Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow renounces Christianity

Denver, CO.  A day after his Denver Broncos were defeated 41-23 at Sports Authority Field in Denver, starting quarterback Tim Tebow, long known for his frequent sideline prayers, announced that he was renouncing Christianity.  "I'm done with Him", a dejected Tebow told a Denver sports columnist during a locker-room interview at the Bronco's practice facility.  "Everything that I've done was for the Lord, and how does He repay me?  He sends His angels to speed the feet of the gosh darn, excuse me, Patriots' linebackers, and I spent half the afternoon on my back.  No more!" 

"I feel like Salieri, do you know what I mean?"  Tebow stated, referring to the Austrian classical composer who was a contemporary and rival of Mozart.  Impersonating F. Murray Abraham's Oscar-winning portrayal of the jealous court composer, Tebow continued:  "From now on we are enemies, You and I. Because You choose for Your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy--yeah, I'm talking about Brady--and give me for reward only the ability to recognize the incarnation. Because You are unjust, unfair, unkind, I will block You, I swear it. I will hinder and harm Your creature on earth as far as I am able."

"But it's not just Brady" sniffed the former collegiate star for the Florida Gators.  "It's Favre.  It's McMahon.  It's Namath.  Football is the greatest sport that the Heavenly Father invented, but who does He choose to be its heroes?  Womanizers.  Drunks.  Partiers.  My brother Aaron Rodgers is far too humble to tell you this, but despite leading the Packers to a 13-1 record, all he hears anywhere in the whole state of Wisconsin is Brett this, Brett that.  I mean, Brett Favre went and played a season for the Minnesota Vikings.  Lucifer's team.  Aaron is a good man, and this is how the Lord treats him?"

"I'm done with God."

Immediately after the interview, Tebow reportedly sacrificed a small goat in the locker room's Jacuzzi.  While team officials refused to comment on the incident, Tebow was suspended for Saturday's game against the Buffalo Bills for an unspecified violation of team rules.

A Bruce Springsteen classic updated for the Youtube era

I bought a bourgeois loft down in the Pearl
Put it on my credit card, with my girl
Man came by to hook up my ISP
We settled in for the night my baby and me
We surfed 'round the Youtube ’til half-past down
Fifty-seven million channels and nothin’ on

Well now portable media was my baby’s desire
So I one-clicked on Amazon for a Kindle Fire
A big brown truck came with a little brown box
Punched in the wifi password and we started to watch
404 came back from the great beyond
Fifty-seven million channnels and nothin’ on

Well we might’ a made some friends with the one percent
Be stayin' in nice hotels instead of sleepin' in a tent.
All I got was a note that said "Bye-bye Juan
Our love's fifty-seven million channels and nothin’ on"

So I bought a brand new Taser down at the local Fry's
And in the blessed name of Springsteen I just let it fly.
’Til my computer lay smoking there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbin’ the almighty peace
Judge said "What you got in your defense son ?"
"Fifty-seven million channels and nothin’ on"
I can see by your eyes friend you’re just about gone
Fifty-seven million channels and nothin’ on
Fifty-seven million channels and nothin’...

The Fourth Directive of economic policy

The 1987 Peter Verhoeven dystopian science-fiction film Robocop concerns the adventures of the title character--a prototype cyborg law enforcement officer, constructed from the remains of a dead Detroit policeman by a giant consumer-products conglomerate, which was seeking to win a contract to replace the Motor City's police force, which was involved in a labor dispute with the city.  Robocop's activities were bound by three directives which he would mechanically repeat at public function:  Serve the public trust!  Protect the innocent!  Uphold the law!   Unbeknownst to most, including the conscious mind of Robocop himself, there was a fourth directive as well, and while the first three were arguably platitudes more than anything, the fourth was not:  do not arrest or harm any senior executive of Omni Consumer Products, the aforementioned corporation which was his creator. 

The movie was critically acclaimed (and a big box-office hit) and is highly recommended (its lame sequels are another matter).  However, the purpose of this post is not film criticism, but analogy.

Economic policymakers around the world, both in the US and (more recently) in the Eurozone, have various policy directives which guide their activities.  The Fed explicitly has a dual mandate to fight both unemployment and inflation, policymakers elsewhere are similarly charged.  Yet in many cases, including the current handling of the European debt crisis, policymakers at institutions such as the Fed and the ECB act as though they are guided by a "fourth directive" as well; and that fourth directive seems to be something along the lines of the following:

Do not do anything which will significantly harm the interests of capital.  

The various policy arms of the US government went to heroic lengths to bail out the financial markets, but seems far less interested in bailing out distressed homeowners.  Whether or not this is because the banks are really "too big to fail" (meaning their demise would truly produce systemic collapse), or simply too politically powerful to be allowed to fail, is an open question--but after programs such as TARP were enacted, it seems offensive to hear politicians tut-tutting about moral hazard when the subject is people losing their homes to foreclosure.

A similar scenario is now playing out in Europe, where the ECB seems intent in ensuring that the financial markets in the wealthy northern countries get their pounds of flesh, via imposition of stark austerity programs on the poorer southern Eurozone countries, programs which will likely result in a severe recession (on top of the current one), and may lead to the breakup of the Euro itself.  Granted, some of the debtor countries arguably went beyond their means and over-leveraged themselves to the point that an economic downturn left them unable to pay off their debts (Spain, Italy), and at least one debtor country could be fairly described as a deadbeat republic (that would be you, Greece).  The sanest course of action for European policymakers--insisting that the (mainly German) banks which made the bad loans in the first place take a haircut, combined with an injection of capital into the markets to protect depositors and refloat the Mediterranean economies, however, is simply not under consideration. 

Interestingly enough, the Fed last week announced a program to lend dollars at low rates to the ECB, in an attempt to stabilize European financial markets, a maneuver which prompts three questions:  1) The ECB is a sovereign currency issuer; why does it need to borrow money to fund its market operations, particularly when the bulk of the debt in question is denominated in Euros and not dollars?  2) Why is the US government being so activist in bailing out foreign financial markets?  3) And, particularly, if the answer to question #2 is "to prevent/limit recession", which is itself not unreasonable, then why is there so much reluctance to similarly intervene in the domestic economy, particularly on behalf of beleaguered consumers and underwater homeowners?

A likely answer to these three questions can be found within the fourth directive.

On the ouster of UO president Richard Lariviere

This past week, the Oregon State Board of Higher Education announced that they would not be renewing the contract of University of Oregon president Richard Lariviere.  Tensions had long existed between Mr. Lariviere and the board, who had placed the head Duck on a short leash last summer, awarding him only a one-year contract, a move which was highly unusual.  But now the other shoe has dropped, and Mr. Lariviere is, as of next summer, out.


Mr. Lariviere is, of course, disappointed.  Many in the UO community are outraged.  Phil Knight called the Board's decision an example of "assisted suicide".  The Board is not talking, other than to note a "disagreement about the future of the university."

I'll say.

The disagreement was about far more than the future of the University of Oregon.  The dispute was about the very nature of higher education in Oregon.

(I should mention at this point that I'm an alumnus of Oregon State.  While I relish beating the Ducks on the athletic field, outside of sports and other extracurricular activities, I don't view UO or any other college in the state as "competition" to be defeated; particularly when it comes to academics.)

The proposal that got Mr. Lariviere in hot water was a 2010 proposal to give the University of Oregon more independence from the Board--one which would match $800 million in private donations with $800 million from the state to provide the university with an endowment which would reduce its need for future funding from (and thus political dependence on) the state Board.  He also suggested that UO have its own board of directors, separate from the state Board, a proposal which obviously did not go over well.  Mr. Lariviere also annoyed some when he used private donations to raise pay for professors.

It's easy to dismiss this as political infighting, and of the Board smacking down someone who didn't know his place.  That is, after all, probably part of it.  It's also easy to play the Randian card, as some at the UO are doing (ironically, given the student body's political leanings), claiming that this is a case of a band of mediocrities (the Board, and by extension, the other five state universities, particularly those on the Park Blocks and in Corvallis) beating down a peer who tries to excel, like the hypothetical crabs in a bucket preventing an ambitious fellow crab from escaping.  But buried in all the heated rhetoric, is a real difference of opinion on how higher education should be structured.

The current structure is of an essentially centralized system.  The six general-interest public universities in the state (UO, Oregon State, Portland State, Western Oregon, Eastern Oregon, and Southern Oregon) are all supervised by the state Board, and each given a role to play in providing education to the state's students (and to students from out-of-state), and are expected to play that role and stay within their boundaries.  The three regional universities focus on undergraduate education in specialized fields, with limited graduate programs; the three comprehensive universities offer a wide range of disciplines, and have extensive graduate and research programs, including doctoral studies in many fields.  Different schools focus on different majors, though there is significant overlap between them. 

In practice, there is quite a bit of turf war that is fought.  OSU, for example guards its engineering program jealously, and attempts to expand the scope and quality of engineering at PSU as frequently treated as a threat, despite Silicon Forests' frequent demands for a flagship engineering school that is closer than Corvallis. 

On the other hand, it's easy to see that administrators at other universities might view Mr. Lariviere's proposals as threatening in a way that proposals to expand Portland State's EE program might not be.  Right now, the state of Oregon doesn't have a "primate university".  No, that's not a term referring to monkeys, but a term meaning a dominant flagship school which is widely regarded as the premier public university in a political region.  To the south, California is big enough for two primate schools, with UCLA in Southern California and UC-Berkeley in the Bay Area.  To the north, the University of Washington stands head and shoulders about the other schools in the state in terms of academic and social prestige (and in resources); it's peer in the Pac-12, Washington State University, is frequently dismissed as a second-rate ag school that offers a lackluster education in anything other than agriculture and related disciplines, despite being a full-service university.  On the other hand, Oregon's land-grant school (OSU) enjoys much more parity with UO in academics, and has the best reputation among the state schools in quite a few non-agricultural disciplines.  However, neither UO nor OSU (nor PSU) enjoys the nationwide prestige that UW enjoys.

I suspect that a big reason that Lariviere is getting the hook, is that many in the state higher-ed establishment suspect that he wanted to erect a primate university in Eugene--that his proposed reforms were intended to go beyond simply improving the quality of the current degree programs offered at the UO, and instead try to expand the scope of UO's offerings in a manner that encroaches on the other major universities in the state.  Were any of the three major public universities to transition to primate-school status, the two most likely are UO and PSU--the latter because of its location in the state's largest city and economic capital (and close physical proximity to OHSU, with which a merger has been previously discussed), and the former because of the wealth of its donor base, which far outstrips those of Oregon State or Portland State.  (OSU, which is located in a college town rather than a major city, which has extensive agricultural programs, a discipline which tends to carry a stigma in the upper-class cultural circles where such decisions are often made, and which lacks billionaire alumni such as Mr. Knight, is probably the least likely candidate to become a primate school). 

Should the state of Oregon have a primate school--a flagship institution which towers about the rest?  Or is it better-served by the current model?  I don't know the answer to that question.  The quality of an educational system is often judged by the (perceived) quality of its top institution, so perhaps its better to have an A-list school and a bunch of C-list schools and/or specialty schools, than several B-list schools.  On the other hand, no existing institution is going to surrender its prestige and resources voluntarily.  It should be noted that the state of Washington has a higher ed structure which is more similar to what Mr. Lariviere would like, with UW and WSU having far greater autonomy, and the state higher education apparatus instead focusing on the regional schools and community colleges within the Evergreen State.

Perhaps this is a conversation that the educational establishment, and the people of Oregon, ought to be having.  Perhaps the forced departure of Mr. Lariviere will encourage the conversation to take place.  But the current soundbites being bandied about don't serve to enlighten the discussion--instead, they simply reaffirm suspicions that athletic rivalries have become extended in the classroom as well.

When the chain of command fails

The sports world has been abuzz at the shocking story of former Penn State assistant coach Jerry Sandusky, who was recently indicted on multiple counts of sexual abuse.  Much attention has been focused on an incident nearly a decade ago when a graduate assistant with the PSU football program, investigating a noise in a locker room, discovered Sandusky (then no longer employed by the university, but running a football camp for kids on campus) in the showers sodomizing a young boy.  The assistant told coach Joe Paterno, who told campus higher ups--who responded by shutting down Sandusky's camp.

But nobody, apparently, bothered to call the cops.

In many institutions, one is taught to recognize--and respect--the chain-of-command.  You see something wrong, you tell your boss.  Or call one of those HR hotlines that promises anonymity.  But going outside the chain--outside the institution--is often seen as disloyalty, and discouraged.

But here's the problem.  We're not talking about a violation of team rules, or NCAA regulations, or university policy here.  (Or even a minor infraction of the law such as an underage football player in a bar sloshed out of his gourd).  A child was being raped.  This is not a matter for the head coach, or the athletic director, or the deans and provosts and regents to deal with.  This is a crime, and a matter for law enforcement.  I have a son who is the same age as the victim in the rape mentioned above, so this story has a somewhat personal angle, even though it's across the country.

I'm not going to pronounce judgment on Paterno in this post, even though I believe he probably has some coming his way.  Instead, it's important to make a broader point.  Institutions--whether its the Roman Catholic Church, the Penn State football program, the National Restaurant Association, or any number of corporations whose employees and officers have been caught engaging in wrongdoing--like to protect themselves.  People trust and believe in their friends.  And when given a choice between sweeping something under the rug, and doing the right thing; many will choose the former.  Institutions often create rules and policies which effectively encourage this.

For matters which are truly internal, this is fine.  But for things that are the business of society--and protecting children from molesters is certainly in this category, the chain of command often fails.

When a violent crime occurs, even within the confines of an institution's ivy-covered walls, the correct--and only--response is not to tell the boss. 

It's to call the police.

Thoughts on the "liberal media"

Think about it, folks:

If the media were really a "liberal media"--i.e. in the tank for liberal policies and politicians, would we really be hearing about in the media how liberal the media were?  After all, where do we hear that the media is liberal?  From the media! 

If the media were truly liberal, and trying to promote a liberal agenda--they'd be blathering instead about what a bunch of right wingers they are; and how reality is actually to the left of what the media says.  In other words, they would be trying to shift the Overton window to the left.

But instead, the media goes on and on about how liberal they are, which means that someone is trying to move the Overton window to the right.

So is the media really "liberal"?

The DHT reports.  You decide.

Random Facebook thought for the day...

I've got a great idea for a cheesy sci-fi TV show.  In said show, a group of futuristic astro-archeologists, led by a Really Nerdy Guy played by William Peterson, zooms 'round the galaxy from dead planet to dead planet, trying to figure out what natural phenomenon or act of collective stupidity offed the sentient life-forms that used to live there. 

I'm not sure if Earth gets visited in the premiere, or the finale.


Bonus points if it involves apes and the Statue of Liberty.

I invite suggestions for the name of this show in the comments.