By Brendan Loy

Andrew Sullivan, praising Ted Kennedy’s record: “There wasn’t a gay rights bill this compulsive heterosexual didn’t champion.” Heh.

By Brendan Loy

I’m planning to host another Live Blog / Live Chat, my first since Selection Sunday (and first since the new blog launched), this Saturday at 1:30 PM MDT — kickoff time for USC and Notre Dame football — and I did a bit of poking around this weekend, exploring live-chat alternatives to Chatroll. I found a nifty option called SavorChat, which allows you to log on through either Facebook or Twitter, and participate in a cross-platform chat window that’s newly embeddable. Initial testing revealed occasional bugginess in the embedded interface, though, so I’m curious how it works for y’all. There’s an example below — play around, and chat away!

I’m also curious how many folks, who would otherwise have participated in the chat, will decline to do so (either this Saturday, or in future Living Room Times live blog/chats generally) because they don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, and aren’t willing to create one (presumably on the Twitter side) just to chat on my blog. If you fall into this category, please let me know in comments (or via email at irishtrojan [at] gmail.com). More generally, if you have any comments about SavorChat, any thoughts on advantages or disadvantages vs. Chatroll, or any suggestions about other embeddable chat alternatives, please let me know!

Anyway, without further ado, here’s the chat window…

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

My Domer friends will be pleased to know that the Notre Dame Victory March calmed Loyacita right down, whereas Fight On made her whine.

By Brendan Loy

College football season is almost underway — the first games are on Thursday, and opening Saturday is one week from today — and it could be a banner year for that favorite Brendan Loy hobby-horse, the mid-majors’ endless quixotic struggle to “bust the BCS.” In the wake of Utah’s virtuoso performance last January vs. the OMG-It’s-A-War conference’s runner-up, Alabama, and their resulting #2 ranking in the final polls, the little guys are getting more respect heading into the season than ever before. The preseason coaches‘ and sportswriters‘ polls each have four — count ‘em, four! — non-BCS-conference teams in the Top 25: Boise State (#16/14), TCU (#17), Utah (#18/19), and BYU (#24/20).

That quartet of teams has thus already taken the first step toward BCS glory, one that usually eludes mid-majors until midseason, when they’re belatedly elevated into the ranks of the elite because so many power-conference teams have played their way down the rankings. This year, it’s different: the Broncos, Horned Frogs, Utes and Mormons Cougars have an unprecedentedly good starting position to begin the BCS race. It’s not a “head start,” but it’s closer to a level playing field than we usually see. These teams don’t have to start 8-0 just to get into the conversation.

So… what does this mean? I think it means we can realistically talk about whether one of these teams could make a national championship run.

Preseason articles about mid-majors usually focus on the question, “Can they earn a BCS bowl berth?” But the answer to that question is an obvious “yes,” for all four teams. In fact, just about anybody can earn a BCS berth if they go undefeated, provided there aren’t any other non-BCS teams ahead of them. Take last year’s Ball State squad — if they’d beaten Buffalo in the MAC title game, and thereby finished 13-0, they would have been ranked high enough to go BCS bowling. The only thing that would have stopped them? Utah, Boise State and possibly TCU would have been ranked higher. But if they’d been the highest-ranked mid-major, their undefeated record against a weak schedule in an unheralded conference would have been enough. Bottom line, the system is now set up in such a way that the highest-ranked undefeated non-BCS team, from whatever conference, with whatever schedule (cough cough, Hawaii ‘07), will get a BCS berth, unless they finish behind a one- or two-loss non-BCS team that’s better respected, in which case that team will get the berth. So there’s really no use wasting our time wondering whether there will be a BCS buster this year. Yes, there will, unless nobody goes undefeated and the Mountain West really cannibalizes itself.

The far more interesting question is, can one of the Big Four — Boise State, TCU, Utah or BYU — rise by season’s end, not just into the BCS Top 14, but into the BCS Top 2, and thus earn a spot in the national championship game? In past years, this has been a pipe dream (albeit one that I’ve occasionally blogged about at length, notwithstanding its unlikeliness), but this season, because of these teams’ starting positions in the polls, it’s actually a legitimate possibility, if things break just right.

Let’s break it down team by team. Continue reading »

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Who’s up for a college football Live Blog / Live Chat at http://brendanloy.com @ 1:30 PM MDT next Saturday, when both USC and ND kick off?

By Brendan Loy

Alan Sullivan: “When [investors] realize the V could really be a W, they will panic again.”

He’s talking about a V-shaped or W-shaped recession, of course. On the bright side, at least we’d know which president to blame for a “W”-shaped recession. Heh. (We’d better hope we don’t get an “O”-shaped recession, since that would involve the economy actually going back in time, and getting worse in the process!)

But seriously… I, too, am very concerned about the W-shaped, or “double-dip,” recession, that Nouriel Roubini (among others) has been warning about. We were able to avoid Great Depression II last fall because we were blessed to have the expertise of policymakers who had studied the mistakes the government made in the 1920s and 1930s, and knew exactly how to avoid those same mistakes. But now, precisely because of their success, we’re in a totally unprecedented situation, in which those same policymakers must somehow thread the needle between triggering very bad inflation by leaving stimulative fiscal and monetary policy in place too long, and triggering a very bad follow-up recession by cutting off those policies too soon.

Last fall, although the crisis had many historically unique elements, we at least had a history book to generally guide us — even if by “guide us” I mean “push us in the exact opposite direction of the one we historically followed.” This time, there’s no historical precedent at all, because the measures taken to prevent Great Depression II had never been tried before (at anything approaching that scale, anyway), so the steps necessary to walk back from the inflationary brink, while keeping the recovery going, are likewise unprecedented. As such, how the hell can anyone possibly know how to thread that needle? Maybe I’m wrong, and someone with more expertise in these matters can correct me, but it strikes me that this isn’t merely difficult — it seems, to my layman’s understanding, like it’s actually pretty damn close to impossible.

And the “panic” problem is a real one: one false move, in either direction, and either the inflation hawks will PANIC!!!!!! or the double-dip worry-worts will PANIC!!!!!! Or possibly both at the same time, if Group A’s panic triggers Group B’s fears of a reactionary wrong move to appease the initial panickers. Panic always feeds on itself, but this could be a particularly acute case of that, methinks. And severe panic alone could sink the economy again, all by itself, even if our flying-blind policymakers are doing a pretty good, but inevitably not perfect, job.

I’m the first to admit I don’t know much about economics or finance, but I really feel like the mass media and the public at large are far too sanguine about the economic and financial situation. For all the talk of “green shoots” and whatnot, it seems to me that everything still hangs by a pretty thin thread. The global financial system and the global real economy are, of course, mutually dependent, and both are still extraordinarily fragile. Policymakers are giving the economy the equivalent of a massive overdose of adrenaline, and yet the economy’s heart is only just barely starting to beat again. But too much more adrenaline will kill the patient, and so will cutting off the adrenaline too soon. And the longer the patient remains in limbo, the more vulnerable he is to new shocks making things even worse. And yet the media is already planning the homecoming from the hospital. Seems like it’s waaay too early for that. In fact, we might want to keep the funeral home on speed dial, just in case.

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

ALL UR INTERNETS R BELONG 2 OBAMA. http://bit.ly/dqeZx

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Fire in a utility tunnel near LaFortune Student Center on Notre Dame campus. http://emergency.nd.edu (RT @nd_news)

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

I just saw an ESPN headline about U.S. Open tennis, “Can Fed be stopped?”, and wondered why ESPN is reporting on Ben Bernanke. I’m a dork.

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

I have a Photoshop project for somebody who’s better than I am at image editing. I need a couple of photos cleaned up. Any takers?

By Brendan Loy (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Newly discovered fact: I’m more likely to get carded when I’m out with my parents. I guess being with Mom & Dad makes me look young.