Last week, for the first time all season, relative predictability reigned in college football. Yes, Georgia upset Florida and Mississippi State stunned Kentucky, and yes, we all learned to our great surprise that UConn is apparently for real… but in the big picture, it was a calm Week 9, at least in comparison to Weeks 1-8.

Of particular note, all five undefeated teams were in action last week — three of them on the road, three of them against ranked opponents, four of them favored by four points or less — and yet all five won. That’s the first time all season a week has gone by without a previously undefeated team suffering its first loss. So the Fantastic Five is still a Fantastic Five. And only four of the Edgy Eleven one-loss teams lost — three of them to another one-loss or undefeated team. The only team from last week’s list of contenders to lose to someone off the radar was Virginia, which fell at N.C. State. So we’re left with a Skittish Seven.

Perhaps it makes sense that last week was relatively predictable, though. After all, I had predicted unpredictability, declaring: "[Nearly] every…team with a zero or a one in the loss column is potentially vulnerable, at least on paper." So, in this season when what’s "on paper" matters less than ever, it figures that the college football gods would defy prediction by being predictable when many people were predicting unpredictability. :)

If that’s right, then this week will probably be the upset-fest that I expected last week to be, because — on paper — this one looks like it should be a calm week. Of the remaining five undefeated and seven one-loss teams (collectively, the "Teetering Twelve" — teetering, that is, on the edge of elimination from title contention), aside from the showdown between ASU (8-0) and Oregon (7-1), there are only two road games (LSU at Alabama, Missouri at Colorado), and only one matchup that screams "potential upset" (UConn vs. Rutgers). Most of the teams on our list are expected to handle this week’s opponents fairly easily. Which, given the way this season has gone, probably means they won’t.

Anyway, without further ado, here are your Fantastic Five and Skittish Seven. Oh, and let’s not forget the Terrible Two: Florida International and Utah State, both 0-8. (Marshall earned its way out of the Threadbare Three last week with a win over Rice.) Here goes…

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You know it’s an unusual season in the land of Troy when you go to usctrojans.com on the Friday afternoon before a football game — the Homecoming football game, in fact — and the top story is "USC BASKETBALL 2007: Five Questions For O.J. Mayo." Heh. (The Trojans are #18 in both preseason basketball polls — one spot higher than their current BCS ranking.)

Anyway, John David Booty will start for USC against Oregon State tomorrow. It’ll be his chance to avenge the loss that started his team’s recent Pac-10 slide (the Trojans are 6-4 in their last 10 conference games, after winning a zillion in a row prior to last year’s loss in Corvallis). But unless we go to a sports bar, Becky and I won’t be able to watch it; we’ll get Florida State-Boston College instead.

But that’s okay, because honestly, I’m more interested in watching the big Pac-10 game of the week (nay, year!), #4 Arizona State at #5 Oregon, especially now that it’s been announced that Rudy Carpenter will play for ASU despite a sprained thumb on his throwing hand. That’s good news for Stewart Mandel, who wrote that "seven hours is a long way for me to fly to watch some backup," and also for ESPN, which rescued the game from Fox Sports Net oblivion by buying the rights to broadcast it nationally in those regions not served by the originally planned regional FSN telecast. (Sadly for the folks in Oregon and Arizona — and Southern California, I think — they still have to watch it on crappy FSN.)

If the Sun Devils, who are 7-point underdogs despite their higher ranking, manage to beat the Ducks this week, and follow it up with a win over UCLA next week (don’t count out the worst-coached team in America; following up losses to Utah, Notre Dame and Wazzu with a win over 9-0 Arizona State would be totally in line with Karl Dorrell’s baffling of neverending inconsistency), they’d be 10-0 when USC comes to town on Thanksgiving Day. I wonder, if that happens, which of her alma maters would Becky — who went to ASU for grad school, remember — root for? Normally she, like me, roots for the Trojans against all comers, but if a USC win would just mean the difference between Some Crappy Bowl and Some Other Crappy Bowl, whereas an ASU win would get the Sun Devils within one win (against Arizona) of the national championship game… I dunno what she’d do. Becky? (Yeah, I could just ask her in person, but asking her over the blog is more fun in this case. :)

10 points to the person that has the best joke by midnight: Disney closes Small World

Drudge has a siren up declaring: "SCARE AT LARGEST U.S. NUKE PLANT." He elaborates: "Security at the Palo Verde Nuclear power plant 50 miles west of Phoenix, Arizona stopped a worker from driving onto the grounds with a small explosive device, according to officials… Developing…"

Becky and I have driven past that nuke plant (it’s a bit south of I-10 heading west to L.A.) many times, and when we lived in the Phoenix area, we were acutely aware of its presence off to our west. I won’t say we lost sleep over it, but it was one reason (among many) that we were glad to be in the East Valley. :)

Anyway, I don’t know if this will turn out to be anything real, or just a false alarm of some kind, but it certainly startled me.

UPDATE: What Drudge calls a "small explosive device," KPHO calls "a small capped pipe that contained suspicious residue." The latter is much more susceptible to an innocent explanation. I’m guessing false alarm.

UPDATE 2: On the other hand, the Arizona Republic says "a suspicious item seized Friday morning from the truck of a contract
worker at Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station turned out to be an
apparent pipe bomb, plant operator Arizona Public Service Co. said." Note the use of the word "apparent." Still, maybe not a false alarm, then. Though I wonder what size pipe bomb. Drudge says it was "small." Could a small pipe bomb blow up a nuclear plant, or cause any sort of serious damage?

After several weeks of blog-silence as he finished up his qualifying paper (which he passed — congrats!), Casey’s blog has suddenly exploded today with a whole bunch of new posts — or rather, a whole bunch of old drafts that he has just now elevated to "published" status. Literally the entire homepage is taken up with stuff that’s dated November 2, 2007. And, as usual with Casey, there’s a lot of interesting stuff there. Just go to his blog and scroll, scroll, scroll. The heavy stuff is near the top, the funny stuff near the bottom, so keep on scrollin’.

I just learned that there is a Cheatham County in Tennessee. Naturally, this caused me to go Googling around for some other county names, and I soon discovered that there is a "Dewey County" in Oklahoma and another in South Dakota. Alas, there is apparently no "Howe County" anywhere in the United States. There are, however, cities and townships named "Howe" in Indiana, Oklahoma, Texas and Pennsylvania. One of those municipalities needs to get together with Cheatham County and one of the Dewey Counties to form some sort of sister city/county arrangement of Dewey, Cheatham & Howe.

Two questions for y’all. First off, does anybody know of a consumer-level (let’s say under $400) digital camera that has a maximum exposure (for low-light, long-exposure still photos) of greater than 15 seconds? Like, 30 seconds, maybe? I love the Canon PowerShot line, but they all seem to max out at 15-second exposures, and for Iridium flare photography, I really wish they could do 30. I’m probably not immediately in the market for a new still camera, but I’m just wondering.

Second, more important question: I need a new video camera. My Sony DCR-TRV140 is out-of-warranty and broken (it gives me the dreaded C31:23 error, and the Internet home remedy of "whacking" the camera doesn’t work for me), and I want a functional digital camcorder before the baby arrives. So I’m wondering if y’all have any suggestions.

To be clear, I’m looking for a reasonably inexpensive consumer-level camcorder — not some sort of super-advanced, super-expensive pro-level monstrosity that has eight thousand features I’ll never use. Also, if my new camera were a Digital8, that would be ideal, since that’s the format that all my previous tapes are in. However, I realize Digital8 is a proprietary Sony format and thus limits my options considerably, so I’m certainly willing to consider a switch to MiniDV or some other format — though then I’ll have to figure out how to play my old Digital8 tapes (maybe by buying something old and cheap off eBay?).

I don’t demand a lot from my camcorders, in terms of bells & whistles. For instance, I don’t care at all about digital zoom (only optical zoom matters), and razzle-dazzle digital effects do nothing for me. I just want something relatively cheap that works well. That said, one feature I actually do care about, which most camera manufacturers seem not to care about, is the ease of manually focusing when necessary. I used to have a camcorder where there was a simple, physical button up front, near the lens, that served as both 1) the toggle switch between auto & manual focus and 2) the focus wheel. That was ideal. By contrast, some camcorders these days require you to navigate a lengthy menu and press buttons four or five or six times, just to make the camera focus on something in the foreground instead of the background. That’s ridiculous. I want a reasonably intuitive interface for that essential camera function. Other than that… um… I’m not sure what else I really need in a camcorder. It doesn’t take a lot a fancy-schmancy digital wizardry to take cute videos of a baby. :) But you tell me. What should I be looking at? I haven’t been in the market for a camcorder for like six years, so I don’t really know what’s out there in any detail or depth. Suggestions? Thoughts?

Will Joe Torre go to the Dodgers?  (And equally important, will he bring those Yankee Free Agents like A-Rod, Posada, and Rivera with him … and Don Mattingly, too?)

Update: It’s official: Torre will take the position vacated by Grady Little (may Red Sox Nation curse his name forever).  Now to see what Yankees staff he brings with him to LA. 

In other news: Joe Girardi has taken the number 27 because the Yankees have won 26 World Series, and he wants to be manager during #27.  Dumb.  His former number with New York, 25, is currently being worn by Jason Giambi (though he war #52 when he was a coach with New York in 2005)

They're building an artificial Christmas tree in downtown Knoxville's Krutch Park. I guess, now that Halloween is over, we rush headlong into the next season. Only 54 shopping days left!! :)

In the name of fiscal responsibility, I’d like to say I would support a Warren Buffett candidacy for president.

(Note, as cool as it would be I don’t think a Warren Buffett Jimmy Buffett ticket would be a good idea, Warren is 77 after all, and we don’t really need our president floating around on a sail boat in the Caribbean.)

Among some of my liberal friends (and some commenters on this blog), it has long been an article of faith that Rudy Giuliani cannot win the Republican nomination because he’s too socially liberal and has too shady of a personal life. According to them, those closed-minded Republican religious wackos would never vote for a pro-choice, pro-gay, twice-divorced candidate who once dressed in drag — never, under any circumstances, regardless of his strength (or perceived strength) on other issues like terrorism and national security.

I happen to think the Republican base is a little bit less monolithic and one-dimensional than that, so I have repeatedly argued against this viewpoint for the last several years. (I think it’s come up a few times on the blog, and I can also remember several conversations along these lines in the law school lounge.) I don’t deny that Giuliani’s socially liberal stances are a liability with your average GOP voter, but I’ve never believed they are the overwhelming, insurmountable liability that left-wing oversimplification of the conservative psyche would suggest.

Now, with the primaries fast approaching and Giuliani continuing to look like the front-runner, Ann Althouse says the oversimplifiers, like New York Times columnist Frank Rich, are finally having second thoughts:

Why is Rudy doing so well? People in the know used to think the rubes
just didn’t realize Rudy has dressed in drag and once lived with 2 gay
guys; they just remembered him as the star of that 9/11 show they saw
on TV that one time.

But now it’s dawning on the pundits that
Americans probably know all that stuff by now, so why isn’t Rudy sunk?
They’re shuffling around for explanations. You could say "terrorism
fears trump everything," or "the rest of the field is weak." But Rich thinks the right answer is that Americans really aren’t as
narrow-minded as they are portrayed…

I agree, except that it isn’t Americans who have been portrayed as narrow-minded, it’s Republicans. Let’s be clear about that.

Anyway, Rich focuses on the extent to which "self-promoting values hacks" like James Dobson and Gary Bauer have puffed up their own importance, and that’s certainly true. But in an odd way, the far left has collaborated with the far right to create the "rarely questioned conventional wisdom…that
no Republican can…win the presidency
without pandering…to the most
bullying and gay-baiting power brokers of the religious right." For Dobson, Bauer, et. al., the benefits of this CW are obvious: it makes them seem more important than they are. For the oversimplifiers on the left, the motivation is quite different: painting all Republicans as Dobson clones is a lovely straw-man argument, lending itself nicely to the all-too-common lefty conceit that liberals are the only tolerant, decent, rational people in this country. (Many conservatives, to be fair, do the same thing to liberals, painting them with a broad brush based on the words and actions of a zealous few. In fact, I must admit that I may have been guilty of doing this on, er, one or two occasions. But I think it’s more widespread on the left, though I admit that’s a subjective perception that can be neither proven nor disproven.)

Anyway, Rich points out something that some of us who don’t spend our time hanging out in the New York Times newsroom noticed a while ago: that Dobson & co. "don’t speak for the Republican Party. They no longer speak for many
evangelical ministers and their flocks. The emperors of morality have
in fact had no clothes for some time." (Now there’s an unpleasant mental image… shudder.)

Rich concludes that "should Rudy Giuliani end up doing
a victory dance at the Republican convention, it will be on their
graves." Yes. But it will also be on the graves of the armchair pundits on the left who have long insisted that Republicans are too one-dimensional and closed-minded to even seriously consider nominating someone like Giuliani.

(Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

P.S. On a related note, I’m feeling pretty good at the moment about my two-year-old dinner bet on the GOP presidential race.

P.P.S. Here’s more from Rich on the disconnect between evangelicals and their alleged "leaders":

But the most significant — and happiest — explanation for the values czars’ demise as a political force is that white evangelical Christians and a new generation of evangelical leaders have themselves steadily tacked a different course from the Dobson crowd. A CBS News poll this month parallels what the Times reporter David D. Kirkpatrick found in his examination of evangelicals for today’s Times Magazine. Like most other Americans, they are more interested in hearing from presidential candidates about the war in Iraq and health care than about any other issues.

Abortion and same-sex marriage landed at the bottom of that list; fighting poverty outpolled abortion as a personal priority by a 3-to-2 margin. To see just how large a gap separates that evangelical electorate from the values organizations that purport to speak in its name, just look at the Values Voter Summit that the Family Research Council convened to much press attention in Washington last weekend. In a survey of participants to determine which issue would be "most important" in choosing a presidential candidate, the summit’s organizers didn’t even think to list the war, health care or fighting poverty among the 12 hot-button options.

The Values Voter Summit’s survey of the attendees’ presidential preferences showed just as large a disconnect. Rudy Giuliani came in next to last (behind Tom Tancredo, ahead of John McCain) in the field of nine candidates, earning only 1.85 percent of the vote. By contrast, among white evangelicals nationwide in the CBS News poll, he was in a statistical dead heat for first place with Fred Thompson; indeed, Mr. Giuliani’s 26 percent among evangelicals nearly matches his showing among all Republican voters. The discrepancy between the CBS poll and the summit survey leaves you wondering who exactly follows Dr. Dobson and Mr. Perkins beyond the ticket buyers who showed up for their media circus last weekend at the Washington Hilton.

Indeed.