http://sportandsociety.com Just another CommonGroundPublishing weblog Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:28:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en From Michael Wines, in The New York Times BEIJING  — If you build it, he will come,” Ray Kinsella, the farmer in the 1989 film “Field of Dreams,” hears, mystically, as he walks through his cornfield. So at seemingly ruinous cost, he razes the cornfield and builds a ball field, and ... http://sportandsociety.com/2010/02/13/after-summer-olympics-empty-shells-in-beijing/ We are very pleased to announce our eight graduate scholar recipients for the Inaugural International Conference on Sport and Society!  We are very excited to have their assistance with running the conference and eagerly welcome them to Vancouver! Our Scholarship Winners: Nancy Anderson Curtis Suver Anne-Marie Bourgeois Cindi Textor Rook Campbell Jesse Wagner Colin McGuire Jun Yue Please click here ... http://sportandsociety.com/2010/02/11/graduate-scholar-recipients-announced/ From The Economist THE Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver in three weeks’ time. An audio guide from our local correspondent tells visitors what to expect of this diverse, temperate city. "You need to recognise that while we may seem very similar in many respects, Canadians are not exactly like Americans. American executives, ... http://sportandsociety.com/2010/02/04/the-mild-west/ From Sam Kean in 3 quarks daily: Head injuries have dogged the National Football League since its very early days, since even before facemasks. But, donning the proud mantle of tobacco scientists everywhere, the NFL’s experts refused to admit until just a few months ago that it wasn’t a coincidence so many ... http://sportandsociety.com/2010/01/18/spartacus-and-pulling-gods-this-is-your-very-breakable-brain-on-nfl-sunday/ From Jessica Flint, in Vanity Fair Will Vancouver-born Milan Lucic make Canada’s 2010 Olympic hockey team when the roster is announced on Wednesday? Pray that the Zamboni gods will be so kind: the world wouldn’t want to be denied of what could be an epic Olympic rivalry between the 21-year-old Boston ... http://sportandsociety.com/2010/01/17/vancouver-2010-olympics-watch-hockey-player-milan-lucic/ From Jessica Flint, in Vanity Fair The first thing that struck me when I met 2006 Turin silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler earlier this year was how much bad ass is contained in such a little frame. After all, the five-foot-five-inch half-pipe snowboarder is best known for a daredevil trick called the ... http://sportandsociety.com/2009/12/16/vancouver-2010-olympics-watch-snowboarder-gretchen-bleiler/ From Michael Mewshaw, in The Washington Post Pro tennis could teach the mafia about omertà. Although dozens of champions have chattered away to ghostwriters, their memoirs have generally remained silent about the game's seamy realities. Presented to the public as clean family fun, an upscale entertainment for the country-club set, top-level ... http://sportandsociety.com/2009/12/14/game-set-and-match-agass/ [caption id="attachment_501" align="alignright" width="221" caption="Unfair advantage? Because they produce less force with each step, lightweight sprinting prostheses probably don't give amputee athletes a leg up. Credit: Orthopedic Specialty Hospital "][/caption] From Michael Torrice in ScienceNOW Daily News. In 2007, South African double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius became the first disabled athlete ... http://sportandsociety.com/2009/11/24/no-sprinting-advantage-with-prosthetic-limbs/ Christopher Green of York University and Ludy Benjamin of Texas A&M University are editors of Psychology Gets in the Game: Sport, Mind, and Behavior, 1880-1960, a new book from the University of Nebraska Press. Although sport psychology did not fully mature as a recognized discipline until the 1960s, pioneering psychologists ... http://sportandsociety.com/2009/11/13/new-history-of-sport-psychology/ From Malcolm Gladwell at The New Yorker One evening in August, Kyle Turley was at a bar in Nashville with his wife and some friends. It was one of the countless little places in the city that play live music. He’d ordered a beer, but was just sipping it, because he ... http://sportandsociety.com/2009/10/22/offensive-play-how-different-are-dogfighting-and-football/