Science!
Crippling snow storms in China, the like of which have not been seen for half a century! Snowfall in Jerusalem! Snowfall in Baghdad! Clearly, "global warming" is a myth and our green and pleasant orb is transforming into the dreaded Snowball Earth. We are doomed, one and all, and there's naught left to us by the grim business of recriminations. Personally, I blame Al Gore.

Super Bowl XLII
My sincere congratulations to Alistair, whose New York football Giants are world champs! Well done, my friend, you certainly picked an auspicious year to finally shed the hapless Lions and adopt your new team. Kudos!

I suppose the Golden Boy will have to find solace in his millions of dollars, the exotic beauty of his internationally renowned supermodel girlfriend, and the fact that even with yesterday's debacle he is still the owner of more Super Bowl rings than the entire Manning clan. Be strong, Tom, there's always next year.

Project OSPREY
College basketball without Bobby Knight? Unimaginable as recently as this very afternoon. Then again, in my tow-headed youth I thought the Soviet Union would forever menace the free peoples of the world. Life is change, and to pretend otherwise is to dally with madness.

Wow, it seems like I've "come to terms" with Knight's retirement awfully quickly, almost suspiciously so. I've also looked askance at the level head with which I've absorbed the soap opera of Coach Rodriquez's still-young tenure at Michigan. Perhaps I have grown cold and indifferent and somewhere along the way lost the passion that makes sport such a singular joy. Or perhaps I am learning to discern "Triumph and Disaster" as the "two impostors" Kipling knew them to be (again, from "If-"). Have I lost the volatility by which I have so long defined myself, or am I merely and at length finally becoming its master rather than its compliant slave?

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Spike Jones & His City Slickers, "Clink, Clink, Another Drink" from The Spike Jones Anthology (T.L.A.M.)