People try & put us down (talkin' 'bout my generation)

Toussaint wrote about the Ali quote I posted yesterday.

On 4/25/07, Toussaint wrote:

Our generation cared more. Yeah, we did get high and wanted to feel good but that wasn't all that we did. We didn't take any shit. If it was a weapon of mass diversion, we called it thus. We were willing to take the tear gas and get our heads busted to change things.

I'm still wondering how this guy can still be in office and not be charged of war crimes. Maybe if he was having an affair with an intern then people this generation would be more interested. Where is Ken Starr?


jp replies:

i used to get mad at the succeeding generations, but my thinking's evolved since then. i blame us.

let's face it; we succumbed to the ultimate drug, more powerful than any religion or any fine booty: CREDIT.

marx was wrong, dead wrong. but then again, so was every economist. they could have NEVER foreseen the world of neo-colonialism spawned by global capitalism, simply because there was no precedent. "outsourcing" wasn't even a concept, much less a practice. and credit cards were still a ways off.

so while i salute the boomers, i also chastise them - the ultimate sell-outs!!! as i say: we can have all of the war crimes and dirty dealings these days, but it doesn't matter to a nation that's self-absorbed, comfortable and ignorant. as long as they have their mcdonald's, suvs and cable tv, they can absorb insane amounts of pain.

you wanna see a REAL revolt?

take away their cable tv and pizza delivery on super bowl sunday and watch what happens - there'll be blood in the streets.

Too Black, Too Strong

Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality. If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years.

Muhammad Ali

Reading: Freakonomics, iWoz & The Blindside

Read three books this month: Steven Levitt's (with Stephen Dubner) "Freakonomics," "iWoz," the eponymous autobio by Apple legend Steve Wozniak, and Michael Lewis', "The Blindside: Evolution of a Game."

"Freakonomics" comes much ballyhoo-ed for its thesis of connecting disparate phenomena, such as Roe v. Wade having a major impact upon the drop in crime during the 90's. Now, I have to admit in full disclosure when I first got pitched "Freakonomics" my initial reaction was to just stay away, cuz frankly, it's not an original thesis by a long shot.

What Levitt is really getting at is contingency. In science evolutionary biology has been talking about this for forever, most notably and popularly, the great Stephen Jay Gould. But it's not an original thesis in art by a longshot either. Everyone from Breton and the Dadaists/Surrealists, most notably Bunuel, to Tom Twyker's, RUN LOLA RUN.

In psychology there's Freudian free association and the many Surrealist games, such as "medium," (where Robert Desnos and Rene Crevel excelled at going into "trances" and speaking or writing disparate "nonsense"), or "cadavre exquis," based upon the children's game of taking a sentence, committing it to paper, folding it over, having another person write the next sentence below it, folding it over, and repeating. It's really fun to play with kids and can even be done with pictures.

What, I suppose, attracted the many readers of "Freakonomics" was the "explanation" of events. Thus, Roe v. Wade prevented many babies being born into economically challenged environments in the 70's. Babies, furthermore, that would have been adolescent age in the 90's and statistically much more prone to violent crime.

Now, that on the face of it makes for sorta interesting reading, but after reading the many examples Levitt provides - "What do Schoolteachers and Sumo Wrestlers Have in Common?", or, "How is the Ku Klux Klan like a Group of Real Estate Agents?" - I was reminded of something very wise that Jerry Farber said about how academics are always studying the pathologies of the "criminal" like gang activity, drug pushing, pimping, etc., but will never commit time and money to studying the political assumptions of the top 10% of the economically empowered and their effects upon society.

Perhaps a more sober - and tragic - example of contingency exists in the mass media reporting of the 32 murdered at Virginia Tech this week - randomness in bloody effect. These murders dominated and overwhelmed the mass media here in the states.

OF COURSE those murders were a tragic example of our crazy society, but meanwhile, on Wednesday alone, at the height of the media frenzy over the VT shootings, Iraq suffered one of the deadliest weeks ever - 5 car bombs alone killing over six times as many killed at VT, maiming who knows how many others. And bringing a country already crippled on its knees belly down on the ground, with insurgents, terrorists and even loyal Baathists all joining in the melee. It is beyond civil war, because there is nothing but hopelessness and chaos with no end in sight except misery.

And then there's this back at home; big insurance companies are now re-examining claims put forth by some of the Katrina victims.

I don't condone it, but I certainly understand why, with a media structure such as ours, certain things are brought to light, and others remain in the background. So to you readers who observe us from afar, know that what's being perpetrated here is a form of mind-control unprecedented in history - far beyond Goebbels.

I rant because if ever there was a case of contingency, the one between mass media reporting and American ignorance and hubris deserves examination. Actually, Chomsky and Herman have already done it. But while Bill Safire gets placed in the NY Times, Chomsky is relegated to the intellectual ghetto.

At any rate, I got tired of "Freakonomics" and its "novel" approach.

===========

"iWoz" was fun. Many complain of Woz's propensity for chest thumping. It can get a bit much, I admit, but for me, what was more annoying was his terminal cheeriness. His self-described "floating head" that's always happy. Quite frankly I look at his childhood in suburbia withe the white collar engineering dad and the June Cleaver stay at home mom, and shudder. In fact, it was that exact conformity that the flower children were at least in part rebelling against.

I've never been an Apple user, but I respect the hell out of the two Steves. And while "Hackers" is still the gold standard re-telling of the tech revolution, if you've an interest in computers you'll grin reading this.

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Last but most is Michael Lewis's brilliant "The Blindside: Evolution of a Game."

At once the story of Michael Oher, who at age 16 was 6'5", 350+ lbs., posted 4.6 in the 40, and was the left (offensive) tackle prodigy - and thus the book's title - and arguably the most coveted high school recruit to big time college football in the nation at his time. But "The Blindside" is much, much more than the telling of a sports prodigy.

For starters, Michael Oher lived largely on the streets, and had been doing so for some 5 years. Childrens Services finally just gave up trying to locate him. And of course he wasn't going to school and was illiterate.

So, it delves into some sociology, the institutional aspects of black poverty and governmental inability and refusal to address the deep rooted pathologies of inner city urban settings and, moreover, our nation's blind eye toward them.

But then it weaves in detailed recountings of football strategy, how for right-handed quarterbacks, the blindside (left) was becoming a gamble that teams couldn't afford to take anymore - they had to address it. The reason? The player who single-handedly changed the game - and the economics of the game - of modern pro football; "LT."

Simply, Lawrence Taylor changed the way football was played. He was so big and strong he was hard at best to contend with, but it was his speed that changed everything. What Bo Jackson did for big strong and fast running backs, LT did for linebackers.

As a consequence, head coaches and offensive coordinators throughout the NFL were losing sleep over LT nightmares. I recall ultra vividly the sight of Joe Theismann's leg bending as a result of LT's fury; it was rubber-like, and a real sickening feeling accompanied that visual.

That all would eventually give rise to Bill Walsh's rebuttal, the so-called "West Coast Offense" (actually originating with Larry "Air" Coryell's San Diego Chargers) and the ascendancy of the left tackle to protect a team's most valuable investment, the quarterback. Specifically, the qb's blindside...

For those who like HBO's "Real Sports" this book is a dream. On top of that, Lewis is such a great writer... it's a tough combo to beat. His "Liar's Poker" was also excellent.

There's SO much going on in this book but it's written so well and thought out so deftly that it's deceptive. If you don't like sports, particularly American football, then nothing here will convince you.

Honestly, this is one of the best books I've read in the past 2 or 3 years, bar none.

Huh???

Ironically, it's not as hard to read good players as it is to read a bunch of incompetents.
-Sklansky

If they don't know what they're doing, how can you know what they're doing...?
-Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott

One of the perverse things that I like about poker is the way that people completely mis-understand what's going on, then luck out and look like geniuses. It's a never-ending story with a never-ending pool of contestants. And even though I have been on the end of such "bad beats" I've come to look at these as amusing.

Someone recently said something that I thought made perfect sense; as long as you're making correct decisions, that's all that counts.

So it was, oh dear reader, that your willing subject in this mad experiment was playing this home game that I visit occasionally. I ended up with about 4 playable hands in about 3 hours. Needless to say I busted and re-bought about 3 times because I picked my spots and went in - of those 4 playable hands only one held up, and it was a four flush on the flop caught on the river!

The one fairly constant thing all night was that I was having trouble putting peeps on hands. What made it particularly confusing is when I would see a hand called down and the winning hand would come down as middle pair from out of position but played much, much differently.

But one hand stands out as a PERFECT example of what I'm talking about, and yes, dear reader, your willing writer was the subject - and object - of its foil. O, crueldad, su nombre es burros...

So it's someone in early position, me in middle position, Dave behind me; 2 other players mucked in a 5-handed table. I've a medium Ace, everyone checks to me. I raise 4 times the big blind. Dave calls, as does the third. We go into the flop three-handed. Perfecto. So far.

Flop: Q A 3 rainbow. Third player checks, I bet out - this time about half the pot. Dave calls. Third folds.

Me thinking to myself: ?!

Turn - rag. Check check.

River - rag.

Now I'm thinking, he's got pocket Queens and thus trips?!?!?! No! If he had pocket Q's, he would have re-raised pre-flop, wouldn't he have, just to eliminate players like me, who have AQ, AJ, A10... or KQ, KJ, K10...! (Pocket 3's is eliminated because of my pre-flop raise).

So I think he can't possibly have pocket Q's, therefore I have him and his pocket J's, pocket 10's, etc., beat or I have a shot at his medium Ace, because who in their right mind is going to call a pre-flop raise of 3 times the big blind with Q-rag??? And with pocket Q's he would have re-raised pre-flop.

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT?

Me: All in.
Dave: I call.
Me: You got an Ace?
Dave: I've got two pair.
Me: HUH???

It was then, oh dear reader, that Dave turned over his puny Q3.

Needless to say I busted, but it was a very cogent lesson in reading, or in this case, how hard it is to put bad players on hands. But I added a perverse twist to it all: I mis-read and thus lost because I gave Dave too much credit, in other words, I forgot that he doesn't know what he's doing, and put him on a medium pair or at best pocket J's because of his pre-flop callsand post-flop checks.

In other words, Dave won because he simply got lucky - any player with even a basic knowledge would not go into a pot with a 3XBB raise with Q3.

It is pretty funny, tho. I gave Dave crap all night about it, and now he lives in infamy in blogville...