um:
Alfredo Prieto’s case has been reassigned to U.S. District Court Judge Henry Hudson, a former prosecutor appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush.
In a profile of Hudson in connection with his overseeing the sentencing of Michael Vick in 2007, ESPN.com’s legal analyst focused on Hudson’s tough-on-crime approach to the law. “In a campaign for commonwealth attorney,” the story noted, “Hudson used a large button that said, ‘I Voted for Hang ‘Um High Henry.’”
This is a really horrifying look at how priests who have been accused of sexual assault often make their way to churches in South America, so decide if that’s how you want to spend your morning:
In a yearlong investigation, we tracked down and confronted five such priests. All were able to continue working for the church despite serious accusations against them. When we found them, all but one continued to lead Mass, mostly in remote, poor communities in South America.
Some of these men faced criminal investigations, but went abroad without charges being brought against them. One of the priests admitted to GlobalPost that he had molested a 13-year-old boy, and acknowledged that he can never work again in the US. He continues to preach in a small Peruvian fishing village. Another is currently under investigation by authorities in Brazil for a string of alleged molestations, including accusations in the poor neighborhoods where for two decades he ran a home for street children — with the support of the Catholic Church.
You are more than welcome to talk about yesterday’s school shooting all you want; I get the sense this is one of those dudes who vigorously jerked off to the idea of all of us talking about him and his motivations, so I’m just not going to post about it formally.
Questlove on Hamilton and hip-hop:
So what has Lin done? For starters, he has brilliantly re-presented American history through the use of race-blind casting. Roles played in history by white people are, in Hamilton, played by Latino or African-American performers, without any explanation. Or rather: the lack of explanation is the explanation. That’s been the creative move that has powered much of the show’s critical attention, and it’s easy to see why: It’s audacious and funny and serious all at the same time. It’s radically democratic: The only thing that’s elitist is how hard it’s become to get a ticket. (Yes, even for me, and I work for them.)
But I think that the reason that Hamilton is blowing people’s wigs back is something a little different. I think that Lin is stepping forward, boldly, with the first real synthesis of two great American institutions: the Broadway musical and hip-hop. Before Hamilton, each of them had their monuments. Broadway had its Chorus Line, Cats and West Side Story. Hip-hop had its Ready to Die, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and 3 Feet High and Rising. But the two worlds turned independently of one another. When there was a seismic event on Broadway, the citizens of hip-hop nation didn’t feel the ground move under their feet. And when there was a major release or retrenchment in hip-hop, the dancers and directors and dramaturges didn’t experience an inner reawakening. Until now. Because Hamilton‘s isn’t just a hip-hop musical or a stage presentation of hip-hop; it’s organically and genuinely both things at once, in ways that are too important to be skimmed over.
Millihelen does a rundown on which beauty boxes are worth it (I LOVE those things, and I put all of them into this big grab bag in my guest room so that when Jaya visits she can do like twelve face masks a day.)
Laura Ortberg Turner on her anxiety and her desire for contentment:
The thing about anxiety is that it only afflicts you — or, on better days, accompanies you — when you are conscious of it. I think fondly of my days as an infant — how weird, because I cannot remember them — because those are some of the only days in my life when I was not anxious. I hadn’t started biting my nails or worrying about my career path or incessantly checking my bank account balance. I hardly had nails, and those that I did were cut for me! Earning money was beyond my capacity! Someone else took care of all of that for me.
The 40th anniversary of the Thrilla in Manila (I am utterly obsessed with boxing and MMA writing, in case this seems incongruous here):
Denied his hand behind the neck tie up, Ali’s breaks along the ropes became a great deal more dangerous. Where covering up against Foreman simply resulted in Foreman swinging away at Ali’s arms, Frazier was accurate. He would dig inside, under and behind Ali’s elbows. What’s more, Frazier’s right hand seemed more dexterous than ever as he doubled up on both lefts and rights. Where Foreman had two targets—head and body—Frazier saw two obstacles, the arms, and anywhere they weren’t was ripe for assault. Ken Norton commented between rounds that Ali could not apply the same strategy he had utilized against Foreman in this fight with a far more savvy and accurate infighter.
By the third round, Ali was hooking with Frazier. Exactly what Dundee wanted him to avoid. “Don’t swing with him!” shouted the always audible Bundini Brown from Ali’s corner as the champion returned to trading hooks with Frazier in round four. Ali spent the majority of the fifth round in a corner, and the cracks began to show. The commentary team noted that the bout was taking on a similar feel to the first—with Ali building up a lead, and then Frazier ‘coming on’ as the fight progressed. Round six was equally disastrous for Ali as he tried to dance but couldn’t seem to get his feet moving, he wound up on the ropes and taking the body blows again.
There is truly a lid for every pot in this magical world of ours:
Ed Houben is now, at the age of 46, one of the preeminent makers of babies on the planet, father to 106 children of whom two-thirds were made the natural way (i.e., by sexual intercourse) and a third made via artificial insemination. In addition, there are 30 or so he estimates from his years at the clinic. Put another way: Ed Houben, who once had sex once every decade, has fathered roughly ten kids every year for the past 15 years. And he’s still at it, thumping his way into history. So prodigious is his legacy that the BBC dubbed him “Europe’s most virile man,” while he regularly gets billed by media as “the Sperminator.”
The prerequisite for his calling, he believes, is full transparency. So visit his website—with the tagline “It is nice you found my website!”—and you will discover that Ed has tested negative for gonorrhea and chlamydia. You can see that he’s tested negative for syphilis and HIV, too. You can gaze upon pictures of him, one in which he kneels beside one of his small children, from some years ago when he was a bit more youthful.
My friend Carrie’s new puppy had no idea they MADE fire hydrants this big:
Sarah Jeong talks to Zoe Quinn and Randi Lee Harper and Ken White about the problems with the UN’s cyber violence report.
Deleted comment of the day:
Props to WaPo for actually transcribing that bear vs. kayak video. https://t.co/8VmqHNKhhy pic.twitter.com/HISmI1WK4M
— Nat Herz (@Nat_Herz) October 1, 2015
