Geostationary Banana Over Texas

Hilarious. Maybe some of you will want to donate money to make this happen. Either way, be sure to read their "On the Concept" page.

Check out the site here.

And thanks to For Your Entertainment's blog for this link.

New Year's in New York

Jenny and I will be heading up to New York City for New Year's. Here's our tentative itinerary. Be sure to check back when it's all over for many pictures and our personal reflections on NYC. Also, we will review the numerous restaurants we head to on our food blog.

December 31st
- Lunch at Papaya King. They have amazing hot dogs and papaya drinks.
- Rockefeller Center for ice skating and shopping
- Dinner at Mark Joseph. The #1 Steakhouse in NYC. $78 for a steak for two.
- Times Square. Maybe you'll see us on TV. Probably not.

January 1st
- Lunch at Dumpling House. This Chinatown spot has great prices on dumplings - 5 for $1! And they're supposed to be delicious!
- Exploration of Chinatown and Ground Zero.
- Dinner at River Cafe and Grimaldi Pizzeria. Drinks at River Cafe, which features a beautiful view of the NY Skyline at night. Grimaldi Pizzeria has been voted the #1 pizzeria in NY by Zagats.

January 2nd
- Lunch at Carnegie Deli. The best pastrami sandwich we will ever eat!
- Rockefeller Center.
- Dinner at Babbo. Mario Batali's restaurant. We booked this reservation exactly one month in advance.

January 3rd
- Central Park.
- Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Lunch at Gray's Papaya.
- SoHo.
- Dinner at Le Gigot.
- Seeing a Broadway Musical. We're not sure which one!
- Dessert at La Petite Auberge.

January 4th
- Guggenheim Museum.
- Lunch at the Pearl Oyster Bar.
- Greenwich Village.
- Magnolia Bakery.
- Dinner at Lupa.

I'll definitely be broke after this trip, but it will be worth it!

Card's Apologize for Winning the World Series

Cardinals Apologize For Winning World Series

ST. LOUIS—Calling Friday night's victory on baseball's grandest stage "a terrible mistake," members of the St. Louis Cardinals issued a formal apology for making the playoffs, winning the World Series, and depriving baseball fans everywhere...

I can't believe I missed reading this article. It's hilarious! Read it NOW!

Chihuly at the Missouri Botanical Garden

Dale Chihuly's glass art was on display at the Missouri Botanical Garden this year. I had a chance to walk through the gardens last week and was quite impressed with the detailed glass sculptures that were spread out across the gardens. Unfortunately, I'm sure the exhibit would have been much more impressive in the summer when the art would have wonderfully complemented the flowers. Here are a few pictures from my walk through the gardens:





Click here additional information about the Chihuly exhibit at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. There's also an interesting article about the installation of "Missouri Botanical Garden Blue Chandelier, 2006," here. Here's Dale Chihuly's website.

Funny Story: What? That was 23 years ago, Officer

From the AP Press and Yahoo! Oddly Enough News:

What? That was 23 years ago, officer

Talk about the slow wheels of justice. A man was arrested on a 23-year-old bench warrant that he said he thought was taken care of years ago.

Merle Hulbert Jr., of Eldred, was brought Thursday before McKean County Judge John Yoder, who noted that Ronald Reagan was president when the warrant for failing to appear at a hearing was issued.

Hulbert said he had no idea the case, a driving-while-intoxicated charge, was still open. His former attorney has since died and he said he was stopped once or twice by police before without the warrant coming up.

Yoder ordered the case to be scheduled for a plea, then told prosecutors he hopes they have a witness with a good memory.

I find it pretty funny that the police would take the time to follow up on a case like this, especially at this time of the year. If you're interested in more postings of odd news articles, please let me know in the comments box.

Winterbells High Score

My high score from the best Winterbells game of my life. 22,325,992,035,810,622. I don't even know what that number is.

Wilmot: twenty-TOO FUCKING MUCH.

I'm never playing again.

Ford Disagreed with Bush About Invading Iraq

Breaking news from the Washington Post. Ford was interviewed in July 2004 and claimed the Iraq war was not justified. The interview would not be released until after his death.

While you can read the interview here, below are a few the excerpts about the Iraq war:

"Rumsfeld and Cheney and the president made a big mistake in justifying going into the war in Iraq. They put the emphasis on weapons of mass destruction," Ford said. "And now, I've never publicly said I thought they made a mistake, but I felt very strongly it was an error in how they should justify what they were going to do."

"And I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security."

Ford also offerred his criticism of Cheney, Henry Kissinger, and Rumsfeld. I think it's funny that as Bush has to call for a national day of mourning for Ford, he also knows that Ford think he's a dumbass.

How to effectively waste time over Winter Break

I had the goal of writing most of my Senior Thesis over Winter Break. It was a grand plan, consisting of staying in my room, with my laptop and my hundreds of pages of notes and articles, typing away on Microsoft Word for two straight weeks. I wanted to hit 60 pages over break. But who am I kidding? There's no way I could be that productive. It's Thursday night and I don't think I've even hit twenty pages, and it's twenty poorly written pages at that. So what have I been doing? Here's a list of five things.

*Before I begin, I would like to thank my friend Wilmot, for singlehandedly dropping my productivity with his amazing links that have distracted me this entire break. If it wasn't for him, there might have been no need for this post. Oh, by the way, this is Wilmot pictured here.

1) Lemmings Online:

I got this link from Wilmot. If you haven't played Lemmings before, the game is quite simple. Lemmings drop from a hatch and start walking mindlessly in one direction. It's up to you to direct them to do certain tasks, like digging, climbing, blocking, or even turning into a bomb to blow themselves up. Your goal is to get a certain number of Lemmings into their exit before time runs out. It's much harder than it looks. Of course, I decided I had to complete as many stages as I could. Unfortunately, the Javascript platform would not register the necessary fast clicking needed to make bashers bash fast enough to beat the Mayhem level I was stuck on. So, I had to move on. Nonetheless, I was up until 5-6am many nights playing this game.

Reward: Nothing

2) Eyemaze: Grow Cube, Rpg, ver. 3.

From Wilmot again. It's hard to explain these puzzles. They're 3D and based off a flash platform. The object is to complete the puzzle in a correct order. And it's hard! Things interact with each other differently based upon on the order that you use them. Of course, Jenny had to figure out how to beat the level before me an hour after I started playing. So besides finding out that I'm pretty dumb, I stayed up until 7am playing this game. Double dumb.

Reward: Seeing a cube turn into a lizard and a bouncing ball travel through a tube.

3) Orisinal.com's Winterbells

Courtesy of Wilmot. This game features the cutest that can be bunny as it hops higher and higher on white winterbells. Each bell you hit gives you 10 points plus 10 more for each subsequent bell you hit and every now and then there's a dove that will DOUBLE your score! Needless to say, this game really has no upper threshold, so you can play as long as you want for and go as high as you want.

Reward: Hitting 1,088,576,251,100. Basically 1 trillion points. That's fulfilling. Sorta. No, not really.

4) NY Times Crossword Puzzle / Yahoo Crossword Puzzle / St. Louis Post-Dispatch Crossword Puzzle

I became a crossword puzzle fiend over break. My family has been into them for as long as I can remember, but since I was the only one really around the house, I got first dibs. I did the print editions of the St. Louis Post Dispatch Puzzle which included their own puzzle plus an older puzzle from the New York Times. And if I was feeling lucky, I would do the one found in the NY Times. And when that ran out, there was always a puzzle on Yahoo games. But this would be something I could only do Monday - Wednesday. After that, it gets too hard, except for the Post-Dispatch puzzles.

Reward: Completing a puzzle feels good. A self-esteem boost when you have no friends.

5) Drinking

Of course this would screw me over. How could I ever think some wine would make it any easier to write a paper at night? With my sister's boyfriend visiting for the past few days, work was a no-no past dinner.

Reward: Being tipsy feels nice. Everything seems so much more funny.

Except for the last two, Wilmot contributed mightily to all of this procrastination. So thanks a lot. I can't say its been all that bad. I've definitely had a relaxing break, I've gotten a lot of sleep, and I even did productive things like get my license renewed, cleaned parts of the house, and went shopping. But when I think about all of the work I could've done, I just get sad. And then I go back to surfing the internet. :-)

A Ghost Story

Last fall, a group called Campus Movie Fest came to Stanford. The task was to give each group a camera, a laptop, and a week to film a five minute film. The short films would then be entered into a campus competition, with the winners moving on to a regional competition and so on. Winners would win iPods, laptops, fame, and glory. A few of my friends entered the competition and produced what I thought was the most professional video out of the entire Stanford group. They were in the top 16 (out of 70!). The video is only five minutes, so watch it! Here's their clip.



If you're interested in watching more clips or reading more about Campus Movie Fest, check out their website at:

http://www.campusmoviefest.com

Manners!

For Christmas, my parent's, err...Santa, always gets us some random gift. This year was no exception, as I was given "From Clueless to Class Act: Manners for the Modern Man." It wasn't that bad a gift - there's useful instructions about how to properly set your table or the appropriate way to act in business situations. Having some insight into hosting a party will be timely information in the future. Nonetheless, while I had my doubts - why would anyone need a book like this? Who doesn't know basic courtesy's like saying "please" and holding a door open for a woman?

Well, all of those assumptions were laid to rest this evening. My Dad invited one of his Doctor friends for dinner - we deep fried a turkey which basically involves immersing a turkey in a big tub of boiling oil for 45 minutes. My Dad's friend is an opthamologist (an eye doctor) and had his misgivings about the ocular dangers inherent with the cooking procedure. But, they were curious about the whole thing and came over, with their two sons, one a senior in high school, the other a college student at Washington University in St. Louis.

Something was amiss when they first arrived. When we offered to take their coats, one of the boys kept his own up until dinner, although we were in the house almost the whole time. And what was worse, he hardly talked to us! He walked around our house the entire time! While we were in the kitchen and the adjacent dining room talking, he was in our living room, the closets, and even went upstairs. He opened our drawers and played with whatever he felt like. He dipped one of his fingers in one of the desserts my sister was making and ate some of our chocolate that was not out on the table for eating. When we were warming up the gravy, he had the audacity to tell us that we should turn the stove down so we wouldn't burn. My mom also makes a really nice green bean casserole, that is topped with some crispy onion rings. While the casserole was cooking, he opened up the container holding the rings and ate some! He missed the rings going on the casserole in the oven, so when he went to steal some more of the rings, he looked disappointed when they were gone. Finally, during dinner, he started to pick at the turkey with his hands! And when we were having dessert, he went over to our living room, picked up this random wooden puzzle that was sitting on our shelf, and started to work on that at the table while we were having what's called a "conversation."

WHAT THE FUCK??????????

And this kid is going to college at Wash U. How can someone apparently so smart - be so fucking rude? We all saw him doing this, but my parents were too nice to tell him to stop nosing around our house. And his parents, who were really nice, did not tell him to stop being an asshole. I have no idea how this kid could be their child. I had no idea some people could be like this. I hope I never raise a kid like that.

Time's Person of the Year: You

When I first heard about Time magazine naming the person of the year, You, it was on a clip from Jon Steward's Daily Show. Called "Newsweak," Stewart appropriately pointed out how silly it was for Time to consider "You" as the person of the year. Are we so stupid to get excited about seeing ourselves in a mirror on the cover of the magazine so that we buy it? Are we supposed to be surprised?



Now I actually read some of the articles in the magazine, including the cover story and I have to admit that it's not that bad. Aside from "you" being a total marketing scheme to sell more magazines, the issue it raised about a new generation of bloggers, podcasters, and internet gurus I think is really one of the major stories about 2006. Everyone is having their 15 minutes of fame with a creative YouTube video, bloggers are becoming an alternative voice for news, and Facebook and MySpace have become unmistakable networking and social tools for countless teens and adults. And it's ridiculous how everything is so integrated. When I started this blog, I was going for the more cut and dry look, with mostly text and maybe some links here and there. But, blogs have become so much more than what I started with a few years ago on my Xanga. It's about sharing videos from YouTube and other video sites. It's about linking to other blogs. When my friends talk about the latest video to sweep the internet, I don't laugh anymore, thinking that the audience who actually cares about these things is small and hardly influential. Justin Laipply's "Evolution of Dance" had been played 37 million times on YouTube, while Smosh performing Pokemon's Theme Song had been played 18 million. The numbers are absolutely astonishing.

But as the Time article admits:

Sure, it's a mistake to romanticize all this any more than is strictly necessary. Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom. Some of the comments on YouTube make you weep for the future of humanity just for the spelling alone, never mind the obscenity and the naked hatred.

But that's what makes all this interesting. Web 2.0 is a massive social experiment, and like any experiment worth trying, it could fail. There's no road map for how an organism that's not a bacterium lives and works together on this planet in numbers in excess of 6 billion. But 2006 gave us some ideas. This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious.

What I believe is that we're just getting started. As more and more kids jump on the internet and take advantage of blogs, photo sharing, etc, the web will continue to get more and more crowded. And as some will find, maintaining a blog is hard work, as is creating a 2 minute clip for YouTube. Some will drop off, while others will thrive. But, who knows who is reading what you write? That's the great anonymity of the internet, where posting is as anonymous as the person reading it. Yet not having a blog or your own MySpace page does not mean you're not participating in this grand experiment. From the most addicted YouTube user to the casual web-browser, you are all the people for which online content exists. So while probably nobody but my girlfriend (thanks Jenny!) reads this blog at the moment, maybe one day more will find it interesting as they click the "Next Blog" button on the top of this page. And maybe one day an anonymous person in Europe will find that some of my posts have something interesting to say about life and culture in America. Until that day happens, I still remain happily content, posting about things I find interesting on the net. But, I do know one thing:

I am putting Time Magazine Person of the Year: 2006 on my resume!

Carson Williams is Awesome

When I found out that it was a gentleman named Carson Williams who had created the amazing Xmas lights display that was Break.com's #4 video for 2006, I was curious if he had made one for this holiday. I was not surprised to find that he had. Here he is with "Jingle Bells" by Barbara Streisand.

Ever since his video of the Trans-Siberian orchestra's piece "Wizards of Winter" circulated the internet, Williams found himself a new job. He has started Consar Lights which provides custom holiday lighting. Northfield Stapleton in Denver, Colorado hired him to do a lights show for the Christmas season. Here's a TV report courtesy of YouTube - the display here is even more incredible than the one rigged up for his house:

I can't wait to see this guy do something incredible for the Super Bowl or a huge choreographed show during 4th of July fireworks.

Deer

There were two deer running around my backyard a yesterday. Here's photographic proof. Regardless of these pictures, I want to emphasize to my Stanford friends that I do not live on a farm!

Of course, I didn't get to close to them, since deer can be pretty vicious, as this stupid hunter found out:

Amazing Christmas Lights Show

Here's one of the most elaborate Christmas lights display I have ever seen. I'm not sure if it tops the Trans-Siberian Orchestra light show put on last year, but it sure comes close. Check it out:



Here's last year's video, which was used later used for a Miller Light commercial. It's Break.com's #4 video of 2006.

Funny Blog

I was clicking the "Next Blog" button on the top of my Nav bar when I came across this blog:

http://butchdingo.blogspot.com/

Affectionately called "My Blog Rules Your Ass!" Butch has consistently posted some hilarious pictures. So in the spirit of Christmas, here's Santa!

Happy Holidays

Happy holidays to you all, regardless of what holiday you celebrate.

I had a nice, relaxing Christmas. Cooked yakisoba noodles for lunch. I made off with some nice gifts:

I had asked for this "Dating for Dummies" guide not because of a struggling love life, but because I post each day on a wall in my dorm for my resident's to enjoy. My most recent calendar was "The Worst Case Scenario Survival Guide," but since there is always a complaint about a lack of dating at Stanford, this guide should help them out.

I had asked for a tripod for the holiday's, since I've gotten into photography lately and want to get better. I'll be taking this bad boy to New York City next week and then back to school. It should aid a lot with some nighttime photography.

Ignoring Hawaii and St. Louis Sports

On Christmas Eve, while the Eastern half of the United States was sleeping and many in the Midwest were attending midnight mass, the Hawaii Warriors were beating the Arizona State Wildcats senseless in the Hawaii Bowl. Colt Brennan, the Warriors QB, demolished the previous NCAA single-season touchdown record of 54 by tossing five of them, finishing the season with 58 TDs. Along the way, he threw a school-record 559 yards, and finishing the season as the nation's leader in TD passes, passing yards, total offense, passing efficiency, points responsible for and completion percentage. Of course, few people even knew who Brennan was. In fact, Hawaii has been a very dominant football team that is continually ignored. Just look at:

1) Timmy Chang

One of the few Chinese Americans to play football, Chang was part of the continually underranked Hawaii squad and holds the NCAA record for total passing with an astonishing 17,072 yards. He blew past Ty Detmer's record 14,665. But, while Detmer would go on to win the Heisman during his time at BYU and be considered one of the best college QB to ever play the game, Chang would be relatively unnoticed.

2) The 2006 Hawaii Warriors

They finish the season unranked, even though they run over San Jose State 54-17 and win against Purdue 42-35. Both of those teams are playing in a bowl game. For a team with the nation's most dangerous offense, you would think they would be in the the AP Top 25. Nope.

3) Colt Brennan

I already explained my reasoning for this in the beginning, but this guy announced he will be most likely return to Hawaii for his senior season. What a class act.

But, since I haven't had a chance to express my opinion about this year's World Series, let me sound off about the St. Louis Cardinals. And their 2006 World Champsionship:

When the Cardinal's made the playoffs, they were 83-78 and had finished the season with a loss. Every media critic wrote them off. They would lose to the red-hot Padres. When they won that series, critics were certain they would be beaten by a talented Met's squad. And when the Cardinal's won that series in a thrilling 7-game set, critics bet on Detriot to sweep or win in 5 games. Nobody but St. Louis fans believed that the Cardinal's could do it. Yet, the story of the World Series was that it had record low-ratings. Of course, if the World Series featured teams like the Yankees or the Red Sox, ratings would have been much higher. How come nobody realizes that the Cardinal's are one of the most dominant teams in baseball? They now have 10 World Champsionships, second only to the Yankees (with 26). Tony LaRussa is only the second manager to win World Series champsionships in the American League and the National League.

The problem is an East Coast sports bias. Nobody watches games without huge sports markets. There's no love for the Hawaii Warriors or even the World Champion Cardinal's. Talented teams are ignored. And it's a shame.

Freud and Popular History

A big historical mystery has been solved- Freud did have an affair with his wife's younger sister, Minna Bernays. It was reported in the New York Times on Christmas Eve. Franz Maciejewski, a sociologist formerly at the University of Heidelberg, tracked down a leather-bound ledger that shows Freud and Minna Bernays stayed in the Schweizerhaus, an inn in Maloja in the Swiss Alps, on August 13, 1898. They stayed in Room 11, and Freud signed in the book, "Dr Sigm Freud u frau,"abbreviated German for “Dr. Sigmund Freud and wife.”

(By the way, Freud's handwriting sucks. Compared to the guy's signature above him, he can't write straight or clearly.) So there you have it, one signature to offset our whole thinking of the father of psychoanalysis.

It's interesting, however, that Freud's affair would be such big news. Understandably, Freud scholars have always had to confront this historical question, but what surprises me is that it seems like another celebrity "who's sleeping with who" game. There are plenty of historical figures who have had extramarital affairs. Here are just three other figures that I'm aware of:

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

Although David Garrow's work "Bearing the Cross" is not available online, it was the first well-known look at MLK's life that brought to my attention King's extramarital activities. As the MLK Research and Education Institute notes, after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover stepped up his "effort to damage King's reputation by leaking information gained through surreptitious means about King's ties with former communists and his extramarital affairs." This FBI evidence, no matter how politically motivated, is not disputed or denied. Yet King is still presented as a morally righteous figure and his reputation has not sufferred at all.

- John F. Kennedy, Jr.

King's Presidential counterpart during the Civil Rights Struggle in the early 1960s, Kennedy is known to have had an affair with Marliyn Monroe in 1962. Still, Kennedy is presented as one of the most sympathetic Presidents for Civil Rights, is praised more for his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and forgiven since he was assasinated in November, 1963.

- Strom Thurmond

I have to include Thurmond, who had an illegitimate, biracial daugher named Essie Mae Washington-Williams when he was 22. If you have a chance, read Dan Rather's interview with Essie on 60 minutes. What's fascinating is that Thurmond was quite supportive of Washington - helping her through South Carolina State College and even visiting her on a few occasions. Of course, he could have been more supportive by actually raising her as her father and not visiting her every 10 years. And then he could have not been such an ardent supporter of racial segregation. But who am I to judge?

Anyway, my point is that history is full of famous affairs and whenever one comes up, it piques the interest of contemporary newspapers and casual historians. It's the equivalent of celebrity gossip, rooted with social impacts that require us to rethink previous assumptions about a person. I suppose we rethink our feelings towards current stars, but I hope those thoughts are more superficial than rethinking how Freud's affair forever changed our understand of pyschoanalysis. At its core, sex scandals always have been, and always will be, fascinating gossip. Whenever a person deviates from societal norms of fidelity, people want to know. There's something to be said about wanting to know what's taboo and the fallout that inevitably occurs from such actions.

For further famous sex scandals, see the Wikipedia page on it.