For some, doing well is not enough

Some of you may remember the college admissions scandal of a few years ago in which many famous actors and other well-to-people were caught finding ways to game the college admissions process so that their children could be admitted to the schools of their choice. One of those people was actor Felicity Huffman who paid an exam proctor $15,000 to correct some of the incorrect answers on her daughter’s SAT exam so that she would get a better score. I was struck by something she said recently as to why she did what she did.

Huffman, 60, ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud as well as honest services mail fraud. She spent 11 days in prison in October 2019 and completed 250 hours of community service after becoming the first of 34 parents to be sentenced in the scandal’s fallout.

Huffman on Thursday said: “I know hindsight is 20/20, but it felt like I would be a bad mother if I didn’t do it. So – I did it.”

Elaborating, she said: “I felt like I had to give my daughter a chance at a future. And so it was sort of like my daughter’s future, which meant I had to break the law.”

Huffman described enduring pangs of anxiety and regret as she drove an unwitting Sophia to the exam.

“She was going, ‘Can we get ice-cream afterwards? I’m scared about the test. What can we do that’s fun?’” Huffman recounted to KABC. “And I kept thinking, ‘Turn around, just turn around.’ To my undying shame, I didn’t.”

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Great moments in parenting

Nancy Wilson is described as an expert in ‘Christian parenting’ and in this clip she describes how she spanked her four-year old child so that she would learn to look happy when her mother came to pick her up from a play date.

Apart from the awful practice of spanking children, it is disturbing that she is forcing her children to express feelings of happiness at seeing her that they may not feel. She is training her children to lie to her, presumably to make the mother feel good and impress any observers present.

I read some comments to the clip that say that the clip is quite old and that the child is now an adult and supports the idea of spankings to achieve goals such as this.

Serious injuries in rugby

I have been railing about the serious dangers to participants in American football, especially with the rise in evidence of CTE, the long-term brain injury that results from repeated collisions that can cause concussions. It is thought that the repeated accumulation of concussions, even small ones during practices, is what leads to later serious cognitive decline in players. I feel the evidence is already compelling enough that I no longer watch games and also think that schools and colleges should no longer offer this as a sports option to their students. It is an activity that should be left for adults to choose to participate in, though they should be made aware of the risks.

Americans tend to view rugby as pretty much the same as American football, except without the protective helmets and body padding and hence think that it must be much more dangerous. I used to tell them that it was not so, that there were differences that made rugby safer. One is that there is evidence that the protective gear actually gives players a false sense of safety and encourages them to do dangerous things that they would not do without it. Another is that in rugby, it is only the player who has the ball that can be tackled, thus any given player faces far fewer collisions per game. A third is that any collision that results in contact with a player’s head results in an immediate yellow card that requires the offender to be off the field for ten minutes, to sit in a chair that is quaintly called a ‘sin bin’. If, during that time, an off-field review shows no mitigating factors, it is upgraded to a red card and the player cannot return to the game.
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Rugby World Cup final set

It will be played this coming Saturday in France between New Zealand and South Africa. The former beat Argentina quite easily in the first semi-final game but in the second England almost pulled off an upset over the highly favored South African team. In a forwards-dominated game played in rain with a slippery ball, there was a lot of kicking back and forth and England led throughout until almost the very end. With the score 15-6 in England’s favor, South Africa scored a goal ten minutes before the end to make it 15-13 and then made a difficult penalty conversion to edge England out 16-15.

You can see the highlights.

These two finalist have dominated the rugby World Cup, each of them winning three of the nine played to date, and winning all four of the most recent. I think it is good for the game when more teams win the big tournaments so while no one will think either of them unworthy of the title, it is kind of disappointing to me at least that other teams did not make the final.

One of the things that made me prefer rugby to American football is that there were so few stoppages of play. But I had not watched top-level rugby for decades before this tournament and noticed that stoppages had become much more frequent, slowing down the action. I can understand when players are injured and need tending but there seemed to be a large number of stoppages for drinks. There were also a large number of breaks for substitutions of players.

Another thing that I liked about rugby was that once the game started, it was the players who made all the tactical decisions on the field, not the coaches. But it appears that the ‘drinks breaks’ are used by coaches to send instructions to the players through the drinks carriers. In fact the referee at one point seemed to be admonishing the two teams to stop having so many drinks breaks, probably suspecting that they were being misused by the coaches.

Another thriller in rugby World Cup

Today (Sunday) saw two interesting quarter-final games. In the first England beat Fiji 30-24. It was a close game and Fiji had its chances but England were more disciplined while Fiji gave away away penalties at crucial moments and failed to convert two penalty goal attempts.

The other match between France and South Africa was a real thriller with South Africa edging out a 29-28 victory. France led 28-22 towards the end but South Africa took the lead with a goal and then their dogged defense held off a furious French attempt to get back the lead. This was another match that was worthy of a final.

One feels sorry for France. They have never won the World Cup since its inception, reaching the finals in 1987, 1999, and 2011 only to lose each time. This time they had a really good chance, especially since the tournament was being played in their home country.

The semi-final games will be Argentina v. New Zealand on Friday and South Africa v. England on Saturday. New Zealand and South Africa are favored to win. Each nation was won three times before, sharing equal honors in the last four World Cups.

Thriller in rugby world Cup

The quarter-final game between top-ranked Ireland and #4 New Zealand was an excellent game, closely fought and displaying a high standard of play by both teams. New Zealand won 28-24, defending a ferocious Ireland attack in the last five minutes. It was a game worthy of a final but due to the unfortunate seeding, these two teams met far too early in the tournament.

In the other semi-final game, Argentina beat Wales 29-17. Argentina had a good second half. Argentina has benefited from this draw that placed them in the weakest pool D where England was the only top eight team in it. Wales (#7) also had an easy path to the quarter-finals, having just Fiji (#8) and Australia (#9) as their most serious contenders. Argentina now meet New Zealand in the semi-finals, which is going to be very tough for them, and one does not expect a close game.

The other two quarter-finals on Sunday involve France (#3) v. South Africa (#3) and England (#6) v. Fiji (#8). The first match is another pairing of teams that should not meet this early. The winners of these two games will play each other in the semi-finals and that too may not be a close game.

Explanation for the puzzling World Cup rugby draw

The 2023 World Cup rugby tournament has entered the quarter-final knock out stage and one thing that had puzzled me all along was the draw that placed the 20 teams that started out into four groups (called ‘pools’), in which the five teams in each pool that would play every other team, with the top two going to the quarter-final stage. You would expect that the teams would be seeded so that the top eight teams would be split equally among the four groups in such a way that, in the absence of upsets, the top four would meet in the semi-finals and the top two would meet in the finals.

But when you looked at the pools, you see that pool A had France (#2) and New Zealand (#4), while pool B had Ireland (#1), South Africa (#3), and Scotland (#5), pool C had Wales (#6) and Fiji (#8) along with Australia (#9), while pool D had just England (#6). (These rankings were those just before the current tournament started and may have changed as a result of the matches already played.) As a result, Scotland did not qualify for the last eight, even though they are ranked #5, because their pool B also had the two of the top three teams of Ireland and South Africa. Even though England is ranked lower than Scotland at #6, they easily made it to the quarter-finals. Their toughest opponent is when they meet Fiji in the quarter-finals and the first time they have to play any team that is higher ranked than them, assuming they get by Fiji, is in the semi-finals.
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Fiji-Portugal thriller in rugby World Cup

The final pool game in the preliminary rounds of the 2023the World Cup was a thriller between the favorites Fiji and Portugal, the latter having never won a game at the World Cup. The lead kept switching constantly until during the very last moments, Portugal scored a try and converted from a difficult angle to give them a historic 24-23 victory.

You can see the highlights.

You would never guess from the scenes of wild jubilation among the Portuguese players and fans and the dejection of the Fijians that it was the latter team that advanced to the quarter finals while Portugal was eliminated. This was because as Fiji got a losing bonus point for the margin of defeat being seven points or less, their points score in their pool was tied for second with Australia but since Australia had lost to them in their earlier contest, the tie-breaker favored Fiji.

The four quarter-final games will be played next Saturday and Sunday with Fiji playing England on Sunday. England had the easiest pool opponents and has not really been tested so far, so this will be an interesting game. The other quarter-final games will be Wales v. Argentina and Ireland v. New Zealand on Saturday, and France v. South Africa on Sunday. Those last two matchups involve the four top teams in the tournament.

Running up the score

I am not a fan of American football but one nice tradition they have is that, at least at the college level, it is considered bad form to run up the score on your opponents once the game has been effectively decided. This is because there is no tangible benefit in college games to having a huge margin of victory. Rubbing the opponent’s noses in the dirt is frowned upon and even though it does happen, coaches who do that tend to be criticized. So once a win is assured, coaches tend to take out their top players and give the second and third string players some playing time and do not try as hard to score more.

However, in the World Rugby Cup being played in France, the rules do favor lopsided scores during the preliminary group stage. This is because when it comes to qualifying for the quarter-final knockout stage, only the top two teams from each of the four groups of five teams can make it, and hence you need some tie-breaker rules if two teams happen to have the same number of points based on wins and bonus points. And almost all those tie-breaker rules depend upon the number of points and tries scored by each side. So running up the score is a form of insurance in case you depend upon tie-breakers to see if you qualify for the second stage.

As a result, we have had some enormously lop-sided results, mostly at the expense of Namibia and Romania. Namibia lost 52-8 to Italy, 71-3 to New Zealand, and 96-0 to France. Romania lost 82-8 to Ireland and 76-0 to South Africa.

In general, I watch just the highlights after each game is over but I had no desire to see Namibia and Romania humiliated like this so I skipped those games. Close games are much more interesting.

Winning ugly in rugby

In rugby, there is a style of game that is attractive to watch and that is where a team advances by passing the ball back and forth among teammates while running, and even when there is a breakdown due to a dropped pass or a tackle, quickly launch a second or even third phase by getting the ball out to its fast running backs. This attacking style is fun to watch.

Then there is the slower defensive game where the burly forwards dominate and ground is gained slowly with the ball frequently obscured by the masses of players converged on it and piled on top of one another, with the referee then blowing the whistle for a penalty or to start a set piece scrum. This game is definitely not as exciting to watch but is often the option chosen when playing in rain and the ground is muddy that makes the ball and ground slippery and the fast passing game difficult to pull off. Some teams choose the dour defensive game as a strategy even when the weather conditions do not require it

Robert Kitson clearly prefers the fast game and he chides England for playing ‘robotic’ rugby against Japan in the current World Cup, when they scored all of their 27 points by penalties and drop goals, all kicked by their incredibly accurate fly half George Ford. Kitson says that Portugal (who lost to Wales) and Uruguay (who lost to France) and Fiji (who also lost to Wales) are playing better rugby even as they lost to higher ranked teams.

While fans of rugby who have no strong partisan allegiances will clearly prefer the fast, open style because it is so entertaining, those who are ardent supporters of their team will undoubtedly prefer an ugly win to a pretty loss.

My high school team in Sri Lanka consistently had one of the best school rugby teams in the country. For a few years they had a coach who carried the desire for fast, attacking play to the extreme. The players were forbidden from doing the standard defensive move of kicks to touch to relieve pressure even when they were deep in their own territory or even behind their own goal line. They always had to run and pass the ball. This gave their opponents chances to win ugly because since they knew that our team would not kick the ball to touch, they could anticipate better what our team would do and move their own defensive players into attacking positions.

So while my school team was the most fun to watch, and they won a lot because the coach was very talented in teaching them how to play this type of game and motivating them to do so, they were vulnerable to opponents who executed a careful game plan that could exploit the lack of defensive plays.