Newspapers may be dying, and that's sometimes a good thing.

I had my first paper route when I was about 10 years old. Third grade, if I remember right. It was a Sunday-only delivery in Leicester, MA. I think I started out with around 50 houses, and grew to around 100 when someone gave up an adjacent route. The papers were so thick, I'd could only stuff about 10 in my bag at once. Yes, this is when American kids actually WALKED - I've since seen parents drive their kids on their routes.

The hills where I grew up are ubiquitous and steep. I've heard the average grade was steeper than the hills in San Francisco, though I think that's not quite true (but close). I'm pretty sure Apricot Street (where this is all happening here, as Arlo Guthrie would say) in Leicester and Worcester is as steep as the famous Lombard Street in San Francisco (a 27% grade), and at least four times longer. I had to stuff my bag, deliver to the first ten houses, walk back down for more, then walk back up to deliver another 10, etc. Later I took up a daily route in Worcester, starting out at 40 houses and growing to over 100 again, which was not so great for my customers, since it was an evening publication and many nice folks received their papers well after dinner.

It was work, but I had no idea how valuable it was, beyond the $20 a week. It certainly kept me in shape, I met a lot of nice people, and my eyes were open to many different types of folks. I can remember the single mother who couldn't afford to pay me and was months behind. She had to ask a 13 year old to spot her the paper so she could look for jobs in it. There was a religious person who needed to tip me with moral stories. There was the 93 year old who kept her home very cold, not out of choice. She loved when I came collecting (yes, cash, credit cards were invented, but not widely used), since I gave her some company, and I enjoyed hers. She knit me a hat and mittens one winter. The letters my wife wrote me the summer when we were 14 are still wrapped in the ribbon that went 'round that gift. Then there was the 50ish man who tricked me into his bedroom and started showing me playboys before I excused myself, suddenly thinking my shorts were a bit to small for my growing body.

But the greatest gift of the newspaper routes were the newspapers themselves - and the writers who made them alive and interesting everyday. Of course I read the sports section first, parsed each baseball boxscore while in season, and waited on the rare "hot stove" article in the winter. (Unfortunately, this was the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, so I didn't discover Peter Gammons until college). These were long routes however, so I wound up reading everything - the front page and every page those articles lead to. I was a teenager and I knew about what was going on in the world more than most adults (and didn't realize it, which may have been better for my ego). Occasionally the business section caught my eye with something interesting, and though I never really was interested in anything a particular business was doing, eventually I realized I loved macroeconomics and watched everything the Federal Reserve did, followed how the markets and interest rates moved and watched the waves of the economy before and during a recession (which paid major returns to me in 2008, when I timed things as well as I could and did not panic). I've continued having wide interests. I also read so much that good writing was drilled into my mind. I'm sure it's weakened, but it's still there.

Don't expect me to say that those were the good ol' days and kids now just don't know how to write or read garbage. Things change. I didn't know how to network with my friends constantly. You can surf for an hour and come across more interesting topics than any paper has in a month. My parents didn't know how to word process.

[Total tangent, but Susan and I were talking about it recently. Language is amazingly dynamic and comes to suit the time as it changes. Think about the word "fair" - how long did it take to get to four letters? According to this:

Origin:
bef. 900; ME; OE fæger; c. OS, OHG fagar, ON fagr, Goth fagrs

If it's a good word in common use, it will get simpler and simpler. Read The Mother Tongue if it interests you . Yes, I know it's controversial among experts, but it's Bill Bryson!]

Newspapers themselves though, and journalism in general, do have ethics to uphold, and they aren't. Newspapers have always been, and always should be, there to balance democracy, to shed light on corruption and injustice, to lend a thoughtful eye and hand to the considerations of the day and time. They have failed, and it's unclear if there is any protection left for the people from the backroom deals that now seem to have their hand at the throat of our democracy. Why? Journalism, such a noble pursuit, is no longer an art, a calling, a public trust, at least outside of some brave poor souls who work for websites and publications that are always on the brink of going under. Newspapers now are about the buck, or a buck for a thousand clicks. It's about working the channel while it lasts. Which is why the Boston Globe's price has gone up almost an order of magnitude, they blame production costs, and then deliver the ads (and only the ads) before Thanksgiving, for free.

The death knell? The Boston Herald, which deserved a quick death 20 years ago, has a new slogan in their ads: "Someone's got to say it." "Someone has to say it" just wasn't colloquial enough?

Techie Blog...

I now have a separate blog for tech stuff at michaelbushe.wordpress.com, so hopefully I'll write more techie and non-techie stuff. I already was able to get a couple of old posts out of the closet.

Humanity's Purpose: A Warning For the Next "Intelligent" Life Form

Truly, it's inevitable, isn't it? The best we can hope for is to leave enough trash around so that, in another 5 million years, some future Bonobo relative realizes that they were not the first forms of life intelligent life, and they could mess it up too.

"No one is useless, anyone can at least be used as a bad example."

New Favorite Movies

I have a new movie to add to my list of favorites: 8 1/2 Now if I could only learn Italian enough to understand it. :-) It's brilliant anyway. In order to understand it, you have to understand Jung, because it's nearly a Jungian drama dealing with a man's relationships to the females in his life as the main character deals with the confusions he creates by following useless and narcissistic tendencies. The climax is as poignant as movies get. A true masterpiece.

So what are my other favorite movies?
American Beauty
Dr. Strangelove
Field of Dreams
Hanna and Her Sisters
Life is Beautiful
Schindler's List
Star Wars, Episode IV and Episode I

Though they certainly span the decades (nothing in this century yet though), there are some common threads - both obvious and more deep. Obviously there are two Italian films, two about concentration camps, five use black and white, and they are generally serious, witty, and often dark. More deeply, they are studies in contrast - always for me the most attractive form of art. The generally share themes of self-actualization in the face of adversity, determination, and penance.

The most common thread is most clearly spelled out in Star Wars - the struggle of good and evil, the battle for the human soul, in short Joseph Campbell's (and Jung's) Hero's Journey, on which Star Wars is based. I'm always surprised by how few people appreciate this most popular movie as a rendering of mythical themes. Distracted by the special effects, I guess.

Speaking of Campbell, I retold again this week my favorite Campbell quote (I'm pretty sure I first heard it in The Power of Myth):

If you follow you bliss, doors will open for you that would not have open otherwise, and that would not have opened for anyone else.

The Yoga I practice I learned from Ananda Marga, which literally means "The Path of Bliss," and this is just the bliss that Campbell is talking about, as he was a Yogi at heart. People can, of course, learn their true nature from many paths. Isn't it funny that when they do, and they act on it, they start knocking down doors that they hadn't even seen before? I can guarantee that if you do honestly practice quietude and meditation you will uncover that steady hum that lies within us all.

No tarnish on '04 and '07 World Series Championships

Now I know I can be naive, maybe exceptionally naive, particularly about the integrity of baseball players, however, I don't believe Manny Ramirez used performance enhancing drugs until 2008.

Why? Here are Manny's numbers in Cleveland, Boston and LA:

(Please excuse the big space here if you see one)

	Cleveland	Boston	Los Angeles
Batting Average	.313	.312	.380
At Bats Per Home Run	14.7	14.4	12.1
Slugging Percentage	.592	.588	.710

Courtesy The Boston Globe

The stats in Cleveland and Boston show what has always been said about Manny - he's a very consistent hitter, and a great one.

Suddenly, in Los Angeles, his numbers are remarkably similar to Barry Bonds' and Mark McGwire's juiced numbers. This should not be surprising, since Manny's was in his contract year, likely his last contract year at age 37.

That's what I hate about autopilot

I never blog or even talk much about fantasy baseball because no matter how passionate as you about it, it's a fantasy, and no one really cares to hear about anyone else's fantasies of any sort unless there's some sort of personal involvement in it that wouldn't seem gross.

If you are not a team owner in "The BLS", the Bushe League Superstars, appropriately, BS.baseball.cbssports.com), I'll try to make this post not really about my fantasy, but about a frustration with algorithmns with some league history. But this post is really for my league mates - it was too long for the chatroom. :-)

The BLS has been a league since 1995 - a few months before the release of Internet Explorer 1.0, and traces further back to when people did fantasy by the U.S. Postal service. You'd wait a week for the report to come in the mail, it would cost about $50 per team per year. You wished it was only 2 days behind and not three, you kept up with boxscores each day in the NEWSPAPER- how quaint! Like many, I did it by hand in a Quattro Pro spreadsheet starting in 1991. I think there were about 500,000 players at the time. Enough to subsidize space on magazine shelves. My first league consisted of some workmates, close friends, two brothers, a wife that ran her own team (As one BLS owner says, "the only wife that knows what WHIP is!"), and some other guys that I found on internet message boards from all over the country and even the world (Australia, Japan, Denmark all hail BLS owners). Susan and I now co-own the The Crackerjacks, and the only other original left just last year.

The league is far more competitive now, but the bridge to the olden days is the way the BLS draft is conducted. It's done very slowly, enjoyed like a fine basket of fruit rather than an ice cream at the beach. The BLS draft is an extended draft of 336 or so picks (14 teams and 24 rounds), which occurs after each team "keepers" from the previous year. I say "or so" because an owner may decide to name anywhere between 3-8 "keepers" from the 30 person roster from the previous year, plus 0-2 form their minor league roster, none of which can qualify for the Rokie of the Year Award.

Most Yahoo or ESPN leagues do a draft 336 in an hour and a half. We do it over 6 weeks (Feb 15th to April 1st or so), 51 picks a week, 7 picks a day -a half a round a day. It can be excrutiating slow at time. There is no time limit at all until about March 1st, and owners will often take a day to think it over. Those are the most important picks, so we give more time for thought.

After March 1st, owers have 12 hours to make a pick, if they go over the time limit, their pick is skipped, but only until they get back to a computer and annouce who they want. Sometimes there are a lot of eyes on the page and picks go in mintues, though usually in hours, and then often hang for for the full 12 hours because we are all busy professionals.

In order to make the draft move faster, you can put the system on "autopilot" so that it pulls the next best player from your queue that is created by hand by dragging and dropping players in order.

(And now the story...)

When I woke up on Saturday, March 21st in round 13 of 22, the person three picks before mine exceeding the 12-hour rule and I skipped his pick (after a long hiatus, I'm commissioner again) .

It was near the "bench" phase of the draft but I still needed:
A relief pitcher
A starting pitcher
A middle infielder
Nice to have - a backup for some of my risky hitters (Travis Hafner)

I enjoy trying to figure out who will be the closer for teams that don't have a proven closer. It usually comes down to talent, temperment and strikeouts. My league requires exactly 3 relief pitchers. If you are going to win, you will need three closers for the season. Since there are 14 fantasy teams, that's 42 slots for "the closer" of each of the 30 MLB teams. Though you can take the risk, it's tough to win without the three closers, because you won't get enough points in the Saves category "rotissierre" baseball. If you finish low in one category (or "punt") you basically have to finish 1 and 2 in every other (and more 1's), to win. The good news is that half the league is playing with 2 closers.

I had two somewhat risky closers already, and almost all of the MLB team's closers were gone. I'm pretty sure in Oakland, that since Joey Devine's arms hurting, Brad Ziegler will get at least enough saves until I can find another one during the season. In Seatle, I love Chad Cordero, and nearly all my picks have been former keepers, as Cordero has been. I like the fit, and I like his talent. Chad has a weird delivery, he's about the only pitcher to nearly square the left side of his foot toward the batter, the toe pointing almost to the first base dugout, not right at the plate as they teach you in Little League. For him, I think it generates some special torque and his ball moves and hitters miss it even though he doesn't throw 95. The problem is that he had labrum surgery in July (injury that may be caused by the foots bad mechanics) and he won't be ready for Opening day, but I figure he'll eventually take the role.

I put Zeigler on top of the queue, then decided who my second pick should be. I was thinking of putting in Cordero, but it was possible that by the time I came back from Newport my other pick could come up. I wanted to make sure not to draft two closers in a row (I can't play a 4th closer), so I quickly put the hitter Troy Glaus second in queue. Determined not to let the draft interfere with my best attempt to be in unison with the cosmic vibration (i.e. - I don't like to do anything that requires such thought before mediation), I figured - "there won't be three picks in the hour it takes me to mediate anyway, I'll come back." I did get involved in a chatting with another where owner and as I went upstairs I thought "did I take it off autopilot?" "Yes. I think so." ,

Susan had to get ready after we finished meditation so I checked the draft web page. Zeigler was drafted (nice pick Peter!) during our meditation. The system picks Glaus for us and we wind up with NO THIRD CLOSER. Though we were able to pick up Cordero later, the way the queue works is sub optimal, unless there's only one in the queue. For most owners there may be 100 to 500 players. I regularly queue 60. An option for a "autodraftable size" queue would be nice.