Bah! Humbug!

NewMexiKen is listening to Christmas music this evening trying to get into the holiday mood.

Of course, my preferred holiday mood is to be somewhat crankier than Ebeneezer Scrooge.

Finally, some HDTV that’s worth watching

Fred Kaplan likes what he sees on VOOM:

VOOM offers 37 high-definition channels—four times as many as any other single satellite or cable company. Its competitors both offer HBO, Showtime, ESPN, and Discovery Theater in high-definition. VOOM has all of those, plus an additional HBO HD channel, an additional Showtime HD channel, two Starz HD channels, two Cinemax HD channels, and HD versions of The Movie Channel, Bravo, and Encore. It also has 21 unique HD channels, including 10 movie channels, two concert channels, and separate channels for news, world sports, extreme sports, fashion, and classic cartoons.

A different Tiger

From Morning Briefing:

A Detroit ballplayer was once heckled so mercilessly that he went into the stands and beat a fan senseless, reported Mike Downey of the Chicago Tribune. The fan was an amputee.

The ballplayer was Ty Cobb, who played for the Tigers, and the incident happened 92 years ago.

Added Downey: “It happened in New York, by the way, not in Detroit.”

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site …

was established on this date in 1999. According to the National Park Service:

Minuteman.jpg

Minuteman Missile National Historic Site is one of the nation’s newest national park areas. It was created to illustrate the history and significance of the Cold War, the arms race, and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) development. The National Park Service is currently involved in the planning process to determine the future of this site. We encourage you to contact us with any questions, comments, or suggestions.

Minuteman Missile NHS consists of two significant cold War sites, a Launch Control Facility (Delta-01) and a missile silo complex (Delta-09). The facilities represent the only remaining intact components of a nuclear missile field that consisted of 150 Minuteman II missiles, 15 launch control centers, and covered over 13,500 square miles of southwestern South Dakota.

To Know Me, Know My IPod

New York Times writer John Schwartz acquires a colleague’s iPod and wonders at the invasion of privacy.

So eavesdropping on Ken’s iPod worried me. I have read about people randomly plugging in to each others’ iPods to figure out what songs are in their friends’ heads, or even in the heads of strangers. (They call it “podjacking.”) But this was a mind meld.

What if I hated Ken’s taste? Would I lose respect for him? I’m not talking about the Paula Abdul songs; we’re all entitled to our guilty pleasures. But what if it was all bubblegum, or deeply dull? It would be like opening his closet and finding Star Trek uniforms. I fretted.

But I fretted wrong. Moments of serendipity thrilled me; I was driving with my teenage daughter, listening to the iPod through the car stereo, when the Beatles’ “Yesterday” began to play. It’s a song that is nearly dead to me after so many thousands of repetitions. But when it finished, the machine skipped to a version of the song I had never heard, by Ray Charles. He sang with all the pain and heart that the twentysomething Paul McCartney could not have known, and I listened with tears in my eyes.

It’s an interesting essay.

Too smart for his own good

The oldest of The Sweeties, Mack, who won’t be four for a couple more weeks, asked his mother yesterday, “Is Santa fake?”

He’s obviously intelligent, already doing the analysis necessary to reach this conclusion.

Of course, if he was really smart he’d have kept his beliefs under wraps for a few more years.

Bump on the noggin

According to a report in The New York Times soccer headgear has become an issue.

The founder of a San Diego-based company called Full90 said he had sold 100,000 pieces of headgear. The headgear resembles an enlarged headband, weighs less than 2 ounces, and covers the forehead, temples and occipital bone in back of the head. The device is made of shock-absorbing foam situated between an outer layer of Lycra and an inner layer of sweat-absorbing polypropylene. Several models are available for $24 to $39.

Full90 does not claim that its headgear prevents concussions. But the company does say the headgear can reduce, by up to 50 percent, the peak impact forces that occur during typical collisions when a player’s head strikes another head, the ground, an elbow or a goal post.

The headgear debate is occurring at a time when some studies indicate that concussions occur in soccer at a rate similar to the rate in football.

Apparently there is a great deal of resistance to the headgear in some quarters, in part for fear people will realize soccer is dangerous and the soccer moms will stop signing up their little darlings. (The article points out that concussions are almost non-existent among players under 12. It’s the older, bigger players who could gain from the protection.)

The resistance is also similar to that which took place when baseball and other sports introduced helmets. NewMexiKen attended a game between the Kansas City Athletics and the Detroit Tigers in the mid-1950s. Vic Power came to the plate without a helmet (it was optional then). He made a show of declining it. After a close, inside pitch he made an ever greater show of going to the dugout and returning with a helmet on.

Worth waiting

That may soon change as a glut of liquid crystal display flat-panel televisions, called L.C.D.’s, enter the market, a result of a boom in new factories. According to several manufacturers and analysts, the prices for L.C.D. flat-panel TV’s will drop in the new year, falling by as much as 30 percent by the end of 2005. The prices of plasma flat-panel TV’s are also expected to fall significantly.

From a report in The New York Times

Supposed I-A playoff

Hypothetical 16-team bracket using 11 conference champions and 5 wild cards. Conference champions based on current best record if not yet decided. Wildcards based on Sagarin’s current overall rating, as is seeding.

USC (Pac 10) vs, North Texas (Sun Belt)
Louisville (Conference USA) vs. Miami

Utah (Mountain West) vs. Michigan (Big 10)
Texas vs. LSU

California vs. West Virginia (Big East)
Auburn (SEC) vs. Georgia

Boise State (WAC) vs. Virginia Tech (ACC)
Oklahoma (Big 12) vs. Miami-Ohio (Mid-American)

Some interesting games and some interesting likely second round match-ups. Of course, if this was done like basketball, by a committee, there would no doubt be more finesse and finagling.

Think of the drama as we waited for next Sunday and pairings to be announced on TV. Who’d be on the bubble, etc., etc.

Alas.

Meanwhile, where the college presidents aren’t jerks — a football championship decided by (imagine) playoffs

The first round of the I-AA 16-team football playoff style tournament has been completed. Eight teams moved to the second round December 4th &mdash

Sam Houston State @ Eastern Washington
New Hampshire @ Montana
Delaware @ William & Mary
James Madison @ Furman

The championship game is in Chattanooga December 17.

(There are 117 I-A schools and 122 I-AA schools.)

End of Jennings’ run on Jeopardy

As noted here sometime ago, Ken Jennings finally loses on Jeaopary! in the show that airs Tuesday (November 30). The Final Jeopardy answer that defeats him:

Most of this firm’s 70,000 seasonal white collar employees work only four months a year.

Answer in comments.

Thanks to Kottke for all this. He has an audio recording of the actual moment.

[When posted here in September the answer omitted “seasonal” and the number was 17,000 rather than 70,000.]

Man says fish stick has Jesus’ face

First loaves (the grilled cheese sandwich), now fishes:

KINGSTON, Ontario – An eastern Ontario man is hoping to make a bit of money by auctioning a fish stick he says looks like Jesus.

Fred Whan, who has kept the fish stick in his freezer since burning it at dinner a year ago, decided Tuesday that it was time to thaw it out so he could sell it on eBay.

A Florida woman recently sold a decade-old grilled cheese sandwich with the toasty visage of what’s purported to be the Virgin Mary for $28,000, according to the eBay Web site.

From Canadian Press via AZCentral. Click image to enlarge.

Rolling Stone 500

Rolling Stone has published a new list of the 500 “greatest rock & roll songs of all time.” All 500 are listed with a discussion of each (ranging from lengthy to a sentence). There is a sound clip for most songs and a link to purchase many for just 79 cents each (from RealPlayer).

At the moment, NewMexiKen has 358 of the 500 on the iPod.

Hail to the Chief

Presidential succession:

  • Vice President Richard Cheney
  • Speaker of the House John Dennis Hastert
  • President pro tempore of the Senate Ted Stevens
  • Secretary of State Colin Powell Condoleezza Rice
  • Secretary of the Treasury John Snow
  • Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld
  • Attorney General John Ashcroft Alberto R. Gonzales