In re: Football, dogfighting, and brain damage

Football, dogfighting, and brain damage : The New Yorker.

Interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell about head injuries in football.  One of the interesting things that he raised when I saw him on PTI and before I read the article was his comparison to boxing that after an acknowledgement of the huge physical/mental toll boxers will have to deal with the sport declined significantly from its height as a main stream sport to its status now.  The NFL is clearly at the top of the US charts right now, but it could be headed for demise as scientists learn more about the brain damage it causes.  While talking about this article with some people many of them didn’t think the comparison or at least juxtaposition to dog fighting was warranted and was probably just a  grab to get in the all things Vick.  I disagree to a point and think that the point Gladwell makes is that inherently dog fighting is cruel and inhumane to dogs and that one cannot have a dog fight without those components, similarly he makes the point that football is inherently going to cause brain damage (studies at UNC football practices showed damaging impacts even in soft drills).  For comparison Gladwell points to Nascar that in the wake of several deaths was able to change the safety of the sport and continue, but he says technology won’t help the NFL.

So enjoy it while we got it, someday when we know the full extent of the damages more clearly (and it seems that day is near) what parents will let their kids play football?  The same ones who sign up for boxing most likely and that means probably it will decline in popularity.

In re: Playoffs full of ex-Indians

Good for them, but definitely sad for an Indians fan to see so many ex-Indians playing all over the playoffs.  Was thinking about this while watching the Cardinals/Dodgers series that seemed like almost everyone had been an Indian, “flyout from Belliard to Ludwick..”  it did seem like a good chunk of the players had been Indians (Ronnie Belliard, Ryan Ludwick, Manny Ramierez, Casey Blake, Mark DeRosa and even Jim Thome) but the rest of the playoffs seems to be loaded as well: CC Sabathia and Cliff Lee already got wins and then there is Carl Pavano and Victor Martinez.  Oh well, heres to next year.

I googled it and saw someone had noticed this already and had a good post on this ”Littered with ex-Indians” from Waiting for Next Year.

In re: Is the public option ‘big government’?

I was struck recently that people in our country are really good at seperating government they like and ‘big government’.  I was up in Maine, in Acadia National Park, which is  truly one of the most amazing places I have been.  While on several ranger led hikes through the park I got to thinking about the ‘Government Program’ I was partaking in at the time.  I guessed that the people on the hike weren’t thinking that they we were experiencing a government program or experiencing ‘big government’.  After all the rangers were perfectly nice people who stayed around to answer questions and most everyone on these hikes seemed to enjoy them.

This past week I have been watching Ken Burn’s documentary on PBS about the National Parks (The National Parks: America’s Best Idea) which I have been enjoying a lot.  The 12 hours series repeatedly showed while discussing the origins of several of the parks the contrasts of National Parks and commercialized venues such as Niagara Falls.  It was interesting to see that the individuals who were instrumental in creating the parks, did so very often in the face of private industry seeking to capitalize on the land.  Places like Niagra Falls that are surrounded by wax musuems, casinos, etc stands in stark contrast to the parks.

Its possible that in one vein the enterprises were right, that in the short run the Grand Canyon would create a larger economic benefit if commercial enterprise came in.  The flaw I think is that under a capitalistic model the process of exploiting the economic value of the park is done so with a short range vision (those running the companies need to extract maximum value in their lifetime – some kind of tragedy of the commons like parallel) capitalism sometimes bypasses the effects and reduced benefits for people in 100, 200, 300 years that would be there if the park wasn’t polluted, mined, commercialized.

The story was the same for many parks, Arizonians fought the creation of the Grand Canyon as a national park, but fast forward to today and no one would say it was a bad decision.  Denali national park 40 years later in Alaska faced the same set of criticims from locales, only a short time later  they sought to expanded it.

So what is the point of all of this?  Well I guess it has got me thinking that there are a lot of flaws in capitalism (among others the free market assumes rational behavior something I have been interested to learn doesn’t exist – oh and no I haven’t seen Michael Moore’s movie yet before branding me a communist).  It just seems turning back to the health care debate that the free market has many potential flaws and I don’t think the free market works real well in delivering certain goods (nature as we just discussed, police & fire service didn’t do well as private enterprises and I am guessing not many people want to go back to private fire & police, the mail (despite Obama seemingly conceding (wrongly I believe) the US mail is not done well compared to Fedex and UPS, forgetting that Fedex and UPS do not deliver first class mail to every house in the country and that they will not deliver packages to all addresses in the US, as there are a few places that are too remote and costly, but the US mail has to by law), oh and of course the military, that so many anti government folks seem to be big fans of).  Health care, especially as long as we have a system where we provide universal emergency care, is not efficient as a divided up pie where some treatment is given if needed and other preventative aspects and proper nutrition and excercise are ignored.  Right now those of us with private health insurance spend a staggeringly large amount of money on  private bureaucracy, which despite that we are still put in the position of fearing bankruptcy if we have a catastrophic health problem, are faced with the fear of changing jobs due to possible loss of coverage  and I think many of us don’t even know what are true salary is (we are getting paid a whole lot less due to huge medical insurance costs we don’t see, if people were offered a gov’t option, no bells & whistles health care plan but got a lot higher take home pay, some of us might take that).

So while I’ll agree with you I am rambling and I may have missed the point I was hoping to make, the point is this, I think that our health care reform efforts have been greatly swung off track, the Democrats are missing a major opportunity to improve our country and we should be aiming higher.  We need to be ready to acknowledge that the free market might not deliver all products well, it didn’t make us un-American and undemocratic to create national parks and fire departments and creating a universal health plan won’t either.

In re: Maine

Was up in Bar Harbor, Maine a month ago and had meant to put up some shots.  Had never been before and it was spectacular.

In re: Van Halen’s Brown M&Ms Contract Rider

Heard about this recently on an episode of This American Life talking about the Fine Print in life.  One of the stories was about the story behind Van Halen’s contract rider specifying there should be M&Ms backstage, but the brown M&Ms needed to be removed, and failure to do so resulted in full payment of the contract and no need to perform.  Over the years I had heard about this and indeed thought it was an example of the crazy excess of rock musicians living in their own world.  On the show they had They Might Be Giants explain the real reason behind the crazy restriction on brown M&Ms and it turns out to be sensible and actually pretty smart.

The reality was that Van Halen was bringing into their shows 2 or 3 times the amount of equipment and trucks that a venue was used to, meaning that their floor might not support the weight, the lights, the electricity etc.  There was real danger if the venue didn’t read the contract rider specifying all the minute details of how much weight everything must support and how much power was needed.  How did you know if the venue was paying attention to the fine print and not be putting the band and crew in danger?  Easy check the bowl of M&Ms, which if they could get that right meant they found that strange request buried in the contract and probably followed up on the rest as well.

Snopes the debunking website also has a good explanation of this and has some quotes from David Lee Roth’s biography that explained this as well, including a story of trashing the dressing room when he found the brown ones.

In re: Tim Hortons ads work

For some reason I like the idea of Tim Hortons. Yeah that might sound strange as it’s a big chain and I tend not to be into chains. Well for one I don’t really put my liking the idea into actual visits , but still something about it being Canadian, being formally owned by Ohio based Wendys and the novelty of being started by a hockey player. So like I said I don’t really go there often as I am not that into donuts and usually have coffee at home or in a local coffee shop, but somehow the other day I had what had to be a subliminally induced craving to try their Iced Capp that has recently been heavily advertised mainly discusing the reduced in price. Strangely I didn’t even know what an Iced Capp is, but still I went out of my way on a 90+ degree day to find out. I was right in guessing it is a sweetened frozen coffee drink from a blender or some dispenser and for some reason it hit the spot (strangely as I don’t really like sweetened coffee. It could have been the heat I was enduring as I treked to various ethnic grocers around Columbus who knows). Not sure if I will go get another anytime soon, but on Sunday it sure was great.

In re: Soccer gaining traction?

Thought this was a good column about the US v. Mexico game by Bill Simmons who isn’t really a soccer guy, but claims he is getting into it (and was into it enough to travel down to Mexico to see the game in the Azteca).  I’ll tell you, one of the major attractions for me that he hits on is that the game doesn’t have commercial breaks and ends 2 hours later letting you go about your day

See the column here

In re: Champions league on FSC

While I might not be a huge fan of Fox News (or fan at all),  I think I going to be happy with the move of Champions League Football from ESPN to Fox Soccer Channel this year.  ESPN never made the tournament a priority, didn’t work to get an HD feed even when showing it on an HD channel (I realize there may have been tech issues here, but I know most Champions League had HD cameras on site and I realize to start FSC won’t have HD either being a SD channel).  The other thing was they didn’t show two games live at the same time, possibly due to carriage restrictions on ESPN classic (the WORST CHANNEL EVER I MIGHT ADD, way to buy an interesting channel and butcher it by putting on poker reruns, what a waste).  Anyway, the ESPN Classic games were always on tape delay and looked like they were being produced by a high school tv studio (its crazy, somehow that channel makes everything ‘classic’ looking i.e. dark and crappy).

Somehow ESPN lost out on the bidding to Fox who might not have the big-time ESPN channel for the final, but they do have FX which supposedly has a lot of subscribers and is in HD where they plan to put the final.  What else do they have?  Well tomorrow they are putting the Arsenal v. Celtic game (Arsenal, Arsenal, Arsenal… sorry) on the regular FSN channels that lots of people get (basic cable for a lot), while showing another live game on FSC, wow two LIVE games (actually more, I think Fox Sports Espanol has another and then Setanta has another etc.), but anyway what a concept!  Additionally FSC is supposedly going HD in January which will be great as they will then start carrying around 2 HD Premier League games a week.

But on an interesting side note ESPN has grabbed some Premier league time slots that Fox had subleased to Setanta (who ain’t doing so hot these days, still better then their UK bankrupt sister company).  I think ESPN is testing the waters to make a run at next years up for grabs premiership in the US (ESPN UK has picked up the package Setanta UK had and supposedly did a good job with their first game).  The thing I dread is ESPN putting scores all over the place and ending my days of watching a game when I wanted without it being spoiled.  That said, Setanta is clearly suffering and I wouldn’t mind having some more options for more games, but losing a dedicated channel like Setanta which seemed to be gaining traction until this year will be sad).

Oh well, enough on this.  Here’s hoping the 6-1 over Everton wasn’t a one-off and here’s to posting a bit more often…

In re: Spicy Teriyaki Tuna

Its not often that I make anything Teriyaki.  I am not sure why I treat Teriyaki with such distrust, somehow I see it as the dish non sushi eaters get if forced to go grab sushi (great Curb Your Enthusiasm on that).  Anyway, the other day I was craving grilled tuna, you know the super rare, but seared on the outside kind.  I decided to serve it w/ a faux islands – polynessian spicy pineapple teriyaki marinade /sauce.  All started with the sauce, used soy, honey, crushed pineapple from a can w/ juice, siracha and reduced that before pureeing the contents.  then I let the tuna steak sit in that for a little while whilst I got the rest of the meal going.

I made sticky coconut rice using sushi rice, water, salt and coconut milk, all put in the rice cooker, and then started on a grilled pineapple salsa to serve as a second sauce/topping.  I brushed large slices of fresh pineapple w/ some oil and grilled them til they had nice char marks, diced those and added jalepano, red bell pepper, cilantro, lime juice, red onion and salt and let that gather its flavor.  The last item were some string beans, straight from my CSA share.  I didn’t want to over cook them being so fresh and nice, so cooked them in a hot skillet w/ some olive oil real quickly and then added a mixture of the Teriyaki sauce mixed w/ a chineese black bean paste.

The dinner turned out good, but unfortunately my gas grill wasn’t getting hot enough to do the tuna the way I like it (I like to grill the tuna a way I learned from Alton Browns putting a grate on-top of and cooking over the charcoal chimney starter that cooks like a jet engine) so using my gas grill to get a nice sear I ended up getting away from the really rare I wanted.  All in all the combo was pretty nice, the rice and salsa made a nice pairing and I might mix some for a leftover side.  All in all a faux taste of some island somewhere.

Grilled Tuna w/ Spicy Pineapple Teriyaki Sauce, Grilled Pineappple Salasa, Green Beans, and Sticky Coconut Rice

In re: Food inc.

I haven’t seen it yet, but I have been waiting for Food Inc. for a while.  The movie is just about set to open up in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, it doesn’t come here to Ohio (Cedar Lee in Cleveland Heights) til July 3 – see opening dates here, but I imagine it will be making a big splash and forcing a lot of people to rethink things (Monsanto has already created a campaign against the movie).  The movie is co-produced by Eric Schlosser who wrote Fast Food Nation, a great book on the industry of fast food (both the food we get and the workers issues).  The movie also features Michael Pollan whose works on food in the Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food among others have really pushed me further into rethinking our food problems (i.e. I am more passionately local and vegetable then before, as well as our corn problem – that is everything is based upon it including our cheap corn fed beef).  Anyway if you get the chance to see this movie it sounds great from the reviews and from the people involved, of course be prepared to be disturbed.  I just saw the trailer and read a review at the NY Times.