Academics, smackademics

All ten starters in yesterday's "national championship" game were transfers.  What that means, in practical terms, is that none of the starters were developed from high school by their college coaches.  None of them took their lower division (freshman, sophomore) courses at Michigan or Connecticut, and for that matter, none of Michigan's players have their major declared on Michigan's fan site.  It is a reasonable question; do any of them ever take upper division courses?  Are Michigan and UConn sheepskins going to provide huge competition for Charmin?

More or less, both teams in the "championship" game are "the best money can buy", and neither team really has the kind of player and personal development that was the rule in college sports just a couple of decades ago.  For that matter, neither team has the personal or player development that was the rule in the professional leagues until the great expansion of free agency made the development (minor) leagues and player development less important.

To me, it's a scary reality that the going deal in college basketball is pretty mercenary--the old goal of developing the player, personally, sportswise, and professionally, is all but gone.  edit/update; it strikes me that the current college sportsball complex is the Monkees to the old Beatles, the "Pre-fab 4" to the genuine "Fab Four".

 

An interesting viewpoint...

Marriage psychiatrist John Gottman is renowned for coming up with a theory of the "Four Horsemen" (Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley, Layden) of marriage, specifically four behaviors of criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling.  Evidently he's got statistical evidence that these behaviors predict marital failure better than anything else.

For a long time, I resisted this, because in my mind, it was more important about the "why" people might engage in criticism, contempt, and the like.  Wasn't it important if someone was assaulting their spouse, or cheating on them, and the like?  

Well, I don't change my opinion that the provocation matters, but upon looking at Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley, and Layden Gottman's definitions for criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling, what I notice is that Gottman defines these behaviors as a rule in terms of attacking the person instead of addressing the behavior.

Or, in a nutshell, what he's done is to formulate family breakdown in terms, so to speak, of genetic fallacies in general and the ad hominem fallacy in particular.  If you're willing to routinely attack your partner, more or less, don't be surprised when the relationship doesn't work out.  And if you want to preserve relationships--marital or otherwise--it'll help a lot if you're addressing behaviors, not attacking a person.

Well, might as well have fun with this

Apparently, a Russian court has sentenced German artist "Tilly" in absentia for the  "crime" of making fun of Vladimir Putin and Patriarch Kyrill at a Karnival (Fasching) parade in Dusseldorf.  Now for the uninitiated, at Karnival parades, you can make fun of just about anything, and the last Fasching Parade where certain political statements were verboten would have been during World War Two, if you catch my drift.  Tilly has also done a float featuring Trump with a swastika--any other day in Germany, that's banned, but not on Rosenmontag.

So more or less, by trying to prosecute this "offense", Putin joins the company of no less than Adolf Hitler.  Since Putin's been putting up statues of his hero (and Hitler's buddy, well, until he invaded the USSR) Stalin, that sounds about right.  And so let's see what Tilly did to 'ol Vlad:

Verdict; given that Kyrill is, like Putin, a former employee of the KGB, and has spent a fair amount of time and effort backing Putin's series of war crimes in Ukraine, this is absolutely true.  In civilized countries, defamation has to make you look worse than you actually are.  We might say that Tilly's work actually downplays the evil of Patriarch Kyrill and Fuehrer Putin.

In honor of the progressive left

As you may have heard, the International Olympic Committee has decided that henceforth, biological males (XY) may not compete as women (XX) in the Olympics.  Thankfully, Angela Carini did not need to be carried out on a stretcher with a sheet over her face before the IOC realized that allowing the likes of Imane Khelif in the ring with her could be deadly.

That noted, we've really got to have some compassion on the trans community, so here's a bit of sympathetic cinema.

 And, of course, a bit more:

A picture of the "anti-zionist" left?

An "art" exhibition in England features...well...pictures of Jews eating babies,  and we are led by Scotland Yard to believe that somehow, despite at least one of the artworks pretty much illustrating the blood libel, that the exhibition is not anti-semitic.  H/T Powerlineblog.

Of course, viewing some of the artwork, part of me wonders why nobody showed the "artist" the kindness of taking away his crayons and telling him that he could have them back when he grew up a little (he's 70, apparently) and learned how to draw.  I don't know what it is about modern "art", but all too often, the beauty and grace expressed in the past has given way to a puerile lack of skill combined with a manic depressive effort to "say something", no matter how evil that something is.  Can't we have an agreement that if a three year old could do better, it doesn't belong in an art gallery?  Just sayin'. 

Also worth noting is that of the modernized racial, sexual, and other slurs I've heard in the past few decades, pretty much all of them were being used by progressives.  Maybe it's time to invest in mirrors so progressives can direct their bile at the proper culprits.

Happy Spring!

Mrs. Bubba and I started the season off correctly this morning with a brisk, cheerful waltz.  By the way, the song actually does commemorate an actual effort by the city of Boston to eliminate some of their "flying rodents".  All the world is in tune on a spring afternoon...

 

More on Planned Parenthood

Apparently some Planned Infanticide Parenthood affiliates are starting to provide cosmetic procedures  because the current bidness isn't paying the bills.  Now there is a reality that in an industry that actually uses infant foreskins for cosmetics, the distance between cosmetic procedures and abortion is not as great as it ought to be, but on the flip side, if pro-life activists can persuade people that they don't want other procedures done by abortionists, then the widespread availability of abortion outside of big cities (and maybe a few D1 university towns) will be gone.

Now here's something encouraging

    My employer's wellness program sent an "assume the best" encouragement, and it brought this bit of cinematic glory to mind:

 Happy Pi Day Eve!

How things ought to be handled

This case in my area, where apparently protesters attempted to disrupt the arrest of a man wanted in Iowa on charges of child sexual assault, is a brilliant example of the kind of case that President Trump ought to be making.   Let's start arresting the protesters and make clear; 

You were interfering with the arrest of a person indicted for child sexual assault.  Are you guys seriously telling me that you think we need more child rapists on the streets in Rochester?

And really, a few large fines and convictions for interfering with law enforcement are exactly what is needed in this situation.  I don't condone everything ICE has done--at times they have been too confrontational IMO--but there need to be some limitations on what the progressive left is allowed to do.  At a very minimum, have a few extra copies of the warrant and state loudly 

We are working to apprehend individuals with a record of rape/murder/aggravated battery/whatever.  Do you need more of this kind of person in your neighborhood?  We'll be willing to let your neighbors know that you think they need to live with more criminals in your neighborhood.

As I predicted

Back in October 2024, I observed the "investigation" by the New Zealand Navy that found that the sinking of one of their ships was "not the captain's fault" was rather hasty, and that their statement was pretty much a statement that it was the captain's fault, and likely having something to do with her being a diversity hire.

Fast forward to today, and we find that the captain had the ship on autopilot while sailing near reefs.  It's a lesson I remember learning when learning to sail as a kid in the Florida Keys.  Autopilot is supposed to be used only when you don't have likely obstructions, and in the world's premier Navy, ours, crashing a ship into an obstacle generally leads to the commander being replaced.

Time for a new sign at Schembechler Hall?

 Back in the 1990s, one fun joke was that the "Welcome to Hot Springs, Arkansas" signs had another sign below them noting that it was the home of President Bill Clinton, and yet another sign saying "Per Megan's Law, the above is a known sex offender.".  

While sadly that was not the case, with Matt Weiss, Sherrone Moore, and LaTroy Lewis all being currently prosecuted for the consequences of their sexual behavior, maybe it's time to put that sort of sign outside Schembechler Hall (the home of Michigan Football).  For that matter, as there are witnesses suggesting that Schembechler himself used "Dr. Drop your Drawers" (Robert Anderson) as a way of obtaining compliance from players, there is a clear pattern that maybe ought to be noted.

Just Michigan?  Of course not--Spartans like myself cringed when it came out that Mel Tucker had decided that it was a great idea to start "sexting" Brenda Tracy, a consultant trying to help college athletes restrain their sexual behavior to reduce sexual assaults by players.  All over the country, there are clear examples of college football programs where basic moral accountability appears to be an afterthought.  Maybe....just maybe....it's long past time to rein this in.  

Limit NIL payments, require players to show up for class, institute Prop 48 with teeth.

Now that's interesting

Pro-Hamas (Pro-Palestinian?) protesters in London have defaced a statue of Winston Churchill, claiming that he was some sort of "Zionist war criminal", and interestingly,  some of the graffiti appears to be in Dutch or Flemish.  Most importantly, however, Churchill's influence in the region was relatively minor, and he wasn't even Prime Minister in 1948, when Israel declared independence.

But I guess they won't let reality interfere with what they're doing.

The more things change,

.....the more they stay the same, at least according to Mrs. Bubba.   (what do you mean by that, honey?)  

Hilliary forgets she's under oath?

Hilliary Clinton uses her testimony about the Epstein files to suggest the DOJ is covering for President Trump, at the same time saying that she doesn't know anything about this.  Since only one of these can be true.....

....OK, to be serious, not a chance that she'd ever be convicted of perjury in either Chappaqua or DC, but still...

My take on the files; it's long past time for an independent prosecutor to go through with a fine toothed comb, and let lawyers for the victims take part, too.  It's pretty obvious that there is either nothing there, or the investigation is deliberately being slow walked.

What a confession

Minnesota trans legislator Leigh Finke argues that access to internet porn should not be banned because he feels that it is "educational" for queer youth.  Now call me weird, but it strikes me that for almost all of recorded history, people have figured out how to have sex without the "help" of porn, and hence it suggests that Mr. Finke has something in mind other than education.

This is especially the case when one considers the "ick" factor of typical sexual situations in porn--things that normal people won't do, more or less.  If someone tells one to "make love like a porn star", the response ought to be "on drugs, humiliated, and basically raped?  No thank you!".  

So in that light, what Mr. Finke is asking for is for kids to be exposed to the kind of acts that require porn producers to have their own, in-house drug treatment and mental health centers.  It is, in a word, recruitment--not to mention horrific abuse.