Wake Up the Echoes
On the strength of an amazing touchdown in the last two minutes, Notre Dame came back to beat Michigan State this afternoon, breaking its five year losing streak to the Spartans. With today's victory the Irish remain undefeated, moving to 4-0.


Notre Dame 21
Michigan State 17

Down the Field
The Yale Eleven opened its season today with a convincing non-conference victory. The countdown to November 23rd has begun.


San Diego 14
Yale 49

Sobran on the Iliad and the Odyssey
Here we have an excellent short essay on the foundational epics of the Western literary tradition by a political columnist with a graduate education in English. Interestingly, Sobran (who has made something of a name for himself arguing that Shakespeare was really the Earl of Oxford) believes that a single poet called Homer did indeed write both of the great poems the Greeks attributed to him. His admiration of the thoughtful Robert Fagles is also well placed; the translator and Princeton professor is every inch a classical scholar in the traditional mold.


We would be well advised never to doubt that the Greeks -- from Homer and Sophocles to Herodotus and Thucydides -- have important lessons to teach us, in the present cultural and geopolitical climate more than ever.

Thomas Eakins and The Simpsons
Tonight the local Fox affiliate here in D.C. re-ran an episode of The Simpsons titled "The Mansion Family". Regular viewers of the show will recognize this as the one in which the Simpson family house-sits for the billionaire miser Mr Burns while he is away at the Mayo Clinic for a physical. I have seen this episode several times, but I only first noticed this evening a delightful detail so fleeting I had to rewind the tape (I record the shows for viewing with my restorative cup of tea after work) to make sure I saw correctly. I did. Towards the end of the episode, as Burns is leaving the doctor's office, if one looks carefully, one will notice in the background, hanging on the office wall, none other than "The Gross Clinic" by Thomas Eakins.


This is just one example of how The Simpsons is quite possibly the most subtly intelligent program on network television.

Shake Down the Thunder
Michigan 23
Notre Dame 25