CONTEST UPDATE

CONTEST UPDATE

Phillips Rips Cardinals, Carpenter Rips Into Ryan

Phillips Rips Cardinals, Carpenter Rips Into Ryan

My E-Mail Inbox Today

Some days are slow when it comes to important or halfway necessary e-mails in my Inbox. Today ranked up there in awesome e-mails, however. It’s only 12:30 PM and I’ve already received these two gems:

1) Hello,My name is Florance Gadu,i saw your email address today as am searching in the Internet and became intrested in you,i will also like to know you more,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom I am.Here is my email address(florance_cota@yahoo.com) I believe we can move from here I am waiting.Remeber good relationship goes beyond distance and colour,honest,emotions,carer and kind that lead both ,lovers to fly highly on the wings of happines, and in all true love is all we need in life to be happy Thanks a lot for your kind attentionFlorance.

Now, I’m engaged and will be married on October 10th. But boy is this tempting. Here are a few observations I have made about this message.

a) My name is Florance Gadu
I don’t know many people named Florance, but isn’t it usually spelled Florence? Regardless, this woman stands out from other Florance’s and Florence’s in every way.

b) i saw your email address today as am searching in the Internet and became intrested in you
Perhaps this is a common practice of hers, stumbling upon e-mail addresses while searching the Internet. Probably not though, it’s obvious that we are meant to be together. She became interested in me simply by seeing my e-mail address. Who can blame her- jmwoelfel@yahoo.com – that’s a good looking address!

c) i will also like to know you more,and i want you to send an email to my email address so i can give you my picture for you to know whom I am
She’s playing hard to get. She could have just sent me a picture of herself in this introductory e-mail, but she likes the chase. My instructions are to send her an e-mail back so that she can then send me a picture of her so I will “know whom I am.” Wait a minute- do I already know her? Maybe it’s someone I see on a daily basis. Maybe this isn’t as random as she led me to first believe. It could be someone I work with, someone I pass while jogging, someone who frequents the same restaurants as I. The mystery!

d) Here is my email address(florance_cota@yahoo.com)
Her e-mail address is Florance_cota, yet she introduced herself as Florance Gadu. Of course, I assume this to be the alias she has chosen to hide her true identity from me. But how complex is this planned revelation that she has even changed her fake maiden name from Cota and adopted Gadu? This woman is deeper than one would assume.

e) I believe we can move from here I am waiting
Florance believes we can now move beyond where our relationship currently lies. Apparently we are ready for the next step. You know, the one that comes after an e-mail introducing one’s name.

f) Remeber good relationship goes beyond distance and colour,honest,emotions,carer and kind that lead both ,lovers to fly highly on the wings of happines, and in all true love is all we need in life to be happy
Ah, she speaks the language of love! I don’t know what a “happine” is, but I want to fly on the wings of them with Florence… er… Florance. She reminds me that a good relationship is more than honesty. It’s deeper than that. Florance understands what Corinne doesn’t. Sometimes true love is about lying. Oh Florance, I’ve been waiting all my life to hear from you.

2) The other e-mail I received was a notification that I had made a sale on half.com. I had sold a book called “How to Understand Your Bible” that was a requirement for one of the classes I took in college. The purchaser? Jesus Guerrero.

Survivor: The Sandra dilemma

I’ll be honest; I love Survivor. I realize that it may come with the same negative connotation that comes to my mind when I hear people talk about the latest developments on “Dancing with the Stars.” I don’t know how that is even a show, but that’s another topic. The “Heroes Vs. Villains” season just wrapped up last night on CBS. It was another great season filled with twists and turns with another disappointing ending, in my opinion. The 20th season (wow!) ended last night with Sandra winning the $1 million for the 2nd time. Sandra beat out Parvati and Russell in the final vote. Jeff only had to ready 8 votes, which I believe means that Sandra ended up with 6 of the 9 votes. Russell didn’t get a single vote despite getting to the final vote for the 2nd straight season. At the live reunion show, Russell claimed that there is a flaw in the show. To some extent, I agree with him.

The great thing about Survivor is that it is hard to argue against who ends up winning. There are always going to be those on the side of the contestant that doesn’t win that has reasons why their favorite contestant should have won. Many times those arguments do have validity and good reasons for them to feel that way. The problem is, the jury cannot get a vote wrong because- well, they’re the jury. They get to vote however they want to. There is no right or wrong way to vote. The game is set up so that those who are left on the panel get to decide who gets the money, and that’s what happened again last night. The majority of the panel wanted to give the money to Sandra.

The same thing that makes Survivor great also makes it insanely frustrating. Rarely does the person that plays the game “the best” win the $1 million. Now I realize that you can argue that the contestants who won should be considered the ones that played the game the best since they were, after all, the winners. But those of you who watch the show understand what I mean. There are some contestants that are just better at strategizing and have more control over getting themselves further in the game than others. Then there are others (ala Sandra) that get further along in the game because they are being used by the strong players for a vote. Sandra never was voted out because, well… she wasn’t a threat. She has won the game twice and has never won an individual immunity challenge. When her tribe needed to sit someone out for a challenge, they chose Sandra whenever possible. She single-handedly lost her tribe immunity challenges because she is such a liability. When it came down to forming alliances, she failed. She consistently made alliances that were voted out. She just happened to be at the bottom of the list when her alliance was being picked off one by one because, again, those doing the voting knew that she wasn’t a physical threat to them down the road and maybe they could even use her vote as time went on. Sandra failed at pretty much everything she did. She did find the last hidden immunity idol, but she didn’t even end up needing to play it. No one was scared of her.

Russell, on the other hand, is the best player I have seen at getting to the final vote. He is the best strategizer. He knows which people to pick for his alliance. He also knows when the best time is to cut ties with someone and form a new alliance. He’s the best at finding hidden immunity idols and then how and when to use them. He made a big play by giving his hidden immunity idol to Parvati at the right time to save her. He’s the best at manipulation. He knows what to say to those he knows he is voting out to make sure their vote goes where it will benefit him the most. When he finds out that someone is targeting him, he makes sure that that person is always the next person to be voted out if he feels like they are a threat. He was by far the best at getting himself to the final vote. Parvati wouldn’t have been there without Russell. Sandra wouldn’t have been there without Russell. But the same isn’t true about Russell. If Parvati wouldn’t have been on board with Russell from the beginning, she would have been gone long ago. He chose Parvati and protected her more than once. Sandra also had nothing to do with getting Russell where he was. Russell himself found a way to get to the end.

The problem for Russell is, the jury always holds a grudge. And that is where I think the closest thing to what could be considered a flaw lies. You would think that after 19 seasons of a game that the contestants would go into the game knowing that you have to lie and manipulate people to win this game. You have to. And to some extent, they do know that. They know this while they are playing and they all to some degree lie to someone, no matter how they want to justify it. For some reason though, most seem unable to distinguish between someone who lies to them in the game and that person’s character outside of the show. This is a game. This isn’t life or death. The game is that you are the last person standing at the end to win $1 million. Lives aren’t at stake if you lie or trick someone. All of those jury members who stand up and address the final 3 people lied and tried to manipulate the people who were in the final 3, they just weren’t as good at it in some cases. The funny thing is that Sandra herself on multiple occasions last night talked about how her strategy was to try and get rid of Russell many times during the game and never could. It was like she was confessing that Russell was too good at the game that she couldn’t convince anyone to vote him off no matter how hard she tried. And yet, she got 6 votes and Russell got none. Those who played with Parvati gave her the 3 votes. In essence, the Heroes did not vote for Sandra. They voted against Russell. And that’s their right, it’s just stupid.

You can tell that there is a disconnect between the viewers of the show and those that play the game. Two seasons in a row the fans voted that Russell was the player of the season while those who were beaten by him refused to vote to give him the million dollars. It was personal. They don’t like Russell. They feel like there is a code that he is breaking. What’s interesting is that there is an unwritten code that the other players feel like he should have adhered to while playing while Russell feels like there is an unwritten responsibility for them to use their votes to reward the person who played the best game. One of the contestants told Russell last night that you have to lie while playing the game but he took it too far. What? So now we’re distinguishing between what lies someone can tell? The point of the game is to get to the end and win. Why would you do anything less than to do whatever you can to win the million dollars? The purpose of the game isn’t to make friends or get people to like you. All those people that talk about giving their vote to someone because they seemed to really care about them are confused as to why they are there to play the game. It’s still their right to throw their vote away and give Sandra another million dollars for being bad at the game, but it’s just dumb.

The majority of people that watch the show on tv agree that Russell played the best game. Parvati did a great job too- she was almost impossible to beat towards the end in individual immunity challenges. I could have stomached her winning. But Sandra? Come on. What the contestants are saying is that we would rather give the money to someone that made their tribe worse off in team reward and immunity challenges, that constantly picked the wrong alliance to belong to, that was unable to vote off the only person she wanted to, that was unable to even contend in personal immunity challenges, and that regardless of how angry the Heroes were that Russell lied to them and voted them out- Sandra was right there writing their names down too—she’s the one you want to reward?

I’m waiting for the season where someone stands up at the end and says “I thought we were together but you tricked me and you’re sitting there with the chance to win the $1 million and I’m not, so you’re getting my vote because you were better at getting there than I was. You deserve to win the money because you got yourself there through hard work, strategy, and logic and you aren’t there because someone else didn’t mind you staying because you weren’t a factor in any capacity of the game except having a vote to help their cause. I may not like you as a friend in this game, but I realize that the purpose of this game is to win $1 million and you did everything you could to put yourself in that spot. I also realize that just because you played by a certain set of standards and rules in this game, it does not say anything about your character outside of this game in the real world.” If someone ever says anything along those lines, I will know that someone finally understands what it means to play Survivor.

Let’s be honest. Anyone could be a Sandra or a Courtney. There’s a million of them sitting at home with no real physical ability. And honestly, how many of us see Sandra or Courtney as someone we could be in the same room with for more than 10 minutes? It’s not like they won because they’re so gosh darn likeable.

Ultimately, you have to take into account how the winner is chosen. And you have to realize that people cannot get past being beaten and reward you for being the one to have knocked them out. If I were the show’s producer, I would seriously consider changing how the winner is chosen. I would think about giving the decision to those who watch the show. I think this would make for better tv in the long run. Think about it- aren’t the most exciting times of the show when someone makes a big play and switches alliances or blindsides another contestant? Those are the best moments that Survivor is known for. If the jury keeps rewarding those that never do anything big and are the least hated, you’re going to see less and less of those types of moves because no one wants to be the one that has offended anyone. We’ll have a bunch of sissy’s playing the game walking around asking each other what their best childhood memory is. Who cares about that? I want to see lying and betrayal! I want to see people voted off who were so sure they weren’t going home that night that they didn’t even play one of their two immunity idols! That’s why I watch the show. Don’t give the contestants motivation to play a safe game.

Who cares if you like Russell? He won what the game was set up to be. Sandra getting those votes from the jury proves that Russell was successful in the game itself. No one on that jury can honestly say that Sandra was the best player. Do you think anyone on the jury would actually say that Sandra played a better game than they did? No way. She made it further in the game because those who were voted out before her were better players. Sandra made the claim last night that being awful at the challenges was a strategy. No it isn’t or she wouldn’t have even tried, though at times I think it’d be hard to tell.

The point is this: Sandra winning for the 2nd time is a kick in the crotch to those who watch this show. It’s a byproduct of giving the jury the power to pick the winner. I understand the ramifications and the fact that the players need to take that into account while playing. I’m afraid that it’s going to ruin the entertainment value of the show eventually when players start figuring out what Russell has exploited: You can’t be the best at getting to the end and win it at the same time. Russell is right- this is a flaw. As much as it is a part of the game that the jury decides the winner, it is too contrary to the game that you are trying to promote. Change it. Give the power to the people- isn’t that one of the reasons that shows like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol have so much success? How about flipping what is done now and let the jury have a $100,000 vote for their “player of the season” and letting the people decide who should have won the game? I think that way would be less wrong… and isn’t that how things are decided on Survivor?

Redesigned Cubs/Cards blog is up!

Ok, so we are starting to really get into this Cubs/Cardinals blogging thing and have moved to a new, much better site! I'm pretty excited about it. Here's the new link:

http://theoutfieldivy.com/

If you have any baseball loving bone in you, stop on over. We LOVE discussing baseball no matter who the team!!

Carbon Dating Adam's Tree house

Noah’s ark has been in the news again recently. You can read about the latest development here. As always, there are going to be different reactions to a story like this. Some will instantly think that this is proof that what they believe is true. Others will question the legitimacy of the finding and say the evidence is faulty. Either way, one of the things about these kinds of stories is the emphasis placed on carbon dating. Carbon dating has been used by proponents of those who believe in the historical accuracy of the Bible and also by those who try to disprove it. Here is an example from the most recent Noah’s Ark story:

“Yeung told the South China Morning Post that a piece of wood obtained from the site was dated as 4,800 years old by a carbon-dating method in Iran. This matches with the range of years stated in the Bible, suggesting when the vessel was built.”

The idea of being able to tell how old something is based off of the organic life that surrounds the site brought about some more questions for me. It made me wonder not so much about the accuracy (though I do question that sometimes), but about the range. Wikipedia says that the range could go up to 58,000 to 62,000 years back. Here’s why I question that.

Assume that the Bible is true and is a literal, historical account. Let’s say creation happened exactly as described in Genesis. After God created everything, he created man (Adam) and put him in the “Garden.” It seems to me that God must have created a lot of creation in mid-existence, if that makes sense. In other words, I don’t think that when he made the garden that there were no grown trees or plants yet. Or when he made the animals, He must have created some of them as fully grown. When He created Adam from the ground, was he a baby? I don’t think so. And then when he created Eve out of Adam, she must have been a full grown woman as well. But how would carbon daters date things in that Garden? If they were able to take a walk through the garden, how old would science say they were? Did the trees have rings on them? Did the soil consist of broken down minerals as if they had existed and decomposed already? If we found a piece of that wood today, how old would our dating system say that it is?

It’s all hard to wrap your head around, but I think these types of questions should be considered. When you hear a scientist say that the universe or the galaxy, etc is hundreds of millions of years old- is it appropriate for them to even make that kind of statement? The truth is, regardless of what we believe to be true, we can only go back so far. Even if you don’t believe in a creation by a higher power, you can only get back to there being some type of explosion that started the chain of events that brought us to where we are today. But you can’t account for where that explosion or where the matter that started it all out came from in the first place. Something can’t come from nothing. At least I don’t believe so.

So isn’t it rational to question how accurate carbon dating could be whether you’re pro-Bible or anti-Bible? I do think that if it can ever be confirmed that this find is the remains of Noah’s ark that it would be pretty significant because it would not only validate the historical accuracy of that account in the Bible, but would also lead to important questions surrounding they “why” behind there being an ark in the first place. The fact that the Bible states that the ark ended up on Mt. Ararat is pretty significant. It’s going to be hard to explain how a boat got up that high in a mountain range where it is quite a bit higher than any other previously discovered habitation level.

Regardless, those were just some thoughts going through my head today.

NBA Payoffs, er... Playoffs

The NBA playoffs are now in full force now and I have again noticed something this year that I cannot figure out. Almost without fail, when there is a series where the team with home court advantage goes up 2-0, (no matter what the matchup is and how good the team with the lead) Game 3 is almost always a blow-out win for the lower seeded team. I would love to see the statistics of what percentage of series the team down 2 games to 0 wins Game 3 by more than 10 points.

Why does this happen? Obviously when you’re down 2-0 in a best of 7 series, Game 3 is pretty much a must win. So… do the players play harder in that game then? Or does the team that is up 2-0 play less hard? I understand that the team down 2-0 now has home court advantage for Game 3. But if you were to go back and look at the regular season, home court advantage wouldn’t normally translate into a blowout win over a superior team.



From watching the playoffs in the past, my best guess would be the conclusion that I really don’t want to come to. Money. Can you imagine how much money the networks, the NBA, the individual teams, and the respective cities themselves would miss out on if the series were shorter? A series that lasts even one game longer could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue when you add in everything that goes into each game: advertising, ticket prices, concessions, souvenirs, hotel rooms, local restaurants and bars, etc.


I’m not saying that there is some conspiracy theory in motion, but what is a better explanation other than that the players of the team behind in the series all of the sudden are able to kick things into another gear and beat the better team so often? And if that’s the case- does that comfort you or frustrate you that the team you love needs to be on the brink of elimination before they have enough motivation to play better? Do shots go in more frequently when you’re almost eliminated from a playoff round? Or if we looked inside the numbers, would we find that the number of foul shots in Game 3 has been statistically more favorable to the team that is behind in the series?

Maybe ignorance is bliss on this subject…

My Other Blog

I will still be keeping this blog as up to date as possible, but come on- it's baseball season. A couple of my buddies and I started a blog to follow the Cubs and Cardinals season this year. Myself and Aaron Monts will be covering the Cubs and Steve Judd (a Cardinals fan who lives in Chicago) will be covering the Cardinals.

I'm very excited about it! We love all things baseball and even get together every spring to do our annual fantasy baseball auction. Here's the blog site- if you're a fan of either team, you should click on that "follow" button and visit often. It is updated almost every day. Come discuss baseball with us!

http://101yearsandcounting.blogspot.com/