Rube Goldberg strikes again - and random other stuff

Sure, it's viral and all, but it's a cool bit of a Rube Goldberg machine. Check it, folks...

And while I'm at it, check the bunch of Comic Relief videos thanks to YesButNoButYes. A couple of them have a bit of spicy language, but they're safe for the BBC, so we're considering them safe for us today. I especially recommend the ones labeled "Ricky Gervais humbly visits Africa" and "Dr. Who teachers English".

While I'm at it, I'd also like to give a shout out to the new Ben & Jerry's flavor Country Peach Cobbler. If only it hadn't been recalled, I'd be all over a pint of that.

The good, the bad, and the ugly

The Good: UNLV's road jerseys (seen most prominantly when the Runnin' Rebels defeated Wisconson this weekend)


The Bad: Oregon's home jerseys (seen most odiously when the Ducks held off Winthrop to eliminate the big dance's final double-digit seed)


and The Ugly: The first half of the IU-UCLA game on Saturday night.


All in all, a wonderful first weekend of the tourney.

Freedom versus safety

It looks like Robert Daniels is pretty much toast.

A news story this month reports that the poor bugger seems to have contracted a disease-resistant strain of tuberculosis and has gotten his backside thrown into jail because of it.

Officials found out about Daniels in 2006 when (all facts according to this story) he went to a Phoenix hospital for respiratory problems. The hospital folks sent him...

...to a Phoenix halfway house for indigent TB patients under a voluntary quarantine. He was ordered to continue treatment and wear a mask when he went out in public because the disease is spread by airborne contact.

Daniels stopped taking his medication and went unmasked to a restaurant, a convenience market and other stores, court records stated.

And therein lies the problem.

The man is a walking timebomb. He's got a strain of TB that is described as "extreme multidrug resistant tuberculosis" and doesn't want to treat it or protect the folks around him. He is the perfect cauldron for development of a new disease and seems to be mostly resistant to that disease (at least for now). According to the article, a 2006 medical assesment showed that the strain is mutating in Daniels.

Good stuff.

So the question comes - do we keep him locked up forever, knowing that even the slightest screw up leads to something like The Stand, do we release him because he hasn't really done anything wrong, or do we trick him into a little room (tell him it's a bathroom or something), shoot him in the head, and drop the whole room into a plasma generator or something?

Of course, how do you scrub and get rid of his hospital room?

Oh, and thanks to for initially sending this article my way.

A simple task

So, what's the tallest building in the world?

No, it's not the Sears Tower. If you answered that, you really haven't been paying attention for a while now...c'mon.

If you said the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, you're getting warmer - and you probably saw that awful film Entrapment.

Nope, the tallest building in the world is - and has been since 2004 - the Taipei 101. To the top of the roof, Taipei 101 is 448 m tall. To the top of its spire, it's 508 m.

The Sears Tower, on the other hand, tops out at 442.3 m to its roof. Of course its spire is actually taller at 527.3 m. So maybe it's the tallest building in the world.

Or maybe it's the the CN Tower in Toronto. After all, its spire tops out at 552.3 m - even though its technical roof is only 457.2 m high.

Or maybe it's the KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota. The transmission tower tops out at 628.8 m, but it's supported by guy wires.

Turns out that answering the question of which is the tallest building in the world is a bit of a tricky subject depending on whether you want to count distance to the roof or the spire, flagpole or antenna, and whether the building has to be self-supported or cable-stayed. Some people even try to include height from top to bottom of oil platforms, but those people aren't right.

Generally, the current winner is accepted to be Taipei 101, but not for long.

Two structures in Dubai (I think I've mentioned the place before, eh?) look to be competing for the title of world's tallest, and neither one will announce a final height for their tower. The Burj Dubai is going to top out somewhere between 808 m and 1011 m, and it's down the road competitor - the Al Burj looks to be somewhere above 700 m tall.

It's interesting to watch the funny humans try to top themselves a few feet at a time as they strive to reach the heavens.

We're funny folks...

Oh, and thanks to the Skyscraper Page for their help with research.

DC Comics FAQ

The FAQs found on this website would be a great place to do some quick research on most DC Comics heroes.

Of course, there are a number of other resources out there that I would recommend as well:

• DC Cosmic Teams - good info about most of the teams (good and bad) around the DC Universe, nicely updated
• Comic Art Community gallery - nothing but images of every possible character from every possible creator
• DC Trade Paperback timeline - if you, like I, wait for comics to show up as trades, then this website is a near must as you'll know what to read and in what order
• Crisis to Crisis - the trade paperback timeline specifically leading up to Infinite Crisis
• Comics 101 - the absolute best site to read about the history of comic characters...nyou never know what's going to roll across Prof Tipton's thoughts, but it'll be fascinating and comics-related no matter...new issues each Wednesday
• Comics in Context (early and late) - the next best column about comics, but this one tends to deviate a bit here and there
• Ze Ball Breaker Micro-Heros Site - to see what the characters generally looked like...nearly any character from nearly any publisher

Too much rock for one poll

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has a poll up asking whether we think twenty-five artists are future hall of famers...

• Guns 'N' Roses - 60/40 (current poll results 60% yes/40% no) - Nope...one phenomenal album, Appetite for Destruction is one of the best hard rock albums ever...and Use Your Illusion was solid but overly long...too little product and too much internal destruction...five albums total - one legend, two very good - just isn't enough to overcome that
• Jay-Z - 35/65 - I'm too far out of my depth in rap to even comment
• Madonna - 76/24 - she's been too popular and relevant for too long to be anything but a yes...but she certainly doesn't feel rock to me in the least...
• Red Hot Chili Peppers - 61/39 - they seemed like such throwaway punk/ska in the 80s that I probably would've said no...but their late career rebirth (Californication, By the Way, Stadium Arcadium) puts them in for me
• Mariah Carey - 45/55 - after ten albums, she still feels like a much lesser, much crappier Madonna...and she's not even close to rock...I'm thinking that the Hall should be changed to the Pop Music Hall of Fame...and she'd still not be in for me
• Radiohead - 20/80 - again, I'm out of my depth...probably couldn't name a single song by Radiohead
• Snoop Dogg - 37/63 - man, I'd say no, but his discography suggests that it'd be closer than I think it would be...again, I'm honestly out of my depth
• Justin Timberlake - 30/70 - no way...he's put out two albums and been a member of a big boy band...the solo work doesn't come even close
• Bjork - 12/88 (lowest positive reaction so far) - more a curiosity than a musician here in the US...no
• Metallica - 78/22 - easy choice for me...yes..twenty years of making relevant, clearly rock music...some phenomenal albums in the process...easy, easy yes...
• Beck - 22/78 - interesting choice here...I like the heck out of him, so I might be biased...I see the potential for Beck to continue to be relevant for decades because he is so stylistically diverse...is he a hall of famer? - no...will he be? - I think so...
• Sheryl Crow - 57/43 - only five proper albums so far...her music is pleasant and non-offensive...seems cut in the same vein as the late 70's singer songwriters to me but with a little more guitar, a little poppier sound...I don't like her music, and she's not a hall of famer yet, but my guess is that she'll put out the same sort of music she's doing for decades...may end up with a career similar to Bryan Adams, honestly...
• Green Day - 54/46 - only seven proper albums so far...two of which are awesome (Dookie & American Idiot - the latter of which is the best album to come out this decade)...tough call...I'd say that they're on track but not there if they got hit by a bus tomorrow, and before American Idiot, I would have certainly said no
• Eminem - 40/60 - as much as I hate him, as much as I think he's white trash with millions of dollars, I think he's got a pretty good shot...he'll have to put out another couple of albums that are closer to his first ones, but his first ones were so revelatory, he was such a media presence that I think he's got a chance...and it's hard to believe that we've only know about him for seven years or so...
• Pearl Jam - 72/28 - Googs would kvetch if I said anything but yes, and I'll do so easily enough...they are the greatest rock band of the last two decades and are still putting out great music...they've taken social stances and connected with their audience like no band since the Dead...their music isn't a direct connection, but their band is the living legacy of the Dead...
• Beastie Boys - 46/54 - tough for me to separate my love for them from what they mean to the industry as a whole...I'd go with yes, though...sure, License to Ill was frat boy rap trash, but their 90's albums brought in an era of sampling that has rarely reached the heights of their own discs...the big problem is that they've only put out six albums in the last twenty years...if they'd've been a little more prolific, they'd be a slam dunk...as it is, they'll get in on artistic merit...
• Mary J Blige - 45/55 - see Jay-Z but replace rap with R&B...
• White Stripes - 13/87 - wow, way lower than I thought the poll would be...now? - no...eventually? yes...
• R. Kelly - 14/86 - no, and if only because his two lasting images are of the friggin' "Trapped in a Closet" video and of Dave Chapelle's parody
• Motley Crue - 70/30 - seriously?...80's big hair hack music...nope, no, nu-uh...and any late career, reality tv resurgance actually detracts from their chances
• Joan Jett - 58/42 - I am amazed at the voting results now...c'mon, name two Joan Jett songs...I'll spot you "I Love Rock 'n' Roll", and I'll still bet that most of you (and me) can't name a second one...one hit, no matter how rock that hit, does not a hall of fame career make
• Nine Inch Nails - 33/67 - there is a chance, but they'll have to have some commerical success - something they haven't seen since the early 90's...only five albums...probably not and definitely not in the "hit by a bus tomorrow" test
• Alanis Morissette - 36/64 - Jagged Little Pill was a heck of a debut but very much dated now...and she's recorded an acoustic version of it which makes it somehow lesser...has the original seriously sold 30 million albums?
• Oasis - 18/82 - too short a peak...though supposedly they came out with a really good album in 2005...in spite of title of that one (Son't Believe the Truth), they seem to have fallen victim to believing their own hype...
• Destiny's Child - 30/70 - never had a great album...probably will go down historically as Beyonce's first group...nope

I love the smell of Btk in the morning

Looks like we'll be re-enacting a scene from Short Cuts this spring when the helicopters rain down Btk (bacillus thuringiensis kurstaki, a pesticide designed specifically to fight the gypsy moth) on our neighborhood.

I know I'm a science teacher and all, and as such should be trusting in the part of the Enquirer story when it tells me that "The Spray won't hurt anybody", but for some reason, I'm a little leary.

I'm thinking that the dogs will be spending those mornings inside.

The simplicity of youth...and fruit pies

Thanks to Branded in the 80s for bringing back that old school goodness day after day - particularly this week when they brought back the classic Hostess ads that ran in comic books from 1977 through 1982.

Those were formative years for me, and I was reading comic books back then like it was nobody's business. Plus, I was horking down sweet treats like they were going out of style. (Thank heaven that so much has changed in the decades since then.)

The Hostess ads of the time were absolute classics of cultural reference. Somebody has to be of a very specific age and hobby to get any references made to the Hostess comic book ads of that period.

And thankfully, Seanbaby remembers them and has set up a tribute website complete with awesomely creamy center. Thanks to Seanbaby, we can see such classics as "Spider Man Spoild a Snatch" and other gems where the superheros fight crime by throwing down with some Tinkies and Ho-Hos and Ring-Dings and the like.

Man, this stuff is all about the genius...

The glory of Madison's

So, the campaign is all but over (fund raising's done, now it's just campaign wrap-up tasks), and the whole thing was a fair success. It looks like our total will end up somewhere in the range of last year's - well short of our goal but around where I realistically hoped we'd be.

Every year I am amazed and bewildered at how many things happen during the campaign that I could never have imagined. Some of this year's highlights:

• An anonymous donor dropped off a cashier's check for $2500 on the last day of the campaign.
• Our 5k made almost $2000 and was won by a guy who won the Flying Pig marathon in 2005.
• I have come to envy and be angry at the Girl Scouts who have a monopoly on nearly every store in the Cincinnati area from Feb 17^th through March 17^th.
• And Madison's Market in Glendale is a wonderful place.

Madison's Market is a small grocer in Glendale Square - about a mile and a half from PHS. Until this fall, I'd only seen the place from the outside, glancing at it when I was at the Glendale Pub or on the Square for one reason or another.

This fall, one of my students who happens to also work at Madison's convinced me to stop in and try their gelato which turned out to be absolutely revelatory. I'll admit to just a bit of a sweet tooth, sure, but the gelato really is outstanding. They make the gelato by the Madison's folks - don't know if it's done on site or out at their Adam's Co. farm - and is absolutely fabulous. All of the half dozen flavors that I've tried - Madagascar vanilla, cinnamon, blueberry, peach, strawberry - have been wonderful, and I've been eagerly awaiting the return of the longed for tiramisu gelato.

Madison's also was generous enough to sponsor our 5K t-shirts - making them the first business to sign on as a sponsor for our new-this-year t-shirts - and to provide a table or two for us to use at our finish line this year. One of our volunteers at the race was generous enough to give Madison's a few bucks in advance so that the two race co-coordinators could have lunch on her, and I managed to venture away from the sweets into Madison's paninis - fresh mozerella, basil, tomato, and red onion on mine, thanks for asking - which turned out to be every bit as wonderful as their gelato.

The Glendale location - awesome store, poor website - is the second store that Matt Madison has opened up in the Cincy area - the first being his Findlay Market location. Both of the stores sell produce that is locally and organically produced and about as fresh as is available anywhere.

Madison's is a perfect example of a store that we should all be patronizing for lots of reasons:

• The food is fabulous.
• The owners are generous and civically minded.
• The produce is grown locally (to save fossil fuels in transport costs) and organically (better for the environment).
• The stores are in the neighborhood, promoting mixed-use development, something that keeps cities healthy and vibrant.

I know I'll be spending more of my time and money at Madison's in the coming years...

More Superman Returns craptacular toys

I've crabbed and complained about Superman Returns more than enough.

So I'll continue...

The movie stunk...

The toys stunk...

And I'm not the only one to notice the fact that the Superman Returns toys are utter crap.

Flaming Carrot gets ALLLLLL the ladies!

It's pretty clear that the truest way to get in good with a lady is to dress up as an incredibly obscure comic book character.

But as the article says, Flaming Carrot gets all the ladies!

Videos of the week

Click on the picture to get a collection of a number of British comedy sketches

Click the above picture to see a large mock-up of what looks like a really neat computer interface

La Mer - the French version is much more beautiful than the American version - "Beyond the Sea"

Alyssa Milano was edging from cute to attractive, but even she couldn't save this disaster

I have no idea what this is, and I can't find any clues. The vocals aren't in a language that I know, but the whole thing just creeps me out.

Nice edits of an otherwise very NSFW song

I think I recognize the locale here.

I've linked to this Japanese tv show before but happen upon their stuff almost by random chance.

Shut up

Keep your stinkin' politics off of my science

I am not an expert on politics.

I am not an expert on many branches of science.

I am not an expert on how my car works.

Heck, I am not an expert on a whole host of things.

So I try not to talk too much about them - and I certainly would be reluctant to create policies that will affect other, more knolwedgable people in those areas.

I am fairly certain, however, that most politicians are not experts on science, and yet many of them continue to legislate in spite of scientific evidence that seems to suggest that they should simply leave the thinking to the thinkers.

To quote the Union of Concerned Scientists:

In recent years, scientists who work for and advise the federal government have seen their work manipulated, suppressed, distorted, while agencies have systematically limited public and policy maker access to critical scientific information. To document this abuse, the Union of Concerned Scientists has created the A to Z Guide to Political Interference in Science.

The guide details sixty-two areas in which the government (in the last half dozen years) has chosen to ignore, refute, or twist science knowledge in order to further their political agendas.

Many of the events are linked to the Bush administration (almunium tubes, arms control, abstinence only sex education, and other issues) which seems to fit a pattern of articles and books claiming that the Bush administration does, indeed ignore or contradict science whenever it is politically expedient to do so.

• The Republican War on Science
• from the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
• from US News & World Report
• from CBS News

I'm not even an expert in this field, so I would ask that if you are interested, that you explore things further. I have the first book listed - The Republican War on Science - in line for my summer reading.

But I do know that I am a little bothered the the Union of Concerned Scientists made some sort of faux periodic table to display their positions.

Their table has no periodicity and displays very few (if any) of the relationships that should be inherent to such an organization.

Their graphic is cutesy but crappy.

The annual pitch

Ok, folks, here the annual pitch.

Tomorrow is the end of our Pasta for Pennies campaign at good ol' Princeton High School.

Each year, I coordinate (along with Calen - common commenter around this here blog) a three-week fund raising campaign to gather together some cash for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. It's something that our school has been doing for eight years now and that I've been a part of for six, coordinator for three, and it's probably the thing that I am proudest of that I do each year.

In my first year at PHS, I didn't have a class during the period that we collected (and still collect) money, but I got roped into the campaign on a stupid bet, sacrificing my hair to the cause when the students beat their goal of $17,000 in the campaign. That year they raised more thatn $25,000 total, and I was totally hooked. I got to see kids who were already working their backsides off to keep up with their classes choose to spend another couple of hours each night collecting in front of Kroger stores; baking cookies and cupcakes between writing reports; and walking miles door to door in their neighborhood.

And they did - and still do - all of this to help out people that they've never met. They take schedules that are already bursting, and they add in countless hours of service because they enjoy doing it and because it's the right thing to do.

And I'm lucky enough to be able to give them a few pointers each year, to nudge their amazing hearts and minds into a slightly different direction from where they normally are. In the process, then, we help out a cause that has come to be very near and dear to me.

I know that the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society is a deserving charity. The mark that blood cancers leaves on a family is a horrific one and one that I hope never to see up close. This was brought home to me last summer when I watched the premiere of A Lion in the House as I saw the lives of five Cincinnati families get entirely and totally shattered in the time it took for a doctor to say one simple phrase to the children and adults: "It looks like you have cancer."

I give my time and money to this campaign for so many reasons, honestly, only the least of which is because the disease is horrible and my money might help someone who is suffering have a slightly better hour, day, month, life.

I give to this campaign because I love how I feel when the stressful part is over, when last weekend's 5K has been completed, and we're cleaning up, and the student helpers gather together for a picture. The absolute, utter bliss in my heart that I felt knowing that those kids were having a great time doing good for other people, that they were taking another step toward becoming amazing men and women, that they were maybe starting down a lifelong path of giving because of something that I had planned and that I had helped them want to do is a feeling that rivals the greatest moments in my life.

This year's campaign looks to fall well short of our $50,000 goal, but it isn't for lack of hard work by those students who have gotten involved. The students on the Pasta for Pennies committee and those in the classes that have bought into the campaign are doing amazing, wonderful work.

If you happen to have a few dollars lying around and would like to guide that money toward doing a little good, I would ask that any of you reading this make a donation to the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Admittedly, your donation will help our total look a little better this year, but it will also do a lot of good as over 75% of the money raised by the Society goes toward patient services, education, and research - a figure that is rivaled by very few national charities.

And if you don't want to give to the LLS, find another charity to give your time, money, and heart to. There are certainly enough out there that could use your help.

If you do happen to choose to give to the LLS, feel free to ask a few friends to give as well.

Thanks...

Oh my golly...they killed America

Yeah, yeah, yeah...

Spoiler alert and all that jazz...

It appears that Captain America is dead.

I know, it's not like a real person died or anything, and he's dead because his death happened to be interesting as a plot device, so there shouldn't be mourning or anything. I'm good with that. I understand that.

Plus, he's a Marvel character, and I'm a DC guy (as you may have picked up from the blog's numerous comic book posts), so I shouldn't care.

And, honestly, I don't care.

The reason I'm pointing out Cap's death, though, is that I find it interesting that two comic book events from the same Marvel storyline (Civil War, keep up, kids) - the unmasking of Spiderman and the death of Captain America - have gotten news coverage on real news venues.

I'm kind of curious as to whether we'll see the same kind of news coverage when - according to this rumor, at least - the seventh book comes out and Harry Potter dies.

Plasma...that's the ticket

It's becoming increasingly clear that we cannot continue to produce a prodigious amount of waste and simply bury it all in landfills. We are running out of room, and the economic and environmental costs of continuing our landfilling scheme are growing exponentially.

Four years ago, Discover magazine published an article that seemed to offer an amazingly viable option to deal with the millions of pounds of trash we produce everyday. The first small-scale thermal depolymerization plant was just then coming online, using a technology that ground up, heated, pressurized, heated, and eventually distilled any sort of waste into reusable materials. A quote from the article that has stuck with me reports that

If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.

The initial entries into the small-scale plant were to be 200 tons of turkey offal from a Butterball plant in Missouri.

The process was reported to be 85% efficient, meaning that of 100 BTU of energy in the waste put into the process, 85% could be recovered and reused - an absolute miracle level of recapture for any waste process.

A year later, Discover published an update on the process suggesting that things would be running along in just a short while. A 2006 update, then suggested that there were a few more hurdles to be overcome - most of them legislative as the process was competing for scarce funding dollars with other alternative energy source lobbies in Washington, DC. The technology isn't dead, but it has been much slower to come to fruition than initial excitement suggested.

This past month, then, Popular Science published an article about another alternative for trash disposal involving a plasma decomposition process. The trash is initiall chopped up in huge grinders and then placed into a vessel that has a 650-volt current passing between electrodes, heating the air in the vessel to high enough temperatures that the trash is broken down into very small molecules and pure elements. Two products come out of the reactor vessel - syngas ("a mizture of primarily hydrogen and carbon monoxide that can be converted into a variety of marketable fuels, including ethanol, natural gas, and hydrogen") and "an obsidian-like glass used as a raw material for numerous applications including bathroom tiles and high-strength asphalt."

The amazing part of the whole deal, however, is that the syngas comes out at 2200 degrees fahrenheit and generates steam as it cools, turning turbines that produce electricity - two-thirds of which goes into continuing the process and one-third of which ends up as energy profit, able to be sold back to electrical utilities or to heat and power the rest of the plant.

Trash goes in and energy comes out.

It could be a miracle technology, folks.

---

If you have a few bucks to invest, do me a favor and throw some the way of an alternative energy scheme, would ya? And if it happens to be one of these two, I certainly wouldn't be too bothered.

More wikipedia issues

Ah, the ignorance of the legislature seems, at times, to be boundless.

Senate bill 49 - sponsored by Senator Ted Stevens - is an updated version of legislation introduced last year known as the Deleting Online Predators Act - or DOPA. Last year's legislation - and this year's similar Senate bill - look to restrict all institutions that receive federal funding or subsidies for internet access - including most schools and public libraries - to block social networking websites or chat rooms as defined by...

the Commission [which] shall take into consideration the extent to which a website--

`(i) is offered by a commercial entity;

`(ii) permits registered users to create an on-line profile that includes detailed personal information;

`(iii) permits registered users to create an on-line journal and share such a journal with other users;

`(iv) elicits highly-personalized information from users; and

`(v) enables communication among users.'.

Now I can't disagree with the other portion of the bill that states that

(1) sexual predators approach minors on the Internet using chat rooms and social networking websites, and, according to the United States Attorney General, one in five children has been approached sexually on the Internet;

(2) sexual predators can use these chat rooms and websites to locate, learn about, befriend, and eventually prey on children by engaging them in sexually explicit conversations, asking for photographs, and attempting to lure children into a face to face meeting; and

(3) with the explosive growth of trendy chat rooms and social networking websites, it is becoming more and more difficult to monitor and protect minors from those with devious intentions, particularly when children are away from parental supervision.

but I certainly can disagree with the option of simply blocking all of those sites from the eyes of school children and library users - particularly of library users.

School children typically are blocked from most of those website already. My school, for example, doesn't block Blogger, but we do block LiveJournal, Xanga, MySpace, Facebook and many other sites. But the blocking of these sites at libraries does mean that adults - typically adults of more limited socio-economic means - will be blocked from performing totally legal actions.

Senator Stevens - from my limited knowledge of him - doesn't seem like a man whose heart is in the wrong place, but he does seem like one who should, perhaps, restrict his actions to areas where he doesn't come off sounding like a complete and total boob.

---

Of course, it looks like at least one of the folks at Wikipedia are doing something to shift the concept of Wikipedia - a website that many have theorized might fall under the jurisdiction of Stevens's legislation - from one that is editable by anyone anywhere with complete anonymity into a slightly more formally-lead online encyclopedia, something that teachers might even start allowing as a citation for scholarly research.

The new project is called Citizendium.org and will see all content overseen by a series of subject-specific experts. The website is just getting started, and it's at the point where there is little enough information that it's not yet ready to nearly be what it could become, but it'll be interesting to watch as it begins to grow...

Good luck, folks, with your continued use of the magical, tube-filled interweb.

Hello to simplicity

I absolutely love the new iPhone ad.

The beautiful simplicity of it all, the fact that the word iPhone is never mentioned...

Amazing...

Apple may not be the biggest tech company in the world (oh, they're big, sure, but Microsoft and Google still could squish them like little bugs), but they easily have the best design and ad folks out there.

And if you'd like to know who's in the commercial, here's the best list I could find...

This American TV show

Oh, schnikies...

This past week YesButNoButYes.com pointed out to me that This American Life is all set to become a television show in the spring.

This should be big news around my household, especially since the girl is very much into This American Life on NPR. I've got my iTunes - 'bout five thousand songs, probably five hundred of which I play in pretty high rotation whenever the computer's on and YouTube isn't up. She, though, heads over to The American Life's website just about any chance she gets and works through their archives listening to the weirdest, most akward stories of normal people doing only slightly normal things that she can dredge up.

My first listens to the show left me feeling weirdly detached, throroughly enthralled by the stories being told but not having even the slightest idea why I had been sucked in so quickly and deeply. Rarely does This American Life present anyone truly outstanding or remarkable. Instead, host Ira Glass's deadpan, dry as Death Valley delivery simply frames thoroughly average folks telling their entirely abnormal - not fantastic, rather just oddly compelling - tales of their lives.

A typical show consists of three stories, each roughly twenty minutes long and connected by a thematic thread that never quite develops in any way that I could have imagined or guessed but that, by the end of the show, have me (and the girl, of course) thoroughly mesmerized.

And I have no idea how those quirky stories are going to translate to the small screen. Often such stories on television end up showing their subjects more as pathetic figures, something that the radio series has always steered well clear of doing. In all honesty, I doubt that I'll ever have to worry about how the televsion show turns out (the whole no cable thing, doncha know), but as long as the radio series doesn't suffer, the folks can do just about anything they want, I guess.

If you happen to have cable, make sure to tune in to This American Life over on Showtime coming within the next month. In the meantime, check the trailers: