SUNDAY FUNDAY...GOOOOOO BROWNS!!!

I wasn't going to post anything fresh this weekend. And then I came across this...




NOW JESSICA SIMPSON IS ENGAGED...
Not to be out done by her ex husband NICK LACHEY who got engaged last week, according to US Weekly, JESSICA SIMPSON is now ALSO engaged to her boyfriend Eric Johnson.

Sources say that the couple got engaged on Thursday.
On Saturday, Jess had a giant ring on her left hand during an appearance at Dillard's in Kansas City.

Jessica and Eric have only been dating since May. His divorce from his estranged wife became official LAST MONTH! YES!

http://www.usmagazine.com/healthylifestyle/news/jessica-simpson-eric-johnson-are-engaged-20101411







WHILE I'M HERE, MAY AS WELL POST A FEW OTHER STORIES FROM THE PILE...
...AND MAY AS WELL STICK WITH THE MARRIAGE THEME!
57-year-old HULK HOGAN and his 35-year-old fiancée Jennifer McDaniel have applied for a marriage license. There's no word on a wedding date, but the license expires on January 11th...so obviously, it should be before then.

E! Online says that Hulk's son NICK will be the best man.






YOUR TV SHOWS DETERMINE YOUR POLITICAL LEANINGS? WHAT!?
A consumer research company called Experian Simmons has released a new study of The Top 15 Most Popular TV Shows For Republicans and Democrats.

The #1 Republican show was "Glenn Beck" on Fox News, and the top Democrat show was "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" on MSNBC. But after that, the lists weren't political at all.

Here are the Top 15 Most Popular Shows For Republicans:
#1.) "Glenn Beck", Fox News
#2.) "The Amazing Race", CBS
#3.) "Modern Family", ABC
#4 and #5.) Tied: "American Idol" on Fox...and "V" on ABC
#6 and #7.) Tied: "The Big Bang Theory" and "The Mentalist", both on CBS
#8.) "Survivor", CBS
#9.) "Dancing with the Stars", ABC
#10.) "Desperate Housewives", ABC
#11.) "NCIS", CBS
#12 and #13.) Tied "The Bachelor" on ABC, and "Lie to Me" on Fox
#14.) "How I Met Your Mother", CBS
#15.) "Two and a Half Men", CBS

And here are the Top 15 Most Popular Shows For Democrats:
#1.) "Countdown with Keith Olbermann", MSNBC
#2.) "Mad Men", AMC
#3.) "Dexter", Showtime
#4.) "Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami", E!
#5.) "90210", the CW
#6 and #7.) Tied: "Private Practice" and "Brothers & Sisters", both on ABC
#8.) "30 Rock", NBC
#9.) "The Good Wife", CBS
#10.) "Damages", FX
#11 and #12.) "Community", and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit", NBC
#13.) "Friday Night Lights", NBC / DirecTV
#14.) "Parks and Recreation", NBC
#15.) "Breaking Bad", AMC

I mean, Republicans love played-out reality shows, and for some reason Democrats are into "Kourtney & Khloe Take Miami" and "90210"?

Interestingly enough, after "Glenn Beck", the rest of the Republican Top 15 is filled with popular shows on broadcast TV...while almost half of the Democrats' selections are on cable.

The study didn't clarify what the parameters were for which shows could be included...assuming there were parameters. I'm just the messenger.

It just seems weird that low-rated shows made the list, while high-rated shows like "CSI", "Grey's Anatomy", "Criminal Minds" and "Glee" were nowhere to be found.

Along the same lines, it's strange that "Glenn Beck" and "Olbermann" were at the top of the two lists, but other politically-oriented cable shows like "The O'Reilly Factor" and "The Daily Show" didn't chart.







GAGA WARDS OFF THE FREAKS
LADY GAGA likes to call her fans 'little monsters'...but when she was confronted by a fan who really DOES sound like a monster, she panicked.

Gaga has reportedly taken out a restraining order against some psychotic, 26-year-old chick who's sent her some very disturbing letters.

She allegedly wrote, "You come to my dreams. I want to die and I want to die together with you. I am not Mark Chapman. It is not only you who will die. I will shoot a bullet through my head, too."

She's talking about Mark David Chapman...the nut-job who killed JOHN LENNON back in 1980. So yeah, you can see how Lady Gaga is a little spooked. This chick has been ordered not to come within 500 yards of Gaga.







MICROSOFT TRIES TO BEAT GOOGLE...
No one knows how to get around a city like a cab driver. They know the fastest routes and short cuts...or, if you look like a tourist, they know the slowest routes. (And they especially know how to get to the best Pakistani restaurants.)

And now...the "good" people at Microsoft are planning to steal that knowledge in another attempt to compete with Google.

Microsoft created the search engine Bing to compete with Google, and they want Bing Maps to compete with Google Maps. But to do that, they're looking for an edge...and one edge could come from giving BETTER DIRECTIONS.

So, to figure out the best directions, they've actually started following around taxis to see the routes the cab drivers take. Then they'll apply those routes in Bing Maps.

So far, they've only done it in Beijing, China. They followed around Beijing's 33,000 taxis and charted their movements. Then they ran tests...comparing those routes to the routes proposed by Google Maps.

In the 30 tests, people who followed Bing Maps got to their destination about 15% faster than people who followed Google Maps.

Microsoft hasn't said if or when they're going to start following around cab drivers in the U.S. to figure out the best routes here.







PHONEBOOK? NEARING EXTINCTION...
A child born in the next few years probably isn't going to know what a "phonebook" is. Phonebooks, especially the White Pages, are rapidly moving closer and closer to extinction...and could be gone within the next decade.

In 2008, a study found that only 11% of people were still relying on the White Pages when they wanted to look up someone's number. That was down from 25% in 2005. And if they ran the survey again now, it would probably be in the single digits.

Fifteen states, including Ohio, have given phone companies permission to stop printing phonebooks: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.

AT&T has set up a system in some of those states where they'll only provide a phonebook on request. Only about 2% of households have requested one.

The reasons for the phonebooks disappearing are obvious. More of us use cell phones, which aren't listed in the phonebook...our cell phones store important numbers...and it's faster to just look up a person or business online.

The White Pages will definitely disappear faster than the Yellow Pages. According to the Yellow Pages Association trade group, HALF of all people in the U.S. still look something up in the Yellow Pages every month.

If the directories go extinct, it could save at least 100,000 TONS of paper every year.

Robert Thompson is a professor at Syracuse University. He says, "Anybody who doesn't have access to some kind of online way to look things up now is probably too old to be able to read the print in the White Pages anyway."