As the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy dissipates, I am having to wade through a blizzard of postings on Facebook by people on my friends list about the aftermath.
Some of the postings are supportive of gun control, with arguments and supporting documents and cites. Some are against gun control, with arguments and supporting documents and cites. I agree with some of the material, I disagree with some of it. The people in question are expressing their viewpoints, which is as it should be.
However, a distressingly large percentage of the postings fall into neither of the above categories. They consist of a slogan poster culled from somewhere else on the internet, accompanied by a short message that translated, equates to "Yeah!" or "Right On".
Some of the slogans fall into the category of what I term "Love or Leave", binary and pugnacious exhortations.
What unites this large percentage of postings is:
- No attempt to construct any sort of argument
- No attempt to engage anybody else in discussion or debate about root causes, possible solutions and ideal solutions

I have attempted to engage some of the posters, but, based on the level of non-responses to date, I am coming around to the conclusion that the postings represent venting.
There is not going to be any useful evolution of public policy in the USA after Sandy Hook without a good deal of informed debate and discussion. History shows us that knee-jerk actions tend to result in unintended (and often dangerous) consequences. No matter which side you are on, the persistence of public and semi-public multiple shooting incidents is unacceptable (or ought to be unacceptable), so solutions need to be discussed, debated and implemented.
Posting slogans is no substitute for the debate that we should be having.

For some time, it has been possible, using mathematical models, to compute whether an isotope of an element should be stable, or subject to decay. This is one of the advances in science since I left high school.
As a result, in recent years, it has been discovered that two isotopes formerly throught to be stable are in fact unstable. However, they have such enormously long half-lives that until recently it was not even possible to detect decay in samples of those isotopes, since it would take a significant period of time to detect even a single decay event, and measurement technology was unable to detect such an event given all of the other background radiation and events that normally occur in nature.
Thanks to advances in technology, we know now that Bismuth-209 and Tellurium-128 are in fact not stable isotopes. However, for all practical purposes they are. The half-life of Bismuth-208 is 1.9×10¹⁹ years, and the half-life of Tellurium-128 is an even more mind-boggling 2.2×10²⁴ years.
As this article makes clear, it is possible that further technology advances will make it possible for us to observe radioactive decay in some isotopes previously classed as stable. However, a large number of isotopes, using existing predictive models, do not have any possible decay modes.

On this most unique of days, a round-up of stuff that has caught my eye over the last week or so:

1. Copyright shakedown agents Part 2- Getty Images
Some time ago, a corporation named RightHaven appeared in the news for it's persistent and blatant attempts at extorting money from users of copyrighted material, even when that usage fell within the boundaries of Fair Use as allowed by most copyright law. After a number of failed legal actions, RightHaven was counter-sued and finally put out of business in January 2012.
There now appears to be an (un)worthy successor to RightHaven in the form of Getty Images. For the last 6 years, the company has been sending vaguely threatening letters to people it deems to have used its copyrighted images without permission or attribution. The letters make vague allegations and demand significant payments to Getty as compensation by the recipients for violation of copyright and licensing rules.
As Ken at Popehat is fond of saying, vagueness in legal letters is usually the hallmark of bullying and thuggery. The letters from Getty or its legal agents certainly fall into that category. The main thing I notice is a total lack of supporting detail as to whether Getty actually owns the copyrights for the images it is citing in the letters. In fact, in at least one case, there is clear doubt about their ownership, and in other cases they have failed to provide compelling evidence of ownership despite being asked to do so.
The sheer number of letters of this type that have been sent by Getty or its legal agents has led to a plethora of internet forums devoted to discussion of these activities.
It seems to me that Getty Images is joining RightHaven in the pantheon of copyright bullies. They had better make sure that they do not end up in the same place as RightHaven, the legal end-game of that corporation is well-advanced, although, like trolls in all of literature, it hasn't quite drawn it's last breath...yet.

2. Charlie Crist joins the Democratic Party
Always the mark of a true opportunist. However, I am hoping that the Democratic party declines to support any run for elective office by Crist as a Democratic Party member, until he finally admits what is blatantly obvious even to me (me, with a limited gaydar), namely, that he is a gay American. His marriage to a well-connected Florida lady proves nothing about his sexuality, given the track record of many prominent Americans for finding "beards" (see Hudson, Rock). However, it does convince me that he is a deeply closeted person living a public life that is shot through with artifice. While I tend to be suspicious of reading too much into images, this picture of Crist taking questions from reporters at his wedding, with his wife looking totally disconnected, offers a profound visual story. The ever-present fake perma-tan on Crist is merely the icing on this cake of deception. (I decided a long time ago that I would be very wary of taking any person seriously if they either have a comb-over or a permanent fake tan, since I regard both of these stylings as affectations, pure artifice).

3. World War II - Norwegian resistance and the drive to prevent Germany from building a Fission Bomb
In the middle of World War II, fears that Germany was working on an atomic bomb program were stoked by the discovery that Germany was building a heavy water concentration plant in Norway. Using cheap hydro-electricity and other engineering concepts pioneered by Norsk Hydro, a plant had been constructed near Telemark for fertilizer production, which produced heavy water as a by-product. (Heavy water, the oxide of Deuterium, was regarded at the time as highly usable in nuclear reactors as a moderator, because of its much larger neutron cross-section).
Fearful that the Germans might be able to make enough heavy water to start operating a nuclear reactor, the order went out to destroy the concentration plant. After one failed attempt, a second attempt was mounted by a combined Norwegian and British team in February 1943. Birger Stromsheim, who died last week at the great age of 101, was one of the members of the team. RIP Birger.

4. The strange case of Sen. Rand Paul's opthalmology certification
In which Rand Paul, while still practising medicine, apparently set up a rival to the American Board of Opthalmologists (ABO), had himself certified under this rival certification authority, let the rival board cease operations, then revived it later. As this article explains, it is not at all clear how many opthalmologists are solely certified via Sen. Paul's board, nor is it clear what the certification process is. In short, this is all murky, inexplicable, and it begs the question of why Rand Paul would attempt to end-run a certification process in the first place. The only rational explanation I can think of is that he wanted to strike a blow for "freedom" by refusing to submit to an industry standard certification process.

The "Crews Missile" is a scathing email written by retired parent Nick Crews to his three children in February 2012. As you will read, he takes them to task for what he perceives as their failures thus far in life, and essentially tells them to not contact him until they have sorted themselves out.
One thing that becomes apparent from the article is that Crews' children, while not making great strides in life, are far from basket cases. They have not (as far as I can tell) been arrested, or convicted of crimes. They are not drug addicts, neither do they have health issues or other intractable problems. They have relationship and career/work issues, but lots of people have those issues in the modern world.
The fundamental underlying cause of Crews' frustration appears to be the classical one that they have failed to live up to his own expectations for them.
So far, as a result, he has a poor relationship with one of his children, and appears to have dynamited his relationships with at least one of his other two children.
Here are some thoughts on the email and the underlying dynamics.

1. This email should not have been published
The contents of the email are incendiary, no matter what your point of view might be. The email clearly caused massive internal family friction at the time that it was sent. There was nothing to be gained by making its contents public. Most likely, the sender and the recipients will double down on their positions as a result.

2. Nick Crews was an absentee father (by his own admission)
In comments in the article, Crews alludes to the reality that he was an absentee father for a long time while his children were growing up. I sense that he now realizes that this was not a good thing, but he does not understand the impact that it has had on his children. He uses the fact that he paid for private schooling for them as a stick with which to beat them in the email, but that makes me wonder whether he and his wife used private schooling as part of coping with his being an absentee father.

3. This email is partly projection.
I sense that the expression of frustration is partly Nick Crews expressing his own anger at being an absentee parent.

4. Nick Crews spent his working life in the military
Without wishing to be too stereotypical, there are some common realities of life in the armed forces:
- Conformity and willingness to obey orders
- A lot of things are taken care of for you

Crews' basic character, based on the reading of the email, is that of an authoritarian, a patriarch. He is ill-equipped to cope with dissent and divergence, which he probably views as a form of disloyalty. He expresses little in the way of positive emotions in the email, merely a stream of censorious condemnation of what he sees as bad life choices. He appears consumed by the conviction that his children should live up to his expectations. Whatever those expectations might be, the bad news is that they are irrelevant in any case. He has no right to expect his children to conform to his own expectations of what they should be. He fails to appreciate that by demanding that they live up to his expectations, they would essentially be surrendering their personal and life autonomy to his whims. Or, to put it another way, he does not want his children to leave home. He seems to want them to exist in a permanent state of subservience to his worldview. To recycle an already-used pun, he appears to be distraught that they refuse to behave like his crew.
Crews himself has probably already gone through something of an epiphany over the email. While he claims parts of it were misinterpreted, and he still defends his initial decision to send it, he seems introspectively remorseful about some of the email and the overall impact.

I recognize this phenomenon in my own family. One of my uncles managed to become embroiled in a dispute with his eldest daughter, when she decided to marry a man who he disliked and distrusted. He basically dynamited his relationship with her over the marriage, which resulted in him refusing to speak to her, while my aunt was talking to her almost every day. One would have thought that he would have learned from this episode, but no...a few years later, his younger daughter became engaged to a man who was divorced, and once again, he argued with her over her plans, and they ended up not on speaking terms either. As far as I know, he died without having fully repaired his relationships with either of his daughters. He had a military WWII background also, complicated in his case by him being a Japanese PoW, with all of the privations and torture issues, which, like many WW II war veterans, he avoided talking about.

As other columnists have already noted, the outcome of this email was never going to be a positive one. People who are leading sub-optimal lives are almost never going to change simply because somebody blasts them for their life choices.
Right now, Nick Crews would do better to express regret for the email, and set to work on rebuilding his relationships with his children. After all, as the old saying goes, they may well be the ones who choose his retirement home....

Many of you will be struggling to understand the real reasons why Your Guys Lost.

Here is my offer for supporters of Mitt Romney and the GOP, made in all sincerity in the spirit of learning and communication. I will spend a minimum of two in-person hours with any GOP supporter who lives locally to me, at a date and time of our choosing, to provide my perspective on why the GOP lost the Presidential election and also did poorly in other areas of the electoral landscape (since the GOP also appears to be on the wrong end of a caning in the US Senate races, based on results thus far).

Conditions as follows:

1. We meet in convivial surroundings with access to food, alcohol and the internet. If we are going to discuss a painful subject, we should do it in style. We will split the cost of food and refreshments.
2. I will initially control the conversation, you will listen. Remember, Your Guys Lost. You will learn nothing if all you do is try to take over the conversation and explain to me (in whatever level of detail) why you think Your Guys Lost. Those explanations are highly likely to be incorrect, especially since you presumably thought that your side was going to win all along.
3. Any discussions or disputes over facts will be resolved, if necessary, by reference to web sites not belonging to the GOP or any interest group that predicted or funded and propagandized a Mitt Romney and GOP victory. Those kinds of sites have no credbility right now, for obvious reasons.
4. Remember that I am analyzing the election campaign from the position of an Independent who leans libertarian (with a small L). I am not a Democratic partisan.
5. I will ignore any and all complaints or objections from you along the lines of "you are being patronizing/elitist/arrogant/condescending". Those are objections based on perceived tone, not substance or content, and as such they are close to worthless.
6. Any discussion where you end up claiming that voters are stupid, "moochers" etc. will lead me to terminate the meeting. You don't get a free pass to insult a large percentage of the voters simply because Your Guys Lost. There is a collection of compelling reasons why they lost, and you need to understand the viewpoints of non-supporters and process them.

1. Negative Adverts
As we approach the Election day, we are being deluged with adverts from Super PACs. These are groups liberated from funding and spending constraints by the Citizens United ruling from the Supreme Court.
As a consumer, I generally have little time for sales pitches that comprise "vote for me because The Other Guys are evil/useless/etc. etc." If you want me to buy your product, you had better have a positive message and case. So I was singularly unimpressed by a group named American Crossroads, which has been running a typically lachrymose ad featuring an angst-ridden mother complaining about spending, national debt that her children will inherit, lack of a plan by the POTUS etc. etc. There was no mention of the Republican Party in the advert, merely a large print disclaimer that American Crossroads is not affiliated the Republican Party.
I have two cynical conclusions about this advert:
1. Most Americans I have met didn't give a flying rat's patootie about the national debt until Barack Obama was elected president.
2. If you believe that American Crossroads is not affiliated to the Republican Party, I have a bridge near New York to sell you (and it's totally undamaged by Sandy...honest)
A quick search via SourceWatch soon lifts part of the veil on American Crossroads. This is a SuperPAC set up in 2010, with advisors including Karl Rove, which plans to spend $79m on ads attacking President Obama, and $9m on ads supporting Mitt Romney. That ratio os spending alone tells you all you need to know about the message. I find these numbers instructive, and they confirm my conclusion that the advert is yet another pile of negative crap which I will ignore.

2. Partisan supporter laziness
I am seeing a number of last-minute postings by supporters of both major parties.
Some of those postings contain slurs against The Other Side.
What really bugs me, however, is when partisan supporters post slurs and allegations against The Other Side that are not only crap, but easily disprovable crap. Today, I found a GOP supporter recycling the claim that President Obama had a student ID card from Occidental College in 1981 showing that he was an Overseas Student.
This claim has been around since February 2012, and I found the debunking of it at Snopes.com in less than 60 seconds via a Google search. As a forgery, it doesn't even rank as second tier. Anybody with a working knowledge of Google could have found the debunking in 5 minutes or less. Yet this was posted without any comment as if it were true. It's this kind of half-assed laziness that tends to confirm my view that the views of many partisans have limited credibility, as long as they can't be bothered to check that their claims are related to truth and reality.

It is a little known fact that in addition to the 28 existing Amendments to the US Constitution, there are several other Amendments. They are written in invisible ink so that you cannot see them, but any person born in the USA knows that they exist.
The purpose of this article is to expose these invisible Amendments, which further enrich our country's history and our respect for the historical verities and wisdom of its written Constitution.

#29 The Gasoline Amendment
Every native-born American shall be entitled to an unlimited supply of cheap gasoline for life

#30 Freedom to believe and promulgate conspiracy theories
Every citizen of the United States of America shall have the right to believe in and promulgate any number of batshit-insane cockanamie conspiracy theories, especially those which postulate visits to the USA by extra-terrestrial life.

1. Political debates, polls and all that jazz
Last week, an event referred to as a "Presidential Debate" took place. As a former high school debater in the UK, I can tell you that I have not seen any event of this type that was a real debate ever. I watched US Presidential debates from 1980 up to and including 2004, and not one of those was anything like a debate. Frankly, if any of those candidates (with the possible exception of John Anderson) had tried to debate like that in front of us in high school, the debate moderator would have ripped them a new one and told them to STFU and start, you know, debating properly.
I passed on watching this week's debate because a talking points Punch and Judy show is not my idea of fun. However, it was difficult to avoid the post-debate agonizing. Predictably, each side of the political spectrum whined about How Awful The Other Guy Was and furiously spun Their Guy as either the winner or at least holding his own (whatever that means).
A lot of hot air was expended post-debate on how the debate had influenced the chances of either candidate being elected POTUS. Most of the hot air was just that, because it is disconnected from any discussion of credible information sources. Both sides quote their favorite polls or pollsters, and denigrate or dismiss other sources of information while providing no arguments. The media, as usual, retreated into the "horse race" framing and narrative, otherwise known as The View From Nowhere.
Fortunately we have access to a website that, like some of the polling companies, actually has a track record of being close to fully correct when predicting the results of US elections. InTrade, where people can wager on who will win electoral contests, was remarkably close to accurate when predicting the 2008 Presidential Election results. Currently InTrade shows Obama ahead of Romney; he is shown as having a 63.6% chance of winning at present. This is s drop from 73% last week, which shows that Romney scored a significant post-debate bounce.

2. Confronting junk science - recent developments in the UK
In the UK a junk science magazine is being distributed quite freely in news and other stores, and there seems to be limited pushback concerning its contents. Ken from Popehat has a thoughtful analysis of the good bad and potentially ugly in this situation. Part of the problem is that current UK libel laws give much more power and leeway to potential plaintiffs.

3. Useless predictions #2 - Christian doomsayers from 2008 and a Letter from God in response
Ever since I was old enough to follow politics in the UK, I have ended up wearily listening to Dire Predictions from regressives about societal or political change. Shopping on Sundays, declining church attendance, homosexuality etc. etc. - there is always a long laundry list of Terrible Developments that regressives think are Very Bad Things That Will End Civilization As We Know It.
My own personal observation is that here we are 40 years later, most of those Terrible Developments have taken place, and civilization as we know it still seems to exist, despite some people's dystopian fanstasies.
In the US, regressive Christian groups have led the way (along with conspiracy theory wackaloons) in forecasting The Impending End Of Civilization. When Barack Obama was first elected POTUS, Focus On The Family, one of the more aggressive groups of censorious Christian nitwits, issued a prediction letter. In it they forecast all manner of Terrible Things that would happen in the first Obama term as POTUS. Rather predictably, almost none of them actually came true. The track record of Focus On The Family may even be worse than the track records of mainstream media talking heads and pundits.
Steve Dutch took a different tack when responding to the doom-laden later, writing a "God Replies" response.
The bottom line is that just about every doom-laden prediction for what will happen in the future by people who are scared of change never comes true. Back in 2000 I read similar predictions when George W. Bush was confirmed as POTUS, and most of the predictions at the time never came true (including the one that he would somehow abolish the 2008 Election and stay in office for ever). This is especially true in 2012, where the internet has become a locus for just about every wackadoodle conspiracy theory known to man (and then some). If I believe a fraction of what is out there, then the Illuminati control the entire world economy, Barack Obama is a mooslem Marxist Socialist alien, the Moon landings were faked, the US government blew up the Twin Towers...all vaccines are a conspiracy by Big Pharma...I get an acute migraine after a few minutes of wading through this crap.

4. Recent eviscerations from Stonekettle Station
Jim over at Stonekettle has been writing his usual biting and acerbic dismantlements of utter idiocy. Here and Here are two posts originally written in 2008 which he recently updated. The phenomenon that he writes about in both of these commentaries is a constant in modern American political discourse.

5. A Member of the House Science Committee believes...WHAT?
In which Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga) admits that he is a Young Earth Creationist, among his other Christian-derived beliefs. I am not sure which is more worrying - the fact that an elected representative with no understanding of or respect for science-based explanations of the world is actually on the House Science Committee, or the fact that he is unopposed in his bid for re-election in 2012. Where the hell is an organized opposition to his nonsensical twitterings in Georgia? Fortunately, Bill Nye has waded into Rep. Broun's utterances.

Anybody watching the NFL game between Green Bay and Seattle last night knows that the game was essentially decided in the final seconds of the game, when a "Hail Mary" pass by Seattle was caught in the end zone. After a painful review process, the decision was a catch by the Seahawks, ruled as a touchdown, hence the Seahawks won the game.
I don't have to tell you that the whole way the game ended was a gigantic screw-up, since the decision on the field was wrong, and the review did not overturn it. IMHO, after watching the play dozens of times, there is no way that the Seahawks caught the ball. In addition, the entire catch debate should have been irrelevant since the Seahawks were guilty of offensive pass interference as the ball reached the end zone. The referees failed to call that infraction prior to the disputed catch.

When a trusted group of professionals are replaced at short notice by a group with little to no experience, there are going to be two phases of assessment performed on those replacement people:
1. Immediate impression of competency
2. Gradual impression of leadership and enforcement policies

(1) can be determined in a matter of days (or hours).
(2) may coalesce over a period of weeks to months, since some leadership capability is only tested when events occur, for example, a difficult decision needs to be made. In those scenarios, credibility is either built or reduced by both the decision-making process and the final decision or decisions.
Right now, the replacement officials have failed (2), for the following reasons that I can see (and I am not a football expert):

1. Decision-making is slow and convoluted
- processing of routine actions such as the calling of timeouts is often slow
- referees not rapidly pulling crew together to discuss calls and determine a final ruling
- excessive referral to off-pitch officiating crew and the replay crew
- slow execution of replay reviews and replay review results

2. Failure to enforce the rules consistently or completely
- Fouls and infractions during plays are not being consistently detected (example of OPI by Golden Tate before the disputed end zone catch)
- Provocative and niggly behavior (pushing and shoving etc.) after plays is not being penalized via misconduct penalties
- Interventions by coaches complaining about calls and berating officials are not being shut down by referees

The teams have determined, after 3 weeks, that the referees are not in control. Just like in a corporation when it becomes clear that leadership is not in charge, the players and coaches are now allowing or engaging in dysfunctional behaviour because they can get away with it. They are fouling on and off the ball more often, they are engaging in provocations towards the opposing team after plays, and coaches are yelling at the referees more often, secure in the knowledge or conviction that they will face no sanction during or after the game.
This situation cannot be remedied rapidly with the current officials. The current crews look overwhelmed by the pace of the game at NFL level, and are not taking care of a myriad of subtle applications of the rules that will ensure that games flow within their alloted time slots, that players are kept in line, and that the outcomes of games truly reflect the performance of the teams on the pitch and follow the rules.
The NFL's denial on the seriousness of the issue has moved beyond optimistic to laughable. Most of their pronouncements on the issue of the referees lockout and the replacement officials now have no credibility. If Roger Goodell showed up in my living room, I would be telling him to stop insulting everybody's intelligence and get back to work and get the primary officials back working games NOW. Anything less will erode his credibility with followers of the game, and ultimately damage the performance of the NFL as a business, which he should be concerned about, since he works for the business owners. Jerry Jones' most recent denial that he even saw the incident in the game also beggars belief. Does Jerry really want us to believe that he was asleep?

Every season at least one NFL player who has either outperformed his contract, or is otherwise disgruntled, holds out of training camp. This year, Maurice Jones-Drew, the Jacksonville Jaguars' leading running back, is holding out, demanding that the Jaguars re-negotiate his contract, which still has two seasons to run.
Let it be forgotten, Jones-Drew is the NFL Rushing record holder from 2011. He also is a complete all-purpose running back. He is no lucky rookie. He has a track record.
Jones-Drew's situation is somewhat different to most hold-outs. Typically hold-outs occur when a player operating under a low-pay rookie contract outperforms the contract in his first couple of seasons, and demands a re-negotiation (think Chris Johnson of the Tennessee Titans). However, MJD is on his second contract; he negotiated a new contract in 2009, and it still has two seasons to run.
The new owner of the Jaguars, Shad Khan, has been making some tough comments in the last few days, essentially confirming that the team will not re-negotiate the contract.
As a practical matter, MJD has no contractual leverage. He can continue to hold out, but he will be fined for missing practices, and if he holds out into the season he will start forfeiting game checks. If he holds out past week 10 of the season, his contract will "roll over" to 2013, and he will end the season with no pay, still owing two years on it to the Jaguars. The Jaguars probably also studied the Chris Johnson - Titans standoff, where the Titans re-did Johnson's contract, only to have him turn in a mediocre season last year.
However, also from a practical standpoint, the stalemate carries a lot of risk for the Jaguars. Jones-Drew is not practising or playing with the team, and if he continues the hold-out, he has no risk of football injury, which could derail or end his career. He will be getting a nice breather from the most punishing role in the modern NFL.
In the meantime, the Jaguars enter the season with a largely unproven running back rotation. Running backs can always get injured, and a team that relies on a single RB can suddenly find its run attack threadbare. Think about what happened to the Dallas Cowboys when they lost DeMarco Murray to a broken ankle. They had no reliable workhorse back to fall back on, having cut Marion Barber, and with Felix Jones lacking durability. Right now the Jaguars can blather on about how good they feel about their running backs and their offense, but this is all hot air.None of their current running backs have the track record of Maurice Jones-Drew, and one or more of them could suddenly disappear to injured reserve. If that happens, the Jaguars will suddenly need MJD rather badly.
You can be sure that if Week 4 arrives and everybody knows that the Jaguars have no running attack worth a damn, the team will be suddenly figuring out a way to get MJD back on the field. Without a decent running attack, the Jaguars will be forced to rely on a passing attack led by a second-year quarterback (Blaine Gabbert) who still has to prove himself at NFL level. Of course, MJD could always return to the field, only to underperform relative to previous seasons (see Johson, Chris). If the team thinks this is possible (and MJD has already undergone at least one knee surgery), then a trade to a willing team might be a better way out of the impasse.
With regard to a trade, any insistence by the Jaguars that they will not trade Jones-Drew is nothing more than hot air. It would be a classic example of what I term negotiation bloviation. If a team rang the Jaguars tomorrow offering two first round picks, MJD would be on a plane to another team within 24 hours, and everybody in the NFL would be hailing the Jaguars ownership as geniuses. For a lesson in how to play poker with a disgruntled player and get maximum value, study the actions of Mike Brown of the Bengals when he shipped Carson Palmer to the Raiders for what could turn out to be two first-round picks.
UPDATE - Rumors are that a number of teams have already contacted the Jaguars about making a trade for Jones-Drew. Despite all of the talking points about running backs being a "fungible commodity", teams will value a running back with a track record. As Bill Parcells said many years ago, when you say a player "has potential", what you are really saying is that he hasn't done anything yet.
Time to get out the popcorn and settle down to watch this one play out. I do not forsee any early resolution.
UPDATE 2 - The Jaguars have once again stated that they will not trade MJD. I take that about as seriously as any of their previous utterances. This is Negotiation Bloviation round 2.
UPDATE 3 - MJD has ended his holdout and reported to the Jaguars. Predictably, the result is being framed in terms of "Jaguars 1, MJD 0", with a lot of crowing that MJD has achieved nothing. Well, if you define "success" in terms of getting a contract re-negotiation, then Maurice Jones-Drew certainly lost. However, the issue of him out-performing his contract remains. So far everybody is saying all of the right things.
As some commentators have pointed out, some teams have trouble attracting free agents, due to negative perceptions about the willingness of the team to invest in players. The Cincinnati Bengals, Arizona Cardinals and Buffalo Bills have all suffered from that perception in recent years, with their ownerships being regarded as more interested in banking profits than investing in free agent acquisitions. (The reality that many great teams have been built using mostly good draft choices is often overlooked). If the Jaguars come to be regarded as a franchise unwilling to invest, and the revelation that they lead the league in unused cap space in 2012 is not going to help,then this will impact their overall ability to improve the team. Ironically, the actions of the Bengals in trading Carson Palmer to the Raiders may turn out to be smart, not just because, on current form, the Bengals got a great deal, but also because, with the rookie contract rules now in effect, teams who build via the draft will be paying a lot less per player than teams that build via free agency. By that logic, the Jaguars should trade MJD if he has another great season. The problem there may be that running backs have little trade value in the modern NFL.