Chad Johnson's arrest puts ex-Dolphin's career on hold

Chad Johnson's arrest puts ex-Dolphin's career on hold

Chad Johnson's arrest puts ex-Dolphin's career on holdBy Gregg Rosenthal
Around The League editor
Published: Aug. 12, 2012 at 10:06 p.m. Updated: Aug. 12, 2012 at 11:17 p.m. Print     Friend(s) Email  Your Email Send Email By Gregg Rosenthal Wife intends to press chargesMankins no longer on PUP list after return to Patriots practiceMore Columns >
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Chad Johnson was serious for precisely one moment during last week's "Hard Knocks" episode. It came after Miami Dolphins coach Joe Philbin warned Johnson to "temper" some of his off-color comments.

Philbin then asked Johnson how everything else was going in the receiver's life.

"Good. This is my life," said Johnson, looking Philbin in the eye. "This is it. So it's going well."

In that moment, the viewer could actually see how much football meant to Johnson. One moment in Johnson's driveway has taken football away from him.

This isn't about guilt or innocence. It isn't about the details of Johnson's domestic violence charge. All of those facts will come out in time, and we're hesitant to make sweeping moral judgements from thousands of miles away. This is about where Johnson goes from here and the sad possible end of an 11-year career.

Philbin did not want the distraction that Johnson's arrest would bring, and it's hard to blame him. The Dolphins organization rescued Johnson off the scrap heap when perhaps no other team would. Around the League's Brian McIntyre reported in June that the Dolphins gave the former Mr. Ochocinco a contract with no guaranteed money. The Dolphins wanted to see how it all worked out in August before committing to him.

Things went well on the field. Johnson was listed as a starter, along with Legedu Naanee and Davone Bess, on Miami's first depth chart. But Johnson didn't hold up his end of the bargain off the field.

Young, talented players often get second, third and fourth chances. The Titans haven't given up on wide receiver Kenny Britt despite his eight incidents with police since he was drafted in 2009. Buccaneers wide receiver Vincent Jackson scored a huge contract despite having DUI convictions on his record. Johnson, however, is nearing the end of his career. He was trying to make the team, while Philbin is trying to establish a culture. Johnson left Philbin no choice.

NFL Network and NFL.com's Steve Wyche talked to league executives on Sunday night who believe Johnson could have trouble finding work in the short term. Johnson's legal case likely will have to play out before any team considers him. Teams will want to see if Johnson is subject to discipline by the league. There's no telling how long that will take, but it would be surprising to see Johnson on a roster in Week 1, when contracts are guaranteed for the entire season.

We're not going to say Johnson's career is over because no one knows. Terrell Owens was cut for being a malcontent in the Indoor Football League not so long ago. His former employers essentially tore Owens' character apart in a press release. T.O. still got another job.

It's possible Johnson will get another shot some day, but now he must focus on his family and his court case. Just a week after Johnson said that his life is football, his life in football is on hold.

Life’s a Pitch: Is Liverpool’s Agger worth £20m?

Life’s a Pitch: Is Liverpool’s Agger worth £20m?

But with the start of the new football season just over one week away and the conclusion of this summer’s transfer window (31 August) getting ever closer it appears as if things are about to get serious.
Chelsea, Arsenal and to a lesser extent Tottenham have largely gone about their own business this summer, landing their principle targets early. But for those clubs yet to achieve their main transfer aims, such as Manchester City and Liverpool, the games of cat and mouse are well underway.
In short, Man City want to buy Liverpool’s Daniel Agger. Liverpool want in excess of £20m for him – in order to fund other purchases – but Man City feel that’s a lot for an injury prone 27 year-old defender with only two years remaining in his contract.
Life’s a Pitch panellist David Walker also reckons £20m is too much, but Tom Hopkinson disagrees. Check out the Liverpool discussion video and its numerous comments to see what everyone else thinks.
But the main event in transfer talk this summer is Arsenal’s Robin van Persie. Manchesters United and City, as well as Juventus, want him, he apparently fancies Man Utd, but Arsenal and Man Utd are nowhere near agreeing a fee. Plus, there’s the latest suggestion that Van Persie has been so impressed by Arsene Wenger’s wheeling and dealing this summer that he’s actually considering staying. Watch the panellists try and get to the bottom of what will actually happen with Van Persie.
Two other players who could also get embroiled in the transfer market are Van Persie’s team-mate Andrey Arshavin and Chelsea’s Daniel Sturridge. Both have been on the periphery of the first-team – Arshavin’s even been out on loan – and we discuss whether they’ll be on the move shortly.
Mike Calvin, meanwhile, takes a look at the career prospects of West Ham’s Ravel Morrison after the former Man Utd starlet agreed a season-long loan to Championship Birmingham.
We also analyse all the biggest transfer rumours and assess whether the handful of deals that have been completed end up with in success or failure.

Life's a beach

Life's a beach


Which seemed pretty pointless. It was like going to an Olympic final and cheering for the human beings, because both teams in the women's beach volleyball were from over the pond.

That didn't mean there wasn't an edge to it. You know what local rivalries are like: it probably meant there was more of an edge to it. They all hail from California, too. "These girls don't like each other," I was tipped off by one fan, who seemed to know her beach volleyball.

On one side of the net, in the red bikinis, we had the Amazonian Kerri Walsh Jennings, all six-foot-three of her, and Misty May-Treanor, the pairing who have won the last two Olympics. And on the other side of the net, in the white bikinis, were the challengers: Jennifer 'Jen' Kessy and April Ross, the 2009 world champions.

Everything about Olympic beach volleyball is incongruous, especially when played at Horse Guards Parade against the backdrop of some of London's architectural splendour. In the crowd, blokes in suits drinking bottles of official Olympic beer rub up against others in Hawaiian shirts and beach hats. The crowd seems overwhelmingly male. Funny, that.

There's a party atmosphere - "Let's have a parteeeeee," urges the stadium announcer, repeatedly - with loud music, dancers and general joviality. And then the teams appear and threaten to kill the mood, because they are deadly serious.


It seems that everyone has come for a bit of a laugh, except the players. Then again, they are professionals: May-Treanor, the 35-year old playing her final game here, has career earnings of over $2m, and the others are not far behind. And an Olympic medal is an Olympic medal, after all. It doesn't have an asterisk, indicating: 'This was only for beach volleyball.'

True, it is difficult to imagine that Baron Pierre de Coubertin had beach volleyball in mind when he resurrected the Olympic Games in 1896, but he might have approved of the setting. It has won universal praise, with Horse Guards Parade described by some as the world's finest beach volleyball court. What, better than Copacabana? Better than Venice Beach and Bondi Beach? Really?

The game gets underway and it's level pegging until 11-11, and then the defending champs begin to pull away. I'm no expert, but it seems to me that having a six-foot-three Amazonian at the net is a great advantage. Walsh Jennings just stands there, blocking or smashing, while May-Treanor scurries around the sand, flicking the ball back into the air for her partner to finish it off. The other pair do a lot of scurrying, but many of their efforts serve as reminders that sand is not a great surface for sport. Terra infirma. Even the dancers, who appear in the interludes, struggle.

The champions win the first set, 21-15. And the second follows a similar pattern: level until the champs pull away to 14-11, and it begins to look ominous for Kessy and Ross. There's a shaft of light at 14-18, when the champs serve long, but in the next point Walsh Jennings is at it again. The challengers retrieve, set it up, smash, but it's as though a wall has been erected on the other side of the net: Walsh Jennings gets in the way every time.

It ends with a damp squib, when Kessy's serve lands out, and Walsh Jennings and May-Treanor collapse to the sand, and their tears begin to flow into the sand.

Like May-Treonor, Kessy said she would retire before Rio, so in theory Walsh Jennings and Kessy could join forces - but although both teams were gracious towards the other, their body language afterwards didn't suggest that this is on the cards.


So, there's the beach volleyball, with the men's final on Thursday evening. There is a lingering argument about whether it should be in the Olympics. If we have the beach version of a sport that is already in the Games in its indoor form, why not swingball as well as tennis, or subbuteo as well as football?

A little more seriously, if it's about appealing to the youth audience that the IOC is so eager to engage (though all four women's beach volleyball finalists were in their 30s), then why not urban downhill mountain biking, or parkour? Both would be spectacular and thrilling.

It also seems a shame that the glamour of beach volleyball leaves indoor volleyball in the shade. And it doesn't help, in London, that the indoor game is out on a limb, at Earl's Court, in the cavernous exhibition centre. It's a venue that lacks the shiny newness of the Olympic Park, or the splendour of Horse Guards Parade; it's a little bit shabby, but the sport is brilliant.

And the indoor volleyball players are phenomenal athletes. The Goliaths on each side of the net combine great skill with extraordinary dexterity, stooping to reach low balls, stretching to smash high balls and sustaining long rallies -- much longer than their beach-dwelling cousins.

Still, Prince Harry was a fan of the beach volleyball, and returned for Wednesday's final. "We wore our bikinis for him," said the defeated Ross.

Life in prison what Loughner deserves

Life in prison what Loughner deserves

On Jan. 8, 2011 a psychotic and insane Jared Loughner terrorized this community, killing six and wounding 14. A year and a half later, his saner self saved this community further harm by admitting to what he did and agreeing to spend the rest of his life in prison.

The agreement was a bargain with prosecutors – in exchange for his guilty pleas to murder and other charges, prosecutors agreed to not pursue the death penalty against him.

By avoiding a trial, the victims, their families and Tucson avoid being forced to relive that awful day over and over again as prosecutors recreate for a jury the minute-by-minute horrors of the shooting through the testimony of victims, through a video of the shooting as it happened and through grisly photos of the crime scene.

In the end, the sane (or mostly sane) Loughner did what his insane self couldn’t – the right thing.

Yet the decision by prosecutors and Loughner is not without some controversy. Some in this community want to see Loughner put to death for his crimes.

For them, that’s justice.

But it’s not justice. It’s not even punishment. It’s revenge.

Putting a killer to death accomplishes little for the victims of crime or their families. It doesn’t bring the dead back to life, make the scars from bullet wounds disappear, regenerate severed nerves or wash away memories of the terror, pain and sorrow of that horrible day.

Not that the death of a killer doesn’t bring about some primordial sense of satisfaction. It does. But that’s not what justice is about. Our justice system is about punishment for crimes, not retribution for victims. While the blood feud, vendetta, or eye-for-an-eye mentalities were part of archaic justice systems, civilization has outgrown them.

A civil society doesn’t kill its citizens, even if they’ve committed horrendous acts of violence.

If we are to say that killing is wrong, we can’t turn around and say, “except for when the state does it.” If a person has no right to kill another, except in extreme instances in which he is in mortal peril and it’s the only way for him to save himself, then it’s wrong for the state to do it absent any mortal peril.

The state, though, is only in mortal peril at times of war.

Certainly a person in the act of killing others may have to be killed by the state’s law enforcement officers in the interest of saving lives. But if that person is captured instead, as Loughner was, the peril is over. The state has no right to take his life.

Loughner, by his crimes and despite his mental illness, has lost his right to liberty, to walk amongst us in peace. We have every right to be afraid of him, to protect ourselves from the psychotic malevolence that dwells inside of him, and to punish him for the lives he destroyed, even if that destruction was the result of mental illness.

He will deserve every day he spends in prison.

But just like he had no right to kill John Roll, Christina Taylor-Green, Gabe Zimmerman, Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck and Dorwan Stoddard we have no right to kill him, even if it would be oddly satisfying.

New life on Mars: how Curiosity saved NASA

New life on Mars: how Curiosity saved NASA

To look at the scenes of jubilation - the whooping, the hollering and the high-fiving - you would think that Team USA had just picked up a dozen gold medals. But these scenes were taking place more than 8000 kilometres away from London in Pasadena, California, and the celebrations were not to mark the fact that someone had run faster, or jumped higher, or thrown further; they signified that perhaps the most audacious and risky mission ever to another planet appeared to have been a stunning success.

The Mars Curiosity rover is the largest, most expensive, most complicated and most intelligent machine humans have sent to another planet. Yesterday, about 3.30pm Sydney time, Curiosity came slamming into the Martian atmosphere at about 21,200 km/h, its heat shield glowing with friction as it heated up to hundreds of degrees.

What happened next was a complex technological ballet that was as controversial as it was clever. First parachutes, then retro rockets, then finally a Heath Robinson contraption called a sky crane were used to slow the six-wheeled rover's speed down to 2kmh. The final few seconds of its descent saw it being lowered on four spindly cables from the hovering sky crane before it touched down safely on the sandy floor of Gale Crater.

Many feared that this landing system, which had never been used before, was simply too complicated, and that the $US2.5 billion mission could fail. But the doubters - myself included - have been proved wrong.

"Touchdown confirmed," said engineer Allen Chen at the jet propulsion laboratory (JPL), NASA's planetary science headquarters. "We landed in a nice flat spot. Beautiful, really beautiful," said engineer Adam Steltzner, the man in charge of the landing. So much was hanging on this mission that some people at JPL were nearly physically sick, and at one point the centre's director, Charles Elachi, had to plead for calm.

After the first test pictures came through from the Martian surface, President Barack Obama lauded the success as "an unprecedented feat of technology that will stand as a point of national pride far into the future".

So what does this mean for our understanding of the Red Planet? First, it cannot be stressed too highly that this was make or break for NASA. Last year saw the effective cancellation of the manned space program with the retirement of the shuttles. If Curiosity had ended up as scrap metal, NASA's planetary science division would have been humiliated, and any requests for funding for future missions would probably have been refused.

Indeed, according to Mars expert Bob Zubrin, the loss of Curiosity could have meant effectively an end to the US venturing into space for at least a generation, and the keys to the solar system would have been handed to the Chinese. But for now, the Red Planet is firmly in American hands.

This is NASA's seventh successful landing on Mars: the first two landers, Viking 1 and Viking 2, touched down in 1976. Since then more landers, including the two large rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, which touched down in 2004, have revolutionised our view of this alien world.

Ever since mankind turned our telescopes on the fourth planet in the 17th century, arguments have raged over what kind of world Mars is. Importantly, aside from the moon, it is the only celestial body whose solid surface can clearly be seen from Earth.

Early on it was clear that Mars had ice at the poles and changed colour on a seasonal basis. It had a day just 30 minutes longer than ours, and well into the 20th century most astronomers assumed that Mars was fairly Earth-like and probably home to some sort of life.

The most enthusiastic proponent of "a living Mars" was astronomer Percival Lowell, who in the 1890s at his observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, spent night after night observing his beloved Mars. He saw, or at least thought he saw, a network of canals on the surface, which he reasoned had been built by Martians to irrigate their arid equatorial regions. But talk of canals vanished with the arrival of the first space probes in the 1960s, which showed an arid cratered surface, no canals and certainly no Martians.

What is interesting is how far the pendulum has swung back since - away from Mars as a lifeless, airless lump of rock much like our moon, towards something more like Lowell's view of the place. There are no canal builders perhaps, but we now have the sense of an active world with mighty volcanoes and a surface covered with evidence that this planet once had huge rivers, lakes and even seas.

Observations from orbit, including those from the Mars Global Surveyor, have shown evidence that liquid water may flow on Mars today. What we don't know is whether there is or has ever been life on Mars.

The Viking landers had equipment that watered and fertilised the soil to see if any microbes might be lurking there. The results were inconclusive although some scientists - including the man who defined the experiment, Gil Levin - insist that Viking did find evidence for life.

Spirit and Opportunity were not equipped for life detection experiments but they found that Mars is made of a wide variety of rock, including sediments that were laid down in an aquatic environment.

Curiosity too is not equipped to find life directly (except perhaps the sort that would come and wave at one of its 17 cameras) and this is something that has been met with raised eyebrows. A few years ago, I asked Mike Meyer, head of Mars exploration at NASA, why he would spend all that money sending a robot the size of a large car to Mars and not look for life directly, merely evidence for conditions that are or were life-friendly. He replied that since we have no idea of what Martian life may be like, searching for it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Nevertheless, many scientists, including Britain's Colin Pillinger (the man behind the doomed Beagle 2 mission to Mars), think that life detection should be a priority.

This niggle aside, Curiosity is a fabulous beast. Nuclear-powered, its plutonium batteries provide enough juice to keep it trundling around at a stately 160 metres an hour for maybe a decade or even two. During this time, it will have the opportunity to poke, prod and zap with its laser the complex suite of rocks in Gale Crater and maybe even to climb the mighty five-kilometre high Mount Aeolis (also known as Mount Sharp at NASA) which lies in its centre.

In the coming days, expect to see hundreds of stunning images showing landscapes far more dramatic than we have seen before. In the next six months Curiosity will tell us more about Mars than we have learnt in the last 40 years. When humans eventually visit, towards the end of this century, they will arrive at a world that will be familiar.

NASA spoke of its seven minutes of terror on Sunday night as Curiosity came shrieking through the Martian air like a man-made meteor. It now looks forward to many years of quiet satisfaction and scientific intrigue as this most extraordinary of envoys from humanity undertakes its Olympian exploration of the red world.

Apple cloud 'life' wiped

Apple cloud 'life' wiped


What would you do if your entire digital life started evaporating before your eyes and there was virtually nothing you could do about it?

This is the nightmare scenario that greeted US technology journalist Mat Honan, who had all of the contents of his iPhone, iPad and Macbook Air wiped, and lost control of his Gmail and Twitter accounts, all in the span of just over 15 minutes.

And the scariest part is that he had a strong, seven-digit alphanumeric password. Apple has confirmed to Honan that its own tech support staff provided the hacker entry into his online world via a bit of clever social engineering.

Several others have reported similar stories of Apple handing access to their accounts over to hackers. Security experts say it is "very concerning" that Apple's staff could be so easily tricked, while even Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak believes the move to cloud computing will create "horrendous" problems in the next five years.

It all snowballed after the hacker gained access to Honan's account on iCloud, an Apple service that allows users to keep all of their files backed up in the online "cloud", to trace stolen Apple devices and even to wipe them remotely if they fall into the wrong hands.

Once the hacker gained access to Honan's iCloud account, he or she was able to reset his password, before sending the confirmation email to the trash. Since Honan's Gmail is linked to his .mac email address, the hacker was also able to reset his Gmail password by sending a password recovery email to his .mac address.

Minutes later, the hacker used iCloud to wipe Honan's iPhone, iPad and Macbook Air remotely. Since the hacker had access to his email accounts, it was effortless to access Honan's other online accounts such as Twitter.

In a blog post published at the weekend, Honan said he was playing with his daughter when his phone suddenly went dead and rebooted to the set-up screen.

"This was irritating, but I wasn't concerned. I assumed it was a software glitch. And, my phone automatically backs up every night. I just assumed it would be a pain in the ass, and nothing more," Honan wrote.

"I entered my iCloud login to restore, and it wasn't accepted. Again, I was irritated, but not alarmed."

He then fired up his Macbook to try to restore his data from a back-up, but an iCal message popped up saying his Gmail account information was wrong, and then the screen went blank, asking for a four-digit pin.

"By now, I knew something was very, very wrong. I walked to the hallway to grab my iPad from my work bag. It had been reset too. I couldn't turn on my computer, my iPad, or iPhone," Honan wrote.

The hacker eventually deleted Honan's Google account and he was unable to restore it as this required Google sending a text message to his phone, which was now offline.

Honan was previously a writer for gadget blog Gizmodo and still had Gizmodo's Twitter linked to his account. The hacker started tweeting from the Gizmodo account and from Honan's personal account with racist and other offensive remarks.

Apple's tech support could do virtually nothing to help and told Honan that the data on his iOS devices would most likely be gone for good without "serious forensics".

"I've lost more than a year's worth of photos, emails, documents, and more. And, really, who knows what else. It's been a s****y night," Honan concluded.

Honan eventually got his iPhone back online but because he uses Google Voice, and his account was deleted along with his Google account, he couldn't send or receive text messages or make calls. All he could do was wait to see if Google would decide to reinstate his account.

He wrote on Twitter that, even though he used a password management tool called 1Password, this provided no protection as the hacker broke into his account without knowing his passwords.

Honan's blog post went viral on the net, and it wasn't long before staff at Apple, Google and Twitter were on to it. Clearly, being a technology journalist for one of the major tech sites helped him as his Google and Twitter accounts were restored on the weekend. Honan also sent an email to Apple chief executive Tim Cook and, within 10 minutes, received a call from Apple Care.

The hacker also contacted Honan to let him know that they access his account "via Apple tech support and some clever social engineering that let them bypass security questions".

Apple has today confirmed to Honan that it was tricked by the hacker and has since assured him that now only one person at Apple can make changes to his account. The company is still trying to restore the data on his MacBook.

Honan is not the only one whose online life has been upended by a hacker who used social engineering tricks on Apple. Chance Graham, a "designer at Apple" according to his Twitter page, tweeted: "Exact same thing happened to me - iCloud was social engineered via support. All accounts compromised. Hacker contacts me. Same m/o?"

The website MyBB.com was recently hacked and in a blog post the site's owners revealed the attackers used the same iCloud social engineering method.

Chris Gatford, of security consultancy HackLabs, said social engineering was always the easiest method to gain unauthorised access and organisations could only defend themselves by having it performed and seeing how employees react.

"This I assume has not happened at Apple specifically the people at Apple Tech support anyhow," said Gatford.

"This is a very concerning situation and I hope Apple look into this and investigate ASAP."

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak predicted at the weekend that there would be "horrible problems" in the coming years as cloud-based computing takes hold.

"I really worry about everything going to the cloud. I think it's going to be horrendous. I think there are going to be a lot of horrible problems in the next five years," he said.

"With the cloud, you don't own anything. You already signed it away ... a lot of people feel, 'Oh, everything is really on my computer,' but I say the more we transfer everything on to the web, on to the cloud, the less we're going to have control over it."

Ty Miller, CTO at Pure Hacking, said email accounts were considered a "trusted primary contact point" and once your email account is compromised the attacker can easily reset passwords for almost all your other online services. The impact you feel is going to be dependent upon the attacker's intent, he said.

"This can range from destroying your data and a public shaming of the victim for being hacked, through to causing financial losses by causing large Skype bills, or performing complete identity theft where the attacker can take control of your bank accounts and finances," he said.

"To reduce the risk of your online identity becoming compromised, individuals should set very complex answers to password reset security questions, utilise two-factor authentication where possible for online services, and make sure that different passwords are used across all online accounts."

Life without Rangers begins for Scottish Premier League

Life without Rangers begins for Scottish Premier League

Scotland's most successful club have had an amazing fall from grace after their fellow SPL clubs voted 10 to 1 against allowing Rangers newco's application to join the league after the old club couldn't be saved from liquidation.
With the Ibrox club now languishing in the third division it will be at least three years until the Glasgow giants are back in the SPL.
The rest of the top division clubs are preparing to tighten their belts in the absence of their fans and the revenue they bring.
Squads have been slashed across the league after many commentators predicted financial Armageddon for some clubs following fears a TV deal might disappear as a result of Rangers dropping out of the SPL.
SPL chief executive Neil Doncaster and Scottish FA counterpart Stewart Regan both warned of dire financial consequences should the new Rangers start life in Division Three.
However, Sky Sports have confirmed they will continue with coverage of Scottish football for at least another five years with reports that the deal is only worth 10 per cent less than the old one.
Some fans now harbour hope that for the first time in 27 years Scotland's top league could be won by a club outside the Old Firm but the usual two-team race for the SPL should now be won at a canter by Celtic.
For the first time since 1890 there will be no Old Firm league fixtures this season but Celtic have consistently insisted they do not need their Glasgow rivals to flourish.
However, the Parkhead club's manager Neil Lennon expects some sort of impact and his side has let 10 fringe players leave the club.
"Financially and commercially it will bite us a bit but the club has its own financial structure and strategy in place and we'll move ahead regardless," he said.
"We always try and maintain a level ground on the spending going out and the money that we bring in. That hasn't changed."
However, Lennon, whose side open up their title defence against Aberdeen at Parkhead on Saturday, admits he will miss the Old Firm derbies and the challenge throughout the season.
"There's that competitiveness, that rivalry, you are obviously going to miss the games," he said.
"It's a great selling point for Scottish football but they are not here and there's nothing I can do about that.
"What I will say is we need our supporters to back the team now more than ever."