Month: December 2002

The Cap Centre (I REFUSE to call it the US Airways Arena) was demolished yesterday at 8:02 A.M. to make way for a new shopping center. What a sad end to an arena that holds some great memories for me. I saw my first concert (Billy Joel, 1989) and my first NHL game (Caps vs. Rangers?) there. I’m not a big NBA fan, but there are many that also know it as the home of the Bullets (the Wizards is the worst name ever!). I think most of all I’ll miss not having to drive all the way into DC for a concert or a Caps game, although Beltway traffic is its own challenge. There are a lot of people mourning the loss of the Cap Centre, and I join them. Baltimore’s Memorial Stadium met the same sad fate in January of this year, although initially there were plans to simply transform the stadium itself into a shopping area. However, in this case the structure was apparently unsound and it was decided to demolish it altogether, although for a time the famous Memorial Stadium facade remained. I remember flying back from New York last year and while flying over was shocked to see that they were in the midst of destroying the stadium. Memorial Stadium holds some precious memories for me; I saw my first Orioles game there back in the ‘70s (against the California [NOT Anaheim] Angels), the first of many. I have to admit that Camden Yards is a much nicer stadium, but that doesn’t diminish the great childhood memories I have of Memorial Stadium. I’ve never seen any NFL game at any stadium :-(, but the legacy of the Colts (and Ravens) goes without saying. I understand the need for (sub)urban revitalization, but I wish there was a way to do so without simply knocking down such icons of culture without any thought to preserving their legacy. At the very least I hope the Memorial Stadium facade is transplanted somewhere as a monument to Baltimore sports. I know I’d visit…

Irish scientists have taken it upon themselves to derive a mathematical formula for the perfect pizza. Images of pizza were “broken down and transformed into a mathematical formula to define the optimal pizza’s base area, spatial ratio between toppings and circularity.” OK, I guess anything that makes pizza better is fine in my book, but what I really want to know is: what is sweetcorn and what is it doing on a pizza?

The New York Times’ 2nd Annual Year In Ideas has a lot of interesting trends that arose in this past year. The actual link is found in the sidebar “The Year In Ideas 2002”, but since it doesn’t seem to be a permanent link I wanted to include both URLs.

Yahoo! reports: Russell Crowe to Wed Longtime Girlfriend.

Read this article by Ben Stein in Forbes Magazine. I’ve always admired Ben Stein, and he makes a lot of good points in the article. Of course, that doesn’t mean that anything will change, unfortunately, but one can hope…

The first controlled, manned flight of an aircraft was made by the Wright Brothers at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. But were they really the first? Although there is no definitive proof, researchers in New Zealand believe that “on or about March 31, 1903, [Richard] ‘Mad Pearse’…flew for about 140 metres before his plane crashed into the gorse hedge surrounding the farm that he never wanted and always neglected.” Apparently Pearse never claimed to be the first:

He never claimed to have truly beaten the Wright brothers, saying he hadn’t met his own exacting standards for “proper … sustained and controlled flight.” His descents were too erratic and his plane, he wrote to the Christchurch Star in 1928, wasn’t fast enough to steer effectively. “I had successful navigation within my grasp … but I decided to give up the struggle as it was useless to try to compete against the men who had factories at their backs.”

In the wake of the approaching hundredth anniversary of manned flight, this is quite a story. However, even if enough evidence is found to prove this claim, it does not change the lasting impact made by the Wright Brothers. I really look forward to attending some of the centennial celebrations in this coming year…

The news that Mel Gibson is set to star in Mad Max 4 was bad enough, but that was nothing compared to this travesty. CNN reports that “Film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. has signed Stallone to write a "Rocky VI” screenplay.“ Now I don’t remember Rocky V all that well, but wasn’t Rocky already in danger of dying because of head injuries from Ivan Drago in Rocky IV? What point can a sequel to the horrible Rocky V serve? Maybe I should just stop asking questions like that, as I am trying to find logic in an industry that often seems to fly in the face of common sense…

Every so often I check the site statistics for all of my pages to make sure that people are actually finding me. Today, I was checking the stats for my 80s page and found out something pretty cool: the main 80s page is the #2 Google result for “80s music!” I’ve been seeing a good amount of hits lately, and I guess this is why. I hate to toot my own horn, but I just think that this is so cool! 🙂

Just when you thought Google was done releasing new toys, Froogle is released in beta mode. Basically, Froogle uses the Google search engine to help shop for things. There are some better sites for that out there, but I already found a rare DVD through Froogle that I hadn’t been able to locate before. It’s worth a look…

GameFAQs is the most comprehensive site for game walkthroughs, cheats, etc. that I have ever come across. And although it covers newer games pretty well, the best part is that it has sections devoted to classic arcade games and systems like the Commodore 64 and ColecoVision. Now *that’s* pretty cool…