- Aaaaaaand the pendulum swings back the other way - again. No health- or science-related topic has featured as many twists and turns as whether or not cell phones are dangerous to users’ health. As of Tuesday, that pendulum is back on the site of unhealthy after the World Health Organization declared that radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer. The WHO now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform. Read that again: the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform. Those are three powerful names to be in a category with, for sure. But hey, the agency did precede its announcement with the assurance to consumers that no adverse health effects had been established. The announcement came from research done by a team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States. After reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety (doesn’t sound all that extensive or high-effort), these scientists decided they had enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans." What does that mean? Not much, actually. There simply are not enough long-term studies conducted to make a clear conclusion if radiation from cell phones are safe, but there is still enough data showing a possible connection that consumers should be alerted. "The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences," said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Radiation coming from cell phones is typically called non-ionizing, most closely resembling a very low-powered microwave oven. Even though Tuesday’s announcement is far from earth-shaking news, the voices decrying the dangers of cell phone use that have grown louder over the years will undoubtedly seize upon it to more loudly champion their cause. One such kook - a well-educated kook - happens to be the head of a prominent cancer-research institute at the University of Pittsburgh who sent a memo to employees telling them to limit cell phone use because of a possible risk of cancer. The largest international study on cell phones and cancer concluded in 2010 and it found that participants who used a cell phones for 10 years or more had doubled the rate of brain glioma, a type of tumor. One area that remains unexplored in the field of possible health hazards from cell phones is the danger to children, an increasingly important topic because of the rapidly expanding number of children who use cell phones at lower and lower ages. With thinner skulls and scalps, the danger should theoretically be higher if any sort of substantial radiation is being put out. Most smartphone manufacturers do warn consumers to keep their device away from their body, but those warnings tend to fall on deaf ears like so many other warnings about potential health hazards about products. For example, the safety manual for Apple’s iPhone 4 says for users' radiation exposure to not exceed FCC guidelines, "When using iPhone near your body for voice calls or for wireless data transmission over a cellular network, keep iPhone at least 15 mm (5/8 inch) away from the body." Competitor BlackBerry advises users of its popular Bold model to "keep the BlackBerry device at least 0.98 in. (25 mm) from your body when the BlackBerry device is transmitting." Or just continue using your phone the same way you always have and consequences be damned…………
- It sounds great and at the moment, it’s essentially all Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard can do to debunk rumors that he is planning on following the path beaten out of town by former Magic center Shaquille O’Neal and heading to a bigger market when he becomes a free agent. Like O’Neal, Howard has established himself as the NBA’s dominant big man and while he’s not on O’Neal’s level as an all-time great, he has won consecutive defensive player of the year awards and is prominently featured as a pitchman for various national companies. Couple his Hollywood aspirations with the reality that the small-market Magic seem like a long shot to compete against the Chicago Bulls and the in-state Miami Heat in the stacked Eastern Conference and it’s easy to see why speculation is intense about Howard’s possible departure. There’s also the rising trend of superstars coming together on specific teams to form quasi all-star squads to increase their championship chances. Howard has heard all of the speculation and although he is under contract with the Magic through the 2012-13 season and has yet to sign an extension, he wants nothing to do with it. Several weeks ago he took to Twitter to rip several local media members who had written stories speculating about his future and demanded that they allow him to enjoy his offseason in peace. That didn’t last long, as Howard sat down with a reporter from the Orlando Sentinel on Monday and said that although he can terminate his contract a year before it expires - after next season - he has no plans to go anywhere. "I'm not trying to run behind nobody like Shaq or be behind somebody else," Howard said of the suggestion he would follow the path paved by O’Neal, who left the Magic for the Los Angeles Lakers after the 1995-96 season. "I want to start my own path and I want people to follow my path and not just follow somebody else's path. I want to have my own path, and I want to start that here in Orlando. But I can't do it alone. Not only do I need the right teammates, but I need the city behind me. That's the only way it's going to get done. We can change this small city that we have -- this small market that we have -- and we can make it a big market." Making Orlando a big market will also mean re-tooling a roster that endured a first-round at the hands of the Atlanta Hawks to end their season. A legitimate run at a championship and a stronger roster could theoretically give Howard more incentive to remain in Orlando. But read between the lines of his comments and it’s clear he has given himself plenty of wiggle room if and when he leaves. "As of right now, I'm a part of the Orlando Magic and I plan to be here," Howard stated. "And I want the Magic to do whatever they can to make sure that we can get our city behind us. I never said I was leaving. I never, ever thought about leaving. That's basically where my head is right now. I never said anything to them (the Magic) about what my plans were because that's not what I'm focused on right now." Right now would be the key phrase there. At this point, Howard would be a fool to say anything else, especially with a lockout on the horizon that could freeze all league business indefinitely. Saying he plans to or has strongly considered leaving would only poison an already tenuous situation and make it all the more difficult for the Magic to trade him if it becomes clear to them he doesn’t plan to stay when he becomes a free agent. These comments won't persuade anyone to change their mind on the subject, but then again, nothing Howard could say right now would do that…………
- Certain actions, comments and stances in life just cannot be defended, no matter how hard someone tries. A country’s military conducting forced "virginity tests" on female protesters is one such action. Protestors gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in March as part of the uprising to demand political change after the February ouster of president Hosni Mubarak and among their number were many women. After weeks of violent protests security forces decided it would be a solid idea to get excessively violent in clearing the square and to detain scores of protestors. Some detainees painted vivid pictures of the alleged abuse, saying it included forced "virginity tests," beatings, electric shocks and strip searches while being photographed by male soldiers. The claims enraged Egyptian activists who called for demonstrations to condemn the incident and led to human rights groups to call on the government to investigate accusations that the army tortured and abused women. Groups such as Amnesty International have claimed that at least 18 women were arrested on March 9 when army officers forcibly cleared Tahrir Square. The military council currently running the country have denied the army’s role in any possible abuses and refused comment on the issue. Yet media reports have quoted an unidentified senior general confirming the allegations while attempting to defend the incident. This ass hat had the audacity to suggest that because the women subjected to degrading and dehumanizing “virginity tests” were not like his or others’ wholesome, pure daughters, the abuse was A-OK. He went on to claim that the so-called virginity tests were conducted so the army could prove that the women were not raped or sexually assaulted at the protest. Citing the tents set up in Tahrir Square the female protestors shared with male counterparts and the presence of Molotov cocktails and drugs in those tents, the general further defended the virginity tests. His revelation led to a mad rush among activists so organize demonstrations to condemn the military's actions. "Women were in the front lines in Tahrir. They have always played a role and they deserve for their dignity to be regained," one activist group posted on its Facebook page. Not to stir the pot further, but this seems to be a story that won't go away and time soon……….
- Peter Jackson hasn’t found the going easy with his forthcoming “Hobbit” movies, but he and everyone associated with the films received good news over the weekend as New Line Cinema, Warner Brothers and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer said in a joint statement that the first “Hobbit” movie would open on Dec. 14, 2012. The date represents what some scholars say is the 509th anniversary of the birth of Nostradamus and comes a month or so after the supposed end of the world predicted by the mythical Mayan calendar, so it’s definitely in a solid window. Not only did the three studios announced the release date for the first of the two films, they also shared the news that the concluding “Hobbit” film will be released on Dec. 13, 2013, a date which not only has two 13s in it but also falls on a Friday the 13th. Those pieces of information on their own would be enough to sufficiently geek up the legions of dorks undoubtedly already planning their campsite outside their local multiplex when tickets for the first “Hobbit” film goes on sale, but wait, there’s more! The studios also announced the films’ full titles: Part I will be called “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and Part II will be called “The Hobbit: There and Back Again,” neither of which gives much of a hint as to how the movies will unfold. The announcement did have a distinct odor of slightly panicked studios attempting to dispel the notion that there is some sort of curse working against Jackson’s “Hobbit” movies, which have already battled a labor dispute, the occasional explosion and emergency ulcer surgery for its director. Now that the films have both release dates and titles, perhaps talk of them being cursed will subside……until the next time something blows up on set or Jackson is rushed to the emergency room again. Then again, if the world does end in November 2012, none of this will matter anyhow…………
- How was your Memorial Day? No matter how fun it was, odds are it would have been substantially more entertaining had you been hanging out in or around downtown Decatur, Ala. As families across the country gathered around the grill or hit up the local park’s pavilion for their cookout, many Decatur residents headed to the Point Mallard aquatic park to cool off from the sweltering temperatures sweeping through their region. With that heat apparently came some hot tempers, as a brawl broke out around 4:30 and quickly spun far enough out of control that park officials decided to close the entire park down and call police. Best of all, the fight was amongst a large group of girls, possibly over someone moving in on someone else’s boyfriend, having the same bathing suit or talking junk about how someone else looked in her bathing suit (all theories approximate). The chick fight had broken up by the time police arrived, but not for good. Instead, it merely spilled out into the town once the water park’s gates closed. Although no arrests were made, police confirmed that the fight at the park multiplied into several fights across the city, with reports of brawls at a gas station and at a local McDonald's. The investigation is ongoing at this point and no suspects have been officially identified, but big ups to any of the fine, classy chicas involved in this fracas for turning what could have been another mundane, ho-hum Memorial Day at the water park into a day to remember. Nothing says “honoring our veterans” quite like fighting some other chicks at the local water park and having that brawl spread across the city as the day wore on. Surely our veterans had these very rights and freedoms in mind when they bravely laid down their lives for this country. The real winners on the day had to be patrons who entered the park after 3:30 p.m., as they not only were able to witness a heckuva brawl, but they can also come back for another day at the park for free on account of having less than an hour to enjoy the slides, lazy river and other attractions before the park closed. Oh, and no one was seriously injured in any of the fights, so the situation is truly a win-win for all involved…………
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Idiots gets more rights, movie news and border crashings
- Idiots in Texas may soon have a privilege that idiots in 17 other states across the nation currently enjoy. For too long now, IQ-deprived fools in the Lone Star State have not been able to (legally) wade into their favorite stream or watering hole, stick their hands down into some hole or recess in the river bed and attempt to pull out a catfish with their bare hands. The practice, known as noodling, is legal in neighboring Oklahoma and 16 other states and it may soon be legal in Texs as well. A bill approved by the state legislature last week would make noodling legal in Texas. Presently, those caught noodling in Texas face fines of up to $500 - not to mention potentially getting their hand bitten clean off by a large, angry snapping turtle if they stick their arm into the wrong hole while looking for that prize catfish. The concept of noodling is actually quite bizarre, with the goal to get the fish to latch onto the noodler's arm with their mouths or to take hold of the fish by the gills. Once he or she accomplishes either of these things, they take the fish to a boat or to shore and gets the fish to let go of the arm. Because catfish can grow to nearly 50 pounds, it can sometimes taken two brain-dead idiots to successfully complete a noodling attempt. Those who value their hands and overall well-being won't be affected by this legal change, but anyone dumb enough to engage in this foolhardy hobby is probably fired up by the very real chance that their favorite pastime could become legal simply by virtue of their governor slapping his signature on the bill and making it official…………
- Anyone who has been involved in an office pool on who will purchase the first model of the world’s first commercially available quantum computer, that question has been answered. Aerospace, defense and security company Lockheed Martin sealed the deal for the über-computer, which uses principles of quantum mechanics rather than classical mechanics. Quantum computers are different than conventional computers because instead of relying on transistors, they rely on principles of quantum mechanics to conduct operations. Properties like entanglement — when two particles have the same properties and behave identically while being separate — and storing data with “qubits,” or quantum bits, make a computer more powerful and faster. Whereas typical bits store memory by registering an “on” or “off,” or a one or zero, qubits can represent information as both memory and the state of entanglement with other particles. It sounds confusing……and it is. All you need to know is that a quantum computer uses a system of 128 qubits, which means the computer will be able to solve more complex problems than traditional computers at a much higher speed. It doesn’t have much of an impact on the things the average computer user does with their machine - updating their Facebook status, knocking out a Tweet about standing in line at Chipotle or downloading porn - but for aerospace, defense and security companies like Lockheed Martin, the computer’s ability to tackle computing-intensive problems related to number theory and optimization is rather handy. One example of its computing power is the use of Shor’s Algorithm, a quantum algorithm that determines the prime factors of a large number quickly and efficiently, to break modern encryption algorithms like RSA encryption, a type of public-key cryptography. The quantum computer’s brain power could theoretically lead to new kinds of encryption methods and security algorithms to secure data and model more complex systems. The computer’s maker, D-Wave, was founded in 1999 and calls itself “the quantum computing company.” The sale price is a cool $10 million, should you be in the market for one…………
- Border crashing party, all! Everyone into the pool - or in the case, the mostly barren desert wasteland that is Egypt. On the day Egypt re-opened its border crossing from the Gaza Strip for the first time in four years, hundreds of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip bum-rushed the crossing. The opening is permanent and comes despite Israeli concerns that the move strengthens Hamas’s rule of the area. Nearly 300 Palestinians crossed into Egypt this morning in a process called “smooth and easy” by a Hamas police officer on the scene. The decision to reopen the border was hailed by the Hamas Islamic movement, which controls the Palestinian enclave. Israel strenuously objected to the move and warned of potential dangers from it. “We will obviously be looking to preserve security arrangements at the border and hope nothing will be done to allow Hamas to empower itself and to reinforce its terrorist infrastructures,” Yigal Palmor, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a phone interview. “The Israeli position has been made known to all relevant authorities, including in Egypt.” Not only is Egypt reducing restrictions at the Rafah crossing, it will also waive visa requirements for most Palestinians entering from other departure points, except neighboring Libya. Hamas saluted the border opening as helping the Gazan population “ease its suffering.” Israel, of course, maintains an embargo on the Gaza coast in an effort to prevent alleged weapons smuggling. The Israeli government has choked off the flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza through its own border crossings since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip since by winning elections in January 2006 and gained full control of the area in 2007. Egypt’s choice comes as its new leadership takes a decidedly different approach than the one espoused by former dictator/“President” Hosni Mubarak. That new leadership is currently facing massive protests and riots demanding it do a better job of carrying out its new responsibilities and the border issue could be one more flashpoint in the growing conflict…………
- The one-man wolfpack was at it again, dominating a strong field at the Memorial Day weekend box office to give The Hangover Part 2 a decisive win in the earnings battle. Hangover 2 scored $86.5 million for the weekend and after nearly one week in theaters, it has made a resounding $118.1 million. It wrested the top spot from last weekend’s top film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and fellow newcomer and sequel Kung Fu Panda, which landed in second in its debut weekend by raking in $48 million. Close behind was Pirates, which chugged along with a so-so second weekend, dropping off more than 56 percent but still making $39.3 million to raise its two-week total to $152.9 million - $100 million short of breaking even on its whopping $250 million budget. The real stunner of the weekend was Bridesmaids, which added $16.4 million in its third weekend to raise its three-week total to an impressive $84.9 million and counting - not bad for the unabashed female rip-off of The Hangover. Thor rounded out the top five with $9.4 million and has made $159.7 million for its first month in theaters. The bottom of half of the top 10 was made up of: Fast Five (No. 6 and inching precariously close to the $200 million mark in the U.S. after $6.6 million and now $196 million through five weeks), Midnight in Paris (a distant No. 7 with $1.95 million and just $2.8 million in two weeks of work), Jumping the Broom (No. 8 with $1.9 million and $34.2 million in its first month of release), Something Borrowed (No. 9 and once again last among the wedding-themed films in the top 10 with $1.8 million to make its four-week haul $34.7 million) and Rio (No. 10 with $1.7 million and $134.8 million over seven mostly impressive weeks. Two films made noticeable drops from last week’s top 10, Priest (dropping from No. 5 all the way to No. 11 in just its third week) and Water for Elephants (No. 12)………….
- What is a driver to do when he or she hasn’t won a race or even come close on the professional racing circuit he or she competes on and doesn’t appear to be on the verge of a victory any time soon? If you happen to be a really hot chick like IndyCar driver/GoDaddy.com skank/pitchwoman Danica Patrick you seize the opportunity to take a step up while it’s still available to you. For Patrick, that means a move to the more lucrative world of NASCAR as soon as next season. Her primary sponsor expects her to do just that, with Bob Parsons, CEO and founder of Danica Patrick sponsor GoDaddy.com, saying Sunday he expects Patrick to move full-time to NASCAR next season. "She hasn't told me she will, but I believe she will and we'll be ready," Parsons said. "Here's the fact: She loves [NASCAR], it's much more exciting than IndyCar, with all due respect, and the TV audience for NASCAR is off the hook." Nothing like making those comments while standing near the track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indianapolis 500, but what does anyone expect from a man who runs the sleaziest, lowest-common-denominator ads for his domain registry/web hosting service, pretty much relying on the “take hot chicks in very little clothing and intimate that they’re about to do all sorts of skanky things” approach in every second of every ad? Class is not a part of the GoDaddy.com corporate verbage. Parsons also recalled Patrick’s reaction after her first NASCAR experience, at Daytona last year. "She came up to me right after she did her first NASCAR race [the 2010 Nationwide race at Daytona]," Parson said. "She said to me, 'I absolutely loved it. This is what I was born to do.'" Parsons and his company would obviously love a move to NASCAR because of the increased exposure and he claimed during his soliloquy at IMS on Sunday that fans have told him already that they would “start watching NASCAR to see Danica.” Of course, he also suggested that America loves and roots for Patrick, when the reality is most fans are tired of her act and realize she’s nothing more than auto racing’s dose of T&A. So far, Patrick has made no official statements or announcements about her plans for next season, but it’s not as if she is going to be a threat to win a ton of races no matter where she drives. And oh yeah, auto racing still isn't and never will be an actual sport, so there’s that to consider as well. In other words, she’s not screwing up a legitimate, honest sport and turning it into a running punchline. No matter how much damage she does, it’s still just auto racing………….
- Anyone who has been involved in an office pool on who will purchase the first model of the world’s first commercially available quantum computer, that question has been answered. Aerospace, defense and security company Lockheed Martin sealed the deal for the über-computer, which uses principles of quantum mechanics rather than classical mechanics. Quantum computers are different than conventional computers because instead of relying on transistors, they rely on principles of quantum mechanics to conduct operations. Properties like entanglement — when two particles have the same properties and behave identically while being separate — and storing data with “qubits,” or quantum bits, make a computer more powerful and faster. Whereas typical bits store memory by registering an “on” or “off,” or a one or zero, qubits can represent information as both memory and the state of entanglement with other particles. It sounds confusing……and it is. All you need to know is that a quantum computer uses a system of 128 qubits, which means the computer will be able to solve more complex problems than traditional computers at a much higher speed. It doesn’t have much of an impact on the things the average computer user does with their machine - updating their Facebook status, knocking out a Tweet about standing in line at Chipotle or downloading porn - but for aerospace, defense and security companies like Lockheed Martin, the computer’s ability to tackle computing-intensive problems related to number theory and optimization is rather handy. One example of its computing power is the use of Shor’s Algorithm, a quantum algorithm that determines the prime factors of a large number quickly and efficiently, to break modern encryption algorithms like RSA encryption, a type of public-key cryptography. The quantum computer’s brain power could theoretically lead to new kinds of encryption methods and security algorithms to secure data and model more complex systems. The computer’s maker, D-Wave, was founded in 1999 and calls itself “the quantum computing company.” The sale price is a cool $10 million, should you be in the market for one…………
- Border crashing party, all! Everyone into the pool - or in the case, the mostly barren desert wasteland that is Egypt. On the day Egypt re-opened its border crossing from the Gaza Strip for the first time in four years, hundreds of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip bum-rushed the crossing. The opening is permanent and comes despite Israeli concerns that the move strengthens Hamas’s rule of the area. Nearly 300 Palestinians crossed into Egypt this morning in a process called “smooth and easy” by a Hamas police officer on the scene. The decision to reopen the border was hailed by the Hamas Islamic movement, which controls the Palestinian enclave. Israel strenuously objected to the move and warned of potential dangers from it. “We will obviously be looking to preserve security arrangements at the border and hope nothing will be done to allow Hamas to empower itself and to reinforce its terrorist infrastructures,” Yigal Palmor, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said in a phone interview. “The Israeli position has been made known to all relevant authorities, including in Egypt.” Not only is Egypt reducing restrictions at the Rafah crossing, it will also waive visa requirements for most Palestinians entering from other departure points, except neighboring Libya. Hamas saluted the border opening as helping the Gazan population “ease its suffering.” Israel, of course, maintains an embargo on the Gaza coast in an effort to prevent alleged weapons smuggling. The Israeli government has choked off the flow of goods and people in and out of Gaza through its own border crossings since Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip since by winning elections in January 2006 and gained full control of the area in 2007. Egypt’s choice comes as its new leadership takes a decidedly different approach than the one espoused by former dictator/“President” Hosni Mubarak. That new leadership is currently facing massive protests and riots demanding it do a better job of carrying out its new responsibilities and the border issue could be one more flashpoint in the growing conflict…………
- The one-man wolfpack was at it again, dominating a strong field at the Memorial Day weekend box office to give The Hangover Part 2 a decisive win in the earnings battle. Hangover 2 scored $86.5 million for the weekend and after nearly one week in theaters, it has made a resounding $118.1 million. It wrested the top spot from last weekend’s top film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides and fellow newcomer and sequel Kung Fu Panda, which landed in second in its debut weekend by raking in $48 million. Close behind was Pirates, which chugged along with a so-so second weekend, dropping off more than 56 percent but still making $39.3 million to raise its two-week total to $152.9 million - $100 million short of breaking even on its whopping $250 million budget. The real stunner of the weekend was Bridesmaids, which added $16.4 million in its third weekend to raise its three-week total to an impressive $84.9 million and counting - not bad for the unabashed female rip-off of The Hangover. Thor rounded out the top five with $9.4 million and has made $159.7 million for its first month in theaters. The bottom of half of the top 10 was made up of: Fast Five (No. 6 and inching precariously close to the $200 million mark in the U.S. after $6.6 million and now $196 million through five weeks), Midnight in Paris (a distant No. 7 with $1.95 million and just $2.8 million in two weeks of work), Jumping the Broom (No. 8 with $1.9 million and $34.2 million in its first month of release), Something Borrowed (No. 9 and once again last among the wedding-themed films in the top 10 with $1.8 million to make its four-week haul $34.7 million) and Rio (No. 10 with $1.7 million and $134.8 million over seven mostly impressive weeks. Two films made noticeable drops from last week’s top 10, Priest (dropping from No. 5 all the way to No. 11 in just its third week) and Water for Elephants (No. 12)………….
- What is a driver to do when he or she hasn’t won a race or even come close on the professional racing circuit he or she competes on and doesn’t appear to be on the verge of a victory any time soon? If you happen to be a really hot chick like IndyCar driver/GoDaddy.com skank/pitchwoman Danica Patrick you seize the opportunity to take a step up while it’s still available to you. For Patrick, that means a move to the more lucrative world of NASCAR as soon as next season. Her primary sponsor expects her to do just that, with Bob Parsons, CEO and founder of Danica Patrick sponsor GoDaddy.com, saying Sunday he expects Patrick to move full-time to NASCAR next season. "She hasn't told me she will, but I believe she will and we'll be ready," Parsons said. "Here's the fact: She loves [NASCAR], it's much more exciting than IndyCar, with all due respect, and the TV audience for NASCAR is off the hook." Nothing like making those comments while standing near the track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the Indianapolis 500, but what does anyone expect from a man who runs the sleaziest, lowest-common-denominator ads for his domain registry/web hosting service, pretty much relying on the “take hot chicks in very little clothing and intimate that they’re about to do all sorts of skanky things” approach in every second of every ad? Class is not a part of the GoDaddy.com corporate verbage. Parsons also recalled Patrick’s reaction after her first NASCAR experience, at Daytona last year. "She came up to me right after she did her first NASCAR race [the 2010 Nationwide race at Daytona]," Parson said. "She said to me, 'I absolutely loved it. This is what I was born to do.'" Parsons and his company would obviously love a move to NASCAR because of the increased exposure and he claimed during his soliloquy at IMS on Sunday that fans have told him already that they would “start watching NASCAR to see Danica.” Of course, he also suggested that America loves and roots for Patrick, when the reality is most fans are tired of her act and realize she’s nothing more than auto racing’s dose of T&A. So far, Patrick has made no official statements or announcements about her plans for next season, but it’s not as if she is going to be a threat to win a ton of races no matter where she drives. And oh yeah, auto racing still isn't and never will be an actual sport, so there’s that to consider as well. In other words, she’s not screwing up a legitimate, honest sport and turning it into a running punchline. No matter how much damage she does, it’s still just auto racing………….
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Giving babies credit, wrasslin' gators and people hate LeBron
- Oddly enough, cutting categories from the Grammy Awards is producing the exact opposite reaction that it should cause. For an awards show that is perpetually among the worst offenders in dragging on interminably and eating up wasted chunks of viewers’ lives they can never get back. Cutting categories should be cause for celebration because it means a (theoretically) shorter show…….but instead, angry musicians lashed out at the cuts and staged a demonstration Thursday, calling on the recording academy to restore 31 musical categories trimmed from the Grammy list. The performers were all from the same genre - Latin jazz - and they staged a mini-invasion Thursday on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard. The musicians staged impromptu jam sessions in an effort to remind the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences what it and music fans will be missing out on by not honoring their genre each year. "Many races, colors and creeds embrace our music," said Latin jazz musician Peter Escovedo. "And to take that away from us is a slap in the face." While the jazz musicians “protested” outside the Beverly Hilton (yes, it’s a ridiculous place for a protest because who can really be that oppressed in Beverly Hills), the board of trustees for the NARAS met inside. Last month, the organization announced plans to eliminate 31 categories from the Grammy Awards, including contemporary blues, Native American, Hawaiian, and Latin jazz. All are genres that would have been in the “Other awards/Recognized prior to the real ceremony” category, but the musicians gathered outside a posh southern California hotel would have none of that talk. "Reinstate the categories," said contemporary blues artist Pepper Mashay. "Reinstate all of them Let the chips fall where they may, on the talent." Some famous faces (and voices) have also criticized the decision, including Paul Simon and Carlos Santana. Predictably, the NARAS declined to comment on the protest or the reasoning behind the decision. The organization’s only response came in a statement by NARAS President and CEO Neil Portnow: "After careful and extensive review and analysis of all categories and fields, it was objectively determined that our Grammy categories be restructured to the continued competition and prestige of the highest and only peer-recognized award in music." Prestige? From the awards show that gives recognition to the same damn mainstream, already-known artists and constantly ignores most of the best and brightest because they simply aren’t big enough? For sure………….
- Corruption amongst Mexican law enforcement agencies is nothing new, but typically it is drug cartels paying off officers or blackmailing them into allowing the cartel to go about its business without being troubled. A paper bag full of cash or a well-timed threat generally does the job and while everyone knows such corruption goes on, stopping it is nearly impossible. For this reason, no one is likely to be surprised that 15 police officers in Tijuana, Mexico, were suspended for illegal and unethical behavior - unless they know the reason for the suspensions. There was no cash exchanged and no cartel members waving guns. The weapons used were the, um, assets of a young female detainee who was forced to perform a topless lap dance in exchange for her release. The tape was supposedly made March 2 and it shows uniformed police officers forcing a woman to give them a lap dance. Still images pulled from the video allegedly show at least one officer groping a half-naked woman and others, posted on a local newspaper’s website, show uniformed police officers standing in the background as the woman stands half-naked in front of one of the other officers. The city’s coordinator for the city's communications department, Raul Gomez Cana, confirmed the suspensions, saying, "They will stay suspended until we decide what to do with them." Best of all, one of the officers suspended for the incident was the district's chief of police, Gomez said. That’s definitely leading from the front, unidentified local district chief of police. Leading your officers as they humiliate, degrade and dehumanize a poor woman by forcing her to strip for them is leadership at its best. Something tells me that trading her dignity and self-respect for her release isn't a swap the woman would have wanted to make…..unless she was forcing a major felony of some sort………….
- Some trends just can't be explained. Why certain fashions, music and television shows become supernova-popular while other, better shows never achieve their deserved status is one of the world’s great mysteries. This is not one of those stories. After an offseason and season full of pomposity, arrogance and asinine statements, the fact that a new ESPN polls has revealed that LeBron James’ popularity is plummeting should surprise no one. A similar poll was done in April 2010, shortly before James’ former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, was eliminated by the Boston Celtics in Game 6 of the playoffs' second round. From that poll to the new one, 50 percent fewer respondents said James was their favorite NBA player. After knifing the entire city of Cleveland in the back with “The Decision,” showing up to a ridiculous WWE-style introductory press conference in Miami, bashing Cleveland in numerous interviews and leaving the Cavs floundering to a 19-63 season, many fans turned against the self-proclaimed King. Along the way, James also glossed his new team the “Heatles” because they were supposedly rock stars like the Beatles. He has also referred to the Heat as being "bad guys" in the eyes of many fans and again stuck his foot in his mouth Thursday night after the Heat ousted the Chicago Bulls in Game 5 the Eastern Conference finals. "We have about a month left of the hate," James said. "We'll see what happens next year." In the 2010 poll, James was tabbed as the favorite player of 9 percent of fans, but he was chosen by just 4.5 percent of respondent this time around. James also lost much of his popularity as respondents’ favorite overall athlete, dropping from 3.6 percent to 1.8 percent. According to his comments following Thursday’s game, he believes that may change as time goes by. Don’t count on it…………
- Alligators in the general vicinity of Rockledge, Fla. are hereby warned not to mess with 10-year-old Michael Dasher. Dasher was fishing with his friends from the side of a local canal when something caught the hook. "The line snapped," Dasher said. His friends figured he had snagged a big one and in truth, he had - a 6-foot-long alligator. Dasher said the angry gator charged at him and he retaliated by hitting it with sticks and trying to evade the lunging beast. At one point, the boy ended up on the alligator’s back and he was ultimately able to capture the gator and drag it home. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers were later called to his family’s home and were stunned to find Dasher in good spirits and with only a few minor scratches on his hands and arms. His grandfather, Benjie Cox, admitted he was stunned when he saw the alligator in the front yard. Cox called the Brevard County Sheriff's Office and wildlife officials and gave his grandson a stern lecture on the danger of what he had done. When Cox finished, the wildlife officers picked up where he left off and informed young Dasher that if he was older, he would have been arrested and charged with a felony. Officers took the gator into custody and after an observation period, they planned to release it back into the St. John's River. Whenever that alligator arrives back in the wild, it would be well-advised to pass along word to its gator relatives and friends that young Michael Dasher is not to be trifled with, lest you want to end up tied up and dragged off……….
- Don’t sleep on babies’ ability to engage in sophisticated statistical reasoning, y’all. Newly published research by the wicked smaht people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pegs babies as extremely capable mini-statisticians, a new study finds, capable of making judgments about the probability of an event they've never experienced before. Researchers used a computer model to accurately predict what a baby would know about a particular event if given certain information. Part of the study’s purpose was facilitating artificial intelligence that reacts appropriately to the world, but said study researcher Josh Tenenbaum, a cognitive scientist at MIT, realized how the study also demonstrates just how savvy baby brains are. "The deeper thing that this shows is that infants' knowledge of objects is not a gut feeling," he said. "They're actually doing some kind of rational, probabilistic reasoning." Previous research has shown babies’ extreme competence at grasping all sorts of information and a 2009 study even found that 6-month-olds can tell the difference between a friendly and an angry dog. Such studies have typically been based a method called "violation in expectation," in which researchers monitor babies' gazes as they observe normal and abnormal scenarios. When a babies look longer at an image or setting where something is "off," that indicates that the baby knows the situation is unusual. Tenenbaum and his team took the process a step further by quantifying how "surprising" a given event is based on the probability of it happening. In other words, would a baby be more surprised by an unusual situation if such a scenario was extremely improbable. To test the concept, the researchers set up a series of videos for 1-year-old subjects to watch. The videos showed a set of objects moving around inside an enclosure with one exit. A blue barrier then popped up on the screen, covering the enclosure. The objected then floated out of the enclosure through the exit, appearing onscreen prior to the barrier fading away to reveal the objects left behind. Multiple factors governed the probability of a given object exiting the enclosure: how many of each type of objects there are, how long the scene was covered up, how the objects are moving and where they were the last time the baby saw them. To predict the likelihood of one specific object exiting the enclosure, a baby would need to process all of this information and the study found they were able to do so, as their performance on the task matched that of the computer model given the same information. The conclusion Tenenbaum and his team reached is that reasoning skills blossom early. "Even young infants' brains, before they're able to walk and talk, they are building coherent, rational models about what is happening out there in the world," Tenenbaum stated. "We actually think that at 12 months, they know more than this model does." Additional experiments are planned to refine the model and test other concepts babies may understand, such as friction and gravity. As it turns out, the rest of the world may not have been giving babies nearly enough credit…………
- Corruption amongst Mexican law enforcement agencies is nothing new, but typically it is drug cartels paying off officers or blackmailing them into allowing the cartel to go about its business without being troubled. A paper bag full of cash or a well-timed threat generally does the job and while everyone knows such corruption goes on, stopping it is nearly impossible. For this reason, no one is likely to be surprised that 15 police officers in Tijuana, Mexico, were suspended for illegal and unethical behavior - unless they know the reason for the suspensions. There was no cash exchanged and no cartel members waving guns. The weapons used were the, um, assets of a young female detainee who was forced to perform a topless lap dance in exchange for her release. The tape was supposedly made March 2 and it shows uniformed police officers forcing a woman to give them a lap dance. Still images pulled from the video allegedly show at least one officer groping a half-naked woman and others, posted on a local newspaper’s website, show uniformed police officers standing in the background as the woman stands half-naked in front of one of the other officers. The city’s coordinator for the city's communications department, Raul Gomez Cana, confirmed the suspensions, saying, "They will stay suspended until we decide what to do with them." Best of all, one of the officers suspended for the incident was the district's chief of police, Gomez said. That’s definitely leading from the front, unidentified local district chief of police. Leading your officers as they humiliate, degrade and dehumanize a poor woman by forcing her to strip for them is leadership at its best. Something tells me that trading her dignity and self-respect for her release isn't a swap the woman would have wanted to make…..unless she was forcing a major felony of some sort………….
- Some trends just can't be explained. Why certain fashions, music and television shows become supernova-popular while other, better shows never achieve their deserved status is one of the world’s great mysteries. This is not one of those stories. After an offseason and season full of pomposity, arrogance and asinine statements, the fact that a new ESPN polls has revealed that LeBron James’ popularity is plummeting should surprise no one. A similar poll was done in April 2010, shortly before James’ former team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, was eliminated by the Boston Celtics in Game 6 of the playoffs' second round. From that poll to the new one, 50 percent fewer respondents said James was their favorite NBA player. After knifing the entire city of Cleveland in the back with “The Decision,” showing up to a ridiculous WWE-style introductory press conference in Miami, bashing Cleveland in numerous interviews and leaving the Cavs floundering to a 19-63 season, many fans turned against the self-proclaimed King. Along the way, James also glossed his new team the “Heatles” because they were supposedly rock stars like the Beatles. He has also referred to the Heat as being "bad guys" in the eyes of many fans and again stuck his foot in his mouth Thursday night after the Heat ousted the Chicago Bulls in Game 5 the Eastern Conference finals. "We have about a month left of the hate," James said. "We'll see what happens next year." In the 2010 poll, James was tabbed as the favorite player of 9 percent of fans, but he was chosen by just 4.5 percent of respondent this time around. James also lost much of his popularity as respondents’ favorite overall athlete, dropping from 3.6 percent to 1.8 percent. According to his comments following Thursday’s game, he believes that may change as time goes by. Don’t count on it…………
- Alligators in the general vicinity of Rockledge, Fla. are hereby warned not to mess with 10-year-old Michael Dasher. Dasher was fishing with his friends from the side of a local canal when something caught the hook. "The line snapped," Dasher said. His friends figured he had snagged a big one and in truth, he had - a 6-foot-long alligator. Dasher said the angry gator charged at him and he retaliated by hitting it with sticks and trying to evade the lunging beast. At one point, the boy ended up on the alligator’s back and he was ultimately able to capture the gator and drag it home. Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission officers were later called to his family’s home and were stunned to find Dasher in good spirits and with only a few minor scratches on his hands and arms. His grandfather, Benjie Cox, admitted he was stunned when he saw the alligator in the front yard. Cox called the Brevard County Sheriff's Office and wildlife officials and gave his grandson a stern lecture on the danger of what he had done. When Cox finished, the wildlife officers picked up where he left off and informed young Dasher that if he was older, he would have been arrested and charged with a felony. Officers took the gator into custody and after an observation period, they planned to release it back into the St. John's River. Whenever that alligator arrives back in the wild, it would be well-advised to pass along word to its gator relatives and friends that young Michael Dasher is not to be trifled with, lest you want to end up tied up and dragged off……….
- Don’t sleep on babies’ ability to engage in sophisticated statistical reasoning, y’all. Newly published research by the wicked smaht people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pegs babies as extremely capable mini-statisticians, a new study finds, capable of making judgments about the probability of an event they've never experienced before. Researchers used a computer model to accurately predict what a baby would know about a particular event if given certain information. Part of the study’s purpose was facilitating artificial intelligence that reacts appropriately to the world, but said study researcher Josh Tenenbaum, a cognitive scientist at MIT, realized how the study also demonstrates just how savvy baby brains are. "The deeper thing that this shows is that infants' knowledge of objects is not a gut feeling," he said. "They're actually doing some kind of rational, probabilistic reasoning." Previous research has shown babies’ extreme competence at grasping all sorts of information and a 2009 study even found that 6-month-olds can tell the difference between a friendly and an angry dog. Such studies have typically been based a method called "violation in expectation," in which researchers monitor babies' gazes as they observe normal and abnormal scenarios. When a babies look longer at an image or setting where something is "off," that indicates that the baby knows the situation is unusual. Tenenbaum and his team took the process a step further by quantifying how "surprising" a given event is based on the probability of it happening. In other words, would a baby be more surprised by an unusual situation if such a scenario was extremely improbable. To test the concept, the researchers set up a series of videos for 1-year-old subjects to watch. The videos showed a set of objects moving around inside an enclosure with one exit. A blue barrier then popped up on the screen, covering the enclosure. The objected then floated out of the enclosure through the exit, appearing onscreen prior to the barrier fading away to reveal the objects left behind. Multiple factors governed the probability of a given object exiting the enclosure: how many of each type of objects there are, how long the scene was covered up, how the objects are moving and where they were the last time the baby saw them. To predict the likelihood of one specific object exiting the enclosure, a baby would need to process all of this information and the study found they were able to do so, as their performance on the task matched that of the computer model given the same information. The conclusion Tenenbaum and his team reached is that reasoning skills blossom early. "Even young infants' brains, before they're able to walk and talk, they are building coherent, rational models about what is happening out there in the world," Tenenbaum stated. "We actually think that at 12 months, they know more than this model does." Additional experiments are planned to refine the model and test other concepts babies may understand, such as friction and gravity. As it turns out, the rest of the world may not have been giving babies nearly enough credit…………
Friday, May 27, 2011
Revolution No. 2, NFL awareness and crapping on Buffalo
- Call the NFL and its players whatever you want, just don’t call them completely clueless. Greedy, sure. Out of touch? Undoubtedly. Unable to compromise when dividing up $9 billion in revenues? Yup. But the league realizes that fans are growing extremely wearing of the ongoing labor dispute after 10-plus week of the back-and-forth bickering. Commissioner Roger Goodell pointed out Wednesday the negative effect the labor battle is having on pro football. "Clearly it has had an impact on the fans," Goodell said. "We see it in various metrics. There's been a noticeable change, TV ratings were down on the draft roughly 4 million people. NFL.com traffic (is down), we see that." What? NFL.com traffic is down? Just because no football business is going and there might not be a season? Who’s not riveted by hearing about the exciting legal battle in which the players and owners are waiting on the 8th U.S. District Court to rule on a lawsuit by the players seeking to have the lockout declared illegal? "Fans want certainty," Goodell added. "We can't underestimate that the fans are going through challenges just in the general economy." Yes, but that doesn’t mean either side is going to cede any ground. When the legal struggle resumes in court on June 3, a three-judge panel will hold hearings on the league's appeal to uphold the lockout. From there, the judges will likely take several weeks to issue a decision and in the meantime, the two sides are scheduled to start another set of mediation sessions on June 7. The owners just wrapped up their annual spring meetings and while those meetings featured lengthy talks about the labor dispute, no deadlines have been set -- yet -- for the opening of training camps, which usually begin in late July. Such a “drop-dead” dead is in the offing somewhere in the near future, but canceling a prominent part of the preseason schedule would undoubtedly infuriate the fans even further. As they gathered for their meetings, the owners were presented with a full range of plans for the season’s scheduled opening weekend, from the first game on Thursday night at Lambeau Field to commemorations of the Sept. 11 attacks on the first full Sunday of games. Those games are not yet in danger, but the longer the lockout goes, the more that changes. "We're not at an Armageddon date," Eric Grubman, executive vice president of business operations for the NFL, explained. "We're not staring that in the face this week." Teams are beginning to consider the possibility of having to move their training camps (if they actually happen) because the colleges and universities many of them use for camp would likely be unavailable if the season is pushed back at all. So the big question, obviously, is whether the Super Bowl in Indianapolis is in danger. Not according to Giants owner John Mara, it’s not. “You're going to have the Super Bowl here, I'm confident of that," Mara said. Somehow, it’s difficult to have as much confidence as Mara supposedly does……….
- Crap on people’s dreams much, Advertising Age? The national advertising magazine clearly fancies itself an arbiter of all things ad-related and felt the need to crush the dreams of the good folks of Buffalo, N.Y. be deeming its new slogan as empty and not giving people a reason to visit. The theme, crafted by a group of more than 70 volunteers from the community, local advertising agencies and members of the Visit Buffalo Niagara group in Buffalo, is "Buffalo: For Real." A piece in Ad Age noted that, "Tourism slogans are reliably corny, but last week New York state took the grand prize for "Huh?" with a newly anointed slogan for its fair city to the north that's best known for it's proximity to Niagara Falls and everyone's favorite 25-cent bar snack." Ad Age staffers admitted to having a hearty laugh at the slogan, but why? What on Earth did they expect Buffalo to do? Would “Come see our 50 feet of snow each winter!” or “Stop and see us for our beautiful two weeks of summer sandwiched between 11-month long winters” have worked better? No offense to the folks in Buffalo, but there’s really nothing they can say or do that is going to make their city anything other than what it is: a depressing, industrial city that’s best viewed from several thousand feet in their air as one’s plane passes over it on the way to somewhere more interesting. Dottie Gallagher Cohen, president of Visit Buffalo Niagara, would surely (and wrongly) disagree with that statement. "We have developed a concept that has tested well with our target audience, the cultural tourist. Over time, we and the 70 or so community leaders who participated in the branding process, believe that Buffalonians will see the expression of the brand and will support it. We will not be swayed by those who would like to define us as a town only known for snow and chicken wings. We are an authentic place rich with art, architecture and history assets. For Real." Okey doke, D. Your city may be “real,” but it’s also really ugly, really depressing and really covered by snow for like three-fourths of the year (meteorological figures approximate). Like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and so many other cities around the Great Lakes region, it is neither interesting nor desirable as a vacation destination - for real………….
- Too much of a good thing doesn’t apply when it comes to revolution and for opposition groups in Egypt, the philosophy could not be less relevant. After ousting former President Hosni Mubarak from office and expecting quick and drastic change, those groups have been largely disappointed with the results they have seen from those who have assumed power. Demands to try Mubarak and his sycophants immediately, end military courts, replace the military government with civilian leaders, reform the constitution and delay the September elections have gone unfulfilled and needless to say, opposition leaders and their followers aren’t going to stand for that sort of thing. Thus, tens of thousands of them filled Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday for what was hyped as a "second revolution." They angrily chanted their demands and boldly displayed them on signs and banners. The common theme was continuing the revolution until its primary goals are achieved, with those goals being security and stability — or something like that. Pundits were quick to cite the protest as further evidence that Egypt's progressives have failed to organize themselves post-revolution and seize the opportunity place in front of them. Their inability to coalesce into a united political force capable of overtaking the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t bode well for their chances in Egypt’s upcoming election. Ahmed Maher, general coordinator of the April 6 uprising, filled the same role for Friday’s event. He called the gathering proof of how well activists can reconcile their differences and work together. Indeed, four diverse liberal and secular groups issued a joint list of demands in putting on the event, demands that included guaranteeing Egypt will be a civil state, ending military courts used to try protesters and other civilians and postponing the elections until the groups are better able to compete. "We have dozens of political ideologies with different approaches, like center-left or communists or center-right or seculars, and it's normal to have differences of opinion and approach between all of them," Maher said. "Islamic parties don't have those divisions because they are all based on one ideology." Liberals have claimed they are at a significant disadvantage against the more established Muslim Brotherhood, but critics insist they could still do a much better job of getting their message out than they currently are. But hey, nothing gets the message out quite like a riot or protest………….
- Is it too soon to declare Microsoft’s first entry into the tablet computer market a failure? After all, the maker of the world’s worst operating system is set to debut a version of its Windows 8 designed for tablet PCs next week and one week from being introduced is more than close enough to know that a Microsoft product is going to suck. Windows President Steven Sinofsky will present a version of the software with a touchscreen interface at the All Things D conference next week and when he does, that software will reportedly be running on a tablet based on Nvidia’s Tegra chip. While the new operating system isn’t expected to be out until next year, providing a physical entity to fulfill the rumors of a Microsoft tablet that have been circulating for months would be a wise move on the company’s part. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is continuing its trend of reaching for success by attempting to blatantly rip off Apple, this time by using the Metro interface developed for Windows Phone 7 in the way Apple has done with the OS for the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft has actually tried a few tepid forays into the tablet field, first in 2010 with the “slate PC,” a model running Windows 7 and Amazon’s Kindle software. That hunk of technological trash was essentially a stripped-down PC lacking a keyboard and it failed miserably, as all Microsoft products tend to do. All the way back in 2000, Bill Gates unveiled something called the Tablet PC at the Comdex convention. The Tablet PC was nothing more than a laptop with a rotating screen and stylus functionality and it too crashed and burned. Of late, Microsoft has been taking an even greater beating than usual in the computer market and sales have been über-slow for its crap-tacular products in large part because of a surge in sales for Apple’s iPad and iPad 2. To compensate, Microsoft is now attempting to bribe students into buying a PC by offering a free Xbox for those who buy a PC costing $699 and up from participating retailers. A successful tablet would make an even bigger impact in the battle, but we are talking about Microsoft here and the chances of a successful tablet coming from that group of tech tools is somewhere between the odds of the Cleveland Cavaliers winning next season’s NBA title and The Situation being awarded a Nobel Peace prize shortly thereafter…………
- What do you do with someone pathetic enough to both be a judge on American Karaoke and be fired by American Karaoke so it can bring in talentless pop hack Jennifer Lopez in her place? Give her two reality shows on your basic cable network, of course! Former AK “judge” Kara DioGuardi has somehow managed to land on her feet after getting the boot from the world’s biggest karaoke contest, signing a deal with Bravo for not one, but two reality shows. Her first project, Platinum Hit, will be music-centric, as music centric as a show centered on a person with no musical credibility or integrity can be. But one Kara DioGuardi show simply wasn’t enough for Bravo and so the network has inked a deal with DioGuardi for a reality show centering on her life as a “Why the hell are you famous again?” reality TV actress. The show, brilliantly titled Kara, is set to air this year. Eli Lehrer, the vice president of development at Bravo, is inexplicably fired up about the chance to add two DioGuardi-based shows to his network, saying, “People have one perception of DioGuardi, but this series will peek behind the curtain and reveal much more interesting and multi-faceted aspects of this incredibly successful, talented artist and business woman." Umm, no thank you? "We believe her dynamic personality and fascinating career will resonate with our audience and reflect our pop culture brand,” Lehrer continued. Look bro…..you’re not selling me on this one, okay? She, like anyone else who associates with AK for even one second, is musically dead. Besides, how is investing two hours of TV viewing time a week in a person who, much like Paris Hilton is well-known without having contributed anything of worth to the world, a wise choice? But let’s give DioGuardi a chance to sell her new projects and hope she can present a winning argument. “I am excited to broaden my relationship with Bravo. I am a fan of the network and appreciate how their programming gives the audience a bird's eye view into different industries and really uncover what makes people tick,” she said in a statement. Umm…..no again. I’ll take a double pass on these two shows and keep on moving, but thanks for wasting everyone’s time with this garbage…………
- Crap on people’s dreams much, Advertising Age? The national advertising magazine clearly fancies itself an arbiter of all things ad-related and felt the need to crush the dreams of the good folks of Buffalo, N.Y. be deeming its new slogan as empty and not giving people a reason to visit. The theme, crafted by a group of more than 70 volunteers from the community, local advertising agencies and members of the Visit Buffalo Niagara group in Buffalo, is "Buffalo: For Real." A piece in Ad Age noted that, "Tourism slogans are reliably corny, but last week New York state took the grand prize for "Huh?" with a newly anointed slogan for its fair city to the north that's best known for it's proximity to Niagara Falls and everyone's favorite 25-cent bar snack." Ad Age staffers admitted to having a hearty laugh at the slogan, but why? What on Earth did they expect Buffalo to do? Would “Come see our 50 feet of snow each winter!” or “Stop and see us for our beautiful two weeks of summer sandwiched between 11-month long winters” have worked better? No offense to the folks in Buffalo, but there’s really nothing they can say or do that is going to make their city anything other than what it is: a depressing, industrial city that’s best viewed from several thousand feet in their air as one’s plane passes over it on the way to somewhere more interesting. Dottie Gallagher Cohen, president of Visit Buffalo Niagara, would surely (and wrongly) disagree with that statement. "We have developed a concept that has tested well with our target audience, the cultural tourist. Over time, we and the 70 or so community leaders who participated in the branding process, believe that Buffalonians will see the expression of the brand and will support it. We will not be swayed by those who would like to define us as a town only known for snow and chicken wings. We are an authentic place rich with art, architecture and history assets. For Real." Okey doke, D. Your city may be “real,” but it’s also really ugly, really depressing and really covered by snow for like three-fourths of the year (meteorological figures approximate). Like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and so many other cities around the Great Lakes region, it is neither interesting nor desirable as a vacation destination - for real………….
- Too much of a good thing doesn’t apply when it comes to revolution and for opposition groups in Egypt, the philosophy could not be less relevant. After ousting former President Hosni Mubarak from office and expecting quick and drastic change, those groups have been largely disappointed with the results they have seen from those who have assumed power. Demands to try Mubarak and his sycophants immediately, end military courts, replace the military government with civilian leaders, reform the constitution and delay the September elections have gone unfulfilled and needless to say, opposition leaders and their followers aren’t going to stand for that sort of thing. Thus, tens of thousands of them filled Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday for what was hyped as a "second revolution." They angrily chanted their demands and boldly displayed them on signs and banners. The common theme was continuing the revolution until its primary goals are achieved, with those goals being security and stability — or something like that. Pundits were quick to cite the protest as further evidence that Egypt's progressives have failed to organize themselves post-revolution and seize the opportunity place in front of them. Their inability to coalesce into a united political force capable of overtaking the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t bode well for their chances in Egypt’s upcoming election. Ahmed Maher, general coordinator of the April 6 uprising, filled the same role for Friday’s event. He called the gathering proof of how well activists can reconcile their differences and work together. Indeed, four diverse liberal and secular groups issued a joint list of demands in putting on the event, demands that included guaranteeing Egypt will be a civil state, ending military courts used to try protesters and other civilians and postponing the elections until the groups are better able to compete. "We have dozens of political ideologies with different approaches, like center-left or communists or center-right or seculars, and it's normal to have differences of opinion and approach between all of them," Maher said. "Islamic parties don't have those divisions because they are all based on one ideology." Liberals have claimed they are at a significant disadvantage against the more established Muslim Brotherhood, but critics insist they could still do a much better job of getting their message out than they currently are. But hey, nothing gets the message out quite like a riot or protest………….
- Is it too soon to declare Microsoft’s first entry into the tablet computer market a failure? After all, the maker of the world’s worst operating system is set to debut a version of its Windows 8 designed for tablet PCs next week and one week from being introduced is more than close enough to know that a Microsoft product is going to suck. Windows President Steven Sinofsky will present a version of the software with a touchscreen interface at the All Things D conference next week and when he does, that software will reportedly be running on a tablet based on Nvidia’s Tegra chip. While the new operating system isn’t expected to be out until next year, providing a physical entity to fulfill the rumors of a Microsoft tablet that have been circulating for months would be a wise move on the company’s part. Not surprisingly, Microsoft is continuing its trend of reaching for success by attempting to blatantly rip off Apple, this time by using the Metro interface developed for Windows Phone 7 in the way Apple has done with the OS for the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft has actually tried a few tepid forays into the tablet field, first in 2010 with the “slate PC,” a model running Windows 7 and Amazon’s Kindle software. That hunk of technological trash was essentially a stripped-down PC lacking a keyboard and it failed miserably, as all Microsoft products tend to do. All the way back in 2000, Bill Gates unveiled something called the Tablet PC at the Comdex convention. The Tablet PC was nothing more than a laptop with a rotating screen and stylus functionality and it too crashed and burned. Of late, Microsoft has been taking an even greater beating than usual in the computer market and sales have been über-slow for its crap-tacular products in large part because of a surge in sales for Apple’s iPad and iPad 2. To compensate, Microsoft is now attempting to bribe students into buying a PC by offering a free Xbox for those who buy a PC costing $699 and up from participating retailers. A successful tablet would make an even bigger impact in the battle, but we are talking about Microsoft here and the chances of a successful tablet coming from that group of tech tools is somewhere between the odds of the Cleveland Cavaliers winning next season’s NBA title and The Situation being awarded a Nobel Peace prize shortly thereafter…………
- What do you do with someone pathetic enough to both be a judge on American Karaoke and be fired by American Karaoke so it can bring in talentless pop hack Jennifer Lopez in her place? Give her two reality shows on your basic cable network, of course! Former AK “judge” Kara DioGuardi has somehow managed to land on her feet after getting the boot from the world’s biggest karaoke contest, signing a deal with Bravo for not one, but two reality shows. Her first project, Platinum Hit, will be music-centric, as music centric as a show centered on a person with no musical credibility or integrity can be. But one Kara DioGuardi show simply wasn’t enough for Bravo and so the network has inked a deal with DioGuardi for a reality show centering on her life as a “Why the hell are you famous again?” reality TV actress. The show, brilliantly titled Kara, is set to air this year. Eli Lehrer, the vice president of development at Bravo, is inexplicably fired up about the chance to add two DioGuardi-based shows to his network, saying, “People have one perception of DioGuardi, but this series will peek behind the curtain and reveal much more interesting and multi-faceted aspects of this incredibly successful, talented artist and business woman." Umm, no thank you? "We believe her dynamic personality and fascinating career will resonate with our audience and reflect our pop culture brand,” Lehrer continued. Look bro…..you’re not selling me on this one, okay? She, like anyone else who associates with AK for even one second, is musically dead. Besides, how is investing two hours of TV viewing time a week in a person who, much like Paris Hilton is well-known without having contributed anything of worth to the world, a wise choice? But let’s give DioGuardi a chance to sell her new projects and hope she can present a winning argument. “I am excited to broaden my relationship with Bravo. I am a fan of the network and appreciate how their programming gives the audience a bird's eye view into different industries and really uncover what makes people tick,” she said in a statement. Umm…..no again. I’ll take a double pass on these two shows and keep on moving, but thanks for wasting everyone’s time with this garbage…………
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Prescient tattoos, too much fuss over a pop hack and quickie weddings
- Her music may not be good, her lyrics and songwriting skills may be nonexistent, but she is a walking freak show and the world always loves those and thus, there was a digital mob scene Tuesday when online retailer Amazon offered fans Lady Gaga's new album for download at just 99 cents. Her second album, just as awful as her first but with much more hype, dropped worldwide Tuesday. Fans in the United States were given an inside track on the album in the form of being able to pay about $5 more than they should have to for the garbage Gaga calls music and they came in en masse for the opportunity. As part of Amazon’s push to promote its new Cloud Drive service, which allows users to store music files on remote servers and stream them over the Internet to their computer or smartphone, the discounted version of “Born This Way” was a mere 99 cents. So many fans responded to the offer that by early afternoon, the retail website's servers had stalled and thousands of fans were saved/crushed after they were unable to download the album in full or listen to its 14 tracks. Within an hour, angry Amazon users began lighting the site up on Twitter and Facebook and verbally excoriating the site on its own review section. One angry user wrote: 'Very disappointed. I guess next time I will pay full price and get the album immediately on iTunes.' Amazon quickly denied that its heavy promotion of the special offer led to the high volume of purchase and downloading delays. It issued the requisite, hollow corporate thank-you to customers for their patience. Amazon posted a message on its Twitter feed saying that the site was 'experiencing high volume' and added: 'If you order today, you will get the full @ladygaga album for $.99. Thanks for your patience.' Those who wanted a physical copy of the album could simply hit up their local Sam Goody, Tower Records or Best Buy and at a Manhattan Best Buy location, the freak show herself turned up to meet fans, pose for pictures and sign autographs. Gaga, real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, showed up like the true freak show she is: in a leather dominatrix-style leather contraption adorned with gold chains, fishnet tights with fishnet hold-ups over them and knee-high lace-up boots. Some fans pathetically began lining up outside the store more than 24 hours before the album dropped for a chance to meet their favorite talent-deprived pop hack. Taken in total, it’s another reminder of why music is quickly heading in the wrong direction and doesn’t seem destined to reverse the trend any time soon……….
- Quickie weddings, fast-food drive-thru style while you sit comfortably in your car aren’t just for Las Vegas anymore. Because not everyone can swing a Vegas run when they want to elope, there has long been a need for cheap, quick and tacky drive-thru weddings in other parts of the country. That need has been filled in tiny Quincy, Mass., where the Lydon Chapel has stepped up to help lovebirds who don’t want a big ceremony but also don’t want to hop a redeye to Vegas or make a cross-country drive while paying $4 per gallon for gas just to have some dude dressed in an Elvis costume pronounce them husband and wife in some 40x40 shack just off the Strip. Lydon Chapel, which has existed for normal chapel-like functions for decades, is now in the business of quickie weddings at its new drive-thru. “Probably I do two or three drive-thru's a week,” said owner Michelle Lydon. Lydon is also a justice of the peace and figured that drive-thru weddings were a good way to expand the business. After all, the cost is next to nothing for the chapel, as all Lydon needs to do is show up, read a few things, make a proclamation or two and that’s all. Plus, adding quickie weddings to the mix has garnered the attention of some of society’s biggest bottom feeders, reality show producers, and one production company filmed a pilot for a show at the chapel last year. The pilot is now being shopped around the major networks and cable networks, meaning Lydon could parlay her decision to add five-minute, in-car weddings into the sort of 15-minutes fame and notoriety that have lifted The Situation, every Real World cast member ever, all D-list celebrity ballroom dancers and all of American Karaoke’s aspiring karaoke champions to their own brief time in the spotlight. Reviews for the drive-thru weddings have been positive so far, Lydon said, and several newlyweds have mentioned that they wanted to have their special day at a Vegas drive-thru chapel but elected to have the big day at Lydon Chapel because their family couldn’t make the roadie to Sin City. And to think, all of this could soon be coming your way on some basic cable network in the form of one more (unnecessary) reality show…………
- Serving time in any prison is difficult, but Chinese prisons definitely have a reputation for being among the most brutal in the world. Still, no one could have imagined the sort of atrocities and human rights violations that were going on in the Chinese prison system, at least according to a story that broke this week. As the story goes, after a long, hard day of manual labor, many prisoners would be subjected to even harsher treatment - being forced to engage in 12-hour sessions of online gaming to rack up credits. Why, you ask? Because the guards at those prisons would then take the online credits and trade them for real-world money, that’s why. There are enough gaming losers out there desperate for credits for their favorite online games that selling credits can be profitable and with a free source of labor handy to game virtually around the clock, the guards saw an opportunity they couldn’t pass up. The story broke because a former prison, speaking under a false name, came forward to tell his harrowing tale of being imprisoned for three years from 2004 to 2007. "If I couldn't meet my work quota, they would punish me physically," the prisoner said. The practice, whether taking place in a prison or in society, is known as gold farming. Gamers the whole world ‘round pay big money for the credits in order to gain control over their favorite games. One game the Chinese inmates were allegedly forced to play was “World of Warcraft,” a renowned dork magnet of a game played by pale, pasty, never-kissed-a-girl losers in countries near and far. The job they did for no pay is one that many free members of society do for a living, but the threat of being beaten or denied food or other modest prison amenities was clearly the motivation for these free laborers. Not that the image of same worn out, dirty and demoralized prisoner being dropped in a chair in front of a flat screen for 12-hour gaming sessions is that far beyond the sort of human rights oppression one would expect from China, but it does show that there are likely many different methods of oppression going on there that no one has found out about just yet…………
- The economy may be having a terrible year, states around the country might be suffering through some of the worst weather in decades and America’s currency and overall international reputation may be taking a beating, but at least one entity in the United States is having a banner year in 2011: measles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in a report this week that 2011 is one of the worst years for measles since 1996. The CDC is seizing on the outbreak as an opportunity to remind the public to get immunized against the possibly deadly disease even though the public will undoubtedly ignore that advice. After scoring big with its hurricane preparedness campaign by linking it to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, the CDC is playing it straight with measles. The raw numbers are fairly disturbing, as a higher rate of infection this year has resulted in 118 measles cases across 23 states in the period from January 1 to May 21. In a normal year, the average number of measles cases in 56. The outbreak is especially disturbing given that the CDC declared measles “eliminated” in 2000. Additionally, the agency thought it had zeroed in one the cause of any cases that have occurred since then, attributing them to people travelling abroad and bringing the disease home. That assessment actually fits well with an outbreak of the disease worldwide. In France, a whopping 10,000 cases of measles have been reported from January through April. Measles, for the uninformed, is an illness easily spread and contracted because it is airborne and can remain in droplet form for up to two hours in closed spaces. To prevent its contraction, the CDC recommends immunization for infants from six to eleven months with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Anyone one year old and older needs two doses of the vaccine received at least 28 days apart before travelling. Those unfortunate enough to be infected will get symptoms that include rashes, fever, muscle pain, pink eye and sore throat. For an unfortunate few, measles can also lead to complications such as pneumonia or encephalitis. So far, measles has failed in only one respect in the U.S. in 2011: it hasn’t killed anyone, although 40 percent of people with the disease have had to be hospitalized…………
- Ink is forever. It’s why any good tattoo parlor will make sure a person a) is sober and b) gives final approval before tatting up. Dallas Mavericks guard Jason Terry was both sober and in his right mind when he went under the needle prior to the season and he was also supremely confident. In fact, he was so confident that on Oct. 19, 2010 -- a day before a preseason game against the Orlando Magic -- when teammate DeShawn Stevenson had a get-together for his Mavericks teammates at his house and brought his chef and his personal tattoo artist for the players as a team unity exercise, Terry made an extremely bold move. Not bold in the way that Stevenson is bold - his chest, neck and arms are covered with tattoos and he has a bitchin’ Abraham Lincoln tattoo on the front of his neck - but bold in a way that wowed his teammates. Terry got ink of the Larry O'Brien Trophy, given to the winner of the NBA championship, on his right biceps. It was a bold proclamation of his expectations for the veteran-laden Mavs, one that had even Stevenson doing a double take. "When he first got the tattoo, I said he was crazy," Stevenson said of the tattoo. "I didn't say it to him. But I've never been to the [NBA Finals], and for him to have that now. Wow. And he got that tattoo in October, and it means a lot with what we've been through." The tattoo story resurfaced Wednesday night following the Mavericks' 100-96 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder that advanced them to the NBA Finals. It’s the second NBA Finals appearance in franchise history and Terry was on hand for the only other one in 2006. He said he got the tattoo because he had an inkling his team was destined to play for the championship. "Everybody laughed and they thought it was a joke at the time," Terry said of the tat on the inside of his arm. "When they actually see me get it, they were like, 'This boy is serious.' And our whole talk and conversation was about right now, about us getting to this point and winning it all." The Mavs have an excellent chance to do exactly that against the winner of the Eastern Conference finals between Chicago and Miami, with the series starting in one week. Should they finish the task, the tattoo will become that much more legendary, both in the Mavs locker room and beyond…………
- Quickie weddings, fast-food drive-thru style while you sit comfortably in your car aren’t just for Las Vegas anymore. Because not everyone can swing a Vegas run when they want to elope, there has long been a need for cheap, quick and tacky drive-thru weddings in other parts of the country. That need has been filled in tiny Quincy, Mass., where the Lydon Chapel has stepped up to help lovebirds who don’t want a big ceremony but also don’t want to hop a redeye to Vegas or make a cross-country drive while paying $4 per gallon for gas just to have some dude dressed in an Elvis costume pronounce them husband and wife in some 40x40 shack just off the Strip. Lydon Chapel, which has existed for normal chapel-like functions for decades, is now in the business of quickie weddings at its new drive-thru. “Probably I do two or three drive-thru's a week,” said owner Michelle Lydon. Lydon is also a justice of the peace and figured that drive-thru weddings were a good way to expand the business. After all, the cost is next to nothing for the chapel, as all Lydon needs to do is show up, read a few things, make a proclamation or two and that’s all. Plus, adding quickie weddings to the mix has garnered the attention of some of society’s biggest bottom feeders, reality show producers, and one production company filmed a pilot for a show at the chapel last year. The pilot is now being shopped around the major networks and cable networks, meaning Lydon could parlay her decision to add five-minute, in-car weddings into the sort of 15-minutes fame and notoriety that have lifted The Situation, every Real World cast member ever, all D-list celebrity ballroom dancers and all of American Karaoke’s aspiring karaoke champions to their own brief time in the spotlight. Reviews for the drive-thru weddings have been positive so far, Lydon said, and several newlyweds have mentioned that they wanted to have their special day at a Vegas drive-thru chapel but elected to have the big day at Lydon Chapel because their family couldn’t make the roadie to Sin City. And to think, all of this could soon be coming your way on some basic cable network in the form of one more (unnecessary) reality show…………
- Serving time in any prison is difficult, but Chinese prisons definitely have a reputation for being among the most brutal in the world. Still, no one could have imagined the sort of atrocities and human rights violations that were going on in the Chinese prison system, at least according to a story that broke this week. As the story goes, after a long, hard day of manual labor, many prisoners would be subjected to even harsher treatment - being forced to engage in 12-hour sessions of online gaming to rack up credits. Why, you ask? Because the guards at those prisons would then take the online credits and trade them for real-world money, that’s why. There are enough gaming losers out there desperate for credits for their favorite online games that selling credits can be profitable and with a free source of labor handy to game virtually around the clock, the guards saw an opportunity they couldn’t pass up. The story broke because a former prison, speaking under a false name, came forward to tell his harrowing tale of being imprisoned for three years from 2004 to 2007. "If I couldn't meet my work quota, they would punish me physically," the prisoner said. The practice, whether taking place in a prison or in society, is known as gold farming. Gamers the whole world ‘round pay big money for the credits in order to gain control over their favorite games. One game the Chinese inmates were allegedly forced to play was “World of Warcraft,” a renowned dork magnet of a game played by pale, pasty, never-kissed-a-girl losers in countries near and far. The job they did for no pay is one that many free members of society do for a living, but the threat of being beaten or denied food or other modest prison amenities was clearly the motivation for these free laborers. Not that the image of same worn out, dirty and demoralized prisoner being dropped in a chair in front of a flat screen for 12-hour gaming sessions is that far beyond the sort of human rights oppression one would expect from China, but it does show that there are likely many different methods of oppression going on there that no one has found out about just yet…………
- The economy may be having a terrible year, states around the country might be suffering through some of the worst weather in decades and America’s currency and overall international reputation may be taking a beating, but at least one entity in the United States is having a banner year in 2011: measles. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in a report this week that 2011 is one of the worst years for measles since 1996. The CDC is seizing on the outbreak as an opportunity to remind the public to get immunized against the possibly deadly disease even though the public will undoubtedly ignore that advice. After scoring big with its hurricane preparedness campaign by linking it to the idea of a zombie apocalypse, the CDC is playing it straight with measles. The raw numbers are fairly disturbing, as a higher rate of infection this year has resulted in 118 measles cases across 23 states in the period from January 1 to May 21. In a normal year, the average number of measles cases in 56. The outbreak is especially disturbing given that the CDC declared measles “eliminated” in 2000. Additionally, the agency thought it had zeroed in one the cause of any cases that have occurred since then, attributing them to people travelling abroad and bringing the disease home. That assessment actually fits well with an outbreak of the disease worldwide. In France, a whopping 10,000 cases of measles have been reported from January through April. Measles, for the uninformed, is an illness easily spread and contracted because it is airborne and can remain in droplet form for up to two hours in closed spaces. To prevent its contraction, the CDC recommends immunization for infants from six to eleven months with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Anyone one year old and older needs two doses of the vaccine received at least 28 days apart before travelling. Those unfortunate enough to be infected will get symptoms that include rashes, fever, muscle pain, pink eye and sore throat. For an unfortunate few, measles can also lead to complications such as pneumonia or encephalitis. So far, measles has failed in only one respect in the U.S. in 2011: it hasn’t killed anyone, although 40 percent of people with the disease have had to be hospitalized…………
- Ink is forever. It’s why any good tattoo parlor will make sure a person a) is sober and b) gives final approval before tatting up. Dallas Mavericks guard Jason Terry was both sober and in his right mind when he went under the needle prior to the season and he was also supremely confident. In fact, he was so confident that on Oct. 19, 2010 -- a day before a preseason game against the Orlando Magic -- when teammate DeShawn Stevenson had a get-together for his Mavericks teammates at his house and brought his chef and his personal tattoo artist for the players as a team unity exercise, Terry made an extremely bold move. Not bold in the way that Stevenson is bold - his chest, neck and arms are covered with tattoos and he has a bitchin’ Abraham Lincoln tattoo on the front of his neck - but bold in a way that wowed his teammates. Terry got ink of the Larry O'Brien Trophy, given to the winner of the NBA championship, on his right biceps. It was a bold proclamation of his expectations for the veteran-laden Mavs, one that had even Stevenson doing a double take. "When he first got the tattoo, I said he was crazy," Stevenson said of the tattoo. "I didn't say it to him. But I've never been to the [NBA Finals], and for him to have that now. Wow. And he got that tattoo in October, and it means a lot with what we've been through." The tattoo story resurfaced Wednesday night following the Mavericks' 100-96 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder that advanced them to the NBA Finals. It’s the second NBA Finals appearance in franchise history and Terry was on hand for the only other one in 2006. He said he got the tattoo because he had an inkling his team was destined to play for the championship. "Everybody laughed and they thought it was a joke at the time," Terry said of the tat on the inside of his arm. "When they actually see me get it, they were like, 'This boy is serious.' And our whole talk and conversation was about right now, about us getting to this point and winning it all." The Mavs have an excellent chance to do exactly that against the winner of the Eastern Conference finals between Chicago and Miami, with the series starting in one week. Should they finish the task, the tattoo will become that much more legendary, both in the Mavs locker room and beyond…………
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Studies on sex, big talk from Liam Gallager and danger in Orlando
- After releasing a disappoint, overly poppy first album with his new band Beady Eye, legendary blowhard Liam Gallagher will surely tone down the rhetoric and be more humble and realistic, right? Umm, no. Have you ever heard anything that comes out of Gallahger’s mouth? The guy is a legendary blowhard, dummy. Major success, minor success or no success, he loves him some him and there is no end to his arrogance. Thus, he is promising that Beady Eye's second album will be packed with "great anthems and epic tunes.” Those promises come even as the band’s debut effort “Different Gear, Still Speeding” was released to a tepid response in February. Gallager, the former frontman for British rockers Oasis, confirmed this week that Beady Eye have already started writing material for the follow-up to “Different Gear” and will hit the studio in February 2012 with plans to have a "storming" record out next summer. "We've started and it's sounding good – we're not messing about. We'll have bits of time off but we won't be sitting around watching Jeremy Kyle, we'll be in the studio,” Gallagher stated. So what might some of the inspirations be for the new album? Possibly watching his beloved Manchester City win the FA Cup final at Wembley Stadium last Saturday, right? That may inspire Gallagher in the writing process, but it hasn’t placed that burning fire in Gallagher’s heart to play larger venues with Beady Eye. "I'm not in the mood for doing big gigs just yet. Our [Beady Eye's] first tour was great – it was great starting off again and playing the smaller venues," he said. Wow…..Liam Gallagher saying he’s okay without the ego stroking of thousands of fans singing along to every line and chanting rabidly for an encore. Maybe the experience of Oasis ending and starting over from scratch with a new band truly has changed Liam Gallahger……hahahahaha, just kidding. He’s still as pompous as ever and don’t ever think otherwise…………
- Orlando, Fla. residents, today is a big (and dangerous) day for you, for today is the day your metropolitan area has officially been ranked as the most dangerous for pedestrians out of the 54 largest metropolitan areas, according to a report released by Transportation for America. The report, which covers the decade from 2000 to 2009, found there were 557 people killed while walking in the greater Orlando region. Additionally, researchers found that the highest pedestrian fatalities occur among minorities, the elderly and children. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, the rate of pedestrian deaths among Hispanics were 37 percent higher and for blacks, they were 48 percent higher. At a time when soaring gas prices are leading many to seek alternative means of transportation (walking on short errands close to home or riding their bike to work or the store), the Orlando area suddenly has an even bigger concern on its hands. Citizens and local leaders aren’t handling the problem well, which is obvious because many of these sad souls are looking to Congress to provide aid money to make roads pedestrian friendly in order to reduce pedestrian casualties. “Some in Congress have questioned the federal interest in keeping pedestrians safe, believing it to be a strictly local issue,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “But 67 percent of all pedestrian fatalities in the last 10 years occurred on federal-aid roads -- roads eligible to receive federal funding and with federal guidelines or oversight for design.” Nice thought, Jimmy, but Congress isn't chipping states off an extra cash to make roads more pedestrian-friendly. Even if most roads in Orlando aren’t designed with pedestrian traffic in mind, as this report claims, the state’s Department of Transportation isn't likely to leap to action to address the problem. The TA should know this because later in its very own report, the organization claims that state departments of transportation currently give 1.5 percent of federal funds to projects that help make roads safer. That 1.5 percent is not a number anyone should be looking to see increase drastically any time soon……………
- His place in baseball history was already cemented with five championships, the most postseason saves in baseball history and more World Series saves than any other reliever, but he added another amazing notch to his baseball belt Wednesday, making his 1,000 career appearance against the Toronto Blue Jays and becoming the first pitcher to reach the 1,000-appearance plateau with one team. While he is the 15th pitcher in major league history to appear in 1,000 games, no other pitcher has played for one team long enough to do it in a single uniform. The age-defying Rivera, who is still going strong and as effective as ever on the mound, retired the side in the ninth inning of the Yankees' 7-3 win over Toronto. "It's a blessing to be able to be on the same team and do that. It's not too often you see that. But the most important thing is that we won," Rivera said after the game. Ever the humble, quiet star, Rivera admitted that he was "surprised" by the accomplishment. "It is because you've got to have the right combination. The organization you're with (has to be) willing to keep you and you've got to do the job and take care of yourself. All of that has to be in place," he explained. To say that no one would have predicted this sort of longevity for Rivera when he made his first major league appearance on May 23, 1995, against the Angels would be a drastic understatement. That day, he was the starting pitcher and was shelled for five runs on eight hits in 3 1/3 innings. After a brief stint as a starter, he was moved to the bullpen and never left after making his first relief appearance on Aug. 1 and blowing the save against Milwaukee. It was 10 appearances into his rookie season when Rivera began throwing his vaunted cut fastball that has made him arguably the greatest closer in baseball history. He has appeared in the postseason 15 times and has a record 42 career saves in the playoffs -- 11 of which came in the World Series. His sparkling 0.71 ERA in 94 postseason games is the lowest playoff ERA of all time for pitchers with at least 30 innings and if the Yankees make it back to the postseason in this, his 16th year, he will be the guy they hand the ball to when it comes time to close out games. "It just shows you, tells you how great he is at his trade," manager Joe Girardi said of Wednesday’s feat. Ironically, Girardi was an active player with the Yankees when Rivera made his debut and after the game Wednesday, he recalled the first time he caught Rivera in 1996. "I had to catch him in the bullpen and I'm like, 'Who's this kid?'" Girardi said. "His stuff was electric. He was throwing 97 (mph), throwing it wherever he wanted to. He could cut, he could elevate. I'd never even heard of him." Now, Girardi and everyone else who knows anything at all about baseball knows exactly who Mariano Rivera is………….
- Japan is a place known for great history, cramming more people into tight living quarters than any place outside of Manhattan and being at the forefront of advances in technology. Rolling aspects of several of those areas into one story, Japan has issued a series of major renewable energy announcements recently and among them was the revelation that all new buildings may come with solar panels in Japan soon. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said during a recent speech that the country would abandon its plan to build 14 new nuclear reactors in the face of this year's Fukushima tragedy and needed to "start from scratch" and create a totally new energy policy. Kan stated that focus would have a heavy emphasis on clean, renewable energy and energy conservation. At the front of that green parade is a plan for a requirement to put solar panels on all new buildings by 2030. With the country already a leader when it comes to cutting fossil fuel use, solar panels would be a logical next step. Scaling back its nuclear expansion plans is also smart given the fallout (pun intended) over the Fukushima tragedy and the realization that a similar disaster could occur again if the search for better energy sources doesn’t take a new path. Solar power is becoming increasingly feasible and doable and making it a fundamental part of new infrastructure and buildings is a logical step. If the policy goes forward as planned, Japan will have one of the strongest policies in support of solar energy in the world by a wide margin. "Taking [Fukushima] as a lesson, we will lead the world in clean energy such as solar and biomass, as we take a step toward resurrection," Kan said during a news conference last month. An official unveiling of the plan to make it mandatory put solar panels on all new buildings is expected to be unveiled at the upcoming G8 summit in Deauville, France as one component in the larger plan to increase renewables and energy conservation. Tree huggers the whole world ‘round will undoubtedly rejoice on that day…………
- Not believing in God equals better sex? That’s the word from Darrel Ray, raised a fundamentalist Christian in Topeka, Kan., who left the church in the late 1970s and has since made studying sex and religion his life’s passion. He recently wrapped up research on his hypothesis that religion and good sex don't mix and in an online survey of 14,500 people who had come from a religious background, he discovered that once they had abandoned their churches, their sex lives improved. The survey, "Sex and Secularism," was published last week and in it, Ray drew a direct correlation between guilt and sexual behavior. “We find guilt is a pretty big thing," said Ray. He concluded that atheists have the best sex of all. "They can speak with some authority," he said. "They were raised in very secular homes." Ray, who has also penned a book titled "The God Virus: How God Infects Our Lives and Culture,” surveyed respondents over 18 and adhering to all sexual orientations about what happened once they abandoned their churches and described themselves as agnostic or without a religious belief. According to Ray’s findings, more than 50 percent saw improvements in their sex lives once they left religion. Just 29.6 percent saw no change and 2.2 percent said it was worse, with those who had grown up in the most conservative churches reported the highest satisfaction levels after leaving religion behind. Oddly enough, all of the people who were questioned were found to have sex around the same number of times a week before and after leaving their religion. Respondents who were raised Mormon tended to have the strictest religious views on sex and also rated highest among those who had sexual guilt with an average score of 8.19 out of 10. In their statistical ballpark were Jehovah's Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist and Baptists. At the low end of the guilt scale were Catholics at 6.34, Lutherans at 5.88 and atheists and agnostics at 4.71 and 4.81, respectively. As for the man behind the survey, Ray is now an “independent” researcher who has worked as an organizational psychologist in corporations and a former clinical psychologist. "For decades I have heard that people felt their sex life was better once they left religion --- any religion -- but no one seemed to have examined this scientifically," he said. With assistance from Kansas University psychology student Amanda Brown, Ray launched his online survey. It generated 2,500 responses an hour and included only those who had said they were once religious, not those who still practice their faith. Still, Ray was blown away by the level of response. “I was blown away," he said. "People wanted to tell us their life story. This is not just about sex, it's about emotions.” Or it’s about making sure he continues to take shots at the religious world he was once a part of and his since rejected, but one or the others…………
- Orlando, Fla. residents, today is a big (and dangerous) day for you, for today is the day your metropolitan area has officially been ranked as the most dangerous for pedestrians out of the 54 largest metropolitan areas, according to a report released by Transportation for America. The report, which covers the decade from 2000 to 2009, found there were 557 people killed while walking in the greater Orlando region. Additionally, researchers found that the highest pedestrian fatalities occur among minorities, the elderly and children. Compared to non-Hispanic whites, the rate of pedestrian deaths among Hispanics were 37 percent higher and for blacks, they were 48 percent higher. At a time when soaring gas prices are leading many to seek alternative means of transportation (walking on short errands close to home or riding their bike to work or the store), the Orlando area suddenly has an even bigger concern on its hands. Citizens and local leaders aren’t handling the problem well, which is obvious because many of these sad souls are looking to Congress to provide aid money to make roads pedestrian friendly in order to reduce pedestrian casualties. “Some in Congress have questioned the federal interest in keeping pedestrians safe, believing it to be a strictly local issue,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “But 67 percent of all pedestrian fatalities in the last 10 years occurred on federal-aid roads -- roads eligible to receive federal funding and with federal guidelines or oversight for design.” Nice thought, Jimmy, but Congress isn't chipping states off an extra cash to make roads more pedestrian-friendly. Even if most roads in Orlando aren’t designed with pedestrian traffic in mind, as this report claims, the state’s Department of Transportation isn't likely to leap to action to address the problem. The TA should know this because later in its very own report, the organization claims that state departments of transportation currently give 1.5 percent of federal funds to projects that help make roads safer. That 1.5 percent is not a number anyone should be looking to see increase drastically any time soon……………
- His place in baseball history was already cemented with five championships, the most postseason saves in baseball history and more World Series saves than any other reliever, but he added another amazing notch to his baseball belt Wednesday, making his 1,000 career appearance against the Toronto Blue Jays and becoming the first pitcher to reach the 1,000-appearance plateau with one team. While he is the 15th pitcher in major league history to appear in 1,000 games, no other pitcher has played for one team long enough to do it in a single uniform. The age-defying Rivera, who is still going strong and as effective as ever on the mound, retired the side in the ninth inning of the Yankees' 7-3 win over Toronto. "It's a blessing to be able to be on the same team and do that. It's not too often you see that. But the most important thing is that we won," Rivera said after the game. Ever the humble, quiet star, Rivera admitted that he was "surprised" by the accomplishment. "It is because you've got to have the right combination. The organization you're with (has to be) willing to keep you and you've got to do the job and take care of yourself. All of that has to be in place," he explained. To say that no one would have predicted this sort of longevity for Rivera when he made his first major league appearance on May 23, 1995, against the Angels would be a drastic understatement. That day, he was the starting pitcher and was shelled for five runs on eight hits in 3 1/3 innings. After a brief stint as a starter, he was moved to the bullpen and never left after making his first relief appearance on Aug. 1 and blowing the save against Milwaukee. It was 10 appearances into his rookie season when Rivera began throwing his vaunted cut fastball that has made him arguably the greatest closer in baseball history. He has appeared in the postseason 15 times and has a record 42 career saves in the playoffs -- 11 of which came in the World Series. His sparkling 0.71 ERA in 94 postseason games is the lowest playoff ERA of all time for pitchers with at least 30 innings and if the Yankees make it back to the postseason in this, his 16th year, he will be the guy they hand the ball to when it comes time to close out games. "It just shows you, tells you how great he is at his trade," manager Joe Girardi said of Wednesday’s feat. Ironically, Girardi was an active player with the Yankees when Rivera made his debut and after the game Wednesday, he recalled the first time he caught Rivera in 1996. "I had to catch him in the bullpen and I'm like, 'Who's this kid?'" Girardi said. "His stuff was electric. He was throwing 97 (mph), throwing it wherever he wanted to. He could cut, he could elevate. I'd never even heard of him." Now, Girardi and everyone else who knows anything at all about baseball knows exactly who Mariano Rivera is………….
- Japan is a place known for great history, cramming more people into tight living quarters than any place outside of Manhattan and being at the forefront of advances in technology. Rolling aspects of several of those areas into one story, Japan has issued a series of major renewable energy announcements recently and among them was the revelation that all new buildings may come with solar panels in Japan soon. Prime Minister Naoto Kan said during a recent speech that the country would abandon its plan to build 14 new nuclear reactors in the face of this year's Fukushima tragedy and needed to "start from scratch" and create a totally new energy policy. Kan stated that focus would have a heavy emphasis on clean, renewable energy and energy conservation. At the front of that green parade is a plan for a requirement to put solar panels on all new buildings by 2030. With the country already a leader when it comes to cutting fossil fuel use, solar panels would be a logical next step. Scaling back its nuclear expansion plans is also smart given the fallout (pun intended) over the Fukushima tragedy and the realization that a similar disaster could occur again if the search for better energy sources doesn’t take a new path. Solar power is becoming increasingly feasible and doable and making it a fundamental part of new infrastructure and buildings is a logical step. If the policy goes forward as planned, Japan will have one of the strongest policies in support of solar energy in the world by a wide margin. "Taking [Fukushima] as a lesson, we will lead the world in clean energy such as solar and biomass, as we take a step toward resurrection," Kan said during a news conference last month. An official unveiling of the plan to make it mandatory put solar panels on all new buildings is expected to be unveiled at the upcoming G8 summit in Deauville, France as one component in the larger plan to increase renewables and energy conservation. Tree huggers the whole world ‘round will undoubtedly rejoice on that day…………
- Not believing in God equals better sex? That’s the word from Darrel Ray, raised a fundamentalist Christian in Topeka, Kan., who left the church in the late 1970s and has since made studying sex and religion his life’s passion. He recently wrapped up research on his hypothesis that religion and good sex don't mix and in an online survey of 14,500 people who had come from a religious background, he discovered that once they had abandoned their churches, their sex lives improved. The survey, "Sex and Secularism," was published last week and in it, Ray drew a direct correlation between guilt and sexual behavior. “We find guilt is a pretty big thing," said Ray. He concluded that atheists have the best sex of all. "They can speak with some authority," he said. "They were raised in very secular homes." Ray, who has also penned a book titled "The God Virus: How God Infects Our Lives and Culture,” surveyed respondents over 18 and adhering to all sexual orientations about what happened once they abandoned their churches and described themselves as agnostic or without a religious belief. According to Ray’s findings, more than 50 percent saw improvements in their sex lives once they left religion. Just 29.6 percent saw no change and 2.2 percent said it was worse, with those who had grown up in the most conservative churches reported the highest satisfaction levels after leaving religion behind. Oddly enough, all of the people who were questioned were found to have sex around the same number of times a week before and after leaving their religion. Respondents who were raised Mormon tended to have the strictest religious views on sex and also rated highest among those who had sexual guilt with an average score of 8.19 out of 10. In their statistical ballpark were Jehovah's Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist and Baptists. At the low end of the guilt scale were Catholics at 6.34, Lutherans at 5.88 and atheists and agnostics at 4.71 and 4.81, respectively. As for the man behind the survey, Ray is now an “independent” researcher who has worked as an organizational psychologist in corporations and a former clinical psychologist. "For decades I have heard that people felt their sex life was better once they left religion --- any religion -- but no one seemed to have examined this scientifically," he said. With assistance from Kansas University psychology student Amanda Brown, Ray launched his online survey. It generated 2,500 responses an hour and included only those who had said they were once religious, not those who still practice their faith. Still, Ray was blown away by the level of response. “I was blown away," he said. "People wanted to tell us their life story. This is not just about sex, it's about emotions.” Or it’s about making sure he continues to take shots at the religious world he was once a part of and his since rejected, but one or the others…………
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
(Sort of) cracking down on smokers, the miracle of llama poop and fake fights for Oprah tickets
- What was the secret of the Incas, who built the largest empire ever to exist in the Americas? How did their society excel where others fell short and expand beyond all reasonable bounds? According to research published in the June issue of the journal Antiquity, the answer is simple: llama poop. The study found that as human populations expended and developed into complex societies focused on agriculture instead of the hunter-gathered approach, llama droppings were the key to the Incas’ success. "This leap occurred 2,700 years ago and was made possible by a huge availability of animal excrement. Organic fertilizers enabled corn to be cultivated at very high altitudes, allowing the Inca to settle and flourish," Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a palaeoecologist from the French Institute for Andean Studies in Lima, Peru and leader of the study. His team probed the practices of the Inca as they ruled the largest empire on Earth -- stretching from the present-day southern border of Colombia to central Chile -- right up to their demise after e their last emperor, Atahualpa, was executed by Spanish conquistadors in 1533. Unfortunately, the Inca language has no written form and much of the empire’s artifacts were destroyed by the Spanish. As a result, much of Inica lore has remained a mystery. Chepstow-Lusty searched far and wide for credible experts to reconstruct the "extraordinary plant-breeding event" long believed to be at the center of the Inca Empire’s rise to prominence. He and his team tracked down pollen and mites buried in layers of mud on the floor of Lake Marcacocha in the Cuzco region of the Peruvian Andes, near the site of famed architectural marvel Machu Picchu. Researchers dug up 20.6 foot-long sediment core from the lake bottom and radiocarbon-dated organic material from six layers for a thorough analysis of a 4,200-year-old sediment record. In the sediment samples, maize pollen appears for the first time in the lake muds around 700 B.C., showing that the crop could be cultivated at high altitudes of at least 10,990 feet above sea level. Prior to that time, other Andean people were eating potatoes and quinoa, a grain-like plant similar to spinach. When the Incas and their llama poop came along and began growing maize, the world as Andean people knew it changed. Because maize is more suitable for long-term, controlled storage and easier to transport than potatoes, it was quickly embraced as the go-to crop. Still, it was only with the help of llama herds that maize truly took off. The llamas provided ample fertilizer for the crop and with a brief period of warming between two major droughts coming at the same time the llamas showed up on the scene, the Inca had everything they needed to launch their very own food revolution……….
- Casualties abound now that the NFL lockout has passed the two-month mark. The rush to sign undrafted free agents fresh out of college that ensues in the hours after the league’s April draft was among the first to fall, followed by rookie minicamps at team training facilities. Yet the presence of the NBA and NHL playoffs and Major League Baseball season have taken some of the sting out of the lockout so far……until now. News came down Thursday that the league has canceled next month's rookie symposium because of the ongoing lockout, meaning hundreds of rookies will not be cramming into some cookie-cutter hotel ballroom or an oversized conference room somewhere and listening to warnings about all the perils of the NFL lifestyle they need to avoid - hangers on, gambling, etc. League spokesman Greg Aiello announced the decision, citing "the uncertainty of the labor issues we are facing and the logistical challenges of conducting the symposium." The event was to begin in Canton, Ohio, on June 26, teaching rookies life lessons on dealing with football, finances and their new lifestyle. Oddly enough, many current players have credited the symposium as a positive first step in their transition to the NFL. As such, the league held off on canceling it for as long as possible but with the NFL and NFLPA at an impasse -- and with both sides waiting for a June 3 court hearing before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the legality of the ongoing lockout -- the time had come to pull the plug. "The symposium is a large, complex event involving many professionals and others," Aiello stated. "In fairness, we could not continue to keep their commitment on hold." Teams and their draftees have been barred from communicating with one another since the NFL gained a stay in court upholding the lockout, meaning all but a few first-round draftees who made it to their team’s facility before the lockout was reinstated haven’t received a playbook or any other communication from their new team. Additionally, the league has canceled programs focused on financial education that were to be held in March at Wharton, Harvard and Northwestern. Some agents laughed off the cancelation of the symposium as a formality because technically, the NFL isn't doing business right now anyway and couldn’t really hold the symposium anyhow. The real question remains who is going to tell these incoming rookies not to bet on games, solicit hookers or by a luxury whip for everyone in their crew the instant their signing bonus is direct-deposited into their checking account…………
- The final few episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" have consumed the entertainment world, going beyond mere entertainment options and morphing into full-fledged cultural events. For most, watching the last episodes of the show on television is as close as they’ll get, but a fortunate few have scored tickets for a four-hour, star-studded "Farewell Spectacular" that is Winfrey's final show. Perhaps expecting Winfrey to take her habit of giving away free swag to the nth degree in her final chance to do so, fans have been scrapping, clawing and brawling for tickets and not stopping until they got them. And that’s not brawling in a metaphorical sense; there have been actual fights over the tickets and in the peculiar case of one Canadian man, a fight with himself. Seems Robert Spearing of Ontario, Canada, drove his wife to Chicago last week with a promise that they would see the taping of Winfrey’s last show. Why he made the promise, I don’t know. Dudes have been promising their ladies insane and impossible things for centuries in the hopes of impressing them, but Spearing really went all-out in his attempt to wow his special lady friend. They showed in up in Chicago, tried to get tickets and failed miserably - only Spearing couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife the bad news. Instead, he did what any sane, reasonable man in the same spot would do: he beat the living sh*t out of himself. That’s right, due beat himself up. He inflicted the wounds by cutting his own forehead with a rock and scraping his hands on the pavement. After sufficiently bloodying himself, he told his wife and police the Oprah tickets had been stolen from him when two men -- one African-American, one Hispanic -- had attacked him on the street. Making the mistake of actually believing an alleged crime victim, police searched for the assailants. When they could find no witnesses to or evidence of the alleged attack, they questioned Spearing again and he allegedly admitted it was all a fabrication. According to a document filed in a Cook County court, the entire charade was done "so he would not disappoint his wife for not getting the tickets.” Spearing spent the night in jail before being released the next day on a $2,000 bond posted by a relative. No word on how his wife feels about having a brain-dead moron for a husband instead of a husband who simply couldn’t deliver on a promise to secure tickets to the taping of a daytime talk show…………
- Smokers, we have you on the run - sort of. New York City has officially expanded its non-smoking section by some 9,000 acres -- an area roughly the size of The Bronx - by making it illegal to light up in parks and on beaches. Eliminating one of the greatest health hazards known to man is always a wise choice, but skeptics question how effective the ban will be since enforcement of the new ban will be done mostly through posted signs and dirty looks. Defiant smokers have vowed to continue smoking in these newly banned locations on account of being tax-paying citizens who reserve the right to kill themselves and others around them who have to inhale the toxic secondhand crap wafting from their death sticks. In Bryant Park, several smokers were spotted the day the ban went into effect, puffing away in plain sight of several police officers. Asked by local media members why they weren’t enforcing the law, which allows the Parks Department's 125 Park Enforcement Patrol officers to write $50 tickets to offenders, one officer explained that he and his colleagues had “more important things to worry about. Even Health Commissioner Thomas Farley didn’t seem especially optimistic about the new law’s potential impact. “We don't expect many of those tickets to be written," Farley said. "What we have found from other communities with smoke-free parks and beaches is that if there are good signs and an awareness of what the rules are, in general this can be self-enforcing.” Self-enforcing……he’s kidding, right? Sadly, no. A toothless, ceremonial law is going to be ignored by New Yorkers the same way they ignore jaywalking laws and pretty much any other statute they don’t deem necessary or legitimate. Expecting even a bold New Yorker to tell another Manhattan dweller to put their cancer stick out seems like a stretch, so the law is effectively a hollow shell of itself before it even has a chance to take root…………
- How tied are people to the places they call home? The answers vary depending on where around the world you are, but the proud people of Louisiana’s bayou region definitely have as strong a tie to their home region as anyone in the United States or beyond. Having been pelted by one natural disaster after another and facing a rising, raging Mississippi River that could wash away their homes and lives once more, many Cajuns have simply had enough and are refusing to budge even before their local parish decides to call a mandatory evacuation. Several residents of the small town of Butte LaRose are among the defiant souls refusing to back down from nature’s fury and eight locals have decided that the word fleeing just isn't in their vocabulary. With 48 hours to go before the mandatory evacuation was to be declared, people like a man who identified himself to a local reporter only as C.J. insisted they are tied to their land and no one can make them leave. "This is supposed to be a national disaster that's unfolding and I'm not just going to put my tail between me legs and run off," C.J. vowed. He is one of eight residents who signed a waiver to stay, a waiver informing the person signing it that sheriff’s deputies will not willingly be put in harms way even if it is to save a life. "This is kind of like a call to arms. You just have to sometimes draw the line where we have to help ourselves. We can't just rely on this other people helping us. Right now it's kind of like every man for himself," C.J. proclaimed. Lest anyone think he’s a foolhardy old man who is expecting to ride out the floods in his attic, C.J. admits that he expects water to reach his second story window and is loading enough supplies in his houseboat to last him for two months. His signature is on a waiver form and once the evacuation is called, anyone who signs such a waiver to stay must stay on their property unless they plan to leave at the last minute. C.J. and his seven fellow Butte LaRose nature-opposers are pledged to do just that and in the words of Tom Petty, they won't back down…………
- Casualties abound now that the NFL lockout has passed the two-month mark. The rush to sign undrafted free agents fresh out of college that ensues in the hours after the league’s April draft was among the first to fall, followed by rookie minicamps at team training facilities. Yet the presence of the NBA and NHL playoffs and Major League Baseball season have taken some of the sting out of the lockout so far……until now. News came down Thursday that the league has canceled next month's rookie symposium because of the ongoing lockout, meaning hundreds of rookies will not be cramming into some cookie-cutter hotel ballroom or an oversized conference room somewhere and listening to warnings about all the perils of the NFL lifestyle they need to avoid - hangers on, gambling, etc. League spokesman Greg Aiello announced the decision, citing "the uncertainty of the labor issues we are facing and the logistical challenges of conducting the symposium." The event was to begin in Canton, Ohio, on June 26, teaching rookies life lessons on dealing with football, finances and their new lifestyle. Oddly enough, many current players have credited the symposium as a positive first step in their transition to the NFL. As such, the league held off on canceling it for as long as possible but with the NFL and NFLPA at an impasse -- and with both sides waiting for a June 3 court hearing before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the legality of the ongoing lockout -- the time had come to pull the plug. "The symposium is a large, complex event involving many professionals and others," Aiello stated. "In fairness, we could not continue to keep their commitment on hold." Teams and their draftees have been barred from communicating with one another since the NFL gained a stay in court upholding the lockout, meaning all but a few first-round draftees who made it to their team’s facility before the lockout was reinstated haven’t received a playbook or any other communication from their new team. Additionally, the league has canceled programs focused on financial education that were to be held in March at Wharton, Harvard and Northwestern. Some agents laughed off the cancelation of the symposium as a formality because technically, the NFL isn't doing business right now anyway and couldn’t really hold the symposium anyhow. The real question remains who is going to tell these incoming rookies not to bet on games, solicit hookers or by a luxury whip for everyone in their crew the instant their signing bonus is direct-deposited into their checking account…………
- The final few episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" have consumed the entertainment world, going beyond mere entertainment options and morphing into full-fledged cultural events. For most, watching the last episodes of the show on television is as close as they’ll get, but a fortunate few have scored tickets for a four-hour, star-studded "Farewell Spectacular" that is Winfrey's final show. Perhaps expecting Winfrey to take her habit of giving away free swag to the nth degree in her final chance to do so, fans have been scrapping, clawing and brawling for tickets and not stopping until they got them. And that’s not brawling in a metaphorical sense; there have been actual fights over the tickets and in the peculiar case of one Canadian man, a fight with himself. Seems Robert Spearing of Ontario, Canada, drove his wife to Chicago last week with a promise that they would see the taping of Winfrey’s last show. Why he made the promise, I don’t know. Dudes have been promising their ladies insane and impossible things for centuries in the hopes of impressing them, but Spearing really went all-out in his attempt to wow his special lady friend. They showed in up in Chicago, tried to get tickets and failed miserably - only Spearing couldn’t bring himself to tell his wife the bad news. Instead, he did what any sane, reasonable man in the same spot would do: he beat the living sh*t out of himself. That’s right, due beat himself up. He inflicted the wounds by cutting his own forehead with a rock and scraping his hands on the pavement. After sufficiently bloodying himself, he told his wife and police the Oprah tickets had been stolen from him when two men -- one African-American, one Hispanic -- had attacked him on the street. Making the mistake of actually believing an alleged crime victim, police searched for the assailants. When they could find no witnesses to or evidence of the alleged attack, they questioned Spearing again and he allegedly admitted it was all a fabrication. According to a document filed in a Cook County court, the entire charade was done "so he would not disappoint his wife for not getting the tickets.” Spearing spent the night in jail before being released the next day on a $2,000 bond posted by a relative. No word on how his wife feels about having a brain-dead moron for a husband instead of a husband who simply couldn’t deliver on a promise to secure tickets to the taping of a daytime talk show…………
- Smokers, we have you on the run - sort of. New York City has officially expanded its non-smoking section by some 9,000 acres -- an area roughly the size of The Bronx - by making it illegal to light up in parks and on beaches. Eliminating one of the greatest health hazards known to man is always a wise choice, but skeptics question how effective the ban will be since enforcement of the new ban will be done mostly through posted signs and dirty looks. Defiant smokers have vowed to continue smoking in these newly banned locations on account of being tax-paying citizens who reserve the right to kill themselves and others around them who have to inhale the toxic secondhand crap wafting from their death sticks. In Bryant Park, several smokers were spotted the day the ban went into effect, puffing away in plain sight of several police officers. Asked by local media members why they weren’t enforcing the law, which allows the Parks Department's 125 Park Enforcement Patrol officers to write $50 tickets to offenders, one officer explained that he and his colleagues had “more important things to worry about. Even Health Commissioner Thomas Farley didn’t seem especially optimistic about the new law’s potential impact. “We don't expect many of those tickets to be written," Farley said. "What we have found from other communities with smoke-free parks and beaches is that if there are good signs and an awareness of what the rules are, in general this can be self-enforcing.” Self-enforcing……he’s kidding, right? Sadly, no. A toothless, ceremonial law is going to be ignored by New Yorkers the same way they ignore jaywalking laws and pretty much any other statute they don’t deem necessary or legitimate. Expecting even a bold New Yorker to tell another Manhattan dweller to put their cancer stick out seems like a stretch, so the law is effectively a hollow shell of itself before it even has a chance to take root…………
- How tied are people to the places they call home? The answers vary depending on where around the world you are, but the proud people of Louisiana’s bayou region definitely have as strong a tie to their home region as anyone in the United States or beyond. Having been pelted by one natural disaster after another and facing a rising, raging Mississippi River that could wash away their homes and lives once more, many Cajuns have simply had enough and are refusing to budge even before their local parish decides to call a mandatory evacuation. Several residents of the small town of Butte LaRose are among the defiant souls refusing to back down from nature’s fury and eight locals have decided that the word fleeing just isn't in their vocabulary. With 48 hours to go before the mandatory evacuation was to be declared, people like a man who identified himself to a local reporter only as C.J. insisted they are tied to their land and no one can make them leave. "This is supposed to be a national disaster that's unfolding and I'm not just going to put my tail between me legs and run off," C.J. vowed. He is one of eight residents who signed a waiver to stay, a waiver informing the person signing it that sheriff’s deputies will not willingly be put in harms way even if it is to save a life. "This is kind of like a call to arms. You just have to sometimes draw the line where we have to help ourselves. We can't just rely on this other people helping us. Right now it's kind of like every man for himself," C.J. proclaimed. Lest anyone think he’s a foolhardy old man who is expecting to ride out the floods in his attic, C.J. admits that he expects water to reach his second story window and is loading enough supplies in his houseboat to last him for two months. His signature is on a waiver form and once the evacuation is called, anyone who signs such a waiver to stay must stay on their property unless they plan to leave at the last minute. C.J. and his seven fellow Butte LaRose nature-opposers are pledged to do just that and in the words of Tom Petty, they won't back down…………
Monday, May 23, 2011
Oppression in Saudi Arabia, Microsoft with "big news" and Mets owner Fred Wilpon hates his team
- There are plenty of reasons to hate Russell Brand. A supposed comedian who isn't funny, an alleged actor who can’t act and a purported entertainer who’s simply not that entertaining, he’s the personification of the term boorish idiot. One need look no further than his critically panned remake of "Arthur" that bombed out of theaters earlier this year for a reason to despise him, but none of those characteristics and qualities are why Brand ran into some serious trouble over the weekend while attempting to visit Japan with wife/pop hack Katy Perry. According to tweets from Perry, Brand was held in custody by Japanese authorities on Saturday and eventually deported from the country as a result of unspecified offenses dating back nearly a decade. "So ... my husband just got deported from Japan," Perry tweeted on Saturday afternoon. "I am so. sad. I brought him all this way to show him my favorite place #tokyodreamscrushed." The Twitter rant continued an hour later when Perry claimed Brand was booted from the country for "priors from over 10 years ago!" Left unsaid was the exact nature of those prior offenses. For someone who is a self-professed former sex and drug addict with a long history of arrests in England, as well as a 2010 arrest for attacking a paparazzo at Los Angeles International Airport, they could be most anything. Brand had flown to Japan to watch Perry perform a show but she insisted after the deportation that she bore no ill will toward Japanese authorities. "But of COURSE I ♥ my Japanese fans & the show #MUSTGOON no matter the daily aftershocks or husband kidnappings! #it'snotrightbutit'soka." Brand also weighed in on the situation and tried his best to inject humor into the mix. "Planning escape from Japanese custody. It's bloody hard to dig a tunnel with a chopstick," he tweeted after his deportation on Sunday. "Stockholm Syndrome kicking in. Just asked my guard out for (vegetarian) sushi. He giggled." After exiting the country, he added, "Alcatraz! Shawshank Redemption! And now this! Ah, sweet blue bird of freedom!" Japanese immigration officials declined comment on the issue, citing privacy issues…………
- T.C. Lewis - aside from sounding like he should be an accomplished author - is now an absolute hero to any walker, runner, biker or individual who has ever been attacked by dogs whose owner is either too lazy, too incompetent or too stupid to keep chained up or fenced in. Even one incident of being out for a run or walk and having a large, angry dog come charging out of its yard and into the street to attack you is enough to turn even the most staunch dog lover into someone who has no issue with grabbing the nearest blunt instrument and beating the stupid canine until it stops attacking. Lewis, a Kirkland, Wash. resident, was walking his German Shepherd in Juanita Beach Park in downtown Kirkland when three unleashed pitbulls attacked them. Lewis and multiple witnesses said the owner of the pitbulls tried to call off his dogs and tackled one of them after it bit the German Shepherd. However, those same witnesses told police the man was not having any luck getting his pitbulls under control and that left Lewis to pull the other two pitbulls off his dog. "They were trying to take my dog to the ground, so I grabbed one dog by the collar and kicked the other one as hard as I could. I got my dog loose," Lewis said. Even that wasn’t enough to stop the pitbulls from their pursuit and at that point Lewis decided to weaponize the situation by pulling out his gun. "He started running, then the other dog came up and he's getting ready to lunge toward me and I pulled my pistol out and I shot him. I feel bad about it but then again, I don't. If he'd have bit me in the leg I'm dead," he explained. Animal lovers looking to crucify Lewis should know that the pitbull that was shot was rushed to a veterinary hospital and is expected to survive and also that Lewis has a concealed carry license and will face no charges because witnesses backed his story. If only more walkers, runners and bike rides had weapons of some kind to defend themselves against vicious, unrestrained dogs, more dog owners would keep their pets on a leash……….
- Does anyone actually get excited when Microsoft promises to deliver big news regarding any of its deficient products? Not really, but let’s all humor Bill Gates’ company as it targets Tuesday at 10 a.m. in TriBeCa in New York City as a launch point for “major” changes to its Windows Phone 7 smartphone platform. Windows Phone 7 has had a troubled history thus far, essentially from the day it was introduced in February 2010. When the platform officially launched worldwide in October 2010, it simply could not compete with Android smartphones available from most carriers. Compounding the problems, WP7 initially only launched on AT&T and T-Mobile. When Sprint declined to pick up any WP7 handsets (and didn’t do so until earlier this year) and with Verizon not releasing its first WP7 smartphone until this week, Microsoft has been dealt one setback after another. The announcement of a minor feature update for January 2011 wasn’t a big deal either, but even than small step didn’t go off without a hitch. The update was delayed until March, then the update that prepared for the update ran into trouble, the process was delayed again and then the update ran into problems with updating Samsung devices. While plans are being kept as quiet as possible, most tech experts expect Microsoft to show off the next version of Windows Phone 7, codenamed "Mango," at Tuesday’s event. Mango is known to include at least a handful of new features, such as Internet Explorer 9, better Office integration, multitasking and Twitter support in the People Hub. It will also add the ability to save and share Office documents through Office 365 and Windows Live SkyDrive, pin email folders to the home screen for faster access view emails in threaded, conversational style and access Lync Mobile, which is Microsoft's unified communications platform. During an address Monday in Japan, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the Mango update will have 500 new features all together. He also promised more dtailed information on Tuesday about Microsoft's relationship with carriers. Unconfirmed rumors have predicted as many as nine new devices from Microsoft's manufacturing partners in the next few days. Those rumors seem farfetched because at present, there are only about a dozen WP7 handsets available right now from the likes of Dell, HTC, LG, and Samsung. Perhaps a new wave of phones will fix the problem of all current Windows 7 phones being nearly identical an indecipherable from one another. All of them have 1-GHz processors, 5-megapixel cameras and screens with the same resolution. In other words, perfectly Windows of them. All identical, all subpar and all uninspiring…………
- Good job, Saudi authorities. Big ups on re-arresting an activist who defied a ban on female drivers by getting behind the wheel and daring to turn the key, press the gas and start her trip down the road. Manal al-Sherif was accused of "violating public order" and ordered held for five days while police investigate the case. She had to know another arrest was coming after she launched a campaign against the longtime ban last week by posting a video clip on the Internet of herself behind the wheel in the eastern city of Khobar. Her plan was to inspire a broader uprising and that appeared to be just what was happening with a Facebook campaign in which participants set June 17 as the day all women should drive their cars. The page, called "Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself," was eventually taken down, but not before 12,000 people indicated their support for it. The campaign’s Twitter account was also taken down, but no word was immediately available on the status of its MySpace page (joke intended). As for Al-Sherif, she was detained for several hours on Saturday by the country's religious police and released only after signing a pledge agreeing not to drive. A Saudi security official confirmed her re-arrest Sunday at dawn but spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Khobar prison chief Ayoub ben Nahit told a Riyadh newspaper that al-Sherif faces accusations of "violating the rules and the system by driving her car, roaming the streets of the province." He also criticized her for "inciting public opinion" by posting the video clip. At least one man fully supported her protest by driving: her brother, Mohammed al-Sherif, who was in the car with her when she drove. Oddly enough, Manal al-Sherif is an employee of state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco, where she is an expert in information technology. Being an educated corporate executive isn't enough to earn her driving privileges in the conservative kingdom and that has fanned the already burning flames of dissent over the issue of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Some activists have appealed to the country’s king to free al-Sherif and give women the right to drive. Thus far there has been no indication that the king and his regime have any plans to change Saudi Arabia’s status as the only country in the world that bans women -- both Saudi and foreign -- from driving. The law causes immense hardships for many Saudi families, who are forced to hire live-in drivers (at the cost of $300 to $400 a month) to ferry female relatives to work, school, shopping or the doctor. Women can't do much to change the law, especially because they are also barred from voting and sitting on the kingdom's Cabinet. Welcome to Saudi Arabia, where they still party like it’s ’99……assuming you mean 1199…………
- New York Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon doesn’t seem to like his team very much. The Wilpon family is struggling financially and has been actively looking to sell a minority share in the team in order to satisfy financial demands being made on them by a bankruptcy trustee in the Bernie Madoff case. All prospective buyers have balked at the idea of purchasing anything less than a controlling interest and perhaps having so much pressure on him and no relief in sight is finally getting to Madoff because he absolutely lit up several of his marquee players in an extensive article in The New Yorker that was originally supposed to focus on his unlikely rise to wealth. Among his targets were shortstop Jose Reyes, who clearly will not be getting a huge contract from the Mets. "He thinks he's going to get Carl Crawford money," Wilpon declared, alluding to Crawford's seven-year, $142 million contract with the Boston Red Sox. "He's had everything wrong with him. He won't get it." Done eviscerating Reyes, Wilpon moved on to right fielder Carlos Beltran. He mentioned Beltran's successful postseason with the Houston Astros in 2004 and self-deprecatingly stated, "We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series. He's 65 to 70 percent of what he was." Nothing like calling a key player a fraction of his former self, but Wilpon was far from done. Asked about star third baseman David Wright, a player in his prime and considered one of the best in baseball at his position, Wilpon deadpanned, "Really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar." The one current Met with whom Wilpon doesn’t seem to have major issues is first baseman Ike Davis, but even in praising Davis, Wilpon still found a way to crack his team. "Good hitter," Wilpon said of Davis. "S----- team. Good hitter. ... We're snakebitten, baby." When asked to respond to his own laying a verbal back-stabbing on him, Wright replied by email: "Fred is a good man and is obviously going through some difficult times. There is nothing more productive that I can say at this time." But as bad as Wilpon’s own words may come off in the article, it’s the ringing endorsements from Madoff himself that could do the most damage to Wilpon’s reputation. In the piece, Madoff praises Wilpon and attempts to absolve the Mets ownership family of knowledge of the Ponzi scheme. That likely won't work and the players Wilpon verbally cut down probably won't feel great about showing up for work for their team either…………
- T.C. Lewis - aside from sounding like he should be an accomplished author - is now an absolute hero to any walker, runner, biker or individual who has ever been attacked by dogs whose owner is either too lazy, too incompetent or too stupid to keep chained up or fenced in. Even one incident of being out for a run or walk and having a large, angry dog come charging out of its yard and into the street to attack you is enough to turn even the most staunch dog lover into someone who has no issue with grabbing the nearest blunt instrument and beating the stupid canine until it stops attacking. Lewis, a Kirkland, Wash. resident, was walking his German Shepherd in Juanita Beach Park in downtown Kirkland when three unleashed pitbulls attacked them. Lewis and multiple witnesses said the owner of the pitbulls tried to call off his dogs and tackled one of them after it bit the German Shepherd. However, those same witnesses told police the man was not having any luck getting his pitbulls under control and that left Lewis to pull the other two pitbulls off his dog. "They were trying to take my dog to the ground, so I grabbed one dog by the collar and kicked the other one as hard as I could. I got my dog loose," Lewis said. Even that wasn’t enough to stop the pitbulls from their pursuit and at that point Lewis decided to weaponize the situation by pulling out his gun. "He started running, then the other dog came up and he's getting ready to lunge toward me and I pulled my pistol out and I shot him. I feel bad about it but then again, I don't. If he'd have bit me in the leg I'm dead," he explained. Animal lovers looking to crucify Lewis should know that the pitbull that was shot was rushed to a veterinary hospital and is expected to survive and also that Lewis has a concealed carry license and will face no charges because witnesses backed his story. If only more walkers, runners and bike rides had weapons of some kind to defend themselves against vicious, unrestrained dogs, more dog owners would keep their pets on a leash……….
- Does anyone actually get excited when Microsoft promises to deliver big news regarding any of its deficient products? Not really, but let’s all humor Bill Gates’ company as it targets Tuesday at 10 a.m. in TriBeCa in New York City as a launch point for “major” changes to its Windows Phone 7 smartphone platform. Windows Phone 7 has had a troubled history thus far, essentially from the day it was introduced in February 2010. When the platform officially launched worldwide in October 2010, it simply could not compete with Android smartphones available from most carriers. Compounding the problems, WP7 initially only launched on AT&T and T-Mobile. When Sprint declined to pick up any WP7 handsets (and didn’t do so until earlier this year) and with Verizon not releasing its first WP7 smartphone until this week, Microsoft has been dealt one setback after another. The announcement of a minor feature update for January 2011 wasn’t a big deal either, but even than small step didn’t go off without a hitch. The update was delayed until March, then the update that prepared for the update ran into trouble, the process was delayed again and then the update ran into problems with updating Samsung devices. While plans are being kept as quiet as possible, most tech experts expect Microsoft to show off the next version of Windows Phone 7, codenamed "Mango," at Tuesday’s event. Mango is known to include at least a handful of new features, such as Internet Explorer 9, better Office integration, multitasking and Twitter support in the People Hub. It will also add the ability to save and share Office documents through Office 365 and Windows Live SkyDrive, pin email folders to the home screen for faster access view emails in threaded, conversational style and access Lync Mobile, which is Microsoft's unified communications platform. During an address Monday in Japan, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that the Mango update will have 500 new features all together. He also promised more dtailed information on Tuesday about Microsoft's relationship with carriers. Unconfirmed rumors have predicted as many as nine new devices from Microsoft's manufacturing partners in the next few days. Those rumors seem farfetched because at present, there are only about a dozen WP7 handsets available right now from the likes of Dell, HTC, LG, and Samsung. Perhaps a new wave of phones will fix the problem of all current Windows 7 phones being nearly identical an indecipherable from one another. All of them have 1-GHz processors, 5-megapixel cameras and screens with the same resolution. In other words, perfectly Windows of them. All identical, all subpar and all uninspiring…………
- Good job, Saudi authorities. Big ups on re-arresting an activist who defied a ban on female drivers by getting behind the wheel and daring to turn the key, press the gas and start her trip down the road. Manal al-Sherif was accused of "violating public order" and ordered held for five days while police investigate the case. She had to know another arrest was coming after she launched a campaign against the longtime ban last week by posting a video clip on the Internet of herself behind the wheel in the eastern city of Khobar. Her plan was to inspire a broader uprising and that appeared to be just what was happening with a Facebook campaign in which participants set June 17 as the day all women should drive their cars. The page, called "Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself," was eventually taken down, but not before 12,000 people indicated their support for it. The campaign’s Twitter account was also taken down, but no word was immediately available on the status of its MySpace page (joke intended). As for Al-Sherif, she was detained for several hours on Saturday by the country's religious police and released only after signing a pledge agreeing not to drive. A Saudi security official confirmed her re-arrest Sunday at dawn but spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media. Khobar prison chief Ayoub ben Nahit told a Riyadh newspaper that al-Sherif faces accusations of "violating the rules and the system by driving her car, roaming the streets of the province." He also criticized her for "inciting public opinion" by posting the video clip. At least one man fully supported her protest by driving: her brother, Mohammed al-Sherif, who was in the car with her when she drove. Oddly enough, Manal al-Sherif is an employee of state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco, where she is an expert in information technology. Being an educated corporate executive isn't enough to earn her driving privileges in the conservative kingdom and that has fanned the already burning flames of dissent over the issue of women’s rights in Saudi Arabia. Some activists have appealed to the country’s king to free al-Sherif and give women the right to drive. Thus far there has been no indication that the king and his regime have any plans to change Saudi Arabia’s status as the only country in the world that bans women -- both Saudi and foreign -- from driving. The law causes immense hardships for many Saudi families, who are forced to hire live-in drivers (at the cost of $300 to $400 a month) to ferry female relatives to work, school, shopping or the doctor. Women can't do much to change the law, especially because they are also barred from voting and sitting on the kingdom's Cabinet. Welcome to Saudi Arabia, where they still party like it’s ’99……assuming you mean 1199…………
- New York Mets principal owner Fred Wilpon doesn’t seem to like his team very much. The Wilpon family is struggling financially and has been actively looking to sell a minority share in the team in order to satisfy financial demands being made on them by a bankruptcy trustee in the Bernie Madoff case. All prospective buyers have balked at the idea of purchasing anything less than a controlling interest and perhaps having so much pressure on him and no relief in sight is finally getting to Madoff because he absolutely lit up several of his marquee players in an extensive article in The New Yorker that was originally supposed to focus on his unlikely rise to wealth. Among his targets were shortstop Jose Reyes, who clearly will not be getting a huge contract from the Mets. "He thinks he's going to get Carl Crawford money," Wilpon declared, alluding to Crawford's seven-year, $142 million contract with the Boston Red Sox. "He's had everything wrong with him. He won't get it." Done eviscerating Reyes, Wilpon moved on to right fielder Carlos Beltran. He mentioned Beltran's successful postseason with the Houston Astros in 2004 and self-deprecatingly stated, "We had some schmuck in New York who paid him based on that one series. He's 65 to 70 percent of what he was." Nothing like calling a key player a fraction of his former self, but Wilpon was far from done. Asked about star third baseman David Wright, a player in his prime and considered one of the best in baseball at his position, Wilpon deadpanned, "Really good kid. A very good player. Not a superstar." The one current Met with whom Wilpon doesn’t seem to have major issues is first baseman Ike Davis, but even in praising Davis, Wilpon still found a way to crack his team. "Good hitter," Wilpon said of Davis. "S----- team. Good hitter. ... We're snakebitten, baby." When asked to respond to his own laying a verbal back-stabbing on him, Wright replied by email: "Fred is a good man and is obviously going through some difficult times. There is nothing more productive that I can say at this time." But as bad as Wilpon’s own words may come off in the article, it’s the ringing endorsements from Madoff himself that could do the most damage to Wilpon’s reputation. In the piece, Madoff praises Wilpon and attempts to absolve the Mets ownership family of knowledge of the Ponzi scheme. That likely won't work and the players Wilpon verbally cut down probably won't feel great about showing up for work for their team either…………
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Why America is FAT, movie news and NFLers with too much time on their hands
- America, has anyone reminded you lately why you’re the FAT-test nation in the world? If not, allow Wisconsin resident Don Gorske to jog your memory. Gorske, who is quasi-famous for appearing in Morgan Spurlock's McDonald’s-centric documentary “Super Size Me,” reached a milestone in his life Tuesday that no one, anywhere, should ever aspire to reach. Some 39 years after walking into McDonald’s for the first time, Gorske sat down and chowed down on his 25,000th Big Mac sandwich. The eatery in which he ate the milestone artery-clogger is, appropriately enough, the same McDonald’s at which he at his first Big Mac back on May 17, 1972. Yet even at a young age, he knew this unhealthy menu option was destined to be a part of his life for as long as he and his arteries could survive while eating it on a regular basis. Gorske has averaged at about two Big Macs every day since he ate his first one and has kept track of his numbers by marking calendars and saving McDonald's cartons and receipts inside a fireproof lockbox. That’s right, this tool has involved a freaking lockbox in the process. Further underscoring his loser-dom, Gorske saved his appetite by only eating one Big Mac a day last weekend so he could reach or surpass the 25,000 mark surrounded by all of his friends at exactly 3:20 p.m. on Tuesday.
"When I was 19, I remember finishing my first 1,000 and thinking 'Man, I'm going to be old and retired by the time I hit 25,000,'" Gorske said prior to his massive accomplishment. "Now, I'm actually getting up in age and I'm retired, and tomorrow I'm going to do it." The day would have been even more momentous had Wisconsin’s ongoing labor battle forced him to retire a couple of months earlier than expected from his job as a scheduling officer at the Waupun Correctional Institution, thus preventing him from retiring and ingesting his 25,000th Big Mac on the same day. It was also a bittersweet day for Gorske because he realizes that he will never make it all the way to 50,000 Big Macs eaten. "It made me realize I'm never going to hit 50,000, I'm going to be long dead before then," he said. "My wife likes to say 'When I have to put them in a blender, it's over.'" Given the amount of fat and cholesterol this fool has ingested over the years, the odds of a blender ever being involved seem remote…………..
- There was no great mystery as to which movie would be tops at the box office this weekend. The real shocker would have been if Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides hadn’t replicated the feat of Fast Five in its debut nearly a month ago, earning as much on its own as the rest of the movies in the top 10 combined. Captain Jack Sparrow and crew were able to do just that, racking up $90.1 million to lap the field and start off the long trek toward earning back all of its whopping $250 million budget. Well in the rearview mirror was the No. 2 film for the weekend, Bridesmaids, which held its spot from last weekend and made another $21 million to boost its two-week tally to $59.5 million and counting. Last weekend’s top film fell all the way to third this time around, but Thor inched toward the break-even point with its $15.5 million haul and has now garnered $145.4 million for three weeks of work. Speaking of Fast Five, it came in fourth in its fourth weekend of release with $10.6 million, boosting its cumulative earnings to a whopping $186.2 million in one month in theaters. The last of the top five was Rio, which impressively remained in the top five despite being in its sixth week by earning a so-so $4.7 million, giving it a six-week total of $131.7 million. Scanning the rest of the top 10, one would find: Priest (No. 6 with $4.6 million and a flop-tacular $23.7 million after two weeks), Jumping the Broom (No. 7 with $3.7 and $31.3 million overall), Something Borrowed (No. 8 with $3.4 million and $31.4 million for its first three weeks of release), Water for Elephants (No. 9 with $2.2 million and $52.4 million through five weeks) and sadly, Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family (No. 20 with $1 million and $51.7 for its first five weeks). Dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend and for the first time in its seven-week run was Soul Surfer, which fell to No. 11…………
- The sh*t is about to hit the fan in Yemen, y’all. Well, the sh*t has already hit the fan but it’s about to go up a notch after Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Sunday announced his refusal to sign a Gulf-brokered peace deal and warned against civil war ignited by the country’s opposition groups. The official Saba news agency reported Saleh’s rejection of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-brokered deal, which proposed he leave office within a month. His rejection came after the opposition rejected going to the Republican Palace to sign it together with him. Yet an aide to the president said on condition of anonymity that Saleh attended the signing ceremony, in which five representatives of the ruling party inked the deal. "I would sign the Gulf deal only if the opposition's representatives come to the Republican Palace to sign it with me at the same time, because the opposition would be our partner in the power for the next 90 days," Saleh said in a speech he delivered through the state television not long after his party signed the deal. His speech contained direct warnings of a potential civil war if the opposition continued its four-month-long run of street protests. "The opposition coalition will be held responsible if they escalate street protests and drag the country into a civil war ... they will be held responsible for the blood that had been and would be shed during the previous days and in the next days," he chided. His insistence that the deal be signed publicly instead of behind closed doors might seem like a blatant stall tactic by a man who refuses to cede power……and that’s almost certainly what it is. Opposition leaders unilaterally signed the deal on Saturday evening and rejected Saleh's condition of going to his presidential palace to sign it again on Sunday. This marks the third time Saleh has undermined the U.S.-backed deal in the past month. If he ever does get around to signing the agreement, he would be bound to leave office within 30 days in exchange for immunity from prosecution according to its terms. Additionally, the agreement would authorize the opposition to form a new government within seven days and arrange for holding presidential and parliamentary elections in 60 days. Even opposition leaders have conceded that the deal is effectively dead because of Saleh’s obstinance, with opposition spokesman Mohamed Qahtan calling it "null and void because the deal stipulated Saleh to sign first, but Saleh did not sign it." Ironically, Sunday marked the 21st anniversary of country's reunification even as bloody clashes between Saleh's thousands of armed loyalists and thousands of opposition members raged on as they have for months. And best of all, this fight ain’t ending any time soon…………
- Have you or have you not been reading in this very space for months that NFL players were going to have an extremely difficult time dealing with the mental rigors and extra free time presented by a prolonged work stoppage? Sure enough, we’re two months into the lockout and already, NFLers are taking loans with ridiculous 23 percent interest rates to make ends meet, hitting teammates up for loans, nearly getting stomped by angry bulls are trying their hand at rodeo and in the case of former Chicago Bears running back Garrett Wolfe, getting arrested in Miami and charged with retail theft, disorderly conduct, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. According to information released by the Miami-Dade police, the former third-round pick and four-year veteran became belligerent and physical with officers when they responded to an alleged theft reported by store employees. While not a star with the Bears, Wolfe played a significant role the past two years on special teams. However, with the impending labor uncertainty the team opted against offering him a restricted free-agent tender this offseason, which means he'll become an unrestricted free agent once the NFL lockout comes to an end. Signing him just became a much riskier proposition for prospective teams, as Wolfe likely will be subject to league discipline under its personal conduct policy if found guilty of the charges. The Bears, already unlikely to re-sign him, also would seem less likely to do so even though he played in all 16 of their games last season. Considering his station as a role player and a player with just 72 career rushes for 282 yards and a touchdown and six kickoff returns for 125 yards, Wolfe probably would have been better off remembering that he is in fact Garrett Wolfe and simply paying for what he wanted from the store…………
- Brain science is always a fun topic, so it goes without saying that Boston is going to be a party scene this coming week as luminaries from the world of health, politics, business, and the non-profit sector will gather in Beantown to create a 10-year plan they hope will lead to a deeper understanding of brain conditions and new treatments. The summit will be co-chaired by former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), son of late Mass. Sen. Edward Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. The One Mind for Research Scientific Forum runs Monday through Wednesday and Kennedy has termed it a "moon shot into the mind," so-worded because it will take place the eve of the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's challenge to send a man to the moon within a decade. "We're trying to introduce a new paradigm bringing in the metaphor of my uncle's call-to-action for going to the moon," says Patrick Kennedy, who retired from Congress in 2010. "We're trying to repurpose that branding to something I believe is equally important." Kennedy himself has battled with depression and addiction, giving him even more motivation to tackle the subject of brain health than he would have based on having a father who died of brain cancer two years ago. "My family's entire legacy has been interwoven with advocacy for destigmatization of these illnesses, as well as advancing research into these illnesses," he proclaimed. The end goal of the summit is to create a 10-year plan that paves the way for more cures and treatments for brain diseases and increases collaboration between those in the neurosciences. The current adversarial relationship between many experts in the field is a subject Kennedy feels passionately about addressing. “Whether it's literally saving our vets from their tragic suicide rates — which some months are greater than the number of soldiers we're losing in battle — or addressing Alzheimer's or autism, what we're saying essentially is science is the only means to taking care of the people we love," Kennedy stated. Some major names from various fields and professions are expected to attend the event, including National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, vice president Joseph Biden, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and actor Martin Sheen. While their presence and the event overall will likely cause an uptick in funding for brain research, Kennedy maintains that connecting leaders and patients to help streamline the current "fragmented" approach to understanding and treating brain conditions is the most salient point for the summit…………
- There was no great mystery as to which movie would be tops at the box office this weekend. The real shocker would have been if Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides hadn’t replicated the feat of Fast Five in its debut nearly a month ago, earning as much on its own as the rest of the movies in the top 10 combined. Captain Jack Sparrow and crew were able to do just that, racking up $90.1 million to lap the field and start off the long trek toward earning back all of its whopping $250 million budget. Well in the rearview mirror was the No. 2 film for the weekend, Bridesmaids, which held its spot from last weekend and made another $21 million to boost its two-week tally to $59.5 million and counting. Last weekend’s top film fell all the way to third this time around, but Thor inched toward the break-even point with its $15.5 million haul and has now garnered $145.4 million for three weeks of work. Speaking of Fast Five, it came in fourth in its fourth weekend of release with $10.6 million, boosting its cumulative earnings to a whopping $186.2 million in one month in theaters. The last of the top five was Rio, which impressively remained in the top five despite being in its sixth week by earning a so-so $4.7 million, giving it a six-week total of $131.7 million. Scanning the rest of the top 10, one would find: Priest (No. 6 with $4.6 million and a flop-tacular $23.7 million after two weeks), Jumping the Broom (No. 7 with $3.7 and $31.3 million overall), Something Borrowed (No. 8 with $3.4 million and $31.4 million for its first three weeks of release), Water for Elephants (No. 9 with $2.2 million and $52.4 million through five weeks) and sadly, Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family (No. 20 with $1 million and $51.7 for its first five weeks). Dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend and for the first time in its seven-week run was Soul Surfer, which fell to No. 11…………
- The sh*t is about to hit the fan in Yemen, y’all. Well, the sh*t has already hit the fan but it’s about to go up a notch after Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Sunday announced his refusal to sign a Gulf-brokered peace deal and warned against civil war ignited by the country’s opposition groups. The official Saba news agency reported Saleh’s rejection of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)-brokered deal, which proposed he leave office within a month. His rejection came after the opposition rejected going to the Republican Palace to sign it together with him. Yet an aide to the president said on condition of anonymity that Saleh attended the signing ceremony, in which five representatives of the ruling party inked the deal. "I would sign the Gulf deal only if the opposition's representatives come to the Republican Palace to sign it with me at the same time, because the opposition would be our partner in the power for the next 90 days," Saleh said in a speech he delivered through the state television not long after his party signed the deal. His speech contained direct warnings of a potential civil war if the opposition continued its four-month-long run of street protests. "The opposition coalition will be held responsible if they escalate street protests and drag the country into a civil war ... they will be held responsible for the blood that had been and would be shed during the previous days and in the next days," he chided. His insistence that the deal be signed publicly instead of behind closed doors might seem like a blatant stall tactic by a man who refuses to cede power……and that’s almost certainly what it is. Opposition leaders unilaterally signed the deal on Saturday evening and rejected Saleh's condition of going to his presidential palace to sign it again on Sunday. This marks the third time Saleh has undermined the U.S.-backed deal in the past month. If he ever does get around to signing the agreement, he would be bound to leave office within 30 days in exchange for immunity from prosecution according to its terms. Additionally, the agreement would authorize the opposition to form a new government within seven days and arrange for holding presidential and parliamentary elections in 60 days. Even opposition leaders have conceded that the deal is effectively dead because of Saleh’s obstinance, with opposition spokesman Mohamed Qahtan calling it "null and void because the deal stipulated Saleh to sign first, but Saleh did not sign it." Ironically, Sunday marked the 21st anniversary of country's reunification even as bloody clashes between Saleh's thousands of armed loyalists and thousands of opposition members raged on as they have for months. And best of all, this fight ain’t ending any time soon…………
- Have you or have you not been reading in this very space for months that NFL players were going to have an extremely difficult time dealing with the mental rigors and extra free time presented by a prolonged work stoppage? Sure enough, we’re two months into the lockout and already, NFLers are taking loans with ridiculous 23 percent interest rates to make ends meet, hitting teammates up for loans, nearly getting stomped by angry bulls are trying their hand at rodeo and in the case of former Chicago Bears running back Garrett Wolfe, getting arrested in Miami and charged with retail theft, disorderly conduct, assaulting a police officer and resisting arrest. According to information released by the Miami-Dade police, the former third-round pick and four-year veteran became belligerent and physical with officers when they responded to an alleged theft reported by store employees. While not a star with the Bears, Wolfe played a significant role the past two years on special teams. However, with the impending labor uncertainty the team opted against offering him a restricted free-agent tender this offseason, which means he'll become an unrestricted free agent once the NFL lockout comes to an end. Signing him just became a much riskier proposition for prospective teams, as Wolfe likely will be subject to league discipline under its personal conduct policy if found guilty of the charges. The Bears, already unlikely to re-sign him, also would seem less likely to do so even though he played in all 16 of their games last season. Considering his station as a role player and a player with just 72 career rushes for 282 yards and a touchdown and six kickoff returns for 125 yards, Wolfe probably would have been better off remembering that he is in fact Garrett Wolfe and simply paying for what he wanted from the store…………
- Brain science is always a fun topic, so it goes without saying that Boston is going to be a party scene this coming week as luminaries from the world of health, politics, business, and the non-profit sector will gather in Beantown to create a 10-year plan they hope will lead to a deeper understanding of brain conditions and new treatments. The summit will be co-chaired by former U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), son of late Mass. Sen. Edward Kennedy and the nephew of President John F. Kennedy. The One Mind for Research Scientific Forum runs Monday through Wednesday and Kennedy has termed it a "moon shot into the mind," so-worded because it will take place the eve of the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy's challenge to send a man to the moon within a decade. "We're trying to introduce a new paradigm bringing in the metaphor of my uncle's call-to-action for going to the moon," says Patrick Kennedy, who retired from Congress in 2010. "We're trying to repurpose that branding to something I believe is equally important." Kennedy himself has battled with depression and addiction, giving him even more motivation to tackle the subject of brain health than he would have based on having a father who died of brain cancer two years ago. "My family's entire legacy has been interwoven with advocacy for destigmatization of these illnesses, as well as advancing research into these illnesses," he proclaimed. The end goal of the summit is to create a 10-year plan that paves the way for more cures and treatments for brain diseases and increases collaboration between those in the neurosciences. The current adversarial relationship between many experts in the field is a subject Kennedy feels passionately about addressing. “Whether it's literally saving our vets from their tragic suicide rates — which some months are greater than the number of soldiers we're losing in battle — or addressing Alzheimer's or autism, what we're saying essentially is science is the only means to taking care of the people we love," Kennedy stated. Some major names from various fields and professions are expected to attend the event, including National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, vice president Joseph Biden, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin and actor Martin Sheen. While their presence and the event overall will likely cause an uptick in funding for brain research, Kennedy maintains that connecting leaders and patients to help streamline the current "fragmented" approach to understanding and treating brain conditions is the most salient point for the summit…………
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)