Medical personnel stabilize Ogden Standard-Examiner photographer Ryan McGeeney's leg after he was pierced by a javelin directly below his right knee while covering the Utah state high school track championships at Brigham Young University's Clarence Robison track stadium in Provo, Utah. McGeeney was transported by ambulence to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center, where the javelin was removed. He received 13 stitches, but suffered no serious damage to any ligaments or tendons. McGeeney took the photo himself.

(AP Photo/Ryan McGeeney)

via Slate.com

Couch-potato culture may cut our lives short

We as a nation are doing ourselves in with our couch-potato culture of eating way too much and exercising far too little. Some health professionals even raise the controversial notion that today's generation of kids like Justin — about a third of whom are overweight or obese — may be the first to live shorter lives than thei parents...

"All of the signs are pointing in the wrong direction," says Dr. Jennifer Shu, an Atlanta pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"Young kids are getting what have traditionally been adult-type diseases — type 2 diabetes and heart disease," she says. "It's like advanced aging."

"These kids are headed for real trouble," agrees S. Jay Olshansky, a professor of public health and a researcher at the Center on Aging at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Their parents may not be faring so well, either, he says. Two-thirds of American adults are overweight or obese.

There's no better introduction to CoolRunning's Couch-to-5K Running Plan is there?

SALT LAKE CITY -- Often celebrated as the best defender the United States has ever produced, Eddie Pope announced Thursday that he will retire from Major League Soccer at the end of the 2007 season.

I''m not sure what to say. I have to admit to being a little sad, and I'm not sure I can quite capture my emotions fully in this post. But the Pontiff is retiring. Definitely the end of an era.

Pope was the shy kid out of North Carolina who wore #23 in honor of fellow alum Michael Jordan. He was the rookie of the year and stand-out defender on a team full of more experienced and well-known players. Of course, he scored the header in stoppage time that won DC the first of their now four MLS Cup championships. And he famously, or at least for me memorably, turned down interest from Europe to stay close to home.

So many memories of my young adulthood are tied up with DC United and it's hard to avoid the sense that an era in my life is passing too. I'm no longer in DC, and no longer a young adult.  Pope is with Real Salt Lake (and to paraphrase ESPN's Sports Guy, "He never played for NY. Can we all agree that that just never happened?"). But I get nostalgic when my friend Neal text messages me from RFK as he did this weekend. And this news is a bit of a bolt out of the clear blue sky -- even though I'll always associate the Pontiff with the pouring rain in which he won his first two DCU championships, the second of which I was lucky enough to attend.

Okay, I'm officially babbling. Back to work, but not without one final chant of "Ooh ah! Eddie Pope! I said Ooh ah, Eddie Pope!"