Interesting: Labor Economics

A
Originally uploaded by kuzmatt9.

Good thing Hitzy got a job -- you know things are tight in the market when people are willing to do things like this for money.

Helpful: Bush sings a happy song

And why not? It's not like anything unpleasant is happening in the U.S. right now.

Helpful: Cats In Sinks

That's right, an entire website with pictures of cats in sinks.

Math pt. 2

Math pt. 2
Originally uploaded by kuzmatt9.

Side view.

Math puzzle

Math puzzle
Originally uploaded by kuzmatt9.

Estimate the weight of the cake in the two pictures.

Another Cubs game...

Another Cubs game...
Originally uploaded by kuzmatt9.

Another loss, this time to the Dodgers 8-5.



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Wait wait...

Wait wait...
Originally uploaded by kuzmatt9.

Live!



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Helpful: Best commercials ever

Before the lawyers take 'em away, here are audio clips of the Bud Light Real Men of Genius Commercials.

Helpful: F.U.T.O

Eagles fans should get a laugh out of this one.
(link courtesy Dad K)

PS - Mr. Owens, if you're reading this, I mean no offense and would be happy to have you on my fantasy football team, if you would so desire.

Cheers,
Kuz

Helpful: Fantasy Football!

Let the madness begin.

Helpful: Larry King is a genius

From Larry King Live:
"KING: All right, hold on. Dr. Forrest, your concept of how can you out-and-out turn down creationism, since if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?"

Interesting: Anti-war vs. Anti-Iraq War

Guess what, Mr. President? There's a difference.

Helpful: Don't bother registering

Blogger now has word verification in comments, so no auto-spammers are gonna get me, so anonymous comments are allowed again. Good times.

Helpful: What would Jesus do?

He'd smoke that chump, according to Radical Cleric Pat Robertson.

See the video here.

Oy vey.

Interesting: Overheard in New York

Because eavesdropping is so much fun.

Not Helpful: Impatience at the poker table

Played a couple of friendly games tonight, and both times I made it to the final two and got impatient and lost. My opponent was betting alot more than normal and won almost every showdown, so I should have just figured that he was getting better cards than me and just tightened up my play. Instead, I kept bluffing at him and losing. Lame. Oh well. Next time.

Interesting: Back to the Campaign

Did some fundraising phone calling for Deb Shore this week. My call list was done in just an hour, but it was still nice to get back into it. Deb is an awesome candidate for an obscure office, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. If you live in Cook County, this is your good government pick for the March primary!

Helpful: "Intelligent Falling"

I've been reading up on intelligent design, the non-scientific science concept that has Kansas State Board of Education yahoos all excited. I'm reading The Blind Watchmaker to find out the main evidence against Intelligent Design, but meanwhile, it looks like there's an even more compelling theory being floated out there--The Onion has the latest.

Interesting: StoryCorps

StoryCorps is NPR's master plan to make people cry every Friday. Can you resist their evil ways?

Interesting: Cindy Sheehan

I don't have time to write much about Cindy Sheehan and her protests in Crawford, but I wanted to make sure I put up a link to her diaries on dKos. I'm interested in hearing everyone's thoughts.

PS - Again, I'm sorry that comment spam from poker websites made me turn off the anonymous comments -- if you'd like to make an anonymous comment, just send it to my gmail account and I will post it. Or set up an anonymous Blogger account. Thanks.

Welcome back...

Welcome back...
Originally uploaded by kuzmatt9.

2-1 Cubs in the second.



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Helpful: Breaking up is hard to do

So do it gently.

Helpful: Please register

I agree with Josh--although I haven't had much comment spam or anonymous postings, they have the potential to be annoying and even destructive. So to comment, please register with Blogger. It's free, they don't spam you, and you don't have to use your real name. But at least that way, if someone's being a jerk or spamming, it's easy to deal with. If you want to comment but don't want to register, use the email addy on the sidebar and write me directly. Thanks.

Bummer

Bummer.
Originally uploaded by kuzmatt9.

KC won 3-2. Our goalie got ejected for shooting his mouth off at halftime, so the Fire had to play a man short. Pretty nice seats for my first time at Soldier Field though. Many thanks to Childers for joining me.

I + H: Travel Light!

All you need is one bag.

Helpful: Intellisync

It took 4 tries, but my new work computer is finally talking to my Yahoo! calendar, so I don't have to type back in my contacts, calendar and task data. Thank you, Yahoo!

Helpful: Better strategy

Democratic Congressmen who supported the decision to invade Iraq have only one intellectually honest way to criticize the President at this point.

Helpful: SPINsider

At first I thought Podcasts were just ok. If I wanted to listen to people talk, I could just turn on the radio. But no stations here play new music consistently, so I've been turning to ones like SPIN.com's SPINsider. KEXP, Rolling Stone, iTunes Music Store, all of them have new music summaries that can help you sift through the gobs of music out there.

On this issue, SPINsider plays Hard-Fi, who was at Stage #5 across the street at Lollapalooza. That day, they sounded fine, at least as good as they could sound from across the street.

Helpful: The Irish

Lauren's latest post about her newfound Irish friends reminds me of a little story from when Indigo Steve was here for Lollapalooza:

We had lunch in a pub, right near my place. Our Irish bartender, Steven, overheard me saying that I liked bourbon, so he said, "ye gotta try the Baaaysil Haaayden." (Basil Hayden.) So he brought over this bottle to show us, but there was very little whiskey left.
I said, "There's not even a shot in there; what are you going to with that?"
He brings the bottle over, slams it down in front of me, slams a shot glass down with his other hand, and says in a voice that I will be imitating for the rest of my life,
"Fine, ya can fockin pour it yourself!"

That was some smooth bourbon.

Interesting: The Message Thing

Jim Wallis is in the New York Times today with a blueprint for Democrats to start winning elections. He thinks the most powerful electoral issues are:

1. Fighting poverty
2. Environmental stewardship
3. Fresh ideas on abortion
4. "Pro-family" cultural issues, like violence and sexual content in media
5. Multilateral international leadership as a foreign policy priority

#1, 2 and 5 are winners, 4 is irrelevant, and 3 is a trap.

As we've seen this week, Wisconsin anti-choicers are much more concerned with punishing female college students for having sex than preventing abortions. I had figured that birth control was a done deal in this country, but apparently not. So how on earth are we supposed to find a compromise on abortions when we have to go back and refight whether women have the right to have their prescriptions filled?

And good luck trying to take sex and violence out of video games and movies. If they want to give us more freedom to choose or block out cable channels, that's fine with me. But there are enough choices in media now with video on demand and TiVo that any parent could pretty much program their child's entertainment choices from dawn to dusk. What's the big deal?

Helpful Update: Fingers

Oh well, didn't get the opportunity I was hoping for. At least not yet. That's ok though, nobody gonna breaka my stride; nobody gonna hold me down, oh no, I gotta keep on movin'.

Helpful: Top 6

Indigo Steve, who apparently feels that the High Fidelity "Top 5" list is insufficient, asked me to list my Top 6 songs. Qualifiers and conditions allowed. So here we go, softly:

In increasing order of volume:

1. Please Stay - Warren Zevon
Zevon cut this album knowing he had just a few months to live. This song is a crushingly poignant view of love and partnership.

2. Nashville - David Mead
I spent a weekend with David at a writing workshop in 2003, and this song was the highlight. It still gives me chills. "Was that blood or wine stain on your wedding dress?"

3. Hard Bargain - Ron Sexsmith
I got a chance to play and sing this song a few weeks ago at church. It's half love letter, half letter to God. "How's a guy supposed to fail with someone like you around?"

4. Lebanese Blonde - Thievery Corporation
I had been listening to this song for a few months before it got put onto the Garden State soundtrack, and I must say, it's one of those rare times when I was happy that my favorite song became popular. If you want to see me dance, all you have to do is play this song. It's guaranteed.

5. Train Ride - Lyle Lovett
There's a million Lyle Lovett songs I could put on this list...unless you believe in mathematics. Which I do. So I chose this one.

6. Paranoid Android - Radiohead
One day, I will be able to play two guitars, bass, drums and 2 keyboards at once and produce my own very special cover of this song. Until then, it's just air guitar and screaming. Lucas and I listened to this way back when on a road trip, right when the CD came out, and I almost ran off the road I was rocking so hard.

There you go.

PS - Big day tomorrow. Cross your fingers.