Bullshit News

by Bill Holmes

While watching the Rangers game tonight I realized (again) what BS passes for news or information. The game tonight was on Fox, not Fox Sports or FSSW, but the big national network that broadcasts, well I don't know what they broadcast but I'm sure it's wonderful programming.  That means that we get high quality, knowledgeable national network announcers.  Tonight it was Kenny Albert and Tom Verducci.  They are not terrible but they don't really know what's going on. They probably got to town last night, read the local papers and formed all their impressions and opinions of both teams. Tom was gushing about the Rangers the first couple of innings until they got behind. You know they don't follow the Oakland A's because nobody does.

The previous national broadcast of a Rangers game was terrible. They didn't know the teams at all, failed to correct obvious mistakes and sometimes didn't complete sentences when they either couldn't come up with the factoid or realized they went down the wrong path.

This phenomenon is not limited to sports.  It's probably even worse in news broadcasts.  A disaster or tragedy occurs and the area fills up with national reporters.  The other thing is when a specific area of human endeavor is reported on.

If you are from the area where the reports are emanating or are familiar with the subject of the report you notice the errors, misconceptions or other BS.  I'm sure doctors cringe at health reports.   

I've seen reports about technology (I've was a professional geek for 40+ years) that have no idea what they're talking about.  The errors cut both ways.  Sometimes they tout capabilities that don't exist and sometimes they don't realize the capability has been around for years.

We all have limited general knowledge and even less expert knowledge.  If most reports I see on subjects I know about are full of errors and BS, how can I trust the reports I see on the 95% of stuff I don't know about?

I think the local paper is still the best way to get information about where you live.  The reporters are not under pressure to put sexy video on the 6:00 news.  I also fear that the local paper and the reporters are a vanishing breed.  Besides the reporters, the newspaper editors, columnists and Op-Ed writers usually have time to take a breath before their stuff reaches the public.  They also have to stay in the community after their report.  They live in the area and can't leave right after the story.  Diane Sawyer, Brian Williams, Scott Pelley and their minions leave town about 30 seconds after the cameras are turned off.

Soundbite, superficial and gotcha reporting is a bane on all of us.  Reporting on celebrity activities, reality shows, The View, Entertainment Tonight, etc. is not news.  I realize that a celebrity divorce is vitality important to the world order, but so are the massacres in Syria or the economic meltdown in Greece or the plight of the middle class in the USA or a local election.

I'm going to watch the rest of the baseball game, continue to watch national news and read the local paper.  Information is important and worthwhile.  I just wish it was more accurate.

wjh

Let's Sue Our Way to the Top

How come Apple, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and other large technology companies continue to litigate over software and product copyrights and patents?  Many of the suits are over what was supposed to be open, shared, free and new industry standard software.   I'm talking about software like Java, PDF, Android and others.  The problem occurs when a for profit company develops a new piece of software, middleware, architecture or hardware they are pushing as a new industry standard.  They publish the software and/or hardware specifications, the API's, development tools and everything else needed to make the new widget an industry standard. They encourage and tell everyone to freely use the new stuff.  Problem is they often keep a little something secret, exclude some part of the product or code from the "use freely" agreement or try to change their mind when a competitor finds a way to turn a profit.  Other suits are based on vague and undefined concepts or very minor changes to established concepts and products.

If a company or individual writes unique software that solves a problem they should be able to copyright those unique parts if they want to.  Parts of Windows, OSX, iOS, Oracle DBMS, SAP, security products, iPhone and Android apps meet that criteria.  I'm talking about probably relatively little code.  Only that which is directly related to making the product unique.

Likewise if a company comes up with a truly unique product they can get a patent. Something vague and generic such as a touchscreen or a rectangle phone does not qualify.

Lately Apple has been leading the pack on suing competitors although Oracle has been active too.  Both companies have vast stores of money in the bank.  They can afford to hire a gaggle of lawyers and pay for multiple actions and appeals.  Apparently they have trouble hiring talented technology professionals to come up with innovative products that can compete in an open market.  Luckily one of Oracle's suits about Java was against Google, a company with an even bigger stash of cash.  So far Google has prevailed and Java is still free to be used by everyone.  Expect several appeals.  

I've written, re-written, patched, fixed and revised hundreds of pieces of software during my career.  A few application solutions but most of it operating system add-ons, extensions, utilities and fixes.  I would bet that only a third of the code I wrote actually addressed the problem I was trying to accomplish.  The first third is setting up addressing and environment.  The last third is wrap-up and housekeeping.  Only the middle third of the code actually did, undid or fixed what I set out to do.  Everybody else also basically wrote the same first and last lines of code.  Sometimes the middle stuff was only a couple of lines, sometimes it was several pages of code, on rare occasion it was a full blown application.  Often it too was just slightly reworked code written or borrowed before.

I never wrote the next must have application nor did I strive to.  I was an operating system guy.   I did see my fingerprints on code now and then, I know Xerox distributed my solution to drive their printers on IBM/JES2 mainframes.  I think Xerox gave my company a very slight price break on support.  We were more apt to share our software among other folks doing the same job.  Our main professional organization was named SHARE.

That spirit has continued in the Unix, Linux and Open Systems world.  It's possible to run a completely free operating system (Linux) with free utilities and add-ons and office/productivity applications (LibreOffice).  If you have the time and talent you contribute to the community.

Many corporations won't go the "free" route because there isn't a local sales rep who picks up the lunch or happy hour tab or has tickets to the sporting events.  The other excuse is lack of a 24/7 instant support staff.  Still there are support companies available for a price.
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In 1971, at an early meeting at Xerox PARC, Alan Kay coined a quote:

    "The best way to predict the future is to invent it".

  Today, more than 40 years later, Alan Kay spoke at the Alan Turing Centenary Celebration, where he revised his famous quote to address the current litigious state of the computer industry:

     "The best way to predict the future is to prevent it".
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Let's innovate more and litigate less.  

Great Baseball Players – My Ode to Pudge

by Bill Holmes

Many of us have been fortunate enough to see great baseball players during our lifetime.  I've seen my share.  Some I've seen live and often as they played for the home team.  Some only occasionally as they played on the visiting team.  Until recently there was  no inter-league play so even if you lived in a city with an American  League team you would never see the National League players unless your team somehow made it to the World Series or if your city hosted an All Star game.   Back in the day, Free agency wasn't the norm either so players tended to stay with one or two teams their entire careers.   Most people never lived in a Major League city and only saw star players on TV.  Regardless of your circumstances, true baseball stars were not and are not common.  A very good team may have two, some had one and many teams had none.

I lived in Atlanta in the late 60's and early 70's.  I got to see  Hank Aaron, a true star, play.  Phil Niekro, Filipe Alou, Clete Boyer, Joe Torre, Orlando Cepeda and other very good players were on those teams. We all knew though that Hank was the only true superstar.  Eddie Matthews and Warren Spahn were already gone from the Braves by then.  Willie Mays came to town a couple of times each year.  That was exciting.  He'd been my favorite player since I was about five years old. He played a different game than other players.  Roberto Clemente, Johnny Bench and Pete Rose  were around as was Don Drysdale and a few others.  You can look up your favorites from about 1968  to 1972.  Of course we never saw any American  League stars and there were a few (Mantle, Frank Howard, Carew, Killebrew).  The point of this is that there are very few extraordinary players in each generation.  If you  are a  baseball fan or just a sports fan it's fairly easy to spot the few truly exceptional athlete.  The rare ones like Mays or Clemente or Aaron who play a completely different game than the rest of those on the field.  Like a Jim Brown in football,  a Magic, Bird, Jordan in basketball, a Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods in golf, Bobby Orr or Wayne Gretzky in hockey and a very few others.  These are people who changed the way we looked at a certain sport.  Things we never dreamed of were being done by these athletes.  Pick your own favorite athlete or game changing event.  Sports are very personal.  Favorite teams and players often have absolutely no basis in logic.  Did you follow the family tradition or rebel against it?  Did some player or incident turn you against a once favorite team?  I do think though that despite our prejudices we can all recognize the real greats.

All that being said leads up to my point of this blog.  Just as I lived in Atlanta in the late 60's and saw Aaron and some pretty good teams, I've also lived in the D/FW area since the mid 80's.  I'm a baseball guy  and went to a million Rangers games at the old Arlington Stadium.  Even a pretty bad Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium was plush compared to that old dump.  Don't get me wrong, there are no bad times at a ballpark watching a baseball game.  Me and my 3,500 closest friends enjoyed many games.  We got very good seats and the beer lines weren't  usually too bad.  The men's room was always a mess and I've been told the women's room may have been worse.  Not a first class major league facility.  Unfortunately the team was not a first class major league outfit either.  Maybe not even a first class Triple A team.  Once in a while a decent player would stop by the Rangers roster for a couple of minutes and there were stars on the visiting teams.

In 1989 the Rangers signed  Nolan Ryan .  There was a ray of hope for the future.  Sure, Nolan was getting old but he was still effective (he'd only get two more no-hitters and reach the 5,000 strikeout milestone while he was with the Rangers) and his clubhouse presence had to help.  The Rangers began acquiring a few better players to go with Nolan and a couple of the good younger guys like Ruben Sierra.  Then in 1991 they brought up a short, stocky 19 year old catcher  nicknamed Pudge.

Former Rangers, GM Tom Grieve told a story at the press conference Monday afternoon.  The Rangers were in Puerto Rico looking for young prospects.  Pudge was not one of the prospects they were scouting.  One of the scouts on a back field happened to put a radar gun on a 16 year old catcher's throw to second base.  It was 93 mph.  There is no way a 5'9” (a big stretch) 16 year old can do that.  They signed Pudge.  It was a good call.  That radar gun might have been slow.  Pudge usually threw the ball back to the pitcher faster than it came into the hitter and his throws to second seemed impossible.

Ivan “Pudge”Rodriguez burst on the scene with a great big smile and a cannon attached to his right shoulder.  They would both endear him forever to the people of D/FW.  He was our favorite Ranger almost from day one  and we were his favorite fans forever.  He threw out base runners, picked off those who strayed off first, third and even second.  Even a passed ball or wild pitch was not a safe steal.  Don't make a  short bunt,  Pudge would throw out the lead runner even if he was running on the pitch.  If the foul pop-up was in play, he caught it.

It didn't take long for even the Rangers fans to realize this was a special player.  No one, not Johnny Bench, Yogi, Roy Campanella, or Bill Dickey ever played the catchers position like Pudge.   He had no fear.  He'd throw to any base at any time with an arm never seen before.  Mostly with good results.  He changed the game.  Teams didn't run on the Rangers.  They didn't even take big leads. Within a year or two, the best defensive catcher ever began to hit too.  Catchers don't need to hit much.  The best catcher maybe ever certainly doesn't need to hit much above the Mendoza Line. 

No one played harder or with more joy.  Pudge was always smiling, always interacting with the fans. He'd hand that caught pop-up to a kid.    He'd  take a sip of someone's drink in the front row.  He even stole what we all thought was a french fry from a front row fan after a pop-up.  He said the night of his retirement celebration (4/24/12) during the game broadcast that it was actually a hot jalapeno and he suffered until the end of the half inning  before he could get some water.  He was still smiling though.

I could go on forever.  Pudge  fits every definition of a star.  He was dominant at his position during his career.   He changed what we expect from a catcher.  He was an all-star (14 times), a gold glove winner (13 times), silver slugger (7 times), an MVP, a World Series ring and all with a smile.  You can click on the link above and find  many of his records.  You can also if your lucky like me, close your eyes and remember that perfect throw to second base or the pickoff behind the runner at first.  No catcher ever did it better.  That's a  Hall of Fame Career.

One more note.  Pudge was the first star player that my son Matt identified with when he was very young.  Matt was always #7 and because of Pudge he wanted to play baseball.  That love of baseball continued through high school and to this day.  We have never had a bad day together at the ball field.  Just like Willie Mays inspired me, Pudge inspired Matt.  For that I'll always be thankful.

Embrace and enjoy the few special ones that cross your path.

The US Education Industry

by Bill Holmes

The public education of our children is now an industry.  What was once an obligation and a public service is now run like many other for profit big corporations.  The goal may not be improving stock price and options but rather job preservation, empire growth and power.  School systems now have a board of directors (school board),  a CEO (superintendent) and multiple vice presidents, directors, managers, supervisors, vendors, consultants and unionized workers.  They may be called assistant or deputy superintendents, chiefs, principals, assistant principals, deans or department heads.  But it's basically the same structure of a large corporation.  There are legal, purchasing, HR, real estate and communication departments plus many others that have little to do with actually teaching children in the classroom.  Of course all these departments need several layers of management, office space, training, supplies and equipment. Many of the top administrators are paid like top corporate management.  This has changed dramatically over the years as school systems have become more top heavy.

Full disclosure: I'm an old guy who was educated in Catholic schools.  My grade school went from K through 8^th grade.  There were two classes for each grade with 25 or so kids per class.  That means we had approximately 400 students.  Our entire administration consisted of a principal and her secretary.  The principal was also the designated substitute teacher.  I guess the parish pastor was officially in charge but he only came by a few times a year for ceremonies.  He knew better than to interfere.  My high school (9 through 12) had about 1,200 students.  That administration consisted of a president and vice president (one a pastor the other a parish priest who were both part-time) a full-time principal and I think two secretaries.  Although we had the same text books, not every class progressed at the same pace or emphasized the same points.  Somehow we managed to get educated and more than 95% of us went on to college.  The public schools weren't quite as frugal but they weren't far off.  I also raised several children from the 70's to the 00's and was once married to a teacher, so I've had some first-hand experience with our education system.

I know that the bare bones level of administration like we had at my school is not possible now but the current bloated level is way too much.  Elementary schools have full-time assistant principals; high schools have several assistant principals, deans and an attendance secretary.  They also now have counselors, department heads and coaches who do not teach a full load if teach at all.    

In my opinion bloated overhead, unionization, political interference and social promotion is at the core of our declining education system.  This blog could be full of statistics about eroding student rankings of the US vs. other countries, expenditures per student, dropout rates and many other numbers, but I'm not inclined to do that much detailed research and document it.   Can we agree that while some top achievers are much smarter than my generation, many of our publicly educated students are lacking in basic skills?  The sad fact that most colleges have remedial reading and math courses should be a clue.  Another troubling fact that the US is not number one in every academic measurement (when we once were) shows our decline.   Don't ask your teenage kids a geography question or how to spell any word with more than a few simple letters.  Try not to be completely aghast when watching a TV game show (not Jeopardy), interview, reality show or a “Jay Walking” segment on the Tonight Show.  Who's buried in Grant's Tomb? What two large countries border the continental US? These are tough questions for some of our kids today.

Just a couple of snapshot facts to give my rant some credence:  The Fort Worth school system has approximately 80,000 students, a budget of $588 million and only 50% of their employees are teachers  (Ft. Worth ISD profile).  I don't pretend to understand the breakdown of the budget dollars and staff.  Something look a little suspicious to me.  What's really administration, overhead and teaching?  The organization chart for Ft. Worth ISD would do any Fortune 500 company proud.  I'm not picking on Fort Worth ISD, as I'm sure the numbers are worse in many other school districts, it's just a good size district that is close by and I get to read about them often in my local paper.  They have a highly paid professional superintendent, bloated administrative staff and a political and meddlesome board.  A perfect combination for not being successful in teaching our kids.  I'm afraid to research the NYC or Chicago schools.  I might get sick. 

So, here is my plan.  I would be to cut the administrative staff drastically, to 20% or less.  Principals, asst. principals, counselors, and school nurses count as administration.  If you're not in the classroom teaching kids, you're overhead.  With those vast savings in salary and overhead we can raise the teachers' pay.  Then treat the teachers like professionals.  No useless paperwork to be sent to make-work administrators.  No useless meetings and seminars planned and conducted by other useless administrators.  No micro-managing lesson plans.  Each principal is the ruler of their school. Each teacher is the ruler of their classroom with only minimum direction from the feds, state, school district and principals.  They can set guidelines and objectives but the teachers get to decide the methods and path to meet them.  I always found in my business career that it was much more effective to tell the staff what we needed to accomplish and not how to do it.  They felt more empowered and often came up with a much better way to do it than I ever would have.  Fewer specific instructions and fewer rules, more positive results, always help and guidance when asked for.  We could probably raise the teacher/student ratios if we have all-star teachers.  More savings, more money for teachers salary.

Hopefully, no teaching (coaching) to the test.  Just teach the appropriate material.  I never had an SAT or Florida Boards (the TAKS, or whatever it's called now equivalent) prep class.  Our teachers just taught the material, told us to get a good nights sleep, don't panic and you'll be fine.  Guess what? Except for the good night sleep part (the tests were usually on Saturday morning after party Friday night) we did fine.  Teach kids to think and reason, not regurgitate facts.

There is a big downside for some teachers if this were implemented.  If you don't educate your students you get fired.  No tenure or seniority that lets a bad teacher keep their job.  You are now a professional with no long-term contract.  The higher salary and more job freedom should attract better teachers.     Maybe someone who majored in math or science might become a teacher instead of someone who majored in elementary education.  Maybe a retired professional who wants to give back a little would decide to teach.  They often make the best teachers.  The new teachers might not be as creative designing the bulletin board or planning the school carnival but they will know the subject.

One more tough point.  The schools and teachers must to be able to enforce discipline in the classroom and on campus.  Disruptive students must be eliminated from the learning zone.  If alternative schools or classrooms for the disruptive kids are required so be it.  Give them help, guidance and counseling but don't let one kid disrupt and sabotage a classroom of 20 other students who want to learn.  If we hurt someone or their parents feelings that's too bad.  “No child left behind” needs to be modified to “No child (or parent) who cares and tries will be left behind”.  

This will not be easy.  There will be resistance from both embedded administrators and the teacher unions.  Administrators want to keep their jobs and expand their empires.  Unions want to expand their numbers, increase pay (and dues) and reduce the actual amount of work.  Competent and honest  people must evaluate the teachers to decide who stays and who gets fired.  Colleges must overhaul their “Education” departments and produce teachers who know their subjects and not how to decorate a bulletin board.  Maybe “Education” should only be a college minor and not a major.  The mind shift comes when we recognize teachers as professionals rather than caretakers. Professionals are expected to get the job done with little supervision.  Succeed and get rewarded, fail and find a new career.  If we started on this path today it would take at least a generation to implement. Even more reason to get started now. New subject expert teachers must be trained.  New evaluation criteria needs to be implemented.  New college curriculum must be developed and taught. It can't work any worse than our current situation. 

Let's pay the teachers $75,000 to $100,000 and maybe eliminate the Deputy Superintendent of Community Affairs and/or a couple of lawyers and accountants.  Education should be about students and teachers not administrators.  I've always been a believer that half as many proficient, dedicated people are far better than twice as many average people that just "show up".

Competent, dedicated teachers and sparse administrations worked successfully for a long time to educate our youth.  What we're doing now doesn't seem to be quite as successful.  Sometimes a step backward is the best way to move forward.  Remedial math in colleges for high school graduates who passed algebra should piss you off.  Let's demand much more from our teachers and students.  My guess is that given the right environment they will both respond.  I'm not as optimistic about the administrators and politicians.

So, pay competent teachers like professionals, eliminate most administrative overhead, have discipline in the schools, and most importantly, educate our children.  Simple.