Author: Muttrox

I went to bed with a few minutes left. We had been up by 46 points for a while. Apparently, a 45 point margin is when Belichick decided to lay back a little. The backup quarterback was put in, and they switched from almost exclusively passing to running virtually every play to run the clock out faster. It’s good to see that there is a point at which the Patriots put the guns away.

They are just awe-inspiring. Of our 10 wins, I’m guessing at least five have come against teams that everyone thought was good until they played us. Let’s see, the Jets, the Chargers, Cincinnati, the Redskins, the Bills. I don’t include Dallas or Indianapolis, both of which at least put up a good fight. These are teams that are touted as being strong, as having a shot to upset the Patriots, and then one after another they are humiliated. Just incredible.

I was at the Los Angeles Auto Show last week. While looking at some of the Lambroghinis and such, I had a fun conversation with a collegue about car prices. That led to this question.

How much money would you have to have before you would buy a car for $1,500,000? How about a $300,000 car?

How about it, what would it take for you?

Other random thoughts:
* Kia’s motto was “The Power to Surprise”. Let me tell you something, when I buy a new car the absolute last thing I want is a surprise.
* BMW has just launched their Series 1 car, aka the One. It stinks. I sat in it, and wanted to get right out. How do designers make an $80,000 car that doesn’t even feel nice to sit in?
* I still lust for a Maybach.

He’s two years and two months old. I lost. His name is now officially “Teddy”.

Random thoughts:

* That was a great game. I enjoyed every minute of it. It was nice to watch it with some Colts fans, it added some spice. It made it extra sweet when we won.
* What was going on with the Patriots tackling in the first half? We looked like a bunch of college players out there.
* Those pass interference calls were complete bull. Two defensive ones that never happened, and an offensive one for bonus. Just crazy. That’s why you play for homefield, your odds of getting friendly reffing are much better on your own turf.
* Joseph Addai is the real deal. Last season, I didn’t give him credit. He was running behind a great line, and defenses were overplaying the pass, I felt like I could have run for a few hundred yards. I’ve changed my tune, he’s a great runner.
* Belichick said that they changed their strategy after three quarters. Slowing down the game wasn’t working, so they turned it into a shootout. That appears to mean, throw it to Randy Moss every play and see what happens.
* “Our goal is to win the AFC East,” Brady said. “Being 9-0, hey, I’m as happy as anybody. But it doesn’t mean anything. Our goal isn’t to be 9-0, I promise you.” I suppose I get this viewpoint. You win the division to get the best seeding for the playoffs. It’s good mental discipline to not let yourself think too far ahead, and you don’t want the press writing how you disrespect the rest of the league. But c’mon. C’mon. I think it’s OK to look just a little bit past winning the AFC East. Right now, the Pats are 9-0. The Bills are 4-4. The East is already done my friend, already done. Shove some croutons in its rear and serve it for Thanksgiving.

Oh, by the way, the Celtics are 2-0.

Sports links, a few hours before the big game:
How to be an insufferable New England sports fan

Adam Vinatieri : The life of a fieldgoal kicker (by Michael Lewis)

Now that is a hook and ladder play. Wow, 15 laterals.

And the usual stuff:
Homework stinks. It also doesn’t help learning or nuthin’. It’s not correlated with increased test scores, knowing more, better character, nuthin’. So why is it still assinged?

”Take a watch.. smash it with a hammer… put the pieces in a box.. shake it around… open the box… see what you get.. do you get a better watch?”
Maybe you do! Watch clock evolution in action

Is there really a placebo effect after all? How about the nocebo effect?

An expert on waterboarding answers, is it torture?

Check out #7
11 amazing pictures of planet Earth, taken from space. I loved number 7.

A map of the internet. Kind of amazing.

Internet stars are viral. Funny parody video for net geeks, to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

Scott Adams has been a tear lately, one funny blog post after another. This one made me snort.

(I have this conversaton several times a week at work.)

Him: Hey Muttrox.
Me: Hey, how’s it going?
Him: Nuthin’, what’s up with you?
Me: Good, good, I’m doing good…

In most states, the local utility company will come to your house for free, inspect the house, and let you know the best ways to save energy and money. I just did this through Georgia Power (click here or call 1-800-524-2421). It was very helpful, and very non-partisan. Why do they do it? If you reduce or smooth out your energy demand, they can serve more customers better. So it’s saving money, and good PR.

• It’s still an hour to go, but congratulations Red Sox. Makes me wish I liked baseball!
• The NFL needs a mercy rule. That fourth quarter was barely fun to watch. I watched anyhow of course.
• Forget the Super Bowl, the real Super Bowl is next week. I’ve been drooling for Pats Colts, the only games that matter.
• Seriously, there’s the Pats and the Colts and a bunch of runner-ups.
• The NFC is pathetic. The Redskins probably thought they were a pretty good team at 4-2. They were not. They were just another team that isn’t the Pats or Colts.
• I have a mancrush on Wes Welker. Oh, those blue eyes! And perfect blocks!
• Maroney is back, Seymour is back. It seems mathematically impossible, but we just keep getting better. Is there an upper limit here?
• What does it take for teams to defend Vrabel on that same touchdown play we’ve seen again and again? When he’s in on offense, cover him. How hard is that? Looks at his line. 3 sacks, each leading to fumbles, each recovered by the Pats. A touchdown reception. He’s caught 10 passes in his career, and they’ve all been for touchdowns. By the way, he’s a defensive player. I can understand your confusion.

In the 2004 election, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke publicly declared that communion should not be granted to John Kerry. I thought is was an appalling thing to do. For an archbishop to insert himself into the presidential race was unseemly. And his stance was hypocritical. True, Kerry is pro-choice, but the Church and the Pope had also blasted the Iraq war as immoral for the same reasons (loss of human life) and the archbishop didn’t seem too concerned about that.

In the 2008 election cycle, I am vaguely pleased to see that he is being consistent. He also says that he would deny communion to Guliani, for the same reason. I don’t think I’ve seen any coverage of this anywhere, and it’s still an obnoxious thing for a religious figure to do, but at least he’s consistent.

I went to Technorati for the first time today. This is the site that technical types use to keep the pulse of the blogosphere. It let’s you see which blogs are popular, rising fast, most linked, etc. It gives a set of stats for any site. Muttroxia is currently going strong at rank 3,915,745. You go girl.

I also found this French site, http://aunizouka.spaces.live.com/ which links to my Aerosmith post. Well, not the post. Actually it’s one of the jerks who linked to one of the .mp3’s I was hosting and created enough traffic to use up my bandwidth, making Muttroxia go dark twice.

Thanks a lot, Jacque!

Update: I just saw that Technorati tracks over 100 million blogs. So I’m at the 97th percentile! Go Muttorixa!

Possibly my favorite Muttrox blog post/argument ever was about correct pizza orientation. You must read this article, I just love the way this guy thinks.

Andrew Sullivan today lashed out at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, printing and adding onto the below:

The problem lies in the role they play in the overall mediasphere, especially among Gen X and Gen Y; namely, the fact that for many of these viewers, Stewart/Colbert have become a surrogate for actually engaging with politics and current events more deeply, or treating it all as anything other than an ongoing joke.

I know this makes me sound like a fuddy-duddy — I’m only 40 — but still… I can’t tell you how many people I know who get their political news exclusively from Stewart/Colbert, and that’s pathetic.

It’s news commentary, after all, not the news itself. Worse, because Stewart and Colbert are so clever, they make their viewers feel clever — or at least smug — as well. But that smugness breeds a kind of complacent cynicism, with the take-away message being something like, “Politicians are just liars and clowns, and politics itself is just a form of kabuki, so let’s just treat it as the joke that it is and leave it at that.”

This is far from the truth. In fact, the two shows are much more serious than most shows. The interviews they do are with more interesting people, and are much more meaty than anything you see on the networks. The interviews always give the guests a chance to speak. They are always back and forth, not just a list of questions.

And more importantly, they are about ideas. An interview with Jennifer Aniston or Kid Rock is much rarer than an interview with Sandy Berger or Salman Rushdie. Oprah has a book group once a month, these guys interview an author a week. Who else is doing that? And even the comedy bits often deal with the substance of issues much more than standard news coverage. The humor often comes from having a larger context, from giving the perspective on the news that the straight news doesn’t.

There’s a reason that the viewers are the most informed. They may not cover it fairly, but the cover news for what it is, not what they want it to be. And they interview the interesting people of the world, clearly because Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are themselves intellectually curious people who want to know more about the world they live in.