Edwin MacPhisto

The cracking of joints. It distracts and bothers me more than any other minor bodily action. A close friend of mine probably cracks various knuckles, vertebrae, and ankles no less than 300-400 times a day, which can make hanging out a brain-racking experience now and then.

He's probably still in the bushes from whence he was going to ambush BPS.

I'll be interested to see where it comes from as well, but I'd much rather we pour money into education subsidies than a lot of other places. Any proposal gifting large sums of money for college does have to be fairly carefully considered, though. Florida pours a ton of lottery money into a college-funding program that also folds in ACT/SAT scores alongside community service; however, that program was more designed to keep high-quality students in-state than to fund people who might otherwise not afford college at all. It ultimately started to overextend its funding, and the program was eventually rolled back from 4 years of support to a max of 3. The standards for funding weren't exactly high; I think a 1300 SAT or so got you a full ride, and something like topping 1000 gave you 75%. The biggest problem with such a program is that it reduces the overall amount of per-student funding flowing into a college, so you can end up with lousy faculty to student ratios and declining university resources. As much as it helped out a bunch of my friends from high school, I think the state needs to get a cap of some sort on the benefit before the state's major public universities decline rapidly, and it appears that Gov. Crist is going to start looking that way. I doubt that'll be as much of an issue on a national program, since scholarship costs will be much more broadly distributed and mitigate that sort of concentrated crunch.

I'd like to talk to them about sports, or lasagna recipes. See if anything like "sausage is the meat of queers" comes up in casual chat.

I'm making that shit.

Bored, I'm changing my vote for the name of the 10th bowl in your pick-em. "Old Spice Third Place Game" is clearly the best of all possible worlds.

"I'm dying...for some interracial gangbang porn!"

Oh, heavens no. I'll put stock in and vitriol towards the supposed Rahm Emanuel version when it actually happens, which it won't.

The Bailout Bowl is the most timely, but I have to rep the 7th Floor Crew.

Did Valve already pull the demo off Xbox live? I tried to find it a couple of days ago with no luck.

You keep throwing up straw men about the way teams lost or Texas Tech or whatever, when I'm not saying that. I'm talking about strength of schedule and the virtues of a head to head win if you eliminate Texas Tech from the discussion, which I think is a completely feasible argument to make for reasons already laid out. No one's going to talk with you anymore if you keep typing the same thing over and over. Don't go down this path again.

That's not what Harley and I are doing. Neither of us is considering Texas Tech as a possibility because of the poor strength of schedule (2 FCS opponents, primarily) as compared to Texas and Oklahoma. Texas beat Oklahoma head to head, and depending on how you view the opponents, Texas may have the tougher schedule as well (remember: no FCS opponent for Texas, and Rice actually turned out to be one of the top teams in C-USA). If you take a look at Jeff Sagarin's updated strength-of-schedule rankings, Texas currently has the 5th toughest schedule while Oklahoma has the 26th. I expect those will get closer since Oklahoma State is a good opponent and Texas A&M isn't. So, no, it's not just a "vicious circle." There are a fair number of strong arguments in favor of each team, and if both teams win out, I'm not sure what's going to happen.

For real. Harley straight-up Crabtree'd me.

I think it's a very tough call between Texas and Oklahoma right now as to who I think should get that Big XII championship game slot. I'm not considering Texas Tech at the moment, more because of their comparatively weaker schedule than the fact that they got housed tonight. Oklahoma's out of conference opponents have really made them look good this year; they're 3-1 against teams currently in the top-20 of the BCS. Then again, so is Texas. The head-to-head victory still has me inclining slightly towards Texas at the moment, although an Oklahoma win next week to get them 4-1 against the BCS top-20 would make the decision even more difficult. I'm glad to see Utah get a chance at a better team than they did the first time they made it to the BCS, even if this team probably doesn't quite touch them in talent. Looks like they'll draw either USC, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, or Alabama.

Holy hell; Myron Rolle actually won the Rhodes scholarship.

GROUP A Respect" by Aretha Franklin "Cupid" by Sam Cooke "She Loves You" by The Beatles "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye GROUP B "Eight Days A Week" by The Beatles "Fortunate Son" by Creedence Clearwater Revival "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles "Daydream Believer" by The Monkees GROUP C "Space Oddity" by David Bowie "Street Fighting Man" by The Rolling Stones "The Weight" by The Band "Heroin" by The Velvete Underground GROUP D "Venus in Furs" by The Velvet Underground "Like a Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan "Gimme Shelter" by Rolling Stones "Norwegian Wood" by Beatles

There's a place in my hometown that does turducken and sells it by the slice at dinner. Very good, though I'm not sure I'd make it a regular or even a thanksgiving thing. It's so heavy that it kind of defeats the need to have anything else on your plate.

I listened to all the tracks, and I don't think it's very good. I like "I.R.S." all right, and "Street of Dreams" seemed better when it was "The Blues" on the leak. I'm in no way shocked.

yeeeeeeeesssss

In theory No Child Left Behind solves that since you have to have a degree in the subject matter you are teaching, which in turn cripples small districts ability to hire since you can't have the chemistry teacher double as a lower tier math teacher. I think you can also qualify to teach a given subject by passing a state exam, which is probably the easier option. Too bad NCLB is a complete disaster in every other aspect. Okay, Mr. Holland.

Um.

ACC excitement continues, as Georgia Tech pounds Miami to finish the season at 5-3 in conference. That opens up a pile of delicious 3-team and 4-team tiebreak scenarios in the Coastal division. Amazingly, every team in the ACC but Duke, NC State, and Clemson can still win the conference.

How's going unarmed working out? I usually get bored by unarmed/melee in Fallout games because there's so little variation early, and the guns are so very satisfying. Question: has anyone else had the fortune to get both Charon and another companion? I currently have both Charon and Paladin Cross with me, which I didn't think was possible until she asked to come along. It seems that Charon is like Dogmeat, in that he doesn't count against your one-companion-only limit. Either that, or I've hit a fortunate glitch.

Here's another problem I have with the new ending, if it is indeed the same that metroman posted earlier and that plenty of sites have suggested. I'll put it in spoilers since it's unique to the movie, I guess.

THURSDAY Georgia Tech SATURDAY Purdue Virginia Mississippi State Penn State Wake Forest California Northwestern Utah Oregon State Iowa Cincinnati Florida State Oklahoma Tiebreak #1: How many total points will be scored in the Texas Tech/Oklahoma game? 66 Tiebreak #2: How many rushing yards will Oregon State's Jacquizz Rodgers have against Arizona? 122