Sunday, March 23, 2008

Madness.

It is not every year that the college basketball season aligns so perfectly with my spring break, but wow: when it does, it does. So while last weekend was all about the ACC tournament, this weekend has been the national tournaments. And I have brackets in play for both the men's and women's tournaments, along with another pool, which I will describe in a minute.

My women's bracket is doing OK, and so far none of my mis-picks (Hartford? Florida State? Georgia? Nebraska? Iowa State?) were supposed to win their next game, so there is great hope.

My men's bracket is a mess. I had Georgetown going to the Final Four, Clemson to the Elite Eight, and U Conn to the Sweet Sixteen, among other things. I am most sad about Clemson, of course, but I suppose they used up all they had beating Duke in the ACC tourney, and that was a worthy sacrifice. (Go West Virginia.) I see that Barack Obama and I are in similar boats, at least in terms of our Final Fours, since he has Pitt going that far. I am sure there was nothing political about that choice, just as my faith that Clemson would beat Kansas was reasonable.... Neither of us imagined the magic that West Virginia would do.

Most exciting, though, is the pool I am in with friends where we had to draft teams and then see who gets the most wins (there are also lesser prizes for the person with the second most wins and the person with the winning team). In that pool, I was tied for least wins at the end of round 1, and as of right now, all my teams (UConn, Vandy, Miami, UNLV, Baylor, Oral Roberts [I know], Mt. St. Mary's) [edited to add: are out] except one. And given the team I have left, I do not even care that I have lost all my others. Want to guess who it is? Hint: I got the first pick in the draft.

As the child of a dear friend would say, Happy Zut Alors!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I don't know, would I be a H E A L, if I guessed one of the colors was a lovely pale blue?


P. S. There's something missing about four sentences from the end of your post. I be English tee-chuh, baby!

Isis said...

Thanks, Mateen! Verbs are helpful things, aren't they?

Scott said...

When I read Mateen's comment I immediately went back to your post to see if I was right about the mistake. My question: I edit my posts all the time; its never ending, and as long as the content doesn't change I don't note the changes (it's only my blog after all). Is there a reference work which details the required disclosure about post-publication edits for scholastic works? Let me correct myself - what guideline do you use for editorial changes?

Anonymous said...

Confession time: Mateen had a spelling lapse, and is feeling a bit sheepish about the fact that he didn't intentionally spell 'heel' incorrectly.

:(

Isis said...

Hi Scott,

No, I don't think there are any strict standards or good reference works on the subject. I believe most printed works silently change errors, misprints, etc. in later editions, and similarly make revisions silently (i.e., without making any specific note about it). (This means that scholars who are going back and trying to devise an "authoritative" edition of a text or even an edition that notes all the different printed versions pretty much do the comparing and compiling of changes themselves.) I think in the world of electronic publishing, the standards are similarly loose, since it is so easy to make a correction--no need to wait for a later edition.

When it comes to my scholarly work, and most of the time with this blog, I make silent corrections and emendations when I find a mistake or something I wish I had said differently. Here, this editing often happens after I have "published" a blog entry, because I am such a lousy and lazy proofreader.

In this case, I marked the change as an acknowledgement of Mateen's sharp eye and sharper wit (but, it turns out, poor spelling...). Similarly, if I had an error of fact or interpretation in an article or a book, and it was brought to my attention by a colleague or other scholar, I might give an acknowledgement in a footnote. (Though it is RARE AT BEST that anything I have published would go to a second edition!)

I hope this makes sense!

Scott said...

Thanks for your explanation, Isis.

Scott said...

And Mateen, you should have kept quiet because I had thought it was a clever play on the Australian Healer, a breed of dog which coincidentally sounds just like a certain university's basketball team. Alas, after your unprompted confession I looked the spelling up and can confirm it's h-e-e-l all around.

Anonymous said...

If there's any way you can putyour hands on "The Printer's Error," a wonderful poem by Aaron Fogel, do it now: it is absolutely dead-on for this conversation. I found in Billy Collins' _Poetry 180_ (pp. 97-100).