Short and sweet this time. Just want to give props to my people for doing the damn thang, complete with photo evidence from the folks at the NYT, via Reuters:
What in the world could this posting be about?
It's definitely not about Chinese astrology. The new year is actually the year of the Rat, once Chinese New Year hits. So, it's not about that.
Thank God. Astrology is for nitwits. And women with too much time on their hands. Not saying that these groups are mutually exclusive. In fact, the overlap may be uncanny.
It could be about nooses and lynchings and our favorite Cablinasian golfer. While this topic is sort of interesting, I honestly don't know about the relevance of Tiger Woods as a socially influential icon, a la Jackie Robinson. The biggest problem is with Tiger as an agent of change is that he's a golfer. There's a fascination with blacks in elitist arenas, like golf and racing (remember, open wheel racing was originally a contest for the rich, unlike NASCAR). I think that it would be much more interesting for an NBA superstar (a la LeBron) to be an agent for social change by going back and helping his community at large in a truly influential way. It's one thing to employ your posse. It's another to stimulate economic recovery in the streets and make social change happen by uplifting your people. It's much harder to do so as an icon in an unapproachable arena.
I think that part of this is with the notion of equality at the highest levels. The problem is, what this does is bring up the black folks who are already in higher positions. Who benefits most from aid that's achievement-based, but only after you allow minority candidates? It's not the inner city kids from lousy schools. Sure, you'll be able to fish out a couple of kids who would have been otherwise lost to the environment. But the folks that benefit the most are the children of existing black professionals. Why should someone get additional benefits, when they are already in a position to succeed? Why should they have an edge if they are black, but came from a family with a mother who was a lawyer and a father who was a stock broker?
So what does this do? You push up a few, while largely ignoring those at the bottom. This is the same thing for golf. It's hard to lift people up from high perch. It's much easier to push them up from the bottom. The black media is calling for someone to latch on to. I wonder if this is for themselves, or for Black America. The black media is successful, educated, and have already broken into the upper echelon of society. Tiger would be their icon. And maybe it would trickle down to the masses.
But I wonder how many black kids out there knew Ralph Wiley's work. If it's there, but it's not accessible, does it really matter (in terms for affecting change)? The black masses may have a hard time identifying with Tiger. This was a kid that was golfing from the time he was 2. He was on national TV as a little kid, and went to Stanford. This isn't inner-city America. For this to work, it would be trickle-down social change. I don't believe in the trickle-down theory in most matters. No point starting now.
Geez. I thought that this wasn't about Tiger Woods...
Well, it isn't, really. At least it wasn't. I have a tendency to ramble.
Duh. So what were you really planning on writing about?
So what I was originally planning on writing about was this little nugget that was on the news a couple weeks ago. Now, apparently, the idiots who provoked the tiger out in Frisco, were drunk and stoned. Awesome. Somehow, this just gets more and more amusing. Especially if you read the comments on this New York Times blog.
My buddy Dino said it best when he said, "There just aren't enough predators to keep the prey in check." He was suggesting that the attitudes of society don't allow for enough of the predator-prey interaction to help people become acculturated. But it would've been cooler had he meant that we should have more tigers running around in the streets.
-Chairman
... remember that time when that Pheidippides dude ran all the way to Sparta and back?
Yeah, dude, that was awesome. We should do it, too.
Didn't he collapse and die?
I think so. It'll be awesome.
Dude, you're on. Last one there's buying the Old Style.
So, let's recap. Great story. Some Greek dude runs 26 miles, and collapses. Then idiots everywhere decide that it's cool to follow suit, paying $80 for the privilege to run themselves into exhaustion, delirium, and if they're lucky, death. After all, you gotta get your money's worth. So, this New York Times article is pretty funny, actually. Some of the highlights include:
“I had no faculties whatsoever,” said Dawn Dowell, who was among the injured, having blacked out at Mile 19.
Sweet. She sounds like most of the people I've talked to this weekend.
...doctors saw runners with core body temperatures as high as 107 degrees. At those temperatures, Dr. Lucenti said, people are stuttering and mumbling, unable to answer simple questions.
I wonder if a lot of people I meet have 107 degree body temperatures, because I see a lot of stuttering, mumbling, and the inability to answer simple questions. Of course, I teach an undergrad class. Maybe the thermostat's up too high in the classroom.
Brain cells may start to be destroyed when body temperatures are raised too high.
Perhaps this is an epidemic, because I think that I've seen a lot of folks with damaged brain cells lately.
Others, especially those who had trained for months and flown to town for the event, said they were angry, and kept running. Some recognized Mr. Pinkowski, the director, and yelled at him as he walked away from the central race area downtown, he said.
I think that continuing the race should have been mandatory. But there's nothing like yelling at someone who just shattered your hopes and dreams of being a world champion marathon runner... wait... nevermind. If you hadn't made it halfway when they called it, you weren't going to win anything, other than maybe your pride. Apparently, it takes a t-shirt to fulfill some of these marathon runners.
And to top it all off, in the women's race, apparently some chick pulled a Leon Lett:
Adriana Pirtea, a 27-year-old Romanian running in her first marathon, was waving her arms in triumph when, with 10 yards to go, the race favorite, defending champion Berhane Adere, a 34-year-old Ethiopian, caught her and flashed by.
How cool is that? Maybe I'll start watching more marathons. Of course, I'll be sure to have plenty of Gatorade. It can get pretty warm sitting there in the sun for so long. In fact, I may just go to the bar to have a couple beers and watch it on TV with the rest of the fans.
Or not.
-Chairman
You'd figure that I would learn my lesson by now. Every year, I schedule flag football games late on Sunday, and every year, I have trouble sleeping on Sunday night. This year, we play at 10. So, basically, I've got my blood flowing hard from about 9 until 11, and then I come home, and try to go to bed. Bad idea. The best part is that I'm actually going out to breakfast at 8 with some of the doctoral students and one of our job candidates. I'm not usually a morning person, but going on 4 hours of sleep (assuming I can hit the sack by 4 - it's 3:10 now) should be interesting. Nothing like representing your program and your school by being a zombie at breakfast. Let's just say that I'll be ordering coffee at breakfast. Happily after breakfast, I can just go back to bed until I have to teach at 3. Of course, it'll be fun to see how I can improvise on what the lecture slides have to say in class. Happily, we won't have any cameras rolling.
This flag football season has not been a memorable one. In retrospect, I shouldn't have tried to put together a team myself this year. I should've just rolled with The Judge and the psych folks, maybe bringing a couple guys over with me. I thought that we had enough manpower to put up a very strong version of 13th Tribe, but some of my regular receivers couldn't play this year. And our recruiting efforts have been down. We haven't had a sub at any of our 3 games, and one game we actually played a man down. Not good times. The sick part of it all is that I may be putting together my best season at QB this year. I'm making some money throws, I've figured out some good route combinations, and am doing a pretty decent job of moving the rock around the field.
So tonight's game was a tough 18-13 loss. We got a little shell shocked in the first half when they just marched down the field and scored on us. We opened up with me getting a little confused by the defense. They didn't really rush me all out, instead having two tall rushers just stand in the passing lanes and try to bat the ball down. I got a ball batted, and on the next play I got overaggressive and threw a pick. Quick slant route where I tried to force it in, and the linebacker jumped in there. A couple plays later, we were down 12-0. Not good. We put together a couple passes, but turned the ball over on downs and they scored again to make it 18-0. We did manage to put together a couple nice passes to close out the first half, which actually helped things out, got me some confidence.
We came out in the 2nd half, and completed a couple short ones, working the ball around to everyone. I also mixed up the rushers with a couple pump fakes and a couple rollout plays. We got a first down, and then, we took a shot deep. Boom. 45 yard bomb down to the 6. Funny story here. One of the refs actually saw that we were down a player, and asked if he could play with us, since he was done working for the night. He was a former player, so he was confident, begging for the deep ball. If there's one thing I can do it's launch that 40-40 ball. 40 yards deep, 40 feet high. He hauled it in, but couldn't stay on his feet, so we took over. They rushed a little harder and almost sacked me, so we switched it over to our fast QB. Incomplete on 3rd, but on 4th, he rolled out right. I stayed in the middle of the field, and saw that he wasn't finding space to run or an open receiver on the strong side, so I yelled, "weak side." He heard me and launched a ball back across the field in my direction. I actually adjusted to the ball and jumped up and took it away from my teammate (who I didn't realize was my teammate until after the play). This was my first TD catch since the year I played with an I-Life team that had Jared as the QB. Let's just say that this doesn't happen often. I throw for plenty. I'll punch one in there on the run everyone once in a while. But I hardly ever catch TD's. If I was thinking more, I would've had a better celebration planned out.
We came out on D, and their QB, maybe feeling a little frisky, decides to launch a deep bomb, as well. Bad idea for them. Great for us. We pick that guy off, and get the ball back pretty quickly. We get a couple short passes, and have the ball just inside our 30 or so. Once again, our new player is begging for that deep ball. So, I send him on that route. I was looking to my short routes first, but the blocking opened up a nice area for me to step up, and as I was stepping up, I saw that the safeties stayed sort of short. My guy was behind everyone. Boom. 50 yards in the air into the endzone. Pretty hot. We get the conversion on a little quick hitter, and were down 18-13 with a little over 2 minutes left to go, needing a stop. We didn't get it until too late. They actually got the ball down to our 2 yard line, but we managed to stop them on 4th down, but with only 15 seconds left. We got the ball out to the 25 with a quick completion, but couldn't get enough laterals together to get into the endzone on the last play of the game. This was the second week in a row where we had a bad first half, but adjusted and played a good 2nd half, and had the game come down to the very end. The sick part is that if we got the ball back with 1:15, instead of just 15 seconds, I really liked our chances with them in prevent.
Oh well. Basically, the story of the game was that our defense didn't wake up until the 2nd half, and our QB (me) was an idiot until the 3rd drive, at which point, we were already down 18-0. So, this puts me at 0-3 for the first time ever. But the thing is, playing w/out subs, and down a man, and keeping every game close has been a pretty satisfying feeling. Don't get me wrong. I hate losing, especially when I have a team that should win. But man, playing with a patchwork team, and doing some good things on the field is a neat feeling. The best part is that the legs are holding up just fine. I'm pretty sore after the games, but that's from being out of shape. The knees feel just fine once I've gotten warmed up. And I actually jumped like a foot in the air to catch that ball, so that's encouraging.
In any case, we have one more game. Hopefully, we can put together some offense and have our defense come out aggressive this time and get a W on the board to close out the career (unless they somehow talk me into coming back for one more season :-) ).
Anyway, I'm off to get a glass of water and try to get a couple hours of sleep before I have to wake up and do breakfast. Uggh.
-Chairman
So, I passed my summer paper. But how I passed it was fun. We're judged on 4 criteria. The first three are things like, can you do a good review of the existing literature, do you understand the theoretical issues in the domain, and have you demonstrated creativity in your paper. I passed those with pretty good comments. Now, the last criterion is whether we can effectively communicate our ideas in writing. My result? "Marginal Pass." The best part was the first comment - "Folksy writing style sometimes got in the way." How awesome is that? I'm folksy. I represent the people... if by people, you mean dim-witted mouth-breathers that enjoy Larry the Cable Guy. Git'er Done! That's how I roll. Actually, the critique is an interesting one. I write how I talk. Which is nice here, nice in presentations, but not as hot for journal submissions. I suppose that I'll have to clean up the writing when I start doing it for real. But I passed.
I'm ready to get moving on the dissertation now. This is going to be an interesting year. I'm working for two professors that I really like, my advisor, and a professor that I worked with during my first year. It should be an interesting experience, as I get to sort of see some more of the nuts and bolts that professors go through. I'm seeing how you run a conference from a behind the scenes perspective by communicating with article reviewers, authors, and session chairs. I'm also reviewing some articles for a conference, too. Scary though, isn't it? I'm going to critique the work of other people, and actually have it mean something. But I'm also doing a little web work for my professors' classes, and I'll be an administrator for a little research group of undergrads. It's interesting, and it'll be useful for when I grow up and get a job.
It feels good to have a new school start up. It's the start of number 11 for me out here. It's amazing. The incoming freshmen were in 2nd grade when I first started out here, many years ago. The fun part is that I was playing some volleyball with them last week. And I was actually playing well. I was moving well, passing great, setting alright, and actually hitting the ball well. Bombing it, as a matter of fact. The legs were sore afterwards, but the knees felt alright. Hopefully, they'll stay that way from here on out.
Recently, I've been feeling really good. I've been hitting the gym pretty good, doing some bike work and lifting. I'm actually dominating some of the ab machines in the gym. If I could lose 20 pounds, I bet that you'd actually find some nice looking muscles underneath. But, I've trimmed a couple pounds, too. The diet has been better - I'm getting more fruits and veggies mixed in there. And the big thing has been this mountain bike that I got. I got it fixed up pretty good (well, good enough so that the brakes work, and I won't die). And now, I'm riding around campus, instead of taking the bus or driving. It feels good, even though it's not a real cardio workout. Where it's more important for me is that it's an attitude about how I approach life. It's like I just tell myself that I'm going to be more active, and my body believes it. It's pretty cool.
I think that we'll also be getting some flag football teams together this year. A lot of the folks who played last year are also going to play this year. I think that we'll have a guy's team that's got a shot at doing alright in the playoffs in B. And I think that our co-rec team may be able to make the playoffs. A lot of it is going to be whether or not my legs hold up. If I'm able to get the legs underneath me and throw the ball for real, as well as make some things happen with my feet, then our offense will be solid. Plus, I'll have a better feel for the guys that I'll be throwing to, as well. Last year, we had some issues when we put our fastest guy out wide, only to discover that he didn't know how to catch the deep ball, and was better with plays where the ball was out in front of him (and not above him). Of course, my biggest asset as a QB is that I can throw the 40-40 ball (throw a ball 40 yards, 40 feet up in the air, and just let the receiver run underneath it). So, I'd be throwing good balls to the sideline, he'd be turning in toward the middle, wanting a post-type route. This year, we'll figure out who likes the deep ball, and who likes what routes a little earlier.
One thing that amuses me is that every once in a while, I'll run into some strangers who remember me playing QB against them. And it's always fun. Even the guys that beat us, seem to remember that we were a challenging team to play against because we were organized and had a good offense. And I've even had more than one team try to recruit me to play QB for their co-rec teams (admittedly, I'm a better co-rec QB than a men's QB, since speed isn't as big of an issue for co-rec, since guys can't run across the line of scrimmage, whereas in men's, the QB can just take off and outrun people, if they're fast enough). The other day, I just ran into a guy who played for the team that beat us to go to playoffs last year. It turns out that the two teams that beat us both made the final 8, with one of the teams losing in the finals. We played both squads tough, and were able to move the ball and score on them. They just made some plays that we couldn't match. I think that we'll get them this year.
Reds only 2 games out in the central, and still in the wild card lead, and it's the end of August. If we can survive this West Coast swing, I like our chances.
Anyway, it's time to turn it in.
-Chairman
So, I'm off at dinner the other night with the Rook and Scotty. Rook's a Cubs fan, while Scotty is a Cards fan. So, I go to Rook, "Rook - ask me who's going to win the NL Wild Card." He sees my grin, so he plays along. "Alright. Who's going to win the NL Wild Card?" Now they were both expecting me to say, "The Reds!" Of course, my response? Deadpan. "The Cardinals."
I don't know how true that is, but all I know is that we're in the middle of August and the Reds are still up a game for the Wild Card and only 1.5 games out, with the last three games against the Cards coming up these next couple days. If we can somehow pull this off and make the playoffs, it would be incredible. I have to say that if the Reds make the playoffs, I'll find a way to get to Cincy and watch some playoff baseball.
Right now, baseball season is good. In addition to the Reds, the Yanks are in first in the AL East. I would absolutely love to see a Reds-Yanks World Series. Not only would it feature my two favorite teams, it would also be a 30 year anniversary of when the Big Red Machine steamrolled the Yankees.
We've also got football season kicking off soon enough. Exciting times - I always love it when fall rolls around because it means that football will be back soon. And this year? Maybe the Bengals can put it together and make a deep run. And maybe the Illini can put it together and get that 3rd win this year. We'll see.
-Chairman
names have been named.
