Quotulatiousness

August 9, 2025

Alert the non-crime hate incident police: soccer star proclaims pride in being English!

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, Soccer — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Spiked, Obadiah Mbatang discusses a recent disturbing incident of a member of the Lionesses (England’s female national soccer team) saying something completely unacceptable to the great and the good:

So the Lionesses were victorious in the UEFA Women’s Euros, holding the title they won in 2022. England forward Chloe Kelly, who scored the decisive penalty in the final against Spain, declared after the match: “I am so proud to be English”.

To hear a sports star make such a simple and patriotic statement was, for most of us, a pleasant breath of fresh air. Just as refreshing has been the muted response to her declaration of national pride. In the week or so since, there have been no online campaigns denouncing Kelly’s views as “problematic”. This raises the question: is it just the Lionesses who are allowed to be patriotic?

Compare the response to Kelly’s post-match comment with the recent treatment of Courtney Wright, a 12-year-old schoolgirl from the West Midlands. A few weeks ago, she wore a Union Jack dress inspired by the Spice Girls to her school’s “Culture Day”, in which pupils were encouraged to “proudly represent their heritage”. Courtney, who had also prepared a speech celebrating Shakespeare and fish and chips, was put into isolation by her school and then sent home. Essentially, she was told it was unacceptable to express pride in being British.

What followed next gave us a fascinating, if depressing, insight into the online left. Aaron Bastani, co-founder of Novara Media, came out in defence of Courtney. “A white British person being proud of their country and its accomplishments does not make them racist”, Bastani said on X. “Either all groups get to celebrate identity and culture, or none.” Yet for striking a fair-minded and consistent approach, he was attacked by his largely left-wing audience.

One notable assault came from Eleanora Folan, who runs the hugely popular “Stats for Lefties” X account. Folan said celebrating British culture “literally does” make someone racist because “the concept of white ‘identity’ is inherently exclusionary and racist”, adding that “all of Britain’s ‘accomplishments’ were built on racism and imperialism”.

Now, I suspect Eleanora and many on the left would never say that Nigerians should view their heritage as “evil” because of the Biafran War and the anti-Igbo pogroms of the 1960s and 1970s. Does anyone on the left talk about King Ghezo’s determined efforts in the 19th century to maintain slavery, even as the British tried to stamp it out in his West African kingdom? Would they say that British people of Arab descent should be ashamed because of Arab slavery of Africans, which still persists to some extent today? Should British people of Rwandan Hutu descent be ashamed because of the Rwandan genocide? Of course not.

Admittedly, there is no shortage of right-wing whataboutery that uses the histories of other countries to avoid discussing the darker aspects of Britain’s past. But that is not what is going on here. Courtney’s treatment by her school, and those online leftists blasting her as racist, reveals that self-loathing oikophobia remains one of the dominant prejudices of the left.

August 3, 2025

“Even when accused men win, they lose”

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Politics, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Janice Fiamengo on the recent court decision that acquitted five former junior hockey players of sexual assault charges in a London, Ontario court:

The acquittal, last week, by Justice Maria Carroccia of five former members of the Canadian World Junior Hockey Team charged with sexual assault has provoked the usual exaggerations and question-begging from feminist advocates.

A common theme has been the alleged negative impact of the verdict on “survivors”. Canada’s state broadcaster, the CBC, titled an article “Hockey Canada trial outcome a ‘crushing day’ for sexual assault survivors, says prof“. The Globe and Mail had the same focus: “After the Hockey Canada verdict, advocates fear survivors will fall silent“. For CTV News, also, “Advocates worry about message to survivors following Hockey Canada sex assault trial“. It seems that any not-guilty finding — no matter the accuser’s proven lies and venality — is said to constitute an assault on rape victims everywhere.

Our era’s motto: Better 100 innocent men go to prison than one potential accuser hesitate to come forward.

Many commentators also gushed about the courage of the woman, still identified only as E.M., who took the witness stand to proclaim her truth. E.M.’s lawyer, Karen Bellehumeur, called her “a remarkable person and truly a hero“. Professor Daphne Gilbert credited E.M. with provoking important public conversations at enormous personal cost. Supporters on the courthouse steps carried signs saying “We believe E.M.”

It’s hard to fathom that those declaring their anguish at the verdict and their admiration for E.M. have actually read Judge Carroccia’s 90-page judgement.

That judgement, far from revealing the judge’s failure to understand E.M.’s fear, as one feminist organization alleged, should cause any unbiased observer to question how the case was ever allowed to go to trial in the first place.

It had been found to be a loser when police first looked into it back in 2018. The story was that E.M. had met a hockey player, Michael McLeod, at Jake’s Bar in London, Ontario; McLeod was in town with his team to celebrate their World Junior Championship victory at a ring ceremony and gala dinner. E.M. agreed to go back to McLeod’s hotel room, but once there, he invited many other players to the room, where they took turns sexually assaulting her. She went home crying, and when her mother asked her what had happened, she told her. Her mother called the police.

The problem was that the complainant’s story was full of holes. Questioned by investigators in the days following, she couldn’t say she hadn’t consented, confessed that she may have enjoyed the sexual attention of the players, admitted she could have left the hotel room at any time, and never mentioned fear or intimidation as factors in her actions. London police closed the case in early 2019 without laying any charges. Over time, it seems, E.M. constructed a more compelling story to explain herself in a way that would be acceptable to her mother and to E.M.’s boyfriend.

In 2022, a police investigation was reopened after it was reported that Hockey Canada, the sport’s national governing body, had paid out millions in settlement money to women like E.M. who had alleged sexual misconduct on the part of players. E.M. herself received an undisclosed settlement amount in 2022 after suing for 3.5 million dollars.

Charges were ultimately laid, in early 2024, against five men, all of whom had by then launched careers in the National Hockey League: Dillon Dubé, Alex Formenton, Carter Hart, Callan Foote and Michael McLeod. Their NHL careers are now in tatters while their accuser has enriched herself with a false accusation.

April 13, 2025

Gender is a social construct … or isn’t a social construct [confused screaming]

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

Is it a good thing or a bad thing that some female athletes choose not to compete against transgendered athletes? Yes. No. Answer unclear, ask again later:

Feminist and gender ideologies have always appealed to women (and continue to appeal) with the promise that women are strong and should be applauded for competing with and winning against men. Any woman who does so is almost automatically granted elevated status in our culture, praised for her guts, stamina, and even “balls”. Women who “break [gender] barriers” enter a special pantheon of heroines. Cartoons and action-movies are filled with super-athletic females who successfully battle all manner of male antagonists.

Feminists were, for a long time, extremely enthusiastic about this view of things. It was radical feminist Kate Millett, author of feminism’s bible Sexual Politics (1970), who praised sexologist John Money for experiments allegedly showing that gender had little or nothing to do with biological sex. She declared approvingly that “In the absence of complete evidence, I agree in general with Money and the Hampsons who show in their large series of intersexed patients that gender role is determined by postnatal forces, regardless of the anatomy and physiology of the external genitalia” (p. 30).

Many other feminists similarly emphasized gender’s social character and declared transgenderism a form of sexual liberation for women, with feminist writer Jacqueline Rose pronouncing in an essay for The New Statesman that “The gender binary is false” and that “Challenging the binary by transitioning becomes one of the most imaginative leaps in modern society”.

Feminist sociologists Judith Lorber and Patricia Martin argued extensively in “The Socially Constructed Body” (see especially the gob-smacking pp. 258-261) that women would at last pass men in many traditional sports when they truly believed they could, for “If members of society are told repeatedly that women’s bodily limitations prevent them from doing sports as well as men, they come to believe it […]”. Lorber and Martin lamented that opportunities were so rare for men and women to compete directly with one another (strongly implying that the patriarchy kept men and women apart so that women couldn’t judge for themselves), and they looked forward to a feminist future in which women could at last demonstrate their true physical capabilities.

From the first, the machinery of this kind of celebration backed men into an impossible corner. Most men have always known that women are not as strong as they; few men want to compete against a woman in sport or elsewhere. Yet no man dared gainsay the right of any woman to show herself equal to or better than a man if she could, whatever the context. If a man refused to compete with a woman, to welcome her into his club, to hire her into his firm, to respect her in any athletic endeavor — then he was a Neanderthal and a misogynist who should be shamed, shouted down, and immediately dismissed from his job.

But a man who competes with a woman, or treats her as he would treat a man, is often in trouble too, as we are seeing now. Yes, a woman was just as good as a man, our culture has insisted, but always and only on the woman’s terms. Sometimes the woman did not wish to be treated as an equal or a competitor, and that too was her right. Men had no say in the matter.

Over the years, there have been cases in which women didn’t like the culture men had created in their places of business; didn’t like male jokes, male camaraderie, male means of competition, or male methods of evaluation. Some women felt harassed, disrespected, held to an unreasonable standard, judged too harshly, given inadequate mentoring, singled out, left too much alone, treated cruelly, looked down upon, forced to behave in ways they didn’t prefer.

In general, women like competing against men and getting praise for it, but they don’t like losing to men.

Some women have turned in fury on the men who took the feminists at their word, preposterously claiming, as did “gender critical” (i.e. anti-trans) feminist journalist and former academic Helen Joyce in her Quillette essay “The New Patriarchy: How Trans Radicalism Hurts Women, Children, and Trans People Themselves” (2018), that trans women exemplify the latest form of the patriarchy that seeks to subjugate women, usurping their bodies and silencing their voices.

Many men, keen to avoid the gender wars they’d never wanted to fight in the first place, have felt understandably flummoxed and on the defensive. Which is it? Are women equal to men in all areas of endeavor, or not? Should women be kept out of direct competitions, or encouraged to show their mettle? Should men champion male-female sameness, or respect male-female difference?

In some once-exclusively-male areas, elaborate protocols have had to be worked out to protect women from feeling as if they have been beaten by men, while also protecting them from the knowledge that they were being protected.

February 9, 2025

When your sports team doesn’t win … which for most fans is every year

Filed under: Football, Sports — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

As a long-term fan of a highly successful sports team that has never won the biggest prize — the Minnesota Vikings have been to four Super Bowl games and lost all of them — I thought Charlotte Wilder’s take was worth considering:

Here’s the thing: The Chiefs are in the Super Bowl again (duh). And a lot of people seem to hate the Chiefs.

I get it. When you watch a team win for seven years straight, and you are not a fan of said team, it gets old. You’re angry. It’s unfair. It feels like watching billionaires get richer. If you’re a Buffalo Bills fan — a team that has lost to Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes & Company at least thirty thousand times in the past seven years, most recently last Sunday — you are probably apoplectic.

But hear me out: Sports dynasties are good.

Seeing as I am a fan of Boston sports teams with recent histories of victory, you might be inclined to shove me in a locker when I present my argument, but I hope you’ll hear me out. I even drew a couple graphs and stuff to try to convince you.

[…]

Being a fan of a losing team is, at its core, romantic. You love this thing that doesn’t really know you exist, will never love you back, is capable of bringing you intense joy and misery, and is usually loaded with nostalgia. The longer your team goes without winning a championship, the more romantic your fandom. Extra romance points if your team has recently gotten close and lost (Bills, Lions) or has just totally sucked for a very long time now (Jets).

I actually did some math here to illustrate my concept. I call it the Fandom Romance Index (FRI).

You might be thinking, right about now, “Hey, Charlotte, I thought this post was about dynasties?” We’re getting there. Before we do, however, I have to familiarize you with the Fandom Hatred Index (FHI), which is the inverse of the FRI.

Simply put, the longer a team wins, the more intense other fans’ hatred. Think the Patriots post-Deflategate, when the rest of the country would rather have eaten seventeen bowls of clam chowder in one sitting than watch Tom Brady hoist another trophy.

Which brings me to the Chiefs. While their fans are riding high right now, their fandom is no longer romantic. The romance of fandom matters because, at its apex, it is the most pure form of loving a team, of being a fan. You’re hanging in there without much reason for doing so. You’re allowing yourself to hope despite all the evidence telling you not to — I think it’s beautiful and resilient.

And the higher the romance index, the more gratifying it is when that team finally wins.

January 16, 2025

“The only possible conclusion is that we didn’t call them racist often enough”

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

Apparently there are still a lot of US politicians who think that letting men compete in womens’ sports is not only okay, but praiseworthy:

Of all the absurdities of the culture war, perhaps the most egregious is the normalisation of the idea that men should be able to identify their way into women’s sports. We are living through a period of mania, so we cannot clearly see how this will look to future generations. But I have little doubt that all those photographs of hulking men towering over women on winners’ podiums will be the memes of the future. “Can you believe they let this happen?” they’ll say, scratching their AI-enhanced cyborg heads.

Wherever one stands on Donald Trump, there can be little doubt that his imminent arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will act as a corrective to this problem. Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act with its goal of preventing males who identify as female from participating in school sports. If passed into law, schools that attempt to defy the ban would have their federal funds withheld. The bill was introduced by Republican representative Greg Steube of Florida, and makes clear that it will be a violation of federal law “for a recipient of Federal financial assistance who operates, sponsors, or facilitates an athletic program or activity to permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls”.

One of the most astonishing aspects of the passing of this bill was the voting outcome. 216 Republicans and only 2 Democrats (Vicente Gonzales and Henry Cueller) voted for the motion. Is it really that controversial that sex, as the bill puts it, “shall be recognized based solely on a person’s reproductive biology and genetics at birth”? You will recall the outcry back in November when Democratic politician Seth Moulton admitted that he objected to mixed-sex contact sports in schools. “I have two little girls,” he said, “I don’t want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete. But as a Democrat, I’m supposed to be afraid to say that”. For this he was branded a “transphobe” and a “Nazi cooperator”, because we all know that one of the top priorities of the Third Reich was the preservation of women’s rights.

Moulton failed to retain his backbone for the latest vote (he called the bill “too extreme”), but his previous comment had been striking for its honesty. He was willing to openly state that fear was the key factor in the reticence of Democrats on this issue. It cannot be the case that only two Democratic members of the House take the view that there is no advantage in sports conferred by male puberty. Surely most of them must have glanced at a biology textbook from time to time. The charitable conclusion is that they have been browbeaten into voting ideologically, not that they genuinely don’t know that there exist anatomical differences between men and women.

Disturbingly, this vote would seem to suggest that the Democrats are not learning their lessons from the election, and instead are determined to double down on the very attitude that cost them the White House.

November 23, 2024

Common sense on males in female sports from … checks notes … the United Nations?

Filed under: Health, Media, Politics, Sports — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ramesh Thakur summarizes some of the findings from a recent report by the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls which somehow defies the narrative from most of the legacy media in the Current Year:

Has Hell frozen over? Uncommonly for the UN (think Antonio Guterres with the global warming hyperbole), one of its recent reports is full of common sense. In the last three years, I have been critical of UN performance regarding some high-profile issues, including World Health Organisation failings in responding to the coronavirus pandemic and a power grab for future pandemic management; lawfare against Israel by the world court and International Criminal Court; and UN Women’s betrayal of the raison d’être for its creation and existence with a shamefully delayed acknowledgment of the weaponisation of mass rape, sexual violence, mutilation and public humiliation of Israeli women on October 7th 2023.

Enter Reem Alsalem, the UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls. It’s a relief and a pleasure to acknowledge her positive report “Violence against women and girls in sport“. Published on August 27th, it was presented to the UN General Assembly last month. She notes that until very recently, the need for a separate category for females “to ensure equal, fair and safe opportunities in sports” was a “universally recognised principle”. Maintaining separate-sex sports is a proportional action that corresponds to legitimate aims within international law. Females also have a right to privacy under international law which is forfeited by compelled mixed-sex spaces in intimate facilities. Alsalem explained to Fox News on October 21st that this is primarily a human rights issue, not a cultural or an individual issue.

Biological advantages for males in competitive sports include strength (162% greater punching power on average!), weight, muscle mass, speed, height, reach and endurance. Separate categories for males and females were created to recognise this biological reality and provide equal, fair and safe opportunities for females to win recognition, prize money, fame and career advancement. Allowing biological males into female sports is unfair and amounts to cheating by males who are simply not competitive in male sports (think swimmer Lia Thomas). It steals women’s dreams, aspirations and rewards. Alsalem’s data show that more than 600 female athletes in over 400 competitions have lost nearly 900 medals across 29 different sports. Other reports document instances of injuries from trans-on-females encounters, including teeth knocked out, concussions resulting in neural impairment, broken legs and skull fractures. Thus safety is yet another another concern.

Despite the unfairness, invasion of privacy, opportunity costs and safety risks, many athletes and coaches who object to trans-inclusion policies are silenced or forced to self-censor at the risk of losing sporting opportunities, scholarships and sponsorships. Many who do speak out despite such formidable hurdles are accused of bigotry, suspended, expelled and subjected to unfair disciplinary proceedings. Many (like Moira Deeming) face hostility if they assemble to discuss how to deal with these issues, violating the fundamental human rights to freedom of belief, opinion and expression. Some have quit sport entirely under the cumulative stress. Because “biological sex is central” to women’s “experiences of discrimination and violence”, countries that permit biological men to compete in women’s sports deny women “their femaleness”. To counteract the “worrisome trend”, she recommends the creation of open categories in sports competition and non-invasive and confidential sex screening procedures to ensure fairness, safety and dignity for female athletes alongside inclusive participation for everyone.

The trans-extremist assault on female spaces in the workplace and sporting arenas has been in the thick of the culture wars. Amidst the wreckage of those wars, the DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) industry has morphed into DIE (division, intolerance, exclusion), promoting resentment, language-policing and unjust outcomes instead of real solutions. Trade-offs are central to public policy decision-making. The last major issue on which this was ignored was the panicked response to Covid and we will be paying for the resulting disasters for many years yet. By putting the spotlight back on the importance of balancing competing and clashing rights through policy trade-offs, this report provides a key to navigating our way out of the wreckage. It’s potentially also helpful in Sall Grover’s appeal in the Giggle v. Tickle case, as is the return of Trump to the White House. Alsalem is right to note that these policies originate from and exist almost entirely in Western countries. Their hold on many parts of the UN system is evidence of the hegemony of Western ideas and practices as the global norm. The adoption of trans and multigender language and the inclusion of trans athletes in international sports is confirmation of cultural imperialism at the cost of women-specific human rights.

October 8, 2024

QotD: The competitive instinct

Filed under: Gaming, Quotations, Soccer, Sports, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I once saw an interview with basketball player Charles Barkley, in which he discussed his retirement. Barkley was a Hall of Fame player, and like most of those guys, he hung on a few seasons too long. Even having lost a step or three, Sir Charles was still a decent player, but that’s all he was — a decent player, but getting paid like a superstar and with a superstar’s reputation. A few seasons after retiring, he admitted as much. He said something like (from memory) “I’d guard a guy and think, ‘this is going to be easy, this guy is terrible’. And then he’d beat me, and I’d realize I just got beat by some guy who’s terrible, and then I knew it was time to hang it up.”

One thing chicks of both sexes and all however-many-we’re-up-to genders don’t realize these days is how competitive men — actual biological males — are hardwired to be. Things like World of Warcraft and fantasy football only exist because the genius who invented those figured out a way to tap into that heretofore-unexpressed male competitiveness. And indeed, it’s the guy who’d never even dream of putting on shoulder pads who’s the most insanely competitive guy in a fantasy football league or (I’m certain) a whatever-they’re-called in World of Warcraft. Even the uber-dorks in the Math Club and the Speech and Debate Society went after each other like Mickey Ward and Arturo Gatti. It’s just how guys are … or, at least, how guys used to be.

[…]

When it comes right down to it, that’s why men of a certain age simply don’t get “women’s sports”. Few will be as crustily chauvinistic as yer ‘umble narrator, and come right out and say it, but here goes: Women’s “sports” are just a shoddy knockoff of the real thing, because women just aren’t wired that way. That’s not to say that there aren’t competitive women, or athletic women — obviously there are, some very athletic and very competitive — but the female of the species just isn’t wired to put in the work the way males are. When faced with the prospect of three straight hours in the batting cage, swinging at curve after curve until your blisters have blisters and your shoulders feel like they’re falling out of their sockets, most women will quite sensibly ask “why bother?” Competition-for-competition’s-sake, even when it’s only against yourself in those long, long, looooong hours in the cage, just doesn’t motivate them the way it does us.

Which is why a person’s reaction to Simone Biles, or the USA Women’s soccer team, or the WNBA, or what have you is an almost perfect predictor of their age, not just their “gender”. I judge sports as sports. I don’t care about soccer, but if I did, I’d care about it as soccer — meaning, I’d want to see the best possible players, playing at the highest possible level. Women’s Olympic teams — that is to say, all star teams, the very best players — routinely get smoked by teams of 15 year old boys. Sir Charles is pushing sixty, but he could dominate the WNBA right now, in street clothes. Obviously this doesn’t apply to Pee Wee or rec leagues, but if you’re going to take a paycheck for doing it, then I want to see exactly what I paid for.

In estrogen-drenched, synchronized-ovulation Clown World, it’s all about appearances. Sure, she let her team down and wussed out (while still talking up how great she is), but can’t you see that it gave her the sadz? Sure, Megan Rapinoe et al keep getting smoked by 14 year old boys, then choking in international competition, but can’t you see her out there, with her pink hair and her tats and her Strong, Confident Empowerment? The “competition”, such as it is, is an excuse for the display. Michael Jordan ought to give baseball another shot. We know he can cry. These days, that’d get him a first-class ticket to Cooperstown.

Severian, “On Competition”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-08-02.

September 25, 2024

QotD: “Rooting for the meteor”

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

One of those common jokes you hear from people whenever two teams they don’t like are playing each other is “rooting for the meteor”.

So far, the meteor has a horrible track record. It showed up once in the clutch for mammals millions of years ago and that’s about it. We need to stop rooting for the meteor. If the meteor even does show up it’ll likely cause all kinds of problems. We need to start rooting for more sensible and practical ways to end a game with both teams losing. Options like:

  • Root for Bane
  • Root for the large sinkhole
  • Root for the tornado
  • Root for the alien abduction
  • Root for spontaneous player combustion
  • Root for lightning
  • Root for the ball ending up being a bomb
  • Root for the dune sandworm
  • Root for the unexpected plane crash. We almost got this one once!
  • Root for the Killdozer to show up
  • Root for the nerve gas attack
  • Root for the Brown Note
  • Root for spiked Gatorade that gets everybody sick
  • Root for stadium structural failure
  • Root for both teams to become friends and refuse to fight
  • Root for acid rain
  • Root for the big squid from the end of the original Watchmen comic
  • Root for the suitcase nuke
  • Root for everyone to suddenly become naked, a state of being it is hard to play football in
  • Root for a dragon to show up. Any dragon. Pick your favorite. I choose Volvagia from Ocarina of Time
  • Root for the solar flare
  • Root for the uprising of the skeleton army

Dave Rappoccio, “Rooting for the Meteor Only Worked Once”, The Draw Play, 2024-06-24.

August 28, 2024

QotD: NFL team owners

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

It’s probably also worth noting that the new Vikings owner is very big on family. By my count, [new Minnesota Vikings majority owner] Zygi [Wilf] used the word “family” 1,068 times during the 45-minute interview session. He mentioned his family, the Vikings family, his partners’ families, local families and the family business.

Asked about meeting the other NFL owners for the first time, Wilf said — you guessed it — they are like a family. Which I can see, particularly when I envision the Corleone family.

Tom Powers, “No news is good snooze with Wilf”, St. Paul Pioneer Press, 2005-06-17.

August 16, 2024

QotD: American football

Filed under: Football, Quotations, Religion — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[F]ootball isn’t really a sport in America. It’s a religion. Almost every single game is played on a Saturday (college) or Sunday (NFL), which, for a Judeo-Christian country, means it’s played on the Sabbath. Accordingly, families come to a standstill when football is on. Tumbleweeds roll through usually busy towns. If anything squares with America’s reputation as a bunch of religious kooks, our faith in football is it.

Jonathan David Morris, “Our National Pastime?”, Libertarian Enterprise, 2005-04-23.

August 6, 2024

QotD: Malicious idiocy

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

God made not men to be malicious idiots. This is something we achieved entirely on our own. It is a living testament to Free Will; and those who attribute malice to the Devil may be too humble. We study his suggestions and run with them. True, he may have started it in scrimmage, but only a human can take it, as we say, “the full nine yards.”

Perhaps we should make it an Olympic event, with male, female, and trans competitions. It would be more fair than the other competitions for running, jumping, lifting weights, &c. No single country would dominate the sport, at least to begin with; some of the smallest nations could excel. Or if they didn’t, malicious idiots could charge the field, accusing judges and timekeepers of racism and hate crimes, adding to the loathely spectacle: Citius! Altius! Fortius!

David Warren, “Off & running”, Essays in Idleness, 2019-11-22.

[NR: This QotD has become much more timely than it was when I scheduled it for today a few months ago.]

August 2, 2024

46-second beatdown in Paris – Olympic hypocrisy on full, disgusting display

Filed under: France, Media, Politics, Sports — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, ESR reacts to the Olympic boxing travesty of a male boxer being in the ring with a female boxer:

I have mixed feelings about the beatdown of Angela Carini at the Olympics and the feminists complaining that she should never have been put in the ring with a biological male.

On the one hand, yes, it’s disgusting that a man pretending to be a woman battered Carini to the point where she threw the match in justified fear of being killed in the ring.

On the other hand, this travesty seems like such an obvious consequence of feminist doctrine and the feminization of politics that I think most of the women (and “male feminist” allies) decrying it should shut the hell up until they seriously rethink their premises.

It wasn’t “the patriarchy” or defenders of traditional gender roles pushing for this. It was a consequence of decades of insistence that men and women are interchangeable, that gender roles are “socially constructed” – mutable at whim, and that people’s feelings about their own victimization and self-assigned identity trump objective facts.

Feminism and political correctness put Carini’s face in the path of Imane Kelif’s fists. It’s the same ideological cluster that has led to an epidemic of rapes by biological males in women’s prisons and homeless shelters.

Most women – and far too many weak-kneed men – said nothing for decades as this fantasy ideology of feelz laid waste to our cultural norms. And in news that I’m completely sure is utterly unrelated, over 50% of young women identifying as “liberal” have a diagnosed mental disorder.

Maybe, just maybe, feminists and postmodernists and critical theorists ought to stop punching Angela Carini’s face?

July 29, 2024

QotD: Football

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

It’s often said that football games are taken as metaphors for the success or failure of groups; that if a football team wins, those who root for the team think this is an omen their lives will go well, while a loss is seen as a bad portent. But why are football games seen as omens? Because so many people are involved. It is impossible to field a football team without a lot of people working together cooperatively. In that, football is like real life and engages emotions in a way other sports do not. A basketball team can win if one star throws in 50 points; a baseball team can win if one slugger hits two home runs; a football team simply cannot win unless everyone cooperates. This makes football a metaphor of the larger world, where for the typical person, everyday life is a cooperative effort.

Gregg Easterbrook, “Why football is the most emotional sport, and there she is, Miss Cue!”, NFL.com, 2005-01-11.

June 27, 2024

Tim Worstall offers a rule-of-thumb for physical fitness

Filed under: Health, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Rather than digging deeply into the esoterica of current research on the human body, Tim Worstall suggests there’s a handy rough metric you can use to judge your own physical fitness in any given area that sounds helpful:

“Exercise Running Fitness Physical Activity – Credit to https://homethods.com/” by homethods is licensed under CC BY 2.0 .

If you can do the whatever it is in under twice the Olympic time for it then that’s just fine. You may, at that point, step off the treadmill and go get more dip.

Not that I have any expertise in such things as fitness — just the normal amount of forced labour true of anyone who went through public school. It still seems to me to be a good guide.

True, the accuracy of this varies depending upon the specific activity. Managing 100 metres in 20 seconds is not a huge call — only just managing it would have small children jeering perhaps. But a mile in 8 minutes, yes, that does require a certain level of fitness and one that’s also indicative of, well, being at a certain level of fitness. Not that I’m going to do anything so gauche as check this, but that sounds like about the fitness tests for middle aged men in the military (longer if it’s in full kit).

One recent Tour de France time trial was around the 45 km mark. Which they did in 45 to 49 minutes (again, from memory) and doing 45 km in 90 minutes is something the average club cyclist would do on Granny’s bike, with the basket in front. A professional cyclist would need to add a sheepdog to the basket to be that slow. But being able to crank out 45 km on a bike — in that hour and a half — is showing a level of fitness that I take to be just fine for the average couch lizard.

So too the mile swim. Olympic swimming is 1500m, in 14 minutes or so. So, a mile in half an hour? That looks quite testing but if I can get close to that (in my 60s) then I’m happy. I can swim a mile, which in itself is a reasonable level of fitness, but that time would, I think, qualify as being “fit enough”.

It’s possibly true that this guide is more accurate at the longer distances. For being able to even perform the longer distances is itself a guide to fitness and the time recorded is less of an issue. It would also be possible that personal experience is playing a part here — I’ve always been comparatively better at longer. Few fast twitch fibre. So the “Worstall’s” could well be “As applies to Worstall” rather than something more general.

I’ve always been bad at endurance sports, but I’ve done fairly well in sprint-style, “twitchy” sports where you need fast reactions rather than long, slow-burn exertion. Tim’s rule of thumb seems to be more useful for runners, swimmers, etc., than for badminton players or fencers.

June 22, 2024

“We can learn a lot about our betters from looking at each exception to their rules”

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics, Soccer — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Julie Burchill isn’t a soccer fan, but she points out that the “exceptions” to the usual “rules” that the kakistocrats allow during international soccer tournaments tell us a lot about them:

Patriotism is not the only “bad” thing we’re suddenly “allowed” to do in the weeks when the national team plays on the world stage. The BBC in particular reminds men that they can disregard the finger-wagging for a few brief weeks. In EastEnders, male characters cringingly ask their mates to “get the beers in for the game”. Alcohol would generally be condemned as a public-health menace by Auntie, but during “The Game”, one more “cheeky” tipple apparently won’t hurt you.

We can learn a lot about our betters from looking at each exception to their rules. Don’t be racist – except against Jews. Believe all women about sexual assault – unless they’re Israeli. Oh, and be careful not to “culturally appropriate” the slightest thing from any other nationality, even to the point of never wearing a sombrero in a Mexican restaurant – but it’s fine to be a cross-dressing man culturally appropriating my sex. Meanwhile, if you’re a woman, be a good little Transmaid and stand by smiling, even if you call yourself a feminist.

Like most other places in the West in these dog days of civilisation, England feels like a nation devoid of hope and pride. Even so, being allowed to take pride in some overpaid ball-kickers, but not in the fact that this country contributed massively to ending slavery – lest we be called out as White Saviours – is a somewhat surreal situation to find ourselves in, after all those centuries of blood, sweat and struggle.

Flying the flag for the duration of the Euros is like being a eunuch who’s permitted to have his nuts back for a couple of weeks – for old times’ sake – and wear them as earrings. But those who indulge must be sure to tear their St George’s down sharpish once the festivities are over, lest they be fingered as a fascist for liking their own flag more than others. Remember, the only flag that can be flown constantly now is the Pride flag. This must be saluted respectfully wherever it pops up – failure to do so may identify you as an unworthy citizen of Soft Play Pit Nation.

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