"I've been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn't require my presence." - Garry Trudeau

In no order - chronological, logical, importance, relevance, or any other category.

How did I miss this Snickers commercial from four years ago?

A couple of years ago, when I still had a TIME subscription, they made a big deal about adding Fareed Zakaria to their writing staff, naming him "editor at large." His articles and columns got lots of space and promotion. I read most of what he wrote and he's clearly smart and a good writer. I wondered where he came from and how he came to the top of the ladder at TIME since I'd never heard of him.
Oops.
It's been discovered he plagiarized sections of an article on gun control written by a Harvard history professor, and used them in a major article on the topic in TIME. He's apologized and has been given a one-month time out. But you can bet there are people pouring over other things he's written looking for more no-no's.
I think it's interesting that if a prof plagiarizes they typically lose their jobs.

It's stupid-hot here. Has been for a week. They say that by Wednesday the middle number might be a zero instead of a one. What does it say that we see that as good news?

People have been debating which U.S. Olympic basketball team ranks better, the "Dream Team" of 1992 or this year's team. The former included Magic, Larry Bird, David Robinson, Michael Jordan, Scotty Pipen, Charles Barkley, Carl Malone.... This year: Lebron and Co.
I don't know how you decide which team woud be superior to the other. I'm not even sure what criteria you'd use. But last night (or was it Friday night?) NBC showed a 30-minute segment on the Dream Team that included a lot of comments from Magic, Bird, Jordan, and Barkley. Each was talking to an unseen interviewer whose questions were unheard, understood from the answers. And each was in a different location, filmed separately and then edited together.
What struck me was that each said that winning the gold for the USA was the single greatest achievement of their basketball career. Not their rings, their championships, but the pride of winning gold for their country. Pure patriotism.
As I heard each of those guys say that I asked myself, "Would the members of this current team say the same thing? Or was this a personal achievement, another notch on their belt?"
If, as I suspect, it was personal and not patriotic, what accounts for the shift?

The BBC has a whole section on their site to teach you to speak Italian. Different types of lessons at progressive levels. Free.
I love the internet.

What does the Queen do when she's somewhere that "God Save the Queen" is being sung? Seems like it would be a little awkward. Does she smile? Mouth, "Thank you, peeps?" Do that royal wave?
And while we're on a British theme, if they asked ME to be in charge of opening or closing ceremonies it wouldn't be a celebration of the host country's culture & history. It would celebrate the Olympic spirit, which is about internationalism, athletic achievement, good will...that kind of stuff. The three hour commercial for British pop culture seemed a little, uhm, narcissistic.
And some of it was just weird! Like the bicyclists wearing orange origami headgear??

Someone in our church posted on Facebook this afternoon that they've got cabin fever. That's exactly what it is. The key to survival in this heat is staying inside. We get about a 3-hour window early each morning when temps are still double digit, and then it gets too hot to be outdoors for more than a trip to the mailbox. I really want to get back to work on the cars but I'm not sure how long I can be in the garage before it's too much. When that job is disassembling and reassembling the entire brake mechanism on a wheel the danger here is that between early morning work sessions I'll forget how all the pieces went together.
Can we fast forward to late September?