This game was most definitely a game of two halves. The Patriots outscored the Ravens in the first half, but the second half looked like a game between two completely different teams. Another bunch of guys showed up wearing Ravens uniforms, and dominated on offense, scoring 28 unanswered points. A different bunch of guys showed up in Patriots uniforms, and looked (to use the old Led Zeppelin tune name) totally dazed and confused. Once the Ravens began throwing the ball down the field, the Patriots looked like a team with no secondary worth a damn. Losing Aqib Talib in the first half did not help, but Joe Flacco and his offense shredded the Patriots defense in the second half. However, at the same time, the Patriots could not score enough additional points on their possessions in the second half to even make the game close. They seemed to lose the ability to move the ball down to the red zone, and then to come away with points.
Not scoring enough points in big games is becoming a fundamental issue for the Patriots. The main reason they lost against the Giants, as Bill Belichick pointed out afterwards, is that they only scored 14 points, and that is never going to be enough to win a Superbowl, no matter how good your defense is.
Talking of Bill Belichick...most of the column inches about him today are devoted to his decision to blow off the post-game interview with CBS. Instead another Patriots player came out in this place, and was suitably gracious in defeat.
The failure to talk to CBS, plus some grouchy responses at his official press conference, displayed Bill Belichick, horse's ass, to the world once more.
I find this aspect of Belichick's behaviour difficult to understand. As my old man used to say, good manners cost nothing. Belichick is actually one of the most measured and polite of coaches when talking about the opposition in public. He is always careful to praise opposing teams and players, and I cannot ever remember him straying remotely near anything that might be construed as trash talk. In fact the Patriots as an organization seem to have a focus on letting their play do the talking, period. Yet, when put in front of a roomful of journalists, Belichick always seems to inhabit the zone between indifference and flippancy, his facial expressions alternating between boredom and contempt. He doesn't have to do that. It would not take much effort for him to, actually, you know, smile once in a while, and, while being careful not to give anything away, to answer a question without contriving to give the impression that he considers it to be a waste of his time. I have to conclude that he considers the effort a waste of his time. This is a pity, since for many people, he is the face of the franchise. Players come and go, but he has been there a long time, and looks like he will be there a while yet. Yet, every time he blows off a press conference, or shoots a look of withering contempt at a journalist, he undermines the image of the New England Patriots.

A lady friend of ours is now a very angry person, courtesy of Spirit Airlines. Spirit cancelled her daughter's reservation on a flight from DFW to Chicago, claiming that she had arrived at the gate too late.
I went off to consult with the Spirit Airlines Conditions of Carriage. Here is the relevant verbiage:

1.3. Check-In
1.3.1. Check-in begins three (3) hours prior to departure at the Spirit airport ticket
counter or may occur within 24 hours prior to flight departure if eligible for online check-in. Beginning January 24, 2012, customers who choose to have their boarding pass printed by an agent at the airport will be charged a fee at
certain airport locations.
1.3.2. Spirit reserves the right to cancel the reservation or seat assignment of any customer who does not have a boarding pass at least 30 minutes prior to scheduled or posted departure; 45 minutes for Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas/ Ft.
Worth, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Orlando, San Juan; and 60 minutes for all International and U.S.V.I. flights except for Aruba, Armenia, Bogota, Cancun, Medellin, Managua, Panama, San Jose, St. Thomas, U.S.V.I and
St. Maarten which require to check-in 60 minutes prior to scheduled departure time.
1.3.3. Customers wanting to check baggage are required to do so at the ticket counter at least 30 minutes prior to scheduled or posted departure; 45 minutes for Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas/ Ft. Worth, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Los
Angeles, Orlando, San Juan; and 60 minutes for all international and U.S.V.I. flights.

My friend's daughter arrived at the gate with hand baggage 45 minutes in advance, but the gate agent claimed that she arrived 44 minutes before scheduled departure time.
This is the first set of conditions of carriage that I have seen that mentions a 45 minute rule for domestic flights, and which also threatens to cancel reservations.
The daughter is now booked on US Airways for tomorrow. Spirit has lost a customer for ever. Not only that, but they have shown enough to never get any of our business. There is an old saying "rules are for interpretation by the wise, and slavish observance by the foolish". The way that Spirit Airlines behaved today shows which category they belong in. I personally have a deep aversion to giving money to fools.

Having read a lot of transcript of the first part of the Oprah interview, here are my quick thoughts:

1. Lance was pretty candid that he used PEDs for all of his career right at the beginning. No weasel words there.
2. Like just about everybody else in the sport who has been prepared to talk about PED usage, he insists that "the culture" of the sport forced him to take PEDs to be competitive, yet he does not want to point at any other competitors. The wall of silence is not yet broken, at least for him.

This is an analysis of the interview from VeloNews. As the analysis shows, there are still a number of things that Lance does not want to talk about, possibly for legal/financial reasons. He is still trying to control the water flow, even though the dam has broken. This shows me that Lance Armstrong has not yet undergone an epiphany, the realization that his old behavior patterns have harmed himself and others, and that he needs to drastically modify his behavior to avoid future issues. He is still being Lance Armstrong The Controller, seeking to maintain some semblance of a charade that he is a Good Guy.
The reasons why Lance was able to maintain the charade are partly to do with his personality (a classic obsessive competitor with NPD), but had a lot to do with the broader public impact of his life narrative and his consequent ability to bring money into the sport. As the old saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats, and his impact on professional cycling in the 2000s was probably equivalent to that of Tiger Woods in golf. While his fellow competitors might have grumbled privately about his undetected PED use, and been frustrated at not winning when he was around, they probably appreciated the trickle-down impact of the additional revenues and prize money.
The charade extended to most of the media, who went along with it in return for "access" to Lance and his inner circle, and the ability to share in the excitement and mutual support of participating in the Lance Armstrong Brand. Journalistic mea culpas are already part of the fallout of Lance's admissions.
Right now, my considered opinion is that the only way that professional cycling can escape from the PED mess is for a Truth Commission to be convened, where everybody can talk openly about the use of PEDS now and in the past. It is my fear that just about every Tour de France winner of the last 30 years was using PEDs at the time of their wins, and the only question left is who is going to admit it for the good of the future of the sport, or who wants to be a stonewalling holdout.
At this time, no large corporation is going to sponsor a top-flight cycling team. The negatives would outweigh the positives. A number of long-term sponsors have already left the sport, and it would not surprise me if more leave, especially if more riders are either exposed by Lance, or decide to talk openly about past PED use. The only way that the sport can be saved for the future is for a process of catharsis to occur. It will be painful and ugly, but the alternative is that professional cycling as we know it today may collapse to where it was in the 1970's, comprising just the Tour de France and a small number of warmup events, with only a handful of top riders actually making a proper living from the sport.
It is also clear to me that the UCI, and particularly Pat McQuaid, is toast. McQuaid has no credibility left, and I am amazed that the UCI continues to support him. The only correct answer is to dynamite the UCI and start over.
As for the Lance Mess, most of the cure for that rests with Lance Armstrong. The verdict so far on his interviews is Too Little Too Late. He is going to have to do a lot more confessing, apologizing and (dare I say it) groveling if he is to have any chance of rehabilitating both his personal life and public image.
Finally, there is the beginnings of a backlash against Paul Kimmage, one of two journalists (David Walsh being the other) who persistently and consistently argued that Armstrong was doping during his peal winning years. They were mostly shunned, excluded and harshly criticized at the time, and Kimmage may have lost his journlism job because of his refusal to parrot the consensus narrative. Frankly, any journalist or sports leader in cycling who was involved in the sport during the Armstrong Years and is now complaining about Paul Kimmage or David Walsh needs to understand one thing. They have no credibility on this issue. Zip, nada. Therefore, they need to shut up before they dig themselves even further into a hole of stupid, bloviating hypocrtical irrelevance.

The Obama administration has published its list of proposals following the Sandy Hook tragedy.
As I feared, a lot of the proposals, while sounding plausible, are not likely to address some fundamental challenges. They tend to read like typical "something must be done so we're doing it" responses. This is a fairly common trap that societies fall into whenever they are touched by tragedy or disaster. Some of the solutions that are rapidly implemented either fail to address underlying causes, or follow the Law Of Unintended Consequences (think: PATRIOT Act). Jim Wright has written extensively about some of the underlying societal challenges in his "Bang Bang Crazy" series of articles.
However, the reactions to the proposals from some ideological opponents are also below risible. The statement by the NRA that what is neeed in response is "The Fight Of The Century" is hyperbolic wankery. This is a political and societal policy debate, not a war. The NRA needs to grow up, or they will complete their marginalization sooner than they think. There are 100+ million gun owners in the USA, yet by even the most generous estimates, they have 4.5 million members. They represent only a small minority of firearms owners.
Rick Perry's statement is also pure political grandstanding and wankery. This suggestion that more prayer or religion would help is, like most of the words that leave his office, merely an exercise in pandering to religious certitude that when all else fails, prayer will somehow help (I seem to recall him suggesting the same to combat drought. How did that work out Rick?) The press release reads like a tour of GOP boogeyman checklists. (Mention "liberals"- check. Mention "left-leaning media"? - check. etc. etc.)
There is plenty of room for a serious considered debate about what might work as a response to Sandy Hook, but horseshit like this doesn't cut it.

Latest status here. There are still 2 head coaching vacancies, at franchises that would be regarded as level 2.
The strange thing is that there are a large number of former NFL head coaches out there who presumably are still of employable age, yet most of them are working in television and/or on their golf handicaps. Increasingly, a lot of former NFL head coaches seem to have no intention or interest in doing the job again. Here is a quick off the top of my head list of former head coaches who are currently sitting out, playing golf and/or working in media:

Brian Billick
Bill Cowher
Tony Dungy
Dennis Green
Jon Gruden
Jim Fassel
Mike Holmgren
Steve Mariucci
Eric Mangini
Jimmy Johnson
Herm Edwards
Mike Martz

That none of the above seem to be publicly interested in a return to the NFL suggests that the job of NFL head coach is one that many of them found to be insufficiently compelling, despite the large financial rewards and prestige. It also seems that Jon Gruden has not attracted any serious interest, despite him being the youngest of the potentially available coaches.
NFL teams have a disturbing tendency to go for the latest bright shiny object in coaching, and coaches and co-ordinators tied to currently successful programs will always have the phone ringing come hiring time. This approach does not work too well a lot of the time, since from the outside it is often difficult to determine the underlying contributors to the success of a coaching and personnel program. In the past 5 years, Notre Dame, Kansas City, the New York Jets, Cleveland Browns and the Denver Broncos have all found out that hiring members of the Patriots "brain trust" did not lead to any sustained success. Whatever the real method and leadership approach is that operates within the New England Patriots, it is likely that it is more based on process than personalities, the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts, and plucking individuals from the operation and expecting them to be successful elsewhere was way too optimistic an approach.
There is also the reality that many lower-level coaches and co-ordinators do not have the correct personality and approach to ever be successful head coaches. In the early 1990's, Norv Turner and Dave Wannstedt both became NFL head coaches on the back of the success they enjoyed with the Dallas Cowboys as co-ordinators. Based on their records since, I would submit that neither of them is really a top-flight NFL head coach. We then got to see the same phenomenon unfold at the Cowboys as Jerry Jones, after splitting with Jimmy Johnson and winning one final Superbowl under Barry Switzer with Johnson's team, proceeded to promote his assistants to Head Coach one after another, only to discover that there was a good reason that no other teams had previously hired them away to be head coaches.
There is also the phenomenon that some people interview better than they perform and vice versa (in playing terms, think Tim Tebow vs. Kyle Orton at Denver in 2011 - Orton practised better than he played, Tebow was the reverse). Gregg Williams apparently wowed his way into the Buffalo Bills as their head coach largely on the strength of his job interview, yet that did not translate to success in his new role, and he has been a defensive co-ordinator since, up until the bounty scandal made him radioactive.
Aside from the Eagles hiring Chip Kelly, the most intriguing hire is that of Mark Trestman by the Chicago Bears. 15 years ago, Trestman was regarded as one of the great offensive gurus in the NFL, yet for unknown reasons, he fell off the radar for head coaching opportunities, and ended up moving to the CFL, where he has been highly successful. As this article explains, the lack of NFL interest might have something to do with his demeanour, rather than his methods. Every QB who ever worked with Trestman has, almost without exception, raved about his abilities, so Jay Cutler must be quite happy about now.
At present, neither the Arizona Cardinals or the Jacksonville Jaguars have hired a new head coach. It is likely, that with "no interviews" windows in place for some co-ordinators, that those teams will not finalize their head coaches until close to the Superbowl, which will leave them short of time to perform pre-draft evaluations and planning.
It is also likely that in 3 seasons from now, half of these newly hired coaches will have been fired, and this process will be starting over again. As Kurt Warner once said, NFL really stands for Not For Long.
In the NFL there are only two types of coaches; those who have been fired, and those who will be fired.
UPDATE - In a stunning reversal, it is being reported that Chip Kelly will become the head coach of the Eagles after all. And, a dysfunctional deck-shuffling is unfolding in Dallas, as coaches leave the Cowboys. I sense the interfering hand of Jerry Jones in all of this, and it will not end well. The current process is looking more and more like an exercise in scapegoating to cover up the deficiencies of both Jerry Jones and Jason Garrett. If it continues, it is going to leave Jason Garrett looking like a "lame duck" coach, in the same category as Dave Campo and Chan Gailey, since people inside and outside the organization will conclude that Garrett is no longer in commmand as the Head Coach, and is merely taking orders from the owner. It is also destroying continuity in coaching, which is an important success factor for teams in the NFL. Monte Kiffin, excellent coach though he may be, will be the third defensive co-ordinator for the Cowboys in 3 seasons.
If I was Jason Garrett, I would be looking at the head coaching vacancies right about now...

Below is a list of my political and charitable donations for 2012.

Gary Johnson for President
Planned Parenthood (twice)
Patrick Murphy for Congress
The Fogbow
Dimeadozen.org
Paul Kimmage Defense Fund

Some notes of explanation follow:

I donated to Gary Johnson because, as a libertarian (with a small l) I have little use for either of the established political parties. Both of them are essential statist. They exist to perpetuate dysfunctional government. This is a function of the compromises necessary to win countrywide elective office in the USA, allied to a surplus of low-information voters, the narcolepsy of the mass media, and the money required to run electoral campaigns, which results in many caampaigns being financed by wealthy individuals or single-issue groups. The parties currently have a comfortable duopoly, and if We The People want better government (which we certainly seem to do, given the consistently low poll ratings enjoyed by representative bodies in the modern USA) then electors must be prepared to move away from the duopoly. We get the politicians we vote for, and collectively we tend to vote for a collection of weirdos, oddballs and second-raters whose main appeal is to emotions and transient pocketbook issues. Lost in the wash are wider considerations of freedoms, governance and what sort of country the USA should be when it grows up.
Currently, every time a Republican politician or legislative body tries to defund, marginalize or discriminate against Planned Parenthood, I donate money to them. This started when the Susan G. Komen foundation tried to remove PP from their list of favored organizations. I am anti-abortion but pro-choice, and I see the animus against PP as nothing more than mean-spirited censorious asshattery, which I will punish with my checkbook.
I donated to Patrick Murphy because, of all of the GOP House of Representative members, I regarded Allen West as the most egregiously inflammatory, mean-spirited and unconstructive. His attempts at McCarthyite shit-stirring when he claimed that the Democratic Black Caucus was a Communist organization were, on one level, utterly risible and unworthy of serious attention, but on another level, the fact that he could make those accusations with a straight face and not be laughed off-set was an uncomfortable reminder that collectively many people in this country have learned nothing from the McCarthy era. His refusal to concede following his electoral defeat further cemented his general buffoonery and mean-spiritidness.
The Fogbow is a "birther" debunker and discussion site. According to Orly Taitz, it is of course funded either by the Democratic Cabal or George Soros, and the members of the FogBow (which I guess includes me, since I have an account there) are brainwashed Obots who conspire constantly to undermine The Truth About Obama for financial gain. To which I guess I have to ask: where's my check then? And can I please have my donation back, since they are clearly swimming in ca$h...
Dimeadozen.org is a music sharing site, one of the places where I find great music that for a number of reasons, has never been officially released. No, this is not a bootleg site, nor is it like the PirateBay, which deals in pirated released content. I do not deal in either of those types of content. Artists should be paid for their IP, just like you or I should be paid for our work.
Paul Kimmage is a former professional cyclist turned journalist who fell foul of the Wrath Of Lance Armstrong because, unlike most media members, he refused to go along with the established narrative that Armstrong was a valiant cancer survivor who won 7 Tours de France by his own efforts, unaided by PEDs. Kimmage, like a number of people who refused to accept that narrative, was punished by Armstrong, his team, and cycling authorities anxious to not derail the Lance Armstrong gravy train, to the extent that he eventually lost his journalism job, and was then threatened with a lawsuit by the UCI. The defense fund raised nearly $100k to help with his defense against the lawsuit, which has now been suspended following Armstrong's effective admissions that he used PEDs. Kimmage has now filed a criminal complaint against the UCI with the European Union, alleging that they covered up Armstrong's PED use, as shown by occasional positive test results.

One of the enduring mysteries to me in the modern NFL is the number of teams who either have no useful or capable backup quarterback (think Indianapolis Colts in the Peyton Manning era), and/or who have a backup quarterback who has not taken a single snap in the regular season.
In the case of the Minnesota Vikings, the latter problem came back and bit them in the behind today, as they were forced to play Joe Webb, who has not taken a single snap in the regular season, against the Green Bay Packers, after Christian Ponder was declared inactive with an arm injury.
We were therefore treated to the sight of a team attempting to win in the NFL playoffs by running the football or via quarterback play-action, with the occasional (mostly failed) pass attempt to keep the defense honest.
The Vikings, lacking any semblance of a passing game, were mostly handing the ball off to Peterson and hoping for him to be able to break through. Great player though he has been this season, not even Adrian Peterson can win a game single-handedly against a tough team like the Packers.
By midway through the third quarter, it was a men-against-boys contest, as the Green Bay Packers shut down the Vikings' attempts at play action from Webb, and held Adrian Peterson to a low enough total of rushing yards, with no big gains or touchdowns from him. Meanwhile the Packers scored enough times on their possessions to slowly, inexorably dig the Vikings into a hole.
The normal reaction of a team that is behind in the second half of a game is to abandon the run game and start throwing the ball. In this game, the Vikings really had no passing game to turn to, so they continued to try to run the ball.
The low-point came at the end of the third quarter, when the Vikings, having stopped the Packers in field goal range, proceeded to commit a bone-head foul as the Packers attempted the field goal, thus handing the Packers a new set of downs. This gift was gleefully accepted by the Packers, who promptly scored a TD to go up 24-3. The sole Vikings TD in the fourth quarter came long after most people had written "game over" in their notebooks, via what seemed to be a blown coverage by the Packers.
To be fair to Joe Webb, the Vikings do not have a great group of receivers, a roster problem that has to be fixed for next season. He also probably had two practices to re-establish any sort of rapport with the recievers.
However, the fundamental lack of game time for Webb all season remains an underlying contributor to this defeat. I fail to understand the reluctance of NFL coaches to give their backups any significant playing time in the regular season. If quarterback is really the single most important position on the roster, then it should have proper backup depth also.

For 2013, the technical regulations do not change much from 2012, since this is the last year of the current frozen V8 engine formula.
In 2014, every team will have to change to a new turbocharged V6 powerplant, and the technical regulation changes are significant. Any 2014 car will therefore have very limited carry-over from 2013. 2013 will therefore be a more expensive year for any team with pretensions to good performance in 2014, as they will need to design a truly new car around a new engine package. Ferrari has already announced that they are forming two parallel design teams with immediate effect; one team to complete the design and management of the 2013 car, and a team to focus 100% on the design of their 2014 car.
There are rumors that several teams (Force India being one team) are looking to change engine suppliers in 2014, but they are trying to conclude deals now, in order to maximize the amount of time that their design teams will have to design the completely new car for 2014.
From 2014, team engine costs will rise for all customer teams, as engine suppliers look to recover the R&D costs of their new engine packages. The current $6-8m a year cost for a customer team looks to rise to anything up to $14-15m in 2014. This is a significant challenge for less well-funded teams. The failure of the RRA initiative has led to a ramp-up of spending across the board in the last 2 years. Mercedes (nee Brawn GP) downsized expecting all teams to follow the RRA rules, but Red Bull and Ferrari did not, so now Mercedes has been forced to upsize its organization to compete.

Ferrari
Fully funded until Ferrari and Fiat pulls the plug.
Awkward: Santander is paying a lot of money as long as Fernando Alonso remains with the team, but this is a "vanity" sponsorship, the Santander CEO is a motor racing fanatic. If he retires or disappears, the Santander money may disappear quickly.
2013 - Alonso and Massa continue as a pair. Massa's main challenge has been learning how to get the best use out of the Pirelli tires. This may or may not be a problem for him in 2013, since Pirelli is changing it's tire construction for 2013, which is actually leading to an increase in car minimum weight.
2014 - Alonso for sure, but whether Massa will continue is open. Rumors persist that Sebastian Vettel has some sort of memorandum of understanding to join Ferrari in the future.

McLaren
Fully funded, stable leadership. Jenson Button now gets to show his mettle as a team leader for the first time since 2009.
Awkward: question marks remain over the future levels of committment from Vodafone.
2013 - The team's cost base rises by at least $8m with the change in their engine supply arrangement with Mercedes. McLaren has to pay for its engines from 2013 onwards. Sergio Perez replaces Lewis Hamilton.
2014 - The one-time cost of a new car/engine solution.

Mercedes
Mercedes is all in on the F1 program. They have a massive stable of engineering leaders, they signed Lewis Hamilton to a 3 year contract from 2013, and Mercedes bought back the 40% stake that had previously been sold to Aabar. Mercedes has retired Norbert Haug and taken on Niki Lauda as a bridge between the race team and Mercedes HQ.
2013 - A new lead driver in Lewis Hamilton. Mercedes expecting all-season competitiveness
2014 - A championship challenge expected.
If a championship is not obtained by 2015, I expect heads to roll and Mercedes to revert to a pure engine supply role.

Force India
Two owners flirting with financial disaster, a driver leaving for Sauber, big promises of investment by an owner whose airline business is all but bankrupt...Force India has some challenges for 2013 and beyond.
2013 - Paul Di Resta, second driver between Jules Bianchi (possibly as part of a Ferrari engine deal for 2014 and beyond) and Adrian Sutil
2014 - Who knows?

Red Bull
Secure until the time when Deitrich Mateschitz decides that F1 no longer supports the brand's marketing goals. Red Bull outspends every other team at present, but has the championships to justify it.
2013 - Sebastian Vettel, Mark Webber

Lotus
Winners again this season, but big question marks remain over funding and ownership. Genii Capital is rumored to be looking to sell a significant stake in the team, but it is difficult to see who would want to take on 49% of a $100+m budget in the current climate.
2013 - Kimi Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean confirmed

Sauber
Effective on a small budget in 2012. Losing Sergio Perez to McLaren at the end of the season, Esteban Gutierrez is replacing him, which would keep the Mexican sponsors happy in 2013 and beyond. Nico Hulkenberg signed as lead driver in 2013 and beyond. Kamui Kobayashi is out of a drive in F1 in 2013.
2013 - Esteban Gutierrez, Nico Hulkenberg

Toro Rosso
Majority owned by Red Bull (with 40% believed to be owned by Aabar), who would probably sell their stake in a heartbeat for the right price. Owning Toro Rosso would have made sense in a true customer car era, when Red Bull could use the same basic car design for 2 teams, but the cessation of the customer car transition in 2009 forced Red Bull to invest a lot of money in manufacturing capability for Toro Rosso to be able to built its own chassis and major parts once more.
Difficult to see why Red Bull would continue to own this team, other than as the incubation academy for the Red Bull driver program, but the program has little to show so far, with only Sebastian Vettel a success (and he was never truly a Red Bull junior driver, Red Bull captured him from under the noses of BMW in 2009). Both 2013 drivers will be under pressure to show good results or go the way of the likes of Brendon Hartley.
2013 - Daniel Ricciardo and Jean Eric Vergne

Williams
A venerable team that roared back this year thanks to the partnership with Renault, a much better car and a win in Spain. The Renault partnership will continue into 2014, so Williams will be well set for the new turbo era. Still looking for a consistent driver, they have promoted Valtteri Bottas to a race seat, replacing Bruno Senna, hoping for more consistent race day performances from both him and Pastor Maldonado. Right now, Williams cannot do without the PDVSA money, but another good season with one or two victories will increase their chances of landing a major sponsor to allow them to hire top-flight driver talent again.
2013 - Pastor Maldonado, Valtteri Bottas

Caterham
A team that is failing to move up the grid, despite a healthy budget and design team. Their need for money is shown by rumors that they will replace Heikki Kovalainen with a pay driver in 2013. This is one of only two open seats in F1 at present, so Caterham has several pay drivers to choose from, including Vitaly Petrov and (possibly) Bruno Senna.
2013 - TBD

Marussia
A money pit (over $100m spent in 2012 alone) with little to show thus far after a painful transition in 2011 from a design process entirely based around CFD to one using both CFD and aero modeling. Unclear who they will use as an engine supplier from 2014 onwards, with Cosworth unlikely to continue due to a lack of customers.
2014 - Timo Glock, Max Chilton

HRT
The team has ceased to exist. Current owners Thesan Capital pulled the plug on the team in December 2012. The team had little in the way of assets, since most of its infrastructure was rented or leased. It did not have the ability to manufacture its own chassis for example. Other teams would be available (see Toro Rosso) that would be far better equipped.

The recent passing of Tony Greig, a natural leader of men who played a significant part in the creation of World Series Cricket in the 1970's, attracted much comment about the man himself, and his sometimes fractured relationships with the English cricket establishment. Born in South Africa with an accent to match, qualified for England only by virtue of his Scottish father, tall, commanding and charismatic, Greig was probably always going to be an iconoclast in many people's eyes, but his determination that players should be better rewarded for their work led him to eventually become the "go to" guy for World Series Cricket in the UK, where he worked to recruit players for the World XI team. Later in life he moved to Australia, where his genial nature, enthusiasm for the game and iconoclasm were embraced, and he could forget his bruising collisions with the English cricket establishment.
Lost in many of the the generous tributes was any detailed examination of the significance of World Series Cricket, in terms of the financial opportunities that it gave to leading cricketers of the era. It allowed several South African cricketers to appear on an international stage, from which they were disqualified due to the isolation of South Africa over its apartheid social policies. However, the back story (not generally talked about) was that even english cricketers playing for their country were appallingly badly paid. I remember watching a tv interview with Alan Knott, the incumbent English wicketkeeper, a fine all round player, where he revealed that he was signing on as unemployed during the winter in the UK, since he had no other source of income apart from his county salary and the limited amount of money that he earned playing for England. At the time, cricketers had next to no commercial opportunities in terms of sponsorship deals in the UK. Some of them were given benefits in kind by supporters of their county clubs, such as cars, but in general, they were treated as indentured servants, with pay scales to match. The one mechanism that they could use to make serious one-time money was a "benefit season", a peculiarly English process whereby a player, once during his career, could participate in a number of activities, the profits of which went entirely into his bank account. This odd convention, financially welcome though it was, remained a painful reminder of indentured servitude, since the benefit rules required a player to have played for a county for at least 10 years, reinforcing the life servitude nature of the relationship between player and county.
World Series Cricket, artificial though it might have been in many of its features, offered players sums of money in their playing careers that they would never have been able to earn while playing for county and regional teams in their own countries.
It is important to note that, like Henry VIII's creation of the Church of England, World Series Cricket was not set up as a financial boondoggle for players. Kerry Packer had been rebuffed in his bids for television rights to cricket in Australia, despite offering many times more money than the incumbent network ABC. There was an element of tilting at establishment windmills in many of Packer's actions. The final cost of WSC has never been revealed, but it probably did not make any money back on Packer's original investment.
WSC did make a number of cricketers much more financially comfortable than they would otherwise have been. However, there was not exactly a quantum jump in cricketer remuneration, at least not in the short term. The publicity for the 1980 Australian cricket team tour of the UK trumpeted their record tour pay - just under $5000 australian dollars per player, which sounded like chicken feed even in 1980 for top-flight professional sportsmen. The real changes came in the 1980's and 1990's, with a massive jump in television revenues, driven by a surge of interest in cricket in India and Pakistan, fuelling significant increases in the salaries of cricketers, along with personal sponsorship and commercial endorsement opportunities in their home countries. Cricketers today are much better paid in real terms than they were in the past, even though their salaries still pale into insignificance when compared with top-flight practitioners in other professional sports.
Every professional sport reaches a point of inflection where the athletes and practitioners eventually start to be properly rewarded for their efforts. Tony Greig was not entirely responsible for the positive change, but he helped to start a trend towards a more equitable relationship between professional cricketers and their employers, beginning a trend that has led to them ceasing to be treated as indentured servants and more as important athletes.

...an agreement has been signed to convert part of the Naval Air Facility at Adak into an oil and gas exploration logistics support base.
In addition, more work is to be done to determine if it is possible to generate more of the island's electricity using hydropower. The current diesel power generation infrastucture is expensive to run, resulting in large electricity bills for many poorer residents.
Online Adak newspaper, The Adak Smack, covering just about all things Adak.
After a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, Alaska Air will continue to fly to and from Adak using Boeing 737 jets, with a subsidy from the EAS (Essential Air Service) Federal government program.