Former Duke star Laettner seeks new job

  

Christian Laettner, one of college basketball's biggest villains, wants back in the game.

 

Ex-Duke star Christian Laettner is searching for a coaching gig

LostLettermen.com, the college sports fan site and former player database, regularly contributes to The Dagger. Here's a look at the current whereabouts of former Duke star Christian Laettner.
Two decades after leading Duke to its first national title and 19 years after hitting the most famous shot in college basketball history, Christian Laettner wants back in the game as a coach.
That's why you'll find one of college basketball's most famous villains in Houston the next couple days during Final Four weekend. Between celebrity appearances and interviews about "The Shot," he's hoping to schmooze with other coaches and inquire about a gig as a Division I assistant coach.

"I'm ready to start meeting people and networking and I'm available if they're interested in taking a chance on me," Laettner said this week.
There are two big obstacles that could make Laettner's dream a difficult one to achieve: His lack of coaching experience and his cocky image.
"I am a little worried about [my image], but I'm hoping that they'll realize that you can't go off image and perception all the time," Laettner said. "You've got to go by one-to-one interaction with people."
The obvious option would be a return to Durham under Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, but Coach K's bench is already full of former Duke players.
Laettner also has connections to Notre Dame's Mike Brey and Harvard's Tommy Amaker, both Blue Devil assistants when Laettner played. And to Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins, who graduated just two years before Laettner arrived on campus.
He might even get an assist from his old college point guard, Bobby Hurley, who just finished his first season as an assistant coach for his younger brother, Dan, at Wagner College in Staten Island, N.Y.
One thing's for sure: Laettner's already dreaming big.
"Well, the ultimate goal is to get a big-time head college coaching job," Laettner said. "If nothing happens in the college ranks, I've got to go to the NBA pre-draft camp this year in Chicago and let the people in the NBA know that I'm ready to be an assistant coach."

Five hot careers for the future

 

 An accelerating economy and two big technology trends make these fields most promising. 

Hot Careers of the Future

Hot Careers of the Future

Find out which professions will be hot tomorrow - and start preparing today.

By Chris Kyle
Wondering what tomorrow's in-demand careers will be?
While it's safe to scratch newspaper editor and mail carrier off the list, you might be surprised at the old standbys that still make the cut.

Unlikely choice for the best state to live in

 

You won't find pro sports or year-round sunshine, but this state is an economic powerhouse.

Why North Dakota May Be the Best State in the Country to Live In

While many states are confronting severe budget shortfalls and dragging economies, North Dakota has a different sort of problem. It's stuck deciding how best to deal with a budget surplus. Yes, a surplus. North Dakota's balance sheet is so strong it recently reduced individual income taxes and property taxes by a combined $400 million, and is debating further cuts.

That's not exactly what residents of California ($25.4 billion projected budget shortfall for the 2012 fiscal year), Texas ($13.4 billion), New Jersey ($10.5 billion), New York ($10 billion), and 42 more states with projected 2012 budget shortfalls are in line for.

Sharapova digs at player's on-court dance

 

 Maria Sharapova isn't impressed by the way one of her fellow competitors celebrates.

Sharapova digs at Petkovic’s on-court dance

By Chris Chase

Maria Sharapova beat Andrea Petkovic Thursday in the semifinals of Key Biscayne and couldn't resist taking a few shots at the German's famed, post-match Petko Dance afterwards.

Q.  [Petkovic] thought you would be tired in the third after the long match you had the previous night.  Didn't seem to be that way.

MARIA SHARAPOVA:  Because I didn't do the dance after.  I wasn't tired.

Boom, roasted. Sharapova didn't stop there, though (emphasis mine):

Q.  She said that one of the things that makes you such a good champion is that you sense right away a weakness in the other player and basically you jump on that.  She said that she felt that you sensed she was hesitating, whatever.  Can you talk about that?

MARIA SHARAPOVA:  Well, to be honest, I felt like I was just making a lot errors in the first set and I wasn't moving my feet at all.  And especially with the wind I wasn't moving towards the ball and letting the ball come to me and not really being aggressive.  That's what's won me so many matches in my career is when I step in and I hit my strokes and they come deep.  I just wasn't doing that.
So first and foremost I felt like I had to start doing that and making little steps and adjusting my game a little bit.  More than anything, I sensed that she was tired --    probably a lot of the dancing that she's been doing -- and I took advantage of it.

Having not seen the press conference live, I'm not going to speculate on whether Sharapova was totally serious, completely joking or a mixture of both. Yet the fact that she brought up the dance twice shows that it was on her mind one way or the other.

'Sign Board Guy' still out of work

 

Laid off in 2008, investment banker Joshua Persky struggles to get back on his feet.

Joshua Persky, a symbol of the recession, remains unemployed

"I do not want to be known as the 'Sign Board Guy,'" Joshua Persky, 51, says.
But after making headlines across the globe in 2008, it's hard to shed the image that became synonymous with a financial meltdown and ensuing recession.
Persky was an investment banker who found himself laid off in early 2008, though he expected he'd easily snag a new job with Bear Stearns. But then, in May, the investment house collapsed, taking most of Wall Street with it.
As layoffs mounted, Persky knew he needed to do something different to stand out in a sea of job seekers. "After being out of work for six months, I decided to do something a little more creative, so I put on a sign board and went out to Park Avenue to get some leads."
His sign, which read "Experienced MIT Grad For Hire" with his name and contact information, launched a media frenzy.

Afghan rage over Quran burning spreads

 

The desecration of the Muslim holy book at a Florida church fuels a second day of deadly protests.

Anger over Quran burning spreads in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan – Anger over the burning of the Muslim holy book at a Florida church fueled a second day of deadly violence half a world away in Afghanistan, where demonstrators set cars and shops ablaze Saturday in a riot that killed nine protesters, officials said.
The church's desecration of the Quran nearly two weeks ago has outraged millions of Muslims and others worldwide, fueling anti-American sentiment that is further straining ties between the Afghan government and the West.

Emergency landing after hole in fuselage

 

 Southwest Airlines passengers describe the drop in cabin pressure after a rupture in the ceiling.

Fuselage hole forces Southwest emergency landing

PHOENIX – A "gunshot-like sound" woke Brenda Reese as her Southwest Airlines flight cruised at 36,000 feet. Looking up, she could see the sky through a hole torn in the cabin roof. The Boeing 737 lost cabin pressure after the hole developed Friday, prompting frightened passengers to grope for oxygen masks as the plane made a terrifying but "controlled descent." A passenger called it "pandemonium." Another watched as a flight attendant and another passenger passed out, apparently for lack of oxygen, their heads striking the seats in front of them. Officials said Flight 812 lost pressure because of a fuselage rupture. Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said the pilot made a "controlled descent from 36,000 feet to 11,000 feet altitude." His safe emergency landing at a military base in Yuma, about 150 miles southwest of Phoenix, drew applause from relieved passengers. No serious injuries were reported among the 118 people aboard but a flight attendant was slightly hurt, according to Southwest Airlines. The cause of the hole was not immediately known. The FBI called it a "mechanical failure," not an act of terror or other foul play. Reese said the plane had just left Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport for Sacramento, Calif., when the "gunshot-like sound" woke her up. She said oxygen masks dropped as the plane dove. Seated one row from the rupture, Don Nelson said it took about four noisy minutes for the plane to dip to less than 10,000 feet. "You could tell there was an oxygen deficiency," he said. "People were dropping," said Christine Ziegler, a 44-year-old project manager from Sacramento who watched as the crew member and a passenger nearby faint. Nelson and Ziegler spoke after a substitute flight took them on to Sacramento. Reese described the hole as "at the top of the plane, right up above where you store your luggage." "The panel's not completely off," she told The Associated Press. "It's like ripped down, but you can see completely outside... When you look up through the panel, you can see the sky." Cellphone photographs provided by Reese showed a panel hanging open in a section above the plane's middle aisle, with a hole of about six feet long. The National Transportation Safety Board said an "in-flight fuselage rupture" led to the drop in cabin pressure aboard the 15-year-old plane. A similar incident on a Southwest plane to Baltimore in July 2009 also forced an emergency landing when a foot-long hole opened in the cabin. Four months earlier, the Dallas-based airline had agreed to pay $7.5 million to settle charges that it operated planes that had missed required safety inspections for cracks in the fuselage. The airline, which flies Boeing 737s, inspected nearly 200 of its planes back then, found no cracks and put them back in the sky. Julie O'Donnell, an aviation safety spokeswoman for Seattle-based Boeing Commercial Airplanes, confirmed "a hole in the fuselage and a depressurization event" in the latest incident but declined to speculate on what caused it. Reese said passengers applauded the pilot after he emerged from the cockpit following the emergency landing at Yuma Marine Corps Air Station/International Airport. "It was unreal. Everybody was like they were high school chums," Ziegler said, describing a scene in which passengers comforted and hugged each other after the plane was on the ground. "I fly a lot. This is the first time I ever had something like this happen," said Reese, a 37-year-old single mother of three who is vice president for a clinical research organization. "I just want to get home and hold my kids." Gregor said an FAA inspector from Phoenix was en route to Yuma. The NTSB said it also was sending a crew to Yuma. Holes in aircraft can be caused by metal fatigue or lightning. The National Weather Service said the weather was clear from the Phoenix area to the California border on Friday afternoon. In 1988, cracks caused part of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 to peel open while the jet flew from Hilo to Honolulu. A flight attendant was sucked out of the plane and plunged to her death, and dozens of passengers were injured. Three years ago, an exploding oxygen cylinder ripped a gaping hole the fuselage of a Qantas Boeing 747-438 carrying 365 people. The plane descended thousands of feet with the loss of cabin pressure and flew about 300 miles to Manila, where it made a successful emergency landing. No one was injured. ___ Hoang, Associated Press writers Don Thompson and Adam Weintraub contributed to this report from Sacramento, Calif.

News Source: Yahoo

Can 'Celebrity Apprentice' recover?

 

Drama has been lacking this season, but there are a few things that may keep us tuned in.

'Celebrity Apprentice': Why This Season's Been Such a Bust

We want to see some boardroom fireworks, people

NBC/Douglas Gorenstein

In last week's "Celebrity Apprentice" boardroom, NeNe Leakes -- after she stopped crying for no reason -- called Dionne Warwick out for being plain old lazy during the task. And with all the eye-rolling that immediately ensued, we were hoping for a big blowout that would devolve into name-calling and nitpicking and the rest of the craziness that this show was once known for.

Unfortunately, Dionne gave up without much of a fight and basically told Donald Trump that she should be fired. Wait, what? One of the biggest personalities (not necessarily in a good way) that this show had this season basically walked off after calling NeNe a coward on her way to the elevator? What happened to the drama? Are celebrities (aside from Star Jones) worried that they'll get a bad rep if they defend their actions in the boardroom?

Snooki outearns a Nobel Prize winner

 

The reality star makes more to appear at Rutgers than commencement speaker Toni Morrison.

• Snooki Earns Higher Speaking Fee Than Toni Morrison

  "Study hard, but party harder." Denise Truscello/WireImage Rutgers University recently booked Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison for its commencement address in May for a price of $30,000. Meanwhile, the university recently had Rolling Stone cover girl Snooki on campus for an hour-long Q&A, shelling out $32,000 for the "Jersey Shore" star.
  Now, there are some considerations to keep in mind here (Snooki was paid by a student-run committee whereas Morrison was paid by the university; Snooki's fee will be divided among her management and opening act, etc.), but the fact that Snooki pulled in more than Morrison definitely makes for an amusing contrast.