(03-15-2015 11:56 PM)ODUChm Wrote: (03-15-2015 08:01 PM)JRsec Wrote: (03-15-2015 07:54 PM)ODUChm Wrote: (03-15-2015 07:41 PM)JRsec Wrote: (03-15-2015 06:41 PM)ODUChm Wrote: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
'So Mr. Smith you've been an admiinistrator for he past 20 years at Murray State, what can you add by being a member of UCLA?'
'Well sir I always made sure to select UCLA in the NCAA tourney over my own school'
'HIRED!!!!'
Yah, I dont think it works like that, thats a pretty big assumption that counter the initial idea that the committee picks the best 36 at larges based on resume.
If there was a conspiracy against mid majors, then Iona wouldnt have gotten in a coupe years ago, VCU wouldnt have been picked in 2011, GMU and Air Force in 06. Those are just the most notable midmajor bubble teams getting picked, Im sure theres a few more Im forgetting. And most certainly Virginia Tech would have been on the right side of the bubble all those years.
As you can tell by my screen name Im a mid major fan, and a fan of a team that was on the bubble, and I really wanted them in, but when I compared their rpi, sagarin, bpi, and kenpom ratings I just couldnt pick them as in, and using those 4 ratings is how I picked my field this year, and out of the 36 teams I picked, the NCAA agreed on 36 of those.
When I was breaking it down, I was a little surprised that UCLA was in my top 36 (I think I had them at 32 out of 36) but I just couldnt ignore their numbers compared to the other bubble teams. I thought it was a risky pick but evidently the committee agreed. Either that or all those metrics are also in on the conspiracy.
Famous quotes by P.T. Barnum come to mind.
Ill take a Carl Sagan quote over a PT Barnum any day of the week
Okay, "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." But, until then, "A sucker is born every minute."
And those suckers will fall for the conspiracy theories filled with assumptions rather than applying occams razor
Again extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Occams razor comes with years and years of living around it. There is corruption for the sake of profit in every facet of American life. In business big box stores don't have to pay state sales tax in many states until their building is paid for. Yes that means that Mom & Pop are out of business not because they aren't smart enough to know after decades how to serve their customers, take care of their employees, and buy and sell profitably, but because when a new Wally World locates down the street they start their morning with a 13 point disadvantage courtesy of their state and local politicians. Yes that's right local politicians who give 50% off of the property taxes for that big box store.
Corruption happens in your churches too. The average protestant denomination spends .97 cents out of every dollar on their buildings and salaries. They may claim to spend 15% of their total budget on missionaries but 97% of that goes to secretaries, warehouses, salaries and retirement and less than 3 cents actually goes to anyone in need. The United Way does better at 5 cents out of the dollar helping anyone. I didn't even list the most egregious behaviors out of deference to true believers.
Are you an organ donor? The hospitals sell those organs that are donated for quite a tidy sum.
And if television networks want to make money they need large draws in every advertising district. Hmm, let's see. Oregon covers the West and tying that into East coast viewing that means F.S.U. and Oregon lights up the screen and Alabama vs Ohio State ties in two top brands to relive a 150 year old rivalry. And you can't miss either. If Oregon and Ohio State win you get a final like the Rose Bowl. If one of the Southern schools wins you still tie in two large viewing regions. But if you let in a small private, especially one that manages to win the first round you lose huge dollars in ad revenue. Hmm. You control that at the selection level with an august panel of people with unquestionable credentials. In life any time such a panel is assembled it is because somebody is about to be really screwed and they want the public to accept the findings. Gee can you think of any other "fact finding" committee decisions that have affected our lives?
The basketball tournament seeding is about trying to maximize viewers in the 3rd round. By then usually the favorites with national draw will emerge, if enough of them have been seeded properly. Underdogs fade because of lack of depth when they get that deep into the tournament.
And then there is that unquestionable bastion of the true believers, academia. Our teachers would never screw us over would they? Penn State, U.N.C., Ohio State under Tressel, U.S.C., Oklahoma, Alabama, Florida State, and Auburn, none of these schools have ever done anything to question the integrity of the leadership at their schools have they? Without tagging the crimes to the institutions they range from the administrative cover up of rapes, academic fraud, the firing of teachers for wanting to actually give flunking grades to kids who could not complete a sentence in an essay, to firearms charges and intimidation of regular students, to armed robbery, burglary, and finally to prostitution. Why should I believe in leadership, lauded as they are, who turn a blind eye to such for the sake of a buck.
So, could these, and do these, individuals exist that would sell out to line their own pockets and advance exist, I ask you?
Now what does that mean to me personally? My wife has my permission to donate my organs, but also my insistence that only the transportation and surgery costs should be added to the recipients bill. I believe in God not institutions that claim to represent God. I also believe the greatest contributions that Christians make are daily, and are acts of mercy, kindness, and grace that they themselves perform. That includes giving directly to those in need. Which if I am not mistaken was essentially the request of Christ who never ordered a middle man for the purse. Maybe because the only one he had betrayed him.
I believe in the good of the common man, and that Lord Acton was correct in that power corrupts. I trust Mom & Pop. I don't trust any business where the owners don't have to look their customers in the eye, especially businesses that in my life I have caught cheating the national treasury and the public, and in a jingoistic kind of way send their production orders overseas to children's sweatshops. If it is a sin to do that to children here why should I care less about children I don't know and won't see?
And I believe in what I have seen and know to be true and that I believe meets the definition of occam's razor in that it is the most simple form of the truth. But I tell you what I don't believe in. I don't believe in the minions of young idealistic people who seek the approval of the very institutions that they refuse to keep an open mind about and which they naively support no matter the scandal. To live in that kind of denial, and to do so in mass, is what permits tyranny. For as the quote goes tyranny "exists where good men (people) do nothing."
Live another 30 to 50 years and then respond. And that's not an insult either, it is what I tell my grandchildren.
BTW, I didn't even get into how countries mess over their veterans either and that is "supposedly" another venerated institution supposedly made above board by the support of a grateful nation.
