Here are some of the best things I found on the internet this week:
- The highly successful high school coach who never punts has another radical idea – This Arkansas high school coach has the courage to rethink everything about his sport and defy conventional wisdom. His teams rarely punt, almost always do an onside kick rather than kicking off, and now he’s been inspired by rugby to try a new way to rack up big yardage. ht Get The Picture
- How is the Apple Watch doing? – Benedict Evans gives a thoughtful assessment of Apple’s latest creation and where it fits in our gadget lineup. It has me browsing the Apple Watch page again, wondering if I can see myself wearing one.
- Vertical Video on the Small Screen? Not a Crime – The New York Times‘s Farhad Manjoo argues the case that vertical video is not just okay but has some aesthetic merits over standard landscape/horizontal presentation of video. I am not convinced. The screen I look at most days is a big 27-inch iMac, so vertical video just looks wrong and amateurish on it. However, if your primary screen is your phone, as is becoming the case for so many now, I can see where this is headed. Snapchat and Periscope and other such apps are defaulting to vertical and going with the flow of how most people use their devices. But I don’t have to like it. If you ever want to show your videos on a big screen—your TV or your computer—it’s worth the tiny little effort to rotate your phone before pressing record.
- Butter unlikely to harm health, but margarine could be deadly – The vindication of saturated fats marches on. We were so wrong. I can believe it’s not butter.
- I asked atheists how they find meaning in a purposeless universe – This BuzzFeed piece is filled with thoughtful and interesting responses to living in a seemingly indifferent universe. It’s long, so if you only read one response, scroll to the bottom and read the last one by Jan Doig. Her story is bittersweet and heartbreaking and, yet, I found it profoundly hopeful.
[…] I’ve posted about maverick Arkansas high school football coach Kevin Kelley before, and now Andy Staples of SI writes about seeing his team, the Pulaski Academy Bruins, in person where they ended the opponent’s 84-game home winning streak. […]