Super Bowl, CrackBerry, network neutrality, resveratrol
Friday, January 30, 2009
On the edge of a weekend that includes the Super Bowl, the finals of the Australian Open and the men’s basketball Civil War (starring Oregon State head coach Craig Robinson, who is Barack Obama’s brother-in-law), I have a bunch of random things to share.
It’s interesting how Obama ultimately got to keep his CrackBerry, I mean BlackBerry, in the White House . . . and how when the Obama administration arrived the White House was setup for email (and the modern world, in general) like it’s 1992: “E-Mail Outage Forces White House to Operate the Oldfangled Way.”
New network neutrality tools have arrived to help keep ISPs honest, thanks to Google. See these two articles: “Google lets users search for Internet blockers” and “Is Your ISP Throttling Your Internet Connection?” 
Can ISPs be stopped from filtering and throttling Internet access? Maybe with Google fighting broadband providers (somewhat indirectly) via Measurementlab.net. Wait, which side do we want to win? All our data are belong to Google, once again. It’s Comcastic!
I’ve been learning more about resveratrol (the red wine chemical, found in red grapes and peanuts), the French paradox, sirtuins (enzymes involved in the aging process) and Sirtris Pharmaceuticals. You know . . . good fats and bad fats, low-quality and high-quality foods, heart disease, dairy and meat, cancer prevention, the magic elixir of eternal life . . . blah blah blah.
About halfway through the Australian Open tournament I was thinking how cool it is that the top seven-ish men have become so competitive (see men’s draw). I was thinking that it’s no longer just Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. Though I guess it still kind of is. However, Nadal’s semifinal match with Fernando Verdasco was amazing. I wonder if Nadal will have the energy to defeat Federer this weekend, following his five-hour, five-set win over Verdasco. In the past, Nadal has won two-thirds of his meetings with Federer.
I don’t really care who wins this year’s Super Bowl, or even care that much about the commercials (except for the 3D ads). I thought it would’ve been interesting if the Arizona Cardinals had been forced to defeat every other NFL bird mascot on their way to the Super Bowl championship: Seattle Seahawks (Week 17), Atlanta Falcons (Wild Card game), Philadelphia Eagles (NFC championship) and Baltimore Ravens (Super Bowl). But that can’t happen now because the Baltimore Ravens lost the Pittsburgh in the AFC championship. Oh wait, Bill Simmons already wrote about this on January 16:
The Alfred Hitchcock Angle for “Creepiest Angle Involving Birds”
So you have the Cardinals beating the Seahawks in Week 17, then the Falcons in Round 1, and now, potentially, the Eagles in the NFC title game. Meanwhile, if the Ravens topple the Steelers, then the Cardinals could potentially beat every other NFL team with a bird nickname during their improbable five-game winning streak to capture the Super Bowl, and if that’s not enough, birds took down Thursday’s U.S. Airways flight heading from New York to Charlotte … the city that’s home to the team Arizona beat five days ago in Round 2.
Tired of the stock market? In this delicious economy, there’s this: “9 Things You Should Do Instead of Buying Stocks” (from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert).
I can has Engrish? Check out these lists: “100 Most Often Mispronounced Words and Phrases in English” and “100 Most Often Misspelled Words and Phrases in English.” So many pet peeves, so little time. Do not misunderestimate us!
I found the x-axis and data labels of this car-themed GraphJam chart really funny.
I’ve been waiting for weeks to upgrade spiral::notepad to WordPress 2.7.1, but its release is still delayed. Entire WordPress development community otherwise occupied? Perhaps distracted by lolcats? See the WordPress Roadmap for projected release dates for next versions.