Category: Also posted elsewhere

In search of a new metric

Many people– and not just Americans– are concerned that what human society considered “progress” is currently methodically challenged by conservative populist movements. This is not just a shock, but a phenomenon that “progressives” fear sets back what took generations, or even centuries, to establish. How to account for this in a way that can be codified and measured?

I wonder if there is a different measure that should be applied — one that is related to something like “behavior given what we know.” Perhaps that’s impossible to define, given inability to agree on facts, but there is a difference between — just to use one example — being elected U.S. president at a time in which slavery was legal and (probably) most white people were openly racist and being elected after a black man just served two terms.

This notion could be extrapolated from in other areas — display of unforgivable relative ignorance, or regression from established knowledge and fact.

My kids’ math classes were much more difficult than mine were. My kids grew up in a society that, thank God, for the most part does care whether someone’s girlfriend or boyfriend is a different race. To my kids, LGBT rights are assumed and not hindered or begrudged. My kids know more about nutrition, the environment, and many other relevant subjects than I did at their age. These are things we call “progress.”

We need an anti-progress index — a measure of something like “desire to make next generation more ignorant than me.”

Read all about it

Despite the infinite choice and ease of access afforded by online news sources, here is the counter-intuitive argument that the best way to inform yourself in the current information environment is to dedicate time to reading a hard copy newspaper. This is not to say that information gleaned this way should not be supplemented with other media, only that a hard copy newspaper is the ideal news foundation.

There are three main reasons that developing the habit of reading hard copy is the best way to become and remain well-informed:

  1. By choosing a hard copy, you are dedicating yourself to the pursuit of information. You have blocked out X time to do it, and you are committing to “news acquisition” as an end in itself, not a peripheral activity. You will not be interrupted with notifications or otherwise be tempted to check other options. On-line, it’s easy to become distracted and hard to stick to your decision to inform yourself.
  2. No slideshows or video. You are forced into reading comprehension and, thus, even deeper immersion.
  3. The amount you contend with is finite. You are not led into click after click on related or unrelated themes. (You can always search them later). You have X amount of info in front of you to read, skip, skim, or save for later.

There is nothing wrong with online news sources, but the best foundation to being well-informed is investment in reading a newspaper.

What, exactly, do we so proudly hail?

I am a sports fan. I am also a very proud American. I attend dozens of high school, college, and professional sports events a year.

At many — perhaps most — of the sports events I attend, I hear a variation of this prior to the national anthem: “Ladies and gentlemen, please rise to honor our flag and the men and women of our armed forces….” [Again, some version of the sentiment, not always those words.]

As someone who served my country for over 30 years, I am offended by this notion. It is our country’s national anthem, not our military’s theme song.

Why isn’t this troubling to sportswriters, given how often they are accused of inserting liberal political opinion or rhetoric into sports coverage?

Heck, why isn’t it troubling to all of us, military and civilian alike? I don’t think anyone in our armed forces believes that the anthem is dedicated to them, yet somehow sports events have decided that military honor guards, military aviation flyovers, and other martial elements are required accessories to the traditional expressions of pride in our country.

Solicited advice

Published elsewhere, in answer to a middle aged dad’s specific questions as to what is permissible for his demographic, particularly in dealing with teen aged children.

Sports jersey: You can wear it if it is a throwback jersey from the time you would have been the appropriate age — say an ugly 70s or 80s jersey. That would be cool — if anyone got it, anyway.

New music: The best way to do this is to find new songs you like but your kids hate. Play and sing them all the time. Or, if you can summon this out of your memory, annoy them by demonstrating how a new song is really just a copy of an older one you know and play the older one constantly. You’ll be right and they’ll know it but won’t want to admit it.

Hairstyle: The only change permitted is to something shorter — and shorter all around, not just on the sides or some other contemporary look.

Car window down: Absolutely, but no loud music. You can’t win no matter what you play. You don’t need the attention.

Talking to kids’ friends: Okay, but only about specific subjects, like sports teams they are on, colleges they are applying to, or anything admirable that they do that your kids refuse to do. “How’s your job going? Do you feel you’ve learned about [insert anything]?”

Social media: It will change faster than you can keep up, so pick a medium and stubbornly stick to it — with pride.

T-shirt: Your kids are right. Plain t-shirts are the best option in public at this point. It’s too much trouble to gauge your interlocutors’ appreciation for something else, and, if you think about it, you probably don’t really want them casting lengthy glances at your t-shirt to figure out what it says.

Collecting baseball cards and/or asking for autographs: Cards, sure, but why? You’ve got enough junk already and you won’t live long enough to find out if any of them are valuable. Autographs, no. I’ve tried a couple of times to approach a certain NBA player to get him to say one sentence I can film (it’s a joke for my daughter, and only makes sense from him) but it’s just too creepy to jockey for position with the earnest kids and youngsters.

“Dad’s” chair: Absolutely. There is no downside to this. Well, almost none. I once jokingly told my then ten year old daughter to get out of “my” chair. She jokingly told me, “take a hike, baldy.”

Food behavior: This is one of the unmitigated blessings of aging. You by all means should cling to your food habits and even take advantage to develop new ones that you’ve mostly been too polite to reveal. You just have to sigh and say, “I know I’m old and set in my ways, but I really don’t like…”

Good luck. There is no reason to go gently into the gloaming, but neither should you deck yourself in glow sticks.

Tapeworn

I don’t have patience for video links and almost always prefer to read something because I can read much faster than I can watch. I have come to realize, however, that I am a disappearing minority in that respect, even among my friends and family. They don’t read many or most of the many things I send or suggest to them, and I don’t watch many or most of the video links they send or suggest to me.

As much as it frustrates me, their approach is sustainable in daily life and, mine, perhaps, is not. Several of my preferred sports websites, for example, now automatically load video that I don’t want to watch. And they do it on almost every page I open. They have decided for me that video is my priority, even though I never declared such an allegiance, and even though it slows down everything else. Exasperated, I wrote one website to ask if I could set a preference to avoid video I had not summoned. I got a cheerful non-sequitur reply that, of course, I could stop any video that started to auto-play.

I am not “right” about my preference, but I confess that defaulting to video bothers me. I once read a fascinating science-oriented article in the New Yorker. It was very long, as they often are. I tried to get my kids to read it. Rolling his eyes, one of them called me over to his computer and said, “Dad, isn’t what you’re talking about the same as what’s in this video?” I watched the four- or five-minute video, and he was right. The video did an extremely good job of covering in five minutes what I spent well over half an hour reading.

While I still believe in the intrinsic value of reading, for many of us it has become complementary rather than prescriptive — perhaps in the same way that vinyl turntables have returned to supplement our reliance on digital music.

In search of good unqualified candidates

Much of the criticism of Donald Trump starts with or includes the notion that he’s not qualified to be president. He is, of course, qualified in the sense that he meets the constitutional requirements for the office, so the stated concern about his qualifications is really more about his unconventional approach to his candidacy and, ultimately, his office.

If traditional qualifications for office don’t matter, as Trump’s supporters — and, to be fair, the supporters of many candidates for national office before him — explicitly or implicitly believe, then Donald Trump is certainly not alone.

There are clearly many other “unqualified” Americans worth considering for the presidency– or for any elected office in the United States.

Who are they and how do we find them? I’d suggest three simple criteria:

First, they have to be public personalities or citizens on the cusp of becoming public personalities due to their prominence in something.

Second, they should be people who are not controversial in a political sense — in other words, not already associated with strong political sentiment that would repel a significant portion of the voting public.

Third, they should be persons that everyone agrees are — for the most part — respectable and respected.

My guess is that there are a lot of them out there.

An example is Chris Webber. He’s a former NBA star and current NBA game announcer, genuinely smart person, and — seemingly — all-around good guy. Much of his on-air commentary, while couched in the context of basketball, is easily extrapolated to other parts of life. Chris appears to be an intellectually curious, non-judgemental person who has built on these traits to become wise.

Here is just one of his quotes about basketball that would be a good guideline for the kind of unconventional political leader this quest presumes.

“Everything you knew, throw that out and get better.”

There are a lot more.

I’d vote for him.