good for kids

There are four big cats that can roar: lion, tiger, leopard and jaguar - all of which belong to the genus Panthera.

In these species, the epihyal bone, part of the voice box, is replaced by a ligament. This can be stretched, creating a larger sound-producing passage and thus a wider range of pitch. The more the ligament extends, the lower the sound generated when air passes across the vocal cords. In addition, the cords are large, unbroken and fleshy, which produces deeper sounds.

In contrast, in the 'small' cats, the bones of the voice box form a fixed structure, with divided vocal cords that vibrate with both in and out breaths. While this design enables these cats to purr continuously (unlike their big cousins), it limits the range of other sounds and prevents them from being able to roar. Even large species, such as pumas and cheetahs, whose voice boxes are proportionately big, possess small-cat anatomy.

Interestingly, the snow leopard - also a member of Panthera - cannot roar. Its vocal cords lack an all-important layer of fatty, elasticated tissue, which, in other big cats, gives the vocalisations an uneven rumble that emerges as a roar. Some scientists therefore argue that the snow leopard deserves its own genus: uncia.

by Ellen Tsay

Hmm… how to not be that overwhelmed freshman? It’s difficult not to: you are bombarded by a barrage of events, opportunities, and tasks; there are constant midterms and exams (especially on a quarter system where things move fast), you are living away from home surrounded by new people and new friends. It’s no wonder many freshmen become exhausted, stressed out, and burnt out. So, how do you prevent this from happening to you?

Here are several common-sense, yet often overlooked things I did to stay sane in college:

1) Set aside alone time for yourself.

Halfway through my freshman year, I began suffering some peculiar symptoms. First of all, I could barely remember what I did the day before. I was so busy that I was forced to live entirely in the present, dealing with only the most immediate tasks and never dwelling on anything for long. Like Dory, I just kept swimming from one agenda item to another and quickly forgot even the most exciting events. In addition, I began to lose my sense of self. I was surrounded by people 24/7 and the little voice in my head was being drowned out by a wave of other people’s thoughts and opinions.

This is when I knew that I needed to set aside time for reflection. I was running on autopilot, doing things without stopping to think about why I was doing them, experiencing things without stopping to think about what they meant. I began biking to a quiet spot each morning, to sit for 30 minutes and “do nothing.” During this time I would reflect upon whatever came into my mind – I would wonder why I hadn’t had the nerve to ask my professor a burning question or ponder the dynamics of the new friend groups I was forming. Sometimes I would ponder The Big Questions – what I wanted to do with my life, how I wanted to spend the rest of my four years in college. Other times, I would simply people watch and feel at peace. Ironically, by setting aside time for nothing, I was much more productive (and happy) the rest of the time.

2) Don’t do something just because you think you ought to.

For much of my freshman year I committed the fallacy of Y.O.L.O. If there was a talk by some distinguished professor who I’d never heard of but who apparently won the Nobel Prize, I would feel obligated to go, because when would I ever again have the chance to? If there was a posting about an internship at some hot new startup, I would feel obligated to apply because it seemed like a once in a lifetime opportunity. If there was anything at all that sounded cool, I would feel obligated to do it, because when would I ever again be able to do such a combination of X Y and Z? After all, You Only Live Once.

It is easy to fall into this trap. Yet it is exactly because you only live once, that you want to be especially selective in how you choose to fill your time. Do things that truly make you happy, not things that will impress your friends because of their cool factor. First identify what you want, and then use that to guide you. Or, if you don’t yet know what exactly you want, here’s another approach: when an opportunity pops up, search inside and see how excited you feel about it. If it really gets you excited, then go for it! If not, look elsewhere – following this rule will simplify things greatly and prevent you from overpacking your schedule.

3) Be clear in your goals.

When I asked one of my friends what his goals were, he answered, “I want to get into entrepreneurship.” When I asked him what that meant, he elaborated, “I want to join a start-up, or start my own company. You know, that whole thing.” When I asked him what sort of company he had in mind, he said he wasn’t sure yet. “I just really want to be an entrepreneur.” For my friend, he had a lot of work still in store as he hurtled along a vaguely defined path. Our conversation prompted me to think long and hard about my own goals. I wanted to be a doctor, but what kind of a doctor? Did I want to be someone like my family doctor, who owns a private practice and primarily treats patients? Did I want to be one of the doctors on TV, who reaches millions of anxious patients via the media? Or did I want to be a doctor who change the entire field of medicine, by inventing a new surgical technique or a new hospital system? Many career paths are much less clear-cut than they appear. In addition, there are many goals that are even bigger than career goals. What did I ultimately want to accomplish, through my life? What mark did I want to leave on the world? By seeking the answer to these questions, you will gradually realize the steps you need to take, and as you align your daily activities with your vision you will feel fulfilled and imbued with a sense of purpose.

4) Stop comparing yourself to others.

Comparing yourself to others can be a good motivator. For example, some of my friends will say, “If Mark can do it, then I can,” or “Cathy is so amazing. She’s inspired me to ___.” However, I’ve also seen the opposite happen: “It’s so unfair – Mark can get away with being lazy, because he’s a genius,” or “Cathy is so much smarter/prettier than me. I’m so dumb.” In fact, I’m pretty sure one of my friendships was ruined because my friend’s parents constantly compared her to me and she naturally reproached me for it. All too often, comparing oneself to others results in low confidence, strained relationships and general unhappiness. So my advice is: don’t do it. Don’t measure yourself using someone else’s yardstick – use your own.

5) Don’t overcommit yourself. Dedicate yourself to a few things you are passionate about.

For those with less rigid constraints on their schedule, it can be easy to get carried away and get involved in too many things. And with too many activities, the quality of your contributions to each activity suffers. To prevent overcommitting, I’d suggest following a strategy used in computer science. In your freshman year, perform a breadth-first search (BFS) and explore as many things as you like. Then in your sophomore year, narrow down the activities you are involved with and transition to a depth-first search (DFS): devote yourself fully to several activities and explore them in great depth. This is also a good time to gauge how much volume you can handle; if you find you aren’t able to dedicate yourself as fully as you’d like to a particular activity, you might consider cutting down on your other activities. By following this BFS->DFS algorithm, you’ll safely commit yourself to just the right amount of activities.

A visual of the Breadth-First Search->Depth-First Search strategy you can use when choosing which activities to commit yourself to in college, and which ones to cut.

6) Keep things in perspective

Finally, if there is anything I want you to take away from this post, it is to keep things in perspective. College is tough, classes are tough, breakups are tough, life is tough, but it’s not the end of the world. If you ever feel like your back is up against a wall and there’s nowhere to go, remember this image:

At the end of the day, college should be stress-free – you’re essentially in a little bubble safe from the realness of the outside world. In the real world, a mistake can mean losing your job and income. But in college, the worst that can happen if you fail a class is a small blemish on your transcript. If you steal food from a dining hall, no one is going to handcuff you. And if you really really need a break, you can simply take a leave of absence and come back when you’re ready. Looking back on your college years, you will realize that many of your struggles then appear trivial now. (as a soon-to-be-graduate, I’m already realizing the truth of that). So, just keep things in perspective.

You have a degree in astrophysics and you know how to fly a jet. You've endured years of preparation and training, logged thousands of hours of flight time and even survived NASA's terrifying "vomit comet" weightlessness test. Now you're up in space for the very first time, floating around the shuttle's cabin, and as you look out of the window, you realize something: you're hungry. What are you going to eat? 

Initial voyages into space introduced questions scientists had never before considered. Could an astronaut swallow food in zero gravity? Would he choke? Would crumbs float into the shuttle's instruments and break something? To keep things simple, astronauts on the Project Mercury and Gemini missions ate pureed foods squeezed out of tubes. "It was like serving them baby food in a toothpaste container," explains Vickie Kloeris, NASA's Space Food Systems Laboratory manager. John Glenn was the first person to eat in space; in 1962 he ingested applesauce and reported relatively easy digestion.

But these early tube meals were unappetizing, and astronauts dropped too many pounds. "We know that astronauts have lost weight in every American and Russian manned flight," wrote NASA scientists Malcolm Smith and Charles Berry in a 1969 Nutrition Today article. "We don't know why." Feeding people in space was not as easy as it looked.

Floating around in space isn't as relaxing as it might sound. Astronauts expend a lot of energy and endure extreme stresses on their bodies. Their dietary requirements are therefore different from those of their gravity-bound counterparts on Earth. For example, they need extra calcium to compensate for bone loss. (Bones tend to regenerate slower in space, and the loss of mass begins almost immediately after takeoff). A low-sodium diet helps slow the process, but according to Kloeris, that's easier said than done. "There are no refrigerators in space, and salt is often used to help preserve foods," she says. "We have to be very careful of that."

By the Apollo missions, NASA had developed a nutritionally balanced menu with a wide variety of options ranging from tuna salad to corn chowder. Of course, all the items were freeze-dried, dehydrated or "thermo-stabilized" (heat-treated to kill bacteria), and they didn't look like regular food. Meals were rehydrated and served in a pouch, allowing them to be eaten with a spoon. The Apollo 8 crew celebrated Christmas Day 1968 by eating thermo-stabilized turkey, gravy and cranberry sauce. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to eat on the moon when they consumed ham-salad sandwiches, rehydratable beverages and "fortified fruit strips" during their lunar excursion. The Apollo 11 astronauts actually ate four meals on the moon's surface; their resulting waste is still in the lunar module they left behind.

Today, the most elaborate outer-space meals are consumed in the International Space Station (ISS), where astronauts enjoy everything from steak to chocolate cake. They even have a small beverage chiller that can serve cold drinks. The ISS is a joint venture between the U.S. and Russia, and diplomatic guidelines dictate the percentage of food an astronaut must eat from each country. NASA's food laboratory has 185 different menu items, Russia offers around 100, and when Japan sent up its first crew member in 2008, about 30 dishes came with him. Kloeris says that the freeze-dried shrimp cocktail, served with horseradish-infused powdered sauce, is the most popular dish.

Due to dietary restrictions and storage issues, astronauts still can't eat whatever they want whenever they feel like it. The space station operates on a 16-day menu cycle, and each astronaut is allotted two cases to fill with any type of non-perishable goods, such as Pringles or M&Ms. Sometimes NASA sends up a bonus item, like a birthday cake.

In 1965, Gemini 3 astronaut John Young surprised his crew members when he pulled out a corned-beef-on-rye sandwich purchased from a Florida deli. Pizza Hut "delivered" a vacuum-sealed pizza to the Mir space station in 2001, and ISS member Peggy Whitson requested a pecan pie in 2002. Tortillas have been on every mission since 1985, when Mexican scientist Rodolfo Neri Vela brought them onboard a space-shuttle mission. In fact, NASA now provides astronauts with their own partially dehydrated tortillas made by the same company that supplies Taco Bell.

In 2008, NASA astronaut and ISS crew member Sandra Magnus became the first person to try to cook a meal in space. It took her over an hour to cook onions and garlic in the space station's food warmer, but she managed to create a truly delicious entrée: mesquite grilled tuna in a lemon-garlic-ginger marinade — eaten from a bag, of course.

Most of the dishes served on the original Apollo flights have been improved, altered or completely discarded in favor of new items. The famous freeze-dried ice cream was created on request for an Apollo 7 crew member, but the astronauts disliked it so much that it has never been used again. A few years ago, NASA tried to resolve complaints about fish-based dishes smelling "too fishy," but their solution, thermo-stabilized swordfish in tomato sauce, tasted so bad that some astronauts refused to eat it. But despite all the setbacks and unappealing concoctions, there is still one food item that has made it onto every menu and that every astronaut seems to enjoy: Tang.

BY David Stuttard

This past April, a solemn ceremony was held in front of the ruined Temple of Hera in Olympia in southern Greece. Serious young men and women dressed in classical-style costumes danced and sang while a torch was lighted from the focused rays of the sun. The torch then began its long trek, first through Greece and thence to Switzerland, before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil, where a team of more than 12,000 relay runners carried it around the country to 83 cities and 500 towns before it reached Rio de Janeiro, its final destination. 

In Rio, at the climax of a celebration in the Maracanã Stadium, to the resounding cheers of a packed audience and watched globally by perhaps four billion people, the torch flame is being used to light a massive caldron. The official website of the Games proclaims that the torch “emphasizes the link between the ancient and modern Games and underlines the profound connection between these two events.” But what were those ancient Games really like? And how profound is the connection? 

The ancient Games were celebrated for over a millennium from the eighth century B.C. (before the Homeric poems were written down) to the fifth century A.D. (after Alaric’s sack of Rome). To survive for so long, they needed to adapt to suit changing realities, while at the same time offering a stable forum not just for competition among the participants but for exchange among the spectators.

The Games provided opportunities for the sale of food and merchandise, for artistic, literary and philosophical discussion, and for political summits among powerful leaders. Like their modern counterparts, they were a unifying force, bringing far-flung people together in one place at one time to celebrate a common ethos.

But like so much in antiquity, what at first seems reassuringly familiar proves on closer examination to be bewilderingly alien. Exploring the ancient Olympics can seem like falling down the rabbit hole or gazing into a curiously distorting mirror.

While today’s Games stress inclusivity, their ancient counterparts were rigidly exclusive. To compete in this celebration of not just Greek (and, later, Greco-Roman) identity but of proud god-fearing masculinity, you had to speak Greek, be free from the pollution of murder—and be male. Women couldn’t even be spectators. Only the priestess of Demeter could attend. 

The chief reason for these restrictions is that the original Games were not really about sport at all. Rather, they were one part of a major male religious festival in honor of the great god Zeus. Indeed, Olympia, site of the Games, was named for Mount Olympus, where Zeus was considered to have had his throne.

Olympia was a rural sanctuary in a fertile valley between two rivers. No one quite agreed what made the site so sacred. Some said it was because Zeus defeated his father Cronus here and seized supreme power. Others maintained that, after cleansing the Augean stables and then defeating the local king in battle, the hero Heracles inaugurated the early Games in Zeus’ honor. Still others told how Pelops, Zeus’ grandson, established them, having won the hand of a local princess, Hippodameia, after sabotaging her father’s chariot to win a race, for which she was the prize. The father died as a result, and Pelops, haunted and remorseful, set up the early competitions in his honor. 

All these foundation myths were emblazoned in sculptures on the fifth-century B.C. Temple of Olympian Zeus, while inside the building a seated statue of the god reduced onlookers to a state of awe. Forty feet high and faced in gold and ivory, it gleamed in the echoing, incense-laden inner chamber. As the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus swooned: “You journey to Olympia to gaze on the statue of Zeus and every one of you would think it a great misfortune to die never having seen it.”

This Greek amphora (jar) shows long jumping. The jumper holds lead or stone weights, to help him jump further. Pegs in the ground mark previous jumps.

Separated from the Temple of Zeus by a sacred area housing the supposed grave mound of Pelops, there stood a second, squatter temple dedicated to Hera. In it were stored some of the key paraphernalia of the Olympic Games, including a discus on which were inscribed the terms of the “Olympic Truce,” proclaimed by itinerant heralds months before the festival began to ensure that participants and spectators could enjoy safe passage.

As time went on, these heralds’ journeys became longer. The first Games, traditionally held in 776 B.C., were small-scale and local. Apart from sacrifices and other religious rites, it included only one sporting event, a footrace of 200 yards, a distance which the Greeks called a stade (hence our “stadium”), and which took well under a minute to run. The first winner was Coroebus, a young man from Elis, the local city which administered the festival, and the victors in the next 10 Games were local, too. But new events were soon introduced, and by the early fifth century B.C., the Olympic Games had become quite literally the hub of the Greek-speaking world. 

For the five days in August straddling the first full moon, athletes and their trainers, aristocrats and artists, poets, philosophers, hawkers and artisans congregated at Olympia to see and be seen, do deals and exchange ideas. Much of that time was spent in worship: grand processions, the sacrifice of many hundred oxen, banquets in honor of gods and heroes. But increasingly, competition assumed a more central role.

The stade race, run at the midpoint of the Games, remained the centerpiece—so much so that in the fifth-century B.C., when it became desirable to introduce an internationally recognized dating system, the polymath philosopher Hippias hit on the formula, “in the xth year of the yth Olympiad, when z was victor in the footrace.” 

Runners in the 'race in armour' at Olympia. The winner has taken off his helmet. The other runner (a bad loser?) has thrown away his shield!

The formula caught on, not only promoting the importance of the Games still further but becoming the means whereby a triumphant runner could win everlasting fame. Many such winners received spectacular welcomes when they returned home. In 412 B.C., when the Sicilian Exaenetus docked at his native Acragas (modern Agrigento) having won the stade race for the second time, he was met by 300 chariots, each drawn by two snow-white horses, ready to escort him up into the city.

Like other athletes at the Games, runners competed naked. Again, the origins of this tradition were debated, but the most well-known involved Orisippus, a young man from Megara near Athens. Until 720 B.C., loincloths were de rigueur, but that year Orisippus raced so vigorously that his fell off. When he crossed the line to victory, it was seen as a sign from the gods and henceforth any kind of clothing was banned.

But the athletes probably didn’t look exactly naked. By Roman times, if not before, it was common first to anoint the bodies of competitors in oil, then to sprinkle them with dust or powder. One treatise recommended the dust of terra-cotta for helping to open pores, asphalt dust for heating the chilled and yellow earth for softening the skin, commenting that: “Yellow dust also adds glisten, and is a delight to see on a body which is in good shape.” Athletes may well have looked like moving statues.

There were no team events in the ancient Olympics. Apart from races over various distances up to 2¾ miles (24 lengths of the stadium), there were two other main types of contests: those involving strength and those involving horses. Some—racing, boxing and wrestling—featured contests for both men and boys. It was during a boys’ boxing match that one of the greatest scandals of the ancient Games was unmasked.

Pisodorus came from a long line of boxers from the island of Rhodes, but disaster struck when his father, who was also his trainer, died. At last a mysterious substitute stepped in, accompanying the boy to Olympia to cheer him on. But when Pisodorus won, his coach (who, like everyone else at the time, was a stranger to underwear) excitedly leapt over the ring fence, with robes hitched high to stop them from getting caught.  

In a flash, the truth was out. The trainer was a woman, Pisodorus’s mother. The penalty for a woman caught attending the Games was to be flung off a nearby cliff to her death, but the judges were so in awe of her illustrious family (or perhaps of her muscular physique) that they consented on this one occasion to bend the rules. From then on, they introduced new legislation. Henceforth trainers, like athletes, were obliged to come naked to the Games—just in case.

The only contact sport forbidden to boys was the pancration, an almost-no-holds-barred free-for-all, in which only biting and eye-gouging were prohibited. A Roman commentator reflected that the competitor must “endure black eyes…and learn holds by which the fallen can still win, and they must be skillful in the various arts of strangulation.” 

One pancratist’s win was particularly unconventional. Arrhachion came from Phigalia, a city in mountainous Arcadia. In 564 B.C. the two-time winner came to Olympia where “his opponent, whoever he was, got a grip first and held Arrhachion with his legs squeezed around his neck at the same time. Meanwhile, Arrhachion dislocated a toe on his opponent’s foot but was strangled and expired. At the same time, however, Arrhachion’s opponent gave up because of the pain in his toe. The judges proclaimed Arrhachion the winner and crowned his corpse.”

When Baron de Coubertin revived—or reimagined—the Olympics in 1896, drawing on the ethos of both the ancient Games and English public schools for inspiration, he averred: “What is important in life is not to triumph, but to take part; what is essential is not to have won, but to have fought well.” This may have been a fine late-Victorian ideal, but it was far from the ancient view. At Olympia there were no prizes for coming second, and, fueled by the Homeric exhortation “always to be best,” the desire to win kudos at almost any cost motivated every competitor.

For the aristocratic elite, it was in that most dangerous and exciting of all events, the chariot race, that the most kudos could be earned. Since its introduction in 680 B.C., leading Greek families from Sicily to Libya to the mainland and beyond coveted this prize above all others, because to win it was a sign of immense wealth and good judgment—and, since they hired charioteers to race for them, they ran no physical risks themselves. 

The cost of buying and maintaining a racing-chariot and team was astronomical, which was why the Athenian playboy-politician Alcibiades caused such a stir in 416 B.C. For that year he entered not one but seven chariots. The result was perhaps predictable. Of his teams, one came in first, another second, another either third or fourth. To celebrate his victory (and flaunt his wealth and connections), Alcibiades laid on a lavish banquet for every spectator at the Games—many thousands in all—and commissioned both a victory ode from Euripides and a painting marking his success, which he displayed on the Athenian Acropolis.

But Alcibiades was far from the most controversial entrant in the chariot race. In A.D. 67, the Roman emperor Nero (who had recently killed his mother) personally drove a 10-horse chariot team of his own. His biographer Suetonius records: “He fell from his chariot and was helped back in, but he could not continue and gave up before the end of the race. Even so he received the victor’s crown.”

In the pankration, wrestlers could do almost anything, except bite and poke out the other man's eyes. One fighter (right) is fouling, so the referee is about to hit him with a stick!

Like doping scandals today, rigged outcomes and cheating, though not common, certainly did tarnish the ancient Games. Visit Olympia, and you can still see the bases of the “Zanes,” bronze statues of Zeus erected from fines imposed on cheating athletes, with inscriptions naming and shaming the culprits. But nothing diminished the allure of the Olympics. Only Christianity could overcome them. With the banning of pagan practices by the Roman Emperor Theodosius in A.D. 391, their days were numbered, and by 425 the Olympics were no more.

For well over a thousand years the Games survived seismic shifts in politics and society, not to mention long-raging wars. Their religious focus undoubtedly played a major part in their longevity. And they evolved, too, with new contests being introduced (those for heralds and trumpeters were perhaps the most bizarre) while others (such as the mule race) were phased out. 

But it was more than all that, and here we arrive at the continuing appeal of the modern Games as well. The philosopher Epictetus put his finger on it. Even as he noted “the cacophony, the din, the jostling, the shoving [and] the crowding” of the ancient Games, he had to admit that “you are happy to put up with all this when you think of the splendor of the spectacles.”

BY David Stuttard

This past April, a solemn ceremony was held in front of the ruined Temple of Hera in Olympia in southern Greece. Serious young men and women dressed in classical-style costumes danced and sang while a torch was lighted from the focused rays of the sun. The torch then began its long trek, first through Greece and thence to Switzerland, before crossing the Atlantic to Brazil, where a team of more than 12,000 relay runners carried it around the country to 83 cities and 500 towns before it reached Rio de Janeiro, its final destination. 

In Rio, at the climax of a celebration in the Maracanã Stadium, to the resounding cheers of a packed audience and watched globally by perhaps four billion people, the torch flame is being used to light a massive caldron. The official website of the Games proclaims that the torch “emphasizes the link between the ancient and modern Games and underlines the profound connection between these two events.” But what were those ancient Games really like? And how profound is the connection? 

The ancient Games were celebrated for over a millennium from the eighth century B.C. (before the Homeric poems were written down) to the fifth century A.D. (after Alaric’s sack of Rome). To survive for so long, they needed to adapt to suit changing realities, while at the same time offering a stable forum not just for competition among the participants but for exchange among the spectators.

The Games provided opportunities for the sale of food and merchandise, for artistic, literary and philosophical discussion, and for political summits among powerful leaders. Like their modern counterparts, they were a unifying force, bringing far-flung people together in one place at one time to celebrate a common ethos.

But like so much in antiquity, what at first seems reassuringly familiar proves on closer examination to be bewilderingly alien. Exploring the ancient Olympics can seem like falling down the rabbit hole or gazing into a curiously distorting mirror.

While today’s Games stress inclusivity, their ancient counterparts were rigidly exclusive. To compete in this celebration of not just Greek (and, later, Greco-Roman) identity but of proud god-fearing masculinity, you had to speak Greek, be free from the pollution of murder—and be male. Women couldn’t even be spectators. Only the priestess of Demeter could attend. 

The chief reason for these restrictions is that the original Games were not really about sport at all. Rather, they were one part of a major male religious festival in honor of the great god Zeus. Indeed, Olympia, site of the Games, was named for Mount Olympus, where Zeus was considered to have had his throne.

Olympia was a rural sanctuary in a fertile valley between two rivers. No one quite agreed what made the site so sacred. Some said it was because Zeus defeated his father Cronus here and seized supreme power. Others maintained that, after cleansing the Augean stables and then defeating the local king in battle, the hero Heracles inaugurated the early Games in Zeus’ honor. Still others told how Pelops, Zeus’ grandson, established them, having won the hand of a local princess, Hippodameia, after sabotaging her father’s chariot to win a race, for which she was the prize. The father died as a result, and Pelops, haunted and remorseful, set up the early competitions in his honor. 

All these foundation myths were emblazoned in sculptures on the fifth-century B.C. Temple of Olympian Zeus, while inside the building a seated statue of the god reduced onlookers to a state of awe. Forty feet high and faced in gold and ivory, it gleamed in the echoing, incense-laden inner chamber. As the Roman Stoic philosopher Epictetus swooned: “You journey to Olympia to gaze on the statue of Zeus and every one of you would think it a great misfortune to die never having seen it.”

This Greek amphora (jar) shows long jumping. The jumper holds lead or stone weights, to help him jump further. Pegs in the ground mark previous jumps.

Separated from the Temple of Zeus by a sacred area housing the supposed grave mound of Pelops, there stood a second, squatter temple dedicated to Hera. In it were stored some of the key paraphernalia of the Olympic Games, including a discus on which were inscribed the terms of the “Olympic Truce,” proclaimed by itinerant heralds months before the festival began to ensure that participants and spectators could enjoy safe passage.

As time went on, these heralds’ journeys became longer. The first Games, traditionally held in 776 B.C., were small-scale and local. Apart from sacrifices and other religious rites, it included only one sporting event, a footrace of 200 yards, a distance which the Greeks called a stade (hence our “stadium”), and which took well under a minute to run. The first winner was Coroebus, a young man from Elis, the local city which administered the festival, and the victors in the next 10 Games were local, too. But new events were soon introduced, and by the early fifth century B.C., the Olympic Games had become quite literally the hub of the Greek-speaking world. 

For the five days in August straddling the first full moon, athletes and their trainers, aristocrats and artists, poets, philosophers, hawkers and artisans congregated at Olympia to see and be seen, do deals and exchange ideas. Much of that time was spent in worship: grand processions, the sacrifice of many hundred oxen, banquets in honor of gods and heroes. But increasingly, competition assumed a more central role.

The stade race, run at the midpoint of the Games, remained the centerpiece—so much so that in the fifth-century B.C., when it became desirable to introduce an internationally recognized dating system, the polymath philosopher Hippias hit on the formula, “in the xth year of the yth Olympiad, when z was victor in the footrace.” 

Runners in the 'race in armour' at Olympia. The winner has taken off his helmet. The other runner (a bad loser?) has thrown away his shield!

The formula caught on, not only promoting the importance of the Games still further but becoming the means whereby a triumphant runner could win everlasting fame. Many such winners received spectacular welcomes when they returned home. In 412 B.C., when the Sicilian Exaenetus docked at his native Acragas (modern Agrigento) having won the stade race for the second time, he was met by 300 chariots, each drawn by two snow-white horses, ready to escort him up into the city.

Like other athletes at the Games, runners competed naked. Again, the origins of this tradition were debated, but the most well-known involved Orisippus, a young man from Megara near Athens. Until 720 B.C., loincloths were de rigueur, but that year Orisippus raced so vigorously that his fell off. When he crossed the line to victory, it was seen as a sign from the gods and henceforth any kind of clothing was banned.

But the athletes probably didn’t look exactly naked. By Roman times, if not before, it was common first to anoint the bodies of competitors in oil, then to sprinkle them with dust or powder. One treatise recommended the dust of terra-cotta for helping to open pores, asphalt dust for heating the chilled and yellow earth for softening the skin, commenting that: “Yellow dust also adds glisten, and is a delight to see on a body which is in good shape.” Athletes may well have looked like moving statues.

There were no team events in the ancient Olympics. Apart from races over various distances up to 2¾ miles (24 lengths of the stadium), there were two other main types of contests: those involving strength and those involving horses. Some—racing, boxing and wrestling—featured contests for both men and boys. It was during a boys’ boxing match that one of the greatest scandals of the ancient Games was unmasked.

Pisodorus came from a long line of boxers from the island of Rhodes, but disaster struck when his father, who was also his trainer, died. At last a mysterious substitute stepped in, accompanying the boy to Olympia to cheer him on. But when Pisodorus won, his coach (who, like everyone else at the time, was a stranger to underwear) excitedly leapt over the ring fence, with robes hitched high to stop them from getting caught.  

In a flash, the truth was out. The trainer was a woman, Pisodorus’s mother. The penalty for a woman caught attending the Games was to be flung off a nearby cliff to her death, but the judges were so in awe of her illustrious family (or perhaps of her muscular physique) that they consented on this one occasion to bend the rules. From then on, they introduced new legislation. Henceforth trainers, like athletes, were obliged to come naked to the Games—just in case.

The only contact sport forbidden to boys was the pancration, an almost-no-holds-barred free-for-all, in which only biting and eye-gouging were prohibited. A Roman commentator reflected that the competitor must “endure black eyes…and learn holds by which the fallen can still win, and they must be skillful in the various arts of strangulation.” 

One pancratist’s win was particularly unconventional. Arrhachion came from Phigalia, a city in mountainous Arcadia. In 564 B.C. the two-time winner came to Olympia where “his opponent, whoever he was, got a grip first and held Arrhachion with his legs squeezed around his neck at the same time. Meanwhile, Arrhachion dislocated a toe on his opponent’s foot but was strangled and expired. At the same time, however, Arrhachion’s opponent gave up because of the pain in his toe. The judges proclaimed Arrhachion the winner and crowned his corpse.”

When Baron de Coubertin revived—or reimagined—the Olympics in 1896, drawing on the ethos of both the ancient Games and English public schools for inspiration, he averred: “What is important in life is not to triumph, but to take part; what is essential is not to have won, but to have fought well.” This may have been a fine late-Victorian ideal, but it was far from the ancient view. At Olympia there were no prizes for coming second, and, fueled by the Homeric exhortation “always to be best,” the desire to win kudos at almost any cost motivated every competitor.

For the aristocratic elite, it was in that most dangerous and exciting of all events, the chariot race, that the most kudos could be earned. Since its introduction in 680 B.C., leading Greek families from Sicily to Libya to the mainland and beyond coveted this prize above all others, because to win it was a sign of immense wealth and good judgment—and, since they hired charioteers to race for them, they ran no physical risks themselves. 

The cost of buying and maintaining a racing-chariot and team was astronomical, which was why the Athenian playboy-politician Alcibiades caused such a stir in 416 B.C. For that year he entered not one but seven chariots. The result was perhaps predictable. Of his teams, one came in first, another second, another either third or fourth. To celebrate his victory (and flaunt his wealth and connections), Alcibiades laid on a lavish banquet for every spectator at the Games—many thousands in all—and commissioned both a victory ode from Euripides and a painting marking his success, which he displayed on the Athenian Acropolis.

But Alcibiades was far from the most controversial entrant in the chariot race. In A.D. 67, the Roman emperor Nero (who had recently killed his mother) personally drove a 10-horse chariot team of his own. His biographer Suetonius records: “He fell from his chariot and was helped back in, but he could not continue and gave up before the end of the race. Even so he received the victor’s crown.”

In the pankration, wrestlers could do almost anything, except bite and poke out the other man's eyes. One fighter (right) is fouling, so the referee is about to hit him with a stick!

Like doping scandals today, rigged outcomes and cheating, though not common, certainly did tarnish the ancient Games. Visit Olympia, and you can still see the bases of the “Zanes,” bronze statues of Zeus erected from fines imposed on cheating athletes, with inscriptions naming and shaming the culprits. But nothing diminished the allure of the Olympics. Only Christianity could overcome them. With the banning of pagan practices by the Roman Emperor Theodosius in A.D. 391, their days were numbered, and by 425 the Olympics were no more.

For well over a thousand years the Games survived seismic shifts in politics and society, not to mention long-raging wars. Their religious focus undoubtedly played a major part in their longevity. And they evolved, too, with new contests being introduced (those for heralds and trumpeters were perhaps the most bizarre) while others (such as the mule race) were phased out. 

But it was more than all that, and here we arrive at the continuing appeal of the modern Games as well. The philosopher Epictetus put his finger on it. Even as he noted “the cacophony, the din, the jostling, the shoving [and] the crowding” of the ancient Games, he had to admit that “you are happy to put up with all this when you think of the splendor of the spectacles.”

At the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, each had made sure that if their country was to fall to nuclear destruction, it would take the other with it. That was “deterrence,” the idea that if a country had the ability to retaliate in a way that was almost unthinkable — guaranteed nuclear annihilation — no one would dare attack them. Underground missile silos filled with nuclear warheads pre-programmed to target major cities was that deterrence. On our next report, Teen Kids News got a special tour of the Titan Missile Museum in Arizona. In part one, Nicole learns that the site was built in the 1960…to protect the United States from nuclear attack during the Cold War. In part-two of this special report, Nicole gets a chance to experience what it meant to be responsible for launching a Titan Two nuclear missile.In part-three of our special report, Nicole speaks to Yvonne Morris who actually sat in the Commander’s Chair in the 1980s and was responsible for launching the missile. Nicole also continues her tour, getting an up close look at the Titan Two Missile.

It’s taken for granted far too easily that emergency workers are available to rush to your side with just a phone call. Paramedics, emergency medical technicians, and other critical care specialists are ready and waiting to assist, and it’s rarely easy work.

Not all emergency medical jobs are the same, and not all calls coming in are for life-threatening injuries, but it is an intense field that often requires long hours of work. To learn more about the field, we spoke with Lt. David F. Phetteplace, FF, CCP, IC, who works as a paramedic and an instructor.

Tell us a bit about your current work and how long you’ve been at it.

I’ve been in emergency services in Michigan for almost 10 years. I started as a volunteer firefighter. Moved on to become an EMT, then a paramedic, then a “Critical Care Paramedic and Instructor for Emergency Medical Services.”

What drove you to choose your career path?

It wasn’t anything planned. I really didn’t have much direction in my life at the time. I had just quit being in a band and was moving on from that point in my life. I one day asked the local fire chief if he needed any help on the department. He told me if I cut my hair and took all the metal out of my face that I could join the volunteer department. So I turned in my death metal gear for fire gear. I was not one of those kids that grew up wanting to be a firefighter and I never had any family in the fire service, it was just a spur of the moment type of thing that happened to change my life. I have thought for a long time the meaning of life was to help others, so it seemed like a good fit. I decided I would like to try it as a career, and that required that you be an “Emergency Medical Technician” at the time, so I went to EMT school. This was when the economy was going to hell in about 2007, so most public services jobs were almost nonexistent. It also meant I lost the job I had at the time.

It just so happened I really liked medical work and focused on that. I went on to become a paramedic and am now employed full time at an ambulance agency.

How did you go about getting your job? What kind of education and experience did you need?

To become a paramedic, you have to first be an EMT. From there, you can go to a paramedic program, which is now required to be through a college (in Michigan, at least). I have been in school for about 4-5 years to become a “Critical Care Paramedic.” Working in Emergency Medical Services requires a state license, which you can apply for after completely school and state based tests.

Critical Care is more focused on transporting patient’s from one hospital to another, often using medications or medical devices that are above the scope of practice of a paramedic. This might include chest tube pumps, ventilators, and certain cardiac devices like balloon pumps.

Many outsiders might not know that their is a difference between EMT and paramedic, but it is like comparing a nurse aid to a doctor. You now have a thorough education of physiology, pathophysiology, cardiology, pulmonology, pharmacology, and neurology. You can also performing skills such as intubation, IV/IO (in the bone) access, as well as medication administration.

Once you are in field working on an ambulance, you follow protocols that doctors have written and have been approved by the state. These are guidelines that offer a minimum of what should be performed and assessed for patients (an example being all patients that have been unconscious, have chest pain, shortness of breath, nausea and vomiting, or weakness all require an 12-lead ECG).

What kinds of things do you do beyond what most people see? What do you actually spend the majority of your time doing?

EMS jobs can actually be variable. Some people work for hospitals and just transport patients from one hospital to another, or to nursing homes. This can be as a basic EMT unit, or as a Critical Care unit for intensive care patients. Others work in urban systems, where you may run lots of calls, but are no more than five minutes from a hospital. Others, like me, work in a rural area, where we may not run that many calls in a year, but can be with our patients for longer than an hour at times. Each of us are doing different things with the same goal of treating and transporting the sick and injured.

What misconceptions do people often have about your job?

In my experience, many people call us “ambulance drivers,” which is like calling a police officer a “cop car driver.” The general public often thinks that all we do is take people to the hospital. While that is certainly part of the job, and how it was when EMS started—up to just about two decades ago—we have now moved to bringing the emergency department to the patient. There is very little that the emergency department does that we cannot in the short term. If a patient is in cardiac arrest, there is nothing the ED is going to do that we can’t. We often “work” those patients on scene until something changes, either we have a return of spontaneous circulation, or we decide that medical intervention is no longer able to help the patient. There are patient’s that do require the lights and sirens because there is nothing we can do, such as a stroke patient.

Paramedics are physician extensions, the same as a physician assistant or nurse practitioner. We are their eyes and ears in people’s homes and on roadways. We bring the patient’s story along with them to the emergency department.

Many people often think it is all blood and guts. Those calls are thankfully rare. Most of our calls involve geriatric patients that are acutely or chronically sick, and need some help on this day. It is more picking grandma up off the floor and making sure she is okay than it is car accidents (most of which are uneventful as well).

What are your average work hours? Is it a typical 9-5 thing or not?

In my agency, which is more rural than urban, we work 24 hour shifts. Sometimes days at a time. I just got off a 48 hour shift. I have 48 off, then I’m back on for 24, 24 off, then 24 back on. I worked 72 straight last week. No, it doesn’t make sense. We work 96 hours a week at my agency, most people in EMS work 48, often with 12 hour shifts. And yes, we do sleep at night if there are no calls.

What personal tips and shortcuts made your job easier?

I’m not sure there are any shortcuts that are helpful in EMS, but some of my tips are that every patient should be treated the way you would expect your family to be treated, and that we didn’t cause the emergency, people have called us on their worst day and expect us to help them. The way to do that is to remain calm and be professional. Be flexible. Things are going to change, be it with the patient, the job, medicine, or the industry.

What do you do differently from your coworkers or peers in the same profession? What do they do instead?

I spend a lot of extra time reading medical journals for EMS and physicians. Since I am an instructor as well, I am often planning education for the next meeting or upcoming classes. Medicine is constantly changing, and how we do things in EMS is not any different. I try to keep everyone up to date on the new information. I am also in change of quality assurance and improvement, so I read every report that our employees write, make sure our protocols are being followed, and that we are correctly treating our patients. This often makes me be seen as the bad guy, since I’m the one correcting peoples mistakes or showing where they can improve.

What’s the worst part of the job and how do you deal with it? I would assume being a paramedic is immensely stressful!

The worst part of EMS is working with children. I don’t mean that in “I don’t like kids.” I happen to really enjoy being around them, and I’m always happy to be there for them. But, we don’t get to see kids on good days. When you see kids hit and killed by cars, in cardiac arrest, abused, it is very hard, and can haunt you for a long time.

People that work in EMS have a very high burnout rate, most people don’t last more than a year or two before moving onto something else. It is physically demanding, and many of us, including me, are overweight. We don’t sleep well. EMS also has a high rate of divorce, alcohol and drug abuse, and has a higher rate of PTSD than the military. I have been diagnosed with PTSD myself, and have premature hypertension, nightmares, poor eating habits, and insomnia as a result.

What’s the most enjoyable part of the job?

Knowing that we do help people. Sometimes the days just start to blur together, and it is easy to become jaded. Running on alcoholics, psychiatric patients, and drug seekers gets old and some people stop caring. It is important to hold onto the good calls: the day we did save a child’s life, or helped someone’s grandma off the floor. When people thank us (which is surprisingly rare, honestly), it feels good. Recently we had a patient that was in a motorcycle accident and had a head injury and a collapsed lung. We were able to save his life, and he came in to our office to talk to me. He was difficult to handle on scene due to the head injury, but was able to fully recover. The look on his face when I told him I was the paramedic that day was wonderful.

What kind of money can one expect to make at your job? Or, what’s an average starting salary?

Pay can be a huge variable in EMS. An EMT will often not make much over minimum wage in my area. Being a full time Critical Care Paramedic at my agency pays around $45,000 a year starting (don’t try to figure that out against 96 hours a week, it’s depressing). I work for a city agency, and get very good benefits and a pension, but most are not that lucky. Unfortunately, EMS is very much still young. We are basically toddlers as an industry, and it will take some time before we get the same pay as nurses in the US. Personally, I find it an honor to be the person someone calls when their life has become a living hell.

How do you “move up” in your field?

Like I said, you start out as an EMT, then can move on to paramedic, then Critical Care (which is not another license, just a further education). The difference between EMT and paramedic is huge. It is like going from nurse aid to doctor. You not only know what to do, but why. You now can do things that might kill a patient if you don’t know what you are doing. If you want to move on from there, it can be difficult, as there is much further to go. Becoming an educator is always rewarding, but in Michigan it [requires] a state license just like your medic license, so it is more schooling. Depending on your employer, you may become a field training officer, supervisor, or manager. It can be very frustrating to suddenly hit a ceiling after becoming a medic.

Some paramedics make a move to become nurses, while some go to become physician assistants or physicians.

What do people under/over value about what you do?

I think many outsiders undervalue EMS, right up until the point they need an ambulance. To most people, we can be an annoyance. We made them pull over or something like that. A lot of people think we are often a taxi, and that we are just there to take a family member to the hospital. When I start doing an assessment and asking questions, they will often tell me, “The hospital has all that information.” And while that may be true, I don’t have access to it, and I’m going to be taking care of their loved one for the next hour or so, and it all may be important to my care.

What advice would you give to those aspiring to join your profession?

It is a great job and extremely rewarding if you like helping people. If you are in it to get a front row to someone else’s suffering, or because you think it is going to be lights and sirens and blood and guts, then this isn’t the place for you. It isn’t easy work, and you have to be able to handle those calls that are terrible. EMS is part emergency doctor, part social worker, part councilor, and part detective. It is a labor of love, and I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.