Why It's Sometimes Called "The Scottish Play"

Here's one version. (It's kind of amateurish, but has some interesting material).

This should be a more reputable source. (You can compare.)

The curse is still apparently alive and well.

Five-Minute Shakespeare

For you guys in Block 2, here's a link to the "Five-Minute Shakespeare" website. We already looked at Henry V; you might want to take a look at Romeo and Juliet, also.

By the way, I would give Henry an "A", R & J only a "C'. Whereas Lea Frost hits a lot of key points in Henry, "Aragorngirl" just seems interested in outlining plot in a silly manner.

Driving (to the hoop) While Black

You'd think that if there's any place in the United States where African-American have attained equality (if not superiority), it would be the National Basketball Association. And if you look at rosters, and all-star teams, that would certainly seem to be so.

But what happens when we look at fouls?

A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a CornellUniversity graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991 through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against black players than against white players.

Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which fouls are called "is large enough that the probability of a team winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the refereeing crew assigned to the game."

Now Benjamin Disraeli said "You can prove anything with statistics." Mark Twain said "there are lies, damned lies -- and statistics." So I will acknowledge that statistical data can be misleading. Then again, sometimes statistics will contradict the things that we think we see, that things that we have just come to accept as true. (Memes, really.)

Here's a link to the whole paper, if you'd rather.

Now, a quick Google News search indicates that this is not the first bombshell dropped by Professor Wolfers. Maybe I just missed it, but this one didn't seem to make so much noise.