Scott Adcox

The Death of Global Warming – I don’t think it’s dead just yet. Just like in a bad horror movie, it will make one last effort to grab us by the ankle and stab us in the knee. Or something painful like that.

Iran News in February. – If this involves a Segway or an iPad I’m going to be very disappointed.

The 25 Hottest Olympians To Watch For – Ok.Fine. I’ll watch.

Wanna Buy Lane Kiffin’s House? – I propose a group of boosters get together to purchase this place. Then invite 100,000 of their closest friends over and roast marshmallows as it burns to the ground.

Free in Tennessee – German Homeschooling Asylum – Speechless. For whatever reason this family chose to homeschool, I’m glad they found a place they are allowed to do so.

Do More, Buy Less – A huge positive from a recession. This goes hand in hand with the fact that people are saving more. I’m still amazed that people at the top continue to contend that the answer is to “get credit flowing again.” Well, I’m not really shocked that they say it. That’s what benefits them and their friends. But I am amazed that so many people buy it hook line and sinker.

Google and HTC Working On a Chrome OS Tablet – Want.

Crunchy French Toast – This is now the official French toast recipe of our household. We’ll only be using the cream after long runs though.

50 Things we know now that we didn’t know this time last year – To be honest, I’ve suspected at least 34 of these things for a few years. I just wasn’t able to prove them.

Global Warming Won’t Prevent Ice Age – If it ain’t one thing with these climate fanboys it’s another.

Four UT basketball players face drug and weapon charges – I have an idea for college basketball players with aspirations of making it to the NBA. Lay off the weed for just four years. Once you get into the NBA you can do pretty much anything you want. I don’t really care what you do as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, but if you’re going to take the money you have to play by the rules made by the people who write the checks.

Web 2.0 Suicide Machine – What we really need is a Web 2.0 homicide machine. Only those with strong passwords survive!!!! I predict Web 2.0 homicide will be a big trend in 2010.

Are we any better off now than we were 10 years ago? Ok, just had to ask that because it seems like the thing to do. I know that for a lot of people the answer is a definite “no”. As for me, I’m infinitely better off than I was then. The last decade has been one of tremendous technological advancement, but there’s plenty to lament. Here’s my list of 10 things I had 10 years ago that I’ll probably never have access to again.

1. The ability to remember phone numbers. I still remember both of my grandmothers’ phone numbers from when I was a kid, but thanks to these fancy schmancy mobile devices, I can only remember a handful now. And if I met you in the last 10 years, you’re lucky if I can even guess your area code.
2. Mix tapes. Yeah, we could burn CDs for some of the 90s, but what the hell were you supposed to listen to in the car? Because chances are you were driving a car made in the early 90s at the latest, and it didn’t have a CD player in it.
3. My knees. This one is obvious. There’s nothing worse than tackling a young guy, hearing the breath leave his lungs as his back slams into the pitch, then watching from the ground as he trots away on his springy legs. The only thing that keeps me going is the fact that he’s going to get old too and probably won’t fare as well as I have.
4. Bill Clinton as President. As much as it pains me to type it, I’d prefer any Clinton (Bill, Hillary, Chelsey, George, any of them) to what we have now. Sure, it’s not the optimal situation, but beggars can’t be choosers.
5. My Thursday afternoon job bottling beer. One of the best jobs I ever had was helping the guys at New Knoxville Brewing Company bottle beer on Thursdays. There was no money involved, but I was promised I’d achieve total inebriation on my death bed. So I got that going for me, which is good. Fortunately, that’s yet to come to fruition, but we were allowed to carry out a couple of cases of “shorties” (bottles that weren’t completely filled and weren’t worth a label) every day. Good times.
6. Waylon Mothergrabbin’ Jennings
7. Tables. Back in the 90s, you could load a website down with embedded table after embedded table, then fill those tables with sliced images that the browser magically placed back together and no one thought a thing about it. Put just one table into a site now and you are getting beat with a USB cable.
8. When a girl could still cook, and still would. I had to throw that in there for Merle Haggard, but actually, this one happens to be the opposite for me. I don’t think I knew a girl in the 90s who could really cook. Not so now. I’m very well fed, and I look the part. But my girl couldn’t cook back in the 90s–this is a newly acquired skill. So if I could go back to the 90s version of her (the one that was over 18), I’d probably be much thinner. That’s logical, right?
9. New episodes of Seinfeld. I have some of the seasons on DVD. It’s not the same. Scott is gettin’ angry.
10. Free international travel. During the 90s I got to go to Europe and Asia to work on projects for weeks, which meant weekends on vacation in Europe and Asia. Even better–the companies I was working for footed the bill and provided per diems for expenses. Damn you Webex and remote login. Damn you straight to hell. Just kidding…except for the travel thing, Webex and remote login have made my life better in more ways than I can count.

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On behalf of bitter old men everywhere, I’d like to thank Michael Jordan for participating in the 2009 NBA Hall Of Fame speechin‘.

When Jordan should’ve thanked the Bulls’ ex-GM, Jerry Krause, for surrounding him with championship coaches and talent, he ridiculed him. It was me, Jordan was saying. Not him. “The organization didn’t play with the flu in Utah,” Jordan grumbled.

Club sports will one day reign supreme.

The media is once again distorting facts, this time about President Obama making triple bogey while golfing.

Let’s set the record straight. The foursome he was playing in took 19 strokes on the par 4 hole collectively. Once the strokes were redistributed amongst the four gentleman they all scored the hole as a par.

Out of fairness, the remaining three strokes were cut up and distributed to secret service agents, a greens keeper, and a chick driving a beer cart. These strokes will be applied to their next round of golf without penalty provided they are used before November 30, 2009. After that they will go to the public kitty where amateur golfers playing on the nations public courses will be charged with one penalty stroke or pay an 1% luxury tax on their greens fees for the 2010 tax year.

What’s important is that the economy, the climate, and 8 baby seals were all rescued in the process.

I don’t keep up with baseball anymore, but Michael Silence brought my attention to an unassisted triple play over the weekend.

When you’ve had an athletic career as long and decorated as mine (I’ll pause for you to finish laughing) that’s been so well documented (again, laughter) it’s sad to say the highlight, if it can be called that, occurred as a five year old in tee-ball. Yeah, I turned an unassisted triple play in tee-ball. You have to remember that when we were kids the only real rule difference between baseball and tee-ball was the tee itself.

I was playing shortstop and there were runners on 1st and 2nd. I ran into the space (is it really the “outfield” in T-ball?) to catch a pop up as the runners were heading to 3rd and 2nd. Luckily, I understood the rules of baseball at an early age, even though these poor kids didn’t. So all I had to do was run over and step on 2nd and tag the runner coming from first (h kept running right for me). Voila! Triple play!

If you played for “the orange team”–we didn’t have a sponsor–you may remember it. However, you were only 5 or 6 years old, so I’ll forgive you for forgetting.

Not the Security and Exchange Commission–I’ll straighten them out next week. I’m talking about the Southeastern Conference.

Now, these are just the simple-minded observations from someone with absolutely no formal training in marketing:

• If someone is excited about your product and wants to talk about it, you should be happy.
• If someone is excited about your product and wants to talk about it, you should encourage them.
• No matter who you are, you have bigger PR problems than someone who is excited about your product telling the world about it.

Michael Silence has been diligent in covering their decision to threaten bloggers, Tweeple, people with phones, and YouTubers, and you can get a ton of information on this from him and others.

I’m not into watching sports as much as I used to be. Like, hardly at all. But I saw two interesting things about sports today.

First, check out the card for UFC 100–the biggest event in the history of the UFC.

• 265: Brock Lesnar (c) (265) vs. Frank Mir (c) (245)
  UFC Heavyweight Championship Unification
• 170: Georges St-Pierre (c) (170) vs. Thiago Alves (170)
  UFC Welterweight Championship
• 185: Dan Henderson (185) vs. Michael Bisping (186)
• 185: Yoshihiro Akiyama (185) vs. Alan Belcher (186)
• 170: Jon Fitch (170) vs. Paulo Thiago (170)
• 205: Mark Coleman (205) vs. Stephan Bonnar (205)
• 155: Mac Danzig (154) vs. Jim Miller (155)
• 205: Jon Jones (206) vs. Jake O’Brien (206)
• 170: Dong Hyun Kim (171) vs. T.J. Grant (170)
• 185: C.B. Dollaway (186) vs. Tom Lawlor (184)
• 155: Matt Grice (155) vs. Shannon Gugerty (156)

What would you have said 3 or 4 years ago if I told you that the light heavyweight fight at the UFC’s biggest event ever would get 6th billing and would feature Stephan Bonnar as its top name?

The UFC is all about the welterweights right now, huh?

The second cool thing I saw today was in a tweet from @alyssa_milano on 11 things that have happened only once in MLB. I was shocked at how many of these are from the recent past and how many of them I actually remember. But this was my favorite:

During the September 4th, 1908, game between the Tigers and Cleveland Indians, Schaefer was on first and a teammate was on third. The Tigers wanted to do a double steal — Schaefer would break for second, and, when the Indians tried to throw him out, his teammate would steal home. But when Schaefer broke for second, the Indians’ catcher didn’t make the throw, so Schaefer stole the base without the run scoring.

That wasn’t the plan so, on the next pitch, he broke back for first… and successfully stole it without a throw. Then, on the next pitch, he broke for second AGAIN, to try to make the double steal work… but again, the Indians didn’t throw.

That makes him the only player in MLB history to steal the same base twice in one inning. (And one of only two players to ever steal first base from second.)