Pretty good week. The floor counts are wrong. Fitbit is great at tracking sleep, very good at tracking steps and miles, and terrible at tracking stairs. In no way. shape or form did I have a 50 floor day this week. Or ever.
As noted, I dig my Fitbit. Highly recommended for anyone doing some last minute Christmas shopping.
Like everyone else I have been heartbroken by the senseless murder of children and those who teach and nurture (and protect) them. That goes without saying. What needs to be said is a few things about the way people are, not unexpectedly, using this tragedy as a springboard to rattle on about whatever social or political issue they feel strongly about. Can’t we just be sad for a little while?
First, a word about politics.
I am so completely uninterested in politics that it defies description. Other than Wake Forest basketball, there’s literally nothing that bores me more. Mostly because politics is a game, played by plutocrats for the benefit of other plutocrats and nobody really cares what the rest of us think. Again, sort of like Wake Forest basketball. I am also uninterested in labels, though if I were awarded a political one, it would be decidedly left of most of the people I know in the real world. They lean (or in some cases tumble wildly) to the right, while I lean, in many respects, the other way.
But I may be about to jeopardize my membership in the liberal knee jerk reaction club.
Because IT’S NOT AS SIMPLE AS JUST MAGICALLY TAKING OUR GUNS AWAY.
And because NOT EVERYONE WHO OWNS AND WANTS TO KEEP A GUN IS AN NRA NUTCASE.
But maybe it’s OK because IT’S ALSO NOT AS SIMPLE AS PUTTING THE GOD YOU HAPPEN TO PRAY TO AND THE RELIGIOUS RITUALS YOU OBSERVE “BACK IN SCHOOLS,” and stuffing them down everyone’s throat. You know what: anyone can pray any time they want, anywhere they want. I pray all the time (to what or whom is a mysterious and complex topic for another day, maybe). But I rarely feel compelled to pray out loud in public and I would never, ever force others to pray with me.
Now about this mental health business. The sympathy I feel for a mentally ill person is an atom in a universe of universes when compared to the sadness and rage I would feel if children were harmed by said person. Let me be blunt. If I start to lose my mind and there is even a slight chance I am going to hurt some babies, then whoever is responsible for me should lock me up and throw away the key. Err on the side of the babies. Sure, we need better mental health services in this country. But we need to keep people from killing children more. A lot more.
What we don’t need is more people shouting solutions from one impractical end of the spectrum to others at the other impractical end of the spectrum.
Taking guns away might be great in theory. Sort of like taking alcohol away. Or nuclear bombs. Or Keisha. But it doesn’t work in practice because some Nucky Thompson or another will fill the demand. Only thing is that only the people who live around the edges of the law will know how to get the illegal goods. Think about it this way. Marijuana is illegal most places. While that may keep some yuppie kids from lighting up, it doesn’t do much to keep committed smokers from finding weed whenever they need it. It also creates a shady industry of suppliers and dealers who get rich off of inflated prices.
There is no doubt that making all the guns disappear would reduce violence. Zero doubt. There is serious doubt, however, about whether you could- in the real world (e.g., outside of Facebook)- actually make enough of the right kind of guns disappear to make a difference. And whether doing so can be reconciled with the rights of legitimate gun owners who have legitimate reasons to legally own a gun. In other words, it’s complicated. There is a balance to be considered. A middle ground.
No one ever wants to talk about the middle.
I have guns (and a CHL for crying out loud). I absolutely do not want anyone to take them away. On the other hand, I don’t have, don’t want and don’t need a machine gun. I think Ted Nugent is an idiot and I think the NRA is the lunatic fringe. Ban automatic weapons. I could care less. That might stop some killing. But most killing isn’t done with machine guns. It’s done with handguns, shotguns, bombs, cars, pit bulls and whatnot.
And about this God thing. I completely believe in God. Yet I cringe almost every time people who purport to speak for religion open their mouth or touch their keyboard. Because too many times people are using religion to go on some digital crusade against someone God would tell you to love and be compassionate towards. Stated simply, lots of people all over the place are wrongfully using religion as a means to launder hate.
So let’s recap.
One, you can’t have my guns.
Two, stuffing your version of God down people’s throats will make things worse, not better.
Three, help those who have mental issues, but first and foremost help others to not get killed by them.
Four, people need to stop giving the lunatic fringe all the attention and rediscover the silent middle.
Finally, it’s OK to be sad without immediately attacking someone who doesn’t share your beliefs.
Raina and the kids got me a Fitbit One for my birthday. I was skeptical at first, being a dedicated MyFitnessPal user (the iPhone app is phenomenal), as fitness tracking goes. But I set it up, clipped it to my pants pocket and have grown to love it. In fact, I have developed an involuntary pocket touch, to make sure I have it clipped on.
A Fitbit tracks your steps, stairs, distance, and estimated calories burned (as well as weight, BMI and a lot of other stuff I don’t track). Best of all, the Fitbit One tracks your sleep. Based on when I know I am awake, it seems to be amazingly accurate. It automatically syncs to your computer and/or your iPhone (via bluetooth). It generates daily, weekly and monthly reports, with lots of detail. Here’s a summary of my current weekly chart.
I woke up a lot Friday night, and fell below my typical 98% sleep efficiency.
It also awards you badges for the number of stairs and steps you take in a day. This sounds sort of dumb, but is strangely effective. I don’t often have a 40,000 step day, but I often do a little extra if I’m closing in on 30,000.
I still use MyFitnessPal to track my food and my runs and walks. But I have integrated my Fitbit into my athletic nerdity. It probably does more to motivate me than anything else. I believe the distance numbers it reports are a bit high, based on how far I run each day, but it’s close enough and clearly gives you a baseline to work towards or improve on each day.
I recommend Fitbit highly, but beware of its power. Once you get a string of high step days, the idea of missing a day is really troubling.
The latest issue of The Southwest News has an article about Delaney’s cross country season.
Click for a larger version
Here’s a video of the conference finals
In addition to her cross country, Delaney is swimming for Rice Aquatics. She had a meet last weekend, and got three 4ths and an 8th. That’s as an 11 year old in the 11-12 division, populated by serious, year-round swimmers.
And while I’m bragging, she recently won the Sugar Tri Kidz triathlon, one of the largest kids triathlons in the country, for the second straight year.
Yeah, I’m pretty proud of her.
The New York Times has a long article about local runners and triathletes, 12 year old Kaytlynn Welsch and 10 year old Heather Welsch. It is a great read, and much of it is very positive, as it should be. These girls work hard, and are unbelievable athletes. But there are also some critical parts. Specifically, whether their parents are too hard on them. Whether they should be allowed to run, swim and bike as much as they do.
I get that extra care needs to be taken with young athletes. That’s a given. But in my opinion, anything other than effusive praise for the Welsch sisters is misguided. We should be having parades for them, not directing them back to the kiddie pool.
Delaney competes often with the Welsch sisters in triathlons. One of the many things I enjoy about watching these triathlons is seeing the Welsch girls bike or run by. It is poetry, pure and simple. They always win their divisions, and Delaney, happily between them in age, almost always wins hers. When I see these girls go by, I don’t see children being browbeat into racing as some proxy for a tyrannical parent. I see young women who are really, really good at something, who know that being the best takes work, and who will benefit from the resulting mindset for the rest of their lives- whether they continue to race or not. I see poetry. Girl power. I see kids who understand the joy that comes from doing hard things well.
I don’t see kids being forced to do something they hate. I see kids being supported in doing something they love. And learning how to work hard and succeed in the process. I see hundreds of kids who got up really early on a weekend to swim, bike and run. I see parents nurturing an active lifestyle that will pay a lifetime of dividends. I see awesome.
Delaney swims at an elite level, does triathlons, runs cross country and plays basketball. Not because Raina or I want her to; because she’s good at sports and she likes to compete. She is willing to work hard to be good. Sure, at the end of a long race, she’ll say she’s never doing another one. Sure, she’ll cry sometimes if she gets beat. I have a great video of her friend and teammate, Emily, running one of the strongest cross country finishes I have ever seen. Right across the finish line, someone asks them how it went. “Terrible,” replied Emily as she tried to catch her breath. Then the next race rolls around and they’re out there ready to go. Doing work (to quote our oft used phrase) and enjoying it is a mindset.
I don’t know the Welsch family personally. Other that an encouraging yell as they fly by, I’ve never spoken to the girls. Raina has talked to Rodney Welsch a few times, and found him to be friendly and helpful. I have seen them at many races, and nothing I have seen looks remotely wrong. It looks right. Hard, but right.
And as far as the whole motivation thing…
I always ask Delaney how she did after a big swim meet. If she didn’t have her best race, I ask her if she needs floaties. She knows, beyond a doubt, that I love her like crazy and that the only reason I can be (or more accurately appear to be) hard on her is because I know she is good. If I came up to her after a bad race and didn’t ask her- yes, with a smile on my face- who put that boot in her rear end, she would instantly realize that something was wrong. You simply don’t motivate an elite athlete solely by telling them it’s OK, you tried. One of the best examples of coaching Delaney has received was when her Rice Aquatics coach got in her grill about something she did wrong, in a race she won. Or the other day, when she was scheduled to swim a 100 meter freestyle race an hour after winning a cross country race. Delaney walked up and started to tell her coach she was too tired to swim and wanted to scratch. He cut her off mid-sentence, telling her that the race was about to start and to go line up. When she told me this story afterwards, she was grinning ear to ear. She got it. She gets it.
Granted, athletes have to know that you can be very good without winning every race, or any race. Missy Franklin knows that. Delaney knows that. The Welsch sisters know that.
They just want to win.
It’s no secret that I love Reddit. IAmA‘s are one of the main reasons why.
Today, Daryl Morey, General Manager of the Rockets, is doing an IAmA. Some tidbits.
On rewarding bad teams:
Being an extremely crappy team is definitely a well worn path to success in the NBA. Each year, the NBA hands the most valuable asset in the game (a scale wage top 5 pick) and hands it to the most mismanaged teams. We could go with this approach (in fact the Rockets invented it long ago) but we think our approach can succeed as well and can succeed faster even though it is more difficult.
On taking risks:
We were rolling the dice on getting Jeremy Lin but taking smart risks is what we have to do up and down the roster on every move. As only 1 team out of 30 gets to win, you cannot play it safe. A fund manager who beats more than half his peers and beats the S+P 500 is considered pretty good. We have won more games than we lost the past few years (beaten our peers) despite losing our franchise player Yao Ming and it has been appropriately considered disappointing despite the fact that most teams win around one-third of their games after losing their franchise player. We need to keep taking on more smart risk.
Just one more reason to dig Reddit.
People say a lot of stupid stuff on the internet. After all, that’s what it’s for, right? The stupidity level rises significantly in election years, when scads of people who don’t really understand what they are saying begin to wildly post and share memes and blurbs spoon fed to them by their preferred plutocrat, who has cleverly conscripted them into some political war that, regardless of outcome, has little or nothing to do with the prospects of the person dutifully regurgitating such nonsense. In other words, Facebook walls that used to be filled with posts about cats, photos of lunch and whatnot suddenly become a contest to see who can make the most factually challenged and outrageous claims about the rich guy they have been told they hate, while conveniently ignoring all the bad things about the rich guy they have been told they love.
Prime example of a stupid Facebook post.
Wow, that photo suddenly made me rethink my entire philosophy. My moral compass is spinning. Not. My moral compass is thinking that the Dalai Lama may be onto something, not because I am losing my religion (I’m holding on for dear life), but because somehow extremists have far too often been permitted to be the face of it.
As an aside, if I were the leader of a religion (of any kind), I would be spending most of my time leading cease and desist efforts against the opportunistic zealots who, far too often, claim to speak for religion while simultaneously acting in ways completely inconsistent with it. Unchecked, this hate-mongering will destroy religion (again, of any kind) from the inside a lot faster that any so-called competing religion will. Fortunately, young people don’t generally drink the haterade to the same degree as some of their elders. And more than they need to crap on others who don’t happen to share their beliefs, churches need young people.
Now comes some alleged study happily announcing that Facebook posts can influence election behavior. Well, it might influence me to vote- solely to cancel out this guy’s vote:
But it is never, ever going to convince me to change my ethics. If anything, it will only add to my growing belief that the political party system in this country is broken beyond repair. It’s not about issues any more. It’s about how much you hate the other group.
I’ve been keeping a rough tally, and I’d estimate that 97% of the Facebook political posts I’ve seen criticize or make fun of the other guy. Almost none actually discuss why the poster’s rich guy is better than the other one. It is idiotic, and anyone swayed by this level of discourse will forget who he’s supposed to vote for long before he stumbles his way into a voting booth.
It’s clear to me that these posts are not intended to persuade. They are merely cyber-tattoos, designed and displayed so people at the same extreme end of the so-called political spectrum can identify each other, congregate in the Comments, pretend they have the first clue what they are talking about, and revel in the camaraderie of extremism. In order to stand out, to get noticed, you have to be more extreme. Louder. Angrier. Dumber.
The same forces that have ruined our political process and are trying to corrupt organized religion (once again, all of them) are on full display on our social networks. Maybe this sort of insanity will drive sane people to the middle and to the voting booths. I hope so. The problem is that, on Facebook and at the polls, no one cares about the middle.
We’re alone on there and out here.
I was in San Antonio yesterday, living the blessed life, on what would have been Woody Guthrie‘s 100th birthday. It was a great time, particularly since I didn’t turn on a TV, radio or computer the entire time, thereby getting a respite from the everybody hates everybody else spinfest that passes for news in our hijacked culture.
On the way out, we stopped by The Cove (highly recommended; best fish tacos I’ve ever tasted) for an excellent gospel brunch with Miss Nessie & the Ear Food Orchestra (as an aside, why can’t they play music like this at church, in lieu of those spirit killing, hundred year old, so-called hymns?).
One of the many, many great songs they played was Give God the Blues:
God don’t hate the Muslims
God don’t hate the Jews
God don’t hate the Christians
But we all give God the Blues.
A-frickin’-men.
Here’s the thing. The Republican Party isn’t going to save us. The Democrats aren’t going to save us. God knows (I believe this, literally) exclusionary organized religion is not going to save us. Hating someone who doesn’t look like you or believe what you believe sure as hell isn’t going to save us.
The only thing that might save us is ourselves. By understanding and embracing the fact that we are all people. And realizing that life isn’t about just taking as much as you can from everyone and everything you can.
Here’s a fantastic cover of a great Woody Guthrie song to help us get started.
Carry on.
So we all know that Game of Thrones, books and TV show, are just about perfect. To say I am immersed in George R.R. Martin‘s expansive world is an understatement. In fact, I have dreamed on more than one occasion that I was in Westeros. Those are my third favorite dream topics, behind only the times I’ve dreamed I was a member of the Grateful Dead and…. Well, other stuff.
While we wait impatiently for the next book in the series and season on TV, here is one of the most rocking songs I’ve heard in a long time.
I was previously unfamiliar with Dominik Omega and The Arcitype, but if this is indicative of their work, they should be performing in stadiums full of crazed fans. This is really good stuff.
Newsome.Org 