Hope you're having a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend...  as the Ole filter makes a pass...

Victor Davis Hanson with some random reasons to feel optimistic.  Excellent stuff.  [ via Powerline ] 

Boy, did you see the 'SC game tonight?  What a demolition!  The final score of 38-3 doesn't tell the whole story, I've never seen a college game at this level which was so one-sided.  As great as they are, it is hard to explain how USC lost to Oregon State - yeah, they did, and so they're not going to play for the championship, boo - but what's harder to explain is how bad Notre Dame has become.  They recruit well (supposedly) and have great coaches (supposedly) and of course a great tradition, but they suck! 

Since Oregon State defeated Oregon (65-38!), if USC beats UCLA next weekend, they go to the Rose Bowl and meet Penn State.  And if they win that game convincingly, they could be voted #1.  It's happened before, remember 2003?

Side note: it was great to see Marc Tyler in the game in the fourth quarter; he's Wendall Tyler's son, and was also Jimmy Clausen's teammate at Oaks Christian High (Alexis' and Megan's school).  Despite playing only one quarter Tyler rushed for more yards (58) than Clausen passed (41).

David Pogue roasts the Storm; No Keyboard? And You Call This a BlackBerry?  "Maybe Storm isn’t such a bad name for this phone. After all - it’s dark, sodden and unpredictable."  Ouch.  I do have to agree, the lack of keyboard is a minus...  it is the iPhone's worst "feature", and there was no reason to copy it. 

Here's some important work; the actual size of the International Space Station compared to various science fiction spaceships...  it is actually amazingly big. 

Stephen Shankland explains Why I switched from Firefox to Chrome.  The quick answer: speed.  And I agree with him, except that Firefox has Adblock, and Chrome doesn't.  Loading all those ads slows the browser down, as well as adding visual cruft.  As soon as Chrome has a way to block ads, it will be game over.  (Stephen did mention the lack of plug-ins for Firefox, but he didn't mention Adblock; you can understand, since CNet is ad-supported...) 

This is pretty cool: Scientists begin to decode whale-speak.  "Australian scientists studying humpback whales sounds say they have begun to decode the whale's mysterious communication system. They say they’ve already identified male 'pick-up lines' as well as motherly warnings."  Just wait, pretty soon we'll be talking to them...  now that would be cool... 

So, I'm pretty proud of the Christmas lights on our house, but thinking about putting them up reminds me of the best lighting display of all time, the magnificent Wizards of Winter from 2005.  The perfect song with the perfect light display, which leaves all us would-be house decorators in awe.  [ via Gerard Vanderleun, who commented "I guess next year all they can do to top it is to blow the whole house off the face of the Earth" - no word on whether they did :) ]  If you haven't seen it - or haven't seen it recently - then please click through.  I love it!