Sunday, December 18, 2011

Kim Jong Il is dead

As you've probably noticed, I don't really blog over here very much but I have a big post up at my podcast's website, dontworry.tv, about the death of Kim Jong Il. If you're interested, read it.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Best NFL helmets

Looks like ESPN has ranked the top NFL helmets. Steelers and Colts are 1 and 2, according to them.

Apart from inexplicably putting the Dolphins in the top 10 and leaving off the Rams, who invented the helmet logo, for goodness sake, it's a pretty good list. And it inspired me to make my own. This list is below. This is harder than my previous NFL uniforms list because no NFL team has a truly bad helmet design at this point. Even the Bills, who I rank lowest because of their annoying multi-shade-of-blue thing, have pretty cool helmets. But once again, you'll see that I have a preference for the classic old-school look, as well as helmets of distinction (eg. Steelers' logo only on one side, the Eagles' wings, the Rams' horns). Heeere's my list:

1. Steelers
2. Colts
3. Raiders
4. Packers
5. Rams (they were better with blue and yellow, not blue and gold)
6. Chargers (would rank higher if they went to the old 60s helmets with the numbers on them)
7. Browns
8. Eagles
9. Bears
10. Cowboys
11. Giants
12. Vikings (would rank higher if I didn't spend most of my childhood trying to figure out what the heck their logo was)
13. Saints
14. Bucs
15. Jets
16. Broncos
17. Redskins
18. Bengals
19. Dolphins
20. 49ers
21. Titans
22. Lions
23. Ravens
24. Patriots
25. Panthers
26. Jaguars
27. Texans
28. Cardinals
29. Chiefs
30. Seahawks
31. Falcons
32. Bills (will jump in the rankings as soon as they get rid of the horrible 3-shades-of-blue thing they've currently got going)

Tuesday, March 29, 2011

I saw Sucker Punch

Definitely, it's the best music video I've seen since "Hypnotize" by the Notorious B.I.G. Wait, you're telling me Sucker Punch wasn't a music video and was actually supposed to be a movie? But movies, they have... plot. Dialogue. Characters. Sometimes they have character development. And... acting. And Sucker Punch didn't have any of these things. It was like Bizarro Inception.

But as a music video, it's kickass and top notch.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

What to call Africa's newest country

UNITED NATIONS - Today's Security Council meeting on Sudan highlights the remarkably peaceful referendum on independence that southern Sudan just completed. While much remains to be done, a peaceful transition now seems a likely outcome, something unthinkable even a few months ago.

That said, a serious problem remains: what to call the new country. According to U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice today, the nation will be called the Republic of Southern Sudan. Does anyone else find this a rather blase name? Really, you don't get to be a new nation every day. Put the past behind you. Don't define yourself by the nation you were once a part of. And most of all, be creative!

Here are some helpful suggestions for the nascent state:

Option 1: North Sudan becomes Nubia (the historical Nubian kingdoms were in northern Sudan and southern Egypt), while south Sudan gets the "Sudan" moniker. And most of the oil.

Option 2: Go with the "the." It's like the Justin Timberlake scene in The Social Network, in reverse. "The Sudan" seems cooler somehow, albeit a bit more colonial, than just "Sudan."

Option 3: A long, specific and optimistic list of all the things your country will most likely not be. Eg. Shiny Happy Democratic People's Free and Independent United Sovereign Multinational Republic of Southern Sudan. A name that all but guarantees failed statehood.

Option 4: Democratic Republic of Sudan. So that generations of American schoolchildren can be even more perplexed in geography class than they were already. The Congos already do this, so why not you?

Option 5: Guarantee war with the North by either including the words "and Abyei" in the title of your country (eg. Shiny Happy Democratic People's Free and Independent United Sovereign Multinational Republic of Southern Sudan and Abyei) or, better, have a map of your country with the disputed region included on your flag. Kosovo did the latter with Mitrovica even though Mitrovica is 90% ethnic Serbs, and nobody's called them on it yet.

Option 6: To borrow from Gregg Easterbrook's solution for the Macedonian name issue, you should really call yourselves "The Greatest Country In History." The tourism ads just write themselves.

Update: Looks like Joshua Keating at Foreign Policy already sorta beat me to it on this topic.