It occurred at 1319 GMT on Monday and was imaged by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, which sits in space at a gravitational balance point between our star and Earth.

The giant prominence at the bottom left of the image is more than 30 times the Earth’s diameter. Such prominences are not uncommon on our star.

If they are directed towards the Earth, they can lead to dramatic lights in Northern and Southern polar skies and also radio and communications interference. Researchers say that this particular explosion was directed away from Earth.

Hot but faded

The prominences are gigantic loops of magnetic fields that emerge from below the Sun’s surface. As they rise, they become filled with trapped, superhot gas that is heated to many millions of degrees.

Soho is a US/European satellite designed to study the Sun

Sometimes, as the magnetic fields become twisted and unstable, the magnetic energy collapses and explosively heats vast quantities of gas which then bursts and rises off the Sun in just a few minutes or hours.

The image taken by the Soho satellite is in the spectral line of singly ionised helium (He II) in the extreme ultraviolet region of the spectrum.

The material in the eruptive prominence is at temperatures of 60,000-80,000 Kelvin, which although extremely hot is still much cooler than the surrounding corona, or outer atmosphere, which is typically at temperatures above one million K.

Researchers followed the eruption as it moved out in space and faded.

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The agency’s deputy administrator, Shana Dale, said the United States would develop rockets and spacecraft to get people to the Moon and establish a rudimentary base. There, other countries and commercial enterprises could expand the outpost to develop scientific and other interests, Ms. Dale said.

Ms. Dale and other officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the agency envisioned a base at one of the lunar poles, to take advantage of the near-constant sunlight for solar power generation. It would have an “open architecture” design to which others could add the capabilities they want.

Scott Horowitz, NASA’s associate administrator for exploration, said crews of four astronauts would make weeklong missions to the Moon starting around 2020.

As more equipment was set up, human stays would eventually grow to 180 days, and become permanent by 2024. By 2027, officials said, a pressurized roving vehicle on the surface would take people on expeditions far from the base.

NASA gave no cost estimate for the program and no design details for the base. Ms. Dale said all plans assumed that the agency would continue operating from a fixed budget of about $17 billion a year.

The space shuttle fleet is to be retired by 2010, and the United States plans to scale back its involvement in the International Space Station. The station is still under construction, with a mission by the shuttle Discovery to lift off on Thursday. Ms. Dale said money would be shifted to the lunar exploration program from the shuttle and the station.

While the Bush administration and NASA have spoken in general terms about plans for a return to the Moon, followed by human spaceflight to Mars, the lunar outpost plan is the first time officials have proposed a permanent presence.

”We’re going for a base on the Moon,” Mr. Horowitz said. “It’s a very, very big decision.”

Many gaps in the plan remain to be filled in. NASA called Monday’s announcement a baseline concept.

In a televised news conference from the Johnson Space Center in Houston on the eve of an international conference there on space exploration, Ms. Dale said the plan was developed after consultation with space agencies representing 14 countries and more than 1,000 experts in space science and commerce.

“The door is open for international and commercial interests,” she said.

The lunar base plan is part of a larger effort to develop an international exploration strategy, one that explains why and how humans are returning to the Moon and what they plan to do when they get there, NASA officials said.

The planning includes an international conference early next year on setting scientific goals for returning to the Moon, including those that private interests might want to pursue.

Doug Cooke, the agency official who led the lunar study group, said the plan called for putting a lander craft down near a polar crater and later adding solar-power generating units and living quarters to establish a base.

A site near the lunar South Pole, like the Shackleton Crater, would provide enough sunlight for power generation. It is also near possible deposits of valuable minerals.

From this site, Mr. Cooke said, other nations could add scientific laboratories or observatories, and commercial concerns might want to process rocket fuel and other products from water and other materials that might be found in the ground nearby.

Mr. Horowitz said having a base did not mean that humans would go there after every lunar landing. The option remains open for some missions to go to equatorial regions, as the Apollo project landers did in the 1970s, or even to the other side of the Moon.

Getting to the Moon and establishing a base will require a versatile, general-purpose lander that could land anywhere and be the core of an outpost, he said.

“The nickname I use for the lander is, it’s a pickup truck,” Mr. Horowitz said. “You can put whatever you want in the back. You can take it to wherever you want. So you can deliver cargo, crew, do it robotically, do it with humans on board. These are the types of things we’re looking for in this system.”

Tomlinson ran for 131 yards and one touchdown and the Chargers shut out Oakland for the first time since 1961 to take pressure off Philip Rivers in his first NFL start, a 27-0 victory over the Raiders on Monday night.

With much of the focus on Rivers as he replaces Drew Brees, Chargers coach Marty Schottenheimer put the game in the hands of Tomlinson and his defense, spoiling Art Shell’s first game back as Raiders coach.

San Diego beat the Raiders for the sixth straight time and shut them out for the first time in their last 90 regular-season games. When the Chargers won 44-0 in 1961, Al Davis was still an assistant with San Diego.

Tomlinson showed little sign of rust after sitting out the entire preseason, topping 100 yards rushing in the second quarter – his sixth 100-yard game in 11 tries against Oakland. Tomlinson carried the ball 31 times and has 837 yards rushing in his last six meetings with Oakland.

The Chargers ran the ball on 48 of 59 plays, and Rivers threw only two passes to wide receivers all game.

Acquired on draft day in 2004, Rivers spent the past two seasons watching, but the Chargers had enough confidence in him to cut ties with Brees in the offseason. Rivers went 8-for-11 for 108 yards, including a 4-yard touchdown pass to Antonio Gates in the fourth quarter that made it 20-0.

“It was exciting,” Rivers said. “I’ve been waiting for this day for a long time. … I’ve said before, I don’t care if I have to hand it off 50 times or throw it 50 times, as long as we win.”

The Chargers’ win capped an opening weekend in the NFL in which 11 games were won by visiting teams, the most on opening weekend since 1983, when 12 teams won their openers on the road. The Raiders joined Green Bay and Tampa Bay as home teams who failed to score in their openers as they had no answer for Merriman and the Chargers defense.

Merriman, last year’s top defensive rookie, had three of San Diego’s nine sacks and the Chargers held the Raiders to only 129 yards in Brooks’ first game as quarterback. Brooks was replaced in the fourth quarter by Andrew Walter, who wasn’t much better.

Shell was brought back to Oakland to turn the Raiders around after the worst three-year stretch in Davis’ more than four decades with the franchise. But after one game it looked like the same old Raiders, who won just 13 games the last three seasons.

Oakland was shut out for the first time since a 30-0 loss to Kansas City on Dec. 7, 1997, ending its final drive at the San Diego 4.

Rivers led the Chargers to scores on the first three drives, although he did little more than hand off.

The Chargers ran the ball eight of nine times on the opening drive, with the only pass going to Tomlinson, as the Chargers moved 51 yards to set up Nate Kaeding’s 47-yard field goal.

Tomlinson ran 58 yards on the first play of the second drive and capped it with a 1-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-goal.

Rivers didn’t throw a ball to a receiver until the third drive when he connected with Keenan McCardell on an 18-yard pass on third-and-8.

Kaeding missed wide on a 42-yard field goal attempt on the drive, but Nnamdi Asomugha was called for running into the kicker and Kaeding made good on his second chance from 29 yards to make it 13-0.

The Raiders offense sputtered all game, drawing boos from the sellout crowd just 12 minutes into the season. The revamped offensive line failed to create any running lanes for LaMont Jordan, who had 20 yards on 10 carries, or to protect Brooks.

Last year’s leading receiver for Oakland, Jerry Porter, was inactive for the game as his standing on the team has dropped after demanding a trade at the start of training camp. He joked on the sidelines as the Raiders struggled to move the ball.

Brooks didn’t even attempt a pass to Randy Moss until about 5 minutes left in the half, connecting on two straight quick passes off one-step drops. Oakland had its deepest penetration of the half on that drive, moving to San Diego’s 33 before two sacks knocked the Raiders back near midfield.

“If you mentioned the Balkans to John Smith, it was still these pictures of AK-47s, nationalism, bad guys,” he told me at the Dream Property Montenegro offices on one of the narrow streets of Kotor’s walled town, where property prices have jumped threefold since last year. “Now I get the feeling that every granny in the Kotor old town is in the real estate business.” In the Monitor

It’s not only real estate that’s selling well. Since Montenegro voted to pull out of its state union with Serbia earlier this year, and is enjoying its first summer out from under Serbia’s shadow. It’s become a country for sale. Companies, hotels, land, private houses – it seems as if everything is on the block, mostly bought by people and investors from central Europe, the Britain and Ireland, though to hear the local gossip, it’s shadowy Russian money launderers who are buying up most of the country.

The reasons for this sale of the century are simple. Montenegro’s Serbia-free image comes as the government is eager to attract foreign investment to help the tiny country of just 650,000 get on its feet. Registering a company here takes just four days. Required starting capital for a limited-liability company is one euro. Foreigners have the same legal status as nationals. And Montenegro is an emerging market that daring investors are keen to get into while it’s hot. Even before the independence referendum, foreign direct investment per head in this tiny country had shot up from 85 euros in 2004 to 618 euros in 2005. Norwegian and Hungarian telecoms have snapped up both Montenegrin telecoms.

Canadian billionaire Peter Mank is said to be buying the Tivat shipyard for some 100 million euros. The Russian-Montenegrin Montenegro Stars hotel group has invested 50 million euros in the new five-star Hotel Splendid, and Britain’s Beppler & Jacobson have invested Ý9 million in Hotel Bianca, the north Montenegrin five-star spa. Headlines in the daily Vijesti range from “Mysterious millions from Holland,” about a tender for one of the coast’s boxy state-owned hotels, to “airports for sale,” about government plans to privatize two airports. There are even rumors the government might sell off some submarines.

But this summer, worries about Russian investors are the talk in many Montenegrin cafes and bars. Concerns are so prevalent that one night I flicked on the state television news to see a segment protesting that investors from Russia ranked far down on the list – 10th – of all the foreign investors here. But central bank figures indicate that Russian Federation investors are sixth, after central European countries and Britain, with 2.7 percent of investments here over the past four years. But the talk persists – probably because you can’t spit on the coast without hitting squat, graying Russians with their much younger and taller trophy wives. At least one investor here finds the rumors enjoyable. “Every time we’re about to close a deal, i.e., buy a plot of land, it’s like, ‘You’ve gotta sign today, because a Russian is coming with a suitcase of cash, and is going to buy it if you don’t sign,’ ” says Justin Faiz, director of Pluto Capital, Ltd., a British-Montenegrin development fund. “Of course the Russian is never around the corner, so this fictional Russian we love to hear about.” TOM BROWN

Mr. Vukicevic at Dream Property says most Montenegrins don’t mind Russians as tourists. “Whoever buys an ice cream or dines in a restaurant – and is not a hooligan – is welcome,” he says. “But people are not very happy with the Russians buying companies. The way they manage it once they buy it is not pleasant for the workers.” He cites the notorious example of an inland steel mill that was bought by a Russian investor who after several months, canceled the contract. Though the Russian threat has been blown out of proportion, another real estate agent warned there may eventually be a backlash. “Montenegrins fought very hard for their land and their territory, and they don’t want to give it up,” says Robin Gellately-Smith, a building surveyor at Kotor’s Total Group Real Estate, referring to Montenegrins’ pride in resisting the Ottoman Empire for 500 years.

I saw that for myself in Zoran Lemajic, who rented me a room at his pension outside Kotor. “Some Russian guy stopped by a few months ago and asked, ‘How much for this place?’ I told him three million.’”

Prime Minister Tony Blair called the win “a momentous day” for Britain.

Paris had been favourites throughout the campaign but London’s hopes were raised after an impressive presentation by Lord Coe, the bid chairman.

IOC president Jacques Rogge made the dramatic announcement at 1249 BST.

It will be the first time the Olympics has been held in Britain since 1948.

Coe said: “This is just the most fantastic opportunity to do everything we ever dreamed of in British sport.”

The Queen, in a message to Coe, said: “I send my warmest congratulations to you and every member of the London 2012 team for winning the bid for the UK.

After the announcement, it emerged London was ahead in every round of voting except the second round when Madrid polled the most votes.

News of London’s victory delighted flag-waving supporters who had gathered in Trafalgar Square and Stratford in the East End of London, where the new Olympic park will be built.

Shares of British construction companies soared, while mortgage lenders predicted house prices in the capital would rocket.

But raindrops began falling on disappointed Parisians outside the Hotel de Ville in the French capital shortly after the result.

Mr Blair had helped London’s late momentum with a whistlestop 48-hour visit to Singapore, before flying back for the G8 summit in Scotland.

Breaking off from the meeting of world leaders, he said of London: “Many reckon it is the greatest capital city in the world and the Olympics will help keep it that way.”

Rogge had correctly forecast a cliffhanger vote, and offered his congratulations to the winners.

“We knew the two bids were very, very close. Well done, London. It will be a superb Games and will strengthen the Olympics,” he said.

An hour after the decision, London’s bid leaders were greeted by warm applause as they signed the official contract to stage the Games.

This is how the decision was made by the IOC in Singapore on Wednesday:

All five bidding cities gave final 45-minute presentations to the IOC members before the vote began.

The electronic ballot started at 1126 BST. Moscow, New York and Madrid were eliminated from the race in the first, second and third rounds of voting.

The final round of voting finished at about 1145 BST, with the committee reconvening at 1230 BST for the official announcement.

Rogge revealed the winner, after a nerve-wracking wait, at 1249 BST.

Wednesday’s decision brings to an end the 18-month race to win the host contract for the 2012 Games.

And it was the most keenly-fought bidding contest in recent years.

Paris was considered the front-runner for much of the campaign, and was highly rated in the initial evaluation and also by the inspectors after their visits earlier in the year.

But it was widely recognised that bid leader Lord Coe, a high-profile personality within the IOC and other governing bodies, hauled London closer to the French capital as the vote approached.

Madrid was seen as a consistent but not outstanding candidate, while New York’s bid was dogged by problems over their proposed stadium, and Moscow was always seen as the rank outsider.

Once attention moved to Singapore, the bidding cities called on political and sporting heavyweights to champion their causes.

And the spotlight inevitably focused on Paris and London in the days leading up to the vote.

The two cities had President Chirac and Prime Minister Blair respectively in their corners.

Mr Chirac actually took part in the French capital’s final presentation on Wednesday, while Mr Blair opted to lobby alongside the London bid team in Singapore before flying back to Britain to host the G8 summit.

London also called on England captain David Beckham and a galaxy of Olympic and Paralympic medallists as ambassadors, while footballers Laurent Blanc and Zinedine Zidane were among those backing the Paris bid.

The listing of Comet Catalina underscores the uncertainty in the knowledge of whether comets or asteroids pose a greater threat to Earth. Previous estimates of the proportion of the impact risk posed by comets have varied widely, from 1% to 50%, with most recent estimates at the lower end.

But comets are larger and faster-moving, on average, so their impacts could be a significant part of the overall risk to human life. And, unlike asteroids, they lie on randomly-oriented and usually highly elongated orbits. This makes them much more likely to remain undiscovered until they are very close to Earth.

Comet Catalina was found by the Catalina Sky Survey, one of the six current, large-scale and automated search programmes for near-Earth asteroids. It was initially designated as an asteroid when first spotted on May 6. But was reclassified as a comet when observers saw characteristic fuzziness in the image, indicating ice and dust streaming off.

Its size is estimated at about 1 kilometre but Steve Chesley of JPL told New Scientist that this “could be off by a factor of a few” in either direction. If there is enough dusty coma to increase its brightness significantly, the nucleus itself might only be a few hundred metres across. But if there is very little dust, then because comets are quite dark, the nucleus could be larger than estimated, perhaps a few kilometres across, Chesley said. “So 1 kilometre is pretty much in the middle of the reasonable range.”
Collision course?

On 26 May, JPL’s unique orbital calculation software determined that Comet Catalina was on what could possibly be a collision course with Earth, though the odds of such an impact were small: just 1 chance in 300,000 of a strike on June 11, 2085. Based on the 1 kilometre size estimate, that would produce a 6-gigaton impact – equivalent to 6 billion tonnes of TNT.

Astronomers expect the addition of further observations to the calculations to rule out any possibility of a collision, as happens with most newly-seen objects.

But that has not quite happened yet. With an extra week of data, the comet’s predicted pathway actually drew even closer to making a perfect bull’s-eye with the Earth – its predicted path passes within 400 kilometres of where the centre of our 12,700-km-diameter planet will be around that time.

However, uncertainty in the exact timing of the comet’s pass through the line of Earth’s orbit dropped the odds of an impact to about 1 in 120 million. That is very low, but the observations so far cannot categorically rule a collision out.
Forceful outgassing

Chesley adds that even the slim 1 in 120 million odds are an overestimate, because comets, unlike asteroids, can move in unpredictable ways because of the forceful outgassing that creates their dusty comas and tails. The odds therefore might be wrong “by a factor of two or so” he said. The cut-off for inclusion on the list is 1 in 10 billion.

The only other comet placed on the JPL list of near-Earth objects with possible collision paths was added in 2003. But additional observations ruled out a possible impact – that comet was removed from the list after less than a week.

Just one other comet, Swift-Tuttle, has been recorded with a non-zero possibility of impact. It was rediscovered in 1992 – after more than a century’s absence – before the JPL list was created.

Additional observations during Swift-Tuttle’s passage, thanks to the publicity surrounding the possible impact, made it possible to rule out the possibility of an Earth impact anytime in this millennium. However, Swift-Tuttle is on an orbit that will almost certainly cause it to crash into the Earth or the moon eventually.

“Voyager has entered the final lap on its race to the edge of interstellar space, as it begins exploring the solar system’s final frontier,” said Dr. Edward Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which built and operates Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2.

In November 2003, the Voyager team announced it was seeing events unlike any encountered before in the mission’s then 26-year history. The team believed the unusual events indicated Voyager 1 was approaching a strange region of space, likely the beginning of this new frontier called the termination shock region. There was controversy at that time over whether Voyager 1 had indeed encountered the termination shock or was just getting close.

“The consensus of the team now is that Voyager 1, at 8.7 billion miles from the Sun, has at last entered the heliosheath, the region beyond the termination shock,” said Dr. John Richardson from MIT, Principal Investigator of the Voyager plasma science investigation.

The termination shock is where the solar wind, a thin stream of electrically charged gas blowing continuously outward from the Sun, is slowed by pressure from gas between the stars. At the termination shock, the solar wind slows abruptly from its average speed of 300 to 700 km per second (700,000 – 1,500,000 miles per hour) and becomes denser and hotter.

The strongest evidence that Voyager 1 has passed through the termination shock into the slower, denser wind beyond is its measurement of an increase in the strength of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind and the inferred decrease in its speed. Physically, this must happen whenever the solar wind slows down, as it does at the termination shock. Consider a highway with moderate traffic. If something makes the drivers slow down, say a puddle of water, the cars pile up – their density increases. In the same way, the density (intensity) of the magnetic field carried by the solar wind will increase if the solar wind slows down. In December 2004, Voyager 1 observed the magnetic field strength increasing by a factor of two and a half, as expected when the solar wind slows down. The magnetic field has remained at these high levels from December until now. An increase in the magnetic field intensity of about 1.7 times was seen at the time of the event announced in 2003.

“Voyager’s observations over the past few years show that the termination shock is far more complicated than anyone thought,” said Dr. Eric Christian, Discipline Scientist for the Sun-Solar System Connection research program at NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC.

For their original missions to Jupiter and Saturn, the Voyagers were destined for regions of space far from the Sun, so each was equipped with three radioisotope thermoelectric generators to produce electrical power for the spacecraft systems and instruments. Still operating in remote, cold and dark conditions 27 years later, the Voyagers could last until 2020.

On July 9, 1858, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas gave a campaign speech to a raucous throng from the balcony of the Tremont Hotel in Chicago. Abraham Lincoln was in the audience when Douglas prepared to speak and invited Lincoln to sit on the balcony. In his speech Douglas rang the themes of the momentous campaign that Lincoln and Douglas waged that summer and fall for Douglas’s senate seat.

Douglas paid tribute to Lincoln as a “kind, amiable, and intelligent gentleman, a good citizen and an honorable opponent,” but expressed his disagreement with Lincoln’s June 16 speech to the Illinois Republican convention that had named him its candidate for Douglas’s seat. In that speech Lincoln had famously asserted that the nation could not exist “half slave and half free.” According to Douglas, Lincoln’s assertion was inconsistent with the “diversity” in domestic institutions that was “the great safeguard of our liberties.” Then as now, “diversity” was a platitude hiding an evil institution that could not be defended on its own terms.

Douglas responded to Lincoln’s condemnation of the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision — a condemnation that was the centerpiece of Lincoln’s convention speech. “I am free to say to you,” Douglas said, “that in my opinion this government of ours is founded on the white basis. It was made by the white man, for the benefit of the white man, to be administered by white men, in such manner as they should determine.”

Lincoln invited Douglas’s audience to return the next evening for his reply to Douglas’s speech. Lincoln’s speech of July 10, 1858, is one of his many great speeches, but in one respect it is uniquely great. It concludes with an explanation of the meaning of Independence Day to Americans with matchless eloquence and insight in words that remain as relevant now as then.

Now, it happens that we meet together once every year, sometime about the 4th of July, for some reason or other. These 4th of July gatherings I suppose have their uses. If you will indulge me, I will state what I suppose to be some of them.

We are now a mighty nation, we are thirty—or about thirty millions of people, and we own and inhabit about one-fifteenth part of the dry land of the whole earth. We run our memory back over the pages of history for about eighty-two years and we discover that we were then a very small people in point of numbers, vastly inferior to what we are now, with a vastly less extent of country,—with vastly less of everything we deem desirable among men,—we look upon the change as exceedingly advantageous to us and to our posterity, and we fix upon something that happened away back, as in some way or other being connected with this rise of prosperity. We find a race of men living in that day whom we claim as our fathers and grandfathers; they were iron men, they fought for the principle that they were contending for; and we understood that by what they then did it has followed that the degree of prosperity that we now enjoy has come to us. We hold this annual celebration to remind ourselves of all the good done in this process of time of how it was done and who did it, and how we are historically connected with it; and we go from these meetings in better humor with ourselves—we feel more attached the one to the other, and more firmly bound to the country we inhabit. In every way we are better men in the age, and race, and country in which we live for these celebrations. But after we have done all this we have not yet reached the whole. There is something else connected with it. We have besides these men—descended by blood from our ancestors—among us perhaps half our people who are not descendants at all of these men, they are men who have come from Europe—German, Irish, French and Scandinavian—men that have come from Europe themselves, or whose ancestors have come hither and settled here, finding themselves our equals in all things. If they look back through this history to trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none, they cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence they find that those old men say that “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and then they feel that that moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration, [loud and long continued applause] and so they are. That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world. [Applause.]

Now, sirs, for the purpose of squaring things with this idea of “don’t care if slavery is voted up or voted down” [Douglas's "popular sovereignty" position on the extension of slavery to the territories], for sustaining the Dred Scott decision [A voice---"Hit him again"], for holding that the Declaration of Independence did not mean anything at all, we have Judge Douglas giving his exposition of what the Declaration of Independence means, and we have him saying that the people of America are equal to the people of England. According to his construction, you Germans are not connected with it. Now I ask you in all soberness, if all these things, if indulged in, if ratified, if confirmed and endorsed, if taught to our children, and repeated to them, do not tend to rub out the sentiment of liberty in the country, and to transform this Government into a government of some other form. Those arguments that are made, that the inferior race are to be treated with as much allowance as they are capable of enjoying; that as much is to be done for them as their condition will allow. What are these arguments? They are the arguments that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world. You will find that all the arguments in favor of king-craft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden. That is their argument, and this argument of the Judge is the same old serpent that says you work and I eat, you toil and I will enjoy the fruits of it. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent, and I hold if that course of argumentation that is made for the purpose of convincing the public mind that we should not care about this, should be granted, it does not stop with the negro. I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out! Who is so bold as to do it! [Voices---"me" "no one," &c.] If it is not true let us tear it out! [cries of "no, no,"] let us stick to it then, [cheers] let us stand firmly by it then.

Sort of. On August 14, 2009, the Vikings beat the Colts 13-3 and on October 4, 2009, the Saints beat the Jets 24-10. Oh, we didn’t get to see the Saints play the Colts or the Vikings play the Jets, but does it really matter?

Once upon a time, when there were two unique leagues and there were bitter differences of opinion about talent and coaching and uniforms, there was something to play for. But now, what’s replaced professional antagonism and disrespect is hype. Lots and lots of hype. Since the merger, there hasn’t been a whole lot that’s different between the Super Bowl and the pre-season since teams that face each other during the summer could, in fact, face each other in February. So, what’s the big deal? So, Manning didn’t play much in the summer and neither did Brees. So what? It’s one league. The winner isn’t World Champion. The winner isn’t even North American Champion. The winner is the United States Champion and that’s why we now call professional football, “America’s Game.”

I imagine that at some point in time, the league will expand to other countries. Perhaps, they’ll be a team called the London Fish & Chips or the Paris Brie or the Rome Fettuccini or maybe the Buenos Aires Maté, but, until then, we have an American game played between American teams from the same American league that know each other quite well and outside of the Lombardi Trophy there’s not a whole lot to fight for.

Perhaps, this year, with the Saints it’s a bit different since in a post-Katrina world, they’re playing for the city of New Orleans and the right to erase years of paper bag masks and ultimate disgrace. More power to them. But there’s no real antagonism between the Colts and the Saints the way there was between Starr’s Packers and Dawson’s Chiefs or Namath’s Jets and Unitas’s Colts or between Stabler’s Raiders and Tarkenton’s Vikings. Nope, the elements of antagonism and disrespect have really disappeared. So, even though the audience for the Super Bowl may be huge, the game itself seems to be missing something intangible that was really there before the two leagues became one. Perhaps, that’s what the AFL owners were thinking all along. Perhaps, that’s why Paul Brown invented the Bengals so they’d become part of the NFL and not part of the AFL. What the owners really wanted was a merger and that’s what they got.

Now the game has become homogenized between two divisions in the same league. Nothing more and nothing less. Regardless of the potential excitement factor of the game, it would appear that, over time, the Super has somehow become something less than that. Seems the only thing that’s remained “majestic” about the Super Bowl is the use of Roman numerals and the possibility of a “wardrobe malfunction.” Perhaps, Jim Brown was right when he originally thought the name “Super Bowl” was a bit lame. If you disagree with that, then take it up with Jim.