Curses, streaks and skeletons

Maybe it was that fully eclipsed moon that lifted "The Curse," allowing the Boston Red Sox to win their first World Series in 86 years. Despite baseball's superstitious lore, we have to think sheer talent and dogged determination had a lot to do with this historic victory.

Coming back from a three-game deficit in the league championship series with their historic nemesis, the New York Yankees, was amazing.

But then watching the Red Sox decisively defeat the St. Louis Cardinals in four straight games to become world champions was - well - convincing. Boston's time had finally come.

The Red Sox Nation deserved this victory more than any other sports franchise deserved one in modern history.

Curse be gone!

The expected and the unexpected happened last Saturday at the state cross-country meet.

The incomparable Zoe Nelson, as expected, raced to her fourth-straight individual championship, and her Bravettes teammates followed her lead in sweeping to another team title in Class AA (the fourth in a row for Flathead girls).

But Flathead High School sprang a surprise in the boys race by striding to victory in a race in which they weren't favored.

The tandem team titles mark the fifth time Flathead has taken both boys and girls state championships at the same meet.

They showed once again that Kalispell sets the pace for the state in cross country.

The Flathead Valley had one other individual champion when Brooke Andrus captured individual girls honors in Class A.

Kudos to all these champions, and a special bow to Nelson, who became the first runner in Class AA - either boy or girl - to win four state titles.

She did it in her usual dominating style, crossing the finish line a full 1:10 ahead of the second-place runner.

Nelson and the other champion runners make us all proud.

A dwarf-sized skeleton discovered on an Indonesian island is rewriting the science books on evolution.

The skeleton turns out to belong to a completely new human species, apparently separated from modern man.

But the hobbit-sized Homo floresiensis is only 18,000 years old, which dashes the previous theories that our species, Homo sapiens, crowded out other hominid competition beginning 160,000 years ago.

The recent discovery shows again that science can still surprise us.