- The Man never quite understands. He never quite gets the mindset and lifestyle of the artist, what it takes for the brilliant creative minds among us to bring about great works of music, painting, sculpture, etc. For some artists, men like Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg, that something is burning the hippie lettuce incessantly. For others, the Colombian nose candy is the muse that makes their art possible. Such is the case of Jamaican reggae star Buju Banton, who is now facing up to 15 years in prison after being found guilty of three charges relating to him setting up a cocaine deal in 2009. Banton, whose real name is Mark Myrie, was inexplicably convicted of conspiracy to possess five or more kilograms of cocaine with the intent to distribute. The conviction is explicable because……well, because the man is a Jamaican reggae singer. Using all manner of illegal drugs is part of the job description. Dare I say, if you’re a Jamaican reggae singer and you don’t like to bake or snort, your career is going nowhere. Banton’s case is a bit more complicated because he was also found guilty of possession of a firearm and of another drug trafficking offense. Unfortunately for Banton, his fate was in the hands of 12 idiots not smart enough to get out of jury duty in Tampa, Fla. That jury found Banton not guilty of a fourth charge of attempted cocaine possession but convicted him on the three other charges. Upon what (probably fabricated) evidence did they base their erroneous decision? Well, there were the video and audio recordings relating to the case created by an informant and by Drug Enforcement Administration personnel. But if that’s your entire case……I’m not sure that’s a leap in judgment I can make. The jury in Banton’s first trial knows what I’m saying because that trial ended when they were hopelessly deadlocked and unable to reach a unanimous verdict. But the second time around, federal prosecutors trotted out the footage of Banton allegedly tasting cocaine in a warehouse and put on a nice dog and pony show in which the jury also heard that the informant was given $135,000 by one of Banton's co-defendants. With all of this hanging over his head and having been in custody as he awaits sentencing, I’m guessing that Banton hasn’t even been able to properly enjoying winning Best Reggae Album at the Grammy Awards earlier this month for his latest album 'Before The Dawn' won, all thanks to The Man holding him down…………
- Can you say conflict of interest? Actually, conflicts of interest might be more appropriate given the situation in which the NBA currently finds itself on account of its ownership of one of its own teams, the New Orleans Hornets. The NBA took over ownership of the Hornets from George Shinn on Dec. 6. It funds the organization and set an operating budget, which led to immediate criticism from coaches and others around the NBA because having the league in control of a team, let alone a team in contention for a playoff spot, presents a lot of problems. Lakers coach Phil Jackson was one of the first to express concern about how the league could run the Hornets and potentially make trades to better the team even though it is supposed to be fair and unbiased in how it oversees each of its 30 teams. But the sh*t really hit the fan Wednesday when the Hornets completed a trade with the Sacramento Kings in which the financially troubled franchise sent guard Marcus Thornton, who is earning $762,195, plus cash to Sacramento for forward Carl Landry, who is earning $3 million. The Hornets/league taking on a salary difference of $2.24 million quickly caught the attention of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who technically owns 1/29th of the Hornets along with every other owner in the league. Cuban ripped the NBA on Wednesday for allowing the Hornets to make the trade and take the salary hit. "If New Orleans is taking back $2 million and the team is losing money and I own 1/29th of it, I'm going to go against the grain and say that's just wrong," Cuban said. "There's no way, with their payroll, having to dump salary before they were sold to us [NBA owners]; now they can take on more salary while they're losing money. That's just wrong every which way." His issue, according to him anyhow, is not the completion of the trade itself but the added financial burden the Hornets (and the league by association) are taking on. "I don't have a problem if they go dollar-for-dollar, great, more power to them," Cuban said. "You could see if it was like a marquee guy and he's going to bring in lots of dollars. No disrespect to Carl Landry, but I don't see that's the way it works. It's just wrong. I'm one of the owners. The league is supposed to just give them a budget and it never dawned on me that the budget would say you can spend more money to bring in players." The cynic might argue that Cuban, whose Mavericks currently have the second-best record in the Western Conference, count the Hornets as a rival in the Southwest Division and could see them in the first round of the playoffs, is also angry about a competitor getting better via trade. Yes sir, conflicts of interest do abound here………..
- Panda democracy is an interesting concept. Can renting someone a pair of cute, fuzzy panda bears really make a difference in strained relations between your two nations? China is certainly hoping so. That’s why the Chinese are sending two giant pandas to Japan in the hope that the gesture could ease tensions between the countries amidst a heated territorial dispute. Those tensions came after boat collisions off some small islands in the East China Sea last October, with the detention of crews from those boats sparking nationalistic rhetoric and protests on both sides. Couple all of that with Japan’s sagging economy and you begin to understand the thought process behind renting the two 5-year-old pandas, which arrived at Tokyo's Ueno Zoo on Monday. The zoo hasn’t had any pandas since the 2008 death of its beloved giant panda Ling Ling and zoo officials are clearly excited about having the two pandas on hand to draw in visitors. The zoo and its surrounding area have been ramping up for the pandas' arrival for weeks, hanging banners decoarated panda cartoons and local shops stocking up on novelty items. Japanese media outlets have camped out at the zoo Anchorman-style. The panda pair -- female Xiannu and male Bili - landed at Japan's Narita airport one day after leaving the panda preserve in southwestern China's Sichuan province and were taken straight to the zoo as the entire scene was broadcast live on Japan's public broadcaster NHK. For the next month, the pandas will undergo health checks and other procedures and then debut for the public in late March. "I hope the pandas become popular and many Japanese people get to see them so that their impression of China would improve further," Japan's Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara said Friday. That impression probably would have improved a significant deal more if the Tokyo metropolitan government had been loaned the pandas instead of renting them for $950,000 a year, but maybe I’m simply being too cynical. China will use that infusion of nearly $1 million annually to rebuild a Sichuan panda sanctuary that was nearly destroyed by a May 2008 earthquake and to fund Japan-China joint breeding projects. The Japanese are obviously banking on tourism dollars from the pandas’ presence to offset the cost of the rental and predict that the fuzzy black and white bears will boost the local economy by about 10 percent a year. With the number of visitors to Ueno Zoo having fallen to around 3 million a year from 3.5 million since Ling Ling's death in 2008 at the age of 22, doing nothing and hoping that people will suddenly choose to spend their money on zoo visits in a terrible economy doesn’t seem like an option. Perhaps the pandas aren’t a guaranteed fix, but they seem to be the best available option. The outpouring of love and support when Ling Ling, also acquired from China, passed away was overwhelming. Relying on that same sort of connection to Xiannu and Bili is now the plan of attack for the Ueno Zoo…………
- If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it too many times. Voodoo sex ceremonies are one of the biggest fire threats in this world and yet, no one listens. Maybe now, those warnings will be heeded, now that candles used in voodoo sex ceremony caused a fatal five alarm fire after they tipped over and ignited bed sheets in an apartment building in Brooklyn, N.Y. The blaze left an elderly woman dead and injured 20 firefighters and three Brooklyn residents, all because some clumsy voodoo priest allegedly placed the candles on the floor around the bed on Saturday as part of a ceremony with a sexual component that was meant to bring his client good luck according to a New York Fire Department statement. While it would be easy to rip the voodoo priest (a notoriously unreliable lot) for the fire, you have to realize that if you hand some kook $300 for a sexually-based voodoo ceremony and expect it to be a smashing success, you’re hoping for far too much. Thus, a healthy percentage of the blame must also be placed on the woman herself. At some point during the ceremony, one of these two whack jobs knocked over the candles, leading to the priest attempting to douse the flames with water and then opening a window in an effort to clear smoke from the room. The notion that adding more oxygen to a burning fire was a bad idea never occurred to him, clearly. When he opened the window, 40 mile-per-hour wind gusts pushed the flames back inside the room, it said, creating a "blowtorch effect” redirected the fire into the building's fourth floor hallway. "Time and time again we respond to tragedies that could have been so easily prevented," Fire Commissioner Salvatore J. Cassano said in the statement. "This fire had so many of those elements ... hopefully others will learn from this tragedy." They could learn…..but the problem is that we have far too many morons running loose in this world and those morons are going to continue doing stupid things like holding voodoo sex ceremonies in small Brooklyn apartments and sparking fires that necessitate 200 firefighters from 44 companies spending seven hours to bring the resulting fire under control. If only those morons were the only ones harmed when an incident like this occurred………
- Are you a fan of red meat? Carnivores be warned, as the British government is targeting your favorite dinner staple and advising its citizens against eating too much red meat. In its first new dietary guidelines since 1998, the British government advised people to help prevent cancer by cutting down on steaks, hamburgers, sausages and other red meat. How little of it should the average Brit consume? Health officials say people should eat no more than 1 pound) of red meat a week, or 2.5 ounces per day. Those figures represent a significant drop from what was previously recommended. In 1998, these same officials said people could safely eat as much as 3 ounces a day and that the only people in serious danger were those who consumed more than 5 ounces daily. The new guidelines reinforce the long-held belief by many scientists that people who eat a lot of meat like lamb, roast beef and ham have a higher risk of bowel cancer. A prominent 2005 study conducted by researchers in Europe found people who ate about 5.6 ounces of red meat a day increased up their bowel cancer risk by one third compared to people who ate the least meat. With a 1 in 19 chance of developing bowel cancer in a lifetime, that definitely merits concern on the part of any individual. However, it’s worth noting that the British are not suggesting everyone should immediately become a vegetarian and never consume another steak or burger in their life. Finding a happy medium in which you include fish, chicken, turkey and other non-red meats alongside the occasional porterhouse or ribeye is a good compromise to strike. If you’re wondering why red meat is so often under attack, there are a few competing theories on the issue. Some experts suspect that haem, the pigment that gives red meat its color, damages cells in the digestive system, which may lead to cancer. Others believe that cooking meat at high temperatures may produce cancer-causing chemicals. Oh, and don’t be so hard on the Brits for recommending lower levels of red meat consumption. Their new guidelines mirror advice issued by the World Cancer Research Fund in 2007, when the agency advised against eating too much processed meat like sausages or bacon and said children should never eat such products. Not everyone is adhering to the World Cancer Research Fund’s advice quite as tightly as the British. Scandinavian countries recommend people eat a slice of red meat about the size of a small pork chop every day and the U.S. currently has no official guidelines for the consumption of red meat, although federal guidelines say people can eat nearly double the amount of protein recommended by Britain. So in the end, as with so many health-related issues, it’s up to you to sort through all of the conflicting claims and advice and figure matters out for yourself…………
No comments:
Post a Comment