Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Updates, Predicitions, and a Clarification

Updates
In my very first post I wrote about brutality in Zimbabwe leading up to a sham run-off between dictator Robert Mugabe and would-be reformer Morgan Tsvangirai. Though the two later agreed to a power-sharing deal, Mugabe, from what I can tell, is not living up to it. Meanwhile, inflation has reached 231 million percent, a loaf of bread costs two million Zimbabwean dollars, and lack of sanitized water has triggered an outbreak of cholera that is now spreading to other countries while we fiddle. And about those two million Zimbabwean dollars: That amount is equivalent to just one dollar in America.

In August I wrote that Russia’s imperialist impulses are reawakening, Soviet-style. Since then, Russia’s navy has conducted joint maneuvers in the Caribbean Sea with Venezuela’s navy, marking the first time the Russian Navy as been present in that part of the world since the Cold War ended. And just today, Russia announced that one of its destroyers will sail through the Panama Canal for the first time in more than 60 years and dock at a former U.S. naval base in a symbolic show of power. Can anybody say "thirteen days?"

Last month I wrote about a few of the reasons I am, to say the least, skeptical about the notion of global warming. In that post, I mentioned that twice recently I had scraped ice off my windshield, despite living in Florida with Thanksgiving yet to arrive. Well, it has happened two more times since that post, including this morning, when the ice was so thick that my sunroof and one of my rear windows would not open – and the beginning of winter is still more than two weeks away!


Predictions
Who will win the SEC Championship Game? Alabama. They play strong, straight-ahead, power football, whereas Florida seems to place too much focus on schemes and formations. The old smashmouth style has always tended to prevail against newfangled ones, and I think this year will be no different.

Who will win the Big 12 Championship Game? Oklahoma. It’s tempting to predict that Missouri will upset them when you consider that the success of their season depends on it, and when you consider Bob Stoops’s tendency during the last half-decade to fall flat once the regular season is over. However, this year’s Oklahoma squad looks to be for real, and I think Stoops will prove that his old nickname – “Big Game Bob” – still applies.


Clarification
Three days ago, I wrote that the SEC is a better conference than the Big 12 for one reason: They play better defense. I want to clarify that the difference between the two conferences is so razor-thin that, were it not for the sole issue of reliable defense, I would place the Big 12 well ahead of the SEC this year. Frankly, there are more teams in the Big 12 that deserve national rankings than there are in the SEC; however, I just can’t get past those high-flying scores that remind me of WAC games from the 1980’s.

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