Tournament time

Yes, the most glorious time of year is upon us. Hordes of fans are huddled in front of their TVs for the days' worth of wall-to-wall basketball known as the NCAA tournament. Of course, in my case, this actually means sitting alone in front of a computer screen because of the obscene eight- to 11-hour time difference between here and the courts where the games are taking place.

Kansas' two games have started at 2:30 and 4:45 a.m. Abu Dhabi time and I, being a big fan of basketball in general and Kansas in particular, have watched both. It's fine at the time but hard not to regret the next day.

As Mrs. Blog can attest, I am not at my best after three hours' sleep. That meant most of Saturday was wasted, dissolved into a blur of recovery, and on Monday my brain cells were powered almost exclusively by caffeine.

A pre-dawn dunking against Illinois.

And I'm not out of the woods yet. Kansas has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, and game time is... 3:30 a.m on Saturday. As long as they keep winning, though, I'll happily suffer a little grogginess--and I apologize in advance for inflicting Zombie Gerry on the rest of the world.

The Muppets have an answer for everything

Or at least a song. Whether you're talking about the Fourth of July or Christmas, they just have a gift for being able to express the pitch-perfect emotions of the moment.

And so I bring you--shamelessly cribbed from Friend of the Blog Craig--a Muppet St. Patrick's Day.

Animal and I know the lyrics about equally well.

Hope everyone is has a great day of eating corned beef and cabbage and dying things green!

For some reason, I thought this would be more secret

The Navy has been developing stealthy, unmanned combat aircraft for a while now. It seems like the kind of thing you would want to keep under wraps and then, you know, make a dramatic announcement like "we have invented the sound barrier" or "all your base are belong to us."

But no, here it is, right on YouTube, making its maiden test flight:

B-2 lite?

Besides being neat-looking and, apparently, quite deadly, I wonder whether this is part of a permanent shift toward robotic combat. Not in a Mechwarrior kind of way, but just in the sense that systems like this allow generals to bomb the enemy without putting their own people in the line of fire... will battles eventually be decided by who blows up the most drones? I guess that's not a bad idea. You could certainly come up with worse premises for a science-fiction novel.