You know I’ve always thought this. Especially after going to college and seeing kids who never drank in their life go completely overboard. I made it a point to teach my kids to drink responsibly. Sheltering kids from alcohol is silly because they’re gonna learn one way or another. I feel like if my parents had let me drink at home during high school, I never would have felt the need to sneak out of the house and drink large quantities of warm, crappy beer. Well, maybe I would have anyway but who knows.

Deadline to enter the lottery for the ALCS and WS is this Friday the 28th. ALDS has passed. Everyone should register, even if you don’t want the tickets you can be guaranteed that you know a close friend who will weep in appreciation and buy them from you.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CXtyYiI5HDk

OMG, I laughed so hard.

I had an “off by one” error folks. I’ll be with my daughter that weekend, so I won’t be in Newport to host. I know all of you were excited beyond words, so sorry to disappoint. To make you feel better, here’s a joke:

Paddy is driving down the freeway when his mobile phone rings. He answers the call and hears his wife on the phone.

“Paddy” she cries, “I’ve just heard a traffic report on the wireless, there is some idiot driving the wrong way down the freeway, be careful, Paddy.”

Paddy replies, “It’s not just one, there’s f***ing thousands of them!”

Not really sure what to say about this, other than some bands just know they have the goods……

Behind the Music

as someone from another site said

“like Captain Beefheart ran a gas station in 1981 Texas and forced the employees to start a metal band.”

For those who didn’t hear, Marc Ecko purchased Barry Bond’s 756th home run ball. He’s taking an online vote about what to do with it.

I personally voted to brand it with an asterisk.

http://www.vote756.com/marcecko/

I thought you guys might like to check out the new service from the super-small startup I’m rocking these days. It’s basically a social-network / micro-blogging platform / Twitter/Flickr/YouTube hybrid and it integrates with many of the existing blog platforms and social networks. Basically, you “Utter” by recording a voice comment (by calling 712-432-M000/6666), sending an audio/img/video attachment to go@utterz.com from your email or cell-phone(MMS msg) or by uploading audio/video/img on utterz.com. If you record an audio post from the road and send in a picture from your cell-phone (within 5 minutes of the audio utter) your picture will automatically be associated with your audio comment. You can also send a regular SMS msg to do a “Twitter-style” post. Your stuff will show up instantly on www.utterz.com. You can view everyone else’s utterz on our website or listen to them on the phone by pressing “1″ after calling the 712-432-6666. You can also grab widgets from our “Lab”section to put on your website/blog/social network page that will play your utterz dynamically as you record them. This service just came out Monday and we’re getting some press. We’re also adding new features all the time. One of the cool new features is “topic of the day”. Check it out! Any feedback is always appreciated.

Yea ought to be talking like a pirate today, yest you be keelhauld. Aye, if ya need help talkin’ like a pirate you may want t’ try this page. Aye.

Saw this image today, thought it was kinda cool:

So for those of you who are fans, its a day for sad news. Apparently he passed away yesterday from complications related to the blood disease he’s been battling for about 2 years.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/books/09/17/obit.jordan.ap/index.html

Last I’d heard the book he’s working on was going to be the last one. He said in an interview something to the effect that even if it needed to be 10,000 pages this would be the last one. He had a full outline and notes for the entire thing, and was a significant way through the writing of the last book, which was estimated to be around 3000 pages when finished. (I’m pulling this from memory, so feel free to dig for me, his blog has been a good site for some of this info)

Anyway, here’s to hoping one of his writer/friends can finish the story with what he’s left behind. Would be awful if his masterpiece was never finished.

“The game of checkers has roughly 500 billion billion possible positions (5 x 1020). The task of solving the game, determining the final result in a game with no mistakes made by either player, is daunting. Since 1989, almost continuously, dozens of computers have been working on solving checkers, applying state-of-the-art artificial intelligence techniques to the proving process. This paper announces that checkers is now solved: Perfect play by both sides leads to a draw. This is the most challenging popular game to be solved to date, roughly one million times as complex as Connect Four. Artificial intelligence technology has been used to generate strong heuristic-based game-playing programs, such as Deep Blue for chess. Solving a game takes this to the next level by replacing the heuristics with perfection.”

This is the abstract of a paper that came out today in Science. You can read the full article here. although the proof is way over my head, the background is SUPER interesting, especially the mention of the greatest checkers player ever, Marion Tinsley.

Someone in my guild sent me this link. Start with episode 1. If you’ve ever been in a semi dramatic guild, you’ll in all likelihood piss yourself laughing, so be warned.

http://youtube.com/user/watchtheguild

This is quite a funny two minutes of your life.  I liked Bam’s show on MTV as it made many Saturday afternoons fly by.

Don’t know how old this is but it’s pretty freakin crazy.  Some people have too much time on their hands.  I liked the bike jump to the boat in the bay.  Pretty sick.

What up all- It is me again, shamelessly utilizing McCrappy to reach the masses. UFC 76 is coming up on Saturday September 22 (not this Saturday, the one after), and guess where I am going to see it? That’s right, Good Times in Somerville. I will be going regardless of how many people go, so if you are down either let me know and we can carpool or something, or just show up last minute if you have nothing else going on!

The card features the return of Chuck “The Iceman” Liddell, as well as the UFC debut of “Shogun” Rua (one of my favorites) as he takes on Forrest Griffin. There’s a bunch of other cool fights too, including one with two Japanese guys- One of which is an Olympic Judoka and the other a 5th Degree Shotokan Karate Black Belt. Should be crazy!

I went to Good Times for the last event and there were two unsanctioned, unbroadcast fights at the venue (in other words, two fights broke out). Good Times, more like GREAT Times!!!