Yet another swimming article

http://www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/lane9/news/23029.asp?q=A%20Message%20to%20Non-Masters%20Swimmers

A brief article on the Swimming World website about the nature of masters swimming, and how it is more fun than scholastic swimming.

Avatar

Just saw Avatar (in 2-D) this evening, and enjoyed every minute.

It was as predictable a movie as I've ever seen: you know exactly what conflict the hero will be faced with (whether to side with the rapacious earthlings or the noble nature-worshipping Na'vi of the planet Pandora). You know from the moment the female Na'vi heroine first appears (and spares the hero's life) that romance will ensue. In fact, you pretty much know the outcome of the entire movie after the first fifteen minutes.

All of the characters are two dimensional (offering a 3-D version of the movie does not add depth to a personality). They all fall neatly into two categories, Good and Bad. Before even getting to the theater, you know from the publicity stills which category the Na'vi, with their big eyes, feline faces, elf-like ears, full lips, and thin bodies, fall into. Their nobility is just as obvious as Orlando Bloom-the-Elf's in Lord of the Rings: Hollywood may occasionally make good beings ugly, but it never makes evil beings beautiful.

One slightly discordant note: Stephen Lang, the accomplished stage actor who plays the evil Colonel Quaritch, has a much more intelligent face than Sam Worthington, who plays hero Jake Scully. Worthington, who was evidently up for the role of James Bond in Casino Royale before it was awarded to Daniel Craig, looks like a callow Ben Affleck (if that's not redundant). Lang has a more refined face, one which seems more capable of empathy, even as he struts and bullies in his role as chief bad guy.

The movie's anti-war and environmental messages are delivered in typically heavy-handed Hollywood fashion.

Avatar is heavily derivative. When the hero meets his first fearsome Pandoran beast, his dialogue is lifted from Will Smith's giant cockroach scene in Men in Black. The penultimate battle scene, with Na'vi on their Pandoran version of horses riding to their doom against the superior modern artillery of the earthlings, is straight from The Last Samurai. The Na'vi themselves are obviously derived from every Disney cliche about noble Native Americans.

And yet, despite all these faults, the movie was impossible not to enjoy. I don't like being instructed what to think -- and whom to root for -- anymore than anyone else. But I couldn't help but root for the Na'vi. (And who would argue against nature and for war?)

The idea of having a paraplegic Marine occupy the body of an avatar is an excellent one. You can feel his joy at the liberation his new body brings him. But the real genius of the movie lies in the creation of the lush planet. It is Pandora, and the essential sweetness of its inhabitants, that keep you involved, even as subsequent plot developments are telegraphed from a mile away. (I smell a well-deserved Oscar for art direction, probably along with a few undeserved ones, this coming March.)

Avatar reportedly cost upwards of $400 million. I'm not sure what that kind of money is supposed to look like, but it probably resembles something like Pandora. The rain forest is exquisite down to its last detail, and the colors are gorgeous (in contrast to the movie's messages, which are presented in black and white). The movie is like the cover of one of those old Edgar Rice Burroughs pulp novels come to life. You can't ask for better entertainment than that.

Any movie which has the nerve to last two hours and thirty-six minutes had better be entertaining. This one delivered (and is well on its way to delivering a good return on investment for its makers as well).

James Cameron is once again king of the world.

Prediction: this movie will generate a whole slew of hardcore, Trekkie-type fans who will paint their faces blue and go to Avatar conventions as every opportunity.

Avoid them, but see the movie.

Enchanted

The USA channel has been playing Enchanted all weekend there, and will play it again tonight at 9PM Eastern time. (The movie is not to be confused with Ella Enchanted.)

When my brother first told me I'd enjoy it, after the first ten minutes (which are in cartoon format) I openly mocked him. But you must see those first ten minutes in order to understand the story, so please stick with it.

It's far more clever and intelligent than most movies, and that alone makes it worth watching. As with most movies, the first hour is probably the best. (The early James Bond movies with Sean Connery are probably the best examples of this.) Enchanted gets a little sappy, but the movie also makes fun of itself, making the sappiness more palatable. (The low point on that score is probably the Central Park song/dance scene, where some choreographer was given way to much leeway.) The ending is downright ludicrous, but it is, after all, a fairy tale.

If you don't like it, be as insulting to me as you like; I promise to publish your comment anyway.

What women like

I spent last weekend at a big masters swimming meet. These meets are always a blast, and have a bit of a cocktail-party-by-the-pool feel to them. I saw a number of people I hadn't seen in years, and that's always fun as well.

Among the people I saw was Benn Doyle, 51, who holds the world record in his age group in the 100 short course meter breaststroke. Ben stands 6' 4" and weighs around 230. He has a little bit of a gut, and is more hawk-faced than classically handsome. But he's nice looking in a rugged sort of way. In any case, the overriding impression he leaves you with is one of masculinity-to-spare, which, for guys, is probably more important than being pretty anyway.

Benn is a veterinarian. I asked how his practice was going, and he replied that he was busy, and hadn't seen any downturn in his business due to the recession: "People just love their pets, and will do anything for them."

He added, with a shrug, "I'm the same way. I cry when I see a baby squirrel run over in the street."

All I could think was, women must absolutely adore this guy. Most women's ideal man is a hulking monster with a kind heart (who also makes money), and Benn is exactly that.

(I also think it helps to be six feet four inches of testosterone on the hoof when you admit to guys you don't know that well that you cry at the sight of a dead baby squirrel.)

Benn explained that the worst thing was to see a squirrel that had been partially run over and was still alive but couldn't move; he said that he always made a point of backing up and running them over again, so their suffering would stop. He then mentioned a buck he had seen in his backyard which had had an arrow sticking out of its chest, and how he had tried -- but failed -- to trap him. "He actually survived for three more weeks," he said sadly.

(It did occur to me that these were just lines -- they're certainly effective ones -- but then I thought, he wouldn't have spent his life being a vet just to buttress this pose.)

I told him that my wife and daughter would be big fans of his.

Of course, being as wise as I am, I also know what women don't like: a strutting bantam rooster who's constantly trying to prove his toughness.

Like me.

Shades of "Psycho"

The following AP article appeared yesterday:

NC woman accused of hiding corpse appears in court

Wilmington, NC -- A woman accused of hiding her elderly mother's corpse for seven months in the family's North Carolina home has asked for a court-appointed defense attorney.

Amy Stewart made her first court appearance Thursday before a district court judge in Wilmington.

The 47-year-old did not enter a plea. She was charged Wednesday with concealing a dead body, a felony. Stewart posted bond and was released from jail.

Police responded to the family's home Tuesday after a 911 call and found the body of Stewart's 87-year-old mother, Blanche Matilda Roth, in a bedroom. Police estimate Roth died in May.

If Stewart killed her mother, she probably could have gotten away with it if she had immediately reported her death. After all, the death of an 87-year-old will usually not excite suspicion. But now the coroner's office will be extra careful.

Or was Stewart simply so attached to her mother that she couldn't bear to let her go? Judging from the fact that a 911 call was made, things may be a little dysfunctional at the Stewart household, which generally means less than overly strong attachments. But the need for a court-appointed, i.e., free, attorney would hint at a lack of the kind of resources which might provide at least one kind of motive for murder.

Either way, it would have been more appropriate if Stewart's name had been Norma Bates.

Their diversity is their strength?

The three animals above were confiscated from Atlanta area drug dealers eight years ago -- at age two months -- and delivered to the Noah's Ark Animal Rescue Center in Locust Grove, Georgia. The lion, tiger, and bear -- unimaginatively named Leo, Shere Khan, and Baloo -- have been brought up together since their youth, and evidently get along fine together. (Rudyard Kipling, based in India, did not include a lion in his Jungle Tales book, so Leo had to settle for being named after an astrological sign.)

Baloo and Shere Khan are particularly close, because they both rise early and like to play. Leo, being a lion, prefers to sleep till late. The animals' natural instincts kick in in other ways as well. Since tigers and bears like water, the zookeepers have a creek running through their enclosure. Lions evolved in Africa, where the rivers contain hippopotamuses and crocodiles, both easily capable of killing a lion. So Leo has an instinctive aversion to water. Bears get fish, notably salmon, from northern rivers, so Baloo likes to play in the water. And tigers are strong swimmers; tigers from the Sunderbans mangrove swamps of India have been known to swim out to fishing boats, capsize them, and kill the occupants.

Diane Smith, assistant director of the rescue center, pointed out, "They are totally oblivious to the fact that in any other circumstance they would not be friends." True enough. Had they grown up in the wild and encountered each other there, each of these apex predators would have attempted to kill the others, or at the very least, avoided them.

The Koreans used to stage fights between lions and tigers, which would inevitably result in the death of one of the animals. Initially they used Siberian tigers, but those tigers were not aggressive enough, and would be killed by the lions, so they switched to Bengal tigers, which sometimes bested the lions. (When I was a child and would ask my father which would win in a fight, he would say the tiger. And that is what one would think, given the tiger's greater size and strength. But it's not that simple: a tiger generally pounces on its prey, whereas a lion clamps its jaws around the throat of its prey, which is the more effective fighting technique when two big cats are involved.)

The picture above was taken at an opportune time: it looks as if the three animals have just had a happy play date and are now heading home. It is surprising, at least after looking at the picture above, to hear that the felines each weigh around 350 pounds, whereas the bear weighs 1000. Black bears in the wild generally don't get above 500 or 600 pounds, whereas tigers get up to 660 pounds, and male lions 550 (there is more sexual dimorphism among lions). But bears have the ability to put on fat more easily than the other two, since fat is crucial to their survival during the long winter months when they hibernate. So a well fed bear in captivity has more potential to grow obese.

Unexpected fact: until 10,000 years ago, lions were the most widespread large land mammal after humans. They ranged all over Africa, from Western Europe to India, and in the Americas from the Yukon to Peru.

"Leo" is obviously a female (she lacks a mane), so if the tiger is a male, offspring could conceivably result. When a male lion mates with a female tiger, the offspring is called a liger; when it happens the other way around, which is rarer, the offspring is called a tigon. Ligers generally end up much bigger than either parent, since the lion sire passes on a growth gene, but the corresponding growth inhibitor gene is absent in the female tiger. So ligers can often reach lengths of ten to twelve feet and weigh upwards of 1000 pounds. (Male ligers are generally sterile, but female ligers have been known to produce offspring.)

One can't help but wonder what the lessons this happy trio have for human beings. If a European, an African, and an Asian were, as far as they knew, the only people on earth, they would probably get along fine as well. It is only when there are large numbers of each that racial discord arises.

At least this zoo can honestly claim that its diversity is, if not a strength, at least not a weakness.

But only, of course, under the most carefully controlled and artificial of circumstances.

Only the good die young

(Theodore Sypnier)

A 100-year-old child molester was released from his halfway house this past weekend. Here's an excerpt from the AP article of five days ago by Carolyn Thompson:

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Everything that pedophile Theodore Sypnier has to show for his 100 years on Earth is packed in a single duffel bag as he prepares to begin a new chapter in life: freedom.

New York's oldest registered sex offender is scheduled to move by week's end out of a Buffalo halfway house for released inmates and into a place of his own, after completing his latest term in state prison for molesting little girls.

The judge who sentenced him said at the time that she expected him to die behind bars.

But 10 years after his last arrest, as Sypnier prepared to shed the closely monitored lifestyle of the halfway house, its director warned that the spry and active Sypnier has not changed. "Whether he's 100 or 101 or 105, the same person that was committing these crimes 10, 25, 30 years ago still exists today and has an unrepentant heart," said the Rev. Terry King, director of Grace House, which has twice taken Sypnier in from prison. "He is someone that we as parents, as members of the community, any community, really need to fear."

(It sounds as if the judge's prediction may still come true: he will die behind bars, for his next crime.)

Six months after marking his 100th birthday in the Groveland Correctional Facility — becoming the first New York inmate to reach the milestone while incarcerated -- the retired telephone company worker now says he wants to get to know the youngest members of a family that has disowned him.

(Retired telephone company worker? Wasn't AT&T's former ad campaign "Reach out and touch someone"?)

A former daughter-in-law said he is not likely to get the chance.

"No one from the family plans to have any contact with him," Diane Sypnier said before ending a brief phone interview.

Being grandfatherly was how the 5-foot-5, 150-pound Sypnier found his victims, authorities say. After his most recent arrest at age 90 on charges of raping and sodomizing a 4-year-old girl and her 7-year-old sister, his neighbors in the suburb of Tonawanda recalled what appeared to be a kindly Sypnier offering rides to adults, handing out money to children so they could buy candy, and baby-sitting.

It's often the people who appear the warmest at first who are in fact sociopaths, who have a knack for great first impressions.

A ninety year old rapist? I wonder if he took Viagra before these encounters.

The nerve

From this morning's NY Post:

Sex Overdrive

By RITA DELFINER

A mother of two in New Mexico has lost some of her lust for life after an injury in a car crash left her with an insatiable sex drive.<p> </p><br /> "It's unbearable," Joleen Baughman, 39, was quoted as saying by the Telegraph of London. "Just my clothes rubbing against me gets me so aroused I can hardly think straight."<p> </p><br /> In the April 2007 collision, a nerve in her pelvis which controls desire was damaged -- and got locked in the "on" position. Because of the condition, the slightest movement turns her on -- even when she vacuums or walks, the newspaper said.<p> </p><br />

A mother of two in New Mexico has lost some of her lust for life after an injury in a car crash left her with an insatiable sex drive.

"It's unbearable," Joleen Baughman, 39, was quoted as saying by the Telegraph of London. "Just my clothes rubbing against me gets me so aroused I can hardly think straight."

In the April 2007 collision, a nerve in her pelvis which controls desire was damaged -- and got locked in the "on" position. Because of the condition, the slightest movement turns her on -- even when she vacuums or walks, the newspaper said.

Could someone please tell me where this nerve is located?

Another piece in the puzzle

Dr. Anthony Galea, 50, who has treated Tiger Woods, Alex Rodgriguez, and Dara Torres among other famous athletes, was the subject of a front page article in the NY Times yesterday. He is evidently the subject of a doping inquiry and is suspected of providing athletes with performance-enhancing drugs.

He is being investigated by both the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for smuggling, advertising, and selling unapproved drugs.

Galea has admitted that he has treated himself with human growth hormone for the past ten years, in order to "have a longer lifespan" with his wife, who is 22 years his junior. But he claims never to have prescribed Hgh or steroids to treat any of his elite athletes, among whom he is known as "Miracle Man."

In my opinion, the miracle would be if he hadn't.

Putting it all together

(At left, Tiger Woods while at Stanford; on right, more recently)


It came to me about the time that Tiger's eighth or ninth girlfriend raved about his insatiable sex drive: the reason Tiger was so incredibly horny is that he was on steroids.

According to the police report from the night of his accident, Woods's wife told them that he had been drinking earlier that day, and also had prescriptions for the sedative Ambien and the pain killer Vicodin. All of which means that Tiger certainly doesn't have anything against putting foreign substances into his body.

You may remember speculation a while back that the drastic change in Tiger's build from his mid-twenties to his early thirties was due to juicing. He said he had weight-lifted extensively before, but before his late twenties had never been able to put on weight. Then, all of a sudden, he magically went from 158 pounds to around 200.

Well, one of the side effects of steroids is that one becomes extremely lustful. I've heard bodybuilders say that when they're on the juice, they would need an entire harem to take care of their needs. The difference with Tiger was, he had the means to actually finance that harem.

Tiger was evidently so desperate for sex that he would have it in the back seat of a car in a church parking lot. He would text his various girlfriends and ask them for dirty pictures, or tell them that he would wear them out. And evidently he did -- most of his girlfriends during his many overlapping affairs were impressed by his stamina and drive.

If Tiger wasn't on steroids, he deserves a medal of some sort.

I certainly can't prove that Tiger was juicing. But it just makes too much sense. You rarely see the kind of wholesale change in build he went through in his late twenties. He simply switched his original body for another. And almost all of these affairs seem to have taken place in the last several years, during his marriage. If he was so driven by sex, why did he never had a reputation as a prolific womanizer during his single days?

If this is true -- and I'd bet a lot of money it is -- Tiger is in a bad place right now. At some level he must want to blame his wanton behavior on the steroids he ingested ("It wasn't me, I was in the grip of this powerful drug"). But he won't, because he knows what the downside is. If someone should happen to come forward at this point to say that he sold Tiger steroids, not only will Tiger's formerly pristine personal reputation be in tatters, so will his reputation as a great golfer. And the latter is now all he has left. I'm not sure what the rules are regarding steroids in golf, but at the very least the public would regard his record as tainted.

And instead of going down in history as Usain Bolt, he would go down as Ben Johnson.

Okay, I promise, this will be the last post on Tiger Woods. Well, I guess I can't promise that. The subject is just too juicy.

I guess if I had gone into journalism, I would have ended up writing for Star Magazine or the National Enquirer rather than the Wall Street Journal.

Do blasians = whites?

(top left, Tyson Beckford; right, Naomi Campbell)






The recent all-Tiger-all-the-time news coverage got me to thinking about his racial background, and I intended to write a short piece this morning about people of mixed African and Asian descent, with an emphasis on their athletic ability. But when I started doing a little research I found myself sidetracked by references to well known people who are of that heritage.

For starters, Tiger Wood's father, whom everyone just thought of as black, was in fact a quarter Chinese. That came as a surprise. Then I read that top model Tyson Beckford was part Chinese (his Jamaican mother had "some Chinese heritage," according to Wikipedia). Evidently Naomi Campbell has a "Chinese Jamaican" father (whom she has never met), also according to Wikipedia. Judging from her appearance her "Chinese Jamaican" father probably had some black blood; maybe "Chinese Jamaican" actually means "Chinese/Jamaican." (It is unclear which part of her lineage she inherited her diva-like phone-throwing tendencies from.)

With both Beckford and Campbell, their Asian heritage is something you wouldn't realize at first, but once you're told of it, you can detect it. Certainly both are splendid specimens.

I'm half-Japanese, half-Anglo. Growing up in Boston in the 1960's, I was a relative rarity. These days Eurasians are much more common. There are so many of them in my hometown in Fairfield County at times you almost think you're in Hawaii. People of mixed black and Asian descent, on the other hand, are, if not quite tions or ligers, still relatively rare -- except in Jamaica. Ian Fleming referred to them in Dr. No as "Chigroes"; now the more acceptable terms are "blasians," or "Afro-Asians." (The term "comblinasian" is a Tiger coinage minted in an effort to universalize his appeal and maximize endorsement deals.)

My original point was going to be that the black-Asian combination seems a good one for athleticism. Asians tend to be smaller on average, but they are generally fit, with loose, sinuous muscles, while blacks are generally considered the most athletic race overall. The men in both races are usually lean, at least while young. Apart from Tiger Woods, reigning Olympic decathlon champion Bryan Clay is half Japanese and half black. A girl with that background ran on my daughter's middle school track team, and she was very fast. (The family moved away while she was still in middle school, so I don't know how she developed athletically.) Tyson Beckford certainly looks like a natural athlete. If such a combination does result in athletic ability, it wouldn't be unique in nature: mules, for instance, are known for their power.

Of course, such a relatively small sample size means little. So we'll have to wait for more data points before drawing a conclusion about their natural athleticism of Afro-Asians.

But then I started thinking of the other ways in which this particular combination would work.

For instance, blacks have an average IQ of 85, whites 100, and East Asians 110. Therefore it would stand to reason that Afro-Asians would roughly approximate the average white IQ.

On various measures of behavior blacks and east Asians rank far apart, too. On a per capita basis, according to government statistics, blacks commit roughly ten times as much of the major categories of violent crime (murder, rape, assault and battery, and armed robbery) as whites do. But northeast Asians (Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese) are, on average, the least violent race in this country.

This difference is not surprising when you consider that violence is highly correlated with male hormones. According to Army tests, blacks are the race with the most testosterone flowing through their veins, and Asians the least.

It's often seemed to me that in terms of inhibitions, whites generally act like Asians who've had a drink or two, and blacks act like whites who've had a drink. This is partly why blacks tend to regard whites as nerdy and lame and boring, and whites regard Asians the same way.

On this measure, as on the others, do Afro-Asians, those most exotic-looking of creatures, have natural instincts and aptitudes which average out to those of whites?

Does this mean that Tiger Woods is effectively white?

(And does it explain why he only goes after white girls?)

Test for sociopathy

This is a test which was circulating on the internet a few years ago. It's actually quite well done:

Read this question, come up with an answer, then scroll down to the bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads.

A woman, while at the funeral of her mother, met this guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing, so much her dream guy that she believed him to be just that. She fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few months later she killed her sister. Question: what is her motive in killing her sister? (Give this some thought before you answer.)






SCROLL DOWN








Almost there.......





Answer: She was hoping that the guy would appear at the funeral again. If you answered this correctly, you think like a sociopath. A famous American psychologist used this test to see if someone had the same mentality as a killer. Many arrested serial killers answered the question correctly.

If you didn't answer the question correctly, good for you.

The basic idea is that a normal (nonsociopathic) person could never even conceive of taking someone else's life so lightly that they would snuff it in order to gain what they want.

I know of exactly one person who got the answer correct, a woman who used to work on Wall Street. (I didn't ask her the question directly, but someone I had passed the question along to asked her, and told me the result.) This woman was a marvel of plastic surgery, including a pair of double D implants which she would flaunt at every opportunity. She would throw herself at men to get business from them. She always struck me as completely lacking in shame and embarrassment.