Attention Hollywood moviemakers: the time is now to begin filming the obvious sequal, X-Men 3: Pyro vs. the Iceman. :) Los Angeles was hit with a huge, freak hailstorm yesterday. It was bad enough that the New York Times has suddenly turned evangelical on us:

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 13 — Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice.

“I haven’t seen anything like this in all my years,” said Tyrone Wright, 52, who was cleaning up the mud around his a tiny and neglected home on Alvaro Street. “It’s like the Lord said I’m going to take Watts and make it snow.”

Heh. Here’s the article from the Los Angeles Times. And here’s a photo gallery.

Thanks to my dad for alerting me to this story in comments.

The recent unusual, out-of-cycle solar activity is nothing to worry about, SpaceWeather.com’s Dr. Tony Phillips assures us. “The sun isn’t about to explode, nor is the sunspot cycle broken,” his article states. Excerpt:

Indeed, it’s possible that what we’ve just experienced is a normal part of the solar cycle, speculates [David Hathaway, a NASA solar physicist]. “There’s a curious tendency for the biggest flares to occur after solar maximum–on the downslope toward solar minimum. This has happened during two of the last three solar cycles.” (The article includes an excellent chart illustrating this point.)

Dr. Werner Dappen, a solar expert who taught the general-education astronomy class that I took at USC, and who I count among my favorite teachers of all time, concurs: “I suspect many ‘irreguarities’ are just regular,” he told me in an e-mail. (Although, in response to my question “You don’t think the Sun is about to go nova on us a few billion years early, do you?,” he initially replied, “Well, it does not have to go nova; even leaving the main sequence and becoming a red giant prematurely would obliterate all climate discussions down here!!” Heh. Global warming, indeed.)

This tidbit from Phillips’s article made me instantly jealous of Californians:

In California, where smoke from wildfires dimmed the sun enough to look straight at it, casual sky watchers were startled by the huge blotches on the sun.

No fair!!! I had to use welder’s glass and metalized mylar, while you bastards got to stare directly and the sunspots — and you didn’t even go blind! Sheesh. Wildfire-stricken states have the life. :)

When I was traveling through Northern California during last summer’s wildfires, and I got to look directly at the Sun, I observed that it would be really cool to be in such a situation during a partial solar eclipse. It didn’t occur to me that the same would hold true during big sunspot periods.

Well anyway, solar activity could pick up again soon. Giant sunspots #486 and 488 will soon re-emerge on the left-hand side of the Sun after two weeks out of sight. And we know they’re still there — remarkable holographic images that allow us to peer through the Sun reveal that they are still presently active on the far side:

In other space news, the Leonid meteor shower is coming next Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. As I mentioned earlier, this coincides with the release of the Two Towers Extended Edition DVD; it also coincides with the release of Britney Spears’s new album. Clearly these things are all related, somehow. :)

All right, USC fans, here it is: your definitive guide to all of tomorrow’s college-football games that could potentially affect USC’s Sugar Bowl hopes, from our crucial game against Arizona all the way down to the lowliest battle between a team you never heard of and another team you never heard of who previously played somebody that Ohio State previously played. :) If it has “implications” for USC, it’s here.

Data courtesy of Rich Tellshow, We Are SC, and a bit of common sense. Rankings courtesy of Tellshow’s BCS standings for all 117 Div. I-A teams.

All times Eastern. The team that USC fans should root for is boldfaced.

DIRECT MATCHUPS:
These are, obviously, the biggies. If Ohio State loses to Purdue, the rest of this stuff probably doesn’t matter anymore. If USC loses to Arizona, the rest of this stuff definitely doesn’t matter anymore — but in a bad way.

#2 USC at #85 Arizona, 6:00 PM
The Trojans need not just a win, but a big win. A mini-letdown following their week off, even if they squeak out the victory, might be enough to vault LSU ahead of us in at least one poll — which would be disastrous in the BCS battle against Ohio State.

#11 Purdue at #3 Ohio State, 3:30 PM
GO, BOILERMAKERS, GO!!!

QUALITY WIN POINTS:
This one is pretty self-explanatory. The higher Washington State climbs in the BCS standings, the more quality-win points we get for beating them earlier in the year. Thus, they need to win, and the teams currently ahead of them need to lose.

#73 Arizona State at #10 Washington State, 5:00 PM
Gooooo Cougars!

#33 Auburn at #9 Georgia, 3:30 PM
This would also help our strength of schedule, and take away LSU’s quality-win points. So, a triple-whammy.

#8 Michigan at #44 Northwestern, 3:30 PM
Go give ‘em a pep talk, Adrienne! :) A Wildcat win isn’t too likely, but then again, Michigan could be looking ahead to Ohio State, so who knows? Anything is possible… well, except Baylor beating Oklahoma (more on that later).

#96 Mississippi State at #7 Tennessee, 12:30 PM
Again, not likely, but again, who knows?

POLL BUFFER:
Currently, LSU is #3 in both polls, acting as a buffer between Ohio State and USC. If they lose and the Buckeyes win out, we would almost certainly lose our Sugar Bowl spot to the OSU usurpers. So, root for LSU at all costs.

#4 LSU at #48 Alabama, 7:45 PM
Well, that is, unless Ohio State loses to Purdue earlier in the day, in which case LSU would be the only remaining one-loss team competing with us for that spot… so, in that case, root for Alabama!

COMPUTER BUFFER:
TCU is helping us by keeping Ohio State’s rating down in two of the eight computers, and we need them to keep doing this.

#78 Cincinatti at #6 TCU, 3:00 PM
If Ohio State loses to Purdue, this game doesn’t matter. But I say, root for TCU anyway, just to piss off the BCS committee.

STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE:
Most of these matter only if Ohio State wins. Some of them are “direct” strength-of-schedule points for USC (or against Ohio State), while others are based on “opponents’ strength of schedule,” which means we are rooting for teams who played teams who played us, or rooting against teams who played teams who played Ohio State. Got that? I didn’t think so. Just trust me, okay?

#93 North Carolina at #46 Georgia Tech, 12:00 PM

#22 Minnesota at #20 Iowa, 12:10 PM

#50 Colorado at #83 Iowa State, 2:00 PM

#71 BYU at #49 Notre Dame, 2:30 PM
USC played both of these teams, but Tellshow says a BYU win helps us more in the opponents’ opponents category… or something.

#38 Air Force at #55 New Mexico, 3:00 PM

#75 San Diego State at #60 Colorado State, 3:00 PM

#57 Hawaii at #84 Nevada, 3:05 PM
We played Hawaii earlier in the year. So, go Rainbows… er, Wahine… er, Warriors… er, whatever you’re calling yourself these days.

#113 UTEP at #26 Boise State, 3:05 PM

#29 NC State at #13 Florida State, 3:30 PM

#30 Kansas State at #17 Nebraska, 3:30 PM
I particularly like this one, because a KSU win would help USC’s opponents’ opponents rating, hurt Ohio State’s opponents’ opponents rating, and — irrelevantly — potentially instigate Big 12 chaos if Missouri wins out.

#33 Auburn at #9 Georgia, 3:30 PM
Auburn is a direct opponent for USC. Also, as mentioned above, this helps our quality-win points by moving Washington State up, and hurts LSU by taking away their quality-win points.

#40 Oregon at #41 UCLA, 3:30 PM
I know it’s painful to root for the Bruins, but c’mon people, this is important. :)

#63 Washington at #59 California, 3:30 PM
Sorry, Dave. It’s nothing personal, honest. We still like the Husky Band better than the Cal band.

#45 Stanford at #37 Oregon State, 4:00 PM
Go give ‘em a pep talk, Mike!

#92 Kent State at #23 Bowling Green, 6:00 PM

#19 Pittsburgh at #43 West Virginia, 7:00 PM

OH, AND JUST FOR KICKS:

#95 Baylor at #1 Oklahoma, 2:30 PM
Hahahahaha. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR WOOOOOO HEE HEE HEE sometimes I crack myself up. But seriously, yeah, a Baylor win would help USC a lot, because I’m betting the pollsters would probably then rank USC #1, LSU #2, Oklahoma #3, and Ohio State #4. Of course, an alien invasion followed by the election of President Dennis Kucinich might also help USC, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Still, a fan can dream…