WILDERNESS OF REALITY TEEVEE: For those of you who cannot abide reality shows yet want to understand their cultural significance and mass appeal, or cannot get over your disappointment when they censor all-female hot tub scenes in the Real World (my own personal dilemma), there are people on the Internet willing to do the legwork for you, television-watchingwise, and all they ask in exchange is that you visit their fine websites. First up: Lang Whitaker watches Fox's "Man vs. Beast" (and Lang's post will disappear in a week or so like all of his posts do, and then you have to root around in the archive):

More monkeys! This time it's a nude chimpanzee, doing an obstacle course against 36-year-old Navy Seal Scott Helverton. The special analyst on this match is former Sergeant Major Dave Francisco, who actually has a pronounced lisp. That must have been hilarious when he was in the military, yelling at the troops: "You guysth are the sthorriest sthouldiers I've ever stheen!" Helverton talks some good trash, calling the chimp a "wannabe human."

Throughout the build-up, I'm thinking the chimp must have this wrapped up. The race has monkey bars, for goodness sakes. That's like having a crazy contest and inviting Ron Artest to participate.

It begins, and it's obvious that the chimp is in trouble. It doesn't understand what it's supposed to be doing, but by watching the Navy Seal, it's able to imitate what he's doing and stay relatively close. Still, it's obvious that the chimp is loafing, and he finishes a few second behind the pompous Seal. He's the Shawn Bradley of chimps.

BEASTS 3, MAN 2

Next up, Moxie watches Joe Millionaire:

While there are already rumors floating around the internet of a lawsuit involving Evan and one of the ladies, it was difficult to get past Heidi's horrible mutterings en Francais and the Fox network's subtitles tonight. Fox transcribed, with painful accuracy her claims of "I have no bread baggage" or something like that. I had to feel her pain, I too have no bread baggage. C'est dommage. But I'll get over it.

I suppose Heidi decided to make the best of her early departure by trying to use her rudimentary grasp of the most beautiful language on the planet. Even a horse knew she wasn't worthy to ride him. I've always said, animals are good judges of character and when her horse wouldn't cooperate, I had just an ounce of faith in the equine species. Of course when Evan eliminated her, I figured the horse and he had a long talk in the stables. Man to man, you know.

Those who were hoping that "Miss parlez vous francais" would go all the way after making it clear from day one that she wants to marry money will have to choose from another money grubbing chick. Sadly, Evan seems to be eliminating them with dead-on accuracy.

Three group dates; one shoveled horseshit, the other coal into a locomotive, and others had to pick grapes in cold so bitter we didn't even see their breath. One might wonder why the ladies in the last two sets of group dates hadn't been warned by the first group that their date was anything but romantic.

As always, Moxie is your finest source for search-for-true-love-based reality teevee analysis.

ONE MORE THING FOR THE MAVS-KINGS FILE: John Hollinger: Mav-Wrecks.

Right now, the Kings are so good that they lost a sure-fire All-Star to injury and are 6-2 since he left, with both losses coming in overtime. They're so good that Scot Pollard has been injured all year and nobody's even noticed. They're so good that they took Hedo Turkoglu, who nearly won the Most Improved Player award last year and would get 20 a game in Cleveland, and basically told him, "Sorry, but there's no place for you to play right now." They're so good that one of the league's most explosive young players, Gerald Wallace, is Turkoglu's backup.

I thought Sacramento would win the title before this season, but Dallas' hot start and new commitment to defense has had me wavering. Now that the Kings are reasonably healthy, (although still missing Pollard and Jackson, which would have lesser clubs whining about a year lost to injuries) we have seen their full power unleashed.

I'm not just saying this based on last night, although that was certainly impressive. The last six games, overall, show that the train has more or less left the station, and it ain't stopping until June. Winning by 26 over the Heat won't raise too many eyebrows, but how about winning by 25 at Milwaukee? (By the way, that was also the last time the Bucks lost -- they're on a four-game win streak.) How about beating the Nets in their own building by 36? How about stringing together those three games in a five-day period? They played three games and their victory margin was +87. That's inhuman.

Above link will disappear eventually, so when it does look for the 1/16/03 column in John's From The Baseline archive.

A STRONGLY WORDED BASKETBALL CONTEST: Kings by 29 over Mavs. The Kings have made several convincing arguments for themselves as the team in the NBA, like that recent blowout of the Nets and the come-from-behind win in Los Angeles on Christmas. They are 1-1 with San Antonio, the win having been a blowout and the loss aclose one in Mike Bibby's first game back. The only argument left to make is with those crazy Pacers--March 9th.

FUNNY: Stephon Marbury tells Steve Francis that he (Steph) is the real All-Star, then plays crappy for the rest of the game:

During a timeout in the second quarter, Marbury taunted Rockets point guard Steve Francis, saying that he, not Francis, was the real All-Star on the court.

Francis let the insult go, and Marbury went ice cold from the field.

After making three of his first six shots, Marbury went 9-for-23 the rest of the night, spelling doom for a Suns offense that shot 37 percent for the game.

"You never want to blame a back-to-back for a loss, because it can be done," said Marbury, who still finished with a game-high 32 points. "You've just got to focus. The last game is in the past, the next game is the future, this game is the present."

And this game could be summed up in two plays for Marbury and the Suns.

Midway through the fourth quarter, Marbury used his quickness and agility to step in front of a Francis pass and steal the ball. With those same lightning-fast legs, Marbury raced furiously down the court ... only to have his fast-break layup attempt blocked by Kelvin Cato.

One good play for the Suns, one better play by the Rockets.

Via Steph Fanboy #1 Lang Whitaker. The Rookie Of The Year Yao vs. Rookie Of The Year Stoudemire thing never really materialized, and both teams are kind of sketchy anyway; the Rockets won this less-than-epic contest.

ELDRED VS. ASHCROFT: "Every time someone cuts away a part of the U.S. Constitution¹, a little piece of me dies; I'm very American in that regard." That's Dirk Deppey today, bringing me the news that the Supreme Court--by a motherfreaking 7-2 margin--has decided against Eldred and for Ashcroft. What a bunch of schmucks. So I go over to Instapundit to get the link to the Lessig blog and find Glenn's already got an opinion posted:

The Court’s strict constructionists believe that Congress should be held to the powers spelled out in the Constitution. By limiting the government to the powers enumerated in the Constitution, they believe, we reduce opportunities for government corruption and preserve the greatest amount of individual freedom. That kind of thinking led a lot of people to believe that the patent and copyright power of Congress should be read narrowly: when Congress acts on these matters, it should have to act in a way that would be clearly calculated to promote the progress of science and the useful arts, and that the monopoly created by the patent and copyright laws should be limited in time.

In passing the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act, Congress drastically extended copyrights, including some dating back when my daughter’s great-grandmother was born. Many people thought this was unconstitutional: how can nearly a century of copyright protection be considered a “limited time,” — especially when Congress keeps extending it? And how can rewarding people who have been dead for decades produce more creativity?

The majority opinion by Justice Ginsburg largely ignored those questions, leaving such issues to Congress’s discretion. (Though the influence of Big Media money on Congress suggests that the Framers were on to something where the corruption angle is concerned.) More strikingly, all the Justices who have stood for limiting Congress’s powers in other recent cases (such as United States v. Lopez and United States v. Morrison) sided with her, calling their commitment to limited government into question. It was left to the unlikely duo of Justice John Paul Stevens and Justice Stephen Breyer to write, in dissent, about the importance of limited Congressional power. While many people are unhappy with the Intellectual Property implications of this decision, its most striking aspect is the strict constructionists’ abandonment of the principles of limited government. I predict that this will come back to haunt them in future cases.

Larry Lessig sounds more disappointed at this point than concerned with what the decision meant and whatnot--as you would expect:

There is a single, central question that has divided this Court over the past decade: Is it the Court’s role to review and constrain Congress in the exercise of its enumerated power. Four justices have been generally strongly in favor of deference. Five justices have insisted on limits. These five have insisted that an interpretation of Congress’s enumerated powers that erases any effective limit to that enumerated power is wrong. Four justices have consistently rejected that argument. Not that these four don’t vote to strike down laws of Congress. But rather these four don’t strike laws of Congress on the ground of this “principle of enumeration.”

These four justices were consistent with their principles in this case. Indeed, three of them wrote opinions in this case. Justice Ginsburg wrote the majority. She has never been a fan of the enumeration principle. She didn’t even mention it in her opinion. Justices Stevens and Breyer wrote dissents. They each had reasons why they believed Congress had gone too far. But neither invoked this principle of enumeration.

Stupidly, as I see now, I thought the hardest group on this Court to convince of our view would be these four justices. Deference is their ordinary mode. Deference was the strongest argument against us. So I was very happy to read the extremely strong opinions by two of these four, each for different reasons showing just why Congress had gone too far.

But again, missing from both opinions was the argument that I believed would win this case: That if there is a principled reason why Congress’s power is limited in the context of the commerce clause (and elsewhere), then that reason applies even more strongly in the context of the copyright clause. As we said over and over again, if you agree with the line of cases that Chief Justice Rehnquist is most famous for, then you must agree that the Copyright Clause restricts retroactive extensions. As the Chief Justice taught in the case of Lopez, if an interpretation of Congress’s power yields the conclusion that Congress’s power is unlimited, it is an improper interpretation. Yet that is precisely what the government conceded its interpretation did.

Thus, again, it was no surprise this argument was absent from Justices Stevens and Breyer’s opinion. Nor was it a surprise that it was absent from Justice Ginsburg’s opinion. She too has consistently argued that Congress’s discretion is broad. Her opinion is an excellent opinion for one who believes that the Supreme Court should defer to Congress’s judgments except where they are wholly irrational. “Irrational” in this context means that there is no possible set of facts that would supply the law with a reason. And as we have said from the start, we do not believe the Bono Act fails that test.

The puzzle in the case was the silent 5 — the 5 justices who have consistently argued that Congress’s power is limited; that enumerated powers must be read in a way that makes sense of those limits. It was my judgment that those justices would apply the same principle to the Copyright Clause, or at least explain why they did not. And ever since the argument on October 9, I have struggled to imagine how they could ever write an opinion that would distinguish commerce from copyright.

It had never even crossed my mind that these 5 justices would simply duck the issue. By assigning the opinion to a justice who has consistently rejected that principle (Justice Ginsburg), the Chief Justice avoided any need to show why his principle of enumeration applied to some clauses of Article I, sec. 8, but not others. And as there was no reason for the dissent to mention the argument, the case gets decided without the central argument that we had advanced even being discussed. It was Hamlet without the Prince.

Your two dissenters were Justices Stevens and Breyer. Stevens said:

Writing for a unanimous Court in 1964, Justice Black
stated that it is obvious that a State could not "extend the
life of a patent beyond its expiration date," Sears, Roebuck
& Co. v. Stiffel Co., 376 U. S. 225, 231 (1964). As I shall
explain, the reasons why a State may not extend the life of
a patent apply to Congress as well. If Congress may not
expand the scope of a patent monopoly, it also may not
extend the life of a copyright beyond its expiration date.
Accordingly, insofar as the 1998 Sonny Bono Copyright
Term Extension Act, 112 Stat. 2827, purported to extend
the life of unexpired copyrights, it is invalid. Because the
majority's contrary conclusion rests on the mistaken
premise that this Court has virtually no role in reviewing
congressional grants of monopoly privileges to authors,
inventors and their successors, I respectfully dissent.

And Breyer:

The Constitution's Copyright Clause grants Congress
the power to "promote the Progress of Science . . . by se-
curing for limited Times to Authors . . . the exclusive Right
to their respective Writings." Art. I, §8, cl. 8 (emphasis
added). The statute before us, the 1998 Sonny Bono Copy-
right Term Extension Act, extends the term of most ex-
isting copyrights to 95 years and that of many new copy-
rights to 70 years after the author's death. The economic
effect of this 20-year extension--the longest blanket ex-
tension since the Nation's founding--is to make the copy-
right term not limited, but virtually perpetual. Its pri-
mary legal effect is to grant the extended term not to
authors, but to their heirs, estates, or corporate succes-
sors. And most importantly, its practical effect is not to
promote, but to inhibit, the progress of "Science"--by
which word the Framers meant learning or knowledge, E.
Walterscheid, The Nature of the Intellectual Property
Clause: A Study in Historical Perspective 125-126 (2002).
The majority believes these conclusions rest upon prac-
tical judgments that at most suggest the statute is unwise,
not that it is unconstitutional. Legal distinctions, how-
ever, are often matters of degree. Panhandle Oil Co. v.
Mississippi ex rel. Knox, 277 U. S. 218, 223 (1928)
(Holmes, J., dissenting), overruled in part by Alabama v.
King & Boozer, 314 U. S. 1, 8-9 (1941); accord, Walz v. Tax
Comm'n of City of New York, 397 U. S. 664, 678-679 (1970).
And in this case the failings of degree are so serious that
they amount to failings of constitutional kind. Although
the Copyright Clause grants broad legislative power to
Congress, that grant has limits. And in my view this
statute falls outside them.

I will end with something from the Lessig blog:

One friend offered a reason in an email of condolence. Those 5, he said, save their activism for issues they think important. They apply their principle to causes they think important. Protecting states is a cause they think important. Protecting the public domain is not.

By what right? By what g.d. right? These five justices have all the right in the world to have their own principled way of interpreting the constitution. Long before this case, I had written many many pages trying to explain the principle I thought inherent in the decisions of these five justices. I have spent many hours insisting on the same to ever-skeptical students. But by what right do these 5 get to pick and choose the parts of the constitution to which their principles will apply?

Like Dirk said--bastards.

UPDATE: Siva Vaidhyanathan has tons of stuff on this.

ZEBRA ZEBRA CHARLIE NINER: I mostly dig Gregg Easterbrook, he's a little too cutesy and self-referential sometimes--you know, Flaming Thumbtacks, Jersey/A, Indigenous Persons, etc.--but overall I enjoy his stuff. And I agree with what he has to say about the recent criticisms of NFL officials:

That flags should not fly on decisive plays numbers among the strangest contentions in sports. Of course officials shouldn't make bad calls on the final play, but they shouldn't make bad calls in a scoreless first quarter, either. Running into the kicker is illegal. It's illegal during a scoreless first quarter and it's illegal on the decisive play of overtime. Don't want a flag? Don't break the rules.

It would be one thing to argue that Dwayne Washington did not run into the kicker or that the Miami defender did not hold the Ohio State receiver -- that is, that the calls were wrong. But Pittsburgh can't argue this, because Washington plowed into Joe Nedney plenty good. If you made an officiating instructional tape to show what constitutes running into the kicker, you couldn't pick a better play as an exemplar. The Miami holding question is not as open-and-shut. TMQ thinks it was indeed holding, but has certainly seen the same action before without yellow floating by.

At any rate, the notion that officials should ignore penalties on game-deciding plays -- essentially, that everything becomes legal when the outcome is on the line -- is what's "ludicrous." Want to legalize running into the kicker? Start a campaign for that. Don't tell me it should be legalized only when your team is trailing in overtime.

It's equally "ludicrous" to contend that when flags fly on decisive plays this means the officials, rather than the players, are deciding the game. If the zebras had allowed Dwayne Washington to do something illegal, wouldn't that be deciding a playoff game in Pittsburgh's favor? If officials at the Fiesta Bowl had allowed defensive holding when Ohio State faced fourth down in overtime, wouldn't that be deciding a championship game in Miami's favor?

There are examples of bad calls that decided games, including Vinny Testaverde's 1998 Phantom Touchdown given to the Jets on a last play against Seattle and the Phantom Interference in the 1998 Buffalo-New England contest. For the latter, the Bills were flagged for interference in the end zone on a Hail Mary on the final play; the Pats scored on their bonus down to win, while replays clearly showed their Hail Mary receiver was never touched. That call was "ludicrous" because it was a bad call. But if there had been interference, of course a yellow hanky should have sailed. Just because it's the deciding play does not make infractions temporarily legal.

TMQ admires those officials who throw flags on the decisive downs of big games, so long as their flags are correct. These admirable officials don't stop doing their jobs just because they might be criticized. Also, they have to live with people like Bill Cowher using them as scapegoats for a team's inability simply to win on the field.

He's also attacking SUVs over on TNR, which I hope inspires some kind of defense from the Reason guys or somebody. Just so I could read it and enjoy it--I don't really have a horse in the moral content of SUVs contest.

SILLY: Marty Burns in SI today picks the top five owners in the NBA:

1. Mavericks: He might drive David Stern crazy, but Mark Cuban is committed to winning. He pays his players and coaches, and he gives the fans a good show.
2. Kings: The Maloof Brothers are two rich playboys who don’t mind sharing in their good fortune. Like Cuban, they enjoy the game like real fans.
3. Blazers: Paul Allen hasn’t received much bang for his league-high payrolls the past few years, but at least he’s trying.
4. Knicks: Few clubs have the deep pockets of Cablevision. In the past they’ve been willing to spend to keep their high-priced corporate clients happy.
5. Bucks: Despite limited resources and a small market, Sen. Herb Kohl flashed some serious power of the purse in signing George Karl, Ray Allen and Tim Thomas.

I agree with Cubes and the Maloofs, but how are the Knicks and Blazers on there? Both of those teams are woefully mismanaged--the Blazers' style of assembling the biggest rogue's gallery they can find has never produced in the playoffs, while the Knicks' willingness to spend barrels of cash on mediocre players is just amusing and pathetic (though it does my fannish heart good.) How does Jerry Buss not make that list? He doesn't blow the cash, but he does have a commitment to winning. The same with the new Steinbrenner-backed Rod Thorn-administered Nets ownership. I would replace spots 3 and 4 up there with the Lakers and Nets, plus maybe whoever owns the Spurs (for being able to succeed in a small market for as long as they have) or whoever owns the Grizzlies now and hired Jerry West. Yep.

I have less of a beef with the 5 worst owners:

1. Clippers: Owner Donald Sterling has let so many players move away, he ought to work for Century 21. But at least his Hollywood friends get to sit courtside.
2. Bulls: They broke up a dynasty in order to slash payroll. Then they didn’t have the good sense to cut Michael Jordan into the action as an owner.
3. Cavaliers: The Gund Family let go of Andre Miller because they didn’t want to pay him a maximum contract. They say the club is not for sale, but ...
4. Celtics: OK, so they’ve got new ownership now. But former owner Paul Gaston makes this list for cutting costs (Rodney Rogers) just before the sale.
5. Hornets: George Shinn made a mess of the situation in Charlotte, then spurned Jordan’s offer to buy in. Now he’s letting Paul Silas twist in the wind.

The (Other) Donald has resumed his cretinous non-spending ways and the Clippers are doomed yet again--so that's a very safe pick. Sterling is always in the running for the Worst Owner In All Of Sports award, along with the Bidwill brothers and that guy who owns the Bengals. The Bulls are a good choice, I like the Cavs so I don't think the Gunds are doing that badly, the Celtics have always had a rotating ownership--I'm not sure how bad or good that is--and George Shinn--I mean, he got what he wanted, and the Hornets are pretty good, so maybe he isn't that bad an owner after all.

OH, AND THANK THE GOOD LORD FOR NBA LEAGUE PASS: Rockets-Suns, tonight in Houston. Rookie of the Year vs. Rookie of the Year. I love this game.

NBA HYPE: Mavs-Kings in Sacramento is tonight and the Sac Bee is bringing the hype. So is the Dallas News, even if Don Nelson is saying it's just another game. No French guy yet, either. But you should watch this game, you really should.

THE HEY?: From the new Hitch on Slate:

This legislation committed the United States to support the removal of Saddam Hussein by the exercise of any force but its own. The plan was to identify Iraqi and Kurdish groups that merited support and to endow them with money for propaganda and rebellion. In one stroke, it also neatly squared an awkward circle: The administration and Congress could be identified with a hawkish (or perhaps hawk-ish) line on Iraq without risking the lives of any Americans or interrupting Clinton's fatuous attempt to earn himself a Nobel Prize for settling the Israel-Palestine dispute.

Hawkish but not hawk-ish? What am I missing here? Oh, you meant Sideshow Bob.

IMAGINED CONVERSATION WITH AUTHORITY FIGURE: "You know what your deal is? You have a tiny little sphincter. Am I right? You can barely get the waste products out. Me, I have an expansive sphincter--the poops just drop out. My sphincter contains volumes. Freud was wrong about a lot of things but he was right about the sphincter and you, my friend, are a case in point." Or whatever that phrase is, he thought to himself.

JUST LINKING, NO THINKING: Some stuff I've found interesting lately.

Daze sends us towards P.J. Huffstutter's See No Evil in the LA Times calling for regulation of the porn industry, using Anne Marie Ballowe--the former Brooke Ashley--as an example.

Charles Murtaugh brings the goods twice, first with this Eugene Goodheart thing decrying E.O. Wilson's attempt to make biology the king of all forms of knowledge. Says Goodheart:

Sociobiology has another adversary in the radical skepticism of postmodernism, which denies the natural sciences, as it does to other discourses, any claim to objective knowledge, despite the amazing progress sciences have made in, for example, our understanding of the genetic makeup of living creatures. (I place "our" in quotation marks because we delegate scientific understanding and conviction to scientists. Our faith or trust in them–these modern-day Prosperos, if you will–is based in part on the evidence of the technology and medical advances that have come out of science.) One is not required to defend the scientism of Wilson and Diamond to affirm the scientists’ claims for the objectivity of their discoveries. It is, of course, true that scientific claims are always provisional and can be superseded by new knowledge. But there are claims that have been consolidated and not superseded, and those claims that have been superseded can be placed on a curve of progress to a better understanding of phenomena. My purpose here, however, is not to defend science–for it needs no defending–but rather to reflect on the opposition between two isms: scientism and radical postmodernism. Both are, in my view, detrimental to the cause of science and of the humanities.

For Wilson, scientism–he calls it the Enlightenment–and postmodern epistemology would appear to be the either/or of theoretical debate in the academy. "Postmodernism is the ultimate polar antithesis to the Enlightenment. The difference between the two extremes can be explained as follows: Enlightenment thinkers believe we can know everything, and radical postmodernists believe we can know nothing." One theory aims for the unity of knowledge, the finding of ultimate explanations for everything; the opposing theory aims for a radical skepticism about the possibility of any certain knowledge. What they have in common is that both theories are grand theories–radical postmodernists would bridle at the attribution–with the ambition to account for everything. They are reductionist and therefore interdisciplinary in a bad sense, for they display an insufficient respect for the integrity and autonomy of the disciplines. Both theories are dogmatic and therefore incapable of that mixture of confidence and epistemological modesty that says, "This we can know, this we may yet know, this remains in the realm of mystery, subject to a variety of speculation and interpretation that cannot be resolved to certain knowledge."

Second there's this David Lodge essay on consciousness and the fact that literature has always understood it while science has not--or something to that effect. There's a history of the consciousness in there too:

Antonio Damasio, in The Feeling of What Happens , observes that philosophy's "preoccupation with what we call consciousness now is recent - three and a half centuries perhaps." It is not, he says, merely that the word did not exist before then - neither did the concept. It was not coincidental that this same period saw the emergence of a new form of narrative literature in Europe which soon became dominant. Ian Watt, in his classic study of that phenomenon, The Rise of the Novel , suggests that "both the philosophical and the literary innovations must be seen as parallel manifestations of larger change - that vast transformation of Western civilization since the Renaissance which has replaced the unified world picture of the Middle Ages with another very different one - one which presents us, essentially, with a developing but unplanned aggregate of particular individuals having particular experiences at particular times and in particular places."

Watt observed that whereas earlier narrative literature usually recycled familiar stories, novelists were the first storytellers to pretend that their stories had never been told before, that they were entirely new and unique, as is each of our own lives according to the empirical, historical, and individualistic concept of human life. They did this partly by imitating empirical forms of narrative like auto biography, confessions, letters, and early journalism. Defoe and Richardson are obvious examples.

But there was also a new emphasis on the interiority of experience, which Watt suggests followed from Descartes making consciousness the basis for a definition of man: "I think, therefore I am," in the famous formula. Watt observes that "once Descartes had given the thought processes within the individual's consciousness supreme importance, philosophical problems connected with personal identity naturally attracted a great deal of attention. In England, for example, Locke, Bishop Butler, Berkeley, Hume and Reid all debated the issue."

And this debate, the precursor of our own contemporary consciousness debate, fed into fiction both indirectly, through the process of meme transmission described by Dawkins, and in some cases, like that of Laurence Sterne, directly. Phenomena such as memory, the association of ideas in the mind, the causes of emotions and the individual's sense of self, became of central importance to speculative thinkers and writers of narrative literature alike.

It is probable that the fairly recent invention and rapid development of printing contributed to that process. The increasing availability of books in which exactly the same story could be experienced privately, silently, by discrete individuals, was a marked departure from the usual transmission of stories in preprint culture by means of oral recitation or dramatic performance in front of a collective audience. The silence and privacy of the reading experience afforded by books mimicked the silent privacy of individual consciousness.

This privacy, the fact that no one knows our thoughts as intimately as we ourselves know them, is what makes consciousness such a challenge to scientific investigation. "Consciousness," says Susan Greenfield in The Human Brain: A Guided Tour , "is the ultimate puzzle to the neuroscientist; it is your most private place." But for the very same reason consciousness is of absorbing interest to novelists - and to their readers. "Fiction has, and must keep, a private address," Eudora Welty wrote.

Salon interviews John McWhorter and it was good:

So what is a racist then?

A racist is someone who hates black people because they are black and/or acts against the welfare of black people. That person today is increasingly rare. More to the point, as often as not that person can't have any effect on your life. So what's the big deal? I know that sounds naive, but if you have a basic ego, how much can that matter? We're taught to fall to pieces whenever there's a "racist." Why?

Well, that brings me to the next question: Do you really think that most black people do fall to pieces? Who and what are you talking about?

No, and that's one of the major themes of "Authentically Black." There is a split identity in black culture today, and I see this daily. There's what you're expected to do in public, and there's what you're expected to do in private. The black undergraduate who hears a professor use the word "niggardly" or hears something an administrator says that could be construed as "racist" and runs out of the classroom crying, I firmly believe, is not genuinely hurt. They have a sense that as good, thinking African-Americans it's their job to blow the whistle on racism in public. It's the same kind of theater that your counterculturally oriented white undergraduates pull.

So somebody says "nigger" or somebody draws a picture in some dorm, and a certain 25 black students jump out onto the central plaza and the local media comes and you've always got one or two of them who will cry. They're not cynical; it's not that they're doing it on purpose, but they have a sense that to be intelligent, engaged black people you're supposed to pull this kind of routine. Deep down, most black people know that some of these things will not destroy you, that you can succeed in a world even if it's not perfect. That is the biggest problem today -- the sense that to be authentically black is to cloak the black race in victimhood in public, no matter how well the race is doing. The idea is to keep whites on the hook. In private, this is not the way that black people talk.

The sadder truth is that for many white people, black people are a minority with a sad history, and they'd rather be rid of us completely. The very sad truth is that white people are much more important to black mythology than the other way around. That's not fair, but like many things that aren't fair, it's also true.

Might that be changing considering how much black culture has influenced white culture? What I find hard to believe is that whites aren't conscious in some ways of how they emulate black people.

Interesting question. Many black people are afraid that we're being co-opted. What they don't understand is how black white people are getting. And it's something that's easy to miss; fish don't know that they're wet. But it's at the point where hybridism is becoming very much the norm. Most people don't think about the fact that the way Britney Spears sings and moves is black.

It's not only in entertainment. You see it in the way people talk. A lot of "ebonics" is now ordinary speech. I don't know how many white girls I've seen calling each other "dude." "Dude" starts with black people and it percolates into white vernacular among men. Now white women are saying, "Dude, let's go get our nails done." It's a black thing. If you look at a silent film, at white people moving in 1903, they don't walk like white people now, they don't nod like white people. All of us are blacker. So what we're really moving towards is a Mariah Carey, Tiger Woods sort of thing. Nowadays, black people do matter more to white people, but in a good way, because black people are in white people and they don't even know it, which is the way it should be.

Which is the way it should be?

Yeah, because we're moving towards getting past race. Al Sharpton wouldn't like that, but we're going to get past it. Getting past it does not mean these communities of wary blacks and wary whites eyeing each other and writing Op-Eds about each other.

Do they feel that way about hip-hop? It's mostly black controlled.

Hip-hop is interesting. It's almost as if people are waiting for it to be co-opted. But the thing is that there is no hip-hop Elvis and there's not going to be one. There is Eminem, but nobody would claim that he is taking the lion's share. There is nobody who thinks of Eminem as the quintessence of hip-hop.

But people have compared him to Elvis. Well, he compares himself to Elvis, anyway.

In that way that he is a white hip-hopper. But he is not taking over the field. He is not making more money than any other number of hip-hoppers. He is just one of the many. And he's doing fine. But he's not taking over in the way that Elvis did. Elvis made it and all of a sudden he's making more money than Chubby Checker and Sam Cooke and all the others combined. Eminem's not doing that, he's not going to, nor will any white hip-hopper do it. Things have changed. The white kids in the suburbs are not listening only to Eminem. There's no sense that they like Eminem better than the black ones.

There you go.

MAVS MAKE WACKY SIGNING. DIDN'T SEE THAT ONE COMING: The Mavs are about to sign Euro pro league great Antoine Rigaudeau. My guess is Don Nelson and Cubes are getting skittish about the Mavs' offense in the playoffs and worried about the coming Lakers resurgence so they decided another shooter to fit in with their system. I hope it works out for them, their bury-'em-with-quick-shots system needs to be completely overwhelming to produce results in the playoffs.

NORTH KOREA WEIRDNESS WATCH: As always, Corsair brings the goods.

THE GOOD KIND OF BLOWN CALL: Dean Juipe in the Las Vegas Sun thinks the ref who made the interference call that kept Ohio State alive in the championship should be getting horsewhipped or something by the media. "To have the result determined by an otherwise obscure man in a striped shirt was bad enough. But it's the fact that there was no post-game, public accountability is what really grates on me." Two things: one, there's no way that game should've ended on that play--the receiver and the defender were tangled up from the get-go and that would be a completely weak way to end a championship. Two, everybody hates Miami; everybody includes the media, and so that's why the ref is off the hook.

Look at this comment: "It may have been Ohio State and Miami playing in the decisive game, yet it was Porter -- as much or more than any Craig Krenzel pass or debilitating injury to Willis McGahee -- who ultimately decided the outcome." This reminds me of a kind of sports fandom that is unlike my own, one where you imagine sports to be this idealized environment where greatness is always conclusively proven--the best team always wins and there are no other factors worth considering. My own fandom--which I would like to think is more sophisticated--involves thinking of sports as a kind of spontaneous or unplanned drama where human factors are everywhere and are, in fact, part of the drama. A game where a ref takes on an active role is just altering the drama or in this case improving it, since that would've been a lousy way to end the game.

BOOTLEGS: One of those endless NPR programs had a segment on bootlegs last night and so I finally heard Freelance Hellraiser's "A Stroke Of Genius"--you know, Christina Aguilera's vocals from "Genie In A Bottle" over the music part of a Strokes song. Yes, it improved both songs but it didn't overwhelm me with greatness or anything. Maybe it requires further listenings. I dunno. It sounded like a Lita Ford song.

BLOGGUS REDUCICUS: As I cram for the muthafreakin PCAT. I took anatomy and physiology in the summer two summers ago because it would be a breeze and the PCAT covers a lot of that and I am left with oh-so-great gaps in my knowledge. I blame our community college system. Yep.

SPORTS BUSINESS STUFF: Eric McErlain has a good post about NHL finances and the Ottawa Senators.

WNBA CRAPPING OUT WATCH: The Portland Fire finally are put down. If anything kills the WNBA, it'll be these atrocious franchise names. The worst are now behind us--the Miracle, Sol, Fire and Starrzzzzz. The Fever and the Sting are lousy too. On the other hand, the Washington Mystics have one of the best franchise names ever, being a better sort-of synonym for their NBA counterpart Wizards. With the WNBA down to like twelve teams, maybe the league pass will be twenty bucks. And you still won't want to buy it.

GINGER'S BACK: But, then again, she was never really gone. Details here.

COMICS CRITICAL ESSAYS TO WRITE: One, MF Doom's Operation Doomsday (an album) considered as a transformative Fantastic Four fan fiction (he changes Dr. Doom's origin so that Reed Richards sabotaged young Von Doom's experiment that scarred his face.) Two, comparing and contrasting Mark Kalesniko's Mail Order Brider with David Mack's entire Kabuki oeuvre, wherein the former uses a character to examine his obsession with Asian girls from a distance, and the latter builds a conventional narrative using his obsession with Asian girls as a medium almost. Yessiree.

YAO WATCH: Page Two is doing the Yao stuff today, as they have Ralph Wiley taking a trip on the wayforward machine as he reports on the coming Ming dynasty, while Bill Simmons recants his Yao-will-be-a-bust comments.

ANOTHER YEAR END LIST WORTH READING: Scott Thrill's Top Ten Reasons Why American Culture Didn't Suck In 2002. Yes, Bowling For Columbine is on there, but so are the Dallas Mavericks and Spirited Away and those two outweigh the movie I don't want to see by the bombastic hypocrite in my book. Via Fred Lapides.

UPDATE: Yes, Spirited Away is Japanese. I can't explain it. Since all ten items on this list receive pretty much universal acclaim from critics who cover these areas of our culture, maybe this should've been called the Top Ten Moments Of Received Wisdom or something.

YEAR END LIST WORTH READING: "However, in a medium that's all about tearing down the elitist opinions of others, someone must weigh in with a Big Picture perspective on what sucked." And so Marc Weisblott gives us the permalink-free Ten Worst Blogs Of The Year.

AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS IT WAS: Kings 105, Lakers 99.

MERRY CHRISTMAS: Have a good one.

LAKERS SINKING: And, I mean, I want them to keep sinking, that would be my greatest vision of this NBA season, being motivated as I am by Team Hate over Team Love. Tim Kraus is blaming Kupchak.

Remember, Lakers/Kings is Christmas night.

BEATO BEATS RAPBEATER: Here's a great Greg Beato mauling of Bill O'Reilly and his stance on hip hop. Via Hit & Run.

HEFNER WATCH: This headline says this study is proving that Playmates are becoming more androgynous over time, but I'm not sure that's what this study is saying:

Reporting in the December 23/28 issue of the British Medical Journal, Voracek and co-author Maryanne L. Fisher of York University in Toronto, Canada, painstakingly evaluated body measurements of 577 consecutive Playboy centerfold models from 1953 to 2001.

From weight, height, bust, hip and waist measurements, Voracek and Fisher calculated body mass index and waist:hip, waist:bust, and bust:hip ratios, the study indicates.

While previous research on the bodies of female centerfold models suggests that "optimums reflect evolved optimal design and thus should not be subject to temporal change," the new research refutes this notion.

"It appears that female bodily attractiveness cues are subject to change over time," Voracek told Reuters Health in an interview.

"More precisely, our data suggest that Playboy centerfolds' typical body mass index has further descended below corresponding population levels, whereas their typical waist-to-hip ratio now approaches corresponding population levels--that of 20-plus year-old females.

"The maximally sexually attractive female body shape seems not to be stable over time," Voracek adds.

Via Hit & Run. The only thing this study seems to prove is Voracek's last comment above.

CONFEDERACY OF ASSHOLES: One man's trouble with airport screeners in Portland. Via Charlie Murtaugh.

PLEDGE DRIVING ME CRAZY: Lawrence Simon comes up with some blogs that should get the sweet clash flow. Lawrence via Chris Anderson (who should read the Postrel Sullivan-linking strategy post) via the Regions of Mind blogroll via the Brink Lindsey blogroll. It's one giant click letter...

NEAT READ: Ted Barlow on transsexuals and his own potential "blinding aura of heterosexuality near which gay men fear to tread."

MAGAZINEWATCHING: The new SI has a freakin' great story on Stanley Roberts, the Shaq-like center who never had Shaq's drive and has the personality of a saint, if you believe the article. Good stuff.

MEANINGLESSNESS OF CONCEPT "RACE" WATCH: Latest salvo:

Scientists studying the DNA of 52 human groups from around the world have concluded that people belong to five principal groups corresponding to the major geographical regions of the world: Africa, Europe, Asia, Melanesia and the Americas.

The study, based on scans of the whole human genome, is the most thorough to look for patterns corresponding to major geographical regions. These regions broadly correspond with popular notions of race, the researchers said in interviews.

Via isteve.

LAS VEGAS, FINALLY A MAJOR MINOR LEAGUE CITY: The New Jersey Red Dogs/Gladiators--the professional Arena football deam that drew out the apathy of the state of New Jersey like no other team--is moving to Vegas. They had the most pathetic crowds there, like, sub-Expo sized crowds. It's about time they moved. And yes, a Vegas sportswriter is already slamming them and I think he's a little off base, the AFL has proven itself viable as a major minor sport, like pro lacrosse and pro soccer. Both stories via ArenaFan.

BY THE WAY: The GMAC bowl kind of stunk, Byron Leftwich was hobbling the whole time--which was inspiring and all but the commentary devolved into an extended bebate on whether or not he was destroying his career--and on the other side Louisville forgot to show up. They didn't even get 90 points between them, so the great offensive masterpiece did not occur. And Louisville was so penalty-happy that the game seemed to affect my perception of time as I watched it, dragging minutes into hours. All was haze around me, I ran and ran but seemed not to move at all. Ah well, you can't expect Arena games to break out all the time.

I WISH I WAS A PBS-LIKE NAME BRAND: Glenn Reynolds reports:

Andrew Sullivan raised nearly $80,000 in his "pledge week" campaign. And I was happy with a few hits to the paypal button!

Well, this should prove that it's possible for someone to make a living at blogging, anyway.

Emphasis on the "one."

AWRIGHT: Dirk Deppey says about the Flaming Carrot/Reid Fleming crossover: "Having seen an advance copy, I can tell those familiar with the two characters with some authority: it's exactly what it sounds like, and you're going to want to read this." Which is as close to Two Thumbs Up, Way Up as Dirk gets. And yes, you do want to read it:

THE PULSE What on EARTH is the story about?

BURDEN The premise is that Flaming Carrot and Reid Fleming are on a game show in Burbank called CELEBRITY STANDOFF. This week's theme is comic book tough guys versus the tough guys of stage and screen. Reid and FC are up against Christopher Walken, Luciano Pavoratti and Fabio. Also there's a vampire Lassie on a skateboard terrorizing the freeways of Los Angeles. People have an accident, they see Lassie coming, and they think she's coming to save them - but instead she drinks their blood. Between shows, Reid and Flaming Carrot are trolling the streets of LA, looking for the deadly dog.

On a different level, the story is about two outsiders busting, banging and blundering their way through the tinsel-town city. It's about having fun, goofing off and hanging out with your friends.

THE PULSE How would you describe the main characters, Flaming Carrot, and Reid Fleming for those who haven't seen them before?

BURDEN Reid is a surly, intrepid, two-fisted milkman. All the kids in the neighborhood look like him: a square nose, balding and a few days of beard stubble.

Flaming Carrot is the world's first surrealistic superhero. He's a blue collar, roughneck from Iron City. He has no powers and isn't very sharp, so when he gets in a spot he usually blasts his way out in a hail of gunfire.

Plus Bob Burden reveals what could have been:

THE PULSE Flaming Carrot and Reid Fleming are both masters of their own surreal domains...how hard -- or easy -- was it to get them to mesh?

BURDEN: David and I have a similar readership base and the art styles seemed to work together. Reid is a great character but most people wouldn't see him crossing over with say, Sandman or Swamp Thing. Same for Flaming Carrot. Although years ago I did work on a crossover between Flaming Carrot and the Superman-Batman team of WORLD'S FINEST for Piranha Press. I had to set it in the early sixties though, because Flaming Carrot's setting and style wouldn't work well in the modern DC universe. On the other hand, the 1950's and 60's DC comics like WORLD'S FINEST and JIMMY OLSEN had a surreal, childlike quality that could have meshed with the Carrot.

Kewl. It's been ages since new Flaming Carrot.

IF INSTAPUNDIT DIDN'T EXIST WE'D HAVE TO CREATE HIM: Jim Henley points out that there is a leftist Instapundit: good ol' Atrios. And Jim points out that he called for something Atrios-like six months ago:

What the Left lacks is an Instapundit. Sure, there are popular liberal bloggers, like Josh Marshall and - help me out here... Eric Alterman? But there's no hugely popular liberal/left blogger who is willing to reinvest his readership capital in subsidiaries, as Glenn Reynolds has done. Marshall and Alterman seem to have the legacy-media horror of "downlinking" that Virginia Postrel discerned in Andrew Sullivan. You can criticize Reynolds for preferring to link to weak material by people with congenial opinions rather than strong material by people who challenge them. (Unqualified Offerings has no personal standing to complain any more.) But Reynolds happily "shared the wealth" and helped nurture a cadre of libertarian-flavored center-right supporters of an expansive war, and likely increased his own readership by doing so. (For Good - or Evil... yah yah yah.)

Who will do the same for the new crowd? Don't the likes of Marshall and Alterman want a posse?

Marshall doesn't--his blog links are Alterman, Mickey Kaus and that New Republic thing--whereas Alterman has a pretty good blogroll. But Atrios is starting to have a lgf-like fanbase in terms of having excited, like-minded individuals reading his site, along with spirited disagreements in the comments boxes. (Jim, where's your comments?) And Jim's post leads us back to one of my favorite Virginia Postrel posts, where she explains the awful truth about how to climb the ladder in medialand:

FACTS OF LIFE: Eric Olsen at Tres Producers has raised a minor ruckus by noticing that Andrew Sullivan almost never links to other bloggers and generally fails to give credit where it's due. Eric might have also noted that Andrew is the rare blogger who never identifies readers who send him letters, regardless of what those readers might wish. (Obviously, some would prefer to be anonymous. But they're almost certainly a minority.) A single byline keeps the focus on the Main Man. It's a savvy media strategy.

This is the way the professional media world is. You become prominent, first and foremost, by knowing the right people and then, secondarily, by attacking or crediting people more prominent than yourself. (They stay prominent by not responding to you by name, a tactic well-honed by neocon intellectuals who almost never identify, much less quote, the objects of their criticism. Exhibit A: Francis Fukuyama.) If you must mention someone less prominent than you are, make sure it is someone much less well known, so you can be recognized for your wide reading or noblesse oblige.

In short: Promote your friends. Mention your (more famous) mentors. But don't be a fool. There is no career-enhancing reason ever to cite someone who might prove a competitor, make a cogent argument against you, or get credit for an idea you could have claimed. Andrew Sullivan is so good at this strategy that he probably doesn't even realize he's following it.

Not so here in Blogland, where Google is the great equalizer and everybody can write down what they want and have a good chance that somebody's going to read it, by linking to it or by having somebody search it out. You just, y'know, can't make a career out of doing this, as Jeff Jarvis is always pointing out.

FOR THE WISH LIST: Radley Balko sent us over to the Onion's top albums of 2002 thing and one item immediately calls out to me:

THE BEST COMPILATION IN THE WORLD EVER

Compiled by a British teenager whose weblog became a de facto weigh-station for the mash-up bootleg scene, Boom Selection_Issue 01 crams more than 30 hours of music onto three ridiculously illegal MP3 CDs. Featuring would-be canon fodder like "Smells Like Booty" (Nirvana + Destiny's Child) and "A Stroke Of Genius" (The Strokes + Christina Aguilera), the 432-track set fans out to include DJ Shadow, Negativland, De La Soul, Coldcut, and scores of others lurking around the movement, which takes sampling to its hyper-literal extreme. For those who haven't been lucky enough to taste mash-up's heady rush live, Boom Selection tucks on 10 DJ mixes by the likes of The Avalanches, Soulwax, and Freelance Hellraiser.

Check it out here.

HEFNER WATCH: Rapmaster was trolling for hits and he pointed out this Salon story by a guy who toured with the bus tour looking for the Miss Millennium Playmate and wound up thinking that porn and strippers weren't all that bad after all, and so I will join Rapmaster in his hit-trolling enterprise on this here Internet, where a man's value is counted by mouseclicks. Anyhow, there is an anti-Hefner nugget in there:

Salon: And so, in the end, were you happy with Miss Millennium?

Leif Ueland, who wrote this book: They picked these twins ... Playboy is always a little behind the curve of what's hip. Apparently, there was a day when they were in the forefront. Now, they're embarrassing. Their effort to leap on the Latin American explosion came a couple years after Ricky Martin. Getting the twins for 2000 -- it was so hokey. Those were women we never saw on the bus. It felt like Playboy just went to a modeling agency and got them from there. But I don't know.

I like the idea that we looked for the Playmate of the Millennium and didn't find her. You know -- she's not out there! Time to shut it down!

The twins were attractive in the attractive-but-useless way Playboy seems to reserve for their big Playmate-Of-The-Whatever nominations, by the way. So the point is, they went through this whole big bus tour, picked these two twins out of a catalog anyway--that is Ueland's speculation, anyway, and he says they were never on the bus and he was there--and wound up producing some forgettable pornography. The bus trip was a sham; the Girls Next Door had already been decided on, and they were just going through the motions to make us think Hefner was still interested in finding somebody interesting for us all to look at naked. How long can the Playboy brand keep coasting?

YAO WATCH: David Aldridge has a great report.

HOPEFULLY UNIVERSALLY FUNNY: Lang Whitaker has up his NBA quotes of the year up and they should be funny even if you're not a basketball fan. The SLAM LINKS disappear after a while, my blog's archives last a little longer so I'll stick up the ones I found funniest here:

"I do not waste my time in answering abuse. I thrive under it, like a field that benefits from manure." -- Shaq, in a sign worn on his jersey one day during practice.

"IN HINDU CULTURE, THE ELEPHANT IS TALL, REGAL, MAJESTIC, STRONG, POWERFUL AND ENIGMATIC. A HINDU PROVERB STATES THAT WHEN AN ELEPHANT IS DOWN EVEN A FROG WILL KICK HIM. ISN'T THAT RIGHT, PLASCHKE?" -- Shaquille O'Neal, in a message written on a piece of paper that he wore taped to his jersey at Lakers practice yesterday, referring to a column in the LA Times by Bill Plaschke saying that Shaq needed to be held accountable for throwing a punch at Brad Miller.

"Shit, we won the game, man. I don't want to hear that bullshit. We won the fucking game." -- Sam Cassell on the tirade from coach George Karl after the Bucks barely beat the Pacers.

"He's a guy that has a lot of talent, but he's easily swayed to do other things besides concentrate and try to get better...No disrespect to Stevie, but he couldn't get off the bench with the group we have now. That's just the honest-to-goodness truth." -- Byron Scott, on former Nets forward Stephen Jackson.

"I'm kind of shocked to hear him say that, out of all people. If that was his opinion, he should have told me that. Regardless how he feels, I'm still going to be in the NBA. So he can kiss my ass." -- Stephen Jackson's response.

"Curling [the winter olympic 'sport'] ain't nothing but dusting...I want my Grandma to get off her old behind and get her an Olympic medal to go with my two medals. She can dust." -- Charles Barkley.

"I was a Cadillac with the back windows shot out when they bought me, so they're going to ride it or put it in the shop. The windows still ain't fixed, so what do you want? It's still $3,099, take it or leave it. [Expletive]. [Expletive]. I ain't really said nothing yet. I'm going to do me a book." -- Charles Oakley.

"I'll just keep eating my bread, sipping my soup and serving my time. But the chicken is going to lay some more eggs one day." -- Charles Oakley.

"Now, if you say the fans and everybody want to know about you, we're going to call the Maloofs now and they are going to make a glass shower and everybody from Sacramento can come and watch me take a shower." -- Vlade Divac.

"I'm frustrated with my son in school sometimes and I can't trade him." -- Sam Cassell, on the recent struggles in Milwaukee.

"Legends don't retaliate to average high school players, and he is an average high school player." -- Shaq, on confronting Danny Fortson after a hard foul.

"It's handicapped all right. You got eight tow trucks and eight tow cars. They all look the same." -- Charles Oakley, on the Eastern Conference playoff situation.

"I don't even think Yao Ming is worth a top-10 pick." -- Mark Cuban, on Finley-for-Yao trade rumors.

Read the links every day and be entertained.

YOUR BOWL GAME TO WATCH: Screw Ohio State and Miami, screw the whole Bowl System. College football will always be a make-believe sport as long as there is no championship. It's basically a four-month exhibition. The beauty of this is you can decide for yourself which game is The Game to watch, and there is no Bowl worth watching more than tonight's GMAC Bowl, wherein Marshall plays Louisville in Mobile and we end up with a 93-90 final after five overtimes. Remember, the only sporting contest worth watching is an entertaining one, excepting the Superbowl because it's a pagan holiday.

WORTH READING: Interview with Jesus Castillo, the Texas comic book store manager who got arrested for selling a Japanese porno comic to an adult.

BLOGGUS SPORADICUS: As I finish my finals my blog activities will become sporadic. Well, my posting is always sporadic, so this is like stating the obvious--like a Seattle weatherman forecasting rain or something. But at least I have an excuse.

Where's my Sitemeter button?

Is it here yet? Ah, now it's there. Thanks, Sitemeter!

MICHELLE MALKIN WATCH: Instapundit links to her and I link to her and our reasons are so terribly different and I feel shame. That new head shot is the greatest yet; she's finally let her hair down and is embracing the fierce physical beauty she has tried to hide for so long. She was on C-SPAN recently, and she has the cutest expression on her face when she's summoning up her thoughts in her head and preparing to give a reasoned, articulate yet impassioned response on our current immigration problems; a highly individualistic display, speaking with conviction yet without a hint of ego. I ordered the transcript and the tape.

NEMESIS WRATH OF KHANESQUE: Over on Slate David Edelstein likes the new Trek flick:

This tenth feature is a big deal, indeed—at least the third-best, and maybe even a notch above the previous runner-up, Nicholas Meyer's Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), the last to feature the entire original starship Enterprise crew. Of course, nothing approaches Meyer's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), which was not only a crackerjack space adventure in itself, but which virtually saved the franchise from the dustbin of TV history. Meyer purged much of Trek's lugubriousness; gave the flabby, liberal-humanist intercourse a dash more militaristic pep; and contrived the fabulous space duels between Kirk (William Shatner) and the muscled-up, Melville-spouting Khan (Ricardo Montalban) that serve as a template for franchise's best action sequences to this day.

Trek movies are so much fun when they're on--and sad and pathetic when they're not--so I am excited to see this and not nearly as ashamed by that fact as I probably should be. KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN.

"What does GOD need with a STARSHIP?"

MAGAZINEWATCHING: For the Unabloggers among us, take note: the new Club International has an amazing layout of Aria Giovanni and Veronica Zemanova engaged in faux-lesbianism. If you're any kind of a fan of the semi-softcore pornography, this is what you were looking for. Yes.

PEERING OVER THE GREAT WALL AND SEEING ALL THESE DOLLAR SIGNS RUNNING AROUND: Great Washington Post article on the potential economic impact of Yao Ming. Sample:

In Houston, the Rockets have distributed Yao growth charts and plastered the city with billboards bearing his image, and ESPN has run commercials showing him dangling out of a tiny bunk bed and performing tai chi -- a series of exercises and postures developed in China -- with the Rockets' wobbly mascot. But there's none of that yet in China, no Yao T-shirts or jerseys, no product endorsements or ad campaigns. Finding even a poster of him is a challenge.

This yawning gap between Yao's immense popularity and his minimal commercial presence won't last long. The NBA hopes Yao does for basketball in China what Michael Jordan did for the sport in the United States. Businesses around the world are salivating at the chance to use Yao to break into the enormous Chinese market, home to 1.3 billion people with rising average incomes and middle-class aspirations.

Just think: Yao's first game against the Indiana Pacers was available in 287 million Chinese households -- well more than double the number of all TV households in the United States.

"We're being flooded with offers for endorsements, from multinationals, software firms, computer manufacturers, shoe companies, apparel companies. You name it, they all want in," said Zhang Mingji, who heads Team Yao, the group of agents, consultants and others managing the player's business interests. "We don't really need to go out and seek opportunities. So we're taking our time, and being very cautious. Yao has to fit with the companies, and the product has to fit with Yao."

Earlier this year, Team Yao asked a group of business school students at the University of Chicago to study Yao's potential in China. Zhang said the results were more than encouraging: Consumers here have a more positive view of Yao than any other Chinese athlete, and while his fans are concentrated in the cities, they include older and middle-aged residents as well as the young.

I bet David Stern is looking is looking at that 287 million households number and putting some dollar signs in front and maybe a zero or two in back. I mean, what a market, ready and willing to be turned into basketball fanatics--and the NBA brand in particular. Stern probably has a whole NBA Far East jotted down on the back of a napkin somewhere. And additionally, will China turn into a nation of basketball players as well? Will pro ball be something a Chinese athlete will aspire to, as another way to get out of poverty in the coming People's Capitalist Republic? We shall see.

I DO SO LOVE THE LINKS: Here's Lang Whitaker on Isiah Thomas's arrest:

People in Indianapolis are alleging racial discrimination was a factor in Isiah Thomas getting handcuffed last weekend in Indy. Hold up, wait a minute...regardless of color, let's say there's been a potentially fatal accident and a police car has been hit. Though the road is marked off and traffic is backed up, one car drives through the area the police have marked as off-limits. The car is pulled over, and the driver refuses to identify himself. No, really. So they cuff the driver and let him wait in the back of a patrol car. When the driver eventually says that his license is inside a briefcase, police check it and find it -- along with wads and wads of cash. When they ask the driver where the money came from, he says "I work for a living." So they call in drug-sniffing dogs to see what's up. I don't care what race the driver is, the whole thing makes sense to me. Then, add on the fact that we all know the Rev. Dr. Isiah is nuts, and I'd have cuffed him, too. Yes, racial profiling is a bad thing. But so is acting like an idiot.

WNBA CRAPPING OUT WATCH: Next up, the dissipation of the Seattle Storm--who are losing money despite Sue freaking Bird--or at least a move a little southwards:

Tacoma Dome Director Mike Combs said the city has been talking to the Seattle Storm for at least three weeks about relocating to Tacoma. The Dome is offering the team a more affordable lease than KeyArena, and Combs said the South Sound has the fan base to support a WNBA team.

"We'd be excited to have them," he said. "It would be great for the city."

The Storm's spring and summer game schedule - the WNBA recently increased its season by two games to 34, and it will run from Memorial Day to mid-September 2003 - fits in well with the Dome, which sees its busiest seasons in the fall and winter, Combs said.

Also, he said, the building is well suited to a basketball team.

"Tacoma's proximity to Seattle is compelling," Karen Bryant, vice president of Storm operations, said Thursday. "We're in discussions with Tacoma. They're not much more serious than that."

The Storm is looking at other facilities for two reasons - the new WNBA operating agreement grants teams the right to play home games in non-NBA arenas, and the Storm's three-year lease with KeyArena expires on Dec. 31.

"Those two circumstances were the catalyst for looking at other options," Bryant said. "We're losing money, so we're looking at all of our major expense lines. We firmly believe that our best opportunity is to stay at KeyArena. But we're looking at other options."

The team is also looking at arena possibilities in Spokane, Yakima and Everett. But moving to Spokane or Yakima seems unlikely because that would entail relocating the entire Storm organization.

I would love a small-market tilted WNBA with the Sparks and Liberty being the big-market anchors, for my own goofy reasons.

Oh, and hey: Paul Allen wants to cut the Fire loose, despite having Jackie freaking Stiles:

Portland Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen wants to cut the Fire loose from his money-losing operation. In the WNBA's current restructuring, Allen has the first option to own the Fire, but he reportedly has urged other buyers to come forward -- in a hurry.

Unless the WNBA team can find a new owner in the Portland area within the next two weeks, the Fire likely will be extinguished.

The Washington Times wraps it all up for you.

TRAIN WRECK I MISSED: They paired up Bill Walton and Dick Vitale last night? And I was in class? Daaaang.

WELL THAT WAS RANDOM: David DuPree, basketball expert, relationships guru:

germany: david, my boy-friend is absolutely crazy about basketball: magazines, pay-per-view, hip-hop music and of course he plays himself. now it's that thing, we had a weekend-trip planned for saturday and now his coach called yesterday that a game is re-scheduled for that day. what am i gonna do about it? we are both working and he spends his rare time in the gym. can you give me a hint what can i do? thanx, D

David DuPree: D --
I think you need to let him know that you don't want to tell him what to do and you do't want to nag him, but you want to take that weekend trip. You sound like someone who doesn't ask for much and it sounds like you have made a lot of sacrifices to accommodate your boyfriend. I don't want to start anything between you, but he needs to at least put you on the same scale as going to the gym. In my experience, the longer you let him get away with tat kind of stuff the harder it is going to be to get him to change. There is always a middle ground and a scheduled weekend getaway should take precedent over a re-scheduled game (unless he's a pro and it's his job). If he does go on the trip with you, don't let him tell you he did it for you. He has to want to do it for the both of you and do it because he wants to be with you and he cares about you. Don't let him tell you he's doing you a favor. Good luck.

This he does without breaking a sweat in the midst of a determined basketball chat. I love DuPree, and hate myself for forgetting to check in on the USA Today basketbal section more often. He's the great below-the-radar American basketball commentator in the pages of America's great below-the-radar paper. If I had more money I'd be getting the USA Today in my driveway every day, and the Financial Times for that matter. Yes I would. But this is, you know, an insolvent republic.

SHOCKING TRUE TALES OF IMMIGRATION: The blog called wimminandminoritiesdotcom links to a whole set of Washington Post stories on the daily lives and ambitions of young immigrants and children of immigrants. It's stuff worth reading. Above blog found via Monstah.

I like this quote:

Music from the choir drifts outside. The limo driver is leaning against a railing on the church steps. Mel McHenry specializes in Vietnamese weddings. He also teaches at a nail academy, which is how he got in with the Viet community. A black man from the South, he spends a lot of time thinking about how a group of immigrants can make the leap from refugee boat to a limousine in 25 years. He lights a cigarette.

"See, we're born with it," McHenry says of Americans. "We're used to flipping a switch. The bulb burns out and we're pissed off. Them? What switch?"

McHenry dusts a piece of lint from his tuxedo. "There is no such thing as my money," he says. "The money goes to the house. They save that money. You watch the men come out of this church. They're in those $5 Kmart block shoes. They come trompin' out, can't hardly walk."

ONCE MORE, INTO THE NICHE: Franklin Harris notices my thoughts on the tiny little corner American comics have painted themselves into, and links to some of his own.

PORN REPORT: Current Pet of the Year Sunny Leone was on Howard Stern last night. She has a funny presence, giving the spiel about her lesbian experiences and somehow being earnest about it and being bemused by it in a "this-is-so-silly" way at the same time, and Howard was eating it all up. She is, in fact, Indian, and not Italian as whoever got her into girlie magazines decided she was. Cool. Hurray for Penthouse, not only for mixing up the ethnotypes but for having no problem raising one to the highest level.

FUNNY, FUNNY STUFF TO BUY: Micah Wright's remixed propaganda posters. Via journalista. And the comic book he writes, Stormwatch: Team Achilles, is a really great war comic with superheroes in it, kind of like the Larry Hama G.I. Joe was a really great war comic with supervillains in it.

HUH?: When did Amazon buy CDNow? I musta missed that memo....

WARRIORS BEAT LAKERS: It was like a college atmosphere in that game, everybody on their feet, Earl Boykins stepping up and getting the call on the charge on Derek Fisher with seconds to go. An entertaing game, and not just because the Lakers lost. Though that always helps.

NICHE-IFICATION OF AMERICAN COMICS CONTINUES: Shonen Jump, the new English-language manga monthly, is the top-selling comic book in the United States. Shonen Jump reprint's kiddie manga comics in serialized form. The number one American comic book, Ultimate War, is a post-Authority superhero story featuring new versions of the Avengers and X-Men fighting each other. Yes, you have to have been reading comics for the past twenty years to understand Ultimate War, or that last sentence, and go to a comic shop to buy it. No, you don't have to go to a comic shop to buy Shonen Jump or have been reading manga for the past twenty years to understand it. It is a little bit of a trick to read something in reverse order--because you still read the English language left to right (duh) but have to read the action itself backwards; I feel something like a typewriter afterwards--but still. The differences are just obvious, and I have no idea how the big American publishers will respond, or even if they want to, preferring to rule the tiny fiefdom of the collector's market and leave the Japanese publishers to dominate the market out of complacency--kind of like Detroit and cars in the 70s.

I could have my numbers wrong, by the way, as I don't have any figures for the other comics with American newsstand distribution--Archie comics. Gawd, why couldn't a big thick superhero comic sell a bunch of copies on the newsstand? Or any other popular genre, for that matter. Or a big thick art comic. I don't get it.

CLIPPERS REPORT: Clips spoil the Hornets' unbeaten streak at home and stay on pace with the Lakers at 9-12 to the Lakers' 9-13. The Clippers' secret plan, obviously, is to use the Lakers as a motivating factor, match them win for win and claw their way into the playoffs. Yep.

Hey, the Clips are on a three-game winning streak and what's tying them all together? No Olowakandi. That's gotta be it. If I was Alvin Gentry I'd keep his minutes extremely limited, because he's only playing for his free agent deal next season and--let's face it--he isn't very good. John Hollinger advocates playing Wang Zhi Zhi because he's just as good as Olowakandi, plus he wouldn't be playing for numbers like Kandiman. Here he is on Olowakandi, free agent:

All I've heard for the last two months is how the Knicks, or the Spurs, or the Nuggets, or some other team, can really help themselves in the middle by forking out big money for Olowokandi. I hate to break the bad news, but he's still an average center at best. While his superficial numbers look outstanding (14 points, nine rebounds and two blocks), he's a turnover machine (over three a game) and rarely gets to the line. After a strong start, his PER is hovering in the 13 range, which isn't something I'd want to spend $12 million a year for. Or even half that.

The guy teams should be targeting is [Brad] Miller. Despite superficially inferior numbers (13 points, eight rebounds), he is an abundantly better player than Olowokandi because he is far more adept at getting to the foul line, is a far better ballhandler, and shoots a higher percentage. In other words, he creates more points from fewer possessions, and ain't that what the game is all about? What's more, the Pacers may be hard-pressed to keep Miller given their need to sign Jermaine O'Neal and Reggie Miller (assuming Reggie finds his game, that is), creating an opportunity for some enterprising club to snatch him up.

Ironically, Olowokandi was the top pick in 1998 and Miller went undrafted. Yet there is no doubt about which one is the superior player.

"PER", by the way, is some kind of statistical analysis that John came up with and is my least favorite part of the otherwise excellent Hollinger repertoir. Basketball just isn't a geek sport, subject to Baseball Prospectus-style numerology; it's a psychological sport, full of posturing and mind games, the closest non-fixed sport to pro wrestling. I don't doubt that a PER is a meaningful value, just not the most important ones in the sport of NBA basketball. But I am officially off the Olowakandi bandwagon unless he starts talking smack about Shaq again.

ONE NWBL CAVEAT: Yes, there is a Birmingham franchise, which means the NWBL is probably doomed. Birmingham is like the ultimate Always Bridesmaid/Never Bride of sports cities. I mean, the XFL, USFL, WLAF, WFL, and the CFL America Project all died and all had Birmingham as a franchise. Well, they were all wannabe football leagues, so maybe there's no correlation, but dang that there is a lot of huge sports debacles. Either Birmingham is an untapped sports market with no luck at getting a major franchise (didn't the NFL stiff them in the 70s?) or a complete sucker for every startup league with big plans and empty pockets. Possibly both. We need a fifth major team sport in this country, because the NBA and NHL can't possibly expand into any more small markets.

PUTTING THE BAND BACK TOGETHER: Lots of ex-UConn stars are reuniting for the Springfield Spirit of the National Women's Basketball League. I am unexpectedly and probably needlessly jazzed for the NWBL, despite not being the biggest women's basketball fan and having little chance of seeing one of their games on tv. The NWBL plays in the months before the WNBA season, like the ABL did but with a shorter, WNBA-like schedule, and seems to have a somewhat smarter business plan, like loading up teams with local players and actually putting franchises in women's hoops hotbeds, like New England and Tennessee. Maybe between the two of them we can have some quality basketball. Or some weird situation where we have two championships a year decided by the same set of players, who play on different teams depending on what league they're in. Which is the situation we are in but it won't be an established thing until both leagues can prove their solvency.

Hey--a page with lots of ABL info. And a creepy URL.

HERE WE GO AGAIN: Miss Turkey wins Miss World. The obligatory Rebekah Revels comment is:

But there were moments to amuse cynics, including a glitch from Miss United States Rebekah Revels, who told the judges: "I admonish you to pick me."

OH GOD IT WAS HORRIBLE: The way the Mavs lost to the Lakers last night, after being up by thirty at one point, getting out of their game and getting completely smoked in the fourth quarter and losing by two points. It was stomach-churning, a horror movie of a basketball game, with the Lakers as the horrible chainsaw-wielding madmen that could not be killed, no matter how many times you poured gasoline on them and ran them over. I saw Michael Finley on the sideline, talking to one of the coaches, saying something like, "This isn't happening. This isn't right, not right at all." He looked scared, the way Nick Van Exel said the Mavericks played. And Nick Van Exel was right. What a psychological blow. They're getting a sense right now of just how hard it is to win a NBA championship.

Derek Harper, on the Dallas Basketball.com site, offered these words:

The one thing the Dallas Mavericks need most on their eventual climb to an NBA title?
They need to get their noses bloodied.
That won’t be enjoyable. That won’t be fun. And it’s difficult work to volunteer for. I mean, who wants to stick his nose into a pile knowing he’s going to come away wounded?
Maybe it happened Friday night in LA. – and boy, that sure wasn’t enjoyable or fun, was it?
Said coach Nelson after that shocking 105-103 loss to the Lakers, "We probably need to go through this experience. It hurts like hell right now. But it's probably good for us. You grow from things like this."
Yes, you do. You grow from having your nose bloodied.
Unfortunately, history tells us that the only way to get to a championship is to suffer that bloodied nose along the way. This is not to say that the regular season is unimportant; it’s all about jockeying for position, jockeying for seeding. There is an obviously huge edge to being in the top four, and this year, in the West, their might be a decided edge in being in the top one, knowing how deep the Western Conference field could be with the Portlands and Seattles and Houstons and Minnesotas all capable of bing a 5 or a 6 with the ability to beat a 4 or a 6.
So by all means, keep the pedal to the metal in the regular season. But know that at some point in the maturation of the franchise, some tough times, some heartache, will have to be endured.
This Mavericks team can play with anybody, and can beat anybody. It’s conceivable that they will keep beating most everybody in the regular season, and lose just enough to take their educational lumps that way.
But keep this in mind: Chances are, a team doesn’t win a title in one season until after it has been through a bloodied nose in the previous season.
It’s going to be painful. It’s going to be bloody, like it was Friday.
It’s going to happen – and that will eventually be a good thing. Though it doesn’t feel very good right now.

Have faith, oh you Mavericks. No one wants to see the Lakers win again. We're all with you, on this here Internet.

And they beat the Warriors tonight, just one night after that soul-threatening loss, and as they walked off the court, in victory of a close game, their heads were low and they still seemed in a daze. They know what's ahead of them, now. What will be required.

NBA TONIGHT: Mavs at Lakers, 10:30. Questions will be answered about the reality of the Mavs, and the non-reality of the Lakers. Be there.

MORE COMICS 2 FILM: Captain Marvel (not any of the Marvel ones) is headed for the big screen, or is at least in development for that--you know how these things are. Captain Marvel is like the cultiest of cult characters, a sixty-year old property that still has a rabid fan following despite never having a successful relaunch since his heyday in the forties, where he was the top-selling super-hero. It must be the concept that keeps attracting people through years of uneven execution. We'll see how this one goes.

WNBA CRAPPING OUT WATCH: The Utah team is moving to San Antonio, which leaves the two Florida teams still homeless. The city of Hartford remains confident. And, yes, the leading candidate for ownership of the Connecticut team is a casino:

A group of Hartford businessmen who are interested includes LAZ Parking chairman Alan Lazowski and former UConn player Corny Thompson. Steve Fox, who owns the NWBL's Springfield Spirit, said he is focusing on his upcoming season but that he would like to explore the possibility in the future.

They all want to bring the WNBA to Hartford, which is where Lt. Gov. Jodi Rell would like to see a team.

"Absolutely," said Rell, who has talked with both the league and interested local parties. "We have the Civic Center. We have a built-in fan base. It's a natural fit."

But she said she didn't want to discourage others who are interested, such as the Mohegan Tribe, which would place the team in the Mohegan Sun Arena in Montville. The tribe is interested in owning a team and has been in touch with the WNBA.

Of the five, the Mohegan Sun group is probably the most prepared to put a team in place by 2003. The tribe owns the arena and has staff for public relations, marketing and other needs already in place. It also has the most money.

The NBA has no rules against placing a WNBA or NBA team in a casino, as long as there is no sports book (there isn't at Mohegan Sun). In October, WNBA president Val Ackerman said she couldn't rule out the casino arena. But the WNBA targets families and children for their audiences, and some may be reluctant to go to a casino for the games.

UPDATE: USA Today claims the WNBA will survive. I do love the niche sports.

YOUR "HOW DID I MISS THIS?" ITEM OF THE DAY: There's an American Splendor movie in the can, right now. Goll-ee. I hope it doesn't stink.

FEAR OF A BLACK PLANET: There's this horrible little station here--you probably have one in your town--that specifically sells itself as being today's best music--without the rap. I'm flipping through the stations in the car and I stop there because my fave pop song of the moment, No Doubt's "Underneath It All", is playing and when they get to the reggae part the reggae part just disappears. At first I just assumed this was a radio edit, but this is a radio song that isn't that long to begin with. So now I'm thinking the staff of Mix 95.7 thinks reggae is sufficiently rap-like that they have to take it out of the No Doubt song. I have a better idea: if a song doesn't fit with your format, just don't play it. Okay? Okay.

HEFNER WATCH: Little opinion piece from one of those new Chicago tabloid youth-market things (and via the Bomis Babe Report) on Hef hiring a Maxim guy to make Playboy profitable again. This will apparently involve turning Playboy eliminating the nudity and turning into another one of those cretinous lad magazines--British imports, I hasten to ad, relics of a more primitive popular culture. What's the appeal in those things? I don't get it, but maybe the lad mag target audience are married men who want a safe form of pornography. I dunno. But what's the point of FHM or Gear if you can get better articles in The Atlantic or Vanity Fair, better interviews in--yes--Playboy, better pornography in Club or Penthouse? Who are you people, and why are you eroding the sexual revolution?

But basically I think Playboy is sort of a lost cause anyway, so whatever Hef wants to do with it to make it relevant or whatever again is fine by me. (The Tia pictures were pretty good, by the way, not especially revealing but not especially annoyingly faux-arty either. The fact that these were pictures of Tia Carrere without any clothes on sort of overwhelms any minor artistic concerns.) Just as long as he doesn't do away with the 96 pages of cheap, tasteful, continous nudity that are the Playboy newsstand specials he and Johnny Maxim can do what they want, import the prurient tastes of British people onto our shores or put the cast of Gilmore Girls in bikinis or whatever. Leave me my tasteful nudity; it's what Playboy's always done best.

SOMETHING I NOTICED LAST NIGHT: While the Mavs were beating the Raptors, and so did Lang Whitaker:

Reader Jeremy writes...
The links are great. Read them everyday.......props to you and Slam. The reason I write is to sound off about Vince Carter. I'm sitting watching the MAVS and RAPS game tonight and with a few minutes left in the 4th and the RAPS down by about 5, VC is on the bench laughing and cracking up. I think he started laughing initially because Davis dunked over Bradley, but come on! Your team is down, are you are supposed to be "showing all the haters" what's up. That you are back this season and you are going to be splitting wigs, but instead you don't have any heart. There are tons of players out there with twice as much heart as Vince, but don't have the athletic ability. If he really wanted it, he could be the best player in the league, but he doesn't. And guess what, he never will, either you want it or you don't. You can't change that. Mark my words. VC will never win a championship. The only situation I see him winning a championship is with a Jordan type player/leader on the team.
Jeremy
San Diego

Jeremy, I was watching that last night, and I got all fired up about it, too. Vince was laughing because he is not mature enough to handle being on the bench with his team down 8. And I think it was Dell Curry who made a joke about AD dunking on Shawn, because the two of them were laughing together. And if they'd laughed for a few seconds, I would maybe understand. But not for a few possessions. Would you ever have seen Michael Jordan do that? Larry Bird? Even Dominique wouldn't have done that. (Well...OK, maybe he would have.) But that's what separates the greatest players from the pretty good ones. Vince is a long way from great.

I wouldn't have noticed it so much if Ron Harper et al hadn't jumped on it--and I thought they were just being, you know, local broadcasters. But Lang agrees.

More from him:

ZONE, ZONE: EVERYONE PLAYS THE ZONE
Flipping around on League Pass last night, it's unbelievable how many teams are playing zone defense these days. Dallas wasn't using it that much, but they did throw it at Toronto. Utah put one on Indiana, who immediately ran their's against the Jazz. Even Pat Riley, noted zone hater, was using it. And it's great, because it totally shuts down the one-on-one game and requires the offensive teams to pass the ball quickly to catch the zone rotating slowly and out of position. I don't know about you, but I like watching fundamental basketball. And there are some teams -- the Suns, for instance -- that have no idea what to do when the zone hits 'em. Penny just catches the ball and looks like a deer in headlights.

I love the Slam Links more than ever since Bill Simmons' semi-retirement. And if you don't love the zone I can't talk to you--Temple being one of my favorite college teams and all.