This winter the women’s USA hockey team is training in the Twin Cities. Besides playing various college teams, they also play in a men’s elite no-check league at the Schwan’s Super Rink. I went out there last night to photograph their game against the Lumberjacks. Team USA battled back from a 2-goal deficit to get a 2-2 tie. Better photos from last night can be seen here.
Melinda Beck had a fascinating column in the Health Journal portion of today’s Wall Street Journal. Her column focused on the nocebo effect - the propensity of patients to display various symptoms after being told that these symptoms could occur based on the treatment they are receiving. Basically, you read the warning labels on drugs at your own risk, because you may well begin to display some of the side effects simply by knowing that they exist. Really, you might ask? Beck notes that about 25% of patients who get inert placebos during clinical trials complain of side effects. In a study from decades ago, hospital patients were given sugar water, and told it might make them sick; 80% vomited.
The nocebo effect tends to only go so far, however. Really serious side effects (e.g., toxic epidermal necrolysis - skin falling off in large sheets) are less subject to the nocebo effect.
This Saturday the University of Minnesota winds up the regular season with a Big 10 football game against Iowa. This game is played for a trophy, a trophy of a pig, Floyd of Rosedale. This morning the Minneapolis Star Tribune had a story about the origin of the trophy. When the game between the two schools was played in 1935, the governors of Minnesota and Iowa had a bet (in part to diffuse racial tensions), with the loser having to supply a prize hog to the winner. After the 13-6 Minnesota victory, Governor Clyde Herring settled up by delivering a Rosedale Farms hog. This hog was the brother of the boar who played “Blue Boy” in the 1933 film “State Fair”.
This morning I went down to Roseville to photograph a men’s bandy game between the United States and Canada. It began snowing during the first half, and I called it quits at halftime with the US leading 4-1. Some shots from this morning can be seen on the web here.
This afternoon I went over to Crystal to photograph the Minnesota State Cyclocross Championships. The weather had a chance of being nasty, but the day turned out quite nice - temperature above freezing, no snow, a lot of sunshine and wind that wasn’t all that bad. Better photos from today can be seen at my bike photos web site.
This fall I photographed quite a bit of football - 15 games actually. Thus, it seemed reasonable that football should have its own section on my photos web site, just the way bike racing does. So, today I updated the site. If you have absolutely nothing else to do, take a look.
On Saturday, Mark Lilla had a column in the Wall Street Journal titled “The Perils of ‘Populist Chic’”. In the column he argued that the conservative movement had been ascendant in America for 40 years because it had been intellectual ascendant. Out of that tradition arose a series of conservative intellectuals (e.g., William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol, Daniel Patrick Moynihan) that, even if one did not agree with them, one had to take seriously. These were folks who were admired for their maturity and seriousness, their historical perspective, their sense of proportion. But, times have changed and the conservative movement in America is now run by folks who no longer see their role educating and enobling a populist political tendency. What had been disdain for liberal intellectuals has morphed into disdain for the intellectual class as a whole.
There was a time when conservative intellectuals raised the level of American public debate and helped to keep it sober. Those days are gone.”
I had recently been mulling over those kinds of thoughts, but needless to say Lilla gave me a more well rounded version of what I had been thinking.
Having just returned from spending several weeks with brother in Idaho as he recuperates from his bicycle accident, I went out to Blaine this afternoon where they were having some cyclocross races on the site of the velodrome. The temperatures were right around freezing, and the wind was blowing pretty good, so it was basically a miserable day. But, I got a few decent shots, which can be seen on my bike photos web site.
This last Sunday my brother, Doug Stuart, had a serious bicycle accident in Pocatello, Idaho. Since then he has been in the hospital in Idaho Falls, where they will be performing an operation next Monday to fuse vertebrae in his neck. I am going out to Idaho tomorrow to be with him. His son, Chris, thoughtfully set up a web site for Doug - click here to visit it.
This afternoon I went over to Crystal to photograph a high school cross country meet. Photos from today are on the web at my cross country photos web site.
