In Defense of Referees

For most of my life, I have enjoyed both participating in and spectating sports, but as I've gotten older there is one aspect of sports culture that really bothers me and that is the vilification of referees.  As you might expect, I have a few thoughts on the subject.

• Why is it socially acceptable to yell at and make insulting comments to referees?  If a cashier gave me back the wrong change, I wouldn't start screaming at them or telling them to pull their head out of their ass.  In most other professions, if someone makes a mistake, I don't think we usually scream at and insult them.  Granted, sports is a different context than real life, but I still find it interesting how acceptable it is for fans, coaches, and athletes to berate referees.
• Why are referees the only participants in an athletic contest of whom we expect perfection.  If a baseball player gets a hit a third of the time, he's doing great.  If a basketball player makes half his shots, he's awesome.  But if a referee misses any call, people want their head on a platter.  I have only tried to ref on a couple of occasions, but both times I found it to be exceedingly difficult.  When referees are expected to see, react, and interpret hundreds of actions instantly, mistakes are going to be made.  And overall, I think referees typically do a very good job and get much more right than they get wrong.
• Accusations of bias by referees are completely unfounded.  I can see where if one team just keeps its mouth shut and plays hard and the other whines incessantly, there might be a tendency of the refs to favor the non-whining team as the game goes on.  But to say that referees come to the game with the intent of helping one or the other teams to win is ridiculous.
• Blaming referees for a loss is not constructive.  Referees are going to miss calls and sometimes those missed calls can come at critical junctures in a game.  But in any closely contested athletic competition, there are hundreds of individual events that help determine who wins.  And more often than not, there were mistakes made by coaches or players...a missed shot, a dropped pass, a missed defensive assignment, a missed block...that had every bit as much to do with determining the winner as a missed call by a referee.  By focusing on the referee, we don't see our mistakes and fail to work harder to correct and improve on areas that we can control.
• Without referees, in most cases, the sporting event would be unable to take place at all.  In many cases, we have individuals giving of their time, or making a few bucks to allow an athletic program to exist, and they are rewarded by listening to fans and coaches scream and yell at them the whole time.
• We can do better as a society and within sports culture of respecting referees.  There is nothing wrong with respectfully discussing the interpretation of a rule or pointing out something that the referee might be missing, but it should always be calmly and under control.

So the next time you're at a sporting event, cheer your team loudly, if you're playing, play hard, but be courteous to the referees.  Give them the respect they deserve.

When Am I Ever Going to Use That?

A few days ago, a friend of mine solicited some help via Facebook with finding the central angle of an arc, given the radius and the arc length.  Since math is one area where I can actually be helpful at times, I tried my best to answer her question about how to solve the problem.  Soon after I entered the conversation, another person commented as follows:

"Is this what I have to look foreword too [sic]? This makes me sick! I will be no help to my kids and where in the world will they ever use that? So dumb!"

I've heard my own kids and others voice similar complaints.  "How is this going to help me?"  "When am I ever going to use that?"  I've even gotten a kick out of a clip from the Simpsons where Marge laments, "Since [losing interest in math after starting to date Homer], I haven't been able to do any of the Calculus I've encountered in my daily life."

But for some reason, this comment by this parent really bothered me and got me thinking about the "I'm never going to use this" argument.  A few thoughts:

• This type of attitude perhaps is at least a partial explanation for the United States continuing to fall behind other industrialized nations in math and science.  If this is the attitude of parents, I can't imagine what the attitude of the children is.  How can the US hope to increase involvement in math and science if this is the prevailing attitude?
• You won't be able to use any knowledge that you don't acquire.  By striving to learn all you can, you keep your options open.  You have the ability to enter fields that perhaps you'd never considered.  Perhaps rather than sitting back and using technology created by others, you could be on the leading edge, creating technology that will be used by others.
• Not all knowledge is necessarily an end in itself.  There are specific concepts in math and science that you might have a hard time finding a specific application for, but in many cases you have to learn basic principles in order to build more advanced concepts on top of it.
• Excellence for the sake of excellence.  I love to learn.  I consider this life a God-given opportunity to acquire all the knowledge that I possibly can (D&C 130:18).  I don't read history books and biographies because it will help me in my career, but because I believe being knowledgeable and informed makes me a better person.  I spend a lot of time exercising as well, not because I feel I have a chance to be an Olympian or a professional athlete, but because I want to be the best version of myself.  Making the effort to understand and master a concept is never going to be wasted effort.
• I think of all the brilliant discoveries and inventions that have been made and cringe to think of an Einstein or an Edison or a Newton thinking "I don't need to learn that...when am I ever going to use it?"  Did Einstein need to make the discoveries he did in order to have a career and get through life?  No.  Did he live a better and more meaningful life because he strove to understand things about the world that no one at the time understood?  I believe he did.
• Just because something is hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be pursued.
• Set your sights high.  We can always set our sights low enough that we don't need any special knowledge or skills.

I'm reminded of this Calvin and Hobbes comic strip (couldn't find the actual image publicly available):

Dad:  Let's start at the beginning. When you ADD something, you INCREASE what you have. You COMBINE.

Calvin:  I don't want to learn this! It's completely irrelevant to my life!

Dad:  This isn't irrelevant.  Everyone needs to know this.

Calvin:  I don't! I can get along fine without math!

Dad:  Oh yeah? What do you want to be when you grow up? Every job requires SOME math.

Calvin:  That's not true! I'll be a... a... a caveman! Yeah!

Dad:  That's not really a job.

Don't be satisfied with being a caveman.  When a teacher (or someone else) tries to teach you something that is difficult to understand and that you don't see an immediate benefit of learning, resist the temptation to say, "When am I ever going to use that?".  Work hard.  Learn all you can.  Stick with something even though it's difficult.  Be the best version of yourself that you can.  

And if you need some help with math, just let me know.  I'm happy to help.

One Week In

I've failed to come up with a brilliant and exciting topic, but as I'm determined to at least make it one week with my weekly blog post resolution, I thought I'd give an update on how the first week of my "best body ever" resolution went, along with some details of what I am and am not doing.  I won't take the time to put this together as an organized, flowing narrative.  Instead, I'll fall back on my favorite crutch, the bullet-point list.

• As I mentioned in my previous post, my workout plan is to continue with my running schedule (I pull my training plans from www.coolrunning.com.  To start off the year, I'm working on the Competitive 5K plan) and to add P90X.  In addition, I will watch what I eat.
• As far as P90X, I didn't purchase the DVDs.  I got the iPhone App for free and purchased all the workouts for $60.  I'm sure I don't get everything that I would from purchasing the whole program, but I feel it will work for my purposes.  Plus, I'm cheap.  My plan is to do the P90X workouts 5 days a week, Monday-Friday.  Oh yes, Tony Horton is annoying.
• I had taken the last week off from running so when I started on Monday I weighed in at 208.3 lbs (which is up a little bit from where I have been).  This morning, I weighed myself after my run and I was at 201.0 lbs.
• So this is what my workout schedule looked like this past week

	Running (all done on a treadmill this week, I'm not as tough as Jeanell)	P90X
Monday	6 x 440s at 10.5 mph with 1:00 walking at 4 mph in between	Chest & Back + Ab Ripper X
Tuesday	7M at 7.1 mph	Plyometrics
Wednesday	7M at 7.1 mph	Shoulders & Arms + Ab Ripper X
Thursday	10 Hills at 9.3 mph (each “hill” is .12 miles, I run .06 miles at 5% incline, then .06 miles flat.  I usually have to rest at least some.  This week I ran 5, then walked a minute or so, then ran 3, walked, and then the last 2.  I hate hills)	Yoga X
Friday	5M at 8.0 mph	Legs & Back + Ab Ripper X
Saturday	10K (6.2M) at 8.3 mph

• As far as eating, I've sworn off sweets and soda, but other than that I am not trying to eat or not eat any particular foods.  My big focus has been limiting my helpings at dinner.  Where in the past I was frequently enjoying three or even four helpings, I tried to stay with one.  (I did have two bowls of Jeanell's delicious Zuppa Toscana soup on Wednesday).
• Wednesday and Thursday my arms and shoulders were as sore as I ever remember them being.  It was to the point where I could barely put on or take off my shirt, couldn't pick scratch my nose.  Even when I went to sleep, it was hard to find a comfortable sleeping position.  Thankfully, the soreness subsided quite a bit on Friday.
• I'm a little nervous about the time commitment.  This week was pretty light on miles as compared to some of the coming weeks.  There will be days where I'll be exercising for 3+ hours.
• Overall, I feel good.  My legs are a little bit sore from the legs workout yesterday plus the running yesterday and this morning, but generally I feel good.  We'll see how the next week goes.