Dave Hackinsack and I were commenting back and forth recently on the redundancy of Ford’s Mercury brand. It looks like Ford is coming to the same conclusion. There is some question about whether or not Ford would lose customers, but why would they since unless they have a Grand Marquis they can get the same car with a different logo on it for cheaper? Besideswhich, Ford’s brand name has never had a better reputation since I got my first learner’s permit. What do to about Lincoln, though. I forget that the brand exists, sometimes.
How student loans destroyed America. Pretty hyperbolic, but there is little doubt that the system has not produced the desirable results. At the same time, I can’t get on board with the notion that those without money should lack options by virtue of that fact. So what to do? Focusing student loans on those students entering areas of study where they are likely to be able to pay them back is one idea. Unfortunately, since we’re unwilling to limit college availability based on academic records, and we’re (rightfully) unwilling to limit college availability based on financial means, we’re kind of in a pickle.
Speaking of college, a while back we were discussing whether or not it is best to go to the most selective school that will have you or whether you should prefer to be one of the smarter kids in the room at a less selective institution. According to Study Hacks (who primarily cites Half Sigma), the former is definitely true. I think that this is very much right when you’re looking at the cream of the crop versus the next one down. I’m not sure if matters quite as much if you’re looking at a state’s flagship university versus its land grant school.
I’m not a very good Episcopalian, but things like this upset me. As much as I would like to have gay bishops if left to my own preferences, there has to be a degree of give-and-take with the Anglican Communion. Without a strong theology, our tradition is one of our key assets. That tradition runs through Canterbury. Just as I don’t want the conservatives bolting the more liberal Episcopalian Church for failure to abide by TEC’s leadership, I don’t want The Episcopal Church bolting (or getting kicked out of) the international church for failure to do the same. Broad Church, people, Broad Church.
From the “Everything Bad Is Good For You” files, being bad at relationships is good for you as is having enemies. In both cases, being put upon helps you learn how to deal with being put upon, in a sense. Part of me agrees, but the other part of me says that this is like saying poor is good for the soul. It’s typically said by people that have never been poor and poor people that are looking for some sort of silver lining.
Some feminists are objecting to Flag Football as a Title IX sport because there is no collegiate-level play. I agree with Christine Hurt that these views are misguided. In some ways, I think that Title IX has really given girls the better deal. Because there are fewer candidates per slot, it’s much easier for a girl for play sports at any given level than guys. In other ways, of course, Title IX does not adequately compensate for what male athletes have. Nor can it, really. I think that there is value in attempted equality, but I also think it’s a mistake to think that actual equality is an issue. My main concern about flag football for girls is if the girls like it. If they’d rather the money be spent on some other sport, go with the other sport.
The End Of The Wii Era? Perhaps, but I still say I have been hearing of Nintendo’s imminent demise since the Turbo Grafx 16 came out. The argument here is the argument I have always heard: the competing technology is better. And it usually is. But is it funner? Some gamers, I think, fail to understand what really makes Nintendo successful. On the whole, I do agree that Nintendo will have to step up its game.
Speaking of video games, do they cause less crime? As we all know, correlation is not causation. Even so, if the alleged criminal-inducing nature of video games were true, things would be looking a lot different now than they do. There are two schools of thought. One is that video games condition violence into the young psyche. The other is that they provide an outlet for natural aggression. It’s something worth keeping an eye on, but not something to get hot and bothered with.
Law & Order’s days are finally numbered and Jon Last writes about what we’ve learned from it. It really had an amazing run and found a very successful formula that automatically compensates for the inability to keep cast members indefinitely. It defined “formula” and yet also kept formula interesting. I shouldn’t even be using the past tense, though. L&O is simply being replaced with a new one taking place in Los Angeles. Besideswhich, there are currently three spinoffs still on the air in the meantime. Kind of odd that they didn’t go one more year to break the record.
Whenever an episode focused on a hot-button topic - environmental terrorism, Terri Schiavo, abortion, cop-killer bullets - you knew where the show’s sympathies lay. But the narrative point of view was that of the state, seeking prosecution of (guilty) law-breakers-which is an inherently conservative perspective. By forcing its writers to come at their biases from off-angles, the show’s forays into politics were lively and off-kilter, not hectoring and dull.
Cute. An alternative perspective is that the show created conservative “bad guys” that either had no real life analogues or were at best unrepresentative.
Comment by ? — May 28, 2010 @ 2:08 pm
Jonathan Last is an interesting case. A while back he wrote that the politics of The West Wing were laughable (Last is conservative, writing for The Weekly Standard and First Things) but that the show wouldn’t work without the liberal slant. And here he argues that the shows liberal slant made L&O better.
They created ““bad guys” that either had no real life analogues or were at best unrepresentative” of all stripes. It was a pretty common feature of the show. And I think that Last is right that it did make the show more interesting. Or rather, it was part of a larger thing the series did to stay interesting. With some shows, the bias makes it tired and predictable. Law & Order managed to avoid that better than most. I think in part because, as Last says, it is on a subject with an natural conservative bias. Contrast with shows about trial attorneys. Those shows have a natural liberal bias and they ride that for all its worth. Predictably, usually.
That’s not to say that I care to defend L&O’s treatment of conservatives. What seemed to happen is that early on the show got a reputation for being conservative (it did used to have that reputation) and the writers and such did what they could to make sure that they would not get that reputation again.
Comment by trumwill — May 28, 2010 @ 9:34 pm
Girl’s Flag-Football: the criticism of it is that it’s a “dead-end” activity. But nearly all high-school sports are dead-end activities, with most NCAA scholarships being nearly worthless. (If I recall the NYT article on them correctly, the average NCAA scholarship pays out about $1,200 a year.)
Also, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I’m a little skeptical of the value of sports. People say they teach teamwork, but where’s the proof? And how would you even measure such a thing?
Comment by Kirk — May 28, 2010 @ 9:44 pm
From the perspective of school sports, the best argument in favor of them is that (for boys, mostly) it channels energies. For some kids, it gives them a reason to go to school and, if not follow the rules, be more careful about not breaking them quite so flagrantly. Some kids are so talented that they can get away with anything, of course. But most kids aren’t.
Boys athletics draws disproportionately from troublemakers. Off-season athletics (PE for kids that are participating in a sport that’s not going on at the time) was hell and the source of a disproportionate number of bad middle school experiences. During the football season, though, these kids somehow managed to behave themselves. Relatively speaking. They had something to lose.
I don’t think it matters as much with girls. Most of the girl athletes I remember being pretty good students anyway. But fair’s fair and if we’re going to offer these opportunities to boy students we need to do so to girls as well.
Comment by trumwill — May 28, 2010 @ 9:56 pm
Perhaps this is just my geeky resentments showing, but I never understood why throwing or bouncing a ball well makes people college material. As for male athletes being troublemakers, the demographics of student-athletes don’t match the student-student demographics. The situation is probably opposite for women’s sports. I’ve heard, but don’t know, that every girl who’s on a HS crew team will get a scholarship for it. I’d bet that girls are better at gaming the quirks in the system than guys are. Not many dudes would trade play badmitton through highschool for a scholarship.
I wonder why ESPN is pushing soccer. I’d bet a “Lax” pro league would clean up, since it’s now the sport of athletic white kids.
Comment by rob — May 29, 2010 @ 7:00 am
Nintendo’s current problem is simple: the handheld games market (which is what saved them in the N64/Gamecube years) is tanking. Meanwhile, they painted themselves into a corner with the Wii, because most mainstream developers don’t like developing for it (too hard to port the game to other consoles) and much of their installed user base bought it for the pack-in tennis game and haven’t bought a game since.
Comment by web — May 29, 2010 @ 7:04 am
I’m wondering whether the cited article’s mention of Law & Order’s liberalism was a very subtle way of bringing up its racial bias.
Lincoln might be the biggest obstacle to kiboshing Mercury. Most current Lincoln-Mercury dealerships would find it difficult to survive selling only Lincolns. Adding Lincolns to Ford dealerships would be the most likely solution, but it would be expensive.
Comment by Peter — May 29, 2010 @ 10:21 pm
“Dave Hackinsack and I were commenting back and forth recently on the redundancy of Ford’s Mercury brand.”
The FT’s Lex column on this yesterday was titled, “Mercury in Retrograde”.
“Perhaps this is just my geeky resentments showing, but I never understood why throwing or bouncing a ball well makes people college material.”
Much of the economy is driven by b-to-b sales reps. A good sales rep (of whatever — widgets, cupcakes, etc.) generates more orders, which means more jobs for the folks making the widgets, etc. The typical profile for a successful sales rep is a first generation college grad who played a varsity sport.
“I’d bet a “Lax” pro league would clean up, since it’s now the sport of athletic white kids.”
I think there already is a pro league for Lacrosse.
Comment by DaveinHackensack — May 30, 2010 @ 5:02 am
I think there already is a pro league for Lacrosse.
The National Lacrosse League, home to such famous teams as the Colorado Mammoth and the Minnesota Swarm … or is it the Colorado Swarm and the Minnesota Mammoth? I sorta doubt we’ll be seeing NLL games on network TV or their highlights featured on Sportscenter. Not anytime soon, at least.
Just because many people play lacrosse doesn’t mean that anyone will care about a pro league. Millions upon millions of children play soccer, yet the MLS has hardly any non-immigrant fans, and for all ESPN’s hyping, the upcoming World Cup is likely to get TV ratings of next to nothing. Ridiculing soccer as a sissy sport has become fashionable. Contrast this with football: almost no one over age 21 actually plays the sport, yet the NFL has long since transcended the realm of sport to become a near-worshiped cultural icon. Any man who dares profess anything short of undying love for the NFL faces social scorn, not to mention rejection by women.
Comment by Peter — May 30, 2010 @ 1:55 pm
[Law enforcement is] a subject with an natural conservative bias.
Only in the real world. But of the L&O variety, prosecuting the Wrong Kind of White People is a liberal wetdream.
For what law enforcement looks like in the real world, watch the A&E series The First 48. You discover will discover that most murders are predictable and depressing, and most murderers look exactly like Half Sigma would predict.
I never understood why throwing or bouncing a ball well makes people college material.
I share the same prejudice, but the last formal study I saw found that student athletes had better life outcomes that non-athletes. I have not seen a comparison between student athletes and a similarly selective group of scholars.
Comment by ? — May 30, 2010 @ 4:07 pm
That goes to the point of what Last is saying, though. It takes a subject with a natural conservative bias and gives it a liberal tilt.
I don’t know if I agree or not with Last that the liberal tilt made it a better show, but the thing that the liberal tilt was a part of - the dramatic crimes with a largely white and middle class to wealthy defense roster - made the show much more interesting than it otherwise would have been.
If L&O didn’t have more interesting crimes and interesting criminals, it wouldn’t have lasted twenty years. Unlike say The Shield, which had action or NYPD Blue, which had character plots, L&O relied entirely on the crime to move the show forward. So the crimes could not be nearly as banal as real life crime the same way a show with the action of The Shield or the character development of NYPD Blue could.
Comment by trumwill — May 30, 2010 @ 7:10 pm
You owned a Turbo-Grafx 16? Most days I get the feeling it was only me…
Nintendo still has the most retail shelf space out where I live, though the Wii is second behind the DS.
Comment by Nanani — May 31, 2010 @ 12:26 am
I didn’t have anything, sadly, though it was probably for the best. My best friend Clint had a TG16, though. We spent far more time on the “inferior” NES.
Comment by trumwill — May 31, 2010 @ 1:11 am
L&O didn’t start the practice of having rich, interesting criminals. Agatha Christie was writing about nice people murdering each other long ago.
Dave, the b2b sales explanation actually makes some sense. Without the athletics scholarships, companies would just find another sales rep profile though.
Comment by rob — May 31, 2010 @ 5:32 pm
In two of my previous jobs, the sales manager played baseball at the collegiate level (for Division I universities). One of them had the advantage of being the company-founder’s son-in-law, though.
Good point about Agatha Christie. Columbo also spent a lot of time investigating wealthy people. Seems to frequently be that way in shows where there isn’t much action and most of the plot involves around the investigation. Shows with more action that are more cop and less detective shows, like The Shield or Southland, tend to have more mundane crimes.
Comment by trumwill — May 31, 2010 @ 5:42 pm
“Just because many people play lacrosse doesn’t mean that anyone will care about a pro league. Millions upon millions of children play soccer, yet the MLS has hardly any non-immigrant fans, and for all ESPN’s hyping, the upcoming World Cup is likely to get TV ratings of next to nothing.”
You can find college Lax on cable. In the early years of the NFL (before TV) college football was a lot more popular than the pro game. Not sure pro Lax will ever get popular, but worth bearing in mind.
The World Cup is going to get huge ratings globally. I’m not sure how it will do here. I stayed up late watching a few of the games last time around (or the time before, I forget). It’s actually somewhat entertaining, and the games go by pretty quick — very few timeouts. The stoppage time business is sort of funny in its subjectivity though.
“Ridiculing soccer as a sissy sport has become fashionable.”
Among whom?
“Contrast this with football: almost no one over age 21 actually plays the sport, yet the NFL has long since transcended the realm of sport to become a near-worshiped cultural icon. Any man who dares profess anything short of undying love for the NFL faces social scorn, not to mention rejection by women.”
The NFL is so popular because it is entertaining, and it leaves you wanting more: a four month regular season where your team plays one game per week, followed by a single-elimination playoff. Compare that to basketball, hockey, or baseball. I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that women would reject a man who wasn’t into the NFL. I bet there are plenty of European and Latin American guys in New York City, for example, who don’t watch the NFL (but do watch soccer) and have no trouble with the ladies.
Comment by DaveinHackensack — June 1, 2010 @ 12:11 am
The NFL is so popular because it is entertaining, and it leaves you wanting more: a four month regular season where your team plays one game per week, followed by a single-elimination playoff. Compare that to basketball, hockey, or baseball. I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that women would reject a man who wasn’t into the NFL. I bet there are plenty of European and Latin American guys in New York City, for example, who don’t watch the NFL (but do watch soccer) and have no trouble with the ladies.
I find the NFL about as entertaining as watching paint dry. A game consists of brief, widely separated bursts of action, surrounded by an endless array of commercials for cars, beer, mutual funds and limp-d*ck drugs. The NFL has long since become television’s whore.
Women like men who are football fans because that’s the normal thing for men to be, and because women are more conformist than men (see the fashion industry) they value conformity in men. Being a fan of such a violent collision sport also helps show that a man isn’t a sissy or coward.
Comment by Peter — June 1, 2010 @ 12:15 pm
To each his own, I guess, but the pause between plays in football gives fans a chance to put themselves in the shoes of the coordinators and try to think of what plays or defenses they should call. The commercials have nothing to do with the entertainment value of the game. I usually wait a half hour to start watching Giants games so I can fast forward through most of the commercials.
That said, although I watch every Giants game, I don’t watch many non-Giants games outside of the playoffs. I might flip on the fourth quarter of a random MNF game if the score is close though.
As for women, I’m skeptical that they have some widespread preference for football fans. But I can think of an empirical test of your theory. Have a guy wearing a generic outfit (maybe a sweater and jeans) hit on a number of women in bars and see how many phone numbers he collects. Then have him do the same thing wearing a replica jersey of the local NFL team and compare the results.
Comment by DaveinHackensack — June 1, 2010 @ 2:42 pm
I like football myself and always have, so finding a mate who liked it also was a big plus for me. But I hate NFL now, because it’s too corporate and sissified today due to all the rules to protect those 80 million dollar quarterbacks. I remember Tarkenton and Stabauch!
I follow Pac-10 college football now.
Comment by Maria — June 2, 2010 @ 10:19 am
I agree with this to some extent; the problem IMHO started with free agency and the jacking up of player salaries to ridiculous levels. Then the owners started demanding more strict rules so that their multi-million dollar player investments would be protected.
I have a standing bet with my husband that neither of the Manning brothers could play as successfully under the same 1970s rule book their dad played under.
Comment by Maria — June 2, 2010 @ 10:23 am