Pwned

A day after Barry Bonds called him a "little midget man who knows (nothing) about baseball," broadcaster Bob Costas said he wasn't upset with the San Francisco Giants slugger and responded with a jab of his own.
"As anyone can plainly see, I'm 5-6 1/2 and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally," Costas said Thursday in a telephone interview.

Math courses aid science studies

Students who had more math courses in high school did better in all types of science once they got to college, researchers say. On the other hand, while high school courses in biology, chemistry or physics improved college performance in each of the individual sciences, taking a high school course in one science didn't result in better college performance in the others.
So that Psychology degree with the Art History minor will probably not translate into a high paying job in nuclear physics or Data Center Management?
WTF?
Why didn't somebody do a study about this and publish it?

I present the following pictures. Psychology students.
Math students.Which group of people do you want running your Data Center?

Nanny State in Action Again

Many power utilities are gearing up to install "smart" meters in kitchens or living rooms to show customers the cost of their electricity use – per minute and perhaps per appliance. During times of peak usage, utilities may even remotely adjust your home thermostat.
A three-year experiment in California with 2,500 customers showed they reduced their average electricity demand by 13 percent during peak summer hours when they had to pay five times the normal cost. Users with the kind of "smart" thermostats that adjust appliance use cut back by 27 percent. Lets review the phrase "adjust appliance use". Really? adjust appliance use? Why didn't he just say, "Disabled the appliance during peak hours."? You know why? Cause people might not be all that excited to learn they can't wash their dishes during the day in the dishwasher EVEN IF THEY NEED TO. Next comes, "those people sure are using a lot of electricity to cool their houses, how about we just turn air conditioners off." Only people in California would allow a power company to "control" their appliance usage.

Bikini Friday

Have a good weekend everyone. I will be playing softball in the Oklahoma State Masters Tournament. If we win we can go to Nationals in Georgia in September. Wish me luck. Well, wish me that my back won't quit me half way through a game and that I'll be able to walk the next day.

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Fun with Google Earth

With its detailed satellite photos, Google's interactive map lets everyone be a virtual globetrotter. And some of the things we've found in our travels are downright bizarre.

The Grim Reaper

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - Oscar the cat seems to have an uncanny knack for predicting when nursing home patients are going to die, by curling up next to them during their final hours. His accuracy, observed in 25 cases, has led the staff to call family members once he has chosen someone. It usually means they have less than four hours to live.
Dosa said Oscar seems to take his work seriously and is generally aloof. "This is not a cat that's friendly to people," Dr. David Dosa said.
No shit? He's the Grim Reaper!
I think I'd have to question the cleanliness of having a cat in a nursing home in the first place. But that is uncanny.

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Tour de France resumes without Rasmussen

GOURETTE, France - Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen was sent home after winning Wednesday's stage, sending cycling's biggest race staggering toward the finish.
Just a day after star Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for a banned blood transfusion, the Tour also lost the man who most believed would be wearing the yellow jersey down the Champs-Elysses.
Rasmussen's expulsion, which Bergsma said was ordered by the Dutch team's sponsor, was linked to "incorrect" information the rider gave to the team's sports director over his whereabouts last month. Rasmussen missed random drug tests May 8 and June 28, saying he was in Mexico. However, a former rider, Davide Cassani, told Denmark's Danmarks Radio on Wednesday that he had seen Rasmussen in Italy in mid-June.
With Rasmussen out, Contador of the Discovery Channel team moved into the lead. Australian Cadel Evans, who rides for Predictor-Lotto, moved up to second, with U.S. rider Levi Leipheimer, also with Discovery, now third.
SO let's review.
German rider Patrick Sinkewitz, out doping.
Kazakhstan's Alexander Vinokourov out, illegal blood transfusion.
Denmark rider Michael Rasmussen out, missing drug tests.
Italian Cristian Moreni and the entire Corfidis team out, doping.

Numbers indicate unlikely outcomes in games Donaghy officiated

In the two seasons in which the FBI is investigating Donaghy for allegedly fixing games for gambling purposes, Bell found that NBA teams scored more points than Las Vegas expected (hitting the over) 57 percent of the time when Donaghy was part of the officiating crew. With a league average of 49 to 51 percent, the odds of such an occurrence are 19 to 1.
Although the 13 percent difference might not seem that jarring to the casual observer, it's jaw-dropping in the world of sports gambling. Bell said the odds of a 44 percent probability happening 57 percent of the time are about 1 in 1,000.
"There's a 99.9 percent chance that these results would not have happened without an outside factor," sports gambling expert R.J. Bell said. "Something abnormal was going on here."
Caption for the above photo: "I have some friends that would be very happy if you scored 80 points."
Or
"I have no doubt your team will win, and I'll bet you beat the spread."

207 million in cash

The way U.S. and Mexican authorities describe 44-year-old Zhenli Ye Gon, he might have sprung from some pulp novelist's overheated imagination.
Born in Shanghai, he lived in Mexico and ran a pharmaceuticals company -- a front, authorities allege, that supplied Mexican drug cartels with massive quantities of a chemical used to make the street drug methamphetamine. Police raided his luxurious Mexico City home in March, carting off what they said was $207 million, most of it in $100 bills that had been stashed behind false walls and in closets. The U.S. government called it "the largest single drug cash seizure the world has ever seen."
In recent years, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said, he gambled away nearly $126 million in Las Vegas casinos.
In an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington in support of a drug charge against Ye Gon, federal authorities allege that, between December 2005 and August, his company, Unimed Pharm Chem de Mexico, illegally imported from overseas about 86 metric tons of restricted chemicals into Mexico "for the express purpose of manufacturing pseudoephedrine/ephedrine."
I wonder if that will slow the pace of meth in America?

Wow

This video is horrendously terrible. Don't watch it.
Really don't. I'm not going to give you back the 5:43 of your life.
No one is.
It's just lost, like your virginity, comic books, and those 1990s porn mags exotic movie magazines you once had hidden in that shoe box in the corner of the closet.

Bill Fleming, Wide World of Sports reporter, dead, 80, prostate cancer

Bill Flemming, a longtime ABC Sports broadcaster who covered events as varied as the Olympics, college football and cliff diving, has died. He was 80. In addition to football and golf play-by-play, Flemming reported on more than 600 events for ABC's "Wide World of Sports." He covered 11 Olympics and the showdown between chess titans Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky in 1972.
Sad. He was never without his coat and tie.

Two US lawmakers face corruption probe

Two senior Republican lawmakers are reportedly under criminal investigation for alleged corruption linked to an Alaska oil services company. Federal authorities are looking into whether Representative Don Young or Senator Ted Stevens accepted bribes, illegal gratuities or unreported gifts from VECO Corp., an oil field engineering firm in Alaska, the Wall Street Journal wrote, citing unnamed "people close to the case."
With Congress's approval rating at an ALL TIME high low, it seems the corruption never ends. I'm not sure the statement in the article,
"The investigations have hurt President George W. Bush's Republican party, with some party members blaming the corruption cases for helping hand their Democratic rivals control of Congress in legislative elections last year."
is entirely accurate. Yes the Republican party was hurt by scandals, but is it George W. Bush's party? I also want to point out that the Democrats have some corruption investigation pending as well. I would have written the article with the approval angle instead of the Republican Party angle.

What's wrong with America?

Here's another edition of What's wrong with America.
Again today it may seem like we are attacking the education system. It all boils down to simple geography people. Of course America took a 20 year break from teaching it in schools so what do we expect.
And for those of you not "hip" to what's going on...that's where Australia should be on the map.

Dumbass of the Day

A special multi-dumbass edition.
For the most part I blame the education system.
Physics should be a mandatory class just like English and Math.

Tour de France riders stage protest

ORTHEZ, France - Dozens of Tour de France riders demonstrated their anger over repeated doping scandals by not starting the 16th stage at the scheduled time Wednesday. The protest came a day after star rider Alexandre Vinokourov and his Astana team were sent home after he tested positive for a banned blood transfusion.
Many of the riders involved in the symbolic protest were from French teams that have long complained that doping is ruining the sport. They simply let Rasmussen, star sprinter Tom Boonen and others ride away — but caught up with them further down the road.
Doping is ruining ALL sports. If we are going to "engineer" humans to compete we must think of competition in a different way. And when you do that, you have kids who start doping to compete, and I don't think anyone wants that.

CU regents fire Ward Churchill

The University of Colorado Board of Regents on Tuesday fired Ward Churchill, the professor whose remarks likening some Sept. 11 victims to Nazi Adolf Eichmann provoked national outrage and led to an investigation of research misconduct. CU President Hank Brown said "the decision was really pretty basic" based on the school's findings of plagiarism, falsification and other infractions involving work unrelated to Churchill's remarks on the Sept. 11 victims. Brown said the school had little choice but to fire Churchill to protect the integrity of the university's research.
"The individual did not express regret, did not apologize, did not indicate a willingness to refrain from this type of falsification in the future," Brown said.
Adios dumbass. You were an embarrassment to the institution you taught at and an embarrassment to Native peoples whom you claim to be one of.

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Frisbee Throwin' PDGA update

Fritz is currently 10 down after the first round. He's in pool C.
He knows the course now and is really excited about his second round.
And how do I know this? Crack reporting that's how!
Okay I just made that crap up, he didn't message me back after I taunted him about our Scrabble game this morning.
You can see him in this picture. I just don't know where manly due to his propensity to wear hats and dress like a woman while in public, so spotting him from a distance is pretty hard.
My first thought after looking at this picture and some of the others,
"Can you imagine the smell in that gym? I mean with that many damn dirty frisbee throwin' hippies in one place, wow. I guess they could fumigate after the tournament is over."

Craig Biggio to retire at end of season

Craig Biggio planned to announce Tuesday that he will retire at the end of this season. Biggio, who reached 3,000 hits in June 28, was scheduled to hold a news conference before the Houston Astros hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers and the purpose of the announcement was to announce his retirement plans, a person familiar with the arrangements said.
This kinda sucks. Even though I truly hate the Yankees, Dodgers, Astros, Craig Biggio is a great player, who is fun to watch play and still gives his all everyday. And unlike some players of a similar age, 40+ whom shall not be named here Barry Bonds, he plays EVERYDAY. He is the only player in major league history with 600 doubles, 250 homers, 3,000 hits and 400 steals. I'm gonna miss seeing him loose to the Padres.

Point Shaving Ref has been doing this for 2 years

In a report I read on WithLeather.
ESPN.com's Wayne Drehs interviewed gambling expert R.J. Bell, who drops this bomb on the sports world: NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who last week was accused of betting on NBA games and fixing point totals in games he worked over the last two years, probably fixed point totals in games he worked over the last two years.
The good people over there also posted up this video.
After you watch it, the bad calls now have some sort of meaning.
I remember watching this game and saying to my wife, wow these refs really suck. Boy was I wrong, I should have said, boy these refs are on the take. My wife mentioned something about, "do you think they are doing that on purpose?" And I foolishly responded, "No way, those refs aren't on the take, the NBA usually catches these guys well before they can do that crap."

Boy was I wrong.

Astana pulls out of Tour de France

PAU, France - Tour de France rider Alexandre Vinokourov tested positive for a banned blood transfusion after winning last weekend's time trial, prompting his Astana team to pull out of the race Tuesday and police to raid the team hotel. Despite the latest heavy blow to a sport reeling from doping scandals, Tour de France organizers said the race would go on.
Well duh, the race will go on how many hundreds of millions of euros have been invested? It seems to me that either, the testing procedure is flawed, or there are a lot of cheaters in cycling today.

Holy Crap!

A model presents a creation by designer Alexandros Talianis on the catwalk of the IGEDO fashion fair in Duesseldorf, Germany, Sunday, July 22, 2007. The Igedo fashion fairs, during which 1,770 exhibitors from 51 countries will present their latest collections to the world's bulk buyers in Duesseldorf lasts until July 24, 2007.
Ummm. Wow.

YouTube questions take a different tack, get same old answers

Video questions submitted to the hip Web site YouTube shook up the usual campaign debate Monday night. The questions, most of them coming from young people, were blunt and earnest, yet sometimes bizarre.
According to the report on NPR this morning, for the most part questions were answered with the same old answers, offering us nothing but the same. The Republicans will get their chance at YouTube questions in September.

Drew Carey will host 'Price Is Right'

Genial comic Drew Carey was tapped Monday to replace silver-haired legend Bob Barker on the CBS daytime game show "The Price is Right." The deal was set Monday afternoon shortly before a taping of CBS' "Late Show" with David Letterman, where he confirmed it.
Asked if he found the prospect of replacing such a TV legend daunting, Carey recalled talking to a friend who knows the game show business who told him, "as long as Bob Barker is cool with it, the fans will be cool with it."
"I'm cool with it," Barker said after hearing Carey's remarks.
Sweet! Good move CBS. Drew, a former Marine, will do a great job. I wonder if he'll be allowed any content changes?
Everything you wanted to know about Bob Barker. Everything you wanted to know about Drew Carey.

Stay home Michael

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has weighed in on Michael Vick's indictment on dogfighting charges, and as a result the Falcons star was ordered to stay away from training camp until the league reviews the case.
You are being tried in the media Michael. The Commissioner is telling you to cooperate fully and your lawyers are telling to not to say a thing. Have you ever wondered what you'll do for a living after football?

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Call For Sierra Bridge Barriers May Cease Suicides

At least 45 people have jumped to their deaths from a 730-foot-high bridge in the Sierra foothills since it opened in 1973, according to the California Department of Parks and Recreation. County supervisors considered installing a mesh fence in the mid-1990s but decided the $700,000 cost was too great. They also have rejected putting up a net, fence or raising the nearly five-foot railing, in part because a barrier would interfere with the views of the American River Canyon and surrounding foothills.
You can't make the entire world idiot proof. So what's next we have to ban all pills cause people take them to kill themselves? So do we have to stop shaving cause some people use razors to slit their wrists? Stop trying to be the great nanny state.

He'll get cha no matter where you are

DEERFIELD BEACH, FL (AP) -- Authorities say a diver was killed after lightning struck his oxygen tank in Deerfield Beach.
When it's your time, it's your time. But diving in the ocean during a thunderstorm is kinda crazy.

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Professional Disc Golf

Our very own Fritz is away this week.
I will be posting the Dumbasses for you, which means some will actually get posted....but he is away competing at the PDGA Worlds in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
You can track his progress here.
How do you root for disc golfers?
According to Fritz, there is a very nice course (World Class even) less than 100 yards from my house. I wondered why all those hippies were out there throwing frisbees.

Dumbass of the Day

In honor of our previous story.

Woman Catches On Fire At Gas Station

LA PLATA, N.M. -- A La Plata woman is hospitalized with burns after catching on fire Friday night while pumping gas.
San Juan County sheriff's deputies said 19-year old Brianna Sanchez was injured after flames shot out of the tank and engulfed parts of the vehicle.
Have you ever seen someone smoking while filling up their vehicle? I often wonder when I watch science fiction movies, what types of dumb shit stuff people will do in the future. I've seen this a bunch. I've even stopped pumping gas and left the station where a woman got out of her car, with cigarette in her hand, and pumped gas. Amazing.
Bonus: Check out the ad on the site. Is that an alien fly fishing? That is craptacular.