Posted: 15 Mar 2010 03:13 AM PDT

CLEVELAND — Like many times in their careers, Jordan Bitzer and Robbie Harman walked off the court Thursday without a win.

But like so many other times, there was little doubt they left it all on the floor despite a a 69-60 loss against Western Michigan in the Mid-American Conference quarterfinals.

Harman led the team with 20 points, while Bitzer scored 15. But that didn't matter. So distraught after the game, they were unable to speak to the media.

The duo had enough talent to make it on the Division I level. But it was hard work that helped them succeed and prove doubters wrong in their four seasons in Mount Pleasant.

And it's difficult to find any other player coach Ernie Zeigler reveres as much as these two.

"They're two kids that exemplify 'Think Tough, Be Tough,'" Zeigler said after the game. "They got better in our program because they listened."

Getting better

I remember watching Harman develop during his four seasons and thinking he might not have as much talent as other guards in the conference. But no one else worked as hard to get better. And no one worked as hard Thursday.

"When I went out and played, I felt like I played maybe not the best I could have, but I played as hard as I could — I know that," Harman said Saturday. "I was dead tired after the game. I was upset and sad, I was mad and all those things.

"But I look back and there wasn't really much else personally I felt like I could have done."

The effort paid off with a pair of MAC West Division titles, and Harman and Bitzer earned second-team All-MAC honors this season. Their goal of winning a MAC title and earning an
NCAA Tournament berth might have been too tall in the end.

This still was a program that went 4-24 a year before they arrived.

That sort of failure became unacceptable when Zeigler was hired. Bitzer and Harman immediately embraced his methods, and it didn't take long until both were contributing on a regular basis.

"I think my main focus personally was just trying to get better each and every year," Bitzer said. "Coming in, people knew me only as a shooter, and each year I tried to develop my game a little bit more — putting it on the floor and getting to the free-throw line."

All heart

Sure, Harman and Bitzer weren't the most imposing players on the court. But they did have the most heart and unselfishness.

Both said they wanted to set up Zeigler — the coach who gave them each a shot — with a better job by winning a few MAC titles.

With one year remaining on his contract, Zeigler's future at CMU is uncertain for now — although Athletics Director Dave Heeke said he was happy with the program's direction before Thursday's game. Heeke said a win Thursday would have been a "defining moment."

But the team's back-to-back MAC West titles alone might be the ticket Zeigler needs to a new contract.

"I know he gets a lot of heat from people — that he should do things different," Harman said. "I go to bat for him every time people ask. I know he's been a great coach to me and
Jordan and the other guys. Me and Jordan really have done what he's asked the last four years and flourished individually."

The future

Harman will continue to play baseball at CMU. A shortstop, he said he looks to begin practicing immediately.

But his first love is basketball, and he and Bitzer have plans to play professionally. If that doesn't work out, they could roam the sidelines as coaches.

For now, their final game still stings. But neither have any regrets.

"I took it a lot better than I thought I would," Harman said. "I was happy with my four years here and I would have liked to have a little more success, but I wouldn't take it back for anything. I'm sure Jordan feels the same way and some of the other guys who are done now.

"I felt like I personally played my best and other guys did, it just didn't happen for us that day. It wasn't something I was going to beat myself up over."

Said Bitzer: "People ask me if I'm doing OK, and I don't think it really has hit me yet that we're done. It'll probably hit me next week when I'm sitting around my apartment when we're usually practicing."

And no matter how Zeigler's tenure at CMU ends, the two guys who set the first example of his philosophy will always stay with him.

"They had great careers and did some things that helped springboard this program in the right direction," Zeigler said. "Unfortunately, it didn't end the way each of us wanted. But we'll always be indebted to Robbie Harman and Jordan Bitzer."

E-mail the author: Daniel Monson

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Books: “On Compromise and Rotten Compromises.” (The New Yorker)

Posted: 15 Mar 2010 02:43 AM PDT

In a provocative book, Margalit—a professor emeritus of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the George F. Kennan Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton—claims that "rotten compromises are not allowed, even for the sake of peace." Focussing on the political rather than on the personal, he defines a rotten compromise as "an agreement to establish or maintain an inhuman regime." Such compromises can be rotten as a result of the terms themselves—such as the provisions in the United States Constitution that allowed for slavery—or as a result of the wickedness of those who determine the terms, as in the case of Hitler and the Munich agreement. "We should, I believe, be judged by our compromises more than by our ideals and our norms," Margalit writes. "Ideals may tell us something important about what we would like to be. But compromises tell us who we are." ♦

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Web guru Tim Bray takes Google Android job (CNET)

Posted: 15 Mar 2010 02:57 AM PDT

Tim Bray--co-inventor of XML, notable tech blogger, and until recently a Sun Microsystems employee--has joined Google's Android team in part to show the world what he thinks is wrong with Apple's iPhone.

The move puts a personal face on the cultural, technical, and business issues central to Silicon Valley companies. In a blog post titled "Now A No-Evil Zone," Bray said Monday he's in philosophical alignment with Google in general and in opposition to Apple's iPhone specifically.

"The reason I'm here is mostly Android. Which seems to me about as unambiguously a good thing as the tangled wrinkly human texture of the Net can sustain just now," Bray said.

Specifically, he likes Android's developer-friendliness, its full suite of interfaces, its open-source nature, its strong Google backing, its open market--and its competition to the iPhone. Bray offers the following tirade against Apple's ways:

The iPhone vision of the mobile Internet's future omits controversy, sex, and freedom, but includes strict limits on who can know what and who can say what. It's a sterile Disney-fied walled garden surrounded by sharp-toothed lawyers. The people who create the apps serve at the landlord's pleasure and fear his anger.
I hate it.
I hate it even though the iPhone hardware and software are great, because freedom's not just another word for anything, nor is it an optional ingredient...
The big thing about the Web isn't the technology, it's that it's the first-ever platform without a vendor (credit for first pointing this out goes to Dave Winer). From that follows almost everything that matters, and it matters a lot now, to a huge number of people. It's the only kind of platform I want to help build.
Apple apparently thinks you can have the benefits of the Internet while at the same time controlling what programs can be run and what parts of the stack can be accessed and what developers can say to each other.
I think they're wrong and see this job as a chance to help prove it.

Google in some areas is allied with Apple, but with Android increasingly is in competition. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt resigned from Apple's board in 2009. And in March, Apple sued HTC for patent infringement, a move that has repercussions for Google since HTC builds its Nexus One and other Android phones.

Google famously adopted a "don't be evil" motto, attempting to build into its corporate culture a motivation besides merely maximizing shareholder value. Although this appeals to Bray, he said he recognized the time for absolutes is over for Google.

It's now too big to be purely good or in fact purely anything. I'm sure that tendrils of stupidity and evil are even now finding interstitial breeding grounds whence they will emerge to cause grief. And there are some Google initiatives that I feel no urge to go near.
But there are those Ten Things and you know, I'm down with 'em. Unreservedly.

Bray had been at Sun Microsystems since 2004; Sun had a strong corporate culture endorsing open interfaces and, eventually, open-source software as well.

But Sun of course didn't remain independent. decided against staying with the company as it becomes part of Oracle.

"I'd had an offer to stay with Oracle which I decided to decline," Bray said. "I'll maybe tell the story when I can think about it without getting that weird spiking-blood-pressure sensation in my eyeballs."

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Philosophy

Monday, March 15, 2010

“Bitzer, Harman exemplify Zeigler’s philosophy (Central Michigan Life)” plus 2 more

“Bitzer, Harman exemplify Zeigler’s philosophy (Central Michigan Life)” plus 2 more

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