Wednesday night misc. links

I have a headache I’ve been unable to shake this evening, and on top of that, I just attempted to sit through the 1998 Godzilla movie on the FX channel in order to try to cure my irrational fear of the stupid thing. It didn’t work.

In any event, I was going to call it an early night, but wanted to post these links for your perusal, and I have one more post I want to put up before trying to catch some sleep:

—- Bizarre: The end of the Muslim holiday Ramadan ends this Friday. The Empire State Building plan on recognizing it by By lighting up the entire building green. It will remain so until Sunday.

—- Remember in early September when I blogged about the flack the Seahawks’ Matt Hasselbeck and Mack Strong got from Seattle after they had the nerve to openly express support for George W. Bush by presenting him with a number 43 jersey with his name on it at a Republican fundraiser? Well, Strong, who played fullback for the Seahawks, is retiring from football after it was recently discovered that he has a spinal cord condition that will likely heal on its own without surgery as long as he’s not playing football. Strong’s handling it well:

“I’ve played a long time, 15 years. I felt like I was pretty lucky, pretty blessed,” a teary-eyed Strong said Monday after learning that a herniated disk in his neck is pinching his spinal cord – and ending an unheralded, improbable career that began as an undrafted free agent out of Georgia in 1993.

“I’m a fullback. That kind of goes with the territory, you are always going to have some kind of pain or injury that you have to push through,” Strong said. “(But) at the same time, I want to be smart. I don’t want to do anything that would jeopardize my long-term quality of health.

“You know, there’s a lot more to life than football. I’ve got my wife and two kids,” he said with a cracking voice, before pausing 10 seconds with his head bowed to control his emotions, “and there’s nothing more important then being able to spend time with them.”

[...]

He’s already thinking of beginning a career a broadcasting, in which he’s dabbled the last few offseasons.

“I’ve given every ounce inside of me to football,” he said, pausing again, this time for almost 30 seconds with his head down, sniffling and then clearing his throat, “I felt like I gave every ounce I had. So I have no regrets.”

Best of luck to you, Mack, and here’s to a speeding healing process. (Thanks to ST reader GWR for the tip)

—- If the Nobel Prize were the honor it used to be, this hero would definitely deserve it much more than the Goracle, who very well may be this year’s recipient.

—- The Nanny State files just got bigger: Belmont, CA has banned smoking … inside some multi-unit, multi-story homes.

—- One Cleveland high school is reeling in shock tonight after a 14 year-old gunman opened fire, injuring four people before killing himself. Watch for the usual suspects to commence shortly with their calls for “more gun control.”

—- The sky is blue, it gets dark at night, and Jimmy Carter is dissing the US – again.

—- So much for Canada’s supposedly “wonderful” national healthcare system. Are you listening, Michael Moore?

—- Make sure to check out Michael Yon’s latest dispatch here.