Monday, March 31, 2008

Sneak Attack


Sneak Attack - that's what I am calling Lynne's NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament bracket. If either Memphis or North Carolina win the whole thing, then Lynne not only beats me she wins the entire pool! That's near $100! Way to go Superfox! If UCLA wins I take 3rd place, if Kansas wins I take 4th place. So now I am hoping NC or Memphis pulls it off, so Lynne can cover my entry fee and we can go out and celebrate.

UPDATE:

After getting very close, neither North Carolina or Memphis could pull it off. So while Lynne was very close, she didn't win the kitty. Damn, so close, yet so far...

Friday, March 28, 2008

Stealing Tips and Urinal Bags


Why do you need unions?

Because of bullshit like this, Quest wants employees to pee in a urinal bag to save all the costly time it takes to look for a restroom? And this: Starbucks routinely forces its baristas to share tips with management. WTF?

Tim and Emo are hooked on THE WIRE

Just like everybody else I know who took the time to watch that show. And I have to give props to the writers, especially at the end of Season 3, where Stringer Bell gets blown to pieces. Below is the email from Emo:

From: emily@portfolio21.com
Date: March 27, 2008 4:41:55 PM GMT-04:00
To: tylerc@umich.edu

Tim and I just finished season 3 last night, and I'm SO bummed that Stringer gets ratted out by Avon AND killed by my Omar. Plus Colvin gets screwed. Those last two episodes were a lot to digest!

Hope all is well,

Emo

NCAA Bracket Battle: War of the Roses Edition!


My email to Lynne this morning:

Hi honey,

I was taking a break and looking at your bball bracket, and you look to be in pretty good shape this round. You went 3/4 last night (only missing on Xavier) and you are poised to win four today (the four you picked are the presumptive favorites). Moreover, you are going to kill me this round, as you and I have the same picks for two games, and you are in the running for additional games that I don't even have a chance at. Check it out:

You have:

Memphis over Michigan State
Texas over Stanford
Kansas over Villanova
Wisconsin over Davidson

I have:

NOBODY in this game (I had Pitt over Memphis)
Texas over Stanford
Kansas over Villanova
NOBODY in this game (I had Georgetown over Wisconsin)

Even if you miss on one of those two games that I don't have a chance at you still get a big leg up on me, and if you hit on both you are ahead of me! Here is how we did in the first two rounds:

Tyler 21 + 20 = 41
Lynne 18 + 18 = 36

Yesterday, we both picked 3/4, so we each got an additional 12 pts.

Tyler 41 + 12 = 53
Lynne 36 + 12 = 48

So, if Memphis beats state, and Wisconsin beats Davidson, you jump ahead of me. SNEAKY FOX!!! Of course, the tricky part is that each round is worth more points, so the games on saturday and sunday will be worth 8 points. For those games we have:

You have:

North Carolina over Louisville
NOBODY (you had Duke over UCLA)
Memphis over WHOEVER
Kansas over WHOEVER

I have:

North Carolina over Louisville
UCLA over Xavier
Texas over WHOEVER
Kansas over WHOEVER

So, for you to keep it close with me in this round, you need UCLA to lose, and Memphis to win tonight and against Texas on Sunday. If you do that, you kick my butt, big time.

So, the point of this whole email is to say that the stakes are high for us tonight:

If memphis beats state, you are climbing, but still down by 1 pt! If that happens and wisconsin beats davidson, you are ahead of me by 3pts! No matter what else happens.

If memphis wins tonight and on sunday, and Xavier beats UCLA, you are up by a whopping 9 points!

As Clay Davis says: SHEEEOOOOOOOOTTTTTTT !

T

Thursday, March 27, 2008

The Latest FRONTLINE Documentary

You might have seen this on PBS the last two evenings, Frontline has produced another interesting documentary on the Iraq war that focuses on the infighting and mismanagement within the Bush Administration. None of this is new material, much of it covered in the book Fiasco, but if you have a lot of time on your hands or if you are having trouble sleeping (which I was) its a great way to entertain yourself for a few hours. The incompetence is staggering, I think.

Sunset on Hillary's Campaign?

THE LONG DEFEAT

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 25, 2008
New York Times

Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign. First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.


Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.

Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

AC is GEO

This email was in my inbox this morning, a note written by Afia Ofori-Mensa, a brilliant young scholar and a good friend. Her casual shout-out to thank members of the American Culture graduate student community reminds me that my experience at the University of Michigan has been just as much about creating community as it has been about creating scholarship.

American Culture boasts some of the best, most committed, most creative, brilliant young academics at the University of Michigan. I am so happy to be surrounded by such excellent people. Check out the email below:

From: afiaao@umich.edu
Subject: picket pride
Date: March 26, 2008 12:50:38 PM GMT-04:00
To: ac.grad.issues@umich.edu

dear ac grad community,

yesterday, when i went out to join the picket lines on central campus, i was moved, again and again, every time i saw an ac face appear in the crowd. it made me think about what a meeting of the generations this moment was, with many of us who were out on the lines three years ago joined by so many ac grad students who weren't here back then to be on those lines, but who now have taken up positions of activism and leadership--in geo and in the ac community--with an enthusiasm i haven't seen since the mid-contract health care crisis my second year of grad school.

i'm sitting here thinking about how proud i am of our ac community and of geo--these amazing groups of people that were not the reason i came here in the first place, but that i feel lucky to have been educated and radicalized by these past six years. i'm thinking about how, at this very moment, back in 2002, i was sitting in my dorm room, trying to figure out how i was going to make this monumental decision, in less than a month, about where i would be spending years and years of my life. and just because i was comfortable with the idea of coming back home, i ended up here, in this place that has become more of a home to me in the past six years than it ever was in the first ten years i lived here.

so i wanted to take a moment to thank everyone i saw out there yesterday:

to lani and tyler, who were up at all hours of the morning to help shut down construction sites and loading docks...

to rachel, who was passing out quarter sheets to students walking by on the diag, right near strike central...

to wittmann, who handed me a sandwich from inside a cardboard box on the line outside of west hall, and who i saw still toting around that box hours later...

to kiara, who gave moving speeches about progress and solidarity during the day's rallies, who ran from place to place throughout the day with a smile on her face the whole time, and who never hesitated to thank all of us for the work we were doing...

to brian, who i saw waving his sign and screaming support at the rally...

to margot, who was holding it down enthusiastically on one of the key picket lines right outside haven hall...

to stiffler and kiri and paul, who led spirited chants on the lines i was on outside angell hall and the ls&a building...

to jessi, who answered those chants tirelessly, her sign in the air the whole time...

to anyone else who was out there but who i didn't run into myself. to anyone else who has taken the time to support geo and ac grad students at any point in this process. thank you. i'm really proud of us.

i just thought you should know.

peace,
afia

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Editorial from the Michigan Daily

I was up at 4:15 am this morning, and spent the day walking the picket line for the GEO. Check out the Michigan Daily editorial, an encouraging sign suggesting that those undergraduates who take the time to read and research the issues conclude that it is in their best interests to support GEO.

-------------------------------------------------

Don't cross the picket lines
'U' needs to stop playing brinkmanship with contracts
3/25/08

It has become a triennial tradition at the University. Every three years since 1993, the Graduate Employees' Organization has staged a walkout when its contract with the University expires. And if there's one thing this university takes seriously, it's tradition. So as of last night, GEO was planning to go on a two-day strike this morning. It will be picketing outside of University buildings. Students, faculty and employees should honor those picket lines. Those lines will be there because of the University's ongoing failure to develop a broad solution that adequately compensates all of its employees - for longer than one contract length.


While yesterday's marathon negotiations yielded some movement, this year's biggest sticking point between the University and GEO - salary increases - was left unresolved. Although GEO has dropped its original demand of a 9 percent salary increase each year for the next three years, it is now demanding that the University increase graduate student instructors' salaries by 9 percent next year and 3 percent for two consecutive years following. The University has maintained that a 9 percent increase is too much, countering with a 3.9 percent increase next year and 3 percent increases the following two years.

GEO didn't pull these figures out of thin air. The 9 percent increase GEO is demanding would raise the median full-time GSI salary by $781 - enough to align a single GSI's salary with the cost of living in Ann Arbor, as calculated by the University's Office of Financial Aid.

It's unfortunate that the negotiations have gotten to this point. GSIs are walking out, some professors are canceling classes and students are faced with a tough choice about whether to cross picket lines. But the GSIs' demands must be addressed.

Undergraduates might scoff at the idea that GSIs need raises, especially when they already receive tuition waivers and an annual stipend. But a future degree doesn't put food on the table now. Even at a time when the state is defaulting on its commitment to adequately fund higher education, the University has an obligation to make sure that its employees receive fair compensation. GSIs are a key part of education here, and they must be treated as such.

Instead of recognizing this, the University has held firm, refusing to give in to GEO's demands without a fight. Many students and faculty are indifferent to GEO's concerns or voice the misguided opinion that fair compensation for GEO will raise tuition. Further, with other unions watching, the University is pushing GEO to the brink because it doesn't want to look like it is caving under GEO's pressure - even though the walkout could have residual and expensive effects across campus, including at construction sites.

The University is missing the point. This game of brinkmanship played each contract year only ensures that there will be more walkouts in the future. The University continues to foster employee grievances and large wage discrepancies between professors, lecturers and GSIs. Instead of being proactive and solving these problems before contracts expire, the University waits until these issues bubble over. Then it takes care of just a few of them. The rest of the problems are held over until the next contract expires, which is exactly what happened this year. And so the cycle continues.

If the University wants to end this irresponsible tradition of GEO walkouts, it must be more receptive to the needs of its employees in order to create long-term solutions rather than quick fixes. In the meantime, students can do their part too. Skip class not just because you can; use your absence to advocate change that's well past due.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Jake Long "flawless" and Chad Henne takes his wonderlic(s)


Check out this column by Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Terence Moore. Its nice to see the big brute get his due. As all of us UM fans know, Jake Long can be the anchor of your offense. He allowed one sack all season folks, and didn't have a holding penalty. Unreal.

Also, as a side note, Jake Long scored a 26 on the Wonderlic IQ test, the test given to all potential NFL draft picks to help teams assess their ability to be successful at the next level. Jake beat Chad Henne's 22 (ouch). Incidently, I took a wonderlic sample test online once and scored a 40 (ahem).

Check out the wonderlic scores of other NFL draft picks here.

Refs Keep Imposing Themselves on Games


Larry Brown Sports says it well, the Refs seem to be imposing themselves on games with alarming frequency this year. We first saw this out in the Pac 10, when UCLA benefited from highly questionable calls to get victories over Cal and Stanford. This time it was Stanford against Marquette, a game we all viewed as a stand in for the long-running argument as to which was more effect in the NCAA tournament: Bigs v. Guards. Despite having their coach tossed, the Stanford Bigs (Lopez x2) hit the big shots and made the big blocks, making my friends Jordan ( 6'7") and Dave (6'5") squeal with glee. Of course, Stanford guard Micah Johnson had something like 15 assists with only 1 turnover. So guards may be pretty damn useful in making bigs effective. Micah Johnson, props to you buddy. 16 to 1 assist to turnover ratio? Yeah, that rocks.

ADDENDUM: Dave Dobbie has informed me that he would never be rooting for Stanford, despite their bigs, because they are whiney little bitches and complain about every call.

A Hobbesian State of Nature. Cormac McCarthy's Novel: The Road


I was having trouble writing today, so I snuck off to Border's in downtown Ann Arbor and read about 100 pages of the book I am reading at home, Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

Emily Lethenstrom recomended this to me recently, or, rather, she asked if I had read it, and so when I happened across the book at Powell's at PDX, I couldn't resist picking it up and thumbing through the first few pages. I wasn't hooked on a particular character, at least not right away, but I was immediately taken in by the ease at which the book could be read. Admittedly I am a little rusty at reading fiction, as I am forced to read history and cultural studies texts at a rapid rate and have become accustomed to their thick and burdensome prose, so Cormac McCarthy's story flew off the pages for me and I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to read a text quickly and easily. Also, there is something about a 'survival narrative' that appeals to the little "stranded-on-a-desert-isle robinson crusoe" in me.

Anyhow, the book ended up being a meditation on love and the parent-child relationship, and perhaps because it was set in a post-apocalypse it was surprisingly pared-down, with little attention paid to the cause of the characters' nightmare. Finding food, protecting one-another, and finding the mental strength to travel-on were the primary concerns of these protagonists, with little attention paid to that which put them in the survival situation in the first place (postwar nuclear holocaust, we must infer). That said, I couldn't help wondering about the big picture, guessing at the root cause of the problems the characters encountered. I wanted the narrator to elucidate the back story, namely, the historical conditions that created their predicament. I wondered what political statement McCarthy was making. Perhaps I wanted the book to go in that direction because I tend to look for macro-level elements of any story, to identify causation and agency and context and other factors that help me understand the "big picture."

But an explaination of "the big picture" did not happen for me, not in this book. Readers don't find out what caused the war that created this tragic life (for my two cents I think it was climate change that led to the destruction, not imperialist nation-states, and certainly not global terrorism). In the end what McCarthy offers is a chance for readers to see common human values in a context where society has imploded upon itself. In a Hobbesian state of nature we all have the same needs: food, water, shelter, safety, love, purpose. To drive home the universal nature of the characters, "the man" and "the son" are never given personal names. They stand as synedoche for any and all individuals caught in global catatrophe, suggesting that readers best not forget that their base needs are of primary concern.

Your point is well taken, Cormac McCarthy. I aim to go and put a few cans of food in the pantry, just in case.

Belated St. Patrick's Day Post

March Madness

This first post comes after a marathon college-basketball-watching-session with my peeps in Ann Arbor, MI (Jordan Miller, Dave Dobbie, Mike Arnold) and in Lansing, MI (Lynne Gratz, Turney Gratz, Jeanne Gratz, Danny Leitao, Lauren Leitao, Will Pringle, Rebecca Pringle).  After an action packed first weekend of the NCAA tournament I am left with a number of impressions:

1.  I can no longer watch sporting events without a DVR.  The NCAA College Basketball Tournament is still one of the best sporting events one could ever watch, but my god, the commercials are completely intolerable.  To begin, while I fit their target demographic (youngish men), I can't relate to any of the products/images/messages being conveyed.   But the most glaring problem with the commercials is their frequency.  It numbs the mind.  It makes you sick.  It makes me want to organize a boycott, or draft legislation, or find any way to fight back against such a stupidly mind-numbing cacophony of corporate messages.

2.  Despite how I might try, I rarely succeed in predicting which teams will be upset, and which won't.  My bracket is ugly now, (12th place in a 16 person competition), but I get solace in the fact that most everybody else is within a couple of points.  If UCLA can roll, I get a chance at redemption.

3.  The sheer drama of college basketball trumps anything the NBA can dish out.  These kids play so hard, game in and game out, how could you not want to see Davidson beat Georgetown? (Despite my prediction that Georgetown would advance to the great eight!)

I'm looking forward to next weekend to see if the PAC 10 can get more than one team to advance to the next level.  I suspect UCLA and Stanford have the best shot.