The Jalens

The best unofficial team in the NBA right now might be the Jalens. Named after Jalen Rose of the Michigan Fab Five (the First Jalen) and then 16 years in the NBA, the current crop was born in the years of his greatest popularity in the late 90s and early 2000s. This year's all-NBA team should have three: Jalen Brunson and Jaylen Brown, both 29, and Jalen Williams, 24. Jalen Duren and Jalen Johnson might qualify for awards this year as well, and there are about ten more after that.  OKC has two Jalen/Jaylin Williams.

Poor Orphan Boy

 Eve, on X: my dad's dad died recently and my mom just told me that now if they're (for example) deciding what kind of pizza to get he'll be like "well we have to get pepperoni..........because I'm an orphan.........."

It reminded me of this. 

 

How Funerals Keep Africa Poor

 David Oks writes from a statistical viewpoint on a lot of job automation and poor country topics. 

How Funerals Keep Africa Poor.  

And, finally, after all this, the big day comes. Your body is retrieved from the mortuary; hundreds of people show up, many of whom never knew you in life; and a great deal of money is spent feeding them, entertaining them, and sending you off in the style that an Akan elder deserves.

This all sounds, you’ll notice, very expensive. And it is.

A modest, mid-level funeral in Ghana costs about $5,000 U.S. dollars; a “befitting” one can easily cost $15,000 or $20,000. And all this in a country with a median income of about $1,500 per year.

Test Optional Admission Policies

 Test-Optional policies are a disadvantage to qualified applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. National Bureau of Economic Research

We find that test score optional policies harm the likelihood of elite college admission for high achieving applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds. We show that at one elite college campus, SAT (and ACT) scores predict first year college GPA equally well across income and other demographic groups; high school GPA and class rank offer little additional predictive power. Under test score optional policies, less advantaged applicants who are high achieving submit test scores at too low a rate, significantly reducing their admissions chances; such applicants increase their admissions probability by a factor of 3.6x (from 2.9 percent to 10.2 percent) when they report their scores. High achieving first-generation applicants raise admissions chances by 2.4x by reporting scores. Much more than commonly understood, elite institutions interpret test scores in the context of background, and availability of test scores on an application can promote rather than hinder social mobility. (Italics mine.)

Testing was my ticket into college. 

 

The Final Battle - Pahlevi Will Return

This is the current Revolution song in Iran.  Note that it refers to the Islamic Republic as a foreign occupier.

 

Who Counts as a Victim?

 Steve Stewart-Williams's post at Nature-Nurture-Nietzsche links to a paper by Jake Womick and colleagues about different definitions of victimhood between liberals and conservatives. 

 In general, liberals see vulnerability as group-based, dividing the moral world into groups of vulnerable victims and invulnerable oppressors. Conservatives downplay group-based differences, seeing vulnerability as more individual and evenly distributed. 

Womick thinks this division makes more sense than Jonathan Haidt's Moral Foundations and fits the experimental data better.  That is encouraging to me, as I very much liked Haidt's research at first despite some flaws I noted, and was disappointed when its predictive value was not holding up as well as expected. 

Point of Comparison

 

Speaking of Mexican and Tex-Mex

I wanted to choose one and just kept watching them.  I finally decided enough was enough and took the next one that isn't too long.

Part of Our Culture

I didn't know who Sabrina Carpenter is, but the recent incident brings up something just a touch puzzling. She heard something she didn't recognise as an Arabic call of celebration and thought it was yodeling.  She said she didn't like it.  The person was offended, saying "But it's part of my culture," and a lot of her fans were offended as well, and chastised her the next day. 

I don't think "It's part of my culture" is quite the blanket excuse that pop fans think, but I do think it is on balance better to be polite. It's better to be polite in the opposite direction, too, however. If I were to go to an Arabic musician's performance and kept interjecting "Hallelujah! ...Glory, glory!...Amen, sister!" throughout the concert I would not be surprised if people found it intrusive and took it amiss. I wouldn't expect the artist and the rest of the audience to understand. I don't applaud during Romanian Orthodox prayers. If I am doing something that I should know will makes others uncomfortable, I should at least have a better reason than "It's part of my culture."  There's an arrogance to that. 

It is similar to complaints about cultural appropriation, which I identified over a decade ago as more about snobbery than protecting another culture: I know more about Indonesian cuisine than you do. That style is more the province of liberals.  Conservatives have different "shoulds."

Donna B and Texan99 discuss Mexican vs Tex-Mex at the link, which was fun.

Beethoven

 We walked out to this at our wedding almost 50 years ago.

 

Not this version

Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism

David Foster, over at his substack Conformity, Cruelty, and Political Activism, which includes some early and mid-1900s political history.

Although most assume that an immoral person is one who is ready to defy law and convention to get what they want, I think the inverse is often true. Immorality is frequently motivated by a readiness to conform to law and convention in opposition to our own values. 

"Just Look At History"

This is a phrase that now puts me off entirely. It is the equivalent of "It's obvious that..." or "Only a fool would..."  When I hear it, I envision hand-waving, condescension, smirking, disdain, or that new thing on reels where guys are drinking from a mug and nodding thoughtfully.

The postmodernists are correct in noting that everyone has unexamined assumptions, especially those who claim to be the most scientific or most orthodox or most knowledgeable. Poking those balloons with a pin often reveals them as the least scientific, orthodox, or knowledgeable. I believe in science, orthodoxy, and knowledge, which is why I am extra suspicious of those who claim it without evidence. "Just look at history" is only a way of saying "I can't prove it but I want to skate by without being challenged by being intimidating."

BTW the postmodernists usually fail by exempting themselves from consideration of unchecked assumptions.  When challenged, they happily point to the unexamined assumptions that they have considered but cost them nothing.  It is similar to the chronological snobbery that irritated Barfield, or the chronocentrism which Lewis kept identifying. Yes, all ages have their biases - especially this one.

It can be used to "prove" why capitalism never works and why socialism never does; how Trump is a fascist or his opponents are; how women have it easy or women are oppressed. It is a social rather than logical or evidentiary argument, relying on cherry-picked data.  

So stop that.  Do I have to pull this car over? 

Links From 2014

 Sentimentality is a leading cause of poverty

Well-Behaved Women I got some pushback for this one.

Development    I should add that Lewis did not dislike Restoration Comedy.  He was making a different point.

Foreigners 

Inspiration...?  

The Magpie on the Gallows  Explanation of a painting by Bruegel. Quite a lot in it.

Changes in the Game

The NBA season is over, and the big controversies are teams tanking to get better draft odds, the 65-games-played rule for many awards, and the increased injuries. WRT the latter*, in the 1980s every year an average of six players who made the All-Star game played all 82 games.  These days there hasn't been one since 2019. The great increase in decelerating and side-to-side motions is blamed. Eurosteps, crossovers, step-backs, stop-and-pops, and many more put tremendous strain on ankles and calves.  Earlier basketball was more straight up and down the court. Fewer games in the season would help but is dead on arrival, because everyone wants the money. Reverting to the ref touching the ball after every made basket would slow the game down and reduce the number of possessions per game. It might help.

Victor Wembanyama has played fewer minutes per game than other top stars and has still been out with occasional injuries - and they bring him back very slowly.  He is very tall, very skinny, and is coordinated enough to make those reverses and spin moves that put stress on the legs, so he plays 30 minutes per game instead of 35. Yet he is going to get MVP votes this year, because he is simply is that good. This limiting of minutes is not going to be just an aberration for him.  My prediction is this becomes more common in the league.  The NBA put in the 65-game rule because when fans buy tickets, they want to see the stars play.  They don't want them being held out for "load management," even though they need it to just not be injured. Compare this to starting pitchers in baseball. No one pitches a complete game anymore, because the greater speed puts more stress on the arm, and whole teams try to wear pitchers out by drawing walks and making them throw more pitches.  Six innings is a good outing now.

There are a hundred proposals for modifying the draft to reduce or eliminate tanking.  Some are saying eliminate it altogether.  The best law firms and hospitals don't draft the top graduates every year.  Especially if you have a salary cap, teams can make their offers to the players they want.  If they have terrible coaches or cities that aren't fun, how is that different from some artists wanting to be in NYC while others want to live more quietly, or Elon Musk moving to Texas? There is an argument that the only shot the worst teams have at getting great players is he draft. But Washington and Sacramento have had top draft picks for years and are still terrible year-in, year-out. Other things are their real problems. No one wanted to play in Oklahoma City either, but Sam Presti is magical and gets players. Brad Stevens of the Celtics is another.

Some of the many proposals are quite odd, and I won't even get started on them.  Most of them seem to accomplish something that would improve the situation by reducing the incentive for tanking. All of them still offer some incentive for losing in some situations, and when that happens, teams will tank.Various lotteries dilute but do not eliminate the problem, and the best outcomes are usually for good teams who have their best player out for the year dropping to the bottom to get a prime draft pick.  The Indiana Pacers went to the finals last year but lost Tyrese Haliburton for this season and will have a top pick this draft.  The all-time example of this was the San Antonio Spurs already having David Robinson but getting Tim Duncan in the next draft because Robinson was out injured.  It was the beginning of their dynasty.

As for the awards, I can see points in both directions, but I lean to eliminating the 65-game rule. Some of the voters object because they want to be trusted to make a decision whether a guy playing 63 games was actually more valuable than one playing 70.  The league does not want to give up the hammer to make sure players aren't being rested "for no good reason."  As if "We want him healthy for the playoffs" isn't a good enough reason.

*Lattest? Latest?  Is that where the word latest comes from? Cool. OED has latest=last as archaic and poetic, and also mentions lattermost.  I should have use "last" in this context.

1 Corinthians 15:21

 

Wax Beans

I didn't know they are the same as butter beans. Butter beans sound wonderful, and duck.ai images look bright and appetising.  I am not fooled. These were one of the horrors of my childhood, worse even than their close relative the green bean. They were a school cafeteria staple, but I haven't seen them in years. Of course, I haven't looked for them either.  They might be in those cans I always walk past with a shudder. 

Maybe they're fine if they haven't been soaked in water and stored on a shelf for two months. Fresh vegetables are better...

But I am not going to find out.  They were called wax beans for good reason. 

P.F. Chang's

There used to be one in NH.  I always called it P K Chang's, and when I looked it up had minor trouble. It now comes frozen, and I still refer to it inaccurately, shaking my head why I can't remember it. I bought some this week for the first time, looking at the package and wondering while I cooked it. It occurred to me that I confuse it with C K Yang, the Olympic decathlete from Taiwan and UCLA. It's as good an explanation as any.

Instant Coffee

 The Creation of Instant Coffee at Works in Progress. I drink instant for the convenience and cheapness, but I admit I am intrigued by the idea of the new offerings. I may give them a try one of these days. 

When I was in Beius, Romania in 1998 I went one morning to the small grocery to find some instant coffee.  Unsurprisingly, I could not find it in the store, which had a bizarre array of products arranged in no discernible pattern.  I stood in line and asked at the counter for Cafea Pudra (powder)...Cafea Repede (instant, fast). Blank looks. I tried to mime spooning it and pouring over. I was holding up the line, half of which was impatient, the other half intrigued.  Someone in the back asked "Cafea Nes?" I turned back, excited. "Da! Da! Cafea Nes! Multumesc!" Relief and jollity prevailed. But they didn't have any.  Maybe tomorrow.

They say Cafea Instanta now. 

Not For Sale

 Daniel Piper is a Serious Literary Author, after all

Today a brand contacted me and asked if I would consider writing a sponsored diary entry. I was shocked and appalled. As a Serious Literary Author, I am against the concept of advertising. I told them in no uncertain terms that my writing is not for sale. 

Afterwards I felt so sullied by the exchange that I was compelled to wash my hands with Aesop Resurrection Aromatique Hand Wash, which, with its gently aromatic formulation containing oils of orange, rosemary and lavender, leaves the hands smooth, purified and refreshed without drying them out.