Author Archives

A Crisis in Sports: Attention Spans

Credit: Mark Danielson/Flickr

We’ll always be fascinated with sports; it’s a constant. There will always be a sizable percentage of the population that cares about the NBA trade deadline, what the New York Yankees accomplished during winter meetings, and whether Dak Prescott is in fact the real deal. Part of our collective human nature is marveling at what only just a few can do better than anyone else alive.

But if you’ve watched an NBA game and waited 10 minutes for the final minute and a half to play out, or if you’ve sat through a 20-pitch at-bat only to watch a player pop up, you might be understandably underwhelmed. There is something to be said for sports lacking the requisite amount of drama and intensity to keep people interested at all times. Again, this is all understandable. But for millennials, and we assume subsequent generations, it’s also a cause for concern.

According to a 2015 study undertaken by Microsoft, average attention spans had dropped by four seconds since 2000—we are now capable of concentrating on a subject at a given time for just eight seconds—why is why the NBA, MLB, and NCAA are all going to their own mattresses to figure out how to keep consumers engaged as the strength and prevalence of the Internet of Things continues to grow. Read more…

The Changing Formation of the Modern American Family

A picture of the writer's sister-in-law, her wife, and their two children (Jack and Beatrix) during last year's Portsmouth (NH) Pride festival.

The dynamics of what constitutes the American family is rapidly changing. According to a 2014 PEW study, less than half—46 percent, to be exact—of children younger than 18 years old are living in a home with “married heterosexual parents in their first marriage.”

And it’s not just that adults are waiting longer and until they’re farther into their careers to conceive: PEW reported a year later that 16 percent of children live in ‘blended families’ (e.g. a household with a stepparent or a stepsibling); in the same study, it also announced that while seven percent of kids live with cohabiting parents, some estimates expect that rate could jump to nearly 40 percent by the time that child becomes a teenager. Read more…

A Reading List from the NBA’s Smartest Coach

Credit: djbelc01/Flickr

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich isn’t just a master on all things basketball; when he isn’t speaking out against the Muslim ban or voicing his unwavering support for the Women’s March, the coach—who has led the Spurs to five NBA championships—is one of the most well-read people in the NBA. Read more…

The 2017 National Magazine Award Winners: A Reading List

Credit: Keith Jenkins/Flickr

This year’s National Magazine Awards—otherwise known as the Ellies (or the award shaped like a modernist elephant)—was held at a luncheon Tuesday afternoon in New York. While the big titles, like New York, ESPN the Magazine, and the New York Times Magazine, held sway in several categories, there were some stunners among the honors, including Huffington Post Highline, Pacific Standard, California Sunday Magazine, and Eater. Mother Jones won the Ellie for “Magazine of the Year.” Read more…

StrawberryGate: Why Does Tom Brady Insist He Has Never Eaten a Strawberry?

Credit: Todd Shoemake/Flickr

What mattered during last night’s Super Bowl LI wasn’t the Atlanta Falcons’ collapse. It wasn’t the New England Patriots’ stunning comeback and overtime win—the first time ever a Super Bowl went into overtime—or that Tom Brady has cemented his status as the greatest quarterback of all-time. No, what mattered most about the 2016 Super Bowl is that Brady is a blatant liar.

Dayna Evans of The Cut spent a day this past fall with the Patriots’ quarterback during his suspension as part of the team’s Deflategate penalty, and her resulting piece is full of fantastic tidbits about a player who is famously vanilla off the field: Brady loves nothing better than relaxing in sweatpants and UGGs; he likes to read a book every now and then; and he has never eaten a strawberry in his life.

Tom Brady has learned that he doesn’t love strawberries or coffee by never having tried either at all, a commitment no mortal man could ever conceive of pulling off. “I’ve never eaten a strawberry in my life. I have no desire to do that.” Never? “Absolutely not.”

Read more…

The Successful Boycott of #DeleteUber and a New Era of Activism

Uber has courted controversy since the ride-sharing company’s inception in 2009. At the time, it made sense that such a disruptive company would cause others concern, but these weren’t typical complaints, ranging from underpaying drivers to disturbing accounts of poor labor practices, all of which ultimately culminated in a class-action lawsuit in California that contended Uber illegally paid its drivers as independent contractors rather than employees (that suit, along with another in Massachusetts that argued the same provision, was ultimately settled, and Uber was allowed to continue using the designation ‘independent contractors’).

But as Uber’s CEO Travis Kalanick continued to grow the company, Uber looked to advance itself as a leader amongst a new wave of monolithic tech companies—a group for which the phrase ‘don’t be evil’ might not share the same distinction.

That is, until this past weekend: During the rollout of the Muslim ban, otherwise known as Executive Order 13769 (which bars citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries from the U.S. for up to 90 days, and disrupts off the United States’ refugee system for upwards of 120 days), the New York Taxi Workers Alliance declared a solidarity strike at JFK International Airport, the hub of the country’s protest against the ban. Read more…

The Misunderstood Genius of Russell Westbrook

Sam Anderson of the New York Times Magazine reports on Russell Westbrook, the Oklahoma City Thunder guard and the best player in the NBA. What’s extraordinary about this piece isn’t just Anderson’s insight (he wrote about the Thunder for the NYTM in 2012), or how his vivid descriptions of the utter ferocity and skill with which Westbrook plays—it’s that Anderson was likely allowed 10 or so minutes to spend actually interviewing Westbrook, a famously taciturn subject. The piece is a marvel of observational reporting.

With just under three minutes left and the [Oklahoma City] Thunder trailing by 3 points, [Russell] Westbrook dribbled hard at the basket and, without any apparent shadow of self-doubt, stopped to rise for a pull-up jumper — precisely the shot I had watched him clank so many times before the game. Now, however, he made it, and then with around a minute left he did it again, giving the Thunder the lead, and in the end, as the crowd gurgled on its own disappointment, the Thunder won by 6 points. Westbrook’s final stat line was dangerously overstuffed: 32 points, 12 rebounds, nine assists. He should probably have had closer to 15 assists, but that stat depends largely on the skill of the players around you, and with this group, nine seemed like a minor miracle.

After the game, Westbrook sat at his locker wearing only a towel, with the veins bulging out of his legs so hard he looked like a map of the human circulatory system. (Joe Sharpe, the Thunder’s head trainer, told me that Westbrook could probably be a bodybuilder if he wanted to.) Slowly, while the media watched in silence, Westbrook started getting dressed. He put on underwear covered with the words “Why Not?” — Westbrook’s personal slogan, which he invokes to justify everything from his fashion choices to his shot selection. (As he tweeted once, apropos of nothing: “WHYNOT?!!! #whynot #whynot”) He pulled on a pair of skinny black jeans, ripped at the knees, then a bright yellow sweatshirt that said, on the front, “Paranormal: Out of the Ordinary.” Over this he put on a denim jacket.

It was, I thought, an interesting outfit.

But there was one more piece, and it was the coup de grâce: Over his jeans, Westbrook pulled on a kilt.

He rubbed some Vaseline on his face and turned to face the media for an official round of questions. As usual, he spoke to the reporters without ever looking at them. It was as if he were being interviewed by the locker-room door, with which he maintained fierce eye contact, with occasional follow-up questions from the ceiling tiles or the carpet.

Why are you wearing a kilt? someone asked.

“Why not?” Westbrook said.

And so began life after Kevin Durant.

Read the story

A Baby Boomer’s Hot Take on Millennial Activism

Photo Credit: Jar [o], Flickr

There aren’t a lack of #hottakes on the internet that attempt to fashion some sort of correlation between millennials and previous generations, and how much of an impact the youngest demographic of voters have had on our political climate. This period of our country’s history will be a popular form of anthropological study years from now, as researchers study the protests and other reactions from both the left and right to the ascendancy of President Donald Trump.

But Bob Huggins, coach of the University of West Virginia’s men’s basketball team (ranked seventh in the country), doesn’t need any additional academic understanding to know why this generation is, as a whole, vastly different from predecessors. Huggins’ rationale? A lack of respect. From Mike Casazza of the Charleston Daily-Mail:

“We’re in an age where young people in general don’t pay as much attention as they used to. We’re in an age now where young people have not nearly the respect that we had for the police. You remember when you had respect for the principal, your teacher, your coach? You know, those were people you looked up to. Those were people you respected. Scared to death of the police. Now they’re out there throwing bottles at them. It’s a different time.”

Huggins, of course, seems to casually forget the Civil Rights era and Vietnam War protests, but I digress. This is one special form of #hottake — one that is particularly lazy. It’s completely understandable for people to express their right to peaceably assemble and protest if their civil rights are being infringed upon; if their rights to their own bodies are being trampled; if their rights to live in a country they’ve contributed to are being discounted because of their ancestral background. But to make a blanket statement attributing protests to just ‘acting out’ discounts the national tenor, which shouldn’t be taken as lightly as Huggins’ comments would seem.

Two weeks after the election, writer Masha Gessen explained why protesting is an essential element of both the nationalistic and societal fabric.

Finally, protest is a powerful antidote to helplessness and confusion. Autocracies work by plunging citizens into a state of low-level dread. Most of the powers commandeered by the autocrat are ceded without a fight, and the power of imagination, the claim to a past and a future are the first to go. A person in a state of dread lives in a miserable forever present. A person in a state of dread is imminently controllable. The choice to protest, on the other hand, is the choice to take control of one’s body, one’s time, and one’s words, and in doing so to reclaim the ability to see a future.

Read the story

Basketball’s ‘Flopping’ Problem

The Oregon Ducks’ Dillon Brooks is one of the nation’s most talented basketball players, a 6-foot-7 forward who can score on the block and possesses enough quickness and handle to double as a guard within the Ducks’ offense. There is little Brooks can’t do, but when the junior tries to extend his talents to other arenas, the results can be, well, a bit embarrassing.

For instance, during Thursday’s win over Pac-12 opponent Utah, Brooks attempted to draw a charge on freshman guard Sedrick Barefield. It wasn’t pretty:

Flopping, in which a player intentionally falls after little or no contact from an opposing player in an attempt to draw a foul, is a problem in basketball, and there have been some very bad ones in the history of the sport. Duke is routinely lampooned for their ability to throw their bodies on the ground at just the slightest touch, and a Google search of ‘Marcus Smart flops’ yields nearly 500,000 results criticizing the Boston Celtics’ guard’s ‘defense’. Read more…