Mel McDaniel has died of cancer. He was 68. A country singer whose star faded far too soon, McDaniel was country when country really was cool.

He didn’t have many hits, but even now, everyone knows who that distinctive voice is when Louisiana Saturday Night or Baby’s Got Her Blue Jeans On comes on the radio.

Disgraced Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl is still working in the community, volunteering his time to help feed Knoxville’s homeless. This is precisely the sort of thing I was talking about last week when I said Tennessee has never had a coach in any sport that took it upon himself to do as much community work as Pearl has done:

“The one thing that really stood out to me when I asked him for his autograph is he still wrote “Go Vols.” I want to ask you, what kind of man would do that.

avidia bank routing code

He got fired from the University of Tennessee yet he’s out promoting the university. That says a lot about him. That says a lot about his character,” said Howard Cusick from Black Eyed Joe’s BBQ.

It does indeed. Not only was he fired, but he was thrown under the bus by an AD who heavily insinuated that he had committed another violation in March and had “non-NCAA” issues that led to his firing because the AD didn’t have the spine to make the termination on its own merit. While few media outlets have been willing to report it, we now have reason to believe that Pearl did not commit the March violation and that the non-NCAA issues had nothing to do with his time spent at Tennessee. I could not support a university under those circumstances.

The YouTube video that is taking the Internet by storm:

Seen in comments on a CNN story: “If it cannot be proven through science, then it is a myth. Faith and beliefs are a good thing, but they are still myths.”

Applying that logic, the very existence of mankind must be a myth. For all its efforts, science still hasn’t managed to substantiate the beginnings of a physical world.

Even if you subscribe to Darwin’s theories of evolution and common descent as proven fact, science still hasn’t proven the beginnings of life. The best science can come up with is a “big bang” in space that created the universe, and then slimy lifeforms came crawling out of the sea and developed traits that would eventually become the traits of mammals and, later, humankind.

But what about the matter involved in the “big bang”? It had to come from somewhere, didn’t it? And even if you trace it all the way back to when it was just tiny specks of dust floating in the emptiness of space, it still had to be created by someone or something. And science, which requires physical proof, is hopeless to explain it. When you boil right down to it, there’s no more scientific proof for the origin of physical matter than there is scientific proof of God.

Which is why Christian singer Mark Lowry once said, “I would be an atheist, too…if I had that much faith.

I don’t have enough faith to believe that all the order around us evolved from chaos.”

This will make your blood boil. A girl, 14, is raped. Hardly a victim in her “moderate Islamic” nation, she’s condemned to death by lashing:

Hena Akhter’s last words to her mother proclaimed her innocence. But it was too late to save the 14-year-old girl.

Her fellow villagers in Bangladesh’s Shariatpur district had already passed harsh judgment on her. Guilty, they said, of having an affair with a married man. The imam from the local mosque ordered the fatwa, or religious ruling, and the punishment: 101 lashes delivered swiftly, deliberately in public.

Hena dropped after 70.

avidia bank routing code

The sun sets in Big South Fork Country.

Above, a blooming purple lilac silhouetted by the setting sun. Below, the sun sets over Leatherwood.

Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel sports editor Tom Davis created quite a stir this past weekend when he used Twitter to tell a basketball recruit that he should choose Butler (Davis’s alma mater) over Indiana.

The editor’s credibility, professionalism and ethics were called into question, first by his readership with alliances to Indiana, and now by his colleagues.

Perhaps Davis should have been smart enough to never publicly offer up advice to a recruit and put himself in this position, but it hardly makes him unethical. Journalists check their personal allegiances and biases at the door when they go to work. That doesn’t mean they eradicate them from their life. Human nature says that’s impossible. If Davis maintains an allegiance to Butler strong enough that he roots for Butler to excel over Indiana (which would hardly be shocking, considering he is a Butler grad), why shouldn’t he drop a kind word about his school in a recruit’s ear?

Being a fan of one school moreso than another doesn’t make him unethical or unprofessional. Bias and objectivity is checked in his work; not in his personal life. If a bias against Indiana shows up in his work, then, yes, his journalism ethics are obviously called into question. Until then, it’s much ado about nothing.

Unfortunately, journalists are renowned for using holier-than-thou ethical platforms to belittle fellow journalists. Most of the time, their charges come across as hypocrisy, since there isn’t a journalist anywhere who can say that they’re without bias.

If the sports editor is guilty of anything, it was a lapse in judgment when he used Twitter, which can be read by anyone, to promote his personal opinion. Like many journalists, I consider my Twitter and Facebook accounts to be more personal than professional, even though social media platforms are being integrated into news media with increasing frequency. Still, you have to understand that the same people who control your salary (the readers) are among your followers and friends on Twitter and Facebook and they will judge your ability to do your job fairly based on what you post. That’s why I steer away from using this blog (or Facebook or Twitter) to comment on issues and people we cover.

I may prefer one politician or political party over another, but I’m not going to promote and/or criticize one politician or party unless it is an issue on which I would just as readily promote and/or criticize the other. On issues we don’t cover — UT sports, for example — I’m much more opinionated and don’t care to wear my feelings on my sleeve.

There’s a line that is drawn when it comes to journalists’ personal opinions. It’s a fine line, but one that is easily tripped over. If Tom Davis tripped over the line, it wasn’t necessarily because he lacks integrity or ethics. If anyone should understand that, it should be his fellow journalists. And, suffice it to say, many of those criticizing Davis have their own moments when their biases shine through.

If one newspaper is any indication, the number of home foreclosures in this region have skyrocketed in recent weeks.

The numbers aren’t concrete, but the number of mortgages in foreclosure in Scott County is easily higher right now than it has been since the recession began over three years ago.

Online retail giant eBay is prepared to compete even more directly with Amazon.com with the $2.4 billion acquisition of a Philadelphia-based company.

According to the National Weather Service, the northern Cumberland Plateau is experiencing below-average rainfall so far this year.

To date, Oneida has received 11.92 inches of rain since Jan. 1. In a typical year, 14.56 inches of rain are seen by the end of March. Even the month of March, which has been so wet, is below-average, if you believe the official NWS data. So far, 5.12 inches of rain have been recorded this month in Oneida.

In an average year, March features 5.51 inches of rain in Oneida.

With two more storm systems to impact the region by Friday, that deficit will likely be erased. And another big storm system appears to be on tap for Monday to get April started off right.

TEMPERATURES

Despite the relatively cold weather experienced across the region the past week, the month of March is still running about 3 degrees above normal, according to NWS data. So far this month, the average temperature is 47.8 in Oneida. An average month of March features an average temperature of 44.9. February was also above normal (38.2 compared to 37.0), a reversal from the cold January experienced across the region. In January, the average temperature in Oneida was 29.7. In a typical year, the average temperature is 33.5.

I think a lot of people will be skeptical about those numbers. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the NWS has recorded faulty numbers in Oneida. For what it’s worth, the NWS is also showing below-average rainfall in Knoxville. So far this year, 13.28 inches of rain have been recorded at McGhee-Tyson Airport. On average, 13.75 inches of rain is received in Knoxville in the months of January-March.