07:55 – Here’s some cheering news. Our kids are losing interest in participating in team sports. From 2000 through 2013, kids’ participation in baseball plummeted from 8.8 million annually to 5.3 million. But it’s not just baseball. Basketball, softball, and soccer showed similar declines. I hope this hemorrhaging means the impending death of team sports, both in sports leagues and schools. Sports teams are nothing but organized gangs. If we must have kids participating in sports, let it be individual sports: tennis, track and field, weightlifting, wrestling, swimming, martial arts, shooting, archery, and so on. And let’s get sports out of our schools entirely. If schools want to have competitions, let them compete academically in things like science and math, chess, bridge, and so on. The focus should be on individual excellence. Individuals matter. Groups don’t.
I got tired of working on kit stuff yesterday, so I knocked off around noon and started working on the prepping book. I may do the same today.
“The focus should be on individual excellence. Individuals matter. Groups don’t.”
That is the root of the issue and the heart of the matter, and some more tortured metaphors.
This is the REAL bedrock difference between conservative and liberal/progressive. The lib/progs are in charge of schools, and your statement is the opposite of their entire belief system. We will never see a reduction in team sports while the progs are in charge.
In their beliefs, organized sports give the laborer, the brute, the lumpen proletariat, a place to focus his energy, physicality, and allegiance. It is a way to dominate, redirect, and control. The spectator sports provide a distraction and a sponge for excess emotion and energy. They make it easy to divide loyalty, and to segment the population. It is easier to engage the proles in spectator sports if they are familiar with the games from playing themselves.
That said, I think there are benefits to having sports teams in schools, in an intramural style. Working together toward a common goal, learning to work within a hierarchy, leadership development, and the pure fitness benefits are important parts of individual growth and development. Sports teams provide young males the pack structure that they crave.
Lib/progs love group activities. It is easy to hide your lack of ability in a group.
nick
WRT the world of work, companies need high skill individuals to push the groups forward. I have a lifetime of experience in ‘project based team’ style work, and it is very clear to me that individuals drive progress, but they must also be able to work with teams, either with other high skill people, or with the vast ‘shaft of the spear’ that makes their own success possible. It is a difficult balance to strike, and often in big business the groups would chase out the individuals, which created a need for people like me and my team, to step in and act when the group couldn’t.
Working with a group is not something that requires training or practice. Three million years of evolution has seen to that.
The history of human progress is about individual genius, period. Groups contributed nothing. Then, as now, they mostly got in the way of progress. Science, technology, agriculture, manufacturing, music, literature–in fact any worthwhile human activity–has always been driven by the individual geniuses.
Which made me think back to when I was doing my MBA. One of the professors decided to demonstrate a dominance hierarchy, so he called on the class to come down and line up in order of dominance. I sat and waited until the other students had all formed a line. Then I got up, walked to the back of the line, and moved forward, looking each of the other students in the eye as I proceeded up the line and took my place as the alpha bull at the front of the line.
We had only half a dozen women in the class, but interestingly they clustered around the middle rather than at the rear as I would have expected.
And we had obligatory study groups that were responsible for group projects. Each group had six members, and it was immediately obvious that we’d all have to depend on the group for a significant part of our grades in various projects. Without any words spoken, it soon became obvious to our group members which ones could be trusted to get it done. We had four in our group that were competent, and somehow one of those four always ended up being responsible for sub-group activities. The other two, we carried, and I’m sure they were aware that they were being carried, although it was never made explicit.
Team sports, hmmm… Not my favorite thing: I played a lot of racquetball, did judo, and now play tennis. That said, team sports do have a place. Humans seem to be very “tribal” by nature, and team sports are a comparatively harmless expression of that. Kids will find tribes to belong to. For the nerds, it may be a gaming group, or a math club, or whatever. For kids who prefer physical stuff, better a sports team than a gang.
“Working with a group is not something that requires training or practice. Three million years of evolution has seen to that.”
I disagree. Being a member of a group does not, but working within the group toward a goal (most human activities) takes practice and training, just like any other skill.
I agree that historical progress, and all the benefits we enjoy, come from individual achievement. But the brightest genius cannot succeed in anything outside of art and math without the vast group behind and under him. Atomic theory, advanced by one guy. Atomic energy or atomic bomb, huge number of people working as a group.
Scientific thought, advanced by each practitioner, but all part of the larger group of scientists. “Standing on the shoulders of giants” as it were.
” Groups contributed nothing. Then, as now, they mostly got in the way of progress. Science, technology, agriculture, manufacturing, music, literature–in fact any worthwhile human activity–has always been driven by the individual geniuses.”
Groups provide the support, the structure, and the framework within which individuals can create and excel. Yes, they ‘drag’. This is in fact valuable for society as a whole. It allows for stability and predictability. It prevents the garage tinkerer from destroying the world. As thought experiments, look at the idea of the singularity and what leads up to it. Individuals become so capable and powerful in their ability to affect the world around them that a line is crossed and the nature of the world changes.
It’s a common theme in sci-fi, the cautionary tale of the mad genius. Someone working alone, advancing knowledge and (without the restraint of being part of society and the world) takes it too far, too fast.
It’s also one of our greatest strengths as a species. Working together, humans accomplish much more than when we don’t. The nature and structure of the group involved in those accomplishments changes, and is a fertile area for debate. But the need for and usefulness of groups can’t be denied.
So it only makes sense to understand how to form, direct, control, and benefit from groups. Which can be accomplished by membership and participation in same.
Unless you just want to make art by smearing your feces on a stone wall, while eating berries and living in a hole you’ve dug with a stick……..
nick
I speak as a life long soccer (football to us Brits) player – still playing into my later years.
I experience human beings as social beings (I believe these are in the majority – even excluding females, not the lone wolves), and soccer has provided a consistent factor in my life to introduce me to new people with whom I can socially engage plus the benefit of motivating me to undertake regular exercise which I would otherwise be less likely to do.
Net is – soccer works for me.
While I agree with Bob on the importance of individuals over groups, I also believe that voluntarily formed group associations are important. I also agree with Brad that humans are going to form groups, and it is better they form a team than a gang.
If the kids were leaving team sports for noble individual pursuits, that would be a good thing. Kids are not leaving team sports for individual sports, individualized learning or something more noble. I suspect kids are leaving team sports for the boob tube.
How has sports participation declined as a percentage instead of raw numbers? Are we seeing a decline in participation in sports or a decline in the number children? Especially middle class children who are most likely to have the resources to play sports?
There is a also a trend toward larger schools. Sports teams are about the same size, but percentage of student population involved with sports is lower with larger schools.
Kids will band together in groups. I would rather see some structure and guidance to those groups, but I wish the school and society in general would express as much admiration for the members of chess club and the robot builders as they do for football and basketball players.
Finally I think there is a backlash about over scheduled kids. For too many years parents were looked at as failures if there children were not involved in activities nearly every waking moment.
” I suspect kids are leaving team sports for the boob tube.”
–or some other screen
There was a recent article that kids are having problems with balance (physical kind) because the don’t move their bodies enough! The caveat is SOME kids, as I see plenty of kids on bikes and skateboards.
American voluntary organizations were seen as a unique strength. They were certainly composed of individuals working within a group, and not trying to hide within it.
My problem with team sports in schools is when it becomes the FOCUS rather than a supporting part of shaping a well rounded individual.
My problem with the emphasis on group work in schools is that it allows the lazy and stupid to hide, and teaches them how to exploit the work of others- which they then carry into the world of work. And much like diversity efforts, it denies the importance of individual achievement to success in life, and the value of individual excellence to society at large.
nick
Has anyone in this group ever wondered why there are no female participants?
Does Barbara read this regularly? How about Mary?
I learned about this place from Jerry Pournelle.
I think you can see where I’m going with this.
I’ll shut up now.
There have been a couple of women in here from time to time but not often. I would imagine there are also lurkers, but this is kind of a self-selecting group of knuckle-dragging brutes who dig science and gadgets and yakking about politics. Some of us also spew foul language from our gobs and look at pictures of nekkid womyn, which is disrespectful and commodifies them, etc., etc. And some of us like to play with guns and blow shit up, not traditional female pastimes, although I guess we wouldn’t know it from the new Mad Max flick that’s out; anyone see it yet?
I ran track in high skool, both winter indoor and spring spring track, and my little events were the high jump and middle distances. Too gawky for the hurdles and pole vault. Football in the fall. I was an end.
I mainly agree with Dr. Bob on the group sports in the skools but I wanna totally eliminate the public skool system anyway. So it’s moot. In private and home school stuff it wouldn’t ordinarily be an issue, I would thing. And if some kids wanna get up teams for baseball or football or whatever, who cares? So long as some adults are overseeing safety stuff within reason. The national obsession with sports is really kind of silly and stupid and only generates big bucks for the owners and media, and some nice injuries plus too many temptations for the playaz. Although I still watch the NFL games; hey, I gave up a ton of shit, so I still watch pro football. Sue me.
RE: Kid Team Sports
It also doesn’t help that the peewee/junior leagues expect parents to somehow get off work at 5, get home, get kids fed, and have kids at practice by 5:30. Whoever comes up with the schedules for that stuff is obviously a stay at home parent. I even had one coworker say his daughter has soccer practice at 4:30 on Tuesdays. He actually had to arrange with his boss to stay lay on Mondays so he can leave early on Tuesdays to get her there.
I have 1 or 2 sports I enjoy watching recreationally but I don’t obsess over them. Outside of that, I could care less. I don’t understand our sports obsessed culture at all. I usually dread it when my wife wants me to meet one of her girlfriend’s husbands. I always complain, “He’s going to want to talk about sports…” I’m almost always right. It’s the official “ice breaker” conversation topic for our gender and I detest it.
Yeah, it was too cold, windy and rainy to fish last Saturday so we snuck into the Mad Maxine flick in Helena. Was pretty good for a trip out to the country and back. I’m not sure that Mad Max spoke ten words in the entire movie. But Mad Maxine, Charlize Theron, made up for him. My son’s analysis of the movie is, patriarchies are bad, matriarchies are good.
The Rio de los Brazos de Dios is up to 41.3 ft deep! It is now back flowing into all of our bayous out here in Fort Bend County. Got to go another 19 ft deeper before it floods my office property. I’ve seen it at 52 ft deep, now that was a lot of water.
http://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/tx/nwis/uv?cb_00060=on&cb_00065=on&format=gif&site_no=08114000&period=3000&begin_date=1988-01-03&end_date=2015-05-21
“The focus should be on individual excellence. Individuals matter. Groups don’t.”
Hmm, never thought about that, but I agree.
I do take exception to OFD’s claim that “totally eliminate the public skool system anyway”.
I think it’s important to have a literate populace, so I’d mandate education through 8th grade, age 13 — or whatever they’re calling it these days. Not that the present system is doing that (ahem!) but I’d want everyone to be able to read and comprehend and do basic maths. I’d pay for it, too.
Having done so, I wouldn’t give them the “right” to vote, but might add a perk.
Man, my memory is bad. The Brazos River gauge is 27.94 ft above sea level (I was remembering 20 ft). My office buildings are 80 ft above sea level. The river is currently at 41.35 ft on the gauge which makes the river level 69.29 ft above sea level. My office buildings may start flooding when the river is at 52.06 ft on the gauge. The peak all time known height of the river is 50.3 ft on the gauge (78.24 ft above sea level) on Oct 21, 1994. I remember it well since the golf course in the subdivision where we lived had three ft of water on it that day but the water was two ft below my house.
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=HGX&gage=RMOT2
Of course, I am about five miles down river from that gauge in Richmond so I am not exactly sure what the river level is down here. The river gauge in Rosharon says that the river there is 42.86 ft above sea level. But, that is 20 miles down river. Given the fact that the river level drops 26 ft over 25 miles, the river may only be 64 ft above sea level at my property (1 ft level per 1 mile of river). That would be cool.
http://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=HGX&gage=ROST2
I have to admit, the National Weather Service (NOAA?) is a worthy function of the USA government. I have no idea how much it costs but it does work fairly well.
harris county has an extensive monitoring program for waterways and bayous.
A real time map of stations is :
http://www.harriscountyfws.org/
Sugarland has the monitoring stations too, see page 3 of this:
http://www.sugarlandtx.gov/DocumentCenter/View/5029
but it doesn’t appear that FtBend or Sugarland put the info online.
With the right radio, you could probably hear the stations directly. It’s something I have on my ‘todo’ hobby list. And the stations are on my mental “infrastructure supply depot” list for the zombie apocalypse. They have a VHF radio and a J pole antenna at a minimum…..
nick
btw, thanks for that link, that river level data is very interesting
FWIW, I have a fairly extensive ‘zombie tech supply depot’ list in my head.
Cable tv distribution points that have batteries and ups’s, and neighborhood distro points that have nat gas generators.
Every school zone has a wifi radio, batteries and a good sized solar panel for the reduced speed zone signs. There are LOTS of them near me.
Several local businesses and schools have wifi at a remote sign.
All the cell sites have big geni’s and many businesses do too.
Several local businesses have solar panel arrays.
Every traffic light crossing here has a patch antenna and wifi radio, with many having solar and batteries too.
Cameras are everywhere.
Just a little game I play as I drive around…..
nick
A variation of the old “war-driving” capers. Recommended anywhere. Gather intel, analyze it, store it and disseminate it as appropriate. Commo skillz and monitoring abilities are increasingly important.
Here’s some fat for the flames:
“The upcoming month of June will be a telling one as the situation in Greece comes to possibly a final head. Tiny Greece is important for several reasons. The first and most obvious, they are certainly a firing pin for the derivatives market. Should they default, what will it be called? Somehow, some way, a Greek default cannot be classified as one because a cascade of failures will immediately follow. Financially, Greece can take the Western financial system down all on its own.”
http://www.jsmineset.com/2015/05/19/in-the-news-today-2198/
And more info on comm and intel gathering:
https://sparks31.wordpress.com/
I was on the swimming team in both high-school and college. Also the diving team in college. Eventually quit both as didn’t care for the competitive atmosphere. I just liked to swim, and being on the team was the only way to get access to the pool. Also didn’t like the jocks lording it over everyone. They respected me because I did well in the math and science curriculum, and was on the swimming team.
I eventually got NAUI certified (SCUBA), and then PADI certified.
I was going to get a teaching credential, but decided I really didn’t want to teach in the public school system – too many strings attached, and not much pay. Ended up teaching and tutoring privately and doing computer consulting work.
I’ve always been told/taught that public education is a good thing. But I’ve always had bad experiences there, so never got involved too deeply. It’s a travesty what kids don’t learn these days in school. Can’t read, can’t write, can’t balance their checkbook or give correct change. Don’t know how to reason or analyze anything.
I don’t know for sure what the problem is, but just wish that someone would fix it. Too many people just seem almost totally uneducated and mostly useless except for service jobs. Since the manufacturing jobs have been shipped overseas, and eventually the service jobs will be relegated to computers and/or robots – I don’t know what work people will be able to find in this country. We’re well on our way to third-world status. Hope that someone can figure out a solution.
Kind of amusing: the H1B “problem” is now an issue in Switzerland. The big IT companies are crying because they’ve already burned through their annual supply of visas for temporary workers from other countries.
The thing that makes this particularly stupid is: the companies can already hire anyone from anywhere in the entire EU without a visa. Just why they feel a need for more programmers from outside the EU is a mystery. The Swiss government will almost certainly tell the companies to get stuffed.
– – – – –
“Too many people just seem almost totally uneducated and mostly useless”
Yep, and I don’t know the fix either. In the US, it seems that you get it from both ends: at the one extreme the “special snowflakes” who are used to winning prizes for showing up; at the other extreme the welfare class that doesn’t care about education.
I like watching team sports, although I was never much good as a player.
One team sport I’m wholeheartedly in favour of is Women’s Beach Volleyball… 🙂
OFD wrote:
“I still watch the NFL games…”
What’s NFL? Is it gridiron? How do you avoid dying of boredom watching that stuff?