Tuesday, April 05, 2005

A kernel of annoyance

Last night I watched the NCAA championship game. It was pretty good and came down to the wire, which is my favorite way for any game to go.

The only thing that annoyed me was the table that the announcer people sat at.

Across the side facing the court there were big numbers:



Two things about this really bothered me. Bothered me to distraction and drew my attention from the game.

First, the numbers read in descending order from left to right. For some reason this really bugged me because here in North America we hold the norm for numbers to read from left to right in ascending order. How hard would it have been to print them the correct direction and avoid the headache?

Second, 65? Why 65? Did they intentionally mess up the sequence to mess with my mind? Don't most people look at numbers around them and try to make patters, see order, develop a sequence for the chaos in life? Don't they know that one small ripple the pond of my consciousness will disturb everything else?

Why didn't' they just put 64 and avoid all this consternation?!?!?!

9 comments:

The Unprocessed Project said...

It was 65 because the tourney started with 65 teams, then 32, then 16, then 8, then 4....get it? That is why they were in decending order. That is how the tourney goes. There was a game before the tourney started between two no name teams and the winner became the 64th team. Therefore, it started with 65.

Katie said...

That makes sense. I didn't know about the two no name teams. I just thought they started with 64. My bad.

The Unprocessed Project said...

They just started this 65 thing a few years back. It is so dumb if you ask me.

Mrs. Architect said...

That is completley something that would have bugged me if I had watched the game.

M.A. said...

I was kind of like- “what's with the stupid looking numbers” until I bothered to look at what the numbers were- but even then I thought they looked stupid.

The 64th and 65th team playing in seems stupid to me. I suppose the reason is adding a conference and thus having another automatic entry to the tournament- but I don't know why that actually requires the 65th team. Couldn't you just have one less invite?

Maggie said...

Hey Katie, when you're playing cards, which end do you put the high number cards? I go highest to the left and lowest to the right.

Katie said...

Mags, highest on the right. I am a slave to convention.

Heather said...

I'm a highest on the left as well as Maggie. In fact I don't think I know anyone else besides you who does highest on the right.

Maggie said...

Highest on the left because that's probably the last cards you want to use (esp in rook) and so you'll keep them at the back. Anyway, that's why my high cards are on the left.