After Super Bowl 44
I have to give due props to the citizens of New Orleans, occupants of a city that geophysically has no business existing where it does, for keeping themselves relatively civilized and joyous in celebration after the Saints won the Super Bowl, with only isolated problems, instead of erupting in violent riots as I thought might happen (and as has occurred in some other cities). They needed a morale boost, and the Saints provided it.
As for the game, the first half was rather dull and tentative, but the second was a fun exchange of long scoring drives fueled by masterful short-passing strategies of both teams. In the end, an exceedingly rare mistake by Peyton Manning sealed the deal. Good for the Saints.
Now let’s get the team back in the Super Bowl that belongs there, in their own stadium in 2011, the team that has been to more Super Bowls than any other: the Cowboys!
My favorite commercial was the one depicting Brett Favre as a 50-year old, still waffling on retirement…hilarious! I’m neither a fan nor a hater of the Who, being rather indifferent about most of their music; but their halftime performance was abysmal. Let’s hope the NFL does a better job next year of picking musicians (no more fossilized rockers, please!) to take the halftime stage. Better yet, since it will be in Cowboys Stadium, how about a home-grown Texas act? George Strait comes to mind. He may be getting old, but he’s still cranking out number-one hits; and you know the King of Country Music would keep it classy and family-friendly.
Rail Project Payola from On High
The idea of robust, safe, high-speed, intercity rail as mass transit is a good one. In principle, I support it, for a multitude of reasons. Ideally, such a rail project would be developed fairly, equitably, and thoughtfully, in a logistically and geographically integrated way, with a measure of careful economic foresight that would allow the system to pay for itself through a combination of fares, grants, bonds and sponsorship, at a minimum of burden to the federal balance sheet. As with most good public-works ideas, however, politics has a way of turning a fine ideal into something slimy.
As many folks have read or heard by now, the White House has proposed a fine-sounding idea on the surface, in the form of grants to states for developing high-speed rail corridors between cities, some large, some not so large. The Engineering News-Record offers a nice summary.
Being an avid student of geography and a skeptic of Washington politics, it didn’t take long for me to detect a fishy smell wafting from the list of top grant recipients in that story. Consider this map I’ve annotated.
Another way to view the situation is to consider the table itself, also with pertinent annotation.
This cannot be mere coincidence. Behind an initially good idea is just what we don’t need: “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” favoritism…or to put it my way, dog-ass dirty politics! Let’s not even go into what this will do to the national debt. Such is the Chicago-in-Washington way of this administration. The more things “change”…
Overzealous Mail Check
Late last year at the building housing my unnamed office, I received the following postcard from the AMS as a reminder to vote in their annual elections. Click on the image to enlarge. Do you detect anything out of sorts?
Now tell me, why X-ray that? A postcard essentially is a two-dimensional object. What in the world is anyone going to hide inside it?