Comics and Education Converge!

Lynn Johnston may have just become my hero. She writes and draws the popular daily comic strip For Better or Worse about the various highlights and misadventures of the Patterson family. Like G.B. Trudeau Johnston has used her daily platform in hundreds of newspapers to raise awareness of various issues. She will writes comics about solemn and important topics like the death of a parent with grace and candor. Her willingness to raise these issues has long drawn attention, and her deft skill at dealing with them with sensitivity and insight have long earned her admiration well beyond the comic community. Recently she turned the gaze of her strip on the difficulties disabled children face in education. She even mentioned some of the technology they use to help them handel daily tasks. Hopefully this widespread exposure will help raise awareness of just how many challenges with which the disabled must contend. I always have believed that comics have a special power to get into our minds through their combined visual and lingual presence. When both the words and pictures team up to bounce around your head, it boosts the chances of your subconcious mind remembering and your concious mind being forced to digest it. In my current projects I am trying to do as much as I can to accomodate students with disabilities, but true change won't occur until more people realize just how much we take for granted. If you want to check out the strip go here.

NBA Team “Solar” Ratings 11/20/2005

Since we are officially one eighth of the way through the pro-basketball season, now seems like a sensible time to review my power rankings of the NBA. Given how my preseason ratings seem to have been good for predicting just about nothing to come out of the season so far, you’ll notice a lot of change between this and previous set of ratings Hey, what did you expect. I’m a rank amateur putting together criticism of highly complicated sports franchises, based on little more than box scores and my own limited television viewing. Still I shall endeavor to provide at least little glimpses of information and insight you can’t normally get from most other power rankings.

I. Sun-
Detroit Pistons- Many commentators have determined that it must be some positive influence of Flip Saunders that has the Pistons sizzling on offense. Don’t buy the hype the starting five have always played their hardest when they had something to prove.

II. Jupiter-
San Antonio Spurs- Right now they look like a team that’s trying to cruise to the playoffs on their talent and depth. Not to say it won’t work, but their lack of motivation has earned them a demotion on my list.

III. Earth-
Miami Heat – I thought Shaq’s injury would push them down to the Uranus tier. Give the credit for their survival to Wade and ‘Zo.

Indiana Pacers- They have a mix of great wins and horrible losses, but they’re looking very good for the long haul. I’ll take their wins over the Heat and the Nets over that puzzling loss to the Bucks.

Cleveland Cavaliers- When LBJ has his opponents asking to see his birth certificate like in little league, that to me is a good sign his arrival is on.

IV. Saturn-
Los Angeles Clippers- Their ownership was happy to have a losing team for so many years, that I wonder if the new winning Clips have the ownership saddened. Shades of The Producers.

Dallas Mavericks- Dirk and the boys may be threatening to take one of the top two tiers. Not just for being the only team with wins over both the Spurs and the Pistons, but also the only team who is in the top-five in both offensive and defensive efficiency.

Minnesota Timberwolves- Things on Kevin McHale’s to do list: 1) Buy Michael Olowakandi a nice present, something from Bath and Body 2) Reassure the fourth best player in the league that I am not stupid enough to trade him, so he’ll go back to giving 100% on the court.

V. Venus-
Denver Nuggets- I have been shifting through some plus/minus data and it does seem that one of the best things the Nuggets could do to improve their record is to bench K-Mart. Explaining why the evidence indicates this is a hard task, but my guess is that Martin hasn’t been playing defense. See Denver leads the association in defensive efficiency, but is in the bottom 10 in offensive efficiency, suggesting that a score-first power forward that has long been criticized for his lack of toughness may not be their biggest asset right now.

Washington Wizards- I don’t know how much dire the difference between your road and home games can be than when you go from scoring 130+ in regulation at the MCI center than bombing three on the road. Who can say “consistency”?

Milwaukee Bucks- My love for their hot start has been tempered by some shaky performances since. How do you never get the lead against the Kings? This is the NBA we’re talking about right?

VI. Mars-
Philadelphia 76ers- Want to know the secret of Philly’s resurgence after a horrible start? Ball control. Just look at how few turnovers they’ve given up over the last few games, pretty impressive.

Los Angeles Lakers- It’s been a shaking start so far, but I still believe. That and I’ll take any excuse to praise a man called Smush.

Golden State Warriors- This team is making up for its sub-par offense with some suffocating D. I’ve got my eye on whether a major hot streak or major injury comes first.

New Jersey Nets- Carter and Kidd haven’t been nearly as destructive a twosome as they were last April, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt for a few more weeks.

VII. Mercury-
Boston Celtics- I’ve watched them twice already and both games they looked great. Except in both games they got outgunned by a superior Eastern team, I don’t expect them to last long at this rate.

Chicago Bulls- They did catch fire late in the season last year, but this opening screams mediocre more than underachieving.

Memphis Grizzlies- You could argue they belong in a higher tier, but I can’t think of the team without the image of Shane Battier’s bleeding head rushing into my mind. I’m sorry but that just shakes my confidence in a team that plays in the same division as three of the most physical teams in the league.

VIII. Neptune-
Portland Trailblazers- I hear the people in Portland want some good news. It seems the new sheriff has brought in a new sense of discipline; the Blazers aren’t giving away as many cheap fouls.

Phoenix Suns- I don’t know what to say here except that everyone in Arizona should just hold out hope until Amare comes back. As much as I have criticized him in the past, it’s clear the offense just isn’t as stellar without him.

Orlando Magic- Their faith in their developing young talent is the only thing that has them up here instead of out on Pluto.

Seattle Sonics- For a team that caused a real stir last season largely off of their determination to go after the boards, it seems all those offensive rebounds they're giving up are really hurting them this season.

IX. Uranus-
New York Knicks- I’m calling shenanigans on their wins so far, they still are dead last in offensive efficiency. Steph says he wants to stop playing point. It seems to me he hasn’t been a table setter yet in his career, so why start now?

Utah Jazz- They never can get all their cylinders firing at once, between injuries and apathy. It makes me wonder if we’re witnessing the beginnings of “The Curse of the Mailman”.

Houston Rockets- You can blame their bad performance on Yao’s fouls or T-Mac’s back. I think it may have something to do with their terrible rebounding of late.

Sacramento Kings- How shocking is it that Brad Miller may be the best player at the center position in the Western conference so far? How troubling is it that even with that on their side the Kings still look dreadful?

X. Pluto-
Charlotte Bobcats- These ‘Cats are doing okay for the players they have. Being last in the league in effective field goal percentage is not a good sign though.

New Orleans Hornets- Two points: 1) I’m still calling them the “New Orleans Hornets” as a gesture of solidarity with the recovering city. 2) Despite the Oklahoma City home crowd and their enthusiastic support, this team is still a long way from the postseason.

Atlanta Hawks- So . . . Joe Johnson. He hardly seems worth a major infight between the team ownership at this point does he.

Toronto Raptors- With the chip Vinsanity left on their shoulder last season officially spent, this team is officially done.

A (Partial) Summation

As I reach a crossroads in my work developing a web site for a high school in my area, I find myself reflecting on my work up to this point as a means of guidance for the future. I would really like to see something strong and positive come out of this. Yet, more than a few complications have prevented the project from developing optimally. As such it seems that I will only have the means and time to create something of partial utility for the school and students. Still I feel even a limited success can have a strong impact. As I have tried to make clear I am a strong believer that a well designed web resource can be an incredible guide and portal to other information and resources. I know one tool that I wish to make available to students is a means of express their own thoughts and reflections on the program of which they can be proud. I think if I set up some type of blog that's held by the community it might give the students a chance to communicate with each other and the outside world in a way that can be comfortable and encouraging. Also, I hope that for all the joy I have taken in creating this blog, the students themselves may take some pride in seeing their work published on the web.

True Accessibility in Technology

We have all heard the warnings on the various TV news magazine programs about why you have to be careful on the Internet. Nothing is as it seems on thw World Wide Web, you can't trust anyone. If someone claims to be a Nigerian prince, or a potential hot date, or a government agency, odds are they are in in reality a con artist out to steal your vital information. We all know why this is an issue in the Internet. The Web is abstract it's "out there" in the ether where no one has to follow the physical rules of our universe. Which means any sleezy character can take on some new fictionalized identity and suddenly become someone new.

I raise this because it demonstrates the commonly held belief that, while the Internet exists parallel to our world, it doesn't actually conform to it. All the rules a different in cyberspace and we are all in some way liberate by this. It doesn't matter if we can't go to a store because the Internet can bring the store to us. If we aren't comfortable meeting people in person, the web allows us to meet them virtually. Once you give someone technology they are reborn out in the ether as a new entity with freedoms and powers they never had before. This all works well in theory, but I recently had my eyes opened to a very important flaw in the Internet's underlying thinking. It claims to create equal oppurtunity through equal access, but the truth is modern computer technology isn't equally accessible.

I recently met with someone working on bringing computer technology to disabled students. He demonstrated some of the difficulties those with handicaps face in using computers. For instance the keyboard I am typing this with relies on an assumption that I am not dyslexic. The screen I am using may be much harder to read if I were color blind. This is to say nothing of the assumption that I have control over my hands or any vision at all. These problems are so rarely recognized by all of us who are currently abled that many of the resosurces we have created to be accessible by computers don't even take it into account. These challenges can be true barriers for a disabled person to the treasure trove computers have opened, requiring additional work and cost to overcome. I raise this issue because I feel compelled to make some statement that it should not be their burden. If those of us who design and distribute computer tech did so with more consideration of making it truly accessible we could save many people a tremendous amount of hardship. Those of us who wish to use technology as a teaching tool could benefit from this as well, as it would allow us to guide our students to various resources with much more ease and confidence that the Internet would provide truly equal oppurtunities.

Comic Shop Musings 10/30/2005

Once again the amazing comic books filling the racks demand my attention and my blog. Being a kind hearted sould, I hear their pleas and champion their cause.

Before Infinite Crisis makes your head explode, (and in case you didn't know- yes, it is that big a deal) I have to take care of some old business. Naturally it will have to do with the other major crossover taking on in the comic world. I have to say I am really impressed with the recent developments from House of M. The latest news from Marvel is huge. Apparently everything since Avengers: Disassembled has been derived from a plot Joe Quesada (Marvel's Editor-in-Chief) and Brian Michael Bendis (Marvel's Writer-of-Everything) stewed up to reduce the number of mutants in the Marvel Universe. Some are taking this news very badly as they had liked the seeds planted by early creative teams on the X-Men titles. The standing storyline had been that the mutants were the next step of evolution, and with evolution being inevitable and all, that means that the whole Marvel universe was supposed to be strapping down for the end of the species homo-sapien as we know it. That's kind of clever in a high-falootin', Isaac-Asimov-y, science-fiction sort of way, but ultimately it's 1) unsustainable and 2) a little off putting. Marvel's ultimate appeal since the 1960's has been that it is a more realistic comic book universe than DC. Do you really think they can maintain interest in a set of titles that eliminate most of their characters and create a world that looks nothing like our own? More importantly, do we really what to spend the next few years watching the hypothetical extinction of our own species in the comics.

On the creative level, I like how Bendis and the rest of Marvel are playing this out. They seem to have really thought out all the logical places this twist would take the Marvel Universe. I also like the implications of fewer mutants and more antagonism between humans and mutants. It gets back to the heart and soul of what the X-men are all about, the feeling of persecution and minority status we all go through at some point. Though I like the results, my criticism of the House of M event as a whole still holds. I didn't need a whole lot of diddling around in an alternative reality to get to this point. I certainly didn't need to be teased with a possible ressurection of Hawkeye and some of the other shenanigans, you get away with you don't have to live with the consequences of your story. Still, I wish Marvel luck with the future.

Next, we have Infinite Crisis. You know what? I am not going to say very much about this. It seems to me that we have enough people talking about it. I am a little surprised that DC has decided to officially declare this a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths. I do think it will be a huge event with some major consequences and a story well worth reading. However I want to hear someone put out an over-under on how many major DC character's will actually die in this one. Whatever it is, watch the under. Comic companies have got a lot more protective of their characters since 1986, DC especially. Back during Crisis on Infinite Earths DC was pretty much playing with house money. They were going to be scrapping their entire universe, and they were desperately trying to cut into Marvel's popularity at the time. Today they are competing toe-to-toe with Marvel and already riding a big wave of revitalization. They don't need a renovation just a good story and some well timed promotion. Plus, the creative minds behind IC aren't going to make their mark by rehashing the original. I fullly expect them to bust out a few more surprises than just "let's kill some characters whose titles aren't selling.

This does make me think about some of the great crossover events I have seen in my time. So I decided to punch out my All-Time Top Five list of intracompany crossovers. I decided to leave aside the intercompany crossovers mostly because the have always been at least one step below their intracompany peers, see the painfully contrived Amalgam lineup. Though some, like "Spider-Man vs. Superman" and "Batman vs. The Hulk" are genuine classics. and others like "The Punisher Meets Archie" and that Spawn issue with Cerberus are way underrated. While I'm vaguely on the topic, what's with Witchblade making her first appearance in some Shi/Cyblade crossover. I still can't believe you can legally do that to collectors. If the Comic Code Authority wasn't policing this stuff, then what good where they?

Anyways . . .

All-Time Top Five Comic Crossovers (within a company)

5. Spider-Clone Saga- I know, I know. It was awful. It was horrendous. It set the character back for years. But hear me out, this story was special in my development as a comic book fan for three reasons. 1) I was personally addicted to Spider-Man at the time, and it showed me that there comes a time when you have to abandon a character on account of the story no matter what your loyalty to the character is. That allowed me to understand how to jump from title to title to take full advantage of the shifting nature of today's comic market. 2) I think the whole comic community was fascinated with this whether you were reading it or not. It was the classic example of a slow-train wreck comic. 3) It was the signal to me and the comic community in general that the heady 90's and their bloated events were over. Frome there the slow rebuilding of the Marvel Universe could begin.

4.DC One Million- Since DC has had about one crossover event every year of at least minor importance these sort of things have been negligible since COIE. Somewhere in the crowd lies this true gem. I loved the concept of introducing a whole new element to the DC universe, the far flung future scape of the 853rd century. This story let Grant Morrison do exactly what he does best, create a huge outlandish idea and then play around with it. It didn't do much to further the universe's storylines, but it did create a bucketful of new ideas for later creators to toy around with. That's more than so many other crossovers.

3. Secret Wars- Secret Wars proved that crossover events could work as a story telling device and a commercial success. Not only did this spawn some crazy sequels and the all-powerful cosmic entity who wore a jheri curl for no good reason, but it also started the sequence of events that led to Venom, Carnage, and pretty much every Spider-Man plotline from 1988 until 2001. Plus, have you ever actually read this series? It's pretty intense and a little crazed in it's own right. If you were reading this title as it came out, you would seriously worry if everyone would make it out alive.

2. Infinity Gauntlet- Again bonus points are awarded for sequels here, no matter how gimmicky. Second, this did have some pretty big ramifications. Third, the cosmic scope of the story and philosophical underpinnings were actually pretty interesting. Fourth, the moment between Captain America and Thanos is an all-time classic in comic book history. Fifth, I have to give credit to Marvel for letting Jim Starlin do what he does best. Sixth, I like numerical lists.

1. Crisis on Infinite Earths- The standard. 'Nuff said.

On one last note, I am pleased to let you know that I have found two other titles I would recommend for your reading enjoyment. Thankfully for all you non-traditional comic readers (read: non-fat white young single white males) and for my reputation as a hip comic fan, neither of them are super-hero titles.

Fell- This is yet another title by one of my favorite writers, Warren Ellis. It's a detective comic in the tradition of gritty crime-dramas like TV's Homocide or The Wire. Each story is an easy to read stand-alone story, with some supplemental material thrown in. This book is a breeze to pick up and enjoy. The hero Det. Richard Fell is a likeable and intriguing protagonist. Ellis has creating a truly fascinating setting the "feral city" of Snowtown. It's great stuff for people interest in some adult level mystery stories.

Sea of Red- Two words to excite just about anyone. Vampire. Pirates. That's a great concept on it's own, but this book, by Rick Remender and Kieron Dwyer, does some interesting things with it. It seems like each issue brings a truly unexpected twist. With the wild attitude of these creators and the fact that none of these are established franchise characters, I am certain this story will be a major thrill ride.

That's all for now, but I'm sure to have more to say soon. Until then watch this space for more on education and basketball.

An Ownership Society

I fear the repercussions of posting my personal information on this blog. Naturally I don't mean accidentally telling you all my cel phone number, or where I buried the bearer bonds. I just worry because I feel I work on some sensitive projects. While spewing my missives into the electronic abyss may help me think about these things, I still must guard against accidentally giving you details of a person or situation of which I have knowledge that those involved may wish to keep private. I have so far tried to be as veiled as possible in my writings while still allowing for those I am try to communicate with know of what I speak.
The question here is one of ownership. I have access to information about others, but I do not own the information. It's simply not mine to give away. Yet so many issues involving information technology revolves around these questions. Can anyone own information posted on the Web? If not, then how can someone feel safe in posting anything on the Internet that may be of value to them, but since its out here in the "free domain" or "market place of ideas", they can't control what happens to it? If someone can own information then how do you protect it? Or, perhaps to dray a sharper point, then why share it at all, given the well known risks of the Internet?
As I have said before information technology can model anything. We can use it to create whatever suits us, and then transform into something entirely different in the next second. Nothing is impossible out here amongst the ether. But then I am reminded of Roger Ebert's criticism, (here I am paraphrasing) "If nothing is impossible, then does anything matter?"
As an educator I think about these things and wonder if this impacts the utility of teaching with technology. I think of the profound transformative effect technology has on everything it touches, and I think how in the midst of this maelstrom we can only guess at what may or may not be of future value to students. So to some degree, educators simply have to find a way to get their students to find meaning in their educational experiences with technology.
Educators agree that students need to have something they can take away from a classroom for their education to have value. Normally that is mean figuratively, but all to often we don't consider the literal implications of such. The papers that hung on the refrigerator door, those trophies from field day, those art projects that all ended up looking like ash trays, those meant something to us as children. Yet a student who's education comes through the form of information and networks, what do they take home?
In our increasing focus on a technology centric education sometimes I have to ponder how you can add substance, real physical presence to what a student learns. On one hand they own their skills and experiences in the truest sense. No one can take away a student's memories and make them her own. The skills and knowledge can only be used by their rightful owner. Still I think we need more. I have recently seen the power of what happens when an educator gives a child something they can literally own as a product of their education in technology. I cannot go into details, but the effects are astounding.
Additionally, I will reveal that I come from a long line of educators. Once my mother gave me some advice. She said "When a student becomes the proprietor of their own knowledge and learning it changes everything about them. It changes how much they'll work for it, how much they want to retain it, and most of all how they improve their behavior because of it."

Getting into "The System"

If you’re anything like me (and who isn’t?) then when you read sports articles you want more than the standard recap. You read the sports page for intriguing stories or an analysis of the facts you can’t get anywhere else. I despise any sports writing that attempts to create an incredibly simplified view of the sport. I understand the idea of providing the public with information, but that’s the purpose of box scores in the corner. If a trained journalist sits down at his computer to share her thoughts with her readers, than I think we all expect more from her than two sentence blurbs on who’s hot and who’s not. (This is to say nothing of the fact that I’m sure every educated sports writer in the country would much rather share her thoughts at as great a length as possible. Well, at least Bill Simmons does.)

Now, I’m speaking of sports writing in general, but for anyone familiar with me or my writing, I am most certainly speaking of basketball. In this instance I am actually addressing the all too common practice of power ratings. In these columns some writer or combination of writers tries to create one very simplified list from top to bottom of where all the teams in the given league, i.e. NBA, rank. They write these pieces as if all the teams exist on some sort of imaginary ladder where each team is trying to climb their way over the others to the top. I know this strain of writing does not exist solely in the NBA columns of the world (heck, the college sports seem to support their whole pseudo-industry on just these concepts).These power rankings are fun, and often colorful, and occasionally they provide real insight into the NBA, but they just don’t describe the reality of the NBA. An NBA team’s goal from week to week isn’t to climb any ladder; it’s to win the next few games they have on their schedule. Sure, you can argue they want to climb the league standings, but those are real and tangible, and aren’t as simple as one top to bottom ranking. It’s a complicated set of relationships, involving conferences, rivalries, three way ties, and playoff seedings that aren’t settled until everyone has played all 82 games. You might want to argue that all teams want to be at the top of this imaginary ladder by the end of the season, but sports champions aren’t declared by winning over the opinion of a bunch of sports journalists (again, the noticeable exception being college football). If a team wants to reach the top of that metaphoric ladder, they know, it’s about winning in the playoffs, not overcoming one team, but just the sixteen games, against the four teams that really matter.

At this point I’m sure everyone has lost patience with my self-righteous ranting. Anyone who writes a piece like this can’t just criticize the standing idea, she has to create one of her own. Actually, she really should demonstrate how her idea can function, just to really prove her point. So I’m going to spend the remainder of this space describing my own idea for how to rate the teams in the NBA.

First, let me be clear I have no qualm with a tiered rating system, one that sorts the thirty NBA teams into several levels. All teams are not equal. Not in the off-season, not in the play-offs, at no point are all the teams close to equal. Any observer has to acknowledge the disparity between teams in terms of talent, financial backing, chances of success, and most importantly current competitive position. Where I draw the line is any system of power rankings that claims to divine the relative strength of the Atlanta Hawks over the New Orleans Hornets. There is no credible information which would justify ranking one 26th and one 29th in the league. Some teams do belong on a level all to themselves, but most exist in tightly knotted clusters of competition. Or, (and here’s where I begin to subtly introduce my metaphor) you could say that similar teams in habit the same basketball planet, where everyone is playing under the same conditions and measuring their success largely compared to each other.

Second, I think a strict enumeration of rankings does a disservice to the abilities of both the writer and the reader. When I see the latest power rankings I can tell that some of the decisions are based on judgments that are either too arbitrary of too temporary, all for the sake of creating a single file procession of teams. Have you ever noticed how Team X is ranked at number 7, because it’s a young club with strong financial banking, and media darling who’s living up to the hype? While at the same time Team Y is ranked at number 17 because even though it has a young club with strong financial banking and it’s best player is a media darling, he just hasn’t lived up to the hype. Both these teams are a three game loss or win streak respectively from taking the other’s position. Does that justify putting a third of the league between them on the ladder? Does it help you understand why one is so much better than the other right now? If two teams are essentially in the same situation, save for minor differences in their record doesn’t it help you more to see like teams grouped together. If you insist on separating wheat and chaff, then we can create tiers among these groups. Overall though, the team’s situation can be as important a factor in measuring them as their record. Or to put it in Wall Street terms, past performance is a poor indicator of future success.

Third, understanding what makes a good team a title contender and what makes another good team simply a play-off hopeful involves a lot more than just a straight up listing. Often it involves understanding something about the relationships between teams and the rest of the leagues. Last year the Miami Heat and the Phoenix Suns each had much improved seasons and became the top seeds in their respective conference. Yet the Heat were considered a legitimate title hopeful, while the Suns weren’t expected to survive the play-offs. It was because the Suns had to beat more good teams to win out of the Western Conference than the Heat had to in the East. These relationships make a lot of difference in understanding what separates elite teams from also-rans.

Simply put, I believe I have a ranking system that will incorporate more information than traditional power rankings and do so in a manner that expresses this information in simple to understand terms. The technique I employ may take some getting used to, and I’m not even certain yet the best way to present it. It will take us all a while to work the kinks out, and I’m sure to experiment here in the beginning. But without further ado, my idea: solar system rankings.

Rank the teams in tiered groups whose relationships and positions can be described by the nature of the solar system. With nine planets and the sun I have ten categories of teams in this unholy amalgamation of astronomy and basketball. The categories can be described in terms of a ladder, or in a more complicated method, in terms of the interactions described by the heavenly bodies themselves.

At this point I am certainly draining the patience of anyone still reading. So here are the categories tiered into ladder order. The order of the categories won’t change, but a team may change categories at any time for many reasons. So you can still understand this as a list from top to bottom (or here from Sun to Pluto) and just make your own judgments as to how teams rank within the categories.

I. The Sun- This should be pretty obvious. The Sun is the center around which all the other planets revolve. Its heat and gravity shape the very nature of the solar system. Quite simply it’s the biggest thing in the system. In the same way the team or teams in this tier are the center of the league. They have the power, and they are the one’s setting the trends and determining what kind of league its going to be. They are the presumptive champions until someone else fills this tier, because they, quite simply, are the biggest thing in the league.

II. Jupiter- Here’s where this rating system becomes difficult to follow. One of the things that makes my solar ratings different than normal power rankings is that I do not want the ordering of the tiers to be as simple as a top to bottom list. Accordingly the orders of the tiers do not come in the same order as the planets outward from the Sun. Ask any astronomer what the most important body in our star system is after the Sun, and none of them will say Mercury. Jupiter could almost be a star itself with just a little more mass and energy. So I think it’s only proper that we label the second best set of teams in the league after the largest planet. This way anytime you see a team in the Jupiter tier, understand it’s on the brink of jumping out to Sun status. I also like using Jupiter as the second tier, because its distance from the Sun lends itself to the concept of conference. Thus in the common case where the conferences each have their clear favorites, we can easily rank one as the Sun and one as Jupiter. This is the kind of relevant relationships and extra information I can describe in a solar system of ratings that you can’t get across in your usual power rankings.

III. Earth- You could argue that other planets are more important for some astrophysical, geological, or other reason. But we all know the Earth is an important planet, because that’s where the life is. So I use this tier for teams that seem to be the life of the NBA. These are the teams that are doing something exciting, making a major statement, or otherwise earning our respect. They may not be currently leading the pack or dominating the league, but there is something impressive about the way they play ball. Maybe it’s the numbers they put up. Maybe it’s a hot streak they’re riding. Someway, somehow these teams give us the sense that if they won the title, we shouldn’t be surprised in the least.

IV. Saturn- Just as Saturn is almost as impressive as Jupiter, and even has some features Jupiter doesn’t, these teams are almost as impressive as the top dawgs but not quite. You could almost say Saturn is a more interesting planet, but really you know that Jupiter is the bigger deal. This is the tier for the next-in-lines and the heir-apparents. If the teams in the Sun or Jupiter slots fall these are the teams waiting to rise up to replace them.

V. Venus- Just as the teams in the Saturn tier are the almost-Jupiters, the teams in the Venus tier are the almost-Earths. Venus has a lot of the same characteristics that Earth does. From a distance they might even seem to be about the same. Venus is way too hot to support the life of Earth though. Venus needs more stability and more time to become as habitable as Earth. These teams are good enough to go on a hot-streak or put on impressive displays like the Earth-tier teams. They just don’t have everything quite right yet. Maybe the team’s too young, or undisciplined, or just not as physically tough as they need to be to compete. They don’t have the influence of the teams in the Earth-tier, but every team in the league is watching out for the moment they come to life.

VI. Mars- Again these are teams that are approximate to the Earth-tier, but for different reasons. Where Venus was too hot, Mars is too cold. Where the teams in the Venus-tier could soon become an Earth-tier team, it appears that the Mars-tier teams are headed in the other direction. Mars may once have been like Earth, but that was in its past. Similarly, these teams may once have been the centers of life in the league, but now they are on the decline. They could be too injured, or too old, or just tired and other wise out of the running. These teams could climb back into one of the top tiers, maybe even make the playoffs, but odds are against it. From here on out we’re looking at the bottom half of the league.

VII. Mercury- Youth can be good. Energy can be good. Athleticism can be very good. But all of these things can be very dangerous too. Mercury is lucky in that it gets too bask in the sunlight so much. Except that it’s proximity to the sun is what makes it completely uninhabitable. The Mercury-tier teams are those teams that have potential, but their proximity to the powerhouses, means they aren’t likely to rise to the tops of the league. They have a lot of good qualities, but they have a lot to overcome before they can rise to the upper tiers.

VIII. Neptune- I don’t have much to say here. Neptune is one of the planets people tend to forget about. It’s somewhere in the back of the system and no one knows anything interesting about it. This is for all those teams that aren’t successful, but aren’t spectacularly bad. Neptune is not an especially interesting planet, and these are not especially compelling team.

IX. Uranus- Remember Uranus is the planet who rotates on an axis like a wheel instead of like a globe. That’s the key to this tier. These are those teams that are so bad they are interesting too watch. There’s just something fundamentally off about them. They could be successful, maybe even great, but something just isn’t working for these teams.

X. Pluto- These are the teams left out in the cold. They are so far out of the race for the title that they might as well be in a different league. These are the NBA franchises that seem to only barely meet the standards of the NBA, just as I’ve recently learned Pluto no longer counts as a planet.

Since I’ve rambled on for far too long already, I’ll just put out my Pre-Season Solar Rankings. Can we all agree that pre-season rankings tend to be mostly guesswork and supposition? So, you can’t really defend them, because they are all pretty subjective right? If we all agree on those terms, then I’ll just put forward my rankings without any explanation and we can live and let live.

I. Sun- San Antonio Spurs

II. Jupiter- Miami Heat

III. Earth- Phoenix Sun, Houston Rockets, Cleveland Cavaliers

IV. Saturn- Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers, Minnesota Timberwolves

V. Venus- Seattle Sonics, Denver Nuggets, Chicago Bulls

VI. Mars- Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings, New Jersey Nets

VII. Mercury- Memphis Grizzlies, Washington Wizards, Dallas Mavericks

VIII. Neptune- Portland Trailblazers, Philadelphia 76ers, Milwaukee Bucks

IX. Uranus- Toronto Raptors, Golden State Warriors, New York Knicks, Utah Jazz

X. Pluto- Carolina Bobcats, New Orleans Hornets, Atlanta Hawks, Los Angeles Clippers

Dewey, Teetchum & Howe

John Dewey did for education what Einstein did for science. If you do much research into the theories and frameworks of education you are bound to sooner or later run into John Dewey's work. He redefined the terms people used to think about education and likely set the tone for the next century of educational reform. recently I had to consider what his views might be on an ongoing project of mine. As I described earlier on this blog, I have been working on creating a website for a specialized program at an area highschool. I have been struggling to determine what educational value this website can add to their experience that they don't get out of the classroom. Thankfully I have the writings of John Dewey to consult. He describes the purpose of schooling as two fold. First, we want to provide the students with knowledge and training they can use in their life, obviously. Second, educators try to socialize students so they can be prepared to deal with the expectations and demands of society as a whole. I had the oppurtunity to view the students for whom this website is intended at their school. What I took away is that like most teenagers, they prefer not to be exposed to society as a whole, but rather to select a small group of their peers with whom they spend most of their time. Now I am not certain that there is anything we can do to end this practice in general. Within this website though, I believe I can do something to improve the socialization process. John Dewey says that school, shouldn't be more demanding on students than the outside world. I feel that these artificial social barriers created by students do add unneeded complications. Worse still the Internet is used all too often as a device to limit our exposure to the outside world to those things with which we already agree. So I am trying to think of ways that this website will break down the cliques and allow students to experience the full social experience their school experience should allow. Once again I will be sure to keep you updated on my progress and welcome any recommendations in the comment area.

How can a website be educational?

Before you read this blog entry you should know that I will be discussing an ongoing project of mine in education. So if you aren't interested in issues involved in education, don't fear I will soon be posting some more stuff about comic books and basketball soon (Infinite Crisis and the NBA preseason are upon us, I don't know which geeks me out more). Also it should be mentioned that for various reasons I can't go into great detail about the who's and where's of this project. For those of you in the know I'm sure you can fill in the blanks. For those of you not in the know, this may be a little frustrating to read. I'm sorry about that, but maybe you should wonder why I haven't let you in the know.

I recently began working with a high school in my area to help design and create a website. This is a fairly common place task these days. Many professionals find thmselves increasingly involved in some sort of web design project at their own place of work. I really am involved in this project instaed of your basic web consultant, because I come from a perspective of education which the high school appreciates. However, this project is a little more complicated than I had anticipated. First, I am not designing a website for a particular school, but rather for a specialized program within the school. Second, there a remultiple teachers at the high school involved in this project who, in theory, are directing my team in what to do. Except, they can't seem to agree amongst themselves about some of the major goals this website is meant to meet, or how it should go about using them. This was on the points that they did have a specific vision for, and not those for which they were expecting our team to sort of generate some kind of purpose Athena-like from our brows. Third, the website is meant to be for a huge audience, including parents and students who are interested in the program, those currently involved in the program, the alumni of the program, and the teachers themselves. All in all, I was a little unsure how we should go about this.

In spite of all of this I determined that I should indeed sally forth and explore this program with my own eyes. I have to say that the program (which combines classes in the social sciences and humanities under the auspices of a few teachers, and a lot of interesting ideas in how to teach the material) is actually quite impressive, and I would think something that could lend itself well to the flexibilty of the Internet. I was really intersted in learning what the students woul like out of this website. I thought that a generation of students raised under the influence of the Internet would surely be interested in the oppurtunity to include a website into their education. I was astonished by the actuall reaction of the students. I was honestly told by more than one student that creating such a website would be impossible.

They felt that the program was so special and so self-contained that it couldn't be transferred onto a website. They couldn't imagine what a website could provide them that they didn't have already. I understood that this program is set aside within the schools, to the extent that they percieved the whole program existing in a kind of pocket universe, that doesn't touch upon the rest of their world. I watched these students use other web resources with ease. I know they use the web as a major source of entertainment. I came to think that they might view the Internet, the same way I view comic books. I love reading comic books, and I can see many more uses for them than the average person would, but if you ever told me a comic book would be incorporated into a class I was taking I would still balk at the idea. So I realized the challenge for myself would be determining what I could bring to a web site that would give it special educational value for these students.

My first thought is that I should use the adabtibility of Internet to emphasize the lelements that the program provides, but that websites normally lack. In my past experience I have found that what the Net adds in convenience it tends to lose in context. Meanwhile the program is steeped in context, as the teachers try to link their lessons around common themes and materialsl. Sso the question become how to I create a context rich website? I will keep you posted on any ideas I may have, but I will also welcome suggestions, in the comment section.

A pronouncement, on the educational value of Wikipedia

Wikipedia does more than provide a new location for information. It provides a whole new way of thinking about, and processing information. I say this not on the basis of my bubbly optimism for internet resources, though my apparent glee in previous posts may suggest it. Rather this comes from my own observations of how individual's interactions with Wikipedia vary from those with other resources.

The other day I was observing a group of high-school age students preparing for a research paper in a library. They had access to an abundance of traditional print resources (I should compliment this library on their magnificent taste in resources. There were many great books to be found there.) as well as computer terminals to access the internet. The students did seek out many books and spent a lot of time doing the traditional sort of research (taking notes from a desk, cross-referencing, that sort of thing). So, I felt satisfied that their schools, must be teaching them something about the old ways to find out information. That reminded me of medieval scholars who had to work so hard for their knowledge and wisdom, that their learning was seen as all the more noble for having been hard won.

Then something interesting happened. One of the students asked me if I knew who Levi Strauss was. She had found his name among a list of topics she would like to research. I told her that Levi Strauss was the Levi of Levi's Jeans. She became really excited and set off to learn more about him. I became concerned that I might have made a mistake, that maybe Levi Strauss didn't have a thing to do with jeans. So I went to the reliable Encyclopedia Britanica. I didn't find anything under S for Strauss. I didn't find anything under L for "Levi's brand jeans", the entry on denim was not very helpful. After ten minutes I decied to consult Wikipedia. One simple search and there was all the information you could bear on ol' Levi and his company and a plethora of links to even more information. Then I noticed that while the students did use the books to answer deep questions, they were relying on resources like Wikipedia for all the basic questions. For them knowledge wasn't isolated and static, like it was for those medieval scholars working by candel light. They saw information as dynamic and instantaneous, just as Wikipedia presents it with information flowing on and off the pages.

I do think it is important to teach from books, and show students how to learn from books. One of my favorite facts about books is that if you want to get rid of the ideas they contain you have to burn them. Wikipedia, and any of the information it contains, can be deleted, gone forever, in an instant. That sort of resource may be handy, but it cannot replace traditional encyclopedia's. For a book says that the information contained therein is so important, someone chose to write it down, someplace safe, someplace permanent, so that we should never forget. Information should flow and change, but any knowledge you think is worth keeping should be written down on a physical piece of paper, as if to say, "here are my thoughts for all to see, and I stand by them". Knowledge than can be destroyed with a keystroke will never have the same meaning as that which has to be burnt.

Some Historical NBA Musings

How good is Tim Duncan?

The discussion on this topic seems to have centered on Timmy’s place among the historical greats. It is clear Duncan should rank high, but how high isn’t clear. As others have noted, using career totals for comparison isn’t fair to Duncan, since he hasn’t played long enough to compile the really big numbers. On the other hand, career averages tend to favor Duncan since he’s been consistently good since the start and hasn’t entered his decline phase yet. Additionally traditional stats tend to over value certain offensive skills, while hardly representing a player’s defensive value.

To address both these problems I decided to run a side by side comparison against the other great big men of recent NBA history. I used a variety of advanced stats and variety of comparison methods to try and get as complete a measure as I could of Tim’s rank among the all time best. For stats I did separate comparisons for Personal Win Percentage, PW%, (which I believe measures a players overall efficiency and balance of offensive and defensive skill), PER (a good measure for the impact and power a player has on offense, like measuring the payload of a bomb), Win Shares (a measure of how much a player carries his team), and Offensive Rating, ORtg, above and Defensive Rating, DRtg, below the league average(which helped me understand the source of the players value as well as their impact compared to the league in which they played). I then compared the players on these stats on a career average (fair in this case because many of these numbers don’t depend on a player contributing a lot, just doing it well) their top three years (to get some sense of their value at their peak), and the average of their five best consecutive seasons (to see how consistent they were at their prime). In all of these things I kept track of the year in which it occurred to get some sense of how each player developed over time as well as how contemporaries faired under the same conditions.

I could not compare Duncan to legends like Kareem, Wilt, and Russell, because too much of their careers happened before the advanced stats were available. Also, I don’t think Tim’s resume can seriously match some of their accomplishments, like 11 championships, 50 points per game in a season, or 6 MVP’s. For similar reasons I will not be comparing him against the very recent legends, MJ, Magic, Bird, because either you believe these guys were gods or you don’t and you can’t convince people one way or the other. Assessments of the great players like Baylor, Dr. J, and the Big O have the same problems mentioned above, plus their skills and styles were so different from the Big Fundamental’s. It’s an apples and oranges thing. Who’s better is very subjective and depends on what you value. Still even if you grant that all these players were better than Tim Duncan (not to say I do, but we’ll get to that later) there’s still an open spot in the All Time Top Ten, so the stakes are very high.

With all that said let’s do the run down of Tim Duncan, versus the great big men of the last twenty-five years. I envision this as an Enter the Dragon tournament, where we pit Duncan against tougher and tougher opponents until someone takes him down. So, in descending order of how well Tim faired against the opposition, they are…


Tim Duncan vs. Patrick Ewing

No, need to go into much detail here. Duncan’s level of play has been higher and done more for his team than Ewing ever had. Ewing had terrific defensive value at some points, but Duncan’s career average for DRtg below league has been better. There’s no question about who’s been a better offensive force. Duncan’s career average of 35.3 Win Shares is better than any season Ewing ever had. Also Duncan never had a PW% as low as Ewing’s career average. Test it anyway you want. This might as well have been a bye round for Duncan.


Tim Duncan vs. Moses Malone

Moses’ career represents the furthest back I was willing to go into pro-basketball history to start looking for comparable players to Duncan. His entire career can be measured by advanced statistics, and while he is remembered fondly, he hasn’t slipped into that category of unquestionable legends. Some people who remember his three MVP’s and a lot of long time Philly fans will think he was more valuable at his prime than Tim is now. The numbers tell a different story, though. Moses had a long career, playing many years after his peak, so his averages are obviously weighted down, by years of sub par performance. His peak seasons were great with a PER of 25.1, a PW% of .929, and his best defensive and second best offensive seasons. He was a little better in certain ways than TD, averaging 40.8 Win Shares in his top 5 seasons, rather than 39.0. I was even surprised to see that while that “Fo’ fo’ fo’” season of ’83 was terrific, his 1982 season was almost as good –noticeably better offense but significantly weaker defense. Still, he peak didn’t last as long as Duncan’s has, and his play and numbers fell off a steep cliff. He didn’t have one season of note after 1985. Duncan has played more consistent ball during his career so far than Moses did in his prime. While Moses had better pure offense at his peak, Duncan has had better overall value at his. The most important factor for me though, is that Tim’s value over the league at what he does best (defense) has always been higher than Moses’ value over the league at offense. So to all the Moses fans out there, your guy is still a legend, but next to Duncan it’s not even close.


Tim Duncan vs. Hakeem Olajuwan

This match-up has a lot of interesting aspects to it. Both were born outside North America. Both have played in “Twin Towers” style offenses, both won championships as the team leader. Both have tremendous defensive reps. On offense Duncan was the pure mechanic, playing like he was a diagram in a textbook, while Hakeem was all agility and grace. If this were a contest between nicknames The Dream would crush The Big Fundamental. Two interesting discoveries I made doing this comparison. First, Hakeem’s best years may not have been his back-to-back titles, but the years preceding it (if anything, this is a testament to how good the league of that day was). His best straight five-year run definitely includes his championships though. Second, The Dream played better defense than Duncan. Olajuwan had better peak years, a better five-year prime and would have had a better career average on D if I adjusted for the dwindling years he played at the end. Outside of that though, this contest is all Duncan. Not by a little either, but by a lot. In terms of PW%, PER, Win Shares, and offense, Duncan just had more to offer. Hakeem’s two titles and two-year domination of a very tough league put him high up in my book. Still in terms of an individual player’s value, Duncan takes the prize.


Tim Duncan vs. Karl Malone

At first, when I reviewed Karl’s stats, I thought that this would be a close competition. Then I took a closer look and realized that like most things dealing with the Mailman his value came from sustaining a very good level of play over a lengthy career. He certainly delivered (ugh) on offense. The PER and ORtg numbers from his prime that clearly prove he had more power and skill (and not just at the pick and role, either). His PW% and Drtg don’t match up to Duncan’s, but they are close and speak to his ability for consistently balanced and efficient play. Also, Malone shouldered a much heavier share of the load than Duncan has had to as reflected in the Win Shares. Karl’s lifetime average of 34.7 just misses Tim’s 35.3, and Malone’s average of 44 in his prime years easily outstrips Duncan’s contribution so far. However the accumulated accomplishments don’t tell the whole story. I want to know if Malone had, at any one point, more value than Duncan. I don’t think the numbers show that, but let’s go into it in more detail.

The big knock on Malone is he has no real prime. He played his best single seasons -as measured by most of the factors- in ’97 and ’98. So that’s a good two year speak, even if it comes unusually deep into his career. But for the next best season you have to go back to 1993, and next best after that was either ’89 or ’90. It seems odd that Malone’s career came in such odd spurts. I would not expect the skill curve of a player who has always had a rep for consistently high quality play, like Malone, to look like that. I thought I’d see evidence that his value rose during his early years, then hit a high level for a few years, and the drop a little, before hitting a plateau until the end of his career. Instead I see a number of instances where his value jumps then falls. Since the Mailman never had a “bad season” to drag his averages so far down from his peak, it seems clear that he wasn’t consistently great. He was very good most years, fantastic a few years, and kept it up long enough to have great career overall.

Looking for an explanation for this, I notice that his best years on defense and in Win Shares came in the late eighties, before the Jazz became a dominant force or the Stockton-Malone combo really gelled. It seems that Malone was happy to transfer some of that burden to his teammates over the years. Given the odd hops Malone made in his power and efficiency, I have to conjecture that he had to rely on his team to get those gaudy numbers. Duncan however has clearly been the team leader, and has spent his whole career doing the things Malone only did intermittently. I think the choice is clear. It looked close at first, but now I’m certain. Whether it’s for one year, five years, or nineteen, I’ll always take Duncan over Malone.


Tim Duncan vs. Charles Barkley

This is a tough contest, and some of my decision may be a little subjective. First of all, Barkley had more of his value come from offense than any other player I looked at. His record for offensive firepower isn’t that far ahead of Duncan’s. Barkley’s watered down career average PER, 24.6, is only a little behind Duncan’s, 25.3. Though Barkley’s best five-year average of 27.1 is as high as Duncan ever got in a peak year. Barkley’s peak years are all slightly better than Duncan’s in everything but defensive value. It’s interesting to note that some of Barkley’s best defensive seasons were also some of his best in terms of PW%, and both came in years, ’93 and ’97, when he came the closest to winning a title.

At this point in my analysis, Duncan’s defensive numbers and career consistency are apples, and Barkley’s narrow edge at the peak and offensive skills are oranges. I don’t want this to be decided on MVP’s and titles, so if Tim Duncan is going to win this there has to be a statistical justification. I found it in comparing the two power forwards’ prime runs. Barkley’s top years all seem to fall in his last stretch with the Sixers, when he took the team on his back and tried to push it through an Eastern conference crowded by Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, and Isaiah Thomas. Between, 1988-91, he clearly took on a huge amount of responsibility for his team as indicated, by his high number of Win Shares, and his offense exploded, shown by high PER’s and ORtg’s. However this is offset by the fact that he played better D and more efficiently later in his career. But of course Duncan had high value and all of these things for pretty much his whole career. Plus he had higher PW% throughout. Plus, his best years stretch from 2000 through now (essentially every season he played after his rookie year that wasn’t shortened by a lockout). And he’s had to carry a big load for his team since he started, 36 Win Shares in 1998. So it comes down to Barkley’s highly concentrated peak of four years, against Duncan’s marathon of greatness, measuring at least six years. I think the argument could be made that from ‘88-’91 Charles made the bigger contribution to his team, but in ’93 and ’97 he made the better contribution. With Duncan you don’t have that divide. He did what his team needed to win, he did it in heavy doses and he did it for a long time. Barkley may have had better individual value for a short time, but Duncan has propelled his team to more wins and been more responsible for them. To argue that the Round Mound of Rebound had a better peak is to ignore certain factors in the light of a better-rounded player. Duncan got more out of several great years than Barkley got out of a few fantastic years. This isn’t about peak versus career value. This is about one player with a longer and more productive peak than another.

If you really want to bicker about it, I’ll point you to Barkley’s own comments after the 2005 Finals. Duncan had just delivered another major season for his team, and once again did it being the exact opposite kind of player Sir Charles was. So in numerous interviews Barkley was asked wear he’d rank Duncan amongst the all time greats. He said that Duncan was the best power forward of all time, better than him and many others on this list. Say what you want about Sir Charles, but he has always displayed lots of ego and lots of honesty. If his ego bowed to his honesty, then that’s good enough for me. Duncan survives for another round.


Tim Duncan vs. Kevin Garnett

This is pretty much an argument of “will be better” versus “has been better”. I’ll go into it in more detail here, but I should be clear up front. I will always take the player who did deliver over the player who could have, or might still.

First though, I’m going to get on my soapbox for a moment. I trust we’ve all noticed that these two are clear rivals in terms of talent. Between them they won three straight MVP’s and have been in three straight Western Conference Finals. Presently the battle between them to rule the league couldn’t be closer, but the differences between the beginnings of their career couldn’t be broader. One fact I don’t think has been mentioned enough is that they are the same age. Much has been made of the fact that Kevin Garnett entered the NBA straight out of high school, which eventually made the way for a flood of prep level talent. Duncan conversely attended Wake Forest, had a terrific college career, and entered the league full of promise. KG didn’t exactly struggle in his first few years, but it was clear he had not yet become a great player. TD had an instant impact, and though he had much better teammates, he was still the best player on a championship team. While lately Garnett has come up to have just as much value as, if not more than, Duncan, Kevin still had to spend a lot of his basketball life to get to that level. I feel like this perfectly summarizes the argument for how high school players have weakened the NBA.

With that out of the way, we can talk about the numbers. It’s much what you would expect. Duncan has had better averages and better stretches, but KG’s peak has been better at everything except DRtg than Dunc. What’s more all of The Big Ticket’s top numbers have come in the last one or two seasons. It seems very likely that Garnett will have more value than Duncan in the next few coming seasons. But that hasn’t happened yet, and you never can be sure that a player won’t just hit some kind of mid-career collapse. So, like I said at the top, I’ll favor value already earned over value potential. But Tim should consider himself warned, that these ratings could change significantly over the next five years.


Tim Duncan vs. David Robinson

I was surprised when looking over all of the players we talk about here to discover that Duncan’s toughest opponent was one of his own teammates. In fact is you look over the numbers I did in the ranges I defined them it looks like The Admiral might have been the best player of all. His PW% and DRtg are way better than Duncan’s. Plus his Win Shares, PER, and ORtg are all excellent as well, indicating that he played incredibly balanced, efficient and powerful basketball. While that may be true, the apparent numerical evidence of Robinson’s dominance just doesn’t pass the laugh test. We know that Robinson was hardly the best player in the NBA at any point in his career. He won his championship at the end of his career, when everyone thought he wasn’t even the best player on his team.

So how does he put up such great numbers? Do those numbers prove greatness? As far as the latter question goes I think they certainly indicate greatness. I rank Robinson higher among the all time greats than others seem to. However, I hardly think he’s in that upper echelon. My reasons for making that distinction also answer the first question.

There was a reason I looked at primes and peaks as well as career values, as well as the years they occurred. It was so that I could keep track of when and how a player lifted his average. I don’t believe that a player who has great at many things each at a different time should be put on the same level as someone who was great all at once, even though their careers may look similar in a broad view. I applied this thought to Robinson’s careers. It’s clear that his best PER and ORtg’s occurred in years that also were his best in terms of Win Shares. This does show that he had the ability to take over a team and still have a major impact. However his best years of PW%, indicative of team success, came at the years he shared with Duncan. Those years also contain his DRtg prime. So it becomes apparent that although Robinson could carry a heavy offensive load and be efficient, but not effective.

In my consideration, Duncan made Robinson better, because he took over the offense and allowed The Admiral to focus on his defense and become a more balanced and overall more effective player. Robinson’s individual value deserves recognition, but his contribution has to be judged in light of what his contribution accomplished. Duncan’s contribution went to more team success and lifted the play of his teammates, including Robinson. I think the situation with Duncan and Robinson is analogous to Magic and Kareem’s relationship. Both Robinson and Kareem had more individual value, but Duncan and Magic elevated their game and took over the burden of leading the team, which allowed their legendary teammates to have a more effective contribution. I say the Duncans and Magics are the better players. While the Kareems and Robinsons had gaudy numbers, that came overtime and accomplished little, their peers did something they never could and accomplished much.


Tim Duncan vs. Shaquille O’Neil

Now we reach an opponent Duncan cannot best. While Duncan has bested Shaq on the floor and is currently the better and more dominant player, he still hasn’t earned as much value as the Big Aristotle in the “all-time” arguments. Duncan’s on pace to supplant Shaq in overall value, but he’ll never touch Shaq’s offensive feats. True, Shaq hasn’t been as efficient or as balanced as Duncan, he’s shouldered a much bigger burden for his teams. What’s especially impressive about Shaq is how long he’s been able to sustain a high value. Looking across the different measurements, there hasn’t been a year he hasn’t either had a peak year or been in one of his prime stretches. To me this speaks of a career with as much value as Duncan has had so far, over a longer period of time. So I’ll give the edge Shaq for now, though he better watch out because even if Duncan’s doesn’t over take him Kevin Garnett might.


To Summarize:

Rating the top big men of the last twenty-five years, I put them in this order-
1. Shaq
2. Duncan
3. Hakeem
4. Robinson
5. Moses
6. Karl
7. Barkley
8. Garnett
9. Ewing

If you want to know, why this order is different than the order I listed them above, it’s because the order above was purely for show. I listed them in order of how they compared to Duncan based on my method. Here they are ordered compared to each other and incorporating things like their contribution to championship teams (which seriously helps Hakeem and Moses, but hurts Karl Malone). These ratings more accurately mirror where I would place them on an all-time list of all players. Speaking of which …

Rating the All-Time Greatest Players (noting that these are a work in progress for me)-
1. Jordan
2. Russell
3. Wilt
4. Magic
5. Kareem
6. Bird
7. Shaq
8. Oscar
9. Duncan
10. Cousy
11. Mikan
12. Baylor
13. Dr. J
14-20. Hakeem, Robinson, Moses
21-25. Karl, Barkley
40-50. Garnett, Ewing

I can’t fully demonstrate these ratings mostly for the reasons I mentioned above (insufficient info, subjective judgments about the value of different positions, and playing styles), and partly because I’m not certain about these ratings yet. I will say that I favor substance over style, which is the main reason Duncan and Mikan are rated above Elgin and Erving. Both those forwards had amazing accomplishments and an historical impact on the game they played, so I rank them both very high. Still that doesn’t overcome the equally great accomplishments and proven success of Duncan.

When I tried to think of a good way to summarize the career of Tim Duncan, I became captivated with a particular analogy. I believe Tim Duncan is the Derek Jeter of basketball. His individual value doesn’t look great in comparison to historic greats, and he played after expansion in a less talented era. His team success could largely be attributed to the incredible organization he had backing him, and the richness of support he had beside teammates. With all that said he still stood out among the rest and won at the highest levels. Most of his value comes through things that are hard to measure, like leadership, consistency, and various intangibles. His legacy won’t be made up of great images or a media friendly personality, but it will be of championships and greatness.

A Passing Summer Fancy.

I could win hundeds of dollars in bar bets, with this one. I bet you can't guess my favorite genre of music.
Go ahead. Guess. (immediate family and close friends are disqualified)
Hmmm. You think something ecclectic and obscure, that's probably what it is.
"Bluegrass?"
No.
"Jazz fusion?"
No.
"Barbershop quartet?"
Nope.
"Psychedelic Funk, you know George Clinton. Acid Rock. Parliment. That kind of stuf right?"
Not even close.
"Gregorian chants?"
Niet.
"Oh God, not ... ska!?"
No. Wait what's wrong with ska?
"They use stupid intstruments instead of guitars."
Stupid instruments? Like trombones and saxaphones?
"Yeah, and trumpets. Totally awful stuff."
Worse than key-tars?
"Key-tars rule, okay! You don't know what you're talking about!"
Right anyway it's drum and bugle corps.
"What's that?"
It's like a marcing band.
"God that's even worse than ska."
No, it's not! And, hey, there's nothing wrong with ska either.
"Yeah, if you have no musical taste whatsoever."
How was jazz-fusion acceptable and ska isn't?
"Totally different. You don't know what you're talking about."
Anyway. A drum and bugle corps (that's pronounced "core" not "corpse") or, more commonly drum corps. Is like a marching band except they don't have woodwinds, flutes, saxaphones, clarines that kind of thing. It's just brass instruments and percussion. Except they don't just entertain football crowds and march in parades. They put on shows full of action, theatrics, and fun. It's a musical extravaganza played out with the energy of a sport. Like if someone mixed those cheerleading competitions with a Broadway musical, a military band, and a track and field meet. No other performance is as big and loud and wonderful live as a great drum corps show.
"Sounds totally lame."
IT IS NOT, OKAY! You sure use "totally" a lot what are you some kinds of lame '80's surfer?
"Totally."
Okay, Spicoli, whatever. The highest level of drum corps competition is the Drum Corps International World Final, held once a year. Now, to partticipate in DCI you pretty much have to be between the ages of 16-21 years old. You audition for a corps and then spend your summer touring with them, competing at different shows, sleeping on gym floors, eating all your meals out of the back of a reconverted RV, and generally having a miserable time. But for ten minutes a night, when you're on the field it's worth it.
"So, did you do ever do this?"
No, I tried out once, but life had other plans for me.
"So you weren't good enough?"
I think I was. But most people aren't good enough to play in the NFL or tour with the Stones, that doesn't mean they can't be fans.
"Yeah . . . but"
But, what?!
"But the Stone and football are cool, this is . . ."
Totally lame. I know, I know. Trust me you aren't the first person to tell me that. So DCI held their World Championships a few weeks ago. The competition was close all throughout the season but the Cadets from Bergen County New Jersey won the title. Their show was supposedly this really weird performance piece, like someone made a Twilight Zone music video. It had dream sequences, freaky music, some special effects, and costumes to make it look like the people we're facing forward when they were facing backward. It was crazy and wild and like nothing else a drum corps had ever done before. I wish I could have seen it live. The DCI champion tends to do something really fantastic no one every tried before. They put a lot of weight on being innovative and daring, rather than just tooting through a bunch of old Sousa marches.
"Hey, when you put it like that it sounds . . ."
Totally lame. I know, I know.
"Yeah, but not as totally lame as it used to.
Thanks that's all I want people to say.
The point of all this was to congratulate the Cadets and encourage people to check out the DCI TV special coming up on September 6th at 10pm Eastern on ESPN2 (check it out at http://www.DCI.org/2npse/) . Here's a news segment on the DCI Finals from the CBS Evening News. Be warned though it's drenched in liberal bias.

Comic Shop Musings 7/30/2005

This post will rescue my blog. I have written a lot on this blog about education, my professional interest, which was bound to happen as that's where my head has been these last few weeks. I refuse to let my loyal blog audience (who do I think I am?) be victimized by my recent narrow mental focus though. I have diverse interests and I can expound on many of them for great length. Of course to bring you the many facets of my mind, I need to occasionally take a deliberate break and steak out a new topic. I have written a little about my personal interests on this blog before, and I have some more ideas to share. However it seems like I'm crowding the landscape with only stuff on professional basketball, so I will spend a some of my lovely webspace on one of my lifelong passions: comic books.

I have read comic books since I was a small child, and have always had a place in my heart for the cape and tights crowd. Superheroes are often criticized for being overly broad or simplistic. While at the same time many complain that it's hard to read comic books because there's too much history involved. I trace this apparent paradox back to the basic nature of the genre. Superheroes are in my mind the descendant of ancient mythologies. This naturally results in archetypical characters engaged in epic quests. Every culture at all points in history has had a use for this kind of story told through one kind of art form or another. Still, some detract from comic books in general because they feel the fail to achieve the greatness appropriate of Art. I take great offense at such judgments. We've created figures of unreal dimensions and characteristics not as a failure to achieve some higher art, but as an exact expression of certain needs the human mind and spirit can't find elsewhere.

I am obligated by my union rules (Comic Book Fans, Trekkies and Role Playing Gamers Amalgamated Local Chapter #513) to remind everyone that there is great diversity at the comic racks. Any decent comic book vendor will point you to any number of genres, art styles, and formats that might please your particular artistic aesthetics. As I have grown and matured as a reader my tastes and interests in comic books have also become more sophisticated and diversified -though I have been missing out on certain genres since, Crossgen Comics went under, but that's nothing you really care about. I urge everyone to buy some comic books RIGHT FREAKIN' NOW! All you have to do is think of your favorite movie of the last five years or so, and then go into a comic book shop and ask them to recommend something like that. I say all of this because I will now go on to discuss superhero comics at great length. If anyone wants to check out of this column now feel free to do so. I'll write something soon about drum and bugle corps, which come to think of it I'm pretty sure the general audience care slightly more about comic books than drum corps (or as my brothers call it dork corps) But I will be writing some more about basketball in a few days and that should appease you lot.

I've recently been forced to find a new comic shop. Not only has this made me reconsider my choices for what I purchase on a month to month basis, but has also introduced me to some new characters and got me started thinking about a few major events going on in comic books right now. I have begun to think about events in comic books less in terms of how the relate to the artists who work on the titles, or the characters, or even the plots, and much more about how they reflect corporate policy.

At this point you'll need a little information about the current state of the comic industry, so you can either skip ahead or be patient with me. To summarize recent history in comic books for the uninformed (or as you apparently prefer to be called "normal") in the early 1990's comic books became a hot speculative item for investors with more money then brains who were waiting for Reaganomics to finally start paying out (funny how they never did until there was a Democrat in office). This meant the market for comics jumped tremendously. The problem with that was that the market didn't really want good comic books. No, it wanted comics that had that sheen of being $HIGHLY COLLECTIBLE$. Naturally the capitalist system forced the comic companies to pursue these profits by doing things like launching "events" or redundant title just to produce more issues with that supposedly collectible #1 on their cover. They also tended to put more thought into creating new "special edition features" like foil-embossed covers, holograms, and other gimmicks than they did thinking about how to tell good stories and use the artform of comics effectively. Then tech stocks got hot, so everyone sold back their comic books and the industry went through its own private recession. Over several years the major comic companies started focusing on quality again, and there has been something of a creative renaissance across all comic books, thankfully including superhero titles. Now the major comics companies Marvel (think Spider-Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four) and DC (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) are finally healthy again, and they are both out to make some serious mullah as their readership begins to grow, which has them positioning to try duking it out.

Now, I was talking to an employee at my new comic shop and he was pointing out that Crossgen Comics recent rise and fall was due to the company ownership's certainty that what they had to do to succeed was claim as much market share as possible. This lead to them releasing many, many titles in a brief span of time. They also tried to add a special incentive to readers to buy all their titles, by making them connected in a larger story. This story was so large that each title could effectively exist alone beneath it as a stand alone story in itself, but it was also so involved that after more than four years it only began to crack the surface when the whole company collapsed. Their idea was daring and it certainly shook up the landscape of comics, but it ultimately failed. Meanwhile DC and Marvel were fattening themselves back up by cutting down on the number of titles and focusing on self-contained stories under the eyes of focused artists. There was an undeniable nugget of truth in what he said with which I had to agree. Yet, something in the back of my mind bothered me about this. Then a few days ago it dawned on me. Marvel and DC have slipped back into the dangerous habit of title proliferation, big events, and intra-company crossovers.

At Marvel the story line is called "House of M" and it essentially transports the Marvel heroes to a world where Magneto, the X-Men villain, has risen to global domination. It has a lot of interesting takes on how the lives of our beloved heroes would be different. It is being overseen by a writer many argue is the best currently in the business, Brian Michael Bendis. Aside from a central mini-series the "House of M" story line is also being touched upon in some of the regular titles and covered to a larger degree in several special miniseries that relate the tales of this alternative reality. It's been selling great and it all seems interesting on the surface. Except for anyone who's been a fan of Marvel comics for more than ten years, this all seems oddly familiar. To paraphrase David Spade's Hollywood Minute, "I liked 'House of M'. I liked it even more when they called it 'Age of Apocalypse'." That's right. Marvel has traveled this road before. They got a major sales boost and a lot of buzz out of it, but this is still old hat. Repeating a tale of the universe being drastically altered because of some change in the timeline that brings a major X-Men villain to power wouldn't even be so bad, if Marvel weren't still CELEBRATING THE LAST TIME THEY DID IT! Because this year marks the tenth anniversary of the "Age of Apocalypse" event Marvel has been releasing ample amounts of comics that revisit the old territory. We might have forgotten the old story long enough to enjoy the new one if Marvel could have just let the past be the past instead of digging it up in the hopes of a little sales boost. Worse still the hype the company generated for this book is undermining their credibility. The publicity keeps saying this will "change the Marvel universe forever". How? The whole story takes place in some other reality, where everything is different anyway. So they can try any stunt they want to pull, and then just wipe the slate clean whenever they return the timeline to normal. I ask you, who cares? At least during "Age of Apocalypse" the company had the guts to replace the regular titles with new ones that only existed in the alternative world. With "House of M" all the regular titles still continue with the alternative world shunted into various mini-series. If the reader can choose to ignore an entire storyline, then how much impact can it really have on whichever series it is she's reading.

Let me tell you where this really hurts Marvel as a company. Let's say an uninitiated potential customer enters a comic book shop. She thinks "I liked that X-Men movie, maybe I'll try those comic books." She then finds the comic rack so stuffed with comics with X in the title that she begins to suspect, she may have mistakenly entered a porn store (while we're on that topic, I'm worried the number of comic shops that also vend pornography of some kind or another, is doing very little to help improve the image of the industry in the mind of the public). Looking over to the store's employee she see's an all too real example of that Comic Book Guy stereotype from the Simpsons, he's probably too involved in a conversation about the comparative merits of both the old and the new Battlestar Galactica shows to notice her, or just too nervous to talk to girls. Trust me if you were in the avergae comic book shop you would feel uncomfortable talking to the man behind the register too. She then does the only thing she can do, which is randomly select four comic books about the X-Men. If any thought goes into these selections it is limited to price, cover art, and how quickly she can grab them and run. When she gets home to read them she finds she's grabbed four books that occur in four different timelines (regular, Ultimate, "House of M", and "Age of Apocalypse" redux). She can't make sense of anything and decides to never try comic books again. Well done, Marvel. You've scared away another one due to a poor corporate policy of printing whatever seems most likely to sell to the same fans you've had for the last fifteen years.

DC on the other hand is taking the smart approach to their company's major event. They have been building up to it with a number of smaller events. There's a good reason for this. It's because the story they want to tell is so big it needs this kind of buildup. They can't just arbitrarily release a flashy mini-series over the summer to spike the sales. Instead they're trying something more natural. If you want to follow the story, there are many titles that are tied into it. If you don't want to get involved, you don't have to, there are many titles still telling stand alone stories. Of course DC plans for this event to be so grand and encompass so much, that you may well have to get involved at some point. They're just providing the oppurtunity for you to have as much lead in time as possible.

The major event from DC is called "Infinite Crisis" and it has been created by a company wide conference of writers, artists, and editors, who are all trying to tell one big story using all of the DC universe. It draws its name and at least some of its inspiration from the 1980's opus "Crisis on Infinite Earths", wherein DC spent twelve issues telling a story of the most epic scope to streamline and simplify a universe of stories and characters that had become overcrowded over the preceding 50 or so years. That series delivered action and drama on both the highest levels of operatic granduer and the most human stories of personal triumph and tragedy. I find the current effort by DC to recreate such a work totally engaging. They promise that the stakes will be as high as ever, and that the series will show "the worst day in the history of the DC Universe". I am in high anticipation of the event, and believe that so far DC has done a much better job of creating a readable story than Marvel has.

I say so far, because I am now hearing of their plans for the follow up, and I'm a little concerned. Apparently after this one really,really, really, bad day for all the DC superheroes, the company plans to take every title and jump the story ahead one year into the future. I guess they kind of have to make up some ground for how much time they're devoting to this one event, so I could almost see this working. Then I heard about how they plan to recount that year, releasing a new comic title that will come out once a week for the 52 weeks of the following year. This is an ambitious idea sure, but no artist, and no writer currently in the biz could keep up that pace to any standard of quality. So you have to deal with a constantly shifting creative team, which is always a risky proposition. On top of that since this title will be released concurrently with stories coming one year after it's completion, you run into the problem of fan confusion. Which is to say nothing of the potential reader who walks into a comic shop, picks up an issue of Batman, asks the man behind the counter what's going on in Batman's world, hears "we don't know, they haven't explained that yet", puts the comic back down and walks out on the street, never to return again.

I just worry that the two major faces of the comic industry aren't doing the best job they can to expand the market. I'm part of the problem since I still buy the books, and what's worse, the superhero books. I know. I know. I'm hurting comics. But so are Marvel and DC. It's like the trench warfare of WWI, the two sides are dug into their little positions and trying so deseperately to knock out the other guy, that they don't realize the damage they are doing to the general landscape.

All righty then. Now that I have my bad mouthing of the industry I love so much out of the way. (I know. I am such a "blame America first" liberal, when it comes to stuff like this. Why can't I just shut my mouth and appreciate what I have? I don't know, but I can't.) I would now like to share what comic books I'm reading and why I would recommend them to others.

In alphabetical order:

Astonishing X-Men- Written by Joss Whedon, the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, this title does a wonderful job of allowing the intimate soap opera of the X-Men to play on a huge action movie stage. This is the first X-Men title I have every bought on a serious month to month basis. Art chores are doen by the incomperable John Cassady

Astro City: The Dark Age (Book One)- The writer of this title, Kurt Busiek, has long been one of my favorites. The world of Astor City is his own private superhero universe, through which he retells stories we've seen before, but from new and intersting perspectives. He turns hokey old cliches and stereotypes into compelling human drama. This new saga tells how superheroes got to be so grim and gritty over the course of the 1970's and 80's.

Batman/Superman- this book combines the two best known superheroes in the world for a massive slam bang adventure that does everything you want the capes and tights crowd to do.

Conan- Another one written by Kurt Busiek. Since, most are familiar with this famous barbarian, I don't need to explain much. Really, I just had to show one example that I'm not all about superheroes.

Daredevil- The above mentioned Brian Michael Bendis has been writing this title for years now and I worry about what will happen when his run on this title is over. Forget everything you might have seen in that dumb Ben Afleck movie. Bendis reinvisions this character as a gritty and realistic street level crime drama. Mixing the rich background of New York City's Hell's Kitchen with a hard-knock hero who has recently had his secret identity revealed to the public. The costume appears so rarely and is of so little consequence, that I don't really think of this as a superhero comic book anymore. Think HBO's The Wire meets The Fugitive, with only occasional glimpes of red tights.

DC All-Stars: Batman & Robin- Written by comic legend Frank Miller, who may have done more for Batman than any other creator, I buy this book for the art. Jim Lee may be the best artist to hit comics in the last twenty years.

Fantastic Four- Again another title that while traditionally thought of as a superhero title it really isn't. The Fantastic Four are first and foremost a family trying to make a living in New York City, something we've all seen time and time before. The fantastic element comes from the fact that their day jobs center around exploring the wildest limits of their universe. Imagine a TV show that took the characters from Arrested Development and put them into Stargate's world. The stories by J. Michae Straczynski (Has it become obvious I pick my books, by the writers?) combine the two elements so well that this series is only limited by his imagination and his heart.

JLA:Classified- An ongoing series that features a rotating set of creative teams who each spend a few issues telling a stand alone story about the characters of the Justice League of America, DC's greatest heroes, including Superman, Batman, The Flash, and Green Latern. You can pick it up whenever a new story comes along and never feel left out. If you like traditional superheo fare this may be the pick of the litter.

Planetary- Written by Warren Ellis and drawn by the great John Cassady -how he carries the art chores for two titles and maintains his quality is completely beyond my ability to comprehend- this title is the flip side of Astro City. It takes a new look at the old superhero stories too, but from a different perspective. Told through the eyes of a team of mystery archaeologists, the series recasts classic comic standards in world of weird science fiction, that makes the stories seem simultaneously more bizzare than the original tales, and more realisticly conceivable to occur in our world. It's a great intellectual read for anyone who enjoys the heady buzz of reading science magazines that are way over your head. It seems that the novel The Historian tells a similar story about a horror classic, so I recommend any fan of one try the other.

The Ultimates 2- Don't let the number at the end worry you. It doesn't indicate that this title is a sequel as much as the second season, of the biggest, baddest, widescreen action on the planet. Every superhero movie should look like The Ultimates as rendered beautifully, by artist Bryan Hitch. (See I can follow artists too). Captain America, Iron Man, The Hulk, and many others are turned into the larger than life action stars you always knew they were. I don't even buy the DVD's of the latest comic book movies, because I have The Ultimates instead. It's an aderenaline rush every time I read it.

In case none of these titles suit your tastes, I recommend you be patient and keep looking around. I myself am far too fical to stay true to one title for to long, which is why I have never had a pull list with any comic shop. So I'm bound to have new recommendations in the near future. Until then I hope you are appeased with more of my ramblings about education and basketball.

The Wiki Witch of the Web

I have done some research into wikis in general and wikipedia in specific these last few days. From some of the literature I have attained it seems that there's an awful lot of talk that wiki's are either an incredible revolution or the worst resource on the web. I am more than a little befuddled by all of the apparent polemic effect of such a simple concept for a web application.

Years ago, when the internet was just rising into the public concsience, and I had only a dim understanding of what could be done when you let computers talk to each other, I sort of envisioned the web as a collection of wiki-type sites. I just assumed that the most useful thing someone could do with web communication was to set up a commonly held and maintained source of information and entertainment. Later when I found out how websites really worked, I was a little disappointed, then I heard of the idea of a "killer application". I guessed that meant that people were trying to tap the secret of how to create the kind of internet I envisioned. A while later the whole idea of the internet became a little mundane for me (that's kind of sad now that I reflect on it, it's a little like taking the stars for granted) and I learned from an urban geography professor that e-mail remains the best example of a killer ap and I guess I agreed at the time. So dim had my hopes for the web become that when some one told me about wikipedia, I thought "Oh, somebody wants to make the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." That thought alone should have sent me leaping into the air except I only conceived of the site as a sad rip-off instead of the full blown realization of a dream that now exists. (Sidebar: For those of you unfamiliar with the science-fiction/comedy writings of Douglas Adams, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galxy is a ficticious book created by aliens to accumulate all knowledge in the universe including facts, cultures, trivia, and the bizarre. The Guide is compiled by many independent reporters who can add to it or access it via a shared network. This is obvious to us now but when the book first came out in 1979 it still qualified as science fiction. By the way I recommend everyone read the novel for themselves.)

It took me a while to realize just how fantastic a resource wikipedia could be, and , as some of the research I've done shows, a fantastic object for future study itself. The way the website develops, what kind of information can you find there, and how are conflicts over the entries resolve, are all questions worthy of deep study by a whole variety of social scientists. I have found some enteries that discuss how teachers can form whole entire lesson plans on wikipedia, not the information in the enteries, but the website itself. I contend that historians, anthropologists, sociologists, behavorial psychologists, and many more could benefit greatly from researching wikis. They create microcosms of human activity that serve as perfectly sized samples for detailed and reliable investigation. I was reminded of another idea by Douglas Adams, when he explained his fascination with computers. He contended that what made computers great wasn't so much anything we already used them for, but what they represented, which was the means to model anything. A computer can model a typewriter, a calculator, a television, the Sears catalouge, an ecosystem, a beating heart, anything. While so far computers have been models for either basic tools or advanced scientific concepts, I have been giving thought to how they could model something of use to social sciences and the humanities. I believe wikis are just computer models of cultures, total cultures worthy of study, with their own rules, traditions, beliefs, conflicts, and historical record, all of it constantly shifting exactly as any real world culture would. Thoughts like this have made me terribly excited about the possible uses of wikis. I know realize a wiki isn't a killer ap. It's so much better than that; it's a living application.