The San Antonian

Picture worth 1,000 words

Luck of the Draw

A couple of articles on how the fates of two cities, Boston and San Antonio, turned in the 1997 NBA lottery.

From the Boston Globe.

From MSNBC.

And one more from the Louisville Courier-Journal.

There was also this nice picture from the cover of The Sporting News, which I didn't know even existed anymore. Seriously? The Sporting News is still published? I thought it went the way of "The National".

The point of all this is that I hate the Boston Celtics. It was cool enough the Spurs got the top pick in 1997. But to see it hurt the Celtics for years to come was even sweeter. I remember exactly where I was when that Lottery happened. I was at my (then) girlfriend's house watching it and I kept saying "we're gonna get the top pick. I know it".

So will the Celtics finally get their top pick? We'll find out tomorrow. But, mostly because I was bored tonight, I ran an experiment. I played ESPN's Mock Lottery game 100 times. The Celtics go the top pick 20 times and the 2nd pick 26 times. But the other 54 times they got the 3 through 5 picks. Getting the 4th pick was actually the most common at 29 occurrences. Take it for what you will. I'm hoping that Boston gets shut out from the Oden/Durant bonanza.

What a great Sports Guy column that will be. I think Bill Simmons will probably disappear for a month before he could write about it. But the wait will be worth it.

UTSA toughens admissions standards

UTSA will be harder to get into next year according to this article in the E-N. Will fewer kids getting accepted at UTSA help the new TAMU-SA? I think it will.

RIP, Tim

For the first time in my career a client of mine has died. His name was Tim Reagan and all he wanted was to get back to work like he had done all his life.

I'm sorry, Tim. I wish I could have done more to help you before it was too late.

RIP.

Scary nuns

Is Wal-Mart really scared of nuns?

Top 10 Cap to be a reality

The E-N has a report that the Texas Senate has approved a cap to the Top 10 admission rule. I knew this would happen because UT wanted it. I can imagine other schools like Texas State and Texas Tech are going to be happy about it because those kids that get locked out of UT will need to go somewhere.

I also liked the part about Senator Tommy Williams claiming his worst vote ever was for tuition deregulation. Tuition has gone up a ton and will only continue to grow. This idea of combining the free market with education is only going to make our best public universities accessible only to the rich.

Sex Offender Witch Hunt

Sorry about the lack of recent posts. With a bunch of work-related travel and tons of work to do at the office I've been unable to find time.

WOAI's Trouble Shooter Brian Collister did a piece this week about where registered sex offenders work in SA. You can find that here.

Okay, so this stuff is public record. And I can understand why people would be concerned about a child sex offender working with kids. But if you read this list almost all of these guys are laborers, mechanics, construction workers. These are jobs most of us, including myself, don't want to do for a living.

Yes, these guys have committed heinous crimes. Yes, they've been branded with our modern day Scarlet Letter. Don't you think it's hard enough to for these guys to find jobs without having some news reporter publishing that their employers employ sex offenders?

You couple this with the Balcones Heights sex offender ban and it seems apparent that we're heading toward Molokai-like sex offender colonies out in Ozona or something.

What should be a calm and rational debate about what we as a society do with sex offenders who have been paroled has been turned into a race to who comes up with the worst solution.