U2 & "Jesus Christ"

Vertigo and Judas Iscariot

#28 Iowa @ #2 Michigan

Saturday, Oct. 21st • 3:30 p.m.
Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI
ABC-TV Regional

[ U-M Audio (Free): All-Access | Quicktime ]
[ Postgame Press Conference Video (Subscription) ]
[ Gametracker (Live Stats) | Radio Network ]
[ Press Conference Quotes: Lloyd Carr | Players ]
[ ABC Coverage Map ]
Michigan Football Game Notes

• Michigan (7-0; 4-0 vs. Big 10); Iowa (5-2; 2-5 vs. Big 10)
  
• U-M leads the series 39-10-4
  
• Series Streak: U-M won 2
  
• Michigan leads the nation in rushing defense (32.6 yds/game) and has held six opponents under 60 yards; time of possession (34:08); and has allowed the fewest turnovers
  

Yahoo!: Wolverines' Carr urges caution
ESPN: Michigan looks to avoid No. 2 jinx vs. Iowa

ESPN: Michigan Clubhouse
Yahoo!: Michigan Team Page
Detroit Free-Press: Michigan Team Page
Detroit News: Michigan Clubhouse

Michigan Stats

• Michigan is #2 in the AP Poll, #3 in the USA Today Poll and #3 in the BCS, #2 in the Sagarin rankings
  
• Michigan has more wins that any football program in NCAA history, 856-280-36
• Michigan has the highest winning percentage of any team in the NCAA history (.7457337)
• Michigan will play its 361th game (267-83-10, .756) when ranked in the Top 10 in the AP Poll. This year Michigan is 4-0
• Michigan ranks #1 all-time in composite AP final football polls (1936-2005)
• Michigan has 42 Big 10 titles which is the most conference titles of any NCAA school and is 452-163-18 in Big 10 play
  
• Michigan has the most weekly appearances in the AP poll, appearing 731 times entering the 2006 season
• Michigan has led the nation in attendance 31 of the last 32 years
• Michigan has had 197 consecutive crowds of 100,000+ fan at "The Big House" - a streak started Nov. 8, 1975
  
• Michigan has compiled a 365-106-15 record (.766) in "The Big House"
• Michigan has appeared in 31 straight bowls, the longest current streak in NCAA history.
• 363 Michigan football games have been televised (244-111-8), which leads the NCAA.
• The Michigan football program is the only Big 10 team in any sport to win a conference title in each decade. It is the winningest overall athletic program in Big 10 Conference history
• Michigan has appeared in more Rose Bowls (19) than any other Big 10 Conference school
• Michigan has 11 national championships (5th all-time) to OSU's 7
• Michigan's five current NFL quarterback's are more than any other school in the country.

Lloyd Carr Stats

• Head coach Lloyd Carr has a career winning percentage of .762 (109-34), ranking him fifth among active Division I coaches.
• He is 39-7 (.841) against Big 10 foes at Michigan Stadium and 33-13 on the road.
• Coach Carr is 43-18 while ranked in the Top 10.
• Michigan has a 39-21 overall record against nationally ranked teams under Carr. They are 16-6 against Top 10 opponents; 8-2 against teams in the Top 5; and 4-1 against No. 2 ranked teams.
  
• He leads active Big 10 coaches with 72 conference wins, 72-20 (.783), a mark he grabbed in 2003.
• He is the 8th coach in conference history to claim five or more Big 10 championships.

Michigan vs. Penn St. highlights

David Zucker Albright Ad

#4 Michigan @ Penn State

Report: Wideout Manningham to have knee surgery

Saturday, Oct. 14th • 8 p.m.
Beaver Stadium • University Park, PA
ABC-TV
[ U-M Audio (Free): All-Access | Quicktime ]
[ Gametracker (Live Stats) | Radio Network ]
[ Press Conference Quotes: Lloyd Carr | Players ]
Michigan Football Game Notes

• Michigan (6-0; 3-0 vs. Big 10); Penn State (4-2; 2-1 vs. Big 10)
  
• U-M leads the series 8-3
  
• Series Streak: U-M won 7
• Michigan leads the nation in rushing defense and has held five opponents under 60 yards
• Michigan leads the Big 10 in rushing (17th nationally) and scoring (15th nationally)
  
• Michigan currently boasts the nation's sixth toughest schedule as it's opposition has compiled a 38-21 record (.644) thus far. U-M has the 13th toughest remaining schedule with an opposition record of 20-11 (.645)
• Michigan is 20-10 in games starting after 5 p.m. and are 9-2 in last 11
  

Yahoo! Game Preview
ESPN: Michigan without WR Manningham at Penn State

ESPN: Michigan Clubhouse
Yahoo!: Michigan Team Page
Detroit Free-Press: Michigan Team Page
Detroit News: Michigan Clubhouse

Michigan Stats

• Michigan is #4 in the AP Poll and #5 in the USA Today Coaches Poll
• Michigan has more wins that any football program in NCAA history, 855-280-36
• Michigan has the highest winning percentage of any team in the NCAA history (.7455166)
• Michigan will play its 360th game (266-83-10, .755) when ranked in the Top 10 in the AP Poll. This year Michigan is 3-0
• Michigan ranks #1 all-time in composite AP final football polls (1936-2005)
• Michigan has 42 Big 10 titles which is the most conference titles of any NCAA school and is 451-163-18 in Big 10 play
  
• Michigan has the most weekly appearances in the AP poll, appearing 730 times entering the 2006 season
• Michigan has led the nation in attendance 31 of the last 32 years
• Michigan has had 197 consecutive crowds of 100,000+ fan at "The Big House" - a streak started Nov. 8, 1975
  
• Michigan has compiled a 365-106-15 record (.766) in "The Big House"
• Michigan has appeared in 31 straight bowls, the longest current streak in NCAA history.
• 363 Michigan football games have been televised (243-111-8), which leads the NCAA.
• The Michigan football program is the only Big 10 team in any sport to win a conference title in each decade. It is the winningest overall athletic program in Big 10 Conference history
• Michigan has appeared in more Rose Bowls (19) than any other Big 10 Conference school
• Michigan has 11 national championships (5th all-time) to OSU's 7
• Michigan's five current NFL quarterback's are more than any other school in the country.

Lloyd Carr Stats

• Head coach Lloyd Carr has a career winning percentage of .761 (108-34), ranking him fifth among active Division I coaches.
• He is 39-7 (.841) against Big 10 foes at Michigan Stadium and 32-13 on the road.
• Coach Carr is 42-18 while ranked in the Top 10.
• Michigan has a 39-21 overall record against nationally ranked teams under Carr. They are 16-6 against Top 10 opponents; 8-2 against teams in the Top 5; and 4-1 against No. 2 ranked teams.
  
• He leads active Big 10 coaches with 71 conference wins, 71-20 (.780), a mark he grabbed in 2003.
• He is the 8th coach in conference history to claim five or more Big 10 championships.

So far, so good for Wolverines

Bill Clinton Blames Others For 9/11

Bill Clinton: Play It as It Lies - Ronald Cass, RealClearPolitics
Clinton's Finger-Wagging Moment - Washington Post
Touch A Sore Spot, President Clinton?
ClintonRage: The morning after
Bill Clinton, Bin Laden, and Hysterical Revisions - American Thinker
Bill Clinton’s Excuses
No matter what he says, the record shows he failed to act against terrorism.
by Byron York

#6 Michigan overcomes slow start to beat Wisconsin, 27-13

Above Us Only Sky: On Camus, U2, Lennon, Rock, and Rilke

‘It just sounded good to me.’

For the first time each member of U2 – and manager Paul McGuinness - has told their own story from their earliest childhood memories to their first meeting with each other, from those opening chords in Larry’s kitchen to the biggest stadiums in the world.

The story is told in ‘U2byU2’.

In our first exclusive extract Adam recalls discovering rock’n’roll as a thirteen year old in an Irish boarding school, buying his first £5 acoustic guitar, talking his parents into buying him a bass guitar and how his friend John said he would teach him to play. ‘It just sounded good to me. Deep and fat and satisfying.’

‘I moved school when I was thirteen, again to an Irish public boarding school, St Columba’s College in Rathfarnham. The buildings were old, there were no curtains and it was cold up there, the kind of cold that you never really forget. I can’t say I was hugely enthused about the move. But fairly early on I fell in with a boy called John Leslie, who could play guitar. John had cassette tapes and we would listen to The Who, The Grateful Dead, Kris Kristofferson, Carole King, Neil Young, people that were around at that time, singer- songwriter things and some far-out stuff, Hawkwind, The Edgar Winter Group, Edgar Broughton. And then the prefects at school would listen to Rory Gallagher, The Beatles, The Stones, Eric Clapton, so we’d hear a bit of that, and some American performers like the Doobie Brothers. So I was getting pretty turned on to music and it always seemed to change my mood; it somehow made it bearable to be in that school situation.
I remember reading that Clapton hadn’t started playing guitar until he was fifteen or sixteen and I thought, ‘Well, there’s still time for me!’
So I bought a £5 acoustic guitar from a junk-shop down Dublin quays and I started learning chords and collecting songs. There was a guy in school who had a bit of a band going. He had an electric guitar and the school gave him a room to practise in; there was a bass player and a drummer and the sound was amazing to me. I just loved it. I don’t know what it was like objectively, four teenage schoolkids struggling to play a song, probably, but the sound of drums and guitar and bass felt primal to me. I started to see that not only did this make me feel good but you got a bit of attention if you did it, too. You could meet girls and these people were considered cool. I suppose that was when I really made my decision that this was what I wanted to do. I had no interest in sports. I didn’t want to be academic, particularly, and at any rate was showing little aptitude. I liked the creative things, such as painting and music; I found that community of people more interesting.
So John persuaded me that we could start our own group. He wanted to play electric guitar, so he said I should play bass. I don’t remember being particularly convinced at first. I knew that you needed bass and drums to make that rock sound but I didn’t really know anything about music which would have qualified me to be a bassist. But John said he’d teach me what I needed to learn. I’d been taking some classical guitar lessons, and there was a folk guitar teacher who used to come by as well, so I picked up a few rudimentary things and decided to go for a bass. I talked my parents into buying it for me. I had to make a solemn promise that I was going to stick at it and all this kind of carry-on.

Now that I look back it was an amazing thing for my parents to do, quite out of character. It was more my mother, I suppose. She had something of the romantic in her and probably thought it wouldn’t do any harm. I guess there was enough music in the family that she could relate to it.
So there I was, fifteen years old, with a dark brown Ibanez-copy bass guitar and no amp. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with it.
Absolutely none. Not a clue. It just sounded good to me. Deep and fat and satisfying. Presumably, in the big picture, someone like me would have been expected to have a couple of years of amateur rock and roll and then move on to something more sensible. But it was all that I had. I didn’t have anything else.
My grades were so bad the following year that my parents said they were not prepared to keep me at this expensive school. That was pretty bad news for me, or so it seemed at the time, because we were just getting a band going. John Leslie and I had started writing an Irish rock opera based on the Celtic myth of the Children of Lir, in which children are turned into swans by their wicked stepmother. But I had to leave before having the chance to establish myself as Ireland’s answer to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
I thought that was it, the musical career was over. And so I was dispatched to Mount Temple, a comprehensive school in north Dublin, which was not a place where I felt comfortable at all, to contemplate a future without much in the way of career prospects. ‘

U2 on tour - in their own words

In this exclusive book extract, join Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr on the epic Zooropa tour as Bono meets Sinatra, Adam collapses and the band go wild in Tokyo

Bono I thought of Zooropa at the time as a work of genius. I really thought our pop discipline was matching our experimentation and this was our Sgt Pepper. I was a little wrong about that. The truth is our pop disciplines were letting us down. We didn’t create hits. We didn’t quite deliver the songs. And what would Sgt Pepper be without the pop songs? Edge I never thought of Zooropa as anything more than an interlude . . . but a great one, as interludes go. Sarajevo Bono The very same week Zooropa was released, a young American writer/film-maker called Bill Carter came to see us at our concert in Verona in Italy and asked would we do an interview for Sarajevo Television. Right on the edge of Europe there was a symbol of tolerance, where three ethnic groups — Croats, Serbs and Bosnians — lived together in peace. And this tolerance was being challenged in an appalling siege by Serbian forces. Edge Bill’s idea was that U2 should go to Sarajevo and that would create a lot of publicity and help maintain the press profile of the siege. Bono So I agreed in an emotional moment to do a gig there. And after I’ve agreed on Sarajevo Television, I then have to explain to the band why putting our lives at risk is going to help the people of Sarajevo. Edge We looked at our schedule and tried to work out how to fit in Sarajevo. Logistically, it would have been impossible and Paul McGuinness pointed out that not only would we be risking our own lives, we’d be endangering our crew and our audience. Paul [McGuinness, manager] Bill Carter went back to Sarajevo, where he managed to get together a little video unit. The European Broadcasting Union had a satellite link out of Sarajevo which we bought time on. And we started to do live satellite connections between U2’s concert and Sarajevo every night. Most of the Zoo show was scripted and highly rehearsed. The Sarajevo links were not. Edge Some nights it felt like it was part of the concert but a lot of nights it felt like an abrupt interruption. It was hard to get back to something as frivolous as a show having watched five or ten minutes of real human suffering. Paul Larry was pretty much against it. He thought we were exploiting other people’s misery for entertainment. Bono definitely felt that we were shining a light on something important. Larry We were playing a rock’n’roll show and it was lots of fun, and though the political stuff was serious it was done with a smile. Then we’d suddenly see video footage of people being bombed and a satellite link-up with people in Sarajevo saying: “We’re being killed, please come and help us.” That was really hard to watch. Paul The worst night was Wembley Stadium, when three women came up on the screen and said, “We don’t know what we’re doing here. This guy dragged us in. You’re all having a good time. We’re not having a good time. What are you going to do for us?” Bono started to reply but they just cut him off. They said, “We know you’re not going to do anything for us. You’re going to go back to a rock show. You’re going to forget that we even exist. And we’re all going to die.” Right in the middle of the show at Wembley. And the show never really recovered. Bono Salman Rushdie came on stage at the same concert. Again, tolerance was the subject we were playing with. Freedom of expression was a real issue in music. We tried to leaven the situation with some humour. I was dressed as the Devil and I whispered in Salman’s ear, “It’s inevitable that one always falls out with one’s biographer.” Bono and Sinatra Bono During a little break in the tour, I recorded a duet with Frank Sinatra. I may not have been the most obvious choice to sing the classic I Got You Under my Skin with the 77-year-old Chairman of the Board but I was more than flattered to be asked. Scheduling was difficult and we recorded our vocals in different countries. Then someone suggested we should make a video. We asked our friend Kevin Godley to direct. It was set up for one of Frank’s favourite bars in Palm Springs. Edge We drove up to Palm Springs, met at the bar where the video clip was supposed to be shot. Simple idea. Bono walks in and sees his “old mate” Frank at the bar. Frank was incredibly charming and smart and witty and everything you would expect him to be but it was obvious that he was starting to suffer from some kind of lapses. You would suddenly see this look of confusion cross his face as he lost his bearings for a second. Everything went fine until Kevin, our director, asked Frank to do it again. Bono So Kevin made me wait outside, cleared the room and left Frank standing at the bar, waiting for me. This was not a good idea, because Frank started to get agitated. He wasn’t sure what exactly was going on. He may have had a bit of a panic attack. They tried to calm him down by telling him he was shooting a video with Bono. He’d had some kind of short-term memory loss. His people were all very embarrassed. My people were all very embarrassed that I wasn’t Sonny Bono. Edge I like to think he was just affronted by the very idea of being asked to do something a second time. Bono He called later on to apologise. He said, “Listen, I don’t like to do a lot of takes. And when I’m hanging around sometimes I just get uncomfortable.” So we got together and shot some footage in the back of his limousine. Afterwards we all went out for something to eat in a Mexican restaurant. His wife Barbara was there. She walked in wearing a beautiful red trouser suit, upon which Frank remarked, “Jeez, Barbara, you look like a blood clot!” He was on great form, telling stories, drinking a giant tequila in a fishbowl-sized glass. Edge I was sitting beside him and I watched as he picked up the blue napkin that was in front of him, stared at it, folded it up neatly and under his breath said, “I remember when my eyes were that blue.” It was not for anyone else to hear, he was really kind of muttering to himself. And he put the blue napkin in his inside jacket pocket to keep. Bono He asked us back to his house, where a few more drinks were taken. There was a classic shtick going on between him and his barman, lines like, “Am I a boy or a man?” when the barman gave him half-measure. Trying to keep up with Sinatra’s intake had gone straight to my head and so I fell asleep. When I woke up, I had this sense of dampness between my legs and thought the impossible. “Oh, my God, could this really have happened? On the snow-white couch?! What a monumental defeat.” But I had just spilled my drink. Phew! Australia Larry By the time we got out to Australia, the tour had been going on for two years and people were really starting to go a little off the rails. I started to notice that Adam was drinking more and that he was drunk in the early afternoons. It never seemed to affect his gig, so no alarm bells were ringing. Adam was such a great drunk, he was great fun and not morose at all, at least not in public. Edge Being on the road is very hard. Being on the road for a long time is even harder. It is a lifestyle that leaves you with little time to call your own but simultaneously it’s quite lonely. Adam Life was pretty chaotic. I don’t really like that kind of intensity. Every night was a party, but I don’t think I felt much contentment or peace. I’d be fine during the day, I’d be fine for the gig but afterwards it was too easy to go out all night or just keep drinking in your room. I was beginning to realise that every time I drank, I couldn’t really be sure of the result. And it always made the next day worse. So I decided to lay off and stop drinking during the final leg of the tour. We were filming the concerts in Sydney Football Stadium for the big tour video. All I can say is that I remember the night before thinking, “Mmm, it might be nice to have a glass of wine.” The next thing I remember it was about 7 o’clock in the evening of the next day and people were trying to wake me up and see if I could go down and do the gig. I don’t really know what happened in the intervening time, other than that I’d been out for a bit and I’d gone through the mini bar in the room. Larry The shows in Sydney were a big deal. David Mallet was the director and he had 25 cameras set up. Adam didn’t turn up for the sound check. He was in his room and he wasn’t coming out. I called him on the telephone and eventually got through. I said: “What’s up?” He said: “I can’t do the gig.” In a million years that was the last thing I would have expected. Adam I was in complete meltdown, there was no way I could stand on stage for two hours. Edge Obviously the timing was drastic because it was the big video that we were going to release of the Zoo TV tour. I think it was probably the pressure that tipped him over. He was in a terrible state but if you were to look at the weight of responsibilities that Adam was carrying versus, say, Bono, or even me, it would have been pretty low. But everyone deals with pressure in a different way. Larry It was the first time that somebody hadn’t turned up for a show. We were in shock but we had no time to stop and take it in, we just had to scramble and we rehearsed with Adam’s bass technician Stuart Morgan during sound-check. Stuart had been working with Adam for two years and knew the parts. He ended up doing the gig. Edge We took the decision not to cancel the TV event but to use a stand-in. It was a tough decision but I think it was the right one. I think it helped Adam put everything in context. For the first time he heard the band play without him. I think that brought everything into focus for him. Adam It was an extraordinarily hard thing to face up to. In the big picture, missing a gig is not necessarily the worst offence in your life but, for me, it was the first time as a member of U2 that I had really let my bandmates down. And this wasn’t sickness or personal tragedy, this was self-inflicted. It appeared to be out of my control, which was very scary. Even the fact that 12 hours later I was still kind of shaky and f***ed up, that wasn’t good. Plus the fact that the band had a lot riding on it. It was a spectacular calamity. That gig was filmed but I have never watched it. Larry There was a meeting with Adam. We said, “Let’s just finish out the tour and deal with this when it’s over.” Adam was as freaked as we were. I think he got himself into a state and just couldn’t find his way through it. Adam They were pretty concerned and a bit pissed off as well. But they supported me in the decision that I made at the time, which was to say to them that I had a problem with alcohol. It was then that I officially stopped drinking. Tokyo Larry The tour ended in Tokyo. People needed to let off steam and Tokyo was just the place. We slipped off into the underbelly of this incredible science-fiction city. Things went a little crazy. Bono I had always loved being in Japan but I was now head over heels, I wanted to go out all the time. Of course, we often had a lot of Japanese carers to accompany us. But one night I slipped out the back entrance of a bar to avoid our security and took off in the company of Fighting Fintan Fitzgerald, our head of wardrobe. We were joined by another good friend of ours from the music world, who I didn’t know at the time was battling with heroin addiction. The three of us went exploring. We ended up in some girl’s apartment, a small, traditional Japanese place, drinking some beers and chit-chatting. Some people started smoking a spliff and, though I don’t smoke spliffs, I did know that in Japan it was a ten-year prison sentence for doing so. It was explained to me that the police did not come here. This was a house run by the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. “Well, that’s great,” I thought to myself. “I really feel safe now!” I was tired and fell asleep on a bunch of coats. When I woke up I thought my drink had been spiked. I thought I was hallucinating. There was a six-foot boa constrictor crawling up my leg. I completely froze. I heard Fighting Fintan Fitzgerald saying: “Don't panic. My mother used to work in a zoo!” He picked up the snake and put it round his neck. Fintan knew no fear but the same could not be said of the snake. There was the sound of water being poured onto the ground and the cry went up from our brave wardrobe man, “It’s pissed all over me!” Snakes take a pee if they’re disturbed. One of the girls performed some kind of burlesque revue and the snake was part of her act. Paul Everyone gets a little nutty after the end of a tour. You have physiological reactions that continue for months afterwards. Around about 9 o’clock you suddenly start going, “Where’s the show? Where’s the show?” Larry I remember Edge saying: “Hey, Larry, how about you and me buy a bus and travel around America and just do it for another year?” I looked at him and for a split second thought, “Oh yeah.” Because the alternative seemed too hard. Thankfully good sense prevailed. We went home. © U2 2006 Extracted from U2 by U2 to be published by HarperCollins, Sept 22 at £30. It is available at BooksFirst priced £27 (RRP £30), free P&P, on 0870 1608080

Called by the King: Election and Assurance in Romans 9-11

How does the gospel message offer assurance to the elect? The author defends the gospel as “power for salvation” and explains Romans 9-11 in light of the salvific nature of the gospel.

by PETER ANDERS

Am I Predestined? Luther and Calvin on the Dangers of Speculating about Election Apart from Christ

by SHANE ROSENTHAL

"blink" awarded Colorado PRSA's "Gold Pick for Media Relations"

To date, “blink” has earned the following awards:

• Colorado PRSA's Gold Pick Award for Media Relations, 2006
  
• Gold SABRE Award for Business-to-Consumer Marketing (New Product), 2006
• Smart Card Alliance's Financial Payments Innovation Award, 2005
• Smart Card Alliance's Outstanding Smart Card Achievement Award, 2005
• Frost & Sullivan’s Contactless Payments Card Product of the Year, 2006
• Frost & Sullivan’s Excellence in Industrial Technologies Award, 2006
• Internet Advertising Competition's (IAC) Outstanding Microsite/Landing Page Award, 2006
• Cards International's Best New Credit Card Product Launch, 2005; and
• PRWeek’s “10 Product Launches You Couldn’t Miss in 2005.”

CBS Nightly News, Sept. 7, 2006

COURIC: The 9/11 attacks were a kind of puzzle the government
couldn't solve with all kinds of warnings and clues. Would we get it
right today? David Martin found an unmarked building in the
Washington suburbs where secrets are being shared.

SCOTT REDD (Director, National Counterterrorism Center): Before
9/11, there were 13 different databases on known terrorist identities.
They were disconnected, different agencies and people didn't talk to
each other.

DAVID MARTIN: Scott Redd may be the most important person
you've never heard of. As head of the new and very secret National
Counterterrorism Center, it is his job to make all the different
intelligence agencies and their computers talk to each other and share
everything they know about terrorist plots against this country.

So you're the guy in charge of the war plan for the war against
terror?

REDD: That's one way of putting it, yes, sir.

MARTIN: And you give that to the President?

REDD: Well, yes, sir, I do.

MARTIN: Another way of describing your job might be to make
sure something like 9/11 never happens again.

REDD: That's what we worry about every day, David.

MARTIN: Known by the initials NCTC, the Counterterrorism Center
is normally off-limits and we're not allowed to tell you exactly where
this building is, but we were given unprecedented access to this brand
new, state-of-the-art nerve center.

Because this center is so new, it is loaded with the kind of
gadgets that make this make this conference room look like a made-for-
TV movie, but it's not the gadgets that make this room the hub of the
war against terror; it's the business that's transacted here.

You do this every morning?

KEVIN BROCK (FBI Agent): Every morning at eight o'clock.

MARTIN: FBI agent Kevin Brock chairs the morning's top-secret
meeting.

BROCK: Here is where we exchange current intelligence, daily
intelligence about what the terrorism threat is out there, and we talk
about and we make sure that information is being exchanged freely
among the agencies in the intelligence community.

MARTIN: For the first time in the history of this country, 18
different intelligence agencies are routinely sharing the kind of
sensitive information they used to keep to themselves. We're not
allowed to stay long.

BROCK: Good morning, everybody, we're going to get started.

MARTIN: And when you listen to the roll call, you'll understand
why.

BROCK: CIA, good morning. NSA, good morning. White House,
good morning.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: White House here.

MARTIN: Every morning begins with an update of the threat
matrix, intelligence that has come in overnight on plots against this
country.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Good morning, everyone. We have two SIT
items and seven threat matrix items to brief this morning.

MARTIN: One of those SIT reps, short for situation report
contains the latest developments in the London bomb plot, which was
just broken up the day before we were here. Redd recited for us the
message he sent to his staff after that.

REDD: I said this was just the type of event that NCTC was
established to address. The amount of effort that went into foiling
this plot was admirable and extremely effective. Bottom line is: We
save lives.

MARTIN: And the corollary is, watch out for the next one?

REDD: Watch out for the next one. Never let your guard down.

MARTIN: That's why the operation center goes 24/7. Randy
Crawford is the supervisor of this watch.

Is this some sort of an airline -

RANDY CRAWFORD (National Counterterrorism Center): That's an
aircraft tracker and what that is used for tracking aircraft movement
around the United States. These are aircraft that are inbound to the
Washington National Capital Region, and we can go in and pull up their
flight numbers.

MARTIN: They can also call up the passenger manifest and check
it against the no-fly list of known or suspected terrorists.

CRAWFORD: Earlier this week, there was a no-fly on a flight
bound from Heathrow into the United States, and sure enough, we got
the list and there was a no-fly on it and the plane turned around and
landed at Heathrow.

MARTIN: There's a name on there that corresponds to a name on
that huge database that you keep of all suspected terrorists, and then
that's enough for someone else to make the decision to turn a plane
around.

CRAWFORD: Yes.

RUSS TRAVERS (National Counterterrorism Center): Information
sharing is undoubtedly the most complex thing I've ever been
associated with.

MARTIN: Russ Travers is responsible for keeping that list of
suspected terrorists accurate and up to date.

How big is that database?

TRAVERS: It's got between 300,000 and 400,000 names in it now.
It's huge. It doubled in '04 and it doubled again in '05.

MARTIN: Sorting through the 6,000 cables that come in each day
and the six million documents stored on the Center's internal Web site
is a task of mind-boggling complexity, but Redd insists it's night and
day better than before 9/11.

REDD: Five years on, we're better prepared today to fight this
war than we have been at any time in our history.

MARTIN: We're better prepared, but are we winning?

REDD: You don't know a commander that is going to tell you that
he is winning the war in the midst of a war. There are too many
unknowns out there, but I will say this, it's a long war and if we
have the perseverance to stick with it, we'll lose a few battles along
the way and that's almost inevitable, but we're going to win most of
the battles and at the end of the day, Lord willing, we'll win the
war.

PRESIDENT BUSH: If the United States ever says, oh, my
goodness, I don't want to defend democracy because somebody might harm
us, we will have lost our soul.

A Day in the life of The Edge: Pt. 3

A Day in the life of The Edge: Pt. 2

A Day in the Life of The Edge, Pt. 1

produced by Bono

Wisconsin @ #6 Michigan

Saturday, Sept. 23 • 12 p.m.
Michigan Stadium • Ann Arbor, MI
ESPN Television

[ U-M Audio (Free): All-Access | Quicktime ]
[ Gametracker (Live Stats) ]
[ Press Conference Quotes: Lloyd Carr | Players ]
Michigan Football Game Notes

• U-M leads the series against Wisconsin 47-11-1 and is 15-2 vs. them in Big 10 openers
• Series Streak: U-M lost 1, 20-23 in 2005
• Michigan is second nationally in turnover margin (2.67 avg) and fourth in time of possession (34:43)
• The Wolverines boast the nations fifth toughest schedule so far in 2006. Michigan's opposition has compiled 21-7 overall record thus far. Their future opposition boasts the third toughest schedule with an 18-4 mark.

Yahoo! Game Preview
ESPN: After big win, Michigan opens Big Ten play vs. Wisconsin

ESPN: Michigan Clubhouse
Yahoo!: Michigan Team Page
Detroit Free-Press: Michigan Team Page
Detroit News: Michigan Clubhouse

Michigan Stats

• Michigan is #6 in the AP Poll and #6 in the USA Today Coaches Poll
• Michigan has more wins that any football program in NCAA history, 852-280-36
• Michigan has the highest winning percentage of any team in the NCAA history (.744863)
• Michigan ranks #1 all-time in composite AP final football polls (1936-2005)
• Michigan has 42 Big 10 titles which is the most conference titles of any NCAA school and is 448-163-18 in Big 10 play
  
• Michigan has the most weekly appearances in the AP poll, appearing 727 times entering the 2006 season
• Michigan has led the nation in attendance 31 of the last 32 years
• Michigan has played 1,945 consecutive games at "The Big House" in front of 100,000+ fans
• Michigan has compiled a 363-106-15 record (.765) in "The Big House"
• Michigan has appeared in 31 straight bowls, the longest current streak in NCAA history.
• Michigan has had 359 football games televised (240-111-8), which leads the NCAA.
• The Michigan football program is the only Big 10 team in any sport to win a conference title in each decade. It is the winningest overall athletic program in Big 10 Conference history
• Michigan has appeared in more Rose Bowls (19) than any other Big 10 Conference school
• Michigan has 11 national championships (5th all-time) to OSU's 7
• Michigan's five current NFL quarterback's are more than any other school in the country.

Lloyd Carr Stats

• Head coach Lloyd Carr has a career winning percentage of .755 (105-34), ranking him fifth among active Division I coaches.
• He is 37-7 (.841) at Michigan Stadium.
  
• Michigan has a 39-21 overall record against nationally ranked teams under Carr. They are 16-6 against Top 10 opponents; 8-2 against teams in the Top 5; and 4-1 against No. 2 ranked teams.
  
• He leads active Big 10 coaches with 68 conference wins, 68-20 (.773), a mark he grabbed in 2003.
• He is the 8th coach in conference history to claim five or more Big 10 championships.

Misc.

In seven of the past 10 years, UM has finished in the top five of the NACDA Director's Cup, a ranking compiled by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics to tabulate the success of universities in competitive sports. UM has finished in the top eleven of the Directors' Cup standings in each of the award's twelve seasons and has placed in the top six in each of the last eight seasons.^[27] The University of Michigan remains the only school in NCAA history to win at least one national championship in all four of these sports: baseball, basketball (men's), football, and ice hockey (men's). The Wolverines have also won NCAA Division I national championships in women's field hockey, men's golf, men's gymnastics, women's softball, men's swimming and diving, men's tennis, and men's outdoor track and field. Overall, Michigan's 32 official NCAA Division I national championships ranks eighth all-time, trailing only UCLA, Stanford, USC, Oklahoma State, Arkansas, and LSU. And in NCAA D1 men's sports only, UM ranks sixth all-time in championships behind USC, UCLA, Stanford, Oklahoma State, and Arkansas.

Michigan Blogs:

• Big House Football
• Blah Me To Death
• The Blog That Yost Built
• Champions Of The West
• The Diag
• iBlog For Cookies
• Maize 'n' Brew
• The M Zone
• MGoBlog
• Michigan Sports Center
• Michigan Football Saturdays
• Mr. Wolverine
• Ron Bellamy's Underachieving All Stars
• Schembechler Hall
• Stadium And Main
• Westsider Rider

Time: 10 Questions for The Edge

MARK MAINZ / GETTY

Portrait of musician The Edge of U2.

Posted Monday, Sep. 18, 2006
His name is Dave Evans, but everyone from roadies to relatives calls him the Edge. As U2's guitarist, he's one of the world's most famous rock stars. As co-founder of Music Rising, he has taken a lead role in getting New Orleans musicians back on their feet. TIME's Josh Tyrangiel spoke with the Edge about the beginnings of U2's next album, a couple of songs he wishes his band had written, and what it was like to be a young man with a large head.

You're speaking from a London recording studio. Does that mean there's a new U2 album around the bend?

Noooo. Nowhere near. We're here with [producer] Rick Rubin and enjoying the chemistry, but we're nowhere near a timetable or anything. I will say that we're having a good time. And I have a feeling that because of Rick's presence it's going to sound very different. But really, it's early days. And we are messing about with other stuff too.

Messing about meaning ...?

Well, right now we're recording a duet with Green Day that we'll perform on Monday Night Football [Sept. 25] for the re-opening of the Superdome.

When you record with another band, who plays lead guitar?

[Laughs.] That's the great thing about punk rock. It was anti the very concept of lead guitar. This song [The Saints Are Coming by Scottish punk act the Skids] is pure 1978, a big inspiration to us at the time, and it couldn't be more in the sweet spot of what Green Day are about. And it's really right for the occasion.

This will be your second time playing a football game, right?

The first was the Super Bowl in the Superdome, right after Sept. 11, which was obviously memorable. But a little added irony is that an hour after I got offstage that night, I got a call from Dublin saying that the U2 [storage] space had been flooded. All our instruments and amps had been destroyed. The only ones that survived were the ones we happened to have in New Orleans.

What prompted a Welsh Irishman's interest in reviving the music culture of New Orleans?

If you understand what goes into making great music, you can't help but worship the miracle that is the combination of all those influences. It's an incredibly precious and delicate thing, and it has to be preserved.

What have you accomplished so far?

Music Rising has given instruments and aid to about 2,000 musicians, but it's barely a start. New Orleans is like one giant music academy; all of those neighborhoods fostered multigenerational music tuition. Grandfathers taught grandchildren in churches, homes, schools. People were passing on knowledge everywhere.

You don't sound terribly optimistic.

It's not a great situation. Obviously we're getting money and instruments to them, but a large part of it is just to offer a little bit of encouragement and to get the rest of the country to realize that this is something we'll all regret if we let it disappear.

Let's get abstract for a moment.

If you could attach your name to any song written over the past few years, which would it be?

Interesting. There's quite a few songs I've been jealous of. Certainly Wonderwall by Oasis. Oh. Easy. The New Radicals' You Get What You Give. That's a great tune. I really would love to have written that. Great spirit, great energy.

U2 is putting out a coffee-table book next week of old photos and first-person tales about your lives. I presume you did this because the band has been so overlooked by the media all these years?

We really did need the publicity. [Laughs.] I don't know, the book idea ... it just felt right somehow. Then we got into it and realized it was actually a big commitment, going through scrapbooks and memories. But it turned out well.

One of the most revealing things in the book is that as a child you had a freakishly huge head. Was this a concern for your parents?

I wouldn't say a concern, but looking back I was like, Wow! That was a weird phase! As Bono says, the stage is like a giant platform shoe, and we all have reasons we end up in bands. For me, my awkward phase corresponded to an interest in rock 'n' roll. From experience, I'm guessing an insecure childhood is probably quite a common thing among people who start a rock band.