Why golf, fishing, and a certain demographic group explain today’s political theater.

After returning to playing golf and paying attention to golf for the first time in decade, I notice things really haven’t changed. Manufacturers are still creating products and advertising to promise longer and straighter shots, or easier putts and chips, cutting a stroke off each hole.

A lot of this is snake oil. Some of it is improvement in technology. Some is a combination of both. In 1999, in his “Short Game Bible,” Dave Pelz writes about how golf irons have changed, had their lofts strengthened, over time  so that a modern seven iron should hit a ball further with the same swing speed than a seven iron of 30 or 50 years ago. Balls have also changed and go further than ever before. In other words, players hit a juiced ball with a club labeled one thing but actually built like something else and they feel like they have gotten better or been given a gift. In reality, their swings still suck but they don’t realize it.

In the end though, to play golf well, it still comes down to the hard work of learning, regular practice, and a certain amount of mental/emotional discipline. Of course, one can enjoy the game without playing well, that is a well-known truism. It is certainly more fun the further one walks between shots before you get to the green.

When I was young, an uncle (and others) taught me that fishing lures were designed to fool fishermen, not fish. This is especially true with bass fishing (largemouth bass).  From the early days of Bass Pro when I found their bags of product in liquor stores in Joplin and the surrounds, long before the building of the mother store in Springfield, and even long before that, fishing lures have existed to feed a need to catch a fish. A fish with a very large mouth that will eat anything from tiny red wrigglers (worms) to the occasional baby duck, begging the question – what won’t a bass strike?

Something strikes me as wrong that we have an industry where folks happily pay $5 to $10 for a piece of plastic to lob at a place where a fish might be. And said piece of plastic tied to a piece of plastic filament that will eventually break, fish or no. Yes, I love the thrill of a fish breaking the water and taking off with a crankbait or plastic worm, but I am kind of cheap. Cheap enough that I still stick to the things that worked for me 20, 30, 40 years ago.

The fun is in the challenge. I rarely care too much if I catch nothing more than an occasional show of interest.

Golf and bass fishing have this one thing in common. They are both supported by an industry allegedly dedicated to to making things easier for you. You will take fewer strokes, get closer to the hole, make more putts, catch more fish, catch bigger fish, get bigger erections (sorry, those are the ads mixed in with these others). They also have their own channels for dedicated advertising of these things.

Of course, it is all just paraphernalia for lost and desperate souls.

Success from hard work, dedication, learning, and practice. Rarely from just new and expensive toys.

This is what candidates for the 2016 presidential race are playing to. The overwhelming desire for easy answers. The desire to skip the hard work, the sustained effort, learning, and practice.

So these candidates are really nothing more than paraphernalia for lost and desperate souls.

As for the demographic group at the center of this…do I really have to tell you what it is? (listen to the end of the song if you are not sure)

Sometimes I can’t resist. When I heard of the leading GOP candidate’s plan for blocking all Muslims from entering the US, it reminded me of three things.

First, following 9/11 there were a lot of questions about citizenship status on college applications. These conversations have later returned following the requests of the dreamers. It always came to down to what was asked…and what the options for response are.

Second, this:

Crucifixion Supervisor: Next! Crucifixion?
Prisoner I: Yes.
Crucifixion Supervisor: Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each. Next! Crucifixion?
Prisoner II: Yes.
Crucifixion Supervisor: Good. Out of the door, line on the left, one cross each. Next! Crucifixion?
Wiseguy: Uh, no, freedom.
Jailor I: Uhm?
Crucifixion Supervisor: What?
Wiseguy: Uh, freedom for me. They said I hadn’t done anything. so I could go free and live on an island somewhere.
Crucifixion Supervisor: Oh, oh, that’s jolly good: Well, off you go, then.
Wiseguy: No, I’m only pulling your leg. It’s crucifixion really.
Crucifixion Supervisor: Oh, oh, I see, very good, very good.
Well, out of the door…
Wiseguy: Yeah, I know the way, out of the door, one cross each, line on the left.

Third:

The church I was raised in believes in full immersion baptism. After all,  if you hold someone’s head under water long enough, they will come up believing your way.

“Blessed are they who thirst and hunger, and go homeless, for education’s sake, for they shall be educators to all.”

Lots of people recommend not reading the comments to articles and blog posts, but Momma, that’s where the fun is. First, there is occasionally useful information that is directly related to the original piece of work. Second, it can be (painfully) amusing to see the displays of arrogant ly uncaring ignorance.

When people responding to the work of Sara Goldrick-Rab, Katharine Broton, and Daniel Eisenberg suggest that students who are home- or food-insecure should address those issues first before considering college, I wonder if such commenters have ever faced truly difficult decisions. Ever.

Sometimes life presents us with competing priorities. We have to address the needs of today, and plan for those of tomorrow. This might involve balancing on the knife’s edge of safety and security. An 18 year-old with no family structure to support them, with no occupational training may be able to find a full-time job, but $14,000 /year doesn’t go very far for housing, food, transportation, clothing, and everything else involved, despite what some colleges may claim are the estimated costs for living off-campus.

Have you ever spent time in the type of apartment one can rent for $700/month or less? I have, and each of the cases I have visited in recent years have been decidedly unpleasant.

Are you aware that not every place has public transportation?

And that available jobs and available affordable housing are often not within walking distance of each other?

And gee whiz, whatever happened to “Give a man a fish and eats for a day; teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” (Assuming he can afford a  fishing license and the there are adequate conservation safeguards in place to maintain a fishery.)

Life is hard and the world has moved on from where it was a generation ago. It is simply not right to suggest that all college students are hungry and that is part of the tradition of college. Especially if state and federal policy makers, and national voices keep encouraging more people to go to college. We need to support people to be successful, especially if their success is tied to our goals and our economic success.

Seriously people, have a heart.

First: “Well, that is not so good.”

Later: “Oh, that is good.”

Years later: “As good as that is,  there is still more to explore.”

So, I wrote this thing over here.

The problem is that I feel like I have a lot more to say on the topic, but I am really tired making it difficult to control the ideas rushing through my head, or recall the thoughts that occurred over the last three days of driving.

Tonight as we made the final miles into San Antonio we were listiening the “Devil Went Down to Georgia” and I started thinking about how much a fiddle made of gold would weigh, and was prepared to write about that, but fortunately a simple query to the Google Gods revealed an existing answer of about 30lbs.

Back to business. There really is a joy to measurement. There is joy in the process itself, the discovery of new aspects of a thing along the way, and most especially in knowing something.  But, when this is done to people, measurement should serve a purpose and be organic to the activity of interest, not an add-on.

For example, in the blog post I referenced at the beginning, I mentioned that I am playing golf again, and letting my ADHD-guided OCD have free reign. I haven’t played for years, so starting up again minus a balance nerve is  a challenge. It is especially a challenge with all the cool apps available for tracking every shot, every aspect of the game. Exactly not what I need right now.

Right now I shouldn’t even be tracking my score. Regardless of my joy of measurement.

I need to focus on enjoying the game.

I need to stay in the moment while I am playing.  Each time I stop to record something, I am creating a distraction. Each time I am distracted, I run the risk of analysis – is this better, is this worse? How do I fix it? How do I fix it now? I’m not competing, I am playing a game for enjoyment. Generally I am spending time with my son – and there is NO good reason for distracting me from that.

So this is my concern with assessing and measuring everything that goes on in the classroom, at any level. Measurement of learning and learning progress is necessary, but it shouldn’t take the teacher or the student out of the moment. It should also not interfere with the joy of teaching or of learning. It should be organic and add value.

If only there were some standard, some quantifiable way to demonstrate some level of performance to a predetermined standard. It doesn’t have to be complex, perhaps five stars or ranked codes.

Really, actually, I just don’t care. The level at which I don’t is below the ultimate level of rest of whale feces.

Why don’t I care?

I was never any more happy with the notion of “favoriting” something with a star than I was with liking something with a thumbs-up. The forced dichotomy of simplification developed within the use of “free” social media platforms is never going to be satisfactory for everyone. There will always be implications for every action (and non-action) in such a system that are both real and assumed. @tressiemcphd has written about this, and a number of other really smart people have also said smart things about how people use and react to these things.

Somewhere in the house I have duffle bag that was issued to me in 1982 at Ft. Jackson, NC on my way to Ft. Benning, GA. On the bottom of it is painted in grey a club (as in that found in within a deck of cards) and dash at the twelve o’clock position. This was so dozens or hundreds of duffle bags stacked together could be readily identified to the units where they belonged. This goes back to World War II and, if you pay attention, you can see it in various Hollywood movies where the 101st Infantry is depicted, such as those about the Battle of the Bulge.

I mention this because it because most of life there have been symbols associated with my life that were not of my choosing. “Tod” is a good example of this. After all, a name is just a symbol constructed with predetermined components. Any icon, simple or complex, is really no different. Whatever values, images, understanding of Tod that exists is based on the collections of my actions not the symbols used to describe those actions. I know that any symbols used have broader contextual meanings and people will apply their own meanings and such, but that will always happen, regardless of symbology, more importantly it will happen regardless of what I think those symbols mean.

In other words, haters gonna hate, hearters gonna heart.

If you are concerned that using the heart is going to cause someone to think that you love someone’s tweet or action, rest assured that anyone who does think that probably thinks they can love a refrigerator and is thus of no consequence.

The heart as an icon has never meant much to me. It has been so overused to the point of “I kind of have a pretense of affection for this thing/person.” Twitter’s use of the heart just drives it into more meaningless to the point that Common Core exams will simply use the heart as a bubble to fill.

Of course, what’s really going on is Twitter wants to make Twitter less hateful. They think by forcing people to use hearts there will be less hate spewed. One really can’t love a hateful tweet…well, unless of course you don’t actually think it is hateful.  And so Twitter is getting hate tweets from users about the heart. I think there is a word for that.

So, I am writing an app. It doesn’t do much that’s useful. It simply allows everyone you interact with to give you a five-star rating. The ratings will get published to the cloud and I have been assured everyone will be given a record, so no one will escape the rating.

All of this is quite simple. The hard part is determining how many categories are needed to meaningfully define human interaction. It seems to me we really only need a few – Work, play, payment, courtesy, empathy, civic engagement, service, attractiveness, and utility. I think this captures everything that matters. Unfortunately, the advisory group hired by the foundation that is funding this effort all seems to think we need much greater nuance and detail. For example, some argue for health & well-being measures while others want a measure dedicated to voting. (For some reason these people seem to think that state boards of election will willingly update the ratings of their citizens.)

All that aside, I think this is app is a game-changer. The individual ratings will simplify things dramatically for employers, lenders, and even dating sites. Just imagine, simplified five-star ratings for everyone. No need to worry about whether a potential mate is good enough, their rating will tell you that.

“Folsom Prison Blues” is one of those near-perfect songs. More folk/Americana than country.

I hear the train a comin’
It’s rolling round the bend
And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on
But that train keeps a rollin’ on down to San Antone..
When I was just a baby, my mama told me. Son,
Always be a good boy, don’t ever play with guns.
But I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die
When I hear that whistle blowing, I hang my head and cry..

The bass line is easily identifiable. It starts and right away you know the song. You know also the “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die” is one of most cold-blooded lyrics ever in popular music.

Today I heard the Surreal McCoys (“The top cowpunk band to ever come out of Notre Dame Law School”) and their mashup of Folsom Prison Blues and Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Lovin’.” It is a song I didn’t know I needed to hear.

And it is coooool.

Sometimes things just work. While I enjoy Jason and Scorchers covers of Lost Highways, Country Roads and Absolutely Sweet Marie, I like the blending the Zeppelin and Cash an awful lot.

But I also like the many versions of Stairway to Heaven, particularly The Geezinslaws cover which includes an inspired use of a kazoo. It is surpassed only by the Yayhoos and Dancing Queen which turns crap into something worth hearing.

Why did we never have a movie featuring Robert Preston as hucksterish university president?

We’ve got an article about the [outgoing] president of Duquesne University calling students libertine for living off-campus. You know, when the student newspaper publishes,

Dougherty made these comments as part of his address to campus faculty about the university’s financial situation. According to Dougherty and Vice President for Management and Business David Beaupre, there are 304 empty beds in campus dorms this semester. This means that only 92 percent of campus beds are occupied, compared to 98 percent in the spring.

It’s clear that you’ve got trouble. Trouble that begins with T, which rhymes with D which stands for Duquesne.

Libertine men and Scarlet women!
And Rag-time, shameless music
That’ll grab your son, your daughter
With the arms of a jungle animal instinct!
Mass-steria!
Friends, the idle brain is the devil’s playground!

I keep wondering about the campus housing scam when I look at the numbers. For example, DU reports $11,084 annual cost for room & board. This reader comment on the student paper editorial highlights cost issues:

Half of a Brottier room: Approximately $800/month.
Private room in a house within walking distance from Brottier: $320/month.
This is the only argument necessary.

To be fair, DU has to collect money to cover things like security, maintenance, acquisition cost of the facility, all that stuff. Further, walking away from on-campus housing is probably not a viable choice, and a certain amount of research on traditional populations of students suggests living on-campus is a good thing. On the other hand, if I were to think like a bureaucrat, I might think, “Geez, what has he stepped in now. Has he just claimed that students living on campus do not drink or have sex or whatever? That somehow DU controls that? Does DU now have an assumption of liability for student behavior it previoualy did not?'”

With an average Net Price for DU’s poorest students of over $17,000, the president might want to re-think his accusations and accept the cost arguments at face value. Especially when the average student is now borrowing $10,000/year, with median graduate debt of $27,000 a couple years ago, excluding PLUS and private loans.

But…

..you know they showed you statue, told you to pray
Built you a temple and locked you away
Aw, but they never told you the price that you pay
Only the good die young

Humans are funny creatures. Their funniest aspect is ego. Too often they seem to think that their awareness of a thing defines its very newness. Just as Columbus “discovered” North America, despite the fact not only it was never lost or undiscovered as it was already peopled, modern Hus act as if the length of their professional career represents all the known work of a field.

Just because you have not seen the work doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an extensive history.

Just because you and others did not develop a need for something until recently, doesn’t mean it hasn’t been done.

I understand that is a lot of work and effort to actually do research beyond the first three pages of Google results. I get that. Even a profession as young as the one I am in, a mere 50-plus years, has a fairly rich history of work and development. And much of that work has not been published in the journals. Why? Because very few people thought it necessary at the time. They might have thought a new thing was cool or interesting, but it wasn’t relevant to their concerns at the time.

It often becomes relevant later.

When this happens, almost no one checks to see if this thing has been done before, if it has a history.

Often it does.

I once teased a senior colleague shortly after he received the top award in the profession, “So, does this mean you are going to write something new instead recycling the same old things?”

“Why should I? Until they read what I have written the last 40 years, why write something new?”

Yep. I get it.

And in 2015 it means to be read it has to be in the first couple of pages of a half-assed Google search.

So, get the hell of my lawn. Come back when you have done your homework.