3rd Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket - Final Four and Championship

#15 UC Santa Barbara Gauchos vs. #14 Oakland Golden Grizzlies


It's a testament to the degree to which I make this up as I go that this is what we've wound up with in the Final Four. I've been talking up the honesty of the Golden Grizzlies lately, but I think the wildcard here is the ingenuity of the Santa Barbara Gaucho. I mean, their job is subduing animals, to an extent. Further, a friend of mine works at a Brazilian Steakhouse, and her restaurant refers to the guys that come around with the giant skewers full of meat as "gauchos", so they've clearly got something going on. In the end, I'm going to defer to the UC Santa Barbara Gauchos' stealth and meat-powers.

UC Santa Barbara advances to the final.

#9 Wake Forest Demon Deacons vs. #4 Purdue Boilermakers


I've been way too big on the Demon Deacons. The Boilermakers have practical knowledge and would be pretty damn useful in an emergency. I'm not sure what a Demon Deacon would do. Read the bible from a motorcycle, I guess. Which is, you know, impressive, but not precisely useful. I'm going to say that this match ends when the Boilermakers use their boilermaking abilities to knock out the lights, then attack the Demon Deacons with an acetylene torch.

Purdue advances to the final.

FINAL

#15 UC Santa Barbara Gauchos vs. #4 Purdue Boilermakers


The Gauchos have come pretty far since defeating Ohio State back in the first round. Purdue's been steady; a high seed that kept on keeping on, what with being (as far as I can tell) a train full of welders. It's an epic showdown with hammers and lassos and welding masks. I wasn't sure which way this was going to go upon first inspection. But then, the answer revealed itself. Nerdiness solves all problems.



That is El Gaucho. He's a member of a group called "Batmen of All Nations", a story that appeared in Detective Comics #215 and revisited during Grant Morrison's run on Batman. The Batmen of All Nations are various heroes from across the world inspired by Batman to fight crime locally. That solved it.

Batman (or in this case, a Batman analogue) always wins.

Your 2010 Murphspot Mascot Bracket Champions.

University of California - Santa Barbara Gauchos

3rd Annual Murphspot Mascot Bracket -Elite Eight

#8 UNLV Runnin' Rebels vs. #15 UCSB Gauchos


I've never been out west, really. Certainly not as far as either Nevada or California. I've always viewed that as somewhat of a personal failing; one which I intend to address as soon as I have enough disposable income to visit. The result is that I'm not sure I've ever met a UC Santa Barbara fan, and I've never met a UNLV fan. There's only one time I can clearly recall seeing someone wearing UNLV gear in the media. That one person? Chumlee.


If this guy isn't your personal hero, you're living your life incorrectly.

I'm not sure what it means that I managed to relate the mascot bracket to Pawn Stars. I think probably something terrible. Still, this sort of handicaps the Runnin' Rebels if there's an art appraisal portion to the competition. There isn't, but it's enough to shake my faith in UNLV and say that this one ends in an upset. UC Santa Barbara advances.

#4 Vanderbilt Commodores vs. #14 Oakland Golden Grizzlies


I feel like I should address the fact that Commodore isn't a rank in the United States Navy. It's a title, but it's not attached to a paygrade (they're senior Captains, but "Commodore" is no longer its own rank). It had its heyday before the Civil War, when Congress refused to authorize admirals. So that takes a measure of awesomeness away from Vanderbilt that even Lionel Richie might not be able to restore. Actually, he definitely won't be able to restore it. I'm not knocking "Hello", but the minute of Lionel Richie being a teacher is just unnecessary. Additionally, the Golden Grizzlies have the element of surprise. The Navy doesn't plan for Grizzlies. Not at sea, anyway. I imagine they would if they were stationed somewhere where there were bears.

Still, I'm saying that Oakland advances.

#9 Wake Forest Demon Deacons vs. #2 West Virginia University Mountaineers


The Mountaineers have been skating along, able to kill pretty much at will because they've been going up against things that you could reasonably hunt. Not so with the Demon Deacons. I imagine this ends with the Deacons sitting the Mountaineers down to talk to them about ethics and how they've been living their lives, followed by the distant rumble of motorcycles as the Deacons' gang comes rolling in to take out the disarmed (both literally and emotionally) Mountaineers.

Wake Forest advances.

#4 Purdue Boilermakers vs. #15 Robert Morris Colonials


The problem with Colonials is that they're by definition living in the Colonial era, which means they'll be overwhelmed by the technology that the Boilermakers wield. They were also indirectly responsible, I expect, for a meal I had at about 4am in a small diner called the Colonial Inn just outside of New York City where they yelled at us for trying to order things that they had on the menu. The nerve. Plus, the Colonials would have had to rely on much slower means of transport than the Boilermakers, weakening their strategic position as communication between outposts takes weeks. Technology wins and Purdue advances

Astronomy Cast

Ah. A geek post. How refreshing.

As you know if you read the header at the top of the page, I attempt to do science for a living. Chemistry. Mixing little bits of things with other little bits of things, then swirling it and drying it and putting it in water and heating it and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. It's fun. It wasn't what got me into the sciences, though.

The reason I'm interested in science and am trying to make a career out of it goes back to being in the fourth grade and checking a book about the solar system out of the library of my tiny Catholic school. Specifically, I remember it including instructions on how to grasp the scale of the solar system by using strings and a basketball and some pebbles. Or something. The point is that while what I do today involves things on a somewhat small scale and attempts to manipulate molecules and the structures they form into doing what I want them to do, what first got me interested in studying how everything works was astronomy. Recently, I've started to get back into paying attention to it, if only to have something pretty to look at in between banging my head against the wall trying to get my science to work.

Which is why you may, if you read this blog regularly and pay attention to it, have noticed the addition of the Bad Astronomy blog to my links on the side there. Actually, if you read this blog regularly and pay attention to it, I'd really like to have a talk with you, as your visits either indicate that you have nothing better to do, and so are clearly experiencing levels of boredom previously thought impossible by leading psychologists and should find your nearest university so that we can study how you've gotten this bored, or you're my mother. In which case, hello.

Phil Plait runs a terrific blog and has a book out and another coming up soon and keeps showing up on the skeptical podcasts I listen to, but the reason I thought to write this post is not to promote him. It's to promote Astronomy Cast. Astronomy-focused podcast run by Dr. Pamela Gay of Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville and Fraser Cain, the publisher of Universe Today and noted Canadian. It's worth a listen and, if somehow you're reading this and employed as a high-school teacher, are running a program through NASA in which you let them know you exist, they send you equipment to record your student's questions, then answer them for you. Which is pretty cool. Overall, very good at taking incomprehensible things and making so that I can at least start to understand them.

It makes me a little bit sad that I'm not able to actually see very much in the night sky anymore, but I suppose that's one of the trade-offs you make when you choose to live in the third largest city in the nation, but do so on a salary that doesn't permit a car, so that you can get the hell out of here or an awesome telescope. I have yet to work up a decent rig that would allow me to carry a very sensitive piece of equipment on my back while biking, and given my tendency to either be hit by cars or have old women jump in front of me, I don't think that's something that's going to happen for quite some time.