Yes, Brady kicked butt. The Greatest of All Time in professional football, the Tiger Woods or Ken Jennings of his sport put on a demonstration of what a GOAT looks like in action. Though he is now sailing under the piratical banner of the Tampa Bay Buccs, whenever I hear an announcer calling a Brady pass to Gronkowski I naturally think I'm watching a Patriots game. This was fun. The half time show, less so. Maybe the symbolism of the ranks and files of masked up (bandaged up?) faces escaped me. I fear that, like my contemporaries in general, I'm out of touch with youth culture, so I certainly didn't recognize the music. Some of the ads were clever. I enjoyed the Paramount ads, in which Patrick Stewart, unseen, was urging various pop culture figures to keep climbing a mountain. Beavis and Butthead were involved. Huh huh, nhuh huh. There was also a gig-economy ad for a service that helps you create a website for your own gig-economy business. The ad involved ...
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I somewhat regret having been so perfunctory in my discussion of Kant in my book on the history of modern philosophy. I've been making up for that lately on Quora, posting repeatedly on matters Kantian. Here I am getting all pedantic full throttle when another Quora denizen asked the meaning and significance of the phrase "synthetic a priori." ---------------- There are two different dichotomies involved. First, for Kant, (following Hume here), some propositions are synthetic and others are analytic. Roughly speaking, synthetic propositions refer to the objective world, whereas analytic propositions describe the concepts/tools that I may use to grapple with the world. In other words, if we think of knowing-the-world as watching a football game, then synthetic means “about the game and its outcome,” whereas analytic means “about what counts as a ‘point’ and what counts as a ‘win’ etc.” Secondly, taking from thinkers like Leibniz, Kant sees so...
This year the New England Patriots returned to the Super Bowl, led by coach Bill Belichick and dogged (for at least the second time in Belichick's time with the Patriots) by a cheating scandal coming in. Heck, even Bill Nye the science guy got into the act, demonstrating for his fans that a certain temperature change cannot deflate footballs. The Patriots were there to take the title away from the defending champions, the Seattle Seahawks. Never mind the stylized "seahawk" of the team's logo, I've posted a photo of an actual seahawk here for my discerning readers to admire. The game took place this year in Glendale, Arizona, University of Phoenix Stadium. The air in Arizona was dry (as always) and windless; the temperature got up to a high of 69 degrees that afternoon. This contrasted with both the northwest and northeast corners of the country, where the two contending teams come from. Super Bowl Sunday was a rainy day in Seattle, with a high of 48. and a ...
Last week, in trying to write a blog entry on Thanksgiving weekend football, I mistakenly stated that the Georgia-versus-Georgia-Tech game was to take place on Thanksgiving day itself. That was wrong. That game occurred two days later. Of course if you really care about college football, you necessarily get your news on the subject, and even your opinionating on the subject, other places. Still: to atone for getting this wrong, I'll revisit the game now. It was a humdinger, decided in overtime. In the fourth quarter, the GT Yellow Jackets, leading 21 to 17, started playing very defensively, as if their plan was to run out the clock. But GT quarterback Justin Thomas pump faked a pass while scrambling, lost control of the ball, and the Bulldogs took over. They then drove for a TD and one-point conversion, putting them up 24-21. By the time the Yellow Jackets got the ball back within scoring distance, time really was running out. Their kicker, Harris...
With all due respect to the Pilgrims, to the traditional sentiments of harvest time, and to expressions of gratitude, both cosmic and local, Thanksgiving Day for some of us constitutes chiefly the center of the football season -- its culmination for high schools, and a good time for the college games that serve as the natural lead-in to the wonders of the bowl-game season. Have you ever noticed, after all, how much a turkey looks like a football? My personal thoughts in this regard this year turn to my alma mater , Marist College, home of the Red Foxes. Their football season is over and it wasn't a resounding success. Their 11 games yielded a 4-7 record. But on the last of those games, November 15th, they kicked the butts of the Davidson Wildcats, with stand-out performances from their seniors. Of course, it sounds like a natural rivalry, a canine wild creature against a feline analog. One senior, running back Emmanuel Onakoya, scored two touchdowns in t...
Leno's been mocking the NFL of late, only in part because of the lengthening rap of the league's players. A sample of his material: It's now 32 NFL players that have been arrested since the Super Bowl. To give you an idea of how bad it's gotten, now when a team says they've hired a new defensive coordinator, they're talking about a lawyer. The latest NFL player to get arrested is New York Giants linebacker Dan Connor. He was arrested at the Philadelphia airport for carrying a switchblade. Experts say it’s the first time anyone in Philly has been able to stop a New York Giant in three years. A lifelong Cleveland Browns fan, a man 55 years old, recently passed away and for his last request he wanted six Cleveland Browns as pallbearers so the Browns can let him down one last time. That’s what he said. The bad news? They fumbled the coffin five yards from the grave.
With all due respect to the Pilgrims, to the traditional sentiments of harvest time, and to expressions of gratitude, both cosmic and local, Thanksgiving Day for some of us constitutes chiefly the center of the football season -- its culmination for high schools, and a good time for the college games that serve as the natural lead-in to the wonders of the bowl-game season. Have you ever noticed, after all, how much a turkey looks like a football? My personal thoughts in this regard this year turn to my alma mater , Marist College, home of the Red Foxes. They creamed the Valparaiso Crusaders on October 30 with the impressive score of 44 to 7, and with stand-out performances from safety Zach Adler (a sophomore) and Michael Rios (a senior). [Well, it was the day before Halloween, so it was kind of a holiday game.] Adler comes from Walden, NY and Rios from Miami, Florida. Of course, the natural rivalry for a team that calls itself the Crusaders would be one cal...