Is your bracket busted yet?

I'd like to thank the Bradley University Braves for totally busting my bracket. Clearly, Kansas is not going to the final four. If you don't know, Bradley is a small school in Peoria, Illinois. I know this only because I looked it up two seconds ago; when I tried to look it up as they were owning my final four sleeper, the site was getting so much traffic from crazy bracketologists that I couldn't get in.

If you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, you missed the most exciting four days in sports this past weekend: the opening weekend of the Men's College Basketball tournament. No other day comes even close to the excitement of any of the four days from this past Thursday to Sunday. Baseball opening day isn't as exciting; NFL opening day isn't as important; Do hockey and pro basketball even have opening days? I don't know.

Quick explanation of the tourny: 64 (sort of) teams enter the tournament. It's setup in a single elimination style "bracket": so every team plays someone in the first round; losers go home, winners play each other; losers of that go home, etc. Basically, all you have to do is win 6 games in a row and you win a national championship.

So why is this weekend so exciting? To start, over 4 days, from noon to midnight each day, 48 games are played. 48!!! There aren't even that many teams in any pro league. It translates to about 4 games being played at once, staggered by the wonderful people at CBS so that typically games don't end at the same time. But figure with 4 games going on at once, one of them has GOT to be interesting. Maybe it's BC and Pacific going into overtime. Maybe it's Northwestern State hitting a rEdiculous game winning three to beat the buzzer. Doesn't matter, something is gonna happen that you are gonna watch.

This brings us to our next reason why this tourny is so exciting: every game matters. People say the NFL is more exciting than baseball because there are 16 games as opposed to 162. Well, in the tourny, there are at most 6 games. More importantly, if you lose, you're out. If you're a fan of a team, you HAVE to watch every game they play. If they lose, their season is over.

But chances are, you are not a fan of any one team in the tournament. You care about this tournament because you picked a bracket. Before the tournament started, you decided who would win every game; you tried to pick the upsets; you tried to pick the national champs. Now all 63 games matter, because you get points for every correct game that you picked. Maybe you just play for pride. Or more likely, you threw 5 bucks into a bucket for your office pool, and just from that you could win a couple hundred bucks. I have no stats to back this up, but I believe this tournament is the single biggest gambling event of the year. Fine, you got me, all the reasons I already mentioned are true, but it's totally all about the money.

So if you were wondering why you couldn't find me between Thursday and Sunday this past week, it's because I was glued to my TV, watching every second of tournament action, taking brief breaks to check my bracket online and the rest of my bracket pool. If you missed out this year, I highly suggest in March of next year you ask a random person in your office if they know of an "office pool." They'll know what you're talking about.

Oo, just be careful. Gambling is illegal and bad. If you get in a bind, make sure you say "this is purely for recreational purposes" or something like that, because for some reason that makes it legal.

P.S. - Yes Rachel, you and Mr. Spam are the only ones who comment. I think there are ways for me to block Mr. Spam, but your comments always look so lonely.

Back from Georgia

So I'm back from Georgia, which was awesome by the way. Ultimate, the beach, nice weather, and otherwise having fun all week. Of course, the sickness that I had all last week but kind of ignored because I was on Spring Break has caught up with me. I even had to skip out on Purim funness last night to try and rest up. I'm not sure exactly what I have, we basically started calling it the plague on break because Brian Cox started break as the only incredibly sick person but by the end of the week it had spread to all of us. Regardless, all and all good time, and I'm tan and happy.

I discovered last night while talking to my grandfather that I only have 5 weeks of classes left. How awesome is that? I am so ready to be working and doing the whole 9 to 5 thing again for an extended period of time (read: the rest of my life). I'm also excited to be making money again, which I haven't done in approximately 10 months now. Seriously, life is expensive.

Also, if I'm not working I can't make extra money by winning March Maddness office pools. Last year I came in second in my office pool (I missed out on first because the Illini decided to suck in their last game. I'm not bitter...). Anyway, every year I come up with strange theories for picking teams in the tourny that have nothing to do with their actual talent. This year the theme is "East Coast Bias: Vindicated." If you don't know, East Coast Bias is the buzzword that people from places like Des Moines use whenever they think their crappy sports team doesn't get enough coverage. So I'm picking as many East Coast teams to go as far as possible. UConn and Duke in the championship, BC in the final four, etc. I'm gonna create a corollary to this: it doesn't matter if your on the east coast if I don't know where you are. Example: Villanova I believe is somewhere in a state that I drove through this past week, but I have no idea where. They aren't making it out of the sweet 16. Gonzaga could be in a foreign country for all I know, same fate for them.

I'm also gonna use a second theory for tie breakers when I can't figure out a teams longitude. There's a Bill Simmons theory out there that the best player in any given year will win the NBA championship. Reason being that with five players on the court at a time, one awesome guy can make all the difference. I'm subscribing to that this year at least secondarily for the tournament. Reddick will carry Duke far. MacNamara will carry Syracuse further than they deserve to go (hell, he already has). Morrison will probably make up for the fact that I don't know where his team is located.

And when all else fails, just figure out who's mascot can kick who's ass. Just remember that Seluki is a dog with dreadlocks and it would definitely kick a Hoosier's (either a country hick or living room breakfront) ass every day.

Punditry

So I guess I'm writing twice today. Go Figure...

While I consider myself a liberal, I tend to hate most political pundits, whether they be conservative or liberal. I've read Ann Coulter, Al Franken, and Bill O'Reily, and frankly I don't like any of them.

Recently, an editorial was written for the Boston Globe about Jon Stewart, and more specifically his viewers. Go read it, it's only a page. I'll wait.

So here's why I don't like pundits, including this guy, whoever he is. He tries to blind readers with broad generalizations ("People who possess the wit, intelligence, and self-awareness of viewers of ''The Daily Show" would never choose to enter the political fray full of 'buffoons and idiots.'"), stereotypes("Born in Newton, Goldberg attended Newton South High School [and] Vassar, where he majored in political science and joined a Jewish fraternity."), big words ("Menckenesque")and famous names (de Tocqueville, Wilson, Roosevelt), while stating a whopping 0 relevant facts (the one stated fact in the entire article: "only 2 percent of the show's audience identify themselves as conservatives." Wow. I guess it's true, only the smartest get into Harvard). So somehow without any facts, he comes to the conclusion that Daily Show viewers eventually graduate and decide that politics suck so they should do something else. Brilliant, do you have any facts to back this up kind sir? Clearly you must have a broad knowledge of the Daily Show fan base and what their lives were like 10 and 20 years after they graduated college. This would probably be difficult since Stewart has only been hosting the show since 1999.

The writer says Daily Show viewers enter the private sector instead of going into politics. I'm curious what most of today's top Democratic leaders did at a similar point in their lives. Well, Kerry went off to fight in Vietnam. Al Gore did the same. I don't really consider that starting a political career, but it is certainly not the private sector, so we'll ignore that one for now. Howard Dean went to medical school after college and started his practice (one might even call it a (private practice). As far as I can tell, Hillary Clinton had no political career until after her husband left office. Barbara Boxer worked as a stock broker and journalist, and was not elected to her first public office until 14 years after she graduated college. My point? Not everyone goes on a straight arrow path to politics.

In the interests of full disclosure, I also looked up Joe Leiberman, Jon Edwards, Barack Obama, and Dick Durbin, all of whom basically did follow the straight arrow path to politics. My point is not that no one follows the path, just that you don't have to go straight to law school to become a politician.

Anyway, my larger point is this: may Daily Show viewers can lead better lives and do more for the democratic party than by running for office. Personally, I think I would be a decent politician, except that my one major screw up that ever politician has at least one of would be more colossal than Dean's screaming fit after the 2004 primaries. Regardless, just because the best minds don't go into politics isn't necessarily a bad thing. I can do plenty by voting, being involved, and giving money without being a politician. In fact, I would say that I'm more likely to do so because of the Daily Show.

One final point: I do know many people who are graduating college and already have or are likely to go into the private sector. And many of these people have been fans of the Daily Show. But while it is to early to tell exactly where everyone will end up, I wouldn't be incredibly surprised if some of them ended up in politics. I know plenty Daily Show fans who are starting careers in religion, social work, education administration, etc. Not exactly Morgan Stanley and the private sector.

Georgia on My Mind

This is a picture from Tybee Island, in Georgia, just outside Savannah. I'll be spending a week there with the ultimate frisbee team, doing nothing but playing ultimate, sitting on the beach, partying, and otherwise having an awesome time. You may not consider ultimate a real sport, it's times like this that I don't personally care. My "fake" sport has beach tournaments and warm weather tournaments in the winter and is way better than any other sport. So there.

So we're leaving tonight, driving down to Delaware and staying the night at one of the team member's houses. I know, Delaware is kinda lame, but GA is like a 20 hour drive, you gotta stop somewhere. Get to GA on Saturday, screw around until Monday when we start the tournament. We play basically 9-5 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. There's only 12 guys on the Men's team, so we get tons of playing time and we got slick new uniforms to boot (I can't believe I just wrote "to boot"). Friday back to Delaware, Saturday and Sunday we're playing another tournament in Maryland somewhere (I don't know much about this tourny), and I'm back in cold Boston Sunday night.

If, for some reason, you happen to be somewhere along the East coast between Boston and GA, you may be getting a phone call. Cindy and Brian, you're the only ones off the top of my head. I intend on being totally ignorant of a state's geography as well. Ex: If I know you are in North Carolina, I will call you from anywhere in North Carolina. The fact that you are in some city 5 hours away as opposed to the one that I am currently driving through means nothing to me. I'm from Massachusetts, where if you're in the state, you're either within driving distance or outside 495, which is basically Massachusetts Minor and not really part of the state.

Yeah, that's about it about Georgia. I'll be back in about a week and a half with a full report.

Groan...

Yeah, so it's been a long time since i've written anything. Why? Because my HCI prof decided it would be good if each one of us could recreate an entire mobile calendar system... and a GPS buddy tracking system. Because you know, how many times have you thought to yourself "You know what would be great? If I could have a calendar and find out who's walking down my street all from the same application!!!" (that was sarcasm, did you catch it?) So it's still not quite done yet, but i've been going crazy over the past 5 days getting it done (not because I procrastinated, but really, he only gave us about a week to do it) and for some reason I feel the need to type incoherently during this repeat of the daily show.

Seriously, have you ever had one of those days where you are doing so much that you look down five times an hour just to make sure you remembered to put your pants on in the morning? Maybe it's just because it's been cold, but really, this is how I have felt this week.

Going back to my HCI class, I need to rant on IS people for a minute. IS stands for Information Science. Theoretically, it is a specific area of computer science that has more to do with computers and people and less to do with computers. Practically, however, IS people have all the bad characteristics of Computer Science people with none of the good ones (yes, there are good characteristics of Computer Science people). Think one level below a philosophy major, maybe a step above a general studies major. But the worst part is, for some reason, they are all snobs. They think they are better than everyone else. They are told "the reason to be in IS is so that you aren't stuck in cubicle all day. IS people talk to people, CS people are shut ins." I would like to state, that in the real world, that's not true. Anyway, my professor for HCI (an IS person), thinks it nothing to just create an application. No big deal. The other big issue I have is that they pay so much attention to the best experience for the user that they ignore the actual device capability. For example, an IS person would say "You know what would be great; if when this app was running on this mobile device, if the mobile device would float in midair. That way, the user could use both hands to control the app!" Frickin' genius!!! Why don't you have it spray you with nice fragrances as well? Man I hate IS people.

I'm going to Georgia on Friday for an ultimate frisbee tournament. Shutup, it's awesome. Anyway, I definately won't be writing from that friday to the following sunday so don't expect anything.

My second newest favorite thing is google video. I'm not linking it, because my newest favorite thing is yahoo video, which has far surpassed google video. Mostly because you can find pretty much the same stuff but there's at least a relatively high chance on yahoo video that you can download and save the video to your computer (and not in some random google format). You can't download this one, but I highly suggest viewing it. Anyway, there's all sorts of wonderful daily show and football and everything else clips, go find em.

Aright, bed now.