Law-breaking photographer saves the life of Maverick's surfer

11:12 PM Law-breaking photographer saves the life of Maverick's surfer No Comments

When you think about , what do you think of first? Which aspects of are important, which are essential, and which ones can you take or leave? You be the judge.



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Luckily that didn't stop him from heading out on his PWC to shoot photos of surfers braving a clean late January swell.

While his presence may have miffed some, it's clear now that his quick action saved the life of surfer Jacob Trette when disaster struck in the morning. Ord's life-saving action is exactly why many surfers opposed the ban in the first place, citing the lack of life-saving apparatus allowed near the break on big days as a danger.

The incident occurred at approximately 9:45 am Saturday morning, when a huge set of waves caught a number of surfers by surprise. Many of them had been lured closer to shore where cleaner waves were breaking more consistently on the higher tide. Then suddenly a huge 25-foot cleanup set approached, heaving way outside of where the pack was sitting. Surfers scrambled and scratched for the horizon to avoid being pummeled in the impact zone. Trette was one of the unlucky ones.

The 30-year-old surfer was sucked over the falls by the first wave after failing to make it over. (He's visible in in the middle of the shot above, paddling the green board.) When he finally resurfaced Trette was staring straight at another 20-foot wave crashing down on him. He endured two two-wave hold downs before being washed through the rocks inside.

When the set approached Ord was sitting safely in the channel on his ski, but sprang into action as soon as the 20-foot set cleared. In the commotion, he nabbed Alex Bottello, another victim, and pulled him out of the impact zone. He was zipping Bottello toward shore when the two spotted Trette's lifeless body floating face-up in the frothy whitewater way inside.

Ord jumped in the water and pulled him onto the rescue sled attached to his ski. Bottello then held Trette's body in place on the sled while Ord raced to shore, where an EMT and another surfer skilled in CPR went to work on Trette. They continued until Firefighters arrived and managed to get a pulse.


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At Obama's midpoint, an altered State of the Union

11:04 PM an altered State of the Union, At Obama's midpoint, Hot News No Comments

Would you like to find out what those-in-the-know have to say about ? The information in the article below comes straight from well-informed experts with special knowledge about .



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WASHINGTON – Nearly two years ago on a cold February day, President Barack Obama stood for the first time before a joint session of Congress and spoke of a national day of reckoning.

It was time not just to stabilize the shaken economy, he declared, but to reach for lasting prosperity.

His goals were expansive: overhauling health care, cutting the deficit, improving schools, finding a way out of Iraq and a way ahead in Afghanistan. Most of all, creating jobs. Jobs by the millions.

He had big plans and a Democratic majority in Congress to help him carry them out.

"We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before," Obama said to rousing applause.

Grim as the economic news was at the time, the nation — and Obama — didn't know how bad it was going to get before things started to turn around. The economy hemorrhaged nearly 4 million jobs in 2009, Obama's first year as president.

Two years in to his term, as Obama prepares to stand before Congress once again on Tuesday, he will size up an altered State of the Union.

The economy undisputedly is on stronger footing, though far from robust. There's a new health care law. U.S. troops have come out of Iraq and gone into Afghanistan.

"The most productive two years that we've had in generations," the president pronounces it.

Yet he will speak to a radically reshaped Congress. His party's ranks have been thinned by voters who delivered a harsh verdict in November on two years of collaboration between Obama and the Democratic-controlled House and Senate.

He faces Republicans who are sworn to slash spending by as much as $100 billion as the government comes off an economic rescue effort that has put the country on track for a third consecutive year of $1 trillion-plus deficits.

Ask people whether Obama has delivered on his broad-brush promise of change, and 42 percent — the biggest share — say it's still too soon to tell, according to an AP-GfK poll. One-third say he's failed to deliver; one-quarter think he's kept his promise.

The public is divided, too, on whether Obama is attempting to change things at the right pace, according to the poll. About one-third think he's moving too fast, and almost equal shares think his pace is just right or too slow.

Where do we stand? "I think I'd use the word transitional," says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker. "There's a sense of expectation on the part of the public. I think it's tinged with hopefulness."

The nation may have weathered its economic crisis, but the same cannot be said for many people.

The unemployment rate was 8.2 percent in February 2009, when Obama first addressed Congress. It hit double digits by that October and was 9.4 percent at last report. While the administration is quick to point out that 1.1 million jobs were created last year, there are 2.8 million fewer jobs now than when Obama took office.

Housing is a particular sore spot. Foreclosures hit a record 1 million in 2010, and this year's figures are likely to be worse.

"I don't think they ever fully got their arms around the factors that were contributing to such an appalling rate of foreclosures and I don't think they've done it yet," says the Brookings Institution's Bill Galston, a former Clinton administration official who gives the president good marks overall for stabilizing the economy.

In Obama's first address to Congress, the president spoke passionately about the inequities and "crushing costs" of the health care system, of families denied treatment or forced into bankruptcy because of medical bills.

Last March 23, after a long and fierce battle, Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aimed at expanding coverage to virtually all in this country and preventing insurers from denying coverage to those with health problems.

The political repercussions were immediate and intense. Republicans campaigned against "Obamacare" in the fall elections; Democrats mostly tried to avoid the subject.

On Tuesday, Obama will stand before Congress in the same chamber where House Republicans voted just days ago to scrap the law (knowing their repeal effort would founder in the Senate.)

While the economy commanded Obama's attention, the two wars he inherited tested his resolve as commander in chief. Obama sought an exit strategy in Iraq, the war he had opposed from the start, and an escalation in Afghanistan, the war he thought was just.

The U.S. had about 138,000 troops in Iraq when he took office and 36,000 in Afghanistan.

Two years later, the situation has flipped: There are 47,000 in Iraq, 97,000 in Afghanistan.

All in all, Obama made an astonishing array of promises in his campaign and rededicated himself to them in the early days of his presidency. They ranged from small-bore ones such as his pledge to open American cultural centers in Islamic cities abroad (a promise being kept) to his vow to repeal the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy (a promise broken).

To the Heritage Foundation's Brian Darling, Obama has emerged as the "over-promiser in chief."

"Walking into another State of the Union speech," says Darling, "the American people will look at his statements skeptically."

To Galston, Obama's efforts on the economy are the overarching achievement of the first half of his term — and the key to a successful second half.

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China sports brand tries to break into US market

11:02 PM China sports brand tries to break into US market, Hot News No Comments

Do you ever feel like you know just enough about to be dangerous? Let's see if we can fill in some of the gaps with the latest info from experts.



Knowledge can give you a real advantage. To make sure you're fully informed about , keep reading.

BEIJING – Chinese athletic shoemaker Li-Ning knew it couldn't "out-Nike" Nike, especially in the sporting giant's own backyard. So the company is going low-budget edgy in its expansion to the U.S, using an irreverent YouTube video to play up its heritage while taking a lighthearted dig at the company name shared with its high-profile founder.

Li-Ning is among the first Chinese consumer product brands trying to build a following in the U.S., seeking to grab a slice of its saturated but highly coveted market. As China's economic might increases — it last year overtook Japan as the second-biggest economy after the U.S. — its companies are increasingly confident about expansion overseas. But corporate China has yet to produce a brand with the global name recognition of the likes of Apple, Sony or Google.

"It's a process of finding out — while staying true to our heritage, our brand — what side of our DNA is going to resonate with the American consumer," said Jay Li, general manager for Li-Ning International. "We're still searching, to be perfectly honest with you. And we're not in a hurry."

Americans might remember Li Ning (pronounced lee-NING) as the final torchbearer during the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics — the former gymnastics gold medalist who "ran" along the opening in the stadium roof while suspended by wires.

His namesake company is a top domestic brand in China's lucrative athletic shoe and apparel industry, with more than 7,900 stores across the country. Though it has forecast slumping sales and a one percentage point decline in gross profit margin in 2011, CEO Zhang Zhiyong recently told the Wall Street Journal that Li-Ning plans to invest $10 million in U.S. operations this year.

"Our founder Mr. Li Ning has always said his vision was never about building China's Nike, it's about building the world's Li-Ning," Li said. "You can't be global without having a legitimate claim of market share in the most mature sporting goods market."

There are significant hurdles to overcome: Americans are still smarting from the recession and spending less. Chinese goods are widely regarded as shoddily made, knockoffs or even dangerous. Li-Ning's logo recently underwent a redesign, but many consumers may still see a strong resemblance with the Nike "swoosh."

"The way to fight the perception is to continue rolling out your own world-class products and that perception will go away," Li said.

He would not provide sales figures for the U.S., where Li-Ning products are sold online and through a few select retailers, but said international operations made up only 2 percent of the company's total revenue.

Expansion into the U.S. is "important for them because if they show they have retail presence in the U.S. it helps them not only sell there but it helps them sell in their home market in China and wherever else they go," said Ben Cavender, associate principal at Shanghai-based China Market Research Group which has studied Li-Ning. "They can say, 'Look, we really are an international brand.'"

The U.S. expansion began in earnest in 2007 with the opening of a R&D center and design studio in the Portland, Oregon, area, heart of the U.S. athletic shoe industry where Nike is headquartered and Adidas has a regional office.

Li-Ning's U.S. staff includes about 30 people, veterans of companies like Nike, Adidas, Converse and Columbia. In comparison, more than 6,000 work at Nike's headquarters just outside town.

Products sold in the U.S. include equipment and apparel for Asian-dominated sports like pingpong and badminton, niche areas where Li-Ning is an established leader. Its running shoes have debuted in specialty shops, with the aim of attracting avid runners who are concerned more about performance than brand name.

But it's with street culture-influenced basketball shoes that Li-Ning may be able to score its breakthrough. Endorsement deals with NBA players like Shaquille O'Neal, Baron Davis and Evan Turner have so far been key to building awareness among image-conscious consumers.

Li-Ning has a quality product but "we need to bring in the cool factor, the street legitimacy, the street cred. Bring all these elements together and fuse them into the product. It's a systemic project and we are working on it," Li said.

That's the thinking behind the YouTube video, featuring a Chinese Li-Ning import agent who has to convince two suspicious U.S. customs officials that the new F2 sneaker is a real shoe. It is a humorous take on real events involving a shipment of F2s that got stuck in U.S. customs because of questions over how to declare the components of a shoe made almost entirely of rubber-like foam material.

The YouTube import agent protests, "They're shoes! Li-Ning!" prompting one officer to snarl, "I'm Li-Ning toward kicking your ass!"

Created by L.A. ad agency Zambezi, the video has received about 40,000 views since December and is a way of getting some attention with limited resources.

There probably won't be a sequel — the Portland customs office called to complain about being in the video and Li's office pledged not to revisit the topic again.

For now, Li-Ning's baby steps are showing encouraging results. Cavender pointed out that one industry insider has found some Li-Ning products to be better quality than Adidas products. And the colorful, sometimes cartoon-like designs are turning heads, even if they haven't yet translated into massive sales.

"People are actively asking about it every time they walk in and see it," said Frank Pacifio, manager of a Champs Sports shoe store in Wayne, New Jersey, which sells two to 10 pairs of Li-Nings a week. In that time the store sells 10 to 25 pairs of its most popular shoe, the Nike Air Max 2010.

"A lot of people try the (Li-Ning) shoe on to see how it feels but people are just accustomed to the Nikes, the Jordans," Pacifio said. "People are so used to what they've had, you never want to take the leap to the other side."

Li remains confident, pointing to the mainstream acceptance of other Asian companies in the U.S.

"A few brands are attempting it, but no one has come out as a dominant Chinese brand in any industry yet," he said. "I always optimistically look back on the Japanese brands in the '50s and '60s and the Korean brands in the '80s and '90s. It's our turn. We'll get there."

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Jay Cutler under attack for leaving Bears' loss with knee injury

10:41 PM jay cutler injury No Comments

This article explains a few things about , and if you're interested, then this is worth reading, because you can never tell what you don't know.



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The Chicago Bears defended QB Jay Cutler on Sunday after he came under withering criticism from fans, analysts and even fellow players for having left an NFC title game loss to the Green Bay Packers with a knee injury.

Cutler exited the game, with the Bears trailing 14-0, early in the third quarter. He remained on the sidelines, spending some of the remainder of the game looking sullen in a seat on the bench and some of it standing on the sideline.
Third-stringer Caleb Hanie rallied the Bears in a game they would eventually lose 21-14, but some fans took out their frustration on Cutler by burning his jersey in the parking lots outside Soldier Field.

Fellow NFL players questioned Cutler's toughness on Twitter during the game, and ESPN analyst and former Super Bowl-winning QB Trent Dilfer called him out after the game.

"You can play this position (QB) hurt," Dilfer said on ESPN. "Some of us have."

Cutler said he hurt his knee late in the second quarter and said he was unable to play effectively after trying just after halftime. (Video of Cutler's remarks below.)

"We gave it a go in that first series," Cutler said, "but couldn't plant and throw, so ..."

Players such as Jaguars RB Maurice Jones-Drew and Cardinals DT Darnell Dockett suggested on Twitter that Cutler had let his teammates down.

But Bears LB Brian Urlacher rejected those who would question Cutler.

"Jay was hurt," Urlacher said.. "I don't question his toughness. He's one of the toughest guys on our — he's tough as hell. He's one of the toughest guys on our football team. He doesn't bitch, he doesn't complain when he gets hit, he goes out there and plays his ass off every Sunday, practices every day.
"So, no, we don't question his toughness."

Bears coach Lovie Smith said there was no hesitation to pull Cutler after officials determined his knee was too sore to play. He appeared to grow agitated by repeated questions about Cutler's status.

"He hurt his knee, and he was out," Smith said. "There's nothing else for me to tell you on that."

The Packers earned a berth in the Super Bowl with the 21-14 win. Before exiting, Cutler was 6-for-14 for 80 yards with an INT. He was sacked twice.

Cutler could not identify on which play he was hurt, and said he hoped surgery would not be needed.

He said it was a "lonely feeling" sitting on the bench in the second half while first Todd Collins and then Hanie replaced him.

Asked if he was disappointed when the decision to lift him was made, Cutler said, "I knew that it was probably better that I didn't."

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Cutler In Haiku: Forget The Damn Injury

10:38 PM Forget The Damn Injury, jay cutler injury No Comments

If you're seriously interested in knowing about , you need to think beyond the basics. This informative article takes a closer look at things you need to know about .



How can you put a limit on learning more? The next section may contain that one little bit of wisdom that changes everything.

As I write this, two of the most popular posts on ChicagoNow are about fans complaining that Jay Cutler should have toughed it out and started the second half of the NFC Championship game against the Packers.

The powers that be at ChicagoNow even decided that this non-issue should be the "hook" of a Facebook item about one of those blog posts.

To their credit, the bloggers in question just seem to be reporting what fans - and other NFL players who didn't make the playoffs - are saying. I don't believe these bloggers are actually wondering about the size of Cutler's cajones. There are also some actual sports columnists defending the toughness of our shitty quarterback.

But is this really what we, as fans, should be worried about? Can we please stop this nonsense?

A big reason the Bears were close enough to tie the game in the last two minutes was because Jay Cutler was NOT playing quarterback. Caleb Hanie managed to do what Cutler couldn't ... SCORE SOME POINTS!

Maybe the offensive line didn't provide enough protection ... maybe the receivers should have caught some of those (very long) passes. (Did I mention that some of those passes were terribly overthrown?). But somehow they managed to perform when Caleb Hanie, and not Jay Cutler, was playing under center. Maybe Lovie Smith or Mike Martz should have called different plays. But somehow their play calling worked much better when Hanie was running the plays.

In any case, the injury is not the issue. Cutler's failure to get any production out of his offense is the real issue. Admit it, Bears fans, our team was better off once it was decided (whether by Cutler, the coaches or the doctors) that our "star" would not return for the second half. At least once the failed Todd Collins experiment was abandoned.

Stop the madness. Admit that Jay Cutler is not a pussy. He's just not a very good quarterback when it really counts.


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Jack LaLanne, Founder of Modern Fitness Movement, Dies at 96

10:23 PM Founder of Modern Fitness Movement Dies at 96, jack lalanne No Comments

Have you ever wondered if what you know about is accurate? Consider the following paragraphs and compare what you know to the latest info on .



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Jack LaLanne, whose obsession with grueling workouts and good nutrition, complemented by a salesman’s gift, brought him recognition as the founder of the modern physical fitness movement, died Sunday afternoon at his home in Morro Bay, Calif. He was 96.
The cause was respiratory failure resulting from pneumonia, said his son Dan Doyle.

A self-described emotional and physical wreck while growing up in the San Francisco area, Mr. LaLanne began turning his life around, as he often told it, after hearing a talk on proper diet when he was 15.

He started working out with weights when they were an oddity, and in 1936 he opened the prototype for the fitness spas to come — a gym, juice bar and health food store — in an old office building in Oakland.

“People thought I was a charlatan and a nut,” he remembered. “The doctors were against me — they said that working out with weights would give people heart attacks and they would lose their sex drive.” But Mr. LaLanne persevered, and he found a national pulpit in the age of television.

“The Jack LaLanne Show” made its debut in 1951 as a local program in the San Francisco area, then went nationwide on daytime television in 1959. His short-sleeved jumpsuit showing off his impressive biceps, his props often limited to a broomstick, a chair and a rubber cord, Mr. LaLanne pranced through his exercise routines, most notably his fingertip push-ups.

He built an audience by first drawing in children who saw his white German shepherd, Happy, perform tricks.

“My show was so personal, I made it feel like you and I were the only ones there,” he told Knight-Ridder Newspapers in 1995. “And I’d say: ‘Boys and girls, come here. Uncle Jack wants to tell you something. You go get Mother or Daddy, Grandmother, Grandfather, whoever is in the house. You go get them, and you make sure they exercise with me.’ ”

His show continued into the mid-1980s.

“He was perfect for the intimacy of television,” Robert Thompson, a professor of television and popular culture at Syracuse University, told The San Jose Mercury News in 2004. “This guy had some of the same stuff that Oprah has and Johnny Carson had — the ability to insinuate themselves in the domestic space of people’s lives.”

Long before Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda and the Atkins diet, Mr. LaLanne was a national celebrity, preaching regular exercise and proper diet. Expanding on his television popularity, he opened dozens of fitness studios under his name, later licensing them to Bally. He invented the forerunners of modern exercise machines like leg-extension and pulley devices. He marketed a Power Juicer to blend raw vegetables and fruits and a Glamour Stretcher cord, and he sold exercise videos and fitness books. He invited women to join his health clubs and told the elderly and the disabled that they could exercise despite their limitations.

At 60 he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf handcuffed, shackled and towing a 1,000-pound boat. At 70, handcuffed and shackled again, he towed 70 boats, carrying a total of 70 people, a mile and a half through Long Beach Harbor.

He ate two meals a day and shunned snacks.

Breakfast, following his morning workout, usually included several hard-boiled egg whites, a cup of broth, oatmeal with soy milk and seasonal fruit. For dinner he took his wife, Elaine, to restaurants that knew what he wanted: a salad with raw vegetables and egg whites along with fish — often salmon — and a mixture of red and white wine. He sometimes allowed himself a roast turkey sandwich, but never a cup of coffee.

Mr. LaLanne said he performed his exercises until he experienced “muscle fatigue,” lifting weights until it was impossible for him to continue. It produced results and, as he put it, “the ego in me” made the effort worthwhile.

The son of French immigrants, Jack LaLanne was born in San Francisco on Sept. 26, 1914, and spent his early years on his parents’ sheep farm in Bakersfield, Calif. By the time he was 15, the family having moved to the Bay Area, he was pimply and nearsighted, craved junk food and had dropped out of high school. That is when his mother took him to a women’s club for a talk by Paul C. Bragg, a well-known speaker on health and nutrition.

That talk, Mr. LaLanne often said, turned his life around. He began experimenting with weights at the Berkeley Y.M.C.A., tossed aside cakes and cookies and studied Gray’s Anatomy to learn about the body’s muscles. He graduated from a chiropractic school, but instead of practicing that profession he became a pitchman for good health.

He opened his first health studio when he was 21, and a decade and a half later he turned to television. He was first sponsored by the creator of a longevity pill, a 90-year-old man, but it sold poorly and he obtained Yami Yogurt as his new sponsor. “It tasted terrible, so I mixed it with prune juice and fruits,” he told The New York Times in 2004. “Nobody thought about it until then. We made the guy a millionaire.”

Mr. LaLanne, 5-foot-6 and 150 pounds or so with a 30-inch waist, maintained that he disliked working out. He said he kept at it strictly to feel fit and stay healthy. He built two gyms and a pool at his home in Morro Bay, and began each day, into his 90s, with two hours of workouts: weight lifting followed by a swim against an artificial current or in place, tied to a belt.

“The Jack LaLanne Show” may have run its course in the mid-1980s, but it had a second life in reruns on ESPN Classic. “We have over 3,000 shows,” Mr. LaLanne said in 2004. “I own everything.”

In September 2007, “Jack LaLanne Live!” made its debut on the online VoiceAmerica Health and Wellness Radio Network. He appeared on it with his wife and his nephew Chris LaLanne, a personal trainer.

In addition to Dan Doyle, he is survived by his wife, Elaine; their son, Jon; and a daughter, Yvonne.

Mr. LaLanne promoted himself and his calling into his final years, often accompanied at events by his wife, a physical fitness convert but hardly a fanatic. He brimmed with optimism and restated a host of aphorisms for an active and fit life.

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