- Not surprisingly, NFL owners have been preparing for the impending labor battle with the NFL Players Association in exactly the fashion you would expect a bunch of rich, successful businessmen to prepare for such a situation. Whereas the NFL has had to actively campaign in order to communicate its message of saving and preparing for a likely work stoppage to players (and that message has probably fallen on deaf ears with more than a few players), the league’s owners have quietly gone about padding their already ample bank accounts so they will have as much revenue as possible in the event of a lockout. Under the terms of the collective bargaining agreement that govern uncapped years, as this season is, none of the NFL's 32 teams were required to fund player benefits such as 401K plans that are not in effect in uncapped years, saving each team $10 million. The NFL has held onto that money and that pot of $320 million could be used to help offset some of the costs during the early stages of a lockout. The league did continue funding for pension, disability, 88 plan, post-retirement medical care and other benefits, and has committed to fund all benefits for retirees even after the CBA expires and even if there is a lockout, but still found a way to accrue that $320 million fund by not paying toward the specific player benefits. That was probably a wise move even though the owners structured the most recent television contract so they will be paid whether games are played or not because let’s face it, billionaires can never be too financially cautious in the event that one of the least-profitable businesses they will ever own (as professional sports teams tend to be) isn’t generating revenue for a few months. Not a single negotiating session has produced substantial progress thus far and Saturday’s meeting between NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and NFLPA head DeMaurice Smith was likely no different. The two sides sat down for two hours and had a meeting in which they likely both realized once again that they both want a far bigger piece of the financial pie than the other side is willing to concede to them…………
- Most people would kill for better cell reception and welcome anything to make that dream a reality. But perhaps even in the quest for the best possible coverage on your iPhone, BlackBerry or Droid, there are limits to put in place. A great place to start with those limits, just for the heck of it, would probably be not dropping cell phone towers in the front yard of a home in a residential neighborhood. That would have been helpful for telecommunications provider NextG, which used the cloak of darkness to drop a full-sized cell tower in the front yard of the DiMarco family of Mount Sinai, N.Y. "I was mortified," Lori DiMarco recalled. "My son actually took me outside at night and said Ma, dad didn't want you to see this yet, he took me outside with a flash light at night." Probably, that would not feel very good, to go to bed with a normal-looking front lawn and to wake up with a ginormous metal monstrosity right in the middle of that lawn. The family’s putrage was shared by Town Of Brookhaven highway huperintendent John Rouse, who fumed, "It's the height of corporate arrogance. If I have to get in that truck myself and take it down, it's coming down." Now THAT is the kind of government employee I love to see…..but wait, what kind of government employee a) gives a crap and b) is motivated to action by anything short of a pay raise? To drive his point home, Rouse brought out a town bucket truck and is threatening to rip down the antenna if NextG doesn't remove it within 10 days. It’s easy to wonder what would possess a company to spend time and money putting up something that is so obviously illegal in such a visible place, knowing full well that it would be torn down. NextG admitted it installed the tower without the proper permits, saying in effect that the town was taking too long to review its application. "NextG sincerely apologizes and pledges to do its best to ensure that this does not happen again," the company said in a statement that also affirmed its promise to take the tower down. Ummm……great. But there are so many things wrong with what you just said. For one, government may be slow and it may be inefficient, but that doesn’t mean you use the personal property of ordinary, uninvolved citizens as a pawn in your game. You pledge to do your best to ensure that this doesn’t happen again? How about sending out an email to the entire company informing them of something they should have known on their own: Do not install cell phone towers in the lawns of people’s homes for any reason. That would seem lie a great fix to benefit one and all……….
- I’ve given up on you, American movie fans. In fact, I gave up on you a long time ago. I gave up on you a long time ago because it became clear to me that you have abysmal taste in movies and by giving up on you, it doesn’t hurt as much when apocalyptically bad movies are at the top of the box office for a weekend. Having said that, The Roommate ending up as the top movie for any weekend - even if it was the only movie in the world for a weekend - is like you walking into my living room, pulling me out of my comfy chair and blasting me squarely in the package with a large, metal meat tenderizer. Yes, Leighton Meester’s new “scare thriller” is really that bad. Yes, it’s actually worse and more poorly written than Gossip Girl. But yet, there is it at the top of the weekend earnings list, debuting with a scrawny $15.6 million that was enough to outdistance every other movie at the theater by at least $6 million. The closest competitor was fellow newcomer Sanctum, which consists of lots of dramatic shots of people diving into deep underground caves and finding scary things at the bottom. One thing Sanctum didn’t find was a lot of people willing to pay $10 to see it and as a result, it finished second with $9.2 million. Slotting in third place was Ashton Kutcher’s latest joke of a movie, No Strings Attached. The “romantic comedy” made $8.4 million in its third weekend, a 37-percent decline from last weekend and yet still enough to elevate the film’s overall earnings to $51.8 million. In fourth place was The King’s Speech, which took a step back for the first time in about three months (literally) by declining 25 percent despite adding 27 theaters. Still, the Weinstein Bros. have had an amazing run with the Oscar favorite and through 11 weeks, it has racked up $84.2 million and counting. This week’s $8.4 million tally might not be overwhelming, but it keeps that run going. The last of the top five was Sony’s The Green Hornet, with Seth Rogen and Co. chalking up $6.1 million, a 45-percent dropoff. That boosts Hornet’s four-week total to $87.2 million, which is higher than most expected. The biggest one-week drop on the list belonged to Anthony Hopkins’ The Rite, a devilishly bad demonic scare-fest that plummeted 62 percent from its opening weekend and made a paltry $5.6 million for a two-week total of $23.7 million and counting. The seventh-place finisher was Jason Statham’s testosterone-fueled action flick (I just described every Jason Statham movie, I know) The Mechanic with $5.4 million. A 53-percent drop from its opening weekend doesn’t bode well for the film’s success going forward and after two weeks, it has earned back just $20.1 million from a $40 million budget. On the other hand, True Grit has turned in its share of outstanding performances over the past seven weeks and even after nearly two months in theaters, it hung on for an eighth-place finish this week with $4.8 million. For its seven weeks of release, the John Wayne remake has garnered $155 million. Ninth place for the weekend was The Dilemma, which has been one of the worst films of every weekend since it’s release and fell off 39 percent this frame with a $3.5 million haul. For four weeks, its coffers now hold a scant $45.7 million. Rounding out the top 10 was another big success story, Black Swan, which made another $3.4 million for a hearty $95.9 million over its 10 weeks of limited release. Dropping from last weekend’s top 10 were The Fighter (No. 11) and Yogi Bear (No. 12), which were in their ninth and eighth weeks of release respectively…………
- I knew I loved Switzerland. Aside from the epically beautiful mountains, gorgeous vistas, amazing train rides, awesome cheese and world-best chocolate, the Swiss are just good people. So of course Switzerland is ground zero for a potentially great development in the story of the worst president in the history of these here United States. You might remember our former leader W., he of starting unjustified wars based on false, fabricated evidence, mangling the names of foreign leaders and ignoring things like the Geneva Convention by quietly condoning waterboarding and other torture techniques and rest assured, that’s how the rest of the world remembers him. How do I know that? Well, W. has canceled a visit to Switzerland, where he was to address a Jewish charity gala, due to the risk of legal action against him for alleged torture. Human rights groups confirmed the decision, saying that W. would no longer by the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod's annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. Seems that pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he ever enters the country. That means no Matterhorn visits, no Swiss ski resorts and no strolling along the Limmat River in Zurich. All it took to keep W. out of a country was lodging criminal complaints against Bush for torture? I wish I had known that sooner, maybe we could have been rid of him in this country by now. The case against W., to be presented soon in Geneva, is expected to include a 2,500-page case for alleged mistreatment of suspected militants at Guantanamo Bay. The U.S. naval base in Cuba has housed captives from Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts in the so-called War on Terror and those captives were reportedly subjected to tall manner of inhumane interrogation techniques. Human rights and leftist groups in Switzerland had called for a protest on the day of W.’s visit next Saturday, leading Keren Hayesod's organizers to announce that they were canceling Bush's participation on security grounds. The same dilemma would likely await W. were he to announce a visit to any of the countries that have ratified an international treaty banning torture. Swiss officials, by the way, have insisted that W. would still enjoy a certain diplomatic immunity as a former head of state. That didn’t stop Dominique Baettig, a member of the Swiss parliament from the right-wing People's Party, from writing to the Swiss federal government last week calling for the arrest of Bush for alleged war crimes if he came to the country. That will happen if you openly laud a torture practice in your memoirs, a practice banned by the Convention on Torture, an international pact prohibiting torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment ratified by 147 countries in 1987 - including the United States and Switzerland……..
- Damn you, Russia. You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you. For 15 million years (allegedly), an icebound lake has remained sealed deep beneath Antarctica's frozen crust and no one has disturbed it. Sure, we all realized somewhere along the way that it might be hiding prehistoric or unknown life, but the rest of us left well enough alone. Lakes need their privacy and we understood that…..but not you. Some of your scientists are digging, drilling and doing everything in their power to uncover this lake. "There's only a bit left to go," exclaimed Alexei Turkeyev, chief of the Russian polar Vostok Station. Turkeyev’s team has drilled for weeks in a race to reach the lake, 12,000 feet beneath the polar ice cap, before the end of the über-short Antarctic summer. It’s the very same location where coldest temperature ever found on Earth -- minus 128.6 Fahrenheit -- was recorded. It’s the cold that the Commie scientists seeking the lake will have to beat in order to complete their mission, as they will be forced the leave on the last flight out for this season. "It's minus 40 (Celsius) outside," Turkeyev said. "But whatever, we're working. We're feeling good. There's only 5 meters left until we get to the lake so it'll all be very soon." Even though they haven’t actually reached the lake, scientists have definite theories about the lake and what they will find there. Turkeyev’s team believes the lake's depths will reveal new life forms, show how the planet was before the ice age and how life evolved. It could even provide an Earth-based example of what conditions for life exist in the extremes of Mars and Jupiter's moon Europa. "It's like exploring an alien planet where no one has been before. We don't know what we'll find," said Valery Lukin of Russia's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute in St. Petersburg, which oversees the expedition. Expeditions have been traveling to the South Pole for a century, but Antarctica's hidden network of subglacial wasn’t discovered until he late 1990s. The find, made possible by satellite imagery, has sparked a maniacal response from scientists the world over. And if the Russians fail to discover the lake before they must leave, American and British explorers may well beat them to other buried lakes around Antarctica. The lakes themselves are a unique phenomenon, as the ice sheet acts like a heat seal, trapping in the Earth's geothermal heat and preventing them from freezing. Sediment and fossils from this particular lake could date back to tropical prehistoric times because Lake Vostok, about the size of Lake Baikal in Siberia, is the largest, deepest and most isolated of Antarctica's 150 subglacial lakes. It is unique even among Antarctic lakes because it is supersaturated with oxygen, resembling no other known environment on Earth. Having said that, here’s hoping the Russians aren’t the first ones to reach it…………
No comments:
Post a Comment