Box Technology Must Advance

Christmas exploded all over my house this afternoon. We have unleashed all sorts of red-and-green goodness in just about every room on the first floor. Don't get me wrong - I love all the decorations and out entire Christmas would feel 'off' if even one of them was missing, I just don't enjoy going into the crawl-space to get them. Also, multiple trips up and down the cellar stairs are not fun either. Still, it could be worse and that was what I wanted to talk about today. The majority of the 15 packages that I had to bring up (plus one fake tree) were large boxes that once held either TVs or computer monitors. These are clearly the best boxes to store things in because not only do they hold a lot of things, but they are nice and square, which makes for easy stacking, and the majority of them come with handles cut into the sides for easy carrying. The problem will be in the future as these boxes start to break down over time, as cardboard is known to do and finding replacements will be difficult.

This was made apparent yesterday when my mom bought my father a flat-screen TV for his birthday. The box it came in will be completely useless when it comes to storing anything. It is long and narrow. It perfectly holds a flat-screen TV, but not much else. So, here's what I need: I need flat-screen TVs to start coming in larger boxes. Now, I know you're probably saying to yourself that will waste a lot of material. However, I have a counter-point: as it stands right now I will be throwing out the flat-screen box as soon as the TV is set up. If the box was bigger and I could actually use it to store things away, then it would be down in my basement containing something that I don't need to see everyday but can't bring myself to throw out and not some landfill. I'm actually helping. It is recycling in the best sense of the word. So, get on this, TV makers of the world. My suggestion is to either include some more packing material or stop making flat-screens so flat.

-Look, I don't want to be the guy who sits here and slams women's sports. I'm openly admitting that almost all female college athletes could kick my ass in any given sport. With that being said, it is insane to compare the UConn women's basketball team which is about to win its 88th game in a row to the UCLA men's team that had a similar win streak back in the 1970s. There are just too few women's programs that are strong enough to put up enough of a fight to say that this is really an 88-game winning streak. Right now I could offer up 12 of the teams that will make it to the women's Sweet Sixteen, because the same teams make it every year. And unless you're playing all 12 of those teams you aren't really facing much competition. Plus, when you factor in that because of a bitter disagreements between their coaches UConn hasn't played Tennessee (who were the major women's college program before UConn took over) at any point in this long win streak, it really de-values what the Huskies have done. It would be like the Duke men's basketball team never playing North Carolina. If you really want to brag about not having lost in almost four years then you need to play more than six tough games a year.