Summer is drawing to a close

Still, we're having day after day of beautiful weather.  But the evenings and, especially, the mornings have a definite chill these last few days.

We're proposing to do the "river trail" tomorrow which is impassable at all times except when the ground is very very dry.  Like now.

We had a preview of what it will be like this morning when we joined the Search for Gracie in the woods of North Billerica.  Gracie is a Sheltie (Shetland Sheepdog) who's been missing since May when she was chased out of her own yard by a coyote.  Her "mom" has worked incredibly hard to try to find her and to begin with there were many sightings (although one wonders how reliable some of these were).  But nobody has seen her now for about a month.  Today, ten of us met at the McDonalds in North Billerica to comb through the woods on the East side of the Concord River between the Boston Road bridge and the River St. bridge.  See below for our track.  We covered about 2 miles in as many hours.  We weren't in a hurry: we were looking for possible dens and/or paw prints.  We didn't see anything and neither did any of our fellow searchers.  But it was certainly an interesting way to spend a morning!  We are very sad for Gracie and her family -- we just wish that they could get her back.



View Search for Gracie in a larger map

Meanwhile, football season is upon us!  The Patriots will host the Cincinnati Bengals tomorrow, one of last season's surprise contenders.  Tom Brady has a new contract worth $18 million annually.  You'd think that with all that money he'd be able to buy himself a really fancy car.  But no.  Some charity he works with bought him a really fancy car so he doesn't need to.  This all came out earlier this week when he was involved in a crash in Boston (not his fault).

And, today being the anniversary of 9/11, we've been threatened all week with a completely outrageous act of racial intolerance down in Florida.  Let's hope that cool heads prevail.

Survival of the fittest

I'm still enjoying listening to the recording of Richard Dawkins' The Greatest Show on Earth and it is, as is everything by Dawkins, really excellent.  He and his beautiful wife, actress Lalla Ward, share the reading and, in an about-turn of my previous blog comments, I really think that this format enhances the experience.  She has a correspondingly lovely voice, while Dawkins' own voice is also easy to listen to.

One of the most exciting recent developments, and which is covered in some detail, is the 20-plus year experiment of Professor Lenski at Michigan State University (presumably no relation of the Lensky who met such an untimely death at the hands of Eugene Onegin).  Briefly, they have allowed 12 "tribes" of the bacterium E. coli to go through a daily feast and famine cycle for, at this point, almost 22 years.  The results are quite amazing and something of an embarrassment to the creationists, who are now doing everything they can to discredit the results, just as you'd expect.

Dawkins himself has been busy promoting the book and appearing on various TV outlets, even on Al Jezeera where he was, rather surprisingly, very favorably interviewed, given what he says about the Judeo-Christian-Islamic deity in The God Delusion.  There's also an interview (if you can call it that) with Bill O'Reilly where O'Reilly predictably manages to shout louder than Dawkins.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our boys in blue, the Patriots have set a new NFL record for embarrassing losses.  They changed the script from we go ahead by 17 points in the fourth quarter only to lose it in the last minute to a completely new idea: we allow the opponents to completely outclass us and begin the second quarter down 21 to nothing.  At least they keep us guessing!  In this case, it was the Baltimore Ravens who were fitter and therefore survived.  I must say they seemed to be a fairly complete team: awesome defense, a better running game than I've seen in the NFL for a while, and a moderately decent passing game.  Maybe they will go all the way to the Superbowl.

It's hard to know exactly what went wrong.  Clearly the entire team was in shock after, get this, winning the toss but electing to receive in the second half, then allowing the first play from scrimmage to rumble 90+ yards for a touchdown.  On the subsequent series, Brady was completely at sea.  To what extent that was because Julian Edelman couldn't get open like Wes Welker would have, or whether Brady and the team were just not prepared for the Baltimore defense, it's hard for me to judge.  But I don't really think it was the Welker/Edelman factor.  We still have Randy Moss, and several other competent receivers, for goodness sake!

Unfortunately, my team's efforts in the open knockouts at the most recent bridge tournament, were agonizingly similar to Brady et al's.  The first two boards (of a total of 24) that we played at our table ended up as losses of 20 and 13 imps!  We outplayed our opponents 50-23 on the other 22 boards but it was a question of too little, too late.  Still, we managed to get 3rd (of 20) in the board-a-match the following day so we recovered some self-respect.

Patriot Games

Is it a coincidence, or do I somehow manage to cause the Patriots to lose, simply by turning on the TV?  And, what if, as on this last Sunday, I actually record it on Tivo and watch it later?  How can my watching, affect what happens 2,000 miles away on the football field?

Yes, of course it's a coincidence.  Yet, every time I have watched the Patriots this season, they have lost, typically by blowing a seemingly comfortable fourth quarter lead.  In the latest installment of utter frustration, they were ahead by 14 points early in the fourth quarter.  There were no last-second heroics by the home team, the lowly Texans in this case.  They simply scored 21 unanswered points and then intercepted the ball in the last minute of play to seal the game.

The really bad news, however, was that we lost Wes Welker for the season, to an ACL injury, just like Tom Brady's last season (except that that was in the first game, rather than the last game).  The actual result of the game didn't matter much, it was really only for seeding (although it mattered quite a lot to the Texans).  For this reason, Belichik was spelling the starters and giving playing time to backups.  Unfortunately, the play on which Wes was hurt occurred early in the game when he was still in play (obviously).

Wes Welker, like his counterpart on the current Red Sox team, Dustin Pedroia (5' 8"), is one of those rare athletes: a short guy at the very pinnacle (excuse the pun) of his profession.  My old neighbor Doug Flutie (officially 5' 10", but I've heard that questioned) was another example.  Flutie still holds the single-season CFL records for passing yards and passing touchdowns.  Even in basketball, there have been short point guards who were really good.  Case in point, Muggsy Bogues at 5' 3"!

Welker is listed on the Patriots web site as being 5' 9".  This year he leads the NFL in receptions (he has 123 to Steve Smith's 107) and for his full stats and bio, see Wes Welker.  It's pretty amazing reading.  This seasons reception total of 123 is tied for second in the history of the NFL!  Even Jerry Rice's best season was only 122.  And, no doubt, if he hadn't been injured early in the game, he'd have got at least 124 putting him a clear second on the all-time list.  Trivia Question: just who does hold the league record for receptions (with 143!)?  Clue: this person has been in the news for almost catching a more deadly kind of projectile.  Answer in next blog (you can answer in comment if you like).

So I look forward to the Baltimore Ravens coming to town on Sunday.  There is hope.  The Patriots are unbeaten at home this season.

Decisions, decisions

What a great game! Will was here to watch the Sunday evening match-up: Patriots versus the unbeaten colts in Indianapolis. The old Brady-Moss magic was back. The Patriots were playing really well: stellar performances from the two stars, with Welker, Faulk and the rest of the offense on a tear, while the defense was seemingly able to shut the Colts down. Or so it was until the fourth quarter. For much of the game, the Pats led by 10 or 17 points. It could have been more but for an end-zone interception and a goal line fumble. The Colts got two friendly defensive-pass-interference decisions from the officials, the second one of these was just mind-boggling. The Patriots were able, with good justification, to go into the "prevent defense" during the last half of the fourth quarter with an 13 point lead. Will and I have always joked that the prevent defense usually prevents the winning side from winning, but last night it seemed appropriate. Injuries had reduced the defensive front seven to a situation where there were no backups and they certainly were tired. However, once the lead was down to 6, it was time to just play good football again. But His Hoodiness (aka Bill Belichik) treated us to a new concept in football: the prevent offense. With fourth-and-two at your own 38 yard line, what does coaching 101 tell you to do? Punt! The punt unit were on the field. But, OMG, they ran off and we're going for it. What relief when Kevin Faulk caught the ball for a first down (game more or less over)! But no, the officials have ruled that he didn't have control of the ball until the defenders had pushed him back over the ten yard line. The rest was inevitable. The most disappointing, nay, tragic loss since Super Bowl XLII.

I shouldn't be quite so hard on Belichik. I am a huge fan of his and am amazed how he always makes really good decisions. Maybe he had a headache, or his contact lenses had fallen out. Whatever the reason, this one is going to be discussed for weeks!

Go Pats!