- Not that the NBA offseason wasn’t a blast, but I really could do without the regular season being consumed by the same superstar-changing-places drama that the Pompous One, LeBron James, put us through over the summer. This time around, it’s Denver Nuggets forward Carmelo Anthony at the center of the drama and Anthony isn’t doing anything to put out the fires of upheaval by stating after Denver's season-opening victory Wednesday that he still doesn't intend to sign a contract extension and speculating that it might be time for he and the team to part ways. In a postgame interview, Anthony admitted that Denver management wants "to sit down and talk, but my thing is it's way beyond this year.” In other words, I want out. Whatever the future is in Denver, ‘Melo wants no part of it. Why he feels that way is a mystery, because he clearly has a better chance of making the Finals out of the Western Conference as opposed to the East, where all of the teams rumored to be interested in trading for him play. The New York Knicks and New Jersey Nets are the current frontrunners in a potential trade, with the Chicago Bulls in the mix as well. But a trade to any of those three teams would then force Anthony and his new team to go through Boston, Orlando and Miami to win a championship, as opposed to having to go mainly through the Lakers in the West if he were to remain with the Nuggets. Whatever his reasoning, Anthony appears set on an exit from Denver and nothing the front office could do seems likely to change his mind. "It ain't got nothing to do with the new GM [Masai Ujiri], Josh [Kroenke, team president], the players. For me, I feel it's a time for change,” Anthony stated. "If I do nothing now, I'm never going to do anything. I feel like my time is now to make a decision if I want to leave or if I want to stay." That three-year, $65 million extension the Nuggets put on the table months ago is still out there, but the team may as well take a match to it at this point because it won't be signed. Thus, they can trade Anthony now for 75 cents on the dollar or wait for him to walk away after the season. Although the Nuggets have until the February trade deadline to deal him, the reality is that his trade value shrinks with each passing day. For now, he’s content to go on a media tour talking about his tenuous situation in Denver, appearing on ESPN Radio Tuesday and saying that the deal is about more than money, although he wouldn’t explain what the “something more” was. But for the love of God, can someone make whatever trade is going to happen, happen because the season is starting to look a lot like the overwrought, drama-laden offseason at this point………
- No dice, Dalai Lama. You want to retire? Sorry, but unless you have an equally kind, wise and charismatic replacement lined up, the world does not accept your offer. I realize that you’re old, your life can be very stressful and a 75-year-old man typically is not asked to put up with the sh*t you put up with in your role is the spiritual guidance and oversight of the people of Tibet, but you took the job and now you have to keep it until someone impeccably qualified to take your place comes along? Why is this even an issue? Because my man D. Lama is whining about retiring and claiming that he has every right to do so, that’s why. “I'm also a human being. ... Retirement is also my right," the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet said in an interview with CNN while in Miami, Florida, this week. "Sooner or later, I have to go. I'm over 75, so next 10 years, next 20 years, one day I will go." Yeah, we’re also going to need advance notice from you when you will be “going,” because that too is going to create a void that someone needs to fill. Sure, the ongoing protests in the Dalai Lama’s home country of Tibet, from whence he is exiled, are a source of stress for him, even from afar. By the way, he supports the protests and the students who marched in them to oppose government plans to teach university classes in Mandarin Chinese, instead of the traditional Tibetan language. "My real boss is the Tibetan people inside Tibet. So now, whenever they carry some sort of movement, I have to support," he said. Perhaps the only sign I can see that would give the Lama-man justification for retiring is the fact that he only views the protests as lawful and reasonable if they are nonviolent. Don’t bring that weak junk around here, man, because sticking it to The Man, rioting, looting and plundering is the order of the day. So go ahead and be "optimistic" about the Tibet’s future, be okay with world leaders not wanting to meet with you so as not to anger China - just don’t bring that pacifist crap around here. "It doesn't matter," he said of world leaders not meeting with him. "If they find it a little bit inconvenient, then of course, it's absolutely OK." Instead, he insisted that his primary focus is meeting with the public to promote human values and religious harmony. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit to come out of the interview is the extent to which the Dalai Lama, a senior citizen, embraces the Internet and social media. He called them "extremely useful" in engaging what he called a "closed society" like China, although he did admit "as far as technology itself is concerned, I'm completely ignorant." Still, his staff tweets his thoughts for his almost 1 million followers. Oh, the wisdom of a respected leader in 140 characters…..wonder if the Dalai Lama also fires off angry tweets if he finds himself behind someone in the supermarket checkout line who has 13 items in the express lane………
- Maybe I’m the only person who will rally to the defense of Marie Claire writer Maura Kelly over the uproar caused by her comments regarding the “fatties” of CBS’ freshman sitcom Mike & Molly, but I’ve never been one to shy away from unpopular causes. The controversy boils down to a column Kelly wrote called “Should ‘Fatties’ Get a Room? (Even on TV?),” and in it, Kelly debated the question, do viewers feel uncomfortable watching overweight people making out on television? But her major sin seems to have been postulating that seeing Mike (Billy Gardell) and Molly (Melissa McCarthy) get physical would likely lead her to become physically ill: “I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other…because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything.” She then added the health risks of being overweight and offered up some fitness and nutrition tips, as if the words of a Marie Claire columnist would be the necessary push to inspire flabby Americans to get off their couches and get fit. Predictably, in the oversensitive and easily offended culture we live in, critics lined up angrily and swiftly to bash Kelly’s comments. Noted Mensa member an high-thinker Sharon Osbourne compared her to a Nazi on her new daytime series The Talk. As always, reaching for a Nazi analogy is never appropriate for any reason, anywhere, so way to chase what you deem horrible comments with even worse words, S. Mike & Molly creator Mark Roberts also chimed in, calling the post “hateful” in an interview. “Almost everybody I know struggles with something — whether its their weight or alcohol or temper,” Roberts said. “To stand in judgment of somebody — especially when you’re breaking it down to just the esthetic. It just makes me sad.” Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on there, Capt. Word-Twister. Kelly didn’t “stand in judgment” of anyone. She merely stated that watching two out-of-shape, obese people getting physical would make her ill. To be honest, I share her sentiments. Regular readers of this very column know how unappetizing, depressing and nauseating I find people who ignore their health and fitness to the point that they are packing on 70, 80 or 100+ pounds onto their poor bodies. It basically declares to the world, “I’ve given up on life on my health and on looking even remotely healthy and attractive.” That’s a depressing message and the sight of someone with rolls and rolls of fat getting it on……yuck. So I was heartbroken to learn that Kelly had amended her post with an apology. She also admitted her own struggles with anorexia and obsession with being thin. Her initial assessment that obesity is something people are doing to themselves was spot on. Shows like Mike & Molly, which hammer home the message that its lead characters are two overweight people and that characteristic defines them, are unappealing and honestly, off-putting. If you want to see a quality show featuring overweight people, watch NBC’s The Biggest Loser, which features morbidly obese people on their way to becoming healthy and fitter……..
- Dammit, America! China already owns pretty much everything of importance in this country and what they don’t own, they manufactured and sold to us. With that in mind, how the frak did we allow them to rip the title of owner of the world's fastest supercomputer from us? That’s right, they have the fastest supercomputer and now they’re one step closer to complete global domination thanks to a computer called Tianhe-1A, unveiled on Wednesday at a conference in Beijing. Tianhe-1A can run calculations faster than the previous speed leader, a computer at a U.S. lab in Tennessee. How fast is this new über-computer? It set a record by processing 2.507 petaflops of data at once. The previous record holder, a computer called Cray XT5 Jaguar and located at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, completed 1.75 petaflop calculations. Of course, hyperbole-prone tech analysts claim that the new record reinforces China's position as a global technology leader. According to Nvidia, the computer technology company, Tianhe-1A will operate as an open access system and will be used for large scale scientific computations. In other words, scientists and engineers working with it will be able to play multiple hands of solitaire at once, update their Facebook pages and fire off tweets faster than ever before. Officially, supercomputers are just a string of multiple computers linked together. They are, ironically enough, a lot like early computers in the 1960s and 1970s, computers that fill entire rooms and even small warehouses. They are (theoretically) used to processes huge amounts of scientific data, but I prefer to think of them as a faster way for slacker scientists to goof around on the Internet………
- Finally, we know what all of the United States’ spy activities cost on an annual basis: $80 billion - if you believe a group of people whose job it is to lie for a living, of course. That’s the amount that the U.S. spent on intelligence activities in 2010 (projecting out for the remaining months of the year) and it’s noteworthy because it marks the first time the government has officially announced the total tab for intelligence spending. Included in that total is the $53.1 billion spent on non-military intelligence programs, a 6 percent increase from the previous year - supposedly. Those totals were included in a statement released Thursday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan confirmed that the military spent an additional $27 billion on its intelligence apparatus, giving us the $80 billion total. Why is this information coming out now? Because from here on out, the government is required by law to reveal the total amount of money spent to spy on other nations, terrorists and other groups by the CIA, the National Security Agency and the other agencies and offices that make up the 16-member intelligence community. Do not that even though this is the first time intelligence spending has formally been announced, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released the national intelligence budget figure for non-military activities for the past four years. As you’d expect, the intelligence community vociferously opposed and resisted efforts to reveal the number, making the asinine and transparent argument that enemies of the United States could learn valuable information by watching trends in spending. What, you mean knowing how much money you all blow on an annual basis on your snack budget? But if you want to blame anyone for this forced revelation of financial figures, blame those responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It was that tragedy which inspired Congress to actually do something productive for once and as a result, they passed a law in 2007 mandating public disclosure of the non-military spending number at the end of each fiscal year. The current director of national intelligence, James Clapper, supported making budgets for both strategic intelligence and military spying public. One person who will undoubtedly give close attention to these figures is Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the head of the Senate Intelligence committee. Sen. Feinstein said it is time to reduce non-military intelligence spending, which has doubled since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. "Given the nation's financial situation, it is my view that the intelligence budget needs to be carefully reviewed and that cuts will be necessary," Feinstein said. "It is clear that the overall spending on intelligence has blossomed to an unacceptable level in the past decade." Be careful what you demand, D., because odds are that the people you want to rip money from have information about every skeleton in your closet…………
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