80s Movie Line for Halloween

Got to see Ghostbusters on the big screen Saturday night. It is still one of the funniest movies ever made. Here is a classic line I'll use to wish you a happy Halloween.

Ray: "Listen! Do you smell that?"

Office Space

More people work at desks doing clerical types of things than at any other type of profession.

So why is Office Space the only great movie that has been made about the subject of working in an office job? Maybe The Office has been filling people's entertainment needs around office jobs for the past few years, but I have to think that an era beyond fax machines and TPS reports has plenty of new material for another great movie. Office Space 2????

Where the Money Went

The chart below provides a nice, tidy summation of income inequality in this country. It shows how different people's household incomes would have been if income distribution would have stayed the same since 1979. All the money, that the middle class and poor would gained wasn't lost in the ether. It was added to the income of the top 1%. This is a pretty good reason for people to be out asking the 1% what's up...

Via Kevin Drum.

The Internet Works Best on Friday

This kind of thing is why the Internet will never get old.

Mainstream Media Bias

Not much time today, as I am heading back to day 3 of my civic duty. But I wanted to pass this chart along from the Pew Research Center (via Kevin Drum), showing just how beat up all the Republican candidates are getting by the mainstream media. Must be nice to be Saint Obama and have 9% of the press fawning all over you.

Prom Disaster

Three restaurants at Crown Center are closing including the revolving Skies. Apparently, the wealthy have decided that nice views and motion sickness are not for the proletariat as Skies will become a "Sheraton Preferred Guest Lounge." Amorous Juniors and Seniors all over the metro will have to find new ways to impress their dates this spring. Gentlemen, the Cheesecake Factory is not the answer!

Chart of the Day

This chart via Kevin Drum shows Wall Street salaries versus other New York private industry salaries. Obviously they are worth this much since the market tells us so. Good thing we have the market, otherwise we might have wondered how the group who drove the economy into the ditch ended up being "worth" so much more than the rest of us.

Big 12 Basketball

So the Big 12 could still fall apart. I acknowledge that, but I would like to dream of what could happen if it doesn't. If the league can get its act together and everyone can get along, I love the possibility of what we could have here.

First off, let me say that I don't care about college football at all. Until college football championships have more integrity than WWE belts, I just won't get too wrapped up in it. I do, however, care about college basketball. And a great basketball league is what the Big 12 can become (and really a good football league as well).

All we need to do is add Louisville and Cincinnati or Memphis. If that happens, and Missouri stays, then all that really happened after all this turmoil is that we traded Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas A&M for Louisville, TCU, and Cincy/Memphis. In basketball terms, that is a huge upgrade. This makes us a much better basketball league. Average RPI from the last 5 years tells the story (thought to be fair playing in the Big East improves Louisville and CIncy's RPIs). Anyway, here they are:

Average RPIs over the past 5 years:

A&M - 27
Nebraska - 102
Colorado - 164

Memphis - 20
Louisville - 21
Cincy - 97
TCU - 188

Of course, averaging produces slightly skewed numbers since a 230 hurts you much more than a 4 helps you. So for comparison, over the same time period KU's average is 6 (despite two #1s) and MU's is 61. Looking at it another way here are the number of NCAA Tourney wins  for each group over the past 5 years:


A&M - 5
Nebraska - 0
Colorado - 0

Memphis - 9
Louisville - 7
Cincy - 1
TCU - 0

There just really is no way around the fact that this league gets MUCH better with the addition of Louisville and either Memphis or Cincinnati. I, for one, would love the idea of a Big 12 tourney round of 8 with Kansas vs. Oklahoma, Louisville vs. Oklahoma State, Texas vs. Memphis, and Missouri vs. K-State. That is an incredible lineup of games!

Get it together Big 12. I live in KC, and I need good basketball to happen here. Now get out there and do it.

Fantasyland

In sports make-believe world, Kansas City would have one of eight teams in a rogue NBA substitute league where the players pick their own squads...

And Kansas City is a no-brainer as the fifth team: It has a state-of-the-art NBA arena, and it's also on suicide watch right now with the Chiefs and Royals. Nobody needs this league more than Kansas City. You're right, Seattle needs it more. My bad.

In this hypothetical league, we get a starting five of Derrick Rose, Amare Stoudemire, Al Horford, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen.

In the real sports world, we are probably losing the only major basketball event in the city sometime in the near future. The real world sucks.

Inequality Hurts Economies

A new study points again to the idea that inequality isn't just bad for the poor, it is bad for everyone.

"Countries where income was more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells," says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund. Comparing six major economic variables across the world's economies, Berg found that equality of incomes was the most important factor in preventing a major downturn. 

So how important is equality? According to the study, making an economy's income distribution 10 percent more equitable prolongs its typical growth spell by 50 percent.

The graph below shows the examined factors, and the effect each has on growth.

Of course, we have a nice long study going on this subject here in the U.S.A. It's the middle of the 20th century versus the last 30 years. It shows the same thing. People do better when society is more equal.

Good News!

Most of my sources seem to be bringing me a steady stream of news that makes me more pessimistic about humanity. So it is nice to stumble across someone who has something good to say about mankind.

Modern homicide rates in Europe—one of the few regions where records are trustworthy enough to permit such comparisons--are 10 to 50 times lower than in the Middle Ages. Murder rates fell by two orders of magnitude in the northeast United States between 1625 and 1900. The past few centuries have also seen precipitous drops in state-sanctioned violence. That includes corporal punishment (from cutting off the hands of thieves to whipping students) and capital punishment, especially combined with torture (drawing and quartering, burning at the stake). Slavery and despotism (which allows tyrants to kill and torture on a whim) prevail only on the margins; 800 years ago they were the rule. As for war, Pinker presents evidence that it killed on average about 20 percent of the population of pre-state societies in the Old and New Worlds, a casualty rate higher than that of the most war-torn modern states.

It seems for all of our problems, we are at least killing one another at much decreased rate. Way to go humanity.

Easy Explanation

Rashard Lewis never went to college. However, that didn't stop him from offering an accurate and simple explanation of why the NBA is stuck in a lockout:

“Talk to the owner. He gave me the deal,” Lewis said. “When it comes to contracts, the players aren’t sitting there negotiating that contract. I’m sitting at home and my agent calls me, saying, ‘I got a max on the table.’ I’m not going to sit there and say, ‘Naw, that’s too much. Go out there and negotiate $20 or $30 [million] less.’ ”

Maybe college is overrated.

Life Imitates Art

Isn't this the basic premise of Idiocracy?

Two new studies bring the contrasting reproductive profiles of rich and poor women into sharp relief. One, from the Guttmacher Institute, shows that the rates of unplanned pregnancies and births among poor women now dwarf the fertility rates of wealthier women, and finds that the gap between the two groups has widened significantly over the past five years. The other, by the Center for Work-Life Policy, documents rates of childlessness among corporate professional women that are higher than the childlessness rates of some European countries experiencing fertility crises.

More On The Intersection of Inequality and Sports

This time it regards the NBA lockout. The Grantland site continues to put up great pieces, and today the contribution is from Malcolm Gladwell.

One of the great forgotten facts about the United States is that not very long ago the wealthy weren't all that wealthy. Up until the 1960s, the gap between rich and poor in the United States was relatively narrow. In fact, in that era marginal tax rates in the highest income bracket were in excess of 90 percent. For every dollar you made above $250,000, you gave the government 90 cents. Today — with good reason — we regard tax rates that high as punitive and economically self-defeating. It is worth noting, though, that in the social and political commentary of the 1950s and 1960s there is scant evidence of wealthy people complaining about their situation. They paid their taxes and went about their business. Perhaps they saw the logic of the government's policy: There was a huge debt from World War II to be paid off, and interstates, public universities, and other public infrastructure projects to be built for the children of the baby boom. Or perhaps they were simply bashful. Wealth, after all, is as often the gift of good fortune as it is of design. For whatever reason, the wealthy of that era could have pushed for a world that more closely conformed to their self-interest and they chose not to. Today the wealthy have no such qualms. We have moved from a country of relative economic equality to a place where the gap between rich and poor is exceeded by only Singapore and Hong Kong. The rich have gone from being grateful for what they have to pushing for everything they can get. They have mastered the arts of whining and predation, without regard to logic or shame. In the end, this is the lesson of the NBA lockout. A man buys a basketball team as insurance on a real estate project, flips the franchise to a Russian billionaire when he wins the deal, and then — as both parties happily count their winnings — what lesson are we asked to draw? The players are greedy.

Read the whole article. It involves the sale of the Nets as insurance for an eminent domain property grab. And it is one more indication that not only is inequality a growing problem, but it is also a problem that is screwing up our sports.

90s Style (Hornets Edition)

An article on Grantland claims that the #1 best thing about being a sports nut as a kid in the 90s was the Charlotte Hornets Starter jacket. I'm not sure about that, as I believe NBA Jam, Beckett Monthlies, and parkboard athletics all trump the Hornets jacket. However, I did happen to have an affinity for the Hornets, and I also happened to have some excellent Hornets gear. So then, here are my top 5 Charlotte Hornets related pieces of clothing from the 90s.

1. The striped grandpa jacket
This is the kind of jacket your grandpa always wore, but his was probably tan. It had elastic around the bottom, a traditional collar, and is stopped right about the belt line (often rising above the belt on account of the elastic). The difference in the Hornets version was that instead of a nice khaki or baby blue, this one was striped with the classic Hornets teal and purple. Had I walked onto the set of any 90s Batman movie or Bel Biv DeVoe video wearing this jacket, no one would ever have questioned me.

2. Converse Grandmama Shoes (Version 2)
Larry Johnson was my favorite Hornet. For two seasons, he was the man. Then he got injured. But those two seasons were enough for me covet a pair of LJ's signature Converse shoes. I believe they made only two editions, and I had both. The best version, however, was clearly the one pictured below. It featured classic 90s contemporary styling, Hornets teal, and that thing your strapped over the top to.... well I guess to keep your shoes tied? I have no idea. But they were awesome. Until they broke. And what did I do when faced with a pair of shoes that broke after a month? I took them back to B&B Athletics, and returned them for a brand new pair of the exact same shoes. Because if they weren't LJ, they weren't Grandmama.

3. XL LJ Jersey
It was LJ due to reasons described previously. It was extra-large because I obviously needed room to operate. My power game at the age of 14 simply couldn't be contained by the medium I actually needed. My favorite part of the LJ jersey buy, however, was that my two best buddies bought Magic Johnson and Larry Bird jerseys respectively, and I earnestly believed my jersey would be the one that we would all look back and determine was the most worth saving. In related news, adolescents don't have a lot of perspective.

4. Purple and Teal Hornets Hat
Hats were very popular with young teen boys in the 90s (maybe they still are). Little did we know that we were burying our hair for a large percentage of the only time in our life when we would have much. Hats were critical for two reasons. One, if you didn't have a hat to go with your jacket, shorts, and shoes, you didn't have an outfit. Two, 14-year-olds are short (unless they play on AAU teams). A purple and teal hat is pretty easy to spot in a crowd. A final note: any hat of the sort should have been worn as demonstrated in the following photo.

5. Charlotte Hornets Looney Tunes T-Shirt

I believe it was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year when I told my parents I wanted more Charlotte Hornets gear for my birthday. My dad told my mom not to worry about it, he knew just what to get me. As you can see from the previous four items on this list, my sense of fashion was not particularly enlightened. But even someone willing to dress up in all the aforementioned nonsense knew immediately upon opening that birthday present, "I will never wear this." That wasn't true, I did wear it. I knew how proud my dad was of figuring out what to get me, so I couldn't tell him to take it back. So I wore it from time to time making precise calculations on the number of strangers or girls I might encounter on a given day. 

After an acceptable period of time, Bugs and company went into the box with my Rickey Henderson cartoon shirt, my Winston Garland practice jersey, and the pair of shorts that had Patrick Ewing's face screen printed on them (no kidding). Unfortunately, I found some of those items recently and the Looney Tunes tee was nowhere to be found. I can only assume it is in some other undiscovered box with several other pieces of Hornets gear, and an LJ jersey that still wouldn't fit me.

When You've Made It

Dan sent me this. Thanks Dan.

Should the rich fear the Big 12?

The Big 12 conference is still a functioning BCS conference, but barely. At the moment, Baylor seems like the only thing kiboshing the full break-up by threatening to sue to keep the conference together. Since pending litigation isn't a very good way to keep friends, it looks like the Big 12 is just about tits up, but what's really to blame?

I'm sure there's a case to be made that the pending dissolution has a lot to do with ego or geography, but I think the root cause of this now 2-year mutiny is income inequality. If Texas hadn't been predictably Texan and tried to grab a bigger slice than anyone else, would they be talking about possibly moving to the ACC in 2012?

Is it too much to call the collapse of the Big 12 a microcosm of the American wealth gap? Is it going too far to propose that the Big 12 serves as an object lesson in the dangers of top heavy economic architecture, which has the potential to establish a tipping point towards populist backlash against the rich? Probably.

Speaking as a member of the lower classes (i.e., 99% of Americans who don't fill their swimming pools with diamonds), we prefer to focus our attention on mascot buffoonery and cheerleader boobery than to think about things like economics or parallels to La Grande Révolution, so I think the rich in America are safe. Now, if income inequality leads to a pornography shortage, then we have a problem.

We Are Getting Poorer

Matt Ygelsias pointed me toward this handy graph from USA Today, reminding us that most of us are, in fact, worse off than we were 10 years ago.

The Sporting Scene

In the midst of all the news about the Chiefs season being nearly over before it starts, the long-finished Royals season actually finishing, and all of our local colleges on the verge of being homeless, let's remember that we have a bright spot here in the metro - Sporting KC.

A great piece from the Star's full-90 blog helps explain why Sporting has been so successful this season. And it has video of 5 of Sporting's best goals of the year.

Also remember that to find great coverage of Sporting KC you can check out the aforementioned full-90 blog, and "down the byline," another great local blog.

The Tea Party and Religion

I hear that the Tea Party is religious, then they aren't, then they are. Here are a few voices that suggest if they are, they need to rethink their religion.