Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Coming Out of the Game

Was feeling a bit woozy given the all the psyop mind manipulation lately:

"With new tool, Mass. hopes to get more schools to report concussions" by Matt Rocheleau Globe Staff  August 16, 2017

With fall sports just around the corner, the state is rolling out a new electronic reporting tool it hopes will encourage more public schools to submit mandated statistics about concussions and other head injuries among athletes.

The latest push comes amid rising concern nationwide about the long-term health ramifications of concussions, particularly for young, developing brains.

Under regulations implemented six years ago — and designed to help ensure that administrators, coaches, parents, and students take head injuries seriously — schools have been required to submit the data after each academic year. The number of schools doing so has risen over the years, but even in the most recent year, about 200 schools failed to submit data, despite the legal requirement. Others reported incomplete information or data believed to be inaccurate, including questionably low numbers. 

It would hurt the team, and if Tom Brady doesn't have to own up to them.

At times, the process has been clunky. There have been typos and fields left blank by school administrators. And it has required state officials to manually transfer information into their database, leaving the door open for more mistakes.

The data are believed to be so flawed that state officials, as well as medical experts interviewed by the Globe, have urged against analyzing or publishing the figures.....

Globe did anyway!

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Now get back in there!

Related:

"A mixed martial arts fighter who was hospitalized over the weekend after competing in an event in Plymouth died Tuesday morning, and an investigation is underway, officials said. Rondel Clark, 26, of Sutton was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, the Plymouth District Attorney’s office said. Clark fought Saturday on a card sponsored by the Cage Titans promotion company at Plymouth Memorial Hall. He lost by technical knockout in the third round and was carried from the ring on a stretcher. “It’s tragic,” said Hilary Rose , a 24-year-old who attended the fight and trains at an MMA gym in Bellingham. “You go to a promotion, you want to watch the fights. Nobody wants this to happen. You never expect something like that. And then it’s a reality. Everyone in the MMA community is a little shocked by it.” Andy Kurzontkowski, one of the commentators for the three-round fight which was streamed online, called Clark a “true warrior who fought until the very end.” 

It is tragic; however, it has happened before. Boxers died, rules were changed, and the sport continued. MMA is the 21st-century boxing (heck, it's melding with the racially charged Mayweather-MacGregor thing), and its confines to the poor and uneducating makes it less troubling. Now, were it to happen on a football field, that could changes things quicker than a CTE scan.

Even more tragic? A culture and media that celebrates sports contests with a warrior mentality.

Maybe war is a game to them. How tragic is that?

I know I've forgotten something today.

Going to need a ride home:

"MBTA names former GE executive as new general manager" by Adam Vaccaro Globe Staff  August 15, 2017

The MBTA said Tuesday that a former General Electric Co. executive with no experience in public transit would be its next general manager, overseeing a network that handles more than 1 million subway, bus, and commuter rail rides a day.

Luis Ramirez is currently a consultant in the Dallas-Fort Worth area specializing in business turnarounds. He was chief executive of an industrial supplier to the power industry for nearly three years after working in energy-related positions at GE.

Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack said Ramirez’s lack of transit experience was far from an obstacle to naming him for one of the most visible, pressure-packed jobs in state government.

“In fact, transit expert was not high on our priority list when we launched the search for a new general manager,” Pollack said at an event Tuesday announcing Ramirez’s appointment. “What we wanted was a successful and seasoned executive with a proven track record at leading complex organizations through transformation and change.”

Oooooo-kay.

Ramirez, 50, takes over an agency that has been under constant pressure since the crippling winter snowstorms of 2015 exposed huge shortcomings in its equipment and operations, leading to the resignation of general manager Beverly Scott. An oversight board formed that year has since tightly managed the agency.

While the T has celebrated the work of its control board, many riders complain that they have not seen much of an effect yet. The agency still struggles with transit delays, which officials say they are addressing by repairing and updating equipment along the system, and spending on new vehicles, such as Red and Orange Line trains scheduled to arrive over the next several years.

Ramirez begins Sept. 12 and will receive an annual salary of $320,000, with the potential for up to $64,000 in annual bonuses based on performance metrics. It’s a sizable boost from past general manager salaries of about $175,000; officials said throughout the process that a higher salary would help the T attract qualified candidates. 

Whatever happened to the $1 a year men?

At his introduction Tuesday, Ramirez bristled at the notion that he was hired as a turnaround executive, saying the MBTA is already on the path to improvement.

“When I hear the phrase turnaround, it means something is going in the wrong direction or a direction contrary to where an organization needs to go,” he said. “My job is to build upon the solid foundation . . . and help create a long-term road map and plan to fully transform the T into what it needs to be: a world-class transportation system serving the people of a world-class city and Commonwealth.”

Ramirez will be the fifth person to run the T under Governor Charlie Baker.

The T has several formidable projects that Ramirez will immediately have to oversee. One is the $2.3 billion expansion of the Green Line, whose costs the T has struggled to keep under control. 

Trump is kicking in millions with more to come and the Globe minimized it (part of his infrastructure plans they didn't ask about).

The agency is also locked into an eight-year, $2.7 billion contract with Keolis, the French company that has run the commuter rail since 2014, sometimes with poor results. The T has already said it will not extend Keolis’s contract, so Ramirez will soon have to prepare to bid out the agency’s largest contract.

Yeah, Keolis got screwed. They low bid not knowing the hunk of junk they were taking over. The firm that had handled matters for decades -- with close connections on Beacon Hill -- was full of fraud and corruption.

Ramirez comes to the T as it is locked in a standoff with its union workers over the privatization of some bus maintenance garages and efforts to contain its high pension costs. In his remarks Tuesday, Ramirez said he has experience negotiating with union workers in private sector positions. 

He may need that in Bo$ton. Things can get pretty rough from what I read.

James O’Brien, president of the T’s largest labor group, the Boston Carmen’s Union Local 589, said he hopes Ramirez “empowers rather than attacks the people that try to keep this aging system running every day.”

Ramirez has been living in Dallas and has few personal ties to Boston — though he has ridden the system during business trips, he said. His wife, Delia Garced, is a GE vice president and will work at its new headquarters near the South Boston Waterfront. 

OMG!!! 

He got the job because his wife is moving to the area and he needs something to do. 

With all due respect, I was told up top he wasn't really qualified and now it turns out to look like another patronage hire.

He began his career as a business analyst, first for Unisys and then Siemens, before joining GE in 2000. He worked his way up the ranks of middle management, becoming vice president at an energy division in Connecticut.

Ramirez left GE in 2012 to become the chief executive of a struggling energy supplier in Texas, Global Power Equipment Group. In his bio on LinkedIn, he said he led a turnaround of the company, but he resigned suddenly in March 2015. 

(Sigh) 

I don't know if you want to read anymore.

Shortly after his resignation, Global Power said it had misreported financial statements due to accounting errors, and its chairman later described the period as “a challenging time.” Ramirez is among several current and former Global Power executives named as defendants in investor lawsuits over the accounting problems. 

And he is in the $tarting lineup, huh?

Ramirez was not available for comment later Tuesday on the matter.

The MBTA said it was aware of Ramirez’s resignation while hiring him, describing it as a “mutual decision” that was not related to the financial reporting issues.

They probably figured he would fit right in over there.

Global Power did not respond to a request for comment about the circumstances of his departure.....

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Time to go into the protocol.

UPDATE:

"The 26-year-old’s death was the first fatality linked to a sanctioned mixed martial arts event in Massachusetts....."

They are saying he wasn’t killed by any blows he took, but how can they know that when the cause of death is still undetermined?