New York, Philly and Papelbon
If you have been living under a rock or don’t a rat’s ass about sports or baseball, this week New York City hosted the Major League Baseball All Star Game. They are knocking down Yankee Stadium after this season, so it was a pretty big deal. The All Star trams are made up of what some people call the “best” of the 2 leagues. New York City hates Boston and all their teams, so of course they hate the All Stars from the Red Sox.
This year they had a little parade down 5th Avenue for the All Stars, which is a neat idea, you get to see all the most popular players for free, which is pretty rare. Unfortunately, one pitcher, Jonathan Papelbon and his pregnant wife got the brunt of New Yorkers feelings for Boston, him and, I am sure, his soon to be born kid. They spit at him, screamed at him and yelled stuff that would probably make a trucker blush.
Why? Just because he was a Red Sox pitcher? Well, he also had the gaul to say he should have been put in sooner then another Yankee pitcher. And that was all.
Michael Wilbon on ESPN’s Pardon The Interruption said that Papelbon should not have taken his wife. But he is missing the bigger picture: why is NYC not being held accountable for booing every person who was not a Met or a Yankee? They booed Chase Utley (who amusingly responded to his buddy Dan Uggla “Boo? Fuck you!”), they booed everyone. No one said a word, not the commentators, not the color commentators, not other press, nobody. It seems that New Yorkers get a pass to be nasty, rude, and mean (they were chanting “Heroin! Heroin!” to Josh Hamilton, the Rangers player who came back to major league ball after a huge drug addiction. That’s cold.).
Why does NYC get a pass? Because they are “the best city in the world”? Does having the official scent of your city be urine make it ok to treat people like dogs? If this would have happened anywhere else, and specifically Philly, the papers, the internet, the tv sports news, would be all over it. “Philistines!” they would have called Philadelphia sports fans. There would have been calls for fines, it would have been major talk on sports shows, it would have been in all the papers. BUt since it’s NYC, ohhhh it must be ok.
Let me set the record straight. So we threw snowballs at Santa? So what? Every city has drunken fans who do stupid things. For example: Cleveland Brown fans showered the field and thier quarterback with beer bottles. Nice huh? But it was in the news and in the media. New York City sports fans make what is a really cool event into something really embarrassing and no one says a word.
I am getting really tired of this New York City ass kissing by the media. Yankees this, Mets that and on and on about Eli and the Giants. Even about Eli’s dad Archie. Archie was a bad quarterback on an awful 70’s era Tampa Bay Buccaneers team. Come on! There are quality sports stories all over the world but the leading ones? A-Rod’s divorce. When Chase Utley was batting in the home run challenge, they split screened it and did an interview with giant asshat David Wright. Disrespectful to the highest degree. When did ESPN become the “we heart NYC” channel? Whatever happened to impartiality in news reporting?
New York sports fans should get just as much bad press as everyone else. Just because you live there does not give you a free pass to be giant douchebags on worldwide television.
Why The GRE Is Bullshit
When you are considering going to college, you have to take the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) to make sure you can read big words and do higher level math. No one in particular is good at both parts of this test, as most people are either left or right brained, and skew to one side or another. This test isn’t particularly needed, mostly because not everyone tests correctly and other things show how well rounded of a student you really are anyway. The GRE is the graduate school equivalent of the SAT and there could not be a more unneeded test in the history of man.
After going to a 4 year college and getting your degree, you might work a little bit and realize working sucks and decide to go back to school to get your Master’s degree in whatever strikes your fancy. “I had pretty good grades and I want to further my study in whatever”. So you sit own at your computer and do a little research to find out how to apply. To your horror you find out you have to take the Grad school SAT’s: The GRE.
The GRE consists of a verbal and math section, sound familiar? “But why would I have to take a test like this when I proved I can do college level work by graduating from a 4 year institution?”. This would be because The Educational Testing Service (ETS, which also runs the GMAT (a business grad school test, LSAT (the Law School SAT) and other medieval tests) has a stranglehold on admissions to Graduate School.
What makes no sense is this: Grad School is subject specific. You won’t be taking math classes if you are a History major, and you won’t be taking an English lit class if you are a Math or Physics major. So, what is the point of making a potential Graduate student try to figure out how to do math that they have not done since sophomore year in undergrad.
Another serious flaw in the GRE is that they do not account for learning disabilities. You either do a section or do not and get a zero in that section (which works beautifully in your score average). So instead of putting a note in the score, saying that the test taker is excused from that section due to a learning disability, they just get screwed. In fact, this is keeping me from attending Grad School.
I sent the ETS people an email asking if this is indeed the case and this is what they sent me back:
Regarding your inquiry:
Candidates who take the computer-based GRE® General Test may exit out of individual sections of the test or quit the test during the testing session. However, please understand the implications of exiting a section or quitting the test. Once you exit a section, you cannot return to that section. If you quit the test, you will not receive a score for any section, even for those sections you have already completed.
If you click on “Section Exit” or “Test Quit” by mistake, you will be given the opportunity to reverse or confirm your decision.
If you answer no questions at all in a section (Verbal, Quantitative, or Analytical Writing), that section will be reported as a No Score (NS).
There are only a handful of programs that do not demand GRE (or GMAT) scores. Most of these programs are art of film schools. All the rest of the Graduate School programs are sniveling lackey’s to the ETS people. Shouldn’t Grad School admissions work more on past history, work and life experience and grades? Along with an interview? How much money does ETS make every year from fees, and how exactly does that help higher education?
The answer is: it doesn’t.
The GRE is a test to make ETS cash.
It only helps people who test well.
The ETS people discriminate against people the Learning Disorders.
The Return
Ok, I know the name is Modern Day Slacker, but I think I went above and beyond the name.
After some crazy months, wordpress problems and some serious laziness, I am back to chew on tv, sports, music and anything else that might catch my eye.
So come back soooon!
-nick
