Settling a Nation

Settlers of Catan is a board game.  If you haven’t played it, I highly recommend it.  It’s a shorter version of Monopoly and Risk and involves a bit more strategy and planning, and a bit less luck (it’s a great family game – in fact we played it with my family last Christmas and they liked it so much they took it with them).  In this game you collect resources in order to develop a civilization.  You gain points by building certain things, and the first to 10 points (or in our case 270) wins.   There are five different resources available, each used for different things within the game; some resources are certainly more valuable than others.

Below you will find these five resources correlated with the swing states based on my assertion of how valuable these states are on election day.  There’s plenty of debate to be had about the accuracy of the polls, and to what we may attribute the disconnect between the national and state polls.  A former professor of mine runs a fantastic poll-aggregator blog – you can read his post here about this discrepancy and how he adjusts all his numbers.  Between this site, poll aggregator sites like fivethirtyeight, and other blog sites (Gallup, etc), there’s a decent amount of polling data to sort through. At any rate, all this is to say that this is my judgment and mine alone, and it is not necessarily what I would like to see happen. Nor am I in any way an expert.

For each “swing state” I’ll eventually make a prediction, and predict a time-frame during which I believe that state will be called.  I’ll throw up one more post tonight/tomorrow with a full outline of when polls close and when I think each state will be called. Please feel free to comment here or on Facebook and offer another projection!

Free Resources

At the beginning of each game of Settlers each player places two settlements, thereby receiving two free points and three free resources.  Likewise, there are 36 states (plus the District of Columbia) that can be reasonably and uncontroversially (is this a word? Does it really matter?) divided into either party’s total tally.  Here’s how that shakes out on the political map:

Republican states (22): Alaska, West Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, Idaho

Democratic States (15): Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, DC, New York, New Mexico, Washington, Illinois, California, Hawaii

That brings the Republicans to the starting blocks with 181 electoral votes; Democrats have 184.  On to the race to 270 (with each state’s electoral count in parentheses).

Sheep

Missouri (10)

Minnesota (10)

Oregon (7)

Michigan (16)

Honestly, when has anyone ever played a game of Settlers and said, “There really aren't enough sheep to go around right now.”  That’s right, never.  Sheep are the commodity you invariably have when you don’t need, and end up foolishly trading for when you do need.  Otherwise, no one ever asks about them, they’re easy to come by, and if anyone ever asks about them you’re confused about why they came up.

There is a handful of states that fall into this category.  These are states that have recently received some lip-service from one campaign or the other, or some political talking head.  They say they are in play – but we know better.

Missouri barely falls into this category (and is the closest to not being in this category) because of two factors: (a) it was a couple thousand votes from going blue in 2008, and (b) the Senate race is still polling in McCaskill’s favor.  But at the presidential level, no mistakes should be made – Missouri has moved to the right.

The other three states, seen as lean-Democrat states, are about the same.  Minnesota comes first because, well, simply there’s no reason to even think it is in play.  No candidate has made a stop there, House races are even trending Democrat, and Minnesota has been solidly blue for, well, a while.  It comes above Oregon because, despite a somewhat substantial gap between the President and Governor Romney in the polls, Obama has not consistently polled much above the 50% mark.  He has repeatedly hit that mark (which is a crucial threshold to reach), but not often gone much above it. On the flip side, the Obama campaign has 12 offices in the state; the Romney campaign has zero (yes, you read that correctly).

Michigan is at the bottom of this group simply because it is the most valuable.  Well, that combined with the fact that Romney grew up there, has spent money there, and the whole “auto-industry” debate revolves around Detroit.  But Obama has consistently polled above the 50% mark and the gap has repeatedly been between the 4-8 point range in nearly every poll, well outside the margin of error range.

Most importantly, even if you believe the polling data is skewed, it would take a major skewing that would cause the need for a total reworking of the polling system to have these states so wrong that any of them went the opposite direction.

Prediction: Michigan, Oregon, and Minnesota all go blue; Missouri goes for Romney.  Obama comes up to 217; Romney to 191.

Lumber (aka trees)

Nevada (6)

Pennsylvania (20)

New Hampshire (4)

Lumber and brick are essential resources to get a good start in Settlers.  They help you build roads and towns – building blocks for any nation.  They’re also resources you can easily overlook during the initial phases of the game and suddenly be really hurt (and then your evil little sisters won’t trade with you to help you out and you lose the game before you’ve even had two turns).  Lumber is worth a little less than bricks, however, simply because there are more spots on the board where lumber is available.

There’s an argument to be made for Pennsylvania to be in the previous category.  However, PA has a history of being a swing state, something ridiculous like 13 out of the last 14 elected presidents have won two of OH, PA, and FL, and Romney made a visit there this weekend.  Again, polling data would have to be terribly messed up for this one to swing into Romney’s column, but there are a few more factors at play and votes at stake which drops it into the lumber category.

Nevada and New Hampshire are in this category simply because there are other ways for both candidates to win without having these states.  One of the simplest paths to victory for the President is to win Wisconsin, Ohio, and Nevada (putting him at 271 if you include the states from the sheep category).  So while these states make good building blocks, they aren’t particularly necessary.  (It’s feasible to win a game of Settlers by just stock-piling other resources, trading a lot, using a port, etc….it just isn’t as easy.)  Nevada is first in this category because the gap is growing in the polling (some even assert that Obama's lead is quite large given a chance that 60-70% of those who will vote have already cast their lot); New Hampshire is last because by most accounts it remains dead even.

Prediction:

New Hampshire is the first true toss-up state I face, and in keeping with it’s North Eastern location, and a recent New England University poll that actually probably misses the mark by a bit but has Obama at a 6 point lead, I’m going to slide it, along with PA and NV into Obama’s column.  Obama: 247; Romney 191.

Brick

Iowa (6)

North Carolina (15)

Wisconsin (10)

Here’s where things get tricky.  Brick is, again, vital to starting your game out on the right foot.  And with fewer opportunities to get it, it becomes a bit more valuable than lumber.

That’s how Wisconsin makes the jump into this category.  Look, for the most part, Wisconsin is probably going blue, and it probably isn’t as close as the polls make it seem.  Though Scott Walker made it through the recall election, there’s a general consensus that Wisconsin voters mainly voted against the idea of recalling the governor more than they voted to affirm their support for the Republican.  But the fact that the polls tightened so much for about a month after the first debate, coupled with the fact that Democrats have consistently counted on these ten votes that will not be easy to replace, certainly was a cause for alarm in the Obama camp.

Iowa has been close all along, but most indicators are that early voting has given Obama a lead.  Romney is expected to win Election Day, but by how much remains to be seen.  A couple of contentious House races only add to the fire in this swing state.

Polling seems to indicate that North Carolina has moved back into the toss up category.  This seems a bit premature; NC went blue in 2008 by only 4,000 votes, and given the tide in this election it doesn’t look like it will repeat in that fashion.  Yet the Latino population has grown significantly in the state, and recent polls have put NC well within the margin of error (even with Obama ahead in a few).  Perhaps most importantly, neither candidate has hit that 50% mark in a repeated fashion, so it is certainly still in play (and falls into this category because of how many electoral votes it represents).

Prediction: There’s a reason both candidates are visiting Iowa so much; there’s a reason Obama took a trip this weekend to Wisconsin and not North Carolina.  I don’t think there’s a large margin either way, but I believe Romney carries NC, and if he doesn’t then his path to 270 seems all but shut (another reason it is in this category).  Due to early voting and history, I think both IA and WI end up falling for Obama.  Obama is at 263 with Romney at 206.  (Now will be a good time to note that the time-table in my next post will give a better breakdown of when one candidate or the other will cross 270, rather than this breakdown by section.)

Wheat

Colorado (9)

Virginia (13)

Ohio (18)

There’s an argument to be made that wheat is the most valuable resource in the game.  It is used to build and acquire a wide variety of things in the game, in fact, the widest variety of any resource.  Yet there is also generally a more abundant supply of wheat than there is ore, once again because the opportunities for wheat are greater.

The same can be said for two states in this group, OH and VA.  There’s an argument to be made that they should be in the most important group of states.  But the fact is they simply don’t represent great enough gains to be of the utmost importance.  Both candidates can win without these states (or at least without one of them).  The path gets harder, but not impossible.  The more telling issue in either of these states, especially Virginia, is when it is called.  If both drag on, it is probably a good sign for Obama.  But if Virginia is called for Romney early in the night, then it could mean he’s doing better than expected.

Obviously they are ordered this way due to a combination of electoral votes, time, and money spent by the candidates. These will likely be my three most controversial predictions.  The fact is that they all carry a decent amount of votes, are remarkably close, and have been the center of plenty of attention.  Yet in the last three polls in CO the President has hit that 50% mark, and he has maintained a lead of 2-4 points in OH as well.  Virginia may be the truest “toss-up” in this election.  The bottom line is both camps believe these states will end up on their side, so don’t expect them to be called early in the evening.  (Not to mention VA’s voter ID law that requires you to show an ID by Friday to have your ballot counted.  So if things end up riding on VA and it isn’t clear, we could be in for a long week.)

Prediction:  Like I said, controversial, but I think all these states hold their 2008 positions.   Adding CO, VA, and OH to the Obama column brings my prediction to 303-206.

Ore (aka rocks)

Florida (29)

You can’t win without ore.  In theory I suppose you can, but it requires a lot of creativity, a bit of luck, and a plethora of other resources.

And the bottom line in this election is that Governor Romney cannot win without Florida’s 29 electoral votes.  I mean – he can, but it would require winning OH, VA, CO, NC, IA, and NH – something I simply don’t think his campaign has had the resources to do.

Obviously the path to 270 for the President is not as complicated without Florida.  But a victory there seals his fate.  Oddly neither candidate has spent an inordinate amount of time in the state since the debate there, I suppose because it is a bit out of the way when trying to hit as many states as possible.  But it is truly a toss-up as well, and I am the least confident about my pick here (along with my pick in Virginia).

Interesting side note. If Romney wins FL, OH, NC, and VA, Obama can still win WI, CO, IA, NV, and NH to win the election.  Which makes me far more nervous about my NH pick.

Prediction: Romney is said to have a lead down the “I-4 corridor,” and if that holds then I think the Governor wins Florida.  That brings the final tally to Obama 303 – Romney 235. Interestingly (and unfortunately), this is almost exactly what Public Policy Polling just predicted, except they left Florida and North Carolina up for grabs.

Winner

That’s actually why I did this.  I was tired of most people “making predictions” but not actually predicting which way some states would go.  My prediction is that the current President emerges victorious from this brutal election, though perhaps after a few recounts and lawsuits.

Perhaps what will be most interesting is how the popular vote shakes out.  It’s certainly conceivable (though definitely not probable) that Obama wins the electoral college something like 347-191 (remarkably convincing for this day in politics), yet loses the popular vote.  Think then both sides would come together for electoral reform?

At any rate, feel free to leave your comments.  And stay tuned for a time-table breakdown of when polls will close and when I think each state will be called!

P.S. Go see Pitch Perfect. It's hilarious. Oh and remember, remember...

You Gotta "Meow" Your Way to the Top

by Leff Teeserv, edited by Miss Stove Erhead

Doubters beware – The Davidson College Club Tennis Team has been under-seeded before, yet they’re still headed to nationals.

Surprising many – perhaps everyone but themselves – Davidson’s club team (affectionately self-named Klub Varsity Tennis, or KVT) confidently worked their way through pool play at the Southern Sectional in late February.  After defeating Vanderbilt and Emory at the Auburn University Tennis Complex, KVT faced a stout LSU team.  Failing to capitalize on opportunities (subbing, strategy, and the occasional overhead), Davidson missed their first opportunity to qualify for nationals.

Undeterred, they stormed back the next morning.  Facing Georgia in a win-or-go-home scenario, the doubles teams came out firing.  The duos of Anne Meredith Baldy/Lucy McMurry and Jack Peterson/Jake Thompson both recorded 6-2 victories.  Despite a brief scare in mixed doubles, senior Hannah English fired two forehands down the line to seal the victory. 

Shortly afterwards Captains Mark Angel and Lucy McMurry had the bid to nationals in their hands.

“Honestly, I wished the piece of paper was a trophy.  But once I got over the worry about more paper work, I realized it was the heaviest piece of paper I had ever held. You know, because of all the emotional weight,” captain and junior Mark Angel said.

Of course Davidson wasn’t satisfied.  Nationals this year is being held in Cary, North Carolina – a mere two and a half hours from Davidson’s campus.

There have certainly been doubters along the way.  One USTA Southern official told the captains that Davidson’s resurgence messed up his seeding.  An unnamed UNCC player pulled a KVT member aside and asked if they had started recruiting or suddenly picked up new members.

In truth, the Davidson club program has been steadily growing, and this trip to nationals is a lot of hard work finally paying off.

A little over two years ago Jay Lanners Jr. took over the club program and made it his goal to expand and solidify the program.  When current senior Jack Peterson took over the club 15 months ago, he knew Jay had formed a solid core.

“Jay developed an incredible platform from which we were able to launch our club to new heights.  At the time Jay and I had little involvement from other upperclassmen, but he did a fantastic job of locking in the interests of the underclassmen.  It gave me plenty to work with and build on over the next 12 months,” senior and former captain Jack Peterson explained. But he’s no longer in charge.

Peterson led the team to sectionals for the first time in February of 2011, and captained the team through a successful fall season in which the team grew to be the largest club team on campus.

Then Mark Angel and Lucy McMurry returned from abroad, and with them came visions of something much greater.

“We want to win worlds.  That’s where we set our sights.  Nationals is the next step in the pursuit of that goal,” Angel stated.

And here they are.  Certainly they’ve received a bit of help along the way.  Senior Hannah English, a 4-star recruit for tennis in high school, finished playing field hockey in the fall, and has rediscovered her love for tennis.  Senior Romina Clemente also declined to return to the women’s varsity team at Davidson for her senior year.  Freshman Kassim Alani was declined a spot on the men’s varsity team after tryouts, as was sophomore Keith Durante.

Asked about these additions, Peterson just shrugs. “Sure, some of it may be luck,” he said, “but you have to give credit to the captains and everyone involved – they made KVT a place that people want to be a part of.  When presented with the opportunity to get the best players on campus involved, Mark and Lucy took the challenge head on and have put together and fantastic team.  That isn’t all luck.  That’s mixing energy, fun, and competition all in a way that is both enjoyable and aggressive.  That’s KVT.”

And that is certainly true.  The Wildcats are out for blood.  They’re fully aware that they’re operating with a senior heavy squad (seniors English, Clemente, and Peterson are joined by Jake Thomposon), and that this may be their best opportunity.  In fact, out of the eight starting spots (women’s doubles (2), men’s doubles (2), men’s and women’s singles (2), and mixed doubles (2)), Angel projects that seniors will start in six of them.

Davidson is the smallest school in the draw by nearly 4,000 students.  They know they face an uphill climb in a pool that includes Baylor, Penn State, and Stony Brook, but they are charging in undaunted.

Keep an eye on their health.  If Peterson’s stomach, Alani’s knee, and their general endurance hold up, the Wildcats could make some serious noise.

“I practiced in full today, and I feel fine.  We may monitor my minutes, but I served and everything and I feel fine.  Kassim practiced in full yesterday. I think we’re injury and gossip free,” Peterson replied when asked about his ailing abs.

Is this KVT’s best shot?  That is certainly hard to judge.  Asked about the future of the club when this year’s seniors graduate and Angel and McMurry pass the torch, sophomore Anne Meredith Baldy says, “We’ll all be sad to see the seniors go, but we’ll love to watch them leave.”  Fellow sophomore Minisha Lohani interjects, “True, but I think this was a really important year for club tennis, and I expect we’ll be able to continue this trend for years to come.  This certainly isn’t the end of the road or the climb.”

And perhaps she’s right.  They’re close, fun, and exciting to watch.  Hopefully the Cats will be around for a while.

DC comes to an end...

The following is my final post detailing what I did in DC this summer. What the future holds for jackabp.blogspot.com I'm not yet sure.

I’m writing this on the plane back to Kansas City where I will spend my last 9 days of summer. On the evening of the 17th I have four friends who will be staying at my home, and then I will drive with Max Shaw and Paul Britton all the way to Davidson over the next couple days.

Suddenly, my time in DC is over. Tuesday I won a “happy hour” at a local bar named McFadden’s. Pretty much this meant that for two hours I, along with any of my friends, was allowed in free. They all were awarded cheap drinks just by mentioning my name, while everything I wanted was free for the whole two hours. We had a pretty good time, if for no other reason than everything in DC has cost so much so far, and it was nice to feel like we were somehow cheating the system.

Wednesday my boss decided we could have a “work from home day.” This was due in part to the fact that the air conditioning in our office had been spotty so far early in the week, and no one in the office seemed to feel their best that morning. She sent us a few things to work on and have finished by the end of the day. This worked out great for me. I sent in all my work by 1:30, studied for a couple hours, and then took my final exam for the course I’m taking. It was 3 essays for which we had 3 hours to complete. I think ended up writing 7 pages, but by 6:00 I was done. My dad took Richard, Patrick, Katie, and my cousin Emily and I out to dinner at a restaurant named Bertucci’s. Unfortunately, the seafood was not very good in the plate I ordered, but it was fun to go to eat with all of them.

Thursday was my final day at work, so I finalized everything I was working on and wrote a brief summary of my experience interning with the Eleison Group. Thursday night was also our last class. Our guest speaker was from the Center for Combating Terrorism. She gave a rather interesting, stimulating, and somewhat controversial lecture about the motivations behind jihad, how it is used as a tactic, and how jihadis are misunderstood. There was plenty of discussion about it afterwards at dinner. A bunch of us, including Richard, Natalie, Paul, and I, ate at Founding Farmers for dinner. It uses only organic and locally grown ingredients. Therefore, it is a bit more expensive, but it also tastes amazing and supports positive organizations.

I went to bed pretty early Thursday so I could be rested for Friday. My dad was kind enough to let me accompany him on a business meeting. Due to confidential information, I am not allowed to say anymore about the meeting or whom it was with. Just kidding. But I’m not going to anyway just out of politeness. He was also kind enough to help me pack for a bit of the afternoon, even if he was a bit sarcastically unhelpful at times. Imagine that.

That evening we went to watch a match or two at the Legg Mason Classic, a professional tennis tournament held in DC every summer. In the first match we got to see Donald Young, a young American, beat Marcos Baghdatis, a former top 10 player. Afterwards we wandered around the tournament and saw Fernando Verdasco practicing (he’s the world’s #12 player), and then we watched the first set between the 6’9” American John Isner and the 18th ranked Victor Troicki. Isner won in a tiebreaker, and then we decided to head out and meet Paul for dinner. But let me tell you, these guys are so good. Every once in a while they do something that just makes you smile because there’s no other proper reaction. Everything they do is so smooth, fluid, and quick. Even the giant has stunning footwork from side to side.

After trying to eat at the Old Ebbitt Grill and deciding it wasn’t worth the wait, and after wandering around and ending up in Chinatown, Paul, my dad and I ate at Ming’s. It was very good Chinese food. After dinner Paul and I met up with Patrick, Kelsey Lilley, and Whitney Suflas. We ended up just hanging out in their apartment, watching shark week, and hanging out until really late. It was pretty nice to just relax and not have to worry about going out; also it didn’t cost us any money – always a plus.

Today has been a bit hectic, but I was moved out and in line to check out by 11. Unfortunately the line was a full block long, but by 11:30 I had dropped off my key and access card and was headed out to Silverspring to meet up with my Uncle Rick. My dad and I dropped off all the sheets I borrowed from them, and then we went to lunch at the Corner Pub. After lunch we met up with Paul and his parents (who had come up to move him out). He was going to BWI to fly out as well, as he is taking trips to Atlanta and LA over the next couple weeks. Since we were going the same direction we offered to drive him from Silverspring to the airport. There we had a nice goodbye. We both agreed that we were very thankful for each other’s company all summer, and that it was much better than it would have been alone.

It’s a bit sad to see it all come to an end. I think I was tiring a bit of the routine, mostly because working and having class at the same time was becoming a bit of a drain. But I will certainly miss the constant action, and the fact that there is always something to do here in DC. Back at home I’ll be working at the country club for a week before I leave, and hopefully I’ll get in a couple rounds of golf with my dad and a bit of time at the lake with Sean, Thomas, and the Henry family.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do with blog now that I’ll just be at Davidson. This likely won’t be the last thing I put up here – it doesn’t really seem like it is the kind of final post I would like to leave. I also may utilize it for club tennis stuff. We’ll see. At any rate, sorry this post is mostly just “and then this happened…and then we did this…” but I figured I ought to get through the end of the summer. Here are a few pictures of the tennis, enjoy!

Center court at the Legg Mason Classic 

Donald Young

Young serving to Baghdatis

Baghdatis

Isner. He is so tall.

Troicki

Almost There

Busy, busy, busy. But hey, at least Congress agreed on a deal that no one wanted. 

Fun fact: One year ago tomorrow I boarded a plane and began my long adventure around the globe by meeting Patrick in London and heading to Cairo.  That's the whole reason this blog exists.  And it was completely worth it.

This past weekend was my last full weekend in DC. Friday Paul and I went to a friend’s apartment and then we all split up and went out separate ways for the evening. The two of us, joined by Natalie and Roxana, took a very windy route towards a bar named Madhatter’s. Fortunately, this route led us past a McDonalds, where we made a half-hour pit stop. Upon arriving, the man at the door checked my ID, and then looked at me, and not-so-politely told me to “get lost” because I had “already been there with my friend” and the ID I had given him was the “third one I had tried to use that night.” I gave him a blank stare and assured him I had no idea what he was talking about, just as Paul step forward and proudly reported that we had just come from McDonalds. As if that was a sufficient reason that my ID was real. But, the guy relented, and made a mark on my hand and let me in. Shortly afterwards Roxana ran into another friend of hers, and Paul, Natalie and I decided it was already late and we didn’t really want to be there anyway. Whoops.

Saturday Patrick arrived after finishing his internship in Charlotte. Katie dropped him at my place while she went to go babysit, and I went with Pat to his brother’s place to help him pack up and move. Eventually Pat and I, along with his brother (Stephen) and Stephen’s girlfriend (Suzanne) went to a place named Wisdom. They serve internationally award winning cocktails, so we celebrated Patrick’s work being finished, and eventually Katie was able to join us.

Sunday was a pretty slow day (I did a lot of reading, and I wrote the last post – a fake article about Davidson College club tennis), but eventually Paul, Natalie, and I went wandering around Georgetown looking for a place to eat. After finding a few overpriced places, or ones where the wait was too long, we settled on a crepes establishment. Afterwards we spontaneously opted to see Horrible Bosses, a recently released comedy film. It was pretty funny – worth a trip to the theatre – but not the funniest movie I’d ever seen.

Monday my dad got in town for work, and he took Paul, Pat, Katie, and me to Good Stuff for dinner. It was as good as always. So good that it’s all I really think about for the next 24 hours. This week at work is a bit slower than the last couple, but that’s ok because I’m finishing up my projects before my last day. Anyway, that’s all at the moment, except a quick update on all the reading I’ve done this summer:

Two more books. Done.

In the past few days I have read both Ender’s Shadow and Fahrenheit 451. Ender’s Shadow is the (rather futuristic) story of a bunch of brilliant children placed in a battle school and trained to be the future commanders of earth’s interstellar fleet. It’s told from the point of view of a particularly young, small, but brilliant child who is incredibly adept at taking a bit of information and leaping straight to the correct conclusion. More interestingly, he infallibly reads other people’s expressions, tone, and the meaning behind your words. The premise for all this is that he’s brilliant so of course he can, but it makes you wonder how fast our brains could work if we pushed to take in as much information and process as much as we could all the time.

Fahrenheit 451, also a sci-fi tale, is a bit more of a downer, even though Ender’s Shadow has its low points. In a reasonably bleak future, one man realizes things should be different but doesn’t know where to turn, so he suffers this ridiculous amount of inner torment before (spoiler alert) he kills some guy with a flamethrower. It does, however, provide an interesting spin on the problem of sensitivities in our society, and it was written over 50 years ago.

Freshman year of high school my World Geography teacher had us read both Fahrenheit 451 and Ender’s Game, the sister novel (actually the older sister of the two) to Ender’s Shadow.[1] At the time, I tried to draw meaning from the stories of the novels. And certainly, there’s plenty to draw from. But I think why he had us read those stories was the supposed reality behind the plot, the stage on which the play was performed. It was those worlds – in Ender’s Game the constant threat of worldwide war full of nationalistic pride, rivalries, and back-stabbings, and in Fahrenheit 451 the thoughtless, monotonous existence that included the burning of books – that Mr. Nickels wanted us to see and be repulsed by. By reading about them, I think he hoped that we would subliminally, or consciously, decide that those were not the types of futures in which we wished to live. I think he hoped, and perhaps hopes, that some of his students will be inspired to prevent the reasonably unstable and perhaps catastrophic futures depicted in these books.
[1] Looking back, he taught us plenty of geography, but none of the books we read had anything to do with geography. He pretty much had us read books he thought were good, important, or both. Which was honestly much more fun.

“There was a silly damn bird called a phoenix back before Christ, every few hundred years he built a pyre and burnt himself up. He must have been first cousin to Man. But every time he burnt himself up he sprang out of the ashes, he got himself born all over again. And it looks like we’re doing the same thing, over and over, but we’ve got one damn thing the phoenix never had. We know the damn silly thing we just did. We know all the damn silly things we’ve done for a thousand years and as long as we know that and always have it around where we can see it, someday we’ll stop making the goddamn funeral pyres and jumping in the middle of them.”
Fahrenheit 451

On the Prowl

By Winn Erkroskort, Ova Hedsmash, and Twee Ners

Carolina schools beware: there’s a new cat on the prowl, and they’re mighty hungry.

Davidson College’s club tennis program has risen from the ashes. Current President Jack Peterson is at the heart of this movement, but refuses to receive any undue credit.

“I wasn’t really around for the genesis of this revival,” Peterson said in an interview with the Charlotte Observer last week. “Jay Lanners Jr. really launched this thing, and he had a lot of help from my junior captains, Mark Angel and Lucy McMurry. I’m just picking up where they left off.”

Mr. Lanners has since moved on to bigger and better things, but says he won’t forget his roots. In an email from Argentina he told us, “Davidson College was a big part of my life, and no part was bigger than Klub Varsity Tennis.”

Ah yes - Klub Varsity Tennis. The name is just as important as the movement itself. While at Davidson Klub Varsity Tennis (KVT) is making a revival, it may also be reshaping the club tennis scene among small schools in general. The spark seen from KVT’s enthusiasm (spelling club and cats with a "k" and partially claiming the title of varsity, among other examples) is helping to lift other area programs to be more motivated and active as well, such as Furman University, High Point, and even Wake Forest. It is a growth that is unnerving to some of the bigger, more established programs.

“Davidson gave us a run at sectionals last year, and they’re still growing and bringing other contenders up to,” said a girl from College of Charleston who asked to remain unnamed. “Some of the schools think it’s just a fad, but others of us want to make sure we aren’t overtaken.”

Duke, Peterson tells us, is one of those schools that thinks smaller programs are just a fad. “I can’t use the words I would normally use to describe them in an official interview, but they slighted us pretty bad the last couple semesters. We’re not holding a grudge; we’d just like to get the opportunity to actually play them and have them take us seriously. Other schools have been much more accommodating, and far less egotistical – we’ve had a great relationship with NC State for the past few years, and that has just grown stronger.”

One of the junior captains, Lucy, is already in New Zealand training for the next semester, but we were unable to reach her for this article. Mark was polite enough to give us a brief statement in the middle of his busy day, saying, “It’s remarkable the recovery we’ve had in the last couple years. I can’t wait to see where it goes next spring when I get back from my training abroad.”

Certainly, the two newly elected sophomore captains are more than excited about the coming semester.

“It’s going to be so fun to be involved in something that’s garnering so much attention,” says Anne Meredith Baldy – the women’s team’s number one player last year. Steven Keller followed her statement by telling us that he “couldn’t wait to get back out there on the court” after suffering a knee injury last spring.

When asked about KVT’s goals, Peterson was fairly straightforward.

“Our goal is to qualify for nationals next spring. It’s a lofty goal, but it is also one we think we can achieve. We lost a couple of quality starters in last year’s class, but our sophomore class this year is very good. It’s going to come down to how much energy we can keep flowing through the program, and whether or not we can keep interest levels high. I think we can do it. It will be tough if we lose a player to the varsity team, but I’m excited to see what this new freshman class brings in. We were fortunate enough to secure the #4 male recruit in the country this year. We lost a couple people, including myself, to injuries last spring. We hope we can keep interest levels high throughout the year. And there’s always the possibility of picking up a player who decides to leave a varsity team. We’ve got plenty of hope.”

As far as predictions, Peterson simply smiled.

“I’m not one to make predictions, especially before I’ve seen what I’m working with. I can tell you this though – we won’t go into any matches expecting to lose.”

KVT can be contacted by emailing DavidsonKlubTennis@gmail.com, and you can follow them on Twitter at @DC_KlubTennis.

Mark Angel, Jack Peterson, Lucy McMurry, and Jay Lanners Jr.

The Jay Lanners Jr.

Mr. Angel.

One team, one family, one community.

A 13th place finish at sectionals last year. And ready for more.

A Glimpse Ahead

The coming 9 days are going to be packed, so I figured I may as well put up a brief synopsis of the things to come and a couple things that have passed.

Tuesday (two days ago) we had a guest speaker from Crisis Group International talk to our class. Effectively what I’m starting to gather from these talks is that all of the important and worthwhile projects in the world are underfunded in favor of funding things like nuclear programs. Or perhaps more accurately, everyone believes their project deserves more funding than it gets, especially relative to things like nuclear programs.

The last two days at work have been interesting, since we’ve also been researching how much certain nuclear programs are costing our country every year.

Moments ago I completed and submitted my paper on my internship this summer to the professor leading the Davidson in Washington (DIW) program. At the moment it is only through the DIW program that you can get credit for an internship – if you write an acceptable paper. It is pass fail, and no one has every failed it before, but in the words of my professor, you at least have to “give it the ol’ college try”.[1] I certainly did that and a bit more, so if I don’t “pass” I will be rather surprised. I may eventually post the contents of that paper on here, but it was a 10-page paper so I may only do excerpts. Clearly I haven’t decided.
[1] Paul literally called me right as I finished typing this sentence to ask if my paper was done and if I had “given it the ol’ college try”. 

Also worthy of note is the fact that I have finished both Xenocide and the sequel Children of the Mind in the last few days. Thus, I am done with the “Ender” series and will now be starting the “Shadow” series.[2]
[2] This is based off of another character in Ender’s Game and follows his life rather than Ender’s. It also tells the story of Earth after Ender leaves it. And by “now” I mean right after I’m done posting this entry. 

Now for a look a few days down the road.

Tomorrow we’re having an office happy hour since it is the last time either one of the partners will be in the office while I’m there. Saturday Patrick arrives after finishing his internship and will be here for a week. Sunday or Monday my dad arrives for the week. Tuesday we have our last class that will be a recap, and Thursday our final is due and we have our final visit from a speaker. My final day of work is also Thursday, I will spend all day Friday packing, and then Saturday Uncle Rick is going to pick me up and take me to the airport. Phew. Then I’ll be home and able to relax for about 9 days before Gabi, Kelvin, Paul, and Max come through, stay the night, and take off with me in tow the next day.[3] Should be a grand ol’ time.
[3] Oh by the way Mom and Dad – Gabi, Kelvin, Paul, and Max are coming through on their way to school and picking me up. 

My next post is probably going to be a completely made up post about Davidson club tennis this coming year. I’m getting really excited about it actually, and since we have a twitter account (@DC_Klubtennis) to spout information about our club, I figured I should probably write a fictional preseason account of the team. So please don’t take it seriously. Anyway, thanks to all who have made DC so much fun so far, this is going to be a great week, and I can’t wait to see my family![4]
[4] This may have been my shortest blog post ever.

Restless and flying.

In contrast to the last two blog posts I’ve put up, this one is going to revert back to the every day descriptions of my time in DC. I do have a couple pictures; they’re uploaded at the end of this post.

Last Thursday we moved our class into a different room in the hope that it would be cooler. If there was a difference, it was marginal.[1] Our speaker was the head of the Bureau for Conflict and Stabilization Operations. Her job, vaguely, is to look at the way the United States treats developing countries, figure out what the best things we do are, scrap the rest, and fill in the gaps with what she (and her co-workers) think will work best. It’s a pretty interesting job. She, like every other speaker we have had, highly praised Dr. Menkhaus, calling him “the world’s expert on Somalia.” Which is pretty darn cool.

[1] It’s occurring to me that I’ve never detailed how hot and stuffy our classroom is here in our GWU assigned room. There is routinely a 15 degree difference between being in the room and standing in the hallway. 

Friday was a normal workday, perhaps a little bit slower than usual. After work I bustled home and changed, and then Katie Lovett picked me up and we went to play tennis. After waiting for a court, we hit for about 30 minutes. That was about all I could take. While I haven’t done much working out or exercising since I’ve been here, the heat index for the day had peaked at 118, and I was sapped.[2] It was a lot of fun though, and I had a great time just hitting and running around and working out. Katie, for all her worries about “not having played in 5 months,” was completely sufficient at running me corner-to-corner and occasionally blasting a winner.

[2] Yes – it was evening by the time we played. But it was still so muggy that I was dripping before we even hit a ball on the court. And I only took one water bottle. 

I’m not exactly sure what I was hoping for, given that a tear is a tear and they don’t heal themselves, but I was slightly disappointed when, after three to four months of not hitting competitively, my shoulder still pops and slides around. Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that my wrist is still weak on slice forehands.[3] I don’t have any idea why I’m typing all this in here.

[3] Although, I shouldn’t be hitting slice forehands anyway. So there – problem solved? 

After tennis Katie made a wonderful coconut-shrimp-risotto dinner with a salad and corn on the cob. I helped as much as I could (mostly I poured the lettuce in a bowl and peeled a beet).[4] It was really delicious though. She also let me use her shower, and after eating with her and her roommate Whitley, I headed out to meet some other people at Town Tavern in Adam’s Morgan.[5] A friend from Davidson, Whitney Suflas, had won a happy hour there. Evidently all you have to do is sign up for these things because it seems like someone I know wins one every week. However, after being there for no more than 20 minutes, the power went out. So a fairly large group of us took cabs to the Georgetown area where we went to Mr. Smiths. There I ran into Katie Mixon and her roommate, as well as Owen Craig, a fellow Shawnee Mission East graduate.

[4] Mom and Dad – this actually led to me singing the “beets” song. I’m not sure if Katie got them at the grocery store or not, and they definitely were not hot, but it still made me laugh.
[5] I’m proud to report that until this point, I had not gone to any single bar or “going out place” more than once. 

Saturday I woke up of my own accord before 11. I don’t know why, but I decided since I was awake I may as well get up and make something of the day. Around noon I headed out to take the metro to Silverspring, MD to visit my Aunt Carol, Uncle Rick, and cousin Laura who was in town. The 10-year-old daughter of the family Laura stayed with when she lived in Guatemala was visiting.[6] She only spoke Spanish and German, both of which I knew at one point in life. I found myself largely able to form Spanish sentences, but I almost always spliced in a German connector, like saying “und” instead of “y” to mean “and”. We ate lunch and hung out at the house some, and eventually decided to go see a movie.[7] Of course they decided on Harry Potter, so I have now seen that 7 times. They took me to a great Mexican restaurant for dinner, and then dropped me off back at my apartment just in time for me to get to work on my paper. Oh, right, I forgot to mention that our paper had been pushed back from Thursday to Saturday this week to give us time to incorporate our lecture from the speaker we had on Thursday.

[6] That’s a much longer story; I promise she didn’t just fly up here all by herself.
[7] As opposed to going to the park because, once again, the heat index was near 120. 

Fortunately, Paul hadn’t written his paper either, as his girlfriend Alanna was in town again. She left around 8 on Saturday, so by the time we both were home around 9:30 neither of us had started. I sent mine to Dr. Menkhaus around 11:30; he sent his around 11:58. As a friendly reminder, I later posted the content of my paper in this blog post. After turning in our papers, we both decided we were sufficiently tired and it wasn’t worth trying to track anyone down to go out with, so we both just called it a night.

Sunday around 12:45 Katie Lovett picked us both up to go the Eastern Market. On the way we picked up her younger sister, Julia.[8] The four of us went to the market and wandered around for a couple hours. Paul and I bought some delicious peaches. It reminded me of the Naschmarkt a little bit, though it was certainly less crowded, most of the stuff was more expensive, and it just didn’t have the flair that everything in Europe had. Still, I had a good time seeing Julia again, and it was fun to see a different part of the city. Plus, we went into an incredible bookstore where, even though my aunt had given me a book and I had another book I hadn’t finished, I bought two more books.

[8] I met Julia when her family was up here over the Fourth of July weekend. Julia is on a three week business program that takes them to DC and NYC, and was able to break free for a few hours to hang out with her sister…and me. 

Surprising no one, when we got home around 4:30, I took a two-hour nap. I woke up in time to see Paul head off to a friend’s for dinner, and eventually I got up to make my own dinner. Eventually Paul came home, and we both debated whether or not we should start writing our final paper about our internships. I was in a remarkably restless mood – I started this post, I read a chapter of my book, I practiced volleys against our wall – but nothing really caught my attention. Eventually I decided this was because I’m ready for a change. I’m not exactly sure what kind of change, but it mostly satisfied my restlessness that I realized that. I still had nothing to do, and as a result I ended up watching “Tangled.” It turned out to be a very cute and funny movie, I was pleased with my decision, and immediately afterwards I went to bed.

Work today was kind of slow – we’re starting to kick of some radio ads, but that doesn’t leave lots of work for me to do because it was just recording and editing ads (which we have other people do). Between lunch and this evening I finished Xenocide, the sequel to Speaker for the Dead and Ender’s Game. Immediately afterwards I went to Barnes and Noble and picked up the final book in the series, as well as another book I want to read.[9] Suffice to say, the rest of the night I’ll be reading.

[9] I realize this leaves me with 5 books to read in the final two weeks I’m here. Guess I’ll be taking them home with me. 

Tomorrow I’m both meeting my cousin Angie and her two (adorable) daughters for lunch and leaving work early for a tour of the US Institute of Peace. Ironically, the USIP is on the chopping block for funds in this whole budget debate (don’t get me started). As my roommate Paul put it, “You’d think that since we give the Pentagon, the US institute of war, billions of dollars, we could spare a couple million to keep open the shiny new USIP.”

Below are a few pictures from the weekend. At the request of Patrick I’ve tried a different thing with footnotes this time.[10] I’m starting to get excited to go home and then to head off to Davidson for senior year – though that sounds so weird to say. Fortunately, while my family is tormenting me by being in my favorite place in the world for two whole weeks, my dad is coming out the first week of August and I’m quite excited to see him as well. Time flies doesn’t it.

[10] Thoughts?

Laura's friend and my Uncle Rick at Chik-fil-A!

My Aunt Carol!

Cousin Laura!

Paul and his to-go container for his mac 'n
cheese - a Maxwell coffee container.

Katie and Julia...haha.

The Eastern Market.

The books in this store went 2, 3, even four rows deep on a
single shelf.  And they had every genre imaginable.

Julia - super excited she joined us for the afternoon.