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By Brendan Loy
#5-seed Notre Dame and #4-seed Oklahoma -- playing in West Lafayette, Indiana -- are tied 72-72 in overtime in the second round of the women's tournament. Winner gets Tennessee in the Sweet Sixteen. GO IRISH!!
UPDATE: IRISH WIN!! Notre Dame is Sweet 16-bound!! Wooo!! GOOOO IRISH, BEEEEAT LADY VOLS!!
I'll update the pools in the morning.
By Brendan Loy
I drove a few miles to Carl Cowan Park this evening, where I figured I'd have a clear-ish horizon and a dark-ish sky to watch the Shuttle & ISS flyover. And, sure enough, I saw both spaceships -- preceded a few minutes earlier by the ATV Jules Verne -- race across the sky. The view of the Shuttle & ISS wasn't as spectacular as when I saw them from Nashville (they were much brighter and more directly overhead in that particular instance), but it was still neat. And I got a video!
Pay no attention to my blithering at the end of the video about how the Shuttle "stayed light longer than I thought it would." I was just a bit confused in real-time. On the video, it's perfectly obvious that the Shuttle faded into shadow when and where you'd expect it to, based on the ISS's behavior moments before.
The more interesting question -- which I don't mention in the video -- is why the Shuttle flared up so bright, brighter even than the ISS, in the final moments before it disappeared into the Earth's shadow. I'm sure there's a good answer to that question, but I don't know what it is.
P.S. The apparent jerky motion of the ATV, Shuttle and ISS is a result of my camcorder's "Super Night Shot" feature. In actuality, orbiting satellites move rather smoothly. :)
P.P.S. The title of this post is technically wrong. The Shuttle and ISS were not directly over Knoxville when I saw them, but rather, over the Memphis area.
By Brendan Loy
U.S. News and World Report's 2009 law-school rankings aren't due to be officially released until Friday, but there are scattered reports of leaks. (Hat tip: yea.) Specifically, law blog The Shark has published a PDF scan of an apparently Xeroxed copy of the alleged list (purportedly found at an unspecified "newsstand"); Xoxohth poster "Gerbil21" claims he saw the magazine on display early at a local Barnes & Noble and wrote the rankings down by hand; and poster "m1" on Law School Discussion took a digital picture of the alleged new rankings page.
If the leaked list is accurate -- a big "if" -- it would mean Notre Dame Law School has recovered from last year's drop from #22 to #28, climbing back into a tie for #22. However, I can't vouch for the accuracy of these purported leaks in any way, shape or form. I'm just passing on the links. You can consider them sort of like the early unweighted exit polls on election nights: lend them whatever credence you feel is appropriate, with "none" being a perfectly valid answer. We report, you decide.
Oh, and insert your own rankings-don't-matter disclaimer here. :)
P.S. For example.
By Brendan Loy
A few days ago, Jay blogged about Phil Bredesen's proposal for a superdelegate superconvention. Today, Hillary Clinton offered her thoughts on the plan: "The governor from Tennessee suggested that there be a convention of superdelegates, and I think that it is an intriguing idea. I have not considered it long enough to have an opinion on it."
Heh. Translation: "I haven't determined yet whether it would help me or hurt me politically. When I figure that out, I'll let you know whether it's an obviously necessary, undeniably fair and just procedure for determining the nominee, or a horribly undemocratic, totally indefensible alteration of the sacrosanct process we already have in place."
By Brendan Loy
Former Buffalo Bills quarterback Jim Kelly is reportedly considering a run for Congress as a Republican.
Let's see: he can serve in the House for four years, run for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat in 2012, win in a stunning upset, make a national name for himself, and then in 2016, when President Obama is termed out...
...can you say Kelly-Norwood '16?
You may scoff, but the ticket has some major built-in political advantages. First of all, they'd win the normally Democratic state of New York in a landslide, by uniting nostalgic Bills fans and grateful Giants fans. And secondly, they'd have no problems motivating the conservative base. After all, nobody knows how to aim for the right like Scott Norwood! It'd be a vast wide-right wing conspiracy!
:P
(Hat tip: Hugging Harold Reynolds. To all my Buffalo readers, including my wife, I apologize. I couldn't resist.)
By Brendan Loy
If you're in the South, the lower Great Plains or Midwest, or Texas, and your sky is clear, you may be able to see the Space Shuttle and International Space Station fly across the sky tonight as two distinct, bright dots, the Shuttle trailing about 20 seconds behind the ISS. (That's "seconds" as a unit of time, not as a unit of angular distance.)
The Shuttle Endeavour undocked yesterday, and is scheduled to land tomorrow, so tonight is the only side-by-side Shuttle & ISS viewing opportunity for this mission, barring delays. As I've said before, this is a very cool thing to see, well worth a few minutes standing outside and looking up at the sky.
The flyover will occur between 9:34 and 9:39 PM Eastern time. To find out exactly where in the sky to look, and when, go to Heavens-Above, select your location from the database or the map, and then click on "ISS" or "STS-123" under the heading "Satellites." The closer you are to the solid black line in the graphic below, the better your viewing opportunity will be:
Don't pay too much attention to the red circle, as it "moves" along with the Shuttle and ISS. Just look at the solid black line. The closer you are to it, the better. But don't believe me -- go to Heavens-Above and found out the local details. And then go outside tonight and look up.
Here in Knoxville, I'll be looking up to the western sky -- just barely south of due west, actually -- about one-third of the way from the horizon to the zenith. The sky's clear now; hopefully it'll stay that way. Now I just need to pick a viewing location. If I'm able to get any good pictures, I'll (obviously) post 'em!
By Jay Johnson
I don't know how many folks are aware of the guys from Red State Update, but I love their redneck takes on politics. The guys are radio DJs/comedians, playing the characters of Jackie Broyles and Dunlap.
Usually, it's simply them sitting at a table, bantering back and forth. This one, however, is a special kind of amusing.
Enjoy. Then, if you haven't already, go check out their other stuff on their site and/or add them to your MySpace friends.
By Brendan Loy
Hillary Clinton admitted yesterday that her claim, in a major prepared foreign policy speech last week, that "I remember landing under sniper fire" in Bosnia in 1996 and "we ran with our heads down" to avoid being hit, was false. She says it was a "misstatement," that she inadvertently "misspoke," and that this whole issue is a "minor blip."
Remember, this "misstatement" by Clinton was not an off-the-cuff, throwaway remark. It was in the prepared text of a major speech, and it formed part of a broader argument that Hillary has meaningful foreign-policy experience from her days as first lady. Politico has more, including video of the CBS News report that debunked Hillary's statement and spurred her to correct it:
On an almost-related note, Josh Marshall weighs in, again, on the Clinton campaign's ongoing "fog of nonsense":
Spin is one thing. And it's not a bad thing. But to have utility it must be tethered to some relevant facts, some kind of reality. Otherwise it just descends into ridiculousness. There's always some new clever but inane argument to twist 'up' into something at least somewhat resembling 'down'. Or if not that, enough to keep your head spinning long enough not to notice for a while that 2 and 2 still equals 4.
And finally, on an entirely unrelated note, a goofy picture of President Bush and the Easter Bunny, courtesy of NRO and Drudge:
NRO readers suggested some captions, but I don't think any of them are terribly good. I think Irish Trojan readers can do better. Suggestions?
By Brendan Loy
Vegas has tabbed two of the better-seeded Sweet 16 teams as underdogs: #3 Xavier (by 1 point to #7 West Virginia) and #2 Tennessee (by 2.5 points to #3 Louisville).
Meanwhile, the Vegas oddsmakers -- much like yours truly (see my current Facebook status at right) -- have jumped on the Davidson/Stephen Curry bandwagon. The #10-seeded Wildcats are only 4.5-point underdogs against #3 Wisconsin. WOOO!! Goooo David(son), Beeeeat Goliath!!!
(Curry, incidentally, isn't just a freakin' awesome player who scores like a bazillion points a game and who looks like he's about 16 years old. He's also apparently a really nice, genuinely humble guy.)
The other Cinderellas aren't so highly regarded. #1 Kansas is an 11.5-point favorite over #12 Villanova, and #1 UCLA is favored by 12.5 points over #12 Western Kentucky. That comports with history; top seeds are 16-0 all-time against #12 and #13 seeds that manage to reach the Sweet Sixteen, and it hasn't usually been close. (Twelve of the sixteen games have been decided by double figures.)
But College Hoops Journal says we shouldn't sleep on WKU: "All they’ve got going for them is some late-game mojo (first true buzzer-beater since Drew Nicholas in '03) and a UCLA team that has escaped three of their past five games with terrible non-calls from officials. How vulnerable is UCLA? They only scored 51 points against Texas A&M and clearly can’t shoot when someone’s not afraid to punch back. ... The Hilltoppers are in the perfect position of being able to fly under the radar (as much as any 12-seed can right now) and finally take the stake to UCLA’s heart."
Personally, I'm not buying what CHJ is selling, but man oh man, it would be awesome if the Hilltoppers could topple the Bruins.
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