A 1962 episode of I’ve Got a Secret in which Paul Lipman played the theremin.
Tags: Paul Lipman
Chris Christie: 2% doesn’t taste the same. (Image by Luigi Novi.)
The most ridiculous moment from Chris Christie’s tone-deaf, masturbatory Keynote Address last night was his assertion that Mitt Romney will tell America “hard truths.” Romney has done absolutely the opposite during this campaign, pledging tax cuts for the wealthiest, a return to a Cold War military budget and yet a reduction in the budget.
What Christie really is saying is the usual right-wing, supply-side nonsense: Unions, working-class people, seniors and poor people have to sacrifice more while the wealthiest will get larger tax breaks. The pain will not be evenly distributed. I would put aside the unfairness of such an arrangement if it actually worked, but it doesn’t. Nothing trickles down.
If you truly want to help impoverished people, there’s a blueprint. Don’t take away their Medicaid and food stamps. Don’t treat them like they’re evil. Start to replicate in other locations what Geoffrey Canada has done with the Harlem Children’s Zone and make a real investment in those born to poverty. The program works, but it requires work and money across generations. That’s the hard truth.
But it’s easier to be a fake tough guy spouting lies, asking the vulnerable to tighten their belts. And this coming from a guy who won’t even give up whole milk.•
Tags: Chris Christie, Mitt Romney
I’m of two minds about Stephen L. Carter’s arguments in his new Bloomberg essay, “How Bobby Fischer (Briefly) Changed America.” Carter recalls the Fischer-Spassky chess matches of 1972, which became a national sensation, as the last time Americans were interested in complex ideas. There are by far more U.S. citizens right now than ever before who are interested in and capable of complicated thinking, though there are probably many more focused on the basic function of tools rather than challenging content they can deliver. The piece’s opening:
“This summer marks the anniversary of an extraordinary moment in U.S. history: the 1972 match in which the American genius Bobby Fischer defeated the Soviet wizard Boris Spassky for the chess championship of the world.
The battle probably should have been just one more headline in an eventful three months that saw the Watergate burglary, the expulsion of the Soviet military from Egypt and the humiliating dismissal of vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton from the Democratic ticket. Somehow the story of Fischer and Spassky and their epic match, which ended 40 years ago this month, captured our attention in a way that no struggle of intellect has since.
The two best players in the world were playing 24 games in Iceland, and everyone paid attention. Strangers who had never picked up a chess piece discussed the match on subway trains. Newspapers put out special editions announcing the results of the games, and vendors hawked them from the corners, shouting out the name of the winner. Book publishers were signing up chess writers by the dozens.
Chess is a very hard game, and what is most remarkable about that summer is that people wanted to play anyway. They wanted their minds stretched, and were willing to work for that reward. The brief period of Fischer’s ascendancy — he quit chess three years later — was perhaps the last era in our nation’s history when this could be said.”
••••••••••
Mike Wallace’s excellent profile of Fischer in 1972, just prior to the showdown with Spassky. Lewis Cohen, the 12-year-old prodigy who loses a game of speed chess to Fischer, may be this guy.
Tags: Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Lewis H. Cohen, Mike Wallace, Stephen L. Carter
The human mind is really good at justification and rationalization and delaying responsibility, so it’s not surprising that a cleverly designed recent study reveals that we’re much more likely to answer printed questions honestly when we’re asked to sign the form at the beginning rather than the end. From John Timmer at Ars Technica:
“Their hypothesis was that ‘signing one’s name before reporting information (rather than at the end) makes morality accessible right before it is most needed, which will consequently promote honest reporting.’
To test this proposal, they designed a series of forms that required self reporting of personal information, either involving performance on a math quiz where higher scores meant higher rewards, or the reimbursable travel expenses involved in getting to the study’s location. The only difference among the forms? Some did not ask for a signature, some put the signature on top, and some placed it in its traditional location, at the end.
In the case of the math quiz, the researchers actually tracked how well the participants had performed. With the signature at the end, a full 79 percent of the participants cheated. Somewhat fewer cheated when no signature was required, though the difference was not statistically significant. But when the signature was required on top, only 37 percent cheated—less than half the rate seen in the signature-at-bottom group.”
Tags: John Timmer
From the March 7, 1895 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Patchogue, L.I.–David Robinson, a resident of East Moriches, is dead. Robinson weighed 500 pounds and was buried in a coffin large enough to hold four ordinary men. Mr. Robinson showed signs of great strength and rapid growth before he was 21 years of age. For some years he was a whaler and sailed on several ships from Sag Harbor. He was a giant in strength. Though the whalers, as a rule, were pretty tough characters in those days, it was said that Robinson was more than a match for the roughest of them. It is said that he could at one time life a dead weight of 2,000 pounds with his neck and shoulders. Of late years, Mr. Robinson had grown tremendously in size and moved about very little, owing to his weight. He had amassed quite an estate.”
Tags: David Robinson
Since we contain far more bacterial cells than cells from our parents, some medical researchers are beginning to look at the human body as an ecosystem. The opening of a piece on the topic from the Economist:
“WHAT’S a man? Or, indeed, a woman? Biologically, the answer might seem obvious. A human being is an individual who has grown from a fertilised egg which contained genes from both father and mother. A growing band of biologists, however, think this definition incomplete. They see people not just as individuals, but also as ecosystems. In their view, the descendant of the fertilised egg is merely one component of the system. The others are trillions of bacteria, each equally an individual, which are found in a person’s gut, his mouth, his scalp, his skin and all of the crevices and orifices that subtend from his body’s surface.
A healthy adult human harbours some 100 trillion bacteria in his gut alone. That is ten times as many bacterial cells as he has cells descended from the sperm and egg of his parents. These bugs, moreover, are diverse. Egg and sperm provide about 23,000 different genes. The microbiome, as the body’s commensal bacteria are collectively known, is reckoned to have around 3m. Admittedly, many of those millions are variations on common themes, but equally many are not, and even the number of those that are adds something to the body’s genetic mix.
And it really is a system, for evolution has aligned the interests of host and bugs. In exchange for raw materials and shelter the microbes that live in and on people feed and protect their hosts, and are thus integral to that host’s well-being. Neither wishes the other harm. In bad times, though, this alignment of interest can break down. Then, the microbiome may misbehave in ways which cause disease.”
Life is a fight that’s long and bruising, the score changes regularly yet surprisingly, and no one really wins in the end. And that’s for the fortunate ones. When we’re at our best or worst, it seems like it will go on forever, that no fall or rise is possible. But the sands shift and the tides are unimpressed. We can spend our time marking down who’s leading, but we’re all falling behind.
Two fighters, Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, brought out the best and worst in one another. Their three fights in the early 1970s made them legends and made them old. Ali used ugly, racist words to describe his fiercest opponent. It was the Greatest at his lowest. Frazier relished Ali’s eventual physical decline, diminishing himself in the process. They were both winners, but it wasn’t enough–the other had to lose. Ali seemed better about letting go of the feud in later years, but let’s remember that he won two of the fights. From “The Lonesome Death of Smokin’ Joe Frazier,” Tom Junod’s 2011 Esquire piece about the rivalry that couldn’t end on its own terms:
“The only time I ever met Joe Frazier was in downtown Atlanta, outside the arena used as a boxing venue during the 1996 Summer Olympics. The week before, Ali had once again “shocked the world” when he was handed the torch at the opening ceremonies, and then he elicited both pity and awe when he shakily climbed the stairs and ignited the Olympic flame. Despite winning the gold medal in the 1964 Games, Joe wasn’t invited to the stadium that night, and now he was selling T-shirts in a jerryrigged shack outside the boxing arena, just another of the carnie barkers who infested downtown during the games and turned Atlanta into an eyesore. His son Marvis — the former heavyweight contender who had been knocked out as if by a gunshot by a Larry Holmes right hand and then almost killed by Mike Tyson — was working the shack, making change. ‘Hey Joe!’ I said, and walked up to him as my father had 25 years earlier. He held out his hand horizontally, and held it still. ‘Hey Joe!’ I repeated, and Joe, looking at his hand and then at me, said with a familiar smile: ‘Still steady.’
He was saying that he had won. He was saying that while Ali was a rattling relic with Parkinson’s Syndrome, he, Joe Frazier, was still steady, and capable of keeping his hand still. He was saying, above all, that wherever Ali was, he, Joe Frazier, put him there, and that he was vindicated by the split decision handed down by the fullness of time.
Now Joe Frazier is dead, and Muhammad Ali has once again miraculously outlasted him. But that’s the thing about fighting your battles over the fullness of time: You fight when you’re a young man, and you fight until the final bell. You keep fighting when you’re an old man, and you keep fighting to the death.”
Tags: Joe Frazier, Muhammad Ali, Tom Junod
How cool: Ray Bradbury visits Merv Griffin in 1978 to discuss Close Encounters of the Third Kind and the future of humankind. He also reads one of his poems.
Tags: Merv Griffin, Ray Bradbury
During a sparring match with Google’s Eric Schmidt, libertarian Peter Thiel restates his belief that technological progress has largely stalled during the last four decades:
“But I think that when you look at this question of how much technological progress has been happening, we get into all these complicated measurement issues. The one that I cite as the big data point is that if you look at the U.S. say in the last 40 years, 1973 to today, median wages have been stagnant. Maybe the mean wages have gone up maybe a small amount, not very much. The 40 years before that, 1932 to 1972, they went up by a factor of 6.
So, if you looked at how people did from ’32 to ’72, you had a six-fold improvement, and it was matched by incredible technological progress. Cars got better. You had the aeronautics industry got started. You went from no planes to supersonic jets. You had the computers invented. You had all sorts of incredibly important dimensions in which progress took place.
And so I agree we’ve had certain narrow areas where there’s been significant progress, but it’s very odd that it hasn’t translated into economic well being. And this is not just a problem with capitalist countries, like the U.S.”
Tags: Eric Schmidt, Peter Thiel
When I posted not too long ago about the reasons why women’s sports have experienced such a boom in America over the last four decades, I was remiss in not mentioning Billie Jean King. In 1974, the tennis star founded the Women’s Sports Foundation, womenSports magazine and became the first female to be a founding partner of a major sports league with World Team Tennis.
Tags: Billie Jean King
“The breach grew wider with time, each sending word that he meant to kill the other.”
A San Antonio cattle deal gone bad led to a deadly duel in 1886, as reported in that year’s November 8th edition of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“A Times special from San Antonio, Tex., says: ‘Information has reached here from Prio Town, the seat of Prio County, of a duel which took place Friday afternoon in Seavala County, near the county line, between two of the wealthiest ranchmen in Seavala County–Hiram Bennett and John Rumfield. The men for several years were close friends and owned many cattle and sheep jointly. About a year ago they dissolved business relations and a difficulty arose regarding the number of cattle in a certain bunch which figured in their settlement at a valuation of $10,000. The breach grew wider with time, each sending word that he meant to kill the other. Friday afternoon the two rich men, with a few cowboys, happened to meet near the edge of the little village of Batesville. They were both on horseback and carrying Winchesters. It was agreed that they should dismount and fire at the word of command from one of the cowboys. They stood about 150 feet apart. Both men were crack shots and each fired at the word. Bennett fell dead, with a bullethole through the brain. One report says Rumfield was wounded in the thigh; another account says he is uninjured. No attempt has been made thus far to arrest Rumfield, who is on his ranch, and would doubtless fight before being carried to jail. The dead man was worth about a quarter of a million dollars in cattle, sheep and lands. He leaves a family.'”
Tags: Hiram Bennett, John Rumfield
“Why would a fat, cheap, dirty, broke guy want to date a knock-out like me?”
knock out (Cranbury)
Realistic dilemma: Stunning, intellegent, independent woman attracts the dredges. Why would a fat, cheap, dirty, broke guy want to date a knock-out like me? Most men my age wind up in a one bedroom apartment in the worst section of town, while the ex’s took the best of them. Second time around sucks for women. And you men who have a little jingle want women in their 30’s even though you can’t have an erection.
A 1965 NBC special hosted by John Chancellor about the science of Cold War spying. You could argue all the gamesmanship, all the information gathered during U.S.-Soviet stalemate had very little effect on anything.
Tags: John Chancellor
“It turns out very few people saw the gorilla.” (Image by Kabir Bakie.)
From a Five Books interview at the Browser with behavioral economist Dan Ariely, a passage about The Invisible Gorilla, which demonstrates that we see more with our brains than our eyes and that our brains are often “blind”:
“Let’s go through the books, and you can tell me what’s important about them and why you like them. The first one on your list is The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us, by Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons.
These are the guys who did one of the most important pieces of research in social science, which is to show how little we actually see in the world around us. The basic demonstration of this is a movie in which there are two groups playing basketball. One group is wearing white t-shirts and the other group is wearing black t-shirts. They are passing the ball, and the viewer is asked to count how many times the people in white t-shirts pass the ball to each other. What then happens in the background is a gorilla passes through. He stops right in the middle and thumps his chest. When the clip is over, the viewer is asked, “How many times did you see the people in white t-shirts pass the ball?” Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong. But when you ask, ‘How many of you saw the gorilla?’ it turns out very few people saw the gorilla.
I didn’t see the gorilla.
There’s also another demonstration in the book that I really like. This involves going up to someone on a campus with a map and saying, ‘Excuse me, can you help me figure out how to get to the student centre?’ They take the map from your hand and start explaining it to you. While they’re explaining, two people in workmen’s clothes come between you with a door. For a moment, they obscure your view. What the person you’ve asked for directions doesn’t know is that you’re going away. You’re walking off with the door and a new person is standing in front of them. The question is, do people notice this change? And the answer is, again, no.
These are findings that are incredibly powerful and important. We think we see with our eyes, but the reality is that we largely see with our brains. Our brain is a master at giving us what we expect to see. It’s all about expectation, and when things violate expectation we are just unaware of them. We go around the world with a sense that we pay attention to lots of things. The reality is that we notice much less than we think. And if we notice so much less than we think, what does that mean about our ability to figure out things around us, to learn and improve? It means we have a serious problem. I think this book has done a tremendous job in showing how even in vision, which is such a good system in general, we are poorly tooled to make good decisions.”
Tags: Dan Ariely
I have great respect for the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, though I usually think his predictions are very aggressive. In his defense, he is way smarter than I am. From the Sun:
“WE are living through the most exciting period of human history.
Computer technology and our understanding of genes — our body’s software programs — are accelerating at an incredible rate.
I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies’ stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nano-technology will let us live for ever.
Already, blood cell-sized submarines called nanobots are being tested in animals. These will soon be used to destroy tumours, unblock clots and perform operations without scars.
Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.
Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.”
Tags: Ray Kurzweil
“How about this: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, in a freeform talk-show-type discussion. “
That excellent James Fallows of the Atlantic has just done a lengthy Ask Me Anything on Reddit. A few segments follow.
_________________________________________________________
Question:
James Fallows:
Tags: James Fallows
Paul Ryan: Chiseled abs, no remorse,
Grover Norquist, whose name I have never espied while within a voting booth, wants the U.S. government to return to the GDP levels of 1900, when the average lifespan of our citizens was 47. (There truly were no second acts in America then.) While that fact doesn’t suggest only causation–medical progress played a large part in the elongation of life–it can’t be reduced to mere correlation, either. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other government programs have helped us live longer and better than humans ever have in our nation’s history.
GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan is also more in love with ideology and fudged math than human life, more beholden to ingrown, adolescent fantasies of rugged individualism. If his policies were ever enacted, really good people would die sooner than they have to. Talk about your death panels. In his latest column in the New Republic, Leon Wieseltier spits his considerable bile at a worthy target in Ryan, that Objectivist altar boy, dismantling his subject with reason and rage. An excerpt:
“‘I swear—by my life and my love of it—that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.’ That is how John Galt concludes his testament, which Paul Ryan demands that his staffers in Congress read. What a frail sense of self it is that feels so imperiled by the existence of others! This monadic ideal is not heroic, it is cowardly. It is also dangerous, because it honors only itself. In his Roadmap, the intellectual on the Republican ticket lectures that “the Founders saw [Adam] Smith not only as an economic thinker, but as a moral philosopher whose other great work was The Theory of Moral Sentiments.’ Never mind that everybody else also saw Smith that way, because he really was a moral philosopher and he really did write The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Has Ryan ever opened The Theory of Moral Sentiments? Has he ever read its very first sentence on its very first page? ‘How selfish soever man may be supposed,’ Smith begins, ‘there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.’ That is the least Galt-like, least Rand-like, least Ryan-like sentence ever written. And from there the conservatives’ deity launches into a profound analysis of ‘mutual sympathy.’ So much for Ryan’s fiction of the isolato with a platinum card! If there is anything that Adam Smith stands for, it is the reconcilability of capitalism with fellow feeling, of market economics with social decency. But Ryan is a dismal student of Smith, because he likes his capitalism cruel.”
Tags: Leon Wieseltier, Paul Ryan
I don’t think people should be exalted, any of us. No statues should be built. Even the best of us are disappointing–small and petty and vain and vengeful. We often take out our unhappiness on others. Even when being seemingly generous–celebrating our country, our community, our family, our friends–we’re often just celebrating ourselves. And we should never do that. We should remain humble.
Neil Armstrong was just flesh and bones like the rest of us. He had his bad days and his flaws. But it’s amazing that he displayed such humility while accomplishing so much and braving every challenge. Not everyone can afford to be so modest. Some people have so many strikes against them that they have to convince everyone else–even themselves–that they belong. But it’s great that the one of us who went the furthest, and got there first, stayed so down-to-earth. Neil Armstrong was above and beyond, and I’m not only talking about atmosphere and stratosphere.
From Oriana Fallaci’s 1966 book about the space program, If the Sun Dies:
“The third old man was thirty-four and looked like John Glenn’s young brother: the same freckles, the same fair coloring, the same ease; he had even been born in Ohio. Nevertheless certain things distinguished him from John Glenn–his lack of vivacity, his diplomacy and his shoulders that were extraordinarily rounded for such a strong physique. His mouth was ironical, but an irony full of caution. His voice was quiet, his movement economical. His name was Neil Armstrong and they picked him with the second group. The most interesting piece of information about him, for me, was that he didn’t have a service background. The only astronaut civilian I was to meet. And perhaps because of this he entered like someone visiting the dentist. And I felt indeed like a dentist, I was tempted to ask: Is it a molar that hurts or a canine? I would not have been at all surprised if he had answered: ‘No, Doctor, it’s an incisor.’ Sound track:
‘What a fine thing, Mr. Armstrong! You’re not from the service!’
‘I came from NASA, where I was an electronics engineer and a jet test pilot. It isn’t different. I mean, I’ve got as much discipline as the others and discipline is the main thing you need if you’re going into space. Besides, the reason they pick servicemen isn’t because they’re more suitable than civilians; they pick them because they’ve got them all neatly packaged and pre-selected so it’s easier to dig up the right man. You know everything about a serviceman, including how far you can trust him. But they knew everything about me too: I’ve been with NASA for several years.’
‘However, becoming an astronaut must give you great joy.’
‘I wouldn’t know. Let me think….”
‘Haven’t you thought about it before?’
‘To me it was simply being transferred from one office to another. I was in one office and then they moved me into this one. Well, yes, I suppose I was pleased. It’s always nice to gain in status. But I don’t have any personal ambition. My one ambition is to contribute to the success of this program. I’m no romantic.’
‘Do you mean that you don’t have a taste for adventure?’
‘For heaven’s sake, I loathe danger, especially if it’s useless; danger is the most irritating aspect of our job. How can a perfectly normal technological fact be turned into adventure? And why should steering a spacecraft be risking your life? It would be as illogical as risking your life when you use an electric mixer when making a milkshake. There should be nothing dangerous about making a milkshake and there should be nothing dangerous about steering a spacecraft. Once you’ve granted this concept, you can no longer think in terms of adventure, the urge of going up just for the sake of going up…’
I observed his mouth. Perhaps not the molar, not the canine, nor the incisor. It was probably the wisdom tooth.
‘Mr. Armstrong, I know somebody who would go up even if he knew he wouldn’t come back. Just for the urge to go up.’
‘Among us astronauts?’
‘Among you astronauts.’
‘I rule him out. If you knew him, he’d be a boy, not an adult.’
‘He’s an adult, Mr. Armstrong.’
‘But who?’
‘It doesn’t matter. Let’s talk about you. Leaving aside the milkshake, I suppose you’d be sorry not to go up?’
‘Yes, but I wouldn’t get sick about it. I don’t understand the ones who are so anxious to be the first. It’s all nonsense, kid stuff, just romanticism unworthy of our rational age. I rule out the possibility of agreeing to go up if I thought I might not come back, unless it were technically indispensable. I mean, testing a jet is dangerous but technically indispensable. Dying in space or on the Moon, is not technically indispensable and consequently if I had to choose between death while testing a jet and death on the Moon, I’d choose death while testing a jet. Wouldn’t you?’
No, it wasn’t the wisdom tooth that hurt. That one was healthy. It was something else, Father, a lack of pain, I would say, a good cry such as children have when they want the Moon, no matter if they have to die to get the Moon, that exquisite infancy which stays in us, as a gift, even when we are adults with all our teeth, our prudence.
‘No, confronted with such a dilemma, I’d unhesitatingly choose to die on the Moon: at least I’ll get a look at the Moon.’
‘Kid stuff. Nonsense. Die on the Moon! To get a look at the Moon! If it were a matter of staying there for a year or two…maybe…I don’t know. No, no, it would still be too high a price to pay because it’s senseless.’
‘Did you spend all your young years at NASA, Mr. Armstrong?’
‘I spent them traveling: Europe, Asia, South America. So I saw what there was to see, I understood what there was to understand, and here I am.’
‘Were you in the war, Mr. Armstrong?’
‘Sure, I was in Korea. Seventy-eight combat missions. I’d be lying if I said they’d done me any good.’
‘Do you have any children, Mr. Armstrong?’
‘Sure. One seven and one two. How could I not have children at my age?’
‘Ten minutes,’ said the Bureaucrat. ‘Hurry!’
He stood up. ‘I’d better say goodbye. I have to go in the centrifuge.’
‘I don’t envy you, Mr. Armstrong.’
‘Yes, it’s very disagreeable: perhaps the thing I hate most. But indispensable.’
‘Time’s up! Stop!’
‘Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.'”
Tags: Neil Armstrong, Oriana Fallaci
Basketball is the one major sport without antecedent that America invented, the handiwork of Dr. James Naismith, who realized in 1891 that peach baskets could be repurposed. Sean Newell of Deadspin has a post about the notes Naismith wrote after watching the first ever basketball game. It wasn’t always clear, for instance, that the game should begin with a jump ball. The transcript from the auction site that handled the papers:
“The First Game
When Mr. Stubbins brot [sic] up the peach baskets to the gym I secured them on the inside of the railing of the gallery. This was about 10 feet from the floor, one at each end of the gymnasium. I then put the 13 rules on the bulletin board just behind the instructor’s platform, secured a soccer ball and awaited the arrival of the class. I busied myself arranging the apparatus, all the time watching the boys as they arrived to observe their attitude that day. I felt that this was a crucial moment in my life as it meant success or failure of my attempt to hold the interest of the class and devise a new game.
I had neither the advantage of age nor the benefit of experience to help me put this across. But I did then what I have found universally successful since. I gathered the class around the platform and frankly stated the difficulties confronting me-telling them how I tried my best to give them the kind of work I thought suitable for secretarial students, frankly stating that I had made a failure of my attempts to modify games but told them that I had an absolutely new one and asked them to give it a trial assuring them that I thought it would be good.
The class did not show much enthusiasm but followed my lead. I lined them up, called the roll and asked T.D. Patton & E.S. Libby to step out and divide the class into two teams. I then explained what they had to do to make goals, tossed the ball up between the two center men & tried to keep them somewhat near the rules. Most of the fouls were called for running with the ball, though tackling the man with the ball was not uncommon.
If we had rules there must of necessity be some one to interpret and enforce the penalty. Two officials were appointed, one to watch the play with the ball, the other to watch the actions of the players & call the fouls.
We were ready to try out the game but as yet had no goal. I went to Mr. Stubbins, the supt. Of the building, and asked him if he had a couple of boxes about 18 inches square, as I had concluded that the goal must be small enough so that a goal could not be made at every attempt. He replied, ‘No,’ and after a moment’s hesitation he said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I have a couple of peach baskets about that size if they will do you any good.’ I asked him to bring them up to the gym floor-I nailed them to the gallery one at each end and the equipment was ready.
First court, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1891.
We now had a team game with equipment and an objective. The next question that arose was how are we going to start the game? I reviewed the games and found that the intent of the start was to give each side an equal chance of obtaining the ball. In water polo the teams were at each end of the pool and the ball was thrown into the center. I felt that this would not do as two teams rushing at each other would at least make for roughness. The plan of soccer was dismissed as it gave too much opportunity to keep the ball in the hands of the thrower’s team, thus giving them a decided advantage.
I then recalled the method of putting the ball in play in Eng. Rugby when the ball had gone over the side lines. The forward lined up in a row perpendicular to the side line, the teams opposite each other. The umpire with his back to the field threw the ball in between these lines with no chance for determining who would receive it.
I then thought of lining the teams up across the center of the floor and tossing it in between these lines. At this point I had a sickening feeling in the pit of my stomach caused by the recollection of events that occurred in such a play. When one of our opponents saw that the opposite side secured the ball he would arrange things in such a way that as the player descended with the ball in his hands over his head his shoulder, elbow or knee was in the spot where his stomach was landing. This again made for roughness.
I then thought that if two men were selected to jump for the ball that it would eliminate roughness and give each side an equal chance.
Again a problem presented itself and no solution appeared. By what line of association it occurred I do not know but I was back in Bennie’s Corners, playing duck on the rock. The whole scene came before me–across the road that led to Walter Gardner’s home was a large rock higher than our knees & larger than a washtub. On this rock one or more would place their ducks-a rock twice as large as our fists. The rest of us stood behind a line about ten feet away from the rock. The object of the game was for ‘it’ to tag one of the boys who was retrieving his duck. He could do this only when his duck was on the rock. It was the object of the men behind the line to knock ‘its’ duck off the rock when he would need to replace it before he could tag anyone.
In throwing at the duck on the rock, I recalled that at times we would throw our duck as hard as we could & thus knock his away some distance. If, however, we were all back of the line and ‘it’ was ready to tag us we would throw our duck in a curve so as to knock his off & ours would fall on the near side & thus be easily retrieved. In this other case the duck was thrown in a curve and accuracy took the place of force. The idea occurred to me that if the goal was horizontal instead of vertical the player would be compelled to throw in a curve and force which made for roughness would be of no value. I then concluded that the goal into which the ball should be thrown would be horizontal. I then thought of a box, somewhat resembling our old rock, into which the ball should be tossed. It then occurred to me that the team would form a nine man defense around the goal & it would be impossible to make a goal. The shot would need to be highly arched to win any chance of entering the goal.
It then occurred to me that if the ball did not need to reach the ground the defense would be useless in that condition. I then thought of putting the goal above the heads of the defense & their only chance to prevent a goal was to go out & get the ball or prevent his opponent from throwing to the goal.”
Tags: James Naismtih
The United States ranks 34th in infant mortality rate, but some of us dream of life-extension beyond belief, we dream of an end that never arrives. That’s our strange reality right now, though perhaps the Affordable Care Act will improve those numbers, should it survive one more mad charge in November. From David Ewing Duncan in the New York Times:
“How many years might be added to a life? A few longevity enthusiasts suggest a possible increase of decades. Most others believe in more modest gains. And when will they come? Are we a decade away? Twenty years? Fifty years?
Even without a new high-tech ‘fix’ for aging, the United Nations estimates that life expectancy over the next century will approach 100 years for women in the developed world and over 90 years for women in the developing world. (Men lag behind by three or four years.)
Whatever actually happens, this seems like a good time to ask a very basic question: How long do you want to live?
Over the past three years I have posed this query to nearly 30,000 people at the start of talks and lectures on future trends in bioscience, taking an informal poll as a show of hands. To make it easier to tabulate responses I provided four possible answers: 80 years, currently the average life span in the West; 120 years, close to the maximum anyone has lived; 150 years, which would require a biotech breakthrough; and forever, which rejects the idea that life span has to have any limit at all.”
Tags: David Ewing Duncan
Asimov and his blazer (wow!) interviewed by Bill Boggs in 1982. Have I ever mentioned that I have read almost no science fiction? ‘Tis true.
In 1984, Boggs welcomed Heller, who will always be remembered for Catch-22, but should also be remembered for Something Happened.
Tags: Bill Boggs, Isaac Asimov, Joseph Heller
“I’m 21, young and beautiful.”
appendix for sale – $500 (anywhere, everywhere)
some asshole stole my iphone and I’m selling my appendix, i figured i have no use for it so might as well sell it. im 21 young and beautiful, so my appendix is healthy and in great condition. we can also do a trade off, my appendix for your iphone 4s…the phone has to be in a good condition, im not taking a crappy phone for my beautiful and healthy appendix.
Awkward and private, Robert De Niro was never a fan of the talk-show circuit, especially in his prime when he was turning out one indelible performance after another. But he relented for Merv Griffin in 1981, the year he won Best Actor for Raging Bull. De Niro also discuses the next movie he and Martin Scorsese were collaborating on, The King of Comedy.
From the September 19, 1898 Brooklyn Daily Eagle:
“Uniontown, Pa.–A christening last night at Banning, a mining settlement near here, ended in a free for all fight, in which knives, pistols and clubs were used. One man was killed and five others were injured. The participants in the melee fled and the police are after them.”