Proving once again that development executives will fall for anything, AICN links to this Hollywood Reporter story informing us that Universal is going forward with the movie version of Malcolm Gladwell’s non-narrative, non-fiction book, Blink. Stephen Gaghan is writing the script and directing with Leonardo DiCaprio set to star in the picture.

Seriously.

John Feinstein’s basketball column is back, meaning it’s that time of year again when Galley Slaves readers, regardless of their politics, begin exchanging their more vicious barbs over who will make a run in March. No surprise, both ESPN and AP have Duke at the top of their preseason polls. Indeed, four of seven Blue Devils are seniors, including J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams. (Speaking of the latter, I wonder if cheerleaders do in fact say to him, “Do it to me Sheldon, you’re an animal Sheldon, ride me big Shel-den”?)

Also highly touted are Texas, Villanova (this will change since Curtis Sumpter is injured), UConn, and Michigan State. Let’s also not forget Syracuse, which still has Gerry McNamara (who must be close to 30 by now).

Not that any of this really matters. As Feinstein points out, “It is worth remembering that a year ago at this time no one dreamed Washington would be a No. 1 seed or that West Virginia would come within seconds of the Final Four. People thought Illinois had a nice team, but no one was predicting 37-2 and a trip to the championship game for the Illini. It was laughable to think that Bucknell would be the team that would end Kansas’s season or that Vermont would send Syracuse packing on the same remarkable night.”

Not to mention millions of brackets that were torn to pieces.

But this year will be different. I can feel it.

Nan Aron seems pretty cavalier about what sounds an awful lot to me like animal neglect, if not cruelty:

Nan Aron lost the fish this summer.

Aron, the founder of the Alliance for Justice, one of the liberal armies in the war over the judiciary, has lived in her Woodley Park rowhouse for 30 years. There’s a small brick pond in the front yard and, much to the delight of the neighborhood children, she filled it with fish over the summer, about 20 goldfish and koi. But summer was also the start of a season of high-stakes judicial battles.

While Aron and her allies were working long hours trying to defeat the confirmation of now Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., her fish disappeared.

“The problem was I was responsible for the fish,” Aron says with a bit of self-deprecating humor. “My one responsibility at home was to feed the fish, talk to the fish and protect their safety, and I’d come home and start counting” and realize that there was trouble.

The casualties of war. But when you come from a family of social activists, you can look into an empty pond and find the positive.

“We’ll start again next year and hopefully I’ll be a little more attentive,” Aron says.

Where’s PETA when you need them?

Bonus: Alternate headline, “You’re going to be covered in red paint. That’ll distract the eye.”

The Angry Clam notes that amid the other election news last night was this tidbit: The city of San Francisco passed a ballot measure banning the sale of all guns in city limits.

Never mind that this runs contrary to state law and that the city lacks the authority to do so. As the Clam says,

Problem: they tried this in the 1980s, when Feinstein was mayor. It didn’t work then, because the California Court of Appeal ruled that state firearms regulations preempt such local regulations, and localities lack the power to ban guns. Likewise, when West Hollywood tried to ban “Saturday Night Specials,” a different district of the Court of Appeal rejected the law as preempted by state law.

Michael Brandon McClellan has more on the Somali pirates, including this great quote:

When asked if the pirate attack would prevent them from cruising in the future, one responded:

“We’re English old boy. We don’t get frightened by things like this.”

Have you noticed these eerie parallels between the next-generation Xbox and the dearly departed Sega Dreamcast?

Unsettling, if you’re planning on rushing out to buy Xbox 360. (Mind you, I own and adore a Dreamcast.)

In search of a ratings boost, NBC execs came up with the brilliant idea of having a live presidential debate on last Sunday’s West Wing. Overall, the numbers were still weak: According to Lisa de Moraes, the show still finished third with 9.6 million viewers, behind ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (18 million) and CBS’s Cold Case (16 million).

But it doesn’t end there. Someone at Rockefeller Plaza thought it equally clever to conduct a Zogby poll, asking viewers who they thought performed better: Democratic congressman Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits) or Republican senator Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda). Prior to the debate, Santos, the presumed successor to Jed Bartlet, led among younger audiences 54 percent to 37 percent. (And it is the younger audience those execs are desperately after.)

But the post-debate numbers show Senator Vinick now leading Santos among 18- to 29-year-olds by 56 percent to 42 percent. In other words, the age bracket NBC execs covet the most prefer the Republican who is supposed to ultimately lose. As de Moraes points out, Smits was even well-armed with such hard-hitting lines as:

What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party? I’ll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation…. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, “liberal,” as if it’s something dirty, something to be ashamed of, something to run away from, it won’t work, senator, because I will pick it up, and I will wear that label as a badge of honor.

Somehow, audiences were not seduced by the sweeping rhetoric. Alda as Vinick, I am certain, was supposed to come off as old-fashioned, stodgy, out of touch–exactly the way a Republican should be. Instead Alda, the veteran actor that he is, actually appealed to viewers with his earnestness and folksy charm.

So what do the West Wing‘s writers and producers do now, knowing their target audience favors, good God, a Republican? Here are three options:

1. It turns out Vinick has some skeletons in his closet. He had an affair. With a male staffer. And, for good measure, he had a drinking and drug problem. How sweet the irony that his own conservative base would abandon him because of his loose morals!

2. Vinick is such a nice guy there’s no possible way he could really be a Republican. Maybe he has a change of heart and decides to switch parties like the senator from Vermont. And he becomes Santos’s veep. Everybody lives happily ever after.

3. Vinick is assassinated–by a far-right militiaman who used a gun that could have been banned under a Santos administration.

Oh, the possibilities.

What to say about TO and the end of the Philadelphia Eagles?

Let’s go to Galley Friend and Cowboy Superfan L.B.:

When the Eagles picked up TO, they knew they were making a huge roll of the dice. On one hand, they knew a big-play WR was probably the last element they needed in order to make it to the Super Bowl–and win. On the other hand, they knew (they *had* to know, didn’t they?) that eventually the dude’s enormous ego and attitude would require running him out of town. So the gamble was that the former would happen before the latter.

And actually, the gamble almost paid off–theycame up just 3 points short in the Super Bowl last year.

Now (to continue the gambling metaphor here), they’ve done the smart thing: cut your losses. This season’s probably beyond repair, but at least they can move on. (Better to have done that during this past offseason–surely they could’ve found somebody dumb/desperate enough to take TO in a trade . . . but better late than never.)

I agree with L.B. except that I’d go further–the Eagles were right to keep TO around and not trade him, because the poor value they would have gotten (a future second round pick, at best) would not have compensated them for having TO playing against them.

So, the Eagles to a chance which almost paid off and have now moved on. Where are they going from here? Nowhere, obviously. I’ll be very surprised if they sneak into the playoffs. (If I ran the team, I would have sent McNabb in for the surgery after week two; when you play hurt, you tend to get hurt.) But they have had three goals in the Owens endgame and are close to accomplishing them:

(1) Get TO off the team. They did that yesterday.

(2) Don’t pay him. At most, the team will have to pay Owens for four more games this season. Owens will lose his appeal–the Eagles front office has been creating the paper-trail for this showdown since the beginning of the summer.

(3) Destroy TO’s career so that no championship-contending team will want him and that even bottom-feeding teams won’t give him more than a one-year contract. The last thing the Eagles want is for Owens to show up in a Redskins (or Ravens) uniform next season. The way things have played out, that’s much more unlikely today than it would have been if the Eagles had cut Owens during training camp. Owens is more radioactive today than he was three months ago–and football people have seen that he isn’t the same receiver he was last year.

(Don’t be fooled by TO’s gaudy numbers–the Eagles have thrown the ball almost 80% of the time this season and on pass playes that weren’t screens, TO was the first, second, and third option. Under that scenario, the team’s #1 receiver couldn’t help but have monster stats. Still, the tape doesn’t lie: Owens is slower than last year and his body is starting to break down. Wide receivers don’t get better after 30.)

So the Eagles have made the best of a bad situation. The only two questions left are: (1) Were they right to make the gamble in the first place? And (2) Will they regroup next year, the way the Pats did after winning their first Brady Super Bowl and missing the playoffs the following season?