Dunnow

Members of the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services just arrived at the Jackson family home in Encino … TMZ has learned.

As we first reported, social workers will be interviewing Michael Jackson’s children, along with the other children living in the home. DCFS will also interview family members and employees about the stun gun incident.

Read more: http://www.tmz.com/#ixzz0h5cW6JgZ

I got a little mileage last spring out of Florida’s fake 40 board, which ludicrously claimed that four Gators ran faster 40 times during winter workouts than any single player at last year’s NFL combine. In the wake of cornerback Joe Haden’s disappointing sprint Tuesday at this year’s edition of the meat market, I’ve been encouraged via email to dig it up for old time’s sake:

At Florida, Haden was listed at 4.33, significantly faster than any cornerback in last year’s combine; coming into Tuesday’s proceedings as a virtual lock to go in the top 10 of next month’s draft, he was expected to run in the low 4.4 range, which still would have been faster than any cornerback actually posted Tuesday (the fastest official time by any corner in Indy this morning was 4.45, posted by Wake Forest’s Brandon Ghee). Haden’s times: 4.57 on the first run, 4.60 on the second, immediately putting his high-first-round status in jeopardy. (Those are unofficial times off hand-held watches, which typically get slower when “official” electronic times comes in.) Suddenly, Haden’s not just the All-American and top prospect scouts saw on film — there’s a number that says he’s kind of slow. Said one scout on the NFL Network, “People are going to have a hard time getting that 4.57 out of their head with a top-10 corner.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, 230-pound USC safety Taylor Mays lit up the stopwatches with an unreal 4.24:

If that time had stood, it would have tied East Carolina’s Chris Johnson as the fastest recorded time in combine history and solidified Mays as the freakiest of all freaks who walked through the door this year or almost any other. Of course, it didn’t stand: When the electronic numbers came in, his official time was 4.43 — still the fastest time among all DBs on hand, but nowhere near the eye-popping reports off the stopwatches. Trindon Holliday’s initially record-breaking run on Sunday met the same fate, when the diminutive LSU return man/NCAA track champion’s best time was downgraded from an absurd 4.22 on the stopwatches to a slightly less absurd 4.34 on the books.

What do the substantial differences in those numbers say about the potential of Joe Haden and Taylor Mays as pro prospects? Probably nothing, especially relative to the importance they may play in their actual draft status (which will likely be smaller than the initial reactions suggest). What does it say about those too-good-to-be-true 40 times often attached to college players and recruits? Overwhelmingly, they really are too good to be true. Even the pros have a tendency toward exaggeration and high variability. The only players this year who ran an official time below 4.4 — Holliday, Cal’s Jahvid Best and Clemson teammates Jacoby Ford and C.J. Spiller — were all first-rate NCAA sprinters; Holliday and Ford (who put up the fastest official time at 4.28) are borderline Olympians. If a sub-4.4 time is attached to anyone else — such as, say, a 235-pound quarterback — there’s no reason to believe it.

And there’s certainly no reason to believe these tedious, minute differences among elite athletes translate to any significant difference on the field.

Rick Perry beat Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the Texas gubernatorial GOP primary.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Driftwood, Texas (CNN) — Texas Gov. Rick Perry won his state’s Republican gubernatorial primary outright on Tuesday, avoiding a potentially costly runoff election against Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

Hutchison called Perry to concede the race after returns indicated that the governor was cruising toward a resounding victory in the closely-watched primary.

“Now we must unite,” she said. “We must win Texas for Republicans.”

Perry’s win ended a yearlong intra-party fight that was billed from the start as a clash of Texas political titans but ended with a whimper as Hutchison struggled to fight a tide of anti-Washington sentiment among conservatives.

The governor cast his victory as a warning shot to Washington in the mold of recent GOP wins in the Virginia and New Jersey governor’s races and the Massachusetts special Senate election.

“I think the message is pretty clear,” Perry told supporters at his election night party near Austin. “Conservatism has never been stronger than it is today.”

Perry said the message to Washington was simple: “Quit spending all the money,” he said. “Stop trying to take over our lives and our businesses.”

He added: “Stop messing with Texas!”

Perry, the longest serving governor in Texas history, is seeking a third full term in Austin. His opponent in the general election will be Democrat Bill White, the former Houston mayor who dispatched six opponents in the Democratic primary.

With nearly two-thirds of precincts reporting, Perry maintained a 20-point lead over Hutchison and appeared to be on pace to cross the crucial 50 percent mark needed to avoid a six-week runoff election against the three-term senator, who began her gubernatorial bid as the prohibitive frontrunner but stumbled as

Perry’s campaign cast her as a big-spending Washington insider. GOP activist Debra Medina, a conservative with strong support among Tea Party activists, looked to be headed for a third place finish.

White, the popular former three-term mayor of Houston, the country’s fourth-largest city, predicted that Perry will try to nationalize the race and tie him to unpopular Democratic agenda items in Washington.

“He’ll run against President Obama,” White said in an interview. “That’s probably for his own political career. I think he wants to run for president. I’m just running for the people of Texas. It shouldn’t be about a party or who’s doing what to whom in Washington.”

www.cnn.com