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Russell Wilson and Larry Bird
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Trent Dilfer was en fuego Sunday night -- they were literally running in from off camera to fan out the flames. Did you catch it? Whether it was Dilfer's Dimes, whether it was post-RGIII reaction, whether it was Wilson analysis, whether it was being called in to swap punches with Boomer and Tom Jackson ... you can't stop Trent Dilfer, you can only hope to contain him.
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=== Flinch Response ===
Dilfer marvelled at the Redskins coming out and splashing the bowling pins all over the back of the catch-basin on their first two strikes. Big crowd, bright lights in the nation's capital, only NFL game on in the country, Redskins tsunami crashes over the Seahawks and ....
ZERO FLINCH RESPONSE. Dilfer's words.
Seahawks down 14-0 in the first. Rookie QB, on the road, the dogs barking. The Seahawks come out, go back to work, and ... how shrill are they? What's the very opposite of shrill? They were like Kirk and Spock and Sulu and Uhura in 1967. Bracketed by Klingons, sir. Shields at 12%. Incoming fire. ... tea, anybody? Yes, ensign, with lemon, and patch me through on subspace line three. We have six seconds left, sir ... :: wink :: Scotty, do that theoretical plasma burst thing.
Lynch fumbled on the two, Dilfer said. Followed by --- > zero flinch response.
The Seahawks blew three straight TD opportunties, said not Dilfer, but Dr. D. You had the fumble on the two ... next drive, Wilson misses Rice deep and overthrows Baldwin ... drive after, no points there... 4th quarter clicks over and we're still down 14-13. I started to get a sick feeling. Wilson? --- > zero flinch response.
The NFL ex-players were unanimous. It is Russell Wilson's attitude that is seeping into the rest of the players.
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I've seen one other athlete with stillness equal to Russell Wilson's. That was Larry Bird. The Celtics were a horrible team in 1978; they had 29 wins and were really worse than that; they were a bygone relic from the 1970's cocaine era in the NBA. They drafted Bird and went 61-21 the next year. Losses seemed like flukes. One rookie cleaned up an entire city, and he did it from the first preseason game.
Seahawks fans are staring down the barrel of a dynasty,* because of one young player.
Not talking hype. Talking fact. Wilson's self-belief is not reasonable. It is not rational for him to believe that he can do the things he's doing.
Dilfer isn't caught up in Russell Wilson hype, because there isn't any. Neither is Dr. D caught up in Russell Wilson hype. We're just reporting on a strange development. Russell Wilson is either missing the portion of his brain that relates to anxiety, or else he is in total control of his own emotions. This is something very unusual.
... perhaps the rookie Joe Montana was as self-possessed as Bird and Wilson. Could be.
.............
Dr. D wants you to take five breaths, re-set, and ... visualize a Russell Wilson season, if he had some receivers getting open for him. What a light show we'd have then.
Possibly this offseason, Carroll will get to work on adding a feature receiver to complete the puzzle.
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=== RGIII ===
Dr. D gets some of them wrong. Not this one, gentlemen, not this one. ;- ) After the game, Griffin and Shanahan flatly stated that Griffin's knee did not affect his throwing. I didn't think so either. What did affect his throwing, was that the rookie Griffin isn't a very good (pocket) quarterback yet.
Richard Sherman might have affected his throwing a little bit, too, I'll grant you. The Seahawks' best three defenders, 1976-2012, seem to have been Kenny Easley, Cortez Kennedy, and Richard Sherman.
Russell Wilson went into Robert Griffin's house, trashed the place, left him duct-taped to a kitchen chair, and grabbed a brew on his way out.
As of today, anyway, Griffin is not in Russell Wilson's class as an NFL quarterback. ... If the incumbent were Tarvaris Jackson or Matt Flynn, then I'd love to have RGIII as the Seahawks' quarterback, of course. He's a super cool person and a super cool athlete.
He just ain't Russell Wilson. Those guys only come along once in a long while.
Tomorrow's news today,
Dr D
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*No, not five Super Bowl wins, necessarily. But six or seven NFC Championship game appearances during Wilson's reign? Sure.
NASA looking to wrangle up an asteroid?
So NASA is up to some interesting speculation lately following a study put together by the Keck Institute for Space Studies. They’ve figured out that it may be possible to send an automated craft out into near-space and, by using a giant bag, grab up a small asteroid. The prize would then be towed back and placed into orbit around the moon where it would be conveniently close enough for scientists to study. All-in-all, if the project were to go through, it would take around 10 years for the entire process.
So what can be learned by wrangling an asteroid and bringing it home? Researchers are hoping to understand more about how to prepare for the coming era of asteroid mining. They also want to see if there’s anything within the asteroid that they could potentially use as resources, either for construction or in the refueling of spacecraft. Their desire is to be able to use asteroids throughout space as either landing pads or fueling stations during longer exploration and mining missions. They also want to see if studying the asteroid will provide any clues as to how we might fend off a rogue asteroid that threatens to collide into the Earth.
If the plan is approved, it will most likely start up sometime in the 2020s and will carry a not-so-modest price tag of more than two-and-a-half billion dollars. Until then, they would be looking for a good candidate asteroid. Since it’s still in the early developmental stages, there’s no telling whether NASA will really get around to it or not, but it would certainly be an interesting feat if they could pull it off.
Still, it brings to light the question of whether having floating rocks orbiting the moon is entirely safe. If mining companies use this technique to make resource extracting easier, there could be all sorts of crazy stuff hanging around the moon. We could very well pelt ourselves with an asteroid on accident. But if successful, it could be a huge leap forward in our capacity as a species to get further into the depths of both known and unknown space.
Baron Empain’s Palace
Baron Empain was not born in the country of Egypt, but moved there from Belgium when he fell in love with the culture. Being a real estate investor, he bought up large areas of land and built a home for himself and his family in the middle of what he sought to make into a massive urban development project. Though he would eventually leave and Empain’s Palace pass beyond his family’s hands, it still stands in Cairo as an amazing historical building with a unique Hindu design. It is also rumored to be haunted by the spirits of Empain’s dead wife and daughter.
It took three years to build the palace, which consists of two floors, an underground chamber and a large tower built on a revolving base. The exterior is covered in Hindu elements of design, including many carvings of things such as elephants, buddhas, snakes and dancers. It is distinctively out of place in the city of Cairo and has, unfortunately, fallen into disrepair over the years.
The reported hauntings consist of lights going on and off in the backyard and in the house and voices that can be heard in the dead of night. These are said to be caused by the baron’s wife, who fell to her death from one of the interior
balconies, and his daughter, who was found dead for unknown reasons shortly after the death of her mother. Caretakers and many passers-by have attested to the strange going-ons in the building, though none, to my knowledge, have fully investigated.
After leaving the Empain family, the building was neglected. In 2005 the government of Egypt obtained control over it and began a slow restoration process. They’ve only fixed up the gardens, where events are sometimes held, and the main building still remains a costly and unfulfilled project. Despite being unable to explore the interior, Empain’s Palace is still a magnificent piece of architecture that most are unaware of. If Egypt manages to fix the place up, they could have quite the tourist destination, particularly for those interested in the supernatural.
YouTube Nation - Learning the Trade
Today, in order to take a break from my usual routine, I feel like discussing something on YouTube that is actually educational and has, on more than one occasion, been helpful to me. The subject I speak of is the presence of people who are willing to put in their time and effort to produce content that helps artists along by either teaching them a thing or two or discussing the many and varied aspects that a particular art can involve. A quick warning, these videos are fairly long and encompass only a small sampling of what’s available out there. The point I seek to make here is that any aspiring artist can likely find help from professionals via YouTube and make their work even better.
One of my favorite methods that people use to teach is the livestream. While they discuss the ins-and-outs of whatever their topic happens to be, viewers are welcome to voice their own questions and ask for clarification on whatever points they don’t quite understand. This makes the video interactive (as long as you happen to be online during the livestream time) and more helpful in the long run.
The first video is just such a thing. It’s an ongoing monthly series called Story Board and it’s aimed at writers looking to improve their craft. Many things about writing you can’t learn from simply reading a book. Advice from those who have been working in the industry for years is invaluable. It’s great that people like this are putting in their time to make the world a better place for those of us who like to read.
This is episode 6 of the series and it varies from other episodes in that there are usually 4-5 people on the panel instead of just two. Still, they raise more than one interesting point. If you are a writer at all, I cannot stress enough how much I recommend this amazing series.
The next one is for people who like to draw. I’ve never been very good at the more visual arts myself, but this group seems to have plenty of useful things to say.
And finally, a woman who does a very extensive series of videos on learning the many techniques of belly dance. This is just one of more than 300 of these things, so if dancing is your thing, you may find an extra boost in your skills waiting at her YouTube page.
It’s an amazing thing that teaching can be done online now and that famous and/or talented people can share their knowledge from the comfort of their own home. With any luck, the trend will spread and some majorly famous faces will be out there with something important to say. All artists can use a little bit of a push and nothing works better than the encouraging words of one you admire.
Facebook Phenomenons - Visual Mash-Ups
One thing that people love to do on their Facebook is post random pictures. Not everyone does this, of course, but I reckon if you took a moment and kept track of all the random crap that people post or “share”, you’d find that a majority of them are fully in line with the spam-requirements of being a proper FB member. These images range from annoying to cute to philosophical and beyond. One interesting trend that I’ve come to enjoy (for the most part) is the visual mash-up, whereby someone somewhere (I’m convinced there’s a room full of people in some exotic land who do nothing but make these things) takes two genres and splices them together. Sometimes the reasoning behind these images is obvious, while at other times it’s a simple case of geekiness.
Here are a few examples of the visual mash-up, and these are just the ones I saw scroll across my feed today.
The first is the picture that heads this article, a wonderful mixing of the Elvish and the Elvis. For Lord of the Rings/Elvis fans (there has to be some out there, right?), it’s a match made in heaven. If only The King could fire an arrow like a proper Elven archer, he might still be alive today. Or not, since it was his addiction to drugs that got him in the end and not orcs…
And here’s one to appeal to both Star Wars fans and fans of the original Van Halen. Fans of the new Van Halen may not get this one, since they’re not as smart as us old-school folks. I do wonder if Mr. Roth would be so inclined as to climb inside a dead ton-ton for warmth though… maybe if he’d consumed enough cocaine?
The next image is a holiday treat that combines the best of the bloody and brutal Game of Thrones’ Winterfell with a yummy gingerbread construct. No points for accuracy though, since I don’t see any beheaded bodies in the streets or naked women in the windows. Maybe next year you’ll get it right, buddy.
The fourth picture brings that horrible, pervasive angry cat that seems to be popping up everywhere and puts him into yet another image. This time around he’s the star of Les Miserable. I’m guessing it’s because he looks so damn miserable? Or maybe I’m just missing the joke here…
And finally, a mash-up that all of us can appreciate - a stormtrooper combined with a latex-clad hottie. Proof that there is indeed a god and that he/she loves us very much.
Well, that’s all I got for today folks. But Facebook is a vast world with many strange things populating it. Check back next week to see what has caught my attention. No doubt many things are catching your attention as well, so if you have anything you want me to rant about, feel free to comment. I’m always willing to steal… er, borrow, other people’s ideas when it comes to my writing.
The Craigslist Files #178 - Best Jobs Ever
Last week, I took the opportunity to talk about some of the worst jobs you could possibly find while doing a search on Craigslist. This week I decided to turn the table and discuss some of the best jobs I could find out there. Occasionally, someone needs a service so utterly easy or entertaining that you would be a fool not to jump on it. It’s even better when the pay is above average. And while this sort of employment is certainly not the norm, rest assured that your dream job is waiting if you just look hard enough in the Craigslist want-ads. Landing a job like one of these would make all the fast-food slinging and ditch-digging worth it.
Most of these posts are old, btw, (yeah, too bad for you and me both), so don’t go trying to apply.
The first job is for cat lovers. No, it’s not picking up Fluffy’s poop or taking them to the vet. Instead, this particular individual needs another human around to act as “cat pillow” for their loveable feline friend. Of course, the job starts at eight in the morning, so that puts me out of the running. Half the reason I became a writer was so that I never had to wake up before noon. For the rest of you, it could be right up your alley.
Feline Lap Surrogate
This title says it all. I work from home and I need someone to sit next to me and allow my cat to sit on their lap (the cat is attention seeking, and has been decreasing my productivity as of late). This is a morning shift from 8am-12pm at $15/hr. I do not need anyone in the afternoon since the sun warms the window sill by that point, and the cat will prefer the window sill to a lap. Breakfast and lunch will be provided each day.
You must have experience handling cats, no allergies, and a plus for experience with older cats (mine is 18yrs old).
The next listing requires that you have a very particular set of genetic characteristics, but the rewards might be worth it if you happen to be so lucky. I mean, hourly wage doesn’t get much better than free, random sex, right? I do have to wonder if there’s an actual paycheck that comes with this one. Or even if the husband is entirely aware of what’s going on here… Wouldn’t want some strange lady popping up later in life demanding child support, eh?
Need to get pregnant fast by clean educated man - w4m
Looking for a light skinned man to get me pregnant this coming weekend or early next week. You will need light brown blonde or red hair. My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for months now and my doctor says I'm fine so it must be him--it would kill him not to have kids. Be drug and disease free. I figure we can try a couple of times while I'm visiting this week and hopefully I will be pregnant for my flight back home. Send a couple of pictures of yourself, especially want nude pics--can't do this if I'm not attracted to you. And tell me a bit about yourself.
And the final one is for the ladies. Some poor, lonely bastard is looking for help finding a lady and all he needs to do it is… well, a lady. I suppose the guy has already tried the dating section of Craigslist before moving on to this attempt at hooking up? Whatever his motivation, hanging out and drinking while someone else hits on your boss can’t be all that bad, especially if he’s paying for your drinks on top of the hourly.
Wingwomen wanted - $30/hr
Wingwomen wanted! A wingwoman is a woman who goes into a social situation with the purpose of helping the guy or guys she is with meet women. This is actually an extremely easy and fun job, but many women find it so counter-intuitive that they simply cannot do it. The role is a wingwoman is to:
-Relax, laugh, have a good time, and emanate a genuine, positive energy.
-Recognize that her presence alone and her silence are often all that are needed!
-Understand or be willing to learn the counter-intuitive principals of how men really attract women.
This is not about you expressing your opinion on relationships, dating, how you think dating should take place, or offering advice. What it is about is getting paid to have a great time doing the most fun, exciting, easy job you have ever done!
I am a classy professional who was part of a group in NYC that employed four part-time wingwomen for the past year. I have recently moved to San Francisco, and am looking to hire two part-time wingwomen to join me at cocktail parties, nights out at the best lounges and clubs, charity events, and other Bay Area happenings.
My goal is to find a serious relationship with the right woman, and to have a lot of fun searching for her and meeting new people in the process. Please include a photo with your response. I look forward to hearing from you, and possibly to working with you!
So yes people, there is hope of one day finding a job that doesn’t feel like it’s grinding you into dust. Most of the above are part-timers, but there’s probably something out there for those who need a regular gig. Maybe an opening to rub oil on swimsuit models will open up? Or a person to count hundred-dollar bills, payable with one out of every thousands that they count? Probably not, but one can always hope.
Until next time, don’t try to demand a raise from your boss when you’re still covered in last night’s party-vomit. It never works out well.
The future of comics: print vs. digital
It’s a subject of great importance to many, though there is probably a fair share of people that see it as a non-issue - the rise of digital format in the comic book world. This progress of technology is likely to spell the doom of the print media that we fans of comics have grown to know and love for most of our lives. Some simple math proves that it is more cost-efficient to produce your comic digitally rather than deal with all the problems of production and distribution of a hard-copy. But the question is, will this be a change for the better or worse?
I’d like to take a brief look at the advantages and disadvantages of switching over to digital media. Some of it is fairly obvious, such as the reduced costs associated with production, but this obvious fact also gives rise to more access for independent comic labels. Anyone who can write, draw and figure out the process to digitally publish will be able to get their comic out. This is an amazing opportunity for readers to experience some fresh stories, stories that they never would have seen before. It may not be the best for the giant comic book labels, as they will see their customer base filtering away to other things, but, seriously, they have enough money.
There is also the advantage of the new digital comics being much more portable. This is probably one of the biggest points, seeing as how lugging around even a dozen comics can be quite the chore. Of course, one needs the proper electronic device to view them, which can potentially cut a sizable section of people off from the stories they love. Most people have computers, but not all, and lending a book to someone may not prove to be simple if they don’t have the required hardware.
The new format will also be cheaper to purchase. In the long run at least. For now they’re barely reduced from their hard-copy counterparts, but that’s all just part of the transitional process. When the comic-book printing facilities shut down, the savings will be passed on to the customer. Especially if there’s a lot more competition to contend with.
The biggest problem, in my opinion, will be the death of comic book shops. Some people are still collectors, but comic shops will be relegated to providing old books from here on out. Since their main profits arise from the weekly releases, most of them will end up out of business unless they get quick in diversifying their money stream. No more hanging out down at the local comic store, chatting with friends and browsing the latest releases. Of course, most people can just chat online these days anyways, right? Who needs face-to-face social interaction?
It’s a love-hate subject for me. I’d love to see what kinds of independent comics arise from the easier distribution, but I don’t want all my comics to be little more than ones and zeros on my tablet. I like the crisp feel of a new book and the smell of the fresh ink. The personal touch will be gone at the demand of convenience. It’s sad, but most likely we are looking at the last decade of wide-spread print comics. There will probably still be the opportunity for collectors to purchase the hard-copies, but the average reader will be browsing online to find new reads and viewing them with hand-held devices.
Goodbye, comics. I will miss you.
Islamic community looking to censor South Indian film
There are many areas of the world where Islamic governments are known for being strong censors of art in all its forms. When government and religion are deeply tied together, the potential for abuse against freedom of speech is great. In the Western world, we prize our freedom of speech highly, and so these acts are often seen as attacks, despite beliefs on the other side of the argument that such censorship is in the right. The recent tragedy with the Innocence of Muslims video and the violence it caused put this conflict into perspective. Now, Muslim groups are demanding a screening of a new South Indian film, Viswaroopam so that they can see if it paints a bad picture of Muslims.
If the screening is granted, these organizations will push for the movie to be censored, the offending scenes removed entirely before the film’s release. From one perspective, it almost seems like a rampant case of political correctness, getting rid of anything that might offend people, although it looks to protect Muslims only. Another perspective might show this attempt at censorship to be a protection, preventing events such as what happened following the release of Innocence of Muslims. But does attacking media in this fashion really help in the long run?
In my opinion, the end result is going to spell more trouble for Muslim communities than if they simply ignore the movie and move on with their lives. Being insulted is something that people have to potentially deal with in our world. Using political pressure to protect your religion gives the impression of tyranny. People will see Islam as oppressive and controlling or, worse yet, fearful of criticism. When a group is seen as afraid of people voicing dissenting opinions against it, then the negative messages that filmmakers put into films are given more weight. Why, after all, would Muslims seek to censor a negative viewpoint if it didn’t hold a note of truth?
The best move in this case is to ignore the film, but the die-hards will not likely even consider such a path. The makers of the film are refusing to let it be screened and are even putting the movie straight into a downloadable format so that people all over the world will be able to view it. If the Muslim community cries foul, they injure themselves. It’s time to accept the fact that the world is a diverse place and not all people are friendly to all religions. Only then can understanding be sought.