Forgive me, but I've never quite gotten over the Magic Johnson Thing.

I saw him again on television over the weekend, when Michigan State celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Spartans' victory over Indiana State for the NCAA basketball championship. It wasn't as big a deal as on the 25th anniversary, when a statue (a statue?!) of him was erected outside the Spartans' arena in East Lansing, Mich.

I'm not sure how I feel about the teen-driving bill that passed a Senate committee on Tuesday.

State lawmakers have a way of reacting to crises. You can almost hear them saying: "We got a bill for that." In this case, lawmakers are trying to put new restrictions on teen-age drivers after a series of well-publicized, fatal accidents involving young drivers.

Hancock County has had more than its share: A half-dozen young people died in crashes in 2008. Most of the collisions involved drivers going too fast. Significantly, the deaths mostly were in single-vehicle accidents.

There's an interesting little story in today's paper about a Greenfield man who required six blasts from police officers' stun guns before he could be subdued. Having taken a Taser hit from Police Chief John Jester during a demonstration a couple of years back as part of the Greenfield Police Department's Citizens Academy, I can tell you one jolt is plenty to incapacitate most people.

Have you ever had one of those dreams during which you're tumbling through space with no idea when you'll land? That's a little like the recession nowadays. Where's the bottom? When we read in December that even Honda and Toyota had suffered drops in their sales numbers, the bottom seemed a little more distant. Until the credit markets loosen, you wonder whether the bottom still is a ways off.

"Which is harder to believe," my friend Alex asked me after he'd strolled along Pennsyvlania Avenue earlier today in Washington, D.C., where he works. "A black man becoming president, or the Arizona Cardinals going to the Super Bowl?"