Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Sony's new tablets, pervs at the library and shoe-throwing activism

- Because there weren’t already enough pervs and degenerates at your local library, the New York Public Libraries are actively defending the right of those pervs and degenerates to roll up on the library and do….well, what pervs and degenerates do: watch porn. Nearly 1.7 million people go online to access porn every minute of the day and the vast majority of them do so at home (or at work shortly before being fired for watching porn at work). Most people who patronize a public library expect to be able to go in, get a book, CD or movie and leave without having to encounter one of these losers streaming a XXX-rated movie from some adult site. That’s the case in most states around the country, but not in New York City. Thanks to a policy, at all city libraries, that gives adults uncensored access to any Internet porn, lonely and horny people can check out some hot lesbian action while kids or families walk by or use the computer next to them for non-perv purposes like research papers or updating their Facebook status for the tenth time that day. The rule governing porn access is based on the First Amendment, according to library officials. "The library provides access to anything that's protected by the First Amendment rights," said Brooklyn Library spokesperson, Richard Reyes-Gavilan. Some parents have lodged complaints over having their children exposed to pornography on other patrons’ computer screens, but library policy basically demands that librarians tell them to suck it up and deal with it. Library officials insist it is not within their jurisdiction to ban porn. "It's not the libraries' job to teach taste," Reyes-Gavilan explained. By the letter of the law, he (and the library) are correct. The law requires libraries nationwide to block anyone under 17 years of age from watching XXX flicks, but that is as far as the law goes. Many library systems’ security measures can be adjusted on individual computers by any perv wanting to access some NSFW content. The lesson, as always, is that anyone using a library computer should be assumed to be up to something shady, sketchy or perverted……….


- It had been too long. For months and months, not one bold citizen in a third world country had stepped up and hurled a piece of footwear at an important political or cultural figure. The brave Iraqi who chucked his shoe at former President W. during a speech was left standing alone as the only man bold enough to make this defiant gesture until…….like a bolt of lightning reaching valiantly across a dark night sky, illuminating the world when it was needed most, Kapil Thakur appeared. If you don’t know Thakur’s name already, don’t worry. You will soon learn that name and learn it well after Thakur, a lawyer from the Indian city of Gwailor, hurled a sandal at the former Commonwealth Games Organizing Committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi at the Patiala House Courts complex Tuesday afternoon. Thakur may not have been seeking to make a bold political statement with his shoe throwing, but he was certainly angry. Why? Because he had been barred from practicing law several months ago after he allegedly stabbed a sub-divisional magistrate claiming that he was corrupt. As a quick aside, stabbing someone who accuses you of corruption is always a solid move because while it may prove you are a murderous individual with little self-control, stabbing a person to death is definitely not a corrupt move. The lone dark spot on Thakur’s act of bravery was that his shoe throw, like the one involving W., went wide of the mark and Thakur was immediately subdued by police. He was booked under the Delhi Police Act, but later released. Throughout the incident, a defiant Kalmadi smiled and continued to interact with reporters. He didn’t let on his anger over the incident happening despite tight security, but the real rage should come from the fact that it took so long for another intrepid shoe thrower to step up and inspire the world…………


- What has actor/comedian Paul Reiser been doing the past few years and in the decade-plus since his lone successful foray into television, Mad About You, went off the air? Clearly, he hasn’t been honing his acting skills because his new show the Paul Reiser Show, was canceled by NBC last week after just two episodes, which both rated extremely poorly. Not that one man can carry an otherwise awful show, but Reiser’s uninspiring performance along with the overall poor quality of the show itself add up to terrible ratings that surprised no one - probably not even the suits at NBC, if they were honest. But back to the question of what Reiser has been doing the past few years…….if forced to hazard a guess, stockpiling bitterness and delusions of grandeur would have to be at the top of the list after his performance Monday on the The Tonight Show With Jay Leno. An interview originally targeted toward promoting one of the network’s new series instead ended up as a postmortem for one of the biggest flops of this or any other TV season and Reiser made no effort to conceal his digust with the network over his show’s cancellation. "NBC, to my knowledge, they don't traditionally make bad decisions. Have you heard that? I don't know what your experience is," Reiser said to Leno sarcastically, alluding to Leno’s own late-night war with Conan O'Brien. "It turns out they said we enjoy missing you more than actually having you. But listen, I don't take it personally. Listen, when you're the last place network, you don't want to jeopardize that. You've found your niche. Stay there. So I get it." Ouch, someone’s a bit thorny after his show bombed out and received some of the lowest ratings of any network series this season. While learning that people hate your show and don’t want to watch it hurts, it’s difficult to see how Reiser (or anyone else in his position) could attack the network for pulling the plug on said show. No matter how great of an actor you believe yourself to be, if the results aren’t there, then they aren’t there. New shoes notoriously have their best ratings in their pilot episode and ratings drop off in subsequent weeks as the curiosity factor wears off. The good, sustainable shows hold on to a healthy chunk of their audience, while the bad shows……well, their lead actors end up ranting in late-night talk show interviews about how the network screwed them over…………


- BlackBerry has entered the tablet market with its Playbook and every other tech company with a pulse has offered up their own take on the tablet, so it was high time for Sony to join the fray and the tech titan did so Tuesday with not one, but two tablets running Google's Android Honeycomb OS. While the tablets don’t have an official name (because introducing two tablets without actual names doesn’t at all suggest their release was rushed), Sony said it had codenamed the two devices S1 and S2, and that the gadgets would make up the "Sony Tablet" line of products. The two decives are significantly different from one another, with the S1 as a wedge of a tablet, with a tapering back and a 9.4-inch touch screen out front. In a release, Sony said the S1's "off-center of gravity design realizes stability and ease of grip." The device sports front and rear cameras for shooting video and photos. Conversely, the S2 is a clam-shell device made up of two 5.5-inch touch screens with a hinge running through the middle of the device that allows it to close up, screen to screen. Users can use the two screens together as one large screen to browse websites or apps or as separate entities, i.e. utilizing the bottom half as a keyboard and the top half as the actual display for browsing. The one significant commonality for the tablets is Google's Android Honeycomb software, using Android apps and featuring Internet connectivity using both Wi-Fi and 3G or 4G cellular networks. Additionally, both devices will be able to tap into Sony's cloud-based services: Qriocity offering music and video, the PlayStation Network offering downloadable video games and e-books from the Sony Reader Store. To emphasized their versatility, the Sony Tablet products will also work with some Sony TVs and home speaker systems, allowing users to push video or music from the tablets to their home entertainment systems via infrared connections. The S1 and S2 were announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, but Sony did not provide any visuals or details about them. They are set to arrive in stores this fall, but no price points have been announced and overall, their existence remains fairly cryptic and shadowy. But maybe intrigue and suspense are the way to go in a tablet market where a company needs every advantage it can get to set its offerings apart from the rest of the field………..


- He isn't the first and he won't be the last, but former NHL enforcer Donald Brashear is nonetheless looking to make his mark as a former professional athlete transitioning to the world of mixed martial arts. Brashear, who played in the NHL for the Montreal Canadiens, Vancouver Canucks, Philadelphia Flyers, Washington Capitals and New York Rangers in a career spanning 18 seasons, has signed a deal with Ringside MMA to step inside the octagon. He still must pass a medical exam and get a license to fight from Quebec authorities and if he does, he is scheduled to fight on the Ringside 11 card June 4 at the Quebec Coliseum. He hasn’t given up on hockey entirely, playing in the semipro Ligue Nord-Americaine de Hockey, but will attempt to fulfill his MMA dreams at the same time. Former NFL running back Herschel Walker has previously made the crossover to MMA and enjoyed limited success, although he himself has admitted that his chances to rise through the ranks are limited because he didn’t enter the sport until he was nearly 50 years old. Brashear has more than a decade on Walker, but taking up MMA is difficult at any age because of the many disciplines involved in mastering it. Even for a 6-foot-3, 237-pound bruiser with a reputation from brawling at every chance during his hockey career, succeeding in the world of triangle chokes, Brazilian jujitsu and flying elbows inside the octagon will be a huge departure from the norm. During his NHL career, Brashear collected 2,634 penalty minutes in 1,025 NHL games from 1993-2010. He won't have to worry about being sent to the penalty box during his bout(s), but spending two minutes in the box might be preferable to having a 250-pound dude cave in his face or render him unconscious with a rear naked choke or taking his head off with a spinning martial arts kick. Seeing the experiment end in disaster wouldn’t be a surprise, but it should be entertaining no matter what the end result…………

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