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Mar 17 2011

Round of 64 Day 1 Afternoon

The commentators last night were dividing the day into 4 groups of 4 and that makes a certain amount of sense.  I’m posting Afternoon and Evening editions so there are 2 groups of 4 in each piece.  I don’t have eight eyes like a spider or 4 TVs so I’ll generally be concentrating on 1 game in each group with sporadic updates on other contests.

Then there are errands to run and my beauty sleep.

In the first group of 4 games the one I’m most interested in is West Virginia v. Clemson.  Clemson looked dominating against Alabama-Birmingham and West Virginia is one of the toughest teams in The Big East, but streaky.  I have no idea about the individual matchups (I’m not that into it).

As always feel free to contribute your commentary about any game.

In the late Afternoon group Pittsburg just crushed in The Big East regular season and I expect they’ll do the same to UNC Asheville.

This all makes much more sense if you take a look at my Master Bracket Schedule for the Round of 68.  For a more traditional bracket try CBS Sports.

Yesterday’s Results

Seed Team Record Score Seed Team Record Score Region
16 *UT-San Antonio 20 – 13 70 16 Alabama St. 16 – 18 61 East
11 USC 20 – 14 46 11 *Virginia Commonwealth 24 – 11 59 Southwest

Current Matchups

Date Time Network Seed Team Record Seed Team Record Region
3/17 12:15 pm CBS 5 West Virginia 20 – 11 12 Clemson 23 – 11 East
3/17 12:40 pm True 8 Butler 23 – 9 9 Old Dominion 30 – 6 Southeast
3/17 1:40 pm TBS 4 Louisville 27 – 9 13 Morehead St. 24 – 9 Southwest
3/17 2:10 pm TNT 7 Temple 25 – 7 10 Penn St. 20 – 14 West
3/17 2:45 pm CBS 4 Kentucky 31 – 8 13 Princeton 25 – 6 East
3/17 3:10 pm True 1 Pittsburgh 30 – 5 16 UNC-Asheville 20 – 13 Southeast
3/17 4:10 pm TBS 5 Vanderbilt 23 – 10 12 Richmond 27 – 7 Southwest
3/17 4:40 pm TNT 2 San Diego St. 33 – 2 15 No. Colorado 21 – 10 West

Follow the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on The Stars Hollow Gazette.

If you don’t like squeeky shoes you can look for alternate programming here-

Mar 17 2011

The Wearing Of The Green

The Wearing Of The Green
O Paddy dear, and did ye hear the news that’s goin’ round?

The shamrock is by law forbid to grow on Irish ground!

No more Saint Patrick’s Day we’ll keep, his color can’t be seen

For there’s a cruel law ag’in the Wearin’ o’ the Green.

I met with Napper Tandy, and he took me by the hand

And he said, “How’s poor old Ireland, and how does she stand?”

“She’s the most distressful country that ever yet was seen

For they’re hanging men and women there for the Wearin’ o’ the Green.”
So if the color we must wear be England’s cruel red

Let it remind us of the blood that Irishmen have shed

And pull the shamrock from your hat, and throw it on the sod

But never fear, ’twill take root there, though underfoot ’tis trod.
When laws can stop the blades of grass from growin’ as they grow

And when the leaves in summer-time their color dare not show

Then I will change the color too I wear in my caubeen

But till that day, please God, I’ll stick to the Wearin’ o’ the Green.

You can listen to it here.

Mar 17 2011

DocuDharma Digest

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Featured Essays for March 16, 2011-

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Mar 16 2011

Play Ins Day 2

This will all make much more sense if you’ve already read my NCAA Basketball Tournament 2011 article which contains my Master Bracket Schedule for the round of 68.

Tomorrow and Friday are crazy days.  Coverage from 12:15 pm to midnight (without overtimes).

I uhh… might choose to nap through some of that and survey the carnage later.  Feel free to contribute your own observations, I don’t bite though I might call you a nasty name or two.

The natural place to split is at the 4:40 pm game so I’ll be running in two halves- one posted at 11:30ish and one at 6:30ish.

The format is going to change too.  I’m going to run two tables, Yesterday’s Results and Current Matchups so I’m only going to be foreshadowing whatever I’m covering now.  It’s probably possible to do it 36 hours ahead, but for sure it’s too much stinking work.

For instance-

Yesterday’s Results

Seed Team Record Score Seed Team Record Score
16 *UNC-Asheville 20 – 13 81 16 Ark.-Little Rock 19 – 16 77
12 UAB 23 – 7 52 12 *Clemson 22 – 11 70

Current Matchups

Date Time Network Seed Team Record Seed Team Record Region
3/16 6:30 pm True 16 UT-San Antonio 19 – 13 16 Alabama St. 16 – 17 East
3/16 9 pm True 11 USC 20 – 13 11 Virginia Commonwealth 23 – 11 Southwest

Follow the 2011 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament on The Stars Hollow Gazette.

If you don’t like squeeky shoes you can look for alternate programming here-

Mar 16 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 55 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Five dead as Bahrain police clear Pearl Square

by Ali Khalil, AFP

23 mins ago

MANAMA (AFP) – Bahraini police firing shotguns and tear gas crushed the camp in Manama of a month-old pro-democracy protest on Wednesday in an operation that left five dead and sparked Shiite outrage across the region.

The violence prompted US President Barack Obama, whose country is a close ally of Bahrain, to express “deep concern,” as his secretary of state said the deployment of Gulf troops to quell political unrest was the wrong response.

Early on Wednesday morning, hundreds of riot police backed by tanks and helicopters assaulted demonstrators in Manama’s Pearl Square, clearing the symbolic heart of the uprising in the strategic Gulf kingdom.

Mar 16 2011

Japan Syndrome

It’s very hard to get your arms around what’s happening with the Japanese reactor meltdown since most of what you read is either disingenous apologia for nuclear power in general or baldfaced lies (or more charitably confusion) about what’s actually been happening on the ground.

As near as I can tell the current problem is a big one.  The fuel rods are burning.  This is because the temperature produced by these still hot (and I mean that in the normal, don’t let your cat sit on the stove, sense) units is above the point where the casing and filler start to burn like a Brillo pad you light with a match.

Now unlike oil or electrical the best way to put out these fires is with water which cools the rods and slows down the nuclear reactions that heat them up in the first place.  The problem is that in these conditions water also breaks down into it’s component elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen, and Hydrogen just happens to be explosive.  Indeed one of the most confusing parts of the story is how many explosions there have been and where, but bottom line is a lot and in many places.

In any event each explosion has created more damage in addition to releasing radiation that has made it periodically impossible to continue fighting these fires without getting a toasty fatal tan.

Now there are other things you can do like dump a pile of Boron (even better than water for reaction reduction, not so good at cooling) on top and cover the whole damn thing with concrete.

That’s what they did at Chernobyl.

The problem is that there aren’t huge piles of Boron just sitting around and most of the brave Russian pilots tasked with that mission, ummm… died of radiation poisoning.

So the situation is fluid to say the least.

The NHK live earthquake coverage in English is on the right.

Mar 16 2011

DocuDharma Digest

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Featured Essays for March 15, 2011-

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Mar 15 2011

NCAA Basketball Tournament 2011

Welcome to the start of March Madness.

First a little meta.  This was incredibly difficult to research and format so I’ve had to put some other projects on hold.  Future editions should be easier.  The Team link goes to the Men’s Basketball page, the Record link to their full record page including teams played and scores.  If I’m a little off on the numbers it’s because some of the formats are hard to count and I might have missed an exhibition game here and there.

It’s arranged chronologically.  For a more traditional bracket try CBS Sports.  Each game can be watched in it’s entirety on the network listed, no switching except with your remote.

You might think there are 72 teams in the Tournament, but you would be counting the 4 slots for the Play Ins twice.  Those are all on True, 2 tonight and 2 tomorrow.  It has certainly been confusing to get the game times and networks, CBS has been posting them a scant 36 hours in advance.

Another problem with the Play Ins are the splits.  The East gets 2 and the West gets none?  And what about the seedings?  One of the Play Ins in the East gets a 12 seed and the one in the Southwest an 11!  If you are going to seed these losers that high why the hell didn’t you put them in the bracket to begin with?  This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that there were a lot of ‘automatic bid’ flukes as you can see by examining the records.  Finally Alabama State has a losing record.  Win The Future?

I’ll be rooting for Syracuse and after they fail at the foul line as they always do and did in the Big East Tournament any other Big East team and will have reasonably good prospects of having someone to root for at the end because they have 11 teams in the Tournament.

If you don’t like squeeky shoes you can look for alternate programming here-

Really great table below.

Mar 15 2011

Evening Edition

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

Now with 54 Top Stories.

From Yahoo News Top Stories

1 Blasts, fire escalate Japan’s nuclear crisis

by Hiroshi Hiyama, AFP

54 mins ago

SENDAI, Japan (AFP) – Explosions and a fire at Japan’s quake-hit nuclear plant unleashed dangerous levels of radiation on Tuesday, sparking a collapse on the stock market and panic buying in supermarkets.

Tokyo stocks, punished Monday in a frantic sell-off that sent indexes around the world sliding, plummeted another 14 percent before paring some losses and ending 10.55 percent down. European and US stocks also fell sharply.

In towns and cities, fearful citizens stripped shelves of food and water, prompting the government to warn that panic buying could hurt its ability to provide aid to areas devastated by Friday’s massive quake and tsunami.

Mar 15 2011

DocuDharma Digest

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Featured Essays for March 14, 2011-

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