Headed for a sweep

Could it be any worse right now for the Penguins?

The Red Wings found a perfect way to move halfway to a repeat - beat the Pittsburgh Penguins back-to-back.

So much for Detroit being old, beaten down and needing a break. The Red Wings topped the Penguins 3-1 in Game 2 of the finals Sunday night and are two wins from holding onto the Stanley Cup.

Just as they did a year ago in winning the title for the 11th time and fourth in 11 seasons, the Red Wings took the first two games from the Penguins at home. This year posed a new challenge, sweeping a pair on consecutive nights three days after finishing the Western Conference finals.

Rookie defenseman Jonathan Ericsson , who watched that series clincher Wednesday night in the dressing room hours after having his appendix removed, scored the tying goal for Detroit in the second period.

Valtteri Filppula added the go-ahead tally 6:08 later, and Justin Abdelkader scored his second of the series in the third. The Red Wings left the ice in front of their cheering, towel-waving fans and headed for Pittsburgh with another commanding lead.

Game 3 is Tuesday night, and the odds favor the Red Wings ' quest to become the NHL's first repeat champion since they did it in 1997 and '98. Teams that win Games 1 and 2 at home have captured the Cup 31 of 32 times.

The odds, and pretty much everything else, are stacked up against the Penguins, who should be much better this time around against Detroit. They're not. It's just not their year. I doubt whether they'll take even one game from Detroit right now.

This is just lunacy, however:

There are people inured to the charms of Detroit who have wanted to beat a retreat from that noble city, but the NHL is moving quicker here than a summer thunderstorm. The Red Wings and Penguins then will play Game 3 on Tuesday in Pittsburgh. Unless my math is off, that represents three games in four days, a haste that previously has been on display in the final only by Paul Coffey on the rush and sportswriters battling the twin demons of deadlines and last call.

Goodness, three games in four days. If you didn't know better, you might have guessed this was January in the Southeast Division.

While the NHL deserves moderate applause for taking smelling salts and reversing its original lunatic announcement that the final would start June 5 if either conference final went beyond four games -- hockey would have been harder to find than D.B. Cooper if it had disappeared for more than a week at this time of year -- the decision to hustle through the first two games to suit NBC's tastes is misguided.

The network pays the NHL in rights fees exactly the number of combined playoff wins by Montreal and St. Louis this spring -- yes, zero -- but it has a disproportionately loud voice in scheduling the league's showcase event. For the niche NHL, NBC represents exposure. (The network is televising Games 1 and 2, then 5 through 7 while Games 3 and 4 are on Versus, the league's subterranean cable partner.) The suspicion is that if NBC, which has not re-upped beyond this year, wanted the NHL to paint the crease area lavender instead of blue, Commissioner Gary Bettman would send out a minion with a watercolor set.

The National Hockey League HAS to kowtow to the wishes of NBC; the league is struggling to receive any national exposure whatsoever. Taking a cheap shot at Gary Bettman is par for the course. In a perfect world, the criticism might be valid, but please. We may very well see the Stanley Cup won in game 4 on a cable network which has a national distribution rate of next to nothing. Nothing.

The NHL is going to have to work hard to find a new television deal anyway. Carping about it doesn't change the fact that it's not their table. It's NBC's table, and they're going to put on it whatever they want, and the NHL has to eat what is put in front of it.

Hockey is the greatest sport ever, but you wouldn't know it if you were dropped down into this world at this stage in its history.

Another Reason I Won't Do Facebook

Even though I don't have a crazy wife, I'm afraid that all of the hotties would "friend" me and put me in their buddy list thingamabob and cause her to lose her mind. Sort of like what happened here:

Atlanta Falcons offensive lineman Quinn Ojinnaka is free on bond after being accused of fighting with his wife over his Facebook activity, police said Friday.

Ojinnaka, a fourth-year reserve drafted out of Syracuse in the fifth round of 2006, was charged with simple battery, said police spokesman David Schiralli in suburban Gwinnett County.

Police said Ojinnaka's wife confronted him about contact with a female friend on Facebook. Police said he tossed her down some stairs and threw her out of their house in Suwanee late Tuesday.

Ojinnaka, who has started seven of 30 career games, told police his wife began the fight by attempting to stab him with a pen.

Falcons spokesman Reggie Roberts said Friday that coach Mike Smith had talked with Ojinnaka, but the team would have no further comment.

The NFL seems to have a problem with these kinds of things, but then again, society seems to have a problem with these kinds of things. There's no reason why this should end someone's career. Wait a minute--yes, yes it probably should be a warning sign that a career could come to an end. There's no reason why you should throw a spouse down a flight of stairs over a Facebook post. That's something that should maybe cause this young man to sit out for a year.

My dear readers, Facebook is evil. It is corrupt and full of predatory pedophiles. Or is that MySpace? I can't tell the difference.

Chiclets on the Ice

There was some thought given to stopping the fighting in hockey.

No, that won't happen.

There is some talk about Pittsburgh winning the Stanley Cup.

Perhaps.

I can't really talk smack about the impending Stanley Cup Finals. I do know this--if Detroit doesn't win, it would be a surprise to me. They are properly positioned to win because of their veteran line up. It's just not quite the year for Pittsburgh.

Now, if they can keep the Penguins together for a couple of years, well. Then I would be more inclined to favor them over anyone in the east.

This has to be an exciting series to keep the interest in hockey alive. There should be chiclets on the ice in every game, and if it goes seven games, all the better. Next year, I would like to see more hockey on television. Really, this is outrageous, sir.

It IS the best professional sport and it IS the hardest to play.

Sports Betting Will Destroy Everything

What the crap?

Sports betting is legal now in Delaware?

The Delaware Supreme Court has ruled that a law allowing sports betting does not conflict with the state constitution, paving the way for Delaware to become the only state east of the Rocky Mountains to allow wagering on the outcome of games.

In a 22-page ruling dated Wednesday, the court said the state constitution permits lotteries that have an element of skill, as long as chance is the predominant factor in winning or losing. The opinion comes in response to Gov. Jack Markell’s request for the court’s views on a law he signed earlier this month authorizing a sports betting lottery.

“I am very pleased with the Supreme Court’s decision,” reads a statement by Markell, who’s relying on the lottery to help overcome a projected revenue shortfall of more than $600 million for the upcoming fiscal year.

This is insane. This is an insane disaster of epic proportions and Congress cannot overreact and hold hearings fast enough for me, sir. Yes, a number of people who need or want to make money will make money, but the problem with that is, they are the kind of people who should be making money from oldsters with plastic cups full of nickels, not wanna-be sports enthusiasts who will bet their paychecks on a Browns-Texans game.

Gambling is a terrible, terrible thing for our society. I am so opposed to gambling that I rarely carry insurance on my cars, save when the state in which I'm living requires that I do so. I don't even bother checking to see if I've won anything when I purchase something that has a contest embedded into it. Who has the time? Not me.

People are going to flock to Delaware and engage in betting on sports. Delaware is smack dab in the middle of two large conferences--the ACC and the Big East, roughly. The number of people who would bet on college football or college basketball games is enormous. I would hope that they would exclude college athletics from this law.

Further in the article, there's some ho0-ha about the NFL trying to stop Delaware from enacting this law. Bite down hard, NFL. Bite down and fight this thing. You don't want sports betting on your games on the East Coast. You will have thousands of fans betting everything they own on a Bills-Eagles game when Terrell Owens is in Philly for the first time. You do not want this. Sports betting will ruin the economy, drive families into homeless shelters, cause undue pain and suffering to professional atheletes who cannot adequately explain to the media why they are stumblebums, and will likely unleash rioting and chaos across this land.

Betting on NBA games? That's fine with me. The NBA is already fixed. What's the big whoop-de-do?

The Space Shuttle is As Boring As Toast

I can remember when the Space Shuttle was a big deal.

Sadly, it's not any kind of a deal anymore, and people are bored with it. The Space Shuttle is about as exciting as riding on an Amtrak train. The only difference is the smell and the presence of politicians. When there are politicians riding an Amtrak train, all bets are off.

You are likely to see full frontal nudity and a stab wound that has bled out on an Amtrak train. You're likely to see someone old, scientific and boring on the Space Shuttle. If they were smart, they would have sent that crazy astronaut into space with a loaded gun and a grudge against half of her crew. They should have dumped her, her rival, and the man she loved on an abandoned space station. The video would have been amazing.

There's a definite lack of drama in the US Space Program right now. Rainy weather is delaying the Space Shuttle landing:

NASA postponed the landing of space shuttle Atlantis until Sunday because of weather concerns.

Rain at Kennedy Space Center in Florida canceled plans to land the space shuttle Atlantis on Saturday.

The next landing opportunity at Florida's Kennedy Space Center will be at 10:11 a.m. ET Sunday, NASA said.

Edwards Air Force Base in California is available as a backup option should landing at Kennedy Space Center not work, NASA said.

It was the second consecutive day that NASA had decided to push back attempts to land the space shuttle because of lingering rainy weather in and around the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, if the people at NASA who are going to be taking over were looking to create some drama, they would let it land in the rain, perhaps while emitting smoke from a wing or something like that. They could strap someone to the rear fin thing and have him pretend to hold something down so that the Space Shuttle can land on one wheel, perhaps. If I was going to stage something, I would have a space dog hanging out of a port on the side with a tether in his mouth, and attached to that tether I would have a plucky female astronaut who is from Texas hanging on for dear life. Do we have any daredevils out there who want to do tricks with the Space Shuttle? Do we have anyone who wants to fix the GPS satellite system? If that thing fails, a lot of pathetic morons are going to be driving into bodies of water or into storefronts. Couldn't we have a band of rebel astronauts go into space with a stolen Space Shuttle, fix all of the GPS satellites, steal an alien technology from a superior alien race, and then crash the Space Shuttle upside down into the river while on fire?

A better post might speculate on where all of the daredevils have gone. I was looking forward to a shuttle landing today, and instead, I get nothing. If I were going to review my own day so far, I would be cruel and say that today has been a dismal failure. Day, you get nothing. You're a disgrace. I have sat here, idly watching television and speculating about when the stock market will break 9,000 and sustain a good rally. Hmm...perhaps I am as boring as toast as well.

The Hubble keeps eating dollars

The Hubble Space Telescope (Illustration)

Honestly, I was surprised the Hubble space telescope was still in orbit. I would have put a dollar down on the bar and bet you that it had been turned off and allowed to fall from orbit and land on the nearest wicked witch. Well, that shows you what I know.

According to the Internet, this thing still gets money and funding and repair missions. As Miranda might say, WTF?

The space shuttle Atlantis crew on Thursday prepared to embark on the first of five spacewalks during its 11-day mission to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. After a two-day chase, the shuttle Wednesday captured the telescope with its robotic arm 350 miles above Earth and pulled it into Atlantis' cargo bay for service. The telescope has been latched to a rotating, lazy Susan-type device for five days of repairs and remodeling. An umbilical line has been connected to provide electricity from Atlantis to the telescope, according to NASA. Mission commander Scott Altman also will position the shuttle to allow Hubble's solar arrays to gather energy from the sun and recharge the telescope's batteries. Thursday's spacewalk will begin at 8:16 a.m. ET and is expected to last more than six hours. Astronauts plan to replace a wide-field planetary camera with an updated model and will "install a mechanism for a [future] spacecraft to capture Hubble for de-orbit at the end of its life." Atlantis launched Monday for NASA's fifth and final repair visit to the telescope. It has been seven years since NASA's last mission to service the Hubble, which was designed to go about three years between fixes.

Isn't Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski responsible for this boondoggle? Is this really a wise allocation of money and resources? I am a man of science, and I support the space program. But if you do any thinking on this matter, you come away with a conclusion that a good idea went astray because someone figured out that it was a cash cow:

Hubble cost a fortune: $6 billion and counting. There are things Hubble can do that ground-based telescopes simply cannot, so comparisons are difficult. But even an expensive telescope on the surface costs more than an order of magnitude less. Is it worth it? Many scientists spent their careers working on Hubble, having their scientific progress ground (haha) to a halt, and some even became pariahs because of it. Had it been managed differently, had it been downsized, had it been not such a political tool, how would that have affected the science itself? We can only speculate — which I generally frown upon — but in this case a little retrospection might be good. We’ll be faced with similar decisions in the future, and of course we already are: going back to the Moon, going to Mars, building the Space Station, and more.

Now might be a good time to start asking questions about how money is spent and allocated in this country. That Hubble was a good idea is not the question. The question is, could we have gotten more bang for less buck? Could we have spent a lot less and built several less expensive platforms in order to give more scientists the ability to conduct studies? If so, where else are we hemmoraging money?

Or is the operative question here centered around doing what is best for the people in power at the expense of the rest of the country? Let's put away childish things and figure out where the money is going. Right now, money is being spent and flying out of Washington like shit through a goose.