7/8 Complete

Curt Schilling, always trying to get into the spotlight, wrote the following on that website he keeps:

"If [Roger Clemens] doesn't [give up his Cy Young awards] then there aren't many options as a fan for me other than to believe his career 192 wins and three Cy Youngs he won prior to 1997 were the end. From that point on the numbers were attained through using [performance-enhancing drugs]. Just like I stated about Jose [Canseco], if that is the case with Roger, the four Cy Youngs should go to the rightful winners, and the numbers should go away if he cannot refute the accusations."

Mr. Schilling: Stop talking (or writing, or whatever). Clearly you're just running your mouth without thinking. Not only are you displaying a lack of professionalism by calling out a fellow player based on accusations that may or may not be true, but your argument here leads to a deadly and dangerous slippery slope. So we should take awards away from those who took PEDs, huh? That sounds easy when you talk about Cys and MVPs, but what about entire World Series Championships earned in part by players who juiced? Want to give up your 2001 title with the D-Backs, Curt? Hell, why stop there? If we'll erase wins and HRs, then we have to update that stats of those who were affected by those accomplishments, too. So Curt, let's start by removing all of your Ks of players on steroids. But you're okay with that, since we should wipe anyway who took illegal substances from the books, right?

Mr. Schilling, for someone with a career in baseball, you really aren't too smart. This sport isn't track & field: you cannot just strip someone of a title and pass it on to second place. Everything in baseball is coupled, such that everything one player does affects another and so on. If you revoke Roger's Cys, you'll essentially have to rewrite and reevaluate all of baseball, including your part in it. Doesn't sound too appealing anymore, does it?

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We're currently getting our third snow accumulation in about a week. That's ridiculous. Already, Boston/Cambridge has had more snow this year than it did last year combined. This all must be our punishment for two years of amazing falls and incredibly mild winters.

And while we're on the subject: since when did it become fashionable to use an umbrella for snow? I think it looks rather silly. I mean, we use umbrellas in the rain to prevent us from getting soaked. Snow doesn't get you soaked. If anything, it will get you lightly damped, but you can just brush it off to prevent even that from happening. I'm pretty sure all of the umbrella users are from the west coast or south.

The worst part about all of this is that I'm supposed to be going home in 30 minutes or so. If I had known that Father Winter was going to release his wrath on us again, I wouldn't have asked mom to make the journey down here today. Oh boy--it could be a looong trip back to the great New York.

Going home means one thing: My final fall term as an undergrad is over. And what a term it was! By looking through the archive on the sidebar, you'll notice a good number of post titles along the lines of "worst week ever." Yeah--that should indicate how tough this semester was for me. Going into it, it didn't seem like a problem: despite the heavy load of five classes, two were project-based (16.622 and 16.82) and only one had problem sets (16.31). No sweat, right? Haha...WRONG. Those two projects took up most of my time, making it tough to complete the smallest assignment in even 16.400. Not to mention the job and grad school searches were more time-intensive than I ever expected; they essentially were two 12-unit classes of their own. In short, when a 48-unit term is considered the norm, I was carrying a virtual load of 84. Yikes.

But I managed to survive it. Three grades are in already--I'm pretty happy with two, whereas I'm going to talk to the professors over IAP about the third. My last two in 17.263 and 16.31 will depend on how I did on the final paper and yesterday's final exam, respectively. That will be the true test of how well I can manage my time despite having a severe shortage of it.

As for Spring 2008? No sweat! Although I only need to take 24 units, I'll be going for 36 so I don't drive myself crazy with boredom. One poli-sci, hopefully a philosophy class, and 18.06 (linear algebra, probably on P/D/F)--next term will be the exact opposite of this one.

(Our joke is that while first term freshmen are on Pass/No Record, second term seniors are on A/B/C/No Graduate. It's true! I need everything other than 18.06 to get my diploma in June. No pressure at all!)

To close this post, I bring you the following unrelated headline:

Study: Teens value non-online meetings

NEW YORK - Teenagers still value phone calls and face-to-face meetings with friends even as they frequent online hangouts like Facebook and MySpace, a new study finds.

For realz??!!!11 I thought today's "young-folk" completely lived in "the Interwebs" and no longer had a need for personal interactions! Good grief...must be a slow news day (and who the hell funded that study?!)