In the Know #9

January 13, 2008


Word of the Day from Dictionary.com:

supplicate \SUP-luh-kayt\, intransitive verb:
1. To make a humble and earnest petition; to pray humbly.

transitive verb:
1. To seek or ask for humbly and earnestly.
2. To make a humble petition to; to beseech.

Today in history, according to Wikipedia:

1733 - James Oglethorpe (pictured) and 130 colonists arrive in Charleston, South Carolina

1939 - The Church of England accepts the theory of evolution

1942 - The United States begins the internment of Japanese-Americans

1957 - Wham-O Company produces the first frisbee

1964 - Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) appointed archbishop of Krakow, Poland


Today's Famous Births:

1808 - Salmon P. Chase (pictured), 6th Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court

1957 - Mark O'Meara, American golfer, winner of two major championships

1961 - Julia Louis-Dreyfus, American actress, Seinfeld

1977 - Orlando Bloom, English actor, Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings


Trivia:
Today's category - Cheesecake

~ The basic cheesecake simply contains eggs, cream and cream cheese.

~ Some cheesecake styles contain ricotta, Havarti (Danish), quark (German) or other cheeses.

~ The first recorded mention of cheesecake was during the ancient Grecian Olympics.

~ The first Cheesecake Factory opened in Beverly Hills, California in 1978.


I always wondered...
...how the BCS works...

The Bowl Championship Series was started in 1998. It is a mathematical and human ranking system used to calculate the top teams in the country. Ten teams are selected each year to play in BCS bowl games. The five games are the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Fiesta Bowl in Glendale, Arizona, the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida, and the BCS Championship Game which is played in a different arena each year.

The top two teams earn berths by having the best scores in the BCS system. Several other teams earn berths by winning their respective conference tournaments. The ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, PAC Ten and SEC tourney champs each get an automatic berth. Generally this will leave four teams to fill in the other spots. They are chosen from non-BCS conference champions, Notre Dame (if Notre Dame is ranked 8th or higher it is given an automatic berth) and other teams in the top fourteen and having at least nine wins.

The ranking system is comprised of three factors, each using Borda counts (number 1 gets 25 points, number 2 gets 24 points, number 3 get 23 points, and so on) to come up with figures: (1) The Harris Interactive College Poll, which is comprised of former players, coaches, administrators and current and former media members who submit votes for the top 25 teams each week, the scores are totaled and then converted to a percentage, (2) coaches' poll, which is also totaled and changed to a percentage and (3) computer average, which utilizes 6 different ranking systems, the highest and lowest rankings for each team are dropped and the rest are added, which would make the highest possible score 100. The two human polls are weighted twice as much as the computer scores. The three factors are averaged together to give a final percentage, the highest of which is the #1 team in the BCS standings.

[All references from Wikipedia.org unless otherwise noted]