Ravens Offensive Lineman Publishes Math Paper
npr.org
npr.org
"I have no desire to try to accumulate $10 million in the bank; I already have more money in my bank account than I know what to do with. I drive a used hatchback Nissan Versa and live on less than $25k a year. It’s not because I’m frugal or trying to save for some big purchase, it’s because the things I love the most in this world (reading math, doing research, playing chess) are very, very inexpensive."
Refreshing to see such a grounded athlete get press. I'm sure there are a lot of them out there, but typically you don't see a lot of stories about them.
“On the morning in 2011 when his $2 million signing bonus finally cleared, Norris was in Florida with the rest of the Blue Jays' new signees. All of their bonuses had been deposited on the same day, and one of the players suggested they drive to a Tampa mall. They shopped for three hours, and by the time the spree finally ended they could barely fit their haul back into the car. Most players had spent $10,000 or more on laptops, jewelry and headphones. Norris returned with only a henley T-shirt from Converse, bought on sale for $14. It's been a fixture of his wardrobe ever since.”
Time and time again I see people arguing on HN as if they haven't read the article. Is it just bad reading comprehension or is it that people read the headline and jump the gun?
I hear what's he's saying about the physical contact, and the feeling of dominating the player in front of you. My high school football coach use to say, on the football field you could measure yourself. You could see how tough you are, how strong you are, and if you have the mental toughness required to win. It's you versus the guy across from you.. There's not many chances in this world to test yourself like that. I think that's some of what he means when he says he's 'addicted' to the physical contact of football. I certainly miss that aspect.
There's something very relaxing about punching people in the face.
the pain comes much later, and by that time, you're already prepared for it.
on the other hand, if you're referring to an unstructured 'street' fight, then I couldn't disagree more. there are too many variables that can't be controlled for, and is thus something I would strongly discourage.
There are so many times in sparring, especially with newbies, where you pull back your punch so you don't hit the opponent if they were too slow to cover up. In a street fight you wouldn't. That would end poorly.
There's something to be said about experiencing the fear and pain of physical combat, something nearly every species on the planet (including our ancestors) deals with on a daily basis.
The first time you get your nose punched while boxing, you have no idea what hit you, or where you are, or where the floor is. It is very disorienting, and usually quite alarming. But that experience somehow reconfigures your brain, and all the times after that are "just" irritating or painful.
And I also remember, that following that day, a lot of things in life became much less intimidating and much more tractable. For me, it was a small, but memorable, "life changing experience"
Now it's just eh. Hardly notice it anymore.
(I played football in high school too. I sucked. No, really, I really sucked. Pretty funny to look back on now, though it wasn't at the time.)
Natalie Portman - http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/01/science/01angier.html
Brian May - http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun/07/science/sci-queen7
http://www.sportingnews.com/mlb/feed/2010-09/smart-athletes/...
If you think an engineering degree is tough, try doing one while also training 30+ hours/week. ;)
The list of multi-talented musicians and actors is also fun to read about. Greg Graffin, the lead singer of Bad Religion, has a PhD in Zoology from Cornell. Here are some more: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/09/07/school-of-rock-10-s...
I have a lot of respect for college athletes who pursue difficult majors.
All serious musicians I know are nerdier than most denizens of /b/. You have to be if you have to devote 8+ hours to an instrument (in the case of athletes, that instrument is their body).
They just manage to do a very good job of masking it.
Honestly, I might have had a different career trajectory had I known that you could be nerdy and still be a cool rockstar or athlete.
Isn't that what most people consider the difference between "nerd" and "geek" to be?
At least it sounds like nice variety. It's probably easier to do 40 hours of study + 30+ hours of exercise a week, rather than 70 hours of studying medicine or whatever.
http://alumni.ucla.edu/share/alumni-stories/stories/mayim-bi...
And I can completely relate to him. I'm an engineer, but I'm also 275lbs and grew up on a farm. I'm a volunteer firefighter and people are surprised when they meet me. Fellow firefighters are surprised when I tell them I write software, and fellow techies are surprised I kick down doors and enter burning buildings for free. But both of those things I enjoy immensely from different parts of my personality.
Generally large metropolitan cities are staffed with paid people full time, because they can't afford to gamble on Volunteers, but smaller cities rely on them heavily, smaller towns (10k people or less) absolutely depend on them.
If you're serious shoot me an email at jeremymorgan at gmail. It's very rewarding and chances are some agency nearby needs you.
I am hardly 'swole', being a average-build dude who sits in front of a computer for 12+ hours a day, with my only real exercise coming from using a bicycle for commuting, but I do think the subreddit is a great example of how people can channel oppression they face to derive humor and fuel for motivation to 'go harder'.
http://www.reddit.com/r/swoleacceptance for anyone interested.
- Each team consists of a chess player and up to 16 boxers
- When one piece captures another, their corresponding boxers fight each other
- The winner of the bout determines which piece is removed from the chess board
http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/spielman/sgta/SpectTut.pdf
While the topic of graph laplacians may sound obscure, there are a lot of direct applications to image segmentation, social network analysis, bioinformatics, etc.
I'm a fairly typical geek in almost all aspects of my life, but nothing beats the thrill of competing in Kickboxing competition and going one on one with another Martial Artist.
It's not even about winning, or dominating. Even when I get the seven shades of shit knocked out of me, I still feel that rush, and walk away with a smile on my face.
I wonder what his schedule is like.
I don't know much about football but I used to compete in badminton and played with many professional players. Most people playing internationally train 6 days a week, 3 times a day. Even when I was only training twice a day, after I was done I would not be able to do anything because of the fatigue, I'd probably just eat and sleep.
I feel much the same way about working nowadays; even though I do have some spare time where I'm not working, the time is less productive than if I were in school where I would be doing nothing but studying. I certainly still learn new things, but it takes me much longer because my mental state is not fresh.
I wonder if this would be alleviated by studying before work instead of after, though, which is something I'm experimenting with. The only issue is that I already have trouble waking up for work, and yet somehow am unable to sleep early despite being so tired.
Punching people is always reciprocal and always with consequences.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_players_with_chroni...
Take the following in good spirits:
The only person you should be comparing yourself against is your former self. Always be better than them.
Whether we like it or not, we are constantly being compared, and there is indeed a winner or loser. I'd argue that we shouldn't try to trick ourselves into thinking that there are no winners or losers, but to accept that it is totally okay, and even good, to lose.
But if you'd like, we could consider another case where we have two employees who have the same position. Since we're on HN lets say we have two junior devs. If the company decides it doesn't need both employees, one of them will be laid off. Obviously the person in charge will have to compare the two and decide which one to let go.
Will we also have an article if a pretty woman publishes a math paper?
Good that you're not surprised. But there's a lot of people out there (and here in the valley) who subconsciously (or consciously) believe that if you're dark skinned with curly hair and athletic, then you're deficient in the intellectual arena, or worse, that you're a thug.
> why don't we congratulate everyone who publishes a math paper?
Because not everyone's story defeats a stereotype that is dangerous and damaging. I'm surprised that this has to be explained.
And he wrote some interesting stuff from personal experience on a topic of current interest, NFL brain injuries.
In fact, almost all the personalities on the FOX and CBS pre-game shows are ex-pros, and I find their abilities to reason and elucidate quite advanced, and they all admit to having many, many instances of head trauma in their careers.
That's how I'd reconcile it. What you see on TV is not a random sampling, before you even get to the selection process of the networks to pick the best available.
Didn't seem so much at first considering the number of players who've gone through the NFL but it was surprising how long I had to scroll to get through the list of players who are plantiffs in the lawsuit regarding concussion related injuries received while playing. The list is even incomplete and only contains less than half the actual number of players.
Also, a paper[1] I found via wikipedia references estimated an encephalopathy prevalence rate of 3.7% (and that's a conservative estimate according to wikipedia).
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NFL_players_with_chroni...
They make contact with other players with less time for anyone to get to full speed. The guys they're hitting aren't generally going in exactly the opposite direction, the way defenders' targets are. That contact is mostly on the body. And they aren't targets the way ball carriers are.
Also, they're some of the biggest guys on the field. That means they've got more neck muscle holding their head in place.
I mean, if I were an exceptionally speedy, brick-wall linebacker, I wouldn't get kicked out for causing extra concussions, I'd be given trophies and expensive contracts.
I think you are conflating speed and quickness. Offensive and defensive lines rely on quickness (i.e., acceleration) to beat the opposing team and make a play, while other collisions (e.g., tackling) often involve speed.
I am not saying that linesmen should not be expected to sometimes suffer head trauma; I was just noting that how often a player runs into another player is not the only factor.
Sounds to me like you're arguing for no reason.
[1] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/concussion-watch/#po...
Centers (3), OTOH, have by this estimate about half the risk of guards (6). This guy should move to center. That's where you want someone really smart anyway as centers have to set up blocking assignments at the line. Also I see the scouting report recommended him for center based on his body type and playing style.
There's probably some truth in this, but as a guard, he has to pull and lead on outside runs occasionally. Plus there's always a chance of getting kneed in the head in a pileup. The risk is far from zero.
He may also be asked to play on special teams, where the risk is probably the greatest.
Here's some data wrt to OL being the worst position actually.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/offensive-play
This is a crucial point. Much of the attention in the football world, in the past few years, has been on concussions—on diagnosing, managing, and preventing them—and on figuring out how many concussions a player can have before he should call it quits. But a football player’s real issue isn’t simply with repetitive concussive trauma. It is, as the concussion specialist Robert Cantu argues, with repetitive subconcussive trauma. It’s not just the handful of big hits that matter. It’s lots of little hits, too.
That’s why, Cantu says, so many of the ex-players who have been given a diagnosis of C.T.E. were linemen: line play lends itself to lots of little hits.
I'd be very surprised if that was true. I got my bell rung more than a few times when I played in high school & college.
Keep in mind linemen are making intense physical contact every single play of the game. If it's a run play, it's unlikely receivers are getting knocked around, but linemen are.
In summary, his choice of sport does increase the risk of neurodegenerative disease presenting as dementia in later life, and CTE in particular has a distinct neuropathology that distinguishes it from other presentations at autopsy.
...I've probably been reading hpmor.com too much lately, but thanks HN for turning me on to that.
And in that case, if an "extreme heroin" player published a mathematics paper, I still would be impressed.
Agreed, football is worse: we actively encourage and reward modern day gladiatorial combat such that otherwise brilliant people feel the need to participate. NFL players publishing papers and having successful academic careers afterwards are not the norm.
It really doesn't do anything to further the discourse.
I think that pivoting the framing from a known known (look at these guys who have brain damage and are killing themselves) to a known unknown (have we really accounted for all the variance?) is risky, because you're then flirting with confirmation bias.
I think that if one guy wants to fly through a canyon in a wingsuit, it's one matter. But when you have an entire nation cheering this behavior on, it starts to make us introspect and say... wait.. exactly how hedonistic are we? Is this really the kind of behavior we want to teach our children? The reductio is that it could lead to us selecting against ourselves, as a species. Go Team!
Oh. I get it. We're supposed to be judgemental and look down on him for doing what he likes. Like we do with people who do drugs. Because this is hacker news, and anyone who does anything physical or competitive is not like us, right?
Everything humans like to do fits into that template.