Are my eyes really blue?

Thanks y'all - looking forward to 36. Gotta be a step up, right? After all, I don't actually have to run for President anymore since I proclaimed myself Emperor...

* My new employer (well, the organization that leases me from my employer) was giving out T-shirts today. I don't really feel like I'm in the Valley unless there's at least one new work T-shirt every year. This one is actually kind of cool, too.

* I'm smack in the middle of a major re-organization of my backup strategy. It's not enough to run Time Machine; I need a secondary backup as well (which is currently spread between an iMac, an old iPod, and .Mac). Now if I get my new DVD project done, there's a very real chance I could wind up with a hard drive only 60% full. Which would be nice.

* Said DVD project suddenly took off like a rocket this morning, when I realized that maybe iDVD looks for movies in the "Movies" folder. (Hold the applause please.) As soon as I moved the project files off the desktop and into that directory, boom, everything was there, and it took me all of 5 minutes to configure the DVD mapping and get the special features menu together. Not only will this one have the new movie, but it will have the trailer, the original 02-02-02 trailer, AND a 10-minute reel of deleted scenes from the new picture. Next trick: getting it burned while working in the background on a couple of actual work projects...

* Celtic is playing at Barcelona today. Barca are the only Continental team that I sort of like, and I do respect the hell out of them: for their record, for their ties to the Catalan region and their role as anti-fascist stand-in against Franco's Real Madrid back in the day, for the fact that they never had a sponsor on their shirt ever...until THEY decided to sponsor UNICEF and put their logo on the shirt. Couple that with the fact that the game is at the Nou Camp, and that Celtic have never won on the road in the Champions League era...well, no spoilers please, but I have a sneaking suspicion how this one will turn out.

* Am I mixing my plural-noun cases here? Probably. Put it down to the influence of Setanta Sports and having the Geoff Show podcast on in the background.

* I don't really need a pair of blue sunglasses, do I? That would just be silly. (Not $illy.) Although I do sort of think that since I tend to use my eye color as a trademark, having brown shades is a bit counterproductive. OK, now I'm just talking shite. I will stop now.

* Last year's Celtic road shirt (the green/black stripes) for £9.99? Now THAT is $illy.

...you couldn't have asked for a better night for the GOP. McCain clinches, Huckabee concedes, all effort can now be turned toward the general election...and in the meantime, Clinton wins 3 out of 4 and stops the Obama momentum.

In theory and on paper, this is not as huge a deal as it looks like - remember, we're still doing proportional allocation on the Dem side. Even though Ohio is a big win, Texas is narrower, and Obama will almost certainly come out of the night still holding a delegate lead. Once he got over the tipping point, the likelihood of him falling behind (barring a spectacular flameout) is pretty slim.

But elections are not fought in theory or on paper, and Wednesday morning's narrative will be the Clinton Comeback, and the notion that she now has the momentum with seven weeks to go before the next primary, in Pennsylvania - and presumably, the same message that won Ohio will play well at least in the western part of the state. More to the point, the story will be that the Obama train has hit a brick wall and will have to recover from this dizzying blow. And above all, there are two Democrats guaranteed to be punching away at each other for almost two more months, while John McCain stands aside looking Presidential and taking notes to recycle any useful attacks in the fall.

Realistically, it's probably still Obama's nomination to lose. But the fact that Clinton made her stand in Ohio and Texas - and pulled it off - means that there's still a long slow slog ahead. And now, it's difficult to see how this is anything but harmful for the D's; the long knives were already starting to come out before today and you can expect the race to take a turn for the uglier almost immediately.

Going forward, for the Democrats to have a chance in November, one of two things has to happen. Either Obama has to turn this into a story about him being able to take a punch and come back hard, and run the table the rest of the way (and the remaining schedule looks somewhat favorable for him), or Clinton has to really make this the point at which everything changes, win big over and over the rest of the way, and make a plausible case to the superdelegates that she has the momentum and deserves the nod going into the convention. Which is kind of a longshot at this point, but cannot be counted out of the realm of possibility. But either way, the odds just took a huge leap that the Democratic nominee will wander out of Denver as damaged goods...which means that at least for tonight, John McCain has to be considered the favorite to win the White House in November.

EDITED TO ADD: Two thoughts, late into the night:

1) John Edwards looked like an idiot for not making his endorsement before Super Tuesday...and now he looks like a genius. Sure, he only controls 26 delegates, but his endorsement could go a long way in the remaining races, especially North Carolina - and the fact that he was probably the furthest left of the Big Three Dems on trade and labor issues means that he could provide somebody with a credibility boost on NAFTA in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

2) Something's going to have to be done with Florida and Michigan. Sure, they broke the rules and they deserve to be dinged for it - especially since it turns out that states later in the process are becoming more and more important, rather than less and less - but the symbolism of the Democrats not counting votes from Florida is just too egregious to let stand. That said, four things:

* Getting an election do-over will be virtually impossible, due to timetable and expense

* Since the original beauty-contest elections were not fully contested, those totals cannot be considered remotely valid

* While a caucus sort of thing could happen, the caucus format has been so favorable to Obama that it might be tough to get both sides to sign on to any plan that exclusively allocates delegates by caucus

* It is not inconceivable that some combination of Florida, Michigan and the Edwards delegates could be the margin of victory before the superdelegates come into effect...and what will be done about superdelegates to try to reflect some sort of small-d democratic process? Anybody's guess at this point

I guess what I'm saying is that in a world that gave us impeachment in 1999, the Florida recount in 2000, the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Gulf War in 2003, an eight-month campaign in 2004, a two-house turnover in 2006, and a presidential campaign that has gone on continuously since then...the only thing you can count on is that nothing is too insane to contemplate.

...but I doubt too many of you voted for him anyway. Therefore:

Dear Stephen Harper,

You don't want NO part of this, so tell your staff to have a big bowl of Honey Bunches of ShutTheFuckUp. If you don't think the next President can make it rough for the PM of a minority government, you're punching WAY above your weight limit.

Love and kisses,
The Democratic Party

However, while Memorial was indeed magical on Senior Night, tonight belongs to Shan Foster.

42 points, including nine straight three-pointers down the stretch, including the winning 3 with 2.7 seconds to play in OT.

(25) MISS ST 85
(16) VANDY 86
FINAL

Won every non-conference game. Won every home game. 25-5 with only a trip to Tuscaloosa before the SEC tournament tips off next week. Our ticket to the tournament is punched...now we're just playing to get into first class. =)

DYNAMITE GO VU!!!

EDIT: Had to include the extended quote from Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury:

"You can't say anything else about it. He jumped up in a stressful situation and made shots. Absolutely nothing else I would have done different, and absolutely nothing else I could have done. He jumped up and made 30-footers with someone in his face. He jumped up in those situations and made shots. It was him. Forty-two points."

You can almost see him shaking his head.

Vandals halt some hybrid buses in Hunters Point:

The Municipal Railway will not use buses from its new hybrid fleet on one line that runs through the public housing projects in San Francisco's Hunters Point neighborhood until officials can stop troublemakers there from turning off the buses' power switches.

Muni drivers have reported over the last couple of weeks that people have been shutting down the power on their buses by flipping a switch that can be accessed easily through an unlocked panel on the outside of the bus.

When that happens, the drivers can't accelerate, they lose radio contact with dispatchers and the interior lights on the buses go out. The power loss does not affect the brakes.

What engineering spastic decided to put the POWER SWITCH on the OUTSIDE of the bus??

Memo to SF-MUNI: stop buying buses designed by UT students!!

Vandy falls 78-73 in OT at Alabama. Finishes 25-6, 10-6 in the SEC and 15-0 non-conf, along with 19-0 at home. And that's good enough for third in the SEC East. That would make you think the SEC was the Death Star of basketball but this year, I'm not sure that's the case. Take as example Kentucky, who were shite on toast until January and still finished above us in the conference race, despite needing double-OT to beat us at home and taking the worst hiding since the Romans ran up against Hannibal at Cannae in the return match at Memorial.

We ought to be pretty good - nobody but Florida seems to be able to contain Shan Foster - but a one-and-done seems more likely this year than in our last two NCAA appearances.

Meanwhile, Newcastle United look to be for the drop. They are only 3 points clear of relegation and have not won since changing managers. After casting a weathered eye around the Premiership, I'm leaning toward Aston Villa if Newcastle goes away. For three reasons:

1) They are from Birmingham. Like me! Sort of.

2) They are owned by Americans - namely the guys who own the Cleveland Browns, and that lot have a specialty in returning football pride to depressed steel towns.

3) They are managed by Martin O'Neill, the Ulsterman who shares my birthday and who put Celtic back on top. (Hail! Hail!)

So I can kind of count on them not being horrible. I'm also thinking about Man City because I'm afraid Gene Hunt will come beat the hell out of me if I don't. ("Today, my friend, your diary will read 'rebuilt two workstations and was stomped by armed bastards.'")

When I heard Spitzer was mixed up with a prostitution ring, I hoped against hope that he was either pimpin' or ho-ing, not just purchasing. You'd kind of like them to mix it up once in a while. I commend to your imagination the figure of Elliot Spitzer in an electric blue shirt unbuttoned to the waist, tight yellow bell-bottoms, a huge chinchilla coat and a purple velvet hat with a a huge wide brim and a white leopard-print band, waving a stick and clutching a jewel-encrusted pimp cup full of a nice Finger Lakes ice wine. Or maybe Manischewitz.

As for his future - who knows? That Republican guy who paid to be put in diapers is still in office, but that's Louisiana, and I think the state of Edwin Edwards and Earl K. Long may have a greater tolerance for that sort of thing than New York, especially when Spitzer built his career on regularly taking a deuce on big-money Wall Street types. I have a sneaking suspicion that if he just digs in, he can hang on for a while, but he will be politically impotent the rest of the way and I don't think the GOP machine in Albany will have any problem running over him like a tractor trailer hitting a rooster. Plus, I wouldn't be surprised if Howard Dean puts a horse's head in his bed to get out of the public eye before he gets stuff on the eventual nominee (I think the NY association probably hurts Clinton more than Obama).

Ah well. He already got Microsoft, and he wasn't going to be anyone's VP this time around, so I don't have a vested interest. Like ML, though, I am astonished that his wife stands up there with him instead of sending him out there to face the guns while she takes shelter in an undisclosed location with her team of very good divorce lawyers.

Everybody knows what the right-wingers in this country think of Hillary Clinton. What the press thinks is also readily apparent, although it has to be caveated by the fact that they seem almost anxious and eager to be led around by the nose and will change positions on a dime if it makes things more interesting (I mean, if my wife were to perish in a tragic blimp accident I would not dissuade Tina Fey from comforting me in my hour of need, but one good zinger - even if it was the sublime "Bitch is the new black" - just ain't enough to make the scales fall from the eyes of the MSNBC types and cause them to suddenly get behind the idea that They Done Hillary Wrong.)

What a lot of people don't realize is that much, if not most, of the activist left in the U.S. also hates Hillary. Despises her. Reviles might even be the best word. For a couple of reasons, after the jump:

Twelve months ago, everyone knew what to expect from 2008. The abortive 2000 Senate race was going to become the 2008 Presidential race: America's Mayor vs the Clinton Restoration. Rudy vs Hillary, as inevitable as the dawn, an epic bloodbath that would no doubt lead to another few rungs down the ladder in American political culture. Funny thing happened on the way to the coronation, though...

(more after the jump, or follow the link)

"Geraldine Ferraro? What is that, Flip Wilson's sports car?"

A plant if you get that. Another plant if you can say who I nicked it from.

Seriously. If my cultural signifiers were Tab, Virginia Slims, and a Bea Arthur character*, I'd probably be a little irritable too. But what the Ferraros and Steinems and the other folks from the age of ERA and "women's lib" don't seem to grasp is that there are a lot - a lot - of younger women who look at Hillary Clinton and see someone who was wrong on the war in Iraq, someone who stayed with a philandering husband to trade on his political credentials, someone whose political record outweighs the potential for breaking the ultimate glass ceiling. Maybe it's a valid viewpoint, maybe it's not, I'm not going to presume to read minds. But I have friends who are female and more experienced and better-educated than me who have made this point, which bears repeating: feminism in the 21st century doesn't mean you have to close your eyes and pull the lever for whoever has the second X chromosome.

* No lie. I have seen anti-Hilary spam that is still name-checking "Maude" as a symbol of the horrors of women's lib. Here's a little nugget for all the Archie Bunkers out there: try not to build your argument on a show that got cancelled THIRTY YEARS AGO.

I don't know how we pulled it, but I'll definitely take a 4. A 4 means you're on chalk for the Sweet Sixteen. A 4 means you get an automatic-bid team in the first round (Siena, in our case). I figured we'd be a 6, and nobody ever wants to be a 5 anymore...

4! Love the 4! LET'S GO DORES!!!!!!

I have talked about politics in highly opinionated terms, I have discussed college football and basketball in downright inflammatory language, what's left that I could give offense with?

Oh yeah - religion!!

(more after the jump, or just click the link. Go on. Ah ye will. Go on go on go on go on.)

It's a favored concept among economists, especially conservative ones, this notion of moral hazard. Basically, the argument is that if you are insulated from the consequences of your foolish decisions, you have no incentive to avoid them. Think of it in terms of Britney-Lindsey-Paris: if you catch an STD or seven, you can get all the drugs you need. If you drive your Jag into a pole while tanked on Grey Goose, you can go to tennis prison for a week. If you're whacked out on grass and pills and God knows what else, there's always a VIP suite at Betty Ford waiting for you. No matter what, you never have to land on your ass.

P.J. O'Rourke, back when he had his fastball, had the perfect term for this: "the Whiffle Life." It came to him after he spent a night with the DC police at the height of the crack epidemic when they raided and busted a teenaged drug dealer at his roach-infested house, came home the next day, and found out one of his friends had a kid on drugs and was trying to get the kid on the "treatment track" rather than the "punishment track." (An aside: everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, should read "A Parliament of Whores," PJ's landmark book about the American system of government - from the 3 branches to implementation issues to the ultimate responsibility in a democracy. I would have used it as the textbook for PSCI 101 if I'd stayed in my old profession.)

So anyway, a bunch of stock traders get wacky on the junk and start pouring money into crazy financial instruments built on unsound lending practices and borderline-deranged notions of investment, and as a result, they wind up holding the bag when the whole house of cards comes crashing down. Their investors are baying for blood, the value of the company is in freefall, and guess how big a splat it makes? None. Because at the last second, Uncle Sam is there to throw a $30 billion mattress under them.

Now everyone will go on and on about how it had to be done, you can't let a major financial institution collapse, the economy is in a precarious state, blah blah blah. I'm not having it. Lassiez-faire capitalism, market economy at its purest, relies at heart on the immortal words of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson:

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

If you loaded your investors' money into securitized subprime mortgages and suddenly found yourself staring at a billion-dollar shortfall, whose fault is that? Nobody is obligated to save your ass. Now that you've climbed up there, it's a hell of a lot higher than you thought, ain't it? But not if Uncle Sugar is waiting with the parachute, because even if we have to cut interest rates five times and kindle the kind of inflationary pressure that hasn't been seen since Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter were asking "what's your 20, good buddy?", we're not going to let you hit the ground, because you're a vital part of the American economy and must be preserved. It's not like you were a bad person or anything - you're too white and too rich for that.

That's what we've come to in our society. There is a threshold line, which I shall call...the Whiffle Line. Above that line you get to live the Whiffle Life. You are completely free from the consequences of your actions. Somebody is always there to bail you out, and you can go on your way just as you always have without ever having to change a thing.

But God help your ass if you're not above the line.

Okay, so having laid down the parameters in part 1, let's look at where things are right now.

(Continued after the jump, or just clicky clicky)

You want to chant "Overrated"? Fine. Chant away.

4 teams from the SEC East made the tournament. 3 of them going out in the first round. And having never led, never tied, and generally shit the bed all the way through the game, Vanderbilt - with 10 minutes to go and having cut it to 7 - basically laid down and died. Uncontested dunks in the halfcourt, fumble turnovers by unguarded players - the Commodores basically quit on the game.

Well, fuck them Commodores. No, that's not a typo. FUCK THEM. I can accept losing. I will NOT accept quitting. And to trail by 12 at the half and ultimately lose by 21 is a fucking disgrace to the uniform. They quit. They gave up. And when Siena gets waterboarded in the next round, it will be obvious to the world just how incredibly overrated we were.

China Might Bar Tiananmen Broadcasts

I honestly don't know how a government that insists on maintaining an embargo against a mostly harmless speck of an island off Florida can reconcile that with the fact of massive trade - indeed, massive economic indenturement, to be blunt - to the hugest Communist dictatorship in the world. Yes, Communist. Yes, dictatorship. Just because everydamnthing in this country is made in China, because businesses get moist in their special places at the thought of 1.2 billion future customers, we're willing to overlook the fact that IT'S A GODDAMNED TOTALITARIAN STATE.

I realize that nobody in this country has a memory longer than last week's American Idol elimination, but yes, this is a country that was "liberalizing" back in 1989 - right before they machine-gunned the kids asking for democracy. That guy didn't have a line of tanks waiting to run over him because he missed his quota at the Nike plant. It's something that none of the last three Presidents seem to be able to wrap their brains around, and I sure don't expect any of the current crop to grasp it (if we piss off China, who's going to make all the cheap Wal-Mart shit to try to make our economy lurch forward again?), but this is a fact, and it is indisputable: the leadership in China is, for lack of a better word, evil. I'ma say that again. EVIL. If the Soviet Union was evil, if Saddam Hussein was evil, then a government that eschews democracy, uses its economic power to dampen foreign opposition, sells dangerous weapons to known international bad guys AND suppresses its citizens by force of arms?

If you don't think that's the definition of evil, well, you're welcome to suggest another word, but I will also suggest that you'd be full of shit.

And now, oh look, they're basically doing what they always do to Tibet...and cutting off the press to make sure nothing mars the pretty pictures from the Olympics. Where the world will turn a blind eye again. Just like always. Massacring citizens, shipping toxins, ravaging huge areas of the country (think Three Gorges) - we're willing to look past all that, because we need our cheap goods, and maybe one day they might buy them too.

If that's not a pathetic indictment of us as a country, I don't know what is. But if we had the balls God gave a gnat, we'd bag the Olympics right now and tell the butchers of Tienanmen Square that they can have their five-ring circle jerk without us, because despite everything, we still really do care about promoting democracy. I'm not waiting, though.

...as if you couldn't guess, my brackets are officially made of grade-AA, imported 800 thread-count SUCK.

SRSLY.

Remember the name. 27 years old, Venezuelan, hair like an exploded Brillo pad. Handed the controls of the San Francisco Symphony tonight, he conducted Stravinsky's Firebird like a kid handed a chemistry set, a bottle of Jack Daniels, two old issues of Playboy and a box of Mexican M-80s. Spectacular.

INT, Easter Sunday Mass...

PRIEST: Any other birthdays?

WOMAN OF ADVANCING AGE: (waves hand)

PRIEST: How old?

WOAA: Twenty-nine!

PRIEST: Happy birthday. Confessional's open right after Mass.

So last week I was knocking down sangria at a ridiculous pace in the company of another blogger, with whom I was discussing the problems of modern online life. I think the chain of events started with the matter of Eliot Spitzer and his young lady, followed by the fact that she apparently got herself all over the Internet and already has footage of her cookie on Girls Gone Wild, followed by amazement that kids these days go to eighth base on the first date whereas in our day, you had to invest a year and a half just to get a long lead off second, culminating in amazement that the current generation of teens has no problem with every aspect of their lives being online, which can't be good for future job prospects...

And she made an excellent point: these kids have grown up with reality TV and tabloid TV, from OJ and Tonya Harding to Monica Lewinsky to Survivor to American Idol to Paris Hilton. Based on that, it is not unreasonable for them to think that anybody can be famous, and it really doesn't matter what for. Consequently, having your entire life out there on the My Space or the Face Book (SEE HOW I LOOK CURMUDGEONLY) is just one more avenue to accumulating friends and followers and fame. Of a sort.

Which dovetails nicely with another thought I have long had: that technologically, genuine privacy is almost impossible to achieve. You'd have to deal entirely in cash, stay completely off the Internet, go to great lengths to make sure nobody uses your SSN as a unique identifier for your driver's license or student ID or anything like that. But if you're a normal person in 2008, you're leaving a trail of breadcrumbs all through cyberspace, from the DMV to your credit report to your Friendster to that weird website account you opened two years ago, used once and forgot about. And that's before you add in the influence of government snooping and the fact that most of your communications will pass through a small handful of pipes - AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter, the like.

Basically, as Neal Stephenson demonstrated in The Diamond Age, the only fix for the privacy dilemma is not technical, but cultural. Messing about in other peoples' business has to be not only a crime in law, but a crime in polite society. A snoop and a busybody have to be held in the same regard as somebody who farts loudly in public, or worse. But if people insist on hanging it all out there, it doesn't work. It's difficult to respect the privacy of an exhibitionist.

Scott McNeely of Sun famously said "Privacy is dead. Get over it." Tough to argue that the youth of today haven't done just that. Which may be a good thing - they may well be equipped to deal with the reality of the future than us. Does that make me some kind of cranky old man?

I don't care what you think of prostitution - these guys should not be on trial, they should be on exhibit.:

So my class ring - the one from grad school, the one I claim, the one that let me down in the first round dammit - is kind of dinged up. I can live with the scratches and dulling, but a good bit of the black enamel on the signet has worn away. And it's apparently under a lifetime warranty, so I will be able to get it refreshed to good as new with no more than the cost of shipping (and insurance obvs). Only problem is...this leaves me with no way to open beer bottles. (I don't have the strength in the off hand to use my wedding band. Nor am I willing to switch to twist-offs.) Since there's exactly zero chance of putting on my undergrad ring (I'm amazed I haven't thrown it into Mount Doom), that means that I have reverted to....my high school ring.

When I went to pull it out of the humidor last week - where it sits along with my old badge from my first job, my dad's hunting club patch, the original key to my old Saturn, and some of the other stuff that I'd have to grab first if fleeing a house fire - I was oddly reminded of a Monster.com commercial that ended, "What did you want to be?"

A good question. When I received the ring, I had a notion of what my career path would be like. It deviated within two years, obviously - and for the last decade, it hasn't been within screaming distance of what I originally expected. But that goes back to the notion that you can't define yourself by your job - so I looked at what the rest of my life looks like since then. Let's see: I drive a car that has a sunroof, a good stereo, and well under a hundred thousand miles. And my Walkman has been replaced with something even smaller that holds more songs than I owned on every tape and CD put together at the end of the 80s - and plays movies, makes phone calls, and gets on the Internet almost anywhere. (The what? Trust me, kid, you'll love it.) I actually have a computer at home. More than one. Macs, at that. If I want to keep the fridge full of Dr Pepper, I can. I own all three Indiana Jones movies and all six (SIX!? Well, yeah...you'll find out. Just deal) Star Wars movies. There's ice and water in the fridge door and a disposal in the sink, and the hot water lasts longer than fifteen minutes, and there's not a parent of mine for 2000 miles in any direction.

And I have friends and comrades and contacts all over America, and I've been there. Irish bar in DC, bagel place in Manhattan, fajitas in Nashville, drinks on the parade route in New Orleans, steakhouse overlooking Highway 1 by the Pacific Ocean, a go-to winery in the Napa Valley. I've been to the World Series, Mardi Gras, and the Stanley Cup playoffs. I've seen major league baseball in 8 different stadiums and owned season tickets for a top-10 college football team. I've had three jobs with three different household names. I've been a godfather, a University Graduate Fellow, and I've been in three weddings - including my own. Yes, I have a girlfriend, who is pretty much everything I would have asked for back then, and who happens to be married to me. And our honeymoon was on another continent.

Half a life ago, the Devil himself could have shown all this to the younger me, and said "for the low low price of one soul, all this can be yours." And I would have said "Okay." Without hesitation.

In every way that actually matters, I am who I wanted to be. And it's a good thing I pulled this ring out, because I need to remember that.

Motorola is splitting in two, shedding the largely unprofitable mobile phone division.

Think about this.

In the spring of 2005, the RAZR cost $599 with a contract. Think about this. When the iPhone dropped, it played music, movies, YouTube clips, synced with your computer, it did email and surfed the web, it had an amazing touch-screen interface and 8 GB of storage - and people ranted about how bloody expensive it was. The RAZR did...F-all. It had speakerphone, a color screen, Bluetooth, a trifling VGA camera, and people could NOT get enough of it. On the floor at PRINT '05 in Chicago five months on, every single sales meatball was yakking away into a RAZR.

So how could Motorola botch this? Well, for one thing, they learned the wrong lesson from Apple. Pretty sells. This is a true fact. Three years later, I still occasionally find myself coveting the RAZR solely for the form factor, which is perfect for sticking in your back pocket before going out for the evening. However, the actual innards of the RAZR - its feature set, its interface, its underlying operating system - was basically the same "Triplets" set that first shipped on the T720...two years earlier. In fact, at the same time that Cingular was offering exclusive sales of the RAZR, you could buy a Moto V635 from abroad with the exact same features PLUS a megapixel camera, a memory card slot, EDGE higher-speed data, video capture, changeable metal covers AND completely unlocked and unbranded...for half the money.

The RAZR was sold on pure fashion. It eventually got the EDGE, the better camera, the video capture, it even added iTunes playback for a while. But for the most part, the biggest changes in the RAZR were...new colors. Black, red, three shades of pink, gold, purple, on and on and on.

All you really need to know, though, is this. Motorola phones based on Triplets use the volume buttons on the side to change the ringtone settings when the flip is shut. Press the volume either way and it goes into ring profile mode. Press the other side button and it steps through the various profiles: Silent, Loud, Vibe and Ring, etc etc. The only problem is that these buttons are raised for ease of use...which means if there's anything else in your pocket, your backpack, your purse, whatever - if it bumps the left side of your phone, your ringer can get changed. Which means your phone might sit on silent for hours or days while you miss calls because it never rings or vibrates. Or it rings - loudly - right in the middle of the movie. Or the Bris. You really don't want to startle the mohel when he's got a sharp object down there.

And from the T720 release in 2002, it took FOUR YEARS for Motorola to ship a phone that let you lock out those buttons from accidental presses.

Some of the newer Moto phones - the W510 for instance - have recessed buttons that don't bump as badly. Others have a software lockout (the 3G version of the RAZR does this). But it should never have taken four years for something so simple.

And that, boys and girls, is why Motorola is spinning off their most highly-visible division.

Davidson College. The Wildcats just knocked off Wisconsin in the Sweet 16. They are now one win away from the Final Four.

Davisdon is a liberal arts college outside Charlotte, North Carolina. Enrollment: 1700. Endowment: a shade under $500M. Rated as one of the "New Ivies" by Newsweek. Ranked top 20 in four different categories by the Princeton Review. Has a Phi Beta Kappa chapter. And oh look, there they are in the Big Dance. Sunday night, they will be playing in front of a national television audience all by themselves for a shot at the third weekend of the tournament.

It doesn't look like academic success has imperiled their athletics. And it sure doesn't look like their athletics (10 trips to the tournament since 1966, including the last three seasons in a row) have done any harm to their academics. And now, they have the kind of publicity money can't buy as everyone in the country with a bracket asks "Who the hell is Davidson!?"

You can do both. No matter how small, no matter how selective, there is no reason you can't compete at the highest levels both academically and athletically. A lot of schools could, but they won't. Some just don't care enough about sports. Some just don't care enough about academics. Some just don't have the will to make an effort. And some of them, like a flea-speck garbage heap in the west end of Birmingham, Alabama, would rather try to persuade you that taking a great big shit on their athletes will make them a superior academic institution.

You say you haven't heard of Birmingham-Southern College? How would you have heard of them? WHY would you have heard of them? WHY SHOULD you hear of them?

No reason. Plain and simple. There is no reason to hear of them. Because they'd rather be safe and happy in their own little bubble, slapping each other on the back and telling themselves how great they are. And if you're willing to spend the rest of your life in their bubble, you might even come to believe they're right.

I am eating Guinness ice cream, washing it down with Guinness beer, watching tournament basketball out of one eye and Mary-Lynn's Friday night collection of college-era hip hop You Tube videos out of the other. Let me tell you, Young MC had this whole relationship thing sorted DECADES ago. Also, I still enjoy everything Digital Underground ever did.

One of these days, when my mother and my *peh* stepfather visit and leave town, I am going to have a massive blowout bash at my house as if they were leaving for the weekend, and we can all get sloppy drunk on bad combinations (vodka and Coke, anyone?) and play all this stuff way too loud. I think we could get eighty people in this house, no sweat.

First time ever...four #1 seeds in the Final Four.

Shame about Davidson. Stephen Curry has got to be the MVP of this tournament.

If CBS had any sense, they would put Billy Packer in a home, sentence Nantz to pitiful voiceovers of that overrated debacle in Augusta, and make Gus Johnson the play-by-play man for every major game, because he is THE most electrifying man in basketball-entertainment.

Somebody want to come drink the rest of this case of Newcastle? I can only handle so much Brown Drank before I have to revert to Guinness.