- Depending on whom you believe, the greatest cyclist of all-time could be coming out of retirement for the 2009 Tour de France. Yes, Lance Armstrong is reportedly preparing to stop making all of us average marathoners look bad by running sub-three-hour marathons and head back to the grueling race on two wheels instead of two feet. A European news agency reported Monday that seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong will come out of retirement and compete in next year's race. Armstrong will turn 37 on Sept. 18, but clearly feels he still has the drive and fitness to compete. A guy like that doesn’t come out of retirement just for the fun of it; he believes he can win and if he believes that, I have to buy in as well. Reports have him joining the Astana team and competing in five road races the Amgen Tour of California, Paris-Nice, the Tour de Georgia, the Dauphine-Libere and the Tour de France. The same sources are saying that Armstrong will receive no salary or bonuses, not that he needs them. Armstrong’s manager, Mark Higgins, refused comment, but if the rumors are true that the comeback will be the focal point of a story in the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, he won't need to. Like I said, I think Lance can come back and win, but I can't say that I’m totally on board with him coming back. For who? For what? You won your last seven Tours, you’re now battling a much more important battle to fund cancer research and what is one more title going to prove? But I guess when you’ve won the race seven times, it’s your prerogative to come back if you want…….
- Boy, this is a disturbing story. In London, The Man is now stooping to new lows in an attempt to invade the privacy of Average Joe Citizen. According to British media reports, Children as young as eight have been recruited by local councils to snoop on their neighbors and report petty offences such as littering. The children are among almost 5,000 residents who are being offered rewards as high as £500 if they provide evidence of minor crimes. One council has admitted to signing up teams of “environment volunteers” who are being encouraged to photograph or video neighbors guilty of dog fouling, littering or “bin crimes.” Are you f’ing kidding me? You’re bribing people, kids in some cases, to spy on fellow citizens? I love the environment as much as anyone, I really do, but this is bullsh*t. These “covert human intelligence sources,” as some local authorities are calling them, are also being asked to pass on the names of neighbors they believe (i.e. speculate) to be responsible, or take down their number-plates. In other words, you’re asking Joe Citizen to do the job of the police, a job most tools in any society aren't capable of. Seriously, have these locals councils been out in their towns and seen the people they’re asking to help fight environmental crimes? I’m telling you, there are too many morons in this world to entrust the average person with this sort of power. Allow the Ealing Council in West London to illustrate my point for me: “There are hundreds of Junior Streetwatchers, aged 8-10 years old, who are trained to identify and report enviro-crime issues such as graffiti and fly-tipping,” the council said in a statement. Seriously, 8-year-olds fighting crime? They’re barely qualified to watch Spongebob Squarepants, yet you want them trying to stamp out crime? The most absurd part of this is that some of the idiots who are taking part in these programs are assigned James Bond-style code numbers, which they use when they ring a special informer's hotline. This is bogus, a total invasion of privacy and a prime example of Big Brother going too far. You dangle the carrot of a few extra bucks in front of poor people in exchange for finking on their neighbors for crimes that they themselves are probably guilty of, you’re going down a road you shouldn’t be traveling…..
- The meat at the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant may be ceremonially clean, but the workers at the Pottsville, Iowa plant aren't in quite the same compliance with the national labor laws at the meat at their plant is with God’s law. The owners of the Agriprocessors plant in Pottsville were charged Tuesday with more than 9,000 misdemeanors alleging child labor law violations. According to the indictments, these tools regularly hired minors and, in some cases, had children younger than 16 handle dangerous equipment such as circular saws, meat grinders and power shears. Nice move there, you want a 15-year-old busting out a circular saw and hacking up some beef. Of course, child labor wasn’t the only racket allegedly going on at the plant. As many as 400 illegal immigrants were also working at the facility and were arrested in May in one of the largest single-site immigration raids in U.S. history. In the complaint filed by the Iowa attorney general's office, violations involving 32 illegal-immigrant children under age 18, including seven who were younger than 16, were found. Also, the complaint says that not only were the minors handling dangerous equipment, they were also exposed to hazardous chemicals such as chlorine solutions. Better still, all of the alleged violations occurred in an eight-month span - from September 9, 2007, to May 12, 2008 - the day when the plant was raided by federal immigration agents. Among those charged are the company itself, Agriprocessors Inc.; plant owner Abraham Aaron Rubashkin; former plant manager Sholom Rubashkin; human resources manager Elizabeth Billmeyer; and Laura Althouse and Karina Freund, management employees in the company's human resources division. Each defendant faces - are you ready for this? - 9,311 individual counts! That’s one for each day a particular violation is alleged for each worker. That has to be some kind of record, being hit with 9,311 charges at once. Even O.J. Simpson has to be impressed by that.
Fortunately for those charged in the case, the charges are simple misdemeanors, each carrying a maximum penalty of 30 days in jail and a fine of $65 to $625. At the maximum end of the spectrum, that would be about 765 years in jail per defendant and $5,819,375 in fines per person. Predictably, the company and its management are denying the claims. Chaim Abrams, a manager at the plant, said in a statement that Agriprocessors “vehemently denies” the allegations. Oh, if you vehemently deny it, then it’s cool. Abrams isn't denying the minors were working at the plant; he’s simply trying to push the blame off on the underage workers. “All of the minors at issue lied about their age in order to gain employment at the company,” he said. “At the time of hiring, all of the minors, like all job applicants, presented and signed documents stating that they were over 18.” Nice try, C. Either you and your human resources department are morons or you’re lying, and I don’t care which. If you had done even a little bit of due diligence, you wouldn’t have hired most of those kids. Lying about it now or trying to finger the kids isn't going to fly, but you might be….flying off to jail and the poor house, that is……
- Nobody does fake news like Stephen Colbert. Not only that, no one does shameless self promotion quite like Colbert, whether it’s pimping his book (I Am America, And So Can You, available at bookstores near you and online now) or campaigning to have a species of trap door spider named after him by East Carolina University researcher Jason Bond. However, this is the first time that a publicity stunt for The Colbert Report will go galactic. Colbert announced Monday that he plans to have his DNA digitized and sent to the International Space Station with game designer Richard Garriott, who will be joining a Russian Soyuz spacecraft set to be launched into space next month. “I am thrilled to have my DNA shot into space, as this brings me one step closer to my life-long dream of being the baby at the end of 2001,” said Colbert.
This actually isn't just a promotional stunt for Colbert; it’s also a promotional stunt for Garriott, who is collecting DNA as part of “Operation Immortality,” a tie-in with his game, Tabula Rasa. The plot of the game is that humankind is near extinction because of alien invaders. The promotional tie-in invites real-life participants to help preserve humans’ legacy by voting for our greatest achievements and also shooting some DNA samples into space. If you want more information on the project, you can learn more at the Operation Immortality Web site……
- What are your balls made of? If you’re the NBA, the answer is (and will continue to be) leather. The Association announced Monday that it will use leather basketballs in its developmental league next season, signaling a temporary end its attempts to force a composite ball on players at the NBA level. “We are committed to leather for the foreseeable future,” said league spokesman Tim Frank. “We just realized leather is what our guys wanted.” You JUST realized it? What, were the dozens of complaints fro, player after player about the composite ball not enough when you introduced it at the start of the 2006-07 season? In case you don’t remember, players complained that the balls became slick from perspiration and left cuts on their fingertips. This decision is good news for Spalding, which will remain one of two companies manufacturing a leather basketball. The decision to stick with the leather ball will have the NBA standing alone, as most colleges and high schools use balls made of synthetic material because they're less expensive and provide more consistent from ball to ball. The new plan for the NBA is to develop a two-paneled ball, rather than the current eight-panel model, but as long as it’s made of leather, the players will be happy and to be honest, I don’t think most fans give a crap……
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