I happened to see a new version of “Gone, Gone, Gone” on TV this morning.
It was more of a “live” version, and it was a nice rendition and pretty much as catchy as the more “commercial” iteration.
But to my dismay, at the end Robert Plant didn’t do his signature Led-Zeppeliny howls. Allison barked a couple of times, but that was it. They just stood there and let the song end.
I felt so used.
If your feet or hands are cold, try taking five deep, slow breaths.
Sometimes the story is so ironic that adding commentary is just gilding the lily.
Has the Transportation Security Administration’s website been hacked? All indications are yes, and that a malicious phishing attack has been launched against travelers who have or think they have been delayed because they are on a watchlist or have a name similar to a person on the watchlist.
(Full article in Wired Blog)
From an article in the Lakeland Ledger:
A state legislator blamed understaffing by the Florida Highway Patrol for the magnitude of a deadly chain-reaction crash along a smoke-filled and foggy section of Interstate 4 in Polk County…
“I believe it could have been prevented,” Brandenburg said. “Those people didn’t have to die.”
Brandenburg said more troopers could have reacted more quickly to the deteriorating road conditions and closed the road.
Talk about clueless.
The taxpayers of Florida mandated that our government design and build a high-speed train through that corridor.
Governor Bush couldn’t be bothered, so he stalled and convinced the voters to repeal the mandate because it would “cost too much”.
Now Brandenburg wants to encumber the state payroll with more FHP troopers. While they’re worth every penny, troopers are expensive.
Why did we not have enough money to fix the I-4 problem in 2004 with the economy under full steam, but we’re being asked to fund a band-aid for it in 2008 with a recession on the way?
If you get sick,
and either the disease
or the meds you take to cure it
make you open to hallucination
do not
pass the time
by reading Heinlein
especially the older stuff.
A tribal medicine man and a doctor examined a man with flu-like symptoms.
The medicine man declared, “This sickness caused by evil spirits.”
The doctor frowned at him and said, “That’s superstitious mumbo-jumbo. This man’s illness is caused by germs or a virus.”
The medicine man shook his head sadly at the doctor and said, “White doctor confusing the mechanism with the cause.”
Presuming the Gators get invited to a bowl game next year, I think the first question to ask is, “Who’s officiating?”
The Capital One Bowl was very refreshing this year, because I knew we were going to lose and all the stress was gone. When the officials missed a blatant and obvious hold on the *very first play of the game*, one that could have resulted in two points for Florida rather than the eventual seven for Michigan, my first question was, “Who the heck is officiating this thing?”
When I heard it was the ACC, I relaxed. Game over, we lose, enjoy the show, no refunds. The ACC hasn’t been doing much right lately, and their officials’ skill in recognizing “holding” has never been a resume bullet point. The Gator jerseys must look like salt-water taffy tonight.
Oh, and there’s this new thing called “blocking in the back”? It’s bad. You’re not supposed to let teams do it.
Some of this is sour grapes, of course, and I’ve got the crud and that’s surely affecting my outlook. Yet I think there exists a fundamental issue of fairness that extends beyond a single game, or even a single sport.
The rules of a game exist for a reason: to provide a level playing field, an amount of uncertainty, to define the game itself. If one side is allowed to exploit loopholes, you’re not really playing the game.
That’s why performance-enhancing drugs in major league baseball are getting such attention. That’s why gymnasts lose major points for stepping one millimeter outside the line on the floor exercise. That’s why pinball games have TILT. Everybody has to play by the rules.
Make no mistake: Michigan was big, and strong, and fast, and talented, and certainly motivated. But then, so was Florida– maybe not as big and strong, but maybe faster and more talented. We’ll never know, because the ACC officials suppressed the TILT by failing to enforce adherence to the rules– *all* of the rules– by which I mean the old tired rant about “holding”.
(It just so happens that this particular “failure to enforce all the rules” turned out to Michigan’s advantage. I refuse to attach any more significance to the situation than an accident of topology– a failure to enforce a different subset of rules might just as easily turned the tide Florida’s way, which makes the overall situation no better.)
To reiterate the point: The rules of a game exist for a reason, and it should not be within the realm of a small group of officials to influence the outcome of a contest by applying them in an arbitrary manner. Some form of checks and balances needs to be devised in order to ensure a level playing field.