Soccer world celebrates with Japan

One of the bad things about sports competitions is that somebody has to lose.

In the case of the Women’s World Cup, which concluded Sunday, the loser was the U.S. team, which had been poised to make history as the first to win the international soccer event three times since it was established in 1991. The winner, however, was Japan, which had never been to the Women’s World Cup final.

Not only did the Japanese team played valiantly, as did the U.S. team, but the victory finally gave Japan something to celebrate, after months of recovering from March’s horrific earthquake and tsunami that killed tens of thousands and devastated that nation’s economy.

In the hyper-competitive world of soccer, that’s as close as it gets to a win-win.

So much for ‘Carmageddon’

Shhh, listen: Hear that big sigh of relief? It came from Californians, exhaling now that the dreaded "Carmageddon" didn’t happen with the 405 Freeway’s closure over the weekend. In fact, transportation stats showed significantly fewer cars on some freeways and significantly less traffic, even in areas far from the 405.

Makes one wonder if a weekend closure of the H-1 or H-2 freeway here might go so well.