We've come a long way

My wife and I were watching a "Match Game '74" repeat on cable, and the phrase to match was:

"Howard's boss added insult to injury when not only did he fire Howard, but replaced him with a BLANK" (cue funky pornish music here)

my wife and I yelled at the screen, robot! monkey!

But every single celebrity, plus the contestant, picked "woman" or "girl," I guess since that was obviously the worst, most insulting thing that could happen to a fellow in 1974, for a female to get your job.

An athlete with a "big heart"

Gilbert Arenas gets snubbed for an All-Star spot and goes out and scores 46 points in 3 quarters. Then sits down without protest, because the game was well in hand.

Hedrick is retarded. All athletes face adversity. Heart is something you attribute to your players, your teammates, or your opponents. Just not yourself. Argh.

craziness

a student in one of the dorms here at UT found ricin in a roll of quarters thursday. she found a white powder and they evacuated the dorm etc., and they identified it as ricin last night.

Two days of EFFL awesomeness

Cal, nomenclature, Jurassic and neogene/Chinese beavers (=finest kind), various Cohens.

My kid's current favorite song is actually sung by Sacha Baron Cohen, on the Madagascar soundtrack, (I Like to) Move It Move It.

She also stands in front of the tv during speedskating bent over and waving her arms back and forths and making "whooshing" sounds. Pretty funny.

This post feels like a board killer. Oh, well.

Let's all go to this one!

This shit is going to be so rocking! Off the freaking hook!

Sasha Cohen

uh oh, what have I done?

worried now.

pix

when you are editing a post, there's a little picture icon that leads you to a window that allows you to upload a picture. you don't have to do the html code thing linking to the picture site anymore.

Olympic speed skating

Well, they both seem immature. I read somewhere that Shani wasn't asked to be on the relay until something like 2 or 3 days before the event... and he had never been asked to be on it before. So it's not like he all of a sudden opted out or chose not to do it after saying he would. I can't blame him for declining. But maybe Chad is right that if he were a "good teammate" then he would have said yes. Who knows. Speedskating isn't exactly a team sport. Who cares. They're both grown men who can't even seem to get it together enough to talk about it together alone. It is prob much easier to gripe about it to the press, rather than meet face to face and hear the other guy's reasons for their feelings.

Hedrick = jerk

I was all prepared to root for him after his first medal and then he turned out to be a giant asshole. I agree, Davis was justified to focus on the race he's been preparing for and not go in the team pursuit. Hedrick was being selfish, no matter how he guises it as being patriotic (and Davis, therefore, being unpatriotic). Hedrick didn't even congratulate Davis when he won his race. that's supporting America? I do also think the media, starved for action, has made it out to be more of a thing than it might have been.

Beautiful Beaver

W promotes baseball

"I think it's really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to—the beauty of playing baseball."—Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2006

I'd like to live in the great state of Baseball, except not if it is in a country with W as prez. or Bud Selig.

He is consistent

Padian seems to be against private ownership of anything with scientific study value, at least paleo-wise... I've seen him quoted in a news article as being against stores such as "The Bone Room" on Solano because, he argues they create a market for items which then become commodified and lose their usefulness to to science.

Yet it seems, to someone who doesn't work on fossils, that you're pissing around an awfully large perimeter if you expect every item with scientific value to be under lock and key in a publically owned, but curatorily/professorially controlled, institution.

But y'all may know more about this than me. Y'r thoughts?

parham

email me at my Yahoo email: molge@yahoo.com

I tried to email you but it bounced back.

s'okay

I already deposited his check.

simey's defensiveness

methinks he doth protest too much.

Simey sent me $100

For my win of our Total Points bet. He is a good dude.

Thanks Simey!

Simey sent me $20 for my EFFL victory. isn't that great? I think so.

Bears still in 1st

in the Pac after UCLA's loss, but with ~4 games left/team, and 2 teams with 10 wins, 3 with 9, it's tight at the top of the standings. It will be interesting to see who "steps up" and wins 3 or 4 in the next 2 weeks, because that's what it'll probably take to win the conference.

That's one weak conifer

to get punk'd by a goose-stepping Bear in a 1940's-era letter sweater.

great clip

looks like Oski was trying to crawl inside the tree costume with the mascot-person.

In a more detailed story, SFGate said that the drunken tree was busted because UC police apparently saw her drinking from a flask inside her costume.

also,

Go! Bears!

dick cheney

live from Folsom Prison

there's audio, and swearing, in case you have office mates who are working.

Three arguments

1. Cal has a better record in conference 9-3 vs UW at 7-5. Cal is a win tonight out of 1st place. UW is in 5th.
2. Though they have split their season series (until the pac-10 tourney) Cal won the 2nd game, thus they are hotter, and rankings should discount games somewhat as you go further into the past.
3. Building on the "hotter" argument... Cal has a 5 game win streak, while UW has lost 3 of its last 5 games.

Otherwise you are right, they look kind of equal on paper. I simply think it looks like they are going opposite directions, though UW had a good win over UCLA.

CA v. AZ, etc.

I thought that AZ was having one of their weaker seasons, though I notice some guy who was kicked off the team has been reinstated. does this give Cal a bit of an edge, relative to their historical performance v. AZ?

I'm not sure WA is over-ranked relative to Cal. despite their position in the Pac-10, their overall record is 3 more wins and 1 fewer losses than Cal (making them more similar to UCLA as well). I'm sure I'm wrong about this and you will graciously explain the error in my reasoning.

not entirely off topic

stanford mascot news

Cal ranking comment

I thought the "time lag"/1 poll + multiple games per week problem was a good explanation when UPE first made it, but now it just looks like the voters just look at the last game involving each ranked team and "adjust" their previous week's ranking. A simple look at Pac-10 standings would have UW ranked out of the top 25, they're having a *bad* conference season. Instead they move up by beating UCLA. Clearly, not a lot of thought or research goes into the rankings beyond the top 10. It looks like autocorrelation, mostly.

I just looked up the RPI rankings, where taking the "human" element out and leaving it to some guy's computer model, it's much worse... Cal comes in at 48, well behind such powerhouses as Wichita State and Bucknell. UW is like 36 in those rankings.

Cheney's got a gun

best cheney-shooting headline

"Cheney's got a gun"

runner up: "White House under fire over Cheney shooting accident" (my office mate was disappointed that it was only under metaphorical fire)

bizarre

yet funny.

is it for real? seems suspiciously well-edited.

I deny

that there's any negativity intended in my first post... although I guess it could be read that way. If a solid 2nd in the Pac is not worth a top 25 ranking (and right now it's not) then we're in agreement that a high final 64 seed is unlikely. I was simply wondering what a worst-case scenario might be selection-wise, and an NIT bid would seemingly be a worst-case outcome. I think 2nd in the PAC in a weak year is probably plenty good for the tourney.

Hey... I didn't even pull the Big Waah "Cal always gets screwed/ anti-Pac bias" complaint. Just wondering what could happen. Probably psychological self-defense, because CAL ALWAYS DOES GET SCREWED! ok there's the negativity.

Cal's baseball team was the only Pac 10 team in history with a winning record in conference that didn't make the College W.S. last year, for example.

Low seed in NCAAs

or high seed in NITs is the only question now, it looks like.

Scenario question:
would the selection comittee skip over a 2nd (say, Cal holds on down the stretch) or 3rd place team in a conference just because some team they want (say, Washington) was "ranked" higher most of the year, and the conference had a down year?

Basketball ranks mystify me... UW seemed to hold a rank in the 10-15 (currently 21st) range while they were falling into their current 5th spot in the PAC. Perhaps I am a basketball simpleton and just do not understand.

Cal

I'm jealous. It looks like it was a good game, especially since they beat Stanferd. how competitive do you think Cal is for one of the NCAA "at large" berths?

German Coast Guard

Hilarious

game

definitely not as good as SuperBowls with Patriots. I was paying so little attention, I didn't know the refs sucked until this morning.

I liked the FedEx commercial.

now that the regular football season is over, and before any other real or fantasy seasons start, wouldn't it be a good time to send the fantasy football champ her winnings? she even has PayPal (molge@yahoo.com) if you don't want to mail a check (Meredith Mahoney, 710 W 34th St, Apt. #105, Austin, TX 78705). Props to Mulker for being the only EFFL GM to pay up.

Refs SUCKED

I only saw the first quarter, cause I was in transit. But the call against Darrell Jackson in the endzone was RIDIC! Holy shit, that was a bad call. He barely even touched the other dude, and it had no effect on the play AT ALL! I don't know the Steelers do it: Roethleisbriszgieiger sucks ass and can't throw, and the RBs are mediocre at best. The Seahawks gained 400+ yards on offense, and only had 1 turnover, yet lost... that sucks, too, clearly.

I forgot to add this:

4.5 hours of viewing time, and only 1 commercial made me laugh out loud (the one where the guy threw his Sprint phone in his buddy's face really hard). WEAK! A lot of the commercials I saw have been on for weeks... they would have been good SB debuts, but they were already old, old, old.

Done bitching... about this.

I was tired and I typed

www.effl.com

into my browser this morning.

somebody thinks our letters are worth $3900. I really doubt that they will get that for it. Blogspot gave us our version for free. Hard to sell things for $4K when somebody else hosts for $0.

XL = Extra Lame

That game sucked. The winning QB had a 22.9 rating. The losing team looked like Cal ca. 2001-- drive to the 30 yd. line then drop a TD pass or give up a 5 or ten yard penalty to kill your drive. The best "human interest story" was about the ~4th best back in the game who ran for 45 yards and no scores. The game was iced on a "trick" play that the Madden et al had called for about 10 times in the previous half hour. "Watch for the gadget play with Randle-el between the 40 yard lines." Oh hey! there it was! Touchdown! Maybe Holmgren and Cowher are geniuses, but there's no way to know how good a game plan might have been when the players stink it up like that. The halftime show featured British people in their 60's... for the 2nd year in a row. At least it wasn't Sir Paul this time, but rather some very wrinkly dudes dancing on a giant tongue extended over a Fake Audience.

Next year all I want are two things: at least one team that actually shows up to play football, and Americans performing at halftime.