The New and Improved PV's Sports Toothache

A brief explanation is in order for the new title and appearance.

We've changed the title and color scheme for a two reasons. First, we write on this blog about whatever in sports happens to be on our minds. A lot of the time (especially from September through December), that's the Minnesota Vikings. We're very happy to write about the Vikings, and are happy that we have a lot of Viking fans as readers. But a lot of the time, we write about issues and events in sports that don't include the Vikings. I feel the title "Pacifist Viking" with a purple and yellow color scheme tended to give the impression this was primarily a Viking blog. There's a lot about the Vikings (so don't fret, readers who frequent this blog primarily for the Viking talk), but there's a lot that's not. We want to make that a little clearer.

Second, we have three contributors. When one contributor has the same name as the title of the blog, it tends to a. confuse readers as to authorship and b. associate all the ideas with the person of that name. Last winter I briefly changed my own moniker to help it make sense, but I didn't like that. Now, with a new title for focus anyway, we can also make it a little clearer that there are several different voices here (and may be more in the future).

The URL is the same. And if you've already linked to us as "Pacifist Viking," I wouldn't bother changing it, since "Pacifist Viking" is fine shorthand for this blog (and I'm rather fickle, and could change my mind on the title again anyway).

There's also no reason to think the content is changing. As I said, we write about whatever in sports we feel like writing about. That's often the Vikings, and the new look and title won't lower the amount of Viking posts (we also don't want to drive away our Viking fan readers, who provide much of the commenting. We want this to continue to be a place where we can discuss the Purple). We just want to make it a little clearer that we also write about other things (mostly football, but a fair amount of basketball depending on the season, with the stuff on writing and theory thrown in on a lot of sports topics).

The title comes from Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. The man from the underground rejects the idea that science, reason, and "our own best interest" governs human behavior, instead claiming irrational desires (primarily the desire to assert free will) drives us. The man from the underground suggests there can even be pleasure in a toothache, as it allows you to bother people with your own groaning. As Minnesota sports fans, we have a massive toothache: we may as well try take pleasure in it and at least enjoy our own groaning.

This extended narcissistic explanation is complete. Enjoy your day, and enjoy the blog.