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The Editors .
Express delivery for championship weekend
What about a monster all-football mailbag before we tackle this week's conference championship picks? Is that something you might be interested in? As always, these are actual e-mails from actual readers. Q: Last Sunday's games were a beautiful reminder of why sports is the best reality show of all time, why fans go shirtless in 32-degree weather, why men flock to bars to get wasted and stuff themselves full of buffalo wings, why bookies exist, and why there will be pregame shows with three panels separated in groups of fours some day. You never know. If you told me before the season that Eli -- and not Peyton -- would be playing to go to the Super Bowl, the Chargers would come back to beat Peyton at home with Billy Volek and Norv Turner, and old fogeys in nursing homes would be doing the Superman dance and lining up to buy a Nintendo Wii, I would not only bet my mortgage against those three things, I would have wagered stapling my buns together.
Scott Turner: Appreciating the gifts of Trustom Pond
Like bee swarms, hundreds of Canada geese crisscrossed the water. Cormorants glowed in the setting sun. Ducks produced beeps, peeps, honks, and squeaks, squawks and whistles. I saw coot, gadwall, scaup, bufflehead, widgeon, redhead, goldeneye, black duck, ruddy duck and three types of merganser. Some of the smaller waterfowl fed in a massed frenzy, looking like a scrum of rugby players. A northern harrier, also called a marsh hawk, passed overhead, as did a great blue heron, which croaked like a movie dinosaur. A rough-legged hawk hovered over the sand dunes near Moonstone Beach. I heard the rattle of a kingfisher. Nearby was a sandhill crane, noted by birdwatchers for weeks, but we did not see it. I caught up with my family at one of the observation decks, where a sea-freshened breeze rattled leaves on young white oaks.
In Memoriam: Those We Lost in 2006
Gerald R. Ford,, 93 -- Thirty-eighth president of the United States, who ascended to the presidency in the wake of Richard Nixon's resignation. He was the only president never to be elected to national office. His pardon of Nixon helped heal the nation after the divisiveness of Watergate. "My fellow Americans: our long national nightmare is over." Saddam Hussein, 69 -- Former Iraqi dictator; deposed by the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Hussein was put on trial for his crimes, convicted and executed. James Brown, 73 -- Musician and entertainer whose legendary talent and innovative hits earned him the nickname, "Godfather of Soul." Dec. 24, 2006 Joseph Barbera, 95 -- Cartoonist who collaborated with William Hanna to produce some of TV's most memorable animated characters.
Giuliani's work for drug maker probed
Brownlee found himself on the telephone last year with a political and legal superstar, Rudolph W. Giuliani. For years, Mr. Brownlee and his small team had been building a case that the maker of the painkiller OxyContin had misled the public when it claimed the drug was less prone to abuse than competing narcotics. The drug was believed to be a factor in hundreds of deaths involving its abuse. .
A talented student rebuilds his life after battling depression - and ...
On the evening of Sept. 28, at an apartment complex in King of Prussia, a tragedy and a miracle occurred 2.5 seconds apart. The tragedy took place when Jordan Burnham, 18, a senior just nominated to the homecoming court at Upper Merion High School, jumped out his ninth-floor window. The miracle happened 90 feet below, when he hit the ground at 50 m.p.h. - and survived. Jordan has no recollection of going out the window. Even though he was suffering from depression, neither he nor anyone close to him ever expected him to do something so impulsive, so lethal. "I had everything to live for," he says now. Today, 114 days later, Jordan's body remains badly broken. With the help of three therapists, he stood on his right leg last week for 60 seconds. He still cannot stand on his left leg, encased in scaffolding.
New Get a Mac ad interrupts football, doesn't need replay
Was it because I was in a football state of mind? Maybe I was just bitter about the commercial break that airs after the ensuing kick-off, which comes after the commercial break aired after an extra point. It could just be that the New York Giants didn't show up for their first quarter in Tampa Bay this weekend. But Apple's new Get a Mac ad that aired yesterday afternoon during the wild-card round of the NFL playoffs, Referee, was pretty terrible for me. The ad, which featured Mac, PC, and a supposed NFL referee, tied into the games taking place yesterday. The PC brought the referee to the commercial to make sure Mac "plays fair," citing his boasts that Leopard is "better and faster than Vista." (Mac points out that those were the Wall Street Journal's claims, not his.) The referee then inexplicably starts the clock and then heads back to the video camera to review the claims.
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