The story of Todd Walker

I think that I have read at least fifty stories just like this one, and they never get old. Someone stepping up and doing something to selflessly help others through sports.

This time, it is 47-year old Todd Walker from Oakland, California. From ESPN:

He told Jaee Logan's family he was going to make a difference. He was going to use football as a teaching tool to save these kids. He started the Junior Bears program along with head coach Herbert Miller, and they set out to teach football and life.

And so, for the past several years, with the permission of the parents, Walker has taken his players on a field trip to the funeral home. He teaches the reality and finality of death to kids who are desensitized by television and video games and the streets outside their homes.

People still think like this?

Ugh.

From The Guardian:

Dressed in full uniform, the explorer scouts, who were taking part in Remembrance Sunday service in Romford, Essex were heard to repeatedly shout "Let's kill the Jews" at Jewish second world war veterans.

It is hard to believe that not only are there still people out there who would do something like this but that they would do it in public.

"The dad comes to a devastating realization: If they remain together, they’ll drown together."

Wow, a powerful read from Men's Journal. I recommend reading it, solely based on the teaser paragraph:

Swept out to sea by a riptide, a father and his 12-year-old son struggle to stay alive miles from shore. As night falls, with no rescue imminent, the dad comes to a devastating realization: If they remain together, they’ll drown together.

"Where there's smoke, there's moonshine"

Just an awesome headline. From McClatchy:

Parker said he made undercover purchases of the illegal hooch in 2006 and 2007 but couldn't find the still. Parker, of Scotland Neck, has been with ALE four years.

Pretty interesting story actually.

On the Amazon-Wal Mart price war

From The New Yorker:

The best way to win a price war, then, is not to play in the first place. Instead, you can compete in other areas: customer service or quality. Or you can collude with your putative competitors: that’s why cartels like OPEC exist. Or—since overt collusion is usually illegal—you can employ subtler tactics (which economists call “signalling”), like making public statements about the importance of “stable pricing.” The idea is to let your competitors know that you’re not eager to slash prices—but that, if a price war does start, you’ll fight to the bitter end. One way to establish that peace-preserving threat of mutual assured destruction is to commit yourself beforehand, which helps explain why so many retailers promise to match any competitor’s advertised price. Consumers view these guarantees as conducive to lower prices. But in fact offering a price-matching guarantee should make it less likely that competitors will slash prices, since they know that any cuts they make will immediately be matched. It’s the retail version of the doomsday machine.

Definitely a cool read (and don't worry, it's short).

CNBC writer: American who won NYC marathon not American enough

Umm... what the hell.

From CNBC:

It's a stunning headline: American Wins Men's NYC Marathon For First Time Since '82.

Unfortunately, it's not as good as it sounds.

Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998, but the fact that he's not American-born takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies.

Yeah, he's only "technically" an American because he's only "technically" been a citizen since 1998.

Kefleighi was born in Eritrea.

As with CBS late night talk show host, Craig Fergusion, he is American on Purpose.

Stephon Marbury is weird #NBA

According to ESPN, Marbury was kicked out of his courtside seats at a New York Knicks game when they found out that he didn't have tickets for the seats he was sitting in.

But Marbury had even more bizarre behavior at Madison Square Garden:

Adding to the bizarre scene, Marbury pulled out a video camera shortly after arriving and began shooting the live action, at one point standing up -- thereby blocking the view of the fans behind him -- while play was ongoing.

Marbury is... just weird.

French newspapers take a page out of drug dealers' book

French newspapers are trying to get young people hooked on newspapers by offering a year's subscription for free to young consumers.

The government Tuesday detailed plans of a project called “My Free Newspaper,” under which 18- to 24-year-olds will be offered a free, yearlong subscription to a newspaper of their choice.

“Winning back young readers is essential for the financial survival of the press, and for its civic dimension,” the culture minister, Frédéric Mitterrand, said.

As @c_chisolm said, "It's how all dealers operate."

Schwazenegger's "message"

Apparently Arnold Schwarzenegger had a not-so-subtle message for Democratic assemblyman Tom Ammiano. The first letters of the first seven lines were "F-U-C-K-Y-O-U."

A coincidence?

Gary Langer writes the odds are one in ten billion of this happening by coincidence, as Schwazenegger's spokesperson (understandably) said.

Here’s how not to figure it precisely, rather a quick and unsophisticated back-of-the-envelope calculation: If the odds of picking a particular letter at random are one in 26, doing it over seven selections (the number of letters in question) is (1/26)^7, or .0000000001245. Just about one in 10 billion.

Now, the odds are not even to picking each letter. It depends on the amount of words that start with those seven letters -- plus, not as many words start with an "x" or "z" (I think none of of the words in this post do, for example) -- though more will, admittedly, start with a "t" than a "k."

I'd love for someone who actually has knowledge of this sort of thing to tell us the odds of this happening by pure coincidence.

That said, even if it's not coincidence (I am almost 100 percent certain that it did not), I still find it funny that Schwarzenegger 1) did this and 2) thought he could get away with it. Should a sitting governor do these sort of juvenile pranks?

Nope. But it's still funny.

All those CIA conspiracy theorists just got tons more ammo

From the New York Times, speaking of Afghani president Hamid Karzai's brother:

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

Good times. It's been going on for eight years, apparently.

Paper suing TX Gov Perry to get clemency report of possibly innocent man who was executed

The Houston Chronicle and Hearts Newspapers are suing Texas Governor Rick Perry, R-Texas, for the clemency report on Cameron Todd Willingham -- a man who was executed but may have, in fact, been innocent.

I first read about it nearly two months ago, and you can too with this 16,000 word article from the New Yorker. Worth reading every word.

The report is a summary and status of the case against Willingham that was given to Perry at 11:30 a.m. on the day of Willingham's 2004 execution in the fire deaths of his three daughters. Anti-death penalty advocates say modern fire forensics show the blaze cannot be proven as arson.

Perry's office has refused to release the report, claiming it is a privileged document. The clemency document was used by Perry in the process of deciding whether to give Willingham a 30-day stay of execution.

“When it comes to human life, there is no place the governor should be more transparent in his decision-making,” said Jonathan Donnellan, an attorney for Hearst and the Chronicle.

Gallup polling: We're better than news outlets

There was an interesting blog post in Gallup's The Queue blog basically saying they're better than newspapers (whose circulation is down) and TV news (with CNN dropping to dead last among cable news networks).

These new realities reaffirm why we do what we do here at Gallup.com. Quite simply, we do what no one else can do -- which is to provide empirical, rather than anecdotal, insights on the news of the moment. Put more simply, we let our data drive our news. Data that no one else has. That's why at Gallup.com, every lead has a data point, and every story has a graph.

We don't want you to visit Gallup.com instead of visiting other news sources. We want you to visit Gallup.com in addition to your favorite news sources. It's perfectly fine with us if you turn somewhere else for context and background, and then come to us for the data or empirical evidence to complete the picture.

What do you think?

Held by the Taliban: 7 Months, 10 Days in Captivity

New York Times reporter David Rohde was held by the Taliban for seven months and ten days before escaping. In a five part series, he recounted his tale.

Moments later, I felt a hand push me back toward the car, and I was forced to lie down on the back seat. Two gunmen got in and slammed the doors shut. The car lurched forward. Tahir and Asad were gone and, I thought, probably dead.

Take an hour or so and go read the first four parts (the fifth isn't up yet).

On Rush Limbaugh and why he can't buy the Rams

Rush Limbaugh is out of a bid to be a minority (irony!) owner in of the St. Louis Rams.

And over at The Corner at the National Review, Kathryn Lopez unveils this gem:

Rush Limbaugh is not an acceptable sports investor because of his politics. How else to interpret the state of a sports world where Keith Olbermann can be on Sunday Night Football and Rush Limbaugh's hard-earned money can't be spent as a partial owner of a team in a sport he loves?

First of all, it isn't his politics. The Center for Responsive Politics looked into where the political money from the National Football League (NFL) went to.

And many of the owners that made political donations were, well, conservative. Dean Spanos, the owner of the San Diego Chargers (I'm typing this from the San Diego airport, actually) was a bundler for John McCain.

Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Redskins, has given $199,000 to Republicans and $1,500 to Democrats.

Robert McNair, the owner of the Houston Texans, has given lots of money to Republicans, including Mitch McConnell, James Inhofe and Rudy Giuliani.

In other words, you can be conservative and be an owner; in fact, if you look at the percentages of money given to Republicans versus Democrats for most teams (the Rams, ironically, are one of the exceptions to this rule), Republicans got more money from NFL people than Democrats did.

As for the Keith Olbermann comment (he's the new bogeyman of the Right), did Lopez forget that he already had his chance to be an NFL commenter?

Limbaugh had to resign after this gem on ESPN's NFL Countdown pre-game show:

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well," Limbaugh said. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

McNabb, according to the Philadelphia Eagles website, "is the Eagles all time leader in pass attempts, completions, yards and TDs."

The previous three seasons, the Eagles had been to the playoffs three times and the conference finals twice in a row. In 2003, the year where Limbaugh made his idiotic statements, McNabb again led the Eagles to the conference finals. The next year, they made the Super Bowl.

In other words, not only was Limbaugh's "analysis" of McNabb wrong, it was just plain race-baiting for no reason.

So why can't Limbaugh be "partial owner of a team in a sport he loves" as Lopez asked?

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell put it best:

"I have said many times before that we are all held to a higher standard here," the commissioner continued. "I think divisive comments are not what the NFL is all about. I would not want to see those kind of comments from people who are in a responsible position within the NFL. No. Absolutely not."

In other words, Rush Limbaugh is not the sort of person the NFL wants to associate itself with. It's as simple as that.

Newly found Babe Ruth footage excites baseball afficianados

A cool story from the New York Times:

Babe Ruth has struck out looking. Displeased, he leans on his bat, right hand on his hip, and looks back at the umpire. He utters something that can only be imagined. Lou Gehrig, on deck, leans on his bat, too, as if he has seen this act before. Ruth finally shuffles away, head turned to the umpire, dragging his bat through the dirt.

The scene, along with eight seconds of footage never publicly seen of Ruth playing the outfield, was part of an 8-millimeter film found by a New Hampshire man in his grandfather’s home movie collection. It provides a rare look at Ruth, a showman even in defeat.

Cool stuff. Head over to that link to see the video.

Marring an otherwise good article on Letterman

The New Yorker has an otherwise good blog post on David Letterman, but this mistake shows that the person who wrote the article obviously hasn't watched The Late Show with David Letterman in a while, let alone watch it on a regular basis:

But from the beginning things were a little off. Letterman made a show of running across the back of the stage before walking out to greet the audience, and then he went off to the side to talk to someone for a second or two. It’s hard to say what that was all about—nerves, blowing off steam, a pretend escape from the theatre?

The Late Show does this gag every day.

38-Year Old catcher staying in the major leagues -- for health insurance

A sad, sad tale from Sports Illustrated:

Two years ago, just when Fasano was thinking of finally retiring, his wife, Kerri, gave birth to the couple's third child, a boy named Santo. He was born with hypoplastic heart syndrome, a condition in which the left side of the heart is underdeveloped. "It was devastating, of course," Sal says. "Your son is helpless, and there's not that much you can do."

There was one thing Sal could do -- find a way to remain in the major leagues. Although baseball diehards who salivate over the perks of the game tend to speak of cathedral-like stadiums and million-dollar paychecks, of fancy travel and high-profile endorsements and red carpet fame, an element they tend to overlook is the major league health plan. If you are a ballplayer, and you spend so much as a second on a major league roster, you are entitled to a year of coverage that, says one major league executive, "takes care of pretty much everything you can think of."

He didn't make it to the major leagues this year, and with just a handful of games left, it doesn't look like the Colorado Rockies are going to call him up.

Stephen Jackson doesn't regret the Malice in the Palace

Remember the huge fight between the Indiana Pacers and the fans of the Detroit Pistons? Well, Stephen Jackson, one of the main characters in that particular drama, says he has no regrets about going into the stands in that fight.

On Monday, he even went as far as to say he regrets nothing in his career, speaking specifically about going into the stands with then-Indiana teammate Ron Artest during an ugly brawl with the Detroit Pistons in 2004.

In case you need a refresher, here's the video of the fight:

Man convicted of stealing locomotive ordered to stay away from trains

From the Miami Herald:

"He knew the workings of the locks, the switches for different tracks,'' Polo told prosecutors. "He knew the train. To my knowledge he knew the train backward and forward. He knew everything . . . And he loved trains."

Ryan Gustin, a special agent for CSX's security force with a knowledge of trains, was also on hand. When Gustin would describe to the officer how trains operate, documents show, Dowdy would finish his sentences.

The man, Brandon Dowdy, reportedly stole the train to go see a house band (Big Dick and the Extenders, in perhaps the only time that phrase will appear in the Miami Herald) play.

His lawyer says he committed the crime because he was off his medicine for bipolar disorder.

How the board game Monopoly helped WWII prisoners escape

This is a really cool story:

During World War II, as the number of British airmen held hostage behind enemy lines escalated, the country's secret service enlisted an unlikely partner in the ongoing war effort: The board game Monopoly.

It was the perfect accomplice.

Included in the items the German army allowed humanitarian groups to distribute in care packages to imprisoned soldiers, the game was too innocent to raise suspicion. But it was the ideal size for a top-secret escape kit that could help spring British POWs from German war camps.