2 Opinion Page
2 Opinion Page March 2 2023 | World and Press comment After the hoopla, all that’s left is the NFL’s violence By Robin Givhan 1 FROM A distance, from outside the circle of fans and aficionados, professional football is both confounding and enraging. It’s America’s most popular sport, and it’s also deliberately, unspeakably violent. It’s a particular kind of violence that’s less about accidental collisions, adrenaline-fueled fistfights, or even a singular articulated blow. Football violence is wrapped up in machismo, militarism, swagger, and patriotism. It isn’t a sport that thrives despite the violence but because of it. 2 The life of any professional athlete can be brutal, but A2 – B2 Cartoons interpretieren, Bilder beschreiben Cartoon & Co. Trainingsheft ¤ 14,90 [D] ISBN 978-3-7961-1062-7 www.sprachzeitungen.de SPORT Football is America’s brutal sport. Training | mündl. Prüfung football players endure broken bones, torn ligaments, and traumatic brain injuries as a matter of course, simply by doing the job they have been highly paid and contracted to do. These injuries aren’t bad luck or lapses in conditioning – although both can certainly play a part; they’re simple facts of the game. 3 Football is a particularly American sport, although it certainly has fans in other countries, notably in Germany, Britain, and Canada. But the NFL doesn’t have the sort of international rosters that one finds among the nation’s baseball and basketball teams. There is no American football World Cup. Football is America’s violence. 4 The violence of football was in sharp relief Monday evening when Buffalo Bills player Damar Hamlin collapsed in cardiac arrest following a tackle. The horror on the faces of the other players was profound. Hamlin appeared to have survived one of football’s routine collisions unscathed only to suddenly be in critical condition. 5 Hamlin’s accident was grievous and rare. Still, it was a reminder of the punishing ecosystem of football, one that’s unlike any other sport. Violence is such a central organizing factor that, except under the most ghastly circumstances, it goes mostly unnoticed. In football, players are helped off the field with damaged knees, bruised skulls, and injured shoulders with some regularity. But if they can manage a thumbs up or a wave to the fans, everything is deemed fine. The game will pause for a commercial break and then resume, as if nothing has happened. As if it’s not a big deal that a human being had to be carried away on a stretcher in the middle of a sporting event. As if every football game doesn’t tempt fate in a way that basketball or soccer or hockey doesn’t. 6 In football, the players wear their helmets and pads to provide them some protection. But all that gear is also a recognition that the game is, in fact, predicated on men injuring other men. They give each other a bruising. They put a hurt on each other. They go to war. 7 The players are practically unrecognizable underneath all that protective armor, which society has learned isn’t nearly as protective as it needs to be. It gives the players broader shoulders and more bulging muscles. It gives vulnerable men the appearance of invincible giants. And that’s irresistible because part of the attraction of any sport, after all, is in watching competitors seemingly defy human limitations. … 8 With football players, there can be a balletic majesty in catching a pass mid-stride – eyes glancing back, forward, and seemingly everywhere at once – and hurdling over obstacles and on to victory. But that ballet is performed against a soundtrack of bones colliding against bone, of air being squeezed out of compressed lungs under the weight of a pile of opposing players. What is so captivating about men plowing into each other? Is there 0 – 1 HOOPLA Rummel — aficionado Fan — confounding verwirrend — enraging erzürnend — unspeakably unsäglich — fistfight Schlägerei — articulated h.: gezielt gesetzt — blow Schlag — swagger Prahlerei; Arroganz — to thrive Erfolg haben 2 – 4 ligament Band — traumatic brain injury Schädelhirntrauma — matter of course Selbstverständlichkeit — to contract s.o. jdn. unter Vertrag nehmen — lapse Versehen — notably insbesondere — roster Spielerliste — to be in sharp relief deutlich werden — cardiac arrest Herzstillstand — profound tiefgehend — unscathed unbeschadet 5 grievous schlimm — ghastly grauenhaft — bruised geprellt — to deem s.th. … etw. als … erachten — commercial break Werbepause — to resume fortfahren — stretcher Trage — to tempt fate das Schicksal herausfordern 6 – 7 pads Schoner — recognition Anerkennung — to be predicated darauf gründen — unrecognizable unkenntlich — armor Rüstung — bulging gewölbt; h.: dick — vulnerable verwundbar — invincible unbezwingbar — irresistible unwiderstehlich — to defy trotzen 8 – 9 balletic graziös — majesty Anmut — mid-stride mitten im Lauf — to hurdle over obstacles Hürden nehmen — captivating fesselnd — to plow into s.o. (AE) in jdn. hineinrennen — to allude to s.th. auf etw. anspielen — fearlessness Furchtlosigkeit — to anticipate vorhersehen — soothing beruhigend — coarseness Grobheit — bloodshed Blutvergießen 10 county fair Jahrmarkt — economics Ökonomik — warrior Krieger(in) — to equate gleichsetzen — toughness Zähigkeit — gravely ernsthaft 11 – 12 competitive spirit Kampfgeist — romanticism Romantik — to disintegrate (fig) Risse bekommen — to reveal offenbaren — corporate office Firmenzentrale — to tailgate während e-s Spiels auf der Ladefläche des Autos picknicken — to orchestrate organisieren — to pummel verprügeln — to wallop (AE) verdreschen another sport in which violence is so elemental? 9 Boxing, of course, is a blood sport. Fighters fine-tune their body and sharpen their mind before a match. ... Boxing is often called the sweet science, which alludes to the idea that a successful boxer is one who combines fearlessness, technique, and an ability to anticipate an opponent’s moves. It’s a bit of soothing poetry to soften the coarseness of the sport, to distract from the broken noses and bloodshed. Mostly, though, boxing has always been honest about its ugliness. 10 Football isn’t so much wrapped in poetry as it is patriotism, not the small town county fair version but big city capitalism. Football benefits from the lucrative economics of machismo. It markets and sells live-action super hero violence. Fans of professional football like to call players warriors and gladiators mit Interpretation and equate that with bravery and toughness while forgetting that warriors all too often are gravely wounded, and gladiators often fought to the death. 11 Americans love their football. They’re loyal to their favorite teams. Fans admire football players’ athleticism, their impressively complex tactics, and the competitive spirit of a Super Bowl. But in the last decade, much of the romanticism that once surrounded football has disintegrated to more clearly reveal the racism in the corporate offices, the sexism within the culture, and the enduring physical pain of the game. All that’s left is the violence. 12 And Americans settle into their seats for that. They tailgate in anticipation of this volatile pastime. This orchestrated pummeling of another team, the walloping of another person. The winner’s victory is a violent one. © 2023 The Washington Post Teacher out-of-pocket expenses. | Cartoon: John Cole, virginiamercury.com World and Press erscheint 2 × monatlich (Juli und Dezember als Doppelausgabe) in der Carl Ed. 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World and Press | March 2 2023 In Focus 3 A WWII weapons bunker has a new mission SCIENCE The fortification now protects 6,000 invertebrates suspended in ethanol alcohol. By Louis Sahagún 1 A WORLD WAR II-era weapons bunker in Irvine has a new mission – sheltering preserved insect specimens. When a collection of bugs floating in specimen bottles outgrew his laboratory, Robert Fisher moved them into an abandoned weapons bunker at the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine. 2 Now, the fortification protects 6,000 invertebrates suspended in ethanol alcohol. Fisher, a research biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, began collecting the specimens 25 years ago, when far fewer wild populations in California were in danger of extinction. “For years, I couldn’t find anybody who cared about this stuff,” Fisher said with obvious pleasure as he led a group of visitors into the bunker recently. “That was before DNA barcoding became a popular research technique.” 3 Advances in DNA barcoding have made all those soggy centipedes, millipedes, snails, spiders, weevils, earwigs, bees, flies, wasps, beetles, and ants very valuable for much more than what meets the eye. Testing just a drop of ethanol can reveal bits of genetic data from other organisms that shared the landscape with the specimen when it was alive: fungi, bacteria, mites, even the parasites in its gut. It could also detect all that remains of species that no longer exist. 4 Scientists say that amid global warming and rapid die-offs of species, such genetic findings are vital in protecting biodiversity and improving ecosystem management. The search for clues Research biologist Robert Fisher examines a jar of 20-year-old invertebrate vials. | Photos: Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times/ TNS has spawned a new field that Scott E. Miller, chief scientist of the Smithsonian Institution, calls “museomics”: determining the DNA in old public and private natural history collections vulnerable to loss from degradation, disasters, and becoming “orphaned” by the retirement or deaths of their owners and caretakers. Wags in scientific communities refer to the latter unfortunate occurrence as “Collect, preserve, and then chuck it.” 5 Daniel Gluesenkamp, executive director of the nonprofit California Institute for Biodiversity, is wasting no time in helping organize collection rescues and DNA testing campaigns with million made available under California’s new Biorepository Upgrades and Orphaned Collections program. This is biological sampling on a Herculean scale – and in a bit of a rush. “We believe there are at least 10,000 specimen bottles in California’s museums alone,” Gluesenkamp said. “So, we’re starting with just insects – specifically those preserved in ethanol, not formalin, which degrades DNA. We hope to complete this phase of the campaign within three years.” 6 Just a few years ago, it wasn’t easy for museums, research institutions, and scientists to fit DNA barcoding into what investment consultants call the “elevator speech” – the pithy hook deliverable during an elevator ride that is needed to recruit big donors. That began to change after scientists determined that the rate of extinction in the last century was about 22 times faster than the historical baseline rate. 7 In 2020, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that made California the first state in the nation to pledge to conserve 30% of its land and coastal water by 2030. A year later, the state budgeted million to pull DNA out of historic insect collections, as well as to launch ambitious new field studies to better understand the extent of California’s invertebrate biodiversity. “Researchers estimate that as much as 75% of California’s insects have still not been described by science,” Gluesenkamp said. 8 An additional million was made available to upgrade infrastructure of existing collections and to lay the groundwork for a system of new permanent homes for natural history collections as they become available. California is ideal for such efforts, scientists say, because it harbors extremely high levels of biodiversity, as well as high numbers of declining and endangered plants and animals. Beyond that, research on the genetics of natural populations and conservation biology has come a long way in California over the past half-century. 9 Samples of ethanol taken from specimen bottles housed at locations including the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, UC Berkeley, and Fisher’s leased WWII-era weapons bunker are being sent to UC Santa Cruz for DNA work. “Our job is to sequence DNA in these samples and report back on what we could determine and what findings may require more analysis,” said Rachel Meyer, an adjunct assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz. 10 “We don’t need much,” she said. Fragments of DNA from the leg of a bee collected three decades ago, for example, could determine all the plants and fungi that the pollinator had landed on while it was busy fulfilling its life cycles. “I’m especially interested in determining the fungi present in those insect collections,” she said. “Imagine the possibility of discovering a beneficial fungus that we could inject into plants suffering from climate change.” 11 Fisher and USGS biologist Jared Heath are eager to help make that happen. On a recent morning, they pulled on pairs of latex gloves as they approached shelves that sagged under the weight of bottled specimens. Then they began the tedious task of using droppers to extract samples of the ethanol soup in each jar. One bottle at a time, most of them tagged with faded labels indicating that they hadn’t been opened in more than a decade. “Many years from now,” Fisher said, “researchers will be able to read the results of our efforts like chapters in a book.” 12 “They will tell a story,” Fisher added, “about whether our attempts to protect California’s wild populations were successful or not.” © 2023 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Biologist Jared Heath extracts ethanol from vials of invertebrates. Jared Heath at the Irvine WWII bunker. 0 – 2 MISSIONAufgabe — fortification Befestigungsanlage — invertebrates Wirbellose — to suspend einlegen — preserved konserviert — specimen Exemplar; s.w.u. specimen bottle Probenflasche — air station Militärflugplatz — research biologist Forschungsbiologe(-in) — U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) US-Behörde für amtliche Kartografie — in danger of extinction vom Aussterben bedroht — DNA barcoding Methode zur Artenbestimmung anhand e-r DNA-Sequenz 3 soggy glitschig — centipede Hundertfüßer — millipede Tausendfüßer — snail Schnecke — weevil Rüsselkäfer — earwig Ohrwurm — … than what meets the eye (fig) …, als man auf den ersten Blick denkt — fungi Pilze — mite Milbe — gut Darm — to detect erkennen 4 amid angesichts — to spawn hervorbringen — to determine bestimmen — natural history Naturkunde — vulnerable gefährdet — degradation Zersetzung; s.w.u. to degrade — to become orphaned verwaisen — caretaker Verwalter(in) — wag (coll) Witzbold — occurrence Ereignis — to chuck it (coll) aufgeben (to chuck wegwerfen) 5 – 6 executive director Geschäftsführer(in) — nonprofit gemeinnützig — biorepository Lager für Bioproben — sampling Probenahme; s.w.u. sample Probe — on a Herculean scale von gigantischem Ausmaß — specifically insbesondere — investment consultant Anlageberater(in) — elevator speech kurze Zus.fassung e-r Idee — pithy prägnant — hook Aufhänger — donor Geldgeber(in) — baseline rate Ausgangsniveau 7 – 8 Gov. = Governor — to issue erlassen — executive order Verordnung — to pledge to do s. verpflichten zu tun — to lay the groundwork for (fig) die Grundlage schaffen für — to harbor beheimaten — conservation biology Naturschutzbiologie — to come a long way (fig) große Fortschritte machen 9 – 12 county (AE) Landkreis — to sequence sequenzieren — adjunct assistant professor (AE) Lehrbeauftragte(r) — evolutionary biology Evolutionsbiologie — pollinator Bestäuber — beneficial nützlich — to inject injizieren — to sag s. durchbiegen — tedious mühsam — dropper Pipette — to extract entnehmen — to tag with a label mit e-m Etikett versehen
