- 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…………
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