- Like it or not, the quality of any riot or protest is judged by the era and landscape of dissidence in which it takes places. What that means for anyone looking to stage an uprising right now is, simply put, you must compete with the world-class chaos being created by tens of thousands of angry Egyptians who are looking to boot their president from office. Anything less than violent clashes with police, overturned and burned vehicles and public spaces crammed with 10,000 or more furious, chanting dissidents is just not going to cut it. So while I would like to salute the 25 activists who were handcuffed and led from a busy intersection on Sunday in front of the Rancho Las Palmas Resort where a secret group of wealthy conservative business people met to discuss political strategy, I simply can't muster the enthusiasm for it. With approximately 1,000 political action and open access group supporters on hand to whine about their belief that corporations were being given unfettered control of the nation, only 25 of these kooks did enough to leave the premises in handcuffs and receive citations. The meeting of über-wealthy business leaders that the protest took place in conjunction with is something the group of businesspeople has done for several years now. Gathering at some posh, exclusive resort for society’s elite screams of, well, elitism, but Charles Koch and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who own an oil conglomerate that is the largest privately-held corporation in the U.S, probably don’t care and neither do their wealthy pals who attended the invitation-only strategy session in Rancho Mirage. Koch Industries could not care less about a few angry, disenfranchised misfits meeting in a hotel ballroom across the street from the resort and marching outside to denounce the meeting of the rich in public fashion. By the time the protest grew to full size, the Riverside County Sheriff's Department estimated the crowd at 1,200. In other words, about 2 percent of these kooks were belligerent enough to get arrested…..not a good percentage for any protest. Signs reading “Medicare for All,'' “Troops Home Now'' and “Tea Party Founded and Funded By The Kochs” are great, but you need more if you hope to be a great dissident. In truth, police wearing riot helmets and visors probably weren’t necessary with this group. Seriously, I doubt any of them had the kahones to bum rush the resort gates that the riot police were so vigilantly guarding. None of this is to diminish, by the way, the ridiculous impact that arrogant, elitist businesspeople like the Kochs have on the political process. They did fund the effort behind Citizens United, the challenge to federal campaign laws that prompted a 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that corporations or other groups can secretly spend as much money on political efforts as they desire. Koch Industries also spent $2.5 million in the last election cycle and $2 million more was spent by individual with ties with Koch Industries, so they carry a certain amount of influence in the political world. Having said that, let’s come up with a better protest the next time someone wants to speak out against them………
- Life continues to be a series of failures, terminations, losses, dissolutions and disappointments these days for Tiger Woods, who is losing spouses, sponsors and business partnerships at a consistent clip and can no longer get the job done on the golf course in the same dominating fashion that was once commonplace for him. Even building a signature golf estate in a corner of the world known for its excess and opulence is too much to ask for Tiger at this point. Plans for a Woods-designed golf paradise in Dubai, including a boutique hotel and sheik-style palaces, have been postponed indefinitely as Dubai's financial downturn continues to wreak havoc in the Middle East paradise. The project’s developer -- part of a conglomerate controlled by Dubai's debt-squeezed ruler - said in a written statement that "market conditions" were behind the decision to halt work on The Tiger Woods Dubai on the city's desert outskirts. "It's been put on hold for right now. A lot of projects are out there," Woods confirmed on Sunday after he finished his season debut at Torrey Pines. "It's still there. We've got six completed holes and a few that were about to be grassed before construction was halted. Everything is on hold." Great, so you have one-third of a golf course. Sounds like the average Tiger Woods tournament effort right now: one or two good rounds and then fall apart on the weekend. But hey, at least Tiger won't get a thousand questions about the situation when he plays in the Dubai Desert Classic next week. To be fair, this development is probably more about the faltering Dubai property market than it is about Woods’ inability to get things done lately, but one can’t help but smile and the irony. Right now, projects that were horribly unnecessary and ridiculously lavish - ensuring they would get done - are being shelved at an alarming rate in Dubai. Heck, a larger version of the manmade palm-shaped island that helped put Dubai on the map is on hold, for God’s sake. The financial outlook for Woods’ new course is so bad that the property is no longer watered and that after Woods plays in Dubai, the project will "return to sand," according to sources close to the situation. The only party expressing any hope that the project may eventually be revived is the developer, who issued a statement saying that: "These conditions will continue to be monitored. A decision will be made in the future when to restart the project." Mmm hmm. So just to be clear, you have a planned $1 billion course surrounded by a complex of 100 villas, 75 mansions, 22 palaces, a boutique hotel, a golf academy and 30,000 full-grown imported trees and you’re thinking that the economy is suddenly going to turn around and make that sort of over-the-top spending possible again? Sure thing. Neither this monstrosity nor the far-larger leisure and living master plan known as Dubailand that Woods’ project is a part of will ever come to fruition, which means the multiple theme parks, including Universal Studios, Legoland and Six Flags, aren’t going to happen either. Taking all of this in, it’s just unfathomable to think how Dubai ever found itself in such dire financial straits in the first place………
- Before anyone is too hard on the hard-charging dissidents who bum-rushed Cairo's Egyptian Museum Friday night as thousands of Egyptians defied a government curfew for completely missing the point once they entered the museum, just step back at the situation and try to view it from their perspective. After the loathsome riot police, who had fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters all day, suddenly withdrew from the streets at around the start of the curfew, including from their positions guarding Cairo's famed antiquities museum in the heart of the capital, on Tahrir Square, protestors stormed the building. Although the museum had been closed all day because of the street demonstrations, it was still a target once protestors had the freedom to roam as they saw fit. After virtually all police abandoned their posts, "people began to enter the museum," says Zahi Hawass, head of Egypt's antiquities department. At that point, there were plenty of possible outcomes for the situation and few of them were good - at least as far as museum officials were concerned. With scores of priceless artifacts unprotected, the financial loss could have been staggering. But bear in mind that we’re not talking about knowledgeable antiquities thieves who know the value of an ancient mask, painting or vase; these are blue-collar, enraged political dissidents looking to do some damage. Some onlookers might rip the intruders for scaling walls, busting through doors and raiding the museum’s gift shop as their kill shot, but not me. I definitely would not call them idiots, which some ignoramuses have done (no names mentioned……cough…..Zahi Hawass……cough). "I'm glad that those people were idiots," Hawass said. "They looted the museum shop. Thank God they thought that the museum shop was the museum." Or they just didn’t want to waste valuable time trying to determine which artifacts were the most valuable or have the hassle of trying to unload them on the black market. Watch an Indiana Jones movie some time and you’ll realize how difficult that task can be. A cynic might view ignoring the Egyptian Museum’s extraordinary collection of ancient treasures, including those from Tutankhamun's tomb, which take up nearly half of the second floor, in lieu of a sphinx-shaped paperweight as shortsighted, but those people are simply missing the point. Just because you have a chance to steal King Tut's exquisite golden death mask, two of his three golden coffins and other pharaonic jewelry, stone statues of pharaohs and ancient Egyptian gods that reach heights of 20 ft. or more; intricately painted sarcophagi; papyri; brilliant blue faience animals and delicate glass objects doesn’t mean you should steal those things. The point was to do damage and send a message, not rob visitors of their chance to see amazing historical artifacts. A group of nine rioters did explore the museum beyond the gift shop, but when they didn’t find the gold they were looking for, they abandoned their quest. Some stick-up-their-butt Cairenes gathered outside in a futile attempt to protect the museum, not realizing that it was an important chess piece in an ongoing battle to overthrow an unjust regime……….
- Before you sit down to watch the Super Bowl this Sunday, it might be wise to consider the physical toll that being a spectator for the NFL’s biggest game may take on your body. No, I’m not referring to your digestive system and circulatory system having to cope with the copious amount of calories in those slices of pizza, fatty chicken wings, potato chips, Funjuns, candy, ice cream and triple cheeseburgers you plan to cram down your pie hole, although those could certainly do plenty of damage in shortening your lifespan. But the bigger issue, assuming that you’re more than a non-football fan tuning in to see the sure-to-disappoint commercials instead of the game itself, could be the impact of rooting for either team on your overall health. A new study published in Monday's edition of the journal Clinical Cardiology, suffering an emotional loss in the Super Bowl may be hazardous to a fan's health. For the study, researcher Robert Kloner, a physician and professor at the University of Southern California, and his team studied cardiac death rates in Los Angeles County after the Los Angeles Rams lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1980 Super Bowl. They found that those cardiac death rates increased after the loss and unlike a previous study linking World Cup soccer game losses to cardiac deaths mostly in men, this study showed death rates increased more for women (27 percent) than for men (15 percent) and older individuals (22 percent). Although overall death rates increased as well, the cardiac death increases were the most dramatic. "The higher rates of female deaths surprised us," explained Kloner. "More and more women are becoming avid sports fans, but some people suggested we think about the interaction between men and women. If a man gets angry and upset (about the loss), that's going to upset a partner." That line of thought inspired Kloner and his team of researchers at the Heart Institute of Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles to examine at death rates in Los Angeles county following the Los Angeles Rams’ 1980 loss and the Los Angeles Raiders’ 1984 victory and compare those rates with death rates during those same periods in non-Super Bowl years. To ensure that they included all potential heart-related deaths, Kroner’s team also looked at deaths from circulatory diseases such as heart failure and ischemic heart disease. What they found was that death rates decreased slightly following the win, most notably in people 65 and older and women and as mentioned, skyrocketed after a loss. This could of course indicate that the cathartic release Los Angelinos achieve by rioting and trying to burn their town to the ground after a win is the secret to peace and tranquility, but that’s just my own quasi-scientific opinion. As for the actual study, Kloner believes a fan's emotional response to a team can be as strong as a connection to a family member and can be a trigger for heart-related death if the person has an underlying heart condition. He feels strongly enough about his findings to issue a slightly cryptic warning for Pittsburgh Steelers and Green Bay Packers fans heading into Super Bowl XLV on Sunday in Dallas. "Talk to your physician. There might be medicines, such as beta blockers, aspirin or anti-anxiety drugs that can help. Breathing exercises can also help if you find your heart starting to pound," he warns. There’s always the option of putting sports into perspective and not becoming so enraged by the result of a sporting event that you have a heart attack, but that seems like the least likely option for most fans………
- Kim Kardashian is either serious about nudity or she’s schizophrenic, but one or the other. For a chick whose sole qualification to be in the public eye is being hot and who has scored reality shows and many a magazine cover because she has a nice backside and not much else, Kardashian sure is biting the hand that feeds. When she’s not dishing out life wisdom to MTV’s army of teen mothers who populate their bargain-basement reality shows or making sex tapes, she is appearing in W magazine, both on the cover and in a photoshoot by Mark Seliger, in pictures revealing enough to make the issue the second-highest seller of 2010 for the artistic fashion magazine. Those who enjoyed the strategically censored images of Kardashian may not have known how she felt about pictures to which she agreed to have taken and posed for, but the latest episode of Kourtney and Kim Take New York on E! gave plenty of insight into what happened during Kim's silver-body-paint only fashion shoot. "I was naked but fully covered in silver paint," she told her sister Kourtney during the episode. "This artist will put images of architecture and buildings and stuff on top of me so you will see my body shape and the outline but not actually my boobs or anything." But as so often happens when a dumb, naïve girl poses for a photographer who promises her that the photos of her taking off all her clothes will be tasteful and artistic, Kardashian felt differently when the photos arrived. "I'm more naked here than I was in my Playboy," she cried. "I'm so f*cking mad right now...She promised I would be covered with artwork....This is serious porn....You can see nipple." Calm down, KK. It’s not like tons of people haven’t already seen you with your clothes off doing much dirtier things than posing for…..well, you get the point. In the aftermath, an exasperated Kim said through sobs that she will never, EVER take her clothes off for a photographer again. "The whole concept was sold to me that nothing would be seen. I feel so taken advantage of. I've learned my lesson. I'm never taking my clothes off again, even if it's for Vogue," she pouted. It didn’t take very long for her to reverse field on that one, because she soon showed up on teeth-bleaching, man-blouse-wearing, tip-frosting tool Ryan Seacrest’s radio show and said that she now "loved" the images. Score one for crazy……..
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