Please Remember That Funding Terrorists is Illegal…mmmk?

Cross-posted at JesusLovesBags.com

When I saw the Salon.com headline NFL under scrutiny for “gay checking” – NY Attorney General Eric Schneiderman told the NFL’s Roger Goodell to investigate, I was initially glad to hear that the NFL was getting some real pressure on this.  After all, what the hell does one’s sexual orientation have to do with whether or not you can run fast or catch a ball?  It doesn’t.  But NFL recruiters are concerned with gays because hyper-pseudo/faux-maculinity (of which homophobia is an integral ingredient), is a defining characteristic of football culture.

But as I read on, I felt nagged by something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on. 

Penn Sate and Steubenville, OH – Not So Different

Cross-posted at JesusLovesBags.com

The fallout from the Sandusky scandal and the ensuing Penn State coverup continues.  Pennsylvania’s Governor, Tom Corbett, has filed suit against the NCAA claiming that the sanctions it levied against Penn State were “arbitrary and capricious” and that the “punishments threaten to have a devastating, long-lasting, and irreparable effect on the commonwealth, its citizens, and the economy.”

This is a very curious lawsuit in my un-professional opinion since as far as I can tell, the economic impact resulting from the sanctions is the primary complaint and basis for the lawsuit.  This is curious because that is precisely what the intended impact was.  Sanctions without any detrimental effects would fail to adequately punish the institution that so blatantly covered up child rape in service of its football team, not to mention that it would fail to serve as a meaningful deterrence to other would-be obfuscatory institutions.

Sunday Reading

from r/pics.

• How to Prepare for a North Korean Invasion, by Ben Makuch (Vice) – A former South Korean soldier speaks about the North Korean’s preparedness for war.
• The Jack D. Ripper School of Reproductive Biology, by PZ Myers (Pharyngula) – MRAs are idiots, don’t understand biology.
• It Ain’t Just a River in Egypt, by Shadi Hamid (Foreign Policy) – Egyptian liberals lost badly in the post-revolution scramble for power — and now they’re in deep denial as many embrace conspiracy theories about the United States.
• Why the World Has to Ignore ReptileEvolution.com, by Darren Nash (Scientific American) – Dispensing of a thorn in the side of archaeologists.
• Ted Cruz’s Deceptive Triumph, by Abby Rappaport (American Prospect) – Ted Cruz’s upset win in the Republican Texas GOP primary for Congress isn’t a win for the Tea Party after all.
• Romney Hasn’t Done his Homework, by Jared Diamond (NY Times) – The Guns, Germs, & Steel author responds to Mitt Romney’s misuse of his book.

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Bumping Uglies: The Olympics, Science, and Gender

The Olympics marketing campaign has always focused on simplicity: the joy of sport. The thrill of victory. The anguish of defeat. The time-honored tradition of athletic competition. The idea is that for just a few weeks every two years, the nations of the world set aside their differences and come together, setting forth their best athletes to represent them on skill and skill alone.

But the ugliness of the world has a habit of sneaking into the Olympic Games. In the case of South African distance runner Caster Semenya, whose female identity was called into question in 2009 due to her phenomenal performance at the 2009 African Junior Championships in Mauritius––where she beat her personal record in the 800m by more than four seconds––as well as her extremely muscular body, the black-and-white nature of the Olympics was thrown for a loop: if Semenya was a man posing as a woman, it would give her, in theory, an unfair advantage over her competitors. But the very public process of confirming her gender amounted to a worldwide orgy of rubbernecking speculation, humiliating Semenya and exposing some very fuzzy science. Now, the media is once again fixated on Semenya for her appearance-–this time noting that she looks “more feminine” due to hormone therapy.

Callous Disregard – A Penn State Football Story

Unless you’re living in an alternate universe, you’ve probably heard about the Sandusky/Penn State scandal/cover-up. Sandusky was convicted in June and will likely die in prison for raping numerous children that were in his child-advocacy program. He was truly a sick fuck.

But on top of all that, the Freeh report was released a couple of weeks ago, which was commisioned by the Penn State Board of Trustees to investigate what Penn State administrators and those in the football program did or didn’t know and do.

Turns out top administrators, including the university President, Graham Spanier, and legendary football coach, Joe Paterno, knew as early as 1998 that Sandusky was, at the very least, endangering young children:

Arrested Developments

Personally, I never cared for the Olympics. I’ve never been much of a sports fan to begin with and so getting some sort of national pride out of people (who probably would have beaten me up in high school) winning a gold medal just is not in me.

But I’ll give this to those who do watch the Olympics, most of them probably don’t fuck children.

Snake Handlers! Satanic Football! Feminist Dispatches From Kolob!

God watches over Moe.

A lot of religious claims and justifications that persist down through the generations do so because they’ve managed to escape empirical testing. So if you ask most religious people if they believe in the power of demonic possession in the straightforward literal sense embraced by the faithful in past centuries, most of them will probably say they don’t. We’ve found better explanations for floods and droughts and other things that used to be blamed on demons. The superstitions that haven’t been filtered out of religion with scientific rigor just becomes what we call religion today.

But even still, lots of superstitions remain intact despite them being proven demonstrably wrong. So for example we have this, from Luke 10:19

Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

Some Christians reinforce this passage with one from the Book of Roadhouse, wherein Patrick Swayze sayeth unto us, “Pain don’t hurt.”

John Hugar Interview

John Hugar is a BEAST contributor who covers sports and music and a student at the University at Buffalo. We talk about music, movies, violence in sports, and lots of other random stuff.

In Which We Jump on the Tebow-Bashing Bandwagon

There are lots of numbers associated with football games. But what do they mean?

A lot was made of Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow throwing for 316 yard in last week’s footsball game against the terminally unemployed steel-workers of Pittsburgh. You see, Tebow stood out from other quarterbacks for painting Bible verses on his face, a favorite of his being John 3:16. People imagined there was some connection between the number of yards Tebow threw for and the placement of one of the more important verses in Christianity within one of the later Gospels.