Reflections on youth football, season two

Right after a crushing playoff loss in cold, windy weather, the football coaches of my son’s youth team gathered the kids around for the usual post-game talk.

The season is over now, there’s no getting around it. This is the end.

After 13 weeks of practice six hours a week … after 9 games … after all the team-building that results from good leadership of 25 ten-year-old boys who love football and get along well with each other … here we are now. Done. Over. After all that effort, and all that investment, suddenly, it’s all over.

Some of the coaches got choked up trying to put their intense emotions into words. Just like last year. And listening to them, and watching them, so did I. Just like last year.

And this was a totally different set of coaches from last year.

Two seasons of football, two different sets of coaches, but two identical scenarios at the end of the season: a tough loss, and an emotional message.

Two sets of good people connecting with our young men, doing a wonderful thing for them, and for us. Two sets of dads who throw themselves into coaching with great dedication and desire. with a sincere and earnest wish to teach football to 9- and 10-year-old boys. For nothing. Well, it isn’t really for nothing: the coaches get to spend a little of their own money, and a lot of their own time, energy, and emotion.

Some kids aren’t so lucky, I know, and end up with jerks for coaches, who ruin an entire sport for them forever. We’ve been lucky enough to go 2-for-2 in the Good Football Coaches category, but I know that maybe some folks feel differently about this whole thing. And maybe I’ll even feel differently someday.

But clearly, for the coaches we’ve had, this is a labor of love. And when it all ends so suddenly, it’s extremely hard to face without some powerful emotions bubbling up to the surface. For some of us, it means an apple in the throat, and watery eyes.

I know if I was a coach and had to get up there, and look at the young faces of 25 young men that I’d grown to like and respect, and deliver a summary of how proud I was of them for trying so hard, for so long, I’d struggle to get through. I know I would.

As I’ve learned over the last two enjoyable seasons, football builds bonds like no other sport that I’ve ever been involved with, as a parent or as a child. The investment of time and emotion is so big. SO, so big. And with all that investment comes bonding. Boys with other boys. Coaches with boys. Parents with each other. Parents with coaches.

It all comes together, slowly, over a period of weeks. It turns into a team, a real team, where everybody works together for a common goal, without concern about who gets credit.

And it hurts when it ends. It hurts a lot. There is a very real sense of grief for the end of that bond. Maybe it hurts the adults more than the kids. In fact, I’m pretty sure about that.

And then we drag ourselves back to work, school, or wherever it is we put in our time each day, but we do so as changed people.

We’ve been transformed. Literally, transformed by the power of connecting with other people and working towards a common goal. It’s an amazing and beautiful thing. And I’m pretty sure this is one of the most powerful draws that keeps people coming back to play football, and keeps coaches coming back to coach it, at least in our local youth program.

Someday, when I’m old, and Jacob is grown, we’ll talk about the good times we had when he played youth football, and how much we both enjoyed it, and how much we both learned. Not just about football, but about other people, especially his coaches. What good people they were, and how much giving they did.

In some respects, life is really all about building memories, and it feels good to know you’ve just built another one. It feels really, really good.

Pelosi and Reid: “Hey America! Don’t Like My Legislating? Dial 1-800-EAT-SHIT!”

“Of the People, By the People, For the People”? Pfffffft.

Sen. Orrin Hatch: “Democrats have decided they have to pass a bill no matter how unpopular it is.”

And by “Democrats”, he obviously means “Nancy Pelosi” and “Harry Reid”.

What a stunning time we live in. Harry Reid I can understand. The Senate is composed mainly of pompous pricks.

But the Speaker of the House? The House is the most democratic chunk of our federal government. Pelosi is a Democrat. Ostensibly, this is the party of the powerless, the man on the street, Joe Six-Pack. All House members face re-election every two years, so they have to at least pretend they care about what we think. Usually, anyway. Of course, they get behind closed doors and stab us in the back when it suits them, but at least they gave the impression of caring about what we wanted in the past.

And make no mistake, the public has made it very clear—via face-to-face meetings with elected representatives, and polling data—that they don’t like the expensive, mostly-hidden piles of crap being sold to us as “health care reform”.

“Bolt the doors! The pre-schoolers are here!”

Apparently, some folks in a neighborhood not far from ours are easily distressed.

A group of neighbors near Park Boulevard and Hillside Avenue in Glen Ellyn are all up in arms about … a Montessori preschool in their neighborhood!

Yikes. What’s next? Gangs and drive-by shootings?

The main concern seems to be traffic. OK, so a few more cars come and go at the same times every day. How big can that “problem” get? It’s a Montessori pre-school, in a town with tons of stay-at-home moms. We’re not talking 200 kids here.

Ron Repking and his wife (name not given) own Diamante Montessori Preschool, and they bought a vacant church to house it in 2007. And it’s been a contentious battle ever since, with yard signs, lawsuits, and everything in between. When driving past the area, I’ve noticed the signs, and wondered just what they were all about.

Now I know, and I think it’s pretty lame.

Who knows, maybe some benefits accrue to the neighborhood from having young kids educated there, Montessori-style? Is that possible? Good kharma, and all that?

And even if the answer to that is “no”, and you have to put up with the auditory horrors of children squealing with delight now and again, we think you just might survive it. We really do.

And if you get supremely annoyed by a few extra cars cruising on public streets, to deliver and pick up children to/from a licensed school run by responsible adults, then maybe it’s time to lighten up a tad. Just a teensy bit.

Or, continue to push hard on an issue that no reasonable person sees your way.

Either/Or.

John Hughes, Prolific Writer of Comedy Gold

I guess I never fully appreciated the true writing genius that was John Hughes, who died a couple of weeks ago of a heart attack at 59.

He wasn’t just a director. In fact, he was primarily a writer, a very prolific one, who started out writing jokes for Rodney Dangerfield on the side, after working tirelessly at his day job at the Leo Burnett ad agency. Later he submitted freelance work to National Lampoon, where they eventually hired him as an editor.

There, he hung out with P.J. O’Rourke. Think for a second about the writing talent in that pairing. The back-and-forth between those two must have been pretty entertaining, I’m guessing, especially on the occasional four-hour lunch.

Eventually he moved his focus to Hollywood, and the rest is history. He wrote some of the best funny movies of the last 30 years, classic comedies including:

• Mr. Mom
• Vacation
• Planes, Trains, and Automobiles
• Christmas Vacation
• Home Alone
• Beethoven

Most writers couldn’t come up with one movie on that list, much less all six. “Mr. Mom” and “Vacation” alone would cement his reputation as a comedy legend, and those came out in the same year, 1983.

And then there are the minor classics, like The Great Outdoors, Uncle Buck, Dutch, Weird Science, and a whole lot more.

A total of 38 movies have his name on them as screenwriter, nearly all of them in a period of just about 20 years, from 1982-2002.

How many screenwriters in the history of movies can match that track record? I don’t really know, but it can’t be very many.

And he was also, of course, a wonderful director of fun, clever, amusing movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Breakfast Club, and Sixteen Candles. He wrote those, too. And he produced over half of all these movies, as well.

He also loved music, and used his movies to promote it. He even says the only reason he went into writing was because he had no musical talent.

So as both writer and director, he basically invented a movie genre: quality, funny movies that are true and have characters with depth and inherent value.

Some of these may have aged a bit. But all movies from the 80s have aged, most of them quite a lot. Why is that? I’m not sure, but the silly hair and clothes sure don’t help. But we can’t blame Hughes for that, and besides, those weaknesses are overtaken by the quality of the stories, writing, and characters.

Some may dismiss his material as suburban and banal, the anti-Spike-Lee. OK, sure, it was about suburban white people. So what? Suburban white people have some compelling life stories to be told, too. Just because your Dad has a Porsche doesn’t mean you live a problem-free life, even though we like to pretend money fixes everything for us. And even if we grant that there is less true drama in those stories, the mark of a good writer is to make the everyday events interesting to us. And that’s exactly what Hughes did.

After dropping out of Hollywood to save his kids from its corrosive effects — thereby proving he respected his own kids, in addition to his movie character kids — he moved to a farm in northern Illinois and continued writing for movies under his pseudonym Edmond Dantes. He also wrote unpublished short stories for the last ten years of his life.

A true artist, both funny and endearing, who would not compromise his kids for the “advantages” of the L.A. lifestyle. Imagine that!

It’s pretty obvious to me that John Hughes was good people, who just happened to earn a living in Hollywood for a few years. For awhile, he was in Hollywood, but he was never “of” Hollywood.

And he was a prolific writer of comedy gold.

Goodbye is the hardest word

My oldest son James moved down to Carbondale yesterday to go to college at Southern Illinois University. They are known as the Salukis, but please don’t hold that against them.

It’s been a rough week in all kinds of ways. Last minute preparation, including him finishing painting our house (!), plus packing up the rented truck. Then he hit some horrible weather on the way, featuring a tornado warning. Good times!

But the roughest part is feeling like a major part of our life together is now just … over. It’s done. He’ll be 21 soon, and he has lived at home longer than most kids that end up going off to college, so there is that. But even if he comes back in December for awhile, or next summer for a couple of weeks, it’s never really the same any more. You can’t keep pretending they are still kids just because they live with you.

We can’t go back in time, but sometimes I think it would be nice. I’d go back to the days when he was 4 or 5 years old. We had fun together. I’ve never forgotten that. Neither has he. We bonded really well, and I loved being his Dad, and he knew it. I’m pretty sure he loved having me as his Dad.

As I write through my tears, I don’t know why this bothers me so much. It just does. Maybe I regret missed opportunities, or just worry too much. Maybe I depend on him to give me something in my own life, and maybe I shouldn’t do that. Maybe we’ll all be better off and he’ll be fine. Maybe this will be the best thing that ever happened to him, and I’m over-dramatizing.

I do know this: no matter what happens, I’m going to miss him.

I learned a lot being his Dad. It was challenging plenty of times, and I can’t say I always earned passing grades, either. But whatever it was, it was there, every day, like the Sun rising in the morning. There is immediacy and intimacy about living with people that disappears when they aren’t part of your daily space and time any more.

But he’s all grown up now … more or less … and he’s all moved out. And so that time of our lives is over.

And I grieve for that.

It was quite a ride, featuring laughter, tears, ball games, disappointments, injuries, and arguments, all the things that fit together when you live with your child. O-v-e-r.

Tomorrow we leave, early in the morning, to go see him in his new digs in Carbondale. He is so excited, you can just hear it in his voice every time on the phone. I’m very happy for him, and happy to see him so enthused and primed for his entire “away at college” experience. It’ll be very good for him, in all kinds of ways.

And then Monday, it’s back home, and his room will be just as empty as it is right now.

Maybe someday that won’t sting so much.

Holy Skewed Temperature Samples, Batman!

Just because some call it “science” does not make it so:

Eighty-nine percent of official U.S. temperature measurement stations are corrupted by poor site selection that gives false warming signals, according to a new study  by meteorologist Anthony Watts.

According to the federal government’s own siting criteria, the corrupting influences at those stations create a margin of error larger than the entire asserted warming of the twentieth century.

Eighty. Nine. Percent.

For those who don’t understand how embarrassing this is for the entire CO2-is-warming-the-planet theory, let me explain.

There are two key points here: the climate data itself is corrupted, and the climate models that use that data are unproven.

Climate Data is Corrupted

Computer models are the main support for the idea that CO2 warms the planet in the first place. There is no other evidence, to my knowledge, that supports CO2 as a primary driver for warming. These models are pretty much it. In fact, historical ice cores show the opposite, that CO2 is a symptom of warming, not a cause, and that the CO2 buildup lags the warming by about 800 years.

Those computer models, of course, need a bunch of historical data points as input in order to crunch the numbers and make predictions into the future.

Among the data they need, of course, is temperature data. And apparently, 89% of that data is basically garbage.

If the input data is garbage, then it doesn’t matter how great the rest of the modeling software is, the conclusions it presents are garbage too.

Climate Models are Unproven

And as it happens, the computer models used by the IPCC are suspect as well, because they haven’t published the source code so that it can be peer reviewed. Here’s why that is important.

I’ve worked in the software industry for over 25 years, most of that as a software developer. Computers are not magic. They can only do what the code they are running tells them to do. If that code has even minor errors in logic, the results are suspect.

To accept the conclusions of a software model that predicts the future, obviously you have no reality to compare the model’s conclusions with. So you need to have a “code review” by unbiased software developers who did not write that code, in order to check for logic errors, remove potential biases, ask questions like “why are you doing this here”, etc. It has to be examined, line by line, to see exactly what is going on in there, what inputs it is using, what it does with those inputs, the assumptions it makes about the effect of the different inputs, etc.

For all we know, a climate software model that hasn’t had a code review could be reading Ted Williams’ stats from baseball-reference.com and then saying “look, the planet is heating up!”. Who really knows? You can’t. Computer software is inherently secretive unless the source code is accessible to experts who can de-cipher it.

And until that code is available for the experts to examine, the models themselves are little more than a plaything.

What Science Does and Does Not Look Like

Yet, somehow, these playthings have been accepted as proof positive by the IPCC and the various governmental agencies the world over. They are untroubled by the lack of accountability on the part of the climate modelers.

That, my friends, is “advocacy”, not “science”.

So. The temperature samples are flawed, and so are the climate models that use the temperatures samples as input. Which means we have not just one, but two layers of obfuscation hampering our predictive ability regarding climate.

And according to the article above, the margin of error just from the bad sampling methodology alone is greater than the entire asserted warming of the twentieth century. Let that soak in for a second.

We keep hearing about a “scientific consensus” that CO2 is warming the planet. What does all of the above that tell you about the “scientists” who formed that consensus? What does it tell you about the degree of confidence we can have in their conclusions?

Science isn’t about “consensus”. This ain’t American Idol.

Science is about proof, and facts, and using those facts to prove (or disprove) theories. Scientists are supposed to be their own worst critics, and turn every implicit assumption on it’s head, and try to disprove their own theory. The science itself must stand on its own, otherwise, it’s bad science, and deserves to be ignored.

Where is the skepticism, the sharing of ideas, the spirit of pushing knowledge forward for the good of all mankind?

Real scientists do not hide their methods and threaten their questioners. Real scientists welcome examination of their data and methods in a spirit of inquiry and the advancement of mankind.

But in today’s increasingly bizarre world, to question any of this is to risk being considered a lunatic. Supposedly, the sane people are the ones who believe in skewed samples and flawed models. How did that happen? It’s like Pope Benedict and Galileo all over again. As Pope John Paul said about that dark period of scientific history, “This led them unduly to transpose into the realm of the doctrine of the faith, a question which in fact pertained to scientific investigation.” And so it seems to be happening again.

But as I must constantly remind myself, global warming isn’t about science, it’s about politics and using fear to scare us into supporting new taxes on our energy use and lifestyle.

And it is all based on the most ridiculous “science” one could possibly imagine: bad data feeding bad models. Now hand over your money!

I am always open to theories that are logically sensible and supported by evidence. And I invite anybody who disagrees with my points above to both (a) point me to a qualified review of any IPCC climate modeling source code, AND (b) disprove the conclusions of Anthony Watts regarding corrupted temperature samples. Real science requires that *all* of the steps along the way be correct. Every. Step.

Until such time, I’ll be disregarding all talk about warming the planet with CO2.

And I have to say I’m not wild about money-grubbing politicians and “scientists” using advocacy and obfuscation to deceive me into throwing money at them, on the pretense that it will fix a future problem for which there is no reliable supporting evidence.

Sorry, I’m not riding that train. Why would anybody?

Taking the Costco Plunge

After years of holding out for some now-inexplicable reason, we finally saw the light and joined Costco this weekend.

Costco, for those who’ve never heard of it, is a discount retailer that requires a yearly membership to join, similar to Sam’s Club. We could just as easily have joined Sam’s as well, but there isn’t a location that is very close to us. In fact, the closest Costco is about a twenty-minute drive, so that isn’t super-convenient either. But it’s close enough, starting now.

We went to the Bloomingdale store at around 12:45 on Saturday. Parking lot: big, and jammed. The membership process was easy, and fairly quick. We opted for the Executive membership, which costs $100, instead of $50 for the standard membership, but you get 2% back on your purchases, so it will easily pay for the difference if we spend $2500 in a year there. Which shouldn’t be very hard, since we spent over $100 the first day we went, mostly on food.

We spend an unbelievable amount of money on food, for a family of five. $250 a week, more or less. And we don’t buy lots and lots of extras, like chips, pop, convenience items, etc. (we do buy some of those things, but not much).

Places like Costco and Sam’s have good deals for families like us with their large packages of frozen meats, like hamburgers and chicken. Also deli meats, and the largest tub of yogurt I’ve ever seen, four pounds of yogurt. You need two hands to lift the thing.

And they had a ten pound bag of apples for like $8. Usually, people that buy ten pounds of apples have 6 kids, or horses. We, however, have a 10-year-old son named Jacob.

We go through all that stuff really fast, and it is all pretty expensive at our local Jewel Food Store.

So even though a Costco run takes forty minutes round-trip, we’ll find a way to squeeze in one or two trips a month, if we can save some bucks on the food bill, not to mention all the other things they have there. Like wine, beer, booze, a pharmacy, even golf balls!

Just two things to remember. One, we now need more storage space in our house. And two, we must never, ever go to Costco on Saturday afternoons.

Darrell “Shifty” Powers, R.I.P.

Click on over to Blackfive and read about the heroic life of one Darrell “Shifty” Powers, a genuine WWII hero who died a few weeks ago to almost no fanfare.

He served in Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division as a paratrooper, along with Major Dick Winters and the other guys from the 101st who were featured in “Band of Brothers”. An excellent series, by the way, and if you’ve never seen it, it’s well worth watching. You feel like you know these guys after it’s done.

He landed at Normandy on D-Day. He jumped at Arnhem in Operation Market Garden. He fought in the Battle of the Bulge.

But when he died recently, the media yawned. They don’t have time for men like him any more. They create other types of heroes that we’re expected to worship, built on image and appearance and never having done an honest day’s work in their lives. Polar opposites, in other words, of a man like Shifty Powers.

There’s a great story embedded in an email at the Backfive post, some of which I’ve copied here:

I met Shifty in the Philadelphia airport several years ago. I didn’t know who he was at the time. I just saw an elderly gentleman having trouble reading his ticket. I offered to help, assured him that he was at the right gate, and noticed the “Screaming Eagle”, the symbol of the 101st Airborne, on his hat.

Making conversation, I asked him if he’d been in the 101st Airborne or if his son was serving. He said quietly that he had been in the 101st. I thanked him for his service, then asked him when he served, and how many jumps he made.

Quietly and humbly, he said “Well, I guess I signed up in 1941 or so, and was in until sometime in 1945 . . . ” at which point my heart skipped.

At that point, again, very humbly, he said “I made the 5 training jumps at Toccoa, and then jumped into Normandy . . . . do you know where Normandy is?” At this point my heart stopped.

I told him yes, I know exactly where Normandy was, and I know what D-Day was. At that point he said “I also made a second jump into Holland, into Arnhem.” I was standing with a genuine war hero . . . . and then I realized that it was June, just after the anniversary of D-Day.

I asked Shifty if he was on his way back from France, and he said “Yes. And it’s real sad because these days so few of the guys are left, and those that are, lots of them can’t make the trip.” My heart was in my throat and I didn’t know what to say.

I helped Shifty get onto the plane and then realized he was back in Coach, while I was in First Class. I sent the flight attendant back to get him and said that I wanted to switch seats. When Shifty came forward, I got up out of the seat and told him I wanted him to have it, that I’d take his in coach.

He said “No, son, you enjoy that seat. Just knowing that there are still some who remember what we did and still care is enough to make an old man very happy.” His eyes were filling up as he said it. And mine are brimming up now as I write this.

Mine too, as I read it.

Real heroes are humble, and always deflect attempts to label them as such. In fact, that seems to be a pretty reliable way to separate real heroes from the loudmouth types who crave publicity about their alleged wartime medals and heroism, and are nearly always found to be lying about all of it.

And all these WWII vets ask is that we remember. That’s all. Just remember.

Because remembering is a form of honor. The cheapest form of honor, in terms of the price we have to pay, but still a form of honor.

“Just knowing that there are still some who remember what we did and still care is enough to make an old man very happy.”

Oh, but he was more than just an old man. He was a symbol of a time when attitudes were different, when people accepted epic responsibilities at terribly young ages so that we could be free today.

Are we thankful enough? You tell me.

I’ll remember, and I’ll teach my kids to remember, and I’ll ask family and friends to remember. It is the very least, the absolute least, we can do.

May he rest in peace.

First Rule of Financial Holes: Stop Digging

You have to wonder if maybe Illinois wouldn’t be in such a big budget crisis right now if the state legislature didn’t routinely, and for many years, approve new programs without funding them.

Seems a little risky, no?

In a business, or even a family, non-essential expenses are the very first thing you evaluate. It’s called “cutting the fat”, and it’s how sane people try to balance budgets.

But not in government! Governments have these wonderful ATM-like things called “taxpayers”.

Governments think taxpayers are awesome because taxpayers are too busy leading their lives to learn much about how completely they get ripped off by their governments. And the media likes taxpayers too, as long as they are kept in the dark about how markets work and what taxes do to an economy.

Isn’t it funny how none of the politicians or news stories mention any of this when the going gets tough? No, it’s all about yanking food right out of the mouths of starving children.

Gee thanks, but I’m trying to cut down on my big-government platitudes and insulting emotional appeals meant to trip my trigger and open my wallet.

The Economist notes how widespread it is :

Despite allocations of federal aid to states, services are being cut, state employees are being laid off, and taxes are being raised in order to balance the budgets of local governments constitutionally unable to run deficits. It’s not at all clear that the federal stimulus will entirely compensate for state-level fiscal tightening, which means that American fiscal policy could, on net, be contractionary.

Q: Is there anybody in the room who dares to ask the obvious? That, maybe, just maybe, we’re overspending?

A: Sadly, no. Doing that would require cutting programs that benefit special-interest groups. And the media, which frames the discussion about the role of government in our lives, believes all government spending is inherently a Good Thing.

And so on and on we go. Giving government more and more power by relying on it to fix things for us.

How’s that working out so far?

Off the Field with Randy Brown

Randy Brown hit a low point in April. A really, really low point.

He got fired from his NBA assistant coaching job with the Sacramento Kings. Even worse, all of his possessions were auctioned off in bankruptcy court.

As if all that weren’t already bad enough, among his possessions were three irreplaceable items: his three NBA championship rings from his years with the Chicago Bulls.

You can always buy another house, and more cars, furniture and clothes. It’s just stuff. And like all “stuff”, none of it really matters all that much, even though we tell ourselves that it does.

When you can buy another one pretty much any time you want, it is less valuable, by definition.

It is another thing entirely to lose a championship ring. A championship ring oozes with meaning. It symbolizes sacrifice, teamwork, and achievement. It represents something few players ever experience: the pinnacle of success for your sport. It demands respect from peers and fans alike. And it reminds you of many good memories and the people that made up one of the best parts of your life. Along with much more, I’m sure.

Brown admits it’s all his fault:

”It’s my fault. I can see how it all happened and the mistakes I made. Like others, I trusted the wrong people, people who were my best friends. Some even lived with me. I never thought of myself as being a big spender, but I did loan and give away a lot of money to so-called friends who never paid me back.”

But now, in a turn of events that would seem far too obvious for even a Hollywood screenwriter,, all of that is changing for Randy Brown. For the better.

This past Wednesday, he was named director of player development with the Bulls.

And Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Bulls, has even promised to replace those irreplaceable championship rings.

• New job with your old team: check.
• Replace irreplaceable rings: check.

Randy Brown is one lucky man.

And he has some good advice:

”I can’t wait to address the incoming NBA rookies at the next retreat. I want them to know that the wisest things they can do are save, trust the right people and be very, very careful where you invest. I learned my lessons the hard way. Thank God my wife, Tamara, and I have a chance to start all over again with our three children, Justin, Janel and Diamond.”

Slow Down, Chumps

If you drive in Illinois, you’d better keep your speed EXACTLY at the work zone speed limit.

If you go too slow, you’ll have 20 ton semis about 6 inches from your rear bumper.

And if you go too fast, even by just ONE MPH, you risk a $375 fine mailed to you as a result of photo enforcement that goes into effect tomorrow, July 1.

Of course, slowing down every driver in every work zone in the entire state will cost us all more time and money. More time, obviously. And more money, because gas mileage is always worse at 45 m.p.h than at 55 or 65. And gas prices are already higher in the summer, because demand is higher … because there are already more of us on the road. A perfect time to insist on slower driving.

And I won’t even get into the possibility that some of the speed trap photo enforcement equipment will be poorly calibrated, resulting in fines for innocent drivers. That would be unhelpful.

I also won’t get into the risks of adding time to an already-long drive which can cause drowsiness later. Again, unhelpful.

But as a benefit, we might get some unknown level of slightly reduced risk. Maybe. So, YAY!

Enjoy your summer! Get out there and travel — the economy needs you!

Fight Back, or Get Used to Sending More of Your Money to the IRS to Slay Imaginary Dragons

In a stunning development, we have learned that Congress is right now crafting legislation that is not just useless, but dangerous and expensive too.

Which, like, hardly ever happens!

It’s called the Waxman-Markey bill. You might not know about it, but you should, because it is just the latest example of how government deceives you in order to take your money. It’s what they do.

It presumes a global warming crisis that is actually unraveling as we speak, as new, compelling evidence emerges nearly every week that we are now entering a historic cooling period.

It assumes that even if this climate crisis did exist, it is best fixed by … collecting money. Really. This is what Congress does: think up ways to waste our money on mostly ineffectual and sometimes downright dangerous “solutions”. When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

And even if you buy into all that silliness, the proposed solution hasn’t worked very well in Europe.

Summing up then:

1. A crisis that doesn’t exist,
2. used to coerce you and me into paying more money into our government,
3. to fund a solution that won’t work.

A perfect storm of pandering.

I know global warming is the current “hot button” issue of the day, and lots of people view it as a crisis that needs our attention. But it doesn’t take very long to discover that the “science” behind it is extremely shaky; in fact, it is not science at all. That’s why they use words like “global warming denier”: it’s a belief system.

Usually, investing your faith where it doesn’t belong is a pretty bad idea. Render unto Caesar, etc.

And we don’t need lies in order to pursue reasonable energy and environmental policies. There were already plenty of good reasons to support the “green” lifestyle. For years, I’ve supported recycling, fuel conservation, and research into new sources of energy. I could support things like wind farms if there was any hope that such a thing could work in a huge country like the United States. And we need to re-open drilling in places like ANWR in Alaska and offshore. The caribou and the godforsaken mosquitoes in ANWR  won’t mind, and other countries are drilling off our shores already, so what do we gain by sitting it out?

But what we don’t need is fear-mongering based on half-baked theories, and taxation that couldn’t fix it anyway. Plus, of course, the meddling in economic markets, which didn’t work out too well with the mortgages.

And even worse, all the social divisions created by all of it. You risk being called ridiculous names by “scientists” if you dare to question their methods and conclusions. Really?

Cute documentaries with polar bears is one thing; turning the junk science behind it into a demand for tax revenue is quite another.

We don’t need the Waxman-Markey bill, or anything remotely like it.

Re-Open TWA800?

Jack Cashill says “Reopen the TWA Flight 800 Case”.

Pretty good idea. Not going to happen.

I’ve always been fascinated by this case, and never bought the TWA 800 explanation about a spark in the fuel tank.

First of all, how many billions of air miles have been flown in the last 80 years? And this happens exactly once? Sorry, not buying that. Even an exceedingly rare occurrence, requiring many variables to be just so, happens more often than that.

Second, aerospace engineers go to great lengths to 100% guarantee that a spark could never occur anywhere near a fuel source. If they screwed up, well, once again, we are back to the “just once?” argument. Design failures occur more than once every hundreds of millions of trials.

Third, there is credible eyewtiness testimony from 270 people who say they saw something else happen, and evidence that some witness testimony was doctored or completely made up to support the conclusion that it was due to a spark.

Well, that’s when I say hold the phone.

Two hundred and seventy people. Not just one person, or three, or seven. And not all in one place. They didn’t even know each other. But they all looked into the night sky and saw something bright flying UP from the horizon, turn at an angle, and fly into something else and cause an explosion.

Two hundred seventy examples of this kind of independent eyewitness testimony is awfully tough to explain away. And when you read the way their testimony is twisted into something else, well, what does that tell you?

I don’t claim to know what happened, but I have heard the theories, and all are frightening.

1. Shoulder-fired SAM from terrorists in a small boat in the ocean
2. U.S. Military training accident
3. Submarine-fired missile

None would shock me, and all make more sense to me than a spark in a fuel tank.  

But I do know this: there was more than enough means, motive, and opportunity for shadowy government influence on both the investigation and the official conclusions.

I’m not going to go into tons of detail here. Read the above (including the comments, some very interesting), read Cashill’s book “First Strike”, read the twa800.com site. Examine it yourself. Make up your own mind. Remain open to theories that fit facts. That’s what I do.

Remember, though, that investigations are not perfect. They are subject to meddling, malfeasence, and ineptitude. This is the government we’re talking about. The same goverment that can’t decide if eggs are good for you or not. The same government that included corrupt and overtly political leadership at DOJ, which controls the FBI, and which used that FBI to investigate political enemies of the Clintons.

To pre-suppose that Truth often results from any investigation by that group into an “accident” with a distinct terrorist flavor is to live in fantasy land.

Governments have every motivation to cover up military accidents or terrorist operations run by other nations. Because they are not just embarrassing, they reflect potential national security flaws. And in the face of admitting “yes, some losers dressed in rags sat in a boat a few miles off our shores, and used arms we sold them to shoot down a defenseless civilian airliner”, a government may well try to steer the investigation to a more comfortable conclusion. To the extent that information can be controlled and manipulated, it may well be. None of that should shock us. 

Powerful interests intersect here. Covering up truth, rather than revealing it, is often the whole point.

Again, I don’t have the answer here. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a spark in a fuel tank.

When Do We Say “Enough is Enough”?

The number of Chicago Public School students murdered this school year? 35

Alex Arellano, 15 years old, was said to be a quiet kid who stayed away from gangs. He was tortured before he was murdered: beaten with baseball bats, hit by a car, shot in the head, and burned beyond recognition.

Thirty. Five. Children. Murdered. In one school year.

I don’t care how big a school system is, you can’t explain away a statistic like that.

It indicates social breakdown on a mass scale.

People keep trying to address education failures in big cities by treating them as education problems. They are not. They are generally social problems, manifested in many ways, just one of which is poor education performance.

Security is the first requirement in a productive society. Unsurprisingly, kids who have to worry about getting killed while going to school don’t focus all that well.

So, some questions.

Who is really in charge in the city of Chicago? Is it the gangs, or the police?

And can the mayor continue to insist that the problems with crime are caused by legal gun owners? After all, that is the only rational basis for arguments in favor of banning handguns. So why isn’t it working?

I’ll just throw this out there. It isn’t working because it can’t work. It is a fatally flawed idea. It isn’t a matter of not enough money, or not enough laws, or not enough police, or just needing a few tweaks to get the “right” kind of weapons off the streets.

The evidence says that concealed-carry laws reduce crime, while handgun bans increase it; a city that truly wants to be a safer place would opt for policies that work, instead of platitudes that don’t.

Peoples lives depend on these policies. It isn’t a parlor game.

Some People Aim Higher Than Others

Every once in a while, we hear about a young person who digs down deep and shows us that all those negative stereotypes we think we know about young people can be wrong.

Way, way wrong.

My latest column at The Love of Sports is about one such young man.

Ryan Paxson is the 20-year-old son of John Paxson, former NBA star and current GM of the Chicago Bulls. Ryan was the son of privilege, and he knew it. Last year, instead of continuing down that easier path of life, he chose to become a US Marine.

Here is my treatment: Off the Field … With Ryan Paxson.

The original version is on my Essays page: Off the Field with Ryan Paxson, USMC.

Congratulate Me

Next Stop:  World Domination

I fixed my very first toilet this weekend. It was rough, but I got through it.

And really, there wasn’t that much water in the basement when I was done.

It had been acting weird lately. Flushes okay, but fills reeeeaaaalllllllyyyy slowly. I did notice, though, that it would fill normally if you shut off the inlet valve and turned it back on right away. Weird.

My total experience with fixing toilets prior to this: replacing a couple of flappers. And this is after being a homeowner for over 20 years. Yeah, I’m not sure how that happened, either.

Moving On Quickly … For Whose Benefit?

I like some of these points, about the steroids scandal in baseball, and I do agree that we should move on.  Fixating on scandal is no way to live.

But I do not agree that “cheating is cheating” and because of that alone, we have a good reason to shrug our shoulders and pretend the whole thing never happened.

And besides, it’s too soon: first, let’s allow some time for the victims here, the fans, to heal.  Here’s three reasons why.

Cheating vs. Gamesmanship

The word “cheating” covers a lot of ground.  One form, more commonly known as gamesmanship, has a long and storied role in baseball, even though technically it could be considered cheating.  Throwing a spitball, corking your bat, catchers moving their gloves a tiny bit to frame the pitch … these are examples of gamesmanship. And the players themselves begrudgingly accept it.  They admire those who can get away with it, because it is commonly considered acceptable behavior.  Barely acceptable, yes, but acceptable, nonetheless.

Changing your body’s hormonal balance by taking illegal drugs is not gamesmanship. It’s cheating in track, in swimming, in cycling, and yes, in baseball.

Obviously, not everybody will see a big bright line separating those two categories, but I sure do.

For one, public opinion would consider it cheating.  You can argue definitions all night long, but when public opinion goes against you, it’s a rough road.

Also, it is pretty clear that taking a substance that shrivels your acorns and causes depression and homicidal rages because it screws with your hormones is way, way beyond weight training and basic nutrition.

Don’t Lie to Us

But even beyond that, there is another issue, and for many fans I think, a bigger issue:  don’t lie to us.  Many fans don’t like to be taken for fools, and Sosa, Bonds, the whole lot of them, have been treating fans like chumps for years now.  Millions of us don’t care for it.  And some of us would now like to see certain players taken down a peg or two as a punitive measure.

Truth matters. The fans’ opinion matters. Image matters. Goodwill matters. Public perception matters. The history and integrity of the game matters; baseball, unlike any other sport, is the grand old game that it is because of the accumulated history behind it.

Object Lessons and Role Models

In fact, I would go even further here:  I think object lessons in cheating, and more importantly, how you handle yourself when you get caught, have a sizable impact on society and culture in general.  Especially young people.

This impact is impossible to measure, but it’s there.  And it can be bad, or good, or a mixture.  So it would seem to be in our best interests right now to hear some mea culpas and some truth-telling (finally).  Maybe even a little groveling. It’s cathartic, and that’s worth something to the fans, and therefore, to the game itself.

Here’s a truism:  what people do matters a lot more than what they say.

And whether they seek it out or not, athletes are role models, and have responsibilities to our youth.  You want fame?  OK, but in exchange, you get to help mold young people.  It’s just the way it works.  Even Charles Barkley, who famously shrugged off his role model status many years ago, has come around to understand the power of the famous athlete to shape behavior in young people.

So while I understand and advocate the desire to move on, and not focus too much on the seamy side of baseball and sports in general, and I most definitely agree that the media in general is exploiting all this for ratings, I still think there is value in players being held accountable.  Tremendous value, in fact, to the fans, to the game, and even, in some ways, to our society.

Blame It On Quants, Don’t Blame It On Me

A few weeks back I wrote about our Economic Reckoning. I wondered how so much bad debt, in the form of credit default swaps backed by risky mortgage debt, could get rated in the AAA tranche by the various rating agencies.

I might have that answer now.

This article, Recipe for Disaster: The Formula that Killed Wall Street by Felix Salmon, explains the story of an industry deathly afraid of unquantified risk, that fell in love with a new formula, and bet the ranch on it.

And lost.

This new formula is called a Gaussian copula function, and it attempts to assign a discrete number X to represent a complete picture of the risk of insanely complicated financial instruments.

A simple, beautiful, and, in my mind, ultimately vain concept.

Impossibly, insanely complicated financial instruments.  Built on layers of other impossibly, insanely complicated financial instruments.  All with basically an unknown level of risk.  These had been confounding Wall St. for years.  But using this new formula enabled entire new markets to open up, which means more revenue.  Lots and lots of revenue.

Unfortunately, it was all based on a correlation model.

Even the credit rating bureaus, like Moody’s and Standard & Poors, bought into it.  A correlation model.

Turns out, there were flaws in that correlation model. Imagine that.

Derrick Rose is Old School

Basketball fans around the country probably haven’t seen much of Chicago Bulls rookie Derrick Rose yet. And they don’t know what they’re missing.

The first thing you notice is his court sense and basketball IQ.  He thinks “pass first”, like any point guard should, and he sees the floor well, and gets the ball to open teammates, usually with a bullet pass.  He has to be prodded to shoot, although he is taking more shots now, and making them, which forces the defense to start making choices they don’t want to make. 

Then you notice his athleticism.  He can jump.  Real high.  And he has a rare combination of both speed and quickness that make it difficult for most defenders to guard him.  On the break, he often runs faster than every other defender, while dribbling and looking for openings.  But he seems to hide all this well, with an efficient, almost “sleepy” style of play.  He doesn’t waste a single motion, and looks like he isn’t going anywhere, and then, WHOOSH!, he flies by his defender, and the next one, and another one, for a dunk.

Blog Post Announcing a Break. Oops. Break’s Over!

So … I guess I took a week-long break last week. Didn’t really plan it, it just sort of happened.

Not sure why.  Maybe it’s because the news is b-o-r-i-n-g these days.  Oh, so a Democratic president is pushing through $800B worth of pork within 3 weeks of taking office?  And the media thinks this is a great idea?  And yet, polling tells us that the more people read about the “stimulus”, the less they like it?

Wow, sure couldn’t see that coming!

Or maybe it’s because I’ve been spending more time chilling in our living room, listening to my middle son Jacob play his new guitar.  We just bought him an Epiphone Les Paul “Special II”.  It’s amazing what you can get for $169 at Sam Ash these days.  I’ll post a pic later.

Now we just need a decent amp; the cheap 12 watt Kustom is not really cutting it.  He’s going to play at school next week, to audition for a talent show, with his friend Ethan; they’re going to play “Wanted Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi.  Yes, our house sounds a lot like 1985 radio lately.

I’ve been very impressed with Jacob’s commitment to learning how to play.  He picks it up multiple times per day, and also plays our other guitars.   We have four of them now (2 electric, 2 acoustic).  We should start a string band.

Let’s see, what other reasons do I have for not blogging much?  I haven’t been surfing the ‘net as much either, for some of the same reasons.  And since blogging is primarily reactive, I don’t write as much, either.  Although, I have been writing for The Love of Sports, and had three pieces published lately: a lamentation about The Saga of Chief Illinwek, and a piece about Tiger Woods and his Dad, And the Son Becomes a Father, and a silly list of Top Twelve Fun Facts about the IFAF.  Please, click and read. Here’s my author page.

Plus, blogging is getting boring.  Yet again.   Let’s see, going back to the Spring of ‘03, this has to be, what, the 5th or 6th time I’ve gone through something like that?  Yeeesh.  I don’t know how people do it, day after day, year after year.  It’s like having your brains, and your life, sucked out through a Silly Straw.  In fact, this long 3 day weekend, I hardly touched a computer at all.  Didn’t really miss it, either.  That’ll change, though.

All I can say is, thank God above for Turner Classic Movies.

Oh, and BookTV, where over the weekend, I saw George Friedman, who wrote “America’s Secret War”, talk about his latest book “The Next Hundred Years”.  Which I ordered today, in fact.

All you folks out there who think you know what is going on in the world, because you listen dutifully to NPR or read the Washington Post?  Might want to read Friedman’s “America’s Secret War”.  You may find your world view altered slightly.  I’m just sayin’.