After reading on the Mental Floss blog that Snap, Crackle, and Pop had a brother named Pow, I lost my afternoon trying to track down evidence. It was relatively easy to discover that the three elves (a baker, a band leader, and a slacker) were created in 1933 as a response to radio advertisement. It was somewhat harder to find evidence for the existence of Pow, who aparently appeared in animated advertisements. But here it is, as provided by John K Stuff. And all that proves is that cereal commercials have always been just fucked up.

[Note: that link above to shamuskrispies.mov is a Quicktime movie link. In my PC browsers, I can't see it, but downloading and watching it on a desktop (i.e. offline) application solved the problem for me.]

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Another year, another Super Bowl. But lest you fear that you don't know enough to make a good pick in your office pool, there's always a celebrity nearby to show you the way. For the 21st year running, Scripps Howard News Service has polled 103 of the world's best and brightest most desperate for attention for their Super Bowl picks. Figuring that there must be some wisdom in the masses, I took a look at the figures:

• Sixty-two of the 103 stars polled (60%), including Haley Joel Osment, who has correctly predicted 9 of the last 10 Super Bowl winners, losing only on the Giants' improbable 2007 victory, took the Colts to win.
• Mode score predicted for the Colts is 35. Mode score predicted for the Saints is 28. Four different celebs picked the Colts 35-28, including Pat Robertson, who apparently still feels that New Orleans will get what it deserves.
• The celebs agree with Las Vegas, culminating in an average over/under of just better than 57 points. A very slight majority, 52 of 103 celebs, took the over.
• The only NFL team owner to have a say in the poll is the Miami Dolphins' Serena Williams, who picks the Colts because she cryptically "knows" Peyton Manning. She was among the 10 celebs who declined to venture a guess at the final score. I could say something very critical here, but she'd no doubt threaten to kill me if I did.
• Average final score predicted: 30-28. The only celebrity to pick the Colts winning 30-28 was Russell Johnson, better known as the Professor on Gilligan's Island.
• The smartest celeb reporting is clearly Dennis Farina: "I hate to bet against Peyton Manning because I think he's probably the best quarterback since Dan Marino." Damn straight, Dennis! For the record, Farina, who previously won the Scripps Super Sage Award for picking the closest final score in the 2005 Super Bowl, picks the Saints, 31-27, which looks an awful lot like 30-28.

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The University of Georgia's football season has been so bad, it killed our mascot: Uga VII died of a heat attack yesterday, November 19, after a mere 23 games as mascot and only 15 months after the death of his predecessor, also from heart failure. Uga VII (born Loran's Best) was only 4 years old at the time of his death and had the shortest reign of all Ugas to date. As a result of his sudden departure, no live mascot will be lounging in his custom-built doghouse for Saturday's prime-time home game against Kentucky.

Though it is too soon to tell, there is an indication that Uga VII may be the last Uga. "There may not be an Uga VIII," said Uga VII's owner, Swann Seiler, in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution, What this means is still up for debate, as reporter Alexis Stevens followed typical AJC procedure and did not follow through on this intriguing line of inquiry, but it would not be unprecedented to have a differently named english bulldog mascot in future seasons. Prior to 1956, Georgia had bulldog mascots named Mike, Butch, and Mr. Angel. And lest we not forget more recently the 1986 temporary Uga IV replacement named Otto. Heck, our next mascot need not necessarily be a bulldog at all.

The historical record reports that Georgia's first football mascot was a goat. Columns, the University's internal newsletter, indicates that inaugural football coach Charles Herty nicknamed the team the "Goats" in February 1892. "At that time the goat was a mascot for everyone," UGA Associate Director of Alumni Relations Charles McBride is quoted in the Jan. 20, 1988 edition of the student-run Red and Black newspaper. "They would just decorate an old goat from the University farm and take it to the game." The Athens Banner-Herald newspaper claims the goat was our mascot for some time, at least two years, though the official mascot may have been the goat for as long as 3 or 4 decades. A paucity of recorded information makes ascertaining the time of the shift between official mascots uncertain, much less the name of that original goat.

According to the University's Athletic Department and other sources, the unnamed live goat was replaced by a bull terrier named Trilby in 1894. From Trilby the University would generate the nickname "bulldogs," which took several decades to saturate the popular consciousness as team mascot despite many people claiming credit for the idea. The Feb. 4, 1938, Red and Black contains reminiscences by Herman J. Stegeman and Robert L. McWhorter -- both men who now have buildings on campus named in their honor -- who debate the exact dates but agree that the team was known internally as the Bulldogs prior to 1921. (Historical note: the game that Stegeman recalls against Yale discussed in the linked article above took place in 1923, not 1921.) The Bulldog was not made the official mascot of the University until a ceremony at halftime of the annual game versus Georgia Tech on Nov. 26, 1938.

While I don't expect a return to the Georgia Goat (a nickname possibly already claimed by current quarterback Joe Cox), I wouldn't be surprised to see a lineage change for the bulldogs. Like the University itself, the Ugas have been growing all too fat and indolent in recent years. Whether the Seilers have tired of the spotlight, the weekly journey from Savannah, or the minefield of internal UGA politics, perhaps a return to the likes of Mr. Angel would do us some good.

So long, Uga VII. It was nice knowing you.

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Three things I learned from the internet:

Lesson 1: Sea-Monkeys® support hate. Harold von Braunhut, the man who in 1957 began marketing brine shrimp -- specifically a patented hybrid involving Artemia salina, used his fortune to support the Aryan Nation. This despite the fact that von Braunhut was born an ethnic Jew. Note: other than Sea-Monkeys, von Braunhut literally holds patents for, among other things, X-Ray Cameras and an aquarium watch. ("A wearer of such a timepiece is then able to contemporaneously tell time and enjoy watching the aquatic pets." Thank you, Google Patents!)

Lesson 2: Eat dolphins and die. Further investigation into the life cycle of the brine shrimp accidentally led me to discover that the Japanese annually hunt dolphins. Many in the East consider dolphin meat to be a delicacy, and the hunting of dolphins continues despite the fact that they frequently contain more than 10 times the legal Japanese allowable tolerance of mercury. Note: Mercury poisoning is blamed for many neurological conditions, one of which may be developing a taste for dolphin meat.

Lesson 3: Mormons control the world's fish supply. Utah is among the world's foremost suppliers of brine shrimp (at one time controlling up to 90% of the market), as the Great Salt Lake is an ideal breeding ground for the little critters. (The brine shrimp is, in fact, the largest animal living in the saline lake.) Commercially, brine shrimp are used as food for birds and farmed aquatic life, biomedical experimentation, and, of course, pets. Brine shrimp fishing on the Great Salt Lake has its own lobby, the Utah Artemia Association, that relies on the tiny organism for life support like a tapeworm. Note: despite their nearly microscopic size, brine shrimp can carry and transmit real tapeworms.

If I can learn all of this, quite by accident, in 5 minutes on the internet, I believe that this clearly demonstrates that it is finally time to stop throwing away money on public education. I never learned anything as interesting or useful in my high school French classes. (What did I learn in French?
Je ne sais pas.)

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As the year end approaches, brace yourself for the deluge of retrospective lists for 2008. For example, it's only the second day of December, but the dam is already bursting:

• Yahoo has announced that "Britney Spears" was their most-searched subject for the fourth consecutive year (which may say more about the remaining users of Yahoo than Britney Spears' popularity).
• Ask.com announced that their top question in 2008 was "how do I get pregnant?" (pushing "what is the meaning of life?" to fall to lowly 7th place).
• Merriam-Webster has announced that the word of the year for 2008, based on online web searches, is "bailout," not "change." (Always a bridesmaid, "misogyny" barely cracks the top 10.)
• iTunes announced that Coldplay sold more digital album downloads than anyone else in 2008. (I suspect that no one even keeps track of cd sales anymore, but I'm sure that there is a list in the works that will prove me wrong.)

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While performing some routine maintenance on Wriphe.com last week, I counted that in the past 60 days my email address had received 17,776 junk emails. That's an average of 8,888 per month, more than 296 per day, more than 12 per hour, or more than 1 spam email every five minutes.

That made me a little curious, so I did some research. In the same 5 minute span between my spam emails, 24 Americans died, 40 Americans were born, 62 Americans were in car accidents, the average American heart beat 350 times, the Earth moved 5,584 miles around the Sun, Americans consumed 1,045,624 servings of Coca-Cola, and the United States Federal Government spent approximately $25,655,864 (before any bailouts).

Now, every time I receive a spam email, I have the urge to spend $25 on a glass of Coke.

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Info-tainment: the following is a lesson in how I learn things.

As I am prone to doing when I get depressed or bored (which I equate to pretty much the same thing), I was looking at pictures of the dilapidated and mostly abandoned urban settings. In this particular case, I was investigating the United States Pavillion at Canada's Expo 67. (World's Fairs are great examples of amazing structures designed for temporary use and then abandoned.) The US pavilion -- a giant geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller and containing the "world's longest escalator" simultaneously promoted American progress in the two most important endeavors in world history, the space race and the movie industry -- was gutted by a fire in 1976. It turns out that by the end of the 70s, the entire remainder of the Expo was in such terrible condition, that it was used as the backdrop for an episode of a Battlestar Galactica set on a post-apocalyptic world ("Greetings from Earth").

Searching the internet for scenes of the Galactica episode in question, I found a flickr page that had jumbled a bunch of vintage Expo 64 and Expo 67 pictures. There I saw a Tyrannosaurus Rex statue that had been displayed at the Sinclair Dinoland exhibit. (Amusing, I think, that an oil company would have an exhibit consisting of life-sized audio-animatronic dinosaurs. That's like a glue factory showcasing an exhibit of horses, isn't it?) Following the history of that T-Rex, I discovered, and here I quote the website of Dinosaur World, a dinosaur attraction with parks in Florida, Kentucky, and Texas:

Of the many movies in which T. rex (the all-time movie star among dinosaurs) has appeared, old T has been brought down only by Superman in The Arctic Giant (1942) and by a Spinosaurus in Jurassic Park III (2001).

So in the end, what have we learned? That's right: the only person to beat a Tyrannosaurus Rex on film was Superman! (Funny, I thought, that I should start with the movie-centric contents of the US Pavillion from Expo 67 and end with movie trivia. But that's how life works, isn't it? I mean, when it's not giving you bone cancer and killing you in house fires, that is. And, let's face it, America is pretty obsessed with Hollywood culture.)

Moving fluidly from point to point through the sea of information that is the internet. That's why we call it "web surfing," James. And that's how you win on Jeopardy!.

P.S. That T. Rex statue in question now resides at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, TX, alongside the Sinclair Dinoland Brontosaurus. And yes, they do know that there was no such thing as a Brontosaurus, but they don't care. That's just how how Dinosaur Valley rolls.

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I love Jeopardy!, but I'm becoming a bit disenchanted by host Alex Trebek's attitude. Each episode, in my least favorite part of each show, Alex responds to almost every contestant's story with what amounts to a pissing contest about how much bigger, better, stronger Alex's life is than the contestant's.

Yes, Alex, you're no doubt much more learned than all but the most hardcore trivia buffs. Yes, Alex, your status as the television icon of the trivia elite has no doubt provided you with many great experiences. And yes, Alex, your family and lifestyle have created many enriching moments to fulfil your grandest hopes.

But, Alex, when a contestant tells you that she prefers Batman comic books, there's simply no need to respond with, "that's too bad, I like Sub-Mariner."

And just like that, Alex found a way to insult the contestant, Batman, and Aquaman in a single snide comment. You'll pay for this, Trebek.

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Not too long ago, I stayed awake until practically daybreak running calculations on the statistics of Risk dice rolls. And because I'm such a great person, I'll share what I learned with you: Always roll as many dice as you can.

Rolling 3 attack dice versus 2 defense dice, the most dice that can be rolled in one attack, the defender will win at least one of the attacker's pieces nearly 73% of the time. (The defender will win both rolls almost 37% of the time to the attacker's 27%.)

In fact, the defender will win at least 1 piece at least 42% of the time, no matter how dice are rolled. The defender will win all of the pieces outright at least 32% of the time. That's almost a full 10% over the attacker in both cases.

If the attacker is worried about attacking and losing any pieces, his opponent must be able to defend with only one die. The attacker has at best a 27% chance of total victory if his opponent is defending with two dice, no matter how many dice the attacker employs. (If the attacker rolls 2 or more dice against his opponent's single die, he'll still win less than 58% of the time.)

So I'd recommend putting at least 2 armies on every territory you control, then play a game of slow and steady expansion, relying on defense rolls and card redemption.

Now, don't you feel smarter? I just feel tired.

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January 4th is National Trivia Day. Oddly, no one on the world wide web seems to know where this holiday came from. January 4th is also Isaac Newton's birthday. Coincidence? Conspiracy? Or merely trivia?

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