A friend of mine caught a math error in a recent article. I dislike math, and failed Trig in High School and Prob Stat in College, and tried in both cases.
I had 43%, and it should have been .98% My thesis holds:
THE RETURN OF THE OLD WAYS
Dining out decreased 17% among Americans from 2000 to 2017.
E-bike sales in the U.S. increased more than eightfold from 2014 to 2017.
Home baking in the U.K. increased 10% from 2014 to 2017.
Quilting in the U.S. increased 48% from 2014 to 2017.
Participation in 11-player High School football in the U.S. decreased 4.4% from 2015 to 2017.
Hardback book sales income in the U.K. increased 31% from 2016 to 2017. Authors’ incomes in the U.K. decreased 42% from 2007 to 2017.
Total book sales income in the U.K. increased 5% from 2016 to 2017. Income from fiction and non-fiction paperbacks also rose, by 3% and 4% respectively.
This shows, stunningly, not just a return to reading, but a return to old-time, real-deal, actual bound books, which are cool, versus paperbacks, which are not really cool.
E-bike sales in the U.S. increased 91% in 2017.
BMX bike sales in the U.S. increased 27% in 2017. This shows youths leaving technology behind, going out and riding their BMX’s, like when I was young.
Mountain bike sales in the U.S. increased 3% in 2017.
High School sports participation in the U.S. increased .98% from 2016 to 2017, from 7,886,231 to 7,963,535.
High School sports participation increased .21% from 2017 to 2018, from 7,963,535 to 7,980,886.
The increase in High School sports participation in the U.S. from 2016 to 2017 was roughly five times that seen from 2017 to 2018.
There were 17,351 additional participants in High School sports in the US from 2017 to 2018, 15,009 of which were girls.
Female High school sports participation increased .44% from 2017 to 2018.
Male high school sports participation increased .07% from 2017 to 2018.
I had to do the math to learn that 87% of the additional High School sports participants in the US from 2017 to 2018 were girls.
Technology-addicted females began taking action in 2017, getting back into sports. Blatantly obfuscating the stunning, inspiring societal change, the NFSHSA said “LED BY an additional 15,009 participants in girls sports programs”.
In 2017, the NFSHSA said “While the number of additional participants this year (17,351) was not as substantial as the previous year (94,635), a steady increase in several boys and girls sports extended the streak to a record-breaking 29th year.”
They said that the .21% increase in High School sports participation from 2017 to 2018 was “not as substantial” as the .98% increase in High School sport participation from 2016 to 2017. That’s another blatant obfuscation of the stunning, sudden, and very positive societal trend.
They described a sudden, quantum increase in High School sports participation as a “steady increase in several sports”.
That is, once again, a blatant obfuscation of the stunning, sudden, and very positive societal trend.
With the cruel truth for them being “There has been a quantum increase in all sports, except American football, which sucks”.
Football decreased for the second consecutive year in 2017.
Participation in 11-player High School football in the U.S. decreased 2.5% from 2015 to 2016, from 1,085,272 to 1,057,407.
Participation in 11-player High School football in the U.S. decreased 2% from 2016 to 2017, from 1,057,407 to 1,036,842
The NFSHSA bravely said “11-player football remains the No. 1 participatory sport for boys in high school by a large margin.”
Participation in high school athletics in California increased 2.95% from 2017 to 2018, to the highest level in history. The Modesto Bee said “Boys and girls swimming and diving, boys and girls golf and girls wrestling saw solid increases by percentage”.
Meanwhile, football participation in California decreased by 2.87% from 2017 to 2018. It was the third straight year of decrease.
In the Sac-Joaquin Section, participation in football decreased 3.3%. Modesto City Schools freshman participation decreased 19% from 2017 to 2018.
The Modesto Bee obfuscated the stunning increases in participation in swimming, golf, and, most remarkably, girls wrestling, but had to cough up the numbers for their most-favored game of “American football”.
I swam in High School, was very serious about it. However, we were at the bottom of the social sports ladder, with golf.
The football players, at the top of the sports food chain, would call us “swimmer fags”, despite the fact that we were the hardest-core athletes there were. In one of the high points of my life, I was paired with the captain of the football team in gym for the Marine Corps Physical Fitness test, in which I crushed him in every category, including sprints, during which I taunted him as we ran. “Keith, don’t you guys do this every day? Keith, could you pick it up, buddy?” Blazing up to the ceiling of the gym on the rope climb like Westley in “The Princess Bride”.
Anyway, the demise of football and the increase in swimming and golf, both fringe sports in my day, bodes well for the populace, and I had to call it out.
Print book sales increased 2% in the first half of 2018. NPD Groove said it was “due to growth in adult nonfiction titles, specifically religious books”.
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