I’ve enjoyed reading all the tweets during the NCAA tournament. One in particular last night read, “I am SICK, SICK, SICK of always watching Kentucky and Michigan teams in the NCAA.”
Sorry about your luck, buddy.Continue reading“Nuts over Basketball in the Bluegrass State”
And the reason you can’t has to do with something called unknown variables.
Statisticians love to work with numbers. Batting averages, free-throw percentages, average yards thrown–they all mean the same thing. Someone, somewhere sat down with a long list of numbers and came up with a statistical average, sometimes weighted, sometimes not.
Before last Sunday’s game featuring Kentucky vs. Wichita, I read seven “expert” opinions about who was going to win. ALL OF THEM chose Wichita. What they were looking at were statistics. But pouring over a long column of numbers and coming to a conclusion often ignores the rather unpredictable nature of sports. There are a number of factors which, by their nature, do not show up in the numbers.
1–An injury during the game. They can’t be predicted, and they can be serious. Not only for the player, but for the morale of the team.
2–Illness. It could be something as innocuous as a bad meal the night before, or something serious like food poisoning. It could mean a cold or the beginnings of a flu, both of which could seriously undermine a key player’s ability.
3–Disruptions. Weather is unlikely to be a factor, but it’s not impossible that a game could be interrupted due to inclement weather. A disruption in the crowd, a technical foul, faulty equipment (a broken backboard perhaps), may all seem unlikely, but are not impossible. They’ve happened before. It’s their likelihood that can’t be accounted for, therefore they can’t be calculated in the statistics.
4–Attitude or outlook, by either team. Attitudes can be caught. Sometimes teams get “fired up,” and conversely they can be discouraged. It could even be something catastrophic to do with a key player’s family, causing them to worry or lose focus. Those types of things simply can’t be forecast with any certainty.
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My point? There are probably dozens of unlikely but possible scenarios that could genuinely affect the outcome of any game. Just because a player has shot 65% from the free-throw line all year doesn’t mean they won’t go suddenly cold in a championship game. We’ve all seen it.
It’s the unpredictability that makes for the excitement of watching two well-matched and determined teams.
At this point, however much I may want one team to win over the other, it could honestly come down to one point.
That’s when my grandpa would have said, “It might as well have been a million.”
© Wade Kingston
According to scientists, time travel is theoretically possible, but only if we move forward in time, and only for very small increments.
Still, it’s fun to think about the places one could visit if traveling backwards was an option. Let’s play a game. Let’s assume we had a time machine and that we could travel backwards in time to any location and at any point in history.
Last week, on our first warm day after the latest round of sleet, snow, and freezing rain, I was out for a long walk. I passed a house where an older gentleman had apparently decided he would be the first in the neighborhood to mow his lawn. Never mind that there were piles of snow still melting against his house. There were wild onions out there, and they had to go! I could smell them before I even heard the riding mower.Continue reading“Time to Mow the Wild Onions”
Best homemade chocolate chip cookie
If you follow this recipe, just be sure to read it all the way through first. It’s not all that complicated, but it isn’t the same as the one on the chocolate chip packages.
What I like most about them is that they aren’t fat and cake-like. They lie flat and stay kind of gooey inside–like the ones you can get in a roll.
Note the addition of Cream of Tartar. That will help give the cookies that wrinkled appearance on the top.
Also, nuts are optional, but I STRONGLY suggest you include them, particularly English walnuts.
Oven times vary. Check your cookies after 10 minutes.Continue reading“Best Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookie (So far)”
Sam watched as the pitiful old animal walked around in a never-ending circle. “Toby” had been walking for days, plodding steadily through the hot sun and humid nights.
When Grandpa first discovered Toby making his circle, he called to the animal. But Toby’s ears did not turn toward Grandpa as they always had, nor did he falter in his gait. The big animal did not alter his steadfast plodding, even when Grandpa laid a strap across his broad back. Grandpa had not the heart to continue beating the faithful animal, so he let him be after that. The veterinarian told Grandpa to just shoot Toby. Grandpa told him thanks, that he would do that. But when it got right down to it he couldn’t. Grandpa told Sam, “Toby will come to his senses. You just wait and see.”Continue reading“Toby”
