TWIB Notes... (minus the TWIB)

[WARNING: The following may contain a really geeky joke involving both '80s New Wave music and grammar dweebery. Proceed at your own risk.]

• Friday is Logan's Run Day, and at this point it's just gonna be a huge relief, because I'm tired of thinking and fretting about it. It is what it is. Once I wake up Saturday morning and the world is still on its axis, I'll be able to move on.
  
• In law school we deal with a lot of hypotheticals, so here's one. Let's say, hypothetically of course, one happened to have recently been informed about a good new P2P program and one just happened to have made the decision to start using such a service on a limited basis to supplement the music on one's computer. Should one feel a little bit less bad about oneself ethically because one isn't so much taking money out of the pockets of cool new bands, as one is digging up weird stuff like Jimmy Osmond's "Long-Haired Lover From Liverpool," Scritti Politti's "Perfect Way," and Tom Lehrer's "New Math"?
  
• If I ever take up a strange, OCD-ish, Bob Graham-like habit, it will probably be that I will start carrying around a little pad and writing down all the graffiti I see in public restrooms. I think it would be fascinating to do that for a couple of years and see what you ended up with--you know, over and above all the strange looks and possible citations for disturbing the peace.
  
• Where do the Patriots go in the Pantheon? I'll say this: of the teams I really remember, which would start around 1983, I'd put them third for impressiveness behind the late-'80s 49ers and the 1985 Bears. The only thing that's been accomplished in the Super Bowl era that they haven't done yet is win 4 out of 6; I'm not saying that's the most impressive feat, I'm just saying it's the only one that (a) has been done, and (b) hasn't been done yet by them. If they win next year and become the first team to go 3 out of 4 and 4 out of 5, then they're the best team of the Super Bowl era, hands down.
  
• The Lifelong Learning tax credit is my new best friend.
  
• People talk about how it's harder to keep a team together in the free agency era, and no doubt that's true, but it cuts both ways. It also means that the best teams probably aren't as good as they used to be. This year's Steelers, Eagles, and Colts were all very good teams, but were also clearly flawed in their individual ways. I don't think you used to get teams this flawed with 15-1 and 13-3 records. That's why the Patriots run is both more and less impressive--and thus, in my mind, roughly on par with similar runs of other eras.
  
• If a member of Scritti Politti put out a solo album, should it be released under the name "Scritto Politto"?
  
• I like the laundromat style of doing laundry in parallel rather than in series, but when the dryers aren't running very well as was true here today, you're still doing laundry for a long, long time.
  
• If I don't start paying more attention during my 8 a.m. class, I'm going to have to start calling it Sieve Pro.
  
• Don't say you weren't warned...