I thought this was a funny “typo.”  How could someone accidentally insert the letter ‘r’ into the word ‘pick’ in just the opportune place, thus completely changing the emotional tone of the paragraph?  And besides, the letter ‘r’ is pretty far away from the letters ‘p’ and ‘i’ on the keyboard to explain any slip of the finger.  And the fact that the mistake stayed in the article for several days after being posted on the Associated Press web site despite several blogs noticing the error is a little suspect. Considering that it stayed live for so long must have meant it made it to press in a large number of newspapers around the world.  I list the URL in this post, but as of last check, the URL was listed as ‘no longer available’:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gxVW-aUPQsPkU0JKEleSPNCyxSsAD92L2HJ80