1. Quiz
2. Finish Presentations
3. Set up Week 15 speeches
4. Conversation
Who do you think is the most beautiful person in your country?
Who do you think is the most beautiful person alive today?
Who was the most beautiful person in history?
Who is the most attractive in your family?
Does beauty affect one's success in life?
Is it better to be physically attractive or intelligent?
Is it better to be physically attractive or wealthy?
Is beauty related to power?
Can you think of anyone who is in a position of power that is not physically attractive?
Do people spend too much time and money on beauty?
How much time should be spent on making yourself look better each day?
Who would you say is beautiful that others maybe wouldn't?
Do you think people should have cosmetic surgery to enhance their looks?
If so what is the minimum age when someone should have plastic surgery?
How popular is plastic surgery in your country?
What is the most popular feature for plastic surgery?
Do you think self-esteem affects beauty?
Do you think beauty affects self-esteem?
Would you ever have plastic surgery?
If so, what would you change?
How important is beauty in your daily life?
Have you ever noticed anyone ever feeling pressured to be more beautiful?
What do you think of the proverb, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder?"
Do you have any proverbs or idioms from your country that relate to beauty? (think: white skin, 9....)
What are some beauty tips that you could share?
Do you think people with many tattoos can be beautiful?
How many tattoos are too many?
Would you ever get a tattoo?
Do you have a tattoo?
Do you think people with many piercings can be beautiful?
What kind of body piercing, if any, do you feel are acceptable?
What kind of piercing, if any, do you feel are unacceptable?
What personality trait is the most important for inner beauty?
How do you define beauty, using your own words?
Would you ever date someone who was not conventionally attractive?
What makes one person more attractive than another?
Do you think people from different countries than you see attractive the same way?
Is there someone famous that is considered beautiful, that you think is not beautiful?
Are beauty pageants good or bad?
Do you think one gender or group worries more about beauty than another?
Would you want your children to be beautiful or talented?
What are some of the drawbacks of being beautiful?
What do you think of celebrities who get plastic surgery?
Do you think it's necessary to have plastic surgery if you are famous in order to be successful?
Do you think skin color affects whether a person is regarded as beautiful or not?
Do you think that fairer skin makes you more beautiful?
What are some advantages of being beautiful?
What makes someone beautiful in your country?
What differs between that idea and the American idea of beauty?
What do you think "beauty is skin deep" means?
How many different adjectives can you think of to describe a beautiful woman or a handsome man
5. Reading
With...
Excerpts From The Book The NBA Doesn't Want You To Read
We've obtained a copy of Tim Donaghy's book, Blowing the Whistle, which claims to
expose the NBA's "culture of fraud"
On
his fellow referees:
Dick Bavetta
….Crawford wanted the game over quickly so he could kick
back, relax, and have a beer; [Dick Bavetta] wanted it to keep going so he
could hear his name on TV. He actually paid an American Airlines employee to
watch all the games he worked and write down everything the TV commentators
said about him. No matter how late the game was over, he'd wake her up for a
full report. He loved the attention.
That very first time Jack and I bet on an NBA game, Dick
was on the court. The team we picked lost the game, but it covered the large
point spread and that's how we won the money. Because of who was playing that
night, I had some idea of who might win the game, but that's not why I was
confident enough to pick the other team. The real reason I picked the losing
team was that I was just about certain they would cover the spread, no matter
how badly they played. That is where Dick Bavetta comes into the picture.
From my earliest involvement with Bavetta, I learned that
he likes to keep games close, and that when a team gets down by double-digit
points, he helps the players save face. He accomplishes this mercy by quietly,
and frequently, blowing the whistle on the team that's having the better night.
Team fouls suddenly become one-sided between the contestants, and the score
begins to get closer. That's the way Dick Bavetta referees a game — and
everyone in the league knew it.
Fellow referee Danny Crawford attended Michael Jordan's
Flight School Camp years ago and later told me that he had long conversations
with other referees and NBA players about how Bavetta propped up weak teams.
Danny told me that Jordan himself said that everyone in the league knew that
Bavetta cheated in games and that the players and coaches just hoped he would
be cheating for them on game night. Cheating? That's a very strong word to use
in any sentence that includes the name Dick Bavetta. Is the conscious act of
helping a team crawl back into a contest "cheating"? The religion of
referees from high school to the NBA is "call them like you see them."
Of course, that's a lot different than purposely calling more fouls against one
team. Did Bavetta have a hidden agenda? Or was he a “company man”, making sure
the NBA and its fans got a competitive game when he was on the court?
Studying under Dick Bavetta for 13 years was like getting
a PhD in advanced game manipulation. He knew how to control a game better than
any referee in the league. He also knew how to take hints from the NBA front
office and extend a playoff series or, worse yet, change the results of that
series.
The 2002 Western Conference Finals between the Los
Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings presents a clear example of game and
series manipulation. As the teams prepared for Game 6 at the Staples Center,
Sacramento had a 3–2 lead in the series. The referees assigned to work Game 6
were Dick Bavetta, Bob Delaney, and Ted Bernhardt. As soon as the referees for
the game were chosen, the rest of us knew immediately that there would be a
Game 7. A long series was good for the league, good for the TV networks, and
good for the game. Oh, and one more thing: it was great for the big-market,
full of stars, Los Angeles Lakers.
In the pre-game meeting before Game 6, the league office
told us that certain calls — calls that would have benefitted the Lakers — were
being missed by the referees. This was the type of not-so-subtle information that
I and other referees had to interpret. After receiving the message, Bavetta
openly talked about the fact that the league wanted a Game 7.
"If we give the benefit of the calls to the team
that's down in the series, nobody's going to complain. The series will be even
at three each, and then the better team can win Game 7," Bavetta stated.
As history shows, Sacramento lost Game 6 in a crazy come-from-behind
game that saw the Lakers repeatedly sent to the foul line by the referees. For
other NBA referees watching the game on television, it was a shameful
performance by Bavetta's refereeing crew, one of the most poorly refereed games
of all time.
The 2002 series certainly wasn't the first or last time
Bavetta influenced an important game. He also worked Game 7 of the 2000 Western
Conference Finals between the Lakers and the Trail Blazers. The Lakers were
down by 13 at the start of the fourth quarter when Bavetta went to work. The
Lakers outscored Portland 31–13 in the fourth quarter and went on to win the
game and the series. It certainly didn't hurt the Lakers that they got to shoot
37 free throws compared to a paltry 16 for the Trail Blazers.
Two weeks before the 2003–04 season ended, Bavetta and I
were assigned to referee a game in Oakland. That afternoon before the tip-off,
we were discussing a game on our schedule. It was the last regular-season game
we were scheduled to work, Denver against San Antonio. Denver had lost a game a
few weeks prior because of a mistake made by the referees, a loss that could be
the difference between them making or missing the playoffs. Bavetta told me
Denver needed the win and that it would look bad for the staff and the league
if the Nuggets missed the playoffs by one game. There were still a few games
left on the schedule before the end of the season, and the standings could change.
But on that day in Oakland, Bavetta looked at me and casually stated,
"Denver will win if they need the game. That's why I'm on it."
I was thinking, How is Denver going to win on the road in
San Antonio? At the time, the Spurs were arguably the best team in the league.
Bavetta answered my question before it was asked.
"Duncan will be on the bench with three fouls within
the first five minutes of the game," he calmly stated.
Bavetta went on to inform me that it wasn't the first
time the NBA assigned him to a game for a specific purpose. He cited examples,
including the 1993 playoff series when he put New Jersey guard Drazen Petrovic
on the bench with quick fouls to help Cleveland beat the Nets. He also spoke
openly about the 2002 Los Angeles–Sacramento series and called himself the
NBA's "go-to guy."
As it turned out, Denver didn't need the win after all;
they locked up a spot in the playoffs before they got to San Antonio. Instead,
it was the Spurs that ended up needing the win to have the division title, and
Bavetta generously helped. In our pregame meeting, he talked about how
important the game was to San Antonio and how meaningless it was to Denver, and
that San Antonio was going to get the benefit of the calls that night. Armed
with this inside information, I called Jack Concannon before the game and told
him to bet the Spurs.
To no surprise, we won big. San Antonio blew Denver out
of the building that evening, winning by 26 points. When Jack called me the
following morning, he expressed amazement at the way an NBA game could be
manipulated. Scary, yes; amazing, no. That's how the game is played in the National
Basketball Association.
Tommy
Nunez
My favorite Tommy Nunez story is from the 2007 playoffs
when the San Antonio Spurs were able to defeat the Phoenix Suns in the second
round. Of course, what many fans didn't know was that Phoenix had someone
working against them. Nunez was the referee group supervisor for that playoff
series, and he definitely had an interest.
Nunez loved the Hispanic community in San Antonio and had
a lot of friends there. He had been a referee for 30 years and loved to travel;
in fact, he said that the whole reason he had become a referee supervisor was
to get out of the house. So Nunez wanted to come back to San Antonio for the
conference finals. Plus, he, like many other referees, disliked Suns owner
Robert Sarver for the way he treated officials. Both of these things influenced
him when he prepared the referees for the games in the staff meetings. I
remember laughing with him and saying, "You would love to keep coming back
here." He was pointing out everything that Phoenix was able to do without
being punished and never once told us to look at San Antonio. Nunez should have
a championship ring on his finger.
Derrick
Stafford and Jess Kersey
Of course, Stafford had some friends in the league, too.
I worked a Knicks game in Madison Square Garden with him on February 26, 2007.
New York shot an astounding 39 free throws that night to Miami's eight. It
seemed like Stafford was working for the Knicks, calling fouls on Miami like
crazy. Isaiah Thomas was coaching the Knicks, and after New York's four-point
victory, a guy from the Knicks came to our locker room looking for Stafford,
who was in the shower. He told us that Thomas sent him to retrieve Stafford's
home address; apparently, Stafford had asked the coach before the game for some
autographed sneakers and jerseys for his kids. Suddenly, it all made sense.
Referee Jess Kersey was another one of Isaiah Thomas'
guys. They'd talk openly on the phone as if they had known each other since
childhood. Thomas even told Kersey that he was pushing to get Ronnie Nunn
removed from the supervisor's job so that Kersey and Dick Bavetta could become
supervisors. This sort of thing happened all the time, and I kept waiting for a
Knicks game when Stafford, Bavetta, and Kersey were working together. It was
like knowing the winning lottery numbers before the drawing!
+++++++++++++++++++++++++===========+++++++++++++++++++
From Wikipedia
Sports gambling expert R. J. Bell, president of sports betting information site Pregame.com,
tracked every game Donaghy worked from 2003 to 2007. He discovered that during
the two seasons investigated by the NBA, the teams involved scored more points
than expected by the Las Vegas sports books 57 percent of the time. In the
previous two seasons, this only happened 44 percent of the time. According to
Bell, the odds of such a discrepancy are 1 in 1,000, and there was "a 99.9
percent chance that these results would not have happened without an outside
factor." He also found 10 straight games in 2007 in which Donaghy worked
the game that the point spread moved 1.5 points or more before the tip —
an indication that big money had been wagered on the game. The big money won
every time —another indication that "something (was) going on".
However, Bell suggested that there was no way anyone who wasn't in on the fix
could have known that something was amiss about Donaghy's actions during a
game; he said it would have been another year at the earliest before anyone
could have caught on.[23]
Handicapper Brandon Lang told ESPN that it is fairly easy for a crooked sports official to
fix a game, despite Stern's insistence that Donaghy was a "rogue
official". According to Lang, an official can directly influence the
outcome of a game 75 percent of the time if he has money on the game. For
instance, Lang said that a crooked NBA referee can fix the total score by
calling enough fouls to get both teams in the bonus. When a game is being
fixed, Lang said, the officials should be the prime suspects because the
players are making too much money to risk their future. Lang also believed a bookie connected to the mafia turned Donaghy in to the FBI.[24]
As a result of the betting scandal, Stern revised the guidelines
on the behavior of NBA referees during the Board of Governors' meeting in 2007.
Despite the labor agreement for referees, which restricted them from
participating in almost all forms of gambling, it was revealed that about half
of the NBA's officials had made bets in casinos, albeit not with sportsbooks. In addition, all referees had
admitted to engaging in some form of gambling. Stern stated that "[the]
ban on gambling is absolute, and in my view it is too absolute, too harsh and
was not particularly well-enforced over the years". The gambling rules
were revised to allow referees to engage in several forms of betting—though not
on sports. There were several other referee-related rule changes made: the
announcement of referees of a game was moved from 90 minutes before tip-off to
the morning of the game, to reduce the value of the information to gamblers;
referees received more in-season training and counseling on gambling; more
thorough background checks were carried out; the league declared its intention
to analyze the statistical relationship between NBA games and referees'
gambling patterns for those games; and the interactions between referees and
NBA teams were made easier and more formal.[25]
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