Mason Park

In Chatsworth. Visited the field today, this is apparently where the (original) Bad News Bears was filmed. Driving up to it seemed familiar, the long long straight road that Buttermaker drove down as he careened into the unpaved parking lot off Mason Drive, poured out some Bud and topped the can off with Jim Beam (a fine start to the day).

But the park layout is barely recognizable. The parking lot is now a grass strip between the road and the field, and the hill the "North Valley Marching Band" walks down on opening day is where the new parking lot is. The field itself has been reworked, the wooden backstop and dugouts and the wooden outfield fence are gone and the grass infield is now bare dirt. Only the sight line from the visitor's bench - the trees in the outfield - seems familiar.

There was no little league this afternoon. But the field was well used by two latino teams playing hardball. If the original movie's inclusion of Miguel and Jose Aguilar acknowledged the diversity of 1976 Los Angeles, today's visit maybe reflected that reality even more. I think I was the only white guy in the whole park. Glad to see the field is well used, but are the white kids just home playing video games (or driving around LA wondering at how much the city has changed)? Sigh.

[Come to think of it, there was absolutely nothing - no plackard or marker that I could see- in the park to commemorate its part in film. Could it be that this is not the field?]

Paradox Watch

The March 12 edition of the "newspaper of record" weighs in with its take on child poverty in India.

Small, sick, listless children have long been India's scourge - "a national shame," in the words of its prime minister .... But Even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.

Now I'm not about to take issue with the misery that is poverty, in India or elsewhere, but describing it as a paradox is wrong.
A paradox is an absurd statement that yields truth. There is nothing absurd here - that India is filled with grinding poverty that is unlikely to soon, if ever, reach the worst off in society is not hard to fathom. A country's economy, like its political system, is shaped (to a great extent) by its culture.

This is not about paradox. This is not even ironic. Poverty in India, much like in the US or Africa, is more about indifference than anything else. Maybe we read too much into "economics" and "democracy", two terms which are often used in the normative sense (we're a democracy - Yay), and forget neither has much to say about altruism. To a casual reader, the quoted passage may suggest that causality, that democracy should infer general well-being. I tend to think its the other way around, the fact of a strong economy or a vibrant democracy has little to say about how equitably the "general welfare" is spread about.

Ka-Zuma

Have been on hiatus for a while - these are busy times.

No pictures this morning, but it was gorgeous north of point Dume and I ran 10k to impress some co-workers (who characteristically said they were impressed I showed up). I've never run that far before, and I hardly sun at all.

Anyway, the run took us south of Zuma to a really beautify stretch of beach. I had a hard time paying attention to where I was running, the water was so lovely, but I know so cold.

After the run I grabbed my swag (new re-useable grocery bag - yay) and headed for that beach, put on my fins and dove in. Oh my it was cold. But I adjusted and caught some fun, if small, waves.

When I left, a lifeguard was opening a nearby tower and had the water temperature posted: 54 degrees. Chilly. But it's march, baseball season's beginning, and there is a full summer of swimming ahead.

Summer Fun

I spent a summer in Montanna, not too long ago, but long enough for me to have gotten two degrees in the meantime. My friends and I were working on a ranch and the owner gave us this to think about one evening:

Let A = B.

It follows that Asquared = Bsquared

Also Asquared - AB = Asquared - Bsquared.

Rearranged: A x (A-B) = (A+B) x (A-B).

Dividing each side by the common term we get

A = A+B which is rearranged (via substitution from the original statement) A=A+A= 2A

1=2

I thought it was a neat trick, which it is. But there is good list of them here. Have fun.

Paradox Reporting Watch

Many writers like to use the word "paradox". Rarely do they actually show a paradox when they use the word. For instance, a reporter might say, "Early in his career, Lance Armstrong was an uninspired bicycle rider. Paradoxically it was his winning his fight against cancer that drove him to his greatest successes."

Finding inspiration in beating a disease is not paradox. While being slightly ironic or incongruous, it is explainable.

Paradox is found in a self contradictory or false proposition like: there is an exception to everything. Or it can be contained in a contradictory or absurd statement that expresses truth like: God is omnipotent, so he should be able to create a rock so heavy that he can't lift it.

Opinion Unreliable

In the January 3rd Economist, Lexington writes of the passing of Samuel Huntington who he (she?) describes as
"a lifelong Democrat, a representative of that dying breed, the hard-headed cold war liberal."

I'm not sure what to make of this statement. Characteristically Lexington does not quite identify why being "hard-headed" (reality-based?) is in short supply among liberals, or what is meant by by the term "liberal". Is this the classic economic liberal, or or is it used in the British sense or is it the popular American sense (conservative verses liberal). I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with optimism.

Maybe it is the reference to the cold war that is the important qualifier here. If the war ended in about 1989, time should be taking its toll (as in this case it has).

Lexington makes the point that Huntington's opposition of the neoconservatives is, somewhat contradictory, that a mix of "liberalism with a pessimism rooted in a conservative reading of history" is vital. In other words, free markets do not go hand in hand with democracy and that culture and institutions have an important role to play. The ideas contained in "the End of History" were wrong. Of course they were. Everyone knows that neoconservatism is simply wishful thinking (and I think there is many a damaged psyche at its core).

This is good as far as it goes. But Lexington goes on to criticize Huntington's work, "The Clash of Civilizations", as having glossed over the fact that much of the 20th century involved conflict within civilizations.

So what? The larger truth is that history, and culture, remains relevant. Huntington, who believed that immigration and multiculturalism threatened America's Anglo-Saxon based culture, and that Western Civilization was bound to be in conflict with the Muslim World, may have ignored other significant "clashes". But he certainly was not distracted by the fuzzy notion that increased democratization and the end of the cold war would unleash an unprecedented era of peace. We all know democracy is often just an expensive cover word for something far less idealistic.

If culture is relevant, Lexington does a bad job with his counter-examples. For instance he gives one example of the universal appeal of the "American model" as the Chinese business elite's interest in Silicon Valley rather than "in their Confucian past". But here Lexington loses track of just what it admired about Huntington. Putting aside the quibble over what exactly Silicon Valley represents about the "American model" (over-hyped technology, market dominance, unearned wealth, unaffordable home prices?) I doubt China's interest is egalitarian and there is little sense that the Chinese, who still refer to non-Chinese as barbarians, look to America for advice on how to govern their people or create popularly accountable institutions or regulate their economy.

If China's admiration does not extend beyond an admiration of our avarice, it may just be a reflection of theirs. Greed, after all, is a universal value. One that may have much to do with liberal economics and republican democracy but which is, as we all know, a necessary but not sufficient precondition. Lexington charges Huntington with excessive pessimism, but I don't see that agreeing with Huntington necessitates succumbing to pessimism. History may simply "be", but learning from it is possible. But you need much more than wishful thinking.

Coldest Water?

Went for a New Years swim at Venice beach. There was the annual Penguin race and I just missed placing in the top three. It was the shortest swim I've competed in all year (yuk) and I clocked in at 3:20. Funny, though, the water seemed much colder to me. I was talking on the beach with a couple of spectators and, although I've recently swum for much longer in the ocean, my words were very slurred. The NOAA data for Santa Monica puts the water temperature at just under 57 degrees (56.7).

That's about as cold as it gets here in this City of Angels.

Funny. But the water did not feel over-cold and I suspect reckon I could have stayed in much longer with negligible additional effect. And I probably normally slur, or at least would have slurred, but it is rare that anyone joins me at the beach this time of the year. Normally, the first time I talk with anyone as I get out of the water is about 20 minutes later, after I shower and put on warm clothes, and hike up a small hill to order a cup of coffee. And then the thing I notice most is the constant chill to my body, usually accompanied to some extent by a shiver, which I did not have yesterday.