Eel made a quick trip to the post office on my behalf today to send the appropriate information to SIBOC to get my credit cleared. Since they claim not to have recieved my last one, I wanted this one sent by certified mail.

When you send something by certified mail with a receipt request, the recipient signs it and it gets sent back to you so that you have proof that they got it.

Here's the thing, though: In the three certified letters I've ever sent, I have not once ever gotten a receipt back. Never. I know that they've recieved it since they respond to it or whatever, but if the whole point of the exercise is to have proof that you sent it and they recieved it, I never actually get said proof.

It's still worth it, though. If they have to sign for it, they theoretically know that they can't say that they didn't recieve it.

I just find it very strange that I never actually get the receipt back.

This is really sad:

Police are investigating a homicide in Pocatello on Pole Line Road

At nine this morning....the Pocatello police departmentrecived a phone call.

It was from co-workers who found the 24 year old woman who live here...dead.

Police tell us that according to the people she worked with...she was never late to work.

When she didn't arrive they became worried and went to her house to check on her.

Given evidence of trauma to the body, police are calling this a death with a suspicious circumstance.

The exact cause of death is unknown at this time

Neighbors say that the woman did live alone, and was renting the house.

She was supposed to be married in two weeks.

She was apparently good friends with the sister of one of my co-workers.

This , on the other hand, is pretty cool:

There’s one vegetable that’s not just for popping and rolling over butter, you can also get lost in it!

It’s corn!

[...]

I’m told it’s a little bit easier if you go through it during the day.

That way, you can see where the paths go a little bit better.

Nancy Andrus, manager of “The Maize,” says, “You basically go through at each intersection and figure out where you’ve been and where you’re going. And it takes the average person about an hour to go through probably two miles of pathways.”

“The Maize” is in the same place it has been for the last eight years along Highway 20, right next to Bish’s RV.

This year’s theme is aliens.

I really hope I can make the time to wade through that!

I was working late to make up for some lost time when I mentioned to one of my coworkers when a coworker and I were debating the virtues of Tater Falls versus Gate City. I commuted two hours a day from Gate City to Tater Falls for work. He commutes from Tater Falls to Gate City for college.

As our conversation waned, another coworker named Farah jumped in. Farah and I hadn't talked before, though I got good vibes from her pretty early on that she and I would get along.

Farah: You live in Gate City?
RAW: Yep.
Farah: Where in Gate City?
RAW: On Fifth Avenue, across from the university and the cemetary.
Farah: Oh, I used to work out there. You ever heard of the Firebird?
RAW: Oh yeah, I live right across the way from there. Did you hear about the fire?
[short conversation ensues about the fire]
Farah: So where do you live again?
RAW: It's a place called Thrifthaven. It's right across the Dunston Street.
[short conversation ensues about where Dunston Street is]
Farah: Oh wait, at the hotel?
RAW: Well, it used to be a hotel.
Farah: I knew the name Thrifthaven sounded familiar.
RAW: Yeah, they've converted it in to an apartment now.
Farah: How? The rooms there are tiny!
RAW: Oh, did you work there, too?
Farah: No, back when it was a hotel, my boyfriend and I would go over there to screw around. They used to rent by the hour, so it was really popular with college students in the 70's.
RAW: I can't say that I'm particularly surprised. Did they call it Thrifthaven University Hotel back then?
Farah: No, why?
RAW: Cause they call it Thrifthaven University Apartments now, but most of the people that live there are ex-cons. Very few college students.
Farah: Ahhh, well they used to cater almost exclusively to college students.
RAW: Sounds like it.
Farah: You don't sleep on the beds there, do you?
RAW: Why?
Farah: ...
RAW: I doubt they have the same beds now that they used then.
Farah: ...
RAW: The beds back then probably got... uhhh... wore out pretty quickly, I'd imagine.
Farah: Yeah, you're probably right.
RAW: I'm going to have to check over my bed when I get home.
Farah: Well, just give it the sniff test.
RAW: I have practically no sense of smell.
Farah: Good thing, probably.
RAW: Yeah.

Dogs can detect cancer, study shows
Some interesting anecdotes of dogs being able to detect cancer and a study backing it up. While hospitals probably won't be having K-9 units any time soon, it's still really interesting stuff.

Hurricane Season Has Some Reconsidering Living In Florida
I'm not sure why anyone would really want to live in Florida. Don't get me wrong, it's a great state to visit, but I can't imagine it would be nearly as fun without the ability to leave with more than just yourself and a carfull whenever the hurricanes come.

Dan Rather's Day of Reckoning
By far the best explanation I've seen for CBS's odd behavior since the forged documents were originally challenged.

No Way To Run A Campaign - September Timeline
A biased, but interesting, look at all the mis-steps of the Kerry campaign in September. I intend to write about it at some point before the debates (though I'm running out of time), but the election isn't over until the debates. If Kerry can't turn it around at that point, I'm not sure how he's going to be able to.

The Insurgency Buster [via Judd]
David Brooks writes a powerful piece in the NYT about the Salvadoran elections in the 80's that took place under circumstances considerably more dire than Iraq. Brooks is unpopular with many on the right due to his inconsistent views, but he has been unwavering in support even as other conservatives have been rushing to abandon the President's war in recent months.

Gerrymandering
Taking on Gerrymandering
Matthew Yglesias and Andrew Olmsted write on the subject of proportional representation. Yglesias puts forth a single model and Olmsted critiques it. As a former student of one Dr. Lutz, I have a lot to say one the matter, but no energy to devote to it at the moment.

Beer for blood campaign is success
An outstanding idea put forth by Poland. The best part is that after you donate blood, you can get drunk off a lot less, saving the state a considerable amount of money and getting people trashed on only two pints of beer!

When I was in high school, I took a class called "Positive Mental Attitude." If that sounds like a creampuff course with little more to offer than a slightly padded GPA, I thought the same thing when I signed up for the course. While it was the easy A that I anticipated, I must confess that there were elements of that class that have stuck with me. More elements than, say, precalculus, which ended up neither easy nor an A.

Coach Dawkins approached the class more seriously than other coaches approach their theoretically more weighty classes. He knew that most of us thought it was a joke, but he enthusiastically made us jump through all the hoops with lectures, discussions, and Zig Zigler videos. I'm not sure if I took as much away from the class as he had hoped, but there is one phrase that I remember quite clearly:

"When we're upset with ourselves, we will talk about ourselves in ways we would never dare talk about anyone else."

It's been a pretty rough week for me, self-esteem wise. I don't mean that in an angsty "I just can't beleeeeive in myself anymore [sob]" kind of way, but rather that there are tangible ways that I've screwed up in ways that could have costed me well over $1,000.

Last week, my folks got another letter from the Southern Idaho Bureau of Credit (SIBOC) that stated that I needed to sign an affadavit of forgery to settle the matter of a forged check. The only problem was that I sent them that affadavit almost a month ago.

I had intended to copy the affadavit two dozen times just in case they didn't get it. The only problem was that between the police station and Kinkos, I astoundingly managed to lose it. Within the first fifteen minutes of having it in my possession! I made a copy of the letter requesting the affadavit to send with the affadavit, but I realized before I made my second copy that the affadavit itself was missing. Knowing me, since I would be back at Kinko's later, I figured that I would just copy the letter then

So I had to call Detective Morgan and arrange to get another copy. He wonderfully obliged. To make matters worse, the reporting detective is the only one who can give me a copy, so I was wasting the Detective's time and not some secretary's.

Knowing me, after recieving the second copy I never copied it because it was so much hassle to get it I just wanted to get rid of it. Since I didn't return to Kinko's, I didn't have another copy of the letter requesting the affadavit either.

So after cussing up a storm about how irresponsible and lazy I was for not going to Kinkos like I had originally planned, I called Morgan and asked him for yet another copy of the affadavit, apologizing profusely and promising to go to Kinko's immediately after. He was wonderfully understanding and I got another copy of it.

Meanwhile last week, I took a trip to the lube place to get my car tuned up and to the bank to cash a paycheck. When I left the lube place, the check was missing from my car. Knowing me, I reasoned, I left it at the apartment. When I got to the apartment, it wasn't there. Knowing me, I reasoned, I either threw it away when I cleaned out my car. I can never, ever, ever clean out anything without throwing away something of importance.

So I wrote our HR guy at work and asked him to cancel the other check and reissue a new one. He wonderfully obliged and said that he would go ahead and give me the reissue with the next paycheck that was due to come out. I thanked him a million times while cursing myself for losing yet another thing, as I seem to lose anything of even vague importance.

The check turned a couple of days later. I stashed it away in my CD case so that I wouldn't throw it away when I cleaned out my car. By then the new one had been reissued.

I got the checks on Friday and went to the bank on Saturday, two hours after it closed. Unfortunately, I don't have a mechanism to deposit checks after hours right now (I lack the slips, envelopes, etc.)

Monday morning I was driving to work and I noticed two envelopes on the front seat instead of three (the three: the nigh empty SIBOC envelope with Detective Morgan's card, the original paycheck that was now void, and the new paycheck and reissued one in a single envelope). Naturally, it was the one with the two paychecks missing. Knowing me, I must have put it in my pocket after seeing that the bank was closed and it probably fell out of my pocket when I sat down in the slacks I was wearing (which happen to be slacks where things fall out of the pocket when you sit down). For fifteen minutes I hurled one cuss word after another at me for losing three paychecks in two weeks. I searched my car while driving 75 mph (the Idaho speed limit) down the freeway.

The check was in the envelope with the voided check. I put it there so that I wouldn't have to worry about keeping track of three envelopes and instead only keep track of two.

Meanwhile, when I got my stuff together to send to SIBOC, I decided to put it in my job-hunting folder since that was where I kept pertinent documents on the road.

That's where I found ten copies of the affadavit and ten copies of the letter requesting the affadavit. I'd gone to Kinko's after all and apparently safely stored them there so that I wouldn't lose them.

Probably the most prominant trait I got from my mother is her temper. Most people don't associate me with an explosive temper, but when I get my guard down it happens. Usually with inanimate objects or things that I know I can cuss out without it doing any damage socially. Inanimate objects and, of course, myself.

Over the past week, I found myself saying countless things to myself. Accusations of incompetence, laziness, stupidity. If anyone else were to say half the things to me that I've said over the past couple of weeks, there's a solid chance that I would never speak to them again.

"When we're upset with ourselves, we will talk about ourselves in ways we would never dare talk about anyone else."

It's no secret that organization is not my strong suit. I go to extreme measures to keep from losing things and then forget the measures that I go to and lose them anyway. If there's a solution to this problem, I really don't know what it is.

Yet apparently I did just about everything right. I put the first check in a safe place, placed the second check so that I wouldn't have to worry about keeping track of so much, and made all the copies of the documents for SIBOC that I needed to.

The only thing that I didn't do was sit back and stop to think about whether or not I had actually done these things to begin with.

Every throught that began with "Knowing me..." ended with something that I didn't do.

So maybe I don't know myself like I think I do. Or, if I gain a little more faith in myself about these matters and keep improving, I don't have to be the person I've always known myself to be.

Mainstays

Miami Hurricanes 38, Houston Cougars 13
This is what I was hoping that the UH-OU and UI-Miami games would look like, so I'm glad that we got it right the second time. Miami is kicking themselves for letting it be as close as it was, so Houston must have done something right. What I'm a bit curious about: Where's Jackie Battle? With Anthony Evans out, I would have figured that he'd be more prominant than he apparently was.

UAB Blazers 35, Memphis Tigers 28
Memphis hit a roadbump on what was supposed to be the season they contended for the conference title. UAB dominated every aspect of this game. They've consistently been the most midling team in the conference, never winning less than five and never making it to a bowl game. They came close to a bowl game last year before losing to Houston in the final game. If they keep this up, they might make it over that hump.

Cincinnati Bearcats 30, East Carolina Pirates 19
East Carolina has won only one of their last seventeen games. Luckily, they play Army again this year so they have another chance at a win. Cincinnati has gone 2-0 against non-BCS teams and 0-2 against the BCS kind. It'll be interesting to see how they do next year in the Big East.

Southern Miss Golden Eagles 32, Tulane Green Wave 14
After beating Nebraska, I'm sure their victory against theoretical rival Tulane was a bit of a let-down. They're apparently somewhat disappointed that they didn't win by more, but it was enough of a blowout that I have to wonder why ESPN.com felt the need to recap this game and not the TCU-USF one that went into triple overtime.

Departing Teams

South Florida Bulls 45, Texas Christian Horned Frogs 44
I commented on TCU's inept kicker, Peter Lacoco, after their game against Northwestern. They could have finished that game off a lot sooner with some kicking. Well this time they didn't get away so lucky, as Lacoco missed an extra point in over time. Congratulations to USF on their first victory this year against a I-A opponent.

Louisville Cardinals 34, North Carolina Tarheels 0
Louisville is 2-0 against BCS teams with a combined score of 62-0. The only team they've allowed to score so far is, oddly, Army. I write about Louisville because there apparently wasn't much of a game to write about between UL and UNC.

Connecticut Huskies 40, Army Black Knights 3
That's Army's 17th straight loss, I believe. They've won a single game out of their last 28. Their departure from C*USA will be an amicable one, I think. If they weren't Army, they'd have to be talking about I-AA about now.

Incoming Teams

Texas Longhorns 35, Rice Owls 13
Rice put up a respectable game against a tough Big XII team. Considering the strong finish they had this year, I repeat my earlier sentiment that these guys may turn some heads this year.

Tulsa Golden Hurricane 49, Southwest Missouri State Bears 7
Tulsa deserved a break after facing a couple solid Big XII teams and Navy and they got it against the lackluster I-AA Bears. They've played above them, they've played below them. Still no idea what happens when they play someone in their league.

SMU Mustangs 36, San Jose State 13
SMU has won for the first time in the last fifteen games, so I'm sure they'll take just about any victory they can get at this point. SJSU has won exactly two conference games this decade against teams that aren't going to be in the C*USA next year. Luckily for them, they'll have former Sun Belt teams to kick around.

America's richest 400 just get richer
Self-Made Billionaires
Gman over at MTPolitics makes a good point about the most recent list of richest folks: Five of the top ten are self-made (the rest are Waltons, as in Wal-mart).

The two most flattering photographs ever taken of John F. Kerry
The title more or less says it all. The description of the second one struck a chord with me as it did with Beldar.

Curt Schilling Rocks
Chris demonstrates why, well, Curt Shilling rocks. Truth be told, I have a great amount of respect for any figure that makes appearences in message boards and chat rooms pertaining to their field. That takes guts.

South Carolina's 'Pops' cleared by NCAA
Didn't they do that in Necessary Roughness?

Pro-life, pro-choice
I may or may not comment on this one in the future, but it's a Buddhist's approach to the abortion issue.

Candidates Gear Up for Crucial Debates
Take this article. Replace "John Kerry" with "Al Gore," alter some biographical information, and you are reading the exact same analysis of the 2000 debates, minus the "Bush is dead meat" conventional wisdom. If this is any indication, I feel better about the debates than I did before reading this article.

Art lovers urged to strip off
25% off at an art gallery if you bear it all.

It didn't occur to me until I was talking to Eel about it last night.

The best case scenario for the computer is that the power supply busted. Given the problems that preceded it, I doubt that I will get away that lucky.

The day the cold front came through, three days or so before it died, the computer was locking up. It started with when I was playing video files or burning CDs (both actions are more prone to cause lockups than, say, Microsoft Word). The computer has always had a problem booting up because the boot drive has been on its last legs for a little while. The lockups during use were disturbing, but only insofar as I felt I would need to replace the HD before I was ready to do so.

So I resigned myself to the fate of just keeping it in file server mode and not logging in to it (using my laptop). Even sitting there idle was causing problems. Eventually it just stopped booting up. It couldn't get past the video card check or when Win2k was loading up, green horizontal lines would start to appear, then mishmash blocks, and it would reboot.

Then it rebooted, hung at the video card, green lines started appearing, and it died.

So my guess is that the motherboard has fried. The problem with a fried motherboard is that everything is attached to it, so any or all of the hardware on the computer could be effected. So next to a power supply issue, the next best possibility is that the motherboard died and after that is that the motherboard and RAM both will need to be replaced.

If the video card, sound card, NIC card, or whatever needs to be replaced, that's cool too. The boot drive itself is almost certainly dead.

What I'm worried about is the data drive. If it's gone, then I've probably lost most of my mp3s. That's heartbreaking considering how many of the CDs they came from are scratched.

But last night I realized it's possible that I lost my writing.

I usually have my writing backed up on both my network and my laptop via MS Briefcase. Last time I lost a data drive, I lost a year's worth of writing but had most of it on my then laptop. With Briefcase, the backups are always up to date.

Except that something odd happened to the laptop. For reasons I don't quite understand, it reverted to a previous saved state, meaning that certain applications that I've installed aren't there anymore.

That also might mean that the Briefcase is gone.

Which might mean that I've lost everything.

It's very unlikely at this point. It would require both a dead hard-drive and the laptop reverting itself to a version prior to my putting Briefcase on it (and Briefcase is one of the earliest things I do).

So I'm being paranoid.

I'm being paranoid, but until I get home and get some piece of mind, it's going to be a long, long day.

Update: All is well. Even the dying hard drive hasn't died yet!

Lil Amber & John Ashcroft
A while back, in one of his earliest posts (on the blog in it's current incarnation) Christopher attacked the sticky issue of mock-child porn. Pornography in which legal women pretend to be underage to pick at some of the most unsavery tastes of some men.

Iconic Filmmaker Russ Meyer Dies
Russ Meyer is considered a pioneer of pornography, though his works are pretty tame by today's standards.

Ad-vising -- Protesters urge boycott of radio station, newspaper
Some media outlets in Salina, KS, are in some hot water from consumers for selling ads to an adult store. I support their use of their first amendment rights, though I think Salinas must be a really nice place if that's one of the biggest issues on their table.


Pornography and the Internet in the United States
A great top-down look at Internet pornography, from its origins, arguments for and against it, and the legal history surrounding it.

The Pornography Plague
A case against pornography.

Breaking Pornography Addiction
As the title suggests, how to confront the problem if you (a) have it and (b) see it as a problem.

In Defense of Pornography
A male defense of pornography.

A Feminist Defense of Pornography
A female defense of pornography.

Some interesting news over at eMusic

Among the roster of music experts hired by eMusic are former Rolling Stone writer and author Michael Azerrad, former New York Times music critic Ann Powers and Justin Davidson, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of classical music.

The critics will write album reviews, columns, and communicate with subscribers on a message board.

Users will also be able to discuss or swap song recommendations with other subscribers through the message boards and other online community features.

I forsook eMusic a while back when they started limiting the number of downloads. It wasn't that I wanted that many songs, but rather I downloaded very unevenly, 100 songs one month and then none the next two. I tended to download everything that appealed to me and then delete what I didn't like. While they haven't reversed that policy (and probably can't for financial reasons), they've done the next best thing, which is put more emphasis on information about the artists so users can more accurately determine what they want. Might save them on bandwidth, too. Unfortunately, it won't save them this former customer.

Masked revelers prefer Bush [via Judd]
An interesting look at as good a presidential predictor as any. And unlike most prediction models, this one actually picked 2000's winner. No, I'm not putting any stock in it, but find it amusing.

Flag football season gets under way
An extremely critical look at recent changes in NFL penalty rules. On one hand, higher scores are generally exciting and these new rules apparently favor the offense. On the other hand, penalties are dreadfully boring and I'd imagine 9 of 10 fans would rather see 15 yards gained any way other than through a yellow flag.


Kerry Tops Bush In MTV Poll
Not a particularly surprising result. What I do find interesting is that, once again, the ones less likely to vote actually favor the Republican instead of the Democrat. I've commented before that these kinds of results runs contrary to conventional wisdom, which states that if everyone voted, it would favor Republicans.

University of Texas [at Dallas] allows wireless Internet
The laws here are quite convoluted. If someone rents out property and wants to restrict wireless Internet, there is no reason, in my view, why they shouldn't. Even if they are a state university.

DJ's answer machine gives Romeos the brush-off
The article is on one in Moscow, Russia. There's actually a great one in the states, though it'd be hard for anyone outside of New York to pretend that a 212 number is their own. Anyone with a cell phone or that has unlimited long distance should really call 212-479-7990. It's hilarious.

Resource: Dales' Electoral College
Resource: Real Clear Politics
Two sites tracking the elections that matter -- the electoral college. They use different criteria but both are an extraordinary wealth of information.

Doral

Let me first introduce myself for those of you that don't know me. I am Doral, the youngest member of RAW's Menagerie of computers. Since the whole Idaho thing, he's taken down the Menagerie and been running almost exclusively on me. All of the attention has been nice, but I've begun to have serious issues with my guardian.

First he took away my friends, Maverick and Heineken. Then he asked me to do all of their work for them. I don't like to be ignored, but enough is enough!

But then the last straw came this week. For some reason, he decided not to turn on the heater. Do you know how cold it gets around here? I'd check the Internet and tell you, but I can't because I have exacted retribution.

Just to show him who is in charge, I destroyed myself! Just to show him what's what, I overheated in nigh freezing weather! Ha! The Irony!

That'll show him!

Oh wait. Now I'm dead. He'll probably salvage me for parts and throw the rest of me away.

Crap.

You'd be surprised how hard it is to type in 39 degree weather when your heater doesn't work. Well, it actually works, but I was told not to turn it on because it's a fire hazard at the moment.

I bought a blanket over the weekend that's being put to good use.

I'm actually doing okay, but my computer hates the cold more than it hates the warm. It's not worked right since the weather turned and then last night it konked out. For good, I think.

Not just my computer. We've had more downtime this week than hours when we can actually get things done.

They must get cranky when it's cold, too.

Hopefully not as cranky as my Computer.

Hugo Schwyzer, my favorite socialist feminism professor, links to some interesting posts and adds some insight to the use of offensive profanity. By that I mean profanity that is derogatory towards a minority, gender, or whatnot. I don't have anything to say on the subject except that this caught my attention:

They are also stunned that "asshole" is also anti-gay, misogynistic speak; "asshole" is invariably only used for men, despite the fact that women also possess this part of the anatomy -- it is used to refer to men who allow themselves to be penetrated like women.) What they want to know, of course, is when and how one can continue to use these words without perpetuating gender violence. Do we have to stop swearing altogether, they ask?

How odd.

If I'd been asked where the term "asshole" comes from, homosexuality never would have crossed my mind. I'd have guessed that it had something to do with one of the most perpetually "unclean" (for obvious reasons) parts of the human anotomy. If I'd been asked to find an alternative origin, I'd guess that it had something to do with being full of ... crap. An asshole is full of crap just like the other side of an "ass hole" is.

The "Free Dictionary" has another alternative, namely that a posterior is taboo and therefore the word is used because it is a part of a taboo area. But that's apparently a wiki definition. Hugo also has a point that it is exclusively directed at men when the taboo angle might be more effective at the gender that less appreciates fart jokes.

Has anyone else heard that the term comes from being derogatory towards homosexuals, or, for that matter, anything sexual at all?

Don’t follow the leader
A good list of "don'ts" when it comes to fashion. While I tend to be anti-fashion, I can't say that I disagree with anything listed except for the single earring thing. That's one place where, for men, symmetry doesn't pay off.

Is Your City Sloshed? - Your statistical sobriety checkpoint [via Dustbury]
New Orleans is resting on its laurels. They are a whopping sixth from the bottom, beat out by El Paso, Denver, Anchorage, Albuquerque, and Kansas City. It's based on drunk driving arrests. Judging by the top ten, you gotta ask what Alabama, New York, and Florida are doing right.

Coloradans for Electoral Chaos?
If you thought Florida in 2000 was bad, Colorado in 2004 could be even worse regardless of how close the election is there (if the EC is close enough nation-wide). In addition to voting for president, they're voting on how to apportion their votes in the same election. This one is already in the courts before the election even started.

A strident minority: anti-Bush US troops in Iraq
An interesting look at those in our military that are not fans of the current administration and/or want out of Iraq ASAP.

Hawks and the Presidency
Kerry for Hawks
Michael Totten makes a hawk's case for John Kerry and Andrew Olmsted responds. Totten makes his case well, and I hope if Kerry wins that he's right.

So Much to Answer For [via Bluishorange]
I was going to rip in to this "happiness is Houston in the rear-view mirror" post, but then I saw it was written by an old Daily Cougar chum. So I'll let bygones be bygones and wish him well to wherever he is headed.

There were two strange things that happened this morning.

The first is that there appears to be some calcification on the mountains. Just as calcified teeth start having white spots on them, the mountains have this weird white growth along the top - except unlike the white on yellow teeth, it looks more impressive on green mountains. I recall seeing them when I got here and checked the paper regularly to see if there were any articles on this strange phenomenon, but I found none. They went away before too long and I didn't think anything of them until they reappeared this morning. Oddly, they were gone by the time I drove home.

The second oddity was on my car when I got ready to drive to work. There was this translucent film covering the windshield of my car. At first I thought it was ice, as that would occasionally happen in Houston, but then I remembered that it's September and so that wasn't possible. Oddly, it was as cold as ice and I found that using a credit card to scrape it worked effectively just as it had with ice in Houston.

Whatever it was, a running engine made it receed into nothingness.

I checked the local newspaper today on news of this phenomenon, but found none. I guess, like the white rain and cold sand, people just adjust to these bizarre geological occurences.

It must have something to do with lingering fallout from the nuclear accident. It's probably not in the papers because of a cover-up.

Where Kerry Went Wrong
It's early yet to be saying eulogies for the Kerry campaign, but Jonathan Alter (who would very much like Kerry to win) puts on his campaign manager hat and puts together some good criticisms of the Kerry campaign. On a side note, is it me, or does Alter look like a random character from The West Wing?

Review: A most amazing comic-book artist
Alex Ross is a pompous egomaniac. The problem is, though, that he really is that good. This apparently came out last year, but I need to get a hold of it.

A Look at Scenes From Hurricane Ivan [via Eel]
Pensacola is almost certainly not as we left it a week or two ago. I imagine that the condo unit we stay in is going to get some much-needed new furniture. I just hope that that one room with the lime green walls and glowing flamingo ornaments will not repeat that error. Interestingly, this article talks about the Flora-Bama, which is an institution down there. The younger portions of the Stenholm and Whitlock clans usually make a trip out there, though we didn't last year. Sounds like they have some work to do before it reopens.

What my sources have to say about the "Bush Bounce"
Chris Elam posts an email from some national poll consultants regarding an oddity in the Pew polls, which one day show Bush with a 13-point lead and the next show a dead heat. BurntOrangeReport's Byron echoes my feelings on polls and media.

Couple have wedding reception at KFC
It's reported from The Sun, so it's suspect. Nonetheless, since my prom dinner was a three-course Wendy's bagged meal, I can't help but hope it's true.

The Cordovas had a fight last night. A huge fight. There was slamming of things against the wall, much screaming, and much awkwardness hearing it all while watching my game and playing around on the computer.

The Cordovas made up last night. There was much slamming of a particular queen-sized something against the wall, much screaming (of a different sort), and much awkwardness hearing it all while watching my game and playing around on the computer.

I'm not sure which was more awkward...

Though they make appearences occasionally, the LDS missionaries are less persistent than I feared they would be before I moved up here. Thankfully, I haven't been hit up yet. Neither had Yale.

But somehow they found something out. Since getting out of the hospital they've visited no less than six times.

The LDS tends to pursue those going through turmoil of one sort of another. The couple of converts I've talked up here made their conversion when they were down about this or that and the Mormons showed up to help. So these aren't random visits. Nor are they because they see his black eye and figure he must be in need of a helping hand. They started coming by and asking for him by name and were aware before meeting him that he'd been assaulted.

If I had to guess, I'd say that someone along the way tipped someone off, probably a nurse or a cop. Or maybe they regularly check police records or something. I don't know. But I find the personal interest that they are taking in a total stranger a little eerie. Makes me want to be more careful of who I talk to.

If you've sent me an email in the last couple weeks and I haven't responded to it, there's a chance that I didn't get the email until last night. For some reason I just got dumped with a whole lot of emails that were apparently sent a while back.

[Link]

You are Superman. Nine times out of 10, you can be counted on in an emergency. Why don't you ever take any credit?
Maybe I should have just admitted that I'm a lacky? If I'd given my alternate answers, I probably would have ended up as Catwoman, so I'll take it.

Eh. I could have written a better one.

You've just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, and the president of the United States commends you for... overcoming noxious fumes and fighting the enemy anyway. (having no sense of smell made this an easy selection.)

If you competed in the 2004 Olympics, what would you win the gold in? Weightlifting (my size has gotta count for something, right? Besides, if I'm gonna be a superhero, there won't be any passing out towels for me.)

What's your weakness? A woman. (Always my weakness)

Your last lover complained about your... tendency to disappear and then reappear. (close call between this and meekness)

What type of undergarments do you favor? Boxers

Conference Teams

Florida State Seminoles 34, UAB Blazers 7
Bowden called this game "boring" and bragged that he didn't have to punt the one play that he did. I suppose FSU has to lick its wounds after last week's loss, but demolishing a middling team in a non-BCS conference isn't exactly awe-inspiring. FSU did give a bunch of tickets away to hurricane victims. Too bad they didn't get to see a contest.

Syracuse Orangemen 19, Cincinnati Bearkats 6
It's hard to say how good Syracuse is going to be this year, since the Orange-no-longer-men got walloped by Purdue in the opening week but rebounded to defeat a hapless Buffalo and now future conference-mate Cincinnati. Cincinnati managed to beat up on Miami of Ohio, but are going to need to prove that they can play with the big boys for their sake as well as the Big East's. Yard-for-yard, Cincinnati played a decent game, but got killed on turnovers.

(AP #25) Memphis Tigers 47, Arkansas State Indians 35
Memphis is one of the best that C*USA has to offer this year, and until the final minutes of the game they were losing against a Sun Belt team. This is either really bad for Memphis (and the C*USA) or, considering SBC Troy's victory over incoming C*USA Marshall, the Sun Belt boosters may not have been smoking crack when they said they aimed to compete with Conference USA. Memphis managed to pull the game together in the last three minutes, soaring ahead with three touchdowns. Despite their win, they may not find themselves ranked next week in the AP poll.

Houston Cougars 35, Army Black Knights 21
Kevin, my father, and my brother made it to this game. Apparently the Coogs look a lot better on paper than they did during the game. Army extends the nation's longest losing streak. Only a touchdown seperates the final score this year compared to Houston's successful year last year, so I still hold out hope that all is not lost.

Outgoing Conference Teams

Texas Tech Red Raiders , TCU Horned Frogs 35
However you do it, overcoming a 21-point deficit to a 35-point victory over TCU is impressive (especially considering the close game with SMU) for Texas Tech. Texas Tech lost against TCU's future conferencemate New Mexico. This may not bode well for TCU's ability to compete with the bigger boys out west. On the other hand, Tech barely beat the SMU team that TCU slaughtered, so I guess we won't know till next year.

South Carolina Gamecocks 34, South Florida Bulls 3
When records are being broken at your expense, it's not a good thing. South Carolina racked up higher numbers in everything except penalties. South Florida was dominated in every respect, racking up twice the passing yardage, twice the rushing yardage, three times the first downs, and 11 times the points.

Incoming Conference Teams

(#3) Georgia Bulldogs 13, Marshall Thunder Herd 3
Marshall managed to hang tough against Ohio State last week, but they couldn't get anything going against Georgia as they slip to 0-3. While losing to Georgia and Ohio State is nothing to be ashamed of, I'll bet they're really, really wishing they'd won the Troy game so that they'd have at least one win on the year.

(#23) Boise State Broncos 47, UTEP Miners 31
UTEP played Boise State closer than Oregon State did. Oregon State gave LSU a challenge. Somewhere in this might possibly maybe suggest that they should be able to beat more than a limp Weber State (the 1 in their 1-2 record). Boise State is kicking themselves for struggling in this one. They probably should be.

Oklahoma State Cowboys 59, SMU Mustangs 7
After an impressive debut against Texas Tech, SMU has returned to form. SMU has a 15-game losing streak and looks set to replace Army as the cellar dweller of the new C*USA. Hopefully they will have better luck in the conference.

Navy Midshipmen 29, Tulsa Golden Hurricane 0
Tulsa had a great year last year. It's not translating into success this year, but they've played a pretty rough schedule. That said, they haven't played anybody close and they will need to prove that last year wasn't a fluke. This is Navy's first shut-out in a decade.

Rice Owls 41, Hawaii Warriors 29
As bad as Houston's year has been so far, at least they haven't lost to a newly minted I-A team and managed to stay within a touchdown of Rice. As I said earlier, Rice is an underacknowledged team. They may contribute more to the new Conference USA than will some of the more highly touted additions.

Unrelated Games

Texas A&M Aggies 27, (#25) Clemson Tigers 6
Clemson lost to unranked Georgia Tech last week. The week before, they scraped by unranked Wake Forest. This week, they lost to an unranked Texas A&M. While A&M is assuredly thrilled about beating a ranked team, I'm not sure a school can do any more to get unranked than Clemson has.

Auburn Tigers 10, LSU Tigers 9
Now that LSU has lost, I can start rooting for them again.

Lex has some pretty even-handed comments on the CBS/hoax story that I mostly agree with:

CBS, for its part, is moving away from defending the authenticity of the documents while continuing to defend the authenticity of their contents. I know my saying the following will make me unpopular with my conservative friends, but: This makes Dan Rather guilty of, at worst, misdemeanor reckless disregard. He should have been more careful in determining the authenticity of the memos or should have been more careful in explaining the difference between the likelihood that the memos were authentic and the likelihood that, authentic or not, they accurately reflected Killian's thoughts at the time (there's much more evidence in support of the latter notion).

But there's zero evidence Rather knowingly broadcast false information about Bush's service record, and the idea that he should be fired, let alone that anyone else higher ranking than he at CBS should be, is laughable (although he and CBS might want to ponder the notion that he should leave simply to help restore the network's credibility). This is a boneheaded lack of judgment unbefitting someone of Rather's rank in the industry, but it is in no way, shape or form as serious as, say, Jayson Blair's serial fabrications for The New York Times...

[Note: I cropped the post mid-sentence because that's a can of worms I'd rather not open at the moment]

Short of catching the forger red-handed, there really is no way of proving that they are false. That said, I came in to it pretty open-minded I believe that the story the document portrayed is probably more accurate than not, regardless of the documents themselves. That said, the pro-forgery side has made the case a lot more definitively than the anti-forgery side has and to say "may be true, may not be" (which is the gyst of Lex's first paragraph)is giving CBS something of a free pass. When an accusation is made, the burden of proof is on the accusor to demonstrate proof (and the authenticity thereof). They've tried and failed to do that.

As to the question of forgery, whether or not the content is true is pretty irrelevent, in my view. The story was not that "Bush evaded service," but rather "Bush evaded service and we have proof!" Without the documents, there wasn't much of a story in the original broadcast. If they'd brought the secretary on to say that Bush's supervisor thought Bush was getting a free ride, that would have been a story, but without the imact of documented proof.

Secondly, CBS demonstrated little desire to investigate the documents once they were run. They dismissed their critics as if what they had to say didn't matter because they were CBS and the critics weren't. They were far more interested in making the documents credible than they were in finding out if the documents were, in fact, authentic. That is far more troubling to me than the documents in the first place. The next time that any CBS journalist talks about "the quest for the truth" or anything in that regard, I'll have to restrain myself from laughter.

All of that said, I have to agree with Lex on the larger part of the argument insofar that I haven't seen any proof of malicious intent on the part of CBS. They were probably too eager to believe the documents in the first place, but that could easily have less to do with blatant partisanship and a lot more to do with tit-for-tat with Kerry and those accusing him of being a less than stellar sailor. Goose, gander, and all that.

There is, of course, the matter of the documentation experts claiming that they warned CBS, but I've seen little to back up their claims and they have as much incentive to lie. Some of them were named to prove that the documents were true. There is a good chance that they didn't look very closely in the first place, signed off on it, and then later feared that their reputations would go down with Rather's. That they have run away from it at the very least suggests that the documents are not credible (if they were sure of the doc's authenticity, I doubt they would have done what they did), but not necessarily more than that.

CBS is quite guilty of shoddy journalism and of being more interested in 'getting the story' than the accuracy thereof, but it doesn't yet equate to "perpetuation of fraud" as Beldar somewhat convincingly argues. At least not yet. If it is proven that Bill Burkett (a Bush-loather with a less-than-credible history of accusations against Bush and a vendetta against the Texas National Guard) is the source, then it becomes journalism so shoddy that Rather should be fired. But I'm not convinced just yet.

But the question at this point isn't whether the documents are authentic (the case that they are authentic is pretty difficult to make at this point), but whether (a) CBS knew it when they ran the story, (b) CBS knew that they might be but figured no one would notice, or (c) CBS really had no reason to believe that they weren't.

Just as the burden is on CBS to prove the documents are real, it's on CBS's critics to prove that this was all intentional and malicious.

Fertility Clinics Vary on Embryo Disposal
An interesting look at what fertility clinics do with excess embryos.

Truck maker unveils a monster pickup
I remember a commercial a while back about the "ultimate SUV," in which some guy transformed a "big yella" schoolbus into something mildly resembling an SUV. It was a joke, of course, but I found it amusing. This monstrosity (and I say this as someone that is not averse to SUVs) looks like a transformed 18-wheeler cab.

Face/Off? Freaky...
Chris takes a look at interesting medical project going on with facial transplants. While I fear that such innovations will ultimately lead to vane and poor uses, the upside is phenomenal when it comes to giving severely deformed individuals a second chance. I'm reminded of a frequenter of a bar I visited with some regularity in Houston. Half of her face was quite attractive, but the other half was severely deformed. Though I never talked to her, she seemed an amazingly well-adjusted individual. I doubt that I would handle that nearly as well.

Most overpriced places in 2004
An interesting look at the cities where wages have a lot of trouble meeting cost-of-living increases. Unsurprisingly, most of the cities listed are on the coast somewhere, Chicago being the exception. Eel and I might land in Seattle (#1) for a brief tenure in a couple of years. The only city there of any interest to me is Portland (#4), but they don't have a program of the sort that would draw us to Seattle. Also not surprisingly, no cities in the south except (#3) Miami (which doesn't count, in my view). The only real surprise is New York's low ranking (#7).

Gay Republicans look for place in party
It can't be easy, for sure. Being a pro-gay Republican is itself not particularly easy, but it's all theoretical to me since neither I nor my closest friends swing in that direction.

A Voter's Guide - Pro-choice candidates and church teaching. [via Master of None]
Being a pro-life Democrat can't be particularly easy, either. Archbishop Myers makes the case for why it's rarely permissable for Catholics (who doctrinally ought to be against abortion) to vote Democratic. If one takes the abortion-is-murder (which I don't take, despite my views against abortion and what the legal permissability thereof), I can't imagine justifying the support of someone that condones roughly a million "murders" a year.

Funeral parlour sets up in nursing home
The coffins in the window were, it turns out, bad for business.

Resource: The Random Name Generator
I was pondering writing a program myself to do this. The thought occured to me that others may already have and I was not disappointed. This one is particularly cool because you can have a "threshold" of commonality, so you can get a generic or unique name. That's exactly what I needed!

When I was a kid, my family went to The Market (capital T and capital M). The only thing that I remember about that was that there was this little 18" knight or so made of tin. I really, really liked it. But I couldn't justify spending a whopping $7 on it. I regretted it until I found myself in San Antonio again, commenting on the same knight to Anna. I couldn't justify spending $7 on it then, either.

Lo and behold, for my next birthday or Christmas Anna got it for me. I called him Sir Herbert and when I would smoke or pace around in the Bingham Barrios, he would keep me company outside. He was there for me during the timultuous Year of Audrey, when there was much smoking and much pacing. At some point, one of my neighbors kidnapped Herbert and I never heard from him again.

Oddly, it started feeling lonelier out there without that inanimate object. I actually looked around for a replacement, but I couldn't find one (the fact that I don't know what these things are called makes it more difficult). I even considered going back to San Antonio and The Market just to pick one up.

A year or two later, I was at my aunt's house in Fort Worth. In her garden was a similar, though mildly different knight. This one didn't look as good as Herbert did. It was older. The bottom was warped so he couldn't stand up right (my aunt had him nailed down). I asked her where she'd gotten it from, but she'd gotten it from Grandmother, who had passed on (or was in the process of doing so). She asked if I wanted it.

Due to his deteriorated, rusty appearence, I named him Sir Russell and he guarded Briarhaven, my next apartment.

I saw Anna and Pierce one last time before I left Texas, Anna (who knew that Herbert had been taken) gave me Sir Adam. Adam wasn't like Rusty or Herbert in that Adam is only a few inches tall (named for The Atom, a comic book character that could become really small). I couldn't find room for Sir Russell in the car for the trip to Idaho, so I brought Sir Adam instead.

Not long ago I found myself wanting a more substantial tin knight, so I tried looking online some more. Without knowing exactly what these things are called, I didn't have much success. What I tended to find was small figurines that cost way too much without protecting my home like Sir Herbert and Sir Russell did. So I gave up.

Later that very same day I was hanging out at Landis's place. On his table was another knight, a little smaller than Herb or Russ, but close enough. I paid him $20 on the spot for it.

So now I've got Sir Gus. Since Gus would be stolen in a heartbeat if I were to leave him outside as I did Herbert and Russell, he'll have inside duty.

I lost a toe nail many years back at church camp when a bench fell on it. The lack of toenail was by far worse than the injury to the foot.

The other day I woke up with my pinky toenail half torn off. Half was torn off, the other half was digging in to my toe. My toe was hurting for most of today and I figured that the cut must somehow be agitated. But the cut is heeled. It's just the lack of a toenail.

You never realize how important toe nails are until you lose most of one.

Robin Hood and his Merry Legislators
An outstanding analysis of a Texas court ruling on school funding in Texas (as one might guess from the title, involving the "Robin Hood" plan) by Chris's new co-blogger Drew.

Australian Opposition Party Pledges to Outlaw Religious 'Vilification'
I've long been a believer in watching what you say in public spheres. We have freedom of speech, of course, which protects our right to say just about anything, but the responsibility that comes with that, in my mind, is to speak... well... responsibly. I suppose that I come across as censorious to a degree. But thank God I live in America, where (as yet) we don't have to worry about "speech codes" outside of universities.

Dan's 'scoop' is as shaky as his status
An interesting psychoanalysis of Dan Rather. It's remarkably similar to the projections laid upon Howell Raines, but an interesting read nonetheless. On an interesting note, Dan Rather graduated from Sam Houston State, an hour or two north of the city of Houston. When I was looking around at colleges, whoever was the guide at the University of Houston was confused because he said that Rather graduated from UH's communications program. Houston, (Sam) Houston State. Close enough, right?

The First Rathergate
Speaking of Dan Rather, this isn't the first time he's dug in his heels when the prevailing factual winds are against him. NRO has a great article on a previous confrontation between Rather and the truth.

Born Again Christians Just As Likely to Divorce As Are Non-Christians [via Sullivan]
The methodology is somewhat spotty on this look at divorce and Born Again Christians. I suppose it was easier than saying "So did you defy God's word on divorce before or after you pledged your life to Him?!"

LI man arrested in air rage case
One of the reasons I've been avoiding Bush versus Kerry posts is because how ugly the race has gotten. Not between Bush and Kerry per se (that's to be expected), but between Bush's and Kerry's respective supporters. I've all but stopped talking about politics with anyone in person.

Student Collects Fake Parking Fines [via Jane Galt]
From the "Wish I'd Thought Of That" files (except for, you know, the 'getting caught' part).

Church searching for Priest Idol
A religious reality show. Heaven help us. No pun intended.

Week Three

(#2) Oklahoma Sooners 63, Houston Cougars 13
There wasn't much hope of winning this one for the Coogs. I was at least hoping they'd improve on last season's loss to Michigan (50-3), but after the loss to Rice, I'm just glad they played more competitively with the Sooners than A&M did last year.

(#8) Texas Longhorns 22, Arkansas Razorbacks 20
After getting embarassed in Austin last year, the Longhorns pull out a win in Fayetteville. I'd say that they embarassed Arkansas as they were embarassed, but really they were outplayed statistically and neither game should have been in too much peril. But then again that's one of the great things about rivalries and college football. This is the last scheduled game between the two and I don't suspect Texas is eager to play them again really soon. I hope that I'm wrong.

Baylor Bears 24, Texas State Bobcats 17
Who to root for in this one? One of my best friends graduated from Baylor and the other will graduate from Texas State. Neither care too much about football, so I root for both as a proxy. Of course, the thing is that this shouldn't even be a scheduled game, much less a close one. Congrats to Texas State, who generally has trouble against I-AA opponents. Baylor really needs to get out of the Big XII so they can start recruiting to win some games.

Troy Trojans 24, (#17) Missouri Tigers 14
Troy University is a much better name than Troy State University (they changed their name earlier this year), but the Troy Trojans just sounds goofy. Goofy or not, they took out future C*USA power Marshall last week and Big XII North contender Missouri in their first two games. North Texas ought to be quite worried that their days as the only contender in the Sun Belt are numbered.

Southern Miss Golden Eagles 21, Nebraska Cornhuskers 17
I like it when Conference USA teams win and I like it when Nebraska loses, so it's win-win for me. An added bonus, ESPN dunderhead Trev Albert referred to Southern Miss (along with Pittsburgh) as a cupcake opponent when trying to convince his co-hosts that his alma mater Nebraska would turn in a great record this year. Truthfully, Nebraska outplayed Southern Miss were it not for turnovers, but I'll take any opportunity I can get to denigrate Nebraska.

Fresno State Bulldogs 45, (#14) Kansas State Wildcats 21
In the Battle of Generic Mascots, the Wildcats (KSU, Kentucky, Arizona, & Northwestern) and Bulldogs (FSU, LaTech, Miss State, & Georgia) are tied at four. In the Battle of the teams with Generic Mascots, the Bulldogs come out ahead. Kansas State has a habit of scheduling extraordinarily week preseason opponents. Given their loss last year to Marshall and this year to Fresno State, they might start making more a habit of it. There's talk of Fresno State running the table this year. The Mountain West was insane to take TCU over a much more regionally appropriate (and probably more successful in the long term) Fresno State.

(#6) Miami Hurricanes 16, (#5) Florida State Seminoles 10
They really shouldn't ever rate Florida State right ahead of Miami before they're right about to play one another. I root for Florida State twice a year. One of them is when they play Miami. I think I root for FSU over Miami because of their obnoxious arrogant attitude about it and because I tend to root for public schools over private ones, but I suspect that a part of me likes to root for the underdog must enjoy being disappointed.

Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets 28, (#18)Clemson Tigers 24
All things being equal I'll root for both of these teams this year (Mom went to GT and Eel's sister went to Clemson). Congrats to Tech on the upset.

Louisiana Tech 24, Louisiana-Lafayette 20
I was hoping ULa would pull this one off if only because of LaTech's snotty attitude towards the Sun Belt (of which ULa is a member). I like both teams and wish them both well, though.

Florida Atlantic Owls 35, Hawaii Warriors 28
This is Florida Atlantic's first year in I-A and they made a splash by defeating WAC powerhouse Hawaii. Congratulations on FAU and the Sun Belt for their pick-up.

Doctor [James Bischoff] faces murder charges for 'mercy killings'
Aim To Be Healthy [Endorsement by James Bischoff]
[via MTPolitics]
As Dr. Bischoff and I have pretty different ideas of the term "healthy," I think I will avoid using medication supplements that he endorses.

Rangers pitcher arrested, charged with battery
The dude through a chair at some irate fan. He missed and hit another irate fan instead. As Mom always says, "the guy couldn't hit a broad side of a barn." Well, he probably could with a ball, just not a chair.

Mark Hamill Talks Star Wars Epis. 7, 8, & 9 [via OTB]
It's a 5 minute MP3 with what Mark Hamill knows and some thoughts on 4-6. I've never seen or heard a Hamill interview before. He's surprisingly charismatic.

Kennedy to Hit Campaign Trail for Kerry
If this is any indication, apparently Kerry's campaign is more worried than I am hopeful.

Time is Running Out
Jason Stark is getting impatient on the upcoming Montreal Expos move to Virginia. He brings up a lot of worthwhile points, though I'm not sure that I agree with his assessment that there is no other market capable of holding a baseball team besides Virginia. In fact, I can't help but believe that such thinking is a product of people that forget (a) there is a whole America in between the east and west coasts and (b) the most successful expansion cities have not been on the east coast (Florida specifically), but rather in middle America where there is less to do (Colorado and Arizona).

'Growing Pains' Actress Gold Arrested
That would be Traci Gold, who has almost been an exemplar of child stars gone wrong.

Job application hidden in virus code
I knew that I wasn't giving my job hunt everything I got. Writing a virus is the one thing I didn't try...

Oklahoma and UCLA were going in to the conference playoffs undefeated. Oklahoma lost its first game of the season to Colorado in the conference championship. That makes them 12-1 with the second best record for the season, tied with Auburn.

Except that the Sooners don't get to play UCLA for the championship. Nor do the Auburn Tigers.

Nor do 11-1 Miami or Ohio State.

Somehow the Texas Longhorns, who were defeated by Oklahoma during the season, get the honor.

This is like when it tried to give my 5-7 team a bid to the New Orleans Bowl last year before it realized that it couldn't do that.

Meanwhile my guys are going to the GMAC Bowl. I was hoping to play in the Liberty Bowl, but I got demolished by Louisville, giving me two conference losses (one to Louisville and one to 1-11 East Carolina). I was hoping it would place me behind Cincinnati, who also had two conference losses, so that I could go to the Houston Bowl.

But noooooooooooo... it placed me ahead and gave me the honor of playing a 7-5 Kent State (!!??) in the GMAC Bowl (which it gives MAC #2 instead of MAC #1, which it really was last year). I would have given anything to have a home-game bowl bid until I realized that I was turning in to TCU.

So Alabama, here I come!

I was considering doing a C*USA dealiebob analogous to Kevin's Big XII one. I figured if nothing else it would help motivate me to keep on top of the league. Then I got a job, a two hour commute, and a realization that I'd only be regurgitating what the game recaps have to say since I don't have much in the way of original analysis in me. But there are various games I want to comment on, so I figure I'll just kinda post as I want to. Since I'm already behind, I'll dedicate today to weeks 1 and 2 and then 3 for tomorrow. Then I'll try to keep up to date. "Try" being the operative word.


Week One

[No Games of Note]

Week Two

Rice Owls 10, Houston Cougars 7
In all of the scenarios - both optomistic and pessimistic - I saw over at Coogfans, none of them included a loss to Rice. None of my scenarios included us getting less than 10 points against anyone save Oklahoma or Miami. Congratulations to Rice, though. They are one of the most underappreciated teams in I-A football. During the reallignment they were mentioned as an example of how low C*USA has become when, in fact, they've turned in more winning seasons over the last decade than Memphis and, sadly, as many as Houston has.

(#8) Texas Longhorns 65, North Texas Mean Green Eagles 0
Can't say that I got too excited about this one. Texas never has much problem rolling the pancakes. Arkansas was the bigger test.

(#3) LSU Tigers 22, Oregon State Beavers 21
I couldn't help myself, I rooted for Oregon State in this one despite my significant other's connections to LSU. Oregon State is one of the only two teams in the Pac-10 I actually like and LSU apparently had zilch respect for the Beavers coming in to this game. We were eating out in Florida during the game as the guys watched with baited breath and the girls rolled their eyes. It was a heartbreaker, but the Stenholms are from Louisiana originally so I was outvoted.

Texas Christian Horned Frogs 48, Northwestern Wildcats 45
I stayed up late to watch this one. Northwestern tried really, really hard to give TCU the game despite more yardage and less penalties. They eventually succeeded in overtime. I've never seen such lousy kicking in my life.

Memphis Tigers 20, Ole Miss Rebels 13
I'm just linking to this game in support of C*USA beating powerhouse conference teams. Memphis is in a good position to deprive TCU a shot at the title in their last year (and Southern Miss their annual Liberty Bowl birthright).

Texas Tech Red Raiders 27, SMU Mustangs 13
Only 27 points against SMU? This either bodes really well for SMU (who didn't win a single game last year) or really poorly for Tech. Judging by Tech's loss against New Mexico in Week 3 and SMU's destruction at the hands of rival TCU, I'm guessing the latter.

San Diego State Aztecs 35, Idaho State Bengals 21
The local university actually held their own against a I-A team in a pretty good conference. Of course, they just lost to Cal Poly and are now 0-2, but they did better against SDSU than they probably should have and that is worthy of celebration.

Louisville Cardinals 28, Kentucky Wildcats 0
And with this final loss, Kentucky is taking it's ball and going home. With Louisville headed towards the BCS Big East and given UL's successes and Kentucky's failures, I really doubt that refusing the play Louisville will help Kentucky much. They're not the football school in the state and with Louisville in such a powerful basketball conference, they may lose that, too. Louisville downed the ball on the five yard line to avoid running up the score. I really don't know if that saved any embarassment for UK, and given the circumstances I would have just run it in anyway.

(#19) Utah Utes 41, Texas A&M Aggies 21
Last year A&M gave the Utes one of their only two losses and got themselves one of only four wins. My feelings on A&M and Utah are pretty conflicted, the former because of their rivalry with the Longhorns and the latter because my part of Idaho is practically a suburb of Utah (oh, and they have a dumb dumb team name). Tough luck for A&M, I guess, but the bracelets and lack of names on the back of the uniforms are both pretty silly.

Oklahoma State Cowboys 31, UCLA Bruins 21
They said during the bowl game last year that OSU was going to lose a lot of talent. Apparently it won't stop them from playing with the big boys.

War Making Headlines, but Peace Breaks Out
The headline says it all (or most of it). A Canadian group that monitors such things has armed conflicts down considerably over the last decade or two.

The Expert Ambush [via Drudge]
A neat guide regarding how a lawyer should "ambush" an expert witness in court.

Reductio ad Absurdum Dot Com [via typo]
I was going to retrieve a link from Reductio ad Absurdum political site and accidally typed ".com" instead of ".net." I was aware of the mistake and was trying to fix it really quickly when the website came up, but the DSL beat me to the punch. Imagine my surprise when the web site that came up was Texas State's.

Memory Fades
Yesterday while Stoner and I were talking outside, I noticed that the flag was flying half-mast. It actually took me a minute or two to look at my watch (which has a datebox) and remember why.

"I've Been In Worse Situations" [via XQRL]
Admittedly, I haven't been following politics as closely in recent months as I used to. Apparently, though, I saw more of the GOP convention than John Kerry did. I suddenly feel a lot better informed!

Open Thread on Moral Cowardice
Alex Knapp asks an interesting question on morality.

"Why do you believe what you believe?"
Christopher provides a primer for why he is a Republican. I've been meaning to write a "Why I'm voting for Bush" post, but unless I get off my rear and register up here I won't have the option to. He's painting pretty broad strokes, but given the mish-mash of political alliances that create political parties, sometimes the only way to come to a conclusion is to simplify.

Role of a Lifetime [via Judd]

Behind Thrifthaven is an alleyway-slash-street. It's more like an alleyway, but when 4th and 5th avenue are under construction, it can be the only road that we have. Somehow, they manage to run trolly busses through it when they have to. During construction, it can be a pretty dangerous place to walk because drivers come zooming through. Stoner was hit by a car, but thankfully he was alright. With construction ended (right here for right now) it should theoretically be safe again.

Yale was walking home last night with a big bag of popcorn. He's a social individual that doesn't eat much, so he offered some guys hanging out in between our apartment complex and the small one next to us. They passed it around, passed it around again, and about the third time they were passing it around Yale asked if he could go ahead and get it back so that he could get back to his apartment. This was apparently crossing some line of machismo or something, becaused they jumped him. Six against one - and Yale is about 5'9" with a scrawny build on top of that - so I don't really need to tell you who won.

Two facial bone fractures, bruised ribs, and delirium.

Yale was left bloodied on the ground. Someone called the police so they were there shortly. Yale was somewhat erratic, yelling at the cops something to the effect of "they went that way." The cops were more interested in Yale, however, since he was the one they had in their custody. He was cuffed and taken to the Gate City Medical Center ER where a probably underrested on-call doc didn't look him over thoroughly. He did get some pain killers and instructions on how many he was supposed to get and when, which the jail promptly ignored.

He was released without charge in the morning. In great pain and delirious, he went back to his apartment to sleep. One of his professors showed up on his doorstep at two or so in the afternoon. Apparently a doctor at GCMC had looked over his X-rays and determined that the orbit below his left eye had been fractured. Yale just wanted to sleep some more, but the professor all but forced him to go see the doctor.

Good thing, because not only did he have a fractured orbit, but his maxillery sinus had been fractured as well. By the time he'd gotten home, his eye had gotten so bad that it was swollen shut. He's going to be undergoing surgery on Monday to put all the pieces back together. He'll be stuck in the hospital for two days afterwards.

Were anyone else in this complex to tell me this story, I'd have my doubts. Of course, most of them would have probably said "You should see what the other guy looks like." But Yale is pretty straightforward and of anybody in the complex (including myself, probably), I'd say he probably has the brightest future in front of him. He's one of the couple of university students living here and not one of the ex-cons or aging hellions.

He apparently just offered popcorn to the wrong person.

Right behind our complex.

The The Sun reports that it does:

HAVING kids makes parents THICK, researchers said yesterday.

In a five-year study, they checked the IQs of couples who were planning to start families, then repeated the tests six months after their first child was born. .

"Pretty Provocative," I thought. I've heard arguments before that there is an inverse corrolation between intelligence and childrearing, but this was definitely the first I'd heard of a cause-and-effect.

Then I read the quotes from the director of the study:

Study head Dr Hosung Lee, of America’s Indiana University, said: “It explains why parents think their kid is the smartest in class or the best athlete, even if that child is as dumb as a box of rocks or needs a calendar to time a 100-yard sprint.

“People who before were intelligent and open-minded turn into raving lunatics who want to blame a teacher or sports coach every time their mediocre child fails.”

Some became almost

"This has got to be a joke," I thought. Whatever the results of the study, no director would ever frame it in quite that manner.

Sure enough.

Some of the good people over at Fark wishes it weren't.

For the first time in a while, things are starting to look good for the President in the polls. Of course, this time last year things were looking pretty good for Al Gore, so the actual numbers don't mean much until the debates (and unless someone really breaks away, not even then).

But there is one aspect about the most recent AP poll that I found fascinating:

Among those most likely to vote, the Republican ticket of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney holds a lead of 51 percent to 46 percent over Kerry and Sen. John Edwards, with independent Ralph Nader receiving 1 percent.

[...]

Among all registered voters, Bush-Cheney led the Democratic ticket 51 percent to 43 percent, a modest bounce in support since early August, when Kerry-Edwards led 48-45 percent.

Generally speaking, from my observations, polls that track "likely voters" favor Republicans and those that track "registered voters" favor Democrats. Rasmussen got burned last year when they predicted a strong Bush victory based on a predicted low turnout. When turnout increased, particularly among minorities, Gore won the popular vote.

The general conventional wisdom that I've heard on the subject is that Republicans are more reliable about going out to the polls than Democrats, so the more conservative the turn-out estimate is, the more likely Republicans. Republicans like to spin this by pointing out their civic-mindedness and Democrats spin it by saying they represent the views of most Americans (including those that don't vote).

If this has changed, the Bush's alleged turn-out based strategy might be brilliant and the belief among many conservatives that the base and a small portion of moderates and independents can carry the election has more merit than I've credited it with.

I'm going to start looking closer at the polls to see if this is an abnormality or whether the non-voting demographic is starting to favor Republicans.

I suppose that I'm behind the curve on the whole (possible) scandal at CBS regarding some suspicious documents they used when they ran a story about George W. Bush's time in the Air National Guard.

The basic crux of the story is that CBS reported that one of Bush's superiors wrote some damning memos about Bush recieving special treatment and not living up to the requirements in the Guard. The officer is deceased, but his family is suspicious. The Blogosphere took a closer look at aspects of the documents that cast doubt on whether or not it was typed out on a 70's typewriter and scooped big media on the story. ABC News and the Washington Post have both run prominant articles on the story.

Scott and Kevin are mostly interested in the media aspect of it and both make their points. Personally, I'm more interested in the forgery aspect of it. I could honestly care less about whether or not Bush recieved preferential treatment just as I didn't care what Clinton was doing during Vietnam some years back. But forgery itself is a subject of interest to me dating back to my own indiscretions in the area. While I've given up my own life of crime, I am still fascinated by it all.

The pro-forgery side makes some very strong points. Most obviously there is the matter of the spacing. While most typewriters were fixed-width, the document in question was variable-width. If you're curious what this means, what you're reading now is fixed-width. If you look at the links below my picture, those are variable-width. The question is whether or not an "i" takes up as much space as an "m."

There were some variable-width typewriters available at the time, but (a) it's unlikely that the government would be on the cutting-edge of technology in this area and (b) there are other problems. ABC, WaPo, and the bloggers that brought the story to big media's attention have consulted type-reading experts who almost uniformly believe that the document was not written on a 70's typewriter due to specific characters appearing differently than they did on typewriters. Little Green Footballs compares the document in question to one typed in Microsoft Word with the default settings and finds them nearly identicle and Indepundit points out some real Texas Air National Guard documents, which don't look nearly as similar as LGF's Word-generated files. An expert in the WaPo article also points out that the document is centered both vertically and horizontally, which is awfully flexible for a typewriter.

The anti-forgery has its arguments to. The superior to Bush's superior claims that they are authentic (and he is sympathetic to the President) and fitting with what he was told at the time. The son also seems to concede that at least one of them appears to be genuine. Some are more damning than others, so it's hard to say what that means in terms of meat-and-fat ratios.

There appears to my untrained eye to be some truth to what the documents say -- even if the documents are not what they are claimed to be. So what might it be? The documents could be reproductions -- updated by the government from typewriter to computer at some point for some reason. That seems somewhat unlikely, though, as I doubt that people came to the assumption that they were originals by accident. I'm also curious about the officer's signature, which is supposed to be on the documents. Unless the signature was forged (which CBS says they checked), in which case there was obviously malicious motives and someone thought they would get away with something. That doesn't mean that the documents never existed, but that would be difficult to prove and the person or group that forged it would be guilty until proven innocent in regards to their claim (were they to make one) that the documents existed in some form at some point.

The White House did not question the authenticity of the documents, which suggests that (a) they figure such documents could exist - doesn't speak well of the Administration's confidence in what they've said so far or (b) they're biding their time waiting for some verification before they challenge the claims. I'm not sure that (b) would be a great strategy since a public conflict in which Bush is exonerated would make the Dems look awfully bad.

Time will hopefully tell. CBS is apparently investigating it themselves and says that they will come clean if they were wrong.

Ultimately, as the liberal commenters point out in Kevin's comments, it won't affect the election much unless the docs are erroneous and it can be directly (and I mean directly) tied to the Kerry campaign, which is unlikely. But whether you disagree with me on that and believe Bush's National Guard service is really significant to the campaign, find the media aspect interesting like Kevin and Scott, or are interested in forgery, there's something in it for everybody.

Update: Apparently Maj. Gen. Hodges, the superior of the alleged author of the memo (Lt. Col. Killian) that previously vouched for the memos is expressing doubts and says that he was misled by CBS. Additionally, the person in the memo that allegedly exerted pressure to sugarcoat Bush's reviews had been out of the Texas Air National Guard for a year when the memo was written. CBS argues that he may have exerted influence unofficially.

Dan Rather and CBS are sticking by their story. Rather argues that the documents were provided by "unimpeachable sources" and that they interviewed former TNG officials that are backing it up.

Somehow, the question of the forgery is turning into a he-said/she-said, which is disappointing because it will allow both sides to believe what dovetails most with their ideology. It also focuses on the part of the story that I am least interested in.

The weirdest part for me is that if these are fakes, the forger has behaved oddly. They apparently knew enough about the situation to know who to cite and so forth. They must have done some homework here. Yet for the precautions they took in that area, it's hard to believe that it didn't occur to them that using the default MS Word settings might be a little suspicious. If I were trying to forge typewritten documents, the first thing I'd do is put it on Courier New simply because it "looks" like what a typewriter would type. That's almost enough to make me believe that the documents are not forged and that is just one of those freak things, but not quite.

When I was in junior high, I used to have a little football league using a little three-cornered paper football (some of you will know what I'm talking about, but I can't really explain it to the rest of you). It was a common game played in the cafeteria where you bumped the ball four times and if you could get it to hang off the edge of the table, you'd get a touchdown. Well, I used a desk and allowed only one bump.

The problem with this league is that (until I realized that I was slightly better with my right hand than my left started having "favorites" with the right) is that it was completely random. A team would be poised to go all the way until they would lose to some team that had gone winless in the last week. It got tiresome.

Regular readers know about my love/hate relationship with Tecmo Superbowl for the Nintendo. Some of you that have played the game can really appreciate it. I loved that game because it was, without a doubt, the best football game on the market at the time. Games were quick and action-packed and somehow in truncated 5-minute quarters the scores were pretty realistic. The problem is, of course, unless I hustled the game the same thing would happen every year. I'd blow out the first 8 opponents, struggle against the next four, barely survive the final four, and then get knocked off in the first or second round of the playoffs (usually to one of the teams that I beat 48-0 during the season). It found ways to screw you over including fumbles, interceptions, and injuries (in one game my QB through nine passes, 8 of which were interceptions). You can only do this so many times before losing your mind.

And lose my mind I did! I would get so angry and so irate that I would practically scream at the dang game until Dad would quite literally come in and make me turn it off.

My interest in EA Sports NCAA Football 2004 is evaporating pretty quickly.

I can't figure out what's worse, the randomness of my paper football league or the repetitiveness of Tecmo. NCAA simulated games seem to be so random that it makes the paper league appear consistent by comparison.

I don't mind losing. Obviously, that's not the goal of the game, but my initial concern when I beat #10 Michigan during my first season was that it would be a cakewalk. A couple weeks later I played (0-5) East Carolina and lost. Then I'd play #21 undefeated Louisville and win. The only modicum of consistency is that I don't do well against ranked teams, which is understandable (but even then, only Auburn beat us by more than 10 points). The only teams I've beaten every time is Army (I don't think they've won a single game against anybody yet) and the only team that's beaten me every time is TCU. But I've yet to play them this season.

I'm on the third season now and the team is 5-2, but you wouldn't know it by the way I was quietly yelling earlier. Actually, it wasn't a yell as much as an exasperated sigh. We were losing to 1-5 Memphis. The week before we crawled by 0-6 Tulane. The two weeks before we crushed a 3-2 North Texas and a 3-1 Central Florida. Though we lost to #12 Arkansas, we actually outplayed them and lost 17-14 due to two fumbles returned for touchdowns. The week before a now 2-5 Rice nearly beat us.

I swear there are two teams out there. There's one team when the game thinks I should win and then another when it thinks that I should not. I have one QB who will throw for 400 yards against the 50th ranked defense (UCF) and then will go 9/31 for 102 yards against #103rd ranked Tulane. One game my running back will appear unstoppable and then the next I swear he will run at half the speed.

It's not just my team, either. I follow the Big XII in addition to my team. I watched Texas take home the championship the first season. Last season Oklahoma was poised to. They played Nebraska for the Big XII championship and whooped them 56-7. When I watched the championship game against Miami, I fully expected them to win or at least be competitive. Miami won 63-14.

And with each passing season, the game becomes more and more unhinged.

I am afraid to think of what it's going to be like on my last season.

Update: We wooped up on a previously undefeated (8-0) TCU. I'm getting really worried about 2-7 Army.

"I want to believe in libertarian isolationism, but this argument requires a time machine.

"It's not enough to stop our intervention in the world. In order to make this argument work, we must alter history so we HAVE NEVER intervened in the world. Even if we stop now, we'll still get bombed over past grievances, and even if we never left our borders, we would still be the symbol of everything they hate."-Michael Duff

I'm thinking about giving video capture cards another try. I'm not looking for a really good one -- I want one that works and will cause my system(s) as few headaches as possible. I run WinXP and Win2k and need it to run well on both.

Anyone have any recommendations?