Prompted in part by this BBC story on Winston Churchill’s position on whether or not Gandhi should have been allowed to starve if he went on hunger strike, and the Gitmo hunger strikes, I am forced to ask about the strategic considerations behind going on a hunger strike. If a prisoner voluntarily refuses to be fed for some basis other than the food itself (i.e. I could see why a Muslim might refuse to eat pork or non-halal beef), why does their captor have an obligation to feed them? More importantly, why does anyone care?

As the 2005 NFL season draws to a close, so too do the existing television contracts. John Cole tries to sort out the details as they relate to the ESPN/ABC family of networks, which also include the end of NFL SuckTime PrimeTime and its presumed migration to the Monday NFL Countdown slot on Mondays.

I wonder if the idea of combining Chris Berman and Stuart Scott’s powers of suck on the new Monday NFL PrimeTime will cross the minds of the ESPN powers that be. If so, we may observe some sort of implosion of the universe, as Berman’s lame nicknames (and combover) and Scott’s bogus street talk (and Urkel glasses) converge to form an intellectual black hole in Bristol on a weekly basis.

Maurice Clarett, the hero of the 2002 Ohio State national championship team, is wanted by police for allegedly robbing two people at gunpoint in Columbus early New Year’s morning, according to ESPN.com. At the time, Clarett was apparently on the cusp of signing a deal to play in NFL Europe in the hopes of returning to the NFL proper; one suspects that opportunity has now evaporated completely.

Sunday’s New York Times carries this article about “merit aid” at liberal arts colleges that pretty much reflects a year’s worth of faculty meetings at Millsaps, the centerpiece of which was often discussion by the dean of problems with our 40-odd percent “discount rate,” which largely reflected our inability to squeeze all of retail out of parents who could afford Millsaps’ relatively light (by liberal arts college standards, at least) sticker price.

þ: Amber Taylor, who is miffed at the Times for its strategy in selecting which colleges to discuss.

Update: Lurker and forthcoming co-author Dirk points out this Daniel Gross post that takes note of a rather serious incongruity between the headline and the article in question.