Wriphe.com: The Blog 2024

The word of the year was 'brain rot'. 'Nuff said.

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1) The average NFL team goes 3-and-out on about 20% of their drives. (Even the best offenses still go 3-and-out about 10% of their attempts.)

2) The chance of recovering an onside kick in the NFL these days is under 8%.

Therefore, there isn't any reason to ever onside kick unless the time remaining in the game is something less than two minutes.

[My actual formula is that the onside threshold should be 39s x (3 - timeouts remaining). But that's a little nerdy.]

The point here being that there is less and less reason to attempt an onside kick, which I think is a shame. If there's no real chance for a team down 9 or more points to score, recover the ball, and score again inside of the final two minutes of a football game (barring an unlikely fumble or head coach looking for a reason to get fired), that disincentivizes the audience to continue watching.

Let's get this fixed, NFL. If injuries on kickoffs are such a problem, let's just get rid of them altogether. Teams could either surrender the ball to the opposing team at the 25 or attempt the equivalent of a 4th and 20 from their own 25 to retain possession. (NFL teams make plays of 20+ yards about, you guessed it, 8% of the time.)

I assure you that solution isn't any stupider than modern overtime rules.

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Good

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Laid

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107/2418. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021)
The original Venom surprised me by being more of a buddy cop movie than I expected, but this one drops the ball as dumb, unnecessary, computer-animated setpiece-driven action. I never liked Carnage in the comics, either. Pass.

108/2419. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie (2016)
I wasn't a fan of the AbFab television show because Edina and Patsy were just horrible people. The movie leans into that, hard. But it also attacks the hypocrisy of a society that judges unequally based on age, sex, and income. I have to admit that I found more than a few things to chuckle at.

109/2420. Woman's World (1954)
Woman's World is more than a little reminiscent of Executive Suite (which also stars June Allyson), though with more emphasis on the spouses of the would-be executives. This one is also more comedic with the added benefit of Lauren Bacall being her glamourous self. (Not a knock against Executive Suite. It's got snarky Barbara Stanwyck, and I do like snark. They're both good!)

110/2421. The Cases of Mystery Lane (2023)
112/2423. The Cases of Mystery Lane: Death Is Listening (2024)
These are essentially television detective procedurals with a variation on the sitcom cliche of a clueless husband paired with an inexplicitly competent wife. (Arranged marriage?) They're a bit formulaic and silly, but so were the five seasons of Hart to Hart.

111/2422. The Singing Marine (1937)
Dick Powell is the title marine, and the script requires him to be both extra naive and extra worldly, so it never quite comes together. There's not much to recommend here other than Powell's excellent singing voice.

More to come.

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And window sills

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Earlier this year, friend Keith suggested that instead of blogging, I should just post my text messages. So here you go, Keith. This was today's conversation with friend Ken.

3655

For the record, according to StarWars.com, the Death Star's planet-destroying superlaser (more specifically identified as a Concave Dish Composite Beam Superlaser on Wookiepedia, [starwars.fandom.com]) "was powered by a hypermatter reactor, which would generate the destructive reaction that was then focused through eight giant kyber crystals." Which doesn't really answer the question of how large its capacitors were.

The Star Trek Technological Assessment (st-v-sw.net) analysis of the weapon's 8 tributary focusing beams concluded that they could not have been less than 25 meters in diameter. Which is big. Again, not an exact answer, but it's safe to say any bank of Death Star capacitors would have had to have been somewhat larger than the 70MFD capacitor you'd find in a Genie garage door opener.

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Mom is participating in her annual college football bowl game pool, where she tries to correctly predict winners against the spread in every bowl game. I never participate myself, but I do always root for her picks.

The first game of the pool was last Saturday's IS4S Salute to Veterans Bowl (formerly the Camellia Bowl) and Mom picked South Alabama to cover 9.5 points. They very nearly did, if only Western Michigan (which has one of the country's worst bowl game winning percentages) hadn't kicked a late field goal to cut the difference to 7 points at game's end. Those dicks!

The question I was asking myself late in the game was whether gambling on the outcome actually made the game more fun. Yes, I cheered when S. Alabama kicked an extra point to go up by 10, but I found myself rooting against W. Michigan's kicker late.

This is exactly why I don't play fantasy football: cheering for or against individual players to compile stats is not nearly as satisfying as pulling for a team to win a game. I'm sure I would have been at least equally entertained by W. Michigan's attempt at a late comeback if I wasn't counting points and waving my fists in the air at the football gods.

Mom never does great with her picks, in large part because she never picks against a team she wants to see win. I think that's wise. And I still agree with picking against Western Michigan in a bowl game, especially since they are now 2-10 all time. Those dicks!

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Friend James just shared an Internet article that claimed that every time I drink a Coke, my life gets 12 minutes shorter. That's a shame. Friends shouldn't share articles like that.

Let's see, if I've had just one Coke a day (ha!) since I was born, that's at least 215,760 minutes or 159 days that I could have lived and won't. If my fated expiration date is May 23, 2025, I might drop dead before I finish typing this. There's no arguing with that; it's science!

If there's one lesson to be learned from that article, it's that I really should stop procrastinating in posting these Coca-Cola product placement screenshots from recently watched movies that haven't otherwise made it into my movie reviews (either because I had already seen them or I didn't watch enough of the movie to qualify):

Drink Coke! (Some Came Running)
Some Came Running (1958)