Sports writers

"In some respects, the life of a censor is more exhilarating than that of an emperor. The best the emperor can do is snip off the heads of men and women, who are mere mortals. The censor can decapitate ideas which but for him might have lived forever."

"For a person in rugged health who is not particularly dressed up and does not want to write a letter or read the newspaper, we can imagine few diversions more enjoyable than to have a child turned loose upon him."

"The average editor cannot escape feeling that telling a writer to do something is almost the same thing as performing it himself."

"The body of the Unknown Soldier has come home, but his spirit will wander with that of his brothers. There will be no rest for his soul until the great democracy of death has been translated into the unity of life."

"The artist has never been a dictator, since he understands better than anybody else the variations in human personality."

"There is no proselyter half so energetic as the hard-shelled atheist."

"Nobody talks so constantly about God as those who insist that there is no God."

"Posterity is as likely to be wrong as anyone else."

"Appeasers believe that if you keep on throwing steaks to a tiger, the tiger will become a vegetarian."

"Umpire Billy Bowden is decked by a Jones sweep! How marvellous...I mean what a choker...A sweetly-timed shot by the England batsman, which strikes Bowden on the hip, sending sunnies and walkie-talkie flying. Shame for Jones, that was going for four. Bowden will have secretly loved that, the old drama tart."

"Having seen the replay, I think Steve Bucknor was right. I like Bucknor, in fact, he might be my only friend."

"Embarrassing cricket tales. When I was about 14, my school team played against a school called Langdon, somewhere or other in the wilds of East London. They batted first and racked up 180-3 off 20 overs. We got 13. My PE teacher called it the most humiliating day of his life. Years later, he got done for sex offences. I wonder what he thinks now."

"Hayden hits his fourth four of the over off the final ball, riding a dreamy steer through the covers. Boom boom boom let me hear you say way-ooh."

"Monty went beserk, like a toddler who's just been told he can't have a Happy Meal."

"Oof! McCullum kerplunks a fuller Sidebottom delivery for what looks a certain four until it smashes into Gillespie's, erm, mummy-daddy button at the non-striker's end and he is denied a run. That had to hurt. Gillespie turns down the opportunity to have it treated by the Kiwi physio - perhaps he's not his type."

"A well-deserved standing ovation from the Lord's faithful and what can you say about any Collingwood innings? Nuggety, earthy, gritty. All hail Ross Kemp - give that man his own cop show on ITV."

"Vaughan is lurking in the dressing room gloom like some mad woman spying into her next door neighbours' garden."

"Hayden marches down the pitch towards Collymore, bat raised, as if he's just returned from the theatre to find him rifling through his wife."

"Bit of Toto as Hoffmann makes his way to the middle - "I bless the rains down in Africa!" - smashing. My favourite Toto number is Rosanna. I used to go out with someone called Rosanna. Her mum looked like Cher."

"Colly doing a good, no-frills, manful job for England here, just one from the over. He is to cricket what Jim Taggart is to detective work."

"Just two from the over, Anderson tighter than Andy Fordham's watch strap."

"I like Monty, I'd like to sit with my arm round him on the sofa all night watching documentaries on BBC Four."

"Murali is really struggling out there, he looked like Heather Mills McCartney making her way to bed from her en suite bathroom fielding down at fine-leg."

"Anyone seen Kaka's wife? Funnily enough, she's a complete sort. She's the sort of woman who, if she looked you in the eye in a bar and asked you where the fag machine was, you'd start giggling and snort."

"I've got a horrible feeling that if United do do the business tonight, Scholes won't be on the pitch in Athens. He may well be the best player England have produced for the last 15 years, but he has all the tackling ability of a granny on roller skates."

"There's Jamie Murray in the crowd - I assume that's his woman, otherwise her actual boyfriend might be extremely irate."

"I'd imagine Janowicz is a fine lover - a big, bear of a man but with the hands of a miniature portrait painter."

"I'm not mad at Limbaugh. He expresses no shame to the game he's been running for two decades. He's an opportunistic, race-baiting, anti-black entertainer. The popularity of the gangsta element of hip-hop music culture has allowed Limbaugh to proudly claim that his form of entertainment is mainstream."

"Having failed as an NFL commentator, Limbaugh understands the power of football."

"And here come the Left Brothers — Al "747" Sharpton and Jesse "DC 10" Jackson — barreling in for a landing on top of Goodell's dome. And this time every black person with an ounce of common sense and self-respect is riding shotgun with Jesse and Al, who have justifiably voiced their displeasure with Limbaugh's ownership bid."

"We hope that Wisden is a constant, helping the reader to make sense of it all and providing a little contemplative calm."

"Cricket's all right in spite of the newspapers, but the trouble is that three quarters of us don't know how to use our own gifts."

"A game of cricket is at work from the first ball to the last in shaping an outline or design for itself. Sometimes the design degenerates into dullness and incompetence, but design there always is, and there is an interest even in the tracing of the course and impulse of its failures."

"At any rate, it would detract sadly from the richness of the game if deduction of character from a player's style was a forbidden pursuit, for undoubtedly the main reason why cricketers are remembered for years, for decades, after the heroes of other sports are forgotten is that they set the impress of character, apart from technical batting or bowling, on the minds of those who watched them, and whether that cricket-character falsely represented the real man is, in the last analysis, unimportant."

"He was certainly one of that company who tried to raise descriptions of matches from mere reporting to literature."

"We've got a freaker! We’ve got a freaker down the wicket now. Not very shapely and it's masculine. And I would think it's seen the last of its cricket for the day. The police are mustered, so are the cameramen, and Greg Chappell. And now he's being embraced by a blond policeman. And this may be his last public appearance but what a splendid one. He's now being marched down in the final exhibition past at least 8,000 people in the Mound Stand, some of whom perhaps have never seen anything quite like this before. And he's getting a very good reception."

"Cricket is the most senior, widespread and deeply rooted of English games."

"God, whose farm is all creation, take the gratitude we give; take the finest of our harvest, crops we grow that all may live."

"I had devoted too much of my life to this utterly irrational game. I would chuck the whole thing and take to Strindberg for amusement."

"It is both a pointless and a churlish thing to praise the old days at the expense of the new, though there are a number of things a man might reasonably have preferred to commercial television and the hydrogen bomb."

"At a point of life when one is through with boyhood, but has not yet discovered how to be a man, it was my fortune to travel with the most marvelously appealing of teams."

"In the intimacy of Ebbets Field it was a short trip from the grandstand to the fantasy you were in the game."

"You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it."

"One did not go to Ebbets Field for sociology. Exciting baseball was the attraction, and a wonder of the sociological Brooklyn Dodgers was the excitement of their play."

"He bore the burden of a pioneer and the weight made him strong. If one can be certain of anything in baseball, it is that we shall not look upon his like again."

"Unlike most, a ball player must confront two deaths. First, between the ages of thirty and forty he perishes as an athlete. Although he looks trim and feels vigorous and retains unusual coordination, the superlative reflexes, the major league reflexes, pass on. At a point when many of his classmates are newly confident and rising in other fields, he finds that he can no longer hit a very good fast ball or reach a grounder four strides to his right. At thirty-five he is is experiencing the truth of finality. As his major league career is ending, all things will end. However he sprang, he was always earthbound. Mortality embraces him. The golden age has passed in a moment. So will all things. So will all moments."

"One thing a writer has, if he is fortunate, and I have been fortunate, is a partnership with the years."

"Surely these fine athletes, those boys of summer, have found their measure of ruin."

"That morning began with wind and hairy clouds. It was late March and the day rose brisk and uncertain, with gusts suggesting January and flashes of sun promising June. In every way, a season of change had come."

"It was a time of transition, which few recognized, and glutting national satisfaction. Students and scholars were silent."

"One can travel for weeks with baseball men and see no books at all."

"No game is as verbal as baseball; baseball spreads twenty minutes of action across three hours of a day."

"Baseball skill relates inversely to age. The older a man gets, the better a ball player he was when young, according to the watery eye of memory."

"What did it matter, Babe Ruth or Jersey Joe Stripp? If vector analysis was beyond me, I could still watch a ball game."

"In the dead sunlight of a forgotten spring the major leaguers were trim, graceful and effortless. They might have been gods for these seemed true Olympians to a boy who wanted to become a manand who sensed that it was an exalted manly thing to catch a ball with one hand thrust across your body and make a crowd leap to its feet and cheer."

"The world is never again as it was before anyone you love has ever died; never so innocent, never so fixed, never so gentle, never so pliant to your will. But these are afterthoughts. Generations vie and the young recover swiftly, or believe they do."

"When the wind blew from the south and the French doors had been opened, the sound of cheering carried from Ebbets Field into the apartment. It was astonishing, to hear cheers from a major league crowd while sitting at home."

"At carefree times in early boyhood I chose to believe that life was a kind of ball game, but with a mix of years and perception I learned better."

"I never heard a thrown ball make that sound before. The ball seemed to accelerate as it came close; an accelerating, impossibly fast pitch that made the noises of hornets and snakes."

"Nouns and verbs carry writing."

"The immeasurable difference between producing cars and producing newspapers is pursuit of the horizon."

"I wonder if anyone always knows-you, me, Jackie Robinson, even Robert Frost-that we will cross to Safety. Or is it rather that when we are There, we think we always knew?"

"The gracious mistress turned bitch in summer heat."

"Defeat, particularly dramatic defeat, confirms our worst impression of ourselves."

"The time seems simpler than today, but mostly because the past always seems simpler when its wars are done."

"Being and writing, the road asked nothing more."

"It was a fine thing to be a newspaperman and I very much wanted to be a good one."

"There is only so much space on the planet. Fathers perish to make room for sons."

"Newspapers blew on dirty floors. Littering is an ancillary function of the free press."

"Is that the minds last, soundless, dying cry? Who will remember? There is no rustling of old crowds as my long, wrenching, joyous voyage ended, only the question, "Who will remember?""

"A man who will misuse an apostrophe is capable of anything."

"Paddy dashed back towards his goal like a woman who smells a cake burning. The ball won the race and it curled inside the near post as Paddy crashed into the outside of the net and lay against it like a fireman who had returned to find his station ablaze."

"The first class contains four, which, we are informed, may be properly called beasts for hunting; namely, the hare, the hart, the wolf, and the wild boar. The second class contains the names of the beasts of the chase, and they are five; that is to say, the buck, the doe, the fox, the martin, and the roe. In the third class we find three, that are said to afford "greate dysporte" in the pursuit, and they are denominated, the grey or badger, the wild-cat and the otter…The reader may possibly be surprised, when he casts his eye over the foregoing list of animals for hunting, at seeing the names of several that do not exist at this time in England, and especially of the wolf, because he will readily recollect the story so commonly told of their destruction during the reign of Edgar."

"And also, of animals when they retired to rest; a hart was said to be harbored, a buck lodged, a roebuck bedded, a hare formed, a rabbit set, &c."

"It has been remarked by foreigners that the English are particularly fond of bell-ringing; and indeed most of our churches have a ring of bells in the steeple, partly appropriated to that purpose. These bells are rung upon most occasions of joy and festivity, and sometimes at funerals, when they are muffled, and especially at the funerals of ringers, with a piece of woolen cloth bound about the clapper, and the sounds then emitted by them are exceedingly unmelodious, and well fitted to inspire the mind with melancholy… Ringing the bells backwards is sometimes mentioned, and probably consisted in beginning with the largest bell and ending with the least; it appears to have been practiced by the ringers as a mark of contempt or disgust."

"According to the ritual of the Romish church, the bells were not only blessed and exorcised, but baptized as those above mentioned, and anointed with holy oil. After these ceremonies had passed it was believed that the evil spirits lurking in the air might be driven away by their sound."

"I have seen a man in London, who I believe is now living, ring twelve bells at one time; two of them were placed upon his head, he held two in each hand, one was affixed to each of his knees, and two upon each foot; all of which he managed with great adroitness, and performed a vast variety of tunes."

"According to some of the pious writers of antiquity, they made large fires, which might be seen at a great distance, upon the vigil of this saint [John], in token that he was said in holy writ to be "a shining light." Others, agreeing with this, add also, these fires were made to drive away the dragons and evil spirits hovering in the air; and one of them gravely says, in some countries they burned bones, which was called a bone-fire; for "the dragons hattyd nothyng mor than the styncke of brenyng bonys." This, says another, habent ex gentilibus, they have from the heathens. The author last cited laments the abuses committed upon thes occasions. "this vigil," says he, "ought to be held with cheerfulness and piety, but not with such merriment as is shewn by the profane lovers of this world, who make great fires in the streets, and indulge themselves with filthy and unlawful games, to which they add glotony and drunkenness, and the commission of many other shameful indecencies.""

"It appears that soon after the introduction of bowling-alleys they were productive of very evil consequences; for they became not only exceedingly numerous, but were often attached to places of public resort, which rendered them the receptacles of idle and dissolute persons; and were the means of promoting a pernicious spirit of gambling among the younger and most unwary part of the community. The little room required for making these bowling-alleys was no small cause of their multiplication, particularly in great towns and cities. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries these nurseries of vice were universally decried, and especially such of them as were established within the city and suburbs of London, where the ill effects arising from them were most extensive."

"Dio Nicæus, an ancient author, speaking of the inhabitants of the northern parts of this island, tells us, they were a fierce and barbarous people, who tilled no ground, but lived upon the depredations they committed in the southern districts, or upon the food they procured by hunting."

"If it be granted that the Britons, generally speaking, were expert in hunting, it is still uncertain what animals were obnoxious to the chase; we know however, at least, that the hare was not anciently included; for Cæser tells us, "the Britons did not eat the flesh of hares, notwithstanding the island abounded with them." And this abstinence, he adds, arose from a principle of religion; which principle, no doubt, prevented them from being worried to death: a cruelty reserved for more enlightened ages."

"The increasing demand for these objects of amusement, it is said, suggested the idea of cutting the outlines appropriated to the different suits upon separate blocks of wood and stamping them upon the cards; the intermediate spaces between the outlines were filled up with various colours laid on by the hand. This expeditious method of producing cards reduced the price of them, so that they might readily be purchased by almost every class of persons: the common usage of cards was soon productive of serious evils, which all the exertions of the legislative power have not been able to eradicate."

"The universality of card-playing in the reign of this monarch is evident from a prohibitory statute being necessary to prevent apprentices from using cards except in the Christmas holidays, and then only in their masters' houses…But this moderation, I apprehend, was by no means general, for several contemporary writers are exceedingly severe in their reflections upon the usage of cards, which they rank with dice, and consider both as destructive to morality and good order."

"The chimney-sweepers of London have also singled out the first of May for their festival; at which time they parade the streets in companies, disguised in various manners. Their dresses are usually decorated with gilt paper, and other mock fineries; they have their shovels and brushes in their hands, which they rattle one upon the other; and to this rough music they jump about in imitation of dancing."

"The mere management of arms, though essentially requisite, was not sufficient of itself to form an accomplished knight in the times of chivalry; it was necessary for him to be endowed with beauty, as well as with strength and agility of body; he ought to be skilled in music, to dance gracefully, to run with swiftness, to excel in wrestling, to ride well, and to perform every other exercise befitting his situation. To these were to be added urbanity of manners, strict adherence to the truth, and invincible courage. Hunting and hawking skilfully were also acquirements that he was obliged to possess, and which were usually taught him as soon as he was able to endure the fatigue that they required."

"The laws of chivalry required that every knight should pass through two offices: the first was a page; and, at the age of fourteen, he was admitted an esquire. The office of the esquire consisted of several departments; the esquire for the body, the esquire of the chamber, the esquire of the stable, and the carving esquire; the latter stood in the hall at dinner, carved the different dishes, and distributed them to the guests. Several of the inferior officers had also their respective esquires."

"The romantic notions of chivalry appear to have lost their vigour towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, especially in this country, where a continued series of intestine commotions employed the exertions of every man of property, and real battles afforded but little leisure to exercise the mockery of war."

"The king then kept his Christmas at his castle at Guildford; the dresses are said to be ad faciendum ludos domini regis, and consisted of eighty tunics of buckram of various colours; forty-two visors of different similitudes, namely, fourteen of faces of women, fourteen of faces of men, and fourteen heads of angels made with silver; twenty-eight crests; fourteen mantles embroidered with heads of dragons; fourteen white tunics wrought with the heads and wings of peacocks; fourteen with the heads of swans with wings; fourteen tunics painted with the eyes of peacocks; fourteen tunics of English linen painted; and fourteen other tunics embroidered with stars of gold."

"It is said of the English, that formerly they were remarkable for the manner in which they celebrated the festival of Christmas; at which season they admitted variety of sports and pastimes not known, or little practised in other countries."

"When beasts went together in companies, there was said to be a pride of lions; a lepe of leopards; an herd of harts, of bucks, and of all sorts of deer; a bevy of roes; a sloth of bears; a singular of boars; a sownder of wild swine; a dryft of tame swine; a route of wolves; a harras of horses; a rag of colts; a stud of mares; a pace of asses; a baren of mules, a team of oxen; a drove of kine; a flock of sheep; a tribe of goats; a sculk of foxes; a cete of badgers; a richess of martins; a fesynes of ferrets; a huske or a down of hares; a nest of rabbits; a clower of cats, and a kendel of young cats; a shrewdness of apes; and a labour of moles."

"Two greyhounds were called a brace, three a leash, but two spaniels or harriers were called a couple. We have also a mute of hounds for a number, a kenel of raches, a litter of whelps, and a cowardice of curs."

"A state of princes; a skulk of friars; a skulk of thieves; an observance of hermits; a lying of pardoners; a subtiltie of serjeants; an untruth of sompners; a multiplying of husbands; an incredibility of cuckolds; a safeguard of porters; a stalk of foresters; a blast of hunters; a draught of butlers; a temperance of cooks; a melody of harpers; a poverty of pipers; a drunkenship of coblers; a disguising of taylors; a wandering of tinkers; a malepertness of pedlars; a fighting of beggars; a rayful, (that is, a netful) of knaves; a blush of boys; a bevy of ladies; a nonpatience of wives; a gagle of women; a gagle of geese; a superfluity of nuns; and a herd of harlots. Similar terms were applied to inanimate things, as a caste of bread, a cluster of grapes, a cluster of nuts, &c."

"As in hunting, so in hawking, the sportsmen had their peculiar impressions, and therefore the tyro in the art of falconry is recommended to learn the following arrangement of terms as they were to be applied to the different kinds of birds assembled in companies. A sege of herons, and of bitterns; an herd of swans, of cranes, and of curlews; a dopping of sheldrakes; a spring of teels; a covert of cootes; a gaggle of geese; a badelynge of ducks; a sord or sute of mallards; a muster of peacoccks; a nye of pheasants; a bevy of quails; a covey of partridges; a congregation of plovers; a flight of doves; a dule of turtles; a walk of snipes; a fall of woodcocks; a brood of hens; a building of rooks; a murmuration of starlings; an exaltation of larks; a flight of swallows; a host of sparrows; a watch of nightingales; and a charm of goldfinches."

"According to the author, in the reign of James I, quoted above, pall-mall was a pastime not unlike goff, but if the definition of the former given by Cotgrave be correct, it will be found to differ materially from the latter, at least as it was played in modern times. "Pale-maille," says he, "is a game wherein a round box ball is struck with a mallet through a high arch of iron, which he that can do at the fewest blows, or at the number agreed upon, wins." It is to be observed, that there are two of these arches, that is, "one at either end of the alley." The game of mall was a fashionable amusement in the reign of Charles II, and the walk in St. James's Park, now called the Mall, received its name from having been appropriated to the purpose of playing at mall, where Charles himself and his courtiers frequently exercised themselves in the practice of this pastime. The denomination mall given to the game, is evidently derived from the mallet or wooden hammer used by the players to strike the ball."

"In a paper belonging to the Spectator there is a short description of a country wake. "I found," says the author, "a ring of cudgel-players, who were breaking one another's heads in order to make some impression on their mistresses' hearts."…to this he adds another curious pastime, as a kind of Christmas gambol, which he had seen also; that is, a yawning match for a Cheshire cheese; the sport began about midnight, when the whole company were disposed to be drowsy; and he that yawned the widest, and at the same time most naturally, so as to produce the greatest number of yawns from the spectators, obtained the cheese."

"I do not know a greater fault in the nurture of children than the conniving at the wanton acts of barbarity which they practise at an early age upon innocent insects; the judgment of that parent must be exceedingly defective, or strangely perverted, who can proportion the degree of cruelty to the smallness of the creature that unfortunately becomes the sufferer. It is but a fly, perhaps he may say, when he sees his child pluck off its wings or its legs by way of amusement; it is but a fly, and cannot feel much pain; besides the infant would cry if I was to take it from him, and that might endanger his health, which surely is of more consequence than many flies: but I fear worse consequences are to be dreaded by permitting it to indulge so vicious an inclination, for as it grows up, the same cruelty will in all likelihood be extended to larger animals, and its heart by degrees made callous to every claim of tenderness and humanity."

"It is indeed said that Edmund, king of the East Angles, was shot to death with arrows by the Danes; but, if this piece of history be correct, it is no proof that they used the bow as a weapon of war. The action itself might be nothing more than a wanton piece of cruelty; and cruelty seems to have been a prominent feature in the character of those lawless plunderers."

"Among the vices of the Anglo-Saxons may be reckoned their propensity to gaming, and especially with the dice, which they derived from their ancestors; for Tacitus assures us that the ancient Germans could not only hazard all their wealth, but even stake their liberty, upon the turn of the dice; "and he who loses," says the author, "submits to servitude, though younger and stronger than his antagonist, and patiently permits himself to be bound, and sold in the market; and this madness they dignify by the name of honour.""

"Yet, we are well assured that learning did not form any prominent feature in the education of a young nobleman during the Saxon government: it is notorious, that Alfred the Great was twelve years of age before he learned to read; and that he owed his knowledge of letters to accident, rather than to the intention of his tutors. A book adorned with paintings in the hands of his mother, attracted his notice, and he expressed his desire to have it: she promised to comply with his request on condition that he learned to read it, which it seems he did; and this trifling incident laid the groundwork of his future scholarship."

"The discontinuation of bodily exercises afforded a proportionable quantity of leisure time for the cultivation of the mind; so that the manners of mankind were softened by degrees, and learning, which had been so long neglected, became fashionable, and was esteemed an indispensable mark of a polite education."

"The general decay of those manly and spirited exercises, which formerly were practiced in the vicinity of the metropolis has not arisen from any want of inclination in the people, but from the want of places proper for the purpose: such as in times past had been allotted to them are now covered with buildings, or shut up by enclosures, so that, if it were not for skittles, dutch-pins, four-corners, and the like pastimes, they would have no amusements for the exercise of the body; and these amusements are only to be met with in places belonging to common drinking-houses, for which reason their play is seldom productive of much benefit, but more frequently becomes the prelude to drunkenness and debauchery. This evil has been increasing for a long series of years; and honest Stow laments the retrenchments of the grounds appropriated for martial pastimes which had begun to take place in his day."

"Stow informs us, that the young Londoners, on holidays, after the evening prayer, were permitted to exercise themselves with their wasters and bucklers before their masters' doors…The bear-gardens were the usual places appropriated by the masters of defence for public trials of skill. These exhibitions were outrageous to humanity, and only fitted for the amusement of ferocious minds; it is therefore astonishing that they should have been frequented by females; for, who could imagine that the slicing of the flesh from a man's cheek, the scarifying of his arms, or laying the calves of his legs upon his heels, were spectacles calculated to delight the fair sex, or sufficiently attractive to command their presence."

"Selden asserts, and in my opinion with great justice, that all these whimsical transpositions of dignity are derived from the ancient Saturnalia, or Feasts of Saturn, when the masters waited upon their servants, who were honoured with mock titles, and permitted to assume the state and deportment of their lords. These fooleries were exceedingly popular, and continued to be practised long after the establishment of Christianity, in defiance of the threatenings and the remonstrances of the clergy, who, finding it impossible to divert the stream of vulgar prejudice permitted them to be exercised, but changed the primitive object of devotion; so that the same unhallowed orgies, which had disgraced the worship of a heathen deity, were dedicated, as it was called, to the service of the true God, and sanctioned by the appellation of a Christian institution. From this polluted stock branched out variety of unseemly and immoral sports; but none of them more daringly impious and outrageous to common sense, than the Festival of Fools, in which the most sacred rites and ceremonies of the church were turned into ridicule, and the ecclesiastics themselves participated in the abominable profanations."

"In each of the cathedral churches there was a bishop, or an archbishop of fools, elected; and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see a pope of fools. These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suit of ecclesiastics who attended upon them, and assisted at the divine service, most of them attired in ridiculous dresses resembling pantomimical players and buffoons; they were accompanied by large crowds of the laity, some being disguised with masks of a monstrous fashion, and others having their faces smutted; in one instance to frighten the beholders, and in the other to excite their laughter: and some, again, assuming the habits of females, practised all the wanton airs of the loosest and most abandoned of the sex. During the divine service this motley crowd were not contended with singing of indecent songs in the choir, but some of them ate, and drank, and played at dice upon the altar, by the side of the priest who celebrated the mass. After the service they put filth into the censers, and ran about the church, leaping, dancing, laughing, singing, breaking obscene jests, and exposing themselves in the most unseemly attitudes with shameless impudence. Another part of these ridiculous ceremonies was, to shave the precentor of fools upon a stage erected before the church, in the presence of the populace; and during the operation, he amused them with lewd and vulgar discourses, accompanied by actions equally reprehensible. The bishop, or the pope of fools, performed the divine service habited in the pontifical garments, and gave his benediction to the people before they quitted the church. He was afterwards seated in an open carriage, and drawn about to the different parts of the town, attended by a large train of ecclesiastics and laymen promiscuously mingled together; and many of the most profligate of the latter assumed clerical habits in order to give their impious fooleries the greater effect; they had also with them carts filled with ordure, which they threw occasionally upon the populace assembled to see the procession. These spectacles were always exhibited at Christmas-time, or near to it, but not confined to one particular day."

"When the ceremony took place upon St. Stephen's-day, they sang, as part of the mass, a burlesque composition called the Prose of the Ass, or the Fool's Prose. It was performed by a double choir, and at intervals, in place of a burden, they imitated the braying of an ass. Upon the festival of St. John the Evangelist they had another arrangement of ludicrous sentences, denominated the Prose of the Ox, equally reprehensible. These exhibitions were highly relished by the populace at large, and crept into the monasteries and nunneries, where they were practiced by the female votaries of religion."

"When the bow and the sling were laid aside in favour of the gun, prudence naturally forbade the putting an instrument of so dangerous a nature into the hands of children; they however provided themselves a substitute for the gun..."

"If a gentleman, or an inferior thane, killed a stag in the king's forests, he was degraded from his rank; if a ceorl, or husbandman, committed the same offence, he was reduced to slavery; and if a slave killed one, he suffered death. Magistrates were appointed, in every county, or shire, to put these laws in execution, and under them were appointed inferior officers or gamekeepers, whose province it was to apprehend the offenders."

"Chaucer, in his Canterbury Tales, makes the monk much better skilled in riding and hunting, than in divinity. The same poit, afterwards, in the Ploughman's Tale, takes occasion to accuse the monks of pride, because they rode on coursers like knights, having their hawks and hounds with them. In the same tale he severely reproaches the priests for their dissolute manners, saying, that many of them thought more upon hunting with their dogs, and blowing the horn, than of the service they owed to God."

"We may also observe, that, upon these occasions, the female Nimrods dispensed with the method of riding best suited to the modesty of the sex, and sat astride on the saddle like the men; but this indecorous custom, I trust, was never general, nor of long continuance, even with the heroines who were most delighted with these masculine exercises. An author of the seventeenth century speaks of another fashion, adopted by the fair huntresses of the town of Bury in Suffolk. "The Bury ladies," says he, "that used hawking and hunting, were once in a great vaine of wearing breeches," which it seems gave rise to many severe and ludicrous sarcasms. The only argument in favour of this habit, was decency in case of an accident. But in a manner more consistent with the delicacy of the sex, that is, by refraining from those dangerous recreations."

"The "time of grace" begins at Midsummer, and lasteth to Holyrood-day. The fox may be hunted from the Nativity to the Annunciation of our Lady; the roebuck from Easter to Michaelmas; the roe from Michaelmas to Candlemas; the hare from Michaelmas to Midsummer; the wolf as the fox; and the boar from the Nativity to the Purification of our Lady."

"The grand fauconnier of France was an officer of great eminence; his annual salary was four thousand florins; he was attended by fifty gentlemen, and fifty assistant falconers; he was allowed to keep three hundred hawks, he licensed every vender of hawks in France, and received a tax upon every bird sold in that kingdom, and even within the verge of the court; and the king never rode out upon any occasion of consequence without this officer attending upon him."

"The pipe-call, mentioned by Burton, is noticed under a different denomination by Chaucer; "Lo," says he, "the birde is begyled with the merry voice of the foulers' whistle, when it is closed in your nette," --alluding to the deceptive art of the bird-catchers in his time."

"In some great boarding schools for the fair sex, it is customary, upon the introduction of a novice, for the scholars to receive her with much pretended solemnity, and decorate a throne in which she is to be installed, in order to hear a set speech, addressed to her by one of the young ladies in the name of the rest. The throne is wide enough for three persons to sit conveniently, and is made with two stools, having a tub nearly filled with water between them, and the whole is covered by a counterpane or blanket, ornamented with ribands and other trifling fineries, and drawn very tightly over the two stools, upon each of which a lady is seated to keep the blanket from giving way when the new scholar takes her place; and these are called her maids of honour. The speech consists of high-flown compliments calculated to flatter the vanity of the stranger; and as soon as it is concluded, the maids of honour rising suddenly together, the counterpane of course gives way, and poor miss is unexpectedly immerged in the water."

"The Norman minstrel Tallefer, before the commencement of the battle at Hastings, cast his lance into the air three times, and caught it by the head in such a surprising manner, that the English thought it was done by the power of enchantment."

"Under queen Elizabeth, the minstrels had lost the protection of the opulent; and their credit was sunk so low in the public estimation, that, by a statute in the thirty-ninth year of her reign against vagrants, they were included among the rogues, vagabonds, and sturdy beggars, and subjected to the like punishments. This edict also affected all fencers, bearwards, common players of interludes (with the exception of such players as belonged to great personages, and were authorised to play under the hand and seal of their patrons), as well as minstrels wandering abroad, jugglers, tinkers, and pedlars; and seems to have given the death's wound to the profession of the minstrels, who had so long enjoyed the public favour, and basked in the sunshine of prosperity."

"The only vestige of these musical vagrants now remaining, is to be found in the blind fiddlers wandering about the country, and the ballad singers, who frequently accompany their ditties with instrumental music, especially the fiddle, vulgarly called a crowd, and the guitar. And here we may observe, that the name of fiddlers was applied to the minstrels as early at least as the fourteenth century: it occurs in the Vision of Pierce the Ploughman, where we read, "not to fare as a fydeler, or a frier, to seke feastes.""

"These selfish professors of religion [monks] grudged every act of munificence that was not applied to themselves, or their monasteries; and could not behold the good fortune of the minstrels without expressing their indignation; which they often did in terms of scurrilous abuse, calling them janglers, mimics, buffoons, monsters of men, and comtemptible scoffers. They also severely censured the nobility for patronizing and rewarding such a shameless set of sordid flatterers, and the populace for frequenting their exhibitions, and being delighted with their performances, which diverted them from more serious pursuits, and corrupted their morals. On the other hand, the minstrels appear to have been ready enough to give them ample occasion for censure; and, indeed, I apprehend that their own immorality and insolence contributed more to their downfal, than all the defamatory declamations of their opponents."

"The national passion for secular music admitted of little or no abatement by the disgrace and dispersion of the minstrels. Professional musicians, both vocal and instrumental, were afterwards retained at the court, and also in the mansions of the nobility. In the sixteenth century, a knowledge of music was considered as a genteel accomplishment for persons of high rank. Henry VIII not only sang well, but played upon several sorts of instruments; he also wrote songs, and composed the tunes for them; and his example was followed by several of the nobility, his favourites."

"Shove-groat, named also Slyp-groat, and Slide-thrift, are sports occasionally mentioned by the writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and probably were analogous to the modern pastime called Justice Jervis, or Jarvis, which is confined to common pot-houses, and only practiced by such as frequent the tap-rooms."

"In an old Chronicle of Norway, we find it recorded of Olaf Tryggeson, a king of that country, that he was stronger and more nimble than any man in his dominions. He could climb up the rock Smalserhorn, and fix his shield upon the top of it; he could walk round the outside of a boat upon the oars, while the men were rowing; he could play with three darts, alternately throwing them in the air, and always kept two of them up, while he held the third in one of his hands; he was ambidexter, and could cast two darts at once; he excelled all the men of his time in shooting with the bow; and he had no equal in swimming."

"It has before been observed that this author is very severe upon most of the popular sports; but in justice to him I may add, that similar complaints have been exhibited against the church-ales and wakes in times greatly anterior to his existence. And, indeed, if we look at the wakes and fairs as they are conducted in the present day, I trust we shall not hesitate to own that they are by no means proper schools for the improvement of the public morals."

"The English are particularised for their partiality to strange sights; uncommon beasts, birds, or fishes, are sure to attract their notice, and especially such of them as are of the monstrous kind; and this propensity of our countrymen is neatly satirised by Shakspeare in the Tempest; where Stephano, seeing Calaban lying upon the stage, and being uncertain whether he was a fish, a beast, or one of the inhabitants of the island, speaks in the following manner: "Were I in England now, as once I was, and had this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but would give me a piece of silver. There would this monster make a man: any strange beast there makes a man. When they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead Indian." Indeed, we may observe that a cow with two heads, a pig with six legs, or any other unnatural production, with proper management, are pretty certain fortunes to the possessors."

"In the Roman de la Rose, we read of a dance, the name of which is not recorded, performed by two young women lightly clothed. The original reads, "Qui estoient en pure cottes, et tresses a menu tresse;" which Chaucer renders, "In kyrtels, and none other wede, and fayre ytressed every tresse." The French intimates that their hair was platted, or braided in small braids. The thin clothing, I suppose, was used then, as it is now upon like occasions, to show their persons to greater advantage. In their dancing they displayed a variety of singular attitudes; the one coming as it were privately to the other, and, when they were near together, in a playsome manner they turned their faces about, so that they seemed continually to kiss each other."

"The first article in the foregoing quotation brings to my recollection the extraordinary performances of a professed fire-eater, whose name was Powel, well known in different parts of the kingdom about forty years ago. Among other wonderful feats, I saw him do the following: He ate the burning coals from the fire; he put a large bunch of matches lighted into his mouth, and blew the smoke of the sulphur through his nostrils; he carried a red-hot heater round the room in his teeth; and broiled a piece of beef-steak upon his tongue. To perform this, he lighted a piece of charcoal, which he put into his mouth beneath his tongue, the beef was laid upon the top; and one of the spectators blew upon the charcoal, to prevent the heat decreasing, till the meat was sufficiently broiled. By way of conclusion, he made a composition of pitch, brimstone, and other compustibles, to which he added several pieces of lead; the whole was melted in an iron ladle, and then set on fire; this he called his soup; and, taking it out of the ladle with a spoon of the same metal, he ate it in its state of liquefaction, and blazing furiously, without appearing to sustain the least injury."

"One great part of the joculator's profession was the teaching of bears, apes, horses, dogs, and other animals, to imitate the actions of men, to tumble, to dance, and to perform a variety of tricks, contrary to their nature; and sometimes he learned himself to counterfeit the gestures and articulations of the brutes."

"And here I cannot help mentioning a very ridiculous show of a learned pig, which of late days attracted much of the public notice, and at the polite end of the town. This pig, which indeed was a large unwieldy hog, being taught to pick up letters written upon pieces of cards, and to arrange them at command, gave great satisfaction to all who saw him, and filled his tormenter's pocket with money. One would not have thought that a hog had been an animal capable of learning: the fact, however, is another proof of what may be accomplished by assiduity; for the showman assured a friend of mine, that he had lost three very promising brutes in the course of training, and that the phenomenon then exhibited had often given him reason to despair of success."

"A number of little birds, to the amount, I believe, of twelve or fourteen, being taken from different cages, were placed upon a table in the presence of the spectators; and there they formed themselves into ranks like a company of soldiers: small cones of paper bearing some resemblance to grenadiers caps were put upon their heads, and diminutive imitations of muskets made with wood, secured under their left wings. Thus equipped, they marched to and fro several times; when a single bird was brought forward, supposed to be a deserter, and set between six of the musketeers, three in a row, who conducted him from the top to the bottom of the table, on the middle of which a small brass cannon charged with a little gunpowder had been previously placed, and the deserter was situated in the front part of the cannon; his guards then divided, three retiring on one side, and three on the other, and he was left standing by himself. Another bird was immediately produced; and, a lighted match being put into one of his claws, he hopped boldly on the other to the tail of the cannon, and, applying the match to the priming, discharged the piece without the least appearance of fear or agitation. The moment the explosion took place, the deserter fell down, and lay, apparently motionless, like a dead bird; but, at the command of his tutor he rose again; and the cages being brought, the feathered soldiers were stripped of their ornaments, and returned into them in perfect order."

"Training of bulls, bears, horses, and other animals, for the purpose of baiting them with dogs, was certainly practiced by the jugglers; and this vicious pastime has the sanction of high antiquity. Fitz-Stephen, who lived in the reign of Henry II, tells us that, in the forenoon of every holiday, during the winter season, the young Londoners were amused with boars opposed to each other in battle, or with bulls and full-grown bears baited by dogs. This author makes no mention of horses; and I believe the baiting of these noble and useful animals was never a general practice: it was, however, no doubt, partially performed…Asses also were treated with the same inhumanity; but probably the poor beasts did not afford sufficient sport in the tormenting, and therefore were seldom brought forward as the objects of this barbarous diversion."

"Bull and bear-baiting is not encouraged by persons of rank and opulence in the present day; and when practiced, which rarely happens, it is attended only by the lowest and most despicable part of the people; which plainly indicates a general refinement of manners and prevalency of humanity among the moderns; on the contrary, this barbarous pastime was highly relished by the nobility in former ages, and countenanced by persons of the most exalted rank, without exception even of the fair sex."

"I have already informed my readers, that bull-baiting, or worrying of bulls with dogs, was one of the spectacles exhibited by the jugglers and their successors. It is also necessary to observe, that this cruel pastime was not confined to the boundaries of the bear-gardens; but was universally practiced on various occasions, in almost every town or village throughout the kingdom, and especially in market towns, where we find it was sanctioned by the law; and in some of them, I believe, the bull-rings, to which the unfortunate animals were fastened, are remaining to the present hour. It may seem strange, that the legislature should have permitted the exercise of such a barbarous diversion, which was frequently productive of much mischief by drawing together a large concourse of idle and dissipated persons, and affording them an opportunity of committing many grross disorders with impunity. Indeed a public bull-baiting rarely ended without some riot and confusion."

"In order to give the better effect to this diversion, a hole is dug in the ground for the retreat of the animal; and the dogs run at him singly in succession; for it is not usual, I believe, to permit any more than one of them to attack him at once; and the dog which approaches him with the least timidity, fastens upon him the most firmly, and brings him the soonest from his hole, is accounted the best. The badger was formerly called the "grey," hence the denomination of grey-hounds applied to a well known species of dogs, on account of their having been generally used in the pursuit of this animal."

"In the reign of Edward III cock-fighting became a fashionable amusement; it was then taken up more seriously than it formerly had been, and the practice extended to grown persons; even at that early period it began to be productive of pernicious consequences, and was therefore prohibited in 1366 by a public proclamation, in which it was ranked with other idle and unlawful pastimes. But notwithstanding it was thus degraded and discountenanced, it still maintained its popularity, and in defiance of all temporary opposition has descended to the modern times. Among the additions made by Henry VIII to the palace at Whitehall, was a cock-pit; which indicates his relish for the pastime of cock-fighting; and James I was so partial to this diversion, that he amused himself in seeing it twice a week."

"If the opposing of one cock to fight with another may be justly esteemed a national barbarism, what shall be said of a custom more inhuman, which authorised the throwing at them with sticks, and ferociously putting them to a painful and lingering death? I know not at what time this unfortunate animal became the object of such wicked and wanton abuse: the sport, if such a denomination may be given to it, is certainly no recent invention, and perhaps is alluded to by Chaucer…If the poor bird by chance had its legs broken, or was otherwise so lamed as not to be able to stand, the barbarous owners were wont to support it with sticks, in order to prolong the pleasure received from the reiteration of its torment."

"Sometimes the duck is tormented in a different manner, without the assistance of the dogs; by having an owl tied upon her back, and so put into the water, where she frequently dives in order to escape from the burden, and on her return for air, the miserable owl, half drowned, shakes itself, and hooting, frightens the duck; she of course dives again, and replunges the owl into the water; the frequent repetition of this action soon deprives the poor bird of its sensation, and generally ends in its death, if not in that of the duck also."

"The books of hawking assign to the different ranks of persons the sort of hawks proper to be used by them: and they are placed in the following order--"

": The eagle, the vulture, and the merloun, for an emperor."

": The ger-faulcon, and the tercel of the ger-faulcon, for a king."

": The faulcon gentle, and the turcel gentle, for a prince."

": The faulcon of the rock, for a duke."

": The faulcon peregrine, for an earl."

": The bastard, for a baron."

": The sacre, and the sacret, for a knight."

": The lanere, and the laneret, for an esquire."

": The marlyon, for a lady."

": The hobby, for a young man."

": The gos-hawk, for a yeoman."

": The tercel, for a poor man."

": The sparrow-hawk, for a priest."

": The musket, for a holy water clerk."

": The kesterei, for a knave or servant."

"The people of Sybaris, a city in Calabria, are proverbial on account of their effeminancy; and it is said that they taught their horses to dance to the music of the pipe; for which reason, their enemies the Crotonians, at a time when they were at war with them, brought a great number of pipers into the field, and at the commencement of the battle, they played upon their pipes; the Sybarian horses, hearing the sound of the music, began to dance; and their riders, unable to manage them as they ought to have done, were thrown into confusion, and defeated with prodigious slaughter. This circumstance is mentioned by Aristotle; and, if not strictly true, proves, at least that the teaching of animals to exceed the bounds of action prescribed by nature was not unknown to the ancients."

"The wassail is said to have originated from the words of Rowena, the daughter of Hengist; who, presenting a bowl of wine to Vortigern, the king of the Britons, said, wæs hæl or, health to you, my lord king..."

"I may just add, that in addition to the hand-guns, I meet with other instruments of like kind mentioned in the reign of Elizabeth, namely, demy hags, or hag butts. They shot with these engines not only at butts and other dead marks, but also at birds and beasts, using sometimes bullets and sometimes half shots; but in the beginning of the seventeenth century the word artillery was used in a much more extensive sense, and comprehended long-bows, cross-bows, slur-bows, and stone-bows; also scorpions, rams, and catapults, which, the writer tells us, were formerly used; he then names the fire-arms as follows, cannons, basilisks, culverins, jakers, faulcons, minions, fowlers, chambers, harguebusses, calivers, petronils, pistols, and dags. "This," says he, "is the artillerie which is nowe in the most estimation, and they are divided into great ordinance, and into shot or guns," which proves that the use of fire-arms had then in great measure superseded the practice of archery."

"The art of wrestling, which in the present day is chiefly confined to the lower classes of the people, was, however, highly esteemed by the ancients, and made a very considerable figure among the Olympic games. In the ages of chivalry, to wrestle well was accounted one of the accomplishments which a hero ought to possess. Wrestling is a kind of exercise that, from its nature, is likely to have been practiced by every nation, and especially by those the least civilised. It was probably well known in this country long before the introduction of foreign manners."

"[I]n many ways, rocks at the bottom of the deep sea, buried under a mile of Earth’s crust, or covered in bird crap on aren’t inanimate objects at all. They are undulating, "breathing" systems crammed with organisms so tiny and metabolizing so slowly that nobody ever noticed. Most researchers never bothered. Seeking out extreme life requires traveling to some of Earth’s most far-flung and miserable environments. Only a handful of microbiologists and geologists have had the will, fortitude, and resources to endure weeks in the triple-digit heat within African mines, or months in the frozen expanses of Antarctica, or years sifting through the polluted oil fields of to find answers."

"It's a hard thing to fathom, the concept that you, me, the birds, and the bees—all life that is and has ever been—came from a few chemical reactions on some ugly rocks a few billion years ago. Proposing such a theory... [e]ven 50 years ago... might have gotten you... ostracized by the scientific community. That all changed in 1977 when... chartered a research vessel... to the Galápagos Trench. Corliss suspected that a... , was erupting on the deep seafloor... [A]t a depth of around 2,500 meters... ANGUS’s temperature gauge registered a... spike. After several hours, the team... developed the film. ...There was life..—crabs, mussels, lobsters, worms—all flourishing... The incredible pressure, 250 times that on the surface, kept the water from turning to steam."

"Truebridge just dove thirty stories... all on one lungfull of air... The pressure... is more than ten times that at the surface, strong enough to crush a Coke can. At thirty feet. the lungs collapse to hald their normal size; at three hundred feet they shrink to the size of two baseballs. ...The dives don't look forced... as if they all really belong down there. As if we all do."

"[T]here is no oxygen tank at the end of the rope, and if there had been... their lungs would have exploded... and their blood would have bubbled with nitrogen before they reached the surface. ...The human body can withstand the pressures of a fast three-hundred-foot... ascent only in its natural state. Some humans handle it better than others."

"I watch several more competitors... Many can't make it... They resurface with blood running... from their noses, unconscious, or in cardiac arrest. ...And somehow, this sport is legal."

"During the three minutes beneath the surface... the body bears only a passing resemblance to its terrestrial form and function. The ocean changes us physically and psychically."

"The ocean is the last truly quiet place left on Earth."

"These more philosophical freedivers get... the same look one sees in the eyes of Buddhist monks or emergency room patients who have died and then been resuscitated... who have made it over to the other side."

"[B]est of all, divers will tell you, "It's open to everyone.""

"Other than ... freediving is the most dangerous adventure sport in the world."

"Scientists call it the mammalian dive reflex or...the Master Switch of Life, and they've been researching it for... fifty years. ...[C]oined by Per Scholander ...it refers to variety of physiological reflexes in the brain, lungs, heart [etc.] that are triggered the second we put our face in the water. The deeper... the more pronounced... Ancient cultures... employed it... to harvest sponges, pearls, coral and food hudreds of feet below the surface of the ocean..."

"We're born of the ocean. ...At the fifth week of a fetus's development, its heart has two chambers, a characteristic shared by fish."

"Human blood has a chemical composition startingly similar to seawater."

"An infant will reflexively breaststroke when placed underwater and comfortably hold his breath... longer than many adults."

"At sixty feet... The heart beats at half its normal rate. Blood starts rushing... toward the more critical... core. ...The senses numb, the synapses slow. The brain enters a heavily meditative state."

"At three hundred feet... pressure... is ten times that at the surface. ...The organs collapse. The heart beats at a quarter of its normal rate, slower than... in a . Senses disappear. The brain enters a dream state."

"If you compare the ocean to the human body... current exploration... is equivalent to snapping a photograph of a finger..."

"[T]hese clicks are so loud you can actually feel them in your body. Your body starts heating up after a few minutes."

"I swam with these animals about 4 years ago. Some friends and I had heard that off the coast of Sri Lanka these huge congregations of s would gather in March and April."

"These animals came up to us, welcomed us into their pods and started showering us with these clicks."

"I found out later that these clicks are actually used for communication. These animals also use them to see in the deep ocean. ...It's a form of called echolocation."

"They're able to see better with sounds than we are able to see with our eyes."

"Inside of these clicks is encoded information... a secret language..."

"[T]he more you focus in on these clicks, the tinier... they get, [growing] into more complex structures. ...[O]ther ns such as dolphins and orcas also use these. It's this secret language... discrete codes... down to the millisecond."

"Back in the 60s... John Lilly had a lab... dedicated to solving the dolphin communication problem..."

"He had a dolphin telephone... and he would listen in as these dolphins would have these very complex conversations..."

"He... had dolphin English language immersion workshops... where... an intern [would] grant dolphins sexual favors if they learned English words, and this... worked."

"Lilly... wanted to... figure out the communication code. He said these animals are by far the most intelligent... on the planet. They have a form of communication that is far more sophisticated than ours. But you can't quite put a 60 foot long whale into a lab."

"So for the past 50 years we've been... studying these animals from the deck of a boat. Now this is very limiting. You can't see... you... have to put... s off the deck... But... they've found... that... sperm whales have dialects... they can shoot this click communication in focused sound beams to other whales across great distances... [T]hese sperm whales can cram 1600 micro-clicks into a single second... and move discreet frequencies around..."

"But they could not crack the communication code. To do that you have to get below the surface. You have to see these animals... to gauge their behavior."

"[A] few years ago a French researcher and a Belgian freediver... thought "What if we try freediving with whales? Maybe we could get close enough... and start communicating...""

"[A]fter around 30 feet... the water stops buoying you... and starts dragging you down to the sea floor. ...[T]he deeper ...the more your body changes. ...Your organs allow for the free flow of fluids so they don't collapse. Your brain waves slow down. Your heart rate will slow to about 1/3 its resting rate."

"[T]he lowest recorded heart rate [of a free diver]... was 7 beats per minute... about 1/2 of someone in a ..."

"The animals are usually very wary of scuba but... they saw something similar to themselves. ...[W]hales also have mammalian dive reflexes. That's how they're able to dive down to 8,000 feet for 90 minutes..."

"[T]he divers were able to commune with these animals for hours... and get footage that no one else has ever gotten."

"The whales welcomed them into their pods, started shooting them with echolocation to figure out what they were, and then started shooting them with... communication clicks. ...[T]his lasted for a series of days ..."

"The sperm whale's brain is about 6 times the size of ours... They've had it for 15 million year longer... We've had our current size brain around 200,000 years."

"[I]f we're able to understand just the rudiments of this communication, we may be able to save them. ...70% of the population is gone, and it's declining very quickly."

"Japan and Iceland... want to keep hunting sperm whales, and are petitioning to do that... [I]f we're able to prove their intelligence and their capacity for communication we might be able to establish them some... rights."

"It's going to a lot harder to kill an animal that's able to speak its name."

"A group of scientists, acoustic engineers and free divers have... the goal of trying to crack the sperm whale communication code in the next 2 years. ...We're going to use and AI algorithms... We're already doing this with mice... bats..."

"[F]or the first time... in human history we have the technology and... methods to... understand these animals and crack into their code..."

"In the next 10 years the U.S. ...is going to spend $100 million looking for signs of intelligent non-human life in the skies. But there's already intelligent non-human life... on our planet deep beneath the sea. It's been trying to reach out to us for thousands of years... [W]e should start talking back."

"[M]y doctor... told me, "A breathing class could help." ...strengthen my failing lungs, calm my frazzled mind, maybe give me perspective."

"I'd just recovered from pneumonia, which I'd also had the year before and the year before that. I was... wheezing, working, and eating... in a rut—physically, mentally [etc.]"

"I... signed up for an introductory course in breathing to learn... Sudarshan Kriya."

"[T]he voice of a man... flowed from the speakers... too melodious to sound natural... instructed me to inhale slowly through our noses, then exhale slowly. To focus on our breath."

"[S]omething happened. ...[I]t was as if I'd been taken from one place and deposited somewhere else. It happened in an instant. ...I had somehow sweated through my clothes as if I'd just run a marathon."

"The next day I felt even better. ...[T]here was a feeling of calm and quiet that I hadn't experienced in a long time. ...The tension was gone from my shoulders and neck. This lasted a few days..."

"I went to Greece to write a story on ... When most people go underwater... they bail out at ten feet... ears screaming. The freedivers told me they'd previously been "most people." ...To freedive, they said, all anyone had to do was master the art of breathing."

""There are as many ways to breath as there are foods to eat," said one... instructor... Another diver told me that some methods of breathing will nourish our brains... others hasten our death."

"I read through reams of literature on the subject. ...The problem was, the sources were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of years old."

"Seven books of the Chinese Tao dating... to around 400BCE focused entirely on breathing... Even earlier, Hindus considered breath and spirit the same thing, and described elaborate practices... to balance breathing and preserve... mental and physical health. ...Buddhists ...use breathing ...to lengthen their lives [and] reach higher planes of consciousness. Breathing... for all... these cultures, was powerful medicine."

"I looked for... verification... recent research in ... but found next to nothing... breathing technique wasn't important. ...Pulmonologists work mainly on ...maladies of the lungs ...collapse, cancer, emphysema."

"[B]reathing research has been taking place... in the muddy digs of ancient burial sites... dental offices, and... mental hospitals."

"They discovered that our capacity to breath has changed through... evolution, and that the way we breath has gotten markedly worse since the dawn of the ."

"[C]oaches in the 50s used to have their runners take a... mouthful of water, run around the track and then spit out that same amount of water... to force them to breath through their nose.... to move their diaphragms... more, because breathing is so essential to their recovery... endurance, and performance."

"25-50% of the population... breath through their mouth. ...[This causes] neurological problems... respiratory problems... snoring, , even s [etc.]"

"I had been talking to the chief of rhinology research at Stanford... He had warned me how bad was, but no one knew how quickly that damage came on. ...[W]e knew that after years, it can change the structure of your face. It's so common in kids that it is has a term called adenoid face... because they've been mouth breathing so long... the musculature and the [skeletal structure] has changed. ...It creates a longer face... and that also makes these people much more apt to snoring and sleep apnea."

"We had to pay for this study... to actually measure what happens."

"The less you use your nose, the less you're going to be able to use [it]... When people start habitually breathing through their mouths, their noses are going to start to close..."

"The doctor of speech, language pathology at Stanford... measured people who had laryngectomies... She found between 2 months and 2 years, their noses were completely blocked."

"We know that the more you breath through your nose, the more that it's going to open... [P]eople who are habitual mouth breathers, who are also joggers... start breathing through the nose. In the beginning it's really... hard... then weeks... months go by and their noses open up... [T]he benefits... they're innumerable... not only oxygen, but it helps defend your body, humidifies... conditions air [etc.]"

"[R]esearchers... were a bit frustrated... seeing so many chronic conditions ties to mouth breathing, and how so many... could either be improved or... cured by switching the pathway in which you breath."

"[B]reathing has to be considered along with diet and exercise as a pillar of health, because even if you eat keto, vegan, paleo, whatever. Even if you exercise all the time, if you're not breathing right, you're never going to be healthy. We know that to be the truth."

"If you were to take [a billiard ball]... and... imagine just pushing it inside your head, that's about the volume of your nose and all your sinus cavities. ...[T]hey even stretch out above your eyes... [T]hey call it the because it looks exactly like a seashell."

"If you were to split a seashell in half and look at it, that's what's happening in your nose. ...[A]ll of this ...evolved for a reason... [A]ir that comes in through the nose is slowed down... filtered... humidified and it's conditioned, so by the time it gets to your lungs, your lungs can absorb that oxygen so much easier."

"The nose is really the first line of defense."

"[T]he nose... produces... nitric oxide... a that plays an essential role in oxygen delivery and also helps battle... viruses, bacteria and other pathogens."

"[T]his is all happening in the nose. In slowing down that air all of these other functions allow us to gain 20% more oxygen breathing through the nose than... through the mouth."

"So you can breath less and get more by breathing through the nose."

"You can overbreath. When people at a gym or... jogging... [through heavy panting] you're offloading... too much CO2. You're causing constriction in your circulation. ...If you were to breath 30 deep breaths, you'll feel some tingling in your head... maybe your fingertips... your toes will get cool. That's not from an increase in oxygen, it's the opposite... a decrease in circulation."

"[Y]our body wants to be in balance... the right amount of CO2 and oxygen for optimum delivery, and that's what the nose helps you to do."

"[Varying the temperature] on... the same hand, one area was grey and the other was red. ...It was at the Menninger Clinic... and a Navy physicist [Elmer Green] did these tests. It was reported in The New York Times. ...They haven't found [anyone else] who had the powers of . I think Wim's about as close as we've gotten..."

"Just look at freedivers... [A]t the World Freediving Championship [Seventh AIDA Individual World Championship] in Greece... [Y]ou see these people [of all sizes] from all walks of life,.. something like 30 countries had representatives... [T]hese people weren't born with these enormous lungs... They did this by... breathing and expanding their lung capacity. ...Once they explained to me ...the benefits ...go beyond just diving deep. It can allow us to heal our bodies (problems). It can allow super-endurance. It can allow us to do all these things that we've been told are medically impossible. ...I didn't believe them. ...I spent several years... talking to people at Stanford, Harvard... the leaders in the field in... this research, and what they'd told be is absolutely true."

"[] was able, on command, to make his heart beat 300 times a minute. ...[I]t was so fast, they were looking at the EKG readout, and they said, "He's stopped his heart." Then they looked... a little closer and said "No, it's beating 300 times a minute." ...[T]hen he would snap out of it."

"[B]reathing... allows us these levers into systems that we can't otherwise control. ...[T]he is supposed to be beyond our control. ...When you breath a certain way, you can influence ...functions and you can start taking control of these other elements of your body, as Wim is showing... [N]ot only the nervous system, but with immune function. All of this was supposed to be impossible until he showed up and said "...test me"..."

"Even if someone has a pulse-ox or... a monitor, you can breath in certain ways and instantly see what it does to your body."

"People who say that this is a placebo effect don't understand that this is a biological function that you're taking control of... [I]f you can elicit such a strong response in a couple of minutes, imagine what you can do in a couple of days."

"Most people take breathing for granted. ...James Nestor's new book about how breathing properly can transform your physical and mental health, feels eerily well-timed. It lays out how we breath incorrectly or at least fail to maximize our potential."

"Mr. Nestor claims 90% of people breathe incorrectly. ...As for why we breathe through our mouths, he traces the trouble to our diets. ...[S]oft, processed foods ...leave our jaws and facial bones underworked and smaller ...Nearly every cliché of the Western Spritual Quest makes an appearance ...He's a bit wide-eyed in repeating claims from self-proclaimed... "pulmonauts"... who can supposedly kill E. coli, or cure hemorrhoids and , or treat and and ... Mr. Nestor slaps down... curing cancer. But... purge[s] a schizophrenic woman's hallucinations... [W]hile there's no reason to doubt... that his breathing exercises improved his life, the real question is why... so much. ...Placebos have real, documented medical benefits ...[H]e never grapples with the effect as a plausible explanation ..."

"Official scorers, rule makers and others identified with the statistical end of baseball, should get together soon on a uniform system of scoring, particularly with regard to what is and what is not a base hit. The "baseball uplifters" have ceased their racket; football is over and plenty of time can now be given to a matter that is very important, but which, it seems, has been neglected for many years, particularly last year, when official scorers were hopelessly divided in the matter of scoring a fielder's choice that comes up when a batsman sets out to advance a runner by sacrificing, but gets his base through a play that fails to get the man ahead of him. In some cities they scored this play a hit; in others they gave the batsman nothing excepting a time at bat and still in others the scorers compromised by scoring it a sacrifice hit. A season of this kind of scoring could render team batting figures obsolete. Such a play may come up just often enough in one city where it is scored a base hit to make a material difference in team batting over the club in another city where the scorer does nothing but charge the very successful bunter with a time at bat when a perfect play is made on the man going to second and fails, allowing both runners to land safely."

"When a man of his natural physique can eat what he wants, drink what he wants and do what he pleases in the open air all the year around, it isn't any wonder that he prolongs his athletic career and stands off the slowness and staleness that comes to the best of them as the years go by. [...] Honus has a poetic nature in this respect, although he is anything but a poet. But the open air, the trees, the streams and the wild freedom of the woods have a fancy for him, and in this environment only is he happy. Is it any wonder then that he retains his vigor and conserves much of that dash and speed that makes him the annual wonder on the ball field?"

"If harmony and spirit get a club anything the sensational Phillies are getting it: A visit to the bench yesterday revealed the rare thing of a ball club cemented together by warm friendships for the manager and among the men. The old Phils of Dooin days and the youngsters as well, took occasion to whisper a word for Pat. Evidently Pat is a pal as well as a boss. At least every last player is for him and his policies."

"Pitt is credited with having been the first team to identify its football players by numbers on the uniforms. It started many years ago as a bright idea to sell more programs. Yesterday I learned another version from Jim Jerpe Jr., son of a famous baseball writer for the old Gazette Times. He says that when he registered at Pitt, from which he was graduated as a chemical engineer, he was told by the late Karl E. Davis, the then graduate athletic manager, that Jim's dad was responsible for the numbering, which Davis instituted. It seems, according to what Davis said, that Jerpe Sr. complained about the difficulty of covering football games in those days before elevated press boxes, when writers trudged up and down the field, and in protest wrote a story in which he reported that a player named Joe passed the ball to another player named Joe, who took off on a run and was stopped by another player named Joe."

"James Jerpe, the sporting writer of Pittsburg [sic] who has been blind for the two past years but continues his good work in the game in spite of that affliction, may be tendered a benefit game. is working it up. His plan is for a team of National League stars to meet a team of American League stars, the receipts of the game to go to Jerpe. It is some test of the popularity of a writer when ball players will turn a hand for him."

"And he [Bryant] was a smart enough man to know that all kinds of great football players from Alabama, some of whom just happened to be black and were not able to play for him because of the prevailing prejudice, in many cases young men who were on their way to the pros, and he knew as well that he had the law of the nation on his side now if he wanted to play them, and that only local prejudice kept him from recruiting them, and most important of all, he was the one man in all of Alabama who could go ahead and recruit them, and stand up to George Wallace, and bring the culture along with him. And for 13 years, when he could have made a great difference, he did very little and did not really dissent from the biases of the region."

"We underestimated the willingness of these peasants to pay the price. We won every set piece battle. Westy believes that he never lost a battle. We had absolute military superiority, and they had absolute political superiority, which meant that we would kill 200 and they would replenish them the next day. We were fighting the birth rate of a nation."

"For [[w:Thomas Mann|[Thomas] Mann]]'s interior dialogue is substituted some of the most ravishingly wrought images Visconti has ever committed to the screen. Aschenbach’s arrival at the Hotel des Bains of the early century is meticulously detailed and observed. His first sight of the boy, in the bosom of his Polish family, his sniffing out of the cholera epidemic which suddenly decimates the tourists, his ill-at-ease attempts to refurbish himself with the help of the hotel barber, all these episodes could scarcely be better done in terms of direction, art direction and acting. True, the camera lingers lovingly on what has been created. There are times when Visconti scarcely seems concerned about moving the story onwards. Yet it serves its purpose quite as well at Mann’s prose. It is in the final half hour that one's doubts grow, as the boy smiles and smiles at the man, and the man visibly dies under the untouching assault. Perhaps it is here that Dirk Bogarde's otherwise superb performance shows a bit at the seams. We become aware that he is an actor acting, manoeuvring a mask, and that Visconti is watching him do it, lost in admiration."

"All [[w:Mrinal Sen|[Mrinal] Sen]]'s films, even his most lightweight, have attacked, with undisguised horror and anger, the poverty, exploitation and inherent hypocrisy of Indian society. That is why he has remained a hero for so many of the young, who criticise [[w:Satyajit Ray|[Satyajit] Ray]] for a lack of overt political commitment and wish to see a truly revolutionary Indian cinema undiluted by European classicist and humanist sympathies. Yet, like Ray, he is certainly not a specifically Indian director whose films show no outside influences at work. In fact, it is almost impossible to talk with him – and he is an indefatigable talker – without constant reference to European, Russian and particularly English culture, often literary rather than cinematic."

"Throughout his career he has unashamedly hopped from one outside influence to another in an attempt to clothe the content of his films in a form which will surprise and shock. He has sloganised, fantasised and parodied as well as presenting us with neo-realism, documentary and even Chekovian pastiche. But that is only the half of it. His films also show the seminal influence of a great deal of Indian popular and folk culture. He will beg, borrow or steal from anything to form an appropriately striking style and, for all that, still remain resolutely his own man."

"Jeanne Moreau was the perfect choice for Catherine: she gives a performance full of gaiety and charm without conveying an empty-headed bimbo. She makes the watcher understand that this is no ordinary woman whom both men adore. It is possibly the most complete portrait of any feminine character in the entire ouevre of the New Wave and it made her an international star."

"Jules et Jim seemed revolutionary at the time, but Truffaut's revolution, unlike Godard's, implied not so much the destruction of the past as a turning back to the humanism of Vigo, Renoir and the French cinema of the 30s. The film's "rondo of love" represents both a backward glance at the best of the past and a forward glance into the cinema's future. Its enthusiasm for what the cinema is and can be is what makes it so special."

"No film I ever saw was any more dramatic than the story of my parents, whose marriage was so soon overtaken by a tragedy that received huge publicity and effectively destroyed the happiness of both."

"I've had the luck if that is what you call it to get stuck in a lift with the great Orson Welles and his large wolfhound to take tea with Charlie Chaplin and to interview the always testy John Ford. Ford hated critics and had stomach trouble at the time He summoned me into the room as follows: "Come on in. I can deal with two shits at once"."

"But I was thrilled to bits just to see them and I asked my mother at the interval whether I could meet them. She asked the theatre manager and he came back with a note. It said: "Yes, but don't bring your mother …" The manager took me to the door of their dressing room and knocked, but left before Hardy answered the door. "Come in, young man," he said. "We have tea and buns on the way for you. This is Stan, by the way, as you can see by his hat. He seldom takes its off, even in bed." I was tongue-tied. But when the tray of tea and buns came in, I tucked in enthusiastically. Whereupon Hardy took a bun from the tray, placed it on his chair and sat on it. It was, of course, squashed flat. I'm pretty sure he did it to amuse me. But you never knew with Hardy, who preferred playing golf to working."

"[How Malcolm began a film critic] I was on the Gloucestershire Echo and wrote to Brian Redhead, who was the Manchester Guardians arts editor, asking if I could write about the Cheltenham literary festival. He said I might send my piece in and it was published, and he told me to come and see him. I knew Redhead was a socialist and if he knew I was at Eton and Oxford I would never get a job. So he asked me where I went to school and I said: "Somewhere near Slough". I ended up as a designer, and then called down to London where I was the late-night sub and the only one who could read the reviews by Neville Cardus [the renowned music critic and cricket correspondent] who submitted his copy in longhand. I became the letters editor, and – because I had been an amateur jockey in the 1960s — the racing correspondent. I was also the deputy drama critic to Philip Hope-Wallace, who took great delight in sending me to review Little Malcolm and His Struggle Against the Eunuchs. I became the film critic because the editor fired the existing critic, Richard Roud, for writing a one-word review of The Sound of Music — he just wrote "No". Just that."

"To publish a book on the "100 best films of the century" is really putting your head on the block, even if that "best" is qualified as "personal". Derek Malcolm's choice strikes me as sound and stimulating, a mixture of the conservative and the adventurous."

"Personally, I regret the absence of Sirk, Boetticher, Donen, Vertov, Tourneur, Whale, Kazan, Boorman, Malle and Roeg, but recognise that Malcolm is making a statement by omitting Spielberg. There are no Australian directors represented, and no SF flicks. All lists reveal something about the compiler, and there's a lot of sex and socialism here."

"Rugby backs can be identified because they generally have clean jerseys and identifiable partings in their hair. Come the revolution the backs will be the first to be lined up against the wall and shot for living parasitically off the work of others."