Pro sports playoffs aren't really comparable. Many of them do it very differently from a standard elimination tournament. Hockey repairs the 8 teams based on seedings so the highest seed remaining always gets the lowest seed remaining. (Was pretty amusing a couple years ago when the 7 and 8 seeds got to the east conference finals since 8 had to go through #1, #3, and #5, while 7 had to go through #2, #4 and #6, or something like that.)
In football, the top two seeds get a bye in the first week. The seeding is also determined strangely since the top four seeds are automatically the four division winners, while the 5 and 6 seeds are the two wild cards. Last year, this meant the Seahawks were a higher seed than the Saints or the Packers, who had substantially better records, because they were in a pathetically weak division.
In baseball, I'm not sure of the exact policy, but I believe the wild card gets the team with the best record, while the other two division winners face. The winners advance to face each other. I honestly couldn't care less about basketball, so I have no idea how they do it in the NBA.
It's also worth noting that in each case except for the NFL, the match-up is determined by more than one contest. They're best of 5 or best of 7 matches. In our vote-off tournaments, official GameFAQs or user-run B8, there's little point in rerunning a match 5 times since they'd come out the same each time.
There's a much simpler way to justify the way that each seed is placed. Imagine we start with a blank tournament bracket, and the highest seed remaining chooses it's "slot" in the bracket. The 1 seed doesn't care since they're all the same when the whole thing is empty. But when the 2 seed picks, are they going to pick to go up against the 1 seed in round one, and potentially be bounced from the tournament immediately? Probably not. So they take the position that is farthest away from #1.
When #3 picks, they have to be on the same side of the bracket as either #1 or #2. Given that, they'll side with #2, but still go to the opposite end to avoid them for as long as possible. When #4 picks, they take the last remaining part of the bracket that keeps them from running into a higher seed before round 3.
As 5-8 pick, they will have to deal with the top four seeds in round 2, but they're going to choose the best match-up for themselves along the way, so the 5 picks the position near the 4, so 6 takes near 3, and 7 goes by the 2, and 8 is stuck next to the 1. But at least they get one good match, right?
And then 9-16 take the same logic as 5-8, except they're choosing the best first round match they can give themselves.
I've never heard of continuing in SMB either, and I'm certainly old enough not to be able to play the "before my time" card. (And I had a subscription to Nintendo Power, but not from issue 1.)
heh, I go looking at the contest rules to see what prize if any there is for the best bracket, and I see this:
Participants must enter their projected winners of all 32 match-ups of the Tournament, round by round.
Somebody fails. 64 participants. One loses each round. 63 matches to get down to one winner. There's 32 in round one, but that's not what it says. Hope that doesn't screw up any legalities in the techno-lawyer-babble.
Tails Cortana HK-47 Yoshi Luigi Alyx Vance Cube Vivi
Cortana HK-47 Luigi Cube
Cube over Cortana
I probably shouldn't take Cortana that far. Tails vs Cortana was the one I stared at for the longest trying to decide on. Ultimately I decided whoever it was had to beat Luigi in the semis because Luigi as a finalist just seems weak, and I figured the factors that would get Tails that far would SFF him out against Luigi. I certainly agree with whoever said the first quadrant is the hardest to predict. Luigi vs Vance for the upper-right is almost a given.
I've also got some picks that don't look very good in retrospect, but who knows? Like Doc Louis winning two rounds, Frog as well, Daxter over Toad, Dom over Chocobo...
BTW, how the hell did they assign the spots in their bracket? It makes no sense. The #2 and #3 vote-getters are in the same division. Upper-right has 3 of the top 8, while the upper-left has just Tails. All the round 1 matches should be an upper 32 vs a lower 32, but quite a few of them are not.
The SMB thing is entertaining, but honestly overkill for SMB1. If he did it with a more robust game like SMW, I'd probably find it very entertaining.
The tetris on the other hand, geezus. Talk about making a classic game hard. I don't completely understand what constitutes completing a line, but just the idea of tetris with rag-doll physics is pretty entertaining.
I was always amazed when I would take my upper division courses for my math degree. Half the time it would be total sausage fest, and the other half it would be an even split.
xkcd is hit or miss. Sometimes it's laugh-worthy, and sometimes just laughable. I usually enjoy it, though.
On topic, similes also sometimes use the word AS rather than LIKE. And that's actually an overly-simplistic way of explaining it, although it usually works for when you're first learning about them and trying to make one up. In essence, a simile is more of a direct comparison, whereas a metaphor is using symbology.
Simile: Because of her short arms and her aggressive nature, Jan's friends joked that she played poker like a T-rex. Metaphor: Jan was a T-rex at the table -- aggressive and with arms that couldn't reach across the table.
KingButz posted... This is how they like to steer in the UK
So yeah...
Man, wth is that? I mean, I guess it works, but man is that weird...and counterintuitive. The only time I turn hand-over-hand rather than one-handed is when I need to turn HARD, often while I'm looking over my shoulder to, say, parallel park. Under the circumstances I would actually use hand-over-hand, I couldn't imagine doing this weird butterfly motion.
And quite honestly, how is it really that different from hand-over-hand functionally? Rotate wheel 60 degrees with one hand, then rotate it with the other hand, and then back to the first hand. The Brits just start the second hand in a weird place.
Why does XD even represent laughter anyway? I get the D, but don't >< eyes usually mean being upset or bothered about something? I guess I can kinda see it in this font, but most of the time it just looks dumb to me.
TheKnightOfNee posted... Poll of the topic: What's your favorite song uploaded so far? (gotta start simple)
I haven't listened to *every* song yet, so I may find a new favorite soon. I have a couple lists of VGM as part of my youtube profile and I mostly add songs of my own choosing that I remember and love, but sometimes I also add other tunes I hear along the way. The ones from VGMotD that I've added (explicitly from VGMotD) are:
#82 Paper Dolls #167 The Neon Mines #178 Beyond the Bounds #243 Pepsiman
#6 Super Mario World (Thousand-Year World of Sunshine Conference) #7 Super Smash Bros. Melee (Fanservice Conference) World of Warcraft (Fanservice Conference) Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Brawl for Broke Conference) - - SoulCalibur II (Games of the Decades Conference) - - Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (Tanooki Blitzball Conference) Kingdom Hearts II (Fanservice Conference) The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Zelda Overload Conference) Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals (Thousand-Year World of Sunshine Conference) -
I'm kinda glad the #1 was a song out of left field. Anyone can pick a power heavyweight at the top, but this was a little gem that's escaped my radar completely since I wasn't around for VGM2. It wouldn't be my personal #1, but I can respect the choice.
Can't believe I missed this the last couple days. I wonder how you're able to take things with you and what limitations it has. Your clothes come with you, and apparently what's in them? Is it a radius effect, or is it like Superman where he can apparently protect everything within a few millimeters from him so his clothes don't burn off? Could we take Sarah with us if we were holding her tightly?
I guess it would help to figure WTF is going on first, though. A2.