A quick note of thanks to coder Devin, content-meister David, and the nice folks at MediaZone, who found this rugby addict twitching and drooling in an alley and took him in.

Not to clean me up.  To help me start mainlining the hard stuff.

They’re streaming the entire Super 12 rugby season, on demand.

Instead of having to settle for whatever games Fox Sports World decided to show each week, I just watched my favorite player and my favorite team — Carlos Spencer and the 3-time champion Auckland Blues — overwhelm Anton Oliver and the Otago Highlanders.

I feel like I did when I was a boy in Cleveland and I’d find out that a Browns home game had sold out, the TV blackout would be lifted, and I’d get to see a game I really wanted to, instead of one that only sort of mattered.  Carlos is both brilliant and slightly insane, and so at least once a game he does something delightfully what-the-f*** resulting in an outrageous scoring chance.  Usually even for his own side.

I am so thrilled right now.  I’m probably taking in too much air.  Quick, somebody pick me up and burp me.

There were a few glitches in set-up — notably, the whole shebang isn’t Mac-compatible, and the website doesn’t yet say so, which wasted a bunch of time and forced me to scrounge access to a buddy’s near-obsolete laptop PC.  The system also seems to insist on IE as a browser, and they could be clearer about that.  However, the customer response was near-immediate, helpful, and super-friendly.  And once I got the thing working, the video stream had only an occasional small stutter and looked surprisingly clear — even when blown up on a big screen, it was roughly like a second-generation VHS tape.

For a season subscription cost of just over a buck a game… I’m pretty happy.

One more caveat for anyone seeking a rugby fix: for some reason, they’re actually headlining some of the results, as if that’s an enticement to watch: "Look at how exciting this game was that we just completely ruined for you!"  They don’t seem to realize that for a lot of their users, this will completely destroy the product before they even get to use it.

Breathtaking, really.  Hope they figure that one out.  Meanwhile, be careful about where you let your eyes go on the page.

Still, all considered… suddenly I’m watching a South African TV feed (complete with Rand-denominated commercial inserts) of an Australian broadcast of a game between New Zealanders.  On a relatively crap computer, no less.

I remember the first time I used email.  It was amazing, really — near-instant letters halfway around the world.  Hard to imagine — and yet you also knew it was about to become a fairly normal thing.

Same thing here, I think.

The future sure is an interesting place.

Really pressed for time, so this week’s pudu entry is merely a link to Ultimate Ungulates, a website that indexes every distant pudu relative you might imagine, and probably quite a few you might not.  If you’re in a hurry, too, you can get your pudu fix directly here.

With so many significant cousins to show off, it’s almost surprising that some pudus don’t go around naming their offspring stuff like George Herbert Walker Tufted Muntjac Hartbeest "Scooter" Pudu.

That would be just so self-absorbed.

It’s much more something a dik-dik would do.

You’ll find each seat is equipped with a U.S. Army field telephone.  Your stewardess will now demonstrate how to attach the electrodes snugly across your lap and pull them tight.  Please refrain from shrieking until the captain has turned off the No Screaming lights.

This Newsweek piece really is worth a look.

I just don’t remember growing up expecting to live in a country where the introductory phrase "Like many detainees with tales of abuse…" would be written about my own government.

Shows how little I know.

Jon over at A Tiny Revolution enjoys a fun snip out of Falwell’s autobiography, courtesy The New Yorker.

Makes sense he’d support a president who tortured animals as a kid, too.

Especially one whose government outsources torture of human beings.