As promised some two weeks ago, there is a new look to the front page of this humble website. Here is a hint as to the current theme.

And you can see the whole presentation if you just click this little link. That’s from a little flowering tree in the backyard. In a few more weeks it will meet it’s full glory. But we’ll probably be featuring a different look by then.

Quite day today, for the most part. I worked on questions for an interview I recorded late this afternoon. The last official act of the week was editing it. I’ll publish the thing on Monday. It was pleasant. A thoroughly delightful chat with a delightful guy. And, like so much of life, there were few concrete answers. You know that going into a lot of things, it doesn’t ameliorate the feeling after the fact though. He said as much, at one point, too. Occupational hazard for him, you see. He’s spent his whole career in that world. He recounted a conversation he had when he was in college. A friend of his who was studying physics just couldn’t comprehend the inconclusive nature of the soft sciences. You could sum it up as ‘I could work a lifetime on a problem and not be able to see it through. Or know the result. Or know if I was correct.’

I guess we all make peace with some sort of limitations.

Or, maybe, if the idea of that makes you a little twitchy — as it does me — the limitation is misplaced. The journey is the destination and all that. I’m sure a great many books have been written about that approach for the goal- and the task-oriented. There’s a bookstore shelf full of those somewhere. Each with a less satisfying resolution than the last. They say things like, Sure you need provisions from the grocery store, but did you see those clouds in the sky? And have you ever really wondered how those things made it to the store and then found yourself at a working farm asking questions about the history of dairy farming? And why did you drive there, anyway? What does that say about us? That we are slaves to cars, the ultimate sign of freedom? And what of the lives you touched along the way?

Anyway, while it was a little perplexing from an issue-conflict-resolution perspective, it was a fine interview. I’ll put it here Monday.

We do have some sports videos for you. Students produced these last night and they were ready for you, piping hot and fresh, this morning. Highlights and updates, updates and highlights:

And if you want to hear people pick their favorite baseball teams as a pre-season analysis, then we’ve got you covered there, too.

I had a conversation about changing sports just to see how the strategy would change. What if you took two timeouts away from basketball? What if you really only played those last five minutes anyway? Say the XFL had the opportunity to really explore their rule changes before Covid came around, what does that do to your play calling? What would happen if the NCAA took a rooting financial interest in elevating women’s basketball and tried to make, you know, money off the thing? What would that look like? Suppose there weren’t end-of-inning resets for baserunners in baseball. What takes place then? Why not send the Detroit Tigers and the Pittsburgh Pirates down to AAA ball for a year, since they clearly aren’t playing well where they are?

(The answers are: The games would be 15 faster. The games would be 90 minutes shorter. It gets more aggressive. We may never find out because the NCAA is full of shortsighted leadership. Also, they’d pass the buck until they could claim the victory as their own, brought on solely and only because of their fearless leadership. You’d routinely have baseball games will final scores like 19-8, fewer utility infielders, more speed, larger pitching staffs and team psychologists to help ballplayers cope with it all. And who says the Tigers and Pirates aren’t already playing minor league ball?)

I had this conversation with some students who haven’t yet been bored enough to think up things like this. But there comes a day, some day when the only game they can watch are the Detroit Tigers … and they’re going to start thinking these things through.

But hopefully it won’t be on a weekend. A weekend! Which is upon us now! Have a delightful one!