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Actually, I am unaware of any women currently on any NBA rosters. Ignoring the small different in men vs women in the population, about half of random people will have 100% likelihood of not being on an NBA team, and about half have a 99.999% likelihood of not being on an NBA team. Those probabilities may still add up to the same thing, but practically, if I meet a random woman black or white, I still can be absolutely certain she is not on an NBA roster.

Saw a TV ad once for a medical show about a man born without a penis getting a "bionic" one. But the blurb said "Andrew is the only person in Britain born without a penis due to a 1 in 20-million condition". I was forced to infer that women in Britain are born with penises.

That, or that people insist on using gender-neutral pronouns even when doing so leads to silliness. Similarly, sportscasters have a checker history of referring to important "firsts" by "African-Americans" except that they sometimes aren't African-American at all...they may be actual Africans from African countries, or may be dark-skinned people born in Britain or elsewhere in Europe ("European-Africans"?).

E.g.

http://www.gelfmagazine.com/ge...

What does Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton have in common with former heavyweight champ Lennox Lewis? They're both famous athletes named "Lewis," of course, but they also have the distinction of being two of the most recognizable African-Britons on the planet. What, you've never heard the term African-Briton before? Perhaps you, like certain media outlets we know, need to learn how to use the term "black."

Here's ESPN's correction after Hamilton won last weekend's Canadian Grand Prix:
"On a June 11 Mike and Mike in the Morning news update on ESPN2, Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton, the first black person to win an F-1 race, was termed an African American. He is from England."

Here's how the Charlotte Observer expressed regret:
"A story in Monday's Sports section misidentified Lewis Hamilton as Formula One's first African American driver. It should have said he is the series' first black driver. Hamilton is British."

Lennox Lewis was also regularly mislabeled, usually by columnists discussing the "African American" dominance of the heavyweight division.

Of course, it's not only athletes who have to deal with this strange combination of political correctness and geographic ignorance from American writers. Brits Naomi Campbell and Thandie Newton have both been referred to as African Americans. (Newton at least has the African part down, as she was born in Zambia.)

Maybe as punishment, the journalists should be forced to listen to a lecture on the differences between African-Americans and black people by Gary Sheffield.

ESPN did it, and there are plenty of others.

There's an interview with one of the stay at home Mom's from the LA Times story where she's defending this practice:
http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/get_rich_or_b log_tryin.php

That's a hoax, written six years ago, and Slashdot editors were suckered by it, as they have been many times before.

Ivermee, a 60-year old archiver in a law firm in South Hampton, has written almost all of the pieces on the Wymsey site, including the egg article, which he wrote back in 2000. In the piece, he outlines eight ridiculous steps for hard boiling an egg using the transmissions of two cellphones pointed at each other with the egg in between.

"I really underestimated how many people would take it seriously," he tells Gelf over email. "No other page on the site has grabbed people's attention and ire button as much as this one. What seems to be happening is that it 'travels' from blog to blog, forum to forum. It was big in Australia last year and seems to be big in the US right now."

Seriously, every time someone bashes on "blogs" it sounds to me like people bashing on television. Fine. Don't watch television. Or watch only the three or four shows you want to watch. Nobody is holding a gun to your head. The same thing is true of blogs. Don't want to see all of that trite bullshit that bothers you so much? Then don't read it!

Don't worry, Groklaw is fisking his quotes even as we speak. Head over there to find them in their proper context. (It's kinda like what The Blurb Racket does for movie poster quotes...)