Summer Vacation

The master did not sit, unless his mat was straight.
-- Analects 10:12

Harry Potter Spoilers

Exclusive! Having bought the book less than 12 hours ago and speed-read through it, here are some major spoilers from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix:

- In a shock move that has the entire Hogwarts buzzing for weeks, Gryffindor sells Harry Potter to rival Slytherin for 25 million galleons (actually, 7 million with the rest being paid in instalments depending on Potter's performance in Quidditch matches). Rumours about the impending move float about for weeks after Harry is hit about the eyebrow by a wand that Professor McGonagall zaps in a fit of pique after a poor loss to Ravenclaw.

- Later, in a match against his old team Gryffindor, Harry Potter seizes the Quidditch but smashes his Nimbus broom while doing so, and cork spills out of the broom handle. Harry protests his innocence, saying that he grabbed the wrong broom by accident- the broom with cork in it he used during warmups to wow the crowd and perform fancy tricks with. Dumbledore suspends Potter for three games (reduced to two on appeal), while Harry suspects that it is Draco Malfoy who deliberately cast a spell so that he would confuse the two broomsticks.

- After Voldemort strikes and blows up the twin towers of Tower Bridge, Dumbledore retaliates by commanding gigantic wizard army and invading Natsinahgfa, a country which has been sheltering Voldemort, and scoring an overwhelming victory. Voldemort flees and is not seen of again for the rest of the book, although he from time to time sends messages via owl exhorting his fellow wizards to rise up and "do nasty things to the oppressor muggles and the infidel wizards who support them, like put itching powder in their pants or whoopee cushions on their seats, heh heh".

- Dumbledore later invades Qari, a country which has nothing to do with Voldemort and successfully driving out the regime there too, claiming that Qari possesses Wands of Mass Destruction and that they are a threat to world peace. Strangely, despite the most advanced magics searching Qari, no Wands of Mass Destruction are found. Readers later learn that Dumbledore invaded Qari because they posessed a great natural reserve of broomstick oil (very valuable), and because Dumbledore suffered from an inferiority complex and needed to prove to his father that he was a great wizard too. That, and he has a small penis.

- Harry does something heroic; Dumbledore says something wise; Snape acts evil but is actually good; Hagrid acts woodsy; Ron does something funny; Hermione shakes her head at Harry/Ron's silly behaviour; Ginny moons over Harry; McGonagall acts sexually repressed (25 years of English public school will do that to you); Draco Malfoy gets envious of Harry and says something nasty; Mr. Weasley gets excited about Muggle technology; Harry's Uncle, Aunt and Cousin act nasty toward him; magic happens; Voldemort threatens the world.

- Harry Potter and Cho Chang go on one date and Potter blows it by being a stupid, tactless teenager who is obsessed with sex. He later gets over his obsession with Cho and ends the book thinking how silly he has been.

Sadly, I didn't make that last one up. I scanned the book in the store at 1230am this morning (I didn't buy it) and that's what I found. The only Asian character in the book and JK Rowling uses her just as the stereotypical exotic Asian girl who is beguiling and alluring but ultimately is mismatched for the Anglo-Saxon boy, whose proper match is his fellow White Anglo-Saxon female. After the promise of the last book, Rowling succeeds in marginalising the only minority character completely and making a fool out of her! Typical! I hope bloody Harry Potter is happy with Hermoine and Ginny Weasley or which every Proper Anglo-Saxon White Female he decides to hook up with, because he lost the opportunity of a LIFETIME with Cho Chang, and Rowling and her discriminatory, white supremist ways can go jump in the sea. DAMN YOU ROWLING!!! DAMN YOU TO HELL!!!! YOUR BOOK CAN KISS MY ASS!!!

Sport or Not

Two events recently have made me think about what we consider sport.

First, some background: I'm the captain of the Oxford University Swimming Club, which is a Full Blue sport. There are three classification for sports clubs here at Oxford: Full Blue, Discretionary Full Blue, and Half Blue, which refers to the type of school colours award you receive at the end of the year. Generally, the more popular (as in, the more people who participate in it worldwide) and difficult (as in, difficult to excel) sports will be Full Blue sports; those a rung down are Discretionary Blues (which mean an automatic Half Blue, along with the possibility of a Blue to those who really excel), and another rung down are Half Blue sports. This is not to impugn the Half Blue sports- criteria is very stringent, and many important and major sports, such as Archery, Gymnastics, Riding, Lightweight Rowing, Volleyball and Water Polo are Half Blue sports. It's a rough description but it should suffice for the purposes of this discussion. For a greater idea of how status is awarded, check the Oxford Sports website.

Recently Mindy asked me what exactly the criteria for awarding of Blues status here at Oxford is. It turns out that she was wondering because the Oxford University Dancesport women's team is a Full Blue sport, but for the men merely a Half Blue (Dancesport is competitive ballroom dancing). I located the exact criteria on the Oxford Men's Blues Committee website and showed them to her. She read them over and expressed an opinion that Men's Dancesport should be at least a Discretionary Full Blue and wondered why there was a large difference between one gender and the other. I explained that the process of upgrading of status required at least nine of the fourteen Captains of the Full Blue sports approve of the upgrade.

"That's probably why!" she grinned. I raised my eyebrows. Clearly she felt that the difference between the status of the male and female dancesport teams was reflective of the different gender opinions towards ballroom dancing in general. Not being in the mood to argue, I shrugged and let it go.

Later, however, I learnt that the Women's Blues Committee awarded the Oxford University Lifesaving Club Half Blue status. My female counterpart, the Women's Swimming Captain, voted against it but was outvoted. I was stunned at the decision. Lifesaving is a sport?!

These two events have got me thinking. What exactly is a sport? How do we judge the criteria by which we classify activities into sports?

Obviously, to be a sport you need an organisation and a set of rules which allow the same sport to be played anywhere inthe world. You also need an element of competitiveness. You also require physical ability, beyond a normal non-trained human capacity. Not many people would quibble with those points. There are probably other factors which we can consider.

However, I would like to focus my discussion on a rather controversial belief that I have long held: that a sport is not a sport without an objective standard.

In other words, anything that requires human subjectivity to interpret is not a sport. This list would include many activities which we have classified as sports, including gymnastics, figure skating, body building, diving, synchronised swimming, and fo course ballroom dancing (My apologies to Mindy, who has been dancing for well over a decade).

The purity of sport lies in the essential comparison of two or more people or groups. By objectively comparing, we satisfy within ourselves a need for competition, for conquest, for victory. There is nothing more satisfying than, at the end of the day, standing proudly on the battlefield, exhausted and victorious. We know when we have won. We know who is better. To me, that is what the term 'sport' connotes: objective comparison. That is the essence of sport.

But by allowing a third party judge to evaluate who is better or worse does not answer that question. It merely tells us who is better or worse in the eyes of the judges. It devalues the competition by framing it entirely within the subjective viewpoint of a group of people. More often than not, comprehension of the standards requires a technical understanding that is not easily accessible to most people.

Thus, judged events lack the purity of objectivity which is essential to a sport being such.

I am not saying that activities which rely on judges are not athletic, nor that people who participate in them are not athletes. Many of these activities require tremendous amounts of strength and ability, discipline, dedication and hard work. It is definitely a lot of fun to compete in any of these events and the thrill of achievement is definitely extant.

Also, I would like to stress the difference between judges, who decide the outcome of an event, versus referees, who merely interpret rules and ensure that they are enforced.

But these are not sports. Call them what you like- activities, events, 'judged sports'- I wouldn't call them sports.

There once was a limerick

Most of you have no doubt heard the bawdy limerick that begins: "There once was a man from Nantucket...." This is not to be confused with the other limerick that begins the same way, which is far wittier and has an interesting backstory.

Today's TopFive.com list is about the well-endowed gentleman from Nantucket, speculating on what movies might be made about him.

Which got me thinking, as I left my room this morning, what funny limericks could I invent about my friends? I decided to limit myself to using first lines of similar format (i.e. "There once was a person...") and to stress bawdy humour. Cycling through the rain and over the cobblestones, these are the best I could come up with:

There once was a man named Andrew Hughey
Whose eyes, one day, got very dewey
And yet it was not
because he missed his wife alot
but rather because his Power Book had gotten all screwy

There once was a girl named Mindy
Who wore a skirt out 'though it was windy
A gust of wind came along
And showed off her thong
Now Mindy wears pants which aren't trendy

There once was a man named Rich Morgan
Who boasted that he could play the organ
When challenged to show
His hands dived below
For the organ was part of Rich Morgan

At the hustings

My good friend Richard Morgan is running for the position of Hertford College Middle Common Room President (There's a nice photo of both of us on the MCR web page. Scroll down- it's the bottom picture and we're both doing our best Grease impression). He was nominated by Mindy and seconded by myself. Normally at the hustings, the nominator has to get up and say a few words about why he or she nominated this person, but Mindy hates public speaking and so I had to do it. I didn't mind.

"What kind of speech do you want me to give?" I asked Rich, "Something inspiring or low-key?"

He laughed, "Make it like Bono introducing Sinatra at the Grammy Awards!"

So this is the speech I gave tonight:

Rich never did like intellectual elitists snob like me. And I'm not too sure how he feels about guys with tattoos either. But he doesn’t hold it against me. And anyway, the feeling is not mutual.

But us ivory tower intellectuals love Richard Morgan because Rich has got what we want: the common touch, empathy, love; he genuinely loves his fellow man and seeks to embrace us all. From Prince to Pauper, Rich’s the man to go to when you have a problem and you want help. He plays at being tough but this guy, well, he’s all heart. The Ace of hearts. The man. The big bang. He knows your story ‘cause it’s his story.

Who’s this guy that every man who knows him wants to claim as their friend? This man with the soul of music in the body of a statesman. This singer who makes other men poets. This king with the common touch. This leader who gets it all done. Comin’ through with the big stick, or the aside, or the quiet compliment. Good cop, bad cop, all in the same breath. I’m not gonna mess with him, are you?

If you’ve heard Rich sing and heard him play you can feel his emotion. His voice as tight as a fist. Opening at the end of a bar. Not on the beat, over it, playing with it, splitting it like a jazz man, like Miles Davis. Turning on the right phrase and the right song. Which is where he lives, where he lets go, where he reveals himself. His songs are his home and he lets you in. But you know that to sing like that, to play like that, you’ve gotta have lost a couple of fights. To know tenderness and romance you’ve gotta have had your heart broken.

Some people say that Rich hasn’t talked to the them, they wanna know how he is, what’s on his mind. But you know Rich is out there more nights than most coppers on the beat. Doing things. Leading by example. From the front. Taking the hits. Selfless. Generous.

This is the conundrum of Rich Morgan. Left and right brain going full tile but hardly talking. Fighter and diplomat, scholar and athlete, bandman and loner, Troubleshooter and troublemaker. The champ who would rather show you his scars than his medals. He may be soft and gentle to women but I’m not gonna mess with him, are you?

Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to welcome a man heavier than the Empire State, deeper than the Grand Canyon, as recognizable as the Statue of Liberty, and living proof that God is an Episcopalian!

Will you welcome the King of Westerly Rhode Island, Richard Owen William Morgan!

Next time, Rich will be more careful about what he asks from me!