COMPETITIVE HUMAN TOWERS.

COMPETITIVE HUMAN TOWERS. I get a kick out of the games that people have invented, and the Wall Street Journal seems to be interested in them also. In the United States, there are cheerleading competitions, in which the competitors from time to time form human pyramids. I don’t think that any of the cheerleading competitions are scored on the basis of which team has the highest pyramid. Matt Moffett in the Wall Street Journal (December 12) had an article about competitions in Catalonia in which the goal is to go as high as you can. The link shows some of the castells (towers). The competitions go back over 200 years. The competing clubs have rich traditions. (One of the people that Moffett interviews is a fourth generation club member.) Moffett describes a contest in which one club reaches seven levels, with a base of some 200 people, and a pinnacle of a 9-year old girl at the pinnacle. This year there have been over 10,000 castells built, with two of them achieving 10 tiers.