It will be a good thing if this baby arrives on September 16 and I miss the Michigan-Notre Dame game. I can already picture endless shots of the Notre Dame band mugging for the cameras as Michigan wets the bed yet again. Where was I the last time Michigan won its road opener? Oh yeah, in an Applebee's in Winston Salem in 1999 when they gutted out an 18-13 win over a 6-5 Syracuse team. 18 points against Syracuse with Tom Brady at quarterback. At least we now have a new offensive coordinator...oh shit! Wait a second, wasn't the lady on the CD just saying that I need to breathe out all my tensions? I need a new subject...
I'm glad I wasn't at the Ted this weekend for the Mets' coronation. Wait, that's not relaxing either...
Champions League Final. Champions League Final. Champions League Final. Ahhh...
I would be a lot angrier at Michael Adams for Ned Flanders-izing Georgia tailgating if I was going to be able to go to Georgia games this fall. Isn't tailgating, almost by definition, supposed to involve drinking? This is the South, is it not?...
I wonder what it would be like to be pregnant? What would I use to divert my attention while in labor? Make the wife sing "Hail to the Victors" over and over again? Would I ask her to recount every Braves game we've ever attended? And if I could take only one tape with me to the delivery room to watch while giving birth, would I go with a movie? Raiders of the Lost Ark, perhaps? A montage of Borat skits from Da Ali G Show?
Does anyone else find it funny that the SEC Championship Game was contested last year between a school with the "Battle Hymn of the Republic" as a fight song and a school whose first superintendent was none other than William Tecumseh Sherman? And am I inconsistent for defending the firebombing of Japan and not liking Sherman? Do I need to re-evaluate my opinions of Sherman?...
J-SMOOVE WITH THE JAM...OHHHH JAM...
Time to wake up? But I was just starting to have fun...
6 comments:
"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."
--William Tecumseh Sherman--
Yup.
Quibble: Brady only played the first quarter of the '99 Syracuse game. Henson played a strong second quarter (I think we scored all 18 of our points then) and then played the second half (where he wasn't nearly as effective).
Carc
Yes, but:
1. Why was Henson playing in the first place after Brady was so much better against Notre Dame? Why did Brady have such a short leash?
2. Regardless of whether Brady or Henson was at QB, why did that offense score 18 points against Syracuse?
Good questions. I can't answer 'em.
Carc
At the risk of turning your sports blog into a cesspool of political-historical backbiting, I take issue with this fascinating quote:
"And am I inconsistent for defending the firebombing of Japan and not liking Sherman? Do I need to re-evaluate my opinions of Sherman?"
Your opinions of Sherman are probably dead-on; I humbly submit that instead you need to re-evaluate your opinion of the firebombing of Japan.
Coincidentally, this very topic was covered in an article on today's lewrockwell.com. Most people don't cotton to the anarcho-capitalist way of thinking and that's OK -- but I think any serious student of WWII history should give this article and its position a fair hearing.
[Sorry for the thread-jacking. We now return to your regularly scheduled programming. Yay, sports!]
The article was pretty interesting, but I think it omits one major factor in Truman's decision to drop the bomb: his own insecurity. Not the be all psyhoanalytic or anything, but Truman was a relatively unknown senator from Missouri when he became President. He had a chip on his shoulder when surrounded by FDR's cabinet and he definitely had a chip on his shoulder about following in FDR's footsteps. Truman perceived that FDR's decision to initiate the Manhattan Project implied a decision to use the a-bombs and he didn't have the self-confidence to diverge from a path laid by FDR. Similarly, the decision to demand "unconditional surrender" was not so much a conscious decision by Truman as it was a refusal to change a process that FDR had put in place.
I generally agree that dropping the a-bombs was unnecessary and was more a show of force to the Soviets than it was a device to end the War. (The case is significantly stronger against the Nagasaki bomb.) The issue that I brought up in the original post is whether Lemay's firebombing of major Japanese cities, which killed more people than the a-bombs, was legitimate and that's a difficult question for me. That bombing did bring the Japanese to the point at which they would surrender, but was there another way to achieve that?
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