Of course, every famous person has a mother, so I wanted to find some that particularly stand out:

Olympias of Epirus

How many mothers can say their kid grew up to conquer the world? Very few. Olympias of Epirus is one of them, having given birth to Alexander III of Macedon, famously known as Alexander the Great.

Olympias was actually kind of ruthless, willing to kill for the sake of her son Alexander’s secure rise to the throne, and it’s not known whether or not she had anything to do with the assassination of Alexander’s father, Phillip II, in order to raise her son up to the Macedonian crown.

You can’t discount the other influences in Alexander’s life. His father is already a nominee for June’s “8 Notable Fathers in History”, and one of his teachers was Aristotle. But without Olympias, there would have been no Alexander, and with no Alexander, no Hellenistic Age.

Wife of Feodor Vassilyev

I don’t have her name, but she had the most children of any recorded woman in history - 69. 16 twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets.

Ouch.

Caterina, peasant girl of the 15th Century

She had possibly been a slave from the Middle East and she bore an illegitimate son with a local Italian notary. It’s kind of a boring story until you find out that the illegitimate son was Leonardo da Vinci.

She didn’t have a big influence on da Vinci’s life, as he lived with his father Piero da Vinci until apprenticing with Verrocchio at the age of 14.

Between 1493 and 1495, Leonardo listed Catarina as one of his dependents on his tax documents, which might be how history knows about her.

Sarah, wife of Abraham

Sarah was childless for much of her life, and when Abraham was to become the father of nations, she offered him the handmaid Hagar to Abraham as his concubine so that he could have children. But Sarah ended up having Isaac.

Pauline Einstein

I guess you already know who she is. But imagine telling a pregnant Pauline Einstein in 1879 that her son would one day grow up and make her last name synonymous with “genius.”

She insisted that Albert take violin lessons at age six, and even though he didn’t like it and eventually quit, who can really say how much those lessons contributed to the growth of one of the world’s most famous brains?

If Pauline Koch hadn’t found the merchant named Hermann Einstein, physics would be without one of its greatest stars, and the 20th Century without its most famous contributor to science.

Bithiah

Not all mothering is done by biological mothers, so here’s some love for those who adopt. Bithiah was the adopted mother of Moses, and according to Jewish tradition, she was exiled from the house of Pharaoh for allowing Moses, a Levite, into their house. Protecting her adopted son from harm

Nancy Matthews Edison

Nancy Edison was no slouch. Edison would say of her, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me; and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.” In that way, she indirectly helped contribute the light bulb and the phonograph.

She’s also notable for being the one who home-schooled the Wizard of Menlo Park. He barely had any formal schooling. This alone makes her pretty cool.

My Mom

Of course, without my mom, there would be no Dan Kenitz, no BipolarNation, and no list of 8 Notable Mothers in History for you to read right now. You can have your Pauline Einsteins and Nancy Edisons; no one has better parents than me. Happy Mother’s Day, to my mom and all the mothers out there!

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Friendship
Don’t Go There
Proposition
Clarity
Passion

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Looking at this from the right, while it would be nice to see the broo-ha-ha of the Democratic primary over, the longer Hillary’s in the race, the more time it gives Republicans to crystallize around John McCain. And the less time it gives Obama to prepare a “we are now united!” speech at the Democratic convention.

Just think what the competition between Hillary and Obama has done for conservatives:

-The emergence of the Jeremiah Wright issue
-Exposing Hillary’s lie about “coming under fire” in Bosnia
-Hibble-dee-gook over Obama’s guns and religion comments
-The re-emergence of the Jeremiah Wright issue; Jeremiah Wright dancing
-McCain got to visit poor places where he might be weak and tell us on the right he plans to nominate conservative judges
-Hillary and Obama both ended up on Fox News

Thanks to Obama v. Hillary, McCain has some real fire power against Obama. Just watching Obama’s victory speech in North Carolina last night, he made a few references to himself being an “imperfect” candidate, trying to address what are widely acknowledged to be his flaws now. Thanks to Hillary not letting go, there are chinks in Obama’s armor.

Of course, McCain has promised a positive campaign and has backed this up by attacking right-wing North Carolina ads that went after Obama. So giving him firepower against Obama might just end up being like giving an iPhone to a caveman. If McCain wants to battle Obama with “I’m okay and you’re okay and everyone’s okay,” against Obama’s counterpunch of “Bush’s third term,” I don’t like his chances.

After all, how is a 71-year-old moderate supposed to invigorate the party?

But as it looks, Hillary is on her last legs, and after Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos*, I can’t help but think Hillary has done a lot for Republicans and maybe conservatives should be sad to see her go.

For all this talk about McCain’s “head start” and ability to unify the party ahead of Obama, his progress can be erased if Obama shows up in Denver with Hillary Clinton in tow - perhaps even as VP candidate. Things would be different if Hillary fought all the way until the convention.

It looks like the general election will see a Pure Liberal against a Moderate Republican. There will probably be a lot of “lesser of two evils” talk in the times ahead.

*By the way, the Chicago Sun-Times released an official Obama team memo about Operation Chaos.

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Assuming you already believe that a goldfish is a “pet.” I would say that you have two options for ruling in this case:

1. “Hey, this is silly! It’s just a dumb goldfish, even if it is a pet. The family can stay.”
2. “The law says this is a pet, and pets aren’t allowed. Either the pet or the family has to go, even if it’s a dumb law.”

What would you answer? Pay attention carefully, because one of them is totally wrong.

I have smart readers, so you probably already know it’s #1, of course. #2 is the right one, because you’d be interpreting the law correctly (assuming a gold fish IS a pet, which was one of the stipulations). You might think the law is stupid, which it is, but your job isn’t to legislate from the bench.

If the kid has to get rid of his pet, it’s the dumb law’s fault, not the smart judge’s.

Why is this relevant?

John McCain just spoke at Wake Forest University about this kind of stuff:

For decades now, some federal judges have taken it upon themselves to pronounce and rule on matters that were never intended to be heard in courts or decided by judges. With a presumption that would have amazed the framers of our Constitution, and legal reasoning that would have mystified them, federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically.

Which raises an interesting question: McCain says he want judges who don’t legislate from the bench (cough Scalia cough). But, since he’s the closest thing to a conservative of the current “big three” candidates, can we count on McCain to appoint judges as well as Bush has, minus Harriet Myers?

This is one of the most important issues I personally face in determining my vote. I want Abortion gone, and with John Paul Stevens currently pushing 90, the next President could very well get to nominate a couple of Supreme Court justices in the next four-year term.

Thankfully, McCain’s record seems strong. His favorite Supreme Court justice is John Roberts. As far as I can tell, he’s been with the Republicans every time in his Senate career and was staunch against some of Clinton’s federal court appointments.

Some conservatives criticized McCain and the group of senators known as the Gang of 14 when they reached a compromise over the nomination of Dubya’s nominees back in 2005: the 7 Democrats in the group agreed not to filibuster in the future unless there were extraordinary circumstances, while Republicans wouldn’t use the “nuclear option” of overriding filibusters. As far as I can tell, the compromise basically got Alito to the “up or down” vote, where he was confirmed 58 to 42. Some people have a beef with all of the backroom negotiating instead of just debating it on the floor.

(Update:  Oh. I didn’t understand the beef until I read this.)
Is McCain really the lesser of two evils (for conservatives) if he’s pro-life, will nominate strong Supreme Court justices, and is generally anti-tax and regulation? Or is he actually a strong Republican candidate?

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1.  Gay people are born like the rest of us, but consciously make a decision to become gay.
2.  Gay people are born like the rest of us, and unconsciously make a decision to become gay.
3.  Gay people are born gay and have no choice, unconscious or conscious, in the matter.

If you see a fourth option, feel free to let me know, but for the purposes of argument, let’s pretend these are the only possibilities.  For the record, I subscribe to theory #2.

First, here are some popular counter-arguments to my “people aren’t born gay” theory.

Who Would Choose to Be Gay?

One common argument you’ll commonly get from people when you believe that people choose to be gay (either #1 or #2) is that “Well - who would CHOOSE to be gay?  Being gay can come with a lot of hardship and possible social rejection from parents and loved ones.  Why would anyone want that?”

My answer to that is, simply, “Well, why would people choose to be a Star Trek nerd?”  Why do people choose to indulge in any behavior that may expose them to social rejection?

There are a myriad of answers, but just remember that people are indeed capable of freely choosing courses of actions that don’t appear to be to their benefit.

Recall from “Ten Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature” that sex will drive politicians to risk their careers (cough Spitzer cough) and make men do other crazy things.

If sex is enough to make people blow things up, it’s more than enough to drive other behaviors, including the stereotypical effeminate behaviors of gay men, no matter how flaming.

You’re probably asking, “but how does the desire for women drive men to be gay?”  Keep reading.

But there are gay giraffes and gay monkeys.  Doesn’t that mean that homosexuality is natural and embedded somewhere in a gene?

First, there aren’t “gay giraffes” or “gay monkeys.”  Yes, there are animals that indulge in homosexual behavior, but that doesn’t make them exclusively homosexual.  The distinction is a subtle but important one.

According to The Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller, any gene that would cause the organism that contained it to be exclusively homosexual would die out in one generation:

Not a single ancestor of any living human was exclusively homosexual…there may have been many gay and lesbian hominids, but if they were exclusively homosexual, they are not our ancestors, and we are not their descendants.

Any genetic propensity toward exclusive homosexuality would have been eliminated in just one generation of selection.

This means at the very least - at the VERY least - there is no exclusively homosexual gene.  People don’t blow up immediately after being born, either, because the gene for doing so would die with them before they had a chance to grow up and pass it on.

In order for a male gene to survive, it has to mix with the sweet, boobly genes of the female persuasion and replicate itself, producing gene heirs.  Those animals you see gaying it up would at the very least be bisexual, and will probably mate with the opposite sex.

In other words, those giraffes and monkeys swing both ways, baby.  If they don’t, their “gay gene” dies out.  It’s that simple.  If 1-2% of people are gay, that means about 100,000,000 people on Earth are gay.  No gene that tells you to NOT mate and produce offspring could ever become that prevalent.

So, if, for the sake of argument, I had to accept “born with it” theory, then I’d ask you to at least cede as much to me - that any organism that is “born with it” is born with bisexuality, not exclusive homosexuality.

This opens up a can of worms.

Now, For What I Believe

Recently on 20/20, Clinical Psychologist Dr. Stanton Jones said science has proven there is no genetic component to being gay.

“What they found in studying (the) Australian twin registry, of 27 identical twin pairs where at least one person was gay, in only three of the 27 was the second twin gay as well,” he said.

With that said, the lack of evidence for a genetic component still leaves this void:  then why are some people gay?

I believe gay men are mostly in it for the women.

Stay with me.  In our formative, pubescent years, choosing a unique identity that gets us to stick out from the crowd is crucial to our future reproductive success.  For others, choosing a conforming, bland identity is a good way to fit in and gain access to - you guessed it - reproductive success.

I realize this sounds like a “catch-all” and a cop-out.  But if you accept sexual selection, as Geoffrey Miller puts it, as the engine that drives evolution, it’s true.

Remember the episode of Family Guy where Stewie explains that he’s not worried about going to high school?  He says that at the very least, he’ll carve out a niche as the effiminate friend to the popular girls.  Then we see a clip of it.

The truth in jest, my friends - carving out that particular “niche” would give Stewie access to a clique he otherwise couldn’t have achieved since he wasn’t the quarterback of the football team.

All normal humans have digestive systems, a circulatory system, and functional reproductive organs.  Everyone you know - they all have to poo, pee, eat, breathe, and sweat at some point.  Do you really think that something as important as the survival of the species is simply “missing” from 1-2% of the population, or that, even if it did, it could survive long enough to last to this day?  No.

(Sure, humans overcome the need to procreate by being celibate - take priests, for example.  But they do it consciously.  So if you’re going to make the argument that gay people transcend those needs through their human willpower abilities, then you’d have to admit it’s a conscious choice.)

So while gay men may be totally sincere about liking men, that doesn’t really mean squat.  I’m really sincere about liking Lambourghinis, too, but I probably wouldn’t like them if they didn’t impress women.

Taking on a gay persona can work to benefit a male’s chances at mating with a female.  For some, it can be a handy “identity” to improve their chances of success with some women.

Even if you want to talk about guys or women who claim to be exclusively gay - okay, whatever.  I’m sure many of you know men who have claimed never to have sex with a woman and are totally gay.  That’s possible.  But they didn’t inherit that - just ask Geoffrey Miller.

If we accept this premise, it means there’s no gay gene.  It means that some people are more bisexual than others, and choose to indulge this behavior more because it’s presented them with the possibility of more reproductive success.

Where I stop with the my opinion on “choice” is that I don’t think this is entirely a conscious choice, any more than it was the quarterback’s conscious choice to be popular and cool.

So what’s an “unconscious” choice?

When you’re forming your identity, it’s usually an unconscious process.

Take a Star Trek nerd.  (And who would “choose” to be a Star Trek nerd, right?)  You wouldn’t really say “Hey, Worf’s pretty cool.  I think I’ll be a Star Trek nerd now!”  You just like how Star Trek makes you feel, how being perceived as smart makes you feel, and lo and behold - before you know it, you’re a Star Trek nerd.

I just made a connection between the mating habits of Star Trek nerds and homosexuals.  Isn’t this a great blog?

Anyways, this is the way I understand homosexual behavior.  It’s possible that I’m wrong, but I don’t think I’m far off.

I know that my argument about gays can be a little like the arguments for man-caused global warming, in that even people being gay proves they secretly love the opposite sex.  However, if you ask “gay people are born with it” theorists about formerly gay men who have reformed and become straight, they’ll probably say the same thing.  “They’re just repressing it - they’re still gay.”

What do you think?

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I used to think that Hillary as President would mean the end of civilization as we know it.  Now, even she argues for less taxes than this guy.  I’m not going to say that Hillary is more palatable to me, since I would still never vote for her  either, but at least with her she’s willing to pander enough to moderates to have some semblance of economic sanity.  But I digress.

Second, the Jeremiah Wright story is revealing just how crazy some people in this country are when it comes to racial issues.  Whenever I hear someone clap for something insane that Jeremiah Wright says, I wonder how it’s possible to find people that agree with him, much less are willing to go out in public in order to hear him speak.

Of course, I’m white, so naturally nothing I say about race counts.  Instead, let’s see the daffy things Rev. Wright said recently at the National Press Club:

On attacks on the “Black Church”:

As I said, this is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition.

Really?  An attack on “the black church?”  It’s more likely that the media has found something sensational to link to a popular political candidate - Rev. Wright’s sermon footage - and used it as a relevant story.

I was not aware that a “Black Church” exists.  Of course, for racists, it’s important to separate “Black” and “White,” is it not?  Imagine if your pastor started talking about how everyone attacks the “White church.”  He’d sound a little crazy.

On Obama separating himself from Wright:

Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls, Huffington, whoever’s doing the polls.

That must be when Obama shouted at the TV for Wright to shut up.

On his grandmamma:

As I said, this is an attack on the black church. It is not about Obama, McCain, Hillary, Bill, Chelsea. This is about the black church.

This is about Barbara Jordan. This is about Fanny Lou Hamer. This is about my grandmamma.

Show of hands.  How many of you think this is about Fanny Lou Hamer and Wright’s grandmamma?

Keep in mind, all of this is coming AFTER he’s already made a mess of things for Obama, his friend .  I can only assume Wrights wants to help him win the Presidency.

On one hand, he claims all of the thousand Fox News clips of him saying stuff like “[Gosh Dern] America!” leaves out much of the context; on the other, all he does is provide new, insane fodder.  Why?  In case the old, insane fodder was too out of context?

Then he goes around saying that Obama HAS to distance himself from Wright because Obama’s a politician, another way of saying “Wink-wink, Obama really agrees with me, he just can’t do it publically.”  It’s like Wright is on Hillary’s payroll.

So he’s hurting Obama’s campaign.  That much is clear.  The question is, why?  Why not retire to your nice house and let things blow over so your boy can become President?  Obama must be insane with anger that Wright continues to take up headlines.  The guy who baptized his child(ren?) and married him and Michelle is basically selling him out for his fifteen minutes.

Answer:  the guy is clearly nuts.  Maybe not in the legal sense, but Jeremiah Wright’s on some sort of power trip that most of us don’t understand.  Maybe for him, any kind of publicity is good publicity.  Maybe he likes dancing on podiums in Detroit.  I can only assume someone who’s charismatic enough to shout at the top of his lungs to a crowd of applauding supporters must, in some way, bask in the attention.

But like I said, the Continuing Story of Jeremiah Wright has its good effects.  He’s hurting Obama’s campaign; maybe not irreparably, but enough to make North Carolina’s primary more interesting.

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You may have noticed this already, but the BipolarNation.com Political Forums are down. I’m pretty sure I know what the problem is, and if I’m correct, it will be fixed by tonight.

I’ll make it up to you with three awesome posts on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

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Nope - the answer is that this weekend is the Mecca AND Medina of the NFL’s off-season, the Draft, and we take it quite seriously. You might remember my brother’s Draft Diary from last year, in which he recorded thoughts on a tape recorder throughout the day.

Why Fredonia? My brother’s friend lives there, and in case you thought I was kidding when I said we take this seriously, he’s been remodeling his basement for the past several months with this weekend - April 26th and 27th - as his deadline. For us, Fredonia is going to be NFL Draft Capital of the World.

So without further ado, here are 10 reasons you should love the NFL Draft.

1. A thousand things to make fun of. The draft is full of a gajillion little variables, and it’s never the same every year. One year, Eli Manning is forcing a smile as he holds up a Chargers uniform (he told them before the draft he wouldn’t play for them; he ended up getting traded to the Giants), and another, the Minnesota Vikings forget to make a draft choice before 15 minutes are up (and they end up getting a star player out of it!).

But for all of its variables, you still know exactly what you’re going to get. Roger Goodell will have to announce draft choices over a crowd of obnoxious, drunken fans who are willing to boo their team’s selection during the most important moment in his football career. At least one top-ten choice will have a parent who doesn’t share his last name. At least one of these parents will have bright orange hair. Every year, Mel Kiper, ESPN’s draft expert, has the exact same haircut and doesn’t look a year older - he might be cryogenically frozen the rest of the year, we’re not sure. New commercials will pop up, like last year’s “Click clack” weird-a-thon featuring white South Carolina coach Steve Spurrier. One team will make a weird reach and select someone way too high - like the Dolphins choosing Ted Ginn, Jr. at number 9 last year when Brady Quinn was still on the board. You just never know when it’s coming.

All of this stuff is easy to make fun of. Because the first round of the draft alone will last around four hours, it inevitably turns into a Mystery Science Theatre 3000 episode where eventually the real fun is in wondering aloud where the 6′7″, 340-pound offensive tackle gets his suits tailored, why Mike Ditka is looking so orange, and commenting on ESPN’s 100,000-person production team.

2. Unpredictability. Like water on Dr. Sadler’s hand in Jurassic Park, no NFL draft goes the same way. While the traditions - the commissioner announcing the picks, Mel Kiper knowing everything - are the same, “how it goes down” is another ordeal entirely. At least one team is going to make a bonehead draft choice that everyone knows is a bonehead draft choice.

Then there are the draft-day trades. One minute, your favorite team is about to make its pick, and then suddenly their logo on ESPN’s draft graphic is replaced by a orange Bengal tiger: your GM just traded the pick away! This happens all the time, and like lightning, it’s never easy to predict. There’s so much trade talk happening through the day that trades can strike at any moment.

This means that even draft choices that seem insignificant can have special relevance to you. For example, I’ll be watching what the Kansas City Chiefs are doing this weekend, even though I’m a Bears fan. Why? The Chiefs need an offensive lineman, and so do we. And they pick higher.

This unpredictability happens for years after the draft, too. In 2006, the Houston Texans made defensive end Mario Williams the top overall pick, and everyone thought they were dumb for not choosing Heisman winning running back Reggie Bush. Everyone thought the Texans were wrong, but they turned out to be right. Now, Mario Williams plays at a Pro Bowl level and Reggie Bush is struggling. Whodathunkit.

3. You can never research enough. Throughout the weekend, over 200 players will be selected into the NFL. For the casual college football fan, you’ve probably heard of maybe 10-20 of these. With some additional research, you probably know most of the players that will be selected in the first round. But it still isn’t enough.

It’s so deep, NFL teams employ people just to watch college prospects play and practice, year-round. On ESPN, some guys are analysts covering a certain sport, like hockey. ESPN’s Mel Kiper is an analyst - JUST FOR THE NFL DRAFT. He does NOTHING ELSE. If you enjoy soaking up information, there is plenty for you to digest.

4. The industrial-size soda can barrel. Last year, our host in Fredonia brought out a blue, industrial-sized barrel that looked like it was stolen from a park. Its single purpose? To recycle our many, many empty soda cans.

5. The possibilities. Last year, Packer fans had a realistic hope to trade for Randy Moss, superstar wide receiver deluxe. Almost every year, some top-10 regarded prospect drops inexplicably through the first round: last year it was quarterback Brady Quinn, who the Cleveland Browns were able to take along with their stellar selection of Wisconsin tackle Joe Thomas. In 2003, the Bears held the fourth overall pick: we ended up trading for two first-round selections from the Jets and drafted a defensive end (bust) and a quarterback (Rex Grossman; hey, we went to the Superbowl with him).

Then, there are the hypotheticals that add to the fun. “What if X player falls all the way to X team, who’s already loaded at X position? They’d be unstoppable!” Because of a trade with the 49ers from last year, the New England Patriots almost ended up with a top-5 pick this year; despite being 16-0! What if a player I never thought the Bears could get, like LSU’s Glenn Dorsey, drops out of the top ten*? What if?

6. The implications. Drafting one player (Peyton Manning, Colts, ‘98) can directly lead your team to the Superbowl. Drafting another (JaMarcus Russell, Raiders, ‘07)** can contribute to keeping your team in the gutter for the next 5 years. The only time the implications for your favorite team are any higher is when they actually play the games.

The margin of error can be razor thin. After Peyton Manning, future Hall-of-Famer, went to the Colts at number 1 in 1998, the player chosen after him was a famous bust, quarterback Ryan Leaf to the San Diego Chargers. Two quarterbacks with the top two picks, and they couldn’t have had more different careers. Ryan Leaf stunk, and his fall kept the Chargers from competing for several years until they could build around another top draft pick - LaDanian Tomlinson***. Meanwhile, the Colts won a Superbowl and make the playoffs every year.

7. Post-first-round possibilities. A couple of years back, I thought the Bears made a solid choice in the second round by taking cornerback Devin Hester from Miami. Nothing special, just a good pick - I thought he’d be a good kick returner. Two seasons later, he is already the best kick returner in NFL history, and nothing short of a sensation. Another one of the Bears stars, linebacker Lance Briggs, was just a third rounder from Arizona. Sometimes, your team even steals guys later on that you wanted all along - such as when the Bears drafted Alex Brown early in the fourth round not long ago.

You can make an argument that because Tom Brady was a sixth round choice and ended up being a Hall-of-Fame quarterback, that the players chosen in the first round are irrelevant. This is generally untrue, though, as the late round phenomenons are usually the exception to the rule.

8. Overanalysis. Though this seems to fly in the face of reason #3, overanalysis does have its fun side effects. When teams think too hard, they might end up drafting Ted Ginn, Jr. in the top ten picks or trading too high up to get a player no one thought they needed.

The overanalysis spreads to the analysis on ESPN and makes for more entertainment. Last year, Michael Smith had a crackpot theory that Brady Quinn, QB from Notre Dame, wasn’t being chosen because his name was “Brady.” He forgot that the first overall player taken was named “JaMarcus.”

Meanwhile, ESPN producers are wondering what to cut to next - their roundtable discussion that includes Corey Chavous, Jon Jansen and John Lynch, or their roundtable discussion that includes Corey Chavous, Darren Sharper and T.J. Houshmandzadeh?

9. Post-first round stupor. Though the time between picks has now been shrunk to ten minutes from fifteen minutes, it will probably still be a marathon of sandwiches, chips, sodas, and late-first round selections you don’t care about. After four hours of craziness, our NFL draft room probably looks like a hungover 10 a.m. frat house - only there was no alcohol involved. It’s amazing that someone like Mel Kiper can stick around for the entire draft, let around the whole first round.

To understand the stupor, it helps to understand the passion that goes into this stuff, and energy it takes to endure a whole round of NFL drafting. We have both Packer and Bears fans in the room, usually, and there’s nothing as apprehensive in the off-season as seeing the NFL commissioner walk up to the podium with your team’s selection.

Then, if your team gets someone you didn’t want, you’ll expend nuclear-type energy in venting your frustrations. In 2003, when the Bears chose Rex Grossman, the room exploded with laughter from the Packer fans, and a loud “NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” from my older brother.

Let me explain the craziness. Since fans put so much energy into rooting for their teams, some individual moments where all of the tension comes to a head prove too much for our minds to process, and we unleash our inner monkeys. When Devin Hester returned a the opening kickoff for a touchdown in the Superbowl last year, or when former Bears defensive tackle Keith Traylor intercepted a pass and ran hilariously down the sidelines with it, I could feel my brain’s inability to fully process what I was seeing, and what came out was hysterical shouting and dancing, and probably jibberish that sounded like “Woopah woopah! Jey monnamonna!” Similarly, if something bad happens, we’ll turn into angry monkeys. “RIBITY RUFFLESNUFF!”

For perspective on how common this is, my brother didn’t really remember reacting like that in ‘03 and ended up being okay with the Grossman pick.

Another example, from last year, was when the Packers selected Justin Harrell, a no-name defensive tackle in the mid-first round. The house turned into monkeys - Packer fans angry, Bears fans laughing, followed by hours of frustration from the Packers fans. My brother caught the moment on his tape recorder, and it sounded something like this:

“E$^!@C R*#(P NFIEOPUNF*(#RUF*()JISDFOPFJIONJIOP!!!!!!”

Needless to say, by the end of the first round, we’re beat.

10. The backlash after day one. Usually, the fun of even the NFL draft succumbs to our need to focus on more than one thing at a time for too long, and eventually some time into the second round we either head out to play basketball, or stay in and watch movies, play Grand Theft Auto or more recently, Nintendo Wii.

And because the draft is two days, it’s always a sleepover, wherever it is. It’s too much awesome for one day.

*I don’t really think Glenn Dorsey dropping out of the top ten will happen, since a lot of people think he’s the best player overall and he easily could go second to the Rams. But what if he slips farther than expected - which for him is something like 6-10 - and the Bears are one trade away from having a Tommie Harris/Glenn Dorsey duo at defensive tackle****? See how these hypotheticals work? I’m giddy just thinking about it.

**This hasn’t happened yet for the Raiders, but I’m a big JaMarcus Russell doubter and I think having all that money tied up into a bust quarterback will hinder them for a few years.

***The Chargers acquired LaDanian Tomlinson with the 5th pick in 2001, after trading down from #1 and letting the Falcons select Michael Vick. Think that trade had a ton of implications? The Chargers got a Hall-of-Fame running back, and the Falcons got a freak athlete quarterback who would eventually go to jail for cruelty to animals.

****I still want the Bears to draft an offensive tackle in the first round.

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That’s what the mysterious lights over Phoenix a few days ago turned out to be: nothing more than a clever hoax, a guy claims. A clever, clever hoax. In fact, it’s so clever I’m kicking myself now: why didn’t I think of that?

The UFOs were just flares tied to balloons, launched one at a time a minute apart each from the guy’s backyard. Because Phoenix was already the site of a famous 1997 UFO event called the Phoenix Lights, it probably didn’t take much for people to see something and then start filling the blanks in their own head.

I admit, if I saw them, I would probably be thinking along the lines of “no man-made flying object I know can just float like that!” (forgetting the existence of balloons) or “look how they fly together!”

Also interesting here is watching the government’s response to this. It would be embarassing if the government explained the lights right away and said “they were just weather balloons!” and it turned out to be a hoax. Eager to explain the lights much, government?

Fortunately, the U.S. military fessed up and said it didn’t know what caused the lights, which in retrospect was the best move.

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Interestingly, although Aqua Sciences wasn’t directly funded through military contracting, it will find early uses in hydrating our troops in Iraq - where it will bring water transportation costs from $30 a gallon to $.30 a gallon.

Darpa gave millions to research companies like LexCarb and Sciperio to create a contraption that could capture water in the Mesopotamian desert.

But it was another company, Aqua Sciences, that developed a product on its own and was first to put a product on the market that can operate in harsh climates.

“People have been trying to figure out how to do this for years, and we just came out of left field in response to Darpa,” said Abe Sher, chief executive officer of Aqua Sciences. “The atmosphere is a river full of water, even in the desert. It won’t work absolutely everywhere, but it works virtually everywhere.”

So this kind of innovation was an indirect response to military funding of an unpopular war.  Though the Iraq War has brought death, suffering and destruction to Americans as well as Iraqis, one indirect legacy might be worldwide access to fresh water.

I’m not saying the ends necessarily justify the means, but it is an argument for high military funding in peacetime.

Speaking of funding that leads to innovation, isn’t the Space Program awesome?  I found a list online of products that we’ve been able to help directly or indirectly because of our ventures into space:

-Scratch-resistant lenses
-Solar energy
-Improved golf ball aerodynamics
-Improved forest management
-Radiation insulation
-Laser angioplasty
-Human tissue stimulator
-Voice-controlled wheelchair
-Engine lubricant
-Emergency response robots
-Self-righting life raft
-Better brakes
-Advanced lubricants
-Microcomputers
-Portable coolers
-Pool purification methods
-Enriched baby food
-Improved weather forecasting
-Programmable pacemakers
-Automated urinalysis
-Improved aircraft engine
-More efficient wing designs
-Safer bridges

NASA has made our world safer and more efficient.  A relatively small company from Miami Beach reduced the cost for fresh water for our troops by two decimal points.  Imagine what can be accomplished with more funding for NASA, and thereby more money for subcontractors that NASA employs.

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