So. Sheed to the Celtics. Good move?
EVE Online, meet your own personal Bernie Madoff. I don't know from sports. I'm more your John Hodgman grade of nerd.
]]>Why did Michael Jackson go Crazy?
Do you think he was a homosexual, and, instead of trying to accept that, he just went off the deep end?
Because, if he was gay, and ashamed or whatever, it would be consistent with him "hating himself" and thus, his becoming a white (kinda) man with straight hair and a thin small nose, who has white children, who are, if my understanding is correct, not even of his blood.
No doubt, in his prime, there was no one better. But, what the f--k caused him to go off the deep end?
DISCLAIMER: the suggestion that he might've been gay has nothing to do with the molestation charges. Whether he was gay or not, IMO, has nothing to do with child molestation.
]]>Reading a special section in the FT today on Brazil made me think of you. I was thinking that, after you finish your extensive exploration of the Civil War, you might want to do some research on Brazilian history. In a number of ways, Brazil is similar to the U.S., including in having a large black population brought over as slaves from Africa. But Brazil's path from slavery until today has been a lot different: no civil war was needed to free the slaves there, for one thing, though Brazil was last in the hemisphere to abolish slavery (of black slaves, that is. There have been some recent reports of indigenous folks used as slaves in remote areas), and, according to one of the pieces in today's FT, Brazil never had anything like Jim Crow. Might be an interesting history to compare and contrast with ours.
]]>A book on race relations in Brazil that blew my mind when I was in college is Michael Hanchard's "Orpheus and Power." He argues that racial democracy (which is actually referred to in the active tense by a subject in the FT) was a myth propogated by Brazilian intelligentsia at the turn of the 20th century, and the ongoing effect is a general denial of racial oppression in Brazil. If you read texts on race in Brazil pre-1980's, they are full of references to racial democracy, even racial paradise.
I think that public dialogue on race in Brazil has increased even since Hanchard published his book in 1998. And certainly there is something to be said for the different racial dynamic in Brazil. I think in many ways it is a society that is more liberated and less oppressive around race than ours, and as you point out, it doesn't have some of our historical trauma. But it has it's problems, too.
]]>I don't play MMOs much, but I find some of the stories from EVE absolutely fascinating. And there are so many of them. It's like the Wild West and the high seas and robber barons and corporate espionage all rolled up into one big ball of libertarian dystopia. And that's the way they like it.
]]>I'll take a look at your response on the other thread.
Brazil certainly has its issues, and blacks there tend to be poorer than other groups (which is true, pretty much, of blacks in every country with a significant black minority population), but there's definitely a different dynamic there. I may have mentioned this anecdote here before, but once when I was in Brazil with a friend, in his mangled Portuguese, he accidentally used the word for "black" instead of the word for "plate", and our black waitress calmly, and with zero offense taken, pointed to her arm to show what was black and what was a plate. I think an African American waitress would likely have responded differently, and that's part of the different dynamic down there.
You're also right about the role of mythology in Brazil. Brazil's president acts sometimes as if he buys the mythology uncritically. I took him to task in a blog post recently for throwing rocks at the U.S. from the porch in front of his glass house.
]]>All I know is that MJ -- an extremely, extremely talented individual-- was, in the end, a sadly troubled soul. May he RIP.
]]>If he had kept himself surrounded by guys like Quincy who loved the music as passionately as he did, instead of trying to fill the emptiness inside with his (what seemed to be) limitless purchasing power, he would have been ok.
]]>The fate of the Uyghurs, along with the Tibetans, will likely be somewhat better than that of the Native American tribes. They will be absorbed over the next century into Chinese culture and lose most of their ethnic/cultural identity. Tough choice for these people: You can't win, so do you fight on nobly but tragically or do you concede and join the great Chinese economic miracle? But one things is for certain, the Chinese Communist Party will use any means necessary to subdue this sort of disturbance, including patiently waiting decades for birthrates to do its work. The Uyghurs will lose.
]]>Had to miss your reading last night (a very good friend died suddenly, and so...well, there you are). But I appreciated the nice advance notice you gave on this one as opposed to "I'm at the Greenwich Village B&N in 45 minutes!" posts you used to do. :)
Do please keep up this new-found timeliness with regard to your public appearances. I really want to make the next one.
Z-B
]]>ESPN is discussing who the best active athlete is right now. In my book - Tennis is above most sports in what it takes and in terms of everything.
And...
Here the highest view counts of some famous people on YouTube:
Michael Jackson: 21,420,519 views
Justin Timberlake / Beyonce: 13,273,176 views
Madonna / Britney: 5,462,093 views
Magic Johnson: 2,004,345 views
Kobe Bryant: 4,950,989 views
NFL: 8,378,586 views
NBA: 13,865,743 views
Cristiano Ronaldo: 18,698,602 views
Pele: 3,590,553 views
Ronaldinho: 29,358,501 views
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/06/gretchen-carlson-michael_n_226707.html
]]>Henry 8,030,323 views
Messi 4,687,902 views
"College graduates who take jobs in central or western China will be entitled to a full refund of their tuition fees, the State Council said Wednesday."
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