The "Duh" Files

Female Lacrosse Players at Higher Risk than males for Head, Face, and Eye Injuries: Wow, really? Look at these photos, then tell me how surprised you are:



I never watched much lacrosse, but I knew that that girl & women players wore less equipment, and suspected that it had a touch of the Victwardian pedestalization of the female à la field hockey (wherein you get a stoppage of play every time someone takes three deep breaths in a row) – I mean, lookit th' skirts. (Women don't play soccer or ice hockey in skirts, the advent of both of which was, for women, post-World War 2.)

But, for heaven's sake, lacrosse involves hurling a hard rubber ball with the extra leverage of a stick. It doesn't take a genius to figure that no headgear + flying hard rubber ball is more risky to the noggin than headgear + flying hard rubber ball .

So it's interesting to me how The Feminine gets differently invoked for various sports: in field hockey and lacrosse, the domesticated woman mustn't overexert herself (hence all of stoppages), and must look ladylike (hence the skirts [tennis, anyone?] and the lack of protective gear). In ice hockey, the fragile woman had to be protected against flying frozen rubber, thus the mandatory helmet & mask for women earlier than men. Opposite conclusions, similar premises. So what, exactly, is the nature of women, then...?



And then in "Mummy's Amazing American Maize", we learn that

...both ancient and modern samples of the crop were genetically almost identical....

"Given the immense changes that took place in South America following the arrival of the Europeans it is surprising that this crop has remained unaltered for hundreds of years."

I mean, really. Maize is indigenous to the Americas. No-one in the Old World had maize before 1493. Modern corn is descended from a hybridization of two American grasses at least 5,000 years ago, and is now so completely domesticated that it simply will not reproduce without human intervention.

So how, precisely, might the Europeans have changed corn? They had nothing to change it with. The only thing they could have done is manipulate the phenotypic coöccurrence of traits already existing in the genotype. But, in fact, the main effect of Europeans on corn has been a reduction in corn's genetic diversity since 1492, what with cash- and monocropping and all.



And while I'm on the subject, would it be too much to ask that journalists have a bit more sophisticated grammatical comprehension than the average 5^th grader (or whomever the A.P.'s target reader is)? In "Chili Peppers Have Ancient History," by A.P. genius du jour Lauran Neergaard, not only do we learn that the cutoff date for 'antiquity' lies somewhere between 3,000 B.P. (previous earliest date for chilis) and 6,100 B.P. (new earliest date) – at least in the New World; in the Old World, antiquity begins (counting back from now) sometime around 2,300 B.P. — no, not only that, we are told that

New fossil evidence shows prehistoric people from southern Peru up to the Bahamas were cultivating varieties of chilies millennia before Columbus' arrival brought the spice to world cuisine.

Let's look a bit closer at that last clause:

...before Columbus' arrival brought the spice to world cuisine

Columbus' arrival? Brought?? World cuisine???

Usually, "Columbus' arrival" refers to his appearance in the New World, with his reappearance in the Old World being known as his "return." Now, one of the rules of language is that the individual does not have the right to use words in nonstandard ways and expect that the rest of the world will accede. Thus, what with chilis being a New World plant and unknown in the Old World prior to Columbus' trip, he did not "arrive" with chilis. He may have "returned" with them, but he didn't "arrive" with them. And then, "world cuisine"? Are two whole continents (North and South America) not enough to warrant inclusion in 'the world'? Or is something only 'world'-class when Europeans start using it? Oh, well – at least she didn't write "...brought...back to world cuisine".