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sgtwolvehttp://blog.burrillstrong.com/

Big fat moleman here

A week or two ago, I received a piece of junk email. In and of itself, this is not an unusual event; junk email is like a runny nose: there’s always more. But this particular piece of junk … well, let’s put it this way: if the people in charge of D-Day were as accurate as this particular spammer, the troops would have landed in Rhode Island.

Those of you who know me are familiar with the shape of my body; for those who don’t know me, I think health care professionals call it “string bean.” According to the BMI scale, I hover on the edge of being underweight; to make my watch fit my wrist, I had to remove every removable link and move the clasp as far as possible. Once, when I declined to join my father in ordering food at a deli, the owner looked at me and said, in his thick accent, “Are you sure? You need some meat on your bones!”

In summary: I am lightweight and portable.

With that context, imagine my laughter when this email invaded my inbox.

Hi, I hate to be the one to mention this, but people continue to talk about your weight issue and it just disgusts me. Whether you know it by now, people are always chattering about each other at work but you come up more than enough. I wasn’t the happiest or best-fit up until a year ago or so but that did change. Thanks to my dam brother-in-law(of all people). Anyhow, it was for the best.

What I am saying is that you need to do something different and maybe you can make the same difference I did. Try this stuff I used. I took it on the idea it’s just more junk but it worked great. I see more positive reviews on it nowadays and makes me feel even better. So, I am encouraging a change, not only in the chatter around here but in you personally.
-Anonymous for now
Using an anonymous email website to send this btw;)
When it helps/works just send a memo out with the name “Angel” in it. Then you can take me out to lunch to thank you. Talk to you sooner than later I hope;)

(If you know the source of the post title, you get 10 extra cool points. If you don’t, order Brian Regan’s DVD.)

Well, aren’t we just special!

It seems like it’s always playoff time in one sport or another, and it seems like playoffs excel at prompting suggestions for improvements. Consider this one more voice in the cacophony.

In most of the civilized world — and the United States, too! — playoffs consist of only a certain number of teams eliminating each other until one team is left. Some systems, like the NFL playoffs and the NCAA basketball tournament, are single-elimination; others, like the NBA or NHL playoffs, consist of multiple series (typically 5- or 7-game series). But all have some standard of entry.

Well, almost all.

The Michigan High School Athletic Association (MHSAA) basketball playoffs began last week. These playoffs are curious for several reasons, the most prominent of which is the standard of entry. Simply put, there is no standard.

In Michigan, every basketball team gains entry to the playoffs, regardless of record or conference standing. Teams whose only consistency was in losing march into the postseason alongside teams that feasted on those losing teams in the regular season. And to add to the curiosity, thanks to the random seeding at the district level, there’s no telling who will be given a first-round bye.

This makes for some odd playoff situations. Chelsea finished the regular season 19-1; the Bulldogs were considered not just the top team in the area, but among the top 10 in the state. But when the district pairings were released, Chelsea did not have a first-round bye. Who did receive a first-round bye? Erie Mason, a team that finished the regular season 2-18. And only two other teams in the district had winning records (Ida and Milan, both at 12-8); the remaining two, Brooklyn Columbia Central and Carleton Airport, were well below .500 at 5-15 and 1-19.

This also makes for humiliating playoff situations. After easily dispatching with Milan in the first round, 63-36, Chelsea moved on to face Erie Mason; as everyone expected, Chelsea won. But they didn’t just win; they won in a blowout, 85-26. Even more than the Milan game, the outcome was never in doubt; for Chelsea, it was simply a practice cleverly packaged as meaningful competition. That continued in the district finals, as Chelsea coasted to a 77-36 victory over Carleton Airport.

Chelsea’s wasn’t the only district featuring losing teams; every district included at least one lowly team. One class C district featured four losing teams: Greenhills (0-19), Inkster (5-14), Riverview Gabriel Richard (4-16) and Romulus Summit Academy (4-16); one class A district featured six losing teams: Adrian (7-13), Lincoln (7-13), Monroe (9-11), Saline (5-15), Tecumseh (6-14) and Temperance Bedford (8-12). There wasn’t room for a winning team.

Districts such as the sub-.500 group cause some to call for coherent organization — which means seeding — at the district level, but this is not a solution; seeding could have one of two effects, depending on its implementation: it could evenly distribute the winning and losing teams, or it could more evenly match teams in the first round.

The former would provide more expedient elimination of the losing teams. With few exceptions, the winning teams would tear through their considerably weaker opponents, much like Chelsea’s Trogdor-like destruction of its weak district; while this might provide a few more interesting second-round games, it would cancel out its potential benefits by guaranteeing too many cakewalks in the first round. This option may improve the second round to some degree, but in most cases, it would do little to improve the first round.

The latter may introduce some interest into the first round by providing more even matchups, but it is difficult to ignore the lowly records of the worst teams in the tournament. A 2-18 team may be evenly matched with a 1-19 team, but the quality of basketball likely will be middling at best. And no matter the winners of those games, they still would be walking from their even matchups into games against far superior opponents, at which point a vast majority of the losing teams would suffer the nearly-inevitable lopsided loss. This option would offer a more realistic — but only marginally meaningful — victory to more losing teams; it would also more quickly eliminate more winning teams. Fortunately, this option also is unlikely.

This playoff situation is not comparable to the NCAA basketball tournament. Unlike their counterparts in the MHSAA basketball playoffs, even the lowest seeds in the NCAA tournament have exhibited some ability to win games. The NCAA has postseason qualification standards; in basketball, the MHSAA does not. The lowest NCAA seeds gain entry through merit; the lowest MHSAA teams gain entry simply by existing.

Ultimately, the idea of guaranteeing even the most miserable team a playoff berth — typically a reward for some sort of regular-season success — is bad for everyone. For the good teams, it gives them not a game, but an unnecessary scrimmage; for the bad teams, it gives them hopeless losses; for the fans, it provides little reason to travel — in Chelsea’s case, a 40-minute trip for its three district games — to watch a blowout. For the most significant improvement, this system requires more than simple reorganization; it requires standards. Any standards.

Football, an equally popular high school sport, recently instituted its own playoff standards. Teams playing nine-game schedules must win six games to qualify; teams playing eight-game schedules must win five games. If there aren’t enough qualifying teams to fill the 256-team field, near-qualifying teams — like Chelsea’s 5-4 playoff team from 2005 — complete the field. As with any system, there are some complications, but in general, it’s easy enough to understand: if you win enough games, you’ll make the playoffs; if you don’t, you won’t.

The specifics of any potential basketball standards would be debated — how many wins is enough? How many teams in the field? How many rounds? — but that would be a welcome debate. It would be the first step in changing a playoff system that suffers because it simply can’t say no.

Minister of Menial Tasks and Other Minutiae no longer, part 1

Eighteen months ago, I started working at the University of Michigan as a professor of nuclear physics.

Okay, okay. I was not a professor of nuclear physics; my job was nowhere near as mundane and pedestrian as that. No, I was one of the thousands of people who allow those professors to be mundane and pedestrian. Without me, those professors would just be highly-educated unemployed people.

Anyway, for the last eighteen months, I’ve seen this sight every workday morning:

And my co-workers have seen this sight every workday:

Except there would normally be a lot more paper on my desk, and as the self-proclaimed Minister of Menial Tasks and Other Minutiae, I would normally look like I was hard at work. I mean, I would normally be hard at work. Yeah. That’s what I meant.

For those eighteen months, I was a temp, and as such, unlike many elected officials, I was subject to term limits. So, at 3:30 PM on Tuesday, 06 March 2007, I joined the ranks of the highly-educated unemployed. (But without the highly-educated part.) And now my former co-workers see this sight:

(Only without the sweatshirt, since I have that with me right now.)

Who knew a chair could look so lonely?

Photo of the Variable Time Period, vol. 81

Happiness and hurt (02-03 March 2007).

Thursday and Friday provided the towering highs and cavernous lows of sports as rival schools Chelsea and Dexter met first in the hockey playoffs and then in the basketball regular-season finale. Both games went into overtime, and both were Dexter victories: 3-2 for the hockey team and 59-57 for the basketball team.

The first picture shows the Dexter hockey team celebrating in front of its student section; the second shows Chelsea’s Mike Bazydlo reacting to the loss. The third shows Dexter’s Johnny Benjamin celebrating his last-second game-winning shot; the fourth shows Chelsea’s Adam Connell mourning the loss.

On Saturday, Dexter’s hockey team lost 4-2 to Dearborn Divine Child, so both schools’ hockey seasons are done. The basketball playoffs begin Monday, with Chelsea facing Milan and Dexter facing Pinckney.

Photo of the Variable Time Period, vol. 79

Look at me when I punch you! (27 February 2007)

Gabriel Richard’s Matthew Szmytke lodges his protest with Chelsea’s Matt Heinen after a Bulldog goal. Szmytke was upset at what he thought was goaltender interference; the referees disagreed, the goal stood, and Szmytke took a roughing penalty for his actions. Chelsea won, 7-0; the Bulldogs will face Dexter in the second round of the playoffs.

Frennies from heaven: an answer of sorts

In response to my recent post about prices listed in fractions of cents (Frennies from heaven, 13 February), Phoebe posed a question:

Why is it that gas stations are the only ones to charge a fraction? How did that get started and why does it continue?

Yahoo made an attempt to answer that very question, but they found no concrete explanation; “Theories abound, but none are definitive,” they say.  But they don’t leave us high and dry; they do helpfully list the theories, and it seems most believe it is simply a marketing gimmick.

(Most interestingly, they do note that Canadian gas stations do the same, but with a twist: Canadian stations don’t always end their prices with .9.)

I hope that provides you some peace of mind.