JordanCornblog

Boy – a little queasy, though.  Soap-infused coffee is definitely not something I recommend on a rainy Tuesday morning.

Speaking of which – is it me, or do you associate Tuesday’s with rain?  Thursday’s, too.  In my mind those are the greyer days of the week.  And speaking of greyer … are greyer and grayer different colors to you?  If so – which has a bluer cast?

Of a bluer and bluer cast, indeed, is the US economy.  It is good to see Obama stepping into the leadership vacuum …

Also on the plate of the new administration will be cleaning up after the previous one.  As noted in this exhaustive and fascinating article titled “The Last Secrets of the Bush Administration,”  by Charles Homans, the Bushies have gone to great lengths to cover their tracks.  Our new administration, in concert with Congress, will need to act swiftly to assure that key pieces of evidence are not destroyed as the Bushies leave.  Homans makes a great case for a 9/12 Commission – to review the past eight years and move us all closer to the truth of the matter.  He writes:

What the 9/12 Commission needs to do, above all else, is tell a story. In War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, veteran war correspondent Chris Hedges writes that following a conflict it is crucial for both sides, aggressor and victim alike, to surrender the narratives they have created in support of their own causes and agree upon a single account of what happened. “Until there is a common vocabulary and a shared historical memory there is no peace in any society,” he writes, “only an absence of war.” Comparisons of our deeply divided nation to a literally civil-war-torn one aren’t worth belaboring, but it is a fact that pervasive misinformation and secrecy, worsened by an increasingly tribal political culture and the sheer complexity of the issues at hand, have left Americans with fragmented and conflicting understandings of what exactly has been done in our name over the past eight years. Without a collectively agreed-upon story of the Bush administration’s excesses, efforts by Congress to undo them and ensure that they don’t happen again are likely to be misinterpreted by half of the electorate as a Democratic power grab rather than a reinstatement of constitutional protections. That would worsen the partisan trench warfare that got us an irresponsible Congress and hubristic White House in the first place.

I have been terribly remiss on the women’s soccer front – so here’s the skinny on the NCAA tournaments as of today:

In DIII, we’re down to four teams.  Two NESCAC teams (Amherst and Williams) made it to the Elite 8.  Amherst bowed out with a 1-0 loss to William Smith.  Meanwhile, Williams defeated perennial powerhouse TCNJ 1-0 and then #25 Ithaca 2-0 to move on.  The quarterfinals pit Williams against Wheaton (Ill) on 12/5, and Messiah against William Smith (also 12/5).

While we’re talking NESCAC – here’s a list of the 20 Bates students who made the recently-released Fall 2008 NESCAC All-Academic team – congrats all!

In DII St Rose (of Albany) plays in the quarterfinals against West Florida on 12/4.  Metro State faces Seattle Pacific in the other match-up.  St. Rose knocked off NH’s Franklin Pierce in the run-up to the quarterfinals – so I guess I’ll be rooting for them (plus I like that Albany connection).

In DI it’s mostly the usual suspects – with the exception of the Santa Clara Broncos – who didn’t make it in this year.  The Elite eight will sort themselves out on 11/28 and 29.  My picks for the quarterfinals are:  Notre Dame, Stanford, UCLA, and UNC.  We shall see!

Meanwhile, here’s a link to hundreds of tournament articles, from the NCAA site!