You want a lot of e-mail? Post on The Corner about curling. Geez o’Pete!

Anyway, here are some responses to my question about the game that is a bowling/chess hybrid on ice and why it can’t be co-ed:

As a novice curler approaching 50, you’d be shocked to learn how physically-demanding sweeping is.
As you have probably learned, one can affect the length of the throw by up to 15 feet by sweeping or not sweeping. When it is obvious that a throw is short and you have to sweep your ass off, it’s like a sprint. I’m out of breath when that rock dies and I’ve been sweeping vigorously. I’m a hockey goalie in decent shape.
Strength and endurance are important, and that’s why it needs to be gender-segregated.

Several Neanderthals somehow acquired e-mail accounts and wrote in with comments like this:

Wouldn’t you expect women to be better at a sport that utilizes a broom?
(Don’t tell my wife I said that)

Outside of the Olympics, curling can be co-ed fun, like a bowling league:

I just read your comment about watching curling on The Corner, and thought I would let you know, as a member of a family of curlers, that there is indeed a category of what is called “mixed doubles”, and this was proposed as part of the Olympics as seen here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_curling
Anyway, it’s enjoyed in curling clubs around the country…just not at the Olympics. For now.
Also, you (and Jonah, for that matter) might find this amusing; it shows that we don’t take ourselves too seriously:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CZlBcY1Jjs