AdamSmith

Looking more & more a bit of a nut case. The public ridicule may be what brings him down, or has already done.

Does he have a severance payment clause? If so, wonder if six months is how long they figure it will take them to find a way to void it?

Was just "suspended without pay for six months": http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2015/02/nbc-news-brian-williams-suspended-without-pay-202425.html?ml=tl_1_b

What an Ed Wood.

Yes!!

Health Experts Recommend Standing Up At Desk, Leaving Office, Never Coming Back News in Brief • health • fitness • Lifestyle • ISSUE 51•05 • Feb 6, 2015 ROCHESTER, MN—In an effort to help working individuals improve their fitness and well-being, experts at the Mayo Clinic issued a new set of health guidelines Thursday recommending that Americans stand up at their desk, leave their office, and never return. “Many Americans spend a minimum of eight hours per day sitting in an office, but we observed significant physical and mental health benefits in subjects after just one instance of standing up, walking out the door, and never coming back to their place of work again,” said researcher Claudine Sparks, who explained that those who implemented the practice in their lives reported an improvement in mood and reduced stress that lasted for the remainder of the day, and which appeared to persist even into subsequent weeks. “We encourage Americans to experiment with stretching their legs by strolling across their office and leaving all their responsibilities behind forever just one time to see how much better they feel. People tend to become more productive, motivated, and happy almost immediately. We found that you can also really get the blood flowing by pairing this activity with hurling your staff ID across the parking lot.” Sparks added that Americans could maximize positive effects by using their lunch break to walk until nothing looks familiar anymore and your old life is a distant memory. http://www.theonion.com/articles/health-experts-recommend-standing-up-at-desk-leavi,37957/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_campaign=LinkPreview:2:Default

That word 'yet' is truly alarming. Geoengineering should not be used as a climate fix yet, says US science academy That extreme planet-hacking fixes for climate change have become a future possibility is a wake up call to reduce emissions now, say top US scientists ‘The likelihood of eventually considering last-ditch efforts to address damage from climate change grows with every year of inaction on emissions control,’ says US National Academy of Science report. Photograph: ISS/NASA Suzanne Goldenberg @suzyjiThe Guardian Tuesday 10 February 2015 11.12 EST Climate change has advanced so rapidly that the time has come to look at options for a planetary-scale intervention, the National Academy of Science said on Tuesday. But it was categorical that such ‘geoengineering’ should not currently be deployed at scale or considered as an alternative to cutting emissions now. The much-anticipated report from the country’s top scientists strongly endorsed the idea of further research into a topic it admitted had once been taboo: proposed high-tech fixes for climate change. Cutting the carbon pollution that causes climate change was still the main solution, the scientists said, but they conceded they could see the day when desperate governments would turn to geoengineering. “That scientists are even considering technological interventions should be a wake-up call that we need to do more now to reduce emissions, which is the most effective, least risky way to combat climate change,” Marcia McNutt, the committee chair and former director of the US Geological Survey, said. “But the longer we wait, the more likely it will become that we will need to deploy some forms of carbon dioxide removal to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.” The two-volume report, produced over 18 months by a team of 16 scientists, was far more guarded than a similar British exercise five years ago which called for an immediate injection of funds to begin research on climate-altering interventions. But the two US reports – Climate Intervention: Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration and Climate Intervention: Reflecting Sunlight to Cool the Earth – could boost research efforts at a limited scale. Bill Gates, among others, argues the technology, which is still confined to computer models, has enormous potential and he has funded research at Harvard. The report said scientific research agencies should begin carrying out co-ordinated research. But geoengineering remains extremely risky and relying on a planetary hack – instead of cutting carbon dioxide emissions – is “irresponsible and irrational”, the report said. Rafe Pomerantz, a climate official in the Clinton administration said: “The hostility has diminished a lot about the need to research. It has made it more politically possible for the academy to come out like this. The atmosphere has changed.” The shift was prompted by the growing awareness that the climate measures in the pipeline to date will fall far short of keeping the world within the 2C limit for avoiding dangerous climate change, Pomerantz said. “There is no risk-free path here,” he said. “The question is: do we need this to help us manage the risks while we are reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? That is the question and nobody knows whether we have a tool or not.” The scientists looked at two broad planetary-scale technological fixes for climate change: sucking carbon dioxide emissions out of the atmosphere, or carbon dioxide removal, and increasing the amount of sunlight reflected away from the earth and back into space, or albedo modification. But even with such technologies on the horizon it was far better to fight climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded. The report also warned that offering the promise of a quick fix to climate change through planet hacking could discourage efforts to cut the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. “The message is that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is by far the preferable way of addressing the problem,” said Raymond Pierrehumbert, a University of Chicago climate scientist, who served on the committee writing the report. “Dimming the sun by increasing the earth’s reflectivity shouldn’t be viewed as a cheap substitute for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. It is a very poor and distant third, fourth, or even fifth choice. |It is way down on the list of things you want to do.” But geoengineering has now landed on the list. Climate change was advancing so rapidly a climate emergency – such as widespread crop failure – might propel governments into trying such large-scale interventions. “The likelihood of eventually considering last-ditch efforts to address damage from climate change grows with every year of inaction on emissions control,” the report said. If that was the case, it was far better to be prepared for the eventualities by carrying out research now. The report gave a cautious go-ahead to technologies to suck carbon dioxide out of the air, finding them generally low-risk – although they were prohibitively expensive. The report discounted the idea of seeding the ocean with iron filings to create plankton blooms that absorb carbon dioxide. But it suggested carbon-sucking technologies could be considered as part of a portfolio of responses to fight climate change. Carbon-sucking technologies, such as these ‘artificial forests’, could in future be considered to fight climate change - but reducing carbon dioxide emissions now is by far the preferable way of addressing the problem. Photograph: Guardian It would involve capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and pumping it underground at high pressure – similar to technology that is only now being tested at a small number of coal plants. Sucking carbon dioxide out of the air is much more challenging than capturing it from a power plant – which is already prohibitively expensive, the report said. But it still had a place. “I think there is a good case that eventually this might have to be part of the arsenal of weapons we use against climate change,” said Michael Oppenheimer, a climate scientist at Princeton University, who was not involved with the report. The other, far more riskier planetary-scale climate interventions involves proposals to increase the amount of sunlight reflected back into space by injecting sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere to increase the amount of reflective particles. But the report expressed deep misgivings about tinkering with the reflectivity of the atmosphere on a planetary scale. “Albedo modification techniques mask the effects of greenhouse warming; they do not reduce greenhouse gas concentrations,” the report said. The two technologies have very different downsides, said Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist at Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology and a geoengineering pioneer. “The primary concern about carbon dioxide removal is how much does it cost,” he said. “There are no sort of novel, global existential dilemmas that are raised. The main aim of the research is to make it more affordable, and to make sure it is environmentally acceptable.” In the case of albedo reflection, however, the issue is risk. “A lot of those ideas are relatively cheap,” he said. “The question isn’t about direct cost. The question is, What bad stuff is going to happen?” There are fears such interventions could lead to unintended consequences that are even worse than climate change – widespread crop failure and famine, clashes between countries over who controls the skies. But Caldeira, who was on the committee, argued that it made sense to study those consequences now. “If there are real show stoppers and it is not going to work, it would be good to know that in advance and take it off the table, so people don’t do something rash in an emergency situation,” he said. Spraying sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere could lower temperatures – at least according to computer models and real-life experiences following major volcanic eruptions. But the cooling would be temporary and the risks enormous, the report said. The interventions would do nothing to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are in the atmosphere – but merely mask some of the symptoms. It would do nothing to right ocean chemistry, which was thrown off kilter by absorbing those emissions. “My view of albedo modification is that it is like taking pain killers when you need surgery for cancer,” said Pierrehumbert. “It’s ignoring the problem. The problem is still growing though and it is going to come back and get you.” Dr Matthew Watson, reader in Natural Hazards at the University of Bristol and who was the lead scientist on a UK geoengineering project that was cancelled due to a perceived conflict of interest, said: “This latest report builds on previous discussion and captures a centrist position that many scientists and publics will feel comfortable with. It highlights the need for careful, engaged and holistic thinking and strongly echoes the messages of UK researchers from the recent Royal Society meeting in London.” http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/10/geoengineering-should-not-be-used-as-a-climate-fix-yet-says-us-science-academy

For our New England friends...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=HxDdtq2fImw

We can hope!

A classic industry expression, no doubt. Never heard it put better!

OK, gay in only the broadest sense. Still -- oboy! Mel Brooks hints at Spaceballs sequel to spoof new Star Wars The director of the cult 1987 Star Wars parody film has spoken about making Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/11399104/Mel-Brooks-hints-at-Spaceballs-sequel.html

Well taken. Probably fair to include the price of high-value gifts in calculating "fee" for this poll. Sort of the same way a monetary tip could be included in "fee" totals? What do people think?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/dc/supreme-court-tip-hand-gay-marriage http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/gay-marriage-alabama-clarence-thomas-antonin-scalia-115042.html?hp=lc1_4

A new project. Centireading force: why reading a book 100 times is a great idea Author and columnist Stephen Marche, who has perused PG Wodehouse and Hamlet more than 100 times each, extols the virtues of literary repetition Pelham Grenville Wodehouse: 100 not out. Photograph: F. Roy Kemp/Getty Images The Guardian Monday 9 February 2015 16.13 EST Stephen Marche I have read two books more than a 100 times, for different motives and with different consequences. Hamlet I read a 100 times for my dissertation, The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Wodehouse a 100 times for comfort. The experience is distinct from all other kinds of reading. I’m calling it centireading. I read Hamlet a 100 times because of Anthony Hopkins. He once mentioned, in an interview with Backstage magazine, that he typically reads his scripts over a 100 times, which gives him “a tremendous sense of ease and the power of confidence” over the material. I was writing a good chunk of my doctoral dissertation on Hamlet and I needed all the sense of ease and power of confidence I could muster. My supervisor, during my doctorate, which was at the University of Toronto, was a man named Sandy Leggatt, one of those rare scholars – I met very few in my sojourn among them – for whom exposure to the texts under investigation was a virtue in itself. He actually liked to read even though it was his job. He was one of the best-read people I ever met, but he was certainly the best-reread person. He would regularly do things like reread all the Greek comedies, for instance, just so he knew them. When we collectively decided that I was going to work on early modern tragedy, he brightened and informed me that there were only about 200 of them, so I would be able to read them all. That took me about a year. There were a lot of duds. There were a lot of great surprises, too. But by the time I decided to read Hamlet a hundred times it seemed comparatively easy. At least I knew I was going to be reading one of the good ones for two or three months. The main effect of reading Hamlet a 100 times was, counter-intuitively, that it lost its sense of cliche. “To be or not to be” is the Stairway to Heaven of theatre; it settles over the crowd like a slightly funky blanket knitted by a favorite aunt. Eventually, if you read Hamlet often enough, every soliloquy takes on that same familiarity. And so “To be or not to be” resumes its natural place in the play, as just another speech. Which renders its power and its beauty of a piece with the rest of the work. My centireading of The Inimitable Jeeves was less intentional. At the age of 40, my father picked up the whole family to start a PhD in semantics at the London School of Economics. For that year, I attended a public school in Cambridge, enduring all the alienation that a chubby boy who had never called anyone “sir” and possessed an “American accent” (I am Canadian) could reasonably expect. Fortunately that year, 1987, the UK government banned corporal punishment in the English school system. That was about the only good news about school for me that year. Every Sunday, my family would load ourselves into a car – my father, my mother, my kid brother and I – and drive out more or less randomly to see what England had to offer. In western Canada where I grew up, it had been perfectly standard to cross three or four hours of prairie to visit a relative for lunch. From Cambridge, an hour in any direction would land us in a church from the reign of Queen Anne, unspeakably ancient to our new world eyes, or some grand estate, the luxury of the residence always offset by the cheapness of its gift shops, always reeking of scones and plastic guidebooks, or the ruin of some abbey, the stuff of mossy legends. During these trips, in the tiny English car, we would listen to cassettes of The Inimitable Jeeves, read by Jonathan Cecil. The psychology of my love for The Inimitable Jeeves isn’t exactly hard to understand. As we rolled through that strange country, laughing at the English with the English, the family was both inside and outside. My associations with The Inimitable Jeeves are as powerful as they could possibly be, a fused sense of family unity and childhood adventure. The book is so much more than just a happy childhood memory. In such ways, books pick us, rather than the other way around. The more I’ve read The Inimitable Jeeves, the more inappropriate my theories about it have grown. Famously, George Orwell described Wodehouse as “a political innocent” in his defence of Wodehouse’s brief collaboration with his German captors in the second world war. But The Inimitable Jeeves is deeply political, at least after you read it a hundred times. At its core is the relationship between Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, a perfect encapsulation of the absurdity of the class system – Wooster, the master, is an idiot, while Jeeves, the servant, is a genius. The upper classes are ruthlessly mocked in the Wooster novels, as they aren’t in say, the Blandings novels. At one point in The Inimitable Jeeves we learn that the head of “the noblest family in England” is under the impression that he is a canary. When Bingo Little is hired as a tutor by the Glossop family, Bertie fails to see how that’s possible, until he remembers that Bingo “did get a degree of sorts at Oxford, and I suppose you can always fool some of the people some of the time”. I have thought of this line every single time I have met someone with a degree from Oxford. Not only is The Inimitable Jeeves political, it is politically effective. One may continue to believe in the breeding of the English aristocracy after reading Marx. Not after reading about the Drones club. The class satire of The Inimitable Jeeves is balanced by a complex counter-satire, as well. The class system is absurd, yes, but attempts to reject the class system, whether through violent overthrow, as proposed by the Brothers of the Red Dawn, or the novels about romance between lords and factory girls, as written by Rosie M Banks, are even more absurd. The way of the world is stupid; the attempt at change ends up being even stupider. As political visions of the 20th century go, you could do worse. Many did. I understand that The Inimitable Jeeves was not intended to be read this way. I am overreading, obviously, probably crazily. There is a definite affinity between centireading and madness – the assassins clutching their copies of Catcher in the Rye, the cults of various kinds poring over their various testaments. I remember a friend’s mother, returning from an extended stay at a mental health institution, who owned a copy of Cocteau’s Les Enfants Terribles which she had read so many times that every last word had been underlined. It reminded me of my own relationship to Hamlet. Eventually, no passage is unworthy of highlight. But what is it in these books that has even made it possible for me to read them a hundred times? It’s not necessarily the quality. The Inimitable Jeeves does not contain the best Wodehouse story. That is either Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend, which Rudyard Kipling called “the perfect short story” or Uncle Fred Flits By collected in Young Men in Spats. But there are no dull moments in The Inimitable Jeeves, no bad parts. Each plot is a novelty, without a trace of laziness. There is not a single weak verb in the entire book. It’s not just that Hamlet is a great piece of literature, either. It’s that every scene is a great piece of literature. The hits just keep rolling out one after the other after the other: Hamlet with his mother in the bedroom, then Hamlet going mad while pretending to be crazy, then Ophelia singing bawdy songs around Elsinore. If there were a pause, I would pause. I wouldn’t keep reading. But there isn’t a pause. So I keep reading. In both books, dense narrative tensions are never fully resolved – this, too, may explain part of their centireading appeal. Hamlet is funny even though it’s a play about madness and death. The “comic relief” everybody teaches students isn’t relief at all; it runs through the whole thing like fat in good steak. Hamlet himself is hilarious; every second line is a joke. He’s more or less a standup comedian who has taken the death of his dad as the theme of a four-hour set. The world of The Inimitable Jeeves is supposedly an ideal world, bracketed between “a slight friction threatening in the Balkans” and “disturbing news from lower Silesia.” But there are serious questions: why do Bertie and Jeeves love each other? Why can’t they talk about it? After a hundred reads, familiarity with the text verges on memorisation – the sensation of the words passing over the eyes like cud through the fourth stomach of a cow. Centireading belongs to the extreme of reader experience, the ultramarathon of the bookish, but it’s not that uncommon. To a certain type of reader, exposure at the right moment to Anne of Green Gables or Pride and Prejudice or Sherlock Holmes or Dune can almost guarantee centireading. Christmas is devoted to reading books we all know perfectly well. The children want to hear the one story they have heard so many times they don’t need to hear it again. By the time you read something more than a hundred times, you’ve passed well beyond “knowing how it turns out”. The next sentence is known before the sentence you’re reading is finished. As I reread Hamlet now, I know as Gertrude says, “Why seems it so with thee?” that Hamlet will say “Seems, Madam? Nay it is. I know not seems.” I know as Bertie asks “What are the chances of a cobra biting Harold, Jeeves?” that Jeeves will answer: “Slight, I should imagine, sir. And in such an event, knowing the boy as intimately as I do, my anxiety would be entirely for the snake.” Centireading reveals a pleasure peculiar to text lurking underneath story and language and even understanding. Part of the attraction of centireading is that it provides the physical activity of reading without the mental acuity usually required. I don’t read Hamlet or The Inimitable Jeeves much any more. I’m rationing them. There may come a point when I need the cool glamour of Hamlet; no doubt life will provide me with many more instances in which I again require the comforting intervention of The Inimitable Jeeves. And I’m not sure whether millireading works. http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/feb/09/centireading-force-reading-book-100-times-great-idea

NBC’s outsized Tom Brokaw factor As Brian Williams flounders, his powerful predecessor stays neutral. By Mike Allen politico.com 2/9/15 8:31 AM EST Updated 2/9/15 12:10 PM EST With America’s #1 newscast at stake, NBC Universal CEO Steve Burke held a meeting with NBC News executives at his house yesterday to discuss the next steps in the Brian Williams crisis. Williams still hopes to survive, and is considering the timing and venue for his next apology. But his cancellation yesterday of an appearance on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” scheduled for Thursday, was a sign that the agony – for Williams and the network – may be prolonged. A potent background voice in these high-stakes deliberations is Tom Brokaw, Williams’s predecessor in the “Nightly News” chair from 1982 to 2004, and one of the country’s most respected voices, period. “Tom makes his views known at all levels of the organization – corporate on down,” said a network executive who has worked closely with both Brokaw and Williams. “Tom was surprised by a lot of the things Brian has said, and has become increasingly critical through the years.” In November, President Obama awarded Brokaw the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his career, including his bestselling “The Greatest Generation,” saluting World War II veterans. Behind the South Dakota native’s everyman appeal, Brokaw is an adroit internal politician with a keen understanding of power. Brokaw, who turned 75 last week, has the title of “special correspondent,” but wields internal and public power far beyond his on-air role, because of his celebrity and moral authority, and his relationships with top executives of NBC and its parent, Comcast. One NBC veteran said: “Tom is seen as the wise counsel, and what he says goes a long way. He’s not shy about making his opinion known about these things.” Brokaw, who has always had wary relations with Williams, issued a statement last week that many took as chilly, expressing no support for his successor, but simply saying that Williams’s future “is up to Brian and NBC News executives.”’ Brokaw elaborated in an email to Playbook: “There is a process underway, and I didn't want to impose myself on to it. This is a very serious issue that must be resolved on the facts. All this endless speculation is unfair to all involved.” The NBC veteran said: “There is no love lost between those two. It’s always been a very awkward relationship. Brian has always felt very threatened by Tom, and acts very strangely around Tom. Brian wants to make sure he’s out front, and Tom is not in the way.” “Brian always feels the need to embellish,” the NBC veteran said. “He has always been known for telling stories dramatically, and he’s known for making any story about him.” But the bluster had always seemed more like a quirk than a time bomb. “It was more people eye-rolling: ‘That’s Brian,’” the NBC veteran said. Friends of Williams were initially mystified, and have become irritated, by the lack of support for the anchor by NBC News and Comcast. He is the face of the news division — a priceless asset — and these friends feel he has been hung out to dry, which has encouraged insiders to assume the worst and outsiders to pile on. But the lack of support is partly Brian’s fault, according to some colleagues. “A lot of people have been very loyal to Brian over the years, but he doesn’t jump in when other people need help,” said one person who has long known him. “He is not a stick-out-his-neck person.” Brokaw is said by friends to be very upset about the controversy. “It’s a horrible mark on NBC, and reflects badly on everyone,” said one friend. The network executive described Brokaw as “the moral center and conscience of NBC News – the glue, the ballast, the backbone, the GPS.” Brokaw helped lead NBC out of its darkest time – the scandal over a 1992 “Dateline NBC” report with a rigged truck explosion – and took over “Meet the Press” after Tim Russert’s death. Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/02/tom-brokaw-brian-williams-lies-115012.html#ixzz3RHOUM1bz

I can work with that.

Legendary UNC coach Dean Smith dies at 83 By Chip Alexander calexander@newsobserver.com The News & Observer | February 8, 2015 Updated 37 minutes ago UNC coach Dean Smith comes out of his seat on the bench as he calls a play in the 1996-97. SCOTT SHARPE — 1996 News & Observer file photo Former North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith, who had a Hall of Fame career, was beloved by his players and became one of the nation’s most revered sports figures, died Saturday evening in Chapel Hill, according to a statement released by the university. Smith, who had been in declining health the past few years, was 83. “Coach Dean Smith passed away peacefully the evening of February 7 at his home in Chapel Hill, and surrounded by his wife and five children,” the Smith family said in a statement. “We are grateful for all the thoughts and prayers, and appreciate the continued respect for our privacy as arrangements are made available to the public. Thank you.” Smith retired in October 1997 as the winningest men’s basketball coach in NCAA Division I history, having passed former Kentucky coach Adolph Rupp. That distinction now is held by Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, who remembered Smith on Sunday as a coach, teacher and role model for his players. “I am incredibly saddened to hear of the passing of coach Dean Smith.” Krzyzewski said in a statement. “We have lost a man who cannot be replaced. He was one of a kind and the sport of basketball lost one of its true pillars. “Dean possessed one of the greatest basketball minds, and was a magnificent teacher and tactician. While building an elite program at North Carolina, he was clearly ahead of his time in dealing with social issues,” he said. “However, his greatest gift was his unique ability to teach what it takes to become a good man. That was easy for him to do because he was a great man himself.” UNC coach Roy Williams once was an assistant on Smith’s staff. With Smith’s urging, Williams left to be the head coach at Kansas. Later, Smith helped coax Williams back to UNC, where Williams continued to rely on Smith’s advice and guidance. “As sad as I am, I also feel very blessed because he was such a great influence on me,” Williams said Sunday. “I cannot imagine anyone being a better influence than coach Smith. I just cannot imagine that. So even in times like this when you’re really sad, and I’ve been sad the last few years not having him in the same shape and form that I’d had before, you got to feel very blessed. “His whole thing was to do the best you could do, the absolute best you could do. Don’t leave any stone unturned. Do the absolute best you could do. And then live with it. ’Til I die, a lot of the things that I do will be from him. And that’s a pretty good legacy.” Smith, whose UNC teams won 13 ACC tournament championships and two NCAA titles, received many awards and accolades. He is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. He was selected national coach of the year four times and named the ACC coach of the year eight times. In 2013, Smith was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the nation’s highest civilian award – by President Barack Obama, although Smith was unable to attend the ceremony in Washington. “America lost not just a coaching legend but a gentleman and a citizen,” Obama said Sunday in a statement. “When he retired, Dean Smith had won more games than any other college basketball coach in history. He went to 11 Final Fours, won two national titles, and reared a generation of players who went on to even better things elsewhere, including a young man named Michael Jordan – and all of us from Chicago are thankful for that. “But more importantly, Coach Smith showed us something that I’ve seen again and again on the court – that basketball can tell us a lot more about who you are than a jump shot alone ever could.” Despite all his success, and there was much success, Smith was more than a coach. He took boys and molded them into basketball players, took basketball players and molded them into men. He was their coach at UNC but also a mentor. He was a father figure. He was a friend. He was the one they could they call on, rely on, confide in throughout their lives, in good times and bad. Smith had suffered in recent years from what his family said was a neurocognitive disorder that affected his memory. It was a degenerative condition, and it saddened all who knew him, knew of Smith’s legendary recall, his ability to remember names and discuss moments and details long forgotten by others. Competitive fire Adored by North Carolina fans, Smith never seemed comfortable with that adoration. He could be a modest man, speaking softly, his eyes always reading you, deflecting praise. At courtside, during basketball games, however, Smith’s competitive fire always burned brightly, if just below the surface. He was determined to beat you, and so often did. In 1961, UNC needed a coach who could change the course and improve the image of a once-glowing basketball program that had darkened under the specter of a point-shaving scandal and NCAA investigation. Smith, a little-known 30-year-old Tar Heels assistant – chosen amid howls of protest from fans wanting a high-profile replacement for Frank McGuire – came to the rescue. “It took about five minutes for me to hire him,” then-Chancellor William Aycock once said. Aycock, who was impressed with Smith’s character and teaching skills, added, “I wasn’t very popular for a while. I’ve never seen anything work out any better.” Smith established “The System” and built a dynasty during the next 36 years. He guided UNC to two national championships, 11 Final Fours, won 879 games, and graduated more than 96 percent of his players. He guided the 1976 U.S. Olympic team to the gold medal and was enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1983. On March 15, 1997, Smith broke Rupp’s record for victories with the Tar Heels’ 73-56 NCAA tournament win against Colorado in Winston-Salem. He would coach only three more games, with UNC losing to Arizona in the 1997 Final Four, before retiring. Smith announced his retirement on Oct. 9, 1997, just days before the start of what would have been his 37th season as head coach. The announcement shook the sports world and beyond, even drawing a comment from then-President Bill Clinton. Longtime assistant Bill Guthridge was promoted to head coach. It was Smith’s players, however, who most appreciated who he was and what he did. “Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than coach Smith,” Michael Jordan said in a statement. “He was more than a coach – he was my mentor, my teacher, my second father.” A trying start Dr. James Naismith invented basketball, but few left a greater imprint on the game than Smith, whose innovations and ideas were copied by coaches from recreation leagues to the NBA. His program was hailed as the model, and the success of his teams helped keep the ACC in the forefront of college basketball. It also compelled other conference schools to get better. Smith’s record cast him as a bigger-than-life figure, but he was more than a coach who mastered X’s and O’s and orchestrated shrewd game strategy. Smith was a faithful Baptist with a keen interest in theology, and an avid Democrat who took strong stands on social issues, never considering whether they were popular. For example, he unabashedly supported integration during the turbulent civil rights movement. “He saw everybody as a person of value,’’ said the late John Lotz, who was a UNC assistant and close friend. Smith’s first few years as head coach were trying. School officials had de-emphasized basketball because of the gambling outbreak at several universities – including N.C. State. There were recruiting restrictions and a reduced schedule, making it difficult to attract elite players. When the team returned to campus after one lopsided loss, there was a dummy of Smith hanging in effigy. It was a devastating blow and also ironic for a coach whose picture one day would hang in the Hall of Fame. Remaining steadfast and quietly persevering, Smith made the needed breakthrough in recruiting in 1965, landing 6-foot-11 Rusty Clark from Fayetteville. Later, he signed eventual two-time ACC Player of the Year Larry Miller in a head-to-head battle with Duke’s Vic Bubas, and the Carolina basketball program never lacked top talent after that. The ‘tired’ signal While a plethora of stars can sometimes create conflict, Smith instilled the team concept. His mandate always was play hard, play together and play smart, which he stressed in one of his several books. Individualism was taboo, unselfishness a Tar Heels trademark. All-Americans such as Michael Jordan, James Worthy, Sam Perkins and Phil Ford, players who could have won scoring titles, embraced Smith’s team-above-self philosophy. His system was complex. The offense was balanced with a premium on percentage shots, one reason his teams hit 50 percent or better 32 of the 36 years. It also featured the famed Four Corners delay game and multiple, changing defenses including the run-and-jump and scramble that were designed to disrupt opponents’ rhythm – and often did. Smith also created the “tired” signal, having a player raise his hand when fatigued. If that happened, the player got a breather but could go back in the game whenever he chose. Practices, closed sessions with a classroom atmosphere, were organized, detailed and timed to the second. Water breaks were brief. No loitering. No loafing. No nonsense. While demanding precision, Smith never used profanity – “that’s something I can control,” he always said. But he would occasionally elevate his twangy, Midwestern voice to the highest decibel to stress a point. “I yelled at players,” he confessed. “In practice, not in public.” Preparation was paramount to him, and no teams were better schooled on how to cope with every game situation than his. “He was the most organized coach I ever played against,” Bobby Cremins, who faced Smith as a player at South Carolina and later as a coach at Georgia Tech, once said. “He had a great system and had it down pat. You had to be really prepared to play North Carolina.” Smith the innovator also was Smith the motivator. But he didn’t give rah-rah pep talks. He typically explained what they needed to do to win and the significance of the moment. Once at Maryland, however, he did promise to sing “Amen” – the Terps’ late-game theme song – if the Tar Heels beat Lefty Driesell’s team. North Carolina won and Smith fulfilled his vocal promise, but according to reports, he would not have won the “American Idol” title. “He was not much as a singer,” recalled guard Ged Doughton. Intense rivalries North Carolina’s success during Smith’s tenure fueled intense rivalries, especially with N.C. State in the electric era of coach Norm Sloan, a fiery, tenacious competitor. Before one meeting, Smith – accompanied by Lotz – confronted Sloan in the basement of Reynolds Coliseum about comments the Wolfpack coach had made before a game regarding officiating. Sloan snapped back with “Your locker room’s down there” and pointed Smith in the opposite direction. Everybody wanted to beat Smith, and several took him on head-on and temporarily wrested the power from his Tar Heels. Sloan’s teams led by superstar David Thompson defeated UNC nine times in a row and won a national title in 1974. Krzyzewski later became an icon at Duke and won two of his four national crowns in 1991 and ’92. N.C. State’s Jim Valvano ruled in 1983, beating North Carolina in the ACC tournament and going on to win an NCAA crown in fairy tale fashion. When current Texas coach Rick Barnes was at Clemson, he challenged Smith verbally at midcourt during an ACC tournament game and upset the Tar Heels that night. “Dean did a great job of not getting personal, but he had some of those coaches he was really glad to beat. He really did a great job keeping his cool,” Guthridge once said. Smith endured, managing the stress with equanimity. After all the challenges, he came back to reign in the ACC again before retiring at age 66. Though producing a perennial power, Smith’s failure to win a national title in his first six trips to the Final Four provoked frustration among UNC loyalists. When North Carolina lost to Marquette in the 1977 NCAA final, Smith drew strident criticism for slowing the game’s pace after UNC had rallied to tie Al McGuire’s Warriors. In 1982, his seventh Final Four appearance, the Tar Heels won the elusive NCAA title with a 63-62 victory against Georgetown that was sealed by Jordan’s memorable, swishing jumper from the left wing. While that victory filled the only remaining void in Smith’s resume, he told Roy Williams – then a Tar Heels assistant coach – that he wasn’t any better of a coach after winning the title than he had been hours before the championship game. Eleven years later, in 1993, there would be another national crown featuring Donald Williams, George Lynch, Derrick Phelps and Eric Montross. Winning close ones In the final moments of close games, Smith’s teams most often found a way to protect the lead or come back and win. As an opposing coach once noted, the “last two minutes against North Carolina seemed like an eternity,” with Smith calling timeouts and making moves like a chess champion. One of the more memorable moments came in March 1974 when the Tar Heels wiped out an eight-point deficit against Duke in the final 17 seconds and won in overtime. Winning the close ones wasn’t magic. It was the result of meticulous planning, special-situation practice, players who could make plays, and the infusion of confidence Smith ingrained in them. “I remember in every timeout, he told us who to cover, where to cover, and everything he said happened the way he said it would,” former Tar Heels All-America and NBA all-star Bobby Jones once said. Guard Phil Ford drew on Smith’s poise under pressure. “It would be a really tight game, and you’d run over to the bench and he’d be cool and calm,” Ford once said. “He calmed me down.” More than all the victories, more than all the titles and coach-of-the-year plaques, Smith valued his players most and made all of them feel important. Star or sub, he treated them fairly, established a lasting rapport, and developed what became known as the “Carolina Family.” Always available While they were playing, before each practice, he gave them a “thought for the day,” which might be a passage from the Bible or a quotation relating to pertinent life issues. Throughout the years, he remained in contact with them, writing them notes at Christmas and sending media guides. When they called or sought his advice, he was always available for a friendly visit or to offer counsel. Smith’s profound interest in his players’ well-being hit home to Doughton on a bus ride back to Chapel Hill from Raleigh on Black Sunday, the afternoon a heavily favored UNC team lost to Penn in a first-round NCAA regional game. “It was my last game, and I was sitting in the back of the bus,” Doughton later recalled. “I saw coach Smith walking toward me. He said: ‘Ged, call the office tomorrow. Let’s sit down and talk about the rest of your life.’ “He was as competitive as anybody I ever met and obviously disappointed. I was not one of the better players, yet he took time to be thinking about me.” Smith also was famous for his elephantine memory. His ability to remember people’s names is legendary. He had vivid recall of what was written in the newspapers, and at news conferences he wasn’t shy about pointing out certain comments in print. He had a winsome way with the media, though. In the era before newspapers paid their own expenses, Smith invited area writers to travel on the team charter when seats were available. However, there was a pecking order, a plane plan. Players always boarded first, and reporters got on last. Smith also treated the media covering his Tar Heels at the 1971 National Invitation Tournament in New York to dinner at Mama Leone’s. His commitment to building a championship program strained his marriage, however. He divorced his first wife, Ann Cleavinger, in 1973. They had three children. In 1976 he married Linnea Weblemoe, and they had two children. In recent years, Smith had been too infirm to be interviewed about the academic scandal involving fake classes that is now gripping the university. A university-commissioned report by former federal prosecutor Kenneth Wainstein found the scandal began during Smith’s final years as a coach. Wainstein’s report said Debby Crowder, an academic department administrative manager, began offering to athletes independent studies that had no faculty involvement in 1993. Crowder, an avid UNC basketball fan, was responding to pressure from the athletes’ tutoring program to make independent studies less rigorous. No evidence surfaced showing Smith knew about the scheme. Crowder did not begin converting classes advertised as lecture-style into no-shows until 1999, two years after Smith retired, the Wainstein report found. A coach’s son Dean Edwards Smith was born Feb. 28, 1931, in Emporia, Kan., the son of a teacher and high school coach. He grew up with sister Joanne Ewing in a religious, academic and athletic environment that helped shape his beliefs and commitment to excellence. About 5-10 and 160 pounds, Smith played guard in basketball, catcher in baseball and quarterback in football at Topeka High. After a stellar high school career, he went to Kansas on an academic scholarship and played freshman football and baseball. In basketball, he earned three letters and was a reserve on the Jayhawks’ 1952 national title team. Smith knew the game and liked the X’s and O’s, as might be expected of a coach’s son. After graduating with a degree in math, he served as an assistant coach at his alma mater, then joined the Air Force and played and coached basketball in Germany. Later he spent three years on the basketball staff at the Air Force Academy, and also coached baseball and golf for one year. Golf would be a lifelong passion. UNC’s Frank McGuire hired him as an assistant in 1958 and three years later, when McGuire left amid an NCAA storm, Smith was named head coach. That McGuire – who could have picked from dozens of standout assistants at that time – hired Smith was a ringing endorsement of his coaching ability, Aycock said then. McGuire relied on his assistants for much of the X&O facets of the game. Aycock said he also was convinced Smith would teach players lessons for life as well as how to win basketball games. Strong convictions Raised in a Christian home with devout parents, Smith had a strong faith and was a long-time, active member of Binkley Baptist Church in Chapel Hill. Smith read extensively about theology, believed all people were created equal and valued each person with that attitude. Two books – “Beyond Ourselves” and an interpretation of the New Testament his sister gave him – heightened his spiritual growth during that low moment when he was hung in effigy. “His faith helped give him perspective,” Ewing said several years ago. Smith had strong convictions and wasn’t afraid to take a stand publicly. For example, he supported the call for a nuclear freeze, signed a petition against the death penalty and worked hard for racial equality in Chapel Hill and throughout the state. When All-America player Charlie Scott, an African American, made a recruiting visit to UNC, Smith took him to his predominantly white church on Sunday. In retirement, Smith remained an activist, speaking out against the lottery and working with his wife, Linnea, on various community projects. He also played golf and maintained an office in the basement of the arena bearing his name. When invited, he would watch Tar Heels teams practice and admitted that was when he missed coaching the most. Bigger-than-life figure For many years he shared his knowledge of the game with former players who became coaches and also produced several instructional tapes, on the point zone and scramble defense. Even as players went on to their own successes, Smith remained a bigger-than-life figure. Former guard Buzz Peterson likes to tell a story about visiting Jordan, his UNC roommate, when Jordan was the NBA’s megastar and winning championships for the Chicago Bulls. The two were in Jordan’s car, cruising around Chicago, talking about “coach Smith” and how they used to get upset about something as players and decide they would go in to see Smith – together, of course. Once in front of “coach,” once under his gaze, the cockiness was gone, the grievances forgotten and they soon were back on their way, having apologized for taking up too much of his time. So here they were, in Chicago, and Jordan was telling Peterson that times had changed, that he now was a huge basketball figure on his own and now in fact even called his old coach “Dean.” Peterson said Jordan reached for his car phone, calling Chapel Hill. Smith’s administrative assistant, Linda Woods, answered as always and Jordan quickly made small talk and said he needed to speak to “Dean,” smiling at Peterson as he said it. Soon, Smith was on the line. Peterson watched and listened. Jordan’s voice, so strong and decisive, all MJ, soon lowered to a near whisper, his tone almost apologetic as he told “coach” he hoped everything was OK in Chapel Hill and, well, he was sorry for taking up too much time and would hang up now. Such was the reverence, the respect, for “coach Smith.” Smith is survived by his wife, Linnea, and their daughters, Kristen and Kelly; and daughters Sharon and Sandy, and a son, Scott, from his marriage to his first wife, Ann; sister, Joan Ewing; seven grandchildren; and a great-granddaughter. “Sometimes the word ‘legend’ is used with too little thought. In this instance, it almost seems inadequate,” ACC Commissioner John Swofford, a former athletics director at UNC, said Sunday in a statement. “He was basketball royalty, and we have lost one of the greats in Dean Smith.” http://www.newsobserver.com/2015/02/08/4540165_former-unc-coach-dean-smith-died.html?rh=1

Impact of quiet revolutionary Dean Smith only began on basketball court Legendary North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith died Saturday at 83 More than a hoop legend, Smith played key role in desegregating Chapel Hill He also protested the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons and the death penalty Dean Smith, who coached Michael Jordan to a national championship in 1982, died Saturday at 83. Photograph: Pool/AP Kevin B Blackistone The Guardian | Sunday 8 February 2015 19.20 EST A couple of summers before four students from all-black North Carolina A&T made an international stir by sitting at a whites-only Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina, in direct challenge of America’s racist and often violent apartheid system known as Jim Crow, a fresh young, white assistant basketball coach in nearby Chapel Hill named Dean Smith walked into a well-known restaurant in that city’s downtown with the pastor of his church, and one of that church’s black theology students. It wasn’t an accident. As the pastor, Rev. Robert Seymour, recounted to sportswriter John Feinstein in Feinstein’s 2011 book One on One: “Shortly after Dean arrived in Chapel Hill as [North Carolina head coach] Frank McGuire’s assistant … [seymour] and Dean had gotten into a conversation about segregation. The two men agreed it was wrong and decided to try to do something about it.” “The manager looked through the door and saw that we were there,” Seymour recalled in a 2013 profile of Smith on the university’s website: “There was a look of consternation, but the door finally opened and we were served like everybody else.” It was being written Sunday upon news of Smith’s death at 83, following a long fight with Alzheimer’s, that he retired in 1997 after coaching the North Carolina men’s basketball team for 36 seasons with a Division I-record 879 victories, two of which were national championships. But Smith’s biggest wins were of hearts and minds. Sports in America are often lauded beyond their due as instruments of racial and social change. For example, Jackie Robinson is celebrated as a seminal figure in eroding barriers for people of color hoping to realize the American Dream. But his moment followed two key court decisions, an executive order and the birth of a key civil rights group, the Congress of Racial Equality, all of which precipitated dominoes to fall. The whitewashing of Robinson’s story by Major League Baseball, in which mainstream media remains complicit, also overlooks that baseball was integrated in it’s infancy until its white organizers colluded to adopt racial segregationist practices of the post-reconstruction South and ban any men of African origin from participating in its games. But Smith was often ahead of times that would change, and never less than being in lock step. Indeed, knocking down that door for black people in Chapel Hill was neither his first revolutionary act, nor his last. Last May, on the 60th anniversary of the landmark desegregation case, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, a plaque was dedicated at Topeka High School honoring Smith, one of its graduates. Smith wasn’t recognized for his athletic exploits. Instead, he was honored for suggesting as a student that the school integrate its basketball team rather than having one for whites and one for blacks. The school acceded to Smith’s suggestion a year after he graduated. In 2013, President Obama honored Smith with the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He cited in particular Smith’s most famous blow against racial injustice, joining the desegregation of basketball in the South’s favorite and famed college basketball conference, the Atlantic Coast Conference, which encompassed the old slave states of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. There was a top recruit in the country in 1966 named Charlie Scott. He was a black New York City native who was spending his senior high school year at North Carolina’s Laurinburg Institute. He was expected to accept a scholarship from coach Lefty Driesell at Davidson College in Davidson, North Carolina, until he soured after being denied service because of his skin color at a North Carolina eatery. Upon hearing the news, the Laurinburg headmaster called Smith and asked if he could pave Scott’s way. Smith said he’d try. “Dean Smith wanted the best basketball players he could get, but he also wanted to break the color bar,” Daniel Pollitt, a civil liberties lawyer who was a faculty advisor for North Carolina’s NAACP chapter, told the Southern Oral History Project. Smith was the antithesis to Adolph Rupp and Bear Bryant, the most legendary of Southern college coaches whose team’s whiteness were preserved into the end of 1960s and start of the 1970s. He was the antithesis of coaches who even today shun all manner of political activism for fear of offending a financial booster of their team or losing a teenaged recruit because his or her parents might feel otherwise. Scott became a two-time All-America at North Carolina, and led it to the Final Four in 1968 and 1969, before graduating to an All-Star professional basketball career. “What he [smith] did more than anything else was to give me someone to look at in a different skin color that I could accept and see that everyone was not like the bigots, or like the racists,” Scott said in an August 2013 interview with the Raleigh News & Observer. In later years, Smith stepped beyond racial politics to protest the Vietnam War, proliferation of nuclear weapons and the morality of the death penalty. Refreshingly, Smith never said he was driven to do what he did by the dismissive catchphrase of today: political correctness. Instead, what he did, he said, was merely what he thought was the right thing to do. http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2015/feb/08/impact-of-quiet-revolutionary-dean-smith-only-began-on-basketball-court