Analyzing Healthy Weight

What’s the “right” weight? It’s a question that doctors and their patients have wrestled with for years, and it’s clear that the standards are changing as human diet, nutrition, activity level, and general health are changing. Humans during the 1400s, being subject to periodic famines, plagues, and disease that stunted their growth, and engaging in day-long physical labor to put modest amounts of food on the table, probably looked a lot different from modern Americans. Even in the last century, the standards have changed. Consider, for example, that the average G.I. in World War II was about 5′ 8″ and weighed about 150 pounds. These days, you don’t see many 150-pound men in the average American city.

So what’s the “right” weight now, in an era of relative food abundance and modern medical treatments for human disease, where many people work at sedentary desk jobs?

For years, the accepted method for determining health weight has been the body mass index. The BMI was simple: it took your weight in kilograms and divided it by your height in meters, squared. The target zone for a healthy you was a BMI between 18.5 and 24.9. Now there is a debate about whether the BMI is really an effective tool, because it doesn’t consider where human fat cells have accumulated. That’s important, because the location of fat cells matters to human health and is related to conditions like diabetes, heart disease, and some forms of cancer. Abdominal fat–that “stubborn belly fat” that clickbait articles claim you can melt away with some “weird trick” or special drink–is more unhealthy than fat that accumulates around the hips, and “visceral fat,” the abdominal fat that builds up around the internal organs, is especially harmful.

As a result, some researchers are urging that use of the BMI be replaced by a focus on the waist to hip ratio. The waist to hip ratio is easy to use, too–you apply a tape measure to your waistline and your hips, and determine the ratio between them. Lower waist to hip ratios mean lower abdominal fat accumulation. And a recent study found that the waist-to-hip ratio was a better predictor of early mortality than the BMI.

There’s no doubt that losing excess weight is helpful to overall health; your hips, knees, and ankles will thank you. But the distribution of weight also matters. We’ll probably never avoid the scale at the doctor’s office, but the predictive value of the waist-to-hip ratio may mean your doctor will be taking out a tape measure, too, at your next exam.

The Random Restaurant Tour — XLV

Toraya Moroccan Cuisine, located at 72 East Lynn Street less than a block from the Ohio Statehouse, is a new establishment that holds itself out as the first authentic Moroccan restaurant, serving halal food, in downtown Columbus. Dr. Science and I are always on the lookout for new ethnic food options, so yesterday we rambled over on a cool fall day to give Toraya a try for lunch.

In addition to the Moroccan cuisine, a few things about Toraya are very distinctive. First, it’s a white tablecloth set-up, which you don’t see that often in a lunch spot. Second, rather than a menu, you get handed a business card with a QR code so you can call up the menu on your cellphone, so don’t forget to bring yours. And third, the menu, which you can see here, offers food at a wide spectrum of price points–ranging from tagine dishes for less than $10, to sandwiches for under $15, to tagine dishes between $20 and $25. Dr. Science and I, appetites stimulated by the fine fall weather and a spirited discussion of just how cool NASA’s DART mission was, decided to go for something on the high end of the price scale.

I opted for the meatballs tagine–because who wouldn’t want meatballs for lunch?–and Dr. Science chose the chicken tagine. A tagine is a pyramid-like clay pot with a vent on top, as shown above, that is used in cooking the dish. Our meal started with a piping hot pot of honey-sweetened tea, which you pour into small glasses, Moroccan-style. And when our orders came, we learned that Toraya doesn’t scrimp on the food. I got a hefty portion of meatballs, very attractively presented in a colorful tagine, a bowl of saffron rice, and a basket of pita bread, as well as a piece of candy. Dr. Science’s portion was equally large. We agreed that you could easily share these dishes, or take some home to reheat for dinner, but since we were both famished we laid into our food with gusto and finished it all, except for the mound of pita bread.

My meatballs were great, and not overcooked as is often the case with meatballs. They came in a red sauce that had a very good flavor that paired well with the saffron rice. I first ate them by forking a meatball, some sauce, and some rice onto one of the quarters of pita bread to create a de facto sandwich, which was a tasty, messy, and fun way to eat the food. Dr. Science sampled some of the meatballs, and I tried a wedge of his chicken tagine dish, which was tender and mildly seasoned and also tasted good on the pita. After a while, I decided to ditch the pita so as not to fill myself up and just went straight for the meatball and rice combo, and that was a satisfying culinary experience, too.

When we finished, Dr. Science and I agreed that we would definitely come back to Toraya. We hope we’ll have the chance to do so, because the 72 East Lynn location is a bit of a revolving door for restaurants; we’d tried the predecessor in that spot, called Aroma, only a year ago, and now it is gone and Toraya has taken its place. We’re hoping that Toraya succeeds where others have failed, because it’s nice to have a little Moroccan flavor in downtown Columbus.

The DART Hits The Bullseye

Our space neighborhood is filled with comets, meteors, asteroids, and other random bits of rocky flotsam and jetsam, any one of which could come plummeting through the Earth’s atmosphere and slam into our planet. Over Earth’s long history, many objects have done precisely that. That reality is of no small concern, because if the object is large enough, the impact could have catastrophic, climate-altering consequences. Some scientists theorize, for example, that the extinction of the dinosaurs occurred because of the after-effects of a gigantic and devastating meteor strike that occurred 65 million years ago.

The fact that humans haven’t had to deal with a similar random, collision-caused disaster has been the product of sheer dumb luck–until now. Thanks to the scientists and engineers at NASA, and the successful test on Monday of a suicidal spacecraft called the Double Asteroid Rendezvous Test (“DART”) probe, we’ve finally got a fighting chance.

The DART mission sought to show that the paths of killer asteroids could be deflected away from Earth by being rammed by a spacecraft. The target of the mission, at a distance about 7 million miles from our planet, was an asteroid called Dimorphos, and the goal was to change its orbit around a larger asteroid called Didymos. The DART probe, which was about the size of a golf cart and weighed 1,320 pounds, slammed into Dimorphos at a brisk 14,000 miles per hour rate, with the goal of nudging the asteroid into a speedier orbit around Didymos. Happily, the DART probe hit the Dimorphos bullseye, and as it approached it provided a continuous stream of photos, like the one above, that made the asteroid target look like a rock-studded egg in space. The ultimate crash of the DART into the target also was captured by many Earth-based telescopes. You can see the video of the collision taken from one telescope here.

So, did the ultimate sacrifice willingly undertaken by the DART probe successfully change the orbit of Didymos, as we hhope? We don’t know for sure, yet, but we’ll find out as the asteroid is monitored, and its orbit path is measured, over the next few months. But just being able to navigate a golf cart-sized spacecraft moving at 14,000 miles an hour into a moving asteroid seven million miles away is a pretty good start to developing a planetary defense system that will protect our species, and other inhabitants of planet Earth, from the ravages of killer asteroids.

Back To Borax

Yesterday I had a very juicy burger for lunch. When I went to the restroom to wash my hands after I was finished, I found this soap dispenser offering “Boraxo” powdered hand soap to help with the wash-up process.

Boraxo? As in 20 Mule Team Borax, the long-time laundry soap sponsor of Death Valley Days, the old TV western that Dad used to watch?

Borax is a sodium compound that is found in places like Death Valley–hence the logic of the old TV show sponsorship–where water evaporated and left behind dried mineral deposits. Boraxo soap is a white granular powder. You use the plunger at the bottom of the dispenser to apply Boraxo while your hands are wet. The water dissolves the powder into a gritty, soapy substance that, in my view, does a very effective job of giving your hands a thorough cleansing scrub.

Borax used to be a popular cleaning ingredient, but it fell out of favor with some people because its grittiness and alkaline component can irritate your skin. But the Boraxo dispenser in the bathroom suggests that it is being rebranded as “naturally sourced,” “non-toxic,” and “eco-friendly.” In short, they’ve apparently got the 20-mule teams at work again and headed out to the Death Valley deposits to gather the borax.

The return of borax soap in the name of eco-friendly cleaning makes me wonder if we might see the resurgence of Lava soap, which was made with actual pieces of pumice–volcanic rock that also could accurately be described as “naturally sourced.” Lava commercials featured large male hands covered with axle grease that were quickly scoured to a pristine state after a rough encounter with the Lava soap, and mothers everywhere thought that if Lava soap could defeat axle grease, it might actually get the layers of dirt and grime off the hands and faces of 9-year-old boys before they say down to the family dinner.

With the emphasis on eco-friendly products, we might be moving back to the era when cleaning products were a little bit tougher than the fragrant soaps and foams that dominate modern bathrooms, but aren’t found in nature. You might want to give Boraxo a try–and keep an eye out for Lava at your neighborhood supermarket.

The Guardians Of The ‘Land

Something pretty amazing happened yesterday. The Cleveland Guardians beat the Texas RAngers, 10-4, and clinched the American League Central division title. It’s Cleveland’s first division title since 2018, and it is a pretty amazing development because no one–except perhaps the Guardians themselves–thought they had even a remote chance of winning the division. Many pundits picked the Guardians to finish last, with a record below .500.

The reasoning of the baseball know-it-alls was easy to understand. During the off season, Cleveland didn’t really make any significant free agent signings or other big moves. Instead, the Guardians made the decision to give the kids in their farm system a chance, and came out of spring training with the youngest team in the majors and a roster filled with rookies. The Guardians’ management then wisely entrusted the team to the capable hands of Cleveland manager Terry (“Tito”) Francona–who has a rare talent for spotting a team’s strengths and playing baseball in a way that accentuates those strengths.

Francona recognized that the Guardians had a core of good starting pitching, and he has always been a wizard at putting together a good bullpen, fitting the pitchers into designated roles, and then employing the staff to minimize scoring by the opponent without exhausting and burning out his stars while building the bullpen’s collective confidence. Francona teams also traditionally play sound defense, to complement the pitching.

On offense, though, the challenge would be scoring runs. These Guardians don’t have players (other than stalwart Jose Ramirez) who bash home runs by the bushel. Instead, they developed into a team that, from rookie leadoff hitter Steven Kwan on down, plays a classic brand of small ball that emphasizes patience at the plate, stringing together singles, speed and theft on the basepaths, and constantly looking to put maximum pressure on the opposing defense. You’ll see an occasional home run, but what you’ll also see are Guardian players routinely going from first to third–and then perhaps scoring on an error due to a bad throw from an outfielder or catcher. It’s the kind of baseball that players like Tris Speaker or Honus Wagner from the early 1900s would have understood and appreciated.

Lately, as the Guardians have played their division rivals the Twins and the White Sox, the combination of pitching, speed, and stout defense has worked like a charm. The team has won 18 of its last 21 games and sprinted to the unexpected division title. And behind it all, Tito Francona must be feeling an immense sense of accomplishment and satisfaction in melding a young, rookie-filled roster into a pretty darned good team that seems to be peaking. Francona should win the American League manager of the year vote, hands down.

The playoffs loom ahead, and it will be interesting to see how the Guardians and their “small ball” approach fare against teams like the Astros, Rays, and Yankees, with rosters filled with well-known stars and lots of post-season experience. Cleveland has struggled against the better teams this year, in match-ups that came earlier this season. But regardless of how the playoffs come out, this year has been an amazing performance by an exuberant and energetic young team that is fun to watch, and their brilliant manager who has carefully put the pieces together to find a winning combination.

I’ll be rooting for them, as always. Go Guardians!

Hike Ohio: Conkle’s Hollow

The autumnal equinox has come and gone, the weather has cooled off, and the feel of fall is all around us. That means it’s time to don the thick socks, lace up the Oboz hiking shoes, and head out to one of the cool hiking trails you can find in and around central Ohio. Our destination yesterday was Conkle’s Hollow, a state nature preserve located in the Hocking Hills near Logan, Ohio.

The Hocking Hills region is a sprawling and beautiful area of woodlands and interesting rock formations that is home to many camps and hiking areas. Located about an hour and a half south of Columbus off Route 33, Conkle’s Hollow is one of the many potential destinations in the area for someone looking to get outdoors, enjoy some scenery, and breathe in some big gulps of fresh autumnal air. Not surprisingly, we weren’t the only ones who decided to visit Conkle’s Hollow yesterday.

When you arrive at Conkle’s Hollow, you’ve got a choice–you can take the gorge trail, which runs along the bottom of the hollow, beneath the canopy of the towering trees, or you can take the longer rim trail, which takes you up to the top of the rock walls that make up the gorge. The rim trail is apparently more rugged and also requires more care, as it winds past some spots where there are sheer falls in the event of a misstep. We decided to take the gorge trail to kick off our hiking season, and leave the rim trail for a later trip.

The gorge trail is an easy hike, and some of our fellow visitors were families with young kids. There is lots to see on the gorge trail, too. Almost immediately, you notice the sheer rock cliffs to each side, towering hundreds of feet overhead. The photo directly above, with the trail and the trail sign, gives you a sense of the immense scale of the rocky walls. Many of the trees growing from the bottom of the gorge were dwarfed by the cliff faces.

After a half a mile or so, the paved trail ends, and a dirt path takes you farther back into the gorge, where you see many of the most interesting rock formations. The air is decidedly cooler in the gorge, and you don’t get much direct sunlight in view of the towering rock outcroppings and tree cover. The filtered sunlight almost makes you feel like you are underwater as you follow the trail, and makes the green shades of the tree leaves, moss, and plant life seem a lot greener.

At many points along the trail there are small caves and grottos, as well as areas where water from above is falling to join the small stream running along the floor of the hollow. In the past, you apparently could explore more of these formations, but the damage done by hikers (and, sadly, some people who can’t resist carving their initials into rocks, as shown in the photo above) has caused the preserve to limit hikers to the trails. That’s okay with me: I’m willing to forgo an up close and personal look if it means that the pristine state of this beautiful area will be preserved for future generations to enjoy.

As you approach the end of the trail, the walls to each side close in, bringing you to the end point of the gorge. The middle of the floor features a small winding stream, with lots of rocks to hop on and felled trees. The kids in the family groups that were with us in this area had a riot leaping from rock to rock and balancing on the logs.

On this part of the trail, the contrast presented by dark shadows of the caverns make the green tree leaves and plants seem even brighter and greener. Whether you look forward, as in the picture above, or backward, as in the picture below, this part of Conkle’s Hollow was a study in black and different shades of green. Chartreuse, emerald, lime, fern, olive, seafoam, juniper–an artist would need a pretty loaded palette to do it justice.

The end of the trail takes you to the last cleft in the gorge, shown below. Water drips down from above into the pool that has accumulated below the cleft, and the dripping sound echoes against the rocky walls. A small ray of refracted sunlight illuminated the point at which the falling water hits the pool. It’s a beautiful scene, and it made us glad to choose the gorge trail for our first visit to Conkle’s Hollow. We wouldn’t have wanted to miss this serene little scene on a crisp early autumn day.

Hike Ohio: Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve

Hike Ohio: Kokosing Gap Trail

Hike Ohio: Dripping Rock Trail

Uptown Columbus Friday Night

Yesterday was a beautiful day, with cooler temperatures and a crisp, decidedly autumnal feel to the air. Last night we decided to stroll up High Street and do some random rambling through the Short North, perhaps to have a drink and dinner if the fates were kind. We weren’t alone in our thinking: there were a lot of people out and about, enjoying the weather and the many streetfront taverns and restaurants.

One stop on our ramble was the Lincoln Social Rooftop Lounge. I’ve walked past it many times, and last night we decided to pay a visit. Regrettably, the place was jammed, with every table and seat taken and not even much room to stand, so we couldn’t stay–but we were there long enough for us to enjoy an overhead view of Columbus, including this interesting perspective looking north up High Street, toward the Ohio State campus. The view of the downtown area in the other direction is even better, but the crush of people was such that there literally was no way to squeeze in to take a photo. We decided we will have to visit the Lincoln rooftop again one of these days and get there earlier so we can enjoy the view, a drink–and a seat.

Although we had to leave the Lincoln rooftop behind, we found another place to dine outside along High Street, which allowed us enjoy an excellent meal and adult beverage while watching the world walk by and hearing some deafening blasts of bass notes from some cruising cars. It was one of those nights that shows off Columbus, and the fine fall weather, to very good advantage, .

Bang, Or No Bang?

Science can be great. The world of science, in most cases, allows for vigorous debate, even about the most fundamental, basic, long considered to be settled concepts–and as new data comes in, the process happens over and over again. Sometimes the novel theory actually topples the old assumptions–as when Copernicus argued that the Earth revolves around the Sun, or Einstein’s thought experiments and calculations dislodged Newtonian theories about gravity. At other times, the new theory is shown to be a bunch of hooey, and the product of shoddy science and cherry-picked data.

There’s a vigorous argument along those lines going on now in the world of astronomy and cosmology. The issue is whether the incredible photographs being produced by the James Webb Space Telescope are inconsistent with the “Big Bang” theory–the widely accepted concept that the universe started billions of years ago with an enormous explosion that occurred everywhere at once and has been expanding in all directions ever since.

An article published in early August argued that the Webb telescope photos are inconsistent with the Big Bang theory because the distant galaxies shown in the photos look different than what the Big Bang theory predicts. Other scientists reject that argument as science denialism; they note that while the Webb telescope images of faraway galaxies show structures that are more evolved and coherent than was expected, that result does not undercut the Big Bang and in fact is consistent with the theory. As one article published earlier this month on space.com puts it: “The surprising finding that galaxies in the early universe are more plentiful, and a little more massive and structured than expected, doesn’t mean that the Big Bang is wrong. It just means that some of the cosmology that follows the Big Bang requires a little bit of tweaking.” 

The constant revisiting and revision of theories as new data comes in is what makes science so cool. The Webb telescope, the data it is gathering, and the discussion it is generating, are doing exactly what the process of science contemplates.

Vlad’s Big Bad

Sometimes people make good decisions, sometimes they make bad decisions, and sometimes they make decisions that are so catastrophically ill-conceived it’s hard to imagine they were the product of rational thought. It’s been looking for some time now like Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine falls into the last category, and the consequences of his bad judgment seem to be getting worse and worse–for him personally, and for Russia.

It’s safe to say that the Russian invasion of Ukraine didn’t go as Putin thought it would. The Ukrainians fought valiantly in defense of their country, and the invasion was universally condemned by other nations. Even worse, as the Russian forces quickly became bogged down and began suffering devastating casualties, it also became clear that the vaunted Russian military wasn’t performing as anticipated due to planning, logistics, operational, and soldier morale issues. If American sports fans had been watching the Russian army’s performance in a stadium, you would undoubtedly have heard the “over-rated” chant.

After being mired in a fighting stalemate for months, things got worse for Russia recently, when a Ukrainian offensive caught the Russians off guard, drove Russian forces back, and captured huge amounts of Russian armaments and supplies. The Russian retreat created a decision point for Putin–and yesterday, he decided to double down, calling for a “partial mobilization” and even raising the chilling prospect of using nuclear weapons if he deemed the “territorial integrity” of Russia to be at stake. It is the first mobilization order in Russia since World War II. The order means that 300,000 Russians in the reserve or with military experience could be subject to conscription and sent to fight in the Ukraine, where thousands of Russian soldiers have already been killed, wounded, or captured.

Putin’s mobilization decision wasn’t well received by at least some Russians, who took to the streets to protest what they see as a pointless, unnecessary conflict. A human rights group reports that 1,200 Russians were arrested in anti-war demonstrations in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. Other Russians voted with their feet, trying to take one-way plane flights out of the country, causing some flights to sell out, and there are reports that roads from Russia to neighboring Finland were jammed with cars trying to cross the border. The protests and departures, coupled with other internal criticisms, raise the question of whether Putin’s grip on the country may be loosening.

Putting aside the reaction of the Russian people, it’s hard to see how throwing more hastily conscripted soldiers into the fight with Ukraine is going to turn the tide, when the trained professional soldiers Russia initially used in its invasion weren’t successful. And rounding up more soldiers doesn’t solve the tactical, logistical, and morale issues that have dogged the Russian forces since the invasion began.

Unlike most people, Vladimir Putin apparently can’t own up to making a mistake. Time will tell, but his mobilization decision may ultimately be seen as moving an initial error farther along the spectrum toward ultimate disaster.

20 Quadrillion Ants

How many ants are there in the world? It’s the kind of dreamy question you might have briefly asked yourself as a kid on a lazy summer day as you were checking out an anthill that was teeming with the busy little creatures, just in one corner of your backyard. Sometimes, though, the subject of a child’s idle wonder becomes a scientist’s challenge–and Nature has published an article that tries to answer that question.

The first step in the challenge is trying to come up with a mechanism that would allow you to approximate the number of ants on Earth, because you obviously couldn’t count them, one by one, even if all of those notoriously active insects would oblige you by holding still. To give you a sense of scale, there are 15,700 named species and subspecies of ants. They are found in and on virtually every piece of dry land in the world and in the widest possible range of habitats, including cities, deserts, woodlands, grasslands, and especially rain forests. The National Wildlife Federation website states that the only land areas that don’t have ants are Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, and a handful of islands.

So how can the Nature researchers hope to count them? By piecing together the findings of 489 independent studies that have attempted to count ant populations on every continent and in every habitats where they are found, using standard ant-counting methods. By extrapolating from this direct data, the researchers estimate that there are 20 quadrillion–that’s 20,000,000,000,000,000–ants in the world. That’s a lot of ants. But that finding admittedly doesn’t give a complete picture, because there are no studies of how many ants live underground or in trees. 20 quadrillion therefore could easily be an undercount.

But the Nature researchers didn’t stop there. They wondered how much all of those ants would weigh, did the math, and concluded that the 20 quadrillion ants would have a biomass of 12 million tons of carbon, which is more than all of the world’s birds and animals combined. (Carbon accounts for about half the weight of ants.) And, as the researchers point out, we should be glad there are so many ants around, because they play a crucial role in the ecosystem in multiple ways, including serving as food for many species.

Ants are also kind of fascinating to watch on a lazy summer afternoon, too.

Understanding Mr. Green Jeans

When I was a kid, I enjoyed watching Captain Kangaroo. I liked the Captain, of course, and Dancing Bear and Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit, but my real favorite was Mr. Green Jeans. He would come on the show, wearing his trademark green jeans and usually a straw hat and flannel shirt, perhaps play a guitar or sing a song with the Captain, and maybe show you a plant or animal and talk about it. But Mr. Green Jeans was at his best in helping Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit play a gentle prank on the Captain–one that usually involved the Captain getting showered with dropped ping pong balls. It was a gentle prank for a gentle show.

I was thinking about Mr. Green Jeans the other day in connection with the gradually dawning concept of people having jobs. As adults, we’ve lived with the concept of work for so long that we’ve forgotten that the notion of people getting paid to do something isn’t necessarily intuitive, and has to be learned like other lessons of the world. For me, at least, Mr. Green Jeans and Captain Kangaroo were part of that process.

At first, a very young watcher would take a show like Captain Kangaroo at face value, as if the broadcast somehow gave you a brief peek into the actual life of the Captain, Mr. Green Jeans, and their friends. At some later point, you come to understand, perhaps because your Mom patiently explained it to you, that the show wasn’t “real,” in the same way life in your home was real, and that Mr. Moose and Bunny Rabbit were just puppets, and that Captain Kangaroo was a show put on for kids like you to watch and enjoy.

Later still came the realization that Captain Kangaroo and Mr. Green Jeans were actors, that being on the show was their job–hey, just like your Dad left every day to go to his job!–and that the Captain and Mr. Green Jeans were getting paid to be on the show. That last step in the understanding process was a big one, because it required you to get the concept of money, too, and why people needed to work, so they could eat and have a house and clothes and a car–and the fact that you would undoubtedly need to work, too, at some point. It was part of a bigger realization that the world was a complicated place, and there was a lot more to it than the Captain reading stories and pranks involving ping pong balls.

By then, as you watched Captain Kangaroo with your younger siblings, you thought that being Mr. Green Jeans would be fun. But by then your sights had changed a bit, and your friends were talking about being firemen or astronauts when they grew up.

A Five-Pound Cell Phone

The other day I had a doctor’s appointment. As the nurse led me down the hallway to my assigned exam room, she weighed me on the doctor’s scale, which is located along one of the hallway walls. I obediently stepped up onto the platform, wearing my suit and tie and shoes, as I always do. After the nurse registered my poundage, I headed to the exam room.

When I mentioned this incident later, I was told that my approach to the doctor’s scale is all wrong: you are supposed to at least remove your jacket and shoes and, ideally, strip down to your skivvies. I wasn’t going to do that, obviously, because the scale is in an open hallway, rather than in the exam room itself. I also figure that so long as I am consistent, and always am officially weighed when fully clothed, the doctor’s office will get a sense of whether my weight is dramatically up or down, which should be sufficient.

The clad approach to the doctor’s scale has another advantage: it leaves an open field for rationalization. When I stepped onto the scale, my pockets were full, with cell phone, wallet, and keys. I’ve never weighed these items, independently–meaning it is at least possible that my cell phone weighs five pounds. I haven’t weighed my shoes, either, but I’m pretty sure that I was wearing an especially heavy pair that day. My jacket and tie were feeling pretty hefty, too. All told, my accoutrements easily could have accounted for a sizeable percentage of the weight registered by the nurse.

If I’d shed my garments and shoes, we would know for sure–but that didn’t happen, did it? Thanks to my five-pound cell phone, ponderous keys, and Frankenstein-like shoes, the precise dimensions of my physical self remain shrouded in mystery and the subject of vigorous internal debate. .

The Long, Dark Night Of The Soul

If you are a Cleveland Browns fan, you know how I feel. If you are not a Cleveland Browns fan, imagine every happy thought, every sunny day, every warm, decent feeling you’ve ever experienced, ripped painfully away as you are thrown headlong into the blackest pits of unending despair.

The Browns continue to find new, unimaginable, impossible ways to lose. Today was, perhaps, the most ridiculous yet. And each time they do, their cadre of loyal, ever-hopeful fans go with them, thrust into hellish depths of failure. Even armored with the most resolute pessimism, Browns fans allow themselves to experience a glimmer of hope and a brief taste of potential victory, and inevitably, again, and again, and again, find their hopes crushed.

What can you say? It’s the Browns. The Browns are the dark side of sports fandom.

A Long, Long Line

Something pretty extraordinary–by modern standards, at least–is happening in the U.K. Thousands of Brits, from sports stars like David Beckham to the common folk, are lining up to wait for hours to file past the casket of Queen Elizabeth as she lies in state.

The lines are so tremendous that the BBC is writing articles about them, and the British government has established a live “queue tracker” on YouTube so that people can keep tabs on the line as it snakes past landmarks like the Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament to Westminster Hall. The maximum length of the line is 10 miles, and the government is warning people who would join the line that they will have to wait, and stand, for hours, without a chance to sit down. People are flocking to join the line, anyway.

We’re used to seeing people leave flowers and notes at places when a well-known person dies, but this situation is different. The people waiting in this colossal line are spending their precious time and voluntarily inconveniencing themselves to pay their personal respects to the Queen. Those of us who don’t quite get the British monarchy have to admit that, in the modern era of frequent self-absorption, this demonstration of devotion sends a powerful message. The British people are voting with their feet, with their hearts, and with their time. It’s an impressive testament to their love for someone who sat on the throne for 70 years.

It makes you wonder: would the death of any American figure provoke this kind of showing? I can’t think of one, can you?

77

Ohio State played the Toledo Rockets, one of the best teams in the Mid-American Conference, last night. The Buckeyes were a heavy favorite, but this season many college football favorites have gone down to ignominious defeat at the hands of an underdog–and for a time, shifty and speedy Toledo quarterback Dequan Finn gave the Buckeyes’ defense fits. In a normal game, his playmaking ability would have been a cause of concern.

But this was no normal game. Finn’s heroics didn’t really matter, because the Ohio State offense played about as close to perfection as human beings can get. They scored 77 points against a pretty good team, and their offensive metrics were unbelievably gaudy. The team racked up more than 760 yards in total offense, including 482 yards passing and 281 yards rushing. The Buckeyes scored at least two touchdowns in every quarter–including four touchdowns in the first quarter and 42 points in the first half–and responded to every great play by the Rockets quarterback with another score.

If I recall correctly, the Men of the Scarlet and Gray scored on 10 of 12 possessions, with the 12th possession focused on running out the clock at the end of the game. None of the touchdowns were on fluke plays or short fields; the team repeatedly put together long drives and chunk plays that shredded the Toledo defenders. The offensive line opened big holes for Ohio State running backs, protected their quarterbacks, and had only a few modest penalties. The Buckeye starters looked great, the back-ups looked great, and the back-ups to the back-ups–including freshman running back TC Caffey, pictured above, who kept his legs moving, escaped the pile, and took a 49-yard carry to the house–looked great. Coaches always find some flaw, less-than-stellar blocking technique, or missed assignment to coach up, and I’m sure the Ohio State offensive coaches will, too–but they are going to have to truly scour the game film to find much to discuss.

The Wisconsin Badgers come to town next Saturday, and with that game the Big Ten season will begin. Playing sound defense will be a lot more important, touchdowns will no doubt be much harder to come by, and last night’s performance against Toledo will fade into the background. But while the memory is fresh, I hope Buckeye Nation pauses for a moment and appreciates just how amazing last night’s offensive performance was. It truly was a game for the record books.