Friday, March 25, 2005

Due Process and Baseball

When a baseball player hits a homerun, why does he or she trot around all those unnecssary bases? After all, there is nothing that the defensive team can do to interfere with the score. Only an error by the runner (like, failing to touch a base bag on the trip around the bases) can intervene, and then only if a defense player notices the mistake and makes a successful appeal to an observant umpire. So when the ball goes over the fence, why doesn't the batter just jog back to the dugout? Isn't that what the 'substantive due process' school would say?

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Timing is Everything

15 years ago, 3 of my men friends and I decided to learn to row.

We had met while watching our children compete on the Winter Park High School crew team in Orlando, Florida. I was about the shortest and weakest of the 4 – all of us were fit and strong for men in our mid-40s. So we hired a coach, purchased a new 4-oared Schoenbrod racing shell for $8,400, and began practicing every afternoon after work for three months to learn the basics.

Rowing looks easy, but it is hard work, and we trained hard. After those three months, we settled into a 4-practice per week routine, but at 5:00AM instead of the afternoons. We were dedicated.

After about 6 months of this, we were beginning to feel pretty smug, so one morning we challenged another boat to a race. It was another 4-oared shell crewed by Winter Park High School’s JV girls – 10th and 11th grade young women who were not quite good enough to make the girls’ varsity boat.

So we lined up our big, beefy crew along these wispy, thin-armed girls, and got set for the 1,500-meter race. We had agreed not to beat them too badly – that if we developed a lead of more than a boat length of open water, we would just sit on that lead all the way to the finish line so that the girls would not be embarrassed.

Well. Things did not turn out quiet that way. Those girls jumped out to a lead in the first 30 strokes, and by the time we’d covered half the distance they were about 5 boat lengths ahead of us, and pulling away.

By the time we crossed the finish line, they were calmly resting on their oars and sipping their Gatorade.

As we rowed silently back to the boathouse, our coxswain finally spoke up, and said, “Well, gentlemen, we’ve just seen what coordination and timing can do…”

Monday, March 21, 2005

The Center Missed History

Slavery was legal in New York until 1827. It was not just a Southern thing. It was just that it was key to the economy only in the South. But it does not stop there. In 1860 New York City voters agreed with Southern voters...and voted 60/40 to allow the expansion of slavery into the territories.

In that year, Lincoln the Republican ran against Douglas the Democrat. Douglas advocated allowing every new state to decide for itself whether to allow slavery in its territory. Lincoln advocated the limitation of slavery to the states in which it was then legal, but no expansion elsewhere. In the practical politics and economics of that day, the expansion of slavery into the territories meant the legalization of slavery in the entire country, really.

In the same 1860 election, New York City voters voted 80/20 to deny the right to vote for FREE blacks.

Upstate voters in NY voted for Lincoln.

All this because of party loyality. So the sophisticated voters of The Center of the Universe can be on the wrong side of history sometimes.

See "Lincoln at Cooper Union - The Speech That Made Lincoln President" by Holzer.

Weakness leaving...

"Pain is weakness leaving the body."

I hope that is true. Ever since I started rowing with Tom, Ernie, Bill and Steve in 1990, I have had a love-hate relationship with my ergometer. A few years ago I logged 1 million meters in one year, just to get the silly little patch that Concept II gives to people who claim to have "rowed" on an erg that far in 12 months. Rowing on it reminds me of my son Mike as a child...he hated to get in the bathtub, then hated to get out. Every morning, I circle that erg in my mind, dreading the pain it causes, but once the workout is over I hate to quit. (Just kidding.) I am shooting for another 1,002,862 meters between now and June 2006. That is a daily average of just over 3,000 for 315 erg days.

I just hope I get rid of lots of weakness for all this..

MORE...updated Saturday 2 April...
Erged 21,300 meters in March at modest splits - only about 2:15. It is scarry how fast the body gets out of shape. Headed for 35,500 in April, and 1,003,000 meters before 30 June 06.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

No Spoon

I could not find a spoon this morning, everything being in boxes, so the first Chicago coffee was very strong, having been measured by visual guesswork only. And my raisin bran kept sticking to the bottom of the coffee mug I used to drink my breakfast. Have you ever noticed how raisin bran sticks to the bottom of a coffee mug? I had to use a pencil to get the last part out. More later.