Fall from Grace (edited)

By: Jorge A. Pérez Santiago, Supreme Court Tribune

March 13, 2014

It had the feeling of a normal day at Delaney Park's basketball gym in Southwood, Tallahassee, Florida.  That is, until Zachary Brian Dickens, former B+ grade recipient only a day earlier, showed up a few minutes after the continually tardy Kris James arrived at the Court.  Zach ran around the basketball court taking ridiculous practice shots and making everyone uncomfortable with how weird his shots looked.  As the old saying goes, "practice makes perfect" as Zach stumbled wildly through the five games played that evening (ultimately resulting in a 2-3 record).  A stat sheet provided to me shortly after the game noted that Zach accounted for 10+ turnovers(statistician lost count after sobbing on the tenth one), 25% shooting, and zero quality defense played.  Although Zach initially appeared humble in succinctly describing his performance as "terrible," he went on to state that "I do not feel bad, especially for Ta'Ronce [Stowes]" because, in his opinion, his poor performance was due to "Ta'Ronce not catching my passes."  Where did all the humility go?  Presumably with his wayward passes.     

When asked what Zach did poorly yesterday, Ta'Ronce "Ta'Roncé" Stowes--the high scorer in a rivalry game back in high school in the middle of nowhere--stated simply "playing defense."  After he provided Zach with a quick tutorial on how to play adequate defense, Ta'Roncé was heard telling Zach, "Next thing we are going to do is take you to the outlets to shop for a left hand." After thunderous laughter, Ta'Roncé returned to his naturally serious state and said, unprovoked, "Kris [James] is the only person not entitled to an opinion" presumably because Kris was nominated for the Least Valuable Player of the Game Award.  This was perhaps Zach's only saving grace for the evening. Kris James, the former walk-on invitee of the Florida State University intramural basketball B team, was seen playing zero defense, doing the opposite of hustling, and generally getting outrebounded by players half his size. Perhaps that explains why Jorge scored 75% of his team's points through the three games Kris participated in.*  Now on to the grades, which will be denoted with the player's team's estimated wins added (EWA) if he were traded for a replacement player.    

*Kris did not respond to our efforts to contact him for this story.    

KRIS JAMES -  his team would receive 35 wins if he were traded for a replacement player.  

ZACH DICKENS - 28.  

Ta'RONCE STOWES -  2 

JORGE -   -2.

THE RETURN PART DEUX

1/28/14 OR 1/29/14

http://www.minicornhole.com/minirules.html

01/08/2014 #domination

http://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=63171

By Greta Lorge

Oddballs of the produce stand, tomatoes and avocados are fruits, as most people know. Yet more often than not they're found alongside vegetables in savory culinary preparations. Working on this issue of the magazine got me wondering what it is, exactly, that makes a fruit a fruit. It turns out that the plant world is full of strange cases of counterintuitive classification.

Botanists define a fruit as the portion of a flowering plant that develops from the ovary. It contains the seeds, protecting them and facilitating dispersal. (The definition of a vegetable is a little fuzzier: any edible part of a plant that isn't a fruit.) Subcategories within the fruit family—citrus, berry, stonefruit or drupe (peaches, apricots), and pome (apples, pears)—are determined by which parts of the flower/ovary give rise to the skin, flesh and seeds.

Strawberries and raspberries aren't really berries in the botanical sense. They are derived from a single flower with more than one ovary, making them an aggregate fruit. True berries are simple fruits stemming from one flower with one ovary and typically have several seeds. Tomatoes fall into this group, as do pomegranates, kiwis and—believe it or not—bananas. (Their seeds are so tiny it's easy to forget they're there.)

One might think that owing to their superficial similarities to stonefruits, avocados might be classified as drupes. But no, they're actually considered a berry, too—with one, giant seed.

So, bananas are berries and raspberries aren't. Who knew?