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...the round in which I sow the seeds of my eventual defeat in our little bracket contest.

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You can go months without talking to a New York cabbie, and most Hong Kong taxi jockey don't speak English. But just about everybody in Singapore speaks English and likes to talk. In two days I've taken seven taxis and had the following conversations. (A Singaporean reporter friend says Singaporean taxi drivers spark many of her stories):

1) The government is corrupt! Corrupt! As proof, he took me past the speaker's corner.

2) Like to gamble? Casinos are coming! Ok, not so fast.

3) Ok, silly American. "Quay" is pronounced "key." You don't know the word? Oh, you've just read it! Sounds like you spend a lot of time with books. Maybe you go out more?

4) Snow? I've never seen snow. What's it like? Is it cold? In New York, does it snow every year?

5) Are you getting sued? (By the way, for a taste of Singapore's freedom of expression, read that Straits Times story. Words fail me.)

6) Singapore ladies: they are the best! So well-dressed. They are always ready to go out dancing!

Eaten so far this trip: chili crab, rojak, roti prata, tauhu goreng.

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Over lunch, I created a Norlos bracket on ESPN's tournament challenge. The password is norlos.

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I was in Commonwealth on Saturday when this song came over the jukebox. It was one of those songs that you know, but it's just on the edge of your consciousness how you know it. So I turned to the guy I was talking to and asked, "hey...do you know who this is?" He was like, "no," but walked over to the jukebox and looked at the band. "It's the Vaselines," he said. "Huh," I replied, "never heard of them. How do I know that song?"

This is how I know that song.

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Wow! What are the odds of one of our newly adopted Cinderella teams being paired up with KU? On a side note, I am suddenly a HUGE Binghamton fan.

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Seeing that micro mini-bus got me thinking of the line at the 2:22 mark of this video:

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Even though I read and love works by a lot of dead authors, it was kind of creepy coming across this piece in the New Yorker recently.

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My college is looking to temporarily replace me for the fall semester. If you know anybody (or know anybody who might know someone) who is a) an ecologist and b) interested in teaching for a semester, hook me up with them. This would be a great job for somebody who thinks that she/he wants to teach college but hasn't really had the opportunity (TAing labs doesn't count for much) or is stuck on the dissertation and could use a paid semester of a different kind of craziness in rural Appalachia. Specific plantnerdiness not a requirement, as the fall schedule will require only introductory organismal biology and ecology, although it never hurts.

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So I've become friends with a guy who, it turns out, not only worked for Breakaway, my old messenger company, but also used to be a roommate of Charity, an ex-girlfriend of mine in Madison.

I'd actually been at her house while he lived there, but I'd never met him.

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If you like music, you should watch this. When you're done, you can read this. (thanks, slashdot)

I'm not going to do the embedded youtube thing because I think it's much more fun to watch full-size.

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The North Dakota State Bison are one win away from their first NCAA tournament in their first season as a full member of Division I. It's on at 8 PM EST on ESPN2. I was surprised to learn that Jayhawk fans are actually familiar with a former NDSU coach.

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NCAA Expands March Madness To Include 4,096 Teams

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So, I had this wild hair earlier to see what Wilbur Nether has been up to. Google is a glorious thing and allowed me to run across an Uncyclopedia entry for Stephenson. Almost up to the standards of The Onion, so if anyone here had a hand, kudos. I also discovered that Wilbur is an amateur etymologist in his spare time.

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From CNN:

"Because the vessels' intentions were not known, Impeccable sprayed its fire hoses at one of the vessels in order to protect itself," the statement said. "The Chinese crewmembers disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet."

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Last week, the NYT had an article about how the character of Binghamton's basketball team has changed. It's hard to argue with success, though. Yesterday Binghamton held off the University of New Hapshire to make it to the finals of the America East conference tournament on next Saturday.

The Bearcats had a razor slim one point lead with about twenty seconds left and New Hampshire had the ball. To set up the final play, UNH called a timeout, but a Binghamton defender managed to tip the inbounds pass away for a breakaway dunk. Totally flustered by giving up the dunk, the UNH inbounder after the basket promptly threw the ball to a Bearcat who was fouled and made the free throws to ice the game.

My impression of the Binghamton team: good talent, but undisciplined on the court. The Bearcats didn't win because they could systematically score, but because enough of the shots that they jacked up went down. The Bearcats had the ball with about 55 seconds left up by that single point. They didn't even make a pretense of running a play, the result of the possession was a contested 25 foot running jumper. Not surprisingly it went clang. They also subscribe to a pressure system of defense, not dissimilar from Missouri's, which led to a frustrating number of layups for UNH.

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This guy just won his 5th conference championship.

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Words nearly fail me on this one.

OK, first watch the video.

Now, "grass mud horse" (草泥马, or cao3 ni2 ma3) is a critter from Chinese mythology. It is also used as the Chinese term for "llama." The lyrics in English, courtesy this website:

There is a herd of Grass Mud Horses In the wild and beautiful Ma Le Desert They are lively and intelligent they are fun-loving and nimble They live freely in the Ma Le Desert They are courageous, tenacious, and overcome the difficult environment

Oh lying down Grass Mud Horse
Oh running wild Grass Mud Horse
They defeated river crabs in order to protect their grass land
River crabs forever disappeared from Ma Le Desert

Check out the web site for a fuller explanation, but this video is actually a stab at anti-censorship in China, land of the Great Firewall. "Grass mud horse" sounds almost exactly the same in Chinese as "fuck your mother." Only two tones makes it different: "fuck your mother" is cao4 ni2 ma1.

Check the link for what "ma le" means.

So this video has it all -- totally weird without context, kind subversive with.

Wo xihuan xue xi han yu!

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Visit the Prelinger Archives for classic movies such as "Dating Dos & Don'ts":

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90-65. Suck it slavers.

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