Athletic talent and loss Oct 29, 2018
Athletic talent tends to filter up.  The best athletes in middle school get invited to play for the best traveling teams.  The best athletes from those teams get selected to play at the best private high schools.  The best athletes from those schools get signed to play at the best colleges.  But then the system breaks down.  The best athletes in college get drafted by the worst professional teams because of the lottery system. 

Something I've been noticing for a while now is that good athletes don't know how to lose.  You'll have an athlete who's won state championships in high school and national championships in college, but then lose their first several or dozen games with their professional team.  They literally haven't lost since they were children.  As much as it's a good thing to select for talent and success, I feel like it sometimes hurts the process when a person never experiences losing. #sports
Millennial ghosting Oct 25, 2018
Millennials get blamed for everything, and it's unfair.  But there's this thing called "ghosting" which is when you cut off all contact with a person without telling them a reason.  This is apparently a thing millennials do. 

So at my job, we go through booms and busts, and we've recently been under a hiring freeze.  That freeze was lifted, and we looked for some people to fill some positions.  I work in a pretty specific industry that requires some pretty specific skills, so there aren't a lot of qualified applicants.  But we finally managed to find a few and gave job offers to two of them.  One of them accepted and started a few months ago.  The other accepted, but then we lost contact with him.  Emails and phone calls went unanswered.  The dude ghosted us. 

Ghosting isn't even a thing.  It's a lack of a thing.  It's a temporary method of avoiding an uncomfortable situation.  Instead of calling or emailing to tell an employer, "Oh hey actually I got a better offer from someone else, so thanks but sorry" you just ignore the problem and go on your way like nothing happened.  Guess what?  That employer selected you over other applicants.  They spent time and energy and money trying to employ you, and you can bet your ass you'll never get that courtesy from them again.  Grow the fuck up.  An entire population is criticizing your generation for being lazy and entitled, and you interact with them by being lazy and entitled.  Be an adult.  Stop ghosting. #sociology
Midwives Oct 25, 2018
I mentioned the midwives a few times in my birth post, and I wanted to elaborate on them a bit. 

Midwives seem to me to be simply women who have some experience with childbirth.  They're sort of like older, wiser tribeswomen with experience doing the thing you're nervous about.  They have a lot of experiential knowledge, and tend to have practical suggestions for things.  Their methods tend to be less scientifically rigorous than I'd like, but sometimes you don't need proof to know that a certain treatment works for some people sometimes. 

We went with midwives (certified nurse midwives, to be exact) instead of the traditional ob-gyn doctor route because Wendy felt more comfortable with them in general.  The doctors were a little too clinical for her tastes, and she wanted more of a say in the actual birth process than a doctor would've allowed.  Specifically she wanted the option of doing a water birth and possibly a home birth, which doctors typically aren't on board with.  Also she didn't want a needle in her back. 

My initial opinion of the midwife-sanctioned home birth was not positive.  What if something goes wrong?  What if they need to do emergency surgery?  What if the umbilical cord is wrapped around the baby's neck or the baby gets stuck in the birth canal or the mother's blood pressure drops too low while delivering?  There are like a billion legitimate reasons to not do a home birth. 

But the midwives have a simple and interesting philosophy:  Childbirth is a very natural process.  The baby will come out of you whether you want it to or not.  Yes it can be dangerous and deadly at times, but humans have been giving birth to babies since before we were technically humans.  Nothing that happens during a childbirth is too much for a woman to handle.  If it was, none of us would be here. 

Modern medical practices have reduced infant and mother mortality by a ton, but some doctors are a little trigger happy.  The rate of C-sections isn't uniform across the board; it depends what hospital you go to, or what state or country.  A lot of the treatments during childbirth are linked to statistics:  If you're not progressing at a certain rate by a certain time, they induce or cut you open.  Also, by inducing childbirth with drugs or procedures, you're short-circuiting the body's ability to produce oxytocin and other chemicals that further help the process and reduce pain.  I'm 100% not an expert on this stuff, so I'm a little out of my element, but the general outline makes some sense to me. 

The midwives' guiding principle is that it's all about atmosphere.  So everything they do, from using a tub, to talking quietly, to having calm lights and sounds, is to relax the person giving birth.  There's no rush, as long as the labor is progressing at a medically reasonable rate (they measure mother's and baby's heart rate).  The cervix is a sphincter, and that type of body part tends to tense up in stressful situations.  So anything that can relax that muscle will allow the mother to relax, which will make the process begin and go smoothly.  They mentioned an anecdote that many women start their labor on the toilet, because that's one of the few times they're alone and in a quiet environment.  Wild animals tend to find a quiet, secluded place to give birth.  Humans should be no different. 

Even before the birth process and after the baby came out, their principles stay the same:  Just relax about the whole thing.  Still take it seriously, and do blood tests when necessary, and measure pulse and weight and whatnot.  But just relax.  I really like that entire worldview. #lifestyle
Social progress Oct 23, 2018
I like this idea of a social progress index from a group called the Social Progress Imperative that measures overall human well-being: 
  1. Basic human needs
    1. Nutrition and basic medical care
    2. Water and sanitation
    3. Shelter
    4. Personal safety
  2. Foundations of well-being
    1. Access to basic knowledge
    2. Access to information and communications
    3. Health and wellness
    4. Environmental quality
  3. Opportunity
    1. Personal rights
    2. Personal freedom and choice
    3. Inclusiveness
    4. Access to advanced education
It's a cool idea to see how different countries and groups measure up against each other in terms of providing their populations with a set of basic human rights. #sociology
Good teams vs. great teams Oct 2, 2018
One thing I've noticed while watching hours upon hours of football is that great teams tend to do two things pretty consistently:  (1) continue to play the game or run the ball or juggle field position despite trailing the entire game, and (2) capitalize on the opposing team's mistakes while also minimizing their own.  These aren't easy things to do, which is why not all teams are great.  A lot of teams are good in the sense that they have good coaches and good players who make good plays, but they tend to break down over the course of a game or have a hit-or-miss feel.  Great teams are like boxers who wait out their opponent's initial flourish, then pounce in the final rounds.  A score on the opening drive doesn't guarantee a win, but a score on the final drive almost always does. #sports
Male contribution Oct 2, 2018
It's pretty remarkable how insignificant the male contribution to birth actually is.  Jim Gaffigan covered this pretty well in his standup special.  But really, aside from the initial part (sex), here's a list of things the male participant doesn't do: 
  1. Grow a fetus inside their body.
  2. Grow an additional organ (placenta) inside their body.
  3. Figure out how to use an organ they've never used before (uterus) to safely eject the fetus from their body.
  4. Feed a human with their body.
I knew I would be mostly on the sidelines for this, but honestly it's kind of embarrassing. #lifestyle