Monthly Archives: April 2006

Holy Crap, I’m in First

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Forkballfirstcropped
This is very uncomfortable territory for me:  I’m in first place in Forkball, the fantasy baseball league in which I participate.  I haven’t sniffed anything near first in years so pardon me if I revel in my glory before I plummet to my usual, comfortable little corner in the basement.

As an aside I must say that any activity/hobby that causes me to utter the sentence "Man, with a WHIP like that my staff must really be doing something right" precludes me from ridiculing other peoples’ silly hobbies.  You know, things like birding, being a Civil War reenactor, or Trekie, or heaven forbid, a bottle collector.

A Red State in More Ways Than One

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The state building codes in the United States tend to vary quite a bit, many rules changing a lot depending on the building codes for where you live. If you want to look into New York state codes because you’re going into real estate then you can find plenty of building codes resources on the web.
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Church_bodiesThe picture to the left is a map that shows which churches are prevelant throughout the US. (Click on the picture to see a larger version.)  The red represents Baptists and it’s no surprise that North Carolina, and much of the rest of the south is depicted in red.  To see different maps showing the nationwide representation for each religion go to http://www.valpo.edu/geomet/geo/courses/geo200/religion.html.

They don’t have a map for the Moravians but it would be interesting to see what a Forsyth County, NC map would look like.  I’d suspect a heavy dose of red, green (Methodist) coffee brown (my color for the Moravians).

There’s another map here that shows the percentage of all residents who are religious adherents and I was surprised to see that North Carolina is decidedly middle of the road.  When the family and I moved here the first question we were asked by anyone we met was, "What’s your church?"  It just seems like a very church-going place.  After looking at the map it seems we are on the eastern edge of the part of the state that reports 50-75% of the residents are religious adherents.  Most of the middle and eastern parts of the state fall into the 35-50% or even 0-35% range.  Not one NC county fell into the 75% or greater category.

Now if you want deep religion you should head out to Utah, west Texas, west Oklahoma, and parts of the upper mid-west.  That’s where you can really find yourself some fire and brimstone.

Turd Man Redux

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A while back I wrote a piece called "The Turd Man of Alcatraz" that described my familial role as the discoverer of all floaters and clogged toilets in our house.  Now I’ve taken my act on the road. 

On Monday and Tuesday I was in DC on business and I stayed at the Hampton Inn in Old Town Alexandria. This being the week after Easter I think I was the only businessperson in the hotel and I was surrounded by tourist families. So I’m getting ready to leave (I’d already checked out earlier) and I decided to hit the lobby bathroom before I left.  There was a man waiting outside the men’s room and it ended up he was waiting for his 8-ish year old son to come out.  After they left I went in the bathroom and found, you guessed it, an amazingly large floater.  I was concerned that the kid actually had clogged the toilet but it ended up he just forgot to flush.

Oh well, it is nice to know why you were put on this earth, you know?

In (somewhat) related news Cottonelle has manufactured a roll of toilet paper that tells kids where they need to tear the sheets so they don’t create a clog-monster.  There is some debate as to its efficacy as it doesn’t seem to take into account the different methods employed by users: folding, wrapping or wadding.  My kids naturally lean to the method of wadding a half-roll for each dab-that’ll-do-you, but I’ve implemented a folding training program that seems to have reduced our occurences of brown floods.  Now if I could only figure out how to put an alarm on the toilet that senses a non-flush and automatically zaps them with a not-so-pleasant electric shock as they attempt to leave the bathroom.  The same alarm should also knock them on their butts when they forget to wash their hands.

Here’s my health tip for the day: never accept any food handled by a female under the age of 11 (they discover cleanliness around 12 and then become compulsive) or a male under the age of 26, which is when the average man gets married and also learns how to wash his hands after being harangued 24/7 by his lovely young bride who he’s just discovered is a freakishly compulsive hypochondriac.

Holy Crap, I’m in Third

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Okay we’re not even out of April yet, but I’m in third place in my fantasy baseball league (Forkball).  I intentionally ignore my team much of the time because I just can’t take the constant disappointment that the fantasy league often provides me.  So I was shocked to check the standings and find myself north of the Mendoza line.  I think I’ll ignore the team for a month solid and see what happens.

New Survival Sport: Ice Chunk Dodging

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A big ‘ol chunk of ice fell on a park in Oakland and apparently it wasn’t frozen poo from a plane since it was clean and clear.  This is happening more frequently around the world and one theory has it that ice is forming on the bellies of planes and then falling off.  Another theory being put forward by a scientist is this:

Martinez-Frias speculates it is
a natural phenomenon caused by global warming. According to his
studies, every time such an incident occurs, it is precipitated by an
unusual atmosphere in which higher altitudes are turbulent and cold.
The cold helps create the ice. The turbulence helps keep it together in
the sky.

As global warming continues to heat the earth, his theory
goes, upper atmospheric temperatures become cooler, opening more
opportunities for the ice to form.

My first question is this: even if it is coming from the bellies of planes why hasn’t it happened before?  What has changed? 

My second question is whether or not anyone knows where I can buy a steel umbrella.

 

Driving a Saturn Doesn’t Have to Be Dorky

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2002_saturn_sl2_01I’ve been driving a 2002 Saturn SL for a few years now.  I bought it when I was commuting into DC because it got good mileage, it was easy to park, it fit the entire family comfortably (the kids were a lot smaller then) and who in the hell would steal a Saturn?  Since moving to NC it has been relegated to family back-up status and the mileage primarily comes from my occasional drives to DC for business.  I’m going to hold onto it so the kids can drive it in about two years. It’s a reliable car, but no one has ever uttered "Saturn" and "cool" in the same sentence.  Until now…check out the Sky.

Saturnsky

How Nice Are Your Buttocks? Let Us Count the Ways

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I might have found all the evidence I need that if you call yourself a psychologist you can get away with saying just about anything, especially if you do it with a British accent.  From Boing Boing:


(S+C) x (B+F)/T = V is the formula that describes the "ideal female ass"
in shape, bounce, firmness and symmetry, according to
psychology lecturer  David Holmes of Manchester Metropolitan University in England:

S is the overall shape or droopiness
of the bottom, C represents how spherical the buttocks are, B measures
muscular wobble or bounce, while F records the firmness.
V is the hip to waist ratio, or symmetry of the bottom, and T measures
the skin texture and presence of cellulite.

Here’s the link to the full source article.  From that article we further learn from Mr. Holmes:

He asked about 2000 women across Britain to assess their bottoms using a simple points scale.

For example, those who believed theirs resembled a trodden doughnut
scored just one point for shape, whereas those with a small peach
scored the maximum five.

Points were then entered into the formula and the closer a bottom scored to 80, the nearer it was to posterior perfection.

"The perfect female derriere has firmness to the touch and a resilience
that prevents undue wobble or bounce, yet looks soft with flawless
skin," Dr Holmes said.

"Slender thighs and a hip-to-waist ratio of 0.7 will frame the perfect bum, well perfectly."

I’d like to meet the woman who classifies her own butt as a "trodden doughnut." 

 

I’m the LA Clippers of Fantasy Baseball

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I’ve been in a fantasy baseball league (Forkball) for several years now and I’ve been a perennial cellar dweller.  I tried to forget this but since the league is hosted on Yahoo! and Yahoo! has created a player profile that tracks fantasy players’ lifetime performance I can tell you that I plain suck at this.  Here’s my numbers:

  • 2003 – 9th Place
  • 2004 – 8th Place
  • 2005 – 8th Place

Yahoo! also informs me that my overall performance is 37%.  I feel like I just flunked algebra for the third time.

Well, our 2006 stats just went live last night and it looks like I’m teetering between 5th and 6th place.  Last year my pitching was actually among the best in the league but my offense was horrid.  So far this year my offense has been pretty good but my pitching ain’t too great.  It doesn’t help that I had Clemens last year and he retired…well kind of.

Now that I’ve established my baseball expertise I want to share with you my top predictions for the 2006 season:

  • Coco Crisp will lead the league in home runs.
  • Barry Bonds will pull a reverse Babe Ruth and become a starting pitcher and win the Cy Young in both the National and American Leagues after he’s traded to the Yankees for A-Rod.
  • The Red Sox will come out of the closet…all of them.
  • The Devil Rays will move to Omaha in mid-season.
  • The "commissioner" will effectively deal with the whole steroid thing.

Now you know why I’m so good.

Canuck Law: And You Thought People in the US Were Litigious

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Here’s the story: a 15 year old high school kid in Canada makes a video of himself reenacting a Star Wars light saber fight.  He leaves the tape on a shelf at the schools video lab and another student finds it and shares it with another student.  The second student digitizes it and emails it to some more kids.  A third kid decides to host the video on his website and then the video goes viral.  Life becomes miserable at school for light saber boy when all the teasing starts.

Okay, I feel bad for the kid but according to this article he and his parents sued the families of the three kids responsible for the video getting out and the parents of the three boys ended up settling the lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.  Huh?

If I understand this correctly the kid made a video using the school’s equipment, left the tape on a shelf at the school (expectation of privacy?) and then when some boys found the tape and put it on the internet his family sued the parents of the kids who found the tape and put it on the internet. According to the article the three boys are accused of bullying, but aren’t all the kids that teased saber-boy the real bullies?  Why not sue them all?

The article also talks about whether any of the parents had liability insurance and how much money they had available for settlement.  Who the heck carries liability insurance for instances like this?  Am I missing a potential business opportunity here?  Insurance against over-litigious parents might be a huge growth industry:)