- Who knew that Gap shoppers were so attached to the company’s decades-old white-on-navy blue logo? Well, other than anyone who has spent even two seconds studying psychology or sociology and has even the faintest understanding of human nature, that is. Those people realize how poorly most human beings react to change and even an overpriced, preppy clothing store changing its logo is bound to throw them off their game. The irritated Gap-sters did what all angry, issue-conscious people do when angry nowadays…..they went online and b*tched about it. The virtual outcry became so vehement that Gap North America president Marka Hansen said in a statement late Monday that the San Francisco-based company had heard the angry roar, realized how much people liked the old logo and how much they despised the new one, a white background with black letters and a little blue box. It took all of one week for the entire ugly scenario to play out. Hansen also admitted that Gap didn't handle the change correctly and missed a chance to have shoppers offer their opinions on the new logo until it was too late. "There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we'll handle it in a different way," Hansen said. She did point out that this particular project was not the right one into which to integrate "crowd sourcing." Gap actually did consider allowing fans to help design a new logo, giving in to the increasingly popular trend of companies and advertisers allowing their customers more input into corporate decision making. Initially, Gap stood by its new logo and insisted that it would roll it out in stores and advertising next month. After the flip-flop, the company plans to return the original logo to the Web site this week. "We've heard loud and clear that you don't like the new logo. We've learned a lot from the feedback. We only want what's best for the brand and our customers," the company said on its Facebook page. Fans - of which there are more than 700,000 - responded quickly and favorably to the announcement, expressing relief that should probably be reserved for bigger issues in life, things like a hurricane changing course so it doesn’t devastate an entire region of a state or trapped miner being rescued from a collapsed mine they’ve been trapped in for two months. But hey, your favorite clothing company puts out a new logo and doesn’t warn you, who am I to tell you that you should get some freaking perspective on the world, pull your head out of your own backside and join the rest of us in reality? Go ahead and keep on living in your little Gap-centric bubble and don’t allow us to disturb you……….
- Way to be proactive, NFL. Five weeks after an idiotic catch rule cost Lions receiver Calvin Johnson a potential winning touchdown in a season-opening loss to Chicago and his team a chance at a division win and a 1-0 start to the season, the league announced plans to review the rule. In the play, Johnson caught the ball, went to the ground with possession and placed (note: PLACED) the ball on the ground as he ran to celebrate. Unfortunately, NFL rules stipulated that the pass was incomplete because Johnson didn't maintain possession of the ball throughout the entire process of the catch. The play came with Detroit trailing 19-14 and featured Johnson leaping to grab the pass from quarterback Shaun Hill in the end zone. He got both feet down, possessed the ball and yet…..no catch. "The going-to-the-ground rule definitely will be discussed," NFL competition committee co-chairman Rich McKay said Tuesday at the league's fall meetings. "It's been discussed the last couple of years. It's a difficult rule. It was made for on-field officials, not as much for people watching on TV. There's a definite conflict. We have to go back and look if we extended it too far." McKay and the rest of the competition committee will meet after the Super Bowl and suggest any potential rules changes to team owners at the league's spring meetings in March. In other words, more teams could get screwed over by this absurd rule this season - assuming their receivers don’t have ESPN or the Internet and didn’t see what happened to Johnson. But I suppose you could argue that anyone not intelligent enough or conscious enough of the league in which they play, then perhaps they don’t deserve a touchdown at all. However, the rule does need to change and what better time to change it than when the league is on the verge of a work stoppage that could wipe out part or all of next season……….
- Shyne may have spent almost a decade behind bars, but he has definitely kept up on the hip-hop game while incarcerated and come out swinging at those he believes to be holding it down now that he’s a free man. After his release late last year, Shyne is hard at work on with two new albums, "Messiah" and "Gangland." The former Bad Boy rapper is set to release “Gangland” (I love that series on History Channel) on Def Jam Records, Shyne says that he's "been on my lawyer to get me up out of there for a couple months now" and because he is a hater of the work of Island Def Jam Chairman/CEO Antonio "L.A." Reid. He believes Reid "shouldn't be the chairman of Island Def Jam" and “don’t believe in hip-hop,” which are fightin’ words to be sure
"It's difficult to do business with somebody who doesn't believe in what you do," Shyne vented. "They don't get it, they don't believe in hip-hop. They're into that R&B thing, and that's cool. But Def Jam is an institution… how you gonna have a chairman that don't believe in hip-hop?" Those words do ring a bit hollow from a guy who inked a seven-figure deal with Def Jam last February after serving nine years for charges from a 1999 club shooting. Shyne would have you believe that he was originally going to sign with Interscope Records, but the deal fell through. "[Interscope chairman] Jimmy Iovine put the deal on the table, and L.A. came along and he sold me on, 'We're gonna do this together,'" says Shyne. "When it came down to it, he doesn't want nothing to do with making hip-hop music. If that was the case, I would have stayed with what my gut told me, which was to go with Jimmy." Whichever label the albums are released on, they will both drop next spring. "Messiah" will come out on Cash Money Records, so there’s no problem on that end of the deal. Shyne (real name Moses Levi) is currently working in Israel after being deported upon his prison release and spending time in Belize. Not being able to return to his native Brooklyn is hard on the rapper, but being out of prison clearly doesn’t suck. "I spent ten years just being numb," he said. "When I first came out, it was with the voice of that suppressed emotion… The lyrical content surpassed anything I had ever done, and most of the things that are out there, bar [Jay-Z]. Other than that, I don't know who else can talk the way I talk." Comparing yourself to H.O.V.A., that takes stones………
- Drug addicts, your doctor now has a new option to help you treat your addiction - a brand new drug! On Tuesday, the FDA approved an injectable medicine, Vivitrol, as a treatment for opiate addiction. Included in that group are heroin and powerful prescription painkillers such as OxyContin. Vivitrol is actually a time-release take on a drug called naltrexone, which blocks brain receptors from responding to opiates. When a an addict doesn’t get their fix from their drug of choice, they stop having the cravings for it. The decision to approve it came even though the FDA was able to consider only a single controlled study, conducted in communist Russia. This pink-o study found that Vivitrol was 50 percent more effective than a placebo in keeping opidate addicts clean for five months. Vivitrol was previously approved as a treatment for alcoholism, but the truth is that the vast majority of addicts don’t get it because most insurance companies won’t pay the cost of nearly $1,000 for each monthly shot. The drug isn’t a quick fix either, as treatment often takes a year or more. Typical treatment for opiate addiction involves group therapy, a 12-step program and “replacement” therapy - the practice of replacing the drug of abuse with a different drug. The pill Naltrexone is another option, but most researcher and medical experts believe that the daily nature of its treatment process makes it a less successful option for most addicts. Ultimately, one of these solutions has to work because the need for an answer is greater now than ever before. Federal statistic peg the number of people addicted to these drugs as increasing 12 percent between 2008 and 2009. More and more people are being rushed to the emergency room because of prescription medication overdoses and perhaps this new wonder drug is just the thing to solve what is fast becoming an epidemic in the making………
- If you’re like me, you had no idea that Indonesia ever had its own version of Playboy magazine. That’s probably because the Indonesian version of the magazine did not show nudity, unlike the publication that millions of men worldwide read only for the articles. Yet the limited amount of skin the mag did show during its less than four years in publication was enough to land its former editor in prison for two years for distributing indecent pictures and profiting from them. "They can lock me up, but my spirit and ideas will remain free," Erwin Arnada tweeted on Saturday. His attorney, Todung Mulya Lubis, added, “We want to review this decision. The magazine did not contain any pornographic material [and] was in line with the press code of ethics.” He and his client will now seek a judicial review. The magazine launched in 2006 and immediately sparked vocal opposition from a hard-line group called the Islamic Defenders Front. These kooks pushed for legal proceedings against Arnada and vandalized the Playboy office in Jakarta. "I don't know why Playboy is targeted when other magazines have more revealing pictures," Lubis said. "The country is supposed to protect the journalist under the press law, not prosecute them. This is why this decision actually sets a bad precedent for the freedom of expression." Of course, Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim country, which sets a very conservative tone for the country, but most Indonesian Muslims are moderates. However, this doesn’t sound all that moderate to me………
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