Quotulatiousness

March 11, 2024

QotD: The profound asshole-ishness of the “best of the best”

Filed under: Health, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

Ever met a pro athlete? How about a fighter pilot, or a trauma surgeon? I’ve met a fair amount of all of them, and unless they’re on their very best behavior they all tend to come off as raging assholes. And they get worse the higher up the success ladder they go — the pro athletes I’ve met were mostly in the minors, and though they were big-league assholes they were nothing compared to the few genuine “you see them every night on Sports Center” guys I met. Same way with fighter pilots — I never met an astronaut, but I had buddies at NASA back in the days who met lots, and they told me that even other fighter jocks consider astronauts to be world-class assholes …

The truth is, they’re not — or, at least, they’re no more so than the rest of the population. It’s just that they have jobs where total, utter, profoundly narcissistic self-confidence is a must. It’s what keeps them alive, in the pilots’ case at least, and it’s what keeps you alive if, God forbid, you should ever need the trauma surgeon. Same way with the sportsballers. I can say with 100% metaphysical certainty that there are better basketball players than Michael Jordan, better hitters than Mike Trout, better passers than Tom Brady, out there. There are undoubtedly lots of them, if by “better” you mean “possessed of more raw physical talent at the neuronal level”. What those guys don’t have, but Jordan, Brady, Trout et al do have, is the mental wherewithal to handle failure.

Everyone knows of someone like Billy Beane, the Moneyball guy. So good at football that he was recruited to replace John Elway (!!) at Stanford, but who chose to play baseball instead … and became one of the all-time busts. He had all the talent in the world, but his head wasn’t on straight. Not to put too fine a point on it, he doubted himself. He got to Double A (or wherever) and faced a pitcher who mystified him. Which made him think “Maybe I’m not as good as I think I am?” … and from that moment, he was toast as a professional athlete. Contrast this to the case of Mike Piazza, the consensus greatest offensive catcher of all time. A 27th round draftee, only picked up as a favor to a family friend, etc. Beane was a “better” athlete, but Piazza had a better head. Striking out didn’t make him doubt himself; it made him angry, and that’s why Piazza’s in the Hall of Fame and Beane is a legendary bust.

The problem though, for us normal folks, is that the affect in all cases is pretty much the same … and it’s really hard to turn off, which is why so many pro athletes (fighter jocks, surgeons, etc.) who are actually nice guys come off as assholes. It’s hard to turn off … but as it turns out, it’s pretty easy to turn ON, and that’s in effect what Game teaches.

Severian, “Mental Middlemen II: Sex and the City and Self-Confidence”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-05-06.

January 24, 2024

Poor Novak …

Filed under: Europe, Health, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Chris Bray explains how vaccines provide complete immunity … but with a catch:

Novak Djokovic during his fourth round match at Roland Garros in June, 2023.
Detail of a photo by 350z33 via Wikimedia Commons.

Three years ago, Novak Djokovic refused to save his own life. Threatened by a deadly virus, he refused the lifesaving vaccines. And now you see the terrifying result. Djokovic is so obviously crippled by Covid-19, a virus he unnecessarily chose to face unprotected, that he’s … well, one of the most shockingly fit human beings on the planet, an absolute beast of a professional athlete who dominates a remarkably difficult one-on-one sport so completely that no one else in the game comes close to consistently playing at his level. I don’t follow tennis closely enough to be sure about any of that, so I Googled — to get the commissariat-approved answer — and found this statement: “Djokovic has been ranked No. 1 for a record total of 409 weeks in a record 13 different years.” NOW DO YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T GET VACCINATED!?!?!?!?

But what I can’t get over, the thing that just keeps churning in my mind, is that some jackass watched Djokovic play a match, in person, saw how completely he dominated, saw how absurdly healthy and fit he is, and then — at match point, at the end — shouted at him to get vaccinated, like he was rebuking someone for an appalling failure. Why won’t you protect your health, you stupid … most powerful and dominant professional athlete in the world.

Djokovic responded by drilling the very next serve for an ace to win the match, slamming it across the court so brutally hard that his much younger opponent couldn’t even get his racket on it and had to just watch it go by.

But the person in the crowd: To do that, to shout that thing at that person at that moment, requires a total immunity to information. You have to have a mind that can’t notice physical reality in any way, no matter how obvious it becomes. I guess you have to be the Novak Djokovic of stupidity, the best in the world at the game of making your own head fit inside your ass.

So, yes: Vaccines induce immunity. To information. In case you’re looking for a way to protect yourself from that.

Update: One of the journalists who mocked Djokovic for not being vaccinated reportedly died suddenly the other day.

January 17, 2024

Look at Life – Kings of Speed

Filed under: Britain, History, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

PauliosVids
Published 9 Dec 2018

British racing drivers have always been at the forefront of this exciting sport. This film examines what has helped to put them in this winning position.

From the comments:

alastairbeaton5245
3 years ago

This was the 1959 British Grand Prix at Aintree. Jack Brabham, who won the race, went on to win the first of his three World Championships, clinching the title in the last race of the year at Sebring when, having run out of fuel, he pushed his car over the line to finish fourth.

December 19, 2023

QotD: The art of the Millennial celebrity memoir

Filed under: Books, Britain, Media, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

“Who Am I?” asks Danny’s book, knowing full well who he is. To feign humility, the title does that Millennial thing: asks a question to which it knows the answer.

I have a cactus-like indifference to celebrity, to Danny Cipriani, to anyone over whom the kaffeeklatsch gushes. Danny was a gifted athlete who drained his Superman abilities in pursuit of celebrity. Little is more tragic than wasted talent.

The Romans thought celebrities were mentally deranged, and to be avoided. To this day, we’re yet to discover the secret behind their vastly superior self-healing concrete. The Romans had a point.

Anyway, Danny’s sex life, as documented in his book, would blush the cheeks of a Roman senator.

Danny has bedded scores of beautiful women. This happens when one is Hollywood handsome, rugged, cocky, and a known shagger. At the height of his bedhopping campaign, Danny featured permanently in the tabloid press, each week a new beauty attached to his arm.

In short, Danny could indulge himself senselessly and did so with the atomic energy of a nymphomaniac in the waiting room at Dignitas.

Reader, that’s it. That’s the story. A young man blessed with opportunities to shag beautiful women indulged those opportunities to shag beautiful women.

[…]

This book could have been a tweet.

Christopher Gage, “Spare a Thought: The inexorable rise of pitybragging”, Oxford Sour, 2023-09-12.

November 22, 2023

QotD: American universities, “sportsball”, and wealthy alumni

It is, or at least used to be, a truth universally acknowledged, that the Athletic Department was the only bastion of sanity left in higher “education”. I love watching Marxists squirm, so the start of football season was always my favorite time back in my professin’ days. Every year, the doofus Marxoid faculty would write their annual complaint about sportsball — “not germane to the purpose of a university”; “takes away too many resources from academics”; “toxic masculinity” and so forth — and every year, the President and Board of Trustees would tell the eggheads to go pound sand.

NOT, I hasten to add, because the Prez and the Trustees (hereafter: The Administration) were some kind of normal folks. Oh God no — quite the opposite, in fact. No open conservative has been hired to any position in academia for the past thirty, forty years; to make it into the ranks of The Administration, you have to be #woker than #woke. Rather, it was because The Administration were among the few mortals privy to the college’s balance sheet. Seriously, those things are more closely guarded than our nuclear launch codes … but The Administration sees them, and draws the only possible conclusion: Without sportsball, the whole university system is toast.

But alas for the bottom line, Intersectionality is a jealous god, and xzhey will have none before xzhem. The Administration knows — they must know, they can’t not know — that all the stuff that makes big league college football go comes from “boosters”, i.e. rich idiots with way more money than sense, and their corporations. But since The Administration is full of even dumber Marxists than the faculty — yeah yeah, I know, I didn’t think it was possible either — they’ve apparently decided to assume, in true Leftist style, that since the money has always just kinda, you know, been there, it will continue to, you know, somehow, someway, continue to be there.

I mean, what are those rich oilmen from Texas gonna do, not watch football?

Severian, “Ludicrous Speed Update: The NCAA”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-04-14.

September 10, 2023

Time for NFL running backs to set up their own union?

Filed under: Business, Football, Sports, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s been known for a few years, but has been brought into clear focus during this NFL offseason that the position of running back — historically one of the most important positions on the field after the quarterback — has been steadily devalued by NFL teams. Superbowl-hopeful teams no longer centre their game plan around a workhorse running back, with more and more plays being passes to wide receivers and tight ends rather than running the ball. During the 2023 offseason, several big-name running backs went public with their frustrations over new contracts. The NFL Players Association, the union for players to negotiate with the NFL’s owners, has not been as proactive for running back concerns so a break-away RB union is back under discussion:

… running backs — whose job includes receiving handoffs from the quarterback, catching passes, and blocking — are getting pummeled like never before by bigger, stronger, faster NFL players. Which means that when their contracts are up, running backs are more damaged than they used to be.

What’s more, the drama has shifted: running backs used to score a lot, but now the action revolves around quarterbacks and wide receivers.

That explains why team owners are increasingly hiring rookies to be their running backs and, instead of investing in them long-term, replacing those rookies with other rookies at the end of their first contract.

So, running backs — having suffered tons of concussions, ankle sprains, and other injuries — never see the big, second-contract payday other NFL players land. Like the Kansas City Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ $450 million contract or the $120 million deal wide receiver Tyreek Hill signed with the Miami Dolphins.

All of which explains how Harris has become a leading advocate for a running-backs-only union — and the unlikely face of the new American labor movement.

“I agree with my running back brothers around the NFL — history will show that you need running backs to win — we set the tone every game and run through walls for our team,” Harris tweeted in July, after three of his fellow running backs failed to secure long-term deals with their teams.

The new union, which would be separate from the NFL Players Association, was first proposed in 2019, when the International Brotherhood of Professional Running Backs filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board.

When Harris was asked in June what he thought of the idea, he said: “I’m open to it.”

He is joined by Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry, 29. Known as King Henry, he tweeted in July: “At this point, just take the RB position out the game then. The ones that want to be great & work as hard as they can to give their all to an organization, just seems like it don’t even matter. I’m with every RB that’s fighting to get what they deserve.”

Granted, professional running backs, with an average salary of $1.8 million, make a lot more than nurses, pilots, public school teachers, and everyone else in a union, but the money is declining, and they increasingly feel as though they’re being exploited by management at the same time the NFL is seeing record success. In 2023, the NFL secured $130 billion in new media deals. Of the top 100 network television broadcasts in the country last year, the league accounted for 82, and that figure is going up. On top of all that, game attendance is nearing an all-time high.

September 9, 2023

7 Ways to Suck at Badminton

Filed under: Health, Humour, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Swift Badminton
Published 27 Sept 2019

This video will give you 7 tips and tricks to become a worse badminton player.
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August 31, 2023

Why New York Destroyed 3 Iconic Landmarks | Architectural Digest

Filed under: Architecture, History, Railways, Sports, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Architectural Digest
Published 6 Apr 2023

Michael Wyetzner of Michielli + Wyetzner Architects returns to AD, this time to look at the history and creation of three New York City landmarks that have since been demolished — but are far from forgotten. From the once (and future?) majesty of Penn Station to the New York Herald building and the original 19th-century Madison Square Garden, Michael gives expert insight into these three historic architectural landmarks, why they were laid to ruin, and what came to replace them.
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August 28, 2023

The Last Chance | Dorktown

Filed under: Football, History, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Secret Base
Published 15 Aug 2023

The Minnesota Vikings of the 1970s were among the greatest football teams ever assembled. Entering 1974, Bud Grant’s teams had reached two Super Bowls, but lost them both. The good times don’t last forever. It’s time to cash in.

Written and directed by Jon Bois
Written and produced by Alex Rubenstein
Rights specialist Lindley Sico
Secret Base executive producers Will Buikema and Jon Bois

Known goofs:

• At about the 42-minute mark, Jon says Fran Tarkenton held a 45-8-1 record as starter between 1973 and 1976. His record across these years was actually 43-10-1.
(more…)

August 21, 2023

What the parades are for | Dorktown

Filed under: Football, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Secret Base
Published 8 Aug 2023

This is the second episode of our seven-part docuseries, The History Of The Minnesota Vikings.

For the Vikings, the 1970s were so full of comedy, drama, and doomed snowmobiling expeditions that we had to split this decade into two episodes. And we STILL had to leave stuff out! What a team.
(more…)

August 14, 2023

56 pounds of beer | Dorktown

Filed under: Football, History, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Secret Base
Published 1 Aug 2023

In the early years, the Minnesota Vikings were like many new franchises of the time: dysfunctional, bad at football, and often intoxicated. And then a former NBA champion came back home to Minnesota and changed the identity of this franchise forever.

This is the first episode of Dorktown’s seven-part docuseries, The History of the Minnesota Vikings.
(more…)

July 19, 2023

Win A Point, Add A Layer Of Clothing | Badminton Insight Singles Match

Filed under: Humour, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Badminton Insight
Published 10 Apr 2022

A Badminton singles match BUT each time someone wins a point we have to add a layer of clothing!
(more…)

July 7, 2023

This would be a Super Bowl halftime show I’d absolutely watch

Filed under: Football, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Christopher Gates makes the case for Weird Al Yankovic being the star of the next Super Bowl halftime show:

“Weird” Al has pretty much universal appeal

With most of the acts that could be selected for the Super Bowl halftime show, a sizeable portion of your potential audience isn’t going to like them. Whether it leans more towards rap/hip hop music or pop music or whatever the case may be, you’re going to have plenty of people that aren’t into it.

Since “Weird” Al’s work spans genres and time frames, you don’t have to worry about that. There’s almost universal appeal in having someone with this sort of talent perform on the biggest possible stage, because you could have a show that hits pretty much all of the different types of music that would appeal to anyone else.

Also, to put it bluntly: Nobody hates “Weird” Al. They might not be the biggest fans of his style of music, necessarily, but there’s nobody that really has an outright hatred or even a dislike for the guy. He’s apparently one of the nicest people in the entire entertainment industry, so he’s got that going for him … which is nice.

Think of the cameo potential

One of the best possible cases that you could make for something like this is the case for cameo appearances, which have become a bit of a thing at Super Bowl halftime shows in recent years. After all, “Weird” Al has been at this for four decades. Literally anyone that he’s parodied over the years that’s still with us is fair game for a potential cameo appearance during something like this.

All those years ago, “Weird” Al started out doing parodies of acts like Madonna and Huey Lewis and the News, and on his last studio album did send-ups of Imagine Dragons, Lorde, and Iggy Azalea. You don’t think you could sell some of those folks on the idea of sharing the biggest possible stage in the world with him for one night? I certainly think that you could. There’s really a lot of potential there, to be honest.

June 5, 2023

Claim: 92% of Canadian women will suffer traumatic brain injury from an intimate partner

Filed under: Cancon, Health, Media, Politics, Sports — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Did that headline grab your attention? Certainly the graphic from which it was drawn grabbed my attention. But, as Janice Fiamengo explains, it’s a vast exaggeration in pursuit of a political goal:

    Linden called on men and boys to educate themselves on violence and to call out one another for perpetrating or dismissing abusive behavior of any kind.

It’s not hard to understand why National Hockey League personality Trevor Linden, former captain of the Vancouver Canucks, has lent his star power to a YWCA campaign about women’s injuries from domestic violence. Hockey players have long been targets of feminist accusation for their association with a sport that allegedly promotes misogyny, racism, and violence against women. Even a beloved icon of the sport must continually strive to prove how much he despises his fellow men.

In this case, the campaign of vilification targets the purported frequency with which female victims of intimate partner violence (IPV) experience traumatic brain injury, and demands “increased support for diagnosis and treatment”. To do so, the campaign asserts some of the most dramatic numbers I’ve ever seen.

No stranger to concussions, Linden is said in a CBC report to have been “stunned” to learn that female victims are injured at a much higher rate than professional hockey players. “For every concussion incurred by an NHL player,” the report states, “approximately 7,000 women and girls in Canada are concussed because of intimate partner and domestic violence, according to a new estimate from YWCA Metro Vancouver and researchers at the University of British Columbia.”

Linden’s shock is understandable. We’ve all seen the hits meted out to professional hockey players. The thought of thousands upon thousands of Canadian women every year being treated in like manner — and suffering the consequences in traumatic brain injury (TBI) — is disturbing even to those of us who have learned to be skeptical of feminist research and inflammatory reports by Canada’s state-funded news agency.

The key paragraph in the story that justifies the staggering numbers tells us that

That sounds as if more than 3 in 10 women and girls in Canada (92% of 4 in 10) will at some point in their lives suffer brain injury from battering.

The statement might just qualify as the most outstanding exaggeration of violence against women ever made by a feminist organization. The good news for women and girls in Canada — and the bad news for the ever-declining credibility of feminist advocates and reporters — is that the numbers being promoted are flat-out false. They’re false even if we take note of the operative word “approximately” in the above statement. They’re false even if we accept the extraordinarily elastic definition of violence employed by the feminists who work for Statistics Canada. And they’re false even if we accept that a small study of black female victims of extreme violence can be generalized to all girls and women in Canada.

The numbers are false, ultimately, because the literature review from which the 92% number was extracted does not actually claim that 92 per cent of all IPV victims experience brain injury. A fundamental misreading and misrepresentation of data is at the heart of the campaign’s extraordinary claim.

Let’s trace, as much as possible, how the numbers have been manipulated and fudged. At the center of the hoopla is a report from Statistics Canada (“Intimate partner violence in Canada, 2018: An overview”) based on a large survey conducted by online questionnaire and telephone interview. This government-funded survey sought to measure the experience and frequency of intimate-partner violence as reported by victims — both men and women — over the previous year and over the lifetime of each victim. The sample size was large (43,296) but the response rate was low, at 43.1% overall in the Canadian provinces. (It is worth noting that response rates lower than 60% are considered by some researchers to produce unreliable and invalid results.)

May 22, 2023

QotD: Gamesmanship in golf

Filed under: Humour, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

One of the nicest things about the game of golf is that it’s a gentle one — no bodies crashing against each other, no feats of strength, no slam-dunks or soaring home runs: just quiet, delicate and deliberate movements.

Which also applies to the subtle art of gamesmanship. No in-your-face screaming “Bring It On!” chest-thumping or trying to put your opponent off his shot; just quiet, subtle digs designed to get inside his head to make him change his game, to his disadvantage or your advantage.

I remember once mis-hitting a drive which just managed to stay on the fairway, but only went for about 150 yards — whereupon my opponent asked disingenuously: “Does your husband also play golf?” implying, of course, that I hit like a girl.

And before anyone thinks that this kind of remark is in any way demeaning to women — it isn’t, because the fact of the matter is that women can’t hit the ball as far as a man can, which is why all golf courses have a “Ladies Tee” in each hole, usually many yards closer to the fairway and green than those used by men.

So when Tiger Woods (47) surreptitiously handed his opponent Justin Thomas (29) a tampon after his drive had traveled further than the younger man’s, everyone knew exactly what he was doing: teasing Thomas, and playing a little gamesmanship.

Kim du Toit, “Growing Skin”, Splendid Isolation, 2023-02-21.

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