I am newly a contributing member of the Most Valuable Network, a baseball blogging web site similar in operation to Political State Report -- at Polstate, I am a contributor representing Georgia; at MVN, I am the contributor representing the Atlanta Braves. Check them both out!

My first article for Tomahawk, their title (which I may later change) for the Braves blog, is a rather lengthy preview of the 2004 season for the Atlanta Braves. If you're up for a detailed preview, read it all. Bold subtitles highlight sections of the preview if you're only curious about parts of it. And please post comments at the end of the article -- that is, if you choose to read it in the first place.

We arrived on the Macon State campus around 7:15 Friday morning and shoved our way into MSC's seven-passenger (including the driver) van, and then we drove for 11 (eleven!) hours to James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia. For much of the 11 hour journey, our minds were in the gutter and our conversations reflected that, but I also took time out of our lazy schedule to read most of Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell, most of which I frighteningly understood (maybe I should consider math/physics again, after all -- if only there were no lab time required!).

The actual event, an International Leadership Conference, was lots of fun. There were 160 students from more than a dozen schools and 30 countries, providing all the cross-cultural celebration one could need in any given weekend. The first night was just an icebreaker; most of us dance, others among us tried to, and still others just sat back and watched. Day two was packed with speeches, classroom sessions, and breaks for food -- even if the educational quality of this conference was horrible, the people and the food made the trip worth it. It felt like a laid back party at a five-star hotel!

I suppose the moral of this story is that you should get involved in groups at your school that go on trips like this, and always consider opportunities for such trips when they arise. Not only do you make lots of connections to people all over the country, but the event looks good on a résumé, not to mention what you learn from the meat of such a conference.

It was lots of fun, and I'm hoping next week's leadership conference in Savannah can be even half as good!

I'm going here, and you (probably) won't hear from me until at least Sunday night, or Monday morning if I'm lucky. I don't know what "Session I", "Session II", or "Session III" entails, nor do I know what's so special about the keynote speaker, Aminata Njeri -- but I intend to find out!

In other news, I've been very busy, somewhat stressed (would you believe it?), and even tired of being SGA President. I can't wait until the next four weeks pass, and then I'll only be Vice President! Yeah!

This is just my opinion of course:

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1980s and 2000s)

2. Family Guy

3. The Simpsons

4. South Park

5. Looney Toons

Honorable Mention: (6) Animaniacs / Pinky and the Brain, (7) Daria, (8) Beavis and Butthead

Every year, the Atlanta Braves give up tons of runs and lose more games than they win during spring training, and every year people have wondered how it is possible that the worst record in spring turns into the consistently best record for the next six months each year. I could venture a guess: the Braves are busy actually training for the regular season in the spring, whereas other teams are actively trying to win. What's the point of winning when you know you're playing B-teams and C-teams, including has-beens and minor leaguers who may never play a full season of regular season baseball?

The Braves have a different strategy. Pitchers don't try to get outs; they try to develop and locate their pitches so they'll be ready by April. If they give up more hits and runs, so be it! The opposing team putting the ball in play so much more allows the Braves defense to see a lot more action, presenting them with a much better workout than so many other teams' players, allowing the Braves another small advantage come Opening Day. Sure, the overall physical effects of this may be minor, but it's the honing of the skills after lying dormant for four months that spells the difference between victory and defeat when the games really count.

If you're just trying to get outs in spring training, you're not warming up properly. Preseason games are excercises, exhibitions, practice. Winning doesn't matter, except for the small reward of knowing your A-team beat their B-team. But when it comes to April and their players sock it to yours, don't ask how it's possible!

I finally found out how to calculate on which day Easter falls each year: it's the first Sunday after the first full moon of Spring, hence Easter shall always fall between March 22 and April 25. That seems kinda random, doesn't it? I mean, Christmas falls on the same date every year regardless of its relation to Sunday or the moon. Why is Easter so flexible?

Below is my attempt to predict the 25 players that manager Bobby Cox will keep on the major league ballclub for opening day on April 5. If you're not familiar with what something means, don't worry about it. This is a baseball-oriented post!

SP Russ Ortiz
SP Mike Hampton
SP Horacio Ramirez
SP John Thomson
SP Jaret Wright

RP Antonio Alfonseca
RP Armando Almanza
RP Jung Bong
RP Kevin Grybowski
RP Trey Hodges
RP Will Cunnane

CP John Smoltz

 C Johnny Estrada
1B Adam LaRoche
2B Marcus Giles
3B Mark Derosa
SS Rafael Furcal
LF Chipper Jones
CF Andruw Jones
RF JD Drew

1B Julio Franco
IF Wilson Betemit
IF Jesse Garcia
OF Damon Hollins
UT Eli Marrero

Watch for Jose Velandia (2B), Mike Hessman (1B), Andy Pratt (SP), and CJ Nitkowski (RP) to make occasional appearances, especially if someone gets injured.

Overall, I'm optimistic. The Braves have a very well rounded team, despite the loss of superstars Javy Lopez, Gary Sheffield, and Greg Maddux. I expect a Rookie-of-the-Year caliber performance from Adam LaRoche, and I expect All-Star caliber years from at least four of our hitters (choose from Drew, Furcal, Giles, Jones, Jones, and LaRoche) and two of our pitchers (choose from Hampton, Ortiz, Ramirez, and Smoltz). Pitching will be solid, despite national skepticism, and the Braves have a solid lineup and bench.

The Atlanta Braves are still the team to beat. The added pressure of losing so many star players will encourage others to step up. The reduced pressure of no longer being in those stars' shadows will facilitate others' rise to stardom.

Division champs for the 13th consecutive (full) season? Only 162 games over six months will tell, but I'm going to say yes. I predict about 90 wins and a first-place finish narrowly ahead of the Marlins and Phillies.

Psephology and psephocracy. Look them up.

For our abbreviated Spring Break -- well, first, let me explain what I mean by that. Macon State College decided to cut our Spring Break short this year; we had only three days (Wednesday through Friday) instead of the usual full week, meaning we didn't get nine days including two weekends, but we only had five days! The reasoning is convoluted, but it revolves around two facts: they had to cram graduation weekend in a particular slot and no later, and they had to take the two days from somewhere. Now, what they could have done is started our Spring semester January 5 (Monday) instead of January 7 (Wednesday) and given us our full Spring Break as usual. I still haven't heard any satisfactory explanation for why this wasn't the case, actually.

Anyway, for our abbreviated Spring Break, Keesha and I took a daytrip to Atlanta on Thursday to check out the High Museum of Art, the World of Coca-Cola, and Junkman's Daughter at Little Five Points -- which sucks very badly compared to the Junkman's Daughter in Athens, but that's beside the point. To skip all the details that are saved for people who actually went on the trip (Keesha and me, not you! Nah-nah!), we had lots of fun, and we spent about as much money on parking ($14) than we did for admission to the main attractions ($15 each). Aside from the parking hassle, though, I had fun driving and walking around the streets of Atlanta.

I was smart enough to think of this, but not shrewd enough to try it this Thursday. (More accurately, I was already on the seventh floor of the parking deck getting into my car before I realized that I had forgotten to try it. Oh well.) So maybe you should try it and tell me how it goes!

This is what I type, even if I get it wrong the first time.

I am definitely not the first to say this (a quick Google query for "Caviezel" and "Best Actor" confirms this), but I think Jim Caviezel is a lock for nomination for Best Actor for the 2005 movie awards cycle for his portrayal of Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ. Some say he can't win it because his performance only required him to act out taking a beating. Well, I've always thought that acting is 5% what you say and 95% how you say it, since the writers are the ones writing the lines anyway. What I mean, of course, that actors simply portray the emotion, regardless of the lines they speak or whether they even speak at all. So regardless of what comes out for the rest of the year, I believe he deserves nomination. I won't try to predict who wins just yet...

Usually these are passed around in annoying chain emails. Well, I'm going to let you do it on your own time at your own whim. You know the drill. Copy, paste, lather, rinse, repeat. Minus the repeat.

Okay, that's all I feel like writing about that right now. It was fun to pass the time until I felt like derailing that train of thought. (Oooh, bad metaphor!) Now that the vodka in my system is starting to kick in, I think I'll go read some more about Ninja Burger and Munchkin before sleep. Mmm, sleep...

I just wanted to let those keeping score know that the floodgates within my nasal passages opened once more while I was doing homework just a few moments ago. The gushing was not nearly as gushing-esque as it was yesterday morning, and with the various tools and chemicals of a home bathroom nearby, the onslaught of blood was not nearly as annoying. But if this keeps up, I might have reason to be, well, less than excited about my current health condition. Maybe I should get this checked. All in favor?

I do way too much, even if I just pushed quiz bowl to the back of my agenda for the next few weeks. Last night, I got about 3.5 hours of sleep after staying up to finish my work logs for my internship. This morning, I got a nose bleed around 10:00 that made it look like someone had a knock-down, drag-out fight in the library building bathroom (it took me ten minutes just to clean up the mess, but somehow my bright white tshirt escaped unscathed). This evening, I suffered the embarrassment of a restaurant not taking my card because my bank took $20 without passing Go, so I had $20 less than I should have had.

I've felt incredibly fatigued the last several days, mostly due to sleep deprivation and work overload. The quiz bowl tournament was a good break from the norm, but driving to and from Jekyll Island -- four hours in each direction, still took its toll. I think I just need a nap. Constantly.

...because he got caught plagiarizing from other newspapers. Sucks to be him -- he'll probably never hold a decent job in journalism again, now that his name is all over the national media network. Moral of the story: cite your sources, and when you're borrowing from other material, only take information (which is not copyrightable); do not take exact phrases or steal others' opinions.

But not the instant kind. The BCC is reporting that Dr. Chiara Trombetti, an Italian dietician, has sound evidence to support that coffee can be good for you, and the stronger the better! (Persons who have heart conditions, stomach ulcers, or children in the womb may need to seek alternate advice.) From the article:

I'm doing my best to avoid large doses of caffeine before Easter, and I think I'll make it pretty easily. Coffee is wonderful, but ever since I gave up caffeine initially last August, even minor doses of it give me the shakes...

Below is text from today's "Daily Dispatch" from the Ralph Bristol Show (thanks Tommy), using the abortion issue to highlight exactly why the federal government has way more influence and power than it rightfully should have, and why we only have ourselves to blame for it:

After looking at my Presidential Match results from a few days ago, I agree with Ralph Bristol. He uses these arguments to conclude that a vote for Bush or Kerry makes no difference -- both want the government to be more involved in our personal affairs. And since I barely agreed with either of them on anything, I don't think it matters one way or the other.

Maybe this would be a good time for a super-strong Libertarian candidate to throw his hat into the ring.

At the UGA-hosted Tournament by the Sea at Jekyll Island yesterday, the Macon State team probably had its best performance since I joined. We had our first winning tournament (meaning we won more games than we lost, including a split in two games against the University of Florida), and I even placed second overall in the music match. Not bad, considering the guy who won was sitting next to the speakers and I was sitting across the room, meaning he knew some of the songs before the soft sounds even reached my side of the room. I also proved that I have a quick buzzer hand when I really know something, so I guess I just need to start reading a ton of stuff to, uhh, make sure I know stuff.

And with that, my time with the MSC Quiz Bowl team is on pause. I'll return sometime in April, probably the week before our next tournament in Chattanooga. I wouldn't wait that long, but I have so much work to do for the student government that I would prefer to be away from quiz bowl to ensure that it all gets done!

Um, the end.

After taking the President Match questionnaire again, being more careful to answer the questions accurately, I received numbers that are probably more accurate:

So much for my theory on the quiz being skewwed/normalized to make one candidate a 100% match -- or maybe they changed that after someone like me complained about being so closely aligned with Bush despite being completely opposed to Bush's proposed Constitutional amendment to outlaw homosexual marriage.

Now that Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts is a lock to take on George W. Bush in the November election for President, phase one is complete. The Democrat's have all but chosen their nominee, shifting the debate into phase two: choosing his running partner!

Since I have not investigated the candidates thoroughly yet, I will defer to Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball suggestions for now, which updated its prediction last night to suggest that Indiana Senator and former Governor Evan Bayh (pronounced "by") would make the strongest team to oppose Bush's team this fall. Senator Max Cleland of Georgia is also pushing hard for the job, or so Sabato would have me believe.

The Democratic National Convention will meet in Boston beginning July 26 to officially nominate Kerry and his running partner. Yay! Only four more months! (Then three more before the real election!)

AOL News and Time present the Presidential Match Guide for the Election 2004 campaign season. Answer a series of questions on social, educational, economic, environmental, and other issues. Then check both the Democrat and Republican box at the end so the results show Bush and the remaining Democrat candidates and how compatible they are with your political preferences. My results are not too surprising, but keep in mind that the results are (apparently) skewwed to ensure that one candidate has a 100% rating:

I have been watching the news for about 15 minutes, and all I keep hearing about John Kerry is that he is winning due to his electability. This begs the question: If Kerry's primary strength is electability, what is his strength?! It seems to me that it's all a tale told by idiots, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing... Kerry's only strength seems to be that he's a generic New England Democrat. (He's a good politician too, but I don't consider that a strength. I think Edwards is more electable than Kerry, just because he's younger, more vibrant, and politically more reliable.)

This morning, my brother was promoted from Private First Class to Lance Corporal. Tonight, he leaves for Haiti. More later -- I'm late for work.

It was an easy workaround. I was just too busy with real work this morning to deal with it. All I had to do was install an old version of AIM (5.1, build 3036, before all the serious bloatware). I then uninstalled and reinstalled DeadAIM (upgrading from version 3.21 to 3.28 in the process). All of the settings I liked were preserved, and none of the settings I dislike have encroached. It's a good end to a minor dilemma.

For weeks, AOL's upgrades to its popular IM client have prompted me to upgrade, but allowed me to keep my old version (build 3036) with DeadAIM (version 3.2) installed. However, just this morning I received a message telling me 'you must first upgrade your software to the latest version' in order to sign on. It looks like AOL is now in the business of forcing upgrades on its users. With all the bloatware incorporated into the newer versions of AIM, and now that I'm losing DeadAIM (which I actually liked), I'd like to pick up a better IM client that can operate on the AIM network, like Trillian or gAIM. So now I appeal to you to:

(a) Help me stick it to AOL for idiotically forcing upgrades, and

(b) Recommend quality chat clients.

Either way, it looks like a couple dozen months of archived AIM logs are about to be split either by leaving for another client or an upgrade to a client that no longer allows DeadAIM to work its magic, unless AOL decides to back off the forced upgrade.

Headlines are rolling in this morning about the rebel convoy, led by former assistant police chief and military officer Guy Philippe, rolling into a suburb of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. The AP reporter riding with the convoy has reported that Philippe is planning to make preparations for the interim president, former Supreme Court Justice Boniface Alexandre, to assume office. In a television interview, Philippe said, "I think the worst is over, and we're waiting for the international forces. They will have our full cooperation.... The time is not for fighting any more."

Fox News offers a reasonably detailed history of the Haitian crisis, including the reasons why rebellion was necessary in the first place (the short, short version: flawwed 2000 elections elected a false regime). Well, the president has resigned and left the country, so the rebels should have no further qualms, and indeed their actions this morning suggest that the violence is mostly over.

Ironically, the Fox News article makes it appear that Aristide's supporters are the only faction left who are willing to "fight" for what's right. Hopefully, though, they understand that Aristide's resignation will not be undone, and they too will cooperate.

President Bush ordered deployment of a contingent of Marines from Camp Lejeune -- where my brother is stationed and in a pool of Marines eligible to be selected for the operation -- to help restore order in Haiti, where 100 people have died during a week of minor rebellion. Secretary of State Colin Powell says that the US presence in Haiti should not be large since this is a stability operation rather than a combat operation.

The first Marines arrived late Sunday at Port-au-Prince airport, setting up a command in the airport's diplomatic lounge. The company comprises about 200 Marines and will be followed by an unspecified number of reinforcements. French Marines arrived this morning to join the American unit, and details of other nations joining the force is still being determined. In the next few days, soldiers from Canada and several Caribbean nations are expected to join the force.

The deployments follow yesterday's unanimous (15-0) UN Security Council vote in favor of sending a "multinational interim force" to Haiti for as long as three months to restore order after President Jean-Bertrand Aristide abdicated and fled the country. The UN is prepared to send an additional "stabilization force" to Haiti.

U.S. Department of State has more on Haiti, including a map and a link to the CIA's entry on Haiti for its World Factbook. There are also news highlights, but they are a bit behind the mainstream news media.

You can probably rely on reasonably consistent updates of significant news regarding the situation. Whether my brother is in Haiti now, is sent to Haiti in the coming days, or remains at Camp Lejeune, the possibility of his service in Haiti has already gotten me involved enough in this story that I don't think I'll be able to put it down until it is resolved.

I would never have guessed that. But the internet says so, so it must be true! What else is out there? (Hint: the answer begins with "every" and ends with "thing".)