The first to testify was Frank Cassaday, a former KBR employee who worked as an ice plant operator in Fallujah in 2004 and 2005. "Ice was a very valuable commodity in Iraq that was regularly stolen and bartered for other goods," he told the committee. He recalled how a convoy of U.S. Marines, in preparation for an operation that would take them outside the wire for several days, requested 28 bags of ice to keep their food fresh in the desert heat. They received only three. "The ice foreman was cheating the troops out of ice at the same time that he was trading the ice for DVDs, CDs, food, and other items at the Iraqi shops across the street," Cassaday said. "This foreman would change the ice tally sheets at the distribution area I worked in to make it seem as though we had handed out more ice to the Marines than we actually did."

...he later observed his colleagues returning to KBR's camp with equipment they had stolen from the U.S. military, including refrigerators, artillery round detonators, two rocket launchers, and about 800 rounds of small arms ammunition. After he informed the KBR camp manager of the thefts, Marines searched the camp with dogs to recover the stolen property. For his trouble, Cassaday said, KBR security officers jailed him in his tent for two days. He then spent another four days in "protective custody" before being transferred, against his will, to work in a laundry.

The practice of stealing equipment and supplies destined for the U.S. military was so pervasive that KBR employees invented a slang term to describe it: "drug deals."

But thefts were not limited to military supplies, said Linda Warren, another former KBR employee who testified at the hearing. Upon her arrival in Baghdad in 2004, she was shocked by the number of contractors involved in criminal activity. "KBR employees who were contracted to perform construction duties inside palaces and municipal buildings were looting," she said. "Not only were they looting, but they had a system in place to get contraband out of the country so it could be sold on eBay. They stole artwork, rugs, crystal, and even melted down gold to make spurs for cowboy boots." Like Cassaday, when she complained to her superiors about the thefts, she was punished. She said her vehicle was taken away, her movements were closely monitored, and her access to phones and the Internet were cut off.

Barry Halley, a former project manager for Worldwide Network Services, a Washington, D.C.-based firm that was working on subcontract for DynCorp. According to Halley, his site manager in Iraq, who he said was employed by a "major defense contractor," moonlighted as the leader of a prostitution ring serving American contractors in Iraq that indirectly caused the death of a colleague. "A co-worker unrelated to the ring was killed when he was traveling in an unsecure car and shot performing a high-risk mission," he told the committee. "I believe that my co-worker could have survived if he had been riding in an armored car. At the time, the armored car that he would otherwise have been riding in was being used by a manager to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad." The prostitution ring was shut down when the company's home office learned of it, but, Halley said, the manager who controlled it retained his job, moving on to work another contract in Haiti.

More than anything I'm embarrassed. Since when did young black men, heretofore the arbiters of pop culture, become so lame? And since when did the citizens of that culture not know the difference?

A genre whirled out of the grist of urban pain and worn as a low-slung hat and baggy jeans has somehow slipped on clown shoes and taken up night classes in pantomime. Its dances are silly, its beats infantile, its rhymes lazy. I am sorry to report this, but hip-hop is no longer cooler than me.

Bo Ryan is the men's basketball coach at the University of Wisconsin. He is old, he's white, and he should have nothing to do with pop-cultural relevance. And yet there he is, online, dancing the Soulja Boy...if you compare Ryan's rendition with the original, you, too, might find yourself preferring the subtlety of Ryan's moves. (His cross steps aren't as aggrandized, for one.) Are these not trying days when a 60-year-old Wisconsinite improves "the game"...

Comprehensive statistics on total sports injuries are in short supply. The N.C.A.A. compiles the best numbers, but even these are based on just a sampling of colleges and universities. For younger athletes, the numbers are less specific and less reliable. Some studies have measured sports injuries by emergency-room visits, which usually follow traumatic events like broken bones. A.C.L. and other soft-tissue injuries often do not lead to an E.R. visit; the initial examination typically occurs at the office of a pediatrician or an orthopedic surgeon. Studies of U.S. high-school athletics indicate that, when it comes to raw numbers, boys suffer more sports injuries. But the picture is complicated by football and the fact that boys still represent a greater percentage of high-school athletes.

Girls are more likely to suffer chronic knee pain as well as shinsplints and stress fractures. Some research indicates that they are more prone to ankle sprains, as well as hip and back pain. And for all the justifiable attention paid to concussions among football players, females appear to be more prone to them in sports that the sexes play in common. A study last year by researchers at Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, reported that high-school girls who play basketball suffer concussions at three times the rate of boys, and that the rate for high-school girls who play soccer is about 1.5 times the rate for boys. According to the N.C.A.A. statistics, women who play soccer suffer concussions at nearly identical rates as male football players.
...
The Injury Surveillance reports include commentary as well as data, and in 2007 the authors stated that an A.C.L. rupture is “a rare event” and advised against making too much of the tears sustained by male and female collegiate athletes across a range of sports. But a young woman playing college soccer can easily generate 200 exposures a year between her regular season in the fall, off-season training in the spring and club play in the summer.
...
So imagine a hypothetical high-school soccer team of 20 girls, a fairly typical roster size, and multiply it by the conservative estimate of 200 exposures a season...Over the course of four years, 4 out of the 20 girls on that team will rupture an A.C.L.

The Santa Monica Orthopaedic and Sports Medicine Research Foundation published results of its trial in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. The research was nonrandomized and therefore not the highest order of scientific research. (The coaches of teams doing the exercises made a choice to participate; the control group consisted of those who declined.) Nevertheless, the results were attention-grabbing.

Number Of Acceptable Things Candidates Can Say Now Down To Four

NEW YORK—After Sen. Barack Obama's comments last week about what he typically eats for dinner were criticized by Sen. Hillary Clinton as being offensive to both herself and the American voters, the number of acceptable phrases presidential candidates can now say are officially down to four. "At the beginning of 2007 there were 38 things candidates could mention in public that wouldn't be considered damaging to their campaigns, but now they are mostly limited to 'Thank you all for coming,' and 'God bless America,'" ABC News chief Washington correspondent George Stephanopoulos said on Sunday's episode of This Week...

In the run-up to Hillary's February 25 foreign policy speech at George Washington University, her top strategist felt that the campaign's speechwriters, overseen by policy chief Neera Tanden, were headed in the wrong direction. Rather than sitting down to talk with them, Penn- -renowned for his lack of interpersonal skills--struck out on his own, setting up a parallel speechwriting effort using outside scribes. Unfortunately for him, Tanden's shop learned of his end-run and was royally brassed off. Fingers were pointed and accusations hurled, prompting Maggie Williams to hold an emergency conference call on the Sunday night before the Monday speech. Among those assembled to confer with Penn, reports one witness, were Tanden, her speechwriting team, and foreign policy gurus Andrew Shapiro and Lee Feinstein. But, when asked by Tanden and Williams to explain his problem with the address, all Penn initially could do was repeat over and over, "This speech doesn't begin to meet the minimum standards of being acceptable." And, "If she delivers this speech, she will lose." Williams had to keep soothing Penn, prodding him to be specific about his objections, recalls the witness. Eventually, everyone had their say, and Tanden's people were sent off to work out the final details. A full-blown meltdown was averted. But Penn's relations with the rest of the campaign had suffered yet another blow.

...for Team Hillary, there is always Bill. Campaign insiders acknowledge that the former president has never been wholly manageable...As one adviser observes, "You can question him, but you can't ever tell him what to do." Most notable, of course, are the public outbursts...But public pronouncements are only a fragment of the picture. As Hillary's campaign struggles, an obviously frustrated Bill and "his people" have taken a greater hand in operations. Immediately post-Iowa, veteran Clintonites like Steve Richetti, Doug Sosnik, and Roy Spence became major players. The president himself announced that he needed an office and would be coming in every day to make phone calls and get "involved."...In the meantime, out went Solis Doyle--never highly regarded by Bill's crew--and in came Williams, who, though a loyal Hillarylander, also has a close and mutually respectful relationship with the former president. Bill's influence waxed further, say insiders, as Williams brought in her team, which included a number of folks considered as much "his people" as Hillary's.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

Clinton rejected any idea that her emphasis on white voters could be interpreted as racially divisive. "These are the people you have to win if you're a Democrat in sufficient numbers to actually win the election. Everybody knows that."

A government, based on the principle of caste and class, can not stand. The aristocratic idea, in any form, is opposed to the genius of our free institutions, to our own declaration of rights, and to. the civilization of the age. All artificial distinctions, whether of family, blood, wealth, color, or sex, are equally oppressive to the subject classes, and equally destructive to national life and prosperity.

We see this in every department of legislation, and it is a common remark, that unless some new virtue is infused into our public life the nation is doomed to destruction. Will the foreign element, the dregs of China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all they know ? ( Please. Stop. Talking. )

If approved by the committee and the City Council, the law would require anyone promoting any event drawing more than 100 people to obtain a license — even if they are working with a well-established and already licensed promoter.

Licensees would also have to carry at least $300,000 in commercial liability insurance (even if the venue is insured), and they would have to be at least 21 years old (...several of the top promoters in Chicago actually started their careers at age 18 or 19).

...if, say, a local fanzine wanted to promote a monthly concert featuring the bands in its new issue at a well-established local club of 200 capacity, the editors would have to apply for a promoters’ license and meet all of the requirements and expenses, even if the club already has a license and can boast of a clean record of trouble-free events. The same would hold true of many regular benefit gigs.

Anyone promoting a musical event would need to be fingerprinted and pay a licensing fee as high as $2,000 (on top of securing the $300,000 insurance); promoters would have to pass criminal background checks, and they would have to notify the commander of the local police district and sign written contracts with venue owners.

Attempts to verify the rumor by talking to real, live teenagers yielded only "hoots of derision and more than a few 'yucks,'" according to one Chicago Tribune article. When a marketing firm called Teenage Research Unlimited asked a group of approximately 300 teenagers if they were aware of any sexual implications attached to wearing jelly bracelets they got vague, ambiguous answers. "They knew of a friend who had a friend who had a friend who knew about this," a spokesperson for the firm told the Associated Press. "But no one could point a finger to anyone who was actually doing this."

This ambiquity jibes with what folklorists have said about historical precedents. Rumors of everyday objects functioning as "sexual coupons" are nothing new in teen culture, observes Barbara Mikkelson of Snopes.com. During the 1970s, pull tabs from beer and soft drink cans were imbued with sexually redeemable value in some places.