This won’t really mean much of anything to regular blog readers, but over on Twitter, the quirky little community of mid-major obsessives orbiting The Mid-Majority is having a blast trying to “find” Kyle Whelliston, “Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego”-style, based on hints he’s dropped while hiding from “The Knowledge” (of who won the Super Bowl) during his annual “Last Man” game.
More Reason to PANIC!!!
As if global warming, er, cooling … “climate change” isn’t a big enough reason to PANIC!!!, now we have the magnetic poles flipping:
Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun’s magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet’s own magnetic field.
When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose.
Evidently Earth’s magnetic poles switch periodically, with the north pole becoming the south, and vice versa. By “periodically,” scientists mean that
[o]n average, such reversals take place every 500,000 years, but there is no discernible pattern. Flips have happened as close together as 50,000 years, though the last one was 780,000 years ago.
In other words, we’re overdue. And according to the article, if recent storms are any indication, we could be in the midst of such a flip. Plus, there’s this:
The Earth’s northern magnetic pole was moving towards Russia at a rate of about five miles annually. That progression to the East had been happening for decades.
Suddenly, in the past decade the rate sped up. Now the magnetic pole is shifting East at a rate of 40 miles annually, an increase of 800 percent. And it continues to accelerate.
As Brendan would say, PANIC!!!
Super Bowl open thread
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I’ll be at a Super Bowl party this afternoon, and likely won’t be doing much live-tweeting (though any tweets I do post will, of course, appear at left), so I’m not going to set up an auto-importing live-blog thingy. But if anyone wants to comment on the game (or the commercials), here’s the place to do it. Go, uh, Packers! I guess! (Because half of my family is from Wisconsin, and, um, I like cheese.)
From Pioneer Pulse to @PioneerPulse
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College basketball is a funny sport. Something like 40 percent of the regular season takes place in November and December, when almost nobody is paying attention. Another big chunk happens in January, when football still dominates the national conversation. Only once the Super Bowl ends, and March Madness becomes the “next big thing” on the sports calendar, do casual fans really start paying attention.
Knowing this, my original plan was that February would be the month when Pioneer Pulse really takes off. I’d do some more in-depth and featurey type blog posts, I’d try more aggressively to advertise the site to potentially interested DU and Denver types, and I’d generally gear up for the coming push toward the postseason.
Alas, the opposite is going to be true. For personal reasons wholly unrelated to the team or the season or basketball, I’m going to need to take a step back from my DU blogging for the rest of the regular season — we’ll cross the March bridge when we come to it — and let my new @PioneerPulse Twitter account do the heavy lifting through February.
I’m sure the blog’s dozen regular readers are crushed. 🙂
Denver-ArkSt liveblog
After a heartbreaking overtime loss Thursday at Arkansas-Little Rock, the Denver Pioneers face a crucial test tonight at Arkansas State — a team the Pioneers beat at home by 38 points two weeks ago, but one that is clearly better than it played that day. The game in Jonesboro tips at 6pm MST. Denver is 7-2 in conference, while Arkansas State is 6-4, so a Pioneer loss would make the Sun Belt’s West division a race again, with Denver holding just a half-game lead. A win, by contrast, would solidify Denver’s huge divisional edge, and put them in position to catch Florida Atlantic (9-1) as the overall conference leader (in position for the NIT autobid) with a win over FAU at Magness on Thursday. So, this is a big game.
Any tweets by my new Denver-specific Twitter account, @PioneerPulse, will appear below. Live-tweeting will likely be limited somewhat by the girls’ 7pm bedtimes, but I’ll do my best. 🙂 Alternatively, here’s the official liveblog from the Denver SID folks.
You can join the conversation by tweeting something “@PioneerPulse.”
[game over, tweetbox removed]
DU-UALR and National #Pixelvision Day liveblog
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Denver travels to Arkansas-Little Rock in a crucial game tonight at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. My live-tweeting will be limited by the girls’ bedtimes, but I’ll do my best. Meanwhile, it’s National Pixelvision Day!!! I’ll be live-#pixelvision-tweeting the Irvine vs. Fullerton game at 8:00 PM. Anyway, you can see the magic unfold below. (And if you reply, please tag your tweets with #pixelvision so we can make this sucker trend!!!) See also the OFFICIAL #pixelvision live-chat, of which this is but a pale imitation.
Brendan and DU Bally’s Excellent
Above-the-Red-Line Adventure:
Jimmer @ Wyoming, SDSU @ CSU
Well… that was one of the nuttiest things I’ve ever done. But so much fun. Totally worth it. My most memorable basketball experience since BracketBusters 2007.
I hope to do a full write-up later. For now, here are two videos, neatly showing the beginning and the end. The first is of DU Bally in Laramie at 6:02 PM, watching the opening tip of BYU-Wyoming. The second is the view, from my seat in Fort Collins at 9:11 PM, of the thrilling final moments SDSU-CSU, as the Rams tie the game and the crowd erupts, then the Aztecs win it and the crowd deflates. Absolutely awesome atmosphere at Moby Arena. Phenomenal college basketball experience.
(For a full view of the action, you may want to change the resolution on the CSU-SDSU video from its default 360p to 760p (HD), and blow it up to full screen.)
Anyway, like I said, more later (in a new post). After the jump, the original post introducing today’s “Excellent Adventure.”
A most excellent adventure
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This isn’t technically DU-related, but over on The Living Room Times, I’m liveblogging a basketball road trip to Laramie and (hopefully) Fort Collins with the Pioneer Pulse mascot, DU Bally, and me. Tune in!
The Mid-Majority needs you!
DU Bally, official mascot of Pioneer Pulse, sez: Buy a Mid-Majority membership! Help get Kyle and Bally (the original Bally) out to DU’s Magness Arena (maybe) and the Mountain Time Zone (definitely)! Also, you get stuff! It’s like an NPR membership, except better, because it involves mid-major hoops!
Baby, it’s cold outside
Really, really cold:
