Extreme March Madness

Wow what a Final Four!  The giants of college basketball have fallen, toppled by two long shots and two other solid teams who couldn’t rate better than a 3-seed.  Connecticut, the Big East tournament champion who is riding on the back of their stellar point guard, Kemba Walker will meet Kentucky in one semifinal.  The other semi will pit Butler, last year’s runner-up against VCU, the team that all the pundits said didn’t deserve to be in the tournament. 

On paper Butler and VCU don’t belong here.  These two “mid-major” schools don’t get the big name high school recruits that power programs do.  However they’ve proven their worth where it counts, on the court, and are now two wins away from a national championship.  So how is it possible for teams like this to compete with the big boys?  Well it’s a numbers game.  Unlike in football where a team needs 40+ excellent players to compete nationally, in basketball you only need a few.  Also, the most highly touted players at marquis schools tend to play only a year or two before going pro.  That doesn’t happen often at Butler or VCU where the players stick around and have more time to develop. 

My basketball prognostication skills are lousy as evidenced by my being knocked out of a pool early with the brilliant pick of Louisville to win it all.  Louisville lost in the first round to a huge underdog.  I also was quoted in a prior blog as saying that VCU, like all the other low seeds, had no chance of winning.  So I’ve learned my lesson.  There is no point in me predicting the outcome of this tournament.  However I can’t resist.  I like Kentucky to outlast UConn and VCU to continue its run by beating Butler.  Then John Calipari and the Wildcats make all the fans in the blue state of Kentucky proud with their eighth national championship.  Apologies and excuses to follow in the next blog.

Company for Mercury

Tiny Mercury, the closest planet to the sun has a guest.  NASA’s MESSENGER spacecraft inserted itself into orbit around the planet last Thursday (St. Paddy’s Day) and will soon begin a one year mission of data collection to enhance our understanding of the little planet.  The MESSENGER mission, managed for NASA by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Laurel, MD, began with a launch in August, 2004.  Six and a half years of traversing the inner solar system followed before MESSENGER became the first spacecraft in history to enter Mercury’s orbit.  The APL team made it look easy with the satellite’s trajectory perfectly matching the ideal path.  Remotely commanding a spacecraft to execute the proper sequence of thruster burns to allow it to be orbitally captured by a planet’s gravity is no simple matter.  The Japanese Space Agency learned this last December when their AKATSUKI spacecraft failed to enter orbit around the planet Venus and skipped off into space due to a propulsion system problem.  They’ll have another opportunity in six years. 

The orbit of MESSENGER is highly elliptic with the spacecraft coming within 200 km of the planet at its closest point, and 15,000 km at its farthest point.  This is a polar orbit so that as Mercury rotates on its axis below it, MESSENGER will get a view of the entire planet during its mission.  MESSENGER’s thermal shield will face the sun throughout the mission, protecting its instruments from the radiative heat and keeping them near room temperature.

Although a scant 36 million miles from the sun, the shaded side of Mercury is very cold and its poles may even contain ice.  MESSENGER’s instruments will map the surface of the planet, provide data on the composition of the planet’s core, study the magnetic field, and examine the constituents in the thin Mercury atmosphere.  The instruments will be activated in early April and planetary scientists are anxiously waiting for what they will learn about our hot little neighbor.

March Madness Baby!

The pairings for the NCAA basketball tournament were announced on Sunday night, thus kicking off the three week celebration of college basketball called “March Madness”.  Dick Vitale, the loud, bald, self deprecating ESPN announcer has been the face of college basketball for decades.  I like Dick because his love for the game is pure and he adds to the fun.  Someday Dick will retire and it will be hard to imagine March Madness without him.

The NCAA tournament should be a simple bracket of 64 teams in a single elimination contest for the title of “National Champion”.  This year there are 68 teams with a convoluted system of play-in games for the lowest seeded teams prior to the official start.  Most of the talk on the CBS and ESPN selection shows were about the teams at the bottom of the list, those who barely made it in, and those who were left out.  The TV talking heads were unanimous in declaring that Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and the University of Alabama-Birmingham (UAB) should not have been included, and Colorado and Virginia Tech got the shaft.  Every team has a fair chance of qualifying for the “Big Dance”.  All they have to do is win their conference championship and the automatic bid that comes with that honor.  31 teams get automatic bids this way.  The remaining 37 at large slots are filled by the tournament committee who meets for several days sequestered in a hotel somewhere, poring over data like “bad losses”, “wins against the top 50”, and who knows what other criteria.  In other words, the at large teams are selected by opinion.  The committee process produces some strange results, like Georgia in and Alabama out.  This, despite Alabama having a better SEC record, and having beaten Georgia twice.  But I’m not bitter about Alabama not qualifying.  They were clearly a “bubble” team and hurt their chances by losing badly to Kentucky in the semi-finals of the SEC tournament. 

In fact, all the debate about the teams at the bottom of the bracket is really pointless because none of these teams are capable of winning the tournament.  There are realistically about 5 to 10 teams in any year that have the talent to win 6 straight games against increasingly tougher competition.  The objective of the tournament is to identify the best team in college basketball, so why should we worry about teams being left out when they probably only have the potential to win a game or two?  Virginia Tech, Colorado, or Alabama had no realistic chance to cut down the nets if they had gotten in.

Opinions about which team is better don’t affect the championship.  The winner will come from a group of teams that didn’t have to worry about whether they were on the bubble or not.  The national college basketball rankings are essentially meaningless unlike the rankings in college football which have way too much effect on determining the BCS football champion.  The champion will be decided on the court and three wonderful weeks of basketball await.

Rush, Rockets, Weather, and Oil

Last Friday NASA lost a satellite whose mission was to study parameters affecting climate change when a Taurus XL rocket and its payload named “Glory” failed to reach orbit because the shroud encompassing the satellite failed to jettison.  This was the second failure in a row for the Taurus rocket which is produced by Orbital Sciences Corporation; the first also resulted in the loss of an Earth science satellite in 2009.  An investigation team has been formed, but according to Rush Limbaugh,  there’s really no need.  Rush knows exactly what happened.  Liberal conspirators who feared that the two missions would provide data to prove that climate change is not being affected by burning oil, deliberately sabotaged the missions.  Think I’m exaggerating?  Watch the video here.

I’ve long been puzzled as to why climate change has turned into a liberal vs conservative issue.  The preponderance of evidence shows that the Earth is getting warmer.  Less clear is whether this is a natural cycle of the planet, or whether we are exacerbating it by burning hydrocarbons.  Rush’s assertion that proof we are not causing climate change is because liberals say we are and they are all liars provides a clue.  The biggest thing that Al Gore has done in his post vice presidential life is his awareness work on climate change.  Gore is a liberal therefore a Rush disciple would conclude that we are not causing climate change because Gore must be wrong.  Have we really become this simple minded as a nation?  Afraid so.

The sad thing is that whether we are affecting climate or not, the best thing to do is to reduce our dependence on hydrocarbons.  Isn’t that something that liberals and conservatives should agree on?  OK, let’s exclude any politician who is in the pockets of the oil companies, but shouldn’t this be an approach with bipartisan support?  Before the term “climate change” came into vogue, there was air pollution, smog, and acid rain.  I don’t remember any partisan disagreement on those conditions being bad.  But one of the best reasons for reducing our dependence on oil is that this would be great for the US economy.

People in China, India, Taiwan, Mexico, etc , have a lower standard of living than we in America do, but technology has given those countries the ability to produce quality consumer products at lower costs than we can.  That’s why virtually nothing in your closet was made in the USA.  We make good airplanes, computer chips, pharmaceuticals, software, and as GM and Ford are proving, cars.  We can’t compete with Asia in the production of well developed technologies (like TVs), but we are better than anyone else at creatively turning new technology into viable products.  America needs to be on the front end of the technology train, and developing alternative energy sources offers that opportunity. 

Wind, solar, and nuclear power won’t completely replace oil, but they don’t need to.  Efficient coupling of renewable energy sources like wind turbines with fast starting aeroderivative gas turbine generators can provide cleaner energy and the ability to meet peak demands.  Hybrid cars have carved out a niche in the US market and the Chevy Volt is an example of a high tech innovative US product.  However, cheap gas prices will stifle development of these technologies because there won’t be enough incentive to the consumer.  As heretical as it may sound, the recent spike in gas prices may be very good for our economy in the long run. 

So why can’t both parties agree on a comprehensive energy policy that at the same time, cleans up our air, and provides a golden opportunity for American entrepreneurship?  Unfortunately, politicians will have to think past the next election and long term planning hasn’t been our strong suit.  Oh and stopping the name calling would help too.

Westboro and the Court

I didn’t plan on writing a third Supreme Court blog in a row, but with the news that the Court ruled in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church on Wednesday, the blog could not be silenced.  The members of the Westboro church, the pride of Topeka, Kansas, are the delightful people who choose to demonstrate at the funerals of American soldiers who have been killed in action.  “Reverend” Fred Phelps and his flock, most of whom are related to him, really don’t like homosexuals.  They feel that America’s depravity as evidenced by our government’s tolerance of gays and lesbians is being punished by war deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq.  So to call attention to this, they picket soldier’s funerals holding signs with all manner of reprehensible slogans.  The family of Marine Corporal Matthew Snyder sued the church after they protested at his 2006 funeral in Westminster, MD.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

These are the words of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.  Also known as “Free Speech”, Amendment 1 is the greatest protection that we have against tyranny, and is one of our core strengths.  It allows for anyone in this country to speak his or her mind about any issue or to criticize the government.  Newspaper editorials, talk radio, internet blogging, etc, are all permitted without fear of government retribution.  The freedom to speak ensures that the United States government must listen to its people.  It is the peoples’ check and balance.  This freedom comes with a price however.  Along with the rights of well meaning people to express themselves, the First Amendment also protects the stupid, and the evil.  That is why the Ku Klux Klan is allowed to march, flag burners don’t go to jail, and Nazis can legally publish their hate.  The Supreme Court decided Wednesday that the amendment protects the Westboro clan too. 

The decision was 8-1 with Justice Alito the lone dissenter.  With a court that is pretty evenly divided ideologically, one has to think that with such an overwhelming majority, the Court got it right.  As much as our sense of decency and justice sides with the Snyders, Phelps and the church have the Constitution in their corner.  Freedom is a wonderful thing, but it has a messy side.  In order for us to have free speech, we have to protect the rights of skinheads, racists, and reprehensible people like Phelps too. 

The Westboro people are celebrating now, but don’t think they’ve really won anything.  Decisions like this have a way of creating common ground among those in opposition.  Leather clad bikers will keep following Westboro to funerals and shielding grieving families from their noise and signs.  They may be joined by other decent counter-protesters who may choose to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest against Westboro.  The Supreme Court is the highest legal authority in this country, but in due time, when Fred Phelps and the members of his hypocritical church favor the world by taking their last breaths, they will be judged by a higher authority.  And there will be no First Amendment protection in that court.