Two-time Living Room Times women’s pool champion Rick Boeckler is atop the leaderboard once again.

Boeckler, who won the 2003 and 2006 pools, took over first place in the 10th annual Times women’s pool when LSU stunned UConn. He snatched the lead from Josh Krause, who had held it ever-so-briefly after passing Kevin Hauschulz when Rutgers upset Arizona State earlier in the evening. Boeckler has 289 points out of a possible 382; Krause is now second with 287, followed by the mathematically-eliminated Hauschulz with 284. Full standings here and after the jump.

Seven contestants are still alive to win the pool: Boeckler, Krause, Jennifer Elam, Daniel Port, Scott Fort (ScottF), Brian Dupuis (DUP) and Tom Greca. Greg Plank and Sandy Pilz were eliminated when Rutgers won; Katrina Lewonczyk and Tyler Condon were eliminated when LSU won. After the jump, a look at the various scenarios for who would win the pool, depending on how tomorrow’s games (Tennessee vs. Mississippi, North Carolina vs. Purdue) turn out.

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If LSU hangs onto its 59-44 lead over UConn with 6:09 left, the first two teams in the women’s Final Four — #4-seed Rutgers and #3-seed LSU — will have a higher combined seed-number total (7) than all four of the men’s Final Four teams combined (6).

UPDATE: LSU routs UConn in a 73-50 stunner. So incredibly, barely two weeks after being rocked by Pokey-gate, the Tigers are bound for the Final Four.

Fellow GBS fans, you may commence being jealous: “At a recent concert by Great Big Sea, Alan Doyle swiped the camera of a woman in the front row, filming her and some of his bandmates before returning the camera for the end of the song.” Here’s the video.

UPDATE: Here’s a post by the GBS fans whose camera it was. Link via Anna the Piper.

A report into the death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman recommends action is taken against officers who passed on misleading and inaccurate information and delayed reporting their belief that he was killed by his fellow soldiers.

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Clearly, sales of the Eragon DVD are booming. ;)

The NY Times ran an interesting article about USC basketball recruit and the number one player in the country, O.J. Mayo and how he ended up with Tim Floyd. There are a lot of people who don’t like this kid at all.

Among the problems he’s had in high school, he was suspended three games for coming in contact with a referee during a game after he was given a 2nd technical foul:

After referee Mike Lazo called two technical fouls on Mayo on Jan. 26, Mayo came into contact with him, causing the referee to fall to the floor as he approached the scorer’s table, according to Lazo.

Now comes this crazy YouTube clip of OJ throwing a pass off the back board and then dunking it. Then he takes the ball and throws it into the stands…in the middle of the game. That was his last game as a high school player and will join USC for probably one season before going pro.

Can’t wait until Brendan starts blogging about him. :)

UPDATE BY BRENDAN: Just a little editorial comment from the webmaster here. :) I actually have blogged about Mayo before, specifically about referee-gate, and the bottom line is that the ref totally flopped in order to make Mayo look bad. It was pretty ridiculous. So that incident really should not be counted against Mayo in any way, shape or form. The showboating business, that’s a legitimate topic of discussion. Also, Mayo’s arrest for marijuana possession was troubling (and made it official that all three of my teams were affected by drug arrests this season, albeit indirectly in USC’s case), but the charges were later dropped, apparently because the weed wasn’t his. (Initially, all four people in the car were charged with possession, which sounds like a “book ‘em first, ask questions later” law-enforcement policy.)

Anyway, Tim Floyd has defended Mayo against his critics. I’ll just say this: we should be very careful to guard against forming harsh judgments about Mayo simply because there have a bunch of half-baked allegations of impropriety that ultimately came to nothing or not much (e.g., referee-gate, the dropped pot charges). There’s a natural tendency to form a negative impression of someone when you hear a lot of bad stuff about them, even if the details ultimately suggest that there isn’t much substance to each of the individual allegations that initially created the negative impression. The tendency is to think, “Well, there isn’t much to that allegation, but there have been so many allegations, so there must be something to at least some of them.” But this tendency is wrong and should be avoided. Allegations of impropriety should be judged on their individual merits, not lumped together and the details ignored. One possible reason we hear a lot of bad stuff about Mayo is because he’s a bad kid, but an equally plausible reason is because there’s a huge media spotlight on him, so everything he says and does is under a microscope that no other high-school recruit in the nation right now has to deal with. Maybe Mayo’s a bad kid, but we shouldn’t jump to that conclusion on the basis of nothing more than a hazy impression that a bunch of negative stuff has been said about him, so he obviously must be bad.

Oh yeah, and in whatever judgments we do form about Mayo, we should also be sure to remember that he’s just a high-school kid.

Okay, fellow apartment-dwellers, back me up on this. If the maintenance people at your apartment complex are going to shut off the water — for whatever reason, at whatever time of day, for whatever length of time — they should (unless it’s some sort of emergency) notify you in advance, shouldn’t they?

This has happened twice here at Clover Ridge Apartments in the past week-and-a-half, and on both occasions, when we called the office, they nonchalantly (and without apologizing, or indicating that any emergency was in progress) told us that the maintenance folks were “doing some work” and the water would be back on shortly.

Both times, this happened in the middle of the afternoon, which makes me think maybe they’re under the impression that it doesn’t really matter if they shut off the water at that time of day, because they figure their residents are at work or school. Never mind that, if I had happened to be taking a shower at 2:30 PM (which I think I still have the right to do… this is America, dammit), I could have been stranded in a soap-covered state when the water randomly turned itself off. Which would have been mighty annoying.

Anyway, in the spirit of blogospheric bitching, I just thought I’d mention this. Harumph.

P.S. I can’t wait till we move to Knoxville. One of the major reasons we chose the apartment complex that we did there is because the management gave off a very strong impression of being, like, considerate and competent.

UPDATE: I got an e-mail from the apartment manager (in response to one I’d sent shortly after posting this) apologizing for the inconvenience and saying that typically, we should get 24 hours’ notice, but apparently this latest shut-off had to be done on short notice for some reason. I suggested setting up an e-mail mailing list to supplement written notices left on doors, since that would allow at least some form of notice to be given in a time crunch.

Logan likes prunes!

A sheep that’s 15 percent human… and no, lonely Scotsmen are not to blame.

In their first-time-ever official, nonaccidental Meeting,

…Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams, sitting side by side for their first news conference in Stormont, confirmed that power-sharing would begin on 8 May.

Mr Paisley said the DUP was committed to full participation in government and Mr Adams said it was a “new era”.

…The British and Irish governments had said they would shut the assembly if an executive was not agreed on Monday.

Emergency legislation will now be rushed through Parliament on Tuesday to give effect to the 8 May power-sharing deal.

Mr Adams - wearing his Easter lily to commemorate those who died in the 1916 rebellion - and Mr Paisley were sitting at one corner of a table at Stormont.

[Guestblogger’s note: at far right in that linked photo is First Minister-presumptive Paisley’s probable Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, former member of the IRA Army Council high command. Oh wouldn’t I love to be a fly on the wall at the upcoming governmental Meetings :]

…Prime Minister Tony Blair said it was “a very important day for the people of Northern Ireland, but also for the people and the history of these islands”.

“Everything we have done over the last ten years has been a preparation for this moment.”

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said this had “the potential to transform the future of this island”.

…In the assembly election earlier this month, the DUP and Sinn Fein emerged as the two largest parties.

…The Northern Ireland Assembly has been suspended since October 2002, amid allegations of an IRA spy ring at Stormont.

A subsequent court case collapsed. Direct rule has been in place since that date.

Read the rest. Also, here are Paisley’s statement, and Adams’s. (Both remarkably sparing of the customary partisan/sectarian bombast.)

Good job, boys. / Now hold fast to that spirit.

UPDATE: Here’s a good BBC wrap-up re the Significance of the day’s events. Money quotes:

…Such was the symbolic power of it all that the image of Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley side by side at the conference table will surely come in future as the image that defines the peace process.

… Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams still represent two parties which will disagree about almost everything once power-sharing is restored but almost everyone in Northern Ireland understands the significance of this moment; in future, differences will be resolved inside a parliament, not in the streets beyond it.

So, this really cool Discovery Channel mini-series, Planet Earth, premiered last night with the airing of the first three out of eleven total episodes: “From Pole to Pole,” “Mountains” and “Ocean Deep.” I missed it (totally forgot about it, actually), but it looked awesome in the movie-theater trailer I saw a few weeks ago, and it’s getting rave reviews.

The first three episodes will be re-aired this Sunday from 11am-2pm EDT, and then the next two episodes, “Deserts” and “Ice Worlds,” will premiere that night from 8pm-10pm (and then air again from midnight-2am). I only wish I had an HDTV to watch them on! You can see the schedule of new episodes for yourself here, or browse the whole Discovery Channel schedule here. For more information on the series, check out its Wikipedia page or go to its official website, www.planet-earth.com.

“If Billy Packer played in my day, I would bust his ass. It would be a massacre.” –North Carolina’s Reyshawn Terry. Heh.

Professor Rick Garnett has an op-ed piece in USA Today about religious freedom and the separation of church and state, which he says “is widely misunderstood by critics and defenders alike.” He concludes:

The struggle for the church’s freedom in China reminds us that what the separation of church and state calls for is not a public conversation or social landscape from which God is absent or banished. The point of separation is not to prevent religious believers from addressing political questions or to block laws that reflect moral commitments. Instead, “separation” refers to an institutional arrangement, and a constitutional order, in which religious institutions are free and self-governing — neither above and controlling, or beneath and subordinate to, the state. This freedom limits the state and so safeguards the freedom of all — believers and non-believers alike.

Read the whole thing.

Is the blogosphere just a big bitchfest?

I voted for “This poll sucks! You’re an idiot!” :) Reminds me of this Fark headline: “The anonymity of the internet makes people meaner than they would be in real life — or so says this idiot of a reporter who writes like a retarded third grader.” Heh.

(Hat tip: InstaPundit.)

P.S. Personally, I never use my blog to bitch about random things. ;)

Anna Nicole Smith died of an accidental drug overdose, according to Charlie Tiger, Seminole Police Chief.

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