"I have overactive sweat glands."
AOL is still a crappy way to Internet, in my not-so-humble opinion, but their latest commercial ("Too much information") had me in stitches.
No more Hullitzer
The third-leading goal scorer in NHL history has retired. Brett Hull made the announcement yesterday, two hours before he would have played with his Phoenix Coyote teammates against the Detroit Red Wings. At 41 years of age, as Hull put it, "the mind is willing but the body isn't." Which is a true shame, because with the type of high-speed game the new NHL rules have created this season, Hull would have had the chance to really shine on the ice. This style of play is tailor-made for players like Hull, his former Dallas teammate Mike Modano, and many others. Hull, even at 41, still has, I'm sure, one of the best one-timer shots in the game. He was so effective and powerful with the one-timer when he played here in Dallas, it lead Stars color man Daryl Reaugh to nickname Brett "the Hullitzer." My first year in Dallas was also Brett Hull's. He had signed with the Stars in the off-season, coming over from St. Louis. I have a Brett Hull #22 jersey I bought the night of the first Stars home game of the 1998-99 season, a game my wife and I attended. Many people were surprised Hull was not wearing his customary #16, but when Hull arrived in Dallas, that number was already being worn by Pat Verbeek. This could have been an occasion for ego-flexing, but Hull showed a lot of class and chose another number. This is an extremely underrated side of Brett Hull; most people, when they're not discussing his playing prowess, focus on his big mouth. My only druther is we seem to be discussing Hull as being dead, instead of merely retiring. Take this quote from NHL Commissioner Bettman (good job on that OLN TV deal, Gary; I'm sure it will bring in tons of new viewers):
"The National Hockey League will miss Brett's skill, his scoring touch and his fun-loving attitude," NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said. "He was a splendid athlete, a passionate player and someone who never hesitated to speak his mind. His achievements further cement the Hull family legacy of hockey greatness." Um, Commissioner, last time I looked, Hull is still a splendid athlete, he is still very passionate about the game, even if he will no longer play, and I seriously doubt he is ever going to hesitate to speak his mind, now and in the future. He's retiring as a player of the game at its highest level; he's not dead. He has expressed interest in working in management. Seeing as how his best friend is coach of that Phoenix team, and a part-owner in same, that may be closer than most think. Brett Hull is retiring as a player, but I expect we will see him around NHL circles for a long time to come. Thanks, Brett, for some great memories.
The ultimate auto accessory?
You can now add a flamethrower to your automobile--as a theft deterrent--for less than seven hundred dollars. In South Africa. [With a wave of the phin to Michael, who gave me a chuckle with this via IM.]
Keep your iCal window the same size
King of Mac OS X Hints Rob Griffiths has a great tip for keeping your iCal window the same size no matter which view (Day, Week, Month) you're using. Very handy.
Less than half a season to go
This past weekend marked game six of our fall season, so now we only have four to go. I missed game five, due to a shin injury I sustained in game four. The team lost a heartbreaker, so at the midpoint of the season, we were 4-1. With game six, we started over playing against the other teams in our league, and just as with game one, this go-around we were up against the kids from First UMC of Lewisville. We're going to have to keep our eyes on these boys and girls; they're getting better the more they play, and we had to fight every inning, eeking out the win by three runs. I was at third the entire game this time, but didn't see much action, other than some forced outs at my bag. My time at the plate was barely above the suckage level, as I went one for three, a bunt single that wasn't intended to be a bunt. Apparently, I'm faster than I look, too, managing to leg that out to get on base. One of my teammates remarked, at the end of the inning, "Man, you were fast!" Somebody clock me next time. So the team stands at 5-1, and through the miracle of math multiples, my season batting average and my lifetime average are the same: .583. I'm 7-12 for the season, and 21-36 lifetime. See, kids? Math is cool. Study hard.
Why stock analysts are worthless
(Alternative title: There's an reason the word "anal" is in "analyst") Apple quadruples its profit, but the stock takes a ten percent-plus dive because the company "missed" the number of iPod sales stock analysts --who are not employees of Apple, do not sit on the Board of Directors, and who are not Apple executives-- said they thought the company should have sold? They sold 6.4 million iPods in a three months. How many Rios did Creative sell in the last three months? Oh, that's right, they canned that music player. Hold on, it gets better. Those same analysts, who are poo-pooing Apple for failing to sell as many iPods as the analysts thought they should have sold, seem to think Delphi is a good buy. No wonder monkeys are just as good at the stock market as these guys. [With thanks to John Gruber, and Matt Deatherage and W.R. Wing on the MacJournals-Talk list.]
Those media b-st-rds
If the president were to call for two plus two to equal four, the media would report that such a proposal had the support of only 42 percent of likely voters, and a slippage of even conservative support from 87 percent to 63 percent. Perhaps on the jump page, in the 38th inch of the story in the New York Times, they might get around to quoting a professor of mathematics from MIT to the effect that, in fact, the president was right that two plus two still equals four. But for television and radio break news, the story would end at the polling result, which is bad news for the president.
[...]
One doesn't mind, so much, mainstream journalists being b-st-rds. It's being such dumb b-st-rds that one finds so irksome.
Why the two-parent family is important
Two decades of research produced a consensus among social scientists of both left and right that family structure has a serious impact on children, even when controlling for income, race, and other variables. In other words, we are not talking about a problem of race but about a problem of family formation or, rather, the lack of it. The best outcomes for children--whether in academic performance, avoidance of crime and drugs, or financial and economic success--are almost invariably produced by married biological parents. The worst results are by never-married women.
[...]
The upshot of these studies is that America is confronted by a form of poverty that money alone can't cure. Many of us think social breakdown is a result of racism and poverty. Yes, they are factors, but study after study shows that alterations in norms and values are at the heart of economic and behavioral troubles. That's why so much research boils down to the old rule: If you want to avoid poverty, finish high school, don't have kids in your teens, and get married.
Two football games, one day
The Northwestern College Eagles, NCAA Division III, have done something no other college football team at any level has ever done: played two games in a single day. They started the day 3-2, and finished 5-2, outscoring their two opponents 106-14 and accumulating more than 1,000 yards of offense. Bravo, Eagles, bravo.
One Man
My wife and Tom both told me about Charles Ross's One Man Star Wars. The video clip sealed it for me; if I find myself in NYC, I'll definitely have to see this, or his new One Man Lord of the Rings.
SAVE earthquake victims
World Vision has started a relief fund for those affected by the earthquake in southwest Asia, which has claimed at least 20,000 lives in Pakistan alone.
New meaning to the term "flipping off"?
Need to send an e-mail to a loved one's or friend's mobile phone, but can't remember the confusing phonenumber@anameotherthanthecompany.something e-mail address wireless services set up? Use Teleflip, a free service. You can use it from any e-mail client or web-based e-mail. Just send a message to phonenumber@teleflip.com, and that's it. Be sure to use all ten of the phone's numbers. (Note that any fees your wireless provider charges for receiving e-mail/text messages to your phone will still apply.)
Zoorific!
Our tyke had his first trip to a zoo yesterday. The weather was fabulous, so we trucked on down to the Fort Worth Zoo for a day with some friends and their son, who is just a few weeks younger than our tot.
Click on the photo to see the entire picture set.
Markdown for Backpack & Writeboard
Backpack and Writeboard, two excellent services by 37signals, both use Textile for text formatting. I have nothing against Textile; I used to use the plug-in for Movable Type on my blogs. When John Gruber released Markdown in to the wild, I was intrigued, and soon after, made the switch from Textile to Markdown, and I've used it for online formatting ever since. Like Merlin, I've found myself using Markdown syntax in other areas, but unlike Merlin, only while typing. Now I want to have my cake and eat it, too: Markdown for Backpack & Writeboard. After using the latter for a couple of days, I e-mailed 37signals with my request. I figured it would be something not-too-hard (I hesitate to use the phrase "fairly easy," because I am, for the most part, totally clueless about backend web server type stuff) for them to implement Markdown formatting for Writeboard. My suggestion was to make it a preference a user could select, leaving Textile as the default. The reply I received from 37signals honcho Jason Fried was encouraging. While he made no promise as to future implementation (not surprising, standard fare), it does sound like something they'll toss around the conference table. A whiff of hope is better than none at all.
2007 Ford Explorer Sport Trac
I may have a reason to make a trip to the State Fair. The new Sport Trac may tempt me away from the Ridgeline as my next vehicle of choice.
The American model
"We live in circumstances our parents did not live in, or our grandparents. We live in a time in which there is no rival model to the American model for how to run a modern industrial commercial society. Socialism is gone. Fascism is gone. Al-Qaeda has no rival model about how to run a modern society. Al-Qaeda has a howl of rage against the idea of modernity.
"We began in 1945 an astonishingly clear social experiment: We divided the city of Berlin, the country of Germany, the continent of Europe, indeed the whole world, and we had a test. On one side was the socialist model that says that society is best run by edicts, issued from a coterie of experts from above.
"The American model, on the other hand, called for a maximum dispersal of decision-making and information markets allocating wealth and opportunity. The results are clear: We are here, they are not. The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe."
--George Will, "The Doctrine of Preemption," from a speech delivered on 23 May 2005, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Dallas, Texas (Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College.) As Mr. Will stated, we had the test of socialism already. It didn't work. Yet the Left in these United States still insist on socialist policies as means of moving our states and nation forward. What hubris. What do they think they know that will make these policies and institutions work here when they didn't work elsewhere? (Don't bother pointing to Cuba, North Korea, or China, mouth-foamers. The first two aren't true communist/socialist nations, as they are dependent upon the cult of personality of the leaders. The latter is, well, lucky to have figured out how to ingest just enough capitalism to keep the economy afloat, which further proves that Marxist communism/socialism does not work.)