Random Thoughts 7/2/10

• Go Oklahoma State! OSU is starting an initiative to enhance their classes with Apple iPads. The students will replace a $100 paper textbook with an ePub download and investigate how the tablet computer enhances their learning. Personally, I think the iPad is perfect for college students.
• July 4th is nearly upon us. My older boys are starting to reach that age when they are eager to blow stuff up. These are the good ol' days.
• Since Jay Leno's return, "The Tonight Show" is getting its lowest ratings in years and years. Take that NBC.
  
• Rankings of U.S. Presidents are usually stupid. Siena College conducts a survey every eight years of which U.S. President is best and manages to put FDR at the top of list every time. Never mind that his policies, many of which were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court during the 30's, and demonstrably deepened and lengthened the Great Depression, making it worse in 1937-38 than it was 1929-30. Read a history book, people! Look at the actual numbers. This "survey" which supposedly measures such presidential qualities as "imagination" and "luck" is nothing more than a silly popularity contest. Which presidents do liberal, progressive college professors like and hate?
• Fantasy Football is starting soon. I'd like to do an auction-style draft but that's unlikely to be implemented this year.
• Some video games are even slower than movies to develop and produce. Starcraft II is going to be released later this month, twelve years after the original game was released and three years after the project was announced. I would have really enjoyed a sequel to Starcraft… ten years ago.