BoyGeeding is a big fan of the cartoon PAW Patrol and wanted to go as the lead character Ryder and asked me to carve him a Ryder jack-o-lantern. I tried my best. For the light in the jack-o-lantern, I used a flashlight app on my old phone. DaughterGeeding went as Ariel for any of you that was wondering.
I got the pleasure of meeting the mother of my neighbor that’s a starting offensive lineman for our local NFL franchise. For you long time readers, you may recall BoyGeeding dressed as him for Halloween a few years ago and how nervous he was around the big guy. Despite never meeting his mother before, she instantly recognized the only kid that has ever dressed as her son for Halloween.
The excessively cautious amount of care for a possible neck injury is needed in football, which we saw for Seattle player Ricardo Lockette before halftime yesterday. That care causes a long delay of game and to fill in the time with the imagery of a player completely still causes network announcers and Twitter to be filled with knee-jerk reactions. As he’s carted off the field we see movement from his arms and hands and then right before the start of the third quarter we learn he has full movement and a concussion. The player will be okay, 100,000 mothers aren’t going to keep their kid from playing football because of that one play, and football will not die because of the money. This season, seven high school players have died due to a football-related death – If that doesn’t call for the stoppage for football, nothing will.
And in case you think I’m nuts for thinking football will be fine, let’s look at a bit of history. The Chicago Tribune reported that in 1904 alone, there were 18 football deaths and 159 serious injuries, mostly among prep school players. In 1905, there were 19 player deaths and 137 serious injuries. What happened? President Teddy Roosevelt lead the fight for reform and an organization directed at player safety was created, which would become the forerunner of the NCAA. [Source] And you are fooling yourself if the think the NCAA has player safety at the forefront, it’s all about the money and how to keep it flowing.
Final football rant. In pee-wee, junior high, and in high school, each season started with the lesson of proper tackling technique to avoid injury – tackle with the facemask up and to never lower my head. Not only does this help protect the spine, but it provides better vision of the field. I’m amazed how I rarely see such a thing that was instilled in me at the start of each season. Perhaps I fear paralysis more than others.
A British journalist from The Guardian visited a Texas hell house. The article did answer one question for me, how did they all get started. Well, I should have known – The late televangelist Jerry Falwell is credited with popularising “hell houses” in the 1970s as a way for Christian fundamentalists to respond to Halloween, with its perceived pagan roots and trivialising of death.
Buzzfeed – A Brazilian man probably had the scariest Halloween in the world this year, after winning a competition to spend the night sleeping in the famed Catacombs in Paris, surrounded by millions of skulls and bones.
But this was a dumb idea for a costume – A soldier dressed as a suicide bomber for Halloween caused an emergency response on Fort Bragg, officials said Saturday evening.
In the ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ Almanac segment, fountain pen magnate George S. Parker of Parken Pens was featured. His pens were used to sign both the German and the Japanese surrenders at the end of World War II and Speaker Paul Ryan lives in his Wisconsin house.
“Not all your friends need to be ‘forever-friends’, some people are just meant to be your friend for that particular time in your life”
ABC News – Texas Case Mulls If Home-School Kids Have to Learn Something – At issue: Where do religious liberty and parental rights to educate one’s own children stop and obligations to ensure home-schooled students ever actually learn something begin?
Yup, alcohol was involved – MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI – A 58-year-old Whitehall woman attacked her boyfriend early Sunday with a mounted sailfish, hitting him over the head and poking him with the object, police said.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve told myself I’ll use this extra hour of sleep with the time change to wake up early and workout to only never follow through with it.
I think they went the wrong way with football safety. I was injured far more often and more severely in full pads than when I played rugby. Maybe getting back to the leather helmets is the way to go.
Of course, I was the wedge buster, and lowered my head into a crowd after running downfield at full speed. I keep telling my wife that I forget things due to my chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but she ain't buying it.
Home School Kids: I read that Texas has 300,000 kids in "home school". That amounts to 1/6 of all kids in the U.S. categorized as home schooled. Texas has a minimum curriculum home schoolers are supposed to follow but there is no enforcement mechanism and there is no testing required. So what is the difference between home school and truancy or why is there such a thing as truancy? It sounds as though you can state that your kid is being home schooled and it ends there? Anecdotically, there are certainly a great many home school kids getting a good education, but with no measuring or enforcement provisions, how does anyone know what's happening with these 300,000 kids?
I think they went the wrong way with football safety. I was injured far more often and more severely in full pads than when I played rugby. Maybe getting back to the leather helmets is the way to go.
Of course, I was the wedge buster, and lowered my head into a crowd after running downfield at full speed. I keep telling my wife that I forget things due to my chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but she ain't buying it.
Home School Kids: I read that Texas has 300,000 kids in "home school". That amounts to 1/6 of all kids in the U.S. categorized as home schooled. Texas has a minimum curriculum home schoolers are supposed to follow but there is no enforcement mechanism and there is no testing required. So what is the difference between home school and truancy or why is there such a thing as truancy? It sounds as though you can state that your kid is being home schooled and it ends there? Anecdotically, there are certainly a great many home school kids getting a good education, but with no measuring or enforcement provisions, how does anyone know what's happening with these 300,000 kids?