Using a typewriter, at times, feels more like playing piano than jotting down notes, a percussive exercise in expressing thought that is both tortuous and rewarding.
Mary Pilon
Once you let go of the idea of waiting for a magical lightning bolt of genius to hit, you can really get to work.
Something amazing happens when you tell people you write about sports for a living. You begin to feel like you're in a scene from 'Dawn of the Dead.' The way people change when talking about 'their team' can be nothing short of zombiefication.
A 401(k) is essentially a basket of mutual funds intended to help people save for retirement.
Throughout the Great Recession of 2008, the average 401(k) balance lost anywhere from 25 to 40 percent of value. Nobody was more harmed than baby boomers or recent retirees, who, unlike younger workers, didn't have the time for the market to rebound or were no longer contributing and therefore unable to invest when stocks were cheap.
As the 19th century teetered into the 20th, the clank of typewriter keys went from solo to symphony. They were the weapon of choice for professional writers, the business elite, people with things to say and the need to say them quickly.
VR could, in theory, connect sports fans in different geographical locations so they could watch a game together. Instead of a group text or Twitter stream of commentary playing out across time zones when a team is playing, our avatars could inhabit virtual stands, side by side with the rest of our digital tribe.
When George Hirsch ran the New York City Marathon in 1976, the first year the course snaked through all five boroughs, the event was a lean affair. He and two thousand others dodged wayward bicycles and pedestrians on the streets, with little help from an anemic police presence.
I was a fly on the wall at Gawker Media during the heyday of this thing called blogging.
Competing in junior fencing requires lessons, equipment, and travel that may cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars a month, keeping talented athletes from wielding sabers or masks.
One of sports journalism's great ironies is that covering an Olympics can be wildly unhealthy. NBC shows athletes in peak health performing on the ice and snow, but not the haggard reporters subsisting for three weeks on stadium starches, cheap beer, deadlines, and little sleep.
Women's combat sports have been on a good run in the United States. Claressa Shields won a gold medal in women's boxing at the London Olympics in 2012, when it became a medal sport. American women won medals in taekwondo and judo as well.
The fear among athletes and organizers is that sailing is becoming more associated with silver hair than silver trophies.
Individual participation in the stock market through 401(k)s helped fuel the go-go days of Wall Street in the 1980s and birthed asset management juggernauts like Fidelity, Vanguard, Pimco, BlackRock, and dozens of others.
Journalism isn't about how smart you are. It's not about where you're from. It's not about who you know or how clever your questions are. And thank God for that. It's about your ability to embrace change and uncertainty. It's about being fearless personally and professionally.
As a producer, it's not unusual to find yourself on the field, backstage, often with a camera crew and living with constant anxiety of accidentally ending up in the shot.
At the turn of the twentieth century, board games were becoming increasingly commonplace in middle-class homes. In addition, more and more inventors were discovering that the games were not just a pastime but also a means of communication.
Women's marathoning was not added as an Olympic medal event until 1984 due to unfounded and bizarre concerns among Olympic organizers about women's ability to run longer distances. It was finally added after much campaigning.
In the 1880s, women were decades away from earning the right to vote. Few owned property - if they were even permitted to do so. In addition to childcare obligations, many toiled in work that was either underpaid or not paid at all. Essentially, the gears of progress for women were moving slowly in just about every arena of life.
In a culture obsessed with happiness, Americans may not be allowing for acceptance that it's OK to sometimes not be perky.
Much like film, authors spend a fair amount of time alone in the creative process, tossing their work out into what can feel like an abyss, void of real people.
Some communities are formed through schools, churches, workplaces. But much of how we learn about one another as a society comes from physically being together in places like skating rinks.
By the middle of the century, retirement culture - exemplified by timeshares in Florida, the golf industry, and AARP membership - was booming. Americans, it turned out, were pretty good at figuring out how not to do anything in their twilight years.
The fitness industry has long thrived off the well-intended coming through their doors and signing up with dreams of self-improvement, only to fade into their couches. Those who stick with it often feel like hamsters on treadmills.
We spend millions on fitness each year, yet we seem to get fatter.
If workplaces that enlist happiness consultants really care about worker satisfaction, why not offer better maternity and paternity policies? Daycare options? They could advise managers to stop calling workers to come in on weekends or expect them to answer emails late on weeknights.
As the issue of youth fitness - from obesity to proper exercise regimens - takes on more resonance in schools and communities across the country, CrossFit Kids and other preschool fitness programs are raising questions about when and how children should start playing organized sports or hitting the gym.
Many of my 20- and 30-something peers struggle with student loan debt and high rent, and more than once, I've erupted in laughter at the idea that I will collect any Social Security in my Betty White years.
Most major races, including the New York City Marathon, require runners to provide photo identification when picking up a bib. Most provide bibs only a few days before the race, shortening the window in which someone could copy a bib.
Ultimately, the joy of sports is social and psychological, both in the ballpark and around a television on Super Bowl Sunday.
Sports like sailing, rowing, and bobsled have long vexed spectators and television producers.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have sparked a booming industry of so-called influencers - people with large-scale followings who are paid considerable sums by large companies to tout their products or ideas.
Without federal assistance, most elderly Americans would be unable to afford long-term care - and most nursing homes would be unable to keep the doors open.
So who or what is to blame for baseball games that go on forever? Two oft-cited culprits are constant replay calls and batters who leave the box in between every pitch to adjust their gloves and helmet and shin guards and elbow pads and then knock the dirt off their cleats before working up their stride for the next at-bat.
Before she made her bid for the U.S. presidency in 1872, Victoria Woodhull worked as one of the first female stockbrokers in the country, starting a firm, Woodhull, Claflin & Company, with her sister in 1870.
Despite the laserlike focus it generates, 'Tetris' has no clear endpoint and no easily defined opponents. Unlike with most other video games, you're playing only against yourself, without any concrete goals other than to keep on fitting blocks into other blocks.
Instagram influencers project a specific, highly crafted image of perfection - one that is largely white, thin, and psychologically Zen. Critics argue that this boom, in turn, has helped fuel excessive self-promotion in which we post about only the good moments rather than reality - essentially, a distorted echo chamber.
The America's Cup World Series was created in 2011, with an eye toward conjuring more off-cycle interest and marketing opportunities. It coincided with the ascent of foiling catamarans, a type of boat that goes faster and looks almost Photoshopped, the way it practically floats in air when it races.
For professional athletes, the motives for cheating generally are more obvious: money, fame, and often a low likelihood of being caught. But why would a middle- or back-of-the-pack runner lie or cheat in a race that doesn't even matter?
The conditions for harassment are built into the very structure of the trucking business, beginning with the training process.
To drive a semi-truck, a driver needs a commercial driver's license. While formal training isn't required, most drivers enroll in a program to help prepare them for the written and practical exams in their states.
Long before social media made things like bib replication easier, banditing at major races was viewed as a brave act. Rebellious runners like John Tarrant gatecrashed races as a political statement, in protest of rules about amateurism that limited how much money athletes could earn in appearance fees and endorsements.
Increasingly, football fans are arguing that the game is bloated with too much down time. The officiating is clumsy.
Wall Street trading floors have long been seen as bastions of testosterone that rewarded, literally, those with sharp elbows who could throw a punch.
Precisely at the moment when an athletic career is most on the line and fan perceptions of a Herculean, supra-human performance are highest, an athlete's brain may be at its most vulnerable.
Trucking is the backbone of U.S. commerce. Consumers rely on the industry to move the parts for their cars, the food for their dinner tables, and, increasingly, the goods they order online.
Even as Instagram defines our visual moment, we use the app's filters to travel backwards in time, to make our images resemble the Polaroids of yore by casting them literally in a different, more nostalgic light.
For generations, minor-league baseball has been seen as the scrappier, sometimes seedier, counterpart to its big-league sibling. Games are often cloaked in strange and sometimes awkward theme nights. Some of the mascots are ragged or downright bizarre. The ballparks are smaller and filled with fewer fans.
As the U.S. prison population has surged over the decades, the legal profession's distaste for former inmates has become more conspicuous. And it isn't only law. Medical schools often have committees to evaluate cases and mitigating factors but are generally reluctant to admit ex-inmates.
To play 'Tetris' is to knowingly opt in to something that has no end and no way of winning.
