Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big
Anabolic Steroids
1994 strike was a low point for baseball
Alex Bragantin
Argument Essay
Ever since the famous 409 page Mitchell Report, published by former senator George J. Mitchell, was brought into light in 2007 there has been a major concern with the use of steriods in Major League Baseball. People think that the use of steriods in baseball tarnishes every record, especially those still standing from the early years in baseball, when steriods weren’t as popular. Even though steriods have been traced back to the 1930’s (cesar), it wasn’t until the Mitchell Report brought up the argument of steriods being bad for baseball that the whole country went steriod crazy! Although many people claim that steriods have tarnished baseballs image, I believe that steriods have been good for baseball because they have improved the entertainment value through batters hitting more homeruns, pitchers getting more strikeouts, and providing miraculous diving catches in defensive fielding as well as stealing bases on offense.
“Anabolic steriods are any drug… or hormonal substance, chemically related to testosterone, a male hormone that promotes muscle growth.” By increasing a mans testosterone, it is proven to create a deeper voice, increase facial hair, along with muscle mass, size of some internal organs and also calcium in bones (cesar). Most athlete’s use steriods as a performance enhancing drug, making them stronger and faster, ultimately to have an upper hand on their competition. There are three ways to take steriods: the most common way is through injection, then pills, and finally a cream which you can rub onto the user’s skin. The Mitchell Report included 89 current and former MLB players who were alleged steriod users, with famous names such as : Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte, Miguel Tejada, and of course Barry Bonds. It is believed by many that the steriod controversy began with the four hundred page Mitchell Report, but it actually started in 2005 with former MLB star Jose Canseco wrote a book titled Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big, which includes ” Canseco goes beyond admitting his own usage to claim that with the tacit approval of the league's powers-that-be he acted as baseball's ambassador of steroids and is therefore indirectly responsible for "saving" the game.” (amazon review). Through evidence, stats, research and quotes, this essay will provide enough reasons to support the idea that steriods have been good for the sport of Major League Baseball.
Beginning with the players strike of 1994, this marked the longest work stoppage of the history of North American Major League Sports which lasted seven months. It not only cancelled the World Series for the first time in ninety years, but also cost players millions of dollars and management close to one billion! The attendance dropped 20% after the strike, and took ten years to get back to the pre-strike level (ESPN). The competition for the market forced the players and owners to cooperate. Due to the fact that baseball was a non issue; basketball, football, and other professional sports were receiving all the television slots, along with filling their stadiums with fans. Needless to say the MLB was in desperate need of a wake up call. And it wasn’t until 1997 when a new labor contract was issued, that the league began to turn itself around.
Hmm... 1997 the league turns itself around, and in 1998 there is the most exciting home run race of all time? Coincidence? I think not. The homerun race of ’98 was between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, and was won by Mark McGuire three days before the end of the season. A season in Major League Baseball lasts from April until October, and consists of 162 games. Mark McGuire finished the regular season with 70 homeruns, if you do the math that is eleven home runs shy of hitting one every two games! Sammy Sosa ended the season with 66 home runs five days before the end of the regular season. During this home run race, stadiums were being filled, televisions were being watched, and an all around love for the game was beginning to reappear in America. Some may find it funny how Jose Conseco labels himself as the savior of baseball, but if he had never introduced the members of the league to steriods, do you think anyone would have broughten baseball out of its slump? Steriods in baseball provide game winning homeruns, epic no hitters, and remarkable diving catches/ wall climbs, including stolen bases. Fact remains that the mere excitement and adrenaline that jolts through your bones everytime you hear the crack of the bat and see the ball fly out of the stadium is more likely to happen with the use of steriods.
I understand that it is not fair to honest baseball players such as Derek Jeter, Dustin Pedrioa, and Nomar Garciaparra to name a few, but without the power hitters in the line-up the game wouldn’t be the same. People will intentionally pitch around a power hitter and walk him in fear of letting up a crucial home run. People like Derek Jeter or Dustin Pedroia will never be intentionally walked! I also understand that people who use steriods create a bad influence for young/aspiring athletes, and to that I say kids are going to take steriods to make themselves better without the influence of Major League players. Just like kids don’t start using drugs because they watched a documentary on Robert Downey Jr., peer pressure is one thing but blaming the use of steriods in High School on Alex Rodrigues is obnoxious. Now we all know that steriods are not good for your body, they reduce the sperm count, damage the heart, and also create liver disease or cancer in long term effects (cesar). But these are grown men we are talking about, they are well aware of the side effects and reprocussions that come along with taking steriods. Just like kids who smoke know there is a chance of developing numerous types of cancer: lung; throat; mouth. This has been known for many years, but ciggarettes still fly off the racks at nearly every convienient store in America.
We are all well aware of the implications of using steroids in Major League Baseball. Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco, Raphael Palmeiro, Alex Rodrigues, among many others are in jeopardy of never making it into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of their involvement with the drug. This drug use has created new drug tests which every player must undergo, even the non suspected players. But face the facts, it’s possible to say that without the introduction of steroids to the MLB, baseball could have fallen to the level of soccer in America. A sport everyone knows about, but creates very little publicity throught out TV, newspapers, and/or sports magazines. Like it or not the home run race between Sosa and McGuire of 1998 saved the game of baseball!
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Ethnography revision
Alex Bragantin
Ethnography Essay
I woke up early in the morning to find that the weather was perfect, the sun was shining and the sky was crystal clear. I called up my friends and made sure they knew to meet up at my neighbor’s house at noon. We had bought the tickets months in advance and today is the day we have been dying for; we are going to see Korn live at the Tweeter Center! Planning for our pre-game rituals we formed a list which included: a table, portable gas grill, hamburgers and hot dogs, ping pong balls, chips, bread, cups, ice, and last but not least plenty of beer. We quickly began to pack everything into Kyle’s SUV and set out to Mansfield.
My neighbor Doug, along with Doug's brother, Kyle, and Dan were all friends from high school, and had always talked about planning a trip like this for a long time. It was about a forty minute drive until we arrived at our destination. We showed up a few hours early so we could have plenty of time to find a good parking spot (which doesn't really matter, because everyone gets stuck in traffic at the end of the night) but most importantly to pregame. This was our first concert where my friends and I were actually the legal drinking age, so the first thing we do is set up the beer pong table. Beer pong is a game we learned about during high school, it consists of a wooden fold table about 8 ft. long, at each end of the table 10 plastic cups are arranged in a pyramid: four closest to the edge, three, two, then one. Once the cups are in position, they are filled a quarter way full with the beer of your choice (in some cases mixed drinks for girls, ex. Vodka and Cranberry). Now that the table is set up and the cups are ready comes the game, teams are formed of two people who stand on each side of the table, the objective is to toss a ping pong ball into the cup on the other side of the table. Once you sink a cup, the opposing team has to drink the cup. The game is played until one team sinks all of their 10 cups. Needless to say it’s a fun way you get drunk in a short amount of time. We placed the grill on the ground next to the cooler, as Kyle played music through his car radio with is windows down and trunk door open. As people started to show up and park around us, it was becoming more and more like a party. With beer costing close to $10 at the show, it’s definitely important to get a good buzz on (without going overboard) before the show starts. We party for about two or three hours and decide to skip the first couple of opening performances. As we leave the parking lot, it looked like a hurricane just hit; half eaten burgers, chips all over the place, flattened beer cans and broken plastic cups were scattered everywhere.
We get to the gate and this is it: Family Values Tour 2007! We make it past security and make our way to our seats. Bumping elbows with the crowds of people moving every direction possible made it tough to stick together. Even though we all had cell phones in case of someone got lost, or got kicked out of the concert, the music and people were so loud we found ourselves yelling to each other while standing only a few feet apart. As soon as we entered we came up with a plan in case somehow we did split up; meet at the condom stand. This stand was easily found next to the entrance of the stadium and unlike the bathrooms, food stands and t-shirt stands; there was only one place that handed out free condoms. After we grabbed beers, we couldn’t help stopping to check out the t-shirts for sale. This is a big part of going to a concert, buying a t-shirt with the name of the bands, the year, and the place it was held. This provides a great keepsake and cool souvenir to show off to friends that couldn’t go.
As we arrived at our seating section, unfortunately somebody who drank too much found them first and covered them with vomit! Doug went and got a security officer to complain; the officer ends up bringing us to a VIP booth with a waitress about 100 feet closer to the stage than our original seats. This was like a dream come true! Instead of taking turns to grab beers, standing in 20+ person lines and waiting up to a half hour per round of drinks, we now had a waitress who would walk by every 20 minutes asking who needed refills! Our VIP section was basically a handicap section with about 8-10 fold up chairs, so as Trivium took stage and we heard a song we liked, we folded up a few chairs and created our own little mosh pit. A mosh pit is basically jumping up and down to the rhythm of the music and jumping into each other, they usually go around in a circle. After about forty-five minutes another band took the stage which I had never heard of so I decided to go to the bathroom. For one thing, I feel horrible for anyone who has to sit down in those bathrooms! It reminded me of watching clips of Woodstock without the Port-a-Potty’s, toilet paper and feces everywhere. It looked like the same tornado that hit the parking lot kept moving and swooped right into the bathrooms. On my way back to my seats there was about three groups of kids asking total strangers for drugs, I must’ve been asked if I had any weed, or pills four or five times. I found this pretty humorous, and felt like saying I was a police officer just to see them scatter into a sea of people.
I arrive back from the bathroom just in time for Flyleaf, a really great band out of Texas with a female lead singer, take the stage and ignite the crowd into a mass frenzy. The crowd is filled with typical “freaks”, wearing all black with nose, eye, lip, and all sorts of other face piercings, tattoos, and holding signs for their favorite groups. Me and my friends were into this music, but stood out like soar thumbs when it came to the clothing. We rock out, basically throwing your hands in the air while screaming and jumping up and down, to Atreyu and Evanescence for about an hour and a half until the headliner starts. By this time it’s been about 4 hours since we entered the concert and as you can imagine my friends and I, along with the thousands of people in attendance, were feeling like we had been hit by a truck. Jumping up and down while screaming really does a toll on you, especially after 15-20 beers, let me tell you. As long as I live I will never forget the feeling I experienced as Korn took stage… the whole arena exploded! A feeling of ecstasy ran through my veins, as we had grown up listening to these guys, through good and bad times they always made us feel better. Now seeing them live, and hearing them thank us for coming was a dream come true! There wasn’t a single person sitting down, not that I could see anyway, but this is what everyone came for, the headliner, the one-and-only: KORN!!! Infused with adrenaline my friend Dan and I took a walk up to the lawn just to see what it was like.
The lawn, which is the farthest section from the stage also the cheapest tickets, is a huge grassy hill where people lay out blankets and lay down during the show. As soon as we got there, we noticed that there wasn’t a bad seat in the house, granted you couldn’t see the stage that well but there were two huge TV screens on both sides of the stage which offer a great view of the performers. Shortly after arriving at the lawn we witnessed the biggest mosh pit either one of us had ever seen, it was basically a sea of people. I say this because they were all moving in sync with the music, to the point where it looked an ocean, with waves crashing into each other (waves of people in this case). Standing around we noticed a 7 ft giant walking through the crowd tossing people up, down, left, and right! Immediately doubting our trip to the lawn was a bad idea, we went back to our seats and joined our friends for the rest of the show. Korn played for about an hour and was one of the greatest performances I have ever seen.
At the end of the show, we could barely walk out to the car, we were so exhausted! My legs were dead, ears were ringing, voice was lost, arms tired, and all around physically dead! Luckily none of our group was separated as we jumped into the mob of people making their way towards the exit. Stopping by the t-shirt stand on our way out, there had to be 100 people all looking at possible purchases to remember this insane day by. Two of my friends bought them, but I didn’t want to dish out $40 on a single t-shirt. We arrive at the SUV and begin to tailgate some more. Tailgating is when you have a truck or a SUV and you release the tailgate, forming a bench to sit on. Tailgating is usually done at football games, sporting events, and/ or concerts but always involves the consumption of alcohol.
Figuring it was going to be an hour before we could drive out of the parking lot, we fired up the grill and began to cook leftover hotdogs and hamburgers, even made a couple bucks for gas by selling them to people walking to their cars that couldn’t help but be drawn in to the smell of fire grilled food like fish to bait, asking us “Hey, how much for a burger?” A man selling t-shirts also came by, probably stolen, and the three of us who didn’t pay $40 ended up getting a similar shirt for only $5… boy were my friends mad who paid a boatload of money for something they could have saved $35 in the parking lot. We hung out in the parking lot reminiscing stories of this band or that band, me and Dan’s trip to the lawn, the bathrooms, and other stuff until the traffic finally started to break up. Getting back to Swansea none of us were up to doing anything except for face planting into our beds. But till this day after seeing about 20 shows; The Family Values Tour stands as my favorite concert of all time.
Ethnography Essay
I woke up early in the morning to find that the weather was perfect, the sun was shining and the sky was crystal clear. I called up my friends and made sure they knew to meet up at my neighbor’s house at noon. We had bought the tickets months in advance and today is the day we have been dying for; we are going to see Korn live at the Tweeter Center! Planning for our pre-game rituals we formed a list which included: a table, portable gas grill, hamburgers and hot dogs, ping pong balls, chips, bread, cups, ice, and last but not least plenty of beer. We quickly began to pack everything into Kyle’s SUV and set out to Mansfield.
My neighbor Doug, along with Doug's brother, Kyle, and Dan were all friends from high school, and had always talked about planning a trip like this for a long time. It was about a forty minute drive until we arrived at our destination. We showed up a few hours early so we could have plenty of time to find a good parking spot (which doesn't really matter, because everyone gets stuck in traffic at the end of the night) but most importantly to pregame. This was our first concert where my friends and I were actually the legal drinking age, so the first thing we do is set up the beer pong table. Beer pong is a game we learned about during high school, it consists of a wooden fold table about 8 ft. long, at each end of the table 10 plastic cups are arranged in a pyramid: four closest to the edge, three, two, then one. Once the cups are in position, they are filled a quarter way full with the beer of your choice (in some cases mixed drinks for girls, ex. Vodka and Cranberry). Now that the table is set up and the cups are ready comes the game, teams are formed of two people who stand on each side of the table, the objective is to toss a ping pong ball into the cup on the other side of the table. Once you sink a cup, the opposing team has to drink the cup. The game is played until one team sinks all of their 10 cups. Needless to say it’s a fun way you get drunk in a short amount of time. We placed the grill on the ground next to the cooler, as Kyle played music through his car radio with is windows down and trunk door open. As people started to show up and park around us, it was becoming more and more like a party. With beer costing close to $10 at the show, it’s definitely important to get a good buzz on (without going overboard) before the show starts. We party for about two or three hours and decide to skip the first couple of opening performances. As we leave the parking lot, it looked like a hurricane just hit; half eaten burgers, chips all over the place, flattened beer cans and broken plastic cups were scattered everywhere.
We get to the gate and this is it: Family Values Tour 2007! We make it past security and make our way to our seats. Bumping elbows with the crowds of people moving every direction possible made it tough to stick together. Even though we all had cell phones in case of someone got lost, or got kicked out of the concert, the music and people were so loud we found ourselves yelling to each other while standing only a few feet apart. As soon as we entered we came up with a plan in case somehow we did split up; meet at the condom stand. This stand was easily found next to the entrance of the stadium and unlike the bathrooms, food stands and t-shirt stands; there was only one place that handed out free condoms. After we grabbed beers, we couldn’t help stopping to check out the t-shirts for sale. This is a big part of going to a concert, buying a t-shirt with the name of the bands, the year, and the place it was held. This provides a great keepsake and cool souvenir to show off to friends that couldn’t go.
As we arrived at our seating section, unfortunately somebody who drank too much found them first and covered them with vomit! Doug went and got a security officer to complain; the officer ends up bringing us to a VIP booth with a waitress about 100 feet closer to the stage than our original seats. This was like a dream come true! Instead of taking turns to grab beers, standing in 20+ person lines and waiting up to a half hour per round of drinks, we now had a waitress who would walk by every 20 minutes asking who needed refills! Our VIP section was basically a handicap section with about 8-10 fold up chairs, so as Trivium took stage and we heard a song we liked, we folded up a few chairs and created our own little mosh pit. A mosh pit is basically jumping up and down to the rhythm of the music and jumping into each other, they usually go around in a circle. After about forty-five minutes another band took the stage which I had never heard of so I decided to go to the bathroom. For one thing, I feel horrible for anyone who has to sit down in those bathrooms! It reminded me of watching clips of Woodstock without the Port-a-Potty’s, toilet paper and feces everywhere. It looked like the same tornado that hit the parking lot kept moving and swooped right into the bathrooms. On my way back to my seats there was about three groups of kids asking total strangers for drugs, I must’ve been asked if I had any weed, or pills four or five times. I found this pretty humorous, and felt like saying I was a police officer just to see them scatter into a sea of people.
I arrive back from the bathroom just in time for Flyleaf, a really great band out of Texas with a female lead singer, take the stage and ignite the crowd into a mass frenzy. The crowd is filled with typical “freaks”, wearing all black with nose, eye, lip, and all sorts of other face piercings, tattoos, and holding signs for their favorite groups. Me and my friends were into this music, but stood out like soar thumbs when it came to the clothing. We rock out, basically throwing your hands in the air while screaming and jumping up and down, to Atreyu and Evanescence for about an hour and a half until the headliner starts. By this time it’s been about 4 hours since we entered the concert and as you can imagine my friends and I, along with the thousands of people in attendance, were feeling like we had been hit by a truck. Jumping up and down while screaming really does a toll on you, especially after 15-20 beers, let me tell you. As long as I live I will never forget the feeling I experienced as Korn took stage… the whole arena exploded! A feeling of ecstasy ran through my veins, as we had grown up listening to these guys, through good and bad times they always made us feel better. Now seeing them live, and hearing them thank us for coming was a dream come true! There wasn’t a single person sitting down, not that I could see anyway, but this is what everyone came for, the headliner, the one-and-only: KORN!!! Infused with adrenaline my friend Dan and I took a walk up to the lawn just to see what it was like.
The lawn, which is the farthest section from the stage also the cheapest tickets, is a huge grassy hill where people lay out blankets and lay down during the show. As soon as we got there, we noticed that there wasn’t a bad seat in the house, granted you couldn’t see the stage that well but there were two huge TV screens on both sides of the stage which offer a great view of the performers. Shortly after arriving at the lawn we witnessed the biggest mosh pit either one of us had ever seen, it was basically a sea of people. I say this because they were all moving in sync with the music, to the point where it looked an ocean, with waves crashing into each other (waves of people in this case). Standing around we noticed a 7 ft giant walking through the crowd tossing people up, down, left, and right! Immediately doubting our trip to the lawn was a bad idea, we went back to our seats and joined our friends for the rest of the show. Korn played for about an hour and was one of the greatest performances I have ever seen.
At the end of the show, we could barely walk out to the car, we were so exhausted! My legs were dead, ears were ringing, voice was lost, arms tired, and all around physically dead! Luckily none of our group was separated as we jumped into the mob of people making their way towards the exit. Stopping by the t-shirt stand on our way out, there had to be 100 people all looking at possible purchases to remember this insane day by. Two of my friends bought them, but I didn’t want to dish out $40 on a single t-shirt. We arrive at the SUV and begin to tailgate some more. Tailgating is when you have a truck or a SUV and you release the tailgate, forming a bench to sit on. Tailgating is usually done at football games, sporting events, and/ or concerts but always involves the consumption of alcohol.
Figuring it was going to be an hour before we could drive out of the parking lot, we fired up the grill and began to cook leftover hotdogs and hamburgers, even made a couple bucks for gas by selling them to people walking to their cars that couldn’t help but be drawn in to the smell of fire grilled food like fish to bait, asking us “Hey, how much for a burger?” A man selling t-shirts also came by, probably stolen, and the three of us who didn’t pay $40 ended up getting a similar shirt for only $5… boy were my friends mad who paid a boatload of money for something they could have saved $35 in the parking lot. We hung out in the parking lot reminiscing stories of this band or that band, me and Dan’s trip to the lawn, the bathrooms, and other stuff until the traffic finally started to break up. Getting back to Swansea none of us were up to doing anything except for face planting into our beds. But till this day after seeing about 20 shows; The Family Values Tour stands as my favorite concert of all time.
PORTFOLIO
Alex Bragantin
Personal Essay
I wake up to the sound of a fire alarm going off. It’s five o’clock a.m. on a Tuesday morning. The fire alarm isn’t real, but instead the sound of my alarm clock on my cell phone. I quickly race to the bathroom and take my morning shower as I get ready to start my day. I’m in a motel room in some small town in New Jersey. After I get out of the shower, my friend who I shared the room with takes over the bathroom. As I sit on the bed watching Sports Center on ESPN, I find it hard stop thinking about “what am I doing with my life?” I am twenty-two years old, my life is just beginning and I already think it is over.
Working for a stadium seating company out of Rehoboth, Massachusetts called L & J Associates; the job consists of traveling mostly around the east coast (Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania). It is a 7am to usually 9 pm work shift, which for the first four hours include constant bent-over, back-breaking labor. Followed by lifting 50lb. boxes onto your shoulder and loving them around a auditorium/movie theater/sometimes even up flights of stairs to a balcony. I leave on a Monday and come home either Friday or Saturday; I’m home for two-to-three nights and then take off again. Now some may say “well at least you’re traveling, getting to see the world”. But there is an enormous difference between traveling and working! After putting in 10-12 hour work days, I don’t have the time to go sightseeing nor the energy. The job pays $11 per hour, which after a 60-65 hour work week can be quite profitable, but take into consideration the $125 everyone must take along every week for food, drinks, beer, snacks on break. Plus being home for only two or three nights means that I only see friends/girlfriends for two or three nights a week, so that’s another $50-75 going to a club or dinner and a movie. I can recall countless mornings sitting in bed wondering what the hell I am doing here. How did I get here?
Easy answer; flunking out of a community college pretty much sums it up. I was originally thinking about joining the Marines straight out of High School, but my mom put an end to that real quick by harassing the Marines recruit man whenever he would call the house, threatening him with everything in the book including lawyers. “Kids are dying in Iraq everyday! You’re not sending my boy to get killed!”, he was finally yelled at to the point where the next time I talked to him, he told me that he couldn’t recruit me. So my mom decided I was always good at arguing, so that means I would be an excellent lawyer. I attended BCC for Criminal Justice and failed miserably. Fresh out of High School, I was skipping class, hanging out with friends who weren’t going to college, basically hanging with the wrong crowd. So when my parents refused to pay for me to go back to school a second time, thinking that I’m only going to fail again, I decided to go to work and pay my own way. This is exactly what I did, despite the pain and suffering I went through of working like a slave for two and a half years. The feeling of not being able to walk straight because your feet ache so much, the feeling of a wasted life every day looking at the people who do this for a living. I knew from the first month that this is not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
Not to knock the men who do work there as a career, a few of them who are very successful. There are 3 bosses: one started the company and is currently a millionaire, while the other two each own big houses, drive nice cars, paid college tuition for their children, and also bought cars for their children among other things. But take into affect they have put 20+ years into the company; a back-breaking, sweat-dripping, life-consuming, sun-up-till-sun-down-profession. But the workers who take orders, aside from the couple friends I went to school with, are a sight for soar eyes! Alcoholics, drug addicts, people with DUI’s, people without any education and have criminal records so they can’t get a regular job. I know people who have worked there for at least 15 years and are only getting paid $15 per hour. Sitting next to these guys on the road trips or sharing motel rooms with them struck a vein deep in my heart; I do not want to end up like these people! My parents always told me: do what you love, try and find a job or career that doesn’t seem like work and you’ll find happiness. And if there was one thing I can say about this job, it’s that I wasn’t happy doing it.
I ended up saving up enough money to enroll in BCC again last year and gladly gave the company my two weeks. Because unless I took on-line classes I would not have been able to continue working there while going to school, plus by the time I get out of working all day, the last thing I would have wanted to do is homework. I still see a few of my friends who work for this company, only on weekends of course, and they tell me about how bad this week sucked or that week was horrible. When I started there was five kids from my High School working there, a year after I quit, there are two. And I’m happy to say that two out of the three that left are now attending BCC with me. So for now I am taking the advice from my parents and pursuing a career in video game development and the decent paying/job-from-hell now remains as a summer job or “getaway” as some people see it.
**********************************************************************************
Alex Bragantin
Text Wrestling
Summary and Response
In “Offensive Play” Malcolm Gladwell, the idea of “How different are dog fighting and football?” is presented. Throughout the article Gladwell bounces back and forth on topics including football, dog fighting, and science. The topic of football views the perspective and job of an offensive lineman, which includes a story from the retired N.F.L. player named Kyle Turley. The part about dog fighting depicts Michael Vick, the animal rights poster boy, and provides an in-depth view of not only the dogs during a fight, but the thoughts and actions of the owners. Finally in the science aspect where neuropathologist Ann McKee along with former college football player and professional wrestler Chris Nowinski team up to give us key examples of former N.F.L. players suffering from dementia.
As the article begins we are introduced to Kyle Turley, an ex-football player who served nine years in the National Football League playing as an offensive lineman under multiple teams. After passing out at a Nashville bar one night with his wife, Turley goes on to tell us about multiple times he has been involved in big hits on the football field. Occasionally going cross-eyed, getting blurry vision, and in one case being knocked unconscious. The scary part was when he had passed out at the bar in Nashville; he compares it to the exact same feeling of being knocked unconscious during a football game!
Michael Vick is then introduced for pleading guilty to his involvement in dog fighting and an extremely graphic description of a dogfight takes place thanks to “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dogfights” an article written by sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth. Two dogs are placed in a pit and subject to fight one another, often to the death: “In a dogfight, as soon as one of the dogs ‘turns’-makes a submissive gesture with its head- the two animals are separated and taken back to their corners.” Only to be released again to finish the job, in this case continues for over an hour. After the fight, the loser has two broken legs and blood gushing from her throat. This is when possibly the most humane action of the night takes place. The loser is killed with a couple gunshots, wrapped and carried to the owner’s vehicle.
The article once again switches gears into the medical side of this argument, and Ann McKee is introduced. McKee is a scientist specializing in the field of neuropathology, which is basically the study of disease in nervous system tissue. McKee begins studying patients with Alzheimer’s disease, finding out that there are typically two trademarks of the disease. But after taking a close look at a seventy-two-year-old man’s brain, she then realized this man had a different condition, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), and this condition is the result of injury. McKee then joins with Nowinski to further investigate the link between dementia and football. Nowinski tells McKee that he will help her find more brains of ex-athletes to strengthen her research. In one case a linebacker who played for sixteen years showed damage done equivalent to using his head as a battering ram, another where a teenager showed to have more damage done than a fifty-year-old.
The story then bounces back-and-forth like a game of ping pong tying in facts from concussions, stories of dogfights, and revealing issues of what it’s like to be a professional football player along with issues facing retired football players. All three topics clearly include people who love what they do: scientists who try to understand brain disease and inform players of future risks, possibly even prevent suicide in some cases; dogfighters who place bets, entertaining an audience and making money, pitting their animal against another in the most primitive form of competition; and football players who give everything they have day in-and-out, seeking the love and respect of millions of people and at the same time making millions of dollars. No matter how hard one tries to prevent football from being non-violent, “There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else-neither considerations of science nor those of morality-can compete with the destructive power of that love.” The same can be said of dog fighting, so to give a general answer to Gladwell’s opening question: Dog fighting and Football are different in many ways, but this article proves that they are similar in many more. So what can we do? There has been new helmets made, to help prevent a big impact, but no amount of padding can stop 100 g's of force from rattling your brain. Eliminating full contact practices could help, but even in those practices, there has been evidence of big hits to the head.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Before reading this article, my brain had never connected the sports of dog fighting and football together... then again I also played defensive lineman in High School. I only played two years due to an injury, and no it wasn’t a head injury. I don't recall ever getting a concussion, but I defiantly remember getting dazed after some plays also really bad headaches. As Turley said in this article "it’s impossible for an offensive lineman to do his job without 'using his head'." In the sport of football it is essential to put your body on the line for the sake of a play, regardless of the repercussions. Much like the art of dog fighting, which made this quote really stand out in my head: "At any organized pit (dog) fight...one can observe the owner of each dog changing position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master." For some reason the thought of a coach running down the sideline as a running back breaks through a crowd and rushes for a fifty-yard touchdown to win the game, the owner (coach) changing position to be in sight of the dog (player). This brought chills down my spine. I know this reference isn't exact, but it made me think of things in a new light. Like how a man can be left in a tub of ice, with a concussion, only to fall asleep and die if someone hadn't been sitting in the tub next to him. It suggests that the coaches treat their players like dogs in a dogfight "And why? For the entertainment of an audience and a chance of a payday."
Don’t get me wrong, I love football. It's arguably one of the greatest sports in the world, but reading this article opened my eyes to another perspective of the game. The perspective of Kyle Turley: a retired offensive lineman from the National Football League; a man who has received numerous concussions over a 9-year professional career; a man who has a great chance of developing Alzheimer's; A man who put on a show week in and week out for nine years, got paid a lot of money, but now that he has retired facing unimaginable problems. Roger Goodell, the National Football League commissioner, met with Michael Vick on regards to Vick's dog fighting sentence of twenty-three months in prison to make sure he was genuinely remorseful. Goodell sat with Vick for four and a half hours, before finally reinstating him into the National Football League. Now "One wonders whether, had he spent as much time talking to Kyle Turley as he did to Michael Vick, he'd start to have similar doubts about his own sport." That is a great question, but let’s think about it: Roger Goodell is the Commissioner of the N.F.L. "the commissioner is the highest executive position. The exact powers of the commissioner depend on the constitution and/or rules of the league. Commissioners are elected by the owners of the league's clubs, and handle matters such as discipline, arbitration of disputes between the clubs, etc."(Wikipedia).
Now Goodell has voluntarily taken a 20-25% pay cut of his 11 million dollar salary of 2008. 11 million dollars. Do you honestly believe a man making 11 million dollars on a sport that delivers fans with bone-crushing hits on a day-to-day basis is going to turn the N.F.L. into a flag or touch football game? I highly doubt it. Why? Simply because the fans are already so familiar with these bone crushing hits, that they wouldn't pay $100 to see a non-contact football game. Fans would be upset, arenas wouldn't get filled, and owners would be enraged. It all comes down to Football being a violent sport, like it or not, football players know what they’re getting into when they sign up. And like my High School coach used to say: “If you can’t take the heat, stay outta the kitchen.”
**********************************************************************************
Personal Essay
I wake up to the sound of a fire alarm going off. It’s five o’clock a.m. on a Tuesday morning. The fire alarm isn’t real, but instead the sound of my alarm clock on my cell phone. I quickly race to the bathroom and take my morning shower as I get ready to start my day. I’m in a motel room in some small town in New Jersey. After I get out of the shower, my friend who I shared the room with takes over the bathroom. As I sit on the bed watching Sports Center on ESPN, I find it hard stop thinking about “what am I doing with my life?” I am twenty-two years old, my life is just beginning and I already think it is over.
Working for a stadium seating company out of Rehoboth, Massachusetts called L & J Associates; the job consists of traveling mostly around the east coast (Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Maryland, and Pennsylvania). It is a 7am to usually 9 pm work shift, which for the first four hours include constant bent-over, back-breaking labor. Followed by lifting 50lb. boxes onto your shoulder and loving them around a auditorium/movie theater/sometimes even up flights of stairs to a balcony. I leave on a Monday and come home either Friday or Saturday; I’m home for two-to-three nights and then take off again. Now some may say “well at least you’re traveling, getting to see the world”. But there is an enormous difference between traveling and working! After putting in 10-12 hour work days, I don’t have the time to go sightseeing nor the energy. The job pays $11 per hour, which after a 60-65 hour work week can be quite profitable, but take into consideration the $125 everyone must take along every week for food, drinks, beer, snacks on break. Plus being home for only two or three nights means that I only see friends/girlfriends for two or three nights a week, so that’s another $50-75 going to a club or dinner and a movie. I can recall countless mornings sitting in bed wondering what the hell I am doing here. How did I get here?
Easy answer; flunking out of a community college pretty much sums it up. I was originally thinking about joining the Marines straight out of High School, but my mom put an end to that real quick by harassing the Marines recruit man whenever he would call the house, threatening him with everything in the book including lawyers. “Kids are dying in Iraq everyday! You’re not sending my boy to get killed!”, he was finally yelled at to the point where the next time I talked to him, he told me that he couldn’t recruit me. So my mom decided I was always good at arguing, so that means I would be an excellent lawyer. I attended BCC for Criminal Justice and failed miserably. Fresh out of High School, I was skipping class, hanging out with friends who weren’t going to college, basically hanging with the wrong crowd. So when my parents refused to pay for me to go back to school a second time, thinking that I’m only going to fail again, I decided to go to work and pay my own way. This is exactly what I did, despite the pain and suffering I went through of working like a slave for two and a half years. The feeling of not being able to walk straight because your feet ache so much, the feeling of a wasted life every day looking at the people who do this for a living. I knew from the first month that this is not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
Not to knock the men who do work there as a career, a few of them who are very successful. There are 3 bosses: one started the company and is currently a millionaire, while the other two each own big houses, drive nice cars, paid college tuition for their children, and also bought cars for their children among other things. But take into affect they have put 20+ years into the company; a back-breaking, sweat-dripping, life-consuming, sun-up-till-sun-down-profession. But the workers who take orders, aside from the couple friends I went to school with, are a sight for soar eyes! Alcoholics, drug addicts, people with DUI’s, people without any education and have criminal records so they can’t get a regular job. I know people who have worked there for at least 15 years and are only getting paid $15 per hour. Sitting next to these guys on the road trips or sharing motel rooms with them struck a vein deep in my heart; I do not want to end up like these people! My parents always told me: do what you love, try and find a job or career that doesn’t seem like work and you’ll find happiness. And if there was one thing I can say about this job, it’s that I wasn’t happy doing it.
I ended up saving up enough money to enroll in BCC again last year and gladly gave the company my two weeks. Because unless I took on-line classes I would not have been able to continue working there while going to school, plus by the time I get out of working all day, the last thing I would have wanted to do is homework. I still see a few of my friends who work for this company, only on weekends of course, and they tell me about how bad this week sucked or that week was horrible. When I started there was five kids from my High School working there, a year after I quit, there are two. And I’m happy to say that two out of the three that left are now attending BCC with me. So for now I am taking the advice from my parents and pursuing a career in video game development and the decent paying/job-from-hell now remains as a summer job or “getaway” as some people see it.
**********************************************************************************
Alex Bragantin
Text Wrestling
Summary and Response
In “Offensive Play” Malcolm Gladwell, the idea of “How different are dog fighting and football?” is presented. Throughout the article Gladwell bounces back and forth on topics including football, dog fighting, and science. The topic of football views the perspective and job of an offensive lineman, which includes a story from the retired N.F.L. player named Kyle Turley. The part about dog fighting depicts Michael Vick, the animal rights poster boy, and provides an in-depth view of not only the dogs during a fight, but the thoughts and actions of the owners. Finally in the science aspect where neuropathologist Ann McKee along with former college football player and professional wrestler Chris Nowinski team up to give us key examples of former N.F.L. players suffering from dementia.
As the article begins we are introduced to Kyle Turley, an ex-football player who served nine years in the National Football League playing as an offensive lineman under multiple teams. After passing out at a Nashville bar one night with his wife, Turley goes on to tell us about multiple times he has been involved in big hits on the football field. Occasionally going cross-eyed, getting blurry vision, and in one case being knocked unconscious. The scary part was when he had passed out at the bar in Nashville; he compares it to the exact same feeling of being knocked unconscious during a football game!
Michael Vick is then introduced for pleading guilty to his involvement in dog fighting and an extremely graphic description of a dogfight takes place thanks to “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dogfights” an article written by sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth. Two dogs are placed in a pit and subject to fight one another, often to the death: “In a dogfight, as soon as one of the dogs ‘turns’-makes a submissive gesture with its head- the two animals are separated and taken back to their corners.” Only to be released again to finish the job, in this case continues for over an hour. After the fight, the loser has two broken legs and blood gushing from her throat. This is when possibly the most humane action of the night takes place. The loser is killed with a couple gunshots, wrapped and carried to the owner’s vehicle.
The article once again switches gears into the medical side of this argument, and Ann McKee is introduced. McKee is a scientist specializing in the field of neuropathology, which is basically the study of disease in nervous system tissue. McKee begins studying patients with Alzheimer’s disease, finding out that there are typically two trademarks of the disease. But after taking a close look at a seventy-two-year-old man’s brain, she then realized this man had a different condition, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (C.T.E.), and this condition is the result of injury. McKee then joins with Nowinski to further investigate the link between dementia and football. Nowinski tells McKee that he will help her find more brains of ex-athletes to strengthen her research. In one case a linebacker who played for sixteen years showed damage done equivalent to using his head as a battering ram, another where a teenager showed to have more damage done than a fifty-year-old.
The story then bounces back-and-forth like a game of ping pong tying in facts from concussions, stories of dogfights, and revealing issues of what it’s like to be a professional football player along with issues facing retired football players. All three topics clearly include people who love what they do: scientists who try to understand brain disease and inform players of future risks, possibly even prevent suicide in some cases; dogfighters who place bets, entertaining an audience and making money, pitting their animal against another in the most primitive form of competition; and football players who give everything they have day in-and-out, seeking the love and respect of millions of people and at the same time making millions of dollars. No matter how hard one tries to prevent football from being non-violent, “There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else-neither considerations of science nor those of morality-can compete with the destructive power of that love.” The same can be said of dog fighting, so to give a general answer to Gladwell’s opening question: Dog fighting and Football are different in many ways, but this article proves that they are similar in many more. So what can we do? There has been new helmets made, to help prevent a big impact, but no amount of padding can stop 100 g's of force from rattling your brain. Eliminating full contact practices could help, but even in those practices, there has been evidence of big hits to the head.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Before reading this article, my brain had never connected the sports of dog fighting and football together... then again I also played defensive lineman in High School. I only played two years due to an injury, and no it wasn’t a head injury. I don't recall ever getting a concussion, but I defiantly remember getting dazed after some plays also really bad headaches. As Turley said in this article "it’s impossible for an offensive lineman to do his job without 'using his head'." In the sport of football it is essential to put your body on the line for the sake of a play, regardless of the repercussions. Much like the art of dog fighting, which made this quote really stand out in my head: "At any organized pit (dog) fight...one can observe the owner of each dog changing position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master." For some reason the thought of a coach running down the sideline as a running back breaks through a crowd and rushes for a fifty-yard touchdown to win the game, the owner (coach) changing position to be in sight of the dog (player). This brought chills down my spine. I know this reference isn't exact, but it made me think of things in a new light. Like how a man can be left in a tub of ice, with a concussion, only to fall asleep and die if someone hadn't been sitting in the tub next to him. It suggests that the coaches treat their players like dogs in a dogfight "And why? For the entertainment of an audience and a chance of a payday."
Don’t get me wrong, I love football. It's arguably one of the greatest sports in the world, but reading this article opened my eyes to another perspective of the game. The perspective of Kyle Turley: a retired offensive lineman from the National Football League; a man who has received numerous concussions over a 9-year professional career; a man who has a great chance of developing Alzheimer's; A man who put on a show week in and week out for nine years, got paid a lot of money, but now that he has retired facing unimaginable problems. Roger Goodell, the National Football League commissioner, met with Michael Vick on regards to Vick's dog fighting sentence of twenty-three months in prison to make sure he was genuinely remorseful. Goodell sat with Vick for four and a half hours, before finally reinstating him into the National Football League. Now "One wonders whether, had he spent as much time talking to Kyle Turley as he did to Michael Vick, he'd start to have similar doubts about his own sport." That is a great question, but let’s think about it: Roger Goodell is the Commissioner of the N.F.L. "the commissioner is the highest executive position. The exact powers of the commissioner depend on the constitution and/or rules of the league. Commissioners are elected by the owners of the league's clubs, and handle matters such as discipline, arbitration of disputes between the clubs, etc."(Wikipedia).
Now Goodell has voluntarily taken a 20-25% pay cut of his 11 million dollar salary of 2008. 11 million dollars. Do you honestly believe a man making 11 million dollars on a sport that delivers fans with bone-crushing hits on a day-to-day basis is going to turn the N.F.L. into a flag or touch football game? I highly doubt it. Why? Simply because the fans are already so familiar with these bone crushing hits, that they wouldn't pay $100 to see a non-contact football game. Fans would be upset, arenas wouldn't get filled, and owners would be enraged. It all comes down to Football being a violent sport, like it or not, football players know what they’re getting into when they sign up. And like my High School coach used to say: “If you can’t take the heat, stay outta the kitchen.”
**********************************************************************************
Monday, May 3, 2010
Xbox 360: Annotation Essay 2
Since the development of the first video game console in the 1970’s, the video game industry has been on a constant rise over the decades. According to The NPD Group, the leading provider of consumer and marketing research in the world, $1.52 billion was the video game industry’s total sales for the month of March 2010. In December of 2009, the industry exploded recording their best month ever: an incredible $5.53 billion (Terdiman)! Don’t get me wrong, the recession took its toll on the industry; dropping the sales just under $2 billion less in 2009 than in 2008 (Takahasi). But think about this: in the year 2000 the video game industry sales totaled $7.98 billion, and in 2009 generated revenues close to $19.66 billion; it is clear to see with the modern technology that games are only going to get better, making them higher in demand, and ultimately creating more profit. While most of the big name companies are located in California, they range throughout the United States, with at least a half dozen of them in Massachusetts. Computer Game Development is a growing field in numerous colleges, offering both associate and bachelor degrees.
Just wait a minute though, with all these big numbers rolling around your head, video games aren’t so perfect after all. With the opening of video game rehab centers popping up all over the world, ranging from Japan to the United States, I would state that video game addiction is a current and developing problem. One rehab center in Washington called reStart is reportedly charging $14,500 for a 45-day detoxification, providing them with a 12-step program similar to drug and alcohol abuse (Pesce). As defined in the medical dictionary; addiction is a “Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one’s voluntary control” (dictionary.com). Most people associate addiction to a substance, that being said the most common forms of addiction include alcohol, smoking, and drugs. But there are a number of other addictions that fall under the category of practice. These include gambling, sex, internet, shopping and … you guessed it… video games! Video game addiction is found in both men and women, due to the simple chemical in our brain called dopamine. Dopamine is believed to deal with the experience of pleasure, and high levels of dopamine have been associated with addictions to drugs (Schlimme). Due to the fact that these same high levels have been found in video gamers, this provides a definite answer to my question: Yes, it is possible to become addicted to video games. Now that we know there is a problem, it’s time to start trying to create solutions. I parents should teach their kids at a young age that playing video games is good, like most things, in moderation. When I was in high school, I was literally addicted to video games; I would come home from school and play games for about 5-6 hours per day. My mother noticed my grades were slipping and decided to take my Xbox away for a month. At first I thought I was going to die, but it ultimately led to me being more productive with my time. I began going to the gym, playing sports with friends, focusing on homework and so on. If moderation isn’t the key, I know that cold turkey works!
Xbox 360 comes with a 2-year warranty from stores, which costs around $50, and if at any time it is not functioning properly just return it to the store with your receipt and are given a brand new one. Since the Xbox was produced, there has been an evil problem occurring known to gamers as “The Red Ring of Death”. This happens when you turn on your console, the lights around the power button will turn red, and you cannot play any games. Thousands and thousands of people have experienced this problem, and Microsoft responded by offering free repairs. The only cost is about a month waiting period while they send you a cardboard box, and you ship the console to Texas for about 3 weeks. No maintenance is required with owning an Xbox 360, but it is important not to leave games lying around. Games have a tendency to scratch easily. Games cost between $40-60, controllers cost $40, and the console can cost between $200-300. So all in all you’re looking at $280 to get started, then of course there is the online capabilities that come along with Xbox Live. There you can play and talk with friends online, download movies, games, TV shows, upcoming game demos, record gaming stats, and much more.
Works Cited
14, January. "That Screeching Sound? U.S. Video Game Industry Sales Decline in 2009 | VentureBeat." GamesBeat | VentureBeat. 14 Jan. 2010. Web. 18 May 2010.
"Video Game Addiction: Do We Need a Video Gamers Anonymous?" Serendip's Exchange. 21 Aug. 2009. Web. 18 May 2010..
"Video Game Addiction: Do We Need a Video Gamers Anonymous?" Serendip's Exchange. 4 Jan. 2008. Web. 18 May 2010..
"Video Game Industry Finally Sees a Rebound | Geek Gestalt - CNET News." Technology News - CNET News. 15 Apr. 2010. Web. 18 May 2010..
Just wait a minute though, with all these big numbers rolling around your head, video games aren’t so perfect after all. With the opening of video game rehab centers popping up all over the world, ranging from Japan to the United States, I would state that video game addiction is a current and developing problem. One rehab center in Washington called reStart is reportedly charging $14,500 for a 45-day detoxification, providing them with a 12-step program similar to drug and alcohol abuse (Pesce). As defined in the medical dictionary; addiction is a “Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one’s voluntary control” (dictionary.com). Most people associate addiction to a substance, that being said the most common forms of addiction include alcohol, smoking, and drugs. But there are a number of other addictions that fall under the category of practice. These include gambling, sex, internet, shopping and … you guessed it… video games! Video game addiction is found in both men and women, due to the simple chemical in our brain called dopamine. Dopamine is believed to deal with the experience of pleasure, and high levels of dopamine have been associated with addictions to drugs (Schlimme). Due to the fact that these same high levels have been found in video gamers, this provides a definite answer to my question: Yes, it is possible to become addicted to video games. Now that we know there is a problem, it’s time to start trying to create solutions. I parents should teach their kids at a young age that playing video games is good, like most things, in moderation. When I was in high school, I was literally addicted to video games; I would come home from school and play games for about 5-6 hours per day. My mother noticed my grades were slipping and decided to take my Xbox away for a month. At first I thought I was going to die, but it ultimately led to me being more productive with my time. I began going to the gym, playing sports with friends, focusing on homework and so on. If moderation isn’t the key, I know that cold turkey works!
Xbox 360 comes with a 2-year warranty from stores, which costs around $50, and if at any time it is not functioning properly just return it to the store with your receipt and are given a brand new one. Since the Xbox was produced, there has been an evil problem occurring known to gamers as “The Red Ring of Death”. This happens when you turn on your console, the lights around the power button will turn red, and you cannot play any games. Thousands and thousands of people have experienced this problem, and Microsoft responded by offering free repairs. The only cost is about a month waiting period while they send you a cardboard box, and you ship the console to Texas for about 3 weeks. No maintenance is required with owning an Xbox 360, but it is important not to leave games lying around. Games have a tendency to scratch easily. Games cost between $40-60, controllers cost $40, and the console can cost between $200-300. So all in all you’re looking at $280 to get started, then of course there is the online capabilities that come along with Xbox Live. There you can play and talk with friends online, download movies, games, TV shows, upcoming game demos, record gaming stats, and much more.
Works Cited
14, January. "That Screeching Sound? U.S. Video Game Industry Sales Decline in 2009 | VentureBeat." GamesBeat | VentureBeat. 14 Jan. 2010. Web. 18 May 2010.
"Video Game Addiction: Do We Need a Video Gamers Anonymous?" Serendip's Exchange. 21 Aug. 2009. Web. 18 May 2010.
"Video Game Addiction: Do We Need a Video Gamers Anonymous?" Serendip's Exchange. 4 Jan. 2008. Web. 18 May 2010.
"Video Game Industry Finally Sees a Rebound | Geek Gestalt - CNET News." Technology News - CNET News. 15 Apr. 2010. Web. 18 May 2010.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
annotation draft
Paragraph 1: addiction
Is there such thing as a video game addiction? With the opening of video game rehab centers popping up all over the world, ranging from Japan to the United States, I would have to say yes. One rehab center in Washington called reStart is reportedly charging $14,500 for a 45-day detoxification, proving them with a 12-step program similar to drug and alcohol abuse. As defined in the medical dictionary; addiction is a “Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one’s voluntary control.”(dictionary.com) Most people associate addiction to a substance, that being said the most common forms of addiction include alcohol, smoking, and drugs. But there are a number of other addictions that fall under the category of practice, these include: gambling, sex, internet, shopping and you guessed it: video games! Video game addiction is found in both men and women, due to the simple chemical in our brain called dopamine. Dopamine is believed to deal with the experience of pleasure, and high levels of dopamine have been associated with addictions to drugs. Due to the fact that these same high levels have been found in video gamers, this provides a definite answer to my question: Yes, it is possible to become addicted to video games.
Industry
How much money is there in the video gaming industry? Does $ 1.52 billion in a month sound good to you? According to The NPD Group, the leading provider of consumer and marketing research in the world, $1.52 billion was the video game industry’s total sales for the month of March 2010. In December of 2009, the industry exploded recording their best month ever: an incredible $5.53 billion (cnet news)! Don’t get me wrong, the recession took its toll on the industry; dropping the sales just under $2 billion less in 2009 than in 2008 (games.venturebeat.com). But think about this: in the year 2000 the video game industry sales totaled $7.98 billion, and in 2009 generated revenues close to $19.66 billion; it is clear to see with the modern technology that games are only going to get better, making them higher in demand, and ultimately creating more profit. While most of the big name companies are located in California, they range throughout the United States, with at least a half dozen of them in Massachusetts.
Is there such thing as a video game addiction? With the opening of video game rehab centers popping up all over the world, ranging from Japan to the United States, I would have to say yes. One rehab center in Washington called reStart is reportedly charging $14,500 for a 45-day detoxification, proving them with a 12-step program similar to drug and alcohol abuse. As defined in the medical dictionary; addiction is a “Habitual psychological and physiological dependence on a substance or practice beyond one’s voluntary control.”(dictionary.com) Most people associate addiction to a substance, that being said the most common forms of addiction include alcohol, smoking, and drugs. But there are a number of other addictions that fall under the category of practice, these include: gambling, sex, internet, shopping and you guessed it: video games! Video game addiction is found in both men and women, due to the simple chemical in our brain called dopamine. Dopamine is believed to deal with the experience of pleasure, and high levels of dopamine have been associated with addictions to drugs. Due to the fact that these same high levels have been found in video gamers, this provides a definite answer to my question: Yes, it is possible to become addicted to video games.
Industry
How much money is there in the video gaming industry? Does $ 1.52 billion in a month sound good to you? According to The NPD Group, the leading provider of consumer and marketing research in the world, $1.52 billion was the video game industry’s total sales for the month of March 2010. In December of 2009, the industry exploded recording their best month ever: an incredible $5.53 billion (cnet news)! Don’t get me wrong, the recession took its toll on the industry; dropping the sales just under $2 billion less in 2009 than in 2008 (games.venturebeat.com). But think about this: in the year 2000 the video game industry sales totaled $7.98 billion, and in 2009 generated revenues close to $19.66 billion; it is clear to see with the modern technology that games are only going to get better, making them higher in demand, and ultimately creating more profit. While most of the big name companies are located in California, they range throughout the United States, with at least a half dozen of them in Massachusetts.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Text Wrestling: Summary and Response
In “Offensive Play” written by Malcolm Gladwell, the idea of “How different are dogfighting and football?” is presented. Throughtout the article Gladwell bounces back and fourth on topics including football, dogfighting, and science. The focus of football is that of a offensive lineman, which includes a story from a retired N.F.L. player by the name of Kyle Turley. The part about dogfighting depicts Michael Vick, the animal rights posterboy, and provides an in-depth view of not only the dogs during a fight, but the thoughts and actions of the owners. And last but certainly not least is the science aspect where neuropathologist Ann McKee along with former college football player and professional wrestler Chris Nowinski team up to give us key examples of former N.F.L. players suffering from dementia.
As the story starts we are introduced to Kyle Turley, an ex-football player who served nine years in the National Football League playing as a offensive lineman under multiple teams. After passing out at a Nashville bar one night with his wife, Turley goes on to tell us about multiple times he has been invloved in big hits on the football field. Occasionally going cross-eyed, getting blurry vision, and in one case being knocked unconscious. Scary part was when he had passed out at the bar in Nashville, he compares it to the exact same feeling of being knocked unconscious during a football game!
Michael Vick is then introduced for pleading guilty to his involvement in dogfighting and an extremely graffic description of a dogfight takes place thanks to “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dofights” and article written by sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth. Two dogs are placed in a pit and subject to fight one another, often to the death. “In a dogfight, as soon as one of the dogs ‘turns’-makes a submissive gesture with its head- the two animals are seperated and taken back to their corners.” Only to be released again to finish the job, which in this case continues for over an hour. After the fight, the loser has two broken legs and blood gushing from her throat. This is when possibly the most humane action of the night takes place. The loser is killed with a couple gunshots, wrapped and carried to the owners vehicle. Why do people get involved in this line of work? “For the entertainment of an audience and the chance of a payday.” Sounds like you could use that very same quote to explain why football players play football.
The article once again switches gears into the medical side of this argument, and Ann McKee is introduced. McKee is a scientist specializing in the field of neuropathology, which is basically the study of disease in nervous system tissue. McKee begins studying patients with Alzheimer’s disease, finding out that there are typically two trademarks of the disease. But after taking a close look at a seventy-two-year-old mans brain, she then realized this man had a different condition. A condition called chronic traumatic encephalotpathy (C.T.E.), and this condition is the result of injury. McKee then joins with Nowinski to further investigate the link between dementia and football. Nowinski tells Mckee that he will help her find more brains of ex-athletes to strengthen her research. In one case a linebacker who played for sixteen years showed damage done equivilent to using his head as a battering ram, another where a teenager showed to have more damage done than a fifty-year-old.The story then bounces back-and-forth like a game of ping pong tying in facts from concussions, stories of dogfights, and revealing issues of what it’s like to be a professional football player along with issues facing retired football players. All three parties clearly love what they do; scientists on trying to understand brain disease and inform players of future risks, possibly even prevent suicide in some cases. Dogfighters as they place bets, entertaining an audience and making money, pitting their animal against another in the most primitive form of competition. Then football players giving everything they have day in-and-out, seeking the love and respect of millions of people and at the same time making millions of dollars. No matter how hard you try to prevent football from being non-violent; “There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else-neither considerations of science nor those of morality-can compete with the destructive power of that love.” The same can be said of dogfighting , so to give a general answer to Gladwells opening question: Dogfighting and Football are different in many ways, but this article proves that they are similar in many more.
Response:
Before reading this article, my brain has never connected the sports of dogfighting and football together... then again I also played defensive lineman in High School. I only played two years due to an injury, and no it wasnt a head injury. I don't recall ever getting a concussion, but I definatly rememeber getting dazed after some plays also really bad headaches. Like Turley said in this article "its impossible for an offensive lineman to do his job without 'using his head'." In the sport of football it is essential to put your body on the line for the sake of a play, regardless of the repercussions. Much like the art of dogfighting, which made this quote really stand out in my head: "At any organized pit (dog) fight...one can observe the owner of each dog changing position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master." For some reason the thought of a coach running down the sideline as a running back breaks through a crowd and rushes for a fifty-yard touchdown to win the game. The owner (coach) changing position to be in sight of the dog (player). This brought chills down my spine. I know this reference isn't exact, but it made me think of things. Like how a man can be left in a tub of ice, with a concussion, only to fall asleep and die if someone hadn't been sitting in the tub next to him. It suggests that the coaches treat their players like dogs in a dogfight "And why? For the entertainment of an audience and a chance of a payday."
Dont get me wrong, I love football. It's arguably one of the greatest sports in the world, but reading this article opened my eyes to another perspective of the game. The perspective of Kyle Turley, a retired offensive lineman from the National Football League. A man who has recieved numerous concussions over a 9-year professional career. A man who has a great chance of developing Alzheimer's. A man who put on a show week in and week out for nine years, got paid alot of money, but now that he has retired faces problems unimaginable. Roger Goodell, the National Football League commissioner, met with Micheal Vick on regards to Vick's dogfighting sentence of twenty-three months in prison to make sure he was genuinely remorseful. Goodell sat with Vick for four and a half hours, considering every alternative he could imagine, and after considering what was right for Vick, along with our society and N.F.L., finally reinstated him. Now "One wonders whether, had he spent as much time talking to Kyle Turley as he did to Michael Vick, he'd start to have similar doubts about his own sport." That is a great question, but lets think about it: Roger Goodell is the Commissioner of the N.F.L. "the commissioner is the highest executive position. The exact powers of the commissioner depend on the constitution and/or rules of the league. Commissioners are elected by the owners of the league's clubs, and handle matters such as discipline, arbitration of disputes between the clubs, etc."(site-wikipedia). Now Goodell has voluntarily taken a 20-25% paycut of his 11 million dollar salary of 2008. 11 million dollars. Do you honestly beleive a man making 11 million dollars on a sport that delievers fans with bone-crushing hits on a day-to-day basis is going to turn the N.F.L. into a flag or touch football game? I highly doubt it. Why? Becuase the fans wouldn't pay $100 to see a non-contact football game. Fans would be upset, arena's wouldn't get filled, and owner's would be enraged.
So what can we do? There has been new helmets made, to help prevent a big impact, but no amount of padding can stop 100 g's of force from rattling your brain. Eliminating full contact practices could help, but even in those practices, there has been evidence of big hits to the head. Basically "There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with thier courage and grit, and nothing else- neither considerations of science nor those of morality- can compete with the destructive power of that love." I couldn't have said it better myself.
As the story starts we are introduced to Kyle Turley, an ex-football player who served nine years in the National Football League playing as a offensive lineman under multiple teams. After passing out at a Nashville bar one night with his wife, Turley goes on to tell us about multiple times he has been invloved in big hits on the football field. Occasionally going cross-eyed, getting blurry vision, and in one case being knocked unconscious. Scary part was when he had passed out at the bar in Nashville, he compares it to the exact same feeling of being knocked unconscious during a football game!
Michael Vick is then introduced for pleading guilty to his involvement in dogfighting and an extremely graffic description of a dogfight takes place thanks to “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dofights” and article written by sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth. Two dogs are placed in a pit and subject to fight one another, often to the death. “In a dogfight, as soon as one of the dogs ‘turns’-makes a submissive gesture with its head- the two animals are seperated and taken back to their corners.” Only to be released again to finish the job, which in this case continues for over an hour. After the fight, the loser has two broken legs and blood gushing from her throat. This is when possibly the most humane action of the night takes place. The loser is killed with a couple gunshots, wrapped and carried to the owners vehicle. Why do people get involved in this line of work? “For the entertainment of an audience and the chance of a payday.” Sounds like you could use that very same quote to explain why football players play football.
The article once again switches gears into the medical side of this argument, and Ann McKee is introduced. McKee is a scientist specializing in the field of neuropathology, which is basically the study of disease in nervous system tissue. McKee begins studying patients with Alzheimer’s disease, finding out that there are typically two trademarks of the disease. But after taking a close look at a seventy-two-year-old mans brain, she then realized this man had a different condition. A condition called chronic traumatic encephalotpathy (C.T.E.), and this condition is the result of injury. McKee then joins with Nowinski to further investigate the link between dementia and football. Nowinski tells Mckee that he will help her find more brains of ex-athletes to strengthen her research. In one case a linebacker who played for sixteen years showed damage done equivilent to using his head as a battering ram, another where a teenager showed to have more damage done than a fifty-year-old.The story then bounces back-and-forth like a game of ping pong tying in facts from concussions, stories of dogfights, and revealing issues of what it’s like to be a professional football player along with issues facing retired football players. All three parties clearly love what they do; scientists on trying to understand brain disease and inform players of future risks, possibly even prevent suicide in some cases. Dogfighters as they place bets, entertaining an audience and making money, pitting their animal against another in the most primitive form of competition. Then football players giving everything they have day in-and-out, seeking the love and respect of millions of people and at the same time making millions of dollars. No matter how hard you try to prevent football from being non-violent; “There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else-neither considerations of science nor those of morality-can compete with the destructive power of that love.” The same can be said of dogfighting , so to give a general answer to Gladwells opening question: Dogfighting and Football are different in many ways, but this article proves that they are similar in many more.
Response:
Before reading this article, my brain has never connected the sports of dogfighting and football together... then again I also played defensive lineman in High School. I only played two years due to an injury, and no it wasnt a head injury. I don't recall ever getting a concussion, but I definatly rememeber getting dazed after some plays also really bad headaches. Like Turley said in this article "its impossible for an offensive lineman to do his job without 'using his head'." In the sport of football it is essential to put your body on the line for the sake of a play, regardless of the repercussions. Much like the art of dogfighting, which made this quote really stand out in my head: "At any organized pit (dog) fight...one can observe the owner of each dog changing position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master." For some reason the thought of a coach running down the sideline as a running back breaks through a crowd and rushes for a fifty-yard touchdown to win the game. The owner (coach) changing position to be in sight of the dog (player). This brought chills down my spine. I know this reference isn't exact, but it made me think of things. Like how a man can be left in a tub of ice, with a concussion, only to fall asleep and die if someone hadn't been sitting in the tub next to him. It suggests that the coaches treat their players like dogs in a dogfight "And why? For the entertainment of an audience and a chance of a payday."
Dont get me wrong, I love football. It's arguably one of the greatest sports in the world, but reading this article opened my eyes to another perspective of the game. The perspective of Kyle Turley, a retired offensive lineman from the National Football League. A man who has recieved numerous concussions over a 9-year professional career. A man who has a great chance of developing Alzheimer's. A man who put on a show week in and week out for nine years, got paid alot of money, but now that he has retired faces problems unimaginable. Roger Goodell, the National Football League commissioner, met with Micheal Vick on regards to Vick's dogfighting sentence of twenty-three months in prison to make sure he was genuinely remorseful. Goodell sat with Vick for four and a half hours, considering every alternative he could imagine, and after considering what was right for Vick, along with our society and N.F.L., finally reinstated him. Now "One wonders whether, had he spent as much time talking to Kyle Turley as he did to Michael Vick, he'd start to have similar doubts about his own sport." That is a great question, but lets think about it: Roger Goodell is the Commissioner of the N.F.L. "the commissioner is the highest executive position. The exact powers of the commissioner depend on the constitution and/or rules of the league. Commissioners are elected by the owners of the league's clubs, and handle matters such as discipline, arbitration of disputes between the clubs, etc."(site-wikipedia). Now Goodell has voluntarily taken a 20-25% paycut of his 11 million dollar salary of 2008. 11 million dollars. Do you honestly beleive a man making 11 million dollars on a sport that delievers fans with bone-crushing hits on a day-to-day basis is going to turn the N.F.L. into a flag or touch football game? I highly doubt it. Why? Becuase the fans wouldn't pay $100 to see a non-contact football game. Fans would be upset, arena's wouldn't get filled, and owner's would be enraged.
So what can we do? There has been new helmets made, to help prevent a big impact, but no amount of padding can stop 100 g's of force from rattling your brain. Eliminating full contact practices could help, but even in those practices, there has been evidence of big hits to the head. Basically "There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with thier courage and grit, and nothing else- neither considerations of science nor those of morality- can compete with the destructive power of that love." I couldn't have said it better myself.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Better Late than Never: My Personal Essay
I wake up to the sound of a fire alarm going off. It’s five o’clock a.m. on a Tuesday morning. The fire alarm isn’t real, but instead the sound of my alarm clock on my cellphone. I quickly race to the bathroom and take my morning shower as I get ready to start my day. I’m in a motel room in some small town in New Jersey. After I get out of the shower my friend who I shared the room with takes over the bathroom. As I sit on the bed watching Sports Center on ESPN, I find it hard stop thinking about “what am I doing with my life?”. I am twenty-two years old, my life is just beginning and I already think it is over.
Working for a stadium seating company out of Rehoboth, Massachusetts called L & J Associates, the job consists of traveling mostly around the east coast (Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Conneticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania). I leave on a Monday and come home either Friday or Saturday, I’m home for two-to-three nights and then take off again. Now some may say well at least your traveling, getting to see the world. But there is an enormous difference between traveling and working! After putting in 10-12 hour work days, not only do I not have the time to go sightseeing nor the energy. The job pays $11 per hour, which after a 60-65 hour work week can be quiet profitable, but take into consideration the $125 you must take with you every week for food, drinks, beer, snacks on break. Plus being home for only two or three nights means you only see friends/girlfriends for two or three nights a week, so that’s another $50-75 going to a club or dinner and a movie. I can recall countless mornings sitting in bed wondering what the hell am I doing here? How did I get here? Easy answer; flunking out of a community college pretty much sums it up. So when your parents refuse to pay for you to go back to school thinking that your only going to fail again, you need to go to work and pay your own way. Which is exactly what I did, dispite the pain and suffering I went through of working like a slave for two and a half years. The feeling of not being able to walk straight because your feet ache so bad. The feeling of a waisted life every day looking at the people who do this for a living. I knew from the first month, this is not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
Not to knock the men who do work there as a career, a few of them who are very successful. There are 3 bosses; one of whom started the company and is currently a millionaire, while the other two each own big houses, drive nice cars, paid for college tuition for their children, and bought cars for their children among other things. But take into affect they have put 20+ years into the company; a back-breaking, sweat-dripping,life-consuming, sun-up-til-sun-down-profession. A profession which I was not willing to accept. My parents always told me: do what you love, try and find a job or career that doesn’t seem like work, and you’ll find happyness. And if there was one thing about this job I can say is that I wasn’t happy doing it. I ended up saving up enough money to enroll in last year and gave the company my two weeks, because unless I took on-line classes I would not be able to continue working here while going to school. And by the time I get out of working the last thing I want to do is have to do homework . So for now I am taking the advice from my parents and pursueing a career in video game development, and the decent paying/job-from-hell now remains as a summer job or getaway as some people see it.
Working for a stadium seating company out of Rehoboth, Massachusetts called L & J Associates, the job consists of traveling mostly around the east coast (Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Conneticut, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania). I leave on a Monday and come home either Friday or Saturday, I’m home for two-to-three nights and then take off again. Now some may say well at least your traveling, getting to see the world. But there is an enormous difference between traveling and working! After putting in 10-12 hour work days, not only do I not have the time to go sightseeing nor the energy. The job pays $11 per hour, which after a 60-65 hour work week can be quiet profitable, but take into consideration the $125 you must take with you every week for food, drinks, beer, snacks on break. Plus being home for only two or three nights means you only see friends/girlfriends for two or three nights a week, so that’s another $50-75 going to a club or dinner and a movie. I can recall countless mornings sitting in bed wondering what the hell am I doing here? How did I get here? Easy answer; flunking out of a community college pretty much sums it up. So when your parents refuse to pay for you to go back to school thinking that your only going to fail again, you need to go to work and pay your own way. Which is exactly what I did, dispite the pain and suffering I went through of working like a slave for two and a half years. The feeling of not being able to walk straight because your feet ache so bad. The feeling of a waisted life every day looking at the people who do this for a living. I knew from the first month, this is not what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.
Not to knock the men who do work there as a career, a few of them who are very successful. There are 3 bosses; one of whom started the company and is currently a millionaire, while the other two each own big houses, drive nice cars, paid for college tuition for their children, and bought cars for their children among other things. But take into affect they have put 20+ years into the company; a back-breaking, sweat-dripping,life-consuming, sun-up-til-sun-down-profession. A profession which I was not willing to accept. My parents always told me: do what you love, try and find a job or career that doesn’t seem like work, and you’ll find happyness. And if there was one thing about this job I can say is that I wasn’t happy doing it. I ended up saving up enough money to enroll in last year and gave the company my two weeks, because unless I took on-line classes I would not be able to continue working here while going to school. And by the time I get out of working the last thing I want to do is have to do homework . So for now I am taking the advice from my parents and pursueing a career in video game development, and the decent paying/job-from-hell now remains as a summer job or getaway as some people see it.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Offensive Play Summary
In “Offensive Play” written by Malcolm Gladwell, the idea of “How different are dogfighting and football?” is presented. Throughtout the article Gladwell bounces back and fourth on topics including football, dogfighting, and science. The focus of football is that of a offensive lineman, which includes a story from a retired N.F.L. player by the name of Kyle Turley. The part about dogfighting depicts Michael Vick, the animal rights posterboy, and provides an in-depth view of not only the dogs during a fight, but the thoughts and actions of the owners. And last but certainly not least is the science aspect where neuropathologist Ann McKee along with former college football player and professional wrestler Chris Nowinski team up to give us key examples of former N.F.L. players suffering from dementia. Buckle your seat belts and put the children to bed, your about to embark on a wild ride never thought imaginable.
As the story starts we are introduced to Kyle Turley, an ex-football player who served nine years in the National Football League playing as a offensive lineman under multiple teams. After passing out at a Nashville bar one night with his wife, Turley goes on to tell us about multiple times he has been invloved in big hits on the football field. Occasionally going cross-eyed, getting blurry vision, and in one case being knocked unconscious. Scary part was when he had passed out at the bar in Nashville, he compares it to the exact same feeling of being knocked unconscious during a football game!
Michael Vick is then introduced for pleading guilty to his involvement in dogfighting and an extremely graffic description of a dogfight takes place thanks to “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dofights” and article written by sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth. Two dogs are placed in a pit and subject to fight one another, often to the death. “In a dogfight, as soon as one of the dogs ‘turns’-makes a submissive gesture with its head- the two animals are seperated and taken back to their corners.” Only to be released again to finish the job, which in this case continues for over an hour. After the fight, the loser has two broken legs and blood gushing from her throat. This is when possibly the most humane action of the night takes place. The loser is killed with a couple gunshots, wrapped and carried to the owners vehicle. Why do people get involved in this line of work? “For the entertainment of an audience and the chance of a payday.” Sounds like you could use that very same quote to explain why football players play football.
The article once again switches gears into the medical side of this argument, and Ann McKee is introduced. McKee is a scientist specializing in the field of neuropathology, which is basically the study of disease in nervous system tissue. McKee begins studying patients with Alzheimer’s disease, finding out that there are typically two trademarks of the disease. But after taking a close look at a seventy-two-year-old mans brain, she then realized this man had a different condition. A condition called chronic traumatic encephalotpathy (C.T.E.), and this condition is the result of injury. McKee then joins with Nowinski to further investigate the link between dementia and football. Nowinski tells Mckee that he will help her find more brains of ex-athletes to strengthen her research. In one case a linebacker who played for sixteen years showed damage done equivilent to using his head as a battering ram, another where a teenager showed to have more damage done than a fifty-year-old.
The story then bounces back-and-forth like a game of ping pong tying in facts from concussions, stories of dogfights, and revealing issues of what it’s like to be a professional football player along with issues facing retired football players. All three parties clearly love what they do; scientists on trying to understand brain disease and inform players of future risks, possibly even prevent suicide in some cases. Dogfighters as they place bets, entertaining an audience and making money, pitting their animal against another in the most primitive form of competition. Then football players giving everything they have day in-and-out, seeking the love and respect of millions of people and at the same time making millions of dollars. No matter how hard you try to prevent football from being non-violent; “There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else-neither considerations of science nor those of morality-can compete with the destructive power of that love.” The same can be said of dogfighting , so to give a general answer to Gladwells opening question: Dogfighting and Football are different in many ways, but this article proves that they are similar in many more.
As the story starts we are introduced to Kyle Turley, an ex-football player who served nine years in the National Football League playing as a offensive lineman under multiple teams. After passing out at a Nashville bar one night with his wife, Turley goes on to tell us about multiple times he has been invloved in big hits on the football field. Occasionally going cross-eyed, getting blurry vision, and in one case being knocked unconscious. Scary part was when he had passed out at the bar in Nashville, he compares it to the exact same feeling of being knocked unconscious during a football game!
Michael Vick is then introduced for pleading guilty to his involvement in dogfighting and an extremely graffic description of a dogfight takes place thanks to “The Social Milieu of Dogmen and Dofights” and article written by sociologists Rhonda Evans and Craig Forsyth. Two dogs are placed in a pit and subject to fight one another, often to the death. “In a dogfight, as soon as one of the dogs ‘turns’-makes a submissive gesture with its head- the two animals are seperated and taken back to their corners.” Only to be released again to finish the job, which in this case continues for over an hour. After the fight, the loser has two broken legs and blood gushing from her throat. This is when possibly the most humane action of the night takes place. The loser is killed with a couple gunshots, wrapped and carried to the owners vehicle. Why do people get involved in this line of work? “For the entertainment of an audience and the chance of a payday.” Sounds like you could use that very same quote to explain why football players play football.
The article once again switches gears into the medical side of this argument, and Ann McKee is introduced. McKee is a scientist specializing in the field of neuropathology, which is basically the study of disease in nervous system tissue. McKee begins studying patients with Alzheimer’s disease, finding out that there are typically two trademarks of the disease. But after taking a close look at a seventy-two-year-old mans brain, she then realized this man had a different condition. A condition called chronic traumatic encephalotpathy (C.T.E.), and this condition is the result of injury. McKee then joins with Nowinski to further investigate the link between dementia and football. Nowinski tells Mckee that he will help her find more brains of ex-athletes to strengthen her research. In one case a linebacker who played for sixteen years showed damage done equivilent to using his head as a battering ram, another where a teenager showed to have more damage done than a fifty-year-old.
The story then bounces back-and-forth like a game of ping pong tying in facts from concussions, stories of dogfights, and revealing issues of what it’s like to be a professional football player along with issues facing retired football players. All three parties clearly love what they do; scientists on trying to understand brain disease and inform players of future risks, possibly even prevent suicide in some cases. Dogfighters as they place bets, entertaining an audience and making money, pitting their animal against another in the most primitive form of competition. Then football players giving everything they have day in-and-out, seeking the love and respect of millions of people and at the same time making millions of dollars. No matter how hard you try to prevent football from being non-violent; “There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with their courage and grit, and nothing else-neither considerations of science nor those of morality-can compete with the destructive power of that love.” The same can be said of dogfighting , so to give a general answer to Gladwells opening question: Dogfighting and Football are different in many ways, but this article proves that they are similar in many more.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Annotation Essay
How much money/games does the video game industy produce per year?
2009 U.S. VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY AND PC GAME SOFTWARE RETAIL SALES REACH $20.2 BILLION
Video game industry finally sees a rebound
That screeching sound? U.S. video game industry sales decline in 2009
Video game sales explode in industry's best month ever
Can people get addicted to video games? And is there treatment? Rehab?
Video Game Addiction: Do we need a Video Gamers Anonymous?
Male video game addiction is neural
First U.S. rehab for Internet and online video game addicts
Can people get paid for playing video games? MLG?
How long has Xbox 360 been around, whats its history? Evolution?
Follow the evolution
Who is the owner of Xbox? Microsoft, small bio of Bill Gates
How long does the warranty last, and what are the details?
How many americans play/purchase video games? (ties into first question)
Is there any maintenence required with owning this system?
What are the online features?
Is there a video game convention? What goes on there? touch on E3
How much does Xbox 360 cost? How much do games cost? Controllers?
How long until a superior system comes out? (Longevity of this system)
I was also considering other topics... something out of the ordinary such as:
Rain, or water damage due to the recent flooding
The Atom Bomb and its effects
The Pentagon
Surfing
eBay
Alcohol
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Offensive Play Summary
Before reading this article, my brain has never connected the sports of dogfighting and football together... then again I also played defensive lineman in High School. I only played two years due to an injury, and no it wasnt a head injury. I don't recall ever getting a concussion, but I definatly rememeber getting dazed after some plays also really bad headaches. Like Turley said in this article "its impossible for an offensive lineman to do his job without 'using his head'." In the sport of football it is essential to put your body on the line for the sake of a play, regardless of the repercussions. Much like the art of dogfighting, which made this quote really stand out in my head: "At any organized pit (dog) fight...one can observe the owner of each dog changing position at pit-side in order to be in sight of his dog at all times. The owner knows that seeing his master rooting him on will make a dog work all the harder to please its master." For some reason the thought of a coach running down the sideline as a running back breaks through a crowd and rushes for a fifty-yard touchdown to win the game. The owner (coach) changing position to be in sight of the dog (player). This brought chills down my spine. I know this reference isn't exact, but it made me think of things. Like how a man can be left in a tub of ice, with a concussion, only to fall asleep and die if someone hadn't been sitting in the tub next to him. It suggests that the coaches treat their players like dogs in a dogfight "And why? For the entertainment of an audience and a chance of a payday." Dont get me wrong, I love football. It's arguably one of the greatest sports in the world, but reading this article opened my eyes to another perspective of the game. The perspective of Kyle Turley, a retired offensive lineman from the National Football League. A man who has recieved numerous concussions over a 9-year professional career. A man who has a great chance of developing Alzheimer's. A man who put on a show week in and week out for nine years, got paid alot of money, but now that he has retired faces problems unimaginable. Roger Goodell, the National Football League commissioner, met with Micheal Vick on regards to Vick's dogfighting sentence of twenty-three months in prison to make sure he was genuinely remorseful. Goodell sat with Vick for four and a half hours, considering every alternative he could imagine, and after considering what was right for Vick, along with our society and N.F.L., finally reinstated him. Now "One wonders whether, had he spent as much time talking to Kyle Turley as he did to Michael Vick, he'd start to have similar doubts about his own sport." That is a great question, but lets think about it: Roger Goodell is the Commissioner of the N.F.L. "the commissioner is the highest executive position. The exact powers of the commissioner depend on the constitution and/or rules of the league. Commissioners are elected by the owners of the league's clubs, and handle matters such as discipline, arbitration of disputes between the clubs, etc."(site-wikipedia). Now Goodell has voluntarily taken a 20-25% paycut of his 11 million dollar salary of 2008. 11 million dollars. Do you honestly beleive a man making 11 million dollars on a sport that delievers fans with bone-crushing hits on a day-to-day basis is going to turn the N.F.L. into a flag or touch football game? I highly doubt it. Why? Becuase the fans wouldn't pay $100 to see a non-contact football game. Fans would be upset, arena's wouldn't get filled, and owner's would be enraged. So what can we do? There has been new helmets made, to help prevent a big impact, but no amount of padding can stop 100 g's of force from rattling your brain. Eliminating full contact practices could help, but even in those practices, there has been evidence of big hits to the head. Basically "There is nothing else to be done, not so long as fans stand and cheer. We are in love with football players, with thier courage and grit, and nothing else- neither considerations of science nor those of morality- can compete with the destructive power of that love." I couldn't have said it better myself.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Personal Essay: rough draft
I woke up early in the morning to find that the weather was perfect, the sun was shining and the sky was crystal clear. I called up my friends and made sure they knew to meet up over my neighbors house at noon. We had bought the tickets months in advance and already had an outline of what we wanted to do. Our list includes: a table, portable gas grill, hamburgers and hot dogs, ping pong balls, chips, bread, cups, ice, and last but not least beer. We quickly began to pack everything into Kyles SUV and set out to Mansfield. My neighbor Doug, along with Doug's brother, Kyle, and Dan were all friends from high school, and had always talked about planning a trip for a long time. It was about a forty minute drive until we arrived at our destination: The Tweeter Center. We showed up a few hours early so we could have plenty of time to find a good parking spot (which doesn't really matter, because everyone gets stuck in traffic at the end of the night) but most importantly to pregame. This was our first concert where me and my friends were actually the legal drinking age, so the first thing we do is set up the beer pong table. We placed the grill on the ground next to the cooler, as Kyle played music with is windows down and trunk door open. As people started to show up and park around us, it was becoming more and more like a party. Beer costing close to $10 at the show, its definitely important to get a good buzz on (without going overboard) before the show starts. We party for about 2-3 hours and decide to skip the first couple of opening performances. As we leave the parking lot, it looked like a hurricane just hit; half eaten burgers, chips all over the place, flattened beer cans and broken plastic cups were scattered everywhere. We get to the gate and this is it: Family Values Tour 2007! We make it past security and make our way to our seats... Unfortunately somebody who drank too much found them first and covered them with vomit! Doug went and got a security officer to complain; the officer ends up bringing us to a VIP booth with a waitress about 100 feet closer to the stage than our original seats. This was like a dream come true! We jam out to Atreyu and Evanescence for about an hour or so until the headliner starts. As soon as Korn took stage the whole arena exploded! Me and my friend Dan took a walk up to the grass section and saw the biggest mosh pit either one of us had ever seen, with a 7 ft giant walking through it tossing people up, down, left, and right! Wanting no part of that, we went back to out seats and joined our friends for the rest of the show. Til this day after seeing about 20 shows; The Family Values Tour stands as my favorite concert of all time.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)