NBC needs to shut up

We're watching the women's individual all-around gymnastics right now, and the announcers on NBC have some serious bias. They complain and harp on every little mistake that the Chinese girls make and they sit silent when the Chinese do well, but they ignore any mistakes that the Americans make and complain like crazy if they don't get perfect scores. Don't get me wrong, I hope the American girls do well, too, but I expect the journalists to keep it to themselves a little more.

Bloggenting

As you may know, it's been quite a while since I've written a blog. I realize that I'm failing the blog community, and that many people are likely depressed and lonely waiting for the next words of wisdom to flow from my keyboard.

Despite the cause for disappointment in my lack of posts I want all of my many readers to know that I have been struggling to make a contribution to the digital community in another form: commenting.

Every blogger knows that the key to blogging is in the comments. After all, if it weren't for the comments from our readers telling us how great and/or stupid we are, then why would we blog at all? If it weren't for the comments, why not just write our ideas in journals like our ancestors did? I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that humankind has evolved past that method of expression.

So, lest anyone think that I am no longer a contributing member of the blogciety, just remember that I'm here every second I have to waste, reading and judging your blog posts, and commenting on them. You couldn't do this without me.

Chicago radio

We were in Chicago a few weeks ago for Stefroni's wedding, and everything was really wonderful. But that's not what I'm posting about.

Chicago's a big city, right? Well, as you would expect from a big city, there are a lot of radio stations. You can't go more than two clicks on the dial without getting a new station. I'd say there's about 800 FM radio stations around Chicagoland.

The part that surprised me is that only about 5 of those stations are devoted to popular music. I don't mean popular music as in Brittany Spears and the Backstreet Boys, I mean mainstream music, including country and rap and everything. So, between these 5 radio stations they pretty much need to play all of the music that normal people would listen to. The other 795 stations in the area are split pretty evenly between Mexican rachero music and talk radio.

Now if I had just 5 quality radio stations to choose from in an area that'd be plenty. The problem is, I don't want to listen to just any mix of mainstream crap. I need a rock station. Kelly and I spent all weekend scanning the spectrum for any semplance of rock, and the oldies station was the only one we could find.

So, in conclusion, Chicago radio stations suck.

Saving lives, one marathon at a time

Ronnie showed me this article today.  Y'all should be thanking me.

The Story of Marathon

Last week I looked up the legend on which the marathon event is based. This is the account in Wikipedia:

The name marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek soldier, who was sent from the town of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon. It is said that he ran the entire distance without stopping and burst into the Senate, exclaiming ['We have won'] before collapsing and dying of heartattack.

Any of this strike you as a surprise? I'd heard the basic idea of this story before: that some guy ran from Marathon to Athens, which is the same distance as the race named after the city. But no one ever mentioned that it killed him to run it. That should probably be in some kind of disclaimer.