An astonishing high school football scam

It is quite astonishing the kinds of scams that are successfully pulled off, even for a short time. Take this scam about an entirely fake faith-based high school named Bishop Sycamore that was created seemingly just to have a football team. That scam is now the subject of a new documentary titled BS High.

In August 2021, two high school football teams met in the Pro Football Hall of Fame stadium in Canton, Ohio, for a much-hyped matchup shown live on ESPN. When it quickly became a 58-0 blowout, suspicion descended most heavily on the losing side – an outfit called Bishop Sycamore purporting to be a faith-based school that actually turned out to be fake.
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The hazards of pickleball

The popularity of the game of pickleball has grown by leaps and bounds, especially among older people. This is because it has similarities with tennis and hold the appeal of athleticism outdoors but is easier to learn and play, with the courts being smaller so that it does not require as much running around and the serve is nowhere near as difficult to master.

But it seems to have its downsides and one that is that older players drawn to the game because of its ease of adoption may underestimate that there is some real physicality involved and as a result, there have been quite a number of injuries that have been attributed to the sport, with this report that “injuries related to pickleball could cost Americans between $250 million and $500 million in medical costs this year, mostly related to wrist and leg sprains and fractures.”

The comic strip Grand Avenue, where the main characters are a grandmother and her two grandchildren, has been running strips on this theme this week, such as this one August 8th.

One of the negatives of the game is that its creators chose a hard flat paddle and a hard plastic ball and the sound of the ball hitting the paddle is quite loud and irritating and can become annoying to people nearby.

(Free Range)

The need to balance fear with hope

When I need to learn how to do something around the house or with the computer, I will go to the internet and will frequently find a video on YouTube that gives instructions on what to do and those are usually helpful. But I only do this for things that are relatively minor. I can tell when I am getting out of my depth and need to call in a real expert.

But the easy availability of self-help videos can mislead us into thinking that that is sufficient even for major tasks and lead to tragic consequences, when people think that they can use that information for life-changing decisions. This is apparently what happened to three people who died in the wilderness of Colorado in their attempt to live off the grid.
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Cell phone data as investigative tool

The ubiquity of mobile phones has led to all manner of novel uses. The fact that each phone transmits data as to where it is enables others to use it to pinpoint their location at any time. This was one source of data that was used to identify a suspect in the notorious Gilgo murders, even though burner phones were used.

Investigators had gone backward through phone records collected from both midtown Manhattan and the Massapequa Park area – two areas where a “burner phone” used by the alleged killer were detected, according to court documents.

Authorities then narrowed records collected by cell towers to thousands, then down to hundreds, and finally down to a handful of people who could match a suspect.

From there, authorities worked to focus on people who lived in the area of the cell tower who also matched a physical description given by a witness who had seen the suspected killer.

In the narrowed pool, they searched for a connection to a green pickup a witness had seen the suspect driving, the sources said.

Investigators found Heuermann, who matched a witness’s physical description, lived close to the Long Island cell site and worked near the New York City cell sites where other calls were captured.

Kevin Drum describes another less dramatic use and links to a study that uses cell phone data to study weekly church attendance. It turns out that the number they find is far less that what surveys that ask people to self-report attendance get.

I guess that we should not be surprised that in a country where there is such a high level of public piety and where being religious is seen as being essential to being a moral person, people will fib about how faithfully they practice their faith.

Naval origins of some English expressions

I recently read the book The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann (2022) about an ill-fated secret expedition by the British navy that left England in 1740. It was part of their imperial war against Spain and it required the ships to reach the Pacific Ocean by going around Cape Horn at the tip of South America in search of a treasure-filled Spanish galleon. The expedition was a disaster, with the fleet experiencing the most atrocious weather with one ship The Wager being shipwrecked on a remote island off the coast of Patagonia.

Facing tremendous deprivation, what remained of the crew experienced a disintegration of command, followed by mutiny, deaths and cannibalism. Incredibly though, a small group managed to put together one small flimsy boat containing remnants of the original crew that had mutinied against the captain and managed to get to Brazil in 1742, while six months later an even smaller remnant led by the captain who had been left behind on the island reached the coast of Chile. The two separate returns to England by crew members that had long been presumed to be dead created a sensation and led to a court martial inquiry to try and determine what had happened.
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Against travel

A few years ago, when I told family and friends that I was going to retire, many of them assumed that I would spend a large portion of my time traveling. After I came to California, many of the people I have met here seem to enjoy traveling. While I do not dismiss the idea that they might be getting a lot out of it, I have done very little traveling since I retired since I do not enjoy it, especially if it involves airlines. I have done a lot of traveling in my life, either out of the desire to see family or for work. Seeing new places for its own sake has very little allure for me and now that I do not have to do it, I avoid doing so. I only travel if it means visiting family and friends, nowadays only going to see my grandchildren.

While I enjoy learning about other places and people and cultures, taking a short visit to those places does not satisfy that need. I would much rather read about them or see them on TV. The closest I get to nature is through David Attenborough documentaries and that suits me fine.

So I was interested to read this article by Agnes Collard who shares my antipathy to travel and makes the case against it.
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Charging by the mile for gas

In the US there is a tax on gasoline and the revenues from that are used to pay for road and bridge repairs and maintenance. But revenues from this tax have not been keeping pace with needs due to Congress not being willing to raise the tax to keep up with inflation coupled with more fuel efficient cars and electric cars on the road, resulting in less consumption of gas. While the latter is a good thing in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, it means that much-needed infrastructure repair is not being done.

One solution that is being proposed is to switch from a gas tax to a mileage tax where people would be charged by the number of miles driven rather that the amount of gas consumed. This requires placing of a tracking device on the car and pilot projects have begun in several states, Oregon being the leader.
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The myth of multitasking

(I came across this old post of mine from back in 2011 that I thought might be of interest to those who had not seen it.)

Since I work at a university and am around young adults all the time, I have long been aware that young people today are avid consumers of multimedia, who are adept at emailing, texting, listening to mp3 players, surfing the web, checking up on Facebook, etc. It seems like they are quite proficient at multitasking.

I have always been a poor multitasker. I cannot read or do any work that requires serious thinking if I can hear conversation or loud noises in the background. I have found that I cannot even listen to music in the background when reading. But I know people who seem to thrive on that kind of ambient sound and even deliberately go to coffee shops to do work such as grading papers or writing, things that would be impossible for me.
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How NOT to win friends and influence people

Yesterday morning when I opened up my email, I got this message from someone whose name I did not recognize.

Mano,

I thought you might enjoy:

Link #1

Link #2

Link #3,

Best,

(Name redacted by me)

That is not unusual. I get emails from time to time from people who think I may be interested in something. I did not click on the links (I am wary about links being used to propagate viruses) but the wording of URLs seemed to indicate that they had something to do with Shakespeare’s (or the Bard’s) sonnets, which seemed reasonable since the email arrived the day after I had two posts about the controversy over the Bard’s authorship.
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