Photo: Finlay MacKay
New York Times:
BUILDING THE PERFECT MACHINE: Bob Bowman has made Phelps his consuming project.
Phelps — owner of a dozen world and American swimming records; winner of six gold and two bronze medals in Athens in 2004; odds-on favorite to accumulate more such jewelry this month in Beijing — must, at some point, come up for air.
Phelps — owner of a dozen world and American swimming records; winner of six gold and two bronze medals in Athens in 2004; odds-on favorite to accumulate more such jewelry this month in Beijing — must, at some point, come up for air. Or so you would think. But as you stare at the eerily still surface of the new pool at the Qwest Center in Omaha, into which Phelps has just lunged, it is possible to imagine, momentarily, that the figure undulating like a mass of kelp in the shallows of Lane 5 might just prefer to stay put, indefinitely, there in his element. I was watching a video from June 29, cueing the finals of the 400-meter individual medley at the United States Olympic Team Trials again and again with the hope of determining, somehow, the precise factors that enable Phelps to thrive, as few ever have, in an environment so unaccommodating to humans.
It’s not a simple task. Of all Olympic sports, competitive swimming is perhaps the most resistant to casual analysis. When the contestants are not entirely submerged, they are typically face-down; the strokes they carve through the water tend to look the same, and much of what they do is in any case concealed by the splash of their effort. Unless you have an intimate knowledge of the athletes, there are few physical characteristics to distinguish one form in the water from another, an effect compounded by body shaving and the uniform of caps, goggles and bodysuits. (The new, much-publicized Speedo LZR bodysuit that Phelps wears, for instance, is a peculiar cross between a piece of lingerie and a tourniquet; fabricated by ultrasonic welding rather than by stitching, it molds the swimmer’s trunk into a drag-reducing form, can take 20 minutes to don and is proving to be a great improvement, speedwise, on old fashioned, no-tech skin.)
Hilzoy via Andrew Sullivan:
I imagine that it often happens that soldiers who are part of the same unit do not like one another. Sometimes, a soldier might even despise another member of his or her unit, or think that other soldier immoral or contemptible. And yet, when these feelings do not have to do with sexual orientation, we routinely expect soldiers to put their personal feelings aside and do their jobs. And when they don't, we assume that they, not the people they endanger, should be disciplined.If, for instance, a soldier is racist, and cannot find a way to work with African-American soldiers, we do not discipline or expel the African-Americans. If a soldier dislikes another and cannot put her feelings aside and do her job, we do not punish the soldier she dislikes; we punish her. In all other cases, we assume that given a choice between two soldiers, one of whom is trying to complete his mission to the best of his ability, and one of whom is unable or unwilling to put his animosity aside and do his job, we choose the first. We expect this of our men and women in uniform, and we also expect that they will be given the training and the leadership they need to act like professionals.
I have never understood why it's different when gay men and lesbians enter the picture.
NYTimes:
Diplomats from the [Bush administration's] United States Embassy in Baghdad spoke to Mr. Maliki’s advisers on Saturday, said an American official, speaking on condition of anonymity in order to discuss what he called diplomatic communications.
After that, the government’s spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, issued a statement casting doubt on the magazine’s rendering of the interview.
The statement, which was distributed to media organizations by the American military early on Sunday, said Mr. Maliki’s words had been “misunderstood and mistranslated,” but it failed to cite specifics. “Unfortunately, Der Spiegel was not accurate,” Mr. Dabbagh said Sunday by telephone. “I have the recording of the voice of Mr. Maliki. We even listened to the translation.”
But the interpreter for the interview works for Mr. Maliki’s office, not the magazine. And in an audio recording of Mr. Maliki’s interview that Der Spiegel provided to The New York Times, Mr. Maliki seemed to state a clear affinity for Mr. Obama’s position, bringing it up on his own in an answer to a general question on troop presence.
The following is a direct translation from the Arabic of Mr. Maliki’s comments by The Times: “Obama’s remarks that — if he takes office — in 16 months he would withdraw the forces, we think that this period could increase or decrease a little, but that it could be suitable to end the presence of the forces in Iraq.”
He continued: “Who wants to exit in a quicker way has a better assessment of the situation in Iraq.”
Mr. Maliki’s top political adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, declined to comment on the remarks, but spoke in general about the Iraqi position on Sunday. Part of that position, he said, comes from domestic political pressure to withdraw.
“Foreign soldiers in the middle of the most populated areas are not without their side effects,” he said. ”Shouldn’t we look to an end for this unhealthy situation?”
Barton Silverman/The New York Times
Chipper Jones and Derek Jeter at venerable Yankee Stadium.
NYTimes:
Across the last 85 years at the Stadium, there has been endless baseball history and, simply, history itself. There have been masses celebrated by Popes, boxing matches featuring the likes of Joe Louis, concerts fronted by Bono and a day for Nelson Mandela. And there have been, of course, those 26 world championships accumulated by the Yankees. Now there is a fourth and final All-Star Game at the Stadium, a signature moment in a final season that will be filled with them.
The game is a reminder to a national audience that it will soon be time to say farewell to a landmark. The American League standings provide more poignancy, since the Yankees are trailing by sizable margins in the division and wild-card races. Unthinkable as it might seem — the Yankees, after all, have been in the postseason for 13 straight years — there may not be any October baseball at the Stadium this season, which means Tuesday night’s game could be the Stadium’s final one on a national stage. “I think that it should steal the attention, rightfully so,” Derek Jeter, the Yankees’ shortstop, said of the place he has always called home in the major leagues. “This place is as special as it gets.”
Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg News
Traders in the crude oil options pit at the New York Mercantile Exchange. Oil prices spiked above $147 a barrel on Friday.
Marc Ambinder:
Obama's trip to Europe will be a huge event...maybe as big as his convention, maybe as big as a debate. Sheer curiosity will translate into enormous crowds, even as most of Obama's events will be small and pooled. The European press will go ga-ga, uncritically. If Obama does speak at the Brandenburg gate -- and it's unclear whether he will at this point -- you could envision a crowd of more than 200,000 watching and cheering him.
The Los Angeles Dodgers take the field at AT&T Park, San Francisco, after winning 10-7.
On Saturday, we returned and sat ten rows behind first base. The Dodgers lost that game.
