Okay, so I misfired on the Falcons-Rams contest. I feel vindicated by going against almost every sports talking head and picking the Patriots to win. Grass, freezing cold, strong defense and a great running back in Corey Dillon. And Peyton was supposed to win by... how was he supposed to win again?

The Jets almost made me cry-twice- near the end of regulation. After being completely dominated in the second half, New York almost managed to win nonetheless. How much do I hate the effing Jets? Well, I could tell you that the humiliating, embarrassing, soul-crushing way that they lost the game didn't fill me with glee, but I'd be lying. A lot. Mheh.

Championship picks to follow sometime later this week.

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Here are my fearless predictions. Should you be foolish enough to use my advice and bet on the games, double the money you paid for these predictions will be refunded to you.

First, the AFC games, which completely suck due to their including 3 present or former AFC East members NOT named the Miami Dolphins. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Anyway, Indy is playing at New England. It'll be cold; the ground will be hard; but Peyton Manning will still be Peyton Manning, so the Colts will score. Unfortunately, the Patriots will score more often. Look for a big game from Corey Dillon as the Colts' porous defense gets run around, over and through. New England wins in a nailbiter.

The J-E-T-S JetsJetsJets are playing AT Pittsburgh. I could go into great detail about the matchups between the two teams, but I won't bother. Suffice it to say that I think the Steelers are the most complete team in the NFL this year. Pittsburgh to win easily.

On to the NFC, where two 8-8 teams will be playing on the road. Excuse me, make that two 9-8 teams.

Philadelphia attempts to make the NFC championship game for the fourth year in a row. Pretty impressive feat, of course, but people tend to focus on the Eagles' inability to actually win that particular game. Culpepper is the better QB, but the Eagles are still the better team, albeit one with a horribly suspect run defense. Luckily for Philly, the Vikings don't appear capable of exploiting that weakness, so the Eagles march on.

You might think that the Rams don't match up well against the Falcons and you'd be right. Atlanta fields a pretty stout defense and runs a potent offense QB-ed by Michael Vick. Currently, only Tampa Bay seems to have figured how to stop that guy. But let's look at the Rams: they have tremendous talent at all offensive skill positions. Somehow, with a -24 turnover differential, St. Louis managed to make the playoffs. If they can stop giving away possessions, the Rams are likely to score a lot of points; the game is being played on turf. I just don't see the Falcons being able to keep up. Rams win.

Consider the last prediction null and void if Mike Martz allows his ego to coach the game. Just an FYI.

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Dave Barry to replace William Safire as NY Times columnist? It's an idea posited by Bryan Curtis at Slate. Excerpt:

Barry (not the Times) won the Pulitzer Prize for commentary the next year. And perhaps his gifts as a political satirist point toward a second act. In his valedictory, Barry refused to rule out a return to column-writing. Here's an idea: As soon as William Safire shuffles off to the Old Columnists' Home, put Barry smack dab in the middle of the Times editorial page. Barry confessed a few years ago that he's a raving libertarian—just the kind of dyspeptic crank who would take pleasure in thumbing Washington in the eye. Give him 14 inches twice a week and let him write whatever he wants. Why settle for another graying libertarian when you can have a libertarian who makes booger jokes?

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Maybe, but imagine a future where this can happen.

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Carnival of the Recipes #22 is simmering over at One Happy Dog Speaks this week. VW did a great job with the roundup, properly categorizing this per meal or food category, allowing you to zero in on what appeals to you most. That means I can head right for the desserts. After all, who wants their dinner to spoil dessert? ::shudder::

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with cream cheese frosting

RED VELVET CAKE RECIPE

Cream together 1/2 cup shortening and 1-1/2 cup sugar. Add 2 eggs, one at a time.

Make paste of 2 tbsp. cocoa and 1-1/2 oz. red food coloring. Add to creamed mixture.
Mix 1 tsp. salt, 2-1/2 cups flour; add alternately with mixture of 1 tsp. vanilla, 1 cup buttermilk, and 1 tsp. soda. Add 1 tbsp. vinegar. Mix thoroughly.

Split ingredients evenly between 2 standard cake pans. I made the mistake of putting it all into one pan, and it takes forever to bake. Plus, it comes out dry.

Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

==========================

CREAM CHEESE FROSTING
2-3 oz. packages of cream cheese(softened)
2 tbsp. evaporated milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
dash salt
1-16 oz. package of confectioner's sugar

With mixer at medium speed, beat cream cheese with milk just until smooth. Gradually beat in vanilla, salt, and sugar until blended.... fills and frosts 2-layer cake or 24 cupcakes.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 02:46 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Neal Boortz interviewed newt Gingrich on his show and the former Speaker provided some perspective on space exploration by this country:

Now I can't remember if we had this conversation during a commercial break, or during the actual show, but Newt came up with an interesting idea regarding space exploration. I know I'm going to get this wrong, but Newt said something to the effect that the United States would be much further along in the exploration of space, and in the realization of benefits from that exploration, if we were willing to assume the same level of risk that NASCAR accepts. There would be no shortage of volunteers who would be willing to accept that risk level in order to participate in space exploration. Instead, we try to make space exploration as safe as walking across your living room to pick up a magazine.

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TMQ discusses what might be a low risk prospect: betting on the home team in this upcoming weekend's contests. Excerpt:

These points against gambling made, are you still looking for a sure thing? Try the home teams in the NFL divisional round this weekend. Home teams in the NFL divisional round are the surest sure thing in sports. Since the current playoff formation was adopted in 1990, home teams in the divisionals are 45-11, an .803 winning figure. The home teams have just finished a bye week and relaxing in hot tubs as their opponents are out in the cold while being pounded. Usually the reason the home teams had byes in the first place is that they are better than the wild-card round teams. Home teams dominate the NFL divisionals, so check-mark them in your office pool. You don't even need to know which team is playing! Just go for the home team in the divisional round.

That, my friends, is what I'd call a trend. Then again, no 8-8 team had ever won an NFL playoff game before last weekend, so your mileage may vary.

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I saw this story and my antennae(hey, it's a costume) started quivering. Here's the headline:

U.S. Ends Fruitless Iraq Weapons Hunt

Notice the little word "fruitless" that some jackass inserted? You know, because we all knew there weren't any weapons to begin with. Remove that word and you receive the same information, but without the little dig at Bush. Anyway, on to the story itself. Excerpt:

The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday

Look, if you're going to rewrite history, you might as well make as well make it interesting, or at least entertaining. Saying that Glenn Reynolds makes puppy smoothies is both; saying that WMD's were the only justification for going to war is neither, and it's patently untrue. The expected presence of banned weapons was used as a reason to not go to war by the same fucking hypocrites that are claiming they knew all along that there weren't any. Maybe such noise plays pretty well amongst their inner circle of like-minded friends, the ones that know Bush is just like Hitler, but it doesn't work with me.

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I'm typing this posts in the probably vain hope that doing so will help to lower my blood pressure. This story made my head throb. It had nothing to do with voting problems experienced by the people in Washington state, but rather the gall, the absolute shameless hypocrisy exhibited by the Democrats in that state.

Example #1
--------------

Rossi won the initial machine count by 261 votes and a machine recount by 42 votes.

[county supervisor]Huennekens said the larger number of unaccounted-for votes should not shake people's confidence in the outcome of an election that he said was still "99.9x" percent accurate.

I don't remember those words being uttered by this particular asswipe when the first 2 vote counts showed Rossi winning.

Example #2
--------------

Democratic Party spokeswoman Lisa Cohen said the results of the hand recount were valid and should stand, despite King County's difficulty in accounting for all votes.

"It's been the most closely observed election in our lifetimes, I think. What's very important to realize and keep in context is that King County and the other counties say that their accuracy rate is more than 99.9 percent," Cohen said.

See comment after example #1.

Let me give you guys a hint: there are a large number of people that vote Democrat just because; many Republican voters are the same. However, there are a number of voters that will cease to vote for a party that appears to not only condone, but ra^ther actively encourages voter fraud. Grow up, folks. Clean up your act.

Update: Sound Politics has more details concerning this bit of electoral tomfoolery.

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yes, I will be watching

Battlestar Galactica has been resurrected on the SciFi Channel. If you didn't have a chance to see the mini-series last year, let me give you a bried synopsis: all of humanity has been wiped out except for a handful of spaceships and the rest are battling to survive. Now you're caught up.

Since I'm old enough to remember the original series, it's still a little bit weird seeing Starbuck as a woman. She's better looking than the original Starbuck, though, as is the newest female Cylon, played by Tricia Helfer.

Hey, it's not a true science fiction series unless there's some serious eye candy. Not in my universe, anyway.

Update: Turns out that Will Collier is a big fan.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 05:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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The sea is rising rapidly! Or not. Or really, really not.

Let's beg the question a little more, shall we?

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Capital One will be performing the same duty for this weekend's tsunami telethon that they did after 9/11: manning the phone banks for donations. Like most large financial services institutions, they handle thousands of phone calls daily, which makes them ideally suited for a task such as this one. Thousands of volunteers will be trained to work the phones for this charitable event.

In a related story, it appears that George Clooney and Bill O'Reilley have kissed and made up, at least for this one event. The reconciliation did have its hiccups, though: apparently Clooney sent a demand for an immediate yes or no that arrived a couple of hours after O'Reilley had already accepted. Oh well, it's not like the two will be spending weekends and holidays together.

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The inspiration for a Beatles' hit is closing its doors. Bummer.

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An Australian grandmother mistakenly grabs the glue instead of her eye drops. She avoids becoming an early Darwin award nominee due to the low toxicity of the glue.

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Bill Whittle has a new post up and it's about my least favorite director, Michael "my ass has its own zipcode" Moore. Apparently, Moore thinks that reason Republicans win elections is because they run actors. The Left's cure for this, of course, is to run an actor themselves. Bill exposes the fallacy of this thinking. Excerpt:

No, some are great movie stars, but generally speaking they’re miserable actors. But in person, truly great personalities. Which tends to confirm a theory of mine, which is that people who are really terrific actors are some of the most boring, colorless, hollow people you would ever be unfortunate enough to meet. I have met a few, and by and large they are simply empty vessels into which better, brighter people – the scientific term for them is writers – pour intelligence, wit, courage and character. That’s why these fictional creations are called characters. They’re the people actors want to be – but due to some defect, some lack of inherent character, these people cannot go out and actually become such people: soldiers, astronauts, cowboys – you know, interesting people. People they make movies about. Actors have to pretend to be them. Actually, first writers have to pretend to be them, then the actor takes these written-down make-believe instructions and then adds their own Eye Crinkles, Thoughtful Stares and Charming, Boyish Grins and viola! It’s a lot easier than actually becoming such a person, so you must admire the strategy, at least from a conservation of energy point of view.

There is very little in our safe, sanitary, prosperous world more disappointing than listening to an in-depth interview with a favorite celebrity and discovering, to our growing then endless dismay, that there is a long, long, looooooong way between Gillian Anderson and Dana Sculley. Or to see how far Jack Ryan is from Alec Baldwin. Or from Ben Affleck.

The bold-faced type was a great disappointment to me. Dana Sculley is(was) a scientist, pragmatic and disciplined to the core. Incredibly sexy and smart to boot. Gillian Anderson is a flake who appears to have a thing for the mystical powers of crystals. If rocks are so damned powerful, maybe she should have worn one during the last 2 seasons of the X Files. Just a thought.

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Hindrocket weighs in on the 60 Minutes whitewash with some information that could prove useful to the powers that be at CBS who will, of course, ignore it. Excerpt:

But, because virtually everyone in the CBS News organization shared Mary Mapes's politics and objective (i.e., the election of John Kerry), skeptical questions were not asked. If there is a single overriding explanation for how a fake story, intended to influence a Presidential election through the use of forged documents, could have been promulgated by 60 Minutes, it is the lack of diversity at CBS News.

For some years now, the party line of the mainstream media has been: of course we're pretty much all Democrats, but that doesn't influence our news coverage. If nothing else, Rathergate should put that defense to rest once and for all.

In a couple of weeks, I will be participating in a conference at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, sponsored by the Kennedy School along with the Harvard Law School and the Shorenstein Center on Press and Politics. The subject will be journalism, blogging, credibility and ethics. Judging from the list of participants, I suspect that most of the discussion may be about how bloggers can become more credible by adopting the standards of mainstream journalists. My own perspective will be a bit different. So far, the blogosphere has a far better record of honesty and accuracy than mainstream organs like the New York Times and CBS. This isn't entirely a matter of personality; it is also a function of the checks and balances of the blogosphere, which are far stronger and more effective than the alleged "checks and balances" of the mainstream media, which, in the absence of political and intellectual diversity, may not operate at all.

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My 26 month old son can carry on pretty good telephone conversations now. He makes no attempt to eat the phone and even makes statements on his own without prompting from me. Today, I got treated to the following:

I love you, Daddy.

You can't top that; don't even try.

Posted by: Physics Geek at 04:15 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Soaking overnight not recommended

Spam. Phishing. Spyware. These are the things that trouble my poor little computer. Some ideas on prevention can be found here. Excerpt:

If you don't run anti-spyware software, and you use the Internet, chances are at least a few quiet little applications are running in the background on your machine. They might simply be tracking where you browse, serving pop-ups and hijacking links. They might be capturing keystrokes on your system, searching for credit card numbers and other personal information.

Running some kind of spyware software is crucial: A couple of hours with "Spybot Search and Destroy" can clean out a system and bring it back to the world of computing. Think it's not a problem? In "Panic over Spyware", John C. Dvorak reports that Dell is fielding more than 70,000 calls a week related to problems it blames on spyware. That's a lot of nasty little downloads.

Worse yet, as Dvorak points out, spyware is getting nastier, moving on from "market research" to employee and spousal monitoring, spambots, and worse still, identity theft.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has just announced its own anti-spyware tool, now in beta. But regardless of which program you choose, you should be running some kind of spyware remover now. For an excellent introduction to spyware-fighting tools, check out our sidebar on Detecting and Eliminating Adware, and consider running one of the Editors' Choice anti-spyware tools such as Ad-Aware SE Plus 1.02, and Spy Sweeper 2.2 that can scan for spyware in real time while you browse.

Related links here and here.

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Finally, some news that will put a smile on your face. Mine, anyway.

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