phil must go free

Just when everything in the world seems to have gone topsy-turvy--for example the snow in late March and the unpredictability of the NCAA basketball tourney—weirdness has achieved a new hallmark.  It appears that prosecutors in Butler Co, Ohio, have indicted Punxsutawney Phil, the groundhog who predicts the duration of winter and the arrival of spring every year.

The prosecutors (who apparently have nothing better to do) charged the groundhog with a felony against the peace and dignity of the state of Ohio.  The prosecutors want the death penalty.  Their problem is that Phil predicted an early spring and he was not correct.

I don’t know how well the weather prognosticators in Ohio do, but I can tell you that the meteorologists here are not always accurate.  They have weather maps and all sorts of data to use to make their guesses.  Poor Phil just gets dragged out every February second and shown the light of day.  Whether or not he sees his shadow is not of his own doing.

Now, the way I see it Phil is just another ninety-eight per center like the rest of us, being pushed and pulled by the powers that be and he doesn’t really have any control over his own fate, again just like the rest of us.  Phil doesn’t have any more influence on the weather than the prosecutors in Ohio have in enforcing the law equitably.

“Oh, Jimbo,” you are likely asking, “What can we do?”

Well, like I said, we are all ninety-eight per centers and there is not much we can do that will actually have an affect on anything, so I am suggesting a symbolic protest and here is what I want all of you to do.

Go online and find a small map of the United States.  Print it out on your computer.  Take a pair of scissors and poke one blade of the scissors through Indiana in the map you just printed.  Then start cutting toward the south through Kentucky and then east through West Virginia and north through Pennsylvania and continue across Lake Erie and west into the lower part of Michigan and then back south into Indiana.  You should come to the place where you originally started cutting, at which point Ohio should fall out of the map.  You should then have a somewhat circular piece of paper about an inch in diameter that will include the entirety of the state of Ohio.  Use the bulk of the rest of the sheet of paper to make notes, grocery lists, doodle, etc.

Take your inch of Ohio with you to the restroom next time you feel the need to go and drop the Ohio-containing wafer of paper into the toilet before you do your business.  At the conclusion of your call of nature, flush the toilet and speak clearly into the bowl the following line.

“That was for Phil, Ohio.  I did my business and you should mind your own.  Now leave our symbolic groundhog to his business.”

I doubt if your protest will do much to change the minds of the Ohio prosecutors, but at least you will feel you have stood up for the dignity of Punxsutawney Phil in a good, healthy way.

the secret numbers you need to fill out your brackets

Much like Captain Ahab in the cartoon posted here a couple of days ago, at this time of year we all put in massive amounts of time filling out our brackets for the NCAA tourney and give up trying to get our jobs done for a couple of days.  Because of all of the productivity lost and its damage to the economy, I felt it was time for me to spend a couple of days doing diligent research so you could work at your job and still make sensible choices on your tournament brackets.

Your first thought is probably concern that I am not getting my job done, but as you may remember I am retired, so my job is not working.  I am an elderly man on a fixed income, remember?

Anyway, I have come up with what I call The Jimbo Number or TJN for short.  The number for each team in the tournament was calculated by figuring in the team’s winning percentage, RPI, percentage against top 25 and 26-50 rated teams.  I also weighted the winning percentage for the team’s last 12 games, figuring that the guys who get on a hot streak have a better chance.  I added in some light weighting of free throw percentage, assist to turnover ratio and rebounding.

Anyway, the higher number the better.  If you get stumped in your selections, just compare The Jimbo Number (TJN) of the two teams you are comparing and use the TJN instead of flipping a coin.  You can find The Jimbo Number on the chart below.  It is in alphabetical order by team name for convenience of finding the teams.

Now, most of you are probably getting ready to mortgage everything and go all in with my numbers.  Before you do you may want to remember that this is just for entertainment and more than $5 should not be put at risk on the data I am giving you.  Before you do anything crazy, be sure you consult with the missus.  She will probably ground you in reality before you do something you shouldn’t.

“Wilma,” you may say, “Let’s get ready to mortgage the house.  Jimbo has given me all the information I need to make a fortune.”

“Isn’t that the guy who said to buy Apple at $500 because it couldn’t go any lower?”

“Well, yeah, but…”

“And wasn’t he the guy who said to buy the Greek shipping stocks because they would be the first companies to profit from a worldwide economic recovery?  And you have seen the Baltic Dry Index lately, sinking just like all those shipping stocks.”

And, Wilma is probably right, but if you are going to burn five bucks on the office pot, anyway, you may want the use the information on this table.
 

Step up your game to a higher level.

 

THE JIMBO NUMBER
School	TJN
Akron	309.78
Albany (NY)	251.35
Arizona	353.12
Belmont	319.41
Boise St.	298.81
Bucknell	333.67
Butler	337.40
California	317.85
Cincinnati	262.02
Colorado	310.49
Colorado St.	313.18
Creighton	315.58
Davidson	296.70
Duke	422.96
Florida	356.54
Georgetown	394.03
Gonzaga	441.93
Harvard	237.28
Illinois	283.79
Indiana	385.11
Iona	210.80
Iowa St.	289.27
James Madison	199.67
Kansas	444.44
Kansas St.	332.55
La Salle	271.37
Liberty	185.77
LIU Brooklyn	216.70
Louisville	422.00
Marquette	339.40
Memphis	349.87
Miami (FL)	395.31
Michigan	344.42
Michigan St.	345.94
Middle Tenn	330.29
Minnesota	280.84
Missouri	327.66
Montana	266.30
N.C. A&T	190.47
New Mexico	414.20
New Mexico St.	290.79
North Carolina	293.18
North Carolina St.	307.12
Northwestern St.	256.08
Notre Dame	328.54
Ohio St.	363.97
Oklahoma	268.70
Oklahoma St.	344.70
Ole Miss	333.32
Oregon	346.27
Pacific	271.92
Pittsburgh	328.18
Saint Louis	405.21
San Diego St.	302.14
South Dakota St.	309.98
Southern U.	238.70
St. Mary's (CA)	311.17
Syracuse	309.24
Temple	332.41
UCLA	357.61
UNLV	347.08
Valparaiso	273.01
VCU	307.94
Villanova	291.35
Western Ky.	199.17
Wichita St.	332.63
Wisconsin	335.89

time to make hard choices: NCAA bracketology

I put this one on the site a few years ago, but now that so many of you are getting ready to fill out your brackets, I figured I'd better reprise it.

^^^

^^^

 

Here we see an artist’s rendering of Captain Ahab at his moment of decision of which team to choose in some long-forgotten game involving an eight-seed versus a nine-seed in some NCAA Western regional of yore. The entire story, of course, is not depicted, however.

The legend goes that Ahab—in trying to make correct choice for this game in his NCAA basketball tournament brackets used the common tools that all men do. He recalled his rote knowledge of brief snippets of highlights of the teams playing he had seen on ESPN’s Sportscenter. He analyzed the coaches overall records, especially their NCAA tourney history. He compared RPI and strength of schedule. He also considered the overall strength of their respective conferences. He looked at the teams’ won/lost records, including their quality wins against ranked teams and their losses of games against inferior teams. He analyzed their schedules and looked for performances against common opponents.

Ahab factored in the previous performances in the NCAA tournament of the players on the teams, where applicable, and the players’ overall talent and experience. He also considered the “X” factors, such as whether the site of the game was close enough to the teams’ respective campuses that they would have a fan-base in attendance.

Finally, after two solid hours of research, he reached the conclusion he should have reached 120 minutes earlier and had his crew paint the names of the teams on either side of a whale. Then, as we can see depicted here, he stood in the prow of his whaling boat, blindfolded himself, and prepared to let the harpoon aid in his choice.

goodbye pi day, hello friday and the ides of march

Today is Friday, which rhymes with Pi Day, which was yesterday, 3/14. 

It took me a little time to figure out that Pi thing because of the slash between the three and the fourteen, instead of a period.  I am glad that we had a Pi day, even though at first blush it seemed pretty stupid.  Since the old 3.14 is the key number to our existence and because it is so important we should give it some attention.  After all, if you were able to measure the distance through the earth to the other side of the world and multiply that distance times Pi, you would get the circumference of the earth, rounded to two decimal places.  If you want to know the area of a circle, such as a pie, multiply Pi times the radius, squared.  Pi R squared.  If your response is that pies are round, then my response is yes they are and therefore that is why Pi is so significant.

Today, of course, is the fifteenth and if you are familiar with the way the ancient Romans did their calendar, then you are aware that today is the ides of March, or basically the middle of the month.

Shakespeare gave the date a bad rap in his play Julius Caesar because that was the day the crone at the edge of the crowd in the play warned Caesar to be wary.

“Beware of the ides of March,” the hag was reported to have said.

Caesar blew her off and paid the price for his inattention.

So, here is wishing that your ides of March goes well and there are no crones or soothsayers warning you about impending disaster, nor any disasters that actually befall you.

However, if you have plans to meet anyone named Brutus today, you may want to call and cancel just to be safe.

can't stand the stress?

Results of the Federal Reserve stress tests were released yesterday and the results showed that 17 out of 18 banks could survive another financial meltdown.  The only one that fell below the Fed’s standard was Ally Financial, and I am glad they didn’t.

Ally said the Fed’s test was “fundamentally flawed.”

Most of you are probably asking yourselves why I would be glad they didn’t pass muster, and it is a legitimate question.  My response is that I hate their television commercials so much that if Ally were ever to mail me a credit card offer it would hit the shredder twice as fast as all of the other credit card offers from other banks do.

Ally is the company that has the commercial where they have an actor, portraying a complete stranger, hang onto a briefcase of $100,000 for them.  Their contention is that if we hand our money to a strange actor for safekeeping it will be safer than if we put it in our current bank.

They also have that dipstick commercial where a dry cleaner gets rid of its employees and puts a blender on the counter to interact with actors portraying customers.

Really? 

A blender? 

What kind of a dipstick would come up with such a whacked-out concept?

I think—from what I remember in advertising classes I took forty years ago—the purpose of these whacked-out ideas is that if something is weird enough, we will remember it.

I guess they figure that if I know that if I put money in their bank they will hand it to some actor, playing a stranger, who will take more care with it than my current bank would.

Nah!  I don’t think that sells me on their business model.

Or that I should expect to walk into my bank tomorrow and there will be blenders replacing the tellers into which I will have to insert my check and push the puree button to complete my transaction.  Of course the customers at my bank—even including me as the lowest common denominator—will have more sense than the actors hired to play customers in their commercials.

So I say to Ally, get the banking side of your business together, lose the blender and the actors and do some studying for the next time the Fed has you take a test.

An appeal to Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud

This post would be more aptly named:

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER

The Prince being Saudi Prince Alwaleed and, of course the role of the pauper will be played by Jimbo. 

For those unfamiliar with the story, this week Forbes came out with its list of billionaires.  Forbes ranked Prince Alwaleed as tied for 26^th spot in their list, claiming the Prince had a net worth of which he could barely rub two $10 billion bills together.  Prince Alwaleed issued a press release asking that he be removed from Forbes’ list with assertion that Forbes’ evaluation process was flawed, inaccurate and biased against middle-eastern investors.  The Prince’s assertion is that he has a net worth of much more than $20 billion.

My assertion is this:  If the Prince says he is worth more than $20 billion, I believe him.  After all, why in the world would anyone who was richer than hell try to convince us that he was even richer than that?

I read the entire story on Forbes rebutting the Prince’s argument and wondered why Forbes was so excited about bad-mouthing the man.  After all, who knows better what the guy is worth than the Prince himself?  I would bet that Forbes would not be able to determine my net worth, and I am an elderly man on a fixed income.  I would bet the Prince’s electric bill exceeds my net worth in a week.

However, the thing that jumped out at me from the Forbes article was mention of Prince Alwaleed’s press kit that he sends to anyone who writes about him.  Apparently it is pretty impressive and it struck me that I would like to have one.  Since I know the Prince probably has people scanning the internet on an hourly basis and since I know I have a big following in the Middle East, either he or one of his people should see this.  Since I am writing about him, it should qualify me for one of those cool press kits.

Since the thing would have to come from Saudi Arabia and it weighs ten pounds and it should cost some serious coin to get it here, and I am a little tight on cash right now, I would have to ask that it be sent prepaid, freight allowed.  I am, as I mentioned earlier, an elderly man on a fixed income.

I would ask that the Prince or his people just go to my profile and send me an e-mail and I will advise the physical address to which to send the press kit. 

You can find my profile down there by my picture and the line about me being an elderly man…

Well, I guess I have sort of worn out that phrase today, haven’t I?