When you don't pay attention and put your boxers on backwards, it's surprisingly difficult use a urinal. This is particularly the case when you really have to go, and are struggling to find the little snap-button that is roughly 180 degrees from where it should be. Not that I would know from experience... because I definitely did not do this last night before I wandered off for a hurricane for Mardi Gras.
Maybe this can make my list of 25 interesting things about myself.
-Chairman
There's a bit of a fad going through the internet, Facebook, etc. where people are listing 25 interesting things about themselves. Naturally, I have to follow suit because I always do things that the internet tells me to do, with mixed results. For example, I have actually had $3.9 million put into my bank account by a Nigerian warlord who didn't have access to proper banking. That was sweet. And the internet has introduced me to horny housewives in my local area who were very interested in me. On the downside, they looked nothing like their photos on the internet. Also, my penis size has remained the same, despite promises otherwise from blinking ads on the web. And finally, those Ukranian brides that were sent had some problems in transit (remember, you need to poke a couple air holes in the box when you ship anything live). But all in all, the internet has been good enough to me that I feel compelled to list 25 interesting things about myself, some of which may even have elements of truth.
1. I once killed a man for looking at me cross-eyed.
1.a. Much to my chagrin, I later discovered that he just had a lazy eye.
2. I think that fantasy sports is the best way to keep in touch with old friends.
3. I have spent more years in secondary education than I have in primary education.
4. I wanted to move to California so I could vote against Proposition 8.
5. I think that Christmas is overrated.
6. I have a crush on Erin E-Surance.
7. I believe in open borders for immigration.
8. I also believe in deporting useless citizens.
9. I have the record for the longest pass from scrimmage in flag football history (tied, I'm sure).
10. I'm shocked that I'm not in a relationship.
11. I can cook really well on a college budget.
12. I'm an environmentalist. Sort of.
13. I really enjoy watching people fall in public.
14. My favorite sports team is Duke Lacrosse.
15. I have a healthy lack of respect for money.
16. I am a fan of Suge Knight.
17. I have spent $150 on a meal for myself. Yes, I'm still in college.
18. I often manage to come off as egalitarian, misogynistic, and racist at the same time.
19. I manage to make friends with off-beat people.
20. When bad things are about to happen, my first instinct is annoyance.
21. I was named Time's 2006 Man of the Year.
22. I usually root for Goliath to beat David.
23. I once rode a raft down the Mississippi with my slave Jim.
24. I will never run a marathon.
25. I have an unhealthy fascination with animals killing people, genocide, and basically things that most people find distasteful.
Actually, in the interest of self-promotion, I've decided to make my list pretty much a list of my fun posts through out the years. In any case, what are 25 interesting things about you? Not that I really care. But I feel obligated to ask.
-Chairman
Take a look at this article about how awesome pets can be. In fact, primates seem to make great pets, as evidenced by Marcel in Friends. And since we all take life lessons from sit-coms, we should all get a primate. Particularly, ones that can learn combat skills.
The body of a man wearing a yellow hat was found early on Sunday morning. Curiously, the police have no suspects at this time.
I think that I owe you guys my annual Illini review. It's been different for me this year, since I actually gave up my season tickets, in preparation of my joining the real world. As a result, my perspectives on the Illini come from my couch and TV. Although in fairness, I do get HD, so the view isn't bad. Of course, it isn't quite like sitting in the first row behind the Illini bench. I don't really get to see the physical nature of the game, but I get to see a bigger picture on TV. I also don't like to really write about the Illini until I get a feel for the team, and I just had not watched enough to really have much to say until today's game. So, think of this is a combo for this year and next year, since many of the key players will be back next year.
Some things stand out about this team. First, it's a much truer motion offense that we're running. Last year, we didn't have the ball handlers, particularly early in the season when Dimitri hadn't won heavy minutes, and we would go out there with Chester, Trent, and Calvin as our guards, and Randle and Pruitt as our bigs. You can't run a 5-man motion offense with only 1.5 ball handlers, especially if your bigs can't pass on the perimeter, which neither Randle or Pruitt could really do. The telling statistic is that we've got 433 assists for our 617 field goals, (about a rate of 70%). This compares favorably to our 04-05 team (about 67%), which shared the ball marvelously, and is well above our team last year, who had assists on only 53% of their field goals, and openly disliked each other on the court. We move the rock, and a big part of that is having better ball handlers out there.
Last year, I commented that we'd be at our best once Dimitri emerged as a clear starter. And Dimitri is clearly the best perimeter offensive player on this team. He's still a bit of a streak shooter, but his bread and butter is his penetration. At this stage, he's a better penetrator than Deron was (and remember, I was a huge D-Will fan from day 1). Dimitri can pull out some fancy dribbling in traffic, has a great hesitation dribble, and has an uncanny ability to avoid defenders who are in position to take charges. I like this guy. Last year, I commented that I wasn't sure about his court vision. I'm now convinced. This guy can see passes, and can make some stunning passes from the perimeter. But where he really shines is being a big time scorer. He may put up scoring numbers the next couple years that we haven't seen from a guard since the Kiwane Garris days. I think that he's strong and skilled enough to play at the next level. I don't know if his pure athleticism will allow him to be a lead guard like Deron in the League, but he's got a chance.
Similar to my thoughts on Dimitri last year, I thought that this year's team would be at it's best once Alex Legion won minutes from Trent. And I still think that's true. However, Trent has improved noticeably this year. He's no longer a liability when he has to dribble, and is even creating some opportunities with his penetration. Legion has won the minutes as the 4th guard on this team, at the expense of Jeffrey Jordan. This is good for the Illini, overall, as the ceiling on Legion is much higher. In any case, I'm very comfortable with the ball handling with Chester and Dimitri on the floor. When one or both of them come off, it gets a little shakier, but those stretches don't come often. When it comes to scoring the ball, Trent is still largely catch and shoot, and has done what he's always done - kill bad teams. We'll see if he can pick it up against better competition. Legion hasn't gotten enough floor time to really emerge on offense, but that may come if Trent isn't able to work better against Big Ten teams.
Chester has improved on offense, particularly with regard to his willingness to shoot. I've never had any problems with his shooting mechanics, in general. This year, he's shooting 45% from the field, 38% from 3, and has looked like he belongs on the offensive end of the court. He's still passing up some open shots that should be taken, but he looks a lot more comfortable out there.
What's been a nice surprise has been the emergence of both Mike Davis and Mike Tisdale. Davis has gotten some national attention with his article in SI, which is nice. My comment last year was that his offensive game was pretty advanced for a freshman. Happily, his development this year has made me look like a reasonable talent evaluator. He's comfortable catching and shooting from 17' in, he can take a dribble and pull up, as well. He's still not the back to the basket threat that Brian Cook was (the player that I compared him to last year), but he is more explosive than Cook ever was, and has a knack for rebounding in traffic. I'm still not sold on him having a NBA body, but still think that he's got All-Big Ten potential.
Tisdale has also emerged nicely this year. He showed a lot of toughness last year, so you knew that he was willing to compete on D. He's also improved his toughness on the offensive end, and has made the most of his nice interior game. He's also improved his catch and shoot game. Having two bigs that can knock down mid-range spot-up jumpers is huge in our offense. One of our biggest problems last year was the inability, of either Pruitt or Randle, to knock down 12' jumpers. This year, both of our bigs can do that, and have done it all year.
One of our big question marks is with our forwards after Davis and Tisdale. Our new transfer Dominique Keller has been a nice addition, emerging as our 3rd forward. He's not a particularly good shooter, but works well inside, despite being a bit undersized against most 4's. I'm still not sure about this guy, and need to see more before I can really give a legit evaluation. And if we need a 4th forward, it's our old favorite Calvin Brock. What's nice is that we've finally realized that he's not a guard. He plays 4 for this team, which is actually perfect for his skill set, and gives him a simpler role in this offense. Unfortunately he's 6'5" and not 6'8". But the important thing is that we're not relying on him as a ball handler. And to his credit, Calvin has accepted the role, and been able to give us a little energy off of the bench.
The hallmark for this team is still it's defense, which Bruce Weber is very good with. Even last year, we still played reasonably well on D. We just couldn't score. This year, our defense is better, since our bigs avoid cheap fouls, unlike Randle and Pruitt. Weber has constantly challenged Dimitri to become a dominant perimeter defender. He's still not there, yet, but you can definitely see the improvement in his D, as well. Ditto for Trent, who will never become a dominant perimeter defender, but has improved to the point where he's not a liability. But the guy who really makes the D work is Chester, who I think is on par with Dee Brown as an on-the-ball defender. In this last game against Purdue, the announcers suggested that Chester and Kramer (from Purdue) were the two best perimeter defenders in the Big Ten. He hasn't had to rebound as much this year, but still comes up with big rebounds when we need it. The D isn't going anywhere, which is always reassuring, since we won't get blown out of games, unless we just shoot really, really, really badly (like the games at Wisconsin and Minnesota the last 2 weeks).
Right now, we're 19-5, 7-4 in conference, tied for 2nd in the Big Ten, and ranked somewhere in the 20-30 range nationally. A look at our schedule suggests that we'll go 5-2 the rest of the way (figure that between games at home against Minnesota and Michigan St., and road games at Penn St. and Ohio St., we'll go 2-2, though we've got just as good of a chance to go 3-1), which puts us at 24-7, and probably 2nd in the conference and a 1st round bye in the Big Ten Tourney. Our resume looks pretty good. 2 W's over Purdue and the W's over Mizzou and Ohio St. are all good. The Tulsa and Vandy W's still hold some value. And we don't have any bad losses. If we can go 2-1 in the tourney, we're probably looking at a 4 or 5 seed in the Dance. And winning the Big Ten tourney may get us up to a 2/3 seed. But if you look around the country, you really only buy into 2, maybe 3 teams (UNC and UConn for sure, maybe one of the Oklahoma/Pitt/Duke/L'Ville) as being Final Four "locks" (unlike last year, you had 4 teams who were dominant on their way to the all-1-seed Final Four ). Coming into this season, a run to the Sweet 16 would be considered an unqualified success. If we can keep our seed from getting below a 6, we'll have a real good shot at achieving that. This Illini squad has a real good shot against anyone outside of those 6 teams, and a run into the Elite 8 wouldn't be the most shocking thing in the world. I won't get to watch it live like I have the past few years, but life on HD isn't all that bad, either, when you're winning.
-Chairman
Part of the current debate on the government stimulus package is where the money goes. Apparently, some of our GOP folks are balking at sending money toward education. Which, of course, got me thinking about a post that I had started back in September (the next paragraph, below). So now, for all of our amusement/dismay, I will finish that post.
A little while back, the good folks over at the Freakonomics blog put up a post that discussed the potentially illegal use of race-based admissions over at UCLA. Not surprisingly, I have a very strong opinion about how we do college admissions. However, my guess is that you wouldn't be able to guess my opinion. And that's because I'm pretty much a sociopath.
I think that way too many people go to college. Why is this happening? I've blamed the feminist movement in the past, and I'm sticking with my story. There's more to it than women leaving the bedroom/kitchen, but it's a starting point.
Over the past 60 years, there's a trend of higher education being more geared toward getting people ready for jobs (rather than teaching them how to think). That's not the focus of this, but keep that in the back of your mind. More to the point here, more and more women have gone to college. Let's say higher education has room for 100 students. In 1950, this would have been 90 guys, and 10 girls (9.7 of whom would then become school teachers or nurses). And when everyone graduates, the 100 students are absorbed into the workforce. Everyone's happy: the workforce gets high quality workers, we get high quality teachers, the people who invest in higher education gets additional value, etc.
Now, imagine a system of equality. One thought would be to simply say, fine. We're going to leave it at 100 students, and we'll just trim 40 guys, and add 40 girls. That would actually increase the overall ability, if you assume that guys and girls have the equal intelligence, and the workforce is a more efficient place, save for basic education, since the girls that end up as teachers are likely not the top 10 of their gender, like in the past, but more likely at the bottom of the higher education sample, probably in the 30 to 50 range. But it's a reasonable situation.
But, I don't believe that's really the case. We know that kids tend to have higher educational attainment than their parents. This is actually not the case with the latest stats here in the U.S., but it's close. (As an aside, this would totally be my fault, if I had kids - I mean, who stays in college for 13 years, really?) But in any case, this means that the situation that I described isn't really the case. Rather, higher education has expanded. So now, we need to not only keep the original 90 guys, but we need to bring in 90 girls to balance it out. The overall ability level of graduates is roughly the same, and you'll note that the quality of school teachers decreases further, probably down to the 60-90 (out of 90) range. But the workforce is only ready to accept 100 workers. You can probably fit some more workers in there, and expand it out to 140 or 150. But there's still some folks there who aren't really employable. We'll call them "English majors" or something like that.
And it's not just the womenfolk that are draggins us down. Back when you only had 90 guys and 10 girls in college, they were probably all white. Now, we start getting black, brown, yellow, and red people in the mix. If you take similar exercises and start adding in other demographics, particularly the black and Hispanic figures, where test scores and admittance criteria seems to be lower, then you start to see not only the overabundance of educated folks, but also degradation in the overall ability of college grads.
So what has the corporate world done? Basically, they've found out that they can take college grads and put them into jobs where you don't need a college degree, and get better performance. Think about most jobs in the corporate world. What percentage of the accomplished tasks could not be done without the training you get in college? A relatively small percentage, I'd bet. Even in engineering, if you gave similar on the job training, you could get competent performance with a sharp high school kid for most tasks (at least you could at GE when I interned there).
So what does a college degree really mean for employers?
That you're going to show up.
No kidding. Folks in interorganizational and occupational psychology (like my buddy Judge) look at this stuff. What the degree (and your activities and stuff) signal is that you're going to show up to class to the point where you'll pass, and get your degree.
And for employers, the most important signal that you give to employers is that you'll show up. The next most important? That you'll be reasonable to work with. The working hypothesis is that most employers know that the tasks that employees are asked to complete are so simple that competence is assumed. There are naturally a few exceptions, and you'll see where ability is really valued. But for many positions, succes isn't driven by intelligence and knowledge, but rather by dilligence and quality control.
So what does any of this have to do with the stimulus package and bailout money? If you accept the assumption that colleges have become more vocational in their orientation, then this begs the question of the effectiveness of this mission. Do we really need this many people with college educations for the workforce? It's nice to have, but it costs. Government subsidies for college scholarships, university funding, etc. all come out of our tax dollars. Now, if you were going to say that we were going to subsidize basic research, I'd be all for it. Advancement of knowledge has been a crucial aspect to the American competitive advantage in the last 125 years. But subsidizing vocational training is different - why are we paying taxes so that a places like General Motors and General Mills have college grads filling roles that could be done my trained monkeys? I'd even argue that the education we require for the medical profession (doctors, pharmacists, etc.) is overkill. Most of the tasks they complete are checklists, which could be manned by a well-designed computer program and a chimp. But that's an aside.
In any case, what's my position? Less money for vocational training. More money for the advancement of basic knowledge. Better computer programs and more chimps in the workforce. And more euthanasia, which isn't really part of my argument here, but I just wanted to remind everyone of my platforms for my future presidential campaigns.
-Chairman
I have a new hero. You guys already knew my affinity for guys like Mugabe or Ahmadinejead. But I have a new hero.
Stephon Marbury.
Sadly, I couldn't find the video clip from NBA Fastbreak where Jalen Rose named Stephon Marbury his "Hoops Hero" after the Lakers-Knicks matchup in December where Stephon bought a courtside ticket, showed up and did an interview with NBA TV.
But the gist of the converstaion was that Stephon Marbury is making $21.9 million this year to hang out. Plus, he can get courside Lakers tickets and promote his shoe line's website, and fly around to watch other NBA games. Love this guy. I want to be Stephon Marbury when I grow up.
That is, if I can't be Mugabe or Ahmadinejead.
-Chairman
So the NFL season is finally over. Pittsburgh. Ugh. Hate the Steelers. I was rooting for the Colts, but they sort of choked it against the Chargers, who in turn got run over by the Steelers. What was interesting was that the Colts-Chargers game and the Super Bowl both had a very interesting situation at the end of the game. The team that was ahead late in the 4th quarter had the ball at their own 1 yard line. The Colts were up 3, and ended up punting from their own 1 yard line to the Chargers, who promptly drove downfield, popped the figgie, and then won in overtime. As the Colts lined up to punt, I was watching the game at home, and talking to the TV. What was I saying?
"You gotta take the safety, right?"
Here's my logic. Say an average punt goes 45 yards, and an average punt return is 10 yards. That means that you would expect a 35 yard shift in field position. If you're punting from your own 1, then you'd expect the other team to get the ball back at around the 36. That's already in long field goal range. So the odds of the other team tying the game is very high, and the odds of them getting a TD for the clean win is moderate.
Now, if you take a safety, you're only up by 1 point. And you get a free kick from the 20, which doesn't seem like much of a gain. But in actuality, that's like a 30 yard shift in field position. When teams punt, they normally snap the ball back 14 yards, before the punter kicks it. So, a free kick from the 20 is more like a punt from the 32 (if you factor in the steps). Now, if you use the same 35-yard shift in field position, then you're looking at the other team getting the ball at their own 33. This is a much different scenario. The odds of them getting a game winning field goal are moderate, at best.
So what does this look like?
Take safety --> Other team scores and wins 40% of the time, you win 60% of the time.
Punt --> Other team scores a TD to win outright, 40% of the time. Other team attempts a FG 55% of the time. Other team doesn't score or attempt a FG 5% of the time.
The other thing to consider is that if they attempt the FG, they probably make 70% of the attempts. So, this puts it in OT, where you give it about a 50-50.
By my crude estimation, taking the safety gives you a 60% chance to win, but just punting from the 1 only gives you a 40% chance to win. I don't know what most coaches would do, but I suspect that most coaches do what Tony Dungy did. Punt from the 1. I believe that Dungy made a tactical mistake by not taking the safety.
Now flash forward a few weeks. Steelers up by 6, and have the ball at their own 1. Of course, you try to get the 1st down and end the game, but the 2nd most important thing is to milk as much clock as you can (3:26 left at that point). I'm still talking to the TV. What was I saying?
"Just run clock for 3 downs, and then take the safety, if you have to."
Instead the Steelers come up passing on 1st down (incomplete). And then they are obligated to run on 2nd and long to burn some clock, which everyone was expecting (no gain, but AZ burned their first time out). Now, I was expecting the Steelers to come out and run again, and force either a 2nd TO or to let the clock run down to the 2 minute warning. Instead, they try to pass for the 1st down. And they complete the pass, amazingly enough. But they get called for the safety, which is what I was sort of expecting. But the worst part is that they only burned 33 seconds (Warner got the ball back with 2:53 on the clock, and 2 TO's in hand, plus the 2 minute warning).
Now, we'll never know if the Steelers take the intentional safety if they had faced 4th down from their own one. But I think that the odds suggest even more strongly than with the Colts-Chargers example, that the safety would be the much better play (especially since a Cards TD would leave the Steelers down 3). But have a suspicion that Tomlin would've try to punt from the 1...
I think that I'm with Bill Simmons. Teams need to have their coaches play more Madden. These clock management situations are botched regularly in the NFL, which sort of makes sense. Playing Madden, you see so many more game situations, since you play so many more games.
Meanwhile, my Bengals still suck, and now my guy T.J. Who's Your Daddy is a free agent, and is extolling the virtues of Rex Grossman. Maybe Carson comes back healthy next season, but if not... this Bengals-fan purgatory is looking to continue.
-Chairman
