Non-contact sports

I was filling out a survey about ultimate frisbee injuries just recently that I'm sure many of you received through the Ultimate Chicago. While taking the survey it dawned on me just how many injuries I've sustained playing ultimate. While it's a non-contact sport, you contact the ground more than in most other non-contact sports, so I've hurt myself much worse in 8 years of ultimate than I did in almost 15 years of soccer. So far I've broken a finger that's required surgery (most recent obviously), torn a ligament in my knee that came close to requiring surgery, broken my nose, blacked out from hitting my head twice, once going to the hospital with a concussion, and suffered knee and elbow tendinitis as well as the scrapes and bruises that come with laying out on patches of dirt. The thing is, I feel this is probably the typical experience for an ultimate player. Is our sport that dangerous?

A flurry of links in lieu of writing

Still at one-hand capacity so instead of my own insight and opinion I've provided others' insights and opinions as well as some bizarre/interesting shit.

Section #1 - I hate John McCain
-It seems I'm not the only one who does
-Of course his campaign may soon run into monetary trouble, but far be it from the media's responsibility to call any attention to that.

Section#2 - I hate turncoat opportunists more
-When you're losing relevance in your own party, kiss the ass of those you used to oppose!
-But don't expect your former party to put up with it.
-Wait, it turns out McCain tried to do the same damn thing! You say you've never heard about this, but you know what Rev. Jeremiah Wright said in a sermon? Curious.

Section #3 - I shouldn't take glee from this, but douche bags do get comeuppance. Also spell check corrected the spelling of douchebags for me :D
-Look, if you're going to encourage voter fraud, at least maybe don't do it on the public air waves.
-Still I agree it's a bit of a fantasy to expect justice :\

Section #4 - Oh Hillary, Hillary why...
-It's hard to look this ridiculous on purpose.
-OK, maybe not as hard as it seems

This thing is even MORE over

The democratic primary has been over for a long time now, but people have yet to get that point across to the Clinton campaign. Their current goal is to catch Barack in the popular vote (not including the caucus states for reasons that make sense only to them), but being 700,000 votes behind with only a few contests to go makes even that goal almost unattainable. And now, today huge news from the democratic leadership. Governor Bill Richardson has officially endorsed Sen. Obama. Those of you who have talked with me about vice presidential speculation know that I've always thought he would be Sen. Obama's vice presidential candidate. As the most prominent Hispanic politician in the democratic party he could shore up democratic support among the Hispanic population. Also he served as energy secretary under Bill Clinton and as ambassador to the UN. I think he would have been an excellent presidential candidate, but he will be a stellar vice president too. What is immediately relevant though is that one of the most important superdelegates left undecided has committed to Sen. Obama, which will definitely work to sway more superdelegates as well as Hispanic voters in the few remaining states. Hillary, you ran a good campaign (for the most part), and I would have whole-heartedly supported you had you become the nominee. But it's time to face the facts and start to help the party instead of threatening to tear it down.

Enchondroma

It turns out I had this in my middle finger, which is why it snapped like a pretzel log when I landed on it funny. So the doctors rebroke my finger, cleaned out all the tumory tissue, and put a few pins in to keep everything set. The result is that I'm only typing with one hand, not playing ultimate, and not getting into any fist fights for the next four weeks. (I'm really upset about the fist-fights) In a few weeks though the cast will come off and the pins will come out, and after a few more weeks of therapy beyond that I'll be back to normal.

So in the abscence of typing acuity I'll try to post some interesting stuff from other people and other sites, as well as post some older stuff that I wrote but didn't think was good enough to post initially. (Actually, I probably won't subject anyone to that.)

The thing that upsets me the most is that I'm failing in my duties to a true Chicago legend, a man who has inspired so many to achieve the pinnacles of greatness they hold within themselves. Because of my injury, and the injury to my fellow roommate, our spring league team will have difficulties in keeping to the high standards that Lieutenant-Major Bill Finn has held himself, and the Chicago ultimate community to. From the CUSL website - "Player's total win/loss/tie record: 112-36-1 ( 0.75% )" Legendary doesn't even begin to describe this accomplishment. So I just wanted to take this opportunity to apologize not just to Bill, but to the community as a whole for letting down their hero.

But I'll be fine in time for the tournament. PRINT OUT THE SHIRTS!

Racism vs Sexism

Check out this snippet from an article in the Nation where a reporter is in Ohio talking to voters about who they're likely to vote for:

begin-
If Hillary doesn't get the nomination, this man said, he'd not only vote for but work for McCain, "and I hate McCain."

"Why not Obama?"

"He's too inexperienced."

"And why else?" a woman down the bar asked.

"Because he's black."

"Thank you!" she replied.

More talk, a little heat, and the man exclaimed, "I'm not going to vote for the n****r!"

Some in the bar seemed tensed; they were "undecided." The man goaded them; that's not what they had discussed the other day. He laughed. Another man from across the bar said he knew whom he wasn't voting for: "the n****r."
-end

I don't know how reading that affected any of you but I can't decide if I feel more disgusted, angry, or just plain discouraged by that exchange. As a supporter of Obama I hate to see people so blinded by their ignorance that they can't see the good such a remarkable man can do. As an objective observer I wince at the irony* that these people are dismissing a man who, if they just gave a chance, could conquer their preconceived notions about race. On the other hand I've known enough people who consider their black friends "one of the good ones" to know that's not likely true. Which is why it's a bit odd that every time I hear of something this blatantly racist in this country I'm still surprised. I've seen it, I know it exists. But it's an affect of the generation I'm from that we've grown up freer from it than our parents, and when I see it it still feels like a shock. What's egregious in the above exchange is that these people are comfortable enough in their bigotry that they talk this way in front of someone who they know is a reporter, let alone a stranger. It's not even about the words they used, it's about how nonchalant they were about their prejudice.

The topic I want to bring from this, as the title of the post implies, isn't that racism is bad, or that Obama will have to fight this kind of ignorance, or that Ohio is a shitty place to live, true as all those are. My point is that while these remarks aren't common about Obama out in the open, they're universally decried when they are. However, the same reaction doesn't seem to surface when people express reservations about Clinton due to her being a woman. I don't think it would be socially unacceptable for someone to say "well I'm just not sure how comfortable I would be with a woman leading the country." Sure it's sort of a misogynistic thing to say, but I think most people would be at most mildly offended by it. On the other hand replace "woman" in that sentence with "black man" and in most social circles you'd be asked kindly to leave the first time, and not so kindly the second. In essence the two kinds of bigotry seem the same, and it would be logical that they are treated with the same reaction, but they're not. I feel that they should be, but everyone may not agree with me there.

I'm not quite on the "the media is unfair to hillary!" band-wagon, but there is something to be said when it's more socially acceptable to be misogynistic than racist in a campaign. After all, Chris Matthews wasn't apologizing for nothing. And in media in general, racism is unacceptable, but the same rules don't always apply to sexism. It's true that sexism is much harder to define boundaries for than racism. Still, so is the fact that misogynism is possibly more acceptable in both a serious context and in a joking context.

I'm not arguing that politics be color or gender-blind. Barack's heritage and Hillay's sex are very important to who they are. Barack grew up in the waning days of socially acceptable racism, found inspiration in key black leaders, and learned his faith in black churches. Hillary struggled against glass ceilings in politics and in the law practice. Both of them are stronger for what they fought against. I however don't mean to compare the adversity of one to the other. When evaluating them as candidates though what matters isn't who they are on the surface or even what they've done. It even matters little who they are. What matters is what they will do for the country. Who they are and what they've done are important insofar as they are predictors of what they will do for the country. Their race and their gender, they are not.

* I know I'm using the word ironic incorrectly, but the colloquial meaning overtook the literal meaning long ago. Give it up english majors.


EDIT - I wrote this post before the Ohio primary and didn't think it was very good. However since I can't type much lately I decided I'll post it just so the people who still check in once in a while have something to read :)

Broken hand continuity

Diagnosis three weeks later... "Well looks like we ARE gonna have to put a pin in it so it'll heal." Thanks doc, I would have hated to get the whole process going ASAP. There's some frustratingly good stuff to write about lately, but I don't have the patience to do it with one hand. When I get the surgery done, or when something huge happens (like Hillary finally giving up), then I'll be back to posting more regularly. And with the Cubbies starting their season soon there will be a LOT more baseball talk :)

Fuck

Well, fuck. Tonight turned out to decide exactly nothing. Obama was unable to put away Clinton and the struggle continues. The only thing that is a definite outcome from tonight is that the next few months will be bad for the democratic party.

I didn't believe for a second that if Hillary didn't win both Ohio and Texas that she would drop out. Even though her husband said in a speech that she needed to win both states to continue, her campaign made no hints that they were even considering dropping out in any scenario. In fact, they had been floating the idea of staying in the race in the face of an overwhelming pledged delegate deficit to try and win super delegates. But I thought that if Obama could win Texas, the rumblings inside the party leadership would grow louder for Hillary to drop out of the race for the sake of the party.

Now though the race will go past Pennsylvania in April. Obama will win Wyoming and Mississippi and the Clinton campaign will label the results as meaningless as the eleven in a row Obama won before tonight. And if Obama wins Pennsylvania, what precedent would make one think that Hillary would drop even then? What will likely happen is this race won't be decided until the temperatures are in the 80's throughout the beltway. It won't come to a contested convention because Obama will win more delegates than she will in the rest of the contests combined and she's already facing a pledged delegate deficit that it would be near impossible mathematically to make up. But Hillary will go through the spring making asinine comments like these sabotaging Obama in the general election. She'll keep running ads like the infamous "red phone ad" that play upon peoples fears to drive voters away from Obama. And in the end, when she loses, she'll have accomplished nothing more than damaging Obama's chances in the general election and wiling away valuable time that could be spent convincing her supporters that what is more important than having her in office is having a democrat in office.

It sounds like a strange argument I'm making doesn't it? I'm a huge Obama supporter and here I am talking about how voting for Hillary is damaging to the party instead of arguing why Obama is the better candidate, which is the only thing I like to believe people should vote based on. I guess you could call it a defense mechanism though to her making the same types of claims against Obama. It's come to the point in the campaign where what's best for the country now seems to take a back seat to winning the current step in the process. The fact remains after tonight that Clinton is almost assuredly not going to become the nominee. From now until the race is decided John McCain can parade around the country shoring up his conservative support while attacking the democrats. He's free to lunch with president dumbass tomorrow without having to respond to criticism that his policies follow almost verbatim the course of the last seven disastrous years.

This whole thing makes me sick.

Also, John McCain was born in Panama. That's right, Panama.