Man, it's hard to find baby stuff on the web. After searching for almost an hour, I wound up at the Target site for buying basic cloth diapers for burp cloths. Target! And then I ordered three, and the shipping cost was going to be, like a third of the price, so I bagged it. I mean, there's a Target a few miles away, now, isn't there. And forget about trying to find Lansinoh nursing pads from an on-line store that I think will be reputable. I guess we'll have to go out for those too.

David W., if you are reading this, stock some of this shit in your store and I will buy it.

Whew. OK, I haven't been posting so much lately. That's because my inlaws were in town, and Kara and Katherine and I were spending time with them. I did get a chance to do some updates last night. Katherine's definately does not have colic. She seems to be moving towards some sort of schedule, but it's still very unpredictable. Last night, she was awake, but not fussy, for a long time, and that was truly a joy. In the wee hours of the morning, I put her down, and did some site updates, and she hung out, looking around, and taking it all in. Eventually, she got hungry, and started to fuss, and I brought her up to Kara to nurse. That's a quick update...more soon.

Is anyone aware that the United States has sent special forces troops to the Philippines to deal with Abu Sayyaf? I couldn't seem to find much about this in the American press, but some foreign sources have reported on it.

One of the wonderful things about the Internet is the power it gives you to experience things in another culture. I spent 10 or 15 minutes during lunchtime today reading coverage in both Boston and Oakland papers of Saturday's playoff game between the Raiders and the Patriots. Unless you were born on Pluto, you probably know that a controversial call enabled the Patriots to continue the game-tieing drive, and they won the game in overtime.

Not surprisingly, the Boston papers talked about how the replay ruling fair, and that the original ruling on the field was wrong. And that you can blame the rulebook or the rule, but not the ruling, because the ruling was consistent with the rulebook, but the rule is somewhat arbitrary. The Boston papers also talk about how the official knew upon first glance at the replay that he had made a mistake, and how the instant replay clearly showed the evidence for overturning the ruling on the field.

The Oakland papers talk about how the Raiders were robbed. About how the rule used was completely arbitrary, and about how you could not even apply that rule because the replay clearly showed contrary evidence. The Raiders players were all very upset that this was not a fumble.

OK, that's the part that you'd expect. Here's the part you wouldn't expect.

The Oakland papers also had two other positions that I was unaware of, and that I found interesting.

1) One article went as far as to say that Oakland did not lose the game based on this call. After the call, the Patriots went on to score a (long) field goal to tie the score in regulation, then won the toss in overtime, and marched 60 or so yards down field including making a 4th and 4 first down conversion to kick the game winning field goal. So the Raiders lost the game on the basis of not being able to stop either of these two drives.

2) In several articles, it was mentioned that the officials, "had it in" for Oakland. It seems from my reading that Oakland thinks that football officials are naturally biased against them, through some pattern of bad calls that have occured both in the past and today, and this was the crowning example of this (combined with a lack of penalties on the Patriots, including a bad spot earlier in the game that stopped an Oakland drive).

To that last point, the folks in Oakland complain that an NFL official is a part time career -they all have full time jobs, and officiate on the weekends. Some of the players directed a lot of libel at the officials too.

All in all, it's pretty ugly, but it was also the most watched playoff game in five years.

And what do I think? I think Oakland got robbed by the correct interpretation of a stupid rule. That's not why they lost the game. They lost the game because they were unable to stop the Patriots for the last eight or so minutes of regulation and overtime.