My bathroom reading of late has been a book I picked up at Half Price, Prometheans in the Lab (Another one of those history of chemistry books I tend to pick up.) I had just finished the chapter on Norbert Rillieux the guy to whom you probably owe your sugar addictions.
Then earlier today, I found this article (via metafilter) on Harry Coover the guy responsible for super glues (Also a question subject at either TRASH regionals or nationals).
The common thread between these two: Both are 2004 inductees into the National Inventors Hall of Fame

Unfortunately, they won't be able to save the team rap.
Stingrays are moving to Florence.
The key quote in this story is true, but really, for our sport, the convention center is pretty close to perfect, on a facilities basis.

I had been wondering if the state quarters program was eventually going to lead the Mint down into the spiral death trap that a lot of state lotteries are in, namely the notion that constantly changing the product is the only way to keep the product selling well. Problem being it only works the first couple times, then you start losing people, but you can't stop doing the action in the first place, not realizing either way you'd lose people. This story indicates they're well on their way down that path. I know I can't wait for my Chester Alan Arthur gold dollar. (Now the government says it's worth one dollar, but an investment like this means it could someday be worth... one dollar.)

Finally, I had had enough issues with ABC's plan to turn adoption into a reality show already (Think "Million Dollar Chance of a Knifetime: Solomonic Edition") , but this just pushed it into the stratosphere. (Admittedly, simply adding the notion of Uri Geller vaguely trashy is kind of like having a can of whipped cream in fridge, you can add it to any dessert to make it better.) And I'm sure I won't be the first to point this out but: Shouldn't he have known this was going to happen?

Okay, I get the feeling that my favorite coach to loathe, Tom Coughlin, is going to have plenty to scream about. First, we combine the stylings of ABC's The Bachelor looking like he's got a coach planted bullseye, following the Eli Manning signing. Add to that this bachelor, who I have to guess is going to turn the locker room into the lost season of Coach. I'd always gotten a sort of Bull Meechum vibe off him, and now, I can just see him bouncing footballs off Snee's head.
(I guess I don't loathe him as much as I just enjoy watching him suffer. Plus, it's hilarious to see him screaming on the sideline and dub in your own quotes from Ross Perot.)

Apparently Walt Whitman also burns down trees and knocks down your soul. But wait, there's more! ( 1 | 2 | 3 )

On numerous occasions Craig and Joe and Mike and I have kicked around the notion of what we'd do should the money start rolling in at extreme levels. This is where the notions of Kidder's Casino and House of Wacky Prop Bets (today's wacky prop bet: Which would be first: tournament at CMU ends, or Steelers first draft pick). Joe's plan simply consisted of getting a franchise of Vichy, the Montreal buffet where I consumed 13 different types of meat in a meal. The reason I bring this up, is because if that ever happens: This will NEVER happen to you, and that's a promise from me, to you the customer.

Draft day. And you know, if it weren't for my broken TV, I might have just skipped out on the tournament. (Not that I would really, but, you know, when things are running well, I mean really running well, and you realize you're that cruising so well, it's occasionally hard to feel like you're not slightly redundant in making it work.) Having the ESPN web feed in the tab room really helped, though I doubt I'll ever find out if Dennis Green, in picking Larry Fitzgerald, actually had the look of Rottweiler contemplating a raw steak.

So, it's hard for me to figure if the Steelers actually got a steal or not in round 1. I had sort of mentally conceded that Rothlisberger was not going to be available at 11, and was starting to worry that Rivers (who I had eventually picked as the second best QB, but likely the 3rd to go) was going to be headed to Cleveland (crazy talk, I know, given they just picked up Garcia, but it was looming in my head.) So when I heard that Rivers was gone at four, Rothlisberger felt like a step down, despite me initially thinking he was the one we wanted. Equally crazy, but one cannot expect fandom to be balanced by logic on draft day.

My main concern now, is why I'm worried about Rothlisberger. I think I can sum it up in the following three unreasons.
1. Rothlisberger is just not a name I trust on a quarterback. That many letters needs to be across the shoulders of a lineman, otherwise it's going to read "LISBERG" and a blur of arm motion.
2. Similar to this, I really don't know if Myron can pull an entire season of "And look at that pass by Rothlisberger." Myron dodged the Fuamata-Ma'afala bullet by cutting it to "Fu". I don't see a similar easy trim here. Roth doesn't quite work, and I suspect much mangle and "yoy" in his future.
3. I'm still stuck on the fundamental beauty of what the Steelers plan had to have been with Philip Rivers. Take him, force kicker Jeff Reed to change numbers, and then give it to the quarterback. How perfect would it have been to see on every Sunday at the confluence.

RIVERS
3

Thing of beauty I tell you.

I was well aware of the presence of "Turn off your Television Week", one can't traverse through most of the link collectors listed on the left side of this page without it. I was also fully ignoring it, which makes the events of this evening all the more ironic. About two minutes after turning it on, the picture tube in my TV blew out. Somehow, I find myself more worried about someone thinking I actually did follow the advice to kill my television. At best, at this point, it's going to be an assisted suicide.

Maybe, I can just claim television addiction. Since this article seems to indicate to me that the next plan for addiction experts is to prove to themselves that everyone is addicted to something.

And the Warhol-Campbell's Soup cycle completes itself.

The story here is going to be interesting. On one hand, the security issue is paramount, and frankly that should be the final decision. On the other hand, having gone through there this past week, it's clear that Airmall can't survive economically without the hope of non-passenger revenue. (I'm not sure it's viable even with the added revenue, but it held its own prior to 9/11, so we grant it a shot.) And given the tight monetary ties between USAirways, the Pittsburgh airport, and the county and city have with each other, any number of them could be overleveraged to the point that should one fail, they all do. (And given some of the other stories swirling in town, this may get swept away.)

You know, I'm this close [puts his thumb and forefinger close together] to just up and declaring him the Pompetess of Fraught. This may be the tipping point. Already in the throes of the hardest fall since either Gino Toretta or Wiley Coyote, Maurice's legal strategy appears to be to climb right up to the top of the mesa just in time for Paul Tagliabue to sneak up behind him and go "meep meep."

In other fraught news. I can pretty much write the Fosters ad now. FRAUGHT. BEER.

And for those of you who believe in the power of other curses, we might just get the wreck of the Larry Fitzgerald.

They found Saint-Exupery's plane.

From the Hot Stove League...
Okay, it was already touched on on Countdown, but I'll bring it up, given I'm also suffering a cooking related injury, I figure it's fair game for me. I can't believe this level of stupidity. Frankly, a chef should know better, and the fact that he's the self-proclaimed Naked Chef... well, that just makes it comedy gold. I mean, I can't even imagine frying bacon without long sleeves.

From the Crazy Dictator Department...
Turkmenbashi decides to open up another front in the rap war. This is seen as a call and raise over recent actions by Hugo Chavez.

From the Things that sound much better when you're drunk Department...
Japanese scientists make it sound better for everyone's sake.

A good thing.

Karma got me again. Just when I thought we had pulled off a very good, very solid tournament, I sliced my finger open while making dinner. These things seem to happen to balance it all out. So I'm typing slowly.

It is a bit hard to parse some of the accolades from this one. After all, we already know that it's insane to expect that doing the same thing over and over again will result in different results. And yet, from my end that's exactly the problem. People are claiming there was a great improvement in trash, (admittedly it's secondhand opinion, since most of the comments came from people who didn't attend), and yet, nothing at any point in the process changed to any significant degree. Outside of them being different questions from last year.

Well, I guess it's a nice problem to have.

"Fifteen Yards! Giving them the business! FIRST DOWN!"

I know they'll sweep it under the whole "unsportsmanlike" umbrella, killing the premise, but all I can hope for is that the gesture that they make the NFL refs do for excessive celebration is an appropriately exaggerated and idiomatic sign. I'd suggest the classic fist pump, (You know, "YYYYYESSS!"), except that's going to be misinterpreted as a face mask. Maybe they can force the refs to do the Ickey shuffle, or mime pulling a Sharpie from their sock. So folks, what is the appropriate gesture for the ref to make?

Thanks JQ, for spreading the love.
(and yes that would be the fitting description, 'die hard Pirate fan'.)

First, notes on two other people's weblogs.
If as has been rumored, the Nielsen family is one of New York's traditional 'five families', Mike is a lot trouble.

Joe found googlism again, and while I didn't it interesting the first time, because asking it "who is Dwight Kidder?" doesn't produce a meaningful result, I forgot to try "Who is DEK?" which will produce much more interesting results, because 'dek' appears to be an actual term in some languages. Look for yourself. However, the one that demanded I look it up, just to make sure you folks aren't writing me into some bizarre form of quiz bowl death porn, was the phrase "dek is stored naked and packetless", I'm so glad to see that's actually something to do with Pretty Good Privacy, though that's obviously not pretty good enough. Don't even think about it. DON'T!

Now then.

It's suck league time again. Those of you who don't know the rules, think of it as combining fantasy baseball, with lowball poker. The goal is to put a lineup out that is as bad as possible, and doing as many bad things as possible. But of course if your players get benched, injured, or sent to the minors, they can't score for you, so it's a constant game of how far they can fall before they blow out.
I still have 2 Free Agents to sign in Waivermania, but this is pretty much what I'll be going with. I lost the exact order due to sorting, but this is roughly it.

Your 2004 Pittsburgh Sparrows (It is, without a doubt, the worst team you've ever heard of. But you have heard of it.)

Cesar Izturis SS LA
Cory Lidle P CIN
Luis Rivas 2B MIN
Jimmy Haynes P CIN
Michael Tucker OF SF
Tino Martinez 1B TB
Dan Wilson C SEA
David Bell 3B PHI
Kenny Lofton OF NYY
Jack Wilson SS PIT
Darren Oliver P FLA
Tony Womack 2B STL
Wes Obermueller P MIL
Juan Rivera OF MON
Juan Encarnacion OF LA
Danny Haren P STL
Steve Trachsel P NYM
Victor Martinez C CLE
Chan Ho Park P TEX
Chris Carpenter P STL
Shingo Takatsu RP CHW
Jose Lima P LA
Rob Mackowiak 3B PIT
Reed Johnson OF TOR
Marlon Byrd OF PHI

Only real interesting bits of this were that I really wanted to get shortstops this year, as I almost want to say that overall bad shortstops are less plentiful than bad second basemen. Then I got a bounty of them. I'm still a little amazed I was able to grab Capt. Jack Sparrow Wilson and Womack in the 10+ rounds. I really lucked out in getting getting David Bell, who I figure might be them millstone around the Phils. I know I'm really weak in OF, in that I really don't have an absolute sink out there, unless Lofton completely bombs out, and then he'll just get replaced. I also may have gone overboard with starting pitching, but I sort of figure either Lima or Carpenter will get shuffled back to the pen.

So the opening lineup would be:
C: C. Wilson
1B: T. Martinez
2B: Rivas
SS: Izturis
MI: J. Wilson
3B: Bell
OF: Tucker, Lofton, Rivera, Encarnacion (Mackowiak goes here, once he gets certified at OF, which is likely to happen in April due to injuries to Jason Bay.)
UT: Mackowiak, Womack, V. Martinez
SP: Lidle, Haynes, Oliver
RP: Takatsu, Lima?, Carpenter?
P: Park, Haren, Obermueller (Rule number 1 of suck league, use as many starters as you can, because you'll never hit the the innings limits.)

Hmm... I'm strong(weak) on starting pitching, strong up the middle, strong at 3rd, and hoping for a Tino collapse at 1st. Beyond that, I still need relievers, and I still don't know if I can easily put the best outfield out there.

Sometimes, no matter how much I try, some logical inconsistency just completely wrecks my ability to deal with a concept. I ran into this with Infinite Jest when I got to the part around page 80 with the simple phrasing of how a team traded for a punter. At that point I put down the book, and just sat there saying "You don't trade for a punter!" I've got my list of crimes against nature, and I'm pretty sure that's on it. Every time I try and pick the book up again, I go back to that spot, and bang. "You don't trade for a punter!" People tell me it's a REALLY good book, and he's a REALLY good punter, and still "YOU...DO...NOT...TRADE...FOR...A...PUNTER!" It's like there's a short in my brain, and everytime that neuron fires, the entire system reboots.

S'anyway... Last night, I'm watching the World Poker Tour, and a commercial pops on. "The Kalahari is coming to Sandusky, Ohio." Phrases like that will get my attention, I could be comatose and that would tilt my head like a bewildered German shepherd. So it turns out it's this, which admittedly, is exactly what Sandusky is there for. (It used to be Sea World and Geauga Lake before they were eaten by Six Flags Uber Alles.) But it's not the phrase "The Kalahari is coming to Sandusky, Ohio" that's bothering me. No, it's the name. And that little neuron that fires off every time Infinite Jest is mentioned is at it again. "You don't name a water park after a desert!" Go to look at the website. "You don't name a water park after a desert!" Look at the website Kondominiums (That's Quality with a capital K.) "You don't name a water park after a desert!" I'm sure my Wisconsin readers will say it's a REALLY good waterpark, but still "YOU...DO...NOT...NAME...A...WATER...PARK...AFTER...A...DESERT!"

Lacking the free time to put a lot of thought into things (software's about to release in both my jobs), here's five things I've read in the past two weeks that I've been fascinated by.

1 I think is the basketball equivalent of the pine tar game, and yet, I've never heard of it before.
2 which also continues my sneaking suspicion that I should have named this weblog "The 'What I want to know' Show."
3 John Rainwater just got added to the list of contributors of my next packet.
4 I remember games on tape, but not this. I can also imagine the multifaceted disappointment that would come with a text adventure based on the Thompson Twins.
5 It probably doesn't matter in quiz bowl any more, but at least a lot of things that looked random previously, now make sense.

Well, I don't know if my bracket is completely busted yet, but it definitely got burninated over the weekend by UAB. Still have three of my final four, but only 7 of the 16.

Saturday I missed out on this holiday, and frankly I'm the poorer for it. No word on how Randall Simon celebrated, but it appears the sausages were all set.

I don't know about this article, except for it being a prime example of my state government in action, or inaction. I think it says remarkable things about everyone: the legislators who do it, both parties who don't mind it, and me for noting that while it probably happens in a lot of states, it's natural that the one dumb enough to get caught is in Pennsylvania.

So, I'm half way to finishing the job. After my ISP got eaten, I needed to redo all my web pages, and since they were non-functional, I took it upon myself to rewrite them, and learn a new scripting language in process. Then I had to push through my natural cheapness to actually pay for the additional services. (Comparative times: 8 days to do the coding, 2 months to overcome the cheapness.) I'm now done with the two bits I needed to have done. Both the Reference Desk and the Freshman Contact List are done. (At least the back code, the data always needs more time, I'm only about 10% through the site listings I need for the refdesk, though now I have it set up so I can automatically update everything.) On top of which, I now have a web site (well, an actual site, more than a page, though less than an actual useful site.) I tried for the obvious one, fraught.com, only to find it not available, though the only reference to it was this fascinating article about which English words were not websites in 1999. Some of these I really should have considered: nilpotent, ratiocinate, and ruminant have interesting appeals, perhaps only to me. Ultimately it was either deksdesk.com, which had the possibility of a cool logo, but no chance of anyone ever typing it right, or what I chose, which is at least associable to me, and a perfect description of a site tied to a test engineer. What do I deal with all day? Fraught machines.
Basically, I just bought space for a lab, and right now, it looks like I've paid no attention to aesthetics. Good. I figure this page may move over there some time, but I don't know for sure yet. I've got ideas of useful things to put over there, but I have other things to do for now. We'll see how it goes.

Random bits

I'm kind of shocked to see that most of the sports talking heads are agreeing with what was the instant Pitt homer vibe upon selection Sunday, that being Pitt got screwed, being forced to play as a three seed, and facing the prospect of a Wisconsin team effectively at home in Milwaukee in the second round. This obviously means they'll keel over in the first round. S'anyway, does anybody know if Wisconsin's fans to the one appropriate thing their cheering section should be doing? The idea of giant mushrooms replacing the "BRICK" signs behind the glass is highly appealing. (Of course, if someone purported to be TROUT MAN, dousing the Pitt faithful with soy sauce and causing shame in their cats, that would certainly balance it all out.)

J-Walk pointed to this article, I'm just baffled at the notion that Hormel, the folks who bring you all you meat in a can needs, are pondering pasta.

Craig pointed out the imminent arrival of "Brood X". Now I have a previous relationship with cicadas, as my family's house is smack dab in the middle of Brood V and Brood VII territory. In their last visitation, Brood V managed to generate something around 40dB, while we were sitting in the house. Outside it was obviously worse. (I'm also very disappointed to find out the X in Brood X was a ten. Somehow I just expected the Sci-Fi Channel to produce an original film "Brood X", a nice ominous name, and if they're looking as far down the chain as snakeheads, all bets are off.)

Speaking of that, this really blew my mind. Compare: IMDB lists three films based on snakeheads. IMDB lists TWO current entries based on Beowulf. One is a 27 minute cartoon, the other is this, which has been sitting at an uncomfortable eye level in the local video store the last two times I've been in there, and quite frankly just looks like such a bad idea I'm afraid to rent it, but I know some kid has failed an English class somewhere because of it.

Meanwhile, Gone Stupid Network, excuse me, GSN, has decided to jump on the poker bandwagon by showing the World Series of Blackjack. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the whole notion of blackjack that you're basically playing against a house that is effectively on autoplay (I'll grant them a chance if they're doing something radical here). You can't fake the house out, thus there's nothing to watch here. Based on this, we're one step away from televising the slot machine world championships. And by extension, we're two steps away from "The Shiny Show".

Both Craig and Pittsblog made note of this story about Pittsburgh getting thrown a bone by Esquire. I'll freely admit I'm not in a position to comment, given I tend not to pay attention to it anyway, and what has been brought to my attention hasn't seemed any greater or lesser than in past years. (Of course, I'm also the guy who is able to completely zone out of following music for years at a time. So any sea change is not going to register with me anyway.) Our turn, I guess.

In other Pittsburgh news, the Onion would have absolutely nailed down Pittsburgh's relationship to its traffic problems, if they had managed to include one reference to "It would be great when I get the frickin' thing finished." The fact that the guy looks like across between Fred Rogers and former mayor Caligiuri also scores major points.