Four tasty links to provoke your appetites:
"Is Food the New Sex?"
Mary Eberstadt makes a tantalizing survey sketch of a hypothesized switcheroo between our food and sexual mores in the past decades. Fifty years ago, where food ethics quietly lingered in a dim broom closet, a set of cultural standards demarcating sexual boundaries enlisted the active support of the common woman. Now, Eberstadt argues, these roles have reversed...but will a persistent concern for social problems and research damn the epoch of thoughtless, convenient sex as thoroughly as the age of thoughtless, convenient food?
Battier the Outlier
Another excellent piece of NYTimes sports journalism profiles the Houston Rockets' Shane Battier as a complete anomaly in the world of professional basketball, who also ironically serves as the poster-manchild for the burgeoning effort to translate the "Moneyball" practice of statistical analysis from baseball to basketball. Beyond providing a window into the fascinating and wholly unique Battier, Michael Lewis also pushes against the fundamental ethos we have about success and perception in team sports, while obliquely begging intriguing questions about faith in ideological process and practice.
Sex, Lies, and Journalism in Portland
An uneven analysis of the controversy currently engulfing Portland's mayor, Sam Adams, who recently admitted to an improper relationship with a then-teen intern. A tired story, save for the lemon twist: Adams wasn't chasing skirts, but well-pressed and fitting trousers. How does the sexual orientation of the first openly gay mayor of an American metropolis alter our sense of impropriety or outrage? Should it? Ought standards even be consistent?
"Reading the Signs"
Lastly, an oddball little article about subway graffiti and schizophrenia with a tart moral at the finish. Particularly when read in tandem with Eberstadt's essay, Dalrymple's thoughts jab the prioritized order of individual and social ethics. What problems can _I_ change, what can _we_ change? Does the problem most personal, the problem closest to us with a human face, take automatic priority?
1 comment:
Freedarko has a provocative paragraph about Battier's multiple identities:
"think about Battier: Sure, he appeals to conservative fans and lacks swagger, but he's also long, versatile, and has been known to make pinpoint, aggressive plays. You follow from there. "Meshing so well that he became hard to see" is a statement about style, but it's also a reflection on identity. Battier's neither a black guy playing white, or someone whose white game is arrived at through means often associated with a certain stran of black player (the difference between Battier and Outlaw is. . . ). Granted, most of this is pat, but if Battier is next level when it comes to this "flow of the game" stuff, it might not be by coincidence that he also confounds easy race-based stereotypes on the court. He doesn't transcend oppositions; instead, he hangs out in everyone's margins, impossible to explain and thus posing a riddle to both sides. That shared terrain, that intersection of margins, is vast and unexplored, and it's only natural it would give rise to new kinds of players and a new way of seeing the game."
The most interesting thing about the Lewis piece is the continual implication that Battier is not just the de jure example of what the new stats measure, but he drives the development of the stats. Morey has such a complete belief in Shane that he develops new metrics just to measure what Shane does, and then normalizes everyone else in relation to Shane. Mmmm, taste the transgressivity.
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