Daily Brief: 2006 Sept 05: Penn State, Macs, & Wishing Stars

The Quotable Joe Paterno

The raindrops keep falling on Joe Pa’s head:

The 79-year-old coach refuses to wear a hat, insisting he would look ridiculous. Asked if he would wear one if members of the media chipped in to buy him a hat, Paterno said: “Considering what you guys would probably contribute, no.”

And he still likes coaching football:

More than seven decades after the University of Chicago’s retirement guidelines forced him to step down, the legendary coach is remembered as a football Methuselah, a wrinkled, white-haired man who seemingly patrolled the sidelines forever.

Stagg was 70 and had coached 41 seasons when he left after the 1932 season. Surely, sportswriters noted at the time, no one would ever coach so long at one institution again.

But when he runs onto the Beaver Stadium turf this afternoon for Penn State’s season opener against Akron, 79-year-old Joe Paterno will have caught up to the Grand Old Man of the Midway.

Paterno is in his 41st season as the Nittany Lions’ head coach. That’s the same number of years Stagg (1892-1932) served at Chicago.

…

“I just want to get on with this season,” Paterno said. “I wouldn’t know whether I tied Stagg’s record for longevity or not. I hadn’t thought about that. Now that you mentioned it is the first time that I knew about it.”

In Other Penn State News

Penn State hates tailgating:

Hoping to cut down on underage drinking and create a safer postgame environment, Penn State is banning alcohol at parking-lot tailgate parties during football games inside Beaver Stadium.

Imbibing before kickoff and after the final whistle, though? Still OK.

Curbing drinking at a football game is like Paterno wearing a hat: It ain’t happening people.

Macintosh!

Mac Rumors: Adobe To Preview Universal Apps Next Week

A “sneak preview” will be shown of some Universal Binary versions of Adobe’s applications according to our source, however it does not appear as though any formal release is imminent.

Maybe new feature previews? That’d be nice. Last statement on release time indicated springish 2007.

Geek Patrol: Mac Performance: From the G3 to the Xeon

Looks at benchmarks from the different processors. With charts!

Politics!

Glenn Greenwald’s in need of a falling star:

If I had one wish, it would be for journalists everywhere to ingest this one extremely simple, undeniable fact — FISA, as written, allows the President to “listen in when Osama bin Laden is calling.” Under the law as it has existed for 28 years, “if al Qaeda is calling into the United States [the President can] know why they’re calling.” The “Terrorist Surveillance Program” doesn’t give the President the power to listen in on those calls because he already has that power under FISA.