Determined By One Criteria: Excellence

I predicted that Stephen would say the word "Peabody" on tonight's show and he did. I don't know where on his fireplace mantle Stephen will put yet another trophy, but he won the George Foster Peabody Award! That puts him in the same company as the great Dora the Explorer, Sherlock for "A Study in Pink," and The Simpsons. Go look at the George Foster Peabody website for a list of all the winners for this year, for past winners, information on the luncheon, and more, much more. And you can read a bit about the man George Foster Peabody over at Wikipedia.

Stephen was very humble in announcing this award. In fact, of all his superior character traits, his humility is what he is most proud of. He wanted to make note of the fact that he shares this award with members of the Supreme Court. Their ruling on Citizens United made this all possible. And he is especially grateful to all the donors to his Super PAC, people like Harry Balsac, Apoop Mapanz, Suq Madiq and Munchma Quchi.

As you all probably remember, yesterday was primary day in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia and Romney got his broom and swept all three races. Just a personal thought here. The wins don't seem to me to be overwhelmingly Romney over Santorum. For example, in Wisconsin it was 42% for Romney to 38% for Santorum. That doesn't seem like a lot to me. But anyway... Many people are now really saying it's over and Romney will be the nominee. McCain said it. Pawlenty said it. Even Stephen gave a rousing speech for Romney, proclaiming, "I settled for it."

As a treat for us, and thanks to us for donating to the Super PAC, Stephen had another ad that he debuted on the show. The Latino and Latina vote will be important in this election and this ad speaks to some of these concern and issues. Let's all remember that Mitt's dad was born in Mexico. This gives Mitt a real connection with our neighbors to the south as well as Americans of Mexican descent. It's a neat ad, especially because it has a really cute little dog in it. Oooh, cute doggie.

Oatmeal. I don't know how to easily go from dogs to oatmeal, so I'll just say Oatmeal again. Larry has gotten a haircut and shed a few pounds. Who is Larry? Apparently that is the name of that guy on the Quaker Oatmeal round box. I had heard that he had a more updated look, but until Stephen had side by side comparison of the before and after images of Larry on the Oatmeal boxes, I had no idea how radical the change was. The difference is almost like night and midnight. It is that drastic. This is going to double or triple how much Quaker Oatmeal is sold, I just know it.

(Interesting bit of trivia. If you do go to the Quaker Oats website and look at FAQs, you will see that one of the founders of the company was a man by the name of John Stuart.)

Tonight's guest was Robert Ballard, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence. Okay, right there I can't help but be a little bit, well, skeptical. An Explorer? In Residence?? Sounds like he's going to sit on his duff and yet somehow be able to explore the world? Neat gig if you can get it.

Fine, whatever. He was on the show to promote "Save the Titanic With Bob Ballard" to be aired Monday, April 9 at 10:00 pm Eastern. (Check local listings in your area.) Did you know that April 15, at 2:20 in the morning Newfoundland time will be the 100th anniversary of the Titanic sinking? Did you know that Robert Ballard found the Titanic? Did you know he was actually secretly looking for the USS Scorpion and the USS Thresher submarines? Lots of interesting stuff! You can also read more over at Wikipedia about Robert Ballard.

Stephen and Robert Ballard went on to talk more about the Titanic. The way he found the ship was to look for a debris trail, sort of like following footprints. It lead him right to the Titanic. He lamented that the ship is getting loved to death. People are making trips down to see it, probably helping themselves to souvenirs, even getting married there which seems to be a little overboard. Robert Ballard says he would like to paint the Titanic to help stop corrosion. It's now possible to paint ships underwater!!!! Stephen then got a really super idea. Robert Ballard could start painting the ship and say what fun it was. In no time at all, he would have other people doing all the work.

In watching the show tonight and thinking about the Titanic, as well as other ships that have gone down, such as the SS Edmund Fitzgerald or the SS Andrea Doria, I wondered about all the people that built those ships. They surely had a lot of pride in building those ships. And they also most likely never thought the ships would be lost at sea along with all the people on board.