Fortunately, the College Basketball Conference Tournaments condense seasons into one the most competitive and entertaining weeks in sports.

In the Big East Conference Tournament, fans pack Madison Square Garden to watch the Gerry McNamaras of the world carry their 10^th seeded teams to the title game on pure heart and determination. Rivalries are taken to a new level as team’s match up for the third time.  Emotions run high, and fans are given a reason to cheer. Mediocre teams are given a reason to play hard all season long, even when they only have 5-7 conference records in February.

For mid-major teams a conference tournament is like a mini-March Madness. A season is compressed into a win or go home format, and excitement and player determination is higher than in any other part of the season. I mean let’s be honest, how much excitement can you build up if you were to crown a conference champion based on regular season wins and losses? Where’s the hype? Where’s the Cinderella story? Where’s the number two team getting the chance to square off against the favored number one? Where’s the sense of urgency?

The NBA is struggling to find a way to make teams like the Knicks and Timberwolves play hard all season long.  But can you blame the players?  I wouldn’t be closing out on the defense when my team is 20 games out of 8^th place.

ESPN writer John Hollinger has proposed a NBA playoff  system where the 8^th through 14^th place teams in each conference would be thrown in a bracket and the winner would take the 8^th seed.

Although it might be a little ridiculous to include the words, “Golden State Warriors and playoffs” in the same sentence, this format would be a significant step forward.

College Basketball Conference tournaments have put meaning into a normally boring college basketball conference season.  Excitement is compounded, rivalries are heightened, and meaning is restored.

It’s time for other competitive sports markets to notice the superiority in the College Basketball Conference Tournaments and for once maybe we can actually care about the NBA before June.

Editor’s Note: This sports column is a regular feature from “The Nightcap” crew,  made up of Ari Zyskind, Ned Schooler, Nathan Barnett, Dan Campbell, and Kevin Shuai, a group of 5Cers who air a weekly radio talk show on KSPC. You can listen in online at KSPC.org (click “Hear us Online via Live365”) every Monday from 8-10 PM.

N.B.: The Nightcap is holding it’s very own, free, March Madness Pool. The winner will receive a collector’s item: a custom made, Nightcap t-shirt signed by the whole crew in addition to a 90 second, uninterrupted, rant on the show. If you are interested, e-mail Ari Zyskind at hzyskind12@cmc.edu or Nathan Barnett atnathansbarnett@gmail.com requesting an invitation to the pool.

If you’re taking it easy on campus or at home and you’re tired of reading 8:27 Procrastination and ramblings on Claremont weather conditions, may we suggest TED?  It’s like the Ath, but better. (And, might we add, excellent prep for Idea Night? **end shameless plug **)

PS: We brought the FlipCam to Cabo…only good can come of this.

Along with the awkward questions from the kids, there will moments of pure hilarity as we reassemble with CMC classmates and browse pictures from a trip to Cabo or watch a video of freshman year bloopers. Memories that would have gathered dust and faded ten years ago can now, for better or worse, be easily immortalized. A great way to assemble these memories is through simple video-editing programs.

Now why is a “how to make a movie” post appearing on campus news publication? Because it is fun and important to learn the basics of movie creation. Tufts University thinks so too; their application process now calls for an optional YouTube video supplement. If you need to make a quick movie to promote an event, make a freshman (or senior?) year blooper reel, or put together a travel highlights video, you can. Tools like iMovie and Windows Movie Maker are too fun and too easy not to take advantage of.

So I am not actually going to teach you how to use iMovie – it is easy enough to figure out. Your biggest hurdle will be opening the program and taking the time to play around with it. Besides, Apple does a much better job it than I could.

What you need:

1. Videos or photos on your computer.
2. iMovie: For Macs – I’ve heard Windows Movie Maker is also easy to use for you PC users out there though.
3. 29:09 minutes of your time. 25 minutes of playing with the program, 4:09 minutes to watch this iMovie tutorial.

Movie creation is a relatively a new revelation to me. I didn’t open iMovie for ages because I had the preconception that video editing takes a lot of tech expertise. You don’t. iMovie is geared for a larger, less tech savvy audience. I love sharing my pictures and videos with others – they tell a story so much better than I can. Sites like Facebook have made sharing photos with friends and family incredibly easy, and now, after 29:09 minutes, you’ll have the expertise to share your own full-feature production.

Check out the below video; I made in a little over an hour. Some friends and I got our butts kicked in mud soccer in a rural village in Bangladesh. It is so much easier and fun to share this video with someone who asks me what my summer was like rather than trying to explain it with words or even an album of pictures. And if you only have pictures, no video footage, iMovie has neat features to turn a collection of photos into an entertaining slideshow.

*On a side note, if you are in the market for a digital camera to record those memories, check out Olympus’s Stylus Tough line – it is waterproof (read: beerproof), virtually indestructible, and takes great photos. Starting at $229.

The Women’s Swimming team beat Redlands by over 100 points to win their eighth straight SCIAC championship, the third longest active SCIAC winning streak next to the women’s and men’s track teams. On the first day, he Athenas team of Jenni Rinker SC ‘11, Elica Sharifnia CM ‘12, Katie Bilotti CM ‘12 and Emma Jones CM ‘12  started the night by winning the 200 free relay and followed by closing the same night with a victory in 400 medley relay (Rinker, Annie Perizzolo CM ‘11, Bilotti, Jones.) On the second day of competition, Athenas also took gold, and set a CMS and SCIAC record in the 200 medley relay (Elsa Cheng CM ‘13, Perizzolo, Bilotti and Jones). In addition, Emily Ott CM ‘13 won the 400 individual medley, Perizzolo won the 100 breaststroke, and Bilotti won the 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke, setting meet records in both swims. On the final day CMS cemeted their victory with wins from Whitney Dawson CM ‘12 in the 1650 free, Tessa Dover CM ‘11 in the 200 back, Perizzolo in the 200 breast and the team of Rinker, Perizzolo, Bilotti, and Jones in the 400 free relay.  Dover set a CMS and SCIAC record in the 200 back and Perizzolo set SCIAC meet records in the 200 breast and the 400 free relay. A number of swimmers will move onto NCAA’s and will be previewed in The Forum before the competition.

In the SCIAC final at Ducey Gymnasium on Saturday, two-time SCIAC player of the year Chris Blees was the star, scoring 14 points to go with 6 rebounds and 3 steals, including the final steal and two free throws that clinched the Stag’s victory. Second team All-SCIAC forward Joey Anderson dominated the glass with 13 rebounds, and added 6 points of his own. Connor Faught came up huge off the bench, with 13 points in just 18 minutes of play, including two big threes. Hounded by the Pomona-Pitzer crowd with chants of “Ja-Son”, Jason Toney CM ‘11 was off, shooting just 2 for 10 from the field, but handled the ball well, and led the offense effectively. Toney was also named to the SCIAC first team for his efforts this season. The Stags were unable to continue their run, as they dropped their first round NCAA tournament game to Chapman 58-47.The Stags will have to wait another year to win their first NCAA tournament game.

The women’s basketball team entered the SCIAC tournament, having high hopes, especially after taking Occidental to OT in their previous match up. They played the first thirty minutes with the same confidence, rolling to a 10 point lead on top seed Oxy. A back and forth game still had the Athenas with an 59-51 lead with 5:31 remaining, but the Tigers did not back down.  They clawed back to even the score at 59-all in the next minute and a half. Occidental then went on a run, and looked like they had the game won in the final minute, up 68-62, but All-SCIAC guard Aria Krumwiede CM ‘12 scored 7 points in the final minute to give the Athenas a possession down 72-69 with eight seconds remaining. Krumwiede again was called upon, but unfortunately her shot fell short, and the Athenas season came to a conclusion.

The improvement plan can be seen in three steps: the immediate, short, and long term.

Within the week, students will see flat-screen televisions in the Hub with HD Direct TV. The administration is also looking to replace the tables to create a more cohesive study environment.

Prior to Kravis Center construction, the space currently occupied by Faculty Support West served as the Frazee Room– a multipurpose room that was significantly underutilized. Vice President for Student Affairs Dean Huang shared, “It has been my plan to return the Frazee Room to a student lounge when the Faculty Support Center leaves in 2011.” Faculty Support will be moving to a room underneath the “glass cube” and the current space will become vacant.

One of the three rooms will become a lounge and meeting room for the Robert Day School, which has requested a space for its scholars; the other two will become study lounges, stocked with tables and whiteboards. The space will be open late-night. It will be one of many additional study spaces, as the Kravis Center is slated to have quite a few as well.

“I think that’s really what we’re most lacking on campus,” Kraus said. “We need more study space.”

In theory, this reshuffling will extract the study-lounge function of the Hub and allow it to excel purely as a lounge. The space will then see more significant renovations.

Further down the line, CMC’s Master Plan, recently approved unanimously by the Board of Trustees, suggests the complete demolition of Emett, as well as McKenna Auditorium and Bauer Center. An academic building will replace the space across from the Athenaeum. And in Bauer’s place, a more fitting and extraordinary building will become our student center.

My ultimate source of happiness-- a sunset in Newport Beach.

Of course the pursuit of happiness has been an eternal question, but studying happiness in a measurable, scientific way is currently in vogue. The internet is cluttered with blog posts and research on the subject. Even Facebook is doing a study of its own– measuring Gross National Happiness through our status updates. Our lives have changed drastically in just the last fifty years. Advancements in transportation, communication and day-to-day conveniences have given us an unprecedented ability to access the world. But with all of these new advancements come new choices, and somewhere in the midst of all this new-age connectedness, many wonder if happiness has taken a back seat. But what is happiness and why is the pursuit of it so important?

A post by career blogger Penelope Trunk proposes  that the goal of achieving happiness may be overrated. This is a novel thought for me. Trunk upholds that she would rather have an interesting life than a happy one and sets up the two ideals up in opposition to one another. She has lived in both New York City and Madison, WI, and uses the two locations to draw a comparison between living an interesting life and a happy one. Trunk characterizes people from New York as people seeking interesting lives. New York provides the choices necessary to have a diverse and exciting life, and those who choose to live in New York do so because they would rather have a varied life than a happy one. Wisconsin, on the other hand, is the land of contentment. It may not have the limitless opportunities present in the Big Apple, but your average Wisconsinite isn’t looking for that. As Trunk says, “People live in Wisconsin because the lifestyle is easy– family is here, personal history is here, things generally are fine. Nothing is fine in NYC. It’s very challenging. Every single day.”

Being from Wisconsin myself, I am used to debunking falsehoods about my home state. I wish I could disagree with what Penelope Trunk said, but her logic rings true. Before you write me off as a simple-minded Midwesterner, however, you should know that I was born in Newport Beach, grew up in Madison, went to boarding school in Massachusetts, and now have returned to California.  I have a broad understanding of a multitude of lifestyles but as embarrassing as it is to say, I would forsake an interesting life if, as Trunk suggests, it stood opposed to the possibility of a happy one. Don’t get me wrong, I am exhilarated by the limitless possibilities of the big city, but I also feel a visceral loneliness when presented with such a vast array of forking roads and diverging tunnels.

In our world today, it is impossible to avoid a certain level of “interesting” in our lives. For those like me that choose to pursue happiness, life is a constant struggle to balance decisions with satisfaction. The following video by photographer/designer/producer Ryan Lewis is what inspired me to write this article in the first place; he so accurately depicts the daily conflict between interesting and happiness.

I am continually amazed by iPhone apps, but I would much rather hang out with you than with my iPhone. I would rather see a smile flash across your face than read your measured text messages. There are some things that just cannot be said in 140 characters or less. According to Daniel Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard University, social relationships are the key to happiness. Taking the time to sit down and talk is an invaluable source for human connection and happiness. But there is an even more important kind of social relationship that, depending on who you are, may not seem as obvious in terms of your net joy. I’m talking about sex. It should be noted that when researchers note the monumental effect of sex on one’s happiness, they mean sex with a consistent partner. According to David Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College, “Going from sex once a month to sex once a week creates a big jump in happiness.”

So returning to the question of whether to be an interesting New Yorker or a happy Wisconsinite, I would prefer to be the latter. Alicia Keys and Jay-Z may love their “Concrete jungle where dreams are made of” but I’m not quite convinced. There’s a place in my guileless heart for that Wisconsin happiness and I’m going to continue searching for it.

Students are invited to submit papers, projects, or original research for the enjoyment of the CMC community below. Participants and their topics will be selected by a committee of student representatives for uniqueness, interest, and quality. We are looking for interesting arguments on any topic — politics, culture, CMC, etc — and although the content will vary greatly, the form will remain constant: each participant will have 10 minutes, a projector, and a podium.

Presentation skills will be valued equally alongside content. At the end of the event, the audience will be asked to rank the speakers on their interest and persuasiveness, and while everyone will get a token of our appreciation, the winner will get a special prize: Ath VIP Status, including a head table spot at Mitt Romney and your name on the wall. More details regarding the prizes to come.

To get you thinking, here are some ideas (although not necessarily good ones) from our own Carl Peaslee: “Will NASCAR be the sport of the future?” “Who is the bigger nuclear threat, Iran or North Korea?” “Is Ford a better investment than Toyota?” “What does Twilight have to do with the recession?” “How is Star Wars the perfect metaphor for the Obama administration?”

Enter to present your idea using the form below, and be sure to sign up at the Ath for the dinner. Check out who else is going and invite your friends on facebook.

P.S. Everyone who steps up and applies will get a (very CMC) surprise gift.

Last weekend was the festival of Holi, a two-day festival around the first full moon in February or March, according to the Hindi calendar. According to legend, the son of the king of demons, Prahlada, was a devotee of Vishnu (a good god), and as you may imagine, this development greatly displeased the king of demons, Hiranyakashipu. After trying and failing numerous times to take his son’s life, including poisoning him, trampling him by elephants and placing him in a room full of deadly snakes, Hiranyakashipu placed Prahlada on his sister’s lap, on top of a burning pyre. The fire burned his sister, Holika, but Prahlada was saved because of his devotion. Today people celebrate the festival Holi with fire and color.

It’s tradition to light bonfires and fireworks the night before Holi, and the collective noise turned our neighborhood into the auditory equivalent of North Philly for the night. We lit some fireworks that sparkled in place, turning our courtyard fluorescent green for ten seconds, and hand-held sticks that made a blue chemical fire, which we danced with until they died out and we’d light a new one. We lit some elaborate fireworks that could have been mistaken for those at your local July 4 party. We also set off some “bombs,” which didn’t light up but did produce a loud gunshot-like noise. We ate, partied, and danced around the bonfire late into the night.

On the morning of Holi, everyone buys packets of beautiful dyed powder and watercolors, and spends the morning throwing colors on everyone else, chaotically. The Day of Color would not be an enjoyable festival for an obsessive-compulsive. The correct way to apply colored powder to someone’s face is to pour some out in each hand, then smear it over the person’s face and hair like your grandma used to do to you when you were six. The other person then does the same to you, and you embrace. If things are going well, you can grab a bucket, add some water and colored dye and pour it on your opposite number. My face changed color from red to blue to purple as the day went on, as did everyone else’s.

Within about twenty minutes of waking up, the floor of our courtyard resembled a Jackson Pollock painting. Soon the courtyard was overwhelmed by the deluge of water and paint and, along with our clothes, turned into a melange of purple, red and brown colors. After an hour we were out of powder, so we walked to the corner store to buy more. During the course of a ten-minute walk, three cars stopped to put powder on us and wish us a Happy Holi.

No Western holiday brings out the raucous joy, fierce energy and community spirit of Holi. Lightness about fireworks aside, it was a wonderful holiday and I’m grateful for the experience.

With just twenty-five ticks left, on Zach Parise’s beautiful goal off of a rebound, US Hockey tied our neighbors to the north in the gold medal game for men’s hockey only to be outlasted by the Canadians in overtime . I think I am finally coming out of my gold-medal-game coma, but it is probably only because of a certain vandal. Sidney Crosby’s stick and gloves “went missing” after the celebration– something tells me an American pulled off this cunning heist. Nothing like stealing priceless memorabilia to avenge a loss. Even if it wasn’t a patriot who managed to steal the dreaded Canadian’s gear, the Olympics were not a complete loss for the American skaters.

No, I am not talking about the silver lining of the second place medal or even the moral victory of doing better than expected (Team USA was a long shot to medal at all). No. I am talking about how cool USA goaltender Ryan Miller looked in that mask of his. Featuring a tatted and ripped Uncle Sam and a menacing bald eagle, the words “Miller Time” (which, the IOC made him cover up because they claimed it was advertisement) and “Matt Man,” a tribute to Miller’s cousin Matt Schoals, who died from bone marrow transplant complications in 2007, Miller’s mask was easily the coolest of the Olympic masks, with honorable mention to Swiss goaltender Jonas Miller’s for looking like someone taped on some pictures printed on computer paper.

Miller, the goaltender for the Buffalo Sabres, is only one of many who seem to be expressing themselves in between the pipes these days. NHL goaltenders tend to have a little more style than their Olympic counterparts…or at least what they lack in style they make up for in…creativity? Most goalies have illustrations related to the team or town in which they play (perhaps this is contractual?), but some are more expressive. Avalanche goaltender and Slovakian Peter Budaj has a Slovakian version of The Simpsons character Ned Flanders on the backside of his mask. Marty Biron’s mask is an odd tribute to Canadian lumberjacks. Antero Nittymaki of the Philidelphia Flyers earned the nickname Frank from former coach Ken Hitchcock after the mobster Frank Nitti–his helmet: Frank Nitti shooting a tommy gun and smoking a cigar. Carolina Hurricane John Grahame displays his love for NASCAR and scantily clad women on his mask. And then there is Kari Lehtonen. One of his masks contains two cartoon characters with swords and a picture of Lil Jon on the back. Another one displays female characters from the video game Final Fantasy X. I mean, really?

Expression is hardly limited to hockey. College football players have recently been in an embroiled battle with NCAA over eye-black expression. Former USC running back and current New Orleans Saint, Reggie Bush, was the first well known eye-black artists. He used to put his area code, 619, in silver ink in his eye-black. Former Florida Gator quarterback, Tim Tebow, displayed biblical quotes under his eyes over the last four seasons.

The NFL, widely dubbed by players as the “No Fun League,” has managed to limit player expression. They have cracked down on post-play celebration and any sort of organized display of attention-grabbing not related to things going on the field of play.

This sort of expressive censorship is dangerous, however. Ryan Miller’s mask was nearly banned by the IOC. Apparently “Matt Man” was a major point of contention. The NFL would not grant an exception for Chad Ochocinco, who wished to wear the number of Chris Henry, a teammate who passed away this year. Major League Baseball has done a great job finding the right time and place for exceptions to uniform rules, allowing pink bats on Mother’s Day and entire teams to wear number 42 on Jackie Robinson Day.

I understand why the NFL does what they do. Most of the time, player expression is not about something important or worth protecting.  Enough is enough. Expression is one thing, but so many players in professional sports have made things about themselves. The team should be above the players, especially considering how much these players are role models for young people.

Editor’s Note: This sports column is a regular feature from “The Nightcap” crew,  made up of Ari Zyskind, Ned Schooler, Nathan Barnett, Dan Campbell, and Kevin Shuai, a group of 5Cers who air a weekly radio talk show on KSPC. You can listen in online at KSPC.org (click “Hear us Online via Live365”) every Monday from 8-10 PM.

Enjoy this selection: