Tag: football

Sunday Wrapup

Another good football Sunday. Pitt lost again, Cards won again, so I’m happy. Warner’s a little banged up but they’re saying he’s fine, so that’s a relief. Also, if you didn’t catch the Lions – Browns game, do yourself a favor and dig up the highlights – Matt Stafford just proved he’s the genuine article.

And who could have possibly seen this coming?

The five men facing trial in the Sept. 11 attacks will plead not guilty so that they can air their criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, the lawyer for one of the defendants said Sunday.

Scott Fenstermaker, the lawyer for accused terrorist Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, said the men would not deny their role in the 2001 attacks but “would explain what happened and why they did it.”

Ridiculous. I don’t know how anyone can justify this, but I guess that’s not the point. Also, there’s this lovely senator, who I think needs to have the word “representative” defined to him, preferably with a 2×4:

“If you get to the final point and you are a critical vote for health care reform and every piece of evidence tells you if you support the bill you will lose your job, would you cast the vote and lose your job?” CNN’s John King asked Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado on Sunday’s State of the Union.

“Yes,” Bennet bluntly and simply replied.

“If you knew for a fact your constituents did not want you to vote for this, would you do it anyway?” “Yes.” “Okay, string him up.”

Anyway, going to try to start working through these doctrinal issues over the next few days. I think posting one per week would be a good pace. Have a good night, y’all!

Post-football digest

What a Sunday for football!

Arizona comes from behind to beat the Seahawks and gets a much-needed, solid win at home. Warner got a late start but once he got going, Breaston and Boldin both looked amazing, and Fitz didn’t miss a beat. Big pleasant surprise was Beanie Wells having another good game – I’m really starting to believe this kid is the real deal.

Cincinnati beats Pittsburgh… in Pittsburgh. And it was a grind, too – they went play for play for a full 60 minutes and made key stop after key stop to keep Pitt from getting away. Afterword, Terry Bradshaw eats his words and apologizes to the Bungles Bengals for ever doubting them. Also, Big Ben got sacked a lot. Always a plus.

And then the “Game of the Year” Pats v Colts… Colts down by 10 at halftime and Manning just isn’t looking like Manning. Brady comes out strong in the second half, scores at the top of the 4th… and then the Colts catch fire and Manning puts together an amazing comeback, bringing them within 6 with just over 2 minutes left. Patriots go 3-and-out but Belichick decides to go for it from his own 30 (!!) and fails, giving Manning the ball back in prime position and he gladly puts it in the end zone. Great game, thoroughly entertaining football, and a great end to a great NFL Sunday.

This will be a long week for me, for many reasons. I’d appreciate it if you guys could keep me in your prayers. Back to regular posting tomorrow.

Geeky Sunday Ramblings

Figured I’d take today and ramble on a little bit about tech developments lately, and some of my geekier interests over the last few days. But let me start off by saying: Dear Cardinals, thanks for winning at Soldier Field today! Great game. Now please never let Matt Leinart on the field again. Love, Dan.

So! The big news this week has been the leaked provisions of the secret copyright treaty that the Obama administration has been working on under the cover of “national security.” Cory Doctorow wrote about it back on Tuesday, describing it as “bad. Very bad.” Even skimming over its provisions made it pretty clear he wasn’t exaggerating. I had hoped it would stir up some controversy and perhaps blow over, but I don’t think that will happen. Among other things, it pretty much obliterates the “safe harbor” status of service providers and forces them into policing all content for copyright infringement. This would probably kill Youtube, Flickr, Blogger, Myspace, Facebook, and any other large content host overnight, as it would be impossible for them to make that happen without charging exorbitant rates for use of the service to hire a fleet of lawyers.

It would also require ISPs to deny accused (not convicted!) infringers access to the internet. That means that if one person in the household gets accused of sharing even a single downloaded song, regardless of if there was proof or if that person actually did it, that person’s entire household would be summarily cut off from the web. This flies in the face of justice as we know it, both in the process of establishing guilt and the principle of reasonable punishment. This treaty also includes a DMCA-style takedown notice provision, which has been an unmitigated disaster in every country it’s been tried. But Obama and the other supporters of this treaty want to make this a global law.

It’s another example of people who have no clue about the ramifications of what they are doing making laws about things they do not understand – or at least I hope it is, because if it is not, then the Obama administration and any other supporters of the treaty are openly declaring that they have no respect for the American values of justice or law, much less the Constitution. Unfortunately, it’s becoming less and less of a stretch to believe the latter case is true.

On a happier note, Ubuntu 9.10 is out and seems to be doing mostly okay. It has gotten a slightly better overall reaction than 9.04 did, and I anticipate that when the first wave of bugfixes come out it will be a really solid distro. What is really important, however, is that this means Crunchbang 9.10 will be out soon. And that, my friends, is worth celebrating. Go ahead, have a drink. Pretend it’s on me. In the meantime, here’s my current #! desktop (click to biggify):

Lastly, I still want a Google Voice invite. Anyone able to hook me up?

Super Bowl post

I waited a day to cool down before writing this, because as anyone who knows me can attest to, I was a bit hotheaded after the game last night – watching my team lose and then having someone smash my windshield in.

Let me start off by saying that was one of the best, if not the best, games I’ve ever seen – and sure I’m probably biased because it was my Cardinals in the Super Bowl – so sue me. A record-breaking comeback and then a heartbreaker of a perfect catch made this a game I won’t forget.

Continue reading Super Bowl post