A very interesting article at wired.com about a new technology to focus sound shock waves on a very specific location within the body, and it appears very effective in stimulating the growth of new blood vessels. Very good for people with hearts with already clogged vessels!!
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
video
Tsuyoshi Nagabuchi is awesome. The more I listen and see him in videos, the more he reminds me of one of my favorite singers, David Bowie.
a video
rough lyrics
a video
rough lyrics
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Heisman, the Coach Behind the Trophy
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/sports/ncaafootball/08heisman.html
John Heisman, the Coach Behind the Trophy
By BILL PENNINGTON
Published: December 8, 2006
The old football coach had a cold, and as it worsened that
September, his wife summoned a doctor to the couple's
Midtown Manhattan apartment. A week earlier, the coach
had played 18 holes of golf and worked out at his local gym.
But now he had pneumonia, and his condition was
deteriorating by the day.
Then, on Oct. 3, 1936, a crisp Saturday and a good day for
a college football game, the man with what would become
the sport's most famous name died at home.
Seventy years ago, the passing of John William Heisman a
few days before his 67th birthday caused little stir in New
York, not as the Yankees were defeating the Giants in their
first World Series with Joe DiMaggio. Several days later,
Heisman was buried in Rhinelander, Wis., the hometown
of his widow, Edith.
Tomorrow, the 72nd Heisman Trophy will be awarded to
the nation's most outstanding college football player. In the
seven decades since Heisman's death, the small, flush-with-
the-ground gravestone at his resting place has rarely been
visited. It has never, for example, been visited by a Heisman
Trophy winner, cemetery officials said.
Mike Garrett, the 1965 winner, might have best summarized
the attitude of the college football community. Handed the
trophy 41 years ago, Garrett asked: "The award is wonderful,
but who's Heisman?"
Heisman, born two weeks before the first American football
game was played between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869,
is often referred to as a pioneering coach - when he is
remembered at all. It would be more accurate to call Heisman
someone who acted as the game's conscience. He was a
forceful defender of its soul and a tireless advocate of its potential.
Without John Heisman, there might not be a forward pass in
football, and without a forward pass, the game would probably
have died from disinterest or been abolished because of its
fatal brutality.
Aside from leading the fight for the legalization of the pass in
the early 1900s, Heisman pushed to divide the game into
quarters and created the center snap. The ball had previously
been rolled on the ground. Heisman introduced the "hike"
vocal signal and the first audible at the line. He invented the
hidden ball trick and what would now be called the fumblerooski.
Because he wanted fans to understand play-calling, he made it
easier for them to follow the downs and yardage needed by
erecting something else new at games: a scoreboard.
He was a man of many faces and skills, and in a lifetime, he
used them to help create what is now an accepted cultural
American character, the autocratic football coach. Despite
an Ivy League education in law, Heisman never became a
lawyer, but he instinctively honed a talent for commanding,
melodramatic locker-room oratory.
Heisman, standing before his players when he first met them,
would hold aloft a football and ask, "What is this?"
Answering his own question, Heisman said: "It is a prolate
spheroid in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly
over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing."
Heisman would pause and add: "Better to have died as a
small boy than to fumble this football."
He moved around the country helping spread the growth of
the game like a coaching Johnny Appleseed, taking jobs
in Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia. With the
game's popularity surging in the South in the 1910s,
Heisman's 1917 Georgia Tech squad became the first
Southern team to win the unanimous college football
national championship. Heisman, who was known to bench
players for poor grades, also became among the first
football coaches to anger an institution's faculty when his
annual salary of $9,000 was higher than any professor's.
He was also a prolific writer, authoring a book, "Principles
of Football," and a series of football columns for Collier's
magazine. Ever curious, Heisman had many side jobs,
including roles in Shakespearean summer stock plays.
But football was his life's work. He had played the game
since 1883 as a high schooler in the western Pennsylvania
oil town of Titusville and later as a 150-pound lineman for
Brown and Pennsylvania universities.
He seemed a paradox to most who knew him. As a middle-
aged coach, he would bang shoulders with his 20-year-old
linemen in practice, then excuse himself to leave early to
attend the opera. He used a silken cord around his neck
to hold a small, effete set of eyeglasses that he would prop
on a flattened nose he broke while blocking a punt against
Penn State in 1890.
There is little in the early stages of football that Heisman
did not see, including the growing fanaticism of booster
groups and the interest of gamblers, as regional powers
began to face off.
Scouting a North Carolina-Georgia game in 1895, Heisman
said he saw the first forward pass in history when a bungled
punt attempt led a desperate punter to illegally fling the foot-
ball over the line to a teammate who ran for a touchdown.
Heisman walked away convinced it was the play that would
save football from itself. As Heisman wrote, violent scrums
based around bruising running plays were "killing the game
as well as the players."
In 1904-5, 44 players had been reported killed in football
games, with hundreds sustaining serious injuries. Heisman
said the forward pass "would scatter the mob."
As Wiley Lee Umphlett wrote in his 1992 book, "Creating
the Big Game," Heisman began to forcefully lobby Walter
Camp, shepherd of the national rules committee. When
Camp did not act swiftly enough, Heisman rallied other
coaches and newspaper reporters to pressure Camp and
the committee. In 1906, the forward pass was legalized
with several constraints that limited its effectiveness.
Heisman pressed on, and the restrictions were eventually
lifted.
Heisman's 36-year coaching career, after more stops at
Penn, Washington & Jefferson, and Rice, concluded in
1927 with a 190-70-16 record. He happily retired to New
York, where he owned part of a sporting goods company.
When the newly opened Downtown Athletic Club recruited
Heisman to be its athletic director in 1930, he started a
popular touchdown club. Five years later, the club came
up with the idea of an annual award recognizing the best
college football player in the land.
The club would give away a trophy, and it wanted to name
the award for Heisman. Although he had never been shy
about self-promotion, Heisman vociferously declined. He
did not like the idea of an award singling out one player
in a team game. The 1935 trophy was named the Down-
town Athletic Club award. Two months after Heisman's
death, the club renamed the award. For the next 28 years,
until her death in 1964, Edith Maora Heisman received a
bouquet of flowers from the Downtown Athletic Club during
the week of the award announcement.
At the Forest Home Cemetery, where Edith and John
Heisman are buried, the current sexton and his longtime
predecessor said that a few people stop by every
December looking to visit the gravesite.
"It was never anyone famous," said Richard Winquist, who
retired as the sexton in 2003 after 32 years and whose
father had been the sexton for 14 years before him. "One
time, it was a couple of newlyweds on their honeymoon.
The woman wasn't too happy about it, but the bridegroom
said he was a big college football fan and he knew
Heisman was buried here, so he stopped to have his
picture taken. Like I said, she wasn't too happy. But he was."
About 10,000 are buried at Forest Home Cemetery.
"It's pretty hard to find without help," Winquist said. "One
year, 1983, somebody left four football tickets to a
Minnesota-Illinois game on the grave and then wrote an
anonymous letter to the editor of the local paper saying
we should do more to promote Heisman.
"I always kept an eye on the grave. I'd walk by it every
morning. He's a piece of history. You just sort of felt it.
Who hasn't heard of the Heisman?"
.
.
--
John Heisman, the Coach Behind the Trophy
By BILL PENNINGTON
Published: December 8, 2006
The old football coach had a cold, and as it worsened that
September, his wife summoned a doctor to the couple's
Midtown Manhattan apartment. A week earlier, the coach
had played 18 holes of golf and worked out at his local gym.
But now he had pneumonia, and his condition was
deteriorating by the day.
Then, on Oct. 3, 1936, a crisp Saturday and a good day for
a college football game, the man with what would become
the sport's most famous name died at home.
Seventy years ago, the passing of John William Heisman a
few days before his 67th birthday caused little stir in New
York, not as the Yankees were defeating the Giants in their
first World Series with Joe DiMaggio. Several days later,
Heisman was buried in Rhinelander, Wis., the hometown
of his widow, Edith.
Tomorrow, the 72nd Heisman Trophy will be awarded to
the nation's most outstanding college football player. In the
seven decades since Heisman's death, the small, flush-with-
the-ground gravestone at his resting place has rarely been
visited. It has never, for example, been visited by a Heisman
Trophy winner, cemetery officials said.
Mike Garrett, the 1965 winner, might have best summarized
the attitude of the college football community. Handed the
trophy 41 years ago, Garrett asked: "The award is wonderful,
but who's Heisman?"
Heisman, born two weeks before the first American football
game was played between Princeton and Rutgers in 1869,
is often referred to as a pioneering coach - when he is
remembered at all. It would be more accurate to call Heisman
someone who acted as the game's conscience. He was a
forceful defender of its soul and a tireless advocate of its potential.
Without John Heisman, there might not be a forward pass in
football, and without a forward pass, the game would probably
have died from disinterest or been abolished because of its
fatal brutality.
Aside from leading the fight for the legalization of the pass in
the early 1900s, Heisman pushed to divide the game into
quarters and created the center snap. The ball had previously
been rolled on the ground. Heisman introduced the "hike"
vocal signal and the first audible at the line. He invented the
hidden ball trick and what would now be called the fumblerooski.
Because he wanted fans to understand play-calling, he made it
easier for them to follow the downs and yardage needed by
erecting something else new at games: a scoreboard.
He was a man of many faces and skills, and in a lifetime, he
used them to help create what is now an accepted cultural
American character, the autocratic football coach. Despite
an Ivy League education in law, Heisman never became a
lawyer, but he instinctively honed a talent for commanding,
melodramatic locker-room oratory.
Heisman, standing before his players when he first met them,
would hold aloft a football and ask, "What is this?"
Answering his own question, Heisman said: "It is a prolate
spheroid in which the outer leather casing is drawn tightly
over a somewhat smaller rubber tubing."
Heisman would pause and add: "Better to have died as a
small boy than to fumble this football."
He moved around the country helping spread the growth of
the game like a coaching Johnny Appleseed, taking jobs
in Ohio, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia. With the
game's popularity surging in the South in the 1910s,
Heisman's 1917 Georgia Tech squad became the first
Southern team to win the unanimous college football
national championship. Heisman, who was known to bench
players for poor grades, also became among the first
football coaches to anger an institution's faculty when his
annual salary of $9,000 was higher than any professor's.
He was also a prolific writer, authoring a book, "Principles
of Football," and a series of football columns for Collier's
magazine. Ever curious, Heisman had many side jobs,
including roles in Shakespearean summer stock plays.
But football was his life's work. He had played the game
since 1883 as a high schooler in the western Pennsylvania
oil town of Titusville and later as a 150-pound lineman for
Brown and Pennsylvania universities.
He seemed a paradox to most who knew him. As a middle-
aged coach, he would bang shoulders with his 20-year-old
linemen in practice, then excuse himself to leave early to
attend the opera. He used a silken cord around his neck
to hold a small, effete set of eyeglasses that he would prop
on a flattened nose he broke while blocking a punt against
Penn State in 1890.
There is little in the early stages of football that Heisman
did not see, including the growing fanaticism of booster
groups and the interest of gamblers, as regional powers
began to face off.
Scouting a North Carolina-Georgia game in 1895, Heisman
said he saw the first forward pass in history when a bungled
punt attempt led a desperate punter to illegally fling the foot-
ball over the line to a teammate who ran for a touchdown.
Heisman walked away convinced it was the play that would
save football from itself. As Heisman wrote, violent scrums
based around bruising running plays were "killing the game
as well as the players."
In 1904-5, 44 players had been reported killed in football
games, with hundreds sustaining serious injuries. Heisman
said the forward pass "would scatter the mob."
As Wiley Lee Umphlett wrote in his 1992 book, "Creating
the Big Game," Heisman began to forcefully lobby Walter
Camp, shepherd of the national rules committee. When
Camp did not act swiftly enough, Heisman rallied other
coaches and newspaper reporters to pressure Camp and
the committee. In 1906, the forward pass was legalized
with several constraints that limited its effectiveness.
Heisman pressed on, and the restrictions were eventually
lifted.
Heisman's 36-year coaching career, after more stops at
Penn, Washington & Jefferson, and Rice, concluded in
1927 with a 190-70-16 record. He happily retired to New
York, where he owned part of a sporting goods company.
When the newly opened Downtown Athletic Club recruited
Heisman to be its athletic director in 1930, he started a
popular touchdown club. Five years later, the club came
up with the idea of an annual award recognizing the best
college football player in the land.
The club would give away a trophy, and it wanted to name
the award for Heisman. Although he had never been shy
about self-promotion, Heisman vociferously declined. He
did not like the idea of an award singling out one player
in a team game. The 1935 trophy was named the Down-
town Athletic Club award. Two months after Heisman's
death, the club renamed the award. For the next 28 years,
until her death in 1964, Edith Maora Heisman received a
bouquet of flowers from the Downtown Athletic Club during
the week of the award announcement.
At the Forest Home Cemetery, where Edith and John
Heisman are buried, the current sexton and his longtime
predecessor said that a few people stop by every
December looking to visit the gravesite.
"It was never anyone famous," said Richard Winquist, who
retired as the sexton in 2003 after 32 years and whose
father had been the sexton for 14 years before him. "One
time, it was a couple of newlyweds on their honeymoon.
The woman wasn't too happy about it, but the bridegroom
said he was a big college football fan and he knew
Heisman was buried here, so he stopped to have his
picture taken. Like I said, she wasn't too happy. But he was."
About 10,000 are buried at Forest Home Cemetery.
"It's pretty hard to find without help," Winquist said. "One
year, 1983, somebody left four football tickets to a
Minnesota-Illinois game on the grave and then wrote an
anonymous letter to the editor of the local paper saying
we should do more to promote Heisman.
"I always kept an eye on the grave. I'd walk by it every
morning. He's a piece of history. You just sort of felt it.
Who hasn't heard of the Heisman?"
.
.
--
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
oops
I guess last week I left a sortof angry rant on here. I had completely forgotten about it, and was just checking on my blog here and noticed it. Sorry about that, I try really hard to maintain a positive attitude about things, but have some stuff I'm always working on. Anyways, replaced that post with this one so, let's just try to forget about that :)
Been working out since Thanksgiving, is really doing me a lot of good. I feel like I have more energy every day, and I sortof feel like I am able to think a little more clearly, which is always good for me :)
Anyways sorry about the retarded angry post from last week, I'm always trying hard to not let stupid stuff like that bother me.
Been working out since Thanksgiving, is really doing me a lot of good. I feel like I have more energy every day, and I sortof feel like I am able to think a little more clearly, which is always good for me :)
Anyways sorry about the retarded angry post from last week, I'm always trying hard to not let stupid stuff like that bother me.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Friday, December 01, 2006
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