tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post8677606911036815019..comments2024-03-27T18:24:19.683-07:00Comments on Steve Sailer: iSteve: CalvinballUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-61595952123147647582011-05-31T19:01:25.241-07:002011-05-31T19:01:25.241-07:00to tire them out so much so that they refrain from...<i>to tire them out so much so that they refrain from that other well known vice and obsession of adolescent boys.</i><br /><br />Dungeons & Dragons?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-53237308460199846722011-05-31T18:35:52.009-07:002011-05-31T18:35:52.009-07:00Don't forget also the immense popularity of ca...Don't forget also the immense popularity of card games and gambling among nobility in both England and Continental countries. Card games ruined aristocratic fortunes and allegedly led to the invention of the sandwich. The recent popularity of poker on TV is a comeback for this once dominant pastime (albeit with a now lower-class profile).James Kabalahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02335302113772004687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-77350666192719627352011-05-31T10:15:29.646-07:002011-05-31T10:15:29.646-07:00"Theodore Roosevelt, who felt the british los...<i>"Theodore Roosevelt, who felt the british lost their edge when they started to concentrate too much on sports"</i><br /><br />One off-hand remark he made after the British suffered some early surprise losses at the hands of the Boers, stupidly blaming it on their fondness for sports, rather than on their Imperial over-reach and sheer hubris, none of which had anything at all to do with their love of sports.<br /><br />Compare that one off-hand remark to TR's lifelong advocacy of the healthy benefits of sports, and your comment amounts to nothing at all. You are simply cherry-picking, sir.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-42196171737955788472011-05-31T10:09:16.738-07:002011-05-31T10:09:16.738-07:00"With stadiums of moronic fans cheering mindl...<i>"With stadiums of moronic fans cheering mindlessly?<br />or taking up adults personal time to distraction?"</i><br /><br />YES.<br /><br />Learn some history, please. You're as bad as Whiskey, whoever you are.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-20000498207702707512011-05-31T07:22:54.645-07:002011-05-31T07:22:54.645-07:00. In ancient times and in medieval times all sorts...<i>. In ancient times and in medieval times all sorts of non-martial sports were engaged in for past times; there are innumerable ancient and medieval variants of bowls, bowling, football, soccer and rugby "type"</i><br />With stadiums of moronic fans cheering mindlessly? <br />or taking up adults personal time to distraction?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-44089753972383434672011-05-31T07:05:49.394-07:002011-05-31T07:05:49.394-07:00Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, an...<i>Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, and all that. In fact it was the people who resisted these "children's games" who ended up looking stiff, foolish, and unathletic in comparison.</i><br />That was not the opinion of Wellington or Theodore Roosevelt, who felt the british lost their edge when they started to concentrate too much on sports... as for wellington "The famous quote attributed to Wellington "The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton" was probably apocryphal.[9] Unlike his older brother, Wellington was not an academic success at Eton; on one of his rare visits back there, the only athletic activities he could remember were skipping across a brook, and fisticuffs with a fellow student. "Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-49147604320652960742011-05-31T05:15:21.395-07:002011-05-31T05:15:21.395-07:00"what about jousting and other late medieval ...<i>"what about jousting and other late medieval martial sport?<br /><br />that had pretty formalized rules."</i><br /><br /><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Creative_Anachronism" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_for_Creative_Anachronism</a><br /><br /><i>"But the advent of adults playing games (rather than martial sports) reflects and infantilization of society.<br /><br />Remember when Rugby was invented at rugby the players were 14 or 15.. the question is, when did adults start become interesting in playing like children?"</i><br /><br />That's a rather silly opinion, and factually wrong, too. Grown men were playing these sorts of games since time immemorial, too, they just weren't codified and institutionalized. In ancient times and in medieval times all sorts of non-martial sports were engaged in for past times; there are innumerable ancient and medieval variants of bowls, bowling, football, soccer and rugby "type" games (harpastum, etc), baseball and cricket "type" games (stoolball, trapball), golf type games, etc., from ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt, China...you name it, there was an ancient game equivalent to modern sports. <br /><br />Grown men were being paid to play cricket in England by the late 1600s; professional sports is nothing new even in the early modern context. Ancient Greece had professional athletes, most of whom were not engaged in martial sports. The ancient Olympics were not for amateurs. By the 19th century, young men were gaining more and more free time, and that was when the Old Boys from English "public" schools first started to codify the sports they had played as youths. The British Empire did the rest to spread and institutionalize those codified sports. No one at the time thought there was anything childish about this: Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, and all that. In fact it was the people who resisted these "children's games" who ended up looking stiff, foolish, and unathletic in comparison. The idea that only martial sports builds up martial valor and martial team building was clearly shown to be false.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-21507530492276224532011-05-30T18:44:00.682-07:002011-05-30T18:44:00.682-07:00codification of sports just followed other codific...codification of sports just followed other codification- nature, animals, spelling (remember it wasn't standardized before the 18th century, at least in English)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-56149572823205133242011-05-30T18:40:55.056-07:002011-05-30T18:40:55.056-07:00"fun fact in rugby you still have to 'tou..."fun fact in rugby you still have to 'touch down' the ball past the try line."<br /><br />I have to be pedantic here. The game of rugby is played WITHIN the lines. Therefore you don't need to touch the ball down PAST the line. On the line is a try.<br /><br />Gilbert Pinfold.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-25381000113782638062011-05-30T18:29:34.791-07:002011-05-30T18:29:34.791-07:00what about jousting and other late medieval martia...what about jousting and other late medieval martial sport?<br /><br />that had pretty formalized rules.<br /><br /><br />But the advent of adults playing games (rather than martial sports) reflects and infantilization of society.<br /><br />Remember when Rugby was invented at rugby the players were 14 or 15.. the question is, when did adults start become interesting in playing like children?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-78203459684525864372011-05-30T17:18:37.782-07:002011-05-30T17:18:37.782-07:00"For example, cricket and Australian Rules Fo...<i>"For example, cricket and Australian Rules Football have a huge problem gaining traction in America because they both require a field much larger than a typical American football field. Similarly, "Russian hockey" is a cool game, but is played on an ice rink the size of a soccer field, on such super-sized rinks don't exist here."</i><br /><br />By "Russian hockey" you mean bandy, and yes finding an ice rink the size of a soccer field is difficult in North America, where ice hockey originated and dominates. Currently there is a small bandy community growing the sport in very cold climates where you can have outdoor rinks, like Minnesota, see <a href="http://www.usabandy.com/home.php" rel="nofollow">American Bandy Association</a>. Bandy is actually older than ice hockey, first codified in England and rapidly taken up in places like Russia and Sweden where similar games already existed in uncodified form; ice hockey then pretty much displaced bandy in Europe in the 20th century since it was easier to build small indoor ice rinks.<br /><br />The USA used to have lots of cricket fields in the 19th century. Many early baseball games were played in cricket fields, and many early baseball players started out as cricket players; a lot of the first professional baseball players were originally professional cricketers. The most famous American cricketer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_King" rel="nofollow">Bart King</a> got his start in baseball before switching to cricket, a late and unusual reversal. But by the early 20th century cricket in the USA was dying and after WWI it was dead; most of the cricket fields had disappeared. So no infrastructure (a rare first class cricket stadium has recently been built in south Florida). One thing about cricket stadiums is that they can be used for lots of things besides cricket and aussie rules: Olympic track and field fits right in (Melbourne Cricket Ground - 100,000 seats, 1956 Melbourne Olympics) and soccer and rugby does too (though the fans are rather far away from the touch lines).<br /><br />Another odd man out are Gaelic games (GAA - Gaelic football, hurling) as their field is rectangular, but much bigger than a soccer or rugby field. The huge field alone helps keep those sports pretty much limited to Ireland and a few outposts in NYC and elsewhere.<br /><br />The huge end zones of Canadian football also probably help keep that game from colonizing the USA successfully. There's been a huge expansion of soccer fields in the USA and Canada over the past forty years (most new NFL stadia are also built for soccer in mind so as to be potential World Cup or international friendly sites) but although soccer prefers an even wider field than rugby does, it doesn't prefer as long a field so rugby played in a soccer stadium usually has abbreviated try zones (end zones). The large number of Soccer Specific Stadia (SSS) built in the past 10-15 years for MLS and lower division soccer leagues has created a lot of small-sized outdoor stadia that other sports like rugby and lacrosse could take advantage of; no good for aussie rules though.<br /><br />The sport with the most ridiculously large fields is polo; there used to be a lot of polo fields in the USA (one right in New York City near central park) but that valuable land doesn't tend to stay a polo field in urban areas. It either gets built on, or if preserved as a park, tends to be used by other sports. Existing polo fields tend to be very rural, for the horsey set. I did see on ESPN360 polo from Buenos Aires, recently, where they do have an actual urban polo field, with stadium seating. Polo is a much bigger deal in Argentina than it is in the USA, though.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-47654843477936269342011-05-30T16:16:17.052-07:002011-05-30T16:16:17.052-07:00What is more interesting, IMOP is that we have mov...What is more interesting, IMOP is that we have moved from Greece's ideal of athletics - as virtue - to Rome's idea - entertainment to distract the masses. <br /><br />Republics don't have huge stadiums of fans moronically cheering and numbing their brains.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-40745376074344080062011-05-30T16:14:43.011-07:002011-05-30T16:14:43.011-07:00fun fact in rugby you still have to 'touch dow...fun fact in rugby you still have to 'touch down' the ball past the try line.<br /><br />American football would be far more interesting by adapting some rugby rules:<br /><br /><br />extra point taken from the perpendicular line where you crossed the try line (so if you scored in the corner you would have to take a kick from there, not on pre defined hash marks.<br /><br /><br />limit subs and have a continuous clock - would mean less coaching and probably more white backs (requires more endurance) <br /><br />of course that would mean less commerical time so don't expect it to happenAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-51580080861201696942011-05-30T13:07:06.423-07:002011-05-30T13:07:06.423-07:00I guess the whatty hoostein took over the blog?
W...I guess the whatty hoostein took over the blog?<br /><br />Will someone explain what these comments mean please?B322https://www.blogger.com/profile/18257802768718375656noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-37646712799347230122011-05-30T11:44:22.425-07:002011-05-30T11:44:22.425-07:00"The institutionalization of sports is a majo..."The institutionalization of sports is a major human accomplishment."<br /><br />No, it's a major Anglo-Saxon accomplishment, like so much else of the most important stuff. How come some groups get credit for things they have done and others have the credit given to "humanity?" I expect better of you, Steve.ATBOTLnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-82980452339275410522011-05-30T11:15:41.859-07:002011-05-30T11:15:41.859-07:00Anonymous: Does hunting (for pleasure) count as a...Anonymous: Does hunting (for pleasure) count as a sport? that was certainly popular on the Continent.James Kabalahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02335302113772004687noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-27548063025363259772011-05-30T09:27:40.848-07:002011-05-30T09:27:40.848-07:00I find the business of sports and niche sports fas...I find the business of sports and niche sports fascinating. One aspect is the physical infrastructure and how that steers sports development.<br /><br />For example, cricket and Australian Rules Football have a huge problem gaining traction in America because they both require a field much larger than a typical American football field. Similarly, "Russian hockey" is a cool game, but is played on an ice rink the size of a soccer field, on such super-sized rinks don't exist here.<br /><br />If you look at American sports infrastructure we have tons of multi-purpose stadiums and arenas. And sport entrepreneurs are constantly trying to invent new sports to fill those empty seats during the off-season.<br /><br />Most of our stadiums are built to football specs, but there are a growing # of stadiums designed for soccer. The indoor arenas are designed for a hockey rink.<br /><br />Baseball fields tend to be single purpose. Same with golf courses, but golf courses are typically used year round by club members. NASCAR tracks are single purpose and only have a couple big events per year. (Same with F1 tracks in the rest of the world.)<br /><br />Lacrosse is piggy-backing on the soccer stadiums of America. And rugby can (barely) on a football field if you include the out-of-bounds area.<br /><br />I dig all the struggling/failed arena sports. So tempting for the sports entrepreneur since all the infrastructure, parking, concessions are already there.<br /><br />Indoor socccer, arena football, indoor lacrosse, WNBA.<br /><br />Only the NBA and NHL have really succeeded as arena sports. But that won't stop new sports and leagues from trying. And the arena owners would love to find a summer/fall sport that can fill their empty arenas.<br /><br />Remarkably few permanent tennis stadiums with decent seating in America (or the world, really). Lots of community courts. But very few with permanent seating for even a few thousand spectators.jtgnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-61369547498726345232011-05-30T07:56:08.220-07:002011-05-30T07:56:08.220-07:00I guess the faggy Queerstein took over the blog. ...I guess the faggy Queerstein took over the blog. Can't see it's gonna get much readership with the stilted language or the pretentious personality.barbra's black hoodienoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-74289543525196466472011-05-30T07:48:27.748-07:002011-05-30T07:48:27.748-07:00I've often wondered why Sailer has so few whit...I've often wondered why Sailer has so few white friends considering how he's the champion of whiteness and all.rockin' robinnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-83657365435945625182011-05-30T07:38:34.913-07:002011-05-30T07:38:34.913-07:00minus those always boring european men, how many i...<i> minus those always boring european men, how many international sports have all humans combined developed? very few....many other groups developed their own sports, but almost of them remained local sports. there are a few sports played internationally that were not developed by europeans, but it's not many. </i><br /><br />But this has nothing to do with sports or games, innumerable cultures have invented them. It's about global dominance and bureaucratic standardization, which are then applied to sports just like they are to so many other areas of human life.MQnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-18104587811863032812011-05-30T05:03:49.819-07:002011-05-30T05:03:49.819-07:00"Girls have bizarre incredibly ritualistic ki..."Girls have bizarre incredibly ritualistic kinds of games that aren't sports but aren't boardgames either."<br /><br />In his diary, Samuel Pepys says he saw a group of young girls playing "light as a feather, stiff as a board" when he was in France (mid-17th C). The words were an almost or exact translation of the English chant.agnostichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12967177967469961883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-60973982099741343662011-05-30T02:00:22.655-07:002011-05-30T02:00:22.655-07:00It is kind of like basketball but without the atti...<i>It is kind of like basketball but without the attitude, trash talk and in yo face uber-athleticism. It is quite the nicest thing imaginable.</i><br /><br />...and it sounds tremendously boring.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-76368879124005723502011-05-30T00:44:54.103-07:002011-05-30T00:44:54.103-07:00Girls have bizarre incredibly ritualistic kinds of...Girls have bizarre incredibly ritualistic kinds of games that aren't sports but aren't boardgames either. I have no idea what the chanting and patterned hand clapping games are called but they are rather elaborate extensions of patty cake. The next phase are those weird origami type fortunetelling rituals. <br /><br />So, girls invent games but not sports. In these games there are neither winners nor losers just those who know the ritual/routine that can be shared for amusement.Lucynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-19247938496312037442011-05-30T00:11:21.416-07:002011-05-30T00:11:21.416-07:00There is always..
Kabbadi, Wushu and Sepaktakraw...There is always..<br /><br />Kabbadi, Wushu and Sepaktakraw<br /><br />http://www.gz2010.cn/special/0078007D/sports10.htmlFFnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9430835.post-46156463572501771372011-05-30T00:05:54.648-07:002011-05-30T00:05:54.648-07:00Anyway, until relatively recently continental Euro...Anyway, until relatively recently continental Europeans (central and northern Europeans at least), had very little interest in 'sports and games', other than those necessary for military training,They were seen as a peculiarly English eccentricity, and no worthy central European would ever waste a Saturday afternoon kicking a ball around a field when he could be doing something useful instead such as cultivating his garden or building his house.Along with the other English obsessions such as horse-racing, cricket etc, 'sports' were seen as inconsequential childish nonsense and a mark of English eccentricity if not degeneracy.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com