And Give Seattle to North Korea

Seems like a fair trade to me.


From Huckleberries Online: A fan in the Washington student section expresses her dislike for Pullman, Wash., the home of Washington State University, during the first half of a college basketball game Saturday at Hec Edmondson Pavilion in Seattle.Washington State beat Washington 56-52, WSU's sixth-straight victory over Washington.

Pullman: The Land That Time Forgot

Cosmopolitan aesthete Mike Hanly sees Pullman on a "grand march toward saturated development." Pull-up-the-drawbridger James Krueger sees Pullman becoming a "big-box clone of a thousand other places."

But what does the outside world think of Pullman? Thanks to NCAA Division I sports, we get an occasional glimpse.

On College Football Signing Day this year, Tom Dienhart of The Sporting News wrote that Pullman reminded him of a moonscape.

Now, in a story last Friday on Cougar men's basketball, Monte Pool of InsideBayArea.com has even more unflattering things to say about our town. Some of the more memorable quotes:

There is the Land That Time Forgot. Then there is Pullman, Wash., an entire town in the witness protection program.

The home of Washington State University is a dot in the southeast corner of the state in the northwest corner of the country. Among Division I basketball programs in a major conference, it's probably the most isolated and arguably the most forlorn.

A group of recruits nobody else wanted are out to change that. While they can't do much about the sleepy solitude of Pullman, they are progressing nicely at bringing some cachet to the place.
...

This proves to civilization that there is life in Pullman, of which it was famously said is "not the end of the world, but you can see it from there." More to the point, there is a quality program in the outback of the Pacific-10 Conference.
...

As if the charm of Pullman wouldn't be enough.

"When I actually got there, I flew into Spokane and I was thinking the school was somewhere in that area," Weaver, of Beloit, Wisc., said. "Then we started driving and driving and driving.

"An hour-and-a-half later, I saw this town spring up out of nowhere. And I'm thinking 'There's a school here? People live here? In this little village?' I didn't see many people of color, either. There wasn't really a lot to do. I just remember going home and telling my mama it's like jail out there. That I can't go to school there."

Weaver has come to accept Pullman. So have his teammates. They got to love the program and embrace the town.

Thank goodness for the Cougars that Weaver and his teammates came to accept Pullman. But how many others haven't? What other potential talents have we been denied? How can we have a "world class university," or a world class anything, when people say Pullman is "forlorn" and compare the town to a jail? We can't do anything about our distance from large cities, but we can provide more things to do, more places to shop, and better places to live.

For many of these elitist PARD professors, living in Pullman is nothing more than a nostalgic trip to Disney World's Main Street USA. They're here for a few years enjoying the "quaintness" and then head off back to "the real world" of Berkeley, Seattle, Columbus, East Lansing, Boulder, Urbana, or wherever. If we let them hold back our progress, Pullman truly will be the Land That Time Forgot.

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Spring Break In Mexico!!

I just returned from a week in Mexico. No, not Cancun for Spring Break.

I was in Monterrey, Mexico, on business. But I did manage to keep up with things here on the Palouse. I saw that Citizen Hosick and Deirdre "Undesirable Social Classes" Rogers were at it again with more red herrings and even more unbelievably arrogant PARD pronouncements. I was also happy to see the Cougs continue their memorable NCAA run.

I will have a few more interesting things to add later in the weekend.

Thanks to Michael, Scotty, Barenjager, and Satanic Mechanic for keeping things going around here. One of Michael's blogs even got linked on Orbusmax, greatly increasing hit traffic this week.

Monday March 5th, The PES

Scheduled to talk some more about Tasers in general, the Palouse Thunder's owner Jerry Lema, WSU Cougar Basketball with Ryno the Sports Guy, as well as our own Tom Forbes. That is scheduled for noon to two pm.

The PES is hosting a special ASWSU election edition show starting at 4:00 pm tomorrow.

Go Cougs!!

Beat the Bruins!!

"Cougars move into national rankings"

Finally, some good national news coming out of WSU. From today's Moscow-Pullman Daily News:

The Washington State men’s basketball team moved into the Associated Press Top 25 today, the school’s first appearance in the rankings since February 1983.

No. 22 WSU (14-2, 3-1 Pac-10), which is tied for that position with Notre Dame, has received votes since December but strengthened its case this weekend when it beat then-No. 7 Arizona at home. Today’s ESPN/USA Today coaches poll ranked the Cougars 23rd in the school’s first-ever appearance in that poll.

WSU is in a four-way tie for the Pac-10 lead with UCLA, Arizona and USC, a team the Cougars beat on the road a week and a half ago. WSU nearly took down UCLA before the then-No. 1 Bruins caught fire in the final minutes.

Earning a ranking means different things to different Cougars.

“Man, it would mean so much. So much,” senior forward Ivory Clark said on Saturday night. “It’s more than just a ranking for us, it’s about respect.”

The emotions of third-year players Daven Harmeling and Kyle Weaver also surrounded respect, but in a much different way. Each seemed unable to forget that the Cougars were picked to finish last in the Pac-10 before the season.

“I don’t know,” Weaver said Saturday when asked if his team should be ranked.

“We don’t even care because nobody respected us from the beginning,” Harmeling said. “Exactly,” interjected Weaver.

“If you want to jump on the bandwagon you can, but we don’t care,” Harmeling said. “There’s still gonna be some doubters out there.”

WSU coach Tony Bennett took the same questions Saturday and responded with the same feelings.

“I just want to keep playing good ball. It’s all about that journey of trying to touch something special,” he said. “The rankings, and every coach will say it, but right now it’s somewhat insignificant except saying you got off to a good start.

“If it’s at the end of the year and we’re ranked, then I’ll be happy about that.”

Clark, though, seemed unafraid to show appreciation of the pat on the back from national voters.

“We know how hard we’ve worked to get to this point and it’d be huge,” he said in the moments after the UA win.

GO COUGS!!