Comment on UNC-Oklahoma

I don't think I've ever seen so many missed dunks in one game. Any by only one team. Roy is going to have them practice their dunking skills. At least UNC played great defense.

FoxNews Headlines

Here are the FoxNews headlines on their website following Obama's speech tonight (all of the headlines pertaining to his speech):

Obama Hits Hope Theme

President walks fine line between honesty about economic crisis, optimism for future | 1ST 100 DAYS

• Obama Errs in Saying U.S. Invented Automobiles

• AP FACT CHECK: Obama Glosses Over Complexities

• Jindal: Obama's Economic Plan Irresponsible

• Obama's Reputation as Good Speaker Debatable

Though I was listening while working, I thought it was a pretty good speech.

Burke and Obama

David Brooks has a warning of caution to the Obama administration about taking on too much at once. I think he makes some good points. The current economic situation certainly requires bold action, but proceding with caution and trying to build off of existing systems is a good way to good.

Jungle Primaries

Fivethirtyeight.com has an interesting article about jungles primaries. And it also has gotten "Welcome to the Jungle" from Guns and Roses stuck in my head. It seems to me like jungle primaries would be generally a good thing, probably allowing for more cooperation between parties and less extremism. I had never really considered before how much our current primary system feeds into our partisanship.

Shaq Tweet

An interesting, though unverified, post about finding Shaq through Twitter.

Low-Tech Fixes For High-Tech Problems

The NY Times has a cool little article about using low-tech stuff to fix high-tech devices when they break. No guarantees, but amusing and some may be worth a try. I've heard of kids successfuly using the cellphone in rice technique before.

If your home Wi-Fi router doesn’t reach the other end of the house, don’t rush out to buy more wireless gear to stretch your network. Instead, build a six-inch-high passive radio wave reflector from kitchen items, like an aluminum cookie sheet.

Obama Sushi

Check it out!

clipped from feature.jp.msn.com

via Meredith!

Julius Peppers

Julius Peppers gives $100,000 to scholarship fund. Wahoo! Nice job, Mr. Peppers.

Fortune Cookie

First learn to "give" and then the universe will reward you.

- My fortune cookie from neurology lunch. Not quite sure why "give" is written in quotation marks.

Lucky numbers: 14, 5, 18, 37, 9, 7

School is in Session

Jordan and Perkins in class at UNC. Gotta love that smile on Perkins. I'd never seen this picture before, which is a shame. From a Tar Heel gallery at SI.

Tyler Zeller Update

For those of you not at the game extremely early, Tyler Zeller came out in athletic clothes shortly after the JV game to shoot around with the team. He no longer has a cast on, and his shot was looking really good. He nailed 3-pointer after 3-pointer. He didn't seem to jump very high, but as far as I could tell, his wrist was looking pretty good. (Afterwards, he came back out before game time with a suit on to sit on the bench).

I take this to be a very good sign. There is talk that he might medical redshirt this year so that he can play four more years. But really, no one knows what the next four years will bring. The team might not be this close to a title again. If he redshirted, Zeller would essentially be trading this year for his 5th-year senior season, which is a complete unknown. If his goal is to win an NCAA title, this year may very well be his best shot. And the team could really use another scoring threat since the bench's output stinks. He also might be able to replace Deon Thompson in the starting lineup, who hasn't done anything since ACC play started. It's only early February. Zeller could work his way back into the line up in the coming weeks. Then we could tinker with lineups to get things right. If we lose a couple games, it's all right. Then by NCAA-time, he's meshed with the team and we're ready to go the distance.

I Lego NY

Christoph Niemann has another humorous piece in the NYT.

clipped from niemann.blogs.nytimes.com

Blago

"I did a lot of things that were mostly right."

- Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, defending himself during his impeachment trial

Now that's the sound of desperation if I ever heard it. But aside from that, what amazes me is that he is still out there proclaiming his complete innoncence. Other parts of his closing statement include, "You haven’t proved a crime and you can’t because it hasn’t happened. How can you throw a governor out of office with incomplete or insufficient evidence?" He seems so completely certain of his innocence that I almost start to wonder if this has been some big misunderstanding. He is a pretty good liar and an evil genius.

I think he demonstrated his evil genius best after the Democrats vowed to barr entrance to anyone he nominated to the senate. So he chose Roland Burris. Matt Taibbi described him as "a 71-year-old, half-batty egomaniac named Roland Burris, the first black man elected to statewide office in Illinois...an over-the-top eccentric who refers to himself in the third person ("If there hadn't been a Roland Burris, there would not have been a Barack Obama") and who has already built for himself a mausoleum inscribed with the words TRAIL BLAZER." 

One more paragraph to borrow from Taibbi:

Americans were thus treated to the spectacle of two white Democrats physically refusing to open the Senate doors for what would have been the body's only black senator. To make matters worse, the Democratic leadership hung its entire case for barring Burris from office on a technicality: His appointment, they insisted, had not been certified by the Illinois secretary of state. When the Illinois Supreme Court ruled that the Burris appointment was, in fact, legal, [Harry]Reid and [Dick] Durbin were left with a face full of omelet just weeks before Obama's inauguration.

The Democrats of course caved and seated Burris, saying, "oh no, we didn't expect Blago to nominate a respectable candidate." By choosing Burris, it made Blagojevich look like a reasonable guy since he was replacing Obama with another African American, and it made Reid and Durbin look like fools (but that was their own fault) since they seated him anyway, thereby giving credibility to Blagojevich. A stroke of evil genius.

NYC v Salt

Dr. Tom Frieden is taking it to the purveyors of salt. Seems like a difficult task, but one with potentially big public health benefits.

Bono

"This kind of spirit blows through every now and then. It's a very strange feeling. We're waiting for God to walk into the room - and God, it turns out, is very unreliable. So you don't have the right to imagine you can make a great album. But what you can do is create the conditions where it might happen."

- Bono, from U2, on making their new album No Line On The Horizon

This quotation pretty much captures what inspiration is all about, as far as I can tell anyway...."create the conditions where it might happen." Those are some words to live by.

Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

The story is at the NY Times. It's all observational though; no guarantees.

Fortune Cookies

"You will have many friends when you need them"

"You have an important new business development shaping up"

(yeah, I opened two cookies)

Beetlejuice

From Bradsucks:

Compare to original over here.

History

I noticed that the Daily Tar Heel has a thumbs up or thumbs down feature called Quick Hits. They gave the symbolic Obama train ride from Philadelphia to DC a sideways thumb, saying it was a bit "too theatrical and corny" for their taste. As a matter of fact, I agree; it's my understanding that it cost a ton of money to set up given the security concerns, but I can't find any figures for that off hand. The idea was to recreate Lincoln's journey to DC, which sounds symbolic, but also brings up hubris and opulence. Had it zero to little cost associated with it, I think it'd be fine, like how the mayor of New York, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, rides the subway to work (occasionally at least). I think the train ride was unnecessary. The fact that the country elected Obama is in itself very significant and symbolic. The fact that a couple million people attended the inauguration was significant and symbolic. Maybe everyone on the National Mall could have joined in song together. That would have been awesome, memorable, and free (or at least cheap). But adding in an expensive, phony train ride to DC is probably taking away from the history being made.

Presidents

Every time I hear something like, "the President took the oath of office," I just smile and feel happy. He's now "the President." Finally. The Iowa Caucuses were over a year ago. I feel quite proud to be an American. Over the last eigth years, I found my president to be an embarassment, and I was often quick to explain that he didn't speak for me whenever I traveled or met people from other countries. A part of me now feels a little sorry for Bush since he has finally shown some remorse and admitted some errors. Too bad he didn't admit errors earlier or have the foresight to know how wrong his direction was. A least, in admitting errors, he seems more sympathetic, like he was in over his head. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, remains defiant.

Different topic:

Interestingly enough, Obama, who has shown quick wit and skilled oration over the years, totally stumbled through the oath of office, with the help of stumbling Chief Justice John Roberts. I guess they both were a little nervous.

I also noticed that most news outlets were optimistic and excited about the election. So I went over to FoxNews to see what they were reporting. Some of the headlines conveyed this optimism, like "Historic Moment Cast as Victory of Hope Over Fear." Some commentators, however, like Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn Beck were skeptical. Hannity could be right that it is the most expensive inauguration ever, but he doesn't cite any numbers.

What was quite interesting to me was a piece about the unhealthiest presidents. Turns out JFK was a health disaster. Eisenhower was also in bad shape, and even developed Crohn's Disease while in office.