The San Francisco Forty Niners were a pretty good team last year. They lost some very close games at the very end of the game. Not that the preseason means a damn thing but they finished the 2010 practice game schedule with a perfect record. Then they come out and start the regular season 0-5 and the focus turned to having Singletary's head on a platter. The Niners could have easily been 3-2 after the first five games. They then went 4-2 over their next six games and could have been 5-1 if they wouldn't have blown a game against the Panthers. My point being, they just didn't have the ball bounce their way when they needed to last season. Singletary was hardly the issue and isn't nearly as horrible a coach as many believe. Granted, I think Harbaugh is probably better, but the team is nearly made up of the same personnel (a year older and wiser) and the main difference is the ball has bounced in their direction this season. They have played in all close games but two of the nine and have won eight of them, and they easily could have won all nine. It just shouldn't be a surprise to all the analyst on Sunday morning. They should be smart enough to understand why the Niners have an 8-1 record.
My buddy AJ asked my pal Louie if he had some coffee last night while we were playing cards. Lou answered, "I have a fresh pot I made this morning".
American English is the only one that places the period inside the quotation marks with only one exception. When the last item enclosed inside the quotation marks is just a letter or a number then the period will go on the outside of the marks. The British are inclined to place periods and commas logically rather than conventionally, depending on whether the punctuation belongs to the quotation or to the sentence that belongs to the quotation, just as Americans do with exclamation points and question marks. I know the rules, the American ones, but it doesn't feel good when I follow them so I always place the period where I think it belongs and that is usually outside the quotation marks.
If you've only voted for the same party in every election in your life do you think you're being honest with yourself about your ability to compromise and perform unbiased evaluations?
If you answered "yes" to the last question do you think you're being honest with yourself?
When I was younger in my college days my friends and I used to play a drinking game called "asshole" (I've heard it called Mr. President too). It was played with cards and the crux of the game was based on a hierarchy system where the person in charge got to make all the rules and the power reduced all the way down to the "asshole" who had to do everything anyone else told him to do. The "President" got to take the best cards from the "asshole's" hand and start the round with an advantage over the other players and made it nearly impossible for the "asshole" to aspire to become anything more than "not the asshole". Eventually the power would shift and different people were assigned different roles. It was always interesting to watch someone that had been the "asshole" for the majority of the evening, pouring beers for everyone, doing silly tasks, giving up their best cards to the player in charge, finally obtain power. Then they would make all the rules so they would never lose power. And they could do that because the only real rule was the person in charge makes all the rules. It worked fine when everyone knew and followed the code that you don't take advantage of the system and rig the game to assure you never lose power. Once that occurred the game was ruined and all of us that were wise enough to know this knew the game was over. I never envisioned our American political system would end up like a game of "asshole".
I absolutely love this time of year when it gets dark early and it rains all day. I love the fresh, cool air and the smell of rain. I hate when it's one hundred degrees and hot and I remember those times when I turn my heater on and open my front door and stand there and look outside.
Do you know how close the next closet star is besides our Sun?
Do you really know why the sky is blue?
Last night with eight seconds to go in the third quarter USC lead Oregon by 18 points and found themselves punting to the Ducks. My buddy Landon informed the poker table that Oregon couldn't win if they didn't return the punt for a touchdown. The USC punter kicked it out of bounds (maybe he knew this formula Landon knew). So it was no surprise to any of us when the Oregon kicker missed a 37 yard field goal to tie the game with just a few seconds left. Oregon's fate had been determined nearly a quarter ago, they were destined to lose.
Cool story, bro.
I'm pretty much an "in the moment" type of guy. I don't say that to sound cool or convince you to live this way. I mention it to explain how I live. And anyone that knows me well and has involvement in my life and dealings with me understands this about me. It's not meant as a gimmick or some quirk to annoy people. It is what brings me joy and allows me to find happiness at a frequent rate. The now is the only thing we really know and the only thing we are guaranteed. There is a lot of good and happiness and miracle happening each moment and it is easy to not see it when focused on the future. So even though this is what I believe and pretty much how I live I still have to live in the real world. I know I'm going to Dinuba next Friday to watch a playoff game. That seems to contradict what I've been saying. When I won a cruise a few years back I planned vacation days from work, again seems to go against the grain. I know I will go to my mom's house on Thanksgiving and my aunt's on Christmas. I apply my "in the moment" philosophy as much as possible and when applicable to my life. However, I live around a lot of other people and there are times I have to interact with reality and abandon my personal preference as to how I wish everything operated. But I would still say I'm a "now" type of guy. This is how I view my libertarianism. I am totally for individual rights being the standard and as little government as necessary being the mark. However, I live in a country of hundreds of millions of people and on a planet with several billion humans. Not to mention billions of other life forms. Sometimes I have to be flexible and recognize there will be needs the government must fill. We must all pull together and invest in our youth, are health, our infrastructure, our exploration, our defense, our future. That's not very libertarian. I still think I'm libertarian I just live in the real world.
Every single week at 10:30 a.m. Pacific time on Sunday morning almost every single, if not all, NFL football game will be at halftime. That's pretty amazing if you think about it. It's an entertainment business. It's as much about football as a game of Monopoly is about the property. It's really about collecting money and everything else is just a device.
If more people watch one source to get their news than any other, how can that source call all of the other sources the "mainstream"? Wouldn't the main stream literally be the primary stream where most people got their water?
At most middle schools here in town the classes reach a level of 35 to 36 students in one class. I can rail on the public education system for a lot things. I've even argued for years that I'm not a fan of public education for various reasons, the fact your child receives an education simply based on the location of your home seems prehistoric to me. I could go on and on. However, if you as a parent accept the fact you send your child off to receive and education while occupying the room with 35 other twelve and thirteen year old's then you need to reexamine your expectations. And if you settle for anything less than truly educating your child, teaching them how to reason and grasp ideas and form their own opinions and study known ideas and formulas and techniques to have a better chance in the world, to have a better life than you, then you are failing your child if you allow them to exist in this environment. There is no one else to blame but yourself. You are responsible for your child. If you can only points fingers and make an excuse and feel apathetic and hopeless to change the system then you're hardly an example to an impressionable mind. When we settle for less than acceptable (36 kids in one class) at the cost of our children then we have lost our way.
This is my favorite stretch of the year. Literally right now. This week we head into the Thanksgiving week and most people have a shortened work week. The weather is perfect, football is on the tube, the food is great, friends and family in town, and when it's all over we aren't too far off from starting another stretch just like it followed by another holiday. Good times.
Quite often I remark about my life being some type of Truman Show. It's not really because of all of these remarkable things that happen that make me feel this way. In fact, it's the opposite. It's a bunch of unremarkably small things that seem strangely odd to me that make me wonder. Let me give you an example. Going for two in football is actually not even a decision almost every time it's done. Only toward the very end of the game when the coach must decide whether he wants to tie the game or win it does a decision arise. Every other time it is simply a formula. Yet, at all levels of football I see this mistake made time and time again. Even at the pro level where the coaches make millions they still get this wrong. And they have thirty dudes on the staff that are coaches as well. This makes me think it's just all part of the script. The writers know me and know this is something that will get my goat so they continually throw it in front of me. It's not because I'm so vain or delusional that I think my life must be a reality show, it's because it almost makes more sense to me. There is no way this many people, including professionals, could continually get this two point non-dilemma situation wrong.
Math isn't about numbers, it's about concepts.
Peace out.
You covered a lot of territory today. Well said. :)
ReplyDelete