Spain’s Red Fury – Euro 2008 Recap

In retrospect it seems obvous that this tournament was about Spain. No one said anything about it of course. Everyone was too afraid to be disappointed, so we talked Turkey, marvelled at Michael Ballack, ooohed and ahhhed Andrey Arshavin, but in the end it was all Spain.  Has a midifeld ever been more dominant in a major tournament in the history of football?  They were incedible on defense and attack, they did what they wanted to when they wanted to do it regardless of their opponent.

Team of the Tournament: Spain.  The team of the tournament is not always the best team (I’d vote for Germany in the last World Cup), but this time around it is. Full marks for style of play, solid defense, nerves under pressure, depth and management.

Player of the Tournament: Marcos Senna – he shut down the whole continent in the back, was dangerous coming forward, and was just big, nightmare presence for the other team all over the middle of the field.  If you need to appreciate it on NFL terms, you can compare Marcos Senna in the midfield to what Deion Sanders used to be able to do to his half of the football field on defense. They both render a huge chunk of the field unusable for the other team.  For US Mens NAtional Team supporters, this is why young Michael Bradley is such an important piece for our future, his game is very similar to Senna’s (Michael is a bit bigger and a tad slower- but if you are going to be slower, it helps to be bigger) and we just saw what Senna did to Europe.

Keeper of the Tournament: Iker Casillas  – Spain. He didn’t face a lot of shots, but he made no major mistakes in the tournament, and his distribution launched some Spain counter-attacks. Also, I want to echo Andy Gray’s incredultiy in the final that the guy punched a ball out of the area all the way to the midfield line!

Manager of the Tournament: Luis Aragones – Spain. Whatever his personal flaws as a grumpy old man might be, every decision he made on the field was attack-minded, positive, and intended to ccreate more problems for the other side.  You could see it in every match that Spain took the lead. Rather than sit back, Aragones would bring on fresh men who would keep the ball on the other side of the pitch and cause a whole bunch of problems that opponents could not solve, much less ask any questions of Spain. In particular, if you look at the subs in the Italy game, they are aggressive chance-taking subs looking to get the game winner rather than aimed at sitting back for the draw.  He tossed superstar player in and out of matches well more than any of them are used to being disposed of, and they all went along with it because it was cear that the manager knew what he was doing.

All Tournamet Best XI:

S. Senturk (TUR)      R. Pavlyuchenko (RUS)

B. Schweinsteiger (GER)      M. Senna (SPA)     Xavi (SPA)    A. Arshavin(RUS)

G. Van Bronckhorst (NED)       S. Ignashevic (RUS)    P. Merteseacker (GER)    S. Ramos (SPA)

I. Casillas (SPA)

Bench:  D. Villa (SPA) F, C. Fabergas (SPA) M, D. Silva (SPA) M, D. Goaian (ROM) D, G. Buffon (ITA) GK

Somehow I doubt they’ll ask St. Thomas…

This has to be one of the weirdest stories of the day. 

DC v. Heller

Again, I write this as a person with no formal legal training, so you should take my opinions as one who could certainly be rebutted with things that I am simply not aware of.  The interesting thing to me about Heller is that it seems to be a decision on principle which is entirely consistent with Boumediene, but the decisions share only one voter in common.  I suspect that what we call the more conservative minded legal analysts will object  because Heller, is interpeeting what the words of the second amendment explicitly state, whereas in Boumediene there is more work in inferring an interpretation based on the Constitution and legal precedent.

However, just because the meaning of the second amendment seems clear to conservative scholars does not mean that it is clear. Obviously, reasonable people disagree about what it means — I happen to think the conservative justices are likely correct and obviously so does the majority of the Court– and since reasonable people disagree about what it means, the Court is left with the choice of (a) doing some work in trying to gather a majority opinion about what it means using sound judgment, drawing on relevant case material, and considering the practical applications of their decision once it is made or (b) deferring to democratic legislative bodies.

It is no secret that I am of the opinion that the second one is almost always a worse option than the first.  The Court’s institutional design makes it a unique body to work out such problems reasonably, and to then explain to us the reasons that justify the actual decision. The fact that there are 9 of them, they have a majority vote, and they are representative over a long period of time of the same professional class ensures that while some decisions may not sit well, none of them will be barbarous. Finally, I think there are very substantial reasons to think that the legislative branch is not democratic at all in the ways that dissenters glorify it as being when they defer to majority infringement on the law. More than anything, the law should be just, and I think experts in the law serving in what amounts to deliberative panels on managing the tradeoffs between coherence, fairness, constitutionality, practical enforcement, etc. are far more likely to understand these problems than the public or their representatives. The House Committee hearing on Guantanamo Bay and Interrogation Rules today evidences this in spades, as it is a very disheartening thing, even for a person with a fairly Downsian view of Congressman, to see a collection of representatives of the people who cannot collectively be preapred enough or precise enough to pin down people who, in all likelihood, uncontroversially ordered human rights abuses.

In short, in both Heller and Boumediene, the Majority of the Court rolled up their sleeves, did seem serious legal analysis about why it was essential for the fundamental legal guarantees of our government and the minority of the Court in both cases through a fit about the Court’s counter-majoritarian behavior.  When I think of guns, I think of violence in cities, and I think of the creepy people I met in Pennsylvania who have bought into the gun industry’s selling of being into guns as a lifestyle, and I cringe.  I also know many people who have a military background, who hunt, and who work in law enforcement that use guns responsibly. I am aware that htere are places in America that do not look like any place I have ever lived where the nearest police station is not near. I’m not sure if it is actually the legal case that the DC ban “goes too far” in violating the Second Amendment or not. I am also not sure if the Court’s reading of the second amendment is the best possible reading or not. However, it seems like a reasonable intepretation of both the amendment and of the ban. Further, I see it no different to say “it is wrong to say ‘better safe than sorry’ about people locked up in Guantanamo Bay for whom there is little to no evidence” and “it is wrong to say ‘better safe than sorry’ that because some people use guns for violent crime we should take them all away.”   Recognizing that the Supreme Court would in fact not be a better insitution if all decisions were just made by me, I can easily live with Heller. Like with Boumediene, it seems to be well-reasoned and it errs towards protecting the rights of citizens fromt he state. While both decisions will result in a lot of apocolyptic pronouncements from those who disagree with the opinion, I for one think we ought to be fairly pleased with both as pragmatic decisions that try to maximize the right kinds of priorities for us as free and equal citizens,

Train Song

Matthew Yglesias wonders about expanding train service as a way to offset fuel consumption.  I have often wondered if this is not a great opportunity to test out some private/public partnership strategies.  If passenger rail became a viable option for lots of commuting Americans every day, it would seem beneficial to open up competition between private carriers. The problem with this, as I understand it, is that the maintenance costs on the rail is prohibitive for private enterprise. It seems the government could make arrangements with companies to pay for rail maintenance and new construction and let the businesses manage their rail cars and service.  

If it did turn out to be a profitable enterprise (which I don’t know if it actually would) – one could imagine deals proposed for newer tracks that can carry more innovative rail designs, and for new routes where businesses have unearthed profit potential.  The government could, in exchange for lending some of its vast startup money, could recover some of the cost by having a small tax on tickets, so that users would be paying down money spent on infrastructure and new routes, and presumably, the government would decrease new spending in a plan like this because they would have to spend less on road maintenance and air transportation.  

Which brings me to my last point – it seems of interest to maximize the amount of shipping that can be sent over rail over the rail instead of via air or big rig.  If we did nothing else but reduce Truck traffic on American interstate highways, the value recouped from decreased  less wear and tear on the roadways, requiring less construction cost, perhaps even less emergency costs for truck related automobile accidents seem to me to be at least worth investigating.

 

Ultimately, all of the ways the government could help offset costs are also placed in the context of a larger good we are concerned with: decreasing energy consumption.  Any opportunity to decrease energy consumption is the best way to deal with the peak-oil world.  We will possibly never have an energy source as cheap as oil was when demand was low and supply was enormous - which means using energy will likely never be that inexpensive ever again. What will we do? What we always do in economy, we will do the best we can with what we have.  A lot of that will be solved by the market through the changing cost structure for each household, but any and all public policy that changes those cost structures favorably for the public interest should be on the table.   

Weak Man Alert!

What is the “weak man” fallacy? Well, you can read it explained here:

a person sets up the opposition’s weakest (or one of its weakest) arguments or proponents for attack, as opposed to misstating a rival’s position as the straw man argument does.

 

The Chronicle of Higher Education seems to have a nice example with this article on violent video games.  Rather than argue about violence in video games with, I don’t know, Dr. Craig A. Anderson of Iowa State University, whose APA fact sheet seems to include reference to many peer-reviewed articles showing empirical studies on the subject spanning many years, the author picks on Senator Clinton of New York and Mayor Bloomberg of New York City. They of course, do not have the best reasons of all the people who hold the same point of view.  

But wait, there’s not only a “weak man” fallacy, there is also a “straw man” fallacy. Did you catch it? Go ahead and look, I’ll put it below the jump.

New Montesquieu (In English)

For the first time in English, “The Motives That Ought to Encourage us to the Sciences” by Montesquieu. I will try and add some reflections here after I am less sleepy.

 

Len Bias…

At this point in time, even the most optimistic projection of Len Bias’ career would have him retired.  But this is the part of his life where I have the most optimistic hopes in “what if”.

If Len Bias were alive, he’d have been out of basketball for a while.  I’d like to have pictured him as someone who would have looked back at his youth with maturity, enough to shake his head and be thankful he survived to grow into a better stronger person, with a family and an appreciation for how hard life’s lessons are. I’d imagine Len sitting next to Darryl Strawberry at basketball games while they watched DJ, and with Ray Lewis at football as he cheered on his brother Keon Lattimore — being famous but talking about family, with the understanding of the responsibility they had learned with age. A trio of athletes with miserably arrogant youths tempered by the responsibilities and humilities that come with time and importance.  

I imagine Len Bias the Boston Celtic calling Joe Smith and Exree Hipp, telling them to learn from his mistakes, that he has better advice for them than Chris Webber and Juwan Howard.  I imagine him telling Chris Wilcox to stay in school.  I doubt they would have listened, it wouldn’t have been helpful for them at the time… but it would have maybe meant something to them when they became older as well.  Many profound life lessons people try to teach you only come to you later when you realize that what you have discovered was what someone else was trying to give you in the first place.  

Len Bias was a young man, a sports star who did drugs and God knows what else. I used to wish Len Bias the NBA star existed, as I am now older, I wish more that Len Bias had a chance to survive it. I believe in Len Bias, not in terms of scoring records or NBA titles… I believe that there was an older, wiser Len Bias who was killed that night by a child Len Bias so blind to his potential as a man–so different than the boy that the boy had no idea who he was risking, who he was killing with his actions.  

If you have ever been a Marylander, or even moreso, if you have ever been a Terrapin, you know the impact that this death had in making the world we inhabited.  Len Bias came up a lot still at Maryland, even in the late 1990’s. Even during the national championship year.  People who are deeply a part of the University of Maryland and invested in the school’s identity as part of their own carry two celebrities in their heart always:  Jim Henson and Len Bias.  We love Jim Henson, but our school has become the place that it is because of Len Bias. It is because of Len Bias that Gary Williams would call me and ask me if his atheletes were coming to class or if they needed straightening out. It is partially because of Len Bias that Maryland started to take a hard look at the fact that a healthy percentage of its non-athletes were also wrapped up in a hard partying culture that the University’s culture was too accommodating towards.  Len Bias didn’t make the Maryland honors program, the scholars program, or the James A Clark School of Engineering, but Len Bias made an administrative culture that would not dare to look idle when initiatives at the school were proposed to make things better.

Today, on the ESPN front page is a very nice article about Len Bias.  There is a link to the comments section for the article.  There are two common responses in the comments section. Theme one is the “I remember when…” comments, testimonials about the impact of that moment (when I heard the news, it was the first time I had ever heard of the University of Maryland). Theme two is the “Len bias deserves no pity/ Len Biases mother is exploitative of her children’s death” variety.   I’d like to think that the way that arguments between these two themes has played out shows the value of both a good college education and of maturity. I wonder if we react so strongly to Len Bias’ death still because we are so haunted by the difficulties of responsibility and judgment in our own lives, and the almost randomly harsh or lenient punishments that seem to accompany many lapses of the same kind.  We can react with overwhelming sympathy, or overwhelming disapproval, but I think that for most of us it is the burden’s of our own life’s importance to others and the continual challenges to make it work that teach us how to come to terms with such things more than anything else. Such things tend to arrive with time. Kent says to King Lear the great shame is that he got old before he was wise.  I want to believe that the great shame of Len Bias is that he never got to get old.  

 

We never know what time will teach us, only he could have known what time would have taught to him. This is the “great what if” of the retirement age Len Bias. When he was younger, we would wonder how his career would have turned out. Now he would be the age where he would discover life beyond basketball. I wonder what would he have found. I don’t believe in the innocent youth Len Bias. I don’t believe in the basketball deity. I believe in an older, reflective, repentant man whose body has quit carrying the rest of him, who, after coming to terms, looks at his middle age and beyond and sees new possibilities for a happy life.  In the parallel world where we have a Len Bias, when everyone else would be starting to forget Len Bias, that’s where I want to start believing in him.  If you cannot mourn for the Len Bias we knew, I think at least a little respect is owed to the possibility there was one we never will.  

 

 

 

If I were the Academy Awards…

After talking about “There Will Be Blood,” I thought I’d post a revisionist history of what the “Best Picture” awards would look like if I could deterine the winner.  I have obviously not seen every movie, and there’s obviously many reasons why they don’t just ask me to pick the winner that are all correct reasons. But, I thought as a speculative exercise, it would nevertheless be fun, and maybe stir some comments and conversation. I arbitrarily will start with 1979, the first year where I’ve seen most of the nominated films in my lifetime (though I was 1 year old at the time they came out)

Steve’s Best Picture Votes: (Actual Best Pictures in Parenthesis)

1979: Apocolypse Now   (Kramer v. Kramer)

1980: Ordinary People   (Ordinary People)*

1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark  (Chariots of Fire)

1982: E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (Ghandi)

1983: The Big Chill (Terms of Endearment)

1984: Amadeus  (Amadeus)

1985: Out of Africa (Out of Africa)

1986: A Room With a View (Platoon)*

1987: The Last Emperor (The Last Emperor)

1988: Working Girl (Rain Man)

1989: My Left Foot (Driving Miss Daisy – ugh!)

1990: Goodfellas (Dances With Wovles – double ugh!)

1991: The Silence of the Lambs (The Silence of the Lambs)

1992: Unforgiven  (Unforgiven)

1993: Schindler’s List (Schindler’s List)

1994: Quiz Show (Forrest Gump)*

1995: Sense and Sensibility (Bravehart)

1996: Fargo (The English Patient)

1997: Titanic (Titanic)*

1998: Life is Beautiful (Shakespeare in Love)*

1999: The Insider (American Beauty)

2000: Crouching Tiger, hidden Dragon (Gladiator)

2001: The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (A Beautiful Mind) *

2002: Chicago (Chicago)

2003: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (LOTR:ROK)*

2004: The Aviator (Million Dollar Baby)

2005: Munich (Crash)

2006: Children of Men (The Departed) *

2007: There Will Be Blood (No Country for Old Men)

Over almost 30 years, I have only agreed with 7 choices for Best Picutre. I wonder how many Best Picture choices over the same time period others would agree with and even if you find one or two of my choices outrageous, if  others would not still find my votes more agreeable than the actual best picture list as a whole.

There Will Be Blood.

In my continuing attempts to learn about things I missed while finishing my dissertation, I saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s film There Will Be Blood yesterday.  I don’t want to write a movie review of the thing, there’s plenty of those lying around. Instead I’ll cut straight to the provocative comments. First, I think that this film is not only the best film of the 21st Century, it is easily the best film of the 21st century.  Second, even when this film gets some competition (judging by the best picture nominees, it’s been a really lean decade), this film will still be in the mix.  In fact, while I am saying bold things about this movie, I cannot think of any films in the two decades before (the 90’s, the 80’s) that I would say is a better film.  Any thoughts?

 

Zimbabwe

The elections in Zimbabwe came to an all-too-predictable end today.  There are few things I can think of that I feel more conflicted over than our obligations when such failures take place. The UK appears to be moving quickly into the realm of sanctions and I don’t have any real sense of where the United States is on what has happened, aside from being repeatedly appalled.  I’d like to think that early global, and particularly African reaction to the end of the runoff elections signals that Mugabe has finally gone “A bridge too far,” but I suspect he will hold on in Zimbabwe regardless of what is thrown at him… and then who knows what happens.