Chuck Klosterman has a brilliant essay out about what I’ve been unofficially calling the ‘Tom Brady Effect’- the strange paradox of grimly predicting a Patriot’s victory while secretly hoping they lose.

A sample:

If the Patriots win, they will just become this thing that scorched the earth for five months before capturing a trophy that was never in doubt. Future historians will describe this New England team as if it were a machine. Everyone will concede the Pats’ superlative greatness, but the 19 wins will be just a collection of numbers. But if they lose — especially if they lose late — the New England Patriots will be the most memorable collection of individuals in the history of pro football. They will prove that nothing in this world is guaranteed, that past returns do not guarantee future results, that failure is what ultimately defines us and that Gisele will probably date a bunch of other dudes in her life, because man is eternally fallible.

Klosterman is epic. Go read the whole column. Then buy some of his books.

If your mind is easily exploded by rampant dumbassery, you may want to stop reading now.

Last Thursday, the National Post reported that ‘Canadian’ is now used as a racial epithet in the American South. And today, Gawker has picked up the story. Apparently, Southern bigots were tired of all the bad PR surrounding the N-word, and decided to adopt something new. How sneaky. And by sneaky I mean ‘completely idiotic’. Read the rest of this entry »

Today marks the 50th anniversary of everyone’s favourite building block and/or choking hazard, LEGO. To celebrate, the Danish toy brickmaker will be holding an international competition to find the best Lego Builder in the world. I would totally enter, except I think I’m a bit too old. And I suffered that near career-ending finger injury during the ’97 finals. OK, not really.

But absent an international competition, I’ll be marking the occasion by spending some idle afternoon in my parent’s basement building some sort of a fanciful spacecraft out of coloured bricks, much the way I spent most of my youth. Yeah. LEGO rocks.

[UPDATE] Check out Boing Boing Gadgets for a PDF timeline of Lego-y goodness.

The receipts have been tallied, and COD 4 is the best-selling game of 2007. The first-person shooter smashed sales records, clearing a staggering seven million units since its debut in November.

Lest anyone accuse me of being disloyal to my first love, Halo,  I should point out that the further adventures of the Master Chief grossed $170 million in its first day of release, setting a one-day sales record for any medium, anytime (it even beat Spiderman 3).

I would say more about the awesomeness of COD 4, but I’m, you know, too busy playing COD 4.

The web-collective (don’t worry, I won’t call you ‘hackers’ anymore) Anonymous has posted up another message for the Church of Scientology:

Interesting that they’re trying to translate on online protest into a real space event. Will anyone show up to protest on February 10? Will Anonymous accompany the protest with more online attacks? I guess we’ll see.