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A week off for most of the NFC North leaves me without much to talk about here.  I could mention the pre-season expectations for the Dallas Cowboys going in the shitter.  But since I don’t know any Cowboys fans that read this blog, what fun is that?

What are you going to be for Halloween?  I think next year, I’m going to try to think about it a little further in advance, and try to make a good, authentic costume.  This year wasn’t bad, but…

No more delays, here are your predictions for Week 9.

SEASON RECORD: 22-15

• Packers – lose
• Bears – win
• Vikings – win
• Lions – lose
• Chiefs – lose
• Dolphins – lose
• Seahawks – lose

Don’t forget to vote on Tuesday, unless you’re like me and you did already.

When we get down to the wire in important elections, I think it’s easy for people to lose their heads a bit.  After all, what do we love in America more than anything?  No, it’s not Dunkin Donuts.  We love confrontation.  We love the stories of us versus them.  We watch sports contests of one type or another 13 months of the year, and we produce endless droves of “reality TV” that pits one group of people in a contest against the other.  Why do we do it?  So we can know who the winner is.  We want to decide who is better.

And like the 4th quarter of a playoff game, this last week is more tense the any time earlier in the race.  We’ve chosen sides, we’ve decided who to root for, and we desperately want to see our team win.  At the same time, we’ve been building up a callus of hatred for The Other Guy.  This is what we need to be wary of, and we really should just let it go.

Hopefully we’ve all had time to reasonably think through the issues, and we’ve made an informed choice.  That’s the sensible thing to do.  It’s a little bit insane to actually and truthfully be gripped by tangible fear at the prospect of our candidate coming in second.  We have a good system in place here.  We have checks and balances built into our system of government (for the most part) that keeps an undue amount of power out of any one person’s hands.

To think that Your Candidate will solve all the problems he’s proposed to solve is naive, but so is the notion that The Other Guy is going to single-handedly flush our democracy down the toilet.  The world continues to evolve and the status quo continues to change, but it is much bigger than one man in one office in one American city.  Moreover, the rhetoric of a political campaign is generally a lot sharper than actual policy.

Make no mistake, this is an important election; there is a lot at stake, and the President of the United States continues to be a key international figure.  But regardless of the outcome next week, it’s not worth jumping overboard if things don’t go the way you’d like.

This week on the podcast, Kyle and I talked about the influence of mainstream media on the presidential campaign, the financial viability of traditional radio, and how everyone is going to pay the bills as the old forms of information dissemination fade away.

Enjoy it here in your browser, or hit the link below to download at your leisure.

[podcast]http://radiocitymke.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/kbpodcast_102608.mp3[/podcast]

download the mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (19.0MB)

Just being out of commission for a day can set you back a little bit.  I had 36 new articles come through my New Scientist feed this morning…

In the category of “It’s Always Something,” we have: Flatscreen TVs turn up the heat on climate, showing once again that we can ALWAYS find a way to destroy the planet.  Is the Earth this fragile, or are we this big?

At this point, the celebrity (or quasi-celebrity) who I idolize the most is definitely John Hodgman.  He exudes an ideal combination of hilarious and intelligent.  If I could be this funny, I wouldn’t really need to worry about anything else.  His second book is a great gift idea for Jason, by the way…

Oh, and in case you hadn’t noticed (and I barely have), the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team has committed to showing up for at least 82 more games, and their season begins tonight.  I have entered basketball seasons with no hope for the Bucks in the past, but this is the first time since I took an interest in the NBA in the late 80s that I start a season with neither hope or interest.  Well, maybe that’s not 100% true– I must be at least vaguely interested, or you wouldn’t be reading these words.  However, I’m not as interested in following the fortunes of the team as I am the story of their inevitable collapse.  I pity the Tom Enlunds and Michael Hunts of the world, who make a living writing about this team.  It can’t be a very good living…

Oh, and you may have noticed a significant uptick in the size of the ‘archives’ available on the site– my sick day was good for researching and solving the problem I’d had with importing data from the old tikiwiki blog.  So if you care to relive the days when my words were much prettier, stop by 2003 or so.

That is all, carry on.