Fat Salaries and World Hunger

If you’re wondering like me, how millions of people are starving and yet sports firms lavish their stars as if money is sand, here’s a possible explanation:

‘Sports fans love to grouse about athletes’ salaries and bemoan the ever-rising prices of tickets, concessions, and merchandise. But “it isn’t some vague indefinable ‘they’ who pays the players,” writes Allen Barra for the Wall Street Journal. “It’s you, or rather, it’s us.” Owners set prices they think fans will pay, and “if you are willing to pay their prices that means they set the right prices after all.”
Barra cites baseball Yoda Bill James, who argues that ballplayers make more than medical researchers because “we are, as a nation, far more interested in having good baseball teams than we are in finding a cure for cancer.” If we donated money to cancer research first, then bought tickets with what was left over, Barra writes, “athletes and rock stars will actually be paid what we pretend they should be paid.”‘ 
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal

The argument from Bill James is very realistic, isn’t it?

Carradine ‘No Suicide’ Autopsy

As expected, the medical examiner ruled out suicide after the autopsy. But I foresee a possible clash of verdicts with investigators which is a common occurrence between the two agencies:

‘David Carradine’s private autopsy was completed yesterday, and the medical examiner officially ruled out suicide due to the way the actor’s body was bound, Reuters reports. “The cause of death was asphyxiation, an inability to breathe, now why that happened is still what we’re working on,” he said.’ Source: Reuters

Air France 477 Plunged Intact

AFF 447 plunged into sea intact:

‘A French investigator says Air France Flight 447 did not break up in flight but plunged vertically into the Atlantic Ocean. Alain Bouillard, leading the investigation into the June 1 crash for the French accident investigation agency BEA, also says life vests found among the wreckage of the plane were not inflated.
Bouillard said at a news conference outside Paris today that the search for the plane’s black boxes has been extended by 10 days and will continue through July 10.’
SOURCE: Associated Press