- Great. After months of hand-wringing and speculation about how the NFL’s long-running collective bargaining dispute between the owners and the NFL Players Association would play out and everyone circling March 3 on their calendar as the drop-dead date (when the current CBA was to expire), we all get to suffer through an extra week drama. First, the two sides agreed to a 24-hour extension of the current CBA as it was set to expire as the clock struck midnight on Thursday. Then, they used that extended window to agree to a seven-day extension of their talks. The mutual agreement means another week of closed-door sessions under the supervision of federal mediator George Cohen, with talks resuming Monday. Under what is known as a "tolling agreement," the league's 32 teams still will be prohibited from conducting or executing player transactions. As the day dawned Friday, it seemed as if it might finally be the day when the players’ union would vote to decertify and the owners would impose a lockout, but sadly that was not the case. After months of buildup to and anticipation for a lockout, one is not forthcoming for at least another week. In the meantime, prepare for more tired shots of NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and his negotiating team showing up to meet with Cohen and NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith and members of the NFLPA’s executive committee doing the same while saying clichéd, uninformative things to the assembled media like, “As long as we’re talking, that’s a good thing.” Speaking as someone who has followed this saga for some time…….give me a lockout before you give me another week of this drivel. At least with a lockout, a decertified players’ union could then band together for a class action lawsuit against the owners and the situation could take an interesting turn. The first work stoppage since 1987 means a new generation of fans will get the lockout/strike experience and all its goodness. What no one needs is Smith entering Friday’s negotiations saying crap like, "We want to continue to thank our fans for still being patient as we work through this." Patient? Patient about what? No games will be played for six months, training camps are months away and even the draft is still several weeks away. Quit saying stupid, bland crap like that because then NFL lead negotiator Jeff Pash will be inspired to chip in with gems like, "If we can make the kind of progress that you needed to make to have a further extension, that's where we'd be looking." It would be one thing if the union had accepted the owners' proposal Thursday, but that hasn’t happened. Besides, reaching an agreement at the last minute would make all of the time and energy invested in the drama of a possible lockout seem……well, seem like one big waste……….
- Bears, beware. According to Minnesota Department of Natural Resources commissioner Tom Landwehr, the state will no longer protect radio-collared bears from hunters, an action that is sure to upset animal-rights groups and thrill hunters around the state. Landwehr made his decision in large part to address an issue involving bears studied by researcher Lynn Rogers between Ely and Tower, Minn., in the northeast part of the state. Rogers is founder of the North American Bear Center near Ely, which as its name implies, studies and actively promotes the welfare of nature’s furry killers. "I'm very disappointed,'' Rogers said Monday. "I was really counting on the commissioner to come through on this.'' Perhaps he wouldn’t be so upset had Landwehr manned up and informed her of his decision in person rather than via email. Or, if he hadn’t announced that the collared bears would no longer be protected before saying that he the DNR will continue to ask hunters voluntarily not to shoot collared bears, as if that will make a difference. The bears in the study wear collars that transmit their position to researchers for tracking and research purposes. Rogers has cultivated a fairly loyal following among fans of his bears in recent years, using a "den cam'' this winter and capturing the live births of bear cubs last winter. That broadcast drew tens of thousands of viewers and the NABC also has plenty of fans on Facebook. "Ely has benefited a lot by these bears,'' Rogers said, point out that online bear followers were instrumental in generating $100,000 in donations for nearby Bearhead Lake State Park. The Ely City Council, knowing where its financial bread is buttered, voted unanimously in December to support protection of the bears. Landwehr doesn’t share their enthusiasm because while he called research done by Rogers "popular and interesting,'' he also deemed it "not essential to managing bear populations in Minnesota.” For bear lovers, them are fighting words. But maybe Landwehr has a point. After all, why should some bears receive preferential treatment while others are fair game for hunters? “As a matter of policy, our job at the DNR is to manage entire populations of wild animals, and singling out individual bears for protection is not a policy I support,'' the commissioner pointed out. Not to mention, policing the hunting of radio-collared bears would be costly, time-consuming and all but impossible. Furthermore, most bears are taken in low light at dawn and dusk, making it very difficlut for a hunter to distinguish between a marked bear and an unmarked bear. "We don’t want to prosecute people for honest mistakes,'' Landwehr said. As an avid non-hunter, I am still inclined to agree with the commissioner. Simmer down, bear lovers, and if you feel that strongly about the issue, go find these collared bears in the wild and use your bodies as human shields to protect them from hunters…………
- Boy, the world certainly has changed. Used to be, the dictator of a rogue nation could violate an international arms embargo by secretly selling weapons to supporters of a neighboring nation’s embattled leader without the weight (and rage) of the world crashing down upon them both. But a culture of tattling and Big Brother-ism now pervades international relations and as such, the United Nations is now probing allegations that Zimbabwe violated an arms embargo on Ivory Coast by supplying weapons to supporters of its incumbent president, Laurent Gbagbo. A confidential report by the UN Mission to Ivory Coast, UNOCI, identified Zimbabwe as a source of arms for Gbagbo, who has refused to relinquish power to Alassane Ouattara, widely acceptedto have won the country’s most recent presidential election in November. The UN report documented the arrival of multiple shipments of light weapons from Zimbabwe, which is a problem because Ivory Coast has been under an arms embargo since 2004. As with the bond between crackpot Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and Venezuelan despot Hugo Chavez, a strong connection exists between Gbagbo and Mugabe. Gbagbo supported Mugabe in his opposition to the West, and in December he sent Ivorian Ambassador to South Africa to seek support ahead of an African Union meeting on the Ivory Coast crisis in January. That support hasn’t really materialized, so Ivory Coast has been in need of a little help from its friends. If the UN report is true, Zimbabwe has provided that help with shipments of small arms. Asked about the allegations, Zimbabwean officials at the United Nations in New York declined to comment. Of course, most observers will leap to the conclusion that the allegations are true simply because of Mugabe’s record of being less than truthful in political matters. It is well-known that Zimbabwe has had the capability to manufacture weapons and can readily ship them abroad, but I just don’t know if that means they should be persecuted for doing so…………
- The words “unlimited downloading on iTunes” are likely to send many music lovers into a frenzy. However, to quote the legendary Mandy Patinkin in The Princess Bride, that phrase does not mean what you think it means. It doesn’t mean that you will soon be able to pay one flat rate per month and be able to download as many songs from Apple’s popular music service as you want. What it means is instead of being able to download and play a song you purchase on iTunes on up to five different computers by authorizing each with access to your iTunes Store account, you may be able to download your purchased songs as often as you want on as many computers as you want. According to "three people with knowledge of the plans,” Apple is negotiating with several music companies — including Vivendi (VIV)’s Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment,Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) and EMI Group Ltd. — to create a system in which customers would have unlimited use of their music, which seems fairly appropriate given that some songs cost as much as $1.29 to download through the iTunes Store. Sources say that the new arrangement would provide iTunes customers with a permanent backup of music purchases if the originals are damaged or lost and allow downloads to iPad, iPod and iPhone devices linked to the same iTunes account. Thus far, Apple has not confirmed the rumors or addressed them, but given the number of competitors rising up to offer cheaper music and the outcry from iTunes users about the cost of songs and limits on how much they can be used, it seems like a logical step forward and something that needs to happen sooner rather than later…………
- How do you get a bad year back on track? When you’ve butchered the national anthem at the Super Bowl, been arrested for public intoxication and become something of a punchline, what’s the best plan for rebounding? I don’t know that there is a definitive choice for how to repair your image after that start to a year, but I can say with absolute certainty that becoming a coach on a reality karaoke series alongside the iconic musical duo of Cee Lo Green and Maroon 5's Adam Levine is not an acceptable solution. Never mind that Levine is the poseur frontman for a glorified boy band with instruments that is easily among the worst in music today, any reality karaoke show should be beneath any self-respecting recording artist. Yet there’s Aguilera, agreeing to become the third coach on NBC's new singing competition series "The Voice" alongside Green and Levine. "Her journey as an artist, who started so young in the music business, will be an inspiration to the talent she coaches on the show," said Paul Telegdy, executive vice president, Alternative Programming, NBC and Universal Media Studios. Also in on the project is Survivor executive producer Mark Burnett, who said Aguilera was his first choice for a female singer. "Christina has a perfect voice and is an undeniable force in the music business. She is the epitome of 'The Voice,'" Burnett proclaimed. Clearly, Burnett has been too busy dealing with spoiler controversies on Survivor to catch Aguilera’s hack job on the anthem at Super Bowl XLV. Sure, her most recent album, "Bionic," debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, which means she should be so far above any reality show that she won't even take a phone call from the producer. Then again, the album only sold 274,000 copies in the U.S., so perhaps Aguilera isn’t quite the musical moneymaker she once was. The obvious conclusion to draw from the Green-Levine-Aguilera trio is that NBC is looking to compete with the kooky, asinine panel of judges that Fox’s American Karaoke has assembled for this season. Unfortunately, Levine is no Steven Tyler, Aguilera and Jennifer Lopez are a wash and Green and whoever that third dude is on the AK panel is are completely irrelevant. “The Voice” will premiere April 26 and after two weeks of two-hour shows, it will move to a one-hour 8 p.m. slot until it flames out and is canceled after one season or less………
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