First day off work in 2 weeks so I'm taking my 2 days off as days off and choosing to not write here, too. I'll be back on Thursday...I highly recommend you read that Bill Parcells article I wrote about yesterday. It's that good.
Well, see ya later.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Profile of a Man: Bill Parcells Revealed
Michael Lewis of the New York Times shows the world that sports journalism is still a branch of the world of journalism. This article is a profile of a week spent with Bill Parcells and the Dallas Cowboys, and it's one of the more intriguing looks inside the mind of one of the greatest minds in the history of sports. It really shows that football is not just a game for brutes to beat each other up on Sunday, and it's not as easy, nor as simple, as many people imagine it is. It is a long read, but it is well worth the time, it's one of the best things I've ever read on sport.
Excerpted:
"After the late-night flight home from Jacksonville, he went to his condo to catch a few hours’ sleep. He woke up not long after he nodded off, choking on his own bile. “It only happens to me during the football season,” he says. “It happens no other time of the year. And it wasn’t something I ate.” After that, he couldn’t sleep at all. He found that his ex-wife, Judy — they divorced in 2002, after 40 years of marriage — had left a message on his answering machine. She saw the game on TV. “Please don’t let it affect your health,” she said.
He still returns in his mind to a question his wife often asked him: why do you do what you do? Coaching football doesn’t make him obviously happy. Even in the beginning, in the late 1960’s, when he was an assistant coach at West Point, he would come home after games so evidently displeased that his eldest daughter would sit on the sofa next to him, silently, and put on a long face. She was 5 years old and had no idea what had happened; she just picked it up from his expression that postgame wasn’t happy time. “When my wife asked me that question,” he says, “I never had a good answer. There was no answer. There is no answer.”
.....
“Guys can’t take it,” he says, “that’s why they get out.” Some of the best coaches the game ever saw — Bill Walsh, John Madden — quit simply because the strain was too great. Parcells won’t quit. He now knows that about himself: he needs it more than it needs him. He just turned 65. His marriage is over, and his daughters are grown. “My whole life I’ve always had some guys,” he says. “You gotta have some guys. That’s probably one of the fears I have when I get older: that I won’t have any guys.” His younger brother Don died last year. Most of his close friends who haven’t died are back in New Jersey. His legacy is secure: he will one day have a bust in the football Hall of Fame. But then his legacy was secure in 2003, before he took the Cowboys’ head-coaching job. Before he did so, he had a surprising number of plaintive phone calls from former players. “My old players didn’t want me to take the job,” he says. “They were afraid I’d embarrass myself. They didn’t get it. It’s not about your legacy.”
Read on here...
Excerpted:
"After the late-night flight home from Jacksonville, he went to his condo to catch a few hours’ sleep. He woke up not long after he nodded off, choking on his own bile. “It only happens to me during the football season,” he says. “It happens no other time of the year. And it wasn’t something I ate.” After that, he couldn’t sleep at all. He found that his ex-wife, Judy — they divorced in 2002, after 40 years of marriage — had left a message on his answering machine. She saw the game on TV. “Please don’t let it affect your health,” she said.
He still returns in his mind to a question his wife often asked him: why do you do what you do? Coaching football doesn’t make him obviously happy. Even in the beginning, in the late 1960’s, when he was an assistant coach at West Point, he would come home after games so evidently displeased that his eldest daughter would sit on the sofa next to him, silently, and put on a long face. She was 5 years old and had no idea what had happened; she just picked it up from his expression that postgame wasn’t happy time. “When my wife asked me that question,” he says, “I never had a good answer. There was no answer. There is no answer.”
.....
“Guys can’t take it,” he says, “that’s why they get out.” Some of the best coaches the game ever saw — Bill Walsh, John Madden — quit simply because the strain was too great. Parcells won’t quit. He now knows that about himself: he needs it more than it needs him. He just turned 65. His marriage is over, and his daughters are grown. “My whole life I’ve always had some guys,” he says. “You gotta have some guys. That’s probably one of the fears I have when I get older: that I won’t have any guys.” His younger brother Don died last year. Most of his close friends who haven’t died are back in New Jersey. His legacy is secure: he will one day have a bust in the football Hall of Fame. But then his legacy was secure in 2003, before he took the Cowboys’ head-coaching job. Before he did so, he had a surprising number of plaintive phone calls from former players. “My old players didn’t want me to take the job,” he says. “They were afraid I’d embarrass myself. They didn’t get it. It’s not about your legacy.”
Read on here...
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Who needs a job, give us us marriages!
Gay marriage is back in the news again recently because of a New Jersey court ruling. This circuitous debate over the gay marriage is becoming frustrating, mostly because it's not a debate, so much as a shouting match. For just about all people, opinions on this issue are firmly entrenched and all the debate/discussion in the world is not going to change minds.
While marriage is an issue that has to be dealt with, I think there is a more important issue out there that the ACLU and gay rights advocates should be talking about: discrimination at work.
There are currently over 30 states in which an employee can be legally fired for being gay. That to me is a more important issue. I think it's an issue where the gay rights advocates can get more public support behind them than on marriage, which is clearly more divisive because of the relationship of marriage and religion and children. More people believe in a right to employment which sidesteps the moral/religious qualms of marriage. If the goal is equal rights, I don't understand why they seem to be sticking on this one issue, when there are others that could be addressed and actually affect change for people, rather than just playing politics.
While marriage is an issue that has to be dealt with, I think there is a more important issue out there that the ACLU and gay rights advocates should be talking about: discrimination at work.
There are currently over 30 states in which an employee can be legally fired for being gay. That to me is a more important issue. I think it's an issue where the gay rights advocates can get more public support behind them than on marriage, which is clearly more divisive because of the relationship of marriage and religion and children. More people believe in a right to employment which sidesteps the moral/religious qualms of marriage. If the goal is equal rights, I don't understand why they seem to be sticking on this one issue, when there are others that could be addressed and actually affect change for people, rather than just playing politics.
Saturday, October 28, 2006
Death to Hits! or: The Changing Landscape of The Business of Entertainment
Wired ran an article by Chris Anderson 2 years ago (which subsequently spawned a book) about a phenomenon dubbed "The Long Tail". The phenomenon is effectively explained with an example from Rhapsody Online Music Service:
“Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.“
The idea is that somewhere out there, there are people who love the “misses” as much as the “hits” and are willing to pay for them whenever they are available, but in the current economic/distribution model, there is only room for mass marketed product, “For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare…Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution”, writes Anderson.
The rise of online retailers and online versions of stores have reduced the problem of physical space to stock anything and everything. Now that the stores are massive warehouses spread throughout the country, there is no problem of lack of space. Music services like Itunes go them one better: they don’t even need warehouses, the merchandise is digital, there is no physical good to produce, ship, or stock. “Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance…with no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. If the 20th-century entertainment industry was about hits, the 21st will be equally about misses.”
Online stores do much of their business based on recommendations. “People who bought similar items also purchased….” on Amazon, recommendations on Netflix and so on. This helps pare down the endless choice available online and also allows people to discover various media that they never would have known about on their own, “a good recommendation encourages exploration and can reawaken a passion for music and film, potentially creating a far larger entertainment market overall…And the cultural benefit of all of this is much more diversity, reversing the blanding effects of a century of distribution scarcity and ending the tyranny of the hit.”
What are the implications of this model? Could the music industry go back to the days of relying on sales of singles over albums? In an article in article in Fortune back in August, Devin Leonard wrote about the death of record labels. Quoting David Kwatinetz of The Firm Management Group, "[Record labels] are in a death spiral. The record business will shortly be extinct. But the music business, the business of creating music, will not be - because people love music." Leonard writes, “Record sales became so profitable that the labels were willing to give up their revenue streams from ticket and T-shirt sales. That was great until Napster came along and CD sales plummeted.…now these same companies are so focused on making their quarterly results from album sales that they can no longer build long-term careers for their artists. The record companies are no longer so powerful, because artists have more ways to get their music to fans. In July, Thom Yorke, Radiohead's lead singer, released a solo album, "The Eraser," on an independent label. It was promoted on the homepage of iTunes Music Store and became the No. 2 record on the Billboard 200. Who needs a major label when you can do that?”
Is this democratization of media product going to be for the best? Or do we need a form of gatekeeper to separate the wheat from the chaff for us? It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out in the coming years.
“Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 100,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, the same is true for its top 200,000, top 300,000, and top 400,000. As fast as Rhapsody adds tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a few people a month, somewhere in the country.“
The idea is that somewhere out there, there are people who love the “misses” as much as the “hits” and are willing to pay for them whenever they are available, but in the current economic/distribution model, there is only room for mass marketed product, “For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare…Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution”, writes Anderson.
The rise of online retailers and online versions of stores have reduced the problem of physical space to stock anything and everything. Now that the stores are massive warehouses spread throughout the country, there is no problem of lack of space. Music services like Itunes go them one better: they don’t even need warehouses, the merchandise is digital, there is no physical good to produce, ship, or stock. “Now, with online distribution and retail, we are entering a world of abundance…with no shelf space to pay for and, in the case of purely digital services, no manufacturing costs and hardly any distribution fees, a miss sold is just another sale, with the same margins as a hit. A hit and a miss are on equal economic footing, both just entries in a database called up on demand, both equally worthy of being carried. Suddenly, popularity no longer has a monopoly on profitability. If the 20th-century entertainment industry was about hits, the 21st will be equally about misses.”
Online stores do much of their business based on recommendations. “People who bought similar items also purchased….” on Amazon, recommendations on Netflix and so on. This helps pare down the endless choice available online and also allows people to discover various media that they never would have known about on their own, “a good recommendation encourages exploration and can reawaken a passion for music and film, potentially creating a far larger entertainment market overall…And the cultural benefit of all of this is much more diversity, reversing the blanding effects of a century of distribution scarcity and ending the tyranny of the hit.”
What are the implications of this model? Could the music industry go back to the days of relying on sales of singles over albums? In an article in article in Fortune back in August, Devin Leonard wrote about the death of record labels. Quoting David Kwatinetz of The Firm Management Group, "[Record labels] are in a death spiral. The record business will shortly be extinct. But the music business, the business of creating music, will not be - because people love music." Leonard writes, “Record sales became so profitable that the labels were willing to give up their revenue streams from ticket and T-shirt sales. That was great until Napster came along and CD sales plummeted.…now these same companies are so focused on making their quarterly results from album sales that they can no longer build long-term careers for their artists. The record companies are no longer so powerful, because artists have more ways to get their music to fans. In July, Thom Yorke, Radiohead's lead singer, released a solo album, "The Eraser," on an independent label. It was promoted on the homepage of iTunes Music Store and became the No. 2 record on the Billboard 200. Who needs a major label when you can do that?”
Is this democratization of media product going to be for the best? Or do we need a form of gatekeeper to separate the wheat from the chaff for us? It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out in the coming years.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Is ethanol the answer?
Out here in California, we're seeing ads with Bill Clinton, among others, extolling the virtues of freeing ourselves from foreign oil. The answer being pushed in Proposition 87 is almighty ethanol, the corn-based wonder fuel. I don't think I'm buying it. Ethanol backers, come to its defense please and lay it out for me. (Note: I haven't read the proposition summation in full in my voter's guide, I skimmed over it. I got as far as prop 85 and had to put it down before it put me to sleep)
From my perspective, taking corn (or other such grain crops) and using them for fuel (at least in part because their fuel value is higher than their food value on the open market) does not seem like the right idea. Not even taking into consideration the bleeding heart notion of starving people in the developing world to feed our SUV's, I see it like this: Not only does grain serve as a foodstuff, and an export, it also serves as a backbone for other the other food industries. If we sacrifice our grain to make fuel, we will have less to use in cattle/poultry farming, which will decrease those outputs, which would decrease outputs of dairy, eggs, and, possibly, footballs.
I think other alternative energy sources should be developed if we are talking about a sustainable shift in energy use. The world population doubled in the last 45 years, and is expected to double again in the next 40 years. At that rate, if the Western world is using even 10-15% of its grain output in fuel production, the effect on the food supply could result in even more widespread hunger than there is now. Now, if it is possible to do this without decreasing our current supply of grain products, adding the necessary acreage to grow the corn rather than using what we currently use, that could make me more inclined to approve of it.
The gas/electric hybrid seems to be the best option on the table, if only the car companies would see fit to produce them at a rate commensurate with demand. There have been millions (maybe billions) spent advertising to people to use public transportation, but I think if more money were spent improving these means and making them more convenient(especially city buses, they all seem filthy and unsafe, and never seem to stop where people live) people might make better use of them.
Wind and solar are also energy sources starting to be used, though their relation to automotive fuel have not, to my knowledge, become practically available.
I wonder if our over-reliance on foreign oil has as much to do with fuel as it does with the over-plasticizing of our country. Sooooo many things are made of plastic. I wonder if there is a way to work recycled plastic or rubber into a usable fuel source, seeing as it is made from crude oil as well.
I don't know, I just think there have to be better ideas out there than pouring our corn into our fuel tanks, no? Maybe there's a way we can glean some energy from the tens/hundreds of millions of tons of food we throw away every year. Is there?
Obviously, there is no one cure-all that will make crude oil obsolete in this country, and we'll likely need to adapt to using multiple fuel sources, but I think the legislation being proposed right now that pledges to do that is still a bit myopic. Ethanol may be AN answer, part of the solution, but it is a far cry from THE answer.
From my perspective, taking corn (or other such grain crops) and using them for fuel (at least in part because their fuel value is higher than their food value on the open market) does not seem like the right idea. Not even taking into consideration the bleeding heart notion of starving people in the developing world to feed our SUV's, I see it like this: Not only does grain serve as a foodstuff, and an export, it also serves as a backbone for other the other food industries. If we sacrifice our grain to make fuel, we will have less to use in cattle/poultry farming, which will decrease those outputs, which would decrease outputs of dairy, eggs, and, possibly, footballs.
I think other alternative energy sources should be developed if we are talking about a sustainable shift in energy use. The world population doubled in the last 45 years, and is expected to double again in the next 40 years. At that rate, if the Western world is using even 10-15% of its grain output in fuel production, the effect on the food supply could result in even more widespread hunger than there is now. Now, if it is possible to do this without decreasing our current supply of grain products, adding the necessary acreage to grow the corn rather than using what we currently use, that could make me more inclined to approve of it.
The gas/electric hybrid seems to be the best option on the table, if only the car companies would see fit to produce them at a rate commensurate with demand. There have been millions (maybe billions) spent advertising to people to use public transportation, but I think if more money were spent improving these means and making them more convenient(especially city buses, they all seem filthy and unsafe, and never seem to stop where people live) people might make better use of them.
Wind and solar are also energy sources starting to be used, though their relation to automotive fuel have not, to my knowledge, become practically available.
I wonder if our over-reliance on foreign oil has as much to do with fuel as it does with the over-plasticizing of our country. Sooooo many things are made of plastic. I wonder if there is a way to work recycled plastic or rubber into a usable fuel source, seeing as it is made from crude oil as well.
I don't know, I just think there have to be better ideas out there than pouring our corn into our fuel tanks, no? Maybe there's a way we can glean some energy from the tens/hundreds of millions of tons of food we throw away every year. Is there?
Obviously, there is no one cure-all that will make crude oil obsolete in this country, and we'll likely need to adapt to using multiple fuel sources, but I think the legislation being proposed right now that pledges to do that is still a bit myopic. Ethanol may be AN answer, part of the solution, but it is a far cry from THE answer.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Hypotheticals
What would happen if tomorrow...
...we all woke up and all U.S troops were gone from the Middle East?
...finally, after 4 years, we came to an official agreed upon pronounciation of Iraq? (It's been 4 years or so now that we've been liberating Iraq and still it's eye-rack, eye-rock, ee-rack, ee-rock...get it together news media)
...all televisions ceased to function other than those in public places?
...the secret service stopped trying to intimidate 14-year-old girls for making anti-Bush websites?
...time had been altered in such a way that there are 48 hours in a day? Would that prompt you to work 16 hours a day, or would you take advantage of an extra 24 free hours?
...someone commissioned a "Catchphrase Hall of Fame"? What would you nominate for induction? I'm campaigning for "Let's get ready to rumblllllllllllllllllle!" and the now defunct "stay the course" from the PR firm of Rove, Mehlman, and Associates, which President Bush NEVER advocated.
...people cared about baseball teams not named the Yankees or Red Sox again?
...you won the lottery? (I can tell you right now, I'd hire 3 staff writers for this blog and never write anything myself again.)
...we all woke up and all U.S troops were gone from the Middle East?
...finally, after 4 years, we came to an official agreed upon pronounciation of Iraq? (It's been 4 years or so now that we've been liberating Iraq and still it's eye-rack, eye-rock, ee-rack, ee-rock...get it together news media)
...all televisions ceased to function other than those in public places?
...the secret service stopped trying to intimidate 14-year-old girls for making anti-Bush websites?
...time had been altered in such a way that there are 48 hours in a day? Would that prompt you to work 16 hours a day, or would you take advantage of an extra 24 free hours?
...someone commissioned a "Catchphrase Hall of Fame"? What would you nominate for induction? I'm campaigning for "Let's get ready to rumblllllllllllllllllle!" and the now defunct "stay the course" from the PR firm of Rove, Mehlman, and Associates, which President Bush NEVER advocated.
...people cared about baseball teams not named the Yankees or Red Sox again?
...you won the lottery? (I can tell you right now, I'd hire 3 staff writers for this blog and never write anything myself again.)
Monday, October 23, 2006
Athletes on trial
I don't know what's going on this year, or if it's always been this bad and I've just been not paying attention, but there seems to have been an abundance of athletes arrested this year. Below you'll find a smattering of this year's arrests, ever mindful that this list is by no means comprehensive. Someone, anyone, explain this phenomenon to me.
Former Ohio State Buckeye and Denver Bronco Maurice Clarett gets 3.5 years for a weapons charge
He was arrested driving with open alcohol bottles in his car; with a shotgun and a machete, coincidentally in neighborhood of a woman who previously testified against him in court.
Mo Clarett
A University of Northern Colorado 3rd-string punter was arrested for attempted murder for stabbing the starting punter in the leg, leaving a 3-5 inch deep laceration, or at least arranged for the stabbing, allegedly because he wanted to be the starter.
UNC Punter assault
Fresno high school baseball player Brandon Madrid gets 8 months in prison for an in-game jaw-breaking punch against a guy who slid into him, cleats-up, at 3rd base.
HS Baseballer jailed
Washington Wizards players Gilbert Arenas and Awvee Storey arrested in Miami on Memorial Day weekend. Arenas allegedly declared "You can’t arrest me. I’m a basketball player. I play for the Washington Wizards, and I’m not going to leave my teammate.” when police told him to back away while they were arresting Storey.
Wizards arrested
Green Bay Packers wide receiver Koren Robinson arrested for repeated DUI's. Sentenced to 90 days and suspended from the league for a year.
Koren Robinson DUI's
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry has been arrested 4 times since December for various charges.
Chris Henry's Legal Woes
Indiana Pacer Stephen Jackson charged with reckless endangerment for firing shots in the air during an altercation outside a strip club.
Stephen Jackson in trouble again
Former NBA all-star center Jayson Williams killed his chauffeur in a gun accident, then attempted to cover it up. The evidence at trial looked like he was going to be convicted, but a mistrial was declared when the jury deadlocked and he walked. Now it looks like it is going to be re-tried, though that is pending decision in the NJ State Supreme Court in the coming weeks.
Jayson Williams re-trial
In a bizarre tale from the summer, that keeps getting more bizarre, San Diego Chargers linebacker Steve Foley led an off-duty police officer in an unmarked car on a high speed chase that ended at his home. He got out and approached the officer, who now admits to never showing a badge. The officer shot him 3 times because he claims he saw Foley reach into his waistband, though it is now known he was unarmed. Foley's girlfriend was in the car too, and when she saw him get shot, she got behind the wheel and allegedly tried to run over the officer who she claims she thought was a carjacker. She is being charged with attempted assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.
Foley was allegedly going to be charged with 2 counts of misdemeanor drunk driving (blood alcohol of .233), suspected steroid use and possibly harboring a fugitive girlfriend (a charge that has since been shown to be baseless). Now with the officers admission that he never showed a badge, and the fact that he was in his own vehicle, not a police car and he was not in uniform, and that Foley was unarmed, leaves Foley, who is still unable to walk because of the injuries, some 3 months later, open to sue for the cop shooting him for the nearly $2million he lost as a result of being unable to play this season. Like I said, bizarre.
Steve Foley 1
Steve Foley follow-up
Finally, This one didn't happen this year, but it was one of the most irresponsible, idiotic things I've seen out of an athlete.
St. Louis Ram Leonard Little was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and DUI in 1998 when he ran a red light and killed a lady while driving with a .19 blood alcohol level. He spent 90 days in jail and 4 years on probation. Then in 2004, another DUI. He deserves all the bad things that happen to him in life.
Leonard Little at it again
Former Ohio State Buckeye and Denver Bronco Maurice Clarett gets 3.5 years for a weapons charge
He was arrested driving with open alcohol bottles in his car; with a shotgun and a machete, coincidentally in neighborhood of a woman who previously testified against him in court.
Mo Clarett
A University of Northern Colorado 3rd-string punter was arrested for attempted murder for stabbing the starting punter in the leg, leaving a 3-5 inch deep laceration, or at least arranged for the stabbing, allegedly because he wanted to be the starter.
UNC Punter assault
Fresno high school baseball player Brandon Madrid gets 8 months in prison for an in-game jaw-breaking punch against a guy who slid into him, cleats-up, at 3rd base.
HS Baseballer jailed
Washington Wizards players Gilbert Arenas and Awvee Storey arrested in Miami on Memorial Day weekend. Arenas allegedly declared "You can’t arrest me. I’m a basketball player. I play for the Washington Wizards, and I’m not going to leave my teammate.” when police told him to back away while they were arresting Storey.
Wizards arrested
Green Bay Packers wide receiver Koren Robinson arrested for repeated DUI's. Sentenced to 90 days and suspended from the league for a year.
Koren Robinson DUI's
Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Chris Henry has been arrested 4 times since December for various charges.
Chris Henry's Legal Woes
Indiana Pacer Stephen Jackson charged with reckless endangerment for firing shots in the air during an altercation outside a strip club.
Stephen Jackson in trouble again
Former NBA all-star center Jayson Williams killed his chauffeur in a gun accident, then attempted to cover it up. The evidence at trial looked like he was going to be convicted, but a mistrial was declared when the jury deadlocked and he walked. Now it looks like it is going to be re-tried, though that is pending decision in the NJ State Supreme Court in the coming weeks.
Jayson Williams re-trial
In a bizarre tale from the summer, that keeps getting more bizarre, San Diego Chargers linebacker Steve Foley led an off-duty police officer in an unmarked car on a high speed chase that ended at his home. He got out and approached the officer, who now admits to never showing a badge. The officer shot him 3 times because he claims he saw Foley reach into his waistband, though it is now known he was unarmed. Foley's girlfriend was in the car too, and when she saw him get shot, she got behind the wheel and allegedly tried to run over the officer who she claims she thought was a carjacker. She is being charged with attempted assault with a deadly weapon on a police officer.
Foley was allegedly going to be charged with 2 counts of misdemeanor drunk driving (blood alcohol of .233), suspected steroid use and possibly harboring a fugitive girlfriend (a charge that has since been shown to be baseless). Now with the officers admission that he never showed a badge, and the fact that he was in his own vehicle, not a police car and he was not in uniform, and that Foley was unarmed, leaves Foley, who is still unable to walk because of the injuries, some 3 months later, open to sue for the cop shooting him for the nearly $2million he lost as a result of being unable to play this season. Like I said, bizarre.
Steve Foley 1
Steve Foley follow-up
Finally, This one didn't happen this year, but it was one of the most irresponsible, idiotic things I've seen out of an athlete.
St. Louis Ram Leonard Little was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and DUI in 1998 when he ran a red light and killed a lady while driving with a .19 blood alcohol level. He spent 90 days in jail and 4 years on probation. Then in 2004, another DUI. He deserves all the bad things that happen to him in life.
Leonard Little at it again
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Charity Consumerism
I was in the grocery store last week and at the checkout counter they were running a breast cancer research drive where they ask if you want to donate $1 to breast cancer research. The guy ahead of me said, "No, not today." which gave me a pass to say no too, precedent had been set and I was free of the compulsion that would have set in if the guy before me had said yes. It's not that I do not believe in giving, or am opposed to cancer research, but I'd feel better if there was some way I could be sure it would actually help. I always worry that the dollar I donate is not going to help anything and that it's really going to end up paying for a flyer about an upcoming "Run For A Cure"-type event that will get stuck under somebody's windshield wiper, end up as litter, then in a dump, and ultimately my dollar has been thrown away.
I think of the thousands of phony charities set up in the wake of Katrina, to take advantage of everyone's desire to give and it bugs me. The billions of dollars countries pledge to give after international disasters (recent tsunami, earthquakes, and hurricanes, etc) are rarely given in full, it's usually just for show on the international stage and since no one ever really wants to fully follow through, no one does, and all countries are willing to look the other way (except the ones who were promised the money...Pakistan, India, the Philippines), because they are doing the same thing. I am really trying to cut down on my cynical quotient, but it's difficult these days.
I don't know why, but this whole culture that seems to have popped up recently that makes people feel compelled to give, not out of genuine concern, but because it's trendy makes me uncomfortable. Who didn't have a LiveStrong bracelet two years ago? And how many people that had them actually cared about cancer research and have since given again or have volunteered to help in other cancer research drives? LiveStrong spawned several sequels for various causes and people were more than willing to drop a dollar or two to get one that matched every outfit. They could feel good about themselves, get their bracelet and apparently everybody wins. I just don't like the idea of conflating consumerism and philanthropy. The rationale is that people are going to buy, buy, buy anyway, so we might as well tie some of that to charity. It just seems disingenuous to me. The corporations rake in the money, capitalizing on people's urge to be cool, score record profits, then get to keep it all because they get tax breaks for donating just enough to charity to get the tax break and not much more. Yoplait donating 10 cents for each pink lid customers mail back to the company to breast cancer research (up to $1.5 million) sounds like a great promotion on paper. Then you do the math and realize they'd have to receive 15 million pink lids to make that contribution. And on their website they say things like "We only accept whole lids, no partial lids." What difference does it make? And they don't provide for postage, so you're going to end up losing money on this deal anyway; why not just donate the dime(s) yourself and not let Yoplait exploit you while circumventing taxation?
Here is an amusing satire on this topic from 4 years back that gets what I'm driving at.
Then again, maybe I just need to get with the times and get myself a (red) Ipod nano
I think of the thousands of phony charities set up in the wake of Katrina, to take advantage of everyone's desire to give and it bugs me. The billions of dollars countries pledge to give after international disasters (recent tsunami, earthquakes, and hurricanes, etc) are rarely given in full, it's usually just for show on the international stage and since no one ever really wants to fully follow through, no one does, and all countries are willing to look the other way (except the ones who were promised the money...Pakistan, India, the Philippines), because they are doing the same thing. I am really trying to cut down on my cynical quotient, but it's difficult these days.
I don't know why, but this whole culture that seems to have popped up recently that makes people feel compelled to give, not out of genuine concern, but because it's trendy makes me uncomfortable. Who didn't have a LiveStrong bracelet two years ago? And how many people that had them actually cared about cancer research and have since given again or have volunteered to help in other cancer research drives? LiveStrong spawned several sequels for various causes and people were more than willing to drop a dollar or two to get one that matched every outfit. They could feel good about themselves, get their bracelet and apparently everybody wins. I just don't like the idea of conflating consumerism and philanthropy. The rationale is that people are going to buy, buy, buy anyway, so we might as well tie some of that to charity. It just seems disingenuous to me. The corporations rake in the money, capitalizing on people's urge to be cool, score record profits, then get to keep it all because they get tax breaks for donating just enough to charity to get the tax break and not much more. Yoplait donating 10 cents for each pink lid customers mail back to the company to breast cancer research (up to $1.5 million) sounds like a great promotion on paper. Then you do the math and realize they'd have to receive 15 million pink lids to make that contribution. And on their website they say things like "We only accept whole lids, no partial lids." What difference does it make? And they don't provide for postage, so you're going to end up losing money on this deal anyway; why not just donate the dime(s) yourself and not let Yoplait exploit you while circumventing taxation?
Here is an amusing satire on this topic from 4 years back that gets what I'm driving at.
Then again, maybe I just need to get with the times and get myself a (red) Ipod nano
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