Scott Wilson RIP

I have had the privilege of knowing many astute and capable people in the course of my life. My best friend in high school went on to become the chief resident of ophthalmology at the Wilmer Eye Institute of Johns Hopkins University. He has been widely published and has pioneered techniques and equipment which has saved the vision of countless people. Right after high school I met my wife at the National Youth Science Camp. NYSC is chock full of brilliant people. As a Physics major in college, I met some remarkable people, both students and faculty. When we came to Dallas to work with SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics), we again met quite a number of outstanding people. I don’t think that there is an organization around like SIL which is larger with a higher percentage of PhDs. During our first several years in Dallas, we met a number of the boys at the Super Collider: all of them being remarkably intelligent. In my wanderings as a computer programmer, I have also met some really gifted people. However, even after rubbing elbows, and working, with so many distinguished folks, the first genuinely brilliant person I had as a friend outshines all the others. His name was Scott.

My family moved around a lot when I was growing up. I was never in the same elementary school for two full years. We moved to Wheaton IL in the second half my 5th grade year and there I met Scott Wilson. I never cared for school much, but I loved to play sports and, I was good at every athletic endeavor. Scott was not athletic at all. In fact, he was so bad that he got teased and shunned by some. I was small for my grade, and when I was new to a school, I was often picked last, but I liked that because my team would win. Even at that age, I knew that being bullied bothered some, like Scott, who were the target of a bully’s sharp tongue. He was my first “best friend.” We enjoyed playing strategy games together. I rode my bike over to his home countless times. The only time I’ve been hit by a car was when I was riding over to Scott’s home. I often think about him when I ride even now.

I could write a lot about Scott, but he was special. When we had a 6th grade research paper, he had a whole little box full of 3x5 cards with quotes, and bibliography. I did not write something so carefully until I got to my masters studies. Scott was brilliant and meticulous unlike anyone I’ve known compared to his peers. I’ve always thought that he would have made a great medical researcher. I’m sure he could have saved a lot of lives but he did not get the chance.

The summer when I was 13, my family took a two week vacation. When my family got back, Scott had died and was already buried. You see, he had Cystic Fibrosis. The adults all told me that Scott would not make it to his 20th birthday. However, when you are 13, 20 sounds like forever. I knew that he was sick, but not sick enough to die.

I’ve thought about him and the waste of human capital that is caused not just from Scott, but all of the kids who are born with CF. Kids today typically last a lot longer than Scott did, but still, the cost is enormous. Just earlier this year I found out that there are a series of CF fundraiser bike rides. Although I have not ridden my bike in two months, I will be doing the 60 mile ride in McKinney on October 13, Lord willing. It is a truly worthy cause that I have experienced first hand and I would like to be a small part of the solution.

Cystic fibrosis is a life-threatening genetic disease that affects approximately 30,000 children and adults in the United States. A defective gene causes the body to produce abnormally thick, sticky mucus. The abnormal mucus leads to chronic and life-threatening lung infections and impairs digestion. Currently there is no cure, and the median age of survival for a person with cystic fibrosis is 36.5 years.

The CF Foundation has consistently been recognized as one of the top voluntary health organizations in the country at efficiently using its money raised to invest in research and medical programs. By investing in the CF Foundation you are helping to fund the landmark research that will, one day, make a tremendous difference in the lives of those with the disease. With your help, we can give the children and adults with CF the quality of life and the future they deserve.

http://www.cff.org/LWC/JohnBaima

Just how good was Robert Griffin III in Week 1?

Just how good was Robert Griffin III’s rookie debut? Unbelievable. Really, what he did was just unbelievable. It goes without saying that he will not be able to play that well every week, and some of his peers will play better in the weeks to come, but that first week was just a dozy.

Never before have five rookie quarterbacks started. First, let’s review where the starting rookie quarterbacks were drafted.

Draft#	Name	Team
1	Andrew Luck	Indianapolis
2	Robert Griffin III	Washington
8	Ryan Tannehill	Miami Dolphins
22	Brandon Weeden	Cleveland Browns
75	Russell Wilson	Seattle Seahawks

The best evaluation of a quarterback is not the normal QB rating, but the “Real QB Rating” system. It is a lot more complicated, and if you want to ready about it, you can do it here.

So, how did the five rookies do? Here are their numbers. The “Rank” is how they faired compared to the 32 starting QB’s last weekend.

Rank	Team	Real QB Rating
2	Washington	124.44
28	Seattle	53.84
30	Indianapolis	42.25
31	Miami	36.13
32	Cleveland	6.94

Of the 32 QB’s last weekend, RGIII had the second best numbers of anyone, but he was playing an away game in arguably the most difficult venue, New Orleans. Without RGIII, the other 4 rookies filled 4 of the 5 lowest slots. That’s what we expect of rookies, even ones which will someday be excellent QBs. That’s why the vast majority of QBs coming out of college are backups for one or more seasons so that they can learn the systems and get the hang of the much faster NFL. We joke about this sometimes, but no college plays at the speed of the NFL. The NFL is truly in its own league.

Let’s look at last years draft and how those starters did. Here was the draft:

Draft#	Name	Team
1	Cam Newton	Carolina
8	Jake Locker	Tennessee
10	Blaine Gabbert	Jacksonville (not starter)
12	Christian Ponder	Minnesota
25	Andy Dalton	Cincinnati

Of those five, four were starters.

Rank	Team	Real QB Rating
17	Minnesota	83.61
19	Carolina	76.78
20	Tennessee	70.79
29	Cincinnati	50.60

The best of last year’s group did not make it into the top half of QBs. The places of the two years minus RGIII is:

17, 19, 20, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32

Again, none in the top half and they had a firm hold on the worst 5 performances last week.

Some have compared RGIII to Michael Vick. How did Vick do:

Michael Vick

27 Philadelphia 54.52

Humm. Outside of the rookie and 1 year vets, Michael Vick was the worst QB in the league. Maybe RGIII will have one week in his career that bad, but I seriously doubt it.

It will be interesting to see how RGIII does the rest of the year. Remember, the Redskins were 5-11 last year. The Saints were 13-3 and were (maybe still are) considered a legitimate contender for the Super Bowl. Outside of the Redskins NFC East opponents, the Saints were the strongest team they have to play this year.

If RGIII keeps doing anything like what he did last week, he will not be vying for Rookie of the Year, but MVP. The Redskins could go from 5-11 to 11-5 in one year by moving up in the draft, betting the farm on a rookie. It looks like a good bet now.

So, it may still make my head explode, but I will keep cheering for RGIII. Yikes, what has the world come to!

The GM Bailout

After the DNC, it seems like Obama is going to tout his GM bailout as the signature achievement of his administration. If you can stand it, take a look at the former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm. The only problem is that the bailout has been a disaster and the alternative would have been much better.

There were several possible outcomes from GM’s problems. The one Obama chose was to intervene before the normal bankruptcy reorganization was completed. First, the settlement originally cost tax payers about $65 billion dollars but because of some bad decisions, that price tag has increased by about $25 billion. That’s a lot of money.

The settlement imposed by Obama basically slaughtered all of the capital investors (the old GM stock was declared worthless) while the UAW got a gold plated deal. The 20,000 non-union workers at Delphi also got screwed and the Obama administration committed perjury about this to try to make themselves look good.

So, when Jennifer Granholm whines that no capital firm wanted to give GM money, including Bain, the answer should be, “No duh!” Who would be willing to invest in a company that will be nationalized by the government bypassing all of the normal legal protections with the result that you lose your money? The government can throw money away, but private firms are averse to throwing money away for some strange reason.

One the beneficial aspect of the normal bankruptcy process is that companies can get rid of loser contracts. Some of the bad contracts and subsidiaries were liquidated, but not all. One of the loser contracts was the labor contract with the UAW. Obama wanted to protect the UAW because they give him a lot of money and labor. Yes, in our current system, the government gives unions (or corporations!) money who then gleefully give money back to the politicians, not the tax payers. This is an inherently corrupt process, but that is a topic for another day.

There was another contract that GM needed to get rid of, and that was the European Opel division. To be blunt, that is one of the largest money pits ever. Without the government intervention by Obama, GM would have gotten rid of that. However, at the Obama appointed directors insistence, it was kept and that has cost another $25 billion and that gift has not quit giving. No one knows what the ultimate loss will be. Of course the people in Michigan know this, despite Governor Jennifer Granholm’s ridiculous speech.

Well, what would have happened if GM was allowed to go through the complete bankruptcy process? Would it have resulted in all of those jobs being lost like Granholm suggests? No. A judge would have restructured the contracts and given less to the UAW and more to the capital investors. After all, you cannot completely kill the current investors if you want new ones. After bankruptcy, it is possible that GM would have been able to function without any government bailout. Government bailouts to corporations just encourage them to act irresponsibly. It is possible, some would say inevitable, that GM would have needed a bailout anyway. Maybe, but what is certain with 20-20 hindsight is that it would not have been anywhere near as expensive, especially if they had successfully divested themselves of Opel.

What the Democrats fail to acknowledge in the GM case is that the price tag matters. If you could have achieved the positive result of making a large manufacturer viable again at a fraction of the cost, would not that have been better? Of course! When individuals evaluate a deal, they look at both the costs and the benefits. When liberals look at a deal, they first look at the intentions, and then if it goes well, they look at the results, but they rarely, if ever, consider the cost. In the real world where individuals live costs do matter.

So, who is right? Who had the foresight to predict what would be the least expensive alternative to helping GM? Was it Obama? He was the right choice if you are a UAW member. If you are a tax payer or someone with a private retirement account that had stock invested in GM (that was a lot of the investors), then the answer is an emphatic NO.

If the GM bailout was Obama’s signature achievement, then his time in the Whitehouse was a complete failure.