Vin Scully to Receive Presidential Medal of Freedom!

The legendary Vin Scully will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest civilian honor in the United States) in a ceremony next week. Yay!

The other honorees include former NBA stars Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Jordan.

Update (11/22/16): The ceremony was today. (There were also other notables who received the award, including Tom Hanks, Grace Hopper (posthumously), Bruce Springsteen, Margaret Hamilton, and others.)

Caltech's Basketball Team Wins Back-to-Back Conference Games!

For the first time in more than 60 years, Caltech's basketball team has won back-to-back conference games. Yup, we don't win very often. :)

It's somewhat more common that we have losing streaks that last a decade or so. :)

Rodman Vs. Kim: One on One

The java mini-gam, Rodman Vs. Kim: One on One is just too funny. It has a combination of snarky commentary and allusion to a game from bygone times that I simply love. (I never did like that old game or its sequel, but I am highly amused by the reference to it amidst the current basketball diplomacy. I just find this whole thing to be bizarre more than anything else.)

(Tip of the cap to Travis Hime.)

The 26-year Losing Streak is Over!

The Caltech men's basketball team has won its first conference game in 26 years, breaking a 310-game losing streak!

Of course, the world has changed quite a lot since our last victory.

(Tip of the cap to Vincent Kong and Greg Fricke for this article, and a tip of the cap to numerous Techers and one non-Techer for the news itself. I linked to a story that Greg Fricke posted.)

Update (2/25/11): Here is an article posted on Caltech's website about the victory. And the Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times wrote an absolutely brilliant comment in his article: "The partying continued long into the night, with players failing to return to their homework after a weeknight game for the first time in many years."

3 in a row!

Caltech's basketball team has won 3 games in a row for the first time since I was a frosh.

Did I wake up to an alternate universe today?

Cornell versus Kentucky

It's amazing that Cornell unexpectedly earned a birth in the "Sweet 16" of men's college basketball. Unsurprisingly, #1 seeded Kentucky beat us. Nevertheless, here is a fun comparison between Cornell and Kentucky. Tonight at dinner, we actually had an all-Cornell table, and we watched the beginning of the game together. The game started with a 10-2 Cornell lead, but then reality quickly set in (and watching the game made it obvious even to me---and I know nothing about basketball---that Cornell was simply outmatched) and we ended up losing 62-45. In one streak, Kentucky got 30 points to Cornell's 6.

The people at dinner included me (obviously), 3 fellow CAMsters (2 of whom overlapped with me), a former Cornell postdoc who overlapped with one of the people who overlapped with me (but not with me), a former Cornell professor who overlapped with us, and a former Cornell grad student from the biometry department. We were all present in one of my 2 seminars today, 3 of the people are faculty at ASU (main campus, which I was visiting), 2 of the people are faculty at ASU West Campus, and 1 person is a visitor from Purdue. And then there's me.

I don't normally care about basketball, but this was pretty cool. I guess that's what it's like to go to a "real" school, although the fact that we were severe underdogs was a big part of the fun for me.