I suppose those who start out highest have the farthest to fall. Manute Bol, the 7’7″ Sudan man who remains the tallest player in the history of the NBA, was an endearing freak show during his career. (Woody Allen: “Manute Bol is so skinny, to save money on road trips they just fax him from city to city.”)
But once his career ended, he ended up in the middle of Sudan’s civil war (read that last link if you read no others here), held prisoner by government forces. Last year, he managed to escape to Egypt, and finally a few months ago made it back to the U.S.. It’s an amazing story.
I suppose that’s why it’s so unspeakably sad to see Manute Bol, former millionaire, noble Dinka tribesman, freak of nature, reduced to Celebrity Boxing II to raise cash.
Author: jbenton
sea ray webcast
wieseltier on judaism, yiddish radio project
The long-time voice of Judaism at The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, has a crack piece on Jewish fear. Robert Siegel talked with Wieseltier about it on NPR Tuesday. (Robert Wright had a more press-centric take on some of the same issues. The American press always gets hit with allegations of bias on Israel vs. Palestinians, although the attacks are almost evenly split down the middle between those who think the press is too pro-Palestinian or too pro-Israeli.)
Speaking of Judaism and NPR, anybody else confused about the endless promotion they’re giving the Yiddish Radio Project? They’ve been hyping this 10-part series (!) every day for months. They promo it at least once an hour during All Things Considered and Morning Edition. I’m sure it’s great (I’ve just heard promos, not any of the actual pieces), but I’ve honestly never seen any form of media give this much promotion to anything they’ve ever done — not newspapers, not magazines, certainly not radio. While I’m sure NPR’s audience skews more Jewish than most media, I have a difficult time imagining there’s enough interest to merit that much hype.
Plus, the radio series actually has its own separate set of corporate sponsors, including (logically) Hebrew National. That always makes me leery.
Certainly I’ve got no problem with NPR having a corporate underwriter; to me, it’s just like a normal advertisement. But it bothers me when the money gets too close to the journalism — as in a corporation sponsoring a specific story. (For instance, I don’t like it that Marketplace, the fine radio business program, apparently has no problem letting companies pay for specific beats or areas of coverage. Phillips Petroleum sponsors their international business coverage, for example.) Imagine if a newspaper series ran with a little tag that said, “The Morning News’ education coverage is sponsored by Stanley Kaplan.”
virginia postrel’s new column in d
Celebrity blogger Virginia Postrel is writing a regular column for D Magazine, our local city mag. (I had no idea until I saw her byline that she lives only a few blocks from me. Back when I was a hyperpolitical teenager, I used to read her libertarian magazine Reason.)
Her political blog ranks up there with my fave, Mickey Kaus’ newly Slate-d kausfiles, and Josh Marshall’s TPM as far as blogs-by-opinion-journalists go.
Anyway, her column on downtown this month (and especially her dead-on takedown of the McKinney Avenue Trolley last month) are refreshing counters to the typical mess of economic development pablum usually serve up. If you’re interested in urban design and how cities become more vital places, she’s a good read.
And if you’re not interested in urban design and how cities become more vital places, well, while you’re at the D Mag website, you can hear Mark Cuban threaten to “come and slice your fucking nuts off.”
everybody’s stressed, depressed, regressed
The weather’s gorgeous, summer’s approaching, and it’s not yet 112 degrees outside — but just about every last person I know is stressed, depressed, cranky, or otherwise out of sorts. (Me included.) No idea why.
Hell, even the Internet feels tired.
print columnist: why i blog
A print columnist explains why he’s also a blogger. “As someone who gets paid to write, the idea of writing for free seemed counterintuitive at first. But in my experience, writing more has made me a better writer. Meanwhile, the blog lets me publish work that might otherwise go unwritten.”
google shout-out defined
Vocab Dept. (alert Gareth Branwyn!): Google shout-out, n. The gratuitous naming of an individual in a blog post in hopes that a popular search engine will pick it up and provide a search return where there was none before.
Sample usage: When I was in AP English in high school, our instructor (the superb Don DeWitt, who deserves a Google shout-out in this entry)…
nopantsland.tk, tokelau
Found while researching the independence movement in the New Zealand territory of Tokelau: www.nopantsland.tk. (No content there yet, but it’s been registered. Luckily, prime domain names like easynopantsland.tk, quicknopantsland.tk, and interactivenopantsland.tk are still available.)
It’s really a shame Tokelau probably won’t be with us much longer. And man, they had a rough couple of decades in the 1850s and 1860s.
“all-woman” team climbing everest, samsung means to come
Two links I’ve been storing up during the MT switchover:
Women turn back short of Everest summit. Quote: “The climb was billed as the first by an all-woman team attempting to summit Everest. The women were accompanied by two male guides, a male photographer and eight Nepali sherpas.”
Um, excuse me, but how in the world can that be described as an “all-woman team”? Assuming the sherpas are male, that’s five women and 11 men. My real argument here isn’t about gender: it’s about the shoddy treatment that the Nepali sherpas always get in Everest summit stories. These folks carry all the gear and climb just as far as the white folks who get the pub, but they get no attention. Sir Edmund Hillary gets the title and the fame, Tenzing Norgay gets forgotten. (Well, not forgotten, but you get my point.) Now these sherpas are evidently not even human, since it’s an “all-woman” team.
And, totally unrelated, Samsung means to come.