It's Official

80 Days away from the national spelling bee, we know at least one speller who's going:

Josephine Kao, winner of the 2009 California Central Valley Spelling Bee, first reported here:

http://www.sacbee.com/topstories/story/1672386.html

Congrats. Next stop: Washington D.C.

Watchin a very entertaining Dallas- San Antonio game. Is it me, or is every one of their games at least decent to watch? This one happens to be just a little better: Dallas with all their weapons back ( Terry, Howard, Kidd, Nowitzki) is a tough team to beat, especially at home. And they're just the 8th seed right now in the west. I woulda liked them to add a legit SG at the trading deadline, but they'll have to work it out the rest of the season.

Here's a question: where has dirk's 3-point shooting touch gone? I hadn't noticed for a while, but as my 3PTM cat has declined, so has dirk's. it's a correlation. Spot it up from outside, big man!


Update about other top spellers from last year's comp:

runner up Sidharth Chand is one of 4 semi-finalists in the Oakland Press Spelling Bee, to be decided on March 4th. Expect nothing less than for him to wrap that up. Guy looks like a professor who's studied 1400 more formulas since last year.

Here's some interesting news:
Kivya Shivashankar, who along w/ her sister will be all over your TV screen come bee time, ACTUALLY MISSED A WORD in her district spelling bee. Whoa. This is like news of Achilles bleeding, or the '96 bulls (72-10) losing a game, cuz you didn't think it was gonna happen. Full report here: http://www.theolathenews.com/100/story/346878.html


So Kivya misspelled during the final 2 round, but fortunately her opponent misspelled right behind her and she was allowed back in, and she didn't let a 2nd chance slip away. These kids are so good, usually it's automatic and you expect it to be. So when they do miss a word out of the thousands they get thrown at them, it's noteworthy. Very, very interesting. I will note that last year's winner, Sameer Mishra, missed a word in the first round but because it wasn't an elimination round he stuck around to win. But wow, what would the spelling bee have been like if Kivya didn't even show up to D.C.? Whooooooo. But she's comin, and the competition better capitalize if she trips up again.

Fantasize on,
Robert Yan