More black than white, and yet so much difference
Most Brazilian newspapers today are talking about a study from IPEA (the Research Institute of Applicable Economy, in Brazil) that says that by the end of this year the black population will be bigger than the white one (bare in mind that, according to convention adopted in the country, a black person is anyone who claims to be black or brown, and the black population is the sum of all blacks and mulattos).
Reading that, made me think of an episode that happened back in 1996 to a friend. Read more
Filed Under History & traditions, Human Rights, Media & Society, Modern Life, Sport
A Maasai in London
More than 34,000 people ran the London Marathon last Sunday. Between them, there were six Maasai warriors from northern Tanzania: Isaya, Taico, Ngovu, Lengami, Ninna and Kesika.
They ran the race wearing traditional robes, shoes made from recycled tyres, shields that weighed five kilogrammes and their lion-hunting spears.
Filed Under Events, History & traditions, Modern Life, Sport
A traditional charity football match in Venice
Everybody like Venice: its beauty, its romantic atmosphere, its ancient buildings… but there’s another lovely thing strictly related to Venice: the spritz, a famous orange coloured alcoholic drink. For Venice citizens aperitif time is a way to join friends, to have a break… to get drunk (since you don’t have to drive ‘cause there are no cars in the fish shaped isle!).
So… why not using the alcohol excuse to do something good?
Read more
Filed Under Events, Food, History & traditions, Sport
‘Coz I went running, ‘coz I went running, ‘coz I went running…
Running can make you high according to researchers in Germany. The bio-technologists published a report that proves that running can change the mood you’re in. Read more
Filed Under Modern Life, Research, Sport
Cheering in the afterlife
If you’re a die-hard sports fan, Major League Baseball is about to test your devotion. They’ve tied up with Eternal Image, a funerary products brand, to market urns and caskets with the colors and logos of baseball teams. At 800 dollars for an urn, and 4000 for a casket, the products are quite expensive, but they already have almost five hundred pre-orders.
I’m sure that somewhere in Europe, the manager of a football club is asking his secretary to get Eternal Image on the line.
Filed Under Sport
50 skips for a world record
Raise your hand if you’ve never thrown a stone on the water surface to see how many skips it would do. It’s an entertaining pastime, perfect for the time of the day in which you’re cooked by the sun and you want to spend the half-an-hour you’ve left on the beach without thinking too much. Still, it involves some routines and strategies, such as wandering around to find the right stone (thin and flat) and cheating when you have to count the skips.
Surfing the Net in these days means bumping without escape into the new world record for skipping stones video: 50 quick skips made by Russ Byars, ready to enter the Guinness Book of Records. If you go deeper in the topic, you will discover that there’s even a North American Stone Skipping Association (NASSA) and a book by his founder appealingly titled The Secrets of Stone Skipping. You’ll even realize that a French physicist, Lydéric Bocquet, has spent time (and probably the French contributors’ money) to find out that “an angle of about 20° between the stone and the water’s surface is optimal”.
Filed Under Sport
Suing Amazon over cockfighting magazines
What happens when animal rights go against freedom of expression? And is it really a case of freedom of expression or we should rather say it’s just with a matter of money? The questions will be soon replied by the District of Columbia Superior Court, recently asked to decide about a dispute between Amazon.com, one of the best online book stores, and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), the American association that protects all animals. The latter accuses Amazon to keep selling online The Feathered Warrior and The Gamecock, two magazines about cockfighting, regardless of the fact that the sport has been declared illegal in all the United States (except Louisiana, for the moment). HSUS condemns in particular some advertisements in the magazines that try to sell blades to attach to the birds’ legs, officially catalogued as illegal goods. In a word, contraband. Amazon takes it as a form of censorship and claims that all tastes are tastes: basicly, if somebody gets excited watching roosters fighting in a bloody pit, that’s his or her problem. Time for the Court to adjourn the sitting to decide.
Read the original article on the NYT
Filed Under History & traditions, Human Rights, Sport