In an Interstellar Burst… at Blog P.I.

…I am back to save the universe. Or at least begin posting again, following just about the worst case of the flu I’ve had in years. I’ve got a few not-quite-ready-for-full-post ideas, so let’s clear them from the docket before getting back to blogging as usual:

First and most importantly, Blog P.I. would like to thank our advertisers. In related news, Blog P.I. has advertisers! Yes, the Blogads box at right has lain barren since I first signed up over a year ago. But now there are three — one from the left, one from the right, and one that I created to promote a friend’s website. Your support is greatly valued, even as I remain officially neutral on the merits of your particular issue and/or cause.
I yield to no critic in my undying devotion to HBO’s “The Wire,” but I must concur with Slate’s TV Club that this fifth and final season is off to a rocky start. The newsroom stuff is too didactic, some of the older characters are speechifying a bit, and the pacing seems weird. I know, it’s a tall order to wrap up a series of this scope in ten episodes while introducing yet another new plot strand. If this was any other TV show, I wouldn’t be complaining. But about that newsroom — does anyone else think the show’s explicit “dead where it doesn’t count” message is somewhat undercut by the ongoing investigation into the death of four girls in Southeast DC? Unlike some fictional deaths depicted this season, these real ones made the front page of the Washington Post again and again, making national (even international) news upon first discovery. I’m not discounting the trend — but current events at least prove it’s not fait accompli.
In a recent post, I pointed out that LinkedIn offered no option to turn off the acquaintance-recommending feature that automatically alerts you to people you may want to be networked with. As it so happened for my colleague, one such recommendation was an ex-girlfriend, whom he most certainly did not want to network with. Well, I still think LinkedIn should offer the option to disable (or enable) this feature, but he informs me that it is no longer appearing on his account. So, uh, Blog P.I. gets results?
Here’s something totally useless, but as an admirer of Douglas Hofstader, amuses me greatly: What’s the TinyURL for TinyURL.com? Well, if you plug the URL into its self-same website, it turns out to be:

     http://tinyurl.com/u

So what’s the TinyURL for that?

     http://tinyurl.com/7uw

And that?

     http://tinyurl.com/8ee

I could go on, but I’ll spare you. The website remembers every TinyURL generated for each page previously entered, so I assume that http://tinyurl.com was in fact the 21st URL entered into the website. Nice to know others are just as interested in the concept of reflexivity. (Hat tip: NM3.)
Today is a day I’ve been counting down to for nearly a year, even though I didn’t always know it: Fred Thompson needs a big showing in South Carolina’s primary this evening, and via Captain Ed, it looks like he just might get it. It’s been a great last few weeks for the campaign, maybe even the best few weeks of the campaign so far. Here’s hoping it’s not, in fact, the last few weeks of the campaign. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.