The NFL season ended last Sunday and the playoffs will begin on Saturday. The New York Giants, my favorite team and defending Super Bowl Champions didn’t make the playoffs. After a 6-2 start, the Giants went into cruise control and couldn’t flip the switch when they needed to come up with a win against the Falcons and Ravens in the final weeks of the season. The Giants lost the division title to the Redskins, who beat the Cowboys in the Sunday Night season finale when Cowboy quarterback Tony Romo’s on field performance once again failed to live up to his celebrity status.
On Monday, 22 percent of the NFL coaches were fired. Andy Reid of the Philadelphia Eagles saw an end to his 14 year coaching tenure after a career worst 4-12 season. Reid took the Eagles to the playoffs in 9 of his first 12 seasons but missing the playoffs two seasons in a row was enough for him to lose his job. Most of the other firings were predictable. The Chiefs’ Romeo Crennel had a record of 4-15 and Chan Gailey’s 16-32 record for the Buffalo Bills weren’t remotely good enough to stay on. Ken Whisenhunt took the Arizona Cardinals to the Super Bowl 5 seasons ago, but that is an eternity in the NFL and he lost his job after going 18-30 in the last three years. San Diego let Norv Turner go after missing the playoffs the past three years despite a 24-24 mark and new owner Jimmy Haslem of the Cleveland Browns cleaned house after their fifth straight season with 10 or more losses.
I was surprised that meddling owner Jerry Jones of the Dallas Cowboys kept his head coach Jason Garrett after his second straight 8-8 season. The Cowboys have won only one playoff game in the past 15 years and Jones isn’t known for his patience with head coaches with none lasting more than 5 years since he took over ownership 24 years ago. The other coach that I was surprised to see keep his job is Rex Ryan of the New York Jets. After getting the Jets to the AFC Championship game in his first two seasons as head coach (losing both), the Jets have regressed the past two years to an 8-8 mark last season and a 6-10 record for this year’s undisciplined mess of a team. The Jets did fire General Manager Mike Tannenbaum and if the past is indicative of the future, the new Jets GM will fire Ryan next year and bring his own coach in.
The most controversial of the firings was Chicago Bears coach Lovie Smith’s dismissal after nine seasons. Smith was the only coach with a winning record to be fired. The Bears had a 10-6 season and only missed the playoffs when the Minnesota Vikings upset the Green Bay Packers late Sunday afternoon.
Smith took the Bears to the Super Bowl in 2006 and the NFC championship game in 2010 so why did he lose his job? Last year the Bears started 7-3 but when quarterback Jay Cutler was knocked out for the season, they faded badly and finished 8-8. The blame for not having an adequate backup quarterback cost General Manager Jerry Angelo his job and Smith now had to work for General Manager Phil Emery and not the man who hired him (Angelo). This year, the Bears started 7-1 and after getting their fans dreaming of another Super Bowl appearance lost six of their next seven games. They rallied to win their last two games but not making the playoffs gave Emery the chance to make his mark on the franchise by installing his own head coach.
Smith was the victim of relative success. He won three division championships in his nine seasons. The Bears won one division championship in the 13 years before his tenure. The Bears lost 11 games in his first season and never again lost 10 games under his watch. In the 13 years before his hiring the Bears lost ten or more games six times. I listened to the Chicago Sports radio station 670 – The Score on Sunday and Monday. Callers, commentators, and ex-players alike thought that Smith was a good coach but was not the man needed to take the Bears to the ‘next level’.
I can agree with the premise that Smith was not going to lead the Bears to the ‘next level’ which I presume means constant playoff appearances and the occasional Super Bowl. I just think that Bears management is missing a big point. There are very few NFL coaches that take their team to the playoffs on a consistent basis along with an occasional Super Bowl and those coaches are very rarely available. Tom Coughlin has been the head coach of the Giants for nine years (the same as Smith). Coughlin’s record is two games better (83-61 vs. 81-63), has been to the playoffs five years as opposed to three for Smith, but has won both Super Bowls he led the Giants to (Smith lost in his only appearance). Tom Coughlin is the next level type of coach that the Bears are looking for, but despite occasional rumblings after a disappointing Giants season, he isn’t going anywhere and neither are other recent Super Bowl winning coaches like the Mike McCarthy of the Packers, Mike Tomlin of the Steelers, or Bill Belichick of the Patriots. This leaves the coaches who had past success and traded it in for the executive suite or the broadcasting booth like Mike Holmgren, Bill Cowher, Jon Gruden, or Tony Dungy that are waiting to be lured out of retirement for total control of the football operation and huge bucks besides. Firing a coach that isn’t winning is a no-brainer. Getting rid of a successful coach not for winning but for not winning enough is a very risky proposition unless that ‘next level’ coach is already waiting in the wings.
Speaking of risky propositions, since I was so prescient in my prediction of the Lakers troubles not being a product of their coach (The Lakers have gone 14-12 after firing coach Mike Brown who had a 1-4 start) , I will be using my prognosticating skills on this year’s NFL playoffs. I’ll be picking against the money line instead of the point spread because I’m much more comfortable picking the winners and giving or taking the odds than taking or giving points and losing my bet because of a late score. I’ll be using the odds at betonline.ag from the Yahoo odds page. Please keep in mind that this is all in fun and I'm not betting real money - not even any of Bethany Carson's trillions of Zimbabwe dollars!
Bengals (+185) at Texans (-215)
The Texans had the best record in the conference until last week when they lost to the Colts and slid to the #3 seed and lost their week off. The Bengals were a poor team until winning seven of their last eight games. Despite the trend, I’ll bet $215 on the Texans to win at home and I’ll win $100 if I’m right.
Vikings (+300) at Packers (-360)
This is a rematch game of last week’s epic matchup that the Vikings won on a last second field goal in a game they had to win to make the playoffs. I don’t think they can upset the Packers two weeks in a row and certainly not in Green Bay. I’ll bet $1080 to win $300 that the Packers win the third matchup of these teams this season.
Colts (+245) at Ravens (-290)
The surprising Colts will be rolling into Baltimore to take on the Ravens. The Ravens will be emotionally charged up by the announcement of team captain Ray Lewis that he will retire after the playoffs. I think the Ravens are likely to win the game but I like the odds on the Colts (who did have the better regular season record) and will wager $100 to win $245 on a Colts upset.
Seahawks (-155) at Redskins (+135)
Both these teams are red hot entering the playoffs with the Redskins winning their last seven games by mostly close scores and the Seahawks winning their last five in dominant fashion. The game will be in Washington and I think the home crowd’s energy will propel the young Redskins to continue their string of dramatic victories. I’ll wager $200 to win $270 on the home town ‘Skins to pull off the upset over the favored Seahawks.
Thursday, January 3, 2013
Sunday, December 30, 2012
Off the Cliff
Meet 'Rollo'
The Democrat response to trying to reduce the deficit is to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for people making over $250,000 a year with minimal cuts in spending and President Obama agreed to allow the cuts to remain for people making over $400,000 a year. The Republican response is to not allow the cuts to expire for anyone and while House Speaker John Boehner tried to allow the tax cuts to expire for anyone making over $1,000,000 a year he was shot down by his party and had to get back to the party line of no tax cuts expiring for anyone.
The economic pundits have declared that the automatic spending cuts combined with the expiration of the tax cuts will send the country into a recession. I’m no economist, but I can’t understand how the economy in expansion when the deficit is 1.2 TRILLION DOLLARS a year but will be in recession when we are only running a deficit of $600 BILLION DOLLARS a year can be healthy in any regard.
The government has had out of control spending for the last 10 years (here is the chart). It doesn’t matter whether there was a Republican President and a Republican Congress (2001-2006), a Republican President and a Democrat Congress (2007-2008), a Democrat President and a Democrat Congress (2009-2010), or a Democrat President and a Republican Congress (2010-2014), the deficits just get bigger and bigger and bigger. The deficit is so large as to be almost beyond comprehension. The 2012 deficit was 1.1 TRILLION DOLLARS, the smallest in four years. Warren Buffett is one of the wealthiest men in the world but his net worth of 44 BILLION DOLLARS wouldn’t pay the deficit for three weeks. The Powerball lottery reached 550 MILLION DOLLARS earlier last month. That jackpot would pay off for four and a half hours of the deficit.
It would be easy to blame the Republicans or the Democrats or the terrorists or the bankers or anyone for the exploding deficits but the real culprit is the American people who keep electing the same people to office (regardless of party) to spend money and cut taxes and when the bill comes due expect others to pay for it. The Bush tax cuts were designed to expire in 2010 but any mention of letting them expire is talked about as a tax increase and not the end of the tax break. It’s the same way with President Obama’s 2% Social Security tax break. It was meant as a temporary spur to the economy but no one wants to give up their little extra money as long as the deficit can be borrowed from somebody else.
Politicians of all parties are attempting to make a last minute deal to avoid the expiration of the tax cuts and allow the spending to continue and positioning themselves to be able to blame the opposing party in case there is no deal. I hope there is no deal and the tax rates revert back to what they were. Once the politicians get done blaming each other for the ‘tax increase’, the politicians can start working on a new round of tax cuts that they can all take credit for. I can’t imagine the millionaires being able to get a tax cut so the one thing that everyone who is not a millionaire agree on will come to pass (millionaires paying more in taxes), but after all the talk of the 1 percent and the 47 percent I’m very interested in seeing where the line that divides the income levels whose tax rates approach the ‘pre-cliff’ levels from those that don’t.
It’s admirable as a society to help people who are struggling by providing welfare and food stamps and paying for their health care. It’s admirable as a society to give students assistance to pay for their college tuition. It’s also admirable to want to have a defense system that can protect our interests around the globe and provide assistance to other countries. But to be borrowing over a TRILLION DOLLARS a year to promote these admirable ideals just seems stupid to me. If someone you knew asked for a hundred dollar loan so they could give it to their favorite charity, maybe you would one time. But would you make the same loan week after week and year after year? If you never got paid back? Wouldn’t you suggest that if your acquaintance wanted to contribute to less fortunate people they should pay for it themselves?
It’s easy to say that the rich people paying more taxes will solve the deficit problem. If there are five million millionaires in the US, they would have to each pay $200,000 to cover this year’s TRILLION DOLLAR deficit. This isn’t people who make a million dollars a year, just people who have a million dollars. I don’t think there are enough millionaires to pay off the deficit and even if there were, they would be the most likely to find ways to avoid paying the new taxes anyway.
If there end up being no tax cuts, I don’t think there will be too adverse an effect on the economy. Whatever money that comes out of the people’s pockets will go to the government and be spent on other programs. The spending cuts total around 300 BILLION DOLLARS of a 3.7 TRILLION DOLLAR BUDGET. Eight percent of the government spending is a lot, but keep in mind that this is all borrowed money anyway and the money lost on the expiration of the tax cuts will be that much less money spent at the Wal-Mart on Chinese made goods.
Left: Rollo was made in China but I got him from this vending machine. Rollo hopes he doesn't fall off the cliff.
If the economy falls off the fiscal cliff, the ’Rollos’ of the world will be one of the first casualties in my household. I don’t think the economy would collapse if Rollo and all his little ‘Hood Hound’ friends have to stay in their vending machine case. I might have to take a second job if things got so bad that I had to stop getting Daisy and Baxter beef stick treats. These would just be some tough choices I’d have to make. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the government to make some tough choices themselves.
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Movie Review - Les Misérables
When the kids were small, Christmas was all about the morning of. On Christmas Eve, we’d empty the stockings the night before, get the kids to bed, and wrap the presents. The kids would wake up early and head downstairs while Kathy and I would enjoy them sorting and opening the presents. Now that Ben is 17 and Matt is 20, there’s not any ‘little kid’ buzz about Christmas. Kathy spent the morning cooking and our neighbor Don, Kathy’s mom, and her husband came over for Christmas lunch. We didn’t open the presents under the tree until late on Christmas night.
Kathy wanted to see ‘Lincoln’ this past weekend, but we didn’t make it to the Sunday show and now it is out of the theatre in Marshalltown. I would have gone to see it but I don’t know how it could have topped ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ movie I saw in June since I’m not one of those people who prefer historical accuracy to seeing countless vampires having their heads lopped off by a President of the United States!
With the Christmas Holiday not devoted to the delight of little kids playing with their toys (not counting the dog toys Daisy and Baxter destroyed), Kathy, Matt, and I went to see the movie 'Les Misérables' in the afternoon. Christmas is a big movie day and there were three highly publicized movies opening on Christmas; Les Misérables, the action movie Django Unchained, and the comedy Parental Guidance.
The theatre was completely packed for Les Misérables, mostly with older people. The movie is an adaption of a Victor Hugo book and has been done in plays, musicals, and movies many times before. It’s a soap opera type of tale that focuses on Frenchman Jean Valjean journeys after his release from the prison after he served a 19 year sentence for stealing a loaf of bread. He is rescued from a return to prison by a bishop, he owns a factory, he adopts a girl whose mother’s death he unwittingly caused, and he gets mixed up in a failed French revolution.
This version was a full blown musical with an all-cast, but even a super hero movie junkie like me recognized many of the actors. The main character is played by Hugh Jackman, otherwise known as Wolverine from the X-Men. Anne Hathaway who played the Catwoman in the ‘Dark Knight Rises’ plays the woman who get fired from Valjean’s factory and eventually dies after turning into a prostitute to provide for her daughter. Gladiator’s Russell Crowe plays Valjean’s arch nemesis, Army Officer Javert, who tracks him down across the decades.
When I see all these actors and actresses in movies or television roles, it’s not readily apparent if they are well rounded performers or just regular people who ended up in the right place at the right time, but seeing them sing and act at the same time gives a greater appreciation for their skills. Crowe didn’t seem to be much of a singer but the rest of the cast was able to handle telling the story through the song well enough and it was a good thing too, since there is no dialog at all.
I’m not a big fan of all the heavy drama so the tragedy and suffering of the French underclass of the 1800’s was lost on me. The part of the movie I liked best was Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the The Thénardiers, the innkeepers who pickpocket and scam their way throughout the movie. I thought Cohen’s ‘Borat’ was one of the funniest movies ever and he and Carter cracked me up in all three of their comic relief scenes, but especially in their first appearance where they strip their unsuspecting customers down to their shorts.
The production values of the movie are for the most part outstanding. It looks like the production started to cut corners when it came to the aborted French Revolution stage of the movie which didn’t have the extravagant scenery of the rest of the film, but the rest of the movie had fantastic scenery and costumes. I especially liked how the poor people of France were made to be dirty, ugly, pockmarked, and with grotesque teeth. In most movies and television shows the down and out people have perfect teeth and hair with maybe a smudge of grease on their face or a hole in their shirt to show the overall grittiness of their lives, but the poor people of Les Misérables could fit right in with the Okies of ‘Grapes of Wrath’ or the Friday Night all you can eat buffet at the Chinese restaurant in downtown Marshalltown.
When the movie was over most of the audience stood up and clapped. I thought the movie was good and I’m sure that it will be up for a bunch of awards as most movies of this type are. It was a welcome change of pace from the action movies I normally go to see (if I was going by myself I’d probably have seen Jack Reacher). The movie is quite long at two and a half hours but the story was good enough that I didn’t notice. When we got home we watched one of the movies I got for Christmas ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. As good a movie as Les Misérables was I doubt I’ll ever come home from an action movie and want to watch it.
Kathy wanted to see ‘Lincoln’ this past weekend, but we didn’t make it to the Sunday show and now it is out of the theatre in Marshalltown. I would have gone to see it but I don’t know how it could have topped ‘Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter’ movie I saw in June since I’m not one of those people who prefer historical accuracy to seeing countless vampires having their heads lopped off by a President of the United States!
With the Christmas Holiday not devoted to the delight of little kids playing with their toys (not counting the dog toys Daisy and Baxter destroyed), Kathy, Matt, and I went to see the movie 'Les Misérables' in the afternoon. Christmas is a big movie day and there were three highly publicized movies opening on Christmas; Les Misérables, the action movie Django Unchained, and the comedy Parental Guidance.
The theatre was completely packed for Les Misérables, mostly with older people. The movie is an adaption of a Victor Hugo book and has been done in plays, musicals, and movies many times before. It’s a soap opera type of tale that focuses on Frenchman Jean Valjean journeys after his release from the prison after he served a 19 year sentence for stealing a loaf of bread. He is rescued from a return to prison by a bishop, he owns a factory, he adopts a girl whose mother’s death he unwittingly caused, and he gets mixed up in a failed French revolution.
This version was a full blown musical with an all-cast, but even a super hero movie junkie like me recognized many of the actors. The main character is played by Hugh Jackman, otherwise known as Wolverine from the X-Men. Anne Hathaway who played the Catwoman in the ‘Dark Knight Rises’ plays the woman who get fired from Valjean’s factory and eventually dies after turning into a prostitute to provide for her daughter. Gladiator’s Russell Crowe plays Valjean’s arch nemesis, Army Officer Javert, who tracks him down across the decades.
When I see all these actors and actresses in movies or television roles, it’s not readily apparent if they are well rounded performers or just regular people who ended up in the right place at the right time, but seeing them sing and act at the same time gives a greater appreciation for their skills. Crowe didn’t seem to be much of a singer but the rest of the cast was able to handle telling the story through the song well enough and it was a good thing too, since there is no dialog at all.
I’m not a big fan of all the heavy drama so the tragedy and suffering of the French underclass of the 1800’s was lost on me. The part of the movie I liked best was Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the The Thénardiers, the innkeepers who pickpocket and scam their way throughout the movie. I thought Cohen’s ‘Borat’ was one of the funniest movies ever and he and Carter cracked me up in all three of their comic relief scenes, but especially in their first appearance where they strip their unsuspecting customers down to their shorts.
The production values of the movie are for the most part outstanding. It looks like the production started to cut corners when it came to the aborted French Revolution stage of the movie which didn’t have the extravagant scenery of the rest of the film, but the rest of the movie had fantastic scenery and costumes. I especially liked how the poor people of France were made to be dirty, ugly, pockmarked, and with grotesque teeth. In most movies and television shows the down and out people have perfect teeth and hair with maybe a smudge of grease on their face or a hole in their shirt to show the overall grittiness of their lives, but the poor people of Les Misérables could fit right in with the Okies of ‘Grapes of Wrath’ or the Friday Night all you can eat buffet at the Chinese restaurant in downtown Marshalltown.
When the movie was over most of the audience stood up and clapped. I thought the movie was good and I’m sure that it will be up for a bunch of awards as most movies of this type are. It was a welcome change of pace from the action movies I normally go to see (if I was going by myself I’d probably have seen Jack Reacher). The movie is quite long at two and a half hours but the story was good enough that I didn’t notice. When we got home we watched one of the movies I got for Christmas ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. As good a movie as Les Misérables was I doubt I’ll ever come home from an action movie and want to watch it.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
The Decision
In the spring of 2010, basketball superstar LeBron James made a decision to leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and ‘take his talents’ to the Miami Heat. He not only made the decision, he announced it in an hour long ESPN special entitled ‘The Decision’. I don’t think anyone outside Cleveland blamed James for getting out of a poorly managed franchise in a cold weather town to play in the warmth of Florida and a franchise run by Hall of Fame coach and GM Pat Riley. The idea of creating a prime time show to announce the decision was perceived as arrogant by sports fans. At the giant ceremony unveiling the Heats ‘Big 3’ of James, Dwayne Wade, and Chris Bosh, James’ prediction of eight championships for the Heat made LeBron James and the Heat easy to root against in a Yankee sort of way.
In 2011, the Heat made it to the NBA finals, but were defeated by an inspired Dallas Mavericks team for the championship. James came under withering criticism as a poor leader who choked in the fourth quarter and couldn’t lead his team to a single championship, much less eight as he promised the previous summer.
2012 proved to be a different story. James won the Most Valuable Player award and led the Heat to a crucial win against the Boston Celtics on the road in an elimination game to get the Heat to the finals and followed that by averaging 28 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists per game in the Heat’s five game finals victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder. James won the Finals MVP, an Olympic gold medal over the summer, and was recently named the 2012 Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated. With the this year’s NBA season nearly a third over, sports discussions about LeBron James are centered about his chances of leading the Miami Heat to a repeat championship and ‘The Decision’ Is a thing of the past.
I’ve been wrestling with my own decision over the last couple of months concerning my monthly youth chess tournaments. As I wrote last month, ever since I added trophy prizes to the beginner (unrated) sections, the top beginners have chosen to continue playing with the beginners rather than move on to the more advanced (rated) section.
I received a lot of feedback and suggestions about this issue. President Obama wrote to say I should award a trophy to every player. Then everyone would move up to the advanced section and I could pay for my expenses by raising the entry fee for anyone whose parents make more than $250,000 a year and if I was a little short on funds I could borrow the money to pay for the trophies. House Speaker Boehner wrote to me the next week and said increasing the entry fees on the wealthy was wrong and the president’s plan would lead to out of control spending. He suggested I only give out a trophy to the top 1 percent of the participants, but make them really, really nice trophies that cost as much or more as I could expect to take in in entry fees and if I was a little short on funds I could borrow the money to pay for the really nice trophies.
There were a lot of suggestions from chess players and parents also. Most of the parents of the better beginner players want their children to move up and were OK with losing the trophies for the beginning players. Some of the parents recommended phasing out the trophies while others wanted to put a limit on how many times a player could win the beginner section. Other parents didn’t see any problem at all and wondered why I saw a problem in the first place.
In a perfect world, the best idea is to force a consistent winner in the beginner section to move up. Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect and not only would it be a lot to keep track of, I can imagine the players and parents being confused about which section they were eligible to play in. No one comes to a chess tournament looking for a surprise and I wouldn’t make any friends if I had to start telling players they had to play in a stronger section when they weren’t expecting to because they had won the beginner section too many times.
I think it’s important to keep things as simple as possible and I strive for simplicity in most things I do. I’ve never had a car with power windows or power locks because to me it’s just one more thing to go wrong in a car. At work, the business applications I write tend not to be thought of very highly by the people who make a living designing the colors and fonts and spacing and fancy pictures because I don’t use a lot of colors and fonts and ‘sizzle’, but the people who have to use the applications daily almost always love how simple they are to use.
Viewing my beginner section trophy ‘problem’ through the prism of simplicity, the approach I wanted to take became clear and I was able to make my decision with a clear conscience. I’ve decided to not have trophies at all. Everyone will still get a medal and I’ll recognize the top finishers in each section with a nice looking but fairly generic ribbon.
There are many positives to not having trophies. The players can still play in whatever section they want. The entry fee will be lowered to my summertime levels ($3 for half a day and $5 for a whole day). I can give out the ribbons to 10th place including ties as opposed to trophoes to the top 5 period (no tiebreaks). A minor (but important) consideration is that I‘m always assured of breaking even moneywise for this tournament format and it takes me a step further down the desired path of having tournaments with no entry fee and only a freewill donation.
Of course, this decision is not a slam dunk to be successful. Without the lure of a trophy, some players may not come to the tournaments at all. I don’t think this is going to happen on a mass scale but it could set my tournament series back a lot if I’m wrong. I thought about this risk a lot. I had good attendance at my summer tournaments (which have never had trophy prizes) this year and that leads me to think I’ll keep my core players. If push comes to shove I can always go back to having trophies but if the lure of a trophy is the only thing keeping chess players coming to the tournaments maybe the whole concept of monthly tournaments is misguided and I should try for a different monthly chess activity.
However my decision works out, I’m sure of at least a few things. I won’t be hoisting an NBA championship trophy in June and I won’t be getting named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated next December. I hope I have to settle for getting the ‘beginning’ chess players that come to my monthly tournaments trying to test themselves against better competition.
In 2011, the Heat made it to the NBA finals, but were defeated by an inspired Dallas Mavericks team for the championship. James came under withering criticism as a poor leader who choked in the fourth quarter and couldn’t lead his team to a single championship, much less eight as he promised the previous summer.
2012 proved to be a different story. James won the Most Valuable Player award and led the Heat to a crucial win against the Boston Celtics on the road in an elimination game to get the Heat to the finals and followed that by averaging 28 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists per game in the Heat’s five game finals victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder. James won the Finals MVP, an Olympic gold medal over the summer, and was recently named the 2012 Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated. With the this year’s NBA season nearly a third over, sports discussions about LeBron James are centered about his chances of leading the Miami Heat to a repeat championship and ‘The Decision’ Is a thing of the past.
I’ve been wrestling with my own decision over the last couple of months concerning my monthly youth chess tournaments. As I wrote last month, ever since I added trophy prizes to the beginner (unrated) sections, the top beginners have chosen to continue playing with the beginners rather than move on to the more advanced (rated) section.
I received a lot of feedback and suggestions about this issue. President Obama wrote to say I should award a trophy to every player. Then everyone would move up to the advanced section and I could pay for my expenses by raising the entry fee for anyone whose parents make more than $250,000 a year and if I was a little short on funds I could borrow the money to pay for the trophies. House Speaker Boehner wrote to me the next week and said increasing the entry fees on the wealthy was wrong and the president’s plan would lead to out of control spending. He suggested I only give out a trophy to the top 1 percent of the participants, but make them really, really nice trophies that cost as much or more as I could expect to take in in entry fees and if I was a little short on funds I could borrow the money to pay for the really nice trophies.
There were a lot of suggestions from chess players and parents also. Most of the parents of the better beginner players want their children to move up and were OK with losing the trophies for the beginning players. Some of the parents recommended phasing out the trophies while others wanted to put a limit on how many times a player could win the beginner section. Other parents didn’t see any problem at all and wondered why I saw a problem in the first place.
In a perfect world, the best idea is to force a consistent winner in the beginner section to move up. Unfortunately, the world isn’t perfect and not only would it be a lot to keep track of, I can imagine the players and parents being confused about which section they were eligible to play in. No one comes to a chess tournament looking for a surprise and I wouldn’t make any friends if I had to start telling players they had to play in a stronger section when they weren’t expecting to because they had won the beginner section too many times.
I think it’s important to keep things as simple as possible and I strive for simplicity in most things I do. I’ve never had a car with power windows or power locks because to me it’s just one more thing to go wrong in a car. At work, the business applications I write tend not to be thought of very highly by the people who make a living designing the colors and fonts and spacing and fancy pictures because I don’t use a lot of colors and fonts and ‘sizzle’, but the people who have to use the applications daily almost always love how simple they are to use.
Viewing my beginner section trophy ‘problem’ through the prism of simplicity, the approach I wanted to take became clear and I was able to make my decision with a clear conscience. I’ve decided to not have trophies at all. Everyone will still get a medal and I’ll recognize the top finishers in each section with a nice looking but fairly generic ribbon.
There are many positives to not having trophies. The players can still play in whatever section they want. The entry fee will be lowered to my summertime levels ($3 for half a day and $5 for a whole day). I can give out the ribbons to 10th place including ties as opposed to trophoes to the top 5 period (no tiebreaks). A minor (but important) consideration is that I‘m always assured of breaking even moneywise for this tournament format and it takes me a step further down the desired path of having tournaments with no entry fee and only a freewill donation.
Of course, this decision is not a slam dunk to be successful. Without the lure of a trophy, some players may not come to the tournaments at all. I don’t think this is going to happen on a mass scale but it could set my tournament series back a lot if I’m wrong. I thought about this risk a lot. I had good attendance at my summer tournaments (which have never had trophy prizes) this year and that leads me to think I’ll keep my core players. If push comes to shove I can always go back to having trophies but if the lure of a trophy is the only thing keeping chess players coming to the tournaments maybe the whole concept of monthly tournaments is misguided and I should try for a different monthly chess activity.
However my decision works out, I’m sure of at least a few things. I won’t be hoisting an NBA championship trophy in June and I won’t be getting named Sportsman of the Year by Sports Illustrated next December. I hope I have to settle for getting the ‘beginning’ chess players that come to my monthly tournaments trying to test themselves against better competition.
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
News or News Cycle?
I didn’t think it would take long for the Javon Belcher murder/suicide of two weeks ago to be old news and I was right. The day after the shooting was dominated by the feel good story of the Chiefs historic comeback victory over the Carolina Panthers the day after their teammate committed suicide. Well, it really wasn’t a historic victory by any standards except by the abysmally low bar the Chiefs have set (their second win out of 14 tries this year) and given the fact that they’ve scored exactly seven points in the past two games it is quite likely to be their last win until the fall of 2013. Two weeks after the Belcher incident, the big question posed to coach Romeo Crennel after Sunday's 15-0 loss to the Raiders was how he would rank his team’s inept offensive performance among the games he’s coached.
Last week, defensive lineman Josh Brent of the Dallas Cowboys was arrested for intoxication manslaughter for the car accident that killed his teammate and friend Jerry Brown. The day after the death and arrest, the Cowboys beat the Cincinnati Bengals on the last play of the game in an emotional victory and followed that with an equally dramatic overtime victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Brent would have been an afterthought except he was on the Cowboys sideline during the game.This caused some controversy (even though Brown’s mother asked the Cowboys to support him in any way possible), but the current news about the Cowboys is focused on whether they can win their last two games to make the playoffs.
On the heels of the two NFL player-related murder incidents came the murder of 26 children and teachers in the school in Newtown, CT on Friday that has taken over the news media attention. This is the second highly publicized mass shooting in the United states this year, the first being the shooting in the Aurora movie theatre for at the midnight premiere of ‘Dark Knight Rises’. Because the victims in the Newtown shootings were children, there is much more outrage among the public than the Aurora theatre shootings and the calls for a ban on the type of assault rifles used in the shooting (and firearms in general) have been overwhelming this week. The crime was so horrific that even the staunchest gun ownership advocates have gone into hiding until the next big story takes some of the spotlight away from the issue.
I didn’t know that there were 270 million guns legally owned by US citizens. Given that number, I would have expected these sort of massacres would be a daily occurrence and I was surprised to see that the Newtown shootings was listed by the Associated Press as one of the worst mass shootings in history. This makes me think that gun owners are very responsible for the most part and the gun owners I’ve known into are not only fanatical about their second amendment rights, but are alsot fanatical about having locks on their guns and having their locked guns in a locked gun cabinet and having their locked guns and in their locked gun cabinets in a locked room that only they can get into. The nut job that killed these kids in Newtown stole his weapons from his mother and she was his first victim.
It’s conceivable that the Newtown shootings will lead to a ban on firearms like there have been in Britain, Australia, and Scotland but I doubt it. The gun lobby is powerful and well-funded and very experienced at blunting gun control legislation. President Obama is trying to sound as if he will be pushing some legislation, but I heard the same sort of speech from him after the Giffords and Aurora shootings to believe that he is doing much more that attempting to strike the correct tone.
While a ban on weapons would reduce the massacres of the kind we saw last week, it wouldn’t put an end to this nut job sort of violence (see the ‘Harry the Human Bomb’ crowd in the Middle East).I don’t think that banning guns would even remove them from American society. The last I looked, meth was illegal yet I see plenty of meth business going in Marshalltown despite the occasional high-profile bust. There are millions of illegal immigrants – I mean undocumented aliens – in the country but any law that even hints of verifying residential status for enforcement purposes is decried as racist and stricken down by the higher courts. I don’t think Americans as a whole are very good at following laws (including me when it comes to speed limits) and banning firearms would just make criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens.
I’m interested in how much news time the massacre will be getting on December 29th (two weeks after the shootings). Will people still be up in arms about preventing this from happening again or will we have moved on to the next hot current event topic? ESPN went overboard in trying to find the right tone in the shooting aftermath, placing a ban on their commentators using social media, references to violence, and even prohibited the use of the term ‘Pistol’ when describing the Nevada offensive formation during this past weekend’s New Mexico Bowl. The ban was over by the Monday Night Football game as the commentators noted that the Jets were in the ‘Shotgun’ formation numerous times.
Any gun control legislation as a result of the massacre will take a lot of time, but there are many things that towns can do to protect their schools in the meantime. Schools should be a regular part of the police officers’ rounds. Instead of stationing state troopers and policemen at speed traps to write parking tickets, why not station them near schools? Politicians are constantly talking about hiring veterans - why not hire veterans to patrol the outside of schools? Then we would have trained professionals protecting our children. In almost 30 years of programming, I’ve regularly had customers ask me to make a program change to meet some unforeseen problem or new business requirement. Many times the change will take some time and I will suggest an alternative process the customer can use in the meantime to accomplish the same goal. When the customer implements the alternative process I know they see the program change they requested as the solution to a real problem because they are willing to take steps immediately without waiting for a program change, but when the customer says they can wait I know they have more of an inconvenience than a problem. Time will quickly tell whether the Newtown massacre is seen as a real problem worthy of immediate action or just a temporary feel-bad moment for anyone not personally involved.
Last week, defensive lineman Josh Brent of the Dallas Cowboys was arrested for intoxication manslaughter for the car accident that killed his teammate and friend Jerry Brown. The day after the death and arrest, the Cowboys beat the Cincinnati Bengals on the last play of the game in an emotional victory and followed that with an equally dramatic overtime victory against the Pittsburgh Steelers. Brent would have been an afterthought except he was on the Cowboys sideline during the game.This caused some controversy (even though Brown’s mother asked the Cowboys to support him in any way possible), but the current news about the Cowboys is focused on whether they can win their last two games to make the playoffs.
On the heels of the two NFL player-related murder incidents came the murder of 26 children and teachers in the school in Newtown, CT on Friday that has taken over the news media attention. This is the second highly publicized mass shooting in the United states this year, the first being the shooting in the Aurora movie theatre for at the midnight premiere of ‘Dark Knight Rises’. Because the victims in the Newtown shootings were children, there is much more outrage among the public than the Aurora theatre shootings and the calls for a ban on the type of assault rifles used in the shooting (and firearms in general) have been overwhelming this week. The crime was so horrific that even the staunchest gun ownership advocates have gone into hiding until the next big story takes some of the spotlight away from the issue.
I didn’t know that there were 270 million guns legally owned by US citizens. Given that number, I would have expected these sort of massacres would be a daily occurrence and I was surprised to see that the Newtown shootings was listed by the Associated Press as one of the worst mass shootings in history. This makes me think that gun owners are very responsible for the most part and the gun owners I’ve known into are not only fanatical about their second amendment rights, but are alsot fanatical about having locks on their guns and having their locked guns in a locked gun cabinet and having their locked guns and in their locked gun cabinets in a locked room that only they can get into. The nut job that killed these kids in Newtown stole his weapons from his mother and she was his first victim.
It’s conceivable that the Newtown shootings will lead to a ban on firearms like there have been in Britain, Australia, and Scotland but I doubt it. The gun lobby is powerful and well-funded and very experienced at blunting gun control legislation. President Obama is trying to sound as if he will be pushing some legislation, but I heard the same sort of speech from him after the Giffords and Aurora shootings to believe that he is doing much more that attempting to strike the correct tone.
While a ban on weapons would reduce the massacres of the kind we saw last week, it wouldn’t put an end to this nut job sort of violence (see the ‘Harry the Human Bomb’ crowd in the Middle East).I don’t think that banning guns would even remove them from American society. The last I looked, meth was illegal yet I see plenty of meth business going in Marshalltown despite the occasional high-profile bust. There are millions of illegal immigrants – I mean undocumented aliens – in the country but any law that even hints of verifying residential status for enforcement purposes is decried as racist and stricken down by the higher courts. I don’t think Americans as a whole are very good at following laws (including me when it comes to speed limits) and banning firearms would just make criminals out of otherwise law-abiding citizens.
I’m interested in how much news time the massacre will be getting on December 29th (two weeks after the shootings). Will people still be up in arms about preventing this from happening again or will we have moved on to the next hot current event topic? ESPN went overboard in trying to find the right tone in the shooting aftermath, placing a ban on their commentators using social media, references to violence, and even prohibited the use of the term ‘Pistol’ when describing the Nevada offensive formation during this past weekend’s New Mexico Bowl. The ban was over by the Monday Night Football game as the commentators noted that the Jets were in the ‘Shotgun’ formation numerous times.
Any gun control legislation as a result of the massacre will take a lot of time, but there are many things that towns can do to protect their schools in the meantime. Schools should be a regular part of the police officers’ rounds. Instead of stationing state troopers and policemen at speed traps to write parking tickets, why not station them near schools? Politicians are constantly talking about hiring veterans - why not hire veterans to patrol the outside of schools? Then we would have trained professionals protecting our children. In almost 30 years of programming, I’ve regularly had customers ask me to make a program change to meet some unforeseen problem or new business requirement. Many times the change will take some time and I will suggest an alternative process the customer can use in the meantime to accomplish the same goal. When the customer implements the alternative process I know they see the program change they requested as the solution to a real problem because they are willing to take steps immediately without waiting for a program change, but when the customer says they can wait I know they have more of an inconvenience than a problem. Time will quickly tell whether the Newtown massacre is seen as a real problem worthy of immediate action or just a temporary feel-bad moment for anyone not personally involved.
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