we think we've climbed so high

Last night's UFC event in Columbus was an entertaining one, with a couple big highlights. Obviously the headline of the night was 43-year old UFC Hall of Famer Randy Couture coming out of retirement to not only win, but completely dominate, Heavyweight title holder Tim Sylvia to become the UFC's first five-time title winner. Few people thought Couture had a chance, but he proved why he's a legend and completely controlled the fight. My own personal highlight was seeing Cincinnati's own Rich Franklin have an impressive win over Jason McDonald after losing the middleweight title to Anderson Silva in October. Franklin looked impressive throughout the fight, and McDonald took such a beating that his corner threw in the towel after the second round. Actually, I lied. The highlight wasn't just Franklin's victory; the highlight was Franklin conferring with UFC President Dana White after the fight and then announcing that White had agreed that the Franklin - Silva rematch would be held in Cincinnati!! Needless to say, our house erupted in cheers of astonishment and joy when he announced that. We didn't manage to get tickets to this event in Columbus but there is no way something will stop us from seeing Franklin's middleweight title rematch here in Cincinnati. I can't wait for them to announce the official date.

Yahoo has launched its 2007 March Madness pick'em. I created a group that you can join here. The group number is 30858 and the password is cincinnati.

If you thought that naming all 50 states in ten minutes was tough, you probably don't want to try naming all 245 countries in the same amount of time. The only problem is this is that there are errors (the commonly accepted tally of countries is 193) because they include too many places that aren't real countries (Greenland and the U.S. Virgin Islands, for example) and because some of the names are too picky (while it accepts "United States", it does not accept "North Korea"; instead it wants the "Democratic Republic of Korea").

edit: Thanks to Rob for this article from the Enquirer on the Franklin bout.