- A good porn crackdown is always welcome, given the fact that anyone involved with the porn industry in any country is a dirty, filthy loser whose life has clearly gone in a very poor, unwanted direction and is in desperate need of ridicule and persecution. So big ups to all my pals in Sri Lanka who had any part in a court-ordered crackdown by police on individuals allegedly involved in the country’s porn industry who had their pictures published by local newspapers. Sri Lankan newspapers on Tuesday published the pictures of mainly women who had acted in locally produced adult films. The ink had barely dried before police were out making arrests of 83 people they say have acted in the films found on websites. Newspapers published the pictures after police obtained a court order to force media outlets to publish their pictures to help locate the suspects. "This is illegal and we need them to be identified for investigations," police spokesman Priyashanth Jayakody said. Clearly, Sri Lanka is not a place where any sleazy porn producer can drop a mattress in the dirt in some back alley and have two VD-sporting actors lie down and get after it on film. Actually, the country is experiencing a growing wave of social conservatism. As part of the porn crackdown, the Sri Lankan Telecommunication Regulatory Commission has already blocked around 100 porn sites and police have even begun arresting people with pornographic content on their cell phones. Seeing this crackdown occur, even in an extremely conservative nation that is mostly Buddhist but also has Hindus, Muslims and Christians, is jarring to say the least. Just imagine if police in the United States were out arresting everyone who participated in or viewed porn. We would have more people in jail than free and would be looking for other countries to house our prisoners. As bad as a porn ban might seem, life in Sri Lanka could get even more strict and totalitarian soon, as there is a movement within a faction of President Mahinda Rajapaksa's government to ban alcohol. That’s right, no booze and no porn. And to think that many people were upset and surprised when Sri Lanka refused a visa to the Senegalese-American R&B singer Akon back in March when he wanted to perform in Colombo because Buddhists were angry over a video in which he appeared briefly showed scantily clad women dancing in front of a Buddha statue. Perhaps Glenn Beck has a new target audience in his movement to turn the entire world into a bunch of conserva-Nazis………
- Few complaints from professional athletes ring more hollow than laments about the unfairness of a stadium arena or dome’s quirks and eccentricities in terms of anomalies that make the game harder for them. Whether it’s a difficult shooter’s background at an NBA arena, gusting winds at an NFL stadium or high grass in an MLB infield, rich players whining about the conditions of the sports palaces (mostly) in which they play is equal parts hilarity and ridiculousness. The biggest complainers in this regard tend to be Major League Baseball players who whine that exceptionally deep home run fences are robbing them of power numbers and bigger contracts, er, um, are making the game unfair for sluggers. Count Minnesota Twins slugger Justin Morneau in that club after he lodged complaints about the Twins’ reluctance to move the outfield fences at Target Field closer to make it easier to homer. When the team announced $4 million to $6 million in improvements at Target Field (which just opened this past season), players hoped that shorter distances to the fences would be among the changes. That particular alteration didn’t materialize and now one of the team’s best players is unhappy. "Right-center to left-center is ridiculous," Morneau said in an e-mail. "[It's] almost impossible for a right-handed hitter to [homer to the] opposite field and very difficult for lefties. It affects the hitters a lot, and you start to develop bad habits as a hitter when you feel like you can only pull the ball to hit it over the fence. You take those habits on the road." Right, it has nothing to do with you and your teammates hitting more home runs, putting up more impressive stats and getting fatter contracts. Fact is, the deeper fences work both ways. Opposing teams must adjust to the different dimensions when they play in Target Field and the fences being where they’re at helps Twins pitchers, who surrendered 64 homers at home and 91 on the road. Guess I missed the portion of the MLB rulebook that states every game must be a 10-9 slugfest with at least four home runs hit. The team, for the record, has no immediate plans to move the fences in. "We had a lot of discussions in the clubhouse with the manager and general manager, but right now there is no plan to alter the dimensions," Twins president Dave St. Peter said. Personally, if I’m Morneau I’d be happy with the fact that my team went 53-28 at home, the best home mark in baseball………
- One of the funniest parts of the music industry is, was and always will be the number of posthumous albums that pop up after an artist’s passing. Whether it’s Notorious B.I.G., Tupac or any of the other artists who have died relatively young, seeing album after album of miraculously discovered, unreleased music that the artist just happened to have tucked away when they did is odd, to say the least. I realize that creative minds are always churning on something and chasing their next big idea, but to have dozens and dozens of recorded-but-not-released songs sitting around and then having your friends, family and bandmates go through them and look to cash in on your name after you’re gone/give fans more of your music to connect with….seems a little wrong, no? I ask that question because news broke this week that an official new single from Michael Jackson‘s posthumous album Michael will be released this Monday, his label announced in a release. “Hold My Hand” is a duet with Akon that was recorded in 2007 and had an unfinished, raw version leak the following year. The label, Epic Records, claimed in its released that, “A handwritten note from Michael belonging to his Estate indicated his desire that ‘Hold My Hand’ be the first single on his next project.” Coincidentally, Jack-O’s family has gone on the record as questioning the authenticity of some tracks on the album, wondering if the vocals truly do belong to the pedophile they knew and loved. Epic says it has verification from vocal experts and that the complete track listing for Michael is full of real, original Jack-O tunes. The album also includes collaborations with 50 Cent and Lenny Kravitz and is set for release on Dec. 14. Gee, I’m going to have a really tough time waiting for that day to come………
- Score one for Big Fast Food - for now. Certain forces within the city of San Francisco have been working to enact a ban on most McDonald's Happy Meals with toys as a means of shielding the city’s children from some of the most fattening eats they can possibly consume after being lured in by a cheap, Made-in-China toy that cost eight cents to manufacture and was churned out by some child laborer making 14 cents a day. The ban was approved on Tuesday by the San Francisco board of supervisors, but Mayor Gavin Newsom moved swiftly to reject it, doing so at a specially scheduled event at Fairmount Elementary School Friday morning. As part of his pub grab, Newsom also released a report outlining the city's efforts to combat childhood obesity. Had this wise ordinance gone into effect, it would have required McDonald's and other fast-food servings with toys to meet new nutritional standards. Newsom objected because heck, who wants more nutritional food for kids? The silver lining here is that Newsom’s ill-advised veto is basically meaningless because the board approved the ordinance 8-3 and the eight votes for it mean the board could override the veto. City officials hope that other municipalities around the country will emulate their law as America continues to (literally) sag under the weight of its child (and adult) obesity epidemic. McDonald’s led the fight against the new law and issued an understandably gloomy statement after it was passed by the board of supervisors. "As previously stated, we are extremely disappointed with this decision. It's not what our customers want, nor is it something they asked for," said McDonald's spokeswoman Danya Proud after the board's vote. Problem is, D., that what your ignorant customers want is also killing them and wrecking our health car system. Someone must step in and tell them that they can’t have what they want and the dearth of people willing to do so is what landed us as the world’s FAT-test nation in the first place. If a new law addressing how toys and other marketing giveaways used to entice kids to buy fast-food meals that are high in fat and calories is what it takes, then so be it. I salute city supervisor Eric Mar, who introduced the proposal because his daughter is in the 6-to-11 age group that has seen obesity rates quadruple over the past 30 years. Coincidentally, that’s the same time frame during which the Happy Meal has been on the market. "This is a simple and modest policy that holds fast food accountable," Mar said before Tuesday's vote. He went on the cite a study released this week by Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, which examined 12 popular restaurant chains and found only 12 out of more than 3,000 kids' meal combinations met the nutritional guidelines for preschool-aged kids. The smart people at Yale also found that the fast food industry spent $4.2 billion on advertising in 2009 and found that 40 percent of preschool-aged children ask to go to McDonald's on a weekly basis, and 15 percent ask on a daily basis. Furthermore, 84 percent of parents say they've taken their children to eat fast food at least once in the past week. One the board overrides the mayor’s veto and the new law goes into effect, McDonald's and other restaurants will have until December 2011 to improve their meals' nutrition by adding fruits and vegetables if they want to keep offering toys with those meals. The entire meal - including beverages - will have to contain fewer than 600 calories and less than 35 percent of total calories can come from fat. On top of that, each meal must contain half a cup of fruit and three-fourths cup of vegetables, and offer less than 640 milligrams of sodium and less than 0.5 milligrams of trans fat. City officials expect Big Fast Food to take up the issue in court, blowing right past the fact that the law would actually benefit children……..
- When you have more than a billion people and the "Zombie" virus is running (or zombie walking) wild in your country, problems are bound to ensue. I wish I could muster some sympathy for the Chinese with more than 1 million cell phone users having been hit with the “Zombie” virus that is so-called because it transmits from phone to phone, just as zombie-ness does in bad horror movies. The difference is that with the cell phone virus, iPhones aren’t turning into walking, moaning, un-dead menaces looking to kill the living. Instead, the virus binds with a security application, which then transmits the user's SIM card details to a central server controlled by a small group of hackers. Once the hackers have control of the SIM card, then can then send text messages of make calls containing virus-ridden links for games and software. From there, the scam is much like the average virus on the Internet in that it affects IQ-deprived tools not smart enough to avoid clicking on links that seem off or possibly spam-like. Anyone who clicks on one of these bogus links then finds their phone affected as well, while also providing a "click through" for the link itself, which typically translates into a payment for a party publicizing the links. Media outlets in China blame the virus on intermediary distributors instead of the actual game or software developers that show up in the ads. The National Computer Network Emergency Coordination Center is working to address the virus, with NCNECC official Zhou Yonglin, saying that "in the first week of September, nearly 1 million cell phones in the country were infected with the virus." Telecommunications providers around the country are working to put up safeguards against the virus, but those responsible for the virus could simply respond with an updated virus that might start sending fewer messages, making it harder for cell users to notice any suspicious activity. The company whose security application was hijacked, infected and used for the virus’ launch is Chendu Qimiao, which insists that it nothing to do with the virus. The only winners here? The tens of millions of Chinese too poor to afford a cell phone………
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