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Upon Giving Up Professional Sports

In celebration of today's National Football League Super Brawl I offer this memoir of my personal disenchantment with professional sports at all levels. I was born and raised in the midwest. I played sports as a kid, not very well until my growth spurt in high school. Then I was All-League in football, an average basketball player and even tossed the shot put my senior year. All of my brothers were football players, each of us lettered in at least two sports every year. We all dutifully followed the Detroit professional sports teams and in the 50s & 60s there were some teams worth following back then: Bobby Layne, Gordie Howe, Al Kaline.

But sometime in the 60s I began to lose interest in professional sports. There were too many other things to follow with real world consequences and then came the escalation of sports salaries that began in the 70s. By then I was watching the Super Bowl only for the commercials and found the glacial pace of baseball to be somnia inducing. By 1975 I was living in L.A. which had the Magic Johnson-Kareem Abdul Jabar Lakers and soon the Wayne Gretsky led L.A. Kings. I hung out at several local taverns with sports connections and got back into following some professional teams but I remember the moment it all ended.

In the 1983 NBA finals the Lakers met the Philadelphia 76ers. Someone scored tickets to game four at the L.A. Forum, it turned out to be the final game of a Philadelphia sweep of the Lakers. The lady I was dating was friends with the Forum's public address announcer who sat court side at the scorer's table and made all the the player introductions and game announcements. We walked down to see him after the game, he was devastated. I had never seen a non-participant in a game that upset over a loss. I'm sure he had a bundle bet on the game but it was after all just a game of basketball and wasn't real, they made it all up to entertain and distract; not to mention to make money. Well paid gladiators and their plutocrat owners.

Periodically I am reminded why I don't follow and don't care about professional sports. The latest reinforcer was this past fall when the NBA player's representative said that in the collective bargaining agreement negotiations the owners were "treating the players like slaves." Yep, slaves! Slaves who make an average of $5.2 million dollars a year.

Nevermind that sports franchises routinely holdup city, county and state governments for huge subsidies to build new stadiums. Studies have shown over decades that professional sports stadiums cost local governments tens of millions of dollars in bond costs and loss revenue while returning to the community income as few as eights days a year in the case of an NFL team.

To be honest, I do have one very positive comment on professional sports - on any given Sunday restaurants, theaters, museums and hiking trails are nearly empty during the "big game." I think a movie for me this afternoon, Go Bears!
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More Public Art

McCarran Airport, Las Vegas

London, UK

Invercargill, New Zealand

Oro Valley, Arizona

Seoul, South Korea
'Living Light' is a permanent piece of public art that resembles the map of Seoul. Panels on the installation reveal the real-time air quality of each neighborhood. The artists Soo-in Yang and David Benjamin explain:
"Each night, the neighborhoods light up if their air quality is better today than last year. Every 15 minutes, the map goes dark and then the neighborhoods light up in order of best current air quality."
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I'm Just Sayin'


Is it me or are some organizations actually beginning to pay attention? First SOPA and now this, before you know it someone will run for president and not lie every time they open their mouth.
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Top Three Articles of the Recent Past


#1 (Bad Health Care Math)

Several famous persons are credited with the quote: "There are three types of lies. Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics." But the problem lies (sorry) not with statistics but with the ignorant or prejudicial use of those numbers. This example comes from the business pages of the Atlantic, usually the home of reasoned and rational discourse. The chief point of the article is that only 5% of the population make up nearly 50% of annual medical costs. 

These 'big spenders' tend to be over 65 years of age and predominantly white, which in itself is shocking in a country that is predominantly white. But when you look at the meager details offered in the article and parse the language properly, here is what they seem to be concluding - The majority of the health care costs in the United States can be directly attributed to expenses associated with the delivery of services to the people who need medical care.

No really, a big Duh! from the Atlantic. Sick people are getting the most medical care in this country. Who would have thunk it?

I am shocked, shocked I say to hear that healing is going on in this hospital.

#2 (Left, Right, Left)

Here's an interesting idea - ask liberals what conservatives get right and ask conservatives what liberals get correct. Here are two articles that tell you a lot more about those responding to the questions than it does about what they believe the "other side" is up to. Conservatives look at Liberals and The Left comments on the Right. What I find most interesting is that everyone I have sent these articles to find themselves a bit chilled by the words of the analysts they usually agree with. Disagreeing with "the other side" is one thing but listening to the emotionless, dispassionate words of "your guys" can be downright frightening.

By the way, if you are of a liberal lean then I strongly suggest you read some or all of the linked articles in the piece where conservatives talk about liberals. These will really give you some solid insight into the conservative mind and will force you to sharpen your critique of those positions or they might convince you that you really aren't right, I mean correct all of the time.

#3 (Magnes Museum)

Ever had that feeling when you read something in the newspaper and you know more than the reporter is telling. It happens to everyone, mass media smoothes out the story and truncates the facts. I had a big dose of this when reading the NYTimes article about the reopening of the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at UC Berkeley.

"The Magnes was created in 1962 by Seymour Fromer, a Jewish educator, and Rebecca Camhi Fromer, his wife. Its artifacts were deliberately wide-ranging, including not just Jewish ritual objects but manuscripts, music and ephemera." 

You see Rebecca and Seymour were the parents of one of my very best friends. I not only helped her empty out her father's apartment after his passing but I now live in that very space. When I first saw the apartment it was full of ephemera. Books, objects of art of all kinds plus paperwork, notes and documents the archivist at the Magnes was drooling over. We sorted, shredded, cleaned and cataloged for several months. The bookseller came in and we packed nearly 5,000 tomes for distribution to their appropriate new homes. We called this work "treasure hunting" because mixed in with decades old Visa statements and phone bills we would find a handwritten letter from the director of a museum in Jerusalem with notes on a piece Seymour had brought back from his recent visit.

The archivist eventually took thirty boxes of papers back to the Magnes, which just this week has reopened in a newly remodeled space a few blocks from this now remodeled apartment that once housed the overflow of ephemera and life that has become the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life.


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A Fine Way to Pick a President

Just to bring you up to date on how the citizens of America Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Florida have gone about picking a republican to run against the current president.

Total Republican Votes in Iowa  - 123,000
Total Republican Votes in N.H.  - 248,000
Total Republican Votes in S.C.   - 604,000
Votes for just Romney in Florida - 772,000

Mitt Romney 'won' the Florida primary with 46% of the vote. He 'won' with less than a majority but got all the delegates from Florida. He got more votes in Florida than all the votes cast for him in the three previous primaries. He ran some of the foulest ads that anyone has ever seen in political primaries. He still has less than 100 delegates with over 1400 needed to win the nomination, but we are now being told by the talking heads that the race is over.

Florida, New Hampshire, Iowa and South Carolina - this is how we pick presidents? Why don't we run the nominating process like American Idol and let everyone text their choice? I would have suggested voting them off the island a la Survivor but seeing Santorum with a torch would make it just too easy for the political cartoonists.
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Motivated Avoidance

"Research suggests the feeling that an issue is 'above one's head' leads people to feel dependent on the government, and this dependence is managed by trusting the government more to deal with an issue, and this is managed by avoiding the issue. This is psychologically easier than taking a significant amount of time to learn about an issue, all the while confronting unpleasant information about it."

Those findings come from research that looked at issues like the economic downturn or global warming and how people deal (or don't deal) with the troublesome aspects of such facts of life. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology uses terms like "Motivated Avoidance" or more strongly "Motivated Ignorance" to report their findings. 


The study found that when problems were presented with complex information and data, people were more likely to defer to some higher authority like government or scientists. When issues were presented in more simple terms with real world references, people were less likely to head for the avoidance behaviors. 


All of which implies that when presented with life real complexity, we tend to act like a Monty Python character. 


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Occupy Oakland

Oakland has once again become the center of the Occupy movement on the West Coast. Last night was the largest confrontation with the most extreme violations of law and civil rights by both sides. Again I got close enough to the action to report but not so close that I am in jail. Over four hundred protesters and bystanders were arrested. Lots of tear gas and bean bag projectiles were fired by the renegade Oakland police and their support troops. Yes, rocks and bottles were thrown by protesters; I have already said their were violations on both sides.

But I wonder just how Yahoo News justifies this type of reporting, when all over the internet were onsite commentaries like this one. In fairness, it looks like the NYTimes basically rewrote the main stream media's press release as well. "Three police officers injured and one protester." I was three blocks away and saw over two dozen battered protesters receiving medical attention.

By the way if you want to feel the moment of conversion from a peaceful protester into a radical police hating revolutionary, read this post.
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