Nothing brilliant to comment on this week, though there’s a ton of odd unrelated stuff going on.  Here are a few things that made me stop and take note:

• Here’s my friend Dan from Manchester making his national television debut on America’s Got Talent.
• I really have to go back and figure out how Nick Licata gets elected to Seattle City Council.  I’m beginning to think that moderates and conservatives simply don’t vote in Seattle.  Either that, or there’s some weird transition that anyone who is moderate or conservative bolts for the Eastside as soon as they can.
• For all the talk about Erik Bedard not speaking to the press, maybe with all his millions Larry Holmes can find a speechwriter, or at least someone who will keep him on some sort of consistent train of thought.  This could literally be a SNL skit.
• The U.S. Embassy told Americans living abroad: "Be Wary of Soccer-Crazed Germans."  No word if the Germans responded by warning their people to stay away from stadiums in Detroit, Cleveland and New York, just as a general rule.
• After months of hearing about how U.S. elementary, high scools and colleges are sub-standard, the graduate programs get blasted with this report from Business Week.  Apparently there was actually a Web site up for years that claimed to give people answers to the GMAT.  Yes, Years.  As in, for years the guys at GMAT never thought to Google "How to cheat on the GMAT" in order to fix the problem. Note to MBA grads – there may be job openings at GMAT soon.
• After the purging of the Mariner front office this week, someone asked me an interesting question.  If all decisions had been left to the Wisdom of Crowds approach where fans could vote on all matters, could they really have done any worse than Bavasi.  In 4.5 years, he’s the only person I’ve ever seen where you look upon the body of work and see no success in the past, no success in the present, and no hope for success in the future.  How hard to you have to try to take an 90+ win season in 2003, and decimate the major league and minor league talent without replacing it with much in return? 
• And of course, today could be the day that we find out for sure that our millionaires and legistalors all got out-hustled by an Oklahoma oil guy.

What a fun week.