The viral video of music mega-star Jay-Z chatting up an older woman — who initially has no notion of who he is — during a New York City subway ride was a charming diversion for a Wednesday afternoon.

The woman, 67-year-old artist Ellen Grossman, realizes the young man sitting next to her is “somebody” since he is surrounded by bodyguards and came in with a whoosh of fans.

He introduces himself as “Jay,” and their conversation is engaging, polite, ordinary and humble, which are among the reasons it has attracted so much attention.

Grossman recognized Jay-Z’s name when he revealed it, but it wasn’t until later she realized how big a star he is.

“I’ve become much more aware of what he’s done and who he is,” Grossman said, according to The Washington Post. “And as I checked him out, I realized, how embarrassing that I didn’t know who he was! There were all these photographers and a crowd of happy people around him, and security people. So it sort of dawned on me as I was looking around that he was someone famous.”

Sweet.

This 2003 file photo shows athlete Iryna Yatchenko of Belarus on the podium during the 2003 world championships. She was among four medalists from the 2004 Olympic games officially stripped of their Olympic medals for doping. (Franck Fife, AFP/Getty Images)

Four Olympic medalists at the 2004 Athens games lost their medals Wednesday as a result of retesting that showed they’d used steroids.

Cheating is cheating, and we’re glad the International Olympic Committee was able to root out those using performance enhancing drugs, even these many years later. The four all were field event athletes.

According to the New York Times, the athletes are: Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine, who won a gold medal in the men’s shot put; Svetlana Krivelyova of Russia, who won bronze in the women’s shot put; Ivan Tsikhan of Belarus, who won silver in the men’s hammer throw; and Iryna Yatchenko of Belarus, who won bronze in the women’s discus.

Perhaps the threat that future tests could potentially detect doping techniques that are not discernible with current technology will discourage athletes from trying to get a chemical edge.

The obnoxious self-righteousness of some anti-fracking activists only seems to be growing. In Boulder on Tuesday, they jeered a representative of Encana Oil and Gas and then harassed her as she walked back to her car.

Let’s have 9News reporter Todd Walker set the scene. “Wendy Wiedenbrook had asked for a security escort from the building and back to her car following testimony,” he said, “and she needed it. A group of several fracking opponents surrounded and followed her for several blocks shouting at her.”

And it’s not only energy officials they harass. Gov. John Hickenlooper had to make his way through a surly group of protesters in Longmont a few weeks ago, although they weren’t quite as nasty as the activists who followed Wiedenbrook seemed to be.

To get a sense of how over-the-top and utterly divorced from reality these activists can be – and a few appear on the verge of sounding and acting more like fascist thugs, actually – consider the words of fracking foe Jeff Thompson, as quoted in the Daily Camera.

Thompson, the Camera said, “told commissioners later during the hearing that the proposed county regulations ‘are just a big fraud, just a big farce.’

“Thompson compared Boulder County officials’ stated position — that they’ll adopt the strictest local drilling rules possible under Colorado law — to what it would have been like if Nazi Adolf Eichmann had said: ‘I did everything I could within the law to protect the Jews.’”

This isn’t just obnoxious rhetoric. It’s obscene. And the Boulder County commissioners, to their shame, permitted these clowns to disrupt and delay the start of the meeting for a full half hour.

DENVER POST MUST-READS
- Denver Police taking longer to respond to 911 calls Link
- Saddling up to horse slaughter controversy Link
- Bennet to lead DSCC Link
- Denver looks to recover $500K from debate policing Link
- Push for year-round Daylight Savings Time Link

MUST-READS FROM ELSEWHERE
Ft. Collins fracking moratorium A six-month moratorium on new oil and gas development including fracking gained preliminary approval Tuesday from Fort Collins City Council after public commenters overwhelming expressed support for the hiatus. The Coloradoan

Longmont readies defense The Longmont City Council will “vigorously” defend its new fracking ban, Mayor Dennis Coombs told residents Tuesday night. Times-Call
Read more…

In an upcoming Perspective section, we will single out a handful of Coloradans for their ideas or accomplishments over the last 12 months.

We need your help coming up with nominees for the following categories:

Arts and Culture; Business; Computers and Technology; Education; Engineering and Design; Energy; Food and Drink; Health; Non-profits; Politics and Government; Science and Environment.

Good Samaritans and police officers were able to lift a car off a mother and child trapped after a traffic accident Monday night in Aurora.

Thank goodness they were able to work together in this emergency to rescue the pair.

The mother suffered serious injuries, but the child, a 2-year-old girl had just cuts on her head and legs. Twin boys, age 4, also were with the mother, but neither was seriously injured. Authorities said none of the injuries was life-threatening.

The accident happened about 6:25 p.m., as the group was crossing in the 14200 block of East Exposition Avenue, near a Walmart. They weren’t in a crosswalk or using a pedestrian signal.

It’s an unfortunate accident, but one that is a good reminder about the importance of using crosswalks, particularly at night and in busy commercial areas.

File photo of James, a homeless man, on the 16th Street mall. (Andy Cross, The Denver Post)

The numbers are unsettling.

In a dozen years in Denver, at least 677 homeless have died. Average age: 46. Twenty froze to death. Another 275 died from drugs, alcohol or some combination.

The statistics come out of a story written by Post reporter Kirk Mitchell, who examined records kept by the Denver coroner’s office and presented a picture of how difficult life — and death — is for some of the city’s most troubled residents.

Given the circumstances faced by people who live on the street, it’s not necessarily surprising that so many would die as a result of drugs, alcohol, fights and even as victims of homicide.

Not surprising, but disturbing nonetheless.

By Janet Jankura
Guest Commentary

A recent McKinsey study showed that companies with a higher proportion of women on their boards also are the companies that have the best performance. Catalyst research proved that corporations with three or more women on their board enjoyed 84 percent better return on sales and 60 percent better return on investment than those with zero female directors. Another key study found that top-rated S&P companies have twice as many women on their boards than do bottom-rated ones.

So why do so few Colorado companies have more women on their boards of directors?

In Colorado, just 12 percent of the Fortune 1000 board members are female, less than the national rate of 16 percent. The reason behind that lack of gender diversity may be the result of a major disconnect, according to a 2012 Board of Directors study by Harvard Business School. In it, executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles found that men say they do not know many executive women or those with board experience, while women say that they are excluded from traditional male-dominated networks.

Read more…

By Greg Dobbs
Guest Commentary

Democracy. It has been the driving force behind our involvement in several wars. Most recently, Iraq. Maybe next, Syria, if we can ever figure out which Syrian rebels actually aspire to democracy, instead of just a different type of tyranny.

But how will we really know? When syndicated columnist Tom Friedman snuck into Syria early this month and asked one rebel commander to talk about the revolution, the guy said that the Islamist parties “want Shariah, and we want democracy.”

The trouble is, democracy means different things to different people. So when as a nation, and as a government, we aspire to support and spread and share democracy with people who have never before been blessed with its liberties, we need to understand what it means. Not to us, but to them.

Read more…

By Tom Westfall
Colorado Voices

My wife and I are blessed to have three wonderful grandchildren and from time to time, they visit us on the farm. One of their favorite activities is taking walks in the woods and playing in the river. When she was 3 years old, my granddaughter, Katherine, made such a visit. Because it was winter, it was much to cold to play in the river, but we did take several long walks in the woods, looking for arrowheads, chasing squirrels, startling deer, and flushing pheasants and quail. Katherine remembered an old coyote den from a previous visit but when we went calling, no one was home.

One of the most fascinating things for Katherine on that trip was a newly constructed beaver dam. In our back pasture, there is a small channel of the South Platte River that flows year round making it an ideal habitat for ducks and geese and apparently for a plethora of eager beavers. Well over 100 cottonwood trees have been felled and Katherine was quite inquisitive about why so many trees had been knocked over.

Read more…