UConn James

Not true! What about when they announce, "Hey, you know that medication that was approved 10 years ago? Turns out it harms people more than helping them! Our bad."

If it were an agreement that NC would automatically be franchised, he should immediately fire his agent and kick his own ass. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest this a case in point that no one invests in copy editors anymore, to the detriment of accurate reporting.

I switch it on when my nephew is over when my brother & s-i-l have AF Reserve weekend. I find that I enjoy these shows, too; waxed nostalgic when I found out that CBS brought back "Madeline" and NBC has "Babar" on Sat. mornings. The old school cartoons are the best. ... That avatar sig sure does have a double entendre thing going for it, tho. That might have been a contribution from the JetBlue stewardess uniform designers. They were consulted during the redeign, and those are the two dominant colors for that airline. Maybe they would have worked together, but when you add 5 other colors into the fray, don't line things up and go absolutely schitzo with you team's identity ('We wanna look like the Patriots with the dark blue. No, like the Titans with the yoke! No, maybe we could add an underarm stripe thingy so we can be like the Broncos! Sweet!") it gets really ugly, really fast. Maybe someone could pose a question on this subject to Chris Brown on BB.com?

Agreed about the pomp and circumstance. It also gives you a good idea of what issues are at the fore for the coming year. That kind of direction (not that Congress has to give a whit, but they generally do) is the reason for the SotU. I'm intrigued about the plan for health insurance deductability. Need to read what the plan is exactly, but it would sure be a step in the right direction. Way too many people w/o insurance (myself included) b/c after everything else, we just. can't. afford. it. Jim Webb impressed a lot of people last night. That reported dialogue b/w him and Bush was a little uncouth, on both sides. It's understandable that he'd be emotional re: the man who sent his son in harm's way for what he thinks (and bear in mind, he being a former Sec't of the Navy) is "the wrong war." It seemed like Bush wanted/expected Webb to put his fingers to his dimples, grin and say, "My son is doing just plum fine, sir!" Civility is in short supply, and this admin sure hasn't done much to cool the fire.

I like what I've heard of BL... and he could be a tweener back ala Alstott. I think he'd be a great change-up from Willis, to take advantage of teams who may be good at stopping one but not the other --- I remember vs. Pitt in the '90s, if Bettis didn't run our D ragged, one of their scatbacks did, and sometimes both. FB is a position Marv needs to upgrade. Shelton is declining, and even at his peak he didn't exactly put the fear of God in LBs.... Even tho it's not sexy to the fans, it is a meat and potatoes spot just like OL. If 2nd-3rd is too rich for Marv, there are a couple of other options to be had in later rounds or UDFA since FBs are largely ignored in the drafts, esp. in recent years. I really liked what I saw from Michael Cox out of GTech this season.

Those things all have nothing to do with why or when a team would make a change in its uniforms. 1) Sabres jerseys be damned. It's the NFL. They could put a piece of poo on the sleeves and people would buy them b/c they want to wear what the team wears. Changing would guarantee an increase in sales, even in the Buffalo/WNY region. The reason the league has the 5-year rule is to have at least a brief continuity so fans don't feel ripped off if the team changes every year... and many people have already bought the throwbacks. 2) "A team in the highest"? Like the Broncos, Bucs, Falcons, Titans, Rams, etc. all knew they were going to do super-well the year before they made the Super Bowls (that's when a simple 'we're making a change' statement needs to be given to the league)? 3) The change was in the works well before Bledsoe was fatefully sacked by Mo Lewis. Even if a team would wait.... We don't have any great players? No exciting players? No young players on the rise?

You don't know how wrong you are. And the thing is, if they changed them to either the throwbacks or went back to the Super Bowl-era unis, about 90 percent of fans would be happy and we wouldn't have to talk about it ever again. As it is, the team wears an amalgum of the Broncos/Titans/Patriots duds that maybe 20 percent of our fans like/put up with/don't care, and the rest of the league points and laughs like when the 'Felons wore all-orange and literally looked like inmates.

Corrected.

Perhaps for the same reason bars shy away from telling any and all that they served the guy who drove against traffic on the highway and plowed head-on into a minivan. Their security, their medical staff and possibly their concessions people all own responsibility. I fully expect this to magically disappear from the news... not that it's being widely reported even here in NE. The family will be stone-walled.

Meh. I enjoy seeing them get a little comeuppance and the furrowed brows this will cause, but it's not like it was our team that beat them.

Y'all may be surprised to hear this, but... I've seen in the Boston media that NE was about $10M under the cap this year (and/or in recent years) too. They're in the AFC Championship. Does this make Bob Kraft cheap? It's a business decision based on the facts on the ground, and the state of the current personnel and who they could reasonably add to make an impact, and the value/opportunity cost of such. I actually agree with the above stadium naming rights qualm, tho. Ralph severely under-values it in his public statements.... but then again I think the real reason he refuses to sell it is an 'overcommercialization of the game' principle. Until he does sell naming, people like Snyder, Jones et al. can lord it over him with a valid business point that Ralph doesn't maximize his profits, so why should they be forced to share their revenues with him?

And with this sentence, ladies and gentlemen, the hammer hits the head of the nail.

Corrected.

There's been press this week. The creators/producers have been talking with ABC about setting a certain conclusion season to the series. Lindelof said he sees it as he saw the series' length at the genesis --- about 100 episodes, which would translate to about 5 seasons. They want to avoid the mistakes of X-Files, Alias, et al. According to Lindelof, setting this certain end will help viewers gain a little more perspective, as he says, similar to how JK Rowling announced the Harry Potter series was ending with this seventh book. I think it will too; they have promised that answers will come. They said an interesting thing also that people and critics are always discontented with the current season and nostalgic about previous ones; which is true about a lot of series. Also, they said next season will not have these hiatuses, which were caused by production realities and schedule conflicts. It will be a straight run from now on. This is probably the #1 complaint and the reason for the ratings dip, which is probably b/c so many people are just waiting until the DVDs come out to watch it all in one clip. Link. There's others around the Internets with interview transcripts, etc.

That is a woman after VABills' own heart.

Sez who? You?!

"It was a retirement gift from Ricky Williams, officer. Honest!"

Christ. Back when I was at the U (I commuted), there could be a full-on blizzard and it would take an act of Congress to close the place.

Which is like suing the town I live if I get burglarized by thieves who use copies of the P&Z board's blueprints, which they have for every building in town. Are we going to stop teaching video production to everyone and burn all textbooks so Ayman and Osama won't be able to use our infrastructure? Govt and agencies have gone overboard since 9/11 denying access to even some of the most basic public records. Stupid response to smart enemies when you tear down your own democracy of information for a little safety. I wouldn't begrudge the blurring/blacking out of the layout of the compounds, bases, etc. (it probably is already done for some sensitive sites in the U.S.) for security purposes, but I would be loathe to wipe out the purpose for all the legit usage of GE.

Who knows, but I usually of the belief that the morons on the Leno show are trying to act dumb so they'll be on TeeVee; if they answer correctly, they won't be on prime time, so they give the host what they want. Also, there's the rule where 99% of people lose all ability to think when there's a camera around. Their inner monologue switches to 'Oh my God, I'm on television! Try not to look stupid, Gordie! Suck in those cheeks and the gut!' Most people turn into morons just with a photographic camera; multiply it by 10,000 with video. Then again, some people are that dumb.

Lawyers and judges don't mind releasing criminals (especially the perverts and child rapists). It keeps them in a job when they strike again... and again... and again.

. NBC hired a consulting firm before they started airing the games, with an aim at delivering what the 18-34 male demographic wanted. It was mostly just a bunch of buzzwords like connectivity, multi-tasking and such, which I can only take as them showing fantasy stats even more than they currently do. This stuff wasn't really incorporated this season, they said, but it may eek into the broadcasts. I actually thought NBC did a really great job with SNF, Madden's Brett Favre pole-smoking aside. It was a very toned-down broadcast, and more traditional, in a mid-90s sense. The Pink intro was about my biggest qualm, which surely qualifies as a sorry-ass little First World problem. (but the mohawk... WTF?!?). The logistics can be as complicated or as simple as they want to make them, but it would be cool to have an original intro by a different artist/band each week. My nominee for a future BOTD is.... Jane Monheit.

Please highlight the pertinent sentence in my post that says that.

Could I get the lottery numbers for next week while you're at it?

For the life of me, I can't understand why NBC thought having her and her !@#$ mohawk sing the same song every week was a good idea.