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Date Title Body
Never forget.

Never forget.

XM, this probably isn't what…

XM, this may not be what you're looking for in a vehicle, but I drive an '07 4Runner with a V8. It's got just short of 200K on it so it's sort of a beater, but it's perfect for my uses.

The interesting thing about the 4Runner V8s of that vintage is that they are full-time 4WD. As you can imagine, the gas mileage isn't great, but I don't drive all that much so it's not really a concern. I bought mine with 167K seven years ago so I haven't been putting hard mileage on it.

The 4.7L V8 is generally regarded as one of Toyota's most reliable engines, and it's not uncommon at all to see them running for well over 200K miles.

It's not as big as the behemoth SUVs commonly driven these days, but with the rear seats folded down you can put a decent quantity of stuff back there. Plus it has a dashboard-operable power rear window, so you that can put lumber, Xmas trees, or whatever long stuff you have inside the car and have it project out through the open window, with the rear door still being shut. 

From the Toronto Globe and…

From the Toronto Globe and Mail obit about Lindsay:

Here's the article in full (paywalled):

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/article-brutal-but-gracious-terrible-ted-lindsay-was-a-tether-to-another/

Watched the game with a good…

Watched the game with a good friend at the old Banfield's on the west side of A2. The entire bar was watching the game and the place erupted in a frenzy when the fisticuffs started, especially when Vernon and Roy went at it. Without a doubt the craziest thing I've ever watched in sports.

Both geographical pedantry…

Both geographical pedantry and a sly reference to a past President: the MGoBlog Difference.

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Manuel isn't beyond…

Manuel isn't beyond criticism for other things—no AD is—but you'd have to be pretty churlish to think he didn't do exactly what we'd all ideally want to see an AD do in this situation.

With big assists from Ramsey and Beilein, of course—it's tremendously valuable to have a network of trusted confidants.

The people at the NCAA who…

I know this isn’t an original observation, but the people at the NCAA who run hockey are fucking shit for brains morons.

There can’t be another…

There can’t be another program in the country that has lost as many big games in OT as Michigan has, going back to 1977. The ways we’ve lost are various and sundry, but It’s fucking painful nevertheless.

It's terrible for anyone to…

It's terrible for anyone to have cancer and I hope she beats it, but I've always been puzzled why any American cares about the British Royal Family beyond the occasional random thought.

Big Ten getting it done in…

Big Ten getting it done in wrestling.

Nice that the weather…

Nice that the weather cooperated.

"he was such a fraud"


All…

"he was such a fraud"

All that "Senator Tressel" nonsense...

If you give Grant the ball,…

If you give Grant the ball, you're as likely to get Will Carr against Purdue as you are the Fridge in the Super Bowl.

His BAC was twice the legal…

His BAC was twice the legal limit. He's fortunate he didn't injure or kill somebody.

As long as we're putting up…

As long as we're putting up stuff from Angelique, there's this from her:

"Michigan, Jim Harbaugh file responses to NCAA Notice of Allegations"

https://x.com/chengelis/status/1770537432598933604?s=20

(Her twitter post links to the paywalled article at the Detroit News)

Woodson only won the Heisman…

Woodson only won the Heisman because he had significant snaps on offense in addition to his ST play. If he had played *only* on defense Manning would have won the Heisman.

Hard to envision Graham getting any time on offense or returning punts.

I’m not saying this makes sense—excluding purely defensive players from the Heisman is dumb—but it’s reality.

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I'm always puzzled why…

I'm always puzzled why anybody cares about the outcome of these meaningless internet polls. If Michigan wins this one, will their day be brighter? If Michigan doesn't win, will they be sad?

I gotta admit that when I…

I gotta admit that when I saw this I just laughed. Barely two weeks in town and he's already getting pinched for something really dumb.

“the defending national…

“the defending national champions”

I still have to pinch myself. 

cOrgi—not a human.

cOrgi—not a human.

Surprised nobody's created a…

Surprised nobody's created a CC: Reply All thread

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Welp, now that Manuel has fired Howard, I guess that I should remove my sarcastic image bashing him.

“That it is a debate of any…

“That it is a debate of any kind is completely outrageous and an indictment of every decision-maker in charge of this choice, with Manuel of course being the most notable.”

Pretty much sums the situation up for me. 

If Howard had played his college ball elsewhere, not only would he already have been fired, he probably wouldn’t have been hired by Michigan in the first place.

I think it's kind of odd…

I think it's kind of odd that there's no comment by anybody directly connected with the program about the departure of one of the most celebrated Michigan players of the past 25 years.

Michigan head coach Juwan…

Michigan head coach Juwan Howard reflects on the 8-23 regular season:

'I feel we have won in a lot of ways'

https://www.on3.com/teams/michigan-wolverines/news/michigan-basketball-juwan-howard-reflects-on-8-23-regular-season/

Michigan head coach Juwan…

Michigan head coach Juwan Howard reflects on the 8-23 regular season: 'I feel we have won in a lot of ways'

https://x.com/thewolverineon3/status/1766922858603647215?s=46&t=IP5_nIf6-bzAzpJkfNbHtw

per ESPN:

“No. 14 Kansas…

per ESPN:

“No. 14 Kansas suffered a 76-46 blowout loss at top-ranked Houston on Saturday, but the defeat might not have been the worst news of the day for the Jayhawks.

Hunter Dickinson left the game in the second half with what Kansas coach Bill Self later said was a dislocated shoulder, and the star center will have an MRI when the team returns to Lawrence.

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Don't forget Leaping Larry…

Don't forget Leaping Larry Chene and Lord Layton.

Currently working my way…

Currently working my way through Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton: A Global History.

It's incredibly detailed and it's not something you'd normally choose for reading at the beach, but if you love history it's pretty fascinating.

This Atlantic article by Beckert is based on the book: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/12/empire-of-cotton/383660/

I saw Dance Mighty Boosh in…

I saw Dance Mighty Boosh in a small club in New Orleans a couple of years ago. Sort of a punk-zydeco-ska mix with a dash of Clifton Chenier and a bit of Professor Longhair.

Thank you for the much…

Thank you for the much needed authentic frontier gibberish.

If we put "SMASH" in the…

If we put "SMASH" in the upper left, it would triple the engagement.

This is the work of the…

This is the work of the conferences and the tv networks bidding the contracts up, and to a lesser extent their agents that negotiate the contracts and the consumers that continue to pay for the ever-growing cost of cable/streaming tv services.

It's not like Nick Saban's agents are negotiating pay raises against Saban's wishes. His first contract signed in 2007 was for an average of $4 million per year—a yearly salary literally unimaginable to all but a tiny fraction of the American population—and by the time he retired it had almost tripled to over $11 million.

Saban has agency—he could have decided at any point that 6 or 8 mill was enough for what he does. However, I do recognize that nobody in his shoes does that, so now that the players have leverage, they're going to do the same exact thing too.

Obligatory.

Obligatory.

For some reason none of the…

For some reason none of the images on the Natty Ring thread were loading for me, including the one I uploaded myself. All I got was a spinning beach ball, and then broken image links.

As long as I'm complaining, MGoBlog started refusing to load on my phone in safari, and although I can view the site on Chrome, it's still glitchy as hell and I have to log in constantly.

I'm on the internet as much as anybody is, and there isn't a single site I visit anywhere, whether on my work laptop or on my phone, that routinely performs as poorly as MGoBlog does.

HUEL is the sound my dog used to make when he was throwing up.

"... and how much are you…

"... and how much are you going to pay me?"

I have some sympathies for Saban and other coaches dealing with this mentality. I predicted ( as did many others) when NIL was originally authorized that it was inevitably going to lead to turmoil in locker rooms, and it's done exactly that.

However, coaches like Saban are also responsible for this mess, because of the grotesquely bloated salaries that they've demanded over the past two decades. Defenders of this greed say they deserve it because that's what the market will pay, and the obvious response is if that's the metric, then the players deserve to extract everything they can as well.

You can't justify huge salaries to coaches and ADs and AD staff while denying the players some of the spoils.

 

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Who decides right from wrong…

Who decides right from wrong?

Last time I checked, it's a criminal offense in most jurisdictions to physically assault someone.

 


I keep hearing that…

 

I keep hearing that everyone watched the show "Suits" during the pandemic.

Not only have I never heard anyone make this claim, I don’t know a single person who’s ever watched that show.

The unspoken corollary of…

The unspoken corollary of this is that within a couple of years, the rules committee will quietly get rid of the rule prohibiting in-person scouting.

To me the most disappointing…

To me the most disappointing thing at this point is that there's no way Sanderson's kid plays ball here, and he appears to be pretty good. I just hope he doesn't end up torturing Michigan by playing for another BIG program.

A non-alum / non-Fab Fiver…

A non-alum / non-Fab Fiver would've been gone a long time ago

That's the danger of hiring alumni player heroes to be head coach—if they're not successful, it's harder to fire them than it is to fire coaches with no previous association with the school.

Manuel was here from 1986…

Manuel was here from 1986 through 1989, but Moeller was DC only in Manuel's freshman season in '86, and Manuel didn't letter. In Manuel's final three seasons, Moeller was OC.

Simple Stupid Thumb Folk is…

Simple Stupid Thumb Folk is my next band name.

I agree that Howard has 100%…

I agree that Howard has 100% responsibility for the situation. Beilein can't be held responsible for the makeup and performance of the team today.

For the sake of argument re timing, the question I have is whether or not he informed Manuel at the beginning of his last season that he was thinking about leaving after the season was over. Given the shock of his announcement that he was departing, I'd guess the answer is no.

If he had informed Manuel at the beginning of the season that he was having doubts about whether he wanted to continue, Manuel would have had the opportunity to quietly begin vetting candidates. If he and Beilein were in consistent communication during the season—which should be the case for all coaches regardless of circumstance, IMHO—then Manuel could have started informally reaching out to the top candidates as the season was winding down.

Ideally, this would have enabled the pool of candidates to expand well beyond an alumni hero who had zero experience as a head coach at any level, and zero experience coaching in college. Maybe Manuel would have hired him anyway; most people around here thought that Howard was a solid choice.

All of this is moot by now, and Manuel has a tough decision in front of him. Whether he gets it right is anybody's guess.

1. Goldfinger  Saw it during…

1. Goldfinger  Saw it during its initial release at the theater when I was 12. My parents would never in a million years have taken me to see it, but the movie was part of the birthday party of my best friend at the time, and his mom took us all to see it. I don't know if she was aware that it had some fairly adult content (for 1965 at least).

Aside from the fact that all the gadgets and plot devices were absolutely awesome to a 12 year old, what made the movie particularly memorable for me was that watching Honor Blackman roll around in the hay jump-started puberty for me. I went into the movie theater a typically naive little boy and came out of the theater a lustful, horny teenager.

2. Never gave a shit about superheroes when I was a kid—I thought they were dumb. I started reading my dad's SF collection when I was 10 (I was a precocious reader for my age) so I was oriented towards fiction that had at least a nodding acquaintance with scientific reality. I knew that it was ridiculous that Superman could fly through the air without an obvious means of propulsion.

I also thought wrestling was dumb and fake, so I was definitely considered odd by most of my friends.

I did love Rocky and Bullwinkle, though.

3. Boris and Natasha.