Inspired by the graph that accompanied this post:
For each of the items on this list, identify whether it is (or is not) "one of the most important issues for [you] in choosing a presidential candidate." Also identify whether you "need more information" about that issue. My answers after the jump.
The war in Iraq
Global competitiveness
Terrorism
Education
Tax policy
Ethanol and renewable energy
Health care and health insurance
The nation's long-term debt
Relationships with other countries
Immigration
Abortion
National security
Faith and values
Global warming
Economy and jobs
Social Security
Judicial nominations
Trade policy
Gay marriage
Proceeding on the assumption that someone had asked me these by phone (so I didn't know what else was coming):
The war in Iraq - KEY ISSUE, NEED MORE INFORMATION
Global competitiveness - yes, but don't need more
Terrorism - yes, no
Education - no, no
Tax policy - yes, no
Ethanol and renewable energy - no, no
Health care and health insurance - no, no
The nation's long-term debt - yes, no
Relationships with other countries - no, no
Immigration - yes, no
Abortion - no, no
National security - yes, no
Faith and values - no, no
Global warming - no, no
Economy and jobs - yes, no
Social Security - yes, no
Judicial nominations - yes, no
Trade policy - yes, no
Gay marriage - no, no
To sum up, I need more information about the Iraq War (but nothing else); with two exceptions the issues I care about in the presidential election all relate to economic issues or global security. (Those exceptions are "immigration" (which you could argue relates to both) and judicial nominations.)
(Most of the way through The Office (U.S.) Season 2 via Netflix-on-demand. The rankings below are inordinately influenced by the "take your kid to work" episode.)
1. Dwight K. Schrute. He's an acquired taste, to be sure, and it's taken the better part of two seasons to acquire. That said, there's deceptive depth of character here. Even at his worst, he's painfully similar to people I've known through school or quiz-bowl. At his best (for example, the speech he gives upon winning a salesmanship award), he blows my mind.
2. Kevin Malone. The big guy's sense of humor is a guilty pleasure. Bonus points for being accidentally(?) named after the Dodgers' infamous "new sheriff."
3. Ryan Howard. Speaking of MLB namesakes, the temp gives one of the best off-stage interviews. He's just witnessed something truly disturbing, and instead of words, everything is in his facial expression -- and at that, entirely in his eyes. All the better when he begins seeing (but dreading) the ditzy Indian gal.
4. Phyllis. From the kids' show: "Are you Mother Goose?" More importantly, she's the only person (other than Roy I guess) ever to give Pam a well deserved (if inadvertent) emasculation, after all Pam put Jim through. (At Jim's party, when Pam asks Phyllis about office romance, hoping to hear some Dwight-Angela gossip.)
5. Stanley. Speaking of Ryan, the black guy was a bit underdeveloped (all he ever did was glower at Michael and be the foil for Michael's awkward racist jokes) until he got to yell at Ryan after his own eighth-grade daughter was hitting on Ryan. "...Jesus himself won't be able to help you..."
6. Jim Halpert. Everyman, I guess.
7. Derek. Poor guy. All the warehouse foreman wanted was to get the shipments out on time, then this jerk Michael has to come down and ransack the place.
8. Indian gal whose name I forget. Shallow and chatty enough to make my whimper, but giving her at least that much personality is a step up from the archetype Michael sees when he sees her.
9. Michael Scott. Had to get around to this eventually. He's such a despicable man (but Steve Carrell plays him so well!).
10. Oscar. I hope his home life gets fleshed out further. We've only just met his boyfriend(?).
11. Toby. Human resources guy. Pleasantly underplays his part. Wouldn't a real-life Toby have gotten a real-life Michael fired long ago?
12. Pam. She's too cute to rank any lower, but where is the outrage? Her unique combination of self-unawareness and weak will is completely ruining at least two lives (maybe three if there's more to Roy than we see).
13. Alcoholic redhead whose name I forget. One-joke pony.
14. Roy. But I have to admit that of all possible Valentine's Day gifts, "the best sex you've ever had" reflects by far the most chutzpah.
15. Jan Levinson. More personal weakness than Pam, but without the good looks to overcome that. Compare what I hate about Pam and Jan as characters to what I like about Dwight as a character. Who knew that between 24 and The Office, the latter would be more likely to mold me into some creepy fascist?
16. Todd Packer. His only redeeming virtue is how ridiculous his "big package" ends up making Michael look. (Compare Michael's reaction before he knows who did it, to the reaction after he learns Packer did it.)
"I had not read anything by Jack London before, nor did I know that Jack London was gay, but The Sea Wolf has a gaydar cross-section of 100 dBsm. Fighter jets could potentially dispense canisters of Sea Wolf paperbacks to jam enemy gaydars. Just saying."
--Richard Mason
Mitt Romney seems to have made up a story about his dad marching with MLK. (Oh, Bart, why didn't you forge plausible grades? A D- turns into a B+ so easily. You just got greedy!)
Mike Huckabee seems to have made up who his favorite author was. Mr. Huckabee paused, then said his favorite author was Dr. Seuss. In an interview afterward with the news media, [seven-year-old] Aleya said she was somewhat surprised. She thought the candidate would be reading at a higher level. "My favorite author is C. S. Lewis," she said.
Ron Paul doesn't make up anything. But the gold standard is the second most important issue about which he's profoundly wrong.
You have exactly three options for your starting move. As game structure goes they're all analogous: You could call them asphalt, bagpipe, and chrysanthemum and not change the game itself one bit.
It is, therefore, rather unlikely that any one of those three options merits the phrase "stalwart players have come up with a strategy," much less the label "how to win."
But hey, some company won a big business deal with scissors once. And now that I think of it, I once saw some guy win a huge pot with 5d 4s on televised World Series of Poker. (OK fine, I looked it up.)
(Awesome: This Wikipedia page has a higher Google rank than this one.)
Everything I know about the feud mentioned in this link, I know from the link itself.
That said: Suppose you were an up-and-coming Republican presidential candidate with huge support from a socially conservative base. Suppose you wanted to build support across party lines, and (if nothing else) reduce the odds that people first learning you exist didn't assume you were a GOP hack.
Could there possibly be a more convenient target than a lightning-rod talk show host who probably was a lot more influential 10 (15!) years ago than now?
Maybe I continue to overestimate Huckabee's chances out of abject fear.
"Lovely Lisa is throwing a girls-only slumber party at her new home and she has invited some of her hottest and wildest girlfriends over to help her celebrate. Whenever these lovely ladies get together you can be assured of two things: the gossip is going to be hot and steamy; and the clothes are coming off at some point along the way."
--peachdvd promo for Girls Night In 2*, as just hit my work e-mail inbox
"Georgina throws a sleepover party for her friend Jamie, a moderately successful actress, on the night of Jamie's fiancée's bachelor party. Jill, Jamie, Marcy, Rachel, and Georgina have been friends since childhood, and as the evening progresses they talk about a variety of topics: Georgina's heterosexual fantasies and her uncertainties about Chris, her live-in lover; Jamie's doubts and insecurities about marriage; and all of their attitudes toward sex and sexual fantasies."
--IMDB synopsis of Live Nude Girls (1995)
The latter has (all links are Google Image Search: any Safe Search settings should just be whatever you've already set up on your local machine) Dana Delany, Kim Cattrall, Cynthia Stevenson, Laila Robbins, Lora Zane, and Olivia d'Abo.
The former has Erica Ellyson, Lisa Daniels, Hannah Harper, and Valentina Vaughn.
*- I missed the original?
(More formally, the 60 point Impact font, white text with borders effect.)
I've started to notice that when it comes to NFL uniforms, I like color jerseys with white numbers a lot more than white jerseys with color numbers.
If you go to ESPN.com right now (as I post this) and click on "NFL" or "NFL2 II" in the scrolling headline widget, you'll see good examples (of what I do like) from both the Steelers and Jaguars.
Sandy Koufax did not juice, despite an ambiguity of the English language.
The reason I bother posting this is that it reminds me I got through maybe five pages of Squeeze Play (Leavy's attempt at a farcical novel). I guess you'd like it if you were the sort of person who liked Primary Colors. I had assumed that it would be vaguely similar to Ball Four (but fictional rather than real); I was utterly wrong.
Awhile back I mentioned watching This Film is Not Yet Rated and being appalled by just how wildly the makers overplayed their hand.
But just because they made a terrible movie doesn't mean the original filmmakers weren't dead right about the absurd things the MPAA will sometimes do.
"We're now using draft slot as a criteri[on] for identifying comparables for prospects (this turns out to make a HUGE difference)."
--Nate Silver
Credit where it's due: Unless I'm mistaken, that idea first came up as a chat question to Silver a few months ago, as asked by joonpahk (Cambridge, MA)
Two finalists. There might be notions more illogical, plans more catastrophic, or assumptions more spectacularly false, but for stupidity so obvious it's almost elegant -- so aggravating that your blood pressure will instantly go up -- it's almost impossible to top one or the other of:
1. Cell phones that blare an alarm when you call 911. Some day this "feature" will get someone killed. (Honorable mention for the Slashdot comment, modded up to the highest possible score, that begins "I call 911 on a regular basis [...]".)
2. Cops in a suburb of Sacramento will pull drivers over to reward them for driving well. (Remember when Homer Simpson invented the "EVERYTHING IS OKAY!" alarm?)
I'm seriously tempted to claim that #2 is the dumber idea, despite being less likely to result in someone's death.
What's gotten into Wiley Miller (Non Sequitur)?
And why is it that people who feel compelled to make Gitmo/PATRIOT ACT/[etc.] references don't seem to feel the least bit of obligation to be funny, even darkly funny?
Compare the best "America under George W. Bush" joke you've ever heard to the worst Soviet joke you've ever heard. (OK, maybe worst other than the Yakov Smirnov "In Soviet Russia, noun verbs you!" meme.) In fact, you can compare them directly just by global replacing the relevant proper nouns.
I'm dead convinced that the Soviet jokes are a thousand times funnier, and it's not just because of my own political bent.
(Obviously I couldn't fairly participate in this myself, and anyone did participate would rely on my honestly reporting the outcome.)
As of today I think the probability that I vote for a Democratic presidential candidate in November 2008 is greater than 3/4.
Oddly enough most of the best links explaining why this is the case come from Slate. In no particular order:
Baptists versus Mormons (I've known about this feud for at least 20 years now; I mistakenly believed it was common knowledge)
John Dickerson thinks Mike Huckabee jokes too much: That's actually NOT one of the things I dislike about Huckabee -- in fact it's a sign that he'll do surprisingly well. (On the issues, though, the chances that he'd win the GOP nomination greatly affect the probability that I'd vote Democratic.)
Mickey Kaus notes that the Edwards campaign has a scandal to deal with: Can you guess why the failure of the Edwards campaign would significantly increase the probability that I vote for a Democrat? (Free trade is arguably the most underrated cross-partisan issue of this campaign.)
Over at Reason, Jesse Walker breaks down the Republican race.
My latest impression of various GOP candidates, in roughly the order that I'd have ranked them a few weeks ago:
1. Rudy: Maybe I'm a bad libertarian for failing to cower in fear here, but I utterly fail to understand what make Giuliani any more statist than any other candidate apart from his being so wrong about the Second Amendment. All that said, he lost me the day he interrupted a speech to take a cell phone call, and hasn't campaigned nearly well enough to lure anyone back onto any sort of bandwagon.
2. Fred: I readily agree that politics are a necessary evil, and distrust anyone who takes great joy in the political process for its own sake. So I sympathize with someone who actively avoids 24-hour campaign mode. That said, when the best thing you have going for you is "he's that guy from Law & Order!" it's not a good idea to give common people the impression that you hate them. I'm dumbstruck by how quickly his incompetent campaign made him into a laughingstock.
3. McCain: If I voted in a primary tomorrow, I'd vote for McCain for game-theoretic reasons. Everything I like and hate about him is well worn in this forum.
4. Romney: It's bitterly ironic that a religious right darling is eating Romney for lunch, given the extent to which he prostituted himself to the conceit that he was "one of them." He could have run an entirely different campaign, as a fiscal conservative / social moderate who was great at running things. That he didn't says... something... about him.
5. Ron Paul: So right about so many things, yet so wrong about the one issue that gets him the most notice. Unfit for office in my opinion. (Yet if forced to choose between Paul and Huckabee, I'd take Paul hands-down.)
Eek:
It says here that Romania has the highest child mortality rate in the developed world: 19 deaths per every 1000 newborn children.
That's nearly 1 in 50.
(I don't necessarily agree with the blog to which I immediately linked: The biggest problem with Romania is probably something other than that the health care is government-run, and I'm sure someone else could find many countries without government-run health care where the medical treatment is abysmal.)
...but this guy lost me with his pity party quote. (I almost wrote "victim routine," which would have created interesting/unfortunate language ambiguity given what made him notorious to begin with.)
If you haven't seen Marginal Revolution today, make a couple quick guesses:
1. What share of federal tax revenue comes from the top 20% of households by income?
2. What share of federal tax revenue comes from the top 1% of households by income?
I'd have missed high on #1 and missed low on #2.
The front page of today's Baseball Prospectus reminds me that my all-time favorite NFL/MLB/NBA logo is the old Denver Bronco D with the horse head. But if anything, the Bulls uniform (seen in the photo of Evan Longoria) does it even better.
"While NFL fans eagerly await today's Pro Bowl release [...]"
--front page of ESPN.com
Now, I'm not a real football fan, but do even the die-hards actually care about this? I can't imagine a major-sport sporting event that matters less to fans of that sport. Even preseason games get more attention because at least they affect (and reflect on) the future of a given fan's favorite team.
The key point here is that last word: I think football fans are more team-focused (rather than player-focused) than basketball, baseball, or even hockey fans. The only ones who are player-focused are fantasy football geeks, and none of them (us) will care about the Pro Bowl for blindingly obvious reasons.
"High school girls usually carry textbooks and binders in the up position, against their chests; high school boys usually carry textbooks and binders in the down position, on their hips. If you have a theory on why this is so, propose it using the address at Reader Animadversion."
--Gregg Easterbrook
In the words of Bob Seger, something something "tight pants, points" something something "way up firm and high."
(Four teams: One didn't make the six-team playoffs in a 14-team league; one lost the quarterfinal; one lost the semifinal; one is alive and well. The team still alive is my ESPN public "plus league" freebie: The final is spread out over Weeks 16-17. The winner gets a plastic trophy, or T-shirt, or some such tchotchke.)
Sit Ubu Sit, Good Dog (hey, I just learned why someone in the draft chat thought this was a Spin City reference: wow that makes me feel old) vs. kalamazoo thunder iv:
QUARTERBACKS: I think I'll keep a tandem going with Roethlisberger (at St. Louis) Week 16 but Favre (vs. Detroit) Week 17. He'll probably start Carson Palmer twice (vs. Cleveland, at Miami) and leave Jay Cutler on the bench. Advantage: me (unless both of my QBs get rested Week 17).
KICKER: Unless one of us grabs a free agent it's Kris Brown vs. Nick Folk. Advantage: him.
DEFENSE: For me, Buccaneers at San Francisco and vs. Carolina. For him, Ravens or Colts (between the Seahawks, Steelers, Texans, and Titans, he's not getting any great match-up) or a free agent pickup. Advantage: me.
TIGHT END: Antonio Gates vs. Tony Gonzalez. (He could start Dallas Clark, but that doesn't change his expected value much.) Advantage: me.
RB1: Brian Westbrook vs. LaDainian Tomlinson. Advantage: him (unless Tomlinson gets a lot of Week 17 rest).
RB2: Clinton Portis vs. Earnest Graham. Advantage: him (given who Washington and Tampa Bay face)
WR1: Plaxico vs. Randy Moss. He made a great trade to pick up Moss at the last minute, for Kenny Watson and Fred Taylor and some second-tier WR. Advantage: him
WR2: Joey Galloway vs. Chad Johnson. Advantage: him.
Flex: Jamal Lewis vs. Kolby Smith. (He started Bobby Engram over Smith in Week 15; not what I would have done.) Advantage: me
RB/WR bench options: In descending order of expected utility I have Aaron Stecker, Warrick Dunn, Jesse Chatman, Correll Buckhalter, Deion Branch, and L. Coles (unless that training table accident ended his season). He has no other RB but his bench WR include Engram, Derrick Mason, Donte' Stallworth, and some guy who used to be Marvin Harrison. Advantage: me for RB, him for WR
Overall I think his team is better (especially after the Moss trade) but mine is more reliable.
I opened Spin (December 2007 issue) to a random page (p. 85) and found this paragraph:
"Touring the Verde Valley in his boxy 4x4, he takes in its expanse of farmland and vineyards and dreams of morphing it into a thriving food-and-wine community -- a future Napa Valley. [...] Even in this pastoral setting, it doesn't take much to trigger a rant about local developers pushing golf course ('What stops these people from being assassinated?') or the FDA's rules regarding wine bottle labeling ('Assholes'). But if Keenan's chi is perpetually cranked to 11, it eases every time he talks about one abiding preoccupation: his goal, in a culture he sees crushed by greed, of building a few modest and self-sustaining businesses."
What stands out more here: The petulance, or the narcissism?
If it weren't for Rage Against the Machine, Tool would be the most overrated band of the 1990s by a wide margin.
If I infer correctly, this company that Facebook just sued executed some scripts that didn't do anything an end user couldn't do manually -- just thousands of times faster than an end user would have been able to.
I see three theories here, one of which is significantly less plausible than the other two:
1. This web scraping may have violated a Terms of Use policy. Highly relevant if the links in question were available only to a registered Facebook user; irrelevant otherwise. (If I'm an anonymous web surfer, I have no particular obligation to obey any given Terms of Use of any given publicly available site.)
[1a. The web scraper might have violated the Terms of Use of whoever old that company Internet access.]
2. The web scraping may have interfered with, or degraded, other people's use of Facebook. This is what Denial of Service is about. It's a Very Bad Thing.
3. Facebook may claim that it's somehow this other company's fault that Facebook users' privacy was compromised. The basic idea here is security by tedium: There was a way to get all this user data, that nobody would bother with because it would take so long (except when someone wrote a script to make it not take so long). Here the blame is entirely with Facebook.
"So instead of being a local rocker, he's a local rocker who The Man won't let play because he's too dangerously sexy. He'll never attract 15 year old girls now."
--a reader of this post succinctly demonstrates the problem with an unusual judicial order.
That is, if instead of "assistant to the regional manager," Schrute weren't 'assistant to' anyone in particular.
(Something about the latest King Kaufman column brought this to mind.)
Isn't this exactly the right place for a strip club?
Easy to get to (and monitor), yet difficult to discover by accident.
"Six weeks ago, I met [him] for lunch at an Olive Garden restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. (I had offered to take him anywhere he wanted and then vetoed his first choice, T.G.I. Friday’s.) "
--from a New York Times profile
(Name obfuscated because this isn't about making fun of one person: It's about an entire decision-making mindset. You're in Manhattan, of all places, and you go where?)
Found at Marginal Revolution, which in turn found it here.
Lost a fantasy football semifinal by six points this weekend.
The best player on the team decided (in real life of course) to go down at the one yard line and guarantee that his team would win, rather than padding his personal stats. He made exactly the right decision.
I spent two minutes trying to find a page that would explain how Yahoo! breaks fantasy football playoff ties. The only thing I came across was a message board(!) with the dubious claim that the first tiebreak was touchdowns. (We had five touchdowns apiece.)
Who in their right mind decided that a team should play on Thursday but then not again until Monday?
32. Atlanta (3-11) (Last week: 31) Thanks to Lawyer Milloy and Deadspin, every time I think of the Mitchell Report I'll think of "COWARD!" in red pen. (Remaining games: at Arizona, vs. Seattle)
31. Miami (1-13) (Last week: 32) Not only is the albatross dead, but I'm more than 70% sure the Dolphins would beat the Falcons at a neutral site in Week 16. (Remaining games: at New England, vs. Cincinnati)
30. St. Louis (3-11) (Last week: 29) In fantasy (all that matters in St. Louis anymore), I would have expected more from Favre and less from S. Jackson. (Remaining games: vs. Pittsburgh, at Arizona)
29. NY Jets (3-11) (Last week: 28) They didn't embarrass themselves. But the weather had a lot to do with that. (Remaining games: at Tennessee, vs. Kansas City)
28. San Francisco (4-10) (Last week: 30) Ladies and gentlemen, Shaun Hill. Don't confuse him with Canada's own Shawn Hill (RHP-WAS). (Remaining games: vs. Tampa Bay, at Cleveland)
27. Baltimore (4-10) (Last week: 24) That 18-yard field goal attempt (1st and goal from the 1, down 3, 12 seconds left) was beyond cowardly. But hey, remember when they almost beat New England? (Remaining games: at Seattle, vs. Pittsburgh)
26. Kansas City (4-10) (Last week: 26) It's not even that they lost a blah game at home, but that this particular blah loss wasn't at all surprising. (Remaining games: at Detroit, at NY Jets)
25. Cincinnati (5-9) (Last week: 23) This clinches the Bengals' first losing season under Marvin Lewis. (Remaining games: vs. Cleveland, at Miami)
24. Oakland (4-10) (Last week: 25) Your 2007 Raiders: road blowouts and home losses by a touchdown. (Remaining games: at Jacksonville, vs. San Diego)
23. Carolina (6-8) (Last week: 27) Ladies and gentlemen, Matt Moore. (Remaining games: vs. Dallas, at Tampa Bay)
22. Chicago (5-8) (Last week: 22) TBA. Don't expect much. (Remaining games: vs. Green Bay, vs. New Orleans)
21. Denver (6-8) (Last week: 20) If the two late 1990s Super Bowls earned them a ten-year honeymoon then 2008 would mark Year 10. (Remaining games: at San Diego, vs. Minnesota)
20. Arizona (6-8) (Last week: 21) I learned two things from the NFL.com video highlights: Kurt Warner and a coach shouted at each other, and the Cardinals have UGLY road uniforms. (Remaining games: vs. Atlanta, vs. St. Louis)
19. Detroit (6-8) (Last week: 15) The first 59 minutes, 30 seconds of their 2007 highlight video will get them through Week 9. (Remaining games: vs. Kansas City, at Green Bay)
18. New Orleans (7-7) (Last week: 19) Of the 20 teams who would NOT make the playoffs if the season ended after Sunday's games, this is the team most likely to sneak in. (Remaining games: vs. Philadelphia, at Chicago)
17. Houston (7-7) (Last week: 16) Probably their last win this year, but 7-9 is a big step up for this franchise. (Remaining games: at Indianapolis, vs. Jacksonville)
16. Washington (7-7) (Last week: 18) Guess NBC knew what they were doing when they scheduled the Redskins for two straight late-season Sunday night games. (Remaining games: at Minnesota, vs. Dallas)
15. Minnesota (7-6) (Last week: 14) TBA. Ranked below the Eagles for now but remember they lost to Philly at home in Week 8. (Remaining games: vs. Washington, at Denver)
14. Philadelphia (6-8) (Last week: 17) See, this what they've been capable of all along. (Not to get all dogmatic about it.) (Remaining games: at New Orleans, vs. Buffalo)
13. Buffalo (7-7) (Last week: 13) You know it's a blizzard when a team with a decent offense can't score against Cleveland. (Remaining games: vs. NY Giants, at Philadelphia)
12. Seattle (9-5) (Last week: 8) That doesn't inspire confidence that this team is capable of winning a playoff road game. (Remaining games: vs. Baltimore, at Atlanta)
11. Tennessee (8-6) (Last week: 12) Likely to be football's best non-playoff team. Incidentally, the Week 17 at Colts is a very good NBC flex game candidate. (Remaining games: vs. NY Jets, at Indianapolis)
10. NY Giants (9-5) (Last week: 9) Swirling winds 1, passing game 0. Not the best way to inspire home crowd confidence in Eli? (Remaining games: at Buffalo, vs. New England)
9. Tampa Bay (9-5) (Last week: 11) Don't read too much into the blowout, considering the opponent. (Remaining games: at San Francisco, vs. Carolina)
8. Cleveland (9-5) (Last week: 10) They're 9-3 in games not against the Steelers. And thanks to their conference record (and Tennessee's), if I'm not mistaken they're one victory away from clinching the last AFC playoff spot. (Remaining games: at Cincinnati, vs. San Francisco)
7. Pittsburgh (9-5) (Last week: 6) Panic is premature but that's two straight losses. (And they're only 7-5 when not playing Cleveland.) (Remaining games: at St. Louis, at Baltimore)
6. San Diego (9-5) (Last week: 7) Peaking at the right time. (Remaining games: vs. Denver, at Oakland)
5. Jacksonville (10-4) (Last week: 5) There could easily be a rematch in three weeks. (Hmm: Compare a playoff road game at Pittsburgh to one at San Diego: Did the Jaguars really come out ahead here?) (Remaining games: vs. Oakland, at Houston)
4. Dallas (12-2) (Last week: 3) King Kaufman called this: "Cowboys cruising, Eagles done, and whoops! Random stumble for the Cowboys. Nothing to worry about." (Remaining games: at Carolina, at Washington)
3. Green Bay (12-2) (Last week: 4) Since they're on the wrong side of head-to-head, think how different this season would be if the Packers-Cowboys game didn't happen to be scheduled in Dallas. (Remaining games: at Chicago, vs. Detroit)
2. Indianapolis (12-2) (Last week: 2) King Kaufman correctly pointed out that the Colts often seem to toy with weak opponents. (Remaining games: vs. Houston, vs. Tennessee)
1. New England (14-0) (Last week: 1) I'm not sure which meme annoyed me more: The hubris that a blowout was inevitable, or the stigma that this might not be a good cold weather team. Neither is true. (Remaining games: vs. Miami, at NY Giants)