Friday, July 29, 2011

1) they're obviously recruiting groupies

2) literally everything they say is innuendo
3) kids, ask your parents' permission!



4)

super mario rap

Remember SongSpy? That's where I got this song.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

that's a pretty clever album title, I admit

Hey there's a Nirvana tribute cover album (!) out. I only like two of them to which I've listened:



Monday, July 25, 2011

CFB Dictator: Conference Realignment

If I were given dictatorial power to make changes in the college football landscape -- like the ancient Romans, perhaps some great crisis comes along and they concentrate all power in one man -- here is what I would do with regards to conference realignment:

I have two plans. In both, the SEC, B1G 10, and PAC-12 stay as they are. Everyone else is primarily determined by geographic reasons and football, the big money-maker, especially since everyone knows the regular season doesn't really matter in basketball. I am inclined toward the second plan, but I think the first one is acceptable, too.

FEELING GENEROUS:

MAC: Iowa State joins, making the MAC an even fourteen teams.

Mountain West: Includes currentish members Colorado State, Boise State, Air Force, San Diego State, Wyoming, New Mexico, and BYU, plus former Big XII members Kansas and Kansas State, plus former WAC members Hawaii, Fresno State, and Nevada. UNLV and the remaining teams left in the WAC (save Louisiana Tech, see below) are kicked out of 1-A.

TOK Conference: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Tulsa, UTEP, Texas Tech, Texas, Baylor, Texas A&M, Houston, SMU, TCU, and North Texas are grouped into one conference. Rice is kicked out of 1-A. The Oklahoma teams, Texas Tech, SMU, and North Texas are in one division, the rest in the other.

C-USA: After losing its TOK teams, C-USA picks up former Big XII member Missouri, former WAC member Louisiana Tech, and former Sun Belt members Troy, Florida International, Florida Atlantic, and Middle Tennessee State. East Carolina leaves for the ACC. The remaining Sun Belt schools are kicked out of 1-A. Louisville replaces Marshall in C-USA.

Big East: The Big East picks up Army, Navy, East Carolina, and Notre Dame. Marshall replaces Louisville. Boston College replaces South Florida.

ACC: South Florida replaces Boston College.

Now there are regional major conferences (The SEC, ACC, B1G 10, Pac-12, and kind of the TOK and Big East) and minor regional conferences (CUSA, MAC, and the MWC) embracing a total of 110 schools. I kept some schools that probably don't deserve it for the sake of staging championship games for every conference.

FEELING NOT SO GENEROUS:

The Pac-12, SEC, and B1G 10 stay as they are in actuality. The ACC and Big East remain as I have them above, except the Big East keeps Louisville instead of getting Marshall. Then we have a new conference:

South-West Conference: Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, Texas, Missouri, Texas A&M, TCU, Kansas, Kansas State, and Houston. They are required to play a round-robin schedule, and this conference mostly exists to give Texas and Oklahoma something to do.

Independents: Hawaii, BYU, Fresno State, Boise State, Air Force, Marshall, Toledo, Troy, Bowling Green, Nevada, Miami of Ohio, and Central Florida. These schools are allowed to keep their football programs at the 1-A level, if they want. They play as football and, if they can afford it, basketball independents. The other non-revenue sports can join conferences at the 1-AA or below level.

In this version, we have five major twelve-team conferences (SEC, B1G 10, PAC-12, ACC, Big East), one major ten-team conference (SWC), and basically another conference of independents with winning records in recent years to round out the schedules. These 82 teams make up 1-A.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Temporal Anomalies movies

Even though I disagree with him on the nature of time travel (if time travel to the past is a thing, then causality should really be treated as a falsity or perhaps a misunderstanding of the nature of reality stemming from our limited human perspective), I like this guy's analyses of the temporal anomalies created in movies about time travel. Sample:
In this original history, Sarah Connor must have had a child. It was not Kyle Reese's child; it might not even have been a boy. All that is certain is that a child was born. It is also certain that someone created something called Skynet, a computer system able to control all of our computerized weapons systems, and that at some point this system became self-aware, and turned against humanity. An unfathomable number of humans died, but Sarah Connor's child survived, and led a resistance of some sort which fought back and prevented Skynet's victory. At some point, however, Skynet decided that it had one good option, to send a machine to the past to destroy Sarah Connor's child. For whatever reason, it determined to do this by destroying Sarah Connor before the child was born. Thus a Terminator was sent back, and history changed completely.

When I say that in this timeline Kyle Reese did not come from the future to protect Sarah Connor, the immediate thought will be that Sarah will die. However, in response to that it is probable that the original terminator was not the T-800 of the first movie, but a much less developed model. The reasons for that are explained in the previous page. Somehow, Sarah Connor managed to escape and give birth to her child. A terminator is relentless, though, and eventually it would have caught up with Sarah Connor and killed her. This must have happened after the child was born. Otherwise, there would have been no child, and Skynet would have had no reason to send the T-800 back, and we would fall into an infinity loop. Because Sarah was killed by the Terminator, Sarah's child would have sent Kyle Reese back to protect her; there is no good reason to have sent someone back to protect Sarah Connor if Sarah Connor survived (something already known from that moment in the future which immediately follows the departure of the Terminator), so Sarah must have been killed. This arrival of Kyle Reese in the past is the second time history changes completely, the third version of time.

this is the best thing

Monday, July 18, 2011

Friday, July 15, 2011

soundtrack for the weekend

Feldman suspension

The real lesson of this whole Bruce Feldman brouhaha isn't that ESPN is stupid, or that Craig James is an obnoxious, hypocritical idiot and a bad announcer (we already knew both of these things). What the story really does, in conjunction with the Longhorn Network and its inherent violation of journalistic ethics, is to underscore the need for competition in the world of sports journalism. ESPN can act the way that they do because they don't have any meaningful competition. There's other options in any particular medium, of course -- SI has a website and a magazine, and there are other blogs, and there are other networks that show sporting events. But nobody has the kind of influence across the board that ESPN does.

I wish that one (or more!) of ESPN's competitors would step up with a serious combined challenge. Sports Illustrated is part of Time Warner, who owns CNN; they could start a cable news network, right? CBS, Fox, and NBC all have terrible sports channels right now, but there's no reason that any of them couldn't, you know, put some quality sports content on the air. What's the point of having massive consolidation of media power into a few multinational conglomerates if they can't give us good content?

Thursday, July 14, 2011

I've only got 10/20

yes yes yes yes
yes yes want want
meh yes no haveadifferentalbumoftheirs
no yes yes yes
no no no no

disclaimer in the upper right of click-embiggened version.

froggies

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Monday, July 11, 2011

logic game

Impasse, I am not quite halfway through. Fun!

an ad campaign that I liked...

or would have, had i ever heard of it.



then there's this. sloooowed down.



which inevitably led to this.

Saturday, July 09, 2011

Friday, July 08, 2011

Durrrty South Sudan

Well, we all have a new capital to memorize. There's the flag. It's the usual African nonsense. Still better than Kosovo, though.

UPDATE: the flag isn't there. go find it!

Cheatypants

Where will Jim Tressel end up coaching next? It's inevitable that he gets back into the job, so the real question is where. I don't think his coaching style and "Fatherly Baptist Deacon caught stealing from the collection plates and plowing the choir director" shtick will fly in the NFL, so that means another college job. My guess is that by 2013 he ends up at some second-tier school with an urge to win and a creative relationship with the rulebook. Possible destinations might include Oregon State, Arizona State, Texas A&M, Arkansas, or UCLA.

However, Tressel is a man of the Midwest. Would a Big 10 team take a chance by hiring him? I bet some of the loser programs would, after a year or three. Tressel will end up at Minnesota or Illinois: mark it, dude.

an ad campaign I liked

Wendy's "Good to Be Square," mostly because of this charming commercial.

Wednesday, July 06, 2011

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

lighters

I saw at the sporting goods store that apparently there is a big demand for BBQ lighters shaped like weapons, tools, or sporting equipment.


You can see there that options at this particular establishment include fishing poles, shotguns, M-16s, and bolt-action rifles. The existence of options isn't a surprise, but the number and the variety make me wonder who is buying all these BBQ lighters. Are there folks with a whole collection of different shapes, each for a different mood, food, or holiday?

Monday, July 04, 2011

west: a counter-proposal

imagine BSC coming out to these killer back beats:



Also too, Metallica generally sucks. Not entirely, but mostly.

Sunday, July 03, 2011

charles, listen to it, i know it's not happy puss-rock...

it's just old, whatever, metallica, but imagine the mighty BSC football team taking the field to this... with 'battery' replaced with 'b - s - c.' So sweet.



CAN NOT STOP THE B S C!

B S C!

Friday, July 01, 2011

I substitute lectured earlier this week

It didn't go this well

Apparently today is Canada Day

and this is a big if...

If and when I have enough money to buy a piece of wood...