Miles's blog

All over the news today is the story of the Pebble watch.  Five guys have created a watch which links to your phone (iPhone or Android) so you can not only tell time on your wrist, but see who is calling, use your apps, check where you are, I am not sure all.  What is amazing is how they have generated this buzz and almost instantly created a successful product.  They used a website called Kickstarter.

Kickstarter allows people to raise money over the internet.  Opened in April 2009, the website primarily caters to creative undertakings, often involving performing art.  When you sign up you set a goal, how much money you will need and how long you collect the funds (up to 60 days).  I assume you have to give a detailed description and videos are probably recommended if not required.  One the project deadline is reached if the target amount has been raised the money is collected, however any project that falls short, even by a dollar, gets nothing.  According to their website more than 20,000 projects have been funded.  Kickstarter is not an altruistic venture.  They collect five percent and the pledgers’ credit  cards are charged an additional amount by Amazon which processes the transactions.

I think this is a very cool idea.  I had heard of Kickstarter before.  Meg knows people in the dance community who have used it to raise funds for performances.  It is a pretty ingenuous idea, and a great way to not only raise money but to raise the profile of the project.  The Pebble people had an original goal of $100,000; they have raised over $7 million.  Amazing.  Each pledge is actually a watch purchase.  For additional pledges you can get multiples of the watches and become a distributor.  It looks like those who jumped on this early will make some serious money.  Wow.

There are lots of interesting projects on Kickstarter.  Today’s featured product is from Brine andDine, apparently makers of “accessible, vegan, fermented foods.”  They have created designer sauerkraut and need $6500 to market the stuff.  They are getting close, having collected pledges of $5259 with 13 days to go.  For $15 you get a jar of the stuff (compared to about $3.50 for sauerkraut at the grocery store).  If you love sauerkraut on your brat, you might want to contribute.  (Add $15 for shipping if outside the New York metro area.)

Some company called Flint and Tender is making mens’ underwear. Not just any underwear, quality underwear made in America.  They wanted $30,000, they have raised $130,000.  Now I am not in need of better quality underwear, especially a $12 a pair, but if you want to support American-made products you might want to contribute.

Some people are amazingly creative.  Two photographers have raised almost $15,000 to travel around America for three months, take pictures, make postcards and send them to their backers.  Shoot. This is genius. I drove from Denver to Connecticut and all I got were some t-shirts I paid for, and a huge credit card bill for the hotels I stayed at. 

Book authors are on here trying to raise money to publish their books.  Maybe I should try to collect some money to have Their Own War professionally edited and published.  Heck it is just as good a book as some of the stuff in the stores.

There is a simple attachment for the iPad which makes the sound clearer; the transformation of an abandoned amusement park in East Germany, posters with deep philosophical quotes from people like Socrates and Nietzche (or intellectual bullshit if you prefer); and a bra with pockets (I have no idea how you would secure items out of the pockets and still retain your dignity, but if you have a need for this sort of thing pledge $30 or more, they have already reached their goal so you can be assured of being the first in your neighborhood to carry important items in a personal place).  You can support a movie about dust or a book about wrestling statistics (which has already raised five times its goal, go figure).

The more I view this website the more I think I need to get on this thing.  I have lots of ideas about things I could do with some money.  Seriously.  Gotta go, lots of deep thinking to do.

The New York Times opinion pages today contained a piece, by some clown named Michael Marder, raising the ethics of what we eat.  In arguments we have heard before, the author describes the conditions of existence of a particular food, proclaiming that its response to stress and ability to “communicate” that stress by passing the conditions (in this case drought) to others of its species qualifies this food as a life form that requires ethical consideration before we dig in.  Vegetarians have long accepted this sort of logic as reasons we should celebrate Thanksgiving with tofurkey, and used this kind of thinking as justification for bombing McDonalds.  But if they follow the logic of this author they will have to rethink their own diets.  The life form referenced in this article, you see, is peas.

That’s right.  The New York Times actually published a piece in its respected opinion pages where some pseudo-intellectual (who is actually a professor at some college in Europe), postulated that the simple pea, the kind which often rests between the turkey and mashed potatoes on Thanksgiving, is an entity which requires ethical evaluation before being subjugated to our desire for nourishment.  I am not kidding.  This piece to me sounds more like The Onion than the New York Times.  For example:

The research findings of the team at the Blaustein Institute form yet another building block in the growing fields of plant intelligence studies and neurobotany that, at the very least, ought to prompt us to rethink our relation to plants. Is it morally permissible to submit to total instrumentalization living beings that, though they do not have a central nervous system, are capable of basic learning and communication? Should their swift response to stress leave us coldly indifferent, while animal suffering provokes intense feelings of pity and compassion?

I mean seriously?  Peas?  Because peas possess chemical reactions created by millions of years of evolution which help the survival of the species we are supposed to have a debate about whether it is ethical to enjoy split pea soup when we have a cold?  Evidently, empathy might not be the most appropriate ground for an ethics of vegetal life. [Vegetal life? Who talks this way?]  But the novel indications concerning the responsiveness of plants, their interactions with the environment and with one another, are sufficient to undermine all simple, axiomatic solutions to eating in good conscience. [I like peas.  I like steak.  I like veal.  As long as my belly is full, my conscience is clear.]

Does this joker really believe this stuff, or is he merely the equivalent of the people who invented Piltdown Man, a hoax from the early part of the 20^th century.   In other words, has he created the specialty as a scam? This guy has created a full-time job teaching plant intelligence at a college.  I am glad my kid does not attend such a place.  What is next?  The poetry of insects?  

According to this guy humans should tailor our food intake based upon the sensitivities of those who seem to have an abundance of sympathy for penned up chickens—as drought-starved peas— but little regard for the economics of food.  We are all going to have to pay more because PETA and its sympathizers got all upset about how chickens, cows, turkeys, etc. suffer while their live their short lives until their ultimate untimely end at the hands of farmers who have bred them for the sole purpose of giving the more than 7 billion people on this planet enough to eat.  Myself, I can’t see how treating these poor creatures any nicer while they are alive is more humane when their ultimate goal is in the middle of my dinner plate, but at least I can understand the argument.  Needlessly torturing animal life is not laudable.  So assuming that fowl have feelings, I suppose making them feel more comfortable while they are on death row can be considered laudable, even if, in my mind unnecessary.  

But peas?  We are supposed to worry about the feelings of peas?  We have to debate the ethics of planting peas?  How far does this go?  The NY Times piece suggests humans need to debate the ethics of killing anything other than perennials.  I suppose that makes Weed-B-Gone Public Enemy number 1to Marder.  What about lawnmowers?  Should we spread some sort of local anesthetic on the grass before taking out the power mower?  (Or is this just like giving them a haircut?)  I know many, many people who plant gardens and enjoy the food they grow.  Does Marder equate them to slaveholders of the pre-Civil War era, or worse? 

Frankly, his writing is so replete with incomprehensible bullshit it is hard to know what he thinks.   Read how he ends his piece:

Ethical concerns are never problems to be resolved once and for all; they make us uncomfortable and sometimes, when the sting of conscience is too strong, prevent us from sleeping. Being disconcerted by a single pea to the point of unrest is analogous to the ethical obsession, untranslatable into the language of moral axioms and principles of righteousness. Such ethics do not dictate how to treat the specimen of Pisumsativum, or any other plant, but they do urge us to respond, each time anew, to the question of how, in thinking and eating, to say “yes” to plants.

That entire paragraph makes no sense to me, and I don’t even see his point.  What I do see is that people are on top of the food chain.  Through the millions of years of evolution life on this planet has developed so that most life forms survive by eating other life forms.  This is true of pretty much everything on the planet I suppose, except plants which survive on rain and sunlight.  Well most of them.  Perhaps Marder thinks he should engage in an ethical debate with a Venus flytrap about the feelings of its dinner.

No matter how you feel about our farming and ranching practices, or whether you choose to eat meat or now, you will, at some point, have to eat something.  Debating whether peas are entitled to more or less protection than apples might be an amusing skit for Saturday Night Live, but has no place on the Food Network.

Playing little league baseball these days requires much more than merely showing up with a hand-me-down glove and a new cap.  Today’s young players, according to an article in the New York Times, require something like $2000 a year in equipment, fees, and expenses.  Bats costs more than $200.  Every year kids need new cleats.  Gloves can easily run more than $100.  If you are strapped for cash then hope your kid is bad and gives it up, unless you want to spend the amount of a small car payment on his participation. (I am going to stereotype this into a boy ballplayer as that is what the article focused on.  I have no idea how much girls softball costs.)

Just letting kids play baseball all day with their friends is out.  For one thing, who wants to leave their kids alone in a park all day?  We trust too little to allow nine-year olds to be unsupervised at any time.  So we program their lives and they conform to a schedule as rigid as the President, in part so we can assure their transportation between school, practice, rehearsal, babysitter, doctor, play dates, etc.  That means little leagues.  And that means games with rules, coaches, uniforms, keeping score, and wins and losses.  (Or maybe one of those leagues where everyone develops self esteem by not keeping score and celebrating after the game whether you won or lost because nobody wins or loses. Yech.)

Instead of kids playing ball all day in the park and getting maybe 100 at bats a day and fielding 200 balls, we now have a bunch of children being coached by some guy whose knowledge of baseball was developed listening to Harry Caray broadcast Cubs games while drunk.  (Yes, I mean both the broadcaster and the listener were drunk.)  Showing up on the first day of little league with no bat, worn P.F. Flyers, and a glove bought at Wal-Mart brands a kid a loser who will never get a real chance to play.  As ballplayers get older the adults get more serious.  This means more games, more expensive equipment, more travel, more private coaching and more pressure.  Parents begin to keep score, and kids create Excel spreadsheets with stats rivaling a Bill James Baseball Abstract.  Umpires and coaches are subject to the scrutiny and disdain we usually reserve for politicians.

I am not sure the kids still have fun. Maybe they do.  I am pretty sure that by the time a boy reaches his teens, he is not still playing baseball just for the fun of it; that unless he has shown some aptitude for the game, he has given it up and found some other interest.  Parents of high school ballplayers cannot help but think of the chances their son has to play in college, maybe even get a scholarship.  The best players are scouted by the major leagues before they can drive.  Baseball America creates lists of the best baseball players in America by age.  Draft projections start for sophomores in high school.

All of this is not necessarily bad.  And I certainly am not condemning the parents who facilitate the current system.  There is not much choice.  I have no doubt that had Meg been my son who was good at baseball as she is at dance I would have been buying $300 Nikes, paying for him to play in tournaments in Puerto Rico, and analyzing his swing with an expensive video system as he hit in the batting cage in my backyard.  (Instead I went with her to buy her first pair of pointe shoes and attended numerous performances watching a bunch of other people’s children and counting the minutes until mine would perform.  By the way, did I tell you my daughter is a professional dancer with one of the finest modern dance companies in the world?)

I do wonder sometimes, though, whether the current system has caused some negative results.  While the cost of raising a big leaguer has risen, the participation of African-Americans has dropped.  Less than 10 percent of current major leaguers are African-American.  I cannot help but wonder whether a lot of that decline is the result the financial demands of our current system.  Undoubtedly some of it is because baseball is just not as cool as football or basketball.  (If you doubt this watch Mike and Mike in the morning and see how often they talk about baseball as opposed to these other two sports.  Not that young African-Americans are watching Mike and Mike, but I do think it reflects the overall media attitude toward baseball.)  In America baseball is the sport of middle-aged white men, mostly baby boomers, and the little leaguers in large part are their sons.  

In the rest of this hemisphere, however, baseball is played much as it was in America 50 and more years ago.  Kids play ball in the street, in the park, in the playground—wherever they can.  Balls often have more tape than cowhide (they stopped using horsehide decades ago) and gloves might be made of cardboard instead of leather.  Boys in the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, and other countries in Latin America need no $250 bat.  They swing bats salvaged from older players, nailed together.  And like Americans from the olden days, these guys develop the ability to really play.  More than a quarter of current major leaguers are from other countries.

If you have a son who likes playing baseball (Eva Wilson and Mark Randall I am talking to you) I am both happy and sad for you.  I am sure it is a lot of fun to watch them play such a great game.  But I am equally sure that every time you write a check to the local league or buy a ticket for a trip to Florida or use the credit card to purchase Ryan Braun signature batting gloves (testosterone not included) your mind cannot help but wonder if he will repay you with his bonus check upon signing with the Rockies.

It had to happen, I suppose.  Someone has invented a computer to grade essay tests.  Not content to merely developing mindless standardized multiple choice tests where a lot of answers make no sense, (read this article about a test question which eighth graders knew was incomprehensible gibberish but which educators defended) educators have developed an electronic grading machine which can grade 16,000 essays in 20 seconds.  This will save a bunch of money and have the nice benefit of putting a lot of teachers out of business.  There is one significant downside to this grader—it can’t actually read the essays, according to an article in the NewYork Times.

Apparently this minor problem constitutes no impediment to the education establishment which has endorsed this machine in an article entitled “A Win for the Robo-readers” in the blog “Inside Higher Ed.”  No less distinguished an authority than the dean of the College of Education at the University of Akron glowingly endorsed these new things by proclaiming: Computer scoring produced “virtually identical levels of accuracy, with the software in some cases proving to be more reliable,” according to a University of Akron news release.

Really?  This would cause me to wonder about the state of education if I had not already come to the conclusion that educators in this country are insufficiently successful.  Robo-readers, you see, can only count words, but not actually understand the substance of the words.  An M.I.T. professor (a college not subject to the ineptitude rampant in higher ed) has effectively destroyed the concept of using these computers by pointing out how they work.

            The e-Rater’s biggest problem, he says, is that it can’t identify truth. He tells students not to waste time worrying about whether their facts are accurate, since pretty much any fact will do as long as it is incorporated into a well-structured sentence. “E-Rater doesn’t care if you say the War of 1812 started in 1945,” he said.

I would sincerely doubt that the machine, therefore, can do just as good a job as human graders, except I doubt most of the human educators would catch that mistake either.  But, I mean, seriously?  For an essay test you want a machine to grade based merely on algorithms evaluating how many words are included and how they are placed in sentences, but no one should actually read the words themselves?  I know teachers are pretty lazy (I mean they complain about making $80,000 a year when they only work about two-thirds of the time) but are they so intellectually slothful that they don’t even want to read the tests they give out?  Again, I would find that hard to believe, except my daughter had homework which included coloring in a coloring book when she was a senior in high school.

But it gets worse.  Not only can the robo-reader not actually read, it has been set up by morons who seem to understand little about good writing.  Again, no surprise as writing instruction in most college classes is done by English majors who revere verbosity at the expense of clarity.  According to the M.I.T. prof, robo-readers prefer long essays, with long sentences, long paragraphs, and long words.  They have been set up to give extra points to sentences using the word “however” as a sign of complex sentence structure, and therefore a proxy for complex thinking.  Robo-readers don’t like sentences starting with “and” or “or,” but they do like using sentences containing words like “moreover.”  In other words, bellicose blow-hards will do well, but Ernest Hemingway, he would fall short.  As would I.

I was trained as a journalist, which means writing in short, punchy sentences, short paragraphs and direct language.  Even in my legal writing I stuck to these tenets.  And (oh shoot, there is a bad word to start a sentence with) while I cannot claim my legal writing was superior to those who drop “moreover” into sentences containing “however,” I do believe my writing made sense and got to the point.  I think readers, even appellate judges, appreciate such writing, even if automated graders programmed by arrogant know-it-alls (like, for example, the Dean of Education at the University of Akron) don’t.

When I was at CDAC we annually published a summary of legislation passed in the most recent session.  These updates were presented in direct fashion using bullet points instead of paragraphs.  This style suited my writing.  Where others would write: “The bill raised the maximum allowed speed on roads outside metropolitan districts to seventy-five miles per hour,” I would put: “Increased speed limit to 75.”  The robo-reader would grade me down.

The developers of this product demonstrate how being a little smart is dangerous when you are trying to be real smart:

As for good writing being long writing, Mr. Deane said there was a correlation. Good writers have internalized the skills that give them better fluency, he said, enabling them to write more in a limited time. 

Read that last sentence again and see if it makes sense to you.  If it does you should pursue a career in education.  To me it is complete garbage.  Good writers can write more in a limited time?  That would be laudible if writing was like making cars on an assembly line.  The more Corollas per hour the more money Toyota makes.  However if your goal is quality, then perhaps writing more in a limited time is not a virtue but a detriment.  As a journalist who had to learn to write to space limitations I was taught to deliver the most information in the shortest space.  I suggest any writing should seek the same goal for the sake of the reader.  Certainly with space limitation on appellate briefs, lawyers should not write for top robo-reader grades, but should aspire to achieve the journalists’ objective.  I have read a lot of legal writing over the years.  Most of it would get high marks from a robo-reader, but I doubt you would enjoy reading it.
 

Let’s hope real human essay grading survives.  And let’s hope those doing it are not like the Dean of Education of the University of Akron.

I have been sitting around Stamford for six months now and I think it is time I found a job.  Seeing that the commissioner of baseball is unavailable, I thought I would check out Craigslist to see what jobs are open.  I realize that after 30 years of being a prosecutor my experience is pretty limited, as are my skills.  I cannot fix HVAC, drive a big rig, or work in the medical field (I faint at the sight of blood).  I am not licensed to practice law, be a tour guide (they need licenses in NYC), or give pedicures.  I can’t sing, act, or dance, nor have I ever worked on a tech crew.  But just maybe I can find something.  All of these are real listings on Craigslist in New York:

·        “Coyote Ugly-type bartending.  Great tips. All types wanted. Real people place.”  When they say “all types,” you think they mean overweight, old men with bad attitudes who really don’t like drunken twenty-somethings?

·         Esthetician Wax Specialist.  I guess this is a person who provides waxing services for people who want to be hair-free.  It says they will train. They promise income of $45-60K.  That is a lot of wax.

·         Copy machine operator for a big law firm.  Now this is something I actually have some experience at.  Working for the government I made lots of copies, cleared paper jams, and learned the subtleties of how to copy two pages of a book onto a single sheet of paper.  There is a slight problem as it says “good attitude is a must.”

·         Mobile pet groomer.  I guess people here are too busy to even drop their dogs off at a groomer so they get the groomer to come to them.  This place says you can earn $500-$1000 a week.  Now, as everyone who knows me knows, I don’t like dogs so that will be a problem.

·         Make $8 to $30 an hour handing out fliers for upscale strip club.  Here is something I am definitely qualified for.  It does require standing on busy street corners in midtown Manhattan thrusting unwanted pieces of paper in the faces of busy and surly office workers, many of whom respond with unflattering expletives about the circumstances of your birth.  This ad says some of their people (and they say this is a full-time job) make $1000 a week.  I wonder if it includes free admission.

·         Male strippers needed.   Stop laughing—didn’t you see “The Full Monty?”

·          Tattoo artist and piercer needed.  Oh damn, you have to be licensed.

·         Brand Ambassador representing 5 hour energy.  This ad is long, but it appears a lot of the job is standing around and giving free samples to people.  I often get tired standing around so if they give me free samples I am sure I will be ok.

·         Matchmaker/Love scout.  I watch the “Millionaire Matchmaker” from time to time.  She charges thousands and I have never seen her actually match a couple which ended up getting married.  I can be just as unsuccessful as she can.

·         New reality show is looking for people with real issues.  The show is called “Brawl It Out.”  Apparently they put you into a ring (unclear if boxing or mixed martial arts or what) and let the two of you go at it for a panel of judges.  I have so many possible candidates I could be a regular on this show.  (Of course, I would get my ass kicked on a weekly basis, but that could be interesting.)  They promise $500-$1000.  I have gotten my ass kicked for a lot less.

I should have no problem finding some work.  There are thousands more openings like these.

Jamie Moyer of the Rockies yesterday became the oldest pitcher in major league history to win a game.  He beat the record of some otherwise pitcher from the 20s and 30s named Jack Quinn who managed to secure a win at the age of 49 years and 70 days old.  Moyer is 49 years and 150 days old.  Moyer’s achievement, as impressive as it seems, is made all the more so when considering that Quinn did not start that game, entering as a relief pitcher in the sixth inning, and going five innings as his team won in the 10^th inning.  In fact Quinn, who won three games that year, did not start a single game.  Moyer has already started three games for the Rockies, and has been their most effective starter.

Moyer is only a year and four months younger than the President, which means he is several years older than Obama when the President took office.  In fact, Moyer is older than nine presidents were when they took office.  (Polk, Pierce, Grant, Garfield, Cleveland, T. Roosevelt, JFK, Clinton, and Obama).  

Moyer is older than eight major league managers, and those who hit off him had little success.   (Joe Girardi was 1 for 13; Ozzie Guillen .182; Mike Matheny .133; Dale Sveum 0 for 1.  Robin Ventura did hit .333). 

Moyer pitched his first game on June 16, 1986.  Madonna’s “Live to Tell” was the number 1 record.  The top 30 included Whitney Houston, the Moody Blues, Culture Club, George Michael, OMD, and The Bangles.  “Top Gun” was the highest-grossing movie (although the rest of the top 10 were lame).  “The Cosby Show” was the most popular show on television, followed by “Family Ties,” “Murder She Wrote,” and “Who’s the Boss.”  

Nelson Mandela was in prison.  Ronald Regan was in the White House.  Steve Jobs was running Pixar.  Apple stock closed at $35.88.  (Yesterday it closed at $609.70.)  The best-selling vehicle in America was a Ford F-series pick-up.  Gas was $1.74 a gallon.  Cell phones looked like bricks.  IBM had just released its first laptop computer, the Convertible.  It cost $2000 and weighed 13 pounds.  Moyer made the major league minimum salary of $60,000.  (Today the minimum is $480,000.)  That $60,000 is worth about $123,000 in today’s dollars.

When Moyer pitched that game his teammates included Ryne Sandberg, Lee Smith, and Dennis Eckersley, who are in the Hall of Fame, and Raphael Palmeiro, who never will be.  Later that year the Cubs called up a prospect named Greg Maddux.  Maddux lasted 23 years and won 355 games, retiring two years ago.  The oldest player on the Cubs was Davey Lopes.  Lopes broke in with the Dodgers in 1971, when his teammates included Maury Wills, Frank Robinson, and Tommy John before his surgery.  Terry Francona, late of the Boston Red Sox, rode the bench for the Cubs.  In the bullpen was George Frazier, now one of the Rockies television broadcasters.

Moyer’s opponent in his first game was the Philadephia Philles whose starting pitcher was Hall of Famer Steve Carlton.  Moyer outpitched Carlton, the first of Moyer’s 268 wins.  Moyer faced current Milwaukee Brewer manager Ron Roenicke as his first hitter—Roenicke doubled.  Roenicke’s nephew Josh is now a teammate of Moyer’s on the Rockies.  The Phillies also featured Mike Schmidt who was inducted into the Hall of Fame 17 years ago.  The broadcasters included Lou Boudreau, a Hall of Fame player from the 1940s.

Moyer’s next start didn’t go so well.  He faced the Phillies again and gave up six earned runs in two and two-thirds innings.  He was relieved by Frazier who did even worse, giving up eight earned runs in two and one-third innings.  Moyer gave up Schmidt’s 471^st home run.  (Schmidt hit Moyer pretty good in his career, .444 with two homers in 27 at-bats.)

Moyer demonstrates a classic example of tenacity.  His early career had only a modicum of success—one winning season before age 30.  In 1991 after five major league season for three different teams he was sent to the minors at age 28, where he languished for two years until making a return for a fourth team.  When he made his comeback at age 30 he was 34-54 lifetime, with an ERA of 4.56 much higher than the league.  In short, he was bad.  He improved slightly over the next three years, going 25-22 with an ERA of 4.41. However, Baltimore gave up on him and released him that winter.  The Red Sox picked him up, and he rewarded them by going 7-1, albeit with an ERA of 4.50.  At the trade deadline the Sox sent him to Seattle for Darren Bragg, a mediocre hitter and indifferent fielder.  Moyer, on the other hand, seemed to have found himself at age 33.  At the time of the trade he was 66-77.   Since then he is 202-129.  He won 20 games for the first time at age 38, and again at age 40.  In his 40s he is 104-81.  

Perhaps the most amazing thing at all about Jamie Moyer is that he missed all of 2011 recuperating from Tommy John Surgery.  When he announced he would return we all laughed. I did.  Now, who knows how long he can pitch.  Probably until his legs give out.   His arm, it seems, is some sort of biological freak.