- Never let it be said that the NCAA is out of touch and behind the times. OK, so you can say exactly that because the NCAA has some of the most arcane and moronic rules known to man and fails to keep up with trends and new developments of all kinds when it comes to running its organization. Case in point, the fact that the NCAA has just now gotten around to creating a rule that regulates the ability of coaches to use text messages to contact potential recruits. For several years now, smart and technologically savvy coaches have been upgrading to the newest Blackberry and sending constant text messages to recruits because there was no limiting and no regulation of texts by the NCAA. Forward-thinking coaches like Florida football coach Urban Meyer were ahead of the game and landed prime recruits in part because of their use of text messaging. Now, the NCAA Division I management council is about to pass a new measure banning all electronic communication between coaches and recruits, with emails and faxes being exceptions as they are already regulated by other rules. Kate Hickey, the chairperson for the council, made a crack that student athletes want to see the ban enacted for their own sanity and to save themselves from ginormous text-messaging bills. Ha, good one Kate, verrrrry funny. I doubt that most student athletes are pissed about having a college coach want to recruit them so badly that they’re willing to send text messages non-stop. The reality is that some regulation was needed because coaches were abusing the no-limit policy on texts, but banning the practice altogether is excessively harsh. Leave it to the NCAA to go from lasseiz-faire to way overboard in two seconds flat.
- Enjoy having the sword of Damocles hanging over you for the next few weeks, Scooter McDougle. McDougle is the University of Toledo football player who was charged in a point-shaving scandal involving UT football and basketball players centered around a Michigan-based bookie. Federal prosecutors have temporarily dropped charges against McDougle, citing procedural reasons and the need for more time to conduct their investigation. However, it is likely that once the investigation is finished, McDougle will be charged once again and will go to trial. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office explained that McDougle likely would be indicted at a later date for taking bribes from a gambler in Sterling Heights, Mich., to alter the result of football games and recruiting teammates and members of Toledo's basketball team to the same. McDougle has been suspended from the football team following his indictment but continues to attend classes at UT. Don’t expect him to be reinstated simply because the feds decided to temporarily drop the charges against him. No, Scooter gets to spend each day going to class and trying to do the right things, all the while knowing the government is strengthening its case against him and preparing to indict him a second time. Life will be a little tougher without the cash, merchandise and groceries that the gambler, identified only as “Gary”, provided to McDougle in exchange for fixing games. Have fun with it Scooter, your days as a non-convicted felon are numbered.
- Recall time! It’s been far too many days since there was news of some food product, pet or human food, being recalled. This one is a doosy, though, so it makes up for lost time. An industrial chemical (score!) that led to a nationwide recall of 100 brands of pet food has turned up again in some pet food imported from China. Any time you can have a food contaminant that crosses national and continental lines, you’ve got something good. The presence of the chemical in Venison and Brown Rice dog foods and Venison and Green Pea cat food, both sold by Natural Balance, has resulted in a recall of those products. Personally I’d recall the dog food and let cats take their chances eating the contaminated grub, but that’s because I hate cats and have no use for them. However, Natural Balance has gone the humane route and recalled both the dog and cat food, so pet owners can consider yourselves warned.
- File this under the heading of not at all surprising. In the wake of the Don Imus firing, critics of the same hateful, bigoted speech that Imus used for the Rutgers women’s basketball team turned their ire to rap music. One of the results was a hip-hop summit in New York, bringing music-industry executives together to discuss sexist and misogynistic lyrics in rap under the leadership of Def Jam CEO Russell Simmons and his Hip-Hop Summit Action Network. Want to take a guess what groundbreaking, earth-shaking changes these executives came up with in their meeting in order to change the way rappers derisively refer to women in their lyrics? If you guessed “nothing” then you would be exactly right. Yes, a grand total of zero recommendations for change resulted from the meeting, meaning that hip-hop is going to keep doing what it’s been doing and that in a few months, when those who are currently livid and demanding change have forgotten all about the subject and gone on to other crusade against other perceived wrongs, rap lyrics will be exactly the way they are right now. Execs aren't about to impose demands and mandates on their artists and risk alienating them and losing fans who love rap the way it is, because that would negatively impact the bottom line, and ultimately that’s what music is about for those in charge of it.
- Rule #1 when receiving email messages with attachments is never, EVER download and open said attachment unless it’s from someone you know well and you are 100 percent sure that it is virus free. Anyone who’s had an email account for more than a week knows this, or so I thought. Turns out that the reason hackers in Asia were able to get into State Department computers and steal government data because a State Department employee in Asia opened a mysterious-looking email that appeared legitimate and contained a Microsoft Word attachment. Once the message was opened and the attachment downloaded, the hackers had access to government files for a limited time until some built-in safety measures severed all Internet services to State Department offices in the region. Glad to see that we are continuing our policy of allowing only our smartest, most computer-savvy federal employees to be responsible for the security of important government computer files. Whoever it was that got suckered in by this bogus email probably was playing a wicked game of computer solitaire or 3-D pinball on their desktop and barely took time to look at their emails as they opened them. Remember, kids, hackers don’t have to be incredibly smart or sophisticated as long as you continue to be clueless and oblivious. One last time: Do not open attachments from anyone that you do not know and know well and do not open attachments unless you are 105 percent sure they don’t contain any kind of Trojan horse virus.
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