Great game notwithstanding, for some the Super Bowl is all about the commercials. There were some pretty good ones this year. These were some of my favorites:

Bud Light - Breathe Fire

Pepsi - Magnetic Attraction

Diet Pepsi Max - What is Love

Audi - Truth in Engineering

Budweiser - Clydesdale Team

FedEx - Carrier Pigeons

Bud Light - Wheel Suck

Bud Light - Jackie Moon

In what was perhaps one of the best Super Bowl games in recent memory and maybe the most watched in Super Bowl history, the New York Giants ripped victory from the jaws of the New England Patriots with 35 seconds remaining in the game to clinch the title and spoil the Pats’ hopes for a record 19-0 perfect season. The Patriots had one last gasp to try to regain their lead and save the game, but Tom Brady’s desperation pass on fourth down fell incomplete. NFL Game Center has the stats and key plays.

Dawn and I watched the game with a group of close friends on Michael & Sisko’s new 73-inch Hi-Def flat screen TV. Now, that’s the way to watch the Super Bowl! We still had all the yelling and screaming those at UofP Stadium experienced, but with far better seats, much better company and, without a doubt, way better food. After the game, we retired to our hosts’ cigar room and enjoyed some of Michael’s finest, perfectly paired with appropriate wines and engaging conversation. It was a wonderful Super Bowl party!

Today I’ll be licking my wounds, paying off a couple of bets I’d made on the Pats, and collecting on one I made (no points!) on the Giants. All in all I came out about even.

Mike sent this in response to last week’s post about exotic juices. A hidden camera settles the debate once and for all…

I was going to post something this morning about the NFL cheerleaders participating in this year’s big game. But the Giants don’t even have official cheerleaders! How lame is that?

Let’s face it, the Super Bowl has evolved into a colossal economic event. From hotels, to commercials, to ticket sales, it dwarfs every other sports event by a mile. And when it comes to the reselling of tickets, the melding of technology and the law of supply and demand have created a buying frenzy nothing short of “shock and awe.” This years average ticket price? $4,322!

Here’s the breakdown: University of Phoenix Stadium will seat 75,000 for Super Bowl XLII. The Patriots and Giants each received 17.5 percent of the available tickets. After the teams dealt with their own needs (key sponsors, owners and others), each held ticket lotteries to distribute the remaining tickets to their season ticket holders. Usually, Super Bowl teams weight the lottery based on the number of years someone has been a season ticket holder. The Cardinals received 5 percent for hosting the game. The other 29 NFL teams split 34.8 percent of the tickets. Most tickets allotted to individual teams are shared with corporate sponsors and season-ticket holders. The NFL offices retained 25.2 percent of the seats, most of which end up with sponsors and league officials. The 1,000 tickets made available to the public come out of the league’s share.

Face value for Super Bowl XLII tickets is $700 and $900, but “Street” or resell prices surge close to $4,000. Asking prices for tomorrow’s game range from $2,450 to $19,446 at StubHub, a unit of eBay Inc. and the biggest of the online resellers. Officials there say the average price so far is $4,300 for tickets that the National Football League originally priced at either $700 or $900.

How much did tickets cost for Super Bowl I? $6 and $12. And the Los Angeles Coliseum, the host of Super Bowl I, wasn’t even sold out that first Super Sunday when the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs!

So most of us will be watching the game from the comfort of our living rooms on big screen TVs. We’ll have better seats, instant replay, cheaper beer and better company. Is it the same as being there? Of course not. But we won’t have to mortgage our homes to enjoy the game, either.

How do I predict the game will end? Well, I never predict. But after the Patriots win their fourth Super Bowl in seven years and become only the second team in National Football League history to finish an entire NFL season undefeated (Dolphins in 1972, 17-0), I’ll collect my winnings and talk about the game with dear friends while we sip a little wine and perhaps light up a fine Cuban. Later, Dawn and I will drive home, about a 25 minute trip, and think, ever so briefly and with a smile, about the poor fools who paid a big chunk of their annual salaries to see the game at UP Stadium and are now stuck in two hours of heavy traffic trying to get back to their hotels. Yes, life is good.

So I was flipping through my friend Steve Jobs’ diary (honest!) and discovered that he doesn’t particularly care for football. Wasn’t even aware of Sunday’s Super Bowl. Seems he’s partial to European sports like cycling and cross-country skiing, and thinks it’s outrageous that we don’t have tai chi on television in this country the way they do in every country in Asia. Who knew?

Well, I and everyone else I know will certainly be watching the big game. And the megabuck ads. Fox is asking as much as $2.6 million to $3 million for a 30 second spot!

Did Steve buy one? Apple’s not on the lineup but, with Steve, you never know.

This dreamlike view looking south from the historic mountain top Pic du Midi Observatory combines moonlit domes, a winter night sky, and the snowy peaks of the French Pyrenees. Encroaching on the night, lights from the La Mongie ski resort illuminate the mountain slopes nearby while the glow along the distant horizon is from urban areas in southern France and Spain. The image was NASA’s January 25 Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Leave it to San Francisco to experiment with a new way to brew the perfect cup of java. Coffee nervana? Perhaps, if you can believe the publicity.

Called a siphon bar, it was imported from Japan by San Francisco’s newly opened Blue Bottle Café at a total cost of more than $20,000. The cafe has the only halogen-powered model in the United States, and getting it here required years of elliptical discussions with its importer, Jay Egami of the Ueshima Coffee Company.

Professionals have long been willing to pay prices in the five figures for the perfect espresso machine, but the siphon bar doesn’t make espresso - It makes brewed coffee. Here’s how it works: A siphon pot has two stacked glass globes. As water vapor forces water into the upper globe, the coffee grounds are stirred by hand with a bamboo paddle. The goal is to create a deep whirlpool in no more than four turns without touching the glass.

Siphon coffee has a brewing cycle of 45 to 90 seconds. Is it really “all that?” James Freeman, owner of the Blue Bottle, is betting it is. And he may be right. Another system, the $11,000 Clover, has been gaining in popularity. Still something of a cult object with just over 200 machines scattered around the world, it makes one cup at a time. But it might soon become a common sight: Starbucks has just bought two.

Dawn and I plan on dropping by the Blue Bottle next time we’re in the City. I’ll let you know if we think the siphon bar really brews the perfect cuppa.

The German Bo-105 is a light twin engine multi purpose utility helicopter initially developed by Bölkow, and then built by Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) which now belongs to the Eurocopter Group. Eurocopter sold the Bo 105 until 1997. It was replaced by the new EC 135.

Being the first light twin-engine helicopter in commercial service, it gained widespread use over rural areas (police and EMS/medevac) as well as offshore. The four-blade hingeless main rotor with composite blades ensures extreme maneuverability. All main systems (hydraulics, electric, fuel, lubrication) were designed to be fully redundant. The pilot is Charlie Zimmermann, German helicopter aerobatic champion.

Thanks Michael!

I’ve been watching HD DVD’s plummeting popularity since Warner’s decision to jump on the Blu-ray bandwagon, especially evident following CES. But Toshiba’s apparently not going down without a fight. In Bryan Gardiner’s article for Wired, he explains what may be their “Hail Mary” effort to stem the tide.

You’ve got to hand to Toshiba. Even now, when faced with overwhelming evidence that Sony’s Blu-ray has won the high def format war, the mortally wounded HD DVD backer just keeps on prolonging the inevitable.

First, Toshiba decides to dramatically cut prices on its HD DVD players in the U.S. following Warner Bros. Blu-ray defection earlier this month. Now, for reasons that also escape us, the company has decided to buy a 30-second Super Bowl spot for $2.7 million to advertise its desperation those marked down HD DVD players.

Of course, none of this is really convincing consumers. As Ars Technica recently noted, in the week following the Warner Bros. defection, weekly HD DVD player sales tanked big time, falling from 14,558 the week previous to a measly 1,758.

Meanwhile, Blu-ray saw a reverse trend, climbing from 15,257 to 21,770. In fact, the format ended up capturing approximately 93 percent of the market that week, according to NDP. …

We’ve watched the format war rage for nearly two years. The world’s apparently made its choice. Maybe it’s time for Toshiba to throw in the towel on this one.

This was in Sunday’s Parade (“Ask Marilyn” section) and was fun to work out. Try it yourselves and see how much you remember.

A number has five different digits, none of which is 0: (a) The first plus the second equal the third digit; (b) the third times 2, plus the second, equals the fifth; (c) the second times 2 equals the first; (d) the first times 4 equals the fourth; and (e) the fourth minus the second equals the fifth. What is the number?

Come up with the right answer and win a valuable, great and wonderful free subscription to this site!

Davey says, “Following the recent crash landing at London’s Heathrow Airport, there have been some modifications to runway lighting…”

An article in the current issue of Nutrition Action Healthletter (Dawn subscribes) offers this advise:

1. Find an exotic fruit, preferably from an ancient culture. Already taken: açai (pronounces ah-SIGH-ee) from Central and South America, goji (GO-jee) berry from China, and pomegranate from the Middle East and South Asia.

2. Turn it into juice, either straight or mixed with other (i.e., cheaper) fruit juices.

3. Attribute extraordinary healing powers to your juice. Already taken: açai is the “fountain of youth,” goji berry is “the most potent anti-aging solution on earth,” and pomegranate lets you “cheat death.”

4. Get Whole Foods to carry it and charge what the market will bear. Don’t be shy. Start with four or five times what regular juices go for.

What will your customers get for their money? An assortment of antioxidants and phytochemicals, just like they’d get from any fruit juice. But whether that makes the juices healthier is unclear. At least that’s the case with two of our three examples:

• Not a single published study has looked at whether people who drink it are any healthier than people who don’t.

• Pomegranate juice. In a small, preliminary study, UCLA researchers found that rising PSA levels slowed substantially in 38 of 46 men with prostate cancer who drank 8 oz. of pomegranate juice every day for three years. … But there’s a catch: The study didn’t include a placebo group, so there’s no way to know if the pomegranate juice was what slowed the rise in PSA levels. …

• Goji berry juice. Same as açai juice.

And what about blueberry juice, which is starting to show up on supermarket shelves? While blueberry extract seems to help rats find their way through mazes, it’s too early to say if blueberries—or their juice—can prevent memory loss in people.

If you like flight simulators, you’ll enjoy this application I just learned about from Michael. Called FlightGear, it’s open-source, so as long as you abide by the terms of the license, you’re free to download, use and share it.

And while it may be free, don’t think for a moment that it’s not full featured. Professional polish and attention to detail are evident in flight variables like wind effects and real-time day/night. That’s the beauty of open-source—programmers around the world contribute to a project.

Flightgear includes real-world scenery taken from photographs and comes with the San Francisco area pre-installed. But you can visit the FlightGear Web site to get additional settings from around the world, including thousands of real airports.

FlightGear runs on Windows, Mac OS-X, Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and IRIX platforms allowing the user to “fly” their platform of choice. If you’re a flight-sim enthusiast, give it a try. New challenges keep your flight-sim skills honed, and you sure can’t beat the price!

Only in America can you find something like this. And did you notice? Chocolate chips! No wonder we have an obesity problem in this country! Thanks Frank; now I’ve lost my appetite!