Who's Better at Social Media?

     Over the past few years, I have kept hearing that ISIS uses social media to attract, recruit, and radicalize young Moslems in the US and Europe. It is a notion that is reported in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, the BBC, and all those British papers that include the words Globe, Mail, or Guardian in them. These bad guys can reach out and influence the thoughts and allegiances of young people crazy things like websites.

• ISIS exploits social media to make inroad in U.S. - CNN
• Terror on Twitter - Popular Science
• ISIS recruits teens on social media - teenVOGUE

     Oh my... what are we to do? How can we ever combat such a dastardly and dastardly evil us of the all these wondrous sites and portals we created?
     Wait. What was that? Hmmm, yes, we created all this infrastructure. Al Gore created the internet based on an idea from, I believe it was, Millard Filmore. Americans created Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon.com, Pinterest, Tumblr, and the rest those other icons that populate websites that almost no one know what they are and make us wonder who the heck uses them. We created social media. We spend way too time on our devices tending to things, trying to be engaging, clever, comical, insightful, and sometimes inciteful. It is a world of selfies and foolish observations. It is a world I blog in and about.
     The point is that we invented most of it. We are masters of it. And, we have just sat by and let ISIS beat us at this?  Huh?
     Shame on us. Really. Shame on us for letting them beat us at the game we both created and are masters of? Oh, the shame of it. Oh, the humiliation. We are the masters of internet marketing and we are letting these novices at it beat us at our own game. Where is our counter marketing campaign? Is it unbelievably possible that we simply never thought of it.
 

   I just googled "social media marketing." The first article that came up was about Chick-Fil-A:
How Chick-Fil-A's Social Media Marketing Translated Into Twitter, Facebook and Instagram Success. This article on the International Business Times website discusses

Forging past 2012 boycotts from an anti-gay controversy, Chick-fil-A honed its social media presence with an engaging voice, original visual content and timely posts, but experts say the Atlanta-based company's grasp of its consumer base is the kernel of its social network mastery. Six days a week, the food chain goes full-throttle on social media, but then, like its restaurants, rests upon the seventh day, going offline Sundays.

     Chick-fil-A does it with simple, but frequent Facebook posts, Instagrams, and tweets like "A couple that eats waffle fries together, stays together" combined with a couple emojis. There is nothing special about their campaign except the

Source: Engagement Labs eValueTM 2015 rankings
of America’s 10 favorite brands for 2015

do it often and effectively.  Their results are impressive. Chick-fil-A was ranked as the "the overall favorite brand of 2015 on social media" beating out the likes of Coca-Cola, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, and Netflix.

     If this can be done for Chicken Sandwiches, why can't a similar campaign, e.g. AntIsis, be run with equal effectiveness.  Of course, there is no way we can let governments be in charge of this.  Heck, our government can't even make the No Call List work.  The US and the European Union would have to fund it, but they just can't run it.  I would hire, Moxie, the social marketing agency Chick-fil-A uses let them at it.  I will give them a couple tweet options gratis while at the same time re-enforcing my complete lack of marketing and advertising skills:

• Channelling Chick-fil-A:  A couple where neither is a suicide bomber, stays together and lives happier.
• Dated but still effective:  Take a chill pill.
• Lennon Classic:  Give Peace a Chance.
• Subaru Classic:  Coexist
• I really should stop here:  Have a Chick-fil-Aful and stop feeling awful.

     Clearly, this is not the job for me.  But you get the idea.  I think if done properly we could use one of our strengths to limit the recruiting and radicalization of young people.  

Shoes That Wear Themselves Out Just Sitting in the Closet.

Note the crack at the base of the heel but no noticeable
wear on the walking surfaces of the sole.

      The other night I noticed dirt on the tile floor of our laundry room.  When I tried to pick it up it just crumbled in my hand.  So, I got the Dustbuster and vacuumed it up.  As I looked to see if more dirt was about, I noticed that more dirt was being deposited with every few steps I took.  Dang.  I must have picked some mud up while I had gone out to get the mail.  I looked at the bottom of the shoes and realized it wasn't dirt but rather that the heel of the shoe was disintegrating.  It was not dirt but really crumbly rubber.
     I was a little annoyed because, while these shoes were several years old, I did not wear them that often.  There was no reason, or so I thought, that the sole of the shoe should be deteriorating in such a manner.  I googled Ecco, the name of the shoe company, and "shoe sole disintegrating."  There were plenty of consumer complaint sites documenting the exact problem I had experienced.  This was a known issue.
     I called Ecco customer service.  While they did not acknowledge any ongoing problem, they quickly said they would be send out a postage paid envelope that I could use to return the shoes to them.  I was told they would evaluate the issue.  If deemed their fault, they would either send me a new pair of the same shoe or a credit to buy another pair.  That sounded fair.  I figured that even though the shoes were old, I rarely wore them and when I did I wore them on dressy occasions when we had company.  I rarely wore these particular shoes outside.  
     I asked if the shoes could be resoled and that would be fine with me.  The agent said that this was not possible because the sole and heel were made polyurethane which was molded right onto the shoe.
     This was not the first time this happened to me.  The same thing happened last year with a pair of Blundstone boots that I had bought in the early 2000s for snowy days.  The soles of these boots disintegrated in almost the same way.  It was in my office and again, at first, I thought it was dirt.  Those boots had to be thrown out as they couldn't be resoled either. In this particular occasion, I just assumed that the rubber (I did not know they were polyurethane at the time) dried out with age and began to crumble.
     I ran across a website that explained why my initial theory was wrong and why this phenomena actually happens:

The shoes had a moulded polyurethane (PU) sole, which, while being light and comfortable, is prone to a form of deterioration called “hydrolysis”, especially in coastal, humid areas, when not worn. In short, they crumble into a sticky mess.

It seems the act of wearing them puts pressure on the soles and squeezes out the moisture, which would otherwise insidiously break apart the foam-like structure. So it’s possible for a pair of unworn or barely worn shoes to disintegrate.

As I discovered when I Googled the words “PU soles” and “disintegrate”, this is a hot issue, and affects most brands of “comfort” shoes, among them Clarks, Hush Puppies, Green Cross, Scholl, Bass and Ecco.
~ IOL a New Zealand News Site

     Basically, shoes with these kinds soles, which indeed are light and very comfortable, last longer the more you wear them and they wear out faster if you don't.  That sounds oxymoronic.  I will have to remember this if Ecco sends me another pair.

January 2016: Chidem Inch - The Water Diviner

Ottoman 5th Army Positions April 1915

      I just finished watching the Russell Crowe film, The Water Diviner.  It debuted earlier this year and, typical of many movie promotions, I had no clue what the film was about.  I made a mental note to watch the film at some point simply because I like most Russell Crowe films.  Then I saw some articles in the Armenian press and posts on Facebook slamming the film.  Russell Crowe was called out for starring and directing a film about Gallipoli and ignoring any mention of the Armenians or the Armenian Genocide.   I made a point of not reading the articles until I saw the film. The film was released in December 2014 in Australia.  The European and US releases were in March and April coinciding, not by mere chance I presume, with the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide commemorations.

      If I wasn't Armenian or Greek, I would have probably enjoyed the film more.  The lay reviews on IMDB.com are quite favorable.  One would definitely want to see this film reading those reviews.  Yet, as Sylvia Angelique Alajaji says in her book, Music and the Armenian Diaspora:  "The 1915 Genocide has become the hinge on which all stories pivot."  For Armenians, that is how we approach this movie.  The Armenians weren't mentioned at all.  The Allies made their first landing on April 25, 1915.  Basically, this historic battle lasted the rest of 1915 simultaneously with the first seven months of the Armenian Genocide.  There were Greeks in the film,  But they were portrayed as invaders and their army as evil.  The Greeks were seen shelling an ancient castle in a battle much like the Turks destroyed the Parthenon (for real) by using it for target practice. The film conveniently ended before they had to deal with not talking about what happened in

Native Greek children standing by the bones, in 1919, of
soldiers who died during in Gallipoli in 1915 

Smyrna.
    There were many things about the movie that resonated with me.  First off, the story was compelling.  I liked the general plot.  I enjoyed two Turkish melodies that were part of the soundtrack.  I loved hearing an Aussie, or perhaps British officer, saying, "We lost the battle, but won the war."  It was interesting to see how the Australians, Brits, and Turks collaborated after the war to collect the vast number of skeletons and bones on the battle field.  Another Australian or British officer noted that this was the first war they tried to identify those slain and bury them in marked graves.  Previously, they dug large trenches and in which soldiers, horses, and mules were all thrown, covered in lime, and buried en masse.  Hopefully, these were not Hollywood fabrications.  It is hard to tell which parts of such movies are factual and which are from the imagination of screen writers.

     There was a scene at the end that takes place in what they call the "old church" in a village near or around Afyon (as best as I could tell from my watching of the movie).  This would have been a perfect time to provide the origins of the church and the lead Turkish character,  Major Hasan who was a most human and sympathetic character in the film from my perspective, might have given an explanation of what kind of church it was and what happened to the people that once worshipped there.  But, alas, it was just the "old church."
     The casualties at Gallipoli, Çanakkale in Turkish, were staggering.  Almost 57,000 Turkish troops died there.  The allied deaths were about the same number.  Approximately 107,000 Turks and 123,500 Allies were wounded.  It was a significant battle and both sides have rightfully commemorated it over the years, the way Americans, the English, French, and Germans commemorate D-Day.  War is indeed hell whether it was ethnic cleansing as in the Armenian Genocide or an epic brutal battle as in Çanakkale.  This film attempted to address the hellish nature of war through characters on both sides that were human

Captain Sarkis Terossian:  The first
person to sink a British battleship

and humane.  The major problem was with the exclusion.  
      They might have had an Armenian character in the film that served in Gallipoli.  The character might have been based on an Armenian artillery officer, Captain Sarkis Terossian, in the Turkish Army that was decorated and wrote a memoir of the Battle of Gallipoli.

In fact, Captain Sarkis Torossian was personally awarded medals for his courage by Enver Pasha, Turkey’s war minister and the most powerful man in the Ottoman hierarchy.
~ Robert Fisk, in a 5/12/13 Independent article.

     Çanakkale Savaşı (The Battle of Gallipoli) is an important part Turkish history.  Mustafa Kemal was a hero of the battle.  He led the post World War I national movement that resulted in the formation of the Republic of Turkey and the deification of Mustafa Kemal as Kemal Ataturk for founder of the Nation.  Because of this, Çanakkale is not viewed as the last great victory of the Ottoman Empire but rather the first victory that led to the founding of the Republic.  To me, as an Armenian, I see nothing more than a continuum that was first subjugation, second class overtaxed citizenship, Genocide, and, lastly, denial.  Mustafa Kemal was part of that continuum from Ottoman to Republic.  This includes, per the Fisk article, a concerted effort in Turkey claiming that  Sarkis Torosian's memoirs and participation in Çanakkale are pure fabrication... as were the thousands of Arabs and other minorities that fought in the Ottoman Army in that famous battle.
     Crowe is not the first Australian to only focus on Gallipoli and ignore the Armenian Genocide. I suppose the question is whether Australians are remiss by only focusing on this very important battle in the history of their nation? The article quoted from below is by Robert Manne who is "Emeritus Professor and Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University and has twice been voted Australia’s leading public intellectual." He claims his country and countrymen are remiss.

And yet, despite the fact that the Armenian Genocide was one of the great crimes of history; despite the fact that it took place on Ottoman soil during the precise months of the Dardanelles campaign; despite the fact that that campaign is regarded as the moment when the Australian nation was born, so far as I can tell, in the vast Gallipoli canon, not one Australian historian has devoted more than a passing page or paragraph to the relationship, or even the mere coincidence, of the two events. Concerning the Armenian Genocide, in the space of two large volumes on Gallipoli, Charles Bean is silent; Les Carlyon gives the issue three or four lines; John Robertson allows half a page. Alan Moorehead, in his mid-'50s classic, is unusual by devoting a full three pages to the Armenian Question.
~ Robert Manne, The Monthly Essays

     Note that these excerpts are from articles, well worth reading, written by non-Armenians.  The Water Diviner got hammered by film critics in much the same way... again by non-Armenians.  Here
are some references and excerpts.

Let me put it this way: If I made a film set in Germany or France or Poland in the 1940s that made no reference to the fate of Europe’s Jewish population in those years – if I appeared unaware that there ever were Jews in Europe, let alone what had become of them – how would that look? What sort of person would you judge me to be, and what sort of point would I seem to be making? Such is the question raised by “The Water Diviner,” a film largely made in Turkey that is being released in the United States on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide – not the approximate anniversary but the precise anniversary, to the day. In a systematic campaign of deportation, starvation and mass murder that began in the spring of 1915, officials of the Ottoman Empire killed between 1 million and 1.5 million Armenians, an event that would later be called the first modern genocide and that shifted the course of 20th-century history, not least because it provided a template for the more ambitious schemes of Adolf Hitler. That event is never mentioned in “The Water Diviner,” not obliquely or indirectly or in any other way; you could easily watch the movie and never know that it happened.
~ Andrew O'Heir, Salon

Australian historian Professor Peter Stanley suggests that rather than a deliberate distortion, the problem with the film is most likely that Crowe, like his writers, has "entered a highly contested historical arena … without any idea of what he was getting into. His response was to simply roll over and accept the Turkish version."
Of course, the cynical might suggest that there may well have been commercial reasons for doing so.
The Anzac story presumably has little relevance to Greek or Armenian audience, but a retelling that is more sympathetic to the Turkish view was always likely to fare well in that market.
~ The Sydney Morning Herald

The moral issue at stake is neatly captured in the subtitle of Robertson’s recently published book on the genocide: ‘Who now remembers the annihilation of the Armenians?’ It was Hitler’s comment to his generals on the eve of the invasion of Poland urging them to show no mercy as there would be no retribution. It’s all part of ‘the other side of the Gallipoli story’ that Russell Crowe somehow didn’t get around to even hinting at.
~Anthony McAdam, The Spectator 

Nonetheless, if you strip the movie back to what works, and to what matters, it will, as I suggest, serve its purpose on Anzac Day. It should certainly not have been released yesterday, for that itself marked a harrowing centenary; to Armenians everywhere, April 24th refers to Genocide Remembrance Day, in memory of the many hundreds of thousands—as many as a million and a half, by some estimates—of their compatriots who died under Ottoman rule. Turkey continues vehemently to refute the charge of genocide, but the word is widely adopted, and was even used recently by Pope Francis. Whatever term you choose, why did the distributors of “The Water Diviner” risk insulting an entire community for the sake of one night’s takings at the box office? After all, here is a film that goes to some lengths to retreat from prejudice, to stand back, and to view distant events as an inextricable tangle of grievance and grief.
~Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

     It is worth reading any of these articles.  They all acknowledge the raw nerve that the memories of both Gallipoli and the Armenian Genocide touch to this day.  The Turks looked to have an international commemoration of Gallipoli/Çanakkale on the same day the Armenians were commemorating the start of the Genocide:  April 24.  They figured they would overshadow a part of their history they want the world to forget by making a big fanfare over an event in their history that they embrace.  World leaders were to attend the Gallipoli commemoration.  The event never happened.  World leaders bowed out when, apparently, they realized the ulterior motive of Ankara.  Sadly, Russell Crowe's movie was already produced.  I do not believe they did not have to release the film on April 24th in the US.  Either Crowe was complicit with or duped by his Turkish influencers.  I am going to believe the latter.  
     I had recently read Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul by Charles King. This book covers the history of Istanbul from the end of World War I until the mid 1950s. Professor King's book addresses the Armenian, Greek, Jewish, Russian, and other minority groups very well. While he could not possibly please all people who might read the book, I believe his coverage to be well balanced. The same cannot be said about The Water Diviner.

=====================
All photos from Wikipedia.

July 2015: Potpourri

     In my Desire to Catch-Up: I began writing this musing e-letter in July of 2015. It is now January 3rd and I am just finishing it. There is a lot of negative things I can say about this lack of discipline, effort, etc. etc. But what is the point? I will celebrate instead, in a glass half full way, that I did finish and distribute it.

      Since I am writing this on January 3, 2016 allow me to acknowledge two special birthdays. My sister Nancy is celebrating a milestone birthday that ends in a zero. My grandson, Vaughn Alexan, is celebrating his first. Happy birthday to Nancy and Vaughn!

      Polygamy Cometh? In June, US Supreme Court ruled that Gay Marriage was a constitutional right. Mostly supporters were quite happy. Facebook was full of joy and well wishes. There was an app that many folks used to add a rainbow tint to their cover photos. Amid all of this were also posts where folks felt their religious views trampled on.
      Me?

      I wrote about this in December of 2010. I pretty much stand where I was then. I am more amazed by what was once taboo is now the norm and what was once the accepted bias is now taboo. This amazes me. I am not so sure why this amazes me and not others. Maybe I am more an observer.
     I do observe that people are happy that they can wed, that they have legal status, and shared benefits. This is good and a long time in coming. Yet, I also sympathize with good decent people who feel that a leg has been kicked out from their belief structure.
     I also observe religions having to come to grips with this. The Wall Street Journal had an Op Ed on June 30th said that this, Obergefell v. Hodges, decision will result in more litigation than even Roe v. Wade. There is a lot of hyperbole in the article but I think the author has a point.
     The title of the December 2010 article was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – Polygamy. Then as well as now, I am kind of wondering what the social implications of this monumental ruling will have. Then as now, I am suggesting that Polygamy is next in line to, first, become acceptable and then to be the law of the land. I find this logical extension amusing. Amusing? How so?
     Polygamy amuses me because of there is a delicious dichotomy with Islam and Mormonism. Both these religions, and I am spitballing here, probably are against same sex marriage but might view polygamy favorably. How can one not be amused by this? 

     By logical extension, polygamy should be a legal no brainer. We are talking about consenting adults. Marriage used to be between a man and woman. Now, that has been opened to men marrying men and women marrying women. One thing that did not change is that marriage is one-to-one. It was and is between two people.

     You are not allowed to marry yourself which would actually be an intriguing topic for a future blog. You are also not allowed to marry two men and three women. Certainly, there is the well-known fact or belief that people have to put in a whole lot of effort to make work. If this is true about one-to-one marriages, imagine how hard it would be to make a polygamous committee function with any degree of civility.

     The reason polygamy will not gain the legal status of marriage as defined as today. One of the compelling features of marriage is the sharing of benefits. Gay couples and nuclear families can now cover their loved ones just as heterosexual marriages and families have always done.

     Corporations were ahead of the curve on this one. They had established the status of partner to cover gay marriages years before the first legal gay marriage. It made sense for both creating a harmonious workforce but also to avoid the kinds of litigations that were obviously coming. 

     When it comes to polygamy, it is doubtful that the corporate world would want to adopt this. The reason is quite simple: the cost factor. People covered could grow geometrically in the multi-spouse world. People would marry their friends with no sexual benefits just to get them real benefits. Prenuptials could cover the estate planning issues. Because of this, I do not anticipate polygamy being legalized very soon. 

     Hold on, Just a Second: On June 30, the last minute of the day was 61 seconds long. The extra second, referred to as a leap second, was added to keep the atomic clocks in sync with the earth’s rotation which apparently has irregularities.

     Leap seconds are not scheduled on a regular basis as are Leap Years. This is all managed by the International Earth Rotation System and Reference Systems Service (IERS) an international organization established in 1987 and headquartered in Germany. We did not really need Leap Seconds before we established official time as set by atomic clocks. The variation of atomic clocks is apparently less than the variation of the earth’s rotation. So, every once in a while a second must be added or subtracted from the atomic clock so it stays in sync with the earth.

     When I was a kid, this would have bothered me. Leap year bothered me. I expected, wanted, perhaps even demanded that the physical world operate in a fixed and predictable manner. Variation and entropy made no sense to me. I simply did not understand how or why God did not design things in a more orderly fashion.

     Over the years, I have clearly gotten over this. Part of the passage from adolescence into adulthood is to except certain thing as just the way they are. This, of course, included cosmic architecture and design. The universe operates as it does. The measurement and tracking of time is a human invention. Whatever underlying postulates guide our logic and science are not necessarily in sync with the aforementioned cosmic architecture and design. Variation is part of the cosmic architecture and design. 

     All this is so much blah blah where astronomy and theology overlap. In the case of the extra second on June 30th, it was unnoticeable. If it weren’t in the news, I would have been blissfully unaware. 

     ISIS Revisited: I just learned that ISIS executed an Armenian, Hovsep Tomasyan, in Kobane on June 24th. Per Asbarez.com:

Four ISIS members wearing Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) uniforms shot the 45-year-old father on the morning of June 24, according to Aram [Hovsep’s 14 year old son]. “My father was bleeding from his heart when he fell on the ground. Despite this he still raised his hand and said, ‘Son, run, they are ISIS.’ I ran. If I hadn’t run, I would have been shot too…”

     In this year when we are commemorating the Armenian Genocide, we are watching the last Christians being driven out of Iraq and Syria because of the civil wars. It seems ISIS has earned at the lion share of the blame for their brutal treatment of Christians and Moslems that are not like them. It was inevitable that Armenians living in Iraq or Syria would become casualties. I am sure Tomasyan is not the first. I am simply sickened by all of this and especially this second Genocide of Christians by ISIS. 

     The world really is doing nothing. The US is doing nothing. As I wrote a year ago, ISIS is partly our creation. But, after prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that were stalemates if not outright defeats, we do not have the resolve to go back in. There is some moral outrage. We are providing some air support and military advisors in Iraq. But, there is nothing like Mideast Relief. 

     There were two points of view that resonated with me when I read them. First, we are underestimating ISIS the same way the world underestimated the Bolsheviks when they overthrew Russia. The underestimation is not in the brutality against innocents but rather their military resolve and evolving capability. 

     The meager response of whatever coalition or alliance we think we are in are leaving the fighting to the Kurds and whatever Iraqi Army there is. It is unclear what the result of all this will be in Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan, and perhaps even Turkey. I am hoping that ISIS is not part of it.
     Salt Craze: Let’s move from the serious to the truly mundane.

     I never gave salt much thought. It came in a blue cardboard cylinder from the Chicago base

Morton company that mined it from the huge salt mines underneath Chicago. When I was younger, I thought our table sale came from the Detroit Salt Mines. But no, the salt mined from under Detroit is used for rock salt and de-icing products.
     In teaching microeconomics, I use table salt as an example when we cover price elasticity of demand which is the sensitivity of demand to changes in price of an item. My point is that table salt, the Morton blue cylinder, is bought so infrequently that no one ever remembers the price last paid for the product. If you need salt, you buy it and it has almost nothing to do with the price.
     Well… that was the case.
     Now, the table and cooking salt market has kind of expanded into different and more expensive variants. There is Kosher Salt and sea salts of a dizzying variety. A quick internet search yields sea salts from France, Italy, Peru, and the Himalayas. Sea salts are also infused with almost any other spice or flavoring one can think of from roasted garlic to porcini from vanilla bean to matcha (green tea). Samplers of these gourmet salts can be $130 for 24 small 5 oz bottles. This comes to $.82 per oz. The 26 oz cylinder of Morton sells for $2.43 or $.093 per oz. These new salts are getting a 9-fold price premium. It seems crazy to me.
     There are two websites that provided most of the information in this article. Between the both of them, you would get all you need to know about this sea salt craze.

1. Sea Salt - Tech Insider
2. Authority Nutrition - Different Types of Salt. This is the source of the table at the end of this letter.

     What is it about sea salt versus regular old table salt. Table salt is processed a bit more. They have anti-clumping agents in them thus allowing for the Morton tag line of “When it rains, it pours.” Generic table salt is also iodized. Goiters caused by iodine deficiency was a bigger problem in the past. In the early 1900s, it was decided to iodize salt and solve this problem. Most sea salts are not iodized nor do they contain the anti-clumping agents. Sea salts are dried and are thus naturally flakier and coarser than the highly ground table salts which until recently were the only standard.

Kosher salt is almost exactly the same as table salt except for a few key differences. While they are both mined from seabeds and salt deposits, kosher salt's individual grains are coarse, asymmetric, and slightly larger than table salts'. That's because it's left to dry naturally after it's mined. It also generally doesn't have any anti-clumping agents or iodine additives, making it the purer cousin of table salt. 

And despite its confusing name, kosher salt is not actually kosher. Rather, it's used in the koshering process. To remove "impurities" from meat, people slather the rough salt onto the outside of a cut to pull blood from surface tissues. The big grains absorb a lot of blood and can be easily washed away after the process without leaving the meat too salty.
~ Tech Insider

      People like sea salt because they are something new, more expensive and hence differentiating, and there is a perception that they are more natural or healthy. OK… according to the two weblinks, they are not any more healthy than regular old table salt. Salt is essential to our diets. Yet, too much salt is unhealthy no matter if it is Morton, Maldon, Indian Black Sea Salt, Celtic Salt, Kosher Salt, or Chicago Street Salt. Salt is one of the top three taste components used in foods. The other two are sugar and fat. In moderation they are good, in excess all three are bad. I never reach for the salt shaker though it is always on the table. Most food is salty enough, especially if it is processed and packaged (read the labels if you doubt me). This is why I am only writing about these exotic sea salts instead of being a consumer of them.
      What makes Pink Himalyan Sea Salt pink and desired by so many gourmets? Rust. Iron Oxide. Yum. It is the trace minerals, or impurities if you prefer, that give the variety of sea salts their distinction. Come to think of it, rust is coarse and flakey too.
      Lastly, this sea salt thing has spread to confections. In our never ceasing efforts to create unhealthy but delicious foods, we now have Salted Caramel. Sweet and salty like sweet and sour seems oxymoronic. Yet, it is everywhere. I do believe regular old caramel candies can still be purchased but for the most part all I see are Salted Caramel this and that everywhere I go.

December 2015: Christmas Letter

In November, when it actually snowed.

     It is early Christmas morning. I am indeed the only person up and about. It is 7 am, not so early. Day has broken and it is a snowless Christmas Day in what has been a very warm December. It was over 60 degrees on the 23rd. There is no hint of snow today none on the horizon.
     We have come to associate Christmas with snow in the parts of the world where I have lived. Maybe we have had it marketed into our psyches through countless ads and holiday films. Maybe it is longevity of pagan and druid festivities on which Christmas has been overlaid that makes us want to mark the Winter Solstice with light and greenery in our homes. I often hear when friends or family move to or spend Christmas in a warmer clime, like California, say “it just doesn’t feel like Christmas.” It is odd because I do not believe that there was snow, yule logs, holly boughs, and evergreens at the first Christmas in Bethlehem. There certainly were no Gaghant Babas, Sinterklaases, or Santas around. The only gifts exchanged were from the three wise men who arrived twelve days later bearing gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 

     It is a pleasure, freshly brewed coffee at hand, to sit and pen this Christmas Letter to family and friends. 

     Two Grandsons: My friend Ara always makes fun of my Christmas letters and just about every other letter I pen. He chastises me for my “It was a dark and stormy night” opening line. Pardon the Charles Schultz and Peanuts reference, my opening tended to revolve, like in this letter, about being up before everyone else. It is usually still dark and quiet and basically a “not a creature was stirring” Clement Clarke Moore kind of morning. 

      The only sound I really hear is my friend of recent years, tinnitus, which this morning is at a higher volume than most. Whereas, I have enjoyed the solitude of this hour in previous years when my grown children were sleeping upstairs, I am listening over my tinnitus, for waking of my grandson, Vaughn Alexan, who is visiting for the first time from California. He is spending his first Christmas with us! 

      I would interrupt writing this letter the moment I hear him stir. Even though his mother, Armene, will attend to him, I want to savor every moment with him while he is here. Others my age and older had told us, when grandchildren were simply a concept to us, “wait until you have grandchildren, it is the most amazing experience.” I never told these folks, but it was not much of a revelation. It is a concept we understood very well and were totally ready to embrace. Plus, we knew this because we knew how special our relationship was with our grandparents and were totally ready to provide the same to grandchildren of our own. 

      Almost on cue, our older grandson, by just six months mind you, facetimed me. Aris Gabriel is in NY for Christmas with his parents and grandparents. It is his second Christmas. He doesn’t quite understand the concept of Christmas but has very well linked the concept of wrapped boxes that hide new things to play with. It was a great pleasure to see him and his parents just know. 

     We are blessed to have two healthy and charming young grandsons. Yes, charming. They both know, in their own ways, how to work a room as they say. But, of course, they are not working. They are being their own engaging and loving selves, happy to see people they know and even don’t know. They are inquisitive, engaging, and smiling. Better than working a room, for which their grandmothers or parents may cast a raised eyebrow in my direction, they simply light up a room more than any festive lights or Christmas tree. It is a joy. They are a joy. 

     e-letter Interruptus: Some of you have asked me about not getting my e-letter. Did I stop writing? Was there something wrong on their end? My mother, my cousin John Sharoian, and a few others were the most vocal in this regard. 

      Yes and no and yes… it is all me. 

      Since November of 2014, I have only written and distributed the February Anniversary letter. I have partially written several other letters which I do plan on finishing and distributing. 

      What happened? 

      The first speed bump happened last December. I attempted both in December of last year and January of this year to write about the racial unrest in this country. The protests in Ferguson, MO were full fledged and there seemed to be no end to the police killing unarmed black men. I tried to make sense of it. I wanted to write my own style of a middle of the road piece about something in which everyone around me seemed polarized to the extreme. I also wanted to relate this to the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I had big and bold plans. I tried to wrangle big and bold ideas and relate them in big and bold ways. Basically, I found myself in quicksand that I have yet to fully escape. Maybe Ara is right, I should not be concerned with providing insight to a polarized world but rather return to my forte which is the Seinfeldesque blogging about nothing, contemplating navel lint and such. 

      While I did not really get my e-letters done, I did post twenty-eight times on my This Side of Fifty blog. I started a series there, reflecting on subjects related to the 100th Anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. I am titling the posts in this series: Chidem Inch (Armenian slang for “what do I know”). 

      Secondly, it was my new job. I was in my first year as a full time college professor. I was teaching four of courses which is one more than a full load. All the courses were new. This meant I had a lot of preparation work. Also, wanting the students to have a full return on their tuition dollar, I assigned a lot of work which required a lot of grading. On top of this, there were administrative requirements I never experienced as an adjunct. I had to attend meetings (gee how I didn’t really miss these from my corporate days). I had thirty students I had to advise… after I learned how to advise. I was busy and all of this took precedence over my writing. 

     When I had a corporate job, I was able to do my writing. People always wondered how I did that. While my corporate positions were demanding, I was used to doing them and got efficient at doing them. In those days, I wrote, mostly, in the mornings, and it became a routine. I have not quite established the same as a professor. But, I am working on it. In preparation for the upcoming Fall semester, I am already ahead of the game and feel confident that I can get back into a writing groove.  

     Thirdly, I had a medical issue this summer that resulted in surgery in late July. I had a sinus surgery to basically roto-root out and the sinuses which were 50-75% blocked and correct a deviated septum. These issues made it very difficult to breathe each and every winter and more recently impossible to sleep a full night with some kind of medicine that had the letters PM at the end. 

     The issue became critical in early May. We had had a very wet early Spring that resulted in a most lush and flowery May. There was a report on the radio the radio that said that a high pollen count was like 10 (I may be way off here) and we were experiencing ten times that. While, my nose and sinuses weren’t able to breathe very well, they heard this radio report perfectly and decided to completely and totally comply. They committed themselves to function at the lowest possible level and drive me to seek medical attention. 

      I was definitely sleep deprived for the first seven and a half months of this year. It took all I had to just do my primary work. After the surgery, I have experienced the simple pleasure of breathing through one's nose and sleeping thought the night in a bed. While the condition and surgery were not anything dire, it was nothing I wish upon anyone. Two months before the surgery and two weeks after were simply a pain in the… nose. This all contributed to lack of concentration and motivation to write. 

     Lastly, everything I was writing was on a keyboard. I had moved away from pen and paper and wondered if that was contributing to my lapse in my monthly letters. I missed the personal act of handwriting compared to the impersonal word processing. So, I returned to handwriting. It was more appealing to me during my convalescence. I now carry a notebook again suitable for writing and keeping the writing organized. I always have a fine writing instrument handy as well.
     Christmas 2015: As noted in earlier Christmas Letters, I used to write a Christmas email to work colleagues and direct reports. Every year, the list grew and for some unorganized reason, I relied on memory to select who I would send the email to. I would certainly include the folks in my current department but often would forget others I had worked with. It made sense to turn that impromptu Christmas morning habit into a bona fide e-letter and blog post. It also made sense to post the link to the blog on Facebook. 

     I usually note an old Armenian American tradition where the menfolk for sure and perhaps the whole family would make a Christmas day tour to the homes of close friends and wish them well, eat some food, hoist a glass, and make a toast. I loved the idea of this and wish I could, like Santa Claus, make that tour and see everyone I know and love around the world. It would be a amazing to visit cities around the world in various climes to shake hands, give a hearty embrace (un fuerte abrazo), wish you a Merry Christmas, and toast to the health and happiness to each and everyone of you for the coming year. Which is exactly what I am doing now. 

     In my December 2004 letter, I wrote about a Bible verse that has always resonated with me and been a theme on many religiously themed Christmas cards over the years. Luke 2:14 says:

“Glory to God on the highest and Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men.”

     It seemed like we needed to embrace that message very much in 2004. I think we need it all the more this coming year.

Çidem İnç: Terror in Paris and Beirut

     On the way home from work, I heard a report on the radio about the multiple terrorist events in Paris.  Apparently, over 120 were killed by explosions and gunfire in what was a very coordinated, well planned, series of attacks.  Suicide bombers hit three different restaurants.  Germany was playing France in a soccer match and there were 2-3 explosions outside the stadium.  The bulk of the deaths took place at a rock concert in which gunmen entered, sprayed the venue with bullets, and then methodically executed people.
     This occurs the day bombings in Beirut killed 43 people.  This bombing was also well coordinated in the heinous way suicide bombings have evolved.  Two bombs were detonated in the same area to create maximum chaos and terror.
     I feel sick, empty, and numb.
     Who is responsible?  ISIS or ISIL or whatever they are being called took responsibility in Lebanon and I am guessing that everyone suspects them to behind the latest Paris attacks.  There is bound to be a similar attack in the US.  It seems inevitable.  In this regard, I hope I am wrong.
      I have yet to turn the television to a 24/7 news station.  I am numb and not sure I want to be shocked, awed, and numbed further by gluing myself to a news source,  I also wanted to react to these events without being influenced by the television journalism.
      It shows the resolve and vicious intent of ISIS.  They are a universal enemy to a great majority of the world.  They must be stopped.  I have no idea how they should be stopped, but they must be stopped.  The US, France, and others have to engage them directly with ground troops.  Air strikes will only do so far.  We will have to ally with Russia and others to eliminate this threat to half of Islam and the rest of the world.  We have to seriously look at our ally Turkey to see where their allegiance truly is.
     This ISIS enemy must be treated as just that:  an enemy capable of horrific acts.  They have no morality or compassion of anyone that is not them.  They are a serious enemy that cannot be taken lightly.
     The dastardly part of these attacks is an immediate realization of how vulnerable we can be in a free society.  This is nothing new to the people of Syria.  They have been living this for a few years and is why they are migrating to Europe in droves.  We have to defend ourselves.  We have to defend ourselves from overreacting in fascist and jingoistic ways that constrict our freedoms or polarize us religiously in our own countries.  That will not be easy to do especially if these kinds of attacks become more frequent.
     For many it will be easy to blame the new wave of migrants. Before this there were reports that terrorists could easily be part of the wave of migration.  Life will probably become much tougher for these migrants because of this Paris attack.
     I am not sure what the consequences of these attacks will be.  But is something that we will have to deal with.  Even before the terrorism this week in Paris and Beirut, many people think the world has been increasingly more polarized, tense, and thus scary place in recent years.
  Thoughts and prayers go out to those who perished and their families.
  Peace on Earth, goodwill to men.

Win Some/Lose Some

Lose Some
The Paul Bunyan Trophy

Win some
The Little Brown Jug

     The oval shape of a football makes it bounce funny.  On occasion it does just that.  Or it doesn't.  This unpredictable behavior add another of dimension of randomness to a game already complicated with randomness.  As readers of this blog know, I am a University of Michigan Football fan.  I live and die with the team and their results.  Randomness over the years has a lot to do with the who wins and loses the close games.  A tipped pass, a missed field goal, a made field goal, fumbles, sacks, interceptions, all play a role and often in the last few plays of the games.  I am I think I have become  much more philosophical both due to age, an understanding of the randomness I am referring to, and the humbling Michigan record from 2008 to 2014.  
      The last two games were excellent examples of both the role of random shocks in this game and a test of my supposed balanced emotions.  On October 17th, the Wolverines lost a heartbreaking game to the Michigan State Spartans on last play of the game.  Today, October 31st, we sealed a victory on the last play of the game against the Minnesota Golden Gophers.  
     Two weeks ago, Michigan lost a game, as they say, by "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory."  The Wolverines played the Spartans tough.  While MSU had more yards, time of possession, and first downs, Michigan's defense held them close.  With less then two minutes left, Michigan had the ball and a well earned 23 - 21 lead.  If they could get a first down, they would surely win.  They didn't but were able to drain the clock down to 10 seconds.  If they punted the ball deep, the would of probably won.  They didn't.  Instead our very good punter, Blake O'Neill who earlier in the game blasted something like an 80 yard punt, fumbled the snap.  He might have fallen on the ball and State would have had 8 seconds or less for one maybe two plays from the Michigan 38.  He didn't.  Instead he tried to pick it up and still get the punt off.  He didn't.  Michigan State knocked the ball out of his hands.  Jalen Watts-Jackson, a sophomore defensive back scooped up the ball and rand in for a touchdown.  No need for an extra point and the final score was 27 - 23.  The joy that was building on the Michigan side turned to gloom.  The bitter taste of loss that motivated State fans to leave the stadium turn to joy.  Everyone was shocked.  MSU kept the Paul Bunyan Trophy.
     There are youtubes of the play.  There are youtubes of completely stunned Michigan fans and grown men crying... literally grown men crying.  Meanwhile the MSU team and fans were going crazy celebrating.  This is football.  I have seen my share of last minute wins.  Sure I was disappointed, but from the very same seats I had seen my Wolverines win last minute games against Notre Dame, Illinois, and Michigan State (a triple overtime classic).  I have seen us lose to Notre Dame and Colorado.  If you follow a team long enough, you will see a fair share of triumphs and tragedies on the last play.
     I thought about writing about the Michigan State game.  I didn't.  I was busy, I did not have exactly the right angle.  I knew the angle I wanted was summarized in the previous paragraph but I just didn't get to it.  Maybe my heart wasn't in it.  Maybe I didn't want to sound whiny.  So, I didn't write a word.
     The game tonight, however, motivated me.  It was the Minnesota v. Michigan game.  Last year, Minnesota came to Ann Arbor and shellacked  the Wolverines 30-19.  It wasn't pretty.  The Golden Gophers won the Little Brown Jug for the first time since 2005.  Earlier this week, the Minnesota Head Coach, Jerry Kill, resigned for health issues.  He was a great coach who had succeeded in turning around Northern Illinois and then Minnesota.  Tracey Claeys, Kill's long time defensive coordinator, took over as head coach.  While Michigan was favored by 13 points, it was clear that the Golden Gophers would want to win this one for Jerry Kill.  They did come prepared to play.  Minnesota out rushed and out passed Michigan.  The really seemed to dominate the game.  Minnesota led at half-time 16-14.  Both teams exchanged touchdowns in the 3rd Quarter.  Minnesota added a field goal in the 4th Quarter and looked like they were going to coast to a win.  Michigan's starting QB, Jake Ruddock, was hurt late in the third quarter.  He was replaced by Wilton Speight who did not look very good in his first few series.  Things looked dire with Minnesota having a 26 - 21 lead.  Minnesota's offense seemed on fire.  Their offensive line opening holes for the impressive running of Rodney Smith and protecting QB Mitch Leidner.  They accumulated 144 passing yards and a whopping 317 passing yards on Leidners pinpoint throws against Michigan's vaunted defense.  They looked unstoppable.  The weren't.  While each Michigan score was a touchdown the Michigan Defense held the Golden Gophers to three touchdowns and three field goals.  
     Speight settled in and engineering a drive with with 5 minutes left in the quarter for a touchdown.  Michigan went for a two point conversion to prevent Minnesota from winning it with a field goal.  Michigan had a 29-26 lead.  Minnesota had a great drive with the clock winding down.  Leidner seemed to have saved his best passes for this drive.  It looked like the last pass was for a touchdown.  The officials signaled such.  But it wasn't.  Thanks to the magic or curse of reviewed plays, the ball was placed inside the 1 yard line.  The tried a pass.  Michigan pressured the quarterback who threw it away.  2 seconds left. Kick the field goal and go to OT?  Or go for it?  Tough call.  Claey chose to go for it.  Bad choice.  Michigan's defense dug in and stuffed Leidner's quarterback sneak.  Whew... we won. We won a game we could have and maybe should have lost.
     One game to the next, I experienced opposite sides of the same thing.  We lost to MSU on the last heartbreaking play and we held off Minnesota to win.  These kinds of last play of the game scenarios do not usually happen back-to-back.  But they did.  
     We won a game we should have lost and we lost a game we should have one.  The feelings are quite close.  How's that for an angle?

     Side Notes:  

• In his touchdown run, Jalen Watts-Jackson was tackled by Michigan's tight end Jake Butts who dislocated Jalen's hip which resulted in season ending broken pelvis when he fell to the ground and/or his teammates piled on him in glee.  That was sad.  I wish Jalen a complete recovery and a return to Spartan Football.
• Certain idiots, I cannot call them Michigan fans, threatened Blake O'Neill's life via twitter.  This is also sad.  I hope these folks seek therapy and can eventually rejoin normal society.
• The Little Brown Jug is the oldest rivalry trophy in College Football.  Michigan has won it a majority of the time leading the series 74-25-3. The last time Minnesota won it at home was in 1977.  The last time they won it in consecutive seasons was 1961 and 1962. 
• There were three other games I saw parts of that were decided on the last play of the game.  Notre Dame beat a feisty and determined Temple team 24 -20 with a game ending interception.  Washington State missed a game ending field goal to lose to Stanford 30-28.  The biggest last play, perhaps in a decade, was in the Duke v. Miami game.  Duke took the lead 27-24 with a few seconds on the clock.  They kicked off to Miami who had a crazy, amazing, seven lateral return that ended up in a game winning touchdown.  Great games.  I enjoyed watching them but... without the emotional involvement of living and dying for any of these teams, it was just really great entertainment.

Enough with these Shooting Rampages

     There was a shooting today.  This one took place in Roseburg, Oregon at Umpqua Community College.  The gunman, 26 year old Chris Harper Mercer, armed with three pistols and a rifle killed 10 people and wounded at least 9 though some reports had it as high as 20.  It was another shocking shooting at a school in the US.  

     We are the only country where these kinds of tragedies happen.  I am not sure what the time between shooting rampages is but these kinds of incidents happen way too frequently.  Is there anyplace else in the world where this kind of thing happens?  I am guessing not otherwise it would be reported here especially on a day like this when we are dealing with yet another shooting rampage and a tragic and shocking loss of life.  

     I was at North Park University where I teach when I heard the news.  I wondered what possesses someone like Chris Harper Mercer to do such a thing.  Why?  Why is this a uniquely American thing?   I left North Park to go to the University of Chicago for a rehearsal of the the Middle Eastern Music Ensemble.  Both campuses are relatively open and thus vulnerable to a similar attack by what I have to classify as a deranged person.  

     On the drive from North Park University to the University of Chicago, I turned on the radio and heard President Obama's passionate reaction to this shooting.  I have to agree with what he said in his remarks.  This is nothing to be partisan about.  The President speaks common sense and as a nation we need to do something about this.  It doesn't matter what you think of the President.  When he is right, he is right.  I think everyone should read the transcript of his speech and consider the wisdom his words.  Here are two paragraphs that sums up his and my reaction to these kinds of shooting rampages.

Earlier this year, I answered a question in an interview by saying, “The United States of America is the one advanced nation on Earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense gun-safety laws — even in the face of repeated mass killings.”  And later that day, there was a mass shooting at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana.  That day!  Somehow this has become routine.  The reporting is routine.  My response here at this podium ends up being routine.  The conversation in the aftermath of it.  We’ve become numb to this. 

This is a political choice that we make to allow this to happen every few months in America.  We collectively are answerable to those families who lose their loved ones because of our inaction.  When Americans are killed in mine disasters, we work to make mines safer.  When Americans are killed in floods and hurricanes, we make communities safer.  When roads are unsafe, we fix them to reduce auto fatalities.  We have seatbelt laws because we know it saves lives.  So the notion that gun violence is somehow different, that our freedom and our Constitution prohibits any modest regulation of how we use a deadly weapon, when there are law-abiding gun owners all across the country who could hunt and protect their families and do everything they do under such regulations doesn’t make sense.

     He is right.  We simply have to do something about this.

August 2015: Ohio State's Excellent Quarterback Problem

Braxton Miller, J. T. Barrett, and Cardale Jones
http://blacksportsonline.com 

      Football season is upon us yet again.  The pro camps are commencing and college media days are taking place.  It all makes me want to write about college football.  And oddly, I want to write about Ohio State.
      I am not an Ohio State fan.  Not by any means.  I am a Michigan fan and they are our great rival.  I do believe that there can be no rival without the rival and that both teams need to win about fifty percent or so to make the rivalry exciting.  Michigan has not been holding up our side of this bargain. Our latest hope is on our new coach John Harbaugh.  Michigan fans are pretty excited to the point of believing that "we're back to the glory days."  I am excited but a little reserved about making any sweeping grandiose claims since we have not even played a game yet and I got over excited by the two previous coaches .   This piece, however, is not about Michigan.  It is not about the rivalry with Ohio State.  It is simply about Ohio State and something, from my perspective, that is very unique and amazing going on down there in Columbus.
     The Buckeyes had something special going on when they hired Jim Tressel.  He won a national championship and beat Michigan regularly.  He was a great recruiter and good coach but left in disgrace given with what I will simply call the Terrelle Pryor incident.  Luke Fickell became the interim coach for a year in which the Buckeyes were uncharacteristically mediocre.  He was holding the job for Urban Meyer who took over in 2012.  Meyer has only lost three games in his tenure in Columbus and won a National Championship last year; the first year of the playoff system.
     I felt a tingle of admiration for the Buckeyes when they kept Luke Fickell as Defensive Coordinator after Urban took over.  I was impressed how they took care of their own.  Meyer could have easily insisted on bringing in his own guy.  I am not often impressed by anything Ohio State does.  But, I had to tip my hat to them on this one.
     Last year, when they won the National Championship, they used their second and third string quarterbacks all season.  Their starting quarterback was to be Braxton Miller.  He was a pre-season Heisman hopeful.  He was a great mobile college quarterback that was a better runner than a passer.  He reminded me of the great Texas quarterback Vince Young.  He was electrifying, deceptively fast, and routinely shredded defenses with both running and passing.  When he went down in the pre-season, most wondered how the Buckeyes would fare without their star quarterback.
     Ohio State began the season with J. T. Barrett, their second stringer, at quarterback.  They beat Navy 34-17 in their first game and then lost their home opener against Virginia Tech 35-21.  At this point, there was a general consensus that the Buckeyes were going to struggle the rest of the season.  Everyone who thought that was wrong including me.  J. T. Barrett, as it turns out, is a very good quarterback.  He was a better passer than a runner and he was a pretty awesome runner.  After the Virginia Tech loss, Barrett led them to nine consecutive wins putting a lot of points on the board.  Commentators were saying he might even be better than Braxton Miller.  He was definitely a much better passer.  In the last regular season game, Barrett was orchestrating a win against Michigan when he suffered a season ending broken ankle in the first play of the fourth quarter.
     With the score being Ohio State 28 and Michigan 21, the Michigan hopeful were actually thinking we might have a chance to win with Ohio State having their third string QB in the game:  some guy named Cardale Jones.  Well... on his next series it was second and fifteen and this third stringer rips off eighteen yards and looked like the best power back on the field doing it.  He continued on from there to seal the win against Michigan.
      Cardale Jones played the remainder of the season.  The Buckeyes stomped Wisconsin 59-0 in the Big Ten Championship game.  They were then selected as one of the four teams in the first ever NCAA Football Playoff Series.  Their first game was against Alabama who they beat 42-35 and then convincingly beat Oregon, with the Heisman Trophy winning Quarterback Marcus Mariota, 42-20.  The buzz was now that Cardale Jones was the best of the three... and it was hard to argue.  He ran like a tailback and passed, to me, like Ben Rothlisberger.
      They won a National Championship basically with their second and third string quarterbacks.  That is a significant accomplishment.  Take any of the top teams that were given a shot at the national title at the beginning of the season.  Then if someone were to tell you their first string quarterback would go down before the season, the second string quarterback would start the 12 regular season games only to get hurt in the 12th game, and any postseason would be using the third string quarterback.  Would anyone think this team be it Alabama, Oregon, Florida State, Notre Dame, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Auburn, Baylor, Texas, or Ohio State would have any hope of even winning their conference let alone win a National Championship?  Very few people would answer affirmative to such a question.
      Yet, Ohio State, Michigan's nemesis, did just that.  Wow.  Unbelievable.
      I discussed that with my colleague in the School of Business and Nonprofit Management at North Park University:  Professor Chris Hubbard.  Chris knows what he is talking about since he teaches leadership and played Division 1 football at Bowling Green as a tailback.  He said it was the Urban Meyer system.  While I agreed that the coaching and management system is important and Urban Meyer has a very good system, there was also a degree of luck involved in having three quarterbacks of that caliber on one team.  There are many coaches with good systems.  Nick Saban immediately comes to mind.  I do not know if Alabama would have won their conference if they had had to use their third string quarterback to do it.  We finally agreed the both the system and luck had something to do with it.
      It was most impressive what Ohio State did.  But, that is not why I am writing about them.  I am writing because all three quarterbacks are returning to Columbus.  That to me is even more amazing then anything.  The buzz was that Cardale Jones was probably going to be the starter.  This led to speculation that Braxton Miller and perhaps even J. T. Barrett might leave Ohio State to ensure a starting position elsewhere.  There was even talk of Cardale Jones opting to go pro.  None of this happened.  All three agreed to stay at Ohio State.   In this day and age of giant egos and doing best for oneself versus the team, that is even a bigger wow to me.
      Quarterbacks transferring schools has become commonplace in the past few years.  Russell Wilson transferred to Wisconsin from North Carolina State.  For the 2015 season, Evert Golson transferred from Notre Dame to Florida State and Jake Rudock transferred from Iowa to Michigan.  Some Michigan hopeful wanted to see Braxton Miller don the winged helmet, as if that was ever going to happen.
     So, why have all three of these talented quarterbacks decided to stay at Ohio State?  Any agent or financial/career advisor would have had to tell all three that their professional prospects would be heightened if they were the starter at Ohio State... or elsewhere.  I would have expected at least one of them to transfer.  But, it didn't happen.
     I asked the same question to a college coach I recently met.  He reminded me that all three players are well compensated and this contributed to their staying in Columbus.  I do not buy into this for the following reasons.  First, if there is under the table compensation, that is probably available wherever Jones, Barrett, or Miller might have considered transferring to.  Second, as argued above, their potential professional compensation would easily overshadow whatever college level compensation they are getting... especially if they were starters.   So, this line of reasoning made no sense to me.
      What makes sense, and is the astonishing part, is that they have loyalty to Ohio State and loyalty to Urban Meyer and his system.  Assuming they are making decisions based on self-interest, each quarterback believes that staying at Ohio State is their best career move even if they are not the starter.  There is something powerful and magic going on in Columbus.  Perhaps when I post this piece, others will provide theories that are more plausible than what I just stated.  We shall see.
     While they may not all start at quarterback, they may all start.  It was recently reported that Braxton Miller will be a wide receiver because that is probably where he would play as a professional.  OK that makes sense and really is not a surprise to anyone that has thought about this.
      This brings me to my final point.  Could Barrett, Jones, and Braxton all be playing at the same time?  Make Barrett the quarterback, Jones as wishbone running back along with Ezekiel Elliott, and Braxton at wide receiver.  By the way, Ezekiel Elliott is a preseason Heisman candidate himself. Three of the four are awesome runners.  Three of the four are very good passers.  Who gets the ball and what do they do with it?  How could teams hope to defend such a versatile offensive backfield and wide receiver?  Think of the reverses and double reverses with Miller, Elliott, and Jones.  Think of the run-pass options.  It is almost mind boggling.  It is like the modern manifestation of Notre Dame's Four Horsemen.
     Now platooning quarterbacks is something fans think is cool.  Coaches do not usually do it.  They do not think it is a good idea.  The quarterback position is so important that coaches want to build their offenses around the styles of one quarterback, not two, and most definitely not three.  But, coaches do not usually have this excellent talent problem facing Urban Meyer.  Barrett is a quarterback.  Jones and Miller are quarterbacks, running backs, and ends simultaneously.  Why not use their skills and drive opponents insane trying to defend against all the possibilities the Four Horsemen bring to the gridiron.  Urban Meyer is a great offensive coach.  I have to assume he has been hard at work to be able to leverage this once in lifetime confluence of talent.
     Ohio State is a preseason favorite to repeat as National Champions.  They look great on paper.  They are coming off a spectacular season.  They might be one of the best teams ever.  They might be the team of the century just like everyone was touting the Buckeye team of 1969.
     Hey a fella can dream can't he?

Manual Treadmills? OMG!

     There was an article in the July 7, 2015 Wall Street Journal, Treadmills Unplugged: A Gym Workout Powered by Your Feet, talking about manual treadmills gaining a foothold (pun intended) in gyms around the country.  

"Treadmills without motors, or manual treadmills, are popping up in high-end health clubs and at the CrossFit Games, an international fitness competition. Instead of pressing a button to start a mechanical conveyor belt, users make the belt go simply by moving their feet."

     Imagine powering a treadmill with one's own energy and exertion.  What a novel idea.

     Well it is not that novel an idea.  Before the fitness craze of the past thirty years, most treadmills were not powered be electricity.  Most were powered by whoever or whatever was on the treadmill.  I remember back when treadmills were becoming popular in gyms, I just assumed they were devices driven by manual power.  The only treadmills I could remember seeing were manual powered.  The idea of a treadmill driven by an electric motor seemed odd and counterproductive.

    Whatever was on the treadmill? Yes, whatever. Consider the definition of the word treadmill:

noun
1. an apparatus for producing rotary motion by theweight of people or animals, treading on a succession of moving steps or a belt that forms akind of continuous path, as around the peripheryof a pair of horizontal cylinders.
2. an exercise machine that allows the user to walk or run in place, usually on a continuous moving belt.
3. any monotonous, wearisome routine in which there is little or no satisfactory progress.
dictionary.com 

     Certainly, numbers two and three make sense.  What are they talking about in definition number one?  Consider the word treadmill itself.  One definition of tread is to walk and that makes sense since walking is one of things people do on treadmills.  Mill?  The first treadmills were not human exercise machines.  Treadmills were used to grind grain and they were powered by people or animals.  Treadmills were human and animal powered devices to generate energy for the milling of grain in places where water and wind mills were not practical or not known about.  In the 1800s, treadmills were used in prisons.  These prison treadmills, which were more like stair steppers, were used to punish prisoners while grinding grain.  These non-exercise treadmills were indeed monotonous and wearisome routines.  

     Eventually steam engines took on these monotonous tasks.  Gasoline engines and electric motors replaced steam engines.  Thus, an electric treadmill is kind of an oxymoron.  It is clear why I was confused by electric treadmills.  They didn't make sense. 

     When I was growing up and was first exposed to ecology, I had an odd notion.  Why couldn't we generate electricity by having everyone that was able, spend a half hour a day on a treadmills or bikes rigged up to harness that human powered energy?  People could exercise and perform a civic duty at the same time.  I never did anything with the idea thinking that hundreds of thousands of folks spending thirty minutes a day on a hamster wheel would never fly.  Silly me.  Clearly, my oxymoronic view of electric treadmills were rooted in this sophomoric notion of mine.

     NordicTrack makes a full line of aerobic exercise machines.  Their business began with a very simple, small footprint, and elegant (in minimalist Scandinavian way) cross-country skiing device.  There was definitely no electricity involved.  If memory serves me correctly, they followed up the success of their skiing product with a manual treadmill.  Their treadmill had many of the same simple and elegant design features as their skiing machine.  While the skiing machine was popular and made both profit and a name for company, the treadmill was not.  Looking at the NordicTrack website today, all of their treadmills are powered.  They had to follow the market.

     Of course electric treadmills make sense.  The first were used in medical facilities to get patients heart rates up very quickly and efficiently for stress tests.  Patients probably exclaimed, "that was quite a workout."  Folks who were better at commercializing ideas than I am, ran with it (yes, another intended pun).  The purpose of a treadmill is too get a good workout, not to generate energy to drive other machines.  Plus, manual treadmills were just too hard as the human was required to get it up to speed and keep it there... just like real running.

     Manual treadmills were too hard.  I tried one once.  It was even more monotonous and wearisome.  My pace was uneven.  Electric treadmills was easier.  They were easy to get a good workout.   There are programs to vary the pace and incline as well as tracking heart rates.  For me, I gravitated to stationary bikes.  Besides preferring biking to running, I liked that electronics on these machines were generated by the rider. 

     So, we have come full circle.  All things old are new again.  As folks are looking for more extreme and vigorous workouts, the manual treadmill is gaining popularity.  Perhaps we can hook them up to the electric grid...