Figuring all great Heroes need to have come from somewhere, the hit NBC series has tapped Star Trek icon George Takei to play the father of Hiro Nakamura, the plucky Japanese office worker who happens to be able to bend the space-time continuum.

http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=fed133ee-2545-4600-8073-0a626192faf0

...will be at Citi Field. I can't wait for the inevitable "Shitty Field" references. They really couldn't come up with a better name? Hell, CitiBank Stadium would be better.

Also, the Mets signed Jose Valentin to a one year deal. Why? I would have liked an upgrade at second.

Red Sox won the right to negotiate with Matsuzaka, so he's out. Looks like it's Zito or Schmidt, as the Marlins apparently don't like Milledge, so Dontrelle Willis is out.

Relying on John Maine, Mike Pelfry, and Oliver Perez might not be the end of the world. Anyone heard anything about Brian Bannister lately?

Before the recounting began, she was down 386 votes.

The fight will center around the district's Sarasota County, where the electronic machines did not register a vote in the Congressional race for 18,000 voters (13%) -- what's called an "undervote." That's compared to only 2.53% of voters who did not vote in the race via absentee ballots.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001990.php

This is just ridiculous. Regardless of who should win or lose, people should be able to vote without worrying about whether or not their vote will count, or even be recorded. These 18,000 votes were, I believe, on touchscreens, with no paper trail.

Also, crap like this should be grounds for prison time: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001974.php.

"We're just glad it's all over," said Betty Beatty...

"They bugged us with their phone calls something terrible," said Betty, who voted for Buchanan because "with all her calls, Jennings, Jennings, Jennings, I wouldn't have voted for that woman if she were the only one running."

The NRCC's calls, you'll remember, began by saying something like "Hi, I'm calling with information about [the Democratic candidate]," then continued to give negative information about the candidate. They did not identify the true source of the calls until the very end, when they informed the listener (if he/she bothered to stay on the line until the end of the call), that the NRCC had paid for it. Voters reported being called again and again. A number of Democratic campaigns reported receiving complaints from voters who thought that the calls were coming from the Democrat, because of the calls' lead-in.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- A Republican-led legislative panel claims in a new report on illegal immigration that abortion is partly to blame because it is causing a shortage of American workers.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/13/AR2006111300924.html

Update, from Reason: "This requires no further comment, but I'm wondering why a state so worried about a labor shortage just reaffirmed a ban on cloning.". Funny.

"She saw my name with zero votes by it. She came home and asked me if I had voted for myself or not. I told her I did," said Wooten, owner of a local bar.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2646802&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Guitar Hero II came out on Tuesday. I didn't get it until today, and for that I blame Amazon. What the hell is point of a preorder if they don't ship it the day (or day before) it's released? I coulda just gone to a store to buy it, but didn't. As it turns out, I wouldn't have had any time to play until last night anyway, so I just missed out on one day.

Unfortunately, the first thing I learned when I put the game in is my wirelessly-modified guitar doesn't work with it. I'm not sure how or why they did it, as the wireless mod essentially just attaches a wireless adapter to the end of the cable on the regular guitar. Still, none of the fret buttons work correctly. I guess I'm lucky I never got around to making my second guitar wireless, and it worked just fine.

So on to the game... my honest initial reaction is: it's too easy.

I skipped Easy and Medium, and jumped straight to Hard. I've played GH1 a lot, and there are still several songs on Hard that I can't beat consistently. I have cleared them all at one time or another, but there are some that will always give me some difficulty.

In GH2, I cleared all the songs except one on the first try. Freebird, the last song in the game, took two tries, and it was only because I missed an easy part that would have given me enough Star Power to push through it near the end the first time through. I made it 90% of the way through on my failed attempt. Of course, a lot of the songs I only got three stars, so there's a lot of room for improvement and replayability, which I will definitely do.

I'm sure I will thoroughly enjoy they game on Expert. The setlist is great, and I haven't even gotten to the bonus songs yet. (I did play Trogdor, though.)

I guess this won't take up nearly as much of my time as I was expecting, though, and I'll get Gears of War sooner than I planned. Maybe even this weekend.