the tindog coffeehouse

The above photo was taken by the Hubble telescope in October (click to enlarge or download the original here).  From NASA:

The festive portrait is the most detailed view of the largest stellar nursery in our local galactic neighborhood. The massive, young stellar grouping, called R136, is only a few million years old and resides in the 30 Doradus Nebula, a turbulent star-birth region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. There is no known star-forming region in our galaxy as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. Many of the diamond-like icy blue stars are among the most massive stars known. Several of them are over 100 times more massive than our Sun. These hefty stars are destined to pop off, like a string of firecrackers, as supernovas in a few million years.

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Source.

I’ve been pretty vocal about my dislike of college football’s BCS nonsense. And of course, I’m not alone. There are many, many fans begging and pleading for some kind of playoff system, arguing it’s the only way to truly determine a national champion.

U.S. Representative Joe Barton agrees. Barton, whose district borders TCU’s hometown of Fort Worth, has even gone so far as to compare the Bowl Championship Series to communism. And nothing gets a Republican congressman more worked up than the threat of communism. Hence his anti-BCS bill, which has now passed in a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Joe Barton, R-Arlington, is not the BCS-destroying solution envisioned by millions of college football fans. But if it were to eventually become law, it would turn up the pressure on the BCS by preventing the group from calling its title game a “national championship game” unless it was the result of a playoff system. …

“What our friends and fans need to know about the Bowl Championship Series is that it is not about choosing the champion or competition on the gridiron,” Barton said. “It is about revenue sharing for the schools that are in the BCS conferences.”

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At the beginning of this year’s college football season, I looked ahead at the impending Texas Longhorns schedule and wrote that “it comes down to this: The Horns have to win. Period.”

Forget the National Championship. If the Horns want to win the Big 12 South, they have to win all three of those games [Tech, OU, and OSU]. Any misstep there, and the Big 12 tie-breaker rule that bit ‘em in the butt last year could do the same again.

Also, the schedule allows no room for error since the last four games will essentially be givens against weaker non-ranked (or lower-ranked) teams. In other words, if they fall early to OU or get tripped up in Stillwater, a blowout victory against Central Florida isn’t going to help them; there’s nowhere to go but down. …

The only way Texas can ensure they will end the regular season with a higher BCS ranking than OU is to go undefeated. And even if they do win the Big 12 with one loss, that single loss will probably be enough to keep them out of the National Championship. So it really comes down to winning every game, not just the biggest three. As Yoda says, “Do or do not… there is no try.”

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