Welcome back to teh interwebs, loyal readers.  This is my first real post of 2009 and I’m pretty psyched about it.  All in all, 2008 was a decent year, but it was also full of crappyness for most of the people I know, our economy/government, and even a little bit of crappy reserved just for me.  I have hope and optimism for 2009 though, the last of the two-thousand-OH’s.  Just one of those feelings. That being said, let’s get this party started.

Fiesta Bowl:

Tonight marks the end of a pretty sweet Longhorn season.  Yeah we got shafted by the BCS, but we’re still in basically the 2nd best bowl in the nation against a traditional powerhouse school.  This season was supposed to be full of fail, but instead we overachieved and set ourselves up to dominate the Big 12 next year.  After seeing some of the supposedly favored teams lay eggs in bowl games the past few weeks, I’m always curious to see which team shows up.   We’ve been the blue collar, focused, underdog team all year, which should play into our domination of the buckeyes.

Big 12 rolls up and dies:

In other news, the big 12 is stinking it up in the bowl games.  Now that we sufficiently cannibalized ourselves during the conference games, we are something stupid like 2-3 in bowls, making it look like the big 12 is overrated. Which is great for ESPN, seriously, I don’t want to have to listen to this shit all year about how the pac 10 is super duper awesome and everbody should suck on USC’s you-know-what.  I do, however, think that USC is the hottest team right now though besides Utah (another story), and would liked to have seen a Rose Bowl rematch UT v USC 2.0. Instant classic.

Kahlua:

I know I’ve posted about this before, but I don’t know what I said so suck it up if I repeat myself.  This weekend the roommate and I made our own Kahlua, which we had been planning to do for a while but just got a chance to buy the bottles to put it in.  Went to the homebrew store and picked up a 24 case of 375 mL bottles and corks and made the stuff in about 20 minutes.  Its super easy: Boil water, add instant coffee, sugar, let it cool, and mix in vodka and vanilla. Bottle.  Easy as pie. You have to let it sit for about a month before it gets good, but we’re going to try some of it tonight to see what its like now.  It smells pretty tasty already.

happy new years.

So it was announced today that the Big 3 bailout failed in the Senate.  Good!! They need to go bankrupt to shed their labor contracts and get rid of the unions - they’re doing nothing but make their overhead costs insurmountable.  The union lobby is what got this bailout started in the first place, they are some of the largest supporters of the Democrats in congress and have a lot of lobbying power.  Under bankruptcy the car companies will be able to renegotiate contracts with the union or if necessary shed those costs all together.  I don’t have the stats right now and I’m too lazy to go look for them, but the Big 3 pay something like 2x-3x in labor costs than Honda, Nissan, Toyota, etc. If they restructure under bankruptcy, the union loses its power (finally) and then maybe American car makers could be useful again.  If not, then I hope they fail, and good riddance.  You may say that its a ton of jobs, and yeah, it won’t really affect me so I can’t say that.  But a company is a company and it has to make money.  If it doesn’t, then it should fail.  Putting a bandaid on the problem to allow them to keep operating is not a solution - they’re still going to have rediculous labor costs and make shitty cars that the foreign automakers (who have a shit-ton of jobs in the US, by the way) will blow out of the water.

In other news, Colt is going to get screwed out of the Heisman. I can feel it.  At least Brian Orackpo aka “a-sack-and-rape-you-till-you-die-po” won pretty much every defensive player of the year award, up until about 2015. Yeah he’s that good.  Mostly I just don’t want to talk about football though, it is too depressing, gotta focus on that basketball team which is gonna be pretty solid, our next ranked opponent is on Dec 20th where we play now #20 Michigan State. Have a good Friday, I’m out.

I know we’ve been pretty heavy on the serious stuff lately, but it is timely and necessary.  It’s official - Obama spanked McCain last night and will be the 44th President of the United States.

In an attempt to stay unbiased (I’m really not) and out of the touchy issues of this campaign, I give you a really interesting statistical site: FiveThirtyEight.com.  This guy has a pretty interesting story, Nate Silver used to be a baseball statistician and is now pretty much the up and coming name in political statistics reporting. Anybody that developed the most accurate polling data in polling history in his spare time is pretty impressive to me. His projection: 348.6 Obama, 189 McCain. Real life: 349 Obama, 159 McCain - with about 30 more coming his way.

He uses his baseball experience to balance out the polls using demographic data and using historical data of each poll to determine outcomes of political races. His site simulates elections a staggering 10,000 times a day in order to give a continuous up to date probability of the outcome. Oh, and if you didn’t know, 538 is the number of electors in the electoral college.

Look forward to some hope and optimism injected into our country, predicted by Nate Silver. Maybe he can give me stats on lotto numbers next. Or maybe wants to go to Vegas.

We’re one day away from a historical presidential election. Regardless of who wins, history will be made. Either the first African-American President or the first female Vice-President, both of which are outstanding (and long overdue) achievements by our country, regardless of my agreement with either’s political ideology.

Through record early voting turnout and a long fought campaign by both sides, I for one, am ready for this long series of shenanagins to be over. Major polls show Obama in the lead, some as much as double digits. Here in Texas, my vote is pretty irrelevant (partial electoral voting is for another day) because Texas is going for McCain, pretty much for sure.  Regardless of this and the voting procedures in your state, take time and go participate in the political process, it is what makes our country great and will continue to do so in the future.

GO VOTE!

Google also loves democracy: Find Your Polling Location

Alright. So you’ve had your fall preview, now its back to things that really matter.  52 inch TV, burgers, brats, and beer. GET YOUR HORNS UP.

Tomorrow is the last ranked test in the schedule from hell for my Longhorns. We travel to Lubbock to face #7 Texas Tech. I’d be lying to you if I wasn’t worried about this game, especially after Tech spanked Kansas like a red-headed step child at wal-mart last Saturday. However, Mike Leach (a certified douche-bag), is 1-7 against Texas in his pirate filled realm at Tech.

So get drunk, wear orange, and kill yourselves a red raider.

What Starts Here Changes The World. We’re Texas.

tylerjameslee has some live videos of the ads here. Whiny bitch.

With Halloween around the corner (tomorrow knuckleheads), a fall themed post seemed appropriate. Halloween after halloween, fall after fall there is a consistent problem with the beginning to the holiday season: Candy-Corn. Probably the most disgusting candy ever created, candy corn remains, steadfast in fall culture.

If you drank a bottle of corn syrup and ate a candle, threw it up, and ate it again, that’s what candy corn would taste like. Fall doesn’t want to taste like that.

Fall wants to taste like pumpkin pie, turkey, and sure, any other acceptable candy on Halloween. Candy corn = not an acceptable candy. Candy corn = disgusting.

Its not about the colors; I like yellow and orange. Heck, the longhorns are the perfect fall color. Orange is not ugly. Candy corn has the colors of mustard (favorite sandwich spread), cheddar (best cheese), and fall—its not candy corn’s fault it was made this way. No matter what, candy corn is still ass flavored, and I do. not. want.

I don’t hate fall. But I do hate candy corn. Please do us all a favor and don’t ruin childrens’ Halloweens by giving it out to them.

I don’t want to turn this into a political battleground, but now that the NY Times has endorsed Obama, I feel like it’s time for me to put in my 2 cents. Barack Obama should be the President of the United States. I know, you were really wondering what I thought.

In an interesting article by the Financial Times, an obviously right leaning financial newspaper, they state that Obama would make a better president than McCain.  I like to read articles from traditionally republican (read: loves money) sources that support Obama because I feel that they give a less-biased outlook on the election, and from a European source considered to be one of the leaders in financial news reporting, I find it refreshing. However, they make another point, which people are overlooking at the moment.

“Rest assured that, should he win, Mr Obama is bound to disappoint. How could he not? He is expected to heal the country’s racial divisions, reverse the trend of rising inequality, improve middle-class living standards, cut almost everybody’s taxes, transform the image of the United States abroad, end the losses in Iraq, deal with the mess in Afghanistan and much more besides.” [FT]

If he could do half of these things, I would be elated. The key to happiness in life, ladies and gentlemen, is low expectations.

RTFA: Obama is the Better Choice, Financial Times

I made a mistake, I left you at your most vulnerable. I’m sorry, but I’m back, and everything will be okay.  I’ve updated the theme, and I can’t promise that I’ll post as often as you or I would like, but you will be experiencing some quality shit.

A lot has changed in the month I’ve been gone.  Obama/McCain only has 12 days left, the economy has gone into the toilet, my Longhorns are number one in the country, fall has started, winter is on its way, and I’ve been working my butt off and hoping it pays off in the end.

I’ve decided to take the site in a little different direction, the specifics of which will remain in my head. Look forward to my upcoming posts tomorrow and this weekend, but in the meantime, please check out the good stuff going on at www.tylerjameslee.com and Erik’s blog at www.blaclab.com.

This specifically is a solid post: A How to Guide: Texas Tailgating

There really aren’t that many things that make me step back and think “wtf are you doing mr. government?” Most of the time I realize that laws that are passed and policies that go into effect typically have some sort of logical purpose although a lot of these things make things better for some and worse for others. That’s pretty much how it works and always has. Except one thing. The attempt the reject the validity of evolution. I’m not anti-religion by any means, but you can’t seriously have beliefs that are shattered by the fact that your ancestors weren’t born 6,000 years ago. I mean really, how do people believe this?

Anyway, an ongoing debate in the US today is the issue of teaching evolution in schools, instead of creationism. Problem number 1. Separation of church and state. Oops? So outside of the fact that it shouldn’t be a debate in the first place, the attempt to make evolution into some wacky “theory” does absolutely nothing but make our government theocratic and American children less educated than the rest of the world. If you want to teach your kids creationism, take them to church, but keep your crazy talk out of schools and places that affect people like my younger siblings and children throughout America.

I didn’t really mean for that to be so much of a rant, but this article of Scientific American spurred me on. You should really read it, entitled “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense”

“Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as “intelligent design” to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a “wedge” for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage” [Scientific American]

Continue Reading…..