There is no team like the best team

The Faculty Games, too, seemed like a good idea at first. Something, though, happened at the first day of tennis matches, apparently a disputed referee call; and since then my e-mail has exploded in suggestions about what to do about it, how to reschedule events, and how to modify the rules so that ... I don't know what problem, exactly, is supposed to be avoided but it seems to have something to do with the rules letting people play several matches -- intended to help smaller departments put together a team -- being used to let larger teams play only the strong players.

So far, near as I can figure (everything's written in Middling Bureaucratic, so I could decipher it, if my interest overcame the stopping potential), none of this affects me, but I have the dread fear the rules about teams are going to be applied to my sport. (As the tallest guy in Singapore I'm in charge of basketball.) Given the pace of (inexplicably doubled) e-mails maybe it would have been better to have given certificates to all four teams and not just gold, silver, and bronze certificates to the top three.

Trivia: The Greenwich meridian was made the worldwide standard prime meridian following an international conference in Washington, DC, in 1884. (Previously countries used their own choices -- typically national capitals -- as prime meridians.) Source: Mathematics in Civilization, H L Resnikoff and R O Wells Jr.

Currently Reading: The Green Millennium, Fritz Leiber. I love the notion of telepathic thought-entities living in symbiosis with kitty cats, exchanging feelings of security and peace to pet ``owners'' in trade for good care of the pet bodies. What the cats think of it seems to go unmentioned.