I DIDN'T SEE THAT COMING.

A few weeks ago, Wisconsin's women's hockey team secured yet another national championship.

The men's postseason aspirations were on life support.  The way things like strength of schedule and quality wins work, though, they were an at-large participant in the national tournament as an at-large team.  They rallied to oust Michigan State in overtime to reach the Frozen Four, and then played North Dakota Fighting Hawks.  There were fans in the stands rocking their Fighting Sioux gear: imagine Chicago Black Hawks sweaters, only in green.

Wisconsin had never defeated North Dakota in the national tournament.  Last Thursday, though, they did.

Twenty years ago, the women won a national championship and a few weeks later (I am not a fan of these long pauses in the hockey tournament while the basketball tournaments go on) the men also did.

The men's championship game featured Wisconsin playing Denver.  Denver had never defeated Wisconsin in the national tournament.  Last Saturday, though, they did.  Denver have eleven national titles, including three in the past five years.  Wisconsin men have six, the most recent being the 2006 win.

Wisconsin's sports information people looked on the bright side.  "The young team proved they’ll be a force to reckon with for years to come."  That might be, although they might want to study the advice Wisconsin's 2006 coach, Mike Eaves, offered.  "In a close game where you don't get rewarded with goals you have to be patiently persistent."  That was Denver, they didn't get many shots, but they didn't let Wisconsin's aggressive forechecking demoralize them either.

IT'S A GREAT DAY FOR HOCKEY.

Current and past players for Wisconsin and Ohio State competed on Team Canada and Team U.S.A. for a gold medal in women's hockey.  Team U.S.A. secured that gold.  Then the current players returned to college, where Wisconsin secured the regular-season championship in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (the conference alignments in Olympic, or "non-revenue," if you will, sports are bizarre) after which Ohio State won the conference tournament.  Thus when the national championship bids were issued, Ohio State were the top seed and Wisconsin the second seed.  They met again for the national championship.

University of Wisconsin official photograph retrieved from WTMJ.

Wisconsin's women won their ninth national championship, and if you thought Connecticut versus Tennessee was too frequent a final in women's basketball, it has been either Ohio State or Wisconsin skating with that trophy you can't drink from each of the last four years.

And those sports pundits who had reservations about Kirsten Simms being on Team U.S.A?  All she did this tournament is get Wisconsin back to the finals with an overtime goal against a scrappy Penn State team.  And 1980 Team U.S.A. most valuable player and current Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson is conference coach of the year.

Well done, kids.

LET THE NIT-PICKING BEGIN.

The Speech from the Throne delivered the longitude as expected, and the platitude unburdened by Trumpian vamping.  Then came the nit-picking.  "CBS News fact checked President Trump's 2026 State of the Union address Tuesday night, in which he highlighted his record on the economy, immigration and tariffs, and also assessed a claim made by Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger during her Democratic response."  Read it if you would like, if it's not nit-picking, it might be ankle-biting, or it might be rivet-counting.

The speech featured two centenarians, two Congressional Medals of Honor awarded, two Purple Hearts conferred, one posthumously, a Legion of Merit, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom by unanimous consent of the Olympians present.  Air Force aviator Royce Williams was one of the centenarians and earned a Medal of Honor for making ace against a fleet of Soviet MIG jets during the Korean War.  Nobody wanted to call attention to his exploit at the time as those jets had Soviet pilots and the United States officially were involved in a United Nations police action on behalf of the Republic of Korea.

DISPATCHES FROM THE NEW COLD WAR.

The Games of the XXV Winter Olympics, to use the full and pretentious title (cue the bugles) wrapped up over the weekend.  Both men's and women's hockey tournaments concluded with Team Canada playing Team U.S.A.  For the first time in any Olympiad, Team U.S.A. won both games, which has not been the case for either squad of late.

Photo by Elsa for Getty Images retrieved from Washington Free Beacon.

Both games ended 2-1 in overtime.  The women played on Thursday.  During pool play, they beat Canada 5-0 (which was a common margin of victory all the way to the gold medal game).  Years ago, Wisconsin's men's team won the Western Collegiate Hockey Association tournament final, putting up ten on North Dakota.  Sure enough, North Dakota got another shot at Wisconsin for the national title, and won that game.

The men played on Sunday.  Both teams arrived at the gold medal game undefeated.  On paper, Team Canada looked like the better squad, and during much of the game all the play was in the United States' zone.  But after Canada got the equalizer in the second period, no team scored in regulation, that despite Team U.S.A. having a four minute power play after Jack Hughes, pictured above, had a close encounter with a high stick.  During that power play, a United States player committed a penalty, and Canada, rather than go on the attack with five skaters and an empty net, went with five skaters, one of whom did his best Bobby Orr impression skating circles in his own zone to facilitate a longer power play for their side.  Nobody scored.  Nor did Canada score on a subsequent five-on-three power play.  Thus it went to overtime, and on occasion the team that looks to be exerting the most pressure comes up short in overtime.  Ask the Minnesota men how their title games against Harvard, Union, and Quinnipiac turned out.  Jack Hughes got the winning goal, hustling into position to convert a two-on-one goal rush into a three-on-one.

HOCKEY THE WAY IT USED TO BE.

Milwaukee Admirals beat [Iowa] Wild, coldest game in AHL history.  "The teams played outdoors at the United Heroes League in Hastings, Minnesota as part of Hockey Day Minnesota."  The Wild scored the first two goals, the Admirals the next three, with everybody getting ninety seconds of extra outdoor time.

Years ago, my dad scored some points with his future father-in-law watching my mom's brother play in an outdoor game in Green Bay.  Might be that after December 1944 in Belgium, a chilly night properly bundled up and fed to watch hockey held no terrors.

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH.

March is for the Wisconsin women to capture hockey championships, yesterday bringing the eighth.

Yes, the championship game took place at Minnesota's rink, and yes, the Minnesota women were among the frozen four, being excused by Wisconsin in the semifinals.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Reality bats last.  Reality thinks not.  (Even Charlie Sykes occasionally gets something right.)  "Dementia Joe would have been crushed by an even larger margin than Kamala Harris was."  No fraud needed, only a vote of no confidence.  “The popular vote result was almost entirely a collapse in support for Harris and Democrats, not an increase in support for Trump and MAGA.”

Farewell, Jarrett regency.  "Biden’s presidency had been a sham from its very first day, a project managed by a group of advisers rather than an actual president, and that cabal couldn’t fire anyone who might reveal the secret."  We can't run him.  "I just was at a meeting with him with several other senators and he couldn’t even function"  It is all an inglorious coda to five decades in public office.  Speaking of inglorious codas, "Joe Biden's advisory opinion that he thinks the Equal Rights Amendment ratified is empty, vain, given to the winds."

No kidding.  "The world will not end on January 20."  The squandering of the peace dividend might have.  "We had started electing cool presidents after the Cold War ended, when it suddenly felt as if the stakes of the American presidency were much less consequential—less nuclear.  Cool never ages well."

The time for cool has passed.  "Donald Trump is glaring because he means bidness. His bidness is to shift the paradigm on the mendaciously sanctimonious managerial class of the USA, of which The New York Times is the principal mouthpiece."  Has nearly 40 years of unserious presidents been enough?

America is done being guilted into accepting the crazy.  The hysterics increased in direct proportion to the poverty of the charges.  Go figure.  "Young men don’t like being ruled over by neurotic — and sometimes psychotic — women."

CRISIS + BIPARTISAN = STUPID.   "Whenever there's a crisis and a bipartisan push to DO SOMETHING, the odds are about six out of five that the SOMETHING will turn out to be too big, too expensive, and corrosive to liberty."  With the rent-seekers cleaning up.

Reality dawns on the Woke.  "Despite living nowhere near working-class black and brown people, this do-gooder somehow knew he spoke for them.  'What happens if your social experiment of abolishing the police ends badly?  What happens if it causes an outbreak of gun violence, gang violence, and youth violence?  You lead an ivory-towered existence in a wealthy white neighborhood whereas my constituents, poor people of color, will be forced to live with the consequences of your social engineering.  Is that truly progressive—to have white progressive luxury beliefs whose costs are primarily borne by people of color?'"  Somewhere George Wallace is nodding.

The weekly round-up of mostly pithy elaborations on traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

ADVANTAGE, COLD SPRING SHOPS.

Shortly after Russia kicked off in Ukraine, I responded to the reactions of our now former president with a tweet.

For God's sake, this man cannot be allowed to remain in power. #BidenWorstPresidentEver pic.twitter.com/1tX2SSVkNK

— Stephen Karlson (@StephenKarlson) March 27, 2022

Yes, it set off some of the usual conscience-cowboys, although it got a favorable ratio.  "Whether any minds get changed on social media, or if it exists to be cathartic, and everybody understands it as such, is more thinking than I want to do right now."

THE BELPOT TROPHY.

There's professional hockey in the United Kingdom, and the Belfast Giants and their home arena have been sponsoring something called the Friendship Four Tournament.  It appears to take place over the long Thanksgiving weekend, when teams travelling for tournaments is common, and that leaves Groundhoug Day for the Beanpot Tournament in Boston.

THE POWER RULE ON THE ICE.

The National Collegiate Athletic Association attempt to generate some interest in their national hockey tournament by deferring the finals until after the basketball championship, just as the pro basketball and Stanley Cup playoffs are about to begin.  Not that it matters.  The best in the West, the heck with the East.

Jared Wright and Rieger Lorenz scored second-period goals, Matt Davis had 35 saves and Denver beat No. 1 overall seed Boston College 2-0 Saturday night to win the 10th national championship in program history.

No. 3 seed Denver (32-9-3), which finished the season on a nine-game win streak, moved past Michigan (nine) for most titles of all time. Boston College is tied with Boston University (five) for fourth, behind Wisconsin (six).

Five teams account for 35 titles in less than a century of hockey tournaments; and I can think of at least two title rounds in which Boston University eliminated Wisconsin and one in which Boston College eliminated Wisconsin; then there's Minnesota channeling the Vikings against the likes of Harvard and Quinnipiac on at least two occasions.

I wonder if there's anyone in the diversity bureaucracy at Denver, or Michigan, or Wisconsin, issuing an apology for the overrepresentation of their hockey teams on the championship trophy.

MERCHANT, BASKETBALL MAGNATE, SENATOR.

Twitchy contributor Ranty Amy Curtis, a Wisconsin resident, remembers her former senator Herb Kohl.  "He was born in Milwaukee in 1935, the son of Jewish immigrants. He got involved in real estate and business, spawning Kohl's grocery and retail store, which made the Kohl one of the richest U.S. senators in history."  Since then, creative destruction has come for retail, with former Kohl's grocery stores with their distinctive arch roof becoming beer depots or Sentry food stores, and the department store side becoming Amazon parcels terminals, that is, when they're not repurposing Boston Stores.

None of which might be as important as her recollection.  "Back in 2007, this writer and her infant son ran into Kohl at Ma Fischer's -- a local diner Kohl frequented. He was tremendously kind, humble, down-to-earth, and very doting to a random baby in his favorite diner."

I continue to have doubts about his tenure as Bucks owner, mostly thanks to Don Nelson being run off as coach.  Fans are right, though, that his money, and his quest for new owners who wouldn't move the franchise to San Diego Los Angeles Sacramento Las Vegas Alturas (odd how some of those Californian relocations have worked out, isn't it?) did keep professional basketball in Milwaukee for another, long delayed, championship.  (That first one arrived as the last Green Bay trains tied up.)

Kohl money also made possible a bigger arena for Wisconsin basketball, still looking for the first national title in over eighty years, and hockey, continuing to stack titles, particularly by the young ladies.

It's because of Herb Kohl that the University of Wisconsin Men's Hockey Team can play at Fiserv Forum for the annual Kwik Trip Holiday Face-Off.

They also call the Kohl Center home ice because of his generous contribution back in the 90's.

"A man who kept the Milwaukee Bucks here and also built the Kohl Center. I mean just a wonderful person” Jim Becker a Wisconsin Hockey fan explained.

Becker and his buddy Bill Flood are longtime Badger sports fans. They went to school at Wisconsin too.

"Putting the Kohl Center up there just became kinda a little monument out there, a great court, a great atmosphere, the ticket sales went up, the alumni ot engaged." Flood, a proud alumni and fan explained.

UW Athletics said in a statement that the department is "forever in his debt for the arena on campus that bears his name…”

No Bucks, no Fiserv Forum.  The men posted two shutout wins in that holiday tournament.  Will they follow up with a national title for Wisconsin's Herb?  R.I.P.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

The weekly roundup of pithy elaborations of traditional Cold Spring Shops themes follows.

1.  The best in the west, the heck with the east.  "The WCHA continued to dominate the Women's Frozen Four."

2.  Work is what we do when the deanlets leave us alone.  "For many professors, a 'vacation' is a day when they can get some writing and professional reading done without constant interruptions of meetings and emails."

3. If they aren't mugged by reality, what will happen to the wokies?  "Zealotry is impervious to science, let alone plain-to-see reality. Try convincing today’s woke believers that defunding the police, destroying the nuclear family, and undermining traditional gender roles guarantee disaster." Sometimes the "science" is the zealotry, isn't it?

4.  The enemy of my enemy?  "If the liberal center-left doesn’t stand up to antiliberal progressivism and refuse to capitulate to its demands within institutions, then those who disdain its influence will have nowhere to turn besides the right."  There are limits to your experiments against reality.  "The enemy of the LGBTQ community is cisnormative values and assumptions; that is, believing that your gender matching your sex is 'normal.'"  They spent the whole night in a horrible fight over who would do what to whom.

5.  Buckle in.  "The discount window is where desperate banks go when nobody else will lend, like a junkie selling the TV."

6.  Wisdom from Irving Howe.  “Some turned to blacks, some to Asian and African peasantries, some to the intelligentsia, some to homosexuals and — in the last, mad days of the Weathermen — even high school students. Revolution was ripped out of historical context, becoming a mere function of sacrifice and daring, all now dependent on the will of a self-chosen vanguard.”  That led to a Republican Senate majority for the first time in decades, and Ronald Reagan winning 49 states.  Let there be mugging by reality.

7.  The man of system, a damn fool.  "And insofar as he or she is taken seriously by politicians, also a dangerous one."

8.  Lesson learned?  “I don’t think I should have been allowed to change my sex before I could legally consent to have sex.”

9.  The understatement of the week?  "Remove, say, adultery from art and literature, and you miss a lot. Relevance can cover some pretty bracing things."

10.  The Normals' Creed?  "Since every college announcement begins with the rote incantation of the DEI Nicene Creed ('X institution is committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion. . .') I suggest every non-woke institution begin every job ad or other official announcement with, 'X institution is committed to truth, justice, and the American way.'"  For no extra fare, a sample land acknowledgement!

11.  Laughter might be the best medicine.  "Western culture has come to be dominated by bullies who are ever eager to force conformity on others and to validate their status as 'the elite.' They get a sick thrill from being free to intimidate anyone who doesn’t agree with their narrative to the point they control them."

12.  Give yourself no powers ... "The fact that progressive politics has already corrupted academia is not a justification for conservative politics to do the same. The rot must be fought by other means."

13.  Tear down those guardrails at your own risk!  "Most of us recognize, that given enough liberty to do so, some women behave just as badly as men. Isn’t that part of what feminism fought for? The freedom of women to make the same reckless, consequence-free decisions as their husbands and brothers?"

14.  Deconstruct norms at your own risk!  "Holding people accountable is a good thing – people should pay for what they broke. But cancel culture demands unreasonable and cruel social ostracisation without the ability to seek redemption."

15.  Swift of foot is Hiawatha.  "The trip from Sturtevant to Chicago Union Station was exactly an hour, which is twice as fast as we could’ve driven into downtown Chicago from our home."  On a good driving day, that is.

16.  The Government Must. Do. Something.  This is something.  "In some ways, the Railway Safety Act looks like the kinds of bills that get batted around in the aftermath of mass shootings. Those proposals often aim to place more restrictions on legal and law-abiding gun owners or prohibit cosmetic upgrades that anti-gun activists dislike, but rarely (if ever) do they address the circumstances that led directly to a tragic event."

17.  Reality audits the balance sheet.  "Since money and banking are subject to the laws of physics, we are going to get the ultimate payback for messing with reality."

18.  The best form of Do. Something. might be to not.  "Decades of Subsidies Have Made the Essentials of Middle-Class Life Increasingly Difficult To Afford."

19.  Wait, what, a health services staffing problem in Europe?  "As we enter the fourth year of the pandemic, our health workers are tired, overburdened and often under-paid."

20.  Ignorance is strength.  "So, limiting government power in favor of individual rights is ‘fascist’. Good to know."

WOMEN'S HISTORY MONTH.

At the University of Wisconsin, seven hockey titles are historic.

As the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation would have it, those are the headlines, these are the details.

The national championship is coming home.

The Wisconsin women’s hockey team scored a 1-0 victory over Ohio State in the NCAA Division I championship game Sunday afternoon at AMSOIL Arena.

The victory capped a tournament run that include victories over the tournament’s top three seeds. The Badgers (29-10-2) defeated No. 3 Colgate in the regional final, No. 2 Minnesota in the national semifinal and finally the defending national champion Buckeyes.

Freshman Kirsten Simms’ goal at the 13:28 mark of the first period was the lone score of the game.

Senior goalie Cami Kronish did the rest. She turned away 31 shots and was named the most valuable player of the Frozen Four.

The championship raised UW's all-time total to seven, the best of any program. It also marked the third championship for seniors Kronish, Nicole LaMantia, Sophie Shirley, Natalie Buchbinder and Britta Curl.

The men's team?  Six national titles, four of those forty to fifty years ago, the most recent in 2006, and conducting a coaching search.

The best in the West, the heck with the East.  Let's Go Red!

TODAY IN FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS.

Athletes sue Ivy League over its no-scholarship policy.  They'd like to make a federal case out of it.

A pair of basketball players from Brown allege in a federal lawsuit that the Ivy League's policy of not offering athletic scholarships amounts to a price-fixing agreement that denies athletes proper financial aid and payment for their services.

Well, it's not as if, outside of college hockey, the Ivy League is a factor in either the unending bowls of December and January, or March Madness. That might cut into the recent opportunities college athletes have obtained to trade on their visibility.

Harvard, Yale, Brown, Princeton, Dartmouth, Cornell, Columbia and Penn don't offer merit scholarships of any kind, including athletic scholarships. The policy, which dates back to 1954, makes the Ivy League the only Division I athletic conference that prohibits member schools from offering athletic scholarships.

Ivy League executive director Robin Harris defended the policy in a statement responding to the legal action, noting there are a wide variety of options when it comes to opportunities available to college-level athletes.

"The Ivy League athletics model is built upon the foundational principle that student-athletes should be representative of the wider student body, including the opportunity to receive need-based financial aid," she said. "In turn, choosing and embracing that principle then provides each Ivy League student-athlete a journey that balances a world-class academic experience with the opportunity to compete in Division I athletics and ultimately paves a path for lifelong success."

Arguably, any financial aid that accompanies a thick letter from an Ivy is a merit scholarship, if we take their claims of selectivity seriously.  But it's not as if that Ivy athletic experience is (again, outside of hockey) pitting yourself against the best players and teams at institutions less selective, or more shameless.

But attorneys for the Brown athletes point out that other elite academic schools, such as Stanford and Duke, do offer athletic scholarships.

"These schools are not part of the Ivy League, but they demonstrate they can maintain stellar academic standards while competing for excellent athletes, and without agreed upon limits on price," the lawsuit said.

The suit also argues that Ivy League schools have a major influence over the path that a small pool of people who are both elite students and elite athletes can take, so by not offering athletic scholarships, the league is artificially suppressing the market for those students.

Pass the popcorn! I can't wait to read about the Ivies disclosing recruiting fudgery or eligibility studies departments at Baylor or Cincinnati or Duke or Northwestern or Notre Dame or Stanford or Wake Forest.  Alternatively, I can't wait to read about counsel for the Ivies arguing that the presence of those institutions comprises all manner of opportunities for that "small pool of people" to get the elite education as well as a shot at the playoffs and an expanded opportunity to trade on their visibility.

BUZZER BEATERS.

In basketball, if the shot is out of the player's hand before time expires, it counts.  Here's an example from a last 0.6 second victory of Northern Illinois at the University of Detroit (now something like Detroit Mercy).

Here's Emily Meinert's game-winning shot from today's 65-63 win over Detroit Mercy (video courtesy of Detroit Mercy Athletics) #SCtop10 pic.twitter.com/mjMQLvrP28

— NIU Women's Basketball (@GoHuskiesWBB) November 23, 2022

These dramatics would not have been necessary had the team not given away a fourteen point lead, but I'm going to wait for the end of the season to grouse about that.  There used to be a rule that one of the officials would turn away once a legal shot left a player's hand to indicate that it would count if it went in; I'm not sure what replay review has done to that rule, the general principle that replay incentivizes careless calls holds irrespective of the outcome.

In hockey, the shot has to cross the goal line before time expires.  Thus a rare Patrick Kane slapshot that was under way before the final horn sounded ultimately didn't stand as a good goal.

There's a green light interlocked with the official clock that automatically illuminates when the countdown hits zero, locking out the red light controlled by the goal judge. Look closely at the slower-motion wider-angle replay at about one minute of the clip, it appears that the green light was on before the puck crossed the goal line, the ruling stated by the referee after, presumably, better quality video from several angles, and a Canadian balloon tracker in Toronto.  That circuitry exists because the goal judge, who is supposed to be a neutral professional, might take a second or two to activate the red light, and once his switch is locked out, there will be no red light.  The goal horn, which is not official, is controlled by somebody in the arena, whose job it is to rile up the home arena fans.

The Blackhawks did get the sole goal of the shootout that followed, sending the fans home happy.

HABIT CAN GET YOU KILLED ON THE RAILROAD.

The Strasburg Rail Road have a web camera with a view of the Leaman Place runaround track (which permits observation of the Keystone Service on Amtrak as well) and on November 2 there was a disruption to Strasburg's train service.

The practice of "pointing and calling" should be implemented in the US anyhow, and this is a perfect example.

Switch stand target is aligned against engineer. He could have spotted that and never gone foreword. Also negligence by MoW crew too. Takes two to make an accident. https://t.co/HF3aE6pAP4

— Interurban Era (@InterurbanE) November 2, 2022

The crew of the locomotive expected the crew of the maintenance equipment to align the switch properly, but you still keep an eye peeled for bad iron.

A combination of a misaligned switch — apparently left open when a maintenance crew tied down the trackhoe on the spur — and the engine crew’s failure to operate the engine at ”restricted speed” contributed to the collision.

Damaged were the smokebox front and door, some auxiliary metal pieces, and the headlight, as well as the bucket, piston, and hydraulic hoses on the trackhoe. The trackhoe arm did not pierce or deform anything vital to steam operation, such as No. 475’s flues or front flue sheet.

Operating rules define restricted speed not as a set velocity, but a method of observing the track ahead while in motion, in such a way as to be able to stop in half the distance to an obstruction, broken rail, misaligned switch or other irregularity.

There is no turntable at Leaman Place, and the customary practice is to run tender first downhill from Strasburg to Leaman Place.

As is customary, the train departed the station at Strasburg with its engine running tender-first on the 4½-mile trip to Paradise. There, the train was left standing while the engine cut away and ran around to couple to the west end of the cars for the return trip. It was during this routine swapping of ends that the incident took place.

Contributing further to the situation is that, during the runaround move, the engine crew typically waves to the passengers on the standing train, potentially diverting attention from the track ahead.

Strasburg have a steam shop good enough to do major repairs for Class I carriers not named Union Pacific, and that includes an Amtrak GG1, but I digress.  The shop crew have returned 475 to service.

The major visible repair work was threefold, as the excavator’s boom punched a hole in the smokebox front and door, both of which shattered into pieces, and damaged the headlight beyond repair.

SRC mechanics replaced the smokebox front with three-quarter-inch-thick steel plate, using the damaged item as a template. The smokebox door – the hinged round center of the smokebox front – likewise broke into shards, and [chief mechanical officer Brendan] Zeigler said, “We elected to braze-weld that. We put a reinforcing steel ring inside to hold it together.”

That smokebox door will retain the excess brazing, as a reminder to operate safely.

The result is a door with visible spiderweb-like scars where the sections were rejoined. Zeigler addressed the question of why those braze marks weren‘t ground down to restore a smooth appearance: “I elected not to have them do that,” he said, “to leave it as a ‘witness mark’ to remind our crews” of the need for vigilance.

Didn't Boston Bruins goalie Gerry Cheevers do something similar with his masks, painting stitches where the pucks hit to pass the word that getting stitches on your face wasn't pleasant?

The General Notice is not in the front matter of the Book of Rules for the benefit of the legal department.  Kindly be advised accordingly, even if your business is hauling tourists.

FRIDAY short TAKES.

Our moronic overlords are at it again.

R - E - L - A - X.  "It’s very possible omicron is contagious but not nearly as virulent as some want to believe."

1.  Reality Remains Undefeated.

2.  Ignore the freakout.

3.  Act like adults.  "[C]ontinuing the fiction that we can 'end this' gives Biden and other leftists leverage to impose ever more draconian restrictions and mandates."

4.  L'etat. c'est moi?  "[O]ne is reminded of an overwrought crime drama where the most crooked and vindictive policeman is left at the end of the line, exposed for what he is, impotently shouting, 'I am the law' before his satisfying comeuppance."

5.  Only one?  "We have one of our two major political parties running on nothing but prejudice, malice, insults, fear, disinformation, and bad, sometimes violent behavior. And doing quite well."

6.  A whiny broken record, at that.  "When it comes to assigning blame for any of life's unpleasantries, [Massachusetts senator Elizabeth "Fauxahontas"] Warren is like a broken record."

7.  Reality bats last, and we know reality wins.  "[A]t some point, you wonder: what narrative are they pushing now that is also bullshit?"

8.  We have fair trials for a reason.  "[W]hen we stand up for the likes of Mathboi Fly, we are really standing up for ourselves."

9.  Speaking truth to power.  "[Former New Jersey governor Chris] Christie’s attack on [former president Donald} Trump is not without merit."

10.  Welcome back, Carter.  "The rightful perspective Americans have is that the economy was booming under Donald Trump and is now in a 1970s-like malaise under Joe Biden. This isn’t complicated stuff. Biden wanted to be the president, and now he gets to own everything that comes with that."  Own it, Brandon.  "Voters blame Biden's policies for current economic turmoil."  Plus:  "President Biden is not an adult."

11.  Those irritable mental gestures.  "According to Lenin, 'left-wing communism' was 'an infantile disorder.' [DuPage County Democrat influencer Mary] Lemanski’s excuse suggests that her leftism also fits that description."

12.  A choice, not an echo.  "The exemplar of the Democratic Party is Pajama Boy, and Democrat voters seem to consist in large part of people who can’t figure out which sex they belong to. In what world is that a winning formula?"

13.  We are Chicken Littled out.  "You are not denying science by pointing out how wrong, and how often, Fauci has been. That malignant dwarf is so high on his on supply that he’s now offering his insights on politics to eager legacy media hacks."  Note the Colonel deploying the literal translation of Giftzwerg.

14.  Lockdown wasn't worth it.

15.  More coot wisdom.  "Biden’s analogy is as absurd and as insultingly tone-deaf as most of what comes out of his mouth."

16.  You'd think this would be Conventional Wisdom by now.  "[T]he next time a politician promises on the campaign trail that they’ll easily and quickly solve massive societal problems if just given power, don’t believe them."

17.  Bye, bye, Miss American Pie.  "The song lasts 16 hours and 47 minutes, and that’s the AM-radio cut. The album version actually pauses in the middle to play “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” twice and is the only LP issued in the ’70s that takes an entire diurnal cycle to play."

18.  Treat the roads and bridges like productive assets.  "If state DOTs really cared about congestion, they’d be implementing congestion pricing."

CAPTURING THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS.

Over the years, Snoopy and the birds got into a lot of hockey games.  This panel, probably from a Sunday strip, is as good a primer for the game as any.

Enjoy.

WHAT IS THE STANDARD OF PERFORMANCE?

Green Bay Packer quarterback Aaron Rodgers has been hosting Jeopardy, and the entertainment mavens teased a frustrating moment.  "[Executive producer Mike] Richards also shared a nugget about the second week for Rodgers, telling [sports pundit Peter] King that there will be a '[f]un moment' that is 'Packer-related' and that leaves Aaron 'exasperated.'" Here it is.

One of the contestants was from Chicago, and she missed it.

So the guest host of “Jeopardy!" is Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, and he’s reading this clue from the Title Waves category: “In the 1960s these Midwesterners earned 5 NFL championship trophies.”

The response from the three contestants ... crickets.

“Green Bay Packers?” Rodgers said, making the appropriate face and stretching out his arms in disbelief.

Not Erick Loh, the pastor from California, or returning champ Dennis Chase, the biotech project manager originally from Massachusetts, or Norah Webster, a meeting planner from Chicago, could come up with the answer.

That was the only entry in the category no contestant had a response to.  "When Loh correctly responded to the next clue from the same category about the Boston Celtics, Rodgers couldn’t resist. 'Oh, you know that one, huh?' he quipped."

No references to the 132 year winning streak on the seas, although the Yankees and Edmonton Oilers were in the mix.

SORT OF A HOMETOWN ROOTING INTEREST.

This year's men's college hockey champions are the Minutemen (at least until the woke mob gets around to problematizing that) of the University of Massachusetts.  They had to go through Bemidji State, defending champion Minnesota-Duluth, and St. Cloud State to secure the title.  Perhaps a hockey program is a better investment than a football team, based on how roughly the Minutemen's participation in the Mid-American Conference turned out.

The first campus I spent any time on was that of ZooMass, although it's unlikely that the hockey registered.