Pigskin Nation

This book explores professional football’s rising popularity in the 1960s and its simultaneous promotion by the NFL as “what makes this country great.” Taking the NFL seriously as a producer of culture—it boasted a publishing house, movie studio, and lobbyists—reveals how it used its status as the national pastime to foment broad debate. The book then explores how political influencers capitalized on that popularity by sending candidates to games, encouraging players and coaches to run for office, and stage-managing conventions that conveyed competence through effective television presentation. Middle Americans might vote for politicians who liked the game; centrist players became engaged democratic citizens; traditionalist coaches and radical athletes suddenly had a platform. Though this field tilted right, politicians on the left saw no contradiction between loving the game and standing for civil rights. This interweaving of football and politics does not reflect a dumbing-down of American politics or merely replicate the standard narrative of conservative realignment: no single participant in this scrimmage won a dominant political meaning for football. But Ronald Reagan built his appeal in 1980 around the romanticized role of George Gipp, making clear that a cluster of images promoted in the ‘60s by the NFL, and created collectively over the next decade, could and would still serve as a resonant symbol through the 80s and beyond.

X-ray image intensifiers: applications and current limitations

Early intensifiers having small fields of view and poor contrast were so difficult to use with normal patient tables that specialized use was the rule, and routine work unusual, though rewarding in patient dosage and detail rendition, when aerial images were used. Deposited amorphous screens suffered traumatic voids, severe halation and short lifetimes. Closed-circuit television presentation led to widespread acceptance of intensifiers for gastro-intestinal work and provided variable contrast for cardiac and renal examinations, but quantum and shot noise were suppressed by increased radiation dosage. Lag prevented close study of moving organs. Caesium iodide input screens provide physical stability, reduced halation, high contrast, improved definition, short lag, with increased quantum absorption efficiency at ‘diagnostic energies’. Reduced closed-circuit television gain and noise improve low contrast soft tissue differentiation, particularly with relative motion; lung metastases are detected before radiographs confirm, and small contrast-filled vessels are sharply defined for cineradiography. Current developments include compact intensifiers, whose field of view accepts cardiopulmonary images or includes the liver, spleen and both kidneys, or the kidneys and a considerable length of both ureters, for functional or vascular studies.

Effects of Medium and Presentation Style on Evaluation of a Communicator

To examine some aspects of the effects of channel and speech delivery style upon evaluations of a communicator, a 2 × 2 (channel × style) independent groups design was used. 32 high school boys and 72 girls heard a political speech presented by a professional actor over either simulated radio or television. Half the subjects heard the actor give an excited, emotional (hot) presentation of the speech; the others heard the speech presented in a relaxed, unemotional (cool) style. The subjects then rated the speaker on 44 dependent measures. Significant results were obtained for both the channel and the style factors. In general the speaker was evaluated more favorably after he had given the cool presentation than after he had presented the speech in the hot style. The television presentation was followed by more positive evaluations of the speaker than the radio presentation. In support of Marshall McLuhan's theory the cool speaker was evaluated more favorably than the hot speaker when on television but less favorably when on radio.