Sunday, August 18, 2013

Being child free is NOT new and revolutionary

Looks are deceiving! (Photo by Mary Johnson)
Cyberspace is agog about the article in Time magazine this week about child-free couples. 

Suddenly it’s news.

Not so much here.

Not having children is a decision I made 40 years ago during my time of prime fertility. It didn’t come after failed attempts to get pregnant or late marriage. I knew I could get pregnant. That happened going into my senior year of college and I knew without a doubt it was not the right time. It was a mistake I never made again.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

Writing is the hardest thing I do

My trusty iMac
I don’t really know why I write. I don’t write quickly, except when I’m really pissed off or on a rant.

I’m a lousy typist. In college I was wedded to erasable typing paper, and later to the correcting tape in the IBM Selectric. I would take illegible notes; later I learned to transcribe quickly after interviews while I could still understand them. I still take illegible notes.

Saturday, February 2, 2013

A Super Bowl Rant-Updated



Deceember 2023
And s
o it continues. The football leagues are too concerned with the big bucks and the fans are too obsessed with violence to take CTE seriously. It's the families who experience the fall-out, all for the sake of the Heismann trophy.

From the Washington Post article: "...of the 1,035 brains of football players examined at Boston University, nearly three-fourths had CTE." 

How is this acceptable?

Super Bowl 52 (a/k/a SuperBowl 2018)
Viewership is expected to be down this year, from a peak of 114 million in 2015, 111.8 million in 2016, and 111.3 million in 2017. Blame it on audience fragmentation. Or maybe it's because Pink has the flu.

Super Bowl 50 (a/k/a Super Bowl 2016)
I couldn't find any stats on how many people are expected to watch Sunday's game (beyond Forbes' "about a billion worldwide"), but you can be sure they'll be eating a lot of guacamole. According to the Hass Avocado Board, 278 million avocados will be consumed, and according to the National Chicken Council 1.3 billion chicken wings will be eaten. Unlike half the country, I'll be doing anything but watching the body-slamming fest. And, sorry, I can't even get into the half-time show or Puppy Bowl or Kitten Bowl or whatever they do to try to suck in non-football viewers.
But here are links to only a few of the reasons I find this sport so detestable.     

Super Bowl 2015 
Bets are on that more than 113 million people will watch Sunday's salute to brutality. According to Nielsen the number last year was 111.5 million.

Super Bowl 2013
Can 100 million people be wrong? 


That’s the number of people expected to stuff their faces with junk food and watch grown men slam heads and bodies together in the name of sport.

It matters not that the chronic concussions experienced by football players may lead to early dementia and personality disorders. The NFL has graciously offered funds to research the problem.

It matters not that the administration of a powerful painkiller allows college players to play through painful, otherwise debilitating injuries. The drug, Toradol, led to a heart attack in a 20-year-old. It’s apparently in widespread use in the NCAA and professional sports.