Mitsuharu Misawa died in Hiroshima, Japan earlier this year less than a week before his 47th birthday. He was in a tag team match for his Pro Wrestling NOAH promotion with Go Shiozaki against Bison Smith and Akitoshi Saito. Saito hit a back suplex on Misawa, which appeared to knock him unconscious. Medical staff attempted to revive him in the ring, but when CPR failed he was taken to a hospital by ambulance. He never regained consciousness and was pronounced dead on arrival.

There’s at least a small bit of solace in the fact that he died in the ring doing what he loved, and what he did better than just about anyone on the planet. Misawa’s last moments were spent working the kind of brutally stiff, athletically realistic match that got a generation hooked on Japanese wrestling.

A top level amateur wrestler in high school, his skill gained the attention of All Japan Pro Wrestling president Shohei Giant Baba. Three years after his pro debut, he got his first big break in’84 when he was chosen as the second Tiger Mask replacing Satoru Sayama. In’90, he had his longtime friend and rival Toshiaki Kawada unmask him.

Misawa would wrestle as himself from then on, and become an even bigger star in the process. In June,’90 he became one of the top stars in All Japan Pro Wrestling when he defeated Jumbo Tsuruta. He soon faced Triple Crown Champion Stan Hansen in an unsuccessful challenge for the title, and would become arguably the biggest native star in Japanese pro wrestling for the next decade.

Hed have legendary battles against Kawada, Hansen, Kenta Kobashi, Jun Akiyama and Steve Dr. Death Williams in singles competition. Hed also become a force on the tag team scene along with Kawada facing Williams and Terry Gordy along with Tsuruta and Akira Taue. Misawa would continue as a mainstay in AJPW until the early part of this decade. After the death of Giant Baba, he repeatedly bumped heads with his widow over the companys direction and in 2000 quit to establish Pro Wrestling NOAH. He would serve as the companys president while wrestling a full time schedule until his untimely death.

Japanese pro wrestling served as an introduction for many American fans into shoot fight sports and MMA. Before the Internet, fans would trade videotapes to stay up on the latest matches from Japan and along with Jushin Thunder Liger and The Great Muta Keiji Mutoh it safe to say that Misawa is one of the wrestlers most responsible for getting a generation of American fans hooked on the product. Were it not for the subculture he created in America, later wrestling promotions like Ring of Honor and MMA promotions like the UFC wouldn’t have had a ready made audience to tap into.

Ross Everett is a widely published widely published freelance sports writer and respected authority on NFL football betting. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Northern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former energy secretary Donald Hodell.

For those not familiar with NFL totals, its the large number you’ll see accompanying most pointspread betting propositions. For example, the 2009 Superbowl line opened with Pittsburgh a 6 point favorite over Arizona. The total was set at 47. Simply stated, the total allows the better to decide whether the combined score between the two teams will go OVER or UNDER. In the case of the aforementioned Superbowl, Pittsburgh won by a final score of 27-23 meaning that bettors who backed the OVER cashed their tickets.

NFL totals are a favorite tool of serious sports handicappers. Many are of the opinion that its easier to accurately foretell the *type* of game that will transpire between two teams rather than who will actually win and by how much.

To set the NFL total, a bookmaker looks at the offensive and defensive scoring statistics for the two teams and calculates a number based on points allowed and points scored. If one team had scored 275 points and allowed 350 in their previous sixteen games that’s a total of 625. Divided by 16 and that’s an average of just over 39 points per game. If their opponent had scored 285 and allowed 400 (685) over 16 games that translates to just under 43 points per game. Add the two numbers together, divide by two and you’ve got a base total of 40.5.

At this point other factors are considered such as the significance of key numbers like 3 and 7 on final scores, weather conditions, injuries, playing surface, etc. Another component that is important is the qualitative matchup between the offense and defense of each team”meaning that a team like the Baltimore Ravens with a strong defense will be more likely to impose their will on a team resulting in a lower final score.

Of course as in the case of the NFL pointspread, public perception is a crucial component of the linesmaking process. For example, the conventional wisdom is that bad weather like rain, snow, or sleet results in lower scores and for that reason a bookmaker will shade the total accordingly. However, its not quite that simple–some handicappers would maintain that sloppy weather can produce higher scores in certain situations as defensive backs aren’t able to cut as well and react to the man their covering. Furthermore, turnovers are in theory more likely in inclement weather.

In conclusion, NFL totals are a very good opportunity for a hard working handicapper to leverage his information about a situational matchup to find good wagering value. Like most elements of the sports handicapping discipline, its not easy to stay a step ahead of the bookmakers who have access to the same weather and injury–and have factored it into the number–but is a very entertaining and potentially rewarding challenge for the NFL bettor.

Ross Everett is a freelance writer and noted authority on soccer betting. His writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Southern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former interior secretary James Watt.

Twitter has become a world wide phenomenon now used by millions of people. Twitter is a free online social networking tool that allows users to post short 140-character updates to the Web for their ‘followers’ to read. As well, the site also allows users to ‘follow’ other people. This popular micro-blogging site has become a handy tool for world travelers. If you are planning on using Twitter while traveling, below are a number of useful tips to make the Twitter experience more worthwhile:

1. Before you book your vacation, follow some travel experts and travel groups from the area where you will be traveling. They will usually tweet areas of interest, information about events and attractions in the area, and special discounts being offered. You can also ask them questions. As well, following travel agencies and airlines will allow you to take advantage of late breaking deals and participate in promotion deals. It is essential to follow tweeters that best suit your travel plans. For instance, JetBlue has almost 500,000 followers to date and they often send out their latest deals information. You can ensure that you don’t miss out on special deals by setting up Twitter feeds. This can be done by clicking on ‘RSS feed updates’ on the profile page of the Tweeter you want to follow.

2. Twitter is a great way to find discounts on local hotels, restaurants, and other events and attractions. Consider following local establishments, hotels, and resorts, tourist bureaus, and more in the vacation destination for updates about latest deals and bargains. More businesses are now using Twitter to advertise their deals and promotions.

3. A helpful tool for Twitter users is an application known as TweetDeck. This application acts much like a personal browser which will display messages from preferred tweeters that is located in easy to navigate columns that organize the content according to the user’s personal preferences.

4. Twitter search is a helpful tool that has an easy to use search box that displays related results from the site. For instance, when using this tool to monitor your flight, you can arrange for all related real-time tweets posted on the site that can include the airline, airport, or other travelers.

5. There are travelers that are using people on Twitter to help them plan their vacation instead of using a travel guide book. For instance, as they travel, they will pose such questions as where is a good place to stay. Where is a good place to eat? Where is a good place to have a cup of coffee? Where is the best beach? Twitter can be very helpful if you are looking for recommendations.

Twitter is a social networking site that is fast becoming an indispensable tool for travelers as well as the travel industry. Because tweeting is limited to just 140 characters, the information sent out is just the facts with no fluff. Twitter is now also the fastest way to communicate with other travelers and travel industry. If you have not jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, it may be time to join and start enjoying the travel tweets.

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It’s funny that we desire to travel through time. Besides self-ish interest, what purpose would it serve? We are actually timetravelers all the time. Or should I say channel surfers?

We get carried away either by thinking about our past or piling up with dreams of the future. These two activities take most of our time. The actual now moment we are currently experiencing is something we would rather not like to have.

It’s far better and safer to sail in our dreams, where all the outcomes are already known and we can speculate with endless what-if scenarios.

The future is even better. For us it has not happened yet and, therefore, we can make it up any way we desire. Well, almost. The only limitation is that we cannot just dream about anything of which we have no knowledge.

For example, in medieval times people did not dream about having cars and flying around the world in airplanes. So dreaming is also quite boring. All the outcomes are predictable in one way or another-like LEGO blocks that can only be set up in a certain way based on their shapes.

Our channel surfing concerns the current living moment. We seldom stay in the channel. We’d rather jump on and off many times in a second. This happens by switching either to the dream or the history channel. Reality TV is something we prefer to consume as a recorded version, just to be on the safe side.

Still, all the action happens in the reality mode. We cannot change our history and cannot predict the future. We have to do all the things right now. The paradox is that the only unpredictable (and therefore nonboring) moment is the fresh now time, what we are all the time experiencing.

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Roller Derby was a staple of the early television era and was similar in its promotional format to its better known “sports entertainment” cousin, professional wrestling. It was frequently seen in the same bad timeslots on the same low powered UHF TV stations, and it was run by the same loose confederation of Runyanesque promoters and businessmen that characterized the regional territory era of pro wrestling. Unfortunately, roller derby didn’t catch on the way professional wrestling did. There was obviously a serious athletic component to it, but the “angles” and storylines surrounding roller derby made pro wrestling seem like Ibsen by comparison. The sport does have its own history–most know that the LA T-Birds were the perennial champions of’70′s, and Ann Calvello and Ralphie Valladares had been in the sport forever and were considered legends–but it never really stuck in the public consciousness like the pre-Hulk Hogan era of pro wrestling.

When the original purveyors of the sport quit promoting in the early’80s most thought it was dead and gone until a ‘new school’ of roller derby surfaced on cable TV via the A&E reality series Roller Girls. It featured a local, all-girl roller derby league in Austin, Texas and followed the lives of the players on and off the track. A sport that had faded into the lowest level of obscurity had been rediscovered and embraced by an eclectic group of young women. They had kept the same essential format, thrown in a healthy dose of burlesque camp and Varga pin-up inspired glamour and changed the competitive format and renamed the competitions “bouts” a la MMA or boxing. The result was a compelling mixture of glamour, toughness and athleticism driven by a healthy dose of punk rock “do it yourself” mentality.

Today, roller derby is a full blown worldwide phenomenon. There are hundreds of local roller derby leagues not only in the United States, but Canada, Australia and Europe. Most of the local groups similarly play up the campy retro pin-up/hot rod iconography and everyone involved sure looks like they’re having a good time. Between teams there’s a vibe of good natured competitiveness and camaraderie. In the US, these groups exist under the auspices of a national organization called the Womens Flat Track Derby Association. Las Vegas has the ‘Sin City Roller Girls’, Portland, Oregon the ‘Rose City Rollers” and Seattle the ‘Rat City Rollers’. There are now groups in not only the larger and traditionally “hipper” cities but also smaller communities such as Birmingham, Alabama and Omaha, Nebraska.

This organic rebirth and growth of roller derby is a result of young women taking what essentially was TV time filler and made it into their own distaff ‘action sport’. The roller derby circa 2009 is a matriarchal success story. No one is in it for the money, as these local groups are typically run as non-profit organization. The women involved have recreated this sport, and run it, promote it and compete in it on their own terms.

The new generation rollergirls also pay homage to their sports’ pioneers. Many of the individual group websites have sections devoted to the history of roller derby, and the late Ann Calvello–regarded as the Queen of the original Roller Derby–is revered as something of a patron saint. The Texas Rollergirl group featured in the A&E series has renamed their championship the Calvello Cup.

Ross Everett is a widely published freelance writer and respected authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and sportsbook directory sites. He lives in Northern Nevada with three Jack Russell Terriers and a kangaroo. He is currently working on an autobiography of former energy secretary Donald Hodell.