Sage Stallone, son of actor Sylvester Stallone, dies in L.A.

Authorities were investigating Sage Stallone's death, but details were not immediately available.

"Sylvester Stallone is devastated and grief-stricken over the sudden loss of his son," publicist Michelle Bega said in a statement. "His compassion and thoughts are with Sage's mother, Sasha."

Los Angeles police said they were dispatched to investigate a death at a home on Mulholland Terrace around 2:15 p.m. but could not confirm the person's identity or offer details.

Coroner's officials also said they were in the initial investigative stages.

"Sage was a very talented and wonderful young man, his loss will be felt forever," Bega said.

George Braunstein, an attorney who has represented Sage Stallone for 15 years, said a housekeeper found his body Friday afternoon. Friends and acquaintances had become concerned because they hadn't heard from Stallone in the past day, Braunstein said.

Sage Moonblood Stallone was the oldest of Sylvester Stallone's children and co-starred with his father in two films. He was the first of two sons Stallone had with first wife Sasha Czack.

Sage Stallone made his acting debut in 1990's Rocky V and also appeared with his father in 1996's Daylight.

Also in 1996, Sage Stallone and veteran film editor Bob Murawski co-founded Grindhouse Releasing, a company dedicated to preserving and promoting the B-movies and exploitation films of the 1970s and 80s.

"He was very respectful of all the actors in all the movies," Braunstein said. "You couldn't mention a movie that he didn't know everything about."

Sage Stallone also directed the 2006 short Vic, which screened at the Palm Springs Film Festival.

Braunstein said Stallone was planning on getting married for the first time, and had frequent requests to work on films.

"He was a full of life filmmaker with his whole future ahead of him," Braunstein said. "He was just very up and enthusiastic and positive.

"I think it was probably some sort of accident," he said of the death.

Braunstein said Sage Stallone greatly admired his father but was working hard to make his own name in the film industry.

"He was very proud of his father and proud to be his father's son," Braustein said.

The sins of the father

What a fool I was.

In 1986, I spent a week in State College, Pa., researching a 10-page Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year piece on Joe Paterno.

It was supposed to be a secret, but one night the phone in my hotel room rang. It was a Penn State professor, calling out of the blue.

"Are you here to take part in hagiography?" he said.

"What's hagiography?" I asked.

"The study of saints," he said. "You're going to be just like the rest, aren't you? You're going to make Paterno out to be a saint. You don't know him. He'll do anything to win. What you media are doing is dangerous."

Jealous egghead, I figured.

What an idiot I was.

Twenty-five years later, when former Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky was accused of a 15-year reign of pedophilia on young boys, I thought Paterno was too old and too addled to understand, too grandfatherly and Catholic to get that Sandusky was committing grisly crimes using Paterno's own football program as bait.

But I was wrong. Paterno knew. He knew all about it. He'd known for years. He knew and he followed it vigilantly.

That's all clear now after Penn State's own investigator, former FBI director Louis Freeh, came out Thursday and hung the whole disgusting canvas on a wall for us. Showed us the emails, read us the interviews, shined a black light on all of the lies they left behind. It cost $6.5 million and took eight months and the truth it uncovered was 100 times uglier than the bills.

Paterno knew about a mother's cry that Sandusky had molested her son in 1998. Later, Paterno lied to a grand jury and said he didn't. Paterno and university president Graham Spanier and vice president Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley all knew what kind of sick coach they had on the payroll in Sandusky. Schultz had pertinent questions. "Is this opening of pandora's box?" he wrote in personal notes on the case. "Other children?" "Sexual improprieties?"

It gets worse. According to Freeh, Spanier, Schultz and Curley were set to call child services on Sandusky in February 2001 until Paterno apparently talked them out of it. Curley wasn't "comfortable" going to child services after that talk with JoePa.

Yeah, that's the most important thing, your comfort.

What'd they do instead? Alerted nobody. Called nobody. And let Sandusky keep leading his horrific tours around campus. "Hey, want to see the showers?" That sentence alone ought to bring down the statue.

What a stooge I was.

I talked about Paterno's "true legacy" in all of this. Here's his true legacy: Paterno let a child molester go when he could've stopped him. He let him go and then lied to cover his sinister tracks. He let a rapist go to save his own recruiting successes and fundraising pitches and big-fish-small-pond hide.

Here's a legacy for you. Paterno's cowardice and ego and fears allowed Sandusky to molest at least eight more boys in the years after that 1998 incident -- Victims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9 and 10. Just to recap: By not acting, a grown man failed to protect eight boys from years of molestation, abuse and self-loathing, all to save his program the embarrassment. The mother of Victim 1 is "filled with hatred toward Joe Paterno," the victim's lawyer says. "She just hates him, and reviles him." Can you blame her?

What a sap I was.

I hope Penn State loses civil suits until the walls of the accounting office cave in. I hope that Spanier, Schultz and Curley go to prison for perjury. I hope the NCAA gives Penn State the death penalty it most richly deserves. The worst scandal in college football history deserves the worst penalty the NCAA can give. They gave it to SMU for winning without regard for morals. They should give it to Penn State for the same thing. The only difference is, at Penn State they didn't pay for it with Corvettes. They paid for it with lives.

What a chump I was.

I tweeted that, yes, Paterno should be fired, but that he was, overall, "a good and decent man." I was wrong. Good and decent men don't do what Paterno did. Good and decent men protect kids, not rapists. And to think Paterno comes from "father" in Italian.

This throws a can of black paint on anything anybody tells me about Paterno from here on in. "No NCAA violations in all those years." I believe it. He was great at hiding stuff. "He gave $4 million to the library." In exchange for what? "He cared about kids away from the football field." No, he didn't. Not all of them. Not when it really mattered.

What a tool I was.

As Joe Paterno lay dying, I actually felt sorry for him. Little did I know he was taking all of his dirty secrets to the grave. Nine days before he died, he had The Washington Post's Sally Jenkins in his kitchen. He could've admitted it then. Could've tried a simple "I'm sorry." But he didn't. Instead, he just lied deeper. Right to her face. Right to all of our faces.

That professor was right, all those years ago. I was engaging in hagiography. So was that school. So was that town. It was dangerous. Turns out it builds monsters.

Not all of them ended up in prison.

Physicists Find Elusive Particle Seen as Key to Universe

Like Omar Sharif materializing out of the shimmering desert as a man on a camel in “Lawrence of Arabia,” the elusive boson has been coming slowly into view since last winter, as the first signals of its existence grew until they practically jumped off the chart.

“I think we have it,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN, the multinational research center headquartered in Geneva. The agency is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the immense particle accelerator that produced the new data by colliding protons. The findings were announced by two separate teams. Dr. Heuer called the discovery “a historic milestone.”

He and others said that it was too soon to know for sure, however, whether the new particle is the one predicted by the Standard Model, the theory that has ruled physics for the last half-century. The particle is predicted to imbue elementary particles with mass. It may be an impostor as yet unknown to physics, perhaps the first of many particles yet to be discovered.

That possibility is particularly exciting to physicists, as it could point the way to new, deeper ideas, beyond the Standard Model, about the nature of reality.

For now, some physicists are simply calling it a “Higgslike” particle.

“It’s something that may, in the end, be one of the biggest observations of any new phenomena in our field in the last 30 or 40 years,” said Joe Incandela, a physicist of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a spokesman for one of the two groups reporting new data on Wednesday.

Here at the Aspen Center for Physics, a retreat for scientists, bleary-eyed physicists drank Champagne in the wee hours as word arrived via Webcast from CERN. It was a scene duplicated in Melbourne, Australia, where physicists had gathered for a major conference, as well as in Los Angeles, Chicago, Princeton, New York, London and beyond — everywhere that members of a curious species have dedicated their lives and fortunes to the search for their origins in a dark universe.

In Geneva, 1,000 people stood in line all night to get into an auditorium at CERN, where some attendees noted a rock-concert ambience. Peter Higgs, the University of Edinburgh theorist for whom the boson is named, entered the meeting to a sustained ovation.

Confirmation of the Higgs boson or something very much like it would constitute a rendezvous with destiny for a generation of physicists who have believed in the boson for half a century without ever seeing it. The finding affirms a grand view of a universe described by simple and elegant and symmetrical laws — but one in which everything interesting, like ourselves, results from flaws or breaks in that symmetry.

According to the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass. Particles wading through the field gain heft the way a bill going through Congress attracts riders and amendments, becoming ever more ponderous.

Without the Higgs field, as it is known, or something like it, all elementary forms of matter would zoom around at the speed of light, flowing through our hands like moonlight. There would be neither atoms nor life.

Physicists said that they would probably be studying the new particle for years. Any deviations from the simplest version predicted by current theory — and there are hints of some already — could begin to answer questions left hanging by the Standard Model. For example, what is the dark matter that provides the gravitational scaffolding of galaxies?

And why is the universe made of matter instead of antimatter?

“If the boson really is not acting standard, then that will imply that there is more to the story — more particles, maybe more forces around the corner,” Neal Weiner, a theorist at New York University, wrote in an e-mail. “What that would be is anyone’s guess at the moment.”

Wednesday’s announcement was also an impressive opening act for the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s biggest physics machine, which cost $10 billion to build and began operating only two years ago. It is still running at only half-power.

Physicists had been icing the Champagne ever since last December. Two teams of about 3,000 physicists each — one named Atlas, led by Fabiola Gianotti, and the other CMS, led by Dr. Incandela — operate giant detectors in the collider, sorting the debris from the primordial fireballs left after proton collisions.

Last winter, they both reported hints of the same particle. They were not able, however, to rule out the possibility that it was a statistical fluke. Since then, the collider has more than doubled the number of collisions it has recorded.

The results announced Wednesday capped two weeks of feverish speculation and Internet buzz as the physicists, who had been sworn to secrecy, did a breakneck analysis of about 800 trillion proton-proton collisions over the last two years.

Up until last weekend, physicists at the agency were saying that they themselves did not know what the outcome would be. Expectations soared when it was learned that the five surviving originators of the Higgs boson theory had been invited to the CERN news conference.

The December signal was no fluke, the scientists said Wednesday. The new particle has a mass of about 125.3 billion electron volts, as measured by the CMS group, and 126 billion according to Atlas. Both groups said that the likelihood that their signal was a result of a chance fluctuation was less than one chance in 3.5 million, “five sigma,” which is the gold standard in physics for a discovery.

On that basis, Dr. Heuer said that he had decided only on Tuesday afternoon to call the Higgs result a “discovery.”

He said, “I know the science, and as director general I can stick out my neck.”

Dr. Incandela’s and Dr. Gianotti’s presentations were repeatedly interrupted by applause as they showed slide after slide of data presented in graphs with bumps rising like mountains from the sea.

Dr. Gianotti noted that the mass of the putative Higgs, apparently one of the heaviest subatomic particles, made it easy to study its many behaviors. “Thanks, nature,” she said.

Gerald Guralnik, one of the founders of the Higgs theory, said he was glad to be at a physics meeting “where there is applause, like a football game.”

Asked to comment after the announcements, Dr. Higgs seemed overwhelmed. “For me, it’s really an incredible thing that’s happened in my lifetime,” he said.

Dr. Higgs was one of six physicists, working in three independent groups, who in 1964 invented what came to be known as the Higgs field. The others were Tom Kibble of Imperial College, London; Carl Hagen of the University of Rochester; Dr. Guralnik of Brown University; and François Englert and Robert Brout, both of Université Libre de Bruxelles.

One implication of their theory was that this cosmic molasses, normally invisible, would produce its own quantum particle if hit hard enough with the right amount of energy. The particle would be fragile and fall apart within a millionth of a second in a dozen possible ways, depending upon its own mass.

Unfortunately, the theory did not describe how much this particle should weigh, which is what made it so hard to find, eluding researchers at a succession of particle accelerators, including the Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN, which closed down in 2000, and the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill., which shut down last year.

Along the way the Higgs boson achieved a notoriety rare in abstract physics. To the eternal dismay of his colleagues, Leon Lederman, the former director of Fermilab, called it the “God particle,” in his book of the same name, written with Dick Teresi. (He later said that he had wanted to call it the “goddamn particle.”)

Finding the missing boson was one of the main goals of the Large Hadron Collider. Both Dr. Heuer and Dr. Gianotti said they had not expected the search to succeed so quickly.

So far, the physicists admit, they know little about their new boson. The CERN results are mostly based on measurements of two or three of the dozen different ways, or “channels,” by which a Higgs boson could be produced and then decay.

There are hints, but only hints so far, that some of the channels are overproducing the boson while others might be underproducing it, clues that maybe there is more at work here than the Standard Model would predict.

“This could be the first in a ring of discoveries,” said Guido Tonelli of CERN.

In an e-mail, Maria Spiropulu, a professor at the California Institute of Technology who works with the CMS team of physicists, said: “I personally do not want it to be standard model anything — I don’t want it to be simple or symmetric or as predicted. I want us all to have been dealt a complex hand that will send me (and all of us) in a (good) loop for a long time.”

Nima Arkani-Hamed, a physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, said: “It’s a triumphant day for fundamental physics. Now some fun begins.”

Jason Kidd reportedly spurns the Dallas Mavericks to finish a career off as a New York Knick

Only in the NBA, and in this nutty offseason, would spurning the Dallas Mavericks for the New York Knicks actually feel like a good idea. And though the Knicks aren't about to set the Eastern Conference ablaze, something about veteran Jason Kidd deciding to leave the Mavericks as a free agent and join New York just feels right. Even if the Dallas Mavericks might be a few tweaks and trades away from being better next year. Even if the Mavs are led by a billionaire who actually thinks things out. Even if the Knicks are the Knicks.
Jason Kidd lives in the New York metropolitan area. He's enjoyed two stints with the Dallas Mavericks with the latter culminating in an NBA championship in 2011, but he's also shot just over 36 percent from the field his last two seasons. He turned the ball over on nearly a quarter of the possessions he used up last year, his defense has faded significantly, and his 3-point shooting has dipped down to the ranks of below average. And yet two teams wanted him, badly, enough to potentially pay him until he turned 42 — even if we're currently unaware of just how many years this three-year deal is guaranteed for.
And he chose the Knicks — THE KNICKS!
(And it makes sense.)
Far beyond the initial cable TV reaction that has us immediately looking toward Kidd's ability to potentially mentor Jeremy Lin, the sad-yet-warming fact is that the best thing Kidd does well now is exactly what these oddball Knicks need — someone to throw a two-footed lob pass through and/or above the defense as they attempt to front Carmelo Anthony at the triple-threat position, or the increasingly stagnant Amar'e Stoudemire by shooting the gap between him and his much-loved elbow-extended spot at the high post.
In a way, Kidd will be acting as a Mark Jackson sort. Teams won't have to guard him but will, and he'll just pinpoint with passes while taking advantage of the fact that teams will continue to overreact and treat him as a major threat from behind the 3-point arc. It's a simple, staid offense that will be run by a man with a brain that demands complexity and improvisation and quick movement, though his weary legs guarantee that this brain has to play down to his team's offense.
If that sounds like a shot at both Kidd and the Knicks, it is; but that doesn't mean we shouldn't agree to the move, and we certainly agree that this is an upgrade. I'm very much looking forward to this setup.
At this point, Carmelo Anthony is stuck where he's at. He was always more Adrian Dantley than Ray Allen -- and the problem inherent in that is that Anthony always had the ability to be a fabulous combination of the two, and that Dantley was paid like and treated as a secondary star. Anthony has never given himself the legs nor the space to turn into the sort of player that can drive defenses batty even without touching a ball during a possession, as he's constantly coming to the strong side and demanding things. Sometimes it works, and you get those 30 points on an efficient night. Usually, it's just big numbers with a lot of hoggin' goin' on. I can't blame Anthony at this point, it's all he knows.
Kidd will aid in that sort of play. He'll take chances with over the top lobs that will force Anthony to move more; to grab a pass like Willie Mays grabbed Vic Wertz's bomb, spin and find that baseline wide open for a play to put the opposing defense in the penalty. Kidd will allow Stoudemire, who might not be as explosive when he changes course and dips backdoor after his defender overplays the entry pass these days, for the perfectly timed touch pass spaced well enough to get Amar'e a good look while affording him enough time to avoid that help defender and potential charge.
He really is a quarterback, at this point. A Dan Marino in his final year at quarterback with those plodding legs, to be sure, but there will be times when Kidd will adapt.
The Knicks weren't going anywhere, either. If they pull a sign-and-trade for Kidd, they can keep the salary cap exemption they were planning on using to sign the guard. They are sure to reel J.R. Smith back in, a player that Kidd can find in transition and give that Kidd-branded exasperated half-smile to. They can even decide to either take out Houston's aggression against itself and walk away from matching the hefty price tag for the guard in Jeremy Lin that they cut eight months ago (while going after Raymond Felton as a result), or they can commit to Lin and that obvious Sports Illustrated feature for next fall ("he's been the best, you can't help but pay attention to everything he says" Lin went on …).
Essentially, now that the Knicks have locked themselves into nearly hitting the salary cap, on average, through just Anthony, Stoudemire and Tyson Chandler over the next three seasons, this a fair bit of reconciliation. Even if Kidd could fall even further off, which seems hard to do, his thin salary could be used in a deal, or just shuttled away.

Serena Williams Wins 5th Wimbledon Title

England - Eighteen years had passed. Amazingly, the faces had not changed. The orchestrator, Richard Williams, was there with his trusty camera. Venus Williams alternated smiles and tears, covering her face with her hands. Sister Isha was right up front with the mom, Oracene. And there was Serena, leaping into a box full of these familiar faces, celebrating a Wimbledon victory that defined this family for all time.

Watching Serena's 6-1, 5-7, 6-2 victory over Agnieszka Radwanska unfold on Centre Court, and especially the aftermath, I found myself transported back to a Halloween night in the Oakland Coliseum Arena, 1994. It was Venus' debut as a 14-year-old professional. The crowd was sparse, a mere trifle compared with the Rolling Stones' concert taking place next door. The echoes of a well-struck tennis ball competed with the thumping reverberations of bass-line rock and roll.

Venus was gangly, upbeat and ready as all hell. She was facing the 59th-ranked player in the world, Shaun Stafford, but she savored the prospect. This was winning time, Day 1. "I'm just here to have fun," she said after defeating Stafford in straight sets. "But I wasn't surprised. I know I can play."

It seemed that half of the people in attendance that night were tennis writers, come from far and wide. Some of us sat down with Richard to hear the back story. He was intensely skeptical about Venus turning pro so young, saying he'd advised her against it, but that it seemed to be working out OK. "And she's got a younger sister, Serena," he said, "that's gonna be even better."

Eighteen years ago. Serena had just turned 13. So, Richard, you're saying you've got two girls who could change the face of women's tennis?

That's what came to mind Saturday at Wimbledon. As the traditional pomp and circumstance transpired on Centre Court, with the marching ball kids and the stuffy officials in crisp blue blazers and the ever-reliable Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, it was all about Serena Williams' private box. On a women's tour characterized by falsehoods and the vague, this was a day that brought clarity.

There's a certain charm to the unpredictability of it all, but this sport needs a strong, viable champion. It hasn't been Samantha Stosur, who won last year's U.S. Open but reverted to head-case tennis. It wasn't Li Na, who has struggled under the weight of her French Open title. Petra Kvitova's 2011 Wimbledon championship seems a bit of a mirage. Victoria Azarenka somehow has reclaimed the No. 1 ranking, and that crown on her head feels more like a refrigerator.

There's something concrete and authentic about a Williams triumph, anywhere, but especially at Wimbledon. Serena and Venus have five singles titles apiece - that's 10 of the past 13 years. This was the 14th major title for Serena, two more than Billie Jean King and not so distantly removed from the 18 shared by Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova (the all-time leaders are Margaret Court, with 24, Steffi Graf, with 22. In an earlier era, Helen Wills Moody won 19).

"I've seen 'em all," said John McEnroe after working the final for BBC television, "and I believe that Serena is the greatest female that's ever played. It's not just the wins, it's the fact that she had an older sister doing so many big things in tennis, and Serena comes in to steal her thunder.

"The grace and support Venus has given Serena is unbelievable. And so genuine. Just think what these two had to go through when they played each other. How in the world do you do that?"

Serena says she has gained immeasurable strength from Venus' bold fight against Sjögren's Syndrome, an autoimmune disease that leaves her intermittently fatigued. Without a word of complaint, at a time when she could ease comfortably into retirement, Venus soldiers on toward the Olympics (in London later this month) and perhaps more major tournaments.

Tom Cruise Spotted in Iceland After Katie Holmes Divorce Filing

Two days after his wife of five years, Katie Holmes, filed for divorce, Tom Cruise is officially on the move.

Spotted aboard a helicopter taking off from Reykjavik's airport in Iceland, the Oblivion star, 49, hid behind a pair of aviator shades as the chopper took to the skies. Cruise's final destination has not yet been confirmed.

PHOTOS: Tom and Katie in happier times

It is the first time the actor has been seen in public since Holmes, 33, filed for divorce Thursday in New York. Filing papers with the help of a New Jersey-based attorney, Holmes is requesting sole custody of the couple's 6-year-old daughter, Suri.

His wife's filing appeared to come as a shock to Cruise, who enjoyed a cozy family dinner with Holmes and their daughter just two weeks ago.

VIDEO: What went wrong for Tom and Katie

"They both looked after Suri and she was getting the main attention at the table, but Tom and Katie would look at each other and smile," an eyewitness at Sushi Samba, in Iceland's capital city of Reykjavik, told Us Weekly after the trio dined there June 16. "They were like all the young families that come in here. It's almost impossible to think they're getting divorced because they seemed very happy that night."

PHOTOS: Tom and Suri's cutest moments

Around the time of their final family outing, Cruise offered an interview to Playboy in which he gushed about his wife of five years.

"She is an extraordinary person, and if you spent five minutes with her, you'd see it. Everything she does, she does with this beautiful creativity," the Rock of Ages star told the magazine. "She's funny and charming, and when she walks into the room, I just feel better."

Leap Second Did NOT Crash The Pirate Bay

Last night thousands of websites, including Reddit, ran into trouble due to the “leap second.” According to some reports The Pirate Bay also crashed due to this unfortunate bug, but this is certainly not the case. The Pirate Bay’s downtime was caused by other technical issues that have since been resolved.

                                                               

As a result, some of the largest websites on the Internet ran into trouble. Reddit posted a message stating that the site experienced Java/Cassandra issues because of the leap second, and others reported problems with Debian Squeeze servers.
Because The Pirate Bay also suffered downtime when the leap second hit, many suggested that it might be related. The topic was actively discussed on The Pirate Bay’s forum where one of the moderators took a guess that the leap second may have been to blame.
“The crash appears to have been caused by the leap second that was issued at midnight,” Velvetfog wrote.
Several news outlets picked this comment up and posted it as fact, but it was just a guess, and one that turns out to be wrong when we look at the timing of the events.
When the Pirate Bay went down yesterday we posted a quick update in our Bits section, and this was three hours before the leap second hit. In other words, The Pirate Bay downtime started hours before that of other sites.
One of the people in charge of the actual servers also confirmed to TorrentFreak that there’s no indication of any leap second trouble at The Pirate Bay. One of the server racks hosted by the Swedish Pirate Party was moved, and this took down a crucial TPB server.
And let’s be honest, If Hollywood can’t take down The Pirate Bay, why should a measly second make an impact….

Shame on NBC for very public humiliation of longtime ‘Today’ veteran

Whatever you think of Curry as a “Today” co-host, and there are legitimate disagreements on that point, no one deserves this sort of slow, forced march to a public execution.

For a solid week, from the moment The Times released a story detailing just what NBC had in mind — including her expected replacement by “Today” third-hour host Savannah Guthrie — Curry had to go on the air every day and smile.

Knowing that all her bosses, all her colleagues, almost all the media and millions of her viewers realized her employer didn’t want her there anymore.

Slow-motion dismissal may be an okay management tactic if you suspect an unpaid intern is smoking weed on lunch break. For someone who has been with the company 22 years, and whom NBC seems to genuinely value, it’s unfathomable.

“Today” is too high-profile a show, and making a host change at the time when ABC’s “Good Morning America” has pulled almost even was inevitably going to roil the pond.
NBC was hoping, no doubt, that once it had decided to bump Curry to another job, she would agree to a hugfest statement about how she loves “Today,” but couldn’t pass up this new dream offer of having her own personal news team to roam the world with cherry-picking the best stories.
Curry did say she loves that new job, as she should. But when she also described the offer as NBC “throwing some fancy titles at me,” it was clear she wasn’t going to hide how she really felt about being dumped from “Today.”
Nor did she have a reason to hide it. She’s not the perp here. She’s the vic.
Minutes after her new position was formally announced — she will be NBC News National and International Correspondent/Anchor and “Today” Anchor at Large, which is a fancy title — NBC issued a statement in which officials right up to NBC News President Steve Capus showered her with torrents of lavish praise.
And that’s great. But where were Capus and everybody else during the preceding week, when all we heard from NBC was blackout silence?
Matt Lauer joined the chorus of praise Thursday, hailing Curry’s “big heart” and saying he looked forward to working together.
That’s great, too. But Lauer was also The Quiet Man for the preceding seven days.
Now sure, it would have been inappropriate for anyone to comment on the undoubtedly delicate contract negotiations. But nothing would have stopped anyone at NBC from whispering a few general words of personal support. No one did.
As for the argument this was a private matter, that played a lot better before the whole world knew it was going on. And whether or not NBC was the source of the original revelation, NBC had ways to make it less uncomfortable. It never employed them.
NBC seemed to treat this whole issue as surgery, removing an unwanted object, and that attitude continued to the end.
Where previous “Today” hosts were sent off with video tributes and long reminiscences, Curry got no clips and less than a minute for each year of her service.
Maybe in the long term this will revive “Today.” Right now, it just feels clumsy and cold.

ObamaCare is Constitutional! Now What?

The Supreme Court upheld most of ObamaCare. The reasoning behind the decision was fascinating. In a nutshell, a divided Court concluded that the individual mandate was really a “choice,” and the penalty for not purchasing health insurance was really a “tax.” You can check out more of the details in my analysis of the ObamaCare decision. The Supreme Court’s creativity aside, the big question is what it means for all of us.
First, the Court did invalidate an important part of the statute. ObamaCare expands the scope of Medicaid and offers states some funding to address the increased costs. If a state declined to expand Medicaid, however, the statute not only held back the increased funding, but it also took away current Medicaid funding to the state. In other words, the federal government was going to put a horse’s head in the state’s bed if they refused ObamaCare’s generous offer. The Court sided with the states on this issue.
[See Seniors Win Big in Court's Obamacare Ruling.]
The expanded Medicaid issue is important to us regular folk for a couple of reasons. The Court’s decision makes it far more likely that some states will decline to expand Medicaid coverage. For those that do expand coverage, it’s likely that state taxes will be on the rise as they try to handle the increasing health costs.
Beyond Medicaid, the ruling means several things for individuals. First, beginning in 2014, individuals must either participate in a health insurance program or pay a penalty. Called the individual mandate, it’s been the subject of much controversy over the past months. While polls show that most are not in favor of the mandate, it’s here to stay.
Beginning in 2014, the cost of not purchasing health insurance for a family of four will be $285 or 1 percent of income, whichever is greater. By 2016, this penalty rises to $2,085 or 2.5 percent of income.
[See How to Save Money on Health Insurance.]
Second, states will be implementing exchanges to help regulate the cost of individual health insurance policies. Exactly how these exchanges will work or how the government can control costs remains to be seen. But beginning in 2014, individuals will be able to buy individual health insurance through these exchanges.
Third, young adults up to age 26 can remain on their parent’s insurance. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 2.5 million people have already taken advantage of this provision, which went into effect sooner than most of the law.
Finally, the law’s provisions on preexisting conditions remain intact. Beginning in 2014, the law makes it illegal for a health insurance company to exclude, limit, or set unrealistic rates on coverage based on preexisting conditions. This part of the law is already in effect for children under the age of 19.
[See How to Find Health Insurance in Retirement.]
The preexisting condition provision of the law is a bit of a Trojan Horse. At first glance it looks like a real gift, as insurance companies will not be able to exclude individuals from coverage because they are sick or have a chronic disease. But on closer inspection, many see a real problem with this provision and the individual mandate.
The penalty for not buying insurance is much lower than the actual cost of insurance. For this reason, many are concerned that individuals will pay the penalty rather than buy insurance. Should they get sick and need coverage, the preexisting condition provision ensures that they’ll qualify for coverage.
In the final analysis, there are some clear winners from the Court’s decision: health insurance providers, Medicaid companies, and hospitals. In trading following the decision, Medicaid and hospital stocks were up sharply, even during a day when stocks overall fell hard. While insurance stocks declined, that’s likely to turn around, as more individuals will be purchasing health insurance under ObamaCare.
DR is the founder of the popular personal finance blog The Dough Roller, and the credit card review site Credit Card Offers IQ.

Juror Says Panel Had Little Doubt on Sandusky’s Guilt

BELLEFONTE, Pa. — Joshua Harper watchedJerry Sandusky listen to one guilty verdict after another — 45 in all — and was more certain than ever that Sandusky, the former Penn State football assistant, had sexually abused those young boys. Sandusky never flinched. No sign of regret creased his face.

“He knew it was true,” Harper, a high school chemistry teacher here, said as his 2-year-old son and his 4- and 5-year-old daughters played on the floor of their home Saturday morning. “It made me feel confident that we made the right decision.”

For two weeks, Harper, a graduate of Penn State and a juror in Sandusky’s trial, heard in disturbing detail how one of his alma mater’s most famous graduates had preyed on and molested 10 boys as he was simultaneously building a charity and a reputation as a pillar of a tight-knit community where football and family were highly valued.

On Friday, Sandusky, 68, spent the first night of what is expected to be the rest of his life behind bars. He will be sentenced within 90 days, his fate rigidly mapped out and only at the mercy of the state’s justice system.

In the meantime, Sandusky will be examined by the state Sexual Offenders Assessment Board, which will determine whether he is a violent sexual predator. He will very likely be isolated from other prisoners for his protection until Judge John Cleland reviews the reports and settles on a sentence.

Then Sandusky will be transferred to the State Correctional Institution at Camp Hill, in south-central Pennsylvania, which holds up to 4,000 inmates, a quarter of them classified as temporary.

Harper said there was little debate and even less doubt in the jury room about Sandusky’s guilt. As emotional and wrenching as the accounts were from the eight victims who testified, Harper said the grimmest and most significant testimony came from Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant, who said he interrupted a sexual assault by his former coach against a young boy in the showers at the university’s football center.

“It was just eye-opening on all the things that happened because we got a whole lot of detail on what Sandusky was doing,” Harper said.

While Sandusky’s future appears predestined, the fates of Penn State, its vaunted football program and some of its current and past officials will be determined after a number of investigations.

There are federal investigations into a possible cover-up by Penn State and the charity Sandusky founded, the Second Mile. The university’s board of trustees has hired the former F.B.I. director Louis J. Freeh to look into the mistakes made in the wake of Sandusky’s crimes and to propose remedies.

The N.C.A.A. and the Big Ten Conference are investigating whether the athletic department had lost institutional control and whether there were more violations of ethical conduct and compliance. Two fired administrators — Tim Curley and Gary Schultz — have been accused of lying to a grand jury about the sexual assault witnessed by McQueary.

Then there are the numerous civil suits from Sandusky’s victims that Penn State has acknowledged are coming.

“The university plans to invite victims of Mr. Sandusky’s abuse to participate in a program to facilitate the resolution of claims against the university arising out of Mr. Sandusky’s conduct,” Penn State said in a statement late Friday. “The purpose of the program is simple — the university wants to provide a forum where the university can privately, expeditiously and fairly address the victims’ concerns and compensate them for claims relating to the university.”

One of the plaintiffs could be Matt Sandusky, an adopted son of the coach, who came forward in the final days of the trial and offered to testify that Jerry Sandusky had abused him. Matt Sandusky was never called to testify, but Jerry Sandusky’s lead lawyer, Joseph Amendola, conceded that the disclosure had kept his client off the witness stand.

Although the jury did not hear that Matt Sandusky had joined the list of accusers until after the verdict, Harper said it was a unifying moment for the jury’s seven women and five men, who had decided early not to exchange last names or contact information.

“That was total confirmation that we made the right decision,” Harper said. “That was very important for me because I don’t have to question my decision.”

On the day after a conviction was announced against one of the most high-profile pedophiles in recent times, there seemed to be little doubt in this corner of the world known as Happy Valley that the right verdict had been rendered.

Still, it did not mean anyone was happy about it.

It was a somber afternoon on campus, especially at Paterno Library, named for Penn State’s iconic coach, Joe Paterno. He had known of at least one of the instances of abuse and was found to have failed to act properly and was fired. Two months later, he died from lung cancer.

Six people politely declined to talk about the months since scandal gripped their community.

“There’s been too much sadness,” said a female graduate student who did not want to give her name.

Fifty yards from the Centre County Courthouse a life-size cutout of Paterno filled a storefront. Across the street from where Harper and his fellow jurors found Sandusky guilty, a banner advertised memorabilia signed by Paterno.

Shana Stamm, a 27-year-old home care aide, remembered how classes at her elementary school were once suspended for an afternoon so Sandusky could give a motivational speech. She remembered how many of her classmates raised money for the Second Mile.

“It’s devastating for this whole community,” she said. “He turned out to be such an evil man.”

He Should Be Alive Today

Alan Turing, who was born 100 years ago on June 23, 1912, might not have invented the computer. (That honor goes to Charles Babbage and Lord Byron's daughter.) But today’s computing would be unthinkable without the contributions of the British mathematician, who laid down the foundations of computer science, broke Nazi codes that helped win World War II at the famous Bletchley Park, created a secure speech encryption system, made major contributions to logic and philosophy, and even invented the concept of Artificial Intelligence. But he was also an eccentric and troubled man who was persecuted (and prosecuted) for being gay, a tragedy that contributed to his suicide just short of the age of 42 when he died of cyanide poisoning, possibly from a half-eaten apple found by his side. He is hailed today as one of the great originators of our computing age.

In 1959, four years after Alan Turing’s suicide just shy of the age of 42, his mother Sara published her biography Alan M. Turing. Shortly after, his elder brother John began his own alternative account, seeking to “put the record straight” and correct any inaccuracies or biases in his mother’s version. Although he worked on the essay throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, John declined to release the account until after his mother’s death, and ultimately left it unpublished in his private papers. It was found in a drawer by his son John Dermot Turing, and finally included as part of the re-release of Alan M. Turing, in celebration of the centenary of his birth. The following is adapted from the book:

My brother Alan was born on 21* June 1912 in a London nursing home. At this, and at all other times, my father took all decisions of consequence in the family. Now, rightly or wrongly, he decided that he and my mother should return alone to India, leaving both children with foster parents in England. Alan and I were left with “the Wards”—always we referred to them as “the Wards.” We were the wards and they were our guardians but no matter—this was to be the centre of our existence for many years and our home from home. I believe it was here, perhaps in the first four or five years at the Wards, perhaps even in the first two, that Alan became destined for a homosexual. Has anyone mentioned it until now?

No. My mother was fully aware of it before Alan’s death (not, I imagine, that she had the faintest idea of what it implied), but she makes no reference to it in her book. One can put that down to Edwardian reticence if one pleases. In my view, based on such conversation as I had with my mother about it, necessarily reduced to a minimum, her reaction was much what one might expect if a specialist had informed her that her son was color blind or had an incurable obsession with spiders: it was a nasty shock of brief duration and of no great significance. I am trying to make this memoir as truthful as I can, so I will not go to the length of pretending that I like homosexuals. To my mind, what is intolerable is the world of the “gay crusade” and, as my unfortunate brother may be cast in the part of an early and valiant crusader, this is by no means an irrelevant comment.

My mother, perhaps unwittingly, gives the impression in her book that she recognized Alan’s genius from the start, and that she sedulously fostered it. If so, she did not give that impression in the family at the time; in fact, quite the contrary.

‘Alan M. Turing: Centenary Edition’ by Sara Turing. 194 pp. Cambridge University Press. $30. (Kings College, University of Cambridge)

My father, on the whole, either ignored my brother’s eccentricities, or viewed them with amused tolerance but (as will appear) there were deep dudgeons when Alan started to accumulate appalling school reports at Sherborne. As for myself, with the selfishness of youth, and separated by a gap of four years, I did not care what Alan did, and I was content to go my own way, as indeed he was content to go his. Our interests were so dissimilar that they never clashed. The only person in the household who was forever exasperated with Alan, constantly nagging him about his dirty habits, his slovenliness, his clothes and his offhand manners (and much else, most of it with good reason) was my mother. If this was due to some early recognition of his genius, she was certainly doing nothing to foster it by trying to press him into a conventional mould. Needless to say, she achieved nothing by it except a dogged determination on Alan’s part to remain as unconventional as possible. The truth of the matter, as I now view it in retrospect, is that neither of Alan’s parents or his brother had the faintest idea that this tiresome, eccentric and obstinate small boy was a budding genius. The business burst upon us soon after he went to Sherborne. After a few terms, it became apparent that he was far ahead of the other boys in mathematics: when Alan was sixteen, the maths master told my mother that there was nothing more that he could teach him and he would have to progress from there on his own. I think it must have been when Alan was due to take the School Certificate examination (now replaced by “O” levels) that he read Hamlet in the holidays. My father was delighted when Alan placed the volume on the floor and remarked “Well, there’s one line I like in this play.” My father could already see a burgeoning interest in English literature. But his hopes were dashed when Alan replied that he was referring to the final stage direction (Exeunt, bearing off the bodies).

LeBron James finally gets it

For a long time, LeBron James had it easy. And that's what made it so hard.

The NBA hadn't really seen a player with such a mix of talent, size and a willingness to being the ultimate team player. So much of this was natural. Not just James' athleticism, either. James had a personality that made him want to be well-liked by his teammates, not just by the public.

Those are the ingredients of a champion. And they were identified early and coveted by every team in the league.

Now James has finally reached that pedestal after nine long years of trying. No one thought it would take this long, especially James himself.

For years, James' career had been all about potential and the mostly stress-free rewards of acclaim, fame and cash. Then something changed -- potential gave way to expectation, and it was a blow to James' ego and a reputation he was both unprepared for and slow to accept. That burden and the relief from it was what made lifting the Larry O'Brien Trophy on Thursday night so liberating.

James didn't just have to learn the hard way, he had to be hurt the hard way: in front of everyone. He didn't just have to grow up as a player, he had to do it with millions breaking down his mistakes. It created one of the most fascinating and polarizing plots in history, an arc that finally reached a climax with the Miami Heat's NBA Finals victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder.

"I just think it's a normal process that, not just LeBron, but anybody has to do to learn to be a champion," said Mike Krzyzewski, James' coach for Team USA. "But in LeBron's case, because he's recognized as one of the great players, he had to learn out in the open. And so a great player will get criticized as he's learning."

When James first made the Finals, with the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2007, it was received with commendation, even though he'd played terribly by his standards as the Cavs were swept by the San Antonio Spurs. At age 22, he was ahead of the curve, and excitement surrounded future trips to the Finals. In one of the more memorable moments of James' early career, he was embraced by Tim Duncan in a hallway after Duncan had won his fourth title.

Holding the O'Brien trophy in one arm and with the other around James, Duncan whispered into James' ear: "Some day the league is going to belong to you."

As James walked away from the Finals that night, he did so with a smile at the thought of that. The warm blanket of potential serves as a shell that deflects criticism. This turned out to be fleeting.

"A lot of people said we were the worst team to ever make the Finals and LeBron really used that as motivation," said Golden State Warriors assistant coach Mike Malone, who coached James as an assistant with the Cavs for five years. "He went out and made himself an MVP after that; he really worked on his game. But it still felt like a tease because he could see where he wanted to go, but we just couldn't get there."

Twice in Cleveland, after he'd won MVP awards, James played on teams seeded No. 1 in the playoffs. These teams were different than the overmatched team of '07. The Cavs' payroll spiked to $100 million as they brought in teammates for him, players such as Mo Williamsand Antawn Jamison and Shaquille O'Neal. The Cavs were not loaded with All-Stars, but they didn't have to be -- the MVP was supposed to carry the group just as he'd done before, back when it was all about potential.

Now there was demand. But he wouldn't reach the Finals again with the Cavaliers.

When he went to the Heat, it was to join two of the best players of his day, the sort of stars he never had with him in Cleveland. But when he walked away from the Finals again in 2011 without a title, even with the help of Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, no one dared think about potential. The last scraps of potential for James were buried in the two-day period in July 2010 when he announced his decision to sign with the Heat and then projected the number of championships he planned to win into a microphone the next night.

Now, all was expectation. That embrace is much colder. It wasn't just the expectations of the basketball-viewing public and his sponsors and his new teammates. It was the expectations that James had placed on his own shoulders with his words and his actions. Even if James could take back the line that stays attached to him like a tattoo -- "Not one, not two ... " -- the expectations would be smothering to him.

"When he went to Miami, I sent him a text and told him that this was going to be the hardest thing he's tried to do in his life," said Paul Silas, who coached James for two seasons in Cleveland. "I think he thought it might be easy. And they might have had it all as a team. But he was still going to have to put them on his shoulders, and it took him a while to understand that."

James' understanding of how tough it was going to be was stunted by emotional bruises. After a poor playoff series against the Boston Celtics in 2010, he deflected its effects by saying, "I spoil a lot of people with my play." When it happened again last year on a higher-profile stage in the Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, James again snapped back at the consequences of living with expectations.

Microsoft risks losing pals

WITH the unveiling of the Surface tablet, Microsoft is heading into unusual territory: competing with its partners.

But Microsoft has little to lose, since the companies which make Windows PC are having little success with their own tablets.

With the unveiling of its tablet this week Microsoft Corp. is taking up the competition with Apple Inc. and its iPad by borrowing a page from Apple's playbook. It is keeping both software and hardware development under the same roof.

"If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, the compliments from Microsoft poured down like a torrential storm on Apple last night," said analyst Brian White at Topeka Capital Markets.

Even Steve Ballmer, Microsoft's famously tough-talking CEO sounded downright Zen and Apple-inspired as he introduced the Surface.

"We believe that any intersection between human and machine can be made better when all aspects of the experience - hardware and software - are considered and working together," he said at Monday's launch event in Los Angeles.

That's a new philosophy for Microsoft, a company accustomed to writing the software, charging loads of money for it, and letting others design the hardware. Microsoft has sold hardware before, most notably the Xbox game console, which is essentially a PC. But when it ventured into the game console market, it wasn't directly treading on the toes of the big PC makers who buy Windows from it. (The exception was Sony, which makes both PCs and PlayStation consoles.)

With Surface, Microsoft faces the challenge of selling the soon-to-be-launched Windows 8 to PC makers who want to make tablets, while at the same time selling tablets directly to consumers.

Rick Sherlund, an analyst at Nomura Securities said Microsoft's hardware partners "are no doubt unhappy" about the prospect of competing with Microsoft's tablets, particularly since Microsoft set a high bar with Surface.

Surface will come in two versions, both with screens measuring 10.6 inches diagonally, slightly larger than the iPad. One model will run on phone-style chips, just like the iPad, and will be sold for a similar price. Another, heavier and more expensive model, will run on Intel chips and be capable of running standard Windows applications.

Mr Ballmer suggested that Microsoft is making hardware so it can kick-start Windows tablets and make sure they're competitive right from the get-go. But the company's long-term goals are unclear. Will Microsoft keep making tablets, or will it declare victory at some point and leave the field to its hardware partners?

One sign of limited long-term commitment to making its own tablets is that Microsoft will be selling the tablets only from its own stores and website. That might leave space for other manufacturers to sell Windows tablets through other electronics stores.

Google Inc. is in a similar position. It makes Android, the software that powers most iPad competitors. But it has also acquired Motorola Mobility, a company that makes Android tablets and phones, so now finds itself competing with hardware partners like Samsung and HTC.

But Google has made clear that it will treat Motorola as a separate, "arms-length" business, and that it made the acquisition to get hold of Motorola's patents, which will provide legal cover not just for Google, but for other manufacturers who make Android devices.

Microsoft's position is complicated by the possibility that consumers will favour its tablet over other Windows tablets for exactly the reasons Mr Ballmer articulated: it's made by the same company that wrote the software. That puts an end to the old Windows PC support runaround, where PC makers blame Microsoft for product failures, and Microsoft blames the PC makers. If something's wrong with Surface, buyers will know who to call.

Ronan de Renesse, an analyst at Analysys Mason, said Microsoft can afford to alienate PC makers when it comes to tablets, because they've captured such a small share of the market.

Samsung Electronics and AsusTek Computer Inc. are the only PC makers who have appreciable market share in tablets, and they only make up 10 per cent or so, by his estimate. Other major competitors to the iPad are Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Nook.

"Microsoft's move in creating its own tablet is the sign that PC manufacturers have lost the game," Mr Renesse said. "The big question is, if Surface becomes as successful as the iPad, will Microsoft choose to stop licensing Windows on tablets?"

Microsoft's partners are mum. Hewlett-Packard Co. and Acer, both of which make PCs and tablets, had no comment on Microsoft's announcement. Samsung did not respond to requests for comment.