- Sports are about many things for kids: learning team play, learning to play by the rules, competing, physical fitness…….and raging sports parents looking to go Mike Tyson on someone’s ass if they dare to do anything less than bow down and kiss their child’s feet on a daily basis. Robert Rodriguez, a parent of a player on this year’s Miami Springs Senior High baseball team, is one such parent and he wasn’t about to take it lying down when his son didn’t make the cut for the team’s tournament roster. In the Florida high school baseball, coaches must trim their roster to 20 players for the postseason and in a climate where playing baseball year-round is common and the sport is extremely popular, most teams have more than 20 players on their roster, hence the rule. Rodriguez’s son Ian didn’t make the cut, like three other dedicated players who had practiced, played and been a part of the team all season long. The difference for Rodriguez’s son was his old man’s willingness to not only confront his coach on the decision, but to get criminal with it. Rodriguez, who stands about 6 feet tall and weighs in at a flabby 300 lbs., confronted Miami Springs coach Jason Moris, who stands all of 5’3″ and 140 lbs. He waited outside the school to do so and after Moris parked his car and got out, Rodriguez approached him and the two started talking. From there, the conversation quickly escalated to confrontation and punches were thrown. Predictably, the much-larger Rodriguez got the best of the exchange and Moris ended up with several cuts and bruises on his face. Looking at pictures of Moris after the fight, a logical person would assume he was the one who called police to the scene, but in fact it was Rodriguez. Why would a man who had just jumped and beaten up another person call the cops? For some bizarre reason, he believed the law would be on his side in the debate. Officers who responded to the call disagreed and after doing some top-notch police work, they determined that Rodriguez was the aggressor and charged him with battery. Oh, and it may stun you to learn that young Ian Rodriguez was a promising member of the pitching staff for Miami Springs and played regularly during the season, only to fall out of favor with the coaching staff because of a high number of disciplinary issues. With a stellar role model like dear old dad, how could this kid possibly be anything other than a model citizen and teammate…………
- Few actions in life are more pointless and perfunctory than asking North Korea to do anything it feels like doing. In short, Pyongyang does what Pyongyang wants and if you want to stop it, be prepared for war. As such, South Korea's unification ministry is asking North Korea to stop its cyber attacks is both futile and a bit funny. The “request” came a day after the South’s prosecutors accused the North of hacking a South Korean financial firm's banking system. South Korean prosecutors accused North Korean hackers of crippling the network of the country's agricultural banking cooperation, Nonghyup. That was the latest in a series of increasingly malevolent cyberattacks on the South, leading South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman to issue the following statement: "We're strongly urging North Korea to immediately stop its indiscreet cyber terrors such as hacking our private financial firm's computer network. In the future, we will keep taking necessary measures to strengthen our competence to deal with the North's cyber terror with related departments.” Umm, lots of luck with that “strong urging.” North Korea not only doesn’t care that the crash of Nonghyup's computer system affected millions of customers and left them unable to use the bank's credit cards and ATMs for more than a week, they’re laughing their butts off about the situation. Dictator Kim Jong Il and Co. revel in causing international mayhem and no matter what happens, they win. At a minimum, they disrupt lives and businesses and at best, they spark World War III. This latest round of attacks came just over a month after North Korea was also blamed for disrupting Global Positioning System signals in the South in an attempt to disrupt joint military drills by South Korean and United States forces. But just to give South Korea a bit of support in its futile endeavor, I too will ask the North to stop its attacks and play nice…………
- Every town has its resident kook. The cause this kook espouses may vary from place to place, but the bottom line is a delusional, misanthropic loser who alienates everyone around them with far-fetched, irrational views and a generally prickly demeanor. For city of Bradenton, Fla., that kook’s cause is defending his (or her) turf against outsiders. Not outsiders in the sense of illegal immigrants crashing America’s borders - unlikely as Bradenton is in the central part of the state on Florida’s west coast - but outsiders in the form of tourists. Whoever this fool is, he or she recently wandered around downtown Bradenton placing business cards on several cars with out-of-state license plates parked outside of a restaurant, with the message, "Florida Native. If you don't live here, go home” emblazoned on the cards. The card is signed by "Cracker, local resident." Why this moron is so against his town’s primary source of income is not clear, but the Manatee County Chamber of Commerce responded to the incident by flying into immediate damage control mode. “Our local economy is dependent on tourism," said Jacki Dezelski, the Vice President of East County and Community Development for the Manatee County Chamber of Commerce. "If we didn't have visitors come to us through travel and tourism, most of us would not be able to enjoy restaurants we go to year round, museums, attractions, retails businesses." That statement is truer than “Cracker” probably realizes or would admit, as Manatee County had 2.5 million visitors in 2010, injecting $708 million into the local economy. Local business owners understand the importance of tourism as well and employees at the restaurant where “Cracker” launched his or her campaign agree with the chamber of commerce. “They are a base source for our business," said Donna Jullerat, who works at Popi's Place VI. "They are the ones that give us the most revenue that we need throughout the year. We rely on them." Not only do the town and its businesses rely on tourists, but chamber of commerce officials say locals pay less taxes because of Bradenton’s tourism revenues. Oh, and there’s also the question of why “Cracker” is so intent on protecting Bradenton as if it’s some sheltered, isolated community with a rich, proud tradition and lifestyle that would be irrevocably polluted and ruined if someone from Georgia, Maine, Colorado or Texas visited for a few days. Hey kook, thousands of snow birds flock to cities around Florida every year and they keep your hurricane magnet of a state going. Dial back the anger a bit, spend your time and money on something other than misguided crusades and work on finding yourself a remote cabin in the woods where you can channel your inner hermit…………
- Did that special dork in your life look a little happier than normal today? Or perhaps they were merely less crabby than usual about being one of society’s biggest pariahs, never kissing a girl and having skin paler than a sheet of plain white paper. The reason for that, in case you’re not up on your dork holidays, is today’s date: May 4. Why is May 4 so big for the nerd community? Because it doubles as Star Wars Day. The explanation for that is simple: a lame Star Wars-related pun which doubles as today's proper greeting: "May the Fourth be with you." Yes, an idiotic pun is the excuse Star Wars dorks are using to call off work, gather with their small circle of pale, no-girlfriend-having losers and spend more than 12 hours watching all six films in the franchise from start to finish. They are dressing up as Yoda, or Jobba the Hutt, or Luke Skywalker, or a wookie and they are living it up with light saber fights and imaginary pod races. The rest of the world may be laughing mercilessly at them, but that’s their reality every single day of the year. That mocking will undoubtedly be fueled by the upcoming Star Wars-themed documentary The People vs. George Lucas. The project chronicles several obsessed fans' love for the Force and their outrage at Lucas for daring to dishonor the first three films’ legacy with the three prequel movies that launched last decade. Other parts of the documentary detail fan tribute films, controversial characters in the various installments of the franchise and Lucas’ decision-making process in creating the prequels. The People vs. George Lucas opens May 6 in New York with screenings scheduled throughout the summer, but one has to wonder whether Star Wars dorks will receive this news in the basements in which they dwell, communing on Internet message boards and Facebook fan pages to hash over their favorite film as if anything has changed since the 47,755 previous debates they’ve had over the exact same issues…………
- Time to revise the case for/against salt and its health benefits/dangers once again. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that people who consumed less salt were actually more likely to die from a heart attack or stroke. The research, an observational study tracking 3,681 Europeans who originally had no hypertension, also found that people consuming more sodium didn’t have a higher risk of hypertension - i.e. high blood pressure. Although those salt lovers did see a slight increase in systolic blood pressure over a period of about six years, the change was not deemed significant. Ultimately, this great effort should serve to further muddy the waters when it comes to the merits and drawbacks of salt consumption and even its authors were unable to definitively conclude what salt intake does to the body. “If you propose what I’d call an invasive measure like reducing salt intake in the population, you have to consider not only the potential benefits, but also the potential harms,” said Jan Staessen, a professor of medicine at the University of Leuven in Belgium and one of the study’s authors. Staessen also believes that recommendations for healthy people to cut sodium intake are extrapolated from short-term studies and from findings in people who already have hypertension. He and his fellow researchers warned that their findings may not even apply to African-Americans, who may be more salt-sensitive than white Europeans. What they don’t know is why lower sodium intake might raise heart risk or whether decreasing sodium intake by a significant amount truly does activate “some of the systems that conserve sodium, which are known to have a negative influence on cardiovascular outcomes.” The study has already drawn an onslaught of criticism from places like the Harvard School of Public Health, which calls its conclusions “most certainly wrong” and blames its authors for citing an “unreliable measurement of sodium intake,” among other issues. The Centers for Disease Control responded to a request for comment by stating that the small number of cardiovascular events seen in the study makes it difficult to draw any conclusions. Even the president of the American Heart Association rejected the study’s findings and stood behind his organization’s current recommendation to consume less than 1,500 mg of sodium per day. In other words, I wouldn’t look for the U.S. government to alter its dietary guidelines calling for those at higher risk, including adults aged 51 and up, to stick to that same limit, not based on this study. The lone voice crying out in support of it? None other than the Salt Institute, which hailed the study as “debunking claims by the FDA and others pushing for population-wide reductions in salt consumption.” Perhaps the debate could be settled by a large clinical trial that randomly assigned people to eat either a low-sodium or normal diet and tracked their health over many years, but that is “not feasible,” says Staessen. Oh well. The world will have to continue doing what is has done all along, namely ignoring what science tells them and believing whatever they want to believe………
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