Lotto Super 7

All sports have a physical component to them. We tell ourselves it's all about heart, effort, practice, character, hussle, intangibles. It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog. But we know that those things can only do so much. All things being equal, I'm betting on the big dog.

But no sport has that physical side shoved in our face quite like basketball. There are examples of small people in the game, but there are far more examples of tall folks that clearly don’t have the athletic ability of most professional athletes, but are nevertheless able to make meaningful contributions in the game.

So I wondered: if you were seven feet tall, what are your chances of making it into professional basketball. I mean, it's clear that there are plenty of tall players in the sport that could never make it without their extra vertical advantage, but how much of a difference does that make?

I googled the question, and got a reference to a widely quoted article claiming that it's 17%. However, this other post points out that there are a few problems with that:

1. The calculation is based on comparing the number of Americans who are seven-feet tall or more, with the number of seven-footers in the NBA. But most of the seven-footers in the NBA are not American.
2. The heights you see quoted in NBA statistics are measured with shoes on, while most people measure heights without shoes. So really, there are hardly any seven-foot-tall players in the NBA.

So we don't really know the percentage, but it's probably on the order of 1%. In contrast, another study looked at Americans 6'6" to 6'8" (or, Michael Jordan to Lebron James) and they had a 0.07% chance of being in the NBA. And among all Americans, less than one-in-a-million are in the NBA. So whatever the number, a seven-footer is orders-of-magnitude more likely to make the NBA.

But still, it’s not like they’re just grabbing random tall people and shoving them on the court. Even among the tallest, they’re getting particularly athletic people. But the standards are not nearly as astronomical as it is for your average person. To put it in perspective, in my high school, there were about a hundred boys in each grade. Imagine you just had to be the best athlete in your grade, and that would be enough to get drafted into the NBA. That’s essentially the situation for a seven-foot-tall individual.

But when you think about it, their lot isn’t really any different from anyone else. After all, if you were, say, six-feet tall and wanted to make the NBA, you’d have to be blessed with your own set of physical gifts, like speed and agility. But in that case, your genetic traits are not nearly as obvious or measurable. And they can be augmented by exercise and practice, allowing us to believe that their success is more than just a genetic lottery. But basketball’s big men shove it in our face that their ticket to success came largely from their DNA.

The Dog Of Small Things

I've mentioned that I'm not a dog person. But I have learned some interesting things about dogs. I've always found it interesting that we created all the breeds, and wonder what that says about us. It's also interesting that in some cases the breeds have become so extreme that they're causing medical problems. Some kennel clubs have gone as far as changing what they look for as the ideal in breeds to try to discourage the creation of unhealthy animals, and avoiding a future where shar peis are just a big pile of folded skin.

But it's worse than that. The selective breeding that creates and maintains breeds is essentially inbreeding on a huge scale, and they cause all kinds of invisible health problems. Well now one dog owner has a controversial solution: genetic engineering. That may seem extreme, but preventing a dog's suceptability to disease could be a simple as flipping a few genes, and the new CRISPR process makes it much easier.

This stood out to me for a couple of reasons. One is that this could be the onset of a gene-hacking culture. I'd heard lots of predicitons that genetics would be the next area that would see a fast, semi-chaotic string of innovations the way computing has for the last couple of generations. I'd always been skeptical of that simply because computer and software innovation has been fuelled by the low cost of entry; you can start a company in your garage, while genetics can only move at the speed of Big Pharma. But if a guy is hacking his Dalmatian in his garage, then it's next stop mutantville.

The other aspect that caught my attention is the quote that I saw passed around social media. It's the dog-hacker's main arguement in favour of allowing genetic manipulation of dogs: “I think it will be easier to teach dog breeders CRISPR than it will be to teach dog breeders why pure breeding is a bad thing.” It may be extreme, but I'm sure he's correct. But more importantly, that seems to sum up our entire age: astounding technology is easy; convincing people to use it responsibly is not. So we just hope we can invent our way out of problems faster than they arise.

Of course, the statement isn't entirely true. Teaching dog breeders about the dangers of pure breeding isn't difficult. After all, I learned it, and I don't know anything about dogs. But really, in this case my lack of connection to dogs is, paradoxically, an advantage to understanding this. Not being a dog person, I don't have any vested interest either way. But if you have preconcieved ideas about dogs, you'll be reluctant to change your mind. Really, it's convincing owners that's the problem. Or, just convincing them that the health of the animals they claim to love is more important than their pursuit of arbitrary and often quite silly ideals. And again, that's a symbol of our times. Spreading information around is very easy, but conveying the importance of things is next to impossible.