Saturday, July 17, 2010
Off Blogging Until August
If you're reading this, you probably should be outside enjoying the summer weather instead.
Friday, July 16, 2010
On Loss
I come from a small family. Growing up there was my mother, father, brother, uncle, grandfather, grandmother and me. That was it. We had relatives on my mother's side - cousins, great uncles and aunts and such - in Israel, but in the US there was nada. My father had zip in terms of relatives anywhere. There were less than 100 survivors from his home town of 20,000.
My parents and grandparents died years ago. I write this on the day of my brother's birthday. He died earlier this year. My brother and I grew up in a very atypical household in a working class neighborhood. We were the only immigrant family in the vicinity although about two miles away there was a four square block area composed mostly of war survivors where we spent a good deal of time. Our home might as well have been in a shtetl in Poland because when we shut our doors, we shut off - except for the presence of the TV - all of America.
I was der kleiner, the small one. He was der groiser, the big one. We were very close growing up, as probably can be expected from just how insular our world was. My brother chaffed against how Jewish and how outside the mainstream we were. I was prideful about it. He was wild. I was calm. He broke rules and let everyone know just what he did. I broke rules and kept it to myself. He married outside the faith and demanded that everyone completely accept the marriage. I never even gave more than a minute's thought, given who my parents and grandparents were and what they had lived through, to marrying someone who wasn't Jewish. I wasn't even going to marry someone who didn't at least understand some Yiddish; I wanted them to know when they were being talked about and what was being said about them.
We were different in so many ways. But the fact was that there was no one else who could possibly understand how I grew up and how I thought with as much knowledge as my brother. Now he is gone.
I saw him last about six months before he died. He looked far older than his years. His skin had the color of someone at death's door. I'd brought a camera with me. I'd wanted to take a picture of us together - the last picture I had of just the two of us was decades old - but the second I saw him enter the restaurant where we met, I knew that I wasn't going to take any pictures at all. I thought it would be twisted to keep a memory of him looking so ill.
A month before he died, he called me some time around midnight - like my mother he never really had any sense of time; my mother would call me at ridiculous hours under the assumption that if she was up, the whole world was up - and told me he was feeling much better. He was walking again. He proposed that we take a trip to Russia, just the two of us. He wanted to see Kamchatka. That was classic thinking from my brother; he never thought small. I told him we should first try a trip up to northern Wisconsin and go fishing. He sounded disappointed, but agreed.
A week or so before he died, we spent about seven hours on the phone over the period of a few days discussing a memoir I wrote about my parents. I hadn't really talked with him like that in a long time, many years. We went over that memoir sentence by sentence, correcting mistakes and adding things he remembered. He wanted to get it all down just right. As he talked about those days when we were growing up, he didn't express one hint of anger or resentment. He talked warmly of both my mother and father, mentioning little details of how they raised us that I would have never, ever brought up on my own. In the past, such memories would have caused rage to rise up in him.
He seemed calm and transformed, at peace with his past. Even though he was older than me, he had forgotten almost all of his Yiddish. I think he did this on purpose, trying to forget where he came from. But because of those conversations, his Yiddish started to come back. He said to me that after he would hang up, he'd remember strings of words, that he was even dreaming about them.
This was the week my brother and I were supposed to go fishing together. Then if he still felt well, we'd be off to Kamchatka in the summer of 2011. I think the last trip we took together was something on the order of twenty years ago. It wasn't a happy trip. But I was very much looking forward to this one.
I have a lot of pictures of my family. There is now absolutely no one with whom I can share them who can possibly understand the intricacies and unspoken language that made my family what it was. If my parents understood one thing through and through, it was the nature and tragedy of loss. I understand it now, too. It really has nothing of value. It's darkness. It's emptiness. It's a horrible sense of something missing. You don't learn a thing from losing those you love.
Here's a picture of my brother and I from long ago. Like always, he's der groiser and I'm der kleiner. You can't tell this from this picture, but I'm doing what my mother first asked me to do when I was twelve years old. "Watch out for your brother. Take care of him. He's not like you. He needs someone to make sure he doesn't do something crazy." But I hope you can tell that I'm enjoying myself.
I remember my mood clearly. I'm with my brother and this is exactly where I want to be at this moment in time. My brother is having a good time as well. I know exactly what he's thinking. He knows what's on my mind, too. He used to tease me about it in a friendly way, this watching over him. I never said I did it. But he knew. With how many people can one person feel that kind of closeness? A mother. A father. A sibling. A lover. A child. It's a rare thing, this kind of intimacy. And it really is the only thing that truly matters.
My parents and grandparents died years ago. I write this on the day of my brother's birthday. He died earlier this year. My brother and I grew up in a very atypical household in a working class neighborhood. We were the only immigrant family in the vicinity although about two miles away there was a four square block area composed mostly of war survivors where we spent a good deal of time. Our home might as well have been in a shtetl in Poland because when we shut our doors, we shut off - except for the presence of the TV - all of America.
I was der kleiner, the small one. He was der groiser, the big one. We were very close growing up, as probably can be expected from just how insular our world was. My brother chaffed against how Jewish and how outside the mainstream we were. I was prideful about it. He was wild. I was calm. He broke rules and let everyone know just what he did. I broke rules and kept it to myself. He married outside the faith and demanded that everyone completely accept the marriage. I never even gave more than a minute's thought, given who my parents and grandparents were and what they had lived through, to marrying someone who wasn't Jewish. I wasn't even going to marry someone who didn't at least understand some Yiddish; I wanted them to know when they were being talked about and what was being said about them.
We were different in so many ways. But the fact was that there was no one else who could possibly understand how I grew up and how I thought with as much knowledge as my brother. Now he is gone.
I saw him last about six months before he died. He looked far older than his years. His skin had the color of someone at death's door. I'd brought a camera with me. I'd wanted to take a picture of us together - the last picture I had of just the two of us was decades old - but the second I saw him enter the restaurant where we met, I knew that I wasn't going to take any pictures at all. I thought it would be twisted to keep a memory of him looking so ill.
A month before he died, he called me some time around midnight - like my mother he never really had any sense of time; my mother would call me at ridiculous hours under the assumption that if she was up, the whole world was up - and told me he was feeling much better. He was walking again. He proposed that we take a trip to Russia, just the two of us. He wanted to see Kamchatka. That was classic thinking from my brother; he never thought small. I told him we should first try a trip up to northern Wisconsin and go fishing. He sounded disappointed, but agreed.
A week or so before he died, we spent about seven hours on the phone over the period of a few days discussing a memoir I wrote about my parents. I hadn't really talked with him like that in a long time, many years. We went over that memoir sentence by sentence, correcting mistakes and adding things he remembered. He wanted to get it all down just right. As he talked about those days when we were growing up, he didn't express one hint of anger or resentment. He talked warmly of both my mother and father, mentioning little details of how they raised us that I would have never, ever brought up on my own. In the past, such memories would have caused rage to rise up in him.
He seemed calm and transformed, at peace with his past. Even though he was older than me, he had forgotten almost all of his Yiddish. I think he did this on purpose, trying to forget where he came from. But because of those conversations, his Yiddish started to come back. He said to me that after he would hang up, he'd remember strings of words, that he was even dreaming about them.
This was the week my brother and I were supposed to go fishing together. Then if he still felt well, we'd be off to Kamchatka in the summer of 2011. I think the last trip we took together was something on the order of twenty years ago. It wasn't a happy trip. But I was very much looking forward to this one.
I have a lot of pictures of my family. There is now absolutely no one with whom I can share them who can possibly understand the intricacies and unspoken language that made my family what it was. If my parents understood one thing through and through, it was the nature and tragedy of loss. I understand it now, too. It really has nothing of value. It's darkness. It's emptiness. It's a horrible sense of something missing. You don't learn a thing from losing those you love.
I remember my mood clearly. I'm with my brother and this is exactly where I want to be at this moment in time. My brother is having a good time as well. I know exactly what he's thinking. He knows what's on my mind, too. He used to tease me about it in a friendly way, this watching over him. I never said I did it. But he knew. With how many people can one person feel that kind of closeness? A mother. A father. A sibling. A lover. A child. It's a rare thing, this kind of intimacy. And it really is the only thing that truly matters.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
The Sanestream Media, Part 2
Fifty years ago, alternative sources of news and information were there, but hard to find. For example, for some reason when I was a kid, we got this local anti-Semitic, John Birch Society type rag sent to us for a year. Maybe it had a total circulation of 5000. It had articles about fluoride being rat poison, fluoridation being a communist plot created for mind control, and blacks (not whites) descending from apes (at least they sort of believed in Darwinian evolution!). I was fascinated by this deranged stuff. When they sent us a letter asking us to renew for free, I sent back a definite yes. I really wanted to know how people who viewed my family as the embodiment of the anti-Christ thought.
Then about 40 years ago, alternative city weeklies came on the scene nationwide. I read those with avid interest, too. They had a different narrative. Government was corrupt. It was designed to control the poor, keep them that way and send their children off to fight wars. I liked this lefty narrative more than the righty rag I subscribed to. I still sort of believe the lefty narrative, but in a less sinister, more fatalistic way. The people with wealth have power. Even in a Democracy, they still call the shots. It's true in any form of government.
But back then, the MSM ruled triumphant. Everyone I knew watched Walter Cronkite. He soberly told you "the truth." You believed every word. The MSM said Viet Nam was a corrupt, bloody mess. You believed them. The MSM said Nixon was a crook. You believed that, too. The MSM took their job seriously. Fluff wasn't on the front page and didn't dominate the evening news.
I would argue that the MSM has abrogated their principle role as truth seekers. For example, the Iraq War has cost us on the order of two trillion dollars, 4000 soldiers lost, one hundred thousand Iraqis murdered, millions of Iraqis displaced, and created a failed violence-ridden democratic state without dependable water, electricity or sanitation. Yet, the MSM buries this negative information deep in their newspapers and it's barely mentioned in the evening news.
The MSM used to serve as a filter of real events and focus on the conventional wisdom of a story. It was "mainstream" because the narrative was middle-of-the-road stuff. The MSM avoided whacky conspiracy theories and One World plots and told you the news that most people would find believable.
Nowadays, though, you can watch the evening national news and see reports about UFOs. Walter Cronkite would have rather have gone on the air naked than spread word about a possible UFO sighting. The NY Times a while back had a front page story about Bigfoot. That's right, the "paper of record" decided that two scam artists from Georgia were legitimate discoverers of Northern California's mythical monster.
The MSM is not quite as sane as it used to be. Instead of being a strict filter it has decided to let urban legend creep into its narratives. But in comparison to what else is out there, it's still the sanestream media. Ever since the advent of cable TV and especially since the advent of the web, there has been an explosion of garbage pretending that it's news.
What's surprising to me is that the public has globbed on to these twisted narratives that make the MSM seem fully sane in comparison. FOX, MSNBC, the Huffington Post, and the Weekly Standard are full of reports of all kinds of conspiracies. It's paranoia 24/7. Then there are even more extreme news "sources" out there for the truly deranged. Basically, much of the public has decided it wants news that fuels its preconceived notions about how the world works. People want their biases verified as truths. In comparison the MSM is boring.
But what about those charges that the MSM omits the truth, the real skinny behind the news? The New York Times and the evening news still have important information. They just have less of it. It's not omission with intent to deceive. But they've lost so much of their audience that they are clinging to the people still watching any way they can. They try to entertain with quirky, fluffy stuff rather than inform. You can still find out that the Iraq War is a protracted, bloody, expensive disaster, but you have to look a little harder in the MSM to find it than you might have had to look twenty years ago.
I've looked at the current spate of non-MSM news services off and on. Left or right, I can't read or watch them. If I see Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann on the screen while riding on my exercycle in the winter, I quickly change the channel. Ditto for O'Reilly. I didn't even know who Beck was until about six months ago. I have a neighbor - a perfectly sane and polite, older gentleman - who used to watch Keith Olbermann every night that Bush was president. I once asked him why. "Because I like to hear someone say that Bush is an a**hole again and again," he shouted. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
Sure the MSM is fluffier than it used to be. And it's dying because instead of relying on the MSM for information, people flock to what they want to hear to fuel their anger and resentment. But I don't want to hear someone shouting at me or read about conspiracies and evil plots that couldn't possibly exist. Sure I get angry, but I want to get mad as hell on my own without anyone's encouragement. I'm probably not altogether sane, but I'm still an MSM kind of man and always will be.
Then about 40 years ago, alternative city weeklies came on the scene nationwide. I read those with avid interest, too. They had a different narrative. Government was corrupt. It was designed to control the poor, keep them that way and send their children off to fight wars. I liked this lefty narrative more than the righty rag I subscribed to. I still sort of believe the lefty narrative, but in a less sinister, more fatalistic way. The people with wealth have power. Even in a Democracy, they still call the shots. It's true in any form of government.
But back then, the MSM ruled triumphant. Everyone I knew watched Walter Cronkite. He soberly told you "the truth." You believed every word. The MSM said Viet Nam was a corrupt, bloody mess. You believed them. The MSM said Nixon was a crook. You believed that, too. The MSM took their job seriously. Fluff wasn't on the front page and didn't dominate the evening news.
I would argue that the MSM has abrogated their principle role as truth seekers. For example, the Iraq War has cost us on the order of two trillion dollars, 4000 soldiers lost, one hundred thousand Iraqis murdered, millions of Iraqis displaced, and created a failed violence-ridden democratic state without dependable water, electricity or sanitation. Yet, the MSM buries this negative information deep in their newspapers and it's barely mentioned in the evening news.
The MSM used to serve as a filter of real events and focus on the conventional wisdom of a story. It was "mainstream" because the narrative was middle-of-the-road stuff. The MSM avoided whacky conspiracy theories and One World plots and told you the news that most people would find believable.
Nowadays, though, you can watch the evening national news and see reports about UFOs. Walter Cronkite would have rather have gone on the air naked than spread word about a possible UFO sighting. The NY Times a while back had a front page story about Bigfoot. That's right, the "paper of record" decided that two scam artists from Georgia were legitimate discoverers of Northern California's mythical monster.
The MSM is not quite as sane as it used to be. Instead of being a strict filter it has decided to let urban legend creep into its narratives. But in comparison to what else is out there, it's still the sanestream media. Ever since the advent of cable TV and especially since the advent of the web, there has been an explosion of garbage pretending that it's news.
What's surprising to me is that the public has globbed on to these twisted narratives that make the MSM seem fully sane in comparison. FOX, MSNBC, the Huffington Post, and the Weekly Standard are full of reports of all kinds of conspiracies. It's paranoia 24/7. Then there are even more extreme news "sources" out there for the truly deranged. Basically, much of the public has decided it wants news that fuels its preconceived notions about how the world works. People want their biases verified as truths. In comparison the MSM is boring.
But what about those charges that the MSM omits the truth, the real skinny behind the news? The New York Times and the evening news still have important information. They just have less of it. It's not omission with intent to deceive. But they've lost so much of their audience that they are clinging to the people still watching any way they can. They try to entertain with quirky, fluffy stuff rather than inform. You can still find out that the Iraq War is a protracted, bloody, expensive disaster, but you have to look a little harder in the MSM to find it than you might have had to look twenty years ago.
I've looked at the current spate of non-MSM news services off and on. Left or right, I can't read or watch them. If I see Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann on the screen while riding on my exercycle in the winter, I quickly change the channel. Ditto for O'Reilly. I didn't even know who Beck was until about six months ago. I have a neighbor - a perfectly sane and polite, older gentleman - who used to watch Keith Olbermann every night that Bush was president. I once asked him why. "Because I like to hear someone say that Bush is an a**hole again and again," he shouted. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
Sure the MSM is fluffier than it used to be. And it's dying because instead of relying on the MSM for information, people flock to what they want to hear to fuel their anger and resentment. But I don't want to hear someone shouting at me or read about conspiracies and evil plots that couldn't possibly exist. Sure I get angry, but I want to get mad as hell on my own without anyone's encouragement. I'm probably not altogether sane, but I'm still an MSM kind of man and always will be.
Monday, July 12, 2010
The Sanestream Media
I was reading the NY Times the other day and one of the major stories was about South Carolina's Democratic candidate for senate, Alvin Greene. It's a puff piece. Greene has zero chance of winning, but he is weird. The NY Times is trying to sell papers and ever since Bill Keller became editor they've been running "colorful" non-news pieces like this in an effort to keep readers. I doubt it's working.
The New York Times is at the apex of the MSM, the mainstream media. I don't know when the acronym MSM became popular. Maybe it was 20 years ago or so. But it seems that whenever anyone uses that term it's as a pejorative. Basically, they assume that the MSM doesn't tell or omits the "truth." If you're on the left and watch and listen to MSNBC or Pacifica radio or read the Huffington Post or Salon, the MSM represents corporate interests and the military industrial complex. It's telling a mass of lies and makes omissions to soothe the masses and keep them under the thumb of "the man." Yes, I'm laying it on thick. This is a blog, you know. I'm supposed to lay it on thick.
If you're on the right and listen to Fox and Rush, the MSM represents liberals who want to melt all your guns, take all your dollars and print money to give to welfare crack moms. It's telling a mass of lies and makes omissions as part of a plot to take away American's basic freedoms.
Now how can these competing views of the MSM both be correct? Well at face value they can't. At face value, both the left and the right are filled with lunatics who twist truths and don't like anyone who doesn't twist truths. So instead of reading the MSM, they read their own rags. They watch their own TV. They go to their own web sites and blogs. And all their nutty views are reinforced by people telling them that they are perfectly sane.
Here's an example of what I mean. Suppose you don't like Obama. I don't like him much either. But suppose you really, really, really hate our president. You're driven into a frenzy just by seeing his picture. Basically, you're a nut job with a nasty obsession about our president. Are you going to access the MSM to find out about who he is? Hell no. They'll tell you he is a Christian middle-of-the-roader when in fact you know he's a Moslem socialist or worse. So instead of reading or watching the MSM, you go to web sites like this. Read the comments on that site, please. Those people are 100 percent off their rockers.
And suppose you are on the left. You don't like Israel. I happen to like Israel more than Obama, but that's another issue. Suppose you really, really, hate Israel. You're driven into a frenzy just by seeing an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. You think that the US is supporting apartheid by giving Israel aid. You want a boycott! Basically you're a nut job with a nasty obsession. Are you going to access the MSM to find out about Obama's recent meeting with Netanyahu? No, you'll go to some place like The Nation and find this. It will confirm your view that Obama is a puppet capitulating to the Israel lobby and Jewish voters. Of course on the right's equivalent, you can find a completely different distorted view.
I'll continue this post next time.
The New York Times is at the apex of the MSM, the mainstream media. I don't know when the acronym MSM became popular. Maybe it was 20 years ago or so. But it seems that whenever anyone uses that term it's as a pejorative. Basically, they assume that the MSM doesn't tell or omits the "truth." If you're on the left and watch and listen to MSNBC or Pacifica radio or read the Huffington Post or Salon, the MSM represents corporate interests and the military industrial complex. It's telling a mass of lies and makes omissions to soothe the masses and keep them under the thumb of "the man." Yes, I'm laying it on thick. This is a blog, you know. I'm supposed to lay it on thick.
If you're on the right and listen to Fox and Rush, the MSM represents liberals who want to melt all your guns, take all your dollars and print money to give to welfare crack moms. It's telling a mass of lies and makes omissions as part of a plot to take away American's basic freedoms.
Now how can these competing views of the MSM both be correct? Well at face value they can't. At face value, both the left and the right are filled with lunatics who twist truths and don't like anyone who doesn't twist truths. So instead of reading the MSM, they read their own rags. They watch their own TV. They go to their own web sites and blogs. And all their nutty views are reinforced by people telling them that they are perfectly sane.
Here's an example of what I mean. Suppose you don't like Obama. I don't like him much either. But suppose you really, really, really hate our president. You're driven into a frenzy just by seeing his picture. Basically, you're a nut job with a nasty obsession about our president. Are you going to access the MSM to find out about who he is? Hell no. They'll tell you he is a Christian middle-of-the-roader when in fact you know he's a Moslem socialist or worse. So instead of reading or watching the MSM, you go to web sites like this. Read the comments on that site, please. Those people are 100 percent off their rockers.
And suppose you are on the left. You don't like Israel. I happen to like Israel more than Obama, but that's another issue. Suppose you really, really, hate Israel. You're driven into a frenzy just by seeing an Israeli soldier in the West Bank. You think that the US is supporting apartheid by giving Israel aid. You want a boycott! Basically you're a nut job with a nasty obsession. Are you going to access the MSM to find out about Obama's recent meeting with Netanyahu? No, you'll go to some place like The Nation and find this. It will confirm your view that Obama is a puppet capitulating to the Israel lobby and Jewish voters. Of course on the right's equivalent, you can find a completely different distorted view.
I'll continue this post next time.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
A Failed Sport
As a kid, I loved bicycles. I still do, but I don't ride 150 miles a week in the summers anymore. I worked as a bicycle mechanic in my teens. I had a girlfriend with whom I had little in common, but she had serious curves and her house was along the bike route where the annual Nationals were often held. I think I liked her location even more than her curves.
Wisconsin was oddly a bit of a bicycle haven back then. Mostly it was because bicycle riding was considered to be great summer training for speed skating. In college, I'd train with Olympic ice skating hopefuls, bicycling along the Wisconsin countryside. In those days, finding information about the Tour de France was almost impossible. In the Milwaukee Journal, the extent of Tour de France news consisted of three times a week two sentence articles about who was in the lead. I'd seen telegrams that were longer.
But then in the 1980s, Greg Lemond came on the scene. The US got interested in cycling. His story was the stuff of sporting legend. He won the Tour de France in 1986, could not compete in 1987 and 1988 because of a gun accident, and then miraculously won in 1989, taking the lead on the last real day of racing. After that win, bicycling became an American sport. But it's also true that sometime after that win, the Tour de France became wholly corrupted by doping.
Since the 1990s, two riders have outright admitted that they used drugs to win the Tour de France, Bjarne Riis and Floyd Llandis. One rider, 1997 winner Jan Ullrich, was banned from the Tour in 2006. Then there is the case of seven time winner Lance Armstrong. He's never tested positive for drugs aside from a minor violation in 1999. But Lemond says that Armstrong told him explicitly that he used EPO. Landis has stated again and again that Armstrong used PEDs.
Yes, Armstrong is an American hero. But I remember in 2003 after a series of tough mountain stages, Armstrong appeared to be completely shot. An acquaintance of mine who has invented a heat fatigue reducing device got a call from Armstrong's team in the middle of that race. Could he ship them the device overnight? He did just that. He has no idea whether it was used. But somehow, Armstrong managed to renew himself for the final mountain stages and win the race by a little over one minute. I remember thinking his resurgence was either a miracle or dope assisted. I don't believe in miracles.
Floyd Landis had a very similar miraculous resurgence on a mountain stage in 2006. That's the day he tested positive for doping.
I understand the American public's reluctance to admit the obvious. Armstrong's story is a miraculous tale of a cancer survivor turned sports champion. It's such a good story that no one wants to be a spoilsport and deflate it. But this is the same public that adoringly watched a baseball player who had obviously been transformed by steroids, Mark McGwire, break a hallowed home run record. We like our heroes of course. But the odds that Armstrong has not used PEDs are slim.
The one defense that can be made for Armstrong is that most in bicycling are dopers. In such a failed sport, it's impossible to win without cheating. I agree with that assessment. I understand just why Lance Armstrong had to use EPO in the 1990s. He's probably using something different now. I don't know what. Doping is a virtual requirement for participation.
I still love bicycling, but as for international competition, I view it as something akin to professional wrestling. It's not rigged, but it is fake. The sport is broken. It's no wonder that I, who once called the sports editor at the Milwaukee Journal as a teen demanding that he cover an event of international significance, haven't watched the Tour de France in years.
Wisconsin was oddly a bit of a bicycle haven back then. Mostly it was because bicycle riding was considered to be great summer training for speed skating. In college, I'd train with Olympic ice skating hopefuls, bicycling along the Wisconsin countryside. In those days, finding information about the Tour de France was almost impossible. In the Milwaukee Journal, the extent of Tour de France news consisted of three times a week two sentence articles about who was in the lead. I'd seen telegrams that were longer.
But then in the 1980s, Greg Lemond came on the scene. The US got interested in cycling. His story was the stuff of sporting legend. He won the Tour de France in 1986, could not compete in 1987 and 1988 because of a gun accident, and then miraculously won in 1989, taking the lead on the last real day of racing. After that win, bicycling became an American sport. But it's also true that sometime after that win, the Tour de France became wholly corrupted by doping.
Since the 1990s, two riders have outright admitted that they used drugs to win the Tour de France, Bjarne Riis and Floyd Llandis. One rider, 1997 winner Jan Ullrich, was banned from the Tour in 2006. Then there is the case of seven time winner Lance Armstrong. He's never tested positive for drugs aside from a minor violation in 1999. But Lemond says that Armstrong told him explicitly that he used EPO. Landis has stated again and again that Armstrong used PEDs.
Yes, Armstrong is an American hero. But I remember in 2003 after a series of tough mountain stages, Armstrong appeared to be completely shot. An acquaintance of mine who has invented a heat fatigue reducing device got a call from Armstrong's team in the middle of that race. Could he ship them the device overnight? He did just that. He has no idea whether it was used. But somehow, Armstrong managed to renew himself for the final mountain stages and win the race by a little over one minute. I remember thinking his resurgence was either a miracle or dope assisted. I don't believe in miracles.
Floyd Landis had a very similar miraculous resurgence on a mountain stage in 2006. That's the day he tested positive for doping.
I understand the American public's reluctance to admit the obvious. Armstrong's story is a miraculous tale of a cancer survivor turned sports champion. It's such a good story that no one wants to be a spoilsport and deflate it. But this is the same public that adoringly watched a baseball player who had obviously been transformed by steroids, Mark McGwire, break a hallowed home run record. We like our heroes of course. But the odds that Armstrong has not used PEDs are slim.
The one defense that can be made for Armstrong is that most in bicycling are dopers. In such a failed sport, it's impossible to win without cheating. I agree with that assessment. I understand just why Lance Armstrong had to use EPO in the 1990s. He's probably using something different now. I don't know what. Doping is a virtual requirement for participation.
I still love bicycling, but as for international competition, I view it as something akin to professional wrestling. It's not rigged, but it is fake. The sport is broken. It's no wonder that I, who once called the sports editor at the Milwaukee Journal as a teen demanding that he cover an event of international significance, haven't watched the Tour de France in years.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Why LeBron James Will Sign With Milwaukee
I've been very occasionally reading about the free agency of NBA star LeBron James. The same teams keep popping up again and again as the likely ones who'll nab him. The New York Knicks and soon-to-be-New York Nets. The Chicago Bulls. The Miami Heat. Or perhaps he'll stay in his home state and continue to play in Cleveland. That's all well and good. But sports journalists are well known for their ineptitude. Most barely understand the English language. Their brand of journalism is to hang around the locker room or bar and write down whatever verbal diarrhea comes out of an athlete's or manager's mouth. I'm sure they are missing something vital.
In all of these articles, there is one team conspicuous by its absence, the Milwaukee Bucks. OK, you say that I'm probably the only one on Earth who would call attention to this "omission", and my view is distorted by my noble Milwaukee origins. But that interpretation would be pure psycho-babble. The sports journalists can pontificate all they want. I know what's going to happen. Like a behind the back pass to an open man that makes you blink twice because you're so surprised at what you see, LeBron will sign with the Milwaukee Bucks. There is no doubt.
It's fate, really. History repeating itself. Forty years ago, an Ohio native - one of the ten best basketball players in NBA history - left Ohio. His name was Oscar Robertson. Where did he go? Milwaukee of course! Why? To pursue an NBA title. Was he successful? Of course!
LeBron James wants an NBA championship, yes? Look at the teams those lame-brain sport journalists tell the world King James is considering joining. The Knicks. They have no talent at all. Ditto for the Nets. Both of those teams are truly pathetic. Will either of them be NBA championship material with the addition of LeBron James? No way. LeBron would be wasting his time going to NYC.
And Miami? They had a mediocre team last year and would have been as awful as the Nets had they not had Dwayne Wade. Wade is leaving and would be a poor fit with LeBron James anyway. Chicago? Not a bad team, but they lack a decent center and Chicago born Dwayne Wade would be a better fit for the Bulls. Cleveland? Lebron's been there and done that.
In contrast, Milwaukee went 46 and 36 last year and like the Bucks of forty years ago are on the cusp of being championship material. Just like forty years ago, they need one more puzzle piece, an Ohio native who longs for an NBA championship. I'm sure as anything that Ohio's last great ballplayer, Oscar Robertson, is on LeBron's speed dial. Given that the Big O is a natural at being a mentor, I'm also sure that he has been giving LeBron good advice. Here's my educated guess as to what they are saying.
LeBron: "Where should I go Big O?"
Oscar: "Milwaukee worked for me. It was the best decision I ever made."
LeBron: "They say they only have 40 mill."
Oscar: "How important is a championship to you?"
LeBron: "Everything."
Oscar: "Well then. I think you know what to do."
It's obvious what's happening. Sports journalists are missing the greatest sports story of the year. While they hop around like fleas to New York, Chicago and Miami, LeBron is talking on the phone every day to Oscar and the Milwaukee Bucks' owner Senator Herb Kohl. They're working out the details one by one. Come next week or so, when LeBron calls a press conference, I know what his first words will be. "Fear the Deer." Remember where you heard it first.
In all of these articles, there is one team conspicuous by its absence, the Milwaukee Bucks. OK, you say that I'm probably the only one on Earth who would call attention to this "omission", and my view is distorted by my noble Milwaukee origins. But that interpretation would be pure psycho-babble. The sports journalists can pontificate all they want. I know what's going to happen. Like a behind the back pass to an open man that makes you blink twice because you're so surprised at what you see, LeBron will sign with the Milwaukee Bucks. There is no doubt.
It's fate, really. History repeating itself. Forty years ago, an Ohio native - one of the ten best basketball players in NBA history - left Ohio. His name was Oscar Robertson. Where did he go? Milwaukee of course! Why? To pursue an NBA title. Was he successful? Of course!
LeBron James wants an NBA championship, yes? Look at the teams those lame-brain sport journalists tell the world King James is considering joining. The Knicks. They have no talent at all. Ditto for the Nets. Both of those teams are truly pathetic. Will either of them be NBA championship material with the addition of LeBron James? No way. LeBron would be wasting his time going to NYC.
And Miami? They had a mediocre team last year and would have been as awful as the Nets had they not had Dwayne Wade. Wade is leaving and would be a poor fit with LeBron James anyway. Chicago? Not a bad team, but they lack a decent center and Chicago born Dwayne Wade would be a better fit for the Bulls. Cleveland? Lebron's been there and done that.
In contrast, Milwaukee went 46 and 36 last year and like the Bucks of forty years ago are on the cusp of being championship material. Just like forty years ago, they need one more puzzle piece, an Ohio native who longs for an NBA championship. I'm sure as anything that Ohio's last great ballplayer, Oscar Robertson, is on LeBron's speed dial. Given that the Big O is a natural at being a mentor, I'm also sure that he has been giving LeBron good advice. Here's my educated guess as to what they are saying.
LeBron: "Where should I go Big O?"
Oscar: "Milwaukee worked for me. It was the best decision I ever made."
LeBron: "They say they only have 40 mill."
Oscar: "How important is a championship to you?"
LeBron: "Everything."
Oscar: "Well then. I think you know what to do."
It's obvious what's happening. Sports journalists are missing the greatest sports story of the year. While they hop around like fleas to New York, Chicago and Miami, LeBron is talking on the phone every day to Oscar and the Milwaukee Bucks' owner Senator Herb Kohl. They're working out the details one by one. Come next week or so, when LeBron calls a press conference, I know what his first words will be. "Fear the Deer." Remember where you heard it first.
Friday, July 02, 2010
On Student Evaluations, Part 2
When student-based evaluations of teaching consist of a series of numbers on a bubble sheet, they're worthless as a means of improving your teaching. Students are strongly influenced in their numerical evaluations by the ease of the course and the ease of grading. All the numbers on my evaluations really told me was whether or not I had dropped some assignments or graded higher or lower than in previous semesters.
Plus, a funny thing I noticed about student-based evaluations was that in some ways students were inflating their evaluations just as much as professors inflated grades. A score of 3.0 on a five point scale, the equivalent of a C (there were no zeros, one was the lowest score you could get) was a sign of truly miserable instruction regardless of ease or difficulty of the class. C was failure. But above 3.5, things got interesting. A score of 3.8, on average, could mean a professor was mediocre or a professor was outstanding and tough. It was impossible to tell the difference without reading student comments.
An average score of above 4.5 overall meant a professor had an engaging personality, could speak loud enough to be heard and expected little from students. Toward the latter third of my teaching career, my numbers shot up above 4.5 for a couple of classes. I was very sheepish about these scores. I knew I was being way too easy. In response, I expected more in terms of workload and graded a little tougher the following semester. Predictably, my ratings dropped down to the 4.3 to 4.4 range.
One thing about the student evaluations that had ample room for comments was that the tone of the writing was fairly adult and mature. Oh sure, there were people who used the written part of the evaluations for revenge or thought it was an opportunity to test their skills as a potential staff writer for late night TV monologues. But in general, the comments were free of sarcasm, and as I noted in Part 1 of this post, useful.
For those schools that still have evaluations with extensive comments, my guess is that the writing is still mature and mostly civil. However, that's not true on website based evaluations like ratemyprofessors.com. Those evaluations almost all look like they were written by spoiled ten year olds. I've looked at online professor evaluations of professors that I know. The professors who take their job seriously and are talented don't score above 4.0. Those that give out A's like candy and go through the motions intellectually get very high marks. I find it depressing to look at online public professor evaluation sites. If you take those reviews as an indication of student sentiment, you're left with the impression that all college students are illiterate brats who have no interest in learning.
Why is there a difference between the evaluations students write in class and those you see online? First off, those that write comments online are volunteering to do so. You're not getting a cross section of the student body like you are with in-class evaluations. So you end up with a preponderance of students who write because they are angry. Second, there is a tendency for people to write things online that they have the sense not to write on a piece of paper. Sanity and decorum seem to go out the window with the internet. All I have to do is look at some of the regrettable emails (and blog posts) I've typed in a hurry to know of the craziness of web-based writing.
Are student-based evaluations useful for professors? The online evaluation websites are completely worthless. In contrast, in class evaluations can be useful if there is room for students to write comments and students are given the time to be thoughtful.
Are student-based evaluations useful for students? If you're a slacker looking for cheesy courses, the online evaluations are fabulous. If you're a serious student, they are of no use. I still believe it would be valuable if schools published synopses of in-class evaluations if they included student comments. But my guess is that the online services have usurped whatever role in-class evaluations could play in helping students choose classes. In this day and age, crudeness is somehow taken as a sign of sincerity and authenticity. So a review of a class that's full of nasty language and insults is taken seriously. I don't understand why. But it is what it is.
Plus, a funny thing I noticed about student-based evaluations was that in some ways students were inflating their evaluations just as much as professors inflated grades. A score of 3.0 on a five point scale, the equivalent of a C (there were no zeros, one was the lowest score you could get) was a sign of truly miserable instruction regardless of ease or difficulty of the class. C was failure. But above 3.5, things got interesting. A score of 3.8, on average, could mean a professor was mediocre or a professor was outstanding and tough. It was impossible to tell the difference without reading student comments.
An average score of above 4.5 overall meant a professor had an engaging personality, could speak loud enough to be heard and expected little from students. Toward the latter third of my teaching career, my numbers shot up above 4.5 for a couple of classes. I was very sheepish about these scores. I knew I was being way too easy. In response, I expected more in terms of workload and graded a little tougher the following semester. Predictably, my ratings dropped down to the 4.3 to 4.4 range.
One thing about the student evaluations that had ample room for comments was that the tone of the writing was fairly adult and mature. Oh sure, there were people who used the written part of the evaluations for revenge or thought it was an opportunity to test their skills as a potential staff writer for late night TV monologues. But in general, the comments were free of sarcasm, and as I noted in Part 1 of this post, useful.
For those schools that still have evaluations with extensive comments, my guess is that the writing is still mature and mostly civil. However, that's not true on website based evaluations like ratemyprofessors.com. Those evaluations almost all look like they were written by spoiled ten year olds. I've looked at online professor evaluations of professors that I know. The professors who take their job seriously and are talented don't score above 4.0. Those that give out A's like candy and go through the motions intellectually get very high marks. I find it depressing to look at online public professor evaluation sites. If you take those reviews as an indication of student sentiment, you're left with the impression that all college students are illiterate brats who have no interest in learning.
Why is there a difference between the evaluations students write in class and those you see online? First off, those that write comments online are volunteering to do so. You're not getting a cross section of the student body like you are with in-class evaluations. So you end up with a preponderance of students who write because they are angry. Second, there is a tendency for people to write things online that they have the sense not to write on a piece of paper. Sanity and decorum seem to go out the window with the internet. All I have to do is look at some of the regrettable emails (and blog posts) I've typed in a hurry to know of the craziness of web-based writing.
Are student-based evaluations useful for professors? The online evaluation websites are completely worthless. In contrast, in class evaluations can be useful if there is room for students to write comments and students are given the time to be thoughtful.
Are student-based evaluations useful for students? If you're a slacker looking for cheesy courses, the online evaluations are fabulous. If you're a serious student, they are of no use. I still believe it would be valuable if schools published synopses of in-class evaluations if they included student comments. But my guess is that the online services have usurped whatever role in-class evaluations could play in helping students choose classes. In this day and age, crudeness is somehow taken as a sign of sincerity and authenticity. So a review of a class that's full of nasty language and insults is taken seriously. I don't understand why. But it is what it is.
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