Indy shines amidst nation crippled by recession

Downtown Indianapolis is in the midst of a multi-billion dollar construction boom. As many as 78 projects totaling $3.3B are being invested in the city as renovations are underway in both public and private sectors. The convention center, government buildings and the new Wishard Memorial Hospital are supported by public funds; Methodist, Riley, Marriott and NCAA HQ are all funded privately.
Of course this is not indicative of the US economy, where its difficult to find any leader willing to develop right now. Instead, Indianapolis is driven to succeed because of its own growth. Specifically, one rapidly developing spot in Indy is SoBro (South Broad Ripple), the area around 54th Street and the Monon Trail... a beautiful mix of art, culture and community.

Noblesville named Best Places to Retire finalist

With no beaches, no mountains, and only a few celebs, Noblesville has picked up a nomination as one of the cheapest places to retire [MSN's Best Places study performed by Bert Spurling]
Also on the list were Mount Vernon, Washington; Rogers, Arkansas; Moon Township, Pennsylvania and Gainesville, Florida.
This recent nod will only further the rapid growth of Hamilton County. Since 2006 we've been touted as the best area by BusinessWeek, Forbes, CNN, MSN and the NBA.

Indianapolis HS amateurs #1

As of 2012, Indianapolis has been represented in 8 consecutive NBA drafts (add JuJuan Johnson + Marquis Teague to the pic below)

Indy, the king of basketball, has produced more than a dozen NBA players since 2006: Gordon Hayward, Eric Gordon Jr, Mike Conley Jr, Josh McRoberts, Courtney Lee, George Hill, Jeff and Marquis Teague. 3 more - Greg Oden, Rodney Carney and JuJuan Johnson - were drafted but currently don't see any action. Zach Randolph and Jared Jeffries do not qualify based on proximity and age. The same can probably be said for the Zellers and Plumlees. 2006 was the first year after the minimum age changed from 18 to 19. Since then, LA's amateur talent includes Mario Chalmers, Russell Westbrook, Robin and Brook Lopez, Demar DeRozan, Spencer Hawes, Chase Budinger, Jrue Holiday.

USA beats UK

BP still gets last laugh by killing our Gulf Coast  

Fishers ranks #1

I know I sound like a broken record, but its worth noting that another media outlet has ranked Fishers as the best place to live in America. This time we've received the title of "most affordable suburb" which follows a long line of similar accolades in recent years. Not only is Fishers healthy, safe, smart, fast, affordable and rapidly expanding -- its also fun!

Ken Griffey Junior retires

The greatest baseball player of our generation has decided to hang up his glove and spend the rest of his days with his family. Junior, the son of former Indianapolis Indians and Cincinnati Reds slugger Ken Griffey Sr, first burst onto the scene in 1989. Twenty-two seasons later, with 13 All-Star appearances, 10 Golden Gloves, 7 Silver Slugger awards, 3 HR Derby championships and the 1997 MVP - he will go down in history as one of the greatest players ever, both offensively and defensively. His last hit was a walk-off single on May 20 and he currently sits 5th on the all-time HRs list (behind Bonds, Aaron, Ruth, and Mays).

Purdue wins 3rd NCAA title

The Purdue Women's Golf team won a national championship, the third* title in school history. Although leading by 7 strokes entering the final round, that lead was squandered to just 1 after Maude-Aimee LeBlanc bogeyed hole #18.

SoCal had a chance to tie it with a 10-foot birdie attempt on the final hole but the putt missed right. Since 1993, either a Pac10 school or Duke had won every national title.

*The other two NCAA Championships were the 1999 Women's Basketball team and the 1961 Men's Golf squad. They still trail IU by 20.

RunnerUp Champs

So far in 2010, Lawrence Central has lost to Brebeuf 3 times in County, including runner-up champions in both Golf and Baseball. Sure high school is a much smaller scale than the NFL, Olympics, NCAA basketball, WNBA, Confederation Cup and yes, even minor league hockey - the commonality is they're all teams in the § galaxy that have been to the championship this past year only to lose.

Update: Chalk up 2 more: Notre Dame LaX just lost to Duke in the Natl championship and LC Boys Track placed runner-up at State - but hey, at least the Girls won!
Update #2: LC football lost the State Championship to Fishers Tigers. The curse continues!

§ Galaxy of Stars Spring Report Card: A-

Lawrence Central won the Marion County Boys Track meet last night @ North Central, edging out Ben Davis and Warren Central, and set the meet-record in the 4x800 relay (7:53.30) This meet is generally regarded as the second-toughest Track&Field competition in Indiana, behind the State Finals which are held @ IUPUI in June.
The baseball Bears play @ Victory Field tomorrow night in the County Championship versus Brebeuf. The game will add to the fierce rivalry between the two schools this year: Brebeuf eliminated both the basketball Bears (by 1 point) and the golf Bears (by 4 strokes) to win the County Championship last week.

The 2011 class juniors are showcasing their hoop skills this summer in hopes of wooing top national programs for scholarship offers. Michael Chandler (LN), Cody Zeller, Branden Dawson, and Jeremiah Davis are all undecided, while Marquis Teague (UK), Ryan Taylor (UL), Darwin Davins (XU), and Austin Etherington (IU) are other Indiana stars ranked in the Rivals top100. Although it doesn't appear so, Indiana is actually the 2nd best state (behind Ohio) when it comes to retaining talent from high school to college.

The BigTen has remained quiet leading up to their meeting in Chicago May 17-19 to discuss possible conference expansion. The latest rumors are that Missouri, Nebraska and Rutgers are being invited to join and that Notre Dame, Syracuse and Pittsburgh are also candidates. Speaking of Notre Dame...
Fourteen Irish teams were honored for their classroom performance, including football and mens basketball. Butler basketball also finished in the top 10%, along with two other Final Four teams MSU and WVU (surprisingly, Duke did not make the cut.) If a team's APR consistantly falls below 925, they face possible sanctions from the NCAA. Speaking of Hoosier Hoops...
IU finished 11th nationally in average attendance (15,296) with just a 10-21 overall record; no other team in the top 25 had a losing record. For the 34th consecutive year, the BigTen was the best conference in the land at 12,591 per game.

And finally, the Cincinnati Reds have been on bit of a roll lately, with their last two starting pitchers both throwing complete game shutouts. On Monday, Bronson Arroyo allowed only 5 hits and a run, then Johnny Cueto and Homey Bailey followed that performance by allowing just five hits combined. In other baseball news, my fantasy team is still in first place. Booyah!

Duke spoils "Hoosiers II"

Butler almost pulled off the greatest story of hoops history tonight. Gordon Hayward had 2 chances in the final seconds to win the National Championship for tiny Milan High...er, Butler. Not only did they have full support from nearly all of the 70,000 fans, it was the hardest fought game you could ask for. It's awfully tough to lose a game like that, especially as the home team (wearing road jerseys).
Reds kicked off the season opener in grand fashion today by getting stomped by MVP Albert Pujols and the St Louis Cardinals. The good news is that they're only a game outta first place.
Tiger Woods returns to golf this week at the Masters, a tradition like no other. This man knows a few things about storybook performances, except his mistresses are the ones getting paid for telling them.

Astrology 201

Have you ever wondered what your compatibility was with others based on their sign? You might be thinking of Astrology, but that's actually called Synastry.

In Synastry, they determine love factors like romance, passion, affection, attraction using Mars and Venus based on where the planets appear in the sky. I wonder why they don't teach astrology in school (anymore). Without tools like Wikipedia and Google, you wouldn't know about the ancient civilizations that studied the stars at night. They determined that a year is the Earth's rotation around the star and then broke that down to 12+ months, each based on a Moon's lunar cycle (~28 days - also a female's cycle). Later on, they came up with 4 seasons in a year (solstice/equinox), and 4 weeks to a month (or moon phases) thus creating a 7-day cycle. "...and on the 7th day, he rested". Even today's holiday [Easter] is astronomical, determined by the moon and the equinox.

Astrology is frowned upon in public schools because there is a lack of scientific proof. I agree, you cannot narrow down every particular person's traits based on thousands of years of research, but truths must have a theory before it can be proven. 

The signs were originally a universal system describing the different parts of the human anatomy, what a better system than to use apparent "star formations" as symbols, just search "zodiac man". The stars themselves did not have the influence over the parts of the man, they were merely symbols used in a system of understanding. These 12 divisions of "the sky" all correlate to systems in "universally" misunderstood books such as the bible, where we see 12 apostles, 12 tribes of Israel, and so forth. We can see also in various Greek texts as we see in the 12 labors of Hercules and the 12 Olympians. These also correlate to anatomy, where in the skull there are quite specific 12 cranial nerve pairs. The wise individuals who created these systems knew that the brain works by association and by symbols. These particular symbols represented different "vibrational stages" of natural function, but misunderstood by "modern" esoteric minds, eventually faded into obscurity. "Modern Science" also misunderstands alchemy which is actually a similar system, all dealing with symbolically concealed mental processes. - RobC

Amateur All-Stars

Gene Keady, Matt Painter and Chris Kramer 

during timeout at NCAA All-Star game @ da Luc'