The anticipated meeting between Chicago Bears and New England Patriots resulted in the Patriots winning 17-13.

It was a sloppy, turnover-filled game with marred by awful officiating, but in the end the better team won, almost in spite of itself. Patriots leading receiver, tight end Ben Watson, coughed up two fumbles but also caught a curiosly underthrown pass from quarterback Tom Brady for the game winning touchdown. He also made a huge catch for 40 yards on a third down play in the drive that ende up with the touchdown.

It was a physically tough game and several players left with injuries, among them Junior Seau who left with an arm injury.

New England cornerback Asante Samuel was the player of the game with three interceptions, including the game-icing pick on a deep throw over the middle inside the second half two-minute warning.

Chicago’s middle linebacker Brian Urlacher is a monster of a football player. He crunched New England’s runningbacks, including the powerful and Corey Dillon and flat-out knocked out Patriots 320-some pounds right-tackle Ryan O’Callaghan who had to leave the game. Yet Brady managed to elude Urlacher to pick up a big first down on a mad scramble in Urlacher’s direction during the drive that ended with Watson’s touchdown reception.

Brady threw one touchdown pass and two interceptions. One of the interceptions came off a high pass that Troy Brown tipped into thin air.

Brown made only one catch but it was good for 13 yards and a first down. He also helped out as nickelback in New England’s typically injury-riddled secondary.

Tight end Daniel Graham was in fine form blocking-wise and made one spectacular, leaping 25-yard finger-tip catch.

New England’s first-round rookie Chad Jackson came up with zero catches and lost 8 yards on a quite over-engineered double-reverse play. Jackson was mugged on a deep pass down the right sideline when a Bears defensive back got away with a flagrant face guard.

The overall inadequate quality of New England’s receivers was on display in the game.

Troy Aikman, colorman to play-by-play caller Joe Buck, called New England’s offensive line underrated at the start of the game. I disagree, I think the line is getting about the due it deserves: It’s above average but nothing more.

Heath Evans had a decent night at fullback but on one play he failed to finish off a blockee who managed to trip Dillon who lost balance and then the ball when a couple of other defensive players crashed into him.

The hard drive on the server that hosts my websites “died” - to quote my former webhost - a few days ago and that’s the reason internet128.com has been offline for 72 hours. 72 hours. How is it even possible to keep a server down for 72 hours? Do you position a sniper outside the server room with instructions to shoot anybody who tries to enter the room? Or do you simply lean back and enjoy the turkey and gravy?

Additional, hopefully minor, glitches, are to be expected over the next couple of days as I move to another host. One of my former webhosts customer service representatives wrote me during the outage: “Once the sites are moved to the new server you shouldn’t have ANY problems with the new server.” She is right about that.

Update: And now that I’ve moved to a new server I’ve added “former” in front of webhost.

These are rough days for the floundering, flailing Boston talk radio station WRKO. For unknown reasons, the toll-free phonelines to WRKO’s talk shows went down this morning, making drive-time talk-show host Howie Carr a very unhappy camper, in part, I guess, because his popular weekly Monday guest Max Robins was on. Ever the entertainer, Mr. Carr did the best of the situation and even let the callers who got through do live Chump Line messages and joked about letting the line fill up again after he had finished taking a call. I think Mr. Robins joked that they would soon do the show in Morse Code.

Year in and year out the Denver Broncos have the best offensive line in the league. They also have the dirtiest offensive line, and last night’s Sunday Night Football game between Denver and San Diego Chargers provided a telling example. It happened late in the fourth quarter, with the Chargers up 35-27 and Denver desperately trying to catch up. After completing an inbounds pass for a first down, Broncos spiked the ball to stop the clock. Rather than just preventing rushers from roughing Denver’s quarterback Jake Plummer, center Tom Nalen stood up and then threw a sneaky and vicious cutblock on Chargers defensive end Oleg Olshansky who was doing nothing but standing up and watching Plummer spike the ball. The big Charger responded immediately by striking Nalen several times, drawing a 15 yard personal-foul penalty and an ejection in the process. San Diego’s head coach Marty Schottenheimer was incensed by Olshansky’s lack of discipline, but I have to say Nalen deserved it, and it’s not as if Olshansky was going to hurt him through all those pads anyway.

Rob Zepeda has a video clip of the play (via a group of Danish football fans).

Chargers fans Jared W. Smith and Minor League Town side with Schottenheimer (and Olshansky as well, I guess, since the big man has apologized for punching the dirty Nalen).

Rich at House of Sports Blab thinks Olshansky was right to pound Nalen:

I’ve long contended that the Broncos have had the dirtiest offensive line in the NFL, but that crap was enough to make Conrad Dobler wince. Seriously, what the hell?

Joe West of Northwest Arkansas Times was infuriated by Nalen’s cut block:

Let me say this: If some jerk dives at my knees on a spike play, I’m going to give him a shot, too. I might give him an Albert Haynesworth stomp for good measure … I know Olshansky could have really hurt his team with the penalty, but I think he was in the right. Nalen deserves a fine as much Olshansky does, but that won’t happen because cut-blocking is still legal in the NFL.

ESPN columnist John Clayton singles out Olshansky without mentioning Nalen’s dirty hit. Let me clarify my position: I’m not saying Nalen’s hit was illegal, I’m saying it was dirty. I’m passing moral, not legal, judgment on him.

Sportable defends Olshansky: “[The Denver Broncos offensive linemen] are a disgrace to the NFL and the game of football.” Hear! Hear!

New England Patriots Pro Bowl defensive end Richard Seymour, on the other hand, was wrong to stomp Indianapolis Colts offensive tackle Tarik Glenn two weeks ago. The block Glenn threw to provoke Seymour’s retaliation was a legitimate part of the play. Stomping a vulnerable player in the upper torso and neck areas also strikes me as more dangerous than throwing a couple of punches in the same areas. To his credit, Seymour, who generally comes across as a good man and a stand-up player, apologized to Glenn in person after the game and has accepted the $7,500 League fine.

Dan Zarrella gets the Workhorse of the Week Award for his live blogging of PubCon Boston. Lots of interesting stuff for people who work with/on/through the interwebs.

The New England Patriots are a top ten NFL team that may or may not be able to beat a top five team, but it has no problems dispatching of the League’s weaklings. Today the Razormen blew out the Green Bay Packers 35-0 on the road. The Patriots launched an air offensive similar to the one it unleashed against the Minnesota Vikings three weeks ago and the Packers could do little to slow it down. While tight-end Daniel Graham made little impact against the New York Jets last week he quickly chipped in today by catching New England’s first touchdown on a fourth and inches inside Green Bay’s two yard line. Later in the game quarterback Tom Brady tossed a touchdown pass to New England’s other starting tight end, Ben Watson. He also threw a 54 yard touchdown pass - his longest of the season - to Reche Caldwell. Caldwell, who’s more of a possession receiver than a downfield threat took advantage of a well-drawn and well-executed play-action play to get wide open in the deep middle. Brady’s fourth and final touchdown went to runningback Laurence Maroney. Maroney was New England’s leading rusher with 82 yards on 19 carries. Corey Dillon had 12 runs for 31 yards. He scored one touchdown but also fumbled once. Fullback Heath Evans contributed with a 4th down four-yard run.

Defensive end Richard Seymour and linebacker Mike Vrabel, both players who should be among New England’s best but who have in fact struggled this year, had productive performances against the Packers. The front-seven in general had a good day and limited Green Bay to 43 yards on the ground.

New England now has a 7-3 record and remain perfect on the road and against NFC teams. The Patriots once again enjoy a two game lead in the AFC East since the Jets lost today to the Chicago Bears. Next week is the fourth major test the Patriots have faced this year when they take on the 9-1 Bears. Considering the weakness of the NFC and the New England’s inability to beat the League’s elite teams (Denver and Indianapolis) the loser next week will look flawed. Sadly, the Patriots probably don’t match up well against the Bears. New England’s offensive line is above average but nothing special and will have a hard time controlling the line of scrimmage.

It should be one heck of a game.

The Boston Globe’s editorial pot-shot at the late Milton Friedman is a real piece of work, as exemplified by this paragraph:

Friedman could not understand why people criticized his speeches in Chile in 1975 that aligned him with the Pinochet dictatorship. He compared them to his talks in China, which should have been questioned as well for their support of a communist dictatorship. Free enterprise does not always equal political and social freedom. And even when his thinking helped topple totalitarian regimes, as in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, the resulting transformation came down hard on those at the margins of the economy.

But this is how the Globe editorialized a little more than two months ago:

Few things are more essential to a university than the exercise of free inquiry. Like other American colleges and universities, Harvard has a long history of hosting figures who have been controversial or who exercised power in abusive regimes. Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, and Jiang Zemin, former president of China: They all came to Harvard and had their say before students, faculty, and the general public.

Yet Romney saw fit to declare that the Kennedy School’s invitation to Khatami is “a disgrace to the memory of all Americans who have lost their lives at the hands of extremists.” The kindest thing to say about this denunciation of Harvard’s devotion to active and open dialogue is that it illustrates the crucial difference between political thinking and the real thing.

The Globe, like virtually all newspapers, has low-watt editorialists who are long on opinion but short on analysis, critical thinking or anything else that could make their pieces, which are almost invariably better suited for blogs than dead-tree mass media, useful additions to public debate or private pondering. Apparently the Globe editorialists believe that foreign dictators should be welcomed to propagandize in America, but Western thinkers whose thinking do not please their left-wing sensibilities should not try to influence the policies of anybody.

The kindest thing to say about the Globe’s denunciation of Mr. Friedman’s devotion to active and open dialogue is that it illustrates the crucial difference between Globe thinking and the real thing.

As I was about to enter the down escalator at the College Avenue entrance to the Davis Square T-station I saw a black woman with a small girl a little more than halfway down the escalator. Right before my very eyes the woman suddenly lost her balance and slowly fell forward. The child started screaming hysterically. I started punching the escalator’s emergency stop button, not realizing that one has to lift a small plastic lid before one can push the button. I think somebody at the bottom of the escalator hit the button at his end just before I figured that out.

One urban nightmare is that of one passing out in a subway station or in the street and having one’s plight ignored by passers by. That’s not what happened in this case. A half dozen people immediately congregated around the woman, who was still down, and the child, who quickly stopped screaming. I called 911 while the others checked in on the woman and engaged the girl. I waited around until emergency personnel reached the woman, others lingered for at least as long. The woman was back on her feet by the time the firefighters arrived (the ambulance overshot the station and arrived a few seconds after the fire truck), but I didn’t see her on the platform so I assume they did some tests on her.

No pictures. It just wasn’t a Kodak moment. I’m sure my furious and futile punching of the plastic lid was documented by a surveillance camera.

While I’m against gambling I am very much in favor of Massachusetts licensing a very, very big casino so that the state can hold on to a good chunk of the money that is now spent by Mass residents at tribal and commercial casinos in Connecticut, New Jersey, Nevada, New York and other states.

The Boston Herald reports that Governor-elect Deval Patrick is open to considering allowing slots and maybe even a casino in Massachusetts, although he sounds less than enthusiastic about it.

Let’s do it. Let’s legalize slots at the race tracks and let’s license a big casino. The annual windfall for the state coffers could be a half billion dollars a year, give or take, possibly at little extra cost to Massachusetts residents (given the assumption in the paragraph above).

(Via Blue Mass Group)

As the Boston Herald reported yesterday, Entercom-owned Boston radio station AM-680 WRKO has canned its entire newsstaff. Now the news are delivered by Fox News Radio, “Live from New York” as the feed happily informs WRKO’s listeners in the Puritan hinterlands. It annoys me, it really does. It cheapens WRKO. What’s next? A drive-time talker out of Chicago? “Call now to talk about Daley and Da Bears!”

WRKO is reportedly getting ready to shake up its roster of talkers to turn around sagging ratings and take advantage of the audience boost that will come when the station starts broadcasting Boston Red Sox games next year.