Sunday, March 12, 2006

 

canada, science, NYT same as it ever was

so much to cover.
I engaged in spongee for the first time. It is basically broomball, but with sticks. hockey, on ice, but no skates--just shoes. There are actually specialized spongee shoes one can buy (with increased traction) and we apparently have the world's largest spongee league in winnipeg. I had regular shoes. I emerged from my first foray as the losing goaltender, but with 0 separated shoulders making the game a success. Lots of good clean young adult fun. In a odd sidebar, there was a fair bit of making fun of my accent. This not the first time it has happened here, but still very novel because I have never felt self-conscious about the way I speak before this year (unless you count word choice). But apparently when I open my mouth (which I do a lot), everyone around knows my nationality and region immediately. I guess accent is all about frame of reference--like velocity in physics. It is a very odd experience and can make one quite self-conscious.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hruby/060310so apparently the guy who wrote this article a rival sports columnist with senorbeavis in college. This predisposes me to hate him, but this article is makes me hate him more. It is such a clear example of average columnists in the oversaturated medium of sports commentary. I know realism is cool and detached both in a hipster way and a Henry Kissinger way, but don't let holden caulfield write your pieces. He is all bluster and no substance, constantly seeking to have the halo of cool without the ramifications of his foolish statements. He adopts a pro-steroids position simply to be novel, because novelty sells; however, he won't even stand behind his assertions about their physiological effects (he palms that off on Jose C. with a puff of smoke and a swipe at congress). He willfully ignores/minimizes biological implications of steroid use in the charmingly bush-ite style of undermining strong long-term correlations with the know-nothing statement "scientific results are inconclusive." Guess what, genius, variation exists within a population (tm charles darwin 1800s) and cause and effect are going to be muted. That is why we have statistical significance. In short, Patrick Hruby, you suck. Clovers does not salute you.

oh and apparently harvey mansfield is a complete buffoon. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/magazine/312wwln_q4.html Or the NYT is now teenpeople. Since when to university professors give 1 sentence answers to questions, and base their answers solely on anecdote ("I lift furniture")? It is hard to tell if he has ridden the tenure-train completely round the neoconservative bend or if the NYT has set him up to look like a fool in a vast liberal conspiracy. Either way, this is really a weird piece.

Comments:
Warning: Do not click on the Harvey Mansfield link if you suffer from hypertension or are at increased risk for a stroke.

P.S. Can you try exploiting the accent in the way British guys do in the States?
 
I am surprised that they can tell where in the U.S. you're from.

I've never been aware of any distinctive mid-Atlantic accent, nor do I think you display one.
 
8yearoldsdude, I salute you for anything negative said about Mr. Hruby. He's funny to a degree, but overly smug, and never insightful. His piece in The Washington Times that first garnered his attention was almost a word-for-word ripoff of a piece Tony Kornheiser had written years earlier, which is ironic in itself because Kornheiser himself hasn't had an original thought since 1991. But fully understandable since he parroted some of my stuff in college my sophomore (his senior) year. According to friends who covered games with him, he was a bit clueless sports-wise.

In a related story, I'm not at all jealous as I sit at my mediocre job writing a blog for an audience of tens.
 
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