1000

After nearly fourteen years, this is my 1000th article on this blog.  Since another word for thousand is "grand" I've compiled a few "grand" facts.

• "Grand" originally came from the French "grant."  Then, as now, it meant large or powerful. [source]
• The name for the 100 grand bar (originally, the $100,000 bar) was inspired by the popularity of quiz shows in the 1950s. [source]
• The Grand Slam tournament in tennis, which is a sport I hardly know anything about, includes four events across three continents. [source]
• Alex Rodriguez set the major league baseball record for grand slams with an astounding twenty-five during his career.  This is one of those records that requires both individual skill and the fortune to have teammates who put you in a situation where a grand slam is a possibility. [source]
• While a Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming was founded in 1929, the current park includes large portions of land that were donated years later by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. [source]
• The Republican moniker "G.O.P." now stands for "Grand Old Party."  However, it originally stood for "Gallant Old Party." [source]
• On average, two or three people die from falling into the Grand Canyon every year.  However, since millions of people visit a year it has to be considered a safe place to visit, statistically speaking.  That said, I would be uptight about the possibility if we visited it with our kids. [source]
• Gerald Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He holds the distinction of being the only U.S. president to hold the office without having been elected either president or vice president. [source]
• There is a World War II power station underneath Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, New York.  It was placed there to protect it from German sabotage during the war. [source]
• The first piano created was a grand piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Italy in the late 1600s or early 1700s.  It was originally known as the "pianoforte," which means "soft" and "strong."  It differed from the harpsichord before it in that you could modulate the volume of the instrument based on how forcefully or lightly you struck the keys. [source]
• The "grand theft" in "grand theft auto" refers to the fact that what is being stolen is valuable.  "Petty theft" refers to the theft of less valuable items. [source]

soccer

I think my personal curse is that I love playing most sports, but I'm not particularly good at any of them.  At this stage of life I'm far less competitive than I used to be, however.  So, I can get a lot of enjoyment out of a losing effort.

In the past few months I have become re-acquainted with soccer.  I played when I was in early elementary, but have barely ever played since.  Some people from our church formed a team on a co-ed, novice soccer league, and I decided I'd join. As with many sports, I've always assumed there is more to the sport than I understood, and I've learned that this is one of the few times that my assumptions were correct.

Through a short season of games I am working on improving my poor form in everything from kicking to running, and I'm learning how pathetic my endurance is, even with my recent bout of exercising.  Enough others on our team are as new as I am that our team is objectively the worst-performing one in the league.  However, winning really isn't everything.  This is one of the most consistently fun things I've chosen to do in a long while.  I really look forward to our Friday night games for little reason other than the fact that I enjoy playing sports.

I used to think that my interest in playing sports was directly tied to my being a very competitive person.  Honestly, now that I am less competitive I enjoy playing them more.  There is less pressure to do well, and I can focus on small accomplishments during the game rather than whether our team won.  Every week I'm able to tally a few accomplishments I'm proud of to offset the embarrassing things I'm doing on the field.

Being on a losing team has also provided the opportunity for me to talk to our kids about being a good loser.  I understand kids getting mad when they lose, but I have been able to point out to my son especially how everyone on our team is very happy after the game, even when we get trounced.  It's one thing to say that keeping a good attitude when losing is important, but it's another thing to be able to illustrate the appropriate attitude and behavior.

Our team is still searching for that first win.  Maybe when we get that I'll get a new burst of competitiveness.  For now, I'm just enjoying the journey.

world games?

I'm not sure how much of the Sochi Olympics we will be watching this year.  The kids are at that age where they can sort of watch the events, but they get bored with most of them.  Our five-year-old daughter was able to sit through and watch one or two figure skating routines this evening, but otherwise complained when the games were on.  I think the upcoming games in Rio de Janeiro and in PyeongChang will hold their attention better than this year's games in Sochi.

For my own part, some of the Winter Olympics sports can be a little difficult for me to get into.  I sort of alluded to this eight years ago (Has it really been that long?), but a lot of the events feel like the sorts of things that only a few hundred or a few thousand people in the world even have the access and resources to compete in if they are interested.

As an example of what I am talking about take a look at the list of official bobsled tracks in the world.  Cool Runnings taught us that you don't need to live near one to compete in the Olympics, but you certainly cannot expect to place well unless you live near a good track, can afford a bobsled, and have the time and money to practice.  This means that there are only a few thousand people in the world who can even realistically have the opportunity to compete in the sport, so this doesn't feel have the world-reaching feel that it should.

As another example if you live in the United States and you want to get into ski jumping you'd better hope you live near one of the seven ski jumping slopes in the country.  Really, any skiing competition limits the pool of potential competitors quite a bit based on means and geography, but the ski jump is the most extreme of those.

Every sport requires some sacrifice and/or means, but it seems like there are more that have this limit in the Winter Olympics than in the Summer Olympics.  My sense is that there are more Winter Olympic games that are outside the reach of what a typical family with an Olympian could afford than there Summer Olympic games.  I do acknowledge that there examples of accessible and inaccessible sports in both.

I think speed skating, and especially short track speed skating, is among my favorite sports in the Winter Olympics for this overall reason.  While training and equipment are probably expensive, it is an accessible sport.  You can become fast on skates without a trainer and without equipment, and so it is conceivable that you could acquire a sponsor of some sort to get a trainer once you prove your natural and practiced abilities.  It's the track and field events of the Winter Olympics.

I am looking forward to the Rio games in a couple of years.

sports praise

As a full disclosure before I get into this I want to note that there are a handful of famous athletes that I look up to, so I'm a bit of a hypocrite with what I am about to say.  One justification for this is that in most cases I do not admire an individual simply for his athletic ability.

Women are judged by their appearance, and men are judged by what they accomplish.  Neither of these are right, but both will be the way things are for a long while.

I have been astonished by the number of people I have seen lately who have gone out of their way to lavish praise on specific sports players in ways that they might not do the same for a Joe nobody.  This has been especially noticeable with Mariano Rivera retiring, Peyton Manning having a career year, and a lot of people wanting to compare Michael Jordan to LeBron James as of late.  While the players praised play at a level that indeed requires incredible dedication, I have to believe this praise is somewhat absurd.

Are any of these people ever going to hear most of the accolades bestowed upon them?  They'll hear a tiny percentage of it for sure, but is there any real value in arguing about who the best basketball player in recent history is or waxing eloquently over a quarterback who impresses you?  Ultimately, it is pontificating about arbitrary information that does not meaningfully affect anyone in earshot.

I have been thinking about this due to the value statement I opened this post with.  Those sports figures are valued because of what they have accomplished (and may still accomplish) through their physical and mental abilities, as well as their willingness to train, and due to the efforts of countless coaches.  Does that change their value as people, though?  Is Peyton Manning worth more than a gas station attendant because one has accomplished a lot in the sports field and the other works a low-prestige job?  Would I be as excited to have the gas station worker's signature or autograph as Manning's?

I am sure that the allure of celebrity is relevant in every culture, but I believe in the West we especially look up to sports figures because we value individual accomplishment in men.  While you have to have won the genetic lottery to have a chance at being a professional athlete, you also typically have to have a strong work ethic to succeed.  Since everyone knows that great effort is necessary to perform at that level it makes those sorts of celebrities admirable.

The same sort of thing happens with women as well, but in regard to appearance.  As an example, Marylin Monroe gets quoted a fair bit, but few would have originally cared about her were it not for her appearance.

My real point is simply that I wonder if the human tendency to praise celebrities more than everyday people points to a deeper issue that we as humans do not know how to value ourselves or others appropriately.  There are some really valuable people in low places, and athletic ability and looks seems like a lousy measure for determining how valuable they really are.

black monday

As a warning, I don't expect most of my readers to bother with this one.  The major themes are football, business, and statistics, and I am fairly certain that only interests a small percentage of my readership.

Today is the day after the last day of the football season, and is typically known as a black Monday when teams who had disappointing seasons announce which coaches are getting fired.  This year, a lot of coaches with relatively successful careers have gotten the boot.  The names wouldn't mean much to people who don't follow the NFL, but they include people like Lovie Smith, Andy Reid, and Norv Turner, all of whom are usually in the playoffs.  And that brings me to a point.  I think that most of these firings are ridiculous, and they point to a mistake that people make when they look at statistics.  there frequently is not enough data available to make the right decision.

One that sticks out a bit to me is the firing of the Chicago Bears coach, Lovie Smith.  I have always detested the Bears, but I have long held quite a deal of respect for Smith, both on and off the field.  While Detroit struggled through ridiculously bad season after season, Chicago was graced with a defensively-minded coach who kept getting them into the playoffs, and was also someone to look up to personally.  Something to envy for sure.  This season, he was canned after a winning season that just missed the playoffs.  A lot had to do with the poor performance of the team's offense, but turn a couple of the team's losses to wins and Chicago would be falling over themselves to keep Smith.  That's the point of my contention.

The win/loss ratio for a sixteen-game football season is not a large enough data set to use to know whether a coach is good or bad.  String along several seasons of mediocre performance, and that would probably be enough, but if you have someone in-house who has a record of success, but one or two mediocre seasons, that is reason to keep rather him rather than to get rid of him.  I see this in other business environments as well.

In my experience and in discussions in my MBA classes, I have been amazed at how willing businesses are to live and die by quarterly numbers.  Most executives and financial decision-makers will have had to have had statistics classes to attain both their bachelors and masters degrees, yet they make decisions (out of necessity or not) that ignore the fact that statistical variance all but dictates that everyone will have periods where their unmanipulated numbers underperform expectations.

Looking to another business source, one of the biggest red flags for the Bernie Madoff scam was that his hedge fund never underperformed.  Statistically this was nearly impossible, even if Madoff was the wisest investor around.  Everyone misses on some quarters if they're being honest.  Rather than his consistent performance being a reason to invest with him it should have been a reason to avoid him like the plague.  People simply aren't wired to look for that sort of red flag, though, and they are wired to punish others based on the appearance of underperformance caused by statistical noise.

hiring alex smith

I play fantasy football, and as a part of that I am aware of a specific player that in my opinion illustrates a major factor impacting the national employment situation today.

The San Francisco 49ers had the first pick in the 2005 NFL draft, and they used the opportunity to draft Alex Smith.  While I don't watch college football, I do know that he had a strong couple of years with the University of Utah and received some votes for the Heisman trophy.  The 49ers certainly felt he had something with him to pick him first overall.

In the next five or six years Smith would be considered something of a bust.  He almost always played just well enough to stay the starter, but no one would think that his play ever justified a place in the first round or two of the draft, let alone first overall selection.  In fantasy, people would chuckle if someone dared to draft him as anything more than a low-level backup for their imaginary team.  No one really took him seriously as anything other than a game manager for a team that relied on its defense for wins.

While most people figured the issue was with Smith, part of the problem was that Smith had five or six offensive coordinators and offensive systems in the same number of years.  This meant that he had to essentially relearn how to do everything every year, and readjust to a system that may or may not be a good fit for him.

Before the start of the season last year the team hired Jim Harbaugh as the head coach, who just happened to be a former quarterback.  I do not know what specifically happened in the coaching process, but the evidence indicates that Harbaugh was able to help develop Smith's potential like other coaches and coordinators were unable to in the past.  In that year Smith's play improved dramatically, and his performance showed more intelligent decision-making.  This is to the point where Smith started a streak of passes without an interception toward the end of the season that surpassed any similar streak any other quarterbacks on the team have ever had.  Those other quarterbacks include Joe Montana and Steve Young.  That streak has continued this season, and he has not thrown an interception yet.  The team is widely considered one of the likeliest to reach the Super Bowl this year.

I think this points well to something that doesn't get enough attention today.  Potential workers need to be developed, and businesses need to bite the bullet and accept that.

The narrative that has taken hold in the last few years in relation to the job market is that jobs are available and there are job shortages in places, but there is a serious mismatch between the jobs that are available and the skillsets of job seekers.  This, I have read, is the a major factor for the high unemployment rate.  As a fake example that mimics what I have read, a business that makes airplane parts might state that they'd be happy to hire welders, but they just cannot find any who are qualified to weld aluminum parts.  I don't completely agree with this assessment, though.

A few months ago I read an article, and I unfortunately cannot find it now, that disputed this narrative.  It stated that there is always a bit of a jobs/skills mismatch in the economy, and there is no real statistical evidence that the mismatch is larger now than at more prosperous times.  The notion is popular because both liberals and conservatives can use it to push their particular agendas.  Those who are more liberal can use this narrative to push for more education funding, and those who are more conservative can use this narrative to shift the responsibility for the jobs situation from business to the incompetence or laziness of the those who are out of work.  At the risk of beating up a couple of strawmen I would like to look at these scenarios.

The education argument has a little bit of merit, but most of it falls apart when you really think about what the narrative implies.  It essentially states that the education system itself fails to get people into a gainfully employable state.  If this is the case, the idea that simply pouring more money into that system will solve anything is naive.  A lot more could be said about this education argument, but that's not where I want to focus.

The other argument that the potential employee pool is simply inferior interests me more, though.  Businesses have always had to expect new hires to go through some learning curve.  Perfect candidates rarely exist, and when they do they typically command top dollar.  The expectation that, even in a weak jobs market, you can be picky enough to demand a laundry list of areas of expertise and experiences with different scenarios and technologies so that you don't have to develop the new hire, then offer a low-ball wage is ridiculous.

What a business is really saying when they say there aren't any qualified candidates is that they are not capable of developing the candidates that are available.  Either that, or they're simply unwilling.  That may be true, but it is also a red flag that those businesses might not acknowledge their role in creating and nurturing star workers, and might be shirking the responsibility to develop them at all.

This is a problem because in the new economy the jobs that require little training are also the ones that will be the easiest to automate, and these jobs will therefore cease to exist.  It's possible that the remaining important roles will go unfilled, or there will be a lot of people playing the role of an undeveloped 2005 Alex Smith who can sort of but not really do their job rather than being a 2012 Alex Smith who is a borderline rock star.

I think a lot of businesses have noticed that some employees get training then leave once they have been fully developed, and that is why those businesses are hesitant to hire someone who needs some development.  I have seen the same thing happen several times myself where someone worked just long enough to get past the learning curve only to leverage that new knowledge to find a role somewhere else.  I do believe, though, that if a business gains a reputation for one that is constantly developing its employees, and also gains a reputation of not downsizing half the company when hard times hit, that this will ultimately lead to retention and recruitment of long-term employees who will give the business a return on those resources spent in development.

In conclusion I believe that workers and businesses share the responsibility that the worker be up to the task of doing their job.  If there is a skills mismatch and a business cannot find people who have the requisite skillset, that is not the fault of the pool of workers that they do not have those qualifications.  It is a failure of expectations that developed people would be ready and waiting.  In that scenario, it is the business' responsibility to find people who can be properly developed to have the needed skillsets.  The companies that know how to identify diamonds in the rough and develop them will find that there are a lot of 2012 Alex Smiths available to be discovered.  Those companies will outperform the ones who decide not to bother with hiring their own Alex Smiths in the first place.

demonization and favoritism

Something that perplexes me is the human drive to like and rationalize for those who we agree with and to demonize those we do not.  I am not pointing to any one group of people in particular.  In fact, what surprises me is how universal this appears to be.  I am also shocked at how on guard I have to be to keep from doing it myself.

This is probably the most pronounced in politics, but it also shows up in most other areas of life like religion and fandom.  Rather than accept that all humans are flawed and endowed with some redeemable traits, no matter their particular opinions, it is easier to see only the bad in those with whom I disagree and the good in those with whom I agree.

I cannot emphasize enough how amazed I am at how easy it is to slip into the line of thinking, "Of course that politician had shady dealings.  Have you seen his policy positions that completely contradict mine?"  It is also easy to think regarding my teams, "Ref, are you blind calling that unnecessary roughness?  That was a perfectly legal hit by the player on the football team I am pulling for.  I'd bet he volunteers his time and resources to his community, and saves people from burning buildings in his spare time—the saint!"  All of this is as if someone's position on the ideal tax system or role in a team from Detroit has anything to do with the quality of their character.

This sort of philosophical favoritism, giving some people unwarranted hate and others unwarranted admiration, is obviously not what God called us to.  I am not convinced that this is the sort of thing that most Christians are aware they need to give over to God, though.  Even though we all know that anything short of love for our neighbors is sin and we know that favoritism has been forbidden, do we (and I am certainly asking this about myself) really believe it?  Does this sort of thing truly make the cut of things we really think of as falling short of God's glory?

I am as in need of as much assistance in countering this flaw in my thinking on this as anyone else.  That is the point, though.  We all have natures so horribly flawed that we cannot on our own obey a simple command like, "Love your enemies..." (Matt 5:44).  This, even when the only thing that makes them an enemy is a difference of opinion about something relatively minor when considered in the grand scheme of things.

Disagree with me on this if you must.  Just understand it means that you must be a bad person.

something light

I actually have a very difficult time coming up with light topics for this blog.  The deeper or more involved ones take some time to type, but I usually have several in the back of my mind that I am mulling.  The problem with that is I expect that most people wanting to read a blog are not looking to commit a lot of time reading through multiple treatises that simply state the blogger's personal viewpoint, and are instead looking for something light.

So, here's a random list of statements about light.

• I used to think that foods labeled as "lite" were labeled using an improper spelling to get around FDA rules.  At least today, there are FDA rules for what can be labeled as "lite," so I was probably wrong.
• Thomas Edison did not create the world's first incandescent light bulb.  He created the world's first economically viable incandescent light bulb.
• A lightsaber's colors are determined by the crystal used in its creation.
• The person who was struck the most times in his life by lightning was Roy Sullivan, who was struck seven times over a period of thirty-five years and change.  He died at his own hand due to relationship troubles rather than directly due to the lightning.
• A boxer who is in the official Lightweight class weighs between 135 and 140 pounds.  The limit for  heavyweight is a mere sixty pounds more than the upper bound of this at 200 pounds.
• About ten years ago some researchers successfully stopped and restarted light by forcing it through a super cold cloud of atoms.  This all occurred in the span of a thousandth of a second, which makes you wonder if the validation process was the researchers asking each other, "You saw that, right?" and responding in the affirmative to make each other feel good.
• The poem Charge of the Light Brigade retells the true story of a cavalry charge in the Crimean War that occurred due to miscommunication.  The poem supposes that the soldiers knew the charge was a mistake, but gave their lives for it anyway.
• Hasbro has an online Lite-Brite that you can use to make and print designs.
• The first traffic light in a form similar to today had two colors (red and green) and used a buzzer as a warning of light change rather than a yellow light.
• Gordon Lightfoot's Wikipedia page lists his various musical styles as, "folk, folk-rock, and country music."  I could have sworn that was three different ways of saying the same thing.
•  The word, "lite," in Swedish means, "a little."

march nothingness

I enjoy March Madness for a different reason than most everyone else does. I love this stretch of time when most other people are spending time watching a sport that I don't care about and TV shows are preempted, so that I can get a bit of extra time that I wouldn't have if I were a basketball fan.

By rights I probably should care about basketball. Now that I have a degree from the University of Kansas, I probably should care how the basketball team does. Of all the major sports, though, basketball is probably the one I care about least. I really, genuinely don't care. Golf, tennis, and NASCAR don't count as major sports.

I have a few problems with basketball. First, it is the sport where physical build most obviously trumps determination. Someone who is seven feet tall is going to outplay someone who is five-and-a-half feet tall regardless of the amount of practice they put in. Second, I can't recognize most strategy in the game like I can for a game like football, so it just looks repetitive to me. Finally, I have never played basketball well, so I never had a reason to care about the sport.

The problem is, most people assume that if you are a man in your thirties and you have an interest in some sports you must like college basketball. I don't like to keep pointing out that I don't care about the sport, so I usually find other ways to deflect conversations about basketball at this time of year. This used to be pretty difficult when I was in class at KU and everyone wanted to talk about the games, the players, the history, etc. I was relatively successful in avoiding looking like I had no school spirit when that was the reality, though.

Do you have anything similar where you just don't care about something you probably should? Is there something you don't always readily admit just simply doesn't matter to you?

don't think

When I was in college I had to take a typing class to complete my Management minor. Most people were able to test out of the class, but not me. To that point I had not had a lot of typing experience, or at least experience typing in a manner other than the hunt-and-peck method, so I knew I would not be capable of testing out of the class.

Now, more than ten years later typing is not such a big deal. I type a lot every day like most modern office workers and people mildly addicted to being online. I was thinking recently about how typing is not something I think about. To think about typing is to slow down and mess up. The finger movements have to be automatic to the point where there is almost no conscious effort involved. This is not the sort of thing at which I excel.

I used to think that the elements of sports that I was weaker in had something to do with athletic ability. I don't think so any more. For example, in baseball I have always been a decent fielder but a horrible batter. This make sense because when I bat I want to stop and think about whether I am going to swing and where I am going to swing. By the time I have thought about it the ball is in the catcher's glove. There is no stopping and thinking about where the ball is going when I am fielding, so I don't have many problems with that.

This is the same with musical performances. If a musician has to think about where each finger has to be on the piano or guitar or whatever instrument, then that musician will have a natural limit to his or her ability to play his or her instrument. Really impressive performances generally come from people who are able, through practice, to make their fingers move to the right place almost without conscious thought.

This all is an epiphany that I had recently. The things that I excel at are those things where I am given the opportunity to ponder. Through unending repetition I can make myself perform automatically, like with typing, but it comes less naturally to me than some others and I have to really work at it if it is very important to me.

The follow-up epiphany was that all practice is is a process for allowing you to do something properly without too much thinking. The thinking is done in advance when the practice routine is designed so that as little brain power as possible will be needed when that practice is put to the test. In more areas of life than I would like to accept, it is all too easy to think too much.

lion down

Since I was living in the upper peninsula of Michigan when I first became interested in sports as a kid, I have been a Lions and a Tigers fan. This is not an easy proposition if you know anything about the records of both teams over the last twenty years, but as I have noted before, I take some pride in pulling for my team even when things are bad. This also diminishes my patience for bandwagon fans.

While the Tigers were horrible for a while, they have at least been an average team over the last three years. The Lions, however, have genuinely stunk for the entirety of this decade. They stunk in the 1980s as well, and they were an average team in the 1990s only because they had Barry Sanders. They constantly battle to just stay out of last place, not just of their division, but of the entire NFL. Part of the appeal of fantasy football is that I can watch football games and pay attention to something other than the score of the Lions game. At least I have some control over how good my fantasy team is. It's a way for me to be emotionally detached from my team until some day in my fifties when they have a winning season again.

Just how bad are the Lions? They have a 31-84 record and have never in that time finished in higher than third place in a four-team division under the leadership of the current team president Matt Millen, which has spanned about seven years. This year they have already been blown out by two teams, the Atlanta Falcons and the San Francisco 49ers, that were among the laughingstocks of the league last year. The Lions have only won one playoff game since 1957 in a league where twelve teams every year advance to the playoffs.

I have heard many commentators express the opinion that Millen is the worst team president in the history of the NFL. It is now common at Lions games for the crowd to chant, "Fire Millen," as the team makes yet another opponent look brilliant. Even so, Millen still has the full support of William Clay Ford, Sr., who owns the team. The fans, however, don't have the same warm feelings or patience for Millen. The opinions of most fans can be summarized by the thoughts in this letter from a former fan and this bit of opinion from an ESPN contributor. Even Bill Ford, Jr. has issued an opinion that Millen should leave the team.

Normally, I am not a person who wants to see someone else lose his job. I really have to make an exception for Millen, though. By now he shouldn't need the money, and all indications are that he is not suited for the job. Part of the human experience is learning to accept that you cannot be good at everything. So, in helping him understand this part of the human experience, and to help the Lions actually have a winning season sometime this century (I wish that were hyperbole), Millen has to go. It would be nice to see the Fords sell the team to someone who understands football as well, but I can only hope for so much.

In this spirit, I have considered rooting against the Lions this year in the hopes that a lousy season will force Millen's ouster. It goes against my nature, and I suspect at this point that Millen wouldn't get fired if the team went 0-16 for the next three years, but it is all I have to hold on to at the moment. That, and my mediocre fantasy football squads.

human interest

This is not a new or original observation by any means, but watching the Olympics over the last week has reminded me of it. Half of Olympic coverage seems to be trying to convince the audience why they should root for a specific athlete. Everyone worth caring about, it seems, has overcome serious adversity or at least has an inspirational story.

This is not to say that I don't have an appreciation for some of the stories that I have heard. The story last night about the long distance swimmer who was competing even though one of her legs had been amputated was amazing. How you swim competitively when you are missing such a major appendage is beyond me.

I think that it is funny that, while one of the biggest challenges of airing the Olympics must be to condense so much content down to something manageable, so much time is spent on content that is not the actual competition. I have watched some of the coverage on CNBC as well, and I haven't seen as many backstories there. I wonder if this is because the purpose of the secondary channels is just to cover specific events that couldn't fit on the network coverage while the purpose of the network coverage is to present content that has the broadest appeal.

I am trying to imagine what the backstory would be for me. "Dust wasn't always such a superb competitor in the recliner-sitting competition. For several years he had to do the bulk of his training on a couch. Even with this early setback, today he performs like a natural."

If only recliner-sitting was a competitive Olympic sport.

gymnastics

I am sitting here watching men's gymnastics on the television, and a few thoughts spring to mind.

First and foremost, only during the Olympics would I bother watching gymnastics or admit to it. I have never cared about gymnastics. Even if I did, though, it is an unwritten rule for most straight guys that they don't confess to watching gymnastics or figure skating with enjoyment. Men's gymnastics or figure skating are especially taboo.

Second, I would like to better understand how the men who make the Olympic team originally got interested in gymnastics. Performing at this level obviously takes excessive skill and training. Who are the boys who grow up driven to be a gymnast rather than a football, baseball, or soccer player? I'm not trying to disrespect the dream, but I am trying to understand it. Had I been blessed with the athleticism necessary to be a gymnast there are countless reasons that I would have probably used it to play a sport like football rather than use it to swing around on a pommel horse.

Finally, who created these events? For the life of me, I cannot imagine a rational scenario where the pommel horse was decided upon as an event. I still haven't figured out how specifically it is judged. I also do not understand why do the men have the high bar and the women have the uneven bars. The rings do make sense to me, but they don't appear like they would be a fun event in which to compete. By that measure, the vault is the only appealing men's event. I could get into the vault.

Even if I have more points to make I'm not going to blather on about gymnastics any more. I have probably already lost enough cred as it is.

judgmental

This post is a confession of my judgmental attitude about some specific things. I need to note that no one who I know who reads this blog has ever triggered the attitude that I talk about here. I wouldn't post this if that were the case.

Try as I may to address this, there are a few things that I can stil be quite judgmental about. A lot of them have to do with how people spend money, so I am sure this says more about me than them. It's really none of my business how people spend their money, and I am definitely not a good judge of the frivolous, but certain key things trigger my judgment. Again, this is something that I am working on.

When I speak with someone who golfs regularly, which isn't that often, I have a hard time not thinking in the back of my mind that a cheaper and less time-consuming hobby might be a better idea. This is wrong on a couple of levels. While a serious golfer may sink several thousand dollars a year into the sport, I know that casual golfers can do so for a few hundred a year. Even if someone does spend thousands on the sport, it's his or her decision on how to spend it.

When I visit a house where the decor has a very expensive feel I make similar judgments. The interior design has to look very exquisite for me to feel this way, but when it does I do. I think about what a waste this extravagance is. I don't think about the things that I might like that are expensive.

When I see someone in a new BMW or Mercedes or similar luxury car my judgmental attitude is triggered again. I wonder who in the world would need such frill. I don't think about the fact that my Taurus would be a luxury in some areas of the world.

The reason that these specific things trigger these bad thoughts is that these are things I always mentally associated with people who were upper class when I was growing up. I don't make those judgments about people who have cable television, for example, because my family as well as many of my friends' families had cable when I was growing up. I judge golf largely because I didn't have any close friends who I knew golfed.

Regardless of my reasons, I know I need to be more careful about how I interpret other peoples' relationships with their money. Mine is the one that I should be concerned about.

on a tangent about sin

One of the podcasts I listen to is just two guys who record an hour-and-a-half fantasy football conversation out of their living room in Philadelphia. Usually, this podcast makes me think more about what quarterbacks I want on one of my teams than about spiritual issues, but last week was a little different.

One of the guys noted that he had offered a wager to a Dallas Cowboys fan regarding the next Cowboys/Eagles match-up. The response he got from the Dallas fan was that he didn't gamble due to religious reasons. This started a conversation in the podcast over whether gambling is officially a sin. A quote that stuck with me was, "Why is God against everything I think is fun?"

Something that really annoys me is that I often feel forced to either take a position for works or against works. Either I have to be the judgmental person who sees just about everything as a sin, or I have to be the permissive person who can't make the judgment that anything is wrong. On this blog I have picked on the judgmental perspective more, but both options are equally frustrating to me.

If someone asked me why everything they wanted to do was a sin, I would probably have a hard time responding because my conception of sin would likely be different from that person's conception of sin. I don't think that God is waiting to automatically strike down everyone who commits some specific action that a lot of people consider a sin, but anything that a person considers fun has the potential to come between that person and God. Things that may appear to be sins aren't and things that may not appear to be sins are.

When Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, I do not think he was exaggerating. It would make sense that the man who has more money and the trappings that go with it (power, security, popularity) simply has more things that can get between him and God. Having those things is not sin, but being unwilling to give them up is.

So, for the moment, I think that just about everything can be a sin. Whether you put it before God and let it become sin is another story.

november news

I haven't done a top ten list in a while, and with Letterman's writers on strike I figure a few people might be going through withdrawal. So, here are the top ten news stories so far this month.

10. Britney Spears succeeds in making Kevin Federline the most fit parent available for their children.

9. Fans of "Survivor", "The Amazing Race", "Dancing with the Stars", et al fail to notice the Writer's Guild of America strike.

8. Dennis Kucinich and Duncan Hunter both put up a strong fight to be the most irrelevant remaining Presidential candidate.

7. The Mormon Church edits the Book of Mormon to modify the religion's assertions of the Native American genealogy and to make Reebok the official sports shoe of Mormonism.

6. Iraqi Kurds detain soldiers from Turkey who were part of a Turkish attack on Kurdish territory in Iraq. This reminds millions of Americans to add both poultry and cheese to their Thanksgiving shopping lists.

5. A senate investigation into questionably extravagant purchases by mega-ministry leaders causes Pastor James Shorm of Rochester First Baptist in Minnesota to stop using premium gas to fill up the church van, just to be on the safe side.

4. Gas prices skyrocket, dramatically increasing the income of nations in the Middle East and the smugness of the typical Prius owner.

3. Mattel announces that the company has plans to enter the nuclear arms shipping container industry since it has a lot of excess lead lying around.

2. Denver Broncos running back Travis Henry appeals his marijuana usage conviction with the rationalization that everyone in Denver plays a mile high and on grass.

1. An unnamed blogger who is short on ideas decides to post a completely unfunny top ten list and, furthermore, expects his audience to read it.

fat fingered

On Monday I went bowling as part of a team-building activity at work. I was reminded of a question I always have had when trying to find a suitable ball. Who is it whose fingers are so much skinnier than mine who still wants to use a 16 pound ball?
I generally look for a ball in the 14 to 16 pound range because I rely heavily on the weight of the ball pushing the pins around. I am not accurate enough to use a lighter ball. I would figure that, since I am looking for bowling balls on the heavier side of the scale, the finger holes in the bowling balls that I check would tend to be larger. As a general rule, people with smaller fingers should want to use a lighter ball.

This is apparently not the case. More often than not I pass up a ball because my fingers do not fit. I have often wondered if anyone actually uses those heavier bowling balls with the smaller finger holes. Maybe there are a lot of people with skinny fingers. Or maybe I just have fatter fingers than I thought.

500

Today is my five hundredth post. Since a five hundred record in sports indicates a season where a team has the same number of wins and losses, this post is about being average.

I do not think that I am good at being average. There is not really a better way of saying it. I have some good strengths and some bad weaknesses, but I rarely feel average. Maybe everyone is like that, and I am more average than I think.

A book written a few years ago called The Average American listed a few things that describe the majority of Americans. I blatantly lifted the list from a longer list at NPR, but NPR ripped its list from the book.

According to the book (I am taking NPR's word for it), the following bullet points describe most Americans. The parenthetical remarks describe whether that specific bullet point describes me.

• Prefers smooth peanut butter over chunky (no)
• Can name all Three Stooges (yes)
• Lives within a 20-minute drive of a Wal-Mart (yes)
• Eats at McDonald's at least once a year (yes)
• Never sings in the shower (not usually, but not never either)
• Lives in a house, not an apartment or condominium (yes)
• Has fired a gun (yes)
• Is between the ages of 18 and 53 (yes)
• Believes gambling is an acceptable entertainment option (yes, but with serious restrictions in place)
• Grew up within 50 miles of current home (no)

According to these amazingly arbitrary questions I am 70% typical American. How about you?

that's not news

I have heard a lot of criticisms of the news in my life. I have issued some complaints as well, justified or not. I have heard the opposing complaints that the news is too negative and that a lot of the news is fluff pieces. The natural problem is that most positive news is fluff.

In my mind, this is a big deal because people are influenced by journalists. If something or someone gets a lot of media attention, most people get the hint that this person or thing is important. If major issues are framed in a certain way in the media, people will look at those issues through that perspective, regardless as to their individual positions on the topic.

I have many times complained that celebrities' love lives should not count as news. My mom once told me that when she was growing up in a family with three girls, she did not believe anyone actually watched the sports report at the end of the nightly news. I have often made fun of what qualifies as front page news in small town newspapers, such as a story about flu vaccinations that had been offered the previous day. Should any, or perhaps all, of these count as real news?

Should there be a standard for what counts as news? If the standard is only to report those stories that impact most listeners, this will eliminate celebrity news and sports. It will also eliminate nearly all international news that is not economic.

If the standard for what counts as news is market driven, specifically what people are the most interested in, there is a real possibility that news is just whatever can garner the most provocative headline, pictures, or video. This is not something that I am comfortable with.

A final issue is objectivity. Should real news have no slant? Is there a threshold where something is mere propaganda with no news value, or can a television commercial substitute for the news?

The question I have for you all today is what should count as news. Should it be defined as what impacts the most people? Should it just be whatever the people want to hear about? Is it even possible to define? Is everything news?

summer trip: day six

Miles so far: 1441

So much has happened since last post. Normally, I might dwell on that, but due to complications with my laptop's ability to plug into an Internet connection, I am outside mooching off someone else's wireless connection. Needless to say, I am short on battery power. No taking time to upload pictures for this post, either.

The main reason that Golden and I planned this trip when we did was to go to her cousin's wedding. On the way there we determined that taking NJ into the main service was a bad idea, so I entertained him in the church lobby while the wedding occurred. In this weird turn of events, I met the bride for the first time and had a short conversation right before she walked down the aisle. I'm never sure what to say in those instances.

Last post I complained a little about it not really being a vacation. Actually, Golden's aunt and uncle have done everything in their power to make things comfortable for everyone. Dash would be interested to know that I am now practiced up on ladder golf, which is a game where two golf balls that are tethered together are hurled at a plastic structure containing rungs. Golden's aunt and uncle hosted several rounds of that game.

NJ does not have a fever any more, but he has what looks like a full-blown case of chicken pox. He got vaccinated for it last week, and everything we can find on the vaccine says that the reactions don't occur in most kids, and when they do they are minor. I'd like to see the stats on that, though, because we can't be the only case.

On the way across Ohio to see my sister I took a few back roads to save time and money, thus skipping most of the Ohio turnpike, but hitting every traffic light in every small town along that stretch. I don't recommend that strategy to anyone else.

The last two nights NJ has been horrible come bedtime and has ended up in our bed. We have a policy that he never sleeps in our bed, so you know it had to be bad. Tonight he seems better, and I think that is mostly due to a stabilizing schedule.

I met the guy that my sister has been seeing for the first time yesterday. We talked a lot of history and politics. I think we both enjoyed that.

Today, we went to a state park in the area for a few minutes before deciding that miniature golf would be the most entertaining thing to do. My mom watched NJ while we played. I didn't do so well, but that mattered much less than the fact that we got to do something entertaining without having to worry about NJ.

Tomorrow. we leave for Scranton. To the question from an earlier post, yes, this is the Scranton from The Office. Unfortunately, the show is not filmed in the city, so there is not much to see from the show in Scranton. I'll be visiting my grandmother, though, so I'll have more important things to worry about.