Thế giới của Sao: matter

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Chủ Nhật, 7 tháng 4, 2013

Sports don't matter, not one iota

Jan. 17, 2013: In this file photo, Rutgers head coach Mike Rice reacts to a play during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game against South Florida in Piscataway, N.J.AP
Jan. 28, 2012: In this file photo, Rutgers coach Mike Rice waves as he holds a ball presented to him for his 100th career win after Rutgers defeated Cincinnati in an NCAA college basketball game in Piscataway, N.J.The Associated Press

Mike Rice, the now-disgraced basketball coach at Rutgers, fired for physically assaulting and verbally abusing his players, could be the poster boy for more than one issue.

He is a bully, at a time when anti-bullying campaigns are looking for case studies of children and adults who misuse power and prey upon others.

He is viciously insensitive to sexual orientation issues, at times when institutions are striving to stamp out prejudice.

But he may be even better used as a poster boy for this issue: how sports, including college sports, have displaced far more meaningful activities and passions in American culture and led to the excusing of horrible behavior on the part of its participants.

If Mike Rice pushed, kicked and yelled slurs at students in a classroom studying international relations, he might well be jailed, or at least sued civilly for millions of dollars (which could still occur, of course, if Rutgers’ athletes decide to take such action). If Mike Rice pushed, kicked and yelled slurs at employees at a computer firm developing next generation software to analyze DNA or help defeat paralysis, he might be thrown in prison or bankrupted by civil suits, too. But because sports—including college sports—have risen to such prominence (financially and culturally), his outrageous behavior was tolerated for years, then initially met with a fine, suspension and counseling by Rutgers. The university has since, rightfully, fired him.

Here’s the truth about sports of all kinds: They are fun, entertaining, money-making activities that showcase the human spirit of competition at an exquisite level and that don’t matter to the world, in the long run, when it comes down to it, at all. Not one bit. Not an iota.

It’s time the world of sports and sports fans got over themselves. They are a glaring symbol of how little passion of their own people have now, how much they need to be ceaselessly entertained and how willing they are to settle for being fans, instead of fanning the flames of their own passions. Mike Rice is a creation of whatever psychological forces turned him into a bully—probably from boyhood. But he is also a product of a culture that wrongfully deifies sports figures, including coaches, and is lost in pretending that who wins the Final Four matters to the future of our existence—which it does not, at all. Not one bit. Not one iota.

Our empty-headed hysteria for anything that gets us pumped up (in an age when we are spiritually deflated) is what leads us to look the other way when men like Mike Rice rant and rave. It is what leads us to half-believe that college football phenom Manti Tao could be making sense when he says he fell deeply in love with a woman he never met. It is what leads us to cheer on Michael Vick as a quarterback when he participated in staging dog fights where spectacular animals were ripped to shreds.

The truth is that if every college sports contest in the world took place with no publicity, in arenas without cameras, covered not even by school newspapers, nothing much would change. It wouldn’t affect anything that matters to anyone, really.

Sick people would still need to find doctors who can really cure them. Poor people would still need to find opportunities to grow economically. And our armed forces would still need to be at the ready to defend our borders and our way of life.

We’d be far better off, in fact, if all sports coverage was relegated to specialty publications and stripped out of daily newspapers and daily news broadcasts. Because games are games are games. They don’t matter. Not really. Not at all. Not one bit. Not an iota.

Mike Rice got a big head because he thought he was a big deal. He wasn’t. He was in a position to inspire and lead a team. That’s a nice opportunity, probably a little less important than teaching math, but nice. It certainly isn’t like leading an army opposing communism. And he even blew that small job.

Dr. Keith Ablow is a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team. Dr. Ablow can be reached at info@keithablow.com.

Dr. Keith Ablow

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What does matter?

On many levels I agree with the good Dr. Ablow that sports really do not matter. But like many smart people he takes his strong position and pushes it too far. The reason sports matter to most of us is precisely because we understand the difference between reality and enjoyment.

I can assure the doctor that when I was sitting here in my den, in my old age, watching the Red Sox open the season this past week with three games against the Yankees, I was enjoying myself. Of course I knew the game would not affect my net worth, my health or my spiritual well-being, but in the same way my listening to the Beethoven violin concerto does not matter, I treasure that gorgeous music as I do the well played baseball game.

The real question Dr. Ablow asks is what does matter? Theologians ask what does it matter if we gain wealth with all it brings but lose our soul in the process. Wise adults come quickly to understand there are values such as good family relations, decent health and a feeling of proper citizenship that cannot be priced. Do they matter? Of course they do but there is no tangible measure for them. Indeed, what does matter is what we want to have matter.

We decide, each of us, how we want to spend our time and how we want to measure the meaning of each part of the day. We use sports as part of the mosaic of life. We spend time watching others play "the beautiful game”-- as the rest of the world calls soccer-- and we go to the ballet and symphony and opera for similar reasons. There is beauty and joy and even truth in sports as there is in those activities. If sports do not matter, how about the opera and the symphony? It is not as politically correct to sniff at the waste of time those lovely passions involve. Yet somehow the elites among us often remind us of how plebeian it is to sit with a cold adult beverage and enjoy the ball game on a warm summer evening.

To me, the ability to be able to enjoy and appreciate the subtleties of baseball and other sports is to recognize the various ways we can experience pleasure. The issue raised by Dr. Ablow is a red herring in the sense that he asks a legitimate question but addresses a false target. The sensible person does not ask why it matters to take a walk in the woods on a fall morning while the leaves are changing color. We do not live solely -- no pun -- for things that matter in the ultimate sense. Ultimate concerns are for the philosopher. Life is to be lived and not to be restricted by such questions as whether this moment could be better spent learning Greek verbs or how to fix a toilet. It is the wise person who knows when to ask the proper question. And to ask about the ultimate meaning of time spent lying in the grass staring at the sky is to engage in absurd self-flagellation.

Get a life. Relax. Live a bit.

I remember being distraught one time as a kid when my Yankees -- I told you I was young -- lost a big game. My Father asked me what Dr. Ablow is asking. Does it matter they lost? Of course he and the good doctor are correct in that the game does not matter at all.

But yet even as a kid I knew the correct answer was not the right answer. The loss mattered to me because at that time I cared. When we care about our teams, their performance matters. The act of caring is part of the investment we make when we follow sports. It is an emotional and not tangible investment but that does not make it meaningless. Most of would not invest in the outcome of a sporting event -- gambling corrupts sports -- but we care because we know the outcome is not going to affect tomorrow.

We love that part of sports. We kid ourselves. There is always another game, another day, another season. Wait 'til next year is the eternal cry of all of us who know how grim is the scythe of Lady Fate who is sitting just around the corner. Now she matters, Dr. Ablow, and we know that just as well as you do. What else does?

Fay Vincent is a former CEO of Columbia Pictures Industries and from 1989-92 served as the Commissioner of Baseball.

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Thứ Tư, 3 tháng 4, 2013

Hey, Republicans, words matter and AP's 'Illegal immigrant' decision proves it

What a difference a word makes! Tuesday the AP announced changes to its Stylebook that embargoed the words “illegal immigrants” and “illegal aliens.” They explained that the decision was in keeping with other choices made to avoid “labeling,” such as describing “schizophrenics” as “people diagnosed with schizophrenia.”

So, let me get this straight -- an alternative might be “immigrants diagnosed with illegal behavior”? The AP is apparently recommending “living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.”

I prefer Jay Leno’s choice: “undocumented Democrats.”

The word-smithing will not impress Janet Napolitano. The Homeland Security head last week dismissed controversy over the term. “I don’t really get caught up in the vocabulary wars” she told reporters. “They are immigrants who are here illegally. They are illegal immigrants.” Bully for Janet.

The decision by AP is, of course, intended to sway public opinion; if we drop the phrase, maybe we’ll forget the 11 million people who have snuck into the country or who have overstayed their visas have broken the law. Maybe we’ll imagine that they suffered an unfortunate attack of amnesia, or simply lost their way promenading along the Rio Grande.

It seems small potatoes, but the truth is – word-smithing of this sort is extremely potent, and Democrats are much better at it than Republicans.

When Harry Truman charged that GOP stood for “Grand Old Platitudes,” he shot an arrow through the heart of the complacent Dewey candidacy, and went on achieve one of the greatest upsets in American politics.

The left has been especially capable of changing the nation’s dialog. Think of the word “entitlement.” We now accept that Americans are “entitled” to Medicare and Social Security – when once these programs were “earned.”

The notion that you pay wages into such programs, to ensure retirement income and medical care after a certain age has been all but abandoned.

This is not accidental.

As sure as spring, the way we will ultimately make these programs sustainable – the way we will save them – is by curtailing benefits for high earners.

There are already hints of this approach; it is clearly the only way that both Social Security and Medicare will survive. Is it fair to those who pay into these programs during their entire careers, and who are successful? Not really – but since we now consider these programs “entitlements,” no one will dare complain that our most successful citizens give up their payout to those who need the benefits more.

The word game has been highly successful for the Obama political apparatus. His relentless attacks on high-income Americans have been powerful in part because words like “rich” and “wealthy” conjure up Daddy Warbucks-type images of heartless exploiters.

The president has enforced those perceptions by constantly talking about those who don’t “play by the rules” and don’t pay “their fair share.” Would Obama’s call for higher taxes been as powerful if he had targeted our “most productive Americans”? Or – our “biggest contributors”?

Doubtful.

Liz Peek is a writer who contributes frequently to FoxNews.com. She is a financial columnist who also writes for The Fiscal Times. For more visit LizPeek.com. Follow her on Twitter@LizPeek.

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Dark matter, hidden substance that makes up the universe, possibly found by $2b space physics experiment

The powerful Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) is visible at center left. The blackness of space and Earth's horizon provide the backdrop for the scene, on May 20, 2011 (Flight Day 5 of the STS-134 shuttle mission).NASA
Artist's concept of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a particle physics detector that will be installed on the starboard truss of the International Space Station.NASA

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NASA will unveil the first discoveries from a powerful $2 billion particle physics experiment on the International Space Station in what could be a major vindication for the science tool, which almost never made it into space.

The space agency will hold a press conference at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT) today, April 3, to reveal the first science results from the experiment, called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. You can watch the AMS science results live on FoxNews.com.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is an advanced cosmic-ray detector designed to seek out signs of antimatter and elusive dark matter from its perch on the backbone-like main truss of the International Space Station. More than 200 scientists representing 16 countries and 56 institutions are part of the science team, which is led by Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, a physicist at MIT.

"AMS is a state-of-the-art cosmic ray particle physics detector located on the exterior of the International Space Station," NASA officials said in an announcement Tuesday. [See photos of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer in space]

'It will not be a minor paper.'

- Nobel laureate Samuel Ting, a physicist at MIT

NASA and the AMS team have not revealed exactly what the first science results from AMS will be, but Ting has assured that it will be a significant announcement.

"It will not be a minor paper," Ting said on Feb. 17 during the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, adding that it would represent a "small step" toward understanding the true nature of dark matter, even if it is not the final answer.

The spectrometer consists of a huge, 3-foot wide magnet that bends the paths of cosmic particles and steers them into special detectors designed to measure particles' charge, energy and other properties. The complicated space experiment was 16 years in the making, but despite its lofty mission, the 7-ton AMS almost never flew.

In fact, NASA canceled the space shuttle mission originally slated to launch AMS to the space station in 2005. At the time, the space agency cited safety concerns following the 2003 space shuttle Columbia accident – an event that led directly to the space shuttle fleet's retirement in 2011.

But NASA's decision to cancel the AMS mission did not sit well with the science community. Scientists launched a persistent campaign to resurrect the AMS launch, including an intense lobbying effort to sway lawmakers in Congress to their side.

The fight back was a success. Congress approved funding for an extra space shuttle mission that would launch the AMS experiment to the space station. That mission, NASA's STS-134 flight aboard Endeavour, launched into space in May 2011.

"I never had any doubt when they were going to fly. I think it was three days after the inauguration of President Obama, we were on the manifest," Ting told SPACE.com in 2011, just before the experiment arrived at the station. "We didn't change the mission, we just continued."

During the fight to revive the AMS experiment, NASA and its International Space Station partners also approved a plan to extend the orbiting laboratory's operations in space through 2020. That decision prompted Ting and his science team to make a last-minute change to the AMS instrument. The team swapped out the spectrometer's original magnet, which would last only a few years, for a longer-lasting permanent magnet to allow for longer science observations.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer was first attached to the International Space Station on May 16, 2011. Three days later, the instrument was activated for the first time and has been performing science observations ever since. The instrument is managed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, which is home to the space station's Mission Control.

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