Flores could have spewed any number of pithy quotes about stepping up and helping out his fellow man, but I really appreciate the honesty. For admitting that a seemingly selfless benevolent act was actually in his own best interests, he becomes an obvious candidate for the Awesome Fund, should it ever exist. Dude had to get to work, and realized that if a guy got hit by a train it’d be a huge pain in his ass.
Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.
Hope you’re enjoying whatever it is you enjoy on Thanksgiving — turkey, good company, rest, whatever. And if you’re working today (and I’ve been there), I hope you can get enough time to at least sneak in a decent meal.
This site will be dark for a couple days, though there’s another Hall of Fame sandwich on the docket for sometime this weekend.
I think this song has stopped being funny and started being nostalgic. And it’s not the album version, so the title of this blog post makes no sense. But excellent Kevin Nealon work regardless:
I mean I realize that dinosaurs supposedly were more closely related to modern birds than reptiles, but if the Tuatara reproduces like a bird, dates back to the Triassic period and is biologically unique for all sorts of reasons, can’t we just say it’s the last extant dinosaur species, for the hell of it? I mean it’s tiny and completely lame by dinosaur standards, but maybe that would make a good story — only the David Eckstein of dinosaurs survived.
Also, Tuatara is the name of one of the many projects the saxophonist Skerik, one of my favorite musicians.
Long tweet so bear with me. The 10000th tweet contest for 4 tickets to Thurs. game will require you to do the #JETS chant while wearing green in a location in NYC (btw 48th and 42nd streets) tomorrow at 11am. With the 10000th tweet I will tell you the location. The winner will be the first to do the chant. Good luck!
I would totally do this if I wasn’t going to be at the Terry Collins presser tomorrow morning and didn’t have plans for Thanksgiving.
The big surprise, though, is while you’re doing the J-E-T-S chant Nick Mangold pops up out of nowhere and pancake-blocks you.
Katherine — who reads TedQuarters for the sandwich reviews even though she’s not a sports fan — sent along the following Google map, which plots and color-codes every sandwich in the five boroughs that I’ve reviewed here.
The Hall of Fame sandwiches are in blue. Sandwiches receiving 80-89 ratings are in green, 70-79 are yellow, and 60-69 are pink.
This might be my proudest blogger moment. Finally, my efforts are legitimized.
View TedQuarters Sandwich of the Week in a larger map
Both Josh and Scott pointed out this breaking news update on anti-matter. For the first time ever, scientists have figured out how to trap it long enough to study it, which is exciting. The next step is to shoot lasers at it, obviously. For all I know, there’s some sensible reason to try that out, but I think being a scientist means never having to explain why you want to shoot lasers at stuff.
Eric emailed me to tip me off about a certain Mets-article I’ll probably tackle tomorrow, then we got into a back-in-forth about blogs as media watchdogs that made me laugh.
He wrote:
My friends and I talk half seriously about a site devoted to covering the NY media, because there’s so much of this stuff. Unfortunately we also talk completely seriously about the fact that we’re probably too lazy to do it right.
I responded:
I think it’d be really funny to keep a blog entirely dedicated to critiquing Phil Mushnick, Bob Raissman, Richard Sandomir and Neil Best -– the NY sports-media critics –- just for the sake of meta-ness.
To which Eric said:
My favorite thing about those guys is how many levels removed they are from what a traditional society would consider real work. You have a bunch of men whose profession it is to hit a ball with a stick for the amusement of others. In turn you have men whose profession it is to write stories about said ball/stick games. And then you have Mushnick, whose profession is to write stories about the men who write stories about the ball/stick games. I might just start the blog you’re proposing – If I’m successful, I could be a whole four steps away from anything that adds value to society. Then again, I’m a lawyer, so I probably have that covered already.
When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very good,” the people having sex gave an average rating of 90. That was a good 15 points higher than the next-best activity, exercising, which was followed closely by conversation, listening to music, taking a walk, eating, praying and meditating, cooking, shopping, taking care of one’s children and reading. Near the bottom of the list were personal grooming, commuting and working….
On average throughout all the quarter-million responses, minds were wandering 47 percent of the time. That figure surprised the researchers, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert.
“I find it kind of weird now to look down a crowded street and realize that half the people aren’t really there,” Dr. Gilbert says….
Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else. In fact, whether and where their minds wandered was a better predictor of happiness than what they were doing.
OK, first of all, Harvard researchers: Perhaps you can’t comprehend this from the comforts of your ivory tower, but none of the people who said they were having sex was actually having sex. No one’s stopping to answer your damn iPhone survey. I can practically guarantee that every single one of those respondents was a giggling middle-schooler.
Second, what? Just… what? So you’re trying to make broad sweeping conclusions about a field as complex and mysterious as psychology by asking people to rate their feelings on a scale of 1-to-100? What does that even mean?
How do I know how happy I am right now, out of 100? I’m pretty happy, but maybe I’ve never even achieved 100 happiness. And if my current psychological state is just amusement at how stupid your study is, does that count as happiness, even if it’s inherently snarky happiness? It’s all completely arbitrary.
Besides — you’re telling me that people whose minds wander are less happy. But how is it even possible to truly rate your current feelings on a 1-to-100 scale without comparing it to the ways you’ve felt at other times in your life? And then, if you’re thinking about those other times, isn’t your mind wandering?
And the quote from Dr. Gilbert. Really? So if I’m walking down the street and I’m thinking about anything besides walking down the street, that means I’m not really there? What? Is my mind not part of my physical person? I’m there, in the flesh, on the street. So is my mind. I just have other things to think about besides, “derp dee derp derp derp, I’m a walkin’ down the street!”
In fact, I often go for walks specifically to let my mind wander. And I love the walks when I am able to let my thoughts stray far from the activity and my physical setting, on tangents off tangents. Those are the times I feel most creative and confident.
So how about this, Harvard researchers: You continue your dumbf@#$ studies, and please, be mindful of every step along the way. When you make photocopies of your findings, just stand there by the photocopier thinking, “makin’ copies; makin’ copies; makin copies,” with every new print.
I’ll be here, daydreaming my damn life away and enjoying every minute of it.
Look: I don’t want to make light of binge drinking, at all. I recognize that alcohol can be just as dangerous as plenty of illegal drugs, and is responsible for all sorts of heartache, injury, illness, death, pain, everything. And, truth be told, I don’t drink all that much or all that often.
But I couldn’t help but feel some sympathy for the fellow whose picture accompanied the print edition of the Daily News’ feature on New York’s “BOOZE EPIDEMIC!” today.
The caption says, “Pitiful sight of empty bottles and a drunken man illustrates the depth of the growing drinking problem revealed in a new city Health Department survey.”
And the guy looks like this:
I mean, let he who has not passed out in the corner of someone’s apartment among a pile of empty bottles cast the first stone.
Even when I do drink I’m not really a wine guy, and I’m not certain wine is typically associated with binge drinking, but if this guy’s into drinking five full bottles of wine and two bottles of beer before knocking off in the corner, I’m in no position to judge.
Who knows what happened to him earlier that day? Perhaps he got dumped by his significant other, lost his job, or watched the Giants lose to the Cowboys on Sunday.
Or maybe, he was working in his job at a stock-photo provider, and someone was like, “Hey Frank, you wanna pose for a picture of a passed-out drunk guy?” And Frank agreed that would be pretty hilarious, so he pretended to sleep in the corner while the photographers set up a bunch of empty wine bottles around him, taking care to make sure none of the labels faced the camera.
Anyway, if by any slim chance anyone knows this guy, please let me know. He’s ripe for an interview. Perhaps we can coach him through his problems.
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Tedquarters 