The NCAA just added a 12th game to college football’s regular season and claimed its decision wasn’t based on money. This is the same organization that resists adding an end-of-season playoffs because it’s worried about how it will affect its student-athletes’ academic careers.

A 10-game regular season with an 8-team playoff would create, at most, a 13-game season for the champion and runner-up while allowing college football to crown a true national champion. But the NCAA won’t create a playoff system because it’s too worried about losing bowl money, yet fans are supposed to believe this same organization isn’t selling out the student-athletes it allegedly loves for an extra week’s worth of TV and ticket income.

Google has launched a new beta feature of Google Maps. After they purchased Keyhole Systems, they added the ability to search via satellite imagery. Very fun.

So I lost the better part of a productive afternoon checking out various places around the country like national monuments, different areas in big cities, and other places I have visited.

Then I noticed something odd. As I was meandering my way, via satellite images, around Washington D.C., I noticed the Capital Building is purposely blurred out. All the areas around it are in focus, but not the block the Capital Building is on.

The reasoning: Could a nut job now use satellite images from Google to plot… who knows what?

If that is the case, then why is the White House not blurred out, or the Pentagon, or… Area 51?

Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a Social Security Town Hall meeting led by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND), and Columbus Ohio Mayor/Gubernatorial candidate Mike Coleman.

The event included the tidbit that Bush claimed, in 1978, that Social Security would be bankrupt in 10 years, an interesting video, personal stories from three women whose lives would have been terribly different without the benefits of Social Security in its current form, and more. Read all about it over at Ohio Watch.

This little chart tells you some interesting things about me.

What you see is that I grew up in the deep South and that a lot of those linguistic features are still with me. I am also an English teacher and therefore have had to adjust how I speak because when you are teaching grammar, it doesn’t work to drop aint’s and y’alls all over the place.

I have also worked overseas for a while and had a few jobs where I traveled significantly within the US, so some of my stronger Dixieisms have been left behind. They come out when I am stressed, tired, or simply getting lazy. I don’t always make a conscious effort to sound less Dixie, but I do subconsciously adjust my speech patterns to the situation which is pretty interesting to me. Give me a week back home with the parents and it’s Tara all over again.

They say ignorance is bliss. That explains those around around me are happy while I’m tormented. –Anonymous

You can go a long way with a smile. You can go a lot farther with a smile and a gun. — Al Capone

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature. — Samuel Butler

Always get married early in the morning. That way, if it doesn’t work out, you haven’t wasted a whole day. — Mickey Rooney

Life isn’t about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself. –Anonymous

What ever you are, be a good one. — Abraham Lincoln

I like long walks, especially when they are taken by people who annoy me. — Noel Coward

A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices. — Edward R. Murrow

Every man serves a useful purpose: A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor. — Laurence J. Peter

Underneath this flabby exterior is an enormous lack of character. — Oscar Levant

I have long been of the opinion that if work were such a splendid thing the rich would have kept more of it for themselves. — Bruce Grocott

The very small majority, 16%, that support keeping Terri Schaivo alive are causing a tremendous problem. It’s ironic that they are trying to keep Mrs. Schaivo alive, but turn around and phone in death threats to the judges who uphold the law – the law that says it is not the governments place to intervene.

Where are you at, Tom Delay. You said God gave you a brain damaged woman so you could point out “what is happening here in America.” Then the poll was released saying that 84% of America doesn’t agree with you. You dropped Mrs Schaivo like a rock and ran.

What’s the matter, you fucking jerk, is Terri no longer a political advantage to you? You see that she can’t “help” you any longer, so you suddenly change your conviction and leave?

Where are you at, Jeb Bush? You sent state police to the hospice to kidnap Terri. But then the local police said they would stop the state police. Seeing police fighting other police and arresting each other would play well on TV wouldn’t it? When you heard about this, you called off your kidnapping, because you know the law would not be on your side.

Where are you at, you 84%? Why are you letting extremists take over? Why is the American Medial Association standing by and letting politicians make a medical diagnosis from a 2 minute video tape? Factual medical science already has proven that no one in a condition like Terri’s have ever gotten better. Now before you recite some story of a person that was in a coma for 15 years and suddenly woke up, you need to realize the following: no one that has gone into an oxygen-deprived coma has ever woken up after 2 months. The only people that have woken up from a coma after and extended amount of time are those that suffered blunt force coma’s where brain swelling was involved.

This is not the fault of the vocal minority. The blame for this fiasco belongs solely with the 84% that won’t speak up.