Super Bowl sets Twitter records -
I did a quick recap of how the Super Bowl did on Twitter for the Wired.com Playbook blog. The closing moments of the game and the Madonna halftime show were the first two US-based events to crack the 10,000 tweet-per-second mark.
Neurotraining Helps Turbo-Charge Football Offenses -
There was so much interesting stuff that wouldn’t fit into this post I did for Wired.com’s Playbook blog about how teams are using brain training to help with reaction time and decision making. One of the best quotes came from clinical sports psychologist Dr. John Sullivan, who described a quarterback’s pre-snap calculations this way:
If you had to really break down what they do, it’s higher-level math, And it’s done in hundredths of seconds. They’re doing trigonometry, geometry. They’re working that out and they can’t think about that. It has to move in synchronicity.
This history of the football rivalry between Texas and Texas A&M that I compiled for Texas Monthly turned out better than I had imagined. It’s remarkable that when the teams began playing each other, Grover Cleveland was in the White House (for the second time) and Coca-Cola began selling in bottles.
Calvin brings the stare from the animal kingdom. #muschampstare
Thanks for the photo, jeffbeckham.com!
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Forgotten Gas Station of the Future
Certain elements, such as gas pumps hanging from an overhead canopy—intended to boost efficiency and save space—were prohibited by Cloquet fire bylaws (although, coincidentally, hanging pumps eventually became popular in Japan). The unorthodox station was also estimated by one trade publication to have cost two to three times as much as a standard design. Still, it remains to this day, open for business, the symbol of a vision of suburbia that never came to pass—or, in all likelihood, did, but just with a lot less futuristic style.
Read more at The Atlantic’s Life Channel.
The Creative Process Behind New York’s Iconic High Line
James Corner is one of the premiere theorists and practitioners of landscape architecture, a field that emphasizes the design of outdoor and public spaces to achieve specific environmental, socio-behavioral, and aesthetic outcomes. The principal designer at James Corner Field Operations, a New York-based architecture firm, Corner focuses on landscape urbanism, an amalgamation of a wide range of disciplines including landscape architecture, ecology, and urban design. In a conversation with associate editor Jared Keller, Corner discusses the creative process behind New York’s now-iconic elevated park, The High Line, whose second section opened in June.
With the High Line, we had this extraordinary artifact that in some ways was an ugly duckling, something with potential. At the turn of the century, it was derelict; the concrete and steel and tracks were obviously in disrepair, the rails rusted, the wood cracked. Most people at the time thought it should be torn down. But where some people saw dereliction, others saw inspiration. It was in the landscape running along those broken tracks. The photographs of Joel Sternfeld (fine-art color photography and publisher of Walking the High Line (2002), an anthology focusing on the railway) had a remarkable influence in allowing people to view this thing as something with potential rather than something to be skeptical of. Running for a mile and a half through the west side of Manhattan, there’s a remarkable dialogue between nature and industry—or rather, post-industry—suspended 30 feet in the air.
Photographs, schematics, landscape ecology, and more at The Atlantic
Rick Barnes and the Nagging Question -
I crawl inside the head of Texas basketball coach Rick Barnes and try to figure out what’s more important: winning NCAA tournament games or developing NBA talent.
While looking for my grandparents’ old house in Dallas, I came across this screenshot in Google Maps. The little dog looking at the two cars made me smile.
Garrett Gilbert's Confidence -
I’ve been writing a few things for the Longhorn sports blog Barking Carnival. Today’s post is about whether the coaching staff’s concern over quarterback Garrett Gilbert’s confidence is causing more harm than good.
(Source: barkingcarnival.com)
My favorite Dirk picture of all time.
Dirk Nowitzki. Don Nelson. Steve Nash.
Middle school center-part! Nellie in a tie! Frosted tips!
(via katiebakes)