Day: July 14, 2013

1162. On the Zimmerman Verdict

admin

I suppose you could say justice was served. In one sense, the letter of the law won out. In another sense the spirit of the law was pillaged. An armed man followed a boy into the darkness and when that boy defended himself the armed man killed him. As I said long ago, had the victim been a woman, this wouldn’t have gone to trial at all. However, it was a boy being killed. It was a black boy in a neighborhood where there had been break-ins and home invasions, thus this individual felt empowered to protect the night and ended up killing someone to protect himself.

I admit that he was protecting himself. For all intents and purposes he was losing the fight. He was being beaten up by the kid he’d been following and may or may not felt like his life was in danger. He retrieved his weapon, suddenly raising the stakes of the conflict, and at that point I completely believe that he needed to shoot Trayvon Martin in order to stay alive.  I also believe that had he not brought the gun into play, both individuals would be alive today. I cannot believe the teen intended to beat this man to death. However, this isn’t even the question the law asks. The question is about Zimmerman’s intent. There was no clear way to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman killed the boy out of spite, willfully, or intended to do so from the moment he left his vehicle. The fact he left his vehicle to pursue someone he considered a suspect is irrelevant. It shouldn’t be irrelevant, but the law makes it so.

I believe Zimmerman is responsible for wrongful death, and perhaps a civil case will exact some measure of justice against the man. As it stands he is free to live his life and free to pursue and kill again should he so chose. What scares me more is that anyone else who decides that a someone looks suspicious now has a green light to follow that person and defend themselves should their potential victim decide to fight back.

We can call it the Punisher rule, because being a vigilante is okay in some parts of our country.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. My 6 year old left his Kindle on the plane. I am trying to figure out a way to brick the device so whoever found it and decided to keep it won’t be able to use it.

1160. Time/Date Stamp

admin

I’ve long been enamored by products that offer a clear timeline of when to expect success. Novel in 90 days. Better Basketball in 21 Days. 30 Minutes to Better Sex. Okay, maybe I made the last one up, but it could exist. There is a market for books that offer clear and time delineated instructions on self-improvement. That market exists largely as a result of a goals-oriented culture that stresses the reward over the journey. We are all children of Phil Jackson who once said, “It is not how hard or much you train, but how smart.” I am paraphrasing here as the precise words are locked away on a network stream that only functions freely 20,000 feet below me. Yet as I cruise the skies on the way to my destination I am struck by the truth of his words. We work smarter, not harder, which is supposed to be the mantra of the generation just behind my own. I suspect this mantra is flawed. How about work smarter and harder. How about we take full control of the hours we have between birth and demise to make the best possible product of ourselves that we can in the most efficient, driven, fashion imaginable?

I’ve been reading up on coaching youth soccer. I head coached for the first time this past spring and while the teams did very well, it is clear that any failures they had as a team were a direct result of my coaching. I could have instilled the principles above in these youngsters, but I didn’t work hard enough or smart enough at my end to do so. The beauty of summer break is that it gives you time to reflect on these failures and come up with a solution to it. My solution is to begin fashioning my on ‘Better Coaching in XX Days’ structure in order to count down to the new soccer experience I will be undertaking in August. My methodology isn’t so pat as these proven authors. It is also untested, so my timescale is entirely predicated on the amount of time I have left to get ready. I think the key is that I’m developing a plan and giving myself time to do so. I teach writing as a process and I believe planning and coaching are the same. I’ve answered the call to my journey, and now I’ll embark on all the steps along the way.
Some Thoughts:
  1. …. I won’t talk about work. I won’t talk about work. I won’t talk about work.
  2. One way I’ve exorcized my kid drama is to write mental hate mail. I address the letters to my kids and pretend I am writing to their grown selves and expressing what giant, stress causing pains in the buttocks they can be. Lately it is just the middle one. That could be because the baby is off on vacation with Mom.
  3. I really don’t care to hear one more story about Kim Kardashian. She is not a metaphor for the average American. She doesn’t represent me or mine any more than Kanye West does. At least I can feel the message of his music. The only message she sends me is, “Capitalism requires no skill to execute flawlessly.”
  4. Flying to Minnesota i’m looking down over the earth and realizing that some clever tosser got it in their head to make their crop patches look like Pacman eating a row of green dots. Well done, farmer. Well done.
  5. I’m calling this one false advertising. The Jay-Z commercial seems to strongly indicate that mega-producer Rick Rubin (The dude with the uber cool zz top beard) is somehow involved in Magna Carta Holy Grail. He is not. The commercial was little more than a listening party collecting today’s top producers in a room with Jay-Z to check out what he’s working on.