My Little Porny
People livin’ in competition
How Life Became an Endless, Terrible Competition
Meritocracy prizes achievement above all else, making everyone—even the rich—miserable. Maybe there’s a way out.
by Daniel Markovits, Professor at Yale Law School
In the summer of 1987, I graduated from a public high school in Austin, Texas, and headed northeast to attend Yale. I then spent nearly 15 years studying at various universities—the London School of Economics, the University of Oxford, Harvard, and finally Yale Law School—picking up a string of degrees along the way. Today, I teach at Yale Law, where my students unnervingly resemble my younger self: They are, overwhelmingly, products of professional parents and high-class universities. I pass on to them the advantages that my own teachers bestowed on me. They, and I, owe our prosperity and our caste to meritocracy.
Two decades ago, when I started writing about economic inequality, meritocracy seemed more likely a cure than a cause. Meritocracy’s early advocates championed social mobility. In the 1960s, for instance, Yale President Kingman Brewster brought meritocratic admissions to the university with the express aim of breaking a hereditary elite. Alumni had long believed that their sons had a birthright to follow them to Yale; now prospective students would gain admission based on achievement rather than breeding. Meritocracy—for a time—replaced complacent insiders with talented and hardworking outsiders.
Easy Rider Gone
R.I.P. Peter Fonda
The “Easy Rider” himself, Peter Fonda, has died – the famed actor passing away at 79 from lung cancer.
Fonda had an interesting childhood – a difficult and distant relationship with his famous father Henry Fonda, he accidentally shot himself in the stomach and nearly died on his 11th birthday,
He made his Hollywood debut in 1963 with “Tammy and the Doctor” co-starring Sandra Dee along with WW2 drama “The Victors” the same year followed by Robert Rossen’s “Lilith” in which he received acclaim. He turned biker for Roger Corman in 1966’s “The Wild Angels” and a role in the Jack Nicholson-penned “The Trip”.
Fonda and Dennis Hopper then conceived, co-wrote with Terry Southern and raised the finance for counterculture hit “Easy Rider” which made over $60 million worldwide over three years from a $400,000 budget.
O Youth!
Plants Are Clocks
Plants can tell time even without a brain – here’s how
Anyone who has travelled across multiple time zones and suffered jet lag will understand just how powerful our biological clocks are. In fact, every cell in the human body has its own molecular clock, which is capable of generating a daily rise and fall in the number of many proteins the body produces over a 24-hour cycle. The brain contains a master clock that keeps the rest of the body in sync, using light signals from the eyes to keep in time with environment.
Plants have similar circadian rhythms that help them tell the time of day, preparing plants for photosynthesis prior to dawn, turning on heat-protection mechanisms before the hottest part of the day, and producing nectar when pollinators are most likely to visit. And just like in humans, every cell in the plant appears to have its own clock.
[ click to continue reading at Yahoo! News ]
Neuralink
Elon Musk’s ‘Brain Chip’ Could Be Suicide of the Mind, Says Scientist
By Sissi Cao
Almost exactly a month ago, Elon Musk introduced a room of engineers and curious consumers to a sci-fi-sounding invention made by his neurotechnology startup Neuralink: an implantable “brain chip” that will “merge biological intelligence with machine intelligence.”
Per Musk’s description, this chip will be installed in a person’s brain by drilling a two-millimeter hole in the skull. “The interface to the chip is wireless, so you have no wires poking out of your head,” he assured.
Musk argued that such devices will help humans deal with the so-called AI apocalypse, a scenario in which artificial intelligence outpaces human intelligence and takes control of the planet away from the human species. “Even in a benign AI scenario, we will be left behind,” Musk warned. “But with a brain-machine interface, we can actually go along for the ride. And we can have the option of merging with AI. This is extremely important.”
Home Movies, sigh…
Campus Fight Night
Inside student fight night where young men box unlicensed in front of glamorous women
EXCLUSIVE: Boxing’s governing bodies are deeply concerned about the lack of control surrounding white-collar events – but for ungrads in Cardiff, it is the night of the term
By Lucy Clarke-Billings Deputy News Editor
Blood splatters across the ring as crowds of barely-clad women scream hysterically.
Two sweaty undergraduates are fighting for glory and their reputations are at stake.
Men clutching cans of Stella jump to their feet, bellowing “hit him” and “go on, son” at their flailing flatmates.
As the referee raises his whistle, a confused woman shouts: “Who won?”
“I’m not sure it matters,” comes the reply. “They’re both getting laid tonight.”
At one of the most popular university fight nights in the UK, students are battling it out to the delight of their peers.
Between bouts, glamorous undergrads in skin-tight mini-dresses dance in the walkways, swinging bottles of wine among friends.
Organisers of the event say they take a number of safety precautions including on site medical professionals, an accredited referee and insurance.
But the event is unlicensed and unregulated by the governing body for amateur boxing, which has repeatedly warned of the dangers.
Three fighters told Mirror Online none of them were medically assessed either before stepping into the ring or after.
Machete-maritan!
Actor Danny Trejo of ‘Machete’ fame pulls young boy from overturned car
LOS ANGELES, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Hollywood actor Danny Trejo, known for his tough-guy roles in such films as “Machete,” helped rescue a young boy who was trapped in a car that overturned in a Los Angeles traffic collision on Wednesday.
Trejo, 75, told television station KABC-TV he was on his way to an auto mechanic in L.A.’s Sylmar neighborhood when he saw a motorist run a red light and crash into another car, which flipped over onto its roof in the intersection.
The boy, strapped into his car seat in the back of the car, and his grandmother, who had been driving, were both trapped in the overturned, partially crushed vehicle.
“He was panicked, and I said, ‘OK, we have to use our superpowers,’ and so he screamed, ‘Superpowers!’ and we started yelling, ‘Superpowers,'” Trejo recounted. “We got kind of, like, a bond, I guess.”
No Robots! No Robots!
The Last Robot-Proof Job in America?
Fish: the final frontier in food delivery. At this point, you can get warm cookies, vodka, and locally grown rutabaga brought to your doorstep in minutes, but try getting a fresh red snapper. Until recently, if you could obtain the fish, it would likely have been pre-frozen and shipped in from overseas. (Such is the case with at least eighty-five per cent of the seafood consumed in this country, both from grocery stores and in restaurants.)
A new tech startup is aiming to remedy this situation. The company is based not in a Silicon Valley lab but inside the Fulton Fish Market, a two-hundred-year-old seafood wholesale market that was once situated in lower Manhattan and is now at Hunts Point, in the Bronx. It is the second-largest fish market in the world, after Tsukiji market, in Tokyo. Historically, it has served restaurants and retailers in the New York City area, operating at night so that chefs and fish-store owners can get there. The startup, called FultonFishMarket.com, allows customers in the rest of the country, both restaurants and individuals, to buy from the market, too, cutting out a chain of regional seafood dealers. The fish is shipped fresh, rather than frozen, thanks to an Amazon-esque warehousing-and-logistics system. Mike Spindler, the company’s C.E.O., said recently, “I can get a fish to Warren Buffett in Omaha, Nebraska, that’s as fresh as if he’d walked down to the pier and bought it that morning.”
There is one thing, however, that the sophisticated logistics system cannot do: pick out a fish. If Warren Buffett orders a red snapper, the company needs to insure that his fish is fresh, fairly priced, and actually an American red snapper—and not some other, day-old red fish that a vender is trying to pass off. (According to the ocean-conservation organization Oceana, more than twenty per cent of the seafood in restaurants and grocery stores in America is misidentified.) For this task, the company has enlisted one of the old-timers: Robert DiGregorio, a forty-seven-year veteran of the business, known in the marketplace as Bobby Tuna. DiGregorio, sixty-eight, is the author of “Tuna Grading and Evaluation,” an industry standby. He possesses a blend of discernment and arcane fish knowledge that, so far, computers have yet to replicate. Over the years, he said recently, “I’ve bought and sold literally millions of pounds of fish.”
No Soap! No Soap!
‘I don’t smell!’ Meet the people who have stopped washing
A growing number of people are eschewing soap and trusting bacteria to do the job instead – and an entire industry has sprung up to accommodate them
by Amy Fleming
David Whitlock has not showered or bathed for 15 years, yet he does not have body odour. “It was kind of strange for the first few months, but after that I stopped missing it,” he says. “If I get a specific part of my body dirty, then I’ll wash that specific part” – but never with soap. As well as germs, soap gets rid of the skin’s protective oils and alters its pH level. Although Whitlock appreciated gaining an extra 15 minutes a day from soap-dodging, his primary motivation was to encourage friendly microbes to live on him in symbiotic harmony. The bacteria get to feast on the ammonia from his sweat and he gets low-maintenance, balanced skin.
Just as awareness of the importance of the gut microbiome has led to a boom in probiotic and fermented foods and supplements, there is increasing interest in our skin microbiome: the trillions of microbes that protect us from pathogens and keep us healthy by making vitamins and other useful chemicals. In this unprecedentedly sanitised era, in which eczema, acne and problems associated with dry skin are rife, consumers are hungry for solutions. Even the mainstream brand Dove claims vaguely that its products are “microbiome-gentle”.
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES – Official Trailer
A Million Little Pieces: James Frey’s Notorious Memoir Goes to Hollywood
Watch the exclusive trailer for the upcoming movie, directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson and starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson.
Pastorero
Behind a $1.50 Taco, a Deep Well of Expertise
To slice the juicy, crisp-edged al pastor meat off the roasting spit, Rolando Marcelino Martinez uses a 14-inch knife that he brought with him from Mexico. He sharpens it every day before customers arrive at Tacos Los Guichos, a bustling taquería housed in a trailer near the 110 freeway at West Slauson Avenue.
The scars of his job sit along his thumbs — faint, squiggly white lines set off against his dark brown skin. He cut himself when he was a novice, more than 15 years and three taquerías ago. Now he’s considered a pastorero, or a taquero devoted exclusively to making tacos al pastor.
Every night, Marcelino’s job has the same complicated set of rules: stack the meat on the spit; trim off the ends so it cooks more evenly; warm the tortillas, keep the cilantro and chopped onion at arm’s reach; sharpen his knife; slice the meat into his outstretched, tortilla-lined hand; monitor the meat so it’s cooked but not burned; and make sure he doesn’t slice off a finger, all while standing in front of a hot gas grill with an open flame.
“The truth is that it’s difficult,” says Marcelino, who grew up in the village of Tamazulapan, Oaxaca. He first learned the taco trade in Guanajuato and eventually stacked trompos, or roasting spits for al pastor, at taquerías in Mexico City’s trendy Condesa neighborhood. “With time, a person learns. But it’s not easy like people would say.”
Tacos al pastor, invented in Mexico City, are among the most popular tacos in Los Angeles, comprising marinated pork filets that have been stacked on a roasting spit and cooked over an open flame. (The spit is called a trompo in Spanish; the pile of meat is called a bola.) Taqueros slice the meat quickly into a warm tortilla and top it with a spray of cilantro and raw onion, salsa, and sometimes pineapple. Many stands in Los Angeles charge around $1 to $1.50 per taco, but the amount belies the expertise that’s actually involved.
“It’s a complicated trade that encompasses knowledge of the kitchen, physics, chemistry, and separately, the soul of a taquero,” says Alejandro Escalante, the Mexico City-based author of “La Tacopedia: Enciclopedia del Taco.” “Taqueros are in a way psychologists or expert salesmen. People come, and they know what each person is looking for.”
Toni Morrison Gone
World mourns the death of Nobel laureate Toni Morrison
By HILLEL ITALIE
NEW YORK (AP) — Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, a pioneer and reigning giant of modern literature whose imaginative power in “Beloved,” ″Song of Solomon” and other works transformed American letters by dramatizing the pursuit of freedom within the boundaries of race, has died at age 88.
“Toni Morrison passed away peacefully last night surrounded by family and friends,” the family announced. “The consummate writer who treasured the written word, whether her own, her students or others, she read voraciously and was most at home when writing.”
Few authors rose in such rapid, spectacular style. She was nearly 40 when her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” was published. By her early 60s, after just six novels, she had become the first black woman to receive the Nobel literature prize, praised in 1993 by the Swedish academy for her “visionary force” and for her delving into “language itself, a language she wants to liberate” from categories of black and white. In 2012, Barack Obama awarded her a Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“Her writing was not just beautiful but meaningful — a challenge to our conscience and a call to greater empathy,” Obama wrote Tuesday on his Facebook page. “She was as good a storyteller, as captivating, in person as she was on the page.”
FRBs IRT
Mysterious deep-space signals can now be picked up in real time
Artificial intelligence has been able to tune in to the odd energy known as Fast Radio Bursts and observe them as they reach Earth.
by ERIC MACK
James Josephides/Swinburne
Over the past dozen years, scientists have been finding enigmatic, fleeting signals called fast radio bursts, or FRBs, by poring over previous observations for the bright blips that come from the other side of the cosmos. Now, for the first time, the powerful flashes of radio waves have been picked up the moment they arrive at Earth.
Doctoral student Wael Farah at Australia’s Swinburne University of Technology developed an automated system that uses machine learning to capture FRBs in real time. The very first FRB was detected in 2007 within observations from 2001, and most other detections have also been made by reviewing data after the fact.
Exactly what FRBs are and where they come from remains one of the newest and most intriguing mysteries in space science. What we know is that they originate from very powerful sources on the other side of the universe — we’re talking billions of light years from us — and last just milliseconds. Only a handful of FRBs so far have been observed to repeat themselves, a characteristic that makes them easier to trace to a source galaxy.
Farah said part of his motivation for studying FRBs is that they can be used to study the darker parts of the cosmos between galaxies that are otherwise almost impossible to see.
QUEEN & SLIM Official Trailer
KATERINA paperback – Check the new cover
Ball Juice
These scientists may have solved MLB’s ‘juiced’ baseball problem
by Josh Peter
PULLMAN, Wash. — In cardboard boxes and plastic bins.
On shelving units and tabletops.
Even suspended in midair, as if by magic.
In the sprawling Sports Science Laboratory at Washington State University, baseballs are everywhere. In flight, too, when they’re fired out of air cannons at up to 90 mph.
“We have balls coming from all over the place,’’ Lloyd Smith told USA TODAY Sports, and he plucked one off a table in the lab where he was sitting last week.
Smith is a 55-year-old professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering who oversees the baseball madness inside the lab he started in 2003. For almost two years, he has been working for Major League Baseball to figure out if and why “juiced baseballs” have triggered a surge in home runs.
The mystery appears to be over.
“I could puke every time I hear it.”
From everyteen to annoying: are today’s young readers turning on The Catcher in the Rye?
JD Salinger’s Holden Caulfield once seemed the universal voice of teenage angst, but now he’s too quaint for young people. Can we learn to love it again, asks Dana Czapnik
by Dana Czapnik
ere’s a thought. Teen angst, once regarded as stubbornly generic, is actually a product of each person’s unique circumstances: gender, race, class, era. Angst is universal, but the content of it is particular.
This might explain why Holden Caulfield, once the universal everyteen, does not speak to this generation in the way he’s spoken to young people in the past. Electric Literature gave this explanation of The Catcher in the Rye’s datedness: “If you’re a white, relatively affluent, permanently grouchy young man with no real problems at all, it’s extraordinarily relatable. The problem comes when you’re not. Where’s The Catcher in the Rye for the majority of readers who are too non-young, non-white, and non-male to be able to stand listening to Holden Caulfield feel sorry for himself?”
On the one hand, Yes! On the other, Oof!
I’ve had conversations about Catcher with undergraduate students in creative writing classes I’ve taught, and every one has complained about disliking Holden. In my limited network of young people, Catcher is not only no longer beloved, it has become something even more tragic: uncool.
But is it as simple as Electric Literature posits – that if you’re not white, privileged and male, it’s hard to see yourself in Holden? After all, this is partly why I wrote my coming-of-age novel The Falconer, told from the perspective of a young woman in early 1990s New York. Maybe hating on Holden has turned into its own form of adolescent rebellion. Catcher was an incendiary novel when it was first published and was banned from many school districts. Reading it once felt subversive; now it’s a reliable presence on most curriculums. And once adults tell you something’s good, aren’t you supposed to hate it?
But it’s not just girls and kids of colour who are turned off by Holden; I have found that my white, male students didn’t like him either.
History Of The Ice Cream Sammie
Birth of the cool: The story behind the ice cream sandwich, an icon at 120
By Devra First
I am standing in the middle of a room that looks like a cross between a Rube Goldberg machine and Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. There are networks of silver pipes overhead, shiny vats of citric acid and huge sacks of sweet whey, dials and switches and hoppers where hot-pink peppermint candy is crushed into bits. Conveyor belts ferry tubs and boxes and the containers called scrounds. Or is it squrounds? There is some debate over the spelling, but it’s pronounced the same either way. It describes the round-cornered square cartons that are particular to the ice cream trade.
This is the whirring, clicking, clanking, buzzing heart of the HP Hood Ice Cream Plant, a long, squat brick building with a flagpole out front and the words “Ice Cream Division” spelled in white curlicue letters along one side. It’s one of the original Hood plants, here since the early ’60s. “There aren’t too many of those left,” says plant manager Peter Fabbri. “It’s one of the few.”
In this 10,000-square-foot space, about 85 employees produce all kinds of goodness: the 60 or so Hood ice cream and sherbet flavors, the premium brand Brigham’s, Lactaid ice cream (Hood has an exclusive licensing arrangement), oat milk, and more.
QUEEN & SLIM One-sheet Released
Poster To Queen & Slim Starring Daniel Kaluuya & Jodie Turner-Smith
Written by Emmy Award winner Lena Waithe, Queen & Slim hits Theaters November 27
Universal Pictures has released the poster to the independent romance drama “Queen & Slim,” written by Emmy Award winner Lena Waithe and starring Academy Award nominee Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) and introducing Jodie Turner-Smith.
Queen & Slim hits Theaters November 27.
From Melina Matsoukas, the visionary director of some of this generation’s most powerful pop-culture experiences, including Beyonce’s “Formation” and the Nike “Equality” campaign, comes Makeready’s unflinching new drama, Queen & Slim.
A MILLION LITTLE PIECES – August 30
New movies coming out in August 2019 – upcoming UK film releases
New August 2019 UK film releases include Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs and Shaw, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, plus many more
By Lewis Knight
It’s set to be a varied month of cinema releases this August!
If action-packed blockbusters are what you are looking for then you will be pleased to know that Hobbs & Shaw has got you covered as Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham return for the latest instalment of the Fast and Furious franchise.
Meanwhile, beloved director Quentin Tarantino returns with his new film Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which features Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt as characters trying to survive in 1969 Los Angeles, while Margot Robbie plays tragic real-life starlet Sharon Tate.
Here’s what we have to look forward to in August 2019.
A Million Little Pieces
Based on the book by James Frey, A Million Little Pieces follows a young drug-addled writer (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) approaching the bottom of his descent submits to two months of agonising detox at a treatment centre in Minnesota. Whilst at the centre, he meets an array of interesting characters. Sam Tayor-Johnson directs the film that also stars Billy Bob Thornton and Charlie Hunnam.
A Million Little Pieces release date: August 30, 2019
The Deadliest Killer Ever
The Mosquitoes Are Coming for Us
They are our apex predator, the deadliest hunters of human beings on the planet.
By Timothy C. Winegard
It has been one of the most aggravating sounds on earth for more than 100 million years — the humming buzz of a mosquito.
She gently lands on your ankle and inserts two serrated mandible cutting blades and saws into your skin, while two other retractors open a passage for the proboscis. With this straw she sucks your blood, while a sixth needle pumps in saliva that contains an anticoagulant that prevents that blood from clotting. This shortens her feeding time, lessening the likelihood that you splat her across your ankle.
The female mosquito needs your blood to grow her eggs. Please don’t feel singled out. She bites everyone. There is no truth to the myths that mosquitoes prefer women over men or blondes and redheads over those with darker hair. She does, however, play favorites. Type O blood seems to be the vintage of choice. Stinky feet emit a bacterium that woos famished females, as do perfumes. As a parting gift, she leaves behind an itchy bump (an allergic reaction to her saliva) and potentially something far worse: infection with one of several deadly diseases, including malaria, Zika, West Nile, dengue and yellow fever.
Mosquitoes are our apex predator, the deadliest hunter of human beings on the planet. A swarming army of 100 trillion or more mosquitoes patrols nearly every inch of the globe, killing about 700,000 people annually. Researchers suggest that mosquitoes may have killed nearly half of the 108 billion humans who have ever lived across our 200,000-year or more existence.
Flying solo, the mosquito does not directly harm anyone. It is the diseases she transmits that cause an endless barrage of death. Yet without her, these pathogens could not be vectored to humans. Without her, human history would be completely unrecognizable.
The mosquito and her diseases have accompanied traders, travelers, soldiers and settlers (and their captive African slaves) around the world and have been far more lethal than any manufactured weapons or inventions.
Cruise Clownpocalypse
Clown ‘starts violent brawl on cruise ship as passengers use plates for weapons’
Families feared for their lives as chaos erupted on the P&O Britannia cruise following a boozy patriotic party where large amounts of alcohol were consumed
ByLatifa Yedroudj
A passenger dressed in a clown outfit sparked a massive brawl on a P&O cruise which left several staff members injured, according to reports.
The huge fight broke out on board a P&O Britannia cruise with families running to hide as passengers reportedly used plates as weapons.
Emergency services were called to the ship’s 16th floor restaurant at 2am on Friday morning.
Paramedics tended to the injured staff who tried to control the massive fight that erupted between passengers.
The guests allegedly threw plates and furniture at each other and there was “blood everywhere”, a witness said.
The fight broke out following a “patriotic” black-tie event on board the cruise ship on Thursday evening with “large amounts of alcohol consumed”, reporter Richard Gaisford said on Twitter .
According to a witness at the scene, passengers were upset after one guest dressed up as a clown despite the ship’s no fancy dress code.
Once Upon A Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino Tweaks History in “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood”
Forging a style from the scraps of a consuming culture, the director alters the history of the Manson Family murders.
By Anthony Lane
Cars and songs. To be exact: the sight of a car bowling along, at speed, while a song cries out on the soundtrack. That, in the end, is what Quentin Tarantino loves more than anything; more than crappy old TV shows, more than boxes of cereal, more than violence so rabid that it practically foams, and more, if you can believe it, than the joys of logorrhea. His latest work, “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood,” is a declaration of that love. There are many scenes in which the characters—folks like Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt)—motor around Los Angeles without a care. To call those scenes the best thing in the film is not a slight upon Tarantino. As he, of all people, is aware, they are the kinds of scene that play in our movie memories, years after the event, on a helpless and happy loop.
Rick Dalton is an actor, just about. It’s 1969, and he’s worried that, sooner or later, somebody will say that he used to be big in pictures. He’s not yet over the hill, but he’s well past the peak. Having starred in “Bounty Law,” on television, in the nineteen-fifties, he is reduced to playing heavies and scumbags; and their sole purpose, as an agent named Marvin Schwarzs (Al Pacino) explains to Rick, is to be bested by the hero. Getting bested is the worst. Viewers come to see you as expendable. Still, it’s a job, and Rick likes nothing more, even now, than sitting down with his buddy Cliff and a six-pack of cold ones, watching an episode of “The F.B.I.,” and waiting for the moment when the villain—Rick, of course—gets to deliver his scumbag line, with a sneer on his scumbag face.
The Funniest Revisited
Rutger Hauer Gone
Rutger Hauer: Blade Runner actor dies aged 75
Actor Rutger Hauer, who starred in 1982’s Blade Runner, has died at the age of 75. The star died in the Netherlands on Friday after a short illness, his agent confirmed.
Hauer played the murderous replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner, which was directed by Ridley Scott and also starred Harrison Ford.
Hauer’s character gives a famous speech during a face-off with Ford at the end of Blade Runner, dialogue which he helped write himself.
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe,” he is seen telling Ford. “Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”
Hauer is quoted as telling an interviewer his character – who had only a four-year lifespan – wanted to “make his mark on existence”.
“The replicant in the final scene, by dying,” he said, “shows Deckard [Ford’s character] what a real man is made of.”
The Greatest Revisited
Avoiding The Knob
The Lonely Pursuit of Air Hockey Greatness
Yes, air hockey is a professional sport. Join a master and his student on a quest for the championship — and a regulation table that isn’t broken.
By Allie Conti
At a bar in Brooklyn this spring, when the hockey playoffs were still going on, a guy with a nose ring and glasses approached a visitor from Toronto who was watching the Maple Leafs game on a small TV in the corner of the bar. He challenged the Leafs fan to a game of air hockey and even offered to buy him a beer if he won.
He neglected to mention that he was currently ranked No. 10 in the world and was almost certainly the best air hockey player in New York.
His name was Justin Flores, and he had been coming to Ontario, a dive bar in Williamsburg, for weeks, waiting for anybody to approach the table. He’d recently found a student — a New Yorker named Liz Cash, who hoped to become the top-ranked female player in the world, and he had her training with the appropriate intensity. He himself was also getting ready for the World Championships that were set for the end of July in Colorado Springs. Both he and his mentee are attending and fully expect to achieve glory if not win much in the way of money.
But he was always on the lookout for more disciples, and he was always up for a game.
When the Canadian sidled over between periods, Mr. Flores was visibly pumped. If it was hard for him to attract opponents, it was no problem drawing a crowd once a game was underway. For one thing, Mr. Flores, who is 30, holds the mallet by its edge, not by the knob, the way most people do, which is the mark of a novice. He also knows how to put the puck into a so-called circle drift, gently cycling it back and forth before executing a killer shot.
Like a true hustler, Mr. Flores let the Canadian score a few points. The subsequent annihilation of his opponent drew stares. One bearded observer took the Juul out of his mouth and looked stunned. “I’ve never seen anyone play like that,” he said.
Skip Trace Queen
THE WORLD’S BEST BOUNTY HUNTER IS 4’11”. HERE’S HOW SHE HUNTS
by Randall Sullivan
AT 4’11” AND just over 100 pounds, Michelle Gomez doesn’t look like the sort of person you’d hire to retrieve earthmoving equipment stolen by a Peruvian crime family. But in the summer of 2013, that’s exactly what she was doing.
Gomez, the proprietor of a one-woman operation in Lockhart, Texas, called Unlimited Recoveries, is one of the best skip tracers in the world. A combination bill collector, bounty hunter, and private investigator, a skip tracer finds people and things that have disappeared on purpose. Gomez specializes in “hard-to-locate recoveries”—she prefers cases others can’t solve. To track down the fleet of Caterpillar wheel loaders taken by the Peruvians, Gomez reached out to the estranged wife of the family’s patriarch, telling the woman that she was pregnant with her husband’s child. The ruse worked: Eventually the wife told Gomez that the heavy equipment was on its way to a construction site in South America.
For Gomez, 43, skip tracing is as much about stalking and capturing elusive prey as it is about getting paid. Today much of that hunting is done digitally, and Gomez has made an art of combing through cyberspace and finding the status updates, financial records, and location blips that virtually everyone leaves behind in the modern age. Gomez’s digital background stretches back to childhood, when her parents, both IBM engineers, insisted that the 10-year-old Michelle build a computer from scratch. “I even had to do my own soldering,” she remembers. The experience laid a foundation for the skills that have made her so good at finding people. “Profiling a subject is a lot like constructing a motherboard,” Gomez says. “You have to see connections that are invisible to other people by filling the spaces between with information.”