Bob Costas - America's Moral Compass

At least that is what Bob Costas seems to think. I had nearly forgotten about this pompous display of blowhardiness, until a post on Slate weighed in feeling the same.



I generally like Bob Costas. I hope NBC pulls the plug on his halftime monologues so I don't permanently change my mind.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

As a Kansas City sports fan and resident of one of the few states that voted for McCain in the last election, I can get caught up in not feeling too appreciative of how the world works. But, by and large, I think humanity continues to improve, and I know I certainly have a lot to be thankful for in my own life. It's nice to think about that every now and again. Friday, I shall resume being downtrodden.

To the Mattresses

Bill Simmons has a great article up at Grantland where he assigns blame to various parties explains how The Godfather is like the NBA lockout. After an opening where he talks about Michael and Sonny, he closes the piece with this:

For the owners, nothing has changed — it's strictly business. For the players, something haschanged — it's almost entirely personal. You can't find a middle ground between those two worlds. You just can't. Maybe it's the opposite of how definitively The Godfather: Part II ended — with Michael Corleone sitting outside by himself, lost in thought, alone in every sense, a ruthless businessman with no personal connection to anything — but even so, that deafening silence sounds the same.

The rest of article where he explains how the various actors have helped bring us to the brink of a year without an NBA season. It's good stuff, but I particularly like the metaphor because I just love movie metaphors. One of my greatest regrets is that I can't find the paper I wrote in high school explaining how The Grapes of Wrath was really the same story as Alien. If I ever find it, be assured it will be making an immediate appearance in this space.

Fudging

There are lies, there are damn lies, and there is psychological science:

In a forthcoming paper, also to appear in Psychological Science, Leslie K. John, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School, and two co-authors report that about a third of the 2,000 academic psychologists they surveyed admit to questionable research practices. Those don't include outright fraud, but rather such practices as stopping the collection of data when a desired result is found, or omitting from the final paper some of the variables tested.

And this doesn't even include the fact that most psychological studies involve some kind of totally unreliable self-reporting by the subjects. Not a real major point here, just something to remember.

Sports Update

A review of my favorite teams:

Kansas City Chiefs - They just lost a game where the opposing QB completed 2 passes. I haven't verified, but this has to be a record. Anytime you hear a story that starts "For the first time in NFL history, Team X did Accomplishment Y, you can safely assume they were playing the Chiefs. The team is a complete disaster on offense. The QB was inaccurate even when he wasn't being driven into the ground by opposing defensive linemen, and now they have to hand things over to his backup. On the positive side, their division is so unspeakably awful that they are still a game out of first after being outscored by 77 points in their 9 games.

Philadelphia Eagles - Actually a game worse than the Chiefs despite outscoring opponents by 17 points. And now Vick has broken ribs.

Kansas City Royals - I am actually looking forward to next season. However, if they don't get any more pitching help than Jonathan Sanchez, you can't possibly consider them an actual contender for the Central crown.

Sporting KC - A great season finished with a disappointing home loss to a team without their best player in the Eastern Conference championship. However, the fact that they were even playing in such a game means they are easily the best franchise in town. Here is hoping they can build on this season, and learn from their playoff experience.

Oklahoma City Thunder - N/A (And that sucks.)

Chelsea - They aren't playing well, and now racist fans are distracting a team that needs to be focused on how not to give up five goals at home. Plus, there is talk of a Didier Drogba trade.

Syracuse - College basketball seems to be my bright spot. The Orange are off to a great start. Of course, they aren't playing anyone this time of year, but there is a feel you can get watching a team. The feel I am getting from this Syracuse team is that they will have good offensive balance and they are athletic enough to compete with other top 5 teams.

Missouri State - I have no idea what to think about their 22 point drubbing of Nevada. Either expectations were too low for the Bears in the MVC, too high for the Wolfpack in the WAC, or the MVC is wwwaaayyy better than the WAC. I think it is probably mostly the first, and a little of the second. Pretty sure it isn't the third.

So there it is. Thank God for college basketball since the NFL has been a disaster and the NBA probably won't even have a chance to be a disaster. March Madness here we come!

First New Page Up

I'm working on adding static pages to the blog. The first is places I like to eat in KC, and you can find it in the menu to the right.

Riveting News

Here is the entirety of a story on the front page of the Kansas City Star's website today:

Firefighter Twists Knee Battling South KC House Fire 

A firefighter twisted his knee early this morning while battling a south Kansas City house fire. The fire was reported about 6:35 a.m. today in the 10900 block of Forest Avenue. The firefighter was being evaluated at the scene. 

There were no other injuries. The cause of the fire was being investigated and no estimate of damages had been determined this morning.

In other news, I stumbled in the parking lot and nearly spilled my coffee this morning.

College and Learning

There seems, out there in the great big world, a growing buzz that college diplomas are not offering all the same benefits they once offered. Politicians, journalists, and college students themselves have been more vocally criticizing high prices and less robust returns on those prices over the last few months. You can see it in such varied forums as OWS rallies and Republican presidential candidate debates. An interesting article from the New York Review of Books discusses a point made by the authors of Academically Adrift:

For most of them, in the end, what the university offers is not skills or knowledge but credentials: a diploma that signals employability and basic work discipline. Those who manage to learn a lot often—though happily not always—come from highly educated families and attend highly selective colleges and universities. They are already members of an economic and cultural elite. Our great, democratic university system has become a pillar of social stability—a broken community many of whose members drift through, learning little, only to return to the economic and social box that they were born into.

 I put the italics in because this just strikes me as one of the most patently obvious issues with our education system. College for many people is not a place to aspire to learn, but a place to earn the right to get a better job. And it would be crazy for us to be surprised by this because this is exactly how we sell college as a social institution. "A college degree is the ticket to a better future... college graduates earn x% more than non-college grads... the opportunities afforded you by college." These are things you hear. You do not hear things like "college is a place to help you be a more reasonable, critical, and thoughtful human being." Why? Probably because there is no certain profit in that.

Old Fashioned 2

A great story in Slate today designates the Old Fashioned as the ultimate symbol of our pluralistic nation. It also makes a pretty strong case that it is a drink built to expose our more tribalistic and pretentious nature.

The old-fashioned is at once "the manliest cocktail order" and "something your grandmother drank," and between those poles we discover countless simple delights, evolutionary wonders, and captivating abominations. Because of its core simplicity and its elasticity—because it is primordial booze—ideas about the old-fashioned exist in a realm where gastronomical notions shade into ideological tenets. It is a platform for a bar to make a statement, a surface on which every bartender leaves a thumbprint, and a solution that many a picky drinker dips his litmus paper in. You are a free man. Drink your drink as you please. But know that your interpretation of the recipe says something serious about your philosophy of fun.

Very true. I would recommend the whole article as it does a nice job of describing the issue with a hipsteristic influence on modern day cocktail making. It also made me think about an issue I have become more and more familiar with in my own life, which is my attempt to thread the needle in my own tastes between crass popular culture and the overly precious tastes of the denizens of speakeasies and indie-music sites the world over.

Indeed, my struggle to find an equilibrium between the mass and peculiar results in a regular self-questioning about how my perceptions of the audience of a drink, show, album, book, etc. are affecting my appreciation of that thing. I am afraid more often than I would like, that affectation is clearly present.I reported on my thread-the-needle approach to the Old Fashioned a couple of years ago. Notice my obvious disdain for the neanderthalic addition of club soda, but my defense of the heretical muddled fruit at the bottom of the glass. I am a creature of two worlds I suppose... or I just know what I like.

Friday Gripe

In reading the news and listening to the radio, it seems to me that what we seem to be having - more than anything else - is a breakdown in faith that we can do anything as a collective. Whether that be govern ourselves, raise children, build good neighborhoods, or improve an economy, it all seems the same. Our national thought process has truly been hijacked by people who believe "every man for himself" is the best way to run a society. Leaving aside the incongruity of this idea with many of these same people's supposed religious beliefs, this is still a baffling issue. How did this train of thought become dominant? Is it a climate of skepticism in one another that has caused it? Is it social, moral, or functional? I don't know, but I am afraid of what we may do to ourselves before we figure out otherwise.

Blogger Stepping Up in the World

I think I may be about 2 or 3 months behind, but I just looked around and see it is now easy to all kinds of things with this blog. I think the project through November may be to start adding some features...

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.