Future Poltergeist

This recipe has some approximations, so feel free to adjust to taste. Step One: Get some extra eggs.  This is most easily accomplished if you and your wife both buy a dozen eggs without each others knowledge. Step Two: Con your wife into hard boiling some of them.  Note: it is entirely possible that she will have this idea on her own but if not, try suggesting it to her. Step Three: Select four hard boiled eggs. Step Four: Start to de-shell the eggs.  (Unpeel?  Open?  I'm going with de-shell.  Send all complaints to the editor.) Step Five: Google for a simple way to de-shell the eggs.  Automatically discard any result that wants you to use cold water. Step Six: Go and see a Lego creation from DF.  Make sure to compliment him on it. Step Seven: Try to go back to the kitchen before LL needs you for something. Step Eight: Help LL unzip a zipper on some random toy. Step Nine: Sneak back into the kitchen and start working on de-shelling the e...

Article here .  This is big news.  Red dwarfs are extremely common and probably have a very good habitable zone for planets.  According to this list of nearest stars to Earth , 46 of the nearest 56 are red dwarfs.  Which means that we could easily have multiple planets with likely habitability within 16 light years of Earth. Now we just need to crack that light barrier and start looking more closely.

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, I saw someone on Twitter (I don't remember who!) suggest that there is a better way to do the medal count board.  If you've watched the Olympics at all, you've seen the board where all the medals are totaled up.  Russia 'won' the Olympics with 33 medals.  Our U.S. came in second with 28.  In the past I've seen people try to weight the totals by giving different values to gold, silver and bronze.  This makes some obvious sense as a gold medal is more sought after than silver or bronze.  As far as I can tell, there is no consensus way to weigh them though and I'm not creating a system here.  Anyway, the idea was to sort the medals by population of the country.  Therefore smaller countries would get more credit per medal.  This makes some sense.  The larger the country, the easier it should be to find an elite individual.  So I decided to crunch some numbers.  Note: I'm going to figure medal...

Here is a list of how many medal events each winter Olympics has had.  If I had more skill, I'd present this as a graph.  2014 98 2010 86 2006 84 2002 78 1998 68 1994 61 1992 57 1988 46 1984 39 1980 38 1976 37 1972 35 1968 35 1964 34 1960 28 1956 25 1952 22 1948 22 1936 17 1932 14 1928 14 1924 16 There are now more than twice as many medal events as there were in 1988.  That's a mere 26 years ago.  At this rate, the 2042 games (set to be hosted by Dubai) will have more than 200.  The mind boggles.  Is that a crazy thing to project?  Those 26 years represent 7 different Olympics.  If you count back 7 Olympics from 1988, you get 1960, which had 28 events, or a little more than half of 1988.  And only five Olympics prior there were exactly half of that, with 14 events.  So it could happen. I'm a little disappointed at how little creativity has gone into this explosion of events.  Broadly, the only discipline that has been added ...

We're about a week into the Olympics, nearly half way through and I thought I'd talk about what I've been able to watch.  You may remember that we got rid of cable about a year ago.  That means that I've only been able to watch what is on NBC proper.  (I've also worked through the primetime viewing period four days this week so that has limited me.  Add in the kids lack of patience for dad's turn with the TV too.)  The only consistent time block I've had is at 11p. That means I've been able to watch: Some skiing.  Moguls, which I don't care for.  Downhill, which is pretty good TV.  Slaloms, which aren't that great TV.   Cross country skiing.  This doesn't seem like it should work on TV but it does.  Maybe in part because I can see my kids competing in it some time in the future. Biathlon.  More cross country skiing, but this time with the added tension of sharpshooting.  I'll admit, I don't get all of the rules h...

The Olympics are just about beginning and there is some excitement in our house.  Well, I'm excited and I plan on dragging the kids in too.  Hopefully the FP Gal will be ok.  The Opening Ceremonies will be broadcast on Friday, starting at 730p CST, but actual events will start earlier than that.  I thought I'd get some things together in one place for myself and anyone else that is curious. Sochi is ten hours ahead of us here in the Midwest.  Which means almost everything you see will be tape delayed.  I don't know how that will work in the age of Twitter and other social platforms.  I don't remember spoilers being a huge problem during the London games though. Here is a link to NBC's viewing guide .  You can also watch some events online or through your phone.  Possibly your refrigerator or toaster, depending on what model you have. I've been meaning to write about this but keep forgetting.  Do you know who does the camera work at ...

There's a very interesting article here on picking teams to cheer for.  The author is moving to NYC and casually said that he might end up a Yankees fan.  (I looked past the senseless political bashing.)  This has led him to ask questions about choosing teams.  It leads him to some interesting places. I am not saying that it is terribly difficult to start supporting a team. It’s just that it demands more than an impartial approval of the team’s merits. You need to sign up to the mission. You need to add a new commitment to the other projects that define your life. I’m not sure that there any rules about how we acquire our projects. Many of them come with growing up. Later in life we lose old ones and find new ones. It depends on what interests and attracts us, on where and how we live, on who we hang out with.   There's a lot of truth to this.  In a very real way, Viking and Packer fans are simply different.  The history of the two team...

(For the record, I've got Relia saying 'superb owl' now.  Gosh, kids are fun!) I've gone back and forth on who to pick for the big game.  Heidi is a big Seahawks fan and I'd like for her to be happy so I'll probably cheer that way.  On the other hand, Peyton Manning is one of my favorite non-Viking players so it would be nice to see him win another ring.  In other words, I'll probably be happy with either team winning. So who do I think will win?  Denver has a historically great offense.  Seattle has a great defense.  Seattle's offense is better than Denver's defense.  The Seahawks have a big edge on special teams.  Given all of that, you'd think that Seattle would be a bit of a favorite. But it's so hard to bet against Peyton Manning.  He's almost certainly the best player on the field and that's tough to ignore.  Which explains why the Broncos are actually favored by a few points.  I guess I'm picking the Seahawks, but ...

Wonderful pictures ! 

School is closed for tomorrow due to insane levels of cold.  It will be the fourth day in January that this has happened.  The fourth day so far, because the forecast for Tuesday ain't that hot either.  On some level I get it.  One day last week Relia waited at the corner for the bus for about 15 minutes.  It would be very bad if that were to happen to some kids tomorrow.  On the other hand, that's four days that parents have had to scramble to find day care.  We're lucky, in that I can watch them and the FP Gal will be home too.  I feel bad for the others though.  Man, oh man, we could use some warm weather.

You may have heard something about this, ' Rat Infested Ghost Ship About to Hit UK '.  According to the article, the ship was last seen in March of 2013 and based on currents and whatnot, they think it should be close to the shore.  It seems very strange to me that they could predict the movement of a ship some ten months in the future, but what do I know?  Also, how hard is it find a 1500 ton ship on the ocean?  Apparently very hard.  The ship has hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of salvage, so there is plenty of reason to find it again. And that's not even counting the threat of cannibal rats!

Boy, does this look nice this week.

A couple of years ago the FP Gal asked me to categorize what sports actually take place during the Olympics.  That led me to writing this piece here , which goes through the various events during the Summer Olympics.  I thought I'd do the same thing for the winter Olympics. Hmmm, looks like Wikipedia has done the job for me.  98 events over 15 disciplines in 7 sports were included in the 2014 Winter Olympics. The three skating sports disciplines are figure skating , speed skating , and short track speed skating . The six skiing sport disciplines are alpine , cross-country skiing , freestyle , Nordic combined , ski jumping and snowboarding . The two bobsleigh sports disciplines are bobsleigh and skeleton . The other four sports are biathlon , curling , ice hockey , and luge . A total of twelve new events will be contested to make it the largest Winter Olympics to date.

This blog, I mean.  I didn't mean for it to go dark for a full three weeks but that's what happened.  Sorry about that.  I've got a bunch of Olympics related posts in mind so hopefully that will spruce things up. 

Ok, I have a weakness for book lists.  That's very true.  Undeniable.  And then, right here , I've run across a list of top book lists.  It's almost so meta that it makes my head hurt.  Anyway, look at it and click through the links.  If you're looking for a new book to read, this will undoubtedly offer you something . 

I hope it's a good one for you and yours!

Tomorrow is the last game at the Metrodome.  In a month or so, they're going to tear the whole thing down and build a new stadium ( which looks pretty nice ).  I wanted to see it one more time so I took the older kids down there for a semi-pro football game today.  (For the record, it was some kind of all star game and I have no clue whatsoever what league was being represented.) We got there in time for kickoff, just the three of us and about 200 other people. We were in time for the national anthems of Canada and America.  I got them to stand still with their hands on their hearts.  Then we watched the football.  They were amazed that the yellow and blue lines from TV weren't actually there on the field.  What impressed them the most?  The kicking and punting.  After some time we got in some bathroom breaks and started to move around a bit.  We met a nice lady from Green Bay who was filming the game for her boyfriend who was one ...

DF picked this out.  I think he wishes he was an elephant. 

DF helped me pick this out.

The days of the Metrodome are winding down.  IIRC, they're scheduled to deflate it on Jan 18th and then tear it down.  I don't have many memories of the Vikings before they moved inside.  I know that we had them on the TV but I just don't remember them playing outdoors.  The same is true of the Twins, but I'm not sure that they we ever watched any of their games at all. My first memory of the dome was going to a Twins game as part of a reward for being a patrol at Sumner.  They played the Tigers and they lost in the tenth inning.  I can't tell you with any certainty what year that was but I would guess it was 1985.  I did also go to a Vikings game sometime around then but I barely remember that at all.  For the past few days, KFAN has been listing the top 25 moments of the dome.  Part one is here .  Part two here and the final five are here .  I was actually in attendance for a couple of them, most notably the 1998 Championship g...