Weekend Assorted Links

Posted on August 30, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

1. Silent book clubs? Introverts of the world unite.

“Locations dot the globe, with congregants meeting monthly in Pakistan, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and many other cities and countries.”

2. Push for Ethnic Studies in Schools Face a Dilemma: Whose Stories to Tell?

“Many educators and policymakers across the country have been pushing for instructional materials that confront race in America, citing instances of racist violence and the divisive and inflammatory language ricocheting in politics, on social media and beyond. California is one of the first three states, alongside Oregon and Vermont, to forge ahead this year with creating K-12 materials in ethnic studies.

The debate in California highlights some of the difficult questions that educators will face: Which groups, and whose histories, should be included? Is the purpose to create young, left-leaning activists, or to give students access to a broad range of opinions? And are teachers, the majority of whom are white, ready to teach a discipline that is unfamiliar to many of them?”

My “Multicultural Perspectives in the Classroom” students will be required to resolve this dilemma at the semester’s end.*

3. We Have Ruined Childhood. Related, School lunchtime too short Washington State’s Auditor says. My “Schools and Society” students will read and discuss this one.*

“. . . childhood, one long unpaid internship meant to secure a spot in a dwindling middle class.”

4. Tehran Orders Crackdown as Wealthy Use Ambulances to Beat Traffic. The growing divide between rich and poor is not limited to the (dis)United States.

“When the phone rang at a private ambulance center in Tehran, a famous Iranian soccer player was on the line. The operator recognized him instantly and expressed sympathy for the presumed medical emergency in his family.

The soccer star laughed and said nobody was sick. He was requesting a reservation for an ambulance for a day to run errands around the city. He wanted to avoid the choking traffic that can turn a 10-minute ride into a two-hour trek. The money he was offering was equivalent to a teacher’s monthly salary.”

5. Woman Wins 50K Ultra Outright, Trophy Snafu for Male Winner Follows.

“. . . there was only a trophy for the overall winner, which was predicted to be a man.”

Oops.

6. The highest paid player per second in NBA history. What a redemption story.

* sadly, the sabbatical ends

Youth Sports Contract

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

From the end of my last post on Andrew Luck retiring, one could conclude that youth sports is a utilitarian endeavor. Get a college scholarship, turn pro, make millions of dollars. The exact problem with too many parents’ thinking.

I hate to break it to you, but your child is very unlikely to get a Division I college scholarship. They’re even less likely to turn pro and make mad money ala Andrew Luck or Rory McIlroy.

I propose youth sport parents be required to sign the following contract at the time they sign their children up for any organized sport.

I do not expect my son/daughter to make up for my own athletic failings.
Therefore, I commit to not yelling at my child from the sidelines. Ever.
I do not expect my son/daughter to earn a college athletic scholarship, turn pro in any sport, or make millions of dollars.
I will not complain to the coaches about my child’s playing time.
I will cheer for my child’s team and also for whichever team they are competing against.
I expect my son/daughter to develop stronger social connections during the season. In that spirit, I expect them to cheer their teammates and show respect to their opponents whether they win or lose.
I expect my son/daughter to become more resilient in light of probable difficulties during the season, whether physical, interpersonal, or otherwise. And unless it’s a grievous situation and I am asked by my child to intervene on his/her behalf, I commit to letting him/her resolve his/her own problems this season.
Learning to compete hard should never supersede having fun. Consequently, I expect my son/daughter to develop even more positive attitudes towards physical activity in the hope that they enjoy a lifetime of good health.

_________________________________________________________________

(Parent signature)

Andrew Luck’s Sudden Retirement From Football

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

The 29 year old Indianapolis Colts quarterback making $35m/year suddenly retired Saturday. Everyone is shocked, including me, but for a different reason than most.

Over his injury riddled career, the Stanford grad made $100m on the field and lots more off of it. If Luck earns 4% on 150m he’ll have $6m a year to decide how to spend the rest of his life. He should be okay especially since he’s said he is going to make Indianapolis home.

What’s most shocking about his retirement is that it’s not more common. I don’t understand why more elite players who have made $10m+ don’t quit before their brains and bodies begin breaking down.

Scientists know football players are at risk from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease caused by repeated head injuries. These are 25 year olds who have another 50-75 to go. Professional football players keep getting larger and faster. Playing professional football is often compared to getting in a car crash every Sunday.

The Colts owner says Luck is passing up $450m in future salary. So what. What is the value of one’s brain and body?

How much money is enough, $150 million no doubt, but why not $5m? Spend and invest smartly and watch it grow over time. Why aren’t many more players heading for the exits. Why isn’t Chris Borland the model?

Early during Sunday’s training ride, six cycling friends and I buzzed Tumwater High School. Cars lined both sides of the street for half a mile. Pop Warner junior football is alive and well in Tumwater, WA. Which I find perplexing.

It makes perfect sense that parents want their children to play sports, but why choose the one where one’s health is most likely to be compromised. Tradition?

Why choose football when there are innumerable safer options? Case in point. You may have missed it, but Sunday in Atlanta Rory McIlroy made $15m by winning professional golf’s final playoff tournament. Hitting a golf ball, not being hit. Don’t expect him to retire anytime soon.

Weekend Assorted Links

Posted on August 23, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

1. The Quick Therapy That Actually Works. Referred to as “microtherapy”.

“Effective solutions are crucial because Americans—stressed out, lonely, and ghosted by Tinder dates—are in desperate need of someone to talk to. The data suggest that most of the Americans who have a mental illness aren’t receiving treatment. About 30 percent of psychotherapists don’t take insurance. Quick interventions offer ‘something, when the alternative is nothing.'”

Research findings are hopeful, but skepticism is understandable.

“Lynn Bufka, a psychologist with the American Psychological Association, says that these types of brief interventions could be just a first step toward the treatment of various mental-health woes. They might be enough for some people, while others go on to get more intensive therapy. But. . . for more severe issues, such as bipolar disorder and major depression, a quick dose of therapy is unlikely to be enough. ‘These kinds of interventions are probably more likely to be beneficial before full-blown symptoms or disorders have developed.'”

2. An Echo Dot in Every Dorm Room.

“If students can’t or don’t want to spend money on their own smart speaker, Saint Louis University’s Echo Dots offer a way to bring voice assistants into the dorm without any added cost to the student, since the project went through the capital funding process and wasn’t funded by tuition increases.”

I’m calling bullshit on this. There is an opportunity cost. Money that is being directed to Echo Dots is money not being spent on something else like physical plant maintenance and that money for physical plant maintenance will come from students. I’m also very wary of the wholesale adoption of any technology. Maybe my thinking will change, but right now, if I were an SLU student, I would not want an Echo Dot.

3. The worrying future of Greece’s most Instagrammable island.

A Greek-American who has lived in Santorini for 12 years laments:

“‘People treat churches like selfie studios. There’s one in front of my house and people used to ring the bell every three minutes or climb up on the roof for their fake wedding shoots. I’d get woken up at 6am by people traipsing across my terrace.” His frustration at the crowds has led him to start hanging ‘respect’ signs around Oia that state ‘it’s your holiday… but it’s our home’.”

As if that’s not enough.

“The constant building and flood of tourists create tons of rubbish, which is all dumped illegally. Santorini still has no proper waste-management facilities, so all the empty water bottles, coffee cups and restaurant leftovers go into a huge dump which doesn’t meet EUregulations. Leakage is free to infect the surrounding earth, water and air.”

Alexa, find me someplace free of deranged photographers.

4. The Mistrust of Opposite-Sex Friendships.

The headline is misleading since the focus is on opposite-sex best friends.

This makes sense to me:

“Alexandra Solomon, an assistant psychology professor at Northwestern University and the instructor of the university’s Marriage 101 course. . . wonders whether the correlation between negative attitudes toward opposite-sex friendships and negative or violent expressions of jealousy could be due to participants’ personal beliefs about gender roles.

It speaks to a bit of a rigid, dichotomous way of thinking—I suspect there’s a layer in there about how much [the subjects] endorse traditional gender roles. . . . A woman with more traditional ideas about gender might feel threatened by her boyfriend’s female best friend because. . . ‘she may have this idea that I ought to be your one and only, and I ought to be able to meet all your needs. If you love me, then you’ll only turn to me.‘ A man with similarly rigid or traditional ideas about gender roles, she added, might feel territorial or possessive, as though his female partner belongs to him and only him.”

The more important, relevant question is about the potential for opposite-sex friendship more generally. I’ve long been intrigued by the tendency of friends to congregate in same sex circles at social gatherings. Even opposite-sex friendships of multiple decades seem relatively superficial. Opposite-sex friends seem to bump up against an invisible wall as if friendship is a zero-sum game. It’s that wall that intrigues me the most. More specifically, why the wall?

5. Waze Hijacked L.A. in the Name of Convenience. Can Anyone Put the Genie Back in the Bottle?

This was a hard read. Seemingly, my favorite app has no regard for the common good.

6. Elizabeth Warren Is Attracting More Supporters and More Media Attention.

An easy read. :)

The Trump Administration’s Push For Dirtier, Less Efficient Vehicles

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

Ford, Volkswagen, BMW, Honda, and Mercedes Benz want to make cleaner cars. Which is pissing off the President. One can’t help but wonder, given his gutting of the EPA, the proposed undoing of the Endangered Species Act, and this attempted rollback of higher standards for fuel efficiency, whether little Donald had a really bad experience in nature. A series of horrendous experiences? For shits sake, is the endgame indoor golf?

From the Verge:

Trump is. . . saying that he is giving “politically correct Automobile Companies” the option of lowering the average price of a car by “more than $3000, while at the same time making the cars substantially safer” (though the EPA and the NHTSA’s proposal has nothing to do with making new cars safer) in exchange for “[v]ery little impact on the environment.” He called automotive executives “foolish”. . . .

Many experts disagree with the Trump administration’s calculations. Some argue any potential savings on the sticker price of new cars would likely be offset by the increased fuel cost over the life of those vehicles, even if gas prices stay low. With less fuel-efficient cars, the rollback could also introduce hundreds of millions of metric tons of CO2 into the air, and increase oil consumption by more than 1 billion barrels, according to the EPA’s own estimates.

‘The clean car standards are the most effective policy we have on the books to fight climate change, and the transportation sector is the country’s largest source of the carbon pollution that causes climate change,’ nonprofit advocacy group Sierra Club said in a statement Wednesday. ‘The Trump administration’s push for dirtier, less efficient vehicles would pump more carbon pollution into our air.’

What do “experts” and the Sierra Club know? And shame on the Obama administration for thinking so positively about entrepreneurial innovation and cleaner, more fuel efficient vehicles. The genius in Trump’s thinking is that the more we lower the bar the more likely we are to exceed it.

The Power Of Language

Posted on August 19, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

If the San Fransisco Board of Supervisors have their way, the words “felon,” “offender,” “convict,” “addict” and “juvenile delinquent” will be part of the past in official San Francisco parlance under their new “person first” language guidelines.

“Going forward, what was once called a convicted felon or an offender released from jail will be a ‘formerly incarcerated person,’ or a ‘justice-involved’ person or simply a ‘returning resident.’

Parolees and people on criminal probation will be referred to as a ‘person on parole,’ or ‘person under supervision.’

A juvenile ‘delinquent’ will become a ‘young person with justice system involvement,’ or a ‘young person impacted by the juvenile justice system.’

And drug addicts or substance abusers will become ‘a person with a history of substance use.'”

Cue the protestations of political correctness. The intent, however, is quite noble. Matt Haney, one of the Supervisors says, “We don’t want people to be forever labeled for the worst things that they have done.” Imminently sensible.

Tyler Cowen has a concern worthy of serious consideration:

“. . . here is my worry. It is we who decide how powerful language is going to be. The more we regulate language, the more we communicate a social consensus that it has great power. And in return the more actual power we grant to those linguistic ‘slips’ and infelicities which remain. It is better to use norms to regulate the very worst speech terms, but not all of them. By regulating too many parts of speech, and injecting speech with too much power, we actually grant more influence to the people and ideas we are trying to stop.”

My worry is different. I fear the proposals open the floodgate to an unprecedented wordiness. Case in point, from the San Fransisco Chronicle article:

“The language resolution makes no mention of terms for victims of crime, but using the new terminology someone whose car has been broken into could well be: ‘A person who has come in contact with a returning resident who was involved with the justice system and who is currently under supervision with a history of substance use.'”

If that level of wordiness becomes the new normal, I will not survive this world for long.

Weekend Assorted Links

Posted on August 16, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

1. The future of bicycle racing is a group road/gravel ride with music at the start?

2. Minneapolis just banned drive throughs. Last sentence is perplexing.

3. A tiny house in every backyard.

4A. Trump’s America. The shining city on a hill is an ugly pile of ruble.

4B. U.S. Significantly Weakens Endangered Species Act.

“. . . the revised rules appear very likely to clear the way for new mining, oil and gas drilling, and development in areas where protected species live.”

5. Are You Rich? Where Does Your Net Worth Rank in America?

“Why are the wealthy so much wealthier than everyone else? One reason is that the rich tend to store their wealth in businesses and stocks, and those in the middle class store theirs in housing. The top 10 percent of the wealthiest households own nearly 90 percent of the stocks in America, while those in the bottom 90 percent own a little more than half of all the real estate in America.

So you can think of wealth inequality as a race between the stock market and the housing market. . . . In periods when home prices are rising, wealth inequality tends to shrink as the wealth in the middle class grows. But during periods when the stock market outperforms real estate, wealth inequality tends to increase.

Another reason is that income inequality feeds wealth inequality. . . . Even if the rich and the poor had the same proportion of stocks and bonds, and saved at the same rate, the rich would simply put away more money.”

6. Are you sure lap swimming is safer than open water swimming?

7. The long wait for season three of Netflix’s The Crown is almost over. The Crown’s production quality boggles the mind. Like watching one movie after another. So good, it’s turned this anti-monarchist into a huge fan. And we’re getting Olivia Colman to boot. Forget football this Thanksgiving.

In Praise of Kenshin Sugawara

Posted on August 13, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

Dan Gartland of Sports Illustrated:

“The Japanese high school baseball championships (known colloquially as Koshien, after the stadium where they take place) are unlike anything in sports on this side of the Pacific. Crowds pack the nearly 50,000 seats in the stadium and people watch on national TV as 56 teams from around the country compete over the course of 15 days to be crowned champs. Daisuke Matsuzaka once threw a 17-inning complete game, because the tournament is such a big deal.

The stakes are incredibly high. The vast majority of these kids will never have an athletic moment as important as this. And yet, one player in a game on Sunday passed up a free base. Kennobu Sugawara from Tokuei Hanasaki was hit by a pitch in the seventh inning of his team’s game against Akashi Shoten. But rather than take first base, he admitted that he leaned in to the pitch. Sugawara bowed to the pitcher, then to the opponents’ dugout, and stepped back in the box. Then he blasted a homer.”

For the life of me, I don’t see any leaning, it looks like he just maintains his stance. Regardless, big props for refusing the free base and then going deep.

The Selfless, Spiritual Nature of Paying Attention

Posted on August 12, 2019 by Ron Byrnes

A recent New York Times newsletter chastised “You’re Not Paying Attention, but You Really Should Be.” The subtitle, “How to actually notice the world around you,” promised more than was delivered.

As a sociologist minded academic, I like to think I’m more observant than average. At the same time, close friends and I sometimes poke fun of the Good Wife for often driving right by us oblivious to our pointless honking and waving. She claims it’s because she’s focused straight ahead, but her awful vision probably contributes to the sometimes funny phenomenon as well.

But don’t sell her short. She picks up on things others, like me, often do not. Por exemplar, a few days ago she left this for me on my corner of the kitchen island.

My dad died 24 years ago. If someone asked me what his favorite bird was, I would reply, “No idea.” But the Gal Pal, who interacted with him 1% of the time I did, knew.

The New York Times newsletter writer unsatisfactorily scrapes the surface when trying to teach others to pay attention.

Paying attention is one of the most concrete ways one person shows another they care for them. My wife knows my dad’s favorite bird because he was important to her. Her default is to care for everyone, but she cared even more than normal for him because he was important to me. She paid extra attention to him, and to my mom, knowing how important they were to me.

She cared for and loved me by paying extra close attention to them. There’s a spiritual component to truly paying attention that the New York Times writer misses. Paying especially close attention to the details of others’ lives is a selfless habit of mind most evident in spiritual people.

Another example. An Olympia friend of mine is visiting his wife’s family in the Midwest. He shared several pictures of her hometown online with explanatory captions. At the end, he wrote, “I was glad I stopped and took the time to find out out more about the town which played a big part in the lives of Mary, her parents, and her sisters and brothers.”

“I stopped and took the time” is the exact advice given by The New York Times writer. To pay closer attention he writes, unplug, slow down, look around. But the second half of my friend’s summary sentence, “. . . which played a big part in the lives of Mary, her parents, and her sisters and brothers,” speaks to the selfless, spiritual nature of truly paying attention.

My wife and friend are two peas in the same paying attention pod. They demonstrate genuine, heartfelt care for their closest family and friends by observing, hearing, and remembering what matters most to them.