A Daughter’s Revenge
[Not single-page] Brigitte Harris was sexually abused by her father for years, before she decided to stop him from ever doing it to anyone again. She’s now in prison for second degree manslaughter, with a parole hearing this week:
“The first thing she learned was that it could be done. ‘Everyone always focuses on Lorena Bobbitt because it’s the most popular. But each and every case I researched, no one died.’ She read about cases in China and in Europe. ‘And I start seeing how to do it without actually killing him.’ On June 26, she bought a package of 50 scalpels on eBay for $6.83, including shipping.
“On July 25, Harris had her final argument with Carleen. On her home video, titled ‘My Reasons,’ she mentions Carleen’s children explicitly. ‘We both know what he wants to do with them.’ She talks about what she’s about to do. ‘Somebody’s got to do something,’ she says on the video.”
The Glass Wall
Forty years after Title IX, the number of female college athletes has soared, but the number of female college coaches has dropped. What happened?
“Some blame the dropoff on a shallow pool of female candidates, who often aren’t as eager to apply for jobs, let alone pack up and move, as men. But there are more pernicious reasons as well. First is an old-fashioned sexism that gives men a chance to coach women’s programs but squelches any thought of hiring a woman to coach men. There is also an ingrained homophobia that quietly pressures women to hire male assistants so as to combat any appearance of a ‘gay’ program.
“One other theme came up again and again during espnW’s dozens of interviews: a lack of second chances for female coaches. Male coaches, particularly in men’s sports, often pass through a revolving door whenever they lose a job—from Bob Knight to Rick Neuheisel to Rich Rodriguez. But women fear they are much more likely to be one and done.”
The God of Gamblers
Macau’s rise as the new global gambling capital leads to complications for the Las Vegas casinos that have flocked to China for a piece of the action. Its differences are illustrated in the God of Gamblers case, in which a former barber named Siu Yun Ping won $13 million, setting off a chain of events, including a murder plot:
“The files of the God of Gamblers case can be read as a string of accidents, good and bad: Siu’s run at the baccarat table; Wong’s luck to be assigned an assassin with a conscience; Adelson’s misfortune that reporters noticed an obscure murder plot involving his casino. But the tale, viewed another way, depends as little on luck as a casino does. It is, rather, about the fierce collision of self-interests. If Las Vegas is a burlesque of America—the ‘ethos of our time run amok,’ as Hal Rothman, the historian, put it—then Macau is a caricature of China’s boom, its opportunities and rackets, its erratic sorting of winners and losers.”
Peter Dinklage Was Smart to Say No
The Game of Thrones star’s long path to stardom—and the choices he made to reject stereotypical roles for dwarves:
“‘I read about him online the day before the Globes. It really made me sad. I don’t know why.’ He corrected himself: ‘I mean, I know why: it’s terrible.’ In October, Henderson, who is 37 and is 4-foot-2, was picked up and thrown by an unknown assailant in Somerset, England. He suffered partial paralysis and now requires a walker. The night of the Globes, after Dinklage’s mention, Henderson’s name was a trending topic on Twitter. Dinklage later turned down offers to discuss the case with Anderson Cooper and other news hosts.
“‘People are all, like, I dedicated it to him,’ he said. ‘They’ve made it more romantic than it actually was. I just wanted to go, “This is screwed up.” Dwarves are still the butt of jokes. It’s one of the last bastions of acceptable prejudice. Not just by people who’ve had too much to drink in England and want to throw a person. But by media, everything.’ He sipped his coffee and pointed out that media portrayal is, in part, the fault of actors who are dwarves. ‘You can say no. You can not be the object of ridicule.'”
Interview: Harry Crews
A 2009 interview with the writer, who died Wednesday at age 76:
“My students are all around the country. All that shit that’s on the, whatever you call it, the internet or something? Google or something? I don’t have it on my computer.
“That’s probably a blessing.
“Well, I do have it, but I just don’t pull it up. But there’s a ton of shit about me on there. There’s a boy named Damon Sauve in San Francisco. He’s a fine writer. He put all that shit on, I guess it’s called a website? I know very little about computers. I just do the best I can and leave all that shit alone. I write in longhand, I write on a typewriter, I write on a computer, I’d write with charcoal if it would make me write better. I don’t care what it is as long as it gets the words down. I only want about 500 words a day. Five hundred words a day is just wonderful if you can get that many, but you usually can’t—not that you can keep anyway.”
LIMBs
[Fiction] An elderly woman encounters her past at her nursing home:
“A beautiful day—even though Elise can smell chickens from the poultry complex down the road and exhaust from the interstate, even though the pear trees in this so-called orchard bear no fruit. The mums are in bloom. Bees glitter above the beds. And a skinny man comes toward her, showing off his mastery of the strap-on LIMBs.
“‘Elise.’ He squints at her. ‘You still got it. Prettiest girl at Eden Village.’
“She flashes her dentures but says nothing.”
Unsinkable
Two of the world’s best tennis players meet for a match 1912, just weeks after they both survived the Titanic disaster:
“Now consider a scenario in which two of the survivors were dashing, world-class athletes in the same sport, destined to face off against each other many times. The hype surrounding those matches would be immeasurable. After their playing careers, the two men would be bracketed together—the Ralph Branca and Bobby Thomson of the sea—perhaps cowriting a book, then hitting the speaking circuit.
“A century ago the culture was different. Look-at-me sensibilities were considered gauche. Many passengers lucky enough to have ended up on the Carpathia struggled with what today would be diagnosed as post–traumatic stress disorder. This was especially true for the men, whose survival was seen by some as evidence of cowardice.”
Puberty Before Age 10: A New ‘Normal’?
In situations where girls are showing signs of puberty as early as age 6, should parents fight it with drug treatments, or figure out ways for the child and parents to understand and accept what is happening?
“‘I would have a long conversation with her family, show them all the data,’ Greenspan continues. Once she has gone through what she calls ‘the process of normalizing’ — a process intended to replace anxiety with statistics — she has rarely had a family continue to insist on puberty-arresting drugs. Indeed, most parents learn to cope with the changes and help their daughters adjust too. One mother described for me buying a drawer full of football shirts, at her third-grade daughter’s request, to hide her maturing body. Another reminded her daughter that it’s O.K. to act her age. ‘It’s like when you have a really big toddler and people expect the kid to talk in full sentences. People look at my daughter and say, “Look at those cheekbones!” We have to remind her: “You may look 12, but you’re 9. It’s O.K. to lose your cool and stomp your feet.” ‘ “
Minor Cords
What it’s like for a teenager to try to emancipate herself:
“Child Protective Services is meant to protect children from abusive homes and provide safe alternatives with consistent monitoring but often the system fails children. I only knew that the institution was a machine, one capable of destroying lives and spirits in its rigid methodology. And I felt it had failed me. I resolved to do anything to avoid it. And after years of living under the spotlight of the Child Welfare System, I wanted to be free.
“My chance came in the form of two law students. After an intense impromptu conversation on a park bench, they scribbled down a number for their professor and urged me to give him a call. When I did, he told me the person who could help me was Bob Schwartz.”
Apple’s War on Android
Steve Jobs pledged to go “thermonuclear” in Apple’s battle against Google’s Android and device manufacturers like Samsung who he claimed ripped off the iPhone and iPad designs. But bringing a patent fight to court comes with significant risks:
“Several Asian manufacturers were noodling around with similar-looking rectangular smartphones before the iPhone came to market. Tipping its hat to a fellow Korean manufacturer, Samsung notes that in 2006, nearly a year before the iPhone appeared, LG Electronics (066570) announced the round-cornered LG Chocolate, with ‘virtually all of the [design] features Apple claims’ to have patented. In December 2006, before Apple released images of the iPhone, Samsung itself filed a design patent in Korea for a similar rectangular phone called the F700. Smartphone and tablet-computer design was ‘naturally evolving’ in the direction Apple claims it has exclusive rights to use, according to Samsung. If true, that matters because basic patent law states that if an idea is ‘obvious’ to an ‘ordinary observer’ at the time of its invention, it doesn’t deserve patent protection. By attacking Samsung, Apple has inadvertently put its own patents into play.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.