To whom it may concern: Shinya Yamanaka is not your personal moral crusader

Posted on October 14, 2012 by scienceundone

“The facts speak for themselves,” is a favorite maxim. Sometimes they do. But when they don’t? This liminal state between unequivocal truth and falsehood is where politics finds itself a comfortable home.

The time following the announcement of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine presents a special opportunity for the public communication of science. For a fleeting moment, you have the undivided attention of a newly captive audience. The tragedy is that politics ultimately inserts itself into the discourse and poisons the well, making it impossible for effective communication to materialize.

The most egregious example of this phenomenon comes from a piece written by Will Saletan at Slate, who opens with the following remarks:

Shinya Yamanaka, a scientist at Kyoto University, loved stem-cell research. But he didn’t want to destroy embryos. So he figured out a way around the problem.

His intention is to make a case for the moral prerogative that supposedly guided Yamanaka’s work, but his “facts” simply do not obtain. In the end, his article constitutes one of the worst-offending mischaracterizations of Yamanaka’s work seen to date.

Deconstructing a False Narrative

Saletan’s argument is built upon the following central premises: (1) Yamanaka desires an alternative to hESC; (2) This desire is motivated by moral objection to the use of embryos; (3) Yamanaka’s work avoids or eliminates the need for embryos; and (4) Yamanaka’s research is an alternative to hESC.

Taken together, these premises lead Saletan to derive the conclusion that Yamanaka’s Nobel Prize-winning research was a moral crusade against the use of embryos in stem cell research.

In making the case for this argument, Saletan generally assumes that premises (1), (3), and (4) are valid and therefore rallies around providing support for premise (2). Thus, the burden of proof is to provide compelling textual evidence for Yamanaka’s alleged moral objection as an underlying motivator in his work.

It is along both these lines that Saletan ultimately fails. I will address the problem with these tacit assumptions (1, 3, and 4) in greater detail in a separate post, but for now I want to focus on the more immediate issue at hand: the misappropriation of science as a means to a political end, particularly through the mischaracterization of research and manipulation of published literature.

Lines of evidence

Saletan utilizes four major lines of textual evidence: (1) The introduction of Yamanaka’s Cell paper; (2) A widely cited New York Times article; (3) A New Scientist interview; and (4) External commentary and responses, including that of anti-abortion groups and the science press.

Commentary from other groups allegedly asserting an ethical relationship or claim of a “moral achievement” is not proof of Yamanaka’s moral objection, so we can eliminate this from our discussion.

This narrows Saletan’s support to (1-3). I will examine each in detail, using an exegetical approach to the text. If Saletan’s claims from these three lines of evidence fail to obtain, then he fails to prove the second premise, and his conclusion is false.

The science literature

Saletan begins by arguing that Yamanaka’s research article itself is evidence that a moral objection to the use of embryos is the motivating factor behind his work. He reasons,

In the introduction to their Cell paper, Yamanaka and his colleagues outlined their reasons for seeking an alternative to conventional embryonic stem-cell research. “Ethical controversies” came first in their analysis. Technical reasons—the difficulty of making patient-specific embryonic stem cells—came second.

It appears that this would be a clear cut case of “true” or “false”—either the text states this or it does not—but Saletan’s claims are, in fact, fairly convoluted. First of all, Saletan has misinterpreted the meaning of the text, and secondly, he absurdly suggests that “order of mention” is somehow symbolic proof of significance, based on his faulty analysis.

Yamanaka and colleagues (Takahashi et al., 2007) begin their paper by identifying the two major properties of embryonic stem cells that make them so valuable for research: (1) indefinite self-renewal and (2) pluripotency. It is these properties, the authors continue, that create the vast potential for therapeutic applications. In the very next breath, the authors implicitly note that the scientific application of the cells into therapeutic ends has been halted by ethical controversies generated by the political climate. This interpretation is made possible by the wording offered in the text itself: the “controversy” is what “hinders” the research, Yamanaka carefully suggests.

The introduction to this award-winning paper is only five sentences, but it communicates much more than meets the eye for anyone familiar with the field of stem cell biology. Let me point out the glaring elephant in the room that Saletan is choosing to ignore: politics impedes science. And guess what? Strict limitations placed on hESC in Japan have made this type of research practically impossible. Yamanaka and his colleagues did not seek out an alternative to research on embryos; they never had a choice to begin with.

Saletan misses the point that the authors mention “ethical controversies” because, in fact, it is the number one reason why the therapies have yet to be achieved. This is relevant to his logic of “order of mention,” since it flips it on its head. The problem of immune rejection prevails precisely because of limited funding and extreme bureaucratic red tape—problems caused by political controversy. If you cannot freely research hESC, then you are not well-equipped to  address the problem of patient specificity with these cells. In the face of such powerful structural limitations, which is more feasible: overhauling the political system, or modifying one’s own research agenda? iPS has gained legitimacy as a result of this. And of course, iPS was not invented out of thin air to address these problems. Yamanaka’s history of research happened to intersect with these sociopolitical problems that currently burden research.

Allusions to ethical problems in the literature offer no real evidence that moral objection to the use of embryos was an underlying motivator for Yamanaka in the execution of his research. But the literature offers overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Like any high-quality journal article (this was published in the prestigious Cell, after all), Yamanaka’s work is organized and concise. At multiple points in his paper, he directly states the purpose, outcome, and implications of his research. For example, the abstract begins with the following statement-of-purpose: “Successful reprogramming of differentiated human somatic cells into a pluripotent state would allow creation of patient- and disease-specific stem cells” (Takahashi et al. 2007, 1). His team concludes the following outcome, which reinforces the stated purpose: “Our study has opened an avenue to generate patient and disease-specific pluripotent stem cells” (Takahashi et al. 2007, 9). Finally, they lead into what is arguably the most exciting part of their research: the implications. They are one step closer to achieving therapeutic outcomes.

But in case that were not enough, an article penned solely by Yamanaka offers yet more insight. The crux of his paper centers around one main idea: “Generating pluripotent stem cells directly from cells obtained from patients is one of the ultimate goals in regenerative medicine” (Yamanaka 2007). Browse any of the literature and you will see that this is the prevailing theme. Yamanaka and his colleagues want to save patients’ lives. And so, the pursuit of patient and disease-specific stem cells is the reason for their research. With hESC research so limited, iPS technology drives their efforts.

“But the New York Times article says…”

Groups eager to politicize his work will be unsatisfied by this analysis. But what about the embryos, they protest, clinging to the notion that Yamanaka is their moral crusader. For them, the strongest evidence seems to come from a New York Times article published at the end of 2007. Anti-abortion groups have jumped all over it, latching onto a single quote in their desperate attempt to assert, “he’s one of us.” Saletan himself falls victim to this crime of [uncritical thinking], as he turns to this single excerpt as proof of his position:

Inspiration can appear in unexpected places. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka found it while looking through a microscope at a friend’s fertility clinic. … [H]e looked down the microscope at one of the human embryos stored at the clinic. The glimpse changed his scientific career. “When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realized there was such a small difference between it and my daughters,” said Dr. Yamanaka. … “I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way.”

Let us not forget that the author is telling a story. When is it ever reasonable to accept a story at face value without subjecting it to logical scrutiny? Secondary sourcing is fallible; narration is highly unreliable. Thus, we must approach any story by exercising our critical thinking skills as appropriate to separate fact from fiction. There are several reasons why you should approach this particular narrative—the framing of the story, not Yamanaka’s quote itself—with a similar degree of reservation and skepticism.

Intuitively, we know that Yamanaka does not actually believe that embryos under a microscope are morally equivalent to his daughters. If he held this belief, he certainly would not be involved in the field of stem cell biology, which requires pervasive manipulation and destruction of hESC along all lines of research. His preference to not use hESC does not presuppose that he is morally against the use of embryos; this is a false dichotomy. There are many other plausible explanations. On a practical level, it may indicate a desire to avoid obstacles to research; on a personal level, it may suggest a particular philosophy toward human nature that has not yet been accounted for.

But we are not limited to educated guesses. There is plenty of other evidence from which to draw our conclusions. In a December 2007 interview with New Scientist, Yamanaka is asked how he felt when he discovered that his experiment was a success: first surprise, then pride, he responded. And then he tells us this:

At the same time I felt kind of responsible for this technology we had developed because now everybody has the means to develop embryonic-like cells. And they can do it without any approval from the authorities.

On one hand, this is a crucial acknowledgement that regulatory oversight plays a major role in the field, which supports my analysis of the introduction to his Cell paper. iPS cells expand the world of practical research opportunities; hESC constrain it—at least right now. But most importantly, he indicates ambivalence regarding the ethical implications of the technology that he just brought into existence. Notably absent from his remarks is any suggestion of having “saved” the embryos, or a vindication of his so-called “moral project.”

Rather, his comments display a sense of ethical concern far more sophisticated than the current debate raging over disposal of excess embryos created through IVF. In this way, Saletan misses the mark completely. Yamanaka implies that his work is not equivocally “good,” at least in the sense of the black and white morality proposed by Saletan’s line of thinking (i.e., “iPS good, hESC bad”). Consider the implications. In theory, iPS technology would make it possible for me, as a female, to create sperm cells from my own DNA and combine them with my own eggs to create a new conceptus. All in a petri dish. This would not be a clone—it would be a genetically distinct organism. There is nothing in our modern human existential experience that could account for a creation like this. A new type of genetic human would be brought into existence. What would this mean for our humanity?

Yamanaka is deeply humble, but what I have gathered from reading both his work and personal interviews is that this is a man with a profound capacity for complex ethical reasoning. He is cautious about his work and forward-thinking about the field. He is, in every sense of the term, a humanist. Certainly, he brings this type of moral awareness to work with him every day. And I am grateful for scientists like him, who embody an ethic of virtue in their commitment to improving the existence of mankind.

At the end of the interview, Yamanaka offers some final thoughts:

We also need a more detailed comparison between iPS cells and embryonic stem cells in terms of what they do. If it is proved that iPS cells are as good as or better than embryonic stem cells, I think they can replace them. I do want to avoid the use of embryos if possible. Ultimately I think that patients’ lives are more important than embryos, but I do appreciate that embryos can become beautiful babies as well.

He regards embryos with a degree of prudence out of respect for human nature, not a desire to abide by a moral absolutist, categorical imperative. His position reflects a carefully reasoned stance closer to the middle, but certainly on a liberal end. It is permissive, rather than restrictive. A central tenet to his philosophy is the respect for potentiality. This is not the same as belief in embryo personhood, or of a supposed moral equivalence to full-fledged human beings, as Saletan and the NYT article would mislead us into thinking.

Incredibly, Saletan ignores the surrounding context and meaning inherent to this passage and misconstrues a choice quote in a subtle but powerful way. He writes this:

Yamanaka explained his ambivalence to New Scientist in December 2007. “Patients’ lives are more important than embryos,” he said. But “I do want to avoid the use of embryos if possible.”

Compare the two passages and note the differences. Yamanaka’s statements mean something qualitatively different when the order is manipulated and context is removed. Saletan erroneously suggests that Yamanaka feels ambivalence about the use of embryos; he manipulates Yamanaka’s words to construct this false pretense of ambivalence. But Yamanaka’s original words and statements provide no such interpretation. Rather, Yamanaka’s own moral position is clear, well-reasoned, and non-contradictory. Thus, Saletan has conjured a moral dilemma where none exists.

It it through this move that Saletan reveals himself as pandering to religious ideology: we have a categorical imperative to avoid the use of embryos in research at all costs, he implies. This is the ultimate duty, a goal towards which we must strive. This reeks of moral absolutism. Yamanaka’s views are not in conflict, but in fact exist harmoniously alongside one another.

Yamanaka does not believe that it is immoral to use embryos in research. He places a premium on existing human life over the potentiality of embryos, and he supports the continuation of embryonic research as long as it offers promise for therapeutic and regenerative medicine. But his humanistic philosophy towards life and science supports the idea that, if it is not necessary to destroy embryos in research, then by all means we should avoid doing so. This is a liberal view to research held by many in the science community.

This is not a man who, through some divinely-inspired teleological effort, devoted his life project to finding an alternative to the use of hESC research. Yamanaka is not your personal moral crusader; he is, first and foremost, a scientist. The work of a scientist is qualitatively different from that of an activist. His life of experimental research may, in the distant future, prove to complement his humanist views, but let’s not project our political agenda onto his work.

For this, the guilty parties should win an award for unethical misappropriation of science.

___

Sources:

Kazutoshi Takahashi, Koji Tanabe, Mari Ohnuki, Megumi Narita, Tomoko Ichisaka, Kiichiro Tomoda, and Shinya Yamanaka. 2007. “Induction of Pluripotent Stem Cells from Adult Human Fibroblasts by Defined Factors.” Cell 131:1–12. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2007.11.019.

Shinya Yamanaka. 2007. “Strategies and New Developments in the Generation of Patient-Specific Pluripotent Stem Cells.” Cell Stem Cell 1:39-49. doi:10.1016/j.stem.2007.05.012

Will Saletan. 2012. “The Healer: How Shinya Yamanaka transformed the stem-cell war and made everyone a winner.” Slate, October 9. Link

Posted in 2012 nobel prize, discourse analysis, Media, philosophy, philosophy of medicine, Politics, public communication of science, shinya yamanaka, stem cell research | Comments Off on To whom it may concern: Shinya Yamanaka is not your personal moral crusader

Presidential debates

Posted on October 12, 2012 by astudentguidetoelection2012

The 1960 presidential debate, the first-ever televised presidential debate in the history of our country, is not remembered for the candidates’ responses or arguments. The debate in September of this year between Vice President Richard Nixon and Democratic candidate John F. Kennedy is not remembered for Senator Kennedy’s comments on communism and the Soviet Union, or Nixon’s discussion of the economy and rising gross national product. This debate is not remembered as just a talisman of the world’s technological advances, or the onset of a new era in presidential campaigning. This debate is remembered as the time Richard Nixon couldn’t stop sweating, possibly the event that lost him the election.

In 1976, Gerald Ford sparked controversy with his debate performance against Jimmy Carter. Scratch that. Gerald Ford blundered his way into controversy in 1976 by incorrectly claiming that no Eastern European countries, including Yugoslavia, Romania, and Poland, were under Soviet domination. This error was subsequently referred to as the “blooper heard ‘round the world,” and can also be attributed to a Ford loss.

In 2012, conservatives, liberals, moderates, basically everyone and their mother are saying that the Presidential debate last week was dreadful for the Obama camp. More than dreadful, people are calling this an extraordinary exception for the rules of normal election politics. Never before have we seen a drop in the polls to such an extent for an incumbent who was leading by an incredible margin before the first round of debates. Besides, of course, the events that occurred during 1960 and 1976. So what was Obama’s big mistake? His huge, campaign-imploding, election-changing gaffe?

…I’ve got nothing. And neither, really, does anyone else who is talking about the Obama loss. Which is a LOT of people. Hendrik Hertzberg, a contributor to the New Yorker Daily comment blog, wittingly titled the October 3rd fiasco as “The Ungreat Debate.” This title may be sentiment to Hertzberg’s argument that Obama was “plainly, not enjoying himself” or “how abjectly [President Obama] ceded the battle on the verbal front as well as the nonverbal, the conceptual as well as the emotional.”

But still, we’re missing the tragic mistake by Obama that so many have made before him, and why a performance that simply didn’t meet expectations can be deemed, well, the collapse of an otherwise flawless campaign.

Hertzberg enumerates the Obama failure in the following way: “By the end of the ninety minutes, Romney had retrofitted himself as the defender of Medicare, the advocate of Wall Street regulation, the scourge of the big banks, the enemy of tax cuts for the rich, and the champion of tax relief for the middle class. All these claims are spectacularly false; all went entirely, or mostly, unrefuted.”

Assuming, thereafter, that Romney did make the kinds of inaccurate statements that Hertzberg, and others, claim. How is it that this doesn’t discredit his performance in the eyes of viewers while Obama’s underwhelming performance is making waves? This is not to say that the commander-in-chief can be wiped of blame – simply put, you lose a debate if you don’t refute your opponents arguments, even if they are blatantly erroneous. But still, what does this say for the way campaigns shape voter opinion?

This debate will go down in history as the debate that cost Obama 8 points in the polls, and an extraordinary lead against his Republican contender. The time when he looked weak compared to the confident and composed Mitt Romney, and nervous as he scribbled notes at the podium. It won’t go down as the time Mitt Romney made false claims on national TV, but won, regardless, due to the president’s sub-par rebuttals. This says something about the way that viewers make decisions, the way in which our electoral process allows for, or doesn’t allow for, accurate discussion of important details as opposed to inflammatory details, and the hopelessness of the bandwagon effect which can cause undue hype.

The “ungreat” debate, to use Hertzberg’s term, reflects for me a sentiment of disappointment regarding both candidates performances, as well as towards the public reaction. But what does this debate have in common with the infamous blunders of the past? Well, it shows just how much appearances matter. The appearance of looking unknowledgeable, the appearance of, I guess, perspiration, and the appearance of one candidate dominating the other. And just how much we prefer a neck-and-neck race over a blow-out.

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Skip Bayless’ Year of Selling Tebow

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Blogging Golomb

The New York Jets have now lost two games in a row, dropping their record below .500. Their once-prolific running game has finally become everything but. Their once staunch defense has lost its Captain, leaving the ship marooned offshore.

And now, as the Jets face the prospect of pre-game coin tosses becoming an exercise in dreams deferred, it’s time for something to be done.

As the Politician’s Syllogism dictates, Timothy Richard Tebow is something – and because of this incontrovertible fact, the Jets have no choice but to give in to the inevitable descent of Tebowmania, and to let the NFL’s prodigal son return to the gridiron as a starting quarterback.

Indeed, this one was as predictable as a morning sunrise, or a tube of hair gel left beneath Mike Francesa’s bathroom mirror; Jets fans were bound to get restless as soon as a few wobbly Mark Sanchez passes landed astray, or as soon as a few games went against Gang Green’s far-too-lofty expectations.

Soon enough, He was bound to rise.

…as was the chief profiteer, perpetuator and spokesperson of Tebow Brand Snake Oil.

In case you somehow haven’t had the pleasure (I envy you, imaginary person), meet Skip Bayless, ESPN’s resident screaming head/pot-stirrer and card-carrying member – nay, leader – of the Cult of Tebow.

Ever since the discussion on Tebow’s NFL worthiness began in advance of the 2010 draft, Bayless has taken every opportunity to preach the gospel of the Gators, Broncos and now-Jets quarterback, stopping just short of declaring him the messiah, harping for attention and personal brand promotion in a way only pole dancers and Paris Hilton were previously thought capable of.

All that is presumably why Bayless has remained (by his standards, at least) relatively mum on his favorite subject in recent months, waiting for the fire to first stoke before popping out the kerosene.

The embers started to burn Monday morning, and Skip seized the opportunity: With the Jets set to go up against the undefeated Houston Texans that evening – a game that would, not surprisingly, end up seeing Mark Sanchez’s job security go the way of replacement referees – Bayless took to ESPN.com, recalling his “Year of Living Tebow.“

More than once, he referred to himself as the “Lone Objective Tebow Defender” (Yes, really.), in a 3,000+ word column that doubled as his first since 2006 – surely, a coincidence – and a journalistic embarrassment of the highest order.

Maybe he was rusty.

Or maybe he’s the modern day equivalent of a snake oil salesman.

Either way, the intertwined fates of Tebow and Bayless represent an epic, perhaps even unprecedented case of “journalist” becoming one with subject. And as the former deemed it necessary to “set the record straight” on his relationship with and perspective of the latter, it only seems right that someone should do something to set the record straight on Bayless’ purported record-straightening.

I am someone.

This is something.

Like Tebow, I probably won’t accomplish anything significant here.

Still, let’s break it down.

Hello, I’m the "Tebow nut.”

Hi, Skip.

And yes. Yes, you are. Also, putting “it” in “quotes” changes absolutely “nothing.”

For 30 years I wrote for newspapers and magazines, wrote books on the Dallas Cowboys’ dynasties of the ‘70s and ’90s, wrote about Michael Jordan in Chicago and Barry Bonds in the Bay Area, even wrote columns for ESPN.com from 2004 to 2006. And now, inconceivably, I’m best known as the “psycho" Tim Tebow supporter.

Damn, dude. That’s some resume you got there!

If only you hadn’t made this face. And this one. And this one. Maybe, then, we would all remember your shitty books and shitty columns instead of your shitty, disingenuous perspective on a shitty quarterback.

Stephen A. Smith, my debate partner on ESPN’s "First Take,” has told interviewers I’m “crazy” when it comes to the quarterback whose name Stephen A. basically has changed to Tim Can’tThrow.

I mean…I’m not one to agree with Screaming A. all that often…but have you actually watched Tim Tebow play football? He really can’t throw all that well.

If you read enough of my Twitter responses – caution: 100 or more have been known to cause brain damage in lab rats – you might even imagine me worshiping nightly at a Tebow shrine in my bedroom, gazing zombie-eyed upon a wall of Tebow pictures, lighting 15 candles for No. 15, then Tebowing as I ask God to please make Rex Ryan bench Mark Sanchez and start Timothy Richard Tebow at quarterback.

All of which is about 15 ways of WRONG.

Wait, what? One – albeit poorly written, way too long – sentence ago, you said that a rat reading your tweets might develop dementia, and that a human following @RealSkipBayless would likely envision you as a rat reading your own tweets. 

Now, you’re trying to say that the public should see something other than the Tebow-worshipping picture you’ve painted for the last three years?

That would be pretty crazy.

The astonishingly missed point:

I’VE BEEN EXTREMELY OBJECTIVE ABOUT TIM TEBOW.

Oh. I see. That’s exactly what you’re doing.

Moving on. 

The God’s truth: I never much cared for Tebow when he played at Florida. I met him at last year’s Super Bowl, and interviewed him, only because he requested the session. I do not stay in touch with him. I’ve criticized him on air several times for the several shirtless pictures for which he has posed, criticized his post-loss comments about how football isn’t nearly as important as his missionary work and criticized him for spending too much time on self-promotion after signing with two of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood – Creative Artists Agency and William Morris.

Is this supposed to pass for objectivity and journalistic prudence?

Never once in the above paragraph do you mention anything about how Tim Tebow plays football. Which of course is what would pass for objective analysis of someone who plays football for a living.

What’s that, Skip? You criticized him for talking about the importance of spreading the word of the the Lord? For allowing himself to be portrayed in something other than a T-shirt? For being too worried about how his disciples portrayed him?

You might as well be criticizing –

…I’m going to stop myself right there. This one is too easy.

And that’s my problem: I’m one of the very few commentators who have been objective about Tebow’s ability to win football games. I merely dared to say Tebow could be a successful starting quarterback in the National Football League – not a Pro Bowler, mind you, just a guy who could win games his way. Which prompted relentless attacks from anti-Tebow analysts and journalists. Which prompted me to defend my position. I wasn’t “loving” Tebow as much as I was defending him. The more I was ridiculed, the harder I fought back – always in the spirit of “give this kid a break.”

I’d argue it was more in the spirit of “this kid is clearly controversial, so I’m going to devote two hours of national facetime every single day to making him as controversial as possible, so that, down the road, when the strawman I created starts to fall, I can position myself as the singular, righteous defender of an unfairly castigated subject, and thereby make my opponents out to look either like haters or dicks.”

But, ya know: tomato, tom-ahto.

Live television is the hottest medium. My passion for sports debate runs hot enough without a camera transporting it into your living room with 10 times more impact. Before I knew it, I was the wild-eyed president of the Tim Tebow Fanatic Club.

Yes, I’m sure after you yelled about Tim Tebow on your national “talk” show for five months straight, you must have been positively SHOCKED when you started to be perceived as a raving Johnny-Loud-Note.

So how did I suddenly go from rolling my eyes at Tebow to defending him?

Through his first three seasons at Florida, I was skeptical of the winning-for-God-and-Gators hype generated by the collegiate myth-making machine. Then on Monday night, Jan. 8, 2009, it happened: I got Tebowed.

My life changed.

Understand, though I’m a proud Vanderbilt graduate,

Thanks for reminding me that we share an alma mater. 

I was born into a family in Oklahoma City that bled crimson for our OU Sooners. That Monday night they played Tebow’s Gators for the national championship. I was so confident I did something I rarely do: I shrugged off any potential jinx and picked OU on that morning’s “First Take.” Starting with my quarterback, Heisman winner Sam Bradford, my team had four players who eventually would go in the first 21 picks in the NFL draft.

That night I experienced what I eventually would call “a competitive force of nature.” It was 7-7 at halftime when (I later discovered via YouTube) Tebow gave his team a speech that was scary great: A shy-smiling boy next door suddenly transformed into the Hulk. A psycho-eyed Tebow screamed at his teammates that they WERE GOING TO GO BACK OUT THERE AND DO THIS AND DO THAT. And that’s exactly what they did. I sat numbly watching Tim Tebow take over the fourth quarter – take over the game, the crowd, the very psyches of my Sooners. Florida 24, me 14. Tebow: 231 yards passing, 109 rushing, 12-of-17 on third downs.

That night I said to myself I would never again bet against this guy.

First off: This speech was better, and the Mustangs still lost the Championship game.

Second, I’m not sure it would be particularly rational to use one good halftime speech and one half of one college football game as the reason why you’d never, ever bet on an athlete  – especially once he begins to compete against far superior competition.

Alas, that’s not even what’s happened over the last three years: There’s a pretty distinct difference between not betting against someone and doubling down on them. Every. Single. Time.  Nobody’s put this much stock in one man since Fred Wilpon started letting Bernie Madoff handle his money.

I was sold. I said on air I’d take Tebow at the bottom of the first round. “Ha-ha-has” echoed. Denver coach Josh McDaniels took him 25th overall.

When it comes to the draft, I’m not sure Josh McDaniels is the right man to stake your reputation on. 

Unfortunately, McDaniels didn’t last long enough the next season to witness his against-the-world pick start the final three games after the Broncos fell to 3-10.

Tebow played pretty well at Oakland, but nobody seemed to notice.

Doesn’t it suck when people don’t notice things that didn’t actually happen? 

Against Houston, his fourth-quarter touchdown pass and 6-yard TD run brought the Broncos from 23-10 down to a rather miraculous 24-23 home win – Tebow: 308 yards passing! – yet I could get no more than shrugs from my show producers. Tebow played OK against the Chargers; yawns all around.

I’m not sure if a two-touchdown comeback would qualify as “rather miraculous.” There’s a few of those every month in the NFL.

And, wait a second! That’s not fair! I didn’t yawn! When a mediocre quarterback played mediocrely against a mediocre team in a meaningless game, I merely didn’t give a shit.  

But as John Elway and John Fox took over, a training-camp report indicated Tebow had been demoted to fourth string. Now THAT our producers wanted us to address on air. NOW would I admit I was wrong about Tebow? NO! I couldn’t forget what he did to my Sooners. I believed.

(USE CAPITAL LETTERS AGAIN I FUCKING DARE YOU.)

(Insert long passage here about how John Elway and John Fox were conspiring to start Tebow only in order to run him out of town in favor of Andrew Luck.)

And, as you know all too well, miracles ensued of Biblical proportion.

Well, I know a bunch of things happened but I’m not really sure any of them were “biblical." 

Tebow didn’t just pull off a couple of fourth-quarter/overtime comebacks. He pulled off six of ’em.

Eli Manning had seven. What is he, chopped liver?

(Insert another long passage about overcoming odds and Elway/Fox conspiracies here.)

And with reports swirling that defenders resented Tebow getting all the credit for the turnaround (this Tebow defender got the blame for that) and game-day reports that the coaching staff was prepared to bench Tebow on any given series against Pittsburgh’s No.-1 ranked defense, you know what happened: 316 yards passing happened. An 80-yard catch-and-run overtime TD happened. And a nuclear war of sports debate kept happening on "First Take.”

Skip Bayless starts nuclear wars. 

What did shock me was that, the more Tebow won, the harder a gauntlet of ESPN opponents came at me, sometimes two or three at a time dismissing Tebow’s 8-5 run as a nice little fluke. Twice during Tebow’s starts I was pressed on air to predict Denver’s final record. My cumulative prediction was 7-4, which prompted on-air guffaws. Tebow’s regular-season record wound up 7-4. Yet no one would give me an inch of credit for the greatest prediction of my career. I was dismissed as lucky or crazy or both.

When predicting a team’s record over 11 games, there are only 12 possibilities. A few of them (11-0; 0-11; 1-10; 10-1) are exceedingly unlikely. If this is best prediction of your career, I sincerely apologize.

Day after day they lined up to bash Tebow by bashing his mouthpiece – me.

Mouth·piece, noun: a person, newspaper, etc., that conveys the opinions or sentiments of others; spokesperson.

Stephen A. Smith, Rob Parker, Jemele Hill, Cris Carter, Merril Hoge, Mark Schlereth, Eric Mangini,Kordell Stewart, Jon Ritchie – hour upon hour they ripped and ridiculed me. I’m proud and stubborn to a fault, insanely competitive, a fighter by nature. I fought back with both verbal fists.

Our golden rule of barbershop debate – no punches pulled, none thrown – was sometimes pushed to its limit.

What does this even mean? What does a fight in which no punches are pulled and none are thrown look like? Do you just stand around staring the other guy in the face until he decides this is stupid and walks away? Does a neutral party decide who looks better sitting in a chair? Where can I see one of these “barbershop debates” and learn their golden rules? Do they sell them on pay-per-view? What do they cost?

Or do they just run on ESPN2 when half the country is at work and the other half is asleep?

Yet in the heat of those on-air battles, I began to see deep inside my opponents. I hit subliminal hot buttons that were making Tim Tebow the biggest lightning rod in sports, more loved and hated than even LeBron James was at that point.

You just admitted to doing the exact thing you said weren’t doing.

(And wasn’t it curious that LeBron, then infamous for his fourth-quarter failures, reached out to Tebow on Twitter, befriended him, even visited Tebow and stayed at his house in Denver, perhaps hoping some of Tebow’s late-game intangibles would rub off.)

Or maybe he was just bored when he was taking a shit, and tweeted.

So much about Tim Tebow moves people toward extreme love or extreme dislike or disgust. It’s rarely what he says, just the mold-shattering, emotion-mixing way he wins and the Christianity he wears on both sleeves. He can be so impossibly bad/great. He can be so insufferably innocent.

He’s the best role model in sports! No, he’s too Christian!

My on-air opponents had all dug in before Tebow’s draft and said he can’t play quarterback in the NFL. They were all being proven wrong, yet they were the very vocal majority. And most of them despised Tebow for something deeper than football. Debate raged.

Wait. I actually agree with all this. WHAT’S HAPPENING!?!?

My opponents kept pounding me with “he just can’t throw.” I counter-punched with, “He threw for 191 yards in the fourth quarter and overtime against the Bears’ defense!”

Ok, better now.

Small sample sizes should definitely override longterm consensus.

My opponents condemned Tebow for two poor late-season games, at Buffalo and against Kansas City. I swung back with, “You critique him like he’s a perennial Pro Bowler. Those were just his 13th and 14th NFL starts.”

No: we critique him like an NFL quarterback – an NFL quarterback who had 60 yards passing in a game his team needed to win. Had the Raiders not lost to the Chargers a few minutes later, that poor performance would have cost his team a playoff spot.

They: He’s all intangibles without enough tangibles. Me: Steve Young says he has natural throwing talent that could make him good, even great.

One analyst says Tebow can throw. Therefore, Tebow can throw. I call this Bayless’s Syllogism.

My opponents said they resented Tebow because he was given an opportunity no black quarterback with his skill set would’ve been given. Former Steelers QB Kordell Stewart told me this on air. So did Rob Parker, who owns a barbershop in Detroit. Yet, I argued, Josh McDaniels didn’t pick Tebow to win popularity contests, just games. I said Tebow got demoted to fourth string and his career might have ended if he hadn’t pulled off that first fourth-quarter miracle in his first start at Miami. I said Tebow had to overcome all the same knocks I heard through the ’70s and ’80s about black quarterbacks: low football IQ, unfixable mechanics, more runner than passer. “Kordell,” I said, “I thought you’d be SYMPATHETIC to Tebow’s plight. He’s a YOU.”

At least be subtle in your race-baiting.

Also, I can’t get mad at the capital letters here because Skip is quoting someone.

Of course, that someone is himself.

My opponents began to make jokes about Tebow’s Christianity, which outraged me on air. I’m a Christian, though (maybe to a fault) not as in-your-face as Tebow. I prefer actions to words.

Not a fault. It’s one of the few things you don’t have to apologize for.

My opponents accused me of loving Tebow merely because I share his faith. From my heart, that is not the case.

Right: The case is that you like attention, controversy and money.

I’m no religious zealot. I’ve been an on-air, in-print fan of many players who were far more Saturday night than Sunday school. But I do find it offensive that some media members ridicule Christianity in ways they would never take public shots at of other faiths.

Because a Muslim player would never be lampooned for bowing to Allah in the endzone.

I took offense to all the mock-Tebowing. Yet Tebow, seeing the bigger picture, embraced the fact that so many nonbelievers were at least pretending to pray.

So understanding. What a saint!

During our 20-minute on-camera interview, I probably went overboard to show I would ask Tebow tough questions. It ended with Tebow mopping his brow and saying, “Man, that was intense.” I told Tebow I didn’t like it when he said after the playoff loss at New England that the most important thing that happened was getting to visit with sick kids before that game in Foxboro. I told him his teammates probably didn’t love hearing that after Tebow played poorly and the Broncos got blown out 45-10. I told him to maximize the platform the NFL can provide him, then go full-tilt into his missionary work when his football career ends.

If Tim Tebow is saving the world, who saves Tim Tebow?

Skip Bayless. That’s who.

Again, I felt I was one of the few trying to remain objective about Tebow.

Four seconds ago you said you “went overboard to show I would ask Tebow tough questions.” You were therefore aware of just how compromised your credibility had become by that time.

It doesn’t matter if you were “trying” to remain objective; that ship sailed long ago.

Do you even listen to yourself? In this six year hiatus from writing, did you forget how to read your own words? 

Yet I stood out like a sore thumb pointing upward Monday after Monday for Tebow. What indelibly stained me as The Tebow Nut was the genius of DJ Steve Porter, who created a catchy mashup featuring my most passionate Tebow defense: “He’s a gamer, he’s a baller …” That “All He Does Is Win” video won a Webby Award.

Possibly the one positive contribution to society you had any part in.

We took our show to Denver for the Friday before the New England game at Mile High in early December. The night before, when I checked into the hotel, the woman at the front desk looked up and said, “Oh my God, you’re the ‘All He Does Is Win’ guy,” and ran into the back to get her fellow employees. The Tebow Nut had arrived.

Did she end up coming back? Maybe she was just running away before you started yelling ALL HE DOES IS WIN! ALL HE DOES IS WIN! until she took 20 percent off your continental breakfast.

At this point in the season a year ago, Tebow at home was thrown into a hopeless situation in the second half for a reeling team against a favored opponent, the Chargers.

Now, eerily, the reeling New York Jets are at home on “Monday Night Football” against the heavily favored Houston Texans.

What is eerie about this? That the Jets are underdogs against a much better team? Doesn’t this happen every other week?

Mark Sanchez will start but now the Jets are prime candidates to get Tebowed. What this young man was born to do is take an undermanned team that’s losing hope and make it believe it has a chance. He ignites. He inspires. He turns Hulk in huddles and after converting game-saving third downs.

Tebow can turn Shonn Greene into McGahee, Stephen Hill into DeMaryius Thomas, an offensive line still featuring three Pro Bowlers from last year into proud road graders paving the way for the NFL’s No. 1 rushing attack. Tebow can help rescue a defense stranded on Revis Island without Darrelle Revis and turn it back into a bunch of tough, experienced, well-coached playmakers.

Indeed, any semblance of competence from the quarterback position would go along way towards helping the Jets offense. But I’m not sure it will make the Jets defenders something they aren’t – namely: tough, experienced or well-coached.

But Rex Ryan and Tony Sparano must have the desperate guts to let Tebow do what he does best.

So far they’ve embarrassed themselves and embarrassed Tebow by using him as a decoy, a punt protector, a blocking back, a slot receiver and the initiator of a Wildcat offense featuring backs or receivers flying in from the flanks for handoffs. Tebow is none of that. Tebow, ever yes-sir/no-sir to a fault, even agreed to gain 10 or 15 “fullback” pounds that could hinder him when he gets his chance to actually play quarterback.

Allow me to say the painful words one last time: I agree.

Starting Tebow will take guts on behalf of the Jets coaching staff. It will be a move that reeks of desperation. And after Rex Ryan and Co. were somehow unable to foresee that their oft-mediocre quarterback would eventually play poorly enough to warrant reevaluation, it’s a decision that could quite possibly cost more than a few people their jobs.

Tebow’s mere intangible presence has turned a starter with shaky intangibles, Mark Sanchez, into a brain-locked basket case.

Mark Sanchez has always been a brain-locked basket case. The only difference this year is you are watching him play instead of Kyle Orton.

If Tebow history does repeat itself and Sanchez does turn into Kyle Orton

Told you!

(Also, Mark Sanchez wishes he was Kyle Orton.)

and Rex finally does give up and give in to Tebow and No. 15 does get his first start next Sunday against Indianapolis, I’ll predict Tebow goes 7-4 the rest of the way and the Jets squeeze into the playoffs.

Please, God. Make Skip Bayless wrong.

Take it from the Lone Objective Tebow Defender: Never bet against him.

*curses under breath*

*logs onto bovada.lv*

*puts money on the Patriots to win the AFC East*

Can’t wait for six years from now, when Skip’s next ESPN.com column hits the web.

By then, maybe Skip’s big bet will have finally come back to bite him.

Maybe then, Skip Bayless will finally sing a different tune. 

Jesse Golomb is the Editor-in-Chief of TheFanManifesto.com. He spent far too much time writing this column.

Follow him on twitter, or drop him a line via e-mail. 

Comments Off on Skip Bayless’ Year of Selling Tebow

THINGS: WhatShouldWeCallMe Is (kind of) Like Therapy Lite

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Emma Grager

Lately I’ve been in several discussions with other college students about the importance of being understood and of understanding ourselves. Inevitably this conversation leads to the stigma about counseling or therapy or some kind of professional mental help. The wonder of being in college is that counseling is free! But, in case you are not so fortunate to find yourself in this position, I have good news for you. There is a little URL that can comfort you day or night about your mental and emotional state.
Chances are if you’ve been on the Internet anytime in the last two years, you’ve heard of WhatShouldWeCallMe. This beautiful specimen of a blog is the answer to your question, “Does anybody understand me?!”
Yes. Yes, they do. And anybody’s name is…well, apparently they haven’t decided what they’d like to be called.
WhatShouldWeCallMe is home to a collection of emotions or moments that most people have probably experienced which can only be expressed visually. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I highly recommend you invest in WhatShouldWeCallMe because they’re loaded. WhatShouldWeCallMe reminds us that talk is cheap, but a two-second video clip is priceless. While I admit some of the images are completely irrelevant to me, for the most part, WhatShouldWeCallMe reads my mind.
Solving the problem of “you-kind-of-had-to-be-there,” WhatShouldWeCallMe has the perfect video clip for every kind of catastrophe of daily life.
Maybe you and I are in the middle of the same experience.
Maybe you’re struggling to adjust to being a real grown up.
Or maybe you have relationship problems.
            Whatever the case, WhatShouldWeCallMe has you covered. Welcome to the 21stcentury, where human empathy is virtual instead of in-person. And that’s not a stab at this fabulous invention. When you simply don’t have anyone around you who understands what you’re going through or you just need reassurance that you are not alone in whatever kind of problem you are facing, the feeling of “I guess I am normal” is just one click away!
            I happen to be the offspring of a pastoral counselor, which translates to “I had real, in-person therapy.” You see, when you’re mom’s a counselor, every dinner table discussion turns into an opportunity to understand yourself or those around you better and then express how you feel in words. That might sound like a disaster, but it’s actually been a huge gift. The only tough part was finding those words, the ones you needed to articulate how you felt about not procrastinating on your paper.
If only I could have showed her this, then maybe she would have understood.
           
            I’ve learned to find those words over the years. It hasn’t been easy or comfortable. And part of it involved a few appointments with a professional therapist.
Ah! Why would you ever do that? Or admit it on the Internet?!
Here’s how I think of it:
            How much do we know about the human body? Quite a lot, from the tiniest synapses and building blocks of DNA to the overall function and ability of the body.  So when we think there’s something wrong with the body, we go to a person who specializes in knowing about it. And even when we don’t think there’s anything wrong with our physical body, we still get it checked once a year just to make sure everything is working properly.
How much do we know about the human brain? Very, very little. It would be as if all we knew about the human body was that skin came in different colors and there was something that went boom-boom in our chest. So when we think there’s something wrong with the mind, shouldn’t we go to a person who specializes in knowing about it? And even when we don’t think there’s anything wrong with our mind, shouldn’t we still get it checked once a year just to make sure everything is working properly?
In an ideal world, every person would have an on-call therapist. There would be some kind of mental ER in case you had some kind of issue or breakdown and needed someone to talk to at 3 in the morning. In an only slightly less ideal world, everyone would at least have a good friend to share their struggles with.
But our world is not ideal, or even close. The reality is that most of us are afraid to share our darkest confessions or scariest thoughts with our friends. More frightening is the truth that we ourselves do not want to admit those corners of our mind exist, let alone delve into them. As Anne Lamott put it, using an analogy of her own, “My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”
So don’t! Don’t go alone. WhatShouldWeCallMe will make sure you have a buddy to go with. Whether you need someone to empathize with your attempt to wear less makeup or you want to justify complaining about your first world problems, WhatShouldWeCallMe is like the on-call therapist you never had. (The best part is that you don’t have to make an appointment, pay them by the hour, leave your house, or even use words to try and articulate your feelings!)

Also, just for kicks, Vandy caught on to the trend. 

Posted in blogs, THINGS | Comments Off on THINGS: WhatShouldWeCallMe Is (kind of) Like Therapy Lite

THINGS: WhatShouldWeCallMe Is (kind of) Like Therapy Lite

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Emma Grager

Lately I’ve been in several discussions with other college students about the importance of being understood and of understanding ourselves. Inevitably this conversation leads to the stigma about counseling or therapy or some kind of professional mental help. The wonder of being in college is that counseling is free! But, in case you are not so fortunate to find yourself in this position, I have good news for you. There is a little URL that can comfort you day or night about your mental and emotional state.
Chances are if you’ve been on the Internet anytime in the last two years, you’ve heard of WhatShouldWeCallMe. This beautiful specimen of a blog is the answer to your question, “Does anybody understand me?!”
Yes. Yes, they do. And anybody’s name is…well, apparently they haven’t decided what they’d like to be called.
WhatShouldWeCallMe is home to a collection of emotions or moments that most people have probably experienced which can only be expressed visually. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I highly recommend you invest in WhatShouldWeCallMe because they’re loaded. WhatShouldWeCallMe reminds us that talk is cheap, but a two-second video clip is priceless. While I admit some of the images are completely irrelevant to me, for the most part, WhatShouldWeCallMe reads my mind.
Solving the problem of “you-kind-of-had-to-be-there,” WhatShouldWeCallMe has the perfect video clip for every kind of catastrophe of daily life.
Maybe you and I are in the middle of the same experience.
Maybe you’re struggling to adjust to being a real grown up.
Or maybe you have relationship problems.
            Whatever the case, WhatShouldWeCallMe has you covered. Welcome to the 21stcentury, where human empathy is virtual instead of in-person. And that’s not a stab at this fabulous invention. When you simply don’t have anyone around you who understands what you’re going through or you just need reassurance that you are not alone in whatever kind of problem you are facing, the feeling of “I guess I am normal” is just one click away!
            I happen to be the offspring of a pastoral counselor, which translates to “I had real, in-person therapy.” You see, when you’re mom’s a counselor, every dinner table discussion turns into an opportunity to understand yourself or those around you better and then express how you feel in words. That might sound like a disaster, but it’s actually been a huge gift. The only tough part was finding those words, the ones you needed to articulate how you felt about not procrastinating on your paper.
If only I could have showed her this, then maybe she would have understood.
           
            I’ve learned to find those words over the years. It hasn’t been easy or comfortable. And part of it involved a few appointments with a professional therapist.
Ah! Why would you ever do that? Or admit it on the Internet?!
Here’s how I think of it:
            How much do we know about the human body? Quite a lot, from the tiniest synapses and building blocks of DNA to the overall function and ability of the body.  So when we think there’s something wrong with the body, we go to a person who specializes in knowing about it. And even when we don’t think there’s anything wrong with our physical body, we still get it checked once a year just to make sure everything is working properly.
How much do we know about the human brain? Very, very little. It would be as if all we knew about the human body was that skin came in different colors and there was something that went boom-boom in our chest. So when we think there’s something wrong with the mind, shouldn’t we go to a person who specializes in knowing about it? And even when we don’t think there’s anything wrong with our mind, shouldn’t we still get it checked once a year just to make sure everything is working properly?
In an ideal world, every person would have an on-call therapist. There would be some kind of mental ER in case you had some kind of issue or breakdown and needed someone to talk to at 3 in the morning. In an only slightly less ideal world, everyone would at least have a good friend to share their struggles with.
But our world is not ideal, or even close. The reality is that most of us are afraid to share our darkest confessions or scariest thoughts with our friends. More frightening is the truth that we ourselves do not want to admit those corners of our mind exist, let alone delve into them. As Anne Lamott put it, using an analogy of her own, “My mind is a neighborhood I try not to go into alone.”
So don’t! Don’t go alone. WhatShouldWeCallMe will make sure you have a buddy to go with. Whether you need someone to empathize with your attempt to wear less makeup or you want to justify complaining about your first world problems, WhatShouldWeCallMe is like the on-call therapist you never had. (The best part is that you don’t have to make an appointment, pay them by the hour, leave your house, or even use words to try and articulate your feelings!)

Also, just for kicks, Vandy caught on to the trend. 

Posted in blogs, THINGS | Comments Off on THINGS: WhatShouldWeCallMe Is (kind of) Like Therapy Lite

Stay informed: two EJ blogs to follow

Posted on October 10, 2012 by summysays

For the duration of this semester, I will be following the blog of the organization I investigated last week, 350.org: http://www.350.org/about/blog. We’re learning about what makes a good blog, how blogs interact with readers and how blogs can change the world. We can see all 3 of these elements in the 350 blog!

The first thing I noticed about the blog was its broad scope of topics relevant to climate change and environmentalism. The most recent post discusses the success of the Arab Youth Climate Movement, a perfect example of 350’s global reach and use of social media and blogs to reach the younger generation. After all, the future of human life on the planet rests in the young. Before reading this post, I had no prior association of the Middle East with environmentalism. Like many, I associated this part of the world with the stuff that’s (literally!) fueling environmental degradation, fossil fuels. It was refreshing and eye-opening to realize that we aren’t the only inhabitants of Earth who care about the planet. Blogger Sarah Rifaat writes, “They are already gearing up to organize an Arab Day of Climate Action on November 3rd… This just goes to prove that youth in the Arab World are eager to take a leading role in turning the tide on climate change.”

Image

Arab Youth Climate Movement

Secondly, each post is user-friendly and interactive. For that particular blog post, commenters used Facebook to log in and leave each other comments like “Selam sisters and brothers from istanbul turkey :) ”, “Hi..Youth I am from Gaza, Palestine” and “Team work at play. Let us work together not against each other. We can learn from the Young; they have more vision than many of us” from Egypt. The comment feature gives people a space to reflect on the material as well as meet and greet one another, a nice bonus compared to an article published in traditional print media.

Image

www.pacingtheplanet.org

Thirdly, posts are written by a variety of bloggers or guest bloggers with their own voice and opinions to lend to the story. For example, the blog post Pacing the Planet featured guest blogger Gavain U’Prichard. He, his wife Dana, and their young children are all walking the roads of America, Grapes of Wrath style, to call attention to climate change and the number 350. Their story absolutely blew me away. Here was a family who lived 100x more simply than I: living in a self-sufficient wooden home in the woods, reclaiming water from the roof to do laundry and gardening, washing and drying clothes by hand, drawing electricity almost purely from a wind turbine, hunting deer for venison, parenting and “homesteading”. Basically these people are simple saints in today’s busy world. But they realized that sticking to their isolated eco-bubble wasn’t going to change the world.

Our family realized that we would fail to address the momentous implications of the recent climate science if we just continued to dwell in the personal obscurity of our own lives, our day-to-day, our work, our enjoyments. We needed to do something…. We’re called to step outside, meet each other eye-to-eye, and acknowledge the extraordinary situation that anthropogenic global warming has put us in.

I think we all really have a lot to learn from this family. I’m just in awe of the intense commitment to integrity by which they live. They know we’re in an urgent crisis and actually stopped their already exemplary simple lives to raise awareness for the issue. You can read more about their journey at www.pacingtheplanet.org.

I’m also following a blog focused on environmental food justice, ejfood.blogspot.com. This blog has more frequent, briefer snippets of breaking news and growing trends in the fight for fair food. Its interface is very sleek and modern, and the writing style of its bloggers is very clear-cut and easy to read. Every post has lots of links to original sources or relevant outside information, giving the posts a journalistic feel, despite its casual tone.

Image

Today I learned that Chipotle signed an agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) in Florida, the source of a lot of our fresh produce.  I’d heard of CIW for a few years now, as I published an article (Sí Se Puede) about the environmental dangers that our farmworkers face every day out in the fields, especially the undocumented workers with virtually no rights.  I’m not sure exactly what concrete changes Chipotle agreed to, but CIW’s protests and threats of bad publicity seem to have paid off. Hopefully this agreement with CIW improves the lives of the hardworking men and women that feed our entire nation.

For decades, farm laborers in Florida have harvested tomatoes and other fresh produce for stagnant, sub-poverty wages, under harsh working conditions. The CIW’s advocacy begins at the top of the food supply chain, with consumers who demand that large food retailers source their produce only from growers who pay fair wages and treat their workers in accordance with national and international human rights standards.

The Food Justice blog has a much more specific scope but ultimately encapsulates what the EJ movement is all about: everyone’s right to live and work in a safe and healthy environment.

Posted in 350.org, blog, CIW, food justice, Immokalee | Comments Off on Stay informed: two EJ blogs to follow

An Experimental New Starbucks Store: Tiny, Portable, and Hyper Local

Posted on October 10, 2012 by summysays

An Experimental New Starbucks Store: Tiny, Portable, and Hyper Local

Starbucks has reimagined the coffee hut as a “modern modular,” LEED-certified drive-thru and walk-up shop.

Consider the small, modular locations. Consider the LEED certification. Consider the power savings of a drive-up business that doesn’t need to feed electricity to laptops all day. Starbucks might not just be designing modern modular locations that are off the normal consumer grid–they could be designing low-footprint stores that eventually go off the grid altogether.

Posted in environmentalism, starbucks | Comments Off on An Experimental New Starbucks Store: Tiny, Portable, and Hyper Local

The Power of Imagination Against Oppression

Posted on October 10, 2012 by writedrunkandeditsober

Why do we read literature?

No, really, why?

Reading Lolita in Tehran

Good literature goes beyond entertainment—it reaches down into the core of us and jerks us back into the heart of the world, into the heart of humanity, into the whirling depths of the human soul.

That is what we need to remember.

Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran, came to speak at Vanderbilt today, and I had the chance to attend a student-led conversation with her this afternoon.

Nafisi’s book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, is the memoir that describes her experiences as a professor of literature under the rule of the Islamic Republic of Iran. After the revolution of 1978, Iran became a place where religion was a forced act of state rather than a personal, spiritual belief. Reacting to these changes—the enforcement of the veil and the brutality of the Taliban—Nafisi used literature, from Nabakov’s Lolita to The Great Gatsby and Huckleberry Finn, to help herself and her female students understand their situations and deal with their own personal traumas.

At the beginning of the conversation, she took out a manila folder of old family pictures and passed them around the conference room. There was her grandmother as a young woman, and there was her mother, and there she was, too. All of them with full lips and black arched eyebrows, none of them wearing the veil except for the grandmother—who thought of it as a personal choice, and was appalled when the government enforced it on all women.

“Imagine,” Nafisi told us, “if suddenly the United States enforced Babtism— a single denomination of a religion—on an entire country, and told you that you—no matter who you were—had to wear a cross around your neck.”

Imagination—it’s a powerful thing. As Nafisi told us today, imagination is what allows us to have empathy. Imagination is what banishes blindness and unwavering ideology. Imagination is the thing that threatens dictatorship and frightens oppression.

And great literature—Lolita, Gatsby, Pride & Prejudice, Huck Finn, and the rest—is the door that allows us to tap into that imagination and those greater human truths.

“That, of course, is what great works of imagination do for us: They make us a little restless, destabilize us, question our preconceived notions and formulas.” – Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi autographs her book

I loved Nafisi’s analysis of the way stories work—the chambers that they open inside us, the thoughts they stir to the surface, the questions they cause us to ask of authority—and specifically of ideological authority.

The past few weeks I’ve been following a blog, Reading the Short Story, by a retired literature professor named Charles E. May. His blog is rather technical, and not altogether engaging unless you are interested in the components of the short story.  I read May’s blog because I am interested in the techniques of story, and how these techniques can be applied to my own fiction.

In one of his more interesting posts, though, May writes about C.S. Lewis’ distinction between “good” art and “bad” art, and this distinction is at the heart of what Nafisi differentiates as the narrative of the state vs. the goal of literature.

May writes, “Bad art may be “liked,” but it never “startles, prostrates, and takes captive,” says Lewis. “The patrons of sentimental poetry, bad novels, bad pictures, and merely catchy tunes are usually enjoying precisely what is there.  And their enjoyment, as I have argued, is not in any way comparable to the enjoyment that other people derive from good art.”

an imagining - photo of the day for May 13th, 2010Good literature—the literature Nafisi read in Iran—allows for complexity.

Too often these days, we’re polarized, shuttled into different “types” of people and frozen into these limited, suffocating identities. White vs. Black, Republican vs. Democrat, Christian vs. Muslim.

In an essay on the illuminating powers of imagination, Nafisi wrote that, “… a culture that has lost its poetry and its soul is a culture that faces death. And death does not always come in the image of totalitarian rulers who belong to distant countries; it lives among us, in different guises, not as enemy but as friend.” –

Good fiction, then, is our escape—an escape route that leads us back into the wonderfully twisted, amorphous human heart.

Where else do we find the ambiguity we so desperately need? The complexity we shy away from, but deep down—so desperately desire?

Posted in Authors, Azar Nafisi, books, C.S. Lewis, empathy, imagination, Iran, Life, Literature, Reading Lolita in Tehran, Short story, story | Comments Off on The Power of Imagination Against Oppression

Science: lies straight from the pit of hell

Posted on October 9, 2012 by scienceundone

Earlier in September, I stumbled across a reference to John Gurdon’s 1960s work on somatic nuclear cell transfer (SNCT) as I was doing background research for a project on embryology. To be precise, it was more like a face plant rather than a stumble. I fell head first and was hooked. This shit was incredible.

His research inspired some fascinating questions that I had wanted to explore in my own work, but they were eventually pushed to the wayside as I had more pressing matters to attend. Still, the impression had been made. This man was a pioneer; he caused us to rewrite the science textbook. Why had no one talked about him?

Fast forward to Monday morning, October the 8th. I’m at the airport, waiting to catch an early flight out of Houston. Bleary-eyed, I begin flipping through NPR’s science blog on my phone, trying to ameliorate the pain of being forced awake so early by indulging myself in the latest headlines. Scrolling down, an image of a man with wild hair and a mad scientist grin catches my eye. The 2012 Nobel Prize winners, just announced.

John Gurdon (UK) and Shinya Yamanaka (JP): 2012 Nobel Prize winners for the category of Physiology or Medicine

Wait, this was my guy! A brilliant yet highly under-appreciated researcher that seemed to fade into obscurity. And he had just won the 2012 Nobel Prize? This was a bizarre coincidence for me personally, but supremely vindicating and satisfying to know that 50 years later, this man’s work had been formally recognized by the international community. And although I’m partial to Gurdon, Yamanaka’s work has been extraordinarily groundbreaking, as well. Both researchers have made historic contributions to the fields of developmental biology and stem cell research. (I plan to review their work in another post, but for now, you can read about their incredible achievements here.)

High five, bros. Congrats for the most important discoveries for the benefit of mankind.

I became so intrigued by Gurdon’s (and later, Yamanaka’s) work because it demonstrates the fallibility of human knowledge—and the stagnation caused by unchallenged conventional wisdom—but so beautifully highlights the ways in which scientific progress and innovation revolutionize our understanding of the world. It is a travesty of infinite proportions that unsound political agendas—designed to appease the religious right and social extremists who wish to return to the moral universe of the 1800s—jeopardize the fundamental sanctity of this kind of scientific work.

This science strengthens our understanding of what it means to be human. But politicians want to put a moratorium on basic research because of silly, magical ideas—a kind of Dark Age thinking of the 21st century—that foster an inaccurate and perversely reductionist philosophy of our human origins. The magical moment when sperm hits the egg, and God’s plan is set in motion…Even without the religious overtones, this view of life is reductionist. But we can never move to the nuances, because the self-righteous, militant dogmatism of those who oppose science has a chilling effect on society, effectively silencing public discourse.

If a fertilized egg is a full-fledged person, how does one morph from a person to a trophoblastic tumor? This might sound iconoclastic, but it need not be inflammatory. I am not denying that something critical happens at the “moment(s)” of conception; I am merely suggesting that there is a mass deficit in the understanding of our basic developmental biology.

Life can be a continuous process, progressing in stages. But it is not a straight line trajectory, nor does it move clockwise in a circle. It can reverse its path or end up at a point that a teleological model simply cannot account for: identical twins, conjoined twins, parasitic twins, chimeras, tumors, cancers, spontaneous abortion, etc. A fertilized egg (or two) can turn into any of these things. And then, as Gurdon and Yamanaka showed: my skin cell can give rise to a new embryo, and my skin cell can also revert to an embryonic-like state. Astonishingly, life is multi-directional and can assume many unexpected paths in between. And genetic organisms, new forms of life, etc. can be created in an assortment of ways.

Science does not always fit neatly into prevailing human thought patterns, or comply with how we want to see the world. So we need to change the way we think, or at least be open to new possibilities.

The extremist, however, is completely unwilling to reflect critically upon his own beliefs. But scientific reality will never conform to the extremist’s worldview, and so he will forever deny its truth.

The dark, twisted paradox is that this dangerous mindset has infiltrated our political legislature. The men and women who are least qualified to direct our nation’s science policy are, in a cruel twist of fate, the ones calling the shots.

On one hand, we have brilliant thinkers like Gurdon and Yamanaka, who are using science to improve the plight of man. On the other end, we have a bunch of bozo politicians like Todd Akin (R-Mo) and Paul Broun (R-Ga), who possess not even the slightest bit of scientific literacy yet use their positions of power to legislate the fields that inevitably give rise to this type Nobel Prize-winning research. Oh, but we don’t want that research anyway:

“All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.”

…says Mr. Broun. Anti-science looney and member of the United States House Committee on Science.

Welcome to the circus, where Jesus rides dinosaurs, women’s bodies shut things down, and perpetuating magical beliefs does not, in any way, jeopardize the United States’ future as a leader in science and technology.

Posted in 2012 nobel prize, developmental biology, hESC, iPS, john gurdon, reflections, reprogramming, shinya yamanaka, SNCT, stem cell research | Comments Off on Science: lies straight from the pit of hell

Top 5 Music City Must-Hit Venues

Posted on October 9, 2012 by alexlouisealonso

If you haven’t caught on just yet… I am constantly enthralled in lists. They consume me. It’s abnormal. I’m aware. Let’s move past this.

To my pleasant surprise, however, I am not alone…

Bucketlist blogging has gone viral and I cannot think of a better place for a girl like me to find some inspiration. This month marks something monumental in my life: Turning 21. I will finally be legal which brings upon a whole new list of activities, venues, and places I want to explore around this city. Admittedly I have not been anxiously waiting to go to some swanky nightclub or raging bar… what I’m stoked for most is venturing into some of this city’s most intimate live music venues that have been off-limits for two years too long. Inspired by 365nashville.com, I plan to create my own little array of music bucketlists. 365Nashville’s blog features 2 full lists of 365 Things to Do –that’s 730 fun adventures to have, hot spots to try, food to inhale, & memories to be made (cheesy, I know…but true). 730?! It’s absolutely insane. In fact, the writers decided to cool off for a bit and recently began the “365 Days of Music in Music City,” offering daily posts on everything from music facts to local events… What better way to find some bucketlistspiration than through being given a new musical idea every single day.

So here goes it. These are my Top 5 Music City Must-Hit Venues.

 

Yes… there’s just 5 for now.

And yes I plan to complete them all whilst celebrating my first week as a legal adult.

5. First stop, 3rd Avenue South: 3rd & Lindsley

With the likings of Train, Ingrid Michaelson, Amos Lee, Patty Griffin, and Joss Stone (just to name a few) gracing the stage at this place, 3rd & Lindsley is an obvious must. Their website has a list of past performers that actually blew me away. When they brag that they have both up and coming artists along with legends owning their stage, this is no joke. This grill and bar provides their guests with live music every single night. So really, there’s no excuse not to drop in.

4. Short detour to East Nashville’s The 5 Spot Live

This gray building could be easily passed by on the artsy streets of East Nashville. However, this stop can be proud to say they are in fact home to “the most stylish party in America.” Just some kind words from a no big deal feature on GQ’s Top 100. Their weekly Monday night “Keep on Movin’ Dance Party” is what they’re famous for but their “$2 Tuesdays featuring Nashville’s Finest” is where I will be found in a few short weeks. With appearances by Sheryl Crow, Kid Rock, and other stars, I think this little joint has more to offer than GQ lets off.

3. Next up? Just a hop and a skip from Hillsboro: The Basement

From what I gather, this dive bar is everything you would hope to find in a Nashville live music venue. Loved for it’s intimate atmosphere, I’ve heard it’s a place that will make you feel like something utterly awesome is going to be shared with you. The kind of place where in 10 years you may turn on your TV and see that little nobody you saw at The Basement performing live on Good Morning America. I’ll be there. New Faces Nite. Every Tuesday night. Free of charge. Who knows, I’ll maybe even be lucky enough to witness the start of someone’s career.

2. Off to spend a little bit of time at home: Douglas Corner Café

Known to be many of Nashville’s famous songwriters’ “Home Away from Home,” Douglas Corner Café offers a little close-knit family lovin’ right on 8th Avenue South.  Though it may appear to be the average bar, this small venue has been named one of Music City’s “Legendary Venues.” Bon Jovi and Jewel are among those who return unannounced to casually play a few impromptu songs and hang out. This café is more than a little hole-in-the-wall. It’s a production company with video and recording studio, producing “No Hit Wonder: Songwriter’s Tour” CDs among others right at this location. They even have what they call “The Ugly Truckling”…a mobile recording studio. Too cool. Tuesday open mic nights draw in the crowds but the low-key charm of this venue is what keeps people coming back for more.

1. Finally! Speeding straight to the honky tonks that make Nashville the one and only Music City. Drop me off at Broadway & The Stage

For me, this is the ultimate. When I think of Music City I envision the bright lights of Broadway, with The Stage on the left pointing the way downtown. The Stage is a place I have been dying to go to since moving to Nashville. And I can assure you it will become my place. Once legal, I will frequent the stage. I will rub shoulders with up and comings. I will spot celebrities. I will be a regular. The bartender will know me by name. This is the plan. There are not enough moments in music that define this place that would justify how great it truly is. It is the Holy Grail of Broadway. Have I been there? No. Is that a strong claim? Definitely. But between the movies filmed there and celebrity appeal The Stage may have to become my one guilty pleasure that I’m just too giddy about to not share with the world.

Posted in 3rd & lindsley, 5 spot live, bucketlist, douglas corner cafe, music city, nashville, the basment, the stage | Comments Off on Top 5 Music City Must-Hit Venues

Strutting Across the Author Platform

Posted on October 9, 2012 by writedrunkandeditsober

This is a big one everybody. Get ready. Don your chunky yellow hard hat and your white paper mouth masks and the oversized plastic goggles that make the rounds of your eyes expand to the size of fish bowls. You ready?  You good? Because this is explosive.

Drumroll, everyone…

I JUST PUBLISHED MY NOVEL!!!!!!!!!!!! TELL YOUR AUNT AND YOUR UNCLE AND YOUR COUSIN AND YOUR NEIGHBOR AND YOUR NEIGHBOR’S DOG AND YOUR NEIGHBOR’S DOG’S ALTER-EGO TO GO OUT AND BUY MY BOOK!!!!!

I COULDN’T BE HAPPIER AND I CAN’T EXPRESS IT IN ANY OTHER WAY BESIDES ALL CAPS BECAUSE EVEN IF I’M A WRITER YOU GOTTA GIVE ME A BREAK, CAUSE THAT’S WHAT THIS BOOK DESERVES AND EVEN IF YOU DON’T KNOW ME, YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT MY BOOK IS FANTASTIC AND YOU NEED TO BUY IT BECAUSE IT WILL ONLY BE A BESTSELLER IF YOU GO OUT AND BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alright, now that I’ve got that out of my system, it’s time for a confession.

I don’t have a novel published. I don’t even have a novel written.

And I don’t want your neighbor’s dog to go prancing about the bookstore in her cat costume, hissing and spitting through her snout when she realizes that her wild-goose chase has been journeyed in vain.

What I would like to talk about is the big trend in book publishing, the author platform.

First off all, what is the author platform?

Michael Hyatt, the guy who literally wrote a book about the subject—Platform: How to Get Noticed in a Noisy World—puts it like this:

“Very simply, a platform is the thing you have to stand on to get heard. It’s your stage. But unlike a stage in the theater, today’s platform is built of people. Contacts. Connections. Followers.”

How did we get to this place?

Just yesterday, it seems, J.D. Salinger was holing up in his house, escaping the glaring eye of public scrutiny—and now we have that hideous, terrifying thing, that new buzzword tossed about by all the big publishers, the unwelcome and hard to obtain entrance pass that will allow us to enter the gates of the publishing world—you guessed it, the author platform.

As if us literary types were performers, too!

But does this Hyatt guy have a point?

Say you’ve just finished typing out the last of twenty revisions on your novel. You’ve sent out pleading query letters with the first few chapters, and agents say they like your work, but they have hesitations. Who would buy this book? It doesn’t have a market.

Perhaps you slouch over to your computer in despair, plant your face in front of the screen, and begin the mindless, soul-consuming scroll through past acquaintances on Facebook.

A story pops up on your news feed—a blog post by a boy you knew way back when you were getting your MFA. So many years since then, and yet a bowl of Cheerios still remains your cost-effective nightly sustenance.

You’re bored, so you click on the post. You’re redirected to the MFA guy’s blog, where he’s busy telling people how to get their books published, how to develop their author platforms, how to market their work.

Author platform, you think. Pshhh. Any real writer wouldn’t fritter away their time on social media. The fact that you, yourself, are on Facebook at this moment does not cross your mind.

But wait, what’s this? Oh shit of shits—this guy has already published three novels, and with big New York publishers, too. When you were in the MFA program together, he was that kid who wrote all those stories about talking dogs with alter egos that purred like cats. And now—this?

The twerp divulges his secret. He started blogging years ago, and now he has 10,000 followers. You do a little more investigation, and discover that his Twitter account, SecretlyADog, has fifteen thousand followers.

Despite your previous doubts about his descriptions of species-confused talking animals, a realization begins to prickle at the corner of your brain…and now you remember…the internet is a vast and ever-changing sea of glutinous, twitching eyes.

Authors have become public personas, super stars, and even the dead ones have a following. Check out Facebook, and you’ll be amazed. The author page of Ernest Hemingway has 356, 806 likes; Fitzgerald has 102, 293. These numbers aren’t much compared to the likes of Lady Gaga, who has an astonishing (and perhaps appalling) 43, 246, 576 likes, but hey, we authors will take what we can get.

More and more these days, if you want to be published, you have to have a fan base. Think of Julie Powell, whose blog became a book, and then the movie Julie & Julia. Think of Ree Drummond, whose cooking blog, The Pioneer Woman, sparked her very own line of printed, bound cookbooks.

With the help of the internet, publishing has become a grassroots endeavor and reshaped the traditional mindset of publishers. It’s no longer simply a process of write, publish, promote—instead, all three have blended together through the world of blogging, Twitter, and social media.

What you should not do is write a book, get a publisher, and then quickly start a blog for the sole purpose of shamelessly promoting your latest creative endeavor.

What you should do is pick something you love, something your passionate about, and share as much of that passion as you can with the world. If you’re good, and if you care enough, you might get a following—and maybe, just maybe, your book will sprout wings, or perhaps a hundred sets of centipede legs, but hey, that will be a start.

Posted in Author, author platform, Authors, ernest hemingway, Life, Michael Hyatt, novel, publishing, writing | Comments Off on Strutting Across the Author Platform

Blogs to Read When Your Apartment is Shaking

Posted on October 8, 2012 by writedrunkandeditsober

Wide-lightening

If you are like me, which is to say you live on the fourth floor of a dilapidated apartment building with no elevator, no couch, and no kitchen table, not to mention the fact that the windows rattle in their frames with every burst of thunder that shakes the building (twice in the past minute), then you will probably want to be one place within said apartment, and one place only: in your bed and under the covers, with your laptop close beside you (after all, it may be your sole means of sending an SOS message, should that be necessary, and judging by the lightening, and by the windows, it might).

But if you are like me you also have the attention span of a flea. That could come in handy once the tempest becomes a cyclone, but for now, under your covers, you are bored.

What to do?

Well, you do have that laptop.

And even if you’re not like me, and right now you’re drinking a mint julep in a rocking chair on a whitewashed porch, idling the afternoon away, well, you still might like to join me in reading a blog or two (or five) if you’ve got your laptop handy.

1. Well Blog from The New York Times

NYT’s Well Blog is a gem. A mixture of longer, print-ready articles and quick bit pieces about recent studies, the whole blog reads well, though more formal than most. The writing is solid, interesting, and fact-heavy in a good way. You really learn when you read this blog, and unlike many blogs on the web, these writers aren’t the amateurs, they’re the experts. From a post about a children’s heart transplant surgeon, to rustic fruit tarts and the debate over organic vs. conventional food, Well Blog hits on topics that inform and serve their readers. Plus, I went running after I read it. Maybe you will, too.

Now, a confession: I know nothing of politics. Blame that on my older brother liking them too much, or my absolute abhorrence of shit-eating-grins, or the fact that a short story always proves more enticing than an article on so-and-so’s latest gaff, but the reality remains the same: I’m ignorant of the blue and the red, and all the colors that are unfortunately absent in between.

Nevertheless, I have enjoyed reading several political blogs this week.

2. Howard Fineman on The Huffington Post

As a newcomer to the political scene, what I love about Fineman is that he provides context, and all articles are reader-friendly. What’s more, he focuses on the subtler moments of the campaign, which are likely to go unpublished in a newspaper that’s forced to highlight what’s most important, for example, Jess Jackson’s invisibility at the DNC and throughout much of the campaign. With its longer, thorough articles, the blog could easily translate into paper-form. Then again, the photo galleries and, best of all, Spotify playlists really give the blog some charm. Biden’s playlist, for example, featured Britney Spears’ “Oops…I Did It Again.” That killed me. Way to go, HuffPo.

3. Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish on The Daily Beast

The Dish is much more of a bloggy blog. Which means it hardly resembles print journalism. Sullivan share political updates in sharp punches. He cuts and pastes updates from articles, which sends you, as a reader, straight to the heart of what’s going on, this very moment, right now. Problem with that is there’s largely no context, and even less commentary. For a politico, The Dish would be a great site. It’s like a twitter for article cuts, which for me was not as appealing. I appreciate Fineman’s approach  more than Sullivan’s. Fineman gives you details. He gives you a story. Sullivan simply cuts and pastes, like a machine, until you wonder, isn’t there an algorithm that could do the same thing?

4. David Roberts’ The Grist

The Grist is a blog that focuses on politics, energy, and the environment, and for me, it came off as a blog about…..god, was I just skimming? Yes I was. Long story short I found it dull…he combined the worst traits of Fineman and Sullivan. He wrote in long-form like Fineman, and yet still managed to make the material uninviting, and under contextualized for new readers, like Sullivan. The few articles that I did really appreciate were his music posts, which then I resented as being bizarrely unrelated within the larger context of this blog on politics/energy/environment. But who knows, try it out. You may enjoy it.

This last blog comes right out of left-field.

5. Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide

Gizmodo is an outlet of Gawker, and it’s pretty great, if you’re a techy (I’m not). Even so, I enjoyed getting a sneak peak at what could be Apple’s new earbuds, and I really enjoyed reading a piece on what happens to you if you get struck by lightening (particularly useful information if, like me, you are hiding from a storm). The majority of the site is written in conversational, slightly snarky bloggy writing at its finest. One article title rings “If You Need a Gimmicky Gadget Alarm Clock You’re a Horrible Subhuman.” Now that’s a blog.

Hey, what do you know. While we’ve been reading away, the windows have stopped rattling and the walls have stopped shaking.

Still no couch, but we weren’t really expecting that anyway, were we?

Posted in Andrew Sullivan, Authors, david roberts, gizmodo, Howard Fineman, Huffington Post, Life, The Grist, Well Blog, writing | Comments Off on Blogs to Read When Your Apartment is Shaking

The Return of OUR Referees, and An Odd Case of Consensus

Posted on October 5, 2012 by Blogging Golomb

These days, we don’t agree on much.

In our rising time of partisanship and fanaticism, of opinions analyzed and shifting on an hourly – nay, minute-by-minute – basis, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for a large group of people to agree on anything at all.

…that is, except for how fucking horrible those NFL Replacement Referees were.

I say ‘were,’ because finally, mercifully – thank the lord – the union men have come home and sent those awful scabs packing, rescuing our true National Pastime from the one thing (gambling fraud) that might have knocked it off its money-churning pedestal.

And guess what? We did it. Sports fans came together and got our guys back, saving football forever – or at least until the next labor deal expires.

But our efforts weren’t fulfilled easily, and for a long time, it looked like they would be in vain.

No matter how many journalists whined (ESPN.com ran 29 stories on replacement refs from their first game on September 6th to their last on September 23rd), or no matter how many fans tweeted their disgust (surely, hundreds of thousands – if not millions – of 140-word complaints were sent out over the same time frame), the corporate behemoth would end up getting what it wanted, like it always does. How could we ever expect Goodell’s goliath to fall at the hands of a few million pissed off fans and a few dozen pension-seeking employees?

In reality, we didn’t: We were told time and time again that it didn’t matter how upset everyone was. As Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young reminded us, “The demand for football is inelastic.” He wasn’t really using the term correctly, but his point stood: all of us were still watching football, even if we weren’t particularly happy about it. This is the world today: driven entirely by profit motive, inelastic until dollars dictate otherwise. The refs could keep calling phantom pass interference until Skip Bayless’ head exploded, and it wouldn’t mean much at all until Skip actually turned off his TV set on Sunday afternoons.

But then, something funny happened. David won. The refs held on to their 401(k)s. The fans appetite for blood was satiated.

And it only happened because of one of the flukiest, freakiest moments in the history of American football.

With just eight seconds remaining in the last Monday Night Football game the replacement officials would ever participate in, Seattle Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson dropped back from the 24 yard-line. He held the ball, held it some more, and finally let it fly – first, as replays clearly showed, into the hands of Green Bay defensive back M.D. Jennings and then – once he had shoved Packers corner Sam Shields out of the way and wrestled Jennings to the ground, into the hands of Seattle receiver Golden Tate.

It was a play that by all accounts, should have ended in an interception and a victory for the Packers.

Instead, the Seahawks went home happy.

And the internet freaking exploded.

Forget 29 columns in three weeks: from the end of the game until the time a new deal was codified three days later, ESPN.com ran 39 separate pieces on just how horrible the replacements were, and just how overdue the NFL was in reinstating its regular officials.

Grantland columnist Bill Simmons – widely considered the most popular sports journalist of his generation, and a noted presence in social media – commented that he hadn’t seen such a sustained reaction on twitter since Osama bin Laden was killed.

Mitt Romney and President Obama, as well as VP candidate Paul Ryan, were all interviewed about the event the next day. They all expressed their disgust over the NFL’s actions and their unrelenting desire to get “our refs back.”

(Never mind that Roger Goodell was using the exact same kind of union-busting tactics Ryan had used with teachers in Wisconsin – but that’s a conversation on hypocrisy for another day.)

And three days later, we did. The NFL gave in to the noise – and the now very real actual possibility of fans switching off their TV sets.

This sort of chaos is just about the only thing that can create change nowadays, or convince those in power to listen to those who keep them there.

It doesn’t take a village anymore: It takes a calamitous moment that threatens to shake the core of an institution, and it takes tens of millions of people tuning in to witness it at the same time.

The outrage machine whirls eternally, but rarely in unison. For once, from late on a Monday night through the end of the week, it did. As a result, against all odds, we got what we wanted.

It’s funny that it happened this way, because one wouldn’t think sports would provide the common ground for Americans to finally come together. Our national pastimes are inherently competitive, and our fandom innately provincial: As fans, we stake claims to a certain team or teams, generally on certain federally-subsidized parcels of land within driving distance of our living room couch. For no other reason than just because, we also tend to hate everything that exists outside of these little bubbles. Our crosstown rivals are Satan, our divisional foes his spawn. 

At some point in the twentieth century, a few very rich white men concluded that Philadelphia and New York were sufficiently close in geography to avoid particularly awful interstate bus trips and thus, that the two cities’ football teams were suitable opponents twice a year. As a result, decades after these white knights rose from their round conference room table, this Giants fan despises everything the Eagles of Philadelphia stand for.

Maybe, in the end, sports is the only medium capable of providing the sort of earth shaking calamity mentioned above. Where else do you have millions of people paying attention – and passionately arguing about – the same event?

This is what I realized when, even if it was for just a few days, Philadelphia and New York could come together and agree: these scabs sucked. They needed to go.

It was a rare instance of brotherly love I could share with my friend from the other side of the Jersey Turnpike – and one I’d forget about instantly once a questionable pass interference call caused my Giants to fall to his Eagles the following Sunday.

Real refs: glad to have you back!

Comments Off on The Return of OUR Referees, and An Odd Case of Consensus

The Top 5 Twitter-Enhanced Revolutions

Posted on October 3, 2012 by alexlouisealonso

Like many of you, I am a tweetaholic. I tweet far too many times a day and often question why I am doing so. Embarrassed by the frequency, absurdity, and insignificance of my tweets, I had typically labeled Twitter as a social media source ranked just above Instagram in terms of necessity and relevance. It wasn’t until recently have I recognized the significance of it. If I were to describe Twitter in one word I would say: Revolutionary. It has been a driving force to spread information and enact change. It consistently beats the news and its constant flow of information makes it the most satisfying social media platform to use. Most importantly? It’s an outlet for change. It gives people in need the ability to stretch across the borders of their countries and beyond the restrictions of their governments.

Here are my top 5 Twitter-enhanced revolutions.

And how Twitter became a medium of revolutionary action worldwide.

 

5. The 2009 Election Protests in Iran

Up until the Iranian election of 2009, the people were tweeting constantly their opinions and local happenings. Turning Twitter into an outlet for the world to see their cause, the Iranian people caused uproar. The government, in turn, unprepared, was forced to try and regulate tweets while a constant influx of new ones continued to sprout up. Iranians banded together to overcome censorship. They sent pictures. They documented the harsh facts. Suddenly the details of the violence of the protests were made viral. All through this little thing called Twitter.

4. Libyan Revolution

The Libyan Revolution proved to be a social media driven one as well. After the government shut down the Internet in an effort to cover up the specificities of the protests, rumors spread that dictator Muammar Gaddafi had left Lybia after months of a vicious war against the rebels. Photos of the dead Gaddafi later were released. Where were these photos leaked and circulated through first? Twitter.

3. The January 2011 “Day of Rage” Revolution in Egypt

During the political crisis in January 2011, tweets from Egypt were spreading viral images, videos, and news spurts out like rapid fire. The government blocked all Internet access in an effort to stop the spread. However, as the Internet today proves to be a spiderweb of links, the retweeting and sharing of these first-hand accounts of crises continued to cross into countries worldwide.

2. 2009 Moldova Civil Unrest

After communists were elected to form a government in Moldova, the “progressive youth” began protesting. With the help of Twitter, the word was spread and reached over 10,000 people. Thousands joined the revolt and fled to protest at major government buildings throughout Moldova. Potential rioters and foreign countries alike were kept in the loop with the inner workings of the protests.

1. The Death of Osama bin Laden

In reflecting on how Twitter can so rapidly spread information and reports worldwide, I took a step back to consider a time when this affected me directly Nothing sticks out more than when I discovered that Osama bin Laden had died… via my Twitter feed. Checking my feed periodically, like many others, I first heard of his death through murmurs on the site. This news circulated nearly 20 minutes prior to any major broadcasts made regarding the breaking news. I knew even before my parents heard and remember us sitting in disbelief anxiously awaiting CNN to confirm what we were coincidentally able to find out just minutes before online.

As a former marketing chief of Unilever describes it, Twitter is, in a nutshell, “word of mouth on steroids.”

Twitter has emerged as a place where opinions and thoughts can be swapped and, more importantly, inside information spread. Finally the backstories to major news headlines are unveiled and voices of first-hand witnesses can be heard. Known now as part of the Twitter Revolution, between 2009-2011 many protests and rebellions were coordinated through the use of Twitter as seen by this Top 5. More often than not what is said via Twitter or other social media outlets is often a completely different view or commentary on the official publications that are released. As The New York Times commented during the Twitter Revolution period, “The recognition that an Internet blogging service can affect history in an ancient Islamic country is a new-media milestone.” The Internet and more specifically, social media, has risen as the primary tool for the spread of not just opinions and news but of the harsh facts and stark realities of people who are often left deprived of voices. It only has me questioning one thing – What next? How on earth will word be able to travel faster in just a few years than it does right now? All we can do is anxiously wait to see what new platform can trump the power of the little birdie that could.

Posted in borders, death of osama bin laden, egypt, election protests in iran, moldova civil unrest, revolutions, Twitter | Comments Off on The Top 5 Twitter-Enhanced Revolutions