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Great opening piece in the New York Times magazine about sports, questioning whether they’re really the wonderful character-building exercises everybody assumes they are:
Sadly, one of the main lessons sports teach is that the more talented you are as an athlete, the less is expected of you socially or academically, and the more the rules will be bent for you. As James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen demonstrate in their report on college sports, ”The Game of Life” — a book that could have been a bombshell had it only been written in a language other than that of an actuary’s manual — recruited athletes, not just in the Big Ten sports factories but even in the Ivy League, are admitted more readily than their academic equals and do worse, winding up more frequently in the bottom third of the class. They don’t become leaders with any more frequency than the rest of their classmates, and as alumni they don’t contribute any more generously — or, for that matter, inspire generosity in anyone else. (There is, in fact, very little correlation between athletic success and alumni giving.) Female athletes, now that they are being recruited as avidly as the men (and in some cases more avidly, by schools desperate to maintain their Title IX balance), turn out to have much the same profile. Jocks are jocks, it seems, male and female alike, and are perhaps more equivalent than the legislators ever imagined.
Considering that Mark William Lloyd, the captain of my high-school’s football team in the late 80s, also turned out to be a serial rapist who broke into four homes in our neighborhood, I learned about the moral vacuum of high-school sports years ago. He was sent to jail for 10 years; I wonder if he’s out yet.
I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.
Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!
New technique renders objects at sea “invisible” to waves of water
Poll: Young people who use landlines are more conservative than those who use mobile phones
At Amherst college, 1% of first-year students have landlines, 99% have Facebook accounts
North Dakota the most outgoing state, according to study of “the geography of personality”
» visit the Collision Detection archives
September 26, 2008 » 01:57 PM
From an interview with ethnobotanist and anthropologist Wade Davis:
One of the cultures you celebrate in Light at the Edge of the World is the Inuit. What do you most admire about them?
Davis: The Inuit didn’t fear the cold; they took advantage of it. During the 1950s the Canadian government forced the Inuit into settlements. A family from Arctic Bay told me this fantastic story of their grandfather who refused to go. The family, fearful for his life, took away all of his tools and all of his implements, thinking that would force him into the settlement. But instead, he just slipped out of an igloo on a cold Arctic night, pulled down his caribou and sealskin trousers, and defecated into his hand. As the feces began to freeze, he shaped it into the form of an implement. And when the blade started to take shape, he put a spray of saliva along the leading edge to sharpen it. That’s when what they call the “shit knife” took form. He used it to butcher a dog. Skinned the dog with it. Improvised a sled with the dog’s rib cage, and then, using the skin, he harnessed up an adjacent living dog. He put the shit knife in his belt and disappeared into the night.
September 25, 2008 » 11:21 AM
“Video from a camp north of Toronto in December 2005 shows a car spinning around in a nearby, snow-covered parking lot. Prosecutors characterized that as special driver training but the defense, and many outsiders, said it was nothing more than “cutting doughnuts,” a favorite winter pastime of young Canadian motorists.” - A key piece of evidence submitted in the trial of a gang of alleged young Canadian terrorists.
September 24, 2008 » 11:21 PM
“Life imitates art imitating life: just thought a gnat crawling across my monitor was part of a Flash-based ad. I clicked it.” - A Tweet from Bill Braine.
September 24, 2008 » 02:37 PM
“Funniest FB friend request ever: “Twitter friend hoping to get to second base (Facebook!) ;-).”” - A recent Tweet by Pistachio
September 24, 2008 » 12:28 PM
Chinese powdered-milk crisis creates a new market: The return of the wet nurse
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