You know, in retrospect, I don't think this will look like as big an upset as the media is making it this morning. For the last quarter of the season and playoffs, the Patriots were not blowing anyone out, as they had in the beginning of the year. The Giants were playing strong in each of their playoff games and lost to the Patriots by only 3, really lost by one Manning interception. Sure the Patriots should have been favored, but two touchdowns at first? 12 points?

The arrogance of predictions (like King's in this column) saying that the Giants had no chance was just ridiculous. The mystique of 18-0 made real analysis of this match-up impossible. The more people study this game and these playoffs, the strength of the outstanding Giants D-line (the real MVP of the game I think, not to take anything away from Manning)and the quality of the coaching will make people realize this win should not have been a shocker.

You know, for four seasons I believed that The Wire was so authentic in its portrayal of cops and the drug trade and life in the schools, but now I am just wondering if it was because I knew nothing about those things. Many newspaper journalists on the web have been complaining about the Sun plot, and now Simon gives us a courtroom scene that has no plausible basis in reality. Clay Davis would have had no opportunity for all of that grandstanding. Objection! Not uttered once by the DA. Cross examination? Why bother apparently. The whole thing was so beneath the show that I am now starting to doubt what I thought about the authenticity of the earlier seasons.

On an unrelated note, another example this season's allusions to previous ones. In season one or two, I am pretty sure there is a scene with McNulty throwing a fit while trying to build some furniture for his kids' visit.

I watch a lot of movies but often have a hard time describing acting in the way that critics do; I just don't see what they see or am unable to articulate it well. This article puts into words as well as I could have hoped the unsatisfied feeling I had in response to DDL's performance in There Will be Blood. Great article.

. . . and some of you people need to calm down. Obviously some people who have no ulterior motive or particular axe to grind agree with what Zacharek has written, both about the film and the performance. The personal attacks are really overboard, and they are also besides the point because they don't apply to everyone who has a similar opinion of the movie. The Tomato-meter over at rottentomatoes.com rarely ever says 100%. Haven't you ever found yourself in the few-percent minority on a movie?

Omar's death just makes it clear that no one in this series will find a hero's end. Even sadder than Omar dying, I think, was seeing him standing in the street, calling out Marlo, but no one listening nor caring. He was dead before he even went into the store. He was alone, without a purpose. Remember that in the first few seasons Omar always ran with a crew, now he had no one. He may have been a legend, but no one will know it, just another anonymous corpse. A sad ending, but great writing.

I guess I now belong in the dustbin of technology and culture, because I like to go to the web to find stuff to read, but every site I visit seems to want to make me watch more things. I can already that this is going to be a transition that I will not appreciate . . .

. . . the best way to get away from the sports coverage of cheating and lying and all of the reactions to it is to write about something else. I can't tell if it was ironic or not, but you even commit the precise crimes that you are railing against, drawing distinctions between certain types of cheating, moralizing,etc.

Instead of trying to be clever, make your statement with the content of this column and cover something else.

. . . it took this long for someone to reference the Megadeth song. It was actually a minor hit for them at the time. Unfortunately, the song is more about the foreclosures of family farms than family houses. Kind of a heavy metal meets John Mellencamp thing . . .

Just wanted to be one of the first to say that this was a brilliant ending. With the exception of Dukie and Michael, it has all the makings of a "happy ending," with pretty much everyone landing on their feet. Each of the past seasons were ended in ways that made me more and more depressed; I am pretty sure I had a smile on my face as the final montage played out this time.

Then I realize that, except for Bubbles, all of these people land on their feet because they turn their backs on a huge lie, one that hurt people despite what McNulty may have thought at times. They all end up okay because they are swallowed by the system and cash in their chips for playing the game, burying the truth, and taking care of themselves. Only The Wire can make you feel good and then actualyl feel worse for it. Man, I'll miss this show.

Historians have been grappling with the issues raised in this excerpt for decades involving how we interpret documents and construct narratives about the past. Differences in interpretation persist no matter how many new documents are produced or how close to the present they were created. Historians disagree as much about the 1990s as the 1790s.

Only the most naive would think that photographs can make something definitively true; photos and video are merely new kinds of documents that people will disagree on. There is nothing particularly special about the biases and interpretation of visual media that we haven't already been dealing with for generations.