I wonder if Paterno will sacrifice his retirement compensation. Or does he think he will need it to hire a legal defense team?

a short blooper reel of astronauts tripping and falling on the moon.

[link]

my inner 6-year-old laughed.

I'm fantasizing that Cain will win the nomination, because if he does, Obama will tapdance on his head. It will be like that season of West Wing where Bartlett ran against the empty suit.

I wish I could agree. However, twice before in my adult life (1980 and 2000), I've seen presidential candidates who "can't win" end up in the White House. There's at least a chance Romney could be a good president, depending on which Mitt showed up at the Oval Office on which days.

As for Penn State, I heard a long piece on either TAL or Radio Lab last winter about Penn State as a party school; the story was mostly about college binge drinking, but they positioned Penn State as the epitome of the syndrome. Tailgating got called out specifically.

Penn State is a very large school, correct? I imagine that it's kind of like the University of North Carolina -- big enough that you can find evidence to support any generalization you care to make. Party school? Check out frat row. Haven for jocks? Check out football (Penn State) or basketball (North Carolina). Center for budding politicians? Point to politicians among the alums. Intellectual center? Point to the mental celebrities among the alums.

Retirement at the end of the season is not good enough. He needs to be outsted, and now. Spanier too.

(I do note that Spanier did take the step of postponing - though not cancelling - the banquet with big donors in his honor that was scheduled for next week.)

ita !, anecdata, but you know I have taken Ambien for my chronic insomnia for years, and that my tolerance has been building up. I've added, with drs. approval, 1 to 1.5 mgs of Xanax to 10 mgs of the Ambien at bedtime, and it has really, REALLY helped to calm down the anxiety and mind/body revving and get me to sleep. IJS.

Some (most?) of them are adults now, right?

I've read that more victims have come forward since the story broke. I think this is an iceberg. He started the Second Mile program in 1977 and was with it until just a few years ago.

I agree with brenda, they need to be fired immediately.

Yeah, I haven't really noticed much more drinking at Penn State, relative to the size of the school, than at any other school I've been at. There is a lot of drinking on football weekends, but a lot of that isn't students.

Anyone heard this:

Joe Paterno, not getting it.

"The kids that were victims or whatever they want to say, I think we all ought to say a prayer for them."—Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno, on the child sex abuse scandal in which he is looking more and more like a knowing enabler for a child rapist. His former colleague Jerry Sandusky is charged with 40 sex crimes against boys, from 1994 to 2005. Paterno has not been charged with any crime. But he's out.

Yeah, I haven't really noticed much more drinking at Penn State, relative to the size of the school, than at any other school I've been at. There is a lot of drinking on football weekends, but a lot of that isn't students.

Oh, I believe that. What did shock me about that report was the volume of drinking that was described--the standard Saturday night out required a lot more alcohol than I ever saw in the early-to-mid 1980s. Things have changed since I was in college.