Plantar fasciitis? A few ideas.

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Amid my sixth and most foolish soccer career at age 44 (indoor, over-30 coed, more challenging than it sounds), I’ve pounded my feet into plantar fasciitis twice now, joining Antonio Gates, Ty Lawson and untold legions of middle-agers (not to be confused with medieval individuals) limping around. By the second time I knew a lot more about PF. Bottom line is, it’s going to totally heal at its own pace, by and large, but you can sharply speed the pace of healing and return to action faster/with discomfort rather than knifing pain by doing a few things.

ADAM graphic of plantar fasciitis

If you can actually see into your foot like this, you should seek expert medical attention.

1) First, my sense is that a lot of plantar fasciitis has nothing to do with pronation/genetic arch deficiencies/obesity etc., but rather exceptional foot pounding via poor shoes or just hard play on a non-soft surface. Age heightens susceptibility, clearly. But it’s essentially an impact injury for most of us. So pick up some gel heel cups. I have ones I bought in the checkout aisle at Dick’s Sporting Goods, which have a somewhat taller back lip so they don’t move (I use these playing soccer and I have a pair in my running shoes). Dr. Scholls has offerings at every drugstore.

2) The Foot Wheel is a good thing to have under your desk – boosts blood flow and actually makes for the best foot massager you’ll ever own also. (The same company also makes The Stick, which has quietly become recovery mainstay among runners  and even the Colorado Mammoth pro lacrosse team, in whose trainer bags I spotted a bunch as they practiced recently at our indoor soccer arena).

3) I have a night splint I wear after some soccer games if there’s particular pain, and I wore it often in the early phases of injury. Often take it off by about 2 a.m., but it seems that the early-sleep stretching is sufficient  to erase morning pain.

4) I stretch both calves before I take a step in the morning (arms on bed, feet on floor). This isn’t necessary, by the way, if you sleep with the night splint on.

5) I bought these velcro-loop arch supports and use on the PF foot, currently the left, when I run or play soccer.

6) I picked up these non-soft quasi arch supports from Heel That Pain and had them in my work/walking shoes for a while, and they did seem to help by essentially shifting the pressure point of your step to a spot a bit in front of the heel. Despite Jason Kidd and John Starks having apparently played pro basketball in them, I’d advise against running in these — I mildly sprained the opposite foot (had both in for symmetry) because of the way they changed pressure distribution.

7) Finally, and I highly recommend spending nine minutes with this video – of myofascial release massage. This is a really good explanation/approach among a whole bunch of noise out there. I lotion the bottom of the foot and use my index knuckle, pressing harder than Dr. Richard Perez of Alamo Family Foot Care demonstrates. Talking to people who have done actual massage therapy with actual masseuses/physical therapists, the pros work it until it hurts. That’s because the plantar fascia is a beast of a tendon to influence. But you knew that already.

Aurora shooting prosecutor screws up

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Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler announced this morning that he’s pursuing the death penalty for alleged (I use this word loosely) Aurora theater mass murderer James Holmes.

Holmes’s attorneys had agreed to a plea deal in which he would spend life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Life without parole essentially ends your life from any practical perspective. No sandy beaches, no mountain hikes, no productive career, no kids, no grandchildren. An hour outside a day. You get to breathe, eat and drink, but you’re basically dead, and society is safe with you behind bars.

Prosecutor George Brauchler made a lousy decision (Photo Ed Andrieski/AP)

The death penalty literally ends your life, of course. But in this case it drags the details of the case out for the world to see, opening old wounds, delaying the healing process, costing a fortune (the judge who has had the case thus far has dismissed himself, citing a lack of time), making us all look barbaric and stupid in the eyes of Europe and beyond. The only ones who benefit are prosecutors such as Brauchler, who can advance their careers by bragging about ending the Aurora Theater shooter, and the media, who will have an ongoing, sordid story to relay at the top of the hour/on their front pages.

Brauchler’s decision is selfish, damaging and wasteful. The chimp in us all wants to see Holmes drawn and quartered, burned at the stake, shot up like a clay pigeon. But we should be smart enough to see the equivalence of a life term and a death sentence and choose the former.

The Denver Post story, FYI: http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_22915093/prosecutors-will-seek-death-against-james-holmes-aurora

TCAP testing – Stupid trying to get smart

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My daughter Lily is a fourth grader at Lowry Elementary School, a Denver Public School. I like the school a lot, her teachers, the fact that its students span a wide range or race and economic backgrounds. But they’ve been wasting her time — and that of all her classmates — for the past two weeks.

Thirty hours of this?

It’s not Lowry’s fault. The issue is a test called the TCAP – the Traditional Colorado Assessment Program. The state Department of Educaiton mandates it for all public-school kids. For the past two weeks, they’ve spent Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday taking this  test. conservatively, it’ll be 30 hours of oval-filling. During that time, there’s no homework and precious little supplemental classwork. In the interest in improving their education, their education grinds to a halt.

I’m no education expert, but consider: The SAT takes 3 hours and 45 minutes. The ACT takes 3 hours and 25 minutes. The GRE takes 3 hours and 45 minutes. The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) takes about five hours. The Colorado bar exam, over two days, spans about nine hours. Yet the TCAP alchemists settled on 30.

Assuming the seven years of TCAP testing (grades 4 through 10) are similarly time-sucking, Lily and her classmates will have wasted 14 weeks of educational experience. That’s almost an entire semester. Fourteen weeks of no new learning at school, of no homework, of sitting at a desk and answering questions. Will it hone their test-taking skills? Sure. Will pounding rocks with a sledgehammer for 210 hours hone my rock-pounding skills? Sure.

I am far from the thick of the testing debate, but how does this make any sense. This is stupid trying to tease out smart.

Never mind competitiveness with kids in Colorado’s private schools who don’t have to suffer such foolishness. And I’ll bet kids in China, India and elsewhere aren’t wasting weeks of their education in front of grinding tests, either.

Testing isn’t the problem — test away. You need to measure to know what to improve. But shorten the TCAP. Get it done in a day, max two. You can get an idea of where these kids are and how their schools are doing with less of a burden on the kids. If two days is good enough for the Colorado Bar Association, it’s good enough for you.

Population argument bombs

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The Denver Post did a sort of quasi book-review/reax piece today to Weekly Standard writer Jonathan Last’s What to Expect When No One’s Expecting: America’s Coming Demographic Disaster.

Cute, but no panacea

One of the few things conservatives seem able to agree on these days is that people — ideally conservatives — should be having more babies (a rare bit of good news for Republicans: the religious tend to reproduce more prolifically, Last says). But it’s a nutty argument that ignores ecological reality, a stupid alarmist counterpoint to the late-1960s Population Bomb scares, which, at least as of yet, proved overblown.

The core argument here is that, because we procreated like rodents from 1945 to 1965, thereby creating a bulge of Boomers, those of child-bearing age must follow suit to provide tax revenue and legions of nursemaids needed to take care of them all.

This, of course, would lead another procreation imperative two generations down the line, and so on. If we’re not overshooting ecological limits already (and we are, according to these guys and many others), it wouldn’t take long until we did. And don’t forget that Americans consume multiples of natural resources more than those in developing countries, so more of us is proportionally harder on the planet. And what if China did the same thing? C’mon.

I haven’t read the book. It may well be rife with nuanced policy responses and calls for technological development to counter the coming eldercare deficit. But when you base your tome on a flawed premise, it’s hard to dig out.

Soccer keeps you fat

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I’m a fan of MedPage today, but these folks are seriously under the copy-cranking gun and often publish summaries of studies absent of perspective. Today’s story, “After-School Soccer Little Help in Obesity Battle” is another example.

These kids and Michelle Obama are all wasting their time, MedPage Today reports.

The story reports a JAMA Pediatrics study. The study concluded that an after-school soccer program run by America Scores failed to produce weight loss among overweight and obese kids.

Turns out the study tracked the kids with accelerometers for all of a week and was, in other ways, statistically and structurally rickety. MedPage Today then drops the ball in failing to note that getting low-income kids together for some exercise has benefits beyond just weight loss — better general fitness and a sense of belonging among them.

From a recent America Scores presser:

America SCORES participants receive ten times more exercise than the national average and lower their BMI by 2% by the end of each season. Using soccer as a tool to encourage fitness, sportsmanship, and leadership, America SCORES inspires the life-long appreciation of sports and health-enhancing behaviors like choosing to eat more fruit and vegetables, participating in organized sports and spending less time watching television and playing video games.

Each year, America SCORES serves 7,500 students at 150 schools through fourteen affiliates located in major urban centers across the United States.

I’m familiar with America Scores because my over-30 coed soccer team plays indoor soccer against them. They’re very good and not obese in the least.

USMNT – No excuse for bad D

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I watched a bit of the U.S.-Honduras soccer game of Wednesday night — the first of several World Cup qualifiers in the “hexagonal round” (how about “round of six,” for clarity’s sake, FIFA?).

The U.S. Men’s National Team (USMNT, not to be confused with POTUS or SCOTUS) lost 2-1 to a country with one-fortieth of the population.

Unless the USMNT focuses on defense, this image will have many future cousins.

Granted Honduras’s football, baseball and basketball teams are abysmal (not to speak of their hockey team). The best athletes in Central America all play soccer. And granted it only takes 11 brilliant players to win soccer games. Plus Honduras is a bitch to play in. But c’mon, there’s no excuse.

I don’t mind the lack of American offensive brilliance, really. Players like Lionel Messi, Cesc Fabergas, Christiano Ronaldo, Mesut Ozil, Neymar, Wayne Rooney, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Juan Mata and other creative/goal-scoring geniuses are born as much as bred. The American side has some solid talent up front anyway — Clint Dempsey is a world-class attacker, for one. What flummoxes me is the threadbare defense.

The U.S. back line and defensive midfield made Honduras look like Brazil.

Granted, the Americans haven’t played together much  (the right back and one of the center backs had never been on the field together before the Honduras game, apparently). But defense is largely about physical prowess, positioning, and tactics. There is no reason why, from a strictly defensive perspective, the USMNT shouldn’t be among the best in the world. Sure, you want your outside backs to land pinpoint crosses from 50 yards, ideally. But I’d settle for shutdown cornerbacking, to borrow a term from a different sort of football, and mundane distribution.

If American soccer players lack world-class skill, fine. Why not rely on what we’ve got in abundance instead, which is raw physicality and the brains to be in the right place at the right time?

Gun Appreciation Day, annotated

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I received an email from the #GunAppreciationDay people today. I figured I’d annotate it. My comments follow the **.

Help us fund advertsing and spread the word far and wide…
On Drudge, FOX News and Facebook

Gun Appreciation Day is January 19

** I’m looking forward to other days on which to appreciate material goods. When is toaster appreciation day?

We’re marching towards Gun Appreciation Day full steam ahead, and already the liberal

** Seeing as Charleton Heston died in 2008, this is now more an offer than a challenge.

gun control crowd is using every trick in the book to try and stop us. They even sent one of their key attack dogs on TV to insinuate that our efforts to protect our Second Amendment rights are racist.

** I am working on improving my cliché usage and appreciate “full steam ahead” and “every trick in the book.” If you could mix a metaphor at some point, I would greatly appreciate it.

Yes, they somehow found a way to pull out the race card against the Bill of Rights. It would be amusing if it wasn’t so sad.

** This paragraph is protected by the Right to Make No Sense.

We have put together a plan for a full media blast to counter their ridiculous claims and build support for Gun Appreciation Day. But we don’t have much time – especially considering frisky Uncle Joe Biden is charging full speed ahead with his gun-grabbing task force.

** I think there might be some birther Southern Cross dog-whistle politics going on here, but my hearing cuts off at 20,000 Hz.

Help us fund advertsing and spread the word far and wide…
On Drudge, FOX News and Facebook

** What about The Blaze? Without Glenn Beck, you put your credibility as a centrist arbiter of truth at risk. And what is “advertsing” — is it a singing advert, like when the people show up on my doorstep in their underwear?

Our plan involves advertising at all the major outlets that conservatives and those on the fence frequent – like Drudge Report and Fox News – along with the social media sites where the messaging battle about guns is raging.

** Fox News’s voters are indeed undecided. About whether to order from Domino’s or Papa Johns, for example.

Getting everything up and running has been expensive, and it’s pushed our resources to the limit. Now it’s up to patriots like you who are standing strong in your personal spheres of influence to help us take this fight to the big leagues.

** There’s our mixed metaphor. Thank you.  

Any small amount you can contribute will help us reach thousands of potential allies – allies we’re going to desperately need going against Big Media and the liberals’ dirty tricks. And it will give us a platform to expose the weak and emotionally predatory arguments of the political Left.

** Among the liberals’ dirty tricks have included speaking at memorials for the children of Sandy Hook.

Without the ability to challenge them on their home turf, the liberals are going to control the message about guns. They are going to push public opinion to accept their gun control schemes, drowning out arguments about our Constitutional rights and how their plans would do NOTHING to decrease gun crime – but a lot to keep the citizenry in line with the liberal Obama agenda.

** First gun control, then mind control. Then, on the highway, speed control.

Help us fund advertsing and spread the word far and wide…
On Drudge, FOX News and Facebook

** Hey, this looks vaguely familiar.

At Political Media, we’re going to continue to lead this battle for our Republic no matter who is with us or what underhanded attacks are thrown our way. But with your financial support, we can actually win this thing.

** Political Media, when people assail you with underhanded attacks, you don’t have to ask for handouts. You can just say,“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt Political Media.”

With your support we can save the freedoms we’ve known not just for future generations – but for our generation too.

** Such as the freedom to be besieged by television coverage of mass shootings.

No matter if you can afford $5 or $500, anything and everything will make a difference. And if you have never given before, there is no worthier cause than to protect the very foundation of our Liberty.

** $5 can’t make a difference, but it just bought me this Starbucks Tazo® Green Tea Frappuccino® Blended Crème, which is really just a Shamrock Shake®.

Because that’s what this is about. Liberty is dangerous to the big-government, big-control Democrats like President Obama and his cronies.

** Fortunately, the 2012 Jeep Liberty is safe to big government and other passengers, scoring a “good” rating based on IIHS Crash-Test Data. We’ll see what happens when they move all their production to China, though.

They know that getting guns out of the hands of Americans won’t stop violence, as any study about disarmed states like the UK will show you. They don’t care about that. What they want is to make sure that we have nothing to “cling to,” as they put it, when they try to implement their government takeovers.

** I swear I’m hearing a high-pitched sound. Is someone preparing tea?

Help us fund advertsing and spread the word far and wide…
On Drudge, FOX News and Facebook

** Now wait a minute…

Over the last 200 years, millions of patriots sacrificed and even paid the ultimate price to win and protect our Liberty. Now, that long legacy is on our shoulders – and we have a duty to honor and protect it ourselves.

** I thought you said “200 million years” for a second, but that can’t be right, because the world is only 9,000 years old.

In this day and age, we don’t have to rely on a few Founders to carry the torch and put everything on the line for us. We can embody the ideal of We the People as they envisioned it and use our combined resources to fight against the progressive tide, ushering back the days of prosperity and greatness.

** These issues don’t seem entirely related. Do they teach economics at gun shows?

We urge you to stand alongside us and make your most generous contribution today. We can’t afford to make a half-hearted effort against the relentless Obama Machine.

** You’ll blow away those fundraising goals, I’m guessing.

Sincerely,

Larry Ward
Chairman, Gun Appreciation Day

PS:  Please follow four easy steps to DEFEND GUN RIGHTS:

1- Go to GunAppreciationDay.com and sign the petition to defend gun rights

** We’ll see a lot of scraggly X’s on that petition.

2- Go to our Facebook page and like us

** Usually we highlight the entire word when hyperlinking. But seeing as you might point your AR-15 Bushmaster with the 100-round clip at me for pointing this out, you go right ahead and do that.

3- Join the Facebook “event” page January 19 – Gun Appreciation Day

** You should consider the acronym “GAD.” Then your online campaign could be “eGAD!”

4- Then invite your friends to join!

** Right after the Tobaccanists for Freedom rally.

406 First Street SE | Washington, DC 20003
Unsubscribe, but please know that we truly value your readership and would like you to stay.

** I wouldn’t dream of it.

Proud gun owner

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The #NRA, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre of children and elementary school teachers and staff, has its friends out in full force. One thing I’ve heard in several media interviews now is “proud gun owner.” This is NRA boilerplate. I bought insoles for my daughter’s skates this morning. I own them, technically. That makes me, I guess a Proud Oder Eaters Owner.  Ditto my minivan. My minivan, while aging and dented, is quite valiant in its provision of transportation services. Am I then, a Proud Minivan Owner?

Point of pride?

Guns are highly engineered, precision instruments. Their purpose aside, they are often quite beautiful. The engineers and manufacturers can rightly take pride in their work, as do the engineers and builders of, say, of the Audi Q7, a vehicle in the same general classification if much nicer than my minivan. But owners of the Audi Q7 have no reason to be proud of their Audi Q7s – beyond, maybe, the economic achievements underpinning the purchase or lease of such fine German wheels.

But guns, save collectibles and historically significant examples, are cheap. Gun ownership is no more a basis for self esteem than TV ownership. I am a Proud Toaster Oven Owner, you might as well say. A Proud Shoe Owner. Congratufuckinglations.

Maybe Proud Gun Owners are proud because of their ability to point and fire their guns. But this is not a complex skill, at least at its most basic level. Shooting free throws is more involved.

Proud Gun Owner is a stupid term. If gun owners are looking for a modifier, and assuming they reflect the general population, more than 30 percent of them could accurately call themselves Fat Gun Owners. Something less than 50 percent could call themselves Romney-Voting Gun Owners. Next time you hear “Proud Gun Owner,” go ahead and substitute “Bullshit-Parroting Gun Owner.”

As an aside, to understand now the NRA has twisted the Second Amendment beyond recognition, thereby enabling multiple massacres by Proud Gun Owners (or, in the case of the Connecticut tragedy, the Son of a Proud Gun Owner), check out Jill Lepore’s fine New Yorker piece of April 2012. May our federal and state leaders have the courage to face this proudly armed special interest and its deep-pocketed backers down. This is an important moment. Lend your voice in support. Our safety — our children’s safety — depends on it.

Global warming, empty bellies

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A few months ago, Micah Williams, TEDxMileHigh’s newest (and only full-time) employee, asked if I might write a blog post about climate change. I said “sure,” and then I thought about what I could say about climate change that wasn’t being said.

Full Planet, Empty PlatesI used to cover the topic at the Daily Camera, and still follow it pretty closely (subscribing to The Daily Climate and Climate Progress daily emails, both great resources). But I came up blank for a couple of months. Then the Earth Policy Institute sent the Society of Environmental Journalists’ list an offer of a review copy of Lester Brown and company’s new book, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity. I had interviewed Brown back when I was at the Camera and have paid close attention to his books ever since. We all should.

I bit, they sent, I read, and then, as tends to happen, complementary ideas suddenly came to my attention, in particular in the form of a World Bank report and a Jeremy Grantham essay. I sent Micah a note and said I had an idea: that the great threat of global warming  may well be its impact on food supplies.

The result isn’t poetry — more the product of a couple of hours of frenetic pro-bono synthesis and a modicum of editing (on my part; I think Micah did more). But it had simmered a good long while.

Monster in the drink

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A video grab of the Dragon capsule approaching the International Space Station on Oct. 10. The capsule splashed down off the California coast on Sunday, Oct. 28, 2012. (Courtesy NASA/SpaceX)

As I write this, SpaceX’s Dragon space capsule is on a boat, having splashed down 250 miles off the California coast on Sunday. Monsters loom off both coasts, then: Frankenstorm to the east, Dragon to the west.

The Dragon capsule splashed down with 1,673 pounds of International Space Station stuff, including the first scientific cargo to come home since the space shuttle program ended in July 2011. Sending home scientific experiments isn’t trivial: the ISS is a national laboratory, remember.

Private companies have been critical to NASA since the very beginning, so I don’t feel that singling out SpaceX for its being a private company doing “commercial space” is all that meaningful. The space shuttle was created by contractors. What’s amazing to me, though is that SpaceX built the rocket and the capsule and got it all to work more or less flawlessly with a staff of 1,800 people (Boeing, though they build airplanes, too, employs about 160,000). And while SpaceX does some contracting, a lot of it was done in-house.

Musk talks about his preference for tight teams in his recent Q&A with WIRED editor Chris Anderson. He also talks about his long-term goal of creating a rapidly reusable launch vehicle (that’s aerospeak for rocket) to drive down costs to the point that a Mars mission would be possible and space in general far more accessible. With Musk, the long-term isn’t usually very long. The first I’d heard him on the topic (though probably not the first time he talked about it) was at a University of Colorado event he spoke at with New Horizons Pluto-mission leader Alan Stern in May 2011. I wouldn’t bet against Musk getting it done.