Cornhuskers Comeback to Defeat Michigan

Last night before reluctantly heading to bed, I e-mailed my sister the following message:

just under 90 minutes until gametime. I’ve been wearing red all day, as has daniel, though he left to play hockey hours ago & hasn’t returned, but will probably head to bed soon. it’ll be 2 a.m. here when the game starts, & I would have to watch the few-minutes-behind updates on espn.com. that could make for a long, tense night.

I saw that Bo Ruud won’t be playing at linebacker b/c of a broken arm – that sucks. still, I think nebraska will surprise & win by 3 or 4.

Go Big Red!

So, this morning I'm elated to learn that my beloved Huskers didn't disappoint and that my Alamo Bown prediction was spot on: Nebraska 32 Michigan 28

I hope someone recorded the game. It's been an up-and-down season for Nebraska, but the last two games - victories over Colorado and Michigan - are paraticularly sweet, and I want to be able to remember this Alamo.

All I've seen of the game is the highlight footage from ESPN.com. The last play was nuts. It looked like a rugby game out there. Given Michigan's history of luckily squeezing out victories in the final seconds of games, the Huskers should be counting their lucky stars that the Wolverines didn't win on a fluke.

Now, will Nebraska be ranked when the season ends? Despite losing the Kansas and some lackluster victories at the season's beginning, I think they are deserving of a place in the top 25.

Student Recovers Stolen Thesis

As the title indicates, this tale of a stolen master's thesis ends happily, if improbably: Student Finds a Stolen Thesis by Thinking Like a Thief. Let it serve as a reminder to (quoting Adam Richer, Mac Guru) back that shit up.

Make multiple backups daily and store them in several locations: on your laptop's hard drive, on an external hard drive, on a key drive, on a CD or DVD, on the university's server... (Yes, Ira, I am talking to you.)

After reading this, I'm going to be sure NOT to carry my portable key drive in my laptop back. That way should (fingers crossed) I somehow lose one, I will have the other. When I fly, it makes me nervous when I pack my backup hard drive in the same carry-on bag as my laptop, but I don't see that I have much choice. I am wary of packing it, or any other electronic device, in my checked luggage.

I Heard the News Today, Oh Boy...

Eliot Weinberger: What I heard about Iraq in 2005. Appalling, obscene, perverse. What will it take to put an end to this shit?

Homeland Security Interrogates Student for Interlibrary Loan Request

The student, an unnamed senior at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, requested an interlibrary copy of an unabridged version of Mao Tse-Tung's The Little Red Book. I wonder what triggered the alarm which led to an unexpected visit at his parents' house, where he lives, from the Department of Homeland Security? Was it that the student had travelled to South America?

The student ordered Mao's book to do research for a paper for a history class taught by Brian Glyn Williams, a professor who specializes on Islamic studies. Williams' class focused on fascism and totalitarianism. No need to look too far in the historical past to learn about those topics. Apparently the Big Brother Bush regime, which has admitted to and stridently defends its practice of spying upon domestic citizens, is intent upon transforming the United States into a privatized police state.

Chilling, truly chilling.

Will Congress please impeach this president before its too late.

Who and What Defines America?

Harold Bloom can be a bit boorish at times (constantly scapegoating poststructuralist theorists for the declining status of the arts and humanities in our ever-more-corporate universities) but this essay, Reflections in the Evening Land, in which he turns to canonical American literature for insight regarding "our national self-destructiveness," is brilliant - one of the best things I've read by him in some time.

Bloom doesn't say anything particularly new, but he is eloquent in describing the toxic reign of the Bush regime, which "daily fuses more tightly together elements of oligarchy, plutocracy, and theocracy," and makes some important points worth airing in clear and simple language: "'Democracy'" is a ruined word, because of its misuse in the American political rhetoric of our moment."

At the age of 75, I wonder if the Democratic party ever again will hold the presidency or control the Congress in my lifetime. I am not sanguine, because our rulers have demonstrated their prowess in Florida (twice) and in Ohio at shaping voting procedures, and they control the Supreme Court. The economist-journalist Paul Krugman recently observed that the Republicans dare not allow themselves to lose either Congress or the White House, because subsequent investigations could disclose dark matters indeed. Krugman did not specify, but among the profiteers of our Iraq crusade are big oil (House of Bush/House of Saud), Halliburton (the vice-president), Bechtel (a nest of mighty Republicans) and so forth.

All of this is extraordinarily blatant, yet the American people seem benumbed, unable to read, think, or remember, and thus fit subjects for a president who shares their limitations. A grumpy old Democrat, I observe to my friends that our emperor is himself the best argument for intelligent design, the current theocratic substitute for what used to be called creationism. Sigmund Freud might be chagrined to discover that he is forgotten, while the satan of America is now Charles Darwin. President Bush, who says that Jesus is his "favourite philosopher", recently decreed in regard to intelligent design and evolution: "Both sides ought to be properly taught."

I am a teacher by profession, about to begin my 51st year at Yale, where frequently my subject is American writers. Without any particular competence in politics, I assert no special insight in regard to the American malaise. But I am a student of what I have learned to call the American Religion, which has little in common with European Christianity. There is now a parody of the American Jesus, a kind of Republican CEO who disapproves of taxes, and who has widened the needle's eye so that camels and the wealthy pass readily into the Kingdom of Heaven. We have also an American holy spirit, the comforter of our burgeoning poor, who don't bother to vote. The American trinity pragmatically is completed by an imperial warrior God, trampling with shock and awe.

Yes, the current state of the nation is enough to make Walt Whitman weep.

... so I should savor Sweden while I'm here for the holiday. Ira brought home a Christmas tree today, the first I've had at home in years. We'll have to heat up some glögg and decorate the tree later.