At the NCAA Regionals for the opening day session in Winston-Salem. This is Texas Tech warming up for their game with BC.

If I get very lucky George Mason will continue its improbable run through the CAA tournament and beat VCU in the finals Monday night. Then if I get very, very lucky they’ll draw Winston-Salem for the first round of the NCAAs. (I think W-S is hosting this year). Since I didn’t get to see my alma mater last year when they won their region at the Verizon Center in DC to go to the Final Four it would be nice to see them just 15 minutes from my house at the LJVM Coliseum.

I still find it a cruel irony that I could live in DC from 1972 to 2004, the exact years that DC did not have pro baseball and within two years the Nats come to town and my school goes to the Final Four by winning their regional semi-final and final just blocks from where I worked for years. Maybe this year I’ll get my make up by getting to see Mason in the early rounds and then a couple of weeks later seeing the US in the Davis Cup against Spain. I’ve already got the second half of that equation covered so here’s hoping GMU comes through.

Cambodia has an interesting rail system that is entrepreneurial to say
the least.  The official rail service is old and decrepit and service
from Battambang (Cambodia’s second city) to Phnom Penh departs just once a week, so entrepreneurs have filled
the gap with homemade bamboo cars propelled by electric motors.  You can read about it here on BBC and here’s an excerpt:

They have created their own rail service using little
more than pieces of bamboo. The locals call the vehicles "noris", or
"lorries", but overseas visitors know them as "bamboo trains".

A tiny electric generator engine provides the power, and
the passenger accommodation is a bamboo platform that rests on top of
two sets of wheels. A dried-grass mat to sit on counts as a luxury.

It would be a white-knuckle ride – if there were actually anything to hold on to.

The bamboo trains reach about 40km/h (25mph), with the
track just a couple of inches below the passengers. Warped and broken
rails make for a bone-shaking journey…

Low fares add to the appeal, but the service is not
without its quirks. There is only one track – so if two trains meet,
the one with the lightest load has to be taken off the rails so the
other can pass.

Here’s a bad self portrait taken with my new PDA the Verizon VX6700. More moblogging to come!

Read this post from Dana Blankenhorn for more ideas about newspapers’ future from someone alot smarter than me.

Here’s a table with the results from a little online linguistic test I
just took. Follow the link at the bottom to take it yourself. My thanks
to Patrick Eakes for posting it first.