ITK is the local high school quiz show.  I was on the team "back in the day" and still watch the annual competition.  Today I watch Mifflin (Columbus Public) vs Piketon (moderate sized school well outside of C-bus) ... final score - Piketon 205, Mifflin 5.  An embarrasment.  Was this meant to boost the inner-city kid's self esteem?  They only attempted to answer about 5 qustions.  One question was looking for a midwestern American city and the Mifflin team guessed "Illinois."

Frightening.

as much as I hate to do this

1.  Florida.  Bama's narrow escape from Auburn and the Gator's domination of FSU maks the difference.  If the game was in Alabama I'd give the Tide a small edge.  But it isn't.  So I won't.

2.  Texas.  Duh.

3.  Alabama.  I am SO pulling for Ingram to win the Heisman Trophy vs Florida.  For Archie.

4.  Virginia Tech.  Loss to Alabama in season opener.  Narrow loss @ Ga Tech

5.  Oregon.  This is where many folks would put TCU but the schedule just don't warrent it.  I can't do it.  Some people put Oklahom here.  Five losses vs top 30 teams.  WITH their QB maybe.  W/O him?  Nope.  

6.  Ohio State.  DAMN that Purdue game!

7.  Georgia Tech.  I LOVE watching a good, well-executed option attack.  Look for an extended stay in the top 10 by this program.  

8.  NOW we go with TCU.  Work on that non-conference schedule

9.  Southern Cal.

10.  Cincinnati.  Poised for an extended run unless Coach Kelly goes all Golden Dome.

Because stuff like this can happen almost any time.  Here's the game you wish you had been at Friday night: Old Mill and Arundel, two high schools near Annapolis, Md., played to a 58-55 overtime victory for Old Mill. Arundel, which uses a hyper-hurry-up all-passing attack, attempted 60 passes in the contest. An NFL team typically attempts 30-35 passes during a game that lasts 60 minutes; 60 passes during a game that lasts 48 minutes is a hard-to-believe pace. Old Mill countered with a running back named Josh Furman who rushed for 414 yards; the kid has 1,165 yards rushing in his past five games! To top things off, the winning overtime field goal was hit by a player who missed four PAT kicks in regulation.

Back when the SuperStations were storming cable (late 70's) they made a lot of money by showing movies overandoverandover and selling HUGE blocks of advertising which ran in chunks during the run of the movie.  Many of us were willing to sacrifice a little continuity for the extra munchies/bathroom break.  The legacy continues today with many lower power networks doing the same thing.  Chief in our are is THIS.

And so it was that I found myself under the weather and bed-ridden.  THIS spent the day showing THREE versions of Babes in Toyland.  Fortunately I was ambulatory during this period.  Had they been showing Toys in Babeland ... well ... that's a different post for a different time.  When I finally landed in bed they were showing the WW II classic "The Great Escape"   I've seen it a few times but after a little nyqui everything old is new again.

<SPOILER ALERT>

IMHO there are three GREAT scenes during the escape.  Steve McQueen's failed motorcycle jump, James Coburn in the French cafe, and  McQueen's return to the cooler at the end of the movie.  The motorcycleescape survived "commercial editing".  The other two were not so lucky.  Scene: sidewalk cafe.  German officers take a table.  Coburn, on the run, sits nearby.  Phone rings.  Waiter answers it, tells Coburn it's for him.  Coburn picksup phone, sez "hello, hangs up and quietly ducks behind bar as resistance fighters pull a drive by assault on the Germa offcers.  GREAT bit.  Commercials were inserted just before Coburn picks up the phone.  TOTALLY disrupting the flow.

McQueen's character spends most of the movie in the cooler, bouncing a baseball off the wall and catching it.  The sound is distinctive and representative of the dull determination of the Allies.  McQueen is recaptured (for the FOURTH time), walked back to the cooler, guard locks the door, begins to walk away, and we hear the persistant ka-thud-whomp, ka thud whom, ka thud whomp.  Tribute screen.  Credits roll.  Except in THIS presentation we cut to a commercial JUST after McQueen enters the cell, TOTALLY disrupting the flow.

It should be noted that most movies made since about the mid-80's (maybe earlier) are practically MADE with "commercial breaks" inserted.  My wife and I point them out all the time watching "theatrical" releases. It's a tough thing to find the commercial break in a movie which doesn't have any.  But it CAN be done.  It just isn't.  And that sucks.

unless something ELSE major breaks somewhere along the line .... this sez it all

In one fell swoop, the Post not only validated the significance of this scandal, but also severely dissed the Global Warmingist-in-Chief.

I'm LOVIN' it!

and posting their thoughts over at Big Government

• So, Dr. Jones, when you used the word “trick,” you really meant that it was not a “trick” at all but a valid, scientifically recognized process of data interpretation?
• Can you identify another instance in your experience where a scientist described his valid, scientifically recognized process of data interpretation with a term commonly used to describe a hoax, scam or fraud?
• And when you wrote the words “hide the decline,” is it now your testimony that when you used the word “hiding,” you were not actually “hiding” anything, and moreover, though you used the word “decline,” there was no “decline” in temperatures to be hidden in the first place?
• So, if I understand your explanation, it is that you commonly use language in your communications which means precisely the opposite of the meaning that you are seeking to communicate?
• And if an email from those who disagree with your findings – who you call “deniers” or “skeptics” – were to be made public that described their use of a “trick” to “hide the increase” in temperatures, would you find this to be of no great import because scientists commonly describe their processes as “tricks” and that their act of “hiding the increase” must be purely benign based on the manner of usage you describe?
• So, is it only proponents of man-made global warming that habitually use words and phrases that mean precisely the opposite of their common usage to describe their work?

But, as delightful as it would be to pick at particular instances of the activists’ admissions of fraud and their lame attempts to explain them away, there’s really one question that needs to be asked.  In fact, if Al Gore would ever expose himself to the questions of anyone beyond the most credulous climate change sycophants, someone ought to ask it of him:

Mr. Gore, would you be happy if tomorrow you were to see irrefutable scientific evidence that mankind’s activities are not causing the Earth to warm?

A normal person would answer with a resounding, “Yes!”  A normal person would be relieved that not only is our planet safe, but that we need not spend trillions of dollars and forfeit our most basic freedoms in pursuit of remedies for the bugbear of climate change.

But do you think for a second Al Gore would say, “Yes”?  Do you think any of the global warming suckers would?  Get real.

Understand you would not get an express, “No.”  He would probably just deny the validity of the question (“We know climate change is real so that will never happen”).  But after 15 years of examining witnesses, I have a rule of thumb.  Any answer to a question that is not an unambiguous “Yes” is really a “No.”

The dominos are falling.

 in Australia: Opposition MPs Bail On Global Warming.

in New Zealand: Climategate Scandal Spreads to New Zealand as MSM Continues Ostrich Act

the Beeb: Climategate Files Were Leaked To BBC But They Refused To Cover The Story.

and the White House: White House Involvement in Scandal Will Make It Harder for MSM to Ignore

these are lengthy but if you wanna know what's going on I'd recommend at LEAST skimming them.  You'll be MUCH better versed on the subject than 99% of the MSM in a few short minutes!

CRU Emails “may” be open to interpretation, but commented code by the programmer tells the real story 

The people -vs- the CRU: Freedom of information

Climategate: hide the decline – codified 

"Climategate" -- Forget the Emails: What Will the Hacked Documents Tell Us? 

Climategate: “Men behaving badly” – a short summary for laymen 

And if you don't know, you're part of the problem.

More here

 Posting over at The Atlantic Megan McArdle has a nice take on BUDGET N

• Conservatives have "no credibility" on budget deficits because George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan ran big deficits  You are missing a Republican president in the middle:  George H. W. Bush, who bravely enacted a whopping tax hike in order to close the deficit, helping to ensure that he would not be re-elected in 1992; by most metrics, Bush I deserves about as much credit for closing the deficit as Clinton does.  But even if this weren't a highly selective misreading of history, so what?  Are we going to drive our government over a fiscal cliff because George Bush and the Republicans who enabled them were grossly irresponsible, and some of the commentators were hypocrites?  That'll show 'em!!!
• You can't talk about deficits in regard to health care spending because the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were really expensive.  Item:  wars, and stimulus spending, are the kind of thing that are traditionally done on deficit spending, all the way back to the American revolution.  That's because they're temporary, and it often makes sense to amortize the cost over a number of years.  Item #2: Lumping in Afghanistan, when almost everyone in the country supported that, is pretty silly.  Item #3:  Entitlements are not supposed to be funded on deficit spending, because they're not temporary.  It's the same reason that it's okay to take out some student loans to pay for medical school, and not okay to take out a home equity loan to pay your mortgage.  You can say that we should never have gone into Iraq, and I'll agree; it's entirely possible that we should stop spending money there, and in Afghanistan, ASAP.  But the problem with our entitlements is not their ten year cost; it's that their costs keep growing and growing.
• The deficit can't be that big, because Iraq and Afghanistan are costing $600 billion and counting  Umm . . . what?  You're comparing a ten year cost to a one year deficit of $700+ billion.
  
• Every other industrialized country has a national health care system  Which will fix our structural budget deficit how, exactly?