How old?

After ignoring the background of this page (it’s a weblog, folks. Remember when those were "hip"?) for a while, I have recently found this neat little dohickey called the "blogtree" where one plugs in the blogs that inspired the creation of their website and it creates a family tree. I did so, and this is what HBII’s tree looks like. Neat! I even have a child blog, since Sean was so kind to list this site as a parent blog. All of the sibling blogs listed are outstanding, and I feel proud to keep company with them.


To do this project, I realized that HBII was so old that I didn’t really remember why I started it. Fortunately, the first ever post here spells it out, even if reading it was a little bit disconcerting and embarassing. Sort of like hearing your own voice on a tape recorder. (I don’t actually SOUND like that, do I? I would HATE me if I were you!) Then, while tweaking the sidebar I realized that I have forgotten exactly how I set this blog up. I know that I have to manually enter in the archive information, because I’ve never figured out how to make Blogger do it automatically, but I don’t remember how I deduced at which page the archives are stored. I also don’t remember how I tweaked Anil’s CSS code to make it work (I use that term loosely, as any Netscape users could attest), and I sometimes forget how to do things like post pictures. In short, I have been doing this for about 21 months and remain a fairly clueless coder. I will just have to work harder on my craft.

End of summer

The fall approaches. That means one thing: Football. SI has the Sooners as the #1 team, which is encouraging if meaningless. In fact, football in general is a meaningless diversion, but it is terribly engaging; twenty-two players on a field smashing into each other, each with a distinct job that they need to execute in concert for successful plays. There is so much strategy and so many good associations in my mind with football watching, it is unlikely to be something I give up just because of the social criticism. I mean, take the Title IX debate for instance; the law requires equality of opportunity for men’s and women’s sports, which the implementing agencies have long interpreted as maintaining proportionality of athletes to student body ratio (i.e., if the student body is 50-50 male/female, so should the athletes in the department). Unfortunately for everyone, football teams are bigger than any other sport, so the existence of football on campus means that Title IX compliance typically means that ‘minor’ men’s sports like gymnastics and wrestling get cut so the women’s teams can maintain this proportionality. The very nature of football and the fact that it has no female analog is a distorting effect on college campuses around the country, and I feel bad about it…. but I still love football. Go figure. (Incidentally, Frank Deford’s suggestion about exempting football from Title IX compliance has great merit, even if it does make me feel a little queasy, just because the law abhors exceptions (or ought to, if it doesn’t). In short, football will likely remain my guilty pleasure of the fall, and even my guilt will not be something I admit to often.