Your Daily Dump

I read over the weekend that the Japanese are planning on drilling, or at least trying to drill, through the crust of the earth down to the mantle, a project that has been tried twice previously.  The United States took the first shot, drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for four years but they never got further down than 600 feet, which is like trying to run a marathon and crapping out after a hundred yards.  The Russians drilled down twelve kilometers in Siberia between 1970 and 1989, but then they got distracted by glasnost when they were still another three kilometers short of the goal.

I was sitting around with some guys and we were riffing on, well, I can’t remember what we were riffing on exactly but somehow the idea of a homeless person being sentenced to house arrest came up.  My first thought was that the poor guy wouldn’t be able to come out from under his overpass, but the consensus was that the homeless guy would have to go live with the judge who sentenced him, and that this would make one heck of a sitcom.  I guess maybe we can have something written up in time to submit for the 2018 - 2019 season.

In theory, because I like their history in running and the fact that "Animal House" was filmed there, I root for the University of Oregon but sometimes the gaudy uniforms and Nike taint get in the way.  I want everyone else in this inaugural college football to lose, though, so even if I were neutral on Oregon, I'd still want them to win this thing.

"Inside Llewyn Davis" got just two Oscar nominations, for cinematography and for sound editing,  which will come as a surprise to a lot of people, especially all those people who gave it good reviews.  I'm surprised that it wasn't nominated for Best Picture although not as surprised as I would have been if it actually won Best Picture; I thought it was pretty good, but more of a snapshot than a story and not at a level of gravitas where it could hang with, say, "Twelve Years A Slave."  That it wasn't nominated in the expanded field of nine probably says good thing about the quality of movies released in 2013, except they are allowed to nominate up to ten.

The new Starbucks on 26 opens at six o'clock in the morning on weekends, which did me no good when I got there around 5:40.  I left and went to my usual one, which opens at five.  The next day I went back to the new one later in the morning - hangover, don't ask - and found out that while they have comfy chairs, they don't have tables near the comfy chairs which makes dining more awkward than it needs to be, especially when trying to simultaneously read a newspaper.  Speaking of newspapers, they didn't have any and the 7-11 across the parking lot doesn't seem to carry the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

CNN has an article on their website about how Hillary Clinton looks strong in Iowa right now, two years before the caucuses, but "familiar pitfalls might await."   Which true that, they might, but really, how important is Iowa anyway?  While the eventual nominee has won the last three contested Democratic contests, Bill Clinton finished fourth in 1992, and on the Republican side neither Mitt Romney nor John McCain took Iowa in the last two presidential caucuses.  Journalists and presidential analysts like to make a huge deal out of Iowa, mostly because they don't have much else to talk about, but I don't think it's nearly as important as people make it out to be.

I was in Office Depot the other day, looking for some Bic Velocity pens that were on sale, and I saw they had a whole section for pens with advanced ink, which I have pens with advanced ink and other than a marketing ploy I have no idea what that it.  Pens are becoming less of a necessity, I guess, so maybe the point now is to convince people that writing is, or at least can be, fun.  I've become more interested in pens the past few years and every time I pick up an ad it seems like a new line or gimmick is being introduced.

The George Washington Bridge scandal does seem poised to undermine any presidential aspirations Chris Christie may have as it gives doctrinaire conservatives, who harbor suspicions of apostasy where Christie is concerned, ammunition to go after him.  I realized this at the gym, while pedaling an exercise bicycle, when I saw Fox News covering the scandal, which they tend not to do so much when Republicans are involved, and Charles Krauthammer was calling into question Christie's competence.  Which is valid, by the way - even if Christie really was ignorant of what his top aides are doing, it shows he's ignorant of what his top aides are doing - but more importantly, if Fox is beating up on Christie, he's got problems.

It, in this case, being the accidental discharge of a semi-automatic handgun by Representative Leslie Combs in the Kentucky State Capitol building, accidental discharge meaning that the gun fired and a bullet ricocheted around the room.  Sergeant Jason Palmer of the Kentucky State Police said that there was "no evidence of criminal acts" but wasn't as forthcoming about evidence of careless or moronic acts.  Meanwhile in Texas, Representative Jonathan Stickland is extremely disappointed that somebody got to fire a gun in a state capitol and that it wasn't him, yet.  I guess that's something he can work on next time the legislature's back in session.

I haven't noticed an influx of newcomers at the gym thus far this year.  I was there after work yesterday, albeit early, and I saw empty treadmills, empty ellipticals, and empty exercise bikes that I expected to see occupied by new year's resolutionists.  I got a parking spot right up near the building and while there were more cars in the lot when I left, you still weren't going to have to hunt for a parking spot.  I don't know what it means - maybe collectively we've given up, or maybe the dilettantes have all headed for the tonier gyms.

A statue of President Dwight Eisenhower, looking more like General Dwight Eisenhower, checks out the scene at his presidential library, off to his left, and museum, on his right, in Abilene, Kansas.  It's a righteous gig when it's warm and the sun is shining, but the dude is out there in rain and snow and scorching heat, and in Kansas he probably has to worry about the occasional tornado, too.  But, you know, no Nazis so he has that going for him, which is nice.  Homegrown fascists are another story, I suppose, not much you can do about them.

I read about a project called Mohole in Bill Bryson's science; it was an attempt to drill down to the Moho discontinuity in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico.  They needed to drill down 17,000 feet and their furthest penetration was 600 feet, which would be less.  The Mohole also makes a cameo in "The Passage of Power", the fourth volume of Robert Caro's LBJ biography - turns out that Brown and Root, Johnson's longtime financial angels, were the ones doing the drilling, for a profit.  So it probably wasn't an abject failure for all parties involved.

I hate the New Jersey Turnpike.  The northern part is ugly, the southern end is boring, from end to end it's usually overpopulated, and I walked into one of its service centers at 10:30 in the evening, hoping to walk out with a Nathan's hot dog and a Starbucks coffee, and the only place open was Burger King.  I wasn't that hungry.  I wound up driving it twice this week; on Wednesday it looked like the state troopers were out en force, raising funds for the state because, you know, the $13.85 toll for going end-to-end just isn't cutting it.

I was standing in line in a Starbucks in Newark, Delaware, when an ambulance in business mode hied down Main Street, weaving its way through traffic.  The girl in front of me, who looked to be about college age, made a furtive sign of the cross, which I haven't seen anyone do that under those circumstances in a long, long time.  I don't know that there's many people my age who would still make the gesture, so I was surprised to see it done by someone so much younger than me, but it looked like a reflex action so it may have been a tribute to a grandparent as much as anything.

They had a big 5K in Memphis on Saturday and then a slightly less big 5K in Memphis on Sunday; I ran the smaller race, the Breakaway Bardog 5K, with about eight hundred other people - most of whom beat me.  Well, my time - they beat my time - I'm not implying that they got violent.  Many of them ran the Elvis Presley 5K the day before so they were probably too tired to get violent, although not too tired to mention that they ran the Elvis Presley 5K the day before.

Texas elected Ted Cruz to the Senate because they figured it was the easiest way to secede without anybody noticing.

Somewhere I heard that the national championship was being played on the ninth; I guess Notre Dame was taken in by that rumor, too.