Category Archives: General

General

What Would Happen if the NFL Eliminated Kickoffs?

As a big fan of Football, I’m sober enough to realize in these past few years this sport has reached something of a threshold moment.  Football, in its current incarnation, is actually relatively new, with the first SuperBowl held in 1967.  Back then, the players were often “part time” professionals and it was not uncommon to find them doing things like selling cars in the off-season to earn some extra cash.

But the sport grew and grew and grew, and as it did the money involved grew as well.  Player salaries skyrocketed and, suddenly, your average Football player no longer had to find alternative off-season work.  Instead, they had the freedom to devote their off season time to condition themselves even more.  Diets were improved and training exercises were perfected.  The money rewards meant more and more young people tried out for Football in High School and College, and thus the pool of talent was deeper, meaning there was more talent at the top.  In the end, the athletes on the field today are superior specimens of strength and speed versus the previous decades’ worth.  Jim Mandich, part of the legendary undefeated 1972 Dolphin team, himself said before his untimely passing that just about any modern Football team would not only defeat but smoke his beloved undefeated team of the past.  No question about it.

Unfortunately, with these stronger, faster, and more skilled athletes arises a big problem which the NFL is currently dealing with:  Injuries.  Specifically, head injuries.  For you see, when you have athletes conditioned to be their strongest and fastest running full speed into other athletes also conditioned to be their strongest and fastest, the one part of their body that one cannot condition to take physical punishment is the brain.  It seems silly to say, but let’s be clear:  There is no exercise out there that can make your brain somehow “stronger” or better capable of taking hits.  Almost any hits.  Sure, the helmets used in the NFL today are very high tech, but the reality is that the brain essentially “floats” on liquid within a person’s skull.  Running as fast as you can and abruptly being stopped by slamming into another player may send the brain against the skull wall.  Do so many, many times over a few years as a professional player and there is a likelihood your brain will sustain some kind of damage.

Because the league is relatively young, it is only now, with the passing of time, that an awareness of the types of injuries sustained over the long term to NFL players is being realized and is becoming an issue.  The league is being sued by former players who note that in the past they were ordered to play on despite concussions and other potentially -as well as actually- serious injuries sustained on the field.  I suspect the biggest worry about the NFL is that if these players of the past that are exhibiting signs of mental and physical problems related to injuries is just the tip of the iceberg.  What happens a little down the road when the current crops of much stronger and faster players drift into their old age?  Will we begin to see even more evidence of head and other trauma symptoms?

In recent years, the NFL has become more proactive and is trying to limit head on head hits as well as a host of penalties for hitting players that are particularly vulnerable to injury.  Some worry that the NFL will eventually become something akin to flag football.

The latest idea floated by the NFL is to do away with Kickoffs entirely.  What effect will doing so have on the game?  Brian Burke of Slate Magazine offers some fascinating analysis of just that:

http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/12/roger_goodell_kickoff_ban_more_scoring_more_fumbles_and_other_potential.html

There is little more to add.  I still enjoy watching Football.  However, a small part of me realizes that this is a sport caught in transition.  What we may see of it in the next decade may be very different from what we’re witnessing today.

General

Dreams and reality…

Had a dream -more like a nightmare- this morning, couldn’t really tell you all the details as they’re rapidly evaporating, but it involved some kind of hostage situation and, of course (!), some kind of road race I was involved in.

The bad guy of the dream piece, like bad guys in all major fiction tend to be, was one step ahead of everyone involved in the situation, and when the good guys thought they had him cornered, not only did it prove not to be the case, but the bad guy set up a new, very stringent demand.

To prove he wasn’t playing around, the bad guy told us we had to comply with his new order(s) in “5…4…3…2…1…”

And just as the bad guy was about to say “zero” -and I swear I’m not making this up- the alarm clock goes off!

Just goes to show how incredible the human mind is, to calibrate a countdown in a dream  to the literal second that my alarm clock is about to go off!

General

Death Bed Confession…

I like weird stories, and they don’t come much weirder than this story from HuffingtonPost.com involving one James Washington, who while in prison suffered a heart attack, thought he was going to die, and made a “death bed” confession to a murder he committed…only to not be quite as near death as he thought he was:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/05/james-washington-death-bed-confession_n_2076932.html

After surviving the heart attack, the man tried to recant his confession, but was ultimately convicted for the crime.

If the details of his crime weren’t so damn gruesome -beating a woman to death- one might be inclined to laugh at the macabre nature of the story.

At least the family of the victim gets some justice.

General

So….election day

Good to see so many people in these parts participating in voting, though there have been controversies.

What else is new…for Florida?

The early voting hours were cut down despite the fact that there were long lines of people willing, able, and patient enough to brave the lines.

As for me, for the first time I applied for an absentee ballot for myself and my wife.  Mine arrived in time to be sent out for this election.  My wife’s?  Still waiting for it.  A website for absentee ballot information lists her ballot as being sent to our (correct!) address on Halloween, October 31st…needless to say, it should have arrived by now.  Perhaps it got lost in the mail or perhaps it was delivered to another household by accident.  Regardless, my intrepid wife will have to brave lines later in the evening when she gets out of work…unless the absentee ballot arrives today and we can simply deliver it to a place that accepts absentee ballots.

My prediction?  I’ll have to go with the majority of pundits and say President Obama gets re-elected.  A couple of months ago I made a similar prediction and felt on far firmer ground at that time.  Today, the margins are smaller and Romney has certainly made some inroads (though he seemed to have primarily been helped by Obama’s non-appearance at the first presidential debate).

We’ll see soon enough…

General

The coming election…

Don’t know if everyone out there in the United States is aware of this, but I heard a rumor that sometime next week we’re going to have a Presidential election.

Here in Florida, a “swing state”, that means a deluge of calls originating from strange numbers (thank you, caller ID…soooo much easier to ignore these annoying robo-calls!).

Now, not to get too political, but I made my decision a while back and find it hard to believe that many polls shows the race as “tight” as it is.  Sorry, but there is simply no way in the world I can support a candidate who switches core philosophies depending on what he thinks his audience at that moment wants to hear.  Voting for Mitt Romney, thus, is like voting for the unknown.  Which Mitt Romney will you get?  That’s not to say, however, that I’m completely enamored of Barack Obama, but at least he’s managed to (slowly, granted) bring this country out of the outright disaster left behind by his predecessor, who I consider the worst President to have graced the White House in my lifetime.

But enough of my politics.

The question on many people’s mind is: Who’s going to win?

While you can look in on any number of predictions (I happen to like the mathematical geekiness offered at fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/), Cracked.com offers the following 6 Bizarre Factors That Predict Every Presidential Election:

http://www.cracked.com/article_20139_6-bizarre-factors-that-predict-every-presidential-election.html

General

Fringe Season Five…so far

Yesterday I caught the latest episode of Fringe, “The Bullet That Saved the Earth,” the fourth episode of the show’s fifth, and last, season.

It occurred to me a while back that while I generally enjoy the show, one of its biggest problems is that the writers behind the series tend to make things up on the fly.  At least this is my suspicion given the way the show started, progressed, and is now winding down.

The show has shifted abruptly since the last season to a bleak future where the mysterious Observers, a race of aliens originally presented as beings who could be in any time of their choosing and are extremely difficult if not impossible to kill but who are now much easier to pick off, have taken over Earth and are grinding humanity down.

But not if our intrepid Fringe division heroes can thwart them.

In this episode, what should have been a gargantuan story point was told in the waning minutes of the episode and, yes, to discuss it I should warn you…

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Still here?

You’ve been warned!

In this episode, the now grown daughter of Peter Bishop and Olivia Dunham, Henrietta Bishop (Georgina Haig) dies at the hands of the “chief” Observer.  The sequence should have been emotionally engaging and, at the very least, shocking.  However, and this is one of the big problems I’ve been having with the show this season, things are happening at such a breakneck pace that, as a viewer, I haven’t been able to attach myself emotionally with any of these characters.  Even the ones who have been around since the series started.

Not to sound too anaI, but did anyone notice how many minutes passed before our protagonist, Olivia Dunham, uttered a meaningful line of dialogue in this episode?  I mean, she was around, but it seemed like we were in the show’s second segment before she had anything worth saying at all…and it feels like this is the way the season has so far gone.

The show’s producers are so busy trying to show us this new world/reality but have short shifted us on the characters.  When Henrietta dies, we should have been floored by such an audacious and stunning plot development.

Instead, I felt…almost nothing.

You see, I barely knew the character.  She hadn’t been given enough screen time on the show for me to develop any feelings for her.  And her death, something that should have been shocking and emotional, instead felt like a cold, calculated plot device to make me feel something I simply didn’t.  Her character hadn’t earned those type of feelings…at least not yet.

Worse, I suspect her death will only be temporary and lead to the show’s ultimate conclusion/happy ending:  Somehow, Walter Bishop will undo the damage wrought by the Observers and “reset” time.  Thus, that day in the park that Peter, Olivia, and the infant Henrietta will play out once again in the closing minutes of the show’s final episode, only without the Observers’ invasion.

And we’ll see Henrietta grown once again, thinking back to that childhood, perhaps along with the older Peter and Olivia as they bury Walter and think back to the beautiful life they had together.

Just a thought.

Anyway, despite these complaints, I’m one to complain.

I’ll be there to the end, despite it all.

General

Eye of the Hurricane

My thoughts go out to everyone who experienced hurricane Sandy over the past few days.

Living in South Florida, one gets to see (and fear) the paths of hurricanes and tropical storms all too much.  August, in particular, seems to be the “nail biter” month.  That seems to be the month to watch out.

Though I’ve experienced my share of storm systems (including the devastating Andrew in 1992), one of the more memorable hurricane experiences I faced was back in 2005 with Hurricane Katrina.

Ironically enough, I was in New Orleans on a business trip about two weeks before Katrina devastated the city.  The trip done, I returned to my native South Florida and then watched as the weather reports indicated a tropical wave might become something greater.  Of course, it was August.

While many recall the devastation inflicted on New Orleans, Biloxi, and other areas in Katrina’s path, few recall that South Florida actually felt the first hit from Katrina.  Of course, at that time the storm was “only” a Category 1 Hurricane.

The thing that I most recall about Katrina was experiencing the so-called “Eye” of this particular storm.  I suspect most people are familiar with the term, but for those who aren’t, many well defined hurricanes have what is called an “eye” in their center.  This eye is often a circular tranquil zone where there are no winds or storms.  The eye wall around the eye itself, however, usually has the most severe weather attached to the storm.

Experiencing Katrina’s eye was an eerie experience.  Katrina, if memory serves, struck us during the day.  The weather rapidly grew worse with each passing minute.  Winds blew heavy and the trees around my house were shedding leaves (and branches) by the second.  Things got worse and worse.  The electricity was knocked out and rain splattered against the window like ball bearings.

And then, all of a sudden, everything was calm.

We knew the storm wasn’t done.  We knew we were experiencing its eye.  I recall going outside the house and feeling not even the slightest breeze.

I went back inside, knowing that this wouldn’t last.  Sure enough, the winds suddenly picked up and the storm’s fury was right back.  Maybe an hour or so later the winds started dying down and the bulk of the storm was passed.

It would go on, of course, across South Florida and into the Gulf of Mexico where it would strengthen into a devastating Category 5 Hurricane before eventually hitting land near New Orleans.

As inconvenienced as I was by Katrina and, later in that same year the more devastating (to us) Hurricane Wilma, it was obvious we were lucky compared to those in the Mississippi area.

Now with Sandy, I can’t help but feel for those who faced that beast.  Any hurricane, regardless of category, is something one must take very, very seriously.

 

Books/Literature, General

Newsweek to end print publication…

A new era, inevitably, has dawned.  Newsweek will officially stop publication of its printed edition at the end of this year, presumably to focus on its online content:

money.cnn.com/2012/10/18/news/companies/newsweek-print-edition/index.html

There was a time I used to get the newspapers delivered to my door every day.  There was a time I would eagerly head over to the bookstore to look over the latest magazines and books.

No longer.

When I heard the mega-bookstore Borders was in danger of being shut down, I was very saddened.  I spent so much time in my local Borders store looking over the latest books as well as magazines and DVDs.  However, by the time the store eventually shut its doors, things had changed considerably and realized I was no longer visiting the place anywhere near as often as I did before.

Why?

The internet.  The fact of the matter is that you can find many fascinating magazine quality articles online, including those of Newsweek itself, online.  There’s CNN, NBC, Salon, Slate, The Huffington Post, Time Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, etc. etc. readily available and updated on a daily, sometimes hourly basis on your computer.

Likewise, any (and seemingly just about all!) books I want are readily available either for download or for ordering a physical copy via Amazon.com and other book sellers.  At the time of Borders’ closing, I was buying cheap copies of used books I wanted through Amazon and receiving the orders relatively quickly…in a matter of, at most, a week.  Very convenient and, unlike Borders, I knew the books were available and didn’t have to drive to the store to check if they had them.

Still, there is a certain sadness with seeing a publication with such a long history (Newsweek first appeared in 1933) leaving the printed edition market that it originated in.

The other day, a relative of mine had a garage sale and my wife decided it was time I unloaded about half of my CD collection.  I’ve been buying CDs since the mid-1980’s but have long since stopped using them.  I have my entire music library on my computer and any new music purchases are done online so getting rid of the CDs wasn’t something I found hard to do.

When people showed up to the garage sale and saw the CDs, they dived into them and bought just about all (I guess my musical taste was popular to those clients!).  One of them, however, made a note of how “outdated” the CD technology was.

One day, I suppose the idea of seeing things on paper, other than titles and legal documents, might also become outdated.