Notre Dame trails, 21-7 at halftime. :(

Less than three hours till the Insight Bowl at Bank One Ballpark in downtown Phoenix. Becky and I will be there, and it sounds like we may be in for a long night:

“I know one thing, this is going to be a long football game. It could break the record for the most time,” [Notre Dame interim coach] Baer said. “I think they’re going to put the ball up, you know, 60 times. If you watched us play pass defense the last two games, I would too.”

Notre Dame’s secondary gave up five touchdown passes and 41 points to both Pittsburgh and USC. Oregon State enters the Insight Bowl as the nation’s eighth-ranked passing offense, averaging 304.4 yards per game.

“They’re 114th or whatever against the pass,” Beavers wide receiver Mike Hass said. “We’re a pretty good passing team so hopefully we’ll be able to take advantage of that.”

The prospect of a looong night at the ballpark won’t make Becky happy, but hey, a high-scoring game would be a fun. A repeat of 2001? Not so fun.

GO IRISH!

P.S. Once the game starts, the score will be here.

The Great Tsunami of 2004 is now blamed for 59,000 deaths, making the 9.0 earthquake that spawned it the deadliest quake since 1976, when an estimated 655,000 perished in Tangshan, China.

P.S. It’s the deadliest tsunami since an estimated 60,000 died in Lisbon in 1755 — and this death toll will almost certainly surpass that one, making it the deadliest tsunami on record, according to this list.

Although it feels odd at this time to post about anything other than the catastrophe in Asia — about which, what really is there to Say, besides prayers? — still a little encouragement (in addition to word that the damn Asteroid has Relented :) — may be welcome.

Accordingly, here’s an item about a bit of progress concerning a potential, un-Natural, preventable Asian disaster.

Dec 28, 1:07 PM EST
Pakistan, India Hold Landmark Dialogue

By SADAQAT JAN
Associated Press Writer

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Top Foreign Ministry officials from Pakistan and India held a landmark dialogue on their dispute over the Himalayan region of Kashmir during peace talks Tuesday aimed at resolving five decades of enmity.

The foreign secretaries of the two South Asian nuclear-armed rivals concluded two days of meetings in Islamabad and agreed to carry forward a wide-ranging peace process with more talks on Kashmir and other issues in the months ahead.

Both sides sounded upbeat, even though they remain poles apart on Kashmir - over which they have fought two of their three wars since independence from Britain in 1947 - and have made little substantive progress in the past year.

“I go back with a sense of optimism that there’s sincerity and commitment on both sides to take this process forward,” Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran told reporters afterward.

His Pakistani counterpart Riaz Khokhar conceded the two countries have “diametrically opposite” positions over Kashmir but that a solution was not beyond reach.

“I don’t think we should give up. It’s just the beginning,” he told a separate press conference. “It’s still too early (to say) that the gaps cannot be narrowed.”

…The rhetoric of cooperation demonstrated how relations have improved since a dangerous military confrontation between them in Kashmir in 2002.

Over the past year, Pakistan and India have restored diplomatic ties and travel links. They have also maintained a cease-fire at the disputed border of Kashmir, known as the Line of Control, where they used to shell each other on an almost-daily basis.

…Hundreds of Indian and Pakistani fishermen are languishing in jail in the other’s country after crossing their disputed maritime border.

Free the Fishermen, dammit. :) Then, beat your Nukes into Fishhooks & study War no more.

The risk of an impact by Asteroid 2004 MN4 has abruptly dropped to 1 in 26,000, or 0.003800000%. I guess they found that new data they were looking for!

Here’s a map of the asteroid’s projected path; the thick white line shows the “set of possible positions” with relation to the Earth and Moon. None of those positions involve an impact; appparently the 1 in 26,000 risk relates to 2037, not 2029.

So, that’s good news. But, er, let’s still prepare, shall we? Because, as my dad said, a large oceanic asteroid impact would produce a tidal wave that would dwarf this past weekend’s Southeast Asian catastrophe.

Speaking of which, Belmont Club has some excellent thoughts on the tsunami, the asteroid, and preparations for rare or unprecedented disasters generally.

Heorhiy Kyrpa, Ukraine’s influential Transport Minister and a prominent Yanukovich supporter, has been found shot to death.

BBC:

There are no reports his death is linked to Mr Yanukovych’s defeat by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko in Sunday’s presidential poll re-run.

A government source told Reuters news agency it was not clear whether Mr Kyrpa had killed himself…

Mr Kyrpa’s spokesman, Eduard Zanyuk, told the AFP news agency he had noticed “absolutely no change” in the politician’s behaviour which would support local media speculation that he had killed himself.

UConn leads Toledo, 24-7, in the Huskies’ first ever bowl appearance, the Motor City Bowl (underway now on ESPN). Seven minutes, 42 seconds left in the second quarater.

UPDATE: Now it’s 27-7 Huskies. Things aren’t going so well for the UConn women’s basketball team, who are out of the Top 10 for the first time since Jan. 25, 1994.

In other college football news, Fresno State upset #17 Virginia earlier. Tomorrow, Notre Dame plays Oregon State in the Insight Bowl, which Becky and I will be at.

FINAL UPDATE: UConn wins, 39-10! The Huskies finish 8-4 and are Motor City Bowl champs in only their third year in Division 1-A! Not bad!

Now there’s a video of the tsunami hitting Thailand’s Patong Beach, a popular tourist hotspot (in particular, a gay mecca) on the western shore of Phuket Island.

The death toll of the Great Tsunami of 2004 is now more than 22,000, and “could climb far higher,” according to officials. Millions are homeless.

The Command Post has more, including links to how you can help.

The risk of a Friday the 13th impact on 04/13/2029 by Asteroid 2004 MN4 is now up to 1 in 37, or 2.7%. More here.

Opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko has been declared the winner of Ukraine’s presidential election revote (the first election was annulled due to fraud), but defeated Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich is refusing to concede, declaring, “I will never recognise this defeat because there were violations of the constitution and of human rights in our country.”

Hmm… what will Putin say?

Syndicated columnist Larry Pitts Jr.’s latest work reports on a study by a psychology professor from Emory University on how political and ideological affiliation affect the way people judge a situation.

In a key scenario, respondents were led to believe a soldier was accused of torturing people at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The fictional soldier claimed to have been following orders from superiors who told him the Geneva Conventions had been suspended. He supposedly wanted to subpoena President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to prove his case. Respondents were asked if he should have that right.

Some were presented with strong “evidence” corroborating the soldier’s story. Others had only his word to go on.

But the strength or weakness of the evidence turned out to be immaterial. Researchers were able to predict people’s opinion over 80 percent of the time based simply on their opinions of the Bush administration, the GOP, the military and human-rights groups. Those who had less affection for the president sided with the soldier even when the evidence was weak. And fans of the president tended to side with him even when the evidence was overwhelming.

We believe what we want, facts be damned.

Hmmm, I bet I could predict how a few frequent commentors on this blog would have done in that study…

The Seattle Times posted a question and answer regarding the governors election and what can happen next.

(more…)

So, this afternoon I used my seven Best Buy gift cards, worth a combined total of $356.24 (thanks, Mom & Dad, Patty, Casey, Ginny & Ted!), to buy a new digital camera! Hooray! Say good-bye to PowerShot A60 and hello to PowerShot A95!

Canon should really pay me a commission. :) In addition to faithfully buying their cameras, I’m always talking them up and encouraging my friends to buy them. Seriously, the PowerShot line is great! And my old extension lenses (telephoto and wide-angle) will still work with my new camera.

Anyway, aside from the LCD flip screen (visible in the lower picture), which is very cool, the major difference between the A60 and the A95 is the resolution. The former is a 2-megapixel camera; the latter, 5 megapixels. For website purposes, this will make little difference in most situations, since I shrink images anyway (usually to 640×480) before uploading them. But in situations where I want to crop a small portion of the image and upload only that portion, it can make a big difference.

You can see, for example, that there is little difference in resolution between this A60 image and this A95 image (although the latter has more contrast; not sure why)… but once I zoom in a bit, you can start to see the difference between old and new… and when I zoom in closer, you can really tell: the old camera can’t even make a 640×480 image out of this portion of the image, but with the new camera it’s full size and looks great. Woohoo! :)

Anyway… I’m sure I’ll be oohing and aahing over the camera for a while, as I take new, cool pictures. In the mean time, here’s the newly updated Winter Break gallery, some taken by the A60 and some by the A95.

Becky will probably take over the A60, by the way. She has her own A60, but it has some issues with regard to recognizing memory cards. If we can work out those issues such that it’s functional again, one camera or the other will probably go on the market. Two friends have already made inquiries… :)

Now they’re calling it a 9.0 on the Richter scale.

Remember, the scale is logarithmic, so a 9.0 is one hundred times more powerful than a 7.0. For comparison, the Loma Prieta earthquake (the one that disrupted the World Series in 1989) was a 7.1, and the Northridge quake (which killed 54 people and caused over $40 billion in damage in the L.A. area in 1994) was only a 6.7.