So, an impressionist goes to a football game. . . .

You know, the university powers that be won't let you bring cameras with "detachable, professional lenses" into Memorial Stadium. So, you're pretty much stuck with your average, "idiot-proof" point-and-shoot camera when you go to a Nebraska football game.

I guess that's enough to turn anyone into an impressionist.

Or something like that.

Thus, the view from the stands when Minnesota came to town to do battle with Our Cornhuskers on a lovely Saturday afternoon.

Yay, team!

To infinity . . . and beyond!

At halftime of Saturday's Nebraska football game, you got the marching band and stuff, sure . . . but you also got to watch some teenagers commit science.

With a little help from a homegrown astronaut.

And they launched some experiment-carrying weather balloons to infinity . . . and beyond! Or just shy of 100,000 feet, whichever came first.

SUNDAY, the Omaha World-Herald got the scoop:

It takes a lot of work to gain the privilege of standing on the field at Memorial Stadium on game day in front of 85,000 fans.

It takes dedication, hours of practice, weeks of preparation.

But the cheers Saturday weren't just for touchdowns, and a football wasn't the only flying object.

A group of students and teachers led one of the biggest science experiments Husker Nation has ever seen.

During halftime, the group released three high-altitude balloons, also known as weather balloons.

The balloons, 8 feet in diameter and typically filled with helium, floated to heights of up to 20 miles into “near space” to collect data. Astronaut Clayton Anderson of Ashland, Neb., assisted with the launch.

One balloon carried specimens of E. coli, red and white blood cells, oranges, motor oil and experimental planting seeds.

A second carried special devices to collect environmental data so students could measure such things as air pressure and cosmic rays. The third carried an identification banner of the different groups.

The data were expected to fall to Earth a couple hours after liftoff.

Michael Sibbernsen, science and technology coordinator at the Strategic Air & Space Museum, said near space is an area in the atmosphere where conditions are very cold and relatively similar to those of outer space.

Many of the experiments measured how near space and high altitudes affect the specimens. Thanks to a NASA grant, such research is now accessible to students and teachers in Nebraska.

WATCH the video (above) from the university. Cool stuff from the very edge of space.

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign

Kids. You have to spell out everything for them.

And at the student union on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's city campus, administrators just want to be clear that they're being absolutely clear. Because it's those darned kids . . . they'll test you.

As I seem to recall from my own college days somewhat farther south than Lincoln, youth from the ages of about 18-22 are kings and queens of the loophole. The second you assume that everyone knows you're not supposed to skateboard in the union. . . .

No, you need . . .

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?

Cornhusker Nation

Behold Cornhusker Nation.

Mrs. Favog and I were at Saturday morning's Nebraska-Arkansas State game, and I walked right into this scene on the way into Memorial Stadium, not too far from the spot where in 1983 I asked her "Will you?" and she said "Yes" and we were engaged. So I raised my little point-and-shoot digital camera and . . . voila!

As a Nebraska transplant -- and as a Husker fan of 30 years -- this seemed rather iconic to me. A photographic metaphor for the Midwestern phenomenon that is Husker football.

Go Big Red!

The reddest place on earth

Memorial Stadium, Lincoln, Neb.

(May Day in Red Square had nothing
on a Nebraska home football game.)

It's not consumerism if you need it

This right here is just what the missus and I always have needed -- dueling collegiate toasters.

In the morning, she can have her inferior, bland Cornhusker toast -- the Big Ten effect, no doubt -- and I can smirk at her as I enjoy my stylish and much more flavorful LSU Tiger toast. All I need is to click on an Amazon button . . . and wait for the parcels to arrive.


YOU WILL NOTE that the LSU toaster is more expensive than the NU toaster. My lovely wife likely will say that's due to kickbacks that have to be paid to somebody in the Gret Stet.

That's because she slept through economics, not to mention many of her other classes at Lincoln.

I attribute the price discrepancy to simple supply and demand.

Geaux Tigers.

Twinkle, twinkle little bat-s***. . . .

This is how you run a state today. Please take notes.

First, you buy a copy of Through the Looking Glass. Pay for it with a check from a bank you just made up in your head last week. Sign the check "Alice."

Then commit yourself to believing "six impossible things before breakfast" every day, nine days a week, and twice on Gloopday.

Third, vow never to make sense again. Coherence, consistency and commonweal are the three K's to avoid at all costs -- they will just mess you up when, as The Man, you're trying to gin up popular outrage against The Man as a means of sucking up to the booboisie.

Fourth, if the public pays for it, the public owns it and the public benefits from it, convince the public that's just "socialism," a nefarious plot conjured up by pointy-headed geeks to steal taxpayers' money.

And finally, tell people there is such a thing as a free lunch, that they can get something for nothing . . . and that nothing is really Something, because when you're paying for something, that's not as good as getting nothing, which is Something, for nothing. Make this point to voters twice every Gloopday.

NOW THAT we've completed our overview of Political Science 1001, I think we're ready for a look at the latest public-policy pronouncements by Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman, the Pillsbury Doughmagogue. (Envision the Mad Hatter, only closer in appearance to Poppin' Fresh and prone to go "Hoo hooooooooo!" every time a state employee gets his pink slip.)

In today's edition of the Omaha World-Herald we observe Flippin' Nuts (which I think is the governor's Twitter handle, but I could be wrong) compare the state university to "a wealthy 'special interest group' with its hand out for taxpayer dollars while the state's citizens want tax relief."

Heineman, in an interview Friday, said that his top priority remains passage of his proposed tax-cut package and that the university needs to reprioritize its spending or use private dollars from its foundation to finance the $91 million in new construction spending it is requesting from the state.

The university is seeking funds to expand nursing classroom space in Lincoln and Kearney, do design work on a new veterinary laboratory in Lincoln, and build a $370 million cancer research tower at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

"Here's what the average Nebraskan tells me: 'The university has over a billion dollars in their foundation, and they can't afford $400 million to $500 million to afford that (cancer tower) project?' " Heineman said. "They're offended, and they have a right to be offended," he told The World-Herald.

THAT'S BECAUSE there's nothing more offensive than cancer research. Unless, of course, it's the resulting economic development that would plague Omaha as a result of any major enhancement of the med center.

Everybody making money long-term -- or lives saved through cancer research -- doesn't change the fact that nothing says "socialized medicine" like a state med school and a state hospital run by a state university. Go Big Red, indeed!


MEANTIME, to borrow a quote from next semester's POLI 1002 required text, "Pay no attention to that comsymp behind the curtain!"

Ron Withem, an NU spokesman, said the university has worked well with the governor in the past and hopes to do so again this year. Withem said, however, that 30 "average Nebraskans" were among those testifying Thursday in support of NU's spending priorities before the budget-writing Appropriations Committee.

"There were nurses, students, medical professionals and cattle producers telling legislators that they should invest in economic development and health initiatives at the university," he said. "We think the average Nebraskans did speak yesterday."

Withem added that the state's largest business groups, including the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, also support the NU requests.

Several members of the Appropriations Committee have voiced support for the university project, although they doubted NU would get the entire $91 million. Much, they said, would depend on the health of the state economy and competing demands for state dollars, including the governor's tax-cut proposal.

IT'S A TERRIBLE thing when the chamber of commerce has been infiltrated, I'll tell you what.

Some people just don't get -- to put it mildly -- that today's best practices for state governance do not include investing taxpayer money in public institutions. Especially education.

The most recent literature in political science clearly indicates that the only message Nebraskans need to hear is "Lie back, have another cigarette, and think of Reagan."

Of course, it's an entirely different thing if we're merely not putting money into state coffers in the name of non-socialistic private economic development. I mean, that money wasn't there in the first place, right?

Not putting money in isn't the same as spending taxpayers' money, right? It's just giving a tax cut to future corporate citizens. Tax cuts are good. And if we have enough tax cuts, maybe more state employees will get pink slips.

"Hoo hooooooooo!"

STILL, one has to have standards and procedures -- even when it involves not making future corporate citizens pay taxes . . . so that Nebraska is the state to which they won't be paying taxes.

For one thing, you have to recognize the devil you know (like the University of Nebraska), you know damned well is a devil. The devil you don't know -- like a secretive bunch of investor types who may or may not be from the West Coast -- you don't know is the devil at all. Really, they're probably great guys.

But we can't talk about it. Hell, we can't even know it. "N" stands for Nebraska, but it also stands for "no nowlege," which is always the best policy because "noing nothing" means there's one less thing you have to lie about.

In running a state's affairs, honesty, remember, is always the best policy. Unless, of course, it isn't.

And before we can move heaven and earth in the Legislature to give secretive investors massive tax breaks so that it's here they come to not pay taxes and build this really cool thing that might or might not be something that's really big and really high-tech, we have to know a few things. Like, we need to know that we only know their first names.

This, again, is consistent with best practices in the state-government racket. (See "no nowlege" above.)

We also need to make sure that the 30-something executives who want to not pay taxes here don't leave any business cards with anybody. And, like I said, we need to know that we don't know where they're from -- that's important.

Then, we need a fancy code name for whatever it is they won't be paying taxes on. The World-Herald said something about "Project Edge." Ooh! That's got kind of a certain je ne sais quoi to it!

Again, it's pretty important that je ne sais squat about quoi. Except that We Don't Know Who from We Don't Know Where are promising us a lot of Mystery Quoi.

But the potential economic impact of their project is no secret among state leaders: a projected $1.2 billion data center that could grow even larger.

It could bring a major high-tech business, one that would become the single-largest consumer of electricity in Nebraska.

The state is in hot pursuit of Project Edge, which is looking at breaking ground in May with an initial investment of $500 million.

State lawmakers are acting quickly to land the economic big fish, swiftly advancing two bills from committees last week in hopes of sweetening Nebraska's tax and electric-rate incentives to better compete with the reported main competitor for the project, neighboring Iowa.

"It's quite an extraordinary investment," said Gov. Dave Heineman, who has been involved in the recruitment effort. "We're one of the finalists, and I think we have an outstanding opportunity to have this occur." [Emphasis mine.]

State Sen. Abbie Cornett of Bellevue, who is championing one of the data center bills, used the words "huge" and "unprecedented" to describe the business opportunity.

The first phase of the proposed Project Edge data center would be nearly three times larger than the $140 million, 175-job Yahoo data center lured to La Vista in 2009.

Project Edge is projected to become twice as large as the $600 million center that Google located in Council Bluffs in 2007. Nebraska officials say the proposed new center comes with the potential to expand even more than the $1.2 billion projection used by state officials.

WHAT WE can take away from this is the absolute importance of distinguishing between a wealthy special-interest group with its hand out for taxpayer dollars and a wealthy special-interest group with its hand out for taxpayer dollars.

Providing state funds for a wealthy special-interest group affiliated with the people of Nebraska is bad -- offensively bad -- when it would further medical education, target a deadly disease that kills millions, enhance the prestige of the state university, eventually add to the state's tax revenues and be an economic windfall for the state's largest city.

Indirectly providing state funds for a wealthy special-interest group affiliated with men who (as far as we know) have no last names and (as far as we know) have no permanent address is good -- the best thing ever!!! -- when whatever the hell it is they're promising just might be big. Really big. Bigger than that Google thing those damned Iowans have.

We think.

At least that's what they're saying. You know . . . them.

But at least these Them aren't greedy public-university thems. And that's good.

Because the guy who runs the state -- the guy in charge of the government -- says government is bad. And we believe him because he's a good guy.

Go ask Alice. I think she'll know.

Cut them taxes! Fill that cash reserve!

The Pillsbury Doughmagogue is at it yet again.

The man who proposes to cut Nebraska inheritance and income taxes some $130.8 million a year is peeing all over a $91 million construction proposal from the University of Nebraska because the state's highest priority in the whole wide universe is . . . that $130.8 million tax cut. That and rebuilding the state's cash reserves.

Being a Republican governor who's obviously running for something else means never having to admit you make no sense. Or that you're contradicting yourself.

Or that your thinking might be a little . . . magical?

I DON'T KNOW whether the Omaha World Herald's political writers ought to be getting hazard pay or have to pay the city's entertainment tax. (And would the Omaha entertainment tax even be an issue for Lincoln-bureau peeps, anyway?)

The University of Nebraska will have to overcome opposition from Gov. Dave Heineman to win approval for its four-part construction initiative.

The governor said Thursday the state's highest priority should be passing tax cuts, followed by rebuilding the cash reserve fund.

"The university may have some good ideas about some future projects, but their request is very bad timing," Heineman said. "It would be fiscally imprudent to steal money out of the cash reserve."

University officials have said they plan to seek $91 million from the cash reserve for the projects. A University of Nebraska Medical Center initiative to build a cancer center is the main component of the NU legislative proposal, which also includes a $17 million nursing facility in Lincoln, a $19 million health care training facility based at the University of Nebraska at Kearney and $5 million to plan a veterinary diagnostic center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The governor's position adds to the difficulties that the university plan faces in winning approval from the Nebraska Legislature, where it will have to battle myriad other ideas for state spending or tax reduction.

THIS IS the point in the blog post where I usually ask "How stupid does he think we are?" But that seems pretty unnecessary whenever the political subject is Gov. Dave.

I fear I know exactly how stupid the Pillsbury Doughmagogue thinks we are.

Go B1G Red!

Free at last! Free at last! Great Paterno Almighty, we're free at last!


Go B1G Red!

Paying the price for Original Stupidity

The incoming editor of the Daily Nebraskan thinks it would be an awful shame if the student body closed the checkbook that covers a seventh of the University of Nebraska student newspaper's annual budget.

Perhaps Ian Sacks ought to have had that conversation with the paper's present student editor before Jenna Gibson and her staff -- largely comprised of what one now-former columnist described as "hipsters" -- set about endangering their already-tenuous hold on that student assessment by angering lots of students for no good reason.

And when I say "for no good reason." I mean just that. Unless, of course, someone can explain to me how a salacious article about the sexual habits of College of Architecture students and teaching assistants, based purely on anonymous innuendo and gossip, constitutes good reason.

Sacks takes to the Support the Daily Nebraskan page on Facebook to lament a student's decision to vote no Wednesday on continuing student funds for the newspaper:

I understand architecture students' grievances entirely. However, I do feel I need to say that as next year's editor-in-chief, no one needs to worry about similar stories running again. I know next year's editorial staff is behind me on this as well.

If these students truly feel one story's damage has outweighed all positive coverage both before and after, and that its consequences should be levied upon next year's staff, that's their prerogative. But it seems very "sins of the father" and that's unfortunate.

AS SOMEONE with a few years under my belt, I find it "unfortunate" that an incoming editor of a student newspaper doesn't understand that "very 'sins of the father'" has been how the real world has operated, oh . . . forever. We Christians call it "original sin."

Ever since Adam decided Eve was onto something with that forbidden-fruit diet, every child born into this fallen world has had to pay the price for the "sins of the father." I suspect that model will hold true concerning the sins of the Daily Nebraskan.

When one semester's DN staff breaks trust with its readers by publishing uninformative, salacious trash -- salacious trash accompanied by a foul illustration -- it, frankly, is unreasonable to expect that a burned student body is going to put much stock in an incoming editor's promises not to be as irresponsible as his predecessor.

In other words, it sucks to be him, because only a fool listens to what people say in lieu of watching what they do.

And what this semester's staff of the Daily Nebraskan has done is squander the fruit of more than a century of previous staffs' hard labor for the sake of one prurient story of no news value. It is this sin that may well be held against many DN staffs that follow -- if, indeed, any follow at all if students vote no.

Not that the newspaper's present management has learned anything from its February missteps:

The story began a lot different than it turned out. The original assignment was to write about the sex lives of students who spend a large amount of their time hard at work in Architecture Hall. Instead, what ran was a story that presented the anonymous statements of few students that was misunderstood at representative of all architecture majors. That this misunderstanding occurred is the fault of the Daily Nebraskan — many architecture students have contacted us saying they resent the statement.

On a positive note, this situation has improved the level of editorial oversight on such provocative articles, and we on the DN Editorial Board admit there needs to be more eyes on a story like this one so it could have been improved before running. There will also be more oversight on the art, making sure that any explicit content is not only justified but not distracting to the point of the story it accompanies.

THAT EDITORIAL from Feb. 6 didn't express regret over printing the college newspaper version of Jersey Shore. What it expressed was regret it didn't give a sleazy premise better production values.

What it also didn't say was that Kelsey Lee -- the reporter who has achieved, while still an undergrad, a level of pandering and cynicism to which it takes others many years to sink -- was out of a job. (That's because she's not.) Editors always can manage a staff better and more attentively. What editors can't do is magically give reporters and artists a moral compass and common sense.

Neither Lee nor artist Bob Al-Greene (who seems to be more of a Bob 2 Live Crew to me) displayed either.

Everybody screws up. Some screw-ups, however, preclude editors from giving the offenders a second chance. Senseless transgressions that may have placed the publication into mortal jeopardy fall into that category.

NO ONE -- or at least not this writer, an alumnus of The Daily Reveille at LSU who's married to an alumna of the Daily Nebraskan -- wants to see NU's student paper disappear or be crippled for years. That goes double for Mr. Sacks, who already has a hell of a mess to clean up as editor for 2011-12.

But, as we say these days, "mistakes were made." Consequences usually follow.

Though the price Ian Sacks and his staff might pay for the "sins of the father" could be high indeed, it would be hard to say the penalty would be unjust should the student body see fit to mete it out. The reality of this world is that we always pay for "the sins of the father."

Thus it always has been. Thus it always shall be.

'Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?'

If a radio station doesn't make a sound because the computer crashes, will anybody be there to not hear anything?

Or whatever.

We're getting closer and closer to an answer we radio-lovers don't want to hear, I'm afraid, in this world where technology can replace human beings but has no power to replace itself when it dies.

Back in the days when Neanderthals roamed the earth and played vinyl records in broadcasting studios powered by vacuum tubes, the only thing that could keep a radio station off the air for a day and a half would be a transmitter failure, a fallen tower or the death of the mastodons running inside the giant mastodon wheels powering the generators at the electric plant.

NOW, IN OUR modern, technically advanced times, all it takes is a little computer crash to bring down a radio station like KRNU at the University of Nebraska, according to the Omaha World-Herald:

A computer error originally made it look as if the station, 90.3 KRNU, had lost everything over the weekend, said Rick Alloway, a UNL broadcasting professor in charge of the station.

While the first check of the computer system that holds all of the station’s files suggested a hard-drive crash, the error was later attributed to a more minor hardware failure.

IN RADIO, at least, progress means willingly turning oneself into a technological quadriplegic, as it were, one dead battery away from being trapped, helpless, in a marooned wheelchair. Or studio, as the case may be.

God forbid we give a live DJ a stack of compact discs, tapes or records and tell him or her to create some magic. What, did the HAL 9000 running KRNU eject all the staff out the airlock and into the man-killing Nebraska cold?

"I know I've made some very poor decisions recently," the automation probably told Alloway, "but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you."

THAT'S just what it told every other station as the bodies piled up outside the airlock.

"Daisy, Daisy . . . give me . . . your . . . answer . . . do. . . ."

I was . . . 11th on the depth chart. Yeah . . . yeah, THAT'S the ticket!

Here's a lot of what you need to know about Nebraska.

In the rest of the United States, many politicians get caught faking their military-service record to enhance their chances at winning public office. Not so in Nebraska.

In the Cornhusker State, politicians get caught faking their football-service record at the University of Nebraska. The funny thing is, the Huskers had such a massive walk-on program for so many years, faking your status as an ex-player is as easy to try as it is easy to get ratted out by a legit ex-NU player who says "Wait a minute. I don't remember that guy."

AND REMEMBER, boys and girls, I don't make this stuff up. I just leave it to the Omaha World-Herald to report the facts . . . which, alas, are stranger than fiction:

A candidate for Washington County sheriff pulled down his Facebook page Tuesday after he was questioned about his claim of being a University of Nebraska football player from 1978 through 1980.

Nick Thallas, an investigator for the Blair Police Department, used Facebook to promote his campaign against Republican Sheriff Mike Robinson.

The site included a statement that he had been a kicker for the Huskers while enrolled as an agribusiness student. Thallas, also a Republican, earned a place on next Tuesday's ballot by petition.

A search of Nebraska varsity football rosters from 1978, 1979 and 1980 did not find Thallas' name. His name also did not appear in the school's football media guides for those years.

In an interview, Thallas said he played on Nebraska's freshman football team in 1978.

A spokesman for the NU sports information department confirmed that Thallas lettered as a freshman, but he said there was no indication he was a member of the Husker team in 1979 or 1980.

“I was a student and I played freshman football down there,” Thallas said. “Apparently, someone bent this all out of shape.”

A few minutes later, Thallas' Facebook page was taken down.

Poisonous football

If you watched the Nebraska-Texas football game Saturday, it became clear to you that something was horribly wrong with the Huskers.

Of course, we all chalked it up to nerves. To anxiousness. To the Huskers letting their brains slip into R (Revenge) before ever engaging in D (Drive the @#$%!*% ball down the #$%!@*+&! field, you jerks!).

Face it, we just chalked it up to Husker coaches yet again letting Mack Brown and his Tejas 22 get under their skins and into their heads.

Of course, we are fans. That means we are wrong. Horribly, embarrassingly, ignorantly and knuckle-draggingly wrong. Just ask NU Coach Bo Pelini.

No, really. Coach Bo explains it all in Sunday's Omaha World-Herald.


IT WASN'T emotion, or nerves or anything like that. See?

Bo Pelini says the outside influences did not factor, that emotion played no role Saturday for Nebraska and that the Huskers again lost to Texas only because they failed to make plays.

A mountain of evidence from this 20-13 UT win suggests another conclusion: that NU wanted it too badly.

How else to explain the three dropped touchdown passes? Or the opening seven minutes that included uncharacteristic missed tackles and a key fumble by senior Roy Helu? It led to a 10-point hole from which NU never climbed.

“A terrible start,” said Pelini, who dropped to 1-4 in October home games as the Nebraska coach.

AND HUSKER receivers dropping something like 873 passes during the game -- about four of them sure touchdowns? It couldn't be nerves, or . . . PSYCH!!!

Nuh uh.

In this doomed series of Big 12 heavyweights, frustration climaxed for Nebraska on Saturday as Texas improved to 4-0 in Lincoln since 1998.

The Longhorns (4-2, 2-1) won for the ninth time in 10 games against NU as a conference foe. UT denied the Huskers and their fans of the moment they all so desired: redemption against Texas before the Huskers bolt next year for the Big Ten.

Barring a December rematch in the Big 12 championship game, they'll never meet again as league foes. And if this is how it ends, what a disappointment for Nebraska.

“Losing to anyone is not a good feeling,” NU defensive end Cameron Meredith said. “but especially Texas.”

The all-too-familiar scenarios played out often for Nebraska on Saturday.

Notably, there were the drops by Rex Burkhead, Niles Paul and Brandon Kinnie. All three passes were thrown well — the first a Taylor Martinez pass on the opening play of the second quarter; the others from Zac Lee, who replaced Martinez midway through the third quarter.

“It's pretty obvious,” Pelini said. “We had our opportunities to make plays. We didn't make plays. They did. They won the football game.”

BUT NOT making the plays, in which "not making the plays" means "dropped every thrown football laid perfectly into your outstretched hands?" And knowing for sure -- after all, Coach Bo said -- that it wasn't AT ALL due to . . . PSYCH!!!

Well, then. This could be serious, and it seems to me -- given the unlikely repetition of such specific inaction by skilled professional student athletes -- we need to start looking at environmental and medical causes.

Perhaps so many dropped passes could be traced to identical symptoms spread among a number of Nebraska players. (In this, we can use the Longhorns as our "control group." They spent only 24 hours or so in Lincoln, and they exhibited few of the symptoms associated with affected NU players.)

Several things come to mind as a possible reason for so many dropped passes Saturday -- and, indeed, so many fumbles by Nebraska throughout the present football season. The likeliest place to start would be some kind of numbness and/or paralysis in players' extremities, particularly the hands.

Now we're thinking diabetes, nerve damage, ministrokes, Reynaud's disease, peripheral artery disease (Thanks, pharmaceutical TV ads for the heads up!) . . . or multiple sclerosis. A mass outbreak of one of these maladies, however, is highly unlikely in this case.

What we need is something that would cause these symptoms in significant numbers within a group, and cause these symptoms virtually simultaneously. Something that's not nerves, or excessive emotion, or . . . PSYCH!!!

Searching Internet medical databases up and down, I could find only one explanation, and it is indeed a frightening one. In fact, as soon as this post goes up on the blog, I'm firing off an extremely urgent E-mail to the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services, with a copy forwarded to Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman.

LIVES ARE at stake, and I'm not talking about some unhinged Husker fan doing something stupid to a player or a coach.

No, I'm talking mercury poisoning.

Look, it's all here:

Symptoms of Chronic Mercury Poisoning

CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM

* irritability [Pelini brothers (Bo and Carl) --R21]
* anxiety/nervousness, often with difficulty in breathing [NU fans at Memorial Stadium]
* restlessness [Ditto]
* exaggerated response to stimulation [Pelini brothers]
* fearfulness [NU fans in stadium]
* emotional instability [Pelini brothers]
-lack of self control [Bo Pelini]
-fits of anger, with violent, irrational behavior [Pelini brothers]
* loss of self confidence [Entire state of Nebraska]
* indecision [Offensive Coordinator Shawn Watson]
* shyness or timidity, being easily embarrassed [Entire state of Nebraska]
* loss of memory [What were we talking about?]
* inability to concentrate [Jenn Sterger is HOTT!!!!!]
* lethargy/drowsiness [Entire Nebraska offense]
* insomnia [Who can sleep now?]
* mental depression, despondency [Are you kidding me? If you're not depressed, you must have flown in from Tejas.]
* withdrawal [Leave me alone.]
* suicidal tendencies [Life has not been worth living since 1998.]
* manic depression [Fiddle dee dee! After all, tomorrow is another day!]

* numbness and tingling of hands, feet, fingers, toes, or lips [Taylor Martinez, NU receiving corps]
* muscle weakness progressing to paralysis [NU offense]
* ataxia [?????????]
* tremors/trembling of hands, feet, lips, eyelids or tongue [Husker receiving corps during game; NU coaching staff after game.]
* incoordination [Husker offense]
* myoneural transmission failure resembling Myasthenia Gravis [NU receivers -- couldn't see the football coming.]

SEE WHAT I mean? Mercury poisoning. It clearly affects the entire Nebraska football team, and probably everyone spending any significant time on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. Possibly it could be a statewide crisis, I am not sure at this point.

We was robbed? Hell, no. We was poisoned!

This is urgent, and it is incumbent upon the state government to act immediately.

Unless, of course, the state's political and bureaucratic establishments are, at this moment, flying into fits of rage and trying to beat up one another, thwarted, however, by lack of coordination, paralysis of the extremities and an inability to see straight.

In other words, an average mercury-poisoned day at the office.

More crap from the No. 2 state

Everything's bigger in Tejas.

First of all, there's the outsized ego of its state university. And don't try to convince University of Tejas fans theirs isn't the only school in Tejas, if not the world -- they won't believe you.

And the "bigger in Tejas" list also includes, no doubt, the feedlots. They'd have to be to hold as much bulls*** as what flows out of the Land of Big Hair and Small Brains every time Jennifer Floyd Engel posts another column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

One of the best rivalries in sports will not be the same; just ask Arkansas what happened to its rivalries after leaving the SWC. Can you imagine the Aggie War Hymn with "goodbye to Louisiana State University"?

Of course, Governor Good Hair wants A&M to stay with Texas.

What he needs to be doing is trying to save the Big XII. I do not say this lightly since this league obviously had fatal flaws, starting with its clearly overmatched commissioner, Dan Beebe, and a lot of schools who did not know their role.

And I am talking to my alma mater, Mizzou. Great job being played by The Big Ten, and enjoy begging for inclusion in the Mountain West. My check is not in the mail, nor will it be until heads roll.

I am also including Nebraska, which idiotically believes going to The Big Ten will turn back the clock to 1990, when 'roided partial qualifiers ruled the college football landscape. How smart are Nebraskans? They actually buy this "more aligned with culture and academic mission" nonsense being spewed Friday.

And who hasn't heard Nebraska referred to as Harvard on the Plains?

In fact, can everybody please dispense with acting like this is about academics, or worrying about being left behind, or anything except for money and super conferences.

Yes, The Big XII is dead, killed by corn shuckers, Tigers and greedy blank-blankers. And while this wake has turned into a roast, look for everybody to be mourning its demise in hindsight.

'ROIDED partial qualifiers? Harvard on the Plains?

Well, there is this story in the Omaha World-Herald. Maybe that's where Ms. Jennifer Floyd Engel learned about NU's reputation:

Few doubt the University of Nebraska-Lincoln can more than hold its own on the football fields of the Big Ten.

A bigger question is how it stacks up in the classroom and the lab. Nebraska's flagship university ranks lower in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and pulls in fewer research dollars than all of its new partners in the nation's most academically prestigious athletic conference.

But regardless of UNL's current standing, almost any university would envy the upward trajectory the school has been on academically over the past decade.

Its U.S. News ranking among comprehensive public universities has jumped from 57th to 43rd, a measure of its rising reputation.

Its federal research haul has more than doubled.

The school is attracting more of the state's brightest students, and more students than ever from out of state.

Were it not for the marked improvements of the past decade, Chancellor Harvey Perlman said he doubts UNL would be the newest member of the Big Ten.

Now that that new affiliation will have UNL running and collaborating with some of the most prestigious public universities in the land, Perlman and other campus leaders say they see no reason UNL can't aspire to loftier heights in the decades ahead.

“It's a new bar for academics and research,” said Ellen Weissinger, UNL's interim vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Joining the Big Ten is going to accelerate our pace.”

UNL's upward trajectory did not go unnoticed when the Big Ten's presidents and chancellors considered granting the school entry to the conference, said Lou Anna K. Simon, president of Michigan State University and head of the Big Ten's board.

While athletics and football were obviously the initial reason UNL was considered, she said, scholarship is taken too seriously in the Big Ten to add a school that was not a serious academic player.

“There was more to this than just a football game,” Simon said Saturday. “I think all of my colleagues felt very comfortable that Nebraska was an extraordinary fit.”

The recent boost in UNL's academic firepower has its roots in a period of serious introspection during the 1990s.

IT'S REALLY a shame that the best a sports columnist for an also-ran metro daily in north Tejas can muster is rank name calling. Then again, Tejas is the World's Biggest Feedlot, and the fumes from all that Chanel No. 2 must have gone to a Mizzou gal's head.

It's not like it would have taken much. As folks up here are keen enough to observe, the University of Missouri is close enough to the Ozarks to see your first cousin from there, and she/he is lookin' right purdy.

As much as anything, Engel's outpouring of bile reminds me of what became pretty much a yearly ritual for Missouri football fans after having their asses handed to them by the Huskers. Of course, they often didn't fare any better in the insult department than they did the football department.

I remember when my wife and I drove to Columbia in 1983 for the Nebraska-MU game. Of course, Nebraska won.

And naturally, some drunk-ass Mizzou student was staggering outside the stadium afterward screaming "Nebraska sucks! Nebraska sucks!" at Husker fans (who, by the way, applaud visiting teams in Lincoln, win or lose). Of course, we responded by chanting back "Nebraska wins! Nebraska wins!"

He shut up. Really, some things are just too easy.

LIKE ENGELS succumbing to the temptation to just "phone it in" by ripping off the patented insult-column style of well-known "Colorado malcontent" Woody Paige. She imitates the Denver Post sports columnist OK; I do it better.

But nobody approaches the real deal. And only a Tejas bulls*** artist would think she could.

That kind of baseless arrogance only can mean one thing. When UT starts up The Longhorn Network, Jennifer Floyd Engel probably will be the first hire.

Talk about your match made in Hillbilly Heaven.

Tired of Bevo's s***, Huskers move out

If he wouldn't be embarrassed, and I wouldn't be embarrassed, I would give Tom Osborne a bear hug right now.

Harvey Perlman, too.

They have led Nebraska fans out of Egypt land. And the hypocrites of the Big 12 Conference let our people go.

Or something like that. Like they could stop us.

I THINK Tom Shatel puts it right well this morning in the Omaha World Herald:

Goodbye, Manhattan; hello, East Lansing. Goodbye, Boulder; hello, Columbus. Goodbye, Austin; hello, Iowa City.

It was a big day, the biggest day, and nobody was bigger than Harvey Perlman and Tom Osborne.

The chancellor and athletic director/legend-at-large put on a show at the regents meeting. They laid it all out. And while they were at it, they laid out Missouri and Texas. It was powerful. It was clinical. Nebraska, eerily quiet all these weeks, finally spoke up and turned up the volume for all the Big 12 to hear.

Perlman called out Mizzou for being the one to start the expansion circus.

Osborne talked about schools in the Big 12 that were asking NU to stay and all the while selling themselves to not one, not two but three other leagues.

Perlman said the Big 12 presidents wouldn't commit to staying in the league if Colorado and Missouri both left.

And then, in a downright delicious passage, Perlman talked about calling Texas' bluff. And how he asked Texas to commit its TV rights to the Big 12 if it was serious about the league, and how Texas declined.

Brilliant, Harvey. The Steve Pederson years are now forgiven.

Then, finally, the money quote from Osborne: “One team leaving does not break up a conference. Two teams leaving does not break up a conference. Six teams leaving breaks up a conference."

Boom. They should engrave those words on a plaque, or on the side of Memorial Stadium. Maybe put them on the final Big 12 football trophy.

AND THAT, boys and girls, is how a lot of us have become something we never really considered until now -- Big Ten fans. Happy Big Ten fans.

Goodbye Big 12. And good riddance.

Go Big . . . 14?

If this holds up, this is great news for Nebraska.

And a big "Hook THIS" for Texas, which will be stuck in a dead league, the Big 12.

THE WORD comes from sports-radio WHB in Kansas City, and already the website is about to melt down:

The Big Ten Conference has extended initial offers to join the league to four universities including Missouri and Nebraska from the Big 12, according to multiple sources close to the negotiations.

While nothing can be approved until the Big Ten presidents and chancellors meet the first week of June in Chicago, the league has informed the two Big 12 schools, Notre Dame and Rutgers that it would like to have them join. It is not yet clear whether the Big Ten will expand to 14 or 16 teams but sources indicated Missouri and Nebraska are invited in either scenario. Notre Dame has repeatedly declined the opportunity to join the Big Ten. If Notre Dame remains independent, Rutgers would be the 14th team. The Big Ten would then decide whether to stop at 14 or extend offers to two other schools. If Notre Dame joins, sources say an offer will be extended to one other school making it a 16-team league.

In order for the University of Missouri to join the Big Ten, the Missouri Board of Regents will still have to approve the move. Sources close to the governing body say the Big Ten has told officials that Mizzou could add $1.3 million per month in revenue to the lucrative Big Ten Television Network. The Big Ten Network is currently offered on basic cable to very few of over 7 million residents living in Missouri television markets and adding it throughout the state will be a windfall for the conference.

Big Ten representatives have also told Missouri officials they would like to have the entire expansion process wrapped up this summer with a formal announcement coming no later than July.

A Confederacy of Dunces

This is what the American university has come to.

When faced with questions so fraught with scientific, moral and ethical complexities as embryonic stem-cell research, top brass of the University of Nebraska now have been reduced to making arguments they wouldn't accept from their teen-agers for even a nanosecond.

"But DAAAAAAAAD, all the cool kids are doing it!"

"But DAAAAAAAAD, Malia and Sasha's dad says it's OK!"

"But DAAAAAAAAD, everybody will make fun of me! You're making me into a laughingstock!"

"But DAAAAAAAAD, it's not like I bought the beer with a fake ID. All I did was have two or three of them."

"But DAAAAAAAAD, everybody's going to the party. If I don't go . . . Gawwwwwd, I'll be hated. Nobody will be my friend."

I THINK that covers all the arguments made by NU President J.B. Milliken and others in favor of expanding embryonic stem-cell research at the university's med center in Omaha. From the Omaha World-Herald:

University of Nebraska scientists don't need formal approval from the Board of Regents to expand their work with human embryonic stem cells, NU President J.B. Milliken said Friday.

Citing an Oct. 2 legal opinion from the university's general counsel, Milliken said existing state and federal laws, as well as university policy, allow scientists to use new lines of embryonic stem cells, once they are approved by the National Institutes of Health.

After more than an hour of public comment on the topic during a Board of Regents meeting, Milliken recommended that the board let current policy stand.

“Embryonic stem cell research holds enormous promise, and if the University of Nebraska is to be a leading research university, it should be appropriately engaged in this research,” he said.

“To do otherwise would unnecessarily limit the opportunities for discoveries to save and improve lives. It would also risk great harm to the reputation of the university and damage our ability to recruit and retain outstanding research and clinical faculty.”

Milliken said Friday that the regents had had the opportunity for review during the past several months and that he was now prepared to open the door to expanded research. He said the board has three options: affirm the existing policy, revise it or do nothing.

The Milliken recommendation upset anti-abortion advocates.

Since the Obama administration announced a change in the federal guidelines last spring, abortion opponents have been urging regents to “draw a line in the sand” to stop NU scientists from embarking on expanded research involving cells derived from human embryos that would otherwise be discarded.

“This is unbelievable what was stated here today,” said Chip Maxwell, executive director of the Nebraska Coalition for Ethical Research. “It's not for the president or any administrator to set this policy.”

Regents Chairman Kent Schroeder said the board probably will take up the issue at its November meeting.

Julie Schmit-Albin, executive director of Nebraska Right to Life, said she and other abortion opponents will continue to urge the regents to reject expanded embryonic stem cell research.

“I will be here,” she said of the November meeting.

The regents agreed to take public comment on the research after anti-abortion groups announced that they planned to speak during the public comment portion of the meeting.

The 12 people testifying in favor of the research included Omaha philanthropist Richard Holland, who is founder and chairman of the pro-research group Nebraskans for Lifesaving Cures; Lynne Boyer, daughter of the late Charles Durham, whose family has donated tens of millions of dollars to build research towers on the NU Medical Center campus; and Rik Bonness, a former Husker All-American football player whose two sons have Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes.

OH . . . I FORGOT an important instance of NU leadership's unleashing of its inner 15-year-old. "I'll do what I want, and you can't stop me."

But frankly, my gut tells me all you have to know about the university's willingness to scrap a hard-won cease-fire between it and Nebraska pro-life groups is this: Holland and Durham. The University of Nebraska, like most of us pathetic creatures, adheres unswervingly to the Golden Rule.

He who has the gold, rules.

It's embarrassing. And I'm not referring to the regents' potential for doing something that causes all the other cool scientists not to want to play with the little Cornhuskers anymore.

No, what's embarrassing is that a pre-eminent university can wade into a moral and ethical quagmire and think the mere spouting of inanities -- ones, in fact, barely worthy of teen-agers who act "young" for their age -- is enough to let it emerge without a lungful of fetid water.

What's embarrassing is that newspaper columnists such as the World-Herald's Robert Nelson can graduate from UNL and still think an effective column in favor of the university's stem-cell stance is little more than calling pro-lifers "zealots" and "rabble." Oh . . . that and regurgitating the party line -- if the Board of Regents gives in to the zealous rabble, that all the cool kids won't play with us anymore, blah blah blah, ad infinitum.

C'mon, I went to LSU, and I couldn't be that all-out dumb even after finishing off a couple of fifths of Early Times.

YOU WANT SCIENCE? I'll give you some basic biology.

Embryos are the result of the union of the female egg and the male sperm. When implanted into the womb and left alone (other than being given nourishment), they naturally grow into fetuses, and fetuses ultimately become (given enough academic degrees and fed enough bulls***) presidents of state universities spouting inanities to elected officials.

At what point do you say "not human, not human, not human, not human . . . AH! HUMAN! Can't gratuitously dissect it anymore!"? That is a question scientists have proven themselves unequipped to answer.

That's the realm of philosophers, theologians and clergy. That's "heavy" stuff, and the University of Nebraska should be ashamed -- in its cavalier handling of the weightiest material -- to have been revealed as such a collection of ethical and mental lightweights.