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Boxing at Workers’ Gymnasium
I attended Olympic boxing Saturday night with Jiujiu and wrote a story for ESPN The Blog that was published today. I’ve reproduced excerpts of an unedited version below.
Let’s just say the bouts didn’t get good until the Chinese took on the French, in the fourth bout of our evening. Then hell broke loose in the arena.
“The Sweet Science.” It could mean many things yet nothing at all, and so it is that boxing is likewise hard to pinpoint. Is it a science for its technicality or art for the humanistic exhilaration of mano a mano battle? Is it sport or brutality? Is it competition or assault? Throw the phrase “boxing is called the sweet science because” into Google and you won’t come any closer to an answer (”Boxing is called the sweet science because thats what it really is when you watch the best fight” [sic]). The best you can hope for is to take a seat and soak it in.
That’s why we were at Workers’ Gymnasium Saturday night, taking in eight pre-quarters bouts in the light fly (48 kg) division. Amateur boxing may be under fire for its scoring system, which awards points for punches deemed successful (”They way it is now, you might as well do fencing if they are going to judge like that,” Britain’s Billy Joe Saunders said after he lost his welterweight fight last Thursday), but that doesn’t detract from the excitement of being in the venue. One bout in particular comes to mind.
…
Yanez was gracious in defeat, congratulating his opponent and going over to shake hands with the Mongolian trainers. He exited with dignity, even as an unpopular decision — yet another in a string of many — left fans shaking their heads. Science? Hardly. If but only for the saving grace of sweetness.
At the soccer game last night…
Brazil vs. Nigeria in the final game of group play at Workers’ Stadium in Beijing, there was a spectacular goal that I just happened to get on my camera. Check it out:
UPDATE: Something about copyright infringement.
Maybe it’s the crowd — ours was announced at 51,112 — or maybe it’s because we happened to catch two good games with seven goals scored between them, but the experience of soccer at a live venue really is different from watching it on TV. I enjoyed the heck out of it, for tickets that cost 150 kuai each (not expensive at all). (Actually, Zhang Wei bought them for myself and Mingyu, so they were free.)
There were fans, excitement, marchers and Fuwas… what else could one want?
Later on the concourse I saw a poor, defenseless white girl holding a Visa sign get swarmed by hordes of picture seekers, most of them Chinese. The first person who did it probably truly wanted a picture of a foreigner, and this was an easy target. The second one was thinking the same thing. Thirty minutes later, well… let’s just say people were doing it to amuse themselves. The expression on her face said “Help me.”
I started taking video because this was much too hilarious to go undocumented:
The late game saw Sweden beat Canada 2-1. There’s not much to report — a couple really nice goals — except the pre-game offered something… different.
Because we all like cheerleaders, here’s the Beijing cheerleading squad dancing to Rihanna’s “Please Don’t Stop the Music” and a tune from High School Musical, “We’re All in This Together.” Time (surprisingly) has a better video for you here.
A fun night all-around.
HYPOCRISY AT TEMPLE UNIVERSITY
A Temple professor of Military history said of DeJohn, veterans are “mentally imbalanced” because we are “trained to kill,” quite an unusual attitude for a professor of military history.
Christian DeJohn, a former Temple graduate student and sergeant in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard, won a lawsuit against the University so-called ‘speech code’ when the 3rd District Court of Appeals ruled it unconstitutional.
DeJohn said he was refused a graduate degree based on his political views. He said he received anti-war e-mails from Temple faculty while deployed in Bosnia during 2002, when he asked that the emails be stopped that led to political disputes with his graduate advisers and those disputes, he said, led to his being denied his graduate degree and other retaliation and degradation, for instance:
The University denied wrong doing saying, “His academic performance just wasn’t good enough, It had nothing to do with his First Amendment rights and had everything to do with Temple professors’ academic freedom to grade a student’s poorly written, poorly constructed … thesis.”
The Court agreed defended Temple University upholding the university’s academic freedom to evaluate his performance as a student. Those claims were not part of the Third Circuit appeal. But, it found for DeJohn awarding him one dollar damages on his original complaints.
FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and ADF (Alliance Defense Fund) won the case for DeJohn challenging the constitutionality of a sexual harassment policy that, in part, penalized “expressive, visual or physical conduct … (that) has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work, educational performance or status, or … has the purpose or effect of creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive environment.” DeJohn claimed that because of the code, he felt unable to freely express his views about the role of women in the military. That ran him afoul of University professors and advisers.
His was a pyrrhic victory leaving him absent a time consuming and costly graduate degree. Temple has changed its so-called “speech code” –I wonder about its hypocrisy.
Call to Islamic prayer “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
What do you think about Obama’s comments and what did he mean about Alabamans?
The resurrection and reexamination of a then largely unnoticed New York Times interview is again making ripples and raising questions about Barack Obama.
“I was a little Jakarta street kid,” Barack Obama told the New York Times a year ago, and he said he once got in trouble for making faces during Koran study classes in his elementary school. He said as president he is less likely to stereotype Muslims as fanatics - and more likely to be aware of their nationalism - since he once studied the Koran with them.
Obama recalled the opening lines of the Arabic call to prayer, reciting them with a first-rate accent according to the New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof who also reported Obama saying “It’ll give Alabama voters heart attacks.”
Obama also described the call to Islamic prayers as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.”
Sean Hannity discussed Kristof’s article today, Tuesday, July 29, 2008 on his afternoon radio program. What do you think?
Fiduciary Fornication At Dewey Decimal Headquarters
Sacramento Library Joins lengthening list of things that don’t work in California.
California looks like it is coming apart at the seams amid fiduciary fornication and outright corruption including the crooks running the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. But. one of the worst examples is the calamity at the Sacramento Library with $2.2 million paid to an array of consultants - included to companies owned by spouses and friends of staffers since 2002 with dubious results and $650,000 in improper billings on just one contract. $4.6 million in fines, fee, and missing books have gone uncollected. and its security chief has been indicted for fraud and felony theft charges. When the finance director blew the whistle last year he was fired and is suing for $200,000. Despite recommendation she be fired Library Director Anne Marie Gold is still collecting her $145,000 salary
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Gave Jesse Jackson Tens of Thousand at Same time as Grabing TAXPAPYER BAILOUT
Campaign Launched to Expose and Stop Those Who Finance Jackson Lavish Living.
At the same time Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were melting down earlier this month they were shoveling tens of thousands of dollars to Jesse Jackson. They are not alone but their largess is a scandal for what is defacto two concerns that depend on taxpayer money to bail out their profligacy. The fact that Anheuser-Busch, Bank of America, Boeing, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Ford, General Motors, Goldman Sachs, GE, PepsiCo, and Shell. fork over hundreds of thousands rather than risk a shakedown by the notorious race baiter is something for their shareholders to stop. Taxpayers and shareholders should scream and stop their wallets from being pilfered. It has worked in the past; i.e., in 2005 the NYSE had ended support of Jackson’s groups as a result of such protests.
Jackson is in the spotlight for saying he wanted to cut Barack Obama’s N***S off, and using the “N” work in the same context. “Rev” Jesse Jackson is notorius for playing the emperor of “racial justice” that supports his lavish and often questionable lifestyle and using his “constitutency” to act against those who do not “play ball” with him.
The National Legal and Policy Center has launched a campaign to expose Jackson supporters and dry up stock holder and taxpayer money.
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