Medary.com

Thomas Herrion dies after football game in Denver:

Herrion was on the field Saturday for the 49ers' final possession. He played left guard on a 14-play, 91-yard drive that ended with a San Francisco touchdown with 2 seconds remaining.

A video review of the drive revealed Herrion did not show visible signs of trouble. He blocked Broncos linebacker Terry Pierce on the final play of the drive, a 23-yard touchdown run by reserve quarterback Cody Pickett.

And there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth in California as the A's drop a series to the Royals:

After playing better than any club in baseball for roughly 2 1/2 months, the A's have reverted to their May persona. They coughed up a highly winnable game to the woeful Royals, losing 5-4 in 12 innings at McAfee Coliseum.

Royals win streak at 2, need to go 23-17 to avoid 100 losses.

The Whip is taking a break and will return Monday, Aug. 21.

Until then, enjoy the Best of the Whip from the week of July 31-August 6, 2005:

#10: Terry Pratchett v. J.K. Rowling
#9: Army sergeant elected Sheik in Iraq
#8: Russia revokes ABC TV's accreditation
#7: Mommy, there's a python under our dishwasher
#6: Bolton finds your lack of faith . . . disturbing
#5: Don't believe everything you see on the Internet
#4: One blog created every second
#3: Iran smuggling roadside bombs into Iraq
#2: NCAA bans "offensive" nicknames from post-season
#1: Job growth "unexpectedly strong"

The Whip is taking a break and will return Monday, Aug. 21.

Until then, enjoy the Best of the Whip from the week of July 24-30, 2005:

#10: Noodling: "You just get a fever for it"
#9: We're gonna die (in 2036)--Asteroid strike
#8: "They make us look like idiots. We're not idiots."
#7: Royals 6, White Sox 5
#6: The Spaceship Company founded
#5: Media criticized, screech like stuck pigs
#4: Are YOU the office jerk?
#3: Vice edges virtue where profit is at stake
#2: Bolton to get recess appointment
#1: Kelo fallout roundup

The more shrill right/center voices (of which I am on occasion) are increasingly discussing "treason,", "sedition," and "aid and comfort" in the context of numerous anti-war commenters. Volokh (a law professor at UCLA) gives us an Assignment for discussion:

What do people think is right? Please post your thoughts in the comments, and think through the counterarguments. (For instance, if your observation is simply that George Galloway's speech is clearly protected because all criticism of the government is protected, you might want to at least explain how this would apply to Axis Sally's criticism of the government. Conversely, if your observation is that speech should be unprotected whenever it seems likely to help the enemy, you might want to confront the question of how we can have meaningful elections when no candidate can criticize the war effort — or even criticize the war's morality — for fear that such speech might help the enemy and might thus lead him to be thrown in prison.)

At some point, we will need to confront the blatant destructive speech coming from some quarters regarding the conflict between civilization and militant Islam. How? Public counter-demonstration (probably the best approach) or turning to the law (never the best option)?

Related: Victor Davis Hanson on what he terms "biteback."

The Whip will be taking a few days off, but will return Monday, August 21st.

#10: Pentagon's even-handed China review
#9: The 747 isn't dead yet
#8: Milky Way: bar galaxy
#7: New idea for the Middle Border: African savanna
#6: SDSU gets new scoreboards
#5: A different strategy for Iran
#4: Out of the mouths of soldiers
#3: Royals: Eighteen
#2: NCAA buys NIT tournaments
#1: Half of all Mexicans want to emigrate to U.S.

The Cato Institute sifts through a Pentagon report on mainland China and finds little hysteria:

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the latest report is its tone. It lauds a "cooperative and constructive" relationship that has emerged between the United States and China since the 2001 EP-3 spy plane incident. At the same time, it seems to acknowledge the seriousness of China's warnings about Taiwan. It recognizes China's recent anti-secession law as "a rhetorical counter to the U.S. Taiwan Relations Act," and cites a Chinese general who worries about Taiwan for strategic reasons. In the general's view, reunifying with Taiwan is of "far reaching significance to breaking international forces' blockade against China's maritime security"

America's interest is in managing China's inevitable rise to great power status without needlessly embroiling Americans in a war. Doing so requires a dispassionate assessment of China's views on Taiwan. The DOD report is a good step in that direction. The report acknowledges that controlling Taiwan is a "core interest" for China, and for good reason: aside from the motive of national pride regarding reunification, roughly 80 percent of China's energy imports pass through the waters adjacent to Taiwan.
. . . The chest-beating at the House Armed Services Committee hearing over the Unocal deal should ring alarm bells in American security circles. Demagoguing the China issue may be useful for political purposes, but it can be incredibly damaging to the U.S.-China diplomatic and economic relationship. The fact is, China is a rising great power, and even if we wanted to, there is little we could do to stop it. But by dispassionately assessing China's intent and capabilities, we can accommodate that country's rise in a way that protects American interests and defuses the risk of a conflict. The new tone of the Defense Department's report seems to be a modest step in the right direction.

New research indicates our galaxy has a bar:

A thin band of relatively old stars, the feature (represented by the bright, diagonal band at the center of the above illustration) is uncommon among spiral galaxies. Astronomers confirmed its presence after conducting the most detailed analysis ever made of the Milky Way.

Yeah, I'm mainly doing this story to use the obvious "Milky Way Bar" headline.

Illustration courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC/Caltech)

Boeing edges toward launching an enlarged 747 to compete with the Airbus 380:

EVERETT - Package carrier UPS has ordered eight 747-400 freighters from the Boeing Co., a deal that further solidifies the future of the 747 line in Everett.

It's the largest 747 order for Boeing since China Airlines of Taiwan ordered 13 jumbo jets in August 1999.

The UPS deal, combined with a six-jet deal announced in July, "pretty much seals the deal for the 747 Advanced, I'd think," said Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia.

Biologists want to kinda, sorta recreate the Pleistocene era in North America:

Today, Africa's large mammals are dying while the human population of the Great Plains is declining, they write. So why not restock with the cousins many-times removed of the very same animals our ancestors hunted into extinction so long ago?

This is an exceedingly silly idea. They'll probably do it.

via Fark.