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.

Wake Up, You Need To Make Money

I read this interesting article about why the current generation of kids is so stressed. The main reason is that they have so much pressure to plan for their career. Teachers and parents make them keenly aware of how big a difference a career makes in the current environment. So from an early age, they know that their education is a make-or-break situation.

I can kind of relate to this feeling myself. When I was in high school, Teachers worked hard to communicate the idea that we were building our future. I remember one correcting people who talked about the world outside of school as “the real world.” He reminded us that school is part of the real world, since our actions in class would have real consequences.

But it was clear that our elders were fighting an ingrained perception that we’d be alright no matter what. I think everyone understood that life would be better if you got more education, but there wasn’t a sense of disaster if you failed to get it. But by the time I was in university, the manufacturing sector was shrinking, and people were really getting the idea that there wasn’t much of a Plan-B. That’s when the Millennials were starting to go through high school and college, so I’m assuming that was the message most of them were given as they grew up.

But a point from the article is that while Gen-X’ers and Millennials may have been exposed to threats of failure, we were at least promised a payoff. The message of study-or-you’ll-always-work-at-McDonald’s might have been stressful, but we were also assured that we could have a good life and feel good about Making A Difference if we got a good job and worked hard. In contrast, the article says that we no longer give that carrot along with the stick. Now we just present the message that you have to get everything just right or you’ll face disaster. So kids are growing up with the idea that you have to work hard just to get a middling existence, with any sort of good life out of the question.

This follows on a popular article in Buzzfeed (cited in the above article) about burnout among millennials. My reaction to that was to ask for some respect: we Gen-X’ers invented early burnout. This multigenerational freak-out is just confirming something I’ve suspected for a while: Though the media may talk about the different generations as though they are different, we really don’t have distinct generations anymore. It’s now just a slowly-changing set of circumstances. So we divide ourselves into Generation X, the Millennials, and Generation-Hurry-Up-And-Get-A-Name-Already, but really it’s just one long spectrum of angst. It seems like we’re having this societal conversation that goes like this:

Millennials: We sure hate adulting. We made a meme about it and everything.
Generation X: We hated adulting first! But seriously, great word, “adulting.” Wish we’d thought of that.
Post-Millennials: Adulting sounds terrible! We’re never leaving home!
Baby Boomers: The millennials are such wimps that they can’t stand adulting. And they keep inventing stupid words.

See, the media keeps telling us that the millennials are completely alien and can’t be understood, but really it’s the boomers are the only generation that don’t fit in and don’t make sense to the others. Indeed, it’s been them that have been the primary drivers behind making society as unforgiving as possible. And that brings us back to the central problem that the exceptional make plenty of money, but for everyone else, the effort-to-outcomes ratio doesn't seem very promising. It would be nice if there was something to reward the average person who works hard, even if they aren't a superstar.

But you know what they call a reward for doing your job even if you’re not the best? A participation trophy. Yes, the concept that's come to symbolize millennial-bashing, and the general point of view that we’re too forgiving of our young people. But if we were too nice to young people, we’d all be less stressed. Really, we've got it all backwards. We're so obsessed with the fear of rewarding people for doing nothing that we've created a world where almost nothing gets rewarded. As much as the world portrayed in the article seems alien to us, we also have to admit that it's the world we've spent the last four decades crafting: one in which there is as little help as possible.

The Future Is Bunk

Ford has a new ad featuring Bryan Cranston in a variety of guises talking about innovation. The premise being that some unknown "other guys" are talking about doing futuristic things while Ford is and always has been actually building it.

The most dramatic part is the android Cranston, which is quite well done. It's like the ad grabs you and holds you out over the Uncanny Valley, and teases, "gonna drop you, gonna drop you!" Of course the fake TED talk is good too. But the president in the plane just looks so old-fashioned now. I mean, a president swamped with work? Weird. But I appreciated the concept the best, since I've always hated it when companies make vague claims about future technology. "Use Smith Brand soap. One day soon we'll bring you cyber soap."

The ultimate in future promises was a series of ads AT&T did in the early nineties. They made a lot of promises about future products like video phones and smart homes. That really ticked me off, because they were trying to sell us on things that they clearly were nowhere near delivering. Why not just promise us warp drive while you're at it?

At the risk of getting even further off track, someone uploaded the entire series to YouTube, and it's fascinating to see the view of today from a quarter-century ago. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much they got right. Well, they "got it right" in the sense that it would happen. In most of the cases, it wasn't AT&T that brought it to us. I wonder if there's grounds for a class-action suit here?

But back to Ford. Much as I like the idea of the ad, it all comes off pretty flat. For one thing, is "Paint it Black" really the best song to accompany the monologue? Let's talk about building the future with a song about depression. Okay, now that I think about it, I guess it was a reference to the Model T coming in black only, which was for the sake of standardization and efficiency, which was one of the innovations they're talking about. Just think, they've been sitting on that one since the song came out in the sixties.

The biggest problem, however, is that it's so out-of-step with reality. Ford is a company that just decided to dedicate itself primarily to Trucks and SUV's. Sure, those are popular, but in the public's imagination, they represent the Walmart parking lot more than the future. And they don't have a Prius or a Bolt in their line-up to point to as something they're pushing the limits with right now. So the climax of the ad is Cranston dissing other companies for not being futuristic enough while driving a bulky pickup that looks like it could have come from any time in the last couple of decades.

What's especially perplexing is that the ad and the campaign it's a part of is apparently supposed to be putting down tech companies. I had assumed that the vague "other guys" mentioned in the commercial were other car companies. But no, they're thinking of the tech companies that have been encroaching on the car biz. What? I know, I've been critical of such companies, but let's face it, it's quite an indictment of the American car business that Tesla has gotten as far as it has. Meanwhile, when I just went Googling for the latest on Ford electric vehicles, I just got promises that they have electric trucks coming soon. So this is the biggest self-own in advertising since Diet Coke's "Just For the Taste of it."

The Best Games You Can Name

I just saw an ad for the video game Civilization VI. It’s been out for a while, but ever since it’s introduction, they’ve had difficulty getting players to upgrade from Civilization V. But I might be convinced thanks to a new expansion for it, which adds a number of new scenarios and new civilizations you can take on.

If you’re not familiar with it, the Civilization series has you controlling one of the great empires of history, exploring the world, expanding your territory, dealing with other nations. For the most part, the empires play the same, though they are each given unique abilities. For instance, the Iroquois are able to move their units through forests more quickly, and the Mongols can create powerful mounted archers.

What has me excited is that they’re adding Canada as one of the civilizations you can play as.

So what sort of unique abilities will we have in the game?

• Can get more production out of tundra territories, allowing you to use land that other civilizations ignore (more or less accurate)
• Your unique troops: the Mounties (You kind of had to go with that)
• Extra diplomatic abilities prevent allies from turning on you and pre-emptively attacking (a little stereotypical)
• You can build hockey rinks to improve your civilization’s morale and culture (okay, now you’re just making fun of us.)

So that got me thinking about what other video games could use a Canadian edition:

• Pokémon Go: the game is the same, but it’s presented as an episode of Hinterland Who’s Who
• Need For Speed: can you keep up with 401 traffic in a blizzard?
• Madden: renamed Buono and played with CFL rules
• Bioshock: It's a nice, orderly underwater community where everyone respects the law. Until the cod fishery is shut down, then all hell breaks loose.
• Asteroids: no guns; you have to grab the asteroids with the Canadarm
• Guitar Hero Rush Edition: for experts only
• Metal Gear Solid: the stealth classic is made more challenging by Snake’s inability to stop saying, “Sorry” and “Excuse Me”
• Red Dead Redemption: the Mounties show up and prevent the game from happening
• Frostpunk: if you're not familiar with it, this game is about building a city in an inhospitable frozen environment. Not only is no Canadian edition necessary, I think we should sue them for copyright infringement or something.

Are Friends Eclectic?

I saw this meme on Facebook a while back. That really stood out to me, since It’s become accepted wisdom among many that modern technology has left us more “connected” with people but emotionally distant. I’m sceptical of this concept, since I’d always noticed how superficial a lot of our interactions used to be even in the pre-social media world. I mean, you talk to far fewer people in the course of an average day now, but most of those lost moments of human contact were forgettable rote interactions. If you now buy things on Amazon instead of a store, you don’t really lose any emotional involvement, since the interaction with a store employee is usually just you playing a part based on expectations.

This meme takes that same concept to new heights: in the same way that you may play a part in your interactions with/as service workers, you also play a part as a high school student. In each case, you act as expected, and this prevents you from having a meaningful involvement. Yes, I know, lots of people develop really deep friendships in high school. But compared to the total number of people you go to school with, and the amount of time you spend with them, it’s amazing how little you know about them.

This comes back to a point I realized a few years ago. It’s not something that’s easy to say, and some people will be shocked by it, but The Breakfast Club lied to us. Its message was that teenagers can be pushed into different roles, but still have commonalities. There’s some truth to that, but it’s also true that high school forces a sameness on us. As I watch my friends and I age, I keep noticing personality come out that couldn’t be expressed before. In school there's so much pressure to play the roll of a teen that you suppress your unique features.

This might be a product of age: we just need a lot of time to explore the world and find ourselves. Our maybe it's due to the same modern technology that delivered that meme: The Internet has allowed us to connect with others with similar inclinations instead of having to fit in to a community of others that we have little in common with. Certainly that’s one thing I’ve envied today’s kids for: the Internet gives them a chance to pursue their interests regardless of how isolated their real-life situation.

But I suspect that my new understanding is because of the different perspective you have of your high school friends now. For adults, social media is more a respite from the world than a part of it. It's the people you choose to be around rather than those you must be around. Thus, it's safer to keep your guard down and be yourself. If people don't like what they see, you're an unfriending away from ending the problem. The irony is that the people you're now allowing to peek behind the mask are the people you used to show the mask to.

Are Trends Electric?

I remember seeing a headline on a magazine cover once that said, “Electric Cars are (Still) Around the Corner.” Of course, that sarcastically got across the idea that electric cars are constantly promised without becoming mainstream. It’s especially meaningful, since I saw that headline in the eighties.

But today that headline is more meaningful because it looks like electric cars finally really are around the corner. So it’s a lesson that just because it seems like some promised revolution is never going to happen, it might still happen one day. So maybe jet packs and space travel are going to happen eventually too.

This walk down Electric Memory Avenue is because I recently saw someone speculate that self-driving cars will become one of those things that will be five-years away for the next forty years. I could certainly believe that: I’ve been skeptical about them, and the over-optimistic predictions in the mainstream media certainly do sound like the predictions of the future that I’ve heard my whole life.

But even skeptics like me have to remember that just like electric cars, it will happen eventually. The irony is that another of those things that have been constantly promised without ever happening is Artificial Intelligence. It was once thought that it was inevitable that computers would be doing all the things humans are capable of in just a few years. But as we learned just how difficult things like language and vision are, the technology wasn’t able to deliver, and the most we ever saw in the real world was the occasional impressive chess computer. I simply got used to hearing an annual prediction that this time next year, we’d be talking to our computers like on Star Trek. Of course, we are now talking to our computers, even if it isn’t quite as smooth as we’d hoped.

What I find interesting is that there is a very different attitude towards self-driving cars. With electric cars, there wasn’t a lot of effort put in by the big companies, and the key innovations ended up coming from outside. Whereas with self-driving technology, there seems to be a rush to avoid being left behind. And that’s the one thing that makes me a little optimistic about the concept: it seems like all these companies are pouring so much time and money into research that they’re going to make it happen out of sheer willpower.

So I wonder why this is different: why didn’t fear of being left behind push car companies to make electric cars work? One reason is because this is less of a car problem and more of a tech problem. The big car companies know that the key innovation could come from some startup no one sees coming, instead of just being a competition of a few corporate behemoths. Also, it used to be that if a car company where caught behind a startup, they could always buy-out the smaller company. But now, between the financial problems of the car industry and the eager investment in technology, it might not be that easy to just buy tech from the innovators.

Also, it’s not just the car companies that want self-driving cars, there’s also the ride-sharing companies. Uber is still losing money, and it’s starting to look like self-driving cars are their only hope. And that’s another thing that isn’t following the previous pattern: Tech companies usually follow one of two trajectories: They lose buckets of money until they get to a scale or structure that makes money (like Amazon) or they discover that their plan was never going to work, however much size and technology they had (like Pets.com).

But Uber’s business plan is clearly in that futile second group, yet investors keep throwing money at it. I’m not sure how this is going to end: Uber has lasted long enough to become an indispensable part of the culture, yet it just can’t survive long-term. It’s like investors love the idea so much that they won’t let anything — not even the rules of economics themselves — prevent it from happening. They’d rather admit that capitalism doesn’t work than have to go back to taxis.

So it’s fitting that Uber’s fate is probably intertwined with self-driving cars: they’re both bad investments that we’re going to make happen, somehow. Part of me admires that tenacity. But mostly, I wish they had gone to the wall for jet packs instead.

Sun Life On My Shoulders

I’m stuck here watching the traditional NBA Christmas games, since it’s that or watch year-end retrospectives or sitcom marathons, or get into the twenty-first century and pay for a streaming service. I should have invited someone to watch them. I know the Raptors aren’t doing anything today, I could have asked them. Of course, that’s Canadian basketball’s yearly complaint, that it doesn’t matter how many winning seasons the Raps have, they’ll never get invited to play on one of the Christmas Day marquee games. At the same time, it doesn’t matter how bad the Knicks get, they’ll just keep getting invited back.

But I should acknowledge that this complaint is not just unique to Toronto this year. Not only are the Raps not playing despite leading the league, the Western Conference leading Denver Nuggets are also at home to unwrap presents and watch 28th-out-of-30 New York stagger around the court. I’m sure some folks are putting together anti-Canadian conspiracy theories based on the fact that one of their key players is Canada’s own Jamal Murray.

It’s more likely that the Denver market just isn’t important enough to the American broadcasters. You see the same thing in Baseball, where the Sunday night national telecast has become a tiresome rotation of the same few teams over and over. No, I’m not expecting them to show the Blue Jays — at least over the last couple of years — but teams like Milwaukee and, again, Colorado get ignored even when they have good teams. Having said that, smaller markets Portland and Utah are coming up in the Christmas night game, so you could also chalk this up to the broadcasters and league doing a bad job of predicting which teams will be good this year. If next Christmas features the Nuggets playing the Knicks while the defending-champion Raptors sit, then we can go back to Canadian indignation.

But one thing you can appreciate when watching multiple NBA games is the oddness of the league’s uniform sponsors. Starting at the beginning of last season, teams have had a corporate logo on their uniforms. It’s nice and tasteful, rather than the giant ads used in soccer or the WNBA. So I’m filing it with the NHL’s shootouts under sports ideas I hated but surprisingly don’t get angry about.

It helps that there haven’t been any embarrassing ad associations. That’s in sharp contrast to venue names, where most of the names are okay, but you feel stupid talking about Sleep Train Arena or Smoothie King Center. Actually, it’s been nice that many teams have sponsorship from local companies, such as Harley Davidson for Milwaukee or Goodyear for Cleveland.

But what’s odd is that even though the less-lucrative teams like Sacramento have not had to take sponsorship from Depends or Preparation H, the more popular teams haven’t taken sponsorship from the Blue Chips. Like, you’d think the Warriors would have a bidding war that only the richest companies could hope to win. Say, a local company like Google or Apple. But no, their sponsor is Rakuten, which is a Japanese e-commerce company and not, as I had assumed, a sound effect from Street Fighter. Apparently it’s a big company, I’m just surprised that a bigger American company didn’t want it. Or, to put it another way, Rakuten is apparently called “the Amazon of Japan,” yet they wanted to sponsor an American sports team even more than the Amazon of America did.

And the Lakers should be a big score too, given their history and their Lebron James. But again, they’re sponsored by Wish. Sure, that’s a big company, but you’d expect the Lakers to be sponsored by Exxon or something, if only to match the Celtics and their GE ads. Okay, I guess the current Lakers are promising, but haven’t truly arrived yet, which is sort of like ordering from Wish.

My point is that the ads aren’t really the prestige item you might expect; many companies are seeing it as a path to legitimacy. I guess it’s sort of like a Super Bowl ad. Sure, Coke or GM might make one, but a lot of the time it’s just some dot-com betting half their funding on making a big impression with the public.