Slashdot Mirror
John Urschel: The 300 Pound Mathematician Who Hits People For a Living
HughPickens.com writes: Kate Murphy writes at NYT about mathematician John Urschel whose latest contribution to the mathematical realm was a paper for the Journal of Computational Mathematics with the impressively esoteric title, "A Cascadic Multigrid Algorithm for Computing the Fiedler Vector of Graph Laplacians." "Believe me, I am aware that terms such as multigrid, Fiedler, and vector are not words that people use in their daily lives," says Urshel.
But as an offensive guard for the Baltimore Ravens, John Urschel regularly goes head to head with the top defensive players in the NFL and does his best to keep quarterback Joe Flacco out of harm's way. "I play because I love the game. I love hitting people," Urshel writes. "There's a rush you get when you go out on the field, lay everything on the line and physically dominate the player across from you. This is a feeling I'm (for lack of a better word) addicted to, and I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else."
Urschel acknowledges that he has faced questions from NFL officials, journalists, fans and fellow mathematicians about why he runs the risk of potential brain injury from playing football when he has "a bright career ahead of me in mathematics" but doesn't feel able to quit. "When I go too long without physical contact I'm not a pleasant person to be around. This is why, every offseason, I train in kickboxing and wrestling in addition to my lifting, running and position-specific drill work."
But as an offensive guard for the Baltimore Ravens, John Urschel regularly goes head to head with the top defensive players in the NFL and does his best to keep quarterback Joe Flacco out of harm's way. "I play because I love the game. I love hitting people," Urshel writes. "There's a rush you get when you go out on the field, lay everything on the line and physically dominate the player across from you. This is a feeling I'm (for lack of a better word) addicted to, and I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else."
Urschel acknowledges that he has faced questions from NFL officials, journalists, fans and fellow mathematicians about why he runs the risk of potential brain injury from playing football when he has "a bright career ahead of me in mathematics" but doesn't feel able to quit. "When I go too long without physical contact I'm not a pleasant person to be around. This is why, every offseason, I train in kickboxing and wrestling in addition to my lifting, running and position-specific drill work."
This just shows that you don't know what the word means. I've know a couple of real sociopaths over a lifetime, and they were mean, manipulative, vindictive arseholes. One thing that they were not, was violent. They preferred to destroy people in more lasting and important ways than a few bruises. The closest everyday concept that mcuttatches the condition is evil.
Most blokes like burning off steam though. Not all of them, some are more shy retiring delicate types such as yourself. But for most men, regardless of whether they end up in the ivory towers of academia or cutting blocks in a yard, physical contact is normal. Success tends to correlate with the ability to control it and project it on demand. That's why we see sports as being a good outlet for it. I've known surprising number of martial artists in academia, they were all very straight forward about why they did it: they like punching things.
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
Ha, that's nothing!
"There's a rush you get when you go out on the field, lay everything on the line and physically dominate the player across from you. This is a feeling I'm (for lack of a better word) addicted to, and I'm hard-pressed to find anywhere else."
This is your indication that you are talking with an adrenaline/endorphin junkie.
I play futbol (soccer) defense, and can completely understand this. Its an otherwise thankless position. If you do it well pretty much nobody but your goalie notices, and if you mess up everyone hates on you. So why do it? Honestly, I believe I got addicted to the adrenaline/endorphin hit. I don't even feel right until I've had my first hard tackle. It is next to impossible to get that fix in real life, but a good physical confrontation will bring it right up. I once hadn't got there yet, and then a (clearly juicing) big forward knocked me to the ground while the ref wasn't looking. I got up laughing and thanking him. Not quite the reaction he was expecting.
I don't know how many here have seen Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way but Loose, but the main character Philo clearly had this as well. It was a major plot point that he had to fight, and had an unusual thing where he got better the more he was hit. Classic Endorphin/Adrenaline junkie.
I think it ought to go without saying that as a mathematician Urschel isn't going to get his body chemical "hit" in his daily life. I've certainly found that to be the case as a software engineer.