Should Women Athletes Be Judged By Beauty or Brawn?

    Do the media give more attention to beauty or skill in women’s athletics. Dr. Precilla Choi, tells the BBC (Beauty beats brawn that the media spend too much time focusing on the former and not enough of the latter.

    Her comments are interesting, but they might carry more weight if she had actually performed any sort of objective study about media coverage of women in sports. Choi complains that the British media vilified tennis star Mary Pierce for beefing up in the gym prior to Wimbledon while giving the beautiful but far less talented Anna Kournikova an easy ride. Unfortunately this is just Choi’s subjective impressions of the coverage she happened to read — she should at least do some sort of objective look at stories on Pierce and Kournikova to back up her claims.

    I haven’t done such a study either, but my subjective impression is that in many American sports outlets the tendency is quite the opposite — Kournikova has been derided on a number of occasions for being a mediocre talent who parlays her beauty to get the sort of attention her game otherwise wouldn’t. One male sportscaster I saw ripping on Kournikova has vowed not to say her name on-air until she actually wins something (which means he’s probably never going to have to worry about stumbling over her last name).

    In fact a lot of the beauty pageant nonsense comes from either athletes or sports organizers who think that’s what a certain segment of the public wants to see rather than originating with the sports media. Much as there is a definite market for poster and calendars of provocatively posed male athletes (or for an older example, look at the way that Joe Namath marked himself).

    Personally, I find this sort of stuff annoying from a sports fan perspective, but the bottom line is that both men and women’s sports today have to appeal to a large audience outside of just sports fans.

Gore Driving NRA Membership Through the Roof

    Al Gore has clearly tried to mute his anti-gun pronouncements, going so far as to arrange for Tommy Lee Jones to describe the vice-president hunting. Unfortunately for him, gun owners aren’t buying it and membership in the National Rifle Association has grown by leaps and bounds since Gore wrapped up his party’s nomination.

    This month the NRA passed the 4 million members mark, and NRA officials were hinting that membership was continuing to increased rapidly enough that they were well on their way to 5 million members. All of those extra members mean extra money that will in part be used to target Gore and other anti-gun politicians — the NRA will spend up to $20 million in the remaining few weeks until the presidential election.

    About the only thing that can be said in favor of Gore’s record on guns is that he isn’t quite as extreme as former Sen. Bill Bradley, who challenged Gore for the Democratic presidential nomination and flat out favors a ban on most guns. Gore, though, favors mandatory registration of all guns which is the first step on the way to a ban.

    In an article about the increase (Bush’s Silver Bullet?), John Fund noted,

It’s fashionable for national political reporters to demonize the NRA. But it’s also true that few journalists have ever bothered to find out why so many Americans belong to such a controversial organization. Most NRA members look at the recent successful efforts of governments from Canada to Australia to limit gun ownership and are resolved to give no quarter when it comes to public policy in this country.

    Of course the NRA could probably get 15 million members and the media would still insist on trying to marginalize it as a bunch of wacko extremists. The media love to tout the importance of the Constitution, except when it comes to organizations that dare defend the Second Amendment.

    Gore is probably wise to avoid going on the attack on gun control because exit polls in the past have suggested that when it comes to guns those who oppose gun control are very likely to be single issue voters who will reject a candidate based simply on that issue alone, whereas while many Americans tell pollsters they favor gun control, they are much less likely to vote for or against a candidate based solely on that issue.

    From personal experience, I’m amazed at the number of people I know who don’t own guns, but who have nevertheless joined the NRA in the past 4 to 6 months. Like me, they don’t necessarily want a gun in their home at the moment, but at the same time they don’t want Al Gore and the Justice Department telling them they can’t if they feel they need a gun for protection (and let me tell you — the two kids who live next to me each have an armed robbery conviction and for awhile a woman in our neighborhood was dating a man just out of jail on a homicide charge. I and my wife have a fundamental human right to adequate self defense of ourselves and our daughter, which means a gun if we so choose).

Problems at iUniverse.Com

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been working on a couple books in my spare time and with the Internet now there are a ton of self-publishing options. One of the services that really impressed me was iUniverse.Com which for a reasonable fee will make your book available for sale both online and as a traditional paper book that is printed on demand.

One of the major selling points of iUniverse.Com is that the mega-book retailer Barnes & Noble owns 49 percent of the the company and on its site, iUniverse.Com touts that it has…

…the most extensive distribution system available; books published by iUniverse.com are available for order at fine bookstores such as Barnes & Noble, amazon.com, bn.com, Borders, and thousands of other traditional & online outlets

Ironically, though, it turns out that many Barnes & Noble stores will not order books for customers that are published through iUniverse.Com. According to this Wired story, many authors who use the service have had potential buyers tell them that their local Barnes and Noble won’t order the book since iUniverse only gives bookstores a 30 percent discount compared to the traditional 45 to 50 percent that most publishers give.

This is especially bizarre since all of the Barnes & Noble stores I have been in over the past year or so have a little display touting iUniverse, usually in the reference section where they stock guides to writing.

The article also notes that some Barnes & Noble stores report 4-6 week turnaround times from iUniverse, which really makes the whole point of the service moot. If it is going to take 4-6 weeks to get the book, the advantage of the iUniverse system disappears — you might as well self-publish and sell the books from your own web site.

Source:

Black Hole in Writers’ Universe? M.J. Rose, Wired News, September 12, 2000.

Effort to Eradicate River Blindness from Equatorial Guinea Island

This spring an effort to eradicate river blindness from Bioko, a small island that is part of Equatorial Guinea, will get underway. The goal — to completely rid the island of the blood sucking black fly, Simuliidae, by intensively spraying the island with pesticides.

River blindness is a parasitic worm that lives in the gut of the black fly and gets transmitted to humans when the insect bites people. The diseases is endemic in many parts of Africa and South America — in some regions of the world, up to 15% of the population has been blinded by the diseases.

The obvious problem with trying to eradicate the black fly, however, is how to do it without killing other important insect species in the area. Dr. Rory Post, who is heading up the project, says this will be addressed by extensive monitoring of the islands fauna to ensure the pesticides are not destroying other species.

It will be interesting to see if they can do it, but even if this project succeeds it is likely to be viable only on isolated areas such as islands since in the continent, the flies can simply come back in from other areas because there is no feasible way to spray the entire area that Simuliidae covers.

Unfortunately the World Health Organization optimistically estimates that it will take at least 12 years to eradicate river blindness throughout the world with drug therapy that can treat the disease.

Source:

African island in disease campaign. Toby Murcott, The BBC, September 7, 2000.

New project to eradicate river blindness.

Training Mothers to Administer Anti-Malarial Drugs Cuts Death Rate

Too many children in Africa die from malaria, and so far nobody’s come up with much a solution. A recent study published in the Lancet, however, suggests that the answer might be as simple as giving mothers training on administering anti-malarial drugs to their young children.

In a study in Ethiopia, giving mothers chloroquine and showing them how to use it, reduced the rate of childhood death rates from 50 per 1,000 to 30 per 1,000 compared to a control group. In the group that was given chloroquine and training, only 19% of childhood deaths were attributable to malaria, whereas in a control group 57% of childhood deaths were attributable to malaria.

The researchers warned that some communities might not be as able to help themselves, but this certainly seems like an avenue of treatment that should be greatly expanded as soon as possible. If poor women in Ethiopia can successfully administer chloroquine to their children and thereby increase their odds of surviving, many families around the world should be able to benefit from this sort of intervention.

Source:

Mothers ‘could slash malaria deaths.’ The BBC, August 10, 2000.

Huntingdon Protest Moves to the United States; Joseph Bateman arrested again

    The protest movement against Huntingdon Life Sciences has gotten extremely violent Great Britain (a full report on that tomorrow), and the protest has moved across the Atlantic as several groups last week protested both at a Huntingdon facility in New Jersey.

    Huntingdon owns several labs that specialize in performing safety and toxicity tests with animals. As a New Jersey Home News Tribune story noted, such safety tests using animals are required by the United States Food and Drug administration in order for a drug to gain approval in this country. Michael Caufield, vice president of operations for the companies Franklin, New Jersey, facility, told the Tribune that the lab uses about 5,000 rats, 100 monkeys and 200-400 dogs each year, almost all of whom are euthanized at the end of the experiment to allow for tissue analysis.

    On Friday, Sept. 8, about 60 protesters showed up at the Franklin facility carrying animal rights signs. “I’m here to express my grief that 500 animals died today and each day in the name of science at Huntingdon labs throughout the world,” 19 year-old protester James McCrory told The Trenton Times.

    After the number of protesters swelled to 60, police attempted to move the protesters to an area on the lawn of the facility. In the process police and protesters got in a scuffle and police arrested five people. Those arrested were Darius Fullmer, 23, an organizer with the Animal Defense League-New Jersey; Ronald J. Blaich, 18; Janell, E. Soto, 22; an unnamed 17-year-old minor; and Joseph Bateman, 20.

    Fullmer, Blaich, Soto and the minor were all arrested for disorderly conduct and obstruction and released on bail. Bateman, however, was charged with assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest along with disorderly conduct and obstruction charges. His bail was set at $2,500 and he remained in jail as of Saturday.

    Bateman, who told reporters he recently quit his job to protest full time against Huntingdon, is no stranger to arrests. The activist, who has been associated in the past with the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, was convicted of felony criminal mischief and misdemeanor possession of an instrument of crime after he was caught near a fur farm with an ALF-style directory of fur farms of the area and equipment to set animals free from their pens.

    I bet the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, which as been sued by a furrier who essentially argues that CAFT condones illegal activities and is involved in an illegal conspiracy, will be pleased by Bateman’s latest arrest.

  &nbsp: In the evening the protesters who weren’t already in jail moved no to protesting at the home of Alan Staple, president of Huntingdon Life Sciences. Staple wasn’t home at the time of the protest. That event went on peacefully with no arrests.

Source:

Five animal activists arrested in lab protest. Nina Rizzo, Home News Tribune, September 9, 2000.

Protesters target Princeton home of research exec. Mark Hamish Barry, The Trenton Times, September 10, 2000.