Welcome to The Faster Times update. In today's edition, we bring you the Super Bowl, Alaska's punk scene, JLo, kiddie art, and democracy in Egypt. Enjoy!

What a nightmare for fans of the Dallas Cowboys. In two weeks their glittery $1.15 billion stadium will be taken over by an NFL horror show — the two franchises that have brought more acute misery to Dallas than any other.

Let’s be honest: no one actually knows anyone from Alaska or has ever been there, and our concept of what daily life is like is based on “Northern Exposure” and nature documentaries. If you told me Alaskans ride polar bears to work, I’d probably believe it.

So when I stumbled across a set of photos from what appeared to be a punk squat in Anchorage in the 80s, obviously I was intrigued.

Though I can take her or leave her as an actress (something tells me they’ll never be calling her name on Oscar-nomination morning), I’ve always had a soft spot for Jennifer Lopez the singer. Yes, her vocals can be, well, soft — and grating — and she desperately needs to work with a coach to lose the Bronx inflections pronto, but with the right producer, she can deliver the goods.

Congratulations to brave New York Times writer, Michael Tortorello, for tackling such a sensitive issue with this week’s “Mom, You’re One Tough Art Critic” about homes so overrun with kiddy art that mothers have done the unthinkable: thrown it out.

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how remarkably tongue-tied the US’s self-proclaimed champions of democracy promotion and human rights on the neoconservative right became in response to the protests against a US ally in Tunisia. Now, Jack Ross has a funny post describing a similar phenomenon occurring in response to the protests in Egypt. Look around the neocon blogosphere and one is struck by the dearth of writing on the protests: Commentary has a single blog post that notably stops short of advocating any US response to the protests; the Weekly Standard‘s Lee Smith warns US observers not to get too attached to the protesters: