Half-Time Advice For The Buckeyes

If you want to win this football game, you’re going to have to score a lot more points in the second half, and not let the other team score so much.

[Update at the start of the fourth quarter, after Smith is sacked, almost a safety]

They’re not following my advice, at least not the first part of it. Off to bed.

[OK, one more]

A wag over at Free Republic:

Being that it is Florida and Ohio, I can expect to see calls for a recount, no?

[Morning thoughts]

I’m asked in comments if I’ll now “give Florida the credit it deserves.” I’m not sure what that means. Florida was unquestionably, by far, the best football team on that field last night. Does that mean they’re the best team in the country?

Who knows?

This just once again points out the absurdity of attempting to discern who is the “best team in the country” or picking a “national champion” in college football. We had two big bowl games in which the teams that were heavily favored got beaten soundly, to most peoples’ amazement (perhaps even many of the fans of the winning teams). That should tell us that there’s something fundamentally wrong with how we judge these things and our ability to predict them.

Let’s go back to the old transitive paradox. Florida beat tOSU. Auburn beat Florida. Why isn’t Auburn the “best team in the country”?

Oh, that was then, and this is now. Well, OK. So would Florida have creamed the Buckeyes back in November, before they had a seven-week layoff? Or did the Buckeyes go from being the “best team in the country” to someone lucky to stay in the top ten in the first few minutes of the game, after they lost Ginn?

Who knows?

Were the losses of tOSU and Michigan in the post season an indication that they weren’t as good as people thought, or that the Big Televen conference is overrated against the SEC and Pac-10, or is it a consequence of the fact that both teams had a couple weeks longer break than their opponents, due to vagaries of the scheduling?

Who knows?

If you want to have a playoff, could there be a better lead up to it than the last two games we’ve seen in this stadium? After their performance in the Fiesta Bowl, shouldn’t unbeaten Boise State have a shot at the Gators now?

Who knows?

Folks, there are too many teams, and too few games played to determine a college football champion at any point in time (and it’s a dynamic situation), or even sensibly rank them. Live with it, and accept the old dictum that college football is the only sport in which the champion is determined by drunks arguing in bars, and doomed to remain that way. And I’d be saying that even if Michigan had played last night, and won.

[One more, after looking at the overnight AP poll results]

OK, why did the Buckeyes drop only to number two? After that performance last night, they should have plummeted to the second half of the top ten. Once again, the irrationality and intrinsic paradoxes of the process is displayed.

Winning Wars

Well, the comments drifted pretty far off topic in this post. Many of them would have been better directed toward this one, on the administration’s seeming unwillingness to recognize that we are in a state of war with Iran.

I’ll repeat my comment there, in response to the comment that we need boots on the ground to “win” a war with Iran.

Do we have sufficient infantry (today) to sustain a win over Iran?

We don’t need any infantry to “sustain a win over Iran” for certain values of “win.” Despite the nutty straw man comments from the trolls, I’ve never proposed invading, or conquering them, or even necessarily regime change (though that would be nice, and might be a side benefit of a more robust stance against them).

If the goals are to a) prevent them from getting nukes, b) discourage them from continuing to arm people killing us in Iraq and c) prevent them from disrupting Gulf shipping, that can all be done with airpower (and seapower) alone. Certainly Israel has no intention of invading or conquering Iran, or putting boots in Persia, but you can bet they have plenty of war plans, and they don’t expect to lose.

Back From Vacation

Thomas James has lots of new posts over at Marsblog this morning.

Check out in particular his thoughts on spacecraft diets. Also, I’m curious as to what he means by (JARGON WARNING!), “It’s worth noting that a good chunk of that excess weight is due to changes to the LM FPR configuration neccessitated by the merging of the NG/Boeing and Smart Buyer configurations and inputs from NASA ADPs.”

An acronym list would be useful, but what and when was the “merging of the NG/Boeing and Smart Buyer configurations”?

Recognizing The Enemy

Melanie Phillips, like me, doesn’t understand why the administration doesn’t see the obvious–that we are at war with Iran, but not fighting back in any discernible way. They continue to go completely unhindered, and unpunished, as they frustrate our ability to stabilize Iraq, and provide the arms and training with which our troops are killed daily. We don’t need more troops. We need more clue, and a new strategy.

It’s All Good

Moonbats (and non-moonbats) often accuse me of being a “right-winger” and a “conservative.” I guess that’s because I don’t think that George Bush is Hitler reincarnated, and that removing dictators who support terrorism is a good thing. But if anyone really wants to know why I’m not a conservative, Will Saletan has an interesting example. So-called liberals are afraid of cloned animals and cloned food. Conservatives seem to look askance at cloned humans. I’ve got no problem with either.

It’s All Good

Moonbats (and non-moonbats) often accuse me of being a “right-winger” and a “conservative.” I guess that’s because I don’t think that George Bush is Hitler reincarnated, and that removing dictators who support terrorism is a good thing. But if anyone really wants to know why I’m not a conservative, Will Saletan has an interesting example. So-called liberals are afraid of cloned animals and cloned food. Conservatives seem to look askance at cloned humans. I’ve got no problem with either.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!