Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Precisely at the moment when an athletic career is most on the line and fan perceptions of a Herculean, supra-human performance are highest, an athlete's brain may be at its most vulnerable.
There are good reasons for not wanting to host the Olympics. The Games can be costly and, in spite of their patriotic overtones, can unintentionally expose a nation's weaknesses to the world.
Generations of thinkers have made typewriters their frenemies, and long before there were Gmail inboxes, print correspondence stacked up, some hastily written and impulsive on the steel gadgets.
Women in finance bore the brunt of layoffs more than their male counterparts during the Great Recession in 2008 and were also more likely to have been in back office jobs that were replaced by computers.
Many of my 20- and 30-something peers struggle with student loan debt and high rent, and more than once, I've erupted in laughter at the idea that I will collect any Social Security in my Betty White years.
Before she made her bid for the U.S. presidency in 1872, Victoria Woodhull worked as one of the first female stockbrokers in the country, starting a firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Company, with her sister in 1870.
The phenomena of taking photos and sharing them isn't new, but with Instagram being mobile, both have become cheaper and faster, producing the instant gratification of knowing how our shots look in our palms.
Even as Instagram defines our visual moment, we use the app's filters to travel backwards in time, to make our images resemble the Polaroids of yore by casting them literally in a different, more nostalgic light.
To drive a semi-truck, a driver needs a commercial driver's license. While formal training isn't required, most drivers enroll in a program to help prepare them for the written and practical exams in their states.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have sparked a booming industry of so-called influencers - people with large-scale followings who are paid considerable sums by large companies to tout their products or ideas.
Individual participation in the stock market through 401(k)s helped fuel the go-go days of Wall Street in the 1980s and birthed asset management juggernauts like Fidelity, Vanguard, Pimco, BlackRock, and dozens of others.
I think that when you talk to people about Monopoly, they love talking about their memories associated with it. And for me, I'm the same way. I mean, when I think about Monopoly, I think of my family playing at the holidays.
Women's marathoning was not added as an Olympic medal event until 1984 due to unfounded and bizarre concerns among Olympic organizers about women's ability to run longer distances. It was finally added after much campaigning.
Trucking-company terminals are places where paperwork gets filled out, driving orders are given, and partners are assigned. They can often be social hubs for drivers, breaking up the monotony and solitude they face on the road.
The fitness industry has long thrived off the well-intended coming through their doors and signing up with dreams of self-improvement, only to fade into their couches. Those who stick with it often feel like hamsters on treadmills.
Most major races, including the New York City Marathon, require runners to provide photo identification when picking up a bib. Most provide bibs only a few days before the race, shortening the window in which someone could copy a bib.
For professional athletes, the motives for cheating generally are more obvious: money, fame, and often a low likelihood of being caught. But why would a middle- or back-of-the-pack runner lie or cheat in a race that doesn't even matter?
As the 19th century teetered into the 20th, the clank of typewriter keys went from solo to symphony. They were the weapon of choice for professional writers, the business elite, people with things to say and the need to say them quickly.
Women's combat sports have been on a good run in the United States. Claressa Shields won a gold medal in women's boxing at the London Olympics in 2012, when it became a medal sport. American women won medals in taekwondo and judo as well.
In the modern road-running era, digital photography has intersected with weekend-warrior culture, creating a golden age of social-media humblebragging. For some, the marathon course is sacred ground. For others, it's a personal movie set.
At the turn of the twentieth century, board games were becoming increasingly commonplace in middle-class homes. In addition, more and more inventors were discovering that the games were not just a pastime but also a means of communication.
I remember, often, when you tell people you're doing a book about board games, they think you're totally nuts. And that might be warranted. But I feel like if we can't get the story of Monopoly right... what hope is there for anything else?
Something amazing happens when you tell people you write about sports for a living. You begin to feel like you're in a scene from 'Dawn of the Dead.' The way people change when talking about 'their team' can be nothing short of zombiefication.
My parents wielded disposal cameras and Polaroids with the best of them, occasionally begging for at least one decent photo of my brother and me at the state fair, in front of the Golden Gate bridge, or smiling half-heartedly next to a mascot.
By the middle of the century, retirement culture - exemplified by timeshares in Florida, the golf industry, and AARP membership - was booming. Americans, it turned out, were pretty good at figuring out how not to do anything in their twilight years.
The more I think about the Olympics, even from afar, its mere concept stuns me. I can't think of any other line of work where, every four years, people gather to be ranked one, two, and three, then are more or less told to evaporate until the next go-around.
Despite the laserlike focus it generates, 'Tetris' has no clear endpoint and no easily defined opponents. Unlike with most other video games, you're playing only against yourself, without any concrete goals other than to keep on fitting blocks into other blocks.
With a smartphone in tow and a playlist humming, a runner may miss the crunch of leaves underfoot, the enthusiastic cheers of benevolent strangers, or even her own breath. And, for many runners, leaving the mobile device at home is the most liberating part of the sport.
Journalism isn't about how smart you are. It's not about where you're from. It's not about who you know or how clever your questions are. And thank God for that. It's about your ability to embrace change and uncertainty. It's about being fearless personally and professionally.
One of sports journalism's great ironies is that covering an Olympics can be wildly unhealthy. NBC shows athletes in peak health performing on the ice and snow, but not the haggard reporters subsisting for three weeks on stadium starches, cheap beer, deadlines, and little sleep.
When George Hirsch ran the New York City Marathon in 1976, the first year the course snaked through all five boroughs, the event was a lean affair. He and two thousand others dodged wayward bicycles and pedestrians on the streets, with little help from an anemic police presence.
It's not uncommon for some Khmer boxers to fight with dangerous frequency, sometimes as often as weekly or bi-weekly, getting up to three hundred or more fights in a career, with the length of a career varying from fighter to fighter, some engaging in bouts far past their prime.
If workplaces that enlist happiness consultants really care about worker satisfaction, why not offer better maternity and paternity policies? Daycare options? They could advise managers to stop calling workers to come in on weekends or expect them to answer emails late on weeknights.
As the U.S. prison population has surged over the decades, the legal profession's distaste for former inmates has become more conspicuous. And it isn't only law. Medical schools often have committees to evaluate cases and mitigating factors but are generally reluctant to admit ex-inmates.
The America's Cup World Series was created in 2011, with an eye toward conjuring more off-cycle interest and marketing opportunities. It coincided with the ascent of foiling catamarans, a type of boat that goes faster and looks almost Photoshopped, the way it practically floats in air when it races.
As the issue of youth fitness - from obesity to proper exercise regimens - takes on more resonance in schools and communities across the country, CrossFit Kids and other preschool fitness programs are raising questions about when and how children should start playing organized sports or hitting the gym.
For generations, minor-league baseball has been seen as the scrappier, sometimes seedier, counterpart to its big-league sibling. Games are often cloaked in strange and sometimes awkward theme nights. Some of the mascots are ragged or downright bizarre. The ballparks are smaller and filled with fewer fans.
VR could, in theory, connect sports fans in different geographical locations so they could watch a game together. Instead of a group text or Twitter stream of commentary playing out across time zones when a team is playing, our avatars could inhabit virtual stands, side by side with the rest of our digital tribe.
I've often wondered if the trade-off for growing up in the relative newness and freshness of the West Coast was befuddlement when it comes to historical preservation. We don't have many old things, and we don't really know what to do with the few that are around when our default response is to compost or field burn.
Long before social media made things like bib replication easier, banditing at major races was viewed as a brave act. Rebellious runners like John Tarrant gatecrashed races as a political statement, in protest of rules about amateurism that limited how much money athletes could earn in appearance fees and endorsements.
Instagram influencers project a specific, highly crafted image of perfection - one that is largely white, thin, and psychologically Zen. Critics argue that this boom, in turn, has helped fuel excessive self-promotion in which we post about only the good moments rather than reality - essentially, a distorted echo chamber.
Endnotes, often confused with footnotes that live at the bottom of a page, is that lump of text at the end of the book, sometimes even relegated to a tiny font size. They're often forgotten but, in nonfiction, particularly history books, can offer a fascinating footprint into the author's research, a joyful, geeky abyss.
So who or what is to blame for baseball games that go on forever? Two oft-cited culprits are constant replay calls and batters who leave the box in between every pitch to adjust their gloves and helmet and shin guards and elbow pads and then knock the dirt off their cleats before working up their stride for the next at-bat.
'Power breaking,' also called Hanmadang - which means something like celebration or festival in Korean - involves breaking large amounts of wood, concrete, granite, and the like with specific hand and foot techniques. Practitioners rely on repeated resistance training and the idea that, over time, the body can adapt to stress.
In the 1880s, women were decades away from earning the right to vote. Few owned property - if they were even permitted to do so. In addition to childcare obligations, many toiled in work that was either underpaid or not paid at all. Essentially, the gears of progress for women were moving slowly in just about every arena of life.
Throughout the Great Recession of 2008, the average 401(k) balance lost anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of value. Nobody was more harmed than baby boomers or recent retirees, who, unlike younger workers, didn't have the time for the market to rebound or were no longer contributing and therefore unable to invest when stocks were cheap.