Friday, October 10, 2008
I Apologize to My Rice Krispies, Too...
It's always nice to know that someone else has a stupider government than you do...
Extremely Medial
Having solved every problem in the U.S. legal system, the Justice Department will now mediate a dispute between two high school coaching staffs.
During a Sept. 19 game between Dunbar High in Washington, D.C. and Fort Hill High of eastern Maryland, Dunbar players and coaches stopped play and walked off the field following what they claimed was a stream of racial insults and epithets. Players and coaches from Fort Hill claim they never heard any such talk, and while referees say they didn't hear any, they noted that players may say things when in close contact that referees don't overhear.
My own opinion is that the Fort Hill claim of complete blamelessness is hooey. The use of derogatory racial terms as insults still exists, as do knuckle-draggers who feel they can properly express their enmity, disapproval or supposed superiority by using them. Again, my own opinion of people who do use these insults is that they exhaust all their available brainpower when they direct their bodies to perform the actions that make up speech -- like inhaling and exhaling, shaping the mouth, moving the tongue, etc. -- and they don't have any neurons left to do anything other than sling a racial taunt.
But even so, it's doubtful that there was some kind of systematic mass slandering going on, given that people who consider such behavior acceptable shrink in number every day. And given that four Fort Hill starters are African American.
As to walking off the field...well, I've never been an African American, so I can't say how I would react to hearing the taunts they say they heard. I think we'd all prefer a walkoff to a brawl, though, so the Dunbar players and coaches showed some character there. The Dunbar coach said a few things before the game about how he'd been told he wouldn't get a fair shake playing at Fort Hill, though, so he's got some ownership of the tension level as well.
Seriously, though -- the Justice Department of the United States? I grant that this is an impenetrable he said, he said situation, and that at this point it's impossible to know what happened. The Dunbar coaching staff believes their players were insulted because of their race, and the Fort Hill staff believes their team and town have been slandered by what was very probably said by a few doofuses. But I can't ever remember the Justice Department displaying Solomon's wisdom, and I doubt anything less would truly move through this maze.
The Department does have a division that handles civil rights issues and this definitely qualifies, but since the most likely result is a joint statement that says everybody's going to behave better next time and try to understand each other, why not just cut out the middleman and say that anyway?
After all, we're talking about two high schools whose seniors test hundreds of points below the national average on the SAT even while they boast championship football teams that can afford to travel far outside their districts to play other top teams in order to pocket a couple thousand dollars. I've never been to either school, but don't those kinds of things usually indicate an outsized emphasis on football over classroom? And given how few people play professional football judged against how many people might need to demonstrate some kind of smarts to get and keep a job, isn't there already a problem with these two schools thinking football is a lot more important than it really is?
I guess we're left saying to the government what we usually have to say to the government: You're doing it wrong.
During a Sept. 19 game between Dunbar High in Washington, D.C. and Fort Hill High of eastern Maryland, Dunbar players and coaches stopped play and walked off the field following what they claimed was a stream of racial insults and epithets. Players and coaches from Fort Hill claim they never heard any such talk, and while referees say they didn't hear any, they noted that players may say things when in close contact that referees don't overhear.
My own opinion is that the Fort Hill claim of complete blamelessness is hooey. The use of derogatory racial terms as insults still exists, as do knuckle-draggers who feel they can properly express their enmity, disapproval or supposed superiority by using them. Again, my own opinion of people who do use these insults is that they exhaust all their available brainpower when they direct their bodies to perform the actions that make up speech -- like inhaling and exhaling, shaping the mouth, moving the tongue, etc. -- and they don't have any neurons left to do anything other than sling a racial taunt.
But even so, it's doubtful that there was some kind of systematic mass slandering going on, given that people who consider such behavior acceptable shrink in number every day. And given that four Fort Hill starters are African American.
As to walking off the field...well, I've never been an African American, so I can't say how I would react to hearing the taunts they say they heard. I think we'd all prefer a walkoff to a brawl, though, so the Dunbar players and coaches showed some character there. The Dunbar coach said a few things before the game about how he'd been told he wouldn't get a fair shake playing at Fort Hill, though, so he's got some ownership of the tension level as well.
Seriously, though -- the Justice Department of the United States? I grant that this is an impenetrable he said, he said situation, and that at this point it's impossible to know what happened. The Dunbar coaching staff believes their players were insulted because of their race, and the Fort Hill staff believes their team and town have been slandered by what was very probably said by a few doofuses. But I can't ever remember the Justice Department displaying Solomon's wisdom, and I doubt anything less would truly move through this maze.
The Department does have a division that handles civil rights issues and this definitely qualifies, but since the most likely result is a joint statement that says everybody's going to behave better next time and try to understand each other, why not just cut out the middleman and say that anyway?
After all, we're talking about two high schools whose seniors test hundreds of points below the national average on the SAT even while they boast championship football teams that can afford to travel far outside their districts to play other top teams in order to pocket a couple thousand dollars. I've never been to either school, but don't those kinds of things usually indicate an outsized emphasis on football over classroom? And given how few people play professional football judged against how many people might need to demonstrate some kind of smarts to get and keep a job, isn't there already a problem with these two schools thinking football is a lot more important than it really is?
I guess we're left saying to the government what we usually have to say to the government: You're doing it wrong.
Monday, October 6, 2008
The Card
Wagner, who played from 1897 to 1917, was one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. He tied for second place with Babe Ruth, behind Ty Cobb. Cobb himself -- not a man given to praising much of anybody or anything besides Ty Cobb -- and pitching legend Christy Mathewson lauded Wagner as one of the best players ever to take the field.
But he's best known as the face on The Card, that aforementioned Honus Wagner T206. Baseball cards today come in packs of their own and many folks may remember when they came with bubble gum, but at the turn of the century they showed up in all kinds of things, including cigarette packs. The American Tobacco Company (ATC) published its T206 series from 1909 to 1911, but Honus objected to being included in that series. According to The Card authors Michael O'keeffe and Teri Thompson, either Honus didn't want kids buying cigarettes in order to collect his baseball card or he wasn't big on ATC making money off his image without giving him a cut. The more things change...
Anyway, probably not more than 200 Wagner T206 cards were actually released. Most of them today look the way you'd expect 100-year-old pieces of cardboard that started life in a package of tobacco to look. Smudged, faded, creased, worn at the edges, etc. But The Card, known officially as the "Gretzky T206 Honus Wagner" and featured on the cover of the book, is still brightly-colored and crisp at the edges, which is why different people, including hockey great Wayne Gretzky, have ponied up several million dollars over the years acquiring it from one another. In September of 2007, an anonymous collector spent $2.8 million to buy it at auction.
Investigative journalists O'keeffe and Thompson detail how The Card appeared in the 1980s and brought with it the beginning of the high-dollar sports card craze. Most of the trappings of that business that are taken for granted -- quality grading firms, authenticators, eyebrow-raising claims of veracity -- stem from the original push to verify and "prove" that the Gretzky T206 was the real deal. While the authors seem to accept The Card was in fact printed in that ATC T206 run, they offer evidence of an origin that falls well into the realm of shady doings.
Folks who are really into sports memorabilia will have their own opinion about whether or not this three-and-three-quarters square-inch piece of cardboard is worth almost as much as a real baseball player. But The Card is a pretty interesting look at how this business began and some of the less-redeeming features of an enterprise that involves grown men spending millions of dollars on broken bats, scuffed balls, dirty uniforms, stinky shoes, sweaty hats and so on because they may have been used by or may have been signed by an athlete at some point.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm heading off to the store to pick up my run of the newest collectible craze: Clergy Cards. The latest set has a pretty good Billy Graham (Position: Elder statesman; Preaches: Anywhere), T.D. Jakes (Position: Loosed!; Preaches: Amplification optional) and Jeremiah Wright (Position: Under the bus; Preaches: Let's not go there).
Saturday, October 4, 2008
East German Judge Gives It a 10!
Well, of course hosting the Olympic Games helped open up China's Communist government, and left a "unique legacy" in Olympic history.
After all, brutal and repressive regimes always respond to the international spotlight by letting themselves be seen, warts and all, and allowing every flaw to be analyzed and examined on the world stage. That's why, even though the first health problems connected to melamine in milk products in China started showing up in December 2007 and the first infant death directly linked to the chemical happened in May 2008, the world learns of the problem well after the Olympic Games are over.
Melamine is a chemical used in flame retardants, cleaners like Mr. Clean's "Magic Eraser," plastics and countertops. Because of its high nitrogen content, it can boost the apparent protein levels in food, even though it's no protein itself. It's what caused pet food recalls last year when it was found in wheat gluten Chinese companies used in preparing the food. Melamine by itself is somewhat dangerous, but when combined with another chemical called cyanuric acid, it can form poisonous kidney stones and cause kidney failure. And oh, guess what, the same companies that added melamine to pet food in order to make low-protein stuff look like high-protein stuff also added cyanuric acid. And oh, double guess what, that's the same tasty combo found in the powdered milk.
Apparently Chinese officials figured that the civilized world would be at least as touchy about poisoned children as they were about poisoned pets, so, according to the AFP story, they kept their investigation of the guilty companies on the QT until after everyone was done ooh-ing and ahh-ing over all the dancers, fireworks and big gold medal haul.
Guess they were worried an investigation might wake the baby.
After all, brutal and repressive regimes always respond to the international spotlight by letting themselves be seen, warts and all, and allowing every flaw to be analyzed and examined on the world stage. That's why, even though the first health problems connected to melamine in milk products in China started showing up in December 2007 and the first infant death directly linked to the chemical happened in May 2008, the world learns of the problem well after the Olympic Games are over.
Melamine is a chemical used in flame retardants, cleaners like Mr. Clean's "Magic Eraser," plastics and countertops. Because of its high nitrogen content, it can boost the apparent protein levels in food, even though it's no protein itself. It's what caused pet food recalls last year when it was found in wheat gluten Chinese companies used in preparing the food. Melamine by itself is somewhat dangerous, but when combined with another chemical called cyanuric acid, it can form poisonous kidney stones and cause kidney failure. And oh, guess what, the same companies that added melamine to pet food in order to make low-protein stuff look like high-protein stuff also added cyanuric acid. And oh, double guess what, that's the same tasty combo found in the powdered milk.
Apparently Chinese officials figured that the civilized world would be at least as touchy about poisoned children as they were about poisoned pets, so, according to the AFP story, they kept their investigation of the guilty companies on the QT until after everyone was done ooh-ing and ahh-ing over all the dancers, fireworks and big gold medal haul.
Guess they were worried an investigation might wake the baby.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
If It Didn't Take so Long...
I'd go back to school and get a Ph.D. and not have enough to do, like our 300-hating prof from a few days ago and like these guys.
According to them, you see, our nostalgic concept of "The Fifties" was invented by the revival group Sha Na Na. Yes, Bowzer is responsible for Richie Cunningham. Our authors the Leonards, well-armed with scare quotes around words like "history" to let you know they know those aren't really words like everybody since Noah Webster thought they were, but are actually sociological constructs, suggest that the Columbia University a cappella group The Kingsmen are the direct ancestors of American Graffitti, Happy Days and probably Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."
The Kingsmen changed their name before a show focusing on 1950s pop songs, including "Get a Job" by The Silhouettes with its "sha da da" chorus (and because a combo up in Seattle had a hit under that name), and thus a phenomenon was born. Before Sha Na Na's appearance at Woodstock (wonder what the folks who'd dropped acid thought when they showed up on stage), "Americans" "remembered" the 1950s as the decade of Joe McCarthy, A-bomb drills and tortured beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg.
Which makes sense -- you may remember how often Elvis had to call Ginsberg and beg him to be allowed to play before the poet went onstage to read before thousands of screaming teenagers. "Don't be cruel, Allan, just a song or two. I need the work. Thank you, thank you very much."
Here's some more fun -- the article I linked to riffs off of two books written by still other professors.
One of them, about which the word "bold" is used for no reason that the article authors go on to elaborate, is called Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics by Daniel Marcus. Mr. Marcus suggests politicians pick and choose from among past events in order to communicate their message. I just saved you $62 plus shipping.
The other, Retro: The Culture of Revival by Elizabeth Guffey, takes a look at how old trends and fads become new again, then old again, then new again. At least, I think it does. One of the reviews of the book says it does this:
Anyway, the authors of our article note that both of these books point out the role Sha Na Na had in the creation of '50s nostalgia. I don't know if the books touch on this, but the article omits one of our main cultural nostalgia-drivers: The baby-boomer desire to stop time and keep alive the era when they were young and thus -- in the eyes of a youth-obsessed culture -- important.
After all, that's why we spent a lot of our 2004 presidential election fighting over what two men in their 50s, who had held a couple of our nation's highest offices, had done when they were 22 and why that was the best indicator of their fitness for the presidency. It's why commercials talking about retirement planning show senior citizens surfing instead of playing with grandkids or relaxing in a rocker on the front porch.
And it's why people who spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of their lives obtaining advanced degrees will devote time and serious scholarship to talking about a time when they dressed up like James Dean and sang "At the Hop." Yes, the authors of the article that suggests Sha Na Na created '50s nostalgia and spawned Happy Days, Grease and the rise of Ronald Reagan are, in fact, two founding members of Sha Na Na.
Go figure.
According to them, you see, our nostalgic concept of "The Fifties" was invented by the revival group Sha Na Na. Yes, Bowzer is responsible for Richie Cunningham. Our authors the Leonards, well-armed with scare quotes around words like "history" to let you know they know those aren't really words like everybody since Noah Webster thought they were, but are actually sociological constructs, suggest that the Columbia University a cappella group The Kingsmen are the direct ancestors of American Graffitti, Happy Days and probably Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love."
The Kingsmen changed their name before a show focusing on 1950s pop songs, including "Get a Job" by The Silhouettes with its "sha da da" chorus (and because a combo up in Seattle had a hit under that name), and thus a phenomenon was born. Before Sha Na Na's appearance at Woodstock (wonder what the folks who'd dropped acid thought when they showed up on stage), "Americans" "remembered" the 1950s as the decade of Joe McCarthy, A-bomb drills and tortured beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allan Ginsberg.
Which makes sense -- you may remember how often Elvis had to call Ginsberg and beg him to be allowed to play before the poet went onstage to read before thousands of screaming teenagers. "Don't be cruel, Allan, just a song or two. I need the work. Thank you, thank you very much."
Here's some more fun -- the article I linked to riffs off of two books written by still other professors.
One of them, about which the word "bold" is used for no reason that the article authors go on to elaborate, is called Happy Days and Wonder Years: The Fifties and Sixties in Contemporary Cultural Politics by Daniel Marcus. Mr. Marcus suggests politicians pick and choose from among past events in order to communicate their message. I just saved you $62 plus shipping.
The other, Retro: The Culture of Revival by Elizabeth Guffey, takes a look at how old trends and fads become new again, then old again, then new again. At least, I think it does. One of the reviews of the book says it does this:
Elizabeth Guffey considers retro's resistance to modernist progressive cheerleading and, in fact, its rewriting of modernism itself.I have a feeling that, even if I read Guffey's book, I still won't be able to say whether or not the review quote was accurate because I have no idea what it means.
Anyway, the authors of our article note that both of these books point out the role Sha Na Na had in the creation of '50s nostalgia. I don't know if the books touch on this, but the article omits one of our main cultural nostalgia-drivers: The baby-boomer desire to stop time and keep alive the era when they were young and thus -- in the eyes of a youth-obsessed culture -- important.
After all, that's why we spent a lot of our 2004 presidential election fighting over what two men in their 50s, who had held a couple of our nation's highest offices, had done when they were 22 and why that was the best indicator of their fitness for the presidency. It's why commercials talking about retirement planning show senior citizens surfing instead of playing with grandkids or relaxing in a rocker on the front porch.
And it's why people who spent thousands of dollars and thousands of hours of their lives obtaining advanced degrees will devote time and serious scholarship to talking about a time when they dressed up like James Dean and sang "At the Hop." Yes, the authors of the article that suggests Sha Na Na created '50s nostalgia and spawned Happy Days, Grease and the rise of Ronald Reagan are, in fact, two founding members of Sha Na Na.
Go figure.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Remain Calm. All Is Well.
Before it shut down, the Large Hadron Collider ran for a little while and proved it probably couldn't create a black hole that would kill us all. But does another danger loom?
The LHC is cooled by superfluid helium (helium gas chilled until it's a liquid, which happens at about -453 degrees. Wear a scarf.), which is something called a Bose-Einsteinian Condensate. Scientists have made these condensates explode with magnetic fields, which of course the LHC makes use of, and they call them Bose supernovas, or "Bosenovas."
They used tiny amounts of their condensates, but the LHC uses about 185,000 gallons of superfluid helium, which would make for a much larger bang -- perhaps even an earth-shattering kaboom.
But we can rest assured of one thing -- being a Bose supernova, we know it's going to sound excellent.
The LHC is cooled by superfluid helium (helium gas chilled until it's a liquid, which happens at about -453 degrees. Wear a scarf.), which is something called a Bose-Einsteinian Condensate. Scientists have made these condensates explode with magnetic fields, which of course the LHC makes use of, and they call them Bose supernovas, or "Bosenovas."
They used tiny amounts of their condensates, but the LHC uses about 185,000 gallons of superfluid helium, which would make for a much larger bang -- perhaps even an earth-shattering kaboom.
But we can rest assured of one thing -- being a Bose supernova, we know it's going to sound excellent.
Monday, September 29, 2008
University -- Birthplace of Genius
Yes, this is certainly a good idea. Instead of "Men," write, "Toilets with urinals." Instead of "Women," write "Toilets."
Because I can't count how many times I've had to wait for some gal to finish at the urinal.
(H/T Fark)
PS -- Some of the comments are a little free with vulgarities, I think, but I don't know much British/English slang. Either way a lot of them are really silly).
Because I can't count how many times I've had to wait for some gal to finish at the urinal.
(H/T Fark)
PS -- Some of the comments are a little free with vulgarities, I think, but I don't know much British/English slang. Either way a lot of them are really silly).
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