All I want right now, is for someone to look at Tim Thomas’ line in the March 28 Bulls-Pacers game and restate the value of +/-, basketball’s statistic of the moment:

                        MIN  FGM-A  3PM-A  FTM-A  OREB  DREB  REB  AST  STL  BLK  TO  PF  +/-  PTS
Tim Thomas, PF  6   0-3     0-1        0-0      0   1   1   0   0   0    0    2 +8  0

Yes, for the 6 minutes in which he netted 1 rebound, 3 misses and 2 fouls, he was rewarded with a +8 rating.

AE: Dude, big changes.
Me: ?
AE: You remember I said I have this paralysing fear of whether I was good enough? Like fretting at work about people thinking I’m no good, etc.?
Me: Yes, distinctly :)
AE: Well, it’s gone.
Me: Wow. That’s huge, man…you should be proud of yourself.
AE: Not so fast…it’s been replaced by a paralysing fear that I’m completely delusional.

What really rankles me, though, is the quality of writing. Spot my problems with this paragraph:

But the principles they are now employing eventually may be considered the new “LeBron Rules.”

The Wizards are playing rough, invoking the Detroit “Bad Boys” on more than one occasion and not saying they’re sorry for knocking James on his backside as much as possible. Have other teams tried to send messages to James with hard fouls before? Sure. But not to this level and with this much apparent conspiracy, according to the man himself.

“I’ve been put on the floor before, but it has been a little different this year,” James said. “Hard fouls happen, but this is a difference.”

I bet you’re thinking I’m pissed off at Mr. Windhorst regurgitating the tired notion of “<Insert superstar’s name here> Rules”, a pointless multiplication of a single idea: to knock said superstar down as many times as possible. No, although his perpetual effort to parallel LeBron with Michael Jordan is transparent even to the blind; what bothers me is the simultaneous elevation of LeBron to hero status and the verbatim quote, which underscores his shortcomings off the basketball court.

(And let’s be clear, LeBron can’t plead Ebonics here — that sentence is just plain wrong.)

This isn’t an isolated incident, particularly given how poorly-spoken today’s sports superstars are. And that Mr. Windhorst is trying to convey LeBron’s thoughts exactly as he expressed them is hardly surprising given that he is a journalist. The problem is that raining hosannas upon LeBron’s head even as he is shown to be committing verbal faux pas galore (and without hesitation and without remorse — without even realising what the problem is!) is exactly why English, the language, sits on a slippery slope today. A slippery slope whose gradient we are ever-increasing by irresponsibly (even if it’s inadvertent) communicating that savaging English is OK.

Understand this isn’t a moral issue to me: I’m not talking about what we’re teaching our kids, I’m saying that the quality of the English we see and hear around us, on TV and in newspapers, is more or less the zenith of what we ourselves aspire to and will ultimately attain. So returning to the point, Mr. Windhorst and others like him would do well to either cut out the hero-worship and present their subjects as normal human beings rather than ideals that we should all admire and dream of emulating in all things, or employ the same artistic license they so happily abuse while serving up cliches and edit their subjects’ soundbites. For the sake of their subjects. And us all.

(Note that I feel bad about hammering Mr. Windhorst this way when more or less all media types are to blame. But I’m sure he understands I’m not trying to target him. And that this problem is bigger than us all. <Cue ‘Gladiator’ theme.>)

For centuries, perhaps millennia, villagers had believed in an ancient story about the son of a mountain spirit venturing across the seas to look for a powerful woman to marry.

They believed that unlike them, this spirit had pale skin.

Somehow the legend gradually became associated with Prince Philip, who had indeed married a rich and powerful lady.

You have to read the whole article to appreciate the subtle hilarity here. For example, Prince Philip has apparently discreetly sanctioned this by sending them his official portraits!

Sadly I’ve missed the radio show associated with this article. Maybe I’ll find a retransmission after my exams are done…

The “it” is, of course, democracy, the imposition of which has proven difficult for the United States in recent years.

I didn’t have my glasses on, so on first sight I thought the author had written “the imposition of which has proven difficult in the United States in recent years”, and a Beavis and Butthead giggling attack overtook me.

If only Americans were that self-effacing.