Power glower?

For the last decade we have been treated to "power poses" -- people doing full body gestures that supposedly boost their confidence -- based on spurious research that was challenged as far back as 2013. You all know that I'm against anything that encourages jackasses to behave with more jackassery, so this is an issue that cheeses me off. 

The idea, which came from a minuscule study (n=42), is this: If you stand in a power pose like a superhero for a period of time, you will gain the confidence that your body is demonstrating. For example, before a big job interview, you might stand like Superman in the elevator on the way up, arms akimbo, as if telling the villain that this evil ends right now. Then, full of confidence, you go in and wow everyone and get the job. 

Note how Marvin's power pose makes him look more manly.

But Scientific American took this theory on in 2013. In "The Dark Side of Power Posing," psych professor Jay Van Bavel wrote, 

If you are already lacking self-confidence, you might reason that the ends justify the means. Acting like a heartless jerk for a few minutes may be a small cost to pay for your dream job or a promotion, right? Although it is tempting to conclude that power posing might be a way to trick our nervous system into feeling powerful, research by Pablo Briñol, Richard Petty and Ben Wagner has shown that that this strategy might actually backfire among the people who need power the most. In a paper published prior to the power pose work described above, they examined the possibility that power posing might make people more confident in their own thoughts–even if those thoughts were negative! As predicted, Dr. Briñol and his colleagues found that power posing increased self-confidence, but only among participants who already had positive self-thoughts. In contrast, power posing had exactly the opposite effect on people who had negative self-thoughts. In fact, it actually decreased their self-confidence as potential professionals. In other words, power posing backfired among half the participants. 

I think it would decrease my self-confidence because I would feel like an idiot.

Here are a couple of other problems I've had with this whole business:

1) Superman can get away with standing in a power pose because he is freaking Superman. Meanwhile, in reality, people really getting into a fight don't stand around waiting to be pummeled. They adopt postures to attack or defend, not stand straight up like a punching bag, which is what they would become in short order.

2) It's mostly used after the fact by assholes to rub their opponents' noses in the dirt, not to show confidence in an event beforehand. Noted America-hater Megan Rapinoe, grown rich playing a child's game like so many other creeps, likes to use a "power pose" after scoring a goal, not before doing so, when it would be foolish. In a lot of other sports, perhaps even in women's soccer back in the seventies, such behavior would have earned her an elbow to the mouth. Part of the reason we have so much showboating in sports now is that the policing of this kind of behavior has been heavily penalized. I miss the days when a showboater could expect a pitch to the head, a poke in the eye, or a stick to the solar plexus. Nobody likes an asshole.   

So those are my thoughts, and I welcome your agreement or disagreement, but don't go making a silly pose before we argue, or I will take your picture and turn it into a meme. 

Soccer to ME?

Google keeps trying to make me care about the Women's World Cup. 

C'mon, c'mon...

Oh, dear!

I don't wish to be mean. Well, maybe I do, but not for the reasons it may seem. Let's go to the videotape and sort it out.

⚽ I don't have anything against women's sports. I like watching the women's events in the Olympics just fine, and not out of prurient interest. Women + sports = no problem.

⚽ And I don't want to burst the soccer ball even though I don't happen to like soccer. Soccer was considered a poor sport when I was a kid, something you might fall back on when all you had was a ball you couldn't throw. Even stickball required more equipment (i.e.: stick). And if you had a throwing ball and nothing else, you might play monkey in the middle. I'm saying, we never saw soccer on TV, our dads had no respect for the game, and it looked really boring.

⚽ Plus the clock moves in the wrong direction and the rules encourage faking injuries.

⚽ But I can appreciate that others may enjoy it. I've worked on some kids' books about Pelé and the World Cup, and I think it's fine. Go enjoy it. Many people enjoy many things that I don't understand, like wine tasting and rock climbing and Kabuki theater, and that's fine too. There are things I do understand but don't want to participate in, like gardening and chess and building intricate model train sets. And there are things that just leave me cold. Soccer is one such.

⚽ (I would like to add that it has been almost five years since I introduced my plan to fix all of soccer's problems, and FIFA has completed ignored me. Sad!)

⚽ And I understand that Google thinks everyone should be cool on World Cup because so many people love the game that billions of human beings will literally pull every hair out of their heads if their national team loses a squeaker.

⚽ And Google thinks women everything is great because Women!

⚽ And not out of prurient interest, Stiiv.

⚽ But Google doesn't address what's going to happen to women's sports when their progressive agenda leads to FIFA and the International Olympic Committee recognizing trans athletes -- men who play dressed as women -- who go on to wipe the floor with the actual women playing, as is happening in NCAA-sanctioned events now. However sincere these men are about becoming women, they've opened the door to future women's events being played entirely by men who couldn't make the cut in the men's events. So everyone who ever made fun of women's sports as being a crappy (rather than just different) version of men's sports will be justified in the end, because that's all it will be.

⚽ But that last point doesn't have anything to do with this year's Women's World Cup. I just don't like soccer. Still: USA! USA! USA! (Assuming they're in it.)

Okay, that's all the caring I have for today. I have to go lie down.

New Year's revolutions.

Resolutions failed you in the past? Want to start the year with something more potent? More awesome? More INSANE? Well, friend, give up on those New Year's resolutions and instead make some New Year's REVOLUTIONS!

Like this one!

Sounds good, doesn't it? But it doesn't always work out well. In fact, revolutions often turn out to be pretty bad.

For example, any revolution where the word "communist" can be applied automatically means "calculator-error-inducing body count." The Chinese Communists couldn't even have a cultural one without killing 1.5 million people. So I'm not even going to mention those. I mean mostly down-to-earth, everyday revolutions, like:

New England Revolution: This Major League Soccer franchise has been around since 1994 and has yet to win a league championship. In fact, Wikipedia tells us that "The Revolution hold the record for most losses in MLS cup games." They did win a U.S. Open Cup in 2007 but that's not the league championship and I don't know why they even have a stupid separate cup. Oh, yeah: Soccer.

"Revolution 9": The infamous mishmash of sound clips on the Beatles' white album is a clear indicator of a band that is running out of ideas -- and decides to put out a double album. The damn thing is eight minutes and twenty-two seconds of nothing but audio garbage. It probably resulted in more needle breaks in 1968 than any other record, as listeners leaped to their hi-fis to move the needle over this "song." Even guys butt-up high on dope couldn't listen to this. This is what happens when bands resort to "art." When something on an album sounds just as good played backward as forward, you know there's a problem. Bad revolution! Bad!

Makeup Revolution: London-based makeup outfit. Looks like all the other makeup to me. Maybe I'm not a good judge.

Revolution (NBC TV series): Failed after two seasons. The plot had to be resolved in a comic book. Which, to be fair, was more than FlashForward ever got.

Dance Dance Revolution: The perennial favorite video game has more lives than a disco kitty, but still overpromises its revolutionary effects. You dance around on pads and score points by... dancing? As Ask a Ninja put it some years ago, "How is that gonna prepare you for the dance floor of life? How about 'Death Death Revolution'? That is a challenge."

The Matrix Revolutions: With a tomatometer rating of 36%, probably better to just leave this one alone.

The French Revolution: I guess we need to address this one. Jacques Mallet du Pan said, “like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children,” and as we know the hungry guillotines of the French Revolution eventually developed a taste for its perpetrators. The 17,000 death sentences carried out in the reign of terror gave the rest of us a taste for what later revolutions could achieve (once we stuck Communist in them). This seems to be the pattern for most revolutions; a genuine oppressive grievance leads to armed revolt, death to a ruling class, and ultimately murder murder murder for everyone.

Why didn't this happen in the American Revolution? Some historians note that one difference is that ours was not really a revolution at all, in that the colonists were not trying to overthrow the crown and turn out Parliament, but rather wanted to get those characters to leave them alone. In that regard, instead of E Pluribus Unum or In God We Trust, perhaps our national motto might have been better served as Leave Me Alone. Which makes me think that the one kind of rebellion that doesn't turn on itself is the kind made up of people who wish to be left alone and are willing to extend the favor to their fellows.

Maybe that should be our New Year's Revolution: Live and let live. Not the worst slogan for a fresh start, I guess.

Happy new year!

Raise a cup to the 4th.

I don't see a lot of long faces moping around, miserable about the U.S. being eliminated from the World Cup thing. Most of the people I see around who have an interest in the sport are rooting for whatever hellhole they fled to come here, anyway. Thanks, guys. Your gratitude touches my heart.*

Meanwhile, one of Frank J.'s random thoughts yesterday sparked my imagination: "So, we didn’t win at soccer," he noted, "but we should console ourselves with the fact that it’s a really really stupid sport." To which I commented, "Do we really want to excel in a sport that rewards people for whining? No freakin’ way, cowboy!" I mean, really, a sport where people cry and overact like a Juilliard student on his first audition to get someone else penalized? What is this, an athletic endeavor or a meeting of the Kid Sisters' Association? You make real footballs depressed when you act this way.

Soccer used to be considered completely stupid in this country, barely worthy of contempt. In my high school I once saw a soccer game---an actual game, in season, in which a friend of mine from another school was playing---get moved off the field so that our football team could practice. And this was in New York City, not some Friday Night Lights town in Texas.

I think soccer's got some more respect here now, but it's got a long way to go. I was thinking that what might help is if we come up with a kind of intermediate game. Something that features the things that make soccer different that don't suck, and reworking or eliminating the things that suck like a sinkhole. Here are my thoughts:

Things We Can Live With

The whole you-can-only-kick thing. It's kind of like yellow to Green Lantern; it's a weakness that humanizes the superpower. So I think that's all right. You can't punch a tennis ball; you can't kick a bowling ball**; you can't throw a soccer ball. Okay.

Running around: Fine, but the field is so huge that it's all running and no scoring. Cut the area of the field down by a third.

Heading the ball: Whatever; it's your cranium. Just don't get handsy with that ball!

Things We Must Drop

The whining: A lot of the same penalties will by necessity be part of the game, but this yellow-card red-card crap based on the supposed severity of the offense is right out. This "screw the victim" attitude may be mean in criminal or civil court but it makes sports more efficient. A player caught trying to fake an injury will be subject to the "Geezinslaws Rule," wherein there is a large fine imposed for whining.

Wimpiness: Tackling will be added. Tackle all you want. Tackle anyone you want. Tackle all the time. You'll have to tackle, in fact, because...

Goalies: We're all proud of Tim Howard's work for Team USA, but goalies are un-American. (Hockey's a Canadian sport and you know it; don't give me a hard time.) You can't goaltend in basketball; in baseball the catcher's not even supposed to block the plate anymore***; in American football the whole defense is sort of a goalie but not really. Just shrink the goal. I figure a hole about twice the diameter of the soccer ball will do. You get it in there while the other guys are trying to clobber you, you earned that goal. The best defense is a good offense. The second-best defense is clobbering the guy with the ball.

Clock: I like the fact that the clock doesn't stop all the damn time as in American sports, but clocks in sports count down. Much more dramatic. And that's how you know when it's almost time to abandon your crap team and beat the traffic. Turn that sad clock face upside down, Pierre!

That should do for starters. Other ideas I have are Plexiglas walls to prevent balls from ever going out of bounds, two-point long-distance shots, and working in clubs or sticks somehow. Any of these might help. Start now and we can get this right for 2018.

And if not, at least we'll have a more American game. We could call it Americaball!

Happy Independence Day, everybody!

* Not necessarily looking at you, Belgian-American community; you could just be in the way.

** Well, you could kick a bowling ball, but you'd be sorry.

*** It's this kind of creeping Euroweenieness that will ruin American sports if we don't fix this soccer thing.