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sex programes on p900June 11, 2006
And you thought the million-monitor drive was big news
CNN.com cited Smith as one of many U.S. colleges and universities with considerable efforts to use and create renewable energy. Smith has a multi-million-dollar project in the works to create a new energy-saving "co-generator" for campus.
Posted by Frances Kingsbury at 07:18 PM | Comments (10)
Smithie Obit: Betty Beale
Betty Beale, a Smithie and a society writer for four decades, died June 7 at the age of 94. Beale was the leading hostess in Washington D.C. who gradually moved from simply writing about society life to inserting political commentary and convincing her managing editor, who told her the women's page was no forum for politics, to send her to national political conventions. Her strong personality is also apparent from her first meeting with Emily Post. Ms. Beale wrote that Post's "sense of humor was such that when I bit into a little sandwich at tea in her house and jelly squirted out on my fingers, I didn't hesitate to lick my fingers in front of her. I wouldn't have to do this, I told her, if I had been given a napkin." Over the course of her career writing for the old Washington Star and The Washington Post, Beale danced with LBJ ("he had a good sense of rhythm and did a smooth foxtrot"), had a ten year affair with Adlai Stevenson, and excused herself from dull party conversations by saying she had to find a "newsmaker."
Posted by Mandy Smithberger at 07:15 PM | Comments (11)
June 09, 2006
Take me out to the ball game
Today, all around the world, billions of people are united. They are putting aside their petty differences (sort of) and taking time out of their day to pause for something that, across national, continental, racial, and economic boundaries (most of the time) brings us all together in a common human activity. They are going to watch a soccer game.
In the 2002 World Cup, Korea was voted the Most Entertaining Team. Photo from FIFA website.
That’s right, today is the first day of the World Cup. It happens every four years and people from diverse countries all over the world do whatever it takes to be near a TV to watch it. According to its governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, over 28 billion people watched the last World Cup in 2002. The 2006 World Cup kicks off today and lasts for about a month.
Why sound you care about a soccer tournament—excuse me, football, as it is known to the rest of the world—when the sport is not terribly popular in the U.S.? For one thing, football, deemed “the beautiful game” is wonderfully simple. The concept of offsides is the only relatively complicated rule that a viewer would want to learn, and even that is not necessary to understand what’s going on. Just pick a team to root for and watch them struggle to put the ball in the other team’s net, using any body part except their hands. While football does not employ the intense strategizing of say, “American football,” anyone can enjoy it. And fans can take pleasure in watching the way a team can employ an offensive strategy to neutralize the other team’s defense or the breathtaking way a seemingly-impossible backwards bicycle kick clinches a crucial goal.
And football is a social experience. Whole nations are united in euphoria with an announcer’s “GOOOOOOOL!” Even a game between the two least important teams can unite spectators in an emotional rollercoaster of faith, joy, loss, and adrenaline. In a recent game I watched between two Mexican clubs, with both teams’ hopes of advancing to a tournament on the line, fans were literally sobbing in the stands. The camera kept zooming in on the losing team’s supporters’ tear-streaked faces as they cried and prayed. Then, in the final seconds of the game, the entire losing team rushed the opposite goal, and it was the goalkeeper who scored the crucial goal. The fans’ tears erupted into screams of joy, and the other team’s fans burst into tears. And like any sport, one team’s story of triumph or defeat is composed of the individual stories of its players, the majority of whom have overcome obstacles to get to where they are today, and who can be charming or infuriating, heroes or villains.
And it can unite or divide. You don’t have to root for your national team if you don’t want to. If you watch the World Cup in a large group, in a restaurant or a sports bar, you can pick favorites between whatever two nations make it to the final game and spend the entire game arguing with the other half of the room.