Sclintonwoods

ANIMATED: Roger Sterling, in his element.

A reader nominates a pleasant woman in a South Park hijab:

The Reddit comments are priceless:

For those of you scratching your heads:

Lisa Hix explores the history of female pin-up painters from the genre’s Golden Age, the 1920s through the early 1960s:

“If you really get into it, you begin to see that women have a different way of portraying women than men do, even when they’re all trying to do something sexy for a pin-up calendar or a magazine,” [pin-up art expert Louis K.] Meisel says. “There is a certain sexy look, with black stockings, garters, and emphasis on [Gil] Elvgren, [Alberto] Vargas, and other male pinup artists do. I would say that the women portray very beautiful, idealized women, but the images are less erotic.

“With Pearl Frush, for example, her girls were very beautiful, with wonderful-looking bodies, but it wasn’t so much about being sexy as being the all-American girl. She had less emphasis on breast size and legs than the male artists,” he continues. “Zoë Mozert was often her own model. Usually, she painted a different face, but she used her own body. And I guess in doing so, she had a different idea of what she should look like to men than maybe men would.” … The men tended to make the breasts larger, and they made the legs longer. The women tended to paint very proportionate women, more of a 36-26-36 look, whereas men would make them a little top-heavy.”

(Image: A pin-up painting by Zoë Mozert)

By now everyone has heard the saga of Jay Harris. The former Michigan State wide receiver commit out of Pennsylvania has parted ways with the Spartans to pursue his rap career. There are varying accounts of exactly what happened; Harris claimed it was a mutual decision, and MSU sources are indicating they dropped him like... well, like a Michigan State wide receiver would drop something. But with all the drama of how this went down, one thing got lost in the shuffle: the music.

[Caution: lyrics are very much NSFW]

Harris put together a this epic music video, so it's only fitting that we analyze said video to try to unlock the genius within.

0:00 -

We open on the most hardcore of all yard equipment storage structures, the shed. This particular shed is especially thug, because it is tagged. On the inside. So whoever was inside the shed would know whose shed it was. A lone young man sits, and while we presume him to be our protagonist, but he has not yet told us his name.

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0:04 -

Oh damn, there goes that scholarship. Oh well. Now we can move on to our hero's true talents like...

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0:07 -

...being a fire-breathing dragon.

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0:10 -

"Datbull fo life. Fo fo life. I'm Datbull fo life. Fo life..."

Finally, a flicker of insight into his identity. Yes, our hero has a name. And like most males, he will go by that name for the rest of his life. But apparently he has had trouble in the past convincing people of either his identity or the vehemence with which he will stand by that identity, so he repeats himself several times to drive home his point. He is Datbull, and he shall remain as such for life.

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0:14 -

He seems to have lost focus, though in fairness it seems to be through little fault of his own.

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0:17 -

Mr. Bull has surrounded himself with a group of likeminded compatriots, but one (who may or may not be pre-weight loss Jonah Hill) has been ostracized from the group. He is made to stand behind a gate. This seems unfair, but perhaps there is a good reason. Only time will tell.

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0:27 -

"I'm Datbull fo life. I take yo wife. Take his b*tch and his b*tch..."

Our scene shifts to the pavilion at a local park. Pavilions, of course, are among the thuggest of the open-air structures. What, were you gonna say that pagodas are harder? You think a weak-ass gazebo could survive in the rap game? Hell no. But I hope they reserved that pavilion, because if that Boy Scout Troop shows up, they'll kick you out again. They plan ahead.

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0:40 -

"She dancin' [in close proximity to my genitals] like she practicing that ballet" 

That's... sir, that's not a nice thing to say about his wife.

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1:19 - 

"And there's mollys in the building so you know I'm popping three..."

We return to the safety of the shed, and we are led to notice the amount of seating available. How many gatherings are you hosting in this shed?

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1:29 -

[I have no idea what he's saying]

This is a tactical error by the director. This large pile of money is barely noticeable. That should be fanned out and/or made to rain. This is standard protocol.

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1:34 -

[Something about being Van Gogh if Van Gogh smoked weed]

Another embarrassing mistake with the vehicle shot. We clearly see our cameraman's hand on the 'oh shit' handle.

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1:38 -

Dude, you just got your own words wrong. We need to get out of this car. Go back to the shed. Or the the street. Things were going pretty well in the street.

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1:45 -

"I'm like Jordan to the game but you can call me DB..."

Thank God, we're back on the street. And it appears that Datbull has carried on the recent tradition of Michigan State wide receiver commits, in that he (a) enjoys basketball, and (b) won't end up playing wide receiver at Michigan State.

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2:02 - Ja

They've finally let Jonah Hill out from behind the gate, which DAMNIT JONAH GET YOUR HAND OFF OF YOUR JUNK. We're filming a goddamn music video here. I mean...you know what? No. Get back behind your gate.

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2:08 -

"...you can call me Datbull. Fo life. Fo fo life. Fo life. You know. You know."

The lyrics conclude. But there is still a full 1:18 left in the video. I'm not sure how we're gonna fill that time, but whatever. Once you’ve made your point, there’s really no point in continuing. And I think we’re all pretty clear about the message. Datbull. Fo Life.

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2:15 -

Drugs are bad, mmmkay?

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2:22 -

The group gathers once more under the pavilion. Jonah has been forced to stand to the side. This is for everyone's safety (see: 2:02).

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2:29 -

We fade to black. There are still 57 seconds left in the video. It's clear now how we are going to fill the remaining time: by not.

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2:46 -

And now we're completely dark. Do... do we leave now? I mean, there's still some sound, but it's like they forgot we were still here. Oh well, let's wait to see if there are some special features at the end, like Datbull and his friends eating shawarma.

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3:00 -

Not looking promising.

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3:26 -

Nope. Just a bold and unconventional artistic choice by the artist, as if to say, 'I don't need graphics or lyrics or sounds of any kind. I'm Datbull. Fo life. You know? You know."

Frank Beckmann, the long-time radio voice of the University of Michigan and severely Caucasian right-wing radio host/newspaper columnist, took time out from his normal activities (holding hands with football coaches and singing Josh Groban songs) to explain to his Detroit News audience that African-Americans shouldn’t be ashamed about that whole black people eating fried chicken stereotype because these stereotypes really should be symbols of pride for the African-American community that Frank Beckmann knows and loves so well.

To the politically correct, the mention of fried chicken is an immediate endorsement of slavery rather than a testament to the innovative determination of the American slave population to improve its own physical wellbeing by creating a readily available dish which improved their diet.

Making fried chicken and popularizing it could thus be viewed as an accomplishment that should serve as a testament to the determination of a group of people who found an inventive way to subsist while enduring unimaginable and deplorable living conditions.

But that would remove the opportunity of the political elite to capitalize by creating an atmosphere of victimization.

Right? It’s just so awful how these political elites are always convincing black people that they are victims of centuries-old institutions of slavery and Jim Crow when really those events were opportunities created specifically so African-Americans could demonstrate their “innovative determination” to not starve to death while in the throes of bondage and involuntary servitude.

Finally someone is brave enough to stand up and say slaves and their descendants who’ve been subjected to lynching, de jure and de facto segregation, institutionally-created poverty, and all manner of prejudice are not victims of anything at all. Thankfully, Frank Beckmann mustered the courage to put the “political elite” in their place and to tell the blacks to quit belly-aching and raise those drumsticks like poultry-based torches of freedom, which they totally are!

Why was this simple-minded bigot heroic wingnut talking about fried chicken, you ask? Oh, because Spanish golfer/choke artist Sergio Garcia (zero major wins) upped the ante in his mean girl spat with Tiger Woods (14 majors, second most all-time) by “joking” that he’d serve fried chicken if ever he had Woods over for dinner. Beckmann cares not for you “politically correct” monsters who would attack poor Sergio Garcia because you don’t care for his nuanced, high-brow sense of humor.

Political correctness serves to divide us rather than unite us.

From the sports world, golfer Sergio Garcia is the latest to feel its sting of this simplistic and harmful concept.

Garcia jokingly remarked that he’d try to make amends for his recent on-course dispute with Tiger Woods by having the world’s most famous black golfer – Garcia never mentioned race – over to the house for a dinner of fried chicken.

Gawd dummit, why is political correctness always trying to divide us when Americans of all races, colors, and creeds seek the unifying power of racial stereotypes? It’s like something happened to this country recently to make us not like what we were. What happened to the good old days when blacks were proud of fried chicken stereotypes, when Jews knew it was a compliment to be considered shrewd with money, when Italians didn’t mind that everyone just assumed they were mafia, etc. etc.? Does anyone know? Frank Beckmann, a desperate nation turns to you for answers?

The Garcia controversy, and its aftermath, is more a measure of the thickness of our skin rather than its color.

We would be better served to save our indignation for much more important issues like the overwhelming attacks on American freedom through the dismantling of our Constitution by the current Obama administration. That makes victims out of all us, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity.

Obama! Of course, it’s his fault. It all makes sense now.

Thank you for clearing that up for us voice of University of Michigan football. Go blue!

[Detroit News]

 

To recap: this is a complement to the most recent podcast Steven Attewell and I produced, on “Second Sons,” in which we discussed, among many things, miscommunication at the wedding of Sansa Stark and Tyrion Lannister. I found my contribution to that part of the discussion lacking, so I decided to demonstrate what I meant about Tyrion coming to dominate a scene that possesses real potential for chaos. The first part can be found here and really needs to be read for the following to make sense.

When we left off, what had been a hostile but orderly wedding banquet teetered on the edge of something. Relations had been frosty but fine until Loras Tyrell reminded people how legs work and walked away from the table, which inspired Tyrion to do something with alcohol. His father, Tywin, noticed his clever son noticing Loras and, aware that Tyrion can become a giant fucking lion when the mood strikes, strode across the hall to talk to him. However, his grandson  (twice-over) had a terrible idea: Joffrey “Baratheon” decided to humiliate his former bride-to-be, Sansa, but caught Margaery Tyrell noticing his planning-face and decided she should be part of it too. All of this happened via glances passing between parties. We resume mere seconds after the last post ended, with Tyrion staring at Sansa’s ass:

This is only unusual not only because, in recent episodes, Tyrion’s been shot in a manner that makes his head appear level to those of the people he’s speaking to. From the camera’s perspective, when he spoke to his father, sister or nephew, he’d ceased being a little person. But earlier in this episode, his height — and its relation to his sexual abilities — had been made an issue when he met with Sansa:

Such is what’s required of him not to stare at her ass. The contrast between this shot before the wedding and the one of his father — that’s Twyin behind him in the first image — is part of both Michelle MacClaren, the director, and Tyrion’s respective plans. In order to make himself appear drunker than he actually is, Tyrion abandons the pretense of being the willful supplicant and lets his eyes rest at their natural level. That it happens to coincide with Sansa’s ass is a happy and convenient coincidence that fails to impress his father:

Note that since she’s merely moving the camera up and to the let about a foot, MacClaren could’ve used a conventional two-shot; but because conventional two-shots create the impression of a bond between characters, she shot them individually. This has two effects: it reinforces the notion that these two are only strategically “intimate,” and it allows Tyrion to dominate the screen when he’s on it. That may not seem significant, but it’s important that the audience, at this moment, see Tyrion as someone capable of dominating the screen:

Is his father behind him? Yes, in the literal sense; but only maybe in the colloquial, because Tywin doesn’t know what Tyrion’s planning. But in a scene in which eyelines and eyeline matches are so important, it’s not a coincidence that while Tywin’s staring directly at his son, Tyrion’s refusing to establish eye contact at all. It was his eyes, after all, that gave away the fact that he was planning something earlier, so no matter how very intently his father stares at him:

Tyrion’s going to refuse to meet that stare, which would allow his father further entry into whatever it is he’s planning. It’s significant that the dialogue at this moment is mostly Tywin talking about the importance of his plans for Tyrion and Sansa coming to fruition. It’s as if he’s trying to stare Tyrion into submission, but it’s not working:

Tyrion won’t return his father’s gaze — because in addition to giving away his own plan, it would suggest consenting with his father’s. So he continues to make contact with everything except his father’s eyes. This is where the situation stands when MacClaren pulls the camera back into the only kind of two-shot that doesn’t suggest a bond between characters, i.e. one in which the characters are looking past each other in different directions:

This is a singular variation of the two one-shots of Tyrion and Sansa earlier in the scene. So intent is Tyrion on not making eye contact with his father that he’s failed to notice that Joffrey’s returned. Tywin recognizes the gravity of the situation: Joffrey’s decided that Tyrion and Sansa should be “gently” escorted to their wedding chambers and stripped for all to see, and Tywin isn’t entirely sure how to tell his grandson that this is a foul idea. So he leaves:

Note that as Joffrey enters and calls for Sansa’s public humiliation, he’s looking right at Margaery. The threat isn’t even implicit: he caught her staring at his planning-face and wants her to know exactly how their upcoming nuptials will end. Tyrion isn’t sure what to do. Whatever his plan had been, Joffrey’s has interrupted it, so Tyrion takes a moment to stare at his wine glass again. He may not be sure what to do next, but he’s certain it’ll involve alcohol. Joffrey then seeks approval from his mother:

Or, more accurately, from the chair she recently vacated. Despite the audience’s initial confusion as to where the characters were in space and in relation to each other, at this point it’s clear that Joffrey’s staring at his mother’s empty chair. Sansa, meanwhile, can no more make eye contact with the boy-king than his mother could. She knows the depravities of which he’s capable. The audience, at this moment, is reminded of what happened when Margaery stared directly at him. One does not make eye contact with the boy king. Tyrion agrees:

He continues to stare at the table evaluating his options. He ignores both Joffrey’s taunt and Sansa’s plea. The situation is so unbearable that the audience is happy to follow everyone’s eyelines to the Tyrion, then to the happy couple’s table: better to be staring at the table cloth than dealing with what’s about to happen. And it is about to happen:

Joffrey turns back to the audience generally, and in the direction of the Tyrell table particularly, and reiterates his terrible idea: Sansa shall be carried to her wedding bed and stripped. Publicly. That she’s not included in this shot indicates that this isn’t really about her. Obviously, Joffrey enjoys humiliating her — but his design here is grander and aimed, along with his eyes, on his future in-laws. Tyrion bides time.

Then he doesn’t:

Now this is a lovely little shot. Tyrion’s pretending to be far more intoxicated than he actually is, so initially the fact that this seems to be a shallow focus shot of nothing could be his drunken perspective. It isn’t. Tyrion’s decided to act, and though it’s difficult to see, there’s the thin edge of a blade in front of Sansa’s down-turned face. MacClaren racks the focus to capture Joffrey’s expression:

Tyrion’s just pulled a knife on the king. Joffrey’s face says it all: “You don’t pull a knife on the king! You don’t pull a knife on the king!” Unless you do:

And here’s the close-up the entire scene’s been setting up: Tyrion staring down Joffrey at eye level. He’s no longer Sansa’s willful supplicant: he’s dominating this close-up and he’s a giant fucking lion and no one has any idea what to do or where to look:

Because he’s Joffrey, Joffrey looks to his mother’s empty chair. Tywin seems to be looking there too, a plaintive glance that somehow communicates his disdain for how Cersei’s raised the boy-king. Margeary seems to be the only one who can look at Tyrion — Olenna stares at her staring at him while Sansa studies the floor and silly me I almost forgot Tyrion continues giving Joffrey the eye-fuck of the century:

Who owns this room? Tyrion owns this room. His father’s impressed:

Note that he’s not making direct eye contact with Tyrion though. He’s looking in the right direction, but not high enough to be looking at Tyrion. The perspective’s a little off here because he’s looking at the camera, so I had to approximate his eyeline. There’s other evidence that he’s not looking precisely at Tyrion though:

Joffrey isn’t looking directly at him either. Note that Sansa and Margaery are looking to Tywin for their cues, because everyone seems to realize what happens when the boy-king’s brought to anger. And he’s certainly angry: he’s been forced to lower his eyes to his uncle because he’s suffering what Elizabeth Loftus calls “weapon focus“:

Except it’s not fear that’s blinding him so much as outrage. You do not pull a knife on the king! But he’s not only offended: he’s profoundly disappointed that what should have been Sansa’s humiliating moment has become his. Tyrion’s ruined the evening’s “entertainment.” He’s upset the king. That Joffrey can’t steal his eyes away from the knife is a telling detail: it’s part and parcel of his reluctance to do anything for himself. He’s as much of a Lannister as a person can possibly be, but he lacks the conviction for self-reliance Tywin tried to teach Jaime in that scene. Unlike Ned Stark, who in the first episode of the series beheaded poor Will in a manner befitting a lord, Joffrey orders knights to kill people and executioners to put them down. Sansa, meanwhile, seems to recognize how precarious her situation is and studies the floor so as not to draw Joffrey’s ire further, and that’s when Tywin calls a stop to it:

He shifts his eyes — but not his body — from the Tyrion’s blade to the enraged boy-king. Significantly, it’s while he’s looking at Joffrey that Tyrion finally relents:

He still dominates the screen — and the room for that matter — but he breaks into an ostensibly drunken laugh and eases the tension among the gathered. That he relents doesn’t change the fact that he’s just put the boy-king in his place, publicly, in a moment of enforced humiliation that Joffrey thought would be his. Little as the victory may matter in the long run, on this day Tyrion’s succeeded where Joffrey failed. He’s taken ownership of his own wedding banquet away from the boy-king who thinks the world belongs to him — who thinks he’s the culmination of his grandfather’s lifetime of scheming. And it’s in this moment that Tywin, for once, seems to agree:

Or sees something on the ceiling and decides to look at it. This is the one eyeline that baffled me. Is he looking at Cersei descending from the balcony maybe? Is this an exaggerated glance at Tyrion for the purpose of making him seem “taller” in the eyes of the assembled? I don’t know. But I do know that his estimation of what Tyrion’s accomplished isn’t out of line with mine. It’s just he doesn’t see the point in needlessly annoying the boy-king. Fortunately for the audience, MacClaren’s been watching the show and understands the joy that comes with watching Joffrey impotently roar.

Especially when it’s at his “little uncle” and especially when it’s because he’s interrupted the boy-king’s reindeer games.

David McRaney explains ”survivorship bias” by using an example from WWII:

The military looked at the bombers that had returned from enemy territory. They recorded where those planes had taken the most damage. Over and over again, they saw the bullet holes tended to accumulate along the wings, around the tail gunner, and down the center of the body. Wings. Body. Tail gunner. Considering this information, where would you put the extra armor? Naturally, the commanders wanted to put the thicker protection where they could clearly see the most damage, where the holes clustered. But [statistician Abraham] Wald said no, that would be precisely the wrong decision. Putting the armor there wouldn’t improve their chances at all.

Do you understand why it was a foolish idea? The mistake, which Wald saw instantly, was that the holes showed where the planes were strongest. The holes showed where a bomber could be shot and still survive the flight home, Wald explained. After all, here they were, holes and all. It was the planes that weren’t there that needed extra protection, and they had needed it in places that these planes had not. The holes in the surviving planes actually revealed the locations that needed the least additional armor. Look at where the survivors are unharmed, he said, and that’s where these bombers are most vulnerable; that’s where the planes that didn’t make it back were hit.

The commanders’ mistake is very common: 

After any process that leaves behind survivors, the non-survivors are often destroyed or rendered mute or removed from your view. If failures becomes invisible, then naturally you will pay more attention to successes. Not only do you fail to recognize that what is missing might have held important information, you fail to recognize that there is missing information at all.

You must remind yourself that when you start to pick apart winners and losers, successes and failures, the living and dead, that by paying attention to one side of that equation you are always neglecting the other. If you are thinking about opening a restaurant because there are so many successful restaurants in your hometown, you are ignoring the fact the only successful restaurants survive to become examples. Maybe on average 90 percent of restaurants in your city fail in the first year. You can’t see all those failures because when they fail they also disappear from view.

John Heisman knows a thing or two about relationships, having endured a divorce so nasty he had to leave the city of Atlanta and his job at Georgia Tech in 1919. He's here to answer your questions about relationships, sex, and other frivolities you will soon cut out of your life if you know what's good for you.

Dear John,

My husband and I have a happy marriage for the most part. One area we disagree on is our finances, though. He spends money on things like nights out with the boys drinking, and never blinks. Yet when I want to buy something modest for myself--a new dress, or a spa weekend, something like that--he explodes and says I spend too much money!

He's a good man. But this double standard is creating tension in our marriage, and I've had just enough of it.

Frustrated in Fredericksburg

Your husband is wise. Liquor is an investment; its dividend is the oblivion of the gutter. This is more payoff than 99% of life's swindles offer, so denigrate its honesty at your own credibility's risk.

Dresses and jewelry, however, are but the camouflage for a soldier of the heart. That soldier has one job: to hunt a man, find his weakness, and then strike in the depth of the cold night without mercy.

You should be allowed a certain budget for these martial decorations, harpy. Five dollars a year should be sufficient. Spend it on trinkets and baubles to shine in the dark while your man seeks happiness in the bright caress of the saloon. It shall be the most faithful lover he shall ever know.

Kansas City is a clerical error built on the compound interest charged by ignorance. That is unrelated but true.

To the next piece of poorly scrawled, half-literate correspondence:

Dear John,

My wife is pressing me for child support. I love my children, but I'm having a hard time paying my own rent, much less the exorbitant payments the court demanded I pay per month. Any advice on how to preserve my relationship with my children while getting some relief from my ex-wife?

-Strapped in San Antonio

You gave them life. Provided you have shown them how to fire and clean a pistol and have scowled at them when they displayed emotion, your obligations to them have been discharged. I repeat the advice given to me by my own father: Florida for bankruptcy, Bolivia for disappearance, and death in Mexico.

Dear John,

I'm a very religious person, and am in a dedicated relationship with my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I am also in a committed relationship a beautiful young woman. I am trying to be chaste but it is very difficult, and marriage will not be possible for several years.

Do you have any advice on maintaining a balance between my duties as a Christian? And is kissing permitted, at the least?

--Torn in Tucson

My only advice is to cease this fabrication of a letter. There are no virgins in Arizona. Do not pester me with your lies any further, Mr. Torn.

If this letter is sincere: consummate this relationship immediately with fornication and appropriate payment. $3.75 and no more should be sufficient in the Arizona territories. Do not kiss: it is unsanitary, and could lead to fatal oral diseases.

Dear John,

I'm a bachelor (and happily so), and recently a coworker of mine and his wife not-so-subtly indicated that they'd like to involve me in their amorous activity. I've never tried anything like that, but should I even consider it given that I work with this man? If I go through with it, any logistical pointers?

- Three And Out, Boston

Three And Out, your libertine co-workers are a disgrace to the institution of marriage. When you are married, you betroth yourself and the body which is your temple to the other party and the other party alone. It is a sacred bond, and one between a man and a woman unbroken by the distractions of lust and others outside the marriage.

Fortunately for you, marriage is a lie. Do it. If you should find yourself in the Embrace of the Parisian, and playing the role of Fortunate Pierre, press through. It is unfortunate, but only half as shameful as the roles of the Confused Marcel or Superfluous Celine in the arrangement.

Take no precautions--courage is the greatest and only true prophylactic.

Dear John,

I'm diabetic, and--

I ceased reading your letter immediately, and burned it in a fire of great intensity. Away from my untainted touch, sugar urine vampire.

Dear John,

I'm dating a beautiful lady. She is a widow, and has two children as a result of her previous marriage. We will be living together as one family soon, and I am worried. Do you have any advice for entering their family without disrespecting the memory of their father?

First reassure these children that their father is dead. Remind them that death is forever, and that forever means they will never, ever see him again--not here, and not in some honeyed fairy land dairy farm of the imagination. Begin every interaction this way; it will establish the present as a life-priority, and you as a trusted truth-teller.

Second, put them to work in a place of industry immediately. Textile mills require the tiny skilled hands and boundless energy of youth. Should they lose either, the mines await. Grant them ten percent of their wages in summer, and fifteen in winter for shoes and pants.

As if the Michigan-Ohio State rivalry couldn’t get anymore ridiculous — the schools won’t even refer to each other by their correct names — Michigan has taken it to a whole new level.

Wide receiver Bo Dever posted a photo of the Wolverines new footballs and while they are made in the USA (wooo, patriotism), they are not manufactured in Ohio. See, it says so on the ball. Because a Michigan man would never, ever be caught playing with a football that was produced in that God forsaken state… Or so I’m told.

Personally, I’m not above finding this sort of pettiness between “The School Up North” and “Ohio” entertaining. Branding footballs is mildly ridiculous, but it will no doubt solicit an equally ridiculous reaction from Ohio State.

- - -

H/T r/cfb

Want to join the conversation? Hit us up on Twitter @YahooDrSaturday and be sure to "Like" Dr. Saturday on Facebook for football conversations and stuff you won't see on the blog.

More college football coverage on Yahoo! Sports:
• Alabama’s shattered BCS crystal ball trophy fetches more than $100,000
• Which player could keep Johnny Manziel from another Heisman Trophy?
• Louisville QB Teddy Bridgewater doesn't want Heisman campaign

ANIMATED: Something goes horribly, horribly wrong as Miguel crushes some poor woman’s head

"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

“Go and love some more.”

Harold and Maude (1971)

Dick Trickle's great story came to a tragic end.:

Throughout his racing career, if Dick Trickle was known by the casual sports fan, it was because of his name. But every old NASCAR driver is a great story, and Trickle was no different, until his life came to a sad end on Thursday.

RIP Dick Trickle. He was a man’s man.

"I'm never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don't do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don't even do that any more."

Eastern Michigan needs money, and self-described "rapacious bird" and EMU head coachRon English is going to make this happen even if he has to throw himself out of a plane and take him with you to make it happen.

We have questions and thoughts:

1. Ron English needs sixty grand for facilities. This is something most college fans understand, but the first thing he mentions is re-tiling the bathroom. Never mention something involving large sums of money, and then mention a task capable of being performed in cooperation with your local Lowe's home care expert. "I need a large sum of money for, um...groceries. Yeah. Like eggs and shit."

2. Ron English says the words "sixty thousand dollars" like he's saying "ONE GORILLION DOLLARS." And for a MAC team, this really is well over one gorillion dollars. We're also a little anxious over the hard sell of going to dinner, Ron. We're fine with friendly dinner, but this belle in a hoopskirt ain't turning into a tulip in bloom for anyone on the first date.

3. Alternative theory: Ron English is building the world's first bathroom that is also a weight room. SQUAT WHILE YOU SQUAT, MACsters.

4. English, like David Letterman and Michael Strahan, embraces his tooth-gap. Respect. It's a brand, and it's one you have to work, dammit.

5. Their fundraising page announces EMU as "the Michigan MAC Champions." Every MAC team in Michigan finished at 1-1 in 2012. Central beat Eastern and lost to Western: Western beat Central and lost to Eastern; and finally, Eastern beat Western, but lost to Central. In the "Michigan MAC," it is middle school field day forever. You truly are all champions. The math says so right here.

6. Someone please steal one of those bags filled with $60,000 just laying around a Big Ten administrator or SEC recruiter's office, and give it to Ron English before he kills himself wingsuiting to get Eastern Michigan a new pair of goalposts.

"A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp."

Andrew Sullivan and Freddie Deboer have two pieces up worth checking out. I disagree with Andrew's (though I detect some movement in his position.) Freddie's piece is entitled "Precisely How Not to Argue About Race and IQ." He writes:

The problem with people who argue for inherent racial inferiority is not that they lie about the results of IQ tests, but that they are credulous about those tests and others like them when they shouldn't be; that they misunderstand the implications of what those tests would indicate even if they were credible; and that they fail to find the moral, analytic, and political response to questions of race and intelligence.

I think this is a good point, but I want to expand it. Most of the honest writing I've seen on "race and intelligence" focuses on critiquing the idea of "intelligence." So there's lot of good literature on whether it can be measured, its relevance in modern society, whether intelligence changes across generations, whether it changes with environment, and what we mean when we say IQ. As Freddie mentions here, I had a mathematician stop past to tell me I needed to stop studying French, and immediately start studying statistics -- otherwise I can't possibly understand this debate.

It's a fair critique. My response is that he should stop studying math and start studying history.

I am not being flip or coy. If you tell me that you plan to study "race and intelligence" then it is only fair that I ask you, "What do you mean by race?" It's true I don't always do math so well, but I understand the need to define the terms of your study. If you're a math guy, perhaps your instinct is to point out the problems in the interpretation of the data. My instinct is to point out that your entire experiment proceeds from a basic flaw -- no coherent, fixed definition of race actually exists.

The history bears this out. In 1856, Ralph Waldo Emerson delineated the significance of race:

It is race, is it not, that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus "on the Manners of the Germans," not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.

Indeed, Emerson in 1835, saw race as central to American greatness:

The inhabitants of the United States, especially of the Northern portion, are descended from the people of England and have inherited the trais of their national character...It is common with the Franks to break their faith and laugh at it The race of Franks is faithless.

Emerson was not alone, as historian James McPherson points out, Southerners not only thought of themselves as a race separate from blacks, but as a race apart from Northern whites:

The South's leading writer on political economy, James B. D. De Bow, subscribed to this Norman-Cavalier thesis and helped to popularize it in De Bow's Review. As the lower-South states seceded one after another during the winter of 1860-61, this influential journal carried several long articles justifying secession on the grounds of irreconcilable ethnic differences between Southern and Northern whites. "The Cavaliers, Jacobites, and Huguenots, who settled the South, naturally hate, contemn, and despise the Puritans who settled the North," proclaimed one of these articles. "The former are a master-race; the latter a slave race, the descendants of Saxon serfs." The South was now achieving its "independent destiny" by repudiating the failed experiment of civic nationalism that had foolishly tried in 1789 to "erect one nation out of two irreconcilable peoples."

Similarly, in 1899 William Z. Ripley wrote The Races of Europe, which sought to delineate racial difference through head-type:

The shape of the human head by which we mean the general proportions of length, breadth, and height, irrespective of the " bumps " of the phrenologist is one of the best available tests of race known. Its value is, at the same time, but imperfectly appreciated beyond the inner circle of professional anthropology. Yet it is so simple a phenomenon, both in principle and in practical application, that it may readily be of use to the traveller and the not too superficial observer of men.

To be sure, widespread and constant peculiarities of head form are less noticeable in America, because of the extreme variability of our population, compounded as it is of all the races of Europe; they seem also to be less fundamental among the American aborigines. But in the Old World the observant traveller may with a little attention often detect the racial affinity of a people by this means.

Two years later, Edward A. Ross sought to apprehend "The Causes of Race Superiority." He saw the differences between the Arab "race" and the Jewish "race" as a central illustration:

It is certain that races differ in their attitude toward past and future. M. Lapie has drawn a contrast between the Arab and the Jew. The Arab remembers; he is mindful of past favors and past injuries. He harbors his vengeance and cherishes his gratitude. He accepts everything on the authority of tradition, loves the ways of his ancestors, forms strong local attachments, and migrates little. The Jew, on the other hand, turns his face toward the future. He is thrifty and always ready for a good stroke of business, will, indeed, join with his worst enemy if it pays. He is calculating, enterprising, migrant and ambitious

You can see more of this here.

Our notion of what constitutes "white" and what constitutes "black" is a product of social context. It is utterly impossible to look at the delineation of a "Southern race" and not see the Civil War, the creation of an "Irish race" and not think of Cromwell's ethnic cleansing, the creation of a "Jewish race" and not see anti-Semitism. There is no fixed sense of "whiteness" or "blackness," not even today. It is quite common for whites to point out that Barack Obama isn't really "black" but "half-white." One wonders if they would say this if Barack Obama were a notorious drug-lord.

When the liberal says "race is a social construct," he is not being a soft-headed dolt; he is speaking an historical truth. We do not go around testing the "Irish race" for intelligence or the "Southern race" for "hot-headedness." These reasons are social. It is no more legitimate to ask "Is the black race dumber than then white race?" than it is to ask "Is the Jewish race thriftier than the Arab race?"

The strongest argument for "race" is that people who trace their ancestry back to Europe, and people who trace most of their ancestry back to sub-Saharan Africa, and people who trace most of their ancestry back to Asia, and people who trace their ancestry back to the early Americas, lived isolated from each other for long periods and have evolved different physical traits (curly hair, lighter skin, etc.)

But this theoretical definition (already fuzzy) wilts under human agency, in a real world where Kevin Garnett, Harold Ford, and Halle Berry all check "black" on the census. (Same deal for "Hispanic.") The reasons for that take us right back to fact of race as a social construct. And an American-centered social construct. Are the Ainu of Japan a race? Should we delineate darker South Asians from lighter South Asians on the basis of race? Did the Japanese who invaded China consider the Chinese the same "race?"

Andrew writes that liberals should stop saying "truly stupid things like race has no biological element." I agree. Race clearly has a biological element -- because we have awarded it one. Race is no more dependent on skin color today than it was on "Frankishness" in Emerson's day. Over history of race has taken geography, language, and vague impressions as its basis.

"Race," writes the great historian Nell Irvin Painter, "is an idea, not a fact." Indeed. Race does not need biology. Race only requires some good guys with big guns looking for a reason.

Nothing to see here.

From 1951.

This came up in comments to the anti-Chinese post from yesterday. Some of you have no doubt seen this, others have not. From Time Magazine, December 1941.

ANIMATED: A disturbing Anderson Cooper GIF.

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The Internet seen through the lens of Law & Order:

It’s been rediscovered in pre-war scholarship:

For years, people in Eastern Europe’s Balkan region have known that kidney bean leaves trap bedbugs, sort of like a natural fly paper. In the past, those suffering from infestations would scatter the leaves on the floor surrounding their bed, then collect the bedbug-laden greenery in the morning and destroy it. In 1943, a group of researchers studied this phenomenon and attributed it to microscopic plant hairs called trichomes that grow on the leaves’ surface to entangling bed bug legs. They wrote up their findings in “The action of bean leaves against the bedbug,” but World War II distracted from the paper and they wound up receiving little attention for their work.

After doing new tests based on the old report, researchers have confirmed the leaves’ effectiveness and are already trying to fabricate synthetic surfaces that mimic their entrapping properties. Video demonstration here.

I guess the answer to what goes best with beef is supposed to be Jello, but the real answer is whiteness.

I also so want some Western Roundup Salad, the name of the recipe at the bottom.

As your attorney, I recommend not saying that.

Behold primitive man:

He's doing so many fantastic things you cannot do: wearing his beard as long as he wants, carrying a flaming tree branch around wherever he goes, killing a wooly mammoth with a spear, and dying by 30. Like, guaranteed dead-by-30, most likely toothless, illiterate, scarred like a brothel's most worn-out dildo, and with some truly horrendous ideas about the notion of sexual consent and property rights. You want to be paleo, bro? Dying by thirty pantsless and starving would be the most paleo thing you could do, bro. You should probably die right now for maximum authenticity and authentic quality of life-ness.

Pantsless is the crucial term here. Pants are awful for everyone everywhere, the smothering twin-tubed oppression voluntarily belted, buttoned, and in some cases crammed onto and around miserable legs, asses, and personal parts from Tangiers to Tianjin. Pants are the most popular form of lower body covering in the world. This would be an endorsement for people who confuse ubiquity for quality. In other news: people love Internet Explorer, Time Warner Cable, and cancer, and this is a fucking stupid way to think about anything.

All pants and pants parts are terrible, but all in different ways.

PLEATS. No. Pleats could be, in theory, a way to tuck a big piece of fabric into a smaller space, and thus leave room for future expansion. We have scissors and cheap pants made by child labor now, and there is thus no reason to ever have them.

But they're slimming. Fat bros, the pleat is never slimming. It takes your waist and turns it into a piece of delicately puffed pastry, and makes it appear you have grown a doily over your genitals, and then cinched it between the legs. Sit down and you turn into a half-assed Zouave. If you have one gut, it creates two. If you have two guts, it creates a quantum universe of infinite guts. In none of those possible universes do any of them look good.

The chinstrap beard, pleats, and hawaiian shirts are all fraudy little hooks you keep swallowing in the hopeless effort to not accept your physique and do what fat men have been doing with dignity for years: DRESSING LIKE THE ETERNAL, UNDYING KING OF UNKILLABLE FAT MEN, JOHN MADDEN.

They even turn skinny men into garnished inverted turkey drumsticks. Look at Matt Damon, and how when costume designers wanted him to look like an utter goddamn loser they made the easiest, most logical choice: pleat him up and let the fumes of sorrow and mediocre taste waft from the seams of every deep crease.

One man is allowed to wear pleats: Alvin Wyatt, former head coach at Bethune-Cookman.

Alvin also lived in the dorms at BCC to save money. He pulled both off, and you cannot because you are not Alvin motherfuckin' Wyatt. Do not even attempt it.

SKINNY JEANS. We have taken you and strapped a bomb to the ankle cuff of these skinny jeans. We have made the jeans wet. You have five minutes to get out of the jeans. You can attempt to take them off, or you can use this hacksaw to cut your foot off just above the ankle. You're going to be using the saw. We don't advocate picking your pants based on hypothetical Mad Max/Saw scenarios, but it must be at least a small part of your decision-making process. You won't regret seeing photos of yourself in these in ten years. Nope. Not one bit.

THAT POCKET WITHIN A POCKET. If you have ever used this you are on drugs or sell them. That is the only thing anyone has ever used this pocket, ever.

WHAT CUT IS RIGHT FOR ME? None of them. You don't even know what any of them mean. Target sells boot cut jeans for twenty dollars, and there is exactly one part of that sentence the average Target shopper understands: these pants cost twenty dollars. I have that many dollars in my bank account, and my other pants have holes in them. Most men's drawers contain four or five pairs of pants bought because they fit at the waist and cost somewhere around twenty American dollars. All pants look stupid because you are a bipedal ape, not because you picked a bad cut.

KHAKIS. Horrible. Only Dr. Dre in 1991 made them work. Wearing Khakis for a white man is to surrender to being at best an undercover agent in Golf Narnia. If you wear khakis while watching HGTV and drinking a craft beer, your penis will shrink up inside you and turn into a third backup kidney that emits a low hum of Dave Matthews' "Satellite" when examined by MRI.

PATTERNED PANTS OF ANY SORT. Just khakis with an earring, a tattoo, and an interesting recent divorce to talk about.

FLAT FRONTS: no one wants to see your penis, but you've never cared what other people think of you.

CARPENTER JEANS. If you can't fit a Sega Dreamcast into each and every pocket, get with the fucking program

CARGO PANTS. Because you love work and carrying shit around so much that you built an entire pair of pants around the notion of becoming a walking, sack-assed trundle of distracted clutter on the hoof. The overloaded Okie Dust Bowl Flatbed With Your Entire Life Packed Into It of pants, because you're gonna go to Californy and eat grapes and let the juices just a-run down yer beard! God, we're so glad the grandfather in Grapes of Wrath dies and dies hard.

DICKIES. There is no designer cut; the legs are the same circumference the whole way down. They were designed to fit a double-barrel anti-aircraft gun.

FATIGUES. They're really comfortable, but you risk being confused for someone terrible like a white supremacist, or a Goth, or Jeremy Shockey.

CAPRIS. The mindbending pant that from a distance makes you say tiny pants....OR HUGE HUMAN?

SWEATPANTS. The gentleman's choice, and the only really honest pair of pants in the world. Rather than insist pants have some innate virtue, and get at least one thing right, sweatpants achieve the highest degree of pants nobility by getting everything wrong at once: simultaneously too big and too small, too hot and yet not warm enough, unflattering at every single angle, sweatpants are incapable of telling any lies. They are a ramshackle, poorly made series of tubes that cover half the body, and tell everyone around you the basics: genital size and location, basic fitness, inattention to detail, and lack of willingness to live or even try anymore by doing things like paying your bills, obeying basic civil codes, or caring.

Everyone on C.O.P.S. ever wore sweatpants, because criminals never lie with anything but their mouths. Sweatpants are a signature on the social contract that reads "Mybutt Yerface, Esq." In your most honest moments, they're all you would ever wear if you had to wear pants.

CORDUROYS. Only fun because brushing one leg against the grain and then smoothing the other out around a person with OCD is the quietest, nonviolent form of torture you can ever engage in against another human. Corduroys are made of rejected pie crusts. One time a man in corduroys thought about sitting down. He exploded, and is dead.

TRACK PANTS. Cousin Niko Bellic America is the land of dreams you just have to out and take it preferably with a rocket launcher--

Thanks to Jon and Janie for important pants contributions.

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"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."