The 2011 IAAF Athletics World Championships Start Today

The 2018 Winter Olympics wasn't the only major international sporting event the Koreans grabbed.   Another one they successfully bid for and won was the 2011 IAAF World Championships that start in Daegu today and run through September 4.

Athletics is what the rest of the world calls track and field, and the Monaco based International Association of Athletics Federations is the governing body of the sport.  The championships are held biennially so they don't step on the prestige of the Olympics being the ultimate event in the sport of athletics. 

The next IAAF World Championships will take place in Moscow from August 10-18, 2013 and in Beijing's Bird's Nest Stadium in 2015.

In the IAAF worlds all the sports we know and love from the sprint and distance races to the field events will be contested by men and women international teams in Daegu.

Yes, they'll be passing gold, silver and bronze medals out too.  They'll also be televised by many networks around the globe, including Universal cable here in the States which concentrates on Olympic and international sports.     

Speaking of the Olympics, since we are less than a year away from the 2012 London Games, by watching the championships being contested here,  we fans of the sport will get some of our things that make you go hmm questions answered leading up to the Olympic athletics competition next summer from August 3-12.

Who are the up and coming athletes in the sport?  What athletes that we have seen over the last few years that we thought were done are making comebacks?   Will the athletes who are having stellar seasons this year continue their winning ways and parlay that season long excellence into world championship medals?  

Conversely, will the athletes who were having a subpar year suddenly take inspiration from being on the big international sporting stage and put it together?  What athlete who wasn't on the world's horizons will have the breakthrough performance that makes them an international household name and a potential medal favorite in London? 

Is Jamaica's Usain Bolt still the world's fastest man?  Can Caster Semenya overcome the drama she's undergone since her surprise 800m championship win in Berlin in 2009 and defend her title?

In Caster's case, I sure hope so.

The answers to those sporting questing question will be revealed as the 2011 edition of the IAAF world championships gets started

DISD Passes Trans Protections!

The Dallas Independent School District is the second largest school district in the Lone Star State and last night became the third in the state of Texas to protect trans students and employees from discrimination and harassment based on gender identity and expression.

There were a total of six policies on the consent agenda that needed to have the gender identity and expression language added at last night's Board of Trustees meeting in order to accomplish that.

According to a FB report from Rafael McDonnell who attended last night's DISD meeting, four of the policies in the consent agenda passed on 9-0 votes. The student nondiscrimination policy passed 8-0 with one abstention, and the teacher contract one passed 6-3.

The NO or abstention votes had nothing to do with the addition of gender identity and expression language to those policies according to McDonnell, but other issues the NO voting DISD trustees felt were problematic.


This a huge win for the civil rights of trans Texans.  At any rate Dallas transpeeps, time to thank your DISD boardmembers who did vote to protect your human rights and reward them with your votes in their next election cycles.

Now that HISD, DISD and FWISD have these trans protection policies in place, what will the rest of the over 1000 school districts in Texas do?   

Austin, San Antonio where you at?   El Paso?  Suburban Houston, Dallas and San Antonio districts?  The Valley?  Corpus Christi?  Lubbock?    

As always, will keep y'all posted.

A Taste Of The 'Paris Is Burning' Ball

In my Paris Dupree post I briefly touched upon the Paris Is Burning ball from which the documentary movie took its name.   The scenes in the documentary are from the 1987 ball.   While searching for video of Paris Dupree to add to the post ran across some classic video of the 1991 ball uploaded to YouTube..

I'm posting the femme queen face, high fashion, and femme queen luscious body categories.   The femme queen designation are the categories that transwomen compete in the ballroom scene. 

There's also femme queen realness, runway and voguing in addition to the other special ones that make up a ball competition.  

I like posting the video from the late 80's and early 90's because you see not only the legendary girls, but you'll note how laser focused they were for the most part of projecting a classy, feminine image.