Warrior women

July 14, 2015

Stanford research scholar Adrienne Mayor – a National Book Award finalist for “The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome’s Deadliest Enemy” – has a new book out, “The Amazons: Lives & Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World” (Princeton University Press, 519 pages, $29.95).

It blows the lid off the myth of the one-breasted she-males who kidnapped men for sex, abandoning any resulting male offspring, to paint a portrait of those Eurasian women who once and still live like men. ...

The Greek debt crisis: WWATGD? (What would Alexander the Great do?)

July 13, 2015

In my debut novel “Water Music” – the story of the rivalries and loves among four gay athletes – Spyros Vyranos is a successful shipping executive in a country whose glory days seem momentarily long behind it.

“The money’s all in Russia and China these days,” Spyros complains bitterly to his son, Alexandros. That the continuing Greek fiscal crisis may be in large part of the Greeks own making is not lost on Alex, who has a strong sense of history and irony ...

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Pluto is ready (or not) for its close-up

July 9, 2015

On July 14, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will fly by the former planet known as Pluto. Already, the spacecraft is sending back pictures that have scientists “drooling,” which is a bit like calling Marilyn Monroe a dumb blonde and then collecting every MM photo you can.

You see, back in 2006, a fraction of the members of the IAU (International Astronomical Union) voted to demote Pluto to dwarf status. (Something about size and crossed orbits and not owning its Kuiper Belt neighborhood, etc.) So even though tiny Pluto has five moons, it was out.

This did not sit well with the kind of Earthlings who champion the oppressed or are tiny themselves (card-writing schoolchildren, especially those who had to memorize “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles,” or some such to remember Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto.) ...

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Sail away, sail away, sail away – ‘The Stylish Life: Yachting”

July 7, 2015

In my debut novel “Water Music,” the four gay athletes at its core explore their relationships during a vacation on Mykonos, the home of tennis player Alex Vyranos.

Alex is the son of a man who has made a fortune working for an Onassis-style shipping tycoon. At one point, Spyros Vyranos lends his son a company yacht, the Semiramide, to pilot his three friends to the neighboring isle of Delos, birthplace of Apollo. Spyros has warned Alex that the Semiramide is not a toy. He doesn’t want him drinking and sailing He doesn’t want the four winding up on TMZ.

Of course not, papa, Alex remembers telling him as he takes a swig of Dom Perignon at the wheel of the Semiramide, feeling all the power, freedom and escape that a yacht has to offer. ...

Nick Kyrgios socks it to Wimbledon

July 7, 2015

In my debut novel “Water Music,” the first in my series “The Games Men Play,” tennis prodigy Alí Iskandar befriends rising Australian star Evan Connor Fallon – a rebel forever in search of a cause, a Bolshevik always in need of a revolution. When a grumpy flight attendant denies Evan an extra bag of peanuts on an American flight, he flies into a tizzy that lands him and traveling companion Alí in trouble with the TSA – an incident that the ever-unimaginative press soon dubs “Nutgate.”

But Evan isn’t the long-suffering Alí’s only troubled friend on tour. There’s his Olympics’ doubles partner Ryan Kovacs, who makes a mountain out of an ingrown toenail and who’s thrown into a tizzy of his own at the New York Games when his parents can’t get the accommodations they want at The Four Seasons ...

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American Pharoah to be a Jersey Boy

July 6, 2015

It’s official: American Pharoah’s next race will be the $1 million William Hill Haskell Invitational Aug. 2 at Monmouth Park on the Jersey Shore.

“We want to do right by him, so he comes first," owner Ahmed Zayat, himself a Jersey Boy (by way of Teaneck), said. "He's told us he's happy. He's gained weight back. He's been paraded, literally, from coast to coast, and Bob (trainer Baffert) said we need to go back to work. I want to maintain my promise to the fans that if he's healthy he will continue to run, and that's what we're doing..."

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Whither Rafael Nadal?

July 5, 2015

Another Wimbledon, another Rafael Nadal loss in the early rounds to a low-ranked serve-and-volleyer who’s destined to be a trivia answer in the Who did Rafa lose to? category. Dustin Brown this year, Nick Kyrgios the year before, Steve Darcis the year before that and Lukas Rosol the year before that. Except for Kyrgios, who has a mouth on him, none of these players is ever going to be a champ.

But Rafa is – was. What has happened to him? Is it age? (He’s 29 but then, Roger Federer’s 33.) His very physical game? A new racket? Loss of confidence and his famous mental toughness? All of the above? ...

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