I used to be active in a Unitarian Universalist church. That's right, you can be an atheist and a Unitarian. You just have to respect the idea that everyone is on a journey. This was mostly a great experience. I was active for about eight years. I felt warm fellowship from many people and they did help me to get through some hard times. I also met my wife through the church. I enjoyed going to church on Sundays ... smelling the coffee brewing and chatting with friends about the sermon. Yes, religious people can respect science, out-of-the-box thinking and people who are different from themselves.
I am still good friends with many of the people I met through the church, but my membership in the church did not end well. I had a falling out with the church. When I announced I was leaving, I expected a lot of calls from fellow parishioners expressing their concern for me, making sure I was okay. I only received two calls, one from the pastor who seemed far more concerned about something I said about him than concern for me. The other call came about six weeks later when they realized my checks were no longer coming. That caller didn't express concern from me either, just for my money. I thought they were different than other religions, but apparently I was wrong. They are more about the money than the fellowship.
Earlier this week my father passed away. He was 89 years old and he lead a good life. This blog post isn't about how much I loved him or how much he will be missed or what a great father he was. I could write a lot about those and I probably will in the future. This blog post is about bowling. He loved bowling. He used take me and my little sister bowling a lot on his days off when I was a kid. He had two jobs during my youth so he didn't have a lot of time off. We always had a great time.
My father was in the same bowling league for twenty years. He was also a practicing Catholic his entire life. He went to church every weekend for almost 90 years. I stood in the receiving line at his wake on Tuesday and there must have been 30 people, perhaps 50, that told me that they knew my dad from bowling. This is not an exaggeration. These were beautiful friendly people who said such nice things about him. They obviously knew him really well and would genuinely miss him. They described his wry wit and his unfiltered nature and how he'd make everyone at the alley laugh. I was really impressed with the depth of their friendship and they made me feel much better on a really miserable day.
If you are looking for fellowship and life-long friendship ... join a bowling league, not a church. Not a single person said that they knew him from the church.
Friday, September 2, 2016
Friday, August 5, 2016
Gays in Star Trek
When I look at the stats of this blog, I am always amazed. Every time I blog about Star Trek, the numbers are off the wall. For example, in the last week I have had over 90 hits on my post about Dr. Crusher (a character on Star Trek). This is the entry with the highest amount of hits for the week. This was posted over a year ago. The next two closest are my last two posts from last week, one with around 40 and the other around 20 hits. Every time I look at these stats, my Star Trek blog posts have the highest amount of hits. I am tempted to blog more about Star Trek. I don't want this blog to be a geekfest, dedicated only to a 50 year old television show, but it is tempting to follow the clicks. I must resist. I am larger than that. So I am only doing this on occasion.
This year's film Star Trek: Beyond was a good one. Remember every other Star Trek movie is a good one. I am not going to go into details about what made the movie worth seeing, for that you can go to Rotten Tomatoes. One little subtle detail in the film that may have caught your eye or may have even pissed a few people off: Mr. Sulu is gay. That's right. The Enterprise docks at the space station Yorktown (one of the most spectacular things I have seen on the screen) and the crew goes on shore leave. They meet up with their loved ones. Lt. Hikaru Sulu picks up his daughter, hugs her and walks away with his arm around her and another man. Fans of the show will presume that the little girl is Demura, Sulu's daughter, but his male partner, that is entirely new.
The crew that is in the film is a reboot of the television show from the 60's. The same characters are in the film but obviously, with younger actors. The actor that played Sulu on the television show, George Takei, came out as gay in 2005 and announced that he had been, at the time, in a committed relationship with another man, Brad Altman, for 18 years. This was prompted by Republican governor Schwarzenegger's veto of California same-sex legislation. So it makes sense that if any character should be gay on Star Trek, it might as well be Sulu. Nothing in the show's past would contradict this. There is one episode, Mirror, Mirror, where Sulu shows some interest in a female crew member, Uhura, but that was the evil Sulu from the alternative universe. Not our Sulu.
When Gene Roddenberry created the show in the 60's he was already pushing the envelope, when he had main characters from non-white descent. While three main characters were white males,the other three were not which didn't happen on television back then. It was somewhat radical for a character like Sulu to be of Japanese descent just a couple of decades after WW II. Uhura was a black woman from Africa and Chekov was Russian during the height of the cold war. Nothing on TV was like it. The network had problems with this, but since they were minor characters, they got away with it. The original pilot had a woman first officer but that was changed when the show was picked up. The network tried to get rid of Spock, because he was an alien, but he was such a popular character, they dealt with it. The original series showed us little of their personal lives so anyone of them could be gay, their sex lives never came into play. Also, their ethnicity and gender had little to do with the plots of the shows. When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out in the 1980's, Roddenberry tried to get a gay character into the mix but it never happened. He had little control over the show by then and he died during the filming of the fifth season.
Science fiction is fertile ground for gender bending. I may have mentioned before, in prior posts, that Star Trek isn't always good sci-fi but it is almost always good television. It is easier to push the envelope on any subject, particular those considered by many to be controversial, when you can hide under the auspice of an alien culture. This is why, it is a bit disappointing that Star Trek didn't take a lead on this in the television world. While lesser shows like Soap and Will and Grace were making strides on this subject, the Star Trek franchise was quite tame.
Standout episodes exist, but until now, we haven't had a gay recurring character. The closest we have had is Commander Riker, the first officer on The Next Generation, who could be bisexual and seems like he'd have sex with anything. If I were on the crew with him, I wouldn't leave him alone with my pets. In a 5th season episode, called The Outcast, we are introduced to an androgynous species called the J'naii. This species has one gender. It is considered perverted among them to lean toward male or female and against the law. Riker forms a connection with one of them, Soren, who admits to him to lean towards the female. They quickly fall in love. When the J'naii force her to undergo a procedure to neutralize her, Riker and Worf (another crew member) risk their lives and careers to stop it. It is not a very good episode, mostly because of how out of character Riker acts and how his behavior is forgiven. I watched this episode when it originally aired in 1992 when I was living with housemates in the suburbs of Boston. I watched it with one of my housemates who got outright angry with it. It might have been the first time I had ever seen physical manifestations of homophobia. He was turning red and breathing heavily. Obviously, the show touched a nerve so maybe I do see why they weren't more bold. He might have had a heart attack if Captain Kirk and Spock started making out.
A number of episodes have had sexuality themes. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the third series, had a Trill character, Commander Jadzia Dax. DS9 had much stronger female characters than the other series and Dax was one of them. Trills are symbiotic species; they are slug-like and live inside a humanoid host. When the host dies, the slug moves to a new host who could be from another gender. The slug lives for generations and carries the memories of the prior host, so their sexuality is fluid. Dax may be a female character but she has memories of having had relationships with men and women. In Rejoined, from season 4, Dax meets up with an old spouse and falls in love again. In Trill culture, having relations with an old spouse or lover from a prior joining is taboo. If they were to continue they would be exiled and their symbionts would not be assigned any more hosts. This episode contains the first same-sex kiss in Star Trek. This is the 357th episode ... it was about time.
Also, in DS9 we had two male characters Miles O'Brien and Doctor Julian Bashir who spend a lot of time alone together on the holodeck. We never get to see what they are doing during these sessions and neither do any of their crew mates. They claim to be reliving famous battles, like the Alamo, but who knows what they are doing. Let your imagination run on this one that is what entertainment is for.
In January 2017, CBS will be premiering the seventh series (if you count the animated series from the 70's) called Star Trek: Discovery. So we'll see if they boldly go where no Star Trek series has gone before. My guess, it will be more subtle than bold.
This year's film Star Trek: Beyond was a good one. Remember every other Star Trek movie is a good one. I am not going to go into details about what made the movie worth seeing, for that you can go to Rotten Tomatoes. One little subtle detail in the film that may have caught your eye or may have even pissed a few people off: Mr. Sulu is gay. That's right. The Enterprise docks at the space station Yorktown (one of the most spectacular things I have seen on the screen) and the crew goes on shore leave. They meet up with their loved ones. Lt. Hikaru Sulu picks up his daughter, hugs her and walks away with his arm around her and another man. Fans of the show will presume that the little girl is Demura, Sulu's daughter, but his male partner, that is entirely new.
The crew that is in the film is a reboot of the television show from the 60's. The same characters are in the film but obviously, with younger actors. The actor that played Sulu on the television show, George Takei, came out as gay in 2005 and announced that he had been, at the time, in a committed relationship with another man, Brad Altman, for 18 years. This was prompted by Republican governor Schwarzenegger's veto of California same-sex legislation. So it makes sense that if any character should be gay on Star Trek, it might as well be Sulu. Nothing in the show's past would contradict this. There is one episode, Mirror, Mirror, where Sulu shows some interest in a female crew member, Uhura, but that was the evil Sulu from the alternative universe. Not our Sulu.
When Gene Roddenberry created the show in the 60's he was already pushing the envelope, when he had main characters from non-white descent. While three main characters were white males,the other three were not which didn't happen on television back then. It was somewhat radical for a character like Sulu to be of Japanese descent just a couple of decades after WW II. Uhura was a black woman from Africa and Chekov was Russian during the height of the cold war. Nothing on TV was like it. The network had problems with this, but since they were minor characters, they got away with it. The original pilot had a woman first officer but that was changed when the show was picked up. The network tried to get rid of Spock, because he was an alien, but he was such a popular character, they dealt with it. The original series showed us little of their personal lives so anyone of them could be gay, their sex lives never came into play. Also, their ethnicity and gender had little to do with the plots of the shows. When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out in the 1980's, Roddenberry tried to get a gay character into the mix but it never happened. He had little control over the show by then and he died during the filming of the fifth season.
Science fiction is fertile ground for gender bending. I may have mentioned before, in prior posts, that Star Trek isn't always good sci-fi but it is almost always good television. It is easier to push the envelope on any subject, particular those considered by many to be controversial, when you can hide under the auspice of an alien culture. This is why, it is a bit disappointing that Star Trek didn't take a lead on this in the television world. While lesser shows like Soap and Will and Grace were making strides on this subject, the Star Trek franchise was quite tame.
Standout episodes exist, but until now, we haven't had a gay recurring character. The closest we have had is Commander Riker, the first officer on The Next Generation, who could be bisexual and seems like he'd have sex with anything. If I were on the crew with him, I wouldn't leave him alone with my pets. In a 5th season episode, called The Outcast, we are introduced to an androgynous species called the J'naii. This species has one gender. It is considered perverted among them to lean toward male or female and against the law. Riker forms a connection with one of them, Soren, who admits to him to lean towards the female. They quickly fall in love. When the J'naii force her to undergo a procedure to neutralize her, Riker and Worf (another crew member) risk their lives and careers to stop it. It is not a very good episode, mostly because of how out of character Riker acts and how his behavior is forgiven. I watched this episode when it originally aired in 1992 when I was living with housemates in the suburbs of Boston. I watched it with one of my housemates who got outright angry with it. It might have been the first time I had ever seen physical manifestations of homophobia. He was turning red and breathing heavily. Obviously, the show touched a nerve so maybe I do see why they weren't more bold. He might have had a heart attack if Captain Kirk and Spock started making out.
A number of episodes have had sexuality themes. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the third series, had a Trill character, Commander Jadzia Dax. DS9 had much stronger female characters than the other series and Dax was one of them. Trills are symbiotic species; they are slug-like and live inside a humanoid host. When the host dies, the slug moves to a new host who could be from another gender. The slug lives for generations and carries the memories of the prior host, so their sexuality is fluid. Dax may be a female character but she has memories of having had relationships with men and women. In Rejoined, from season 4, Dax meets up with an old spouse and falls in love again. In Trill culture, having relations with an old spouse or lover from a prior joining is taboo. If they were to continue they would be exiled and their symbionts would not be assigned any more hosts. This episode contains the first same-sex kiss in Star Trek. This is the 357th episode ... it was about time.
Also, in DS9 we had two male characters Miles O'Brien and Doctor Julian Bashir who spend a lot of time alone together on the holodeck. We never get to see what they are doing during these sessions and neither do any of their crew mates. They claim to be reliving famous battles, like the Alamo, but who knows what they are doing. Let your imagination run on this one that is what entertainment is for.
In January 2017, CBS will be premiering the seventh series (if you count the animated series from the 70's) called Star Trek: Discovery. So we'll see if they boldly go where no Star Trek series has gone before. My guess, it will be more subtle than bold.
Sunday, July 24, 2016
This Year's Election Is Just a Pre-Impeachment Ceremony
I know you have all been there. You are at a wedding and as the bride heads down the aisle you think, this marriage will not last. At one of my friend's weddings, my friends and I were placing bets as to how long it was going to last. It is not a wedding but a pre-divorce ceremony. This year's presidential election is like that wedding, it is a pre-impeachment ceremony.
Negativity: Like most Americans I will not be voting for someone this November, but against someone. I will be voting against Trump, not for Hillary Clinton. Both candidates have the highest negativity numbers ever of any candidate running for president. Trump is the highest at 59.1 % of the electorate having a negative opinion of him, while Hillary has 55.9% which isn't much better. Passion for a candidate will not drive voters to the polls this fall, but dislike for their opponent. The election will be won by whomever gets the most people to show up. This means that it will be close, like in 2000, and it is going to be messy. Whoever wins will not have a mandate and will have difficulty leading.
Impeachment is difficult: It is not easy to impeach a president and that is as it should be. The US has only done it twice in our history, Andrew Johnson after our Civil War and Bill Clinton, who was impeached in the House of Representatives but acquitted in the Senate. Nixon would have been impeached if he hadn't resigned preemptively. At the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, it was Benjamin Franklin that first proposed the idea of impeachment. Usually, states removed "obnoxious" leaders by assassination. Since we were a country ruled by law, a legal way to remove such a leader was needed. Basically, the House is the jury and the Senate is the judge. A majority vote in the House is required to bring impeachment charges (Article I, Section 2, Clause 5), which are then tried before the Senate (Article I, Section 3, Clause 6). Two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict before a president can be removed. The current make-up of the 114th Congress has a Republican majority in both houses. Of the 435 Representatives, 234 are Republican and 211 are Democrats. The Senate has 54 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 1 Independent. This obviously will change. Every seat in the House is up for re-election along with one third of the Senate. Again, this election will be about who shows up. If all those young people, who loved Bernie Sanders, decide to stay home and not vote against Trump, we'll not only have our first orange president but Congress will probably not change either.
Popularity: Impeachment is more a game of popularity, than logic or law. Regardless of how bad of a president you are, if you are popular, you are not going to get impeached. In 1834, the House considered impeaching our 7th president Andrew Jackson who basically said "fuck you" to the Supreme Court in relation to the native people of this continent. He had a banking crisis and the nullification crisis which were included in the charges in the attempts to impeach him. Jackson was extremely popular and so were his actions against the natives. Impeaching him would have been near impossible. Like Bill Clinton he was censured instead (aka a hand slap). The case of Andrew Johnson's impeachment, our 17th president, is obvious, regardless of how bad of a president he was, he was a Southern in charge of the federal government after the Civil War. He was the only southern Senator to maintain his loyalty to the North after his state seceded. He was unpopular in the North and the South. Impeaching him was easy.
Both Trump and Hillary Clinton are extremely unpopular. Any screw-up they have, either perceived or real, will fuel the creep towards impeachment. Trump is even unpopular in his own party. Even a Republican majority could remove him from office. With this in mind, their Vice Presidential picks are key. When voting, think closely about who you'd like for not only our 45th President, but our 46th as well ... President Pence or President Kaine.
Negativity: Like most Americans I will not be voting for someone this November, but against someone. I will be voting against Trump, not for Hillary Clinton. Both candidates have the highest negativity numbers ever of any candidate running for president. Trump is the highest at 59.1 % of the electorate having a negative opinion of him, while Hillary has 55.9% which isn't much better. Passion for a candidate will not drive voters to the polls this fall, but dislike for their opponent. The election will be won by whomever gets the most people to show up. This means that it will be close, like in 2000, and it is going to be messy. Whoever wins will not have a mandate and will have difficulty leading.
Impeachment is difficult: It is not easy to impeach a president and that is as it should be. The US has only done it twice in our history, Andrew Johnson after our Civil War and Bill Clinton, who was impeached in the House of Representatives but acquitted in the Senate. Nixon would have been impeached if he hadn't resigned preemptively. At the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, it was Benjamin Franklin that first proposed the idea of impeachment. Usually, states removed "obnoxious" leaders by assassination. Since we were a country ruled by law, a legal way to remove such a leader was needed. Basically, the House is the jury and the Senate is the judge. A majority vote in the House is required to bring impeachment charges (Article I, Section 2, Clause 5), which are then tried before the Senate (Article I, Section 3, Clause 6). Two-thirds of the Senate must vote to convict before a president can be removed. The current make-up of the 114th Congress has a Republican majority in both houses. Of the 435 Representatives, 234 are Republican and 211 are Democrats. The Senate has 54 Republicans, 45 Democrats and 1 Independent. This obviously will change. Every seat in the House is up for re-election along with one third of the Senate. Again, this election will be about who shows up. If all those young people, who loved Bernie Sanders, decide to stay home and not vote against Trump, we'll not only have our first orange president but Congress will probably not change either.
Popularity: Impeachment is more a game of popularity, than logic or law. Regardless of how bad of a president you are, if you are popular, you are not going to get impeached. In 1834, the House considered impeaching our 7th president Andrew Jackson who basically said "fuck you" to the Supreme Court in relation to the native people of this continent. He had a banking crisis and the nullification crisis which were included in the charges in the attempts to impeach him. Jackson was extremely popular and so were his actions against the natives. Impeaching him would have been near impossible. Like Bill Clinton he was censured instead (aka a hand slap). The case of Andrew Johnson's impeachment, our 17th president, is obvious, regardless of how bad of a president he was, he was a Southern in charge of the federal government after the Civil War. He was the only southern Senator to maintain his loyalty to the North after his state seceded. He was unpopular in the North and the South. Impeaching him was easy.
Both Trump and Hillary Clinton are extremely unpopular. Any screw-up they have, either perceived or real, will fuel the creep towards impeachment. Trump is even unpopular in his own party. Even a Republican majority could remove him from office. With this in mind, their Vice Presidential picks are key. When voting, think closely about who you'd like for not only our 45th President, but our 46th as well ... President Pence or President Kaine.
Saturday, July 23, 2016
Go Fever
I have Go Fever. I get it often and I get it bad. Go Fever is an informal term that was created by NASA by the engineers involved in the Apollo I fire that resulted in the death of all three astronauts involved. It was also used after the Challenger disaster in 1984 and the Columbia disaster in 2003. It is the frenzy that occurs by individuals and groups when involved in a big project. As go-live approaches, one's ability to see problems are diminished for fear of failure or of dragging your team down. No one wants to be the one to cause a project to miss its go-live date. The money, the stress and the amount of time put into the project can contribute to the fever. One has a tendency to not see problems in this state of frenzy or to diminish their value.
This is not a failing in personality or character, it is just the residue of stress, just an aspect of being human. The big difference between me and the folks who work for NASA is that no one dies when I get the fever. There might be some money or good will lost , or inconvenienced doctors or patients, but no one is going to die because of my mistakes. I work in medical billing, I don't touch those machine that go beep. The Freakonomics podcast recently interviewed Allan McDonald, one of the engineers on the shuttle. He says that the more successful a person or organization, the worse the fever can get. Prior to the Challenger disaster in 1984, NASA had never lost anyone is space. The Apollo I accident happened on the test pad and Apollo 13 failed but was ultimately saved due to their innovation and creativity. So you could say, they were going into the space shuttle project quite cockily. You can't learn from you mistakes if you haven't made a lot of them and you feel infallible.
I am blogging about this because I learned from my failures in the past. It is one of the reasons why someone with 20 years experience is better than someone with zero: we've already made our failures and have learned from them. A true failure is one that you haven't learned from. Freakonomics talks about a pre-mortem (as opposed to a post-mortem) on projects where they go over everything that can go wrong. This is a lot like what I do with my team of testers. They test the code that I write and they get back to me about problems. We try to think of every way the software can be used and test the hell out of it. I fix the problems reported and we start over again. As Go Fever sets in and gets stronger, my idea of what a problem is gets smaller and smaller. I tend to accept some problems later in a project that I may not have accepted it earlier. This is why engineers don't test their own code. The testers are a fresh set of eyes that look at a project from a perspective that the coder could never. I have been working the same project for about a year now. My go-live date is the first week of August, a couple of weeks. My Go Fever is quite bad right now, not fatal, but I am looking forward to it being over.
This is not a failing in personality or character, it is just the residue of stress, just an aspect of being human. The big difference between me and the folks who work for NASA is that no one dies when I get the fever. There might be some money or good will lost , or inconvenienced doctors or patients, but no one is going to die because of my mistakes. I work in medical billing, I don't touch those machine that go beep. The Freakonomics podcast recently interviewed Allan McDonald, one of the engineers on the shuttle. He says that the more successful a person or organization, the worse the fever can get. Prior to the Challenger disaster in 1984, NASA had never lost anyone is space. The Apollo I accident happened on the test pad and Apollo 13 failed but was ultimately saved due to their innovation and creativity. So you could say, they were going into the space shuttle project quite cockily. You can't learn from you mistakes if you haven't made a lot of them and you feel infallible.
I am blogging about this because I learned from my failures in the past. It is one of the reasons why someone with 20 years experience is better than someone with zero: we've already made our failures and have learned from them. A true failure is one that you haven't learned from. Freakonomics talks about a pre-mortem (as opposed to a post-mortem) on projects where they go over everything that can go wrong. This is a lot like what I do with my team of testers. They test the code that I write and they get back to me about problems. We try to think of every way the software can be used and test the hell out of it. I fix the problems reported and we start over again. As Go Fever sets in and gets stronger, my idea of what a problem is gets smaller and smaller. I tend to accept some problems later in a project that I may not have accepted it earlier. This is why engineers don't test their own code. The testers are a fresh set of eyes that look at a project from a perspective that the coder could never. I have been working the same project for about a year now. My go-live date is the first week of August, a couple of weeks. My Go Fever is quite bad right now, not fatal, but I am looking forward to it being over.
Friday, June 24, 2016
Arizona: Likes and Dislikes
Earlier this year, my wife and I vacationed in Arizona. We spent a week going to Spring Training baseball games, enjoying the weather and took a nice side trip to New Mexico simply because we had never been there. I have been to Arizona before and it is a beautiful place. It is one of those places, like Las Vegas, that I experience a little bit of guilt when visiting because they are environmental scourges. Because the weather is so hot, it seems that everyone has a pool. Because there are so many pools, the desert now has humidity. That old argument that it is "a dry heat" is getting less and less accurate. Like every other environmental problem, there are just too many people living there now. Regardless, I enjoyed my vacation.
We spent a weekend in Tucson and the rest of the week in Phoenix. I saw bike lanes all over the place in both cities. They are both very flat so commuting via bike seems like a really good option for locals. Also, the traffic in both towns were not bad at all and this is the busy time, with half of the major league teams packing the fans in for Spring Training. Having lived in Boston, my idea of what bad traffic is might be twisted, but for the size of the cities, I was impressed. Phoenix is a grid so it is easy to get around, like New York, the streets are numbered. We were staying off of 18th Street in a Homeaway home which was a short drive to Sloan Park. The only difficulty we had was that there was an 18th Place, a dead end street, on the side of 18th Street. We kept driving into the dead end street when we saw it. Why do city do this? If a street falls into between 18th and 19th, couldn't they just name it 18.5 Street or anything other than 18th Place. They definitely don't do these things with tourists in mind. But the highway was very pretty. Even the on ramps had South Western style paintings on them. Just a short drive out of the city, you can get to some really gorgeous dessert landscapes.
We spent a weekend in Tucson and the rest of the week in Phoenix. I saw bike lanes all over the place in both cities. They are both very flat so commuting via bike seems like a really good option for locals. Also, the traffic in both towns were not bad at all and this is the busy time, with half of the major league teams packing the fans in for Spring Training. Having lived in Boston, my idea of what bad traffic is might be twisted, but for the size of the cities, I was impressed. Phoenix is a grid so it is easy to get around, like New York, the streets are numbered. We were staying off of 18th Street in a Homeaway home which was a short drive to Sloan Park. The only difficulty we had was that there was an 18th Place, a dead end street, on the side of 18th Street. We kept driving into the dead end street when we saw it. Why do city do this? If a street falls into between 18th and 19th, couldn't they just name it 18.5 Street or anything other than 18th Place. They definitely don't do these things with tourists in mind. But the highway was very pretty. Even the on ramps had South Western style paintings on them. Just a short drive out of the city, you can get to some really gorgeous dessert landscapes.
Arizona knows how to do baseball right. I've been to Florida for Spring Training to see the Red Sox and I have to say that the Arizona experience is much better. In Florida all the parks are spread apart, some of them several hours from each other. You could spend your Spring Training vacation in the car if you go to Florida. But in Arizona (the Cactus League), they are all in or around Phoenix, a short drive from each other. Some of the facilities are shared. For example, the Peoria Sports Complex is shared by the San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners. These facilities are huge. We spent all of our baseball time at Sloan Park watching the Cubs. We saw about five games in both good and bad seats. Each day was a joy.
My wife is on a 50 states before she is 50 kick. She turns 50 years old next year so I don't think she is going to make it. She has about six to go. The deal is: she has to sleep in each state. We were so close to New Mexico so we went for a road trip so that she could get NM off of her list. We took a road trip to Silver City NM, spent the night and went to visit Gila National Park in the morning. The drive in the park alone was worth it. Beautiful! We did a hike up the ancient cliff dwellings in the park.
Whenever I visit someplace, I always wonder if I could live here. There are definitely somethings about Arizona that I would like. The hot dry weather is very appealing. But there are some things I don't think I would like at all. One thing is the uniformity. If not for the numbered streets and the GPS, I would have gotten very lost. Most streets look like every other street. We repeatedly saw the same box stores and the same chains. The city doesn't have a lot of character. I have lived in New England my whole life. The character is definitely something that I would miss if I left. Every street looks different, the roads twist and turn and the buildings are by no means uniform.
The worse thing about the place was the crime. We visited some of my wife's relatives when we were there, a lot of them. Every single one of them talked about how their houses were robbed and had many deadbolts on their doors. One of her cousins said he was car jacked twice. We left our car unlocked once, for about five minutes while we were checking in, and our GPS was stolen from our car. It was old and we use the Waze app on our phone most of the time anway so we didn't care much. I have never had any such problems any place I have lived in New England. I can deal with the New England weather, but feeling unsafe .... not something I can deal with.
Monday, May 16, 2016
Lessons from Games
All my life I have been a game player. Begging my siblings or parents to play a game, when I was a kid, was fairly common for me. I have no doubt that I was annoying. Every family has the stories they like to tell. One of the stories told in my family was how I beat my uncle in chess when I was only three years old. I doubt if it is true. For one, I doubt I could have understood the subtleties of chess at that age, not only to play but to win. I am told that my opponent called me a "freak," but memories are poor arbiters of truth, so I'll never know what happened. One thing I can confirm, I don't remember anyone ever teaching me chess. So it must have been at an early age. I cherish the life lessons I have learned from playing this game. If you are interested in playing me, I have been using Chess With Friends on my smart phone and my record is 51 Wins and 13 Losses. So challenge me, my user is Manofwow44. Humble me!
In the movie, War Games, the computer that is about to destroy the world is introduced to the game of Tic Tac Toe. When asked what it was doing, Matthew Broderick's character simply states: "Learning." What the computer was learning from Tic Tac Toe was that some games cannot be won, like a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. It is a very simple game with simple lessons. Once you get good at this particular game, the best you can do with an equally skilled opponent is a draw. Lesson learned. Earth was saved!
The biggest lesson I've learned from chess is to plan ahead. When I play chess on-line, I can almost immediately tell when I am playing an inexperienced player. They go into attack mode almost immediately. I usually spend the first four or five turns setting up my defenses, pushing pawns and moving bishops and knights to control the center of the board. I might give my opponent the impression that I am going after their pieces, but really, I am just planning for the future. Putting off the immediate desire to attack for the long term goal of taking their king. When I was in college and I had a paper to write and someone invited me to a party, I used to think of the chess board. I have to put the immediate desire aside for now. I once had a housemate, a great chess player, who used to plan seven moves ahead. Seven is difficult. I probably do five, but not often. This is probably why he used to beat me more often than not.
Chess also taught me about sacrifice. I'd give up a pawn if it lead me to take my opponent's knight or bishop et al. I'd even push a pawn into danger to trap an opponent. I've even given up pawns for better positions. The important thing about sacrifices is that you give up something small or lesser, for something large or greater. If you give up a queen but then win the game five turns later, then the sacrifice was worth it. So I will sacrifice a Saturday of doing road clean up if it means contributing to a town with clean water and that is aesthetically pleasing. The key to a successful sacrifice is that you give small for something larger. These don't have to be material goods. You can sacrifice time and effort to help make a better world. We all have a different definition of what winning the game means.
I recently taught my niece to play Cribbage, one of my favorite card games popular in the UK and their ex-colonies. My family emigrated from Canada so this explains my father teaching me to play when I was a kid. We'd sit on our screen porch in Ashaway, RI, on summer nights with the bugs hitting the screen, the frogs croaking by the river and watching the Red Sox on the black and white, we played cribbage. Of the things I learned from Crib, decision making is probably the best skill. When we make decisions we sometimes have to choose between bad and less bad. In Crib you have to decide which cards you give to the dealer. The dealer gets an extra hand called the crib, made up of your rejected cards of all the players. This can be a very taxing decision if you are not the dealer. You have to choose between the best hand for yourself while not providing anything good for the dealer. Sometimes there are no good choices which is a lot like voting. When your choice is between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I have no problem voting for the less bad hand, regardless of how much I dislike her. Thank you Cribbage for this important life lesson.
Another lesson you learn from card games in general is that you learn to deal with the hand you were dealt. I know people who really stew over a bad hand. I am talking metaphorically and literally here. They just whine over, "I wanted to play baseball today but it rained." They are stifled by the cards they were dealt instead of turning it into an opportunity. In cards, you are forced to deal with the cards you were dealt. You make do. In poker, often, you can win with a bad hand simply by bluffing; an inexperienced player, who hadn't learned this lesson, would simply fold when they saw a bad hand. In life, bad situations can often lead to opportunities. Once, back in the 90's, I was laid off from one of my software jobs. Instead of stressing about it, I saw it as an opportunity to spend time work on my writing and dedicate some time to a paper I was writing on Kurt Vonnegut. I also spent a lot of time with my future wife, while she was a nanny, doing day trips with the kids. I really enjoyed this time off. Because I did this, I ended up being extremely relaxed and once I started interviewing, I really rocked the interviews. I ended getting one of the best jobs I've ever had and that excelled at for the next decade. I have to wonder if I had stressed over finding a job, if I wouldn't have found the right one. I was dealt a bad hand and I played it well.
Every card game requires you to read your opponent. Whether it is trying to determine if they are bluffing in a poker or if they have the low trump card in pitch (aka high, low, jack), it is a skill that is learned. This skill can be used throughout your life whether you are in interviewing for a job, interviewing someone else for a job, on a sales call or buying a car. Reading their tone or body language is invaluable and you get better at it with practice.
Like sports and musicianship, in game playing, practise makes perfect or close to perfect. Most games have an element of luck, so regardless of how much you practice, you may not get the cards or the dice that you need to win. Practice gives you the ability to seize the opportunity when you do get good cards. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell states that it take 10,000 hours of practise to master a task. Gladwell rejects the idea of prodigy, The Beatles became great because they practiced. They took every gig they could find for little-to-no money and played everyday. I am not sure if I have that much time playing cribbage. 10,000 hours? Maybe. But I've been playing for over 40 years and I have never seen a perfect hand (the highest hand of 29 points). Practice, practice, practice.
In many card games, you can play partners, like pitch, pinochle, euchre, whist, bridge, spades, hearts and cribbage. My mother used to go to whist parties at the church with my dad when I was young and when he couldn't make it, I'd sometimes go in his place. I was a teenager the last time I went. By playing with a partner, you learn collaborative skills. In teamwork, you learn how to compete with someone as opposed to against them. You feed them points or set them up to win, so that both of you win. This can be important whether you work in an office, play sports competitively or act in a theater company. It is a skill we all start learning in pre-school. Playing well with others is one of the more important skills in success doing anything.
In playing Scrabble, I have improved my vocabulary. I've been playing Scrabble for decades. Two letter words are very helpful. I've been playing the word "aa" for years. It is a volcanic rock. A few years ago, when I visited Hawaii, I got my first look at aa rock. That was pretty cool.
In playing games, I learned that I can learn from better players. This has helped me as a professional. Every computer programmer comes across someone who is better than they are. The best way to approach this is to cast aside your pride and ego, and ask questions. If they are amenable to teaching then ask questions, if not, then sit back and observe. My chess game improves when every time I lose because I learned something. I cannot say that about winning.
I have become less risk averse by playing games. You don't have to bid to win in the game of pitch, but you are far more likely to win if you do. You can live you life averse to risk, but you won't get far. Whether it is asking out that cute girl in your Math class or taking a chance on a new career, you have to take the risk and believe in your abilities to get it going.
Lesser games have lesser lessons. The game Monopoly is what I would call a lesser game. While chess promotes logic, planning and concentration, Monopoly promotes greed. If you want to see the worst in your friends and family, play Monopoly. Most successful people I know are game players. So if you have kids, choose their games wisely, for they are learning life skills after all.
In the movie, War Games, the computer that is about to destroy the world is introduced to the game of Tic Tac Toe. When asked what it was doing, Matthew Broderick's character simply states: "Learning." What the computer was learning from Tic Tac Toe was that some games cannot be won, like a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. It is a very simple game with simple lessons. Once you get good at this particular game, the best you can do with an equally skilled opponent is a draw. Lesson learned. Earth was saved!
The biggest lesson I've learned from chess is to plan ahead. When I play chess on-line, I can almost immediately tell when I am playing an inexperienced player. They go into attack mode almost immediately. I usually spend the first four or five turns setting up my defenses, pushing pawns and moving bishops and knights to control the center of the board. I might give my opponent the impression that I am going after their pieces, but really, I am just planning for the future. Putting off the immediate desire to attack for the long term goal of taking their king. When I was in college and I had a paper to write and someone invited me to a party, I used to think of the chess board. I have to put the immediate desire aside for now. I once had a housemate, a great chess player, who used to plan seven moves ahead. Seven is difficult. I probably do five, but not often. This is probably why he used to beat me more often than not.
Chess also taught me about sacrifice. I'd give up a pawn if it lead me to take my opponent's knight or bishop et al. I'd even push a pawn into danger to trap an opponent. I've even given up pawns for better positions. The important thing about sacrifices is that you give up something small or lesser, for something large or greater. If you give up a queen but then win the game five turns later, then the sacrifice was worth it. So I will sacrifice a Saturday of doing road clean up if it means contributing to a town with clean water and that is aesthetically pleasing. The key to a successful sacrifice is that you give small for something larger. These don't have to be material goods. You can sacrifice time and effort to help make a better world. We all have a different definition of what winning the game means.
I recently taught my niece to play Cribbage, one of my favorite card games popular in the UK and their ex-colonies. My family emigrated from Canada so this explains my father teaching me to play when I was a kid. We'd sit on our screen porch in Ashaway, RI, on summer nights with the bugs hitting the screen, the frogs croaking by the river and watching the Red Sox on the black and white, we played cribbage. Of the things I learned from Crib, decision making is probably the best skill. When we make decisions we sometimes have to choose between bad and less bad. In Crib you have to decide which cards you give to the dealer. The dealer gets an extra hand called the crib, made up of your rejected cards of all the players. This can be a very taxing decision if you are not the dealer. You have to choose between the best hand for yourself while not providing anything good for the dealer. Sometimes there are no good choices which is a lot like voting. When your choice is between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, I have no problem voting for the less bad hand, regardless of how much I dislike her. Thank you Cribbage for this important life lesson.
Another lesson you learn from card games in general is that you learn to deal with the hand you were dealt. I know people who really stew over a bad hand. I am talking metaphorically and literally here. They just whine over, "I wanted to play baseball today but it rained." They are stifled by the cards they were dealt instead of turning it into an opportunity. In cards, you are forced to deal with the cards you were dealt. You make do. In poker, often, you can win with a bad hand simply by bluffing; an inexperienced player, who hadn't learned this lesson, would simply fold when they saw a bad hand. In life, bad situations can often lead to opportunities. Once, back in the 90's, I was laid off from one of my software jobs. Instead of stressing about it, I saw it as an opportunity to spend time work on my writing and dedicate some time to a paper I was writing on Kurt Vonnegut. I also spent a lot of time with my future wife, while she was a nanny, doing day trips with the kids. I really enjoyed this time off. Because I did this, I ended up being extremely relaxed and once I started interviewing, I really rocked the interviews. I ended getting one of the best jobs I've ever had and that excelled at for the next decade. I have to wonder if I had stressed over finding a job, if I wouldn't have found the right one. I was dealt a bad hand and I played it well.
Every card game requires you to read your opponent. Whether it is trying to determine if they are bluffing in a poker or if they have the low trump card in pitch (aka high, low, jack), it is a skill that is learned. This skill can be used throughout your life whether you are in interviewing for a job, interviewing someone else for a job, on a sales call or buying a car. Reading their tone or body language is invaluable and you get better at it with practice.
Like sports and musicianship, in game playing, practise makes perfect or close to perfect. Most games have an element of luck, so regardless of how much you practice, you may not get the cards or the dice that you need to win. Practice gives you the ability to seize the opportunity when you do get good cards. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell states that it take 10,000 hours of practise to master a task. Gladwell rejects the idea of prodigy, The Beatles became great because they practiced. They took every gig they could find for little-to-no money and played everyday. I am not sure if I have that much time playing cribbage. 10,000 hours? Maybe. But I've been playing for over 40 years and I have never seen a perfect hand (the highest hand of 29 points). Practice, practice, practice.
In many card games, you can play partners, like pitch, pinochle, euchre, whist, bridge, spades, hearts and cribbage. My mother used to go to whist parties at the church with my dad when I was young and when he couldn't make it, I'd sometimes go in his place. I was a teenager the last time I went. By playing with a partner, you learn collaborative skills. In teamwork, you learn how to compete with someone as opposed to against them. You feed them points or set them up to win, so that both of you win. This can be important whether you work in an office, play sports competitively or act in a theater company. It is a skill we all start learning in pre-school. Playing well with others is one of the more important skills in success doing anything.
In playing Scrabble, I have improved my vocabulary. I've been playing Scrabble for decades. Two letter words are very helpful. I've been playing the word "aa" for years. It is a volcanic rock. A few years ago, when I visited Hawaii, I got my first look at aa rock. That was pretty cool.
In playing games, I learned that I can learn from better players. This has helped me as a professional. Every computer programmer comes across someone who is better than they are. The best way to approach this is to cast aside your pride and ego, and ask questions. If they are amenable to teaching then ask questions, if not, then sit back and observe. My chess game improves when every time I lose because I learned something. I cannot say that about winning.
I have become less risk averse by playing games. You don't have to bid to win in the game of pitch, but you are far more likely to win if you do. You can live you life averse to risk, but you won't get far. Whether it is asking out that cute girl in your Math class or taking a chance on a new career, you have to take the risk and believe in your abilities to get it going.
Lesser games have lesser lessons. The game Monopoly is what I would call a lesser game. While chess promotes logic, planning and concentration, Monopoly promotes greed. If you want to see the worst in your friends and family, play Monopoly. Most successful people I know are game players. So if you have kids, choose their games wisely, for they are learning life skills after all.
Monday, March 21, 2016
In Defense of the Millionaire Athlete
Rounders was the most popular sport during the American Civil War. Abner Doubleday codified the rules and added some interesting features and renamed it baseball. After the war, the first professional sports team in America, or perhaps anywhere, was formed ... the Cincinnati Red Stockings. By the 1870's, they were pulling crowds of over 10,000 fans. The owners saw the opportunity to make money and started charging at the gate, 10 cents for home games and ladies were free. The laws of supply and demand ensued. This thinned out the crowd a little and made the owner some coin. They also started paying their players because winning teams attracted more fans. You could attract the better players by paying them. The team went out of business in 1880's, then the Guilded Age struck America. Eventually the team moved to Boston and were renamed it the Boston Red Sox.
Once the economy picked up again, the league started back up. By the end of the 19th century, a lot of money was being made in baseball, mostly by the owners. Players needed to be paid higher wages so that they could quit their jobs and play full time. Being a baseball player required a lot of travel, mostly local back then but still a lot of travel. They started making more than your average laborer. Because they had fans, they also had clout therefore had demands. The owners didn't want to lose control so they came up with the Reserve Clause. It was embedded in every baseball player's contract in 1879. Just a few years after the Emancipation Proclamation, if these players wanted to play baseball, they were to be owned by the clubs, paid what the team determined and had to remain with the team until the team wanted to release them. They were paid but not much more than the average worker and this remained this way for about 80 years. In that time, the amount of money increased tremendously while the player's salaries increased mildly.
This system was challenged many times. Players went on strike, court cases were filed and other leagues formed but it always fell on the side of the owners, until 1969. The St. Louis Cardinals informed their outfielder Curt Flood that he was being traded to Philadelphia. He was told that he had no say in the matter and had to back his things and move his family to Phillie. He had been settled in St. Louis for over a decade and wasn't looking forward to going to Phillie who fans were notoriously racist. He said "no" and brought them to court. He lost, but in the long run, he won. The player's union realized that defeating the Reserve Clause was popular with the players and it was used as a bargaining chip for the next few years during collective bargaining. By 1975, some contract were created without the reserve clause and it eventually disappeared. Free agency was born and so was the millionaire athlete.
Teams own their players still. They are not employees, but property. They don't produce commodities for their owners like the rest of us, but they are the commodity. They are being sold. The owners control, or at least try to, what they do in their free time. They control the substances they put in their bodies. The players can't skateboard, hand glide or even play volley ball. Recently, Baltimore Orioles has added pie throwing as a banned activity. They can't speak their minds, although often they do, especially now with Twitter. They represent a brand so the brand is expected to shine ... at all times. When you expect this of a person, when they are bought/sold/traded, you better compensate them well.
Today, our derision for this situations has swung the other way. Some players make an obscene amount of money. I am sticking with baseball here because that is what I know, but this applies to other sports as well. In 1976, the average player made $50,000, that is $206,000.00 in today's economy. Not a bad amount of money but considering the amount of travelling, the fact that you have no privacy or freedom and you got the privilege of having 40,000 fans yelling slurs at you half the time, that isn't that much money. Today, the average salary is around $4 million. I think I could deal with it for the money. The highest paid player in baseball now is Clayton Kershaw who will make $32.5 million this year. Among the five highest players are two on the Phillies, a last place team, who make $25 million each. Ryan Howard is no longer any good and Cliff Lee might be retired, but the Phillies still have to pay him. It is obscene, but like everything else, you have to consider the alternatives ... our current situation is better.
I still heard the tired arguments about players making too much money. I see it every now and then on Facebook. When you know the history, it is cringe-worthy. Just because you don't like something, it doesn't mean the alternative to it isn't worse. Professional sports team make a lot of money. If I have a choice between the player or the owners making the money, I will go with the players. No question. Why? Here is what happens when a baseball player makes millions, it trickles down. Example, Marian Rivera, ex-pitcher and future Hall of Famer for the Yankees, was born in Panama City; his father was a fisherman. When he wasn't breaking the hearts of Red Sox fans, he founded a foundation called the Mariano Rivera Foundation. They contribute $500,000 annually to help educating poor children in Panama, Dominican Republic, Mexico and the US .... building schools, churches, providing computers and supporting mentoring programs. These type of foundations aren't that uncommon, Craig Breslow, Ryan Dempster, Curtis Ganderson, Cole Hamles, Tim Hudson, Derek Jeter, David Price, Albert Pujols, C.C. Sabathia, Chase Utley, Shane Victorino, David Wright, Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Zimmerman, among others .... all have charity foundations. I am guessing, and I don't think I am assuming too much here, that the average ball player probably gives more to charity than your average baseball owner.
Once the economy picked up again, the league started back up. By the end of the 19th century, a lot of money was being made in baseball, mostly by the owners. Players needed to be paid higher wages so that they could quit their jobs and play full time. Being a baseball player required a lot of travel, mostly local back then but still a lot of travel. They started making more than your average laborer. Because they had fans, they also had clout therefore had demands. The owners didn't want to lose control so they came up with the Reserve Clause. It was embedded in every baseball player's contract in 1879. Just a few years after the Emancipation Proclamation, if these players wanted to play baseball, they were to be owned by the clubs, paid what the team determined and had to remain with the team until the team wanted to release them. They were paid but not much more than the average worker and this remained this way for about 80 years. In that time, the amount of money increased tremendously while the player's salaries increased mildly.
This system was challenged many times. Players went on strike, court cases were filed and other leagues formed but it always fell on the side of the owners, until 1969. The St. Louis Cardinals informed their outfielder Curt Flood that he was being traded to Philadelphia. He was told that he had no say in the matter and had to back his things and move his family to Phillie. He had been settled in St. Louis for over a decade and wasn't looking forward to going to Phillie who fans were notoriously racist. He said "no" and brought them to court. He lost, but in the long run, he won. The player's union realized that defeating the Reserve Clause was popular with the players and it was used as a bargaining chip for the next few years during collective bargaining. By 1975, some contract were created without the reserve clause and it eventually disappeared. Free agency was born and so was the millionaire athlete.
Teams own their players still. They are not employees, but property. They don't produce commodities for their owners like the rest of us, but they are the commodity. They are being sold. The owners control, or at least try to, what they do in their free time. They control the substances they put in their bodies. The players can't skateboard, hand glide or even play volley ball. Recently, Baltimore Orioles has added pie throwing as a banned activity. They can't speak their minds, although often they do, especially now with Twitter. They represent a brand so the brand is expected to shine ... at all times. When you expect this of a person, when they are bought/sold/traded, you better compensate them well.
Today, our derision for this situations has swung the other way. Some players make an obscene amount of money. I am sticking with baseball here because that is what I know, but this applies to other sports as well. In 1976, the average player made $50,000, that is $206,000.00 in today's economy. Not a bad amount of money but considering the amount of travelling, the fact that you have no privacy or freedom and you got the privilege of having 40,000 fans yelling slurs at you half the time, that isn't that much money. Today, the average salary is around $4 million. I think I could deal with it for the money. The highest paid player in baseball now is Clayton Kershaw who will make $32.5 million this year. Among the five highest players are two on the Phillies, a last place team, who make $25 million each. Ryan Howard is no longer any good and Cliff Lee might be retired, but the Phillies still have to pay him. It is obscene, but like everything else, you have to consider the alternatives ... our current situation is better.
I still heard the tired arguments about players making too much money. I see it every now and then on Facebook. When you know the history, it is cringe-worthy. Just because you don't like something, it doesn't mean the alternative to it isn't worse. Professional sports team make a lot of money. If I have a choice between the player or the owners making the money, I will go with the players. No question. Why? Here is what happens when a baseball player makes millions, it trickles down. Example, Marian Rivera, ex-pitcher and future Hall of Famer for the Yankees, was born in Panama City; his father was a fisherman. When he wasn't breaking the hearts of Red Sox fans, he founded a foundation called the Mariano Rivera Foundation. They contribute $500,000 annually to help educating poor children in Panama, Dominican Republic, Mexico and the US .... building schools, churches, providing computers and supporting mentoring programs. These type of foundations aren't that uncommon, Craig Breslow, Ryan Dempster, Curtis Ganderson, Cole Hamles, Tim Hudson, Derek Jeter, David Price, Albert Pujols, C.C. Sabathia, Chase Utley, Shane Victorino, David Wright, Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Zimmerman, among others .... all have charity foundations. I am guessing, and I don't think I am assuming too much here, that the average ball player probably gives more to charity than your average baseball owner.
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