On the 3rd hole we see Yang’s tee shot but nothing else. When he was putting for birdie, NBC showed a short piece on former Open winners.

On the 5th hole, none of Yang’s putts are shown.

The 6th hole after McIlroy tees off, you’d think NBC would show Yang’s tee. Nope, they don’t. Instead we get a fluff piece on McIlroy.

There was an earlier lapse in NBC’s coverage of Yang on either the 1st or 2nd hole but I didn’t take notes.

Hardcore LPGA followers have been noting for a long time the way Korean golfers are covered on television. Or call it lack of coverage. Just a month ago NBC had no problem telling  us David Toms had a very poor record at The Players Championship while he dueled KJ Choi. NBC didn’t mention that Choi’s record at the TPC of Sawgrass is even worse.

Yang just made birdie at the 6th hole to pull to nine shots behind. NBC also issued an apology for editing out part of the pledge of allallegiance in a opening segment of today’s broadcasts.

A Chinese woman in New York made the mistake of telling a Judge she don’t admire ‘African-Americans, Hispanics and Haitians.’

An incensed federal judge sentenced a racist Brooklyn woman to indefinite jury duty on Tuesday after she trashed the NYPD and minorities.

“This is an outrage, and so are you!” Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis told the woman, holding up her bile-filled juror questionnaire.

Juror No. 799, an Asian woman in her 20s who said she works in the garment industry, was up for jury duty in the death penalty trial of Bonanno crime boss Vincent (Vinny Gorgeous) Basciano.

It didn’t take long for her to start looking worse than the defendant.

Asked to name three people she least admired, she wrote on her questionnaire: “African-Americans, Hispanics and Haitians.”

When the judge asked why she answered the question that way, she replied, “You always hear about them in the news doing something.”

She also declared that cops are all lazy, claiming that they sound their sirens to bypass traffic jams.

Garaufis flipped forward several pages in her questionnaire.

He landed on the page where she had said she had a relative who was a member of the Chinese Ghost Shadows gang in the 1980s, convicted of murder and still in prison.

“Why didn’t you put ‘Asians’ down also?” the judge asked sarcastically, referring to her list of least-liked people.

“Maybe I should have,” she said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Taryn Merkl requested that the woman be disqualified from the Vinny Gorgeous case because of her “inappropriate” comments. The motion was granted.

It is not unheard of for people to try to get out of jury service by making ridiculous statements concerning their views.

It was unclear Tuesday whether that was this woman’s motive.

And if it was, it didn’t work.

Indeed, the woman was going to be seeing a lot of Brooklyn Federal Court.

“She’s coming back [today], Thursday and Friday – and until the future, when I am ready to dismiss her,” Garaufis said.- New York Daily News

Under what authority Judge Garaufis can you order a person back to your court? Oh Judges are Gods and they can do whatever the hell they please and take away other people’s liberties and destroying lives in the process if they want and still several years later be able to walk out of court after being convicted of a crime.

Update- The Judge has reversed course but I still think his actions are inexcusable. As one Law Professor said ” She can’t be punished for being a racist,” Gillers said. “You don’t check the First Amendment at the courtroom door.”

Did anyone prove the statements on the questionaire weren’t true? If the woman believed what she wrote, how is that a crime?

As you can tell, I’m not a big fan of Judges. Or the legal profession in general.

The New York Daily News Reporter,  John Marzulli,  is a work of art too. Non PC comments don’t make a person worse than a gangster convicted of murder.

The news-gathering landscape has mutated so quickly and so absolutely, at once enhanced and contaminated by the immediacy of everything from texts to Twitter to TMZ, that America’s most famous athlete this weekend went from suffering a serious injury in a car accident . . . to suffering a minor injury in a car accident . . . to being “fine,” according to his agent . . . to reportedly being unfaithful to his wife . . . to maybe having his face scratched by his angry wife . . . to being rescued by his helpful wife from his crashed car with a golf club . . . to having his car smashed up by his betrayed wife and her golf club . . . to not being any kind of “fine” at all.

Not all of that can be true, obviously, but who cares?

Truth is one of the many things that gets trampled today when boring facts can’t keep up with the media’s need to feed instantly and the public’s appetite to be fed faster than that.

Actually sports celebrity news bores me. I blogged about the news of Woods accident but refrained on speculating about its cause.  That kind of restraint is not normal in either the news business or blogging now. I rather not make a fool out of myself by talking about 2nd or 3rd hand error prone news.

If someone wants to make the case I’m a fool, there’s over 4 years of blog posts out on the internet ready and waiting for them.

Qian Xuesen, a rocket scientist known as the father of China’s space technology program, died Saturday in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He was 98.

Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, began his career in the U.S. and was regarded as one of the brightest minds in the new field of aeronautics before returning to China in 1955, driven out of the United States at the height of anticommunist fervor.

Qian set up China’s first missile and rocket research institute, which later helped start China’s space program.

He led the development of China’s first nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and worked on its first satellite, launched in 1970.

He retired in 1991, the year before China’s manned space program was launched. But his research formed the basis for the Long March CZ-2F rocket that carried astronaut Yang Liwei into orbit in 2003.

In August, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited Qian and praised him for dedicating his life to China’s defense technologies, according to Xinhua.

“I’m trying to live to be 100 years old,” Qian told him.

Born in 1911 in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, Qian left for the United States after winning a scholarship to graduate school in 1936. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later at the California Institute of Technology, where he helped start the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

During World War II, Qian helped to design ballistic missiles for the U.S. military. In 1945, as an Army colonel with a security clearance, he was sent to Europe on a mission to examine captured rocket technology from Nazi Germany.

He studied the German V-2 rocket and interviewed its chief designer, Wernher von Braun, who would go on to play a key role in the American manned space program.

After the war, Qian married the daughter of a military adviser to Chinese leader Gen. Chiang Kai-shek. In 1949, he applied to become a U.S. citizen, shortly before Chiang’s Nationalist forces were defeated by Mao Zedong’s communists.

As anticommunist unease in the United States mounted, the FBI confronted Qian in 1950 with a U.S. Communist Party document from 1938 that listed him as a member.

Qian denied being a communist, but he was briefly arrested and lost his security clearance. Washington began hearings to deport him, though he was never charged with a crime.- Associated Press

In spite of a Navy undersecretary saying- “It was the stupidest thing this country ever did…he was no more a Communist than I was and we forced him to go.”, United States officials kept Tsien under house arrest. In 1955 we deported him back to China. If he wasn’t a communist before, he went to work for them after the way he was treated in the United States. Maybe he had little choice by then. RIP.

Two little notes about the article- AP has Tsien dying at age 97 but his wikipedia entry shows his birthdate as being in December of 1911. Is Associated Press unable to count or is the Wikipedia entry wrong? I could believe the later. Just recently I fixed the entry on one television show, where someone changed the article to say the program was on for eight years instead of five.  There is a massive amount of proof on the internet saying ‘Streets of San Francisco’ ran for just five seasons.(Didn’t that bozo realize that would have had actor Richard Hatch starring in two ABC shows at the same time? Hatch was Michael Douglas replacement in SOSF’s last season before moving on to Battlestar Gallactica) The incorrect information on the show remained up for over two months, and other people came along to tweak the article but not correct the misinformation till I fixed it.

On the other hand I’ve pointed out the dumb mistakes of AP writers all the time. Not just the work of its golf writer, the sloppy Doug Ferguson.

I guess the moral of the story is- Double check and verify whether it is Associated Press or Wikipedia.

Liew Siaw Hsia, 31, gave birth on budget carrier AirAsia’s flight from Penang to Kuching on Wednesday.

Nazatul Mokhtar, a spokesman for the airline, said on Friday that the flight had been diverted to nearby Kuala Lumpur for an emergency landing when Mrs Liew started labor pains. He said Mrs Liew was 27 weeks pregnant, 11 weeks short of the full term.

A doctor on the flight helped the woman deliver her son while the plane was still 2,000 feet in the air in its final approach to land.

Mother and son were rushed to a nearby hospital after the plane landed, an airline statement said. Their condition late on Friday was unknown, though Mr Nazatul had said earlier that they were both in good shape.- Daily Telegraph

An Associated Press article tells us more about the mother.

Liew Siaw Hsia had been flying home Wednesday after quitting her job as a waitress when she started having labor pains.

*****

Liew, a 31-year-old divorcee, said she plans to raise the boy on her own in her home state of Sarawak on Borneo island.

Liew is a single mom.  She may not much use for AirAsia’s free plane ticket offer.

She and the airline said she had been 27 weeks pregnant, 11 weeks short of the full term. The airline, AirAsia, said it would give Liew and her child free flights for life.

Liew told The Associated Press that doctors at a hospital outside Kuala Lumpur have told her they do not expect any health complications and she can take her baby home Monday or Tuesday. She said her boy’s current weight was about 7 pounds (3.2 kilograms).

Huh? The Associated Press should fact check this article written by Sean Yoong out of Kuala Lumpar.  Why do I say this? Here are the reasons-

*- A lungs of a  baby at 27 weeks gestation are not mature.  The child would need breathing assistance for over a month till their lungs were more developed.

*- Babies born at 27 weeks spend at least 8 weeks/two months in a NICU aka neonatal intensive care unit.  My son Daniel was born at 28 weeks and five days. I know more than a little bit about this subject.

*-  No baby born at 27 weeks would weigh 7 lbs. A baby at 37 weeks is considered slightly premature but is often able to come home right away or after a slightly longer hospital stay than a baby born at full term.

A 37 week gestation child could well be born at 7 lbs weight.

A hospital doctor declined to comment, saying it was not their policy to speak about patients.

A specialist on babies and children at a Kuala Lumpur private clinic said it was possible for a baby born at 27 weeks to be healthy and as heavy as Liew’s. He asked that he and his clinic not be identified because Malaysian doctors are supposed to get health ministry approval before making statements to the media on public cases.

This ‘specialist’ is either a fake or a crank. No perinatologist would say a baby born at 27 weeks can be that heavy.  Did Sean Yoong talk to the NICU janitor for his article?

A girl has been held against her will,  violated, and scarred for life and some sports writer thinks this is a good hook for a column. A column about all the trivia she missed out in life while she was abused and tortured.  I don’t know what is more appalling, that Whicker thought this was suitable for a sports column, or that his editorial supervisors at the Orange County Register approved it for publication. All the scorn that is being thrown at Whicker and the Orange County Register are well deserved in my opinion.

Tomorrow is 9-11’s eigth anniversary. If Whicker’s editors and the public hadn’t given him such a smacking to his brain matter deprived head, I could have just seen him writing a similar column featuring what the people killed on 9-11 missed over the last eight years.

BTW Whicker takes full credit for what he wrote. Columnists are often told by their editor to write about a topic but Whicker is not taking that way out.

Whicker came out and apologized today. The apology is worthless in IMHO. Why is that? Whicker had an email exchange with Michael David Smith of Fanhouse. He said it should come as no shock that Whicker’s clumsy attempt of using Duggard’s tragedy as fodder for a sports column has horrified and shocked people. Whicker then told Smith in a second email.

“Thanks for ripping me. I’m really happy I devoted part of this very hectic day responding to someone who had as little interest in my viewpoint as the crazies out there.”

Whicker is so sick between the ears he thinks his behavior is normal. What a pathetic human being he is. In light of his reply to Smith, Whicker’s apology should be considered both insincere and worthless. I’m betting he was made to apologize and feels he did nothing at all wrong.

Also I could point out that if Whicker or his employer wanted the apology taken seriously, it might help if they didn’t place an advertisement featuring a big breasted woman on the same web page. It makes it look like the OC Register and Whicker still have their heads in their rectums the gutter.

Ryan Ballangee writes-

Look, I try to make connections between social and political events with the sport that I cover. It’s natural to try to use sports to put things into context, and vice versa when the tone of sport needs to be reset. But nearly two decades of personal hell and painful captivity at the hands of a deranged freak of society is no context for an escape like sport is for many people.

Whicker may as well have used the Holocaust to talk about how 6 million Jews really lost out on some great World Cup action after World War II ended. It is that bad.

Clearly, Whicker did not have any kind of empathy for Jaycee Dugard or her family. Using their ordeal – and that’s putting it mildly – as a basis for a lame column defining a sports time capsule screams of someone who simply does not get what has been happening to Dugard without his knowledge until just a few weeks ago.

Every writer makes a big mistake like this at least once in their career.

*****

Mark Whicker probably shouldn’t get fired for what he wrote. Far worse is said in all corners of the Internet everyday about a host of people. What Whicker needs, though, is a serious adjustment in his perspective about the connection between life and sport.

Sport, yes, is an escape and Whicker’s sentiment in that regard is correct. Sport could never be used to explain something like what happened to Jaycee Dugard. To even try to make the connection is just rubbing salt in the many deep wounds that Dugard has because of what Phillip Garrido has done.

Much of what Ryan writes, I agree with. Except I think Whicker and whomever at the Register who approved that pile of excrement impersonating as a piece of journalism should be held accountable. Whicker should be fired, that will send a message loud and clear. Induction into Sports Journalism’s Hall of Shame just isn’t good enough. The rape, kidnapping, and torture of a being found suitable for a sports column should lead to permanent banishment from the profession of journalism.

Note- I won’t quote one word from Whicker’s column. It is such a piece of filth, I won’t let it soil this website. You’ll have to go to the link if you want to read it yourself.

Okinawa police are questioning an Okinawa man who allegedly left the scene of an accident that severely injured the wife of a Marine.

According to Okinawa prefectural police, Erin Harding, 36, was riding her bicycle about 5 a.m. Thursday heading south along Highway 58 near the commissary gate to Camp Foster when she was struck by a car that sped away.

Harding was on her way to the Camp Foster pool to train for the Half Ironman Contest on Izena Island in October, her husband, Maj. Todd Harding said in a telephone interview Monday evening.

She was rushed to the U.S. Naval Hospital on Camp Lester, where she is in the intensive care ward being treated for several serious injuries, including a fractured pelvis, fractured left hip, three fractured vertebrae and a sprained right shoulder, her husband said.

She is scheduled to be transferred to the Balboa Medical Center in San Diego* later this week. Harding said he is having his tour curtailed after five years on Okinawa and is being reassigned to Marine Corps Air Station Miramar to be near his wife during what is expected to be a lengthy recovery.

“Our lives have been turned upside down in a matter of seconds,” said Harding, 40, assigned to Headquarters and Service Battalion, Marine Corps Base.

It can take a year to recover from a fractured pelvis and Mrs. Harding will need many simple things done for her.  I hope the Hardings have a good support network. God bless them.

Did the Stars and Stripes headline writer read the entire article? The headline read- Okinawa man held in alleged hit and run.

The last paragraph of the above article read- The driver of the car turned himself in Thursday evening at the Okinawa City police station, where he was questioned and released.

Oops!

Back to the accident. It took place early in the morning and in darkness. It is possible the driver didn’t realize what happened.  He could have also fled the accident scene. Down here in Florida, automobile drivers will take off after hitting a bicyclist. It happened to both my father and brother but fortunately both were no where as near as badly as Erin Harding was.

*- I was assigned to Balboa for two years back in the mid 1980′s.

A northwestern Pennsylvania newspaper is apologizing for running a classified advertisement calling for the assassination of President Barack Obama.

Warren Times Observer Publisher John Elchert says the ad appeared Thursday. It read, “May Obama follow in the steps of Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy!” The four presidents were all assassinated.

Elchert tells The Associated Press that the newspaper’s advertising staff didn’t make the historical connection.

He says the newspaper turned information over to police and that the Secret Service is investigating the person who placed the ad.

Either the newspaper takes advertisments from anyone who has the wherewithal to pay for it or no one at the paper has a decent knowledge of American Presidential history. Which ever the cause was, it doesn’t speak highly of the Warren Times Observer.

Hat tip- Joanne Jacobs who writes- “OK, maybe Garfield and McKinley are obscure, but they didn’t get a clue about the ad’s meaning from Lincoln and Kennedy either.  It helps to know history.”