Fox Sports is reporting legendary Brazilian soccer captain Socrates died Sunday at the age of 57 after suffering an intestinal infection.

The star of the 1982 World Cup was rushed to Sao Paulo's Albert Einstein Hospital late Thursday after suffering food poisoning and was said to be in critical condition in its intensive care unit Saturday.

Despite briefly responding to a stronger antibiotic, Socrates died early Sunday, O Globo reported.

Socrates' wife and a friend of the couple also got sick after eating the stroganoff, but the former midfield maestro's body was said to be too weak to fight the illness after years of alcohol abuse.

Socrates, whose full name was Sampaio de Souza Vieira de Oliveira, spent his entire club-playing career in Brazil, bar a single season with Italian club Fiorentina in 1984-85.

He rose to international prominence as the tall bearded playmaker who lit up the 1982 World Cup in Spain, despite Brazil's shock exit ahead of the semi-finals.
Socrates graduated as a medical student during his early playing days and practiced after his career ended in 1989.

Regarded as an intellectual thinker, he also wrote widely about sport and culture later in life.

Teaching a recitation class for a General Psychology class is hard work.  It involves choosing appropriate material to cover, presenting that material accurately and grading papers. That’s the easy part.

The hard part is discerning students’ real excuses from made-up ones. I have heard stuff that you probably wouldn’t make up just to get out of class and a lot of stuff that sounds a little unlikely, if not straight out of a high school movie.

One of my fellow recitation teachers got the Contador excuse from a student; “It was the food.”
The student claimed food poisoning prevented her from making it to class – right before class time during tailgating Thursday. The excuse wasn’t entirely unlikely since food during tailgating might be cooked improperly, or cross-contamination might occur. However, alcohol poisoning is not entirely unlikely either.

To believe or not to believe, that is the question. While you can test athletes’ blood for illegal substances, you can’t ask students for stool samples. If it had been my student I would have asked for a doctor’s note, but the excuse worked for her (Contador, it seems, will not be so lucky).
 

AFP is reporting that 70 people, including children between 3- and 12-years-oldwere victims of food poisoning Monday in a recreation center in Houilles.

Three children and one adult were transported to the hospital "for observation" and a dozen other victims had to be hospitalized.

Children who do not show symptoms have been returned to their families.

The origin of the food poisoning appeared to be meals delivered by a central kitchen, and tests are underway to identify the causative agent of intoxication.
 

“The life of everyone on board depends upon just one thing: finding someone back there who can not only fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner.”

The nominal plot of the 1980 movie, Airplane! recounts the efforts of a stalwart flight crew trying to land a commercial airliner after spoiled fish incapacitates most of the crew and passengers.

I first saw the movie Airplane at the drive-inn on the edge of Brantford, Ontario (that’s in Canada) when it came out in 1980.

I thought it was stupid.

But that’s because I was more interested in the blond next to me.

When I saw Airplane again, I thought it was hilarious.

I’ve seen the movie so many times, I can better recite the lines from Airplane than nerds who do Monty Python sketches. And Leslie Neilson, good Canadian that he is, stole the show (he’s from Saskatchewan; that’s in Canada, his brother was deputy Prime Minister of Canada for awhile in the 1980s).

As reported in the N.Y. Times today, within months of its release in July 1980, Airplane! became the highest-grossing comedy in box office history, a distinction that held until “Ghostbusters” came along in 1984. And it remains one of the most influential. Its anything-goes slapstick and furious pop culture riffs can be seen in the 20-gags-a-minute relentlessness of “The Simpsons,” “South Park” and “Family Guy” and grab-bag big-screen parodies like “Epic Movie, “Date Movie” and the “Scary Movie” franchise.

Back in 1979, when “Airplane!” was being shot on Universal’s back lot in Los Angeles, it didn’t seem like a potential blockbuster. The three Wisconsin-born filmmakers were rather amazed that anybody would give them a budget — and $3.5 million at that — to make such a lark, one that had no big stars. A follow-up to their 1977 cult film “The Kentucky Fried Movie,” which they had written, this was an extended riff on “Zero Hour!,” a glum thriller from 1957 about an imperiled aircraft that set the template for the next half-century’s worth of disaster pictures.

Food poisoning can be awesome.