When in Rome

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There's a backyard game that is very popular and involves two boards with holes cut in them and bean bags. The game requires tossing the beanbags into the holes and is played much like horseshoes. When I was growing up in Northern Virginia that game was called Bean Bag Toss, but here in North Carolina people call it, um, Cornhole.

Now, I've heard the term cornhole before, but it was always in reference to a decidedly unpleasant act perpetrated on certain parts of the anatomy found on a person's posterior side where the sun don't shine. And of course those of us who are of a certain age remember Beavis & Butthead's Cornholio.

Until moving to North Carolina I'd never once heard Bean Bag Toss called Cornhole, but one day at a picnic a seemingly normal guy sidled up to me and asked me if I'd "like to Cornhole." I was slightly taken aback, to say the least, and before slugging the guy I decided it would be prudent to find out exactly what he meant so I replied by saying, "Huh?" He figured I didn't hear him, and luckily when he repeated himself he added the verb "play" to his sentence and pointed at what I thought of as a Bean Bag Toss game set up in the yard. Greatly relieved I proceeded to play a smashing game of Bean Ba-, uh, Cornhole.

Years later I was still uncomfortable calling the game Cornhole and at work I'd insisted on referring to the game as Bean Bag Toss since I thought other people might make the same mistake I had. Slowly it dawned on me that I was probably the only person in the Piedmont Triad who had a problem with "Cornhole" so I caved and started calling it that at work functions.

*Side note: You'd be amazed how often people play Cornhole at work functions.*

Unfortunately while I was attending a trade show in Boston earlier this summer I referred to a bean bag game in someone's booth as Cornhole; if I'd had a camera I could show you how people must look at flashers.

BTW, I think this confusion is quickly becoming a thing of the past, especially since there's now an American Cornhole Organization. Still if you're at all unsure of your audience I'd highly recommend the eminently more accurate moniker of Bean Bag Toss.

Comedic Carolina

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In a Slate piece written by Evan Smith Rackoff, a product of UNCG, we learn why North Carolina seems to be a breeding ground for comics, and the role that the School of the Arts plays in that development:

The Andy Griffith Show is not the only product of the early ’60s that has proven essential to the new wave of North Carolina comedy. In that same era, a Winston-Salem-born novelist, John Ehle, accepted a position on the staff of North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford. The two men devised a plan to create a new, publicly funded school, an arts conservatory, rooted in performance, rather than the academy, and taught by working artists. In 1963, the North Carolina School of the Arts was chartered. It’s a high school as well as an arts college, and it’s part of the 16 colleges in the UNC system. It’s one of the reasons that more North Carolina comedians have found their way out of the state in recent years, venturing away from small foothill towns and broadcasting their particular sensibilities to the wider world.

Among its graduates is the entire creative team behind Eastbound & Down, a show that, in Scott Jacobson’s words, is “North Carolina to the core.” Jody Hill would be pleased at the description, I think; he told me that when he and his fellow creators looked to the movies and television, “We really didn’t see the South we knew represented.” Kenny Powers, the central character of Eastbound & Down, is a modern-day Jack, of the Appalachian Jack Tales—which people have been retelling in North Carolina for centuries. Jack is a weak and shiftless character but clever and quick-witted. In the end he’s often taught an instructive lesson, though it doesn’t necessarily stick. This is part of the mystique of Kenny Powers. And like Griffith, Danny McBride knows not to play his character for laughs. He plays him with utter sincerity, and the laughs follow.

Hat tip to John Robinson, former editor of the Greensboro News & Record, who shared this on his excellent blog Media, Disrupted.

Slow Money

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Responding to a piece in the New York Times about bypassing Wall Street with investment dollars,  AVC's Fred Wilson describes how he and his wife have abandoned Wall Street and have concentrated on investing in businesses they can feel, touch and understand:

We are in cash, real estate, venture capital, and private investments centered around our neighborhood and city (retail, restaurants, etc). Other than cash, we are invested in things we can touch and/or impact and understand.

As Ron talks about at the start of his piece, the never ending blowups on wall street are eroding confidence in that system. It certainly has eroded our confidence in that system. So we are staying out of it for the most part.…

And he describes a movement he calls Slow Money described in this way:

“Let’s just take some of our money and invest it near where we live in things we understand, starting with food,” as the movement’s founder, Woody Tasch, puts it. He describes returns as being in the “lowish single digits,” ranging from roughly 3 percent to a few percentage points higher…

As one system seems to be failing on a regular basis, it makes sense that there are new systems that operate differently that are emerging. 

Wouldn't it be sweet justice if the titans of Wall Street were put in their place not by the toothless-so-far government regulators, but by the free market they so stridently defend but seem to only believe in if it's rigged in their favor? 

Fleecing the Financiers

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How bad are the reputations of bankers and financiers these days? Bad enough that when you see news stories about bad things happening to them you experience a level of schadenfreude that almost can't be described. To wit:

Case 1: Banks desperate for money falling for scams that used to only work on people who believed a prince in Africa would reach out to them for help.

Case 2: A large trading firm almost bankrupting itself in one day thanks to some faulty computer code.

Here's a fun game: see if you can find one person who actually sympathizes with these folks. 

What Came First, Chicken or Jelly?

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Once, when I was a kid, I was in the grocery store with my mother and we were picking out jelly.  I picked out a jar of Welch's grape jelly and she told me to put it back and replace it with a jar of the store brand. Now, you have to understand that this was long enough ago that generic brands weren't just less expensive, they were lower in quality and I was just a tad unhappy that we'd have to suffer through weeks of PBJs with inferior jelly. I asked Mom why we couldn't get the (superior) Welch's and she said she couldn't support a company that treated its workers the way Welch's did. Of course I hadn't a clue what she was talking about, but I couldn't believe I was going to have to suffer through crappy jelly because some company apparently was mean to its people.

After thinking the situation through I had a thought and said to Mom, "Welch's must sell a ton of their jelly and make a lot of money, they aren't going to even notice if we don't buy a jar. It just doesn't seem worth the all the effort to me." I'll never forget her reply: "Jon, I'm sure they won't notice, but I'm also sure I'll feel better every time I make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if I'm not making it with their jelly." How do you argue with that?

That's a story I think about every time I see one of these "product protests", the latest of which is the so-called boycott of Chick-Fil-A being called for by folks who are incensed by the company president's statement against same-sex marriage. Whether or not the boycott causes Chick-Fil-A financial distress (I doubt it will since there's now a counter-boycott being staged by conservative Christian organizations), at a minimum the people doing the boycotting can feel better about where they're jacking up their cholestorol.  

For what it's worth people really shouldn't have a problem with Chick-Fil-A taking a financial hit for their conservative stance, mainly because they've made a ton of money from broadcasting their conservative Christian values. There are a LOT of people who frequent the chain not just because they like its chicken – they also feel good being able to support a business that reflects their own values. This is definitely one of those "live by the sword-die by they sword" situations.

As for me the boycott is a non-issue since I'm probably the only person south of Boston who thinks Chick-Fil-A is overrated, and they might have the worst coffee on the planet. Bland chicken and crappy coffee equals a permanent boycott that has nothing to do with the company's politics, but for the record if I did like Chick-Fil-A I'd be taking a break from visiting their restaurants. They wouldn't notice, but I'd feel a lot better about my jacked-up cholestorol.

Update: The "Support Chick-Fil-A" counter-protest today was quite popular in towns around NC and apparently a North Carolina based Wendy's franchisee showed support for its competitor as well. Although it's the kind of thing that the local news has to carry, is it really a surprise to anyone? After all this is a state that recently passed, overwhelmingly,  a state amendment against gay marriage. It's also firmly esconced in the Bible belt, clerks routinely wish you a "blessed" day and the first question you're asked upon introduction isn't "What do you do?" but "Where do you go to church?"

All in all I'd say this is totally predictable – what would be more interesting to know is the net effect on Chick-Fil-A's business around the country. It'll probably make a good case study for the Harvard Business Review in the near future.

A French Egg and a Clock

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From the excellent Now I Know comes one theory for how tennis got its bizarre scoring system:

Eggs are, of course, oval shaped, much like the number zero. And in a few sports, they’re used as such — “goose egg” is common in American sports, and “duck,” short for “duck’s egg,” is common in cricket. Tennis may be an addition to the list. The sport most likely dates back to 12th century France, and, as such, many of the rules and much of the terminology has carried forward since. The French term for “the egg” is “l’oeuf,” which, if you’re not a French speaker, sounds a lot like the word “love.” It is likely that a series of English speakers simply replaced the French word with its English homophone.

As for the actual numbers? Certainty as to their origin has been lost to antiquity, but the most likely explanation involves a pretty simple way to keep score: clock faces. The first point would earn you one quarter of a revolution, or 15 (minutes or seconds), the second point moves you to 30, and the third to 45. When the game ended, both clocks would be reset to the top. Easy — except that tennis games have to be won by two or more points. If both players were on a 45, then what? Even moving the hand half-way wouldn’t work, as 60 minus 45 is 15, which is not divisible by two.

The inelegant solution? Move 45 to 40. When the players tied at 40-40 (“deuce”), the next point would be worth 10, moving the clock to 50. If the same player earned the subsequent point, he or she would get another ten points and win the game. If not, his or her clock would be reset to 40, and the players would be deadlocked at deuce again.

No wonder so many interesting characters are attracted to tennis. Don't think so? Check out any local USTA league and you'll soon change your mind.

While Hucksters Lead Us Into the Economic Abyss

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This piece from Freakonomics should scare the you-know-what out of anyone in this country with an ounce of sense:

If you follow the economic policy debate in the popular press, you would be excused for missing one of our best-kept secrets: There’s remarkable agreement among economists on most policy questions.  Unfortunately, this consensus remains obscured by the two laws of punditry: First, for any issue, there’s always at least one idiot willing to claim the spotlight to argue for it; and second, that idiot may sound more respectable if he calls himself an economist.

How does one fight the pundits? Well, some economists are trying to do it by regularly polling their counterparts of all ideologies about various issues and reporting on their findings:

Their “Economic Experts Panel” involves 40 of the leading economists across the US who have agreed to respond on the economic policy question du jour.  The panel involves a geographically and ideologically diverse array of leading economists working across different fields.  The main thing that unites them is that they are outstanding economists who care about public policy.  The most striking result is just how often even this very diverse group of economists agree, even when there’s stark disagreement in Washington. 

So what did they find? Among other things:

Let’s start with Obama’s stimulus. The standard Republican talking point is that it failed, meaning it didn’t reduce unemployment. Yet in a survey of leading economists conducted by the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, 92 percent agreed that the stimulus succeeded in reducing the jobless rate. On the harder question of whether the benefit exceeded the cost, more than half thought it did, one in three was uncertain, and fewer than one in six disagreed.

Or consider the widely despised bank bailouts. Populist politicians on both sides have taken to pounding the table against them (in many cases, only after voting for them). But while the public may not like them, there’s a striking consensus that they helped: The same survey found no economists willing to dispute the idea that the bailouts lowered unemployment.

The sad thing is this is literally the equivalent of a sick person being surrounded by doctors who know what's wrong with him, but rather than hear a proper diagnosis from a trained expert he only hears a prescribed cure from a bunch of drunken snake oil salesmen. When it comes to our economy isn't it about time we start hearing from the doctors directly?

When Parents are Full of S***

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The two oldest of our three kids will be heading to NC State in a few weeks, our oldest for his sophomore year (transferring from UNC Charlotte) and our middle child for her freshman year. Our son has already changed his major from business to a biology-chemistry double major. Our daughter is in First Year College and as of right now is thinking of majoring in engineering, but who knows what degree she'll end up with? That's as it should be since one of the core benefits of a college education is the opportunity to try different things on until you find something that fits, if you're lucky.

A couple of weeks ago we were on vacation and during dinner my daughter mentioned that she might want to major in Italian (I think it was Italian), and I made the brilliant statement that she shouldn't major in a language because you can always study a language independently by taking a course later. That statement was followed by something like, "You should study something practical that, if you wanted, you could practice in any language you might happen to learn." My mother, who was also at the dinner, gave me the look that is normally reserved for people for whom she feels sorry, and drolly asked if that's why I majored in English. Ouch.

I later told my daughter that her Dad had a moment where he was indeed full of s*** and that she should study whatever she is truly interested in, something that she can be passionate about.  Sharing this particular tale of parental malpractice was inspired by this letter written to Ted Turner by his father when young Ted informed the old man that he wanted to major in the Classics at Brown:

There is no question but this type of useless information will distinguish you, set you apart from the doers of the world. If I leave you enough money, you can retire to an ivory tower, and contemplate for the rest of your days the influence that the hieroglyphics of prehistoric man had upon the writings of William Faulkner. Incidentally, he was a contemporary of mine in Mississippi. We speak the same language—whores, sluts, strong words, and strong deeds.

It isn't really important what I think. It's important what you wish to do with your life. I just wish I could feel that the influence of those oddball professors and the ivory towers were developing you into the kind of a man we can both be proud of. I am quite sure that we both will be pleased and delighted when I introduce you to some friend of mine and say, "This is my son. He speaks Greek."

Note to my children: if I ever write or say anything remotely like this please tell me I'm full of s*** and feel free to not visit me in the home if I live long enough to get there.