THE MORNING ACCORDING TO US

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"Next time, I'm lighting a stogie at the 50-meter mark. Minimum."

Time and distance cause all kinds of problems. If he lived in the year 2008, and wandered into eastern China, Van Gogh never could have painted "Starry Night", and had he made his way west, he may have never painted at all, what with Real Housewives of Orange County so addicting. In the meantime, we're hard at work on how to skip across the time/space continuum like so many lily pads. You? Well, you can span both in like, five minutes if you check the map. So why not do it now?

Baseball Began in Britain
Oh, this won't play well in Cooperstown at all. Baseball wasn't invented here. It was invented in the south of England, in genteel Surrey, with the first report of the game coming on Easter Monday in 1755, 35 full years before the debated advent on American soil. A teenager named William Bray had an entry in his diary from that day, which was just uncovered by an English historian: "Went to Stroke Church this morning. After dinner, went to Miss Jeale's to play at base ball with her." Despite the fact that the early game apparently only needed a boy who misused prepositional phrases, the MLB has verified the reference. Crap. First the American dollar, now this.

The Holocaust: Still Not Cool At All
Football fans and Jewish groups are outraged over the prospect of a new Giants and Jets stadium being named for German insurer Allianz because of its Nazi ties in World War II. The company insured the Auschwitz death camp and had a chief executive serving in Hitler's cabinet. The company is on the short list of those vying to slap their name on the Meadowlands stadium in New Jersey via a lucrative sponsorship deal.We're going to go out on a limb here and say someone should have red-flagged this.

Web Tiger Celeb
Brian Levi, a Penn State senior, is a celebrity now because of the video he shot last year when he saw the glitch in his friend's Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 game that allowed Woods to perform the miracle shot. Well, at least a web celeb. Levi posted it on YouTube as Levinator25, referring to it as the "Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 Jesus Shot", a shot that only happened on his friends' game. In the shot, Tiger can sort of walk on water to hit a shot. EA took the idea and made a commercial out of it, saying, "It's not a glitch, he's just that good." Now that's some classic PR, folks making lemons out of lemonade. Take note, Meadowlands.

Bolt "Celebration" Loss Assessed
Usain Bolt could have run the Olympic 100m in 9.55 seconds had he not eased up before crossing the finish line, according to a scientific study released Thursday. Hans Eriksen and his colleagues at the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics at the University of Oslo, Norway, used television footage to measure Bolt's positions, speeds and accelerations as well as those of the runner-up, Richard Thompson, the London-based New Scientist magazine reported. Per our policy here, we refuse to question any scientist named Hans. Case closed.

For Your Crappy Play, We Demand a Rebate
China's soccer team was eliminated in the first round of group play at the Olympics. The team's sponsor, Swiss company Infront Sports & Media, wants a 10 million yuan rebate; because the Chinese sucked so bad, it left Infront's advertising and budget plans "in a mess," a spokesman says. Well, maybe you shouldn't front such a loser, crazy Swiss company. Then again, the Chinese are considering honoring the demand.

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