A Simple Tool

Jumping on the back of the soon to come ironic t-shirt website (@ ironictshirtcomedy.com) I’m moving the blog over to a new server so thewedge.wordpress.com won’t be active anymore, instead use simpletool.net.  Update your RSS feeds and bookmarks accordingly.

I’m still ironing out some stuff with the new design, so comments over at the new site are welcome.

Another thought I had that was just a little too long for Twitter.

We seem to like our sports to be episodic (for lack of a better word). Think about basketball, baseball, and football, all have easily definable segments (possession, at bat, play) that either end with success (a basket, a hit, or a first down) or failure (turnover, out, or failing to convert/turnover). So if someone does something awesome, it 99% of the time leads to some sort of success. So, Americans are very used to episodic-type sports.

Soccer, on the other hand, doesn’t have these chunks, coupled with the lack of scoring, you’ve got this situation where a guy makes an awesome move at midfield and it essentially leads to nothing.   So they moved the ball 10 feet further down the field and then someone just took the ball away or the dude kicked it out of bounds. Soccer is, essentially, a single big episode, which requires a whole different kind of watching. Americans are so conditioned to viewing sports episodically that I doubt they’ll ever be able to appreciate soccer, in the same way that I doubt many people overseas will learn to appreciate American football because it’s so choppy to them.

Essentially, my argument is that it’s all baseball’s fault.  Baseball established the episodic-kinda format and basketball and football (boxing/mma too for that matter) reinforced it.

Oh and why didn’t I mention hockey, which is seemingly an exception to this episodic theme?  Well, 1.) because it doesn’t support my argument and 2.) I’d argue that hockey has never actually been a truly popular sport in the same way that basketball, baseball, and football (and even boxing back in the day) are.

If I could get footnotes to work, I’d insert this note here in support of the second argument: How many non-hockey fans can name who won the Stanley Cup last year?  I can’t, and I even watched a good chunk of the playoffs (go Flyers).  On the other hand, I imagine most people (or at least significantly more) could name who won the Super Bowl or the World Series.  So bam! take that hockey, in your face!

*Late Edit* Someone I was talking to brought up NASCAR.  True NASCAR doesn’t really fit the paradigm, but I also have a completely unscientific argument about how NASCAR is really fake-popular, so I think my point still stands.

End Soccer Talk, Begin Movie Talk

Got a chance to see Adventureland yesterday, it was good little movie.  One which is profoundly different from what the trailers would lead you to expect.  Instead of a raunchy sex comedy ala Superbad, it’s a really well done love story, which is really held together by Kristen Stewart’s(!) acting.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still funny, but it’s also got all this very real (and quite good) romantic stuff in it. Heartily recommended.

The greatest downside of my movie-watching experience was the audience who, during the trailers, laughed uproariously at the jokes in the sure-to-be comic masterpieces of Dance Flick and The Proposal (the Ryan Reynolds-Sandra Bullock vehicle, not the sweet Australian western by the guy who’s directing The Road).  It wasn’t a bad audience otherwise, but come on, Dance Flick?

By the way, I’ve gone back through some old posts and noticed some really irritating typos (really self? fucking up their vs. there?).  Just wanted to apologize, I don’t really proofread these things, feel free to point out errors you find so I can fix them.

Just a thought I had as the Yankees blow their opener (also, terrible umpiring re: the non-call on fan interference in the 8th inning.  You have replay for a reason, assholes, and it’s a critical moment in a big time game on national TV, maybe you should use it.)

Anyway, ESPN keeps cutting in promos for their pre-NCAA championship coverage where the apparent theme this year is how MSU (who I have 50 bucks riding on tonight, so go Spartans!) has “inspired” all of Michigan.  This really bugs me.   I realize that a lot of this is just your typical ESPN-manufactured crap, but it’s crap we hear all the time.  Why do we have this intrinsic desire to make sports more meaningful?  Why can’t they just be a form of entertainment?  If MSU wins tonight, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden life in Michigan is going to become more bearable, it’s not going to give you your job back, and if you’re not an actual MSU fan you’re going to forget about the whole thing a week later. Well, except for me, because I’m going to just becoming off my 50 dollar spending binge.

The real height of this bullshit was after 9/11 during the World Series (yes I’m stealing this from Will Leitch’s book, go away) when the Yankees (and as anyone that knows me can attest, I’m a fairly hardcore Yankees fan) were supposedly “America’s Team” (which is btw my least favorite label of all time (Cowboys suck)).  So what did this imply?  That the Arizona Diamondbacks were on the terrorists’ side?  And then the Yankees lost the series (damnit).  So, I guess America lost.

The same thing is true with this MSU team.  Is UNC somehow the bad guy because their state isn’t completely falling apart right now?  (No, they’re the bad guy because 1.) I really want to win 50 bucks and 2.) if you like them and aren’t a.) an alum or b.) from NC you’re a freaking bandwagon jumper who gets away with it because everyone hates Duke more)  If MSU loses does that mean that the morale of Michigan has been irrevocably crushed?  No, it doesn’t mean anything.  It’s just a goddamn basketball game.  Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love sports, I regularly smash things and swear loudly when the Eagles and/or Yankess lose, but let’s not act like an MSU victory would fundamentally alter anything in Michigan or anywhere else.

Ok, this was a lot longer than a twitter post.  Self Deprecating bit: “ooh a rant! how edgy!” Angry reply to my self deprecating self: “Shut up, you”

Quick administrative note: If you haven’t guessed by now, I’ve abandoned the 50 movies thing.  The motivation just wasn’t there.  Hopefully there will be a lot more content on the blog once I finish the whole grad-school thing in June.  At least that’s the plan.  /administrative note

I can’t vouch for the awesomness (or the comprehensibility) of the following, as I came up with most of it around 2 am after reading a whole bunch of Bonaventure.  Feel free to critique at will and extensively.

I think we can all admit that the vast majority of the things we encounter on a day to day basis are contingent.  That is, the chair I’m sitting in (for example) did not necessarily have to exist.  Nor, one could argue, did I have to exist.  The universe (and here I’m defining “the universe” as what we perceive as reality to avoid the whole messy “what is reality as it truly is” issue and also because I’m primarily operating within a medieval frame, which predicates that our sense perception is in fact providing a reasonable approximation of “actual” reality)  could putter along nicely without both me and the chair, thus we are contingent.

Moving beyond this, one could claim (I’d imagine that almost everyone would accept this) that the entire universe itself is, in fact, contingent.  However, at some point do we need to posit some necessary thing (be it event, object, universal constant, etc.) upon which the existence of the universe rests?  More clearly, was the Big Bang a necessary event?  Or are the various physical laws which led to the Big Bang necessary? It seems the answer should be “yes” to at least one of these questions.

However, the existence of a necessary thing implies the coherency of the idea of a necessary being.  If we accept Hartshorne’s formulation of the ontological argument (which is logically valid ) than this coherency implies that God exists, and indeed must exist.  That’s a troubling notion for this little conflicted atheist.

So where does the argument break down?  Possible objections that I can see:

• One could claim that no thing is non-contingent.  Of course, this leads to some questions regarding how exactly the universe came to exist.  I guess the question is: Is there a need for an ultimate necessary cause for the existence of contingent things?
• The universe is, in fact, not contingent, but necessary.  Of course, this doesn’t really solve the issue at all, as it still supposes a necessary thing.
• The existence of a necessary thing does not imply that the idea of a necessary being is coherent
• The ontological argument is not logically valid.  <–I don’t see how this is an argument anyone could make, as it’s entirely valid as far as anyone can tell.

Of these, the first seems most satisfying to me, however I can’t really come up with a good argument for how an entirely contingent existence can, in fact, exist.  Anyone got any ideas?

That’s all I got, I apologize for any difficulties in understanding that my surely crappy prose/analysis creates.