Month: February 2014

Watching the commercial for the 300 prequel got me thinking about the idea of war again. Our recovery from the great depression is tied to a world war. This newest depression is tied to a war on terror–one that can never be one or even end. It occurs to me that war seems to be a prerequisite of human civilization. I cannot name a significant part of the world that isn’t in some state of conflict. It seems that we are a people drawn from the divisions between us and try as we might we tend to line up in some form of an us vs. them dichotomy.

In terms of America, us vs. them is supposed to boil down to good vs. evil, with us always being the side of good. Within the nation there are those same lines, though good and bad line up as tradition vs. progress. We call it Republican vs. Democrat round these parts. Its anyone’s guess as to who is actually good. I like to think that the true good are the ones who don’t buy into the dichotomy and recognize the futility of war.

Some Thoughts:

1. Started watching Being Human again. Many say the Vampire/Werewolf thing is old hat, and they’d be right, but this show constantly finds ways to make the interactions between the characters incredibly compelling.
2. One thing I’m looking forward to more than the 2014-15 NFL season is the 2013 season (5) of the League coming to Netflix.

Call it a weekend defrag. Coherent thoughts are a rarity at this point. I seem to be at the precipice of a creative burst, but as always the edge of such things is a jagged line tied to a short fuse and limited ability to reason. Once I hit the zone I’m good, but the process of getting there is quite difficult for the people around me.

This thing that gets in me is contagious. My kids get really creative as I move closer to ‘the zone’ so much so that they often pick up the pen and do something fantastic. I’m reprinting the following text for the benefit of my 6 yr old. We watched Real Steel yesterday and then spent a few hours playing the Xbox game. He woke up inspired the next day and decided to write a Real Steel fanfic piece. Everyone deserves to be published, so here is his first web publication:

Ram Chip vs. Ida Ten

By (l’il ‘legger)

One day Atom beat so many people that Ida Ten wanted to vs. Ram Chip. So Ida Ten’s owner got so angry he wanted to vs. Ram Chip. So he got a fight. When Ida Ten and his owner got there he noticed all the robots were there except Atom and Zeus. Ida Ten’s owner thought they were fighting, but they had a day off and Ida Ten’s owner didn’t know it was robot day so he had to vs. 1,999 robots to get to Ram Chip.

Kick, Pow, bang, wham!

When he got to the underworld I he vs. Ambush, then Atom, then the Midas touch. Then when he went to Underworld 2 he vs. Six Shooter, Black Top, and the Mighty Metro. When he got the World Robot Boxing I he vs. Noisy Boy and Twin Cities. When he gone to the last stage he vs. Albino, and Zeus. Then he got to Ram Chip. Ida Ten shot a dart at Ram Chip’s head so the spike blew up then it spit oil at Ida Ten’s face. Then he shot him right in his gut. Then he flared. Then Ida Ten became the champion and he got the champion belt.

The End.

Its a first draft, but I’m proud of the kid.

Some Thoughts:

1. Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me recorded in Phoenix this week and I didn’t even know it. At points like this I feel like I’m trapped between the worlds of intellectuals, athletes, fools, and children without true knowledge of any.

Truth is I don’t have a whole lot to say right now. This was a pretty good rebound weekend for flag football. After a two game losing streak, my 6-7 team rebounded for a win. The 8-9 also rebounded from last week’s tough loss to earn a big defensive win. 4-5 continues to have fun, running and gunning to win #6. All was not perfect in the football world, however.  I learned that the 8-9 team is vulnerable on office. Some of that comes from not understanding the plays as they are called, and some of it is about not having the right people in the right positions. Two practices left, and we ought to focus one of them on the offensive execution.

I learned from this weekend where I need to improve as a coach and a play caller. This will benefit me in a number of ways and a number of sports. I am excited about the opportunity to coach 8-9 soccer and have two of my boys finally play together. They are both very high energy kids and though the younger one isn’t old enough for the 8-9 grouping, he is aggressive enough to hold his own with a number of the players, and his physical skills can only rise to the challenge.

Some Thoughts:

1. Sometimes you know when someone is doing the right thing. My wife is a nurse and this is the perfect job for her. She loves what she does, and that makes me happy to know she found her happy place.
2. A cop cut me off in the parking lot today. I was driving towards him and as he watched me get closer he decided he was done waiting. I slammed on the breaks and narrowly avoided hitting him.  Since when do cops run insurance hustles?

I’ve often wondered why America doesn’t just implode. Our political climate is so charged that people will openly disrespect the President during the State of the Union address and town hall meetings regularly devolve into shouting matches. We have so many distinct groups within our country each with divergent political ideas. Moving beyond politics, we have a huge tech responsibility as we try to keep these ancient power and water grids functional. The problems I’ve illustrated are different for other countries, and the reason, I think, is the number of Americans per square mile.

 

Japan is a tech giant. They are so far ahead of us in terms of cellular and wireless tech that we sometimes view their everyday tech as science fiction. They can do so much because they are so small. The rollout of new tech is so localized that it can be accomplished so much faster than in a huge nation like the USA.

That space is a double-edged sword. While it makes it difficult to upgrade technology, it makes it easy to maintain social order. Because we are a large country with relatively few people, we have the space to distance ourselves from those who think differently than us. For the now it is a functional situation. I suppose there could come a time when the various sides take up arms and wage war for control of resources, but it seems far-fetched. Our idealist battles are fought on CNN and Fox News.

 

I spent the past hour pouring through Poster Presentation rubrics, looking to create a research/social sciences rubric that is based more around research than experimentation and process/based scientific methodology. The majority of poster presentations I’ve uncovered are rooted in the sciences and are very prescriptive devices that walk the student through precisely what to do. This creates no room, and as importantly, offers no value for creativity. My research led me to the question: What effect do rubrics have on student growth?

As a general rule I find rubrics constricting. On the one hand students are being given clear expectations and understanding as to what a specific type of assignment would generally look like. On the other hand, students spend k-12 being ‘taught to the test’ and are given precious little space to develop and explore creativity. Because they’ve been trained in this fashion, they are likely to do exactly what the rubric says, which puts creative (and affective) control in the hands of the rubric creator.

There needs to be a balance, or at least some categories that reflect the role of creativity. Even so, the idea of a creativity rubric smacks of irony. I know what rubrics are for: they help students understand what you are looking for in terms of grading, but they can stifle the most important part of the process–learning to be an individual.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Walmart’s new commercial claims to celebrate the heritage of black women, but focuses on black women’s weaves and relaxed hair and the hair product used to maintain a look that is in fact forced upon them. A bit ironic in my book.

I had a wonderful conversation with a friend about the lulls. She suggested that periods of downtime, or lulls, might be exactly what a writer needs to cultivate those ideas that brighten the page. It is nice to hear a contrasting voice to my initial opinions. That helps me refine my thoughts and reflect on what I truly want to believe moving forward. In this case, I’m refining my initial suggestion that the lulls are a bad thing. I still hold dear the idea of writing every day even if what comes out is pure nonsense. Now I don’t think that achieving your writing potential is as simple as I initially implied. There are a few factors to consider for reaching your potential. I’ll start with Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal development as a baseline for how you must write. The when and the how often of writing are equally important as is developing a reward system that reinforces your appreciation of the finished product.

If I just wrote the same stuff over and again I’d get stagnant and lazy. I watched this happen a few years ago as a Shadowrun writer. A friend and editor called me on it, questioning my style and even content as being ‘ordinary’. A writer can never be ordinary. The ZPD here is that idea that I have to continue finding the writing challenges that live on the bleeding edge of what I think I can do. A writer challenged is a writer engaged. On the other hand, a writer overburdened is a writer burnt out.

This is a philosophy that can be applied to most situations in regards to activating potential. Down the road I’ll talk about the time to write and consistency in general as well as reward systems. It is a lot to say. Too much for 10 minutes.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. The Olympic athletes represent the best in the world at a given event. Consider that for a moment: Best in the world. The implications there are mindboggling.
2. Work politics are very stupid and tend to boil down to the emotional fulfillment of individuals being hindered or advanced by the particular position they are in at the time. In other words, it is not about the work it is about how the people feel about themselves and each other. I suspect all politics boil down to the same thing.
3. States that do not have pro teams tend to breed a sense of collegiate pride to the point where they will swear that college sports be the pros. Yeah, that’s not how things are in the real world. New Yorker’s don’t talk about how Syracuse football is better than Giants football. Nobody talks about watching Seton Hall instead of the Nets.

The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation signed into law by Abraham Lincoln served as the legal terminus point for the human slave trade. However, slavery is no game that ends when the buzzer screams. The alienation and dehumanization that it caused lasts to this day. I’m going to use an example that might serve to be an exaggeration. At the very least people will call it that, but I don’t think it is. KTLA anchor Sam Rubin recently interviewed Samuel L. Jackson and quite obviously mistook him for Lawrence Fishburne. Fishburne/Jackson went all BMF on him, calling him out for the mistake and making it clear   he wasn’t about to let it slide.

If you watch the video to the end you’ll see the rest of the news crew having a good laugh about the situation–both in a way that chided their coworker but excused his mistake. The laughter is telling of the situation. This is about them seeing Jackson as a thing vs. an individual deserving of respect. Rubin even tried to backtrack later and claim he never confused Jackson. Clearly that is a lie.

When you create a situation that dehumanizes people, it takes an extremely long time to humanize them again and even longer to treat them like they are the same as you.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. I keep thinking my cat is going to stroll in through the doggie door. She isn’t.

I have to confess: I fell in love with a girl long after I married my wife and since that moment she’s been a part of my life that I wont let go–until now at least. She was a stray on the edge of becoming feral, but she was tiny and cute all the same. I met her at a vet where I was taking my dog for a check up. She was with her brother and the vet couldn’t keep them both. He didn’t have to ask me to take her. I knew straight away she’d be coming home with me. She did, and we spent the next 9 years together. She would have been 10 this year.

I don’t know why or how it happened. The warning signs were there. Tonight my wife to my girl to the vet and she came home alone. Razi’s liver failed and we had to put her to rest. I didn’t have the strength to go to the vet myself. My wife went with our youngest. We didn’t know how bad it was or expect that it would end in euthanasia. He didn’t take it well.

Our family has faced a lot of death over the past few years. We lost a father each of the last two years. Losing a cat is much easier in some ways and harder in others. She was with us every day, so the loss is more immediately realized. It is just a pet, but pets are the ones who love us when no one else cares to. Pets are the ones who curl up on our lap and purr. Pets are the ones who remind us that someone can’t live without us.

Once in a while circumstance reminds us that they can’t live forever.

Somewhere on a snowbank in Russia, a handful of snowboarders are kicking back, smoking weed, and talking about jumping out of helicopters to board some pure white. I’m supposed to care about this and them as part of my patriotic responsibility. I’m supposed to clap for Ashley Wagner and cheer on the tandem of Meryl Davis and Charlie White as they blaze across the ice at Sochi. The only problem is I don’t care. I don’t think I was meant to care either.

I was raised in Harlem, NY. I’m fortunate enough to have a mother who thought beyond the ghetto. She made sure I was educated. She introduced me to chess and tennis. She took me to swimming pools. She tossed me on the ice on more than one occasion, just to give me the experience of doing these activities that a lot of inner city kids never connect with. Like I posted earlier, I didn’t play basketball. I had to find football on my own. She did everything she could to give me an experience that was antithetical to what many (often falsely) associate with as the traditional black experience. Even still, we never skied. The thought of such things didn’t even come up in our house. As a grown man I’ve only snowbarded a handful of times and still have never skied. It cost too much money and was too alien to me.

Skiing–winter sports in general–is something that doesn’t exist in the realms of inner city America. There is a reason why you can count the number of black and hispanic Ice Hockey players on one hand. Unlike soccer, basketball, football, and baseball, inner city youth were not traditionally targeted for hockey or figure skating, or many other of the Winter Olympic sports. I’ve always felt this social distance from those sports, as if they belong to an entirely separate audience–like backgammon and shuffleboard.

if not for my new hero, Shiva Keshavan, and the miniscule number of American athletes like Shani Davis, my interest in the Winter Olympics would be limited to talking trash about Ice Skaters who fall down and an extremely curious fascination with curling. I’m watching because my kids find the flips amazing and maybe out of some residual social programming to connect with my patriotic side and cheer on America in this us vs. them extravaganza. So, we do our duty on some nights. We stay up late and go ooh and ahh and my kids, without being told to do so, anxiously wait the scores of the American team. We are far removed from the inner city now, but we are also far removed from the conditions that would allow us to do any of what these athletes do. Unlike the sports we play, the Winter Olympics is an alien life form and we’re peering down the viewport for a glimpse of how the other half lives.

I put a lot of stock in the idea of universal tides. This is the premise that there are certain things in the universe that are going to happen for whatever reason and you really can’t stop them. The best you can hope for is to be aware of them before they come to pass, so that you are prepared and perhaps insulated. Then again, I’m a bit of a stubborn mule myself. Despite repeated evidence of the futility of the effort, I continue to swim against the tide, or as Wesley Snipes once famously put it, “Ice skate uphill.”

To stay with the Wesley quotes a moment longer, “You either smoke, or you get smoked.” We got smoked today in two age groups. The 6-7 free fall continues with a cavalcade of tears and busted attitudes. 2 straight blow out losses and I’m down to less than five players I can depend on to go out there and give their all if their not up by 3 scores. It was actually worse for the formerly undefeated 8-9 squad who was beaten thoroughly by the best team they’ll see for the rest of their lives: themselves. Errors cost us a game we should  have won by at least two touchdowns. Worse still, it was a loss to a team that I don’t particularly like. Short of the head coach, the coaching staff is mean, demeaning, and should not be around kids at all.

Not even their own.

The sad fact is I saw this loss coming a week in advance and tried everything in my power to change the tide. Nothing worked. Our team was in the best position to win on practically every play and could not perform at all on offense. The drops seemed to ring up in the double digits, and the unforced errors on defense still have a sneer hanging from my lips. Yeah, its kids below the age of 10, but no matter how old you are if you care about something enough to fight that much for it, then it matters.

 

Some Thoughts:

1. Facebook is evil. I mean, what else would you call daily updates of the life you aren’t living and the friends you never get to see?
2. Still pissed off. This may last a while.
3. Shiva Keshavan is my new hero. You shouldn’t–heck, you really cannot–do what he did and still finish the run. #BMF