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I’ve never bothered with one of these things before, but there’s a first time for everything. Also, I’m watching my Windows Server VM update itself so I can do some testing, and that drastically limits what I can do besides “write text” for the moment.

So, seven random things about Chief Heathen, which turns out to be harder to make interesting if you’ve got eight years of blog posts illuminating most of your life.

  1. I wish I could sing. It turns out I have excellent pitch, but (apparently) neither the disposition to gain technical mastery of an instrument nor vocal cords that will do anything other than my normal speaking voice. It’s annoying.

  2. I hate old movies. Not all of them, just most of them. Generally speaking, if it was made before 1965, I probably have little interest in watching it. I’m not sure why this is — certainly the vocabulary of film became drastically more subtle and interesting in the auteur era of the 70s, and certainly too films made since I was born have more to offer me in terms of cultural resonance, but other than that kind of generality I can’t really explain my distaste for old movies. Obviously, there are exceptions for giants of the film canon, but for popular movies it’s a pretty hard and fast line.

  3. My most recent passport — sadly now expired — was issued in a city and country that no longer exist. On a student tour of the Soviet Union in 1991, we all got royally hammered more or less at every opportunity, and certainly before every Aeroflot ride. Between Moscow and Tbilisi, my passport must’ve slid out of my jacket as I napped (or was taken by a nefarious thief; it doesn’t really matter). This generated some great consternation for the tour leader (my Russian prof), but imposed no actual inconvenience aside from an early-morning trip to a photomat in Kiev for a replacement pic (where our Intourist guide forced the shopkeeper to take me immediately, and to hell with the 40 or so Ukrainians waiting in line). The actual passport wasn’t put together until our last city, where there was a U.S. consulate, and where I delighted myself by stepping back and forth across the threshold (“I’m in the US! I’m in the USSR! I’m in the US!” etc). Consequently, said passport — containing what must be the least flattering photo of me ever taken, and that’s saying something — is stamped “Issued by United States Consulate, Leningrad, U.S.S.R.”

  4. I’m shocked I’ve stayed in Houston 14 years. When I moved here in 1994, it was a lark — the idea was hatched in a drunken party weekend, and executed less than a month later. I assumed I’d live here for a bit, and then branch out. Except cool things kept happening, and I eventually bought a house, and my career turned into a travel-heavy thing (thereby rewarding me for living in mid-country), and I got involved in local nonprofits, and built a great network of friends, and here I am still. I still don’t think I’ll be here forever, but we sure do have good friends here. I just hate the summers.

  5. I’m coming to grips with my 20 years of science-fiction-fan apostasy, and have actually begun delving into the pool a bit more. I read piles and piles as a teen, but was pretty much done with it by late high school. Real books — and I still think of them as such — were more rewarding to me. In my thirties, flying as much as I do and in need of more reading material, I started sampling again, first with the Dresden novels and then with Scalzi’s work, but also with bigger bits at a friend’s suggestion. It’ll never be what I read by default again — too much of it is utter crap, poorly imagined and badly written, and in willful violation of this law — but it’s fun to include as part of my literary diet.

  6. I never really planned this technology career, so I still don’t really know where it’s going. There’s a lot to unpack there, but I mostly decided against going to grad school in creative writing because I didn’t want to be poor, and I liked hacking with computers as much as I liked writing. But I didn’t really give it much more thought than that. I sort of thought I’d keep writing, and while in some ways (e.g., here) I have, I really pretty much retired from fiction and poetry a long time ago. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. It’s also pretty obvious my nonprofit arts activities are attempts to scratch this particular itch by being close to art being done instead of really making any of my own, and (like most such replacements) that’s unlikely to be satisfying in the long haul.

  7. It will surprise no one for me to say that I’m a deeply cynical bastard; I trust people in general to be dumb as posts and venal besides, and to act stupidly in their own interests, or based on superficial lies. This cynicism extends to an utter disgust ar the willful and ham-handed emotional manipulation that is part and parcel of so much of pop culture, and said culture’s inability to separate sentiment from sentimentality. So it may actually surprise people to learn that “It’s a Wonderful Life” completely has my number, and that Sam Wainwright’s telegram makes me tear up every single year: MR GOWER CABLED YOU NEED CASH STOP MY OFFICE INSTRUCTED TO ADVANCE YOU UP TO TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS STOP HEE HAW AND MERRY CHRISTMAS SAM WAINWRIGHT

Seven people? You must be joking. Virtually none of my people blog. But I’ll try: Dorman, Christina, Patrick, JoAnn, Chris and Cathy, Noel, and Erin, for whom this is a surprise soft-launch. (Sorry, honey; your idea is too good not to push.)

Overexposure, 28 years later

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“It seems we’ve landed on some sort of comedy variety show planet.” Kottke’s found the whole Star Wars appearance on the Muppet Show in 1980. Bonus: their appearance is sold as an “accident,” wherein they bump the formerly scheduled guest, Angus McGonagle the Argyle Gargoyle (who gorgeously gargles Gershwin).

I remember watching this in 1980, shocked and amazed at the whole idea of Luke and 3PO on TV.

Update: I do not actually recommend watching all three parts, lest you inadvertently watch the dance number in the third act.

In re: the auto bailout

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From Signal vs. Noise, who got it from Andy Sullivan, who was quoting Peter Klein:

The proposed bailout of GM, Ford, and Chrysler overlooks an important fact. The US has one of the most vibrant, dynamic, and efficient automobile industries in the world. It produces several million cars, trucks, and SUVs per year, employing (in 2006) 402,800 Americans at an average salary of $63,358. That’s vehicle assembly alone; the rest of the supply chain employs even more people and generates more income. It’s an industry to be proud of. Its products are among the best in the world.

Their names are Toyota, Honda, Nissan, BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Subaru.

Interview with an Empty Suit

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BoingBoing interviews Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, with predictably bullshit results, for example:

Chertoff: What I can tell you is that in the period prior to September 12, 2001, it was a regular, routine issue to have American aircraft hijacked or blown up from time to time, whether it was Lockerbie or TSA or TWA 857 [I believe he meant TWA 847 – Joel] or 9/11 itself. And we haven’t had even a serious attempt at a hijacking or bombing on an American plane since then.

But BoingBoing bothered to do some legwork:

According to Airsafe.com, the last flight previous to 9/11 to be hijacked with fatalities from an American destination was a Pacific Southwest Airlines flight on December 7th, 1987. “Lockerbie” refers to Pan Am Flight 103 which was destroyed by a bomb over Scotland after departing from London Heathrow International Airport on its way to JFK, with screening done — as now — by an organization other than the TSA. TWA Flight 847 departed from Athens (Ellinikon) International Airport, also not under TSA oversight.

While Wikipedia’s list of aircraft hijackings may not be comprehensive — I cannot find a complete list from the FAA, which does not seem to list hijackings, including 9/11, in its Accidents & Incidents Data — the last incident of an American flight being hijacked was in 1994, when FedEx Flight 705 was hijacked by a disgruntled employee.

The implication that hijacking or bombing of American airline flights is a regular occurrence is not borne out by history, nor does it follow that increased screening by the TSA at airports has prevented more attacks since 9/11.

In other words, as we might’ve predicted, Chertoff it talking out of his ass, and does nothing here but make noises designed to support the obviously worthless policies his organization has pursued since 9/11.

This is as good a place as any to point out “End, don’t ment, the Transportation Security Administration,” an op-ed from the Christian Science Monitor that ran last week. In it, the author points out the absurdity of the liquid ban as an example case: enacted after the British “liquid explosives” plot, experts have since shown that it’s essentially impossible to fabricate an explosive from components in flight. You need a lab, careful procedures, a lot of time, and significant training. Further, British juries returned ZERO terrorism convictions associated with the “plot:”

The TSA makes it sound as though anyone with a year of high-school chemistry and some hydrogen peroxide can whip up explosives in an airplane’s restroom. But mixing a truly explosive bomb is a delicate operation. It requires exact temperatures, precise measurements and methods, and specialized equipment – all more commonly found in laboratories than lavatories. The procedure takes a while, too. And the fumes are likely to alert the passengers shifting from foot to foot in the aisle as they await their turn in the washroom.

In fact, chemists worldwide doubt that even the most accomplished terrorist can concoct such a combustive cocktail high above the Atlantic. A British jury this summer didn’t buy the allegations, either. Due to lack of evidence, only eight of the plot’s original 25 suspects finally made it to trial. As it turns out, police should have freed all the defendants: jurors refused to convict anyone of terrorism. They exonerated one man, returned no verdict on four others, and settled on lesser charges for the remaining three.

But none of these facts seem to matter to the TSA. It needs something to justify its existence: Despite six years of patting down passengers, it hasn’t reported uncovering a single terrorist. No wonder it latched onto the nonsense about liquid bombs. Ferreting out and confiscating everyday substances not only makes work for 43,000 screeners, it also fools us into thinking this protects us.

The TSA has always been a political, not practical, response to 9/11. It hassles us at checkpoints not because of penetrating insights on security or some brilliant breakthrough, but because politicians handed it power. Specialists in security didn’t invent the TSA; the Bush administration imposed it on us. So we might hope the incoming president would abolish this absurd agency.

Word. So far, Obama has pledged to improve, but not abolish the agency. Let him know what security people actually think.

Now that’s MY kind of smuggler!

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In Columbia, they call him Captain Nemo:

Reporting from Tumaco, Colombia — Squat, bull-necked and sullen-looking, Enrique Portocarrero hardly seems a dashing character out of a Jules Verne science fiction novel.

But law enforcement officers here have dubbed him “Captain Nemo,” after the dark genius of “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.” They say the 45-year-old has designed and built as many as 20 fiberglass submarines, strange vessels with the look of sea creatures, for drug traffickers to haul cocaine from this area of southern Colombia to Central America and Mexico.

(Via BB)

Leia on Lucas

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From Lucas’ AFI award ceremony, here’s Carrie Fisher. Stay with it through the end:

How much do you love “I hope I slept with you to get the job, because if I didn’t, who the HELL was that guy?”

Ah, telcos. Will ever stop being craven weasels?

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So, there’s been a bit of hoopla lately about network neutrality and what the Obama administration’s position might be thereon. NN is the idea that all net traffic should be treated the same, and that telcos shouldn’t be able to prioritize some data over others — just as the phone company doesn’t prioritize party A’s calls over party B’s on the basis of some “Gold Seal” level of service sold to A. This is a good notion for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that we don’t want the increasingly diversely-interested telcos deciding to, say, detain packets of data related to competitors’ services. (The other angle is that in order to deliver better service for some packets relative to today’s mode of work, you’d basically just be degrading everything else. It’s not like they’re gonna roll out a new nationwide fiber network and charge admission to the fast lane; it’s all about putting roadblocks up.)

Anyway, one bullshit argument the telcos love to use — especially when they can have idiot sockpuppet pseudo-analysts do their shilling for them — is that a network-neutral world is why Google gets such a free ride.

Free ride, you say? What’s he talking about? Good question. The idea is that Google, since it’s not paying for the round trip of bandwidth between you and Gmail, is somehow getting a subsidy. Except — first — every Google customer is paying for bandwidth somewhere, and — second — Google of course pays for bandwidth to its data centers. Does Google pay for bandwidth at the same rate you do? Of course not, just as Nestle pays a lot less for sugar than you do:

This is stupid on so many levels I’m almost too stunned to know where to begin. Why would you ever imagine that the per-byte cost of getting upstream traffic out on a few enormous pipes would be the same as the per-byte cost on the downstream side, where the same traffic is dispersed to a bazillion consumers, each with their own broadband connection? (Nestle pays a lot less per pound than you do for sugar; I await a “research study.”) What would possess anyone to posit that there’s some inherently “fair” division of the cost of connecting end users to popular (mostly free) services anyway? Google adds value to the product ISPs sell, presumably helping them to attract customers; should Eric Schmidt be demanding compensation for the “implicit subsidy”?

FanTAStic

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From a friend and fellow alum, who says “this will never stop being awesome:”

The University of Alabama is set to honor Mobile native James M. Fail by placing his name on a prominent fixture at Bryant-Denny Stadium. A donation by Mr. Fail to the Crimson Tide Foundation will result in the visitors’ locker room being officially named “The Fail Room.”

For once, we can endorse some Republican legislation

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Rep. Joe Barton of Texas has introduced a bill essentially mandating a college football playoff:

He said the bill — being co-sponsored by Reps. Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat, and Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican — “will prohibit the marketing, promotion, and advertising of a postseason game as a ‘national championship’ football game, unless it is the result of a playoff system. Violations of the prohibition will be treated as violations of the Federal Trade Commission Act as an unfair or deceptive act or practice.”

WTF?

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Note iconography under “Wed,” below — as well as the contrasting high temp predicted for Sunday.

houston-weather.png

Things that are geeky but very, very cool

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GoToMeeting has been my, well, go-to virtual meeting/screen-and-app sharing tool of choice for well over a year for very good reason; it Just Plain Works with nearly zero fuss, no matter what sort of firewall my client is behind. They point their browser to the site, click “join a meeting,” and in a moment or two I’m giving them a 9-digit number that connects them to the virtual workspace. (The service has a teleconference option, too, but that’s less often in use since many of my meetings are one-on-one.)

Having something like this Just Work is fucking HUGE, since for years everybody and their brother has been trying to make it happen with often spectacularly awful results. Microsoft’s LiveMeeting/NetMeeting product has eaten more billable time in my career than some projects I’ve been on — people wander into the room, and then everyone spends 20 minutes trying to get the thing to work before giving up and doing without. LM is a little better now — I do business with MS, and they use it — but it’s still awkward and clunky, and completely hostile to any OS that isn’t Windows.

Well, GTM has been Mac-friendly as a participant for a while, but I discovered today that Mac users can now be full-fledged screen-sharing hosts. I don’t typically go this route — I prefer to sandbox my screensharing inside a VM for privacy reasons — but it sure is nice to have the option. I still interact with plenty of other online meeting tools, but GTM seems to be getting better and better all the time. It’s cheap, too — flat fee per month. If you need this sort of thing, it’s a Godsend.

Plaxico is an Idiot

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This whole Plaxico thing just reeks of boneheadedness, which is painful for Heathen Central to admit given our affection for the Giants generally and Plaxico specifically (Burress has been our favorite player for a while, an honor that is predicted predominately on “which productive NFL player on a team we like has the funniest name.” (The runner-up is Atari Bigby in Green Bay)).

Consequently, the light this event shines into Plaxico’s fucktardery is, well, disappointing to us. The entire affair is error on error on error in a chain that could have, at any moment, been broken and thereby prevented the near-certain incarceration endgame.

So, in the order he probably committed them, a brief survey of stupid Plaxico tricks:

  1. “I’ll wear a shit-ton of jewelry worth tens of thousands of dollars to a loud and chaotic night club where snatch-and-run type thefts are easy to perpetrate, and I’ll do this on the off chance that someone around me may of missed the fact that I make a fuckload of money by being one of Eli’s favorite targets, and — oh yes — I caught the winning TD in the Super Bowl last year.” Stupidity rating: 3. Lots of people, especially people who come from below the upper-middle-class, have a tendency to suffer from Wife of Bath syndrome in an effort to show everyone how well they’ve done. Pro athletes are particularly vulnerable, and it’s hard to completely condemn the practice for this reason. However — and I say this as someone dumb enough to have regularly stumbled home drunk from Egan’s wearing my dad’s Rolex — wearing flashy jewelry in a club like that is just silly.

  2. “Because I have to wear such fancy jewelry to illustrate my station in life, I must also carry a gun to protect same.” Stupidity rating: 6. Plax jumps a lot here, since he’s making a bad assumption based on a bad assumption which compounds the whole affair. Carry a gun because you HAVE to go someplace where you don’t feel safe, sure. But creating a situation you perceive as dangerous (wearing the jewels into the club) and then compounding that danger by carrying a gun as well makes you pretty stupid. Better to avoid the danger in the first place, but therein you see how the chain develops.

  3. “I have no reason to bother with registering this firearm.” Stupidity rating: 8. Carrying a loaded gun without a permit in NYC is a felony. Dude, you’re rich as metric FUCK; hire a security service if you need to wear 30 pounds of gold out in public. Carrying just tempts fate, and fate can be a bitch.

  4. “I’m going to pick a gun to carry based on popular culture and not on my specific carry needs.” Stupidity rating: 5+ (see below; this plays into point 6, below). This is inferred, but at least a few reports suggested that Burress was carrying a full-sized pistol; there appears to be no dispute that it was a Glock in .40S&W. All Glocks, even the small ones, are double-stacked — meaning they’re much wider than many more carry-appropriate guns. You can get a 9mm or even .40 that’s far slimmer, and that will fit neatly in one’s pocket; when you’re carrying on the sly, concealability is paramount, and absent a proper carry rig, being able to slip it in your pocket securely is pretty important.

  5. “Wait, you mean you can get carry rigs that work in just about any set of clothes, from inside-the-waistband holsters to full shoulder clutches to fanny-pack setups?” If you’re gonna carry, SECURE THE MOTHERFUCKING PIECE. Plax did NOT do this; he was apparently trying to carry a double-stacked Glock in the waistband of his sweatpants. WTF, man? Stupidity rating: 9.

  6. “I’m gonna go ahead and keep one in the pipe just in case despite lacking a real safety or a real carry rig.” Stupidity rating: 10. Most folks who carry probably DO keep a round in the chamber, but they’re probably using real gun leather, or a pistol with a more affirmative safety mechanism than the Glock has. Plax dropped his gun and, in fumbling for it, pulled the trigger. The Glock’s safety is IN the trigger, which one source of criticism for the pistol’s design. There’s no click-on, click-off safety at all. This means carrying a Glock with a round in the chamber without a secure rig is really, really, really stupid; had he picked a safer gun, a real holster, or carried without a round in the chamber, none of this would have happened. (I.e., if Plax had just dropped the gun and avoided shooting himself or anyone else, nobody would have ever known.)

  7. “Now that I’m at the club, wearing loads of jewelry, and carrying a gun, I’d better go ahead and get drunk.” Stupidity rating: 10. In Texas, by the way, carrying a gun EVEN WITH A PERMIT into a place that makes more than 51% of its money selling booze is also a felony. This is NOT a bad law. Carrying when you’re drunk is a bad, bad idea — no good can come from it.

Plax is going to jail. What he’s really going to jail for is being a fucking idiot, given how many choices he could have made differently in this sequence. “Skip the jewels, so I don’t need the gun” would’ve been a great start, but even “get a real holster” or “carry something with an affirmative safety” or “don’t fucking keep one in the chamber” would’ve also saved his career and kept him out of the loving arms of New York State.

Christmas Shopping Woes?

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Check out the Spacetaker Winter Art Market, today through Sunday, at Winter Street Studios.

Spacetaker is excited to bring Houston-area holiday shoppers a three day celebration of creativity, fun and unique gift buying at the Winter Holiday Art Market. WHAM features over 60 local artists, artist demonstrations and children’s art activities. Find everything from paintings to prints, photographs, jewelry, crafts, ornaments, soap, and more! Give something unique this year!

Live music, open bar and yummy food from Beavers on Friday and Saturday nights —- With a jazzy Sunday to wind down the weekend.

More info at Spacetaker.org.

Where DOES the cat go during the day?

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If you have a cat, and it’s not one of the indoor models like HeathenCat, it probably does some significant wandering whenever you let it out. Fortunately, digital photography bits can now be made small enough to fit into a rig attached to a collar, which is how we got to CatCam. Check out the galleries for a cats-eye view of the world.

The Cautious Endorsement

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So, the official mobile telephone and Internet platform of Heathen HQ is the iPhone. It’s fantastic. I’ve used WinMo and Palm and Blackberry, and none of them have the total package of capability + usability the iPhone brings. I’m sore about the walled-garden aspects, but I’m also reasonably confident that as Android spools up, that’ll stop being quite such an issue.

Anyway, one aspect of the iPhone that was vexing out of the gate was the lack of any contact search. If you’re a hipster kid with 100 friends, this is a non-issue, but I have 710 contacts in my address book, and this is AFTER I did a huge cull last year. Scrolling by letter was painful.

The 2.0 update gave us a search option, but its implementation was sub-optimal; there’s a search box, but you have to scroll all the way to the top of the address book list to get to it. A better option would have been to keep the search box on the screen at all times, so it’s always accessible. (This is one area where the Blackberry is definitely superior; on a BB, you can pretty much start typing a name from anywhere and have it do a live search for you, but never mind that.)

Anyway, someone’s found a way to at least sort of solve the problem, and in a way I would’ve laughed at if I hadn’t tried it first: the Melodis Voice Dialer is a thing of beauty, and more or less Just Works. Even better: it’s FREE. I just downloaded it today, so it hasn’t had heavy use or anything yet, but my gut is that it’s gonna be a winner.

Probably a mistake, but y’all go on anyway

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Word is that Auburn head coach Tommy Tuberville is out in the wake of a disappointing season and a stunning shutout in the Iron Bowl. This is almost certainly a mistake; in 10 years at Auburn, Tuberville has produced consistently, taken them to a bowl every year since 2000, and posted winning seasons every year but his first and this one. He’s the only Aubur coach to ever beat Alabama six years in a row. His 85-40 (68%) record isn’t better than Bowden (73%, fired in 1998) or Dye (71%, forced out in an rules violation scandal in 1992), but it’s close — and n.b. that neither of those guys left voluntarily, either.

If this is true, it means four of the six teams in the SEC West will have coaches with less than 2 years tenure at kickoff next August: Mississippi State, Arkansas, Auburn, and Ole Miss. (I’d make a joke about Saban scaring them all off, but when you factor in Nutt’s move from Arkansas to Ole Miss it’s really only 3 who shuffled out of the SEC — and there’s at least some chance Tuberville might go to Starkville.)

MSU isn’t going to do better without Croom. I find it hard to believe Auburn will do better without Tuberville. Nutt might do a little better at Ole Miss than he did at Arkansas, but even that would be inconsistent. Longtime Heathen Third-Party Contract Oil insists that Petrino’s Louisville roots mean Arkansas will become an offensive power in a couple years, but even if that’s true it still means lots of rebuilding in the SEC West, which is bad for everybody because of perceptions of weakness in strength of schedule.

(Sorry, Lindsey.)

The Onion wins again

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American Airlines Now Charging Fees to Non-Passengers:

[AA President Gerard] Arpey said that non-passengers of American Airlines should expect to pay a small fee when making Greyhound bus reservations, choosing to drive to their final destination, or simply being a citizen of the United States with a valid Social Security number.

Arpey went on to note that some additional charges would also apply, including a $15 fee for every piece of luggage customers have inside their bedroom closet, and a one-time payment of $40 for any American whose name is Greg.

(Sorry, Greg.)

ROBBED: The Death of the Whisky Pact

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BCS is out, and despite having BEATEN Oklahoma, this goofball system we have put Texas BEHIND Oklahoma in the rankings, which means it’s the Sooners that will whip Mizzou in the Big XII game and play the SEC champion in Miami.

Of course, we here at Heathen know that the SEC will prevail, and our home conference will enjoy its third title in a row. But suppose they don’t, and Oklahoma wins. Texas sits out the big game despite having beaten them, and the champs know there’s a team better than them down in Austin.

This whole things just stinks.

And All Was Right With The World

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I’d have been happier with 40+ points, but a 36 to zippo shutout of Auburn ends the regular season for both teams. Auburn’s difficult year ends at 5 and 7, a game shy of a bowl slot, which suits us just fine. Tuberville may have a year left — his six-game Iron Bowl streak will probably buy him some time — but something tells me that next year won’t be much better, and the Auburn faithful aren’t likely to be very patient at that point.

Alabama, of course, improves to 12-0 and will continue to the SEC championship game in Atlanta next Saturday against one-loss Florida. Meyer’s Gators are hot, and have played very well since their shocking loss to Ole Miss, so the game is likely to be quite a brawl. The winner there will for certain go to the BCS game in Miami, meeting whomever ends up on top of the Big XII South. All three contenders in that division won their games this weekend, though only Texas‘s 49 to 9 over A&M was truly authoritative; Texas Tech needed a big late-game rally to escape Baylor, and Oklahoma allowed 41 points in their 61-point win over Oklahoma State. (Frankly, the confusion may actually be all hype: after the drubbing from Oklahoma and the scare from Baylor, smart money says Texas Tech is out of the running for good — and Texas has already beaten Oklahoma in the regular season, which ought to get them into the Big XII game ahead of the Sooners.)

Elsewhere, LSU continued their downward slide with a 31-30 loss to Arkansas, which we’re certain will give the Tiger Boosters a bit of heartburn considering what they’re paying Les Miles.

Next door in Mississippi, the Egg Bowl turned into a 45 to nothing slaughter that also ended Croom’s career there. I hate seeing the preppie bastards in Oxford win that game, but you can’t argue with 45 unanswered points and Houston Nutt’s near-immediate success in his first year there.

On the other end of the coaching spectrum, as always, is Notre Dame’s Charlie Weis. Just a year after an embarrassing 3-9 season, and only a week out from a collapse for the ages against 8-loss Syracuse, the Irish gave up 38 points against the USC Trojans in a pathetic excuse for a game that has pundits all over calling for Weis’ head. The bad news for the ND athletic department is that apparently Weis’ contract buyout is friggin’ huge. Look for several more years of Irish mediocrity with or without Weis; their lackluster performance goes back further than Weis’ tenure.