News You Can’t Use: Super Bowl Edition

“Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties,” says Paul in today’s second reading. He was speaking to New England Patriots football fans.

Be free of anxiety, I say: The New England Patriots will win Super Bowl XLIX by seventeen points. This blog is already on record.

Since the over-under is settling at 47 1/2, I’ll even give you a score: Patriots 30 – Seahawks 13. Take the under. Barring special teams disaster for the Patriots, Seattle cannot score more than one touchdown, probably on the first drive after the Patriots defer on the coin flip.

The Las Vegas betting line opened two weeks ago favoring Seattle, but the smart money swooped in, bet heavily on New England, and the line moved to pick-em (even). The smart money is on the Pats, people.

Want more proof?

“You Hate Us ’Cause You Ain’t Us” and Other News You Can’t Use During the Big Blizzard of ’15

“This time it’s the Patriots against the world!” the digital Boston Globe crowed this morning.

I don’t know if the print edition carried the same headline. If a paper Globe were still being delivered to my house, I would not look for it until Thursday or find it until spring. 

Right now (see weather map) the snow is streaking past my office window horizontal, my back door is blocked by a drift, and I am happy. Nothing to do today but finish off Christopher Dawson’s Religion and the Rise of Western Culture and blog my fanny off. No point in shoveling until the end of Armageddon, or about 5 p.m. EST, according to the latest forecast. 

But about our New England Patriots—not yours if you live west of the New York state line. My Pats had a big send-off from City Hall Plaza yesterday, and the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy was there to watch:

News You Can't Use: On The Meaning of Faith, Transgender Saints, and Waking Up a Yankee

Bloggers comment on breaking news items, but I was never interested in news. Politics is not in my DNA. I usually hear the news when it’s olds.

I hear the news only after whatever broke has been patched together into an artifact over which people are already bickering.

Still, I read stuff on-line that catches my eye. And in that catching of my eye there's something interesting. It tells me about myself and my experience of the world. How I relate to my world.

Three items caught my eye today.