-Caveat Lector- ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Tue, 6 Jul 1999 12:27:25 -0500 From: "Jeff Taylor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Reason Express List Member <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Reason-Express: REx27, v2 Welcome to Reason Express, the weekly e-newsletter from Reason magazine. Reason Express is written by Washington-based journalist Jeff A. Taylor and draws on the ideas and resources of the Reason editorial staff. For more information on Reason, visit our Web site at www.reason.com. Send your comments about Reason Express to Jeff A. Taylor ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Virginia Postrel ([EMAIL PROTECTED]). REASON Express July 6, 1999 Vol. 2 No. 27 1) The Blunt Instrument Behind Women's Soccer 2) Strip Malls: Evil Incarnate? 3) Gray Lady Kisses Off Great White North 4) Quick Hits - - Entitled Side - - Virtually every story on the great run by the U.S. women's soccer team to the World Cup final mentions Title IX, the federal requirement that universities give "equal" opportunity to women athletes. The lack of context in such reporting suggests the Title IX reference is tacked after a quick scan of a press release rather than any hard thinking. First, the reports never mention what Title IX is all about: money. Without it is impossible to understand what has happened in the last two decades. Only then does it begin to make sense why women's soccer might have benefited from Title IX re-directs of money. College administrators casting around for a quick and easy way to add a maximum number of female varsity athletes for a minimum of expense could hardy go wrong with soccer. A few balls and spare fields and bam--20 freshly minted women athletes to help stave off lawsuits. >From there it required years of work by dedicated coaches and athletes, but the initial motivation should not be forgotten. The money angle also leads to the true cutting edge of Title IX today: the slices that come out of men's athletic programs. Sports that are costly to provide--gymnastics, wrestling, diving--and do not produce much in the way of fan interest, i.e., revenue, are routinely wiped out by administrators trying to meet a federal bean counter's idea of fairness. This vision often entails male athletes having to transfer to new schools to continue playing, if they continue their sports at all. Only the federal government and lawyers who file suit under Title IX could regard this as a happy outcome. Of course, none of this should detract from the accomplishments of a very gritty and determined group of athletes who just happen to be women. But it would be nice if the mainstream media would at least attempt to try to tell the whole story of a federal mandate that has had decidedly mixed results instead of mindlessly cheerleading from the sideline. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/03/014l-070399-idx. html http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/02/180l-070299-idx. html Contributing Editor Walter Olson looked at how Title IX is killing men's sports at http://www.reason.com/9802/col.olson.html ************************************************************** - - Quaint Stripper - - Just how bad are the suburbs? Why, these communities are anti-community, or so says Richard Moe, head of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. In recent years, Moe has led the group to the forefront of battles against development. Why? "I defy anyone to show me a sense of community in a strip mall," Moe, a former aide to Walter Mondale, explains. Well, OK, Mr. Moe. You might try any strip comic book shop, where you'll be sure to find several intense conversations between the owner of the shop and his clientele, which will range from post-grad students to 8-year-olds. Also note that the owner revels in his little ad-hoc community. His practiced X-Men and Astro City pedantry is well received, even appreciated, and returned in kind. He is surely not in it for the money--the rent on his cozy-cum-claustrophobic spot sees to that. Stick him downtown where rents are higher and see how long he lasts. Or you might try the local shoestring-budget ethnic restaurant. Simply navigate to any large suburban divided highway, and one will soon show itself. It might be Vietnamese, Cantonese, Indian, Ethiopian, Korean, Jamaican, or something that defies description. It might occupy strip space formerly held by a shoe store, drug store, or hardware store--the kind of fine upstanding fare that right-thinking Minnesotans might recognize. But once the previous occupants went belly up thanks to the big category killers on the edge of town, the strip owners had cut some quick deals to fill up the empty space. So in come the dim sum or curries, with weekend brunches that fill the parking lot to capacity. Although anglos are welcome and some do seek out the exotic fare, the restaurant is mostly a gathering spot for non-anglos who crave something both authentic and close by. And, as any member of the species knows, special food means special occasions. Family and friends dress up to celebrate graduations, holidays, or very special business agreements. It is an insular little community, but a community all the same. The same goes for the gatherings at coffee bars, for even the ubiquitous national chains have their regulars. Or at chili parlors, especially the ones close by softball fields which offer a discount for parties in uniform. Listen to the banter, joshing, maybe even flirting between the staff and the faces they recognize. Clearly something is being knitted together at these places that is more than just the sum of the transactions. Moe's is a peculiar kind of cynicism that holds that the accidental qualities of bricks and mortar define human experience. Such an outlook forgets that human vitality is a powerful thing. It can overcome many things, not to mention such inconveniences as building a community in a strip mall. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-07/05/108l-070599-idx. html Check out the Reason Online Breaking Issue on the fight over the suburbs at http://www.reason.com/bisprawl.html ************************************************************ - - Big Nothing - - The country may have just turned 132, but The New York Times regards Canada as nothing big. It intends to cover the Great White North from Denver after calling home its Toronto correspondent. The Times cites the high cost of keeping an employee in Canada. Ottawa taxes fringe benefits such as medical insurance at 40 percent rates. The result: taxes too high to justify keeping a man on the ground. "Our tax bill this year was something close to twice his gross salary, which is just too much," said Times Foreign Editor Andrew Rosenthal. More than a few Canucks also feel overtaxed, if the recent round of tax cuts is any indication. Provincial governments in Manitoba and Ontario instituted tax cuts on personal income this month. That puts them in the company of Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island which have already cut taxes this year. But that may not be enough, as even National Hockey League franchises are ready to stream south to escape high taxes. The owner of the Ottawa Senators plans to move his team unless his $37-million tax bill is reduced. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-06/28/136l-062899-idx. html ************************************************************* QUICK HITS - - Quote of the Week - - "Japan or something. China. Somewhere out there on the other side of the world. It's like Independence Day for the presidents, or some shit like that," Hardy Hsu, 14, a seventh-grader at Roosevelt Middle School in San Francisco, when asked the which country the United States won its independence from and the meaning of the Fourth of July. Hardy was not alone in his confusion. http://examiner.com/990704/0704history.html - - Quote of the Week, William Bennett Dialectic Division - - "Thirty years ago, Europe produced very good movies. They don't anymore because they are practically crushed by the weight of this cultural invasion," Fidel Castro speaking at Rio de Janeiro State University and decrying U.S. movies that "poison, confuse, and cheat a large part of the world." http://www.nando.net/entertainment/story/body/0,1087,65836-104276-741329-0 ,00. html - - The Weblog Prohibition Act - - The House takes up legislation which would give powerful copyright holders greater say over what is done to or with info that is in a database. The upshot: use of facts--such as prices or other rankings--without permission of the copyright holder could be illegal. http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/20550.html - - Private, But Not From Big Brother - - Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.) was the sole dissenter in a House move to overhaul banking regs and provide privacy protections for consumers from everyone except the federal government. Stay tuned. http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/privacy990702.html http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/20554.html ############################################################## Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group (http://www.dbtgroup.com), manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and productivity software. Current Circulation: 3301 We encourage you to forward Reason Express. If you received this issue from a forward, please subscribe. Previous issues of Reason Express are available at http://www.reason.com/re/re.html To subscribe to the TEXT version just send a TEXT ONLY message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with this in the body of the message: subscribe Reason-Express [EMAIL PROTECTED] For the HTML version the TEXT ONLY message would be: subscribe Reason-ExpressHTML [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your email and your domain would be something like [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe, use unsubscribe in place of subscribe. 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