In doing so, the Packers became the first team to complete a sweep of the NFC North division (which has only existed since 2002), and extended their Lambeau Field Lions-humiliation streak to 21 straight games.  The last time the Lions won a game at Lambeau was December 15th, 1991, when Don Majkowski was the quarterback.  It was Brett Favre’s rookie year (he was with the Falcons) and Tony Mandarich’s third and final year in Green Bay.  Remember him?

Matt Flynn, who was 6 years old on 12-15-1991, did an OK job filling in for the resting Aaron Rodgers.  Flynn played the entire game, completing 70% of his passes for 480 yards and 6 touchdowns. The latter two numbers are both Packers franchise records.

Matt is in the final year of his contract, making him a free agent at the end of this season.  I would like to be the first to congratulate whichever team signs him.

About damn time.  I wonder who gets his glasses.  Better keep an eye on Ebay, just in case.

The new boss is Kim Jong Eun.  He’s that pudgy fellow in the black outfit.  Let’s see how long he lasts.  Smart money’s on “not very.”

So far, anyway.  the Colts could still pull ahead.  Really, they could.

So having Wisconsin play Michigan State in Indy means the nice people there will get to see some good football for a change.

Beep.

“Tower Heist” stars Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy.  To judge from the commercials (because research? bah) Stiller is a hotel worker who decides to rob a rich guy who stiffed him and his co-workers on a deal of some kind, and Murphy is an ex-con he recruits to help with the job.

It has been years and years since I went to an actual movie theater to sit through an actual full-length movie.  I can’t even remember the last one that didn’t have the words ‘star’ and ‘wars’ in the title.  But I’ll tell you what: I will make a point of going to see “Tower Heist” IF….

IF Eddie Murphy’s character is named Reggie Hammond.  That would be awesome.

Otherwise, forget it.

*Obscure Reference Alert is a term I’m familiar with from this blog, where I am a frequent visitor and commenter.  It’s fun.  As for this particular ORA, figure it out.  You have internet access, right?

Until today.  Today I saw a bumper sticker I can get behind.

Well technically, I was behind it.  Traffic, y’know.

You probably have to be a Wisconsin sports fan to really get this.

Also, I hear it comes in a t-shirt.

Last week, some scientists conducted an experiment where they got some neutrinos to, apparently, move faster than light. It wasn’t the first time this apparently happened, either. They fired the neutrinos out of some kind of big slingshot, sent them through the earth’s crust, and caught them in a second location 450 miles away. The neutrinos hit the finish line 60 billionths of a second before light would have (if light could travel through the earth’s crust which is, after all, opaque).

How do they know its the same neutrinos? Those things all look alike to me.

Here’s my hypothesis: a hidden underground race of mole men superintelligent earthworms (mole men are so cliche) is trapping our neutrinos, while simultaneously firing off others from a few feet to the left, making it appear that the neutrinos are FTL when in fact they didn’t traverse the entire distance. Just to mess with us.

But seriously:

Experiments show that as one approaches the speed of light, time slows down relative to slower-moving objects. If you spent a year traveling at (say) half of light speed, when you returned you would find that what seemed like a year to you was a much longer time for the earth-bound.

In theory, any object reaching the speed of light would experience zero time. A trip taken at light speed would seem instantaneous to the traveler, no matter how long it was*.

The linked Economist article states that going faster than the speed of light would therefore cause time to reverse. This is a nonsensical statement. Would the traveler actually become younger? What would his perception of the trip be like? ‘Reverse time’ in this context is similar to ‘negative length’. You can say it, you can think it, but you can’t explain it. It has no meaning.

More importantly, it’s nonsensical because experiment also shows that as an object accelerates, it’s mass increases. In theory, the mass of an object becomes infinite once the object reaches the speed of light. Infinite (or just near-infinite) mass would mean an infinitely strong gravity field, which would immediately pull in and destroy all other matter in the universe. So who cares about ‘reverse time’?

“Don’t destroy the universe” is one of those little rules I try to live my life by. Unfortunately, it makes faster-than-light travel a lot harder. That’s why they use massless particles like neutrinos in these experiments; because a 1000% increase in zero is still zero.

So if you ever want to travel faster than light, better get started on that diet, lardbutt. What, you didn’t think all those chins could affect anybody but you?

*It occurs to me that not only would the trip seem instantaneous to the traveler, but also to his vehicle.  Which means it wouldn’t require much fuel at all, once it reached light speed.  Think how much you could save in gas money if you could drive at relativistic speeds!

Yes, there are many, many things wrong with that assertion.

UPDATE: “We don’t allow faster-than-light neutrinos in here,” says the bartender. A neutrino walks into a bar.

Okay, yours was funnier. 

So Detroit and Green Bay, at 4-0, are the only undefeated teams left in the NFL.  And due to the vagaries of NFL scheduling, they won’t play one another until November 24th, also known as Thanksgiving Day.  Therefore look forward to two 10-0 juggernauts facing off for NFC supremacy on that day.

That’s a prediction.  You heard it here first.  Unless somebody else already said it, but that’s not my fault.

I didn’t get that this year.  But the Badgers did get to start the Big Ten season by being the first to welcome Nebraska to the conference.  Now that’s exciting!  Nebraska’s Big Ten debut.  Two top-ten teams.  In Camp Randall.  That’ll be fun!!

And then the Badgers smacked the Sooners Cornhuskers around like they were the chess club from Our Lady of Perpetual Groin Pulls U.

And my first thought was, this is a top ten team?  And my second thought was, welcome to the Big Ten, losers Sooners Huskers*!

And then there were some thoughts that were unrelated to football. And then…

I realized that I’ve been all wrong about this.  Those games where they averaged a 40 point margin of victory?  Those weren’t just cheap wins, they were blowout practice!  

Man. Barry Alvarez is a genius.

*Sooners, Huskers, whatever.  Hey, at 48-17 I don’t have to know your name!