The First Week of 2008 Has Been an Eventful One

The first week of 2008, in brief:

1. Monday night's BCS National Championship Game wasn't exactly a nail-biter. The game began and ended similarly to last year's match-up between Ohio State and Florida. Ohio State surged ahead in the beginning of the first quarter, only to be crushed by LSU during the rest of the game-- the same way that Ohio State was crushed by Florida last year. It was a predictable end to an unpredictable season.

2. The Business section of Sunday's New York Times included a feature on Burt's Bees (the eco-friendly cosmetics company that went green before it was cool to do so) that rivals US Weekly's cover stories. The man and woman behind Burt's Bees, Burt Shavitz and his one-time lover, turned Burt's beehives, which were nestled near the Maine turkey coop that Burt called home, into a multi-million dollar company that left Burt's lover rich and Burt himself with a few more dollars than he started with and a slightly larger turkey coop. Click here for the full article (it's absolutely scintillating).

3. On the political front, last Thursday Iowa decided that Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee would be the early victors in this year's presidential primary season. The New Hampshire primary is today, and early indications place Obama in first place among the Democrats and either John McCain or Mitt Romney ahead among the Republican candidates. It's unclear what happened to Hillary Clinton's campaign--she went from being the "inevitable" choice to battling John Edwards for second place in the early Democratic contests. What is clear is that the Obama campaign is taking the nation by storm. Voters are embracing Obama's message of hope and change, and Obama's fellow candidates--Democrats and Republican's alike--appear to be attempting to incorporate elements of Obama's message of change into their own campaigns. (MSNBC's unbelievably extensive coverage of the primary season can be found here. )