Month: July 2002

What’s new, what’s cool: Please touch

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

For KRTKids

The bad thing about museums is that they have all these cool things — priceless artifacts, beautiful art, stuffed animals — but you can’t really do anything with them. The signs always say, “Do not touch.”

Not so at the Smithsonian for Kids Web site (http://www.si.edu/kids/). The Smithsonian is a collection of many different types of museums in Washington, D.C.

There are tons of neat things to do at this site. You can learn how to identify all those bugs in your back yard, how to read a satellite image, what you can make from a buffalo, test your knowledge of pandas or U.S. postal history, and watch how the bare skeleton of a triceratops moves as it walks.

Those are only a few of the many fun things to do at the Smithsonian for Kids site, which always says, “Click here,” and never says, “Do not touch.”

___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services

Long, long time — no blog, blog

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

It’s been extremely hectic here in D.C., between the midterms, finals and research-intensive features I’ve written for KRT. Oh, and also the not getting any sleep. I’ve barely had time to answer e-mails, read news and other blogs, let alone do any of my own blogging. But I’ve got a blogging backlog if things I’ll be catching up with once I get home.

So look for a slew of posts next week. Until then.

Student activists discuss universities’ limits on free speech

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

For KRT Campus

WASHINGTON — Conservative campus activists complained Friday that since Sept. 11 university administrators have stifled displays of patriotism and support for the war on terrorism.

In a panel organized by the conservative group Accuracy in Academia, three student activists told stories of how they felt their speech rights were hampered on campus.

“Patriotism at the University of Michigan was suppressed by political correctness,” said U-M student Allison Tarr. “After 9/11, we were hit by a barrage of anti-war demonstrations, which only reinforced the repugnant anti-American image of Ann Arbor.”

Tarr said that the Diag, the main area on the U-M campus where students demonstrate with university permission, saw many displays and expressions of understanding for Muslims and the Islamic world, but little expression of sorrow for the men and women killed on Sept. 11.

“Instead of encouraging women to don Muslim headdresses, why not encourage people to wear flags?” Tarr asked.

Arizona State University student Oubai Shahbandar said things were worse on his campus. On Sept. 26, a large American flag was hung in one of the residence halls, but it was taken down by the administration, Shahbandar said.

The administration claimed that the flag would be offensive to the many international and Muslim students who resided in the hall.

Shahbandar, who was born in Damascus, Syria, and moved to the United States with his family at age 7, objected to the university’s action. He proposed a resolution in the student senate to put the flag back up, but it was defeated. He continued to make noise, causing ASU to lose $1 million in alumni contributions.

“Finally, the university acquiesced and put the flag back up,” Shahbandar said. “We won a small victory in the culture war.”

But the battle over campus speech is not new, said Thor L. Halvorssen, executive director of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a legal group that works to protect the individual rights of students and professors in universities.

“The assault on freedom of speech on campuses has been going on for 15 years,” Halvorssen said. Restrictions take the form of speech codes and zones of free speech on campus. “It’s only after Sept. 11 that people are starting to notice it more.”

Halvorssen said that both pro-war and anti-war students and professors sought FIRE’s legal help.

“We had a number of people who came to us with their cases who expressed a desire to take immediate military action or hoist the American flag and express their patriotic spirit,” Halvorssen said. “There were many more cases of that type than speech calling for restrained action or who said the U.S. was to blame in some way.”

Jordan Kurland, associate general secretary of the American Association of University Professors, disagreed.

“Controversial positions taken on international affairs have not suffered greatly since Sept. 11,” Kurland said. “What has been much more of a problem is the great slew of steps taken in terms of federal legislation.” Kurland referred to the Patriot Act and other counterterrorism measures that he felt would hamper intellectual freedom.

Kurland did say that “there is an atmosphere of intense bitterness” on the Israeli-Palestine conflict, with Jewish-American and Arab-American students taking the other side’s views very personally.

“There’s a degree of incivility or worse that is very bothersome and has appeared in a number of college campuses in that regard,” Kurland said.

Whether conservative or liberal, “Nowhere do you have a right not to be offended,” Halvorssen said. “People offend each other all the time — it’s called debate.”

The student panel, “Campus Anti-Americanism in the Wake of 9/11,” was part of a four-day conference called Conservative University, which featured an array of speakers and events for the dozens of college students who paid to attend. The conference also was organized by Accuracy in Academia.
___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services

The sports stadium scam: What is seen and what is not seen

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

The Fund for American Studies’ Institute on Political Journalism

The local sports franchise is in trouble. The owner says the old stadium is economically obsolete and the taxpayers must rush in to save the day, or else he will be forced to move the team elsewhere.

The voters, scared to lose the team they love, give in. A new stadium is built and the area around the stadium is revitalized. Restaurants, bars and shops pop up. The city retains its identity as a “major-league city,” and through the magic of the multiplier effect the local economy grows as a whole.1

Voila. The owner wins. The fans win. The city wins. Heck, sometimes the team even wins — games!

It’s a great story, but — like the notion of a Cubs‘ world championship — it’s largely a pipe dream. The real story is that taxpayer subsidization of professional sports facilities is almost always a losing bet, economically speaking.2

The economic impact studies employed by politicians, the news media, and pro sports owners to support government-financed facilities are beset by methodological problems and don’t count all the relevant costs.3

The real story is that taxpayer-financed sports facilities are a boon to owners and players, the news media and especially politicians, but average taxpayers — particularly those too poor to afford to attend sporting events regularly and those who don’t follow sports to begin with — wind up on the losing end.4

The construction of sports facilities has skyrocketed in the last 15 years. According to economists Roger Noll and Andrew Zimbalist, thirty-one new stadiums and arenas were built between 1989 and 1997 alone.5 They also estimate that $7 billion will be spent on new facilities before 2006, and most of that money will come from public sources.6

The idea that taxpayers should pay to build a sports facility and then let the team owner reap most of the profits seems a little far-fetched.7 How has this happened? Sports owners claim poverty (relative to other owners) because as ticket and broadcast revenue-sharing in sports leagues has increased, one area where owners can still keep most of their gains is from team memorabilia, concessions, parking, hotels, luxury boxes and all the other amenities associated with live sports nowadays.8

Other owners use these newfound profits to buy higher caliber talent, which leads to better on-field performance, which leads to yet another round of profits. Without taxpayer subsidies for a new facility that will allow them to extract these non-shared income streams, owners say they cannot compete. But as economist Mark Rosentraub has written, “It is difficult to find any real evidence that team owners or players need subsidies or welfare support.”9 Still, a team’s threat of leaving often proves too much for politicians to bear, which will be explored more in-depth later.

We know why owners want new facilities, but what arguments are put forth to justify them to the public at large? It is usually argued that a new facility will actually prove to be not just a subsidy for an ailing sports franchise but a boon to the local economy as a whole. This is usually done through the economic impact study, and a key economic theory expounded in these studies is the multiplier effect.

“The theory is supported by a simple observation,” explains economist William J. Hunter. “When an individual purchases goods or a business pays salaries, the recipients of these funds will in turn spend the money. This additional spending tends to increase income and employment, which in turn generates still more spending, and so on.”10

Hunter goes on to add, “While it is no doubt true that this process takes place, the common belief that the results of this process can be accurately measured and manipulated by the government is mistaken — and genuinely dangerous.”11 One major problem, Hunter explains, is the “local production fallacy,” where the “local economy is presumed to benefit from all the jobs, primary and secondary, ‘created’ by the public works project.”12

Much of the money that is spent both in the construction of facilities and in the operation of the facility and the franchise winds up going elsewhere. “A multiplier might appear to some to be the magical mystery tour of any economy,” says Rosentraub, providing an example to prove his point. He and a friend go out to dinner in Indianapolis, but how much of the money they spend actually stays in town?13

The food was purchased from farms or ranches in other states. The money that was invested probably came from multinational banks not even based in town. So to assume that all the money put into a project multiplies locally is to deny the reality of a modern economy.

Furthermore, what is most overlooked in economic impact studies is the opportunity cost of the project. What could have been produced by alternative uses of the same capital and land in the private sector?14 Indeed, if the multiplier theory made sense, almost no public project would be a net loss, Hunter argues. “By increasing public expenditures, even greater increases in community income can be effected through the multiplier’s ripple effect … Certainly if one bridge can generate far more community income than additional cost, several bridges connected by new highways will bring even more income.”15

The truth is, Hunter says, that “government spending does not ripple through the local economy, and does not swell private incomes.” Why? Because of the opportunity cost of the consumption and production “forgone by citizens who must pay taxes to support public spending.”16 Indeed, there is a deadweight loss from taxation that also goes uncounted by most economic impact studies. According to Noll and Zimbalist, “the social cost of taxation exceeds tax collections by about 25 percent.”17 This means that the true cost of, say, a $200 million sports facility would actually be $250 million.

So economic impact studies are seriously flawed, but what does the empirical research tell us about the actual economic effects of taxpayer-subsidized sports facilities? First, while sports get a great amount of media attention, they are a very small part of any local economy. Most franchises have annual budgets of $60 to $100 million, and while that’s certainly a valued contribution to the local economy, Rosentraub explains, “businesses of this size are quite small when compared to other organizations in urban areas.”18

How small a contribution do sports franchises make to a local economy? Rosentraub’s got the data. As of 1992, pro sports make up only .06 percent of total private-sector employment in all U.S. counties with 300,000 or more residents.19 The U.S. county with the largest concentration of direct employment in 1992 was Georgia’s Fulton County, where the Braves, Hawks and Falcons play — a mere 0.32 percent.20 Here’s another stunning figure, again courtesy of Rosentraub: As of 1997, Sears Roebuck & Co. reported annual sales approximately 30 times the revenues of all of Major League Baseball.21

While it’s true that the evidence seems to indicate that many sports facilities are not attractive private investments (since 1953, approximately 71 percent are publicly owned), there may be a crowding-out effect at play, argues economist Robert A. Baade.

“Subsidization by the public sector of stadium construction is one rendition of an old saw,” Baade writes. “Do not spend your private funds when the government will financially accommodate your private ambition. It is quite plausible that the private sector has not often invested in stadium construction because it has not needed to.”22 The empirical results of taxpayer-subsidized sports facilities, however, are crystal clear.

Noll and Zimbalist deliver one of many death blows: “A new sports facility has an extremely small (perhaps even negative) effect on overall economic activity and employment. No recent facility appears to have earned anything approaching a reasonable return on investment. No recent facility has been self-financing in terms of its impact on net tax revenues.”23 They do not stand alone in their harsh judgment.

According to Baade and Richard F. Dye, “Independent research has not supported the notion that direct economic benefit exceeds cost.”24 Their regression analysis of sports facilities built from 1965 to 1983 concluded, “The presence of a new or renovated stadium has an insignificant impact on area income for all but one of the metropolitan areas.”

The exception was Seattle, which also gained a new football franchise.25 Economist Dean V. Baim concluded in 1990 that “stadium construction is not a low-risk investment.”26 In fact, Beam found that for the years 1953 to 1986, teams received an “aggregate subsidy of $139.3 million to play in municipal stadiums.”27

Baade and many others argue that sports facilities do not increase economic activity but merely divert entertainment spending from one source to another. “The leisure budget of a family or an individual is limited, in terms of both money and time,” Baade writes. “It seems likely, then, that a dollar spent at the Spectrum in Philadelphia may well be a dollar less spent at a movie theater in Bucks County.”28 Rosentraub redoubles the argument, saying, “If the economic activity would have taken place if the team did not exist, then there is NO overall economic impact, just a transfer of economic activity.”29

So sports facilities lose money and merely divert economic activity from one item to another, but that’s not all. Analysis has shown that sports facilities actually worsen the local economy, because they result in seasonal, low-wage, low-skill service sector jobs. “An area development strategy which concentrates on these types of jobs could lead to a situation where the city gains a comparative advantage in unskilled and seasonal labor,” write Baade and Dye.30

There’s nothing wrong with such a comparative advantage, but it could probably be achieved without massive taxpayer subsidy, and what remains unknown is what kind of jobs and industries would have developed had taxpayer dollars not been taken in the first place.

The only argument left in favor of taxpayer-subsidized sports facilities is that they help enhance the city’s image, thus attracting businesses to the area. But sports alone will not be a determining factor in a corporation’s decision to relocate to the area.31 It is only one of many factors, and since it has been shown that in many ways these facilities make cities worse off economically, it would be wiser to let taxpayers keep their money and stay away from these high-risk public investments.

It should be clear by now that taxpayer subsidization of sports facilities makes little economic sense. The question that remains is how these projects get approved by the voters when the evidence is so damning. Public choice theory tells us that when one small group has a lot to gain from a given government action and a large, diffuse group has only a little to lose individually, the former group will prevail.32 In June 1997, for example, both San Francisco and Washington held referenda on new sports facilities.

Both won by the barest of margins. San Francisco’s supporters of the stadium deal outspent their opponents 25 to 1, while Washington’s pro-stadium groups outspent their opponents 80 to 1.33 Even if stadium proponents lose the first time around, they come back again and again, because the potential profits of rent-seeking are huge.

The news media also have much to gain from new sports facilities, especially if they are built to retain or attract franchises. “Sports are a critical asset for the mass media and directly contribute, in several ways, to the profitability of newspapers, television stations, and radio stations,” explains Rosentraub.34 Sports make up as much as 20 percent of what appears in newspapers, and firms such as the Tribune Co. and Turner Broadcasting (now part of AOL-Time Warner) have even bought franchises (the Cubs and the Braves) in order to provide content for their broadcasting outlets.

For politicians, the short-term benefits of supporting taxpayer-subsidized facilities are great. They reap the rewards of an extremely visible project usually gracing the heart of downtown where tourists are likely to visit. They are hailed as saviors for keeping the local team in town or attracting a new one after the old one has left. The long-term losses don’t begin to sink in until well after they’ve left office.

When a team demands a new stadium only 20 years after its last stadium was built with taxpayer dollars, the mayor or governor who helped shepherd that deal has long gone on to greener pastures. But the taxpayers have no such escape.

Furthermore, the losses are largely invisible and hard to calculate. Whatever investment might have taken place in the stadium deal’s absence surely would not have been as concentrated and visible as the domed monstrosities that are constructed in the hearts of cities. The sports stadium scam is a classic case of what is seen and what is not seen, as the 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat explained in his famous essay.

“This explains the fatally grievous condition of mankind,” Bastiat wrote. “Ignorance surrounds its cradle: then its actions are determined by their first consequences, the only ones which, in its first stage, it can see. It is only in the long run that it learns to take account of the others.”35 The accounting has been done, and taxpayers are on the losing end, while wealthy special interests, politicians and the news media are better off.

The wonders of government never cease to amaze.

Citations:
1 Rosentraub, Mark S. “Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who’s Paying for It.” New York: Basic Books, 1997, p. 25.

2 Noll, Roger G. and Zimbalist, Andrew S. “Sports, Jobs, and Taxes.” Washington: Brookings, 1997, p. 88.

3 Hunter, William J. “Economic Impact Studies: Inaccurate, Misleading, and Unnecessary.” Heartland Policy Study No. 21, July 21, 1988. Available: http://www.heartland.org/studies/sports/hunter.htm.

4 Noll and Zimbalist, supra note 2, p. 87.

5 Ibid., p. 5.

6 Noll, Roger G. and Zimbalist, Andrew S. “Sports, Jobs, and Taxes,” The Brookings Review, Summer 1997, p. 35.

7 Rosentraub, supra note 1, pp. 90-100.

8 Ibid.

9 Ibid., p. 15.

10 Hunter, supra note 3, p. 1.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., p. 2.

13 Rosentraub, supra note 1, p. 162-163.

14 Bast, Joseph L. “Sports Stadium Madness: Why It Started and How to Stop It.” Heartland Policy Study, February 23, 1998, p. 5. Available: http://www.heartland.org/studies/sports/madness-ps.htm.

15 Hunter, supra note 3, p. 7.

16 Ibid.

17 Noll and Zimbalist, supra note 2, p. 61.

18 Rosentraub, supra note 1, p. 139.

19 Ibid., p. 143.

20 Ibid., p. 144.

21 Rosentraub, Mark S. “Are Tax-Funded Sports Arenas a Good Investment for America’s Cities?” Insight, September 22, 1997, p. 27.

22 Baade, Robert A. “Is There an Economic Rationale for Subsidizing Sports Stadiums?” Heartland Policy Study No. 13, February 23, 1987, pp. 1-2. Available: http://www.heartland.org/studies/sports/baade1.htm.

23 Noll and Zimbalist, supra note 2, p. 36.

24 Baade, Robert A. and Dye, Richard F. “The Impact of Stadiums and Professional Sports on Metropolitan Area Development.” Growth and Change, Spring 1990, pp. 1-14 (p. 2).

25 Ibid., p. 10.

26 Baim, Dean V. “Sports Stadiums as ‘Wise Investments’: An Evaluation.” Heartland Policy Study No. 32, November 26, 1990, p. 4. Available: http://www.heartland.org/studies/sports/baim2.htm.

27 Ibid., p. 5.

28 Baade, supra note 22, p. 11.

29 Rosentraub, supra note 1, p. 155. Italics not mine.

30 Baade and Dye, supra note 24, p. 7.

31 Rosentraub, supra note 1, pp. 170-171.

32 Olson, Mancur. “The Logic of Collective Action.” Boston: Harvard University, 1971.

33 Noll and Zimbalist, supra note 2, p. 85.

34 Rosentraub, supra note 1, pp. 49-50.

35 Bastiat, Frederic. “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen.” 1850. Available: http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html.

‘Ozzy Unauthorized’ digs not-so-deeply into Osbourne’s bizarre life

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

For KRTeens

“Whatever else I do,” heavy metal legend Ozzy Osbourne once said, “my epitaph will be: Ozzy Osbourne, born Dec. 3, 1948. Died, whenever. And he bit the head off a bat.”

Six million viewers — many of them teen-agers — tuned in to make “The Osbournes” the highest-rated show in MTV history. But their knowledge of Osbourne’s life and career probably doesn’t extend much beyond his imagined epitaph.

Looking to fill in the gap and capitalize on the show’s popularity, author Sue Crawford has written “Ozzy Unauthorized” (Michael O’Mara Books, $14.95), a bite-sized look at Osbourne’s amazing story.

The breezily written biography dwells on Osbourne’s personal travails and pays scant attention to his music. Crawford converts VH1’s “Behind the Music” formula perfectly into print.

While “Unauthorized” — written, as the title implies, without the cooperation of the Osbournes — does not do justice to Osbourne’s lasting influence on heavy metal, especially his work with Black Sabbath, the book does dish out the juicy details of his debauchery-laden past.

Early on, Osbourne was fascinated with death and with killing living things.

“I always had a big thing about the darker side of life, the morbid gray side of things,” Osbourne says in the book.

The catalog of morbid acts seems endless: He once tried to strangle a brother and set fire to a sister; he once took seven different drugs in one day; he shot a bunch of chickens in his back yard and later shot 17 family cats; he bit the head off a dove in a meeting with record company executives; and during a bender he attempted to strangle his beloved second wife, Sharon.

That last bit of bad behavior earned him three months in a rehabilitation facility and nearly ended his marriage. Sharon eventually forgave Ozzy for the incident, just as she has forgiven most of his sins.

In fact, in her acknowledgments, Crawford sends “a heartfelt thank you to Sharon Osbourne for keeping Ozzy alive for the last seven chapters; without her this would have been a very slim volume.”

Since Sharon bought out Osbourne’s contract from her father, Don Arden, his life has changed entirely. He no longer uses illegal drugs and rarely drinks. Where once he went through gobs of money, now Sharon manages his career with great success, landing them a spot on British Rich List in 2001 with a joint fortune of $58 million.

Add to that the reported $19.5 million the Osbournes will be paid by MTV for a second season of their reality sitcom antics, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

The big question that Crawford fails to answer in her book — and which is probably unanswerable by even Osbourne himself — is how much of his life is an act put on to amuse, entertain or frighten others, and how much is a real expression of his inner torment.

“When I’m cornered,” Osbourne says in the book, “when I’m surrounded by a lot of other people, I feel like I have to be an eccentric for them to like me.”

The secret of the TV show’s success is that because Osbourne’s bad-boy image is so deeply engrained in the public mind, eccentricity for him now means puttering around his house in track pants trying to discipline his own teen-age children, Jack and Kelly.

“Ozzy Unauthorized” only highlights what a radical departure Osbourne’s current home life is from his first 40 years on the planet.

In that sense, it is perfect summer reading. It won’t mess up a day at the beach by probing its subject too deeply.
___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services

For athletes, summer weather and heavy pads can be a deadly combination

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

For KRTeens

If your most strenuous physical activity this summer has been the occasional long walk to the refreshment stand at the local multiplex, then you need to be especially careful when getting in gear for the fall sports season.

For the 1.5 million teen-agers who suit up to play high school and junior high school football every August, it may seem like the worst thing that could happen is to not make the team or, worse yet, get whipped with a wet towel in the locker room after practice.

But the hot, humid late summer weather combined with players’ heavy padding can add up to a formula for tragedy.

Take the case of Craig Lobrano, 17, an all-state football player at Varina High School in Varina, Va. Thirty minutes into an early September practice last year he collapsed from heatstroke. The temperature was only 77 degrees, but the humidity was 85 percent. Lobrano died two days later.

Lobrano is one of 20 young football players who have died of heat-related causes since 1995. Three players died of heatstroke last year, and 100 have died of heatstroke since 1960, according to study released last February by the National Center for Catastrophic Sport Injury Research.

Too often, athletes eager to impress coaches and teammates dismiss the warning signs their bodies are give them.

Joshua Krenz, now 21, played high school football for four years in Fall Creek, Wis. He says he saw few of his teammates take themselves out of a practice or a game because of dehydration or heat exhaustion.

“I think there was this attitude that guys wanted to show they were tough, either to impress their teammates or to impress the coach,” Krenz said.

What makes these heat-related deaths especially tragic is that they could be avoided, says Frederick O. Mueller, co-author of the football deaths study and chair of the American Football Coaches Committee on Football Injuries.

“There is no excuse for any number of heatstroke deaths since they are all preventable with the proper precautions,” Mueller said. “Every effort should be made to continuously educate coaches concerning the proper procedures and precautions when practicing or playing in the heat.”

Football players are at an even greater risk of heatstroke than other athletes because they wear so much padding, explained Dr. Robert Gotlin, director of orthopedic and sports rehabilitation at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York. He added, however, that athletes in all sports — including other fall sports such as cross country — are at risk when training in hot, humid weather.

Krenz said the Fall Creek High School football team’s practices began in early August, when temperatures would hit highs in the low 90s or upper 80s. Practices were held in the mornings or at night to make it easier on players, Krenz said, but it was still hard.

“We took breaks every half hour or 40 minutes for water and to rest,” he said.

“Thirst is the first sign of dehydration,” Gotlin said. “By that time, you’re already a little bit dehydrated.” Gotlin, who coaches younger football players as a hobby, said players should receive breaks every 15 to 20 minutes for a quick breather and cold water or electrolyte drinks like Gatorade.

Mueller advised that 15- to 30-minute rest periods be provided for each hour of practice.

Krenz, now a senior at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, also said many players arrived in practice out of shape and unprepared for the level of activity football practices require.

“The biggest problem, I think, was that guys spent all summer going to the beach or not doing anything,” Krenz said. “Then they’d come to football practice and try to go at it for a couple of hours like they were in perfect shape. You just can’t do that.”

This is why Mueller recommends that coaches “acclimatize athletes to heat gradually by providing graduated practice sessions for the first seven to 10 days and other abnormally hot or humid days.”

All players should have a complete physical exam before the season begins, Mueller said. Krenz said that players at his school were required to have a physical every two years, and he knew of at least one player who did not return because he failed the physical.

According to Mueller’s report, signs of heat illness and dehydration include nausea, incoherence, fatigue, weakness, vomiting, cramps, a flushed appearance, blurred vision, unsteadiness and profuse sweating.

Aside from heatstroke, another danger to football players enduring practices in August heat is the risk of heart problems. Gotlin said that problems like cardiac arrhythmia — an irregular heartbeat — often go undiagnosed and can be exacerbated or become fatal when players exert themselves in extreme temperatures.

There were six heart-related football deaths in 2001, according to Mueller’s report.
___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information Services

Web site of the week: Blogger.com

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

For KRTeens

While you might tease them for being geeky, in your heart you secretly envy the kids with their own Web sites. You want your own, but the only C++ you know is the grade you got in geometry.

While programs like Dreamweaver have made creating Web pages easier than ever, a new — and more importantly, free — program has come along to give you the power to publish instantly on the Web from anywhere in the world.

It’s called Blogger (http://www.blogger.com/) and it’s used to publish what are called blogs — diary-like sites consisting of short posts, photos, poems or whatever else you want. With Blogger, you don’t even need to pay for an Internet hosting service. You can get a free “blogspot” to post your musings.

Once you’ve set up your blog, all you need to do to update it is go to the Blogger Web site, sign in and start typing. When you’re done, click “Post & Publish” and your latest thought is on the Web.

Blogger also allows you to do a group blog. You and a group of friends can post for fun, or you can use it as part of a group school project.

Be the envy of all your geek friends — become a blogger.
___
© 2002, McClatchy/Tribune Information
Services

All-Star shame

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Bud Selig’s decision to call the All-Star Game is such an unmitigated disaster that it almost boggles the mind to think how he thought he could possibly get away with it. This decision upsets me more than the strike talk and steroid allegations.

Labor problems I can understand. The owners believe they can’t survive unless there’s some kind of salary cap and revenue sharing. The players think the owners are lying and, more importantly, don’t think they can lose. All of this is ugly, sure, and another “work” stoppage (ahem, it’s a “play” stoppage, actually — and that’s not merely a semantic difference) would bring me great sadness. And while it would affect the game in the most obvious way, the roots of the problem lie beyond the game itself and belong in the realm of industrial and labor economics.

How can I get angry about the economic realities of the game and the incentives each side faces to keep fighting and not give in to the other side? Those are the facts, and they probably won’t change anytime soon (if what we know about game theory is true). They impact the game, but they are not about the game.

As for steroids, I think that if major-league baseball has a rule against their use, it ought to do random testing to enforce the rule. It’s only common sense. But I don’t see it as a black mark on the game that some players (to speculate on how many seems irresponsible and silly at this point) use steroids to give themselves an advantage. Players in all sports have always done just about everything to give themselves an advantage, and performance-enhancing drugs are no exception.

There are certain things we think should be allowed (bigger mitts, pine tar, batting gloves and gear, etc.) and others that shouldn’t (spitballs, nail files, steroids, etc.). It’s not a black mark on the game that some folks try to cheat, especially when the game is so unserious about enforcing the rules. Again, steroid use impacts the game, but in the end it’s not about the game.

What Bud Selig, Joe Torre, Bob Brenly & co. did to the All-Star Game is another matter entirely. It was a calculated decision to change the rules of the game — while the game was in progress! — for the convenience of the players and against the interests of the fans both in the ballpark and at home. No, that’s too weak a condemnation. It doesn’t even come close to describing the bile that rises in my throat when I think about what they did.

Baseball, unlike most other sports, is timeless. Part of its charm is that, conceivably, a game could go on forever. The average game may last too long, but I’ve never heard a paying fan complain about an extra-inning game. It’s one of baseball’s little devilish tricks that just when you — as a manager, as a player, as a fan — think you’ve got the right strategy figured out to win the game, something can come up and bite you in the ass.

That big bopper you replaced with a light-hitting, speedy defensive replacement — you’re stuck with him and his .240 on-base percentage for the rest of the game. The star catcher you replaced with a rookie so the old-timer could rest his knees — the only good he can do now is wear a rally cap and yell from the bench, as helpless as a fan in the last row of the park.

That is the essence of managing — making decisions that will be second-guessed as soon as you make them and that just as often go well as badly. The constraint on all of your free-wheeling is that you know that the game must be played. No matter what, a conclusion must be had. It ain’t over ’til the last man is out or the winning run crosses the plate.

That’s the game. That’s the way it has been for about 150 years now. Unless there’s bad weather or there aren’t enough players on the field to finish the game, it goes on. The toil of the player continues, for the pleasure of the spectator. Until last night.

“Oh, but what about the players? They might get hurt!” it’s said. “Oh, but what about the players’ regular managers? They’ll be upset!” it’s said. Yes, they might get hurt — that’s known going in. Every game carries the risk that a player might get hurt. No one must participate in the All-Star Game. Players bluff injuries all the time to get out of it. You don’t have to be at the game. You don’t have to start the game. But you’ve got to finish it.

“Oh, but it’s just an exhibition!” it’s said. Yes, it was. It was an exemplary exhibition of a kind of unthinking arrogance which believes it can go around changing the rules willy-nilly without any repercussions, and without any consideration of the game’s true trustees, the fans who cherish it so deeply.

On very few occasions, I’ve left a ballgame early. Usually, it was because I was so tired or sick that I just couldn’t stick it out. I’ve regretted every single time. Sure, I felt bad because I wasted my money or someone else’s, but more so because when I go to a game I like to watch it from start to end. There is a wholeness to it that I find somehow satisfying in a way I’m not sure how to express.

But whether or not I can stick out the end of a game (and I almost always do), I take for granted that it goes on. Like the sun and the moon and the tides, it started without me and will go on when I’m gone. And like our silly little universe, it too will fade into nothingness eventually. The game will go on no matter how many play stoppages we have, because the love we have for the game far exceeds the greed of the owners and the players.

The only way the game will be destroyed is if the game itself changes. And though I’m sure that superficial changes will be made to make sure that this won’t happen again, the fact that Bud Selig would even think it permissible to unnecessarily conclude a game without conclusion speaks very poorly of his understanding of what makes the game so special.

It’s all about the game. If we forget that, we are truly lost. Selig and friends may have forgotten momentarily, but those 41,000-plus fans in Miller Park (paid for with their tax dollars, incidentally) didn’t forget.

“Let them play!” they chanted. “Let them play!” Music to my ears.

A time to mourn?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

While some libertarians might want to mourn the Fourth of July, especially in light of the counter-terrorism measures passed after Sept. 11, I still think there’s plenty to celebrate. The Fourth has always been one of my two favorite holidays, along with Thanksgiving.

And while I disagree with much that has fallen under the domestic war on terror umbrella — and about half of what Dubya’s trying to do overseas — Sept. 11 did much to reinforce the spirit of individualism still remnant in the American culture at large. It’s easy to dwell on Ashcroft or the Homeland Security Department (shudder) and think all is lost, but when we consider how easily things could have turned worse, we’ve much to be thankful for.

Yes, there are some 1,200 undocumented Arabs in jail somewhere in New Jersey without access to legal representation. And, yes, the “enemy combatant” move by the Justice Department sets a disturbing precedent, but our freedoms and our way of life have remained largely untouched. People will celebrate the Fourth. They’ll barbecue in the back yard and get drunk, and a few will blow their heads off with fireworks — as is their God-given right.

But there are no internment camps. There is no national ID card. There are no tanks patrolling the streets. The blessings of liberty are still with us. We should remember that and have a good time just to spite those who’d trade liberty for security.

Here’s to our Founding Fathers. Thanks, guys! Have a Sam Adams on me.

Heritage has some hot models

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

No, not that kind. I’m talking about the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis, which a group of KRT interns toured yesterday. CDA director Bill Beach gave a very inspiring and impassioned speech about data, and the many helpful models that can be formed using data.

OK, I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek here, but honestly, he was engagingly geeky. If there is one thing journalists miss is how to interpret the actual effects of proposed legislation, whether it’s taxation, Social Security or health care benefits. Crunching the data and using sophisticated models which take into account how changing one variable — say, a change in the capital gains rate — affects all the other variables, can be useful in understanding the dynamic effects of legislation.

Of course, all these models must work in some implicit assumptions about what the effects will actually be (e.g., that a tax cut will broaden the tax base thus increasing revenue rather than cutting it), but it’s still pretty cool.

Joe Camel sez, “Smoking helps government grow, kids!”

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Eerily, both Julian Sanchez and Jacob Sullum point out the idiocy of some of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s recent comments regarding a bill he signed to increase cigarette taxes to $1.50 a pack.

This is, of course, a nationwide trend. Bloated local and state governments first thre the tobacco settlement money down the drain, and now that revenues have gone down thanks to a sluggish economy, they return to their favorite whipping boys and girls, smokers, to make up the shortfall. But don’t do it! You may not want to quit smoking, but you don’t have to finance this ludicrousness.

There are lots of discount cigarettestores online. Here’s the one Karen recently ordered her smokes from. Puff in peace. Buy online.

If it’s broke, wait to fix it until later

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Walter Pincus reports in the Post that “Congress will put off a reorganization of the FBI and CIA to improve the performance of the intelligence community until it establishes a Department of Homeland Security, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.”

Great idea.

These two mammoth agencies couldn’t tie each other’s shoes, let alone put together the clues necessary to stop the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and now we’re going to complicate everything by creating another agency to battle over turf before even redefining how the CIA and FBI will change — if at all — and what went wrong.

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

Who will buy a wonderful voucher and put it in a box for me?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

Terry Neal writes in the Washington Post that there is no constituency for school choice. Blacks and Hispanics won’t vote solely based on that issue, and support for vouchers has gone down as the rhetoric has shifted toward using choice to help low-income and minority students. Neal mentions only in passing the “intractable” opposition from teacher’s unions.

Is this argument sound? I have no idea. I sure hope not.