Tiger Woods’s Back and Tommy John’s Elbow by Jonathan Gelber MD MS

Author:Jonathan Gelber, MD, MS
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781683582595
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2019-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

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Ayrton Senna, Dale Earnhardt, and NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow

“ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOREST fires” is perhaps the most memorable slogan ever to be uttered by a talking noncartoon bear—Smokey Bear, to be precise. Most people know the furry forest ranger as “Smokey” The Bear, but in actuality, his given name was simply Smokey Bear. He first appeared in 1944, two years after Disney’s Bambi laid bare the devastating effects of forest fires on animal habitats. Hot on the trail of Bambi, other animals began to appear in posters and ad campaigns as part of the National Park System’s efforts to curtail forest fires. Unable to employ the young fawn for more than a year, the government organization turned to New Yorker art critic and part-time ad man Harold Rosenberg. He first breathed life into the large, friendly bear. Shortly after his creation, he was named Smokey after Smokey Joe Martin, a firefighter who was blinded and burned during a fire rescue. Smokey was further personified when a small black bear cub was actually rescued from a forest fire and sent to live in Washington, DC’s national zoo. This cute and cuddly cub provided even more ammunition in the forest service’s efforts to combat forest fires at all costs. This effort, however, had its own unintended consequences.

In the early 20th century, fire management was different from what it is today. The Southeast and Western portions of the United States were more prone to fire outbreaks, but small outbreaks weren’t necessarily seen as a bad thing. Many landowners in these areas recognized that smaller, regular fires were necessary to remove fuel sources that could otherwise build up and escalate into a potentially extreme fire condition. A new school of thought, however, was growing within the forestry schools, which were influenced by the German approach to fire prevention. The Germans emphasized a scientific and ordered view of management. Proponents of this view stressed that just letting fires burn was a savage approach. To them, this was not forestry or conservation, but simply “destruction.” It also impeded a country’s ability to keep its timber supply at the highest level. To allow a small tree to burn was akin to extinguishing the light of life in nature.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, forest fire management was codified by the “10 a.m. policy,” so-called because fires were to be under control by 10:00 a.m. the next day. This encouraged a fast and all-encompassing fire suppression tactic. Over the years, some objections were raised, but even these were tempered by the idea that so much fuel had now been protected, that to allow the fires to burn again would result in an even bigger disaster. In fact, that is in line with what we now see as an unintended consequence of overaggressive conservation. By limiting the number of tree species that burned, an encroachment of less-fire-tolerant species has now grown where previously it may have been limited. For example, in the Western United States, less-fire-tolerant Douglas fir

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