Amusements

 It is official:  I have a cold.  Grr.  Funny, sort of, as I went to bed early last night, and was woken up by the low blood sugar alarm three times (12:30, 2, and 5), and I dutifully snacked each time.  Oi.  Anyways, I skipped the gym today due to work/sickness (oi). and all I can do now is try to sleep and load up on vitamin C.  Duke is on tonight, and while I fully intend to watch, if I nod off...well, I will just give in and head to bed.  Coach K can chastise me later, of course!

I am amused by the cycle about the Hesgeth nomination; I would rather not have nominated him, given his issues, and, again, there are other candidates who are less of a lightning rod.  The idea of Ron DeSantis as the Desanctimonious Secretary of Defense amuses me.  I mean, on the one hand, all of the rivals are one big happy family again.  And, I think he would be good at the job.  On the other hand, do we want to lose him in FL?  But it is a high-profile role.  Of course, I could see him saying no -- he has kids, he doesn't want to leave, etc. -- but of course, he has a Lady Macbeth, and... 

Civil War Buffs Drill for the ‘Hardest Test in History’ - WSJ
This is pretty cool!  I mean, I love listening to a lot of history podcasts, including Civil War ones, and the LBGs -- and Gettysburg -- seem to be disproportionately represented on these things.  Of course, people want to go there, so... I am not surprised?

Note on the FBI - by Matt Taibbi - Racket News
Dare I say that this is largely correct, and, I (and most Trump voters) am looking forward to seeing some reforms, like it or not.  I suspect the Epstein list has long been sent to the shredder, but many of the other abuses -- targeting churches, ignoring sexual abusers -- is going to be resolved, and people are going to lose their jobs.  And that is not a bad thing.

Also amusing to me is the war of coaches and ADs regarding the CFB playoff rankings.  I mean, I guess this is a variation of the "smart enough to understand the game but dumb enough to think it is important" meme.  More seriously, the one way around this -- and it would work but only too well -- would be to only invite conference champions to the playoff.  Now, I know this would rule out the service academies and Notre Dame (perish the thought), but you could put in something about an independent team getting a bid as well.  If not, why not develop an NFL QB-style rating to rank all of the non-champion teams and invite them?  You could weight for stuff like SoS and playing good teams on the road.  Of course, it would work, so it would never work...