brett’s morning blend (21sep10)

Sex Isn’t Selling

Pornography revenues are down 80% over the last 3 years… which sounds like great news.  And may very well be.  But it’s likely this decline has little to do with morality — and is more due to our culture’s refusal to pay for sex and porn these days;  there’s just so much out there for free.  So we’re seeing a lower morality actually drop porn consumption.  Ironic.  Tim Challies writes all about it in this essay on why sex just isn’t selling these days.

Who’s Going to Hell

It’s incredibly unlikely, I suppose, that any one individual or group understands correctly who exactly is going to heaven and who is indeed going to hell.  Yet we constantly attempt to draw these lines.  Richard Beck looks at Type I and Type II errors in reading trends in data sets, and suggests he finds in them a major difference between “conservative” and “liberal” churches.

The Facts About Calories

An info-graphic about just what the title would suggest.  Recommended intake, calories consumed, calories burned, etc, etc.

Dollars Spent = Wins in a Season

This just in.  Those NCAA schools which spend the most money on their football programs win the most games.  That’s why Ole Miss shouldn’t complain quite so much about their record this season.  They come in at #63 in spending.  And I’ll bet you can guess who the other low-spenders in the SEC are.  That’s right:  Mississippi State, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky join the Rebels to round out the bottom four.

The Quotable Les Miles?

Yep, a website completely devoted to Les Miles’ ridiculous and nonsensical quotes.  If you’re not an LSU fan, you’ll love this site.  If you are, you’ll hang your head in shame.  Just a quick sampling:

• “Louisiana has a heritage of great players that play their high school football within the boundaries of Louisiana.”
• “I can only tell you that the only fit to me for those players on this campus is extremely good.”
• “That advantage when you’re a team that provides great opportunities and also an opportunity to play for a national championship is, in this state, a tremendous advantage for us.”
• “There’s still a lot of football to play for and a lot of football left.”
• “As soon as we know exactly who we are playing and what date we will be playing on, the schedule will become more finite.”
• “This year it was a nice pass that was underneath the coverage that Brandon LaFell interpreted to be a touchdown.”

The Best Bathroom Sign Ever

Apparently, there’s some instruction needed these days on how NOT to use a public restroom.  This sign’ll do just the job.

a lesson in math for steve conroy

A 16th-ranked Auburn team (AP) just barely squeaked past an unranked, but talented, Clemson team.  It took the Tigers from Alabama an illegal snap and a failed second attempt of a Clemson field goal to win in overtime, 27-24.

So I get it if the AP voters want to move Auburn down a position to #17 in their poll.  Heck, I suppose I’d understand if they dropped the Tigers a spot or two further than that.

But what I don’t get is the Boston Herald’s Steve Conroy and his voting practices.  Conroy’s the only AP voter (of 65) who doesn’t have Auburn ranked in his top 25 — which is every bit his right and prerogative, and it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility that Auburn is indeed a #26 or #27 team.  Last week Conroy had Auburn at #19 and Clemson at #20.  This week, though, Auburn is a no-show on Steve’s ballot, while the Clemson Tigers are sitting pretty at #25.  So let me get this right, Steve… two undefeated teams face one another, the winner falls from the top 25, and the loser stays?  Mr. Conroy, I think you’re mistaken.  Give glory to God, man.  Be honest.

The Coach’s Poll, by the way, moved Auburn up one spot from #15 to #14.  Next game: South Carolina.  War Eagle!

college football and a decade in the sec

And college football begins.  As you guys are all enjoying your Saturday afternoon cookouts and football, I’ll be listening to Auburn games on a slow-buffering internet radio station at 3 am.  But a happy “War Eagle!,” all the same.

In honor of the big day, please enjoy the past decade in SEC football according to Facebook:

image courtesy of chadgibbs.wordpress.com

brett’s morning blend (13apr10)

Seriously, I Need to Eat This: the Double Down

This sandwich is why I never should have left the states.  The moment I remove myself from within driving distance of a fast food restaurant, KFC invents what might be the best thing since to replace sliced bread.

And this blog post is just one of the reasons I subscribe to NPR’s Wait, Wait… Don’t Blog Me.  On “Sandwich Monday,” seven of Wait, Wait‘s writers and staff ate the sandwich for which I should’ve stayed in the U.S., lived, and then commented on it.

NCAA to Investigate Butler Basketball

We all get excited about a lesser-celebrated school playing up to the level of the big boys in the NCAA Tourney… and then news like this is made public.  Steroids in baseball, EPO in cycling, cheating in “golf,” and now this.  I’m becoming a fan of bowling, darts, or billiards, where the only performance enhancers are cigarettes and beer.  And those are just to give the “athletes” something to do while they’re standing around.  [Also why so many baseball players dip tobacco -- it's either that or play with the grass in the outfield.]

Learn a Language

The Foreign Service Institute has some great material for learning new languages.  And it’s free.  There are hundreds of lessons in over 40 different languages.  I’ve only looked in detail at the Swahili stuff, but if it’s representative of the whole, these are legit.

National Poetry Month

As you probably already know and have been celebrating now for 13 days, April is National Poetry Month.  I live in Tanzania, and we don’t celebrate poetry; instead April is National Eat Rice at Every Meal Month — wait a minute… didn’t we celebrate that in March… and February… and….  The link above is to poets.org, where you will find a list of 30 ways to celebrate poetry.  Some of them are pretty dumb.  And one is a game called “Exquisite Corpse,” which I’m not sure I want to be a part of.

A Very Confused (and uninvited) Group

So there’s a group called “The League of Canadian Poets.”  And they’re celebrating National Poetry Month by — hey, who invited them?  The Canadians can get their own month, as far as I’m concerned.  National. That means our country, not our continent.  I haven’t seen an invitation to our “friends” from the north; and it’s rude to come to a party uninvited.  ESPECIALLY when you choose your own theme for the month.  And their theme: Climate Changes.  What?!  That’s ridiculous!  All the beautiful things we could write about and celebrate with poetry, and the Canadians choose climate change?  I’m glad Frost, Whitman, Dickinson, and Silverstein didn’t live to see this day.  They would’ve recklessly sprayed aerosol cans while driving their Hummers and Suburbans at higher than the optimal speed for fuel efficiency.  [For the record, National Poetry Month was adopted in the states in 1996.  Canada adopted April as their celebration of rhyming in 1999.  That's the national holiday equivalent of plagiarism.  For another blog post on lack of Canadian creativity, go here.]

And a Special Invitation

I’ve not yet asked him, and so, this blog post will be his formal invitation.  But I’m going to invite my younger brother, Brian, to write a poem for my blog in celebration of (the United States’) National Poetry Month.  The rules are that:

• it can’t be vulgar* (you guys don’t know my brother…).
• it can’t be written in such a way or about such a topic that will get me in trouble with my mission supporters.
• it can’t be about climate change.  [Take that, Canadians.]
• it can’t be sympathetic to the Canadians.  [My brother is definitely a Canadian-Sympathizer, with his rowdy Canadian friends, his love of hockey,* and his phony French accent.]

This will be the first guest post ever on my blog.  I know those of you who have been reading for more than a couple of days are really excited.  The day, should my brother accept my invitation: Sunday, April 18th.

* This is a late edition asterisk, only added after my wife corrected me, saying I shouldn’t               make people believe that my brother is vulgar.  He indeed is not.

** This is another late edition asterisk, added after my brother corrected me, saying he                 prefers the good Canadian sport of curling to hockey.  He did not, however,                         correct me concerning his being vulgar.