Monthly Archives: December 2015

Linkluster 61*7


The Democrats tried to make a run at Republicans on the terrorism issue and the gun issue by talking about how the Republicans don’t want to prevent guns from falling into the hands of “Suspected terrorists.” The problem with this argument is that there is no due process for “suspected” anything, which combined with this sort of thing (and Colorado Springs) makes it wise for them to be wary.

What was "Burritos and Tacos" serving *before* that sign went up?

What was “Burritos and Tacos” serving *before* that sign went up?

Woohoo! Seattle is moving back school start times.

Opponents to DST: Farmers, cows, and babies. (Also, right-thinking individuals everywhere.) Also, here are some helpful maps and charts.

A stupidity virus exists, apparently.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott directed churches and charities not to help refugees. As it happens, things don’t work that way.

David Frum, Agent of Daesh. I’m not sure people recognize how terrible the argument Frum is mocking actually is.

Hey GOP candidates, this here is some low-hanging fruit.

Some Montana ranchers are preparing for the Syrian invasion from Canada. (As opposed to a Canadian invasion from Canada.)

The Jewish need no longer fear, Chris Deerin says The Corbyn Show is over, though one way of looking at it he might be doing better than Miliband. Cameron doesn’t seem worried.{More}

Argentina turns to capitalism.

What it’s like in Marco Rubio’s classroom.

Gilmentum!

Calhoun County, Alabama, has a little over 100,000 people and two military tanks, but no more.

The latest in Pennsylvania: You do not have a right to see pornographic emails at the attorney general’s office, despite Kane’s efforts.

No slippery slope here. They just jumped right on down.


Category: Newsroom

Democracy. Ugh. (In Which @varadmehta Tweets Guns)



Category: Statehouse

BYU Blues


BYU head coach Bronco Mendenhall is headed to Virginia. A lot of people are surprised by this because they thought Mendenhall was a Cougar lifer, but I’m not. He’d been saying for a few years now how BYU had better get into a Power 5 Conference. People scratched their head wondering why Mendenhall thought he was in the position to tell the Power 5 conferences what to do, but I thought at the time that his comments were never directed at the P5 conferences but rather BYU officials. The “Or what?” is that he would leave. Which is what happened.

The Salt Lake Tribune has an article on Mendenhall’s potential replacements, and the prospects are kind of underwhelming:

Only one certainly exists when it comes to compiling the list of coaches in the pool to replace Bronco Mendenhall, the BYU football coach who stunningly resigned on Friday afternoon to take the head position across the country at the University of Virginia.

It’s a very short list.

Because the new coach at BYU will have to be a member in good standing of the church that owns and operates BYU, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, it is as shallow a candidate pool for a Division I coaching job as any in the country.

Because BYU is a private institution not subject to open-records laws, Mendenhall’s salary at BYU is not known. He signed a five-year contract with Virginia on Friday that will pay him $3.25 million annually.

Suffice it to say, the new BYU coach will make substantially less — probably in the $1 million range.

broncoIf that’s the pay range, it’s going to make a difficult search even moreso. The only really good candidate is Ken Niumatalolo of Navy. Niumatalolo was mentioned for some reasonably big openings this year (Iowa State most prominently). He either likes Navy or is was passed over, but if he likes Navy then leaving is going to need to be worth his while. He’s paid $1.7m a year at Navy. And even then, he might be more interested in a real Power 5 job, and Navy is probably a better platform from which to make that move. I could be wrong, depending on his level of devoutness, but he’s the only allstar choice.

The Mormon limitation may be understandable, but is pretty constricting. The first two names that came to my mind don’t seem to apply. The first is Washington State’s Mike Leach, who is Mormon and allegedly looking for greener pastures. But from what I’ve been able to gather, he’s… lost his temple recommend. The other, Steve Kragthorpe, is a former head coach at Tulsa and Louisville whose father was a BYU coach (and Kragthorpe is a Mormon name). Turns out, the “health problems” I remember him having that lead to him backing away from a coordinator job was Parkinsons. And he apparently left the church at some point anyway.

So now what? In addition to the Mormon limitation, BYU is a tricky job and I am pretty sure that’s a big part of why Mendenhall left. Going independent in football was a good move in some respects. They got a good TV deal worth good money and rebroadcast rights. They aren’t stuck in a conference with San Jose State and midnight games in Hawaii. But from a coach’s perspective, it has its problems.

The biggest is that it puts the team in a box. If Navy goes undefeated, they almost get invited to a New Years Six bowl game. If BYU goes undefeated, they might get that invite but it’s far from clear. There is no provision for independents. They could get an at-large bid, but only if their schedule warrants it. Unfortunately, scheduling as an independent is tough and BYU has had pretty limited success in getting games against marquee opponents. They’re doing the best they can, but after the first few weeks most programs are playing conference games and they have to go out of their way to schedule BYU. It’s so tough that even Notre Dame had to enter a scheduling agreement with their non-FB conference (BYU’s non-FB conference, the West Coast Conference, doesn’t sponsor football). By and large, their schedule is more analogous to that of an ambitious G5 program (like Boise State) than that of a power player.

Added to that, being without a conference means they have to make their own bowl arrangements. Which means that on any given year, as soon as they are bowl eligible they know where they are playing around Christmas. There are no conference or division races to look forward to. There are no conference championship games to look forward to. Win six, go to a mid-tier bowl, year in and year out. That’s their life now.

I can understand why that would dampen the enthusiasm of a coach to what is otherwise a very attractive program that draws crowds of 60,000 a game, has great television exposure, and with the exception of their conference and schedule situation are a power program. But that conference and schedule situation…

Given the dearth of Mormon candidates, maybe the impact this time around is limited. They need to start evaluating their options, though, and that means more than waiting for the P5 conference invite they are due but are not apparently going to be recieving any time soon. They left the Mountain West for a couple of reasons, one of which was the conference’s TV contract. The MWC’s new TV contract is better, and given that both the MWC and BYU contracts are handled by ESPN there may be some wiggle room. The second is the conference’s loss of prestige after the other major programs (TCU and Utah) left or were leaving. There is no easy solution to that one.

They could, at least, attempt to bolster their schedule by entering into a scheduling arrangement with one of the top two G5 conferences, the Mountain West Conference and the American Athletic Conference. The upper crest of each would probably be happy to play home-and-homes with BYU and their conference offices would probably be glad to accommodate. They should even be able to get in on their bowl packages. The Mountain West Conference is right in their regional blueprint, but there may be bad blood there (there certainly was when they left, but we may be at the bygones stage) that they don’t have with the American Athletic Conference. Either way, it should be something to consider.

It could all be moot in a few years. If the Big 12 gets raided again, BYU would be a candidate (though from what I’ve heard, the conference is more likely to expand further eastward). The American Athletic Conference could try another westward push (more on this later). The Pac-12 could get raided in a western push by the Big Ten and need to restock. But none of these are things to be relied upon. None seem especially likely, and only the first is even on the radar. But if their next coach is successful, and they want to keep him, they may have to donate almost all of the extra proceeds from their TV contract to make it happen.


Category: Theater

Turnin’ Up The Volume


dailynews

The “God Isn’t Fixing This” headline barely raised an eyebrow for me because it was mostly the highest-profile example of targeting pro-gun politicians who offered thoughts and prayers.

Tagging the NRA head as a terrorist is kind of old hat. And coming off the heels of the God headline, I shrugged.

I suppose it’s getting more and more difficult to get attention. Which is about the only explanation I can offer for why they would run a piece trying to equivocate between Syed Farook and one of his (hard right) victims.

Whether I link to it or not (you can click on it below), I suppose the fact that I wrote a post about the New York Daily News makes this a success?


Category: Newsroom

In Which @adamgurri Tweets About Trust [Updated]


UPDATE: Adam Gurri informs me that he extrapolated these tweets into a post:

Increasingly I’ve come to believe that trust is the most important aspect of faith in this respect. How is coordination and cooperation among millions of strangers possible? A widespread trust. How are we able to learn anything? By trusting in certain authorities and in the authority of certain sources. How has science advanced? By creating specialized communities of inquiry who trust each other enough to learn from each other, and develop standards of evidence that they believe will be employed in good faith.

What you believe is, I think, much less a factor of your theoretical pre-commitments, or your religion, or your politics, than of who you trust. Indeed, your pre-commitments, religion, and politics are largely determined by a combination of who you trusted in the first place and your own judgment.


Category: Coffeehouse

Linkluster Million Hindi Speakers


hailsatanJeffrey Taylor of Salon says “Hooray for Satan and Satanists!”

Eitan Hersh explains how Democrats suppress the vote! Okay, the headline is hyperbolic, to say the least, but off-schedule elections aren’t just for Republicans! (Neither is trying to disqualify potential voters by making voting more difficult, which you sometimes see Democrats do in districts with military bases.)

At some point the conversation seems to be shifting (according to some) from “An enduring Democratic majority is inevitable” to “an enduring Republican majority will be illegitimate.”

Freddie wants the Democrats to move beyond the Coalition of the Cool. I understand where he’s coming from ideologically, but tactically it seems to have worked pretty well.

Ardis E Parshall explains (sympathetically) the Mormon policy on children of gay parents.

Sarah Conly explains how China’s recently terminated One Child Policy was a good thing. Leaving aside the central question, I’m not sure how you can separate the enforcement mechanisms (which Conly opposes) with the policy itself.

Relatedly, we’ve recently discovered the best chance of life outside our solar system.

With the Fifth of November come and gone. Bradley J Birzer writes about how V for Vendetta represents the graphic novel at its best.

Karan Mahajan looks at the history of Asian America.

Katie Herzog reports on the decline of the alpaca in the US. Only tangential since they’re two different things, but one of the things I miss about the west is the llamas.

No more free rides for some gay couples.

Scott Sumner believes we owe Texas our thanks. Norway, on the other hand, thinks that “Texas” is shorthand for crazy.

Barbara McClay hates tipping. PEG dissents.

The perils of being casual about sex and serious about consent.

Relatedly, Rebecca Traister argues that we need to be talking about the ways that consensual sex can be bad.

Bjorn Lomborg thinks we’re focusing too much on wind power.


Category: Newsroom