Becky’s flight from L.A. to St. Louis has arrived. Presumably she is now in the airport, getting ready for her flight to South Bend, which is due to depart at 4:36 Central time (2:36 Pacific time, 17 minutes from now).

I signed up for a thingy whereby this website should automatically post an update 30 minutes before Becky’s next flight is scheduled to land. I’m not sure if it will post another one when it actually does land.

L.T. Smash, the soldier-blogger in the Persian Gulf, spoke to his team of fellow soldiers today:

“For most of you, this will be the only time in your life you will be involved in an armed conflict. Treat this mission as if it were the last thing you will ever do in your military career. Don’t hold anything back. The troops on the front lines are counting on you. The people back home are counting on you. The oppressed people of Iraq are counting on you. The success of this mission depends on you.”

Becky’s flight is 57 miles northeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico, at the moment, travelling 599 miles per hour at an altitude of 37,000 feet. It is due to arrive in St. Louis in roughly 1 1/2 hours. (She will then board a connecting flight to South Bend.) Click here to track her current flight yourself.

PITT-MARQUETTE GAME WILL BREAK TIE,
GIVE EITHER CAPLIN OR VALE THE LEAD

This much is certain: the Pittsburgh-Marquette game will break the tie between Justin Vale and Larry Caplin.

Vale, a 15-year-old freshman at Rockville High School in Vernon, Connecticut, and Caplin, a 59-year-old Michigan resident and uncle of Becky Zak, have been tied for the lead ever since Friday evening, with the brief exception of a roughly two-hour period on Saturday when Vale had the lead to himself. But only one of them will be in first place at the end of the day today.

Vale picked #3-seed Marquette to win the Sweet 16 showdown between the Golden Eagles and the Panthers, while Caplin picked #2 Pittsburgh. The co-leaders agree in their predictions for the day’s other three games — choosing Kentucky, Arizona, and Kansas — and no one else on the leaderboard has the potential to overtake both of them today. So, one way or the other, Pittsburgh-Marquette will break the tie between the current co-leaders in The Living Room Times’s eighth annual NCAA men’s pool, and determine who will have sole possession of the lead through 52 games.

Of course, other games will impact the leaderboard as well. An upset victory by Wisconsin over Kentucky would vault defending champion Tom Greca, currently in 13th place, into fifth, just nine points out of the lead halfway through the day’s action. Add victories by Pittsburgh and Kansas, and Greca could be in second place by the end of the day. (On the other hand, even if Wisconsin and Kansas win, a Marquette victory would mathematically eliminate Greca from winning the pool.)

A victory by Duke over Kansas would bring Cam McLachlan, currently 13 points behind the leaders, within three points of first place. Jeff Cultrera, Mike Wiser, and Ted Zak, currently 15 points behind, would move to within five. By contrast, a Kansas victory would drop those players down the leaderboard considerably, and would mathematically eliminate Cultrera.

An Arizona victory would drop Dan Port from third place, three points behind the leaders, to a three-way tie for fifth place, 13 points back. A Notre Dame victory would save Port from that fall and would vault Matt Thomsen, currently tied for 22nd place, into a tie for 14th. Thomsen is the only pool contestant remotely near the top of the leaderboard to pick Notre Dame.

Here is a look at today’s schedule, and the picks made by the top 13 pool contestants:

4:10 PM Pacific time: #1 Kentucky vs. #5 Wisconsin
4:27 PM Pacific time: #1 Arizona vs. #5 Notre Dame
6:40 PM Pacific time: #2 Pittsburgh vs. #3 Marquette
6:57 PM Pacific time: #2 Duke vs. #3 Kansas

Justin Vale (217): Kentucky, Arizona, Marquette, Kansas
Larry Caplin (217): Kentucky, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Kansas
Dan Port (214): Kentucky, Illinois*, Marquette, Kansas
Kristen Everson (212): Kentucky, Arizona, Indiana**, Kansas
Josh Rubin (205): Kentucky, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Kansas
Cam McLachlan (204): Kentucky, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Duke
Ryan McBride (204): Kentucky, Arizona, Marquette, Kansas
Mike Wiser (202): Kentucky, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Duke
Ted Zak (202): Kentucky, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Duke
Kevin Hauschulz (202): Kentucky, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Kansas
Jeff Cultrera (202): Kentucky, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Duke
Matt Kagan (202): Kentucky, Arizona, Marquette, Kansas
Tom Greca (198): Wisconsin, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Kansas

*Illinois was eliminated in the second round. Port needs to root for Notre Dame over Arizona, since few contestants picked the Irish but many picked the Wildcats.
**Indiana was eliminated in the second round. No matter who wins the Pittsburgh-Marquette game, Everson will lose some ground on the leaderboard.

Just left on SuperShuttle for her flight to Notre Dame. I’m already lonely. :(

Well, at least I have Toby. (Live TobyCam)

Living Room Times men’s pool co-leader Justin Vale is a mystery man no more.

Vale revealed Wednesday via e-mail that he is a 15-year-old freshman at Rockville High School in Vernon, Connecticut. Vale has held at least a share of the lead since Friday, but pool administrator Brendan Loy does not personally know him, and until now, did not even know who he was.

Vale is tied with Michigan resident Larry Caplin, an uncle of Loy’s girlfriend Becky Zak, for first place through the tournament’s first two rounds. At 59, Caplin is nearly four times Vale’s age, making them a rather odd pair on the pool leaderboard.

Dan Port, 21, a junior at the University of Southern California, is in third place, three points behind the co-leaders. He is vying to become the first USC student to win a Times pool.

Kristen Everson, a University of Connecticut junior, is in fourth place, five points behind Vale and Caplin. Josh Rubin, a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, is 12 points back, in fifth. Both are Newington High School graduates; Rubin is presently the highest-ranking member of the NHS Class of 1999, which has produced every single Times pool winner since 1997.

Ryan McBride, a senior at Northeastern University, and Cam McLachlan, a resident of East Amherst, New York and a friend of Zak’s family, are tied for sixth place, 13 points behind the co-leaders. Five contestants are tied for eighth place, 15 points back: Central Connecticut State University senior Jeff Cultrera, UConn senior Kevin Hauschulz, Southern New Hampshire University senior Matt Kagan, USC senior Mike Wiser, and Becky’s father Thaddeus Zak, of Amherst, New York and Phoenix, Arizona.

CNN’s e-mail thingy has been busy sending stuff to my inbox and my website today.

Rest in peace, Senator Moynihan.

Former four-term Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-New York, dies after a long illness.

1,000 U.S. paratroopers dropped into Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and seize air base.

U.S. intelligence indicates “major column” of Iraqi Republican Guard troops with 1,000 vehicles heading south from Baghdad toward U.S. forces near Najaf, sources tell CNN’s Walter Rodgers, embedded with the 3rd Infantry Division.

Pentagon looking seriously at report that seven U.S. soldiers in an ambushed convoy were killed by Iraqis on Sunday as they got out of their trucks with their hands up, surrendering, sources told CNN.

THOMSEN STILL LEADS WOMEN’S POOL;
CASTELHANO, 26 OTHERS ELIMINATED

Jenn Castelhano will not win a Living Room Times NCAA pool this year.

The UConn senior, who won the 2001 men’s pool and the 2002 women’s pool, has been mathematically eliminated from winning either contest this year. She is one of 27 contestants in the women’s pool who were discovered Tuesday evening to have no chance of winning, according to a computer scenario analysis run at the end of the second round.

Only 13 contestants are still alive to finish first in the pool. In decreasing order of their mathematical probability of victory, they are: Matt Thomsen, Richard Simon, Rick Boeckler, Josh Rubin, Brian Newbold, Larry Caplin, Sara Hamilton, Pat Caplin, Toby Zak (the cat), James Peters, Ryan McBride, Kim Stone, and Nick Sowers.

Castelhano was one of nine contestants determined to be eliminated from winning the men’s pool at the end of that tournament’s second round, which concluded Sunday. The other 34 contestants in that pool still have a chance of victory. (Women’s pool contestants are being eliminated more rapidly because their picks are generally more similar to each other’s, leaving less chance for movement on the leaderboard.)

Thomsen, who was a perfect 32-0 in the first round, remains in first place as of the end of the second round with 244 points out of a possible 272. He went 7-for-8 Sunday, failing only to predict #11-seed Notre Dame’s stunning upset of #3 Kansas State. According to the computer, Thomsen would win in 10,586 of the 32,768 remaining scenarios — nearly one-third.

Simon, currently 20 points behind Thomsen in third place, is closer behind probability-wise: he would win in 9,108 scenarios, a 27.8 percent chance. Boeckler is in second place, just eight points behind Thomsen, but has just a 14 percent chance of winning, according to the computer. Everyone else’s chances are in single digits.

For complete scenario statistics, click here.

Being mathematically eliminated or having a low percentage chance of winning the pool does not necessarily translate into an inevitable poor finish. Sometimes highly ranked contestants are eliminated from winning simply because their remaining picks are so similar to those of someone ahead of them, they cannot possibly overtake that person, which means they cannot win. In many cases, however, it is still possible for them to finish near the top of the leaderboard. For instance, Matt Kagan, presently in eighth place, has a 29.5 percent chance of finishing in the Top 5, but a zero percent chance of winning.

The highest-ranking contestant in the women’s pool who has already been eliminated is James Dixon, who is in sixth place, just 27 points behind Thomsen. The lowest-ranking contestant still alive is Toby Zak, the cat, who has a 1 percent chance of winning despite being in 30th place at present, 66 points behind Thomsen.

The scenario generator’s calculations do not take seeds into account; all possible tournament outcomes are considered equally likely. This means there are an equal number of scenarios in which #11 Notre Dame wins the national championship as there are scenarios in which #1 UConn wins the title.

In the current standings, after Thomsen’s 244 points, Boeckler’s 236 and Simon’s 224, Josh Rubin and men’s co-leader Larry Caplin are tied for fourth with 220. Then comes Dixon with 217, followed by James Peters with 213, Kagan with 212, and a tie for ninth between Kevin Hauschulz and Danny Pilz with 207 points apiece. Sara Hamilton is eleventh with 205.

Castelhano is one of four players tied for twelfth place with 200 points. Last year, she scored an all-time Times record 409 points in winning the women’s pool, and finished tied for 13th in the men’s pool. Two years ago, she won the men’s pool and finished third in the women’s pool.

Becky is heading to Notre Dame this weekend to tour the graduate school, to which she has already been accepted. If she wanted to visit the campus at a time of peak student excitement, her timing couldn’t have been better. The Fighting Irish have not one, but two teams in the Sweet Sixteen.

Notre Dame’s #11-seeded women’s team stunned Kansas State today to advance to the Sweet 16, joining the #5-seeded men’s team, which advanced on Saturday by beating Illinois.

Not that Becky will be able to attend either game. The women will be playing in Dayton, Ohio; the men, in Anaheim, California. (I might go; I’m still looking for tickets on eBay.) But surely it will be an exciting weekend in South Bend.

On the other hand, the success of the Notre Dame women may cause Becky’s beloved kitten, Toby, to develop a negative opinion of the school. The Fighting Irish are cat-killers — their first- and second-round victories both game at the expense of teams called the “Wildcats” (Arizona and Kansas State).

Becky leaves L.A. for South Bend (via St. Louis) on Thursday morning.

Becky has a very good column in tomorrow’s Daily Trojan about the complexities that arise when professors preach against war to their students. My favorite excerpt:

Don’t get me wrong, I would be the last person to curtail free speech on campus and I think that professors should be able to express their opinions about the ongoing war.

But it’s not playing fair to bill an ideological rally as a teach-in, and it’s not OK to claim that you’re fostering critical thinking when only antiwar opinions are represented.

Personally, I think a big part of the problem is that students need to learn not to take professors’ statements — or anyone’s statements, really — at face value, without analyzing the bias of the speaker. It’s incredible to me how many students take the word of ideologically radical professors as gospel, as if their mothers never told them, “Don’t believe everything you hear.”

But professors do have responsibility for this, too, as Becky eloquently states. In the classroom setting, they need to clearly demarkate between what is a factual lesson that could appear on an exam, and what is a statement of opinion with which students are free to disagree. And when testing students on subjective questions, they must make certain to grade all exams and papers with the same degree of scrutinty, based on the same, fair set of criteria, regardless of ideology or opinion. This can be difficult, but it is essential.

Professors should also make every effort to explicitly encourage an open classroom discussion of contentious issues, to make sure dissenting students don’t feel alienated. Professorial soapbox speeches are fine, but they must not be allowed to have a chilling effect on those who disagree.

Good column, Becky.

“At about 1:30 AM on Sunday, March 23, a female student living in a non-university apartment north of the University Park campus awoke to find a suspect inside her apartment. She tried to escape but was attacked by the male suspect as she reached the door. The suspect fled when the student started screaming for help. … The suspect was described as Hispanic male, 30 years of age. He was 5′6″ to 5′11″ tall and weighed 160 lbs., and was armed with a pair of scissors.”

Becky lives, and therefore I unofficially live, in a non-university apartment noth of the University Park campus. So this is a little scary. The crime bulletin went out by e-mail to all students this evening.

But hey, at least the Daily Trojan has pronounced USC safe from terrorism. So that’s a relief, anyway. :)