This Week's Signs Of The Apocalypse

For nearly two decades, Sports Illustrated has stirred the tea leaves to discern a weekly Sign of the Apocalypse. Deadspin salutes the magazine's ongoing effort to cover the end of times but declines to cede the scoop on the biggest event in world history.

Here's SI's Sign of the Apocalypse this week:

During the NHL lockout the Montreal Gazette is playing out the Canadiens' season on EA Sports's NHL 13, game by game, and publishing news stories off the results of the simulated matchups.

Frankly this is borders the anti-apocalyptic: At least a newspaper has rediscovered a path toward relevance. And yet, Deadspin was also held in thrall by the doomsday precursors we noticed this past week. We learned that Skip Bayless trains harder for his slap-fights against Stephen A. Smith each day on First Take than Barack Obama did for his first presidential debate. We saw a robber yell "Go, Cards!" as he fled a St. Louis bank, stolen money in hand. And we watched in pre-Judgment Day amusement as Wyoming coach Dave Christensen laced into Air Force coach Troy Calhoun with heaps of invective—"No fuckin' integrity!"—on Military Appreciation Night at Wyoming.

All worthy candidates for this week's Sign of the Apocalypse! But Deadspin's going with the following for our SotA:

A car bombing in Beirut that wounded dozens of people and killed at least eight, including a top Lebanese intelligence official, stoked fears and accusations that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad ordered the assassination, and signaled that Syria's civil war, which has claimed 30,000 lives, could be spilling into neighboring Lebanon.

Beirut assassination heightens fears of Syrian violence embroiling Lebanon [Washington Post]