Different Minds, Same Result

My sister and I have very different political perspectives. Though registered as Unaffiliated, she's quite left-of-center. I'm strongly Republican. She chose to vote in today's Democrat primary. Oddly, we both voted for the same option on the ballot: No Preference.

I'd bet a lot of folks made the same choices today for the same reasons.

Don't Sing Happy Birthday

In a convergance of two blogsites, the Blogfather points out a birthday, and the Volokh Conspiracy explains why you might not want to sing your greetings.

Good Sports, Bad Sports

Tonight the NBC Nightly News had a heartwarming story of good sportsmanship. I couldn't find the NBC story on-line, but here is an ESPN account of the game. In a critical league softball game between Western Oregon University and Central Washington University, Sara Tucholsky, a Western Oregon player (who had been hitting .088) hit a home run with two runners on base in the top of the second inning. As she rounded first base, she stumbled, tore ligaments in her knee and collapsed in pain, unable to continue. By the time anyone realized something was wrong, the two runners had crossed the plate and Sara was the only WOU player still on the field of play. Umpires ruled (incorrectly as it turned out) that if Sara could make it back to first base the team could substitute for her and she would be credited with a two-run single, but if a WOU coach, trainer or player touched her before she got to the base, she would be called out.

As WOU coach Pam Knox was preparing to make the substitution that would wipe out the home run but save the two runs, Mallory Holtman, one of the CWU players and a star of the team, asked if she could help Sara. Umpires agreed she could, so Mallory and other CWU players carried Sara around to touch all the bases and complete her home run.

How was Mallory rewarded for her good sportsmanship--did her team come back to win? Read the ESPN account to find out how the game turned out.

This contrasts to a game that took place much closer to here. Read the account of a different approach to sportsmanship here.

Some people seem to believe that any actions are justified in order to win a game, and some people don't. Mallory Holtman has her idea of sportsmanship and Duke Coach Sean McNally has his.

Worst Case Scenario

Here is another case for the Worst Case Scenario folks. Who'da thunk you could send an innocent text message to your wife and you end up a suicide in jail.

"She showed the message to her father, who angrily called Ramazan and accused him of calling his daughter a prostitute. Ramazan went to his wife’s home to apologize, only to be attacked by his wife, her father, and two sisters. He was stabbed in the chest but succeeded in grabbing a knife, stabbing his wife, and getting away. Emine died of her wounds; Ramazan killed himself in jail.

Texting can be dangerous.

A Different Vantage Point

The movie Vantage Point is about an assassination plot on the President of the United States told from the viewpoint of a number of different characters. The action takes place in Salamanca, Spain. I visited Salamanca 25 years ago and spent several hours visiting the old university town and its magnificent Plaza Mayor.

My travelling companion and I stopped and enjoyed a "cold one" at one of the may cafes around the plaza and took several photos of the picturesque site.

What makes this a different "vantage point" is that these pictures show how I remember the Plaza mayor--as a very large open space. This last picture was taken with a very wide-angle lens (21-mm) and thus distorting relative sizes. This is quite evident when you see the actual plaza in the movie. It wasn't nearly as large in the movie as I remember it. I guess it is a matter of vantage point.

March Madness

Tennessee over Wisconsin, UCLA over Texas, then UCLA over Tennessee. You can't win the pool being safe.

Clemson Wins ACC Championship!

There is no reason to play the ACC championship game this afternoon. Clemson should be declared the champion. After all, in the first meeting between the two teams (the primary) Clemson was ahead 50.3% to 49.6% with one second left in the game. In the second meeting (the caucus) Clemson was ahead 55% to 45% with seven minutes left in the game. Why play a third game? We should forget about all this internecine squabbling, declare Clemson champion, and get on to the Big Dance.

Stamey's Gets Some Blog Attention

Al Dente blog liked it. I agree that Stamey's is very good, the second best in town. (from the blogfather)

Nightmare Headline!

Could it get worse?

More Global Warming Doubts

Rand Simberg points to more fodder for Global Warming skeptics.

Miklós Zágoni isn't just a physicist and environmental researcher. He is also a global warming activist and Hungary's most outspoken supporter of the Kyoto Protocol. Or was.

That was until he learned the details of a new theory of the greenhouse effect, one that not only gave far more accurate climate predictions here on Earth, but Mars too. The theory was developed by another Hungarian scientist, Ferenc Miskolczi, an atmospheric physicist with 30 years of experience and a former researcher with NASA's Langley Research Center.

He also points out good reasons to be skeptical of this and similar stories as well.

Rove's Humor

Thanks to a post from Sue Polinsky about a speech Karl Rove gave at the U of Iowa, we see Karl's sense of humor:

Radio Iowa also reports one audience member told Rove that MSNBC's Keith Olbermann named him the "worst person ever."

"Ever?" Rove joked. "Yea, worse than Hitler, worse than Stalin, worse than Mao and worse than the person who introduced aluminum baseball bats.

You got to love that.

Car Lust

I enjoy the Car Lust blog so nuch I put it on my check-every-day list. With their call for open entries on favorite cars, I hereby propose my favorite. I'll eschew my Corvettes and go with my most fondly-remembered car.

When I was finishing college, My mother promised me a new car for a graduation present. I lusted for a Corvair Monza Spyder. My mother's uncles owned the Studebaker dealership in town so we had always had Studebakers. She was at the dealership one day and mentioned to one or the salesmen that I wanted a Monza. He told her he was taking a year-old Studebaker GT Hawk in on trade for a new Avanti and I might be interested in that car. I went by to see it when it came in, and it was love at first sight.

(Side note: The dealership also handled Mercedes-Benz. When I went to see the Hawk, they had a 1955 SL300 gullwing Mercedes on the floor as well. The Monza would have cost $2,500 or so, and the Hawk was about the same. The Mercedes was, as I recall, $5,500 but it might as well have been a million since it was way out of our budget. Some years later gullwing coupes were worth $500,000 or more. Another lost opportunity.)

I drove the Hawk for four years. Things began to go bad on it that were difficult to get fixed since Studebaker had left the car business in 1966. The last summer I owned the car, 1967, the windshield wipers didn't work, and it was only because that was the driest summer in years in Maryland that not having wipers wasn't a critical problem.

In late summer of '67 I bought a new Plymouth Belvedere and sold the Hawk to another lieutenant at Aberdeen Proving Ground, for $500. He was moving to Colorado, and a week or so after he left I got a letter from him. I was expecting the worst, but he was a happy camper. He had taken the car in for service when he got to CO and had been offered $1,200 for it on the spot. He was thrilled, and I was happy to have had my Hawk "fix".

The above photo was taken at Rehobeth Beach DE and includes my first wife Ann, our friends the Bianchi's, and Punkin the dachshund.

I've owned a number of interesting cars: two Corvettes, A BMW, a Lotus, a Jaguar, and several Mercedes, but the Hawk is my all-time favorite.

Scary News

I don't usually write about politics, so classify this as a "management" post. The News & Record had a very scary line hidden in this article this morning:

"But on Thursday, Matheny said a motion might not be necessary. City Manager Mitchell Johnson was moving faster than expected on finding Miles' replacement, he said."

Why scary?, because the intimation that the search for a city attorney was being conducted entirely by the City Manager, without input from other sources.

One of the things I learned early in my management career was the power that groups have to make better decisions than individuals make. In an executive development program, I was exposed to the "Crash in the Desert" exercise in decision making. This article outlines my experience perfectly. They write: (emphasis added)

"We played the "Desert Survival" game where the challenge was to decide how to best survive an airplane crash in the desert. Each person had to rank 10 items in order of their importance to survival and decide whether to stay with the plane or try to walk for help. After each person made his or her decisions, we were put into small groups to make the same decisions as a group." "What amazed me was the outcome ... ALL of the groups scored higher than the highest scoring individual.

My boss was an ex-military guy who was quite confident about his survival skills. Even he did not do as well as the groups.

Mitchell Johnson is undoubtedly a smart person, but that doesn't mean he will make the best decision in this case. I think the city has suffered from other decisions that were made by one or two people without input from a broader point of view. (I'm thinking of David Wray's dismissal.) I hope the City Council and Mitch Johnson will realize that a group of people will almost always make a better decision than one individual will and will convene a group to help with the selection of a new city attorney.

National Championship Team?

Youngstown State, Akron, Northwestern, Washington, Minnesota, Purdue, Kent State, Michigan State, Penn State, Wisconsin, Michigan. These are the teams Ohio State's football team beat this season. Only one (Purdue at #20) was ranked in the top 20 polls when they played OSU. Is this really the schedule of a potential National Champion? I don't think so.

The Greatest Car Commercial

The Blogfather has recently made several references to car commercials (here and here). As to car commercials, I'd nominate this one as the greatest of all times. OK, its not your run-of-the-mill ad. It was an LP record (you remember those, the round flat things with the groove on each side.)

I remember listening to this in a fraternity brother's dorm room at Clemson 1962, and from that point on, I lusted for a Corvette. I subsequently owned two, a '73 and an '84 and loved both of them. I wish I had a new one now! So I don't know about from an artistic standpoint, but from the point of commercial success, this ad did pretty well.

There is more about Arkus-Duntov, the Father of the Corvette, here.

Bored?

Need a little excitement in your life? You might want to try this job.

(Particularly check out about the 2-minute mark.) "There's only three things I've ever been afraid of: electricity, heights, and women, . . ."

Thanks, City

My driveway goes into Henderson Road, which is not curb-and-guttered along my yard. About every ten years or so, the junction of the driveway and the street gets washed out and a ledge of several inches develops at the street pavement. I thought I'd see if the city could do anything to help the situation, so I called to inquire. I got out the trusty Blue Pages in the phone book and under the city listing was a number for Shoulder Maintenance, which sounded like it might be the right place to start.

I called, and after listening thru several minutes of recorded messages, I got to talk to a live person. After explaining my problem, the lady said she'd have a supervisor come by and look at the situation to see what could be done. She said the supervisor would call me with a report.

Within an hour, a gentleman called to say he'd looked at the driveway, and he could authorize a truck to come by and put some gravel in the low spots, filling-in a couple of feet from the street, if that would be satisfactory. He said if I wanted concrete apron or curb/gutter work, that was above his authority. The gravel was just fine I said, and I thanked him for his quick response.

Before long, there was a dump truck in my driveway dumping gravel and a crew smoothing it out. They did a very nice job and quietly left.

It took less than two hours from first phone call to completion. Thanks for a job done promptly and well.

Here is what the repair looks like.

Remembering Friends Lost

Ed Cone remembers the 25th Anniversary of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. Some time ago I came across the web-site for the Virtual Wall which has a lot of info about men who were killed in Vietnam.

I often recall two friends who were killed there. Tommy Rose was from Greensboro and we were friends from church and scouting. That's Tommy on the left.

Robert Walden was a friend and fellow menber of the Pershing Rifles drill team at Clemson.

I think of them both often, and we should honor their sacrifice for our country.

Second Chances

I believe in second chances. I am personally glad that people get them. Yesterday, while following some links on the Beauchamp/TNR story I came across a phrase, "flat ass rules", that was new to me: I googled it and found this document which contains the lines:

3. Leadership
Understand the difference between a mistake and a breakdown in discipline. Identify, correct, and lead through mistakes. Utilize every ounce of your leadership to stamp out discipline lapses. I neither expect nor demand unending perfection. Perfection is attainable, but only for select periods. I do demand consistent
excellence and a dedicated commitment to improving the readiness of our Squadron.

I like that line "Identify, correct, and lead through mistakes." I don't fully understand the phrase "breakdown of discipline", but if I translate it to mean failure to follow proper procedures, this makes a lot of sense.

Today Michael Yon has posted a great essay on second chances.

All this reminded me of our current city management/police department situation. I've come to believe that Mitch Johnson needs to go as city manager, but maybe council candidate Bill Knight has a better idea. Bill has suggested finding some other spot in city government for Johnson, and I first thought this was just a way to avoid firing him.

On second thought, maybe it is the best way. Mitch has many supporters who believe he is a talented and valuable manager. He made a serious mistake in the way he handled the Wray situation, but perhaps he deserves a second chance. I could support giving him a choice of moving to some other open job with the city and letting him earn a second chance.

We need to find a solution to this mess, and I think Bill's suggestion has some merit.

Come on Guys, You Can Do Better

Ann Althouse linked to this article. It is a fascinating story, but I was struck by the following, "Ms. Gibson will receive the promised $15,000 reward from the seller, as well as a smaller finder’s fee from Sotheby’s, which the auction house declined to disclose." Let's see, doesn't the auction house get a 20% commission. That's $200,000 if the painting in fact sells for a million dollars. Surely Sotheby's can pony up more than a piddling couple of thou. In this case, I think they should split the commission more nearly 50:50.