Radical Georgia Moderate

..the dead horse had been beaten to a pulp, sent to the glue factory, and returned to sender for inadequate postage, I give you YES WE CAN HAS:

Some of them are really funny, some of them not not so much. That’s all I’ve got today. Work has been very busy.

You might not have agreed with a word he said, but William F. Buckley was pretty much personally responsible for the golden era of intellectual debate on television. His Firing Line program was just superb, bringing together influential figures from all across the ideological spectrum for rigorous, sincere competitions of ideas.

Check this footage from a debate he had in 1969 with Noam Chomsky (this is part 1, go here for part 2):

He was always gracious and respectful to even his fiercest opposition. The world is a poorer place without his piercing wit and sense of humor.

Hot! If I looked half that graceful doing anything, then… well, I don’t know, I’d look pretty graceful.

This video was taken with her (ostensibly) still camera on auto focus, and the low light performance is pretty damn impressive if you ask me. Much better than my first go-round with the camcorder. This has inspired us to try some videos at home so I can work on figuring the damn thing out, and (obviously) so she can post more videos.

The most obvious place to look is shutter speed, something I wasn’t aware I could change when I made the Podcamp Nashville video. I read in the friendly manual that there’s an “auto slow” shutter speed I should try in dark conditions.

It’s not the precipitation, it’s the stupidity?

(that’s a downed tree on North Avenue near Freedom Parkway)

Our power was out this morning in Decatur, and as far as I know it’s still out. At least one other person here at work said her power was out. Someone on Twitter said I285 was backed up to make a 10-minute jaunt turn into two hours of gridlock. Joeventures said the Kodak/Goody’s sign on Ponce lost a chunk.

Anything else?

I don’t remember very many of my dreams, but I do remember one I had last night.

The setting was a living room that looked sort of, but not exactly, like the one in my parents’ house where I grew up. There was blue carpeting, vintage 70s wood panel walls, and a brown leather chair and hassock like the one that was there when I was younger. It seemed bigger than the room I grew up in though, and the outside light came from different places and hit objects differently, giving me a feeling like when I encounter someone who knows me but I can’t place where I met them or remember their name.

There were three animals in the room: a baby pig, a baby chick, and a kitten. I was rubbing the baby pig’s belly while the kitten and chick ran around the room.

The second dog we had while I was growing up (who is still alive) was a Golden Retriever named Sophie. When she was a puppy, we kept her confined to the living room. Sometimes she would entertain herself by walking over to one side of the room, then rushing full speed, bounding over a couch and crashing into the wall side-first. Generally, she would do this when no one else was in the room, and we would know she was doing this after hearing a loud crash that sounded like a heavy box falling off the top of a book shelf.

In my dream, either the kitten or the pig (I can’t remember which now) started out like it was going to do the same thing, bounding into the wall. Only, instead of a crashing thud, the animal disappeared when it hit the wall and reappeared in another spot in the room.

The other animals followed suit, running into the teleporter and reappearing in other parts of the room several times. I felt something was amiss, so I warned them to stop playing with the teleporter. They ignored me, and eventually they went in and didn’t reappear.

When all the animals had disappeared, I searched the room and found the baby chick’s little orange leg under the couch.

By Joel’s count, the word perfection was used about 894 times last night. Alas, it was not meant to be for the Memphis Tigers. Instead, it would be the Vols who were Pearlfect:

I am enjoying it while it lasts. A number one ranking is nice, but just about irrelevant once the tournament starts. The Vols have Vanderbilt on Tuesday, a team good enough to spoil that ranking very quickly. The joy that came from wiping the sneer off Calipari’s face will last a while longer. Winning the SEC outright for the first time in about 40 years would be much nicer than either of those things.

The game was not always pretty. I felt like the Vols were lucky not to be down 15 at the half the way Memphis was draining threes. But it turned out that the Tigers’ reliance on three-pointers (not their strong suit) was their downfall, as they went cold from outside the arc in the second half.

+1 to Pearl and the Vols for coming up with a good game plan and sticking to it even when it looked like it might not work early on.

From an unnamed AJC reporter in Atlanta Magazine’s sprawling biopic of Julia Wallace:

Print is the tail that still thinks it’s the dog.

h/t Mostly Media

While I was preoccupied with license plates and offseason turmoil for the football team, I failed to note that the #2 UT men’s basketball team has a showdown with #1 Memphis this Saturday. Memphis is a 6-point favorite.

There are lots of great storylines:

A rare #1 vs. #2 match-up.

The rags-to-riches ascension of Tennessee the past couple of years.

In-state bragging rights.

The best remaining chance for an undefeated team to lose in the regular season.

You should do yourself a favor and tune in, as Tennessee is just a fun team to watch. I typically don’t care about college basketball until the tournament starts, but I’ve watched several UT games this year. They keep a ridiculous tempo and often just outrun their opponents. And if they don’t feel like doing that, they hit three-pointers that make you say “that was a terrible shot, he was just lucky.” Then you look at the box score, and it turns out they do that every game.

From the AJC, via Jen on Twitter:

In a 142 to 10 vote Thursday, the Georgia House of Representatives passed legislation to stop making out-of-state university sports mascot car tags.

That is, unless the Legislatures in those states begin making Georgia plates for Bulldog Nation citizens living in diaspora in South Carolina, Alabama and Florida.

I received an email a few days ago that the UT Alumni Association here in Atlanta has just over 500 paid applications for UT plates. Prior to this law being passed, they needed 1,000 applications. I’m not sure yet how this effects their plans, but I emailed the person in charge and asked her. I’m guessing she won’t be happy.

Funny how the government here lurrrrrrrrves out-of-town fans when their dollars are coming into town for the SEC Championship Game. I wonder if it would be effective for out-of-state universities to lobby the SEC to move the title game to a different state. I would support that even though I live here.

Update 3:10 p.m. Hey look, the SEC is only under contract at the Dome through 2009. Looks like I’ll be writing a few letters tonight.

Update 11:05 p.m. It’s possible this law wouldn’t effect the UT plates, according to the Georgia Sports Blog’s reading of it. Waiting to hear the UT Alumni Association’s version before firing off any letters.

While I’d be glad if it didn’t effect the UT plates, it’s still a crappy law. If I’m siding with Florida fans, that is indisputable. I hate Florida. If Florida was serving me dinner, I would leave it a penny tip just so it knew I didn’t forget to tip.

…and the AJC says “I got to bed around 2, 2:30.”

Studies show that under the current statewide gas tax system, a large portion of metro Atlanta’s taxes are siphoned off to projects in other parts of the state.

But really, I think this is probably maybe good news.