Chimpy McBushitler for real!!!

Obligatory disclaimer:  The above post is a joke.  Anyone who takes it seriously is also a joke.  We now return you to your regular scheduled blogging.

Back in June, Tennessee women’s basketball coach Pat Summitt announced she was cancelling the annual UConn-Tennessee rivalry series. Turns out, UConn coach Geno Auriemma is pissed at her:

“I think she should just come out and say she’s not playing us because she hates my guts,” Auriemma told The Courant. “And I think people would buy that. Then everyone [who seeks a reason] would be happy. She should just say that [Geno is] a dope, a smart-ass, and then everyone could say that they agree with her.”

Geno added that he would never have cancelled the series: “You know what? I would never want to. This game is bigger than any individual.”

“Besides,” he added, “Brendan Loy just moved to Knoxville, so it’s really poor timing to end the series now.”

Okay, maybe he didn’t say that last part. But it’s true! (Hat tip: my dad.)

An attempted kidnapping on 27th Street near USC.

Becky used to live on 27th on the west side of Hoover, right near where this happened.

Looks like Apple is bumping the minimum system requirements for the new OS. 

"Leopard will now require Macs with "an Intel processor or a PowerPC G4 (867 MHz or faster) or G5 processor." Other system requirements include a DVD drive, built-in FireWire, at least 512MB of RAM (additional recommended), and at least 9GB of hard disk space."

Now, how long do I wait before hopping on the Leopard train?

We’re two weeks past the climatological peak of hurricane season, but still in the “active” part of the season historically, and it looks like things could get a bit more active this week. Dr. Jeff Masters says “three tropical depressions may form by Wedneday in the Atlantic.”

UPDATE: One down, two to go!

MORNING UPDATE: T.D. 12 is now Tropical Storm Karen.

I neglected to note that, a week ago Sunday, the second anniversary of Sarah LeFoll’s death came and went. I think I subconsciously knew it, though: I’ve thought of Sarah several times in the last week or so, and until now I wasn’t sure what caused my mind to wander in her direction. But of course: it was this time of year in 2005 — the night after the Michigan State game, no less — that I got that awful call from Steve Kenny. I was getting ready to head out to Dmytro’s “3-0″ party (reconstituted as a “2-1″ party after the Irish’s overtime loss) when tragic news arrived via cell phone like a bolt out of the blue. Needless to say, I never made it to the party.

For Sarah’s immediate family and close friends, I imagine the grief is still acute and constant. For me, “closure,” whatever that means, has long since come. And yet: every now and then, I still think about her, and about what happened to her, and it makes me so sad. Death is so damn permanent. Sarah had much yet to offer this world when she died, and no trite turn of bloggy phrase can ever resurrect that potential, forever lost.

Rest in peace, Sarah. We still miss you.

Becky just roasted her first chicken.

It was delicious.

Mmmmmmmm… chicken.

Aww, Becky is becoming all domestic and stuff. :)

So says Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It would be funny, because of its blatant absurdity, if it weren’t coming from someone whose government executes gays as a matter of policy.

Also, it seems Columbia President Lee Bollinger gave Mad Mahmoud quite a mouthful in his introductory remarks. (Hat tip: InstaPundit.) I haven’t watched the video yet, but it sounds like a pretty awesome, and well-deserved, "string of insults," as Ahmadinejad put it later, taking umbrage just as he took umbrage at Mike Wallace daring to ask direct and forceful questions on 60 Minutes. (You’ll have to forgive Mahmoud; he’s not too familiar with the whole “free speech” thing.)

Less awesome is the fact that, apparently, Ahmadinejad got a good reception from some of the far-left idiots in attendance at the Columbia event. Anybody who childishly mimicks anti-Bush talking point is okay by them, I guess. Some think he’s “entirely reasonable.” Some even have crushes on him! And some were utterly humiliated by President Bollinger’s factually accurate “insults,” and cheered and applauded Ahmadinejad when he criticized Bollinger’s lack of “manners.” I guess some folks weren’t really interested in a free and unfettered exchange of ideas, including harsh criticisms and tough questions for Dear Leader Mahmoud?

But hey, although they might not realize it, those Ahmadinejad-apologist fools are actually an unwitting testament to what’s great about America: in this country, you have the unalienable right to be an idiot — and more to the point, the unalienable right to speak out against your government, no matter how wrong-headed your views might be. Imagine if George W. Bush (or, ahem, perhaps a slightly more articulate American leader) came to speak at a university in Iran, and started reciting anti-Ahmadinejad talking points. There might be some Iranian dissidents who would cheer, but they would do so at great personal risk, as they could potentially be arrested or even killed if the government deemed them enough of a threat. Certainly, the government would do everything in its power to exclude them from the lecture hall if it could identify them in advance, thus producing a mirage of monolithic anti-American sentiment. In this country, by contrast, no such effort was made; the government did not try to “manage” the event so as to make sure the audience response was uniformly anti-Ahmadinejad. The marketplace of ideas was allowed to do its thing, unfettered and unimpeded, and thus, unlike in Iran, and unlike in the fanciful dystopia that some radical lefties erroneously believe they are currently living in — y’know, Chimpy W. Hitler’s fascist police state of Amerikka — the result was the gloriously messy cacophony of viewpoints that can only happen in a free country. Somehow I suspect the amazing virtue of that reality will be lost on Mahmoud, but we shouldn’t let it be lost on us.

For those of you who’ve already seen the Britney breakdown of Chris Crocker on YouTube, here’s one for the straight male Mac enthusiast.

Heh.

If the Vegas oddsmakers to be believed, the biggest upset in college-football history was not the Michigan-Appalachian State game three weeks ago; it was the Louisville-Syracuse game this past Saturday!  The Orange was a 37-point underdog to the Cardinals — one point more than the 36-point spread in the 1985 Oregon State-over-Washington stunner that is generally regarded by gambling types as the biggest upset ever.

Appy State, by contrast, was "only a 22-23 point underdog, depending on who you listen to," according to Brian Cook.  I’m not sure where he’s getting those numbers, since there is generally no "official" point spread on games between I-A and I-AA teams.  But this article says Jeff Sagarin had Michigan as a 25-point favorite.  So whatever the exact spread (or would-be spread), I think it’s fair to say it was (or would have been) less than 37.

And rightfully so, I’d argue. For all the histrionics, here and elsewhere, about the Appy State upset ("This is frogs raining from heaven. This is physically impossible"), the Mountaineers are a good team that just happens to play in a lower division; they would probably finish in the middle of the pack in the Big Ten, and they might win the ACC Coastal Division. Okay, maybe not, but you take my point: whether you call them I-A or I-AA, "Bowl Subdivision" or "Championship Subdivision," the reality is that Appalachian State is better than Syracuse.

None of which, of course, changes the fact that Michigan lost to Appalachian State. HAHAHAHAHA. (Pay no attention to the 38-0 drubbing of Notre Dame behind the curtain!)

Anyway, the broader question this brings to my mind is: how many more milestone games can college football possibly give us?  The last three seasons have been a veritable goldmine!  We’ve seen the biggest upset ever by point spread (Syracuse over Louisville, 2007), the first-ever Div. I-AA win over a ranked Div. I-A team (Appalachian State over #5 Michigan, 2007), the most consequential and utterly thrilling David-over-Goliath upset in bowl history (Boise State over Oklahoma, Fiesta Bowl, 2007), the biggest comeback in history (Michigan State over Northwestern, 2006), the biggest comeback in bowl history (Texas Tech over Minnesota, Insight Bowl, 2006), arguably the greatest championship game ever played (Texas over USC, 2006), and arguably the greatest game ever played, at least until the Boise-Oklahoma game (USC over Notre Dame, 2005) on arguably the greatest day in college-football history (October 15, 2005).  It’s really getting a little excessive at this point.  Can college football possibly keep up this insane level of excitement?  Or are we in for a few boring years ahead, as karmic retribution?

Blue Plate Special hosting Grammy winners Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that there's a huge crowd to see such a big act perform for free. I should have gotten here sooner!

The phrase “it sucks to be a lawyer” isn’t going to get much sympathy from non-lawyers, but nevertheless, it seems there are more and more lawyers making less and less money, according to the Wall Street Journal:

A law degree isn’t necessarily a license to print money these days.

For graduates of elite law schools, prospects have never been better. Big law firms this year boosted their starting salaries to as high as $160,000. But the majority of law-school graduates are suffering from a supply-and-demand imbalance that’s suppressing pay and job growth. The result: Graduates who don’t score at the top of their class are struggling to find well-paying jobs to make payments on law-school debts that can exceed $100,000. Some are taking temporary contract work, reviewing documents for as little as $20 an hour, without benefits. And many are blaming their law schools for failing to warn them about the dark side of the job market. …

A slack in demand appears to be part of the problem. The legal sector, after more than tripling in inflation-adjusted growth between 1970 and 1987, has grown at an average annual inflation-adjusted rate of 1.2% since 1988, or less than half as fast as the broader economy, according to Commerce Department data. …

On the supply end, more lawyers are entering the work force, thanks in part to the accreditation of new law schools and an influx of applicants after the dot-com implosion earlier this decade. In the 2005-06 academic year, 43,883 Juris Doctor degrees were awarded, up from 37,909 for 2001-02, according to the American Bar Association. …

Many students “simply cannot earn enough income after graduation to support the debt they incur,” wrote Richard Matasar, dean of New York Law School, in 2005, concluding that, “We may be reaching the end of a golden era for law schools.”

Some of the things that are making life harder for lawyers — such as tort reform and malpractice reform legislation — are good things for society at large, even if they’re bad for me and my classmates. Still, it would have been nice to graduate from law school a little bit earlier in the “golden era.” :)

If you’re a college-football announcer, what better time could there possibly be to start randomly talking about Britney Spears — confusing the hell out of everyone else in the broadcasting booth — than in overtime of the Georgia-Alabama game, right before the game-winning touchdown?

Thanks to Georgia QB Matthew Stafford and WR Mikey Henderson, I guess we’ll never know to answer to the question, "What is Britney doing with her life?" (Hat tip: Stewart Mandel.)

Also thanks to Stafford and Henderson, Alabama is no longer among the ranks of the unbeaten… and somewhere, some crazed Crimson Tide fan is thinking about registering FireNickSaban.com. :)

Anyway, the Thrilling Thirty-One is down to a Terrific Twenty-Three. After the jump, a look at how all 31 teams that entered the week undefeated fared.

(more…)

Subtropical Storm Jerry has formed, way out over the Central Atlantic. He is no threat to land.

Once again, Alan Sullivan is unimpressed, declaring Jerry a “marginal designation” and the latest symptom of the National Hurricane Center’s “zeal to pin a name on any storm in the Atlantic Basin.” In an earlier post, he wrote of Jerry’s formation, “Such storms can occur at any season in the North Atlantic. If NHC gets in the habit of designating them, it will be scaring the public with hurricanes in winter.”

Of considerably more potential significance are Invest 94L in the Gulf of Mexico, Invest 97L east of the Lesser Antilles, and Invest 96L way out in the Cape Verde region. Dr. Jeff Masters and Eric Berger have more on 94L; Sullivan has more on 96L and 97L.

I won’t post a gigantic number this time, nor will I add to the curse Brendan believed I may have started.

I’ll just say this: the Sox are in the playoffs!!!!  The first team to clinch a playoff berth in the Majors, Boston’s magic number to clinch the AL East now sits at 6.