Monday, December 08, 2003
Up Is Down; Black Is White
Rent one of my favorite movies, Brazil. If you're up for an ironic, satiric view of our society from a George Orwell pov, you'll love it. Watch it a couple of times though.
BCS, FICO, They're All Nuts
Once again the great unknown "they" stood common sense on its head. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), formed by a bunch of TV executives, college/university presidents and the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange Bowls honchos decided to listen to one little man--some obscure doctor who said he'd used his computer to figure out what team would be number one. That was about five years ago.
Kinda like the Holy of Holies, no one is allowed before this statistical altar of programming. Because the variables are secret, it's difficult to ascertain how much the doc's subjectivity affects the outcome. As with FICO numbers, the programmer's bias, presents a deeply flawed outcome.
Meanwhile, outsiders who meddle don't sit well in college football. Money, millions of dollars of it, is on the line. Since almost everything in this life is economically based, and thus flawed, our intelligence has once again taken an assault. Number 1 USC plays number 4 Michigan in a non-championship game, while number 2 LSU plays in the Sugar Bowl against number 3 Oklahoma for the championship. Why? Because Hawaii beat Boise State (yeah) yesterday. Why? Because USC was beaten by Hawaii. Must've been all that plumeria.
By that logic, my alma mater, Texas Christian, should be moved up in the polls. They beat Hawaii after all. Speaking of money, because TCU lost one game in the middle of the season, they also lost the ability to earn their program millions. Instead, their worth became only $750,000. in a matter of 60 minutes official play. Welcome to today's college athletics.
Time may pass before this outrage becomes truly addressed. Kudos to USC's Pete Carroll for his gracious acceptance of The Rose Bowl's invitation. His example to his kids is what is really important. As my dad, who was an athletic coach used to say, "I'm a teacher first, a coach second." So is Coach Carroll.
The Russian's Demand For Putin's Ways Brings Back Memories
I've mentioned I was married to a Czech for a short time. Actually, Joe would take offense at my calling him a Czech. He was a Slovak, and don't you forget it. From him I learned about everyday life in the orbiting soviet solar system, most of it shocking and revealing. His father, an upper tier soviet official (bureaucrat), an ex freedom fighter against the Nazis (who secretly loved Hitler), was picked up daily by a chauffeur and delivered to his dreary office in a four-hundred year old building, then returned to his home in the evening. The family lived quite well and became the poster children for why Communism works. Wow. Joe came from the upper class in a classless society.
Beneath the percs, cars, the nice homes, lay another level of life in a Communist country. For instance, that one couldn't do what one really wanted. I couldn't figure how the system could work for very long. After all, I told myself, no one could watch you 24 hours a day. Could they?
They could and did. Children were instructed by the schools (they start at age two) to snitch on anyone who dared to speak against the state or the party--including one's parents or siblings. Bet that made for intimate times together.
Neighbors watched too. The all too human trait of coveting your neighbor's belongings fed people's willingness to tell when things were suspicious. Or if someone slipped, said something awful about the state. After all, the reward for squealing was very often the same apartment in which the culprits lived. No family was spared from this intrusion. The system was fed by greed and fear.
Joe and I had enormous cultural differences over which we never recovered. Since my family came to America in the 1600s (my grandfather was born in Philadelphia in 1670), he considered us to be like the royalty of England. He failed to understand the reasons for a new America. He refused to acknowledge the work involved in making a nation like America. His final line to me was, "Of course you have everything you need. Your great, rich American family has given it to you."
That's the problem with America haters. They don't get it. They don't realize that the work my ancestors put into this country was based on freedom and industry. And great sacrifice. The only thing given was a plot of land in the New World. That walk through the Cumberland Gap in 1803 was not a holiday, nor was the battle for independence from the greatest country on earth at the time.
What rankled Joe the most? The fact that he had to look for a job! That the system, like that in Europe, didn't give people things.
What's that to do with Putin? Well, if such a reaction from a man like Joe, who had been out of his communist country for nearly twenty years still remained, how can the people who still live there deal with the facts of life? Freedom takes work and a deep belief that one is the head of his own destiny. Russians can't automatically jump into democracy any more than I could jump into a socialist or fascist society. I haven't the sensibility, nor do they.
The oligarchy has ruined Russia (I blame Mr. Clinton for a lot of this), has finally bankrupted the nation, and because there is so little opportunity, the great savior, another Vladimir, says they must clamp down. Most would rather have martial law, than chaos, it seems.
The far left keeps ringing that authoritarian bell. It's a warning to the rest of the world. Communists can't be cleared away like yesterday's trash; they remain viable because they have a willing audience who honestly believe things were better in the old days. At least they didn't have to look for a job in the Soviet Union. The current peace protests, underwritten and supported by socialists and communists, aren't about peace at all, rather they represent another way for the far left to take back power. Power, after all, is what all politics is really about. Getting it and keeping it.
Is Russia's answer more government jobs? Yes, but only enough required for running an efficient society. Joe didn't know any better. He thought all things emanated from the state, from cradle to the grave. No matter how I tried, though, he couldn't understand that freedom and democracy have a high price. Try teaching that to disappointed countries who were promised the gold at the end of the democracy rainbow. No one told them it takes work.
The LA Times Worries About Shocking Chickens To Death
A story that appeared on today's front page concerns a man who is having difficulty with killing chickens at Tysons' plants in Arkansas. Guess he might be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, maybe it's the Stockholm Syndrome, who knows? Anyway, he's feeling great guilt over his actions. For you who care, his killing method was wholesale computer generated electrocution.
Hell. I remember the time my mother took me out to the chicken house, grabbed a hen, stepped on her neck, literally wringing it, then told me to not be surprised when the chicken's body jumped around. Like a chicken with her head cut off.
I was eight. That's how you killed chickens you were having for dinner that night.
Why do people refuse to grow up?
Thanks for the read.
BCS, FICO, They're All Nuts
Once again the great unknown "they" stood common sense on its head. The Bowl Championship Series (BCS), formed by a bunch of TV executives, college/university presidents and the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar, Orange Bowls honchos decided to listen to one little man--some obscure doctor who said he'd used his computer to figure out what team would be number one. That was about five years ago.
Kinda like the Holy of Holies, no one is allowed before this statistical altar of programming. Because the variables are secret, it's difficult to ascertain how much the doc's subjectivity affects the outcome. As with FICO numbers, the programmer's bias, presents a deeply flawed outcome.
Meanwhile, outsiders who meddle don't sit well in college football. Money, millions of dollars of it, is on the line. Since almost everything in this life is economically based, and thus flawed, our intelligence has once again taken an assault. Number 1 USC plays number 4 Michigan in a non-championship game, while number 2 LSU plays in the Sugar Bowl against number 3 Oklahoma for the championship. Why? Because Hawaii beat Boise State (yeah) yesterday. Why? Because USC was beaten by Hawaii. Must've been all that plumeria.
By that logic, my alma mater, Texas Christian, should be moved up in the polls. They beat Hawaii after all. Speaking of money, because TCU lost one game in the middle of the season, they also lost the ability to earn their program millions. Instead, their worth became only $750,000. in a matter of 60 minutes official play. Welcome to today's college athletics.
Time may pass before this outrage becomes truly addressed. Kudos to USC's Pete Carroll for his gracious acceptance of The Rose Bowl's invitation. His example to his kids is what is really important. As my dad, who was an athletic coach used to say, "I'm a teacher first, a coach second." So is Coach Carroll.
The Russian's Demand For Putin's Ways Brings Back Memories
I've mentioned I was married to a Czech for a short time. Actually, Joe would take offense at my calling him a Czech. He was a Slovak, and don't you forget it. From him I learned about everyday life in the orbiting soviet solar system, most of it shocking and revealing. His father, an upper tier soviet official (bureaucrat), an ex freedom fighter against the Nazis (who secretly loved Hitler), was picked up daily by a chauffeur and delivered to his dreary office in a four-hundred year old building, then returned to his home in the evening. The family lived quite well and became the poster children for why Communism works. Wow. Joe came from the upper class in a classless society.
Beneath the percs, cars, the nice homes, lay another level of life in a Communist country. For instance, that one couldn't do what one really wanted. I couldn't figure how the system could work for very long. After all, I told myself, no one could watch you 24 hours a day. Could they?
They could and did. Children were instructed by the schools (they start at age two) to snitch on anyone who dared to speak against the state or the party--including one's parents or siblings. Bet that made for intimate times together.
Neighbors watched too. The all too human trait of coveting your neighbor's belongings fed people's willingness to tell when things were suspicious. Or if someone slipped, said something awful about the state. After all, the reward for squealing was very often the same apartment in which the culprits lived. No family was spared from this intrusion. The system was fed by greed and fear.
Joe and I had enormous cultural differences over which we never recovered. Since my family came to America in the 1600s (my grandfather was born in Philadelphia in 1670), he considered us to be like the royalty of England. He failed to understand the reasons for a new America. He refused to acknowledge the work involved in making a nation like America. His final line to me was, "Of course you have everything you need. Your great, rich American family has given it to you."
That's the problem with America haters. They don't get it. They don't realize that the work my ancestors put into this country was based on freedom and industry. And great sacrifice. The only thing given was a plot of land in the New World. That walk through the Cumberland Gap in 1803 was not a holiday, nor was the battle for independence from the greatest country on earth at the time.
What rankled Joe the most? The fact that he had to look for a job! That the system, like that in Europe, didn't give people things.
What's that to do with Putin? Well, if such a reaction from a man like Joe, who had been out of his communist country for nearly twenty years still remained, how can the people who still live there deal with the facts of life? Freedom takes work and a deep belief that one is the head of his own destiny. Russians can't automatically jump into democracy any more than I could jump into a socialist or fascist society. I haven't the sensibility, nor do they.
The oligarchy has ruined Russia (I blame Mr. Clinton for a lot of this), has finally bankrupted the nation, and because there is so little opportunity, the great savior, another Vladimir, says they must clamp down. Most would rather have martial law, than chaos, it seems.
The far left keeps ringing that authoritarian bell. It's a warning to the rest of the world. Communists can't be cleared away like yesterday's trash; they remain viable because they have a willing audience who honestly believe things were better in the old days. At least they didn't have to look for a job in the Soviet Union. The current peace protests, underwritten and supported by socialists and communists, aren't about peace at all, rather they represent another way for the far left to take back power. Power, after all, is what all politics is really about. Getting it and keeping it.
Is Russia's answer more government jobs? Yes, but only enough required for running an efficient society. Joe didn't know any better. He thought all things emanated from the state, from cradle to the grave. No matter how I tried, though, he couldn't understand that freedom and democracy have a high price. Try teaching that to disappointed countries who were promised the gold at the end of the democracy rainbow. No one told them it takes work.
The LA Times Worries About Shocking Chickens To Death
A story that appeared on today's front page concerns a man who is having difficulty with killing chickens at Tysons' plants in Arkansas. Guess he might be suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, maybe it's the Stockholm Syndrome, who knows? Anyway, he's feeling great guilt over his actions. For you who care, his killing method was wholesale computer generated electrocution.
Hell. I remember the time my mother took me out to the chicken house, grabbed a hen, stepped on her neck, literally wringing it, then told me to not be surprised when the chicken's body jumped around. Like a chicken with her head cut off.
I was eight. That's how you killed chickens you were having for dinner that night.
Why do people refuse to grow up?
Thanks for the read.
