Banning Facebook in Bangladesh, head-butting Little League coaches over playing time and using leftover cooking grease to churn out beer

- Not that this is a great loss for the citizens of Bangladesh, but the People’s Republic of Bangladesh has blocked Facebook because of what it deems offensive images of the Prophet Muhammad that were hosted on the social network. The images sparked a wave of protests and the government felt the need to chime in and restrict access to the site. The protests also had to do with Facebook groups and pages like “Everyone Draw Mohammed Day,” which rips the Muslims who took offense to South Park’s depictions of the prophet and suggested that thousands of Facebook users draw images of Muhammad, which is forbidden by Islamic law. The primary offender in terms of Facebook pages isn’t even all that popular, boasting just 3,000 fans. However, Muslims seem to take greater offense to several visual depictions of Mohammed on the page and not so much the number of people who are fans of it. Bangladesh isn’t alone in blocking the site; Pakistan blocked Facebook allegedly for the same reasons last week. Neither of the bans is long term, so users in both nations will soon be able to get back on and resume joining moronic groups of people who like certain flavors of ice cream, whose names begin with a certain letter of the alphabet and who like specific brands of breakfast cereal, all of which seem to be key components of the Facebook experience for most people. However, the bans will stand until the offending images are removed, which they will be in countries where objections have been raised. Facebook’s policy is to allow access to offending content outside of the countries where it’s offensive and censoring to comply with individual countries’ laws within their own borders. So for now, it’s life without Facebook for you, Bangladeshians…………

- No matter how many times you hear people tell tales of adults behaving like complete and total idiots at youth sporting events, you never really get used to the concept that the kids are the mature ones at most of the games they play. Men like Matthew A. Collins of Perry Township, Ohio will always amaze me. Collins, apparently the prototypical hot-headed Little League dad, decided that after a game Wednesday at Perry Township Park would be a good time to confront his son’s coach about a lack of playing time for his son. From there…..well, I’ll allow Lake County Sheriff Daniel Dunlap to take up the tale.
“During the course of the game, Mr. Collins became upset, something about playing time,” Dunlap said.
“(Collins) claims he was either belly bumped or kneed in the groin first.” From there, Collins allegedly headbutted the coach, followed him to the ground and continued to flail at him, Dunlap said. Collins attempted to sell the story that he was trying to end the argument and did not initiate the physicality, but the game’s umpire and other impartial witnesses all said that it was Collins who started the fight. He was arrested, charged with assault and released on a recognizance bond. He will be making his preliminary appearance in Painesville Municipal Court is scheduled on Tuesday and if convicted, he could face any punishment from community service to a six months in jail. Ironically, Collins is himself a police officer in the nearby city of Mentor. Way to show that you know how to keep your temper in tense situations, officer. If you can’t keep your head at a Little League game where the worst thing that could happen is someone running out of Capri Sun pouches before your kids gets one, how are you supposed to remain calm and in control if a suspect pulls a gun and opens fire on you in a crowded place? I’m sure that Mentor Police Captain John Jaros and his department will have a lot of fun conducting their internal investigation into Collins’ actions to see if sanctions would be appropriate. And as always, I’m sure this was an immensely proud day for Collins’ son, seeing dear old dad led away in handcuffs as his teammates and their parents looked on…………

- I’m not supposed to root for or against specific movies to succeed or fail, what with attempting to maintain an air of professionalism and all. However, I have to admit that I laughed…..and laughed…..and laughed when I heard that even in its debut weekend, "Sex and the City 2" couldn’t beat out a giant, green animated ogre for first place at the box office. "Shrek Forever After" won on what will go down as the slowest Memorial Day holiday weekend at the box office in a decade. "Shrek Forever After" won the top spot with a three-day total of $43.3 million, besting the glorified cougars of “SATC 2,” who raked in $46.3 million, far less than the $57 million earned by the original two years ago. Honestly, this film was such a glorified cash grab that even Hollywood should be ashamed of it. Bringing back a bunch of past-their-prime, marginally attractive actresses with mediocre acting skills for a sequel to a movie that was a bad idea the first time around reeks of desperation and a lack of originality. In third place was "Prince of Persia," the Jerry Bruckheimer adventure flick starring Jake Gyllenhaal and based on the popular video game of the same name. However, gamers don’t tend to venture out of their basements into the sun’s harsh rays all that often and they don’t generally risk interacting with members of the opposite sex, so counting on them to get out and support your movie is risky. Bearing that in mind, the fact that “Persia” managed to make $30 million for the weekend doesn’t seem all that bad. Seven percent of its total came from IMAX screens and has made $133 million in 10 days thus far. Fourth place went to "Iron Man 2," which conjured up $16 million, a decline of 39 percent from last weekend and has earned $274 million total. Next on the list was Universal's "Robin Hood," which fell 45 percent but made $10.3 million in its third weekend in theaters. In sixth was the Amanda Seyfried-starring romantic pic "Letters to Juliet," grossing $5.9 million for the weekend to boost its cumulative total to $38.1 million. The worst movie I’ve seen in a long, long time, Fox Searchlight's "Just Wright," was seventh for the weekend with $2.2 million to put its three-week gross at a laughable $18.2 million. Twentieth Century Fox's "Date Night" amazingly held on to eighth place, piling another $1.75 million into its piggy bank to inch ever closer to the $100 million mark (currently $93.4 million). After that the top 10 saw its biggest flop take ninth place. That would be the Relativity Media-financed comedy "MacGruber," the epic failure in the making from Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. Considering the movie had an embarrassingly bad debut weekend, the fact that it lost more than 63 percent of its value from that opening weekend and actually made money as opposed to losing it is astonishing. “MacGruber” made just $1.5 million for the weekend, which can't make “star” Will Forte feel that great. "How to Train Your Dragon" secured the tenth spot in, appropriately enough, its tenth weekend. The DreamWorks family flick made with another $1 million and raised its cumulative total to $212 million…………

- Rarely do I find myself in the position of defending someone who has been accused of creating music that promotes devil worship. But to be fair, deceased heavy metal rocker Ronnie James Dio is not able to defend himself and the ass hats from the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas are doing what they do best namely turning what should be the respectful, dignified goodbye for grieving family members and friends to the one they loved into a glorified publicity stunt for their church’s hateful agenda. The memorial service for Dio took place Sunday at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills in Los Angeles and prior to the event, those pieces of crap from Westboro Baptist Church posted a picketing schedule on the its website and announced that protesters would be at the Dio memorial. In case the name of the church doesn’t ring a bell, these are the same classless a-holes who routinely pickets soldiers' funerals to promote their platform of hate and bigotry masked as an opposition to the homosexual lifestyle. The church isn’t accusing Dio of being gay, but rather accusing the 67-year-old rocker of worshipping Satan. He passed away on May 16 after a battle with stomach cancer and even for someone like myself who was not a fan of any of his bands, especially not his most famous one, Black Sabbath, the idea of respecting his passing is a no-brainer. Yes, he was a key figure in heavy metal music, a genre that has often been hit with charges of devil-worshipping. And yes, Dio popularized the "devil's horn" gesture, where the index and the little fingers are upright and the thumb is clasped against the two middle fingers. Fans throw the gesture up at concerts and it’s spilled over into pop culture in many places. Dio claimed that he was taught by the sign by his superstitious grandmother as a way to ward off the "evil eye," but some religious groups have taken offense to the gesture, alleging that it is a tribute to the devil. Ironically, it is Dio’s widow Wendy who is teaching a lesson about forgiveness and compassion to the Christians who picketed her husband’s memorial service. "Ronnie hates prejudice and violence. We need to turn the other cheek on these people that only know how to hate someone they didn't know," she said of the protest. The service also served a second purpose in addition to honoring Dio’s memory: raising money for cancer research. The memorial hosted a donation center for Dio's "Stand Up and Shout Cancer Fund," named after one his songs. His most recent musical efforts included touring with Heaven and Hell, a version of Black Sabbath renamed for legal reasons. All shows were canceled last March because of his illness. He last appeared in public His last public appearance was in April at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, when he accepted a vocalist of the year award. He was part of three Black Sabbath released albums, including "Heaven and Hell" in 1980, "Mob Rules" in 1981 and "Live Evil" in 1982. He left the band in 1982 and had just one brief reunion with them, a decade after the initial split. Here’s hoping that he is remembered for his music and the people it affected as opposed to the idiots who turned his memorial service into an absolute farce……….

- In one of the more fitting marriages of beverage and factory fuel I can remember in some time, Milwaukee Brewing Company has found a way to use leftover cooking grease to make its product. The company has reached a deal with local parks to use leftover cooking grease from their kitchens to turn it into bio-diesel energy to fuel the brewery. To complete the circle of enviro-conscious business, the grease-fueled beer will be sold in recyclable cans at county parks. Milwaukee County Parks Director Sue Black showed up at the plant to test ne of the first beers off the line at on the city's south side and gave it her seal of approval. I find this entire arrangement very fitting because who likes greasy, fatty foods more than beer drinkers and especially beer drinkers in Milwaukee? These are people who eat bratwurst for breakfast, bathe their breakfast cereal in malted hops and consider a nice, juicy steak to be a nice appetizer before plowing through a ginormous plate of ribs for dinner. Combining grease left over from cooking up some of those greasy, fatty, meaty meals with the production of one of Milwaukee’s true loves - beer - is genius. “Everybody that goes out on a Milwaukee County course gets to see a Milwaukee branded beer that they know is brewed using sustainable practices," said Jim McCabe of Milwaukee Brewing Co. It’s important to note that no actual grease goes into the beer, although for some odd reason I don’t think that a lot of Milwaukee residents would have a huge beef with that…………

A glut of perfect games in MLB, a child dies at the hands of morons and Lindsay Lohan finds a perfect role for her

- Is pitching a perfect game in Major League Baseball getting easier? With only 20 perfectos having been thrown in the history of the game, the immediate answer would seem to be no. However, given that two of them have been thrown in the past three weeks and three in the past calendar year, it’s a question worth asking. Philadelphia Phillies ace Roy Halladay joined the club Saturday night, blanking the Florida Marlins 1-0 in Miami to add the ultimate masterpiece to his already sparkling resume. Halladay recorded the last out at 9:23 p.m., when he got pinch-hitter Ronny Paulino to hit a grounder to third for the final out. "It's never something that you think is possible," Halladay said. "Really, once I got the two outs, I felt like I had a chance. You're always aware of it. It's not something that you expect." His perfect game came a mere 20 days after Oakland A’s rookie Dallas Braden accomplished his own feat against Tampa Bay. After finishing off the perfect game, Halladay received a call in the clubhouse from Vice President Joe Biden to offer his congratulations. "Early in my bullpen I was hitting spots more than I have been. I felt like I just carried that out there," Halladay said. Unlike many perfect games or no-hitters, Halladay didn’t need many spectacular defensive plays behind him to keep runners off base. Shortstop Wilson Valdez did go deep into the hole for a grounder, backup third baseman Juan Castro went to his knees for another, second baseman Chase Utley ranged well to his left for another out but none were jaw-dropping defensive gems. In respect for his accomplishment, the Marlins said they would give Halladay the pitching rubber as a souvenir. That led to a grounds crew heading onto the field after the game, digging up the rubber as other members of the group prepared for a postgame concert behind second base. The Marlins themselves weren’t too worried about being part of history on the wrong side. "Look who's pitching," Marlins outfielder Cody Ross said. "It's Roy Halladay, the best pitcher in baseball. It's not embarrassing." Not that either side needed to be reminded of who was pitching, but this is exactly why the Phillies made that multiteam trade that brought him from Toronto in the offseason, then gave him a $60 million, three-year contract extension. The Marlins were helpless against his arsenal of pitches Saturday night and their desperation to get a hit showed through in the ninth inning when manager Fredi Gonzalez sent three consecutive pinch hitters to the plate in one final attempt to best Halladay. "He did what he had to do," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "We gave him one run. He made it stand up. That was good. Super for him." It is the second perfect game in Phillies history, along with 10 total no-hitters. The moment was so huge that the local NBC affiliate in Philadelphia switched over from its coverage of the hometown Flyers’ appearance in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup finals to show the final few outs of Halladay’s perfecto. So whether it’s the quality of the pitchers doing it or simply the perfect game becoming easier to accomplish, baseball is seeing an amazing first half of its season that will hopefully continue………..

- Ironic is thick and at the same time horrifying in this next story. A Korean couple whose baby starved to death because they were too wrapped in an online fantasy game in which they - wait for it - raised a virtual child was sentenced Friday. Kim Yun-jeong and her partner, Kim Jae-beom, allowed three-month-old Kim Sa-rang to die of malnutrition in September while they were locked into 12-hour sessions of the game Prius Online. If you’re not a gamer dork, Prius Online a 3-D fantasy game in which players nurture an online girl who gains magical powers as she grows. Never did it dawn on these two imbeciles that they had an actual, real-life child who needed magical things like food and nutrients to stay alive. Instead, they gamed their way right to a jail cell. Yun-jeong received a suspended sentence because she is expecting the couple's second daughter in August. Hopefully, that child is raised by someone else, someone who remembers to feed her. Jae-beom was sentenced to two years behind bars, but the couple's defense attorney said he was satisfied with the sentence. "This is the first legal case regarding Internet addiction in Korea," said Kim Dong-young, a lawyer with the Korean Legal Aid Corp. "I am pleased that the female defendant's Internet addiction was taken into consideration, and she was bailed." Prosecutors at Suwon District Court had sought a five-year sentence for negligent homicide, but the court handed out a two-year sentence instead. Personally, I would have thrown both in the hole for a decade at least and also ordered both of them sterilized so they can never bring another child into this world for any reason. Just listen to one of the key facts presented during the trial: the child weighed 6.4 pounds when she was born, but was only 5.5 pounds at the time of her death. And no, I don’t accept the defense of addiction to online gaming. Sure, Internet gaming is hugely popular in South Korea, with ultra-high speed Internet connections nationwide. However, this isn’t gambling away one’s life savings or losing touch with family and friends because you spend all of your free time in front of the computer screen. This is neglecting to meet the most basic physical needs of an infant who is unable to fend for herself and allowing that infant to die a painful death because you were focusing your effort on a virtual - VIRTUAL - child that you had no hand in bringing into this world. Ironically, Suwon, the satellite town south of Seoul where the tragedy occurred, was named "Intelligent City of the Year" this month by a New York-based think-tank Intelligent Community Forum. Doesn’t seem so intelligent to me……….

- Rarely has any actor or actress been more perfect for a role than the one Lindsay Lohan is about to occupy on the big screen. One of the biggest lushes and wild women in Hollywood in this or any era, Lohan has been out doing g promotion for “Inferno” - the Matthew Wilder-helmed film that tells the story of ‘70s adult firm star Linda Lovelace. Lovelace, the 1972 “Deep Throat” star, will be brought to life by a woman who has probably had the most hookups with random strangers and yet never (that we know of) appeared in an actual porno - so far. Posters promoting the movie are now making the rounds, with one a close-up on the brunette Lohan, sitting on the edge of a bed with her knees drawn to her chest as what appear to be the torsos of two men linger in the background and the other depicting her laying on her back in retro undergarments. Both images were snapped by Tyler Shields, the same photographer who also captured Lohan wielding a gun back in April. Considering who is involved in the project and who the movie is telling the story of, the posters are actually much tamer than most would have expected. Still, one can’t help but smile at the thought of Lohan finally landing in a role she was born to play, one in which some of her best skills are going to be on display on the big screen. For Lohan herself, it must be nice to have people talking about you for reasons that don’t include alcohol-monitoring bracelets, court appearances or possible jail time. So congrats on finally finding your place in the world, L., keep it up…………

- There are a lot of factors that can hold up road construction and renovation projects: laziness, lack of funds, bad weather, political disputes and dozens of others. However, the state of New York is staring down a new issue as road repair season nears for 2010 - a dearth of road paint. Supplies of the reflective road paint used to mark dividing lines are running low around the country, all due to a shortage of a single chemical used to make the paint. Road paint differs from other types of paint - spray paint, paint used inside and outside of homes, etc. - because it must be specially formulated to give it durability and luminescence under harsh conditions. "It's a very significant problem," said Brian Deery of the Associated General Contractors of America. Right now, the shortage hasn’t hit home quite yet and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials expressed optimism that supplies will be restored before any roadwork gets derailed, but it’s a dicey proposition at this point. "Most states report that they're getting the same monthly allocations [of paint] that they got last year," said Tony Dorsey of the AASHTO. "It's not like the tap's been cut off. They're just not getting more than they got last year." New York isn’t the only state cognizant of the impending problem and in Texas, officials are already taking steps to conserve the use of paint. "We see shortages on the horizon and anticipate slowdowns," said Chris Lippincott, director of media relations for TxDOT. "What we don't want to do is start a project that we can't finish." Well, projects that you can’t finish because of a lack of paint, anyhow. Projects can drag on for years due to other reasons, but not a lack of paint. TxDOT is prioritizing projects to preemptively tackle the potential paint problem, including suspending some repainting work in the hopes of stretching the existing supply until production is back to normal levels, more or less. So if you are out on the road this summer and notice a few less orange barrels and construction projects on your state’s roads, now you’ll know why…………

- Sarcasm makes the world go ‘round - well, it makes my world ‘round, anyhow. The problem with sarcasm is that there are too many morons in the world and sarcasm unfortunately flies right over their heads. Sadly, these tools are the ones who would benefit most from understanding sarcasm because then they might realize what a drain they are on the rest of us and make some effort to step their game up in life in general. The question is how we get these laggards up from the back of the intelligence pack to join the rest of us in dispensing and enjoying sarcasm? Furthermore, how do we accomplish this in the online world, where the normal contextual and nonverbal clues are missing? Enter a group of researchers who have developed a computer program that can identify sarcasm in online communities with an accuracy rate of about 80 percent. That team is led by Oren Tsur, a computer scientist at The Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Tsur’s sarcasm detector ironically began as a sort of joke after he received an email during his freshman year of college that thanked him for his previous contributions to an annual conference and asked him to be that year's program chair. Being who he was, Tsur knew that the email was intended for someone else. He wrote back with a humorous, yet sarcastic tone and the response to that message startled him. "They allowed me to postpone the deadline for submission and asked me what I was working on," Tsur said. "I wrote back that I was working on detecting irony in email. They didn't get that either." That led him to begin experimenting and working on a program to detect the very sort of sarcasm that had flown right over the heads of those who read those emails he sent and all of that led him to a program that may help the sarcasm-stupid in the world to get a clue. As a test, Tsur and colleagues fed the computer 80 sarcastic sentences and several hundred non-sarcastic sentences that they had pulled from Amazon.com user reviews. The program analyzed the sentences and created hundreds of patterns it then used to evaluate 66,000 reviews for 120 products sold on the site. Results included the finding that sentences that start with "I guess" and end with an ellipsis are often, though not always sarcastic. In order to test their program’s proficiency in detecting sarcasm, Tsur’s team then presented 200 of the same product reviews to three independent reviewers. Those three reviewers found an 80 percent agreement between the computer’s perceptions of sarcasm and their own. The program is still a long way from being ready for widespread use, largely because sarcasm is such a complicated social construct. However, Tsur plans to present a paper about his work at a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Washington, D.C. If nothing else, he is providing a glimmer of hope for the knobs, tools, idiots and imbeciles out there who just can’t figure out when they are being sarcastically mocked by those intellectually superior to them…………

UConn basketball in deep sh*t, Nepal in some of its own and staged presidential photo ops

- Not a great day for you, is it UConn basketball fan? Your vaunted coach, a future hall of famer, now presides over a program accused of eight major NCAA infractions, with investigators citing hundreds of improper calls and texts from UConn staff to recruits. At the front of this impropriety parade is head coach Jim Calhoun, whose men's basketball program now faces accusations including giving recruits improper benefits and improperly distributing free tickets to high school coaches and others in addition to those impermissible calls and texts. While leading a program to multiple national titles is great, the NCAA is less concerned with those feats and more concerned with Calhoun’s alleged failure to promote an atmosphere of compliance. "It's not exactly, certainly anywhere near the high point of my career, as a matter of fact it's certainly one of the lowest points at any time that you are accused of doing something," said Calhoun. "It's a very serious matter." Thanks for that, Capt. Obvious. Look, I know the guy can’t say anything of substance at this point, when the matter is still an open case, but saying it’s “a serious matter” is a pretty severe understatement. And no, I don’t care that athletic director Jeff Hathaway offered support for Calhoun and defended the university. "Let me be clear," Hathaway said. "The University of Connecticut is fully committed to NCAA rules compliance and takes this matter very seriously. With regard to coach Calhoun, he personally has a long-standing demonstrated commitment to NCAA rules compliance." I don’t expect this guy to do anything other than back up his coach at this point, but know that the NCAA has spent 15 months digging into this matter based on suspicious activity surrounding the recruitment of former player Nate Miles, who was expelled from UConn in October 2008 without ever playing a game for the Huskies. Miles was charged with violating a restraining order in a case involving a woman who claimed he assaulted her and never got anywhere near the court in a game for the Huskies, but his impact on the program may end up being greater than anyone who has ever played at the school. Because of Miles, the NCAA began digging and found enough to accuse the program of 160 impermissible telephone calls and at least 191 impermissible text messages between recruits and coaches, including assistants Beau Archibald, Patrick Sellers, Andre LeFler, associate head coach George Blaney, and then-assistant Tom Moore, who is now the head coach at Quinnipiac. UConn has until Oct. 15 to respond to the charges because that’s when it will appear before the NCAA to give its reply. The school is likely to take the same initial tactic as the Michigan football program is currently taking in its own battle with alleged NCAA violations, attempting to impose its own sanctions in advance of any NCAA judgment in the hopes of lessening the governing body’s penalties. Those penalties could include anything from recruiting restrictions to the loss of scholarships, but a ban on postseason play or the forfeiting of any games is unlikely. No competitive advantage was gained from the violations, so more severe penalties relating to on-court issues just don’t make much sense. Recruiting restrictions can definitely have an impact, though. Just as Indiana University how much it hurt to have the NCAA crack down on its men’s hoops program after the misdeeds of noted liar and scumbag Kelvin Sampson, who was forced out in February 2008 when more than 100 impermissible calls to recruits came to light. UConn’s alleged violations seem just as bad, especially claims that Archibald and Sellers provided false and misleading information to NCAA investigators. Both men have resigned, but Calhoun is still there and with or without direct knowledge, he was in charge of the program when those lies were told and as such, much of the burden falls on him and the five-year, $13 million contract he recently inked. Bet you’re glad you have those two national titles to fall back on now, eh Jimmy……………

- In the worlds of business and politics, photo ops are a way of life. At building dedications, dudes in suits pick up golden shovels and pretend to shovel dirt for pictures, when donations are made to charitable organizations, the leaders of those groups involved in the donation pretend to unload boxes for the cameras and so on. We all know and accept these facts, but shouldn’t it be a little different when the situation is not donation or building opening but one of the worst natural disasters in recent memory? Of course, the disaster in question is the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the still-failing effort to stop the leak and clean up the resulting mess. As President Obama visited the Gulf Coast on Friday to assess the situation up close, you had to know there would be ample photo ops with hard-working members of the cleanup crews, showing the president was right there on the front lines, talking to those who are working around the clock to clean this mess up. What you may not have known was that BP shipped workers into Grand Isle, Louisiana, for President Obama's visit to the oil-stricken area and sent them away once the president left the region. That’s what one Gulf Coast official accused BP of doing, claiming that "a number of buses brought in approximately 300 to 400 workers that had been recruited all week," Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts said. Making matters worse, Roberts said the workers were offered $12 an hour to come out to the scene at Grand Isle and work, but only while the president was there. Nothing like trying to polish your public image by padding your worker base in an area where you knew the most powerful man in the Western Hemisphere would be, BP. That clearly screams eyes on the prize and dedication to cleaning up the spill above all else. Fact is, I understand that at this point, your reputation could not be much worse. Most of the American public hates you and many of them are boycotting your gas stations. However, wasting time, resources and fuel to bring in extra workers to an area just so you can make your failing cleanup effort look better on TV and in pictures is feeble, disingenuous and offensive. Any doubt about why the workers were there was erased when they beat it out of the area once Obama departed, so did the workers, he said. BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles tried to downplay the claim Friday evening, saying it’s not unusual to see people wrapping up work in the afternoon. "These individuals are working out in the heat of the sun. These are long days. They start early in the morning, and they stop early in the evening," he said. "So the fact that they were leaving the location late in the afternoon was not unusual. It's not associated with the president arriving." Mmm hmm, sure thing, Douggie. I can't imagine any company making such an obvious and blatant attempt at a cheap public relations ploy in the face of a massive natural disaster…….….

- Good news, everyone! The voice of our generation - his words, not mine - is back from exile! Kanye West has been laying low, wearing his butt-ugly sunglasses and interrupting unsuspecting people in Hawaii for a while now and no one has heard much from him. During this time, rumors have had him working on a mysterious new album and preparing for a triumphant return to the music scene. At long last, we finally have some results to listen to from those recording sessions in paradise in the form of a new song that may or may not be part of a forthcoming full-length album. “I guess every superhero needs his theme music,” West says at the start of a newly leaked song called “Power.” However, don’t let that opening line fool you. On the whole the song is pretty dark, edgy and angry. It’s not a superhero song by any means, including lines like, “No one man should have all that power.” It’s unclear who West is referring to with those words, especially since his arch nemesis, W., is no longer in office. He also reserves lyrical space for people who have mocked him in the past (“F— SNL and the whole cast”), explaining his recent absence from the public eye (“I just needed time alone with my own thoughts”) and other assorted topics. The words also include ramblings on unrelated topics - “How’s ‘Ye doing? I’m surviving,” and “I was drinking earlier, now I’m driving.” The song also mixes in a back-and-forth exchange with singer Dwele. All of this is laid over an eclectic, erratic beat that builds with clapping, screaming and other sounds into a prog-rap groove that samples King Crimson. Ironically, as much as we know about this song, West’s label is still keeping quiet about “Power” and not confirming whether it will be part of his next album or not……….

- Chaos averted - for now, Nepal. Your nation narrowly escaped a political sh*t storm on Friday when the leading political parties reached a last-minute agreement to prevent the dissolution of Parliament and provide another year for country to complete its peace process. Staring down a midnight deadline, Nepal’s Maoists reached agreed to a very generally worded deal with leaders of two other major political parties in which the they agreed to extend the term of Parliament, the Constituent Assembly. In return, Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal agreed to tender his resignation at a to-be-determined point in the future to “pave the way” for a new government. The measure was taken up just before midnight and passed an hour later after parliamentary leaders approved it. As much as I love countries having functioning governments to rule over them, a large part of me wishes the Maoists had stuck to their demands for the resignation of the prime minister before Friday’s deadline as a precondition for extending the assembly. When the prime minister refused, the Maoists should have stuck to their guns and forced him to reconsider, with threats of violence if necessary. Getting a written promise of a future resignation just isn’t the same. As far as legal documents go, the agreement is remarkably short, weighing in at a few short pages and centering on three main points. The agreement also promised that other major issues in the struggle between the parties would be addressed in an extended legislative session and during the drafting of a new constitution. “We are firmly committed to consensus and cooperation to take the peace process to a logical conclusion and to immediately complete the remaining tasks of the peace process and to accomplish the historic responsibility of writing a new constitution,” the agreement read. Such is life in a nation undergoing a transition from feudal monarchy to secular democratic republic. The peace process is four years in the making and was only allowed to begin after the Maoists agreed to end a 10-year guerrilla war (another thing I love in life, guerrilla warfare). An interim constitution has governed the country the past few months and Friday was supposed to be the deadline for drafting a permanent one. That deadline has basically been pushed back for now, which gives the two sides more time to address issues like the fate of the more than 19,000 former Maoist soldiers living in camps monitored by the United Nations. Opposing parties question whether Maoists were truly committed to democratic principles like separation of powers, but the Maoists have their own questions and concerns. They also have a significant chunk of Nepal’s power, having won a plurality of seats in the Constituent Assembly and formed a government in 2008. Of course, they stepped down after nine months in a political dispute, but have since demanded that they be allowed to form a “national consensus” government to oversee the drafting of the constitution. Regardless of how this turns out, hopefully we get some more late-night legislative drama to enjoy as the process rolls onward…………

- For all of the ‘80s rock dorks out there, "Rock Band 3" may soon become your favorite video game of all time. Rumors are swirling that instead of a keyboard being included in the game - as was teased in the "Green Day: Rock Band" demo - there will instead be a keytar-like instrument supported for the system. For non-‘80s music fans, a keytar is a keyboard-guitar hybrid that is basically a keyboard with a strap, held like a guitar. It will be the only new instrument for the game, which is noteworthy in and of itself because game maker Activision had explicitly stated that they were focusing on software and not hardware in order to cut costs. To work around these concerns, the peripherals for the game will be created by an outside company - Mad Catz. Mad Catz will be creating all the "Rock Band 3" instruments and bundles, while EA will only be distributing the software. There will be a variety of bundles with different combinations of instruments available, and there will be bundles that are exclusive to certain retailers. If you already have guitars, you’ll need to purchase a bundle for drums. If you need everything, there will be a comprehensive package to cover it all. Some stores may elect to not clutter up their shelves with ginormous boxes and simply stock the game. This should allow the focus of the launch to be kept on the software, which will have a "pro" mode included in the game that will require proper technique, necessitating actual skills on guitars and bass. Mad Catz is clearly hoping to create a product more like an actual guitar, building on its long-standing license to release Rock Band peripherals. With the company’s experience in the field, it makes perfect sense for EA to turn this aspect of the game over to Mad Catz. Also keep in mind that “Rock Band 3” is still in the works and not on sale yet, so all of this could change in small ways over the days and weeks ahead………

Celebrity news to benefit us all, Israel in another international scrap and bias in empathizing with others' pain

- So as it turns out, being more concerned with suffering endured by people of your own race may in fact be a natural thing. While we’re all wired to feel another person's pain, a new study suggests that people may feel less innate empathy if the other person's skin color doesn't match their own. Neuroscientists have discovered that we literally feel each other's pain in a sense, in that seeing a person suffering similar suffering to what you yourself have suffered causes your nervous system to respond as if you yourself had been hit in the same spot. The study found that subtle racial bias can disrupt this process -- a finding that could significantly impact health care as well as social harmony. You can read all about it in the journal Current Biology (which I am sure you all read anyhow) and learn about how people of Italian and African descent watched short film clips that showed needles pricking white- and black-skinned hands. While they watched, research measured participants’ empathy (their nervous-system activity) by monitoring sensors attached to the same spot on their hands, as well as heart rates and sweat-gland activity, both commonly accepted measures of emotional response. "White observers reacted more to the pain of white than black models, and black observers reacted more to the pain of black than white models," says the lead researcher, Alessio Avenanti, Ph.D. In a weird twist, the researchers also showed clips of a needle pricking a hand painted bright purple. Both groups of participants were more likely to empathize with the strange-colored hand than with the hand of another race. This suggests that the lack of empathy for the first video was not due merely to difference in skin color, but to a specific skin color. "This is quite important, because it suggests that humans tend to empathize by default unless prejudice is at play," Avenanti stated. Additionally, Avenanti and his team tested the inherent prejudice of participants by measuring their reactions to certain stereotypes of Italians and Africans. Those who showed a strong preference for their own group in this test also tended to show less empathy when the hand belonging to the other group was stuck with a needle, the researchers found. Obviously, the concept and practice of empathy are different in the real world than in a lab setting, but there is no denying that racial differences and prejudice could play a role in certain interactions. "A doctor with high racial bias may understand the pain of other-race patients in a more detached or disembodied manner and, in principle, this may contribute to the causes of racial disparities in health care," Avenanti explained. So the next time you see someone in pain, stop and consider your level of empathy and see if it might be different were that person of a different race…………

- Edgy and provocative is everything in advertising. Consumers see so many ads in so many places through so many different media that unless your ad truly stands out, it’s going to be ignored. Thus, there is a fine line to walk between being edgy or controversial and just being inappropriate. A new line of provocative ads on New York City buses walks that line and depending on who you ask, steps right over it. "Fatwa on your head?" one ad asks. "Is your community or family threatening you? Leaving Islam?" The ads, sponsored by an organization called Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), promote refugefromislam.com, a website designed "for people who are thinking of leaving Islam or are leaving Islam and need resources" to protect them from harm.” Obviously, encouraging anyone to abandon their own religion in favor of something new is going to offend a lot of people. SIOA leader Pamela Geller doesn’t exactly have the most ironclad solution for practicing Muslims who find the ads offensive, saying they should "ignore it." Geller has been appearing on every radio show that will have her, including conservative talking head Sean Hannity's radio show recently. In that interview, she said, "It's time for Americans to stand up against the evil of Islamic jihadi terrorism and Islamic supremacism." Her group is also currently lobbying to block a mosque proposed near the World Trade Center site. Islamic groups are predictably outraged by the ads, including the Council on American-Islamic Relations in New York, which called the ads "Islam bashing." Sure, suggesting that your friends and family members are putting out a religious standing kill order on you and that you should hit the eject button on your religion might seem like criticism of that religion, but maybe not. Perhaps the SIOA is merely looking to give Muslims options……okay, even I don’t buy that. I’m not Muslim but I can easily see why Muslims would have a problem with this. "Islamophobes are notorious for their cheap tactics that seek to marginalize American Muslims and divide communities," CAIR Community Affairs director Faiza Ali said in a statement. "Pamela Geller uses the same tactics as tobacco companies, hiding the cancerous nature of her agenda behind a smokescreen of feigned concern. Geller is free to say what she likes, just as concerned community members are free to critique her tactics and motives." Now, there are extremist groups within the Muslim community and those are probably the ones Geller was referring to when she called CAIR an "unindicted co-conspirator Muslim-brotherhood front Hamas-tied" organization. She may not have proof of that, that doesn’t seem to matter to her. In actuality, Manhattan isn’t the first place the SOIA has placed these ads. They also sparked controversy when SIOA bought ad space on public buses in Miami, more than has resulted in New York City in fact. "We have not gotten complaints on it, to be honest,"New York Metropolitan Transit Authority spokesman Aaron Donovan said. The standard run time for ads on MTA subway cars and buses is one month, and so it will be for the SIOA ads. If it happens to spark a subway brawl or two during that time, so much the better…………

- Before the NBA’s top free agents make their decisions on where to play next season, they will apparently meet for the first-ever max contract free agent summit. LeBron James, Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade and Joe Johnson will be four of the most sought-after free agents only the Association kicks off its free-agent signing period July 1 and according to Wade, before he makes his choice, he'll talk it over with James, Johnson and Bosh. Wade said in a newspaper interview that although no date has been set for the unofficial summit, but they've been discussing their futures informally for a while now. "[Free agency] has been three years coming," Wade said. "We've discussed it prematurely, at different times. [But] you don't know what guys are thinking and where they're going. I think we'll all sit down, and before one of us makes a decision, all of us will have spoken to each other and [listened to the] thinking. A lot of decisions [will be based on] what other players are willing to do and what other guys want to do. So it's not just a 'me' situation here. We all have to look and see what each other is thinking." James, Wade and Bosh became close while playing together on the 2008 U.S. Olympic basketball team that won the gold medal in the Beijing, but does friendship on an Olympic team mean these guys will leave millions of dollars on the table to play with each other in the NBA? I’m thinking no, even if the possibility seems cool to them in theory right now. Johnson seems the most likely member of the quartet to end up playing with one of the other three because his massive choke job in the Atlanta Hawks’ playoff series sweep by Orlando should lower his stock a bit when teams come to the negotiating table. As for Bosh, he has reportedly given his current team, the Toronto Raptors, a list of five teams he will consider signing with next season -- Toronto, Chicago, the New York Knicks, Miami and the Los Angeles Lakers. Why he’s telling the team that, I’m not sure. He’s also thrown up Tweets asking fans to help him decide on where to sign, so his head could be just about anywhere at this point. The Chicago Bulls are expected to be the frontrunners in the free agent race, as they have enough money to possibly sign two elite free agents. The Knicks, Nets and Heat are the other teams with the most financial flexibility to add a prime free agent from the 2010 class and the Cleveland Cavaliers will also obviously be in the mix for at least James. Still, what I wouldn’t give to sit in on that powwow when these four guys get together and use $100 bills as coasters for their drinks, drive their $100,000 rides up to the meeting place and ooze money out of their pores when they sweat............

- Don’t mess with Israel. A lot of countries have learned that lesson the hard was over the years (Iran, you listening?) and with another international controversy brewing and Israel at the center, we may be on the verge of having this conversation once again. The Israeli government announced Thursday it will stop a convoy of cargo and passenger ships filled with supplies and headed to Gaza. The ships - sent by a collection of nations that includes Turkey, Greece and Cyprus - is seeking to break a blockade imposed by Israel in 2007. When that convoy nears its destination, it will be met by the Israeli Defense Forces, which have been given instructions to reroute the flotilla to Ashdod port in Israel, where the supplies will be unloaded and transferred to Gaza. As a quick aside, who loves the world flotilla as much as me? It’s fun to say, fun to write and fun to read. Israeli politicians seem to be very angry about the flotilla (told you it was fun), with Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev calling it "a cheap political stunt" and questioning the true intent of those sending it. "If they were really interested in the well being of the people of Gaza, they would have accepted the offers of Egypt or Israel to transfer humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza, along with the other 15 thousand tons sent every week," Regev said. Those Regev is ripping are the Free Gaza movement, a pro-Palestinian human rights organization, and the IHH movement, a Turkish humanitarian relief foundation affiliated with the Islamic Brotherhood, that organized the convoy. Its contents include 10,000 tons of construction material, medical equipment and school supplies and about 750 activists of different nationalities. In the meantime, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has summoned the ambassadors the countries from which the flotilla set sail -- and "clarified the state of Israel's official position, which declares the flotilla an absolute provocation.” The MFA has also “invited” the flotilla to dock at Ashdod port, to unload its cargo and transfer it to Gaza after a security check. Now, calling this an “invitation” is a bit like calling certain NFL team activities “optional.” You only have a choice in the matter if you don’t mind pissing off a very powerful entity and are itching for an all-out brawl. The blockade has been in effect ever since Hamas forcefully took control of Gaza in 2007, ousting the Fatah movement headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Israel put it in place and doesn’t seem inclined to remove it any time soon. Under international maritime law, when a maritime blockade is in effect, no vessels can enter the blockaded area for any reason. Such blockades are a legit measure under international law, so Israel is well within its rights here. They may be implemented as part of an armed conflict at sea and Israel views this flotilla as a maneuver to break Israel's siege on Gaza and blockade on Gaza. Both sides are firmly entrenched in their respective positions and as with all matters involving this region of the world, look for this one to get incendiary in a hurry……….

- Typically I don’t pay attention to celebrity gossip - who’s dating who, who is in rehab, who’s getting Botoxed or having their rack enhanced - but I’m going to make an exception in this case because if true, this next story could drastically improve the life of each and every person reading this story and even the nation as a whole. For too long now, dumbass duo of Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt have terrorized us with everything from moronic books to bad pop music, from vapid reality TV shows on MTV to diva-like performances on other reality shows that are raising money for charity. Both are well below par on IQ points, deficient when it comes to having class and clueless when it comes to how truly irrelevant and insignificant they are in the world. As a couple, they have been able to consolidate their powers of moron-itude and inflict a lot of damage on pop culture. Thus, news that they may be divorcing is huge for every last one of us. Montag fired Pratt as her manager months ago in favor of a Hollywood psychic (who she fired after a week), but the bigger development came when she recently acknowledged the possibility of a divorce. She turned around and dismissed that talk as "being dramatic," but now the vapid, walking billboard for plastic surgery appears to have changed her mind and reportedly wants to move out of the house she shares with Pratt and into her own Malibu home. An unidentified source closed to the bleach-blond troll said Montag "is looking to move out due to all the fake bad press that Spencer controls." Fake bad press? Sorry, unidentified source, but these two jokers can accrue plenty of legit bad press all on their own. Whether it means anything or not, Montag did Tweet two days ago, "PS: I am not Heidi Pratt, I am Heidi Montag." Big ups on spelling both your first and last names correctly, H., I didn’t think you had it in you…………

My prediction on WWIII coming true, Apple v. the DOJ and the death of a mullet

- This is one prediction I could have done all right being wrong about. When South Korea began bumping its gums about retaliating against North Korea for allegedly sinking one of its warships last month and killing 46 South Korean sailors in the process, I quickly predicted that as always, Kim Jong Il and Co. were going to use any retaliation as an on ramp to starting World War III. Sure enough, that’s exactly what the diminutive dictator seems to have in mind. As South Korea began an anti-submarine exercise early Thursday, North Korea quickly stated that it would meet "confrontation with confrontation" and war with "all-out war," the very war yours truly predicted. "Now that the puppet group challenged the DPRK [North Korea] formally and blatantly, the DPRK will react to confrontation with confrontation, and to a war with an all-out war," according the North Korean government said through a state news agency. Through its news agency, K.J. Il’s government scornfully labeled South Korean leaders as a "group of traitors" and said they would experience "unheard of disastrous consequences" if they make a move against their neighbors to the north. Never mind that those neighbors almost certainly were responsible for exactly what they have been accused of and everyone but them agrees on that, North Korea will not be bullied, dammit. But as I said, don’t think for a second that Kim Jong Il is the least bit bothered by the heightened tensions on the Korean peninsula. Dude is reveling in being the center of attention and salivating over his chance to be the igniter of WWIII. He may have even ordered the firing of that fateful torpedo at the South Korean ship just to expedite the process. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Seoul on Wednesday and poured some extra gasoline on the fire by calling the sinking "an unacceptable provocation by North Korea" to which the international community should respond. North Korea is readying itself for that response, reportedly enacting new measures to deal with any "all-out confrontation," steps that would "retract all measures for providing military guarantees for the North-South cooperation and exchange, and the promise of a physical strike.” Here’s hoping I’m wrong about all of this, I just don’t see it happening…………

- Apple may have conquered Microsoft and become the new king of the technology world in terms of profits and net worth, but Steve Jobs and Co. now have a new opponent: investigators for the Department of Justice. The DOJ is asking questions about Apple's business practices involving digital music and has been investigating the company for the past three weeks. Investigators have interviewed executives at record companies and digital music stores in an attempt to determine whether Apple has employed anticompetitive tactics. Right now, sources say the investigation is still in its early stages and there is no evidence that the DOJ has found anything substantial enough to file a complaint against Apple. The heart of the investigation seems to be the question of whether Apple, through its iTunes store, has used its prominence in the digital music world to discourage two of the top record companies from participating in a special Amazon music promotion called the "MP3 Daily Deal." Apple has a reputation for being a bully in the digital music world and with the iTunes store accounting for 70 percent of all digital song sales, the company definitely carries significant clout with record labels. In 2005, Apple CEO Steve Jobs chastised top recording companies for "getting greedy" by considering variable pricing on songs and albums. Apple haggled and eventually agreed to certain controls on pricing, but held strong against demands to give record companies the ability to sell albums that were unbundled. Apple had no interest in allowing popular LPs to be sold only as a comprehensive unit instead of as individual songs and has not given much ground on the issue. Users of the iTunes store have often hailed these efforts by Apple as sticking up for the little guy, especially ensuring that customers would not be compelled to buy full albums if they only wanted a song or two and paying for songs they didn’t want. It is a major issue and yet consumers have become so familiar with the system as it now stands, few even give it a second thought. All along the way, the government never stepped in to reprimand Apple for its business practices. Now, the new king of the tech world seems to have crossed a line that the government is unwilling to ignore. It all has to do with Amazon's "MP3 Daily Deal," a promotion that involves cutting prices on specific music titles and marketing them heavily on the day of their release. For these songs, Amazon is often able to secure exclusive access to the music for a period of time. That didn’t sit well with Apple, whose managers reportedly informed the labels that any music included in Amazon's promotion would receive no promotion at iTunes. One of the more prominent examples of this practice involved material from Alicia Keys, which Apple saw promoted as part of the Daily Deal and registered displeasure over it with Sony Music Entertainment. Other instances have seen Corinne Bailey Rae's "The Sea," Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now," and Ke$ha's "Animal" (all crappy songs by terrible artists, by the way) as subjects of Apple’s battle versus Amazon. I suppose that if you want to dominate the music market (the iTunes store accounted for 28 percent of all music purchased by U.S. consumers in the first quarter of this year), these anti-competitive, threatening tactics would be a good way to accomplish it. Of course, it would also be illegal and unethical, but no one wins in business by being legal, ethical and honest, right………….

- This next story just about crushed my soul and ruined my day, so be forewarned. Jared Allen, the man who has come to represent the lifestyle that is the mullet and became a hero to millions because of his courage to rock the Mississippi Mudflap day in, day out, has done the unthinkable and lopped off his Canadian Passport. Allen, the Minnesota Vikings' star defensive end, may have created his own iPhone app with a “Mullet Generator” program that shows aspiring wearers of the business up top, party in the back how they would look with their very own mullet, but with his wedding fast approaching, he has caved in to the demands of his future wife and cut his hair for the big day. "The things men do for love," Allen told Vikings.com. Again, this is a guy who has said time and again in interviews that the mullet is a "lifestyle," not just a hairdo. He has inspired thousands to join his "Mullet Militia," rock the group’s t-shirts and download his app. In a 2009 interview, Allen waxed philosophic about his adoration and respect for his mullet. "The mullet isn't just a hairdo. It's definitely a lifestyle. You're carrying on a legacy," he said. "If I approach you from the front, it's like, wow, that dude is pretty serious. Then I walk away and you're like, damn, he likes to party. With two Rs." Flat-out awesome, bro. But if it’s truly a lifestyle, then how do you turn your back on it for a woman? I haven’t seen any pictures of Allen’s fiancée, but she had better be a cross between Jessica Biel, Jessica Alba, Kristin Kreuk, Scarlett Johansson and Megan Fox if Allen is selling out and shaving his Tennessee Top Hat for her. Now, Allen did tease a possible return of his mullet at some point, so don’t lose all hope. In actuality, as long as that thing is back for the start of the upcoming season, it may not be as bad as I initially feared. If he has to chop it for wedding pictures but has permission to start growing it back the instant that ceremony ends, I might be able to digest this news more easily. Bring it back, Jared, bring that luscious Wisconsin Waterfall back as soon as humanly possible. Mullet Nation and the world as a whole are rooting for it……………

- Oh goodie, here we go again. We all had more than enough of reality TV ass hats Jon and Kate Gosselin on their now-defunct reality series "Jon and Kate Plus 8," but let’s go ahead and pile on more exposure to at least one of them - Kate. Coming off of a stint on ABC’s “Dancing With the (D-List) Stars” in which she was the target of plenty of fan hate (Gee, famous for no reason besides popping out eight kids, played out her family drama on reality TV, no discernable talent or soul), Kate Gosselin and her exploited children are set to debut in her solo spinoff show on TLC, “Kate Plus 8.” The show will purportedly show the new, single-working-mother side of Kate, but I prefer to call it more of the same old garbage, sans one of the show’s main ass clowns. But TLC clearly feels that one show featuring Gosselin and her band of brats isn’t enough, because the new show will be accompanied by not one, but two specials, with the first featuring the family on a surprise trip to Orlando for the sextuplets' sixth birthday. “Highlights include the kids feeding sting rays at Discovery Cove, swimming with the dolphins, feeding exotic birds, riding in an air boat and taking in the sights of the Everglades, [and] partaking in an orange juice squeezing contest,” according to a statement from TLC. Great, but why do I care? Why do I want to see these losers going on a family trip to Orlando any more than I want to see family vacation videos of a Disney World trip from some random stranger on the street? This is the very core of why I hate reality shows like this one, which pretend to follow the real lives of people I don’t know or care about. First, the shows are anything but real, with teams of writers and producers steering every scene. Second, you’re picking a person who has done nothing to be famous or get on TV, putting them on camera and giving them the false impression that they are relevant and special. I don’t know them, I don’t care and that’s why I have zero interest in a TV special providing a “behind-the-scenes” look at what it’s like to be Kate. I don’t need that show to know: no soul, an IQ of 47, a sense of entitlement and a total lack of ability to understand my absolute worthlessness to the world as a whole. “Inside Kate’s World” may have a few no-life-having losers to watch it, but not me. I don’t need your “unique, never before seen glimpse into the day-to-day routine of the single mother, entrepreneur, best-selling author, dance partner and friend,” TLC. She’s not my friend and as much as I wish you would cancel the two hours of Kate plus her eight brats, I realize it will air June 6 at 9 p.m. and all I can do is make my best effort to block out all knowledge of and exposure to it………….

- Sweet, more evidence that tanning beds are in essence ginormous boxes of death. According to a new study, people who regularly use tanning beds may double or even triple their risk of developing melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. In the study, participants who have used a tanning booth or similar service even once have about a 75 percent higher risk of melanoma, on average, than those who have never tried it. The risk of melanoma was also higher among frequent and long-term indoor tanners than in those who tan outdoors. When compated to those who had never slammed themselves into a bathing suit and goggles and sat inside a cancer box for 15 or 30 minutes, individuals who spent more than 50 hours under the lights were three times more likely to develop melanoma. The study, which is the largest of its kind to date, also revealed that people who visited tanning salons for more than 10 years or who logged more than 100 sessions were about 2.5 times more likely to develop the cancer. Lest you think this is some biased research conducted by a group with a personal vendetta against the tanning industry, just know that the study is saying very similar things to what an FDA advisory panel is saying as it ponders tougher regulations on indoor tanning. The panel is considering use restrictions (possibly an outright ban) on indoor tanning for people under age 18. The panel’s most recent meeting, in late March, focused on strengthening skin-cancer warnings at tanning salons and moving tanning beds to a class of medical devices that includes CT scanners, among other measures. By the way, if someone is legitimately thinking of classifying a device you use for non-essential, cosmetic enhancements in the same category as CT scanners, shouldn’t that be a huge sign that you shouldn’t be using the device in the first place? At that March meeting, the FDA panel heard testimony that was "pretty compelling," says Dr. Lynn Drake, a dermatologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston, and a nonvoting member of the panel. "This new study adds to the body of evidence supporting the fact that indoor tanning poses significant risks." It’s worth noting that in spite of a potential ban on teen tanning, teens do not seem to be more susceptible than adults to artificial ultraviolet (UV) rays. Instead, the study’s results suggest that melanoma risk is more directly tied to total exposure time as opposed to the span of time in which that exposure occurs. “Given our findings, the age you start indoor tanning may matter less than how much you do it," says the lead author of the study, DeAnn Lazovich, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Minnesota. "Maybe a ban should also be considered for adults." No beef there, professor. Fact is, of the nearly 70,000 people in the U.S. who received a melanoma diagnosis in 2009, you wonder what percentage of them were in that position in the name of beauty through indoor tanning. Maybe they don’t realize the severity of melanoma, which is deadly because it can invade deep into tissues and spread to other parts of the body. Given the age of people you typically see patronizing tanning salons, it’s no surprise that melanoma is the second-most-common cancer among people ages 15 to 29. The study itself appears in the journal Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention and included nearly 1,200 melanoma patients in Minnesota and a cancer-free control group. Of the melanoma patients in the study, a jaw-dropping 63 percent had tanned indoors at least once, compared with 51 percent of the melanoma-free individuals. Researchers also measured the melanoma risk associated with different types of tanning machines, comparing high-speed and high-pressure machines. Those who used such devices had roughly three and 4.5 times the risk of developing melanoma, respectively. In case you’re not up on the latest in cancer box technology, high-speed machines use higher amounts of ultraviolet-B (UVB) light while high-pressure machines use more ultraviolet-A (UVA). Predictably, the Indoor Tanning Association, a trade organization representing tanning facilities and suppliers, objected to the study and tried to spin the results in its favor. John Overstreet, a spokesperson for the association, tried to muddy the waters by claiming that unanswered questions remain, including the fact that vitamin D, which is produced by the skin with moderate UV exposure, may have cancer-fighting benefits. "Science is still wrestling with this issue and there's certainly still more to learn," Overstreet said. "We welcome a more complete body of research that will allow us to advise our customers how to achieve their goals without unnecessary risk of exposure." Nice try, cancer box proprietors, but no. Stop killing people, stop playing to their vanity and do us all a favor by just going away……….

NFL owners don't get it, go-go dancing for grads and hookers for the World Cup

- Way to show that you still don’t get it, NFL owners. After voting in March to change the sudden-death rule for the playoffs in order to make the system more equitable to teams that don’t win the coin toss, the league’s owners passed on the chance to extend the rule to the regular season when the issue came up at this week’s owners meetings in the Dallas area. Commissioner Roger Goodell said Tuesday the issue was tabled during the meetings, although there was clearly enough time to make the ill-advised decision to award the 2014 Super Bowl to the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area. However, owners decided that having different rules for overtime in the playoffs and regular season was a good idea. In the regular season, the old rule will prevail and a team that wins the coin toss and scores on its first possession - either a field goal or touchdown - will win immediately. In the playoffs, if the team that loses the coin flip immediately gives up a field goal, that team will get a chance to score either to tie or win. Why there wasn’t enough support to vote the measure in for the entire season astounds and confuses me, partly because of the inconsistency of having different rules for fundamental parts of the game in the regular and postseasons, and also because if it’s a good way to end games in the playoffs, why wouldn’t it work for the regular season? Either it’s good enough for both or it’s not good enough for either one, but there’s really not a middle ground. I understand that the owners were all itching to make their tee times, er, um, to discuss upcoming labor negotiations with the players and erroneously award the 2014 Super Bowl to the N.Y.-N.J. metro area, but this is a subject that deserved much more support than it received……….

- Times are tough and for new high school graduates, there aren’t many palatable options. Going to college is one possible route, but not everyone is cut out for higher education (I say just go, spend a few semesters hitting the keg, the bong and occasionally the classroom before flunking out just to have some fun, but I digress) and many graduates elect to enter the “real world” instead. They may find office jobs, labor jobs or just slum it for a while…..or they might just begin their career working at their local gentlemen's club. Graduates in the greater Jacksonville, Fla. area now have that option to consider thanks to Centerfold Lounge, a bikini bar in their area that has posted a billboard soliciting recent graduates for hire. The sign, put up by bar owner William Warner, is located just off Philips Highway south of Emerson Street and reads, "Now hiring the graduating class of 2010." Amazingly, some locals have objected to the sign and demanded that it be taken down immediately. "I think it's terrible. I mean really, young people could do a lot better than that," one local said. "It's a bit of shock and awe," another local resident remarked. "It's like, 'Wow, that's what our graduates have to look forward to? Go-go dancing and stripping?'" I’m sorry, what’s wrong with go-go dancing? Generations of father-hating, drug-addled young women have turned to that very profession and done quite well for themselves and their coke habits, er, their aspirations to attend law school. Warner is up front about admitting that the billboard is first and foremost a publicity stunt, although he obviously wouldn’t mind if it brought in some new prospects for the bar. "I mean, look at the economy. We have nothing to offer these grads," Warner said. "I do. I have what they can make money. Yes, we're looked at as scum of the Earth, but it's a paycheck -- money that will put food in their stomach and keep a roof over their head. Yeah, I hope some people will come and say, 'That's funny. Let's check this club out.” So now you have something to aspire to, Class of 2010 in the Jacksonville area. Taking your clothes off for money may not have been what those career aptitude tests suggested for you growing up, but it’s never too soon to be open to alternative paths in life……….

- The world is readying itself for the World Cup and when I say everyone is getting their game face on, I literally mean EVERYONE. Players, politicians, referees and fans are all bracing for one of the biggest events in sports, but another important group is getting ready for the big event and they are being overlooked for reasons I can’t fathom. That group, of course, is hookers. Wait, my bad. I mean, “sex workers.” Yes, that’s the term that members of the world’s oldest profession now want to be known by and according to the Deputy Chairman of South Africa's Central Drug Authority (CDA), the agency is bracing for as many as 40,000 women to soon arrive in the country to work as prostitutes while the World Cup is taking place in June and July. With the event just a few short weeks away and FIFA preparing for its ultimate showcase, I suppose that players and fans still need to get some action while they are in South Africa and to that end, 40,000 hookers should do the trick. Yes, this is soccer’s most prestigious tournament and the first time it has been held on the African continent, but when you stop and think about it, why should Africa be any different than any other host continent? You don’t want to feel left out, do you Africa? Hookers show up to the Olympics and other major international sporting events on other continents, so it’s only fair they come crashing across you borders along with the 450,000 people expected to travel to South Africa from around the world and the 32 different countries competing in the tournament. David Bayever, Deputy Chairman of the CDA, fretted about the glut of sex workers coming to the country while speaking at a public meeting recently. “As if we do not have enough people of our own, we have to import them to ensure our visitors are entertained,” Bayever snapped. “Our youth are going to be on holiday. They are going to be targeted to become prostitutes.” With those things in mind, the CDA is allegedly trying to put measures in place to keep shady individuals out of the country during the World Cup. And on the one hand, I can see their point. After all, South Africa is frequently reported as having the highest percentage of a population anywhere in the world suffering from HIV/AIDS. On the other hand, what’s not hilariously and ridiculously awesome about the mental image of some 40,000 - 40,000! - pros streaming across the border and flying from all over the world to lay down and take some from strangers for money? Great event you have going on, soccer, sounds like it’s going to be a blast in more ways than one……….

- Sometimes those most trodden down and overlooked by the world at those who show the sort of kindness and compassion that most of us never manage to conjure up in the course of our daily lives. Homeless men and women often can’t get the time of day from their fellow citizens and are often treated with such contempt that you wonder how they could have any of their own to share. That certainly isn’t true of J. Dudley Beavers, a homeless man from Memphis who became the unlikeliest of heroes for a dog dumped and left to die in an oil pit. Beavers came to the dog's rescue earlier this month in Memphis and helped save its life. Despite having been homeless for months (or perhaps because of it) and spending his days seeking shelter in an old car wash in East Memphis, Beavers knew just what to do when he saw the dog dumped just feet from him in a six-foot deep oil pit. "I was sitting there and I heard a dog squealing and I had an artificial limb and I didn't have it on. I heard a truck peel off and fly down the road," he explained. Altohugh he didn’t see who dumped the dog or even what had been dumped at first, he investigated and found the animal. He was able to extricate the dog from the pit and get her to safety. "I laid down and I put the rope under her arm and pulled her out," Beavers stated. Once he pulled the dog from the pit, he called a friend for help. Sheila Zachar put the oil-soaked dog in her car and rushed her to the Humane Society. "Her body temperature was low and I wasn't sure if she was going to make it. I wasn't sure how much oil she ingested," Zachar said. In the end, not only did the dog survive, but Humane Society workers took so much of a liking to the pooch they named Ellie May that the Humane Society is currently raising money to create an ambulance type service to pick up abused dogs like Ellie May and is considering making her he poster dog for their fundraising effort. It’s simply a great story of two individuals (Ellie May and Beavers) who have been ignored and cast aside by society and have managed to fight and survive in spite of that indifference……….

- Game over, Microsoft. Your reign as the dominant tech company on the block is over. Yes, you still have the crown as the manufacturer of the world’s worst operating system and no one is looking to take that from you, but Apple has seized the title of the industry’s true alpha dog. On Wednesday, Apple's market capitalization push carried it past its biggest rival. As recently as last month, Microsoft's market cap exceeded Apple's by about $25 billion, but Apple has now surged ahead by nearly $3 billion. With new items like the iPad and iPhone 4GS, Apple is lapping Microsoft of late at Bill Gates and Co. see their old cloak of tech invincibility ripped away. Today, Microsoft fell four to close at $25.01, while Apple lost 0.45 percent, closing at $244.11. Over the past two weeks, Microsoft stock has been hit hard by market fluctuation and dropped 15 percent, compared to just six percent for Apple. “What this means is that Wall Street has more confidence in Apple's growth prospects than it does in Microsoft's growth prospects," said Matt Rosoff, lead analyst at Directions on Microsoft, an independent firm. In the face of these grim numbers of perhaps because of them, Microsoft announced Tuesday that plans to shake up its management structure. The company will have to replace executive Robbie Bach, who led the entertainment and devices group of the company that created products like Xbox and Zune. Bach will retire from Microsoft in the fall and hopefully he will be taking all of his Zunes with him. Some experts believe Microsoft has fallen into too much of a react/respond mode in trying to match every new product or idea from Apple, but I prefer to view it is karma coming back to bite Microsoft in the backside for years and years of foisting the worst operating system ever invented on the public. Apple has a great operating system and is in the process of releasing a new one, which has led to record profits and rising iPhone sales. By comparison, Microsoft has tried and failed with the Zune, which has been embraced by no one and has become the red-headed stepchild and perennial punchline of digital music player jokes since its release. Those sorts of failures seem to have gotten inside the head of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who pulled the plug on development for a tablet computer to potentially compete with the iPad. In short, Microsoft has lost its edge, is badly rattled and shows no signs of pulling out of this nosedive any time soon……….

Bad news for stoners, no China trip for the Islanders and where to buy a cheap iPhone

- Please tell me this isn’t true. Tell me that the man known as Canada's "prince of pot," a man who is a hero to millions (and MILLIONS) of stoners worldwide didn’t really plead guilty Monday in a deal with prosecutors that could send him to prison in the United States for five years. You may know him better at hippie lettuce activist Marc Emery, but by any name, he pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Washington, to a single count of conspiracy to manufacture marijuana following an 18-month investigation into the seed-selling business Emery operated from his shop in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was sold out by his own government, which signed an extradition order May 10 that allowed the U.S. to hail him across the border to face our insane pot laws. This case has dragged on for five years after Emery was arrested in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he as the guest speaker at the Maritimers Unite for Medical Marijuana festival. He was accused of selling marijuana seeds to American customers and on the same day as he was arrested, Emery claimed that DEA agents raided his head shop in downtown Vancouver, where he sold bongs, pipes and books. Yes, you read that right - bongs AND books. Thankfully, U.S. District Court Judge Ricardo Martinez scheduled Emery's sentencing August 11, meaning there is still time for all you stoners out there to rally up, formulate a plan to spring Emery from jail and…..aww, screw it. Who am I kidding? We’re talking about stoners here and they just aren’t the most motivated group in the world. Emery’s fate was sealed when Canada's justice minister sold him out last week and paved the way for extradition. "Marc has never been afraid to face the music," said his wife, Jodie. "He's spent most of his life breaking laws he considers unjust to demonstrate they're unjust. He'll go to jail to prove how absurd our drug laws are." I agree, being the avowed friend of stoners that I am. So what if the guy produced the magazine Cannabis Culture and ran an Internet portal, Pot-TV? Just because the DEA's 18-month undercover investigation into Emery Direct Seeds allegedly turned up incidences of agents buying seeds from Emery's business over the Internet and in person doesn’t mean anything. The guy stands against our arcane, backwards laws governing pot in most of our states and authorities are merely pissed that this guy is standing up to them. However, don’t buy DEA Administrator Karen Tandy’s boasts that Emery’s capture as a "significant blow not only to the marijuana trafficking trade in the United States and Canada, but also to the marijuana legalization movement." Nice try, K. You, better than anyone, should know that in the drug culture, there is always a next person waiting to step up and take the baton for the druggie relay team. When one man goes down, the organization just welcomes in the next guy and keeps going. So if Emery and his two employees, Gregory Williams and Michelle Rainey-Fenkarek, are thrown in jail, the battle will continue and in the end, the right side will prevail……..

- Here’s hoping that New York Islanders owner Charles Wang hasn’t set off a major international incident by cancelling his team's planned nine-day trip to China. The move, first reported on Monday, certainly wasn’t expected. The trip, which had previously been agreed upon by the team, the NHL and the NHLPA, was expected to be a public relations maneuver for both the team and the league, but it had the plug pulled when the NHLPA began to check on making sure logistics including arenas, transportation and lodging met the union's standards. Wang became angered (and no one wants and angry Wang) and he was the one to cancel the trip. Team general manager Garth Snow confirmed the trip’s cancellation, but NHLPA spokesman Jonathan Weatherdon confirmed that the union's planned logistics check was standard operating procedure for any event involving the union's membership and was not in any way a sign of disrespect for Wang or the Islanders. "It's what we do," Weatherdon said. According to Weatherdon, the NHLPA always sends staff to events to ensure that everything is in order and that arenas, travel arrangements and security are in place for the event. When the Tampa Bay Lightning were preparing to play an exhibition game in Bratislava, Slovakia, in the fall of 2008, the NHLPA staff that visited the arena found nails sticking out of the boards around the rink and order that new boards be installed before the game. Also, if the league or players’ association were truly against this trip, why did the NHLPA waive its normal percentage fee for participating in international events for the China trip? The association made its own public relations ploy, asking instead for a donation to Goals and Dreams, the union's grassroots hockey program, to benefit youth hockey in China. Now, the trip is off, Wang is pissed and the Chinese can't be much happier...........

- Looking for a cheaper iPhone? Well, it may not be the 4G smartphone that you are seeking, but Wal-Mart has announced plans to slash the price of Apple's 16GB 3GS iPhone to $97 beginning this week. The world's largest retailer could well be looking to clear inventory as Apple prepares to unveil a brand-new iPhone next month. In other words, the iPhone 3GS is about to be out of date and that means you could save more than $100 on the phone, which currently retails for $199. However, that discount also means that you must sign a two-year contract from AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive service provider. "It is our commitment to always lead on price," Mehrdad Akbar, Wal-Mart's senior category director for wireless, in a prepared statement. Not that Apple needs any boost in iPhone sales (8.3 million last quarter, more than twice the amount sold during the same period a year ago), but this should help. Not everyone can afford the latest smartphone and those who shop at Wal-Mart typically aren’t the wealthiest, most affluent people who can afford a $300 smartphone anyhow. Also, Apple could be looking for an edge as competitors like Google, Research in Motion and Hewlett-Packard step up their smartphone game. HP, which recently purchased Palm, is the latest to jump into the fight and with industry analysts predicting that worldwide smart phone sales will continue to increase after topping 54 million units in the first quarter, it’s definitely a battle worth fighting. Both Apple and Wal-Mart also know that with the launch of the iPhone 4G on the horizon, sales of the previous model will soon begin dropping off as buyers simply wait out the new version. Having a $100 incentive to buy now may not send iPhone sales a-soarin’, but it should at least give Apple a bit of a boost as it prepares for its next big launch………..

- America, are you ready for another summer of hot chicks, ‘roided-up dudes and cranky reality TV lifers cramming into a glorified house/sound stage to live together, compete in absurd challenges like oversized putt-putt golf, throw in ridiculous costumes and engage in nonstop infighting as the world watches their every move on TV? If so, then you have to be pumped that the 12th edition of Big Brother will premiere on CBS on Thursday, July 8. Host Julie Chen will be back to preside over this gaggle of misfits and miscreants as they roid up, tan, gel, strategize and hook up. The show will be a staple of CBS’ summer lineup, airing three nights a week: on Sundays (8-9 p.m), Wednesdays (8-9 p.m. ET/PT) and Thursdays (eviction show from 8-9 p.m.) In the past, Brother has aired on Tuesday nights but the network reportedly wanted to keep its lame-tastic lineup of dramas on that night in place. The network hasn’t announced the cast for the 12th run of BB, but would it really be that much of a revelation? We don’t know any of these losers and whatever corner of obscurity CBS has plucked them from, it makes no difference. The show had a good run last season, logging a 7 percent increase in viewers (7.08 million from 6.60 million), and a 4 percent jump in adults 18-49 (2.5 rating/8 share from 2.4/07). Also, all three nights of the show tallied increases over the same night from the previous summer. Once again the winner will receive a $500,000 prize, which seems like a small reward for whoring out your personal dignity, self-respect and integrity - that is, assuming any of these hacks posses any of those characteristics at this point in their sad, pathetic existences anyhow……….

- Hmm, might it be a problem that the Food and Drug Administration is looking into reports of at least 775 serious side effects from Tylenol, Motrin and Benadryl drugs from Jan. 1, 2008 through April 30, 2010? I mean, drugs that are supposed to heal you or address serious medical problems harming you instead of helping would seem to be bad, right? The drugs have now been recalled by McNeil, a division of Johnson & Johnson. A Congressional investigation found reports of 30 deaths, although the majority of those fatalities were not tied to the recalled products. Still, the FDA is investigating reports of several hundred serious side effects -- or "adverse events" -- and seven deaths since May 1, when McNeil recalled 50 children's versions of the medicines due to serious quality and safety concerns. For the health-care dumb, adverse event reports are consumer complaints of a serious side effect associated with the use of a medical product. They could include death, hospitalization, disability and other health complications. To delve into the matter further, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has scheduled a hearing on May 27 to examine the recall. In the meantime, Johnson & Johnson has suspended production at McNeil's facility in Fort Washington, Penn., that manufactured the drugs. It seems like a smart move, especially since this is McNeil's fourth recall in the past seven months, coming after: 1) a November 2009 recall of five lots of Tylenol Arthritis Pain 100 count with the EZ-open cap because of unusual odor leading to nausea, stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhea, a December recall expansions done to include all product lots of Tylenol Arthritis Pain caplet 100 count bottles with the red EZ-open cap and a January 2010 recall widening to include an undisclosed number of Tylenol, Motrin and other over-the-counter drugs due to the same odor. As always, McNeil is attempting to spin the situation in its favor by painting its recall as "undertaken on the basis of adverse medical events" but as a precautionary measure. Sure it’s not, liars. The next company to recall its products from the goodness of its heart will be the first. "We track all adverse events and thoroughly investigate all serious adverse cases that are reported and, in turn, report these to the FDA, whether or not the event may be caused by our products," McNeil said in a statement Tuesday. In between now and that congressional hearing, you may want to spend some time cleaning up the Fort Washington plant, a facility of which the FDA, issued a 17-page inspection report earlier this month listing 20 violations. Step your game up, McNeil, and stop making products that are supposed to help people but actually pose more of a threat to them than the ailments they are looking to treat………

Toxic Food Outbreak time, the power of social media sites on display and the iPad is surging

- Toxic Food Outbreak! Toxic Food Outbreak! Man, I love striking panic into people’s hearts with that rally cry and this time, there’s actually a legitimate reason to do it. For that, I have to thank my friends at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who announced over the weekend that federal public health officials are investigating a salmonella outbreak that has infected 22 people in 10 states. The illnesses are believed to be linked to the consumption of raw alfalfa sprouts, the CDC said. I’ve always had my doubts about alfalfa sprouts and those to produce them, so let’s just say California-based Caldwell Fresh Foods has been on my radar for some time. The company, in a thoroughly predictable maneuver, is recalling all alfalfa sprouts manufactured under three of its brands because they may be contaminated with salmonella. Caldwell admitted its alfalfa sprouts have been associated with the outbreak, but was quick to point out that there have been no deaths reported from the outbreak. So far, four of those infected have been hospitalized, leaving CDC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and with state public health officials to investigate the salmonella outbreak. In the case, what tends to expedite the process is outrage over a particularly weak - very young or very old, typically - person affected by the outbreak. This time around, we have an infant hospitalized in Oregon after eating alfalfa sprouts, said Paul Cieslak, manager of the state health department's communicable disease section. The salmonella strain, called Salmonella Newport, has been traced to raw alfalfa sprouts from a single sprout processor in California, the CDC said with out naming Caldwell Fresh Foods directly. Ground zero for the problem seems to be California, where half of those sickened by Salmonella Newport reside. And by the way, what’s better than a company issuing a “voluntary” recall as Caldwell Fresh Foods has done, as if it is doing something truly magnanimous and munificent on behalf of those endangered by its potentially deadly product? Like the CDC wasn’t going to force you do to that anyhow, ass hats. Problem is, the alfalfa sprouts were distributed to various restaurants, delicatessens and retailers across the country, including Trader Joe's and Wal-Mart stores. Infections linked to the outbreak have also been identified in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and Wisconsin…..so far. The first reported illness occurred on March 1 and those affected have mostly suffered diarrhea, fever, and abdominal cramps 12 to 72 hours after infection, with the illness usually lasting four to seven days. Death is a possible end result if the infection isn’t treated properly, although it certainly should never get that far. Then again, a company shouldn’t be selling toxic alfalfa sprouts in the first place, but maybe my expectations for food are just too lofty…………

- I have to admit, even being a huge Apple guy like I am, finding out that sales of the iPad are already bettering those of the Mac in the United States is stunning to me. Yes, the iPad is still an oversized, overpriced and glorified iPod Touch with no built-in cameras, spotty wireless connectivity and a reliance on touch-screen technology that I still can't get with. However, a lot of Americans appear to be down with the iPad because Apple is selling more than 200,000 of them per week, according to market analysis. By comparison, Mac computers sell an average about of 110,000 units each week. Next up on the hit list for the iPad is the iPhone, which is now moving at a pace of 246,000 units per week during the smartphone’s first quarter of launch. Tossing more confounding numbers onto the heap, Apple announced in early May that it sold one million iPads after only one month. Estimates have sales projections for the year at 8 million iPads in 2010, up from earlier projections. Those estimates are admittedly shaky because the iPad has only been selling for a month and a half, so the market could definitely reach a saturation point before the end of 2010. However, the fact that it is already outpacing the Mac computer family, which includes the Mac Mini, iMac and MacBook Pro, is impressive to even me. Sure, the iPad comes in six different configurations, but to me, they are all totally overrated and overpriced. In keeping with good business practices, Apple has not marketed the iPad as a computer replacement, looking to position the tablet as a new device category bridging the gap between a smartphone and a computer. That way, it can keep pushing both products without hurting sales of one another - at least theoretically. Now, none of this means I’m going to be splurging and spending $600 or $700 on an iPad any time soon (or ever), but I do have to recognize the success Apple has had with the product………..

- Athletes and nightclubs are an explosive mix. It almost doesn’t matter the sport or the city, but NFL players seem to be the worst possible combo with clubs and Green Bay Packers defensive end Johnny Jolly isn’t helping with the problem. Jolly finds himself in even deeper legal waters than he was in before and it’s all thanks to a flyer advertising a party he allegedly hosted at a Houston nightclub earlier this month. That flyer was enough to get Jolly into trouble with a judge on Friday, resulting in tougher restrictions for his bond on a pending 2008 felony drug charge. When prosecutor Todd Keagle asked state District Judge Mike Anderson to raise Jolly's bond and order he undergo additional drug testing during a court hearing in the case, Anderson concurred. He did so largely on the strength of a flyer featuring Jolly’s picture and proclaiming that he hosted a May 7 party at a Houston nightclub called "The Blue Door." That’s a problem because even though Jolly's bond does not stop him from going to nightclubs, it does prevent him from using drugs or alcohol. Keagle argued that Jolly has been a regular on the nightclub circuit since his July 2008 arrest outside another Houston club for illegally possessing at least 200 grams of codeine (Maybe dude just had a bad toothache?) In his defense, Jolly's attorney, Michelle Beck, told Anderson her client's name is often used to promote "social functions" and there was no evidence he attended the party. She added that her client has not tested positive for drug or alcohol use since his arrest, which was enough to convince the judge not to raise Jolly's $10,000 bond. However, Anderson did ordered him to submit a hair sample for additional drug testing, adhere to a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, be evaluated by a drug counselor and to not attend "clubs or any other establishment where drugs or alcohol are used." As a quick aside, why not just say all clubs, period? There is isn’t a club anywhere that doesn’t have both drugs and booze on hand in ample supply. "I had better not see any more flyers like this," Anderson chided Jolly while holding up a copy of the flier. "Yes sir," Jolly meekly responded. Oh, and it didn’t sit well with Anderson that Jolly allegedly hosted the party just two days after missing a previous court hearing because of appendicitis. Of course, I share all of this having no experience in terms of being picked up after 1 a.m. in the parking lot of a club known for drug and gun use, stopped by a police gang unit because of excessive noise coming from amplified bass music coming from my ride and arrested on a charge of possession of a controlled substance after police "smelled the strong odor of codeine" in cups in my vehicle, so I can’t say exactly how Jolly must be feeling. However, I can say that if I found myself in that sort of legal trouble, I would probably make at least a passable effort to lay low and adhere to the terms of my bond…………

- Here I am, torn on this next story. On the one hand, women’s sports don’t play a huge role in my life and if they were all gone tomorrow, I can't say that I would be that much worse off (save for my girl Maria Sharapova). On the other hand, no one becomes angrier more quickly than me when someone tries to rip my rights and tell me I can’t do something. So I don’t know what to think of Sheik Abdul Karim al-Khudhair, a senior Saudi Arabian cleric who has urged the Saudi government to uphold a ban on women's sports in the kingdom despite increasing demand to ease the restrictions. His argument is that sports are "corrupting" and "satanic" for women, views he espoused in a released statement Sunday. Yes, dude just called women’s sports corrupting and satanic. How the devil is involved in women’s tennis, I don’t know. So I think I have a position on this issue and it’s squarely against al-Khudhair and his bass-ackwards idea that women should stay at home. Again, this guy is attacking the right of hot chicks to play sports like volleyball, tennis and field hockey and do so in skin-tight outfits. My man, this is NOT cool. Making matters worse, al-Khudair is a member of the Council of Senior Scholars, which is in charge of the kingdom's Islamic affairs. On the opposing side of the issue is the Saudi Education Ministry, which has recently announced that starting next school year it will introduce a new curriculum in the country's schools that includes programs to provide social skills and creativity, a move that could include the addition of sports to girls’ schools. If it gives us the next Saudi Maria, then I have to say, I’m all for it…………

- Hey, whaddya know? There is actually a defensible reason for the average person to have a Twitter feed. Matthew Keys, an online news producer for KTXL FOX40 News in Sacramento, California, proved as much recently when he was reunited with his long-lost brother via the social media site. Keys, clearly a big fan of social media and networking sites, recently spotted a message that led him to a piece of news that he didn't previously "catch" -- a message from a man named Adam Smith reading: "Hey is your mom's name Jackie?" After reading the message at midnight, Keys was admittedly startled. "I have a routine of checking my e-mail, Twitter and Facebook before bed each night, just in case something happened during the evening that I didn't catch, " Keys explained. "Adam and I actually met in a web forum. Neither of us can remember exactly how we came to meet, but we kept in touch off and on over the past year on MSN and Skype." After seeing a picture of Smith, he realized that the two of them had spoken before. Now fully intrigued, Keys fired up Skype and messaged Smith. "He started telling me things from my childhood that I had heard bits and pieces of growing up -- things nobody could have possibly known," Keys said. "I gave him my cell phone number and told him to call me. After a few minutes talking on the phone, it became pretty clear to both of us that he and I were related. We wound up speaking on the phone for four hours, so much so to the point that I had to take the next day off from work to sleep!" The connection was easier for Smith to make because several years ago, his mother told him that his father had other children, and mentioned a few names, including Keys'. "At some point, Adam started asking his mom and our dad about me and something in him pushed him to ask me on Twitter details about my biological mom," Keys says. As the two men got to know each other, they were amazed to find that they live just 10 minutes away from each other. Both are now even bigger fans of Facebook and Twitter now than they were before and for once, I can't say I blame them…………