…In related news, is Tecmo Super Bowl ever going to come out for Wii Virtual Console? I would really like to be able to modify my playbook and whatnot. (I know it’s not very hard to get an emulator with Super Bowl, and indeed I had one in college, but playing video games on a laptop is dumb. I want to play on my Wii.)

1) Academic research is largely incremental, and there’s nothing wrong with that. No one is expecting a first year Master’s student to reinvent the wheel by developing a brilliant new theory which overturns all of the established wisdom in the field. No one really expects that of PhD candidates or established professors, for that matter. The goal is primarily to advance the preexisting body of knowledge, and I should be pleased if I manage to do even that much.

2) No research methodology is completely flawless. It would be practically impossible to prove something definitely. A proposal can’t attempt to counter all possible criticism. It must instead be capable of withstanding that criticism and nonetheless providing a valuable result.

As of right now, I’m finally taking down that photo of McCain lurching like a dinosaur during the presidential debate from my desktop wallpaper and replacing it with Jedi Master Obama.

I have two points here: First, school rocks, and so there’s that. Second, my interests at the moment are obviously not pointing me towards regular obsessive reading about politics, let alone blogging about politics (as you well know if you’ve been repeatedly refreshing this site for the past month or so, desperately hoping for new content). In fact, I just cut my RSS subscriptions by a full 25% because I haven’t been paying much attention to the 24/7 political news feeds for weeks (and if you know me, you know that’s a huge change in my daily habits). Following a similarly large cut earlier this summer, I’m down to 75 feeds, with an almost even split between politics, local news, sports (mostly baseball), comics, and music (plus a handful of blogs written by friends and a few miscellaneous news feeds).

I’m not putting this blog on hiatus or anything, because I like having the outlet when I want it and occasionally something pops up which I really want to write about. However, I’m also not making any promises regarding future content. For now, this site is really nothing more than any other occasionally updated blog written by someone you know. Check in once in a while, or don’t; either is fine with me.

That may not sound like much, but it truly means quite a lot. Kennedy was a constant in our national politics, from the time when my parents were kids until today. For just shy of fifty years he fought in the Senate, and nearly every fight was about assisting the Americans who most needed assistance. Fifty years.

By the time I was old enough to have any understanding of politics, Kennedy had already achieved his senior status in the upper chamber of Congress. His presidential ambitions had long since passed him by, and he was no more and no less than America’s Liberal Lion. Most of my lifetime has been marked by conservative domination of our federal government. Still, Kennedy remained in the Senate, always fighting to advance liberal ideas. Kennedy never stopped working for a better compromise when compromise was necessary, such as on No Child Left Behind, and he never failed to oppose the actions of the government when opposition was necessary, such as when the president foolishly led the country into a war in Iraq.

Conservatives hated Kennedy. They used him as their symbol of all that was wrong with this country. Even as recently as 2004, I remember George Bush taking swipes at John Kerry by comparing the candidate to his fellow senator from Massachusetts. To my mind, the effect was always to confirm Kennedy as an ever-present force, protecting the values I held dear against men like Bush. American politics will be worse for the lack of that forceful presence.

Many will say that we must pass health insurance reform which provides universal access to quality care because this is what Kennedy wanted. I disagree. I say that we must pass health insurance reform which provides universal access to quality care because it is the right thing to do. The fact that Kennedy knew this and worked towards it for decades merely confirms how dearly we will miss him in this battle and in so many others.

Ted Kennedy was the face of American Liberalism. His absence leaves a hole in our national life, as well as enormous shoes to fill.

Then I read the first page of Jeffrey Goldberg’s Atlantic article on the film and thought, “Well, that sounds like a pretty cool concept (despite Goldberg’s creepy lede and my concern regarding the involvement of Eli “Torture Porn” Roth); I really want to see the movie and find out whether Tarantino pulled it off.”

Then I read the second page of Goldberg’s article and thought, “Why did this jackass just describe, in enough detail to ruin the punchline, the final scene of a movie that hasn’t been released yet without the courtesy of any sort of spoiler warning?”

Fuck you, Jeffrey Goldberg. Fuck you, The Atlantic.

(And yes, I remember the last time I wrote a post like this, but I think this time I’m on much more solid ground.)

(Parts two and three are also available at that site; four and five are supposed to be coming soon.)

Whoever created this video did a great job. If you don’t get the joke, go read this not so humorous story from last week.

1) I’m one of those people who misses album art and liner notes in this otherwise wonderful digital age, and Tom Tomorrow’s art for the album is pretty cool.

2) “Find images from the album that have been scattered across the Net, and win a free downloadable mp3 of a track from the album.” Is that a prize? I mean, I guess that might be a fun game for die-hard Pearl Jam fans who are going to buy the album anyway, but I’m pretty sure anyone who wants this album for free can get the whole thing without that much effort.