Racist cameras, illiteracy in Laredo and Tim Floyd stays true to his inner d-bag

- Literacy in the city of Laredo, Texas is taking a standing eight-count at this point. . A 2003 study by the National Center for Education Statistics found that 48 percent of the residents of Webb County, Texas -- home to Laredo -- lacked basic literacy skills and the fact that the city is now without an actual bookstore is not going to help the problem. As of Jan. 16, when Barnes & Noble, which owns B. Dalton, closed the store inside Laredo's Mall del Norte, Laredo has been bookstore-less. The closest bookstore is in San Antonio, some 150 miles away, and that makes Laredo (population 250,000) one of the largest cities in the United States without a bookstore. A grass-roots group called "Laredo Reads" has formed and begun collecting signatures to show corporate book dealers that Laredo can support a bookstore, but the fact that all of the bookstores in the city closed would somewhat contradict that sentiment. After all, business don’t generally close if they are profitable and so I have to assume that bookstores in Laredo just weren’t making much money, hence their closure. Barnes & Noble says it closed the Laredo store as part of an overall strategy to shut down the chain of mall-based bookstores. That is the company’s concern, but the concern of Laredo residents is that the lack of a book store will make the city look like an ignorant outpost on the Texas border. "Assuming that we don't read because we're Mexican or we're immigrant or we're poor, that is not the case," said Xochitl Mora, the city's spokeswoman. "Our challenge is to convince a corporate America bookstore and others they will find a literate, articulate, eloquent citizenry." Look, I feel your pain Laredo, but just know that approximately 50 to 60 small Barnes & Noble-owned bookstores have closed every year over the last 5 to 6 years. Furthermore, what I would point out to those lamenting the lack of bookstores in Laredo is that not having a bookstore doesn’t mean people aren’t reading. Electronic reading devices like Amazon’s Kindle (on which you can read this very blog!) are becoming more and more popular and taking away from sales of actual books in physical form. To be honest, I can’t tell you how many bookstores are in any city I live near or have ever visited and I don’t use that number as any sort of measuring stick for literacy. You still have a sweet public library that I’m guessing it heavily underutilized, so go down and check out all the books you want for free. Boost literacy that way and you should be a-ok, overpriced national chain bookstores be damned…………

- I personally believe, like, such as, therefore, toasters, lamp shades, pitchfork, rainbow, that the Iraq and people who don’t have maps in the South Africa, such as, tacos, nuclear bomb, Fiji, zebras, that the next season of The Amazing Race will be quite a trip. That sentence is brought to you by the legendary, the infamous, the one and only Caitlin Upton, a.k.a. the former Miss Teen South Carolina who delivered a Muhammad Ali-like beatdown to the English language in answering, well……I have no freaking idea what Miss America question she was asked that precipitated her incoherent rambling answer about maps, Iraq, South Africa and the future, but when someone delivers that sort of rambling, legendary diatribe, the question is virtually irrelevant. Now, Upton will team with Brent Horne, a model from Columbia, S.C., to form one of the 11 teams that will cross five continents and eight countries in the 16th edition of Race that kicks off Feb. 14. They will be joined by former Big Brother contestants Jordan Lloyd and Jeff Schroeder, proving what an incestuous little circle reality shows are, recycling contestants from one show for the case of another. The remaining nine teams are comprised of people who aren’t “famous,” including a team of undercover detectives, a professional baseball coach and his daughter, two attorneys, a personal trainer grandmother and her granddaughter and the requisite married couple and lesbian couple. For what it’s worth, Amazing Race is one of the better reality shows out there, which is akin to being the tallest midget in some sense, but it’s still a show that would be worth your time to check out…………

- I’ll say this for former USC coach Tim Floyd: He’s sticking to his true scumbag self no matter what the situation and no matter how bad things get. After running a corrupt program during his short stint at USC that (allegedly) featured payments and illegal benefits used to entice prized recruit O.J. Mayo to play for the Trojans, Floyd abruptly left the Trojans' bench in June as allegations about the improper recruiting surfaced. Rather than stay and face the looming NCAA sanctions, he jumped ship to the NBA. His resignation came after allegations surfaced that he paid $1,000 to Mayo associate Rodney Guillory, who helped steer Mayo to USC. Because of his corrupt regime, the Trojans have been banned from postseason play this season and suffered other self-imposed sanctions the university put in place in the hopes of avoiding more stringent NCAA penalties. But in spite of the mounting mounds of evidence against him, Floyd continues to insist that his departure was in no way related to the allegations of improper recruiting against him and was due to his deteriorating relationship with athletic director Mike Garrett. Floyd, now an assistant coach for the New Orleans Hornets, is as defiant and douche-baggish as ever in denying the real reason he fled USC like a guy fleeing a crowded room after dropping a gag-inducing fart. "Why I left was not in any way an admission of guilt," Floyd said, according to the Times-Picayune. "It was a complete testament to a lack of support by my administration and how we were treated after four years of doing everything the right way. And that is what I've gone on record as saying. The day the story broke, my athletic director called me and asked me where I was. He asked me if I'd read the story. I said, 'Yes. And I did not do what I'm accused of doing.' Two, 'Where are you?' 'I'm in New Orleans.' The third thing he said was, 'You need to get your ass back to Los Angeles, so I can decide what I'm going to do with you.'" Interesting. And by interesting, I mean a scumbag not actually denying what he did, but rather saying he didn’t explicitly admit guilty by hitting the eject button with a sledgehammer when it became clear that the sh*t was about to hit the fan. Mayo hasn’t been much better, refusing to cooperate with USC’s investigation into the improper recruiting allegations even though he had nothing to lose by doing so. Neither he nor Floyd could possibly be punished for what they had done while at USC and for anyone with an actual conscience, that would be incentive enough to be truthful and own what they had done. Instead, Mayo and Floyd sit idly by while the players and coaches remaining at USC must cope with this season's postseason ban and the vacating of wins from 2007-08, a reduction in scholarships, restrictions on recruiting, and returning money the school received from participating in the NCAA tournament. Of course, it’s impossible to completely absolve Garrett of any blame in this matter, as he is presiding over what appears to be the most corrupt athletic department in college athletics. The situation involving the men’s basketball program is mirrored by a similar investigation into the football program, where NCAA is investigating whether former Trojans running back and Heisman Trophy winner Reggie Bush received extra benefits during the 2004 and 2005 seasons. Ironically, USC football coach Pete Carroll also fled the school for the professional ranks as the investigation heated up. Carroll jumped ship to the Seattle Seahawks earlier this month, again leaving behind the players to deal with the mess he made. There just aren’t any true good guys here and Floyd merely happens to be the most loathsome of the bunch at this point…………

- Want to own a part of a near-disaster that became one of America’s greatest stories of heroism in recent memory? If so, I have just the opportunity for you. US Airways Flight 1549 ended with an impromptu crash landing in New York's Hudson River courtesy of Capt. Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger last January, but the plane itself hasn’t suffered nearly as famous a fate as its pilot. The plane, an Airbus A320-214, is now up for auction. It currently sits at a salvage yard in Kearny, New Jersey and is listed for sale "AS IS/WHERE IS". Currently the wings of the plane are separated from the body, although they are included in the sale. The the bid site for the aircraft lists "severe water damage throughout the airframe" and "impact damage to underside of aircraft." One thing you won't get in the sale are the engines, which were famously damaged by a flock of freaking Canadian geese, leading to the improvised landing on the Hudson landed with 155 people aboard. The auction continues until March 27 at 4:30 p.m. ET and is open to the public. It is being managed by Dan Akers of Chartis Insurance, a division of the larger American International Group Inc. that insures US Airways. is Marie Ali, a spokeswoman for Chartis, stated that the plane is being auctioned "as salvage." Admittedly, I’m not sure what one would do with the wreckage of a commercial aircraft, as it’s not like a signed jersey from a professional athlete that can be neatly displayed over the mantle inside a nice frame. I suppose if your back yard is large enough, you could resurrect the Airbus A320-214 and use it as a piece of playground equipment for the kids. That being said, I don’t know that you can justify throwing away the chunk of change it will likely take to win this auction just for a conversation piece……………

- Can cameras be racist? I sure hope so. Nothing pumps me up more than the possibility of inanimate, non-human objects displaying racist tendencies and giving minority groups one more target for their anti-establishment rage. The issue of camera racism came to light last year when some Asian-American consumers experienced problems with Nikon cameras whose facial recognition software flashed messages about people blinking in pictures when in reality they were simply Asian and had more narrow eyes than many non-Asian photo subjects. Face detection can also automatically snap a picture when a subject smiles, so it has become more popular with many camera makers. It is also used on computer webcams, where it can track a person's face during a video conference or enable face-recognition software to prevent unauthorized access. The software relies on an algorithm to identify for common facial features, or more specifically, their shadows. A video from an RV dealership in Texas showing the webcam on an HP computer reacting differently to a black employee than a white employee went viral on YouTube last month, with almost 2 million views. Rather than labeling that camera racist, my explanation would simply be that HP computers are pieces of crap, mostly because they are. Still, some analysts wonder how cameras that are so “racist” in their facial recognition even made it to the market in the first place. The blame belongs more so on the makers of camera parts who often supply the facial recognition software to well-known brands. Issues arise in creating facial-recognition software because the more images fed into the making of the program to help the camera identify faces, the more contradictions pop up in the rules the computer uses for the purpose. What helps identify a face in one image could be contradicted by the data from another image and that’s where problems occur. Lighting and the computing power of the camera’s internal memory also factor into the equation, so there is obviously much more to the issue of camera racism than it may appear. That being said, I like the idea of bigoted cameras and the thought of angry minorities drop-kicking their digital picture-takers after receiving the same offensive, mistaken error message over and over again…………