Sports Fact & Book Rec of the Day 8/18/2011

8/18/2004:
American gymnast Paul Hamm recovers from a bad fall into the scorers' table during his vault and delivers an amazing high bar routine to win the men's all-around gold medal at the Olympics in Athens, Greece. After the event, bronze medalist Yang Tae Young of South Korea will complain of a scoring error related to his parallel bars routine. The International Gymnastics Federation will admit the error and suspend three judges, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport will officially award Hamm his medal on October 21.

Birthdays:
Roberto Clemente b. 1934
Rafer Johnson b. 1935
Matt Snell b. 1941
Bobby Higginson b. 1970
Jeremy Shockey b. 1980

Packers Fact:
Safety Eugene Robinson (1996-97) played college football at Colgate.

“Happiness is a conscious choice.”

—MILDRED BARTHEL, American poet

ON ADVICE, NOT EXACTLY WHAT WE’D
EXPECT FROM THE ROYAL GAZETTE

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HOW TO COMBAT THAT
FEELING OF HELPLESSNESS
WITH ILLEGAL DRUGS

headline in the Royal Gazette (Bermuda)

A WILD RIDE

Nick Harkaway thinks writers nowadays should be more conversant with the technologies we use unthinkingly every day, because the ramifications of progress might be something like what takes place in this apocalyptic, funny-serious, genre-bending, almost indescribable novel of war, love, and heroism in the future. (By the way, Harkaway is John Le Carré’s son.)

“It is not only clever, it is also genuinely terrifying . . . the pace and action of an episode of 24.”—The Times (London)

THE GONE-AWAY WORLD, by Nick Harkaway (Knopf, 2008; Vintage Contemporary, 2009)