Category: rePosts

So the most outrageous young players become these urban legends online and are stars before they turn 21, and as much as the hype and stardom is a compliment, it’s also a curse, because the same media that inflates the legends helps amplify the backlash when real life doesn’t measure up. Setbacks are inevitable. Athletes can still be wildly successful despite all this, but in general, it takes some public disappointment to shake us back to a place where we can appreciate athletes for who they are, not what we want them to be. It took LeBron a decade.
It’s something to keep in mind as we obsess over young superstars like Wiggins, Clowney, or anyone else. The once-a-year “Next” issues are obsolete now, because those stories happen daily, complete with the hype roller coasters that follow. This is what we do now.
via The Year in Prodigies – The Triangle Blog – Grantland.

The comfort made him do it.
That was the successful defense strategy used by a Texas teenager sentenced Tuesday to 10 years of probation after he killed four people in a June drunk-driving accident.
According to news reports, a psychologist hired by 16-year-old Ethan Couch said the teenager was a victim of “affluenza,” a condition caused by the sort of absurdly permissive home life that comes with being wealthy. The lenient sentence—prosecutors had sought up to 20 years in prison—prompted anger by the victims’ families and others.
These things tend to happen in free-market capitalist societies, said Oliver James, a British psychologist and author of Affluenza: How to Be Successful and Stay Sane. Wealth skews perceptions of right and wrong, he said.
“America teaches people that greed is good,” James said. “There are very few parents who don’t imbue their children with some values, but what those values are is another story. Bernie Madoff’s children were undoubtedly given a model that money is king.”
via Judge Says Drunk Teen Is Too Rich to Pay the Price for Killing Four People | TakePart.

How This Works
Stephanie Brown and Jordan Sheldon of Bloomberg Sports ran the timeout numbers for us (data gathered current as of Dec. 11), and we have at least the beginnings of an answer. To isolate dead ball performance, BS only looked at plays immediately following a timeout (including officials’ timeouts—though not ones that came just before free throws—and totaled up the points per possession for them, as well as the true shooting percentage for those possessions. This loses plays following intentional fouls late in a game, out of bounds, and other times you might get a set play, but it allows us to isolate the times you’ll definitely see a designed set play.
via ​Which NBA Coaches Are Best At Designing Plays During Timeouts?.

Home ›News ›LTFRB names Metro Manila’s ‘most dangerous’ bus operators
LTFRB names Metro Manila’s ‘most dangerous’ bus operators
23 Sep 2011
Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB), the government agency in charge of the Philippines’ public land transportation services, has released names of the most dangerous bus operators in Metro Manila.
The LTFRB put together the list based on the number of death, injuries and damage to property incurred by the errant bus companies. According to Inquirer.net, the list published by the LTFRB covers the entire 2010 and the first half of 2011.
LTFRB board member Manuel Iway added that the agency hopes the publication of the list will make bus operators more aware of their passengers’ welfare or else risk the cancellation of their franchises.
Most dangerous bus operators based on the number of deaths (passengers and bus personnel)
1. Admiral Transport
2. Nova Auto Transport
3. JAM Liner
4. Gassat Express
5. Joyselle Express
6. Philippine Corinthian Liner
7. Rainbow Express Inc.
8. Alberto Garating
9. Alps the Bus
10. EM Transit Service
Most dangerous bus operators based on the number of injured (passengers and bus personnel)
1. Admiral Transport
2. Nova Auto Transport
3. AM Liner
4. Gassat Express
5. Joyselle Express
6. Miami Transport
7. Pascual Liner
8. Philippine Corinthian Liner
9. Rainbow Express Inc.
10. CEM Transit Service
Most dangerous bus operators based on damage to property
1. Don Mariano Transit
2. Nova Auto Transport
3. Gassat Express
4. Miami Transport
5. Pascual Liner
6. Rainbow Express Inc.
7. Ropal Transport
8. A&B Liner
9. GELL Transport
10. CEM Transit Service
via LTFRB names Metro Manila’s ‘most dangerous’ bus operators – News.

“The number of practicing Catholics is diminishing very quickly,” he said. “In the 1950s 90 percent of Catholics still went to church every Sunday. Now, it’s only five percent.”
This mass exodus has hit the bishops hard in their bank accounts. “The Dutch Church,” the cardinal said, “does not have a subsidy from the state but depends on voluntary contributions of the faithful. Therefore, we are forced to close many churches.”
He quoted figures from the Dutch Office for National Statistics that said in 2010 that just under 16 percent of the population identified themselves as Catholic, adding that this number is expected to drop to about 10 percent by 2020. The same office estimates that Islam will become the second largest religion in the Netherlands by the same year, with only about four or five percent expected to be Protestant Christians.
Cardinal Eijk said that the visiting bishops had given this report to the pope, who replied, “You must not give up. You must keep courage and above all the hope that Christ has given us. This hope never disappoints.”
via Dutch bishops tell Pope the Church is collapsing as they face hundreds of closures | LifeSiteNews.com.

“You still got to play within the game, but having so many coaches throughout my career, it’s like you got to prove your worth, prove your value, prove you can play every new situation you get into because, especially with me, they always want to put me in a box: ‘Just drive and dunk it.’ ‘Just play defense, get steals.’ ‘I don’t want you shooting the ball,'” Iguodala said. “One year, I was told, ‘Stay away from 3s. Limit your 3s, limit your 3s.’ I shot 40 percent from 3 that year, because I was just like, I got to prove myself each and every time.”
At the hotel, a second person approached Iguodala as he sat quietly. It was an excited fan. “Welcome to the Bay,” he said. “We need you.”
Iguodala thanked him. The fan went on his way. “I still think that my game isn’t respected,” Iguodala said later. “So when they say I need you — and I’m not being arrogant — I think y’all need me more than you think you do. And I’ll show you. I just can’t wait to show it, even if they won’t be able to see it.'”
via How Andre Iguodala is like Scottie Pippen – Grantland.

ACT 2: YESTERDAY, HE SPEAKS OF THE MISOGI
Two days later Kyle is on the phone, on an off day, sounding relaxed. He has a theory about how he did it. It sounds a bit far-fetched, maybe, but do you have a few minutes?
Hear him out. It’s important.
Most of the guys on the team haven’t heard it.
Most of them, he thinks, probably wouldn’t get it. Here he is:
“There’s a jiu-jitsu concept that was introduced to me this summer called the misogi. It comes from the idea that as we get older we take fewer risks, think more inside the box, get more careful, make more decisions based on fear. To combat this, once a year you do something that you’re not sure you can do. That’s the misogi. I’m not talking a marathon — lots of people do that. It’s more like, climb to the top of the farthest mountain you can see. That’s where I’m gonna go.
“So as my trainer is telling me all this, I’m like, ‘Yes, I get this.’ I feel it. I feel it in my basketball game. I want to work on different moves, catch and shoot faster. But what are we doing?
“He says, ‘Have you ever stand-up paddleboarded before?’ No. But I’m in. ‘How do you feel about paddleboarding from the Channel Islands to Santa Barbara? Twenty-five miles across open water?’ I’m in!
“So we practice seven or eight times. Then we took a boat to the islands in early September. Suddenly I found myself in the middle of the ocean, on a 13-foot board called the Big Easy. I was with two friends. We had packs. A boat followed us: Every few hours they’d throw us Gatorade, water, a Clif Bar. The first few hours, I kept falling. I had to paddle from my knees. Maybe six hours in, getting baked, this pod of dolphins comes flying in from nowhere. They’re under us, around us. It was magical. Out of a movie! I was like, ‘Yo! Come with us! We’re gonna make it!’ I started paddling really fast. Then, an hour later, this dorsal fin pokes out of the water near us. And it keeps going up and up and up. This thing was like two and a half feet tall, and it comes for us. It comes for us! I was like, ‘Is that a killer whale? It’s so big!’ But there are no killer whales in Santa Barbara.
“The guy in the boat jumped up and said, ‘That’s a mola mola.’
“I said, ‘Does it have teeth? We’re so scared.’
“We’re standing our boards with our paddles in our hands. Turned out it was a 2,000-pound fish.
“I could talk about this for a long time.
“The point is, as we’re paddleboarding … there wasn’t a tree, there wasn’t a corner, there weren’t mile markers. You had to break it down even smaller. Into the stroke. So I sat there and tried to perfect my stroke each time I pull. The angles of how I’m pulling the paddle back and going forward. How long I’m going. How I’m using my wrist. All these things. You try to make the stroke perfect. It took nine hours.
“My bones felt hungover for like two weeks. Training camp started and I thought I was in bad shape. But I recovered, and I think I’ve become more serious about my shot. My mechanics. My revolutions. The stroke.
“That’s what the misogi did.”
via Kyle Korver’s Big Night, and the Day on the Ocean That Made It Possible – The Triangle Blog – Grantland.

In February, Alyssa Rosenberg wrote an excellent and nuanced examination of the paradox of Ender’s Game, and the tricky negotiation of consuming valuable works by reprehensible artists. In the 1930s and 1940s, George Orwell produced article after article trying to navigate the treacherous intersections of literature with the personal and political. But even now, there’s no map. It is unconscionable to keep supporting Card, to buy his books, to afford him any further platform. But if we all walk away and keep walking, someday a kid is going to reach for the touchstone that I clung to — and come up empty.
Once, early in our correspondence, Card and I talked about villains. I don’t remember the exact words, but Card’s advice stuck with me: to find something worth loving in every antagonist. It’s the lesson that made Speaker for the Dead my partner’s favorite book in the Ender series: that no one is all good or all bad; that most of us live the lives we think we have to.
via Orson Scott Card: Mentor, Friend, Bigot | Underwire | Wired.com.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Nebraska” are the current standards of what a serious Hollywood movie looks like. “American Hustle” offers so many easy pleasures that people may not think of it as a work of art, but it is. In the world that Russell has created, if you don’t come to play you’re not fully alive. An art devoted to appetite has as much right to screen immortality as the most austere formal invention. ♦
via David Denby: “American Hustle” Review : The New Yorker.