In America, the stereotype of a rugby player includes being tough, but this automatic inference is not often true.  Not everyone who has ever pulled a rugby jersey over their head has demonstrated the toughness that they are credited for.  I will attempt, for this discussion, to identify some of the key components of being rugby tough.

Being rugby tough means being highly disciplined on and off the field.  On- field discipline includes running straight with the ball in hand, staying on side, and not giving away silly penalties.  On-field discipline appears when players have focused well during training and therefore understand their role and responsibilities in attack and defense within the team’s patterns of play.  Off field discipline is performing workouts when you don’t really feel like it. Being discipline isn’t anything unusual for athletes, but also shouldn’t be assumed.  Discipline is a character trait that is at the core of being rugby tough.

Being physical at the right moments in matches is rugby tough.  Rugby allows athletes to impress their physical will upon the opposition countless times during a match, something not all sports allow for.  For example, in basketball you can’t make too much contact with the player in possession of the ball; and in football, play stops once the ball is blown dead.  Rugby provides countless opportunities to play hard but fair. Rugby tough players don’t coast or walk during matches.  Players who are rugby tough minimize or completely eliminate coast moments during matches. To play relentlessly is to be rugby tough.

Some of the toughest men I have played with have been physically and mentally able to perform at an incredible pace for however long was required of them.   Only those who are rugby tough can consistently respond to the demands of the game.

Rugby tough requires an attitude that is unique to our game.  Rugby it isn’t a sport for everyone to begin with, and to be rugby tough ups the ante.  A rugby tough attitude goes beyond the good old fashion “stick to it-ness” that all sports share.  New players to rugby either admire this attitude and strive to emulate it or don’t get it.  There is nothing in between.

 In every match there are moments where nothing seems to be going right, when assignments are missed, and possessions turned over.  The continuity aspect of rugby forces players to regroup and redouble their efforts on the run.  With no time outs available, the individual players must each possess the ability to make assignment adjustments and keep on playing with a high degree of determination if they want to be considered rugby tough.

To be rugby tough requires players to be highly disciplined, physical and smart.  These players always compete with an “over my dead body” attitude.”

Strive to be rugby tough.

Check out this article! It’s definitely useful for all of the designers out there or for those who are searching to achieve a certain feel for their document or design.

The New York times has a short article, The 8-Year-Old Programmer, on Kodu, a programming environment intended to help young children learn to write programs.

“Kodu, built by a team at Microsoft’s main campus outside Seattle, is a programming environment that runs on an Xbox 360, using the game console’s controller rather than a keyboard. Instead of typing if/then statements in a syntax that must be memorized — as adult programmers do — the student uses the Xbox controller to pop up menus that contain options from which to choose. Kodu itself resembles a video game, with a point-and-click interface instead of the thousand-lines-of-text coding tools used by grown-ups.”

You can also read about Kodu in the Wikipedia article Kodu Game Lab or Kodu project page at Microsoft Research, from which you can also download a free version for the PC.

Kodu is an rule-based, event-driven language with a simple context free grammar that lets you write rules like “see apple red, move toward quickly”.

Kudu takes it’s place in a long history of programming languages developed to teach programming to children, starting with Logo in the late 1960s. None of these have ever truly caught on, although Logo was taught in many elementary schools in the 1980s. As a computer scientist, I believe that being able to write simple programs for one’s own use will eventually be a skill that all educated people will have, just as being able to basic numerical computations and write effective text are today.

Read a good book lately? Why not nominate it for the 2011 UMBC New Student Book Experience, which invites new UMBC students to read the selected book and engage in formal and informal discussions about it as the new year starts.

We are looking for books that (1) are compelling, intellectually stimulating, engaging on multiple levels and capable of generating interesting discussions; (2) address issues meaningful to students of diverse backgrounds; (3) are not widely required in Maryland high schools or made into a recent film; and (4) are available in paperback and not overly long.

You can nominate one or more using this handy Facebook app. The app uses the Google Books API to help identify books given a partial title, so it’s easy to use. After recoding your nomination, you’ll have an opportunity to make an optional post to your Facebook page like the one below, so your friends can see what you suggested. Nominations will close on October 31, 2010 and the selection will be announced in the Spring.