OK, NFL fans: any football predictions or thoughts on the upcoming season? My personal feeling, icky though it may be, is that the Super Bowl is the Stupid Patriots' to lose.

I want to go to a movie at the theater described here.

(via Tenser, said the Tensor)

Driving back from Tulsa to Dallas yesterday evening, I heard a report on NPR's the World about the massive project in China attempting to divert water from the South of the country up to the North and Beijing. The total budget for the project reaches upwards of $14 Billion and will consist of:

three south-to-north canals, each running about 1,300 kilometres across the eastern, middle and western parts of the country.

The three lines are designed to divert water from the upper, middle and lower reaches of the water-rich Yangtze River into the country's drought-prone north.

Over the past two decades, hundreds of cities in North and Northwest China have been plunged into an ever-growing regional potential crisis of water resources.

The project is expected to be completed by 2007, just barely in time for the Summer Olympics of '08. One commentator on the NPR program said that it was akin to try to divert water from the Mississippi River to Washington DC. Just kind of made me go "whoa".

You know how at state fairs (and the larger county fairs) they'll have a pavilion or two where you can watch live versions of infomercials, wherein salespeople pitch things like therapeutic massage chairs and space-age cookware? Here's a nifty profile of one member of this special breed of traveling salespeople.

I find sales to be one of the most mystifying of vocations. I spent a year and half doing it (badly), and I can never fathom the kinds of people who can pretty much launch right into an effective pitch within half an hour of seeing the product they're selling for the first time.

Anyone else ever try sales?