BAN FOOTBALL

In this month's Scientific American (February 2012), there is an article entitled "What Football Does to Brains."

I opened the table of contents to verify that this is the article that would stipulate exactly what is being done to brains under the moniker of football. "Football players diagnosed with Lou Gehrig's disease may suffer from the effect of repeated blows to the head."

The article begins,

"Kevin Turner was a premier athlete in the National Football League, a fullback who could run, catch and block. At 6'1" and roughly 230 pounds, he was slightly undersized for his position, but he had tremendous thrust in his legs and used it to launch himself into players who were bigger than he was... Now Turner can't button his shirt" (68).

Turner is 42, and can't open a box of cereal.

"What is clear is that when the head, moving at significant speed, comes to an abrupt stop, the brain cells inside get stretched, squeezed and twisted ... When a concussion occurs, however, the membranes of brain cells get damaged and the cells become leaky ... Ions rush in and out indiscriminately..." (68).

Chrisopher Giza, an associate professor of pediatric neuology compares it to a submarine crash in which leaks are coming in everywhere -- a mild concussion can require about ten days for the cells to repair themselves. A major concussion can mean permanent injury to brain cells, and even death of the brain cells.

David Duerson, an NFL star who played for the Chicago Bears, shot himself in the heart and gave his brain to science. What was discovered is that he had "chronic traumatic encephalopathy" which meant that major parts of his brain had been destroyed during his career in the NFL. This disorder is very similar to Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Kevin Turner, the premier athlete, was once a very sharp and focused guy. Now he's a basket case who can't fold laundry or open a box of cereal. His wife comments, "I hate what he has gone through, emotionally and physically, because of football" (71).

Kids should stick with synchronized swimming.

JEREMY LIN: Christian NBA Star

While the NBA season started late, I still haven't seen a single game. I've only peripherally been aware of the Knicks' sudden improvement due to the addition to their starting roster of a Chinese American player named Jeremy Lin. They had had a mediocre season, losing more than they won, and suddenly added Lin to the roster and they've won four of four. Lin's 6'3" and only 200 lbs. I heard an interview with him on NPR this morning where he stated that he was not a freakishly good athlete, but was clever in reading defenses and setting up teammates with good passing. He's also not good in one-on-one. He's a team player. The Knicks beat the LA Lakers last night with 38 points from Lin. That's a pretty impressive number. We haven't had anyone on the Knicks score that many points since the old days of Patrick Ewing.

How will Spike Lee react to this new addition to the Knicks?

Does he consider it to be the right thing for the team?

Lin grew up in Palo Alto and led his high school team to an all-California championship, then played at Harvard and was a bench-sitter for the Golden State Warriors until about a month ago. When he was picked up by the Knicks he didn't expect to make the team permanently and has been sleeping on his brother's couch. He got his chance with the Knicks last week after they played another listless game, and suddenly they began to hit hoops and win.

But there's yet another anomaly about Lin: he's Christian!

According to Wikipedia:

"Lin grew up in a devout Christian family and would one day like to be a pastor who can head up non-profit organizations, either home or abroad.[105][38][106] He has also talked of working in inner-city communities to help with underprivileged children.[91]"

I think we should all pray for him.

SANTORUM WINS THREE

Santorum wins three primaries in one night: Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Just when I thought he was out, he wins three in a row. I ordered his book, It Takes A Family (a clear reference to Hillary's It Takes a Village).

Many people want to throw their kids upon the village, and have them raise them. Well, really, only families can raise kids. What constitutes a family? We are about to have a huge debate, if Santorum can win the nomination.

What we'll see is the resurgence of a Catholic framework that has been worked out over a two thousand year period, aligned up against the flimsy multicultural Marxism of the left. I don't know if Santorum can continue his momentum, but if he does he will entirely change the conversation.

The Gingrich moment seems to have petered out, floundering on the rock of his ex-wives' allegations, and his own rhetorical violence. Santorum on the other hand has solidity on his side, and an unwavering commitment to Catholic ideals.

This race just keeps getting more interesting. Personally I had hoped that Romney would pull ahead so we could begin to work with him. He's goodlooking, and he has some business sense. But Romney has been for abortion, and for other things (Romneycare) that are anathema to many on the right.

I think almost all the people on the left will be bitterly angry if Santorum wins the nomination. They went to all the trouble of knocking out Pawlenty, Bachman, Cain, Gingrich, Huntsman, and tried in vain over and over to make sure that Romney was the alternative. The right meanwhile kept trying to get behind different candidates. Anyone BUT Romney. Santorum has somehow survived and somehow has traction finally.

The only thing I know that he's said is in reaction to a question from a college student in New Hampshire. She asked, why are you against two men in love, and willing to marry? He asked Socratically, why not three men in a tub, rub a dub dub? I heard this second-hand, and need to verify that's exactly how it went, but I think that's what he said. I should track this down!

I did find it funny that he put it into the framework of a nursery rhyme. It's the first reference to any kind of poetry in the debates.

One thing the Catholics have worked out over the last thousand years are a set of clear definitions. From St. Thomas Aquinas forwards, they have worked on the notion of beauty which they define as coherence and complexity, and on the notion of ethics, down to whether or not the fingernails will grow in the afterlife (I can't remember if they will or not). There is something to be said for Catholic unity, and discipline, and the powerful intellectual life they've created through the monastery system and their willingness to work on even the most arcane questions in order to create firm definitions.

If Santorum wins, we'll see the logic the Catholics have worked out over the last thousand years and more come into play against the often crazy and meandering logic of the left that has been worked out in the humanistic (man is the measure of all things) secularizing universities (which have in essence nothing but desire holding them together). The OWS movement was the epitome of this, with Zizek arguing for having sex with animals along with socialism, as somehow one leading to the other. Against that, three men in a tub sounds like orthodoxy. I had to hold my head as I listened to Zizek's logic befor ethe OWS crowd, held together merely by desire, rather than by any sense of what's reasonable or healthy for animals and people.

I am now hoping this Santorum-Obama debate will take place, as old questions that have been silenced over the last twenty years will come back into play. What is a family? What is beauty? What is a community? I think many Lutherans and other evangelicals will be willing to close ranks with the Catholic Santorum, as they really can't quite with either Gingrich (whose personal life is a monumental disaster) or with Romney, who is from such a strange tradition that most of us aren't even familiar with it, or with their ideas that Christ lived with Native Americans after Gethsemane, for instance. Mormons apparently believe you get your own universe after you die. This may not matter in politics, but it is very strange for most of us who believe there is just one God, and we're not it. Also, in terms of sheer numbers, the Catholics, even after all their problems, still have an enormous army at their command, while the Mormons -- not so much. We need to win more than Utah if we're going to win the White House. Can Santorum pull it off?

He will face very stiff resistance in a way that Romney, who is a much less defined entity (Romney is a gas, while Gingrich is a liquid, and Santorum a solid). At the very least Santorum will provide definitions, or definition, to the race. I for one would like that. I want something that is like a rock: solid. The church is that, at least as it was originally defined (before it started to become a gas in the 60s).

LEMON-AID FOR LYME

Lyme Disease has been in the news lately. Researchers note that the ticks that spread the disease are heavily infesting the northeast, especially NJ and CT.

No one seems to mind killing the tick, but there are sentimentalists who mourn the death of deer, probably due to the Disney film, Bambi.

Deer are conveyors of disease and nothing else! Let's get them from the air with helicopter gunships before it's too late! What are we waiting for? President Obama has done nothing. He got OBL, but since when has he bagged a Lyme perp, who are the real terrorists (thousands of new cases each year and it's SPREADING). Perhaps Preisdent Gingrich will be the first to release the helicopter gunships on the deer. We need leadership in this area! AFAIK, there has not been one candidate who has mentioned Lyme throughout the 2012 contest although a full 1% of Americans now suffer from the disease.

My kids this summer will sell lemon-aid for victims of Lyme, and we will donate all profits to the Lyme Foundation. That's more than this government is doing.

Stuart Kurtz: Lutheran Surrealist Citizen of the Month

Our long term correspondent Stuart Kurtz, a mathematician at the U. of Chicago, is happy. Why? Because he has just voted in the most recent Lutheran Surrealist poetry contest. Check the comments box to see the poet that he voted for. (Two or three posts down.)

It is not a requirement that you vote wearing our official LS t-shirt, but it is encouraged.

However, there are only two in existence, and I have no idea how to make any more of them. The other one belongs to a poet in Jacksonville, Floria, who goes here by the name of GM. Our winner has not yet been decided. It's nip and tuck, with one vote for each of three candidates. Your vote could be decisive. Please: no dimpled or hanging chads. Make your preference known!

MY ATTEMPT AT A DOROTHY PARKER

For people who are against drilling, they are certainly boring.

H.L. Van Brunt: A Missing Poet

In about 1973 a poet named HL Van Brunt came to Stroudsburg High School in NE Pennsylvania where I was a junior. He read a poem about Roadkill and a few other poems and then asked us to write a poem. I did, but don't remember what it was about, just that it was written on a lunch bag. He had asked us to write on white plain paper, and was glad I had broken his one rule. Does anybody know this poet's work? He came from rural Oklahoma but worked in the New York and Pennsylvania school system. His last name indicates a Dutch ancestry but he also writes extensively about Native Americans in the one volume I possess: For Luck (Carnegie Mellon, 1976). He was once famous and had books not only at Carnegie Mellon Press but also at the Smith, and taught in high schools as a peripatetic poet for several decades. He was born in 1936, and his initials stand for Harold Lloyd, indicating he might have been named for the once famous comedian. However, his poems are generally somewhat morbid, and often about animals killing each other, or having something to do with death. He wore a goatee, had a relatively flat face, had a nice suit but appeared disheveled, he was older but somehow looked like an innocent boy. It was summer, but he looked and felt like winter.