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November 04, 2005

This Just In: Lanky Black Dudes Are Kinda Speedy

I dropped this link in the last post, but I'll quote a little bit of this article. The writer is black, not that that matters, because I'm sure he's not a "real" black, but some sort swarthy-complexioned white guy who's really into the J. Giles Band ("they're so funky") and Peter Cetera.

While race is an inseparable element in sports, thoughtful discussion of the topic makes some squeamish.
DeBerry [coach of the Air Force Academy football team] looked at black receivers running past his slow and usually white defensive backs and said he wants more fast black kids, so his team has a better chance to win.

...

[DeBerry] has received a reprimand from the academy, in fact, for saying it seemed to him that African American players run very, very well. DeBerry was quick to add, almost seamlessly, that he would be open to having players of any race who are faster than his kids, but that black kids appeared to be faster.

Then all hell broke loose, and by Wednesday the coach was fighting back tears and saying, "I want everyone to understand that I never intended to offend anyone."

DeBerry has nothing whatsoever to apologize for. I understand that any kind of categorization, especially along racial lines, can be risky. One of DeBerry's former black players (who loves his coach) e-mailed me this week to point out that any such comments put the speaker on a very slippery slope, and that's certainly true.

But our fear of any discussion involving race should not eliminate common-sense observations. Since Jason Sehorn retired from the NFL a season or so ago, how many white starting cornerbacks are there in the NFL? The answer, as far as I can find, is zero.

It's just so silly.

posted by Ace at 05:06 PM

Comments

Yet when Joe Morgan whined that there weren't enough blacks in baseball during the Series, implying Houston lost because they were so 'white' he was celebrated for his insight.

Which ignores the fact that so many latino players are succeeding in this competitive sport.

As if any baseball manager has cared about skin pigment since 1956...

Which is more racist? The NHL or the NBA?

Answer? trick question... neither.

Posted by: DANEgerus on November 4, 2005 05:25 PM

It's all part of the faux-egalitarian BS that came into vogue in the Activist Era. Admitting that black kids on average run faster than white kids is to acknowledge that there may be actual physical differences between the races of Man... and is therefore a bigoted statement. Ditto for actual differences in physical capability between men and women, race notwithstanding.

Of course, the topic is also poisoned by REAL racists and bigots who will try to derail the discussion at any chance.

Maybe we just have to wait on this one until we ALL grow up.

Posted by: DaveP. on November 4, 2005 05:31 PM

Know what's funny? In 1936, the statement, "black kids (could) be faster," was a concept promoted by people in the US to refute the claim of a certain racist in Europe who said his "Master Race" of white guys couldn't be beaten by a "subhuman". The idea was settled when Jesse Owens proved the racist view wrong.

It's almost 70 years after Jesse came home with 4 gold medals, but now it's a sin to suggest he could do what Hitler swore he couldn't.

Posted by: The Black Republican on November 4, 2005 06:38 PM

The Black Republican,

Exactly.

The irony is..well... sad.

Posted by: Rightwingsparkle on November 4, 2005 06:46 PM

I took a trip to Wikipedia. I'm on dialup at the moment, so things are too slow for me to link to more than Jesse and the last 20 years worth of the "Fastest Men Alive":

The Fastest Man Alive, 1936 (Jesse Owens)
The Fastest Man Alive, 1984-1988 (Carl Lewis)
The Fastest Man Alive, 1992 (Linford Christie)
The Fastest Man Alive, 1996 (Donovan Bailey)
The Fastest Man Alive, 2000 (Maurice Greene)
The Fastest Man Alive, 2004 (Justin Gatlin)

Remember: If you notice any similarities in these pictures, it's either just an amazing coincidence or you're a racist. You have no other possibilities to choose from.

Posted by: The Black Republican on November 4, 2005 07:12 PM

To: The Black Republican
I was what was referred to as "Pretty fast for a white boy."

Posted by: Corwin on November 4, 2005 07:18 PM

While I've always been "pretty fast for a zombie."

The retro zombies, of course. Fuck all this new-school zombie shit. (But that was death with ad nauseam here, long long ago).

Posted by: Knemon on November 4, 2005 07:34 PM

I remember the first time I played G1, Steading of the Hill Giant Chief. Man, that was an awesome adventure. We killed the two sleeping giants at the gate, but the 28 giants down the hall having a party gave us a rough time. And how about Room 17A in the lower level? Wow, that Wierd Abandanded Temple threw us for a loop. Oh, and we killed the orc escaped slaves instead of getting them to help us. They were orcs, for god's sake. All in all, a true blast, only topped by G2, Glacial Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl!

Posted by: File Closer on November 4, 2005 08:26 PM

Damn, wrong thread again. Sorry Ace!

Posted by: File Closer on November 4, 2005 08:28 PM

Old news Ace.

Posted by: Iblis on November 4, 2005 10:51 PM

I agree black dudes are speedy.

One sport where speedy black dudes are under represented is race car driving.

The black race needs more race car drivers.

I've seen plenty of speedy black race car drivers, but not in official races.

Not driving their own race cars either.

Posted by: Speller on November 5, 2005 01:35 AM

Who can forget Rodney King, the only man on earth who could make a Hyundai Excel break a hundred miles an hour...

Posted by: DaveP. on November 5, 2005 04:47 AM

Notice also that the faster blacks are the ones from west Africa. In fact, eastern African countries have almost none 100-200, heck, even 400 meter runners. However they dominate the 5000+ meter races, while western African countries (and America, whose blacks are what, 95% descendents of western Africans?) have almost no runners in those categories.
.Heh, genetics are amazing aren't they?

Posted by: madne0 on November 5, 2005 07:58 AM

I've read that there is more human genetic dieversity among Africans than all the other people on the planet.

Posted by: boris on November 5, 2005 09:01 AM

You are correct, boris, which is why most anthropologists and geneticists believe in the "out of Africa" theory of human evolution: the older the population, the more variance contained within the population. Granted, a little math to back up this positition would be favorable to "trust me, I was a scientist, kinda," but I'm watching TV today, not pulling crap out of storage and transcribing it for you buttnugget-eating, Wesley Crusher-loving gaywads.

Posted by: ArmChair in sin on November 5, 2005 12:31 PM

The J. Geils Band really were funky. I don't think they bear any correspondence to Peter Cetera.

Posted by: Donnah on November 5, 2005 02:32 PM

Of course their fast just look at JESSIE OWENS in the olympics in BERLIN

Posted by: spurwing plover on November 5, 2005 11:11 PM

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What? Skeleton of the most famous Musketeer, D'Artagnan, possibly discovered in Dutch church closet.
Dumas picked four names of real musketeers out of a history book, D'Artagnan, Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. So there was an actual D'Artagnan, though he made most of the story up. (Or, you know, all of it.)*

Charles de Batz de Castelmore, known as d'Artagnan, the famous musketeer of Kings Louis XIII and Louis XIV, spent his life in the service of the French crown.
The Gascon nobleman inspired Alexandre Dumas's hero in "The Three Musketeers" in the 19th century, a character now known worldwide thanks to the novel and numerous film adaptations.
D'Artagnan was killed during the siege of Maastricht in 1673, and there is a statue honoring the musketeer in the city. His final resting place has remained a mystery ever since.

A lot of Dumas's stories are based on bits of real history. The plot of the >Three Musketeers, about trying to recover lost diamonds from the queen's necklace, was cribbed from the then-almost-contemporaneous Affair of the Queen's Necklace. And the Man in the Iron Mask is based on real accounts of a prisoner forced to wear a mask (though I think it was a velvet mask).
* Oh, I should mention, Dumas says all this, about finding the names in an old book, in the prologue to his novel. But authors lie a lot. They frequently present fictions as based on historic fact. The twist is, he was actually telling the truth here. At least about these four musketeers having actually existed and served under Louis XIV.
Fun fact: You know the beginning of A Fistful of Dollars where the local gunslingers make fun of Clint Eastwood's donkey and Eastwood demands they apologize to the donkey? That's lifted from The Three Musketeers. Rochefort mocks D'Artagnan's old, brokedown farm horse and D'Artagnan is incensed.

A commenter asked which should be read first, The Hobbit of LOTR?
Easy, no question -- read The Hobbit first. It's actually the start of the story and comes first chronologically. It sets up some major characters and major pieces in play in LOTR.
Also, the Hobbit is Beginner-Friendly, which LOTR isn't. The Hobbit really is a delightful book, and a fast read. It's chatty, it's casual, it's exciting, and it's funny. In that dry cheeky British humor way. I love that the narrator is constantly making little asides and commentary, like he's just sitting next to you telling you this story as it occurs to him.
LOTR is a very long story. Fifteen hundred pages or so. The Hobbit is relatively short and very punchy and easy to read. If you don't like The Hobbit, you can skip out on LOTR. If you do like it, you'll be primed to read LOTR.
Oh, I should say: The Hobbit is written as if it's for children, but one of those smart children's stories that are also for adults. Don't worry, there's also real fighting and violence and horror in it, too.
LOTR is written for adults. (It's said that Tolkien wrote both for his children, but LOTR was written 17 years later, when his children were adults.) Some might not like The Hobbit due to its sometimes frivolous tone. Me, I love it. I find it constantly amusing. Both are really good but there is a starkly different tone to both. LOTR is epic, grand, and serious, about a world war, The Hobbit is light and breezy, and about a heist. Though a heist that culminates in a war for the spoils.

The Hobbit Challenge: Read two more chapters. I didn't have much time. Bilbo got the ring.
I noticed a continuity problem. Maybe. Now, as of the time of The Hobbit, it was unknown that this magic ring was in fact a Ring of Power, and it was doubly unknown that it was the Ring of Power, the Master Ring that controlled the others.
But the narrator -- who we will learn in LOTR was none of than Bilbo himself, who wrote the book as "There and Back Again" -- says this about Gollum's ring:
"But who knows how Gollum had come by that present [the Ring], ages ago in the old days when such rings were still at large in the world? Perhaps even the Master who ruled them could not have said."
In another passage, the ring is identified as a "ring of power."
I don't know, I always thought there was a distinction between mere magic rings and the Rings of Power created by Sauron. But this suggests that Bilbo knew this was a ring of power created by Sauron.
Now I don't remember when Bilbo wrote the Hobbit. In the movie, he shows Frodo the book in Rivendell, and I guess he wrote it after he left the Shire. I guess he might have added in the part about the ring being a ring of power created by "the Master" after Gandalf appraised him of his research into the ring.
I never noticed this before. I know Tolkien re-wrote this chapter while he was writing LOTR to make the ring important from the start. And also to make Gollum more sinister and evil, and also to remove the part where Gollum actually offers Bilbo the ring as a "present" -- Bilbo had already found it on his own, but Gollum was wiling to give it away, which obviously is not something the rewritten Gollum would ever do.
But I had no memory of the ring being suggested to be The Ring so early in the tale.

Finish the job, Mr. President!
Melanie Phillips lays out the case for the total destruction of the Iranian government and armed forces. [CBD]

TJM acts like he knows anything about John Wick and screenwriting. It's embarrassing, really.

Podcast: Sefton and CBD talk about how would a peace treaty with Iran work, Democrats defending murderers and rapists, The GOP vs. Dem bench for 2028, composting bodies? And more!

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Tomorrow is March 25th, "Tolkien Reading Day," because March 25th is the day when the Ring is destroyed in the book. I think I'm going to start the Hobbit tomorrow and read all four books this time.
The only bad part of the trilogy are the Frodo/Sam chapters in The Two Towers. They're repetitive, slow, and mostly about the weather and terrain. But most everything else is good. Weirdly, the Frodo-Sam chapters in Return of the King are exciting and action-packed and among the best in the trilogy. (Though the chapters with everyone else in Return of the King get pretty slow again. Mostly people talking about marching towards war, and then marching towards war.)

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Forgotten 80s Mystery Click
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US decimation of Iran's ICBM forces is due to Space Force's instant detection of launches -- and the launchers' hiding places -- and rapid counter-attack via missiles
AI is doing a lot of the work in analyzing images to find the exact hiding place of the launchers. Counter-strikes are now coming in four hours after a launch, whereas previously it might have taken days for humans to go over the imagery and data.

Robert Mueller, Former Special Counsel Who Probed Trump, Dies

“robert mueller just died,” trump wrote in a truth social post on march 21. “good, i’m glad he’s dead. he can no longer hurt innocent people! president donald j. trump.”

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