Check that sunrise tomorrow

The headline in the print edition was

As surely as the sun rises in the east, Kentucky loses to the Vols

Online, it's less wordy but just as certain:

Sun rises in East; Kentucky loses to Vols

In the story,

All streaks end at some point, right?

Wrong. The sun keeps rising in the East. A Georgia running backs gets suspended every fall. And Auburn and Alabama fans never wake up without thinking how much they hate each other.

So UT fans shouldn't assume the streak against Kentucky — 26 victories and counting — must end.

And this prediction:

UT 27, Kentucky 10: Despite the likelihood of medical advances, no one alive today will live long enough to see the Vols lose to Kentucky.

Well, half right. Final score: UT 7, Kentucky 10...

What goes before a fall? Oh, yeah. Pride.

All things must pass, sang George Harrison. This too...

Presidents Cup

Somebody said something this morning which made me realize that, in all fairness, I needed to note that Tiger Woods didn't suck at the Presidents Cup. True, he only scored two points, but his play was fairly solid and he knocked in the winning birdie.

On the other hand, if I were a player I'd wonder about this quote from Freddie Couples:

"A lot of people have asked why I picked him and how he was going to play," Couples said. "Certainly I couldn't answer how he was going to play, but this week I think he showed to himself that his swing is back and he's healthy. And that's more important to me. Obviously, we want to win the cup. But it's more important for me to have people realize that he can play the game."

More important that Tiger do well than that the team win the cup? Really?

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to my American readers, and happy end of autumn (or spring) to the rest!

Why I don't watch Fox

I get the Washington Times. I rarely quote from it, but I do get it, because reading only what you already believe isn't much help. But the WaTimes, strident and obnoxious as I usually find it (last week they ran a series of columns about how evil the Girl Scouts are because they, unlike the Boy Scouts, are not overtly Christian and anti-gay. Seriously. That was the actual pitch.), is head and shoulders over Fox, which has long since ceased to be any kind of news organization whatsoever.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago Fox national correspondent Steve Centanni said Kagan's recusal from the health care case may be required by "Article 28 of the Constitution." And Fox's crack screen graphics department put up the actual quote from the "U.S. Constitution, Article 28, Sec. 144".

Just one problem.

There is no such Article in the Constitution.

This is actually a perfect example of why watching Fox News is simply bad for you. It's not an honest presentation of the conservative side of any argument. It is propaganda. It is lies.

Lies do not inform the public conversation. They derail it. They hijack it. They fill it with fear.

Fox is not news.

Slight miss from Will Shortz

Okay, actually from Patrick Berry, but Shortz edited it. This is from the syndicated New York Times crossword today, the theme clues:

Starch: a cross between ________?
Pimple: a cross between ________?
Hisses: a cross between ________?
Beetles: a cross between ________?

The first three work very well (Starsky and Hutch, pure and simple, hugs and kisses), but the fourth one is less satisfying. The vowel in "beer (and skittles)" isn't the same one as in "beetles" even if it spelled the same.

Zing!

A couple of nice ones from Fred Clark:

Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association reassures his listeners that Elton John will never sing at his wedding. (Fischer is criticizing Rush Limbaugh for having the pop star sing at his most recent wedding. In keeping with Fischer’s notion of “traditional values,” he doesn’t complain that this was Limbaugh’s fourth wedding — only that the more successful radio demagogue hired a gay icon to sing.)

The beloved Norman Rockwell painting to the right — part of his “Four Freedoms” series — is famously titled “Freedom to Worship.” According to the Liar Tony Perkins, that phrase “freedom of worship” was recently invented by the Obama administration as part of its ongoing persecution of real, true, heterosexual Christianity. We all knew that President Barack Obama loves Norman Rockwell. But until the Liar Tony Perkins told us about this, we hadn’t realized that Obama also had a time machine that enabled him to travel back to 1943 to conspire with Rockwell and President Franklin D. Roosevelt in their diabolical assault on Christian freedom.

Whale Bones and Waitresses

From the Yahoo! page, this puzzling set of headlines. I'm having a hard time understanding how ancient whale bones and outraged parents are the same story... And clicking through doesn't help, as the two stories are just as enjambed as their heds...

On Vacation

Posting will be irregular (hah, like it's regular now)

The Week in Entertainment

Live: The Rake's Progress - a student production by the Peabody company. Very nice, very good production. Kisma Jordan, the soprano, has a great career ahead of her if this is any indication. She filled the house with a lovely, full voice, something that Peter Scott Drackley, the tenor, couldn't always manage. He's not at all bad, but he's not up to her weight. Unfortunately for him, he's also overshadowed by a very theatrical Peter Tomaszewski, who brings a nice acting talent as well as a good voice to the rewarding role of Nick Shadow (the devil always gets great applause). Lots of fun.

DVD: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (Something Happens), Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (The Brave Heart Carries Off the Bride), and Kal Ho Naa Ho (Tomorrow Might Never Come), all very good (as I said earlier, I'm on a Shahrukh Khan kick...). Kal Ho... is a real tearjerker, and Kuch is a blast, though the college scenes are just a bit over the top in places. Dilwale is just about perfect.

TV: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 2 - wrapping up the series neatly enough. Like part 1, it was dark, and I don't mean thematically. There were some scenes in which it was nearly impossible to see what was happening. The Middle and Modern Family - the latter quite funny (as always), particularly when Phil worried about changing careers, pointing out that he has three kids and "at least one is going to college. Worst case scenario, they all go" and when Alex told Hayley "You have your fans and I have mine. Someday yours will be working for mine." "The Song of Lunch" on Masterpiece Contemporary, with Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson, which should be enough right there but didn't have to be, a gorgeous script and lovely direction.

Read: Continued with 1Q84.

No Deal

Paul Krugman's latest column explains why no deal is a Good Thing:

But don’t we eventually have to match spending and revenue? Yes, we do. But the decision about how to do that isn’t about accounting. It’s about fundamental values — and it’s a decision that should be made by voters, not by some committee that allegedly transcends the partisan divide.

Eventually, one side or the other of that divide will get the kind of popular mandate it needs to resolve our long-run budget issues. Until then, attempts to strike a Grand Bargain are fundamentally destructive. If the supercommittee fails, as expected, it will be time to celebrate.

And his best point? (Though the dig at "centrist" pundits is good, too.)(emphasis mine):

So the supercommittee brought together legislators who disagree completely both about how the world works and about the proper role of government. Why did anyone think this would work?

Well, maybe the idea was that the parties would compromise out of fear that there would be a political price for seeming intransigent. But this could only happen if the news media were willing to point out who is really refusing to compromise. And they aren’t. If and when the supercommittee fails, virtually all news reports will be he-said, she-said, quoting Democrats who blame Republicans and vice versa without ever explaining the truth.