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American sprinter Justin Gatlin sets world record in the 100 meter dash: 9.76 seconds. But, could he beat a horse the length of a basketball court?
Update: Due to a rounding error on the timekeeper’s part, Gatlin merely tied the world record.
The Stev(ph)ens Dubner and Levitt report on some recent research suggesting that people who are good at things got good at them primarily through practice and not because of innate talent.
Their work, compiled in the “Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance,” a 900-page academic book that will be published next month, makes a rather startling assertion: the trait we commonly call talent is highly overrated. Or, put another way, expert performers — whether in memory or surgery, ballet or computer programming — are nearly always made, not born. And yes, practice does make perfect. These may be the sort of cliches that parents are fond of whispering to their children. But these particular cliches just happen to be true.
The talent myth described here seems to be distinct from that which Malcolm Gladwell talks about in relation to talented people and companies, but I’m sure parallels could be drawn. But back to the original article…I was particularly taken with the concept of “deliberate practice”:
Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome.
“Deliberate practice” reminds me of a video game a bunch of my friends are currently hooked on called Brain Age. Available for the handheld Nintendo DS, Brain Age is based on a Japanese brain training “game” developed by Dr. Ryuta Kawashima. The game measures the “age” of your brain based on your performance of simple tasks like memorizing a list of words or addition of small numbers. As you practice (deliberately), you get faster and more skilled at solving these mini-games and your brain age approaches that of a smarty-pants, twitchy-fingered teenager.
Speaking of talented teenagers, this week’s New Yorker contains an article (not online) on Ivan Lendl’s golfing daughters. In it, Lendl agrees that talent is created, not born:
“Can you create athletes, or do they just happen?” [Lendl] asked me not long ago. “I think you can create them, and I think that Tiger Woods’s father proved that. People will sometimes ask me, ‘How much talent did you have in tennis?’ I say, ‘Well, how do you measure talent?’ Yeah, sure, McEnroe had more feel for the ball. But I knew how to work, and I worked harder than he did. Is that a talent in itself? I think it is.”
Translation: there’s more than one way to be good at something. There’s something very encouraging and American about it, this idea that through hard work, you can become proficient and talented at pretty much anything.
Sam Anderson articulates his hatred for Kobe Bryant. “Since he’s a Jordan-like talent, Kobe clearly thinks that he’s entitled to the Jordan mythology, but he doesn’t have any of Jordan’s charisma or imagination.”
Discussion of various animals’ athletic abilities. Cheetahs can reach a speed of 45 mph in 2 seconds (3-4 strides)! Still no convincing answer for the man vs. horse question though.
Saturday was a sports viewing doubleheader in our household: the Kentucky Derby followed by a lackluster Lakers vs. Suns game 7. During the basketball game, the commentators referred to the speed of the Suns’ Leandro Barbosa and that plus the similarity of his name to Derby winner Barbaro’s led to a discussion about which of the two would win in a race the length of the basketball court. Three of us argued that the horse would win and one argued for the human winning.
So, how fast are horses and humans? In winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973, Secretariat averaged 37.5 miles/hr over a mile and a half. World record holder Asafa Powell averaged 22.9 miles/hr in the 100 meter dash. Jesse Owens raced horses over a 100 yard distance and beat them, but only because the horses reared at the sound of the starter’s pistol, giving him a sizable head-start. In 2004, in an annual race held in Wales, a chap named Huw Lobb beat a field of horses and other humans over a distance of 22-miles.
But that doesn’t do much in answering the question of which would win over the short distance of a basketball court (94 feet or 28.7 meters). I searched high and low online and found little about the acceleration of either horses or humans. No doubt horses are much faster than humans, but a man is probably quicker off the line. So I put the question to you in hopes that you can answer it:
In a 94-foot race between a human sprinter and a thoroughbred race horse, who would win? Assume a standing start for both, the horse races on dirt, the man runs on the court, and both horse and man are among the fastest at their respective distances.
The Kentucky Derby is “the weirdest two minutes in sports”. “What we get, then, is a not-very-representative sample of thoroughbreds running a far-from-typical race under far-from-typical circumstances.”
Henry Abbott lets us know about Flint Star, a documentary film about basketball in Flint, Michigan. “It’s amazing to watch. Six year olds who can dribble between their legs and hit a fadeaway. Dribble penetration followed by vicious alley-oop dunks. Flagrant fouls that will make you bark out loud as you’re watching the DVD in bed next to your sleeping wife.”
Gladwell’s reading Game of Shadows (which alleges that Barry Bonds took steroids) and proposes that record setters like Bonds, Flo Jo, and Bob Beamon should be subjected to a high degree of statistical analysis before their records should be allowed to stand. (followup)
This Onion story is right on the edge between humor and tasteless: Kent State Basketball Team Massacred By Ohio National Guard In Repeat Of Classic 1970 Matchup. I laughed, but I felt bad about it.
Update: The burger w/donut buns is not a new invention…it’s commonly called the “Luther Burger” after Luther Vandross. Double true. (thx, scott)
“What would your ideal fantasy-baseball lineup be if you had to create it using only characters from classic Nintendo video games?” Toad and Mario from Super Mario Bros make the starting lineup.
MC Hammer has posted a love letter to Barry Bonds on his weblog. “As you close in on the record, and the day of reckoning is at hand, there will be many attemps by the bloodhounds to shake you and force you to quit.” David Jacobs thinks the fans and the media are being hypocritical about Bonds’ situation.
Not a big surprise, but it looks like Barry Bonds took all sorts of performance-enhancing drugs in the last few years of his career, including the season he hit 73 home runs.
Kirby Puckett dies at age 45. Aw, shoot. As a local, I cheered the Twins on to their two World Series victories…I can still hear Bob Casey’s “KIR-beeeeeeeeee PUCK-it” echoing around the Metrodome.
I’ve got a few stories about the Winter Olympics open in tabs, so in the interest of getting rid of them:
- Photographer Vincent Laforet discusses his process in getting the photographs he wants.
- How the broadcast graphics were done for NBC’s coverage of the Olympics.
- The Nation on what went wrong with NBC’s coverage.
- Here’s the New Yorker’s take on the TV coverage.
Finally, Gelf Magazine compares Olympic predictions with the actual results. The media outlets surveyed all predicted higher medal counts for the US, but weren’t off by that much (aside from the ridiculous AP predicitons). Only NBC and Nike were surprised that Bode Miller sucked so royally.
Part 2 of the Bill Simmons/Malcolm Gladwell conversation is even better than part 1. They really rip into what Isiah Thomas has done as GM of the Knicks. “The mess [Thomas] is creating right now in New York will be studied by business school students 50 years from now alongside Enron and pets.com.”
Part one of a wonderful rambling email exchange between sportswriter Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell. Part two on the morrow. (thx, richard)
The Captain of Design himself points us to the ski trail maps of James Nieuhues. Nieuhues is a prolific fellow…he’s done paintings for most of the large ski resorts in the western US.
Russia plans to drive a golf ball off of the ISS with a gold-plated, scandium alloy six-iron into a four-year, low-earth orbit….which may actually damage the space station if the ball is not “hit out of the station’s orbital plane”. I understand this event will be debuting at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.
A lesson in sports uniform typography: vertically arched lettering versus the easier-but-cheesier radially arched lettering. (via do)
Video compilation of the best dunks from the 2006 NBA dunk contest. Andre Iguodala’s off-the-back-of-the-backboard and behind-the-back dunks were both very sick and wrong.
The history of the NBA logo…and yes, that’s Jerry West. (via th)
Gold medal winning mogulist Dale Begg-Smith, described during the Olympic telecast as a successful entrepreneur, was actually a bigwig at a spyware company. Business aside, his final run wasn’t good enough to warrant the gold. (via /.)
A collection of “stupid nude calendars”. I confess that I found this while looking for photos from the racy curling calendar…but I came away empty-handed. (Only slightly NSFW.)
Very unflattering (and excellent) article about Michael Jordan, written during his second (third?) comeback with the Washington Wizards. (via truehoop)
I did some skiing last week up in Vermont and took some videos with my phone on the slopes. The quality isn’t great, but hopefully you’ll get the gist.
A short clip of me skiing through the trees:
Riding the chair lift:
And one of me skiing behind Meg:
The motion in the last one reminds me of Quake…like I’m chasing after her with a railgun or something.
ABC (owned by Disney) traded former Monday Night Football announcer Al Michaels to NBC for, in part, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character created by Walt Disney in 1927, pre-Mickey.
Since I’ve been skiing a little bit recently (for the first time in years), I decided to check out what was happening online in the skiing world. Specifically I wondered if there were any ski blogs out there and if the many ski magazines offer online archives of their content.
Just like every other topic under the sun, skiing is well covered in blog land; no chance for fresh tracks here. A couple of quick searches uncovered blogs about backcountry skiing, New England skiing, ski adventures from around the country, skiing products and fashion, Colorado skiing, an attempt to ski 120 days of powder, Euro-centric skiing, and even a skiing videoblog.
Most of the skiing blogs I found focus on their respective author’s adventures on the slopes. If someone wanted to start a skiing meta-blog (blogging not just skiing adventures but other skiing-related topics and pointing to other people’s adventures), would there be enough good information out there to point to? The magazine racks of ski country convenience stores are filled with all kinds of periodicals about skiing…how much of that content is online? From what I can tell, the skiing magazines do offer content on their sites, but not necessarily from the pages of their print magazines. Both SKI Magazine and Skiing Magazine have archived print articles on their sites, but only from June 2005 and earlier. Both have other resources like forums, skiing news, resort details, videos, and online-only features. Neither site is organized particularly well for quick information perusal and retrieval. Skipressworld offers PDF versions of their entire print magazine online, including the current issue. Powder magazine has some online archives as well as online-only features like videos and message boards.
And so on…Google News is currently featuring over 10,000 articles about skiing (although much of that is due to the impending Winter Olympics), Flickr has thousands of skiing photos, and nearly all the ski areas an resorts have web sites on which you can check the current conditions, the lines at the chairlift via webcams, and trail maps. Killington is even doing podcasts.
So there’s lots of skiing info out there. I know there must be a few skiers among the kottke.org readership…what are your favorite skiing sites and resources online?
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