This goes to 11

I live in California and right now our state is on fire. I don't mean that in the Alicia Keys sense, either. California is literally on fire. Fire crews have been battling the nearly two dozen raging fires to the best of their abilities. They deserve a lot of credit for preserving property and keeping the bulk of the damage limited to things that will grow back sooner or later.
Still, there has been a firefighter killed in the northern part of the state and some property damage done. As good as these fire crews are doing, certainly they'd love to do even better. Part of the reason they are doing a good job this year, even amid California's tinder-dry brush, is improved resources from the air.
Cal Fire, the state's main wild land fire resource, has utilized a small fleet of DC-10 airliners, converted from commercial use to battle fires. It's made a big difference. But, like all things that go up to 10, maybe there are times when folks could use that little bit extra and turn it up to 11, as Spinal Tap suggested.
That 11 could come in the form of the Air Force C5. The Air Force is in the process of upgrading their fleet of C5 cargo planes. New and retrofitted planes will be able to carry more, fly farther and higher and generally do everything better than the current C5.
Also, there will almost certainly be some that are never retrofitted and are destined to end up in the desert bone yard somewhere. So why not adapt those for fire service? OK, I get that carrying a sloshy fluid like fire retardant or water makes flying a plane complicated – but the vacuum of space also made flying complicated and yet, the moon. So, you know, obstacles are beatable.
Without getting overly technical, the payload capacity of the C5 is about double the DC10. The aid ground crews get from a single DC10 pass would be double, in theory.
A higher volume of water would not only help douse flames better, they would help calm related fire conditions. Hot air rises, which pulls surrounding air into the area, which helps keep the fire stoked. Much of the water from a C5 would douse flames, but much of it would also cool the air, settle that rising air and calm fire-generated winds. In the use of retardant, a C5 could cover a much larger area and help contain the flames to a smaller perimeter. Rather than dozens of fire crews spread across 100 square miles, they could be spread across 40 or 50 square miles.
My politician friends will, of course, point out the cost of conversion and operation. Yep. There's also a cost to insurance companies for fire damage and to state and federal expenditures for fighting fires. Why not fight it as quickly and aggressively as possible and minimize the resources needed and risk to property and life?
Until then, we'll just have to hope crews on the ground keep doing a great job. Maybe one day soon they'll get a bit more help from above.

Blue Chip Season

After blue chip basketball recruit Jayson Tatum's recent announcement to sign with Duke, many recruiting experts anticipated this meant fellow blue chippers Dennis Smith and Harry Giles would join Tatum in Durham.
Giles and Smith can certainly do so, but it would be a mistake.
The path through Duke to NBA stardom does not pan out often. Bobby Hurley, Christian Laettner, JJ Reddick, Kyle Singler, Shane Battier and a handful of other all-time Duke (and ACC, for that matter) legends, have combined to average 62 points in their careers. But that's not the important point for Smith and Giles.
Duke, for as many players as it does send to mostly fruitless NBA careers, has done horrendously poorly in compiling NBA championships. Since Coach K has been at Duke, only three players have ever won NBA championships. North Carolina, as a comparison, just passed the 30 player mark this season when Harrison Barnes and James Michael McAdoo earned rings with the Warriors. But that's also not the point for Giles and Smith.
The real point for Giles and Smith to consider is what they want out of playing in college. Anything else anyone can name is all well and good, but I'd have to assume that each of these players has hopes of being drafted as high in the NBA draft as possible one day.
With that, the smarter bet for these two is to go somewhere besides Duke so they can more clearly stand out apart from Tatum and other top-level recruits who have signed with Duke already. Moreover, it might be smart for them to sign with North Carolina to not only have a chance to stand apart from other recruits, but have multiple opportunities to prove they are better than these other recruits. Playing with them at Duke makes that difficult.
Need an example: Jahlil Okafor was drafted in the top five this year. His teammates Justise Winslow and Tyus Jones slid down from their previous draft projections, thus costing them money. Having worked as a sports writer for 16 years and talking over and over to scout after scout, their number one question always is: Is Player B that good or is he being made to look good by Player A? Because of Okafor, Winslow and Jones weren't defended as rigorously as they could have been – which is helpful  for getting open shots. NBA scouts, evidently, thought Okafor was making life easier on his running mates and they weren't really as good as they seemed.
That's fine if the goal is to win in college. But is it?
There has been case after case of players playing at Cal or Oregon State, Creighton, Butler and so on, who have excelled despite being the central focus of a team's offense. They boosted their draft stock by not playing next to other top-level recruits.
So what of the case for North Carolina, then? Certainly UNC has no lack of top talent but they have something that Duke and Kentucky can't offer and that's opportunity.
Marcus Paige and Bryce Johnson are leaving after this season, not only opening up needed playing time for both Giles and Smith, but also voiding the "star" role on the team, which would allow the two to really showcase how good they are on their own while also having one other player to help take away some pressure.
What will further aid them at UNC, in the eyes of scouts, is Carolina's notoriously tough schedule. They play Duke, obviously, but almost always play teams like Kansas, Michigan State, Kentucky and other top-tier teams. It's easy for Giles and Smith, then, to not only show they are better than the top players at Duke but also better than every other player at every top program by giving them a chance to play them head to head.
So those are the facts staring these blue chip players in the face.
And it's not an argument to sway. The facts are simply facts. Risk losing money in the draft, get caught in whatever weird funk seems to haunt Duke players in the NBA and abandon hope of winning NBA championships, or make a smarter choice all the way around and choose a different school.

My Pipe Dream

I have a dream. My dream is not as meaningful or as impactful as that of Dr. Martin Luther King, but it's a dream nevertheless.
My dream is to awaken in America one day when there is a pipeline stretching from one end of this country to the other. No, mine isn't meant to tote oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Mine is to transport water from where it is overly plentiful to more arid areas.
Sure, this redistribution of water wealth might seem like a socialist ideal, but I think it's a plan that can make America better in the long run.
Consider the ways it could help us right at this very moment. There's a drought in California and many other western states. There there's also a bit of a water surplus in the Plains. Why not take the floods away from Texas and Oklahoma and deliver them to parched California? No more flood, no more drought. Ahh, if only there was an efficient way to deliver water from flood-proned places to traditionally arid regions.
We could build a pipeline. In the same way an oil pipeline can be built, a water pipeline can be built. But even better, a water pipeline could be built cheaply. With a short Internet search and some rudimentary math skills, I estimated we could build a 2-foot wide line stretching for 3,000 miles for just over $1B. Indeed, other lines going north and south and wherever else would drive that cost up to $2B or $5B, but consider how much it cost to clean up after Sandy, or this mess in Texas or Katrina. Surely insurance companies would be interested in investing in such a private-public project as this...to save on payouts to flood victims. Verily, how good would it be to help keep those flood victims from becoming victims in the first place?
And that's a financial benefit merely from loss avoidance. What about the economic boon on the other end?
I worked for a short period of time for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. One of the most productive regions in the state is the Imperial Valley, a desert area with no business being an agricultural powerhouse. But it is through irrigation. What if we duplicated that bounty in desert regions of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and more? Yields and quality would go up. Prices for consumers would drop and we could expand exports to other countries, even areas where poverty and hunger are extreme. The agricultural boon alone would pay for the pipeline in a matter of years. We could end the feuds between farmers, boaters and citizens. We wouldn't have to flush less or take shorter showers. Farmers wouldn't have to leave fields fallow and sportsmen could fish their hearts out.
And what of environmentalists? If my...nay, our...water pipeline were to leak, what then? Well, it's just water. It'll evaporate. Surely the wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico or the California coast would be no worse the wear if a massive water spill were to dump into the ocean. The ocean is, after all, just one giant water spill anyway.
Haven't the people who live near our great rivers had their fill of piling sandbags in front of their homes? Certainly helicopter pilots are burned out from plucking people from their roofs. News agencies, I know, are tired of running pictures of cracked, parched soil...because nobody can comprehend what a drought is otherwise.
We can solve this problem once and for all. Dr. King realized his dream! Well, I mean, we're still tweaking it a little. It's only been like 55, 60 years, so...
OK, so some dreams are hard. But this one is easy, relatively cheap and will make us better in the end.

Where will you be?

There's a commercial for a TV/Internet provider that envisions a future with exciting things happening, like man setting foot on Mars and so forth. The idea is that this service makes it possible to enjoy TV anywhere, the train station, the coffee shop, the airport...
First, a side note: there's a future where we're landing human beings on Mars but we're still taking the train to work? #LameFuture.
One of the variations revolves around where you will be the moment a woman plays in the Big Leagues for the first time. My simple answer is no where. I won't be anywhere watching it because it isn't going to happen.
Certainly women are fully capable of playing in the Big Leagues. My answer is drawn from the fact that things can't spontaneously happen because it's a good idea that fills our hearts with joy. Women won't play in the Big Leagues...ever, ever, ever...if they don't play baseball.
That's how men make it. They grow up playing baseball as kids, keep playing through high school and into the minors then to the Majors. At no point do men play baseball, play softball for a while then go back to baseball and make it to the Big Leagues.
The reason anyone does anything is because the opportunity exists and the proper development is undertaken. Neil Armstrong trained to be an astronaut. Michael Jordan developed his basketball talent. All talent has to be developed. Since girls aren't developed to play baseball, they'll never make it to the Big Leagues. So I'll be no where ever when a woman plays in the Big Leagues for the first time.
But such is the case with youth sports and the development thereof. I've been involved with sports, in some fashion, for nearly 40 years now. Youth sports, on a bigger level, have failed miserably to understand how to build themselves up.
Soccer has only recently changed its tactics. Previously, they sought out players who could afford high-level camps, clinics and developmental teams and poured their resources into the kids who could afford to pay for the privilege.
Many other sports used the same blueprint. Find "elite" competitors and coach the daylights out of them.
What sports like soccer found out was that their method was really good at filling the rosters of Saint Whoever High, creating an exclusionary structure that developed individual talent but left a competitiveness chasm.
What soccer realized is they needed to develop the players at Downtown High in order to create more competition among teams and, in turn, that competition would force the driven, passionate and dedicated to develop themselves.
Baseball has been slower on the uptake, but developing players who can't buy their opportunities has been a change in the last decade or so that is slowly paying off for baseball.
Unfortunately, we still have a very "isn't that so cute" approach to women's sports. Here, use this girls' ball, hit from the ladies' tee...oh, and here, wear a skirt.
The plan is simple...we kill the Batman. No wait. That's a different plan.
The plan is simple: put girls on the same playing field--in every meaning--and they will find their way to the same playing field as men when they grow into women. The girls that are driven with a passion for the game will find a way to compete with boys, in the same way the Downtown High soccer players compete against Saint Whoever.
Likewise, some boys, not wanting to be bested by a girl, will learn how to compete harder, which makes the sport better overall. Most importantly, because some girls will rise up and be better than some boys, boys and men everywhere will come to respect women differently that they do now...which for some men is not at all.  

Pete and Repeat

I saw recently that Pete Rose was going to be part of the MLB All Star festivities this year in Cincinnati. Just a day or two after that announcement, news came in about the Barry Bonds obstruction of justice conviction, which was overturned by a court of appeals.
These are two important details related to the baseball Hall of Fame.
Both Bonds and Rose, along with some others, have been denied access to the Hall of Fame in previous years and it's about time all of that changed.
Pete's situation is somewhat different than the others. There was a conviction and an admission of wrong-doing on his part. He paid a price and has been the butt of an endless array of "I'd bet you anything..." jokes.
For Rose, I think the point of "don't bet on baseball or else" has been made. In recent years, he's been involved with some minor league camps, some youth camps and there's been a general softening of attitudes throughout baseball about Pete Rose.
But don't let that detract from how all of this came about. Pete Rose has suffered through his own actions and by his own hand. But ours isn't a Mortal Combat society, where we see a beaten down, defeated figure on the brink of collapse and think, "finish him!"
Even the mob, after a bludgeoning with a bat or lead pipe, will toss a guy a towel and say "here, clean yourself up."
What should never be forgotten, however, is no matter what anyone can ever say to slight Pete Rose, nobody can ever deprive him of his Charlie Hustle nickname. All things considered, Pete Rose should be in the Hall for no other reason than being an example of how to play the game properly.
As for Bonds, the circumstances are different to me. The Hall issues for Bonds, as best I can tell, are based on conjecture. In other words, some people who can vote for Bonds don't based solely on what they think. They think he took steroids. They think he cheated. This isn't to say he did or didn't, it's simply to say there is no tangible evidence he did.
There's the ever-reliable ex-girlfriend testimony, which is really the most accurate picture anyone can paint of another. And then there's the...Um. The um. I could sit and pick apart the lack of evidence, but let this be a simpler way to decide: Journalist have a certain level of access to information. Federal prosecutors have a greater level of access, however. Prosecutors can subpoena information. Whatever evidence was available, you'd have to assume prosecutors knew about and had in their possession. They also had the full resources of the federal government behind them. Yet with all of that, they couldn't convict him on charges he had possession, use or other contact with steroids. There are no failed drug tests. There is no tangible proof, period. Therefore, a vote against Bonds for the Hall is based on belief, not proof.
But let's just agree that Bonds did steroids. OK, guilty. So answer this: When did he start taking them? You don't know. How much did they help him? You don't know. When he hit 73 home runs, how many would he have hit without steroids? You don't know. Are his pre-steroid use stats good enough for the Hall of Fame? You don't know. Are the people in the Hall 100-percent free of performance enhancing substances? You don't know.
So what is the no vote based on? You don't know.
But then there's the whole thing about the weight gain, the muscle mass and the increase in cap size...but enough about me. Yes, since I graduated from high school, I've gained about 80 pounds...some of which is pizza and donuts, let's be honest. But a great percentage of that is muscle mass. I gained 30 pounds in one fall weight training class in college. It's not easy, not even common, but it can happen-that people add a lot of bulk in a short period of time naturally.
The added muscle did nothing for my home run totals, by the way.
So what we're left with is a Hall of Fame without some of the best players that ever played based on some really flimsy reasoning, which turns the Hall of Fame into a joke. They should change the name to the Hall of Guys the Baseball Writers Really Like.
It's always nice when something that is supposed to be the pinnacle of professional success in baseball can be likened to a 13-year-old girl's OMG list of Totally Hot Guys.

Girl flower

I had an unusual experience with sports this weekend. I watched a lot of different things I don't normally watch. I checked out some rugby, a little soccer, even some softball. Something else I watched, a little bit by accident, was women's college lacrosse.
I tuned in thinking it was men's lacrosse, but it turned out to be a women's game. The equipment is different in the women's game, so it was pretty easy to note the difference. Male lacrosse players, for instance, don't wear skirts.
Skirts? Seriously?
Some other women's sports are like this, too. Women wear skirts in field hockey and tennis, among other things. Surely I'm not the only person who thinks this is stupid.
I mean, what year is it? Haven't we gotten past this ridiculousness?
It's bad enough that so many women's sports are "girled" up, with softball using a gigantic bat and super-sized ball, or women's basketball utilizing a smaller ball, as if to suggest women can't play the sport the same way men do.
Certainly some sports aren't that way. Swimmers swim in the same pool or sprinters run around the same track. But women haven't broken free from it completely.
There is a big push in this country for things like pay equality for women, along with other ways for women to be viewed the same as men. But that push has to start with women universally. They have to stop accepting this as OK. Nope, skirts are impractical. They serve no purpose in sports, so we won't wear them. We're not going to use different equipment or have our sport altered in other ways as to make it something women can actually do.
Women can run and jump and compete. Period. The size of the stupid ball shouldn't matter. Wearing a damn skirt should definitely not matter.
And here's why: It's OK to be one thing as a woman for one moment and then be something different. That's generally what men like about women, that they can adapt and change.
Take Ronda Rousey, for example. Most men I know think she's attractive...or hot or sexy or however you want to express it. She's pretty, she looks nice in a dress and she turns more than a few heads when she's looking her best.
Men I know that like her as a fighter like her without qualification. There is no "throws like a girl" with her. We appreciate the fact that she can flat out fight. Not for a girl, for a fighter. In fact, many MMA fans I know like women's fights more because women fight each other with greater intensity than men often do.
And when Ronda is fighting, I enjoy the fight. Whatever it is I enjoy about my favorite male fighters - they're strong, great grapplers, solid strikers, they're aggressive during the fight, they go all in and leave nothing back- that's what I like about Ronda, as well.
And she's intense, focused, fights with some animosity and her work ethic is clear. And that's what I want as a sports fan. I want to enjoy those things about other competitors, that they care, they have will and drive and that I can clearly see their effort.
I get that with Ronda Rousey. I get that with Sue Bird, with Abby Wambach, with Lindsey Vonn. They compete with a relentlessness that I can appreciate and the fact that they are women doesn't alter my perception of what I'm seeing.
Most importantly, while Ronda or any of the others are attractive when not competing, there's no need for them to try to be while they are.
I'm a man. If you're a woman and you want what I have, then you need to start treating yourself the way I do. I don't wear a skirt when I compete and I don't play a sissied-up version of the sports I love.
If you wear a skirt off the field, fine. If you wear one on it, you're allowing yourself to settle for your position in second place. And what kind of competitor would do that?  

Go to the NBA, not Duke

Just about every kid bouncing a basketball somewhere on this globe dreams of playing in the NBA. It's an empty dream for most. For the ones fortunate enough to play for a college powerhouse, their odds are better than most. Except if you play for Duke.
Certainly much has been made about Duke's legacy in college basketball, Coach K's milestones in wins and their Final Four heritage. That's all great news for Duke fans. But those kids dreaming out on the court, dribbling that ball, envisioning a bright future aren't dreaming of winning college basketball games. They're dreaming of the NBA. To those dreamers, I suggest going somewhere other than Duke.
Rather than listen to my own spite, I'll allow some basic facts to speak for themselves.
It's true, Duke wins a lot of basketball games, they win championships and Coach K has earned a great deal of esteem as a result. That's fantastic if your goals are only as far as college.
But look at the NBA and players who played for Coach K. Consider the following list of Duke greats, keeping in mind some of these players are top players in ACC history, if not national history: Christian Laettner, Bobby Hurley, JJ Reddick, Trajan Langdon, Danny Ferry, Shane Battier, Seth Curry, Mike Dunleavy, DeMarcus Nelson and Kyle Singler. Who could argue that these aren't some of the all-time greatest in Duke history? They all had long, successful careers under Coach K at Duke. But what happened after that? That greatness faded into a collective of mediocrity. That list of 10 Duke greats combined to average 62 points in the NBA...and that's with rounding up.
Oh, but there have been successful Duke players in the NBA. True. Compare that first list with this one: Carlos Boozer, Elton Brand, Luol Deng and Kyrie Irving. Those four have averaged 69 points in the NBA. What could be the difference? One difference is the people on the second list stayed at Duke for two years or fewer. The first list is made up of players who very often stayed three or more.
Draw what conclusions you might from that. But how about this list: Bill Cartwright, Bill Walton, Jason Kidd, Paul Pierce, Baron Davis, Trevor Ariza and Kawhi Leonard. All of those were the Player of the Year in California. So was Duke star DeMarcus Nelson. While the rest of the list is made up of NBA draftees who all went on to, at the very least, solid NBA careers, DeMarcus Nelson wasn't drafted. He didn't average a whole point in his short NBA career. He's also the only California POY to attend Duke going back for decades.
It's possible these things are coincidental, but it that's a pretty big pile of coincidences.
But don't let that diminish from Coach K. He's really great at getting kids to play Duke basketball, to win games for Duke and hang banners at Duke. And if that's your dream, to help Coach K win games for Duke, to help him add to his wins tally, to be appreciated by the people at Cameron for a few years, then go ahead and go to Duke. If your dream involves the NBA, you might want to think about going somewhere else. Examine the facts on your own and make up your mind. But doesn't it make you wonder why Coach K never took any of that NBA money? Because he loves Duke too much? Wouldn't you? Unless you were one of those guys on that first list, who helped Duke realize their dreams only to end up, at best, as a NBA journeymen.
It seems clear that the shorter you stay at Duke, the better your chances are to be a star in the NBA. Would you rather be Bobby Hurley and Christian Laettner or Jabari Parker and Kyrie Irving? Ask yourself what the difference is. If you don't stay at Duke very long, you're much more successful. So just think of how successful you'd be if you never went. Jason Kidd and Paul Pierce didn't. DeMarcus Nelson did. What do you suppose the difference was?