J. Michael Andresen

Poor Tiger. His wife was not as forgiving as Kobe Bryant's when his philandering came to light in the press. And golf is a much more a mental game than basketball. Tiger was unable to regroup after being left by his wife and children, and he was shut out of the four major championships. The last major of the season was two weeks ago, and Tiger finished tied for 28th. That means the answer to Question 7 of the 2010 Prognostication Quiz is E. Tiger will win no championships . A whopping 31 entrants were so empathetic with Tiger's pain that they were able to predict his lassitude on the links: Ryan Craig Janette Russell Larry Ron Adrian Gloria Missy Mary C. Stephanie Matthew Rich Zoe Carol Janet Ekrem Cameron Jan Megan Liz Grant Todd Valerie Polly Peter II Cherie Mike F. Tina Sarah Chris C. The 22 of us who thought all the extramarital nookie would energize Tiger this year stand cowed and embarrassed. Ben is especially embarrassed because he is in last place with zero points and ...

FIFA World Cup One of the two pre-tournament favorites, Spain needed two overtime periods to finally score the only goal of the game and beat the Netherlands. In one of the more bizarre human- (or mollusk-) interest stories surrounding the tournament, Paul the Octopus (pictured above) correctly picked eight World Cup games , including the final. The answer to Question 6 of the 2010 Prognostication Quiz is therefore B. Spain . Siete personas chose Espana to prevail: Rachel H. Russell Larry Adrian Matthew Grant Ellen That's an especially sweet point for Matthew, who won last year's quiz but has been shut out of this year's scoring until now. Death We've also had a spate of recent deaths. Lena Horne, Martin Gardner, and Robert Byrd have all gone on to meet their maker. (Isn't there a saying about such things coming in threes?) This means that F , N , and P are added to correct answers to Questions 13-15. Janette, Marcus, and Jan picked Mr. Gardner. Mary C. and Peter...

Max's aunt Tina took a video of him while she was babysitting one day. In one two-minute video she captured a lot of his most recent developmental advances, including following verbal requests. Tina asks Max to cuddle his baby and he is only too happy to oblige. For those Max fanatics out there, I give you three additional videos taken on Max's first long-distance vacation! I had a two-day conference in Boston, so we made it a long weekend and took Max with us. He was quite good on the plane, despite our great fears: he loved looking around and only got fussy when he got tired and we were able to get him to take a nap when that happened. My favorite part was how smitten Max was with our hosts' three-year-old daughter. He kept following her around wherever she went so that he could sneak up and give her hugs when she wasn't looking. She loved the attention at first, but she was quite ready for us to finally leave. Poor Max. Unrequited love at such a young age! Here's...

Max took his first steps on his birthday, when he took three half-falling steps to get from the ottoman to me sitting in a chair. Since then, he has mostly been perfecting his short-distance walking between pieces of furniture in the living room. Last Friday, he suddenly blossomed. He discovered that he has enough balance to go long distances as long as he went relatively slowly. In the intervening week, he has gotten faster and faster. Here he is, showing off his mad skillz:

Some months ago, I received this email: Common Phoenician transportation was by means of ships. Most often Phoenicians would travel by sea on ships called galleys. Galleys ate large ships that can be used either for trade, travel or war. The Phoenicians were one of the first people to make and use galleys along with the Greeks. More than often galleys were used for transportation for trade between varios civilizations such as the Greeks, Syrians and many other civilizations. Galleys were made from wood found in local regions in Phoenician territories. Galleys had large masts that had sails used to propel the galleys via wind power. They also included a set of oars on both sides o the ship so that oarsmen could row the ship when's winds were in unfavorable conditions. As time passed a many renovation to the galley occurred. Biremedes were introduced as an advancement on the original galley. The biremedes were a second row of oars to further increase the rowing capabilities of the ga...

A guest blog post from my co-parent: Max is now more than 1 year old and has clear likes and dislikes. Max Likes: Grape tomatoes—he seriously loves these and will eat lots and lots of them; the other day I think he went through almost a pint Lettuce, even undressed. Wiggling his barefoot toes in the grass, which I’ve only let him do once Being outside Dancing—“dancing” meaning waving his arms and twisting at the waist when any of his toys make music or other sounds, such as the rumbling of a truck’s engine, when we sing to him, or when we say “dancing” Waving hello and goodbye to people, cars, animals, and objects—It is very exciting to Max when someone waves back, which isn’t that often because people in cars don’t usually see Max and people on foot are often past Max by the time he waves Balls Kissing (often sloppy open mouthed on the mouth), hugging, head-butting and biting (the head-butting and biting seem to be extensions of affection rather than something done out of frust...

Randall Munroe on the has performed a large experiment in color perception over at the xkcd blog. Basically, 222,500 people sat down in front of their computers and typed in the name they would ascribe to a wide panoply of monitor-produced colors. Language Log calls this "the largest scientific experiment ever run by a cartoonist." The list at the end of the most outrageous individual entries was entertaining, but my favorite part was his analysis of the responses that occurred numerous times and in a gender-biased fashion: Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among women: 1. Dusty Teal 2. Blush Pink 3. Dusty Lavender 4. Butter Yellow 5. Dusky Rose Okay, pretty flowery, certainly. Kind of an incense-bomb-set-off-in-a-Bed-Bath-&-Beyond vibe. Well, let’s take a look at the other list. Here are the color names most disproportionately popular among men: 1. Penis 2. Gay 3. WTF 4. Dunno 5. Baige I weep for my gender.