A biography for Jeanne Marie Laskashasn’t been written yet.
“On a foggy, steel gray Saturday in September 2002, Bennet Omalu arrived at the Allegheny County coroner's office and got his assignment for the day: Perform an autopsy on the body of Mike Webster, a professional football player.”
“In the early 16th century the Italian physician Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, a pioneer in the science of anatomy, came up with the idea that perhaps 'brain commotion' was caused by the thrust of the soft structure of the brain against the solid case of the skull.”
“'The melancholy of all things done' is the way Buzz once described his complete mental breakdown after returning from the moon. Booze. A couple of divorces. A psych ward. Broke. At one point he was selling cars.”
“LaGuardia is jammed into just 680 urban acres; taxiways are tight; runways intersect; you can't launch a departure until the arrival on the other runway crosses the threshold or else the airplanes will ... collide.”
“Dead at 50. Mike Webster! Nine-time Pro Bowler. Hall of Famer. 'Iron Mike,' legendary Steelers center for fifteen seasons.”
“Coal mines make the news only when they explode, collapse, kill. It's exciting! Tragedy! Fodder for a cable-news frenzy.”
“Omalu first found the tau 'threads' in the brain of former Steeler Mike Webster in 2002 and published his findings in 2005, in the journal 'Neurosurgery.'”
“Mike Webster lost all his money or, maybe, gave it away. He forgot. A lot of lawsuits. Mike Webster forgot how to eat, too. Soon, Mike Webster was homeless, living in a truck, one of its windows replaced with a garbage bag and tape.”
“Jim Udinski has been coaching in the league for the past fourteen years, and his Division II team, the Lenape Valley Indians from suburban Philadelphia, has already made history - twice.”
“Importing foreign labor has always been the American way, beginning with 4 million slaves from Africa. Later came the Jews and Poles, the Hungarians, Italians and Irish, the Chinese and Japanese - everything you learned in sixth grade social studies about the great American melting pot.”
“Whether we buy into the rhetoric or not, one thing has been made clear: Illegal immigration is a problem reaching a breaking point, and something must be done.”
“The Gun Control Act of 1968 was an attempt to impose order. It set up the Federal Firearms License (FFL) system; gun stores would have to become licensed, and they would have to follow certain rules. Felons, illegal immigrants, and crazy people would be prohibited from buying guns.”
“The ESPN complex is a 255-acre playland, as beautiful and perfect as the Magic Kingdom itself down the road - except it's sports!”
“People assume NFL cheerleaders are within some vague sniffing distance of the good life, but a Ben-Gal is paid seventy-five bucks per game. That is correct: seventy-five bucks for each of ten home games. The grand cash total per season does not keep most of them flush in hair spray, let alone gas money to and from practice.”
“Almost as soon as it aired, 'Late Night' became one of the most buzzed-about shows on television.”
“Every coal miner I talked to had, in his history, at least one story of a cave-in. 'Yeah, he got covered up,' is a way coal miners refer to fathers and brothers and sons who got buried alive.”
“In 2003, the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and a year later, a national ethics committee in France, said that face transplantation would be going too far. The risk of complication would far outweigh the benefits.”
“A person can't just drive around the North Slope, visit the locals, stop in at a burger joint. There are no locals, no burger joints, no houses, no cities, no churches.”
“The island is named Oooguruk, an Inupiaq word meaning 'bearded seal,' an animal plentiful on the shores of Alaska's North Slope.”
“'Affable' is the word that often comes up from reporters, even staunch critics, who meet Lou Dobbs for the first time.”