I’m no doctor, but I have long argued in favor of rugby as a safer adjunct and alternative to football for kids. In the first instance, it teaches proper tackling technique, with the head placed away from the opponent and outside of the contact area. Further, the continuous nature of the game means that the tackler…

Someone get Santa a Caucasian.

This will probably be forever mired in the grays, but I witnessed the actual Weinermobile in the wild, booted for parking illegally in a supermarket lot.

Explorer? I hardly Ranger!

If ever you hear of a crime or terror attack and think to yourself “If only there were more armed citizens who could have taken out the bad guys,” remember this woman with a “military background” who “just wanted to help” police. I think there are more people out there like her than there are level-headed,…

I watched Princess Mononoke with my kids when they were pretty young and the movie was just out here in the States; the boar demon scene scared the piss out of them. And they became huge fans.

The buttcheek-clenching moment for me was when the reserve opened into a mild twist. That’s when the camera flew free and the guy did what he should have in the first place.

You hit the nail on the head - the guy didn’t want to drop the camera. I had a few of these when I was jumping regularly some 20 years ago. You get out of this by spreading the risers and kicking your legs. If it doesn’t work quickly, you go to the reserve ideally before you get in a major spiral like this guy did.

I’m a rugby ref, but we have similar complaints on turf v. natural surface. I cover the area in and around NYC, and easily more than half of our matches are played on field turf these days. It’s somewhat a necessity given the volume of play on a very limited number of fields; if it were natural grass, the pitches…

An idea brilliantly appropriated by Neal Stephenson in Anathem, an excellent and engaging read.

As a former hooker, I subscribe to the notion that anyone with a single-digit shirt lower than 9 has no business ever trying to put boot to ball. Not that I didn’t do it often, sometimes to the consternation of my teammates.

Need more sheep. And Tom Jones.

5x5 has been great for me in that it’s a simple, straightforward path to building significant strength, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it by itself for fat loss. In my experience (and it may be that I am just genetically predisposed to bulking) you need to add traditional cardio or metcon workouts on the…

Thank jeebus I was watching the ITV feed via VPN. The US commentators (especially Hightower) are putrid.

In a nutshell, World Rugby (formerly the IRB) national team eligibility does not require citizenship. You can represent a country where you were born, where a parent or grandparent was born, or where you have resided for 36 consecutive months prior to the test match. And it’s not just the Japanese that import talent:

there’s just no way to police what goes on at the bottom of a scrum

Here’s an excerpt from the official comment to Rule 3.16:

And I just had a craving for a hard cider float. This will happen.

White Lambo having a bad day at the office?

Prince will forever remain the absolute gold standard of Super Bowl halftime shows. I am not entirely unconvinced that he controlled the weather to ensure that it would rain dramatically during the performance.