Dowbrigade

KATHMANDU (Reuters) – The head of the
Nepal Mountaineering Association urged the government Saturday to take
action against a sherpa who reportedly stripped on top of Mount Everest.

The Himalayan Times had reported Friday that the Nepali climbing guide,
whose name it gave as Lakpa Tharke, stood naked for three minutes in freezing
conditions on the 29,035-foot summit of the world’s highest peak.

If confirmed, he would be the first person known to have stripped atop
Everest, considered by Nepali Buddhists as a god.

Ang Tshering Sherpa, head of Nepal’s top mountaineering body, said he could
not confirm that the incident had happened."But if he did it, it is
very shocking because Sagarmatha is the goddess mother," he said,
using the mountain’s Nepali name.

"The government must enforce strict ethics for climbing." Authorities
have yet to comment.

But the climb’s organizers seemed happy enough with Lakpa Thaeke’s strip.

"We are planning to file his extraordinary feat for the Guinness Book
of World Records," the paper quoted an official of the hiking group
that employs Tharke as saying.

from
Reuters

As far as we know, the Guinness people don’t  have
a separate chapter for greatest naked accomplishments. Gosh, you would
need highest naked pole vault, most naked people in a phone booth, most
naked piano player on stage at one time…..Maybe the folks at Hustler would be interested.

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – An Iraqi tennis coach and two
of his players were shot to death this week in Baghdad because they were
wearing shorts, authorities said Saturday, reporting the latest in a
series of recent attacks attributed to Islamic extremists.

In the Baghdad incident, gunmen stopped a car carrying the Sunni Arab coach
and two Shiite players, asked them to step out and then shot them, said
Manham Kubba secretary-general of the Iraqi Tennis Union.

Extremists had distributed leaflets warning people in the mostly Sunni
neighborhoods of Saidiyah and Ghazaliyah warning people not to wear shorts,
police said.

from
AP

It is certain, were we to somehow find ourself in Iraq, that we would
want to play tennis. After reading the above article, however, we
would be sure to dress appropriately….

Although we recognize the centrality of Economics
in any understanding of the modern world we live in, and have in fact
taken several courses in the material,many of the economic phenomena
we observe first hand remain absolute mysteries until explained by
someone with a stronger knowledge background and a knack for explaining
things to knuckleheads like the Dowbrigade.

We had such an enlightenment today reading Robert
Kuttener’s column in the Boston Globe about the millions of jobs immigrants
are taking because supposedly Americans aren’t interested in them.
He maintains that the reason they aren’t interested is that the jobs
suck unnecessarily:

Raise wages, improve working conditions, and Americans
will materialize. But won’t that be inflationary? Here are some statistics
that suggest it needn’t.

Last September, Robert Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker, economists from Northwestern
University, observed that productivity and per-capita GDP had roughly
doubled in three decades, while median wages had hardly budged. So they
conducted a study titled “Where Did All the Productivity Go?"

They found that nearly all of it had gone to the richest 10 percent of
the population, and the most extreme gains to the richest 1 percent,
who now have a share of national income equal to the bottom 50 percent.
The people who really made out were the top one- 10th of 1 percent –
one American in 1,000.

So if we had a distribution of income more like the one that prevailed
in 1966, when chief executives made "only" 60 times what a
normal worker made instead of 600 times, we could raise the wages of
ordinary
people without adding to the nation’s overall wage bill.

from Boston Globe Op-ed page

So that’s how come real wages have been stagnant
for the last 30 years and families now have to work 50% more hours
to stay
in the middle class! Productivity has DOUBLED, meaning a worker nearing
retirement is producing twice as much as he or she was when they started,
but still getting paid the same crummy wage.

Where did all of that increased productivity
go? During the past three decades, as the worker’s slice of the pie stayed
the same, 100% of the benefits of the growth in productivity went to
owners, investors and top managers.

The fact that American business as a whole has been
able to get away with this boondoggle is directly related to the decline
of the American labor movement. Organized labor is the only practical
counterbalance to the greed of Ivy league executives and their legions
of highly educated lackeys, but because of scandal, corruption and disinterest
American labor as currently constituted has largely betrayed and abandoned
those it should be representing.

Meanwhile, big business has just abut bought or
co-opted every important politician in all three branches of government,
facilitating
the rip off of America’s workers and the concentration of the resulting
concentration of profits in the bank accounts of the richest fraction
of a percent of Americans.

This devaluation of honest working class jobs, leads
to the twin cancers of a large, non-productive underclass of
poor minority
citizens,
and
an
indigestible army of alienated illegal immigrants working in illegal
conditions for illegal wages. It does a tremendous disservice to the
millions of ordinary men and women who keep this country going, and represent
everything that is worth saving about this poor beleaguered land.

The
entire Miami Heat basketball team was suspended from league play today
by NBA Commissioner David Stern. The suspensions
were announced simultaneously with the launch of an investigation of
players and some coaching staff for "inappropriate touching, hugging,
butt-patting and jumping on top of each other with open legs."

Until the investigation is complete, none of the players
will be allowed to appear in a game, creating difficulties for the Heat
in their playoff series with the Detroit Pistons, currently tied at a
game apiece.

According to anonymous sources in the league office,
an unnamed player filed a complaint with the Commissioner’s Office to
the effect that he, "felt sexually intimidated" and was subjected to
"unwanted intimate touching and groping."

According to Dr. Pat Franahan, an expert in sexual harassment
in the workplace who serves on the board of the Massachusetts Association
to Control Hostile Actions (MACHA), "Although sexually charged touching
is common in all professional sports, the problem is particularly acute
in basketball because of the skimpy uniforms and silk shorts. In addition,
their official uniform shirts are what are commonly referred to as ‘wife
beaters’."

Another unnamed sources close to the investigation said
that league officials are pouring over Heat game tapes, looking for "patterns
of excessive or uncalled for physical contact with possible sexual connotations."
They are especially interested manual-gluteus contact, and according
to the source are electronically timing the duration of all such contact.

Sources say Commissioner Stern has yet to rule on how
many seconds of manual-gluteus contact are legal before the touching
becomes possible sexual harassment.

The suspensions come a week after the Dallas Maverick’s Jason Terry was suspended for grabbing Michael Finley of The San Antonio Spurs by the groin.

In
addition to specific actions by particular players, the investigation
reportedly includes team officials and Miami Heat as a corporate entity,
for "engendering an atmosphere conducive to and tolerant of physical
sexual harassment" and maintaining facilities, including the playing
court at American Airlines Arena, locker
areas, whirlpool and physical therapy areas, where unwarranted and unwanted
hugs and other touching took place.

Coach Pat Riley stands by his players. "I really don’t
think there was anything sexual involved. Antoine Walker is just a very
emotional guy. He was doing the same stuff in Boston, plus the Wiggle!
And Shaq, he’s just a big teddy bear. He tries to hug everyone!"

As to the identity of the complaining player, Riley quipped, “I don’t know who she is and for her sake I hope I never find out.”

Results of the investigation are expected by the end
of the week, although if this target is not met or the results lead
to charges being filed, the outcome of the Miami-Detroit series would
be in the
hands of the Commissioner. Let’s keep those hands in plain sight at
all times.