Weekend Wire, March 5

Lil Wayne - Music - More Music Videos

Oh, Weezy
Lil’ Wayne released his video for “6 Foot, 7 Foot” on Thursday and it is kind of awesome. The video is inspired by the movie “Inception” without all the confusing storylines that gave me a headache. And it has a puppy that can’t roll over. More.
The only thing missing? Since the song samples “Day-O” by Harry Belafonte, he should have totally featured some Beetlejuice.

Pass up the Triple-Bypass Burger
The 575-pound spokesman for an Arizona burger joint that rewards and makes light of obesity died this week at the age of 29.
Blair River died of a flu that morphed into pneumonia, but his heft is considered to be a part of his ultimely demise. Doctors and studies indicate that there could be a correlation between obesity and the ability to fight the flu.
Jon Basso, owner of Heart Attack Grill, said, “Had he been thin, he would have had a tenfold opportunity to survive the pneumonia."
Basso, however, is not planning to change his shtick, adding that he thinks his restaurant adds to the conversation about obesity but that his food should be consumed in moderation. Hmm.

Mo' Money for Mark (Not Really)
In just six weeks Facebook’s value has soared 30% to $65 billion. That’s based on the planned investment by private-equity firm General Atlantic, which is reportedly buying one tenth of one percent of Facebook from former employees. In January, Facebook announced it had raised $1.5 billion at a price that valued the company at $50 billion. At the time, Facebook said it had no immediate plans for the capital, but said it was continuing to build and expand its operations. At best I can tell, the only thing they’ve done so far is introduce the new photo album feature. As one of my friends once said, for being one of the busiest sites on the Internet, Facebook is pretty clunky. More.
One more thing! If one of your friends has an update about Facebook shutting down, don’t click it. If Facebook shuts down you can expect it to be pretty big news that you’ll read about here, no doubt.

Libya Update
Maybe Hillary Clinton is right, because this Al Jazeera story is loaded with tons and tons of information about Libya. I particularly like this beginning vignette about the western town of Az Zawiyah pushing Moammar Gadhafi’s loyal forces out of their town. The number of people killed in Libya since the protests against the Gadhafi regime began in mid-February range from 1,000 to 6,000. More.

White Fright
Are white people oppressed? Apparently some people think so. CNN reports that there is a growing sentiment among whites that they are under fire and need to protect their heritage. I am not sure how I feel about all of this, but the story is fascinating. I do believe, and concur with George W. Bush no less, that there is a growing “nativist” movement and I wonder how that relates to this.
The story quotes Tim Wise, author of “White Like Me” as saying, “We can no longer take it for granted that we (whites) are the dictionary definition of an American." Using "American" as a synonym for "white" is something that has always bothered me, and anyone who has ever (perhaps innocently) asked me “What’s your nationality?” knows that. (My standard response is "My nationality is American. Are you asking about my ethnicity?")
My favorite part of this story is the assertion that white people are uncomfortable being the minority. For some people, like my roommate who spents his weekends hanging out with me and a handful of Indians, that doesn’t appear to be true. However, I had white friends leave my college graduation party because they were uncomfortable being the only white people there. More.

Davies Follow-up
In Thursday’s wire, I briefly mentioned Brandon Davies’ suspension from the basketball team of Brigham Young University. My friend Kevin said I didn’t properly report on the enormity of the dismissal. Davies was suspended because BYU, a school associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, requires its students to live a chaste and virtuous life. In other words, don’t get drunk, don’t have premarital sex. Davies had the sex. This story says he may have gotten a girl that is not his girlfriend pregnant. Scandalous.
While it might be unrealistic to expect star athletes to keep it in their pants, when you sign up to play for a special kind of university you have to play by their special rules. If he wanted to pass it all over town he should have attended a state school. Anyway, as Kevin said, this guy was probably their second best player and the team was ranked third nationally and had a good shot of getting the top seed in the NCAA tournament. Well, in the team’s first game without Davies they lost to the unranked New Mexico and lost their shot at the top spot. More.