Keith Rabois Resurfaces at Silicon Valley VC Firm

I blogged on February 11th about how Silicon Valley looks the other way when one of its anointed wizards violates ethical, legal, or moral boundaries. The case noted in my post involved allegations of sexual harassment levied against Square's now-former COO Keith Rabois. He happens to have been among the early key employees and investors in PayPal and LinkedIn. That status gives him entree into just about anywhere in the Valley.

Keith Rabois

Rabois played his cards well. According to a story by the fine journalist Peter Delevett in today's siliconvalley.com, Rabois has just joined Khosla Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's premier venture capital operations. While Valley hotshots have made it a point to praise the move, not one has uttered a syllable about the circumstances that led Rabois to look for a new job. The rules apparently don't apply to the stars, at least not in star-struck Silicon Valley.

International Herald Tribune Says Adieu

The New York Times announced today that it planned to "rename" The International Herald Tribune this fall. The 125-year-old newspaper will still be published, although under altered circumstances and with far less glamour than when the Trib was in its heyday.

The headline for the Times' story on this development included the word "rechristened." Heaven help us all. Instead of calling a spade a spade, the Times' spokespeople offered dissembling statements and marketing jargon. The low point was when the Times ran a correction on its own story, in which an assertion that the "rechristened" publication would offer a "new website" was recharacterized as a website with "a new design." Inquiring minds may wonder what the distinction between the two categorizations is. Meanwhile, considering the Times intends to have a new masthead for this reborn international newspaper, a "new design" appears to understate the dimension of change.

Art Buchwald
(photo: LA Times)

For many Americans who lived or currently reside overseas, the Trib's farewell is a melancholy event. When I lived in Italy, I read the Trib for better or worse. A number of its editorial choices did not sit well with me, and at times I thought the paper misrepresented controversial European political and social issues. Nonetheless, the International Herald Tribune's legacy provided an irresistible cachet for its content. Its Parisian roots connoted a Continental sophistication that one lived in Europe to embrace. Its journalists included excellent writers, such as food specialist Patricia Wells and the late Art Buchwald. The Trib's so-called "rebranding" not only marks the end of an era, but a loss of sensibility for which few substitutes exist.

Journalism has changed greatly since the Trib's glory days. It is unlikely a "rebranded" newspaper will bring them back. That gloire will come from some other direction, and from fresh voices.

Why Watch the Oscars?

The Oscars are on tonight, and watching the event is tough sledding. I found the red carpet preamble nearly unbearable, with the fawning over fashion divas especially dreadful. The only actress who seemed at ease was, strangely, the incessantly photographed and remarkably untalented Jennifer Aniston.

Sometimes, I talk with friends who can't understand why some actors win Oscars and some don't. The word "fairness" or "merit" come into the conversation. Hollywood acknowledgement is rarely about either concept. Nikki Finke points out in her "Live-Snarking the Oscars" that "Envy and spite will determine the winners....just look for whomever is envied most by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and bet those names probably won't get called onstage tonight."

So why watch the Oscars? Why care? However, earlier this evening, I watched my blu-ray version of Chinatown. Sometimes, the right movies win Oscars for the right reasons.

Sometimes, they don't.

Let Them Eat Horse

American classists imagine Western Europe as an idyllic land where desirable lifestyles, unadulterated foods, and physically attractive, "sophisticated" people live in harmony with the environment and (typically) liberal political values. One expression of this conveniently naive, tastelessly self-centered notion was the Italian portion of Elizabeth Gilbert's wildly popular memoir Eat Pray Love.

Graphic (and associated, interesting post): zerohedge.com

Reality that's "darker than night," as Raymond Chandler once observed, has a way of interceding such daydreams. Recently, Western Europe has learned to its shock that a number of meat-based products did not exactly follow truth-in-labeling laws. Horse meat was surreptitiously included in items such as goulash and pasta with bolognese sauce. There has been something of a freakout on the Continent and in the United Kingdom over this quickly expanding horse play. Massive product recalls have been issued by industrial giants, including Findus and Nestle. One concern is the identification of funky drugs in the horse meat. With litigation just an ambitious attorney away, Euroland's food kingpins want the evidence out of the marketplace toute de suite, as the details of a willfully ignorant food production chain grows ominously. (The zerohedge.com link in the above illustration includes a well-written piece about the corruption and its grim echoes of the attitudes that shaped the subprime mortgage crisis.)

Meanwhile, some Europeans have suggested equine cuisine could remain a viable option for its neediest citizens. A BBC report notes that German development minister Dirk Niebel advocated that the illegal food be distributed to Europe's poor. Hey, what's wrong with a little horse when you don't have anything else to eat? "We just can't throw away good food," Herr Niebel stated.

Mr. Ed (left)
(photo: vanityfair.com)

He has a point. However, the minister did not go so far as to push for the provision of genuinely healthy items for those who can't even afford dog food, never mind ground Trigger. Let them eat horse? There seem to be some historical echoes in that line of reasoning, don't you think?

If a horse could talk, as Mr. Ed did on American TV for years, what do you think it would say about this issue?

Scientists Explore New, Deepsea Underwater Vents

Shrimp found near an undersea vent
(Photo: mirror.co.uk)

For all the legitimate fuss about outer space exploration, we know far less about undersea worlds. One relatively new discovery is undersea vents. These essentially consist of very hot water that bursts into surrounding, much cooler ocean water. The environment encourages specific life forms to exist there. It's incredible stuff, and stranger than science fiction can fathom.

If you have time, take a look at a recent BBC report on new discoveries in Captain Nemo's world. It's an easy read, the material is fascinating, and likely to get your imagination to consider our planet from a unique -- dare I say, underwater -- perspective.

Retired General Suggests National Guard Should Patrol Chicago

Lt. Gen. (ret.) Russel L. Honore

A story that hasn't gained much traction outside the Midwest is Chicago's uptick in shootings and other violent crimes. It's startling to read about homicides as a nearly routine weekend Second City story. Why Chicago has not exactly heard the message from Newtown should give both sides on the gun rights/gun control issue something to consider.

It's gotten to the point where people are contemplating dramatic remedies to the atmosphere of violence. To that end, a retired lieutenant general, formerly in charge of the military's response to Hurricane Katrina, suggested Chicago municipal authorities ask for a National Guard presence on Windy City streets.

A recent Chicago Tribune report noted the officer in question, Russel L. Honore, raised the issue during a news conference connected to The HistoryMakers project. (The initiative's goal is "to record and archive the stories of African-American military leaders," according to the Tribune.) Honore's call out for effective action against gun violence strongly resonates in Chicago's African-American neighborhoods, where the majority of crimes of foul play take place.

China's "Leftover Women"

Women have traditionally been compelled to swim upstream against society's powerful currents. In the United States, glass ceilings become tough to endure. Successful actresses routinely and reasonably complain about the ruthless combination of sexism and ageism in the entertainment business. Pressure to bear and raise children, in spite of career goals or personal exploration, can become relentless.

Conscientious Reading and Study
PRC Stamp Issued 1975

As bad as those scenarios are, American women don't get hammered the way their unmarried Chinese counterparts do. A recent BBC article points out that the dreaded birthday for single Chinese women is 27. If they're not married by that age, they're washed up. The Chinese phrase for this phenomenon is sheng nu, or "leftover women." The signals for this societally sanctioned dismissal are not subtle ones in the People's Republic.

As an example, the BBC report cites a piece published by the All-China Federation of Women titled Leftover Women Do Not Deserve Our Sympathy. It presented the following opinion with a straight face:

Pretty girls do not need a lot of education to marry into a rich and powerful family. But girls with an average or ugly appearance will find it difficult. These girls hope to further their education in order to increase their competitiveness. The tragedy is, they don't realize that as people age, they are worth less and less. So by the time they get their MA or PhD, they are already old -- like yellowed pearls.

Well, how does the writer really feel about the issue, eh?

I suppose a limerick sums up the situation:
It just won't do
To be sheng nu.

Author Patricia Cornwell Wins $51 Million Lawsuit

Patricia Cornwell
(photo: cbsnews.com)

Who said there wasn't any money in writing novels? Patricia Cornwell, who has churned out best sellers seemingly forever, recently won a lawsuit against her financial advisers. A jury awarded Cornwell fifty-one very, very large, according to a story in today's BBC.

Don't suppose that Cornwell had to take a part-time job while she litigated. As the BBC report noted, "the writer said that in 2009 she discovered her net worth was less than $13m, even though she had made an eight-figure annual income for the previous for years."

FAA Plans Six Domestic Test Sites for Drones

Someone who invested in drone manufacture must be very happy these days. The unmanned flying devices, once the military's newest and quite effective toy, has become embraced by domestic law enforcement constituencies, corporate interests, and institutional users. The demand for drones is so hot that the FAA is ready to open the gates to widespread use in the United States.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the federal agency has requested permission to open a half-dozen drone test sites across the country. Apparently, the FAA plan is to have states compete for the "honor" of housing a drone test site.

Drone prototype/United Kingdom
(photo and related video: guardian.co.uk)

The Post article notes the enormous amount of money behind the "must have a drone" movement. "Industry experts," the Post observed, "predict the takeoff of a multibillion-dollar market for civilian drones as soon as the FAA completes regulations to make sure they don't pose a safety hazard to other aircraft."

The FAA has supposedly cared about individual privacy in this matter, including a stipulation that each test center follow relevant federal and state laws "and make a privacy policy publicly available."

That tricky tray of regulations and good intentions is unlikely to offer a great deal of tangible privacy. In the meantime, people will experience a continued erosion of their privacy. What happens, for example, when a tabloid hires a drone to photograph celebrities? Or a private detective agency rents some time to document the movements of a suspect? Or a social media firm decides to provide "real time" images from public areas, such as a sports stadium? (Air rights could become a significant legal issue in those cases.) While one could argue the FAA would simply deny access to sensitive or high-profile venues, one could also suggest that everything has a price. What would you pay for drone-free privacy?

Olympic Committee Recommends Dropping Wrestling from 2020 Summer Games

You don't have to follow legitimate wrestling or the Olympic Games to cry "foul" over the International  Olympic Committee's (IOC) executive committee's recent recommendation to drop the sport from the 2020 Summer Games. That's right: the sport associated with the original, ancient Greek Olympics is going to be dumped. This action, and its indefensible rationale, has generated worldwide condemnation. The IOC managed to pin a truly worldwide sport to the mat of TV popularity and commercial endorsement.

Antique Greek Cup Showing Athletes
(photo: British Museum)

Wrestling's advocates in the United States have quickly published op-ed articles, interviews, and other publicity initiatives protesting the IOC's outrageous decision. A Bloomberg video segment with Fortress Investment Group principal Michael Novogratz articulates the case against the IOC's decision. Among the printed, high-profile opinion pieces was one former Secretary of Defense (and Princeton University wrestler) Donald Rumsfeld published in The Washington Post.

Rumsfeld mentions that his athletic activity helped develop his ways of thinking and his character. He has considerable company in that line of reasoning. When I was a pre-teen, I had what today are called "self-esteem" issues. I had just failed a junior life-saving program that, along with other disastrous life changes, brought my self-confidence down to zero. My father thought one way to reverse that trend was to take boxing lessons at a private, somewhat privileged neighborhood athletic club. However, one look at boxing and I wanted out. I thought my chances of getting slugged in the ring were far greater than any punishment I could deliver. Wrestling seemed a safer play.

The wrestling lessons were taught by the boxing instructor, a short man who could argue with either his wits or his fists. My usual opponent was an age peer who lived in the neighborhood, but didn't fit the prosperous area's demographic profile. He lived in an apartment above some shops. He was raised by a single mother and I believe went to public school. Both circumstances were unusual for a 7th grade Catholic kid in Forest Hills at that time. He was a better wrestler than I was, and he was quicker and stronger than I was.

There was a public competition at the athletic club; my usual nemesis and I were names on the wrestling card. This time, I beat the odds, mostly by using a defensive strategy. My opponent never really displayed what he could do, and I won. Did I feel good about the victory? No. I didn't really win as much as avoided defeat. Much more significantly, I felt badly for my opponent. The result clearly hammered his self-confidence. I felt guilty that happened. How would his life have changed had he performed as he had practiced? As a consequence of his defeat, was he destined to be trapped in a world where he always ended up on the wrong side of the tracks, the losing end of an argument, the runner-up in a two-person race?

Clarissa Mei Ling Chun
US Female Olympic Wrestler
Bronze Medal/London 2012 Olympic Games
(photo: Reuters, and shown in the Christian Science Monitor)

I realize people overcome disappointment, and that is as much character building (maybe even more so) as the cult of winning fosters. Meanwhile, the experiences and lessons from my brief encounter with wrestling have stayed with me for a lifetime. They have done so for others, from august American cabinet ministers to anonymous athletes from obscure nations. They have done so for centuries. Why the International Olympic Committee chose to drop wrestling from its 2020 Games defies common sense and global experience.

The Emergency Earring Stash

My wife's emergency earrings.

My wife and I went out for Valentine's Day. We had a lot of fun. At first, we thought a cloud might linger over our mood. My bride lost an earring during her visit to New York's Museum of Modern Art. The lost item didn't have any significant monetary value, but the accessory did feature some red and possessed some sentimental aura. However, my wife, as resourceful as Ulysses and as wily as Penelope, had a solution to her dilemma. She routinely carries a spare set of small, everyday clip-on, earrings in her handbag! She put them on; our evening continued unabated.

My wife notified the Museum of Modern Art's staff about the lost earring. It may remain lost forever. Meanwhile, we have gained a good story that will make VD 2013 a day to remember.

NY Times vs. Tesla

Earlier this week, a dispute arose over a New York Times article which cast the Tesla Model S electrically-powered sedan in a very negative light. The Times sent reporter John Broder to test drive the Tesla in the Northeast. The challenges included cold weather and distant charging stations.

The Times' choice of Broder was a curious one. He is not an automotive reporter and has no known expertise regarding cars. The Times would not have dared conduct a similar approach with, say, Apple. One wonders why the paper went ahead and had Broder cover the story.

Elon Musk
(photo: esquire.com)

Broder wrote a highly critical piece about his Tesla test drives. Tesla did not take this lying down. Its president, Elon Musk, has taken to Twitter and other media outlets to bitterly criticize the Times and Broder. The newspaper, which has often written fawning pieces in the past about favored tech firms such as Apple, has taken on one of Silicon Valley's darlings. We'll see how far that approach works, and whether tech firms will take Times' reporters calls.

Siliconvalley.com has a useful synopsis of Times v. Tesla in today's online editions.

French Cars

Classic Citroen
(photo: Telegraph)

Today's online editions ofThe New York Times included a feature piece about classic French cars. The article reports on the 38th annual Retromobile show, an event that showcases Gallic automotive ingenuity. Americans don't associate the land of Chanel and haute cuisine with engineering excellence. Yet, French firms have created some memorable, even wacky machines.

Among them are Citroens, Peugeots, and Renaults whose shapes would never have passed a Detroit Big Three review committee. During various visits to France, I've seen some of these vehicles. They often seemed held together with something other than sturdy bolts and suspensions. My favorite was M. Hulot's jalopy, which I saw courtesy of the funny Jacques Tati movie M. Hulot's Holiday. That film was as quirky as the car shown in it. There's something about the French sense of invention that remains appealing, even today, and it's on display now at Retromobile in Paris.

Silicon Valley's Startup Culture Vs. Employment Law

Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial spirit embraces a free-wheeling startup culture. Few rules animate these typically small firms, whose key employees essentially disdain boundaries and imagine social laws apply only to others. This atmosphere and belief system occasionally creates legal and moral issues for the enterprise founders, principal investors, management, and yes, the "staff."

Keith Rabois
(photo: NY Daily News)

A case in point is the recent resignation of Square's Chief Operating Officer Keith Rabois. According to a Reuters story picked up by siliconvaley.com, the COO said auf weidersehen due to a legal contretemps involving an employee with whom Rabois had canoodled for two years. The story suggested that startups and their key assets could essentially do, say, or suggest anything to anybody on the staff at any time. It was as open and as vulgar as a frat house on a drinking binge, or as dangerous as a physical game of "truth or dare."

The story didn't really pinpoint Silicon Valley's all-male executive suites as a cause of these behaviors. Yet, it's hardly a secret that the tech world is the boy's club, filled with young guns who've made money too easily and too quickly. They sometimes come from environments where privilege quickly translates into repellent actions taken without consideration for their consequences. The movie The Social Network, spotlighting the actions of Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, shows Harvard's arrogant, implicit encouragement of entitlement. In that respect, Silicon Valley companies aren't greatly different than that Athens on the Charles.

What's most off-putting is the current American idealization of Silicon Valley's lack of ethos, I suppose.  "Creativity," "innovation," and "progress" apparently make objectionable behavior by very intelligent, ambitious under-25-year-old men acceptable. Behind this sleazy facade is not sexual drive as much as a drive for power and status. These young 'uns, intoxicated with their uninhibited use of control, become behavioral monsters or tricksters, such as the Sean Parker character Justin Timberlake so convincingly portrayed in The Social Network.

The Reuters piece mentions other activities, such as whitewater rafting, that had to be curtailed once a startup approached a significant financial scale and staff size. There was a sense of melancholy as small enterprise owners realized those "exciting" team-building activities were fraught with legal peril. The owners also realize employees might prefer getting paid via a lawsuit than through a problematic IPO. That is also the time when Silicon Valley's libertarian zillionaires discover they live in a land of laws, and not in a self-created nation of one-man rule.

Atget and Friedlander -- The Princeton Exhibit

Atget

The combination of photographers Eugene Atget and Lee Friedlander is not an obvious one. They worked during quite different eras, used substantially different equipment, and had decidedly distinct temperaments. Yet, a current exhibit at the Princeton University Art Museum combines the work of both photographers in an attempt to make the whole more articulate than the parts. Fortunately, one doesn't have to buy the curator's strained premise to enjoy the works in the excellent, compact show.

One delightful aspect of the exhibit is the museum itself, housed on Princeton University's campus. The  uncrowded space allows for relaxed contemplation of the displayed works. Annoying devices providing podcasts or other recorded information are blissfully absent. The free admission removes the anxiety of "getting one's money's worth."

I'll let the Atget image and the Friedlander photograph, each of which appear in the Princeton exhibit, speak for themselves.

Lee Friedlander: New Orleans, 1969
copyright: Lee Friedlander

Maureen Martin, US Conservative Legal Activist -- RIP

Maureen Martin
(photo: heartland.org)

Maureen Martin, the conservative Heartland Institute's legal counsel, passed away yesterday. According to a story appearing in the Milwaukee Journel-Sentinel's online edition, the 66-year-old attorney died in a fire at her rural Wisconsin home.

The Heartland Institute's obit on Martin noted that she offered legal ballast for selected issues, including the dismantling of Wisconsin's collective bargaining laws by current Republican governor Scott Walker. She provided significant support for aggressive interpretations of the right to bear arms. Martin also wanted to end what she considered abusive activities by certain attorneys and plaintiffs.

There's Gold in Tham Thar TV Apps

Apps World North America 2013, a mobile app event currently running in San Francisco, offers a glimpse into what app creators are hoping to launch. One area of interest is apps for TV. I don't know a damn thing about the subject. However, I read the story in today's siliconvalley.com on the topic with considerable interest.

One app, from a Chinese developer, can stream live HD television programs. One developer has dreams of linking tweets to live TV appearing on an iPad.

The 800-pound gorilla in the room, of course, is Apple and Apple TV. Anyone with early information on developments from Cupertino's #1 corporation is welcome to contact me, or Apple shareholders' newest public know-it-all advocate, hedge fund manager David Einhorn.

Fixing Sports "Fixes" Proves Vexing

This year's Super Bowl was marked by a blackout whose cause remains unstated. One of the funnier conspiracy theories about the incident is that it was caused by disgruntled San Francisco 49er fans based in Silicon Valley. I'm skeptical about that particular interpretation of events, but it makes more sense than the NFL's retreat into the Cone of Silence.

Meanwhile, the day after the Super Bowl provided us with the dreaded shadow all who enjoy professional and collegiate sports fear most -- the "fix." It's happened before in the United States, when college basketball was tainted for years, thanks to a point shaving scandal. The current iteration of the "fix" involves international soccer.

The BBC reported that European police identified a massive fixing campaign, orchestrated by certain Asian gambling interests, had essentially corrupted big-time, global soccer. Some major matches, the equivalent of a Super Bowl or World Series, were rigged. The fixing went beyond players and referees and included front offices.

It was a shocking report, especially in light of Italy's two recent soccer fixing scandals. What the police discovered was that the corruption was far deeper, and far more extensive, than investigators initially suspected. The news also takes some heart out of the sport's entertainment value and degrades the concept of fair play, sport's essential dramatic value.

That soccer, the world's leading sport, could be so thoroughly compromised, should give Americans pause. (Of course, Americans are familiar with financial corruption from the housing crisis.) The NFL, NBA, and MLB are far from immune to the siren song of easy money or the darker rhythms of blackmail. There's tremendous amounts of money at stake, from corporate interests to mom and pop gamblers. If the NFL, and especially its Super Bowl, is perceived as "dirty," the sport is finished. People will have to find some other opportunity to lose money in exciting ways.

NY Mets' Owners Pitch for Queens Casino

Mr. Met

Oh, those wild and crazy New York Mets have created quite a story for the back pages. The tale begins with the Metropolitans, one of Major League Baseball's premier franchises, pleading poverty in the wake of the Bernie Madoff affair. Their solution to this dilemma, however, does not involve improving the baseball team. Instead, according to an article in today's New York Post, Sterling Equities has made a pitch to build a casino adjacent to the Mets' ballpark, Citi Field.

Sterling Equities is the "development arm" of the Mets' owners, Fred Wilpon and Saul Katz. They've made a deal with a local Native American tribe to operate the gambling parlor. (Native Americans have a monopoly on table gaming in the Empire State.) Now, inquiring minds may ask how an Indian reservation was found about two miles from LaGuardia Airport. Well, there isn't one. The New York State Legislature would have to amend current statutes to permit table gambling in the Big Apple. Unsurprisingly, there's been some initial discussion in Albany addressing that very topic.

Now, before you can say "round up the usual suspects," keep in mind that Major League Baseball is highly allergic to any association with organized crime -- excuse me -- organized gambling. Further, New York governor Andrew Cuomo appears cool to the idea of a "family-style" gaming oasis in Queens. Gotham's legal games of chance currently focus on horse racing. Of course, illegal gambling is a major New York business. Why would anyone want to legalize such a lucrative money pot?

It's more than a little sad to see Citi Field pathetically empty during the height of a baseball season. The way to fix that depressing atmosphere is for Wilpon and Katz to put a better product on the diamond, rather than putting their money on a fixed casino game.

Super Bowl Winners and Losers

OK, the Big Game is over. The globe is still spinning on its axis, the sun rose this morning, and Barack Obama remains president of the United States. With those issues firmly settled, we can indulge ourselves in a game of Super Bowl winners and losers.

Super Bowl 2013, in partial darkness
(photo: Denver Post)

Winner -- me. I didn't go crazy buying expensive booze and vittles. I did enjoy a pork chop, some black bean and roasted corn salsa, and Victory Pilsner. I also stayed home, which meant I really didn't care what happened to the Superdome's lighting.

Winner -- Twitter. Over 24 million tweets during the game, according to an AP story in today's siliconvalley.com. "Lights out" turned out to be a boon for the Twitterati.

Winner -- referees. Zebras let the players play. That was a big plus for the older, slower, but street-wiser Ravens.

Winner -- Baltimore fans, whose team defeated the Colts (a team all Charm City residents thoroughly despise), defeated Peyton Manning (former Colt), and won the World Championship.

Winner -- Dodge, for the old school Paul Harvey commercial that really held one's attention.

Loser -- NFL, for its mismanagement of "lights out at the Superdome." League is still not talking about why the juice vanished. Even Con Edison during a New York blackout does better than that. There's something very fishy about this incident, as Super Bowls, among the world's highest profile events, get rigorous security checks. Hard to believe NFL doesn't have a clue it can share with the public. NFL almost hit the loser's daily double when the Lombardi Trophy temporarily vanished after the game. Can't blame that one on the lights, can you?

Loser -- Jim Harbaugh. He didn't deign to be interviewed by CBS immediately after the game. League will not forget this snub at its showcase event. San Francisco coach rapidly getting a bad rep with the media.

Loser -- CBS. Ratings down a little. Small market teams, such as the Ravens, are ratings poison. I hate to write that, as I happen to like Baltimore's feel and history.

Loser -- All those who put their cash on the 49ers.

The NFL, Injuries, and the "D-Word"

Bernard Pollard plays safety for the Baltimore Ravens. He plays the game hard. Sometimes, his hits injure players. When they are stars, such as New England Patriot quarterback Tom Brady, people take notice and wonder if his style goes beyond whatever passes for an unspoken, but well-known rule among players and coaches.

Pollard also articulates the darker side of what violence means for the NFL and its entertainment "values." (Many years ago, former Oakland Raider and TV football star John Madden, when asked what fans liked about pro football, unequivocally and immediately said "the violence.") Well, suppose the "action" gets kicked up a notch. What would happen? During a pre-Super Bowl interview with cbssports.com, the Ravens safety used the D-word.

Detroit Lion player Chuck Hughes
Oct. 24, 1971.
(photo: corbisimages.com)

"'I hope I'm wrong,'" Pollard toward interviewer Clark Judge, "'but I just believe one day there's going to be a death that takes place on the field because of the direction we're going.'"

Players understand that pro football is a dangerous way to make a living. Frightening injuries are commonplace during a game. The dark shadow that crosses their collective mind is paralysis. It has happened in the NFL, notably to Dennis Byrd of the New York Jets and Darryl Stingley of the New England Patriots. A player on the Detroit Lions, Chuck Hughes, died on the field, but due to a heart attack and not from any immediate physical contact.

Pollard's grim question is simple: who will be the first NFL player to die from game-day contact?

Jimi Hendrix, As Related By His "Foxy Lady"

The BBC's online edition has provided an engaging interview with Kathy Etchingham about her life with Jimi Hendrix. The British woman was the muscian's main squeeze during his most creative years. They met when Hendrix, then a relatively unknown guitarist, went to London in hopes of kicking up his career a few notches.

Etchingham insists through the interview that people should see Hendrix the man, rather than Hendrix the myth. The interview's most charming moment occurs when Etchingham talks about early London days with Hendrix when both she and Jimi were broke. Their diversions at that time included playing Twister, which must have been a hoot.

George W. Bush's Dog "Barney" -- RIP

Barney and Bush
(photo: LA Times)

No, it's not a joke. The 43rd President of the United States' pooch, Barney, died this week. The former Commander-in-Chief released the news in a statement to the media, as reported in today's Washington Post.

The press release offers a sense of Bush's occasionally playful sense of humor. He noted how the dog regarded reporters in ways similar to how canines typically size up postal employees. Bush, with tongue in cheek, noted in his statement how Barney "never discussed politics." The former American supremo also provided a photo of the dog.

The image happens to show Bush's painting of Barney. Believe it or not, W. is learning how to paint. I had to read the story three times to confirm I wasn't dreaming.