Sports

In our panel on youth athletics, UofM Women's Swimming coach Jim Richardson said that sports are given an awful lot of focus in our culture. Disproportionate, perhaps, to the good that they actually do. What do you think?

Shaun White won his second gold medal for Olympic Snowboarding Wednesday night. His spectacular performance outshined every other competitor, almost to a freakish extent. White is a snowboarding innovator, a pioneer in the sport. He trains in his own secluded half-pipe in the mountains, which can be reached only by helicopter. He is a phenomenon, but like many Olympic athletes, he is privileged and has the resources to out-train the competition. 

Winter sports at the Olympics have an extra-dangerous edge.Many of these sports are not practiced by most people in the world. Unlike Summer Olympic games such as soccer or swimming. These are very specific events, requiring the young athletes to put their lives at great risk. What compels us to watch, when we know how big the risk is?

AP PHOTO

U.S. Olympic Alpine skier Lindsay Vonn has opened up about her recent leg injury, and the use of Topfen cheese in speeding the healing process. Wrapping her leg in the curd cheese, in addition to other pain-management and laser treatments, has reportedly brought down the swelling. What do you think? Do you approve of the use of performance-enhancing cheese? And does the image of a woman wrapped in cheese make her less attractive?

By MZ. MANNERS, WHO DOESN'T MEAN IT LITERALLY

For real. This is craziness. We are living in the post-apocalypse already. I feel like this could have all been avoided. I am officially boycotting the Superbowl. Which is fine, because I wasn't going to watch it anyway. But now that CBS has pulled a clever little stunt, it's official. I'm going to watch PBS Masterpiece Classics instead.