Cars Crashing into Buildings

A car recently drove the fence surrounding my friends apartment complex. It crashed through a tree, somehow slid between two parked cars, and crashed into the side of the building. I wouldn't believe it myself if I hadn't seen the replaced fence, the missing tree, and the patched up side of the building. My friend now parks his car on the other side of the building, in case another car repeats this improbable feat.

Now, what are the odds this happens once? Pretty small. What are the odds that it happens again, well must be really small. There are two schools of thought on this. One is that, when a person wins the lottery, the chances they win again are small, unless they invest their winnings back in lottery tickets, which would increase their chances of winning again. Of course, you have the lightning bolt theory, which I just made up, which says that if a tall metallic object gets hit by lightning once, it probably means it isn't grounded well, and is more likely than other places to get hit again. Statistics is fun to think about, and if I've bored you, reread the first paragraph of this post.

Terry Schiavo Redux

After the Bears/Broncos game ended (w00t!), I didn't bother to change the channel until 60 minutes came on. Anderson Cooper started with "Two years ago, Terry Schiavo sparked a nationwide debate...", at which point I turned off the tv. No she didn't! There was no debate. Every agreed, what in God's name is the Congress doing involved in this? This, to me, was one of the major reasons the Democrats took power, everyone was sick of the Big Government Republicans. The problem with news coverage today is not only do they beat on dead horses, but they periodically dig them up to beat again!

No Country For Old Men

I saw this movie, the new Coen Brothers, last night, and I didn't particularly enjoy it. It's based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy , who I've never read. I'm not a big fan of the Coen brothers, which probably explains it. I've never really liked any of their movies, although I'm a big of most of the actors. The people I was with really liked it. If you liked early Coen brothers, then they say you would like this.

After the movie, I said "I must have fallen asleep, because I missed the part where they explained what the hell was going on", to which it was replied, "No, you didn't fall asleep".

Harvard Physicist Stops and Starts Light at will

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-11/st_alphageek

My favorite part is:

That's just freaky. Hey, Einstein may have set that initial speed limit of light, but he only theorized about BECs. "It's not breaking relativity," Hau says. "But I'm sure he would have been rather surprised."

Tags

I've started to become enamored with whole tags thing, so I'm going to make a list of tags for myself to keep track of.

INFO : general information about the blog
MUSIC, MOVIES, TV : Shows/bands that I like, dislike, or otherwise have some sort of feeling about.
COMEDY : Either jokes or the entirely unfunny discussion on why things are funny. Also, fawning about Del Close.
SPORTS : I typically follow MLB, NFL, NBA, NCAAFL, NCAABB, and a scattering of other stuff.
SCIENCE : I'm fascinated by how things work, how scientists figure out that work, and why people sometimes don't believe it.
BOOKS : I read lots of books, and before now I've just kind of put them down. Hopefully I can use this blog to track what I read and how I feel about it.
WORDS : Words are fun. See Wordie . I think I will occasionally post about a word that I like.

As time goes by I will probably add, remove, and change these categories around.

Blog description

My goal is to talk about science, music, books and words, tv, movies, sports, possibly a little politics, and anything else that comes into this sphere that is my head.

I finally have a blog.

Yes, it's true, I've finally, after years of insistence, started a blog. My friend Dave started his blog 6 years ago. That was long enough ago that he called it a "web log". I guess if he called it an "online journal" it would sound kind of wussy. Of course, there is Livejournal, but I have the impression that that's kind of wussy too. My friend Amanda suggested I start a blog a couple years ago, when she started hers, but I was afraid I would accidentally offend everyone I know. Now that I've thought about it some more, I think it's a good idea.