Son of Colts' Coach Tony Dungy Found Dead

From Yahoo! ...Please take time to pray for Coach Dungy and his family

TAMPA, Fla. - James Dungy, the 18-year-old son of Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy, was found dead in a Tampa-area apartment, police said Thursday.

In a news release on its Web site, the Hillsborough County Sheriffs Office said it "responded to the Campus Lodge Apartments this morning at approximately 1:32 a.m. The girlfriend of James Dungy had returned to the apartment and discovered Dungy."

Police performed CPR on Dungy before he was taken to University Community Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The cause of death is pending an autopsy by the Hillsborough County Medical Examiner's Office.

Tony Dungy has left the Colts and is in Tampa, according to NFL.com.

The coach and his wife, Lauren, have four other children: daughters Tiara and Jade and sons Eric and Jordan.

The Colts (13-1) are at Seattle on Saturday.

NY TRANSIT STRIKE FLASH: MTA gives $26,315 to each of the 38,000 workers...

Well, it didn't happen, but it does show how much the 1 billion surplus could have helped each of the the transit workers. Even if just 15 percent of that surplus was given to the workers, it would have been $3,947 per transit worker.

That would have been an awesome Christmas bonus for them.

Mayor Bloomberg on The NY Transit Strike - Live now on CNN

Reiterrated that the strike was "unfair" and "illegal" to start today's speech. (But what upsets me about CNN, is they cut away to some press conference about a manhunt for a rapist in Miami. I understand, but the strike impacts millions). Ok, we're back to Bloomberg.

He says it's not as cold as it normal would be, which is good. The New York Blood center can't collect blood and so has declared a state of emergency. "Robery Payne is a health care worker who walked six miles to get to work," he said.

The Mayor plans to warn the transit worker and order them back to work via a restraining order.

CNN just lost the feed, and broke away

I'm not sure that's going to work. Again, the issue is the allocation of a $1 billion surplus, which the workers never got even part of....

Reggie Bush looking for agents - Note to USC's Reggie Bush: pick Sports Agent Leigh Steinberg

Read about it at SBS NFL Football Business Blog with a click on the title of this post.

Reggie Bush looking for agents - Note to USC's Reggie Bush: pick Sports Agent Leigh Steinberg

According to ESPN.com, Reggie Bush is interviewing candidates to be his sports agent, a sure sign he's going to enter the 2006 NFL Draft.

ESPN.com reports that "Seven agents met on Monday in Los Angeles with Bush, who is expected to be forego his senior season with the Trojans and enter next year's draft, and with his advisors. The agents were Tom Condon, David Dunn, Todd France, Mitch Frankel, Eugene Parker, Joel Segal and Leigh Steinberg.

On Tuesday, at least three of the agents -- France, Segal and Steinberg -- were apprised by Bush advisors that the field had been winnowed and that they are finalists to represent the star tailback if he indeed goes into the 2006 draft."

Reggie, here's a friendly note: go with Leigh Steinberg of Leigh Steinberg Enterprises. Not just because Leigh's legendary, but also because he's got the best reputation and can not only get you the best NFL deal, he can leverage your celebrity into other areas, like broadcasting. Something the other agents can't do.

Forget his court battle with Athlete's First. Their arguments against him are exagerated greately.

Also one of these agents you're considering has had a recent problem. To learn more about it, read my account of the 2005 NFL Draft by clicking here.

Good luck Reggie.

PG&E's failure: power outage blanks Oakland's Adams Point / Lake Merritt

Read about it at Oakland Focus, by just clicking on the title of this post.

Google buys 5 percent stake in AOL - Will it buy more of the Internet portal?

From Businessweek.com

DEC. 20 7:38 P.M. ET America Online on Tuesday sealed a $1 billion transaction to sell a 5 percent stake to Google Inc. in a deal that deepens the ties binding two of the Web's most popular Web sites while thwarting Microsoft Corp.'s efforts to grab a larger piece of the booming Internet advertising market.

Approving the expanded alliance had been considered a mere formality last Friday when AOL's corporate parent, Time Warner Inc., abruptly ended several months of negotiations with Microsoft, which had hoped to supplant Google as AOL's main advertising partner.

Many of the details, including a plan that may display more graphical ads on some of Google's traditionally sparse Web pages, had been leaked to the media in the last few days.

New SBS NFL Football Business Blog

Click on the title of this post to see our new NFL Football blog on busineess news related to the game. The blog will also feature opinion on the NFL issues of the day.

Colts QB Peyton Manning receives record 1.18 million Pro Bowl votes.

From NFL Media.com
RECORD 70.5 MILLION ALL-STAR VOTES CAST ON NFL.COM AND SPRINT WIRELESS; PEYTON MANNING, ALEXANDER & TOMLINSON TOP VOTE-GETTERS

RECORD 1.9 MILLION MOBILE VOTES CAST VIA SPRINT WIRELES; PEYTON MANNING RECEIVES RECORD 1.18 MILLION VOTES

Indianapolis Colts quarterback PEYTON MANNING received a record 1,184,142 votes to lead
NFL All-Stars in balloting for the 2006 Pro Bowl, the NFL announced today. Presented by
Sprint, Pro Bowl voting on NFL.com, in stadiums and via the Sprint wireless service ended
Friday, Dec. 16.

There were a record 70.5 million votes cast on NFL.com and via the Sprint wireless service -- a 16 percent increase over the 61 million cast last year.

In the tally was a record 1.9 million mobile votes via Sprint wireless -- nearly 200 times the 10,000 mobile votes cast last year.

Seattle Seahawks running back SHAUN ALEXANDER (1,110,575 votes) ranked second overall while San Diego Chargers running back LA DAINIAN TOMLINSON (1,044,360), Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver CHAD JOHNSON (987,650) and Chargers tight end ANTONIO GATES (941,846) rounded out the top five.

BEARS-VIKINGS KICKOFF TIME ON JAN. 1 MOVED TO 4:15 PM ET

From NFL Media.com - private access website; no direct link available to the public.
The Chicago Bears at Minnesota Vikings game on Sunday, January 1 will be played at 4:15 PM ET rather than 1:00 PM ET, the NFL announced today.

The change is to accommodate FOX television patterns.

Intelligent Design sacked in court - judge rules lessons unconstitutional

A US court has ruled that school children cannot be taught the theory known as "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution.

Ihave mixed emotions about this, but it's important that kids are given non-religious tools with which to analyze biological change. But that said, is science a religion itself?

Study: Racial prejudice makes you stupider

My friend and attorney Bill Taylor brought this to my attention today, so I looked it up on the San Francisco Chronicle website. Here's a large excerpt; for the rest of the story, click on the title link.

To the litany of arguments against prejudice, scientists are now adding a new one: Racism can make you stupid.

That is the message of an unusual and striking new series of experiments conducted at Dartmouth College, with the help of brain-imaging equipment and a crew of undergraduate volunteers.

According to the findings, the more biased people are, the more their brain power is taxed by contact with someone of another race, as they struggle not to say or do anything offensive. The effect is so strong, the team found, that even a five-minute conversation with a black person left some of the white subjects unable to perform well on a test of cognitive ability.

"Just having a prejudice makes you stupider," said John Gabrieli, a professor of psychology at Stanford University who was not involved in the research. "It is really interesting."...

...The work also paints a dispiriting portrait of the state of the nation's race relations, the lead researcher said, even among the well-educated, well- meaning Dartmouth undergraduates whom the scientists studied.

"I think people are getting caught in this trap where they are trying not to do the wrong thing, rather than trying to act natural," said Jennifer Richeson, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth College. "Somehow, we have to get past this awkward phase."

Richeson and her colleagues began by recruiting a group of white Dartmouth undergraduates and asked them to perform an "Implicit Association Test," a test that is widely used to measure unconscious racial bias. The subject is given a screen and two buttons. First, the subject is asked to push the button on the left if the word that appears on the screen is a positive word, like beauty, or a common first name for a white person, such as Nancy. Otherwise, they are instructed to push the button on the right.

After a session, the test is changed slightly, and the names given are those more common for a black person, such as Tyrone. The greater the difference between the reaction times in the two sessions, the more the person has trouble associating black names with positive concepts.

Next, the team had each of the students speak briefly with a black experimenter and then perform a test of cognitive ability called the Stroop test. They showed that the higher a bias score the student had in the IAT test, the worse they did on the Stroop test after speaking with the black experimenter.

...It is part of a nascent movement to study the neurological basis of social phenomena, in particular racism. One study, by Elizabeth Phelps at New York University, found that biased people were more likely to have greater activity in their amygdala, a portion of the brain associated with negative emotions like fear, when shown the picture of a black person they don't know.

Another, conducted by Stanford's Gabrieli and other scientists, showed that the brains of white people process white and black faces differently from the moment they see them.