The most telling sign that your (bowl game / basketball game / non-mainstream sporting event) on TV does not matter at all?

You have a female as one of the main broadcasters for the game.

Try it. The next time you are watching a sport on tv and you hear a woman doing the play by play or the color, examine the teams playing and the implications of the game. I'd be more than willing to wager that the game is like the godaddy.com bowl or a thrilling matchup between the Cleveland Browns and the South Dakota Whozits.

Its just one of those weird things. Maybe there just aren't many female broadcasters in sports. Or it might just be that the predominant audience of sports (guys), prefer to have their sports commentated to them by guys. I suppose its some combination of the two.

I think I've finally figured out what made Press Your Luck such a great game show.

It is because there is almost no skill involved whatsoever.

In game shows like Wheel of Fortune, contestants are rewarded for their ability to basically fill in missing letters.

In game shows like Jeopardy or Who Wants to be a Millionaire, contestants are rewarded for knowledge of random facts.

But in a game like Press Your Luck, there really isn't any skill involved (other than the guy who learned the patterns). It was just hit the button, try to win money. I suppose there was a little strategy as to when to pass your spins and whatnot, but really no skill or knowledge involved.



There is a new game show on CNBC. Its called "Deal or No Deal," and its a great study in risk aversion. It seems like it was designed by an economics professor. The game is simple. 26 female models bring out numbered suitcases. Inside each suitcase is a number, ranging from one cent to $1,000,000. You pick a suitcase as your own, and then you start picking other numbered suitcases to reveal their contents. Every now and then, the "bank" will call and offer you some amount to buy back your suitcase. As the number of unrevealed suitcases goes down, the bank starts calling more frequently. Of course, this offer is much less than the expected value of your suitcase. On tonight's show, for example, when there were six suitcases left, of values:

$1,000,000
$500,000
$5,000
$75
$10
$5

The offer from the bank was $121,000, while the expected value of your suitcase is over $250,000.

Adding in to the fun is that the show brings in three of your family members to "consult" with you from the audience. This only adds to the hilarity.

When you get near the very end, the show will have other people get in touch with you. Like say, your kids calling and then the host asking them if $201,000 is a lot of money. Its pretty great. Highly recommended.

Behold! The worst fantasy fooball championship team ever!

QB: Tom Brady
QB: Eli Manning
WR: Plaxico Burress
WR: Lee Evans
WR: Issac Bruce
RB: Rudi Johnson
RB: Corey Dillon
TE: Tony Gonzalez
K: Jason Elam
DEF: St. Louis

Bench:
QB: Ryan Fitzpatrick
QB: Aaron Brooks
WR: Brandon Lloyd
RB: Tatum Bell
DEF: Seattle

But a championship is a championship!

I thoroughly enjoy the commercial for Wolf Creek.

Its some sort of horror movie. Near the end of the movie, you see a hand reaching out of the ground to grab a woman who is running away. And then, right after that scene, the commercial says:

"Based on true events!"

Merry Christmas everyone.

Please please please please!

Well that was the worst exam I've ever taken. Four hours of hell. The only assuring thing out of it was that everyone else was shaking their heads in disbelief during the exam. I'm so demoralized right now.

And yet I cannot take the night off tonight (as I have done on the nights of my first two exams) because my last exam is this Wednesday, and its for the class I am least prepared for.

Man, tonight and tomorrow are going to blow.

But...

3 out of 4 exams done. I'm almost home.

It was a commercial right before the Giants/Chiefs game today (BTW, thanks for sucking Eli Manning. Way to absolutely kill my fantasy team) when I switched onto HBO for a second. And then I was faced with a dilemma that I had never hoped to face.

Garfield, the movie, was on.

Now obviously, its a movie that noone in their right mind would ever watch. But for those of you in the know, Jennifer Love Hewitt is in the movie.

Well, even her insane hotness couldn't get me to watch it. Score one for the ol brain.



Alright I still switched back a couple times during commercials. Leave me alone.

So I got done my criminal law final, walked back to my apt in the ice storm, and shaked and baked some chicken. Only a problem arose in the middle of that last activity.

The power went out.

Apparently the ice storm caused some power lines to go down or some transformers to blow. Whatever the case was, my electric oven was no longer cooking my chicken. And I was hungry.

I decided to leave the chicken in the oven. It had only been in there for a few minutes (and needed 40 to cook), but I convinced myself that perhaps it would just slow cook. Well, after an hour or so I decided that was a stupid idea. The chicken was sort of warm, but not nearly cooked. And thats when I looked at the fireplace.

I already had a fire going, and there appeared to be a nice little area under the metal stand to place the chicken. How hot was it under there? Probably at least 350 degrees. But if I stuck the pan under there, wouldn't I get wood embers all over the chicken? Then an idea hit me. I'd wrap the chicken in tinfoil and place them under there. That would cook them good.

I wrapped the chicken up and placed them under the fire. I heard some sizzling, indicating to me that the chicken juices that were in the foil were beginning to bubble. This was a good sign, as it appeared to me that the area under the fire was indeed hot enough to cook the chicken. I pulled some left over biscuits from the fridge and threw them (in foil) near the fire to heat them up too. I thought I was tilin good shape.

Well for whatever reason the fireplace cooking method didn't work as well as I wanted it to. Maybe I didn't leave the chicken under the fire long enough. Maybe I didn't place it close enough to the embers. But regardless, I only nibbled at the outer edges that seemed to be cooked more than the inner parts. It may have just been an illusion; maybe the flashlight I was using was skewing my vision. Anyway, I didn't feel real good after eating the chicken.

But I'm in acceptable shape now, 5 hours later. So I guess it might have been a success after all.

"And even if the example I gave were entirely hypothetical, the conclusion--yes, in this case even torture is permissible--is telling because it establishes the principle: Torture is not always impermissible. However rare the cases, there are circumstances in which, by any rational moral calculus, torture not only would be permissible but would be required (to acquire life-saving information). And once you've established the principle, to paraphrase George Bernard Shaw, all that's left to haggle about is the price. In the case of torture, that means that the argument is not whether torture is ever permissible, but when--i.e., under what obviously stringent circumstances: how big, how imminent, how preventable the ticking time bomb."

From an interesting article on the morality and usefulness of torture in The Weekly Standard.

And a semi-rebuttal off of Slate Magazine.

I just woke up five minutes ago (10AM). My first exam is not until 1:30 PM. I have no idea what I should do in the time between now and 1:30. I have to eat. But that won't take too long. I'm planning on making some biscuits, frying up some bacon, putting the bacon in the biscuits, and then putting some cheese on top. I would have eggs too... except I forgot to buy eggs when I was at the store this past weekend. Doh.

I'm so tempted to read over my notes some more. And the book. But I kept saying I would not look over anything in the time right before the exam. It probably would just make me more stressed out and actually be counterproductive. But what if I realize that I just don't know something? I suppose I'll allow myself to look at the book/notes if I realize that there is a specific concept that I need to brush up on. But I will not allow myself to just blankly stare at random stuff.

There's a good compromise. Time for a banana smoothie.

Congratulations to Ms. Jenny Teabo (Cinnaminson), accepting the marriage proposal of Mr. David Mach. The proposal was done in Japan, which may seem quite out of the way and romantic, but they have actually lived there (teaching english) for the last two years.

I believe our first real introduction to Jenny came in high school. It might have been junior year at lunch, when Jimbo declared that the girl sitting at the next table over was "hot." We automatically disagreed, since Jimbo is always wrong, but later granted that he was in fact correct in this instance.

I'm not sure if I remember the entire story of how Jenny and Dave met, so I'll just make up parts that I don't know. They were merely housemates in the pink house on Nichol Ave., on the Douglas College campus in New Brunswick. The house was a bit crazy at times because it was so diverse. People of differing racial backgrounds, sexual orientations, and ages lived and often clashed in this abode. Also the house only had one shower for 9 people. Through all the hubub, Jenny and Dave found each other. They eventually found their way out of New Brunswick, and in fact out of the United States, to a foreign land, where they had many adventures battling, and eventually slaying, Godzilla and Mothra.

So it begins.

I was watching the Duke/Penn game last night, and the Dockery fawning began. But not by Dickie V (he wasn't commentating this game), but by ex-Utah coach Rick Majerus.

Every single time Dockery did anything, it was because of his "heart." The intangibles he brings to the table. He's always involved in the play. He makes so many great steals. He always hustles. Etc.

Perhaps my favorite moment of the night was when Dockery saved the ball from going out of bounds by diving into the photographers row. Then there was a scrum. Around 5 seconds later, the ball pops out, and Dockery has returned and runs away with the ball.

Well, Majerus wanted to use this point to show just how much hustle Dockery brings to the table. So ESPN showed him diving into the photographers, and they showed the video of the cameraman who kept the shot on him.

For 3 seconds, Dockery does not move. He just stares back at the action, and then eventually decides to get up.

Majerus: Well, you didn't get to see his hustle there... but he got the ball!

Implied in the comment was that we just weren't afforded the pleasure of seeing the hustle. But lets be honest. There wasn't any. He dove into the photographers and then saw there watching the play. Lets not call an arm a leg just to make a point.

But Dockery had 5 steals last night! Hustle!

Um, both Josh McRoberts and Shelden Williams had 4. And it was against PENN!

I had the strangest feeling of deja vu thinking about this post. And then I realized I had written the same thing two years ago when Chris Duhon was being lauded for playing with a bruised chest. He was the same type of player - can't shoot, is a senior, has "intangibles", is a "winner." I remember the inane arguments people brought up defending Duhon.

You know what? If Dockery has a good game against Texas on Saturday, I'll shut up about him.

Talk about an incentive to enroll in a foreign language class at Duke...

Undergraduates who have yet to receive an iPod from the University and enroll in classes that are part of the program will receive a voice recorder and either a fourth-generation photo iPod or fifth-generation video iPod free of cost.

I wonder if you have to give it back if you decide to drop the class after the first week.

I won't lie; I've been making fun of Sean Dockery all year. He has to be my least favorite Duke player in history. When he dribbles, he's out of control and turns the ball over. When he shoots, he only does so because he is so insanely wide open that he has to. His "tough" defense results in more fouls than steals.

And Greg Paulus is already better than him.

Well, Dockery made me eat some of my words last night. He did not hesitate to shoot wide open threes, and he actually knocked them down. And of course, he had the incredible half court shot to win the game, which will give him (an undeserved) immunity from criticism for the rest of his time at Duke.

Lost in all the hubub was what Dockery did in the final minutes before his heroic shot. At the 1:39 mark (I think), Dockery drove, spun, and as usual, fell because he was out of control. And at the :12 second mark, with Duke up by 2, Dockery, going for the steal, fouled the VTech player.

Of course, nobody remembers those plays. Dockery made up for it in spades by hitting the half court three.

But come tournament time, I find it much more likely that Dockery will do his usual "out of control turnover" followed by a "bad foul" shtick, and I'll go out on a limb and say that another half court shot to save his ass is not in the cards.

DeMarcus Nelson, please get healthy soon.

I just think this is a funny picture.



This is a good one too

Stupid commercials bother me.

And I don't mean "stupid" in the conventional sense. I guess I mean "stupidity" in the making of commercials.

A prime example was something I'm fairly sure I blogged about in the past - when the football referee called his wife at home, who was watching the game on some super clear TV, and had to ask her whether the guy stepped out of bounds. She told him that he did, and then the ref made the "first down" signal. If it wasn't a catch, why was it a first down? One could make the argument that its a first down for the other team, but that is unlikely, as the ref would probably say "Dallas ball" or something like that.

Well, another irritating commerical has caught my ire.

Its a commercial for T-mobile. The parents are standing behind a bbq while the husband pours lighter fluid into it. Their daughter is on the phone with some new boyfriend. The parents are not happy with this as they are running out of minutes. The guy lights the bbq, we go to an overhead shot of it, and its not full of charcoal! No! Its full of money!

Wait... if they're concerned about money, why are they lighting money on fire? I would understand if the point was that the parents don't care about money, and thus they didn't care that they had a crappy mobile plan. And if they did not care about having a crappy plan, and didn't care about money, then they wouldn't care about their daughter being on the phone all the time. But they do care about the lack of minutes (as indicated by their concern over their daughter on the phone), and thus they are aware of the value of money. So I ask again, why are they burning it?

Its just as well that I have AT&T/Cingular.