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Saturday, September 13, 2003
MICHIGAN 38, NOTRE DAME 0 UM's biggest defeat of ND ever, and the first time we've shut out the Irish since 1902. (In case you don't know, I am a Michigan grad, and grew up on the Michigan border with South Bend, Indiana. I went to high school literally across the street from Notre Dame. I hate Notre Dame: every year the Wolverines would enter the game ranked #4, then get waxed by Lou Holtz's squad on an improbable last second play. National title hopes dashed, UM would play unispired ball and limp to an 8-3 record and a birth in the Peach Bowl. But not this year. Heh heh heh; had my parents not raised me to be polite, I'd be making some taunting phone calls right about now.) 38 - 0. Wow. posted by Nate on 7:06 PM link Friday, September 12, 2003Robert X. Cringely has an insightful, terrifying article on identity theft. Most states include Social Security numbers in their voter registration databases, nearly all of which are open to the public and many of which are searchable online. But searching for one name and grabbing 100,000 voter records are very different things, so trying to gather mass data for identity theft using your AOL account would probably be noticed and is not a good idea. But many states will sell you the data on CD-ROMs that you can take home and search as intensively as you like. As an experiment, he acquired a few government CD-ROMs and went to work coallating data. He estimates he could steal the identities of 300,000 people and make billions of dollars within a few weeks. (Cue Dr. Evil pinky finger to the chin.) Slashdot has a thread mostly consisting of people who've gotten hosed by the Identity Theft Monster. Great, I guess now I know how I'll be spending my weekend: at Office Depot, procuring a paper shredder. posted by Nate on 8:08 PM link Wednesday, September 10, 2003Following the birth of his child, Mike Carmanati re-posted one of his amazing rants on the sublime analytics of ESPN's Joe Morgan. Joe Morgan is to baseball analysts what Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness is to literature. He’ll say things like, “I am the self which I will be, in the mode of not being it.” Some people will sit there agape, some will coo approval, and some will scratch their heads and, “That makes no sense whatsoever, but it’s kind of cool.” If you count yourself among this last group, welcome, brother, to the world of Joe Morgan Chat Day Every time I read The Rants, I laugh like Kate Hepburn in Night of the Iguana. Somebody needs to get this guy a regular ESPN Page Two column, stat! (Sorry for the over-the-top doctor talk; I watched one too many previews for the new season of ER.) posted by Nate on 11:41 PM link Yesterday at work, something called "the ballast" blew out in the fluorescent lights above me. Nasty brown liquid started dripping from the ceiling and got on the lights and started smoldering. Smelled like overheating antifreeze or burning sugar. I got a little lightheaded, so I left at four. It was a nice day, so my sister and I took my mom's dog to the P-A-R-K (spell it out, don't say it, or he'll B-A-R-K...) Anyway, afterward, my sister wanted to watch the new Whoopi Goldberg sitcom. I reluctantly agreed, mumbling something about how Whoopi was funny... twenty years ago. I was wrong; this show is ridiculous. It reminds me of the first season of "South Park," when it was so outrageously politically incorrect you couldn't believe what you were watching. The Persian handyman? The Anglo-centric black lawyer? The "wigger" girlfriend? These were laugh-out-loud characters, exaggerated versions of people you've met dealing with current social / political situations. And a cynical Whoopi cracking apt one liners at them all? Awesome. I wonder if it will keep on surprising us or if they exhausted most of the "Holy Sh*t" factor in the first episode. South Park fell for a while after the first five episodes, but it rebounded in the third season; it's one thing for a late night cable show with a cult following to slug through a rough spot, but quite another for a prime time network show that has to compete with Eight Simple Queer Eye Factors for the Joe Millionaire Idol for that advertising dollar. posted by Nate on 10:40 PM link Monday, September 08, 2003Gregg Easterbrook has a new, as-yet-unnamed blog on The New Republic website. My suggestion for a name? How about "TNR Morning Quarterback: Random Thoughts Not Involving Football and Scantily Dressed Cheerbabes." posted by Nate on 9:56 PM link Sunday, September 07, 2003The Lions beat the Cardinals 42 - 24, as Joey Harrington tossed four TDs, two of them to rookie Charles Rogers. I couldn't watch the game, as our cable system is utterly funky; we get our local channels from across the border in Indiana, except for ABC. That's the Chicago affiliate (!?!). We don't like them ever since they interrupted a hard-fought Red Wings playoff game for an hour long police press conference about a convenience store robbery that turned into a homicide. That's sad and all, but it's not like that doesn't happen every .0004 seconds in Chicago; why interrupt playoff hockey to tell us about it? Also, the programming geniuses often run Illinois and Northwestern football games instead of Michigan, even when UM is the regional game. Last year, for example, they decided not to show #8 Michigan vs. #11 Washington, opting instead for Northwestern vs. the Air Force Academy. Apparently they think it's the 1930's when academic institutions and military academies were collegiate football powers. Maybe they'll cancel the usual John Saunders postgame show and replace it with an in-depth discussion of the single wing offense, and the way this new "forward pass" might change the game. (Actually, ABC cut to the second half of the hotly contested UM-UDub game after the Air Force Academy took a 51 - 0 lead. Last season was not Northwestern's year.) Anyway, judging by the highlights Detroit's offense looked good. The defense gave up 400+ yards to the Cardinals, though. Not suprising since Detroit's "D" were ranked 31st of 32 teams last year. Finally, I have found someone whose record on defense matters is worse than Howard Dean's! (Sorry, I was just fantasizing about the politically incorrect things Rush Limbaugh might say on ESPN's NFL Countdown. "Today the New York Jets play the Chicago Bears. No word yet on whom Hillary Clinton will be rooting for." Rush was pretty mellow and inoffensive today, actually. However, every time he opened his mouth Tom Jackson looked like he was this close to charging across the studio and clotheslining him. Lest you young'uns forget, Tom Jackson was the original Terry Tate, office linebacker. Only larger, and with scary facial hair.) Cardinals' wideout Anquan Bolden racked up 217 yards on ten receptions, a record for a player's first pro game. But the Lions still won, and I have Bolden in our all-rookie "keeper" fantasy league, so I guess I'll live with it. But if local ABC doofuses postpone Saturday's telecast of Michigan - Notre Dame, I reserve the right to get all Tom Jackson on somebody. posted by Nate on 9:23 PM link It has been some sports weekend here in Michigan. First, the NFL starts today, and the Lions will be significantly less godawful this year. In college ball, my alma mater Wolverines pounded Houston 50 - 3 in the final warmup for Notre Dame next week. The wide receivers looked shakey and dropped a number of passes, but the running game came through with a vengeance. The offensive line looked good, and the defense was improved from last week, though untested on the ground. I'm still not sure if we can defend the run, and ND came from behind yesterday with an incredible fourth quarter rushing assault. In baseball news, Detroit Tigers pitcher Mike Maroth is a twenty game winner... on opposite day!!! Friday, he became the first pitcher in two decades to lose twenty games in a season. Teammate Jeremy Bonderman, an eighteen game loser, has been removed from the starting rotation. Back in May I wrote: this is a bad team, but in the dozen years I've followed Detroit baseball, this isn't the worst squad by a longshot. In years past, the wily veterans would win sixty or sixty five games with no real chance to improve year-to-year. This time around, they have a few good young arms and position players who can play quality defense. The offense is brutal, of course, but they're still learning to hit major league pitching. Not that I can name three of the Tigers' everyday players, but in this worst-to-first era maybe they can be the Kansas City Royals of 2005. Er, yeah. I know what I'm talking about, really. I was joking, or something. Wait, I know-- that was Evil Me With a Beard, writing about the Detroit Tigers from my Opposite Day dimension; the Tigers in Beardless Me's dimension continue to suck the rhinocerous swizzle. (No, I don't know what that means, but it sounds like a dissatisfactory activity to engage in.) At least living in southwest Michigan, ninety minutes from Chicago, I can root for the first-place Chicago Cubs. The first place Chicago Cubs? Damn, either I have grown an Evil Beard or it must be opposite day. posted by Nate on 3:22 AM link
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your stolen base are belong to Rickey Henderson. Questions or comments? Email nate@swankypimp.com |
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