For those that have been influenced by Pascal’s wager, which basically states that you’re better off believing in god because there’s no punishment if you do believe in him and he doesn’t exist, but if he does exist and you don’t believe in him, you’re in trouble, there’s a new religous option available to you.

I always enjoy meeting proffessors on the first day of classes, they’ve always got their rap for the first day down, so they’re at their peak, and there’s no stress between the professors and the students due to GPA concerns, so it’s really the one day where our relationship is the most pure and perfect. Also, they say some amusing stuff:

“It turns out that confused and bored are very similar expressions.”
–Professor Franklin

“I mean, let’s face it, you only absorb maybe a third of what I teach you…

…ok, maybe less.”
Professor Smith

I was watching Florida State play in their bowl game the other day when they decided to interview the first lady of Florida State, Head Coach Bobby Bowden’s wife. Bobby Bowden has been coaching college football since before the the AFL or the NFL even existed. And that’s not an exaggeration, he’s been coaching since the 1950’s.

So when they asked Bobby Bowden’s wife how long she would give him the green light to keep coaching as he inches closer and closer to retirement with every knee creaking step, I was surprised to hear the following response from his wife of 55 years:

“He can keep coaching as long he keeps winning.”

So it’s not necessarily win or die for Bobby, but it is win, tie, or divorce.

“Why would the police bother to arrest innocent people? Because they are easier to catch.”

-Jeremy Hardy

I’ve always considered one of the managers at work a bit of a wuss, so you can imagine my surprise today when he informed me:

“Yeah, I’m a skydiver. I’ve got about 400 jumps under my belt. I was the first person to ever skydive naked in Paso Robles.”

Instant credibility.

Beware the IRON HAMMER OF DIPLOMACY tshirt. The bombing will continue until you accept our democratic rule.

Courtesy of Y-Que.com, the best tshirt store.

EVER

ok, ok, ok….

The following is a picture of my sister and her three suitemates. First person to guess which one is my sister wins a shiny new quarter made in 1993, with the words “E Pluribus Unum” inscribed on the back.

By a show of hands:
How many of you know a Heisman Trophy winner personally?

Now those with your hands up:
How many of you know the reigning Heisman Trophy winner?

And for the two guys in the back with their hands still raised:
How many of you have sat on his lap?

That’s what I thought. However, my former apartmentmate not only knows the current Heisman trophy winner, but got photographic evidence on her 21st birthday, while wearing a hat fashioned by one Miss Lauren:

I wish I could have told Leinert what I wanted for Christmas.

Upon watching Ocean’s 11 recently, it occurred to me that the United States’ foreign policy is completely stolen from Terry Benedict’s. You just switch some words around, which I will do for you here:

Saddam: Just out of curiosity, which towers did you idiots choose to knock down.
Osama: uhhh, the twin towers.
Saddam: *Fork drops*
Saddam: What have you got against George Bush?
Osama: What have you got against him, that’s the question.
Saddam: (angrily) He invaded my country, pushed me around.
Saddam: If you’re going after him, you better god damn know.
Saddam: He’ll kill you, and then he’ll go to work on you.

*********

Osama: Did you hear about that guy the United States caught selling Nukes?
Osama: They sent him to prison for life, then..
Saddam: *interrupts* Bankrupted his brother in law’s tractor dealership, yeah I heard.

It’s more of a security by intimidation, but I’m not one to question Ocean’s 11.

By the way, if you find this not funny and in fact completely tasteless, it might help to watch Ocean’s 11 at least ten or fifteen times like I have.

to continue the circle of shame that ben started, I come bearing politics and sex:

More later, but less now.

I bought a cheap mp3 player recently, and was having a bit of trouble operating it, so I decided to dive into the instruction manual that was supplied. Upon turning to the first page I discovered an abortion of english unequaled since Toaplan decided to distribute Zero Wing in the United States. It’s like somebody who didn’t know english OR the language they were translating from used google translator a couple of times, translating it back and forth between the two languages until all that was left was utter gibberish. The following is found on the first page of the instruction guide:

This machine is a new generation of digital personal stereo. It can be said to be a best works with it’s perfect sound quality, rarefied reliability and ingenious appearance. We heartily wish it could give you a transcendental enjoyment of digital age.

The powers of goodness forbid that you should ever make it to page 23, on which you will find “Important Recommendation” which describes the function of “Dream Space.”

In general, MP3 uses should be puzzled by “disclose data” who want to others see his “individual data”, he could only deletes these “privacy” while friends borrow his MP3, it could bring big trouble.
From this days onwards, the function of “dream space” solves the problem drastically.

….Which is good, because I’d been having problems with my disclose data being puzzled by MP3’s, with big trouble often resulting.

So where did it come from, you ask? According to the only information I can find on the company’s website, it came from Fort Worth, Texas.

Uh huh, yeah right. And the Megatokyo guys are from Wisconsin.

“Bet you wish you were my homework right now, because you’d be hard and I’d be doing you on my desk.”

-Kimi’s away message. I don’t really talk to her anymore, but her away messages are always quality.

As I sat in Starbucks today I spied the following scene:

A man sat at a table drinking his gourmet coffee…

Checking out the internet wirelessly on his Apple Powerbook…

His Powerbook was connected to his Apple Ipod…

If he was any more yuppy he might have imploded.

I bet he drives a jetta!!!

Looking at a calendar, Joel speaks:

“So Thanksgiving is on a wednesday? or a thursday…”

Yes folks, he really said it. And he was serious.

Never thought I’d quote a Slashdot inverview of a guy who makes movies about Star Trek fans (How funny does that have to be?), but here goes:

“Something to keep in mind, post presidential election, is that in the long run conservatives always lose. If this statement were not true, we would still be living in caves. We wouldn’t have cell phones, vaccines, and rockets. Conservatives will never go to the stars. They are too busy trying to hold society back.

Every new idea that is introduced is liberal at first. The idea that the Earth is round and revolves around the Sun was denounced by conservative leaders at the time. Fact-based evolution is currently being denounced and taken out of some school curriculums, to be replaced, or taught side-by-side, with faith-based creationism. Faith has it’s place for some people in society, but it didn’t get us to the moon and beyond.”

–Roger Nynard from here.

After reading one too many web comics and realizing that I possessed more talent in one hangnail than the entire online community, I set out to create a web comic whose brilliance would be matched only by it’s hilarity and humility.

It was not an easy road, and at many points during script development I had to completely shred everything I had and start over in the interest of staying true to my self and giving birth to an original idea that the world has never seen before. Then I started doing pencil tests on different types of characters, mapping out and analyzing every expression, stance, and texture that would becme part of my visual arsenal.

My strip shall be known as “Inconsequential,” and the first episode in this series, which I present to you now, is entitled: VAIN

As you can see, there were many sacrifices made to the rock bottom budget this production was forced to operate under, tasha and craig both have stubs where limbs should be, which I used to emphasize their feelings of helplessness and isolation, and they’re both utterly and completely naked, again twisted to my advantage by revealing how exposed they both are, though they lack the anatomy to be embarrassed about it. tasha only has one eye as the art department simply lacked the dollars and cents required to draw another eye, while craig’s face is conveniently covered with hair, as to whether or not he in fact has eyes, you will have to wait and see…

Me: I really want to see this movie about Alfred Kinsey, who caused a sexual uproar with his book “Sexual Response in The Human Male”

Rachel: Sexual response in the human male? What is it, an 8 page picture book?

If you have a piece of frozen chicken which is too big to fit on your george forman grill, just smack it really hard against the edge of the counter top and it will break cleanly in half.

Anyone who’s asked me in recent history would know that it’s my opinion that the minor fluctuations in popular vote numbers that we see in the polls don’t matter one bit. It’s all up to the electoral college at this point, so why don’t people show what the estimated electoral vote and eventual outcome of the election would be if it took place today? Finally there is a site that does just that called (quite imaginatively), the Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004. Not only does it exist, but it’s written by a rather notable computer scientist, Andrew Tanenbaum, who will probably have been the author of a couple of my textbooks before I get out of school. He provides his sources in the form of excel spreadsheets and more data than you could ever need. If you roll your mouse over the states, you get not only the current poll that he’s using for that state, but the source for that poll as well as the result from the 2000 election. He also pledges to stay up all election night and update the site in real time. Fun stuff.

As it sits right now, according to the polls, Kerry would have 298 Electoral Votes and Bush would have 231. Bush supporters shouldn’t get all up in arms and Kerry supporters shouldn’t get cocky, as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida are all in a statistical dead heat between Bush and Kerry. If you’re a third party supporter, I’d have to say it looks not so good. Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia ( a combined 50 Electoral College votes) all went to Bush in 2000, while Pennsylvania and New Mexico ( 26 Electoral College Votes ) went to Gore. Both Bush and Gore had 48.8% of the vote in Florida (27 Electoral Votes) for 2000, and I’m sure we all remember what happened there.

Below is a snapshot of the map taken when I looked at it (NOTE: This map doesn’t have statistics when you hover your mouse over it, only the map on the EV predictor does that). You’ll note if we voted by land mass Bush would have a landslide victory, or even a slight victory by popular vote, but thanks to the Electoral system, none of that really matters. Case in point: Gore did win the popular vote in 2000, but he’s still the one who ended up riding the pine come January 20th. Especially interesting is this graph, which shows how the Electoral Votes have been divided as well as relevant events that have happened going all the way back to June.

Blech, head cold + coughing equals Blech.

Creativity, motivation, and the urge to show up for class, gym, or work all are severely lacking. Hoping a freak power outage or scary mutant turtles with the powers of many ninjas will stop classes from happening tomorrow and I will be allowed to lie in bed undisturbed and watch my favorite bad movies.

Been listening to the Toadies a lot recently, I’d forgotten they existed.

Team America : World police was funny. I wouldn’t recommend that any relatives see it. If you’re not related to me, go watch it, it’s hilarious.

A quote of the moment from Trey Parker on the difficulties of making a movie with often heady (definition #2) and egocentric marionettes:

“You could threaten to kill my family and I would not make another puppet movie. If my mother would die if I would not make another puppet movie, she’d be dead. I’m totally serious.”

I finally saw Tron a couple days ago with Byron. That movie gets a huge “wow” rating from me, this is a classic sick day movie and as a Computer Engineering major it’s absolutely hilarious. A super computer that’s smart enough that it’s on the verge of taking over the company that created it and it still ends it’s sentences with “end of line?” Bloody Brilliant. Also, how cool is Jeff Bridges? Plays rebel programmer Flynn in Tron then later goes on to play no other than “The Dude” in The Big Lebowski. What else could you ask for from an acting career?

I’m going to make some tea, read some more philosophy, and snort some Ny-Quil.

Look ma, no proof reading.