The collective water from people flushing toilets at halftime of the Superbowl has led the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department to ask citizens to stagger their bathrooms usage during halftime, so as to relieve stress on the city's sewer system. Here's the story.

Bill Gates on Daily Show

This is a nice little interview with Bill Gates discussing today's release of Windows Vista.



and here is a nice demonstration of Vista Aero at work:

This afternoon I went to Quiznos for lunch with a friend of mine. As we were about to eat our sandwiches, my friend realized that the lady only put two meatballs on his meatball sub. So he brought the sandwich back to the counter, and had them make another with an adequate amount of meatballs. The lady at the counter did, and told him just to throw the first sandwich away.

So, my question, is whether it would be wrong not to throw away the first sandwich, but instead to eat it, and then eat the second one as well - of course having only paid for one meatball sub.

What would be wrong with eating both sandwiches instead of throwing the first one away? Whatever happens to the first sandwich has no impact on Quiznos. They have to make an additional sandwich at zero cost, regardless of whether the first sandwich is eaten or throw away.

It would be wrong had my friend falsely complained about his sandwich, so that he could get a second one, and eat both. However, his complaint was genuine. As a result, I don't see a problem with the first sandwich being eaten as opposed to being trashed.

As for what my friend did - He ate half of it and threw half away.

The official estimate is that the Feb. 4 game and the surrounding festivities will give the region a $400 million boost. But some economists who study the game's monetary impact say that's a pie-in-the-sky estimate, that the actual amount is one-tenth of that.

"If you move that $400 million estimate and you move the decimal point one place to the left you're much closer to what it is that it actually provides," said Robert Baade, an economics professor at Lake Forest College in Chicago who has looked at the financial impact of Super Bowls, Olympics and World Series

Read the rest of the article here.

Here we have an interesting article discussing the connection between the damage to a small section of the brain and addiction to tobacco. A man in this article damaged his insula as the result of a stroke, and consequently has lost all desire to smoke cigarettes.

Stephen Colbert trys to explain AT&T's very convoluted ownership.



Yes, Colbert is hilarious mocking this complex corporate structure, but the truth is, it is absolutely ridiculous. Of the 24 Bell Companies which spun off AT&T in 1984, at the government's request, 11 are now back under AT&T's ownership. Here is symplified diagram, outlining the mergers that brought together the current AT&T.


Read more about AT&T and its merging here and here.

?

The question mark was first used, in its present form, in 16th-century England. It is a simplification of an abbreviation in which an uppercase Q stood atop a lowercase o, representing the Latin word quaestio, "I search for."

Fixing Gays?

Here's a fascinating article discussing the prospect of curing homosexuality. Scientists are attempting to change the hormonal balance in the brains of "homosexual" sheep, so that they might be more inclined to mate with members of the opposite sex.

It raises the prospect that pregnant women could one day be offered a treatment to reduce or eliminate the chance that their offspring will be homosexual. Experts say that, in theory, the “straightening” procedure on humans could be as simple as a hormone supplement for mothers-to-be, worn on the skin like an anti-smoking nicotine patch.

According to the article, gay rights groups seem to be up in arms about these tests, which are being conducted at Oregon State University. However, I cannot see why people would be upset at eliminating a defect in humans which precludes propagation.

Quote of the Day

Boy, what ever you is
And where ever you is,
Don’t be what you ain’t,
Because when you is
What you ain’t, you isn’t.

Uncle Remus

Word of the Day

uxorious \uk-SOR-ee-us; ug-ZOR-\, adjective:
Excessively fond of or submissive to a wife.

It is batty to suppose that the most uxorious of husbands will stop his wife's excessive shopping if an excessive shopper she has always been.
- Angela Huth, "All you need is love", Daily Telegraph, April 24, 1998

Flagler seems to have been an uxorious, domestic man, who liked the comfort and companionship of a wife at his side.
-- Michael Browning, "Whitehall at 100", Palm Beach Post, February 22, 2002

The iPhone

Steve Jobs announcing the new Apple iPhone. It will sell for $599 iand will allow users to download and play iTunes music, browse the web, send email and make calls. It features a wide screen and a two-megapixel camera and can also link wirelessly to music headsets, stereo systems and Wi-Fi networks. For more, read here.

Traffic Jam

I hope your daily drive to work does not look like this. This is Xiamen, south China where personal automobiles have become increasingly popular. However, they have no yet implemented stop lights or overpasses to deal with this hilarious and probably very frusterating situation.

More Boise St. Video

Below is the best overall montage I have been able to find of the fantastic finish of the 2007 Fiesta Bowl. Unbelievable.

Boise State Wins 2007 Fiesta Bowl

Here is the 2-point conversion, statue of liberty play which won the game for Boise State. This stunning upset is one of the best football games I have ever seen in my life, and the ending - not just the 2-point conversion, but all three trick plays - is probably second only to the Stanford-Cal game. Enjoy, everyone.



and a replay from a different angle