Oregon quarterback and Heisman hopeful Dennis Dixon is done for the season after tearing his anterior-cruciate ligament in Thursday’s game against Arizona. Dixon will need to have surgery with a recovery time of six months.

Well, if you actually failed, and really wanted to pass instead, I’d say your best bet is to be the daughter of a South Carolina Judge, a law clerk for a Judge (makes you wonder about the hiring process for clerks, huh?), or otherwise be related to someone in South Carolina politics.  Then, I’m pretty sure you’d get your failing grade changed to passing by the Supreme Court.

I’m not licensed in South Carolina, so I don’t know anything about the Courts or the judicial process there.  This smells really, really bad for the South Carolina Supreme Court to me.  This is the kind of conduct that brings a very bad negative impression of lawyers to foster bad stereotypes.  It’s also the kind of thing that really pisses me off in general.

The bar exam is hard as hell for a reason.  It makes sure that the people that pass the thing are at least minimally competent.  For those who busted ass to prepare and passed, it’s a big time slap in the face to just change a "fail" to a "pass" because of that person’s parentage.

Oregon’s loss is all Ryan Leaf’s fault. Heh.

Also: "Remember the implications of this: because of the injury to Dennis
Dixon’s knee, we might see literally dozens of football players suffer
career-ending injuries in their attempt to carry a victorious Mark
Mangino off the field in New Orleans this January."

(For the uninitiated, that would be this Mark Mangino, he of the many cupcakes. h/t.)

UPDATE: Dennis Dixon is out for the season. DAMN YOU, RYAN LEAF!!!

Remember the tropical cyclone that I said was "threaten[ing] massive loss of life" along the Bengal Bay coast? Well, at least 500 people are dead in Bangladesh — and because these are early reports, and this is the third world, I have no doubt that the number will rise significantly.

Cyclone Sidr didn’t weaken at the last minute, as was predicted, and instead made landfall as a strong Category 4 with 150 mph winds, according to Dr. Jeff Masters. But the real problem isn’t the wind; it’s the water. As Dr. Masters points out, "The big killer in Bangladesh cyclones is the storm surge. The triangular shape of Bengal Bay funnels high surges into the apex of the triangle where Bangladesh sits, and the shallow bottom of the bay allows extraordinarily high storm surges to pile up."

The good news, relatively speaking, is that "the portion of coast likely to receive the highest storm surge levels of 20-25 feet is virtually unpopulated" — specifically, the coastal regions of the "Sundarbans Forest, the world’s largest forest of mangrove trees … [which] is the least populated coastal area in the country." However, 10-to-20-foot surge still likely affected "areas with a population of at least a million, to the east of the Sundarbans forest, and inland from the forest."

I assume the death toll will ultimately be well into the thousands, which will make the notion that "it could have been worse," while true, seem rather hollow.

It’s become increasingly common in the sports blogosphere to refer to the BCS title game as the "MNC," meaning "Mythical National Championship." As regular readers know, I despise the BCS, so I agree with the sentiment, but I have nevertheless resisted the "MNC" label because I don’t want to confuse people with unnecessary blog-hipster jargon.

That said, never has the label been more appropriate. Unless Kansas goes 13-0, in which case they will have earned the right to be called an undisputed national champ, this year’s "champion" will indeed be mythical. Commenter Sandy Underpants expressed this point well yesterday:

It’s become fairly obvious that there will not be a National Champion
this season. Sure a team (or two (or three)) will get the BCS title and
the AP title and the Golf Digest title, but they aren’t going to be
national champions because they were dominant or the best, they’re
going to be champs because the season ran out. If we kept going there
would be a new number 1 and 2 team during the week of December 8 and a
new 1&2 December 15.

Indeed. It’s tempting to argue that LSU is somehow above the rest of the pack, and that they would eventually become the obvious choice if the season continued indefinitely, but in light of their close shaves (and their loss, albeit on the road in triple-overtime, to a team that has since been exposed as only slightly above average), I’m not sure that’s accurate. I think the Tigers are a bit like Hillary Clinton: they’ve been at or near the top of the polls for long enough that they are starting to feel inevitable, but they haven’t actually done anything to establish that they’re head-and-shoulders above everyone else.

(more…)

I love Google Maps. I swear, whenever I think of something they could do to improve it, they do that very thing within three months. It’s like they can read my mind. Latest example: they’ve changed their "customize your route" feature so that it doesn’t create an extra "stop" at the arbitrary point that you drag the cursor to. Instead of a big ugly yellow pause-sign thingy, dragging & dropping now just creates a little white dot, and the driving directions are continuous. You can still manually create an a multiple-stop trip, of course, by using the "Add destination…" link or by typing to:[wherever] as many times as you want in the "End address" box. But you don’t have to create faux-stops just to customize your route from Point A to Point B. Brilliant.

Pakistan continues to go to hell in a handbasket, and Iran’s nuclear ambitions have reached a critical, potentially war-triggering juncture.

Why do I suddenly have Tom Lehrer running through my head? "This is the song that some of the boys sang as they went bravely off to World War III…"

Anyway, this has been your international news update. We now return you to your BCS controversy, Hollywood writer’s strike, and Trials of the Century (O.J. and Barry), already in progress.

Arizona 34, Oregon 24, final. The injury-plagued Ducks are the fifth #2 team to lose to an unranked opponent this season.

Ridicluous.

The Big 12 trio of Kansas-Oklahoma-Missouri now unquestionably occupies the #2 spot in the BCS pecking order. #3 is West Virginia. #4? I’d say it’s Arizona State, rather than Ohio State; I think the Sun Devils will leapfrog the Buckeyes if both win out. Regardless, the Sun Devils now control their Rose Bowl destiny.

And on that front, how about USC? If the Trojans win out, they can earn their sixth straight Pac-10 title or share thereof. They’ll need another Oregon loss to reach the Rose Bowl, though.

Oh, and if eight of the Top 10 teams not named Arizona State lose between now and December 2, the Trojans could be playing in New Orleans on January 7. Far-fetched? Not this season. Fight on!

P.S. I just did a quickie BCS bowl projection update, and, assuming USC beats ASU, Oregon and Texas win out, the Big 12 champion reaches the national title game, and West Virginia wins the Big East, I think this could mean a Trojans-Longhorns rematch in the Fiesta Bowl:

Title game: LSU vs. Oklahoma (or Missouri or Kansas, whatever)
Rose Bowl: Oregon vs. Ohio State
Orange Bowl: Virginia Tech vs. West Virginia
Fiesta Bowl: USC vs. Texas (!!!)
Sugar Bowl: Georgia vs. Boise/Hawaii/Illinois

At least now, if Oregon wins out, we won’t have to see a Rose Bowl pitting either USC vs. Michigan (for the third time in five years) or USC vs. Ohio State (next year’s home opener). Frankly, given the competition, I’d rather see the Trojans in the Fiesta Bowl. Playing Texas (or some other Big 12 team, or Georgia, or whomever) would be interesting and fun. The Buckeyes or Skunkbears? Bleh.

On the other hand, what if Michigan beats tOSU on Saturday, and Oregon wins out? We’d be looking at a Rose Bowl rematch of that dreadful Michigan-Oregon game from September. Yikes. Would the never-before-used “greater good of college football” clause be invoked to prevent such a yawner?