Okay Buckeye fans. Here is something of a true tribute to the upcoming game. Someone took the time to build a 1:275 scale model of Ohio Stadium using Legos. This makes my entire childhood look uninspired. I obviously aimed low with my own modeling ambitions.
The Stadium weights about 38 pounds, according to the website that is passing on an email of an email from a friend (you know how that goes). It took over two years to build, or about 2,000 hours of the builder's time. It isn't glued, it's all interlocking Legos pieces.
I'm bummed not to see tiny little Lego dudes out on the field.
I'm not a sports guy, but it's hard to miss the excitement about the upcoming Wolverine/Buckeye game. If you're getting into it, then you're certainly going to want to catch this exhausting analysis of the upcoming game. Statistics, past games, and individual players are all examined very closely (although not surprisingly for a forum at Buckeyeplanet.com, the consensus is... Buckeyes).
But this isn't just a local obsession. The whole nation is getting in on it (nothing to polarize us recently, let's find something else! Families are even arguing over this game), and major media outlets like Sports Illustrated are getting involved with things like this nifty list of the best Ohio vs Michigan games over the decades with lots of multimedia.
It could get ugly though. Michigan fans are being warned about Ohio fans, and being told to reduce the blue merch and keep cool while in Buckeye territory.
Curious about how this crazy rivalry came to be? Check out wikipedia's history on the Ohio vs. Michigan rivalry, where it's said that the rivalry is a holdover of animosity between the two states over a bloodless war fought over Toledo back in the early 1800s.
You're in an accident. You use your cellphone to dial emergency services. How do they find you? With a landline the phone's location is programmed in to emergency systems' databases. But when you have a cellphone you are on the move. In order to figure out where you are calling from, cellphone towers have to triangulate the position of the phone to get a bead on you.
So far only eight counties in Ohio can pinpoint where a 911 call came from when its on a cellphone. Right now you have to have your wits about you and figure it out yourself and let the 911 operator know where you are. That's a tough call. A few times after zoning out while driving I've called in an accident and had to stop and really think about where I was calling from. If I were injured or hurt, I imagine I could have a hard time figuring it out. Particularly with a head injury.
Why no coverage? We may have one of the highest tax rates of all the states, but apparently there is no money for 911 cellphone call triangulation. In fact, we're almost the worst state as far as wireless 911 coverage.
The only state with worse off? Oklahoma. I'll be their taxes are lower than ours too.
Update: as pointed out to me, it's Columbus, GA. This story was tipped off to me and I thought it too cool not to post, and in my rush never caught that the newspaper story was in GA, not OH. Snap! My bad. -Tobias
The competition to get ones' hands on a Playstation 3 is so fierce that a dentist who hired 60 temp workers to stand in various lines to try and buy several Playstation 3 consoles for him, gave up. All this week dedicated fans of the new Playstation console have been lining up outside stores in chairs, taking days off work or school, to try and snag the few units that are being shipped out to stores. I myself indulged in trying to set up plans to head out early today and wait, thinking that in mid-West Ohio there might be a chance. No such luck, people were already in long lines at stores that had initially said they would have 20 consoles to sell, now they had only 4 to sell.
As a result of this pent-up demand, with limited and falling supply (remember your econ 101), the price outside the retail environment is shooting up. On eBay consoles are going for literally $1-2,000. Many of the people lining up are doing so out of a simple desire to turn a profit and sell their systems on eBay. And if a dentist plus 60 hires isn't getting them, it isn't surprising my own plans failed as well!
The dentist, Murray Newlin, was hoping to surprise his younger relatives with the console for Christmas. My advice: get them Nintendo Wiis or Xbox 360s. Much cheaper. And if they throw a fit over not getting PS3s the brats don't deserve the $600+ machines! They should go run around outside, the graphics are pretty amazing, I hear, and the force feedback packs a real punch!
People complained to the stores and employment agency, which is why the plan was canceled. Newlin should consider himself lucky. People have already been shot by BBs in line and there have been reports of fights in the lines.
Nonetheless, kudos to Newlin for trying to out-think the line. He should have kept the whole thing a little more on the down low, though: he might even have succeeded.
When we did our interview with the director of the movie The O in Ohio, Billy Kent, he talked about how welcoming and easy it was to use Cleveland to film the picture. In fact, he gave Ohio a whole lot of love in the interview, and mentioned that the film had chosen the main character to be a promoter for Cleveland to talk the city up as well.
Spiderman 3 filmed in Cleveland as well. And according to a recent Cleveland.com article, more and more directors are turning their eye towards the city with the thought of using it to film in.
What are some benefits to filming in Cleveland?
A readily available talent pool of technical laborers.
The Cleveland Convention Center for use as a sound stage.
Cheaper mid-West accommodations.
A smaller, more intimate city that can handle the disruption of filming.
As the air beings to bring a bit with it and I watch all the trees lose their leaves around my house, pictures like this become a quick reminder of what is coming up. These frosted leaves were taken by bosela in Lorain.
Not too long ago I wrote about the Ohio Universal Tube company that made actual tubes. After the news that Google was buying YouTube broke out and filtered out into the rest of the non-connected word, confused webonauts keystruck their way over to www.utube.com instead of the www.youtube.com address they should have been looking for.
A somewhat understandable mistake for the non internet-savvy. Ohio U Tube got some press for the mistake in business magazines, but now they are gearing up to sue YouTube. You see, all that attention is costing them as traffic has increased a hundred-fold.
Yes, that sounds good in theory, but the cost of keeping their website running is hampering the Ohio manufacturing company. They are also having to wade through droves of non-pertinent email and complaints that are really directed at YouTube. They also fear their brand is being destroyed, and that to remarket themselves will be expensive. Alternatively, a more cynical explanation that some will forward is that with $1.65 billion on the table, they could be among the first of many trying to line up to snatch a piece for themselves.
Ohio Universal Tube points out that they were online with that sounding name first, in 1996. I'll bet they're kicking themselves for not spending the money it would have cost to have snagged the awfully similar sounding 'youtube' to have prevented this. It offers online businesses a careful lesson, however: buy alternate versions of your name to protect your brand!
I'm not exactly a prude, but I've always found the audacity of the Girls Gone Wild advertisements popping up with bouncing black bars at the most random of times and in the early evening programming on cable TV to be... a bit much. That and the whole concept sounded a bit predatory (young women + alcohol + creepy older guys with cameras).
At a recent shooting in an Akron, Ohio nightclub called 'Mangos' a 17-year old claims that she was taken out to the Girls Gone Wild motorcoach and raped.
Boing Boing has linked to stories that are damning of the GGW crew and their activities, including their failure to document the ages and consent of the girls they are filming. This L.A. Times story is just as negative, and has eerie similarities and parallels to the story that is alleged to have happened in Akron.
Over the last few months we've pointed out some stories that talk about the brain drain in Ohio, as well as as other population pressures that force our best and brightest out.
The Newark Advocate takes a look at a study of the average price of college in Ohio, along with comparisons to other institutions around the country. Our neighboring states charge less. It's not surprising, therefore, that we're struggling to keep the younger demographic. Everywhere they turn there is less incentive for staying in Ohio.
Ohio graduates have more debt to get their education, it seems, and lower paying job opportunities. That's a frustrating position to be in. The Advocate offers up the two governor-candidates solutions to the problem, but no matter who is elected, more attention needs to be paid.
Boxing in the days of yore was a much more brutal sport. And the Dempsey vs. Willard fights is fairly well known as a bloody battle fought in 1919 in Toledo. I'm not much a boxing guy, but watching Dempsey knock the tar out of his opponent is mesmerizing in an odd way. It's excusable: it's history!
In re: is getting pysched up for the big OSU v. Michigan game, and resisting the urge not to sell his ticket despite the high prices they're going for.
weColumbus points out a new theater production, Major Bang, that will be running in Columbus, which will be at the Wexner Center.
Cleveland:
Brewed Fresh Daily is bummed he missed the Northeast Ohio sustainability forum, the event sounds very interesting.
Cincinnati:
Cincinnati blog points out that the NAACP will be hosting its 2008 convention in Cincinnati.
Gallipolisdaily has a map of the world's air pollution hotspots. Lots of activity around the Great Lakes and the upper East Coast. Yay us.
If you live in Ohio and blog, please make sure to drop us your address in the comments or via our tips button so we can add you to our daily reads! And on a sidenote, I'm looking for any Dayton blogs that are out there, if you know of any I would appreciate a comment or tip to that effect, I'd like to be reading Dayton blogs!
Annie Oakley was raised in southwest Ohio, rural and poor. To bring in food and money she turned to using a rifle. Later on in life she became a celebrity trick shooter, touring with the Buffalo Bill show. Here is a historic piece of footage showing her shooting abilities.
I'm looking out at my yard and seeing lots of leaves that need rake, but this beautiful picture of fall trees and colorful yellow leaves goes a long way towards reminding me how great the season can be. This was taken near Wellington by bosela.
Did you know that Ohio has more wind to tap into than Pennsylvania? I didn't. I've always been impressed by wind power as a natural resource. Not because I'm particularly green, but because I grew up aboard a yacht. As a kid I lived 'off the grid.' We generated most of our power using a small wind generator or our own gasoline powered generator.
But anything that lessens dependence on one particular energy source is good. As we've learned before, specialization in an environment leads one vulnerable to changes, so seeing more wind and solar and such energy sources tapped means that if there were to ever be a major problem with foreign energy, society would be minimally effected.
The Ohio Wind organization has lots of information on wind resources all around the state and how they might be used better than they currently are. I had always assumed Ohio wasn't a very wind-heavy area (unlike hilly Pennsylvania or coastal California) for the most part, so it's nice seeing work done to raise awareness about the option.
Okay Buckeye fans. Here is something of a true tribute to the upcoming game. Someone took the time to build a 1:275 scale model of Ohio Stadium using Legos. This makes my entire childhood look uninspired. I obviously aimed low with my own modeling ambitions.
I'm not a sports guy, but it's hard to miss the excitement about the upcoming Wolverine/Buckeye game. If you're getting into it, then you're certainly going to want to catch this exhausting analysis of the upcoming game. Statistics, past games, and individual players are all 
You're in an accident. You use your cellphone to dial emergency services. How do they find you? With a landline the phone's location is programmed in to emergency systems' databases. But when you have a cellphone you are on the move. In order to figure out where you are calling from, cellphone towers have to triangulate the position of the phone to get a bead on you.
Update: as pointed out to me, it's Columbus, GA. This story was tipped off to me and I thought it too cool not to post, and in my rush never caught that the newspaper story was in GA, not OH. Snap! My bad. -Tobias
When we did our interview with the director of the movie 
Not too long ago I wrote about the 
I'm not exactly a prude, but I've always found the audacity of the Girls Gone Wild advertisements popping up with bouncing black bars at the most random of times and in the early evening programming on cable TV to be... a bit much. That and the whole concept sounded a bit predatory (young women + alcohol + creepy older guys with cameras).
Over the last few months we've pointed out some stories that talk about the brain drain in Ohio, as well as as other population pressures that force our best and brightest out.
A round up of recent posts from all around Ohio:
Did you know that Ohio has more wind to tap into than Pennsylvania? I didn't. I've always been impressed by wind power as a natural resource. Not because I'm particularly green, but because I grew up aboard a yacht. As a kid I lived 'off the grid.' We generated most of our power using a small wind generator or our own gasoline powered generator.
