Irish Trojan in Tennessee

Loonie passes dollar

By David K.

Today for the first time in over 30 years the Canadian dollar passed the American dollar.

Just another sign that the American economy is continuing to thrive right?

Hat tip: Daring Fireball

The Thrilling Thirty-One

By Brendan Loy

Last year, throughout the college football season, I had a weekly feature here on BrendanLoy.com called "The Unbeatens," in which I would list Division I-A's remaining undefeated teams, along with their opponent for the next week. I started it after Week 3, when there were 29 unbeatens remaining. We're at that point again -- indeed, Week 4 technically starts tonight, and Miami vs. Texas A&M involves one of the Thrilling 31 -- so I guess I'd better get crackin'. 

This year, there are two more unblemished records than last year at this time: 31. That number will decrease to no more than 29 after this weekend, though, as there are two games between fellow unbeatens: Oklahoma at Tulsa tomorrow night, and South Carolina at LSU on Saturday afternoon. Meanwhile, there are four games Saturday between an undefeated team and a winless team: Kansas vs. Florida International, Texas vs. Rice, Cincinnati vs. Marshall, and (ahem) Michigan State vs. Notre Dame.

Anyway... what is the significance of this list? Well, at least for the teams from BCS conferences (28 of the 31), being on this list means your hopes of an undefeated run to the national championship have not yet been extinguished. For some of these teams, those hopes are a realistic possibility (e.g., USC, LSU, Oklahoma), while for others, they are a ridiculous pipe dream (e.g., UConn, Indiana, Kansas). For most, they're somewhere in between those two extremes. But regardless, in every one of these fan bases, you know there are a bunch of fans -- delusional fans, perhaps, but fans nonetheless -- asking the question: "What if? What if we won all our games?" And that's the beauty of college football: it affords everyone (well, er, except the non-BCS teams) the opportunity to dream big... and then affords everyone else the opportunity to laugh their heads off when those dreams are cruelly extinguished (e.g., when UConn visits Pitt on Saturday).

Anyway, without further adieu, here is the list...

WTF??

By Brendan Loy

I just checked TVGuide.com, and, um... ABC is showing Iowa-Wisconsin at 8:00 PM Saturday in Knoxville, instead of USC-Wazzu?? Are you kidding me??

I thought I'd escaped the torture of missing games I cared about in favor of lame-ass Big Ten crapfests when I moved out of the Midwest!! Not that Wisconsin is crappy, of course, but c'mon: how is #7 Wisconsin vs. an Iowa team that just lost to Iowa State the "national" game, instead of #1 USC vs. a decent Washington State squad (whose only loss is to... you guessed it... Wisconsin)? Good grief.

Hey, fellow Knoxvillians (Knoxvillites? Knoxvillagers?), can you recommend any non-smoking sports bars? Does such an animal even exist? I have a pregnant wife to think of here...

On being an Irish fan

By Brendan Loy

A classmate with unimpeachable Domer credentials sent me this blog post, which he thinks is pretty funny, and I agree. Excerpt:

SOUTH BEND, IND (AP)–Notre Dame Athletic Director Kevin White announced the signing of a contract extension to head football coach Charlie Weis this morning, inking the third year head coach to an unprecedented three hundred year contract extension worth an estimated 1.4 billion dollars in salary and benefits.

Heh. Read the whole thing. Mer-people are mentioned.

This comment by Stewart Mandel, written in the form of an open letter to White, is also rather amusing: "I'm sure when you handed over that Fort Knox-sized contract extension to Charlie Weis a couple years ago, you were expecting a slightly bigger return on your investment than, say, zero offensive touchdowns through three games. It's too bad you didn't structure the deal so that he'd be paid per rushing yard. That way, he'd owe you money right now." Heh.

Apropos of which: it has been suggested that I'm taking Notre Dame's horrendous start a little too lightly, and that my light-hearted attitude demonstrates, once and for all, that I'm not a real Irish fan.  That's a contention that some of my Domer detractors have been trying to prove for over three years now, but this particular incarnation of the argument is, on its face, better than most of the ones that have been raised before -- and this time, some of the people raising it are actually doing so in good faith. So I thought it deserved a more complete answer than "shut up, you Trojan-hating idiots."

Here's the thing. As some of my regular readers surely have noticed, I take a light-hearted attitude toward almost everything. Even when it comes to stuff I feel strongly about, I'll still joke around mercilessly. (My jokes aren't always funny, but that's a separate issue.) I have practically no sacred cows. I'll make fun of whomever, for whatever reason. For instance, I think global warming is real and a very important issue that we need to address, yet I routinely make fun of Al Gore and his fellow crusaders. I very strongly believe in gay rights, yet I crack jokes about gay issues all the time. Perhaps most relevantly, I'm a big Gonzaga fan, and that loss to UCLA two years ago was one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen, but I'll totally make fun of Adam Morrison for crying on the basketball court, because dammit, it's funny.

The same goes for Notre Dame. Am I happy that they're 0-3? Do I enjoy watching the utter meltdown that has occurred in South Bend? Of course not. I'd be much happier if they were unexpectedly 3-0, and we were building up for another colossal clash of titans between the Irish and Trojans. I'd be much happier if this season was like the last two, when I would routinely spend my Saturdays watching consecutive resounding victories by "my" teams. But that's not the reality. The reality is, the Irish suck right now, and they suck so badly that's it's, objectively, rather funny. I mean, c'mon: snapping the ball over the player's head on the first play of the Michigan game? That's worthy of the '62 Mets! Notre Dame -- Notre Freakin' Dame -- being ranked last in every offensive category? The irony alone is comedy gold! And for heaven's sakes, no offensive touchdowns in three games? WTF??

If USC was this bad, I'd laugh at them too.  Really, I would.  It's a big part of how I deal with disappointment, at least when we're talking about topics that are inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, like sports.  Of course, I can't prove to you, based on the archives of this blog, that I'd laugh at USC too if the Trojans were comically bad, because the Trojans have never been comically bad -- they've never been bad, period -- since I started this blog!  But if I dig through my old photos (and I'm of no mind to do that right now), I believe I'd find a picture from the fall of 1999 of my dorm-room whiteboard after a USC-Oregon contest in which Paul Hackett's Trojans set a new Pac-10 record for penalties in a game.  My reaction wasn't to wail and scream and gnash my teeth and wring my hands; I don't do teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing; it's not my thing.  Instead, my reaction was mockery.  I don't remember exactly what the whiteboard said, but it was something along the lines of congratulating the Trojans for their glorious Pac-10 record.  Mockery is always, or nearly always, my first resort in such situations.

No gay marriage in Maryland

By JLR

Maryland's highest court has declared that the Constitution of my adopted home state does not allow room for the marriage of homosexuals within its borders.  The US Supreme Court will not and cannot hear this case, since it is a matter of state law that is in question.  The reason?

the prohibition on same-sex marriage promotes the state's interest in heterosexual marriage as a means of having and protecting children.

So let me ask this question to all of the law experts in the Brendansphere.  If a man or a woman is physically unable to produce children (due to menopause, castration, or for any other reason), should they not be allowed to marry in this State?  Should we ban married couples from buying contraception?

IMHO, there is absolutely no reason for the Court of Appeals to decide this.  The legal ground on which it rests is shaky at best.  Furthermore, the majority of the 4-3 decision agreed that the State General Assembly (the legislature) could (and should!) write a law allowing gay marriage in Maryland.  The last governor, Robert Ehrlich (R), vetoed a civil union bill that had passed the General Assembly in 2005.  The current governor, Martin O'Malley (D), would support a civil union bill.

But my opinions of civil unions (and how they're no better than white-only lunch counters) make up another rant all together.

Good grief

By Brendan Loy

Ugh: "The Yankees have shaved 13 games off the Red Sox lead since May 29, and now sit just 1.5 back after a 2-1 win over the Orioles."

Boston's magic number is 9, where it's been stuck ever since Josh's oversized post on Saturday. (Not that I'm blaming you, Josh. Maybe I'm the one who jinxed it, by moving your giant number "after the jump.") Meanwhile, the Yankees' magic number, which was 20 on Saturday, is now 12 after four straight Yankee wins and four straight Red Sox losses. As I said: Ugh.

Pope-pourri

By JLR

Though unofficial, it looks like Pope Benedict XVI will likely visit Washington, DC when he visits the US in April.  Also likely on the schedule: Mass in Central Park plus a visit to Ground Zero and a trip to Boston.

Maybe the message of peace he delivers to the UN will resonate with some of those folks in our nation's capital.

Court rules, France Yale surrenders; Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia

By Brendan Loy

Yale Law School officials announced yesterday that the school "will end its policy of not working with military recruiters following a court ruling this week that jeopardized about $300 million in federal funding." (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) Some of my NDLS classmates will remember this issue from moot court, but for those unfamiliar with the controversy, here's a quick summary:

Yale and other universities had objected to the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy that allows gay men and women to serve in the military only if they keep their sexual orientation to themselves. Yale Law School had refused to assist military recruiters because the Penatgon wouldn't sign a nondiscrimination pledge.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Yale on Monday, rejecting its argument that its right to academic freedom was infringed by federal law [i.e., the Solomon Amendment -ed.] that says universities must give the military the same access as other job recruiters or forfeit federal money.

"The fact is we have been forced under enormous pressure to acquiescence in a policy that we believe is deeply offensive and harmful to our students," said Robert Burt, a Yale law professor who was lead plaintiff in the case.

While I disagree strongly with the military's "don't ask don't tell" policy, I believe the law schools were wrong on the merits of their legal case, and thus this decision is the correct one -- at least, assuming the issues are similar to what they were in the previous incarnation of the case that we argued. (Admittedly, I haven't followed the evolution of this controversy over the last two years; I'm not even sure how it ended up back in a circuit court after SCOTUS ruled on it in 2006.) I had to argue the government's side in moot court, which was a random crap-shoot, but I ultimately came around to the view that it's the correct side, as I wrote in a previous post. If these policies -- either the underlying military policy toward gays, or the policy cutting off funding to universities that don't give equal access to military recruiters -- are to be changed, that change needs to originate in the legislature, not the courts.

In other news from the world of academia, it seems that while Larry Summers isn't welcome to be a dinner speaker at the University of California, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an honored guest at Columbia. (Hat tip: Becky.) Well, that makes perfect sense to me. Ahmadinejad may be a murderous, oppressive tyrant bent on destroying Israel, dominating the Middle East, opposing America at every turn, and potentially hastening the apocalypse and the arrival of the 12th imam -- but hey, we should listen to what he has to say, right? Only closed-minded bigots and crazy right-wing warbloggers (but I repeat myself!) would say no to an "opportunity for faculty and students to engage the President of Iran." Free exchange of ideas, understanding the "other," and all that sort of thing. Summers, though -- Summers questioned feminist orthodoxy! Tolerance only goes so far, people. The free exchange of ideas extends to Holocaust denial, but it doesn't extend to suggesting the possibility that men and women might not be biologically identical. There are some things you just don't say.

(I hope the sarcasm in the above paragraph is sufficiently dripping. ... And yes, I know, UC and CU are different institutions on different coasts. Perhaps Columbia would welcome Summers, too. But I do think this is indicative of a pattern, as illustrated so well in that David Bernstein column that I linked yesterday, albeit in pirate-speak.)

Speaking of right-wing warbloggers, they're organizing a welcome party for Mahmoud in New York on Monday. (Hat tip, again: InstaPundit.) Anyone in the area want to go there and liveblog it for me?

LOL

By Brendan Loy