Random Thoughts 10/25/07

• Did you catch Senator McCain slapping down Hillary to thunderous applause last weekend? I probably wouldn't vote for McCain but you have to respect him.
• How interesting! Brett Favre, Peyton Manning, and Tom Brady are each only one game away from being the first quarterbacks to beat 31 NFL teams. Manning and Brady can achieve this goal this week as Manning plays the Panthers and Brady plays the Redskins. Favre can finally beat the Chiefs next week. In each of these cases, these QBs only play these opponents once every four years. These three QBs also have the three longest streaks for starting games at their position: 243 games (Favre), 150 games (Manning), and 101 games (Brady).
• We'll be taking the boys back to Union Station again this Christmas; it's an enormous, intriguing, and historical place to visit. But have you read about the Kansas City Massacre? Supposedly you can see machine gun bullet pock marks on the outside of the building, but I've never seen any convincing evidence.
• Oh yeah, the Raiders have still not beaten the Chiefs, Broncos, or Chargers since November of 2004. Mmm, that feels good.
• Rumors abound that Al Gore, Oscar-winner and Nobel laureate, may be selected as the running-mate for Obama. An Obama-Gore ticket? Yeah, Hillary will savage them, chewing them up and spitting them out before they ever get that far.
• First-class stamps went up to 41¢ this year and again everyone complained. But did you know that, adjusted for inflation, postage has stayed the same for most of the last 120 years? This chart shows how even when stamps were two or three cents a century ago it was equivalent to about 40-45 cents today. In the 1920's and 1950's postage dipped to about half of today's price, but ever since the 1970's the cost of postage has been roughly the same, while the nominal price has risen from 10¢ to 41¢.