Urban Dictionary

I know its stupid, sick, and immature, but I love to read the Urban Dictionary. Today's front page defines the term surge protectors. Go take a look and see what hipsters think this means.

2 points for playing a safety except in Washington

In today's Chicago Tribune, John Kass eloquently summarizes the growing public discontent with the ultra-cautious Democratic leadership and its Iraq strategy. Non-binding resolutions? Tough questions? There's nothing we can do? Come now. The Democratic party complained bitterly about the actions and policies of the Republican majority, and now that the Democrats are the majority, we'd like to see them step up and drive the changes they campaigned on and were elected for by the people. One might think with the apparent divisions in the Republican party, the new majority party might be able to find a way to move its platform forward?

Thank god scotch is not distilled from corn...

Because corn trading on the Chicago Board of Trade hit an exchange price change limit of 20 cents per day Friday, with per-bushel prices rising to $3.96. Per-day price changes are imposed by the CBOT to limit price volatility and allow time for the market to digest major news - like the Friday morning USDA report detailing strong domestic corn demand along with strong exports.

Friday's Chicago Tribune had two articles about this, primarily focusing on the root cause of the rise of corn prices: ethanol production. One article focused on the impacts in Mexico, where corn prices have driven a 14% increase in the price of tortillas, a dietary staple in the country. The other article focused on the basics of the commodity, and hinted at the possibility of further price increases as the number of operating ethanol plants in the US will increase by roughly 50% in 2007.

Flacid with rage

The Colbert Report is one of my favorite shows, and I have a friend who is an Apple fanatic. After he crowed for what seemed like hours, I stumbled across this Colbert video where he pokes fun at the IPhone (and the porn comment is funny too).

The end of all things

Yes, life as we know it and the value of living it is over the year. With their 41-14 pasting of Ohio State, the Florida Gators closed out the college football season with a bang. Ohio State peaked on the first play of the game, a 93 yard kick off return for a TD by McGinn. After that, it was not so much as Florida piled up the yards on the ground and in the air, running sort of a weird I formation with both qb's lining up. While OSU fans might be dejected, the city of Columbus was relieved as an OSU victory would have almost certainly resulted in a major crime wave there.

See you on 9/1/2007 when NU opens at home against Northeastern.

Charging blues over?

Google on eCoupled to learn about the potentially nifty new technology which is about to be introduced. Wireless re-charging in and of itself sounds great, but even better is the fact that the myriad and sundry different bricks, plugs, and power adapters could be replaced by a single gizmo. I don't know what you have, but I have a cable for my Blackberry, which re-charges off USB on my laptop. But I also have a wall adapter for it when the PC is not handy. And I have a brick for my laptop. And I have a brick for my MP3 player. And a base station for my cordless phone. I could keep going, but you see the point - replace all the power sources and recharging stations with a single eCoupled power pad or bucket, which doesn't need to be replaced each time you buy a new phone or MP3 player....its gizmo nirvana!

Toxoplasma Gondii

The current issue of Discover magazine had a brief article about Toxoplasma Gondii. Being generally ignorant, I was unaware of this parasitic creature. A female friend educated me that pregnant women who own cats are quite familiar with it, as the routine toxosis it can cause is known to be harmful to fetuses.

The Discover article focused on a different aspect. Recent studies have uncovered correlations between toxoplasma and schizophrenia, and indeed, there is some evidence that the little beast may account for the most significant cultural differences between countries and peoples. Correlations have been made between toxoplasma and male stupidity, between toxoplasma and female libido, between toxoplasma and neuroticism and schizophrenia. Click here and here for references....Google for yourself and try to decide if this is symptomatic of a medical tulip craze or totally legitimate, and then drive yourself to Walgreen's and get a test kit.

Number of the Beast

If you are a frequent reader of Distrowatch, you've seen the news that Ubuntu is the #1 Linux distro for the second year in a row. Ubuntu's growing popularity is reflected in the number of interesting variants of the distro. Want Ubuntu but prefer the eye candy of KDE? Get Kubuntu. Student or teacher? Get Edubuntu. What would Jesus download? Get UCE, Ubuntu Christian Edition. Want to run Linux but you only speak Klingon? Wait for the Klingon translation.

And now there is literally one for everyone, as Ubuntu Satanic Edition, "the distro of the beast", is now available. You can run Windows and feel like you are burning in Hell, or run USE and only look like you are burning in Hell. Its great to have choices!

The business section of today's Chicago Tribune had an interesting juxtaposition of articles. At the top of the front page was "Boeing to post record sales". Chicago-based Boeing completed its second straight year with sales of 1000+ planes, and will likely out-sell rival Airbus by 200 or more planes after Airbus posts results on January 17.

At the bottom of the page, "Toyota now No. 3 in U.S. sales". Toyota sold over 2.5 million vehicles in the US in 2006, while GM sold over 4 million. While Toyota remains far behind GM in US sales, its likely that Toyota will surpass GM in global sales in 2007.

Sandwiched in between these two articles? "Greenhouses gases to shape coal debate". The US, which has the world's largest reserves of coal, produces roughly 50% of its electricity from coal. Which leads to the dubious distinction of the US producing 20% of the world's CO2, the "pre-eminent" greenhouse gas. The article discusses various activities to establish voluntary or mandatory emission-trading schemes around the country, and includes the obligatory bow to the current tulip craze on nuclear plant construction.

How many ways can you say Ouch?

Sugar caned. Sugar smacked. Thumped. Pummelled. That's 4 to start. 4 also happens to be the number of quarters in a football game, and the Irish only played with LSU in the first 2 of last nite's Sugar Bowl. After a 41-14 pasting (that's 5), it was clear that ND was not in the same class as LSU. Before the game, ND faithful (including me) figured play calling and Quinn were the Irish's great hopes. Both were deflated as Weis made some bad calls (the fake punt was unusually bad) and Quinn was out-everything'd by Jamarcus Russell. This was not a game that inspired hope for next year either, as Quinn departs for the pros and Weis plays footsie with his job.

Hook that ladder

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the first two good bowl games would be Michigan and Boise State. I was half-right, as the Michigan game was a flop as the Trojans whomped them bad in the second half of yesterday's Rose Bowl. But the Fiesta Bowl with Boise State.....ahhhhh that was a gem. From the shock and despair after Zabransky threw that lousy interception with 1 minute left, to the masterful execution of the hook and ladder play on 4th and 18 that got the Broncos back in the game, to the brilliant play fake on the statue of liberty 2-point conversion all-chips-in-the-pot play that won the game, this was one of the best football games I've ever seen. Ignore the silly talk about the game reviving the national playoff controversy, and just enjoy the replays!