With a disappointing Redskins season on the books—the team went 4-12 this year—we hoped Hogs Haven bloggers Kevin Ewoldt and Ken Meringolo would be able to find a silver lining. Does a 2020 Super Bowl win count? Ouch.

Hogs Haven was founded in 2006, but the duo took it over last January from their predecessor Will Allensworth. Native Washingtonians, Ewoldt and Meringolo have been lifelong Skins fans. Says Meringolo, “I think I learned how to walk, talk, and become a Redskins fan all at the same time.”

The pair try to keep their blog posts informative and accurate yet light. Ewoldt has a background in improv and stand-up comedy, so he likes to incorporate humor into his writing—and his Photoshopping. Some of his hack jobs have ended up on Sportsillustrated.com.

We pressed Ewoldt and Meringolo to make some solid predictions on the future of our hometown team. With Jim Zorn and Vinny Cerrato out, there’s lots of fun guesswork to do. Read on to see what they have to say, and be sure to leave your thoughts in the comments.

When Kim Peek, a savant, died in December, newspaper articles about his life identified him as the inspiration for Dustin Hoffman's Rain Man character. In reality, Hoffman's inspiration for the character wasn't so clear cut—the actor had met with several savants, including an autistic savant from Annandale named Peter Guthrie. Here is a Washingtonian article from 1992 about Peter Guthrie's remarkable life, including a look at the time he spent hanging out with Dustin Hoffman while Hoffman researched his role.

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Tareq and Michaele Salahi burst into the headlines with their gate-crashing stunt at a White House state dinner. A year and a half earlier—long before she became a potential player in Bravo’s Real Housewives of DC—The Washingtonian interviewed Michaele for a Web feature called Sidewalk Style about her fashion tips. Here are excerpts from what she told us at the time:

Photograph courtesy of Gary Knight.

The Hidden Brain By Shankar Vedantam

One of the most compelling stories in Shankar Vedantam’s The Hidden Brain is about an incident that happened 15 years ago on the bridge between Belle Isle park and downtown Detroit. One hot summer night, a man dragged a woman through a station-wagon window and beat her bloody. Fleeing as he came at her with a tire iron, she leapt to her death in the rapids below. Dozens witnessed the assault, which lasted a half hour, but as if auditioning for roles in Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, no one came to the woman’s rescue while she was being attacked.

To make sense of this episode and other puzzling human behaviors—from how educated individuals become suicide bombers to why a stranded puppy yanks our heartstrings more than genocide does—Vedantam began scouring a new field of psychological research that links our action, and inaction, to an array of unconscious influences, what Vedantam calls “the hidden brain.” The result is a fascinating piece of explanatory reportage, in the tradition of Thomas Friedman and Malcolm Gladwell, that has the capacity to sway public policy and spawn a popular franchise. Vedantam, a Washington Post science columnist, is set to turn the idea into a blog for Psychology Today.

It’s the start of a new year in Congress, which means two things: (1) our representatives are rehashing all the mistakes of the previous year, and (2) they’re worrying about upstart pipsqueaks stealing their seats in 2010. So expect to see a lot of local pride from them in coming weeks, combined with plenty of snipes about federal spending and the occasional comment about the weather. So not much different from any other week then. Oh well.

Mad props to Leonard Boswell and Joe Wilson for starting 2010 with an air of optimism, even if Joe Wilson’s is appreciation for the fact that a televised outburst of rudeness to hundreds of millions of people worldwide provided a welcome boost in profile and campaign donations. We’ll take what we can get. And boos to John Boehner, Mike Coffman and Eric Cantor for reminding us that it’s business as usual. Randy Neugebauer has the dorkiest New Year’s Resolution we’ve ever heard, Ben Nelson is mad at Taiwan, Kirsten Gillibrand is concerned with Asian Carp and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is worried about both her kids and an unseasonal cold snap in Florida. Rob Wittman has gone back to school. And John McCain is the most popular man in the world, again.

Rafat Mahmood. With the United States stepping up efforts in Afghanistan, what’s the situation in Pakistan? Ask this well-connected Pakistani-American.

Elizabeth Fowler. Max Baucus’s point person on health care might be able to shed some light on what exactly this health-care bill means.

John Solomon. Are the days of the perennially money-losing Washington Times finally numbered? Ask the former executive editor, who resigned as part of a big shakeup.

Vicki Kennedy. The widow of longtime senator Ted Kennedy and newly appointed Kennedy Center trustee is staying out of the limelight in the race to succeed her husband.