Football Caturday, Week 12

My blog hasn't seen much activity over the past few months, most of my "creative" pursuits having been directed at Twitter (and to a lesser extent Facebook). However, there has been one unchanging feature every Saturday these past three months of fall - college football. Most of my Saturdays have gone by in infuriating followers and friends alike with numerous updates and tweets on games either in progress or riveting games that managed to finish miraculously in time to catch yet another kickoff.

I figured I should channel some of the frenzied material to a pre-gameday post, and see how much of it I got right. The least this will do is eliminate the cushion of hindsight, and it may even lead to fewer unfollow requests on Twitter!

Here then are some predictions for tomorrow's match-ups.

Michigan v. Ohio State: The big one, in the Big House. This series has consistently been one of the most talked about rivalries in the nation, but it seems like Rich's reign hasn't converted into too many riches for the Wolverines. Mich. are looking at a second straight losing season, while the Buckeyes have already wrapped up the conference and are looking forward to the Rose Bowl. A Buckeye Blowout. OSU.

Oklahoma v. Texas Tech: I caught one of the Sooners' previous games and was impressed with their tooth-and-nail fighting for points approach. This one should be a pretty even match-up, as both teams lug it out in Lubbock. I'm going with Texas Tech.

Purdue v. Indiana: Another rivarly game of sorts; Purdue has been in some sort of form lately, coming off a victory that crushed the morale of the Wolverines. Should be an interesting game to watch, although neither team has hopes of salvaging their season at this point. I pick Indiana, more because of the home advantage; also, if they manage to beat the Boilermakers tomorrow, they might just avoid bottom-place shame in the Big Ten (something Michigan will be hoping just as fervently to avoid).

LSU v. Mississippi: The PAC-10 calls itself the conference of Champions, but truth be told (and this does hurt a bit), this title should really be the SEC's. The conference that once boasted three teams in the nation's top 4 sees the Tigers take on Ole Miss. at Oxford. The Tigers are still smarting over what might have been a possible national championship season - I pick LSU to put one over the Rebels tomorrow.

Penn State v. Michigan State: Another interesting match-up. The Lions are coming off beating the Hoosiers, while the Spartans outsmarted the Boilermakers last week. Penn State is clearly the superior team here.

California v. Stanford: A match-up that will have any PAC-10 afficianado salivating. Although both teams have identical records, Stanford showed in their decimation of USC last week that they are quite the force to reckon with. Add the home advantage and the Cardinal should be home and dry (no pun) over the Bears. Stanford

Kentucky v. Georgia: Another great match-up from the SEC. The first signs of UGa's faltering season came when they barely managed to hold on against the ASU Sun Devils at home - tomorrow's match against the Wildcats will be another test. I pick Georgia, if only out of sympathy for the recent loss of their mascot.

Oregon v. Arizona: The PAC-10 matchup of the day. Definitely one to watch; Oregon have been the story of the West so far, but Arizona have quietly been climbing up the rankings and playing some good football. If Arizona can control Oregon's running game, they have as good a chance of getting close as anyone in the conference. Playing at their decidedly small home stadium (and not Autzen) will help no doubt. I still pick Oregon.

Arizona State v. UCLA: I have to do this. Might not be as interesting a matchup to the rest of the country, but Samson Szakacsy will be interesting to to watch as he starts for the first time. Both teams are trying to avoid a losing season, with UCLA trying to stay bowl eligible. At least a chance for ASU to play at the Rose Bowl (albeit in a non-glam game). Sentiment overrides reason to say ASU.

I'll be counting - you should too. Here's to Football Caturday!

More on Ideology

In my previous post, I might have led you on to believe that the worst that can happen in trying to label things into convenient categories based on ideology is a confusion on the social issues that you may or may not choose to care about. I was wrong. The worst that can happen is far worse - you could end up being plain wrong.

On a recent trip on the free shuttle to campus, a bunch of thoughts slowly took form. These three men boarded the bus at an intermediate stop, visibly inebriated. Their actions were harmless enough, and if ever they spoke to the rest of the passengers, it was in a friendly manner about the unbearable heat. All of this is innocuous enough - but here I will appeal to you, reader - if you've ever been in public transport with strangers who are obviously drunk, you tend to give them short-shrift and even harbour a couple of resentful thoughts towards the driver for having allowed them to board in that state. Whether you do it subconsciously (but mask your disapproval) or show your displeasure in public is unimportant. We just need the fact that you do.

Now I'm no expert on the whole liberal-conservative divide, but wouldn't it be interesting to think about who is more likely to express their disapproval (in a more active way than just wishy-washy stares at the bus driver)? If liberals are identified with make-marijuana-legal signature drives, would they also automatically embrace (the idea of) potheads on the bus? Would a conservative stick with a strict interpretation of the constitution and determine that since these people were violating no laws and were well within their rights, they had just as much of a right to ride the bus as anyone else?

The other example that I've had to grapple with (and that I now offer up) has fewer questions and more facts that are striking. Who donates more to charity as a group, conservatives or liberals? Nicholas Kristof had a telling article this last holiday season about this. Writing in the New York Times, Kristof agues on the basis of available data that specifically in the United States, and more loosely around the world, people or countries that are identified as conservative often end up giving more to charity as a percentage of their income than their liberal counterparts. This, even when you account for donations to religious institutions, of which you would think conservative money made up a major portion. An excerpt:

The upshot is that Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry and homeless, personally fork over less money to charity than Republicans — the ones who try to cut health insurance for children.

Quite an upshot indeed. So it seems that more conservative money than liberal money is going in to find solutions to those problems that world governments either have no time, or money, or motivation to focus on. Kristof also argues (later in the same article) that if the argument is made that conservative cash goes to mostly religious pursuits, then it is just as true that a lot of the liberal loot ends up funding museums, schools and universities that more often than not cater to the well-off rather than the needy.

There's an interesting personal anecdote related to this whole discussion: a friend once confided that he would feel more hopeful, were he to get stuck on the road someplace random in America, of eliciting a helpful response deep in red-America than in Bohemia (or its equivalent wherever he happened to exhaust his luck) - and not just because they know how to put wheels back on cars in small towns!

In the end, all this fun analysis seems to illustrate is that classification based on labels as random as liberal and conservative is an exercise in futility if you're attempting it for any purpose that is even half serious. We all need our biases to make judgement calls and survive in this world - but if and when you do have the time to think things out more seriously, it shouldn't be too much to hope that stereotypes will play no role in your decisions. Because contrary to all beliefs, the judgements you make with no encumberances of time or reaction do affect other people: their lives, their experiences, and in turn, their prejudices.

Of Ideals and Ideologies

To what extent does ideology transgress into our daily lives? It would seem that within the confines of our day-to-day existence, there is meagre opportunity to espouse ideology and take stands - however, it is quite often the case that we view the world through glasses tinted with the ideas that we chose to believe in.

Take fiscal ideology - are you conservative, or are you liberal? Is your present worry about who or what will pay for your next meal, or would you rather worry about whether the entire world has access to that same meal? It is often fascinating to see the subtle tussle between left and right play out with current circumstances contributing the players and the arguments, and never more interesting than when it comes to the question of budgets and balance sheets.

To the conservative, nothing seems more important than balancing that spreadsheet. No resources may be allocated without sources of revenue present and accounted for. This plays in well with the idea of a small budget, smaller oversight and still smaller responsibility. Before you set out to help the rest of the world, it is wise to cast a look around your own surrounding and ensure that things are in order. To summarize - you'd probably skip the orange juice for this week if you've just had to have your refrigerator replaced.

The liberal is different, of course. Revenue doesn't decide expense; on the other hand, spending is inevitable and a way must be found to balance the budget. However, place them on a table, programs versus balanced budget, and you can be sure the liberal will choose the former. So that organic milk isn't as much a lifestyle choice as it is a necessity - for your good, for the cows' good, or just for a better world - and you're just going to have to work harder for the monthly bonus.

Now this is enough of a problem with mundane everyday budget-balancing; consider then how much larger this conundrum is when the problems concern an entire group, an entire community, or indeed the whole world. Replace the OJ or organic milk with your favourite burning issue, and behold a question without an answer.

There are so many injustices and atrocities perpetuated in today's world - how many will you try to stop? How many will you raise your voice against? And how many will you just plain ignore, for lack of opportunity, willpower or a strong enough prick to your conscience? The answers to these questions may well classify you into your own little sliver of this spectrum, one which you can make your own and use to call out to others on either side as yet undecided as to their leanings and unsure about their bearings.

There are neither easy morals nor carved in stone rules that will offer you succour. There is but the limit of your willingness to listen and feel and understand, and the vast gap in which your decisions run the gamut from ideal to idiosyncrasy.

Of Human Suffering, Part I

Through history, man has enslaved his fellow beings in a quest for supremacy, a workforce, or some other equally misdirected reason. If it wasn't the dark ages and you weren't a serf toiling away in order to satisfy the lord's whims and fancies, you were stuck in the plantations of the new world and sold in markets like other common commodities. 

No age in recent history has been free of this scourge - if the 18th and 19th centuries had slavery and its European equivalent - the bonded labour demanded by the industrial revolution - the 20th century was no laggard either, with Communism, slave camps and human trafficking making up but a small part of the suffering that mankind has seen (and perpetrated upon itself).

But how long will these tales of exploitation continue? Will they go on forever, for it is in human nature to subjugate and suppress, just as it is to love and adapt? Or is mankind an essentially decent race that has led itself astray over the course of centuries of flawed moral and social rules?

To answer that, it is pertinent to begin from those ancient Greek philosophers, Socrates, Plato and (certainly) Aristotle. Broadly speaking, Aristotle subscribed to the view that the most important property of one's life was - not power, nor fame, nor wealth - but happiness, that elusive and unquantifiable ideal. Without going into philosophy headlong, it is pertinent to ask the question: would people recognize happiness if it announced itself and then appeared? Since when has mankind been able to define its measure of happiness?

Nevertheless, let us move on and consider the hopelessly misdirected rationalizations that people have offered at some point or the other in time for the human abuse detailed above. The Industrial Revolution had the best marketing going for it - the peasants were being given a chance to earn a fair wage, and work at jobs of their liking, and maintain a standard of living, and all that sort of thing. 

However, the enslavement of people across the Atlantic had star power to go with it; the founder of the nation of the free and the brave maintained slaves, whereas the man that wrote passionately about the ideals of freedom and individual freedom saw nothing untoward in availing of the services of enslaved individuals.

The title of most ironic, however, must go to Communism and the subsequent rise of labour camps through the erstwhile Soviet republics (though it must be noted that neither this phenomenon nor the method of dishing out suffering were restricted to that conglomerate of nation-states). Here was a system of governance that people demanded and overthrew governments for, in the belief that all would be equal under the new order. 

From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs - how could something with such a wonderful premise go wrong? But as history showed us, it was nothing but a Utopian ideal, a shroud that was used to adorn some of the most high-handed governance we have yet seen. Under the pretext of dissent, sedition and other equally colourful (but imagined) charges thousands (and maybe more) were sent to forced labour camps and often mass-graves.

All these things of the past, you shake your head and say. But are we better off today? Are we able to comment on that, caught as we are in the paradox of being unable to say anything about contemporary happenings until they can be judged through the objective rationality of time? What kind of system or society will it take to make us really happy?

Continues.

Note: This article does not take cognizance of a horror that eclipsed all others in its brutality and sheer inhumanity, and was a blot on the existence of mankind - the Holocaust, and all genocides before and after. These, I am strongly convinced, are driven by an insanity that is not a hallmark of human nature, and as such deserve to be construed as appalling examples of events that our systems of morality and society cannot explain.

Pop goes the Packing

Moving to a new city never had any particular enticements to me as a kid, but one of the few saving graces was the unending supply of bubble wrap that would make itself available for free use. The actual purpose of the material was always to protect the sensitive and expensive household items like the fridge, the television (yes, these were the times of one TV per household, not room), the computer's monitor (if you were one of those privileged kids).

Squeezing the little plastic bubbles until they made that 'pop' noise - there was a unique pleasure one got from the whole exercise. To the lay adult, looking on into a kid's world from the outside, it must have appeared a futile occupation in monotony, but how wrong that is - for bursting those little bubbles is a science unto itself, a field that to this day escapes documentation. Here then is an attempt to demystify the cult of Bubble Wrap ...

Myth # 1: Bubble wrap is an exhaustible resource, and is the primary cause of global warming.

Any kid worth their mischief will tell you that this isn't true, least of all because every appliance you buy, every finely finished piece of furniture that is delivered to your doorstep, comes wrapped in this universal substance. As for global warming - well, stop buying a TV everytime you see it marked down for sale.

Myth # 2: The funnest way to destroy bubble wrap is to place it on an even surface and jump up and down.

Now this one is plain untrue. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of having their thumb and index finger go sore with constant application of opposing pressures will attest to the fact that the most pleasure can be derived from choosing your victim in a carefully thought out way and attending to it with the utmost concentration and the correct compression index.

Myth # 3: You can go to jail for misusing bubble wrap when over the age of 13 in forty seven states.

I used to believe this one until I verified it for myself. Also, "misusing bubble wrap" has wholly other disturbing connotations.

I could go on clearing other fallacies and urban legends about bubble wrap, but I have to figure out a plan for my impending move ... and we all know what that means.

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Note: I wrote this one lazy Sunday afternoon for Sarmista, who surprisingly seems to think I can write. Or maybe she just had a pressing deadline (and an accompanying need). Either way, I accept cash, credit or Chipotle.

Fancy Footwear

So Bush had shoes thrown at him. Big deal - at least he wasn't made to feel unwelcome by scores of protestors who showed up on the streets of Iraq the next day in a show of solidarity with the thrower-of-shoes, but who really were just venting their own frustrations over the disconnect between the liberators and the situation on the ground. Heck no - according to W. man, the shoe thrower was no more representative of the popular sentiment on the ground than his former generals were of war strategy.

How right he is - most of Iraq now feels, unlike that famous (but currently incarcerated) QB for the Baghdad Boot-hurlers, that he should have thrown a couple of inches left and had a wee bit of speed added on.

What about the receiver? One can't help but wonder what goes through Bush's mind every morning as he wakes up, each new dawn bringing him one day closer to the end of a way of life that he (and I don't blame him here) has probably got used to.

Does it prey on him that he may be the least popular outgoing president in recent times? That people around the world give him, the gifted wordsmith who famously coined Axis of Evil and other legendary phraseology, the designation of devil incarnate? That his successor in the White House is a Democrat who, even by Republican accounts, is a worthy occupant of that building? That the man he followed into the presidency, not one very given to restraint in life public or private, is now being hailed as a beacon of progress and development in $1000-a-word speeches at the world's wealthiest ballrooms? Or, most cruelly of all, that he'll have to go to Thanksgiving dinners where there will always hang the unsaid stigma of having accomplished less in eight years' time than his old man did in half that time?

By his own accounts, Forty-three seems more than eager to get back to good 'ole Texas and settle back into a slower-paced life, one where he can devote his time to writing memoirs and raising money for his presidential library. But as they say (or if no one does, I do), loneliness is the handmaiden and harbinger of impending sadness by self-introspection.