Join our 2010 NCAA Basketball Pool. Here are the details:

Group ID#: 105989
Password: dummo2010

See if you can buck our group's general bias towards Kansas and the Big Ten. Thrill to the challenge of beating me for my traditional last place. Make a bracket based entirely on what team's mascot would win!

I applaud ESPN for having an ombudsman and for the most part I enjoy their columns on ESPN.com. I thought Le Anne Schreiber in particular did an excellent job during her tenure. I haven't enjoyed the current ombudsman, Don Ohlmeyer, as much, but for the most part I thought he did an okay job. Until today. Ohlmeyer's latest column addresses Tony Kornheiser's two week suspension for disparaging comments he made about fellow ESPNer Hannah Storm.

After reviewing reader mail on the situation, Ohlmeyer says:

In terms of attire, all ESPN commentators are supposed to select their wardrobes with the approval of producers and consultants. The byword of corporate guidance is "appropriateness," but a large number of the letters on the Kornheiser suspension questioned just that -- the appropriateness of Storm's clothing choices.

Storm is an excellent sports broadcaster -- knowledgeable, articulate, likeable and entertaining. Her breezy, relaxed delivery works particularly well on morning "SportsCenters." She's had an exemplary career, but if critiques in this mailbag reflect the audience at large, her choices for attire are not helping either Storm or the network. If anything distracts the audience from interesting content professionally presented, ESPN should take notice.

So basically, Ohlmeyer is blaming the victim. He's trying to make a claim that somehow her wardrobe was so inappropriate as to be legitimately worthy of Kornheiser's comments. Here's what she wore:

I mean, I don't love it, but could anyone reasonably claim that it's inappropriate for a sports program anchor? Is the sight of her bare knees really more distracting to the audience than this:

this:

or this?

Of course not. Remember that the first "E" in ESPN stands for "entertainment". We're talking about sports reporting. These people aren't CEOs, lawyers or international diplomats. Second, if you think ESPN doesn't pre-approve their wardrobe, you're crazy.

I feel like Ohlmeyer is making the old school sexist argument that a woman deserves what she gets if she dresses like "that". Or maybe he's making an ageist argument where women "of a certain age" should be matronly. I don't know what it is, but I certainly expect more from an ombudsman than an excuses for his cronies and double standards.

My regular morning DJs were talking about earthquakes this morning. They seemed relieved to hear that experts are reassuring the public that this cluster of quakes is just a coincidence and not the end of the world.

But then, one of the DJs did point out that those famed soothsayers R.E.M. start out "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" by singing:

That's great, it starts with an earthquake
Birds and snakes, an aeroplane

And now in Canada an aeroplane that was chartered to count birds has crashed. Not to mention a recent incident in England where 100 birds fell from the sky.

What about snakes, you say? Well, down in Sydney, they're calling this the "week of the snake bite" after a slew of incidents. Spooky.

So are we doomed? Are you afraid?

So apparently there's a movement afoot to put Ronald Reagan on the $50 bill. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Reagan, but wouldn't the Gipper decry such wasteful spending?

What's interesting about the debate isn't the overheated reaction of partisans on the left or the right or the 8,000+ member Facebook group named "JUST SAY NO" TO RONALD REAGAN ON A $50 BILL OR ANY CURRENCY - EVER!". (You can tell they really mean it because it's in all caps.) No, what's interesting to me is the renewed interest in Ulysses S. Grant, who is currently on the bill. Grant was a war hero, but also a heavy drinker. He championed early civil rights for blacks, but was an anti-semite. His Presidency was full of scandals, but he also ended up writing wildly praised memoirs at the end of his life. He was a complicated man (and probably no one understood him but his woman), but he lived large. In short, he kind of seems like exactly the kind of guy that probably really would have a wad of $50s in his wallet. A desire to honor Reagan shouldn't be done at Grant's expense.

In fact, if we want to honor Reagan, let's do so by not spending money on stupid things.

I was reading an article about whether or not politicians should use social media that says:

There are many reason why politicians need to do what Mitch Joel calls “be the media”.

* traditional media can’t or won’t always cover a candidate
* politicians can’t control how traditional media will present them
* politicians don’t need digital channels to create difficult situations (like here and here)

And the payoff…

* increasingly, people are getting their information online — specifically from Google (and other search engines)

I get so frustrated when I read things like this. Campaign managers only see the Internet as another way to get things from voters. At first, they only saw the Internet as another way to fund raise. Now, it's just another marketing channel.

I agree that smart candidates should try to bypass the traditional media, but to view social media, and the Internet by extension, as just another audience is not only short-sighted, but also shows a lack of respect for a candidate's voters and/or constituents.

Social media isn't just media. Candidates ignore the "social" part of it. A candidate who uses Twitter or Facebook or some other social media outlet to simply push out messages is going to get ignored pretty fast. It's like a guy who goes to a party and just talks about himself. Pretty soon he's going to be in alone in a corner.

Likewise, using social media isn't just about putting up a page and letting people go at it (ahem, The White House). A good host doesn't let their party descend into a free-for-all. You've gotta encourage and lead the conversation for anyone to get anything out of it. Otherwise, as The White House page shows, it's a useless and unpleasant situation for everyone.

I know that politicians and their advisors just want to repeat their carefully prepared talking points. But that's not what we want from social media. We want responses. We want a dialogue. We want to be social with the politicians we've chosen to have online relationships with, not just each other. Marketing, whether it's for a political candidate or a bar of soap, isn't just sending messages. It's about listening and responding and having real conversations sometimes. Until candidates understand that they're only going to realize a fraction of the potential of the new media landscape.

Even with NBC's horrible coverage, I still love the Olympics. I didn't get that wrapped up in them this time, but I did enjoy the hockey, Kim Yu-Na, Shaun White and biathlon. Biathlon. Really! It doesn't seem like the skiing part matters that much, but the shooting was incredibly tense and actually exciting. Who knew?

Anyway, perhaps the most significant thing to come out of the Vancouver Games was the reestablishment of Russia as our natural enemy. At first it was just the obnoxiousness of Evgeni Plushenko, his stupid hair and his "platinum" medal. But now, Russia is forcing its sports officials to resign and shipping them off to Siberia. Okay, maybe I made that last part up.

In the scheme of sports, this is awesome. America needs an enemy in the Olympics. We don't want to feel bad chanting "USA! USA!" after our athletes beat some poor Swede whose Mom just died of cancer and had to learn to ski on slats of wood that his Father formed from the very walls of his house because they were too poor and had to walk uphill both ways to practice every day. If we're going to rub it in someone's face, who better than a bunch of Commie bastards?

The Canadians, for all their talk of "owning the podium" are still Canadians. We can't take America, Jr. seriously. When they talk big, we simply pat them on their toques. The Chinese probably could threaten us, but they want to be loved. They want to impress us with their progress. The Russians, on the other hand, don't give a damn about that. They want to bury us. And god bless 'em for it. Bring on Sochi!

After each Olympics, I find myself trying to imagine what a Wisconsin Olympics would be like. What are the myths and iconic images that we would want to show the rest of the world? What is our giant inflatable beaver?

While the Vancouver Olympics ceremonies focused on Canada as a whole, typically, American Olympics are more about the region they're held in, so Atlanta had pickup trucks & Salt Lake City had the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. For Wisconsin, here are a few things I think we'd show the world:

1. Instead of giant inflatable beavers, we'd either have giant inflatable cows in the Opening or Closing Ceremony or perhaps just a Cow Parade in the host city.

2. Wherever the Wisconsin Olympics were held, you can rest assured that Bucky Badger and the UW Marching Band would be a part of it. I suspect that you'd hear "On Wisconsin" almost as often as we heard "Oh Canada" the last two weeks, not to mention the Bud Song. I think people would be singing "When you say WIS-CON-SIN, you've said it all" in their sleep.

3. It's easy to imagine the Opening Ceremonies beginning with an Ojibwe ritual.

4. Likewise, I'd expect to see a fanciful interpretation of fur traders taking birch bark canoes down the Fox River, portaging at Portage and traveling down the Wisconsin from there. Perhaps Alice Cooper would be available to explain the history to the worldwide audience.

5. Obviously, beer, cheese & brats have to be a part of the event. My thought would be to stage a light-hearted Closing Ceremony like Vancouver with a tailgate party theme. We could get a bunch of trucks (maybe Atlanta still has some we can borrow), grills, beer pong tables and baggo and show the world a good time.

6. Like Canada, Wisconsin has its share of lumberjacks and with the World Lumberjack Championships here it's only natural to include some logrolling.

7. For music, I guess we'd have to include the BoDeans since I think every Wisconsinite is required by law to go to at least one of their shows. Our cheesy American Idol would be Danny Gokey. Our indie perfomer would be Bon Iver. We could have Liberace impersonators and polka bands. It'd be fantastic, even before we got to the obligatory performance of Steve Miller's "Swingtown" ("O" for the Olympics this time, minus the swearing).

8. Our Olympic flag bearers could be giants of Wisconsin sports like Bart Starr, Hank Aaron, Robin Yount, Bo Ryan, Dick Trickle (yeah, I said it), Ron Dayne and Bob Uecker. Oh, Brett Favre, if you weren't such an ass, you'd be on this list...

9. If Wisconsin held the Winter Olympics (oh, if only we still had the Gogebic mountains) I'd think the torch would be lit by either Dan Jansen or Eric Heiden. In the summer, it's harder, but maybe someone like Suzy Favor Hamilton would fit the bill?

10. Finally, the most delightful part of the Olympics would be how certain athletes and fans would be pleasantly surprised to find a slice of home here. Swiss skiers could fill up on rosti in New Glarus, while German bobsledders would feel right at home in Milwaukee. A Polish biathlete would be the huge crowd favorite in Stevens Point and Norwegians would be welcomed with a wide variety of Ole and Lena jokes. Wisconsin: You're Among Friends.

But sadly, our lack of mountains, big cities and the IOC's hatred of America make this all an impossible dream, but a fun dream nonetheless.

I was reading the comments to a Chronicle of Higher Education article about Amy Bishop. Talking about the tenure process, one man noted that the politically correct culture of academia weeds out political dissenters like conservatives and Christians well before they'd ever be up for tenure. He says:

As Marc Bauerlein has powerfully written in the pages of The Chronicle, political discrimination in the humanities and social sciences against anyone is not politically correct begins with the search committees, and the initial drawing up of candidates for positions in the first place. Open conservatives, and open Christians, have little chance making the short-list. There is real prejudice against them. The result is that I don't think there are a lot of oppressed secret political dissenters among the untenured faculty in the humanities and social sciences (though I know one or two). The system eliminated most of them much earlier in the process.

It's interesting to read an obvious insider confirming what those of us who've suffered under ultra-liberal professors already knew. But then, in the very same comment, this guys notes that:

I'm reserving my sympathy for the three senior faculty-members who were killed, two of whom were African-American and one an Indian-American, and their families, who must be so terribly distraught.

What the? Why in the world is the ethnicity of the victims relevant to this guy? I've read some unhinged conservatives who are almost gleefully calling it a "racist" rampage, but that's it. Most of the evidence points to the fact that this woman was a sociopath and a time bomb (not to mention a pipe bomber).

It's like he realized how un-PC his original comments were and quick had to write something PC to make up for it. So really, that comment makes me think that academics have gotten so politically correct that it's somehow worse to them to kill African-Americans or Indian-Americans or Latin Americans or anyone other than plain ole garden variety white people. I guess I shouldn't be surprised as it's the logical progression from hate crime legislation that states that killing someone for one reason is somehow worse than killing them for another. It's Murder Plus!

As we've discussed, NBC's Olympic coverage sucks. Henry Blodget at Business Insider put it best when he wrote:

So, right now, for us, NBC isn't the network that brings us the Olympics. It's the network that prevents us from watching the Olympics. And we hate NBC for that.

Exactly. NBC is doing what so many other unsuccessful marketers do: they're giving us, showing us and telling us what they want to instead of giving us, showing us and telling us what we want.

What NBC wants to do is deliver expensive ads to a big prime time viewing audience. And that is exactly what they're doing. If they get that big prime time audience, that'll be evidence of their "success".

What we want to do is watch the Olympics, but NBC has clearly decided that if they show the Olympics, it'll mean fewer people will watch their prime time Olympics show.

You'd think there would be some common ground between the desire of viewers to watch the Olympics and the desire of NBC to provide an audience to advertisers. I'd argue that the more live events NBC shows, the stronger ratings they'll get at night. People aren't hermetically sealed into cubicles all day. We're online. We're watching TV. We're talking. If something incredible happens at (god forbid) 3 pm Eastern time, people who can't watch it live are going to hear about it from those people that did and want to see it later that night. It's piquing their interest. The live, hardcore audience that NBC desperately wants to screw are exactly the same people that they should be catering to because they're the folks that are going to talk about the Olympics and get other people interested in them. One passionate Olympics fan is worth dozens of slick ads.

I know it's revolutionary thinking for marketers, but if you give the people what they want, you might just get what you want.

I was reading this long article on Texas Christian Conservatives and their efforts to influence school curriculum today. They basically believe that America was explicitly founded as a Christian nation. One Texas school board member says:

“Textbooks are mostly the product of the liberal establishment, and they’re written with the idea that our religion and our liberty are in conflict,” he said. “But Christianity has had a deep impact on our system. The men who wrote the Constitution were Christians who knew the Bible. Our idea of individual rights comes from the Bible. The Western development of the free-market system owes a lot to biblical principles.”

I think he's completely wrong, but also somewhat harmless. Another board member states:

students should be taught the following principles which, in his reading, derive directly from the Declaration of Independence: “1. There is a fixed moral law derived from God and nature. 2. There is a Creator. 3. The Creator gives to man certain unalienable rights. 4. Government exists primarily to protect God-given rights to every individual. 5. Below God-given rights and moral laws, government is directed by the consent of the governed.”

To me, this isn't an exclusively Christian belief anymore than the Golden Rule is. All of the world's major religions have a sense of moral good. Basically, I think this whole "we're a Christian nation" stuff is just a backlash against some overly zealous interpretation of the separation of church & state. People get pissed when the Ten Commandments are removed from courthouses and signs like this have to be displayed next to a Christmas tree and this is what happens.

Unfortunately, it's not harmless. One of these board members also protested having a Hindu open a U.S. Senate session with a prayer because “In Hindu [sic], you have not one God, but many, many, many, many, many gods. And certainly that was never in the minds of those who did the Constitution, did the Declaration when they talked about Creator.”

Sometimes I'm shocked by how little people who want to rewrite history actually know about history. People didn't come to America to evangelize. They came here to practice their faith without being persecuted. They had no vast concept of "Christianity" like we do today. Catholics, Puritans, Quakers and Anglicans weren't some part of a common happy Christian community. When the Pilgrims landed in 1620, they were only eight years removed from the last Englishman burned at the stake for heresy.

What I mean to say is that a Puritan and a Catholic back then would have felt they were just as different as a Baptist and a Hindu do now. As such, the founding fathers took religious freedom seriously. And it wasn't just for Christians. The words "God" or "Jesus" aren't in the Constitution. That's not just coincidence.

I actually think the framers would be comforted by the chart below:

To me, it's a perfect illustration of their vision for America - which wasn't a nation bound by a common religious identity, but rather a nation founded on ideas. In the words of Rufus from Dogma:

I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier. Life should malleable and progressive; working from idea to idea permits that. Beliefs anchor you to certain points and limit growth; new ideas can't generate. Life becomes stagnant.

Imagine how stagnant America would be if she really was a Christian nation exclusively settled by Christians throughout the years. Everything from our culture to our economy has benefited from the kinds of freedoms that attract the best and brightest all of colors and creeds. That's the kind of "city on a hill" that Ronald Reagan so famously described.

So some moron at Discovery News is trying to blame Vancouver's lack of snow on global warming:

The future of the Winter Olympics is uncertain and I fear that no amount of green tech will be able to save the snow. Vancouver's efforts to make the current games sustainable have been laudable, but global warming is turning out to be a formidable competitor.

While I'm sure there are some people in Washington, DC, who wish that Olympics organizers would airlift their snow away, this isn't a sustainable solution. Don't get me wrong--I love the Winter Olympics and even built a "luge" track in the backyard as a kid one winter. In the near future the international community will just have to rethink the way it holds these games. Indoor Winter Olympics anyone?

It's "reporting" like this that's killing journalism. It takes about one minute to go to Wikipedia where you'll discover that Vancouver's average low temperature in February is a balmy 35 degrees. It doesn't take a respected East Anglian climatologist to tell you that there's not going to be snow if it doesn't get below freezing. Another quick search on the Vancouver Olympic website would show you that Olympic officials obviously realized this because all but two of the outdoor events are actually being held up in the mountains in Whistler. In any case, this isn't the first time the Winter Olympics have been threatened by lack of snow. And, global warming climate change or not, it won't be the last. It's the weather. It happens.

What shouldn't happen is such lazy, opportunistic "journalism". It's garbage. You don't read garbage, you put it in the trash where it belongs.

With all due respect to Bread (who clearly have 3-4 of the wussiest love songs of all time - if I were to make such a list), sometimes a picture also paints a thousand clicks.

Playing around with some web traffic stats, here's a few interesting tidbits.

This is traffic to a fish fry blog I write for. The traffic spikes you see are on Fridays. In one sense, it's obvious that people search for fish fry content on Fridays, but in another sense it's interesting to know that people don't plan their fish fry adventures more than a day in advance.

Here's a snapshot of US traffic to this website. As you can see, during this time period, most of our traffic came from Wisconsin & Minnesota. Is that because of where we're located or because of my rabid Brett Favre hatred? The analytics say it's a little bit of each.

Finally, the chart above gives us some pop culture insight. Looking at this traffic searching for words around "ugly sweaters" I can pinpoint exactly when hipsters start planning their ironic Ugly Christmas Sweater parties and bar crawls. Basically, while some people shop the day on Black Friday, these folks start scouring the web for info and ideas for their parties. Imagine how thrift shops could use this information to figure out how to best stock their stores. If you've got ugly sweaters out in early November, you're just wasting space. Hipsters don't plan!

I was having fun looking at Wikipedia's lists of number one songs throughout the years and decided to figure out what year had the absolute best huge hits. After careful consideration, I narrowed it down to four main contenders:

1966:

Classics: "The Sounds of Silence", "Good Vibrations", "Paperback Writer", "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'", "You Can't Hurry Love", "When a Man Loves a Woman", "Summer in the City", "Cherish"

Personal Favorites: "Good Lovin'", "Strangers in the Night", "Wild Thing", "Paint It Black"

WTF?: "Ballad of the Green Berets", "Winchester Cathedral", "My Love"

1971:

Classics: "Me and Bobby McGee", "It's Too Late" / "I Feel the Earth Move", "You've Got a Friend", "Maggie May", "Theme from Shaft", "Joy to the World"

Personal Favorites: "My Sweet Lord", "Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey"

WTF?: "Indian Reservation (The Lament of the Cherokee Reservation Indian)", "Want Ads", "One Bad Apple"

1983:

Classics: "Billie Jean", "Come On Eileen", "Beat It", "Every Breath You Take", "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)"

Personal Favorites: "Down Under", "Say Say Say", "Islands in the Stream"

WTF?: "Maneater"

1988

Classics: "Sweet Child o' Mine", "Every Rose Has Its Thorn", "Faith"

Personal Favorites: "The Flame", "Never Gonna Give You Up", "Need You Tonight"

WTF?: "Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car", "Don't Worry, Be Happy", "Groovy Kind of Love"

I think my favorite year is 1988, just for the sheer weirdness of the charts that go from utter cornball schlock like "Kokomo" to GnR. If you want consistency, it was hard to find a really bad number one song from 1983. If you want classics then it's 1966. But I'm going to settle on 1971 for the wide variety of classic styles (everything from sensitive 70s singer songwriters to funk) and the inclusion of not one, but two, cheesy songs from ex-Beatles not named John Lennon. Oh sure, there's some Osmond nonsense cluttering that chart, but hey, every rose has its thorn, baby!

No offense to my Baby Boomer friends and family, but sometimes I just can't wait for you all to, um, fade away and take your death grip on popular culture with you.

Watching The Who at the Super Bowl last night was embarrassing. Half of the band is dead and the other half are in their mid-60s. Roger Daltrey is 65. 65! Without Keith Moon, the band apparently had to settle for Nigel Tufnel on drums.

Don't get me wrong. I love The Who. My older Boomer siblings made sure of it. But their hour upon the stage has long since passed. The same goes for The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton and the like (as an aside, is anyone else grossed out by Clapton's T-Mobile ad? At this point, I don't want to think about him "getting off" on anything. Keep it in your pants, Grandpa.)

The Who haven't released an album in over 30 years. They're not creating anything new anymore. They're just an oldies band. And maybe that's fine for the Super Bowl. But that's because they're "safe" now (like playing "Shout" at a wedding), not because, as a commenter on Althouse asserts, music somehow peaked in the 1960s:

I think the problem is that there hasn't been a really original innovation in popular music since the 1960s. Teenagers are still listening to Led Zeppelin and the Beatles because music today is really very little different from the music of the 1960s, whereas the music of the 1960s was very different from earlier music. So 1960s music still sounds very good and mainstream to modern ears.

Until someone comes up with a fundamentally new popular music genre that captures the popular imagination like 1960's music did, those 60's acts will continue to have mass appeal.

I don't know why the 1960s was so different, but my best guess is a combination of the introduction of the electic guitar with all it could do and the cultural changes. Maybe someone needs to invent some new musical instrument.

The 1960s were so different to you because you were young then. The music of your own coming of age is always going to seem more powerful and important to you than anything you hear before or since.

What I resent about the Baby Boomers is that so many of them feel the need to tell the rest of us that our coming of age just wasn't as important as theirs. They want to play their cultural soundtrack over our lives. I remember Boomers being pissed that college students weren't marching against the first Iraq War and then again for the 2nd Iraq War. It was as if they expected us to relive their youth instead of living ours.

Kids still listen to The Who and Led Zeppelin because they were good. College students also listen to Nirvana and Pearl Jam today, but you don't find Generation X claiming that music peaked in the grunge era. I feel sorry for a lot of Baby Boomer music fans because they've missed out on two generations worth of great music. If Eddie Vedder is rockin' the Super Bowl LVI halftime show in 2022, I only hope I'm making fun of him rather than claiming that there's been no musical innovation since "Ten".

But what does this mean for Brett Favre?

With the precise, "tremendous machine" of the Colts going up against the wild & crazy Saints, this year's Super Bowl match up reminds me of The Simpsons. Why? Well, in the classic episode where Homer meets his fugitive Mom we find out that Ma Simpson was radicalized by the long, wild and carefree locks of Joe Namath, while Abe was content with the "high and tight" style of Johnny Unitas. (see the bit starting at 2:50 in the clip below):

Now, Drew Brees is no Broadway Joe, but you gotta admit that Peyton Manning looks like he goes to Johnny Unitas' barber.

To me, the Colts are a likable team, but they're boring. They'll probably win, but they won't act like it's any big deal. If the Saints win, they'll lose their minds. It'll be a blast.

So, who do you think will win? Who do you want to win?

I quite like this Business Week global warming article. I like it because it acknowledges the existence of other climate changes in recent history: the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and the Year Without Summer. Imagine, climate change not caused by mankind!

There's a subtext to the man-made global warming movement that global warming is the result of mankind's hubris. We're going to destroy the world because we thought we were bigger than nature. But isn't this an extremely arrogant attitude? Does mankind really have the ability to alter the earth's climate? Or is it hubris to think we have that power?

One of the things that irritates me the most about global warming activists is how they've co-opted the whole environmental movement. When you talk about saving the environment, the assumption is that you're talking about global warming. I don't believe in man-made global warming. But that doesn't mean I don't believe in conservation, developing alternative energy sources and cleaning up our messes.

Why aren't we using our energy (pardon the pun) to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? At least we understand the problem and can reasonably do something to solve it. I guess it's easier to get attention and money buy saying we're going to destroy the Earth than by saying "Hey, look at that all of that garbage!"

I think of it like this: cleaning up the garbage patch is like cleaning your room. You do some work, get your hands dirty and maybe make a trip to Ikea to help you organize your crap so it doesn't happen again. Done. Our approach to alleged man-made global warming is like burning your house down because you're afraid it's built on an ancient Indian burial ground.

"Why are you burning down your house?"

"Yes"

One of these scenarios makes sense. The other is close to madness.