Ahmadinejad comes to America, Apple v. Adobe heats up music news that pumps me up

- Does it make anyone else a little uneasy that Iranian President/Dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boarded a plane yesterday bound for the United States to take part in a conference on nuclear nonproliferation? Forget for a second that this guy has no business anywhere near a gathering whose expressed purpose is to slow and even halt the spread of nuclear weaponry across the globe and focus on the fact that dude basically affirms his hatred of the U.S. and its current leader any time someone sticks a microphone in the general vicinity of his face. He would just as soon see America wiped off the map as to pay a friendly visit here, yet he’s showing up to address the United Nations Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference in New York today? Yeah, because it was really difficult to figure out how that speech was going to go. Ahmadinejad basically made his speech reporters in Tehran before his departure, declaring that the NPT has failed. "The biggest threat to the world today is the production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons," he said. "Unfortunately the [International Atomic Energy Agency] in the past 40 years has not been successful in its mission. We have no disarmament or nonproliferation and some countries have even procured the nuclear bomb during this period.” What, you mean like the country you currently preside over, you two-faced d-bag? The very idea that Ahmadinejad plans to offer major proposals at the conference is laughable at best, given that all of his proposals involve his nation maintaining full control and progress of a nuclear program that is one of the man reasons the conference is being held in the first place. And for the last freaking time, no one believes that Iran’s nuclear program is solely aimed at producing nuclear energy. Maybe Ahmadinejad’s visit is primarily to lobby against the new international sanctions against Iran that the United States is pushing for new because of Iran’s refusal to halt its nuclear program. Ahmadinejad made an ominous threat Saturday that his nation "cuts any hand that signs a document against Iran," so he is heading for this conference spoiling for a brawl. "We have documents that prove [Washington] is the root of world terrorism," Ahmadinejad said in a speech in Tehran, Press TV reported. "It has been aiding and abetting extremist groups over the past years." Great, so now you’re going Hugo Chavez and basically accusing the U.S. of being the “great Satan.” I look forward to hearing the full audio from your speech as soon as possible, Dictator Ahmadinejad, and hopefully nothing untoward happens to you while on U.S. soil………….

- I hate this next story. Outfielder Eric Byrnes is one of my favorite guys in all of Major League Baseball because he’s the ultimate colorful character without being a bad guy or a threat to anyone and he plays the game with a reckless joy that is awesome to watch. Heck, he once likened MLB’s steroid investigation, the Mitchell Report, to a prostitute laying by a dumpster with needles sticking out of her backside (it’s a long story). But Byrnes has never become a bonafide star or even a guy who was penciled in as an everyday starter for a team long-term. He peaked in 2006 when he posted 26 home runs and 73 RBI for the Arizona Diamondbacks and while his balls-to-the-wall approach in the outfield has made him a fan favorite, he is clearly not a favorite of the Seattle Mariners coaching staff and front office. Less than 12 hours after he manned left field in a 3-1, 11-inning loss to Texas, the Mariners released Byrnes Sunday night. His release came two days after a late-game snafu in which he inexplicably pulled his bat back on a botched suicide squeeze in extra innings of a scoreless game, leading to Ichiro Suzuki being tagged out on the play. That incident was followed by Byrnes’ bizarre exit from the clubhouse on a bicycle. That may have put him on the radar to be cut, although his .094 batting average (3 for 32 in 15 games) may have already accomplished that. Either way, when Byrnes struck out looking on three pitches with the bases loaded in the fourth inning Sunday, his fate was apparently sealed. He was let go and the team called up outfielder Ryan Langerhans and infielder Josh Wilson from Tacoma. Manager Don Wakamatsu suggested after the game that changes were forthcoming and he wasn’t bluffing. "There are decisions that have to be made," Wakamatsu said. "If someone would have said you'd throw 26 scoreless innings in a three-game series and get swept, they'd think you were crazy. Kind of tells you the shape of the offense." The only positive for Byrnes is that in MLB, all contracts are guaranteed and although the Diamondbacks are paying all but $400,000 of the $11 million due in the final year of his $30 million contract, it doesn’t really matter where the money comes from. He signed with Seattle in January after Arizona released him. Sure, it may be awkward for Byrnes because he has been living in downtown Seattle, but now he has extra time to tool around on his beach cruiser bicycle, the same one he zoomed out of the clubhouse on after Friday’s game. The next day, he vegged out on the clubhouse couch watching a movie and now he has all the time he wants to catch up on his latest Netflix picks………….

- This right here is the sort of news that freaking PUMPS ME UP! Without further delay, I relay to you the outstanding announcement that Fox’s American Karaoke is seeing its worst numbers in a long time! According to data from The Nielsen Company, last season's AK karaoke nights drew an average of 26.3 million viewers, while karaoke results nights had an average of 26.9 million viewers. Season-to-date data through April 18 shows 25.7 million viewers on Tuesday nights and 24.5 million viewers for the musical carnage on Wednesdays. For far too long, this monstrosity of mangling music has terrorized our airwaves and achieved high ratings thanks to the litany of musically challenged morons who currently popular the U.S. of A. The first noticeable chink in the armor came in February, when the Winter Olympics ended AK’s ratings domination when two of its nights of action edged out the world’s largest karaoke contest, marking the first time AK had lost in six years. That was followed up by a defeat at the hands of a reality show that is nearly as offensive - ABC’s Dancing With the (D-List) Stars, which beat AK twice in consecutive weeks. Those numbers lead to the obvious question of whether those of us have been waging was against this debacle are finally winning. Leave it to teeth-bleaching, man-blouse-wearing, tip-frosting show host/ass hat Ryan Seacrest to attempt to put a positive spin on the situation while appearing on CNN's Larry King Live recently. Seacrest insisted that "ratings traditionally take a little dip" before "heading back up" later in the season. Some point to Seacrest’s own bizarre behavior on the show (don’t watch, so I can't say for sure what that means but it doesn’t surprise me) and the polarizing nature of karaoke-ers on recent seasons. Again, I despise all of those tools so I don’t know that I buy that argument. Ultimately, the reason is irrelevant just as long as the result continues to be declining ratings for the single worst thing ever to happen to the music business, at least since disco…………

- As kids, we all have dreams of making a house out of absurd, ridiculous materials, things like cheese. However, most of us don’t actually follow through on that dream like Bob Noguchi, a resident of Aina Haina, Hawaii who has both channeled his inner child and done something to help the environment by building what appears to be a ginormous white fort but is actually a home made out of Styrofoam. Noguchi’s home is one of several like it built by Green Builders Hawaii. It’s also the first two-story Styrofoam construction in the United States, according to Green Builders Hawaii. "There's this one guy down the street coming every week looking at it," said Noguchi. As an added benefit, Noguchi is doubling the size of his home using Styrofoam instead of wood, metal or hollow tile in order to make room for his grandchildren. Contractor Mike Bedsaul of Green Builders Hawaii explained the most common misperception the average person would have when they first hear about a home made of Styrofoam. "When you think of a Styrofoam home, you think of a Styrofoam cooler," said Bedsaul. "You really need to see it to believe it." The Styrofoam used for homes is in fact light, but it’s also different from the type used for coolers or in packing materials because it's thicker and more dense. It also contains a special chemical that makes it fire resistant and termite proof. To construct the walls, floors and ceilings of the home, Styrofoam panels from five inches to one foot thick are glued together and sprayed with a mixture of cement and glass fiber. Because the walls, support beams, stairs, ceiling and roof are constructed with the Styrofoam and cement coating, there are no nuts, bolts, tie downs or straps to stick out and ugly up the structure. On the exterior of the home, even the gutters are cut into the foam and it's all within building code. "This is solid. There's no air in between. This is concrete, Styrofoam, concrete. It ain't going no where," Bedsaul declared. After the home is finished, homeowners can finish the walls with any normal building materials, including tile, stucco or drywall. Once a homeowner moves in, her or she will have a cooler home because there is no wood used and that new home, according to Bedsaul, can withstand hurricane force winds and is about 10 percent cheaper than traditional construction. Not sure how I’d feel about the prospect of living in an oversized foam cup, but maybe I just need to embrace my inner green self…………

- Corporate pissing matches are the best. Who doesn’t love two titans of industry whining, lobbing accusations back and forth at one another and having each side accuse the other of some heinous misdeeds worthy of scorn, derision and ridicule? The tet-a-tet between Apple and Adobe continues to escalate and shows no signs of simmering down any time soon. Apple struck the first blow by refusing to incorporate Adobe’s Flash software into its iPhones and after prolonged negotiations between the two sides in which some fairly contentious talks took place, Adobe finally threw up its hands and gave up on developing any Flash apps for the iPhone. In response to that decision, Apple CEO Steve Jobs threw some verbal haymakers in a blog post that basically belittled Flash as an antiquated, troublesome program that does more to harm touch-screen devices like the iPhone than help them. Jobs wrote that the format leads to crashes, hinders app development and doesn't work well with touch-screen devices and that's why Apple does not support Flash video or games on the iPad, iPhone or iPod. Of course, Adobe wasn’t about to take that lying down and its chief technology officer, Kevin Lynch, returned fire in a blog post Thursday evening. "... Given the legal terms Apple has imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR. We are working to bring Flash Player and AIR to all the other major participants in the mobile ecosystem, including Google, RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others," Lynch wrote. In short, Adobe is telling Apple and the rest of the tech world that Apple isn’t the be-all, end-all of the business and that while Flash would be a great addition to the iPhone and iPad, Adobe isn’t sweating the loss. "We could provide a terrific experience with Flash on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch," he wrote. "We look forward to delivering Flash Player 10.1 for Android smartphones as a public preview at Google I/O in May, and then a general release in June. From that point on, an ever increasing number and variety of powerful, Flash-enabled devices will be arriving which we hope will provide a great landscape of choice.” As someone who uses both Flash and Mac’s pretty extensively, I would have to side with Adobe on this one and I too hold out hope that the two companies will eventually be able to work something out………..