Human Error

Asked for an assessment of NFL officiating this 2008 season, a league spokesman said, "Same as it normally is. Outstanding, not perfect. That's the nature of sports." The nature of sports can be difficult to stomach . . . for coaches with jobs on the line; for players with playoff bonuses at stake; for fans heavily invested, psychologically and financially, in their teams.

I have to admit it would be fun to join the rollicking beat-down of the New York Times and Alessandra Stanley that has followed the chief television critic's egregiously error-ridden tribute to Walter Cronkite. Wasn't the public fascinated, after all, to learn that Stanley and the nation's Paper of Record managed eight mistakes in an almost 1,200-word tribute to Uncle Walter?

A day after saying that police "acted stupidly" in arresting a black Harvard University professor in his own home, President Obama appeared to soften his stance Thursday, spreading the blame more equally between the police and the arrested man. Obama had previously implied during a news conference Wednesday that Henry Louis Gates Jr., his personal friend and one of the nation's preeminent African American scholars, had been a victim of racial profiling by the police.

The Federal Aviation Administration has agreed to pay $4.5 million to the survivor of a fatal 2003 helicopter crash that a federal judge concluded was caused by air traffic controllers at Torrance Municipal Airport, an attorney said Wednesday.

At least six Air Force and two Army generals face potentially career-ending punishment in the mishandling of U.S. nuclear warhead components, Defense Department officials said. Military officials are expected to announce the disciplinary action today. At least two of the officers are three-star generals. "It is extensive and it is severe," a senior Defense Department official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the punishment had not yet been announced.

Whoops! Somebody pushed a couple of wrong buttons on a California Department of Motor Vehicles computer just before New Year's Day, mistakenly sending 30,000 car owners letters saying their car registrations were being suspended. "It's human error. What are you going to do?" asked DMV spokesman Mike Miller. The department moved quickly to contact the affected motorists and offered a "sincere apology."

ARTHUR was a retired philosophy professor in his 80s who came to my office three times a year for a checkup followed by a chat. In my examination room, I routinely listened to his chest, scanned his skin for irregularities, percussed his abdomen with my stiffened fingers and peered into his throat, shining a light and asking him to say, "Ah." We had a relaxed rapport, which I believed would cause me to be especially careful with his healthcare. I was wrong.

When she heard the diagnosis of invasive lobular carcinoma, Darrie Eason had but one thought: Please don't let me die. Four months and a double mastectomy later, doctors told Eason that her tissue sample had been mislabeled, and that she never had cancer. "I didn't know what to believe," said Eason, a 35-year-old single mother from Long Beach, N.Y. "They told me I had cancer, and now they're telling me I didn't.

The dreaded BANG! came from deep within the F-16's lone engine, shaking the warplane as it made passes over an Arizona bombing range in December. Then came the alarming loss of thrust. Two attempts to restart the engine failed. Having exhausted their options, the pilot and his student bailed out, parachuting to safety before the plane slammed into the Sonoran Desert, a $21-million loss for taxpayers. Not all F-16 pilots have been so lucky recently.

The body of an elderly woman was discovered Sunday in the front passenger side of a crumpled car in a San Fernando Valley towing company's yard -- a day after paramedics had removed her son from the same vehicle after a crash, authorities said. The woman, whose identity was not released, had apparently been left in the car at the accident scene in Tarzana even as her son was taken to a hospital, police said.