Lactate Meters and Labor Day Weekend
You can tell that folks are gearing up for the last week of summer, as marked – in the US, at least – by the "back-to-school" season. Things have been pretty quiet this week, save the steady drumbeat of marketing emails about Labor Day sales from every company from which
The Extra Mile
Earlier this month, Virginia Sole-Smith, bestselling author of Fat Talk, published a podcast/essay titled "Nobody Cares About Your 'Health and Fitness' Journey." I'm not a premium subscriber to her Burnt Toast newsletter, I confess, so I couldn't listen or read; and
What Computers Cannot Do (for Health and Fitness)
Happy Friday! What's good? Here are some of the latest stories about the intersection of health and fitness and technology (and money). Speaking of money, I'm, like, 20 years late to the game, but I just started reading Michael Lewis's Moneyball, in part because
The Extra Mile
Cooling Technologies, "Cool" Technologies, and Not At All Cool Technologies
I don't know about you, but I'm feeling that end-of-summer, post-Olympics melancholy this week, so this will be a fairly short one. (Shorter than Monday’s massive missive, at least.) I'd say I'm feeling a bit resentful that I'm having
Teaching Machines (for Bodies, Not Brains)
Many histories of education technology start with the hornbook, a fifteenth century invention that, according to Bill Ferster, "married pedagogy and content knowledge into a physical device" — a device that allowed students to learn their letters (without tearing up or writing in an actual book, I guess). Of
The Extra Mile
An author I very much admire complained on Facebook recently that the Olympics are an example of "scarcity economics" – only one gold medal so we don't celebrate everyone's immense talent. The Games – all manner of sports contests, she said – are closely bound up in
The Technologies of the Olympics, Continued
Wow. The US is having one helluva track meet over there in Paris. I'll have more to say in Monday's newsletter – Cole Hocker!!! – as I really am trying to restrict Friday's email to news about health and fitness technology, not just news about my
The Extra Mile
Maybe Not the Sports Technologies You Were Expecting
As a writer about and critic of education technology, I was often asked "what's your favorite piece of ed-tech" – some sort of "gotcha" question, I reckon, in which I was supposed to confess that, in fact, I hate everything. I'd answer "
