Irvin hosting reality TV show to win roster spot on Cowboys

This spring SpikeTV will air an Irvin-hosted, still unnamed show wherein 12 “football neophytes” get training and inspiration from #88. That dozen gets voted off week by week, by judges including former Cowboys players and Jerry Jones. The “winner” gets a spot on the Cowboys roster. Watchable?

Obama's First Fashion Faux Pas

While we're all rejoicing at the fact that Barack Obama is our new president, we did have some reservations about the tuxedo he wore to the inauguration ball (above). Simply put, the combination of a notched-lapel dinner jacket (by Hart Schaffner Marx) and a big, shiny white bow tie was not quite the thing for a commander-in-chief. We asked our old friend Alan Flusser, the world's leading authority on men's style who's been interviewed several times about Obama's dress sense, for his thoughts on the matter. Flusser is a renowned designer and author of several seminal works on men's style including Dressing the Man: Mastering the Art of Permanent Fashion You can check out his video interview with Charlie Rose here.

In Dressing the Man, Flusser writes, "The whole idea of a formal suit [i.e. tuxedo] is to distinguish itself from the notch-lapel business suit, not replicate it." Flusser declares that a dinner jacket with notched lapels is nothing short of a "sartorial oxymoron, convoluting both the form's aesthetic logic and its promise of timeless elegance." A proper dinner jacket should have peaked lapels, or, for slightly less formal occasions, a shawl collar. As for the white bow tie, that should only ever be worn with tails - hence the classic "white tie and tails" - and should never be satin. More here. 

Can Creatine Build Muscle?

Before there was 'the Nomad Surfer', I popped my internet publishing cherry by producing this nice and informative site that compiled a bunch of scholarly articles (It was also an assignment for my Health Psych class).  Click here to expand your creatine knowledge. 

Obama Chia Head

Pre-order one while supplies last from Amazon. 

iPod touch M110 sniper rifle: another reason to fear the Cult of Apple

We're trying... we're trying real hard to cling to our pacifist ways. But damn if the fusion of this US Army M110 Sniper Rifle and mounted iPod touch running the BulletFlight external ballistics calculator (available via the App Store) doesn't make us want to kill. Tap in the variables such as weather conditions, ammunition type, distance to target, and wind speed before exhaling and gently squeezing back on your second amendment right. God bless America. Via The Firearm Blog

'the Nomad Surfer' Got Wordle'd

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. www.wordle.net

the Nomad Surfer Visits Apple Store in NYC

All Music Is The Same Four Chords

Don't watch this if you don't want to lose all faith in music. The Axis of Awesome breaks down your favorite songs into the same four chords — over and over.

Harold Simmons’ 14-year Nuclear Gamble Pays Off

Simmons once told D CEO editor Glenn Hunter that if he landed the right permits, one of his companies could easily net another $200 million a year profit. Well, today, after 14 years of trying to get the state to allow him to bury radioactive waste in West Texas (shown left), it’s finally happened. February’s issue of D CEO (on newsstands soon, if not now) describes how Simmons and his company, Waste Control Specialists, worked the State Legislature and the people of Andrews County, Texas, to grease the skids. Link to the D Magazine article. 

30-pound marijuana brick delivered to wrong address in Denton

When an address didn't exist in Dallas, UPS assumed that perhaps the addresser meant Denton. Such is how a Denton man discovered a package containing a 30-pound brick of compressed marijuana on his front porch Monday. When he realized it wasn't the Sears tools he ordered, he took the chronic to the police department.

The package, addressed from Pharr, TX, had a street value of $10,500.