Slashdot Mirror
What Happens To a Football Player's Neurons?
An anonymous reader writes "It seems like every week there's a new story about the consequences of all those concussions experienced by football players and other athletes — just a few days ago, the NY Times reported that some athletes diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's Disease may actually have a neural disease brought on by head trauma. But missing in these stories is an explanation of what head trauma actually does to the brain cells. Now Carl Zimmer has filled in the gap with a column that takes a look at how neurons respond to stress, and explains how stretching a neuron's axon turns its internal structure into 'mush.'"
So, you have to be really dumb to use steroids. The prosecution rests.
Funny thing is, at least in places (not Texas) that don't take high school football too seriously, football is an excellent opportunity for a nerd to get into the "in" crowd.
In fact, it's how I became "cool." It didn't matter how well you played or how annoying or ugly you were, as long as you survived hell week and stuck with the team, you were in with the cool people(and, by extension, the juniors and seniors and the parties that they threw and all the pussy surrounding that whole scene). You were allowed to scream, cuss, punch lockers, high-five, whatever you had to do to shrug off the pain...as long as you took your hits and didn't cry like a bitch on the field.
Plus, a working knowledge of sports makes it much easier to bond with others and make new friends. And, of course, the health benefits. Now if only those damn San Diego Chargers would quit taking bribes and fucking up in the playoffs so I can see them win at least one super bowl before I die.
Define "smart", experience has shown us that measuring intelligence as a single vector is folly. It does take a certain kind of intelligence to be able to quickly read and react to the changing conditions on the field. However that same intelligence may not necessarily be very applicable to designing a particle collider and vice-versa. To put it another way, you really cannot say that "Einstein was smarter than Mozart" because that statement really depends on how you define "smart". I'm sure if Einstein decided to become a composer he probably could have wrote something passable since he was quite intelligent, but I doubt it would have reached the level of Mozart. And I'm sure if Mozart was a scientist in the early 20th century he probably could have made a living at it but I doubt he would have excelled to the level of Einstein.
Monstar L
Funny thing is, at least in places (not Texas) that don't take high school football too seriously, football is an excellent opportunity for a nerd to get into the "in" crowd.
In fact, it's how I became "cool." It didn't matter how well you played or how annoying or ugly you were, as long as you survived hell week and stuck with the team, you were in with the cool people(and, by extension, the juniors and seniors and the parties that they threw and all the pussy surrounding that whole scene).
No, actually, the funny thing is how in the USA (maybe also Canada?) you so ridiculously obsess about being popular, being with the "in" people. Is being yourself so scary, over there?
While I believe that there is some peer pressure to conform, everywhere, in the USA it seems it has become grotesque.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.