Rainbow Icons

Sports was featured last night as in the Sport Report. In what was a big surprise to some, but probably not to others, Alex Rodriguez, or The Rod, will be suspended from baseball for 400 years for using performance enhancing drugs.

Not to worry if you need to watch sports. The Winter Olympics are coming soon. This year the Games will be in Sochi, Russia from February 7 to 23, 2014, or if you are over there, they will be from 7-23 February 2014. Take a look at the official website using that link right up in first sentence. Lots of information and a really cool chart that shows which events will be held on which days. There's great color-coded icons for each sport, so it's easy to see on that chart which of your favorite sports is happening on which days. My favorite, Curling, is listed 6th on that chart. Never mind that the sports are in alphabetical order. I still think it's because Curling is so popular that it is near the top of the list. It looks like the USA Men's team will be meeting Norway for their first competition. Oh I hope the USA Men's Curling Team has great fashion designers working on their uniforms. Those Norwegian Men can intimidate you just by coming on the ice in their bold uniforms. So go look at the Winter Olympics website. I absolutely love the rainbow color theme used for the chart and sport icons.

You can also go over to the website and support your team. Right now, here's the Likes:

Russian Fed 344
Latvia 232
Lithuania 134
Canada 108
Ukraine 62
United States 60
Belarus 41
France 32
Kazakhstan 25
Japan 22

As we get closer to the Olympics, I'm sure those numbers will go up.

Delegate member and tennis great Billie Jean King did show up to discuss going to the Olympics as probably the most famous gay athlete. She said she won't protest, but if the media asks questions, she will give them answers.

Deborah Solomon was Stephen's guest last night. She has a book out now about Norman Rockwell - "American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell." Stephen likes Norman Rockwell's art because it is realistic. He can look at a painting and recognize it's a painting of a mailman.  We got to see some of the more famous paintings of Norman Rockwell and we got to hear Stephen sound exactly like a cultured art critic. Deborah Solomon explained to Stephen that Norman Rockwell believed in equality, and tolerance and voted for JFK and LBJ. Their discussion was a little loud and almost confrontational at times which seems amazing, considering they were discussing Norman Rockwell.

Splendiferous Loquaciousness

The Shutdown is over and I have been celebrating. The nation lost about $24 billion in that deal, but don't worry, Congress still got paid and they are all back doing their job (working on gridlock, according to Stephen).

In a related story, a hungry woman was arrested in Bellefontaine, Ohio for taking $2.87 out of a pretty fountain in order to buy some food. She's unemployed. Someone should tell this woman to run for Congress.

But, to get back to the show, Ted Cruz is excited because, "We saw the House of Representatives take a courageous stand, listening to the American people that everyone in official Washington just weeks earlier said would never happen. That was a remarkable victory."

In a segment that might have been labeled "Let's Blame Someone" but wasn't, Stephen talked about Dr. Keith Ablow, Psychiatrist over at Fox, who gave a "brilliant long distance diagnosis" of President Obama. Stephen was amazed at Ablow's "yankability." Stephen even staked his professional reputation and said that Dr. Ablow is able to retain that which he has grasped and even now is allowing his creativity to blossom and move his thought processes to tomorrow's show. (I'm paraphrasing somewhat.)

Education is important of course. Why else would we watch the The Colbert Report if we didn't want to learn stuff? Unfortunately, U.S. students aren't doing so well on the global level. In fact, "...students in Latvia, Chile and Brazil are making gains in academics three times faster than American students..." Stephen pointed out that that is almost twice as much and I think we have discovered the problem.

Enter the Common Core Standards. Sounds good, but here's a related problem. Robots are grading test papers. They can grade 6,000 essays in 20 seconds. One way they do this is by simply counting. How many letters in a word? How many words in a sentence? How many sentences in a paragraph?  Go read about Mr. Bleep Blorp's method and success at grading papers. Then, next time you take a test, just put in big words, long sentences and lengthy paragraphs. Or should I say enormous words, gargantuan sentences and humongous paragraphs? I think we can all agree that this will end all the controversy about kids taking too many standardized tests and teachers teaching to the test. As long as kids use big words when writing essays, content will not be important.

You know, it reminds me of one of my college professors. He could grade research papers in five seconds! He would stand at the top of stairs in the old library and throw all the papers down the staircase. The ones at the bottom got an A and the ones at the top got an F. It worked for him.

Stephen had a short literature segment about dinosaurs. It was interesting in that I learned something I had not known before about our scaly friends.

The guests on Monday night were The Reflektors - Win and Will Butler. They are from Montreal. That's in Canada which was a nice tie-in because Senator Ted Cruz was born in Canada, eh? They discussed with Stephen some other Canadian bands, namely Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Arcade Fire.  Win, Will and Stephen all agreed that BTO is the better band. Arcade Fire is "kind of pretentious." The interview turned into a travel promotion for Haiti. But of course they sang a song and of course there is a bonus song over at Colbert Nation. But sadly, we got to see what the staff at Colbert Studio does when Stephen is away. Arts and Crafts, Mischief Making and general poking fun at Stephen's big head. At times I was even confused at to who was actually playing instruments and who was singing.  I think it just points out how important it is for anyone to pay attention to details in the fascinating world of music and music makers.