NewsWARP: procrastination week

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March 7, 2012

Happy Procrastination Week!

NOTE: Because our staff writers put off their assignments to the last minute, we have no new articles this week. We apologize for any inconvenience or lasting depression this may cause.

In the meantime, click here for a quiz to find out what type of procrastinator you are.

No, that would be disgusting.

Once upon a time, footballs were made from an inflated pig’s bladder (photo by Donna Turner Ruhlman). Since animal bladders were in large supply in agricultural society, this useful idea spread quickly. Pig bladders were round, lightweight and easily inflatable. (Pity on the poor man whose job it was to inflate them.)

The oldest such pig bladder ever found (at Scotland’s Stirling Castle) was made in the 1540s. The earliest games of “football” consisted of opposing villages trying to kick the pig’s bladder onto the balcony of the other team’s church. The loser had to say ten Hail Marys.

Once tire guy Charles Goodyear invented synthetic rubber, the pig bladder was tossed aside in favor of today’s rubber or polyurethane encased in a leather shell. Sadly, Americans still incorrectly refer to football as “tossing the ole pigskin” when really the game should be called Bladder Ball.