Concussions being the worry du jour, my county now requires all high school athletes to perform a baseline test. CDC helpfully explains, “Baseline tests are used to assess an athlete’s balance and brain function (including learning and memory skills, ability to pay attention or concentrate, and how quickly he or she thinks and solve problems), as well as for the presence of any concussion symptoms. Results from baseline tests (or pre-injury tests) can be used and compared to a similar exam conducted by a health care professional during the season if an athlete has a suspected concussion.”

So, the football and soccer teams were examined last week. And then the cross country, tennis, golf, and volleyball teams. I have no idea in which year or decade the last high school tennis player was knocked out, but when the next one returns a serve with her forehead, she’ll have documented evidence of how much dumber that misfortune will have left her.

[A blog comment of mine from nine years ago. It came to mind this morning, reading a Mormon globe-trotter lauding her un-Mormon economic choices.]

Riding in trains across Pennsylvania these past months [first half of 2004], I became interested in learning a little more about the Amish. Farming is their main occupation, and many of them use older, horse-powered methods. An interesting point for what follows is that at the beginning of the 20th Century their agricultural practices and lack of financial opulence were not nearly as distinctive as they are now. They stayed as they were and the surrounding world changed.

In many American communities, it is the common practice for husband and wife to both be employed. It wasn’t that way forty years ago, but it is now. Among Latter-day Saints, though, generally only the husband is employed, in keeping with the guide of church leaders. This will have the result of Latter-day Saint families having less money than they would otherwise and being overall a poorer people.

(more…)

Dissatisfied with the price and worth of high-speed rail in California, Elon Musk turned some of his SpaceX and Tesla engineers loose on the idea of regional transport between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Their white paper describes a pair of seven-foot diameter steel tubes mounted on concrete pylons along Interstate 5. The tubes are pumped down to 100 Pascals, or, as Musk’s team prefers to call it, 1/6 the atmospheric pressure of Mars. Inside the tubes, 28-passenger vehicles riding on air bearings would run the 350-mile route in 35 minutes, 70% of the time at near-sonic 760 mph.

(more…)