Just saw an update from the Star Tribune‘s Jim Souhan saying that Brett Favre isn’t on the Vikings’ active roster for tonight’s game. Others on the inactive list are Percy Harvin, Hank Baskett, Tyrell Johnson, Chris Cook, Steve Hutchinson, and Ray Edwards. That’s a lot of talent sitting on the sideline.
Says SouhanStrib: “Does that mean he’ll wear Wranglers and cut-off t-shirt on sideline, with a sweaty golf cap? Maybe a piece of grass between his teeth?”
John Holler has a few thoughts on the bizarre trainwreck of a season the Vikings are experiencing:
The Vikings season has been filled with more twists and turns than a “I wouldn’t take that” mountain road shortcut. Throughout it all, the dysfunctional Vikings family had a home. Until Sunday morning. When the roof caved in on the Metrodome, it might have caved in on the craziest season in recent memory for the Vikings.
Not only are the Vikings not going to be hosting the Giants on Monday night — Detroit gets that free privilege, which begs the question what sort of fan is going to show up in Detroit to watch two teams they don’t like? — but there are significant questions as to what to do next Monday when the Vikings are scheduled to host the football world for the Monday Night Football largesse. Initial word out of TCF Bank Stadium is that the field has been put to bed — ice-encrusted mothballing if you will — and that not only wasn’t it an option for tonight, but it may well not be an option for next Monday either.
Yesterday’s games upset a lot of post-season calculations for other teams in the NFC North:
The Vikings could have been eliminated from postseason contention with a win by the Green Bay Packers Sunday, but both the Packers and Bears got beat. Chicago got pounded at home by the Patriots in a wind-swept smackdown and the Packers, who lost QB Aaron Rodgers in the second quarter, scored just three points in a 7-3 loss at Detroit. Vikings fans denied watching their own team play got both games on TV…well, sort of. The Patriots-Bears game became such a laugher that the powers that be in New York deemed it better to send most of the country that was watching the game to a “more competitive” game — the Dolphins-Jets 10-6 yawner. As such, a win tonight would put the Vikings back into the “still alive” fringe of the playoff bracket tables.
If they win tonight’s game, they’ll move out of the “mostly dead” category. They still won’t be really “alive” in playoff contention without a massively unlikely combination of lucky outcomes in other games.
Sunday’s loss by the Packers could be the death knell for their own playoff hopes. Unless the Vikings can knock off the Giants tonight, the Packers will be behind whichever team (New York or Philadelphia) doesn’t win the division and at a current tie-breaker disadvantage with Tampa Bay in the Packers’ search for a wild card spot. Making matters worse, their final three games are at New England, currently the hottest team in the league, at home against the Giants and at home against Chicago. They must win two of those three at a minimum to make the playoffs and may well need all three.
As hard as it may be for most of them to stomach, the Packers and their fans need to become Vikings fans really quick. Green Bay’s best shot at getting to the playoffs may well end up being winning the division. There is a very good chance that the NFC North will produce just one playoff team. The Bears’ closing schedule has games at Minnesota, vs. the suddenly-desperate Jets at Soldier Field and at Green Bay. If the Vikings can knock the Giants down into a tie with Green Bay at 8-5 and beat the Bears next week, the Packers would level the playing field in terms of tie-breaker advantages in the division and the conference. At it currently stands, from head-to-head to division record to conference record, Chicago holds every edge on the Packers. Green Bay’s loss to Detroit was devastating, so, just as the Vikings have become desperate for a 20-game domino effect to happen in the next three weeks to make the playoffs, the Packers may have just about as significant a hill to climb, leaving them hoping the Vikings play as well as they can and Green Bay’s season sweep comes into play.
Update: Mike Tanier gets in on the act:
Tired of building vinegar-and-baking-soda volcanoes for your children’s science projects? Recreate the collapse of the Metrodome roof instead.
Materials needed: green construction paper, some wooden dowels, a paper towel, about 500 artificial sweetener packets, and a cellphone. Glue some wooden dowels to green construction paper. Moisten a paper towel and fasten it to the top of the dowels. Then puncture it slightly and keep dumping artificial sweetener on or near the puncture spot until the roof gives way. Once the “field” is covered in white powder, use the cellphone to send a series of text messages from Brett Favre to explain how the Midwestern blizzard and the breathtaking footage of a major architectural landmark caving in is really just a backdrop for his personal saga.
Strategy Page looks at the mechanic that PFC Bradley Manning is reported to have used to grab copies of all the information now being released by WikiLeaks:
A bit late, the U.S. military has finally forbidden the use of all removable media (thumb drives, read/write DVD and CD drives, diskettes, memory cards and portable hard drives) from SIPRNet. Thumb drives had earlier been banned. The motivation for this latest action was Wikileaks, which obtained hundreds of thousands of secret American military and diplomatic documents from a U.S. soldier (PFC Bradley Manning). As an intel specialist, Manning had a security clearance and access to SIPRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router Network). This was a private Department of Defense network established in 1991, using Internet technology and able to handle classified (secret) documents. But Manning got access to a computer with a writable CD drive, and was able to copy all those classified documents to a CD (marked as containing Lady Gaga tracks) and walk out of his workplace with it. The big error here was having PCs available with writable media. You need some PCs with these devices, but they should be few, and carefully monitored. Normally, you would not need to copy anything off SIPRNet. Most of the time, if you want to share something, it’s with someone else on SIPRNet, so you can just email it to them, or tell them what it is so they can call it up themselves. A network like SIPRNet usually (in many corporations, and some government agencies) has software that monitors who accesses, and copies, documents, and reports any action that meets certain standards (of possibly being harmful). SIPRNet did not have these controls in place, and still does not on over a third of the PCs connected.
Just like their civilian counterparts, soldiers have been very eager to get and keep connected, both for personal and professional reasons. Data not shared can’t be useful.
For the last decade, the Pentagon has had increasing security problems with its internal Internet networks. The Department of Defense has two private Internets (using Internet technology, but not connected to the public Internet). NIPRNet is unclassified, but not accessible to the public Internet. SIPRNet is classified, and all traffic is encrypted. You can send secret stuff via SIPRNet. However, some computers connected to SIPRNet have been infected with computer viruses. The Pentagon was alarmed at first, because the computers only used SIPRNet. As a result, they did not have any anti-virus software installed. It turned out that worm type hackware was the cause of infection, and was installed when someone used a memory stick or CD, containing the worm, to work and, well, you know the rest.
[. . .]
It’s easy for troops to be doing something on SIPRNET, then switch to the Internet, and forget that they are now on an unsecure network. Warnings about that sort of thing have not cured the problem. The Internet is too useful for the troops, especially for discussing technical and tactical matters with other soldiers. The army has tried to control the problem by monitoring military accounts (those ending in .mil), but the troops quickly got hip to that, and opened another account from Yahoo or Google, for their more casual web surfing, and for discussions with other troops. The Internet has been a major benefit for combat soldiers, enabling them to share first hand information quickly, and accurately. That’s why the troops were warned that the enemy is actively searching for anything G.I.s post, and this stuff has been found at terrorist web sites, and on captured enemy laptops. In reality, information spreads among terrorists much more slowly than among American troops. But if soldiers discuss tactics and techniques in an open venue, including posting pictures and videos, the enemy will eventually find and download it. The terrorists could speed up this process if they could get the right hackware inside American military computers.
Following up to this post, Chris Greaves offers both a link, and a theory to explain the link.
The prince’s office also declined to comment, but stressed that the royal couple did not seek medical help after Thursday’s altercation.
Officials are assessing royal security after the attack on Charles and Camilla, whose Rolls-Royce strayed into the path of protesters against tuition fee hikes.
They hit the car with sticks, fists and bottles and chanted “Off with their heads” before the vehicle pushed its way through the crowd and drove off.
One casualty of the review may be the classic Rolls-Royce Phantom VI the couple were using, a gift to the Queen on her Silver Jubilee in 1977. The 33-year-old limousine does not have bulletproof windows or other modern protection features.
So what’s the conspiracy theory, you ask? Here you go:
Liz Windsor: (Thinks) How to get rid of Camela?
(later) I know, I’ll give her a Rolls Royce whose windows are not bullet-proof.
Heh heh.
Powered by WordPress