One can only speculate what British author C.S. Lewis, who spent his boyhood in rural Ireland a century ago, would think of todays WiFi-enabled home entertainment revolution.

Doubtless, the Christian apologist would be curious to see movie versions of The Chronicles of Narnia his best-selling mythic allegories grounded in virtues and sacraments on Disney Plus. The streaming service has two big-budget Narnia adaptations listed right between modern updates on Winnie the Pooh and Cinderella, with its Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo soundtrack.

Staunchly religious American families have long had a complicated relationship with The Walt Disney Company, as VidAngel founder Neal Harmon shared in a recent interview. After his company developed filtering technology to allow subscribers to sanitize streaming films and shows, Disney and other Hollywood studios promptly sued them. Litigation is ongoing.

Still, when asked what films sparked his creativity as a child, Harmon did not hesitate to name two titles featured on Disney Plus.

Entertainment shaped the way we saw the world, he said, having grown up on an Idaho farm with his three brothers. I remember watchingSwiss Family Robinson, then building treehouses in the trees behind our house. After watchingStar Wars, wed jump in the canals during a big snowstorm and pretend the Empire was coming to attack.

Others are less enthused by the Magic Kingdom and its wares. Due to religious or other values, they ardently avoid all things Disney, concerned aboutconsumerism, undertones of aprogressiveagenda, orcorporate values that conflict with their own.Biblically engaged believers freely admit that the gospel according to Disney has always been animated more by pixie dust and wishing stars than a loving God come to seek and save humanity.

Disney filmography has for decades provided many fascinating, imperfect reflections of American civil religion. On-screen stories of faith are rarely told with doctrinal orthodoxy or austere respect, which is also true of how most of the nation treats religion. Now with hundreds of past films one click away, it provides a window into the evolution of faith on-screen.

Particularly since the dawn of the 20th century, Judeo-Christian archetypes and imagery have stirred the American imagination, as reflected in the following 10 films on Disney Plus. This list concludes with five faith-conscious titles not yet released on the rising streaming service.

1. The Sound of Music (1965)

When top Hollywood director Robert Wise (West Side Story) took on the hit musical by theater team Rogers and Hammerstein, it was destined for greatness. Winner of five Academy Awards, The Sound of Music took liberties with the true story yet portrays religious aspects of the Catholic teachers love story and later flight from the Nazi regime during World War II.

2. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005)

Co-produced by Walden Media, the beloved fantasy classic came to life 15 years ago in this lavishly produced $180 million film. Disneys answer to Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, it stars A-list talent including Tilda Swinton, James McAvoy, and Liam Neeson. Although it veers from the source material at times, the Lion overall captures its redemptive essence.

3. The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)

Only two years following the sudden loss of Jim Henson at age 53, his son Brian Henson marshaled the Muppet performers and award-winning Rainbow Connection songwriter Paul Williams for a heartfelt comic adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Highlighting the conversion of Scrooge with laughs and overtly religious lyrics, many regard it as the best version of Dickens novel.

4. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)

Following last years devastating fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, many rewatched this animated reimagining of Victor Hugos 1831 novel. Given unprecedented access, Disney artists captured its sacred beauty. Following the release of kid-friendly The Lion King, Hunchback is decidedly more mature, pitting an oppressive judge against outcasts and a kindhearted priest.

5. Full-Court Miracle (2003)

While Disney Channel productions tend to avoid religion, this TV movie is a curious exception. Steeped in Jewish history and ending with the celebration of Hanukkah, it draws on the story of Judah Maccabee and his second-century BC revolt against Roman tyranny, using those events to inspire a current-day sports drama at a grade-school Hebrew academy in Philadelphia.

6. Millions (2004)

Director Danny Boyle (Yesterday) explores a humanistic version of Christian theology in this Fox Searchlight dramedy. Having recently lost his mother, a 7-year-old boy is obsessed with Catholic saints, and thinks it providential when a duffel bag stuffed with cash shows up. Even as Millions inspires through themes of sacrifice, parents should be aware of its PG-13 content.

7. Ruby Bridges (1998)

Recounting an important chapter in the civil rights movement, Ruby Bridges takes some inspiration from Norman Rockwells iconic painting. In 1960, a 6-year-old African-American girl was among the first to attend a newly integrated public school in New Orleans. Bridges and her family rely on their Christian faith to persevere in a film that quotes scripture throughout.

8. Pollyanna (1960)

Produced with great care and investment by Walt Disney himself, Pollyanna distills his vision of God and country in a narrative that draws on his childhood in small-town America. An orphaned girl who helps everyone around her see the bright side of life, Pollyanna influences even a local fire-and-brimstone preacher to shift his message to emphasize love and optimism.

9. The Small One (1978)

Years before he left Disney animation, writer and director Don Bluth (An American Tail) honed his craft on this musical story that imagines events adjacent to the Gospels Nativity accounts. When a peasant boy in first-century Judea gives up his beloved donkey to a carpenter and his pregnant wife, it means more than he couldve imagined.

10. Miracle at Midnight (1998)

Only a few years after Schindlers List, Disney partnered with mega-producer John Davis (The Blacklist) for a family-friendly dramatization of a little-known World War II story starring Sam Waterston (Law & Order). More than 7,000 Jews in Denmark are rescued in a courageous covert mission led by Christians and Jews acting in solidarity.

1. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)

Due to diminishing box-office returns, only three of the seven Chronicles were produced, including this story of the temptations Narnian royalty face when confronting their fears.

2. Selma, Lord, Selma (1999)

This biopic dramatizes the cataclysmic March 1965 events of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama, featuring Clifton Powell (Ray) as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

3. A Friendship in Vienna (1988)

During the late 1930s, two schoolgirls living in Vienna one Jewish, one the daughter of a Nazi sympathizer cannot make sense of how a changing society seeks to sunder their friendship.

4. Father Noahs Ark (1933)

While Disney Plus features more than 100 classic animated shorts, hundreds more remain unreleased, including this musical Silly Symphony adaptation based on the Genesis account.

5. A Man Called Peter (1955)

Hollywood leading man Richard Todd (The Sword and the Rose) portrays the journey of Peter Marshall from his boyhood in Scotland to being appointed U.S. Senate chaplain.

One can see moments depicting believers throughout the Disney canon from the Swiss Family Robinson pausing for prayer when they reach shore, to a funeral scene in Up, to Friar Tuck defending the downtrodden in Robin Hood. Such scenes resonate with people of faith, especially as popular entertainment increasingly shuns religious themes portrayed with sincerity.

Correction: The last film summary was updated to correctly identify the lead actor.

Josh Shepherd covers culture, faith, and public policy for several media outlets including The Stream. His articles have appeared in The Daily Signal, The Christian Post, Boundless, Providence Magazine, and Christian Headlines. A graduate of the University of Colorado, he previously worked on staff at The Heritage Foundation and Focus on the Family. Josh and his wife live in the Washington, D.C. area.

Read more:
10 Faith-Conscious Films On Disney Plus And 5 Still In The Vault - The Federalist

Once upon a time, yogurt occupied a thin sliver of the dairy aisle. Now its an entirely separate section of the grocery store. There are at least a dozen brands of plain yogurt, but wait! Theres more! Yogurt comes with fruit on the bottom, sprinkles on top, M&Ms mixed in, and almond butter swirled over. The choice is overwhelming, but its also what consumers have come to expect.

For many Americans, yogurt is a staple snack food. In other parts of the world, its a marinade, a dip, a base for a soup, a drink. Indians stir it with chickpea flour and turmeric to make a warming, bright yellow dish called kadhi. Persians use strained yogurt as an aromatic side dish called mast o khiar, with cucumbers, rose petals, raisins, herbs, and garlic. In Turkey and Lebanon, meat dumplings are bathed in a tangy yogurt sauce to make shish barak. In the US, in spite of all the years yogurt has been a fridge mainstay, were still stuck on fruit and granola. Go figure.

But despite the more narrow American views of yogurt, it has managed to occupy a unique role in the countrys food culture its evolution on grocery shelves has mirrored that of eating habits and cultural touchpoints. There have been distinct eras in yogurt tastes, from Greek to Icelandic to nondairy, and each one offers a glimpse into the ingredients, diets, and narratives people were buying into at the time. Sure, yogurt is just one product in a sea of groceries. But it tells a compelling, complete story about the American diet.

Yogurt showed up in America from Europe as early as the mid-20th century, in the wake of World War II. In Europe, it was a fridge staple meant for snacking or eating for breakfast plain, tart, and creamy, often adorned with some berries. In the US, though, it would be a while before yogurt achieved that same staple status.

The problem, says Frank Palantoni, who was vice president of marketing for Dannon from 1987 to 1991, is that in its pure, unsweetened form, yogurt tasted terrible to the American palate. Americans associated dairy products with ice cream and milkshakes, and therefore a lot of sugar. Everyone was brought up such that if it smells tart, you throw it away, he says. In the post-World War II era of rations and cans and boxed mixes and TV dinners, people had a predisposition for foods that were convenient, easily consumed, and often high in sugar. They didnt want to spend all day in the kitchen. They didnt care as much about splurging on higher quality ingredients.

Owing in part to a popular Dannon ad campaign from 1977 featuring older people saying the secret to their vitality was yogurt, Americans gradually began to regard it as a health food.

Dannons big breakthrough was fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt, released in the late 1980s, which was packaged as single-serve cups, and had the candy-like strawberry and blueberry flavors people were used to. In 1992, yogurt was being marketed to kids in the form of products like sprinkle-topped Sprinklins, which Palantoni helped pioneer. He says sugar wasnt as much of a concern for people back then. The thought was, kids run around, they need sugar, he says. The basic concept is that we are giving kids milk, and it is high protein, so if there is sugar it is okay.

Yogurt was marketed equally aggressively to women, because they were seen not only as the primary shoppers in the house, but also as diet-conscious. Advertisements showed women eating spoonfuls of yogurt at the spa bedecked in plush white robes, and ogling at a raspberry cheesecake before realizing excitedly that there was a raspberry cheesecake flavored yogurt. (Spoiler alert: It tastes nothing like raspberry cheesecake.)

As a result of all this, the yogurt business suddenly exploded. Everyone from kids to adults was eating it. Got Milk ads were in full swing, which only bolstered the appeal. In 1992, the yogurt market was valued at $1.135 billion.

A single word can define American dietary preferences of the early 2000s: protein. It was the magical nutrient that could keep you both satisfied and trim. Meal replacement bars suggesting they had enough protein to keep you full all day were getting big. Muscle Milk was a body-building staple. It was in this protein-obsessed environment that Greek yogurt a thick, strained version of the original was able to not just succeed but completely dominate the yogurt market.

There had been attempts at introducing Greek to the broader market. Palantini says Dannon introduced a product called Mini Moos around 1990 that was meant to be a high-protein snack for kids, but it tanked because it was marketed as fromage frais, or fresh cheese. Fage, with its ultra-thick Greek yogurt, was gaining popularity, but it was pricey, and it had a tart taste. Americans still loved sugar the protein shakes and protein bars were loaded with it.

The brand that was able to break through was Chobani, started by Hamdi Ulukaya, who came from a family of dairy farmers in Turkey. Chobanis offerings were affordable and had less sugar, but still enough to satisfy American tastes. But most importantly, Chobani pushed the protein messaging hard, and became seen as a healthier choice than all the other sugar-laden yogurt brands.

Because of the protein angle, Greek yogurt prompted advertising to finally shift away from focusing exclusively on women. The containers were now shaped like six-packs, the branding was black (because masculinity!), and the marketing sold it as post-gym fuel for bros a more all-natural version of protein powder, essentially.

Greek yogurt occupied 1 percent of the yogurt market in 2007; that jumped to 44 percent by 2013. Once Greek became accessibly priced and broadly distributed and people understood Greek means high protein, they snapped it up, says Peter McGuinness, president of Chobani. There was this total Greekwashing, with every major yogurt brand coming out with its own version of Greek yogurt.

Greek yogurt walked so all the other country-specific yogurts could run. Almost as soon as this once-foreign food became a hit, consumers started looking to see what else was out there. Suddenly, Icelandic, Australian, and French yogurts were crowding grocery aisles, marketing themselves as more curated choices for food lovers. This was at a time when food and restaurant culture was starting to feel more mainstream thanks to publications like Bon Apptit and Lucky Peach, and shows like No Reservations. Chefs like David Chang and Alice Waters were household names. People were traveling not just to see sights, but to eat specific dishes at famous restaurants.

Greek yogurt did a lot of educating people about the importance of protein so we didnt have to talk about those things, says John Heath, the chief innovation officer at Icelandic Provisions. We were focused on this X factor of having a story. Creating a premium product for someone who has a bit more of a food IQ and an appreciation for where the food comes from.

Greek yogurt walked so all the other country-specific yogurts could run

Icelandic yogurt, or skyr, was being sold alongside this Viking heritage of Iceland, and stories of heirloom yogurt cultures. In the 2010s, Iceland became a more popular place to travel and was ranked as home to some of the worlds happiest people. This destination was aspirational, Heath says.

Siggi Hilmarsson, who founded Siggis, another Icelandic-style yogurt, also marketed his product as more premium than Greek. But he decided to focus less on the narrative, and more on the lack of sugar an ingredient that was vilified in the media. With a tagline that promised more protein than sugar, while still offering customers familiar flavors like blueberry and vanilla, from 2013 to 2019, Siggis quickly caught the attention of mainstream grocers, trainers, and doctors.

The story was important, he says. But they were primarily buying into the narrative of, wow, I didnt realize there was this much sugar in yogurt in America. This brand is telling me there is something better.

Nondairy yogurt has existed since the 1990s, but it was long associated with a chalky, unpleasant texture, bitter taste, and loads of additives. A few years ago, the tide started to turn in two key ways: First, nondairy milk was becoming standard in coffee shops and in fridges, as people increasingly believed that dairy was bad for the environment, and that lactose was upsetting their digestive systems.

Second, the nondairy yogurt market finally had options that mimicked the creamy texture of yogurt and the rich, full flavor. Anitas Yogurt, started in 2013, offered yogurt made out of coconut milk. Kite Hill, founded in 2010, popularized almond milk yogurt. Liz Fisher started Lavva in 2018 after discovering that pili nuts became buttery and creamy once blended. Fisher and others started a movement toward branding their yogurt not as nondairy but as plant-based shifting the focus away from what their yogurt didnt have.

Most importantly, when it seemed like yogurt had been modified and flavored in every possible way, nondairy milk gave consumers even more choice, and even more permutations to try. For a lot of people, the appeal of nondairy wasnt necessarily that they wanted to stop consuming milk products. They just wanted to try something new, and the environmental and health-angled marketing made that decision feel even better.

Fisher says Lavvas sales are up 300 percent from last year. Brands like Chobani and Siggis have both released nondairy offerings. Still, Fisher adds, while health food grocers cant get enough of nondairy yogurt, the category is still not growing all that much among larger retailers.

They are focused on the percentage of the business that anchors the category, which is cows milk yogurt, she says. As popular as nondairy yogurt may seem to be, its not a replacement. Dairy yogurt is here to stay.

With dairy still occupying the lions share of the market, there are plenty more innovations to be had. Previously, every brand of dairy yogurt was putting out low-fat or fat-free offerings, to track with the steady concern of Americans with fats. Now, with the rise of low-carb, high-fat diets like ketogenic, and increased awareness of the idea of good versus bad fats, yogurt companies are now leaning into fat.

Theres Siggis triple-cream yogurt, Iceland Provisions whole milk yogurt, Chobani Greek yogurt with almond butter, and Peak, a product whose 17 percent milk fat is displayed right on the package. Its a full-circle moment: These companies are reclaiming the notion perpetuated so long ago by early companies like Dannon that yogurt could be an indulgence, and a legitimate replacement for dessert, while still being good for you.

With yogurt occupying more and more shelf space in grocery stores and tracking so closely with American diet habits companies are constantly trying to figure out whats going to be big in yogurt. Heath says Icelandic Provisions is making a big bet on cold brew, having recently released a coffee-flavored yogurt made with cold brew concentrate. Hilmarsson, meanwhile, believes the business will go the way of the Impossible Burger, and people will develop synthetic proteins that work in yogurt.

Palantini compares what has happened with American consumers and yogurt to what happened with wine. Americans have a very limited receptivity of their palate to new flavors, he says. But once given options, with different tastes and textures, you will eventually develop your palate and it will get more sophisticated. The variety in yogurt has made many people more adventurous eaters. As packed as the yogurt aisle seems, expect even more wide-ranging offerings in coming years. And that, he adds, is a good thing.

Support Voxs explanatory journalism

Every day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Voxs work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

Read the original here:
Chobani, Skyr, Dannon: How yogurt took over the dairy aisle - Vox.com

Philosophers are making some important and interesting contributions to the conversation about biological origins. Earlier today we saw that philosopher Subrena E. Smith registered a harsh critique of evolutionary psychology in the journal Biological Theory, even saying that evo psych explanations are impossible. Now, a new paper in the Italian philosophy journal Humana Mente, Residuals of Intelligent Design in Contemporary Theories about Language Nature and Origins, observes that the arguments of intelligent design proponents are applicable to many explanations of the origins of language. The authors are cognitive scientists at the University of Messina, and although the English translation isnt always easy to follow and some of their ideas about ID are both dated and heavily critical, the openness to taking ID seriously is clear.

First, the authors semi-accurately describe ID arguments, noting:

IDs current and general criticism not only to evolutionism but also to biological science is not that complex phenomena cant be explained without the participation of a creator God, but rather that they cant be entirely solved inside a radically monistic theory. In other words, they cant be exposed to a naturalistic reduction

They correctly quote Phillip Johnson noting that ID isnt based upon the Bible: the first thing that has to be done is to get the Bible out of the discussion, and even rightly observe that Natural selection is the actual target of ID, quoting ID theorists Angus Menuge and Michael Behe to this effect. They even recognize that ID is potentially compatible with common ancestry, noting that under ID evolution can reveal itself as a sequence of related species, but never as a casual variation of structures that come in succession across a selective ecological modeling. What you just saw is something rare: scholars recognizing in a mainstream academic journal that ID is not based upon biblical arguments, is compatible with common descent, but takes issue with the causal power of natural selection.

Dont take this to mean that the authors are pro-ID. They are not. The article is peppered with gratuitous rhetorical jabs at ID in which they show their bona fides to fellow academic materialists. Indeed, their primary information about ID comes from a highly inaccurate and outdated polemic against ID published back in 2004. Their ideas are so outdated that they cite Discovery Institutes Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, a name we havent used in over 15 years! They quote ID proponents such as Michael Behe, Angus Menuge, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson, William Dembski, and Jonathan Wells calling them new gladiators, apparently unaware that Johnson passed away last year, some 15 years after their primary source on ID was written. They use all kinds of outlandish rhetoric, including calling ID second generation creationism, a more sophisticated and dangerous theistic science tradition, and a vehicle of philosophical infection, an insidious vehicle because it seems reasonable and moderate. In a passage that has to make you laugh, they state:

If nothing is ascribable to structural transformations generated by natural selection, but neither comes out already equipped by a demiurges mind, how the hell we can explain the ID foundational phenomena, or the irreducible and specific complexity in range of a carefully regulated universe? [Emphasis added.]

Theres no need to for their mystification about the cause behind ID. Since as human beings we have extensive observations of intelligent agents designing things, we can readily recognize the effects of intelligent agency in the natural world. Thus, intelligent design is detectible by science, and while it may not have a naturalistic mechanism it certainly provides a scientifically acceptable cause: intelligence. You might even call it a mechanism (although definitely not one in the materialistic sense).

Nonetheless, the point of the article is less to attack ID than it is to attack their fellow evolutionists who propose non-direct evolutionary pathways. They do this, ironically, by claiming that such evolutionists are falling into some traps of ID.

To make this argument, they first note that ID strongly criticizes direct evolutionary pathways:

From this point of view two decisive points of evolutionary analysis are brought into question: the first one is that the origin of language has to be obligatorily connected to functions directly linked to reproductive advantage; the second one is that, from the point of view of adaptive selection, the functional components acquired with language development might not be considered, or revealed, as an evolutionary advantage (on the contrary, they even could show themselves as counter-evolutionary features).

This second point raised up by Dembski seems to challenge the central mechanism of evolutionary reconstructions. According to Darwinian dictate, indeed, also the most complex organism derives from numerous, successive, and slight mutations of their own morphologic structures. The pure reconstruction of these transformations and the internal laws that rule them, is called by ID supporters a direct Darwinian pathway (Dembski & Well, 2008, p. 151).

They believe that language is amenable to such direct evolutionary pathways:

In human language, for example, a direct Darwinian pathway can be rebuilt taking into account the original structural constraint story (peripheral and central structures of hearing-vocal system) and the interaction between ecologic and environmental constraint (bio-geographic, for example) and social structure constraints, produced in turn by morphogenetic and cognitive constraints (from human females hidden ovulation, to the sentence of semantic and syntactic categorization caused by vocal articulation). In short an intersection between different restrictions, but all inside a natural perspective.

They then take aim at those who use non-direct explanations to account for human language oddly linking this somehow to a flaw in ID:

[U]ntil recently many explicative models, born in the field of cognitive sciences, have unconsciously adopted this dangerous dualism surreptitiously brought by ID in their attempt to explain complexity in human language without using the right way: an evolutionary explanation linked only to the progressive variation of morphologic structures.

They then delve into the debate about the best way to explain the evolutionary origin of language. Heres their view:

Direct Darwinian pathway goes through the analysis of body morphology: organisms narrate an evolutionary story made by phylogenetic heredity and species-specific changes. The functions that every organism show depend by constraints given by its body shape and by the interaction with the habitat he lives. Human language, as any cognitive function, showed itself only when sapiens morphology reached a usable minimum threshold, a discreet ergonomic target and a system of neural control that make possible compositional segmentation (Wray, 2002) and constant articulation of vocal sounds. In this way, it is possible to explain the presence of a communicative and representative complex function as human language without intelligent residuals, without necessarily using an external substance, and without spasmodically researching the adaptivity of every linguistic component to demonstrate evolutionary continuity.

We prefer to stay out of this fight. However, note that some theorists are deeply skeptical that the origin of human language is amenable to a detailed evolutionary explanation, appealing to adaptive benefits alone. For example:

In a very real sense, the two principal peculiarities of human language are an evolutionary embarrassment. It is not easy to picture the scenarios that would confer selective fitness on, specifically, syntactic classes and structure-dependent rules. While linguists advise us that these are formal properties without which human language cannot be modeled, it is not at all clear what functional properties of language are served specifically by these formal properties. Perhaps recursiveness is such a property; it may depend on syntactic classes. Let us pretend that it does: I, at least, do not see how to realize recursiveness without syntactic classes. These classes afford the kind of abstract representation in which the rewrite rules, needed for recursiveness, can be easily realized. But if this is correct, even in the weak sense that syntactic classes provide an economical or simple access to recursiveness, the, peculiarities of human language would remain no less an evolutionary embarrassment. I challenge the reader to reconstruct the scenario that would confer selective fitness on recursiveness. Language evolved, it is conjectured, at a time when humans or protohumans were hunting mastodons. Having language would be a benefit to them. They could do social planning, discuss strategies together, lay plans for specific contingencies. Now the alleged advantage of recursiveness is not simply unlimited sentences, but even more perhaps, the compacting of information. Would it be a great advantage for one of our ancestors, squatting alongside the embers, to be able to remark: Beware of the short beast whose front hoof Bob cracked when, having forgotten his own spear back at camp, he got in a glancing blow with the dull spear he borrowed from Jack? Human language is an embarrassment for evolutionary theory because it is vastly more powerful than one can account for in terms of selective fitness.

Its difficult to know how to make sense of all of it. These philosophers take ID seriously, at least enough to describe the relevant arguments accurately. Yet they heavily criticize design theory, with trite and easily answered low-brow objections. One of the main points on which they take ID seriously seems to be a misapplication of ID ideas: they critically compare invoking the arguments of ID theorists to linguists who adopt non-direct evolutionary explanations for the origin of human language. Of course ID proponents are some of the most vocal critics of those who promulgate indirect evolutionary explanations. Why? Because such explanations are weak, difficult to test, and just highly unlikely. Sometimes indirect evolutionary explanations almost sound teleological.

Again, the English translation of this paper is rough. Perhaps the article rejects indirect evolutionary pathways because those pathways seem too goal-directed. Perhaps the authors intuit that material causes dont work very well to guide an evolutionary pathway toward a specific, complex endpoint. If this is the way they see things, then theyre exactly right. But then what they dont appreciate is that there is a cause that can operate with an end-goal in mind to guide evolution to produce a highly complex function. In the words of Stephen Meyer: The answer is: intelligence. Conscious activity. The deliberate choice of a rational agent.

Photo: Socrates, a bust displayed in the Vatican Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.

Read the original here:
On Intelligent Design, an Italian Philosophy Journal Takes a Step in the Right Direction - Discovery Institute

Joshua Harris explores the philosophy of science, the history of thought, and the future of humanity through the paradigm of evolution.

Courtesy of innovations in science and technology, famines, plagues, wars, and infant mortality are now so low that most people living in economically developed countries expect to survive to old age, something which is unprecedented in the history of our species. Our modern society is able to avoid or survive diseases and wars far better than previous civilisations, but one of the final problems facing any civilisation is overextending the bounds of its resources - that is, running out of food.

Some farming practices, such as zero-till farming and applying fertiliser, are able to reduce nutrient losses, or spread them out over a larger area. However, in order to entirely eliminate nutrient losses from the food system, we would need to fertilise crops with our own faeces and dead bodies. Applying artificial fertilisers mined from rocks can help, but these will inevitably run out.

Physiological evolution has in some cases come close to the limits of what is physically possible.

Yet now, it seems as if even food production, the ultimate constraint on our survival, could be solved by technology. Bacterial cultures could produce food from thin air (or, rather, water), and be processed into substitutes for much of what we eat. We would still need to grow fruit and vegetables, but the amount of land required for this is tiny compared to what is required to produce animal products.

Is there any limit to what technology can solve? Thinking about the evolution of technology throughout history helps us address this question. Technology is a part of our cumulative culture, and there is a compelling argument that culture evolves by natural selection acting on memes, analogous to how organisms physiology evolves by natural selection acting on genes. In this sense, technological advances and scientific breakthroughs have little to do with individual people, but are to a large extent a product of the culture which these individuals experience. In support of this idea, there are many examples of convergent evolution. Agriculture arose at least 10 times independently. Calculus was formulated by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz around the same time. Big religions with just one or a few gods tend to evolve from animism and the worship of various spirits, wherever agricultural societies emerged from hunter gathering.

The various developments which eventually led to the iPhone may have been reliant on chance events. But if one of the inventors of Morse code, circuit boards, or miniature batteries had been run over by a bus before their big breakthrough, it seems highly likely that someone else would have made it in their stead, and the iPhone would still ultimately result. If Charles Darwin had never gone on the voyage of the Beagle, it is highly likely that someone else would have discovered evolution by natural selection. In fact, Alfred Russell Wallace did.

We are not in any way special compared to other creatures: we are all governed deterministically by evolutionary processes.

Physiological evolution has in some cases come close to the limits of what is physically possible. Some trees have reached their maximum possible size. Our eyes can detect single photons. Dogs noses can detect single molecules. Similarly, there surely must be limits to technology and scientific discoveries. There is surely a finite amount which can be known about the world, and, like distantly related groups of animals under similar environmental conditions converge on the same ecotypes, we will eventually arrive at a given set of explanations for how things work. Evolution, or the laws of physics, exist, and were just waiting to be discovered. To a certain extent, the way in which we think about things is influenced by our language and our culture, but the principles of formal logic and mathematics upon which science is ultimately based are the same regardless of the language which we use to express our internal thoughts and the cultural biases which impact hypotheses.

If evolution, culture and even ideas always converge to common ground, we might reasonably ask: do our individual choices matter, or is everything predetermined? Arguably, our actions are strongly influenced by our values and general worldview, which is shaped by the culture in which we live, which is to some extent a product of biogeography. The general direction of society is modelled by the struggle for survival between different memes which infect our minds and propagate themselves as we transmit ideas to others. In this sense, perhaps we are not in any way special compared to other creatures: we are all governed deterministically by evolutionary processes.

However, what sets us apart from other evolved species is our ability to predict and manipulate the world. For example, physicists could predict that if you dropped a hammer and a feather on the moon, they would hit the ground at the same time, and when people went to the moon, they showed that this was indeed true. Hypotheses in complicated systems like ecology can never be proved definitively, but we can use statistics to discriminate the better theories from worse.

READ MORE

Does the human lifespan have a limit?

So, whilst our beliefs and values are just human constructs, humans have the remarkable ability of predicting phenomena which occur regardless of the cultural frames through which we perceive them. To quote the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, The good thing about science is that its true, whether or not you believe in it. And, although recognising that our actions are to some extent predetermined can make life feel meaningless, I think its impossible to imagine a better existence than to be a conscious being in a world full of fascinating things.

Varsity is the independent newspaper for the University of Cambridge, established in its current form in 1947. In order to maintain our editorial independence, our newspaper and news website receives no funding from the University of Cambridge or its constituent Colleges.

We are therefore almost entirely reliant on advertising for funding, and during this unprecedented global crisis, we have a tough few weeks and months ahead.

In spite of this situation, we are going to look at inventive ways to look at serving our readership with digital content for the time being.

Therefore we are asking our readers, if they wish, to make a donation from as little as 1, to help with our running cost at least until we hopefully return to print on 2nd October 2020.

Many thanks, all of us here at Varsity would like to wish you, your friends, families and all of your loved ones a safe and healthy few months ahead.

Read more:
The Limits of Science - Varsity Online

A crucial step towards forming his own nuanced artistic identity. ... Marvin Gaye. Photograph: Gems/Redferns

It can be hard to grasp the depth and breadth of Marvin Gayes career. He seems to have lived one of those kaleidoscopic lives that could only have occurred at the birth of modern pop and celebrity culture: starting as a session singer for Chuck Berry before songwriting and drumming for Motown groups such as the Marvelettes and the Miracles; earning his stripes as a duettist with Kim Weston and Tammi Terrell and then breaking out on his own, first as a tentative R&B man and then as a socially conscious soul auteur and hedonistic sex symbol. And then, at the age of 44, he was shot dead by his father.

His expansive life is much like his voice: all four octaves of range from honeyed baritone to raspy, yearning tenor (his tough man voice) and then the heart-rending, vulnerable falsetto, differing musical personalities contained within the singular liquid runs he would make in his songs. Reconciling these competing expressions would prove to be a lifelong evolution, one that can be traced back to Gayes first solo commercial success, 1968s I Heard It Through the Grapevine.

Like much of the music in Gayes early career, the release of the song was heavily contested and almost didnt happen. Originally written by Motowns Barrett Strong and Norman Whitfield, the song riffed on the concept of the human grapevine that slaves coined during the American civil war to communicate information, adapting it to the tale of a singer longing after a partner they had heard was leaving them for another. It was recorded by the Miracles before Gaye got to it in 1967, and again later that year by Gladys Knight and the Pips.

The arrangement of Knights version is almost unrecognisable from the one made famous by Gaye: all funk and shuffling tambourine, it highlights her gravelly, full-throated voice in a call and response, reducing it to yet another light-hearted song about a wronged lover. After hearing this version and predicting it would be a hit, the notoriously controlling Motown boss Berry Gordy had Gayes recording shelved and blocked from release.

Luckily, producer Whitfield had it added to Gayes 1968 eighth solo album release, In the Groove, where it soon became popular via radio play and forced Gordys hand to release it as a single in October 1968. It became the biggest hit single in Motown history for the next 20 months and it earned Gaye his first solo No 1 in the US. It was so successful that In the Groove was ultimately reissued with the title I Heard It Through the Grapevine. It was also his first and only UK No 1, reaching the top in April 1969 for three weeks.

After almost a decade in the Motown camp, adhering to Gordys strict demands on appearance and music choice, this win for Gaye was a crucial step towards forming his own nuanced artistic identity. Gayes hits to date had been as the preppy, clean-cut counterpart to Weston and Terrell, songs that spoke to the all-conquering power of love, yet with Grapevine we hear the beginnings of Gayes true skill: the forlorn interweaving of loss, defiance and lust those constituent parts of a more realistic love than the sickly exaltation of songs such as Aint No Mountain High Enough.

As on many of Gayes subsequent hits (Whats Going On, Lets Get It On and Sexual Healing) an instrumental opening grabs the listeners attention a slowly vamping Rhodes and bassline layered with a tambourine and a shrill call of horns before Gayes plaintive vocal illuminates the opening lyric: I bet youre wondering how I knew. From there, its his voice that brings home the narrative line after line, cushioned by strings played by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra: his falsetto rasps through a longing for his lover; his tenor registers a defiant resignation to losing her.

One key tenet of Gayes solo work is this palpable sense of loss and the attendant sadness that exists just beneath the surface of his sentiment. Its there in the eco-soul of Whats Going On and Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology), and even in the aching opening of the lustful Lets Get It On. This is the quintessence of his soul music, the knife-edge balance of opposites that momentarily reconciles to create a newfound whole.

Having had the first solo hit of his career, Gaye was characteristically resigned and dismissive, telling a reporter that he didnt deserve it. This was likely due to the fact that his longtime friend and singing partner Terrell had brain cancer at the time. Her death less than a year later would send him into a profound depression, one that would leave him resolved to leave Motown and to ultimately create his conceptual masterwork Whats Going On in 1971.

Here, Gaye would establish himself as the bad boy of Motown, both a figurehead for rising anti-Vietnam sentiment and archetype of the socially conscious songwriter. It is a far cry from the straightforward sweetness of a Holland-Dozier-Holland recording such as How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) released only six years earlier, showing an emotional depth that would ultimately take a profound toll on Gayes life. With I Heard It Through the Grapevine, we find him stepping out into his independence, all potential buoyed on by the force of his first creation.

More here:
The 100 greatest UK No 1s: No 10, Marvin Gaye I Heard It Through the Grapevine - The Guardian

As we ticked over from 2019 to 2020, one of the hottest topics in the drinks industry was what the years trends would be.

Now, as we reach mid-2020, its likely that predicted trends have faced unexpected challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, perhaps not achieving results forecasted before the virus exploded across the world.

Knowing this, Wine Intelligence has reissued their Global Trends in Wine 2020 report, in an updated document with insights and commentary about how each trend is likely to be impacted by Coronavirus in the short and medium term.

In a new introduction to the report, Lulie Halstead, Wine Intelligence Co-founder and CEO, said: Back in January, we reported that the key themes in global trends in wine for 2020 revolved around The Four Rs: Relationship, Retail, Repertoire and Responsibility. In our new environment, we believe these mega trends are as valid as they were in the pre-coronavirus world. However, the way in which these trends present themselves in the current context, and the path of their evolution through the remainder of this year and beyond, has undoubtedly changed.

Some of the most notable trends for retailers are below, but the full report has also now been made free to access on the Wine Intelligence website (normally worth upwards of $2,000). You can download that in full here.

The first R is home to the trends of rising involvement with reducing knowledge, and increasing visual impact.

Before COVID-19, the first relationship trend points to consumers becoming more involved with wine, but reducing their technical wine knowledge. This was largely credited to how we increasingly rely on external measures, like smartphones, to retain and recall knowledge for us, rather than relying on our own cognitive measures. However, Wine Intelligence has predicted that both wine involvement and knowledge may increase now thanks to the pandemic and how it has shifted our daily lives and habits.

The report noted: We anticipate that as a result of the enforced shift in wine purchasing away from the on- premise, some to retail stores, but most to online, objective wine knowledge may in fact increase. Having to pre-populate search terms and having more time and opportunity to read online reviews and commentary will enrich knowledge levels. Overall, involvement may also rise because consumers will have time to explore.

Meanwhile, the second relationship trend relates to the visual impact of a wine bottle, and how consumers will increasingly use this to make purchasing decisions. This is set to be unaffected by the pandemic, and the report said: The attractiveness and appropriateness of the bottle and label design will carry on growing in importance in 2020 and beyond.

The second R has three trends: maturing consumers, growing on-premise opportunity and premiumisation.

The maturing consumer trend refers to the relevance that the over 55 demographic has on the world of wine. In a globally ageing population, the cohort is the largest consumer group of wine, albeit with less confidence than younger generations. the significance of the maturing consumer is predicted to continue through 2020 despite COVID-19 affecting older generations more than younger.

Wine Intelligence said: The wine drinking population will continue to mature, with these drinkers remaining more wine experienced and knowledgeable due to the number of years they have spent engaging with wine.

In terms of the on-premise trend, in January Wine Intelligence described how higher priced and special occasion wines are more likely to be consumed in venues to help boost experiences. Of course, with the shut down of so many on-premise markets across the world, this has been re-forecast on the medium and long term, to suggest at-home consumption of wine will be boosted instead.

The ongoing premiumisation trend was set to continue in wine this year, as more consumers looked for options to help them drink less but better. But with the extreme economic shock that the pandemic has caused, value for money options have overtaken this trend, at least in the short term, with the report noting: We may have seen the end of the premiumisation trend for now.

The third R discusses the trends of switching out of wine, shifting wine choices, and universal rose.

Consumers that are part of the switching out of wine trend are contributing to the growing number of drinkers that are no longer defined by the one category they frequent. Instead, Wine Intelligence predicted a drop in regular and frequent wine drinkers, as they switch out to other alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverage categories. This is unlikely to be impacted by COVID-19.

The millennial demographic is largely driving the shifting wine choices trend, with predictions centring around the growing number of consumers expanding their repertoire to a larger number of grape varietals from a smaller number of origin countries. The new report predicts this will continue, however with consumers now choosing more local products, or opting to support nations that have displayed actions that align with their personal values throughout the pandemic.

We anticipate a renewed focus on domestic and local wine in wine producing countries, reflecting national populations becoming more inwardly-focused and protective. This will also reflect consumers agendas to support their local businesses at a time of economic crisis. Potentially, there could be a consumer backlash against certain countries and regions, depending on how the pandemic is managed, the report said.

The ever-growing popularity of pink has seen rose predicted to trend again in 2020. Even with the pandemic, this is set to continue, especially as the Northern Hemisphere moves into summer, which is likely to boost demand.

The final R area of Wine Intelligences report contains the trends of moderation and rising ethical engagement.

Low and no products have experienced boosts in sales through the moderation trend and that was predicted to continue in 2020 before COVID-19 struck. However, as the updated report notes, Evidence indicates that abstinence does not typically occur during times of crisis and if anything, consumption of alcohol can increase.

However, early findings describe how consumers are also moderating but drinking more, choosing lower ABV products but perhaps consuming more of them. In any case, the moderation trend has been predicted to be on hold for the short term as more people are confined to their homes with changed lifestyles.

The final trend that was set to see big results in 2020 was rising ethical engagement from an increase in consumers looking for brands and products that align with their values. Areas of particular note were sustainability and health causing boosted popularity for organic and other alternative wine types, especially in younger demographics that are more willing to invest in conscious consumption practice.

This has already been a trend that has been impacted by Coronavirus in other markets, for example in many venues no longer accepting reusable coffee cups. Wine Intelligence says there is potential for wine to go either way in this trend.

During times of crisis, benefits which can be seen as desirable rather than fundamental are typically the first to be abandoned. This may be the case for sustainable wines, particularly as they are often more expensive than their regular counterparts. [When this is over] purse strings will tighten and may reduce the attraction of sustainable and alternative wines. Conversely, we can also expect a heightened focus on collective responsibility, leading to support for sustainable products, Wine Intelligence explained.

The full revised report goes into more detail about the data points of these trends on a country specific level and can be downloaded here.

Original post:
Global wine trends react to Coronavirus - The Shout

Posted on May 22, 2020 in Science

Bow, Humans: Trillions of Cicadas Are Going to Rule America, As humans remain stuck inside or socially distanced, trillions of buzzing cicadas will burst out of the ground across the U.S. between now and summer 2021. Its already starting, reports Motherboard Science.

The Secret History of the Supernova at the Bottom of the SeaHow a star explosion may have shaped life on Earth.reports Julia Rosen for Nautil.us.

Consciousness is Like Spacetime Before Einsteins Relativity The question that has intrigued several of the planets great physicists, including Stanfords Andre Linde and Princetons John Archibald Wheeler in the last decades of his life, was: are life and mind irrelevant to the structure of the universe, or are they central to it? Are we living in a participatory, conscious universe, a cosmos in which all of us are embedded as co-creators, replacing the a purely materialistic universe as out there separate from us.

The ground is softening. Something is shifting in Antarcticas McMurdo Dry Valleys, reports Massive Science,The first water measurements here were taken in 1903. Long-term monitoring since then tells the tale of an abrupt ecosystem shift.

COVID-19: What the Autopsies Reveal-Pathologists are starting to get a closer look at the damage that COVID-19 does to the body by carefully examining the internal organs of people who have died from the novel coronavirus, reports Scientific American.

The Carouser and the Great Astronomer -Its a fine line between oblivion and immortality, reports Nautil.us. What had brought Frederik and Johannes to Prague was the arrival there the year previously of Frederiks third cousin Tycho, a 54-year-old bear of a man with an artificial nose made of gold and silverhis fleshly one had been sliced off in a duel. At the age of 30, in 1576, Tycho Brahe had established the most advanced astronomical observatory in the world, Uraniborg, on the Danish island of Hveen, of which he was Lord.

The giant tectonic plate under the Indian Ocean is going through a rocky breakup with itself.In a short time (geologically speaking) this plate will split in two, a new study finds.

Graduate Student Solves Decades-Old Conway Knot Problem. It took Lisa Piccirillo less than a week to answer a long-standing question about a strange knot discovered over half a century ago by the legendary John Conway, reports Quanta. I didnt allow myself to work on it during the day, she said, because I didnt consider it to be real math. I thought it was, like, my homework.

Will Hot Weather Kill the Coronavirus Where You Live? Asks The New York Times.The forecast from researchers is grim: Warm weather alone will not control the virus in America or abroad. Here are the results for the United States, showing weather on its own cannot meaningfully reduce infections to the rate of 1 new case per every infected person, the point by which the number of infections falls continuously.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish Water Worlds Like Earth May Not Be Best Bet for Life

The Last Place on Earth Wed Ever Expect to Find LifeMicrobes are turning up deep beneath the ocean floor, a sign that life might have fewer limits than scientists once thought, reports The Atlantic.

Egg Laying or Live Birth: How Evolution Chooses A lizard that both lays eggs and gives birth to live young is helping scientists understand how and why these forms of reproduction evolved, reports Quanta.

The Fed chief warned of a whole new level of uncertainty as financial pain deepens, reports The New York Times. Mr. Powell said the nations economy was in a downturn without modern precedent.

The U.S. Is Getting Shorter, as Mapmakers Race to Keep Up, reports The New York Times. Scientists are hard at work recalibrating where and how the nation physically sits on the planet. Its not shrinkage its height modernization.

Could science actually make Game of Thrones happen? Sometimes! reports Farah Qaiser for Massive Science,Fire, Ice and Physics breaks down the science behind Game Of Thrones, including beheadings, White Walkers and wildfire.

Read more:
Planet Earth Report The Supernova at the Bottom of the Sea to What Covid-19 Autopsies Reveal - The Daily Galaxy --Great Discoveries Channel

DGAP-News: Gigaset AG / Key word(s): Quarterly / Interim Statement 28.05.2020 / 09:22 The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Press release Munich, May 28, 2020

Gigaset AG publishes report on the first quarter of 2020 Europe-wide lockdown weighs on revenue and earnings

Gigaset AG (ISIN: DE0005156004), an internationally operating company in the area of communications technology, today published its report for the first quarter of 2020. Its key revenue and earnings figures were negatively impacted by the measures to combat the coronavirus pandemic that were initiated in March. The considerable restrictions on public life imposed by governments in Europe were felt in full force by brick-and-mortar retailing, causing a slump in sales and revenue.

The company posted total revenue of 32.4 million (Q1 2019: 45.8 million) and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) of minus 7.4 million (Q1 2019: minus 1.9 million) in the first quarter of 2020.

"Like many other companies worldwide, we have also been hit by the coronavirus pandemic," says Klaus Weing, CEO of Gigaset AG. "In particular, the Smartphones and Phones business segments suffered in the first quarter. Nevertheless, we believe we are still well-positioned moving ahead once the crisis ends. The Smart Home segment is also performing positively in the current crisis thanks to our new technology partnership. We still see great potential in B2B business, and the assumption that the coronavirus pandemic will accelerate digitization in private and professional life bodes well for the company's future."

Performance by business segments From the operational perspective, the company is divided into the four business segments Phones, Smartphones, Smart Home and Professional.

Revenue in the Phones segment was still at the budgeted level up to mid-March of fiscal 2020, despite the fact that the market environment remained challenging. Since March it has been impacted negatively by the measures initiated to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Sales and revenue fell sharply as a result of the massive curtailments in public life and store closures. Phones generated total revenue of 25.3 million (Q1 2019: 33.0 million).

The Smartphones business segment was hit particularly hard by the measures to contain coronavirus in all sales markets. The measures resulted in distributors returning devices and so negative quarterly revenue of minus 3.7 million (Q1 2019: 1.8 million).

The coronavirus pandemic also affected the Professional business segment: Enterprises deferred projects and orders and so revenue declined by 7.7% to 9.6 million (Q1 2019: 10.4 million).

However, business with Smart Home products was very satisfactory, with revenue in that segment doubling to 1.2 million (Q1 2019: 0.6 million). This increase was attributable to the launch of a strategic partnership with a leading European telecommunications company.

"The coronavirus pandemic is hitting Gigaset, as well as hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of people worldwide, hard," says Thomas Schuchardt, CFO of Gigaset AG. "However, because we have been extremely cost-conscious in running Gigaset for a long time, we took prompt measures to cut costs further and achieve additional savings and implemented them with the necessary resolve and focus. These measures are already reaping initial rewards and will help us withstand the crisis."

Outlook for 2020 In view of the direct effects of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as Gigaset's dependence on external factors outside its control, in other words, decisions by governments to impose lockdowns and close businesses and borders, as well as the duration and further evolution of the pandemic itself -, the company will not issue a detailed guidance for 2020, since a reliable forecast is not possible given the unique nature of the current situation. However, Gigaset expects its relevant key figures to fall year on year as a result of the crisis.

The complete report on the first quarter of 2020 can be downloaded here.

Gigaset AG is an internationally operating holding company in the field of telecommunications. The wholly-owned subsidiary Gigaset Communications GmbH is Europe's market leader in DECT cordless telephones and is also a leader in the international arena, with around 900 employees and sales activities in around 50 countries. Gigaset Communications GmbH's business activities also include the segments Smartphones, Smart Home and business telephony solutions for small, medium-sized and enterprise customers.

Follow us on: Corporate Blog | Xing | LinkedIn Visit our homepage: http://www.gigaset.ag

28.05.2020 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases. Archive at http://www.dgap.de

Read this article:
Gigaset AG publishes report on the first quarter of 2020 - Yahoo Sport UK

In todays NBA, the best offenses weaponize the threat of the 3-point shot to spread the floor; the best defenses scheme ways for long, smart ber-athletes to erase that space; and the best players tilt that spatial battle in their teams favor. But todays players arent the only ones with the right skills to tick those boxes; plenty of their predecessors could, too.

In fact, some of them might have translated even better to todays leagueand might have been even more enjoyable to watch in the 2020 NBA than they were in their heyday. I decided it might be cool to write about some of these players.

This is not intended to be a definitive, inarguable list, or a scientifically rigorous exercise. There will be some statistical cherry-picking, because cherries are delicious, and there will be some decisions made purely on aesthetics, because we hold it as true that things that look dope should be prioritized. Weve gone position by position over the past few weeks, aiming to pass some of our seemingly endless downtime by remembering some kick-ass players in a fun thought experiment.

Weve already covered point guard, shooting guard, small forward, and power forward. Last, but certainly not least, for the Time Machine All-Stars: the men in the middle.

Chances are, Chris Ballard wrote in his excellent book The Art of a Beautiful Game, the mobile big man and sweet-shooting 7-footer could have emerged at an earlier time in the games history if players had been given the opportunity. Well, friends: Let us, one last time, use our collective powers of imagination to grant that opportunity.

Career (1,045 games, 1959-73): 30.1 points, 22.9 rebounds, 4.4 assists per game, 54.0% FG, 51.1% FT

No player from the past feels harder to wrap your mind around than Chamberlain. The statistical record is just unfathomable: 37.6 points and 27 rebounds per game as a rookie; 50.4 points in 48.5 minutes per game in 1961-62, headlined by the 100-point performance that still stands as the highest-scoring game in history; the most 40- and 50-point games ever, as well as the longest streaks of 20-, 30-, 40-, and 50-point games; basically every major rebounding mark in existence; etc. Its like you went through MyCareer in NBA 2K and decided to never let any teammates rack up a single box score statisticonly it actually happened in real life, and it went on for about a decade and a half.

Chamberlains monstrous numbers would surely come down in a modern context, if for no other reason than he wouldnt have as many chances to pile them up. During his 14 seasons, according to Basketball-Reference.com, the leagues average pace never dipped below 110 possessions per 48 minutes of game time; thats a full 10 possessions per 48 faster than this past season. Fewer possessions means fewer shots, rebounds, assists, and block opportunities to go around. Combine that with what would assuredly be a significantly curtailed workload in the age of load managementWilt averaged an absurd 45.8 minutes per game for his careerand youll get fewer mythological stat lines.

Its not like adjusting for pace and contemporary minutes management would make Wilt just another dude, though. This would still play:

At 7-foot-1 with a reported 7-foot-8 wingspan and 9-foot-6 standing reach, having starred at both 250 pounds as a lithe rookie and a muscular 300-plus pounds during his latter years with the Lakers, Chamberlain had more than enough size, length, and strength to challenge even the burliest modern bigs. He wasnt just a lumbering giant, either: Chamberlain could sky to block shots and snare rebounds, and sprint the length of the court to fill the lane on the break. Like all massive 5s, hed have to prove capable of defending in space and handling jitterbug guards on switches in the pick-and-roll. But a modern Wilt would profile, at minimum, as a mammoth rim protector and interior deterrent; think a thicker Rudy Gobert (a close analogue in terms of measurables) with a collegiate high jumpers hops.

The other end would be even more interesting. Chamberlain essentially wrote the scoring record books of his era, using his physical dominance to overpower nearly every opponent he faced. (Nearly.) He was such a force down low that the NBA literally changed the rules, and the width of the lane, to mitigate his influence. In todays game, though, with post-up play largely marginalized as teams look to work from the perimeter and attack defenses in space, would Chamberlain still be a high-volume source of offense?

Its possible. Today, a prep prospect with Chamberlains physical attributes and skill would probably be given the green light to create at an early age, sanding off some of the rough edges in his ball handling and footwork. In addition to the brawn he used to bulldoze his way to the basket, Chamberlain also flashed a soft touch on non-flush finishes, and was an early adopter of the fadeaway jumper that would become part of the repertoire of so many great low-post scorers in future generations:

And while theres some dispute about just how valuable his passing was to his teams offensive performance, Chamberlain could facilitate with his back to the basket, finishing second in the league in assists in the 1967-68 season and turning in what remain the two highest assist-per-game averages of any center in league history:

Context matters in a players development. Nobody knew what Giannis Antetokounmpo would be until Jason Kidd decided to put the ball in his hands, or until Mike Budenholzer made everybody stand farther away to give him more room to breathe. Give a young Wilt a steady diet of reps as a creator in the half court and more space to work with, and who knows what alternate pathways to dominance might open?

Its also worth noting what led to the blossoming of Wilts playmaking in the late 60s: He reportedly wanted to dispel the notion that he was a selfish player. Chamberlain experienced fabulous success playing one way, fielded criticism from fans and pundits over it, and then just decided to play an entirely different way to prove a point. That reaction underlines another reason Id love to see him now: Hed be an unbelievably alluring subject for modern media coveragea larger-than-life character whose outsize public figure would be rivaled only by his raw-nerve sensitivity. As Lakers teammate and fellow Hall of Famer Jerry West put it in his autobiography, West by West: Wilt was very self-conscious about his size and strength and he was reluctant to be viewed as a villain. He wanted to be loved more than anything else, and yet he was convinced that nobody loves Goliath.

Even if we set aside his infamous bedroom claimswhich, of course, we most certainly would notWilt still would be an object of unbridled fascination today. Here was a man who once claimed to have bested a mountain lion in single combat. Decades before Shaquille ONeal ripped mics with Fu-Schnickens, the Dipper was out here crooning, dog. After years of trying and failing to conquer his free throw shooting demons, Chamberlain found success with underhand, granny-style shootinghe went 28-for-32 from the line that way in his 100-point gameonly to give it up because he felt like a sissy. He wanted to be cool, tall, vulnerable, and luscious, and he couldnt hide it. When youre that big, you cant hide much.

Given his love for the spotlight, his polarizing on- and off-court presence, and his sensitivity to blowback, how would a figure as towering as Wilt Chamberlain play in the social media era? The mind reels at all the possibilitiesand at all the vitriol his burner accounts might unleash.

Career (1,238 games, 1984-2002): 21.8 points, 11.1 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 1.7 steals, 3.1 blocks per game, 51.2% FG, 20.2% 3FG, 71.2% FT

In the book Basketball: A Love Story, Olajuwon describes the first time he saw an NBA game. He was already in America, having come over from Nigeria to enroll at the University of Houston, and he went to a Rockets game. He went home elatednot because of all the skill, pageantry, and aerial artistry he just witnessed, but because even as an undergraduate just barely getting his feet wet in the game, he wasnt too impressed with the future competition.

I see people, they drive to the basket, I say, I must be missing something. How come that shot isnt blocked? he recalled. I see opportunities that should be rejected, but it scores. The next day, the reporters ask me, You were at the Rockets game, what do you think? I told them, I think I could block four shots I saw.

He was right then; he blocked four or more shots four times in his first six NBA games, led the league in blocks three times, and still tops the all-time leaderboard in swats nearly 20 years after his retirement. Needless to say, Hakeem could hang. I think hed do just fine now, too.

Hakeem likely couldve become a passable 3-point shooter with enough commitment. Olajuwon had an excellent midrange game, with incredible touch on those turnarounds and fadeaways out of the block, and shot a crisp 50 percent between 16 feet and the arc during the 1998-99 season, his final healthy run before the wheels started to come off. Even if a contemporary Dream never stretched all the way out, though, we already know the best way to unleash him as a menace in a modern offense. You just do what Rudy Tomjanovich and Co. did in 1994 and 95: Surround him with shooters in a four-out set, and watch as he kicked the ball out of double-teams to open cutters and perimeter marksmen, or used that absolutely lethal face-up game to decimate overmatched defenders.

Like, for instance, David Robinson.

(For what its worth: Robinson would be a worthwhile choice for this exercise, too. Dude was a chiseled-from-granite gazelle with rocket boosters in his heels, a legit Defensive Player of the Year who could fit into any style or tempo. This does not change the fact that, shortly after he won MVP honors, Dream summarily digested him.)

Olajuwons fluidity, length, and quickness would flourish in an era when a big mans defensive value is predicated on being able to both protect the rim and guard in space. In his prime, Hakeem seemed capable of covering half the court by himself, assessing threats and snuffing them out with unnerving efficiency. He was disruptive as hell, registering a block on more than 5 percent of his opponents 2-point tries and logging a steal on more than 2 percent of their offensive possessions; only six other players who have played at least 5,000 career minutes have done both. One of them was fellow Time Machine All-Star Andrei Kirilenko, who was also one of just two players in NBA history with multiple 5x5 gamesat least five points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocksto his credit. The other? You guessed it: The one who turned the 1984 draft into prom night.

Something about Hakeems game always seemed to bridge eras; sure, he was a rim-rocking dunker and an aggressive shot-swatter, like centers of the past, but damn, since when did 7-foot, 250-pounders move and shake like that? He embodied the best of the positions present while hinting at an even brighter future. Drop him into todays league, and the bet here is that he wouldnt miss a stepand, in fact, he might have even picked up his pace of production.

And now, we move from Hakeem to the man he once nearly played one-on-one for $1 million put up by Taco Bell in an event promoted by Donald Trump, in what sounds like a stirring round of Some Bullshit Mad Libs but is actually a thing that almost happened:

Career (1,207 games, 1992-2011): 23.7 points, 10.9 rebounds, 2.5 assists, 0.6 steals, 2.3 blocks per game, 58.2% FG, 4.5% 3FG, 52.7% FT

If were going to wonder how Wilt Chamberlain would look in the 2020 NBA, we must also consider what the present might hold for Wilt Chamberneezy.

When I think of Shaqs playing days, I immediately flash to the version that dominated in Los Angeles in the late 90s and early aughts. You remember him: the irresistible force who tipped the scales after adding all that bulk to withstand the legions of Hack-a-Shaq implementers, the immovable object whom noted giant Yao Ming described in 2003 as like a meat wall, and the mountainous MVP who Juggernauted his way through the league to the tune of 27-and-12 on 57.5 percent shooting for a smooth eight years.

But when I think about the prospect of Shaq playing nowwith more long and skilled big men to line up against, and fewer fellow kaiju roaming the painted area to batter him every time he catches the ballI wonder whether a Shaq who came along in 2020 might have been better served staying down around the 290 pounds of his salad days for a little longer. That would be pretty rad, because Orlando Shaq could fuckin move, man:

Maintaining that staggering combination of power and quickness would be critical for a modern-day ONeal. He would need to stay trim and explosive enough to cover a ton of ground, because you can bet that every modern offense would make it Job No. 1 to play a stretch-5 against him to try to draw him out of the middle and keep him from walling off the paint, or run dozens of pick-and-rolls aimed at getting him switched onto guards and forcing him to defend in space. Whether he could stay nimble enough to meet that kind of challenge would go a long way toward determining how effective hed beand how much damage he could do on the other end. We got a brief glimpse at something like that about a decade agolest we forget, Shaq averaged 18-and-8 alongside Steve Nash for the Slightly Longer Than Seven Seconds Suns in 2008-09but by then, he was 36 and heavier, with more than 45,000 regular and postseason minutes on his body. How would the fresh-out-of-the-box version look?

It seems more likely that ONeal would still need to do the lions share of his damage within arms reach rather than suddenly developing a feathery touch from 23 feet. Hed need to be as adept as ever at bursting past defenders with one-dribble power moves, spinning away from them to elevate for alley-oops, and rim-running in transition. Inspired by rule changes that allowed for zone defenses, easier double-teams, and more effective swarms of players holding the ball in the post, the game has moved away from just dumping the ball down to your big man on the block and letting him cook.

Outside of a select few scorers who still get a bunch of low-block touches, like Joel Embiid or LaMarcus Aldridge, post-ups these days are more often a vehicle for creating catch-and-shoot 3s, or a way to attack mismatches when defenses switch themselves into a mouse in the house situation, than a main feature of an attack. While the Shaq we know bemoans the disappearance of dominant back-to-the-basket bigs, the 2020 model would need to be capable of getting his points in other ways in a league where post-ups have largely been excised from the playbook altogether.

In fairness, though, ONeal absolutely could be the sort of force worthy of a steady diet of post entries. In an ESPN feature published earlier this year about the evolution of NBA big men, Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said that if his notorious envelope-pushing team had ONeal on the roster, I would give him the ball 1,000 times, is my guess. Once he got it, keeping him from getting to the rimand from putting his man inside itwould be an awfully tall order, and would likely result in even more trips to the line for someone who averaged nearly 10 attempts per 36 minutes for his career. That could work against ONeal, who famously struggled from the stripe, shooting just 52.7 percent for his career; but a half-decade after the institution of new rules aimed at reducing intentional fouling to improve game flow, it might not be quite as big an issue as you might think.

If youre wondering what it might look like, the Big Baryshnikov has a comp handy. I would actually love to play in this NBA, he told Jackie MacMullan and Kirk Goldsberry. I would bring a little bit more physicality. I would bring my length, I would bring my athleticness. So, before you say, Shaq cant play in this era today, Im already playing. My name is Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Career (470 games, 1995-2003): 12.0 points, 7.3 rebounds, 2.1 assists, 0.8 steals, 1.1 blocks per game, 50.0% FG, 32.8% 3FG, 78.6% FT

By the time Sabonis finally came to the NBA in 1995, he was already 31 years old with a pair of ruptured Achilles tendons and a litany of leg and groin injuries rendering him a pale imitation of what he once was. That might seem like a bit of an exaggeration: After all, Sabonis still starred in the States, averaging a double-double in Year 3, posting a player efficiency rating over 20 in six of his seven NBA seasons, and playing an integral role on Trail Blazers teams that went to consecutive Western Conference finals, including one that came within a hellacious fourth-quarter comeback of beating Shaq, Kobe, and the Lakers in 2000. How much better could he have been before the injuries?

Wellat the risk of disrespecting a stand-up dude for the second time in the space of one columnlets ask David Robinson, against whom Sabonis held his own when the Soviet Union nearly knocked off Team USA in the gold-medal game of the 1986 FIBA World Championship, and when the USSR did defeat the Americans in the semifinals of the 1988 Summer Olympics (despite Sabonis playing shortly after recovering from his first Achilles rupture):

Legendary big-man coach and talent evaluator Pete Newell told Sam Toperoff of The Atlantic Monthly in 1986 that he thought Sabonis could conceivably become the greatest player in the game and he would have taken the Lithuanian over Patrick Ewing in the 1985 draft if he had played for an American team. At 7-foot-3, the pre-injury Sabonis had the springs to tip-dunk all over The Admiral and swat shots from the weak side with reckless abandon, plus the touch to step out on the floor and drain NBA 3-pointers.

And the passing. My God, the passing:

As Bill Waltonwho knew a thing or two about how big men could dominate while still playing a team-first game (and whom well get to in a second!)told Grantlands Jonathan Abrams back in 2011, [Sabonis] could do everything. He had the skills of Larry Bird and Pete Maravich. He had the athleticism of Kareem, and he could shoot the 3-point shot. He could pass and run the floor, dribble. We should have carried out a plan in the early 1980s to kidnap him and bring him back right then.

Or, even better: popped him into a tricked-out DeLorean, sent him to 2020, and found out what it might look like if Kristaps Porzingis passed like White Chocolate, or if you pressed fast-forward on Nikola Jokic. (Or, for that matter, pushed the sliders all the way up on his son Domantas Sabonis, an excellent modern player and All-Star in his own right.)

People dont understand that when he was younger, Sabonis was a perimeter player and he played facing the basket, longtime NBA coach George Karl, who had gotten an up-close look at him during two stints coaching in Europe, told Abrams. He was a very athletic player. ... He could score, too, but you could run your whole offense through him, and his basketball IQ was off the charts for a 7-footer.

Maybe the most exciting thing about the idea of bringing a young Sabonis to the present day is that wed get to see what he wouldve looked like playing against elite opposition every night. Newell told The Atlantic that the one knock on Sabonis was that, because the opposition Sabonis meets inside Russia is not challenging to him, he sometimes gets lazy. ... Id like to see him in the NBA, just to see how great hed be if he were pushed to the limit all the time.

Its possible that version of Sabonis wouldnt be a generational sensation in the modern game. His old national teammate Sarunas Marciulionis emphasized in Basketball: A Love Story that Sabonis hadnt yet fully developed his face-up game, his 3-point shot, or his court vision before playing in Spain following the 88 Olympics, so a younger model wouldnt necessarily have resembled a more explosive version of the finished product. Even so, the collection of skills at that size, with that flair, and with the athleticism to play like a point guard at 7-foot-3 would be intoxicating to watch nowa perfect fit for where the center position is, and where it could go from here.

Career (468 games, 1974-87): 13.3 points, 10.5 rebounds, 3.4 assists, 2.2 blocks per game, 52.1% FG, 66.0% FT

It feels kind of hard to divorce Walton from the era in which he playedfollowing the Grateful Dead to protesting the Vietnam War to rolling with radical activists associated with the Symbionese Liberation Army. (As Jackie MacMullan wrote in When the Game Was Ours, Waltons one regret was that he never made Nixons enemies list.) Some things about Big Red, though, would translate perfectly to the modern game. For one: Decades before Shut up and dribble became a sociopolitical flashpoint, Walton was telling The New York Times In this society, they dont expect an athlete to speak for himself or to be able to lead his own life. The only thing Im supposed to know is how to put the ball through the hoop. Everything else is said for me or explained to me, right? Seems like our man Bill wouldve made for an interesting podcast guest!

Years before the Kevin Garnetts and Kevin Durants of the world began lying about their heights to make themselves seem smaller, Walton was reported to be 7-foot-2 but listed as 6-foot-11 [because] he didnt like the stigma of being a 7-footer. Walton didnt want to be chained to the block and forced into the same old dump it down and drop step monotony; he wanted to be free to explore the outer limits of both his skills and those of his teammates. (OK, I agree: That was a very Bill Waltonass thing to say.) He acted as a half-court offensive hub from the elbows and out of the post; as the last line of defense on the other end, he was an ace shot-blocker and defensive rebounder who looked for every opportunity to trigger a fast break and an easy bucket within the flow of the game.

In The Breaks of the Gamean all-time great sports book not about the triumphs of the 1976-77 Trail Blazers team that Walton led to a championship, but rather about how things fell apart, for Walton and for the organizationthe great David Halberstam described a truly great basketball player as not necessarily someone who scored a lot of points; a truly great basketball player is someone of exceptional talent and self-discipline who could make his teammates better. Basketball was a sport where under optimal conditions a great player with considerable ego disciplined himself and became unselfish. (Walton had his share of ego too. In Loose Balls, Terry Plutos iconic oral history of the ABA, former ABA commissioner Mike Storen recalls that in negotiations over trying to get Walton to come to the counterculture league, Waltons representative made it clear that the two wanted Bill to be the highest-paid professional athlete in the history of mankind, and to be on a great team surrounded by a lot of talent so that the responsibility for winning and losing does not fall directly on Bill. Again: He might fit in just fine today.)

By Halberstams measure, and any other, Walton when healthy was a truly great basketball player. At issue, of course, is how rarely he was healthy. Walton had a bulging medical file before he even reached collegehe suffered multiple lower leg fractures and underwent knee surgery while still in high schooland struggled through broken bones in his spine and knee tendinitis at UCLA, resulting in another knee surgery before he joined the Blazers. Things didnt improve in Portland, as ankle and foot injuries (along with two separate broken wrists) cost him 78 games over his first two seasons.

The lower body injuries turned catastrophic late in the 1977-78 season, when Walton, already dealing with right foot pain, suffered a sprained left ankle that sidelined him for weeks. He returned for the Blazers postseason opener, but despite a pain-killing injection before Game 2, he couldnt continue past halftime; subsequent X-rays revealed a broken navicular bone. Walton, having lost all faith in Portlands medical team, demanded a trade, sat out the entire 1978-79 season when one wasnt granted, and left to sign with the San Diego Clippers. But the damage was done: Hed only play 169 games between 1979 and 1985. He played more than 70 games only once in 14 seasonsin the 1985-86 season, when he made 80 appearances as a reserve for the Celtics, winning Sixth Man of the Year on one of the greatest teams of all time.

The staggering array of injurieswhich would require some three-dozen surgical procedures over the yearscost Walton three full seasons in what should have been his prime and kept him from ever experiencing the sort of professional success for which he seemed destined while starring for John Wooden. But when he was right man, was he right:

At his peakthe 1976-77 season in which the Blazers won the title, and the 1977-78 campaign in which Portland was 50-10 when Walton broke his foot (he won MVP that year despite missing the final 22 games)Walton averaged 24.9 points, 18.3 rebounds, 5.8 assists, and 3.8 blocks per 100 possessions. A contemporary Walton would be free to act as the rising tide to lift all boats, to invert the offense and sling the ball around to the open man, and to hunt playmaking opportunities at least as often as he did his own shot. As the man himself put it in Basketball: A Love Story: Basketball is a symphony, and we could take that ball and become artists ourselves. Itd be cool to hear what kind of music hed make today.

Those are my five, but theres always room for more time travelers, so lets hit a few honorable mentions:

Vlade Divac (1989-2005): Bigs who can pass, forever and ever, amen.

Divac was pretty spry for a giant, ably running the floor to create for others or to finish plays as the trailer, and he used his length and instincts to be a disruptive defender, averaging about 3.5 stocks (steals plus blocks) per 36 minutes during his Lakers tenure. Weirdly, though, I can see the older Vlade nestling snugly into the ecosystems of good present-day teams that emphasize passing and defend smartlyoffering, say, a rough approximation of what Marc Gasol gave the Raptors last season?

I also think Steve Kerr wouldve done horrible, unspeakable things to get someone like Vlade operating in that Andrew Bogut/Anderson Varejao/David West playmaking pivot role as Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson run all those split actions, flinging passes all over the place:

I dont know. Maybe I just kind of miss perennial playoff performers who looked like theyd just smoked half a pack of Camel Wides before the start of the third.

Sam Perkins (1984-2001): Heres that protostretch-5 you ordered:

Big Smooth could shoot from deep in the first part of his careerjust ask the Bullsbut he rarely did, attempting only 352 triples during his first eight seasons and barely making a quarter of them. Once he hit the other side of 30, thoughand once he got with George Karl, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp, and the gang in SeattlePerkins started more aggressively stretching his game out to the perimeter, becoming one of the first full-fledged floor-spacing bigs in the game. Between 1993 and 2001, he fired up 5.0 long balls per 36 minutes of floor time, and cashed them in at a cool 38.2 percent clip.

A steady vet who knows his role on defense, whos good in the locker room, and whose heart wont start racing in the postseason would make an awful lot of money sticking around these days. (Im thinking of Channing Frye, but by all means, insert your preferred end-of-the-rotation stretch big here.) But a version of Perkins who starts spreading his wings a bit earlier, when he still had the athleticism to be a problem on the offensive glass and explode for tip dunks, and even the quickness to be a threat running off of pindown screens for catch-and-shoot looks, might have been more than a role playerand maybe even quite a bit more.

Mehmet Okur (2002-12): At the risk of veering too close to the territory of scraping-the-barrel Twitter highlight videos about how this player in 2004 WAS A PROBLEM, there was absolutely a minute there where the Turkish shooter was somebody you didnt really want to see on the perimeter late in a tight game:

The 6-foot-11, 250-pound Okur was a perfect pick-and-pop partner for Deron Williams in Utaha legitimate 3-point threat who could pull opposing centers away from the paint to create more room for D-Will drives, Carlos Boozer and Paul Millsap post-ups, or whatever weird shit Andrei Kirilenko wanted to try. From 2005, when he became a full-time starter for Jerry Sloan, through 2010, when he suffered the ruptured left Achilles tendon that would effectively end his career, Okur shot 38.7 percent from 3-point range on 3.7 attempts per 36 minutes; put him alongside a pick-and-roll maestro point guard now, and hed likely double that.

In his best yearthe 2006-07 campaign, when he earned his first and only All-Star nodOkur averaged 18 points and 7.2 rebounds per game, shooting 38.4 percent from 3-point range on 4.2 attempts per game. Over the past 10 seasons, the only center to match those averages on that combination of 3-point volume and accuracy is Karl-Anthony Towns. Now, Im not saying that, if you plopped him into todays NBA, Memo would suddenly become the sort of 7-foot Steph you could build an offense around. I do think, though, that hed probably become an even more useful piece to deploy in a spread-it-out-and-bomb-away offense and that, on occasion, yes, he might even be construed as ... A Problem.

View original post here:
Time Machine All-Stars: Five Centers Who Would Have Dominated 2020 - The Ringer

Joe Grushecky doesnt normally look back on his long career, preferring to focus on creating new material and performing dozens of live shows around the Northeast. But with the fortieth anniversary of Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive), the sophomore record that paired his band, the Iron City Houserockers, with a rock royalty production team of guitar great Mick Ronson (David Bowie) Ian Hunter (Mott The Hoople) and Steven Van Zandt (Bruce Springsteen, Southside Johnny), the Pittsburgh native felt the time was right.

The noted critic Greil Marcus wrote about the Houserockers in Rolling Stone after their debut record Loves So Tough was released and said, this is hard rock with force I hope theyre around for a long time. In our conversation, Grushecky revisits the crucial follow up release Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive), (out now as an expanded reissue on all digital platforms with a physical CD and vinyl release June 19) and discusses the bands formation, his songwriting evolution and a near disaster that almost ruined the albums completion. The reissue includes a full bonus CD of demos and rarities which flesh out the evolution of the songs from work tape to final release.

The title track is a tough, in your face declaration of words to live by. Pumping Iron chronicles the daily life of a hard-working steel-driving man ready for a weekend of good times, complete with a sing-along, fist-in-the-air chorus. Old Mans Bar and Juniors Bar work as a two-sides of the coin observation of life inside the watering hole, where some come to forget, and others look for action.

Steve Popovich, founder of Cleveland International, a small indie label, took notice of the Houserockers gritty, anthemic songs, solid work ethic and loyal fan base and scored the band a deal with MCA Records, leading to their debut Loves So Tough in 1979. Cleveland had recently hit it big with Meatloafs certified platinum album 1977 Bat Out of Hell, noted for its big musical arrangements and Springsteen-like novellas (the record even featured Springsteen members Max Weinberg and Roy Bittan). Popovich had also signed New Jerseys Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, who bought out several critically acclaimed records and were noted for the gritty, horn-driven soul-inspired music coupled with raucous and celebratory live shows.

Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive) is a forgotten gem of a record, a time capsule of frenetic 80s energy and lyrics about home that hit home, performed by the toughest, tightest band from the work hard, play hard working-class streets of Pittsburgh.

How important were rock critics to a band when your debut was released in 1979?

I can remember going into the music store and someone said, hey have you seen Rolling Stone? Greil Marcus, the dean of rock critics, gave us a good review and that started the ball rolling. That was a couple months after the first record came out. We put it out with very little fanfare. It wasnt a highly anticipated debut! Greil was an important guy and it snowballed after that, especially when this Have A Good Time record was released.

Do you know how he found out about the band?

Im guessing it was the record company, Cleveland International and owner Steve Popovich. We had zero to do with it as far as I know. This was back in the heyday of the late 70s when there were big promo staffs in these big buildings at the labels in New York.

What made you pick each player for your band?

Art Nardini and I had known each other for years. We played together in high school and had a couple bands in college too. We played frat parties and bars. I was playing in an after-hours place in the South Side district of Pittsburgh, from 2 to 5 am after the bars closed. It was a steady once a month gig. Art came in one night and asked if I wanted to get a band together again. I told him not if were only going to do covers. He knew I was a writer and I said if he wanted to make a record, that would work.

In 1976 I moved downtown into the city. I had a blues-y type band with a guitar player, Gary Scalese, so we brought him in. Slowly, we added the rest of the band. We werent looking for the cream of the crop. We wanted people that were dedicated and wanted to do what we did. We rehearsed almost every night for the better part of a year and then started playing out. But we werent a very successful club band. We were a terrible cover band. You had to play four sets a night- 40 on, 20 off. We found a bar, the Gazebo, that wasnt doing too well and would let us play whatever we wanted. We would do one set of covers like the Stones, J. Geils and some blues, and then play originals. Pretty soon we were packing them up. But the club closed up! So, we found another place called the Decade in Oakland, the college district, and soon we were packing them in there twice a week. We were rehearsing, writing originals and doing demos during this time.

We had a good New Jersey connection because Steve Popovich from Cleveland International Records had signed Southside Johnny and had success with Ronnie Spectors cover of Say Goodbye To Hollywood, which featured the E Street Band. I used to buy Billboard every week to see what was going on in the music biz and saw their name. I sent Steve a demo tape and he invited me to Cleveland. There was a party there with Ronnie, Boz Scaggs. Steve gave us money to make a demo tape. I always tell people he sent us back to Pittsburgh with a pocket full of hope.

He signed us and it took about a year and a half to get everything going and put the debut record out through MCA. And, of course, it came out at the worst time. In 1979 the music industry was in flux because there was a massive gas shortage. It was hard to travel. The record came out in April and by October I ended up in the hospital for about a month. I had a tumor in my throat pressing up against my vocal cords, which ended up being benign. By the time I recovered, MCA and Popovich had gotten us all this great press and we were going to do another album very quickly. We had demos and went to New York in February and did a week of rehearsals and a week of basic tracking and then vocals.

Where were the demos on the reissues bonus disc recorded?

Those were recorded in Pittsburgh. We recorded in a studio. The tapes I had left in my possession were all cassettes and reel to reels. I had those for years which is what prompted me to include them on this reissue. They were sitting in boxes since I save everything, and we transferred to digital at Nada Recording.

How was the band received when you toured?

We were a smoking band. We played a lot. We played in New Jersey too. We toured with Ian Hunter. We played the Fastlane in Asbury Park and the Stanhope House, Bottom Line, Boston, DC, Chicago, Cleveland, Erie, PA

Youre looped into the heartland rock genre, which is primarily Midwest bands. But did you do well in that area?

No! (laughs) We never went to the heartland. Its weird. Ohio is so close to me and its classic Midwest, but we always considered ourselves a Northeastern band. Our music was a little more R&B, harder-edged, bluesy, a little angrier than the Midwest bands. I think of Cheap Trick, REO Speedwagon, which was more melodic and pop. That wasnt us. Lyrically, we werent in the same ballpark as them. We were writing a little more socially conscious, maybe to our detriment.

What makes Pittsburgh such a tough town?

Well, it was the steel mill and coal miner jobs. Theyre tough jobs. Very strong ethnic backgrounds with a strong work ethic. Its a rough and tumble town. They all went 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Its backbreaking work. They worked hard, drank hard and partied hard. Our crowd used to be so over the top wild. I can remember specifically one night getting off stage and saying have a good time but get out alive. You guys are going to kill somebody! That was the idea for the song. It came out of the culture we were in. It was the end of the Steel City era. People were starting to panic because we were in the middle of a recession and people were leaving Pittsburgh. We had 450,000 people in the city, and we lost 150,000. A lot of it was our crowd.

Thats why you see Steeler bars all over America. That was our crowd. Everybody scattered. The economy may have been good in other places, but Pittsburgh was dying.

Ian Hunter produced this record. Did that connection happen through your tours with him, or was it through Steve Popovich?

We went to record with Steve Popovich and Marty Mooney, who called themselves the Slimmer Twins. They were enthusiastic record company guys who had great ideas, but they werent musicians. They couldnt translate their ideas and take a song apart and have the vocabulary to guide somebody on how to construct a song. I think they realized that too. I think they had just put out Hunters Youre Never Alone With A Schizophrenic record and were in New York when we came in to rehearse. The first day Steve Popovich showed up at SIR Studios with Mick Ronson and said Mick was going to work with us. Then Mick showed up the next day with Steve Van Zandt. So, Steve would work with us for part of the day and go back to the Power Station and work on what became The River with Springsteen. Wed work on arrangements for about a week or so. Then we went into the studio. For the first couple days it was Steve Van Zandt with Mick Ronson. When Van Zandt left, Ian Hunter started coming more and picked a song or two where he wanted to get involved. Hypnotized is one that he produced.

Steven Van Zandt was pretty involved in shaping lyrics, wasnt he?

He was invaluable. It was like going to college. He asked me specifically about one song. He said it had really good lyrics but there with a couple of iffy lines. I said, ah theyre just a couple throwaway lines. He said, no, nothings a throwaway in a song. You gotta make every lyric count.

I understand there was an incident that almost ruined the record.

So we got together one morning and had a couple hour brunch working on lyrics. We went back to the hotel, in the middle of New York City, to finish the songs and the lyrics were gone! I was sure I had misplaced in the room or the lobby somewhere. Couldnt find them anywhere. I decided I had to go back to the restaurant a few blocks away. Im walking down one of the streets going toward Central Park. In those days, there were metal, hanging waste receptacle baskets attached to the parking meters which you could see through. I dont what made me look down, but all my lyrics were in one of the baskets! Someone must have picked them up and put them into the garbage basket! So I went back to the hotel and Steven couldnt believe it. I couldnt either! It was one thing to lose them, but then to find them. Steve said this record has to be something special because its a miracle to find the lyrics in the middle of a waste basket in New York City!

How influenced were you by New Wave and MTV, both of which were new and popular?

We were more influenced by the punk rock bands because they hated the same bands we hated! We were ten years older than the New Wave bands. We were more of the Stones and Beatles generation. Especially in Pittsburgh, where there is a great musical heritage. A lot of jazz guys came out of here. To play in our day you had to know your music. It was wide open. Everybody knew their Hank Williams, Muddy Waters, Stax, Motown. It was very rich, inviting and open to all kinds of music. At the same time, it was very hard edged. Pittsburgh had this thing with AM radio stations. About 6 pm every Friday night til midnight on Saturday all these crazy disc jockeys would come on and play the wildest most obscure, rip-roaring rock n roll and rhythm and blues music you could hear. They wouldnt touch the Beatles or Stones and even Stax was too mainstream.

You also had these teen nightclubs and they would play these obscure tracks. Spencer Davis had Gimme Some Lovin and Im a Man but the club played High Time Baby. And you could see Bo Diddley, Wilson Pickett, Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels, Sam The Sham and the Pharoahs, all from five feet away. Junior Walker and the All-Stars up close and personal every weekend.

Tell us about Old Mans Bar which features your keyboard player singing lead, and the following track, Juniors Bar.

We had a goal to record a certain number of songs with basic tracks before we would start overdubs. At that time, we had about eight or ten but needed a few more. Our keyboard player Gil Snyder and our guitar player Eddie Britt and Bob Boyer our soundman concocted Old Mans Bar one evening and played it for Ronson. He loved it right away. They went for this ethnic, old guys down at the corner bar feel. That was their take on it.

Later that day, Steve Van Zandt heard it and said, lets rock it. He came up with basically the same song in a rock and roll tempo. We changed the chord sequence a little bit and Steve came up with that great opening guitar lick. He also worked up the chord change modulation from the five chord, going from B to C. It doesnt sound like it would work but it does. And its a brilliant musical move. When he left the project and I returned to NY to record final vocals and overdubs, I came up with a different set of lyrics and sang it differently than the original. I was singing about a different subject matter than Gils song so it worked as a pair. Its like a matched set, a couplet. We played it back to back like that in our live shows for many years.

Pumping Iron, from this record, is the one you still play out live.

Yeah thats the one that stuck with me through the years. Its a good song and its fun to play. Its become a signature song, an identifiable song for us Pittsburghers. Its one of my moms favorite songs too. We were playing four or five nights a week in these bars that were wild every night. We only had eight songs and we needed more rockers. And I always loved that Chuck Berry groove. That was my attempt to write one of those songs.

Your songwriting style started to refine itself and take shape with Have A Good Time.

I started writing about Pittsburgh. I found that if I tried writing about the beach in Malibu or living in a mansion with all these women, it wouldnt ring true. The songs werent even presentable. But when I started writing about what I knew about- the city I live in, my friends and the particular time period- I felt the songs were more true.

Revisiting this record has made you look back on your career hasnt it?

This is the first time in my career where Ive spent so much time looking back. Im always interested in the next record. We were recording a new record when we were shut down due to the Covid-19. Ive been reminiscing about this particular era. We have three recorded and about six or eight written.

When did Steves son, who now runs Cleveland International, decide to reissue this record?

He revived the record company last year. We became friends and started talking about reissuing the Iron City Houserockers catalog. The band was playing in New York last year and I was chatting with one of our old fans about the Loves So Tough 40th Anniversary record that had just been reissued by Cleveland. He took a look at it and said there was nothing new on it that he didnt already have. A bug went in my ear and I knew I had to be involved in any other reissue. I discussed with Steve and he was into it. I started getting the bonus tracks together and make it a much more interesting project.

Tell us about your work outside of music.

Im a special education teacher in Pittsburghs inner city and Ive been doing it on and off a long time. The community I work in has been designated one of the most violent communities in the US. I work with autistic, emotionally distressed and severely handicapped kids- the toughest population.

Were you doing that job while you worked on the Have A Good Time record?

No. At that point I was a full-time musician. I was doing it before the first record and then started doing it back again around the Swimming With The Sharks. I had about twelve years, from 1977 to 89 where I was footloose and fancy free before they put the dog collar back on!

It seems that music helps as a common bond with the types of kids you work with.

It is. Music is a universal language. I always tell people that to me its the most important and intimate art form. How many times can you watch a movie or read a book? A couple. How many times can you listen to your favorite song? Hundreds. Its different with a song. A song is immediate.

Read the original here:
Joe Grushecky Discusses The 40th Anniversary Deluxe Reissue Of Iron City Houserockers Critically Acclaimed Have A Good Time (But Get Out Alive) -...