Jackie Robinson In 3-D

With perhaps days/hours to go before the baby, I’m doing a big push on Jackie Robinson to see how far I can get before my life changes so much.  I had a big day in the shop yesterday and took these stereo photos.

Together, they can be viewed in 3-D.  If you were one of those who could left your eyes relax and see those old 3-D, computer-generated drawings, then you SHOULD be able to do this the same way.  I can do it.  But it takes a few moments to get it.

The trick, for me, is to get far enough away from the two photos, so that they are a little smaller than a postcard, held at arms length.  Then you stare, allowing your eyes to relax and not truly focus.  When your eyes are relaxed correctly, you should see double–that’s 4 images.  Keep trying different pressures on your focus until the two center photos become 1 photo and it will be 3-D.  It’s eerie.  When you get it, you will KNOW, so if you are wondering, then you don’t have it.  Remember: Try and make the middle two images merge into one, so that overall, there are 3 photos, and only concentrate on that middle photo–that’s the one that will become 3-dimensional.

How did I take this photo?  With a 3-D camera?  Nahh, with my own camera.  Since I’m working with a tripod, and nothing is in motion, the time lapse between photo1 and photo2 can be ignored.  You couldn’t do this trick with live action, because p1 and p2 would not match.  But in the studio, you just take one photo and then move the tripod 80mm to the right and take another one.  80mm is about the distance between people’s eyes.  The “interpupillary distance”.  Actually, in the population, it’s much smaller for most and is smaller for women and bigger for some ethnic groups.  It runs between 65 and 83 mm.  At 25.4 mm per inch, you do the inch-math.

With the two photos of EXATLY the same thing and yet from two slight different (80mm apart) vantage points, they are about what your brain takes in and processes into one, 3-D image.  The slightly different perspective means that the right eye sees a little further around Jackie’s left side, than the left eye can see.  That info is used by your wonderful brain to give you all sorts of depth and distance information.  Imagine trying to golf without it!  “How far to the pin?”  “Where’s the 150 yd marker?”

And for you Liberals out there, remember, the beauty of the eye and the brain and the depth is pure chance–we’re talking NO INTELLIGENT DESIGN, right?  Don’t even think those words in a public school.

Before you go thinking I’m some kind of techy person, realize that 3-D cameras and looking at “stereo-images” like we are here, originated at about the time of the Civil War.  Stereo view photos were all the rage from about 1870 to 1910.  They looked like this:

They were viewed in a viewer that looked like this:

The slides were available as canned, commercially produced photos of current events and famous places and landmarks.  Think GAF-viewmaster from the 1970’s:

I’m not sure why they fell out of favor.  Perhaps WWI, which destroyed so much of what good was happening in the world around 1914.

Anyway, they did commercially produce stereo cameras for the home-gamer and here is one:

All you need is the ability to take TWO images simultaneously, one interpupillary distance apart.  Now if you search for these things, you will only find, I believe, film cameras from yesteryear.  There doesn’t seem to be any digital stereo cameras available.  There are a couple of guys who have hacked together two digital cameras, but the hack is never simple and the mounting and alignment is never easy.  Both lenses have to point at the same focal point out in space, or the pictures will look hokey–like mine!

What I want to know is why doesn’t SOMEone produce a decent digital stereo camera?  WHY?  With PC’s bringing down photography prices and giving us all sorts of exotic ways to display them, it’s a perfect marriage!  I have searched, but not recently, so it’s possible that there is something out there now.  If anyone knows of a product, comment in please.

For Jackie fans, Jackie may be getting his first paint today on the lower legs and shoes and pants.  It’s always the single biggest, quickest change in the statue and for a medium that goes crawling by in the hundreds of hours, this is a welcome thing.

Your crazy old uncle

Heard yesterday that Tommy LaSorda was going off about the steroid guys and how they should be banned for life and their records expunged from the book and so on and I thought to myself, “…when does LaSorda cross that line and just become your crazy old uncle who everybody just kind of laughs off, you know?  Like, ooh, that’s just Uncle Blabby–don’t really pay attention to him, he’s crazy as batpoop…”

Has he crossed that line already?

Although, to be fair, he is outspoken about things that are taboo.  Take this snip of a Hannity interview:

HANNITY: One time you said about Darryl Strawberry, it’s a character flaw because he was using drugs.

LASORDA: Absolutely. Anybody that takes drug and they try to pass it off as a sickness, that is a lie. They take drugs of their own free will, put it in their body of their own free will, realizing that: No. 1, it’s against the law, No. 2, it’s harmful to their body and No. 3, all it will do is lead you down the path of destruction.

Or these gems from a Pepperdine speech:  “There are three types of people in this world,” Lasorda said. “The person that makes it happen, the person that watches it happen and the person that wonders what’s happening.

“I hope that by talking to you today, you will all become the people that want to make it happen, or else it was a waste of time for me to battle the last hours of traffic to see you today.”

“I don’t know why kids take drugs,” he said. “They don’t make you smarter or prettier. Darryl Strawberry could have been one of the best players ever in this game, but he let drugs take over his life.”

Open Apology to Phil Mushnick

Recently, I had done a piece on Mushnick, a guy I admire and respect.  I went over how I thought it was perhaps unfair to rip Bud Selig without mentioning the union.  I posited that Selig isn’t omnipotent–he’s locked in a dance with Fehr and the union and basically, “it takes two to tango” re steroids.

Mr. Mushnick and I exchanged a couple of emails over this and he mentioned that perhaps I had not read the many column inches over the years that he devoted to doing just that–giving it to the union as much as he did, to Selig.

And I apologized to him for not having acknowledged these items, citing the new baby, and the fact that in the last 1.5 yrs, for the first time in a decade, I wasn’t reading every column like I had been–so, sure, I could easily have missed some items.

I think he is a fair man and realizes the big picture.  I was railing a bit at the media’s tyipcally liberal-and-therefore-always-going-to-take-Labor’s-side-even-though-in-this-case-Labor-is-a-bunch-of-super-rich-guys-complicit-in-a-drug-problem-in-their-ranks-in-the-interest-of-making-money.  To my mind, Labor always seems to get away with things.  Selig is low-hanging fruit, if you will.  It’s easy to bash Selig.  My 9-yr-old nephew can rip Selig.  But newspapers are always reluctant to go after the union guy; the Labor guy; after all, we’ve all been conditioned by Hollywood and the news media to revere the unions–they’re supposed to be for the “little guy”.  How can you bash that?  That’s why we bail out the big 3 auto companies and don’t write enough about how the UAW is driving production costs so high, they just can’t compete with other companies.  The union is for the little guy, got it?

And with a “rich” owner like Selig, we have no respect.  He’s a shill for the other rich guys, so let’s go after him.  Since the time of Charles Dickens, we’ve all been conditioned by Hollywood and the media to hate the rich.  It’s too easy and per formula.  Only it’s not the full story.  The full story is more akin to what Phil Mushnick has published this morning in the New York Post: Click here to launch the piece in a new window

The fault for the look-away, non-confrontational stance on PED’s, has been a dance of BOTH the Commissioner and the Union head.  Selig AND Fehr.

Nice work Mr. Mushnick.  I have never enjoyed a column of yours as much as this morning’s.  Please accept my apology.

***

As an addendum, I was telling Mrs. Pinetar that now I’m a big player in the news business! haha.  I said, “…but honey, think of it!  I’m like Winchell–I should have a booth at the Stork Club…”, to which she said, “…Dear, give me a break~and you DO have a booth–at (Ciro’s) the pizzeria down the steet.”

***
Addendum #2: While going over the Selig thing, I got to thinking about the 200 baseball books I have read since about 1980 and I thought about the Commishioner’s office and just what it was–and wasn’t.  Originally, in the 1920 environment, the game was under a cloud.  It was feared that people would not buy tickets to a game that was not a true contest.  The fear was that if gamblers could rig the world series, then the public would start to stay away, more and more.

And it wasn’t just the 1919 series that was rigged.  There is real strong anecdotal evidence that the 1903, 1911, 1912, 1914 and 1917 series were rigged.  Connie Mack lost the 1905 series partly because he would not pitch Hall of Famer, Rube Waddell, because he knew that gamblers had gotten to the simple, but brilliant man.

Connie Mack also broke up a juggernaut team: the 1911-1914 A’s, because he believed they had thrown the 1914 series to the lowly Braves.  Grover Alexander may have thrown many regular season games.  Cobb and Speaker were almost banned for life.  John McGraw tried to bribe the umps in the replay of the Merkle game in 1908.

The stink was so bad, that baseball knew it had to act.  They had to “appear” to the public to be trying to fix the problem.  They hired Judge Landis as a figurehead, but he knew he had leverage and he didn’t want to just be a figurehead, so he held out for sweeping powers.  Sweeping powers that kept blacks out of the game for decades.  Landis had power because of his unique bargaining position–but he was probably the only Commishioner who wasn’t a straight-up shill.  Remember, all the owners wanted originally was a shill.  And Landis wouldn’t go along.  The position is ultimately a shill position for the owners, and saps like us (via the sappy media) lend credence to the myth that the guy cares, or that he has autonomy.  The reality?  He has very little autonomy.  He was, and is, a shill for the other owners.  Why look at him any other way?

***

Final shot: You’ll Never Walk Alone, Yossi Benayoun.  That an Israeli is scoring a big goal for a staunchly English (and Scouse) club in the Champion’s League, is just a nice thing, dontchathink?  All around.

And I can not recall a goal that made me happier in a very long time.  Gerrard’s goal at the end of the FA Cup Final?  The goals in Istanbul?  This one may not be in THAT zip code, but it’s up there.  Mazel Tov, Yossi #15.

Yankees 2009 Team Salary Payroll

Here are the MLB team salaries going back to 1993.  Figures are from USA Today.  Notice where the Yankees are each year and by how much.  It’s breathtaking:

Pettite Inexplicably Escapes

This is something that has always bugged me.  Yankee fans worship this Andy Pettite fellow.  He’s this big god to them because, I suppose, he was on the 1996-2000 teams that won 4 in 5 years.  Never mind that the teams that won were lousy with steroids and HGH and were the highest payroll teams in MLB EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THOSE YEARS.  Never mind that.  Yankee fans don’t want to understand that.  They don’t want to think about it being “rigged” that way, you know.  They only want to see the Yankees stomp every other team year after relentless year.  It makes them feel like bigshots, I guess.  Covers up for their insecurities, right?  Ok, fine.

XM 175 Destroyed

Why did I cancel my 3 radios?  Easy.  They fired Mark Patrick, for one thing.  But they also showed me who they are.  After XM merged with Sirius, they not only fired Patrick but they completely revamped the 175 channel lineup.  After destroying the morning lineup, they split up Dibble and Kennedy and ruined the afternoon drive show as well.  They did this all WITHOUT ONE WORD TO THEIR CUSTOMERS.  It was like they tried to sneak it in without anyone noticing.  They treated loyal paying customers like dirt–like kids.

I was a 3+ year subscriber and I was such a steady customer that I would re-up by the year and it had been so long since I logged on to my account, that I didn’t remember my password or even my user name.  This made dropping the service today, a bit of a chore which angered me further–to the point where I might have kept a radio but after the great “customer service” I received, I never want to deal with them again.  They are rockheads.  It isn’t worth it.

When I first called, I was put on hold a long time.  Ok, no problem.  Then, when I reached a person, it was clearly an offshore call center.  Now I’ve been to call centers in India for business and worked with those folks and they are the nicest people you can possibly imagine.  They are nicer than folks from Oklahoma!  It’s almost ridiculous how nice they can be.  It’s to the point that you wonder what they’re “on”.  But it’s their way.  Well I got maybe the only one who was a little obnoxious.  Trust me when I say that I know how much of a long shot that is.

So they transfer me to a person in the states and I tell that person that I may have auto-reupped without the knowledge that XMSirius was going to pull the rug out from under me and rip apart the one reason I subscribe.  She didn’t really even understand me when I told her that.  As soon as I thought she might have a brain, she went right into canned, scripted come-ons about how Sirius was working to improve things and that I should hang in for all the great changes.  “I’ve seen the change and that’s why I’m leaving-thanks”, I told her.

On she went about the improvements and so forth and I said “decline”.  Then she started throwing free months at me.  First it was 3-free months for the main radio and then she moved to 3-free months across all radios, to which, I said, “decline” a couple of times.  I finally got what I wanted but yet the clincher is that these bastards don’t have a CLUE why they just lost three radios that were basically permanent.  They don’t get it.  They don’t WANT to get it.  I hope they fail.  I hope the whole company comes down like a ton a bricks and I hope that Mark Patrick NEVER sells out and becomes that which he so deftly mocks.  I hope Patrick ends up on the MLB channel or some such place where they leave him alone and let him work his craft.

You are clowns XM-Sirius!  CLOWNS~!

(my wife doesn’t know it yet, but with the money we save on the stupid sat-radio, we are getting the season package for baseball~!  woo hoo!)

How to argue with Yankee fans

[sigh] I have to go over this one more time, because I just heard it again.  I was lamenting the Yankees (and to a MUCH lesser extent the Mets) just spending ridiculous amounts of cash and rendering MLB a joke on a lot of levels.  Anyone who reads The Pinetar Rag is well aware of this, and probably tired of it too.

So a guy I know accuses me of being “Socialist” because I complain about the bigger market teams out spending the small market teams by 10-1 at times.

Here’s the correction:  “Socialism” is the situation when GOVERNMENTS heavily tax their population under the guise of providing goods and services that would otherwise be provided by the private sector.  So instead of choosing the item and paying for it out of your pocket, the government takes the money out of your pocket, in the form of taxes, and provides their government version of the service.  You no longer make the choice–the politician and the voters who stamp it, make that decision for you.  Once it’s made, you have no other options.

Now in baseball, it’s a professional sports league.  The league is holding out to the public, the concept that their contests will be fair contests among the teams.  If the contests were not viewed as “fair”, by the paying public, they would not pay money to see them–would not waste their time.  This is the concept behind the anti-gambling stance of Major League Baseball; to keep the game’s on-the-field-fairness-and-integrity sacrosanct, because everyone’s lively hood rests on that cornerstone.  A guy mixed up in gambling might be willing to “sell” games, as Hal Chase of the Yankees did with abandon in the 19-oughts and teens.

When I advocate that the league do something (salary cap) to prevent the Yankees from just buying up players and spending over 200 million while the lesser clubs have to get by on 30, 40 and 50 million, I advocate it because I don’t think the on-field contests are fair anymore.  How can they be?  I think the integrity of the game is compromised when the Yankees can do what they have been doing with all that money.  The Yankees’ spending is antithetical to fair contests.  It SHOULD be viewed with great alarm, but somehow, it isn’t.

The person who called me “Socialist” for wanting to cap or curb the kind of spending the Yankees do, is mixing up the contexts.  I don’t want the government to steal my freedom (taxes) and force me to take or leave their sub-par “services” whether I like it or not–with no “opt-out”, like with Social Security.  I’m not a Socialist.  That’s governments, got it?

But when I invest my time in a baseball game, I want some assurances that the deck isn’t just RIGGED with CASH, like it is now!  I want the league to address it themselves so I don’t have to think about it; so I can just enjoy the game.

The league is an artificial contrivance; a closed system.  By limiting the Yankees’ cash-sledgehammer, they are not being “Socialist”, they are actually delivering the product that they promised me; a fair product.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence can look at a demographic map of the USA and see plainly, that all metro areas are not created equal, and thus, teams in those areas are not on equal footing with regard to generating cash!

Kansas City has 1.9 million souls.   Click here to bring up numbers in a new window

NY/NJ/CT metro area has about 19 million.

Only an idiot would set up a system where these two areas are considered “equal” in terms of cash generation.  You’re supposed to have a fair contest on the field but you are going to ignore these numbers?  My goodness.

So don’t advertise a “fair” fight on the field, when anyone who thinks about it knows it isn’t that way.

By this time in the fact-pattern, (usually from Yankee fans) I hear the talking points recited from memory, as if the Steinbrenners sent out a memo from their war-room, deep in the bowels (or the vault) of Yankee Stadium.  I’ll address the more common ones:

(1)  Money isn’t everything: look at the [names most recent high spending team that didn't win]

It doesn’t invalidate the Yankees’, cash-sledgehammer model if some other team wastes a lot money.  My goodness; anyone can blow through money!  Just because a fool squanders his money doesn’t decrease the VALUE of money, and the mountains it can move, for everyone else!  All it does is prove that one team and its management, was foolish that particular season, and no more.

The thought process is because the 1997 Orioles blew a ton of money, the Yankees can spend 100% more than the league mean, every year, and no one is supposed to notice?

Guess what?  We noticed.  The Orioles were stupid, but we’re not!

(2) The Yankees pay lots of luxury tax, and the “cheap” owners just pocket it

They do pay this but it is a pittance.  This money can not lift a Pittsburgh, KC or Cincinnati out of where they are: in small cash markets.  What it amounts to, in my opinion, is a line item on the MLB (and Yankees’) Public Relations Income Statement.  It is MLB’s way of fooling it’s customers (remember the fans?) into thinking, “see, we have addressed the spending disparity in our sport).”

No you haven’t!  Not even close! Since this thing went into action in 2003, the Yankees have paid out about 20 million per year.  During that same time, they outspent the league by an average of about 110 million PER YEAR!  So, even if you gave the FULL Yankee luxury tax to ONE average team spending 90 million dollars, the Yankees would STILL have outspent them by a whopping 90 million dollars, or, about DOUBLE.

Does that sound like they addressed it to you?  Me neither.  I’m not buying this.  But be fair, it’s wonderful PR, because many, many fans buy in 100% to this nonsense that the system is somehow fair.  And the media aids and abets the deceit, as they usually do in cases such as this.

(3) Owners like Pollad of Minnesota are billionaires who could easily write some checks and keep up with the Yankees.

This is my favorite because of it is the most “Candyland” of them all.  The premise is, “…the guy’s rich, so what if his team is in a small market, if he wants to compete with the Yankees, he can write checks out of his personal bank account!”

Listen closely to what’s being said. The owner, because others feel he “has the money”, should just DONATE his own PERSONAL money to his business, to keep up with the Yankees, otherwise, he is, somehow, not a “sport”.   This concept could be the height of Yankee-fans’-arrogance and stupidity.  For the honor of spending like a lunatic Steinbrenner, owner-X should PAY.  Pay for it himself.  Even if his business LOSES money in the process.

They want to tell another man how to run his business, and, basically, that he should run his business AT A LOSS, so that the Yankees and their fans don’t have to feel self-conscious about out spending the league by over a 100 million dollars every year!  I guess the Kool-Aid is: It’s ok that we spend like pigs because Pollad has untouched money in the bank.  [shaking my head] My goodness…

(4) The Yankees won with home grown guys like Bernie and Jeter and Posada.  It wasn’t money!

Because George Steinbrenner was banned from baseball and couldn’t trade them all away (he tried very hard to dump Bernie–read “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty” by Buster Olney), they DID have a home-grown nucleus, I’ll grant you.

But why did they win 4 titles in 5 years?  MONEY.  They payroll was the highest in baseball EVERY ONE of those championship years.  And the nucleus was young and not making the obscene money yet, so SOMEONE must have been paid to come in and help, and they were.  Mostly the big ticket pitchers.  The Key’s and Cone’s and Clemen’s and so forth.  So while yes, there were home-grown guys on the roster, don’t be fooled: the dynasty was resting on cash; lots of it.  Cash that towns like KC and Pittsburgh and Cincinnati don’t have access to.  Make no mistake.

(5) See?  Small market teams CAN win. [referring to 2003 Marlins]

Yes, it’s true, in 2003 the 150 million dollar Yankees lost to the 49 million dollar Marlins.  It can happen.  That’s because home field in baseball is only a 4% edge and the biggest edge you’re ever likely to see in the post-season is only about 65%, which means that 35 times out of 100, the lousy team will beat the juggernaut in a series.

But let’s examine what’s really behind this talking point.  Yankee fans throw this one out there as if to say, “sure we spend a lot, but you don’t have to spend to win…”  This is supposed to deflect attention from their massive cash outlays each year.

But there are 30 teams in MLB.  And the mean payroll in 2007 was 80 million. [click to see numbers] So let’s call 10 of them, the bottom third, truly “small market”.

Here are the last 10 world series winners:

2008 Phillies, 2007 Red Sox, 2006 Cardinals, 2005 White Sox, 2004 Red Sox, 2003 Marlins, 2002 Angles, 2001 DBacks, 2000 Yankees, 1999 Yankees

I can really only call the Marlins truly, “small market”.  So let’s double it and say that twice every 10 years, a small market team scales the heights.  So you might be tempted to think that, “…sure, about every 5 years, we have a puncher’s chance to run-out in the postseason”.

But not so fast!  There are 10 small market “trials” EVERY season!  That’s 10, different small market teams placing their small bets and spinning the wheel every year!  And out of all 10, only ONE of THEM scales the heights every 5 years or so.  But if you are one particular small market team, then you might have to wait longer.  You might have to wait 10 times 5 years = 50 years for your number to come up.  That’s the difference between referring to the population, and a given team IN the population.  Neat trick there, Yankee fans, but we ain’t buying it.  Being a fan in a small market stinks.  We watch our good players hit arbitration and then end up on the Yankees and coming back into town to kick the snot out of us.

Sure PNC park is the nicest place on Earth to watch a ballgame, but don’t blow the Yankee smoke up our bippies.  Please. –Fog

There’s a long drive, it’s gonna be…

Click here to read a blurb on Yvars.

Just read the sad news that Sal Yvars passed on Dec 10th.

Patent bread bowl?

Finished re-skimming Dale Carnegie’s 1920’s era meisterwerk, How to Win Friends and Influence People”.  Like I said, I had read it before (Sioux Falls, SD on a February, 2-week business trip) and thought I might benefit from a re-read.  I ended up skimming it.  Probably read 60% of it but I reviewed the stuff I wanted to.  Mrs. Pinetar makes fun of me for “skimming” certain (not all) books and I say that it’s just time-management.  By skipping (and not suffering) certain lame parts of books that don’t interest me, or don’t apply to me, I get through more material that DOES.  Nothing wrong with that.

I thought I needed the re-read because lately I’ve found that I have been wasting time getting drawn into stupid arguments.  (Spoiler alert!)(If you can have a spoiler for a book written in 1927) One of Carnegie’s big tenets in the book is that you don’t argue: almost never; with anyone.  It’s a losing proposition.  He says, and I mostly agree, that even if you win, you have only won a small, academic point and yet in the bigger picture, you have antagonized the man you beat and lost him.  He goes on that there is a way to point things out to folks who need learnin’, but do it right or you gain nothing.

I find myself arguing too much.  It’s not good.  Most people are not even considering your ideas in the typical argument IN GOOD FAITH.  You may THINK your ideas are having their day in court, but the other person is not even considering them–not giving them a chance.  He’s waiting for you to take a breath, so he can dazzle you with his stuff…long story short, you’re both wasting your time–get back to work.

Other gems in the book are the idea that to “Win friends” and “Influence People”, you need to be a smiling, active, engaged LISTENER.  Carnegie says that people don’t care about YOU at all.  They only care about themselves and if you let them bloviate on about themselves, they’ll walk away from that lecture (Carnegie says “let it BE a lecture”) LIKING you.  That’s it.  That’s all.  Shutupayourmouth and listen.  Be genuinely intersted; ask engaged questions but SHUT UP and let THEM talk.

I never did sales, but imagine that lots of this Carnegie stuff is now long-boilerplate in the sales-force-training manual; particularly the part that says: “NEVER argue with a customer!”  In fact, if the customer says that the competitor’s product is great, you are supposed to AGREE with that immediately!  Yikes.  But really, anything else you say devolves into an argument and you are then DEFENDING your own product instead of selling it.  Carnegie was big on the sales stuff, so if you are a sales person and you haven’t read this book, shame on you.

In fact, I’m throwing a big “shame on anyone” who hasn’t read this book.  It’s that core.  It’s basic.  It’s worth it.  You might learn something about yourself that you can tweak.  I know of a person who holds a big government job (where else?) and he is NOT liked by his charges.  They gave him this book anonymously for Christmas one year to send a message.  If your employees send you this book anonymously, they are trying to tell you something, but STILL, you should read it and think it over.

Where I work, I have a guy reading a book I thought was great, “Baseball Between the Numbers”.  He’s reading it reluctantly but has a real attitude about it BEFORE even reading the ideas presented.  And he was telling me basically that I’m going to be the one DEFENDING the Baseball Prospectus guys’ work.  I told him “no, I’m not”.  If you don’t like a piece, email the author!  I’m not going to be put in that position.  I enjoyed the book, and I hope that you do too, but if you can’t accept the fact that they found no mathematical evidence to support ‘hitting protection’ in the lineup, or that they found most sac bunts, stolen bases and hit-and-runs to be HURTING the team that does it, then it isn’t my fault.

What it does mean is that people, for the most part, are not objective.  They get an emotional attachment to an IDEA and to do that you must SURRENDER ALL OBJECTIVITY.  That’s why you don’t argue with anyone.  Because most people get emotionally attached to ideas and can NOT stand off and be a passive, truly objective observer; which is what you need for a true “debate” to have meaning, and not just be two guys shouting their “stuff” at each other.

I’m sure I’m guilty of it too, but I try to look at objective facts and evidence on its merit and incorporate that info into my view.  I think my ability to do that, to the extent that I can, reflects my education in Accounting and Computer Science.  I also have always loved Science and read every bit of non-fiction science-history that I can get my hands on.

The Accounting and Comp-Sci trains you to be objective and look at measures and build up assumptions off of them.  I carry this out even in an emotional avocation like fantasy baseball–building spreadsheets and then trusting what those numbers tell me.  For many, a thing like baseball is a very emotional, seat-0f-the-pants thing.  Don’t go showing those guys any numbers that say the way their daddy or their high school coach showed them was wrong–it only gets them mad.  They are totally convinced that they KNOW, so don’t go showing them anything else–it’s noise.  If it’s numbers, there’s a built in prejudice that, well, “…you cooked those numbers to have them say what you wanted”.

Reading Science-history books (there are so few good ones) is the other thing that I think helps me to be more objective at times.  It always fascinated me how certain really brilliant things came to be.  We always take for granted that a telephone or a computer or transistor, just WORKS.  But I always think that at some point in the past, some person had to MAKE it work for the first time.

And so you read about these people and it seems that the ones who succeed and make the breakthrough are ALWAYS the ones who question the current state of the art.  They question the conventional wisdom.

I just finished the Wright Brothers book, and they doubted the published, accepted figures for the day for lift and drag on a surface.  They built their own wind tunnel and derived their own numbers and when their numbers were far OFF the published, academically-accepted marks, they had the guts to TRUST their own results and proceed from that assumption.

Another example is in the great book “The Dancing Wu Li Masters” ( a must read for anyone–tremendous book).  They explain very well how Einstein’s real breakthrough was the simple fact that he was the first to ACCEPT the experimental results that had been accumulating, that said light traveled the SAME speed no matter the speed of the source or, of the observer.

That concept didn’t make sense to people because it is so fantastic; so counter-intuitive to everyday life.  People were not willing to ACCEPT that result after experimental result was piling up and confirming this odd “fact”.

Einstein’s genius is that he was just the first person to think,”…ok, let’s assume that is true, where does that lead?”.  That’s what led to his theory of relativity–just being WILLING to believe experimental results.

The analogy is a baseball fan when they first hear that the numbers show that hit-and-run, stealing and bunting almost always HURT the team doing it.  That’s not what they have been taught all their lives.  To accept that means that not only have THEY been wrong their whole lives, but all their peers and teachers (dad) were dead-wrong too.  Some are able get past being “wrong” or “fooled”, and say, “thank you very much, I am glad to have this knowledge!”, while others will not yield: “…light speed MUST vary with the speed of the observer or source! It MUST!” (“All those people can’t be wrong!”)

So you read the science history and you see how many times the accepted stuff was WRONG and the challenger was the breakthrough guy.  You see it over and over and over.  Lister and hospital cleanliness.  The Wrights.  Edison.  Einstein.  Heisenberg.  And on and on and on.

I’m not saying I’m smart like Einstein or anything dopey like that.  I’m saying that I’m working on the Jackie Robinson statue and I’m spending long hours doing that and you end up thinking about prejudice and where it comes from and why and so forth.  Prejudice can be about numbers and everyday notions too–work or play, it’s everywhere.  It is the human tendency to ASSUME things without looking at evidence; it is the human tendency to get EMOTIONALLY INVESTED in IDEAS for no reason.  It’s usually damaging in some way.  Some, obviously, more than others.  It’s beneficial to try and avoid it for yourself, if you can.  (I think this is also why I like Mythbusters so much)

***

For anyone still reading this far, the book we’re reading now is “Patent it Yourself” 13th ed by Patent Attorney David Pressman. I love it!  It’s reading like a text book, but it covers Intellectual Property, which is a bigger area than I originally thought: Patents: Utility, Design and Plant; Trademarks/Trade names, Copyrights & Trade Secrets.  It is fascinating.

For instance: To get a patent, you apply and pay a fee.  There are two levels: one for small guys and one for big institutions.  Then, when they grant the patent, if they do, you pay again.  This usually takes 3 years.  Then, at 3.5 years and 7 and 10 years, you will have to pay “maintenance fees” that add up to more than you lay out to get it or get it issued.

How this jag started was that I have been working on an “invention”, let’s just say, for a few years.  It was an idea for a year or two before I built a prototype last January.  My nephew and I were having fun dreaming about taking it commercial when I did what I always do, which is, bought a used patent book on Amazon used books.  In the first 15 minutes of reading that, I realized, “oh no! If I don’t have a patent for this and I take it out in public or publish it in ANY way, I have one year to file a patent or I LOSE the ability to EVER patent my own idea!”

So that put the breaks on our plans (not that we had time anyway–there were little league games to win).  I was amazed at that, but after reading Pressman (a much more in depth book), I understand why it has to be this way.  And I’m starting to see what my options are and that is making my planning much easier.  It takes the paranoia out of it.

Patent searching, has also never been easier than it is now.  You can go to google patents and look to see if anyone has thought of your idea but be careful, these online patent searches are not full.  They don’t go all the way back.  To do that, you need to go to Alexandria, Virginia, to the PTO library there.  Oddly enough, when you look out the front window of the Gaylord National Hotel in Washington, DC, you see Alexandria.  So we may be heading over the Potomac River to hit the library.  But there’s  a lot of work that would have to be done first.

Looking through the patents online is also very entertaining.  Check out this one.

Click here to open the patent in google-patents in a new window

One of the big takeaways of looking through the patents is the realization that some pretty dopey stuff gets issued.  And that’s not cheap.  If you are a small business or individual, you will be paying $1,100 minimum if you patent something COMPLETELY yourself.  That’s doing the writeup yourself, the full patent search (Alexandria, VA) yourself as well as filling out all the gov forms and the drawings!

Paying a patent attorney, a searcher and draftsman to do all that typically runs between $5,000 and $15,000,  so it makes you wonder who would bother to draw up, search and file a basically frivolous patent.  But apparently, some do.

And no, Phil, I’m not looking to patent the bread bowl, although it is a nifty idea…

I’ll end this longest ever post with my favorite Edison quotes:

Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.

Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

Hell, there are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists – proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.

I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

I start where the last man left off.

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

There is far more opportunity than there is ability.

We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.

Say It Ain’t So! Mark Patrick Leaving The Big Chair?

Just got the sad news, which is “unofficial”, that Mark Patrick is leaving the XM Radio 175 Baseball This Morning Show.  No details were given but I suspect that it might not have been totally amicable on both sides.  According to XM sources, Buck Martinez is still under K and will return to that show and format with some one or more as yet, un-named co-hosts.

My take on the show is thus: In year 1, with Mark Patrick, Buck Martinez and Larry F. Bowa, the show redefined good sports radio.  They had unbelievable rapport and chemistry and weaved in and out of serious and silly with little trouble.  It was as if you were evesdropping in a big league clubhouse when the guys were coming in and getting their coffee and talking about the games of the night before.  It was fantastic radio.  The humor was superb.  The proof that it was great was evident in the fact that EVERYONE that year in baseball, was using the show’s catchphrase “stay hot”.  You heard “stay hot” popping up everywhere.  You KNEW that all of baseball was tuning these guys in every morning–and you loved it.

Year 2 saw Orestes DeStrada substrituted in for Bowa, who left to coach for the Yankees.  DeStrada was chosen most likely for his attributes, unfortunately for the listener, he had absolutely NO sense of humor or appreciation for what they had built the show into, the previous season.  It was a tough listen for that year and a half.  The suits at XM did a lot of damage to a very valuable property by casting DeStrada and then by refusing to rectify their obvious error in doing so.

Year 3 was the same lineup as Year 2, until Orestes was let go or left; they never really made that clear.  What was clear was the spring in Mark and Buck’s step when the decision was made.  Clearly, they were unhappy with the year 2-3 cast.

The decision to stick with just Patrick and Buck was decent.  You were always hoping that they’d find the “magic guy” like Bowa was, but you knew that would be a tall order.  After the debacle of Orestes, you were just happy that they didn’t go plugging just any old baseball fringe-lifer in there in order to have 3 guys.  It worked for the most part and Mark Patrick was again able to do his silly schtick.

The forays into Bill Ripken weren’t real good listens.  Bill Ripken has a sense of humor, but I don’t think it jelled well with Buck and The Big Chair.  They needed to look back to when it was great: with Bowa; and look to recreate that atmosphere, if at all possible.

***

Now that Patrick is gone, we need to complain long and loud and bitterly to XM to do the right thing and give us back The Big Chair.  So here it is.

This is the petition.  Leave a comment below and leave a short message and when it hits 500 or 1000, we’ll pass it along to XM.  Whattayasay?

The phone number for XM 175 is 866-MLB-ONXM.

Beyond that, this is the email address for XM radio comments.

Listnercare@xmradio