Arms Race

2009 regular season Postseason Player Team Cmp % TD Int Rating W-L Rating Drew Bree Saints 70.6 34 11 109.6 1-2 92.7 Brett Favre Vikings 68.4 33 7 107.2 12-10 85.2 Joe Flacco Ravens 63.1 21 12 88.9 3-1 45.8 Peyton Mannin Colts 68.8 33 16 99.9 7-8 85.0 Philip Rivers Chargers 65.2 28 9 104.4 3-3 79.7 Tony Romo Cowboys 63.1 26 9 97.6 1-2 86.0 Mark Sanch Jets 53.8 12 20 63.0 1-0 139.4 Kurt Warner Cardinals 66.1 26 14 93.2 9-3...

For Brit-pop fans, Thursday night's Coachella announcement was like a birthday, Christmas, Hannukah and an unexpected inheritance check all arriving at once. Devotees of the dance-leaning Sahara Tent, however, might be taken aback by the light bill of major EDM superstars, or even rising newbies who haven't played L.A. in the last six months, on the bill this year. One has to scroll down to the third line of any given day before a proper dance act is listed (some electro-leaning bands like The Postal Service and New Order have higher billing)

For Brit-pop fans, Thursday night's Coachella announcement was like a birthday, Christmas, Hannukah and an unexpected inheritance check all arriving at once. Devotees of the dance-leaning Sahara Tent, however, might be taken aback by the light bill of major EDM superstars, or even rising newbies who haven't played L.A. in the last six months, on the bill this year. One has to scroll down to the third line of any given day before a proper dance act is listed (some electro-leaning bands like The Postal Service and New Order have higher billing)

EUGENE, Ore. - The clanks and booms of heavy machinery interrupt an otherwise quiet, gray morning. This is what winning football sounds like at Oregon. A few hundred yards from where the Ducks practice, construction crews are erecting yet another athletic building, a team complex that - bound in black metal and glass - will rival anything the NFL has to offer. It is easy to view this program's recent success in terms of brick and mortar, to credit Nike co-founder and university alumnus Phil Knight for funding an array of facilities and a stadium renovation.

It is my calculation that the dangerous equation involving the world's current arms deals ("Arms Race, Round 2," March 23) and the Defense Department's cutbacks and military base closures equals a solution of possible catastrophic proportions. How many times do we have to learn the painful lessons of the past that inadequate defenses, or weak international posture, often results in breaches of security. Part of this equation is not so much a negative commentary on the aggressive nature of man as it is a simple fact of truth that should be heeded.

Claiming that the Soviet Union would give up nuclear weapons if given the chance, Ted Turner called Thursday for the Soviet Union and the United States to end the arms race, "bury the hatchet" and work together for world peace. The flamboyant cable-TV entrepreneur and nuclear-disarmament advocate also asserted that President Reagan doesn't realize that it is passe for a major nation to threaten other nations with its "greater military might."

Re "Bush Makes His Case for a U.S. Missile Defense," May 2: By moving the arms race into space, the Bush administration is making sure that its friends in the aerospace industry will make hundreds of billions of dollars at the expense of further militarizing our fragile planet while dumping the bill on unknowing taxpayers. How can you "maintain peace" through domination? Haven't we learned yet from our sordid military past that more nuclear weapons only mean more instability and a greater chance for nuclear annihilation?

Amid a playoff atmosphere and an international media onslaught in the Bronx, Hideki Irabu gets the second half of the 1997 season off to a rousing and appropriate start tonight when he faces the Detroit Tigers in his New York Yankee debut. Appropriate? If the Nolan Ryan of Japan comes even close to that in the United States, he should help fuel a first-half trend that produced a reduction in power and a resurgence in pitching.

Representatives of six nations will meet here in June to push for an end to the nuclear arms race, the government news agency Notimex reported. It said that officials from Mexico, Argentina, Sweden, Greece, Tanzania and India will participate in the meeting to urge President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to stop the arms race. The group was formed by the six heads of government in 1984 and met in New Delhi in January, 1985, for its first conference seeking an end to nuclear

Democratic congressional candidate Jay Chen couldn't begin to match the nearly $2.5 million raised by longtime Rep. Ed Royce (R-Fullerton), whom Chen is challenging for what is widely regarded as a safe GOP seat. But a little-known group called America Shining recently started spending money - more than $610,000 so far - to oppose Royce and help Chen, drawing attention to the race in ways the Chen campaign couldn't afford. The outlay by the 3-month-old America Shining, whose only donor is Chen's brother Shaw, is a fraction of the nearly $42 million in independent spending poured into unusually competitive California congressional races this year.

Almost since the United States began using the unmanned aerial vehicles known as drones, their use has drawn criticism. The latest criticism, which has received considerable attention in the wake of the drone strike on Anwar Awlaki, is that America's use of drones has sparked a new international arms race. While it is true that some other nations have begun developing their own unmanned aerial vehicles, the extent of the alarm is unjustified. Much of it rests on myths that are easily dispelled.

My daughter thinks they are spying on us. The "74% Off Haircut Package" offer arrived from Groupon just as she was putting away her credit card, after paying the bill at her beauty salon. Amazon's "Half Off Carpet Cleaning" coupon showed up on her cellphone moments after a friend's text message about getting the carpets cleaned at his house. Daily Deal's "Laser Vision Correction" discount landed in my inbox while I was walking out of my optometrist's office, with a new pair of eyeglasses in my purse.

Google Inc. has purchased more than 1,000 patents from IBM to defend itself from an onslaught of patent litigation. The Internet search giant is taking part in what has become an arms race for patents. Its anemic intellectual property portfolio has made it vulnerable to legal assault, said technology patent valuation specialist Alexander Poltorak, chief executive of General Patent Corp. Google has more than 700 patents, mostly for search engine technology. Most of its competitors, particularly in the mobile industry, lay claim to thousands.

The cars were clunkers as soon as they rolled off the assembly line. Soviet-made clothes, food and entertainment were equally shabby. Moscow was hemorrhaging its worthless rubles in an arms race with Washington, and Soviet mothers were angry that their sons were dying in a senseless war in Afghanistan. When Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and launched his campaign for perestroika — Russian for "reconstruction" — he gambled that taking an honest look at the country's problems and urging citizens to speak truth to power would steer the Soviet Union off its collision course with economic collapse.

The world may be in turmoil, but in the defense business there are signs of a return to normalcy. After dreary decades in which the U.S. military had to live without a presentable threat with which to justify its spending on high-technology weapons, the Chinese stepped up to the plate. With ominous talk gaining currency in Washington of actual cuts in the U.S. defense budget, our Asian friends have suddenly offered a titillating peek from an airfield in Chengdu at their newest warplane, described as a radar-evading "stealth" fighter like our own F-22.

When it comes to money in politics, the new normal is already on vivid display. It could be seen last week in posh restaurants and corporate townhouses on Capitol Hill, where politicians held fundraisers at a record pace. It was evident at Washington's blue-chip law firms, where campaign finance lawyers began work setting up new political committees to collect unlimited donations. It was apparent in the halls of Congress, where lawmakers swapped strategies about how to contend with muscular interest groups looking to take them out. The unusually intense December bustle is the product of this year's elections, where spending surged to $4 billion in sharp-edged campaigns across the country -- a record for a midterm.