NFL Getting Harder To Watch

The quantity and extent of injuries seems to get worse every year. An unofficial count puts the number of consussions this season so far (and we're not even halfway through) at 46. And long-term health data indicates most NFL players will end up with long-term health problems and shortened lives (and not just the ones with brain damage from concussions). Being party to that weighs on the conscience more heavily each season.

Football is the most telegenic sport out there [while porn is at the front of the adoption curve for many entertainment-related technologies, I think football was the driver behind early adoption of HDTV in the US], but I'm not sure it can be saved. Size, speed, and specialization have increased to the point that it's unlikely any rule changes or further equipment development will make any difference. In the mid-80s, "the fridge" was a novelty because he was over 300 pounds. Today Chicago has at least 11 players on the roster over 300 lbs, and that's typical, if not slightly small, for NFL teams. And the big guys have gotten faster. The big guys are the ones who can barely walk by age 50 with neck, spine, hip, and joint injuries. The smaller guys are concussing themselves into permanent brain damage. Players like to puff themselves up with blabber about it being a man's game and all. Now that I'm older, and a dad, this comes off as youthful bravado, and I can't help wondering how much strut the same guys will have a decade or two after playing, when walking properly or living without pain on a daily basis might be the biggest challenge.

What can fix it? Better equipment won't do it. Some rules changes would help (e.g. eliminating the 3-point stance). The only real solution is to get rid of the protective equipment. The consequence of the equipment has been greater injuries. (Rugby has vastly fewer injuries than the NFL. It's not as telegenic, but it's close enough to football in some aspects to be instructive. And yes, they play all-out in a rough, manly way despite there being rules about what types of tackles are dangerous and disallowed.) But moving away from a technology-based solution is so un-American that this will never happen.

Are You Feeling Sorry For Him Yet?

I love it when well-off folks threaten to work less because of taxes. Hilarious! I especially enjoy the weaselrific use of "in effect". Let me see if I can do that, too. If I were taxed less, I'd have an extra dollar to win the lottery, which would yield my children tens of millions of dollars. But instead they get nothing. In effect, my family's absolute [let alone marginal!] tax rate is thus virtually 100%! How demotivating. I think I'll work less. Or switch jobs to one better for tax avoidance.

A Slow Chili

A few weeks ago I made confit of beef cheek -- poached, pulled, and potted. Still getting great returns on the holiday goose fat. Sunday I roasted a variety of fresh chilies, tomatoes, and garlic, and then cooked them with some more onions, garlic, tomatoes until I had a fairly thick paste. Got it to a fine consistency in the food processor, then broke out the jar of beef and folded them together. The beef was incredibly tender and rich, a nice offset to the sharp/sweet/spicey roasted chili paste, yet they blended well and settled in to make a very nice dish.

Adobe & Microsoft? Please no!

Despite my loathing of flash-based websites (which long predates the Jobsian jihad on Flash), I really like Adobe. They are one of the best ever large development shops. Adobe Lightroom is in my apps hall of fame. Recent rumours of an acquisition by Microsoft are now fading. Let's hope they dissolve completely. I can't imagine a happy partnership. Adobe's more Apple-like on focus on functionality, while Microsoft is a monument to mediocrity and bloat. 

(Although microsoft does in fact produce some astonishingly good technology, mostly in the realm of dev tools and core technologies. One of the great mysteries is how the same place can craft such great stuff for software development and then develop such awful software.)

More Trains On The Way

I'm disappointed by the estimated three more years until this is operational, but will be great to take a single high-speed rail line from London to Frankfurt.  I'm also dreaming of a revival of sleeper service trains, having now enjoyed such to Edinburgh and Penzance. A proper sleeper service from London to, say, Zermatt, or Berlin. Now there's a dream.

Scanner!

I ponied up for a good one, a Fujitsu S1500M. Despite free delivery from the UK version of buy.com, it arrived less than 20 hours after ordering(!), and I've set it up and started scanning. I still expect devices such as this to be rickety and error-prone. So far, it is vastly exceeding my expectations. It is slick, quick, and does pretty much exactly what I want it to do. And I've used the included software to set my default profile to one that automatically shunts scans directly into evernote. So I put a doc in the feed try, press one button, and a few seconds later I have a new pdf in evernote. I've scanned some old school reports from the boys, one of which was A4 on thick stock, color printing, comb bound. After pulling out of the binding, I dropped it in and pushed the futuristic blue scan button. It automagically performed dual-sided scanning. Another was on thin A5, stapled, with some bent corners. No problem. So far, it just works.

Virtual document archival is a problem I've been pondering for years. Seems like a good time to be able to sort it finally.

Zero History

Gibson's latest: highly recommended. Good to read Pattern Recognition and Spook Country beforehand, but not mandatory. In fact, I read Spook Country first, then PR, now ZH. Was a bit sad getting near the end, as I suspect the characters won't be appearing in any further books. But well worth it. Does not edge Spook Country off its pedestal for sheer brilliance (reading that was pure revelatory bliss) but not far off. Charming and a pleasure to read.

Scanner?

Evernote makes me want to buy a scanner. Bizarrely, some institutions still insist on transferring information on paper. This does me no good as I am terrible at hardcopy file & retrieval paradigms. Now I can scan everything and dump it to my cloud brain for searching from anywhere. I have no idea what to look for in a scanner, though.

Shirts

I've picked up a possibly bad habit of buying shirts from tm lewin. They are always on sale, 5 for a dollar or something like that. They are a bit hit or miss. Some of them end up great, many so-so. Probably all made in china. I have occasionally bought nicer-quality shirts elsewhere, and liked them. I'm mulling getting some very high-quality shirts actually made for me. Not sure if it's worth it. Although my doctor did instruct me to buy better-fitting shirts.

speaking of festivals

Woodstock happens, then turns into a rather pathetic legend for decaying boomers.
Glastonbury happens, everyone decides it's pretty fun, and they're still at it, every year for the past 40.
There's a bit more wisdom in the latter.

Another Festival in Victoria Park

There's another music festival this weekend in Victoria Park. I love these. Nice crowds, lively music. The festival walls weren't photogenic, but I took some random photos in a big walk around the music grounds.

some wildflowers in Well Street Common

new olympic stadium looming over Tower Hamlets... looks wonderfully alien

Trending Aesthetics

I've noticed that the iPad versions of apps for which there are also desktop versions tend to have much nicer interfaces (e.g. Evernote, SplashID, OmniFocus, BBCNews). Has Apple made it ok for both hardware and software to actually look good? Has the aesthetics of the device and the free availability of competition in the marketplace raised the bar? Maybe it's just the iPad versions are newer, but I think there's more to it.