William's Cool Links

The rest of this page is pretty straight-laced group stuff. This part of the page just for fun. These are some sites and things I enjoy personally, and no endorsement by the chemistry department or university is implied.

Soccer

I got sucked into soccer when Christopher turned four and wanted to play. The local club called me up and said if I wanted him to have a team, I had to coach it. I said OK, as long as it didn't matter I knew nothing particularly of the game, and surely didn't know how to play well at all. That was a few years ago. I still can't play well, but I have a lot of fun with it with him and playing myself.  Now I'm on the club board and have all these pieces of paper that say I'm supposed to know something.  Not going to be too long before the little dude can beat Dad...but that's a good thing, right?!  And the twins aren't far behind...

They call Soccer "The Beautiful Game." Took me a while, but now I get it.

• This is the local club, The Ames Soccer Club.  I currently do their web site.
• This is a great resource for parent-coaches that get sucked in like me. There's a mailing list and a free (good, also long) coaching manual. The Soccer-L homepage.
• This is the web page of the National Soccer Coaches Association of America.  Great site, great group.  Great magazines, too.
• This is the ESPN Soccernet.

Cyclones

OK, so I'm a sucker for the local teams.  We're season ticket holders for the Women's Basketball team.  All hail Bill Fennelly!

• This is the official women's hoops site, part of www.cyclones.com.
• The once-proud Des Moines Register is now a Gannett piece of garbage, but at least they still cover the 'clones.
• The Ames Tribune also (of course) covers Cyclone sports.

The Dodgers

OK, so Fox and its owner might have beenThe Root of All Evil (no wait...isn't that Bill Gates?) and the new guy is called a Parking Lot Attendant in the LA Times, but they're still The Dodgers.  We'll see how the Dodger version of MoneyBall works out in the long run, I guess.

• Of course, you need to read the LA Times Dodgers Coverage if you missed last night's game!
• Here's the ESPN baseball site. I hear that they also cover a few other minor sports, too.... And by the way, too bad they gave their site over to Microsoft, the root of all evil (well, most evil, anyway, along with Rupert Murdoch.  OK, let me add Clear Channell to that, too.).
• I don't like to pay for radio, but you can listen to all the games at MLB.com.

Media

• We're blessed in Iowa to have two great public radio stations based at ISU:  WOI-AM-640 and WOI-FM-90.1.  Between the two of them, we get a good selection of classical, jazz, news, and talk.
• A couple of cool political/opinion magazines:  The New Republic and The Washington Monthly .
• Go to the New York Times and get them to send you Daily Headlines.
• I like to go to the IMDB or to Roger Ebert to read about movies.

Politics, etc.

• One of the cool things about living in Iowa is that - once every four years - You Matter.  My guy - Howard Dean - imploded, but hey, you don't win them all.
• LGBT issues are a pet peave of mine.
  • Here is the site of the More Light Presbyterians, most definitely NOT part of the religious right.  They have a LOT of excellent things to say about the value of all people, especially in relationship to the church in which I grew up.
  • Here are some on-campus resources.
• Become a card-carrying member of the ACLU.

Animals

• We used to be very involved with the dog scene, but that has been harder with kids.  We still have our two Newfoundland Dogs.  This is the site of the Newfoundland Club of America.  Also, here is the regional club, the Heart of America Newfoundland Club.  We got our Newfs from Kaylar Kennels in Grinnell Iowa.
• This picture was taken in 1996, but we still really like it:

• We recently lost our lovely cat Lavender to a brain tumor. She was a British Shorthair, a wonderful breed which isn't too common in the United States. The best general information web site for cats that I know of is the Cat Fanciers. You can get to just about anywhere else of interest from there. The two largest cat registries, CFA and TICA have nice sites.
• These are pictures of Lav.

  

• We like to keep aquarium fish.  Below are some pictures from a nice little African Cichlid (Julidichromis regani) tank I kept in my office for several years.

William S. Jenks
wsjenks@iastate.edu, 515/294-4711
3760 Gilman Hall, Iowa State University
Ames, Iowa 50011-3111