“WIND CHILL VALUES WILL INCREASE TO AROUND ZERO IN THE AFTERNOON.” –National Weather Service advisory, 4:09 PM, discussing tomorrow’s forecast.

Heh. “Increase to around zero.” I love it.

It’s an Irish Trojan’s dream in the Week 14 coaches poll: USC (18-6) and Notre Dame (18-5) are tied at #21 with 89 votes apiece. Heh. It’s a bit reminiscent of the preseason coaches poll in football, when the Irish and the Trojans were tied at #3.

Meanwhile, Butler cracks the Top Ten, moving from #11 to #9, and Southern Illinois cracks the Top Twenty, moving from unranked to #20. So the BracketBusters game between the Bulldogs and Salukis will be a battle of ranked teams, if both can keep on winning over the next two weeks. (Southern Illinois has a huge home game against MVC co-leader Creighton on Saturday, sandwiched by only-slightly-less-big games vs. Bradley on Wednesday and at Missouri State next Tuesday. Butler is at home against Horizon League cellar-dwellar Cleveland State on Thursday and Horizon League second-place team Wright State on Saturday, and then at Division II Florida Gulf Coast next Tuesday.)

P.S. Speaking of BracketBusters, the official site says the game times haven’t been scheduled yet, but according to ESPN, the SIU-Butler game will be at 4:00 PM. That’s awesome, because it means I should be able to catch at least the second half of the Memphis-Gonzaga game, which starts at 6:00, on TV after leaving Hinkle Fieldhouse. Unless of course the SIU-Butler game goes to, like, triple-overtime or something, which would be awesome, and a fair trade-off for missing the Zags. :)

UPDATE: Now the AP poll is out too. It has USC at #19 and Notre Dame unranked (third in the “others receiving votes” category, so effectively 28th). I think the AP has it right: although the Irish have a better record than the Trojans by one loss, they’ve played a much weaker schedule (#115 vs. #63, according to InsideRPI) and don’t have any truly huge marquee wins. They’ve beaten a likely mid-range seed, Syracuse, on the road; a bubble team, Maryland, at a neutral site; and bunch more bubble teams — Alabama, Louisville, West Virginia and Villanova — at home. They’ve also suffered two very bad losses, to conference bottom-feeders St. John’s and South Florida. USC, by contrast, has only one really bad loss (to South Carolina at home… and even the #81 RPI Gamecocks are much better than the #139 Red Storm and #151 Bulls), and has two wins over likely #2 or #3 seed Oregon (one at home, one on the road), as well as wins over bubble teams Washington and Arizona at home and Wichita State at a neutral site. #19 versus #28 might be a little bit too wide a gap, but the Trojans definitely have a better resume than the Irish right now, IMHO.

Of course, all these rankings shenanigans don’t really matter anyway. What matters is beating fUCLA on Wednesday at Pauley Pavillion. BEAT THE BRUINS!!!

P.P.S. Check out the #43-45 spots on InsideRPI:

Heh.

It looks like Rudy is running.

Obviously having too much time on his hands, blogger Grame Cole set out to test the old adage “…like nailing jell-o to a wall,” only he used the phrase “…like nailing jelly to a wall”. Interestingly enough, in England they refer to gelatin based desserts (which in the U.S. are almost universally referred to as Jell-O because of its ubiquity) as “jelly.” Typically, jellies refer to a concoction made from boiling fruit juice containing pectin or with pectin added and sugar, at least here in the States.

Oh, and no, you can’t nail it to a wall, whatever you call it :-)

After dipping as low as -7.6° at 8:50 AM this morning (with a wind chill of -29°), the mercury crested the zero mark shortly after after noon, and is now up to a balmy 3°. A look at the hourly temperature history shows just how cold it was this morning:

According to this morning’s 4:11 AM National Weather Service advisory, “EXPOSED FLESH WILL FREEZE IN ABOUT 10 MINUTES THIS MORNING.” For that very reason, many schools closed around the area. This brings me to my question of the day.

Given that many students live in apartment complexes that are more than 10 minutes’ walk away from their classroom buildings (e.g., Fischer/O’Hara Grace, Turtle Creek, Clover Ridge)… and given that many of these students regularly walk to school and do not have cars… and given that what public transportation is available via TRANSPO isn’t sufficiently reliable to guarantee that prospective riders won’t have to stand outside for more than 10 minutes while waiting for the bus… and given that Notre Dame knows all of this…

Shouldn’t classes have been cancelled today?

It’s -6° outside, with a wind chill of -28°.

Good lord.

UPDATE: According to a commenter, Hesburgh Library is closed because of flooding. Can anyone confirm this? What’s going on? Pipes bursting?

I would tromp across campus to investigate, but uh, it’s FREAKING COLD outside.

UPDATE 2: Confirmed via e-mail from the university:

Due to flooding in parts of the Hesburgh Library, the building will be closed until further notice.

UPDATE 3: A new e-mail, sent out at 3:55 PM, states:

The Hesburgh Library reopened at 3:30 p.m. Monday (Feb. 5). Selected areas of the building will remain closed until further notice due to water damage.

The Indianapolis Star’s take:

And the Chicago Tribune’s take:

But the award for the day’s worst headline goes to the South Bend Tribune:

Huh? And an ugly layout, too!

More front pages after the jump, including several with puns on the word “rain” that actually make sense.

(more…)

Some months ago, as Becky and I were returning to the U.S. after passing through southern Ontario en route from Buffalo to South Bend, a customs agent gave us a hard time because we only had our driver’s licenses as identification, not passports or anything else that “proved our citizenship.” Becky, who grew up in Buffalo and has crossed the U.S.-Canada border countless times without incident carrying only her driver’s license, was quite surprised by this, and calmly explained to the officer that she’d never been asked for anything more than a license before, and thus we weren’t carrying our passports. The officer proceeded to launch into a rant about how we were basically expecting him to look the other way because we’re white, America’s whole border policy is “racist,” etc. The whole thing was incredibly unprofessional, a huge waste of time, and really amounted to harassment. After speechifying for several minutes, he ultimately let us through with a warning to bring our passports next time.

Although the officer’s behavior was totally inappropriate (either let us through or don’t, but arguing with travelers and making political speeches about the racism inherent in America’s immigration laws is not in your job description), I assumed he was at least right on the law — that driver’s licenses are technically insufficient, but most customs officers usually look the other way. Well, it turns out, our customs officer wasn’t just an unprofessional ass on a power trip. He was also wrong:

Only about a quarter of U.S. citizens hold valid passports, and most Americans are accustomed to traveling to neighboring countries with just a driver’s license or birth certificate, which have long been sufficient to get through airport customs on the trip home. … For now, [new rules requiring passports that went into effect next month] affect only air travelers. Land and sea travelers will not have to show passports until at least January 2008.

So, our officer was “ahead of his time,” in a sense. But as of August 2006, when this happened, he was enforcing a nonexistent law. Heck, he’d still be wrong if he did the same thing today. Not for another 11 months will his preferred policy go into effect.

I really wish we’d gotten the guy’s name. We should have reported him to the Customs Bureau. He was basically practicing a sort of bureaucratic vigilantism, trying to unilaterally change the rules by scaring travelers into believing they are required to do more than what the law requires.

(Incidentally, I’m not necessarily saying I disagree with the new policy requiring passports. The mild inconvenience of obtaining and bringing a passport seems like a reasonable tradeoff for greater security. But whatever the policy is, the individual officers need to know it and adhere to it, not invent their own policies — either more or less lenient — thus confusing and misleading travelers. And certainly, angrily berating travelers for failing to obey a nonexistent law is totally ridiculous.)

UPDATE: According to an anonymous but authoritative comment, the officer was actually correct:

When crossing the border from Canada into the United States on land, you still have to present proof of United States citizenship. A drivers license is generally sufficient as a government-issued photo ID, but is not proof of citizenship by itself (since non-citizens can get drivers licenses in most states). Proof of citizenship can be made with a birth certificate or a passport. Therefore, to travel you need either a passport or a government issued photo ID + birth certificate. The agent wasn’t wrong, although was out of place in his racist rant. Granted, I’ve traveled to Canada many times and crossed the border with just a driver’s license. Only once was I asked for “proof of citizenship,” and luckily had my passport on me, but technically, they could (and maybe should) ask every time for more than just a license, to uphold the law. See http://travel.state.gov/travel/tips/regional/regional_1170.html (â€?Current Requirements for Entry Into Canadaâ€? AND the section “Returning to the USâ€?). The same rule applies to travel to Mexico.

Fair enough. So my initial assumption — that the officer, while an unprofessional ass on a power trip, was technically right on the law — was correct.

I will say this, though. If a law is totally unenforced — and unmentioned! — 99% of the time, it starts to become unreasonable to expect people to follow it, or even know about it, just from a practical standpoint. Becky had always been able to get into and out of Canada with just a passport, on many, many, many different occasions, and so I think it was pretty reasonable of her (and, by extension, me) to believe that that’s all that was required. Yeah, in theory, we should avail ourselves of the relevant knowledge and learn the rules. But realistically, most travelers won’t go to the State Department website and check; if their cousin’s friend’s sister says “all you need to get across the Canadian border is a driver’s license; trust me, I’ve done it a thousand times,” they’ll tend to believe that. So as a practical matter, the border authorities really need to enforce the law a bit more uniformly. If they let an otherwise unthreatening person through with just a driver’s license (as they ultimately did with us), that’s fine, but they should politely say, “Be sure to bring proof of citizenship next time,” so people will at least know.

In other words, even leaving aside the lack of professionalism, the officer’s anger at us was totally misdirected. He should be angry not at us, but at his fellow (apparently “racist”) customs officers, whose fault it is that so many people erroneously think the rules are less stringent than they are.

In case you missed it amidst all the Super Bowl hoopla, Florida State won at Duke yesterday. The Blue Devils and Seminoles are tied for fifth place in the ACC standings at 5-4, and for the second time this season, Duke has lost two in a row. Nice.

Lots of big games this week (including UNC @ Duke on Wednesday), as it’s “rivalry week.” Each of my teams plays once during the work week: Gonzaga at Loyola Marymount, tonight at midnight on ESPN2; USC at UCLA, Wednesday at 10:30 PM (not televised…ARRRRGH!!!); and Notre Dame at DePaul, Thursday at 8:00 PM on ESPN. Go Zags, Trojans and Irish! Beat Lions, Bruins and Blue Demons!

Here’s a beautiful shot of auroras in Greenland, via SpaceWeather.com.

URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NORTHERN INDIANA
411 AM EST MON FEB 5 2007

…IT WILL NEVER BE WARM AGAIN…

…WIND CHILL ADVISORY EXTENDED UNTIL THE 12TH OF NEVER…

EXTREMELY COLD AIR WILL REMAIN IN PLACE ACROSS THE SOUTHERN GREAT LAKES REGION EARLY THIS WEEK, AND THROUGHOUT THE REMAINDER OF HUMAN HISTORY. BRISK WINDS WILL COMBINE WITH THE FRIGID TEMPERATURES TO PRODUCE POTENTIALLY LIFE THREATENING WIND CHILL VALUES. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE.

WIND CHILL TEMPERATURES WILL RANGE FROM 25 BELOW TO 30 BELOW ZERO UNTIL ABOUT 10 AM THIS MORNING. AFTER THAT, IT WILL GET EVEN COLDER. TEMPERATURES WILL REACH ABSOLUTE ZERO BY WEDNESDAY. THIS IS COLD ENOUGH FOR EXPOSED FLESH TO FREEZE IN ABOUT 1 MILLISECOND. PLEASE DRESS ACCORDINGLY.

A WIND CHILL ADVISORY MEANS THAT VERY COLD AIR AND BRISK WINDS WILL COMBINE TO GENERATE LOW WIND CHILLS. FROSTBITE, HYPOTHERMIA, AND INSTANT DEATH WILL OCCUR IF PRECAUTIONS ARE NOT TAKEN WHILE OUTDOORS, AND PROBABLY EVEN IF THEY ARE. DRESS IN LAYERS, COVER ALL EXPOSED SKIN SURFACES, AND KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE.

SOMEONE PLEASE PUNCH AL GORE.

(Disclaimer: the preceding may or may not be an actual National Weather Service bulletin.)

Great balls of fire were seen across the Midwest last night:

From southeastern Wisconsin to as far as Des Moines, Iowa and St. Louis, people reported seeing balls of fire, possibly meteors, streaking across the sky last night. …

The National Weather Service’s Sullivan office said reports were called in from Iowa, northern Illinois and on up to Green Bay.

Experts said the fireballs were either meteors or errant Rex Grossman passes.

Grossman launches another “fireball.” It missed all offensive and defensive players, left the stadium, and ultimately broke up in the atmosphere over Iowa.