notesfromnokomis

Language Myths — a (limited) book review

I just read Language Myths, edited by Lauri Bauer and Peter Trudgill, published in 1998. Twenty-one different authors each tackle a language myth and debunk it.

Below are the myths, each of which gets its own chapter.

–The meaning of words should not be allowed to vary or change.

–Some languages are just not good enough.

–The media are ruining English.

–French is a logical language.

–English spelling is kattostroffik.

–Women talk too much.

–Some languages are harder than others.

–Children can’t speak or write properly any more.

–In the Appalachians, they speak like Shakespeare.

–Some languages have no grammar.

–Italian is beautiful, German is ugly.

–Bad grammar is slovenly.

–Black Children are verbally deprived.

–Double negatives are illogical.

–TV makes people sound the same.

–You shouldn’t say “it is me” because ‘me’ is accusative.

–They speak really bad English down south and in New York City.

–Some languages are spoken more quickly than others.

–Aborigines speak a primitive language.

–Everyone has an accent except me.

–America is ruining the English language.

The various authors make compelling cases for concluding that the truth is contrary to every single myth posited. I’ll mention one argument to give you an idea.

The myth is that double negatives are illogical, but according to the author, they aren’t. The myth derives from math. Two minus negative two is four, the two negatives equal a positive. That’s how math works, that’s not how languages work. When someone says “I didn’t talk to nobody,” no sentient person really thinks, hmmn, if he didn’t take to nobody, then he must have talked to somebody. Only pedants think like that and they do it purposely to showcase how smart they are. Everybody, including the pedant, knows that the speaker didn’t talk to a human. Furthermore, double negatives are an integral part of many languages. In French, “I don’t want anything” is “je ne veux rien,” where “ne” and “rien” both indicate a negative.

The other myths are similarly discredited — though in truth, some of the “myths” have the appearance of strawmen. Memorize the opposite of the myth and you will have a much better understanding of linguistics. Or read the book and you will understand why the myth isn’t true.

The overwhelming takeaway from this book and other books I have read about language and linguistics is that languages are in a constant state of change. Words are created regularly (think about anything pertaining to text messages), fall into disfavor (dungarees), and change meanings (“nice” originally meant “silly”). The only thing constant about language is flux.

Books and writing have tended to slow the rate of change by locking in meanings and usage. But even so, words continue to morph.

Like many English words, “while” has multiple meanings, and most of them have a temporal element. Unfortunately, “while” has also become a synonym for “although.” It shouldn’t. The better practice is to retain the temporal element, as in “I read the book while riding the bus.” Use “although” when contrasting two related concepts, as in “although the sun was shining, it wasn’t that warm.” The oft-used “while” just doesn’t convey the same meaning. “While the sun was shining, it wasn’t that warm” almost seems illogical, as if it were warmer when the sun wasn’t shining.

Similarly “since” should be used to convey that time has passed, “I haven’t been outside since 10 o’clock this morning.” It is frequently used as a synonym for “because,” again without enhancing clarity, “since he went outside, he put on a jacket.” The reader isn’t certain when or why the jacket was put on.

The synonymic usages are here to stay, but I don’t like them because they add a level of ambiguity. Retaining the temporal element is clearer, less difficult to understand, and more difficult to misunderstand.

What we are really looking for, especially in conversation, is comprehension. So the next time you are having a conversation with someone and they don’t use “bring” or “come” exactly the way you would, take a deep breath and consider that, because you understand what is being conveyed, there is no reason to correct the mythical mistake that is likely on its way to becoming common usage.

Alone — the TV show

This TV show (on the History channel) is the best of the survival reality genre. It doesn’t have the built in stupidity of being naked, it doesn’t have gimmicky games, and it doesn’t endorse risky stunts, it focuses on surviving in the woods alone. And that “alone” part is exceedingly difficult. It is what sends people home. The producers did a great job the second season of selecting highly skilled people for the endurance challenge. But the aloneness gets them, even the highly skilled.

For those who don’t know, the show deposits ten outdoor skills experts at ten different spots on Vancouver Island, all supposedly inaccessible to each other. Each location has ready access to fresh water. All of the contestants are allowed a basic supply kit and in addition are allowed to take ten items from a list of 50.

The challenge is to stay on the island as long as possible. And the reward to the last person standing is $500,000. Last year the winner lasted 55 days and was surprised that he had won so soon. He was prepared to stay much longer.

Here is a list of the supplies that are allowed, borrowed from the show’s website. I will resume commentary at the end of the list.

The contestants are allowed the following “regular” items:

pair high leg Hunting boots
2. 2 pairs of Outdoor Pants (can unzip into shorts)
3. 1 t-shirt
4. 2 fleece or wool shirts (hooded or unhooded)
5. 3 pairs wool socks
6. 1 hat (brimmed, wool or baseball)
7. 1 bandana or shemagh
8. 1 pair gloves
9. 1 light outdoor jacket
10. 2 pairs underwear
11. 1 rain jacket and rain trousers
12. 1 thermal underwear (long)
13. 1 pair of gaiters
14. 1 pair of Crocs, Teva sandals or Keen sandals
15. 1 toothbrush
16. 1 pair of prescription eye glasses
17. 1 personal photograph

In addition, they are allowed the following winter items:

1 wool sweater (heavy)
2. 1 pair of gloves (wool/Dachsteins)
3. 1 trapper’s hat with ear protection or toboggan

They are also allowed the following safety/tracking/transmission items:

2 safety tools (may consist of a canister of wild animal repellant, an air horn and/or 1 flare)
2. 1 rules and regulations guide
3. 1 backpack
4. 1 camera pack
5. Camera equipment
6. 1 emergency flare
7. 1 satellite phone
8. 1 emergency personal flotation device
9. 1 first aid kit (military type – tourniquet, wadding, ace bandage, alcohol, plastic bag, etc)
10. 1 small mirror
11. 1 20×20 canvas tarp
12. 1 10×10 tarp for protecting camera and equipment
13. 1 GPS tracking device
14. 1 head lamp
15. 1 emergency rations pack to include water and food

And finally, they are each allowed to select any ten items from the following list:

Shelter

12×12 ground cloth/tarp (grommets approved)
2. 8 mm climbing rope – 10M
3. 550 parachord – 20m
4. 1 hatchet
5. 1 saw
6. 1 ax

Bedding

1 multi-seasonal sleeping bag that fits within provided backpack
2. 1 bivi bag (Gore-Tex sleeping bag cover)
3. 1 sleeping pad
4. 1 hammock

Cooking

1 large (no more than 2 quart) pot, includes lid
2. 1 steel frying pan
3. 1 flint or ferro rod set
4. 1 enamel bowl for eating
5. 1 spoon
6. 1 canteen or water bottle
7. 1 bear canister

Hygiene

1 bar soap
2. 1 8 oz tube of toothpaste
3. 1 face flannel
4. 1 40 m roll of dental floss
5. 1 small bottle bio shower soap
6. 1 shaving razor (and 1 blade)
7. 1 towel (30” x 60”)
8. 1 comb

Hunting

1 300-yard roll of nylon single filament fishing line and 25 assorted hooks (No lures)
2. 1 primitive bow with 6 Arrows (must be predominately made of wood)
3. 1 small gauge gill net (8 m x 2 m OR 1.5 m deep x 3.6 m long and 2” [50 mm] mesh)
4. 1 slingshot/Catapult
5. 1 net foraging bag
6. 1 3.5 lb roll of trapping wire

Food

5 lbs of beef jerky (protein)
2. 5 lbs of dried pulses/legumes/lentils mix (starch and carbs)
3. 5 lbs of biltong (protein)
4. 5 lbs of hard tack military biscuits (carbs/sugars)
5. 5 lbs of chocolate (Simple/complex sugars)
6. 5 lbs of pemmican (traditional trail food made from fat and proteins)
7. 5 lbs of gorp (raisins, m&m’s and peanuts)
8. 5 lbs of flour (starch/carbs)
9. 2 lbs of rice or sugar and 1 lb of salt

Tools

1 pocket knife
2. 1 hunting knife
3. 1 Leatherman multi-tool
4. 1 sharpening stone
5. 1 roll of duct tape or 1 roll of electrical tape
6. 1 small shovel
7. 1 small sewing kit
8. 1 carabineer
9. 1 LED flashlight
10. 1 pair of ice spikes

All other items are prohibited – and in particular the following items are specifically prohibited:

Fuel or matches
2. Bug spray/mosquito repellant.
3. Sunscreen/chap stick
4. Sunglasses
5. Beauty products
6. Map (detailed topographical)
7. Compass
8. Unapproved technology (anything with a battery or an engine, eg. cell phones, computers, watches, etc.)
9. Professional snares
10. Firearms of any kind
11. Ammunition
12. Explosives or gunpowder
13. Animal poison
14. Professional fishing rods
15. Fishing lures, flies, bait kits
16. Fishing traps
17. Food or beverage (except the options from the selection list)
18. Decoys
19. Animal calls
20. Tree stands
21. Professional bows or crossbows
22. Scopes of any kind
23. Tents or shelters
24. Stoves, pressure cookers or other cooking appliances
25. Hydration packs
26. Fire pits
27. Electric or propane lanterns
28. Inflatable boats
29. Filtration, purification devices, iodine tablets
30. Coolers or food storage boxes (except optional bear canister)

I’m not sure why they exclude specific items — if an item isn’t on the list, it isn’t allowed — but they do. And it just makes this post longer without adding any clarity.

I will now tell you the ten optional items that I would choose. Rest assured: this is only an academic exercise; I would never attempt the challenge. The contestants are way too uncomfortable (wet, cold, sleeping on the ground) and I hate being uncomfortable. That’s enough for me to stay home. But the more legitimate reason to stay home is the abundance of wildlife of a predatory nature. Vancouver Island has healthy populations of bears, mountain lions, and wolves. Those animals often play a supporting role in the show – and never in a constructive way.

Many of the items that I would select are obvious and appear to be selected by every contestant, like the tarp, axe, sleeping bag, pot (with lid), and ferro rod. That’s five items and it covers only the very basics: shelter, fire, and water purification (by boiling). I would also take a water bottle so I could store a little water while purifying more.

That leaves only four items and one of them must be a knife. I would probably choose an ultra-durable bushcraft knife instead of a multi-tool. It’s not as versatile, but then again, I wouldn’t expect to have much need of a screwdriver, whether flathead or phillips.

Based on what I have seen on the show, a gill net is essential. It is the most reliable provider of protein. One guy made his own gill net, so that is an option, but having a good one ready-made seems a better choice.

Down to two items and the list I’m considering remains long: paracord, saw, fishing line and hooks, trapping wire, food (gorp), sewing kit, and flashlight.

Contestants can use anything they find. Given that they are all situated on oceanfront property, the variety of stuff that lands on the beaches is incredible. Most of them find some kind of cordage and I would plan to do the same – no paracord, no wire. A flashlight would be great, but it would run out of juice and that would be annoying – no flashlight. A sewing kit would be incredibly useful for fixing clothes over the long haul, but not so much in the short run, which is all I’m counting on – no sewing kit. Good old raisins and peanuts would be binged on at the first sign of hunger and then where would I be – no gorp.

I would take a saw to help built a solid shelter. It’s seems essential if I am to sleep at all, otherwise my concerns about predators would overwhelm me. And I would take fishing line and hooks. There is plenty of seafood – snails, limpets, to use as bait. And procuring fish is the best way to get substantial food.

Which ten items would you select? The bonus question is what other item would you most want.

The item I would most want is a book. It would help fight the aloneness and boredom. The sophisticated 1% of me would want something like a complete volume of Shakespeare or some lengthy anthology. But the rest of me would want the most recent baseball encyclopedia. They don’t publish baseball encyclopedias anymore because a market of one person (me) isn’t adequate to cover the cost of production. All the information is online of course, but that is cold comfort to a survivor in the woods.

I wouldn’t last long alone in the woods, but I would last longer if I had a book — I’d even promise not to use the paper to help build a fire.

Cities and Championships

Much has been written about the championship drought in Cleveland. And it is real. It has been 52 years since the original Cleveland Browns shut out the Baltimore Colts 27-0 on December 27, 1964. There are lots of other droughts, some are even worse than Cleveland’s.

I’ll start with a few disclaimers. First, I am just one person. I compiled a lot of data and double-checked as much as possible, but I am certain that something somewhere is a year (or digit) or two off. Because my ultimate conclusions are based on rounded off numbers, and are not intended to be fractionally precise in any event, the assumed mistakes do not significantly affect my analysis.

Second, the data starts in 1950. I had to pick a year and that one is nice and round. There are certainly people alive who remember championships that were won before 1950, but I’m guessing that none of them place too much importance on those championships. Philadelphia residents don’t place much emphasis on the Eagles’ 1949 NFL championship. The same goes for the Yankees’, Red Wings’, and Lakers’ championships in 1949. Each of those teams (and therefore each city) has won since then and more importantly, most fans weren’t alive then. And the further back in time we go, the less important historic championships are. Just ask Cubs fans how much pride they take in the back to back World Series the Cubs won in 1907 and 1908.

Third, I didn’t consider defunct teams. The records of ABA and WHA teams are part of the equation only if their franchise continued in the NBA or the NHL. The Indiana Pacers won ABA championships in 1970 and 1972, those count. The ABA championship won the Pittsburgh Pipers in 1967 does not.

Fourth, I decided to lump Anaheim in with Los Angeles. Maybe that isn’t fair, maybe they are separate cities. But I consider them the same city even though they are no more distant from each other than San Francisco and Oakland. It’s just that San Francisco and Oakland have always been separate and one of Anaheim’s teams is the Los Angeles Angels.

Fifth, cities with only one professional team were eliminated from consideration. There really is no point in comparing the utter futility of the Columbus Blue Jackets, which are only 15 years old, with the cumulative horror that Buffalo fans have endured: 104 seasons since their last championship. Also, what would I do with Syracuse, which hasn’t won a championship in 63 years or had a team for 55.

Once the one-sport cities (Calgary, Columbus, Edmonton, Green Bay, Hartford, Jacksonville, Memphis, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Ottawa, Portland, Quebec, Rochester, Sacramento, San Antonio, San Jose, Syracuse, Utah, and Winnipeg) are removed, the database contains 36 cities. Removing the one-sport cities eliminates three cities with five or more championships (Edmonton 5, Green Bay 7, San Antonio 5). That would be troubling if I were assessing the quality of franchises, but I’m not, I’m assessing the cumulative misery of cities and I have artificially determined that a city without more than one team can’t be considered to have suffered as much as Cleveland, whose three teams have gone 150 seasons without a championship.

None of this should be taken too seriously. My conclusions would change if I had chosen a different starting point or compiled different numbers – winning percentage, for instance.

With the disclaimers out of the way, here is a brief recap of my methodology. I ranked the 36 cities in three categories: championships won since 1950, the years since the last championship or 1950 or the years that a city has had a team (whichever is lower), and the cumulative seasons played since the last championship. I then ordered the three categories and gave a team one point for the worst position, two for next worse, etc. Any ties were averaged. The team with the lowest point total is the unchampion. A truncated chart below shows the totals.

Let’s start at the other end of the spectrum. The top five cities for championships (according to this no- doubt-flawed methodology) are Boston, San Francisco and Chicago (tied), Oakland, and Denver. Between them they have won 61 championships, over 22% of all championships since 1950. And they have all won within the past year or so. New York, which has the most championships, hasn’t won for four years, meaning that 28 seasons have passed since the last championship.

The members of the axis of misery (in order): San Diego, Vancouver and Buffalo (tied), Milwaukee and Cleveland (tied). Cumulatively, they have won only nine championships, well under 4% of all championships. The most recent was the Bucks triumph over the Bullets in 1971. These cities haven’t won a championship since the Nixon administration. The aggregate of the seasons played in these cities since each last won a championship is 502 years; the aggregate for five cities at the top of the rankings is 14 years. That is a chasm. But it can close quickly.

For instance, if the Cavaliers win, they would vault to fifth place, from 33rd. Such quick rehabilitation might be a flaw in the system, but it might not. After all, if the Cavs win, the 52-year drought becomes zero years, the cumulative seasons since the last championship becomes zero seasons. That is worth a lot. Cleveland fans would be as muted as Red Sox fans after 2004, when their 90-whatever year drought became zero. It’s hard to proclaim “woe is me” when your last championship was seven minutes ago.

Recency is a powerful force. The perfect answer to the question: what you have done for me lately, is: won a championship. The next question from Cleveland fans would be: what about the Browns. I have no answer for that. Even worse, I have no answer for Padres’ or Chargers’ fans.

CITIES and CHAMPIONSHIPS

City (# of franshises) (1950-2015)	Championships	Seasons since last championship	Cumulative seasons since last championship	Composite

San Diego (4)	1	53	110	10
Vancouver (2)	0	46	50	18
Buffalo (3)	2	51	104	18
Milwaukee (3)	2	44	88	22
Cleveland (3)	4	52	150	22
Atlanta (4)	1	19	76	27
Arizona/Phoenix (4)	1	15	60	29
Cincinnati (3)	3	26	52	31
Washington (6)	4	25	87	32
Minneaplis/Minn. (5)	5	25	100	33
Brooklyn (2)	1	61	6	35
Nashville/Tenn. (2)	0	19	19	38
Charlotte/Carolina (3)	1	11	33	39
Tampa (3)	2	12	44	41
Houston (4)	4	22	45	42
Toronto (4)	7	23	67	42
New Jersey (2)	3	14	28	48
New Orleans (3)	1	6	12	54
Montreal (2)	18	24	36	57
Indianapolis (2)	4	10	20	58
Philadelphia (5)	8	7	28	67
Detroit (4)	15	8	32	68
Seattle (4)	2	2	4	71
Pittsburgh (3)	12	7	21	72
Dallas/Texas (6)	8	5	20	73
St. Louis (5)	7	4	12	74
Miami/Florida (4)	7	3	12	76
New York (8)	33	4	28	80
Baltimore (4)	8	3	6	83
Kansas City (4)	3	0	1	85
Los Angeles (9)	22	2	12	89
Denver/Colorado (4)	5	0	2	90
Oakland (3)	8	1	3	93
Chicago (7)	13	1	4	95
San Francisco (3)	8	1	1	95
Boston/N.E. (5)	27	1	4	99

Predictions

Our lives are rife with predictions. The variety is unlimited, whether the weather, sports, business, politics, or any number of other things. When I was young, my mother predicted the weather with much better accuracy than I could imagine was possible; she called herself the Weather Witch. In reality she was watching the evening news and relaying their predictions, which though worse than current meteorologists, were nevertheless pretty impressive to a five-year old.

Some predictions are easy to make. For instance, I predict right now, before the 2016 Stanley Cup finals have finished, that the Detroit Red Wings will make the 2017 NHL playoffs. They have made the playoffs 25 years in a row and there is no reason to think they won’t increase their streak to 26. Predicting the price or oil or gold is markedly different. They have both shown remarkable volatility over the years. For instance, according to a spreadsheet I found on-line (http://www.gold.org/research/download-the-gold-price-since-1978), the price of gold was $667 per ounce on 9/30/1980, then meandered in the $300-$400 range for years, before nadiring at $255 on 8/31/1999. Thence it soared to $1813 on 8/31/2011 before dropping to $1212 on 5/31/2016. Gold bugs almost always predict that gold will rise, but on 8/31/99, they were actually and truly right because from the low gold rose at a compounded rate of return of roughly 19.5% to the high. The gold bugs were not so perceptive on 8/31/11, since which gold’s rate of return has been a compounded negative 8% or so.

The prediction game is fun, pervasive, and fraught with potential to humiliate the predicter. All of this is prelude to a brief discussion about a book I read recently.

The book is Future Wars, subtitled: The world’s most dangerous flashpoints, by Col. Trevor N. Dupuy, U.S. Army (Ret.), published in 1992. The good Colonel passed away in 1995. He predicted ten future wars and very little of it happened the way he expected. My intention isn’t to impugn him because he knew more about military matters than almost anyone alive then or now. His preparatory discussions about each war showcase his encyclopedic knowledge about military history and history in general. These vignettes are worthy reading even today.

That someone as knowledgeable as Col. Dupuy can be dead wrong in predicting the future concerning his specialty, a topic to which he devoted his entire life, should cause us to take pause. And yet we don’t, we listen to young commentators on Fox News or CNN as if they have special insight into what will happen in this or that election or business cycle. They can’t, and we shouldn’t listen – fight the 24-hour news cycle. Some of their predictions will necessarily be right, but that is more about randomness than prescience.

Accordingly to a quick survey of Wikipedia, there have been dozens of wars in the past 30 or so years, many of them civil wars, many others asymmetric wars. Col. Dupuy predicted only one civil or asymmetric war. Now a quick look at the ten wars predicted by Col. Dupuy:

Sixth Arab-Israeli War. This has not happened. Peace is not assured but there have been no organized assaults on Israel by any of the national armies of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, or Syria as predicted by Col. Dupuy. There is the on-going Intifada, but that is not more a war than the Wars on Poverty or Christmas are.
Fourth India-Pakistan War. This war did happen, though on a lesser scale and in a different place than predicted, and Pakistan was the aggressor, not India. An obvious problem with predictions is that you can be right and still be wrong, as here, where, though there was a war, it was not the war predicted.
Civil War in Russia. The prediction here called for a coup and subsequent conflict between rivals in the armed forces for control of the country. The war was to involve large scale troop movements, mutinies, and assassination; none of these ensued. The conflicts that have occurred in the Russian sphere have not been internal, but external, directed at reasserting control over areas that had been part of the greater Russian/Soviet empire. Some of these conflicts continue, but Russia has been spared a full-scale civil war.
Second War for Africa. Dupuy envisioned a large-scale conflict between South Africa and its immediate neighbors and Angola, essentially the renewal of an earlier conflict. It never happened. South Africa has been involved in various peace-keeping missions and in hostilities with less immediate neighbors, such as Congo, Uganda, and Tanzania. But it has not renewed its old battles with Angola or Namibia.
Third Gulf War. There was a third Gulf War that continues to smolder. Though it started with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by the United States, it is now more in the nature of a civil war or insurgency. It is not the large scale continuation of centuries-old hostilities between Shia-led Iran and Sunni-led Iraq. The rivalry remains, but warfare has not been renewed.
Second Korean War. Hasn’t happened.
Sandinista War. Col. Dupuy imagined a full-scale conflict between the Sandinistas of Nicaragua and the allied forces of Honduras and El Salvador, assisted by the United States. Col. Dupuy foresaw that the United States would be preoccupied with a Second Korean War and, therefore, slow to react to hostilities in Central America. None of this happened. Instead Central American and north South American have been embroiled in drug wars, both internal and external, that continue to this day.
War for Transylvania. The envisioned war between Hungary and Romania never materialized. And likely never will.
Egypt’s War with Libya and Sudan. Instead of warfare between these countries, there has been much conflict within each of the three. Governments in Egypt and Libya have been overthrown and Southern Sudan has been severed from Sudan. Egypt has aided the forces that arrayed against Libya and attacked the Islamic State in Libya, but it has not fought a war with either Libya or Sudan.
Sino-Russian Conflict. The border disagreements that led to armed conflict between China and Russia in 1969 bubbled for years without escalating into armed conflict. The disagreements have largely been settled at the negotiating table.

The difficulty of making predictions is obvious from this brief recap of Col. Dupuy’s predictions. He had extensive knowledge of the historical underpinnings of each war that he predicted. He had intimate knowledge of the various military and political leaders. He knew why war in each instance was possible and where and how it could be fought. With all this information and his vast store of experience and historical knowledge, he still only batted 1 for 10. (I’m giving him India/Pakistan.)

Given what we know, what wars would we expect to take place. Sadly, many of Col. Dupuy’s predicted wars remain entirely possible. There still is not lasting peace between Israel and its neighbors or between Pakistan and India. Russia is not satisfied with its current position in Europe and has even suggested that it wants to reacquire Finland. Africa remains a continent riddled with conflict both between and within countries, though South Africa is relative quiescent. The gulf simmers and the Koreas remain officially at war, though a truce has been in effect since 1953. Egypt and its neighbors remain somewhat antagonistic. Even though wars didn’t break out, conflict percolates.

The three predicted war zones where peace seems relatively secure are in Central America, and along the Hungarian/Romanian and Russian/Chinese borders. And who knows what might happen in these places.

Making your own predictions and hearing those of others is entertaining, it is provocative, and it is great conversation fodder. Just don’t confuse predictions with knowledge or insight. The gap between most predictions and subsequent reality is as great as the gap between Col. Dupuy’s wars and what happened on the ground.

Confucius Peace Prize

The Confucius Peace Prize was awarded last week. According to the New York Times, the Confucius Peace Prize is “the Chinese answer to the Nobel Peace Prize.” Based on its short history, it is a pale imitation.

Wikipedia describes Confucius as a “Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher.” That covers a lot of ground and belies the fact that he died almost 2,500 years ago. The foundation of Confucian philosophy is morality, justice, and sincerity. The good qualities conveyed by this short resume of Confucius are not readily apparent in the resumes of CPP winners.

The first winner of the CPP was Vladimir Putin in 2011. How he embodies the promotion of world peace from an Eastern perspective is at best uncertain and at worst antithetical. It is unclear from my admittedly limited reading that Putin has ever advocated or furthered peace. An exception that proves the rule being when he has agreed to peace in order to consolidate gains acquired through aggression that he initiated, as in the Crimea.

The best year in the history of the CPP was 2012. There were two winners that year and both represent positive qualities. Kofi Annan was the long term Secretary General of the United Nations and whatever you think about his accomplishments, few would quibble about whether he was well-intentioned. The other winner that year was Yuan Longping, who was primarily responsible for developing hybrid rice species that proved to be high-yielding, thereby ameliorating hunger in areas otherwise susceptible to famine.

Another seemingly laudable winner is Yi Cheng in 2013. My knowledge of this man is so limited that all I can say for certain is that he was President of the Buddhist Association of China. At a minimum, he is not known to have promoted violence, which cannot be said of most of the other winners.

The winner of the 2014 Confucius Peach Prize was Fidel Castro, the man who has done more than anyone in the last fifty years to ensure that Cuba remains mired in technological stagnation. He has solidified a Marxist regime by totalitarian means and in general overseen the impoverishment of a country that has the people and the resources to have a vibrant and prosperous economy. He has exported weapons and soldiers to such a large extent that awarding him a peace prize is tantamount to a joke.

But the worst winner, and it isn’t even close, is Robert Mugabe. Take the worst of Putin and Castro, throw in 40 or so years of indiscriminate death squads and massive persistent voting fraud and you have Robert Mugabe. Whatever good he ever symbolized (as the face of the movement to overturn white minority rule) has been eviscerated by his use of torture and murder as political weapons, his promotion of various wars with his neighbors, and the impoverishment of millions of Zimbabwians because of the misguidedness of his various land and other reforms.

I wish the Confucius Peach Prize well. It appears to be an attempt to highlight leaders who are exemplars of Confucian principles. Its success in doing so is spotty. Compared to the early winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, the first four of whom where known for their active engagement on behalf of peace movements (Frederic Passy, Jean Henry Dunant, Charles Albert Gobat, and Elie Ducommun), the first winners of the Confucius Peace Prize are, on average, not especially peaceful. Here’s to hoping that future winners better exemplify the ideals of Confucius.

p.s. The various factual statements in this post are courtesy of several different Wikipedia pages. I’m not an encyclopedia, but fortunately, I have ready access to one.

A Simple Tweak to Instant Replay

Joe Posnanski, the best sportswriter in the country, doesn’t like instant replay. See this recent column: http://sportsworld.nbcsports.com/replay-lose-nuance-of-game/. He knows that people think he is crazy to have that opinion but he lays out his case with humor and aplomb. Joe doesn’t think we need to get every call right and I agree. His solution is one that I think is spot on, one that I’ve been telling my children about for years.

The two most fundamental problems with instant replay are the time expended and the creation of phantom errors. The phantom errors are those that, but for the excellence of technology, would not exist. A couple of simple examples are provided in Joe’s column. Whether a player loses contact with a base for a ten of a second or less should not be reversible. People do not regularly operate at that minute level of separation. Similarly in football, re-spotting a ball because a player’s knee came did or did not touch down for a micro-second is too minute a level of distinction to justify reversing the call of a seasoned sports official.

A simple change to the way the various leagues operate their replay protocol would solve both of these issues: wasting time and creating phantom errors. The simple change would be to have a replay official review the various angles available one time at real speed. That official should only be able to reverse the call if it was clearly wrong. There is no reason to stop a game for five minutes or more to allow officials to look at every segment of stop action that is available. There is also no need to scrutinize every call made by an official at the microscopic (whether in time or space) level.

Professional officials, whether baseball, football, or any other sport, generally do a fine job. Of course, some are better than others, just as players are. And of course, they make mistakes. But every single mistake should not be reversible or there will come a day, because of advances in technology, when every single play will be reviewed. Instead, we should ensure that the calls that are obviously wrong get reversed and learn to live with minor or barely discernible mistakes.

Wild Card Games

The wild card games are completed. The Astros shut out the Yankees and the Cubs shut out the Pirates. The Yankees and Pirates can both affirmatively state that they made the postseason, however brief the experience. The Astros and Cubs can both state that they won a playoff game and little else. It is almost a mockery of the concept to pretend that these are playoff games. It’s akin to believing that the eight teams in the so-called first round of the NCAA basketball tournament have played tournament games. Everybody (except NCAA executives) knows that they are play-in games, not tournament games. So it is with the wild card games.

And let’s not pretend that the games prove anything, other than who get to play in the divisional series. One baseball game is the approximate equivalent of six minutes of an NFL football game. (The 16-game NFL season is one tenth of a 162-game MLB season, meaning that one NFL game equals roughly 10 MLB games, meaning that one tenth on an NFL game, six minutes, equals one MLB game.) It is a travesty to let the equivalent of six minutes of a football game decide anything. Can you imagine the uproar if the NFL added a new round of playoffs and told the teams they would play six minutes to determine which of them would advance to the next playoff game. People would laugh. But that is what the MLB does. That is the what Bud Selig’s playoff expansion has wrought.

Even the five games of the divisional series approximate only one half of a football game. I say “approximate” because not every series goes five games, some end after only three. Even five games aren’t enough to determine which team is better, just which team won three games first. And ditto a seven games series and winning four games. The original World Series concept of playing a nine game series was best. But we abandoned that over a century ago.

The easiest way to address the problem is to discard the ill-conceived system of having two wild card teams in each league. There was nothing wrong with the original wild card system which had treated baseball well since 1969. Only four teams should make the playoffs and each series should be best of seven games. To attempt to avoid paying games in cold weather, travel days should be eliminated except between series, which would also place more emphasis on depth of starting pitching, not just quality. The wild card team should be the team with the best record that doesn’t win an artificially created division (more on that in a subsequent post). To avoid the silliness of a one game playoff of two or more tied teams, MLB should create a tie-break system. Every youth baseball tournament in the country has one, so it shouldn’t be that hard to find a reasonable concept that would reward something that was earned over a 162-game period (for instance, fewest runs allowed) rather than reward the team whose (one fifth of its) starting rotation has a better day.

Still and all, congratulations to the Astros and Cubs and I wish them well as they advance. By the way, how did two National League teams win the two wild card games? Oh, right, another questionable Bud Selig decision. As with many of his decisions, this one benefited the Brewers. (More on that in a later post.)

I’m looking forward to the divisional series. May the best teams win. But if they do, it will be fortuitous, not by design.

Unchartered Waters

Have you noticed how often commentators, especially when discussing sports, use the term “unchartered waters?” They mean, of course, “uncharted waters.” The original term referred to areas of the world that had not been mapped, that had not been charted; areas that were known to exist but not fully understood. And that is how the term “unchartered waters” is also used.

On February 20, 2014, ESPN quoted Duer Sharp, the commissioner of the Southwestern Athletic Conference, as saying with respect to the college football selection committee that “It is kind of unchartered waters with strength of schedule being what’s going to be looked at.” Last fall, I heard a commentator talking about Alabama, which had won several games without being behind. The first time they trailed in that game, he stated something like “we’re not sure how Alabama is going to react because they are in unchartered waters.” On March 15, 2015, CBS Cleveland quoted Josh McCown discussing the travails of Johnny Manziel in 2014 as saying “It’s unchartered waters. It’s so hard.”

Kirk Herbstreit, who is a terrific college football commentator, used the term so many times that I sent him an explanatory email before the advent of this blog. He either didn’t read it or ignored my proffered help because he has continued to use the term.

I think these people actually believe that the term is “unchartered waters,” as if there is a lake or sea without charter boat operations. Then again, it’s not a crime to use the wrong term and every time it is used, I know exactly what the commentator means. So why mention it? Because I hope the improper term doesn’t spread into general usage. But if it does, it certainly won’t be the first time something that doesn’t make sense has become part of our language. And it won’t be the last.

No New Publicly Funded Roads

I recently read Green Metropolis by David Owen, which started a “what if” thought process. As in–what if we didn’t allow the construction of new public roads or the payment of tolls on roads and bridges roads. I can think of several potential positive developments.

First, roads and bridges are expensive to build and maintain. If we don’t build any more roads, all currently available highway funds can be used to ensure that we properly maintain or improve the roads and bridges that we have. Perhaps we could reverse the massive infrastructure deficit that currently exists.

Second, the gasoline tax funds currently available could be slightly increased to make up for the lost funds currently obtained through tolls. But the formerly lost time and fuel from waiting to pay tolls would be released to productive purposes by leaving it in the pockets of drivers. This would be a boon for business and for personal lifestyles.

Third, suburban sprawl would be somewhat contained. Sprawl hurts our country in various ways. The length of commutes increases and people are required to drive to obtain even basic necessities. This uses more gasoline than it should. The larger houses that are inevitably built consume more resources to build and more energy to maintain than smaller homes built nearer to the source of jobs.

Fourth, and perhaps most important, if our cities and towns can’t grow out, they must either compress or grow up. Either way would be more efficient. New York City is the most energy efficient city in the country. All that living space packed so tightly together helps adjacent units heat and cool each other. And the relative lack of personal transportation means that people use mass transportation, something most of us in the suburbs don’t have much access to.

Obviously this is a truncated discussion, primarily because I’m not a transportation or energy expert. But perhaps there is something to the concept. Perhaps if we all start thinking about ways to improve our country we can come up with ideas that lead to progress.