My theory on McCain's VP choice - he selected her for her fresh, young organs. Has anyone checked to see if they share a blood type?

So I'm scrapping the college football top 10 this year, never quite liked the way it worked out. Instead, you get:

BLOGALICIOUS' GAMES OF THE WEEK

Thursday - UTEP at Buffalo. I know almost nothing about this game, and if I were more of a wag I'd make a joke about the Miners defense's approach in containing Trent Edwards. But I do have a feeling that whoever wins this game will wind up playing in the New Mexico Bowl. Bank on it. Score: UTEP 9, Buffalo 5

Friday - SMU at Rice. Hey, it was this or Temple-Army, a game where it's quite possible that neither team will cross into opposition territory in the first half. Either way, it looks like a great night for baseball. Score: SMU 12, Rice 7

Saturday - James Madison at Duke. This game is second to App State-LSU as far as how happy a potential 1-AA win would make me. But as I don't see App State striking twice, I'll go with the Dukes beating Duke. See, there's more of them! Score: JMU 45, Duke 2

Sunday - Colorado State at Colorado. All the security in Denver this week will make its way to Boulder. Take the sharpshooters and the points. Score: Colorado State Police 42, Colorado 21, CSU 17

Monday - Tennessee at UCLA. Because opening the season in California worked out so well for the Vols last season. Score: Tennessee 21 UCLA 3

Another school year is nigh, and in some cases undergraduates have already returned to campus. That being said, I'd like to pass along five handy tips to those of you heading off to college for the first time (or to those of you coming back who may need a refresher).

1. Look both ways before you cross the street. I know this seems obvious. You've made it through your 18-plus years without this being a problem (hopefully). But if I had a dime for every student who nearly became a hood ornament because they were paying more attention to their iPod than oncoming traffic, I'd be writing this from the study of my mansion rather than a cubicle.

Watch the lights, stick close to crosswalks, and pay special attention to cab drivers, as they follow no more than 40 percent of traffic laws at any one time.

For those of you going to school in Boston who may find themselves on Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, or Huntington Avenue, please also give special attention to the Green Line. Their cars do not stop like your mom's SUV. They stop like small trains because, well, they are small trains. If you don't know why they would take longer to stop, please find a physics major to explain it.

2. Save your complaints for something worthwhile. We know. Your room is too small. Your roommate does that thing with his/her hands. The food sucks. We know you have these problems because every student has had the exact same problems.

So get used to your small room, learn to live with your roommate's idosyncracies and take my word for it that dining hall food has come a long way in the last 20 years. When you have something to complain about - your room is taking on water from the bathroom upstairs, or your roommate is doing that thing with his/her hands with someone else while you're in the room - find your RA or similar person.

Oh, and if you're the person who is going to write the school paper talking about how your hometown is so much better than your current location? Put that energy into transfer applications to schools in your hometown. I'm sure they'd love to have you back.

3. Don't get kicked out before classes start. There's always one student who is a little too excited to be at (or back at) school. They get a little high spirited (literally or otherwise), maybe pull a fire alarm as a prank, and the next thing they know they're either looking for a new place to live or a new school entirely.

Please don't be that student. There are no worse phone calls, either from the student or staff perspective, than the one that informs a parent that their child's educational plan has just taken a fairly significant detour.

You'll learn pretty quickly what you can get away with, so give yourself the first couple of weeks where you don't do anything more stupid than normal. That should get you through safely. And if it doesn't, it's destiny.

4. We are not out to get you. When things don't go your way, it's easy to place blame elsewhere. For some students, this becomes a vast conspiracy involving their RA, professors, the financial aid office, various deans and the guy who sorts the mail.

There is some communication between staff when there's a problem. There has to be, otherwise one hand doesn't know what the other is doing and more problems are created. But we don't spend our time telling the campus to jerk you around. We have enough to do already.

5. Get your parents to back off. To say that parents are more involved in a student's college career now than they were, say, 10 years ago is an understatement. The term helicopter parents wasn't coined without reason.

It's hard to get your folks to back off. They're used to doing things for you, and you're probably used to them doing those things. But a major part of going to college is developing the independence that will see you through the rest of your life. You don't have to cut them out completely, just be firm with them when they want to register you for your classes or call the president because they don't like the color of your room's walls. You'll be doing everyone a favor.

That's it. Class dismissed.

Now that the cauldron has been extinguished, it's time for a very special:

MAKING IT BETTER: The Summer Olympics

Granted, most (if not all) of these suggestions are aimed more at whatever international body runs the sport. But I imagine the IOC has some leverage here.

1. Create an audit system for gymnastics where the judges have to document deductions, and make them publicly available. This doesn't have to be real time (judging seems slow enough now), but I think there'd be fewer shenanigans if the judges were under greater public scrutiny. If nothing else, gymnasts would have data to help them know what to expect from certain judges, sort of like how baseball players know how each ump defines the strike zone.

2. Wire up the boxers like the fencers. The current judging system in boxing is probably the worst of all the current Olympic sports and is among the worst all-time. Why not use technology to put sensors in the gloves and uniform in such a way that contact leads to points, with contact information transmitted wirelessly?

Other option - use a panel of judges for each boxer and give them more time to register punches. This will cut down on the amount of work per judge, and allow for them to register combinations that the current system can't always handle.

3. Bring back baseball and softball, as the idea that both are dominated by Americans was pretty much put to rest this year. Or, if the MLB steroid issue was as much of a factor in their removal as Rogge suggested, also get rid of cycling, weightlifting and track - to start.

4. Cut taekwondo, as it needs to get its own house in order before it can continue as an Olympic sport.

5. Getting back to cycling, bring back the team time trial as a road discipline. Maybe that'll get the Tour de France to put it back in for a stage. It's always one of my favorites.

6. If we can't have baseball and softball, add in rugby. It's a popular world-wide game that the US sucks at. Like soccer.

That's all I have for now. I'm sure I've missed something, so suggestions are welcome.

Book Log 2008 #34: The Lost Constitution by William Martin

I've generally enjoyed Martin's historical scavenger hunts, but was highly disappointed in this one, where antiquarian Peter Fallon gets involved in the search for a rumored early draft of the Constitution complete with notes on the debates, which people on both sides of a movement to repeal the 2nd Amendment want to see in order to further their cause.

I think the book misses on a few marks:

* The politics of the book are too simple and the ultimate message in favor of rational discussion and bipartisanship doesn't resonate that strongly.

* The idea that people staunchly in a political camp may be putting on an act to protect personal lives or to gain power seems to want more outrage than I could muster.

* We have a much better sense ahead of time how the missing object is going to play into the current story line that we did in books like Harvard Yard and Back Bay. This takes away from the ending a bit.

* That ending is very hard to believe.

* There was no family tree at the front of the book, which would have been helpful in keeping the historical characters straight (especially when that story line started to branch into cousins).

I'd not bother with this unless you want to read all of Martin's books.

Book Log 2008 #33: Six Frigates by Ian Toll

This engaging history of the founding of the US Navy goes well beyond simply telling the story of the ships that formed the nucleus of the American fleet. It also puts the Navy into the context of American standing abroad and the internal struggle between federalists and republicans. The latter is more interesting, I think, as it's not the story you usually hear about this subject (at least based on my US history class in high school, where the fight against the Barbary states was the focus). I also appreciated the discussion of the Quasi War, which probably didn't get enough coverage in high school.

There's also a great deal of detail in the personal, especially in the men who not only captained these vessels but also had the responsibility of seeing them built. The story is especially interesting around the Chesapeake and the Philadelphia, the two ships which probably had the least success of the original fleet. Personally, I'd have liked more talk about Old Ironsides, but that's the homer in me coming out.

I'd be interested to hear if the US history teacher or US naval officer who are at least semi-regulars here have read this and what they thought of it. Speaking as a generalist, I'd happily recommend this book for anyone interested in early US history.

There's an analogy out there between the US men's basketball team from 2004 and the two US 4 x 100 meter relay teams this year, but I can't quite figure out if it involves a lack of fundamentals or lack of preparation. Or why not both?

I know that I own exactly one house. Well, maybe something like .12 houses with a bank owning the rest. Can I be President now?

Book Log 2008 #32: The Ghost by Robert Harris

This book's unnamed subject is a ghostwriter who takes an abrupt turn from the musicians and athletes he usually writes for when he is hired to complete the autobiography of the recently out of office Prime Minister of Britain, a Tony Blair-like figure. Turns out the previous "ghost," a former staffer for the PM, died under odd, but not suspicious, circumstances.

Or at least that's how it seems, with the doubt building in the writer the longer he's on the job, between the PM's frosty relationship with his wife and an existing manuscript that seems almost intentionally clunky. The writer turns from his hired job to trying to figure out the facts behind the death of the previous writer, and in doing so is exposed to much greater danger than he ever imagined.

Harris is better known from writing historical novels, and I think he may be better suited for them. This isn't a bad book, but it's not as good as his past ones. It's better than the average political thriller using the same plot would be, but I don't know if that's much of a compliment.

So I've been absent. What's been up? Let's start from last Friday:

Funeral - had my aunt Shirley's funeral on Friday, which went as well as a funeral could go. Saw a fair amount of family that I'd not seen in a while, and the rain managed to hold off for the most part. I did get to spend some quality time with the neices and nephews, which is always good. We got back to the house late in the afternoon, actually pulling up at the same time as our...

Houseguests - the wife's cousin and her husband are over from England, and they stayed with us for a few days. It was great fun, as we got to sightsee a bit, drank too much, and probably watched more Olympic coverage than they'd have liked (though we did see a swimming event where the Brits went gold-bronze, which went over well). I didn't get to spend quite as much time with them as I'd have liked, thanks to...

Work - our big graduation was today, and we added a little over 500 new alumni to the rolls without too many problems. We did have a few more problems than usual, though, thanks to a database problem on Monday that kept us from releasing grades to students until Friday. We could see them, so I was able to do a fair amount of my usual pre-graduation work, but parts of it got pushed back. I had a nice little plan going into the week, which was summarily blown to hell. We should have seen this coming when we closed grading with fewer than 20 individual grades missing. When I did get home, it was time to settle in and relax with...

The Olympics - which would be fine if I was in as much in love with swimming and gymnastics as NBC would like me to be. I wound up missing some sports entirely (cycling and judo), which others I've only caught fragments when I managed to catch a recap or the start of early morning coverage on one of the cable outlets. I feel like there was more variety to coverage in 2004, or at least the scheduling allowed me to see more.

So there it is. Back on the blogging wagon this week. Expect multiple appearances of the Book Log.

I've not written here before about my aunt Shirley, which isn't surprising as I rarely write about my family here (they do know about this blog, after all). I bring her up today as she passed away yesterday, which wasn't unexpected but is still a little challenging to face as she was the last direct relative we had of that generation on my dad's side.

I don't have any specific fond memories to share (she never killed a rattlesnake as far as I know), but she did play a fairly important role in my life thanks to a Christmas present to all of us kids back when I was just starting school: a full set of the World Book Encyclopedia (with annual news and science supplements, too!).

As you can imagine, I spent a fair amount of time with the various volumes of the encyclopedia. I was especially fond of articles on countries, and enjoyed the section on human anatomy where you could peel back plastic pages to reveal the various systems and organs.

There are a number of other notable things I could discuss - her career as an educator, missed opportunities to get family history, the personality quirks that she shared with my dad and that seem to be coming for me - but I think the main thing, for me, is the role she played in fostering my love of reading and thirst for knowledge, trivial or not. And for that, I thank her.

Odd personal fallout from the Manny trade - I've been roped into taking him in a bet with my sister to see if he or Jason Bay will have a more productive rest of the season with their new team. We're basing it on batting average, RBI and home runs, which so far is working out nicely for me.

The odd part of this is that I'm more or less neutral over the whole thing (outside of paying the rest of Manny's salary; McCourt can afford it). I'm not even sure how my reply of "I don't know about that" to my sister's assertion that Bay would out perform Manny got her worked up to the point of betting. I don't think we've bet on anything, ever. Still, if I get dinner out of it I'll play along.

Book Log 2008 #31: God Save the Fan by Will Leitch


This book is not what it purports to be, based on its cover. It is not a manifesto or plan that will help sports fans get their sports back. What it does do is take players, owners, media and fans and puts each on display, letting us see the less savory bits that have been smoothed over or ignored elsewhere, for our education and entertainment (though often in reverse order).

It's to the book's credit that there's not much actual overlap in content between it and Deadspin. There are several items in it that were also treated on the website, but there's new stuff in the book which helps round out what was originally posted.

I'd have to say the extent to which you'll enjoy the book will directly related to the extent which you enjoy the website. I like the website and liked the book. Certainly worth a read.