So your bracket is busted. Now what?

If, like most, you're either done for the Tournament due to a string of odd basketball in the NCAA's or, like me, you're hoping that your Sweet 16 and beyond picks can pull you out of the fire, the question becomes what strategy to take going forward to try and recoup losses. Full disclosure: During my trip last weekend to Vegas I was stricken with food poisoning so I really have no losses to speak of since I was in my room for most of the trip.

Had I been betting however it would not have been pretty.  So I, like most, would be considering how to get back on the good side of things starting Thursday, assuming that I had not gotten right in the NIT.

With that thought in mind, I'm going to opine a bit (in no particular order of preference):

Take a chance with a longshot and hope you're right.  Before we left Vegas, the wife put down a small bet on Dayton to win it all at 60-1.  You can do this, but the odds of getting your money back are very long.  I think Dayton is two and done in the Sweet 16, beating Stanford and then losing to Florida in the Elite Eight.

Blast the favorites. After the mess of the first two rounds, historically things tend to right themselves heading to the Final Four.  In this case it might be wise to wager heavily on Florida and Arizona since they appear to be two of the strongest three teams. If you're way in the hole this won't work, due to the projected payouts being too small.

Play the hot hand. Iowa State is 6-0 ATS in the last six games.  Against UCONN I think they have a good chance of going 7-0. I also think Iowa State could net you some pretty big value for money. They won the tournament for arguably the toughest conference in the country and appear to be peaking at the right time.

Pick a (slight) underdog. Baylor anyone?  Right now they're 3 1/2 point underdogs to Wisconsin. The way the Bears are playing I like them to beat that number and possibly give Arizona all they can handle in the Regional final.

Experience Matters. As frustrating as they are to root for, Michigan has been there before and look like a team that might be there again.  Granted, Louisville will be a tough out but, as 2 1/2 point favorites against Tennessee, they appear to be a pretty good bet and in a solid position to make it to the Elite Eight.

One final thought:  I saw a blurb on Odds Shark that Michigan State has never not beaten the spread in the Sweet 16 round. They're currently coming in as 1 1/2 point favorites against a solid Virginia team.  It's that kind of information which causes a lot of sports bettors to make foolish decisions.  Trends like this don't matter, especially in College where the only constant from year to year is coaching.  That said, I always will find it hard to take too short of a position against Larry Izzo whom I consider to be one of the best coaches in basketball today.

Whatever you do, keep it fun, don't get a stomach ailment in Vegas (as I did), and don't bet above your means.  Consider losses as a sunk cost.  You're starting the Sweet 16 at zero and looking to move forward from there.

As always, since I'm back in Texas where sports gambling is illegal I will not be placing any bets on these games so take my advice for what it's worth (nothing). I will however be rooting like hell for Dayton because the wife's future bet is the only money I currently have down on the remainder of the tournament.

Sometimes you don't know what you think you know

Case in point: Chron.commenter "Sterling Minor" on David Barron's AT&T vs. CSN Houston story today

I think you are an unusual sports watcher. This town is brimming with people who have an interest in SEC and UT sports. Next year, I predict many more people will want to see the Rockets than answered they did this year, but that is an educated guess only. Dynamo? You betcha for me, but the large racist and anti-immigrant crowd in the viewership area could be expected by a betting man to boycott a station showing soccer.

Emphasis added by me.

"Knowing" that everyone who won't watch the Dynamo are racist and anti-immigrant is a piece of common-knowledge information held by a certain set that, when examined, falls flat. Americans don't like soccer because it's perceived to be too slow and there's not enough scoring.  Last I checked, a lack of goals isn't racist, it's boring to some.  It, the perceived slow pace, is the same reason many don't watch baseball any more, or why tennis has fallen so far back in the ratings.  Of the major "slow" sports, only golf has, mysteriously, held on.

Many, not all, of the soccer enthusiasts that I know simply don't watch MLS because it represents soccer in the minor leagues.  I far more enjoy watching matches from Barclay's Premier League or La Liga or Serie A than anything MLS has to offer.

When most people watch pro sports they like to see the game being played at the highest level.  That's why the WNBA hasn't taken off.  Rather than sexism (along with racism the other -ism thrown around when people don't like your sport of choice) it's the fact that the Yates boys basketball team would best their best team by 40.

I don't watch the Dynamo because MLS' brand of soccer bores me.  It's slow, basic and not really all that entertaining of a brand.  Yes, some people say you should watch because it's the key to the future of International soccer in the US.  To that I say, go Scotland.

As a final note: ESPN shows soccer, you don't see a large contingent of "racist and anti-immigrant" Houstonians boycotting that channel do you?  Point, set, match.

The scary thing is, some people take these rankings seriously.

Houston is the 9th happiest city for young professionals.  At least, it is if you take this report from Forbes' Magazine seriously:

Happiest cities for young professionals. Jacquelyn Smith. Forbes.com via Yahoo!

The problem, as I see it, is that none of the "criteria for happiness' have anything to do with the cities themselves:

Young professionals, defined by CareerBliss as employees with less than 10 years' experience in a full-time position, were asked to evaluate ten factors that affect workplace happiness. Those include one's relationship with the boss and co-workers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and control over the work one does on a daily basis.

In other words: the rankings are for a companies, and have been inappropriately applied to municipalities in order to....?

One guesses in order for certain groups to run ragged with (faulty) results to suggest that if only more green space/public transportation/arts/trendy restaurants were added (preferably in the central core) their fair city would move up the ranks.

In reality, this is a survey of corporate culture.  But that won't stop the unproductive class from using as proof of case that Something! Must be done.  Nor will it stop Texas Lock Step Political Media from reporting it incorrectly as well.

*sigh*

Some good news on the eve of the Mayan apocalypse

As the Mayan calendar trundles forward to the end of history and the world apparently I have some good news for those of you worried about the coming ruination of all things Gaea.  There are, in fact, a great many things that you're worrying about now that seemingly won't matter after tonight.

1. Sequestration - Let's assume for a minute that the United States of Obama really is planning to put on a squirrel suit and hit the air for a leap off the fiscal cliff.  Doesn't matter.  Because when the great rogue planet smashes into the Earth your personal income tax rate (and the rate of those making slightly more than you) won't matter one iota.

2. The dismantling of the 2nd Amendment -If (or when, depending on your point of view) Mother Earth goes blammo is it really going to matter whether or not you're carrying your Glock 9 into the hereafter?

3. Whether or not Chris Bell will ever run for public office again. - I understand that, for a few years now, you've been worrying about that, Democrats wanting him to run because he's a solid progressive and Republicans hoping he runs for the comedic potential, and maybe he will, I hear there's going to be a need for administrators in the afterlife, possibly we can get a 'moon-shot' for gold-paved road repair?

4. Miss USA is now Miss Universe - Great, you're saying, we finally win one and it's going to be the shortest reign ever.  Look on the bright side.  This means there's less time for a nudie-picture scandal to come to the forefront. (Miss. Brazil should have won, or Miss South Africa.)

5. Climate Change - All that infrastructure laying by Al Gore and his investors, all of that speechifying and factually challenged movie making, Nobel prize wins, and countries fleeced only to have it all crashing down as the seas ultimately boil away due to nothing caused by man.  Must be a downer.

6. Who wins the Garcia/Alvarado pillow fight? - Thankfully (for the people soon to be represented by one of these two) it's not going to matter as the projected population of the district will soon be naught.

So, as you move along today, trying to meet deadlines, trying to finish off that last-minute Christmas shopping list for the people you forgot to shop for keep in mind this thought:  It's all possibly meaningless tomorrow. 


Unless, that is, you actually wake up in the morning.  That's because it will already be the next day in Japan, and the Mayans were wrong.  In which case you should re-load your worry list and you can resume your normal state of barely controlled panic over the state of things.

Finally, I wouldn't advise cashing in your 401(k) and flying to Las Vegas for an end of world bender just yet.  I'm doubtful that we should take too seriously predictions of the end of time from a culture who was unable to predict something as simple as their own demise.

Your question for the weekend

Why is it that European austerity measures are considered a failure just a few months after implementation but Keynesian economics is a "work in progress" almost 4 years later?  This despite similar results from both.


Discuss.


Have a great weekend.

Context is everything....

And when you take something outside of it you can make things seem like whatever you want.

Case in Point: Eric Berger's blog post today on food regulations.

As much as we may hate food regulation, it works. Eric Berger, Chron.Com

Now a new study (see abstract) suggests those efforts have borne fruit. Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study found that blood levels of trans-fatty acids in white U.S. adults decreased by 58 percent from 2000 to 2009.

“Findings from the CDC study demonstrate the effectiveness of these efforts in reducing blood TFAs and highlight that further reductions in the levels of trans fats must remain an important public health goal,” said Christopher Portier, director of CDC’s National Center for Environmental Health.

The study does not provide a causal link, but it does suggest that strong labeling guidelines, public health campaigns and some regulations can limit the consumption of harmful foods

Great, all well and good. We're all for people having full information when it comes to lowering levels of unhealthy substances in their diet, if they so choose.

What Berger didn't mention was why Trans Fats were so prevalent in our diet in the first place. You got it, government food regulation. You see, back in the day it was felt that margarine was inherently healthier than butter and other animal fats, so the government promoted its use. This lead to the rise of the lipid theory which (in a really simple description) laid the blame for most heart related illnesses on fats. Specifically: saturated fats. It turns out now that this wasn't the case, that the "Trans" fats the government then promoted (with strong urging by large food corporations) was actually akin to shooting yourself with a bazooka, from a heart health perspective.

It's not unusual to find this lack of historical context in many of Berger's scientific arguments. He tends to only report on, or pay attention to, theories that line up with his existing beliefs, casting everything else off to the "junk-science" realm.*

The important thing to remember is that humans don't know quite as much about the physical realm as our scientists think they do. We see things happen, but explaining why they happen is currently beyond science. Belief that we know everything is why proponents of post-normal science believe that the "science is settled" on Anthropogenic Global Warming, why "fat" was once removed from all "diet" food in the name of cheap, low-calorie carbohydrates and why the scientific method came with an expiration date.

One last (quick) point: Reporting on science does not make one a science expert, nor does blogging about the same. I'm no expert, but I understand context, and history. A large swath of the "scientific" community seems to be hell-bent on removing consideration of prior events from current observations. That mistake is giving us the "scientific" mess we have today. It's led to greater political influencing, and created some pretty spurious results.








*Junk science, ironically, is a closer description of the methods of most legitimate scientists these days, substituting the observable world for the world of computer models. Garbage in, Garbage out.

2012 predictions

Let's see how wrong I can get this year...

1. Romney wins R nomination, loses general to Obama b/c of tea party defection to 3rd party "non RINO" candidate.

2. Perry drops out of nomination race after poor showing in SC. Announces will run for another term as TX Gov.

3. EPA continues war against oil industry. Prices rise to over $150/bbl.

4. US economy continues to suffer despite gridlock in Fed Gov.

5. This blog will either undergo a ame change, or shutter in 2012. Right now I'm leaning toward a name/direction change. No more political blogging is already a given.

6. The Obama administration is hobbled by a series of scandals.

7. "food deserts" are never defined, but Millions are spent trying to put an end to them.

8. Mexico is unsuccessful turning their economy around and controlling the drug gangs. This is a bad thing for the US economy.

9. At some point Israel will have enough of Obama's dithering in the region.

10. AGW climate change will be all but disproven, movement will still survive because adherents don't fully understand scientific method and why science is not settled.


That's all I've got this time. Blog reboot coming soon.

Unintentional Humor

If find it funny that Prog economist Paul Krugman comes out with this:

Republicans against Science, Paul Krugman, New York Times.

Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Utah governor and ambassador to China, isn’t a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Hunstman has been willing to say the unsayable about the G.O.P. — namely, that it is becoming the “anti-science party.” This is an enormously important development. And it should terrify us.

On the same day CERN comes out with this:

Science Getting Settled, Lawrence Soloman, Financial Post.

The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth.

The research, published with little fanfare this week in the prestigious journal Nature, comes from über-prestigious CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centres for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. CERN is the organization that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.

In this chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds, the cloudier and thus cooler it will be. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.

I'm not going to go out on a limb and suggest to you that the Republicans were somehow "right" about the whole climate change deal. Many of them have been denying that there was any significant change all along. On the other hand, it's the Prog's who seem to be in danger of becoming the party of pseudo-science, happily believing unproven theories left and right because they are told to by their political heroes who stand to gain Billions of dollars based on a series of politically influenced financial bets.

Neither am I going to say the issue of climate change is dead. There are still open questions as to whether or not ground level pollution is a partial driver, or whether the chemicals needed to drive climate change are mostly natural in origin. In short, the Sun drives MOST of our climate's change, but there still is a benefit from not polluting etc. not only from a climate perspective but from a general health and natural beauty perspective as well. These study results are not carte balanche to pollute, but they should spell the end of the "stop climate change by shutting down the economy" nonsense that we've seen for a while.

The simple fact is that the Earth's climate has always been changing. The idea that human beings had the ability to stop or alter that change is arrogant. It's high time we started finding ways to deal with climate change now that we're seeing its effects, and stop wasting Trillions of dollars trying to stop something we have no control over in the first place.

What should terrify us is not the GOP's refusal to believe man is altering the climate, but that the Prog's are willing to destroy our global economy in a vain attempt to become King Canute.


RELATED: CERN Press release on CLOUD

Ahmadinejad over OPEC?

America's oil nightmare realized.

Eventually, something like this had to happen. As America has continued to dither over our energy policy, the rest of the world has noticed our lack of leadership, now Ahmadinejad is poised to take over the mosty powerful, dysfunctional economic organization outside the US.

Seems our playing politics with our oil and gas industry is just about to rise up and bite us in the.......*










*And no, I'm not just referring to the Obama administration, although they've certainly done their part to make America even more reliant on OPEC than we have ever been. This flows through several Presidencies, and the frustrating tendency of politicians to ignore the long-term financial needs of the County in the name of re-elction. An implosion of OPEC (the most-likely scenario if Ahmadinejad goes bonkers) doesn't help anyone.

Heckuva job Greenies....

You can't help but wonder if no one takes the Green movement seriously any longer due to the fact that they're not very serious themselves?

Carnival barkers and "tar ball" donuts are fine, for children, but when you enter the realm of adult debate it's time to put hyperbole and histrionics to bed.

Well, that and simple competency might help. Just a little.


What the world really needs right now are not costumed enviros shouting idiotic pronouncements supposedly espoused by big oil but the serious approach taken by conservationists, many of whom work in the corporate world that the ecomentalists so despise.

What a waste...

It's not like this stuff comes along every day.....


(Officials uncrate Scotch whisky, which was on ice for 100 years. AP via ChronBlog)

A crate of Scotch whisky that was trapped in Antarctic ice for a century was finally opened Friday — but the heritage dram won't be tasted by whisky lovers because it's being preserved for its historical significance.

Step One: Wrangle a job working in the preservation lab.

Step Two: Decide if viewing Scotch as a historical object is today's sign that the Apocalypse is upon us.