interesting things
It seems like about half my friends have split town in the last decade or so, and I totally sort of understand, though I deeply resent the following excuses that I’ve heard from some of the defect…
Continue reading “The Five Worst Reasons For Leaving NYC” >
Historian Tony Perrotet discusses how the ancient Games more closely resembled some combination of Woodstock, Red Light Districts, and cage-fighting than the current Costas/Seacrest vibe:
The combat events on the fourth day were very popular with the rank and file. The wrestling was similar to today’s Greco-Roman wrestling. But the boxing was more exotic. Guys pummeled each other to the head using their fists with leather thongs wrapped around them. Body blows were actually forbidden. There were no rounds and no weight restrictions. There are vivid tales of people’s faces being pummeled to a bloody pulp. One boxer didn’t want to give his opponent the satisfaction of knocking out his teeth, so he swallowed them all.
Meanwhile, prostitutes could make the equivalent of a year’s revenue in just five days. But women weren’t excluded from competition:
The [women’s] games were held at Olympia and dedicated to Zeus’s consort Hera. The young women ran in short tunics with their right breast exposed as an homage to the Amazon warrior women, a race of female super warriors that was believed to have cauterized their right breasts so as not to impede their javelin throwing.
Doping was also a thing back then:
Forget anabolic steroids in easy-to-swallow tablets, or EPO in clean syringes. Ancient Olympic dopers got their pre-Games hormone boost from chewing on raw animal testicles.
I prefer mine lightly sauteed.
(Sketch: Olympia in Ancient Greece from the Pierers Universal-Lexikon, 1891.)
via The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/08/the-ancient-olympics-more-hbo-than-nbc.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+andrewsullivan%2FrApM+%28The+Daily+Dish%29
Staring down the barrel of bankruptcy, an Arizona State University doctoral student with Stage 4 colon cancer who ran out of insurance money to cover his treatment decided he had nothing to lose by tweeting the CEO of his health insurance company and asking for help.
Much to Arijit Guha’s surprise, Mark T. Bertolini not only responded, but by the end of their two-day conversation, the CEO of Aetna agreed to cover “every last penny” of his medical bills.
“The system is broken, and I am committed to fixing it,” Bertolini tweeted last Friday.
Guha had been paying $400 a month for a fairly robust student health-insurance plan, but after being diagnosed with cancer last year, the 31-year-old’s expenses quickly mounted, surpassing the plan’s $300,000 lifetime cap.
According to ABC News, lifetime caps have been eliminated by the Affordable Healthcare Act, but Inside Higher Ed says the caps are still in effect for student plans.
“I am incredibly pleased and in shell shock and trying to figure out what just happened. It’s a huge relief,” Guha told ABCNews.com.
Though he can certainly use all the help he can get in paying off his massive medical tab, Guha has been hard at work raising money through his own website. His “Poop Strong” campaign — a play on Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong wristband initiative — has raised over $120,000 according to ABC.
Guha’s cancer is currently in remission, and, with Aetna covering the cost of his treatments for the rest of the year, the Arizona Republic says he plans on donating the funds he raised to cancer charities so they can benefit others in need.
[photo via @Poop_Strong]
NBC says they hear the criticism of their XXX Summer Olympics coverage. “Some of it is fair, and we are listening, said NBC Sport’s Mark Lazarus today. “We knew it wasn’t going to be perfect,†added the Group Chairman. Asked about NBC editing out the fall of Russia’s Ksenia Afanasyeva in Tuesday’s gymnastics event to create suspense for a U.S. team Gold win, Lazaus said it was cut “in the interests of timeâ€. He added that “it was immaterial to the outcome†of the U.S. team’s Gold win. “All of the drama was about the US performance, not what the Russians did or did not achieve, said Lazarus. “It did nothing to alter the suspenseâ€. In a conference call from London, Lazarus and NBC Research’s Alan Wurtzel sought to address the criticism that the network has received for its tape delay of the XXX Summer Olympics from London, most noticeably the Opening Games on July 27. Noting time zone difference and other limitations, the NBC Sports boss said “our preference is to do things liveâ€. Lazarus added that he hopes the 2016 Olympics Opening Ceremony from Rio will be live.â€Â Lazarus also said that it was a “regretful†moment when a promo was shown on the East Coast of Missy Franklin winning a gold medal before the race was actually broadcast in the States and the network has installed a back-up system to ensure such a mistake doesn’t happen again. “We will continue to innovate our coverageâ€, Lazarus noted later “There is no way for us to show all live action in the US in primetime,†he said. “With so many simultaneous events going on, you cannot physically show everything liveâ€, added the Group Chairman. “The ratings are strong and our business partners are pleasedâ€, said Lazarus, reiterating that NBC will break even on the Games and predicting they might even make “a little bit of money.†NBC are “over delivering in all areas†on air, online and social media, Lazarus also noted. During its first days, the London Olympics have consistently beaten the 2008 Beijing Games in the ratings. The Olympics from the UK drawing over 35.8 million viewers on the opening weekend, making it the most watched Summer Games opening weekend ever. Wurtzel predicted that the London Games could well end up being in the Top 5 most watched TV events ever.
Related: NBC Edited Out Women’s Gymnastics Fall To Create Fake Gold Medal Suspense
NBC ‘Today’ Promo On Missy Franklin Spoils Net’s Coverage Of Swimming Win
No Fury Like Live Olympics Viewers Scorned
NBC Hammered Back Home For Not Airing Live From London
via Deadline.com http://www.deadline.com/2012/08/nbc-sports-summer-olympics-coverage-criticism-gymnastics-misssy-franklin/
The campaign is pushing against the press after remarks that sparked frustration in Palestine.
via POLITICO Top Stories http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/romney-strategist-gets-into-jschool-game-130888.html
After months of wrangling, the Senate on Thursday rejected White House calls and failed to advance sweeping legislation aimed at protecting American computer networks from cyberattacks.
The cloture vote to end debate on the bill was 52-46, short of the 60 votes needed to advance the measure.
“Despite the President’s repeated calls for Congress to act on this legislation, and despite pleas from numerous senior national security officials from this Administration and the Bush Administration, the politics of obstructionism, driven by special interest groups seeking to avoid accountability, prevented Congress from passing legislation to better protect our nation from potentially catastrophic cyber-attacks,” the White House said in a statement, calling the situation a “profound disappointment.”
via Homepage http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/cybersecurity-bill-fails-to-advance-in-senate-20120802
The best things in life! They are free. And while I wouldn’t consider a pap smear among the “best things in life,†reproductive health for women in general is a pretty great thing. And now a bunch of the stuff I’ve been paying for since I became a real lady are all FREE. (Well, nominally, at least—true change takes time, apparently, even after it is a law upheld by the Supreme Court. For now: Women with new indie insurance plans get co-pay-free birth control; the rest of us have to wait another year until a grandfather clause expires. But don’t worry gals, the year-long wait can be fun if you turn your BC packets into a fun DIY countdown calendar, just google “birth control countdown calendar diy craft”). BUT LET’S JUST GO WITH IT, SHALL WE?
I’ve been feeling sort of meeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh about being a woman in this brave nation as of late, what with everyone and their Republican uncle discussing what I may and may not do with my vagina, uterus, and ovaries. But today I am proud, and grateful and … really shocked. Not that it should’ve taken this long. My body is and has been a wonderland for the entirety of my life, but now at least the government is recognizing the costs it take to keep it that way.
Read the rest at The Billfold.
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via The Awl http://thebillfold.com/2012/08/this-online-shopping-excursion-brought-to-you-by-obamacare/
Though it was overshadowed nationally by the Texas Senate runoff, Georgia held its primary elections yesterday. But the elected-official campaigns (including two highly competitive GOP congressional primaries which produced runoffs) were almost entirely eclipsed–and were in some cases affected–by a complex set of regional transportation sales tax referenda that mostly went down to resounding defeat.
The so-called TSPLOST (for Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax) referenda were the unwanted child of a state desperately in need of transportation money (particularly in the famously gridlocked metro Atlanta area) and a Republican-controlled legislature unwilling to increase taxes for any purpose (other than maybe to raise income tax rates for poor people, as it did in 2011). In a scheme engineered by former Republican Gov. Sonny Perdue, the legislature authorized twelve regional votes to self-impose a temporary penny sales tax dedicated to a list of specific transportation projects agreed to by local elected officials.
Even though the “Yes on TSPLOST” campaign was backed by current GOP Gov. Nathan Deal and other GOP leaders, and by most prominent Georgia Democrats (most notably Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and former Gov. Roy Barnes), not to mention virtually every business group in the state (who paid for a lavish and virtually unopposed $8 million ad budget) it went down to flaming defeat in nine of the 12 regions, including Atlanta, where it lost by a 63-37 margin. The regions encompassing the mid-sized cities of Augusta and Columbus did narrowly approve TSPLOST, but it was mostly just a disaster.
The results in Atlanta exhibited a rare liberal/Tea Party coalition, with the Tea Folk opposing the referendum vociferously (some on grounds that it would foster the communistic idea of “planning”, and some on the quasi-racial grounds that expansion of rail service would boost crime in the suburbs) while the Sierra Club and the NAACP rejected it late in the campaign for diametrically opposed reasons (not enough emphasis on rail and/or the regressive nature of sales taxes).
The net effect of the referenda beyond very bad publicity for Atlanta will be to give Gov. Deal a lot of centralized control over transportation projects in the state. But more generally, it showed the continuing price Republican pols in many parts of the country are paying for their relationship with the Tea Folk, whom they alternately pander to and then ignore. You can’t endlessly demagogue about taxes and Big Government and the urban “looters” seeking to despoil virtuous middle-class suburbanites and then turn around and expect said suburbanites to support sensible regional transportation policies. The TSPLOST vote gave Georgia Tea Folk the opportunity to simultaneously stick it to cowardly GOP leaders, the minority-dominated City of Atlanta, and untrustworthy business leaders (who should have been out there creating jobs instead of asking for tax dollars), and they took it with both hands.
via Political Animal http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_08/a_big_no_in_georgia038947.php
When Apple acquired AuthenTec last week, neither company issued a statement or a news release on the deal, which underscores the hard bargaining tactics of the technology giant.
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/apples-quiet-deal-for-authentec/
Could India’s power outage have been caused by magnetic eruptions on the sun?
via NYT > Most Recent Headlines http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/did-solar-storms-cause-indias-massive-blackout/
