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Rashad Mahmood of Cairo, Egypt, asks, "Is there anything you could do to make Tuesday Morning Quarterback actually appear in the morning? Living in Cairo, which is plus-7 hours from Eastern Standard Time in the United States, a mornings-published TMQ for me would be the perfect end-of-the-workday, low-productivity-zone reading. But alas, I often don't get TMQ until Wednesday morning in Egypt, and then it cuts into prime morning productivity time." Rashad, TMQ is published "noonish Eastern," and what I always tell people on this point is that noon Eastern is still morning in four of the five time zones of the United States. So the column name is 80 percent truthful, and that's pretty good by the standards of modern marketing.
D. Jeffrey Over of Geneseo, N.Y., writes, "In regard to placebos, in a placebo study, participants ranked pain on a 1 to 10 scale, after either being given 'acupuncture' that was actually a spring tipped needle that never penetrated the skin, or swallowing an 'advanced pain relief medication' that was just a sugar pill. Not getting acupuncture turned out to reduce pain better than not taking a drug!"
Don Aldrich of Minneapolis semi-defends NASA by saying the space agency is not doing nothing at all about the risk of a comet or asteroid hitting the Earth -- here is a table of "near-Earth objects" NASA has identified so far, and here is a utility that allows you to estimate their movements. But my point was that NASA is doing nothing whatsoever to design or even research devices that might stop a comet or asteroid approaching our world. Hardly reassuring, since NASA's own tables say the agency already has identified 835 "potentially hazardous" asteroids near Earth.
Professor HollyAnn Harris, chairwoman of the chemistry department at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb., writes, "I am a rabid football fan but an even bigger fan of the well-written word. I enjoyed Tuesday Morning Quarterback for several years when you were on NFL.com and I was very disappointed when I could not find you this season. I just stumbled across your column on ESPN this morning and was delighted to discover TMQ there. I figure I have a month's worth of joyful reading ahead, as I catch up with your past columns."
Many readers including Kevin Bartram of Bremerton, Wash., noted Bill Belichick called the rarely seen actual double reverse against Chicago: Tom Brady handed off to a running back, who handed off to a receiver going one way, who handed off to another receiver going back in the original direction. Three handoffs, actual double reverse. Result of the play? What you'd expect -- loss of 8. On my item about NFL coaches only blaming their players, Eric Overpeck of Indianapolis was among many to note that the day after the Bears lost at New England, Lovie Smith said, "I made a lot of bad calls."
Dave Dyroff of St. Louis points out this article by Douglas Abrams recounting 10 recent acts of good sportsmanship in high school sports. Good news -- the count is up to 10!
Kama Siegel of Portland, Ore., notes that not only do the enormous new jetliner-based CEO flying palaces waste fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases -- their contrails might contribute to global warming. On the private-jet parking problems at Aspen airport, Mike Monroney of Aspen, Colo. writes, "I live across Highway 82 from the Aspen airfield, and can confirm the absurd number of jets parked there during the holidays and any other BIPIDs: Beautiful Incredible People Important Dates. More, two-lane Highway 82 becomes a parking lot every morning as beautiful people and realtors try to force their way into town. Imagine being a movie mogul who spends 90 minutes flying 800 miles here from Los Angeles, only to sit in traffic for another 30 minutes to go the final three miles."
Readers, including Monique Carlen of Pasadena, Calif., asked how my generic predictions are doing. So-so -- Home Team Wins is currently 109-83, better than Chris Mortensen's forecasts but trailing the rest of the crew on the ESPN predictions board and trailing the ESPN computer, which simply endlessly predicts that the team with the best statistics will win. Home Team Wins also is doing better than the picks of USA Today football writer Jarrett Bell (the paper's board updates Thursday). My off-price private-label exact final score -- Home Team 20, Visiting Team 17 -- is, however, blazing hot. This outcome has happened five times so far this season, most recently Sunday at Long Playing Field. If you'd endlessly predicted Home Team 20, Visiting Team 17 this season, you'd have been right five times. I bet among full-time NFL touts who use their incredible insider information to predict exact final scores, there isn't anyone in the country who's been right more than once, versus my five right!
Perennially, Tuesday Morning Quarterback complains that the NFL opens Pro Bowl voting before the season is complete -- that is, before anyone knows who belongs in the Pro Bowl. Justin Duiguid of Washington, D.C., reports, "Not to be outdone, the NBA opened All-Star balloting three weeks into the eight-month season. Most teams had played about eight games at that point, making the nominees the 9.75 Percent All-Stars." More proof that professional sports all-star recognition is a popularity contest, not a measure of who's best.
Dustin Riley, an alum of TMQ's favorite obscure college, Indiana of Pennsylvania, reports the nickname-less school has narrowed its choices to three: the Crimson Hawks, the Gray Wolves or the Crimson Thunder. Here is the school's poll. Sounds to me as though whoever chose this list rigged it for the Crimson Hawks because "the Gray Wolves" sounds like a squadron of German submarines and the Crimson Thunder doesn't have much graphic potential -- you can see lightning, but you can't see thunder.
Years ago, TMQ read about Professor Hal Rothman of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, who was studying the sociology of Vegas stripper culture. This seemed a sensible idea; today, several million Americans enter striptease and lap-dancing clubs in Vegas in any year, or attend Vegas topless dance revues, which increasingly are marketed to couples. Why not study this? But what Rothman had done was create a perfectly legitimate reason to spend substantial amounts of time inside lap-dance lounges, interviewing beautiful women who take their clothes off for a living. TMQ decreed a Hal Rothman Award, which, for a few years, I gave to the man who invented the cleverest legitimate reason to gawk at naked babes, or the woman who invented the cleverest legitimate reason to gawk at shirtless hunks. Now comes the awful news that Rothman has contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). As you know, there is no cure. Friends say his spirits are good, given the circumstances. Hal, hang in there. The University of Nevada hopes to endow a scholarship in his name. If you wish to donate, go here and select the Rothman scholarship fund under "designation."
Finally, a few weeks ago, TMQ commended to readers the latest Human Development Report, the annual United Nations publication that charts progress and challenges in the developing world. A century from now, who won the Rose Bowl will be forgotten but whether our generation helped lift the world out of poverty will be viewed as critically important. I've learned from the United Nations technical staff that 115,224 people jumped from Tuesday Morning Quarterback to the Web site of the United Nations Development Programme to read about the report -- among the largest single-day viewings the United Nations' Web presence has ever had. Add to that number by checking out the report here.
In addition to writing Tuesday Morning Quarterback, Gregg Easterbrook is the author of "The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse" and other books. He is also a contributing editor for The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly and The Washington Monthly, and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. Sound off to Page 2 here.
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