So Long US World Cup

Ok, so this will probably not be a politically correct blog entry, but I can't help myself. The US has bowed out of the World Cup after finishing first in their group with 5 accumulated points. I tried to be interested, and to be supportive of the endeavor on a private, personal level. After all, I am a loyalist. I root for all the local sports teams - a 4 for 4 guy - in cheering on the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers, and Sixers. I cheer on the local high school teams, and I go to local college games as time and opportunity permits.

I watched a decent amount of the England-US game. I saw almost all of the US-Algeria game. I glanced briefly at the US-Ghana game today. I didn't care. I wanted to care, but I just didn't. Perhaps I have been spoiled by the games (sports) with which I have had the most involvement: baseball, basketball, football, and lacrosse. Even hockey might qualify, especially playoff hockey. You see, in those sports with which I am most familiar, one basic truth prevails: if the offensive player does what he is supposed to do with a high degree of technical and situational skill, his team will be rewarded with a reasonable chance to score a goal, touchdown, or run.

Now, look at soccer. These guys are admittedly some of the most remarkable athletes in the world. They can run, jump, stop on a dime, control a ball with only their feet, and generally make torturously difficult athletic movements look ridiculously easy. However, if the offensive player in soccer does everything he is supposed to do with high degree of techinical and situational skill, his team will have a reasonable chance to score a goal approximately one out of every thirty times. Moreso than baseball, and almost every other sport except for field hockey, failure is the norm.

90 or more minutes every game, and the most common score is 1-0. My conclusion is that the game is just too hard. I don't need high scoring, a 1-0 baseball game or a 1-0 hockey game can be riveting, as can relatively low-scoring basketball and football games. The problem isn't the final tally, but the futility of the efforts on a regular basis.

I think they need to change the rules. Maybe if they played with fewer players per side, or if they changed the off-sides rule to allow those sneaky guys to hide behind the defense. I honestly don't know the game well enough to suggest a legitimate rule change. What I know is that the games I watched weren't compelling. I respect the athletes, and am often awed by their conditioning and skill. What I would like to see is the fruit of the definition mentioned earlier. If a soccer teams executes its play, sequence, or set EXACTLY as they have prepared and practiced, they should be rewarded with a chance to score. Perhaps a defender will streak in to redirect a shot. Perhaps the goalie will make a phenomenal save. Perhaps the offensive player will kick the ball just barely wide. I don't need a higher level of success in scoring, just a higher chane for success.

I wish the US had advanced. I would have no problem with soccer's popularity growing to rival the rest of the world's. I believe that will never happen, however, so long as chances are so few and far between, and so long a games are won and lost so often on the whim of a referee's call that no one can explain, and which the referee himself isn't required to explain. So long as games are won and lost on the capricious bad or good bounce - depending on which team one is cheering - the games will not hold my interest.

I apologize to all of the fans out there who will hate my position. I admit in advance that I don't understand, and I am not inclined to try to learn. I think the sport needs to change. Put 7 men on a side. Do away with off-sides. Do something to elevate the sport beyond what it is now, a great deal of work while waiting for one team or the other to get a stroke of luck.

The 8th Habit - Hmmm...

So I picked up Stephen Covey's book, The 8th Habit, and started to have a look at it. I vaguely remember reading the 7 habits book from many years ago, but I was less impressed than everyone else on the planet.

While I agree with Covey's points, I suppose my lack of excitement was housed in the fact that I thought the advice was less than earth-shattering. You see, aren't most of his ideas grounded in the same optimism that Thoreau and Emerson espoused with their Transcendental philosophy of the middle 1800's?

The 8th Habit therefore is even less earth-shattering, though again I must express a general agreement with the principles. If I read Thoreau and Emerson correctly, they seems to agree that each human has to think for himself, trust that he and other people have the potential for greatness if they connect with the universal in themselves and in the world in general, and believe that the self-reliant individual will act in a way that will benefit himself and those around him.

Now go look at the Covey book and tell me that his philosophy isn't essentially transplanted from the woods of Walden to the top offices of the corporate centers of the world.

So why respond?

Could it be that no matter how complicated the world becomes, the more basic is the philosophy that can help people to wend their way through it?

A summary then... Be yourself. No matter the external forces and circumstances, marshall your efforts so that you are making yourself as viable and efficacious as you possibly can. When decorum or propriety tell you to tread softly, listen. But do not stop following the principles and drives that tell you what is right and what is wrong. Right and wrong DO NOT CHANGE with the times. They are intractable, constant, and timeless.

It didn't take a book.

Do we Really Think? An Impertinent but Necessary Question to Ask Ourselves

The title and text of the following entry is entirely borrowed from a book af essays and observations. I will give proper credit at the end, so that the reader has a chance to respond as intended/expected.

"We Americans are firm believers in education. The litle red schoolhouse is the very backbone of our entire experiment in government and living. Education is widely encouraged and made available to almost everyone."

"It would shock most of us, then, to hear that our education is sadly in need of repair. That despite our buildings and books and teachers and endowments we have overlooked the most important result which any education should give."

"The truth is that, as a nation, we have not been educated to think. We are filled with dates and names and even a wide variety of knowledge, but the ability to think --- to think through to the very end of a problem --- is stil a very rare quality with us."

"Millions of men come to problems which they earnestly seek to solve. On paper the solution they bring seems to be the right one. Weeks later, Time has proved it the wrong one. Isn't that the real reason why so many men who are sincere, ambitious, and hard working still meet with so little success?"

"As a nation, we enjoy a fine percentage of literacy. We read, write, spell, count, and talk reasonably well. Yet the ability to think, to rationalize --- to reason coldly and logically, is something apart from all this. And to men in business, this remains and shall always remain the greatest of assets."

"It is time to inquire into this. It is time to realize that in this machine age, average knowledge, average ability to do anything, is worth only half of what it was fifty years ago. We are building machines today which add better than men can and faster too. It is only a matter of time before machines will spell and provide information and carry out tasks of all kinds. In short, the mechanical man we are perfecting threatens to do almost everything we do - except one, and that is to think."

"Thinking on the surface---or halfway--- or three quarters of the way --- is like making half or three fourths of an automobile. And thinking this distance is just as useless.

"It is time to ask: are we really thinking things through?"

Heatter, Gabriel. Faith: a selection from essays and editorial that appeared in "The Shaft." United States of America, 1936.

Seventy-five years ago, at least one voice was forewarning, and forecasting, the perils that plague us in 2006. How prescient for a pre-WWII radio man to see that we were headed for an eduational disconnect that has not gotten better in the end?

Too many of us aren't thinking, about anything, all the way through to the end.

Admit it, if the 'red schoolhouse' and the dated computer references hadn't given it away, you would have thought this was written today.

How else to explain the current predicaments we are in? Pick a current issue - the Gulf Oil leak, the various war zones, the global economy, the jobless rate, the bailouts. You cannot tell me that the perpetrators would have taken us to where we are now had they thought there various situations through to the very end.