For one thing, he said, "it is useful to have fair-minded and sober analysis of the law and the facts."

Of course, the mandates of sound, sober analysis didn't vanish.

If Roethlisberger had done a sober cost-benefit analysis, he never would have gotten on a motorcycle.

But he also knows how to give his otherwise sober analysis the melodramatic packaging that attracts attention.

"Network Rail has carried out a sober and independent analysis"

But that would hardly create a proper image for a sound and sober analysis of "the consequences of political violence."

Beneath the photos was a sober analysis of what the vote might mean for peace in the Middle East.

But come Friday, he added, the market is likely to be guided by sober analysis after the release that morning of the December employment report.

That sober analysis does not match the popular image, most recently embodied in the brilliant but disturbed hero of the movie "Pi."

Both are matters not of sober analysis, but of faith, patriotism, morality.