Planned Parenthood

Catalina bison going on birth control
LA Times, 11/20/09



It wasn't the headline that struck me as funny but a line about bison souveniers.

"Gift shops sell furry bison figurines and gold-painted, dehydrated bison droppings."

Really? How do you explain that to a house guest?

"What's that Erv?"
"Oh, just some buffalo crap the wife and I picked up in Catalina. Go ahead you can pick it up."

I'm surprised zoos don't sell golden panda droppings.

Should you need a helmet in buffalo country.

Penalty! Unnecessary Blandness! Redesigning the Worst NFL Helmet Graphics




I like the "New" Patriots helmet design, even though it's a bit Captain America/Easy Rider/American Gladiators or Doonesbury as my friend said.

Tell Tale Month

Former St. Louis Cardinals offensive lineman and current NFL analyst Dan Dierdorf.

"The stat sheet is air." - CBS analyst Dan Dierdorf on Miami LB Joey Porter, after Porter spent the week barking about Tom Brady receiving special treatment from NFL officials. Porter finished with a a donut, zero tackles, zero assists.

Dierdorf Factoid

The sputtering walrus was born in Canton, Ohio, the home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Dierdorf was enshrined in Canton in 1996.

Pats Highlights

In a career full of highlights Randy Moss, added two more to his Canton reel. After getting stung early by Miami CB Vante Davis for an interception, Moss made a spectacular one handed grab against Davis. Later in the third quarter he stiff armed Davis, enroute to a 71 yard touchdown.

Laurence Maroney got tough today. He ran hard all day. Maroney finished the day with 20 carries for 82 yards and one touchdown.

We'll really see how good New England is in the next month.

Next week the Patriots face the 8-0 Colts, followed by their division rival the New York Jets (4-4), and they finish the month against the number one offense in the NFL, the New Orleans Saints (7-0).

"Back to you Dan."

Here's a few more shots of Dierdorf from his playing days. I love seeing old trading cards of coaches and analysts.






I can't figure out why they listed Dierdorf's kick return stats, since The Walrus wasn't known for his blazing speed.


OK, a 4.9 40 in 1972, was really good for an offensive lineman. Still, I don't think Dano was lining up to return kicks from Jan Stenerud.


OK, a bit of a selfish reference & picture, I own this card. But what is not to love about Stenerud?

Here are a few quick hits on JS.

~ He's Norwegian. I'm not sure how many foreign players (if any) were in the league prior to Stenerud.
~ He was one of the first dedicated or pure (meaning that was his sole responsibility) place kickers.
~ He was one of the first kickers to use a soccer style kick.
~ He came to the US on a ski jumping scholarship.
~ He played for 19 seasons.
~ He's one of only three place kickers, and the only pure kicker, in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


Here's one from Dierdorf's college days at Michigan. They should take press shots like this again for football.

Masked Man

I was told to report to work with a flu mask tomorrow. Apparently the masks were made mandatory by the Ministry of Education, although there was no mention of the policy on the ministry's website.

The Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (KCDC) English website also makes no mention of the mask policy.

Unfortunately, the H1N1 specific pages on the KCDC website are only in Korean.

The latest KCDC press release (10/30/09), states that the H1N1 School Vaccination Program will be started a week earlier than planned. The program will now commence on November 11th instead of the 18th.

A previous briefing by the Ministry's Central Influenza Headquarters, stated that after inoculation, it takes two weeks for enough antibodies to develop to protect against the flu. So the first children inoculated will not be protected until November 25th.

The release, dated October 26th, also states that, "given the current fatality rate of the pandemic, the Headquarters said that it is not considering to upscale the current phase of the crisis nor implement a nationwide school closure."

According to the Korea Times, HQ has changed its mind.

The administration will likely upgrade the nation's alert level to "Red," today . .
.

The change in the alert level is due to the surge in confirmed infections last week.

According to the China View website, "The move comes as there were an average 8,857 people confirmed as having infected the Influenza A every day last week from 4,420 tallied the week before."

The Korea Times, also reports that there is likely to be an uptick in the number of reported cases due to the current cold snap, which is expected to last until midweek.