Month: November 2007

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State legislator says global warming is good for us and our crops

From my own back­yard: Lar­ry Pow­ell, a Repub­li­can state leg­is­la­tor from West­ern Kansas, has assert­ed that increased CO2 lev­els will make crops flour­ish. He cites a study that says that, “atmos­pher­ic CO2 enrich­ment will boost world agri­cul­tur­al out­put by about 50 per­cent.” They don’t deny glob­al warm­ing any­more, instead they insist that it is good […]

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Culture

Amanda makes her move on Survivor:China

About time, dude. Aman­da pulls the move she had to pull on Survivor:China, and James shows he’s a men­sch by admit­ting he screwed up in the post-toss cam­era con­fes­sion­al. Now that she’s rock­ing Ship Todd, what is Aman­da’s next move? I think she needs to appeal to Eric’s mas­culin­i­ty, Peih-Gee’s para­noia, and Denise’s sense of […]

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Culture

Writers’ Strike bears fruit: American Gladiators returns!

In a pro­mo after Bion­ic Woman this week, NBC announced the return of Amer­i­can Glad­i­a­tors, pre­mier­ing in Jan­u­ary. Awe­some! This was one of the first shows I watched when I came to this coun­try for col­lege, and it was God-awful. I loved it. I think of it as a pre­cur­sor to the mod­ern wrestling TV […]

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I’ll be buying my next pair of glasses online

Over the years I’ve seen a lot of posts about buy­ing pre­scrip­tion glass­es online. The lat­est is this one, Matt Haugh­ey’s account over at 43 Fold­ers. It has help­ful notes on what mea­sure­ments you need and a lib­er­at­ing result: instead of order­ing one cheap pair, order five cheap pairs in dif­fer­ent styles! As he points […]

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Culture

Can I possibly pass up National Geographic for $12?

I know the price has always been low, but I don’t think I can pass it up this year. We just got a let­ter from the Nation­al Geo­graph­ic Soci­ety offer­ing a year sub­scrip­tion to their mag­a­zine (12 issues), a world map, and a “100% guar­an­tee of your sat­is­fac­tion” for $12.00. Unless you live in Ken­tucky. […]

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Other Rants Technology

Is the Chevy Volt just another hybrid?

I’ve been hear­ing a lot about Chevro­let’s new elec­tric car, the Volt. It is sup­posed to be Amer­i­ca’s answer to Toy­ota in the green car exhi­bi­tion. On Chevro­let’s elec­tric car site, they proud­ly pro­claim, “It’s unlike any pre­vi­ous EV (elec­tric vehi­cle), thanks to its inno­v­a­tive recharge­able elec­tric dri­ve sys­tem and range-extend­ing pow­er source.” This “range-extend­ing […]

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Other

What would you take with you if you were evacuated?

The cov­er­age last month of the fires in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia includ­ed sev­er­al sto­ries of peo­ple being evac­u­at­ed with just a few min­utes notice. Invari­ably, some­thing was left behind. It got me think­ing. If I had a fif­teen min­utes to pack before being evac­u­at­ed, what would I take with me? We have two cars, and I […]

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Other

Time to move on from college football

I like col­lege foot­ball. I also like the NFL (this may make me unwel­come in some places, but there it is), but there’s some­thing about the semi-pro nature of col­lege foot­ball, and the sheer num­ber of pro­grams, and the rival­ries, and the radio announc­ers, and the ter­ri­bly flawed bowl system(s, past and present)… it is […]

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Crying in my eggnog: KU 28 — Mizzou 36

So that sucked. A lot. If KU had only played like they did in the fourth quar­ter through­out the whole game. Or, the sec­ond half. Or some­thing.

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This game is proving hard to watch

Third quar­ter. This is awful. KU is play­ing like the team they were last year. Mis­souri is play­ing as adver­tised. I have offered a cou­ple of times to stop watch­ing and put on this week’s Sur­vivor instead. A Miz­zou fan holds up the best sign of the game, “Kansas Foot­ball, a Tra­di­tion since Sep­tem­ber.” I […]