Norwegian skier Fred Syversen was doing some helicopter skiing in the French Alps when he took a wrong turn and plunged 381 feet off of a cliff. He survived with nothing more than a bruised liver as he waited for his companions to dig him out of a six foot deep hole he created on landing.

“Breaking or trying to stop was no longer an option. It simply went too fast. If I had tried that I wouldn’t write this. So that left one choice: go for it, and do it right.”

He's alive because he didn't panic and controlled his flight.

I could relate, because when I was eight years old, I "accidentally" when off a ski jump at Jay Peak in Vermont. I was airborne and down so quickly, I really didn't have time to panic, and I landed on my skis and my ass, also no worse for wear.

I don't have video though.

H/T All Voices

Dad used to take my my brother and I to the dump and shoot cans with a .22. Probably not what this guy had in mind when his .40 caliber pistol slipped out of his pants while using a Carl's Junior restroom.

No reason--I just thought it was cool.

OK, there is a reason. I've been fascinated with archery since I was a child, often making my own crude bows with sticks and kitchen string. In my early thirties, I actually got serious about it and bought the equipment and learned to shoot. I shot competitively briefly, but just didn't have the time to devote to it between my work and family.

I decided to pick it up again last year, and bought new equipment (which is vastly improved over the stuff I had been using...). With a few weeks of practice, I had by shooting form back, but was chagrined to learn that I can't see the target anymore. Next week I get my first pair of bi-focals, but it will be nice to see 20/20 again.

The next video is Korean. The Koreans are to archery what the U.S. is to basketball. Shooting soy beans from 30 meters is pretty impressive. The "Robin Hood" at the end of the sequence? Not so much. If you look closely, you can see that the nock--a plastic piece inserted at the end of the arrow that pinches and holds the string--has been removed. That makes this shot much, much easier.

I've shot a few Robin Hood's in my career. I still have the first one because it was still common to use aluminum arrows back then, and the arrows would "tube"--essentially nest one inside the other, and preserve the accomplishment. With modern carbon arrows, you get splinters. Its a more common phenomenon that you might believe among better archers, which is why they shoot five spots at closer ranges, rather than the classic single target.

If that's more than you ever wanted to know about archery--I apologize.

I've observed this before in passing, but this year, with Tiger Woods returning to golf begin reported like General MacArthur returning to the Philippines, the inanity that is professional golf--a 200 billion dollar a year business in the U.S. 50 billion Euros in Europe. In the year-round, fair weather climes of San Diego, golf dwarfs the comparable economic value of aerospace and software with a 3.7 billion dollar impact and nearly 30,000 jobs.

That puts the professional tour into some sort of context, and explains to some degree why Tiger Woods is such a big deal. Before he came to the tour, less than ten pro golfers made more than a million dollars in prize money a year. After he came to the tour, that number ballooned to nearly one hundred. Its mind-blowing to grasp that an industry of this magnitude rides almost entirely on the performance and image of one man--Tiger Woods.

Without a hint of sarcasm or irony, radio and television channels promised round-the-clock coverage of the Masters and fifteen minute updates.

I'm one of those guys who enjoy playing sports (I golf. Not well, but regularly...), but with rare exceptions, don't want to waste time watching others play. I find it more than a little odd to see how emotionally invested people are in the competitive pursuits of strangers. It is thrilling to see an extraordinary athletic feat, but when those feats become routine, its a snooze.

But I digress.

Tiger Wood's image, or rather image-making, is totally fascinating to me. In a game played by prosperous middle-aged family men, Tiger Woods worked hard to reflect the values of the American alpha-male stereotype--emotional discipline, superlative work ethic, civilized comportment.

His African-American heritage created a political dimension as well. I have a theory that the myth of Tiger Woods made the myth of Barack Obama politically viable--the black man who was 'just like us'. Canadians talk of the distinct French and Anglo cultures within that country as "The Two Solitudes', which serves well to describe the racial isolation between blacks and whites. As a result, Canada has produced a succession and bi-cultural, bi-lingual party leaders and Prime Ministers going back to the 1960s.

Tiger Woods bridged the gap between whites and blacks by being black but embracing 'white' values well before Barack Obama was described as a nice clean black man who didn't have to use the Negro dialect if he didn't want to.

Apparently we love that.

It's a little spooky to observe that both of these bridge symbols between the solitudes came to their dissolution at virtually the same time. They may in fact have made relationships between the races far worse than if they had never come on to the public scene by smashing the illusions of racial idealists. Suddenly, the old stereotypes have new credibility.

For those who sought to cynically exploit our cultural dynamics for profit and power: Live by the stereotype, die by the stereotype.

3 weeks ago I had a clash of heads playing soccer. I was cut but cleaned myself up, walked away, applied ice at home and flew to Iceland a few hours later with a proud battle wound up top. The other player was concussed, but came to and had the presence of mind to demand photos. The guy had been lying on the hard floor for 15 minutes waiting for an ambulance in a widening pool of blood, but still smiled for a mug-shot. You've got to admire Australians. Here's what he looked like + my comment.