Dick Butkus Shoulders

There's a football game on, easily the most overrated, over hyped "event" in my lifetime. Proof: who finished second in the last five Super Bowls? If you're good enough to play a game for immortality, shouldn't you be remembered?

The Indianapolis Colts are playing, and I don't care enough to watch. When I earned my stripes as an NFL fan, they were the Baltimore Colts, and I didn't like them then, surely not Saint John Unitas, exalted as one of the greats, ever. Baltimore did play in two SB's in those years, but ChristInCleats (and you thought that was Joe Montana, who won four) only played in one. His back-up, Earl Morrall, played in the loss to the New York Jets, making a hero of the extraordinarily disgusting Joe Namath.
Unitas started in SB V, but left the game in the second quarter. Morrall finished the win.

There were a couple players I liked from those Colts teams. Tom Matte, a running back that played hard, always, and Mike Curtis, the best middle linebacker in the game until Mr. Butkus came along.

I wanted to refer to my little falcon as having Jack Lambert shoulders, but felt the best middle linebacker in the history of the NFL might have escaped the notice of some non-fans, while Butkus was in movies and at least one current television commercial.

Since American Kestrels sit tight on the wire in winter, they can be indistinguishable through your windshield on a drear winter day from say, a turtle dove (Mourning dove - probably mourning the thousands and thousands of doves, a symbol of peace, shot annually for "sport"). They are the same size, and colors fade in leaden skies, but a turtle dove has a long neck and tiny head. Don't fret over that "bird brain": they fly at speeds up to 55 mph, and if you doubt the thought and coordination necessary, put a typical 12-year-old behind the wheel of your car and press the accelerator up to that speed. Enjoy hospitalization, at best.

The kestrel has massive "shoulders" and, practically, no neck, and is distinctive in the bleakest conditions.

Admire, and enjoy.

Of course you'll have to slow down, and get off the damn cellphone. And do your part to save lives: never, ever, text message while driving.

Creationists "believe" the earth is about 8,000 years old. Belief, faith, are terms used to qualify irrational subscription to theories with no empirical proof or supporting evidence of any kind. 8,000 years isn't long enough to account for all the snow in Indiana.

On Groundhog Day, the sun shone brightly, but our groundhog couldn't see his shadow because he was snowed in, in the dark, hibernating peacefully.

Hibernation is a much-underrated activity, or lack thereof, a talent we lost the capacity for sometime in the 5 1/2 billion-year history of our planet. And check it, because in your lifetime that age will grow, as much as another billion years. Remember, the current estimate is based on evidence found and examined, namely meteors, and there are tons more to be found, analyzed, and dated.

Algae fossils five billion years old have been validated. You carry the DNA from that algae, with some other, in every cell in your body.

For sure.

8,000 years, indeed.

Neanderthals were gone about 30,000 years ago. They left with the largest brains of any hominid. I'm guessing they knew the earth was older than creationists "believe".