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Aug. 20, 2006 1) The Sacramento Monarchs’ 92-64 blowout of the Houston Comets in the WNBA Playoffs on Saturday meant more than just advancing to the Western Conference Finals. It meant the end of one of the great careers in all of sports. Dawn Staley, who had become a fixture with the Charlotte Sting, was traded to Houston last season, primarily to give her one last crack at the one thing she didn’t have, a WNBA title. She won’t get the Ray Borque-type ending—one where she gets to celebrate victory with her new team in Houston and the old faithful fans here in Charlotte—but her career was still the stuff of legend. The challenges don’t end for her, because Temple’s women’s basketball team will be looking to return to the NCAA Women’s Tournament in 2007. She is a class act, and one day she’ll join the many others who are enshrined at Springfield. 2) I’m making my case again for the election of Art Monk into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. It baffles me, a die-hard Redskins fan, and many others who know and appreciate the game why one of the greatest receivers of all time is not already enshrined. I’ve heard the arguments, most notably from Sports Illustrated writers Peter King and Paul Zimmerman, both of whom are Hall of Fame electors, that Monk didn’t strike fear into the hearts of the defenses covering him, that he didn’t bring flash-and-dazzle, make the great circus catches or threaten to burn someone deep on every play. He also didn’t have the gaudy post-season numbers of former Pittsburgh teammates John Stallworth and Lynn Swann. All Monk did in his career was keep the chains moving and, as a result, the Redskins went to four Super Bowls in the first Joe Gibbs regime, winning three. Art Monk has earned his spot in Canton, and it shouldn’t have to come down to the Seniors Committee to give it to him. The Hall of Fame electors need to right this wrong and vote him in at the next opportunity, which comes in South Florida before Super Bowl XLI. 3) Here’s what happens when you take someone who’s never watched a single episode of American Idol and try to interest them in a Lifetime movie about its most celebrated champion: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz… For the record, I’m happy that Lifetime actually had the guts to telecast a movie whose central character was not Meredith Baxter, Valerie Bertinelli, Melissa Gilbert or Nancy McKeon. (Also for the record, I happen to like all the people I just mentioned, especially Nancy McKeon.) But it would have been more enlightening and more fulfilling to see that movie be about someone like Mae Jemison or Oprah Winfrey—African-American women who have not only succeeded but thrived, and have the staying power and resources to make a difference in people’s lives. Fantasia Barrino’s rags-to-riches story may be uplifting and moving for many, but it does nothing for me. In fact, seeing what I did of it, and knowing what I did before I saw it, only intensified my own frustration and anger with today’s generation of African-American youth. So many of our young minds do not understand, do not know, and do not care about the sacrifices that were made on their behalf. And it was evident in Fantasia’s biopic that she did not understand, did not know and did not care. A national contest kept her from winding up where so many others in her position, regardless of color, wind up. She’s among the lucky ones. The question is: Thirty years from now, will we be mentioning Fantasia Barrino in the same breath as greats like Ella Fitzgerald, Whitney Houston, Nina Simone and Ehtel Waters, or will we be watching her story in a “Whatever Happened To…” segment on Entertainment Tonight? 4) It slipped through very quietly in the news, but one of America’s great scientists is now gone. James A. Van Allen died of heart failure on August 9 in his native Iowa. The radiation belt that the Explorer I satellite found in 1958 was detected by instrumentation designed by Van Allen and his students at the University of Iowa. Subsequent satellite launches discovered the existence of a second belt, and both were named in his honor. Van Allen was also instrumental in the development of the Rockoon, a small, high-performance sounding rocket that would be carried aloft by a large balloon and fired when it above most of the atmosphere. Because there was no way to control the direction of the lifting balloon once aloft, Van Allen could not conduct his launches over land, but directed a number of firings from ships to provide a larger zone of safety. But his greatest contribution may have been serving for over 30 years as the head of the physics department at Iowa. During his tenure, Iowa brainpower was involved in high-profile space programs like Galileo, Mariner, Pioneer and Voyager, contributing to the knowledge of our solar system and, quite possibly, what lies beyond it. Among the many honors that Van Allen received during his lifetime was being one of Time’s Men of the Year (1960, as part of a group of 12 scientists), the Gold Medal from the Royal Astronomical Sociey (1978) and the National Medal of Science (1987). ------------ About the author: Claxton Graham has written over 100 articles for Useless Knowledge. He has also written the unpublished novels The Writer's Nightmare and Santa's Sleigh Is Missing. He works as a business analyst. Email: scifiwriter8502@email.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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