#anyway what team on the east should i support? i have the spurs in the west just to jump on the wemby train

[jiriceks]

the cbj coaching news is probably gonna push me to watch the nba like the filipino gods intended. why i decided to watch a sport played on ice in a country with four sheets of ice total is a mystery.

[96thdayofrage]

“Special thanks to BitDefender for helping fix our issues,” DarkSide said. “This will make us even better.”

DarkSide soon proved it wasn’t bluffing, unleashing a string of attacks. This month, it paralyzed the Colonial Pipeline Co., prompting a shutdown of the 5,500 mile pipeline that carries 45% of the fuel used on the East Coast, quickly followed by a rise in gasoline prices, panic buying of gas across the Southeast and closures of thousands of gas stations. Absent Bitdefender’s announcement, it’s possible that the crisis might have been contained, and that Colonial might have quietly restored its system with Wosar and Gillespie’s decryption tool.

Instead, Colonial paid DarkSide $4.4 million in Bitcoin for a key to unlock its files. “I will admit that I wasn’t comfortable seeing money go out the door to people like this,” CEO Joseph Blount told The Wall Street Journal.

The missed opportunity was part of a broader pattern of botched or half-hearted responses to the growing menace of ransomware, which during the pandemic has disabled businesses, schools, hospitals and government agencies across the country. The incident also shows how antivirus companies eager to make a name for themselves sometimes violate one of the cardinal rules of the cat-and-mouse game of cyber-warfare: Don’t let your opponents know what you’ve figured out. During World War II, when the British secret service learned from decrypted communications that the Gestapo was planning to abduct and murder a valuable double agent, Johnny Jebsen, his handler wasn’t allowed to warn him for fear of cluing in the enemy that its cipher had been cracked. Today, ransomware hunters like Wosar and Gillespie try to prolong the attackers’ ignorance, even at the cost of contacting fewer victims. Sooner or later, as payments drop off, the cybercriminals realize that something has gone wrong.

Whether to tout a decryption tool is a “calculated decision,” said Rob McLeod, senior director of the threat response unit for cybersecurity firm eSentire. From the marketing perspective, “You are singing that song from the rooftops about how you have come up with a security solution that will decrypt a victim’s data. And then the security researcher angle says, ‘Don’t disclose any information here. Keep the ransomware bugs that we’ve found that allow us to decode the data secret, so as not to notify the threat actors.’”

In a post on the dark web, DarkSide thanked Bitdefender for identifying a flaw in the gang’s ransomware. (Highlight added by ProPublica.)

Wosar said that publicly releasing tools, as Bitdefender did, has become riskier as ransoms have soared and the gangs have grown wealthier and more technically adept. In the early days of ransomware, when hackers froze home computers for a few hundred dollars, they often couldn’t determine how their code was broken unless the flaw was specifically pointed out to them.

Today, the creators of ransomware “have access to reverse engineers and penetration testers who are very very capable,” he said. “That’s how they gain entrance to these oftentimes highly secured networks in the first place. They download the decryptor, they disassemble it, they reverse engineer it and they figure out exactly why we were able to decrypt their files. And 24 hours later, the whole thing is fixed. Bitdefender should have known better.”

It wasn’t the first time that Bitdefender trumpeted a solution that Wosar or Gillespie had beaten it to. Gillespie had broken the code of a ransomware strain called GoGoogle and was helping victims without any fanfare, when Bitdefender released a decryption tool in May 2020. Other companies have also announced breakthroughs publicly, Wosar and Gillespie said.

“People are desperate for a news mention, and big security companies don’t care about victims,” Wosar said.

Bogdan Botezatu, director of threat research at Bucharest, Romania-based Bitdefender, said the company wasn’t aware of the earlier success in unlocking files infected by DarkSide. Regardless, he said, Bitdefender decided to publish its tool “because most victims who fall for ransomware do not have the right connection with ransomware support groups and won’t know where to ask for help unless they can learn about the existence of tools from media reports or with a simple search.”

Bitdefender has provided free technical support to more than a dozen DarkSide victims, and “we believe many others have successfully used the tool without our intervention,” Botezatu said. Over the years, Bitdefender has helped individuals and businesses avoid paying more than $100 million in ransom, he said.

Bitdefender recognized that DarkSide might correct the flaw, Botezatu said. “We are well aware that attackers are agile and adapt to our decryptors.” But DarkSide might have “spotted the issue” anyway. “We don’t believe in ransomware decryptors made silently available. Attackers will learn about their existence by impersonating home users or companies in need, while the vast majority of victims will have no idea that they can get their data back for free.”

The attack on Colonial Pipeline, and the ensuing chaos at the gas pumps throughout the Southeast, appears to have spurred the federal government to be more vigilant. President Joe Biden issued an executive order to improve cybersecurity and create a blueprint for a federal response to cyberattacks. DarkSide said it was shutting down under U.S. pressure, although ransomware crews have often disbanded to avoid scrutiny and then re-formed under new names, or their members have launched or joined other groups.

“As sophisticated as they are, these guys will pop up again, and they’ll be that much smarter,” said Aaron Tantleff, a Chicago cybersecurity attorney who has consulted with 10 companies attacked by DarkSide. “They’ll come back with a vengeance.”

At least until now, private researchers and companies have often been more effective than the government in fighting ransomware. Last October, Microsoft disrupted the infrastructure of Trickbot, a network of more than 1 million infected computers that disseminated the notorious Ryuk strain of ransomware, by disabling its servers and communications. That month, ProtonMail, the Swiss-based email service, shut down 20,000 Ryuk-related accounts.

Wosar and Gillespie, who belong to a worldwide volunteer group called the Ransomware Hunting Team, have cracked more than 300 major ransomware strains and variants, saving an estimated 4 million victims from paying billions of dollars.

By contrast, the FBI rarely decrypts ransomware or arrests the attackers, who are typically based in countries like Russia or Iran that lack extradition agreements with the U.S. DarkSide, for instance, is believed to operate out of Russia. Far more victims seek help from the Hunting Team, through websites maintained by its members, than from the FBI.

The U.S. Secret Service also investigates ransomware, which falls under its purview of combating financial crimes. But, especially in election years, it sometimes rotates agents off cyber assignments to carry out its better-known mission of protecting presidents, vice presidents, major party candidates and their families. European law enforcement, especially the Dutch National Police, has been more successful than the U.S. in arresting attackers and seizing servers.

Similarly, the U.S. government has made only modest headway in pushing private industry, including pipeline companies, to strengthen cybersecurity defenses. Cybersecurity oversight is divided among an alphabet soup of agencies, hampering coordination. The Department of Homeland Security conducts “vulnerability assessments” for critical infrastructure, which includes pipelines.

It reviewed Colonial Pipeline in around 2013 as part of a study of places where a cyberattack might cause a catastrophe. The pipeline was deemed resilient, meaning that it could recover quickly, according to a former DHS official. The department did not respond to questions about any subsequent reviews.

Five years later, DHS created a pipeline cybersecurity initiative to identify weaknesses in pipeline computer systems and recommend strategies to address them. Participation is voluntary, and a person familiar with the initiative said that it is more useful for smaller companies with limited in-house IT expertise than for big ones like Colonial. The National Risk Management Center, which oversees the initiative, also grapples with other thorny issues such as election security.

Ransomware has skyrocketed since 2012, when the advent of Bitcoin made it hard to track or block payments. The criminals’ tactics have evolved from indiscriminate “spray and pray” campaigns seeking a few hundred dollars apiece to targeting specific businesses, government agencies and nonprofit groups with multimillion-dollar demands.

Attacks on energy businesses in particular have increased during the pandemic — not just in the U.S. but in Canada, Latin America and Europe. As the companies allowed employees to work from home, they relaxed some security controls, McLeod said.

Since 2019, numerous gangs have ratcheted up pressure with a technique known as “double extortion.” Upon entering a system, they steal sensitive data before launching ransomware that encodes the files and makes it impossible for hospitals, universities and cities to do their daily work. If the loss of computer access is not sufficiently intimidating, they threaten to reveal confidential information, often posting samples as leverage. For instance, when the Washington, D.C., police department didn’t pay the $4 million ransom demanded by a gang called Babuk last month, Babuk published intelligence briefings, names of criminal suspects and witnesses, and personnel files, from medical information to polygraph test results, of officers and job candidates.

DarkSide, which emerged last August, epitomized this new breed. It chose targets based on a careful financial analysis or information gleaned from corporate emails. For instance, it attacked one of Tantleff’s clients during a week when the hackers knew the company would be vulnerable because it was transitioning its files to the cloud and didn’t have clean backups.

To infiltrate target networks, the gang used advanced methods such as “zero-day exploits” that immediately take advantage of software vulnerabilities before they can be patched. Once inside, it moved swiftly, looking not only for sensitive data but also for the victim’s cyber insurance policy, so it could peg its demands to the amount of coverage. After two to three days of poking around, DarkSide encrypted the files.

“They have a faster attack window,” said Christopher Ballod, associate managing director for cyber risk at Kroll, the business investigations firm, who has advised half a dozen DarkSide victims. “The longer you dwell in the system, the more likely you are to be caught.”

Typically, DarkSide’s demands were “on the high end of the scale,” $5 million and up, Ballod said. One scary tactic: If publicly traded companies didn’t pay the ransom, DarkSide threatened to share information stolen from them with short-sellers who would profit if the share price dropped upon publication.

DarkSide’s site on the dark web identified dozens of victims and described the confidential data it claimed to have filched from them. One was New Orleans law firm Stone Pigman Walther Wittmann. “A big annoyance is what it was,” attorney Phil Wittmann said, referring to the DarkSide attack in February. “We paid them nothing,” said Michael Walshe Jr., chair of the firm’s management committee, declining to comment further.

Last November, DarkSide adopted what is known as a “ransomware-as-a-service” model. Under this model, it partnered with affiliates who launched the attacks. The affiliates received 75% to 90% of the ransom, with DarkSide keeping the remainder. As this partnership suggests, the ransomware ecosystem is a distorted mirror of corporate culture, with everything from job interviews to procedures for handling disputes. After DarkSide shut down, several people who identified themselves as its affiliates complained on a dispute resolution forum that it had stiffed them. “The target paid, but I did not receive my share,” one wrote.

Together, DarkSide and its affiliates reportedly grossed at least $90 million. Seven of Tantleff’s clients, including two companies in the energy industry, paid ransoms ranging from $1.25 million to $6 million, reflecting negotiated discounts from initial demands of $7.5 million to $30 million. His other three clients hit by DarkSide did not pay. In one of those cases, the hackers demanded $50 million. Negotiations grew acrimonious, and the two sides couldn’t agree on a price.

DarkSide’s representatives were shrewd bargainers, Tantleff said. If a victim said it couldn’t afford the ransom because of the pandemic, DarkSide was ready with data showing that the company’s revenue was up, or that COVID-19’s impact was factored into the price.

DarkSide’s grasp of geopolitics was less advanced than its approach to ransomware. Around the same time that it adopted the affiliate model, it posted that it was planning to safeguard information stolen from victims by storing it in servers in Iran. DarkSide apparently didn’t realize that an Iranian connection would complicate its collection of ransoms from victims in the U.S., which has economic sanctions restricting financial transactions with Iran. Although DarkSide later walked back this statement, saying that it had only considered Iran as a possible location, numerous cyber insurers had concerns about covering payments to the group. Coveware, a Connecticut firm that negotiates with attackers on behalf of victims, stopped dealing with DarkSide.

Ballod said that, with their insurers unwilling to reimburse the ransom, none of his clients paid DarkSide, despite concerns about exposure of their data. Even if they had caved in to DarkSide, and received assurances from the hackers in return that the data would be shredded, the information might still leak, he said.

During DarkSide’s changeover to the affiliate model, a flaw was introduced into its ransomware. The vulnerability caught the attention of members of the Ransomware Hunting Team. Established in 2016, the invitation-only team consists of about a dozen volunteers in the U.S., Spain, Italy, Germany, Hungary and the U.K. They work in cybersecurity or related fields. In their spare time, they collaborate in finding and decrypting new ransomware strains.

Several members, including Wosar, have little formal education but an aptitude for coding. A high school dropout, Wosar grew up in a working-class family near the German port city of Rostock. In 1992, at the age of 8, he saw a computer for the first time and was entranced. By 16, he was developing his own antivirus software and making money from it. Now 37, he has worked for antivirus firm Emsisoft since its inception almost two decades ago and is its chief technology officer. He moved to the U.K. from Germany in 2018 and lives near London.

He has been battling ransomware hackers since 2012, when he cracked a strain called ACCDFISA, which stood for “Anti Cyber Crime Department of Federal Internet Security Agency.” This fictional agency was notifying people that child pornography had infected their computers, and so it was blocking access to their files unless they paid $100 to remove the virus.

The ACCDFISA hacker eventually noticed that the strain had been decrypted and released a revised version. Many of Wosar’s subsequent triumphs were also fleeting. He and his teammates tried to keep criminals blissfully unaware for as long as possible that their strain was vulnerable. They left cryptic messages on forums inviting victims to contact them for assistance or sent direct messages to people who posted that they had been attacked.

In the course of protecting against computer intrusions, analysts at antivirus firms sometimes detected ransomware flaws and built decryption tools, though it wasn’t their main focus. Sometimes they collided with Wosar.

In 2014, Wosar discovered that a ransomware strain called CryptoDefense copied and pasted from Microsoft Windows some of the code it used to lock and unlock files, not realizing that the same code was preserved in a folder on the victim’s own computer. It was missing the signal, or “flag,” in their program, usually included by ransomware creators to instruct Windows not to save a copy of the key.

Wosar quickly developed a decryption tool to retrieve the key. “We faced an interesting conundrum,” Sarah White, another Hunting Team member, wrote on Emsisoft’s blog. “How to get our tool out to the most victims possible without alerting the malware developer of his mistake?”

Wosar discreetly sought out CryptoDefense victims through support forums, volunteer networks and announcements of where to contact for help. He avoided describing how the tool worked or the blunder it exploited. When victims came forward, he supplied the fix, scrubbing the ransomware from at least 350 computers. CryptoDefense eventually “caught on to us ... but he still did not have access to the decrypter we used and had no idea how we were unlocking his victims’ files,” White wrote.

But then an antivirus company, Symantec, uncovered the same problem and bragged about the discovery on a blog post that “contained enough information to help the CryptoDefense developer find and correct the flaw,” White wrote. Within 24 hours the attackers began spreading a revised version. They changed its name to CryptoWall and made $325 million.

Symantec “chose quick publicity over helping CryptoDefense victims recover their files,” White wrote. “Sometimes there are things that are better left unsaid.”

A spokeswoman for Broadcom, which acquired Symantec’s enterprise security business in 2019, declined to comment, saying that “the team members who worked on the tool are no longer with the company.”

Like Wosar, the 29-year-old Gillespie comes from poverty and never went to college. When he was growing up in central Illinois, his family struggled so much financially that they sometimes had to move in with friends or relatives. After high school, he worked full time for 10 years at a computer repair chain called Nerds on Call. Last year, he became a malware and cybersecurity researcher at Coveware.

Last December, he messaged Wosar for help. Gillespie had been working with a DarkSide victim who had paid a ransom and received a tool to recover the data. But DarkSide’s decryptor had a reputation for being slow, and the victim hoped that Gillespie could speed up the process.

Gillespie analyzed the software, which contained a key to release the files. He wanted to extract the key, but because it was stored in an unusually complex way, he couldn’t. He turned to Wosar, who was able to isolate it.

The teammates then began testing the key on other files infected by DarkSide. Gillespie checked files uploaded by victims to the website he operates, ID Ransomware, while Wosar used VirusTotal, an online database of suspected malware.

That night, they shared a discovery.

“I have confirmation DarkSide is re-using their RSA keys,” Gillespie wrote to the Hunting Team on its Slack channel. A type of cryptography, RSA generates two keys: a public key to encode data and a private key to decipher it. RSA is used legitimately to safeguard many aspects of e-commerce, such as protecting credit numbers. But it’s also been co-opted by ransomware hackers.

“I noticed the same as I was able to decrypt newly encrypted files using their decrypter,” Wosar replied less than an hour later, at 2:45 a.m. London time.

Their analysis showed that, before adopting the affiliate model, DarkSide had used a different public and private key for each victim. Wosar suspected that, during this transition, DarkSide introduced a mistake into its affiliate portal used to generate the ransomware for each target. Wosar and Gillespie could now use the key that Wosar had extracted to retrieve files from Windows machines seized by DarkSide. The cryptographic blunder didn’t affect Linux operating systems.

“We were scratching our heads,” Wosar said. “Could they really have fucked up this badly? DarkSide was one of the more professional ransomware-as-a-service schemes out there. For them to make such a huge mistake is very, very rare.”

The Hunting Team celebrated quietly, without seeking publicity. White, who is a computer science student at Royal Holloway, part of the University of London, began looking for DarkSide victims. She contacted firms that handle digital forensics and incident response.

“We told them, ‘Hey listen, if you have any DarkSide victims, tell them to reach out to us, we can help them. We can recover their files and they don’t have to pay a huge ransom,’” Wosar said.

The DarkSide hackers mostly took the Christmas season off. Gillespie and Wosar expected that, when the attacks resumed in the new year, their discovery would help dozens of victims. But then Bitdefender published its post, under the headline “Darkside Ransomware Decryption Tool.”

In a messaging channel with the ransomware response community, someone asked why Bitdefender would tip off the hackers. “Publicity,” White responded. “Looks good. I can guarantee they’ll fix it much faster now though.”

She was right. The next day, DarkSide acknowledged the error that Wosar and Gillespie had found before Bitdefender. “Due to the problem with key generation, some companies have the same keys,” the hackers wrote, adding that up to 40% of keys were affected.

DarkSide mocked Bitdefender for releasing the decryptor at “the wrong time…., as the activity of us and our partners during the New Year holidays is the lowest.”

Adding to the team’s frustrations, Wosar discovered that the Bitdefender tool had its own drawbacks. Using the company’s decryptor, he tried to unlock samples infected by DarkSide and found that they were damaged in the process. “They actually implemented the decryption wrong,” Wosar said. “That means if victims did use the Bitdefender tool, there’s a good chance that they damaged the data.”

Asked about Wosar’s criticism, Botezatu said that data recovery is difficult, and that Bitdefender has “taken all precautions to make sure that we’re not compromising user data” including exhaustive testing and “code that evaluates whether the resulting decrypted file is valid.”

Even without Bitdefender, DarkSide might have soon realized its mistake anyway, Wosar and Gillespie said. For example, as they sifted through compromised networks, the hackers might have come across emails in which victims helped by the Hunting Team discussed the flaw.

“They might figure it out that way — that is always a possibility,” Wosar said. “But it’s especially painful if a vulnerability is being burned through something stupid like this.”

The incident led the Hunting Team to coin a term for the premature exposure of a weakness in a ransomware strain. “Internally, we often joke, ‘Yeah, they are probably going to pull a Bitdefender,’” Wosar said.

[junker-town]

Which city should be the next to host an NFL franchise?

Los Angeles has two teams now and Las Vegas will have one soon. Who’s next?

NFL teams have never been shy about moving around. The Rams began in Cleveland, moved to Los Angeles, uprooted for Saint Louis, and then ducked back to Los Angeles in favor of a stadium that will cost more than the GDP of 35 nations. The Cardinals played second fiddle in Chicago through their first four decades, moved to Missouri for a while, and now bounce around the Phoenix metropolitan area every so often.

Even entrenched teams have been subject to temporary rehoming. The Bills have played all of their 60 seasons in Buffalo, but they’ve also experimented with home games north of the border in Toronto. The Jaguars have been in Jacksonville since 1995, but are an annual fixture in the league’s International Series in London. New markets get tested every fall.

In the past 25 years, Baltimore, Charlotte, Jacksonville, Nashville, Los Angeles, and Houston all welcomed NFL franchises within city limits. So which cultural center will join them? A cross-Atlantic market in Great Britain? One of the world’s largest cities in Mexico? The current Canadian home of the reigning NBA champions? Wilmington, Delaware?

Here are our candidates.

London, England

Foisting American sports off on the Brits has been a proud tradition that dates back to 2007. After luring fans to a packed Wembley Stadium in the late 2000s with a lineup that included recent (and even current) Super Bowl winners like the Giants (‘07), Saints (‘08), and Patriots (‘09), the league then tested England’s limits by making the Jaguars an annual fixture overseas in 2013.

And it went pretty well! Only one of the 21 games to take place at Wembley drew fewer than 80,000 fans. All three of 2018’s games at the stadium eclipsed the 84,000 mark. Anything over a 78,000 average would give a London franchise the league’s second-highest attendance behind the Cowboys — though that’s a little misleading since most teams don’t have stadiums that can hit that 80k mark.

Of course, fatigue would set in as fans adjusted to either the growing pains of an expansion team or a franchise whose performance had dropped enough to make relocation passable. That’s a concern, but this is also a city that’s averaged 84,240 fans per game while watching the Jaguars go 3-3 in London. You can argue some of those fans were lured to the stadium due to the novelty of the game and high profile halftime shows, but Wembley nearly hit 86,000 for last year’s Philadelphia-Jacksonville game that had no halftime performance. And nearly 84,000 still came out for a 2016 game that featured Robin Thicke at the break, which feels like more of a punishment than anything.

Travel plans and finding a full-time stadium are major logistical concerns, but manageable ones. West coast teams would likely have to plan an east coast game the week before heading overseas to prevent the headache of a 10+ hour flight to the isles. Whatever team, new or requisitioned, would need to work out a timeshare on a soccer pitch before working out their own plans for a(n American) football-specific stadium. But between the NFL’s stated goal of expanding the game globally and the bundles of money that would come with a greater European presence would make those headaches worthwhile.

Otherwise, let’s throw a team in Anchorage, Alaska. Give the world an outdoor stadium that can wrest the “frozen tundra” moniker away from Green Bay. The largest city in America’s largest state (by area) only has 10,000 fewer residents than Pittsburgh or Cincinnati and is has a greater population than Buffalo or AAF standbys Orlando and Salt Lake City. The west coast needs more teams to balance out those 4pm EST kickoffs — why not get weird with it? — Christian D’Andrea

Portland, Oregon

Take a cruise down the list of the largest cities in the United States and most of the top 20 or 30 consists of places that either:

A: Already have an NFL team, or B: Are boxed out by a nearby franchise or two.

It’s hard to imagine California getting another team soon after taxpayers balked at the idea of paying for new stadiums in San Diego or Oakland. That eventually resulted in two teams relocating. It’s also going to be difficult for Texas to get a third team so long as Jerry Jones keeps pushing back on a team coming to take a slice of the Lonestar State pie.

If all that means places like San Antonio, San Diego, San Jose, Austin, Fort Worth, and El Paso are scratched from the list (which it might not, but let’s assume it does), that’d leave Portland as one of the biggest cities in the country without an NFL franchise.

Portland currently sits No. 25 in the United States in population — ahead of plenty of NFL cities, including Baltimore, Atlanta, Kansas City, Miami, and Minneapolis. It’s also the 22nd largest media market, according to Nielsen.

The only major professional sports teams in Portland right now are the NBA’s Trail Blazers, MLS’s Timbers, and the NWSL’s Thorns FC. All three are well supported by the city. The Trail Blazers and Timbers both consistently sell out their venues, and the Thorns FC dominate the rest of the NWSL in attendance.

That doesn’t necessarily mean a 60,000+ seat stadium would get filled too, but it’s a really good sign. It helps too that the earthquake-inducing fans of the Seattle Seahawks have shown the Pacific Northwest has a passionate bunch of sports supporters. Portland would probably should up in a big way for a football team they could call their own. — Adam Stites

San Antonio, Texas

San Antonio isn’t the biggest market for an NFL team, but they’d be a nice spot for a new team.

Ron Nirenberg, the mayor of San Antonio, believes the city will have a team within 10 years. Here’s what Nirenberg had to say when asked about his 10-year timeline to host an NFL team:

“It’s a horizon. A fairly short horizon as it relates to the economic growth of the city. The economic growth of San Antonio and the success we are experiencing now is profound and it has been a concerted effort, a deliberate effort on my part and other city leaders to make sure that our profile in pro sports is rising.”

“Increasingly professional teams and leagues are looking to San Antonio as a place where they can find success and that’s very exciting for the San Antonio citizen in general who wants to see the economy of our city succeed, but its also great for San Antonio sports fans.”

Prior to settling down in the Oakland Coliseum for one last season, the Raiders were pondering a one year move to San Antonio prior to their relocation to Las Vegas. Nirenberg said that he wants San Antonio to remain “on the radar” in any relocation talks — permanent or temporary.

San Antonio has already showed that they can support a professional basketball team with the support they’ve shown the Spurs over the last 20 years. Admittedly, it’s easy to support a team that’s consistently good like the Spurs have been, but it does show that the potential fanbase is there for an NFL team.

San Antonio can also look at another team in their own state to rapidly build a fanbase in the Houston Texans. Houston joined the NFL in 2002 and has already cultivated a passionate group of fans — the Texans ranked 11th in attendance last season.

Football reigns supreme in Texas. Given the longtime success of the Cowboys and the recent success of the Texans, San Antonio should be confident they can sustain a professional team if they received one. — Charles McDonald

Memphis, Tennessee

Memphis almost had an NFL franchise back in the 1990’s but could only watch as Carolina and Jacksonville were awarded expansion teams. The team was to be called the Memphis Hound Dogs, which sounds pretty cool. That franchise came to exist anyway in a bizarre 9-9 season playing in the Canadian Football League.

All that drama led to Memphis having a tense relationship with the NFL. But there is reason why they should (again) be a candidate for expansion.

For starters, they already have a stadium in the city. The Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium is already the home for the Memphis Tigers football team and hosted the Houston Oilers for a couple of games in 1997. For a team that’s new to a city, already having a place to call their own is huge. It’s one of the major hurdles for any city looking to woo a franchise — even if it’s only a temporary home while an NFL-quality stadium is built.

The AutoZone Liberty Bowl, which is hosted every year in Memphis, had the 11th highest attendance of all the bowl games last season and has averaged over 50,000 fans since 1998. The market for football is there in Memphis.

Memphis already has the Grizzlies (granted, they’ve had a recent attendance decline), but the city should be looked at if the NFL is hunting for a viable city. Plus who wouldn’t want to hear the Hound Dogs called out on their TV on Sundays? - Vijay Vemu

Mexico City, Mexico

The NFL wants to get international, but a team in London, eight hours ahead of the Pacific time zone, is a tall ask. In North America, they have some real options, including Mexico City. Not only is Mexico City closer to teams in Texas and Florida than those teams are to, say, California’s teams, but the potential market size is enormous.

Not only is the population huge, it would largely be comprised of extremely passionate fans. I’m not here to knock the fans of any American teams, but sports fans in Mexico bleed for the teams they support. I don’t know how well an NFL team will be embraced right out of the gate, but the market is large enough to support them.

Plus, if the team is actually good, the potential fanbase is even larger. They’ll immediately be some of the most passionate fans in the sport. Mexico City is also a very nice place, if you weren’t aware. You should go sometime.

It’s worth noting (well, it’s worth it to me, you probably don’t care, but you’re reading this anyway) that when I relocate a team in Madden, I always relocate to Mexico City, which the game gives top grades to in market size and fan dedication. I’m nearly 20 years into my Madden 19 franchise in Mexico City, and it would be rad if that team (mine are the Mexico City Diablos) became a reality. — James Brady

A Canadian City

As stated above, the NFL has been trying to go international for years. The NFL is the only one of America’s major sports leagues without a team in Canada. Even the MLS has three Canadian teams. It’s time to expand the NFL past the northern border.

Toronto would be the obvious choice here — especially with the recent success of the NBA champion Toronto Raptors — but they haven’t exactly shown dedication to American football. The Buffalo Bills’ played six regular season games in Toronto from 2008-13 and averaged a little more than 47,000 in attendance. The Toronto Argonauts also have one of the lowest average attendance in the Canadian Football League.

The city does seem dedicated to increasing the popularity of the CFL as a road to an NFL franchise, but have yet to be successful. Other major Canadian cities like Montreal or Edmonton could be just as successful or more so than Toronto, though

Edmonton’s stadium — Commonwealth Stadium — is the second largest in the country with a seating capacity of 55,819. The MLB’s Montreal Expos were successful and were supported by the city and fans for decades before their relocation.

Hockey is always going to come first in Canada, but the NFL should be able to capitalize on whatever success the CFL has and make a franchise all of Canada can root for. — Kennedi Landry

Seth’s House

It’s nice! — Seth Rosenthal

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

The Marvel of Trelsi (Part XI)

I’m back with a bang. Real life constraints should be made illegal, so that I can spend my days squeeing over Trelsi loveliness. (The above picture! :D) In this instalment, I’m going to round up on my major problems with the central pairing of HSM, Troyella. The initial list I wrote down was much longer, but I realized that many things came under the same catgeory: arguably, the central problems with Troyella can be summarized into one. Their relationship is fundamentally unequal, hence why they have no shared passion, almost nothing in common, one-sided respect, and aren’t in love with each other. Like I said in the last post, I would have rearranged my list in retrospect. I’ve been debating upon which final problems are worth exploring for a while, because there is so much overlap, but I think this final point encapsulates another core problem in the Troyella farce. 

6- Nobody criticizes the Troyella relationship. Everyone thinks it’s the best thing since the invention of the wheel. 

If there was one thing more obnoxious than Troy Bolton being shackled to someone as unrepentantly selfish, cruel and hypocritical as Gabriella Montez, it has to be the way his peers worship this “relationship”. The message in the HSM franchise is clear: this is the ideal, and you, the viewer, will be convinced of this not only by virtue of excellent camera work, romantic music and well-timed PDA, but also by the way that East High’s world revolves around the central pairing. Whenever Troy and Gabriella perform onstage, everyone cheers, whistles, smiles, claps, jumps, has religious experiences. All competition is either explicitly shown or implied as being innately inferior to Troy and Gabriella, even though this is unlikely. Not that I think all the emotion shown during the Troyella ballads is fake; Troy in particular translates a lot of genuine emotion into his musical renditions and therefore is a captivating performer. And even when his previous love for Gabriella degenerates into mindless emotional dependency, he conceals this when performing his ballad duets with Gabriella during HSM III. So, in effect, their relationship becomes a performance. 

But Troy and Gabriella’s peers, although potentially able to perceive problems between the two, rarely react to them, let alone acknowledge them. It is only during HSM I, I believe, where Chad and Taylor show some remorse when they see the upset that their deceitful webcam stunt caused. And to their credit, both The Jocks (The Jerks) and The Brainiacs (The Maniacs) repent of their sins, realizing that Troy and Gabriella have a right to pursue their own interests in peace. This appears a more uniform approach to addressing relationship problems from an outsider’s perspective. And I often think that outsider perspectives are important in romances to instigate and even interrupt character development, and to motivate the plot. All the classic romances have commentary, help and even interference from outsiders. They do not necessarily have to be helpful-- that clearly wasn’t the case in HSM I. However, in the franchise, we are dealing with, in particular, Troy’s friends. The sheer lack of any scene in which someone asks about his relationship out of concern, instead of gushing over it like Troyella is some American version of Romeo and Juliet (and look how those two ended up!), is deeply troubling as it leads to Troy’s increasing emotional isolation. 

Let’s break this down carefully. Many of the scenes of conflict between Troy and Gabriella occur when no one else is around. In HSM I, she suddenly turns cold towards him in the corridor, but everyone else is just passing by. In HSM II, two of her cruelest moments, mocking him for wearing Italian golf shoes, and then dumping him, had no onlookers. In HSM III, Gabriella’s refusal to listen to any of Troy’s advice with regards to Stanford happens in the private of her bedroom. However, there are several scenes betraying problems in the Troyella relationship that occur with onlookers, or could potentially involve other characters, as I will demonstrate below. 

Chad Danforth

One of the most mystical things throughout the entire HSM franchise is Chad’s inability to act like a best friend towards Troy when it doesn’t particularly suit him. I have covered this in Part IV, V, VI and VII of this series. Let’s just remember that Chad is Troy’s best friend. In the man’s own words: “we have been like brothers since pre-school.” And that’s a beautiful thing. How many people have managed to remain friends with people for at least fifteen or sixteen years in a row, from childhood no less? That’s why I like Troy and Chad’s friendship-- not because it’s stellar, like his friendship with Kelsi-- but because of its tenacity as well as the genuine brotherhood between them. 

Initially, Chad is not sold on Gabriella, because in his view, she is luring Troy away from his basketball career like a Siren leading sailors to their doom. In HSM I, he says, “What spell has this elevated IQ temptress girl cast that suddenly makes you want to be in a musical?” Gabriella is getting in the way of the Grand Plan. She is an obstruction, and not just a new girl in school who has become Troy’s friend. However, it is a credit to Chad that, upon realizing the cruel effects of his webcam stunt, he appears willing to make amends for his behaviour, and we can presume from then on he approves both of Gabriella as well as her relationship with Troy. But at the end of the day, he is still Troy’s best friend. Somewhere along the line, his friendship with Troy took a back seat, whilst a blind acceptance of Troyella took centre stage, with Chad even willing to default to Gabriella’s side (she’s “already one step ahead... As usual” after bailing on Troy before prom in HSM III) whilst his own friend is clearly upset. It’s an assumption, but Chad seemed more concerned with Gabriella’s feelings in HSM II, particularly when they were watching Troy teach Sharpay golf. We can see this where Chad casts a look at Gabriella, after telling Taylor that he has “no idea who [Troy] he really is,” which could be interpreted as sympathetic. It’s quite brief. Since the scene ends here, it seems that Chad felt that Gabriella had been wronged, as well as himself. It is surely astonishing that in a friendship supposed to resemble family ties, we NEVER see a scene in which Chad asks after Troy and Gabriella’s relationship in casual conversation, even if he suspected that Troy was neglecting Gabriella. 

Even after definitely discovering that Gabriella broke up with Troy in HSM II, there is no scene where Chad tries to comfort his best friend; we know this, because later on, when Troy is lying alone, despondent in bed, he says the two following things: that the Wildcats wouldn’t come “even if I called”, and that “Chad won’t talk to me.” His best friend, so openly a fan of Troyella, won’t bury the hatchet and pick up the phone, come round and visit, try to boost Troy’s spirits. Demonstrate that their friendship is stronger than a petty quarrel motivated entirely by Chad’s own jealousy. And why is this? Because the image of Troyella, this glorious legend, becomes more important to Chad than Troy the man-- a person he never truly understood anyway. What’s ironic is that Chad never seems to demonstrate much insight into people anyway, so he can’t be that clued up on Gabriella’s character, yet he eventually treats her as though she is without blame and her word is immutable. So when Gabriella sees fit to renege on her promises to Troy over the phone in HSM III, Chad only offers the verbal equivalent of a pat on the back, although this is one of the few occasions where he does genuinely try to pick Troy off his feet, urge him not to pine and mope. But that’s offset by Chad’s lack of interest when Troy was sitting alone in the auditorium, clearly devastated by Gabriella’s departure, not to mention him pillorying Troy when the latter kept making mistakes in rehearsals. The image supersedes the man. 

What does Chad see in Troyella? I’m not really sure, given that he bills himself as the hard, unsentimental type. Clearly that isn’t the case, given his admiring and supportive smile in the wings during HSM III when Troy is performing “I Just Wanna Be With You”. I suppose, deep down, Chad has a very simple philosophy: if it makes Troy happy, then he won’t interfere. Deep down, Chad can be a true, supportive friend when he wishes to be. But with such good intentions comes the requirement of regular concern and support, which Chad simply does not provide, even when faced with staggering evidence of problems in the Troyella relationship. It’s outrageous that we are never shown Chad’s reaction upon discovering, somehow, that contrary to following his “man up” advice, Troy had gunned up his engine and driven off to California, 1053 miles by himself, seemingly without telling anyone. As I said in my Questions for HSM III series, I can’t see his parents allowing him to go, and I couldn’t see Chad being too happy either, given that he just told Troy to get over the situation not long beforehand. But because we are supposed to see the entire series wrapped up with a shiny bow, no one questions the appearance of the Golden Couple, and everything goes right in the end. Chad applauds and silently approves. 

Meanwhile, he could be constantly there for Troy with a pat on the back, some brotherly advice and concern when Troy demonstrated an increasing inability to think for himself. As Troy’s best friend, Chad should know him better than anyone, and demonstrate deep concern when he sees his best friend twiddling his thumbs alone and staring listlessly into space at school, or collapsing onto his bed, his voice heavy and lifeless. In the Troy-Chad dynamic, Chad is often the motivational partner who can spur Troy to action. This is shown at the beginning of HSM III, where Troy leaves Chad to rally the team so they are motivated to win. Whilst Troy clearly internalizes a lot of his anxiety, by HSM III, the toll of being with Gabriella showed a great deal, and Chad should have been right next to Troy in those auditorium seats, doing what he could to lift Troy’s spirits. Chad should have been alarmed to see Troy wandering around without meaning or purpose on the rooftops, staring at Gabriella’s empty locker, sitting in silence instead of engaging in normal social interaction, because these are all signs of the kind of pervasive sadness that can develop into withdrawal and even depression if left unchecked. He has, after all, known the guy for over a decade, and should be aware of what to do. Instead, he’s chatting with Taylor, and it’s Kelsi, whom Troy has not even known for two years, who knows JUST how to comfort him with a hug and a smile. The irony.

There’s simply no excuse for Chad’s neglect of Troy at crucial moments, despite being fully aware that he is witnessing problems right before his eyes. 

The same goes for the Wildcats. I won’t analyse them individually, but they are supposed to be Troy’s friends. We don’t see any scene where they decide to rally around Troy when he’s clearly hurting after the breakups in HSM II and HSM III. None of them ask where he’d been in HSM III, and why he didn’t show up for prom. No one is remotely interested when he’s struggling with Gabriella’s absence. The image supersedes the man each time. And why is this so ironic? Because the HSM series is supposed to represent breaking the status quo, the hierarchised world of East High that keeps all students trapped in their specific social group, and raises hell for anyone brave enough to challenge such normativity. But actually, what the Wildcats do is ditch one status quo (social prejudice) to replace it with another (Troyella worship). And this status quo ends up being equally poisonous to the social and moral atmosphere, given that it encourages the unhealthy view that “perfect” romances exist (they certainly do not), and means that all flaws are routinely ignored. In this case, it is Troy who is emotionally isolated time and time again, as the Wildcats appear to side with Gabriella more. I base this conclusion on the fact that, as I stated earlier, the Wildcats refused to visit Troy after Gabriella quit Lava Springs, and it is implied that Troy sensed their bitterness towards him, even though they were presumably still speaking with him at that point. “Maybe my friends are right. Maybe I am turning into a jerk with new shoes.” Given the Wildcats’ underhand methods of displaying their displeasure, perhaps Troy had heard them, or suspected they were muttering behind his back. The Wildcats all want their special piece of Troyella cake, want to experience the magic like they’re watching Disney. Troy, their friend and captain, is of secondary importance. 

Mr. and Mrs. Bolton

Now, the fact that Mr and Mrs Bolton are never shown to express concerns over Troy’s rapid deterioration throughout the movie series is not to be assumed as based on a lack of concern for their son at all. Despite notable criticisms of Mr. Bolton’s behaviour, many of which are valid, at the end of the day, Mr. Bolton has his son’s back 100%. So it is mystifying that he is never shown to have questioned Troy’s relationship with Gabriella. Why? Because in HSM I, we know that he is willing to demonstrate his disapproval of Gabriella outright, even based on the flimsiest evidence. “You haven’t missed practice in three years. That girl shows up--” And yes, even though he eventually approves of TROY’S singing ambitions (and learns to refer to Gabriella by her given name), it is clear that his son comes first. So much so that even in HSM II, it appears that he relents on the scholarship pressure when it becomes clear that Troy is really suffering an identity crisis and is genuinely upset.

I don’t think he comprehends the full scale of that upset, because the advice he gives is helpful, but strangely insufficient. In the whole dialogue exchange, it is clear that Mr. Bolton can’t comprehend Troy’s internal conflict. When Troy essentially tells him that the Wildcats don’t want to speak with him, Mr. Bolton just laughs it off, instead of asking why and showing some concern. When Troy tells him that Gabriella quit (and dumped him), he makes no response. He’s certainly concerned, of course, but doesn’t comment on that exact event. I have to assume this is the first time that Troy told his father about the situation between him and Gabriella, which implies that Troy had kept it a secret. But when Mr. Bolton notes that Troy has been in his room for the last couple of days, that leads me to believe that perhaps he didn’t check on him for a while, possibly believing that Troy would get over whatever it was that was bothering him. Again, this is NOT based on a lack of concern, but let’s get back to why Mr. Bolton’s advice to Troy is insufficient. 

[Mr Bolton] “You know what? I’ve known this kid for a long, long time. And I got a lot of faith in him. He looks a lot like you. I’m absolutely sure he’s going to figure out the right thing to do.”

Now, there’s piano music and a clarinet to fool you into thinking that this is a pivotal point for Troy, and his father has just delivered a motivational speech. But actually, what’s the message here? After hearing that his son’s girlfriend broke up with him, and his friends won’t talk to him, what Mr. Bolton advises as a solution could be summarized at best as “You’ll figure it out.” But clearly that’s not the case. By his own admission, his son has been lying in bed for days, won’t eat food, hasn’t received any social calls and seems unresponsive to any encouragement. This is not the kind of person who seems ready to figure it out. HERE is where Mr. Bolton could have shown a strong, fatherly presence and advised Troy on how to navigate his next step, instead of chucking down a photo of Troy dressed in East High colours (thus referring to the dreaded Pedestal and perhaps causing Troy to throw back his head in exhaustion as though he has heard this lecture before), and leaving him to his own devices. Furthermore, Mr. Bolton makes absolutely no mention of Troy and Gabriella’s breakup, and we know from HSM III, that he will ask after Gabriella. Earlier on in the film, he shared an amusing anecdote about Troy’s devotion to Gabriella: “You know whenever she calls, he just, blushes.” So he knows the relationship means a lot to his son. And yet no comment about her quitting? No comfort? No asking why? 

Again, please don’t assume that Mr. Bolton doesn’t care. He does care. But perhaps he too has too much faith in Troyella to fully appreciate the extent of damage that Gabriella is causing. Not to mention, of course, that Troy internalizes so much anxiety and rarely confides this, except very often to the wrong people, like Chad and Gabriella. His faith in Troyella seems predicated upon his faith in Troy’s decisions, without necessarily evaluating whether those decisions are good decisions. So if Troy is with Gabriella, and she apparently makes him happy, then he approves of Troyella. The problem is what has to happen for Mr. Bolton to realize that Troyella is a problem? This is why we HAD to see his reaction to his only son driving off into the hinterland for a girl who had just reneged on her commitments. I think that would be a sufficient breaking point, because unlike many other characters, Mr. Bolton has more loyalty to his son than to Gabriella, and would somehow draw a line. We needed to see Mr. Bolton, with his good old-fashioned, masculine reasoning, tell his son a few hard truths about being in a relationship and show some concern about Troy’s increasing despondency. Being Mr. Bolton, he may not have tackled this in the most constructive way, but as a father, he sure as hell would have tried at some point. 

Which brings me to Mrs. Bolton, who is woefully underused throughout. Mrs. Bolton is an admirable matriarchal figure who keeps everything in order with calmness and style. She is surrounded by men, but she’s the one keeping them in line. They can be in charge on the court, but she’s in charge in the house. “Woah, woah, woah. Can we all redirect this energy by bringing in the groceries?” To which the people say “Yes, Mrs. Bolton.” Her will be done. This lady is not someone to be crossed. Her love for her husband and son is enjoyable to watch (take note, Troyella fans; the Boltons have a PROPER relationship), and she appears to treat Chad like a son too, if the prom suit scene is anything to go by. “Aw, you did good!” She does relent sometimes, like at the beginning of HSM I where father and son are in the middle of shooting hoops. But throughout, she very clearly wants the best for Troy, and Troy appears to have a much easier relationship with his mother than his father: he can persuade her easier. 

Again, referring to HSM I, he manages to convince her to let him shoot one more basket before heading to the kids party. Given this obvious affection, it is inexplicable that nothing was made of Mrs. Bolton’s visible surprise, dismay and disappointment when the fragments she heard of Troy’s conversation with Gabriella in HSM III. Indeed, the film almost treats her reaction as an aside. Having been, presumably, the first parent to see Troy’s prom suit, having been gushing and proud of him, having been eager to see Gabriella wear the ordered corsage, having seen her son almost giddy with excitement for the first time in possibly WEEKS, WHY does Mrs. Bolton all but disappear from our screens when Troy is at his lowest, only to reappear when everything is seemingly going well again? Because out of the two parents, Mrs. Bolton would have more constructive advice for her son’s relationship problems; women and mothers often tend to be more intuitive in that sense. Obviously, Mrs. Bolton would have discovered that Gabriella wasn’t turning up for prom, and whilst Mrs. Bolton evidently approves of Gabriella (although isn’t fooled by her-- that “Hi Gabriella” kind of sounded like “I know what you’re up to/I know you’re up there/You can’t fool me”), her son comes first. She would be right there, trying to comfort him and perhaps offering him some help. Perhaps, were she even more intuitive, she might be asking questions about the kind of girl who builds up their boyfriend only to drop kick him at the last minute. She might connect the dots between Troy’s lifelessness for the past couple of weeks, to his excitement at seeing Gabriella, to his despondency when Gabriella disappoints him for the nth time. We don’t know. But the airbrushing of Mrs. Bolton except when it comes to dancing in the crowd is shameful and inexplicable, making the Bolton’s seem like unconcerned parents when clearly they are concerned. It’s just not possible that they wouldn’t be. 

Ryan Evans

Another inexplicable example comes from Ryan Evans, who is either very forgiving or a diplomat. Remember that the biggest howler in HSM II came when Gabriella twists Ryan round her little finger, buoying him with flirty compliments in an attempt to humiliate Troy. Because Ryan is an honourable and decent person, he has no intention to carry through with this plan, hence why he extends a friendly welcome to Troy and passes on a compliment from his father. But this does place Ryan in the prime position of seeing a glaring problem in their relationship; that Gabriella is willing to manipulate and punish Troy. If you watch this scene carefully, you can see Ryan’s initial confusion which melts into awkwardness when he catches Gabriella’s expression and sees something akin to coldness and vindictiveness there, directed towards Troy. Furthermore, he hears the awkward silences and realizes something is up that he finds embarrassing. However, Ryan’s general reaction is that they will both sort whatever it is out themselves; he looks like he’s dodged a bullet when he makes his hasty and awkward exit. This is fair enough. But it seems far too light, given Troy’s expression, plainly betraying hurt and jealousy and humiliation, is plain for all to see. Then again, Ryan tried his best to diffuse the situation and ended up being cut off, so when he runs out of ideas, he leaves. 

Having just witnessed a very ugly side to the girl who, just moments before, was praising him to the heavens and assaulting him with sweet smiles, why does Ryan (and Kelsi) think the solution to Troy and Gabriella’s later breakup is a musical reunion between the two? I mean, I commend him for trying his best in this regard, and I suspect that his aims were simply to create a pleasant surprise for Troy, whom he perceived to be having a hard time. These are honourable aims. But I just can’t comprehend his lack of criticism for Gabriella’s crystal clear manipulation. Not only does he see Gabriella’s vindictive behaviour in this scene, later on, he is STILL hanging out with her! Because Ryan is not given much relevant dialogue apart from either pandering to Sharpay, or engaging in that silly macho contest with Chad, or saying a few things here and there later on, we don’t know whether Ryan addressed the issue of the LAUGHABLY obvious tension and discomfort between the alleged Golden Couple. Most likely he thought they would patch things up. Of course the fact that he gives Gabriella a hug is based on being friendly, not upon being Don Quixote. As I write this, perhaps there IS a reason. Gabriella went out of her way to speak with him (for the first time), and at this point, Troy had not yet done so. Furthermore, the circumstances that Gabriella created, made things awkward for Ryan, whereas Gabriella continued to show him (ostensible) friendship. Furthermore, Gabriella was actually the reason for his popularity with the Wildcats, whereas beforehand, it is implied that they may have mocked him. So he is actually grateful to her on that count. As a result, he thinks that they couldn’t sort whatever “it” was out, so I’ll cook up something nice and maybe that will fix it. He has no hard feelings towards Troy, he has no hard feelings towards Gabriella (even though she clearly used him), all he needs to do is write a nice song, get Kelsi to play it and everyone’s a winner. It’s an extremely naiive, although clearly well-meaning approach. I certainly wouldn’t criticize him for it, given that he still possesses some measure of awkwardness and is keen not to draw negative attention to himself. He is also keen to stay on good terms with everyone, even jocks who may or may not have treated him as a laughing stock. So he isn’t going to rock the boat. Perhaps he is a diplomat. In HSM III, he’s impressed with Troy and Gabriella’s performance, and ends up congratulating the both of them. There’s no hard feelings. Like everyone else, he has no criticism for Gabriella upping and leaving for California. Unlike almost everyone else, he does show Troy support, so he obviously isn’t as immune to the problems in the relationship as are so many others. But when they all appear to get back together in the end, he approves on TWO occasions, despite the breakups occurring in similar circumstances. The musical will fix it! :D *shakes head* 

So there you have it, folks. Six concrete reasons why Troyella is a horrible central pairing. Granted, there are many offshoot reasons that I considered, such as the poor communication, lack of realistic aims, Troy’s immunity to Gabriella’s faults that I could have added into the series, but I think that many of those are already covered throughout the piece. We have a couple who are supposed to share an interest, but don’t. A couple who are supposed to have at least a few significant other things in common, but don’t. A couple who are supposed to respect each other equally, but don’t. A couple who are supposed to be in love with each other, but aren’t. A couple who are supposed to be equal, but aren’t. A couple who should have at least fostered some objective outside perspectives, but don’t. A couple that leaves Troy Bolton, the most likeable character of the lot, broken, diminished, full of self-doubt and lonelier than ever before, whilst Gabriella gets into her Freshman Honours Program and has a bright future ahead of her. By the way, have you noticed that I haven’t criticized any character for not attending to Gabriella’s emotional needs throughout this movie? Because she rarely ever seems upset when her relationship takes a downturn. She might shed a few compulsory tears, mope around at home and pull a few sad faces, but she’s right as rain not long afterwards. Watch the latter half of HSM III if you don’t believe me. Not long after dumping Troy over the phone, she is SMILING, people. Clearly, her mental well-being is in NO danger. Furthermore, she NEVER shows one hint of remorse about what her actions do to Troy, and neither does anyone in the movie series tell her, because they all believe that Gabriella is beyond reproach. 

Troyella is therefore illogical, untenable, disturbing, almost immoral, and a direct affront to everything this movie is supposed to stand for. 

Guess who thinks this relationship is perfect and so romantic?

:D Oh dear. 

I weep. I really do. 

We will dissect Kelsi’s romantic interests in the next installment, including analysis of why she latches onto Troyella with such blind fervour, and what this means. 

More analysis upcoming. 

[torentialtribute]

Mauricio Pochettino should stop cryptic talk about his Spurs future

The identity of the Europa League quarter-finalists was known on Thursday, March 14. By the following evening, UEFA should have Been able to announce the venue for the final. Somewhere reachable; somewhere the fans could enjoy. Not Baku. Nowhere remote, or inhospitable. Nowhere prohibitively expensive.

There are 18 countries and 1,725 ​​miles between the points UEFA could choose from. They are lying when they say the Wed of Baku and back is not on them.

UEFA knew the area covered by the quarter-finalists by the time. It ranged from Lisbon in the west to Prague in the east, London in the north to Naples in the south. And at that point, UEFA knew too that the nearest Baku would be any of the possible finalists was 2,227 miles away.

Chelsea and Arsenal will contest this season's Europe League final at Baku's Olympic Stadium

Slavia Prague were then knocked out. Likewise, UEFA had already decided that the final was being hero in Vienna, say, 156 miles from the Czech capital, there would be no argument whoever ended up there.

Vienna is approachable. So is most of Germany, Spain, or France – and these are all countries with stadium options. It should not be close to two years to find a venue for a final.

Yet Baku was chosen on September 20, 2017. We already know the venue for the 2020 final: Gdansk in Poland. This month we will discover who hosts in 2021: either Tbilisi in Georgia, or Seville.

And for what? So UEFA can conjure up some branding and a meaningless slogan. "Together to Baku," is the one for this year. Yet who is together to Baku, considering the limitations of the venue? Together in a car, six hours from Tbilisi maybe. Together via Istanbul. Together watching from the sofa because tickets are so scarce.

The qualifying teams, Arsenal and Chelsea, have been told they will only get 6,000 seats each at a 68,700 capacity stage, and this is now being blamed on the main airport only being able to handle 15,000 visitors a day. And UEFA found that out now? Of course not.

One of the advantages of a two-year lead time is the compilation of evaluation reports; detailed analyzes of venue logistics, including international transportation. Meaning UEFA knew about Baku's flaws and the unavoidable restrictions on tickets but ignored it.

The venue holds 68,700 fans but Arsenal and Chelsea have just given 6,000 tickets each

They probably figured that once the final was tasks so far east, the numbers traveling would be significantly down anyway.

The only argument for holding finals in remote locations concern inclusion. Azerbaijan is part of UEFA too. Why shouldn't it get a little gravy? And that much is true. Yet the final venue should always play sympathetically for the needs of supporters.

This year, Krasnodar and Zenit St Petersburg from Russia were in the Europa League's last 16. Had either got through, most of Eastern Europe could have been considered among the options for a final, even Moscow. And yes, Arsenal and Chelsea to Moscow, would still have a trek. Yet there would have been more than 6,000 tickets each at the end of it, and flights and entry routes would have been less problematic.

This is a final constructed with the least thought, even for the playing participants, given that it has now been revealed that Henrikh Mkhitaryan of Arsenal might not be able to get a visa, due to Armenia's war footing with Azerbaijan.

How could UEFA award such a fixture to a city without first establishing that all players would be able to gain access? That alone should have been a red flag in 2017 – or at least sorted out months ago when it was clear that Arsenal's presence in the final was very possible.

Henrikh Mkhitaryan may not be able to get a visa due to Armenia's war footing with Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan has lots of lovely oil money and, looking back, this has been on the agenda since UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin took the job. He floated the idea in his first major interview, in 2016 when discussing potential final venues. "To go from Portugal to Azerbaijan for example is almost the same or the same as you go to New York," he said. "For the fans it's no problem."

At the time, the headlines were about UEFA taking the Champions League final to the American continent – and that will come if the elite clubs get their way, don't worry – but we all missed Baku as a prior staging post. You've got to love that 'no problem', too. There speaks a man who hasn't worried about the cost of watching football in decades.

Ask Arsenal or Chelsea's fans if Baku is no problem. OK, two years too late, but it might inform the decision about Tbilisi in 2021.

It is a myth that UEFA, or any remotely competent organization, cannot organize an event in two months. If it goes the distance, baseball's World Series completes its post-season playoffs two or three days before the finals start.

In 2012, San Francisco Giants played St Louis Cardinals for the National League Pennant on Monday, October 22. Having won, the World Series opened with the Giants facing Detroit Tigers on Wednesday, October 24. Yet the Tigers could just as easily have been playing in St Louis that day.

San Francisco and St Louis are 2,051 miles apart, and while Detroit to St Louis is 532 miles, San Francisco is 2,393 miles away. And yet it gets done. Travel is organized, tickets are sold, branding is designed – and the whole process is completed in 48 hours.

And no, because of the often enormous distances involved, baseball does not have the tradition of away support that exists in football. Yet there are still a few hardy souls who make the trip – and between two days and two years, there is surely middle ground. It's called March.

Nothing can last for ever – not even City's stranglehold

Europe's richest clubs had finished fashioning financial fair play in a protectionist's charter, Manchester United, it seemed, were golden. Nothing would challenge their elite status. They had neutered the power of new money; they had insured themselves against the day Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down.

David Gill's many years of politicking in football's highest offices had been worth every meeting. Manchester United had football where they wanted it.

And then Ferguson left and the entire edifice crumbled. If Arsenal win the Europa League, United will be the only member of the Premier League's elite six not in the Champions League next season. They did not qualify in 2014-15 or 2016-17 either. Since losing the Champions League final in 2011, the deepest they have gone into the competition is two quarter final appearances, five years apart.

So those worrying that Manchester City's rule is permanent after back-to-back titles and 198 points over two years, can relax. In football – certainly in English football – nothing is for ever.

Manchester City Captain Vincent Kompany lifted the Premier League trophy again on Sunday

If Manchester United , a club with every advantage of size, wealth and privilege can be plunged into a relative wilderness, then City's dominance cannot last, either. Think about it: unless Vincent Kompany scores the greatest goal of his career, they probably don't win this title.

And then, one day, Pep Guardiola will depart. How do they replace him; indeed, who could replace him? City possess a more sophisticated executive strategy than United, but that doesn't mean there will be a Guardiola effect.

Manuel Pellegrini won the title in his first season, but went downhill after. Roberto Mancini ended up in a ruinously fractious relationship with the club, and a single title win. The new money ensures the dominance of super powers like Juventus and Bayern Munich is not such a factor in the English game.

Even if City were to win again next season, they would just be equaling the feats of Huddersfield ( 1923-26), Arsenal (1932-35), Liverpool (1981-84) and Manchester United (1998-2001 and 2006-09). Only a fourth victory would be unprecedented. As it is, City simply join a list of 11 clubs that have retained the title, on 25 occasions.

And it hasn't happened for a while – not since Manchester United in 2008-09 – and never by winning a combined 198 points, so there is a lot of projection. Yet City were never this successful until Guardiola arrived.

And if he isn't for ever, neither are they.

But City will not dominate English football forever, especially once Pep Guardiola leaves

What's your point, Poch … or can we guess?

If Mauricio Pochettino was a Tottenham player he would have been widely castigated for his behavior at the end of last week, Champions League final or not. Why does he keep talking about his future at Tottenham? More specifically, why does he keep talking about not having one?

In the aftermath of an incredible night in Amsterdam, suddenly it was all about Pochettino's intentions again. What if Harry Kane or Christian Eriksen used such a special moment to cast a shadow or doubt across the club? They would have been accused or self-indulgence, or selfishness, or undermining their team mates.

Pochettino can hardly complain now, if he has more questions about his intentions. He can hardly be surprised if his motives are appreciated cynically. A sabbatical? At a time when Manchester United might be regretting their latest managerial appointment? Well, isn't that convenient?

If Daniel Levy makes good his promises of investment, there really isn't a better club for Pochettino than Tottenham right now – yet frequently his public utterances serve only to challenge that view . What is going on? This seems as strategic as any of his game plans.

If Mauricio Pochettino was a player he would have been widely castigated for his behavior

Who were the REAL bigots in B aker's case?

There are not enough geniuses in broadcasting that we can afford to lose one. What was interesting about Danny Baker's dismissal, however, is those who leap to his defense. Everyone who knew him, and had a public platform.

Unable to give the benefit of the doubt: those who have never had with him, or had no interest in his work, his interests or his personality.

On social media, many of those sitting in judgment made the connection between Baker's south London roots, his love of football and his support for Millwall. It stood for reason that he would harbor horrid prejudices because he was a white, working class, Millwall fan. There's a word for that, you know.

Broadcasting genius Danny Baker was sacked by the BBC after posting an offensive tweet

S urprise! Money breeds success

A Premier League money table has been published. It is made up of three categories: the equal share of £ 79.4m each, the money accrued from live TV broadcasts and the per place prize money. Of the 20 clubs, eight were in exactly the same position in the league table as the money table, 10 were one place off and two – Newcastle and Watford – swapped places two away.

The table in the Championship, by comparison, is random. Manchester City did not win the league solely because of money – Liverpool actually topped that table – but finance decides who gets in the mix.

At the end of what was probably probably the greatest title race in history, as Manchester City lifted the trophy, a dreadful refrain filled the Amex Stadium. "No time for losers," Freddie Mercury sang. Really? This, or all seasons? Hasn't anyone at the Premier League been watching their own competition? How incredibly crass.

Out of Africa, trio who lit up the season

Many years ago, when Sky's coverage of the Premier League was in its infancy, a very famous former England footballer was the studio guest. He was asked what he expected to see from a young winger, a talent on the rise, tipped for international honors. "Not much, really," he replied.

Pressed to explain, he offered the devastating analysis: "I don't fancy the black lads much, when it gets cold." Suffice, he made two appearances on television that night: his first, and last.

We appear to have moved on since then. And for those that have not, perhaps the sight of three African players – Mo Salah, Sadio Mane and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang – sharing this season's Golden Boat with 22 goals each will persuade. It's not where you're from that counts; it's where you're at.

Mo Salah, Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Sadio Mane (left to right) right) shared the Golden Boot

Who knew Toon had a plan?

Salomon Rondon is still unsure of his Newcastle future, despite scoring 11 goals this season and becoming the first Newcastle striker to win the club's Player of the Year since Alan Shearer in 2003. Rondon is on loan from West Brom but, at 30, his age profile apparently goes against the club's policy. Imagine – there's a policy. Who knew?

Looking at Brighton's team sheet, it's no surprise the club battled relegation. With the exception of Lewis Dunk, arguably no individual would get into a team in the top half. So Chris Hughton's sacking is resinous.

Having said this, Brighton are not the first club to reject a pragmatic manager in the hope the switch to a more open style will bring with it excitement and improved results. Sometimes, however, the excitement is or rather a different kind of child to that imagined. Ask Stoke.

Lewis Dunk is the only Brighton player who would get into a top 10 Premier League team

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[tylerarltunl]

Tyler’s Takes 6.0

April 7th, 2018

Welcome one welcome all to a late night early morning addition of my steaming hot takes on this week in sports. My good friend Cade Webb who has plenty of hot takes as well you should give him a follow on twitter if you do not already. His takes get even better during college football too! But anyway he gave me the idea to have two editions this week so this will be the general what has happened in the week and tomorrow I will release a half edition that focuses on the Masters and how it played out through my eyes so without further ado I will start supplying the takes. 

College Basketball

The masses are declaring for the draft there were a few surprises and a few kids I wish would stay but I cannot blame them for wanting to cash in a big payday. I think their game would develop with another year at the college level but I would never tell anyone to turn down money. Also I am going to pat myself on the back for my bracket. Bet yall didnt think I would do that well now did ya!

-Trevon Duval (Point Guard, Duke) is a kid I think could increase his draft position by 10 spots if he were to stay another year at Duke. I know when he signed at Duke he was intending to be a one and done but could you imagine a summer where he doesnt have the pressure to get ready for the draft and can focus on his weaknesses. IE his shooting. A summer and another season to work on his jump-shot would do wonders for him. 

-Malik Newman (Guard, Kansas) made himself some serious cash with the finish to his season. Apparently his plan and Self’s plan was for him to leave after this season regardless of how he performed. He is counting his dollars because he went from not even being talked about to putting himself on the map with his late flourish. A position less player in the NBA who benefited from having Davante bring the ball up will find it comforting that teams like guys who can shoot which makes him a better prospect than Duval in my eyes. 

-Landry Shamet (Point Guard, Wichita State) Here is a guy I thought would stay solely based on how the season ended for him and I thought he would want to come back and get the bad taste out of his mouth. This might be an indictment on what the Shockers are going to be next year but I never blame a kid for leaving. I think he is the best NBA ready prospect of the three guys mentioned here as he can do a little bit of everything. I am concerned about his speed on defense but if Fred Van Vleet can guard NBA talent Landry Shamet can learn to do the same. 

-Nebraska has two guys that have not signed an agent yet and  I think should come back and make a run next year. Neither guy excels at what they do (Issac Copeland and Jordan Palmer Jr.). If they come back Nebraska will be picked in the top 5 of the Big Ten in preseason polls because the Big 10 is losing a lot of its elite talent this year. I think both guys would be better served rounding their game into form in their senior campaigns but if they both go Issac has a better NBA future. 

College Football

-Not a lot here just Spring games will be happening around the country in the coming weeks so I hope you enjoy your teams game! I am in the minority here but I think Spring games are a whole lot to do about nothing. Tanner Lee threw some pretty passes in the Spring game and look how that turned out. Just know your team is never as good or bad as you think it is in April and you will be for the better. 

-My quick take on the Huskers...  their spring game is April 21st so lets hope the QB position has a direction by then. If there is no separation from someone in that group that usually means they are all BAD. What are the odds you are going to have three studs in the same room. Scott Frost does have a plethora of talent at the skill positions. Morgan, Lindsey, and Speilman could be a special trio at receiver and please please please dont make me suffer through another season of Devine Ozigbo and Mikale Wilbon as the primary running backs. Please let Greg Bell and Jaylen Bradley separate from the group. Maurice Washington could be a factor as a true freshman as well when he arrives on campus in the fall. I think Tre Bryant might not play football at all or successfully again. (You heard that here first)

Major League Baseball

-The Red Sox are hot!!! The temperature outside may be cold but they are clicking right now. The starting pitching has been the story for this team. Rick Porcello pitched a great game today and it was the worst start by a starter this season. 7.1 IP and 3 earned runs. That is crazy. The Sox also have not committed and error yet this season and since I typed that sentence Sunday they will commit one you can bet on it. The Red Sox played 162 games without a grand slam last year they got that out of the way before game 10 this year. 

-CC Sabathia is headed to the DL and so the Yankees weak rotation gets even weaker. They are going to win games by scoring 10 runs but I honestly do not think they have the horses in the rotation to be taken seriously.  The bullpen has surprisingly cost the Yankees wins so far this year dont look for that to continue.

-The Phillies scored 20 runs today as a WTH stat of the week. Interested to see which team.... the Phillies or the Braves rise out of the ashes first. I think both are a year away but the NL East is about to be loaded.

-The Royals are bad. They could have had a jump start on the rebuild and I am guessing management is feeling they should have taken that path. How about Danny Duffy being spotted a 4 run lead in the first on Opening Day then getting shelled and the loss then getting spotted a 2 run lead in the first to Cleveland on Friday and giving up 3 in the bottom half of the inning as they went on to lose 3-2.

National Football League

Not a whole lot here this week just a signing and a trade

-The Cowboys added Kony Early to the roster. He averaged 4 sacks a year with Carolina Panthers and New York Jets. Dont know if that moves the needle at all. Randy Gregory is said to be asking for reinstatement into league as well. The league would be foolish to grant that. I dont blame the Cowboys for drafting the former Husker but dude has issues LAY OFF THE WEED.

-The Rams traded for Brandin Cooks. The Patriots got a first round pick and a 6th round pick. The Rams are all in while Jared Goff is young. Am I the only one that thinks he could take a step back this year? Todd Gurley is a beast and the defense appears to be insanely good on paper with all the pieces they added. If those pieces mesh is a completely different story. 

-Any guesses as to what the hoodie has up his sleeve in New England? I really wish he and Tom Brady had left on top after their historic comeback against the Falcons. That would have made such a better story then quietly going into the night. 

National Basketball Association

-Very concerned Warriors fan here. I am not saying a first round exit but man they look bad right now and the west is as good as ever since the Warriors made their run. Happy for Quinn Cook to be playing so well and earning himself a nice contract. He is the perfect backup to Steph Curry. 

-I hope you have been taking my advice and watching the western conference standings! The west is a crazy fun mess right now with 6 teams vying for 5 spots. Give me the Spurs, Jazz, Thunder, Pelicans, and Nuggets not in that order.

-Are the Sixers putting the East on notice? They look scary good right now for a conference that does not have an elite team. Lebron is Lebron but I do not think the Cavs are elite and this is the worst team personnel wise he is taking to the playoffs since his return to Cleveland. 

-Can the Bucks play competently in a playoff series? Right now they are 7 to the Celtics 2. That will be the hot upset pick of the playoffs but it really should not be all that surprising after the injuries the Celtics have been dealt. 

Last one and I am gone 

Golf

-Man I love the Masters and I will go in depth in 6.5 edition but seeing the best play at their best is great television. I think it should be a four horse race tomorrow because Reed just put so much distance between himself and the meat of the pack. Reed, Rory, Rickie and Rahm are the four horses their but I would not be shocked if Bubba or JT threw a 64 on the board and put themselves in the mix. Rory is my favorite international golfer the emotion he shows is good for the game in my opinion but I will be cheering for Fowler to break through. I hope it is tight late and someone makes a putt or hits a shot that we will remember.

As always thanks for reading and for your support. Enjoy your Sunday folks! 

[dallasareaopinion]

Cowboys and more Dallas Sports

Well football season is upon us and the Cowboy mania is going full tilt. Everyone here is championship this, championship that….

 And we still do not know if we are going to have Zeke for half the season or so… and even before all his drama started we had suspended defensive lineman left and right so I had figured that we were going to have to have 15-20 onside kick off plays in the playbook.

 The defensive is still under construction so I was thinking to win games the Cowboys need to win the toss, receive the kickoff, score, then do an onside kick, score, repeat a few times and then play out the game. Basically, try to get ahead 14-21 points before giving the other team the ball.  I know they can score. The Boys have a great offensive line. We got weapons without Zeke. He seals the deal, but we can compete while he is suspended. What no one knows is how the defense is going to perform. The defensive coordinator can work miracles, but he needs at least the one bucket of fish to get started.

 This will be an interesting season. Dak will have some up and down games. It is his second year, most QBs struggle a bit. I think he will do well, just have to sit through a few moments every now and then as he settles into a real career. It wouldn’t be a concern if we knew the defense can handle it.

 The Patriots are playing the Chiefs tonight and I could care less. Sunday can’t come fast enough and it will be a good read for the whole season. We will see.

 And I am trying to avoid the Rangers. Every time I pay attention to them, they lose a few games. I quit paying attention and they win a few games. How can you be a fan in these circumstances? Anyway, I am still hoping the put together a good win streak these last couple of weeks and sneak in. Anything can happen once you make the playoffs. I am not putting any money on it, but some emotion….yeah!

 I am a casual fan of the Stars so I have no idea what to expect. The people I know who are super fans seem to have a guarded optimism in their eyes when talking about them. I am fortunate enough to get to see some home games so hopefully I can get a better feel by the middle of November. Last year just didn’t work at all. Some blame injuries, some blame the goalies, all I know was about mid-November the Stars were in OT and the other team scored in less than a minute to end the game. And you knew it was bad when the whole crowd groaned before the opposing team crossed the blue line. The Stars were struggling and everyone knew it. Stars fans are very supportive and it took them a long time to give up on the season, but you could tell they were only hoping by this point in the season.

 And then someone asked me, what is the Mavs plan. I can get excited he said if I knew the plan. So, I gave him this one. Dirk doesn’t start every game. In fact, there may be a few different starting line ups based on who the Mavs are playing. And in my plan, this is not a bad thing. The general starting lineup will probably be Nerlens, Dirk, Harrison, Wesley, and Dennis. Yet this is not set in stone and in my plan, don’t expect it to be. Other potential starting line ups can be Nerlens, Harrison, Finney-Smith, Wesley, and Dennis; or Nerlens, Harrison, Wesley, Curry, Dennis; or Dirk, Harrison Finney-Smith, Curry, Dennis.

 And then bench options are still great, imagine Dirk and JJ coming off the bench. You could have a ten-point run in three minutes realistically against many opposing benches. Quite frankly not starting Dirk some, keeping him limited to about 20 minutes many games allows him to play more games, rest a few and he can manage his health through the season.  You could start Nerlens, Harrison, Wesley, Curry, and Dennis and play them a full 8 minutes to start the game. Completely switch out the team and have Dirk, Finney-Smith, Devin Harris, JJ and Yogi come on for 4-5 minutes. Your starters stay even with most other teams’ starters and your bench outscores teams 40-20 throughout the game very easily.  You cannot do this every game, but there will be many opportunities throughout the season. And for the last five minutes of the game you basically pick and choose the hot hands for the game. So, Dirk could be well rested for end of game or you have any of Curry, Barnes, Yogi, Smith, Jr, Wesley with Nerlens and Finney-Smith playing full speed to close out games.  I do not think they will win the West, yet they can win their fair share.

 And speaking of the West, I am of the opinion there are going to be some disappointed fans after all the moves made over the summer. There is going to be some major changes in playoff order this year. Obviously, Utah is going to be hurt by the loss of Gordon. The Clippers will probably slip significantly and I do not think it will be Beverly’s fault. In fact, he may be who holds them together. Blake is just too much of a sore loser and hot head to be a team leader. DeAndre will still be a beast, but he cannot lead a team by himself. He will play well, everything will be different though.

 The Spurs are going to struggle. They will win 50+ because of KL, yet after him there is a drop off now. Pop is still a great coach, but age on that team is going to show and with half the West younger and developing some teams will just outplay the Spurs.

 Houston and OKC are the real wild cards and here is where the fans might be disappointed. Either team can have monster year or have a monstrous let down.  This will be interesting.

 Minnesota is the real wild card. They have an interesting make up and it wouldn’t take much for them to take two or three steps forward from last year. Denver, New Orleans, and Sacramento will be interesting to see if something pans out. Mavericks probably fall into this category.

 Outside of GS, the rest of the West is wide open. Spots 2-4 will probably be Spurs, Rockets, and Thunder, with no guarantees. The race for places 5-10 will be very fun to watch with the 9 and 10 teams just missing the playoffs and may go to place 12 being close.

 As for the East, both Boston and/or Washington can beat the Cavs this year. And this isn’t because of IT’s hip injury. Boston and Washington are getting better with experience and Cleveland has had a run because of weaker competition. LeBron is older and he needed Kyrie. Yes, he made Kyrie better, but he needed him.  LeBron’s age is going to show this year and there is no one who can run the team for extended minutes without him. One nagging injury and Cleveland could drop fast until he gets better or gets help.

 And back to the Cowboys. They have a good chance of making the playoffs, however, the NFC East is going to be tough. Not too many teams are going to want to head East so to speak this year. The Cowboys may win it or be the wild card, but they should make the playoffs. The real question is can they become as good as Atlanta last year. There is some if to that question.

 Fall is fast approaching here in North Texas as we enjoyed cooler air (mid 80’s is cooler for us) so get excited, pigskins are flying everywhere over the skies of the USA.

 Finally, prayers and anything else we can send to large portions of the country is needed. Houston is an ongoing disaster, yet The Caribbean and Florida, Georgia or South Carolina may not have it any better. This country needs to rethink much of who we are as a people and how we govern ourselves so we can better plan to manage natural disasters. There are also major fires out west. This is a very rough year and let us hope we can learn something. We must start treating these events like the military prepares for battle. Long term strategies must be developed. For now, let’s do our best to send what we can to help the people affected in these terrible calamities.  For certain areas of our country it will be years before the cities are rebuilt. For example, see New Orleans and Katrina. Hopefully we will learn better this time.

 There is a story running around in my head and more will come. We have been away for a bit so just now getting back into the swing of things.  And is it just my work mates and myself or are many of you ready to quit ATT? Or the whole cable territorial monopolies in general? Too much control over us, the customers, who keep them in business. We need better options.