In the ultimate example of TV’s sweeps-month exploitation (a new word: sweepsploitation?), the Jessica Lynch movie and the Elizabeth Smart movie are currently going head-to-head on NBC and CBS, respectively. I’m not watching either. At the moment, all three of the TVs in our house are tuned to the Discovery Channel, which is airing a program about model-rocket nerds. :)

I liked Conan O’Brien’s satire of the sweeps silliness, which also, of course, included CBS’s controversial, now-cancelled Reagans movie. Conan’s TV-movie of choice showed Jessica Lynch, Elizabeth Smart, and Ronald Reagan getting trapped together in a Pennsylvania mine shaft… only to be rescued by Kobe Bryant. Hee hee. :)

USC fans may need to come up with some creative anti-Ohio State chants, because you know what? If the Trojans and Buckeyes both win out, I think Ohio State will reach the national-championship Sugar Bowl.

As expected, LSU is #3 and OSU is #4 in the new coaches’ poll, but the Buckeyes are dangerously close to the Tigers. They trail by just 29 poll points. By contrast, the gap between #3 and #4 last week was 75 points. So this is a close one, folks. With victories over Purdue and Michigan, I think OSU could easily be #3 in at least one poll by the end of the season. And Rich Tellshow says, “Should OSU move up in just one poll, I think they will be very close to USC. In fact it will probably come down to [strength of schedule].”

That’s bad news for the Trojans, because Ohio State’s schedule ranking will be considerably higher than USC’s by the end of the year. And since the stupid computers don’t acknowledge any difference between impressive victories (like all of USC’s) and unimpressive ones (like most of OSU’s), the fact that the Trojans have dominated by an average of 23 points while the Buckeyes have squeezed past their opponents by an average of 10 points doesn’t matter. Plus, although an Ohio State win over Michigan would drop the Wolverines down several notches, it could still give the Buckeyes a couple of minimal, but perhaps crucial, quality-win points.

USC can’t move up any higher in the polls unless Oklahoma loses (which is like saying, unless pigs fly), and as much as we might like to alter the computer formulas mid-season, we can’t. So Dane is right, the only thing we can do is root for Auburn, BYU, Hawaii, and Notre Dame… and Washington State, in hopes that they’ll crack the BCS Top 10 and give us some quality-win points… and any Pac-10 team that plays Oregon (since that helps our strength of schedule too).

Oh, and of course, root for the Trojans, who, by the way, I am relatively terrified will have a letdown against Arizona next Saturday. Remember what happened the last time USC had an off week before playing a crappy team?

Anyway, back to the standings for a moment. All of the above is assuming LSU wins out, and remains #3 in at least one poll. If the Tigers — who must win four more games, including the SEC championship — lose even once, then boom, Ohio State (which only has two games left) is definitely #3 in both polls. And even though USC is clearly the better team, that would make it very likely, I believe, that the Buckeyes would overtake us in the BCS and go to the Sugar Bowl.

And the worst part is, because OSU is the defending champion, it wouldn’t even provoke as much national outrage as it should. Instead of saying, “This is absurd, the Trojans are clearly better, the BCS sucks” many commentators will say, “Well, USC is better on paper, but hey, Ohio State is the national champion until somebody beats them.” Alas, if only Penn State’s kicker had made that 60-yard field goal last week, we wouldn’t be having this conversation…

The bottom line for Trojans fans is, root against Ohio State at all costs. USC’s Sugar Bowl survival may now depend on Purdue and Michigan. GO BOILERMAKERS! GO WOLVERINES! Also, go Tigers (of LSU and Auburn), go Cougars (of BYU and Washington State), go Irish (Dammit! Notre Dame and BYU play each other next week! What are we supposed to do, root for a tie?), go Warriors, f**k the Ducks, and GO TROJANS!!!

In other news, Texas Christian is now a solid #6 in Tellshow’s latest BCS estimate, which would give the undefeated Conference USA squad an automatic berth to a BCS bowl, if they can hold onto that spot. Can you say, Texas vs. TCU in the Fiesta Bowl? Can you say, yawn? :) No, but seriously, this would be great for Texas Christian… down with the BCS monopoly, up with the Horned Frogs!

You know, if Pittsburgh wins the Big East over conference traitors Miami and Virginia Tech, and TCU gets into the BCS picture instead of some big-name school like Georgia or Texas or Michigan, this might just be the greatest anti-establishment revolt in college football history. :)

In case you haven’t figured this out already, the big bad rumor that’s floating around about Prince Charles — the rumor that no major British or international news organization can print or say — is that… (drumroll please)… Prince Charles had gay sex with a servant.

Whoop-dee-do. Frankly, I’m underwhelmed. I guessed that homosexuality was involved, but I was thinking maybe we’d be talking about a rape, or some weird fetish, or some combination of gay sex and drug use… something. But if the sum total of the allegation is that Charles is gay or bi, and this is supposed to “bring down the monarchy”… well, I hoped we had come a little further than that in our open-minded and tolerant society. Sheesh.

If anybody knows more details about the allegations — details that would perhaps make this scandal seem a little more, well, scandalous, to those of us who aren’t homophobic — please feel free to leave them in comments. I hereby suspend the “family website” rules for comments on this post. Warning: Parental discretion advised in reading comments! :)

By the way, here is a denial of the allegations.

Here are a couple more photos from tonight’s total lunar eclipse, taken from my front yard.


2-second exposure at 8:05 PM, one minute before totality began.

2-second exposure at 8:11 PM, five minutes into totality.

Here’s a shot from several minutes later, near the end of totality, taken from Tim Sheridan’s front yard.


2-second exposure at 8:23 PM, 17 minutes after totality began and 8 minutes before it ended.

Okay, so they all look kind of the same. So sue me. :) SpaceWeather.com has more eclipse photos, of course.

Speaking of Tim Sheridan’s house, but on an entirely non-astronomically-related note, here are a few pictures from hanging out there this evening:

Chris Hutchinson (with silly sunglasses), Kate Morran, and snacks.

I drink a Coke. Photo by Tim Stevens.

One high-school football ticket, a hot dog and a hot chocolate: $6.

Two Rum & Cokes, two-thirds of a Long Island Iced Tea, one Irish Car Bomb, and one shot of a mystery liquor sold by a mysterious, attractive bartender at the Brickyard: $22.

A fun night out with some of the coolest people from the greatest graduating class in Newington High School history: Priceless.

:)

It looks like nobody wants the national title. Three of the six once-beaten teams from BCS conferences lost Saturday: Miami, Florida State, and Virginia Tech.

At first glance, this appears wonderful, because it seemingly solidifies USC’s hold on the #2 spot in the BCS rankings, assuming of course that the Trojans win their final three games (Arizona next week, UCLA the following week, and Oregon State on Nov. 6 — I’ll be there!).

But one problem (among many) with determining a champion using computers and polls is that there is always going to be someone ranked #3, #4, etc., even if all the pollsters and prognosticators agree that the #1 and #2 teams are head and shoulders above the rest. The BCS formulas do not acknowledge margins of superiority within rankings, only the rankings themselves. So, no matter how many times your statistical rivals are vanquished, there are always new rivals automatically moving up the statistical ladder to take their place.

Enter Louisiana State and Ohio State, now the only remaining one-loss teams from BCS conferences besides the Trojans. LSU, like USC, was idle Saturday, while OSU beat Michigan State, 33-23. The Tigers and Buckeyes will presumably move up to #3 and #4, respectively, in the new polls Sunday.

Once the math is recalculated and the standings reshuffled, will either of these teams have a chance to leapfrog USC for the #2 spot if the Trojans win out? I don’t have the data to answer that question — I’ll have to wait for Rich Tellshow to update his numbers — but I do notice that Tellshow’s “projected” strength of schedule list shows Ohio State ranked 7th in that category by the end of the season, while LSU will be ranked 26th and USC 24th.

Based on that, it seems like Ohio State might be the bigger threat to overtake USC if both teams win out, in which case Trojan fans should root either for the Buckeyes to lose, or for LSU to win out impressively and thus stay ahead of the Buckeyes in the polls. Best of all, root for LSU and OSU to both lose, thus making USC the only remaining one-loss team. That would be a big advantage in the BCS.

***NEWS FLASH: Tellshow just posted his update, and he confirms my worst fears: “I think OSU will be within striking distance of USC should LSU lose. If they beat Purdue and Michigan, I think OSU will [be] #2 in most computer polls. As of last week, OSU was projected to pick up 0.64 points on USC due to [strength of schedule]. If this holds, then they would only need to maintain a .5 margin in the computer polls over USC.”***

Needless to say, this is absurd. With all due respect to the Buckeyes, who are the defending champs, they’ve gotten this far largely on luck (just like they did last year, cough cough). Hell, they almost lost to Penn State last week. Penn freakin’ State! Nobody outside of Ohio thinks they are anywhere near as good as the Trojans. If a one-loss OSU gets into the Sugar Bowl ahead of a one-loss USC, it will be an utter travesty.

***ADDITIONAL THOUGHT: One of the things that hurts USC here is the college football gods’ decision, some years ago, to disallow the computer polls from taking margin of victory into account. This was a well-intentioned reform, designed to eliminate an incentive for teams to run up the score against crappy opponents, but it also creates a serious inequity when strength of schedule remains such an important part of the formula. What it essentially does is, it punishes teams whose schedules are weaker, but does not allow them to recoup any points by winning impressively over those weak teams. Thus, USC’s dominating win over Notre Dame is equivalent, in the computer’s eyes, to Ohio State’s narrow escape against Penn State. Clearly, this is unfair. (My proposal would be, reintroduce margin-of-victory numbers but impose a “cap” of perhaps 30 or 40 points, so that running up the score ridiculously high would not benefit a team.) The bottom line is, if you’re going to make schedule strength a factor, you have to include margin of victory in the equation, too. And if USC ends up falling behind Ohio State in the BCS, this will be a significant part of the reason why. Don’t believe me? Check this out: Ohio State’s average margin of victory is 10.4 points. USC’s average margin of victory is 23.8 points. Case closed.***

(more…)

I just took this picture from the front yard:

UPDATE, 6:59 PM: Here’s another photo, brighter because of a longer exposure, showing the refracted Earthlight on the dark side, and a thin cloud that passed overhead:

UPDATE, 7:13 PM: Here are two very different photographic views of the moon at almost the same time, a few minutes ago:


A short-exposure photo, showing details of the moon’s surface in the area where the Earth’s shadow has not yet “touched down.”

A long-exposure photo, overexposing the non-shadowed portion of the surface, but revealing dim light in the shadowed area.

You’ll notice that the size of the shadowed area looks bigger in the top photo, even though the two pictures were taken mere moments apart. I believe that must be because the top photo’s exposure is so short that even some of the surface area inside the Earth’s “penumbra” (its outer shadow) appears dark.

UPDATE, 7:37 PM: The full moon has now been reduced to a slender crescent. Totality begins in about 25 minutes.

UPDATE, 7:44 PM: The eclipse has reached my personal favorite stage, where the red moon looks sort of like a giant version of Mars, with the still-sunlit portion acting as the polar ice cap:

This will be my last real-time eclipse update. I’ll post the rest of my pictures later tonight, but right now I’m heading over to my friend Tim Sheridan’s house for a lunar eclipse/trivial pursuit party. :)

FINAL UPDATE: Photos of the moon during totality are here.

There’s no USC game today, but there are several important games for Trojan fans to watch. First and foremost, Miami lost — for the second week in a row! That’s right, the Hurricanes are on a losing streak! When was the last time you could say that??? (Answer: 1999. That’s last century! :)

This is very good news for the Trojans, since a one-loss Miami probably had the best chance to leapfrog us in the BCS if we win out and several other one-loss teams lose. But the Hurricanes have two losses now, so forget it. Woohoo! Now, if Clemson can just beat Florida State in Bowden Bowl V tonight, USC will be all set!

If we do reach the national-championship Sugar Bowl, odds are we’ll be playing Oklahoma. So how are the Sooners doing? Um… Oklahoma 77, Texas A&M 0. Jesus.

Other interesting results: those lovable UConn Huskies beat Rutgers, 38-31, on a touchdown in the final minute to keep their bowl hopes alive; Indiana edged Illinois, 17-14, in a Big Ten cellar-dweller pillow fight; and Northern Illinois crushed Buffalo, 40-9. (But hey, at least Buffalo scored!)

What’s the most interesting game now in progress? That would be Navy vs. Notre Dame. The Midshipmen, who are trying to beat the struggling Irish for the first time in 40 years, trail 21-17 in the fourth quarter.

UPDATE: Navy just scored, and now leads, 24-21.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Notre Dame came back, and won the game on a last-second field goal, 27-24. Yay!

IN OTHER NEWS: The UCLA-Washington State game tonight is also an interesting one, because if the Bruins can manage to beat the Cougars, the big USC-UCLA rivalry game in two weeks could become a showdown for the Pac-10 title.

Meanwhile, in the Big East, wouldn’t it be great if either Pittsburgh or West Virginia wins the conference title (and the resulting BCS bowl berth) instead of either of those ACC-bound traitors, Miami and Virginia Tech? At the moment, Pittsburgh controls its destiny; the Panthers are the only team that’s undefeated in conference play, and they’ll try to maintain that status tonight against the Hokies. On the other hand, West Virginia can take over the conference driver’s seat by beating Pittsburgh next week, and then hoping somebody in the conference beats Miami.

“The fight for real security calls for pretend terrorism.”

The NHS Class of ‘99 “mini-reunion” was wonderful, even though the Indians lost the football game. A total of 15 people showed up (17 if you count the cameo appearances by Ms. Perkins and Mr. Lombardi), not bad for an entirely unofficial event. After the game, 11 of us went to a bar and then a dance club in Hartford. Very fun. Here are a few pictures from the evening:

Top row, from left: Sean Vivier, Todd Stigliano, Jeff Cultrera, Idalina Estanislau, Jeff Brunetti’s girlfriend (sorry, I forget her name, but somebody feel free to comment with it), Jeff Brunetti, Tim Stevens. Bottom row, from left: Derek McDonald, Jen Persaud, me, Dan Seremet. Photo by Mr. Ludlow’s wife. :)

Also at the reunion, but not in the photo above: Liz Joseph (left) and Liz Janelle (right).

Also there: Jen Bolduc! Here you have it, “Queen” and “King.” :) Jen’s beau was there too.

Another shot of everybody (minus me, Todd, Jen B., and the Lizzes).

Idalina and Jen P. talk to Mr. Ludlow and his wife in the announcer’s booth. (”Lud,” our now-retired AP English teacher, is also the football announcer.)

Not at the reunion, but earlier in the day Friday, here I am with Jaimie Kwassman (left) and Tara Boisvert (right), who couldn’t make it to the game but are nevertheless very cool. :)

So yeah, there you have it, a wonderful day of hanging out and catching up with my high-school classmates. Woohoo!

UPDATE: Priceless thoughts on a fun night.