WTF?

LA Times: Roughly once a month, the NBA cuts 31 checks to NBA teams as revenue from its multibillion-dollar national television contract. There are only 30 NBA franchises, so who gets the extra check? The money goes to brothers Ozzie and Dan Silna, co-owners of the long-forgotten ABA team, the Spirits of St. Louis. Thirty years ago, Ozzie Silna, with attorney Donald Schupak, negotiated a deal that cleared the way for the ABA to merge with the NBA. It ranks…

LA Weekly: Another day, and what sounds like another arrest on the Arizona border. Naco is a city where “The Border” is no abstraction. It is the painfully real corrugated-steel barrier — rusted in spots, barbed in others — that slices the town neatly in two. One half for the United States, one half for Mexico. In Naco, the border is where illegal immigrants and the Border Patrol come to perform their intricate ballet of catch-and-release. But Helen is no…

So, I’m listed under the Wikipedia category of People from Santa Monica, California. This is a category I share with Tiger Woods. But when I went to read his entry, I discovered that while he’s not actually from Santa Monica, (born in Cypress, CA), he apparently went to my alma mater, and was classmates and golf teammates with Carson Daly. Whoa.

Ethan Zuckerman: BBC reports the death toll from the second intifada at roughly 4000. Iraq Body Count offers an estimate of civilian deaths in Iraq between 39,000 and 43,000 – a study from Johns Hopkins projects a much larger number, 100,000 by October 2004. Marc Herold at UNH projects between 3 and 4,000 civilian deaths in Afghanistan from October 2001 – June 2004. Military casualties include 407 coalition casualties in Afghanistan and 2,564 coalition deaths in Iraq. Using the JHU…

The so-called Principality of Sealand, seven miles off the coast of Felixstowe and Harwich, was evacuated at lunchtime yesterdayafter a generator caught fire. Thames Coastguard, Harwich RNLI lifeboat, Felixstowe Coastguard rescue teams, firefighting tug Brightwell, the RAF rescue helicopter from Wattisham and 15 Suffolk based firefighters from the National Maritime Incident Response Group (MIRG) were all called into action to tackle the blaze. One man, believed to be a security guard, was airlifted from the scene and taken to Ipswich…

BBC: The Dutch ambassador to Estonia, Hans Glaubitz, is leaving the country, complaining of persistent racist and homophobic abuse. Mr Glaubitz said he and his partner, a black Cuban man, were regularly insulted when they went out. An Estonian foreign ministry spokesman said the men had been well received at an official level, but expressed “regret” over any public abuse. Mr Glaubitz is to be posted to Canada to become consul-general in Montreal. He told Dutch newspapers: “It is not…

NYT, Today, fifth graf: One senior government official, who was granted anonymity to speak publicly about the classified program, confirmed that the N.S.A. had access to records of most telephone calls in the United States. MOST !?!?

Stuff.co.nz: The cost of bringing justice to remote Pitcairn Island has already topped $14 million NZ, and there are several sex crime hearings still to go. That’s about $9 mil US. That’s over $200,000 US spent on each of the 42 residents. Wow.

But many San Franciscans left the city permanently. Oakland’s population doubled to 150,000 between 1900 and 1910, spurred by the earthquake and developers Francis “Borax” Smith and Frank Havens. There was also a big jump in population in Marin and on the Peninsula. All these new suburbs, however, were stained by the racism of the time. The promoters of the new Rockridge Tract in Oakland distributed a leaflet that said, “It is probably unnecessary even to mention that no one…

Alameda Times-Star: OAKLAND — Ice falling from the sky might seem unusual, but some Spanish and American scientists say it is becoming a frequent occurrence throughout the world. Like the estimated 200-plus-pound chunk that fell Saturday on Bushrod Park, clear ice from the sky has been reported around the world. Big and small ice-falls have happened in China, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, Scotland, Hungary, England, India and more than half of the United States — often in summer and some…