The seasons are starting to change in St. Louis. The weather is getting cooler, the leaves are changing colors, the Red Sox are starting their yearly choke, and football season begins in 4 brief days. With this in mind, I issue my annual challenge to Lucas, the weekly NFL picks.

My prognostications were quite poor last year, but I'm out to redeem myself if Lucas accepts my challenge.

It's not often that I stray from movies and television to talk about civilized topics like books, but that's what I intend to do this afternoon. If any of you are looking for an interesting read before your classes bog you down with homework and "required reading", you should check out The Language Police by Diane Ravitch, the story of how textbooks and standardized tests are censored by pressure groups.

I requested it at the U-City library 2 months ago and finally got it the other day, so I'm only about halfway done, but so far it's both informative and entertaining. I'm sure all of you remember those reading comprehension questions on standardized tests about esoteric topics like the feeding habits of grasshoppers, traditional customs of indigenous peoples, and the like. This book talks about how these stories get put through the scrubber to make sure there are no stereotypes or examples of bias.

For instance, there can be no stories about snow or cold-weather climates, because these are "unfairly biased against southern students who have never seen snow", elderly people should only be depicted jogging or doing other strenuous activities, and the most absurd of all: the gender and nationality of people in textbook illustrations should match the percentages of each gender and nationality in the last census.

By this standard, the Festival could not be put on a standardized test. In the pictures on my header, for instance, I do not follow the proper census statistics, unless there truly is a 3:4:3:2 of men:women:elephants:tigers in America.

I saw a sign today on Debaliviere Ave. down by the intersection of Delmar that said "Welcome to the Historic Debaliviere Neighborhood". I wasn't aware that our little area had such a rich and diverse history, but I did a little research. I present to you, a short history of Debaliviere:

1452-1519 - Leonardo da Vinci sketches air transport vehicles, cites as his reason "quicker way for man to get from Paris and Rome to Debaliviere".

April 30, 1803 - U.S. acquires Debaliviere along with a whole bunch of other less-consequential land in the Louisiana Purchase in order to establish a key fort to defend against Canadian invasion.

April 12, 1861 - Bloody Civil War begins when northern and southern states argue over whether Debaliviere Neighborhood will have slavery. War ends when a northern army surprises and massacres a battalion of southern soldiers who are attempting to order food from Chinese Express but are unable to get across that they want a "full order" of hot braised chicken rather than "four orders" of hot braised chicken.

1904 - St. Louis World's Fair takes place in Forest Park. Debaliviere hosts the future pavillion, called "Tomorrowland", which features glimpses of life in Debaliviere in the year 2000. People drive around in flying cars, the city is enclosed in a giant glass bubble, and safety glass is invented so that car thieves don't hurt themselves when smashing your windows.

1908 - Henry Ford mass produces the Model T. Two days later, the first incident of car theft in history occurs in Debaliviere when vandals take advantage of a stuck parking gate to push the car out of the lot and down the road into East St. Louis, where they scrap it and sell the parts to buy gold jewelry.

October 29, 1929 - Stock market crashes, hundreds of wealthy businessmen jump out the windows of Apartment 12.

August 12, 1938 - German military mobilizes in preparation for World War II. Secret U-Boat invasion of Debaliviere is only thwarted years later when the Germans surface in the Mississippi River and immediately begin gambling at the President's Casino. They lose all of their war funds within hours.

February 15, 1946 - ENIAC formally dedicated in Pennsylvania. Used by the government to calculate missile trajectories of nuclear warheads fired from secret underground silos in Debaliviere.

1947 - Aliens crash land in Roswell, NM after taking a wrong turn. After years of government interrogation, it is discovered that the aliens were in fact looking for Dirt Cheep Beer and Liquor, which apparently really is the last refuge of the persecuted smoker.

July 20, 1969 - First human walks on the moon and plants a U.S. flag, declaring that the journey is "One Small Step For Man, One Giant Leap for Debaliviere".

August 22, 2003 - U.S. News and World Reports ranks Washington University as the 9th best school in the country, cites proximity to Debaliviere as their primary reason for moving WashU so high in the rankings.

And even the future looks bright...

April, 2010 - First fusion-powered car is stolen from Debaliviere lot.

August, 2013 - Government finally reveals that giant "cell tower" off of Waterman and Clara is actually a weather-control device, the testing of which has caused St. Louis' unpredictable weather patterns for the past 30 years.

September, 2023 - Metrolink expansion is finally completed.

March, 2045 - Forest Park Parkway is finally repaved, although it is rendered irrelevant as humans now pilot flying cars.

April, 2053 - St. Louis reaches critical mass of manhole covers, which cover every square inch of roadway and begin to spread to sidewalks, parking lots, and grassy areas.

Today, Victor, Scott, Ron and I were having a discussion in the lab about the role of cheating at the high school and college level. It seems that many of the new freshmen this year experienced rampant cheating their high schools that, even if it is discovered, goes unpunished.

Back in the Dark Ages, I attended a corrupt private school fraught with favoritism and nepotism (link added for Google's webcrawlers), where both the valedictorian and salutatorian of my graduating class (among others) were caught cheating in Calculus. The entire episode was covered up, however, as one of the cheaters' parents worked at the school and the others' had donated a considerable amount of money to the school and had a haughty southern-money first name.

Part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that when people are paying an institution for an education, they feel like they are also paying for good grades and a good recommendation. "I paid [x] dollars so you could prepare my kid for college, if they get caught cheating they won't be able to get into a good college so why have I paid you anything?" seems to be the attitude. This is a problem.

In reality, when parents pay for a private high school or for college, they are paying for the opportunity to get what they perceive is a better education. If their kid screws it up by cheating, breaking school rules, etc., then it's their own fault. They still got what they paid for, the chance to learn something.

Ron argued that it's not his job as a professor to catch cheaters. It's his job to do research, work with students, and teach them about Computer Science, and indeed it's a waste of his time to go to extreme efforts to thwart those few who choose the less-moral path through school.

However, it's also not fair to those students who work hard or just know the material and get good grades if their neighbor who decompiled code gets the same grade. Sure, the first student gained more knowledge, but in the eyes of any objective outsider, the two students are equal.

Both students are assumed to have a mastery of CSXXX at a top-ten university because of their grades, while this is not actually the case. Shouldn't WashU have a responsibility to its students that pay 30-whatever thousand dollars a year to maintain that their diploma means something and isn't just a piece of paper that everyone who paid 30-whatever thousand dollars a year got just for showing up and surfing the internet for answers?

Nathan has been quite vocal in his blog recently about WashU selling out their students in a race to build buildings and move up in the US News rankings. I can't say I agree with his view, but by having a spineless Academic Integrity policy and not making an effort to find cheaters, isn't the school risking an erosion of its own public image when these people get out into the workplace and don't actually know how to write a Java program or what a design pattern is?

I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on the subject, especially since posting frequency is down all around.

Every day I'm more and more convinced I could write a movie screenplay. Especially after last night's viewing of the new Jackie Chan movie The Medallion, which was the work of 5, count 'em 5 screenwriters.

First a bit of background on the movie. It was made in Hong Kong for $35 million, which is supposedly a huge huge budget for movies there. The goal was to produce a movie in Hong Kong that would also do well in America, and their solution was to make a film more along the lines of Jackie Chans wildly-successful-in-Asia Asian films but also pair him with a comic foil, a formula that has done well in America.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans...

This movie was like a train wreck, in that it was so horribly bad that I couldn't keep my eyes off of it. First of all, the 5 screenwriters thing? Not a good idea. Characters pop in and out of the movie with no explanation, plot points are introduced then promptly forgotten, and seemingly important parts of the back story are never explained.

In one typical scene, Female Sidekick (played adequately by Claire Forlani of Mallrats and Antitrust) is fighting with a whole bunch of bad guys when all of a sudden everything stops and this other woman, previously unseen in the film, appears and assumes a stereotypical "karate stance". The two start fighting (with odd sound effects of cats screeching in the background to signify a "cat fight"), Female Sidekick wins, and Random Other Chick disappears from the movie with no explanation.

The movie also plays it fast and loose with its own mythology. From what I could gather, the idea was that when the two pieces of this medallion were joined by Random Young Asian Boy it had the power to grant eternal life and superhuman powers, but the separate pieces had no such powers. Indeed, Jackie Chain is granted these powers by the medallion, but later the boy also gives the bad guy super powers with only half the medallion (why? nobody knows.), then tells him that he can only be immortal if he gets the other half. After getting it, Jackie uses the other half to kill him. Confused? So was I. Why didn't the boy just use his half to kill him? Why did the boy give him super powers in the first place? Nothing about this movie made much sense.

And to top it all off, half of the movie was dubbed, and the "special effects" consisted of "increase the film speed". Combined, these were very distracting, as I spent half the movie trying to figure out what language it was filmed in, which characters were dubbed and which weren't, and the other half of the movie trying not to get a seizure.

If you're in the mood for a movie with awkwardly bad acting, strange special effects, and a plot that makes no sense, then I highly recommend The Medallion. I give it one star because Jackie Chan is cool, and one star for being by far the strangest thing I have seen on screen all year.

It's 102 degrees outside according to the always-accurate Weather.com, and the heat index is 112. Luckily for me and the plants that I bought for my desk yesterday, I am not outdoors but rather next to a large window cooling unit. Oh those poor freshmen who have to move in today...Ha ha ha ha ha.

Speaking of freshmen moving in, it looks like WashU once again underestimated the time it would take to complete their multitude of construction projects this summer. The roads are still torn apart next to the Music building and outside of Mallinckrodt, the library is as unsightly as it has been for the last year and whatever, and I haven't been to the South 40 recently but I'm pretty sure that the new dorm with a view of Center Court still isn't finished, and even if it was there would be nowhere for anyone to park.

But the flowers are blooming anyway outside of Eads and out front of Brookings, signifying the arrival of parents. For a few days at least, the food will be good and the freshmen will be wide-eyed and sober. Until they melt into the pavement.

If I get one more of these SoBig.F worm emails in my CEC inbox I'm going to snap and go on a rampage. Last night between midnight and 8:30 AM I got 27 emails, of which 25 were this worm.

On a somewhat related topic, I know CEC has spamassassin installed. Does anyone know how to set it up on your user account so it filters spam into a separate folder? I'm getting kind of tired of reading about how now is the best time to refinance my home.

If you haven't noticed, Monopaddle Hydrolocomotion and Lackluster Reality have been removed from my link bar. Due to lack of posting (and in one case lack of a website), Ben and Christie have been banished to the land of wind and ghosts. Only a resumption of posting can restore them to their former lofty position.

Well I'm back after a self-imposed break from posting and email while I was in Flore-da. Here's a wrapup of what happened in the world while I was offline:

-A blackout, most likely caused singlehandedly by the power consumption of Apartment 12, ravaged the northeast and parts of Canadia.

-Some guy I've never heard of won the PGA Championship, subjecting me to incessant boring golf talk on Pardon the Interruption once it returns next week.

-Michael Vick broke his leg and Jimmy Smith got suspended for drug use, totally screwing up my rankings for our fantasy football draft next week and forcing sportscasters to talk about someone besides Michael Vick.

-A bunch of really crappy movies came out that I will never see, including Freddy vs. Jason: Yet Another Nightmare in This Endless String of Movies that Haven't Been Popular Since the Early 80's, Brittany Murphy Looks and Acts Like a Little Kid, Freaky Friday Remade for the 8th Time, and Open Range: Written, Directed, Produced, and Ruined By Kevin Costner.

-Lucas posted, an event quickly becoming as rare as posts by James or Red Sox victories.

Tomorrow I embark upon yet another trip to the Sunshine State. This means not one but two flights tomorrow (Carjacking Central -> Tampa, Tampa -> West Palm "Where Your Vote Counts 3 Times...Or Not at All" Beach) and, this is the best part, flying through a Tropical Wave.

Sure, Weather.com may claim that it will be "clear" tomorrow night when my plane finally arrives after a 2 hour flight and a 4 hour layover in Tampa, but the newscasters in Florida have collapsed into full panic mode already. David puts my chances of surviving the plane flight at "50/50", but if the weather is bad and the flights start getting delayed, I might not go at all, and instead take a much deserved couple of days vacation here in St. Louis, trying not to get carjacked and getting ready for the Fantasy Football season.

Thanks to Apartment 12's proximity to a (mostly-empty) office complex, I am awakened every Monday morning by the trashmen emptying the dumpsters in their noisy truck. This would normally be preferable to awaking to a buzzing alarm, but I do not normally set my alarm for 5:30 AM. Aren't there some sort of noise ordinances that are supposed to prevent stuff like this from happening? If I went out at 5:30 AM with an air horn and ran up and down the street with it, someone would call the cops and they'd make me stop. With tasers if necessary. Does anyone know the proper avenues to pursue in order to get the noisy garbagemen to at least wait until the sun comes up?

Anime Amy often posts reviews of restaurants that she attends, expounding on the virtues of their wine list and culinary selections. I thought I'd try and be Amy for a day and post about my recent restaurant experience: dinner at Fazolis.

It's clear from the advertisements that the food comes second at Fazolis. The breadsticks are obviously their main draw, and they did not disappoint. Most people don't know about this, but if you dine at a standalone (non-mall) Fazolis, a helpful employee will bring a basket of breadsticks (usually the old ones they're trying to get rid of) around to each table and serve them to you. I'm a big fan of this policy, and the only better thing I could think of would be if the waiter actually put them in my mouth for me. This way I would expend the least amount of effort to enjoy the buttery goodness.

However, it was not all smiles and free breadsticks at Fazolis. Eileen and I both had one of their "Signature Pasta Dishes", signature presumably because they are the most expensive items on the menu ($4.00). Eileen partook in some sort of garden vegetable penne something-or-other, while I chose the spicy chicken and marinara penne.

Both of our pastas were underdone to the point of crunchiness. I have had their pasta before, and I've always felt I've gotten a decent meal considering the price and the fact that it's basically fast food pasta, but this was horrible. The flavor was off, the pasta was crunchy, and I didn't even finish my small portion. It was bad enough to overshadow the goodness of the breadsticks and leave me with a bad taste in my mouth.

The drink selection was the standard fountain drink fare, along with some smoothie-looking things. I chose the water, and it proved to be a fine vintage with a pleasant bouquet and good body.

All in all, I give the Fazolis on Chippewa 2 Stars. One star for their breadstick policy, and another for their proximity to Ted Drewes.

Before I start this post, I'd like to point out that Lucas' and my favorite NBA player, Nene Hilario, has dropped the "Hilario" in favor of just Nene. I don't understand why anyone with such a kick-ass name would dare mess with perfection...

But now on to the real topic of tonight's post: the California governor's race. It seems things are getting out of hand and everyone thinks they're qualified to be governor: Gallagher, Larry Flynt, former Bryan 503 poster-boy Arnold Schwarzenegger, and even Gary Coleman. Former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth is even rumored to be joining the party. Who's next, Pete Rose?

Arnold is looking to be the strongest candidate right now, and if the position were Governor of Gold's Gym he would certainly be the most qualified, but there's still time before tomorrow's deadline for my dark horse candidate to emerge and win the voter's hearts: G.I. Joe.

In this time of international crisis, who better to lead our nation to victory over terrorists than G.I. Joe? If he were running Gulf War Part Deux, not only would we have won the war in 30 minutes or less but no one on either side would have gotten killed. Our futuristic laser weaponry would have shot down every Iraqi plane, but all soldiers on both sides would have parachuted to safety.

Plus he knows Sergeant Slaughter.

I have been slighted once again by network television. The other day on Jeopardy, there was a category called "Famous Festivals". I was quite sure that this website would at least be a $200 question, but I was quite surprised to find that I was ousted by such trifles as the "Cannes Film Festival". Do they average 70 hits per day? Do they make NFL picks? I don't think so. I'll play your game, Trebek...

The Big Red Robot and its proprietors leave today for Acapulco, where they will spend 2 weeks tanning, drinking, and enjoying the Mexican nightlife. Well, either that or programming and competing in a robotics competition of some sort. All the robot has to do is act like a grad student: use an elevator, avoid running into people, and give a presentation.

I would like to enter myself in this competition. I can operate most elevators, I don't run into people outside of the basketball court, and I've given a few presentations in my day. Not only that, but I bet I can do all of these things better than any robot in attendance, even one from Carnegie Mellon.

I haven't had a vacation in a long time, not since spring break. I'm going home for a couple of days next week, but I could use 2 weeks of drinking brown water and being sold funny shirts and fake jewelry. Plus, michael, Ashwin, Joe, and Nik wouldn't have to spend most of their hard-earned vacation trying to get me to work properly.

Hello everybody! I just wanted to announce that Chris's archives have been automagically restored, thanks to a little script I wrote. Restoring 396 posts is no easy task, let me tell you. After extracting nearly 1 meg of pure Chris Hill, my script has been acting a bit odd. It keeps complaining about drivers in florida, rooting for the Red Sox, and singing bad love songs. Perhaps we cann use it to replace Chris, after we kidnap him and send him to Russia as a mail-order American groom. After all, there has to be something to balance to flow of mail-order Russian brides.

Anyway, if Chris doesn't immediatly delete this post, I'll let him write his own guest-post on Rubidium, as a show of good faith. The last thing we need is another "H@x0r W@r" to leave the -273 server scorched and barren. Oh, and I swear on my 21'' monitor that I didn't touch any of Chris's other posts (and I'm 99% sure that my script parsed all of them correctly).

Everyone seems to have their archives up and running again except for me. Perhaps in one of my old posts I accidentally threw light on a secret government conspiracy (possibly in one of my rants regarding daylight savings time), and the NSA had to send out a task force to silence Jim and prevent him from revealing the horrible truth by putting the post back online. Or perhaps Jim is just lazy.

Or a ditcher.

I'm sitting here in the lab working on the Powerpoint presentation for my thesis defense (defense date still unknown), and I can't get over how good the presentation looks on this monitor. Ron recently upgraded our monitors from bulky Dell flatscreens to sleek, slim, Samsung 19" flat panel displays that look fantastic. Perhaps I can arrange to give my thesis defense at my desk so that my committee will be so awed by the monitor's clarity and size that they don't notice that much of my thesis is eerily similar to Lucas'.

Or perhaps I could just nonchalantly walk out of the lab with the monitor concealed under a coat or something. As good as it looks here, I think it would look even better in my bedroom...

-Why does Schnucks keep their shampoos, shaving supplies, deoderant, and body washes in the toiletries aisle, while they keep bath soap in the laundry detergent aisle clear across the store?

-How many American Idol episodes will it take before people realize that successful musicians with both talent and staying power cannot be created overnight by three sarcastic judges and 4 million slack-jawed FOX viewers who vote on the finalists?

-In the new anti-movie-piracy ads that are shown before movies, are we really supposed to believe that not downloading Gigli will cause movie studios to start paying their set designers a higher salary?

-Is there any better public restroom than that of Chevy's on Olive? It's like relieving myself in a Sharper Image catalog.

-Why do all Chinese restaurants have a name consisting of any two of the following words: {star, panda, jade, hunan, szechuan, chinese, happy, express, garden}? And for that matter why are there no successful nationwide Chinese franchises like McDonalds or Wendys?

-Is there any better store-bought pasta sauce than Newman's Own Tomato and Fresh Basil Bombolina? As a picky Italian connoisseur brought up on my grandmother's homemade sauce, I never thougt I would settle on a favorite sauce from a jar, but I can safely say that I have. And the best part is that it tastes just as good reheated as it does the first time around.

Yesterday David, James, Eileen, and I saw Pirates of the Caribbean at the Chase Park. There was no one playing the organ in front of the theater before the movie, unfortunately, but the film turned out to be much better than I expected.

This story actually begins a few years back, when some bright Disney executive (or, more likely, underpaid intern) had a thought: "We can't make rides out of any of our movies anymore, since they all suck, so we should start making movies out of our rides." There was hearty laughter around the table, until everyone realized that Disney's animated features no longer had the broad appeal that they once had (see: Treasure Planet) and they were quickly losing the animation market to Pixar.

Thus, a complete disaster was born: Country Bears. But despite this initial setback, the Disney team stayed its course and came out with Theme Park Ride The Movie Par 2: Pirates of the Caribbean.

The good news is that Pirates is actually a good movie with good actors and a (mostly) good plot. However, this is also bad news, since Disney will misinterpret the success as meaning that any old thrown-together idea from a ride will be a great movie, as is evident in the trailer for The Haunted Mansion starring Eddie Murphy.

But back to Pirates of the Caribbean, this movie works because it has the three essentials for any successful movie: Pirates with funny accents, a hot girl, and a monkey. If every movie had these basic ingredients, we would never have to sit through 2 hour train wrecks like Moulin Rouge.

My one quibble with the film is the ending, which has plot holes big enough to drive a British schooner through.

***WARNING: SPOILERS! If you haven't seen the movie yet, gouge out your eyes before scrolling downward***

For upwards of 2 hours and 15 minutes, the British Commodore chases after Captain Johnny Depp and attempts to kill him. In fact, mere minutes before the movie ends, Captain Depp is on the gallows about to be hanged. He once again manages to escape by jumping off a cliff into the ocean, but instead of, say, shooting at him, getting in a boat and rowing after him, or making any effort to capture him, Commodore British Guy just stands there and basically says "eh, let him go". Keep in mind this is someone consumed by rage against pirates, Captain Johnny in particular, for pretty much the entire movie.

Then, to top it all off, Commodore British Guy (it wasn't a very good day for him, apparently) had finally tricked Lady Hot Girl into marrying him (I'm not too good at character names, as you can tell). He spent the whole movie trying to convince her to marry him, but then Sir Main Character proclaims his love for her and the Commodore basically says "eh, go ahead and take her".

I know Disney movies are supposed to have happy endings, but characters are also supposed to have motivations for their actions. Couldn't they have conveniently had the Commodore get killed by the Evil Immortal Pirates Who Never Kill Important Characters? Or fall off the boat and drown? Or get eaten by sharks? Something? Anything besides lose all the pompous pride that they spent 2 hours drilling into our heads that he had?

***End of Spoilers***

But besides that, I highly recommend this movie and give it nine thumbs up. This almost makes up for the sheer horridness that was Country Bears and will be The Haunted Mansion.

Well it looks like I'm back, although some of the others are still filing in slowly. My internship ended yesterday, so back to working in the lab at school and posting more frequently, I hope.

They finally closed the remaining piece of Forest Park Parkway, so now I am completely walled off from all points west of Apartment 12. I sub on Sally Goldman's summer softball team, which plays its games at the JCC just off of Lindbergh. Normally it takes 20 minutes to get there by taking Forest Park to 170 to Olive to Lindbergh, but the other day it took me 45 minutes. I had to detour through Forest Park, down Wydown, and through Clayton just to get to 170. And school isn't even in session right now, imagine the Fall when our horde of speeding frat boys and sorority girls on their cell phones descend upon campus and clog up the two remaining roads we have left. It will take half an hour every day just to get from here to campus.

My solution is a simple one: dig a tunnel from the Apartment 12 parking lot to the Hilltop lot. The entrance on our end will be inside a gate, so it will never be crowded with through traffic, and it give the school an excuse to embark upon another year-long construction project that shows wanton disregard for area residents and businesses. Perhaps it will be done by 2005, when Forest Park reopens.