"Polishes Potter's Goblet"?

You can imagine my surprise this morning when I saw this headline.

We've all had a laugh at some of those old porno films that in lieu of a plot, came up with a play on words for their title; Rambone, Private Bun-jiman, A Beautiful Grind, Rear and Present Danger, An Officer and a Genitalman, Battlestar Orgasmica, and my personal favorite, Diddle Her on the Roof. So you can imagine my shock this morning when I saw the linked article in the Chicago Tribune! I had no idea who this Newell guy was, but the fact that he got his x-rated film publicized in the Trib was quite impressive.

Turns out, that it is a little less than that and apparently some headline writer has quite the sense of humor. Bravo!

Are You Ready For Some Soccer!!!!!!!!!

Whew, what a weekend.

We just returned from a long weekend at a soccer tournament, far, far away from here that PD1 and her team competed in. I enjoy watching these games, and I must say there is so much to the game that I never fully appreciated when I was a kid. As I've said before, soccer was for the kids who's moms were concerned about injuries, and so we didn't really give it much attention. Of course this was an unreflective, crackpot sort of view that I've subsequently come to look past, and I now appreciate the strategy, physicality, and intensity of a game where every score could be decisive.

This post isn't about that though. What I want to write about is the importance of sports in the development of kids. Of course my only perspective is my own experience and that of my daughters', but I have seen a lot in these experiences and I find that sports are as important in our young lives as school work, or anything else that we're likely to take on at an early age.

First, we must agree that sports are about winning and losing, and that beyond the obvious importance of sportsmanship, nothing else matters.

Nothing.

I'm so tempted to depart from this post's intent to rant about those parents (we all know who I'm talking about here) who think that we need to protect kids from failure, and neuter the impact of competition on a child's development. I'm not going to do that, other than to say, these people are lost, and my hope is that they're children experience the "thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" inspite of these good, but misguided intentions.

I haven't mentioned it here before, but PD1 is a pretty good soccer player. I don't think we need to start reserving rooms at the 2012 Olympics, or even at whatever college she ultimately attends, but she is always one of the best players on the field, no matter what team she joins. This is the result of a certain level of innate athletic ability, but is also due to her enjoyment of the game and the level of intensity that she maintains on the field.

Over the past two years we had become increasingly disenchanted with the local team that she was on. The coaching was poor, players were not challenged to get better, and while people spoke of wanting to win, there was no real commitment. Most disturbing was watching my daughter's love of the game decline before my very eyes because of these issues.

So we moved teams. This was not without it's consequences as we live in a very small town where something like leaving the local team is viewed as an act of disloyalty. Once our decision became known, the head of the soccer association phoned PD1 and not very subtly threatened her future career in the local high school, and other parents expressed their disappointment as well. All of this made us wonder if we were doing the right thing; it is just a silly soccer league after all.

Our decision was compounded by the fact that PD1 was put on the "new" team that was being formed at this other soccer association. While her old team would continue to play at the A/B level, the new group was going to start out at the B level. As you can imagine, this was met with a few snickers, but we insisted to our daughter that there are times in your life when a small step back will mean a big step forward down the road.. Behind close doors, we of course panicked!

This fall went very well. The new team had an outstanding coach who focused on conditioning, skill development, and winning. The team, a group of girls who had not played together previously, responded better than could be expected and won their league with a 7-1 record, 26 goals for and 6 goals against. This spring, not only will they move up in competition but they will move up a couple of levels and play at the premier level. With the possible addition of two new players they may even have a shot at the state cup.

So great, but that really isn't the point either. What happened this weekend is the point.

The team went to this tournament to play A level teams and we hoped for the best, but feared the worst. Their first game was tough, but they won it 2-1 and they didn't even play very well. It soon became clear that they were suffering from over confidence. When the second game started the table was set for disaster. It hit hard.

They were playing a team that was obviously not very talented and our girls dominated the first 10 minutes of the game. They then collapsed and in one of the worst butt kickings I have ever seen on a soccer field, they lost 5-0. It wasn't as close as the score indicates.

The team was devastated. Their false sense of invinciblity destroyed, they didn't know what to do next. Our coach was beside himself, but after chewing the team out, he told them to forget it. "Bad game, failure happens to everyone. The real test is how you respond to this experience", he said.

Truer words were never spoken. The next day the team played to a 0-0 tie, but what a difference. Their passing was better than ever. They returned to using the full field, and keeping their opponents on the run. As the time was drawing to an end, they didn't panic knowing that they hadn't scored yet, they just put more pressure on. When it was all over, despite the fact that they didn't win the game, they knew that they had beaten something bigger, and in the process took the first step to learning how to win.

Learning how to win. We often look at winners in life, and think they have more talent, more brains, or possibly better connections. While this all may be true, it still is not what makes winners. Winners perservere, and use a quiet confidence to push through life's challenges to deliver victory. This is the magic of sports; they teach our kids that failure is something everyone experiences, and that failure by necessity, must only be a temporary state.

Winning is different. Winning is the end state, and while in each event it is a zero sum game, in life there is enough for all who have the desire to get there.

Are You Ready For Some Football!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?

Well, a pretty disappointing week last week. After going 10-4 and 9-5 the previous two weeks, the odds evened out on me with a stunningly bad 4-10 showing against the spread. So we cleaned house at the “Pursuit Institute for Football Prognostication” inspite of the fact that the staff has put up an impressive 61-55 record for the season to date.

We’ve got great expectations though, so I’ve brought in a new Quant analyst, had PD1 and PD2 vacuum out the server farm, and we’ve pulled one of the Crays out of storage and plugged it in too. Should be a good week:

Bears 13 49ers; go Niners

Bills 2.5 Chiefs; Bills

Redskins 1.5 Bucs; Go Bucs

Pats 3 Dolphins; Take the points

Giants 9.5 Vikes; Johnson shows baby Manning the ropes this week

Lions 4 Cards; Lions should never be favored by 4 over anyone

Jags 6.5 Ravens; Take the Jags

Colts 18 Texans; This one could be ugly, take the Colts

Panthers 9 Jets: Panthers

Broncos 3 Raiders; Broncos

Seahawks 7 Rams; Rams

Falcons 9.5 Pack; Falcons

Steelers 8 Browns; Steelers

Eagles 8 Cowboys; Eagles

Bear Down!

Functionally Wrong

Ok, now that title up there really isn’t fair. Not in the least. My “evil blog nemesis”, The Functional Ambivalent, takes the time to author a very reasoned response to my support for the extreme questioning of detained terrorists, and I go and call him “Functionally Wrong”. What kind of guy am I?

Well, for one, the kind that knows Tom, over at The Functional Ambivalent, can take a joke, and also the kind of guy who is feeling guilty about all the links Tom, at The Functional Ambivalent, has given me lately and is just trying to even the score.

Ok, so let’s get to the meat of the matter, shall we? My post below, “The Torture Hysterics” was my response to the unhinged members of our citizenry who are all up in arms about some extreme measures that we are taking in a few cases to extract some information from terrorists. Allow me to reiterate; I support doing everything short of torture to get as much information out of these fiends as possible. They want to kill us, and I want to stop them. Tom, and the intrepid Duff, do too but are a bit more restrictive when it comes to where we draw that line. Make that a lot more. Their thoughts are in the comments section, and are for the most part well considered.

They’re also wrong.

I don’t want to scribble another long post (I get the impression you folks sometimes don’t finish the longer articles), so let’s first make clear what I didn’t say:

• I didn’t say torture was ok
• I didn’t say extreme measures were ok for all detainees
• I didn’t support Abu Gharib, which while not torture was a prosecutable breakdown of military discipline

What I did say is that measures which caused extreme discomfort, pshychological stress, and emotional tension in the pursuit of information is not only acceptable but morally justified. We are fighting, yes fighting Duff, depraved killers who want nothing more than to slaughter and enslave those who are not like them. There is nothing honorable or moral about their cause or their actions. This has nothing to do with their religion or their ethnicity as there are millions from each of those groups who manage to go through their daily lives without slitting anyone’s throat, or blowing anyone up.

When the radical Islamists decided to attack our country and kill our civilians, they not only sentenced thousands of wives to life without their mates, thousands of children to life without their parents, and millions of Americans to the reality that evil walks the earth, they picked a fight with us. Fighting is not pretty, it is not fun, and it is not something that should be done with half measures or hesitancy. The execution of power should not be indiscriminant nor should it be sadistic.

It would be nice if the enemy wore uniforms and fought behind defined lines of battle in clearly delineated territory as most conventionally wars are, for the most part, fought. It would also be nice, if those in their groups who were not fellow travelers would help turn them over to us. It would be really great if the enemy would stick to killing only legitimate soldiers and attacking only military targets, but they don’t.

So this war is different. To win, we must be ruthless and we must work harder than any other conflict in this country’s history to gain intelligence, just to figure out where the enemy is. For all of these reasons, it is not only justifiable, but morally imperative that we press the fight to the limits of acceptable practices, and include such extreme procedures such as water boarding and other similar measures. Our obligation to protect those innocent people around the world who are the illegitimate targets of the terrorists demands this from us. My only regret is that we haven’t gotten more information to stop bombing such as those that occurred in Jordan this week. The conventional wisdom is that the rough stuff doesn’t work, but I have my doubts about this. If our interrogators believe they need this tool to be effective, I’m happy to give it to them. Does it bother you that bombings that didn’t occur may have been stopped because we got rough with a detainee? I’ve got to tell you, I have no problems here.

I read with interest Tom’s comments on evil, and no doubt he’s read Hannah Arendt’s banality of evil stuff. I couldn’t agree more, but we cannot look at the totality of what we are doing in this war and conclude that we are evil. I realize Tom that you didn’t do that, but I’ve heard more of this “we’re going to lose our soul” bit lately – mostly from Sullivan – and it just doesn’t stand up. We have given the people of two countries a shot at a better life when it is now clear that our supposed allies spent the last decade taking bribes to ensure that the poor of Iraq remained poor and under mortal threat from Saddam. Talk about the banality of evil!

As with all other wars that we’ve been in, I’m sure we’ve crossed the line in places. Abu Gharib was clearly one of those places, and we’ve paid a price for it, although I think that price has been greatly exaggerated. In those other wars where we stuck to our principals, no doubt treated some of the enemy pretty harshly when information was required, and ultimately won, we came out victorious and have been viewed by history not only as liberators, but as the most benevolent victors this planet has ever seen. Claims of the impact of Abu Gharib aside, I have no doubt that the same will be true in Iraq.

The fact is, we’ve been accused of Koran desecration, which didn’t happen, massacre, which didn’t happen, torture and indiscriminate killing of civilians during air raids, which didn’t happen. So this “torture” bit is the only tool the anti-war left has been able to get traction with. I admire those who are taking a stand on principal here, and despise those for whom this is just an anti-Bush club.

Sorry we’re gonna disagree on this one guys, but I hope my reasoning is at least clear to you.

Food Bloging

Charlie Trotters in Chicago tonight. It was very good not great.

Wines: Meyer Chardonay 2001. Fantastic
Caju Cabernet Sauvignon 2001. Average

Courses: Blue fin tuna, shell fish emulsion. PEI mussel. Wow.
Some japanese trout. Very good
Venison Wow
Cheese on fruit bread with 25 year old balsamic. Very good
Sorbet
Multi Course desert. Wow. Don Pedro Sherry. Excellent.

More later.

Must sleep

The Torture Hysterics

It was with great shock last week that I heard news reports suggesting that the CIA was maintaining secret prisons around the world. These “black” prisons, to use a sufficiently loaded word favored by the press, are in locations where we are able to take prisoners in the GWOT for some extreme interrogation.

I, of course, couldn’t be more pleased.

I’m glad to see that we are still aggressively pursuing the homicidal criminals of Al Qaida despite the crazed rants of hysterics such as Andy Sullivan who view this as just more evidence that George Bush is turning America into a torture haven. I read Sully’s blog occasionally and find myself astounded at just how detached from reality he has become since Dick Cheney and W decided to oppose gay marriage.

Ok that probably isn’t fair, so I’m sorry.

These torture hysterics’position on torture (his tortured position on torture?) is that torture is bad which doesn’t exactly qualify them for intellectual status anywhere outside of the echo chamber of DNC and UN cocktail parties. In the isolation of an amoral world it is difficult to disagree with these folks, yet we all know the world is not as black and white as we’d perhaps like.

The enemy that we face today is unlike any that we have ever seen and the simple truth is that nobody is torturing any legitimate soldiers of any legitimate opposition army. In fact, nobody is torturing anyone from any illegitimate army either. I do acknowledge that some prisoners have died while in custody, the number is somewhere around 100, and I whole heartedly agree that each death should be fully investigated and any murderous activity prosecuted. Yet let’s not fool ourselves here. The people we are fighting are criminals who violate international law every waking moment of their day, and dream of killing innocent civilians while they sleep. To subject them to the full extent of discomfort during interrogation right up to the edge of torture is just fine by me.

It all comes down to how you define the word “torture”. Anti-Bush hysterics want to maintain a broad definition of torture that includes not only the widely agreed upon sadistic practices that are viewed as wrong, but also those practices that make the detainee uncomfortable and frightened. Koran abuse? Not a fantasy of the anti-war left, its torture. Leash girl Lindy? Not a punishable breakdown of military discipline, its torture. Water boarding, temperature stressing, fake menstrual blood? Not rough measures of discomfort to elicit information that we need to keep the country terrorism free since 9/1, its torture.

Sorry, but I’m not buying it. As Americans we have every obligation to treat opposition soldiers with the respect and dignity that an honorable fighting man should be accorded. I think we can all agree that terrorists are not honorable fighting men, but rather homicidal maniacs who target civilians and gleefully kill those who are simple civilians trying to live life, or aid workers toiling to make the lives of others better.

Sadly there are those who just can’t see the moral distinction. Lets take a look at a line from Sully’s blog the other day. Admittedly it is only one line, but I think it is representative of the rather unhinged nature of his recent writing. Acknowledging the historically low number of American casualties in this war (a good thing one would think), Sully suggests that it is actually the result of something sinister for which Rumsfeld, and presumably Bush should be held accountable for:

“And part of it is a consequence of the Rumsfeld decision to let Iraqi civilians be murdered in the thousands, rather than provide basic order and stability in an occupied country. But it's important to keep some context in mind.”

Oh yes, Andy and his kind are always careful to keep context in mind, aren’t they?

A serious view of the casualties would make it quite clear that part of the reason they’re so low is because we face a cowardly enemy who would rather kill innocents than take on a professional fighting force. In case it’s not clear allow me to spell it out. These people are criminals. Criminals such as these will sink to whatever depth is necessary to achieve their evil goals, including the murder of civilians. Yet to maintain their anti-Bush psychosis the terror hysterics suggest that it is our Defense Secretary who “decided to let Iraqi citizens be murdered”.

This distinction is important, because were the hysterics to admit that we face a criminal enemy, they would then also have to admit that such an enemy is not subject to the same Geneva Conventions that protect legitimate members of honorable fighting forces. Hysteria and its partner, hatred, have led these types to the position that criminals must not be made to be uncomfortable, and because we maintain a policy of aggressive interrogation, the US military and Administration are the real bad guys in this war.

I often look back on the days that followed 9/11 and wonder what these folks would look like from the perspective of those awful days. The NYT reports this morning that one of the terrorist prisoners, Kalied Shiek Mohammed, was a recipient of a cell in one of those “black prisons” where he was water boarded as part of the interrogation process. I’ll remind you that this fiend was a key (possibly the key) architect behind the 9/11 attack which killed over 2,000 American civilians.

Now ask yourself what is the real outrage; the fact that he was made to believe that he was drowning so that we could get some information, or the fact that we didn’t finish the job.

I Ain't Got No Basketball Jones

I am not a basketball fan. Never have been, never will be.

A simple enough statement don’t you think? In fact, you could say it would fit nicely on a set of business cards that I could hand out to all my male acquaintances that, in my view, are way too enamored of this sport. I’m not sure where the attraction for this game comes from; sometimes I think my peers are relieving themselves of pent up sexual frustration, with an unhealthy focus on this and other sports. Any five minutes spent listening to sports radio tends to confirm this view, and when you think about it my theory would also go a long way to explaining the outbreak of violence at that Pacer’s game last year.

Whatever it is, there is one definitive truth in the world today, and simply stated that truth is that basketball, in any of its forms, sucks.

In the spirit of full disclosure I probably need to acknowledge that me and basketball, well, you could say we have a “troubled” history. I’ve always been very competitive and as a boy enjoyed playing in all the big sports. Football was by far my favorite, but I also enjoyed baseball and had an interest in playing basketball as well.

So it was with great enthusiasm, and perhaps less talent, that I went out for the team in fifth grade. Of course, as a natural athlete of uncommon skill I was able to make the team despite a lack of basketball specific knowledge or experience. I quickly grasped the basics, rebounded with the best of fifth graders, and my shooting skills, while not accomplished, demonstrated a certain level of promise.

So what was the problem? Well, I’m sorry to say it but the sport seemed to be populated with a bunch of wussies who couldn’t take a little contact! As a result of these timid little momma’s boys, me and the officials became quite familiar with each other early on in each game, and I resultantly received the proud designation as the team’s “hatchet man”.

Unfortunately, this also resulted in a reduced amount of playing time for young Pursuit, a situation to which I had been previously unaccustomed. None-the-less, I was undeterred. When I entered the game to “slow down” (my coach’s words) an opposing player who had the hot hand, I remained committed to demonstrating the promise of basketball as a semi-contact sport but found no avail. It seems the referees were just as determined to enforce the draconian standards of the game that were, no doubt, dreamed up by Dr. James Naismith’s mom. In fact, anybody here want to bet that Dr. James nailed that peach basket to the post in the first place as a direct result of the fact that his mom wouldn’t let him play football?

I didn’t think so.

Well by now you all can see were this is going. I was determined to play the game as I thought it should be played, and the officials were just as committed to thwarting my attempts at improvements to the game. The back and forth of this joust continued until that fateful Saturday morning in February of 1972 when I received my fifth foul in the first quarter of the game against the Pioneer Park Pirates. I remember it like it was yesterday. I stood there, an incredulous look on my face as I was whistled for “reaching in”.

Think about that…..”reaching in”. What kind of sport has a penalty for such a move? My goodness, if I were writing the rules there wouldn’t be anything special for reaching in because PEOPLE DO THAT WHEN THEY WANT THE BALL! Reaching in….geez if I were in charge of the game, clothes lining would be a border line call and reaching in would mandatory.

So as I walked off the court that day, it was with the full knowledge that my nascent career in the sport of wimps was over. Oh, I played out the year, and to my everlasting credit I lived up to my nom de honour, “The Hatchet Man”, but it just wasn’t ever the same. I gave up the sport.

I became the guy who went to our high school games to socialize, but I could never muster much enthusiasm for the team, since my respect for the voluntarily meek of this world has never been great. I went on to matriculate in my undergraduate studies at Indiana University where we even won the NCAA tournament during my sophomore year. While I gleefully participated in the mad partying that accompanied the victory celebration, I never set foot in Assembly Hall until I was there to receive my diploma on graduation day.

I walked away from basketball completely.

Never again could I honor the sport with my presence or attention; it simply wasn’t worthy. In January of 1972 my father, before The Day That Shall Live in Infamy and in support of my basketball interest, obtained tickets to go see the Chicago Bulls at the old stadium. We had a delightful time, and as I recall the Bulls, who included Norm Van Lier, Tom Boerwinkle and Bob Love, beat the Milwaukee Bucks that night.

It was the last Bulls game that I ever saw. Michael Jordan? Never made it to the Stadium or the United Center to see him. All those NBA Championships? I might have caught one or two games on TV when it couldn’t be avoided, but I made great efforts to ignore the whole sorry spectacle otherwise. Most upsetting about those games that I did happen to see was the realization that NBA players now played the game physically and aggressively – ala Pursuit you could say. One might think I would have found some satisfaction as a player who clearly, in my own small way, helped instill some respect and honor to the game, but to this day I remain uncredited for this advancement and therefore, unimpressed.

Last night I returned, after 33 years, to a Bulls game.

My only reaction is, “what in the name of all that is good and pure about sports have these people done?” Oh sure, I have to admit that it was fun, but the actual game hardly seemed to be the point. The contempt that the players, owners and fans thereby show for the game itself should be criminal in the eyes of any real aficionados of the game, but last night made clear that there a very few of these types left.

It was like I went to a carnival where they happened to have a basketball game as just one of the events. There were dancing girls (the Luv-A-Bulls), dancing kids (The Bull Kidz), horny mascots (yes, horny), weird break dancing McDonalds cashiers with T-shirt cannons, a Benni the Bull dirigible that dive bombed the crowd. There were races between coffee cups, donuts and bagles. There was a race between water trucks (win a free gallon of Hinkley-Schmidt water!) and worst of all there was “Rubber Boy”.

Rubber Boy. Man this was one scary dude. As you can imagine Rubber Boy, the main event at halftime, was a contortionist who was brought out to center court in a very small box, from which he slowly unbent his body to emerge and begin his performance. Rubber Boy was quite flexible. He put his whole body, one appendage at a time, through very small orifices such as a toilet seat (which he but humped while he gazed at the crowd with a wicked look in his eye) and a tennis racket. He bent his limbs into all sorts of unnatural positions, seemingly able to dislocate and relocate his joints at will. The crowd was alternately horrified and amazed depending on what body part was being bent into what position to perform what act. I found the whole thing to be bizarre and more than slightly obscene.

As the horror that is the Rubber Boy experience continued to reveal itself at center court I found myself wondering exactly how I would explain Rubber Boy’s act when he became quite infatuated with the spectacle of his own ass. There in front of Benni the Bull and everybody he gleefully examined his butt, close up, from the vantage point of bending his head down between his legs and back up towards his posterior. Thank God my daughters weren’t there, for I am sure that I will be experiencing repressed memory syndrome and wouldn’t wish this experience on them.

To be candid, the whole evening had a weird sort of Acid Trip feel to it that I hadn’t felt since my college days. The only thing that was missing was T-Rex on the stereo and my buddy saying things like “Life is different through a plastic bag”…….”Man”.

For me, this was fine. I hate basketball and was glad for the diversion which was so distracting that at times the game had resumed after a break, and few in the crowd really seemed to notice. Were I a fan though, I would have found this monstrosity to be an outrageous crime against an otherwise noble sport.

However, that really is the crux of the problem isn’t it? Basketball at its heart is a charade. Players run up and down the court for 60 minutes tossing a ball in a basket and unless things get really out of hand, none of the points during the first 50 minutes count. It’s all just an elaborate fake. The only real action is in the last 10 minutes of the game when the clock threatens to arbitrarily cut the time short and leave one team out in the cold because it missed a few baskets at the wrong moment in time. If you think about it, basketball is really no more sophisticated the children’s game of musical chairs except that it’s played by really tall people with over protective mamas.

I don’t know about you, but I’d never pay to watch musical chairs, but then again, I’ve never seen Rubber Boy perform at a musical chairs game either.