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Holiday Blogging

TDE slows down for the holidays, and this secular holiday is one of the holiday-ist of all. The first Thursday and Friday of the NCAA Tournament are my two favorite sports days of the year. This pic shows Max getting the screens set up for Thursday night's action.

I was visiting Marie at Eastern Michigan University in 1989. She had classes in the afternoon, so I went to the Wooden Nickel and sat there by myself, pounding beers and watching the games. One game in particular: Princeton-Georgetown. There were other good games that afternoon. By the time Marie got there, I was pretty loaded. She was like, "You're drunk! You got drunk, sitting here by yourself, in the middle of the afternoon." I was like, "It was incredible! You won't believe what almost happened . . .". She was just shaking her head, but she still married me eventually.

The link above is to a story at Princeton.edu. Take notice of the very last line:

Despite the loss, the result of the game was a proud moment for Princeton basketball, as it demonstrated that it could play with the best of them.

Never use "as" in this fashion. You might as well stamp "amateur" across the top of the article. Consider how much crisper one small change makes it:

Despite the loss, the result of the game was a proud moment for Princeton basketball: it demonstrated that it could play with the best of them.

If you wanted to make it even crisper: "Despite the loss, the game showed that Princeton basketball could play with the best of them." I mean, do you really need to say it was a "proud moment"? That's obvious. And it removes an ambiguity: the game's final result made Princeton proud, or the game itself made Princeton proud?

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