Justin Bieber's private jet was reportedly detained at a New Jersey airport this afternoon after law enforcement agents smelled a "strong odor of pot" coming from inside. The plane, which had just landed for the Super Bowl, is reportedly being held until police dogs give it the all clear.

According to TMZ and the New York Post, the plane is being held at Teterboro Airport and is in the process of being searched. So far, no pot has been found, according to TMZ and the Post's sources.

UPDATE: TMZ is now reporting that the plane's passengers were released after no drugs were found.

But the New York Post is now reporting that two K-9 dogs, one from the Customs and Border Protection and the other from the Port Authority Police, indicated that that there was marijuana in two pieces of luggage on the plane.

You can watch live video of the plane here.

Hey, remember when we said that Bridgeghazi meant Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was either a vengeful asshole or entirely incompetent? According to the Port Authority official at the center of the controversy, he's a vengeful asshole. And he's still lying to reporters and residents.

David Wildstein, a high-level Port Authority appointee and former high-school classmate of Christie's who emerged in emails as the official who ordered subordinates to shut down the toll lanes onto the George Washington Bridge last September, said through an attorney that the guv knew all along what was going on. According to The New York Times:

[Wildstein] described the order to close the lanes as "the Christie administration's order" and said "evidence exists as well tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference" three weeks ago.

"Mr. Wildstein contests the accuracy of various statements that the governor made about him and he can prove the inaccuracy of some," the letter added.

The letter marked the first signal that Mr. Christie may have been aware of the closings, something he repeatedly denied during a two-hour press conference earlier this month.

What does Wildstein have, and what does it say about Christie? Hopefully it can shed some light on which political revenge fantasy was to blame for the closures. But more important: Why would Christie categorically deny any knowledge of the whole affair if there was obvious, obtainable evidence to the contrary? Then again, shit's definitely slipped his mind before in this case. And it's not his only current political problem.

[Photo credit: AP]

Ken Kurson, editor-in-chief of the New York Observer, confirmed to Valleywag that he has hired Ryan Holiday, author of the book Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, as the editor-at-large of its tech blog, Betabeat. In a statement, printed in full below, Holiday described the website as a "client."

Betabeat was launched in March, 2011 to cover New York City's burgeoning tech scene. Full disclosure: I worked at Betabeat from June, 2011 to April, 2013, first as a senior reporter and then as a senior editor, running the blog. For a few months I edited some of Holiday's freelance pieces; while Kurson edited the others. Holiday has continued to write a column for the site called "Off the Media," from the perspective of an insider in the marketing and advertising industry.

However, the reasons to question Holiday's credibility as an editor are all there in the title of his book, where he describes tricking reporters for the financial benefits of his marketing clients. Holiday has also worked as the "media strategist" for two men of ill repute—Tucker Max and Dov Charney—best known for their misogynistic and legally murky actions and attitudes towards women.

In one of his columns for Betabeat, Holiday describes how purposefully floated a fake number about the size of his book advance to reporters:

It went like this: I would grossly exaggerate the size of my book advance in a press release and let the gossip mill take this number and run with it. I would encourage bloggers and reporters to speculate that it was a celebrity tell-all about high-profile clients of mine like Dov Charney and Tucker Max. In effect, I'd be using the media's weakness for sensationalism to get them to expose their weakness for sensationalism (and give coverage to my indictment of them, something they'd otherwise be reluctant to do).

In response to questions from Valleywag, Kurson offered the following statement:

Ryan's knowledge, insights, integrity and work ethic are all beyond reproach. He'll be called editor at large so it'll be more like an expansion of the great stuff he's been doing for Betabeat since before I arrived. He has already written great stuff and attracted excellent writers. Won't be in office every day and if he has any biz conflicts, he will disclose, same as any writer in the whole co.

In a statement to Valleywag, Holiday said the site was a "client," just like any other:

I'll actually be editor at large, which is just a step up from my role as contributor and contributing editor (as its been on the masthead for some time). It means I will write considerably more but also help grow the site as I've done with lots of clients over the years. I have access to all sorts of thinkers, writers, potential contributors and sources that the average blogger does not and we'll be growing Betabeat with those contacts.

Look, this is a world where the average blogger—including yourself—has a financial stake in every story they write by nature of pageview bonuses. Because of my books and other businesses, I don't have that motivation. I write and think about these things because I enjoy it and I'm working with Ken because I have a great deal of respect for him and the team he is building.

Just last month, our sister site Lifehacker interviewed Holiday about juggling his jobs as director of marketing at American Apparel and partner at marketing agency StoryArk. The bio at the bottom of his latest column for Betabeat says:

Ryan Holiday is a best-selling author and adviser to many brands and writers. His newest book, Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising, focuses on the untraditional tactics behind a new class of thinkers who disrupted the marketing industry.

"Growth hacking" is a popular term in the tech industry used to either aggrandize traditional strategies for acquiring more users and traffic, or as a euphemism for shadier tactics.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

The morning hosts of New York’s Hot 97 interrogated Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday morning about ending stop-and-frisk, raising the minimum wage, and legalizing marijuana (“I don’t think that’s happening anytime soon”). Listen to the interview here.

Here's Vogue Knights, a short documentary on the contemporary voguing/ball scene in Hell's Kitchen. Paris is still burning.

If Football—that is, the American National Football League football—used the same naming scheme as "Dungeons & Dragons," we'd call it "Beer Commercials & Cheerleaders."

Like dungeons and dragons, beer commercials and cheerleaders are two things that not everyone likes. They are also, however, not The Point of their respective games: they are simply nouns which evoke an atmosphere. You either buy into that atmosphere body and soul—or you don't.

I'm going to need you to forget about beer commercials. I'm going to need you to forget about cheerleaders. Don't worry—you're free to remember them when we're done, if you absolutely must.

I'm here to tell you that Football is, beneath its blaring American pop-culture facade, a turn-based / real-time action collectible trading card game of fine, minute mathematical depth, with just the right pinch of procedural randomness, and character / plot development unparalleled in any other role-playing game released yet in the history of games. You might not believe at first that Football is a deeper, harder, more interesting game than Advance Wars, though once you give it a chance and look past the boring graphical presentation, its math will blow your mind and you will be a convert for life.

Football would perhaps better be titled "Battleball," "Warball," or "Wizardball." The "foot" in "football" only applies to the notion that the ball is most often carried by someone who is "on foot," and places the brunt of the glory on the idea that the game is about mastering terrain and fighting for progress one inch at a time.

Yet the name "football" maybe doesn't give enough credit to the masterminds who have continued to devise new creative strategies inside the framework of the game's rules for well over eight decades.

In Football, the two "coaches" each start the game with a deck of forty-five players. At any given time, they can use eleven of these players. During the turn-based phase, coaches can substitute any player if they see fit, for one they deem more suited to a situation.

The team controlling the ball is called the "offense." The team trying to regain control of the ball is called the "defense." Like Pac-Man, yes—this is a game of duality, where the hunter can become the hunted on a moment's notice.

The offensive team's goal is to move the ball forward, over the "goal line." Doing so gets them a "touchdown," which is worth six points.

Each attempt of the offense to move the ball forward is called a "play." Every time the ball touches the ground, that's a "down."

"Downs" are "lives" in Football's battle system. If the offense can move the ball ten yards toward their goal within four downs, they get a "First Down"—a "continue." Depending on the strength of the offensive team and their ability to navigate the other team's defense, players might experience a thrilling sensation of scoring multiple first downs in a row, without ever seeing a second, third, or the dreaded "Fourth Down."

The defense's goal is to keep the offense from moving forward. If they're especially tough, they'll even manage to push the offense backward.

First down is always "1st and 10," meaning the offense has ten yards to go for a 1up, though if a defense's strategy is solid second down can be "2nd and 11." Third down can be "3rd and 3" or "3rd and 25," depending on the impregnability of the defense.

The toughness of the defense clashes with the strategy of the offense in a battle of strength versus wits, versus wits versus strength.

The coach playing defense at the time places his eleven players (units) nearly anywhere he sees fit—on his team's side of the line of scrimmage. The line of scrimmage is what they call the imaginary line spanning the width of the field, radiating outward from the exact spot where the ball last touched the ground.

The defense is the "level design" that the offense has to navigate. So here's the interesting part—unlike a first-person shooter where players' main goal is to always shoot at the other guys, or to get the flag to their base, always in ready-made level designs, in Football the players (by which I mean coaches) are navigating the levels in one phase, and designing the levels in the other phase.

Actually, in an action game, "level design" either means the geometry of an arena in which players kill one another, or the presentation of events in a curated single-player campaign where the goal of the level design is to entertain the player. "Defense" in football is actually one team calculatedly attacking the other. Let's not dwell on this. Football defense is enthrallingly complicated.

This streamlining of a complex duality penetrates other aspects of Football, as well: "damage" in Football is measured in "yards." The further a team is from their target goal line, the more "damaged" they are. The offense "heals" itself by moving forward toward the target goal line. If they heal themselves up to 100 yards, that's a six-point "touchdown." If you can't get the full touchdown, on the fourth down, you're free to kick a "field goal" through the goalpost in the endzone for three points—if you're close enough to not fail.

Meanwhile, as the offense heals themselves, they're damaging the defense—moving them further away from their goal line. So it is that, in Football, healing and attacking happen at the same time. Literally every gain or loss of yards heals one team and damages the other. You'd think this might dumb the game down, though as with many time-honored games such as chess, this is a restriction that only deepens the experience.

For example, if a defense manage to push an offensive team backward into the goal behind them, that's a two-point score called a "safety." This is rare, though you'll see it happen every now and again.

Football has been in open beta for 144 years. The original goal of the developers was to create a game that roped together more than five centuries of rugby history into a more spectator-friendly, strategically deeper game.

Rugby is a fascinating game, if considerably less polished than American Football. Rugby is a sport that the very idea of folklore itself designed. As such, it's not good for newcomers to the sports strategy genre. Give it time. You'll soon find it's easily one of the top three best ways to legally hurt other people.

Where Football excels over its spiritual predecessors is the implementation of the "system of downs" feature—which we touched on briefly above. Breaking up a "drive" toward a "touchdown" into four-part mini-battles, adding chances for continues and resets to "first down" for highly successful plays really helps funnel the juice of the strategy into a meatier game.

Football goes one magnitude deeper by implementing elements of a turn-based rugbylike with "the huddle": between downs, the coach relays play formations to the quarterback, who then takes the play to the rest of the team. In a secret on-field meeting called a "huddle," the quarterback communicates the play to the rest of the team. They have forty seconds to decide their play, line up, and prepare for "the snap." (Taking longer than forty seconds earns a "delay of game" penalty.)

One player on the offense, known as the "center," is in control of the start of the play. When the quarterback shouts "set," all players on the field must stand still for one second. When one second—or more, if the offense wants to hammer in suspense—has passed, the center "snaps" the ball to the player behind him. Now the game is officially being played: the center class-changes in an instant, and is now a blocker.

The game has switched from turn-based mode to real-time mode in a heartbeat.

In real-time mode—while the game is in play—it all comes down to whether or not the players on the field can live up to the coaches' expectations, and perform their heroic physical duties under intense pressure. This is where the first layer of psychological randomness falls into place.

After the snap, the quarterback—or "QB"—has the ball. He can hand it to one of his runningbacks, or he can pass it to a wide receiver. Or he can run it himself.

Almost every play formation gives the quarterback options, because the heavy tome of Football play formation history has taught coaches and players that sometimes, anything can happen.

The QB has to think quickly: ahead of him the center, two guards, and two tackles—the biggest, toughest, and smartest players on the offensive team—are pushing back with all their might against the defensive linemen—the biggest, toughest players on the defensive team. Whose "tanks" are tougher than whose? That's a question that a game of Football asks dozens of times in its course, and the answer is never always the same.

Depending on success or failure of his blockers, the quarterback might have two seconds to get rid of the ball. Or he might have six. He might be about to get tackled by a successful defensive player. Or he might just have enough time to get the ball to one of his receivers.

Wide receivers generally start on the farthest sides of the line. When the ball is snapped, they run forward, ready to receive a pass. Since the team knows the play, the wide receivers know what destination they're supposed to stop at. Meanwhile, cornerbacks and/or linebackers—the "fast" and "smart" defense units, respectively—will home in on them, either trying to keep them from reaching their destination, or intercepting a pass (immediately turning over the game so that the defense is now the offense).

After many decades of strategic iteration, coaches have arrived at this right here as the generic play formations.

In the case of a forward pass play, the quarterback is under severe pressure. Maybe the linebackers and/or a cornerback and/or a safety (another defensive unit) are attempting a "blitz": that's the Football equivalent of "suppressing fire" in a first-person shooter. In a "blitz," the defense tries to psych out—or even take down the quarterback. If the defense tackles the quarterback while he's still holding the ball, that's called a "sack," and it is the Football equivalent of most first-person shooters' "shotgunned in the side of the neck at close range."

Completing a pass is a genuinely heroic action. One might even call it "magical," and one might call the quarterback a wizard. (Uh-oh—didn't I say the coach was a wizard? Hmm. The coach is a Level-100 Wizard, then. Or a general. Got to think fast, metaphors falling apart—)

A crude passing play. I drew this with a mouse and am not, for the record, a professional offensive coordinator.

By way of the "magic" of a "pass," the quarterback teleports the ball many yards. If the wide receiver is in position, and able to outwit his defenders, he catches it, earning multiple yards—healing his team, and damaging the other.

In the real world, the physical act of completing a pass is about as easy as playing a full round of Halo 4 multiplayer viewing the game through a sniper scope—and winning.

Sacking the quarterback is about as easy for a defense as scoring a tetris in Gameboy Tetris while someone chases you around with a baseball bat.

Then, of course, there's the act of running the ball. At the beginning of a play, with faith in the ingenuity and strength of his blockers, the quarterback might hand the ball to the halfback or fullback, his two "warriors," in charge of fighting most non-magically for every inch of progress: they run the ball. That means they carry the ball in their hands and they gun it. They are melee fighters. With speed, smarts, and instinct, they dodge attackers, ideally homing in on a touchdown.

Though maybe it's not always a touchdown you want—not right away, anyway. Maybe you're just looking to make progress. Maybe you just want a first down. This is where the game becomes even more about psychology: consider briefly that every "down" is a reset; every play is a complex, quick, fluid, fast, full-featured game within a game, and the number of ways to play that microcosm game—always involving strength, speed, skill, and strategic smarts in varying areas—are frighteningly infinite.

In its many years of professional and collegiate play, Football, despite its many freedoms, has been home to a general condensation of strategic maneuvers. For example, though the offense needs to have seven players on the line of scrimmage at all times, and though the players don't need to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder, the offense almost always lines up five players in front of the quarterback. Why is this? Because sometimes "common sense" and "tradition" fall in love and get married.

Yet, heavy as the Football history books are with hundreds of winning plays that look, uh, exactly like most other plays, every once in a while you find a whole chapter devoted to the One Minorly Different Thing That Worked.

The shotgun formation, for example: in the shotgun formation, you put the quarterback back several yards from the center, instead of making him stand right behind the center. You can put him back as many yards as you want—there's no rule on where the quarterback has to stand, though of course it'd be suicide to put him twenty yards back. For one thing, the biology of the human arm and the gravity of planet Earth conspire such that the quarterback can only throw so far.

Football only offers one multiplayer map. This isn't exactly a complaint: it affords immense room for creative strategic freedom.

The reward of the shotgun formation is that the quarterback is possibly going to have two or even three extra whole seconds to think, and the receivers will be able to use those seconds to more reliably get into position.

The primary reward of the shotgun formation is that the extra distance affords the quarterback extra visibility with which to better assure the ball gets to the right receiver.

The primary risk of a shotgun formation is on the runningbacks—they'll have extra distance to cover if the team ends up running the ball. And if the quarterback gets sacked by some wily, adrenalin-jacked linebacker, that's extra yards lost.

On paper, it sounds smart; in practice, heroic quarterbacks like Joe Namath and Joe Montana have wielded it as a weapon of genius.

Meanwhile, the strategic pantheon of football is lined with tales of fake field goals, rule-bending moves like onside kicks (kick the ball the minimum distance on the kickoff, and recover it before the other team), and psychology-twisting moments like that team that Went For It (running or passing the ball on Fourth Down, just as the other team was expecting them to punt, gracefully surrendering, and turning the game over). Between two experienced coaches, the very act of play selection is psychological paper-rock-scissors and poker, hugging as though super-glued together.

Everyone knows by now about that Notre Dame player whose fake girlfriend died. The internet is aflame with the rumors—did he think she was real? Was "she" an internet troll? Or was he just nuts? Also, lots of people (and puppy-lovers) know that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick participated in illegal underground dog-fighting events.

I have to admit that I find this element of the Football "story" not very interesting. It's full of trite plot twists and boldly, dumbly stereotypical characterization—like Tim Tebow, the devout Christian quarterback who prays frequently on the field. That's just lazy writing.

One of the innovations legendary boxing promoter Don King brought to the sports genre is the concept of rivalry—of a game being more than a game: it's a bloody, personal, bitter battle. In boxing, a one-on-one sport, this feature devolved into interviews which bait boxers to verbally abuse their opponents, and appear unintelligent. American television networks have iterated and reiterated upon this concept, however, and summarized it nicely with phrases such as "The Best Offense in the NFL faces The Best Defense in the NFL—This Monday Night." They're making it about the math; they're encouraging you to think about the math. That's right up my alley—and probably the alley of any Magic: The Gathering player.

My favorite characters in stories like "Game of Thrones" are always the old people, so naturally I enjoy the coaches' story arcs more. They're the level-100 wizards—or they're the kings, or the generals. Can such-and-such coach have as much luck with such-and-such running formation as he did last year, or has the rest of the conference caught up, watched all the tapes from all the angles, and theoretically outwitted his secret weapon?

The structure of the season lends itself to great long-term plot arcs: Teams play just one game per week during the season, which keeps the game personal: Team A lost to Team B last year. Last year, Team B lost to Team C. Team A also lost to Team C last year. Now, a year later, Team A just beat Team C. Does this mean they're going to beat Team B? Team D also lost to Team C two weeks ago, and this week Team D beat Team E—and Team E made it into the Super Bowl last year. Whoa—is Team A an underdog Super Bowl contender all of a sudden? Creative, statistics-based speculation will drive you insane. The overarching game design of the season structure deepens that insanity.

And the icing on that narrative cake is the league structure: two conferences of sixteen teams each. Teams don't always play teams in other conferences, meaning that many possible match-ups don't occur during regular season play. Sometimes the only way for two teams from different conferences to face one another is in the Super Bowl. And getting to the Super Bowl is a matter of winning multiple games—can the team master long-term goals like single-game victories, medium-term goals like touchdowns or first downs, and immediate-term goals like "dodge that guy, quick" with enough success to accomplish the super-long-term goal of "Win enough games to get into the Super Bowl"?

All throughout the season, you'll be eyeing teams in both leagues, wondering which of them will win in a game, and never really knowing, because they might never get to have a faceoff. At the end of the season, there can be only one team from each conference, leading viewers to speculate forever on a robust catalog of delicious "What if?" scenarios.

Players sometimes get injured, prompting fans to wonder how their teams will cope without them. Sometimes, an injured player is (Final Fantasy VII spoilers) as sad a moment as Aeris dying.

Then there's the preseason, during which the coaching staffs devise new plays, revise old plays, and train the players to acquire new skills or polish old ones. You know Football has got its hooks in you if you're talking about the preseason—or the draft, during which teams acquire hot new players for big money.

Televised Football's biggest competitor, the Madden franchise of Football-inspired video games, flaunts direct interactivity: using a controller, you can become the quarterback, passing to a receiver, and then you can become the receiver and run the ball to a touchdown.

Many game-players say that playing Madden will teach you an appreciation of Football—John Madden himself has pointed out that Football coaches are getting younger, and they're citing the Madden video games as a valuable tool for learning the ways of the game.

Many game-players say that playing Madden will teach you an appreciation of Football—John Madden himself has pointed out that Football coaches are getting younger, and they're citing the Madden video games as a valuable tool for learning the ways of the game.

Though after spending more than twenty years carefully studying Football, I have to put my foot down: I enjoy the open-endedness of the Televised Football Viewing Experience—it's like Skyrim to Madden's Zelda.

With Televised Football, I'm my own taskmaster. I can think, "I bet they're going to run the ball the next play," and there it is. They run the ball, and I'm right—or they don't, and I'm surprised. That's interesting either way. Or I can think, three games into the season, "The 49ers are definitely going to be in the Super Bowl," and then, when it turns out I was right, there's an enormous headshot feeling, like I just sniper-shot a head the size of a dime from a mile away. No "Achievement Unlocked" pops up on the screen, though I'm fine with that. I enjoy setting my own achievements.

The character creation process of Televised American Football Viewing offers incredible freedom of classes: you can be a Barbarian (the beer-drinking, "WE WON!"-screaming happy and/or violent psycho), a Dungeon Master (pick a roster of currently active players and play "fantasy football" with a group of friends), a Calculator / Mathemagician (turn your near-psychic brain encyclopedia of Football strategy and creative statistics-reading ability into an airtight plan for betting and winning), or a Necromancer, like me (watch games usually with the sound off, and loud music playing, sitting motionless and speechless in a meditation posture, your internal monologue consisting of the word "interesting" repeated). There are plenty of sub-classes to master, as well—such as the topless, face-painted variety of shrieking fan-barbarian (Football's closest relative to video gaming's "furry").

Whatever you choose, know this: everyone who loves Football is, in some way, as much a "geek" for Football as people who play video games are for video games. And why shouldn't they be? Football is so deep and so complex you have to be some sort of geek for it just to understand what the heck is going on.

I know that many of you out there have the impression of Football as a game for big dumb knuckle-dragging, beer-guzzling brutes. I understand that whenever a sports championship ends, fans light a car on fire in the winners' hometown and the losers' hometown. However, if you look beyond the microscopically car-arson-decriminalizing, drunken-idiocy-enabling graphical facade, you'll find a game as strategically rich as Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem's Ivy-League-educated firebaby, with action as mechanically ferocious as an entire Street Fighter III: Third Strike tournament.

And that, my friends, is why Gears of War is better than Halo.

Center

Center of the line. Starts each play. Becomes a blocker once play has started. Maybe the most well-rounded player on the field—has the mammoth responsibility of coordinating protection at the line.

Agility: 1
Dexterity: 2
Intelligence: 3
Power: 4

Guards

Positioned around the center. When the play starts, they push against the defensive line to protect the quarterback. Typically coaches use four of them—five linemen, counting the center.

Agility: 1
Dexterity: 1
Intelligence: 3
Power: 5

Tackles

Bigger, stronger linemen who stand on the outside of the guards. They keep defenders away from key offensive players.

Agility: 2
Dexterity: 1
Intelligence: 2
Power: 5

Tight End

Specialty unit: powerful defensive lineman in his own right, though is also trained to be able to catch passes. A rare talent ("an expensive unit"). Typically just one per formation.

Agility: 3
Dexterity: 3
Intelligence: 2
Power: 4

Quarterback

The "Wizard." Can "magically" "transport" the ball long distances by passing to wide receivers. Not as physically adept as his supporters.

Agility: 2
Dexterity: 5
Intelligence: 5
Power: 1

Wide Receiver

"Rangers": skilled in evading the defense's human obstacle gauntlet ("level design"), can run great distances quickly enough to be ready to receive quarterback's passes, and gloriously run for the touchdown. These guys get the job done, and take a big chunk of the glory.

Agility: 5
Dexterity: 4
Intelligence: 3
Power: 2

Halfback

A sort of "Paladin"—the quarterback's most trusted defender/blocker, and carrier of the ball in most running plays. Also trained to occasionally receive short passes.

Agility: 5
Dexterity: 5
Intelligence: 3
Power: 3

Fullback

A "Warrior": the quarterback gives him the ball, and he runs it. More of a "power runner" than the Halfback—more muscularly built, adept at berserkering his way through dense crowds.

Agility: 4
Dexterity: 4
Intelligence: 2
Power: 4

Defensive Tackle

An "Aggro": wants to break through the offensive line, and does so with strength.

Agility: 1
Dexterity: 1
Intelligence: 1
Power: 5

Defensive End

A "Smart Aggro"—positioned on the end of the defensive line, and works to prevent offensive players from getting around.

Agility: 2
Dexterity: 2
Intelligence: 1
Power: 4

Linebackers

They are "Clerics." Though yardage in Football = "damage" for one team and "healing" for another, we'll call these guys "Clerics" because they are "defensive." The Middle Linebacker is often called "The Defensive Quarterback." They make intelligent, fast defensive decisions—not always brute force.

Agility: 2
Dexterity: 2
Intelligence: 3
Power: 5

Cornerbacks

"Rogues": they cover receivers, to keep them from completing successful attacks using either distractions or physical takedowns.

Agility: 4
Dexterity: 3
Intelligence: 2
Power: 3

Safety

The last line of defense: damage control. The ultimate healer. They stay back a bit, in case a receiver breaks away. When they tackle, they mean it.

Agility: 3
Dexterity: 5
Intelligence: 2
Power: 4

Coach

The mastermind of strategy. The Level-100 Wizard. The general. The king. The emperor.

Agility: N/A
Dexterity: N/A
Intelligence: ∞
Power: N/A

Scout

The grizzled old guy who goes from high school to high school with a clipboard, passing judgment on which kids are going to stand a chance in the NFL. If quarterbacks are wizards and coaches are level 100 wizards, this guy is god darn Gandalf.

Agility: N/A
Dexterity: N/A
Intelligence: ∞+1
Power: N/A

Tim Rogers is someone you can follow on twitter. He is the founder and director of Action Button Entertainment, makers of ZiGGURAT for iOS. He is currently directing development of ViDEOBALL, a next-level electronic sport that might be deeper than football and soccer combined.

Update: This article has been edited for clarity, composition, and a few extra details.

This article originally appeared on February 1, 2013.

Settle down, children! It's time for another fairy tale from that enchanted land of knights and princesses and New Rochelle trust funders, the New York Times real estate section.

This week, the section's apartment-hunting column, "The Hunt," stretches its definition of "hunt" to include Vanessa Csordas-Jenkins, a New York University junior who seeks "an advanced degree in quiet," or a pricey studio in a "1900 neo-Renaissance-style co-op with a beautiful marble lobby and a virtual doorman" near Union Square. Whichever!

You see, living with other students just wasn't cutting it, because the apartment walls had ventilation openings, and other people make noise that's, like, audible:

If a roommate was in the living room, the noise kept her awake. Ms. Csordas-Jenkins — who had received a diagnosis of a sleep disorder five years ago — was exhausted and cranky.

"I checked the box that said are you willing to pay more, because I need to be a healthy person," she said. "That request was denied. Presumably there were no open spaces, which was understandable, but certainly didn't help me any."

Earplugs combined with a white-noise machine were not enough. "It was impossible for me to live comfortably in that situation," she said.

Time for a change! Csordas-Jenkins did what any college student in search of lodgings would do: She hired broker Deborah Hughes to find her a perfect place where she could pay more, as you do.

On East 25th Street, near Second Avenue, a studio in the back of a small 1920 walk-up building with a sleeping loft was available for $1,950 a month. Ms. Csordas-Jenkins, an aspiring actress who is studying theater and dramatic literature, liked it but thought it was too far from campus.

She knew she would fret about rising early enough for class.

"It seemed like the potential for a really stressful situation for me if I woke up late and had to wait for the train," she said. She also wanted to avoid the sirens that came with proximity to the hospitals along First Avenue.

But good things come to those who wait. Things like a pre-war 240-square-foot studio, a charming "little room" just big enough for "a bunk bed that has a sofa underneath." So what if it has a clogging sink? It was totally worth the $3,000 broker fee and the rent... how much was the rent again?

She texted pictures to her parents, who also liked what they saw, and agreed to the rent of $2,100 a month. "I am grateful for my parents because I know how expensive my tuition is," Ms. Csordas-Jenkins said.

And they know it will come back to them sevenfold. Theater and dramatic literature are growing industries. I believe I read that in the Times once!

[Photo credit: Shutterstock]

Here is a column in the New York Times opinion section, by David Brooks, explaining what President Obama should do with the rest of his term, rather than trying to pass any laws to promote his agenda. He should revitalize and modernize the "Whig tradition," which:

believes in using the power of government to give marginalized Americans the tools to compete in a capitalist economy.

The Whigs fought against the divisive populist Jacksonians. They argued that it is better to help people move between classes than to pit classes against each other.

Brooks's vision of neo-Whiggism involves creating "a group of Simpson-Bowles-type commissions" to come up with policy suggestions that transcend the current party divisions—suggestions that Brooks helpfully pre-supplies, starting with policies to "improve family patterns" before working around to more early-childhood education, wage subsidies, and job creation. Far better that the president should convene commissions to eventually tell him the country needs jobs than that he should create any jobs.

(Also Brooks believes the president ought to ditch his "political operatives" and staff up the White House with a rising generation of "social entrepreneurs" to serve as a new ruling technocracy. These people should come from places like "the Clinton Global Initiative," where they are innocent of any connection to political operations.)

The alternative to this dynamic approach of setting up commissions would be to give in to the stagnating power of divisive populism. And the poor will never advance in America if they insist on talking about the fact that they have less money than the rich. Our classes will remain estranged, by meanness.

Meanwhile here is another column in the New York Times, from the business section, about the fact that JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon, who presided over $20 billion in fines this year because of the bank's comprehensive misconduct, saw his pay raised to $20 million:

[I]n the world of executive compensation, especially when viewed from the rarefied perspective of other chief executives, and more broadly on Wall Street, Mr. Dimon's pay — and how it was determined — is not only defensible, but laudable....

I spoke this week to several people with direct knowledge of the board's discussions about Mr. Dimon's pay. They said that the compensation committee went through an exhaustive process to determine the right level and that the board considered the likely negative reaction. "We were mindful of it, but it didn't influence our decision," said one, who like the others, spoke only on condition of anonymity....

Members of the compensation committee compared Mr. Dimon's compensation to that of other chief executives, both in banking and other industries, and to that of chief executives at other similarly large firms, which is the starting point for most compensation exercises.

This is the furthest thing from populism. Yet it, too, seems to be discouraging movement between our country's classes. Maybe another way to encourage people to move from one class to another would be to occasionally allow rich people to become poor.

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San Francisco magazine says all the heat surrounding Bitcoin has attracted the kind of unsavory schemers you might have once found on the trading room floor. But they're not just trying to manipulate the Bitcoin market. Their plan of attack relies on the frantic hype surrounding new varieties of "altcoins," like say Dogecoin:

Enter what we like to call the Coin Wolves, a group of cryptocurrency insiders who have begun to engage in pump and dump schemes, in which they use their community influence to artificially raise prices before selling out at the peak. The phenomenon has become common in the altcoin world. For instance, on January 28th at 1:00 pm, betacoin jumped 300% (from .00004 bitcoins to .00013 bitcoins), before crashing down to .00003 bitcoins by 1:10 pm. Some people made out pretty. Most didn't.

The magazine spoke an "altcoin speculator," although he's only made $10,000 in profit in the past month, and his money is "technically still tied up in bitcoin"—not exactly dwarf-tossing money:

How do the pump and dump operations work?

There's a couple of influential guys in the world of altcoins that tell the community when a pump will occur. They tell their followers that, at a specified time in a private forum, they will reveal the name of the altcoin to be pumped. The trick is that insiders already know the coin in question, so they're buying discreet amounts of it during the hours leading up to this greater pump. When the time comes, and the altcoin is revealed to the public, there's a huge rush to buy the coin and sell at the peak. It's a pure gamble for the majority of people involved, but the guys who already owned the coin can usually make off with a comfortable profit. Even so, the whole pump and dump process only lasts about 10 minutes, and the exchange site cryptsy gets a little overloaded I think, so it gets sketchy for everyone.

It's probably not going to end well when even the schemers are sketched out.

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

Years before Billy Standley died on Sunday, he planned out every detail of his funeral: He bought up the three plots next to his wife's grave, had his sons build him a custom casket, and arranged for the funeral director to embalm him in a sitting position. Earlier today, Standley's dream funeral took place, and he was laid to rest atop his beloved Harley-Davidson.

Standley first came up with the idea 18 years ago and, with the help of his family, worked on it on and off for years. The casket was made out of plexiglass, with wood and steel rods reinforcing its bottom.

"If you stopped by his house, he showed you his casket," his son Roy Standley told the Dayton Daily News. "He was proud of it."

Dave and Tammy Vernon, co-owners of a funeral home, were tasked with the embalming process. "We've done personalization… but nothing this extreme," Tammy Vernon said.

From the Dayton Daily News:

Five embalmers prepared his body and secured him with a metal back brace and straps to ensure he'd never lose his seat on his beloved bike, even as it was towed by a trailer to his final resting place. The casket was assembled in the garage of Vernon's' funeral home in Mechanicsburg, enshrining him with his trophies and well-worn leathers.

Along with his friends and family, motorcyclists from across the country reportedly rode along with his funeral procession through Mechanicsburg, Ohio.

"He'd done right by us all these years, and at least we could see he goes out the way he wanted to," his son Pete Standley said.

[h/t Daily Mail/Images via AP]

Good morning! Rob Ford got a ticket for jaywalking last night.

Toronto's number one football fan was crossing the street with friend and former staffer David Price in British Columbia around 8:45 pm when a female officer stopped the pair and issued each with a $109 citation for jaywalking.

"They went out of their way to do this," Ford told the Toronto Sun. "I said I support you guys. Did you arrest me because I am a Bronco's fan?"

Some guy on Instagram is currently being inundated with requests from reporters asking about this photo he posted with the mayor last night, including the hashtags "#RobFord #Hewasdrunk #nowimdrunk."

Ford denied allegations that he was also ticketed for public drunkenness. "All I have had here is a Diet Coke," he said.

MA'ALEH ADUMIM, WEST BANK – Scarlett Johansson's decision to part ways with international anti-poverty outfit Oxfam so she can keep her endorsement deal with Israeli fizz-maker SodaStream has intensified the global controversy over businesses that operate in the occupied Palestinian territories. But the Palestinian employees here basically have no idea who she is.

"Maybe if they saw her, they would know who she is,'' shrugged Wassim Siam, a 26-year-old quality-control employee approached by a reporter outside the plant just as he was arriving for his Friday shift.

He might be more clued in if someone bothered to come here and screen the commercial that was produced for millions to see on Super Bowl Sunday about the at-home carbonated drink machines that he and 1,300 others—500 Palestinian Arabs from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, 450 Arab Israelis, and 350 Jewish Israelis—assemble and package in the West Bank.

Siam says SodaStream's management has yet to brief employees about the Hollywood starlet, who signed on as the company's brand ambassador earlier this month, or tell them about the sultry commercial that Fox nixed from the Super Bowl over digs at Pepsi and Coke (an edited version was approved for broadcast). Not to mention her decision to end her seven-year tenure as an Oxfam ambassador after Oxfam objected to SodaStream's ownership of a plant in Palestinian territory that it, and the United Nations, regard as illegally occupied by the Israeli military.

"Nobody here knows she made a commercial for SodaStream," he said. "Nobody knows who she is, what, why, or when.''

Sporting black Ray-Bans and a matching black jacket, Siam was standing just outside of the plant's iron gate after getting off a bus that had ferried him from a checkpoint in East Jerusalem to the Mishor Adumim industrial zone, located in the bald hills of the Judean Desert that lead down to the Dead Sea.

U.S., Israeli, German, Australian, and Swedish (but not Palestinian) flags flap silently at the SodaStream gate. From the street outside the factory (management declined to open up to a reporter), the last row of mid-rise apartment buildings are visible just up the hill in the Israeli settlement of Maaleh Adumim. Popping up over the west horizon is the water tower of Hebrew University atop Mount Scopus in Jerusalem—the edge of Israel proper—a 15-minute drive away.

The flags of Israel, Germany, Australia, the United States, and Sweden—but not the Palestinian Authority—fly outside SodaStream's West Bank plant.

Just before 7 a.m., the silence outside the plant is disturbed by the roar of engines as the SodaStream fleet of buses and vans begin to queue up, and the Palestinian employees from nearby West Bank villages make their way to work.

In a Huffington Post blog post last week defending her association with SodaStream, Johansson said she's "proud of the...quality of their product and work environment," and said the factory places Israelis and Palestinians together side-by-side in cooperation. That frankly sounds too kumbaya to be true, but a similar sentiment was actually volunteered without prompting by the Palestinian workers here.

"Hell yeah, I'm happy. We're like family. We have fun,'' said Mohammed Yousef, 22, from the Palestinian village of Jaba. "We are Jews and Muslims here. We are here peacefully. We have no problems. Everyone is complaining about settlements here and everywhere, but SodaStream is different.''

The workers here say they take home about $1,200 monthly–anywhere from double to triple common wages in the territories. The company also provides pensions and some medical insurance.

Yousef said that many here are also for the most part unfamiliar with Oxfam, the anti-poverty human rights non-profit that has operated in the West Bank for years on behalf of the Palestinians.

Palestinians are, of course, familiar with their own government, which is encouraging international efforts to boycott the settlements that they — and most of the international community — say have been illegally constructed on their land and are slowly eating away at a future state on the West Bank.

"Mrs. Johnson [sic] decided to continue endorsing SodaStream, which operates illegally in the occupied State of Palestine,'' wrote Ahsraf Khatib, an official with the Negotiations Affairs Department, a Palestine Liberation Organization outfit that advises the Palestinian Authority in peace talks, in an email. "We believe that she should have dropped her endorsement in exchange of supporting human rights and freedom of people under occupation.''

Several years ago, the Palestinian Authority embarked on a major PR campaign to get Palestinians to boycott Israeli products from the settlements in their stores, drawing up long lists of goods to be banned from the shelves. The campaign largely failed.

Truth be told, the SodaStream workers and local Palestinians were downright peeved when asked about the efforts of solidarity activists and their own government to boycott SodaStream. That could cost the hundreds of Palestinians wage earners salaries that are significantly higher than what they would make at home.

"Prostitutes are better than politics. Politics doesn't bring me bread,'' said one 34-year-old packaging worker who declined to give his name. "Leave me alone with the Palestinian state. If they close the plant, where will I go?''

Just a two-minute drive away from the industrial zone is a small strip of Israeli retailers featuring a discount Rami Levy supermarket chain (which also employees Palestinians from the West Bank) that is a big draw for Israeli locals.

A random sampling of shoppers in the parking lot revealed that, like their Palestinian neighbors, most Israelis were vaguely familiar, at best, with Johansson. Still, her stand against Oxfam and against the boycott movement has won her decent media coverage here, and several had caught wind of the controversy on the TV news.

Even though the movie star insisted her endorsement of SodaStream is not political, some see it as an expression of solidarity with Israel.

"We're very proud of her. She's Jewish. She's standing firm. Good for her.'' said Einat Sabag, a 40-year-old lawyer at Israel's Courts Authority, as she loaded her trunk up with groceries. "Ma'aleh Adumim isn't a settlement on a hill. Its a city that's just a few minutes from Jerusalem.''

If anything is causing unease at the SodaStream factory, it's anxiety that the firm might shut down the West Bank plant and move all of its operations inside of Israel, where a new factory is set to open in May. Several weeks ago, about 100 got layoff notices.

Siam, who eventually checked out the Johansson commercial on YouTube, told me he liked it, especially the dig at Coke and Pepsi. "That was so cool.'' That said, Siam said he understood the objections of the pro-Palesitnian activists who denounced his company's ambassador.

"I talk a lot to friends abroad. They say, 'You are an Arab. How can you work there?'" he said. "Nobody knows there are 1,000 people and their lives will be turned upside down by the [boycott]. You are killing them, so stop it.''

Josh Mitnick is a reporter in Tel Aviv who writes for the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications.

[Photos by Josh Mitnick]

Earlier today on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, the volcanic Mount Sinabung erupted, killing at least 14 people including a group of schoolchildren. The death toll is expected to climb.

The volcano has been active for months, spouting hot ash over the various villages that populate the area. But on Friday, officials allowed some evacuated residents to return to their homes outside a three mile radius surrounding the volcano.

According to Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the spokesman for the country's National Disaster Management Agency, they expect to uncover more bodies as rescue efforts continue, but progress on that front is currently being impeded. "We suspect there are more victims but we cannot recover them because the victims are in the path of the hot clouds," he said.

But among the confirmed dead were four high schoolers who were in the village of Sukameriah on a sightseeing trip to the volcano, which awakened in September after being dormant for three years.

[image via Getty]

Eco-saboteur Rebecca Rubin was sentenced to five years in prison this week for her involvement in actions taken by the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front back in the '90s. Also she was ordered to read Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book, David and Goliath.

The Canadian Press reports:

She was ordered to pay more than $13 million in restitution upon her release and perform 200 hours of community service. Rubin is a Canadian citizen. Her sentence will not be carried out until she is naturalized in the U.S., which Aiken said she expects soon.

Aiken included in her sentence an order to read two books: "David and Goliath," by Malcolm Gladwell, which Aiken said Rubin could learn non-violent means to protesting systems she perceives as unjust; and "Nature's Trust," by University of Oregon environmental law professor Mary C. Wood.

Can judges really assign required reading to the convicted? Is that even allowed? Does Rubin have to write a book report? And more importantly, couldn't forcing someone to read Gladwell be considered cruel and unusual punishment?

One might imagine that the American justice system is sufficiently brutal without throwing homework into the mix, but there is in fact a long-standing and heartwarmingly genteel tradition of prescribing books to convicts.

In July 2012, for example, a woman in Pennsylvania was sentenced to eight years in prison and also to read the Book of Job. For a time in 2011, one Houston judge's sentences would include an order to read a Christian workbook (?), The Heart of the Problem.

Not all such requirements are religious, however: when teen revelers broke into the late Robert Frost's Vermont home in 2008 and caused $10,600 worth of damage, part of their sentence included attending a seminar led by a Middlebury professor on Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken"—a fate worse than death.

But then, perhaps such skepticism is misplaced: evidence does exist that more structured bibliotherapy programs like the Changing Lives Through Literature program really do have a positive impact on individual convicts' lives—even if it remains unlikely that poetry will ever change underlying structural issues, like the fact that more than 3,000 people are serving life sentences for non-violent crimes.

It was loooooong ago established that Toronto mayor Rob Ford has no shame, so it should be no surprise that he went out to a pub in Vancouver last night while in town for a funeral. There, Canada's second most notorious drug addict celebrity found himself trapped in a web of selfies taken by adoring fans that don't have to worry about the repercussions of his governance.

Though Ford he insisted that he was sober, Instagram hashtags on these photos include #sowasted #hotmess #drunk #drunkeness #whatwashethinking and, of course, #wantcoke. Then he got a ticket for jaywalking.

In which the paper of record links to the website Know Your Meme in an article about snowy owls. What a world!

I tell this story often.

My first legal job was as a public defender in Seattle. When I was getting ready for my first jury trial, I scoped out the empty courtroom that would ultimately host the trial. While scoping and practicing my (compelling) cross-examination, I wore a suit (my first new suit!) and tried to replicate the experience of trial—no surprises. “Know where the jury box is, where the defense table is, etc., etc.” No surprises.

While I was practicing my cross-examination, a young white lady came into the courtroom. I smiled at her and continued pantomiming the interrogation. She smiled back—very cordial. Then, with that smile on her face, she asked me very politely, “Excuse me, sir, are you waiting for your attorney?”

I know, I know.

Anyway, I didn’t let on that I was a lawyer. I smiled again—it was actually cute. I mean, it reeked of white privilege, but it was cute. She was sweet. She later found out and apologized profusely. I believe that her apology was sincere and that she was very embarrassed. Whatever—I get it. I wasn’t even mad or offended. White privilege—a huge Native dude with long hair in a suit and a courtroom? Seriously? Who knows—maybe I’d think the same thing.

Still, the fact remains that unlike the general legal presumption of innocence—that a person is innocent until proven guilty—the big brown guy (suit or not!) was guilty until she later found out that I was innocent.

The lawyer world is quite small and socially inbred in Seattle (and most other places as well). As a result, inevitably the little young white prosecutor who cast me as a criminal defendant and I found ourselves at the same event, hosted by one of my lawyer friends and primarily attended by lawyers. The young lady lawyer who mistook me for a criminal defendant and I talked and laughed about the whole thing. She told one of her friends—a public defender with whom I played basketball (he sucked)—the story. He was a very nice white guy, thought of himself as a progressive, and we all laughed at the story: “Yeah, little did she know that the huge, long-haired Native American guy was not only a lawyer, but a lawyer who went to (expletive) Columbia Law School!”

We laughed. It was funny. Yeah, I mean what are the odds? The big-ass Indian that she asks if he was waiting for his lawyer happens to be an Ivy League law school-trained lawyer who was pretty darn good at this trial thing.

Funny.

And to tell you the truth, I never really thought about it until these past couple of weeks, while watching the coverage of cornerback Richard Sherman from my beloved Seattle Seahawks.

Richard Sherman—a young NFL cornerback who made the biggest play of his life in the biggest game of his life(!!)­—got excited and passionate and competitive in a league that values excitement, passion and competitiveness. For those of you living under a rock, Sherman made the game-saving play in the end zone against the Seahawks' bitter rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, in the NFC Championship game. That's a big deal, and he acted like it was a big deal.

When asked about the play (we’ll just call it “The Play”), he screamed his response. He didn’t curse, didn’t threaten anybody and he spoke in complete sentences. A rarity in pop culture viral videos these days.

Yet there was substantial outrage and backlash about the spectacle. Comments sections of websites that ran footage of The Play are filled with comments calling Sherman “dumb nigger” and “jungle monkey” and saying that he makes Black folks look stupid (these are actual comments from twitter and other websites). Some silly man—a Black man—named Damien Wayans said that Richard Sherman “set black people back 30 years.” (In an interesting sidenote to the Richard Sherman “controversy,” while Sherman got lambasted for being too loud and vocal, his teammate Marshawn Lynch gets crucified and makes people feel “uncomfortable” because he doesn’t speak enough to the media and athletes are expected to talk. Mixed messages anyone?)

Obviously these comments are silly, racist and sad. But in the response to the response­, the Sherman defenders have been equally guilty of silly, racist and sad behavior. Let me explain.

To balance out the racist insults—“nigger,” “monkey” and/or allegations that Sherman somehow magically set Black folks “back 30 years” (which I actually wouldn’t mind, FYI—“Thriller” would be killing the game right about now, Cosby Show coming up, I’d get to the “Purple Rain” experience anew, and the Wayans family would still be actually funny), people chose a particular kind of rhetoric to defend Sherman.

Take, for example, Isaac Paul at the Huffington Post (not to pick on Paul, because there were plenty of defenses like this):

Firstly, we're talking about a 25-year-old who came out of the streets of Compton, California. Sherman graduated from one of the worst school districts in the United States, one that boasts a high-school graduation rate of 57 percent. In a country where 68 percent of all federal and state inmates are lacking a high school diploma, you could say Sherman avoided a horrifying fate. But to say he "got lucky" or "escaped" would be foolhardy. He didn't "just graduate," either. He finished with a 4.2 GPA, second in his class, and went on to Stanford University, one of the most prestigious places to get an education in the entire world. He busted out in a rocket ship. He went from a world of gang violence and drugs to everything that Palo Alto and Stanford University represent…

There are some key facts that those folks who come to the defense of Richard Sherman usually point out: He’s from Compton, he graduated from Stanford, and he's never been arrested. Also, he’s never cursed in a post-game interview. Moreover, he doesn’t have reputation as a “dirty player.” And finally, they note that he appealed and won when he was supposed to have been suspended for allegedly using performance-enhancing drugs.

Then those defenses of Sherman will usually contrast Sherman’s immaculate record with the sins of other NFL players. They might cite that 31 NFL players were arrested for everything from gun charges and driving under the influence to murder in the past year.

And it sounds innocuous enough. Noble even. And no doubt, these folks who presented these sorts of defenses have good intentions. But the road to hell is littered with good intentions.

And white privilege.

We all understand that the people who make the initial damning racist conclusions in these two quick stories are dead wrong. Terrible and harmful. Specifically, the little white prosecutor who thought that I was a criminal defendant is an easy target—yes, of course she should know better than to assume that this big brown dude in the courtroom has to be a defendant.

That’s easy.

Likewise, obviously the folks who call Richard Sherman a “nigger,” a “monkey” or say that Sherman somehow set Black folks back 30 years—those people are clearly stupid. Racist. Easy to categorize. And we judge them and write articles about them and sit very regally in our liberal sensibilities: “We know that Richard Sherman is not a nigger or a monkey or has set Black folks back 30 years. We know that, instead, he is a Stanford-educated, non-troublemaker who gives charitably.”

And we sit proud of ourselves that we set those racists straight.

But, in the immortal words of Nate Dogg, “Hold up wait…”

The “defenses” to the overt racism and white privilege are pretty damn loaded too. When that incident with the young prosecutor lady happened, I really didn’t think about it a whole bunch. Mistakes happen, whatever—I wasn’t mad. I mean, I recognized the “stereotype” part but it’s no big deal; I actually thought it was kind funny.

And I certainly didn’t think about the guy who pointed out my credentials and came to my defense. He undoubtedly had good intentions. Yet now, looking through the lens of this Richard Sherman incident, I see it slightly differently. Yes, my co-worker bravely told the young lady how silly she was by explaining my credentials: I’m a lawyer. I went to Columbia Law School. That’s cool.

But why would the fact that I happen to be a lawyer matter when the young white lady assumed that I was a criminal defendant? Why did it matter that I happened to attend Columbia Law School? Would it somehow have been OK to assume that a huge Native man in the courtroom had to be a criminal defendant if he didn’t happen to have gone to Columbia Law School?

How would she have known the difference?

Similarly, these defenses to Richard Sherman imply that it would, somehow, be OK to say that he’s a dumb nigger, jungle monkey or that he'd set Black people back 30 years if he didn’t have those outstanding credentials. That, somehow, those credentials create some insulation from those insults and that, while we might feel that way about some Black folks, he’s different.

Richard Sherman, despite being loud and physically intimidating to poor white women reporters, is still the right kind of big brown man. We big-ass brown men are taught from an early age: don’t be too big. Don’t be too brown. Don’t be too loud. People get scared.

Things have changed. Right? I mean, now in 2014, instead of simply saying, “Big Brown Men you all have to know your places” folks who congratulate themselves on not being racist say, “Big Brown Men, now you can be loud or big or brown just as long as your credentials are stellar.”

Maybe it’s just me, but that seems to send a very troubling message, a message that the nation is in no shape, or rush, to understand.

Gyasi Ross is a member of the Blackfeet Nation/Suquamish Territories. He is an
activist, attorney, and author of the book, "How to Say I Love You in Indian" www.cutbankcreekpress.com. He can be contacted @BigIndianGyasi

[Image by Jim Cooke, photo via Getty]

The CBC on Thursday reported that the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), a Canadian spy agency, has been using airport wi-fi to track travelers. The report was based on a document leaked to Glenn Greenwald by whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Yesterday Prime Minister Stephen Harper's parliamentary secretary, Paul Calandra responded by saying it was all made up and Glenn Greenwald is a 'porn-spy.' Excuse me?

East Lansing police are looking for a gunman who shot two Michigan State students in their apartment early this morning. One of the victims, Dominique Nolff, has died, and the other has been released from the hospital. This is the third shooting at a college campus in the past two weeks.