First Person Irregular

There's a fairly remarkable article in the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly, called "Distracting Miss Daisy," in which the author, John Staddon, argues that "the American system of traffic control, with its many signs and stops, and with its specific rules tailored to every bend in the road, has had the unintended consequence of causing more accidents than it prevents." Here's his take on...

The LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association) tour recently announced that it will require all its players to speak English starting in 2009. "Why now? Athletes now have more responsibilities and we want to help their professional development," deputy commissioner Libba Galloway told The Associated Press. "There are more fans, more media and more sponsors. We want to help our athletes as...

Yesterday in the Freakonomics blog, Ian Ayres argued that "Citizenship Flexibility at the Olympics Is a Good Thing," because that's the only way that all of the best athletes would compete at the Olympics. And there's a certain logic behind the notion: Ayres writes, "The country quota system keeps many of the best athletes home. If I were the fifth-best back-stroker in the world, I’d be...

Since the Olympics started, I've been interested in all the meta-scoring: that is, the "alternative" looks at the results. For example, Braniac has a story today called " The Pyramid Theory of Sports," which offers a new slant on whether Michael Phelps is the greatest athlete of all time. The blogger, Christopher Shea, argues for a pyramid theory: The pyramid in question is demographic. The base...

So there I was whangling through the NY Times online yesterday, when mine eyes were arrested by this-a-here box: Now, I'm not an engineer, but I work for an engineering company (which is indicated in my LinkedIn profile). Thus, my NY Times profile talked to my LinkedIn profile, and now my Web page has a special box where I get customized news ... sort of. I say "sort of" because this morning I...

I've been somewhat quiet lately, because I've been gorging on the Olympics. But the coverage of indoor volleyball continues to bug me. For some reason, TV coverage consistently shoots volleyball action this way: True, the horizontal court is visible on your horizontal TV screen, but if you want to see the interesting stuff, you're out of luck. From this shot all we can see who's hitting, and how...

Three interesting kid-related studies all appeared in the news recently. An article in the Hindustan Times writes up a study from Australia that found an association between high levels of outdoor activity and low rates of short-sightedness (i.e., myopia) in children, “irrespective of how much near work, such as reading, the children did.“ I think they said the flip-side was true,...