Connections

So, earlier today I hosted my first ever LiveChat, with a smashing turnout of one person...which was one person more than I expected. And that's fine, because it was mostly a test run to see how it works. But my discovery of CoverItLive LiveChat has caused me to wonder what else Michigan bloggers are missing as far as communications tools go.

This is especially important because the Michigan Republican Party needs to be shaken up a little bit. They're getting a little stale. Crusty. It's not pretty. There's a lot of energy among young conservatives in this state, but it doesn't seem like it has anywhere to go. That's where bloggers come in. We know technology. (Okay, other bloggers know technology. I'm just glad that other people know it so I don't have to.) And we have the energy to organize.

So...why don't we? Granted, we have jobs, some of us own businesses. I'm, horrifyingly, a grad student. Yet surely we can organize regular get-togethers, maybe invite speakers. Reporting and opining on the ether is definitely a good thing, but face-to-face interaction is where it all happens. The Michigan blogosphere could go on tour in the summer--have meetings in cities all over Michigan. Go from Benton Harbor to Grand Haven to Muskegon to Grand Rapids, Lansing, Brighton, Ann Arbor, Detroit...go around and meet the people who want to get involved, want to be connected, but don't know how.

Let's be thinking about this stuff, youse guys.

LiveChat, 12/20/2008

Suggested Topics: Auto Industry; The Future of Conservatism (Caps!)

Saturday Afternoon LiveChat (And New HaloScan Commenting)

Because I can.

I just figured out how to host a LiveChat on my blog, and in celebration I shall host a LiveChat tomorrow, Saturday, December 20, from 2-3 PM.

How it works: The LiveChat box will be on my latest blog post. Click on it, enter a username, and start chatting. As moderator, I will have the option to allow or disallow comments before they appear in the box. (Considering the small number of people who will likely participate, there is little chance of comments being disallowed, unless someone I do not know begins posting hateful or offensive speech. Host your own LiveChat if you're interested in that sort of thing.) Leave comments if you have ideas for discussion topics. Already on the agenda: the auto industry and the Michigan economy, the future of conservatism.

ALSO...this reminds me. Do not be alarmed by the new HaloScan commenting system. It's easier for me, easier for you, and nice-looking. Just do what it says, and no harm will come to you.

Great Headline Of The Day

Courtesy of the BBC: "Mice suspected in deadly cat fire."

After years of oppression of mice, sectarian violence between the two bitterly opposed species has finally escalated in Canada. Noted one stiff-upper-lip commenter--the spokesman for the Toronto Humane Society--"It's unfortunate and ironic that mice caused the fire that killed the cats." He also noted the shocking nature of the assault: "Unfortunately, the mice probably perished in the fire as well." A suicide mission!

The End For The UAW?

John Hinderaker of PowerLine Blog today writes about the "silver lining" in the possible auto industry collapse--namely, the United Auto Workers collapse.

Most conservatives I've talked to here in Michigan have the same struggle I do. None of us want to see thousands of people out of jobs, unable to support their families, and potentially having to move. On the other hand, there seems to be very little hope, economically, for the state of Michigan until the politically powerful unions lose influence. My friends here at the U seem to think the Big Three's problems are mostly due to poor business planning, and don't seem able to grasp that an enormous dead weight of extra benefits U.S. automakers have to pay might cause inefficient business models.

Unfortunately, no state government in Michigan can make these problems go away. (No national government can, either.) The companies must be allowed to restructure under bankruptcy and hopefully become actually profitable, or they must be allowed to fail. (And why don't we ever see start-up American car companies? Hmm....perhaps a lot of the regulatory and union overhead ought to be slashed.) It will hurt Michigan in the shorter run; but in the long run, this hard policy will be less painful than the alternative.

In the meantime, perhaps we can find private solutions for the people who are going to be out of jobs. Ideas?

Next Generation Conservatives

Jay Nordlinger's "Impromptus" (which he has been producing at a delightfully rapid pace this week so far) included (scroll down a bit) a letter today from "someone with a close knowledge of Harvard Law School." This paragraph in the letter struck me:

One thing that really bothers me is that the brightest students seem to really want to have a cause to pursue. The Left gives them many causes, but the Right offers little — very few alternatives. I guess conservatives generally just go to the business world (or big law firms, in the case of law-school graduates). Maybe this works out in the end, but it still feels like this generation of college students is being lost even more to the left-wingers than before.

There is a stereotype out there that has some small truth to it: Last generation's conservatives just wanted the government to leave them alone while they worked at their jobs and raised their families. This generation, as a whole--conservatives and liberals--want a sense of wider community. And rightly so. But I don't think modern conservatism--which, of all "political philosophies," ought to be the most about community--has done a good job of offering that. And conservatism, of all "political philosophies," is the least about ideology, the most about lifestyle and relationships.

We younger generation of conservatives need to find ways to be involved in our communities, find causes that are about people. We've all seen how many people the Left is willing to hurt in their crusade for abstractions--equality, liberty, fraternity, as it were. How is it that they are the ones who are seen as having a monopoly on compassion? It's time to stop blaming society for seeing liberals as the compassionate ones, and ask ourselves what we can do to change a perception that we know to be false.

Save Our Shows

The good ones, I mean! I've become concerned about society recently, for two reasons. And they're both from the same web page. A prominent video website recently placed CBS's The Big Bang Theory and NBC's Chuck on their list of best TV shows you aren't watching. I hope this doesn't mean you, gentle reader. For, although The Office and 30 Rock are finally truly funny again, although Scrubs is coming back (this time on ABC) for a half-season, and although Battlestar Galactica returns in January for the final half-season of its story arc, my two favorite TV shows right now are still these two. The ones about loveable geeks (and non-loveable geeks) spying and/or being really geeky. (I wonder why?) Instead, everyone seems to be watching the inane Heroes and, erm, Gossip Girl. (Yes. Really.)

Why are these my favorite shows? The same reason I love any show. They aren't very serious; the writing is fantastic. The actors were perfectly cast. Honestly, Sheldon Cooper and Penny on Big Bang Theory and Chuck Bartowski, John Casey (Adam Baldwin, of Firefly and Serenity fame), and Morgan Grimes are some of the best characters on TV right now. Sadly, Chuck and The Big Bang Theory run opposite each other on Monday; the former being an hour-long show starting at 8, and the latter a half-hour show starting at the same time. If you must only choose one, pick Chuck, which has better characters and production quality and boasts a more promising storyline; but full episodes of Chuck are available on www.nbc.com, whereas the episodes of The Big Bang Theory can only be found, ahem, subversively.

Yes, I hear what you're saying...good shows only ever get cancelled by FOX! (*sigh* Firefly, Arrested Development....tragedies...) But with Pushing Daisies and some others, there is now precedent for even non-FOX networks' cancelling shows with small but loyal followings. Give these shows a try!

WATCH! Chuck episodes, webisodes, and episode re-caps can be found here, for those wishing to catch up on the action; CBS's much poorer Big Bang website, sans full episodes, can be found here.

Okay, guys...

Hey-o. Back. I wish I didn't have to begin posts like this so often, but nobody told me: Grad school takes a lot of your time. Hm.

That said, I'm very nearly done with my first semester. (Oh, how the definition of "very nearly" has changed since I came!) And since it seems probable that I'll never have a semester as stressful as this one until I'm actually a student-teacher, I should have plenty more time for blogging. And that's a good thing, because your local newspapers are PROBABLY going to go bankrupt sometime soon. Mm.

Some bullets:

• Michigan's football team finished 3-9, but was not the worst team in the Big Ten. *Sigh*. That would still be Indiana. Scott Shafer then resigned as defensive coordinator, and we're most likely going to replace him with Jay Hopson, whose resume is seriously less impressive. Although "good resume" hasn't really flown with this football team so far...maybe it will work? REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY!
• Michigan's basketball team is 7-2 and sitting at #26 in the AP; Marquette's recent loss means that we should crack the Top 25 for the first time in forever--as long as we beat Oakland at The Palace on Saturday. I wish I'd bought tickets, except--oh yeah, I'd get to feel terrible because I should really finish my paper on Callimachus's Aetia. That will be Laval Lucas-Perry's debut as a Wolverine...watch! If you can!
  
• No, don't ask me what Callimachus's Aetia is. I want to think about it as little as possible.
• Our president had a shoe thrown at him by an Iraqi journalist; this is the highest insult possible in Iraqi culture. Irony: Which would have worse results, doing this to George Bush, or doing this to Moqtada al-Sadr? Hmmm....
• The cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe has, unfortunately, gotten worse. The Robert Mugabe epidemic has, unfortunately, remained stable.
• Chris Muir's Day By Day cartoon has now shown Sam wearing a "Room Temp" Che T-shirt several times; WHY IS THERE NO "ROOM TEMP" CHE T-SHIRT AVAILABLE FOR SALE YET?? (THAT I'M AWARE OF??) Of course, I couldn't buy one; that is an invitation for my roommate to dynamite my bedroom. And what was left of me, the rest of Ann Arbor's peaceable inhabitants would take care of.
  

BCS Thoughts

Some thoughts on the present BCS discontents.

ESPN wants a playoff. Brian at MgoBlog wants a playoff. Actually, it seems that most people want a playoff. Most people agree that almost anything would be better than what we have now. I will say this: There are good plans out there—notably Brian Cook’s plan—that are fairly good, because they take into account many of the things that any postseason scheme has to take into account.

I write this because of the plan RightMichigan.com’s “jdee” placed into the ether. I want to note a few errors there before plunging into my own discourse. “Undefeated Ball State, Utah, and Boise St would NOT have vied for a national title under the previous system either…” This isn’t true; BYU, for example, won the national title in 1984 by going undefeated and beating Bo Schembechler’s worst down-year Michigan team in the Holiday Bowl. “This year, most major teams will play 12 or 13 games, plus several will play an extra game for the conference championship.” I’m not aware of any team playing 13 regular-season games, apart from conference championships. The NCAA extended the regular season by a week, I believe, a few years ago, so that teams could play twelve games instead of eleven. “who really watches the Motor City Bowl anyway? So lets give some of the games some importance.....” Small-school programs like, say, Central Michigan, benefit greatly from these bowl games, in terms of money, fan-base loyalty, and recruiting. “Really, who ever complains about the team that didn't make the March Madness tournament?” Hmm. “Quarterfinals will be played as part of four minor bowls around Christmas time. Semifinals will be two major New Years Day bowl games and the Championship game a week or two later at another major bowl.” I will tell you how to make the bowl games meaningless; make them first stops for big schools on the way to games you actually want to play in. “Bowl games can rotate the way they do now in the BCS system.” Nope. There is a BCS Championship Game, and then the four “traditional” (ahem) BCS bowls: the Rose, Orange, Sugar, and Fiesta. No rotation.

There are something over 125 teams in Division IA football, and they each play, usually, 12 games. In the NFL, 32 teams play 16 games; the NBA, (I think) 32 teams play 82 games each—playoffs make sense in these two, not so much for college football. Even in NCAA basketball, around 350 teams play 30 or so games, excluding conference tournaments. A bit under 20% of teams go to the NCAA Tournament. College football can neither have conference tournaments nor send a fifth of its teams to a post-season playoff.

We need to realize there is no “solution” for college football postseason. Any conceivable plan will offend someone’s wishes. Putting a lot of emphasis on crowning a national champion will, like it or not, make a uniquely regional sport into even more of a national one. Incorporating human polls in a major way will anger anyone who wants it all to be decided on the field—which is, of course, impossible anyway. A small playoff will offend people who want to include small-conference undefeateds, and a large playoff will irreparably damage the bowl system that everyone loves.

I think, anyway, that people looking for a way to crown a “legitimate champion” (whatever that means in college football) might very well find themselves giving up much of what made college football unique. Part of what has been great about college football is its craziness—independent bowls, bowl tie-ins negotiated by conferences, entire stadiums basically dedicated to one massive game a year. Choosing national champions based on human polls. How much less would we have to talk about in college football if we started getting rid of those things?

I’ve said it before: we should go back to the old system. Yes, I know it will never happen. But that is the best “solution.” I’ll stick with that. Next time you demand a change be made to college football in the interest of choosing a national champion fairly, ask yourself, “Why?” I’ve never found a good answer to that.