Watching Football on the Wayback Machine

The closest I come to watching football these days is reading the knee MR's of local players. However, I was fascinated by this Mark Bowden article in the Atlantic Monthly: Distant Replay.

As part of his research for a book, The Best Game Ever, Bowden watches game footage of the 1958 NFL championship game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants with Andy Reid, head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.


Dead tree & Kindle versions of the book

A great review of the evolution of professional football over the past 50 years, as seen through the eyes of a Jedi master:

“Okay,” he’d say, when he had examined a play from snap to tackle, “here’s what happened.” Then out would pour a detailed explication: what the offense was trying to do, how the defense was trying to stop it, the techniques (good and bad) of the various key players, the historical roots of the formations and the play’s design, and ultimately why it worked or failed, and who was responsible, either way. The wealth of information Reid gleaned from a single play reminded me of the way Patrick O’Brian’s 19th-century naval hero, Jack Aubrey, eyeballing an enemy ship during a sea chase, could read from the play of its sails and the disposition of its crew the experience, intentions, strengths, and weaknesses of his opponent.

(via Daring Fireball)

Samurai Radiologist Back From the Road

I've been a bit too busy traveling lately to post much. The last 5 days have been spent in Austin, TX and Kansas City, MO, giving 3 talks. Nice to be home again, where I can rest up from the rock-star lifestyle of the academic radiologist.

Mural on exterior of Threadgill's.

I had great fun in Austin catching up on my Texas food groups. I had a definitive chicken-fried steak at Threadgill's and some extra-moist barbecue brisket at Rudy's that were, as my dad would say, just larrupin'. I also got my Tex-Mex receptors well-coated at Maudie's on North Lamar and Vivo. Muy sabrosa!

Besides being a great place to get Texas home-style cooking, Threadgill's also houses a zillion relics from the old Armadillo World Headquarters, the premier music hall in Austin back in the 70's. The Armadillo was to Austin what The Fillmore was to the San Francisco music scene.

Armadillo relief on exterior of Threadgill's.

Lone Star outside of the Texas State History Museum

I also got to visit the wonderful Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, which has a boatload of Smithsonian-quality exhibits on Texas history.

It also has an IMAX theater, where we saw Dolphins and Whales 3D - an impressive look at quite a few marine mammals in 3D. Watching the finback whale engulf an entire school of fish with one huge gulp was, frankly, awesome, in the original sense of inspiring great awe. I might also add, that if you have not yet seen manatees fart underwater in 3D IMAX, you still have a few more things left to savor in life.

Any nostalgia evoked by wandering through this great museum was further heightened by reading Cormac McCarthy's amazing book, No Country for Old Men, on the plane ride out of Austin.  This book is a great piece of story-telling by any standard.  The fact that just about every scene in the book happened somewhere I grew up magnified its impact considerably.

One can spend years and years away from Texas and come back with attitudes, tastes and politics a whole lot different from the rest of one's tribe.  However, it's comforting to see how many things there still resonate -- sometimes unexpectedly deeply.  I think José Navarro nailed it pretty well in his 1842 quote below.  I love where I live now, but a part of me will always be a piece of Texas.

Snake Oil Science

Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine by R. Barker Bausell, Ph.D.

What if someone with impeccable academic credentials and years of experience in designing rigorous clinical trials turned this expertise toward CAM (complementary and alternative medicine)? What if this same person reviewed the controversial and contradictory literature of CAM for efficacy? What if this same person went the extra mile and helped to develop a credible placebo for, say, acupuncture?

Find out answers to all 3 questions in this book, written by the former Research Director of a National Institutes of Health-funded Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialized Research Center.

If I had 10 hands, I'd give this book all 10 thumbs up.