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Two Videos of Me Jumping Lila

 Posted by on 18 May 2013 at 10:00 am  Personal, Sports
May 182013
 

First, from my 10 January 2013 lesson: Jumping an Oxer: The Ugly, The Bad, The Bad, The Bad, and The Good. The first time over was a complete disaster, then it was merely bad, bad, and bad. Finally, I got it right because I turned sooner: I wasn’t preoccupied with straightening her in the strides before the fence, so I was able to focus on getting a good canter from her. (Yes, that makes a world of difference!)

Second, from my 22 January 2013 lesson: Two Fences with a Tight Turn. These tight turns are difficult for Lila and me. If I don’t have her very collected yet still powerful in her stride, they’re a disaster. Here, we did okay.

Earlier this week, I had my first lesson since January 22nd… and it was so much fun! Alas, no video.


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Make More Progress

 Posted by on 9 May 2013 at 11:00 am  Advice, Productivity, Psycho-Epistemology, Psychology, Purpose, Sports
May 092013
 

(I wrote this for Philosophy in Action’s Newsletter back in September 2012, but it’s still relevant today… and I’m still using the same technique!)

Just this week, I had my third horseback riding lesson with my new three-day eventing trainer. Lila (my horse) and I have made remarkable progress in just these three lessons, and my trainer has definitely noticed that. Hooray!

The main reason for my progress is that I’ve been ruthlessly purposeful about my training. After each lesson, I’ve taken notes on the main problems and exercises that we covered. (It’s a bit hard to take notes while on horseback!) Then I deliberately work on some of those issues every time I ride. Lila and I aren’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we are making very speedy progress. That steady progress makes my riding and my lessons so much more enjoyable and satisfying. (Ideally, I’d like to find a way to video record my lessons, as that would be even better than notes.)

So if you’re spending your valuable time and money on learning any kind of skill — whether via dance class, dog training, or a sports clinic — make the most of it! Take good notes as soon as you can. Then practice the advice in those notes as often as you can. You’ll likely notice vastly better results in very short order.


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My Farrier at Work

 Posted by on 13 April 2013 at 1:00 pm  Animals, Cool, Personal, Sports
Apr 132013
 

Back in November, I snapped a few pictures of my super-awesome farrier, Chad Tuttle, at work shaping Lila’s shoes. By such “hot shoeing,” the farrier gets a better fit than he would otherwise.

I vastly prefer to allow a horse to go barefoot if possible. The horse’s hoof still needs to be trimmed by the farrier every eight weeks, but that’s a much faster and much cheaper process than shoeing. Plus, if the unshod horse kicks man or beast, that might hurt, but it’s not likely to do any serious damage. When the shod horse kicks man or beast, that’s likely to require medical attention.

However, sometimes the horses do require shoes to protect their feet, despite those downsides. Last summer, Lila’s soles were sore. The moment that we put on shoes, she became a vastly better horse — far more forward and free in her movements than she’d ever been. I put shoes on Elsie then too because she’d worn her feet down and gotten quite sore. We just pulled Elsie’s shoes off last week: her feet had grown out, the ground is reasonably soft now, and I’m not riding her much. Still, if she wears her feet down too much, she’ll be back in shoes when the farrier returns at the end of May!


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Lance Armstrong and the Problem of the Credible Liar

 Posted by on 11 April 2013 at 11:00 am  Ethics, Honesty, Moral Amplifiers, Sports
Apr 112013
 

Before Lance Armstrong confessed to doping, I blogged about the possibility of such a confession here: The Moral Implications of Lance Armstrong’s Possible Confession to Doping. In that post, I said:

I don’t fault Armstrong for doping, nor for lying about that to a quasi-governmental agency. However, if he sued people for millions for telling the truth about his doping… well, that’s remarkably sleazy. Even if he felt backed into a corner, that’s no excuse for abusing the law in order to intimidate people into silence.

However, after watching this video montage of his denials of doping, I couldn’t be so forgiving.

The basic problem is that he’s such a skilled and credible liar. That makes him worse than a bugling, incompetent liar. How so?

By the time that the skilled liar’s deceptions are finally exposed, he has zero credibility left. Given that he was so believable for so long, how can anyone trust him now? He might just be spinning a new web of lies. That seems like the most likely scenario, in fact. By lying effectively for so long, the skilled liar has utterly destroyed his character. He had to make a slew of ever-worse compromises in order to protect his lies from discovery, including maligning the good people who’ve discovered the truth about him. In Lance’s case, he sued people for defamation for telling the truth about him, which is even worse.

The abysmal liar is likely to get caught early. That’s to his benefit, in fact. He experiences the harms done by his lies early and often. His moral character has not been eroded over the course of years, so he’s more likely to be able to redeem himself.

Basically, skill in making yourself persuasive or believable to others is exactly the kind of moral amplifier that I’ll discuss at ATLOSCon in May. That skill helps a good person do better… and it helps a bad person do worse.


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Egoism Versus Money

 Posted by on 28 February 2013 at 10:00 am  Ethics, Money, Sports
Feb 282013
 

It’s a myth that rational egoism means pursuing money above all else. Other goals can and often should mean more to a person… even when millions are at stake.

For example, given what a great coach Belichick is and what a great organization the Patriots are, Tom Brady is wise to forego a few million for the opportunity at another SuperBowl win, I think:

Tom Brady took a huge step today to ensure he’ll retire a Patriot, agreeing to a three-year contract extension that will keep him under center for New England through the 2017 season, when he will be 40 years old.

For the second time in his illustrious career, Brady is doing something players in this day and age simply do not do: As he did in 2005, Brady, a league source told SI.com, is signing a contract with New England that will pay him significantly less money than the market will bear, in large part to help the Patriots stay competitive for the next five seasons.

Amazingly, according to the source, the deal is for an eye-poppingly conservative $27 million, which is less than half his worth by any measure.

That’s a man who knows what’s important to him… and it’s not sitting back in his final years of play to rake in a few more million. He wants to win! Go Tom!


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The Virtue of Blind Belief?

 Posted by on 13 February 2013 at 10:00 am  Epistemology, Religion, Sports
Feb 132013
 

I just ran across this passage in an otherwise merely annoying sports column on athletes and steroid use:

This past Christmas Eve, my son and daughter made Santa cookies, wrote him a letter, even left four carrots for his reindeer. As we were putting them to bed, I remember thinking, Man, I wish they could always stay like this. And by “this,” I really meant, I wish they could always just blindly believe in things being true despite mounting evidence against them.

Oy vey! The “blind belief” of faith is not a virtue — neither in adults not in children. It’s the rejection of reason’s requirements of empirical evidence and logical argument. To the extent that a person lives by faith rather than reason is the extent to which he imperils his life and his happiness. (For more on what’s wrong with faith — including why faith and reason cannot be reconciled — I strongly recommend George H. Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God.)

Interestingly, the sports writer indulges in fairly arbitrary doubts about athletes and steroid use in the rest of the column. Given that kind of irrationality, it’s hardly surprising that he longs to enjoy the comforts of the opposite kind of error.


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The Christian Conservative Echo Chamber

 Posted by on 7 February 2013 at 10:00 am  Christianity, Conservatism, Politics, Religion, Religious Right, Sports
Feb 072013
 

In his recent article, Why I’m Canceling my SI Subscription, Andrew Klavan is up in arms about the supposedly hostile leftism of culture — Sports Illustrated in particular. It begins:

I am going to let my subscription to Sports Illustrated lapse when it runs out this year. I hope lots of other people will do the same. Like too many other publications, the magazine has become dishonest, dishonorable and even occasionally despicable in its conformist, lockstep left-wing bias. Republican politicians and conservative positions are routinely insulted in articles having nothing to do with either. Yawn-inducing left wing predictability is brought to the discussion of every issue. No SI writer is allowed to disagree with leftism ever. Despite its great photographs and occasionally good athlete profiles, the magazine has remade itself into crap in the name of political conformity.

For me, the Super Bowl issue with its smarmy and poorly reported article on religion in football was the last straw. The article was not an offense to God, it was an offense to journalism. Mark Oppenheimer, a left wing anti-religion writer for the left wing New York Times, among other left wing venues, does the left wing hit job on football players of faith. …

Despite all that overblown rhetoric, he cites just one one example from the article. Here is the offending quote:

It’s clear that for a substantial number of athletes and coaches, there is no tension between being a Christian and being an aggressive athlete. On the contrary, many of them argue that football builds character and thereby makes a man more of a Christian — a commingling of faith and football now accepted by fans.

But is that a mistake? Just 50 years ago such coziness between public Christianity and football would have seemed absurd. Athletes were nobody’s idea of good ambassadors for religion; they were more likely to be seen as dissolute drinkers and womanizers — more the roguish Joe Namath than the devout Roger Staubach.The aggressive, violent play preached by coaches of an earlier generation was accepted as natural precisely because sport was pagan, not Christian. Christianity was peaceful, charitable and pious. Sport was bloody, ruthless, impious.

In the 1950s and 60s that antagonism began to soften…”

That’s it. Not only does that example not support Klavan’s hyperventiliating about left-wing bias, but it also equates public expressions of Christianity by private individuals with conservativism, such that any skepticism about that is nothing but left-wing bias. In fact, (1) most political leftists are Christians, and (2) many devout Christians are uncomfortable with the loud expressions of faith often heard from football players.

Are conservative Christians unaware of just how silly this makes them look to anyone outside their echo chamber?

Alas, I think not. Lord have mercy on us!


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Doug Williams: The First Black Quarterback in the Super Bowl

 Posted by on 6 February 2013 at 10:00 am  Culture, Racism, Sports
Feb 062013
 

On Super Bowl Sunday, I watched a short but excellent feature from Sunday NFL Countdown on Doug Williams, the first black quarterback in the Super Bowl. (ESPN has only posted the first minute, but a terrible recording of the whole thing can be found here.)

The segment was fascinating in so many ways, and I really admire Doug Williams for gracefully handling such intense pressure, particularly when injured. However, I was particularly interested in the segment from the perspective of cultural change. That Super Bowl happened just 25 years ago, in 1988. It was a big deal for the reason that’s stated at the outset of the segment:

There’s always been this idea that blacks lacked the intellectual decision-making capabilities of playing the quarterback position.

That view is just mind-bogglingly incomprehensible to me — and it’s really bizarre to think that such was only demolished by Doug Williams just 25 years ago. Sheesh, that was in my lifetime: I remember the hubbub about this Super Bowl when I was kid.

The simple fact is that, while racism and racial tensions are not wholly absent from America today, they are far, far less severe and less common than they used to be. Every American — whatever their skin color — is better off as a result.

That’s part of why I’m so glad to be living in the supposed “cesspool” of modern society. Racism is not merely one evil among many. It’s a particularly disgusting, destructive, and dishonest evil. As Ayn Rand said, “Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism.”

(As some of you might recall, I discussed a number of positive cultural barometers in answering this question about what’s good in American culture in a December 2012 episode of Philosophy in Action Radio. If you’ve not yet heard that episode, check it out!)

At the end of the Sunday NFL Countdown segment, Doug Williams offered a hopeful note on today’s NFL:

You don’t read about Seattle’s quarterback, you don’t read about the Washington Redskins quarterback, being black. They just happen to be their quarterback. I think that’s the way it should be, and hopefully that’s the way that it will be from here until eternity.

Hear, hear! And thank you, Doug Williams, for helping to make that possible!


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Best Football Clip of the Playoffs

 Posted by on 21 January 2013 at 2:00 pm  Football, Funny, Sports
Jan 212013
 

Yes, the playoffs featured some fabulous football. But… my favorite clip, by far, is this one of Jim Harbaugh’s overwrought (and yes, girly) reaction to a call by the referees to which he objected:

Heh. He should probably talk to a psychologist about his problem with repression!


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The Moral Implications of Lance Armstrong’s Possible Confession to Doping

 Posted by on 7 January 2013 at 10:00 am  Defamation, Drug War, Ethics, Law, Rights, Sports
Jan 072013
 

The New York Times reports that Lance Armstrong is considering confessing to doping in order to resume his athletic career:

Lance Armstrong, who this fall was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles for doping and barred for life from competing in all Olympic sports, has told associates and antidoping officials that he is considering publicly admitting that he used banned performance-enhancing drugs and blood transfusions during his cycling career, according to several people with direct knowledge of the situation. He would do this, the people said, because he wants to persuade antidoping officials to restore his eligibility so he can resume his athletic career.

As I explained in this Philosophy in Action Radio discussion of performance-enhancing drugs in sports, the government has no business banning performance-enhancing drugs. Moreover, the case for a ban in in private sports leagues is remarkably weak. That’s here:

Alas, the problem for Armstrong is that his years of vehement denials of using performance-enhancing drugs, if admitted to be false, would embroil him in major legal troubles. The concern is not merely unjust prosecution by the government. His contracts with sponsors depended on his not using performance-enhancing drugs, and as the the article explains, some sponsors are seeking to recoup millions. Moreover — and this is what I find so morally distasteful — he might have ill-gotten gains from libel lawsuits too:

Armstrong is also facing two other civil lawsuits, one that involves the Dallas-based insurance company SCA Promotions, which is trying to recoup at least $5 million it covered when Armstrong won multiple Tours.

The company withheld that $5 million bonus from Armstrong after he won the 2004 Tour because of doping accusations that surfaced in the book “L.A. Confidentiel: Les Secrets de Lance Armstrong,” which was published in France. Armstrong sued the company, and the case was settled for $7.5 million.

Armstrong is also being sued by the British newspaper The Sunday Times over the settlement of a libel case in which the newspaper paid Armstrong nearly $500,000.

I don’t fault Armstrong for doping, nor for lying about that to a quasi-governmental agency. However, if he sued people for millions for telling the truth about his doping… well, that’s remarkably sleazy. Even if he felt backed into a corner, that’s no excuse for abusing the law in order to intimidate people into silence.

When faced with such difficult circumstances, the moral person changes course: he admits what he did openly, he defends himself by explaining his reasons, and he advocates for changes in the law. He does not sacrifice others by violating their rights. To do that means sliding rapidly down a very dangerous and degrading slippery slope. That slippery slope doesn’t just destroy a person’s character, but also undermines any capacity of mine to admire his achievements.

I really, really, really hope that that’s not what we’re seeing from Lance Armstrong now.


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