Dreams do come true!

This may not mean anything to anyone else, but I was pretty exiting to read in today's Times about a rescue mission to lead lost whooping cranes home (above). Why? Because it's a real-life version of one of my favorite (crappy) childhood films, Fly Away Home, in which Jeff Daniels flies a bunch of geese South for the winter. My ten-year-old self is VERY excited.

Alex Ovechkin at it again

Our-age phenom Alexander Ovechkin is quickly becoming the NHL's most exciting player.

If you're Bart, you'll remember this stunning goal.  If you're not, watch it:
(It shouldn't be ignored either that he scores against the team coached by Wayne Gretzky)




Anyway, he's at it again with this jaw-dropper from the other night.  The way he steals it is just as awesome as the goal itself, which he scores by shooting it to the goalie's right, his left. (Oh, and the defenseman that he makes look silly is no pushover, he's former #1 draft pick and 3-time all-star Roman Hamrlik)



And in honor of these two goals, ESPN's "Top 10 NHL goals while falling":

what Nate's up to

predicting less important things, like the oscars, for new york magazine:

Oscar Predictions You Can Bet On!

High Speed Rail ... Fail

Maybe I'm just dense, but let's look at this map of high-speed rail tracks designated under the stimulus:



So, you can get from Kansas City to Cincinnati (through StL) and from Pittsburgh to Montreal (through NYC), but since there's no Cincy-Pitt connection, you couldn't get between those two networks?

Would it have been that hard to connect Tulsa and KC? Orlando and Jacksonville? Houston to Austin?

OK, I've decided. I'm missing something really obvious and I'm going to feel really stupid when you tell me what it is. Maybe HSR isn't for long-distance travel? I don't see why not, but Missourians aren't experts on mass transit ...

Story

This is sacrilege.

The Simpsons has a new opening sequence for the first time since 1989. Largely the changes made do not affect the order of the elements of the old introduction (e.g. Bart writes on a chalkboard, Lisa plays a sax solo, and Homer endangers his life in the family's driveway), but rather serve as a yearbook of characters and gags that have been created since the opening was last updated. Overall the changes make this feel like a bad clip show...come to think of it, that is redundant, so let's just call it a clip show.

Interesting Wiki Page

In doing the complete opposite of what Bart and I are trying to do (namely, reduce our number of posts linking to a small number of articles) here is a Wikipedia page I found particularly interesting. Some of the pages on the list seem really random to me, such as RuneScape in the top 10 (I had to look at the article to learn what it is).

Pages with the most revisions - Wikipedia

I've solved the controversy!

Bill Clinton was the first Joaquin Phoenix president.  All other labels are unnecessary.

Damn You, Economy

I just got the word: no carbon offset purchases for my office this year. With my term as green czar ending in May, I was hoping to be able to push through this historic legislation.

PS - I'm having a lot of trouble believing/verifying some of the claims made in that article Bart posted about Todd Palin's snowmachine racing. If anyone has an info, let me know.

Dreams From My Campaign

God I'm tired of this crap. I was hoping for some change. Maybe next time we could get this guy to run for president:

"Do We Need a New Internet?"

Not quite sure what to say about this, mostly because I know nothing about internet security. I don't like the idea of trading privacy for safety (in any context), but maybe I should be more worried about security in this case...?