Vox Popoli

Last week: 13-3. Overall: 111-63. Fantasy: 6-5-1 (4th place)

W-St. Louis Rams over San Francisco 49ers

W-New England Patriots over Cleveland Browns

W-Pittsburgh Steelers over Jacksonville Jaguars

W-Indianapolis Colts over Tennessee Titans

L-Minnesota Vikings over Chicago Bears

W-Philadelphia Eagles over Green Bay Packers

W-Detroit Lions over Arizona Cardinals

W-San Diego Chargers over Denver Broncos

Seattle Seahawks over Dallas Cowboys

W-New York Jets over Houston Texans

W-Buffalo Bills over Miami Dolphins

W-Kansas City Chiefs over Oakland Raiders

W-Carolina Panthers over New Orleans Saints

L-Atlanta Falcons over Tampa Bay Buccaneers

L-Baltimore Ravens over Cincinnati Bengals

L-New York Giants over Washington Redskins

Not bad. Third place in the picks pool regardless of the Seattle result and a HUGE fantasy win moving the Fish into a strong third-place at 7-5-1 and a likely playoff spot. Only a loss combined with two upsets will knock me out; it’s possible, but not probable since I’m playing the White Buffalo’s crippled, out-of-roster-moves team.

Rod Dreher on the societal sickness that has followed spiritual abandonment in Holland:

Like dissolute descendants of old money, the Dutch have been living for two generations now on the moral and spiritual capital built from centuries of religious faith and practice, however imperfect. The accounts are nearly depleted. “The Dutch believe that if it’s possible, then you mustn’t forbid it, you must tolerate it,” says Focus on the Family’s Hondsmerk. “We’ve had that for a generation now. That works as long as people have a natural self-control, but that is fast fading.”

“What we are witnessing now is the very first generation who grew up without a religious background,” says Kinneging. “What has happened until now is that most people without a religious background have become consumerists, materialists, and hedonists. They are still law-abiding citizens. We’ll have to see what the next generation will become.”

As the difference between Woodstock I and Woodstock II suggests, probably nothing good.

From Lying in Ponds:

1 Robert Scheer

2 Molly Ivins

3 Paul Krugman

4 Maureen Dowd

5 Ann Coulter

6 Thomas Sowell

7 Joe Conason

8 NYT Lead Editorial

9 Richard Cohen

10 Michael Kinsley

I count two conservatives and eight liberals there. Clearly, it’s those conservatives who are the mean, nasty ones….

When I saw the headline: Undesirable Irish: Why Notre Dame has become the worst job in college football, and saw that it was written by a black man, SI managing editor Roy S. Johnson, I was sure that this would be yet another emotional, fact-free assertion of why Notre Dame is to be condemned for racism because they dumped a coach, Ty Willingham, who is not performing at the required level. I was wrong.

Notre Dame will never again be a regular contender for the national title. And let’s stop blaming the school’s high academic requirements. Sure, the school’s admission standards are a barrier for many of the nation’s top athletes, but a surly admissions officer isn’t even one of the top three reasons the job is the worst in college football.

The primary culprit is the Irish’s schedule. In the BCS era, an undefeated record does not guarantee an invitation to the title game (See: Auburn, Utah and Boise State), and a single loss (Cal, Texas) can make you Team Irrelevant. Notre Dame plays the toughest schedule in the nation, and will do so at least until 2008, the last season for which its schedule is already locked in. Next year, four of the Irish’s first five games are on the road, at Pittsburgh, Michigan, Washington and Purdue. Then they’ll face USC at home. Season over.

The second reason is the one Notre Dame officials and boosters seem most delusional about: Notre Dame just simply isn’t Notre Dame anymore. It’s no longer the Holy Grail of college football. Talented young men no longer dream of representing the Golden Dome and following the legacies of the Four Horsemen and the Joes, Theismann and Montana. Blue-chip players dream of competing for conference titles. That’s not happening at Notre Dame. It’s happening at places like Purdue, Wisconsin, Cal, Florida, Auburn and even Boise State. They dream of playing close to family and friends, which helped schools like Virginia Tech, Iowa and LSU retain home-grown talent and achieve respectability. South Bend? Please.

The third reason Notre Dame has come to this place was ignited 13 years ago when the school signed NBC to be its exclusive football broadcaster. Most TV deals are struck with conferences, allowing teams to share the television revenue and the pressure to produce solid ratings. As an independent, the Irish signed a deal that allows them to pocket all the revenue (variously reported to be $9 million annually). But it also puts the ratings burden squarely — and solely — on Irish shoulder pads.

Mr. Jones writes a good, dispassionate assessment of why Notre Dame is in a stew of its own making. He takes a more charitable view of Willingham’s performance than I do, but his position is an eminently reasonable one that revolves around academic performance and off-field character, not race. I wish the white sportswriters who are undergoing fainting spells at the notion that a black coach would be held accountable to the same brutal standards of college coaching as everyone else would take a lesson from the man.

I’d never seen Richard Pryor before, so considering his status as a comic legend, I thought I’d give him a try. Space Bunny and I sat there through the first 15 minutes of his show in New Orleans and barely cracked a smile once before turning it off. The uproarious reaction of the crowd to every mumbled “mufugha” and clipped “shit” reminded me of elementary school children hearing their first fart jokes.

I realize that post-Pryor comedians such as Murphy, Rock and Williams consider him to be a major influence on them, but as a comparison of George MacDonald with CS Lewis and JRR Tolkein easily demonstrates, being the first is not the same as being the best.

I quite like reading ebooks, usually in Palm Doc (pdb) format. Microsoft has its own Microsoft Reader as well, and as usual, they’ve tried to make its .LIT format hard to use or convert. They’ve been bitchslapped by the Invisible Hand, of course, as some enterprising soul has written a program called ConvertLIT which breaks the .LIT file into its component parts.

This is quite possibly illegal under the increasingly fascist DRM law. And while it’s good to practice civil disobedient piracy, it’s even better to render it irrelevant. What I’d really like to see is an open source Reader program running in Linux that uses an open source file format with easy graphical conversion to and from txt, rtf, pdb, pdf, html, doc and lit.

Any interested programmers out there? Let me know and I’ll design that bad boy.

I cannot even tell you how sick I am getting of receiving get rich quick schemes, offers for Viagra and Cialis and suggestions on how I can enlarge my penis. I don’t know how many – if any – of you are responding to these things, but clearly someone is. Please, I’m begging you, just stop!

The scary thing is that I have my filters set as well as an external spamcatcher that nukes tons of this stuff before I even see it. I’m not calling for the banning of spam, (which wouldn’t work anyhow), I’m just hoping that sooner or later all the credulous fools who are capable of falling for this stuff will have gotten burned and wised up so that the spammers will see no point in continuing.

If it’s an ad in an email, it’s trash. Don’t respond in any way, just nuke it. This isn’t rocket science.

John Derbyshire quotes Wolfe:

The cool guy doesn’t flatter anybody or act obsequious or even impressed by somebody — unless it’s some athlete … and you don’t act enthusiastic unless it’s about sports, sex, or getting high. It’s okay to be enthusiastic about something like Dickens…or Foucault — or Derrida for that matter — but if you want to be cool, you don’t show it, you don’t say it, you don’t even let on. A cool guy — and I’ve seen this happen — can secretly work his ass off five — no, four — nights a week at the library, but he has to make light of it if anybody catches on. You know what the favorite major of the cool guy is? Econ. Econ is fireproof, if you know what I mean. It’s practical. You can’t possibly be taking it because you really love economics.”

I told you I was cool… although the only Foucault about which I was enthusiastic is the fictional Pendulum. I have to admit, I’m kind of kicking myself, as Charlotte Simmons is the sort of college novel I could have (and perhaps should have) written. Then again, it wouldn’t have been anywhere nearly as good as the estimable Mr. Wolfe’s.

Another day, another best of blog vote. Interestingly enough, both the Physics Geek and Vox Popoli are on the list in the category Best of the Top 250 – 500 Blogs while Evangelical Outpost is up for Best of the Top 100 Blogs and Blackfive is up for Best Milblog.

I don’t know what the basis for Top 100 is – it must be based on links, not traffic, don’t you think, Joe? Also, you can vote everyday until December 12, which seems very strange.

So, vote. Or don’t vote. Do what you do. Win awards….

California schools cannot inform parents if their children leave campus to receive certain confidential medical services that include abortion, AIDS treatment and psychological analysis, according to an opinion issued by the office of state Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

The opinion was prompted by resistance from teachers unions and groups such as Planned Parenthood to a Sacramento-based lobby group’s efforts to help schools enact a “parent-friendly” policy requiring parental notification and consent in the wake of “medical emancipation” statutes that allow students to confidentially seek medical help off campus.

Previously it was understood that schools were allowed to enact confidentiality policies, but now the state’s top lawyer is saying they are required.

Like most such “opinions”, this one is manufactured wholesale out of nothing. But anyone with two eyes can see where this is leading. Why not just leave your baby at the hospital while you’re at it. If your kids are in a California public school, get them out… while you still can.