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Editors note:In the wake of the NCAAs decision to cancel the 2020 tournament, The Athletic will be celebrating the best NCAA Tournament game played on each day over the course of the next three weeks.You can read the rest of the stories here.

Before he became His Airness, before he changed the athletic apparel industry, before he revolutionized the game of basketball, Michael Jordan was a freshman at North Carolina. And on March 29, 1982, the Tar Heels needed a bucket.

James Worthy, the teams leading scorer and consensus first-team All-American, was on the floor. So was second-team All-American Sam Perkins.

In the waning seconds of the championship game, though, the shot went to the skinny freshman whom coach Dean Smith wouldnt even allow to appear on the preseason Sports Illustrated cover.

Trailing Georgetown 62-61, senior guard Jimmy Black found Jordan near the corner, whose shot from 17 feet didnt even graze the rim.

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This Day in Madness: When Mike became Michael Jordan - The Athletic

Merion West is an online news source that dubs itself a journal where all perspectives are welcome. They tout the fact that they have been rated by Media Bias/Fact Check as a Least Biased source.

Generally, their articles seem to have deeper analysis than you will find in much of the mainstream media. For example, recent headlines include, The Fraught Relationship Between Religion and Epidemiology, The Critics of Social Justice, from Jonah Goldberg to Jordan Peterson, and Hannah Arendts Concept of Impotent Bigness. They regularly interview newsmakers, and authors often include professors in relevant fields and others well qualified to comment.

Articles are explicitly labeled by viewpoint: left, center, or right. This makes for interesting reading. To date, I havent seen much about evolution and intelligent design on the site, but there is a recent article entitled When We Oversimplify Darwin. I was curious to see what Merion West would say. The article is labeled as representing a View from the Center.

It is too concerned with trying to make peace between all sides. Interestingly, the author, artist Chris Augusta, acknowledges that there is scientific debate over evolutionary theory. Thats a plus. The article links to last years Hoover Institution-sponsored discussion Mathematical Challenges to Darwins Theory of Evolution among Stephen Meyer, David Gelernter, and David Berlinski, led by Peter Robinson, and to a Socrates in the City conversation between Dr. Meyer and Eric Metaxas.

Augusta argues that Darwin was confused about the nature of reality and didnt come to firm conclusions regarding the existence of a designer or a central role for chance. Augusta, whose website includes some weird and spooky Art of Evolution, advocates for paradoxical reality:

Charles Darwin, that greatest of empiricists, bears witness to the raw spectacle of paradoxical nature. He sees clearly manifestations ofdesign,and he sees clearly manifestations ofchance. Reading Darwins letters to Asa Gray reveals a man transfixed by the blinding spectacle of contrary forces. Darwin is a deer in the headlights: He cant move forward; he cant move backward.

I find this conclusion absurd. Darwin clearly derived from his theory a materialistic view of the world. He wrote in his Autobiography, There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws. For Darwin, this had sinister implications. In a poignant Evolution News article, science historian Michael Flannery noted, Writing to William Graham (1839-1911) on July 3, 1881, Darwin saw the march of human progress in blatantly racist terms. Civilization would advance even at the cost of inevitable racial extermination. Darwin wrote:

Lastly I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.

We may dispute what Darwin felt or thought in the privacy of his study but the bulk of his writings fall clearly into advocating for one perspective: naturalism. Why else would atheist Daniel Dennett have written that Darwinism was a universal acid that eats through just about every traditional concept? Dennett was not wrong. That does not sound too paradoxical to me.

Augusta says poets too grapple with this paradoxical reality and then goes on to liken science to poetry. He offers comfort to those who, unlike Darwin and poets, are intimidated by paradox but gently points out that our insistence on resolving these paradoxes through Christianity or militant atheism la Percy Shelley is childlike. Pardon me, Augusta, I think I might vomit.

Needless to say, poetry is very different from science. It operates by entirely different rules. We dont let poets (or artists) make rules for us; I dont think they were consulted about how to respond to the coronavirus. Poets and artists dont have that kind of power, and its probably a good thing.

As part of his closing, Augusta notes that the universe is better described as creative than created. Really? Actually, lets take a look at that whole paragraph:

This materialistic Darwinism has dominated for more than a century-and-a-half, but its own explanatory power may be waning. Proponents of Intelligent Design insist that the very complexity of life cannot be explained by essentially random mechanistic processes. But Intelligent Design is perhaps a poor choice of words that tends to shift attention away from the thing (or event) observed to some pre-existing designer. You do not have to introduce the notion of an Intelligent Designer to acknowledge the existence of order and pattern in nature. The universe may be apprehended, as it was by Albert Einstein among many others, as embodyingintelligenceinsofar as the human mind can apprehend order and harmony. For Einstein, doing science was nothing less than an attempt to understand this intelligence. Sticking to what we actually experience, the universe is better described ascreativerather thancreated.

I am at a loss. In what way is the universe creative? To be sure, materialists have mounted strained defenses against the evidence of cosmic design. But the multiverse hypothesis is bankrupt truly a fantasy. String theory is a delusional apparition. Stephen Meyers forthcoming The Return of the God Hypothesis makes these things clear.

Augusta seeks to encourage tolerance and agreement. What he has written, though, is a mess. Im baffled to see that Merion West thinks this is centrist.

Photo credit: JJ YingviaUnsplash.

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An Artist Examines Evolution - Discovery Institute

Marvels new New Warriors. DCs 5G Initiative. Riri Williams. Wallace West. Amadeus Cho. All-New Mockingbird. Carol Danvers. A list of borderline-heretical names, certain to induce lucid nightmares for long-time comic-book fans. The underlying theme congruent throughout those aforementioned disasters? Their agenda-driven hijacking and desecration of the legacy of beloved pre-existing characters.

To appease the new school of identity-obsessed writers within comics, the assertion Just make new characters has been upheld as a happy medium, to spare existing titles from corruption by contemporary politics, and open up new avenues for prospective writers to gift fans with unexpected breakout stars. However, with the stranglehold on content said identitarians have asserted, and vapid characters like Ms Marvel/Kamala Khan and Ms. America Chavez being only two of many unsuccessful experiments churned out in recent years, the latter half of that ambition hasnt come to fruition.

Related: Marvel Comics Introduces New Non-Binary Superhero Character Snowflake As Part Of Woke New Warriors Line-Up

But, before we go any further in examining the viability of the proposition, allow me to first steel-man the argument. When Just make new characters is said, what is meant is Create individualistic, complex, standalone characters, which arent derivative of established characters, dont supplant established characters, and arent diverse gender-or-race-swaps of established characters. Said argument has been propagated by numerous prominent industry commentators, including Eric D. July, Ya Boi Zack, and Ethan Van Sciver. This is a perfectly valid desire, but the current state of the comics renders it an insufficient remedy for the industrys ails.

Its issues are derived from the multi-faceted failings of modern comics. Namely: the ideology of the writers being inseparable from character creation; the incapability of writers with inclinations toward activism to compartmentalise characters and monthly floppies into their original, politicised content, and inherited, untouchable, and impartial intellectual property; and the over-saturation of stores, causing widespread closure.

Related: Comic Book Creator Gerry Conway Attacks Potential Customers In Illogical Racist Rant

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Lets deconstruct each of these points.

The coalescence of postmodernism and Marxism came to the following sequential conclusions. There are an infinite number of interpretations of a text. There are an infinite number of interpretations of the world. Therefore, objectivity is meaningless, because everyone operates on subjective observations and value judgements. Therefore, any hierarchy which privileges one perspective above another is evil. Therefore, hierarchies are only predicated on the immoral misuse of power. Therefore, hierarchies should be abolished in favour of equity (equality of outcome), to ensure there arent disparities in evaluating differing interpretations as valid. Therefore, to implement this, the current hierarchies, and distribution of power, must be inverted, and redistributed. Therefore, the oppressed groups must oppress their oppressors to rebalance hierarchal power, andas said power is amoral aside from its outcomeany method to do so is permitted.

This is why representation matters to those abiding by this ideology: although all perspectives are subjective, perspectives which align with the narrative that hierarchies are oppressive (for example, those decrying western society as a patriarchy, white supremacist, or heteronormative/homophobic) bolster and reinforce the overarching narrative that subjective perspectives are being suppressed.

You may be thinking to yourself: Isnt that like in Revenge of the Sith, when Jedi said Only Sith deal in absolutes, but thats an absolute? And youd be right: but these ideologues discard constraints placed on thought by objective facts and rationality, because theyre deemed part of the white supremacist, patriarchal philosophical tradition traceable through Jerusalem, Greece, and Enlightenment Europe (mainly Britain). So, they can contradict themselves with axioms like the truth is there is no truth, or all perspectives are subjective, but this group is correct because they all agree, and, like the Jedi, be ignorant to the eventuality that theyll succumb to a downfall set in motion by their own intellectual vanity. As Jordan Peterson said: postmodernists say biology doesnt exist, but they dont act like it because they all die.

Related: Zoe Quinn to Write DC Comics Batman and Superman Spin-Off The Infected: Deathbringer

Regardless of the ideologys contradictions, its imposed on our modern comics. So, what happens when this redistribution of power, to validate the abolition of objective facts and morals, is imposed on heroes, who abide by classical narrative archetypes and virtues? Simple: heroes become anti-heroes, at best, and villains, at worst. The imposing of a subjective view of the world, believing its a better one, on the world, by force, is the role of a villain. It suddenly becomes permissible to retaliate to speech with violence, because criticism is an attack on your subjective interpretation; and therefore your identity; and therefore you. Speech paradoxically becomes violence. New postmodern heroes redefine justice as the redistribution of power, and engage in, disproportionate retributive violence for even the slightest of infractions (as seen in Roxane Gays She-Hulk comics, or the deleted scene from 2019s Captain Marvel).

Its no surprise, then, that the Women of Marvel podcast unanimously agreed that they prefer writing villains. Their sympathy is derived from inverting the hierarchies of conventional justice to equally value the interpretations of the world held by villains and heroes, as to not unevenly privilege one over the other. They defined a villains vengeful externalising of their own past trauma as a catharsis: an inversion of the terms original intention. Catharsis, to those unaware, was originally the ablution of negative emotion from audiences of Grecian tragedies, who would weep at the death of the tragic protagonist. The fall of the protagonist was initiated by Hamartia: their fatal flaw, often exhibited as them being conceited, ambitious, and, above all, prideful. Again, its no coincidence that the confession of Marvels female writers sympathy for villains came during their Pride Month episode.

Related: Marvel VP and Ms. Marvel Creator Sana Amanat: Blatant Racism, Bigotry & Hypocrisy Peddled by This Administration

And who, you might ask, is responsible for the degradation of the two industry titans to this well-documented degree? At Marvelas YouTuber The Fourth Age has concisely presentedit began with Joe Quesadas hiring of Sana Amanat as Director of Content and Character Development. Amanats wealthy family has close ties to the Clinton Foundation and Hollywood. Amanats bachelors degree was in political science, with an aim to be a journalist, before working for Virgin Comics after its owner, Amanats friend, offered her a job. Three years later, the company folded, and Amanat and two other Virgin Comics employees were brought aboard Marvel by Quesada. When the head of content and character creation has spoken about the importance of intersectional identity at the White House on Obamas invitation, you can expect a little ideological bias to permeate the trajectory of the companys content.

At DC, former co-publisher Dan DiDios culture of incessant reboots and crossovers was conducted to force an arbitrary and equitable outcome of diversity and representation, and the false dichotomy of widening your audience by catering to a supposedly untapped market by pandering to minorities with identity politics. There is, of course, a profoundly racist idea at the core of this marketing strategy: that universal ethics exhibited by heroes like Batman and Superman are inaccessible to non-white men, and women, because they originate from a western philosophical tradition. Not only is the ignorance of Eastern and Middle Eastern contributions to that tradition astounding, but its also the inverted perspective of 19th century racists who barred non-whites from education on the grounds that they believed white thought to be inaccessible to them.

Related: Report: DC Comics Co-Publisher Dan DiDio Exits Company

So, with the ideology identified, its evident as to why it cant stay confined to the pages of their original characters. The ideology is so pervasive, and permeates all established mediums and media that activists can infiltrate, because the ideology mandates promulgation until their mouthpieces definitions of diversity and inclusivity are uniform. Therefore, be it with the takeover of established titles, or creation of new characters, its evident that no avenue in comics would mitigate the dogmatic political poison of writers who agree with this ideological framework.

The other predominant issue isover at Marvel at leastthat sales are of secondary importance to ability to circulate their books as indoctrinating materials to children. Perpetuating the ideology has become paramount. Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, set to have its own Disney Plus animated series this year, had its appalling sales propped up entirely by Scholastic book fairs. Amanat has considered other cancelled books a success because of their educational property, despite their devastating impact on the sustainability of local comic stores.

Even in the MCU, poor-selling series characters have been fast-tracked to receive Disney+ series and movie appearances to fulfill Kevin Feiges sudden diversity and inclusion mandate. Consumer voice and creative meritocracy is being sacrificed at the altar of political correctness, and the industry itself is having the pages of its paperbacks drenched to illegibility with the blood.

This isnt only taking the sustainability of the industry round the back of the woodshed, but its also putting a slug in the skull of any hopes for audience expansion. With increased monthly issue cost, increased numbers of interconnecting titles, and an increased roster of characters which are made mandatory to know with the increased frequency of crossover events, the barrier to entry for new fans is nigh-on unscalable.

Related: Marvel Studios Boss Kevin Feige Confirms Gay Character for The Eternals: Hes Married. Hes Got a Family.

Now, I wouldnt be much use contributing to the discourse without proposing a solution, would I? Whilst Comicsgate has provided conscientious readers a noble alternative to the big twos monopoly on the medium, it still leaves a childhood-sized hole in the hearts of long-time fans. But fret not: DCs Black Label line seems to provide a model for a healthier industry. Producing less books, with higher quality control, and focused on narratives concerning flagship characterswithout culminating in an interruptive universe-wide cataclysm or reboot every six monthshas proven a profitable and acclaimed venture. Hopefully, an emulation of this by Marvel, following a necessary ousting of the ideologues sitting pretty alongside Amanat, will revitalise both companies. However, with rumors that AT&T might cancel DCs publishing wing, and Disneys detestable regime over Stan Lees legacy looking unshakable, Im nihilistic about such a prospect.

Related: Ethan Van Sciver Speculates DC Comics Will Be Sold by AT&T to Please Hedge Fund Investor

Without greater consumer consciousness, and a reorientation of the industry toward an ethic of individualistic exhibitions of virtue constituting heroism, laughable characters like Snowflake and Safespace will continue to kamikaze the profit margins of comic books into obsoletion. I say we hold off on going gung-ho on bloating continuity with a cavalcade of new characters, and only focus on high-quality iterations on flagship titles, until we uproot the bad actors in the industrys midst and settle on a sustainable business model as a fandom. Currently, waiting for new characters untainted by the derangement signature of the contemporary zeitgeist is a forlorn and fiscally untenable hope indeed.

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OPINION: The Irresponsibility Of The Just Make New Characters Argument - The MIX

President Donald Trump announced Friday the government is waiving school standardized test requirements amid coronavirus disruptions. He also said federal student loan borrowers will be able to suspend their payments for at least 60 days. (March 20) AP Domestic

As coronavirus COVID-19 and Louisiana state mandates have students at home, high-schoolerstaking Advanced Placement classes are shifting to a new kind of test.

What's normally a 3-hour-15-minute test on paper is going to be 45 minutes long and taken online.

"We've practiced all year on paper; this is a different way of doing things," said Jordan Gaspard, who teachesteaches AP Language and Composition at David Thibodaux STEM Magnet Academy in Lafayette.

The online exams are "free-response," in which students write in their answers. Students will have the option to write their responses by hand and submit a photo, or they can take the test on any device computer, tablet or smartphone, according to CollegeBoard, the company that administers the tests.

"Based on the number and length of school closures, it's clear that the usual way AP Exams are given at schools wont be possible," according to CollegeBoard.

MORE: Coronavirus: STM, Teurlings take learning virtual to protect,prepare students

We're in uncharted territory, and I think they're making the best of a bad situation. The good thing is they are not testing any skills (that would be taught) beyond March.

The company said colleges support this solution and have longaccepted a shortened AP Exam for college credit when groups of students have experienced emergencies.

For each Advanced Placement subject, there will be two different testing dates, which have yet to be released. The full exam scheduleand additional testing information will be available by April 3.

"We're in uncharted territory, and I think they're making the best of a bad situation," Gaspard said. "The good thing is they are not testing any skills (that would be taught) beyond March."

Schools in Louisiana are closed, but teachers like Gaspard are making sure their students are ready for the test by emailing students with links to free resources and practice tests from AP and CollegeBoard. He is going over skills three times a week through Google Classroom.

MORE: 'It's my hope schools can resume' this year;officials makecontingency plans

These aren't required, as the Lafayette Parish School System is not giving assignments or tests while schools are closed. But teachers are making resources available, whether they be for fourth-grade math or the AP English compositionexam like Gaspard's juniors.

His students can take advantage of free, live review sessions via the AP YouTube channel. AP teachers from across the country go over skills like "identifying the rhetorical situation in a pre-20th century text," which students could see on their exam.

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Keagan Peterson, who teaches AP Government and AP History to sophomores at Lafayette High, was focused on getting resources to her students before the district's directive or CollegeBoard's videos.

"We hadn't finished three units before we left," Peterson said. "So I was really focused on pushing that content to students and practicein Google Classroom."

MORE: ACT date rescheduled from April to June due to coronavirus

For more of her students, these are their first-ever Advanced Placement classes, which earns them college credit if they take and pass the AP exam.

It's a college class, so you get a very hard-working student. The content is difficult. The pacing is difficult. Expectations are pretty high.

"It's a college class, so you get a very hard-working student," Peterson said. "The content is difficult. The pacing is difficult. Expectations are pretty high."

She said some of her students are doing their own research and investigation to get ready for the test. Some are watching the livestreams on YouTube and Facebook to practice while also gettinga connection to others in a classroom.

MORE: Louisiana sends SOS for ventilators; may extend coronavirus stay home order

Peterson has watched some of the CollegeBoard classes and has recommended them for her students. The classes are starting with content she had covered already.

"They're doing a great job giving guided practice," Peterson said. "It is part content and part review."

A big focus in the classes is on free response questions, which will be the totality of the shortened test this year. Peterson has practiced free response in her classes, but as one part of a mix of questions.

"That (practice) is invaluable right now," Peterson said. "If you are lacking in FRQ, there's a lot less wiggle room."

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Coronavirus: Advanced Placement students can still take exams, but they'll be different - Daily Advertiser

By this point in March, the Kansas football team was supposed to be four practices into its spring schedule. At least that was the plan before the coronavirus pandemic changed everything.

Now, the Jayhawks don't know when they will have a chance to practice again.

Its really tough, former KU starting quarterback Carter Stanley told the Journal-World when asked what type of impact losing the 15-practice spring schedule would have. I couldnt even imagine.

KU Athletic Director Jeff Long told reporters during a video conference on Monday that head coach Les Miles and his assistants were geared up and ready to embark on the spring schedule the first practice was set for March 17 and the finale slated for April 18 when it had to be put on hold, and pressing pause felt like a big blow.

And even though the original version of spring football has essentially been canceled nationwide, Long remains hopeful some alternative practice schedule could be put in place once KU operations start to get back to normal.

Photo by Nick Krug

Nick Krug

Kansas head coach Les Miles calls out players to go head-to-head in the Jayhawk drill during practice on Thursday, Aug. 8, 2019.

We are looking nationally about how that will be handled whether there's a possibility of being able to come back and have some kind of a spring practice in June, maybe as an extension of the preseason going into August, Long said. So maybe there's additional days added on that front end. But none of that has been decided.

As the Jayhawks and college football players nationwide wait to find out whats next for them, Stanley said he felt sorry for his former KU teammates, and he was thankful that his final season in the program wasnt marred by this type of obstacle.

Obviously if this happened last year, it would be catastrophic, Stanley said, because we had a new staff and were putting in an entirely new system.

During his five years at KU (Stanley redshirted as a freshman) he learned that spring football is a great opportunity for every player in the program, as well as a critical stage for developing team chemistry.

For players, you can put yourself in a position to be the starter for fall camp if you stack days consistently, Stanley said. For coaches, its huge, because you can put in almost the entire playbook and get 15 opportunities to evaluate players.

For the current KU team in particular, spring practices projected to be a pivotal stage for the quarterback competition.

The last time offensive coordinator Brent Dearmon was made available for interviews, back in December, he envisioned senior Thomas MacVittie and junior Miles Kendrick as the two QBs in the program likely to battle for the starting job in 2020.

When asked about the challenges that would result from the loss of a typical spring schedule, former KU linebacker Joe Dineen said it was likely to hit the QBs the hardest.

Its not the end-all, Dineen told the Journal-World, because a lot of competitions can roll over into camp. But usually I think teams will know what direction theyre headed by the middle or end of spring ball regarding the QB position.

Dineen said the absence of spring football would be a setback for younger Jayhawks in particular. Those sessions can provide a rare chance for players buried on the depth chart to prove themselves.

If you redshirted or didnt play much defense or offense (the previous season), spring ball is kind of where you get the opportunity, Dineen said, because when camp rolls around you get into more game plan stuff and coaches dont have the time to evaluate a bunch of guys.

Spring repetitions and meetings, Dineen also pointed out, give players time to get acclimated to new coaches and their different coaching styles.

This offseason, Miles hired four new position coaches running backs coach and special teams coordinator Jonathan Wallace, tight ends coach and recruiting coordinator Josh Eargle, safeties coach Jordan Peterson and outside linebackers coach Chidera Uzo-Diribe to replace assistants from the 2019 staff who left the program.

Hakeem Adeniji, a former four-year starter on KUs offensive line, said the Jayhawks could take some solace in the fact that the loss of practices would affect all football programs, not just Kansas.

The teams that will be, I guess, the most benefited by it would be the teams that have the least amount of turnover, Adeniji told the Journal-World. I think we definitely need it. So many seniors gone, people having different roles.

Dineen was hopeful that teams could make up some of that lost time in the summer if the coronavirus situation improves enough by then.

I hope the NCAA will grant them extended summer hours, Dineen said, and maybe some nonpadded practices in the summer to make up for this. But itll be interesting to see how KU and every other team can overcome this.

Stanley said coaches who are best navigating these bizarre circumstances by maintaining contact with players about playbooks and the like will benefit from those endeavors eventually.

Who knows how long this will last?" Stanley said. "But the teams that do the best job of communicating and teaching now will show a lot in early games.

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'It's really tough': Loss of spring practices could hit KU football hard - KUsports