What does history look like if all movies are true? The Movie Timeline answers that question. It’s especially fun when it tries to put together all the sci-fi futures (some of which are now actually the past).

BrendanLoy.com reader Mike Marchand of the marchand chronicles has a finalist in Hugh Hewitt’s Photoshop contest. Vote for it here! (It’s “Notre Dame Champions.”)

TalkLeft takes a skeptical look at the Duke lacrosse rape allegations. I don’t have the foggiest idea what or whom to believe; I’m just throwing this out there as fodder for discussion.

I considered doing some sort of April Fools Joke on the blog yesterday, but just couldn’t think of anything good that I could realistically pull off. (The gold standard is my fake CNN Breaking News alert in 2004 announcing that John Kerry had picked John McCain as his running mate. I made it look just like a real CNN alert, and my dad and several others totally fell for it. My dad even called a friend on the phone to talk about the big news. Heh.) I thought about announcing some sort of fake new Apple product, but then the absence of a link (or the fact that I’d be linking to something on my own server) would give it away before the punch line click. Belatedly, Becky suggested posting an announcement that she’s pregnant, which would have been awesome and easy to pull off, but probably a little too extreme… we wouldn’t want to give our parents heart attacks in the name of a joke. :)

Thankfully, my lack of April Fools creativity was not shared by everyone. The website ThinkGeek came up with some pretty good April 1 products, in particular the iZilla Media Monster, which some people totally fell for. Heh. More here.

Oh, and that reminds me… yesterday was the 30th anniversary of Apple Computers.

UPDATE: Wikipedia has a page listing the day’s notable pranks, including:

NarniaWeb posted several hoaxes related to the next installment of The Chronicles of Narnia film series, including an announcement that Mr. T had been cast to voice Reepicheep the mouse.

LOL!! (See here.)

Indiana has now officially entered what everyone else in America, minus AZ and HI, considers to be normality. :)

P.S. My blog’s clock adjusted automatically. Brilliant! But I need to change the “EST” manually to “EDT”… and then all the old posts’ timestamps will be inaccurate… argh… there must be some way to do a conditional tag based on the date of the post…

Prior to tonight’s Final Four games, CBS ran a segment about an effort among some coaches to expand the NCAA Tournament. Apparently Jim Boeheim wants to add 3 to 10 teams. I believe it was Tubby Smith who mentioned expanding the field to 80. The alleged justification for this idea is that George Mason’s run to the Final Four proves that teams on the at-large bubble are capable of making deep tournament runs, and therefore, we should let more of ‘em in. The implication is that such a plan would help the “little guy.” But that’s not true at all, and I suspect Boeheim, Smith & co. know it. If we want to expand the NCAA Tournament in such a way as to help the little guy, there’s a good way to do it, but it looks nothing like Boeheim and Smith’s “tack on a few extra at-larges” plan.

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Mike Tran was at the RCA Dome for the Final Four on Saturday, and what he witnessed wasn’t just a pair of dominant wins by Florida and his alma mater, UCLA. It was also a pair of games that lifted Tran’s own bracket to unprecedented heights in Living Room Times pool history.

Tran, who clinched the 11th annual Times men’s pool on Sunday, and who has already been recognized by SI On Campus as having one of the best brackets in America, is the only person out of 218 pool contestants who picked both UCLA and Florida to reach the title game. As a result, he is now guaranteed at least a 47-point margin of victory. That would tie Justin Vale’s 2003 record for the largest winning margin ever in a Times men’s pool. If UCLA beats Florida, Tran’s margin will be a staggering 72 points.

Tran’s margin over the pool median will also absolutely shatter the previous record of 110 points, set last year by Brian Kiolbasa. His mark will be either 148 (if Florida wins) or 173 (if UCLA wins).

And if UCLA wins, Tran will break Kiolbasa’s all-time men’s pool points record of 362. Tran is already in second place all-time with 356; he’ll hit 381 if UCLA prevails.

By being the only contestant to pick both finalists, Tran has now had at least a share of the best prediction record per round for the the last four consecutive rounds, and he owns that distinction outright for the last three. He tied M.T. Swanson in the second round by correctly predicting 13 of the Sweet 16 teams; he was the only contestant out of 218 to correctly predict seven of the Elite Eight; and he was the only one to pick three of the Final Four.

The only games Tran has failed to predict since the tournament’s first round are Bradley over Pitt, Wichita State over Tennessee, and George Mason over North Carolina, Wichita and UConn. He’s gotten the other 25 games right, ten of which have involved teams advancing further than they were supposed to, according to seed.

Meanwhile, UCLA’s win also means that Andrew Long — who picked the Bruins to lose to UConn in the title game — is guaranteed of finishing in second place with 309 points. “Always the Best Man, never the groom” might be Long’s motto, as he finished in a tie for third place last year after very nearly winning; he would have been the pool champion if Illinois had beaten North Carolina in the title game. Long finished 90 points ahead of the pool median last year, and will finish 101 points ahead of the median this year. In most years, that would be more than enough to win the pool, but he has been stymied by some quality competition.

Behind Tran’s 356 points and Long’s 309, Ben Eng dropped to third Saturday with 297 points. Surging into fourth place was Adam DeGuire, who one of the 13 contestants who picked UCLA to reach the title game. DeGuire has the Bruins winning the title, and will finish third in the pool if they do. He has 280 points, and could finish with 305. (The pool is scored on a 5-7-10-15-20-25 basis.)

The other ten contestants who picked UCLA to get this far are: M.T. Swanson (sixth place), Bob Lutts (14th), Chris Hummel (20th), Chris Bossman (23nd), Karen Cultrera (30th), Sandy Pilz (34th), Kristen Wall, Ken Stern and Scott “Boi From Troy” Schmidt (tied for 59th), and Sergio Lopez (141st). In addition to Tran and DeGuire, four have the Bruins winning the title: Cultrera, Wall, Schmidt, and Lopez.

Complete standings here and after the jump.

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Tonight is, with apologies to Stephen Hawking, an historic night in the history of time, here in Indiana at least.

For the first time in 30 years, the vast majority of Hoosiers will be changing their clocks tonight, making the “spring forward” into Daylight Saving Time that most of Indiana has resisted for so long. More here and here.

Technically, the switch occurs at 2:00 AM tomorrow morning — or, to be more precise, we jump directly from 1:59:59 AM to 3:00:00 AM, making tomorrow a 23-hour day. But of course, most people change their clocks before going to bed. (Don’t worry, though: the bars won’t close early. Heh. So tonight is your one and only chance — well, until next April — to be at The Backer until 4:00 AM!)

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Okay, I realize UCLA’s defense is very good, but it seems like they also have an uncanny knack for catching teams on nights when they’re playing absolutely terrible offense. You can’t convince me that either Memphis or LSU is actually that bad. (Final score: 59-45.)

Anyway, the game is over, which means by bet debt is paid, and the godawful UCLA jersey photo is finally gone! WOOHOO!

[More discussion of the good defense vs. bad offense question after the jump] (more…)

Mike Tran, who clinched the championship of the 11th annual Living Room Times men’s pool last weekend, clinched at least a 39-point margin of victory — which would be the third-most in Times pool history — when Florida beat George Mason in Saturday’s first national semifinal. He could end up winning by as many as 72 points, shattering the old record of 47, if UCLA wins the national title.

Moreover, in what could be the first of a series of Times pool records to fall, Florida’s win guaranteed that Tran’s margin of victory over the median score in the pool — arguably the best measure of overall bracket impressiveness and pool dominance — will be the best ever in a Times pool, men’s or women’s.

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Are they really the “Fighting” Tigers?

Anyway… BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

P.S. Win or lose, I finally get to remove the awful UCLA jersey photo from my homepage when the buzzer sounds on this game. Thank God!

UPDATE: Billy Packer just said there are some “fine-lookin’ athletes” in this game. Hehe. Okay, Billy, if you say so. ;)

Well, of course Florida won. Mike Tran said they would, therefore it was bound to happen. :)

80s prom fundraiser for manchester rugby!

Quick, everybody on the bandwagon!

GO MASON!!!

:)