On-air challenge: Every answer today is a word that contains part of the human body in the exact middle.

Ex. Group of Native Americans, starting with T and ending with E --> TRIBE, which contains RIB between the T and the E 1. E ____ Y Mournful poem 2. W ____ Y Tired 3. A ____ G Very sore 4. EL ____ SE Geometrical shape 5. LE ____ ES Beans and peas 6. RE ____ AL Opposing argument in a debate 7. OB ____ TE Out of date 8. RA ____ SS Quality of a harsh voice 9. FLA ____ ESS Showy display

Last week's challenge: Consider this sentence: Benjamin, the Greenpeace ombudsman in the panorama, was charmed by the chinchilla fragrance. This sentence contains seven words of seven or more letters. They have something very unusual in common. What is it, and can you think of an eighth word with the same property?

Puzzle answer: You can delete some of the interior letters of each of the words to leave the name of a country Benin, Greece, Oman, Panama, Chad, China, and France.

Other words with this property include Chipotle (Chile), Indicia (India), Latinos (Laos), Ironman (Iran), and Turnkey (Turkey).

Puzzle winner: Mike Strong of Mechanicsburg, Va.

Next week's challenge: This is a spin-off of the on-air puzzle. Think of a familiar two-word phrase starting with T and ending with S, in which the interior letters name part of the human body. Remove the first and last letters of that word, and what remains will name another part of the human body. What's the phrase, and what are the body parts?

Submit Your Answer

If you know the answer to next week's challenge, submit it here. Listeners who submit correct answers win a chance to play the on-air puzzle. Important: Include a phone number where we can reach you. The deadline is Thursday, June 22 at 3 p.m. ET.

See the original post here:
Sunday Puzzle: Hopefully, You Paid Attention In Anatomy Class - KUNC

By Douglas Anele

But despite their remarkable capacity for creative ingenuity and accomplishments, the Igbo as a group, according to Prof. Chinua Achebe, have the deadly flaws of hubris, overweening pride, obsession with material success and irritatingly noisy exhibitionism or showiness which tend toinvite envy from members of other ethnic groups. Yet, those flaws do not justify their being massacred periodically by northerners or treated as second class citizens in their own country. The May riots of 1966, Ironsis gruesome murder and massacre of Ndigbo afterwards led to a radical rethinking of their attitude to the idea of a unified Nigerian nation. The Igbo began to realise that their belief in a strong central authority that provides a level playing field which enables Nigerians from every ethnic group to actualise the ideal of one nation, one citizenship, and one destiny was a delusion.

The belated Igbo questioning of One Nigeria was consistent with the memorandum submitted by the northern delegation to the Nigerian ad hoc constitutional conference of September 1966. In it, northern representatives claimed that We have pretended for too long that there are no differences between the peoples of this country. The hard fact which we must honestly accept as of paramount importance in the Nigerian experiment especially for the future is that we are different peoples brought together by recent accidents of history. To pretend otherwise would be folly. The north even went further to demand that in any new constitution a secession clause should be inserted granting any member state the right to unilaterally secede completely from the union, and to make arrangements for cooperation with other members of the union in such a manner as they may severally or individually deem fit. Now, from what transpired later, it became clear that northerners were only interested in regional autonomy as long as it favours the north.

We have noted that the civil war that lasted from July 1967 to January 1970 proves the deadly extent caliphate colonialists can go to maintain its dominance in Nigeria. But before the war proper, a last ditch attempt was made in Ghana to save the country from disintegration occasioned by the fallouts of the two military coups in 1966. The Aburi meeting hosted by Ghanas military ruler, Lt. Gen. Joseph Ankrah and attended by senior military and police officers as well as government secretaries, resolved that each region should be responsible for its own affairs, and that the federal government would be responsible for issues dealing with the whole country, such as defence, currency and external affairs. In my opinion, if the Aburi accord had been implemented, the Biafran war would have been averted because eastern region would not have seceded. The agreement collapsed because ab initio there was a mismatch between the delegation led by Gowon and the one from eastern region headed by its military governor, Lt. Col. Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu: whereas Gowon and delegates from other regions apart from the east arrived Aburi with the vague idea that somehow Nigeria must remain as one country, Ojukwu and his group came with a well-articulated detailed vision of what the future political architecture of Nigeria should be. Thus, although the eastern position was eventually adopted, the two parties left Aburi with different ideas of what the agreement meant in practice. As a corollary, some aspects of the accord, especially those dealing with the issue of power relations between the central government and the regions, were unrealistic and impractical to implement given the growing domination of the army and political power by the north, coupled with the strained relations between the Igbo and northerners as a result of pogroms against Ndigbo resident in the north. Moreover, top federal civil servants in Lagos vehemently opposed the accord, and convinced Gowon that it was unworkable. The problem was aggravated by the all-or-nothing attitude to the contents of the accord by Gowon and Ojukwu, which was unnecessarily rigid and myopic. Gowons unilateral repudiation of the agreement was matched by Ojukwus insistence on its full implementation as quickly as possible: both men failed to realise that a give-and-take approach and compromises are required forsuccessful implementation of agreement on troublesome political conflicts.

The non-implementation of the Aburi accord by the federal military government heralded the end of the concept of regional autonomy and self-sufficiency in Nigeria, leading to the consolidation of caliphate colonialism. After Gowon had emerged as military head of state, he started implementing measures that effectively turned Nigeria into a unitarist federation, which increased the powers of the federal government over the federating units beyond what was allowed by the unification decree promulgated when Ironsi was in power and which was used by northern soldiers and their civilian collaborators to justify the bloodthirsty coup of July 29, 1966. Interestingly, northern emirs who had for long opposed the creation of states mainly in order not to compromise the norths geographical and political domination of Nigeria suddenly urged Gowon to create states. Gowon complied with the demand. The creation of states was more detrimental to solidarity among the three regions in the south than to the northern region because southern Nigeria did not have the equivalents of the theocratic emirate system, Islam and a dominant language (Hausa) which tended to unify different ethnic nationalities in the north. Besides, by concentrating more power at the centre ostensibly to keep Nigeria as one united country, Gowon also ensured that the federal government dominated by northerners controlled all revenues from recently discovered large deposits of petroleum mostly in the eastern region. As a result, Gowon not only expanded the pre-independent policy of using resources from the south to develop the north, he instigated the bizarre practice of northern preponderance in the ownership of oil wells in oil-bearing communities. One can claim justifiably that some of the most significant pre-war decisions taken by the federal government headed by Gowon are responsible for the extremely damaging effects of caliphate colonialism in Nigeria since 1967.

Any student of Nigerian history who blames the eastern region, particularly Ndigbo, for seeking self-determination after the horrendous atrocities they suffered in northern Nigeria is either a pathological misanthrope or moron. It is difficult to imagine a self-respecting ethnic nationality with the quantum of human and natural resources of the defunct eastern region that would not desire to take its destiny in its own hands. As Prof. Achebe observed, The Nigeria that meant so much for [Ndigbo] was not reciprocating the affection we had for it. The country had not embraced us, the Igbo people and other easterners, as full-fledged members of the Nigerian family. Hence, on May 30, 1967, when Ojukwu, on behalf of the 335-member Consultative Assembly of Chiefs and Elders who unanimously mandated him to pull out the east from the rest of Nigeria at an early practicable date, announced the secession of Biafra, he was actually demanding that Igbo people and their immediate neighbours be allowed to develop at their own pace untrammelled by the yoke of caliphate colonisation. Many uninformed Nigerians believe the pernicious falsehood that the Igbo declared war on the rest of Nigeria. Far from it because, as I have stated earlier, if there is any group that have contributed most to the building of modern Nigeria and lived the concept of One Nigeria (and still does, admittedly,to its own detriment) it is the Igbo. Therefore, it is in Ndigbos interest that Nigeria continues to exist and prosper. When the eastern region seceded, caliphate colonialists led by Gowon decided to respond with a short, surgical strike through what he called a police action.

In every war, it is always plausible to argue, after the fact, that it could have been averted or avoided if the combatants had shown more restraint. The Biafran case is not anexception. The war was led by two young military officers in their early thirties, Ojukwu and Gowon. Perhaps, older and more experienced statesmen could have handled the complex issues that led to the bloody conflict much better in a manner that would have led to a peaceful resolution, although it would have been extremely difficult, judging by the horrors they suffered in the hands of their northern compatriots, to persuade the eastern populace shortly before the civil war broke out that they are equal stakeholders in the Nigerian project.

Now, northern hardliners such as MurtalaMohammed wanted full-blown war as the final solution to teach the Igbo a brutal lesson and consolidate the norths domination of federal power, whereas Gowon saw it as an opportunity to cut the arrogant and rebellious Ojukwu to size. Eastern leaders who mandated Ojukwu to secede at the earliest practicable opportunity were desperate and confused, and the people themselves were emotionally exhausted and disillusioned. In such a psychologically charged atmosphere, critical thinking and logic would be replaced by the exciting logic of war hysteria such that anyone who questions the extreme measures taken by Ojukwu in response to Gowons prevarications and provocations or expresses doubt concerning the propriety of secession without adequate preparation for war would bebranded a spineless coward or saboteur. To be continued.

Read more here:
The anatomy of Caliphate colonialism (5) - Vanguard

Brilliant: Hattie Morahan in Anatomy of a Suicide. Photograph: Tristram Kenton for the Observer

When sadness runs through a family, is it inherited? Alice Birchs skewering Anatomy of a Suicide suggests something more complicated. A sort of hypnotism. A transfixing of one generation by another. A daughter who finds her mothers life compelling may vacate her own existence.

Three generations of women enact their histories from the 1970s to the 2040s side by side. They are so closely woven together that it is hard to know where one begins and the other ends. Does the suicide of her mother cause the breakdown of a woman when she gives birth? Does that womans drug habit steer her daughter towards becoming a doctor and sterilisation? Words home is one that recurs and gestures echo between them. When a woman speaks of wrists, her mother (who has tried to slit hers) sends her hand pirouetting gracefully in the air.

Birchs dialogue is as unswerving as it is in her Lady Macbeth screenplay, but more intricate. The influence of Caryl Churchill is apparent in ellipses and overlaps. But there is individual sharpness. Hurrah for this response to a woman who says she is sorry because her acquaintance does not have a husband. What a funny thing to say.

Hattie Morahan brilliantly vanishes. Her mellow voice is dulled, her limbs are angular, her features are fixed. All her systems are shrinking. Adelle Leonce gives a beautifully judged performance as her granddaughter: fervent but contained. Kate OFlynn is remarkable: a bolt of unhappiness. She has arrived as a vital actress in stealthy splendour, not as a lightning flash. A knockout four years ago in Port and last year in The Glass Menagerie, here she is metallic with grief.

Taking us into depression so deeply means a bleaching out, and levelling of texture. The play is both riveting and static. Director Katie Mitchells distinctive trance style comes into its own. Between scenes, each woman stands like a mannequin, as clothes are slipped on and off. As if life were simply draped over them.

At the Royal Court theatre, London, until 8 July

Go here to read the rest:
Anatomy of a Suicide review unhappy days are here again - The Guardian

Jedd Gyorko has had a weird season so far. If you read this blog often, youre probably a Cardinals fan, which means youre well aware of that. If not, this graph says it all:

This is a rolling 15-game average of Jedds wRC+ throughout his career, provided by the goodnfolks at Fangraphs.com. wRC+ aggregates all of a hitters contributions at the plate into and spits out a park and league adjusted single number to describe how good or bad a hitter was overall.

Jedd started out the year red hot, and just kept hitting better and better. This eventually culminated in holding a 184 wRC+ for the season on May 6th, 86 plate appearances into the season. That means he was 84% better than league average at the plate over that time frame. If he could have somehow kept that up the whole year, it likely would have resulted in an MVP award. Since then its been all downhill, recording a 76 wRC+ in the next 132 plate appearances. That means hes been 24% worse than league average since that point.

Thats averages out to a 118 wRC+ going into Fridays contest, which is solidly above-average. If he can hold that the rest of the year, it would represent a career high for him, so that sounds great. There is worry among fans though, that hes in a bit of a free fall. Some think hes getting exposed in a full-time role. Lets see what the numbers say.

First off, lets look at Gyorkos strike out and walk numbers throughout the year.

Pitchers mostly have control over strikeouts and walks. They can influence contact quality, but to nowhere near the same level, and its hard to be sure without a really large sample. If pitchers figured something out, youd expect to see it in Gyorkos strikeouts or walks. That doesnt seem to be the case though. Continuing with May 6th as the arbitrary dividing line, heres his K% and BB%:

Nearly identical in walks and strikeouts. Non-contact wOBA is also shown, and that did change. Non-contact wOBA is the non-contact portion of wOBA, which is strikeouts, unintentional walks, and hit-by-pitches. For context, league average is .200. Gyorko is below average over both stretches, but he was .017 points worse over his slump period. However, thats actually only because Gyorko was hit by a pitch during his hot streak, but wasnt during his slump.

So no, Gyorkos struggles havent come in non-contact situations. His slump is due entirely to worse results on-contact. Lets look at a 15-game rolling average of his BABIP (Batting Average on Balls In Play) and ISO (isolated slugging, or slugging percentage minus batting average, to get a measure of extra base hit ability):

Both peaked around the same time that his wRC+ did, and have plummeted since. The BABIP was always going to regress. No one in the history of the game has a true BABIP ability of .400, let alone .500. And if they could, it wouldnt be someone like Jedd, who is slower than average and tries to hit as many fly balls as he can, which have the worst chance of being an in-play hit.

Thats OK, because hitting for power can make up for that, and thats the game Gyorko plays. The ISO has plummeted as well though. On its own, that doesnt spell doom. While its not as noisy as BABIP, ISO varies a lot over the course of a season. Baseball is a game of inches, and the difference between a homer and a fly out to the warning track is just fractions of an inch in terms of where the ball makes contact with the bat.

So lets dig into Gyorkos contact quality. Heres his radial chart for the 2017 season, provided by the statcast data hosted at BaseballSavant.com.

If you havent seen this image before, the protractor-shaped image above is used to represent any batted ball by Exit Velocity and Launch Angle. The six shaded regions represent the six qualities of contact, and each dot represents one of Gyorkos batted balls in 2017. If thats confusing to you, dont worry, I was too at first. Check out this post for a full breakdown of the six types of contact quality.

While this is a great visual, it lacks context. We want to know how Gyorkos quality compares to league average, and it would also be nice to know how productive each category is. For this situation, it would also be helpful to see a split between what his hot streak looked like compared to his current slump. Heres what all that looks like:

When Gyorko was hot, he was hitting a well above average amount of barrels, the best type of batted ball. He was getting very little solid contact though, which is basically a border surrounding barrels. You have to wonder if that was the first part of the regression. When one player has a lot of barrels or solid contact, but not that much of the other, it seems likely that the two would be more even going forward. Despite barrels representing much more area on the radial chart than solid contact, theyre very comparable in terms of the average likelihood of one occurring.

Also notice the weak category, which is any batted ball under 60 MPH, regardless of angle. Those batted balls actually perform at an above-average rate, likely because the defense usually isnt positioned in preparation for batted balls under 60 MPH.

Regardless, its hard to believe its a good sign for a hitter. Like the connection between barrels and solid contact, it seems believable that if a hitter has a lot of weak contact, going forward some of that will turn into under or topped batted balls, which are the two below-average performing batted balls. That looks like the case with Gyorko, who saw a big reduction in weak contact, and a big increase in getting under the ball.

Next up, well look at Gyorkos xwOBA. xwOBA is also brought to you by BaseballSavant.com, and replaces the on-contact portion of wOBA with what it should have been, based on the average performance of each of the players batted balls. This doesnt take into account foot speed or how often a player is shifted against, but nevertheless Craig found that xwOBA was more predictive of future wOBA than wOBA itself. Heres how Gyorko grades out during both streaks:

During his hot streak, Gyorko out-performed his contact quality by .060 points of wOBA. For context, thats the 32nd biggest negative difference of 317 players with at least 40 at bats over that time frame, just outside the top 10%. Still, .399 is an impressive xwOBA, 29th over that time frame, or among the top 9% of the league. Gyorkos hot streak wasnt just luck, he was also just plain tearing the cover off the ball.

On the flip side, his cold streak was entirely earned, with the wOBA matching the xwOBA. What does this mean? Again, it doesnt have to mean anything. Baseball is a game of inches, and hitting is one of the most obvious examples of that fact. Lets push forward though, and see if pitchers are attacking Gyorko any differently. First off, well look at a heatmap of where Gyorko has been pitched in 2017, provided by Baseball Savant. On the left is the hot streak, on the right is the cold streak:

The differences are very minor. Generally, Gyorko is pitched a little bit to the outside portion of the plate, but with the highest density middle-middle. That was the case during both his hot and cold streaks. But thats just part of the equation. What about pitch selection? Are pitchers throwing him a different mix of pitches? Heres a pie chart by pitch type during the hot streak, again courtesy of Baseball Savant:

And heres the same thing, but for his slump:

Again, strikingly familiar. Jedds Zone% is also almost the same over this stretch as well, so pitchers arent avoiding the zone more often.

Jedd is walking and striking out at the same pace. If he wasnt, it would be a good sign that either something was wrong or pitchers were successfully adjusting to him. While theres a .160 point difference between his wOBA in both time frames, xwOBA brings it down to a .100 difference. Thats still very significant, but at the same time, hes getting pitched virtually the same way. All that appears to be going on here is a great example of the contrast between a hitter being as locked in as he can be (and have some things goes his way) vs. something being a little off.

Its always fun to find something more concrete, but the season is just full of ups and downs is a valid answer in baseball. Hitters talk about this all the time. Sometimes the ball looks like a beach ball, other times a marble. Its just part of the game. Going forward, hell almost certainly be somewhere in-between. Baseball is a game of streaks. Lets hope Jedd is about done with this one.

Read more here:
The Anatomy of Jedd Gyorko's streaky 2017 - Viva El Birdos

Where to Stream

Strap in, cord-cutters, because your weekend is about to be jam-packed with the highest quality content you can get your hands on.Platforms like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, Showtime, Starz,Sundance Now, and more are delivering more than your moneys worth on all fronts, and between original content and hit television series, the summer streaming selections just keep raising the bar every week.

Netflix has the biggest bingers covered with the latest series of Shonda Rhimes series likeScandalandGreys Anatomydropping this weekend, as well as the ridiculously hilarious original specialOh, Hello On Broadway. Hulu and Amazon Prime Video are following suit with a handful of hit TV series and blockbusters, and HBO has your laughs covered with comedy specialT.J. Miller: Meticulously Ridiculous. Laughs, thrills, and terrifying scares are in the queue for this weekend, so what are you waiting for? You could be spending this time tackling these top-notch titles!

ShondaLand lovers, rejoice the latest seasons of bothGreys AnatomyandScandaldrop on the platform on Saturday, and theyre better than ever. The thirteenth season of the wildly successful medical drama continues to follow our group of staff as they navigate the complicated waters of the hospital and their own personal traumas. With the departure of a major character impending once again (IS ANYONE SAFE?!), the stakes are higher than ever as this ongoing saga continues its reign.

[StreamGreys Anatomy: Season 13 on Netflix June 17]

The latest installment of the Chris Pine/Zachary Quinto iteration of the franchise does not disappoint as the USS Enterprises crew once again explores the furthest reaches of uncharted space and suddenly find themselves face-to-face with an unexpected, unstoppable enemy. Action-packed, suspenseful, and unexpectedly funny (largely in part to the delightfulSimon Pegg), this Justin Lin-helmed sequel will bring you just as much joy and excitement as the first two flicks and make you remember the gone-to-soon Anton Yelchin fondly.

[StreamStar Trek Beyondon Hulu and Prime Video June 17]

This 1970s-set follow-up to horror hitThe Conjuringonce again depicts the paranormal investigations of Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) as they take on their most hair-raising case yet. The Warrens travel across the pond to aid a single mother raising four children as she copes with an evil spirit infestation, and obviously, total terror ensues. This eerie thrill-ride is a rare example of a quality horror sequel, and you should bump it up to the top of your queue.

[StreamThe Conjuring 2on HBO June 17]

Aquarius: Season 2 (2016) Counterpunch*Netflix Original El Chapo: Season 1 (2017) Marco Luque: Tamo Junto*Netflix Original Marvels Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Season 4 (2016) Mr. Gaga: A True Story of Love and Dance (2015) Oh, Hello On Broadway*Netflix Original Special Quantico: Season 2 (2016) The Ranch: Part 3 *Netflix Original World of Winx: Season 2 *Netflix Original

Greys Anatomy: Season 13 Scandal: Season 6 (2016) The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)

Shooter: Season 1 (2016)

American Ninja Warrior: Season 9 Premiere (NBC) Asmodexia (2014) Bayou Maharajah (2013) Cardinal: Complete Season 1 (eOne) Cocaine Cowboys (2006) Control Room (2004) Family Mission: The TJ Labraico Story (2016) The Girls in the Band (2011) The Hunting of the President (2004) Outatime (2016) Spartan: Ultimate Team Challenge: Season 2 Premiere (NBC)

Kundo (2014) Star Trek Beyond(2016)

Grand Piano (2013)

Star Trek Beyond (2016) Suits: Season 6

Entre nos, Part 1 (2017) Krampus Psi:Season 3

The Conjuring 2 T.J. Miller: Meticulously Ridiculous

Backstreet Boys: Show em What Youre Made Of (2015) Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo (1984) Breakin All the Rules (2004) Flaming Star (1960) The Good Shepherd (2006) The Hitcher (2007) The Invisible Woman (2013) The Marine (2006) Nothing Like the Holidays (2008) The People Under the Stairs (1991) Sydney White (2007) Town & Country (2001)

Inferno (2016)

American Gods(2017) SEASON FINALE Episode 108

An Englishman in New York(2009) Latter Days (2003) Out In The Dark (2012) Sand Dollars (2014) Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story (2015)

Among the Living I Want You Inside Me (2016) The Puppet Man (2016) The Treatment (2014)

800 Words: Series 2, Part 2, Episodes 5-6 Count Arthur Strong: Series 3, Episode 4 Danger UXBThe Heart Guy, Series 1, Episodes 3-4

More:
What's New On Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, And HBO This Weekend: 'Grey's Anatomy', 'Star Trek Beyond', 'The ... - Decider

By Bob LundebergMid-Valley Media Group

The two longest winning streaks in Division I baseball this year belong to Oregon State.

The top-seeded Beavers (54-4), who open the College World Series at noon Saturday against Cal State Fullerton (39-22), will take the field at TD Ameritrade Park in Omaha, Nebraska as winners of 21 consecutive games. OSU closed the regular season with 16 straight victories and has outscored opponents 44-9 during its five NCAA tournament games.

Earlier this year, the Beavers won a program-record 23 in a row from Feb. 25 to April 9, including a 12-0 start in Pac-12 play.

The two streaks have accounted for 44 of the teams 54 victories, another single-season school record. With a winning percentage of .931, OSU is on pace to break Arizona States 45-year-old all-time mark of .914 (the Sun Devils finished 64-6 in 1972).

Below is a breakdown of the Beavers winning streaks.

Streak 1, Feb. 25-April 9

Length: 23 games

Runs scored: 136 (5.9 per game)

Runs allowed: 49 (2.1 per game)

One-run games: 6

Shutouts: 6

A loss to Ohio State, which finished 148th in the NCAA RPI, dropped Oregon State to 5-1 early in the season.

The Beavers began the longest winning streak in school history with a 5-2 neutral-site victory over Nebraska, which later came to Oregon for the Corvallis Regional. OSU then got revenge against the Buckeyes to wrap up play in Surprise, Arizona before sweeping consecutive home series with UC Davis and Ball State.

Entering Pac-12 play 14-1 overall, the Beavers outscored Arizona State 16-1 during the three-game set to seize an immediate stranglehold on the conference standings. Starting pitchers Luke Heimlich (eight two-hit innings), Bryce Fehmel (eight innings, one run, four hits) and Jake Thompson (seven two-hit innings) were close to untouchable in the desert.

OSU picked up its first of six walk-off wins at Goss Stadium on March 24, knocking off Arizona 4-3 on a KJ Harrison single that plated Adley Rutschman. The Beavers trailed 3-1 entering the eighth.

One night later, OSU again overcame a deficit and walked off again when Preston Jones scored all the way from second on a wild pitch for a 5-4 win. A comfortable 11-7 decision in the series finale pushed the team to 20-1 overall and 6-0 in Pac-12 play.

The Beavers kept the streak alive with another come-from-behind effort, scoring three times in the ninth to steal a 4-3 victory at Saint Marys on March 28. Nick Madrigal collected the game-winning hit, a two-out, two-RBI single with the bases loaded.

Following another road sweep in which the Beavers outscored Stanford 25-8, OSU pulled out a 4-3 road decision at Portland for its 20th win in a row. Rutschmans two-run single in the sixth put the Beavers in front for good.

A home sweep of Utah including two more walk-offs left OSU 28-1 overall (12-0 Pac-12). Steven Kwan hit a game-winning single in the opener while a Rutschman sacrifice fly brought home Jack Anderson for a 5-4, 16-inning victory in Game 2.

The streak finally came to an end April 13, a 3-2 loss at Washington. But the Beavers fought back to win the final two games of the series.

Streak 2, April 30-current

Length: 21 games

Runs scored: 158 (7.5 per game)

Runs allowed: 41 (2.0 per game)

One-run games: 5

Shutouts: 6

After starting the year 28-1, the Beavers went just 5-3 during a two-week span from April 13-29. The rocky patch included a 7-5, 10-inning home loss to USC, which finished in the Pac-12 basement with Arizona State.

Oregon State came back to rout the Trojans 10-1 in the series finale, igniting a winning streak that has yet to end.

A midweek home victory over Oregon followed by a three-game sweep of California put the Beavers on the brink of the Pac-12 championship. After cruising past the Ducks in Game 1 of the Civil War conference series, Mitchell Verburg struck out Ryne Nelson with the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth to seal a 5-4 victory and the outright Pac-12 title.

Verburgs heroics also delivered career win No. 1,000 for coach Pat Casey.

The Beavers blanked Oregon 1-0 to sweep the series and cruised by Portland two days later before coming out flat against Washington State May 19. Trailing 3-2 entering the ninth, Steven Kwan and Jack Anderson drew consecutive base-loaded walks off Cougars closer Scott Sunitsch for a true walk-off.

OSU went on to outscore Washington State 19-3 in the final two games of the series, finishing with the best record in conference history at 27-3.

The streak nearly ended again May 26 against Abilene Christian, the Beavers final regular-season opponent. Knotted at 4 in the bottom of the 11th, Anderson knocked in Andy Atwood with a single for the teams sixth walk-off of the year. Reliever Mitch Hickey proposed to his girlfriend on the Goss Stadium turf immediately following the game.

The Beavers entered the NCAA tournament with a 49-4 record and breezed through the Corvallis Regional, outscoring Holy Cross and Yale by a combined margin of 27-3. Two comfortable wins over Vanderbilt in the Corvallis Super Regional pushed the winning streak to 21 as OSU prepares for its CWS opener.

See the original post here:
The anatomy of Beavers' win streaks - Mail Tribune

London:It began with a sudden, frantic knocking on a door, late at night.

On the fourth floor of Grenfell Tower, a block of flats in west London, pregnant Maryam Adam, 41, had been deep in sleep when the loud banging woke her. The clock told her it was just after a quarter to one in the morning.

Play Video Don't Play

Play Video Don't Play

Previous slide Next slide

Fears the toll will rise with 12 confirmed dead and 78 taken to hospital after the massive blaze at the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in London.

Play Video Don't Play

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio turns over an Oscar won by Marlon Brando and US investigators move to seize a Picasso painting of his, as part of a probe into alleged money laundering by a Malaysian investment fund.

Play Video Don't Play

Nike will cut about two percent of its global workforce as it changes its organisational structure and reduces number of shoe styles.

Play Video Don't Play

A cross border team has brewed a new beer featuring President Donald Trump as a gun-slinging mariachi musician.

Play Video Don't Play

WARNING, DISTRESSING IMAGES: Two people died at the scene and five later died in hospital after an explosion near a kindergarten in east China's Jiangsu Province.

Play Video Don't Play

Jurors in Bill Cosby's sexual assault trial say they're deadlocked on charges the comedian drugged and molested a woman in 2004, but a judge ordered them to keep trying to reach a unanimous decision.

Play Video Don't Play

While charities bemoan the lack of official direction for helping London fire vicitms, the community is pulling together in mourning and mutual support..

Play Video Don't Play

A blimp at the US Open golf tournament in Wisconsin caught fire and crashed on Thursday.

Fears the toll will rise with 12 confirmed dead and 78 taken to hospital after the massive blaze at the 24-storey Grenfell Tower in London.

She went to the door. It was her neighbour, identified by one newspaper on Thursday as a 44-year old taxi driver from Ethiopia.

"He was shouting that his flat was on fire," Adam said.

She looked across the central corridor in the core of the 24-storey tower. A big bag of clothes sat outside the man's flat.

His door was open and through it she saw a "small" fire in his kitchen, she said later.

Another woman on the same floor, Aalya Moses, had a similar experience.

"There was no alarm, no sprinkler, just my neighbour who told everyone on my floor and the surrounding floors," she said. "If he hadn't told me I wouldn't have known."

Adam echoed the sentiment. "If he had not knocked, I don't know what would have happened."

They left the building, spooked. It was about 10 minutesto one in the morning on Wednesday, June 14.

Within an hour, the place would be an inferno.

This is a story that has many revisions to come.There will be surprise reunions and inevitable funerals. There will be police reports, fire reports and an inquest into the deaths: 17 at Thursday's count, a number that will rise over days and possibly weeks.

And there will be an official public inquiry into what happened and what can be learnt, what must be learntfrom a tragedy that, it appears, could have been and was foreseen, and could have been but wasn't prevented.

It was a pleasant night after a warm day. Many in Grenfell Tower had left their windows open to capture a light, cool night breeze.

The building benefited from new insulation, installed in a renovation that finished in 2016: a sleek aluminium composite cladding covering old, stained concrete.

That cladding was starting to catch fire.

Mahal Egal was another who got out from the fourth floor with his two small children, warned by a neighbour, among the first to evacuate.

He said the neighbour told him his fridge had exploded.

Leaving was against the building's fire safety advice. If residents knew there was a fire outside their flat, they were supposed to shut their door and wait for rescue.

Such buildings are designed to isolate fires. And with residents safe inside their flats, firefighters have more chance of running an orderly evacuation if it becomes necessary.

Indeed, this was reportedly the early advice that firefighters and 000 emergency operators were giving before an evacuation was ordered some time later. If this turns out to be the case, it could have been a fatal mistake firefighters and fire safety experts later said this fire spread faster than any high-rise blaze they had seen before.

Even as Egal left his flat, the first of many fire engines were arriving.

"At first it seemed controllable," he said, watching the fire from the outside. "At this point the fire was no higher than an average tree.

"But really quickly the fire started to rise, as the cladding caught fire."

There was already smoke inside the building, in the single central stairwell, he said.

He thought of his extended family and friends still inside the building, and he worried, and he watched the fire grow out of control, leaping eagerly up the building.

Within minutes it had climbed a dozen floors.

Witness Tanya Thompson said she saw it go "up like a firewall, straight up the side of the building" in about ten minutes. Another, Omar, said it was "like a piece of paper like dominos, fire and then fire and then fire. It was so quick and shocking."

Mickey (Michael) Paramasivan, 37, was woken on the seventh floor by the smell of burning plastic. He tucked his six-year-old daughter Thea into her dressing gown and they ran downstairs.

By the time they were outside "we looked up at the tower and it was like a horror movie", he said.

Mouna Elogbani was on the 11th floor with her husband and three children a friend called and warned her to get out. When they first opened the door to escape "flames burst into the house", she said. They managed to get out down the stairs.

On the 17th floor a man who identified himself on radio as "Methrob" was woken by fire sirens, grabbed his aunty and they started to make their way down.

"By the time that we got downstairs, the fire had gone all the way up and was just about reaching our windows," he said. "The whole side of the building was on fire. The cladding went up like a matchstick."

There are many more stories of narrow escapes. Other stories do not end well.

Jessica Urbano, 12, borrowed someone's phone as she hid in a stairwell with a group of friends making their way down from the 20th floor. She rang her mum.

"Jessica had been asleep in our flat when something woke her - I don't know if it was the smoke or a fire alarm - so she rang me at 1.39am as I was on my way home from work," Jessica's mum, Adriana, told the London Telegraph. "She said,''Mum where are you? Mummy come and get me'." Mrs Urbano urged Jessica to run down the stairs of the tower block and try to find a fire fighter to lead her to safety.

"I told her to get out of there as quickly as she could. I said 'run as fast as you can', but then the line cut out".

On Thursday Jessica was listed among the missing.

On the 14th floor, at 1.38am, ZainabDean phoned her brother Francis.

"She said there was a fire in the building," Francis said later. "She was very nervous and scared. She is a nervous person anyway. She said the fire service arrived and had told everyone to keep calm and to stay where she was."

Twenty minutes later, he got to the building and tried to get in to rescue his sister, but police stopped him.

After an hour, he was desperate with worry.

"I could see the building was going up in flames. I said Zainab you have to get out of the building it's not looking good. She said she didn't want to go down the stairs because there was too much smoke.

"But she tried anyway and then [her three-year-old son]Jeremiah collapsed in her arms."

Their last contact was at 3am.

"On the phone I just keep telling her they were coming to get her."

He handed his phone to a fireman. The fireman handed it back, saying "tell her you love her".

"I knew then to fear the worst. The phone went dead and I couldn't talk to her."

One firefighter was heard telling his crew "we're going in and we're going up".

"My firefighters battled through intense heat to reach some of the highest floors," said London Fire Brigade Commissioner Dany Cotton.

"I was looking at a building that was engulfed in fire where I knew members of the public were still trapped yet I was committing hundreds of firefighters into a building that to a lot of people looked terribly unsafe.

"My firefighters were desperate to get in there and desperate to rescue people, and we committed crew after crew into a very dangerous, very hot and very difficult situation because we had a passion to do as much as we could to rescue the people in there."

The firefighters were told to write their names and numbers on their helmets before they went in.

"It was like a war zone in there," said one. They rescued at least 65 people.

Another said they were "knee deep in debris and bodies" once they climbed past the 11th floor but they kept going up as high as they could, as far as their legs and oxygen canisters would taken them, touching and feeling their way along corridors and stairs, "sweeping and stamping" to check for obstacles or collapsed flooring.

Outside, the fire hoses simply couldn't reach the upper floors.

By the time the fire reached the top floors, the internal stairwell was ink-black with smoke and those remaining felt there was no escape.

Nura Jemal, mother of three on the 22nd floor, told a friend on the telephone "I'm so sorry, goodbye. Please forgive us. We are not going to make it."

The first victim of the fire to be name was Mohammed al-Haj Ali, 23, a Syrian refugee who came to the UK in 2014 and was studying civil engineering.

He had been in a flat on the 14th floor with his brother Omar.

"We smelled the smoke, opened the door, saw smoke," Omar said. "The smoke came inside. I've seen the fire around me."

They left the apartment together and headed for the stairs.

"I couldn't see anything, even my fingers," Omar said. "I thought I was going to die on those stairs. I was breathing smoke, lots of smoke."

Then, when he was almost out, "I looked behind me and I didn't see my brother."

"I called him [on the phone] and said 'where are you'? He said 'I'm in the flat'. I said 'why didn't you come?' He said 'no one brought me outside'."

There they stayed, Omar outside and Mohammed in. They spoke to the end.

"I was speaking to my brother [on the phone]he said 'I'm dying'. He said 'I cannot breathe'."

Among the lost are a 57-year-old man who told his wife and son to leave him behind, and has not been seen since, and Tony Disson, 66, whose phone fell silent at 4am after speaking to a friend and saying "tell my sons I love them".

Ali Jafari, 82, was escaping with his wife and daughter in the lift but got out at the 10th floor, unable to breathe, and did not get back in before the doors closed.

A mother lost her grip on her 12-year-old daughter's hand as they stumbled down the pitch-black stairwell. She spent Thursday travelling from hospital to hospital searching for her child.

Rania Ibrahim posted frightened videos on Snapchat and Facebook while trapped on the 23rd floor, the hallway outside impassable with smoke. Her last message was "guys, I can't get out".

But there were more survivors, too, emerging from the blaze in the arms of firefighters.

Natasha Elcock, trapped on the 12th floor with her six-year-old daughter, flooded the bathroom and kept her flat damp. After 90 minutes the fire crew told them to get out but they couldn't the door of the flat was too hot to open.

"The door was buckling and the windows bubbling and cracking, it was terrifying," she said.

Fire crews rescued her at 3am. She stepped over a body on the way out.

Schools inspector Marcio Gomes, 38, was told to stay put but by 4.30am the fire had engulfed the whole building, and fire crews were unable to make it up to them.

He wrapped his family up in wet towels and said, "There's no turning back, we have to go," he told the Sun.

"As soon as we opened the door all the smoke came in. We had no choice because the fire started coming in through the windows. We had to go down the stairs.

"You couldn't see anything. We didn't see people, we just felt people. We were just climbing over bodies."

He stayed on the line to the fire operator all the way down.

"They said 'keep going down, keep using your voice'."

See the original post:
London fire: Anatomy of a high-rise horror - The Sydney Morning Herald

The Haka has become one of the most beloved and inspirational spectacles in world sport.

New Zealanders talk passionately about its spiritual significance, the way it links them to their past and their ancestors, and its central place in their sporting culture.

Here, we examine how the Haka grew from this 1973 abomination against the Barbarians at Cardiff Arms Park.

Watch the video below, and then well examine it frame-by-frame, in excruciating detail.

Original post:
The world's worst haka: anatomy of the 1973 All Blacks fiasco - Telegraph.co.uk

This was no accident.

When Andrew Benintendi threw out Howie Kendrick at the plate with one out in the eighth inning, potentially saving the game for the Red Sox Tuesday night, it might have simply seemed like a nice toss home coupled with an ill-advised decision by the base-runner to try and score. (To see the play, click here.)

Butthere were a few more factors at play when considering what made Benintendi's throw possible.

The execution of the action could first be tracked back to the night before, when the Red Sox left fielder had scurried over to get a ball before hastily trying to pick it up with his barehand. That resulted in a bad throw. So when Benintendi approached the ricochet off the left field wall - which emanated from Maikel Franco's blast just a few feet shy of reaching home run distance - the memory of Monday night immediately flashed into his head.

"I was going to make sure I picked it up with my glove," Benintendi later said. "I didn't last time, and that didn't work."

The next piece of the equation was also a lesson learned, this one garnered during pregame activities. Prior to Tuesday night's game, Benintendi had joined the other outfielders in working on all their throws to the bases. They were drills that aren't done every day, but ended up being perfectly timed for this occasion, particuarly since it let the rookie get the kinks out.

"I was throwing all cutters. Not straight balls," Benintendi said of his practices tosses. "But the game is all that matters."

But perhaps what made the whole thing come together was simply a demeanor that many have referenced when describing the 22 year old. Throughout the chaos that came with the Red Sox' fate hanging in the balance, Benintendi remained remarkablycalm.

"I saw where the runner was and I saw how he had it gauged up. There was no sense in him panicking," said Red Sox center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr.. "He played the ball the way he was supposed to, but just got a hard kick. As he was running to get the ball I saw him pick his head up and kind of analyze where he was. That's why he knew the distance that he was wasn't very far and he able to throw a strike to home plate."

"To remain under control," said Red Sox manager John Farrell when asked what impressed him most about the play. "Hes got to chase that ball a long way after the carom. He comes up, throws a strike to home plate. Its the even temperament that he shows in probably every aspect of the game, particularly the final swing tonight."

That swing, of course, was Benintndi's first career walk-off hit, giving the Red Sox a 4-3, 12-inning win over the Phillies.

It's a swing that probably isn't made possible, however, if not for the outfielder's casual throw and catch with backstop Chritian Vazquez about an hour before.

Read the original:
Anatomy of Andrew Benintendi's game-saving throw home - WEEI.com (blog)

The sins of the father revisited on the son its a stage staple that tracks back to Ancient Greece. From Captain Alving in Ibsens Ghosts to Arthur Millers arms-dealing Joe Keller in All My Sons, a mans acts live on. Feminist playwright (Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.) and screenwriter (Lady Macbeth) Alice Birch offers an alternative in this chilly triptych, now play at the Royal Court Theater. Not once, but twice, a mothers trauma rebounds on her daughter. Mental illness becomes a baton passed between three generations: a frazzled 1970s housewife, a 1990s riot girl, a detached doctor in 2033. Katie Mitchells clinical staging forces us to watch forensically, sifting for clues about causality. Is this nature, nurture or social structure?

Birch splits the stage in three, so that three women, decades apart, appear side by side. In 1971, Carol (Hattie Morahan) emerges from hospital with her wrists wrapped in bandages, her husband berating her for ruining the floorboards. In 1997, Anna (Kate OFlynn) wobbles on her feet, off her bloodied head, with one arm in a sling, as a male nurse checks her over and ticks her off. In 2033, a third woman holds her bleeding hand, a fishhook dug into the palm but its her expressionless doctor, Bonnie (Adelle Leonce), who assumes importance.

These women couldnt be more different, and yet their individual stories echo each other sometimes exactly, as phrases and gestures ripple through time. Carol sits at home, alone, infantilized by her stern, shambolic husband (Paul Hilton), smoking at the kitchen table, a child crying somewhere in the house. Anna rampages off the rails, a laddette with a heroin addiction partying through the millennium. Bonnie, meanwhile, shuts everyone out. She might seem the most sorted of the three, but shes not really. All three incur mental health problems of some form or another: a mix of anxiety, depression and detachment.

Its only gradually that we realise that theyre related three generations of the same family. As each individual narrative unfolds, it adds a little more context to the next. One womans life encompasses the others childhood, and so explains the issues they face in adulthood. Eerily, you intuit their deaths before they take place. Each is strangely absent from their daughters life and yet, equally, ever-present.

Its a beautifully organised play, an elegant information overload. Birch is an exacting writer; Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again proved her precision with language, but here, as in her recent film Lady Macbeth, she lets small slices of life assume momentous significance. As Carol smokes a sly cigarette at a childrens party, Anna crashes into a drug-induced coma. Bonnie stands outside a birthday bash, bottle in hand. Many of the micro-scenes have a painterly quality, a stark, unsentimental beauty.

Set designer Alex Eales encases the women in a grey concrete cell so that the world seems oddly absent, and only James Farncombes articulate lighting gives a sense of place. Melanie Wilsons soundscapes swim around like underwater echoes. Between scenes, as the years pass, the women stand, still as mannequins, as castmates undress and reclothe them. Fashions change, women dont, nor society neither any shifts are merely superficial. Birchs play is, among other things, a history of the care system. Patrician doctors become scrubbed-up careworkers, but the treatment prescribed is still the same: electric shock therapy.

As youd expect of the meticulous Mitchell, all three women are played with extraordinary clarity. Morahan wears a faraway frown as Carol, her eyes wide and watery, while OFlynn chews her words as if permanently brain-fuzzed and physically discombobulated. Leonce plays Bonnie with a clean-cut aloofness that almost borders on dissociation, as if to complete the cycle.

Theres something schematic in a play that works entirely through patterns. Birch asks us to compare and contrast, but the triptych form can feel like the complete-the-sequence section of an IQ test: A, B, ?. A mother who feels too little produces a daughter who feels too much. Her daughter, in turn, retreats to a numb silence. Sarah Blenkinsops costumes stress the point: Carol in red, Anna in green and black, Bonnie in white with hints of red. The driving concept is too close to the surface here, the causal chain too certain to ring true. That each woman is so of-their-own-era only exacerbates the problem. All three feel emblematic, rather than idiosyncratic individuals, and it can feel like Birchs thesis is leading her play.

Thats a small grumble, though, in an otherwise unflinching examination of motherhood and mental health, articulated with a sharp sense of theater.

Royal Court Theatre, London; 465 seats; 45, $57 top. Opened, June 8, 2016 reviewed June 8, 2016. Running time:2 HOURS.

A Royal Court production of a play in one act by Alice Birch.

Directed by Katie Mitchell; Set design,Alex Eales; costume design, Sarah Blenkinsop; lighting, James Farncombe; sound, Melanie Wilson; composer, Paul Clark.

Gershwyn Eustache Jnr, Paul Hilton, Peter Hobday, Adelle Leonce, Sarah Malin, Jodie McNee, Hattie Morahan, Kate OFlynn, Sophie Pettit, Vicki Szent-Kirallyi, Dickon Tyrrell.

More:
London Theater Review: 'Anatomy of a Suicide' - Variety