more halloween

halloween

apropos

metal monday: baby metal!

top comment: RELEASE THE PEDOBEAR!!!!

I'm the first mammal to wear pants

on time and on a dime!

Arkansas (-10) at Vanderbilt

Georgia (-3) vs. Florida
Ole Miss (+12.5) at Auburn
Mississippi State (-10) at Kentucky
South Carolina (-3.5) at Tennessee

Oi, again with the home dogs!

Week 9 picks on time for once

Last week I went 4-0 straight-up and a gross 1-3 against the line. That puts me at 50-8 and 29-28, respectively, for the season overall. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

ARKANSAS (-10) at Vanderbilt
GEORGIA (-3) vs. Florida
Ole Miss (+12.5) at AUBURN
MISSISSIPPI STATE (-10) at Kentucky
South Carolina (-3.5) at Tennessee

Octopus intelligence

Only recently have scientists accorded chimpanzees, so closely related to humans we can share blood transfusions, the dignity of having a mind. But now, increasingly, researchers who study octopuses are convinced that these boneless, alien animals—creatures whose ancestors diverged from the lineage that would lead to ours roughly 500 to 700 million years ago—have developed intelligence, emotions, and individual personalities. Their findings are challenging our understanding of consciousness itself.

I had always longed to meet an octopus. Now was my chance: senior aquarist Scott Dowd arranged an introduction. In a back room, he would open the top of Athena’s tank. If she consented, I could touch her. The heavy lid covering her tank separated our two worlds. One world was mine and yours, the reality of air and land, where we lumber through life governed by a backbone and constrained by jointed limbs and gravity. The other world was hers, the reality of a nearly gelatinous being breathing water and moving weightlessly through it. We think of our world as the “real” one, but Athena’s is realer still: after all, most of the world is ocean, and most animals live there. Regardless of whether they live on land or water, more than 95 percent of all animals are invertebrates, like Athena.

Inside the mind of an octopus

Another fun North Korean dance music video

hawaiian dances are stupid

Arkansas (-15.5) at Ole Miss
Auburn (+21) at Louisiana St.
Army (+11) at Vanderbilt
Tennessee (+29.5) at ALABAMA

Would have liked to have disagreed more, but oh well.

week 8 real late my bad

Last week I went 5-0 straight-up and 3-2 against the line. That puts me at 46-8 and 28-25, respectively, for the season overall. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

ARKANSAS (-15.5) at Ole Miss
Auburn (+21) at Lsu
Army (+11) at Vanderbilt
Tennessee (+29.5) at ALABAMA

Kentucky is playing Jax State, which probably is a pick 'em.

Bohemian Shatner

avengers

Everyone around here is getting ready for Klanoween

He sprang to his Chevy, to his team gave a purr,
And away they all flew, all screaming out slurs.
But I heard him exclaim, as he drove out of town,
"Best to get all them darkies out here 'fore sundown!"

this just in

I am not generally a Kill Bill fan but this is a great scene

this is where i predict the future

OH MY GOD.

South Carolina (-3) at Mississippi State
Louisiana St (-17) at Tennessee
Alabama (-25.5) at Ole Miss
Georgia (-11) at Vanderbilt
Florida (-2) at Auburn

THASSA LOTTA HOME DOGS.

Week 7 Picks subtitled I am doing worse against the line than I expected I would

Last week I went 4-2 straight-up and 3-3 against the line. That puts me at 41-8 and 25-23, respectively, for the season overall. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

SOUTH CAROLINA (-3) at Mississippi State
LSU (-17) at Tennessee
ALABAMA (-25.5) at Ole Miss
Georgia (-11) at Vanderbilt
Florida (-2) at Auburn

efficient resource management

56 06 39

SEC expansion

Here's an idea about what the SEC could do with regards to expansion, since it's apparently a thing now. The SEC should add to what it has by picking up WVU, Louisville, Kansas, Kansas State, and Missouri, for a total of 18 teams.

So, the football divisions would be the nine schools in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Georgia in one division, Kentucky and all the new pick-ups since 1992 (the five listed above plus South Carolina, Arkansas, Texas A&M) in the other. This means a lot of travel for the new schools, but football and basketball can afford it. The division made up of the older SEC teams would be the football division, the new one a basketball division.

The conference would play nine conference games in football: round-robin schedule against the other eight teams in your division, plus a team in the other division. I would give schools freedom to schedule the inter-division game: Tennessee and Kentucky want to play every year? Sure! Florida wants to rotate three teams? Whatever.

In basketball, I'd subdivide the divisions. Play a home-and-home with your four biggest rivals in the division every year, one game against each team in the rest of the division, and a rotation of six games against teams in the opposite division (for a total 18 conference games). This would have everyone play their biggest rivals twice a season, their other division rivals once a year, and get regular games against the rest of the conference.

All other sports would ignore the divisions, perhaps playing in pods or protected rivalries with rotating games. This would cut down on travel costs and let rivalries in individual sports to flourish.

Such an expansion would protect all the important football rivalries. It would put the SEC on TV sets stretching from Texas and Kansas in the west to Pennsylvania and Florida in the east. It would create unquestionably the strongest athletic conference in the country; for basketball and especially football, you'd have divisions as strong as any other conference.

It would also protect and nourish the weaker halves of the two money sports. Missouri, for example, can build and improve their football program without having to play Florida or LSU every year. Basketball is slightly more evenly divided, but it would help (say) Mississippi State's basketball team to not have to necessarily play Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisville all in one year.

There are some big downsides. The new additions probably won't add as much money, even with the new TV contracts, as they'll take.

More importantly, it will change the football product. The SEC probably will never have another undefeated season. No matter how good (for example) Auburn ever is, they will not win every game against the average LSU, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama team in one season.

The football title game would also be much less important and impressive. You'd have a three or four loss Georgia or Florida beating the pants off a one or two loss Texas A&M or West Virginia every year.

Gang Fight! Gang Fight! The gang is down to fight, yeah

roomba

I've got to admit, my heart just isn't in this.

Mississippi St. (-18.5) at UAB
Kentucky (+21) at South Carolina
Florida (+13.5) at Louisiana St.
Vanderbilt (+29) at ALABAMA
Auburn (+10) at Arkansas
Georgia (-1.5) at TENNESSEE

Not only will Tennessee win, they'll cover.

Some call it Week 6 picks

Last week I went a gross 4-3 straight-up and 3-4 against the line. That puts me at 37-6 and 22-20, respectively, for the season overall. Once again for this week, bold to win, caps to cover the line.

MISSISSIPPI STATE (-18.5) at UAB
Kentucky (+21) at South Carolina
Florida (+13.5) at LSU
Vanderbilt (+29) at ALABAMA
Auburn (+10) at Arkansas
Georgia (-1.5) at Tennessee

You see, you dont have to live like a refugee

in soviet russia...

Privacy

Say you're a 26-year-old who just got hired as a middle school teacher. You love your new job. Your students are great. But what if they Google you and make it to the third page of results, where there's a link to a sexually explicit column you wrote years ago for a now defunct Web magazine? Awkward. Maybe even a threat to your career. Alas, the erstwhile editor of the site won't remove the piece. And even if he did it would live on -- it's hard to remove anything from the Internet.

Or maybe what vexes someone is photo-tagging. When John Doe attended that gay pride parade while visiting New York City, he never realized his image would be captured in a huge crowd, his Sacramento Kings cap atop his head, or that technology would make it possible to zoom in on his features, or that facial recognition software would tag the photo as him. Now he's back in Fresno freaking out. What if people at the plant where he works figure out that he's closeted? So he takes to the Web. Photoshops himself into all sorts of unlikely places. Tienanmen Square. The gold medal platform at the 1976 Summer Olympics. In the crowd for "The Shot Heard Round the World." All while wearing that same cap. Suddenly the gay pride parade shot is just one more iteration on the photo meme that he or some prankster buddy made.

A Plausible Thought About the Future

I'd better go take a swim and see if I can cool down a little bit