NBey6's Blog

 "Courage is fear holding on a minute longer."            - General Patton -

"Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can't be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them."

- Adam Smith -

Doctors have the highest suicide rate of any profession. About one physician a day commits suicide, or somewhere between 300 to 400 every year, qualifying it for the highest rate of any profession.

- Provided by The World Almanac 2010-

TIW 4-25-10 NC Evening

Winning Numbers: 367 & 3487

073, 167, 210, 279, 236, 391, 458, 609

0725, 1079, 2341, 9537, 9681, 5108, 5928

6302, 6409, 6415, 6127, 3048, 7428, 8376

279, 380, 491, 502, 613, 724, 835, 946, 057, 168

0127, 1127, 2127, 3127, 4127, 5127, 6127, 7127, 8127, 9127

6120, 6121, 6122, 6123, 6124, 6125, 6126, 6127, 6128, 6129

As of April 26, 2010

1 Federer, Roger (SUI) 10,690 0 18

2 Djokovic, Novak (SRB) 7,390 0 21

3 Nadal, Rafael (ESP) 6,480 0 17

4 Del Potro, Juan Martin (ARG) 5,725 0 18

5 Murray, Andy (GBR) 5,485 0 17

6 Davydenko, Nikolay (RUS) 5,245 0 25

7 Soderling, Robin (SWE) 4,805 1 25

8 Roddick, Andy (USA) 4,780 -1 20

9 Verdasco, Fernando (ESP) 3,555 0 26

10 Tsonga, Jo-Wilfried (FRA) 3,050 0 25

Enjoy this killa jam by Timbaland featuring Justin Timberlake!!

Well today is do or die, for the playoffs and we kinda know which way you guys are leaning. I know it's been a long road and we fans appreciate the effort you guys have given us this 2009-2010 season. Hopefully ya'll will take everything you've learned this season and make a stronger run for it next season. I'm sure Michael and Larry will make you more focused after today so enjoy your day and off-season break................you're going to need it for next year!!!

Updated: April 26, 2010, 2:02 PM ET

Howard now referred to as 'Foul on You'

Associated Press

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Move over Superman, a new nickname is catching on for Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard.

You can call him "Foul on You."

[+] Enlarge

Scott A. Miller/US PresswireYes, Superman, the foul was on ... you! Dwight Howard has played just over 82 of a possible 144 minutes in three Magic playoff victories vs. Charlotte.

"That's my new nickname. They've been killing me all day calling me 'Foul on You,' " Howard said of his teammates after shootaround Monday before their playoff game against Charlotte. "So I've accepted my new role."

The teasing stems from the four-time All-Star being called for 16 fouls in the first three games against the Bobcats, who have used three centers to frustrate him.

Howard fouled out with 3:32 left in Game 3 on Saturday, but the Magic still rallied to win to take a 3-0 series lead despite Howard playing just over 82 of a possible 144 minutes.

"My teammates say when we wrestle I shouldn't use 100 percent of my strength. They said I should use 50 or 40 percent," said Howard, smiling. "So that's been the main focus today, using 40 percent of my strength to hold guys off."

Coach Stan Van Gundy was a little more serious, knowing the Magic can't afford Howard sitting on the bench later in the playoffs. He showed Howard video on Sunday of his frustration elbows and shoves that have put him in chronic foul trouble.

"We watched, I think, nine clips, maybe 10 clips, just trying to get an understanding of what's going and what their strategy is in the whole thing," Van Gundy said. "He's a very smart guy, but you're in very difficult, very physical situations out there. He's got to take a lot of hits and a lot of grabbing and holding. Obviously, he has to handle that in the right way."

Maybe levity will help. As teammates and others shouted "Foul on You" at the end of Monday morning's workout, Howard raised his arm and clenched his fist to mimic a referee's foul signal.

Forward Mickael Pietrus then walked by with some advice.

"Maybe you need your own whistle," he said.

Earlier, Howard indicated he was going to walk back to their nearby hotel because he might be whistled for a foul on the team bus.

"It's been frustrating, but everything happens for a reason. That's the only way I look at it," said Howard, who has 18 blocks in the series. "Maybe this situation has to happen for me and my teammates. We're just looking at all the positive things that can come out of this situation."

"Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do."              - Benjamin Spock -

Court: Wal-Mart to face massive class action suit

By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer

Paul Elias, Associated Press Writer

48 mins ago

SAN FRANCISCO – A sharply divided federal appeals court on Monday exposed Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to billions of dollars in legal damages when it ruled a massive class action lawsuit alleging gender discrimination over pay for female workers can go to trial.

In its 6-5 ruling, the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals said the world's largest private employer will have to face charges that it pays women less than men for the same jobs and that female employees receive fewer promotions and have to wait longer for those promotions than male counterparts.

The retailer, based in Bentonville, Ark., has fiercely fought the lawsuit since it was first filed by six women in federal court in San Francisco in 2001, losing two previous rulings in the trial court and again in the appeals court in 2007.

Wal-Mart successfully convinced the appeals court to revisit its 2007 ruling made by a three-judge panel with a larger 11-judge panel, arguing that women who allege discrimination should file individual lawsuits. The retailer argued that the number of litigants that the lawsuit purports to represent is too big to defend.

"Although the size of this class action is large, mere size does not render a case unmanageable," Judge Michael Daly Hawkins wrote for the majority court, which didn't address the merits of the lawsuit, leaving that for the trial court.

Judge Sandra Ikuta wrote a blistering dissent, joined by four of her colleagues.

"No court has ever certified a class like this one, until now. And with good reason," Ikuta wrote. "In this case, six women who have worked in thirteen of Wal-Marts 3,400 stores seek to represent every woman who has worked in those stores over the course of the last decade — a class estimated in 2001 to include more than 1.5 million women."

A Wal-Mart representative said the retailer was preparing a statement.

Wal-Mart shares fell 27 cents to $54.26 in afternoon trading.

Midday 4-25-10 Evening

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Midday 4-25-10 Evening

** until 4-28-10 **

0125 0129 0134 0138 0147 0156 0179 0237 0246 0269 0278 0345 0359 0368 0458 0467 0489 0579 0678 1236 1245 1259 1268 1349 1358 1367 1389 1457 1479 1569 1578 2348 2357 2379 2456 2469 2478 2568 2789 3459 3468 3567 3689 4589 4679 5678 6789 0012 0017 0026 0035 0039 0048 0057 0089 1106 1124 1128 1137 1146 1169 1178 2204 2208 2213 2217 2235 2249 2258 2267 2289 3302 3306 3315 3324 3329 3347 3356 3369 3378 4409 4413 4418 4427 4436 4458 4467 5502 5507 5516 5529 5534 5538 5547 5579 6605 6609 6614 6618 6623 6627 6645 6659 7703 7712 7716 7725 7734 7739 7748 8801 8805 8814 8819 8823 8837 8846 8859 9903 9908 9912 9917 9926 9935 9948 9957 0044 0066 1133 1155 2244 4499 5588 6677 6699 7788

Friday, April 23, 2010
Updated: April 24, 3:06 PM ET
Mays tackles Carroll over draft spot

By Shelley Smith
ESPN

Ever since January when Pete Carroll took the Seattle Seahawks job, Taylor Mays said he had been thinking he would only have to drive a few miles over a few bridges from Seattle to Renton, Wash., to meet the press after being drafted into the NFL.

It all made sense. He was from Seattle. Carroll had recruited him out of Seattle to USC, where the All-America safety had spent the past four years. Carroll had convinced him to stay last season, even though most scouts predicted he'd be at least a top-15 pick.

So when pick after pick was announced and his name wasn't being called, Mays sat in front of the television, stunned, and he started to blame Carroll for his plight.

"He is someone I've trusted for a long time, been very close to," Mays said Friday. "I put my future in his hands when he told me to come back to school. I just feel like we weren't on the same page for what I needed to do to get drafted where I wanted to be drafted."

“

Here's my head coach, the person I trust most, telling me I had nothing to worry about and then I'm worrying about it [when it's too late] because I'm not getting picked.

” -- Taylor Mays on Pete Carroll

Mays says all year he had continually asked Carroll what he needed to do to get better, what deficiencies he needed to correct to prove to scouts that he was the brightest, fastest, most physical safety in the country; to maintain the lofty status he had achieved the year before.

"[Pete] kept saying, 'Taylor, you'll be fine. You're fine,' " Mays said. "Obviously that wasn't the case."

Mays had been nearly bouncing off the walls Tuesday as he boarded his flight from Los Angeles to Seattle. The USC senior was headed home to be with his parents and younger brother to watch himself get drafted into the NFL. His entire future waiting on that announcement, only one thing was on his mind.

"Don't let me forget this," he said to the flight attendant as she hung up the plastic garment bag in the closet. In the bag was the brand-new custom-tailored charcoal suit that he was planning on wearing when he would make his media debut amid all the pomp and circumstance afforded first-round picks in the NFL.

"Otherwise I'll have to wear my jersey," he said and laughed.

He wasn't laughing later.

"It was really, really hard," he said of sliding down the board.

Carroll had even invited Mays to drop by the Seahawks facility Wednesday, which Mays did until rattled Seahawks personnel informed Carroll that the deadline for pre-draft visits had passed. "Oops," Carroll said. "Great to see you, you have to go."

Except for that, it had all been shaping up very nicely: Carroll to the Seahawks; Mays to the Seahawks. It all had nice symmetry.

But then, as Carroll tells it, the first round began and when it came for the Seahawks to make their 14th pick, a slot where Mays thought he might be selected, Seattle saw that Texas safety Earl Thomas was still on the board. Just about everybody had rated Thomas the second-best safety in the draft (behind Tennessee's Eric Berry, who went fifth overall to Kansas City) and the defensive secondary-desperate Seahawks couldn't believe their good fortune.

Thomas is a versatile, athletic safety who can also play corner, and someone who they thought would fit in perfectly behind last year's top pick, linebacker Aaron Curry. And so Carroll voted with his head and not his heart and took Thomas and passed on Mays.

Even Mays would say later he couldn't argue with the pick.

"Earl is a very, very good player," he said. "I knew he'd go higher than me."

But then, a lot of teams passed. And just like that, his first-round probability became an improbability. Mays' world continued to spin. By the time he was picked 49th overall by the San Francisco 49ers, it hit a frenzied level. He had given up a possible top-10 slot, was hurt in the Trojans' game against Ohio State -- causing him to miss his chance to play his senior year against Washington at Husky Stadium in his hometown of Seattle, a game the Trojans lost -- and suffered through a miserable season.

There are those who believed Carroll forced Mays into a defensive scheme his senior year that was convenient for the young, sometimes inept Trojans defense. The scheme didn't showcase Mays' talents.

"He played too far off the ball, he was responsible for too much ground, he was expected to make up for the mistakes of others," wrote the bloggers. Mays refused to buy into the criticism, saying he was doing what Carroll told him to do. It was a story he stuck to all season, because, he says, he believed and trusted that Carroll was doing the best thing for him and for the team.

In hindsight, he says, he realizes the scheme probably didn't prepare him for the draft, and the fact that he wasn't a defensive playmaker because of it is likely what hurt him most. Still, he ran a blistering 40 at the combine (4.23 to 4.43 depending on whose watch you were watching) and was, by just about everybody's standards, still an incredible athlete.

Obviously it wasn't enough.

"I wish I would have known why I wouldn't be taken in the first round," he said Friday, "At least have been shown what I needed work on. Here's my head coach, the person I trust most, telling me I had nothing to worry about and then I'm worrying about it [when it's too late] because I'm not getting picked."

Mays said it hurts that had he chosen differently a year ago, he would probably be many million dollars richer and could have avoided the heartache he just went through. Still, he believes he is a better player than he was a year ago -- smarter, more physical, more mature. Which makes it all the more baffling why Carroll had assured him "I was fine," when it came to the draft.

"I put my future in his hands," Mays kept saying.

Told of Mays' comments, Carroll looked wounded. He said before the draft it would be emotionally draining to have to pass on one of the many players, not just USC players, whom he has gotten to know well. He looked down and softly said about Mays, "He's hurting."

Later, he said: "We really were looking forward to picking Taylor. We thought we would get the chance to do that in the first round. But we were surprised when Earl Thomas showed up, we really coveted him as an all-around cover guy who could play safety or corner. And so when we made the pick, we felt fortunate to get Earl, but we were really hoping that we were gonna get a chance to get [Taylor], but unfortunately we didn't."

Mays is heading to San Francisco on Saturday morning to meet the media in his new charcoal suit. Before the draft he had said that, even though he would love to play for Carroll and the Seahawks, he had been impressed with coach Mike Singletary, the history of the 49ers organization and the "killer way they play defense." In one moment he had said he'd love to stay home, but in the next he hinted that, like most young adults trying to find their way, that the allure of a new city was compelling as well.

On Friday, when he was done venting, Mays said he was moving on, moving to the next opportunity, the next challenge.

"I look forward to playing 16 games for Coach Singletary more than I look forward to playing Coach Carroll twice a year," Mays told a group of Bay Area writers via conference call on Friday.

Oh, by the way, the season opener for the 49ers: at Seattle.

Updated: April 24, 2010, 7:16 PM ET

Dementieva, Oudin to meet in Fed Cup

Associated Press

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Melanie Oudin defeated Alla Kudryavtseva 6-3, 6-3 Saturday, but Russia's Elena Dementieva evened up the Fed Cup semifinals matchup with a straight-set win over Bethanie Mattek-Sands.

Dementieva, ranked No. 6 in the world, won 6-4, 6-3 to set up a big Sunday rematch with Oudin in the best-of-five tie.

The 18-year-old Oudin, ranked a career-best 31st, rallied from two games down in each set to win the match at the Birmingham-Jefferson Convention Complex Arena. She fell behind 1-3 and 0-2 to the Russian, who was making her Fed Cup debut.

Oudin took control after the slow start, breaking Kudryavtseva's serve three straight times in the first set.

"I was missing a couple of shots that I normally make," Oudin said. "I knew I had to hang in there and make her hit a lot of balls, and then she started making some errors and I started playing better and being more aggressive. I was able to close out the first set very well."

Dementieva capitalized on 43 unforced errors by Mattek-Sands in a matchup of players with aggressive styles to win the second singles match. Mattek-Sands is ranked 129th.

"She wanted to make some spectacular shots, going for the winners," Dementieva said. "It was not easy for me to play because of the situation (down 0-1). There's always a little more pressure when you have to win your match. It was not an easy win for me."

Defending Fed Cup champion Italy took a 2-0 lead over the visiting Czech Republic in the other semifinal, where Flavia Pennetta and Francesca Schiavone each won in straight sets. The U.S., which would host the final round on Nov. 6-7 at a site to be determined, lost to Italy for the title last year.

The second match set up the potential for some final-day drama.

"We're happy," U.S. captain Mary Joe Fernandez said. "Both Bethanie and Melanie played their hearts out, they competed extremely well. That's all that I can expect from them."

Oudin was down 0-2 in the second set and facing game point after losing a point on a ball she thought was long, dropping her racket and covering her face in exasperation.

She then fought off two game points and won the next three games.

"I think I started well, considering how nervous I was," Kudryavtseva said. "I guess I just got more nervous as I went on. Melanie played well. She fought and was there every point.

"I did feel a lot of pressure. I don't think I've ever had so many people cheer so aggressively against me."

Oudin, who is from suburban Atlanta a couple of hours away, will face Dementieva in reverse singles on Sunday. She is 1-1 in career meetings against her.

"Elena's going to be the tough one on the team for us," Oudin said. "I knew I really needed to try to beat Alla today because Elena's going to be really tough. I was really happy to be up 1-0. This was the first time I've ever played the first match in Fed Cup, so I liked it better, I think."

Mattek-Sands will play Kudryavtseva or Ekaterina Makarova on Sunday, then team with top-ranked doubles player Liezel Huber. Dementieva and Makarova are scheduled to team up in doubles for Russia.

Russian captain Shamil Tarpischev said he would consider changing his No. 2 singles player.

"I'll be ready for both and I'm sure Melanie's ready for Elena again, too," Mattek-Sands said.

Kudryavtseva was impressed by the 5-foot-4 Oudin, and so was Dementieva.

"She's tough. She doesn't give anything," Kudryavtseva said. "You give her a little chance, and she's right on it. She has the guts, she has the courage to go for it no matter what the score is or what the situation is, and that's why she's so good."

Dementieva knows Oudin will have the fans behind her, including a sizable contingent of friends and family from home.

"It's a big advantage to play near your hometown and have the crowd support," the Russian star said. "For us on the Russian team, it's never easy to play in the United States but this is what we like about Fed Cup: The crowd is very involved in the game and very emotional."

Updated: April 24, 2010, 9:46 AM ET

Finger shelves Henin for singles

Associated Press

BRUSSELS -- Justine Henin has broken her left little finger during training and is out of the singles for Belgium's Fed Cup matches against Estonia.

The right-hander plays with a single-handed backhand, but the pain was still enough to rule her out for Saturday's opening singles. If she plays at all, Henin might come back for Sunday's doubles.

Henin said the injury would not have kept her from playing in a regular tour event, but because Belgium has such a strong team, there was no need to force her into the singles matches.

U.S. Open champion Kim Clijsters will open the weekend against Maret Ani, and Yanina Wickmayer, ranked 12th in the world, will take Henin's place to play Kaia Kanepi in the second singles.

Henin should be fit to compete in the WTA event in Stuttgart next week. The break occurred on Wednesday but the extent of the injury only became clear on Friday.