NFL to debut first female referee, Shannon Eastin, for Thursday’s preseason game

**Update: Shannon continues her historic journey – works her first regular season game.   It will be history in the making Thursday night as for the first time in NFL history, a woman will officiate the contest between the San Diego Chargers and the Green Bay Packers. All eyes will certainly be on Shannon Eastin, who …

A century of Olympic posters

    Images from the book “A Century of Olympic Posters” by Margaret Timmers: As snapshots through time, Olympic posters provide a fascinating record of our world, a lens through which we can explore links between sports and art, politics and place, commerce and culture. A Century of Olympic Posters offers an intensely visual representation of the modern …

YouTube adds face blurring to videos – to protect anonymity of activists in troubled countries

As citizens continue to play a critical role in supplying news and human rights footage from around the world, YouTube is committed to creating even better tools to help them. According to the international human rights organization WITNESS’ Cameras Everywhere report, “No video-sharing site or hardware manufacturer currently offers users the option to blur faces or …

The Dark Knight Rises – trailer #4 – released July 6th

  More glimpses of some epic street battle of 100s of people…   “The Dark Knight Rises” in theaters July 20 – Facebook Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ “The Dark Knight Rises” is the epic conclusion to filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. Leading an all-star international cast, Oscar winner Christian Bale (“The Fighter”) again …

Dodgers new ownership finally takes over

  Stan Kasten As the primary architect of the Atlanta Braves’ dynasty in the 1980s and ’90s, Kasten noted the Dodgers’ fast start in stressing that the goal is to “win now — we’re not going to wait two years.” Mark Walter In the tall, reserved Walter, Johnson can see parallels in ownership style with …

Debate over oil subsidies – Senators voting to protect them received on average 4x more contributions

The debate goes much deeper than who received money, but these numbers are still important: In a 51-47 vote, 43 Senate Republicans and four Democrats filibustered to protect $24 billion in tax breaks for Big Oil. Although a majority voted for Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-NJ) bill, it fell short of the 60 needed. The only …

Gmail: why do messages end up in spam folder?

Many of our users say the accuracy of our spam filter is one of the key reasons they love Gmail. And while we think you should never have to look in your spam folder, we know some of you may want to know why the messages there were marked as spam. So starting today, we’ll …

California traffic fatalities down 37% – lowest level since 1944

The California Office of Traffic Safety celebrated their fifth year of consecutive declines in traffic related fatalities. In 2010, the number of fatalities in the Golden State dropped to 2,715.  That is nearly a 12 percent drop from 3,081 traffic deaths in 2009.  And since the peak in 2005, with 4,333 deaths, California’s numbers have …