Distractions

I was just zoning out reading crap I like to read online. Some of the crap makes me feel halfway intelligent about myself when I read it, so I thought I'd share some of that. Some of it is much less ... intelligent; I guess I'll share that too, full disclosure. Well, not FULL disclosure. Anyway ...

Anyway, the crap that I start reading when I'm really zoning out is ESPN game recaps and box scores. I was just looking at some of those just now. There's really not very much mathematical about it. There are certain numbers that spike interest for me--a player scores more than 30 points, or grabs more than 10 rebounds ... I scan the rebounds and assists columns and look for the crooked numbers or the double-digit numbers. I think I read over it the way some people read over stock listings. I would probably profit more from doing the latter. Maybe I should/could take that up. Anyway. (I said that.) There was a time when I analyzed each box score and tried to figure out from it why the winning team had won. By my analysis, the winning team either had to make a higher percentage of shots, or it had to simply take more shots. The latter would take place for one of two reasons visible in the box score: 1) better rebounding; or 2) less turnovers. So I would investigate these things on a team level. As for percentage of shots made, I would look at that too. I would look at the field goals made and field goals attempted, and then I would factor in free throws. These count as half as much so I would count them as half as much before folding them into the free-throw numbers. And then I would factor in three-pointers made ... I had a method for folding that into the analysis too. I considered 50% of field goals made a pretty efficient standard, but when I folded free throws in to the analysis, the benefits of getting fouled became apparent to me. Say a team shoots 16-of-20 from the free throw line, that would add an 8-for-10 to the team's shooting percentage I was calculating. Anyway, the whole exercise, it now seems, was an attempt to actually see for myself, or come to my own conclusions, about why winning teams won and losing teams lost, rather than trust the analyses of the sports writers. It was kind of an actual attempt to be a pundit or an expert. I never really ran with it, though. These days I don't look at all those numbers, except occasionally. I just skim looking for big numbers.

But like i said, that's only when I'm really zoned out. When I'm PRETTY zoned out, and this is often the case on Fridays (and was the case today), I read Bill Simmons. He writes about weekly, and it usually comes out on Fridays, and it combines some observations on pop culture with commentary on the latest sports story lines, to occasional good effect. He's kinda funny. But he appears on a website he started called Grantland. Grantland is hosted by espn.com--I'm not sure how independent Grantland is or if it's just a page on ESPN's website. But Simmons cooked the whole thing up and I like it a lot; I spend a lot of time on it. There are Simmons' columns, but there are a lot of other guys too. Chuck Klosterman was one of the main attractions when the site opened; he was originally to have been like a co-senior editor with Simmons, and he very well may be, but his participation has dropped off a cliff lately. A more regular crossover presence from mainstream nonsports journalism is Charlie Pierce, who writes the politics blog on Esquire. Pierce has some good articles. The hockey writer, Katie Baker @katiebakes has been linked by Ray Ratto enough times for me to catch on and check her out whenever she writes about the Sharks.

But the best guy, who I spent some time reading tonight, is Brian Phillips (@runofplay). God, he has a lot of heart in his writing, and a lot of sense! Today's featured @runofplay article, linked by Simmons in his weekly checkin, was an indictment of the "be-a-man" culture advocated by so many talking heads covering the NFL--condemning that reaction to Miami Dolphin Jonathan Martin's resignation, as it were. I didn't realize suicide was so epidemic in the NFL. But it doesn't surprise me that @runofplay would notice that. He writes about sadness a lot. He writes about textures of sadness; he writes about loneliness in odd places; he writes ...in a way that really speaks to me.

So he not only wrote that poignant and pithy piece about the culture of the NFL; he also wrote this enjoyable bit of fan frustration with his favorite team's least productive player. More sadness--here is a player, he says, that makes so many people sad! Unhappiness spreads around him like waves! I find that hysterical, just as I find this funny as well.

Then I spent probably another 5-10 minutes reading Andrew Sullivan. The volume of content on Sullivan's site is such that ... it is endless procrastination fodder. There are new essays by him every day. There are links to so many other works, so many movies, so many items about politics, about culture, about ... politics. I like Sullivan's take on the political scene today. There are a few other guys I like as well, but Sully, he's got a good head on his shoulders. I like that Sully, boy.

I'm getting increasingly tired and am wondering what the point of this post was if not to just waste more time. Well, I guess there was something in there about being intellectual. You know, during the time in my life when I was getting the least shit done, I took the most pride in being an intellectual. It's like, I may not be doing anything, but I do read fancy books. Which is to say, I get all the high-falutin' jokes. I'm a member of the privileged culture that knows all the vocabulary--vocabulary that many of my sutdents do not know.

In other words, it can be a self-justifying image, thinking of myself as smart or intellectual.

And ... I'm about out of mental energy. I love me my distractions, and at the same time I pray for the ability to cease indulging in them. I think I need to go another week without reading. That worked a few weeks ago---now the bad habit is coming back.

So ... the kind of high-falutin' thinking that is triggered by excellent, intelligent wirting ... reminded me of some other high-falutin' thought observations I had about myself today. About my history as a mathematician. As a young, young kid, I was GREAT at math--Really good at it. But the combined lack of enthusiasm of my teachers and my fellow students was enough to convince me, by the time I graduated high school, that math was a waste of time, something that didn't really concern me at all. And so, put back in the classroom and told to teach it, my context at first has been, "Let's get this over with."

Because I'm not only relatively new to math this go-around ... not only that, but also I was pretty well lured over to the dark side in so many ways. I was anti-authority. So many young people want to ... Okay I'm done tonight.