Breathe. Breath. Breathing is a part of boxing that fighters have to think about. You can't hit someone if you are hypo-anemic (or otherwise lacking oxygen in your blood ), and your brain has started to selectively shut down functioning; your left jab is the first thing to go. But not a lot gets written about various boxer's breathing styles. You don't often hear someone say, Manny Pacquiao is the best breather in the game. But he might be. I went into my boxing lesson last Thursday thinking about breathing because I'd been reading F.X. Toole's Rope Burns, the story collection that contains Million Dollar Baby, and there's some good writing in there about breath in boxing.

Bob Marley's birthday was February 6, a couple of weeks back, and it got me thinking again about the reach of Rastafarianism in popular culture and about how if you really want to find out about what Rastafarianism is and does, it's not easy. It used to be, before GoWesting.Com, that if you searched my name on Google, the only contact you could make with me was by way of a seminar on Rastafarianism I helped to organize when I was at Harvard Divinity School called "Kingdom Rise, Kingdom Fall." That process was interesting in itself, and spoke to the different types of people who have been affected by Rasta beliefs, and about what they want to perpetuate as the legacy of Rasta.

Tip O'Neill, the former Speaker of the House and iconic Democratic political figure of the 1980s, said, "All politics is local." It's one of those things that you hear politicians repeat over and over again like a mantra. Everyone knows it's right, or that it's a statement with power, but what the hell does it really mean? Does it mean all politics comes down to making sure people's trash gets picked up on time? Does it mean that a Tupperware party is the best way to indoctrinate people in party ideology? Does it mean you should be a successful local politician before you graduate on to a higher calling?

Arsenal played PSV Einhoven yesterday in the first leg of the round of 16 of the UEFA Champion's League. It was the first matchday of this year's knockout stage and there was a lot of hype surrounding the games. Arsenal have remained undefeated thus far in 2007 but they were coming off an anemic 0-0 tie in the FA Cup fourth round against Bolton Wanderers. Tommy Smith, the mainly idiotic ESPN announcer who has ridden his Irish accent to some measure of respectability in this country, actually had a point when he said, "You don't know which Arsenal club will show up. The one that plays well and scores goals or the one that plays well and doesn't."