Ruminations about hermeneutics, theology, theory, politics, ecclesiastical life… and exercise.
Pippa felt so exhilarated by last night’s squeaker win that she drew a victory cartoon to celebrate:
For those who don’t pay close attention to ACC basketball, the UNC Tar Heels have a ram as their mascot, and their team color is a pale shade of blue (“it is ludicrous to believe that your team’s colors inspire either respect or fear”); the Duke Blue Devils wear a deep blue that (legend has it) was selected to mirror the blue of Yale University.
Duke squeaked out a close win tonight over their arch-rival, the Carolina Tar Heels. Duke led through most of the game, but Carolina came back in the second half to pull ahead for a frightening window, leading by five points with four and a half minutes left. In the closing moments Duke pulled ahead to stay; even the home court couldn’t cheer Carolina to victory when the teams were traded the lead over and over, down the stretch. Must have been a great game to watch — keeping a vigilant eye on the internet scoreboard just doesn’t measure up.
I mention Duke’s win not [only] to craw about my alma mater, but to raise a question with historiographic overtones. There’s a persistent legend that Duke gets all the breaks when refs make close calls. Coaches and (especially) TV analysts repeat that assertion that Duke gets the benefit of an undue proportion of referees’ decisions.
Now, I’ve known a couple of referees in my day (not ACC refs, but I take it that the attidue must be roughly the same, and the professionalism even higher) (not a knock on you, Rev). The idea that one of my ref friends would bend a rule or favor a team at all, at any level, for any reason, rings a false note to me. The notion that an ACC ref would play favorites seems inconceivable (remember, the league officials review these games to evaluate the refs’ work; would you risk your standing as a ref in an elite basketball conference in order to favor a particular team?). I’d allow the chance that each ref might have a small bias relative to one or another team, but the idea that all favor Duke seems patently absurd.
Plenty of games draw on pools of refs from outside the ACC, too; do we suppose that these out-of-conference refs favor Duke, too? And all these refs continue to favor Duke game after game, even when they know there’s a hue and cry about refs favoring Duke? I’m sorry, you’d have to be willfully ignorant to believe such a thing.
Maybe Mike Kryzsewksi casts a hynoptic spell on refs, whom he intimidates with his glare? Presumably a scowl from Coach K does a better job than the invective from every other coach in the country. I don’t think so.
Maybe the Big fix is in, and TV executives (the ones who employ the analysts who decry Duke’s prevalence) have decreed that Duke should win. They must have decided that Duke would usually win, since Georgetown upset them impressively this winter. There may be an executive in charge of deciding which games Duke would win or lose. . . .
The closer you look, the less probable such an elaborate scheme becomes. We’d need a whole troupe of conspirators who keep secrets better than does the NSA. Not one of the players, coaches, refs, conference administrators, NCAA officials, media execs, or anyone else who would have to play a part has leaked the inside secret. But don’t take my word for the implausibility of this premise — Al Featherston runs some numbers to cement the premise that Duke doesn’t show a statistical prevalence in getting the benefit of foul calls.
Of course, this topic provokes the question, “Who says that all teams ought to be called for the same number of fouls anyway?” I’ve certainly seen teams who hacked and shoved a lot; such a team would, presumably, be called for more fouls than the team that doesn’t hack and shove. And while it’s easy to find clips of Duke players not getting called for what look like fouls, it’s easy to find that footage of any team (except, perhaps, a team that’s so bad that all its fouls are obvious fouls). saying, “They missed this one” doesn’t prove anything unless you can show a pattern of not calling this, this this and this alleged foul by Duke, but calling that, that, that, and that against the opposing team. Without analysis, claims about Duke getting the breaks amount to nothing more than justifying intuitions with isolated anecdotes.
What does all this have to do with historiography? It reminds me of the history-by-fantasy that characterizes conspiracy theorists who write about church history.
(a) My daughter has very sharp eyes.
(b) She’s a frugal shopper, who scours the junk-mail coupons to find savings on any product we might occasionally need. I, on the other hand, regard these mailings as instant trash (or recycling), and consider myself to have saved considerable expense by not taking time to read through them and not buying the additional items I’d be likely to pick up alongside the super-sale goods.
(c) Anyone can make a mistake sometime.
All that being said, I will pass along to you that Pippa reported tonight that in one recent mailer from an area food chain, she saw a banner that advertised “Black History Month” savings, one of the products on which you could save being — Aunt Jemima’s Syrup. I kid you not. (Her take on it: “And they were using that to make money.”) I wish we’d saved the mailer; I would love to be able to scan it for the world to see. . . .
(Full Disclosure: I followed up by looking through the weekly specials flyer online; I saw a small section set apart for Black History Month sales, but that section did not include Aunt Jemima.)
On an unrelated topic, my former student Will Crawley has a religious-topics radio show on the BB, of which I was reminded by a pointer from Kendall’s, relative to a discussion provoked by John McDade (S. J.)’s exhortation to his fellow Roman Catholics to define the term “Catholic” more expansively.
Will took Greek from me, tutored Nate in Latin, and portrayed me in a student parody revue. someday I’ll get my videotape of that evening digitized, so all the world can sing along to Will’s “(Greek is the) Grammar of Love” song.
And no, I definitely do not walk that way. But yes, I did have a pony tail at the time.
Margaret’s back in Durham, I had classes and meetings and services all day, got home, fixed dinner for Pip, and switched into tidying-up mode for the seminary appraiser’s inspection of the house tomorrow morning. It won’t sparkle, but I’m trying to clear up the larger spots of chaos. I had forgotten that we had guests arriving last weekend (along with Margaret) (along with incoming papers to mark), and didn’t get as much cleaning done as I’d wanted to. Even marking papers comes in second to the appraiser.
You know what bothers me about comment spam? I keep on thinking of ways I would do it better — deliberation that’s of absolutely no benefit to me, and that I wouldn’t dream of offering to a spambot operator. Why can’t I use those spare brain cycles to cure a disease, or finish one of the books I’m working on?
Doc reports that The Onion has opened its archives, permitting readers to link directly to favorite columns even when they’re years old — like this one, to pick a day-appropriate example.
Papers to mark, houseguests to shelter, feed, and entertain, Margaret to spend such time with as is possible, email to catch up on (and always more coming in).
Margaret’s flying in for the weekend, so I expect that I won’t be as active online as I usually am.
I didn’t see the State of the Union Address, but I read Tom Matrullo’s scarifying account of it.
Gary modulates from subtle Photoshoppery to PowerPoint sabotage. Brilliant.
Today Seabury observed the feast of St. Anskar, Archbishop of Hamburg, Missionary to Scandinavia, and patron saint of dyslexic hot rod drivers.
For a variety of reasons, I was reminiscing about my days teaching at Princeton Theological Seminary earlier in the week — when what should happen, but I got a letter from Katy and Mac Shafer, two wonderful students from those days (whose sense of humor is so twisted that they scarred their dog forever by naming him after Eric Montross — but that’s Carolina fans for you). Hi, Mac and Katy!
I remember Mac and Katy very vividly, but I can just as easily blank out entirely relative to students from my past (especially embarrassing if they come up to compliment you). More often, I forget things I said in class — I shut down the “self-conscious” part of my brain when I’m lecturing, and I allow my love of the Bible (or Greek, or of early church history) take command. Frequently when students quote me back at myself, I have absolutely no recollection that I ever said such a thing. For instance, Beth noticed my allusion to the Flying Spaghetti Monster in yesterday’s lecture on the Epistle to the Colossians. When I saw her post, I remembered mentioning the FSM, but if you’d asked me what made it into my lecture without prompting me, I doubt that I’d have been able to tell you.
The link to the FSM, though, called to my attention Chris Doyle’s Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, brought to you by the same guy who created the Mini-mizer (depicts a person in Lego units — here’s what I looked like three years ago). Kyle was asking me about the Mini-mizer and I’d lost the link, so I thought I’d bring it back here.
The clever Mini-Mizer reminded me of the cool Flickr games to which Shelley pointed yesterday: her own Flick-a-Pair game, and Scott Reynen’s Fastr. Among those two, the Mini-Mizer, and the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I will have used up more than my share of your time today. Me? I have housework to do and papers to grade.
Was it just me, or did other people experience quivers of nausea at the President’s claim that “My job is not only commander in chief, but educator in chief”? Exactly what does he think he stands to teach us?
On a related note, in a chat today with Pascale, I referred to “a real edfucational institution.” Those of you who know me and my keyboarding skills will realize right away that I didn’t intend to cast aspersions; I just fat-fingered the “d” in “education.”
Pascale and I, however, saw the implications of my slip. I then alluded to the institutiona as Edfucational U, and she noted that it must colloquially be known as Edfuc U — which then struck us as a tremendous merchandising opportunity (imagine the t-shirt sales). . . .
When I pointed out to Pippa that the DVD that Netflix sent us was evidently called Groundhog Day, she shot back, “It’s a documentary on what to feed pigs for today’s markets.”
We watched the movie, which (of course) made me think of Dave Rogers, and in one viewing nullified answers to two net-quiz-memes I’ve grudgingly answered lately: (a) it made me cry, and (b) this can only be the one movie one could watch over and over.
Bag of tortilla chips: $1.99
Can of black beans: $ .79
Small onion: $ .49
Spring greens: $ .49
Half jar of Newman’s Own Mile Salsa: $ .99
Time spent painstakingly arranging, preparing, slicing, sprinkling, spreading, and so on: 30 minutes
. . . .
Hearing a daughter’s bemused laughter: priceless
No, the length of this post will not correspond to how much I have to do.
I’ll tackle only two topics. First, my thumb: this morning I’m not concerned about my carpal/metacarpal joint, but the small wart on the center of my thumb pad. I have tried all the official non-clinical remedies, but this wart has endured for years. A few months years ago, though, out of the corner of my ear (so to speak), I heard someone on NPR talk about research on remedying warts using duct tape. So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to try it.
Results? Well, a number of people have been concerned about my sanity or my bandaid supply. The wart is persisting admirably, though I can’t really fault the duct tape; I’ve had to take it off and reapply it in order to lead services at church, and it may be that the tape stifles the virus’s airflow; by giving the virus little gasps of air at church, I probably just defeat the purpose of the whole exercise. But I won’t be conducting further research on the topic, though, because the duct tape tears the dickens out of my thumbnail. So when I say that you’ll have to take me warts and all, I mean it. For now.
The second topic is a little more sensitive. When I skimmed the book No Time that I received at the Twelfth Night party, I noted a section on the relation between stress and eating habits (no shocker there). The author noted, to the best of my recollection, that people who reported high stress levels tended to eat less healthy foods, and to be heavier. By the sheerest coincidence, the last few years have been particularly stressful for me, and I’ve drifted up to my heaviest weight ever. Now, as six-foot middle-aged guys go, I’m still in the normal range — but I reckon that this sort of trend merits resisting, so I’m gearing up to begin morning exercise again, and I’m trying to be less self-indulgent in my choice of foods (the almond horn pastry in the counter opposite me is calling out, “Come over, Akma; it is your destiny!” and my will power responds, “No-o-o-o-o-o!”).
I’d like to think this isn’t vanity, another instance of American weight/body-image-obsession, and I don’t by any means want to participate in the obloquy typically directed against people heavier than me. On the other hand, people my age and height ought generally to be more active, a little less paunchy than I am. We will see where this leads — but I’ll probably still have a wart on my thumb either way. A wart, but no duct tape.
