Going out of town--It's a gamble

To the disappointment of border town convenient store owners in Virginia, South Carolina, and Tennessee, North Carolina has a lottery now after the state senate approved it yesterday. However, the circumstances of this passage are a little fishy. Last week, President Pro Tem Mark Basnight announced that the senate was done with business for the term, no more bills would be voted on even though the House had not quite finished its work. This meant that there would be no Senate vote on whether or not North Carolina should have a lottery, a bill which the House had passed in April but which was known to not have enough supporting votes in the Senate. However, when Basnight found out that two Senators who opposed the lottery and actually believed him when he said that he would not call for any more votes and could not return to Raleigh to vote--John Garwood of North Wilkesboro because he was too sick to travel and Harry Jackson of Jacksonville because he left for his honeymoon--he called for the vote, which was a 24-24 tie, broken by Lt. Gov. Beverly Purdue in favor of the lottery. Way to go, Basnight.

Wow, here's a trip for you. Ben Jones, a 20-year-old college student from Lynwood, WA, visited all 50 state highest points in 50 days. I'm also pretty impressed by the highest points of the conterminous 48 states in only 29 days. Amazing.

Reseach Travel

There have been times that I have been disappointed that my research keeps me in my office. Sure, sometimes, I have to walk across the hall to the Math/Physics Library, and there have been a couple of trips to Venable Hall, which I can see from my office window, to visit the Chemistry Library and once to show some research to some collaborators. There was even a trip to Pittsburgh for the annual meeting of Society of Rheology a couple of years ago, but that was not specifically related to my particular research issues apart from giving me a much better feel for the background. I'm talking about travel to actually do research. For example, I was quite jealous of the grad student I met when he was tracking bear radio collars in the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park. His research involved camping and hiking, and while he did of course bring up the bad points--he was once knocked unconscious when a bear he was trying to collar sent him flying 15 feet into a tree trunk--it still seemed much more fun that just sitting in an office.

But then there's this story about a Duke grad student who was arrested and convicted in Armenia on a research trip. Granted it is just a suspended sentence, but a two years in an Armenian prison doesn't sound like fun to me.

My stab at MLB chiropractics

I finally got around to putting pencil to paper in effort to provide a solution to something that I've complained about for quite a while--Major League Baseball Realignment.

They still haven't got it right. There are 30 teams divided into 2 leagues of 3 divisions each. Thirty teams, six division. Hm, let's think back to third grade--five teams per division. But no, the National League Central division has 6 teams and the American League West has 4 teams. This is MLB thinks they need to have an even number of teams in each league, which was not a bad idea prior to the advent of interleague play in 1997. If all games are required to be intraleague, then an odd number of teams in a league requires that there is always a team not playing, a bad thing for a league where you play six or seven games a week in two, three, or four game series--ergo, and odd number is unreasonable.

From 1977 to 1992, there were 14 AL teams and only 12 NL teams. It wasn't two much of a problem because there were only two divisions in each league, and so the divisions in the same league where the same size, unlike today. However, if interleague is allowed and encouraged, why then hold to the even-number league requirement? Because interleague play is reserved for special weekends, when everyone plays interleague. Well, everyone except for those two NL teams left out in intraleague cold. This is the ninth season of interleague play. There are now baseball fans who don't remember the days before the leagues played each other. It's not really "special" anymore. Why not have interleague play every week?

MLB recently missed a golden opportunity to remedy when they decided to send les Expos from Montreal to Washington, DC, instead of out west to either Portland, OR, or Las Vegas, NV, and to the American League West. This coupled with moving the Pittsburgh Pirates from the NL Central to fill the void in the NL East left by the Expos. But they are keeping them in the geographical east, and so something else must be done.

Here's how I propose to fix the system. Send the Houston Astros to the NL West, leaving only five in the NL Central at the cost of having six in the NL West. Then, the loser of season series between the Arizona Diamondbacks and Colorado Rockies will be relegated to the AL West to give all divisions 5 teams. There is something about further improving the high scoring at Coors Field by adding a DH that sounds somewhat appealing, in that it will make it so absurd that the DH will be stricken league wide.

Now, we have the same number of teams in each division, and so we can standize the number of games that each team plays agains each other team, unlike the present system. I propose that each team play 18 games against each of the other four teams in its own division, 6 teams against each team in the other two divisions of its own league, and then a total of 30 interleague games to get to the total 162 games of the regular season.

For the 30 interleague games, I further propose they be structured like this: 6 games against the main permenant interleague rival, 3 games against each of two secondary permenant interleague rivals, and then the remaining 18 games be 3 games against 6 of the remaining teams in the other league, and then the following season these games would be played against the other teams. This way, during a two year span, each team would play all of the other major league teams, and during a four year span, each team would host a series against every other team.

Here is my proposed main perminant interleague rivalries:

East
New York Yankees	New York Mets	Subway Series
Boston Red Sox	Atlanta Braves	The Braves were known as the Redstockings until 1883 when they swiched to the Beaneaters, back before they were crosstown rivals with the Red Sox for 50 years, before the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1952.
Baltimore Orioles	Washington Nationals	All proceeds go to pay tribute to Peter Angelos.
Tampa Bay Devil Rays	Florida Marlins	Alligator Alley Series
Toronto Blue Jays	Philadelphia Phillies	Remember Joe Carter's walk-off home run to end the 1993 World Series? I'm sure the fans in Philly do.
Central
Chicago White Sox	Chicago Cubs	Crosstown Series
Kansas City Royals	St. Louis Cardinals	Put me out of my Missouri? Not with the I-70 Series.
Cleveland Indians	Cincinnati Reds	Who do you root for in Columbus?
Minnesota Twins	Milwaukee Brewers	The I-94 Series
Detroit Tigers	Pittsburgh Pirates	The Rust Belt Series
West
San Francisco Giants	Oakland A's	The Bay Bridge Series
Angels of Wherever	Los Angeles Dodgers	Are they truly crosstown rivals? The world may never know.
Texas Rangers	Houston Astros	The I-45 Series
Colorado Rockies	Arizona Diamondbacks	The Mountain Time Zone Series
Seattle Mariners	San Diego Padres	I-5 Series? Each city is the western gateway to a NAFTA country. Perfect match-up.

I haven't yet come up with the two secondary interleague rivals yet.

How do I blog about my own blog?

As bloggers are wont to do, allow me to blow something way out of scale by comparing something small, personal and insignificant to something large and significant which I am not really related to at all.

Every once in a while, a major news story involves an organization that reports the news. The New York Times has to report on its reporter going to jail to protect her confidential source. Time has to report on why its reporter not going to jail. CBS News has to report on how Dan Rather screwed up in Rathergate. Today, ABC News has the sad task of reporting on its fallen anchor Peter Jennings, easily my favorite of Rather, Brokaw, or Jennings, although the vast majority of my news comes from NPR, which has recently had to report on whether or not the government will cut its funding and whether or not the government thinks it biased. And now I stretch to include myself in with these organizations.

In case you don't often check the comments on my blog, take a look at the one from my recent post about Jerimoth Hil. Why exactly Annonymous "figured" this had anything to do with the highest point in Rhode Island, I don't know?

Reading your blog and I figured you'd be interested in advancing your life a bit, call us at 1-206-339-5106. No tests, books or exams, easiest way to get a Bachelors, Masters, MBA, Doctorate or Ph.D in almost any field.

Does anyone have an auto-dialer I can borrow? Preferably someone who lives in Seattle.