Safe as Rugby ?

David Post over at Volokh has an interesting way of thinking about risk aversion* in football: less padding = less injuries?

So I raised my hand and asked the stupid question: instead of trying to design the perfect helmet and armor for the players to wear, is anyone seriously thinking about going in the opposite direction, i.e., taking away some of the padding that the players are wearing, as a way to reduce the frequency of severe injury?

My model for that is rugby — it’s a damned violent sport, played at the highest professional level in dozens of countries around the world with world-class athletes, and yet the frequency of serious injury is much, much lower than in American football. A large part of the reason is that the players wear virtually no padding at all — you can’t run into someone a full tilt, head down, throwing the full weight of your body into the blow (the way you can in football) if you don’t have the full panoply of helmet and shoulder pads and all the rest.

It seems, to me, like it’s at least worth considering (though the reaction was mostly nervous laughter at the conference when I raised the question — the general feeling being that the public would never stand for it).

-------------------

* It's somewhat similar to the way many treat insurance: the more you have, the more you (might think you) can afford to risk...

Say what you will about the Irish...

they can write. Observe and write.


Charles McGrath in the NYT, on William Trevor's short-story work* over the years:

Trevor’s is a style that could be called old-fashioned or even Edwardian except that he has stripped it of mustiness and excess decoration. He is a master at leaving things out, even more than of putting them in, and an eloquent evoker of silences. He is not a clever or metaphorical writer. Nothing in a Trevor story is “like” something else; things are what they are. He almost never writes in the first person or even in the free indirect style of the third person. His voice, wise and omniscient, sometimes sounds like the ancient voice of storytelling itself.
...
Roughly half of Trevor’s stories are set in Ireland; the others are set in England, where he has lived since the 1950s, or else in some Continental holiday spot. The English stories — which take place in boarding houses, rundown hotels and cheerless cafes and depict bungled love affairs, lonely bachelors and spinsters, married couples going through the motions — sometimes resemble those of another master, V. S. Pritchett, but without Pritchett’s warm embrace of eccentricity. Trevor’s is a drabber world, occasionally interrupted by exciting disorder in the form of housebreakers, say, or con men — people who seem to be sneaking in from another part of the fictional universe entirely.

The Irish stories often revolve around weddings or funerals or other reminders of time’s passage. And yet in Trevor’s Ireland — and his England, too, for that matter — the present is consumed by the past and very little seems to change. The Troubles, or their memory, lurk behind a few of the stories. In one, a man’s wife and daughter are killed by a bomb planted in the wrong car by mistake. You would know from the lovely story “Of the Cloth,” about a visit by a Roman Catholic priest to his Church of Ireland counterpart, that the Catholic Church in Ireland had experienced a pedophilia crisis. But you would have to read very carefully in this volume to catch a hint of the Celtic Tiger, of the building boom in Ireland in the ’90’s and of the economic downturn that has again emptied the countryside. The past exerts a powerful, backward-tugging force here, trapping people in ancient, pre-­determined patterns and identities. The title characters of “The Hill Bachelors” are Irish farmers who can’t find wives because the young women all want to live in town. And yet, stubborn and forlorn, these men are unable to leave the family farms, tied to the hardscrabble hillsides, to an inheritance of guilt and obligation.

There are references to pop culture — to movies and songs — in these stories but only very occasionally, and they sometimes feel a little awkward, as if Trevor were forcing himself to notice these things. A mention of Madonna in the story “The Dressmaker’s Child” is so surprising that you have to read the sentence twice to be sure it’s not the other Madonna, the one in all the paintings. And in the absence of such little clues it’s often hard to say when exactly a story is taking place. The stories written in the 1970’s are practically interchangeable with the ones written in the ’90’s. Most of them take place in a world that, while clearly our own, also evokes a much older world, stripped of accidentals, that is the eternal present of legends, fables and tales.
...
Trevor has a long view, and, again unlike (fellow short story writer Alice) Munro, who is acutely aware of generational conflict and of how people sometimes break away and redefine themselves, he is less interested in the way things change than in the way they don’t. For him the present is always being consumed by the past. The default condition in his stories is loss and disappointment. Lovers are always breaking up, or on the verge of it. When they’re not dying off, people in families are always wounding and betraying one another.

But the stories are melancholy rather than gloomy, and they’re warmed with radiant little moments of grace or acceptance. In the beautiful, heartrending “A Bit on the Side,” a married man breaks up with his mistress because he suddenly sees other people looking at them and can tell from their eyes that they know she’s what the title says — his bit on the side — and he doesn’t want to shame her. The story ends by predicting a future less bleak than they imagine, brightened by “the delicacy of their reticence” and by “they themselves as love had made them for a while.” “Of the Cloth,” the story about the two clergymen, ends with the older man standing alone in his garden and thinking about the visit. “Small gestures mattered now,” the last sentence reads, “and statements in the dark were a way to keep the faith, as the monks had kept it in an Ireland that was different too.”

Trevor’s prose has a precise, well-made solidness that is itself a kind of protest against change. These are stories that wear well and will never go out of fashion because they were never entirely fashionable to begin with.

No matter how dark or desolate things get, there is a way out, for those who continue read ... and believe. Even for those damned souls who remain ever observant, and somehow find a way to capture -- in art -- the life continually passing around them.

Thank you, Wm. Trevor, for rising above...

-----------------
*Of course, it's not everyone's cup of tea, but for those readers who like bleak realism...

Broderick Brown's batdown / tip in.

Play of the Day...
Beautiful.

Kids naturally turn it on when Musburger's around, no? That's been my observation, over the years.

Report from the Field.

They took a spike buck yesterday, and wounded a small doe this morning, and were tracking her. Good meat.

A beautiful, sunny Saturday here.

Crisp, but in a healthy way...

AlaBAMa - Auburn...

College football gets better than this?

I confess: I wanted Auburn to win it, when Fairley was penalized for sacking the QB and "celebrating". If that's excessive, on a key stop like that, then the game has no meaning. Unfair... but then again, look at the end result.

Fairley hits McElroy, later recovers the fumble.

Thanks for the Joy that you've given me*...

Home again. (Jiggety jig jig.)
I like where I live: stopping for beer and gas, there were two bucks on the back of a pickup at the pumps, and a doe tucked nicely into the open trunk of a medium sedan... could it be a Malibu?

Hunting season. It's the rut. But cold, so they're not moving, I'm told...

Here in Wisconsin, the upper Midwest, north of Highway 12 8! (8... got 12 on the mind....) is considered Up North. By many definitions, anyway. It's hunting season here, and ironically, on Saturday -- last Saturday, gun deer opener -- many women consider themselves Hunting Widows. Go shoppping the craft sales -- hunting opener is the big day.

Again,
it's amazing to get off one ground, and then be here, with snow at the base, I'm going to take some pictures in my town soon, I promise. Summer is the "God's Country" season, but I've always believed: if you want the good times, you've got to put up with some bad...

But by sticking it out this winter,
I'm hoping I'll be in a place to host guests -- if not at my place, a modest two-bedroom rental, then in the kayaks, under the control of the easiest flowing northern waters you'd ever know...

It's a good place to visit -- Stillwater, Minnesota: you know what they say about still waters; Apostle Islands: where the Natives mixed with the French trappers, and in summer, the days are long...

Premature widows, like the hunting, or other types, deserve the best. It is God's country come summer, worth a visit, with the cultural homes to visit too...

It's a record cold here, apparently, but with the acquired warmth, who'd notice it anyway? Thanks for sharing, you and yours... Let's sing out with a brew, or two:
I want you to know I belive in your song...
Rhythm and rhyme and harmony:
You' ve both helped me along;
Keepin' me strong...



--------------------------
*Thanks for the Joy that you've given me...
I want you to know I believe in your song.

Your Rhythm and Rhyme and Harmony...
You've helped me along...
Keepin' Me Strong...

ADDED:
Oh gimme the beat boys, and free my Soul...
I wanna get Lost in your Rock, and Roll.
...
And I'm countin' on you...
To carry me through.

* And hey it's good, to be back home again...
(No attachment to the video; I just like this song...)

Don't try this at home...

Trust me. There's a better day of the year to interview your elders about how and when your ancestors passed. Honestly, someone thinks this is a good idea??

Before the family sits down to dinner today, the U.S. surgeon general wants you to whip out your smart phone and type in your family health history.

On Thanksgiving Day — perhaps the only time of the year when the whole family is together — Surgeon General Regina Benjamin is encouraging Americans to interview their relatives about the diseases that run in the family, age of onset and how the illnesses were treated.
...
The questions may be awkward and the answers imprecise, but the creation of a permanent record is important, she said, for the healthy future of the family.

Pass the potatoes, please...
What a catch by Colston!...
Oh, and what ever became of Uncle Albert anyway? ...

Aack! It gets worse:

Lisa Marton, of Boca Raton, belongs to one of those high-risk families. Her grandfather and mother had breast cancer. Marton had a prophylactic mastectomy three years ago.

She found the surgeon general's My Family Health Portrait site online and encouraged her 822 Facebook friends to record their histories. She plans to remind them on Thanksgiving Day with a tweet, and said she will urge her brother to assess his cancer risk when the family assembles Thursday.

?????
Yeah, right. -- "Love you too, big sis!"

Going back for thirds...

Did you think it was the Indians, in teaching the newcomers to plant corn, who helped the Pilgrims survive those early winters, when they arrived with pretty much nothing?

Nope, Ilya Somin tells us, in "How Private Property Saved the Pilgrims". 'Tis but a myth. It was only when the community re-worked the economic incentives, giving Men more of a reason to work for their own, that the system inherently became more fair ... and more productive.

Today is Thanksgiving. So it’s time for my annual post on how private property rights saved the Pilgrims. Economist Benjamin Powell tells the story here:

Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.

In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.

Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.

This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.

Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years.

On Being Thankful -- second round.

Oh, and I'm thankful for free WiFi on the Thanksgiving holiday too, where you can log on and connect to the cyber world, compliments of the airline, here above the clouds... how cool is that?

From the 80s of Orlando, to the 12 degree current temp on the ground at Minneapolis... it still amazes me, going from habitat to habit in such a short period. Going backwards, even...

Now if our ride just forgoes the afternoon hunt, instead comes to get us at the airport right after his family dinner... I'll be extremely grateful. Make it worth his time too, and maybe, just maybe, get safely back to Rice Lake soon after sunset...

Here's hopin'.

Praying for the poorest of Americans.

On our shared Thanksgiving holiday today, they might not be the ones you immediately think of in these tight times:

An aspect of Thanksgiving I’ve always had trouble with is the part about giving thanks. I’m not against gratitude, but things to be grateful for just don’t naturally spring to mind.

How truly sad.

It's not the bank balance afterall, or the worldly success... It's the inner thankfulness. Knowing you are where you are, because of those who strived to help.

"We stand on the shoulders of others, so that one day, we might reach the stars..."

Thanks to my parents, brothers and sisters, friends and family friends. We live in a blessed country, even when we overestimate our liberating tendencies. Some gifts we ourselves can give, and some: we just have to offer strong steady shoulders upon which others may stand and strive...

"So thanks for giving me your love"

Hope:

Worked hard, got us off to school every day...
Kept her eyes on the stars when the skies were gray.
Gave us pride to survive, really showed us the way...
Now I really understood what she was tryin' to say:

She said, "Son there'll be times when the tides are high
And the boat may be rocky, you can cry,
Just never give up.
You can never give up."

In this life, you could lead if you only believe...
And in order to achieve what you need:
You can never give up...
You can never give up.

Happy Thanksgiving 2010!

Bass - o - Magic !
(No Gay plays needed...)

or,
Everybody contributes!
(Is it just the black socks, or are the Heat failing to move their feet here?)

On the shores of Lake Jessamine.

The Estate House.




-------------


----------------

Where it began,
I can't begin to know it.
But then I know it's growin' strong.

Was in the spring,
And spring became the summer...
Who'd a - believed you'd come along ? ...

Cypress Grove Park, Orlando.

Disney, Orlando, Florida.

Beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

every where you go:






--------------------

Time out over.

I'm back to reading Krugman. Just needed a bit of a break, and his post this afternoon helps me relate a recent accent story of my own...

Leaving the bookfest Saturday afternoon, I stumbled upon the most wonderful Peruvian restaurant, on 2nd Ave. off 1st Street in Miami. Chicken, black beans and plantains were good, but the soup was out of this world.

Finely cut vegetables, the most nutritious-tasting broth, and a piece of meat -- on the bone with the marrow leaking out -- that I identified as chicken. Chicken noodle soup, to me.

No, said the waitress, taking my bowl and heading off, as I requested another: "Ham."

Ham? I thought. The meat, maybe, was beige-ish, from the boiling, not pink. So maybe ham, but that bone? Ham, chicken ... whatever, it tasted great.

This is ham soup? I asked when she came back. "Ham ... ham ... ham!" she repeated, as though in the repetition it would become clearer... "This is pork?" I asked.

Turns out ... it was "hen".

"Hen soup!" We shared a laugh -- she thinking me ignorant, no doubt. Me, feeling a bit like Al Bundy on Modern Family, as the Peruvian and Columbian accents are close...

Life, not just a death.

Bob Herbert writes today about John Kennedy's 1960 election, not just his tragic end:

Days of promise, that knew no boundaries. Days of youth, when it all lay ahead and not in the looking back. Life, not Death.

This is why I like reading Herbert: he was raised post-War, it seems, surrounded by love and promise. Positive, a lifetime attachment.

By not going for the obvious today in subject matter -- decline and doom, over deeds that got done -- just by shifting the sights slightly, Herbert puts us in line to once again score.
and Score Big:

Kennedy accepted the Democratic nomination in a speech that he delivered before 80,000 people at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on July 15, 1960. It became known as the New Frontier speech. The candidate spoke of an old era ending and said that “the old ways will not do.” He spoke of “a slippage in our intellectual and moral strength.” He said:

“The New Frontier of which I speak is not a set of promises; it is a set of challenges. It sums up not what I intend to offer the American people, but what I intend to ask of them. It appeals to their pride, not to their pocketbook. It holds out the promise of more sacrifice instead of more security.”

What Kennedy hoped to foster was a renewed sense of national purpose in which shared values were reinforced in an atmosphere of heightened civic participation and mutual sacrifice. That was the way, he said, “to get this country moving again.”

His voice was in sync with the spirit of the times. Americans were fired with the idea that they could improve their circumstances, right wrongs and do good. The Interstate Highway System, an Eisenhower initiative, was under way. The civil rights movement was in flower. And soon Kennedy would literally be reaching for the moon.

Self-interest and the bottom line had not yet become the be-all and end-all.
...
We are now in a period in which cynicism is running rampant, and selfishness and greed have virtually smothered all other values. Simple fairness is not a fit topic for political discussion and no one dares even mention the poor.

The public seems fearful and cowed. ... You can say whatever you’d like about the Kennedy era and the ’60s in general, but there was great energy in the population then, and a willingness to reach beyond one’s self.

Kennedy spoke in his acceptance speech of a choice “between national greatness and national decline.” That choice was never so stark as right now. There is still time to listen to a voice from half a century ago.

Or,
One even older than that...

We Remember. We Celebrate. We Believe.





(and,
Thanks for the reminder, Bob.)

OK: Jewels, or ... Junk ?*

I know it's just the way this New Media gloms onto a hot new phrase, but...

Word choice can be telling. A way of judging.
(Like, How a Man Treats his Mother.)

So can passive protests at ... "grunts", with expert pundits now apparently endorsing the need for psychologists to be on-hand at airports, for those survivors of sexual abuse -- especially think of the children! -- who either are selected, or opt to undergo the full-frontal patdown, rather than the more non-invasive machine screening: What if they flashback to abuse, and freak?

Just hope you don't get a person with a dramatic flair, and looking for a good place to apparently vent some political frustration, in front of you in the security line.

My point?
We can easily argue and discuss, and voice our displeasures in a myriad of ways, at something important. But pretending that a child was forced into a strip search, when his father merely got frustrated with the slowness of the procedure and yanked the kid's shirt off to show: No bomb. ... Keep your kid's shirt on, if you're worried. Or to say that the TSA pissed on someone who apparently went through the checkpoint with a full bladder bag... Who does this help?

It takes away from the legitimate concerns. So, to review ... no child strip searches; sorry, no can afford on-call shrinks in case someone "freaks out" in line -- bring your own if it's a concern. Nobody really wants to root through your extra-large package for pleasure either. And please remember ... don't show your superiority attitude at the "front line grunts".

We can't all be law college professors you know. Somebody has to be the do-ers, the workers who keep the system moving.

And I wonder if more of the talker experts stepped away from their computers and actually interacted in real world America more often -- mixing with the people, getting outside, unconstipating the attitude, so to speak -- they'd be less likely to go off on the "grunts" or freak in the line...

Just Sayin':
No body likes a man faking mountains where there's molehills, and again, legitimate concerns get lost amongst the more junk concerns, and the outright falsities.

Trust me:
the kids'll be fine without the helicopter psychologists along for the ride. Now get out there and don't be so scared of being molested! (That's really what a lot of these social issues seem to come down to in the end, no?)

---------------------

First Nomination for "Ugly Phrasing o' the Year":

Joshua Green: "From Marc Ambinder's report on the White House and TSA decision to "double down" on invasive and absurd junk pat-downs of toddlers, elderly, etc., ..."

Ugh.

Riviera Beach, Sunday morning.

Defending the rights of Married People...

means repealing DOMA.

Because laws have consequences that affect real people:

EDITH "EDIE" WINDSOR and Thea Spyer were together for 44 years and legally married since 2007. They lived in New York, which recognizes same-sex marriage. But none of that mattered when Ms. Spyer died at 77 in 2009 after a decades-long struggle with multiple sclerosis.

Ms. Windsor, now 81, was treated like a stranger to Ms. Spyer because of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which recognizes only marriages between one man and one woman. She was forced to pay ... federal inheritance taxes.

Gerald V. Passaro II and Thomas M. Buckholz had been a couple for 13 years when they were married in 2008 in Connecticut, which legally blesses such relationships. Mr. Buckholz had worked for 20 years for Bayer Corp., which extends certain benefits to domestic partners; he was also vested in the company's pension plan. But when he died in 2009, Mr. Passaro was denied benefits for surviving spouses. Because federal law governs the pension plan, DOMA applies.
...
This month, Ms. Windsor filed a lawsuit in New York challenging the constitutionality of DOMA. Mr. Passaro is one of the plaintiffs in a separate lawsuit in Connecticut.
...
This year, a Massachusetts judge ruled that DOMA violated the equal-protection rights of same-sex married couples. Ms. Windsor and Mr. Passaro offer convincing arguments for why the jurists overseeing their respective cases should reach the same result.

Ouch !

or, The Bigger They Are...

ADDED: What a Gay play!
And you damn right, there's nothing wrong with that.

(Just doing my bit to change the teen vernacular out here... make it a more positive world and all. You're welcome, America. ;-)

Saturday Snapshots.

Not too often... but sometimes, things do live up to their potential.
Even Things Bigger than Life. .. [More to Come...]

------------------
A November Saturday in Miami,
circa 2010.
(This Photo by Mal.)

Bienvenido a Miami ...

A Saturday morning, in Miami.
If that's not a good combo, I don't know what is.
---------------
Friday at Cocoa Beach:

To the Left:

To the Right:


Christmas at Ron Jon's Surf Shop: