New Year's Resolutions (2016)-- curb the cellphone

Let's face it. There is only one resolution to be considered. "Stop staring at my cellphone." Give it up. Give it a rest. I heard an expert talking about cellphone use. People have their cellphones next to their bed. They check their Messages in the middle of the night. Sleep is disrupted. A person without sleep is a crazy person. People text while they drive. A person who texts and drives is a crazy person. The machines are making us crazy.

Our machines, the ones that we built, now run 24 hours a day/7 days a week. The machines, the apps... they rule our lives and we love it! That's the problem. People do the things they love. Funny how kids in high school always knew the lyrics to popular rock n roll songs. But math equations of dates for history class were a mystery, lost somewhere and never to be recovered. The ads could be recalled because the songs had catchy beats... "You'll wonder where the yellow went, if you brush your teeth with Pepsodent." That's an old TV ad, you probably never heard or saw.

Can you resolve to change your cellphone behavior? It's you versus the machine. Are you looking at your phone while at dinner with friends or family? That's loser behavior. And you're telling your company that they do not matter. You'd rather be someplace else. You want to be where your phone transports you-- with some other people, in some other place.

Every gone to a restaurant with a friend and they're looking over your shoulder? They want to see if somebody interesting shows up. Somebody more attractive, powerful and important than you. And why? If you were really important, you would not be eating with them. And so it goes.... your eyes staring at your phone tell other people, nearby people, they do not matter very much.

So, how can you change your cellphone behavior for 2016?

Thanks,

Mr. Manners
(etiquette coach)

Looking for a Christmas Story

Went to New York City a few weeks ago and the temperatures were in the mid-60s. Hard to think of Christmas with spring like weather, but I wanted to find a Christmas story. My favorite A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens was published way back in 1843. You remember, Scrooge gets visited by some ghosts and finds his way from being a cheapskate egomaniac to a new life embodying the Christmas spirit of giving. Could I find a story to rival the Dickens' masterpiece in some corner of Gotham, home of Wall Street bankers and subway strap-hangers?

Guess what? I found a story and it did take place in New York City. Remember Insanity? That two week period in Jan- Feb 2012 when Jeremy Lin, an Asian-American basketball player, sparked the New York Knicks to an amazing run of victories. Lin's name blazed around the world as he didn't fit the expectations of a NBA superstar. He rose from anonymity to super stardom in two weeks-- something never done before or since by anybody in a NBA uniform. Jeremy Lin has continued as an NBA player. He's having a great season with the Charlotte Hornets this year.

I watched the Netflix documentary entitled Linsanity produced by Evan Jackson Leong. The movie entertains with the life story of Jeremy Lin, the middle son of a Chinese-American family living in Palo Alto, California. My pleasant surprise, my Christmas story, happened around a minor character in the film, a fellow Knick player named Landry Fields.

Landry Fields made room in his apartment when Lin arrived in New York. Jeremy Lin, slept on a couch in Landry's place, a couch not quite long enough to contain Lin's 6' 3" frame. Coincidentally it was Landry Fields who the Knicks drafted with the 39th draft choice in Round 2, a spot Lin had high hopes of obtaining. Lin did not get drafted. Landry played at Stanford. Lin wanted to play basketball at Stanford but the coach showed no interest in giving Jeremy Lin a scholarship. Lin played at Harvard and surprised the skeptics. Lin bounced around the pros, showed some potential and found his way to the same team as Landry Fields. The two became teammates and temporary roomies.

Landry Fields impressed me in the margins of the Linsanity film. Most viewers will hardly notice him. I perceived something special in Fields' excitement and enthusiasm for Jeremy's history-making run of basketball stardom. Fields would congratulate Jeremy with chest bumps and genuine joy as Lin's last-second shots fell through the hoop. Landry's enthusiasm defied the competitive world of professional sports. For Landry there was no jealousy, no sign of holding back in the way Landry Fields shared those celebrations with Jeremy Lin.

I checked out Landry Fields on Wikipedia and noticed he has suffered injuries since his Knick days. The NBA is a tough, heartless business. You stay on the roster only if the team benefits. Your career ends when your skills diminish or you no longer serve the team's success. Landry Fields has struggled in recent years. Landry Fields does not show up on a NBA roster this year. But Landry showed the true spirit of giving in his friendship and appreciation of Jeremy Lin's meteoric rise. Landry Fields is my Christmas story

Holiday Thoughts (Weird Science the Winner)

The holidays always put me in a weird state of mind. As a kid I had morose tendencies. I grew up in New York. The weather would get cold. The days would get shorter and darker. The relatives would visit. I liked reading and the New York Times kept me entertained with stories of sports heroes past and present. I always had lots of friends and valued their support, encouragement and laughter. So, what got me so depressed yesterday?

Maybe mortality? Time creeps forward. I get older and family members, some older than me. Friends get sicker, find themselves fighting disease... Where do I fit in within this cosmic organization? I've hit the sixth decade! I always heard time flies faster with each passing decade. It's true. I feel like science and technology has dwarfed our frail human forms and modest psychological tools for absorbing change.

We are overwhelmed with change at the speed of light. Too much information from every direction.  Syria, Paris, YouTube, Twitter, Fitbit, Texas floods, water level rise, Ariana Grande licking donuts. Yes, I'm at least six months behind on the Youtube revelation. Make that six years behind... or maybe 16 years!

Johnny Manziel dropped to third string. Tried to cover up video of his partying in Austin. It's not the crime-- it's the cover-up!

Science dwarfs sports. Weird science! NFL football players too strong for the game. Not enough time for a quarterback to launch a pass. The bionic, science-built defenders race in and devour the passer like so many merciless robots. The announcers drone on. Tony Romo bites the dust. No, make that bites the scientifically created artificial turf.

Weird Science 1- Humanity 0

Are things getting better or worse? I see lots of optimism in my grandchild, so things get better from his youthful perspective. He delights in everything, from books to video games.

Ah, I sound like a cranky old man... trying to make sense of this spinning globe!

McLuhan's Electronic Haiku

McLuhan is...

rhetorical
satirical
surfaces
grammars
interfaces
new and old technologies
provocative
stimulating
and
required reading
to understand
electrical and digital convergences


from "Marshall McLuhan"
by Janine Marchessault
2005
Sage Publications
(inspired by p. 116, paragraph 2)

McLuhan Predicts Cellphone (The New Yorker, May 5, 1965)

Marshall McLuhan’s prominence as the world’s foremost intellectual  cannot easily be conceived from the remove of the present day. A piece from “The Talk of the Town” column, at the front end of the The New Yorker magazine issue, May 5, 1965, entitled “The McLuhan Metaphor,” was  composed at the same time as the  the New York World’s Fair. The author mentions the Westinghouse company’s plan to place a Time Capsule for future generations at the World's Fair and suggests McLuhan himself could better serve as a time capsule. 

My family visited the World’s Fair that year. I recall lavish futuristic exhibits sponsored by Ford and General Motors,  two industrial companies representing a mechanical age. Their exhibits imagined an automotive future with Jetsons-style highways flying in every direction. But McLuhan envisioned something different, an information age—and a massive change in consciousness.

The New Yorker author describes McLuhan’s lecture at Spencer Memorial Church in Brooklyn and quotes several startling prophecies included in his remarks:

“(He) predicted a happy day when everyone will have his own portable computer to cope with the dreary business of digesting information” and

“Dr. McLuhan next suggested the possibility of a new technology that would extend consciousness itself into the environment. ‘A kind of computerized ESP,’ he called it, envisioning ‘consciousness as the corporate content of the environment—and eventually maybe even a small portable computer, about the size of a hearing aid, that would process our private experience through the corporate experience, the way dreams do now.’”

McLuhan’s accurate prediction of computers, cellphone-sized and smaller, merits no further explanation but the second insight--consciousness as the new environment-- cuts to the very essence of the digital era.  The hearing aid device anticipates the iPhone or other mobile device. Individuals study the phone and share experiences as a corporate entity creating a group consciousness and posts are exactly as McLuhan described-- personal, random thoughts offered in a dreamlike manner. McLuhan perceived the new electronic environment as consciousness— and no better, more succinct description of the modern social network has ever been offered.

McLuhan’s notion of new technology working as extensions of the human body achieves new levels of traction in the electronic era, for if clothing extended the skin, and the wheel extended the legs’ ability to achieve movement, “the computer achieved not merely an extension of our eyes, like print, but an extension of our whole nervous system.”  (New Yorker 1965)

70 degrees on Nov 6 in NYC at 10 PM!

"What's it gonna take?" The talking heads said that and marveled at the "unseasonably warm" New York City temperatures. November 6 at 10:00 PM --and it is 70 degrees in New York City.

Historically speaking, 56 degrees is an average high in NYC for November 6.

One of the Weather Channel experts smiled and wondered aloud "What if an 80 degree day came along in the middle of December in New York City. Would that shock people enough?"

Enough to do what-- get scared maybe...?

The weather guy smiled the whole time, but a nervous smile-- reminiscent of a gallows humor response. (Gallows humor--see Wikipedia below)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallows_humor
Gallows humor is humor about very unpleasant, serious, or painful circumstances. Any humor that treats serious matters, such as death, war and crime, in a light, silly or satirical fashion is considered gallows humor.Gallows humor has been described as a witticism in response to a hopeless situation. It arises from stressful, traumatic, or life-threatening situations, often in circumstances such that death is perceived as impending and unavoidable.

The increasing temperatures are too foreboding to consider. We use denial and rationalization. Push the problems out of mind. Crops? Warmer ocean waters? What will happen to us? We take the easy way out. We deny the facts, rationalize them, or better yet, ignore them completely.

More fun to think about Donald Trump hosting Saturday Night Live tomorrow night.

The young people of today never experienced the "old normal." My growing up years in New York had a rhythm to the seasons, a consistent pattern. September meant needing a sweater and a jacket. November and December arrived and a warm coat was needed for winter.

We have upset those rhythms of nature-- and nobody knows the price to be paid.

Instead we smile nervously about the fun of wearing short sleeves on a November night in New York City. We know better. And keep our fingers crossed.

Harold Reynolds-- Baseball Commentator extraordaire

Harold Reynolds has worked this World Series (2015) as part of the Fox Sports team. He has to be the best baseball analyst events. Reynolds played second base for the Seattle Mariners and was a big league ballplayer from 1983-1994. He was born in 1960. At age 54, Reynolds has developed a comfort level with the microphone and a mature understanding of communicating with the baseball audience.

A few examples... New York Mets vs. Kansas City Royals

Game 1: Reynolds notes that Mets shortstop Wilmer Flores was proving to be a difficult out for Chris Young, the behemoth Kansas City relief pitcher. Young stands 6' 10" and looked like a dominant force. Reynolds added Flores "has great eye-hand coordination, the best on the Mets along with Daniel Murphy." He added that Chris Young "does not have the stuff to get Flores out." Sure enough Flores fouled off multiple pitches, eventually got a walk and trotted off to first base.

Game 1: Reynolds also noted the way Curtis Granderson, another Met player, deftly moved out of the way of a fastball headed right at him. "He's seeing the ball extremely well." Granderson's ability to dodge the pitch indicated to Reynolds that the batter had established a strong position in the batter's box, a nice insight to share with the viewers-- not related to any statistical data. The pitcher avoided serving up any good pitches to Granderson.

Game 2: Reynolds contrasted how the Kansas City Royals hitters have deviated from conventional baseball wisdom by going after good pitches in an aggressive manner. He explained further. The Kansas City hitters never stand passively in the batter's box and take pitches. The attempt to tire pitchers out by lifting the pitch count in not the KC style. Instead, they seek to hit the ball and knock the pitcher out of the game by superior ball contact. They certainly have done that effectively in Game 1 and Game 2 of the Series.

Reynold's grasp of what to share about the finer points of the game truly amazes. He avoids the sports cliches but doesn't not get into minutiae or belabor the statistics. Baseball has a notorious love affair with stats-- and now you can follow the pitch count, review the ball's position as it moves through the batters box, watch the spin on the pitch thanks to super slow motion technology and countless other details. Reynolds is like a breath of fresh air. He tells you what is really happening at keep moments of the game.

Moneyball, the baseball book by Michael Lewis, recounts the absolute tyranny that numbers have claimed over the game of baseball. And, of course, most of the number crunchers never could play the game of baseball beyond the Little League level but have been elevated by virtue of their mastery of big data. Reynolds played the game but does not overstate the case for his real life experience. He offers commentary with clarity and modesty. Reynolds allows the fans to absorbs insights without any showboating or ex-jock braggadocio.