Final NCAA Ranks

Records are top 100 games only, with any losses outside top 100 after.
Italicized names did not make the tournament.

1) Duke 18-5 (most top 25 wins, 9)
2) Gonzaga 12-3 (rates as best offense in country, by a large margin)
3) Virginia 19-3 (plays slowest tempo in country, again)
4) Michigan St 21-6 (most top 50 wins, 17)
5) North Carolina 17-6 (8 top 25 wins)
6) Michigan 21-6 (tied with Michigan St for most top 100 wins)
7) Tennessee 17-5
8) Kentucky 17-6 (8 top 25 wins)
9) Texas Tech 16-5-1 (rates as best defense in country)
10) Purdue 18-9
11) Auburn 17-9
12) Virginia Tech 12-8
13) Wisconsin 18-10
14) Iowa St 14-10-1
15) Florida St 15-6-1
16) Houston 12-3
17) Kansas 19-8-1 (16 top 50 wins, toughest schedule overall)
18) Louisville 12-12-1
19) Buffalo 4-1-2
20) LSU 17-6 (lowest rated top 3 seed)
21) Mississippi St 14-10
22) Nevada 6-1-3
23) Villanova 17-8-1
24) Kansas St 14-7-1 (lowest top 4 seed)
25) Marquette 15-9
26) Maryland 14-10
27) Wofford 9-4 (0 top 50 wins)
28) Florida 9-14-1
29) North Carolina St (first team out) 9-9-2
30) Cincinnati 11-5-1
31) Clemson 7-13
32) Texas 9-14-2 (lost three in a row at end of season)
(There is a rather steep drop here between Cincinnati and Syracuse)
33) Syracuse 12-11-2
34) Utah St 5-4-2
35) Oregon 9-9-3
36) St Marys 6-8-3
37) Oklahoma 14-11-2
38) Iowa 14-11
39) Indiana 11-15
40) VCU 7-4-3
41) Nebraska 12-16
42) Ohio St 11-14
43) Ole Miss 9-12
44) Baylor 11-11-2
45) Penn St 9-16-2 (18 losses, still rates as a top 50 team)
46) TCU 10-12-1
47) Washington 12-7-1
48) Central Florida 7-7-1
49) Minnesota 14-12-1
50) New Mexico St 0-2-2 (no top 100 wins)
51) Creighton 9-14
52) Seton Hall 15-11-2
53) Belmont 4-2-3
54) Murray St 1-3-1 (only win is the win that got them in)
55) Arkansas 6-14-1
56) Lipscomb 3-6-1
57) Arizona St 10-5-5 (5 non top 100 losses)
58) Memphis 6-10-3
72) St John's 10-10-2
75) Temple 6-7-2 (these two should be considered the last two in the field)
76) Irvine 2-3-3 (18 road/neutral wins, most in country)
78) Vermont 1-3-3
79) Liberty 2-3-3
81) Northeastern 3-6-4
94) Yale 1-3-4
95) St Louis 6-6-6
97) N Kentucky 0-2-6
104) Old Dominion 5-1-7
109) Georgia St 0-1-8

(nearly every team after this has no top 100 wins, and few such games played)
121) Colgate
127) Montana 1-3-5 (beat South Dakota St)
157) Abilene Christian
158) Bradley 1-0-14 (only win was over Penn St)
170) Gardner-Webb
192) Iona
200) North Dakota St
203) Prairie View
208) Fairleigh Dickinson
292) NC Central

Seeding overall looks a lot smoother now that they're not using the RPI system. A few teams were higher or lower than expected (Wisconsin, perennially), but there are not any embarrassing 5-12 or 6-11 games where the 12 or 11 is obviously better. There was a clear consensus who the top 8-10 teams were, with Houston being the only one much higher in the NET rating system than elsewhere, so there was nothing like "Xavier or Oregon gets a 1 seed as the 12th best team in the country"

Ghost lives

I've been kicking around trying to condense some thoughts on this for a few weeks after a few "debates" went... poorly, sometimes with a certain breed of human male (the types I usually try to avoid). The most frustrating of which have been with more sexist versions of people like myself though, who think they're being rational and skeptical. So I've kept unwinding my thoughts and winding it all back up not thinking there's much that can be said by me. There's a bunch of disclaimers I feel like I needed to make that I mostly won't make here.

Because I think it has become clarified in the last week that it suffices to focus in on one thing that keeps coming up in almost every forum this is discussed.

Male obliviousness of how women are living, and the ability not to have to worry about that ignorance or its consequences.

Where that intersects here lately. I don't walk into a room outnumbered by women, or simply alone with a single woman, with one or both/all of us perhaps in some degree of inebriated state and suddenly start to worry about my physical safety. Or being molested. I don't have to. I have been groped or grabbed or simply stared at by a relative stranger with some level of sexual interest before. But I am a rather large human male. I'm not sure I'd have to worry about this as a real threat in almost any room under any scenario, and I can't think of an occasion that I have done so (I experience other anxieties being in a room with a lot of people, but none involve my actual safety). I am not sure very many men if asked on the spot could come up with a concept of what kinds of defenses would be necessary to reduce or prevent this from happening, what kinds of precautions to take, and finally have any understanding that there probably is still a last line of thought for "this could go sideways anyway, no matter what I do, what would I do then?". Because it's not something we've ever had to consider.

There's a general concept for men of "this isn't a friendly neighborhood, I will walk with my guard up a bit to discourage a fight and make sure my car doors are locked up when I park/leave". But that's very different than "I'm in a room with 4 other men, I need to make sure I know where the exits are, be careful where I put a drink, try to decide which of them I can trust not to be a dick", and on down the line of precautionary elements. It's a different level of specificity and passive/active mental practices to inhabit. This is a serious cost to pay for what often amounts to, for men, normal social interaction. The relative freedom to engage with other human beings without worrying about security or physical abuse is something I can take for granted. And that's all being imposed as a mental and physical tax upon women for safety and security in ways that will probably always exist (it'd be nice if rape or sexual abuse could be abolished... but that's not the point here). It's why some women probably won't go in that room with 4 men. It's also why it can be convenient to play a "boyfriend/husband on TV", as it were. To discourage some other asshole from bothering a friend. The larger point though is there's a bunch of places and situations I can walk into and never have to think twice or think about how to structure the experience to make sure I come away safely at all that almost every woman I know does to some degree consider this.

A related but far less pressing problem here is that it deprives men of the company and input of women in certain situations at work or in some social setting. And that's unpleasant for us too. That's a cost we're all paying for because some of us are dicks. This is low hanging fruit as a space for room of improvement is to get men to behave a little bit better and be aware of this as a cost imposed on the women around them when they do not. There are ghosts around us where there should be a person, or these are people who have to deal with some very angry and ugly ghosts just to get through the day. That's not unusual, but the particular flavor and its widespread nature should be concerning.

Especially if we are to come to consider how common it is that virtually every woman a man knows; his wife or girlfriend, his daughter, his friend from work or school, his mother and grandmother, has had a small to large mountain of sexist bullshit to wade through, daily, for most of her life (at least teen on, if not prior). From more innocent seeming comments than intended to overlong glances and stares assessing her entirely as a physical sexual specimen on the lowest end of the scale (what might be called the pornification of women) to creepy guys exposing themselves or randomly asking for photos of her breasts, to a boss or coach molesting them. Some women will manage or avoid portions of that ugly continuum far better than others. But it's a universal experience. At some point, possibly daily, hopefully rarely, she will feel like she is an object. No longer a person. The person is a ghost, dismissed from the scene. Most men have little feeling or consideration of this as it relates to themselves I expect. I do not think other people are assessing me as an object. I am not certain any people are assessing me much at all frankly, but certainly it does not cross my mind to contemplate being seen as an object of fantastic desires, nor am I made to feel that bad about it if I am not fulfilling any social demands and expectations that I should be so considered.

One of the things that's come up often after the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings, such as they were, is the volume of men talking to and hearing from women around them who have similar stories and the overwhelming reaction of these men has been along the lines of "I had no idea". The point here isn't "all men are creeps". That's not the issue. The issue is that most men are unaware of how widespread this is that women have had to figure out how to deal with this wide variety of creepy and sexist behavior, up to and sometimes including physical or sexual violence against her personally. Firsthand, not simply through some talk their parents gave them as a child. And then probably never told any of the men around them about it after it happened. We don't know about the catcalling because it never happens when we're standing right there. We don't know about getting random dick pics because they get deleted (and it's not like we'd want to see them either). We do not know who was beaten by an ex. We don't know which of our friends were raped or had some guy in college or at a party force himself on her that she fought off and escaped.

I do not think all of these stories and events are equally terrible. Nor is the point that women are equally as innocent as men are in some manner guilty. I do not think all of these events will be handled in some way that every woman involved in it won't respond by handling it herself and not needing any man to fight any part of the battle for her. The point here isn't that women can't do some things to improve. That however isn't a very interesting question for me, a human male, to try to understand is what is it that women can do to improve the behavior of men, much less what we could do to improve the behavior of women.

The question that has nagged at me for months, years now, is what is it that men should do. Not just to improve behavior toward women, but amongst ourselves.

I'm not always sure what it is that we are going to do next to deal with these as societal concerns. Shame and shunning does not seem to have any prominent effect anymore. The assholes among us keep coming on anyway now, without apology or recognition. Indeed, they are sometimes clustering together in damaging, sometimes violent ways. Due process doesn't always apply in some formal legal sense, leaving informal and inconsistent quality measures instead to evaluate claims and defenses. Which is all very messy and probably less effective at providing some context of what someone did that was wrong and what they need to learn not to do in the future. The methods and tools at hand for social and cultural change are, thus far applied, weak, inconsistent, and probably not favored to be used by many still yet anyway. What has become clear is this is not something that men can pretend doesn't happen anymore; to claim that sexual harassment and gender inequality was resolved decades ago and now a gender peace in the workplace reigns. Or claim that because he didn't touch you or didn't penetrate you, or if he did that he didn't use his penis to do it or didn't "finish", it doesn't really matter. Or make broad claims that women are making up rapes, or idiotic claims about how female physiology works. Or to claim that "boys will be boys" and find that a compelling defense.

There's been a wide variety of responses to this sudden sunshine over blissful ignorance by men. Some of which are outright sickening or pathetic. "We can't flirt or tell a dirty joke anymore", said by idiots, up to "I need to record all my sexual encounters to make sure she can't accuse me of rape", said by monsters. We are not monsters, or at least, I'd like to set the bar at least that high for most of us as human beings. That leaves doing something else besides complaining about the behavior of half the population in order to improve these circumstances. Nominally it is not the half of the population actually committing these sexual assaults and misconducts and disrespectful attitudes and speech coming up for introspective analysis at that. Introspectively trying to understand "what is the problem", "is there something I can do about it", and then where possible go do that is a big start. Being aware of these issues and listening to women, compassionately as people, not because they're "my wife/girlfriend/daughter", which is merely an object state in relation to ourselves, happens to go over really well. At least according to some women around me. Men are capable of exercising this faculty. Maybe not very well, but it's a possibility. I would recommend we improve upon that.

I think the value of feminism ultimately comes down to helping men (and sometimes women too) behave a little bit better toward each other, across and within genders, by being slightly more aware of the lived experiences of other people, and thus offering a marginal space to improve how they relate to women around them, and sometimes to other men around them. People they purport to care about might be better treated and respected. But more importantly, people they don't know and don't care about at all might be accorded a level of respect. If we are having issues with teenagers and college students trying to navigate sexuality and consent, and I think there's broad agreement that this has been a problem for decades, if not centuries, maybe we should be doing a better job allocating our social and political capital and trying to figure out what to do with it instead. How can we prepare each other to try to make difficult decisions and take any actions required gracefully, and behave responsibly and compassionately. We will not abolish the worst aspects of human behavior. That's not the point. It's how can we help each other avoid and manage those horrible things as best we can. That cannot happen if there is a veil of ignorance pulled over it by half the population. This is also not a simple problem with a simple solution. There's probably 50-100 major factors filtering into all of this sludge of toxic masculinity and sexism, and some of the results of that will never really wash away no matter how diligently we try. That does not absolve us the responsibility of looking at it and trying to improve. If not for ourselves, for children or their children.

Russia talks, Trumps lips move

As with DPRK, the point of objections isn't (or shouldn't be) to the existence of talking to the Russians. We have substantive diplomatic issues with which we should be talking to them, leaving aside the questions of hacking and election and news meddling. The people making this argument, "that why are they mad that we're talking" typically suggest no similar argument is valid for Iran, which makes it hypocritically stupid. It is possible to set aside difficult and intractable policy goals and rivalries with other nations to make agreements on specific issues (like nuclear weapons policy, or Syria).

 It's also not an objection to say well even if Russia meddled in our elections and democratic processes, we did that too in other countries. This has rarely redounded to American interests to have done so. It was not a good thing that we did it, and most of the countries that were meddled in have had very mixed and poor results in their stability or even their allegiance to American hegemony (Iran most prominently figures against this idea being a good one, South Vietnam would be another good example, or most of Central America).

 Russia or Putin may have reasons to think this was a good idea. We do not have to.

 The point of the objections is largely in three areas:

 - That it was far from clear Trump was capable of addressing these substantive topics on his own, and in a way that would result in any deal, much less a deal favorable to US policy goals. He rarely credibly talks about anything in a way that suggests he has reached a well formed opinion or an informed position. This is fine if the deals and their details are to be worked out by others. He believes they are being worked out by himself alone.

 - That Trump is himself heavily compromised via the continued Russia/Mueller investigations, and that any agreements or attempts at agreements would be labored by this weight and unlikely to hold up. Indeed, it was extremely likely they would backfire with Congress (again) attempting to pass sanctions and other restrictions on Russia. These passed easily before, and aren't some liberal plot. Russia's actively doing stuff we don't and shouldn't like or tolerate.

 Trump seems at best purposefully oblivious to this, and more likely purposefully obstructionist over the whole issue. The better phrasing of objection here is less that he will appease Putin, but that he's a Manchurian Candidate. A Putin puppet. 

 - That Trump would obsequiously and favorably address yet another murderous dictator with a fawning admiration. Stylistically and diplomatically, this is wholly unnecessary. It is possible to conduct talks without telling horrible people they are awesome, and possible to tell relatively decent people that we share their major values even as we disagree about some particular issue. It all presents the position to other nations that our disagreements with our actual allies (EU, Canada, Mexico, South Korea, etc) are with rivalrous foes while our disagreements with our actual rivals (DPRK, Russia, China) are more cordial affairs. This makes little sense even from a game theory perspective. Theoretically it is about unpredictability. Unpredictability is potentially useful for a game of chicken type approach to foreign affairs. But this is repetitively predictable and unsurprising. Trump pisses off a bunch of American allies, and makes nice with some really terrible people. It is not unpredictable. It's boringly obvious. He has a long standing history of thinking some really awful and horrible regimes or the people running them were "tough" and "strong". This is not news. And it should surprise no one that he behaves more favorably toward such regimes now. 

DPRK talks

“I think he will do these things. I may be wrong. I may stand before you in six months and say, hey, I was wrong. I don’t know I’ll ever admit that. I’ll find some excuse.” If Narang and Panda are right, and Kim Jong-un proves as unwilling to follow through on his vague promises as his predecessors given the credibility and legitimacy they now provide him, the president finding some excuse to cover up what will then be a failed summit will likely be the best case scenario.

I've been trying to figure out what to make of all of this for a few weeks now.

I find the idea that no talks should occur, ever, a bit strange. It's very clear there are reasons to engage with DPRK along with South Korea and probably China to resolve the issues involved non-militarily if possible. The danger to US allies is substantial, as is the probability of the regime collapsing and a massive humanitarian and economic crisis emerging in a very rich corner of the world, a corner which would be largely demolished. The bar should be set pretty low that anything could happen for such talks. But talking is preferable to threatening words being exchanged or destructive warfare.

I do think the idea that any talks involving Trump would be productive, particularly for the US and our allies, is correct to bring up as a serious problem. This was never very likely. Trump is a terrible negotiator as but one obvious problem. And there did not even appear to be agreement over what the terms of the deal could even be. Spiking the football when you're at the two yard line is an interesting game plan for conducting diplomacy. I would not call it a winning one.

It's really strange to think talks will be productive after nuclear deals to prevent proliferation with Iran are being scrapped. This should put a very low ceiling on the prospect of what "denuclearization" actually means to the North's regime. Many Trump decisions on foreign policy have this quality of own-goals being scored rather than forward progress being made toward these goals. (This is before considering if those goals are worthwhile, which they are often not).

The most self-aware admission is the quote above. This is correct he will find someone else to blame rather than admit fault if these talks go nowhere or produce no tangible result. As we should expect for the time being.

The amount of praise heaped upon Kim is disgusting and unnecessary. This is not the only authoritarian regime Trump has obsequiously complimented and admired for little or no diplomatic benefit, effectively unprompted gushing and fawning swoons over some of the most terrible people on the planet. This is probably the most disturbing trend that continued.

The most optimistic reading is that talks and relations between North and South Korea improve or are able to have productive outcomes without the added attention of the US nuclear demands for a time. Presumably those US centered talks will continue, but without Trump's attention, they are less likely to be important to anyone in the region, allowing for attention to be spent on more productive things. This would be a net boon. The nuclear deal itself is unlikely to materialize in any practical sense, but relative peace in Korea and the possibility of trade or economic freedoms offered through reform of the North's authoritarian system of repression and starvation would be welcome (basically a smaller version of what happened in China in the 1980s and 90s).

This is to keep in mind, again, that Trump's Iran policy purportedly offered as a framework here is not helpful. That policy will ultimately destabilize the region and made it more likely Iran, and Saudi Arabia if not others, would become a nuclear power, all while achieving no humanitarian aims or diplomatic advantages and weakening relations with the US's European allies necessary to achieve any harsher goals on nuclear powers (including North Korea).

Not so Open Borders

Observing immigration debates, particularly with the border issues over asylees currently. Something that occurs to me is there's a very poor public understanding of what "open borders" actually means and the propensity of any Americans to think it to be a good idea or ideal (there are few who do).

This is a typical canard faced by people who oppose nativist restrictionist policies intended to reduce legal immigration from current low levels, not just illegal immigration is this claim they favor an open borders policy. Sanders complained about this too, so it's not just Trump types that do it. The actual debate is something more like the following: We don't have open borders, or very open borders, and what we are mostly arguing about as a country is the level of how closed we wish them to be, whether it is closed or open enough and how or whether to adjust that. Not whether it should be thrown open entirely to allow for the most possible free movement of people.

The US has fairly restrictive immigration policies by comparison to the rest of the globe and has had them in place for a long time, going back at least a century, which make it difficult to move here and become a legal citizen or worker/resident, particularly from non-favored places on the globe. This restrictive approach didn't start with Trump or Obama, and wasn't undone by Reagan (or Obama). It started during the Arthur administration (if we don't want to go back further to restrictions on the Transatlantic slave trade as a means of reducing "immigrants" from certain places on the globe). Anti-immigrant fervor was for a time a major political movement of its own during the antebellum period, and existed throughout the early days of the American republic, but did not succeed in surging into broad and major legislative restrictions until the early 20th century.

We were explicit back in the Wilson administration when some of the first major and broad immigration restrictions were instituted that a significant goal was to severely reduce and strictly control immigration from, say, Poland or Russia or Japan, just as it is now sought to reduce and control it from Honduras or Nigeria or Syria. There is and was little reason to do any of this for the benefit of our residents and citizens, to keep people out from any particular nations or regions. It solely benefits nativist demands to reduce the need for their own assimilation to a more dynamic culture. Immigrants themselves tend to assimilate fine to the American system and ways of life; it's the nativists who don't keep up. This is evident by examining places with more dynamic economic growth (mostly places with more immigrants living there), or places that more strongly oppose immigration (mostly places with very few immigrants).

There are advantages to the overall US system, such as jus soli, that make it easier in certain ways for immigrants to get and stay here legally. But we actually receive fewer families as immigrants than even the supposed high-skilled worker-based immigration systems of Canada and Australia that (some) Trump type conservatives seem to want to emulate (other than Trump himself or Stephen Miller types). Those supposed advantages are being washed out by all the difficulties and impediments we throw up instead.

What seems needed to reform the situation in a more constructive manner, as a non-expert observing the issue.

- Understanding that the "illegal" immigration issue, such as this even matters, largely is one of people overstaying legally issued visas or coming in from Asia or Africa or Eastern Europe, and not anymore from Central America. Many people coming in from Central America at present getting much of the news attention are attempting to apply for asylum status. Almost none of this is anything like someone storming across the border with malevolent intent that it should require a harsh legal or military response as is being demanded.

- Walls are pointless to deal with those problems even if they are considered as seriously as issues related to these problems. Walls are a poor symbolism for a free democratic nation to use to boot as an additional reason to avoid them.

- Policies adopted by less democratic or less free nations with the intention of reducing the cultural, intellectual, ideological, and ethnic diversity of that nation are not to be emulated or considered a valid comparison as something we should wish to do. The very idea any number of Americans think it is a good idea to see what North Korea or Afghanistan or China does with people trying to cross their borders illegally and copy any elements of that, or to take a more representative example of actual policy, to look at what we did with Japanese Americans during WW2 and see that as an instructive and successful policy, is horrifying from a civic perspective.

- There should be a massive expansion of work visas in amounts and availability. These visas should be controlled by the workers themselves as much as possible so that companies can decide whether or not to employ someone without worrying about national origins or needing to apply and somehow justify that they need to hire someone from another country, and so workers can go from job to job relatively easily or start a company of their own if they wish/are able. Companies could sponsor specially talented workers as a means of generating loyalty among highly skilled employees, but otherwise should have to pay normal wages to everyone.

- Significant expansion of refugee/asylum programs should be undertaken. The global refugee population is at an all time high in the last decade. This is in part because of American policies; such as in Yemen or parts of Central America. Regardless of the blame we may ascribe to our policies abroad or domestically as they negatively impact other nations and people, we have a moral obligation as a rich country and people to help those in dire need. And we tend as a nation to benefit considerably by taking in refugees historically as a selfish reason to do this. There are no significant downsides to doing this. Other than that it annoys nativists who may elect more immigrant-restrictive public officials.

- Significantly easier citizenship applications and processes should be created. The cost and time involved is a significant impediment to making it easier for people to immigrate legally and become a permanent resident, if they wish. If it is easier to immigrate legally via citizenship or work status, it would be much easier to concentrate enforcement resources on those who continue to come with more dangerous and thereby illegal purposes than finding work or being with family and friends.

- As such, we should see reduced deportations of non-criminal immigrants, whether or "illegal" or not. If someone is not a terrorist, spy, or murderer/rapist, I'm not sure why it would be a useful exercise of the federal government's priorities or resources to deport them. Concurrent with that, abolishing checkpoints for immigration within a border zone, not at the border would be useful for US residents. Immigrants are not required to live in and are not necessarily concentrated in these zones anyway that monitoring visa status would be useful to do in this way. Such checkpoints appear to be mostly used for other dubiously legal purposes, such as checks on narcotics smuggling rather than arresting or detaining immigrants with dubious residential status

On offensive analogies

I make a lot of analogies when talking to people lately. Some of them don't work as well as I would hope, and others work fine. Because this particular subject keeps coming up in some form over the last few years, I'm going to make one as a thought experiment which might be offensive. You have been warned. It's also not originally mine.

Something which occurs often in atheist and secular circles is the question of how to deal with often zealously religious people, and some not so zealous. I find I probably have fewer problems than most other atheists. Mainly because I wasn't brought up with some strange beliefs and did not lose many friends or associates as a result of abandoning them either. I was raised on cultural things like Star Trek and its humanism and the writings and philosophies from Aristotle, Mill, and Adam Smith, and later the Stoics. Maybe those are strange to others, but they're fairly normal within American and Western culture. I was also brought up around a rather more tolerant friend group, and family members that did not tend to push religious beliefs. There were occasional arguments over evolutionary theory or points of ethics, but it wasn't by and large causing major social rifts. The fact that I didn't and don't like most people did that, or vice versa.

What I intend to do is explain how it is I try to get along with religious people, and why it is that breaks down sometimes. There's a famous formulation of analogy for belief in god to wonder whether there is a tiny teapot floating between Earth and Mars. While there are some logical philosophical problems with it, it should suffice to examine this question for my purposes.

The primary disagreement atheists and theists have is whether or not there is a teapot there in the first place (and indeed this is the primary logical problem with the argument is that this materialist framing bogs it down in the face of faith-based reasoning in teapots). This is a rather trivial disagreement in my view. I do not care if people want to believe in very silly things to extract comfort and meaning from life or on how to practice and put forward their ethical values. Only whether or not these are sensible ethical values or lead to contented and fulfilling lives for as many people as possible seems a pertinent question to me. The metaphysics of teapots isn't a very interesting debate for me. Ethics are.

The relevant disagreement atheists and theists that I see as having is to suppose that this difficult to find teapot has also been broadcasting instructions and teachings on the ethics and meaning of existence to human beings for centuries, and that human beings should act accordingly and follow this as a doctrine or dogma about what appropriate human behaviors and social arrangements are.

This poses (at least) four separate scenarios for how human beings will act. (Note that none of this requires that the teapot actually exist, merely that some people believe this is an origin point and act upon that).

-1- That the teapot sends beneficent messages about compassion, kindness, generosity, charity, hope, tolerance, or love, and people who follow its teachings mostly try to follow these examples and virtues in their actions. In so far as being kind or compassionate is difficult to do sometimes, they won't do it perfectly, more something to aspire toward as a set of values and virtues.

-2- That the teapot sends beneficent messages about compassion, kindness, etc, etc, and teapot followers do not mostly try to follow these teachings, but instead expend a lot of energy about which version of the teapot's teachings they should listen to, or whether or not other people believe in the teapot in the first place. Or if they do believe in the teapot if they do not follow it perfectly or in the way they believe is perfect. Rather than whether or not other people tend to ascribe to some significant elements of those teachings in their own independent behaviors and judgments of ethics and decency and tend and intend to behave as such.

-3- That the teapot sends mixed messages, with some benevolent and some intolerant or cruel, and people have to decide for themselves which are beneficial and wise and which are not, or determine when they apply and when, or if, they do not from context and structure of words and accompanying doctrines. Sometimes people will succeed at this challenging task, and sometimes they will fail.

-4- That the teapot sends cruel or intolerant messages and people decide (or not) to follow these, and act accordingly. (Trump and some of his more rabid religious Christian followers, ISIS types, etc). This is one possible solution to the theodicy problem, to suggest that the teapot has a message, or at least some parts of messages, that would be favored by some sick fucks in the first place and at least some people are acting in accordance with that.

In the first and perhaps third versions, if the net result of people's belief in teapots net results in acts of mercy, kindness, charity, and love and compassion for other people (and sometimes even other living things), I see little reason to complain about this. I can think it's silly, but they're unlikely to bother me much about it or be bothered that I think it is silly in the societies that result. In general, many religious people I have encountered try to work within that framework, trying to be decent human beings toward one another, and not all that bothered that I am not of their religious tribe if I likewise act with decency or kindness and respect toward them. I might have some significant quibbles with what things are found to be ethically questionable at times by their teapot related messages, or what things are deemed intolerant or cruel by teapot followers. But these are not generally because they believe in wise and virtuous space teapots or not in the first place. More because ethics are really hard as a subject for people to reason through, and they mostly do not bother to try (teapots or not). And because these are not always simple and non-contradictory commands that are being followed. Interpretation is involved, and wisdom or folly will proceed from there.

People will learn, hopefully, from their errors, and the correcting instruction of others, how to behave sensibly and appropriately, and generally this could result in a more just and fair society. I see little basis for judgment or derision of the silly beliefs in teapots somehow being reliant in forming these habits of justice in others, so long as they are aspiring to form these habits and mostly successful at doing so. Many religious people I encounter act more in this world according to the wishes or teachings of a benevolent teapot and ignoring other considerations or scenarios. This does not make them always good people, but it can make them more sensitive to arguments about compassion even for people who might violate some of the more strange ethical commands made by the benevolent teapot. And the net result is a society that could kind of slide by those more strange and perhaps harmful conceptions of goodness in favor of the more beneficial ones.

Not all people however hew to this arrangement. It is the second and fourth versions I find really challenging to deal with, and also perplexing as common in public perceptions of teapot followers and common behaviors by some. And indeed, perhaps increasing in the commonness of public perceptions that these are the more likely ways for teapot followers to behave.

The second option devolves into a lot of arguing over theology and doctrine and ingroup-outgroup tribalism dynamics. It is responsible for a lot of bloody wars and genocides over the last several centuries. This is hardly an ideal way to follow this teapot with its supposedly benevolent messaging. It remains active as an artifact of skepticism of the Christian bonafides of Catholics by other Christians for example, and generally leads to a wide array of religious people fighting with each other. As an atheist, this scenario has the most impact upon the quality of arguments and salience of religious orders, simply because it acts to weaken them and cause disarray and distrust of them internally within religious organisations that are no longer as unified by their common belief in the great teapot. If it were thus limited to that arena of humanity, people willing to fight and die over such disagreements, this would be deeply disturbing but not something I would actively work to stop either. This group of people will expend a lot of time harming people that don't really care that much about these arguments, and mostly just wanted to follow the general messages of good teapots everywhere (or those who don't care about teapots in the first place and want some coffee or beer instead, say). Either by making such people look bad by acting like fools and defaming the good name and example of decent people, or by acting with intolerant cruelty and hypocrisy toward people of the "other" groups.

It nevertheless makes dealing with such people incredibly frustrating. The quality of theological debate is typically poor and poorly informed, the quality of philosophy poor, and the embrace of any positive social messages and changes they might otherwise have used as poorly convincing but at least beneficial evidence of their beliefs gets bogged down in these tedious spaces. Society does not progress toward a more beneficent set of arrangements for its people and risks or inflames many pointless conflicts along the way.

The fourth scenario has its obvious drawbacks. The first being that convincing people that their teapot is in fact a vile asshole is really hard. Trump, as a practical example, is really, really popular among very religious (white Christian) Americans, particularly with a lower standard of education, and not so popular at all with anyone else. Or at least many people who claim to those beliefs. This suggests these are people don't see his actions and behavior as a problem, and further suggesting their beliefs and teapot based communities are more about intolerance and cruelty he displays toward unfavored others in the first place than about any beneficial messages from their teapot.

The second and most pertinent problem is that it would lead to a lot of unethical and inappropriate behavior harming other human beings. Cruelty and suffering being things that should be avoided where possible to foster a peaceful and prosperous world for people, following such a teapot's messages or the people who think they would prosper by them, is something that should be avoided. Getting people to stop doing so is going to be really hard, and probably not usually worth the effort. But that still leaves cleaning up the messes they're making on the way, which is not absolved by ignoring vile and unpleasant people either.

Final Rankings NCAA 2017

Seem to be the best two teams now.
1) Gonzaga 10-1 - 6 top 25 wins, but 3 are against St Mary's
2) Villanova 19-3

Other likely title contenders.
3) North Carolina 17-7 - top rebounding team, 6 top 25 wins
4) West Virginia 17-7-1 - forces tons of turnovers
5) Kentucky 20-5

Mixed bag, mostly teams to avoid taking too far.
6) Louisville 14-8 - only 8-7 in Road/Neutral games
6) Kansas 20-4  - lowest 1 seed, 6 top 25 wins, 14 top 50
8) Wichita St 4-4 - 10 seed, 0 top 50 wins
9) Virginia 14-10 - 5 seed, #1 defense
10) Duke 18-7-1 - most top 25 wins, 8, 15 top 50 wins, also most
11) Florida 17-8

Sleepers
12) SMU 10-3-1 - 6 seed, but rates higher than 3 seed Baylor
13) Purdue 15-6-1
14) Oregon 14-5  -only 2-3 vs top 50
15) UCLA 11-4
16) Baylor 19-7 - 13 top 50 wins
17) Iowa St 16-10 - 13 top 50 wins

Upset potential teams (in either direction)
18) Florida St 15-7-1 - 13 top 50 wins, losing record in road/neutral games
19) Michigan 15-11 - 10 top 50 wins
20) Arizona 12-4
21) Cincinnati 10-5
22) Wisconsin 16-9 - 10 top 50 wins, but 8 seed...for some reason? (RPI has them at 32, I'm not sure how)
23) St Mary's 5-4
24) Notre Dame 14-9
25) Oklahoma St 13-12 - 10 seed, #1 offense, bad defence
26) Butler 17-6-2 - 11 top 50 wins
27) Creighton 11-9 - started year 18-1 overall, but slumped since starting PG was injured (was leading nation in assists)

Most teams from here will have middling records against competitive teams.
Non-NCAA bid teams will appear in italics
28) Marquette 9-11-1 - top 3 point shooting team, but awful defense
29) Kansas St 10-13
30) Wake Forest 8-13 - 3-13 vs top 50, worst defense among at-large teams
31) South Carolina 15-9-1 -only 3-5 vs top 50, worst offense among at-large teams to make the field, plays de facto home games in first and second round (7 seed)
32) Miami 8-11
33) Minnesota 13-9
34) Vanderbilt 12-14-1 - 4 top 25 wins got them in
35) Indiana 9-13-2 - first team out
36) Xavier 10-13- only one good win post-injury (Butler)
37) Northwestern 10-11 1st NCAA bid in school history
38) Arkansas 14-8-1 - 3-7 vs 50
39) Clemson 9-15 
40) Rhode Island 8-7-2
41) Michigan St 11-13-1
42) Dayton 10-4-3
43) TCU 9-15 - 2-8 in last 10 games
44) Syracuse 9-12-2 - 2-11 in Road/Neutral games
45) Texas Tech 7-14 - 2-11 in Road/Neutral games
46) Virginia Tech 11-9-1 - 8 top 50 wins
47) Maryland 14-7-1
48) VCU 8-7-1 - 1-3 vs 50
49) Middle Tennessee 4-1-3

Last "out" at larges and mixed upset mid-majors/low rated at-larges
50) Utah 4-8-3  - 0-6 vs 50
51) Houston 5-7-3  - 1-5 vs 50
52) Nevada 5-3-3
53) Seton Hall 11-9-2
54) Alabama 8-14  
55) Georgia 11-14 - 1-11 vs 50!
56) Illinois St 1-3-3 
57) Providence 10-9-3
58) UNC-Wilmington 4-3-2 - 0-2 vs 50
59) California 6-11 - 0-7 vs 50
60) USC 5-8-1 - lowest rated at-large team, 2-6 vs 50, got in because of RPI rating (41)
65) Vermont 0-4-1
66) ETSU 2-4-3 - 0-1 vs 50
70) Princeton 1-5-1

Rest of Field
77) Bucknell 3-5-3 - 1-2 vs 50
93) New Mexico St 0-1-4
105) Florida-Gulf Coast
110) Winthrop
112) Iona
132) Kent St
134) Troy
144) N.Kentucky
155) UNC-Central
166) Jacksonville St
178) North Dakota
179) South Dakota St
186) Texas Southern
194) Mount St Mary's (only team in field with negative scoring margin, also gets clobbered on the boards)
202) New Orleans
205) UC-Davis


Critical injuries
Xavier- Sumner (6-7 since, but 3 of those wins are against DePaul)
Creighton - Watson PG (6-6 since)
Oregon- Boucher (injured in conference tournament)

Cultural critique

I've been off to the side watching a lot of film and TV, during what appears to be a golden era of TV and TV writing, and cultural nerd/geek ascendancy in film. 

There are two major issues I keep seeing repeated. 

1- It's a visual medium, use "show, not tell." This fails the viewer on many levels. Showing us acts of heroism/villainy or romance or cleverness establishes clearly these features as a reason to care about or relate to the character. Telling us someone is clever or a hero is the same function as a person assuring us "I am smart". In that it generally tells us "you are an idiot." Dialogue can be used to establish any of these things instead of action, but there is a less is more style approach to this that is frequently abandoned, as though the expectation is the viewer won't understand what is going on without being spoon-fed lines of exposition constantly. Dialogue of this sort should be more about establishing the character, by making them seem more real or relatable. For example, to tell a joke or a moving back story to another character, having them gossip or engaged in some act of chicanery and mischief, rather than about spoonfeeding us details about them. With a more complicated show with many moving parts and characters (the Wire, or Game of Thrones say) this might be true that the viewer needs a little bit of explanation to follow it. Game of Thrones essentially invented the concept of "sexposition" as a method of having complicated pieces of information conveyed while someone, or several someones, is nude and engaged in various salacious actions on screen. By contrast. The Wire has a sequence, a entire brilliantly written and shot sequence, where the two characters communicate entirely by variations of phrases including "fuck" key within them, with no dialogue exposition whatsoever. It's all shown through reenactment and body language what they are thinking and doing and the viewer is simply expected to apply what exposition they've had before and know what's going on. And it isn't hard to follow in spite of this limitation of words and precision. 

The most dramatic cultural difference I've noticed is between Marvel's films and DC's in the last few years. We are constantly told Superman is a hero, and then rarely see much heroism and instead watch a city getting destroyed through collateral damage in his own fight with the main villain. This doesn't really convey much of a reason to care much about this apparently indifferent and possibly sociopathic superhero because the depiction we are seeing is at odds with the depiction we are told we are seeing. Guardians has a bunch of anti-heroes, or at least very unlikely heroes and their tree creature companion, running around eventually working together to save a planet that probably hates or fears them just as much as we are told Superman is hated or feared by humanity. It's acted out and it fits more or less what we are told needs to be done in those moments of exposition between explosions. 

Romance plot lines in most films follow a similar problem, where the chemistry and interplay and dialogue between the main love interests is usually an unconvincing dud that is neither escapist entertainment nor realistic depiction of human pair bonding and attraction. 

Even with Game of Thrones, which is one of the better shows on TV for avoiding the show not tell problem (although it often dwells too heavily on the showing of barbarism), spends most of the last couple of seasons telling us that Tyrion is clever and wise, and then watching most of his plots and clever schemes blow up in his face. We are buoyed along by the fact that he has done clever and wise things in the past, but no longer seeing the more convincing evidence of this fact. 


2- "it’s more interesting in theory than in practice." This is a frustrating component of a ton of film and TV. Rogue One could have been a very interesting and compelling work of fiction set in the Star Wars universe to tell us a story most people could conclude was not going to work out that well. The way it could have done this was to have interesting characters who will all, eventually, be sacrificed for a good cause. We should care more who these people are, why they are fighting, and that they are dying. Dirty Dozen managed to carry this off in a war-themed film, where most everyone dies (spoiler alert if you haven't been alive since 1967). Instead the characters are fairly disposable means of creating action sequences. Some of them may as well have been named "plot device", for all I know they were. This is frustrating because there's an angle where the context and content that's available should have been really interesting and engaging, but nobody bothered to use it. 

The most common example of this is sci-fi themed. Westworld and the Expanse are both shows that hit some interesting questions of psychology, neuroscience, or philosophy. What would a world with AI be like, what is consciousness, what would the discovery of alien life do to a primitive space-faring human society and its messy politics? But they fall short by being a tangled mess of story that rarely allows people to care about dynamic characters doing something interesting on its own. There is a huge gap between Omar in the Wire, a guy who runs around robbing drug dealers who should not at all be a popular and well-regarded character (and is), and whoever the hell these people are in the Expanse (I have a vague idea of names other than one of them does the voice for a Quarian admiral in Mass Effect). Or William in Westworld. One of these is a well-developed character who doesn't even appear until the 3rd or 4th episode of the series. And the others, I've been following these people around for an entire season of a show and still don't really feel like they are anything other than ciphers and plot devices around which things are supposed to happen to make me feel like there's something interesting happening. I don't relate to them. They don't seem to have complicated motivations, or even get along all that well to where I'd understand why they back each other up. 

Where I think this is falling flat mostly is that stories are about the people in them and how we feel about them. And it feels like writers or show runners have forgotten that. Sometimes in favor of flashy action sequences. Not always. A writer can and should expose people to interesting concepts or ideas, but stories they tell are primarily about people (actually primarily about themselves or the people they know well, which is why so many films or shows are about people trying to act or write or succeed in some creative endeavour). The ideas are smuggled in alongside that. I thought that having everyone important in the story die (spoiler alert from 1977) in Rogue One should have been a really interesting risk to take with a film, especially when it seems to be a war film. This would confront us with the horrific cost of war and violent resistance and that even if there seems to be a valorous sacrifice in the works, a victory will feel hollow and painful for the losses we accrue to get there. But then I didn't care about any of these people and they barely seemed to care about each other. So. It didn't work very well as a story about people. It traffics, as Force Awakens did before it, but in a less reliant way, on a cultural memory that we have seen from characters before (Han Solo or Darth Vader), rather than giving us much new about these characters now. 

There are films and shows that get around these problems. I may be expecting a bit much for a big blockbuster production to have ideas and complex characters in it for example. Still. It isn't that much of an ask to have the main character not be "the explosion in scene 24" either. 

March NCAA Ranks

All records are top 100 records only (with any losses to non-tournament quality teams designated).

1) Gonzaga  9-1
2) West Virginia 14-7

I still don't feel like these are the two best teams. Gonzaga has only played one meaningful game since last month. The gap has also closed. The next two teams are right behind them now
3) Villanova 19-3
3) North Carolina 15-6

5) Kentucky 15-5
6) Florida 16-6
7) Kansas 21-3
8) Louisville 13-7
9) Virginia 12-9

10) Wichita St 2-4
11) UCLA 11-3
12) Purdue 14-6
13) Duke 14-6-1
13) Baylor 17-6

15) Oregon 13-4
16) Florida St 12-7

17) Oklahoma St 13-10

18) SMU 11-3-1
19) Butler 18-5-1

20) Iowa St 13-9
21) St Marys 4-3
22) Wisconsin 14-7
23) Cincinnati 10-4
24) Arizona 9-4
25) Creighton 12-7
26) Notre Dame 13-7

Bubble thoughts going into the tournament weeks
Teams I have "in". These are not all teams I would put in, in fact none of them are). These are teams ranked high enough to sneak in basically.
31) Wake Forest 7-12 - All of Wake's losses are in the top 50.
34) Texas Tech 7-12
36) Kansas St 7-12 (yes all three of these teams have 7-12 top 100 records)
38) Indiana 7-13-1
39) Clemson 10-14
40) Vanderbilt 9-13-1
46) Houston 7-6-2

Of these, Wake, Kansas St, Vandy, and Houston are the only ones even getting bubble chatter. The fact that any of these teams are seems like a problem. The bubble looks incredibly soft this year.

Teams I have "out" that will almost certainly get in
47) Michigan St 12-11-1 (injuries and actually a decent record against top-100 teams and a tough schedule)
56) Providence 11-9-2
58) Seton Hall 10-9-1
67) USC 5-7-1

Actual bubble right now
42) Xavier 11-12, fallen about 15 spots in the ranks in the two weeks. Probably safe, but fading badly
44) Syracuse 8-12-1
49) Rhode Island 5-7-2
50) California 4-8-1
51) Illinois St 1-2-3 (not much of a schedule)
All of these teams are in right now, probably. If there's a couple of at-larges because of upsets in conference tournaments, these are the teams getting axed. Syracuse appears to have a terrible RPI, but will probably be getting in anyway (again). Which is a good sign the RPI is useless and starting to be ignored/replaced.

Early NCAA ranks

All records are top 100 records only (with any losses to non-tournament quality teams designated).

1) Gonzaga  9-0
2) West Virginia 9-5

I don't have much faith these are the best two teams, mostly because they both have lower quality schedules, so far. Partly this is because nobody seems that far ahead of the rest of the pack this year.

3) Virginia 11-5
4) Louisville 10-5
5) Villanova 15-2

6) Kentucky 10-5 (seems to be in a funk, they were ranked #1 two weeks ago)
7) North Carolina 13-4
8) Kansas 13-3
9) Florida 11-5

10) Purdue 10-5
11) Wisconsin 12-3
12) Baylor 13-3
13) Duke 9-5
13) Florida St 11-4
15) Wichita St 2-4
16) UCLA 8-3

17) Cincinnati 7-2
18) Oregon 7-3
19) SMU 6-3-1

20) Arizona 7-3 (currently projected as a #2 seed on bracketmatrix)
21) Oklahoma St 7-8 (toughest schedule in the country)
22) Creighton 11-4
23) St Marys 5-2
24) Butler 14-4-1
25) Notre Dame 9-7

Non-top 25 notes
Michigan and Indiana are the first teams which I have ranked that are considered bubble teams (and probably out), at 31 and 32. Followed by Wake Forest and Miami. And Syracuse, as the ACC has a string of middling teams. None of these teams looks that distinguished. Syracuse has only one road/neutral win so far all year, for example. This is typical as bubble teams are usually mediocre.

ACC vs Big 12 as the "power conference" for the year
ACC has 11 potential teams up for bids (more like 10, Clemson hasn't beaten anyone, neither has Wake Forest), and the #3 and #4 and #7 teams.

Big 12 has 8 teams most likely all getting in, with #2 and #8 also in the conference. Additionally, even the weakest two teams that won't get in (Texas and Oklahoma) are in the top 100.

In general, the Pac-12 looks overrated by tournament prospects. Arizona's very high on the projected seed line, and Utah is projected as a bubble team, with a 2-7-1 record, and USC has a very low computer ranking (I have them at #59), mainly because they don't appear to have played anyone (5-4 record). California also has some bubble potential and a poor ranking (I have them at #55). I'd say there are probably some of the usual RPI shenanigans, but I don't look at RPI. These things could improve, but don't count on it.

UCLA rates as the best offense in college basketball.. but their defense is outside of the top 100.

Best non-major conference teams as upset spoilers should they get in:
#54 Middle Tennessee 5-1-3
#57 UNC Wilmington 3-3-1