You Have to Ask the Right Question

Like just about everyone in the US, and many beyond our shores, I have watched and read the unfolding story of the Las Vegas "gunman," who last week killed 58 people as they attended a country music festival in the shadows of the Mandalay Bay casino complex.

Like many (though decidedly fewer I admit), I wonder if, with this latest horrific event, the US will finally set aside the frankly tribal politics around guns and put in place some sensible measures that may at last curb some of the bloodshed in our country.

I've made my thoughts on the topic pretty clear over the years. The US has thousands of gun killings each year, many many times more than in France, the UK, or other Western European nations. 

There are more murders in a year in Chicago (population two and a half million) than in the entire nation of France (population 65 million).

Ironically, the Las Vegas gunman had rented a hotel room in Chicago, at the time of the Lollapalooza music event, with the idea to kill people clustered at that festival. It's not clear why, but I know people who were in Chicago (my cousin and his young children among them).

It's too awful an idea to spend much time thinking about, but it's a reminder how important the role of chance plays in our lives, despite a belief that we control the levers and knobs that determine the settings.

I do wonder - what is it that should be done to stop this? What should be done.

More to the point, what can be done.

One blog I follow is Scott Adams, of "Dilbert" fame. He gained some notoriety in the past 18 or so months by doggedly explaining why Donald Trump would be elected president. I am not sure how seriously even Adams took his guesses, but following - and the daily reactions - was amusing. 

I think Adams is a somewhat poor cartoonist, from a technical point. But "Dilbert" was always funny. I am not sure Adams is a brilliant man, but often, his suggestions have a common-sense truth to them.

Today, Adams hit the nail squarely as he talked through why, in his opinion, sensible gun control remains beyond our grasp. And it's not all just politics.

He points out that we are just asking the wrong questions. With that, it's obvious that the answers we get back are going to be flawed.

Both sides [of the debate] pretend they are arguing on principle, but neither side is. Both sides are arguing from their personal risk profiles, and those are simply different. Our risk profiles will never be the same across the entire population, so we will never agree on gun control. (emphasis added)

A key counter-argument about gun control is the famous "If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns."

Personally, I've never found this argument convincing - for one thing, it's what logicians call "truth functionally true." That means to say it is vacuously true, or true by definition. If posessing a gun is illegal, then someone who has a gun, by definition, is breaking the law- an outlaw.

That should not be a shocking revelation.

The gun people go further and say that, because people willing to break the law will not be stopped by yet one more law (in this case, possession of an illegal firearm), the law will not eliminate crime. They go further and offer examples (as Adams points out, like the knife-murderer in Japan) where gun laws will not prevent killing. Even in France, which has pretty strict gun laws, there are still not -zero- murders per year.

But as Adams further points out, the laws are in practical terms not meant to eliminate crime; they are meant to reduce crime to a tolerable amount. 

Humans are lazy and stupid, on average. If you make something 20% harder to do, a lot of humans will pass. It doesn’t matter what topic you are discussing; if you introduce friction, fewer people do it.

Gun laws do not have to be perfect; they just have to good enough. The tail of the distribution of those willing to go the extra mile to commit a senseless murder is pretty extreme. Yes; the lunatic in Japan is still going to find a way, but some number - 80%, 90%? - of would-be-madmen are not going to be willing to exert the effort. 

Thus, the question is not, "How do we end the slaughter." The question to the gun folks would be, "What level of senseless killing is OK for you so that you can have open access to all levels of gun and ammunition?"

We just have to make getting these weapons obnoxious enough that lives are saved. Let's find out what that level is, and get to it.

Another common trope is the famous "slippery slope." Pace Adams's point, limitations on what and how many guns you can own is not what the NRA and gun lobby would have you believe. NO ONE is going to come grab your hunting rifle or pistol that you keep at home to (ostensibly) protect you. We hear people warn us not to let a camel's nose into the tent on practically every argument. 

Trump should not initiate a restriction on the granting of visitor visas to people from countries hostile to the US because it will lead to concentration camps. "Hitler did not start in 1933 by rounding up" scapegoats.

It's non-sense when the antifa fools say it; it's non-sense when the gun nuts say it.

As Adams writes: 

Banning personal use of grenade launchers did not lead to confiscation of hunting knives, and probably never will. The slippery slope idea inspires fear in gun lovers – because creeping regulations feel like a risk – but in the real world, each decision stands alone. The slippery slope is an irrational fear, not a reasonable factor in policy-making.

If you are a right-wing gun rights supporter, consider this: The next time you feel an  inclination to fall back on the "gun control is going to lead to gun bans," remember how stupid the argument of the leftists is that Trump is Hitler.

That is what you sound like to the rest of us,

Yes, it is.

To those on the left (with whom I generally agree with respect to guns), stop pretending that the real problem with guns in the US is nutty white men with automatic weapons.

Right after Las Vegas, there were memes galore circulating (Shaun King, the one man rent-a-grievance at the New York Daily News tweeted multiple times about how this was yet another case of imagined white privilege) about how the US has some sort of "angry white man" problem at the root of gun violence.

Anyone who pays attention to the data knows that this is pretty much unadulterated bullshit. Slate today had an on-line argument that basically destroys this point, after trolling through the data collected over the past decade by Mother Jones.

Thousands of people do die each year because of gun violence. A tiny percentage is from incidents like Las Vegas, or Columbine, or Aurora. The overwhelming majority of gun killing is done with Saturday Night Specials. Banning "assault" rifles or "bump stocks" feels good, but will have no real impact on the carnage.

Stop rushing to get in front of a camera to propose pointless laws that touch the political erogenous zones of your activist donors, and propose real solutions. Instead of looking to score points, work with sensible people on the other side of the divide to draw up real solutions. Stop opposing programmes (e.g., Stop and Frisk) that actually work to get guns out of the hands of criminals.

If you want to get to sensible answers, you cannot begin from foolish questions.

Still the Word

Continuing (oddly I suppose) the walk down memory lane, today brings a fond memory rather than heartbreak.

As I said, one of the by-products of living is that one collects a past. A history that cannot be unwritten.

I now live in San Francisco, California - the latest (and I hope perhaps, final) stop in a series of homes. Toronto, Los Angeles, South Carolina, Cleveland, Paris, France. My wife, son, and I live in the Castro neighbourhood of the city, a colourful, central area of Victorian homes, small shops, restaurants. 

One of the real gems of our neighbourhood is the Castro Theatre, a glorious Spanish baroque cinema opened early in the last century (and reputedly still owned by the family who built it). It screens classic movies as well as the occasional special event with more modern fare (at the time of the Academy Awards, it screened "La La Land" in an event hosted by co-stars Ryan Gosling and  Emma Stone) in a large, balconied auditorium. Before the movies, audiences are entertained by a period Wurlizter pipe organ.

In the Bay Area, we are blessed to have both the Castro and its spiritual cousin, The Stanford Theatre half an hour south in Palo Alto.

Tonight, the Castro is doing a screening of the (less than classic, but still fun) musical movie Grease. 

As fate would have it, Grease is actually the very first movie that I ever went to without my parents. Back in 1978, at the ripe old age of eight, my mother dropped my older brother Charles and me and two friends at a decidedly less stylish multi-plex of the sort popular in the middle 1970s with a buck each for the ticket and another dollar to buy popcorn.

Back in those days, two bucks was enough for a show and snack.

I don't remember too much about the date. I remember that the mother of our friends, both brothers as well, came to collect us all when the show was over. Brent and Brian Agnew (Brent was my age, and like me, had very blond hair, just a lot curlier; Brian was the about the same age as Charles - perhaps a year older, and, like Charles, had straight, brown hair). 

I still recall pretty clearly climbing out of the way-back (third row) seat of my mother's 1976 Chevrolet station wagon (yes, it had the fake wood panel that was de rigeur at the time), and getting our matinee tickets. We thought we were oh so "with it" in our polyester turtlenecks and Toughskins jeans (pretty sure that that label has joined Sylvania and Hang Ten in the bin of defunct brands).

Grease is not a great movie of course, but it's a fun one. And the music (faux 1950s tunes) are in my Spotify feed. The jokes are corny, and John Travolta is less than convincing as a 'greaser' high school tough. I still laugh when I think of the scene at the Rydell dance where "Blue Moon" is, shall we say, cut short by the T-Bird antics.

I bet that that is the only time in movie history that the name "J Edgar Hoover" ever got a laugh. 

I had no idea what became of the Agnew brothers - we moved away a couple of years later. Turns out, both are on "Facebook" (bless the internet). Brent is a teacher in Gaineseville, GA, and Brian is a school principal in Charleston, SC. 

I think our son will, like I did, like the movie. Some of the jokes will go over his head, as they did mine. I suspect, strongly, that he will laugh at the unfortunate ending of "Blue Moon", like I did.

Childhood, life indeed, is made up of moments. Some of them make you want to cry. Some stick with you in the form of a mildly subversive laugh.

You Can Only Be Naive Once

(Art Credit: Aaron Dana, sportsnet.ca)

The problem with time passing is you acquire a history. 

Getting older has many draw-backs; at first, frivolity is replaced by seriousness. Freedom slowly erodes into responsibility. Tiny bumps and scrapes become nagging pains that never seem to quite go away before new ones arise.

Your memories grow longer as your time grows short.

When we are young, there is always an impatience for tomorrow. None of us believe that tomorrow is going to come, even if we paradoxically understand that it will.

But in the end, the real issue is that with time, we acquire a past.

Yesterday, the 4th of October, marked a significant moment in my own past. On this date, 30 years ago, one of the seminal moments of my adolescence was punctuated by a weak, bouncing baseball that four hopped 35 feet into the glove of Frank Tanana, veteran left-hand pitcher for the Detroit Tigers.

Garth Iorg's full swing and weak tap-out was the anti-climax to what remains perhaps the greatest disappointment of my youth. 

My team, the Toronto Blue Jays that year ended their season with seven consecutive losses, three one-run defeats in the final week-end of the season. And what had just a week before seemed a certain walk into the playoffs ended with one of the most epic collapses in the history of sport. 

It's been 30 years. 

Other collapses have gotten more ink - the 1969 Mets overcoming a huge deficit in the final weeks of the season to stun the Chicago Cubs. The 1964 Phillie Phlop. 

It may simply be a reflection of a sheltered youth (more than likely the case) that was largely void of drama, but as I reflect on the early days of my life, nothing comes close. Getting cut from actual sports teams I tried out for. Nope. Unfulfilled or unrequited romances? No.

I look back on that week, if I am being honest, with more bitterness - much more bitterness - than I do thinking of college rejection. I felt more deflated with that defeat than I did when the "You're a swell guy, and I am sure you're going to be a big success whichever school you go to. It just won't be this one" letter that I got in a thin envelope from Harvard just a few months later.

Funny how that is. And now that I'm fully an adult (NB: by age in any case, even if I still snicker when I hear "Time to musk up" said for the 47th time), I don't even care at all about sports.

In 1987, I was 17 years old. In many ways, that summer was the last real time of 'youth' in some sense. I was entering my senior year of high school. College applications (and acceptances and rejections) awaited. I had not yet worked any sort of job, unless you count chores around the house - lawn cutting and the like. My first actual job came in the summer following high school graduation.

That was still a year away.

In 1985, the Blue Jays had, for the first time in their brief history, captured the American League East crown. In those days, there were only two divisions in the AL - no wild cards and no AL Central. The team took a 3-1 lead over the Kansas City Royals only to lose three straight games (none of which, as close as the scores showed). The team had never won anything prior, so the disappointment was tempered with hopefulness that better days were to come.

1987 was the "next year" in a sense. The team was not terrific, but good, and in fact never fell below .500 all season.

Just one week prior to The Game, a different narrative seemed possible. On consecutive days (Thursday and Friday night games, then Saturday), the Blue Jays had hosted the Tigers in their old derelict stadium (Exhibition Stadium, honestly a football stadium converted for baseball, and poorly) for a four-game set.

The Jays won the first three, all by one run. Friday night and Saturday were "walk-off" wins that, quite frankly, they had little business winning. Friday, for example, the same Frank Tanana who would shut them out just one week later, pitched 8 shutout innings, leaving a 2-0 lead to Mike Henneman. Henneman surrendered the game via a bases-loaded triple to Manny Lee.

Store that name for later.

No one at the time knew it, of course, but that Saturday, 10-9 walk-off would be the last game Toronto won until April of the next year.

There was trouble on the horizon. In the first game, all star shortstop Tony Fernandez was lost for the season on a somewhat dirty take-out slide by Tigers' DH Bill Madlock. Fernandez's elbow was broken. Two days later, veteran catcher Ernie Whitt was similarly lost in a DP slide when Lou Whitaker's knee broke three ribs.

Sill, the Jays built their lead, and in the finale Sunday, the team took a 1-0 lead to the ninth inning. Tom Henke (at the time called "The Terminator" for his ability to come in and simply blow people away) was on the mound on a cold, overcast day. Three outs, and the team would be up by 4 1/2 with just six to play. 

Kirk Gibson had other plans - this was one season before he dramatically broke Dennis Eckersly's heart with a game-ending home run.

Gibson's home run tied the game, which the Tigers won in 13.

OK - so the lead was 2 1/2 with six to play. Still looking good.

As it turns out, that 9th inning was the last appearance that Henke would make in 1987.

The Milwaukee Brewers, who had owned the season, came to town and swept the Jays away. With Detroit winning 3 of 4 in Baltimore, the lead was down to a single game, with three to play in Tiger Stadium.

What just five days earlier looked like a lead-pipe-cinch was now very much in doubt. Still, the Jays were 

1. Still on top, albeit by a single game
2. Needed to win only one of the three games to force a play-off

A sloppy Friday night affair in which Toronto hit into five double plays erased the last bits of the lead.

Saturday was an epic game - veteran Mike Flanagan, picked up at the trade dead-line to bolster the rotation faced Tigers' ace Jack Morris. Flanagan pitched 11 innings (and according to rumour, fought tooth and claw to come out for the 12th) despite being nearly 40. Morris battled as well, throwing close to 200 pitches of his own  over 10 innings.

The game ended in the 12th, when Alan Trammell's ground ball right at Manny Lee (see: he's back!) went under Lee's glove with the bases loaded. The infield was in, so an almost certain 6-2-3 double play instead resulted in loss number six.

Incredibly, Trammell was awarded a hit (at the time, Bob Costas actually descibed in the post-game how Manny Lee's error might not have been made by Fernandez - apparently, Costas agreed with me and not the scorer).

It goes without saying that, the final day of the year, what had been building for a week came to pass in an agonizing 1-0 loss. Frank Tanana, who as a young pitcher had paired with Nolan Ryan on the old California Angels to intimidate hitters with a nearly 100-mph fastball, had through injury and time converted to a guy whose fastball wouldn't bruise a baby's butt kept the Jays' off the scoreboard. Larry Herndon's second inning, windblown home run JUUUUST over the glove of left fielder George Bell was the only run of the game (Herndon only had six home runs all season).

Jimmy Key was the hard-luck loser that day, and finished with a 17-8 record. He lead the league in ERA that year, and I felt at the time that, had he been a 1-0 winner on the final day rather than a 1-0 loser, he had a legitimate chance at the Cy Young (NB: it was won by Roger Clemens). Key never won a Cy in his career.

I remember sitting in my parents' living room watching the entire denouement unfold, and feeling....nothing. Not shock. Not anger. Just emptiness.

With that bouncing ball, I quietly switched off the television and went to do my homework (it was a Sunday afternoon).

The Tigers went on to lose in four games to the Minnesota Twins who went on to defeat St Louis in a tight Series.

I didn't watch the Series that year - for one weekend, I was in Boston visiting colleges (and my older brother, who had just gone off to college) with my father. 

It's been 30 years, nearly to the day.

I've gone off to college. Moved from home. I lost my father, more than 20 years ago. My mother a few years ago sold the house, so it, too, is a memory. I've gotten married, bought my own home. I now have my own adolescent son.

With time, you you acquire a past.

The Blue Jays eventually did win the World Series in 1992, repeating the next year. There have been a lot of ups and downs (mostly down) for the team since, and my interest, like my youth, has faded, replaced by other things.

There is of course the famous reading from First Letter of Saint-Paul to the Corinthians:

When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, darkly, but then face to face.

The American League playoffs begin tonight (no; the wild card game is still for me a bridge too far). I may tune in to see some, but I doubt it. My own son is in junior high now, and I have a parent-teacher conference. 

I've put away at least some childish things, of which sport is one.

But in 1987, I was still young. And more than the sting of any broken teen romance or failure, that moment I still hang on to.

30 years.

Well, it Happened Again

Spoiler alert: I think it's time - beyond time - that the US stopped deluding itself that guns are not part of the problem, and enacted sensible limitations on who can own what sort of guns, and how many of them.

It happened again. Not that it matters, at all, but this time in Las Vegas. A "gunman," for reasons that remain at the moment not known, took a cache of guns and massacred a group of innocent, unsuspecting people.

Newtown. Charleston. Orlando. San Bernardino.

This time, Vegas.

I'm not inclined to use the name of the man responsible, but an otherwise "ordinary" man this time has killed 59 people at a country music festival, and injured hundreds more. 

So we as a nation react, as we always do, with thoughts and prayers, and questions of "why," and finger-pointing. Inevitably, one side will offer that this time the US will get serious about gun control. Just as predictably, the other will fire back (pun intended) with arguments about how guns don't kill people, that only a "good guy" with a gun can stop a bad one, how many times a gun is used to prevent crime, how the outcome could have been different if only someone in the crowd had been armed.

In 2012, at Christmas, the nation woke to the horrible story of a "gunman" entered a school full of small children in Newtown, Connecticut and systematically obliterated 20 helpless children. Mostly kindergarten and grade one students. All were six or seven years of age. It was a story that almost uniquely left me feeling genuinely shaken.

A weekend has now passed between us and the horrific shooting in Newtown, CT.  The images of crying, shaken young children will not soon be forgotten.  And the thought of little five and six year old, lifeless children with unopened Christmas presents and named stockings forever awaiting a return that will not come, spending the weekend pending crime scene investigations to be completed is too terrible a thought to consider.

Predictably, the discussion has turned to what to do about this.

I would self-identify as a pretty far-to-the-right conservative.  Not a libertarian, per se, but in that general ZIP code.  And I have to say, listening to my political fellow-travellers talking about this, and in particular, the possibility that we may finally, FINALLY get some sort of sane gun control policy is a journey into madness.

In the end, nothing was done. The "guns don't kill people" crowd carried the day.

Then, 2014, in Santa Barbara, California, a 20 year old male ("man" does not apply) decided that writing his grievances in a 'manifesto' was not enough, so off to the campus he went, where he shot, stabbed, and crushed (with his BMW) a score of his classmates. 

Another needless day of violence and blood-shed in the US.  Like Newton, CT before it.  Or Virginia Tech.  Or Columbine.  There are again candles, and stuffed animals, and flowers.  There are more crying families and friends.

The US, plain and simple, has a violence problem.  It's obvious that, yes, it is far, far past the time that Americans accepted sensible, rational rules about gun ownership.  Requiring law-abiding citizens to have a licence to own a gun, and limiting the amount of ammunition they can purchase is not "gun grabbing."  The Second Amendment guarantees people the right to own guns and to defend themselves.  But this ain't 1750 on the frontier.  The Constitution was not written by God himself, nor was it given to Moses.  It can (and has been) amended to reflect the times.  The Second Amendment itself is testament to that.

It's undeniably true that a gun is an inanimate object; it can no more kill a person by itself than can a broom or a tin of soup. For that matter, neither can a bottle of arsenic. I get it.

But it is beyond dispute that, a person like the individual who opened fire in Las Vegas, if he did not have his arsenal, if he were even limited in what he could have gained access to, many of the 59 people he slaughtered would be alive.

If you cannot accept that basic fact, then you are beyond reach.

I know the arguments about the Second Amendment, and I agree that people have the rights granted. I don't go in for the sophistries about "well regulated militias," nor the collective vs. individual rights. But the Constitution has been amended two dozen times. It's not an act of God. And it's not 1775 anymore.

We do not need to arm ourselves to the teeth against a tyrannical king half-way round the world. Black helicopters are not coming. And even if they were, you and your handguns are not going to stand a chance against them. 

The government have actual, trained soldiers. They have tanks. They have, well, black helicopters.

Red Dawn was a movie, as I said before. 

I used to live in France. Yeah, I know. Cheese eating surrender monkeys and socialism. According to the CIA fact book, in 2015, there were 682 murders in all of France. In the city of Chicago, there were 751.

To put things in perspective, there are 65 million people in France. Chicago is a city of just over 2 million.

And France has among the highest rates of murder in Western Europe.

Obviously, there are other factors at play, but can anyone seriously deny that access to guns is a significant factor? 

It is way, way past time to look at real solutions here. And it's not arming every "good guy" and putting him in a school. Charles Bronson is dead. Sorry.

The question is this for Americans: How many dead are we willing to accept as part of the bargain for our right to keep and bear arms? How much blood? 

Yes - the NRA and their political handmaidens in the Republican party are correct that gun control means giving up some measure of our freedom. Of course it does. Giving up the right to drive 200 miles per hour means giving up some measure of freedom as well. ANY law means that someone won't be able to do something that he wants.

Yes - passing gun control will not "solve" the problem. People will still have access to knives. They will still have the option to drive their late-model Buick into a crowd on the sidewalk. Gun control is not going to cure evil people with murder in their hearts. Laws against murder haven't done that yet. Should the lack of a perfect solution block any step towards reducing the problem?

I'm not a lawyer. I've not read all of the Federalist papers. But it seems like a pretty simple equation to me.

You have the right to keep and bear arms. Agreed. A lot of people have been killed because of that right. People who today would be alive.

Is it worth it? Is all the killing really worth you maintaining the ability to stockpile dozens of weapons and hundreds of rounds of ammunition? Is your right worth all that blood? THAT really is the question here. It's that basic. Because part of the bargain is this: Your right to own (sensibly and responsibly) any number of guns and any amount of ammunition guarantees that we will be having this discussion again. 

Don't pretend that it won't happen. Deal frankly with the fact that it will. 

Please. Think carefully.

Closing Time, 2017 Edition

Time for you to go out to the places you will belong

Sports has been in the news a lot recently - not because of Aaron Judge's quest to overcome a 30 year old rookie home run record (he recently eclipsed Mark McGwire's 1987 total of 49) or the start of the NFL season.

Much of the focus has been around the controversy of whether football players will stand for the national anthem, 'take a knee' on the field, or hide in the tunnel to avoid the whole thing. The decision by American President Donald Trump - never one to avoid a camera or photo-op to insert himself into the mess has had the effect of casting the debate more as a proxy fight over whether one loathes or supports the president.

The definition of something that is "polarising" is an object, question, or concept that takes a collection of disparate, even random items and focuses them into sharply contrasting ends - poles, as it were. Prior to the tweet of Trump, there were few people beyond actual football fans talking about it. Now, it seems that everyone has an opinion - friends I know who went out of their way to declare their disinterest in football and (in some cases) animus towards football players, suddenly find themselves declaring, openly, their "sincere" respect for a group of men who, until six months ago, were often the targets of attacks of being the epitome of "toxic masculinity."

Prior to the controversy, I thought of football, when I bothered to consider it at all, as a brutish, boring game played by cartoonishly hulking men. The object was nominally to advance the ball down the field, but from how friends described it, the real object was to inflict as much physical damage ("look at the HIT that got put on that guy!") as possible. 

And to sell beer.

That view hasn't changed. I've already said my piece last year about Colin Kaepernick, a fading former star (subsequently cut by his team) here, but to recap: 

Kaepernick is an entertainer. He's an entertainer of a particular sort - a modern day gladiator. He’s paid to throw a football (when he plays). He's paid very well to do this. His views on politics are as relevant to me as his views on the Academy Awards, the weather in Nebraska, or whether “We Built this City on Rock and Roll” really is, as Rolling Stone magazine claims, the worst song ever.

Colin Kaepernick has every right to his opinion about any of these topics. I respect his right to say what he pleases, and in a sense, the freedoms we have in this country to speech and belief are nothing if they do not protect unpopular opinions.  As I've said before, it's easy to defend speech we like; the acid test is whether we stand up (or sit down) for views that are unpopular, or indeed, are ones we personally do not like. 

But

We pay to see our gladiators compete on the field. Or, in the recent history of Colin Kaepernick, sit on the bench.

That is their job. They should leave the singing to the vocalists.

So no more on that.

No - I am more interested in the end of the baseball season, which for most of us will be this Sunday. My team, the Toronto Blue Jays, has blundered more or less in a sort of random walk through mediocrity all season. They started off with their worst April in the 40 year history of the franchise, rallied a bit in May, getting to within a game of even, but never quite achieving it, and then settling in to an utterly forgettable season.

They won't be truly awful - likely to settle in with a loss total of 85 or 86, avoiding the 90 loss level that seemed within reach. Their fading star, Jose Bautista, had a shot at the famous Mendoza Line (named for light hitting Mario Mendoza) - a sub .200 batting average. This is something no Blue Jay regular has ever accomplished. Joey Bats got close, but then last Sunday had a 2 for 4 day, and is likely going to have to settle for just setting the team record for poorest batting average for a regular (set some years ago by Aaron Hill, .204). He did manage to set a team record for strikeouts in a season.

It was a dismal season punctuated by one brief moment of sunshine.

Speaking of strikeouts, came across a discussion today: It seems that players today are again hitting a lot of home runs - Aaron Judge has overtaken McGwire's rookie record, and the Marlins' Giancarlo Stanton has 59 total, needing just one more to become the eighth player (and third tossing out the Steroid Era) to reach 60.

They also are striking out a lot.

Why is this? Is there some fundamental reason why so many strikeouts?

Looking at the Baseball Reference book here, in 2017, there is an average of 1.26 home runs per nine inning game. If that stands, it would beat the old record of 1.17 set in 2000 (at the peak of the Juiced Era). That's a bump of less than 10 per cent, but still. It would eclipse the 2016 number of 1.16 per game that is a close third.

But strikeouts are the real eye opener:

While there has been, over the past 25 years, a general trend up in home runs per game (blue), the trend in strikeouts is even more obvious. In fact, the number of strikeouts has increased, year on year, every year for 13 straight years. 

Never, in the history of baseball, have people struck out as frequently as they now do. Not in Nolan Ryan's time. Not in the 1968 Year of the Pitcher. Never.

Why?

One suggestion is that pitching is just better now. The argument is that in the old days, pitchers would go whole games, which required them to "save" their best stuff for when it was really needed.

That surely is part of it – pitchers were expected to go 9 unless they got knocked out early. The idea of short, late innings relief specialists was evolving by the 1960s, but it was still not a common strategy.

Now, the bullpens not only have their big relief ace, but it's even more been a speciality to have the guy who can come in and dominate the 8th (and maybe even get an out or two in the ninth). Just look at how the Cleveland Indians got to the World Series last year. Andrew Miller (a guy making $10 million per year), pitched in 70 games last year, finishing only 15 of them. This year, he’s finished 5 of 55. Over those two seasons, he’s 14-3 cumulatively, with ERAs of 1.45 and 1.47, and in incredible 215 strikeouts in just 136 innings pitched.

I do wonder if batters are just less inclined to shorten up as well, and are taking more pitches to work counts? With the advent of so-called “SABREmetrics,” people now look at OBP as much as batting average, and working high pitch counts is part of the strategy.

Again, looking at the year on year batting stats, and sort by strikeouts per game.

13 straight years. 

The odds of that are pretty low, without some underlying, systematic change. 

But it cannot be the pitching alone: if it were true that it were simply a case of pitching being tougher, then you would expect similar data for batting averages, wouldn'y you?

It is not the case – the lowest cumulative average in professional baseball was 1968 (the “year of the pitcher”).The past 13 years – with record whiffing – has had averages between .250 and .265, which are very close to the historical averages.

Batters are still hitting at the same clip more or less (with obvious year on year variance). But they are striking out a lot more frequently.

I suspect that the players know that the fans want to see a home run, and they are swinging from the heels, even with two strikes. There's just less running and more hacking. Brute force of a sort.

So, the football mind-set has infiltrated.

Humanity on the Treadmill. Or, in the Blender

Came across an interesting "study" that is to be carried out by the founders of Y-Combinator, a self-proclaimed "start-up incubator" here in the San Francisco Bay Area.The founder of that outfit, Sam Altman (who bears no resemblance to the comical Ehrlich Bachman on the HBO show "Silicon Valley" - AVIATO!) announced about a year ago that he was interested in testing not how companies might behave, but people.

The idea on Altman's mind is to a small-scale test of the impact on people (and feasibility) of the introduction of a "Universal Basic Income."

Briefly, the UBI is a concept by which an entity (most likely, the state) provides to all of its citizens a basic, floor income. The idea is not new, and has been floated (and endorsed) by the likes of the uber-libertarian Milton Friedman. Under the scheme, every citizen would be granted a certain amount of monthly or annual stipend, irrespective of work of any sort.

It's whose appeal I find increases the more I consider:

1. The growing role of automation in delivering goods and services
2. The rising challenge beyond our shores in countries with wage demands and standards of living well below what is necessary to be considered "middle class"
3. The increasing concentration of wealth at the top
4. The ascent of near-human artificial intelligence
5. My own empirical observation of the clash of the increase of skills needed to "make it" versus an apparent dystopian devolution in actual skills present (well educated, skilled people have fewer children at later ages while people lacking education and skills have larger families at younger ages. Think: the central premise of the movie "Idiocracy."

I think a lot - perhaps more than is healthy, about what is going to happen as the machines and the underclass grow. I've written more than once about my particular views with respect to AI. But in a nutshell:

1. I reject that machines will ever replicate human intelligence in anything more than a simulation (good)
2. Artificial intelligence will not be a perfect simulation (good)
3. It doesn't have to be (uh-oh)

Steve Wozniak some years ago, in talking about the future of machines, put it this way:

Will we be the gods? Will we be the family pets? Or will we be ants that get stepped on? I don't know about that … But when I got that thinking in my head about if I'm going to be treated in the future as a pet to these smart machines … well I'm going to treat my own pet dog really nice.

The erstwhile mathematical and political blogger John Derbyshire several years ago described what is happening in the workplace and beyond in a somewhat dystopian view that has stuck with me since first I read it:

The assumption here is that like the buggy-whip makers you hear about from economic geeks, like dirt farmers migrating to factory jobs, like the middle-class engineer of 1960, the cube people of today will go do something else, creating a new middle class from some heretofore-despised category of drudges. But… what? Which category of despised drudges will be the middle class of tomorrow? Do you have any ideas? I don’t. What comes after office work? What are we all going to do? The same thing Bartleby the Scrivener did, perhaps, but collectively and generationally.

What is the next term in the series: farm, factory, office…? There isn't one. The evolution of work has come to an end point, and the human race knows this in its bones. Actually in its reproductive organs: the farmer of 1800 had six or seven kids, the factory worker of 1900 three or four, the cube jockey of 2000 one or two. The superfluous humans of 2100, if there are any, will hold at zero. What would be the point of doing otherwise? [emphasis mine]

Machines that can function as lawyers or doctors - they will need people to make, train, and maintain them.  But I suspect not on a 1:1 basis.  Likely not on a 10:1 or 100:1 basis.  That's an awful lot of smart, educated people who are going to have to find something to do.  

The current trends are scary (a guy with graduate degrees working as a salesman at Macys). It's going to be ugly for even the educated. Worse, as bad as such a future will be for the educated, it's going to be cataclysmic for those lower down the education scale.  Someone perhaps capable of graduating high school or perhaps completing a couple of years of community college is going to find that he is competing for jobs with men and women who are much smarter than they.  

The "solutions" (universal pre-school, 'free' community college) are going to bump into biological realities.  And fast.

If you want to see a real horror movie, forget about a guy in a hockey mask. Check out this video, entitled "Humans Need Not Apply."

This is where the UBI may come in.

The EU is already looking at the future - a vote was taken this past year in Brussels to examine taxing robots as they enter the workforce as a means to take care of the human workers they will displace.

The research that Altman proposes will provide random people with $1000 per month, over five years. People given the money will not be required to do anything in return for it, and at the beginning and end of the 60 months, people will be interviewed on their behaviours and choices. Did you work? Doing what? What did you spend the money on? 

How did you pass the time?

The sociological research question implied is: without work, will our lives have purpose? Is an intrinsic part of humanity to create things? To do things other than entertain ourselves? The ultimate leaving behind of any sort of work, and what its effects on how people see themselves is a critical question.

But the question that is unasked is this: What sort of impact will it have on the tiny number of 'producers?' Producers, not in the sense that Republicans talk of "makers and takers," but of those whose job it will remain to come up with ideas and visions? That shrinking set of individuals will potentially have enormous power and control.

I'm reminded of the image of the future from HG Wells's The Time Machine. The protagonist - never actually named - goes far into the future, and encounters two creatures. One (the Eloi), look like perfectly formed, beautiful human beings. They cannot speak and lack much more than the sort of intelligence one might expect of a domesticated animal.

The horrible truth is revealed, of course.

In our real future, under a UBI, when the overwhelming majority of people don't have to actually do anything to acquire survival, will we lose as the Eloi did?

And what sort of Morlocks will tend to us? 

Steve Wozniak recommends to be extra nice to his dog. But will our future Morlocks view us with compassion?

The history of mankind is not encouraging.

Are You Prepared to Fight Back? Do You Think He Knows? Then Don't

I've been trying to avoid saying anything too political recently. Really, I have. I usually feel better at the end of the day, and I suspect, people I interact with do as well.

Wanted to write something today that was decidedly non-political. For example, Blue Jay RF Jose Bautista (Joey "Bats" (sic)) went 0-4 yesterday, lowering his batting average to .203 and in the course setting a single-season team record for striking out. He's in striking range of the Mendoza Line. Thought that looking at his chances could be fun.

Not to flog/promote it too much, but I participate from time to time on Quora, which is a question-and-answer site. There is any number of topics ranging from "Why shouldn't I go into a pub wearing Arsenal gear?" to "How do I obtain number plates for my car in California?"

I highly recommend it if you want to look for answers or get riled up over Colin Kaepernick.

Anyways, I have a couple of hundred "followers" who will sometimes submit questions directly to me. My areas of knowledge are mathematics, French language and politics, and the American right wing. 

Today, I got this peculiar question:

How do I piss off Trump supporters?

For the record, I am not a Trump supporter, but to many, "conservative" and "Republican" are synonyms, and in any case, all of us on the right are viewed monolithically as backers of the Orange One.

There is a lot of anger in the country, and too many people have given up talking to each other, and instead now simply look to irritate each other.

Not that I am against gratuitously pissing off people - just ask any one of my siblings. And I do, at times, get some guilty pleasure 'trolling' friends. So I am not above this.

But I decided to take a different approach to answering. Many of you who read my comments here might want to know how to piss off Trump supporters, so here is how:

Wake up. Spend a few extra minutes with your dog - maybe even give him an extra treat after you take him out.

Go to work. Contribute something to the company’s mission. Offer to support a colleague in some project that he or she is working on. 

On the way home, keep your eyes open looking for someone who seems to be in some distress, or looks like he needs help, or is just having a bad day. Walk up to that person and smile, say hello, and wish them a nice day. If they need help, help them.

When you get home, instead of scolding your kid, tell him something about himself that you admire or that makes you proud. 

Instead of finding a short-coming of your spouse, say that you love him or her.

Vow to do something for someone that would not directly benefit you in any way, and who cannot do anything for you. Then do it.

Go to bed.

OK. I am not sure that any one of those things will “piss off a Trump supporter.” They might. They might not. I’m not a “Trump supporter,” so I just don’t know.

But here is what they will do:

Make a positive contribution to the mission of your employer, and support someone who works with you.

May make a small difference in the day of someone who needs it. Who knows - your smile and kind word may be the only decent thing that happens for that person today.

Give your kids a sense of self-worth and confidence.

Remind your spouse of why they chose to be with you.

Improve the world in some small way

Even if you fail in your goal to irritate someone you, in all likelihood do not even know, it’s still a pretty good day.


By the way, given Bautista's batting average, If he finishes up with two hits in his final 19 ABs, he will break the Mendoza line. Given his current batting average, that's about a one in four shot.

I will be pulling for him

Once I Was Seven Years Old...

Once I was 7 years old

My momma told me:

Go make yourself some friends or you'll be lonely

I was yesterday driving back after taking my son to his weekend Chinese school. As half of his ancestry is Chinese, I want him not to forget or lose connection with that half of his heritage, and so he spends a couple of hours each Sunday there. As a young child, he was somewhat resistant - what little boy wants to spend time at the weekend in a class room when just beyond the glass is a world of slides, swing sets, and round-a-bouts? As he's gotten a bit older, he's much more keen on the idea. But this is really a story for a different day

Among the many ads on the radio (why do the stations seem to co-ordinate the times that they will all run the same "Come to Mattress Firm for 3 years same as cash on a new Stearns and Foster" at the same time? I am sure that there are 'big data' being deployed to help), a somewhat catchy, if cheesy pop song called "Once I Was 7" appeared. I'd not heard it before; it's not a great song, but the lyrics provide some introspection, and the little chiming bell sounds bring a bit of poignancy.

The singer - Lukas Graham - describes the views of a person at seven, 11, 20, 30, and then 60. At seven, advice given from a parent to make friends. At 30, having left some of those friends behind as time passes. And then at 60, looking somewhat cynically backwards, wondering if his own children will come to visit from time to time. 

Go and make yourself some friends, or you'll be lonely

Our son this year has reached and left behind two of the mile-posts at seven and now 11. He's entered middle school, and moved to a new school in our Noe Valley neighbourhood. 

We've moved about a bit in his brief life - it's been an adventure, first in the Bay Area, then suburban New York, on to Paris, and now back in San Francisco. While providing many new experiences and opportunities, our somewhat peripatetic lifestyle has meant more than a few hellos and goodbyes for our son.

I had some thoughts last year about how at times as a parent, you catch glimpses of your own life's experiences in shadows that the dance of your child's life cast on the wall:

One cannot help see in your child flickering glimpses of the past - of the road taken, how it played out.  But also, of the choices not made. 

Some of those choices turned out well, but not all of them. And therein lies one of the most difficult challenges of being a parent. 

When you see an opportunity where a collision is (almost surely) down the road, when do you choose to act? Are some lessons worth learning (a second time), and which are best so that the learning is virtual rather than real? 

When I was younger, my own personality could have been accurately described as aloof. 

I've never been an extrovert, and have struggled virtually my entire life trying to socialise with strangers. "Making friends" was never a long suit, though I always have recognised it as an extremely valuable strength. Just not one that I have.  I'd like to think that I'm much better - more "friendly and outgoing" now than I was, but still, my wife is the gregarious one in our family. And I'm not a close second. 

As a kid, my older brother was far, far more naturally personable - many friends, homecoming king in high school. It all looked so easy from my side of the virtual window peering in. 

Being able to "fit in" is an extremely valuable life lesson; one I've tried to instill in my own son, with mixed results.

As Alastair began his school year a few weeks ago, I tried to counsel him that he is in a new school, and the move provides one of those rare opportunities in life to re-invent yourself. No one really knows you. There is no backstory. No written pages. No defined role that you have to play. He is in a sense, free to make his own story again.

(As a kid, we moved on a few occasions, and each time, I had more or less the same chance).

Marins des eaux douces

I dropped him at his school this morning, as I do most mornings, on my way to catch the train to work. A couple of his classmates greeted him, smiling. "Hi Alastair! How was your weekend?" He seems to be making friends in his own quiet way. He's not lonely.

Alastair's mother is far more gregarious than I am - someone who, growing up, easily made friends. That was never my long suit, and I guess our son is more me than her at this point. He's unlikely to ever be, like my brother was, the type to be Homecoming King and the life of the party.

And as time goes by, I think it's OK. He makes his small circle of friends, as I did. And he's happy in his place with the friends he has, and with his books and his stories.

Sailing on the sea of adolescence is difficult. Which way should I go? Are those storm clouds over there? If I get into trouble, who on my 'crew' can help? We all navigate these situations that are not, as the French say, "eaux douces." 

I worried a lot when our son was seven about making friends. At 11, I am less worried that he's going to be lonely, however.

Friday Night Jazz

Friday is here. Friday afternoon. Despite the way we feel each Monday morning, it always does arrive. 

Eventually.

I'm feeling a bit "random" today, so nothing too coherent or involved to add, so I thought I'd just offer some short-takes.


The Sky Already Fell

As those who read from time to time know, while I am increasingly less interested in sports, I do remain a baseball fan, and my particular team is the Toronto Blue Jays. They've made it to the playoffs in two consecutive years (after more than 20 straight years of not even pretending to contend). The've in fact twice made it to the American League championship series. And truth be told, twice embarrassed themselves with poor showings both times - going down 4-2 in 2015, and 4-1 last year.

This year, the team is almost surely going to accomplish the feat of transforming in a single season from playoffs to last place. 

Last night, the Jays lost (again) in extra innings. The team is now 5-14 in extra innings games. This is far and away the poorest showing of any major league team - no other team has even lost 10 such games.


The Sky Already Fell, Take Two

No one better exemplifies the nearly free-fall than former slugger and all-star Jose "Joey Bats" Bautista. Bautista was made famous a few years ago for leading the AL in home runs in consecutive years (a team record 54 in 2010, and then 43 more in 2011), receiving a Silver Slugger Award in each.  More recently, he is famous for being punched in the face and receiving a less prestigious Black Eye Award from Rougned Odor.

Bautista this year is battling to stay above the Mendoza Line - currently winning the battle with a .205 average (he went 0-5 last night, inching closer). 

According to data at ESPN.com, Baustista, the proud owner of a -0.7 "WAR" (wins above replacement - a statistical measure of how much better or worse in pure wins/loss estimated compared to a hypothetical 'replacement' player who could be plucked off the waiver list). This means that Bautista is the worst player in Major League Baseball, at least by this metric.

Another First to Worst.

Ironically, the year he hit his 54 homers, Bautista won the Blue Jays' "John Cerutti Award for displaying goodwill and character."  No joke.

Going the Other Direction

I spent my high school years living in Cleveland, Ohio. During that time, I passed many evenings (and weekend afternoons) watching the Cleveland Indians play in their massive, hulking, crumbling stadium. The team was comically awful, and the crowds so sparse you could hear individual insults being yelled at the players from the seats on the other side of the field.

Good times.

Well, Toronto decided that - in order to pay Bautista $17, $18, and $20 million for this, next, and the subsequent year, they needed to let go of their other slugger, Edwin Encarnacion. (EE was so poor in Toronto at third base, his nickname became E-5, made all the more poignant because he actually wore number five on his jersey).

Encarnacion is not having a great season in Cleveland (he's currently hitting .252 with 34 home runs after a very slow start), but it's a damned sight better than Bautista. At least EE is better than a "replacement" player (WAR is +2.2).

I wonder if the Toronto GM (Mark Shapiro) would make a different decision if he knew then what he does now? He came from Cleveland, so is it a case of divided loyalties?


Going the Other Direction, Take 2

Speaking of Cleveland, the Indians last night won their 22nd consecutive game. In dramatic fashion. The Tribe trailed 2-1 going to their last ups in the ninth. Down to their last strike, rising star Francisco Lindor looped a double over the glove of left fielder Alex Gordon, who came *this* close (hold your thumb and forefinger close together) to ending The Streak. Gordon claims that the ball glanced off the top of his glove.

That's how things go when you're winning.

I still have family back in Cleveland, and others who live elsewhere, but still follow the Indians, and they are (understandably) excited that maybe this is the year after a 70-year winter of darkness.

The playoffs are a crap-shoot (just ask last year's Red Sox, who on paper should have clobbered the Indians, but in fact, were not only sent home by Cleveland, but were sent him in a sweep) of course, and it's possible that some team will get lucky in a short series and beat the Tribe.

But 22 in a row? And during that time, the Indians not trailed their opponents in 201 of the 207 innings played. They have ended an inning behind exactly six times over three weeks. They've outscored their opponents by a 142-37 margin. Aside from last night, there has been very little drama as they've simply ground opponents into mush. Scarier still for their foes, the Pythagorean W-L formula of Bill James says that the Indians' AL-best 91-56 record actually underestimates how well they team has played. Given their runs scored and runs allowed stats, Cleveland could expect to be 99-48 right now. 

Read that again.

The Indians have only played six extra-inning games (winning four of the six), the fewest in the major leagues.

It's Cleveland still, of course. And a crushing, shocking defeat is still possible out there. Likely, perhaps even.

Lights, Camera, Scandal



Speaking of shocking results, the French this spring elected something of a fresh face to be their president; 37 year-old Emmanuel Macron, whose previous experience in politics was a very, very brief turn as the economics minister for the failed quinquennat of François Hollande, won out over a field of damaged opponents to take up residence in the Elysee Palace.

Macron is known for his florid speech, youthful handsomeness, and Mrs Robinson-esque wife.

Turns out, there may be something to how he looks so good, even for a relatively young man.

The French newspaper Le Canard Enchaîne (who broke the scandal that destroyed François Fillon - his English wife was on the public payroll for a no-work job that would be right at home in New Jersey) reported that Macron has billed the French state $10,000 per month for makeup.

Read that again.

While only his hairdresser knows for sure, that strikes me as a lot of rouge for a man.

This is not really raising many eyebrows in France, and Macron's defenders point out that this is not in fact, out of line for les présidents. For example, Hollande, spent more on his haircuts and makeup, and anyways, Macron spends a lot of time in front of a camera. Et donc, quoi?

On the one hand, Hollande is balding, so not sure why he needs to spend so much on a hairdresser. Point: Macron. On the other, Hollande has the charisma of a failed breeding experiment involving a toad and a pig, so one might argue that he needs the help.

Oh la la, c'est compliqué.

Bring it on Home

Finally, Hollande was back in the news this week, finally sitting for an interview with the French news press. Hollande is having some difficulty, apparently, coping with his ignominious rejection, at times citing ruefully how he imagined leading the state towards the glorious 2024 Olympiad.

But the interview reads as far more introspective - and reality-based - than the current book tour that his American partner in electoral failure (Hillary Clinton) shows.

Quoted:

Je devaits désormais se consacrer à d'autres missions. J'essaie d'être utile à la place que j'occupe.

(Going forward, I must dedicate myself to another purpose. I am going to try to be useful in whatever the future brings)

If only Mrs Clinton could just dedicate herself to something "useful" - and no; making money pushing a finger-pointing book is not really useful beyond reifying biases of her base.

Happy Friday to all.....