The Daily Parker

I think I can get used to having an association with a national champion team of some kind, which in my life hasn't happened since 1998:

The Duke Blue Devils officially were the last team standing Monday night, the only team on the podium with the championship trophy in hand.

Duke claimed its fourth NCAA championship but the first for any of its current players with a 61-59 victory over hometown favorite Butler in front of 70,000-plus fans at Lucas Oil Stadium.

More:

The Blue Devils won with defense. Holding the Bulldogs to 34 percent shooting and contesting every possession as tenaciously as Butler, which allowed 60 points for the first time since February. Zoubek, the 7-foot-1 center, finished with two blocks, 10 rebounds and too many altered shots to count, but also came out to trap the Butler guards and disrupt an offense that was already struggling.

Now if only the Cubs can win a game. At the moment, they're 161 games out of first place, which isn't the worst they've ever been.

Update: I suppose I have to mention this as another reason to be thankful I'm a Dukie:

ATLANTA — The Cubs are marketing the 2010 season as "Year One," referring to the first year of the Ricketts family ownership. But on the first day of Year One, the Cubs suffered their worst Opening Day defeat in 126 years, losing 16-5 to Atlanta before 53,081 at Turner Field.

I mean, day-um.

This greeted me on my return to Raleigh today:

This is from pine pollen, which forecasters predict will be miserable for a couple of weeks. It covers everything, all over, everywhere down here. Another view of my formerly-silver car:

I wish those trees would stop having sex on my car.

A 7.2-magnitude earthquake rumbled through Baja California yesterday afternoon, killing one person directly and another indirectly:

The quake struck about 6 miles below the earth's surface at 3:40 p.m. PT Sunday, about 110 miles east-southeast of Tijuana, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

After examining data, seismologists upgraded the size of Sunday's 25-second quake from a magnitude 6.9 to 7.2, according to Dr. Lucy Jones of Caltech.

"This is the largest earthquake since the [7.3 magnitude] Landers earthquake of 1992," Jones said, "A 7.2 is going to happen over a pretty long fault, probably close to 50 miles long."

... According to reports, the force from Sunday's temblor caused high-rise buildings in San Diego to sway back and forth around 30 seconds before rocking high-rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

Caltech officials reported that over 20 million people felt shaking related to the 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

Oddly, none of the national news services I subscribe to have mentioned it.

In Chicago, for example, one of the top stories was Blagojevich getting fired from "Celebrity Apprentice." That has nothing to do with earthquakes, but it's amusing enough to mention.

I've spent the day at the company office in downtown Chicago, 37 flights up a 60-story building. The wind outside is gusting to 67 km/h, so the building is swaying.

While I've visited plenty of tall buildings, I haven't experienced this kind of wind while inside one in many years. The entire structure is creaking.

It's most disconcerting.

And it's only April. The temperature in Chicago hit 28°C this afternoon, a new record:

The mercury first reached 26.7°C at 12:49 p.m. and proceeded to 28.3°C just over an hour later at 1:53 p.m. breaking the previous record of 27.8°C set in 1946. The city's official high is likely to end up at 28.9°C--a reading 17°C above normal and more typical of June than early April. ... The normal high is 11.7°C.

So, remember all those climate-change deniers who failed to understand that climate change theory predicts more severe winters? Do they get that it also predicts warmer springs and summers?

Hello? McFly?

I had planned to write about the smallest pre-reading box ever[1]. I had planned to write in Ubbi-Dubbi Pig Latin, a language spoken, as far as I know, by only one other person on earth. I had planned, in other words, not to have this come out:

No, not that. The updated version:

Pope Benedict, accused by victims' lawyers of being ultimately responsible for an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state, a top Vatican legal official said on Thursday.

"The Church is not a multi-national corporation," Giuseppe dalla Torre, head of the Vatican's tribunal, said. "He has (spiritual) primacy over the Church ... but every bishop is legally responsible for running a diocese."

Dalla Torre also rejected suggestions by some U.S. lawyers and critics of the Church that Vatican documents in 1962 and 2001 encouraged local bishops not to report sexual abuse cases.

He re-stated the Vatican's position that the documents, one of which called for procedures to remain secret, did not suggest to bishops that they should not report cases to authorities.

"Secrecy served above all to protect the victim and also the accused, who could turn out to be innocent, and it regarded only the canonical (church) trial and did not substitute the penal process," he said.

Secrecy did substitute for the penal process. And abetting a felony is usually a felony. So: What did the Pope know, and when did he know it?

[1] It contained two textbooks, one of which I can leave at home for the residency, a CD, and a few sheets of paper, total about 3.5 kg.

My new employer requires that I get an appropriate Microsoft certification by February 2012. This requires that I take six certification tests. I've started preparing, after not having bothered in four years. And, as I was in 2006, and 1999, and 1996, and 1993, the last times I jumped into the MCP Pit of Despair, I am unhappy.

Why, pray, have I not bothered to get certified? Why only one test in the last 10 years? Because I really, honestly, truly, hate these exams. The last time I took one, I literally walked in off the street and winged it. This didn't work. Not, I assert, because I lack the skills the test purported to measure. No, because the exams, for reasons of economics and volume, don't demonstrate ability; they screen for something else entirely. (I'm still trying to work out what.)

Having just taken a practice test, I am saddened to see things haven't improved. Here's an example, which I first demonstrated in 2006. Imagine you want to get a "Chicago Certified Driver in Stick-Shift Transmissions (Automobile)" badge. This credential establishes that you are certified by the city of Chicago to drive cars equipped with manual transmissions. To get this credential, you take a computerized, multiple-choice test. Here is question 1:

You're driving from 1200 West Fullerton Parkway to 741 West Cornelia Avenue. What is the route you follow?

A. East on Fullerton, North on Halsted, West on Cornelia.

B. East on Fullerton, North on Clark, North on Sheffield, East on Cornelia.

C. West on Fullerton, North on Western, East on Addison, South on Halsted, East on Cornelia.

D. East on Fullerton, North on Clark, North on Broadway, West on Cornelia.

Do you know the answer? You have 60 seconds, closed book.

The correct answer is C, because the other three are illegal. Of course, no one would ever, ever, ever, choose C in real life, because it takes you three miles out of your way. But that's not the point. Certified Chicago Drivers may not know how to use a manual transmission, but they absolutely know all the one-way streets in the city.

See, in order to get this question right you need to know several things. First, Halsted is 800 West, so you need to be East of it to get to 741 W. Cornelia. Second, Cornelia is a one-way street that goes East and West from Halsted. In other words, if you're on Halsted, you can go either East or West on Cornelia, away from Halsted.

Further, if you got the question wrong, so what? So you're going up on Halsted and you turn the wrong way on Cornelia. Oops: you're on the 800 block of Cornelia, the numbers are getting bigger, so you waste maybe 15 seconds turning at the next street and trying again in the other directon.

And even more: Anyone who has ever spent time in that neighborhood knows you won't find a parking space on the 700 block of Cornelia unless you get really, really lucky. So you may want to turn West on Cornelia anyway, because it's sometimes easier to find parking over there.

You may be wondering, why would anyone who wants to demonstrate mastery of driving stick-shift cars (a) take a multiple-choice test requiring him to (b) memorize all the one-way streets in Wrigleyville? Good question. And I have the one and only answer that should ever, ever make you do this:

Because someone is paying you to do so.

That is a good enough reason for me.

Sean Wilentz at The New Republic has a better explanation of the nullification nonsense this morning than I had yesterday:

Now, as in the 1860s and 1960s, nullification and interposition are pseudo-constitutional notions taken up in the face of national defeat in democratic politics. Unable to prevail as a minority and frustrated to the point of despair, its militant advocates abandon the usual tools of democratic politics and redress, take refuge in a psychodrama of "liberty" versus "tyranny," and declare that, on whatever issue they choose, they are not part of the United States or subject to its laws—that, whenever they say so, the Constitution in fact forms a league, and not a government. Although not currently concerned with racial supremacy, the consequence of their doctrine would uphold an interpretation of the constitutional division of powers that would permit the majority of any state to reinstate racial segregation and inequality up to the point of enslavement, if it so chose.

That these ideas resurfaced 50 years ago, amid the turmoil of civil rights, was as harebrained as it was hateful. But it was comprehensible if only because interposition and nullification lay at the roots of the Civil War. Today, by contrast, the dismal history of these discredited ideas resides within the memories of all Americans who came of age in the 1950s and 1960s—and ought, on that account, to be part of the living legacy of the rest of the country. Only an astonishing historical amnesia can lend credence to such mendacity.

The whole idea is childish in a way. Little children and extremist politicians have a definition of "fair" that only encompasses what they want. Seriously, doesn't this whole thing look like a temper tantrum? When you start to think about the far right as a bunch of little kids more concerned with winning than governing, their whole ethos becomes clearer.

In other words, my message to Western legislatures is: Grow the hell up. We have real problems that need real solutions. Act like adults and get back to work.

He really should know better:

Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert has signed two bills authorizing the state to use eminent domain to seize some of the federal government's most valuable land.

Supporters hope the bills, which the Republican governor signed Saturday, will trigger a flood of similar legislation throughout the West and, eventually, a Supreme Court battle that they hope to win -- against long odds.

Um...no. Starting with the Supremacy Clause, moving on to the Federal applicability of the 5th Amendment, and ending with the unfortunate result of the 1832 Nullification Crisis[1], this bill has less chance of having legal effect than the Cubs have of winning a post-season game. In fact, of the two events, I'd wager on the Cubs.

This silly act is merely the latest in a disturbing trend of Republican legislatures imagining that the last 150 years of U.S. history didn't happen.

Or maybe it's not their imagination. Maybe, on top of being ornery, they might in fact be ignorant of the late unpleasantness and its aftermath. Utah has no excuse, though. They entered the Union in 1896, four decades after all that stuff about, you know, Federal supremacy had been decided.

[1] President Obama will probably not send the U.S. Navy to Utah, owing to certain practical difficulties, but you get the idea.

Yesterday I expressed more relief than dread after finishing my Term 3 finals. Dread just won:

Subject: FedEx Shipment Notification

[Redacted] of Duke Fuqua School of Business sent David Braverman 1 FedEx Express Saver package(s).

This shipment is scheduled to be sent on 03/29/2010.

Oh. Joy. The Term 4 books are coming.

Sigh.