y'all are so cute

So the other day Mary Carla and I decided to have a mini cook-out and grill some chicken for lunch. My apartment has a little grill just outside my building and a picnic table next to it so that's where we were. With the chicken we decided to grill some fresh asparagus. It was all very good, till MC took a bite of one stalk of asparagus, chewed it a couple times, made a face, then spit it out. Then she tried another bite, couple chews, made a face, spit it out. Then she offers it to me, "here try this." As I'm leaning forward to take a bite of this bad asparagus off of her fork another resident of my apartment complex walks around the corner and declares loudly, "Awww! Y'all are so cute feeding each other! My ex-boyfriend and I used to do that!" In the mean time, I'm unable to spit out the bad asparagus because of how cute we are for her feeding me nasty green vegetables. Timing, it appears, is everything.

"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity." ~~Frank Leahy

Jim Thome, first baseman for the Philadelphia Phillies, recently gave an interview in Sports Illustrated. When they asked him about Jim Thome Drive, by his high school near Peoria, he had this to say..."At time I make a detour to drive down it. I do it every year before I got to spring training. It's a way of keeping me humble." I don't know about you, but it seems to me that going out of your way to drive down a street named after you doesn't exactly scream 'meekness'. Although, according to Jim Thome logic, imagine how full of himself Sadaam Hussain would have been if it wasn't for all those statues and murals of himself he had put up all over Iraq. His ego really would have been out of control then.

"No great genius is without an admixture of madness." ~~Aristotle

So I was reading this article the other day about a 24 year old student in France, Alexis Lemaire, who is now being hailed as the world's greatest human calculator for finding the 13th root of a 200 digit number in less than nine minutes. If you're wondering and too lazy to read the article, the number was...
83689566882369569398373286622256452247267804664938366774973575581573035075704089625288
02385783156837680293493820105634336385559593151445041514949070941909770444930566026840
2771869624155688082648640933
The answer itself was 16 digits long. Oh, and he wasn't allowed to write or type. He did it all in his head. And this wasn't the first time he's amazed nerds around the world. In December he broke the record for finding the 13th root of a 100 digit number. Before Lemaire, the record was 13.55 seconds, held by a German man. Lemaire found his answer in only 3.62 seconds.
The article also (under)states, "According to neurological scientists at Caen University, genius arithmeticians use a different part of the brain from that used by average humans."
Other highlights from the same study by those Caen U scientists were...
--the processors in your computer are more complex than those in your little brother's calculator wrist-watch
--Michael Phelps uses different muscles than the average 400 pound couch-potato
--French chefs use different ingredients than the average college student
--Boeing 747s use different parts than the average paper airplanes
--Donald Trump's Mahattan apartment is more lavish than mine

When Lemaire was asked about the difference between his recent 200 digit accomplishment and the 100 digit feat back in December he said, "It is 100 times more difficult than the record I broke in December
because this time there was only a one in 400,000 billion chance of getting the result by
luck against 1 in 8 million in December." Granted, I'm no arithmetic genius, but it seems to me that if he was able to find the 13th root of a hundred-digit number in only 3 seconds, he could have paused for a second or two during the interview to think of a better comparative than "100 times." One in 8 million to one in 400 billion. Then again, I don't use the same parts of my brain as he does.

Mugatu: I give you, "The Derek Zoolander Center for Kids Who Can't Read Good!"
Derek: What is this? A center for ants? How can we be expected to teach children to learn how to read if they can't even fit inside the building?
Mugatu: Derek, this is just a model...
Derek: I don't wanna hear your excuses! The building has to be atleast... 3 times... that size!

I am away from my computer right now

If there's one thing I like about my friend Pete Bell, it's that his away message is always original. He's never just lazily clicked on "Default Away Message" and left all his IM Buddies wondering what he's up to. Now granted, sometimes we compulsive away-message-checkers are left with no details of his activities, but at least we can shake our heads and say, "That crazy Bell, he's calling himself a weiner in his away message," instead of that boring, boring, boring, boring, "I am away from my computer right now."
And now you know how I feel about that. Thanks, Pete Bell.