Fast Company magazine has an amazing article about Johnathan Goodwin, a Wichita mechanic who’s able to modify cars to provide drastically more running time on dramatically less fuel (or biodiesel).
As the article reports, “The numbers are simple: With a $5,000 bolt-on kit he co-engineered–the poor man’s version of a Goodwin conversion–he can immediately transform any diesel vehicle to burn 50% less fuel and produce 80% fewer emissions.”
Chris Colin has a damning article at SFGate.com documenting the workplace harassment faced by Kurdish-American mechanic Hamid Sayadi after September 11th. Sayadi, who was granted amnesty in the United States in 1977 after fleeing Iraq, alleges he was called a terrorist, had his tires slashed and had his lunch box inspected by his superior (for fear of a bomb being inside); he’d worked for his employer, New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., since 1990. The last straw? Being strip-searched by security when he attended a company-sponsored “Mission Accomplished” party after the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
I doubt this is an isolated incident; I can’t imagine the barrage of hostility people of Middle Eastern descent have had to endure over the past six years. Of course, American ignorance isn’t a finely wielded tool–my best friend, who is of Indian descent, has been called “a Palestinian terrorist” and “Osama Bin Laden” by thoughtless pigs on the street. If this is the new America we’ve chosen, let me offer a thought for our updated national anthem: a series of oinks and squeals.
Chuck Klosterman has a perceptive article on ESPN.com about the “problems” facing the NBA. He argues that the NBA’s continual state of crisis doesn’t result from player misconduct or racism on the part of fans. After all, he says, the NFL is subject to these same factors, but its popularity has surged over the past decade.
Instead, Klosterman claims that the unpopularity of the NBA stems from three issues inherent to the game. First is the reality that “some games are going to be boring.” Second is the fact that “We are an unshared society” (i.e. the racial, economic and talent gap between players and fans makes them utterly unable to relate to one another). Third is the idea that “potentiality destroys happiness” (i.e. the balletic potential of the game is undermined by bricked shots and long slogs in the low post).
I recently stumbled across a free pile of paperbacks from Piers Anthony’s Xanth series. Being the optimist that I am (“Sure, I have space for fourteen books as well as time to read them”), I gathered them in my arms and took them home with me. I’d read most of them before, when I was in middle school, and I had fond, if hokey, memories.
Jack McCallum has a moving piece in this week’s Sports Illustrated that parallels the death of his best friend in Vietnam with the loss of another small-town athlete in Iraq. The joy of sports, the complex motivations behind military service, and the senselessness of loss are all effortlessly evoked.
Stephen Colbert took over Maureen Dowd’s column in the Sunday New York Times to offer an analysis of the 2008 Presidential race (if only the change were permanent–readers might gain insight into our political system instead of bon mots that Joan Rivers discarded for being too catty).
Some things I learned recently:
Jazz legend Louis Armstrong came late to the political arena, but he didn’t mince words when he arrived.
As David Margolick reports for the New York Times, Armstrong responded to the desegregation standoff in Little Rock, Arkansas by stating, “President Eisenhower…was ‘two faced,’ and had ‘no guts.’ For Governor Faubus, [Armstrong] used a double-barreled hyphenated expletive, utterly unfit for print….He then sang the opening bar of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner,’ inserting obscenities into the lyrics and prompting Velma Middleton, the vocalist who toured with Mr. Armstrong and who had joined them in the room, to hush him up.”