(click on pic for video)
very strange article in the denver post today about how there aren’t that many white people playing in the nba anymore:
The last such NBA superstar was Boston’s Larry Bird, who retired after the 1991-92 season.
The last such all-NBA selection was Utah’s John Stockton, a third-team member in 1999.
Since 2001 there have been two such NBA all-stars, Brad Miller (2004) and Wally Szczerbiak (2002).
The Nuggets are on the verge of playing a complete season without a white American on their roster for the first time in franchise history.
On opening-day rosters this season, there were only 48 white Americans, excluding mixed-race players, less than two per team and down from 60 five years earlier.
“I knew we were a dying breed,” said Houston guard Jon Barry, a white American. “I wouldn’t know how to explain it.”
“I don’t think it’s relevant,” Vandeweghe said. “We’re talking about basketball players. I don’t care if they are from China, Africa, Europe, the U.S.”
NBA commissioner David Stern agreed.
“I don’t think (race) matters a bit,” Stern said. “People ask me about having foreign players as opposed to American players. I give them the same answer. The question is: Is Dirk (Nowitzki) doing a good job? Is Tony (Parker) doing a good job? Is Yao (Ming) doing a good job for the home team? That’s what it’s about.”
One white American has won the NBA’s slam dunk contest - Brent Barry in 1996.
Mark Pope was the Nuggets’ last white American player. He got mop-up minutes in nine games last season and was cut during training camp last fall. The Nuggets opened the season with 11 African-Americans and four international players.
this also illustrates how i’m afraid to live in colorado, despite the fact that it’s cheap and it’s great for snowboarding.
maybe it’s because i’m not a “white american”. is that like a “white russian”? but with budweiser?
somewhere halfway up from lost angels while driving up the 5, the 6 disc cd changer in hmc’s jeep gave out. whirrrrr whirrrrr whirrrrr. click. suddenly the am/fm radio 6 disc cd changer pretended like it was an am/fm radio. cd’s? whuzzat?
seeing as we were vaguely around fresno, raisin capital of the world, our radio station choices boiled down to something like this:
country
christian
christian country
urban hottt hitz
431 tejano stations
chinese pop music(?!?)
thankfully, we were saved by picking up alice, which plays “modern adult contemporary”. meaning things like prince. and modern english. even more thankfully, we pulled in to eat dinner before we had to listen to guns n roses.
for the rest of the way home we pulled out the tivoli pal
go ahead and huff and puff.
i’m not sure what’s up. i’m procrastinating something fierce, even more than normal. i’ve got three things to do before i fly down to lost angels to get hmc this weekend: 1. pack 2. clean the house & the fridge 3. create slides for the presentation i need to give next week.
i’ve been putting all of these off for a week. and here it is, a couple hours before i need to go to the airport, and i’ve only got one of them done.
(feel free to note that this very act of blogging is another form of procrastination.)
what have i been doing instead?
it seems that i’ve been downloading and watching every episode of the u.s. version of the office.
which it turns out isn’t that bad. i tried to watch it when it first came out, but the first episode was almost identical to the uk version in every way, that i had a hard time seeing why i should even bother. had i done so, i would have seen that every episode after that is actually different, and thus doesn’t feel like a rip-off but is actually pretty cute and has a similar sensibility. now with the second season, the boss character is a little more human and less of a ‘bad boss’ caricature, so it’s even better.
what does this have to do with anything? i dunno. little bits of humor leading to an inevitable sunday night where i’m furiously putting together slides. ugh.
question of the day: is it wrong to wear leather pants to a vegan restaurant?
more info on the eternal brains vs balls debate:
SYRACUSE, N.Y. - For some male bats, sexual prowess comes with a price — smaller brains. A research team led by Syracuse University biologist Scott Pitnick found that in bat species where the females are promiscuous, the males boasting the largest testicles also had the smallest brains. Conversely, where the females were faithful, the males had smaller testes and larger brains.
“It turns out size does matter,” said Pitnick, whose findings were published in December in “Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Science,” an online journal.
The study offers evidence that males — at least in some species — make an evolutionary trade-off between intelligence and sexual prowess, said David Hoskens, a biologist at the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter in England and a leading authority on bats’ mating behavior.
“Bats invest an enormous amount in testis, and the investment has to come from somewhere. There are no free lunches,” said Hoskens, who did not participate in the study.
…
Pitnick’s team looked at 334 species of bats and found a convincing contrast in testes size. In species with monogamous females, males had testes starting at 0.11 percent of their body weight and ranging up to 1.4 percent. But in species where the females had a large number of mates, Pitnick found testes ranged from 0.6 percent to 8.5 percent of the males’ mass (in the Rafinesque’s big-eared bat).
“If female bats mate with more than one male, a sperm competition begins,” Pitnick said. “The male who ejaculates the greatest number of sperm wins the game, and hence many bats have evolved outrageously big testes.”
Promiscuity is known to make a difference in testicle size in some other mammals. For example, chimpanzees are promiscuous and have testicles that are many times larger than those of gorillas, in which a single dominant male has exclusive access to a harem of females.
Large brains, meanwhile, are metabolically costly to develop and maintain. Pitnick’s research suggested that in those bat species with promiscuous females, the male’s body used more of its energy to enhance the testes — giving it the greater adaptive advantage — and lacked the energy it needed to further develop the brain.
The study found that in more monogamous species, the average male brain size was about 2.6 percent of body weight, while in promiscuous species, the average size dipped to 1.9 percent.
meanwhile, in an assuredly unrelated story in our particular animal kingdom, E3 bans “booth babes” from this year’s show:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The video game industry’s 2006 E3Expo trade show in Los Angeles is getting a make-over — banned are the swarms of sexy, semi-clad “booth babes” that in years past took the unveiling of new games and technology to titillating new levels.
Rules prohibiting the use of scantily clad young women to peddle video games are nothing new, but the handbook for this year’s show in May outlines tough new penalties, including a $5,000 fine on the spot for the booth owner if the “booth babe” is semi-clad.
“What’s new in 2006 is an update and clarification of the enforcement policies; as we do from time to time, we have taken steps to ensure that exhibitors are familiar with the policy and how it will be enforced,” Mary Dolaher, E3Expo show director, said in an e-mail.
She did not comment on the reasons for the change.
The video game industry has come under fire from federal and local politicians, who want to limit sales of violent and sexually explicit games to minors.
The handbook from the Entertainment Software Association, the show’s promoter, says: “Material, including live models, conduct that is sexually explicit and/or sexually provocative, including but not limited to nudity, partial nudity and bathing suit bottoms, are prohibited on the show floor, all common areas, and at any access points to the show.”
Exhibitors would receive one verbal warning when a violation occurs. Upon a second violation, the ESA said it would impose a $5,000 penalty, payable immediately on the site. It would also require that models comply with the dress code before returning to the floor.
this from reuters: eggs, not lsd, are the secret to a long life:
BASEL, Switzerland (Reuters) - The 100-year-old Swiss chemist who discovered the psychedelic drug LSD said on Friday the secret to his longevity was the eggs he eats for breakfast and not the mind-bending drug.
Albert Hofmann, who celebrated his centenary on Wednesday, rejected the idea that the drug had prolonged his life, despite taking his first trip in the mid-1940s and his last just three years ago.
Instead, Hofmann revealed the secret of his longevity was the two raw eggs he eats with his muesli for breakfast.
“In an egg there is everything a being needs to develop — vitamins, minerals and hormones,” he said.
…
Although best known as a recreational drug, LSD was used in the United States as a psychotherapy treatment in the 1950s before it was banned by the U.S. government.
…
“It is still my problem child,” Hofmann said. “But very often they turn into wonder children. I hope that it can be possible in time for LSD to find the place in society that it deserves.”
At his centenary celebrations on Wednesday, Hofmann put his name to an appeal launched by the symposium’s organizers to legalize the drug for clinical and scientific use, which will be lodged with authorities in Europe and the United States.
thank goodness. again, that lines up nicely with getting a “egg and muffin toaster” instead of a “acid and muffin drug lab” for xmas.
and plus, you don’t have to worry so much about overdosing on eggs as opposed to acid. unless you eat, say, six hard boiled eggs in a row and get painful heartburn. not that i’ve ever done that before. because that would be ridiculous.
 | You scored as Serenity (from Firefly). You like to live your own way and do not enjoy when anyone but a friend tries to tell you that you should do different. Now if only the Reavers would quit trying to skin you.
Coming on December 1, 2005:
Which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? v1.0 created with QuizFarm.com |
apparently, the attack has begun: we’re being invaded from the undersea world by armies of giant jellyfish:
Thursday, January 19, 2006; Posted: 4:24 p.m. EST (21:24 GMT)
TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) — A slimy jellyfish weighing as much as a sumo wrestler has Japan’s fishing industry in the grip of its poisonous tentacles.
Vast numbers of Echizen kurage, or Nomura’s jellyfish, have appeared around Japan’s coast since July, clogging and ripping fishing nets and forcing fishermen to spend hours hacking them apart before bringing home their reduced catches.
…
“It’s a terrible problem. They’re like aliens,” Noriyuki Kani of the fisheries federation in Toyama, northwest of Tokyo, told Reuters ahead of the conference.
…
One Echizen kurage can be up to 2 meters (6 feet, 7 inches) in diameter and weigh up to 200 kilograms (440 pounds).
Despite their size, the invertebrates aren’t toxic enough to cause serious harm to humans, but fishermen often wear goggles and protective clothing to avoid stings when dealing with them.
Much about the jellyfish, the largest variety found in the Sea of Japan, remains a mystery, according to Hitoshi Iizumi of the Seikai National Fisheries Research Institute in Niigata.
Researchers have suggested they drift to Japan on currents after reproducing in South Korean or Chinese waters, a theory that Japan wants to investigate with the other two nations.
…
Spikes in population have occurred in the past, notably in 1958, but consecutive outbreaks in 2002 and 2003 prompted the government to seek reasons and solutions.
Scientists have suggested global warming might be a factor.
…
Officials at Thursday’s conference are also set to propose a forecasting system that would allow fishermen to prepare for the next onslaught of the jumbo jellyfish.
South Korean fishermen have been suffering similar woes, but China, where giant jellyfish are a delicacy often served dried and dressed with sesame oil, does not seem to have registered the outbreak as a major problem, Japanese officials said.
see? i’m a problem solver.
i’ve been away.
not really, but it feels like it. i didn’t go to tahoe this weekend because something came up.
cheryl’s dog of many years, rca, had been sick for over a year now. back in april or so the cancer had metastasized and she had to make the hard decision then about what to do. we decided to have rca’s front right leg amputated, which was supposed to give her another couple of months at most. that was over nine months ago! rca was the coolest three-legged dog you’ve ever seen.
but the cancer kept spreading. she was coughing constantly with fluid in her chest, and maybe it had spread to her lungs.
i wish i was a better writer. i could maybe write words that would do this justice. you look at words and paragraphs describing lives and what they mean to people, and you kind of get the sense of it, but it’s just a little summary, right? i see the rich and fun descriptions of xz & danger tramping around africa, and it’s great. but it’s days of travel, hours and hours on a bus, ups and downs all contained into a little anecdote in a paragraph. but within that are all these little nuances. like the smell of the guy in the market as they’re looking for something for lunch. or how hot it is that day and how it’s making beads of sweat collect on the tips of their noses.
i only knew rca for a few years, and didn’t even see her that much anyway, so i can’t even begin to describe all the little things that cheryl must remember. the funny ways that rca would play with her. the look in her face as a horse comes running down the beach. the tired panting sounds, laying on the bed after coming home from a good run. just being there and looking on with comforting, trusting eyes, no matter what just happened.
how can words really describe that experience of those last hours? rca not really being able to do anything but sit upright because laying down on her side made her cough. rca painfully standing up to cough several times an hour, but walking over to the side of the room. like out of politeness. or like she didn’t want us to see. her getting sleepy from all the sedatives fed to her in the orgy of dog foods from nirvana: pats of butter, honey, peanut butter, and bacon, bacon, bacon, everywhere bacon! and yet not really fully getting out of it. being ready to go, because it’s painful not being able to breathe and not being able to sleep for days because you can’t breathe laying down. being frightened and scared because it’s frightening, this moving on to the next thing even though you’ve got people who love you around you and trying to make it as easy as possible.
it’s a powerful and holy thing watching the life leave a body.
i really don’t know what else to say.
(list of individual photos here: 1. u03, 2. r05, 3. r04, 4. r02, 5. p02, 6. o06, 7. o02, 8. n01, 9. l03, 10. l01, 11. k03, 12. j02, 13. f02, 14. a03)
argh.
sure, i saw james brown last fall in oakland, but then i heard about an upcoming show he was doing at bimbo’s 365 club. really small venue, so you’d get to see him really close up and experience the godfather of soul in person. like so close you can FEEL the dynamite!
i figure that if i can’t or decide i don’t want to go, i’ll just sell the tickets to someone on craigslist later.
so i buy tickets.
here it is, a couple of months later, and i realize the show is on sunday for mlk weekend. only i’m suddenly going to tahoe for some boarding this weekend (!!) and so i need to sell or give away the tickets.
should be no problem, right?
only I CAN’T FIND THEM.
i’ve looked in all the normal places. i’ve looked in all the abnormal places. i’ve looked in all the places that i might have accidentally put them. i’ve looked in placed that i wouldn’t put them in a million years.
besides confirming the fact that i’m rapidly losing my mind and in general a big bonehead, what’s the big deal? well, how about the fact that this was a “very special exclusive” concert. where “very special” means “very expensive” and “exclusive” means “$125 a ticket”.
which means that i’ve misplaced almost $300 if you toss in the ticket mafia service charge.
mother fracker.
i’ve been looking for a week now, and i have no idea where they are. it’s possible that i just recycled them sometime, as that seems to be a very popular thing for me to do with important items lately. other things that i tried to recycle and had to fish out of the bin downstairs:
at this rate, there’s no way i’m buying tickets for burning man this year. even in the slim chance that we do go, what are the odds that i can hold onto the tickets for that long?
the BBC reports that taiwan’s developed glow in the dark pigs!
When lit up in the dark, the pigs glow green
Scientists in Taiwan say they have bred three pigs that glow in the dark.
They claim that while other researchers have bred partly fluorescent pigs, theirs are the only pigs in the world which are green through and through.
The pigs are transgenic, created by adding genetic material from jellyfish into a normal pig embryo.
The researchers hope the pigs will boost the island’s stem cell research, as well as helping with the study of human disease.
The researchers, from National Taiwan University’s Department of Animal Science and Technology, say that although the pigs glow, they are otherwise no different from any others.
Taiwan is not claiming a world first. Others have bred partially fluorescent pigs before. But the researchers insist the three pigs they have produced are better.
They are the only ones that are green from the inside out. Even their heart and internal organs are green, they say.
To create them, DNA from jellyfish was added to about 265 pig embryos which were implanted in eight different pigs.
Four of the pigs became pregnant and three male piglets were born three months ago.
Green generation
In daylight the researchers say the pigs’ eyes, teeth and trotters look green. Their skin has a greenish tinge.
In the dark, shine a blue light on them and they glow torch-light bright.
The scientists will use the transgenic pigs to study human disease. Because the pig’s genetic material is green, it is easy to spot.
So if, for instance, some of its stem cells are injected into another animal, scientists can track how they develop without the need for a biopsy or invasive test.
But creating them has not been easy. Many of the altered embryos failed to develop.
The researchers say they hope the new, green pigs will mate with ordinary female pigs to create a new generation - much greater numbers of transgenic pigs for use in research.
insert the requisite joke about being halfway there and now just needing some green eggs to go with our green ham, sam i am.
my favorite quote from the nytimes’ coverage of this year’s adult video news awards:
“There’s nothing worse then when the pizza boy rings the doorbell, the girl says she doesn’t have a tip, and then they get it on,” she said. Ms. Daniels also won an award for best screenplay for a parody, “Camp Cuddly Pines Power Tool Massacre,” which presumably had a storyline more in keeping with her tastes.
if only all prizewinners would be more outspoken about social injustices, perhaps this world would be a better place to live. or strip. or fuck.
speaking of which, sugarbank notes that the avn also published sales stats for the industry last year, including:
i just watched mad hot ballroom, which was pretty fun. although i think that rize was better in that it tried to deal with the broader implications of the power of dance to give kids avenues out of social despair, where as ballroom just touches on this just to give more color to the storyline.
what does it say that i love all these dancing movies? strictly ballroom, rize, shall we dance? (the original japanese, please. you’ve got to be kidding if you think i’m talking about j.lo.) maybe it just makes me wish i knew how to dance the foxtrot, swing, tango, rhumba, and merengue.
alas, put that down: #241 of “things to do when you live in the same city as your wife”.
at least i don’t watch dancing with the stars. even if that ex-playmate did win last year.
although i’m a little mad and hot about the stupid anti-piracy commercial at the beginning of the dvd. they ask you, “would you steal a car?” “would you steal a handbag?” “would you steal a mobile phone?” well, then, “would you steal a dvd? piracy is wrong! it’s stealing! it’s like killing small babies, $5 at a time by viewing blurry copies of cheaper by the dozen 2: eugeney levyloo!”
it’s so stupid that it MAKES ME WANT TO STEAL!
why, yes, mpaa! i will steal a car, a handbag, a phone! i’ll drive it far, with a hag, or alone! i’ll steal the dvd, or maybe two! i’ll steal a copy of betty blue!
AND THEN I’LL SELL IT TO SOMEONE ELSE.
happy now?
i just got this comment spam (already deleted):
i don’t know what’s worse. the fact that they tried to spam me using “frisco” or that they spelled it incorrectly. either way, that’s low. what happened to the good old days of just talking about donkey porn?
not like you care, but the wrist is slowly getting better.
i did end up going back to the orthopedic clinic when i was down in lost angels over the holiday. this time instead of seeing the head of the clinic and having him ignore me aside from violently wrenching my wrist back and forth to test the extent of the pain (measured in screaming decibels, apparently) while discussing how famous my dad was in the taiwanese community, this time i had a different doctor who actually took the time to talk to me.
what a concept.
everything he said was very reasonable. he looked at my injury, asked and examined where it hurt and said that i had a extensor corpi ulnaris tendon sheath injury. he confirmed that i didn’t need surgery and that it was normal that it still hurt. he said that these things take a long time to heal, on the order of 4-6 months. which instead of being worrying, was actually a relief as that fit in with the fact that my wrist still hurt a lot, but had been feeling better.
basically he said to keep wearing the brace, try to use it as little as possible, and it will slowly heal. also, he said that i could go snowboarding, but i should definitely use the brace while doing so. great!
as for the whole heat vs. cold debate? he said that heat was good if it helped it feel more loose, but if it got reinjured and felt inflammed, i should ice it until the swelling went down.
see? very reasonable.
we sent in our notice a couple of days ago giving up hmc’s rent controlled apartment in berkeley.
a tiny little one bedroom (although with a decent size kitchen and a porch) only a few blocks from campus, off of telegraph. still for an unheard-of $494/month!
it’s certainly a shame to give that up. but hmc’s sister had stayed there through college, and then we rented it out to andy c, so it certainly got put to good and deserving use.
and we kept thinking about holding on to it, in case hmc went back to grad school, or maybe fixing it up and renting it out to vacationers on craigslist, but it all was just a little too much effort for that. plus the machinations of hmc having to keep some mail sent there to prove “residency”.
it’s good to be free of the hassle, i suppose, but still, it’s a little bit of a shame…
i forget who turned me on to this way back when, but i’ve been thinking about this year’s mayfly project entry. although somehow in my head it got mixed up from just summing up your year in 24 words into making a haiku summing up the year, which ends up being even more terse.
although i’ve got the first line down, i can’t figure out how i want to go with the rest:
inevitable:
morbid:
mysterious:
this may have been the worst thing ever.
i’m sure this is nothing new to you people with kids or who love that harry potterdom, but if not, watch out. jelly belly makes these real-life versions of the harry potter book “bertie bott’s every flavor beans,” basically jellybeans with all sorts of disgusting flavors in addition to yummy ones. how disgusting? well, try such delicious flavors like soap, sardine, grass, dirt, earthworm, earwax, and booger. i accidentally ate one of the vomit flavored beans.
OH MY LORD.
it honestly tasted like someone threw up in my mouth. i can’t remember the last time i tasted something so foul.
then again, it saves you the time of going out to a bar on friday night, getting some girl drunk, taking her home, making out with her, and having her throw up in your mouth instead. what a time saver!
