Tell me something I didn’t know…

I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head — big darkness, soon come — but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball tournament is one of them.

—Hunter S. Thompson

As I write this, we’re early in the NCAA basketball tournament, and one of my favorite times of the year. Little work gets done anywhere in the U.S. where there is a networked PC in proximity to your desk. Basketball! As does about everyone (at least those who aren’t from top seed places), we live for the underdogs. No time in the entire sports season where the chance for that to occur is higher. And someone can get hot, and wins a few, and NOTHING beats that.

And don’t forget brackets. If you play it right, you can have beer money for a few weeks with a lucky pool. We are a wagering country—we love to play the wheel. Wonder what the odds were for us becoming a nation? You know someone was on that.

My least favorite part of this is the talking head coaches and commentators on TV. What I don’t need is someone telling me the obvious. You know what I mean; “Well, Tom, if PXU can just keep Tech from hitting those 3’s this half, play good defense, and rebound the ball, they can get back in this and maybe win.” Uhhh, sure. The football geeks on the weekend do the same thing. “Well, Bill, if Green Bay can convert all their third downs and keep Oakland out of the end zone, they can win this game.” Yeah, and if pigs could fly, or if stocks always went up, or if I could blink and make lawyers disappear…

I read somewhere that work in the U.S. doesn’t stop, but slows down during the March tournament. I don’t think it’s likely a good time to be in the hospital. Radiology? Look, we work from TVs. If you find yourself drifting into a radiology reading room during the NCAAs, do not be surprised to see people bending in front of a small PC screen to the side of the PACS monitor. I don’t think we are terribly unusual; we just have more access to bandwidth and nice monitors.

You know, if you would read out all of those outpatient exams, the list wouldn’t be so long. Hope your team did well. Mahalo.

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