CONSTANT lurker, but rarely post. I guess I rarely feel like I can offer something that hasn't already been well articulated. But this is one of those discussions where two of my passions collide (nerdery and football), so I'll give it a stab...

As a new parent, football has been on my mind quite a bit lately thanks to news such as this study. I grew up in a household where football was pretty much the religion. It was a large bond between my dad and I from when I very young, so it's probably not surprising that at the age of ten I jumped at the first opportunity to put on the pads and see what I could do.

It was a pretty big shock! Even at ten years old, the violence of the game caught me off guard, and my schoolyard prowess just didn't translate well. I pretty much got the crap beaten out of me. My second year playing, though, something clicked in me. I finally got it. In order to enjoy playing football, you have to embrace the violence. And embrace it I did. As the smallest kid on just about every team I played on, I enjoyed nothing more than knocking down somebody twice my size.

I've never been into my skull with a microscope, but there's no outward evidence that any of this early playing took a physical toll on me. I started high school ball with body in perfect working order and grades at the top of my class. And off the football field I was still not only a total nerd, but a pretty nice guy!... Once up to high school, though, the physics of things change. I was still small, but now the bigger kids were starting to catch up in speed. It's at this age that REAL collisions start to occur. (It always confuses me when parents tell me that they're not going to let their kids play football until high school because it's too dangerous. I always respond with, "Are you kidding!? It doesn't get dangerous until high school!") I was still the smallest guy on the team, but loved nothing more than sticking my nose in it, so I ended up playing positions that nobody my size had any business playing. And my body suffered horribly.

I graduated from high school having torn or pulled pretty much every muscle in my body, with two badly dislocated shoulders, a hip pointer, torn wrist tendons (bother me to this day), and having suffered through four knee surgeries (three on one knee and one on the other). I took one hit to the head that left me seeing stars, several other hits where the split second between impact with the opponent and impact with the ground completely disappeared, and one hit that was so bad it demolished my helmet (facemask torn from the shell and cheek pads scattered on the ground). After all of those hits, while playing 90% of positions on the field over the course of eight seasons of play--linebacker and fullback my senior year in high school, no less--I cannot see ANY signs of mental deficiencies as a result. I tutored fellow students in calculus and physics while still in high school, graduated with a nearly perfect academic record, went off to college, am upbeat and happy (as far as having two babies in the house allows...), and have always been extremely non-violent outside of a football field (the picture of me abusing my wife would be laughable if you knew me).

Which brings me to my son. As a rational human being, how do I reconcile the situation described above with all of the recent reports by scientists studying the long term impacts of playing football? How do I tell my son he can't play football when I still regard it as the most rewarding hobby I've ever had? And so he can, what, sit on his ass all day playing video games instead? Take up an individual sport that lacks any aspect of teamwork, camaraderie, or strategy? (Because the same damage is being found in hockey players, soccer players, etc. Few team sports are in the clear.)

It's also hard for me to justify keeping my son out of football when I still don't regret my own time playing the game. Football gets a bad rap as a game for morons, but I haven't played any other sport that involves so much strategy and mental preparation (what other sport has a rulebook that thick or a list that long of completely different positions?). It's truly possible to be a football geek, and I certainly was one (and still am). I've found that my favorite activities in life are those where I can satisfy my body and brain at the same time--and get an adrenaline rush to boot. (Now that I can't play football anymore, what's my nerd sport? Motorcycle roadracing. Also not too friendly to the brain at times...) All of the injuries I suffered at the time--so many that I lost 17 pounds of muscle due to injury related atrophy over the course of my senior season--and those that still nag me to this day as a result are still not enough to come even close to causing regret

The question of violence is definitely one I'm considering. It was the violence and accompanying adrenaline rush that attracted me to football. Never followed me off the field, but can the same be said for all players? I definitely don't want my son to be violent, and I sometimes reflect on my time spent on the football field and am a bit ashamed of... well, of how badly I wanted to inflict pain on others until the whistle blew. But is having a controlled outlet for violence during adolescence really worse for mental health than never exposing kids to violence at all? I don't know the answer to that question.

I don't know, I guess I don't really have an answer. If my son could get the same kind of enjoyment and fulfillment out of football that I did, then he should play if he wants to. On the other hand, here are studies clearly indicating that allowing my son to play football is pretty much exposing him to certain brain injury. And now that I know this, how can I let him play? It's definitely one of those "first world" kind of problems, but one that's kept me up at night more than once.

It's an issue of selfishness. Buying the bigger tank than the next person on the road to make sure that they absorb more energy in a collision is subtly stating that, "You and yours be damned, I've gotta look out for me and mine." (I still argue that the safety advantage of these large vehicles is more marketing than reality, but I've already posted that above.) And maybe this attitude is natural.

So fair enough. It's war, then. You pull out a knife, so I pull out a gun, so you pull out an ICBM, etc. I propose a solution to move things back in the right (efficient) direction with regard to this highway arms race: I call it "The Wedge," and it's my dream car.

The Wedge would be a small four or five seat car that's very low and slants sharply to the ground at front. The nose of the car is made to crumple fore and aft to mitigate an impact with an immovable object, but also made INCREDIBLY strong in vertical compression. Perhaps the entire hood and windshield is made of composite sandwich structures and visibility is achieved with cameras or something.

Upon impact with a larger vehicle, The Wedge would effectively act as a ramp, sending Hummer McDoucherson and his entire family rolling to their unfortunate demise, crushed under the weight of 6000 pounds of "safety." Meanwhile, The Wedge would have a few scratches and dings to buff out.

It's great because this design could be kept to a very low weight, and this combined with slippery aerodynamics would achieve great fuel economy. All the while my family could be completely safe from the 6000 pound tanks on their way to soccer practice. Not that such an impact would be likely, because The Wedge would be able to actually get out of its own way.

It's a shame so many other families that would have the bad luck of having an unfortunate encounter with The Wedge would have to die, but, hey, they started it.

Can I get an "Amen"?

+1

I flew from Seatac to San Jose for the MotoGP races in 2007, I believe it was. Was myself and my wife and another couple we're friends with. I think this was early days of mandatory TSA locks (or risk having your own lock cut). So we dutifully complied, bought TSA locks, and locked our luggage up. Ashamed to admit that this actually made us feel MORE secure that our luggage would be safe. Should have known better. We arrived at our destination and my friend's wife opened her checked bag to look for her sunglasses. They were gone. Expensive Ray Bans. Also gone was her iPod, her camera, and a necklace/earrings set of glass jewelry they got in Venice on their honeymoon. We couldn't believe it! The lock was intact, so the thief could have only been the TSA screener that searched our bags. Luckily I carried my laptop and camera equipment on the plane with me (at the time I thought I was being paranoid, but I guess not!). She called the airline right away. They essentially told her she was shit out of luck. It was the TSA that stole her stuff, after all. She asked why the airline didn't have some kind of supervision in place to make sure this kind of thing didn't happen. She pointed out that it is ridiculous to pay good money to an airline and they can't even protect their customers from being robbed blind. They didn't seem to care. Not their problem. So she got someone from the TSA on the phone. They pretty much told her to frig off as well. How could she prove that those things had been in her bag? It's ridiculous. I've only flown twice since then. One of them I really had no choice--it's a long boat ride to Italy. At least I was able to find a similar set of glass jewelry in Venice for my friends. Since the whole wacky molestation theater broke out, I haven't flown at all. I'm going to make it my goal to see to it that I don't until that mess is cleaned up. We shouldn't have to be molested by or stolen from by our own government agents to travel. I wish more people would get this and avoid air travel. If you have to, though, I hope our experience on that flight is a good lesson for you: DO NOT check anything valuable. There's a fair enough probability you will be robbed.

When I first read the story, I felt, like a majority of posters here, that this is an outrage, and watch out for the Streisand Effect. After watching all four of this kid's video, I don't think it's so cut and dry.

The fact that the videos are about what you'd expect from an 18 year old has been beaten to death, so no need to elaborate there. But there were details in both the videos themselves and the manner in which they were presented/created that bear repeating:

1.) The videos feature the name/likeness of one of the school's teachers.
2.) The videos appear to slander other students (I'm assuming every name in the videos are names of fellow students--names, for instance, linked to anal sex in the backseat of a car or called a dick, etc.).
3.) The videos were made for and, I'm assuming, presented in a school class. This is referenced in the videos themselves.

Although I agree that the school's administration was being a little naive in that they clearly don't understand the Streisand Effect, they were well within their rights to discipline the student. The student made videos featuring the names of their faculty and students that reflected poorly on the school. If this were in the U.S., the teacher or one of the other students made fun of in the videos probably could have sued the school for not taking action against the author of the videos if they felt the videos were overly hostile towards them.

The question for me is this: The videos are clearly not a shining reflection of the school this kid attended. Hell, viewing the videos myself, I was left wondering, "And this kid was allowed to show these in class!? All the way through!?" I know I've NEVER had a teacher that would have let any of these videos play past the first minute in class (in fact, I failed my sophomore final Biology project and had to have a parent/teacher/principal conference due to a similarly inappropriate--but funny!--video I attempted to present to the class), let alone not punish me or fail me for making them. Having said all that, once the initial presentation is past and the kid posts the videos to YouTube, is the fact that the videos are in the public sphere and embarrassing to the school enough to warrant punishing the student? I agree that the school has no place punishing students for activities that they conduct off of school grounds and also that the student has a right to free speech, but at what point does the offensive material cross the line of free speech and into slander? If none of the kids/teacher he made fun of in the videos complain, does the school really have a legitimate beef? And should the school suspend the student, or should they just report the incident to the police and make it a legal matter since it's off school property?

If you ask me, this is a bit of CYA by the school. Apparently they've got some Civics teacher that's REALLY lenient with his class and lets kids show videos in class featuring swearing (could care less, but a lot of parents might not share that view), sharing cocaine with children (pretty much universally agreed-upon to be not school-appropriate material), and crudely making fun of fellow classmates. The school administration eventually sees the videos somehow, finds out that they're public on YouTube, and can just imagine what parents in the district might say if they catch wind of any of them: "You let THIS go on in your classrooms!?" Wanting to throw the lid over the videos was probably smart. The way they went about it--and every subsequent decision and press blurb they made regarding the matter from then on out--was downright idiotic.

Two theories: 1.) Is it possible that people underestimate how much damage to a face an assault rifle round can do at close range? Would looking at a picture of a neck with some bloody hamburger above it really convince anyone that OBL is dead? 2.) What if something during the actual raid went wrong? Maybe, perhaps understandably, one or more of the SEALs took matters into their own hands in dealing with a surrendering OBL? Or something else that might make the U.S. or its special forces look bad? Maybe the lies and whatnot are to protect some of the team that was on the ground conducting the operation? Just playing devil's advocate. I suppose it's also possible there's he's in a secret prison somewhere, being asked a few questions, with a go Kart--"GOLF cart"--battery hooked up to his nipples.