NYC

And lo, the requisite "I'm back from that three day vacation thing" post. Which I'm never sure how to right other than being just a record of what the hell's gone on. So we'll do that I think.

Thursday: March 23, 2006:

I fell asleep at about 4:30, and woke up at something like 7:40, which is about ten minutes after I'd wanted to leave. We'll get back to why leaving at 7:45am (after throwing on what happened to be clean) for a 10:59 flight was hilarious in how ample a head start that is. So. Red line to Roosevelt, Orange Line to Midway. Sunrise, sunset. And, after making it through security, having a nice gyro and what not, I'm on a plane to New York City. I'm really not entirely clear why I'm not allowed to listen to an mp3 player during takeoff, but whatever. I'm glad I was eventually allowed to use it, such that I got to fall asleep to whatever the most calming music on there was, rather than having to either a) listen to nothing, which isn't fun, or b) procuring a set of headphones, which I'd have to pay for, to listen to the in-plane music, most of which seemed to be either top 40, Country, or an entire station of U2. And while I know that flying is remarkably safe, I'm glad that I get to listen to music of my choice while I notice that the wing really is moving up and down a lot more than I'm comfortable with for something that's called "fixed wing".

Arrive: LaGuardia Airport: 1:50pm. Relatively smooth flight, with little turbulence. I do have to note here, that while I've got pretty much nothing but positive things to say about this trip, LaGuardia ranks pretty damned low in my opinion of Airports. Maybe the gate I used was the only example of a crowded, broken, aging gate, and maybe the slashed seat covers and broken ceiling tiles happened that day. But it just seemed to, you know, show its age, which is another theme I'll be talking about in a bit. Anyway, less than impressed with LaGuardia. Whatever. Hopped on the m60 bus toward 125th St., felt like I was going to fall through a window on some of the turns on the way to getting to somewhere that I could catch the 6-train, just as Jenna directed. It's interesting, incidentally, re-experiencing that feeling of not knowing where one was, really. I've had it a few times in the rural bits of Pennsylvania in a car, though that's lessened because there's usually the option of driving until one hits civilization again and the only real worry is running out of gas, and then when I got to Chicago, though that was alleviated after about a week of exploring, which appears to be enough to get my bearings so that, even if I don't know where the hell I am, I've gotten better at looking for ways to figure out how to get somewhere that I do know. Anyway, yes. 6 train to Astor Place, then quick walk to Broadway, down to 4th St., then to Washington Square Park, where I sat reading the heaviest book that I think I've bothered to read for the sake of boredom and waited for Jenna's class to end. Met her, went back to her apartment, realized that I really don't like dorms at all, and put down my stuff. Good times.

Jenna and I, happily reunited, proceeded down past her school to look for something to do. We ended up at Yummy Village Sushi (I’ll be plugging these places when I deem them decent enough for mentioning, and when I remember). I had some sushi, Jenna had some spicy chicken because Jenna never remembers that she’s always overwhelmed by spicy food, and it was good times. I was somewhat tempted to go for their “Eat 52 pieces of sushi in 20 minutes and we won’t charge you” challenge, but as the upside is that I get to be sick for free and the downside is that I get to be sick and they charge me something like $70, I passed. We proceeded to Bleecker Bob’s to look at some records, including some hilariously decorated album covers for rather “rare” recordings before wandering around for about an hour, eventually ending up about where we started, at the Cedar tavern before heading back home.

End Day One.

Friday, March 24, 2006.

Late start. Left the apartment at about 2pm, and I have decided that even a one hour shift in time zone is pretty significant. We started with the required museum run, checking out Met, which I’ll have to say I was impressed with. The geography of the building is a bit confusing, and it took us quite a while to figure out where the Musical Instruments section was, but if you’re going to stare at Benny Goodman’s clarinet, that’s something you deal with, I suppose. We ate at a diner before going back down to Bleecker St., where we met up with Andrew at Le Figaro Café, which had moderate White Russians, bits o’ right-leaning French daily covering the walls. Leaving there, we returned to Bleecker Bob’s on Andrew’s suggestion, and eventually made it to a little café with a few chairs and some post cards. Good times. We met up with another of Jenna’s friends, Lisa, and proceeded to the smallest bar I think I’ve ever been in that wasn’t also in an airport. The V Bar looks from the outside as a standard dark bar where people congregate to have goatees. Lots of candles and black curtains being held back from the windows by stainless steel chain. Mediocre. Until, that is, it was revealed that they had a bunch of board games. I was pleased with that, but then I remembered Sorry! being a lot more fun than it is. Maybe it was the fact that I was less than ecstatic about the apricot flavoured “Magic Hat #9”. Either way, we departed, found a diner with overpriced undercooked mozzarella sticks and went back to sleep.

End Day 2:

Saturday, March 25, 2006

My last full day in NYC, but unfortunately, Jenna was scheduled to work four hours that afternoon. Which meant that I’d have to find something to do. We had lunch at a small Afghani restaurant on 26th St. and 3rd Ave, which was really quite a pleasant experience except for the fact that I couldn’t feel my legs afterward because of the floor seating and got bits of a chicken that had about twelve times the number of bones of an average chicken. But then I sound like a stodgy 22 year old, don’t I? Finishing that, Jenna and I walked to her place-of-employment and I was finally free of the oppressive gaze of Jenna, what with her unceasing er, alone. And what does one do when one’s alone? Why, walk 33 blocks south through Manhattan. Of course.

Fairly standard from there. Only got somewhat lost occasionally, and happened past some sort of Falun Gong thing in Union Square. A woman with a pamphlet asked me to stop the Communist regime in China, which I’ll get on the next time I have lunch with China. For some reason, despite my enormous sway with mainland China, I’ve just never worked up the courage to say “You know what? Enough with the human rights violations”. But more importantly, I eventually did make it to my destination, Forbidden Planet, which I was excited about only secondarily because it gave me a chance to pick up some enjoyable zombie comics. Primarily, however, it marked my visit to a landmark in 3rd wave ska, as Robert Hingley was asked in the early 1980’s to travel to New York to manage the store (including firing the entire staff and hiring new work), and it was from Forbidden Planet NY that the Toasters were formed. So it’s got that going for it. Another 40 block hike, two crossword puzzles, some Jamba and a few hours later, and I met up with Jenna again. After pizza near her house and watching any hope that I’d win my office NCAA pool vanish with Memphis’ loss, we proceeded to Union Square to poke around in the Virgin Megastore and what not. Unfortunately, I was once again unsuccessful in convincing Jenna to purchase a copy of William Shatner’s The Transformed Man.

Here’s where the old thing comes in. From this point onward, I’m not sure why, perhaps because I was tired, but I really felt very old. The Caliente Cab Co. bar was part of it, as I really wasn’t all that into hearing “My Humps” blasted over the soundsystem (though it was entertaining to watch Jenna deal with the Sno-Cone-cum-margarita she ordered), and we returned home.

I checked the computer.

I realized I’m incredibly bad at entering numbers into my phone. And as such, my night was not over.

Armed now with the proper number, I was able to get in contact with a remarkably energetic member of the Rum and Monkey forums who I’d threatened if I somehow left Manhattan without meeting him, if only because, dammit, if I’m going to discuss the relative merits of Land of the Dead as compared with earlier Romero fare, I’m going to meet them, damn it. So Jenna and I went back down, met up with Mani, and hit up a diner that was reasonably priced and actually very good. I couldn’t help but feel old, was the problem. Perhaps because it was 2:00 am and I was convinced that, given enough of a running start, Mani could very well have run headlong through the wall. Not that that’s a bad thing; on the contrary, it reminded me of myself about five years ago. Hopefully, my current state of slowmoving is a passing phase, brought on by just having gone through a week of finals and, more probably, having just walked about 6 miles. Which only goes to argue more strongly toward me getting outside more. Maybe if there were some sort of treadmill that made Dave Littlefield make better decisions.

Overall, the result is that I’ve got to thank Mani here for being a goddamn fireball and making for a very interesting 2:00-4:15 am.

Still, after some film discussion, a visit to another café (Esperanto Café) and resolving the complications arising from the apparent contradictions in most quantum mechanical systems (which I wrote on a napkin that, unfortunately, was left at the café and subsequently stolen by [insert the name of whoever figures out everything]), Jenna and I said goodbye to Mani and returned back to the apartment.

We fell asleep.

Damn it.

My flight was at 8:00am, and the plan was to stay up until 6:00, get a cab to LaGuardia and that’ll be that. Unfortunately, we got up at 7:00, which led to me forgetting my belt and phone charger on the way to grabbing a cab, paying the cab to drive really goddamn fast to the airport and being remarkably nervous as to whether it was possible to get through to my plane in time. It was. Good times. I read more of that pretentious GEB book, fell asleep several times, and, lo, I’ve returned to Chicago.

Read most of the Walking Dead series. Slept for a long time.

Blogged.

End.

Majoring in Florida

So here's the thing. I'm not a big supporter of Jeb Bush, usually. I'm not so sure that's the case in this specific instance. Quick overview, Jeb wants to start having high schoolers declare a major.

Schoolers? Is that right?

Schooners.

"You know what? There is no Easter Bunny! That over there's just a guy in a suit!"

Ok. Back to the task at hand.

On the one hand, this could very easily turn into a lot of stress for a lot of kids, mostly in pressure from parents who want their kid to be a doctor, and so force the young'n to major in bio or, if they're particularly awesome, chemistry. And that's not good times.

On the other hand, I think that students should be allowed to self-design their curriculum as long as certain minimum criteria are still being met. I like the concept of having to have a minor, so long as that minor is in a field disparate from that of the major. I really do support the concept of a liberal arts education, and think that I benefited from having to go through all of that German/Econ/Psych junk at Allegheny. I disagree with Jebuchadnezzar that this'll stop, or significantly decrease dropouts, but I'll let him have that. If implemented properly, I don't see how it would be much different than the already existing vocational programs, except that it would allow kids that are really into chemistry study more chemistry, those that are really into english focus on that and those that are really into machining work on machining.


Then again, college students can be really stressed out, and many probably don't need that extra pressure. Those that are really driven to study whatever are going to do that regardless of whether there's an actual system designed for them (and they shall weep when I fail them on their lab reports, and such), and they might be successful at that (e.g. R. B.) or they might have an anyeurism, but that's independent of what's going on here, I think.

Final Verdict: Interesting experiment. You Floridians tell me how you like that.

Planner

I don't think I get it.

Actually, I'm pretty sure I don't get it. It, of course, being the reason that I'm just not really coming up with much to write about in this blog lately. I try. Really I do. I'll get in little fits of ambition and cruise Fox News and CNN, only to learn that I really don't care about the Ports deal and think that, while natural disasters appear to occur more or less round-the-clock, there's not much to say about them. Yes. They're bad times. But more than that, they don't make for very interesting blogging.

I will say that I am excited that I'm finally done with Winter Quarter (though my grades aren't up yet, Northwestern. As you're reading this, you big anthropomorphic degree-granting institution, I'd appreciate it if you could let me know how I ended up doing in Bioorganic. Thanks. Now, if you'll remember, "I'm done".) So I've only got one class left, got out of this one alive, and can finally get some actual progress on the synthesis of these probes.

It just seems that I'd have something, not always witty, but at least something last summer, when this blog really took off in earnest. Maybe McDonalds is thousands of times more exciting than Northwestern (It's not. If you're at McDonalds, I'd advise you to instead move to Chicago) or maybe the diminished social interaction that goes along with working these damned hours is to blame (again, not likely as I'm a hermit at home too). Perhaps I just have less time recently to poke around on the internet until I find something worth commenting on.

But enough of that for right now.

On to the interesting things.

In fads, culturebox examines the appeal of Whole Foods, which, if you're not familiar, is an "organic food store" that is prohibitively expensive for, well, me, and is capitalizing on the craze over organic foods. Some reasonable points are made (Any ecological benefit derived from using a more earth-friendly fertilizer is effectively negated if the chemically fertilized stuff is from Jersey and the earth-friendly stuff is from Chile due to transportation, that if these foods really are better for us, increasing their price so drastically is akin to elitism, and that really, the claim that a vast majority of organic farmers are family farmers is playing with semantics), though for the most interesting point to my mind you'll have to go somewhere else. Namely, that you can call something "organic" if everything you put on it, in it, around it, or through it is found somewhere in nature.

So that quite a few of these additives are synthetic (not that there's anything actually inherently wrong with synthesized products).

Smoking cigarettes is really a disgusting habit that kills you, and I understand the importance of second-hand smoke legislature. Hell, I'll even go as far as to say I'm down with Chicago's recent ban on smoking in public buildings. Chicago's specific ban includes a restriction on smoking outside in one place, resulting in the bizarre march of the smoker, up and down the alley so as not to be in violation of standing outside a building and smoking, but Calabasas, I'm afraid I just can't agree. Sure, relegate cigarette smoke to a strictly private affair in one's own domicile or one one's property (so long as that property isn't right up against some public property), but this bit's a bit rich:

Smoking in one's car is allowed, unless the windows are open and someone nearby might be affected.

Nicotine addiction is a disease. Smokers are not within their rights to threaten the health of nonsmokers by smoking at them. But the fact that they're now forcing smokers to confine said deadly toxin (for slow release into the atmosphere through the ventilation of the car) in such a small space is just further damaging the health of the person who's smoking. Moreover, they're doing it in a big polluting metal machine. One wonders if they're not banning the smoking in cars thing such that the nearby person can enjoy the fresh, wonderful smell of car exhaust.

V/WBC

So then there's that.

Finals are, for all intents and purposes, complete, though I will have to turn in a report on my work. So it goes. More importantly, two things:

Following my last final today, Bioorganic Chemistry and grading for a few hours for the undergraduate sophomore organic chemistry course's final, I had the pleasure of not having to pay for dinner for once. That is, Northwestern picked it up for me, as I'd been given the nod to take the prospective graduate students out for dinner with NU picking up the tab. Sometimes, I can dig it. Burgers at Nevin's is a good time. But that's not what inspired me to write this post. What did was what I did afterwards, which was, unfortunately, not picked up by Northwestern as it wasn't at all related to the students. I saw V for Vendetta, and enjoyed what I saw. Without regarding what it maintains the line of the comic books or not, I found it to be quite interesting, and an exciting action movie. Good for that.

What I'd like to take a second to respond to is the amount of bloggers and imdb.com message board patrons that are somehow twisting this into being a decisive attack on conservatives, others callling it an explicitly "anti-American" movie. Honestly, I have no idea what to make of that, mostly the second one. I'm not entirely surprised. Star Wars Ep. III was boycotted by some who viewed it as an explicitly anti-Bush film. Precisely the same sentiment appears to be popular now about V for Vendetta. I'll give them a bone here. At least V for Vendetta is actually somewhat political, and I believe it's mentioned somewhere that John Hurt's "Sutler" character was at one point a member of the Conservative Party of Britain (though two seconds later it makes it clear that he either left or was forced out, invented his own party which overtook both the Conservatives and Liberals in the UK, which is, if anything, a parallel to the NSDAP). Star Wars is Star Wars. But that doesn't justify the comparison. I know many really want this to be anti-American or anti-Conservative, as it then becomes another piece of the vast liberal plot to brainwash children out of making up their own minds, but it's just not. The big bad guys aren't conservatives. Or liberals. They're fascists. They're Big Brother. The Party. Singular and without distinction between conservatives or liberals or anything in between or outside of the relatively narrow conservative-liberal spectrum. It's Big Invasive Government. V's call for revolution against the militaristic, dictatorial and, here's the kicker, fictional government is nothing more than the demand that the citizens of a nation hold its Government accountable for what it's doing, not have to live in fear of being threatened or abducted by the government, and that maybe we shouldn't beat people with rods. The corrolary to that that I've seen in several places, that the movie is a movement for the Gay Agenda (now existing in a theater near you!) because it shows the beating and imprisonment of homosexuals by the government. Two points here. 1) Valerie's imprisonment is in the comic books, so it makes sense to include it here. 2) The point of the scenes with Valerie's letter isn't to convince people to flip their gay switch on, but to suggest that maybe we shouldn't beat people with rods and imprison them for digging on certain types of people.

The allegation that it's anti-American is just plain incomprehensible to me (unless one would like to make the claim that America is a fascist nation or that it should be and this negative depiction of fascism is clearly an attack on what America should be) or that V is a communist (mostly because the term communist has lost essentially all of its meaning because of its general application to people that one disagrees with. The interesting thing here is that I ran into a blog claiming this exact thing which attempted to use the posters as proof that V is a communist. Which is just ridiculous. They're propaganda type posters, but that's really more of a reference to the Big Brother type government. No. the fact that so much red is associated with the posters and imagery is not relevant either, as the V symbol and all the red and black is very clearly a reference to the symbol and colors of the general concept of anarchism. Which isn't communism.)

Furthermore, the "War" that the movie charges America with starting... I'm not counting that as an "anti-American" bit in the film or the book, nor am I willing to give credence to the conclusion that it is the current "War on Terror", more likely deferring to the fact that it more or less makes America a non-factor (which is important to the focus on why the UK is alone in all of this) and adds to the dystopia by tying up the US in civil war.
So:

Good movie.
Action. Some knife throwing. Natalie Portman's in it.
It's not anti-Conservative or anti-American. It's pointing out that totalitarian fascism probably isn't awesome. Essentially, 1984.
V's not a communist. He doesn't propose any other system of government, just that it'd be nice to be able to walk around without a curfew, and that citizens have a duty to hold their governments responsible for their actions.
I don't believe that anarchy is a viable system of government. Don't do it.
Proposing that beating homosexuals probably isn't cool doesn't make this a Gay Agenda (TM) piece.

So that's that.

Now. The important thing:

How the hell is the US out of the World Baseball Classic?! We're not supposed to lose. We did, essentially, everything we could to rig the damn thing, putting ourselves in an opening pool with Mexico, Canada and South Africa and structuring the tournament such that we wouldn't even have to think about facing any of the really threatening Latin American teams until they'd killed each other off. I just... what the hell.


That said, this thing is amazing. I'll be watching it until the end, and loving it.

Finals!

It seems it would be a decent time to post about not being able to post. Unfortunately, finals are upon us at Northwestern which tends to lessen the time I've got available to write here, so, while I'll try to keep this updated, it might tend to fall behind until at least next Friday.

Some points before I get back to bioorganic:

I'm firmly convinced that a picture of this gentleman on one's desktop is good luck when one's giving a presentation. Moreso when the professor for the class gets a kick out of it and gives one a decent grade on the "15-percent-of-your-grade" presentation.

And who says soccer games get to start all the international incidents?. I've actually found the World Baseball Classic strangely compelling, if only for the Canadian upset so far. I would not at all be averse to this continuing, especially if it's on a four year cycle.

Sony. For You.

I've finally submitted to the inevitable, though to my credit I held out for nine years after its inception in 1997. Mostly because for the great majority of that I've been much too strapped for cash to actually afford to submit to this particular inevitablity.

That's right. I've finally bought an mp3 player. Or rather, ATRAC player.

The player specifically is this kidney shaped thing. I caved for the 1GB model,and as yet have not had any trouble with actually using the thing (it's relatively intuitive). It's a nifty little flash-based player, and I've yet to actually use the thing enough to test the claim of 50 hours of battery life. I'd rather I could change the playlists without plugging the thing into the computer and cracking open SonicStage, but I'm willing to live with that. Overall, something that should make it possible for me to forget I'm surrounded by hundreds of carcinogens at most times. More when I'm at work rather than eating fast food.

ZING.

Bonds and Crossdressing

I usually don't login to post about one topic, and I can't actually say why that is. But this, this I can't pass up.

If any of you are regular readers of this blog or know me ("but then I repeat myself"), you'll know I'm from Pittsburgh. And being from Pittsburgh, I've been, since about 1993, been carefully conditioned to disapprove of everything Barry Bonds stands for. He's pompous, he's got that ridiculous martyr complex thing that doesn't make any sense, and he won't stop whining about how people hate him for being an all around jackass. He's become emblematic of a very real scandal in baseball, and I can't get behind his fan's assumption that it doesn't matter whether or not he's on 'roids, because "power's not the only thing that hits home runs". That's true, but if all we're talking about is accuracy and ability to judge a pitch, Jason Bay might have broken the "zero" barrier in last years HR Derby.

But right now, in this moment, that's ok. Why? Because for the first time in quite some time, Barry Bonds showed he had a sense of humor at Giants camp yesterday. I still don't like the guy or what his playing means and has meant for baseball. But good lord, Barry Bonds-as-Paula Abdul is just comedy gold. I've no doubt that this reaction is exactly what they were looking for from the public.

But Barry Bonds in a dress isn't' something you see every day. If you're lucky.

So yes. That said, good for Bonds for showing a bit of humor once in a decade, and I think we'll all be happy to just go on with our lives, trying desperately to block that image out of our minds forever.

Slackers.

Just back from a concert. I'd like to attempt to convey what I thought for most of the night. Going to a concert alone is something I've done only one other time (Mustard Plug at the American Music Cafe was the first time I've done that), and I've noticed that, coupled with not having a roommate, travelling to, attending and leaving a concert can be a nearly meditative experience. Except that there's beer falling on you and people screaming for an encore. But other than that, it's damned meditative.

So, in chronological order:

• I didn't realize that I still have at least some conceptual problem with being on a train that's raised above street level. But I can't deny that I had kind of a shocked reaction to a dog running under the tracks. It might just be that I'm not cool with dogs and transportation, as there's only been, what, two(?) years since I ran out on New Year's Eve dressed like a buffoon, trying to catch that stupid dog only to have him run into the path of a truck whose driver thought the best thing, rather than slowing down, would be to attempt to "straddle" him. I still have no idea how he (the dog) got out of that alive.


• On the subject of canines, the Bow Wow Lounge, which is just off the tracks of the Red Line is just freaking huge. For what's billed as a grooming salon, I can't imagine what's going on inside that requires the space that the buliding takes up.


• The Olympic Closing Ceremonies were held today, meaning I can stop caring about Short Track Speedskating until February 2010 when they'll be doing that in Vancouver. Before that, though, are the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, and I think I might try out. If only because I can't fathom how I covered the 1.473 miles from the Belmont stop to the Beat Kitchen at 2100 W. Belmont being passed only once by a bus, at about 2000 W. Belmont (that is, about a block from where I was going). Clearly, I must be some kind of Superman, and will be trying out for all of the track events in Beijing.


• The previously mentioned Kitchen of Beats (as opposed to the previously Soviet Kitchen of Beets) really doesn't want me to see any ska bands. Three weeks ago, they wouldn't sell me a ticket online or over the phone, and told me to just show up at the door. I was promptly turned away from the sold-out Toasters concert. This time, I fixed the issue I was having with the online purchasing system, bought the will-call tickets and showed up at about 6:15 for the 6:00 show, knowing that I had a spot reserved (they couldn't turn me away, as they account for all of the will call customers in their fire-code estimations) and content with the fact that I'd missed a bit of a band I'd never heard of (more about them later) who were opening for the band.
  
  Me: Hi. I've got will call. Murphy.
  Guy at Door: We're opening doors at 7 now.
  Me: Curses! Foiled again.
  
  It didn't actually prevent me from seeing the show and in my wanderings (as I didn't really feel like being in a crowded noisy bar for 45 minutes), I found a truly astonishing number of vodkas being sold in bottles shaped like rifles and stood outside. Worse things have happened. Also, I feel less like a schmuck this time, as I purchased online, and people were turned away. Good for me.


• Flashlight Brown. Fairly standard stuff. Nothing too adventurous, aside from the devotion to finishing precisely the set they had previously decided to finish, screwing up the intro to the fourth song in their set five times before the guitar player finally changed the guitar that was acting up.


• The Slackers were quite impressive, playing a very long set, revisiting some stuff from as early as I can recall listening to their music, and just an overall good act. Not much commentary here, other than it was hot, and I happened to be close to a wall, which meant that every time I was actually getting into a song, twenty people wanted to get out of the front and decided to proceed by shoving me to the side. :(


• It's funny how shows tend to make me think about an incredibly diverse array of topics, most having nothing to do with the show at hand. Mostly how busy I am and how I really shouldn't be doing something as childish as attending a concert when there's purification of compounds to be completed. This time, I was distracted at several points by the idea that I'll never see the guy that introduced me to the Slackers (and the rest of ska) again. But that's enough of that morose stuff


• I was passed much earlier by the bus on the way back (twice, actually), but walked the 1.whatever miles back. Good for me.

Overall, a good experience as my first show in Chicago. I'll do it again. Hopefully with something closer to the Red Line than the damned Beat Kitchen.

Hello to you. Monday Roundup.

And once again, I return after however long I've been gone to fill your lives with joy for at least an instant. That might be the instant you close the browser, but it's an instant nonetheless, and it deserves recognition.

Barry Bonds doesn't know if he's going to quit but maybe will, and I can't find it in me to care. Maybe it's the whole Pittsburgh ordeal, but I, for one, grew tired of Barry Bonds pretending to be a martyr for the sport long ago, and his claim that his reason for sticking it out for the 2006 season is a completely unselfish desire to save baseball as a sport seems another attempt to pretend that he's a spotless angel who's done no wrong and is constantly dogged by big mean men in suits with cameras and microphones. I've got to agree with Gene Wojciechowski once again in that if Bonds really does hate playing so much he should get out now.

While I'm sure David Irving knows the law and broke it anyway and is at least now admitting that his major arguments for Holocaust denial are junk, I don't support throwing the guy in jail for having some boneheaded ideas, or writing 30 books about said ideas so that other boneheads could hop on the bandwagon. I don't agree with Irving at all (or didn't, as he's now saying that he was mistaken in denying the Holocaust), but as one who likes being able to say what I wish, I can't approve of locking the man up for what he says, even if what he says is complete rubbish. I imagine this decision will result in a response from electrical engineering professor/Holocaust denier/hack/"No one loves me because I deny the Holocaust boo-hoo" fellow Arthur Butz, but I suppose we'll just have to wait for that.

The Sun Times is filling its pages with the incredibly relevant story that yes, we now think of gas prices around $2.30 as being low, where as last summer, they were high. Whatever. Shock! Please tune in next year for the same story, when we've decided that $75/gallon is a downright bargain.

*Is glad sometimes that he has to wait for the damn train all the time*

Cheney, the Heart, Hamas and Paris Hilton

Evidently, Cheney appeared with Brit Hume today about the whole shooting incident, and was, understandably, "soft-spoken and somber", but does note that "You can talk about all of the other conditions that exist at the time but that's the bottom line and-- it was not Harry's fault. You can't blame anybody else," which is should calm down the crew at the Vaughn Building (end of article). It sort of breaks with Katherine Armstrong's assertion that Whittington was at fault (a view supported by Scott McClellan, and his retelling of the story that Whittington was unresponsive kind of breaks with Armstrong's "it knocked him silly, but he was fine" comment.

But whatever.

He didn't say much about why he waited to comment, merely noting that he believed that, as an expert in the field and owner of the ranch, leaving it up to Katharine Armstrong was best. I don't disagree with having her break the story, in an effort to have everything as well worded as possible by someone who knows what they're talking about, but it doesn't answer her choice to wait until the next day.

Meh. Again, whatever. Guy's apparently sitting up, eating, and plans to do some legal work. Go-go indestructible lawyer, I guess.

In other news, Daley has decided that the book for this spring's "One Book, One Chicago" campaign will involve a delightful tromp through Soviet gulags (last fall's pick was "Pride and Prejudice".)

Explainer goes into how the heart symbol (which, as we all know, looks nothing like a heart) is derived from an early form of birth control, the seedpod of the plant sliphium.

Hamas would like to let everyone know that they're still very frightening sons of bitches.

And, while PETA is usually laughably over the top (as when they tried to force the Packers to change their name to the Green Bay Pickers or Green Bay Six-Packers or violent, I'd say it's about damn time someone hit Paris Hilton with flour.

Cheney, the guy he shot, and figure skating

I think this is the first time I've ever had a post requested by phone. And definitely the first time I've written one while a pair of figure skaters dance around to an airy rendition of "Mack the Knife" that would make more sense were the song not Mack the Knife.

Anyway. More with the weapons.

As you've all undoubtedly heard by now, the vice president kinda sorta shot a guy. I've heard a lot of terms that appear to be slight euphemisms for shooting a guy in the face and chest, including "peppered," "sprayed" and whatever else you can come up with to lighten the fact that the VP fired a shot gun at a man.

Did he mean to? Absolutely not. No one's contending that. Not being a hunter myself, my understanding is that this is relatively common (though certainly not something one expects when they sign up for quail hunting), but it's not like the VP did something no one's done before. Whittington stayed back (a no no in quail hunting according to Explainer, which clarifies the standard practice of walking three abreast while you're shooting things), and when Cheney saw some quail fly overhead, he turned to where they were flying (which happened to be where Whittington was looking for a quail that had been shot) and pulled the trigger, hitting Whittington. The owner of the land claims it's more or less all Whittington's fault, which isn't the case here. It was an accident, and there's no shame in admitting that yes, Cheney might not have had the best hunting sense about him when he pulled the trigger. The guy lived, and is expected to be fine (and gets to honestly claim to have been shot by a sitting vice president, which has got to be some kind of honor and proof of how tough as nails you can be as a 78 year old lawyer). But placing all of the blame on the guy who was shot isn't right either. Neither he nor Cheney was being Captain McSafety here. Why pretend Cheney had no fault in the matter? It's clearly not as though Cheney runs around middle America shooting everything in sight, or even as though he's not a perfectly safe hunter. But why not say "Hey, I made a mistake. He's ok. We're done here."

It'd be a non-issue if Cheney's people (not the White House, as Scott McClellan is quick to point out) didn't wait as long as they did to tell anyone about it. It took a full day for the Corpus Christi Caller-Times to get on it, and they were before the rest of the nation? Is this the same country where we're constantly obsessing over which "I'm too young to be a has been, aren't I?" celebrity will be leading the Mardi Gras parade in a partially revived New Orleans and still, after how long, give a damn what Jennifer Aniston thinks about the end of her relationship with Brad Pitt (the divorce was finalized in October of last year)? Had Cheney come out an hour or two after the incident (after taking the understandable time to make sure his friend was ok after such a terrible accident) and simply said "There's been a hunting accident. Everyone's ok, and we'll keep you posted with how this guy is doing. I'm going to go somewhere now," that'd have been the end of it.

I just don't see why they felt the need not to tell anyone, I guess. The guy's ok, Cheney should pay whatever penalty the state of Texas lodges against this kind of stuff (evidently he's being warned for failing to buy a $7 stamp, which is more or less irrelevant), and use this as a message to hunters to be really remarkably safe when there are other people about.

So. Long story short:

Cheney shot a man in Texas. The man's ok. That's good. Why all the blaming the man (who definitely deserves his share) and no blaming the guy with the gun? Also, why the coverup for such non-news that'll get buried beneath what sippy cup Angelina Jolie buys in preparation for her kid anyway? Say you made a mistake, however common it might be, and tell hunters to not shoot each other.

And no, Michelle Malkin, I don't believe "the biography of a man who has served this country so well and so honorably for so many years will be overshadowed by a single, ill-fated hunting mishap." That's rather remarkably speculative, no? It'll pass. Now is not the time to start speculating about overshadowing that hasn't happened yet.

UPDATE: Whittington had a minor heart attack after some bird shot entered his heart. The Tribune is speculating as to why they might have waited while hunters criticize Cheney for shooting before he knew what was beyond his target.

EDIT: As I said, figure skating's on. You can completely crash into the wall and almost break your leg and still get a silver medal? What kind of crap sport is this? Good for Michelle Kwan for getting the hell out of this wacky, wacky world of "It doesn't matter if you completely screw up everything. You get a medal."

Olympics, I

And here I am, trying to get through the day despite several setbacks, and just an overall bad day. This was not helped by the fact that clocks and schedules are a more or less an abstract concept to the CTA, something to be grinned at slyly before abandoning them all together.

But avoiding subjects of school for a moment, I'm amazed at how effective NBC's presentation of the Olympics is in getting me to pay attention to sports that are far, far outside my interest zone. For example, last night I found myself enthralled by short-track speed skating (watching mostly because I'd heard that something had gone wrong with Apolo Anton Ohno's run, whoever that was). Before yesterday, I'd not realized there was a short track speed skating event, or how it might be different than regular speed skating, or what the point of doing 13.5 laps around a track was when the first eight appear to be somewhat of a throwaway, pace-keeping event. And then, five minutes in, I'm already cursing the commercial breaks for separating me from the EVENT. Six minutes after that, speed skating's been bumped for snowboarding (Curses!) and a few minutes thereafter, I'm an avid snowboarding fan.

Basically, what NBC's done (which I'm quite sure they've done for the other Olympic games) is to compact a sport I'm unfamiliar with into short enough blocks to satisfy my attention span without actually having to know anything about the sport. It speaks to the level of impatience and indifference that likely persists throughout society today, but I'll leave the commentary about the relation of fast-food to fast skating out for now.

Two more things, also about the first few days of the Olympics:

1) I'm not really sure what my position is on snowboarding. As a member of the generation that was subjected to an endless supply of commercials for oddly yellow soft drinks and the prefix "X-", I have what I believe to be an innate attraction to things that combine the ancestry of the Olympic games as a cultural phenomenon with "Ten in 2010" by Bad Religion. Still, I can't really see how this is much different than figure skating, which I'm not particularly interested in, if only because my limited schedule allows for very few events and watching someone in a leotard flipping around on the ice doesn't make the cut. Both are performance based events that are judged by six people who, I presume, have some sort of expertise, and I can't really separate them, other than to say that one involves big bulky snowsuits, while the other involves commentary by Scott Hamilton.

2) Grandma Luge, the sole participant from U.S. Virgin Islands, broke her wrist and won't compete. She wasn't going to medal anyway, but I'm all for 52-year olds going down a slide at 80 miles per hour. That, also, rocks.

Oh for the love of all that's sacred.

Working hard at climbing the corporate ladder, but no new clients seem to need your particular services as an advertising whiz? Only $15 dollars a month nets you a ton of new accounts. They might be orcs though. Are there orcs in World of Warcraft?

EDIT: Wikipedia says yes. Oh for the days that being out of the loop meant you didn't know the last name of that chick those Ninja Turtle guys were hanging out with.

It was O'Neil. And she wore some yellow stuff. That's all I've got.

Hooray for nonsensical posting!

EDIT 2-Electric Boogaloo: In light of Wojciechowski's "Stop the whining" article, I thought it'd be a good idea to post a happy little comic detailing what I believe it was like for most of the fellows on rumandmonkey.com from the general Washington area. The two are connected only by the fact that they both reference the whining, and the fact that I hadn't posted Wojciechowski's yet. Though I'd like to point out that the entry that goes along with this comic written by Jerry Holkins does, at least, acknowledge that Seattle made mistakes last sunday.

Once again, Super Bowl Champs \m/

RCN and Headaches

You know what I love? Sitting on a phone for forty minutes. I did that twice today, the first time to cancel my cable service after they tripled the cost of my cable and internet this month and the second time to find out where I should take my cable box. It turns out the person who canceled my cable didn't actually do so in a manner that, you know, did anything, but rather took the time to fingerpaint a picture of a giraffe. A poor picture of a giraffe. With big thick legs. And it's grey and has no neck and a trunk. So an elephant. Anyway, I'll have to call back again tomorrow to see if these schmucks can get the message that I don't want their crappy cable service and, while I'll pay for what I used this month, I'm not paying $130 for cable and internet.

You know what, I might even be willing to pay that this month if I never had to deal with these incompetent pricks anymore.

I swear I won't make fun of his name.

If you're not attending Northwestern right now, or working for them, or aren't a reader of the Tehran Times, stories put out by the Mehr news agency or the Chicago Tribune, you're probably not even aware of the controversy surrounding one of the faculty.

I speak, of course, of Electrical Engineering Associate Professor Arthur Butz, whose interests are digital signal processing, long walks along the beaches of Evanston, and Holocaust denial. Of course, his recent comments in support of Iranian President Ahmadinejad aren't the first time he's expressed these views. That would be in what's considered by some to be the seminal work of Holocaust denial, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry. Incidentally, that was published in 1976, two years after he received tenure, proving once again that tenure more or less means you get to do whatever the hell you want, from publishing books in no way related to your research or field of expertise on why you think the Holocaust didn't happen (though, regarding his comments in the Mehr news agency's story, it should be clarified that he doesn't deny that the Holocaust happened, but rather denies that the extermination of millions of Jews during the second World War didn't happen. I'm not quite sure what the difference is, but thought I'd give the guy a chance to explain himself here) to running around naked with a meat cleaver. Flipping through it (or rather, clicking, as it's available as a PDF,) he doesn't say that his book in any way reflects the opinions of Northwestern and at times rails against the University, merrily commenting that he should, perhaps, "look for Northwestern's gas chambers for white males," at the end of the third supplement to the book, published in 1992.

In response to his recent comments in the Tehran Times and Iran's semi-official (?) Mehr News Agency, the president of Northwestern has issued a somewhat scathing statement regarding Butz. I agree with Bienen that Butz comments are an embarrasement to Northwestern, the implicit allegation that Holocaust Revisionism is a poorly conducted "science", making up claims and then searching for evidence to prove them rather than analyzing what the evidence suggests, often relying on the absence of evidence to equate to evidence of absence, and outright rejecting any eye witness reports (including that of Rudolph Hoess) that disagree with their beliefs. However, in a nation where the freedom of speech (and, more fundamentally, the freedom to think what one will), it's impossible to take him to task for what he's saying. It's possible to prove him wrong, and expose the chicanery that goes along with what he's saying, but as an individual, if Arthur Butz would like to believe the Holocaust didn't happen, then fine. Let him. If he's made it clear that he's not expressing the views of Northwestern, and Northwestern's come out to say that they'll not punish him as long as he maintains the whole "this is outside my role as a Northwestern Faculty member" that's fine. He's not teaching it in the classrooms, he's not claiming the beliefs are anything but his own, that's fine. Northwestern probably loses a few students who, hearing of it, decide that they're not going to attend a school where one of the faculty is a "revisionist", but whatever. That's their choice.

There's just one issue that came to light concerning Northwestern's recent decision to retire Pubweb, a service through which Northwestern hosts personal web pages. He can say that his views do not represent NU all he wants. The higher-ups at Northwestern can insist the same thing. But as long as the URL he's using to propagate his beliefs contains the word "Northwestern", it's not true. Yes, it will stop being an issue on December 31, 2006, but that's incidental and, since it's been up and until then, Butz' personal page is lent credence that having "northwestern.edu" in your URL brings with it. Removing the page would, essentially, be editing for thought, yes. But it's not consistent with Northwestern's claim that they can do "nothing to stop it." As a non-governmental organization and private school, it is not required to use the First Amendment as a rule to decide who gets to publish on a northwestern.edu address. If it decides that a certain web page is costing the school in terms of money, attendance, whatever, it has the ability to disallow the web page to continue. And it's not a restriction of free speech, as it's the one paying for the server. That'd be like saying that if a speaker (and I'm not saying that there's a connection between this example and Butz. It's hypothetical, but interpret it how you will) from the Klan wants to give a speech in one of NU's auditoriums and demands that NU fund his speech directly in providing snacks with Northwestern napkins, private security and an opening performance by scary little white nationalist kiddies Prussian Blue (which, incidentally, is a reference to the "science" employed by deniers of the Holocaust), Northwestern couldn't refuse as it would be a violation of freedom of speech.

I doubt we'd be hearing about how they couldn't do anything if a pubweb page detailing why a prospective student shouldn't go to Northwestern was put up. They'd take it down in an instant, as it'd hurt the University financially while being funded by the university. If Professor Raindrop Q. McHippie, professor of abstract Mathematics had a page devoted to arguing that ecoterrorism really isn't that bad and maybe it's ok, they'd have the right to do the same thing, of course. But to sit there and say they are completely separate from him is just false.

But then whatever.

Here we go, Steelers. Here we go. Pittsburgh won the freaking Super Bowl

A few quick notes, because I really do need to get something done.

1) On the Officiating: Yes. It was pretty strange. If I were a Seahawks fan, I'd probably be pretty angry, and might even blame the officials for my team's loss, rather than recognizing that the clock management by my team (the Seahawks in fantasy land) was just atrocious, that the second half was dominated by the Steelers, not only in stopping any Seahawk movement, but just overall dominating. Still, the Hasselbeck tackle and the phantom holding... I just don't get. But then, I don't get the Hasselbeck fumble/reversal.

2) More officiating. The Roethlisberger TD. It seemed to me that the ball broke the plane of the end zone, and that, lacking evidence otherwise, the officials correctly maintained the TD call on the field. So I don't see how that's controversial. And yet, I log on to a messageboard and that's all I'm hearing about. Oh, and the pushoff that resulted in turning a Seahawk TD into a Seahawk FG. He extended his arm. That's a penalty. Just because it went against the Seahawks doesn't mean it was a bad call.

3) I can't believe I'm still hearing about how no one talked about the Seahawks.

4) The Antwaan Randle El touchdown pass to Hines Ward was a thing of beauty.

5) I think it's hilarious that one edit on the Pittsburgh Steelers wikipedia page implies that the Steelers "cheated" their way to a Super Bowl victory by having fans that showed up and were enthusiastic. I'll put off for now the fact that that editor has got some spelling issues.

6) Say what you want about the officiating, but you just can't when a game when thirty seconds (!) pass without anything happening at the end of the first and your "hurry up" offense involves tiny passes for short yardage down the middle. You just can't.

7) Enough about the Seahawks or their Fans. The Steelers are freaking Super Bowl Champions.

Metametametametameta-analysis

So, if you're going to answer phones about buying tickets to a concert, and then tell the person on the other end of the phone that it's probably just better to stop on by because you never sell out, it'd be nice if you were right. I was turned away from a Toasters concert recently, and, while I don't really blame the person who answers the phones or the bar in question (what with fire codes and all), I was still kind of put off by the whole deal, after the day went less than ideally anyway. But whatever. I'm over it, at least tried to go to the show, and was able to console myself by wasting my money on this crap, which rules in an interesting way

But now to the reason I'm posting.

I read ESPN probably more often when teams like, say, the Steelers are a few days away from playing in their second Superbowl since I was born (or, if you're one of those schmucks that doesn't define everything by the date of my birth, their sixth in the Super Bowl era, which is really the era in which you're going to want to play your Super Bowls.) But I've been noticing something. Noticed it on a few messageboards.

The tendency to either laud a team because they're underdogs and it makes you a certain kind of clove-smoking rebel against the "mainstream" who's "hyping up another East Coast team" or write volumes about how little they care about this particular Super Bowl.

Some clarifications.

1) It's hard to take people seriously when they're going on about the Seahawks being underdogs when, two months ago, they were lauded as the only NFC team that could beat the then-invincible Colts. Now, the Seahawks having failed to stumble (the chic prediction when they were more "1st seed in the NFC" than "poor ignored underdog going up against those big bad Steelers"), they've become the awkward target of an organization continually accusing itself of being biased.

2) Fine. You don't care about the Super Bowl because neither the Colts, who were supposed to win it all, then the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup without Peyton Manning (as he was off inventing faster-than-light travel and winning the Grammy for Best Album of the Year for his grunge rock take on The Transformed Man) or the Patriots (who would later star in their own Saturday Morning Cartoon chronicling their efforts to save the world from a comet controlled by Cobra Commander) are playing the Seahawks. After the Steelers loss in the AFC Championship last year, I didn't care about the Super Bowl last year. But that I had diminished interest last year didn't mean that I'd go around predicting the worst viewership ever, or that the Super Bowl somehow didn't actually count. The funny thing is that one of the posts on the subject was written by a White Sox fan, whose organization went through the same criticism last year (mostly from bitter Red Sox, Yankees, Angels, Cubs and Diamondbacks fans. Not that the Diamondbacks have anything to do with the situation.)

3) The fact that Vegas has the Steelers as 4 point favorites has completely negated the fact that they're the first sixth seed to make it to the Superbowl since there's been sixth seeds and that the first week of the playoffs was the only week they didn't play the "odds-on favorites to win the Super Bowl". Evidently.

4) Kind of unrelated; The media is hilarious. Story of the moment: the Sports Guy starts criticizing the media for criticizing itself. It's very interesting, this whole meta-criticism thing.

No, the Penny Arcade comic doesn't have anything to do with anything.

Note: Mary Kutchko, of Kutchko's Country Garden Center (advertisement!) is incredibly awesome. Hooray for Kutchko. If any of you loyal readers are in the Pittsburgh area any time soon, and it's like... time for gardening to start happening, you'd do well to go there. Or I'll end you.

:D

Sometimes, you have to move a chair.

Ahoy:

Quickly, so that I can finish doing what I'm doing. Which is grading.

Or grating.

Sports: It has now become the height of wit among sportswriters to point out that the media has been focusing heavily on the Jerome Bettis story, which strikes me as hilarious, as the people that are being hilarious about repeatedly pointing out that the media sure is talking about Jerome Bettis' hometown a lot are (shock! awe!) members of the media. I'm predicting that by actual gametime, we'll be hearing mockeries of parodies of statements poking fun at the amount of attention that poking fun at the media for covering Bettis' hometown is getting.

That said, I'm remarkably nervous for Sunday, and appear to occasionally resign myself to the worst outcome for the game. While I'm anticipating it, I'll be happy when it's over so that I can stop worrying about it.

News: The governor of West Virginia is proposing what's being called in NYT a moratorium on mining.. Yes, safety needs to be reviewed in the wake of the death of 14 over the past month in these coal mines, and that's of paramount importance. Stopgap solutions aren't. Miners cannot be sent down into mines without being sure of their safety. And the leader of the WV Coal Association has joined in the call for a "moratorium", noting that safety increases productivity. I'm somewhat concerned for the miners that will now have to get by until they can get back to work (and as the article mentions nothing about continuing to pay them, they may be out of luck... though I'll find confirmation on that). Perhaps fining mine owners more than $73 per infraction (in one case) would lead to efforts to maintain a safer atmosphere. While I understand that these kind of regulations are never going to be entirely successful in enforcing behavior, it'd be a start.

Leave the damn groundhog alone. I support the annual event spontaneously becoming a Steelers rally, but I can't imagine a situation which would be analogous to being pulled from a hole by a man in a ridiculous hat while thousands who have surrounded my hole ask me whether or not lighting conditions are conducive to me recognizing that, yes, I have a shadow.

Chicago's got five of the nation's twenty largest bottlenecks, which makes me chuckle, boosted by never having to drive anywhere with just a hint of disappointment at being at the mercy of the guy that's driving the Red Line that decides, ten minutes late already, that he should talk to his friend on the platform for a few minutes.

I'm done now. I believe I may have to move a chair in the very near future. Go about your business.

Edit: So, in the way of an Update, some guy from Borizon called me, told me the people above me have a washer and they didn't actually think that routing the outlet to the washer through the drain of the sink might cause a problem. They've "sent a guy out to check on it", but I'm pretty sure we're not at the end here.

Borizon Sucks

I really, really wanted to blog about some things over the past few days. Some current events, I've been wanting to do a 6 month review of what's happened since one of my friends died, but all of that gets shuffled to the back when I'm trying to figure out how acetyl CoA synthase works. But this issue, this can't wait.

I'm renting from a certain realty group here in Chicago. I won't give my address, because I know that some of you are crazed lunatics that would seek the opportunity to find where I live so that you could sneak in late at night, cut a lock of my hair, and scamper out to add it to your impressive and growing shrine, including the faux-baseball cards of me that were taken when I played Little League (both the Tigers AND the Mets). I'm hesitant to mention the realty group, but let's say it's a term for the apparent intersection of the earth and sky and rhymes with "Borizon". I'd be tempted to link you to their homepage, but it doesn't actually exist anymore.

But, anyway, I'm doing that whole sleep thing I love so much. I wake up (a bit later than I intended) to the sound of dripping coming from my kitchen. Lots of it. Drip drip drip. Rapid succession. Then pouring. I'm confused. I get up and go to the kitchen to find that everything's now flooded. Sadness.

As a bit of background, I should note that this has happened before. Some water bubbles up through the sink, and I call Borizon to see if they can do anything. Like make it so I'm not living in a potential swamp. They've never actually called me back, nor has their maintenance man (who, in full disclosure, was somewhat helpful when my apartment was burglarized) ever taken the time out of his schedule to help me move toward my goal of a swamp-free apartment. That didn't change today. Despite repeated calls to the "emergency" maintenance line (I use quotes because it only counts as an emergency line if it does something in an emergency) and an assurance by the maintenance guy that he'd "be there later" (which, I suppose, I can't rule out yet, as time hasn't stopped), nothing. I've left several angry messages on the answering machines of the staff of Borizon, trying to figure out what kind of Mickey Mouse operation they're running where no one's calls are ever returned, neither email nor voicemail seems to have an effect, the homepage has ceased to exist and the maintenance personnel are more theory than anything. I'm going to try to go down there tomorrow morning, but I can't promise too much, as I've got a class and (ye gods!) actually have somewhat of a job to do without spending every waking moment trying to get these schmucks to answer a call.

I'm off to study some chemistry and fume some more.

Felony Criminal Damage

I'm conflicted on whether or not to post this, but as major media outlets have mentioned it, I feel like I'm on safe ground here.

They've arrested the young man that scribbled Anti-Semitic language and swastikas... and bunnies... on the walls of a Northwestern dormitory after he confessed to the crime Thursday. He's posted bond and is back in Michigan with his family, and has been charged with institutional vandalism and felony criminal damage to property (both of which, from my perspective, are about as harsh as you can get on someone for drawing on the wall with sharpie, though what he drew certainly (and should have) factored into the charges) for which he faces a maximum of five years in prison. Northwestern has not stated whether or not he will be permitted to continue attending Northwestern University or what punishments the school itself might assess.

The weird thing about all of this is that I know the kid. I was his TA last quarter (and likely won't be ever again), and honestly can say that from my limited contact during lab, I'd not have guessed it was Neil. Picking up the paper today, my first thought was "but his labs were always so good", and his friends claim that this is totally out of character, which I believe. It can't go unpunished, but I honestly hope that Neil sorts all of this out and gets the help he needs to get back on a productive path.

Pittsburgh's going to the Superbowl

I keep trying to remind myself to post about specific things, but then other, more urgent subjects come up that I have to get out before they become old(er) news (than they already are).

So right to it then.

Say it's the year we'll get that one for the thumb.

And here we have a conundrum. I have been, without fail in all three previous rounds of the playoffs, the exact same at predicting who would win as your average quarter that isn't somehow weighted to give any particular result more often. 50% success rate all the way. So how does this work out? With only the big game remaining, how to I continue a 50% success rate in picking the victor? I've either got to be completely right or completely wrong.

While I was impressed at Seattle's performance against the Panthers, I get the sense that the Bears really should have beaten the Panthers in the first place and that the overmatch was more than most were noting. They covered Steve Smith (which the Bears didn't do at all) and got on Delhomme early and the Seahawks fans were overpowering. But the Superbowl isn't at Qwest Field, so they lose at least some of the "12th man" support. And the Steelers aren't the Panthers.

The Steelers, on the other hand, shut down a Broncos offense that had just a week before handily taken care of the Pats and made the defense look like that of Deer Lakes. Which is to say, ridiculous. Two fumbles and two interceptions (that came out of Jake Plummer playing the AFC championship like I play Tecmo Super Bowl), and Pittsburgh's going to the Super Bowl once again. And exactly ten years after their last visit (in Super Bowl XXX, which they promptly lost to the Cowboys), which means that while I have seen the Steelers in a Super Bowl in my lifetime, the last time it happened was in the winter of my seventh-grade year.

So it's been a while.

Still, I think the Steelers can pull this one out with the way the coaching staff's been behaving lately and how things have been falling. They're playing like they're meant to win this thing. And it seems (though, because no one in the media is mentioning this, I can't confirm) that Jerome Bettis might actually be from Detroit.

Plus, Joey Tolomei's from Washington. And you can't win Superbowls when you're the embodiment of sorrow. Fact.

Steelers over Seattle.

Oh, actually, more importantly, the National Anthem will be sung by Aretha Franklin and Aaron Neville, accompanied by Dr. John, New Orleans jazzman. Awesome.

And that bit about not being able to confirm that Bettis is a Detroit native was a little attempt at a joke, lest I have everyone in Pittsburgh come to my blog (Traffic!) to berate me.

Wells v. Rodgers: The Quickening

Oh, right.

The Pirates signed Kip Wells to a 1 year, $4.15 million contract. Whatever. I'd like him to do better than 8-18 5.09 ERA, but if we can either work out something where he's cursing other teams or we can do the whole "Kip Wells Complete Game" every time I see him pitch, we'll be ok. Unfortunately, that would be like... 3 times per season max at Wrigley, but if it has the side effect of making Cubs fans sad, I'm all for it.

AND: I'm not a fan of the Yankees by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I might have to get this, if only to track down Glen Rodgers while I'm wearing it.

-The launch of the Pluto mission "New Horizons" was scrubbed today after high winds. They'll try again today. It'll take nine years to reach Pluto, so I'm going to file this under "relative non-news".

Which is really most of what this blog is anymore.

Hot, Hot Cowher on Officiating action.

I'm remarkably tired, but I can't fall asleep because I'm a bit sick. So I'm going to do this really quick.

1. Monday, the NFL recognized that Pete Morelli's call didn't make any sense any way you look at it. The NY Post, in a really common observation, pointed out that had the Steelers not hung on to the lead, Joey Porter wouldn't be the only one screaming "Fix". Cowher came out today to call Porter's comments ridiculous while recognizing the severity of how off the call was, and ESPN's front page took the opportunity to make Porter look more and more insane every few minutes. The link to an article on Porter's "The whole world loves Peyton Manning." comments changed in the following manner:

• Porter feels cheated
• Porter Upset
• Porter Angry
• Porter Livid

My favorite by far is "Porter Livid", but I'd have liked to see it hang around the front page long enough to confirm that Joey Porter is the Hulk with the headline "Porter SMASH! GRAHGAAA!"

But that's just me.

In other Steelers: I thought I was having a heart attack as I watched Bettis' first fumble since November 2004, probably exacerbated by the Polamalu interception call, but didn't. This guy did. Thankfully, he's doing ok now but, and I'm being totally serious right now, who does that. Seriously.

Finally, I'd like to apologize. I won't give specifics, but let's suffice it to say I pulled a Collins (if you'd like an explanation, contact RJ or infer what it refers to knowing that KotOR2 is the subject). I tend to be very careful about spoilers, forgot myself today and presumed since I'd heard so much about a specific spoiler that came out in July that it was common knowledge by now. Evidently, no. Not that I really objectively know if the spoiler is true or not, but whatever.

Whew. Relief.

The good news is, I think, is that the heart condition I acquired during the Steelers-Colts game can be controlled with medications.

The bad news is that I have to waste more time on this stuff next week.

Really, I don't know what to say that's not already being said by everyone, everywhere. Personally, I'd just like a single playoff season to go by without the officiating being what's talked about after every single game. Yes, they screwed up the pass interference call. They screwed up whether Faneca moved and at the same time, took an inexcusable amount of time to make the call. Yes, they screwed up the Polamalu interception (an update to all of you who haven't seen the new NFL rules: in order for an interception to be an interception, you actually have to burrow into the ground a minimum of seven feet. This is why shovels are placed at strategic locations around the field) which could very reasonably have cost the Steelers the game.

That all ceased to matter following Bettis' fumble. Had we lost it following that, I might have been okay with that. If only because we'd have conclusively been beaten by ourselves, rather than the Officiating/Colts team.

I'm at 66.6%. Now the Bears just have to stop that whole "letting the Panthers go up 7-0 in the first minute or so of the game", and I might just improve this week.

Update: And I drop back down to 50%.

Let's say, for the Championship games next week:

Carolina over Seattle
Pittsburgh over Denver

Normalcy

Things have returned to normalcy. Every time I get on the Red Line, my car once again has some singing jackass, it's freezing here again, I'm once again overjoyed by the fact that I just used some giftcards to get around to owning yet another crappy movie, and the Seahawks have won their first playoff game since 1984.

Wait. That last bit isn't normalcy.

Hopefully, I can have a bit more accuracy in picking football games this week (over last week's .500).

Update: Pats down, Broncos up, and I'm back to .500. Here's hoping that the weekend ends at, oh, I don't know, 0.750.

Link.

As you might have guessed from, oh, reading anything I've posted on here ever (or, rather, even looking at the text without letting the sweet, sweet nonsense pass into your consciousness), you'll know I'm not one for short posts. That said, this'll be a short post. Links to brilliant other things, mostly.

If you're the kind of person that's been near a video game in the past decade, you may not be able to resist finding this quite hilarious. Well written in that Lore Sjöberg kind of way, slightly saddening because it predicts that people will be ever-so-slightly more consumed by World of Warcraft in 2010. Which doesn't actually count as "surprising", but you'll have that.

The world turned on its head as everyone everywhere realized that even the almighty Oprah can be hoodwinked, following the revelation that James Frey might not have been telling the truth. I cannot emphasize strongly enough the sense of "whatever" that I'm feeling toward this. A columnist for the Chicago Tribune's free tabloid-like Red Eye (which makes for a compact and free thing to read during the first few weeks of my daily trek to Northwestern on the CTA, before everyone gets into the whole cannibalism thing and we all abandon all hope of making it past Jarvis) contends that it matters a great deal that he made his story of drug-addicting and redemption up, as no one could expect a reasonable person to take away any inspiration from mere fiction. I happen to disagree strongly with the opinion that having a "nonfiction" lying renders it useless (I would disagree less were this, say, my organometallics book), simply because I think more people have been inspired by fiction over the years. And that I still can't quite conceive of the fact that there are things that exist beyond my own line of sight and the book very well may have simply materialized. In which case it doesn't matter if the void from which it arose is lying or not. Particularly because I've got far too many other things to read at the moment to worry about it.

While writing that paragraph, one of the two worst acted lines in the Star Wars series came out of my TV. Specifically, it's "We're coming in too hot." I'm not one to nitpick about the acting, and a long, long time ago I wrote a post defending the constantly attacked Prequel Trilogy, but that combined with the "No." that Palpatine says, like a defiant five year old (note: not Vader's "Nooo") are just... they just kill it.

Incidentally, while those two about tie, the third worst acted line is, as any self respecting geek should know, concerns Tasche station and power converters.

Incidentally, that thing at the top about this being short, or these all being links doesn't count.

Toasterssteelers

So that whole updating with more frequency thing was a complete lie.

I really should be reading organometallics, so let's do this quickly, possibly with some updates (including my opinions on actual news) after I go home.

Sports: I'm incredibly nervous about the Steelers-Colts game, which is to say I'm rather pessimistic about the whole thing. I'm beginning to think that's just how I approach sporting events (I'd counted the Steelers out of the Bengals game as early as the first quarter last week), mostly as a mechanism so that I can deal with imminent loss gradually. Rather than all at once. Still, Roethlisberger's healthy this time around, the Colts aren't invincible, and the guy that has the desk across from me said at about week 9 that he wouldn't be suprised if the Colts went 16-0 and lost the first game of the playoffs. I'm hoping that still holds with 14-2.

The Pirates front page is hilarious lately, mostly because they're devoting quite a bit of work to making things seem much better than they are through the methods they've always used. Hernandez (currently 41 years old) will "mentor the young'ns", the young talent will surprise everyone, and so forth. I'll believe it when I see it.

Music:

Having missed a Toasters concert on like, my second day in Chicago, I'm not missing the next one, dammit. The next one happens to be February 3rd at a reasonable time (read: 7pm opening, as opposed to 5pm) at the Beat Kitchen. I'm highly anticipating that I'll probably actually not be able to go, as my Organometallics class has tests on Friday evenings and, knowing my luck, Chris will probably set a test for that day, but I'm going if nothing academic stops me.

Any donations that would actually allow me to buy the $12 ticket would be greatly appreciated.

That's it. I'm getting back to work. I'll be back tonight with something.

NFL Wild Card Weekend

Well, there's that. I did about as well at picking the wild card games as one could flipping a quarter, but I'm glad that at least one of those worked out. Next week, in the Divisional Playoffs, let's say (by say I mean guess):

Seahawks over Redskins
Bears over Panthers
Patriots over Broncos
Steelers over Indianapolis.

That last pick is called "being heavily influenced by emotion". Call me a dreamer.

My Post About Sago

As I posted last night, many others have already covered this much more extensively and in a much timelier fashion than I will. And as the comment on my last post indicates (who mysteriously has knowledge of my ancestry), I, like many of those with semi-rural Pennsylvanian upbringings, have members of my family that have worked in mines. With that in mind, some comments about this whole deal and the remarkably odd series of events that's followed.

First, the actual accident. Without a doubt, terribly tragic, especially given recent evidence that lightning may have caused the explosion that trapped the miners, but it does highlight a need for an overhaul of safety protocol, and a rethinking of the methods used, particularly in dissemination of information during one of these disasters.

Second, the backlash from the public on hearing that the miners didn't survive. This one needs to be broken down into two sections.

• First, the jump to blame the media. While I'm not one to jump in front of a train for the media, they're not actually, technically to blame for this. The mixup, as I'm sure most of you have heard by this point, was a result of the mining company's attempts to stop something like this from happening, using code to avoid ever mentioning the words "alive", "dead" or "miner", lest it get to the media and the exact thing that happened occur. In a questionably callous move, they used "item" to refer to the miners, but whatever. They're more at fault for realizing that a mixup had occurred and that the families and media were given incorrect information, and not doing anything at all to stop it. They've apologized (claiming that they "alllowed the jubilation to continue for too long", which, considering the situation by any reasonable person, would be a very short time considering that only one survived), but it's nigh inexcusable to allow such sensitive information to continue. Perhaps this whole mixup, if anything, says something about the limitations of "breaking news" and fact-checking, but it appears that the mining company continued the "they're alive" statement over the three hours while they were checking, rather than saying, perhaps, "No, we have no information one way or the other, and have no evidence to support the belief that 12 are alive".
  
  Or something


• I've seen several calling for all of those in the mining industry to get out, citing the danger of the occupation, on several messageboards. Such a proposition is almost too dumb to mention, except for the fact that this is my blog and the phrase "too dumb for Murphspot" doesn't exist with any real meaning. It's dumb not because it advocates taking precaution when entering in to such a job (which isn't at all dumb) but that it, in a comment on our society and modern convenience, presumes that things would continue as normal if everyone followed that advice. Mining, dirty job that it is, is still essential, and it's because of people like the miners in the Sago mine, the miners in Quecreek, miners like my grandfather that modern life is possible in the way we experience it. If mines could become obsolete and humans were no longer needed, then that's sound advice. But while we're still reliant on fossil fuels for energy, we need miners.

I don't know. Perhaps while Randal McCloy, Jr. is in Pittsburgh in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber trying to recover, it might be a good time to reflect on such behind the scenes players as miners, without whom the rest of us couldn't sit around with fancy things like electricity and whatnot.

I'm going to go read now.

The Green Sayat Kontroversy

Continuing a series of remarkably far apart posts, this is evidently a weekly now. I'm going to try to write more in the upcoming weeks, though I can't make any promises as the winter quarter has just started, sparking a new era of balancing classes with teaching and now, research.

So, away we go.

---

Jenna's gone home, and if nothing else, her visit allowed me to justify going broke visiting things in Chicago that I probably wouldn't have done otherwise. Two things.

During orientation week for NU's graduate program, one professor or another (Lambert?) included the Green Mill in his presentation. It's a bar at Broadway and Lawrence and has a remarkably bright and flashy sign that's impossible to ignore walking to Borders. Meh. There are lots of flashy bars. But I can honestly say that I regret not taking whoever's advice about going to this place earlier. Alfonso Ponticelli and Swing Gitan were the evening's entertainment, a remarkable little combo in the gypsy/jazz tradition, and I believe it was at about the end of "Puttin' on the Ritz" that I was able to stop constantly fearing the bouncer with the handlebar moustache that warned us against that most heinous of crimes, making absolutely any noise whatsoever. Hooray.

Sayat Nova's odd. A little Armenian restaurant right off of Michigan on Ohio, I'd stop back again. Not much to say about this, really. Typical romantic night out right before Jendar heads back to NYU for the rest of eternity, highlighted, I think, by Jenna's reaction to the appetizer. Something about how she responds to raw beef covered in onions and olive oil is actually rather sweet. Well, relatively to her crying in horror at how she has no concept of how spicy things are actually going to be. The sarma dinner left something to be desired, but it was overall a very pleasant experience. Raw beef and all.

Enough of Murphy=Zagat's.

---

This semester represents a return to not only bonus-that-isn't-really-bonus-but-is-required-kinda, but two (which is one more than I've ever had) classes in which the professor wrote the text. I'm not sure how I feel about those. Hopefully, it'll work itself out after I actually get the books, but I'm always a bit nervous when that happens. Perhaps because I have no recourse if I feel either the book or course to be lacking. But the classes that are currently happening are both taught by (in the small experience I've had) pretty good professors. I'll update more on how my academic life is consuming my soul after I've had more than a week to get acquainted with everything.

---

I don't know. I'd rather not tackle subjects like the Sago Mine accident, Ariel Sharon's massive health problems (mostly because I know very little about the latter, and the former's been covered pretty extensively, though I might be on later) or what on earth is going to happen with the playoffs this week (though, in quick fashion, let's say I'll go ahead and pick the Bucs, the Pats, the G-men and the Stillers) as I'm remarkably tired. I'm off to try to read (to no avail, probably) about spectroscopy.

I'd just like to note that Jenna's love for the Kinks is undying. Until she picks another band to latch on to for about a year.

:D

I swear I'll get back to posting more often. Srsly.