- Everyone greets a new neighbor in their neighborhood differently. Some people throw a “Welcome to the neighborhood party,” others bake a pie to take to the newcomer’s home and many don’t even bother getting to know that person because they’re so engrossed in their own life. None of those welcoming methods appealed to an unidentified Amherst, Mass. man whose new neighbor clearly wasn’t what he was hoping for. That neighbor is the Jaffarya Center, a recently-built mosque on Transit Road in Amherst. Having any public building next door is rarely ideal for a homeowner based on the sheer volume of people coming and going, along with a higher-than-usual noise quotient. But that doesn’t explain this intolerant homeowner tossing up a sign reading, “Bomb-making, next driveway.” Hmm, if a person didn’t know better, they might view that as a bigoted, discriminatory sign suggesting that all Muslims are terrorist fanatics looking to blow people and buildings up. Not exactly the way to welcome someone to the ‘hood, anonymous Amherst homeowner. Whether you are a Muslim or not, whether you view Islam as a legitimate religion or not, even if you dislike Islam, that sign is out of bounds. While the First Amendment might give a person the right to post that sort of spiteful speech, that doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Fortunately for this ignoramus, the director of the Jaffarya Center (and probably its lead terrorist in the sign maker’s mind) is much more intelligent and mature than he or she is. "I love my neighbor, and I pray for him," said Dr. Syad Jaffri. Neighbors confirmed the sign was posted over the weekend by a neighbor who was reportedly upset about the building's lighting and that it was so close to his home. The issue was quickly brought to the attention of Amherst Town Supervisor Dr. Barry Weinstein, who confirmed that he's aware of the issue. "It is inappropriate, but it is the resident's free speech prerogative to put up a sign and it's the same free speech that we all hold so dearly," said Weinstein. Local Muslim leaders and media members have knocked on the door of the sign maker and no one has answered, so the other side of this story has yet to be told. For what it’s worth, the town planning department has not found any violations with the building and says the lighting was built according to code. The Amherst Police are also involved in the matter, but it all seems like a bit of overkill on account of one misanthropic kook…………
- Assuming the NFL is serious about improving player safety and eliminating dangerous hits and concussions from the game, wouldn’t it do a better job of ensuring its players have the best equipment possible? Not according to a new study by Virginia Tech researchers, who found that nearly 40 percent of NFL players last season wore a helmet model that got the second-lowest rating for reducing the risk of concussions. The Riddell VSR-4 helmet received just one star in a study of football helmets led by Virginia Tech professor of biomedical engineering Stefan Duma. The study awarded a top rating of five stars to just one helmet, the Revolution Speed, while five models -- two made by Riddell, two by Schutt and one by Xenith -- received four stars. Yet 38 percent of the league’s players wore the low-rated VSR-4 in 2010 and the company confirmed that 39 percent wore one of the various models that fall under the Riddell Revolution name or the new Riddell 360. So why not spend some of the league’s $9 billion in annual revenues to buy the best, safest helmets? NFL spokesman Greg Aiello confirmed the league’s awareness of the study and said the league's head neck and spine medical committee would review the research. He also claimed the league and NFL Players Association informed players, trainers and equipment managers last year that three helmet models -- two made by Riddell and one by Schutt -- met all three criteria for qualifying as a top-performing helmet when 16 were tested. The league and NFLPA told players and teams at the time: "In general, some of the modern helmets performed better in these tests than did the older helmets." The news was actually welcomed publicly by Riddell, which was interesting. "It is our hope that based upon this and other independent research, that players and teams at all levels will continue to migrate to the Revolution family of helmets," Riddell Sports president Dan Arment said in a statement. Ultimately, each NFL player is allowed to choose which brand and model of helmet he wears and thus there is no way a player can blame anyone but himself for inferior equipment in that respect. Still, why is the league even making inferior helmets an option? Riddell stopped selling the VSR-4 in 2010 and the newer Revolution models include significant changes from the VSR-4, such as covering the jaw area and having padding there, as well as adding padding to increase the space between the head and the shell. Seventy-five percent of helmets used in 2010 were made by Riddell, which has had a licensing/sponsorship agreement with the league since 1990, with a handful of other manufacturers making the remaining 25 percent. Duma and his team used eight years’ worth of data for their study and said the star ratings provide "a prediction of concussion risk." Concussions, of course, are bruises on the brain which occur when the brain moves inside the skull from an impact or a whiplash effect. While no one involved in the discussion believes it is possible to eliminate them from football, research like Duma and his team’s study could help reduce their prevalence and for a league supposedly focused on improving player safety and long-term health, that should be great news……….
- Party time in Cuba, woo hoo! Okay, so technically it’s less of a party and more of the communist island nation embracing realities of everyday life that the rest of the civilized world has counted on for years, but when the brothers Castro are running your country you must take what you can get in terms of progress. Progress in this case is legalizing the sale of real estate and cars and expanding the ranks of private co-operatives that could serve as boosts for the country’s sagging economy. The Communist Party's newly released economic guidelines also teased the possibility of the government allowing Cubans travel abroad as tourists, a long-time promise of Cuba's leaders that has yet to be fulfilled. For now, the government will (allegedly) study that possibility. Letting Cubans out of the country as tourists has always been risky because even when the country’s athletic teams have traveled to international competitions in other countries, the risk for defections has been high. Cubans have been waiting for decades for the travel ban to be lifted, but the newly minted guidelines provided few specifics, meaning everyone will have to wait to see the exact details when the strategy is eventually translated into law by Cuba's National Assembly. To add another layer of bureaucracy to the mix, the guidelines also established a commission charged with implementing the changes. It definitely seems like a desperation move to placate the populace on account of a floundering economy. A meeting of the Communist Party Congress last month produced the economic changes, but the final documentation wasn’t released until Monday. And boy, what a whopper of a document it is. In all, there are 313 individual points. Among them are points stipulating that the state "establish the buying and selling of homes" for Cuban citizens and another calling for legalizing the sale of cars and other vehicles. However, the guidelines also stipulate that the state is not yet in a position to sell most Cubans new cars through state-owned businesses. Under the previous laws, only cars built before the revolution could be sold, as in thousands of Soviet-made Ladas and Moscoviches, as well as tiny Polskis and other cars used in the former Eastern bloc. Owners of those cars have basically been stuck with them until either they or the car die. In other words, anyone in need of late model, Soviet-made Moscovich, a glut of them will soon hit the market……….
- Ratings for the first post-Steve Carell edition of NBC’s hit comedy The Office were down significantly from Carell’s final episode, even with Will Ferrell continuing his guest stint. So what is the Peacock to do? A slew of guest stars are planned for the final few episodes of the season, with the lineup including Ricky Gervais, Jim Carrey, Will Arnett and Ray Romano. But will those four household names be enough to steady ratings? If not, NBC has another ace in the hole that could “buy” it some time: none other than the Oracle of Omaha himself, billionaire investor and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway Warren E. Buffett. Buffett, whose investors were treated to a taped performance by Carell and his Office colleagues at the company’s annual shareholders meeting, which occurred two days after Carell’s farewell episode. Buffett will now return the favor by appearing in the May 19 season finale of the series. In a bit of a stretch, he will play one of many characters seeking the vacated regional manager’s post made available by the departure of Carell’s Michael Scott character. In the sketch that aired at Berkshire Hathaway’s shareholder’s meeting, Michael Scott introduced Mr. Buffett to his “Office” colleagues as his potential replacement and explained that Berkshire Hathaway was best known for producing all of Anne Hathaway’s movies. Another favorite Office character, Rainn Wilson’s Dwight Schrute, picked a fight with Mr. Buffett’s partner Charlie Munger. Buffett also played a similar character to the one he’ll portray on the show. The connection between Buffett and The Office is Stephen B. Burke, the chief executive of NBC Universal and a Berkshire Hathaway board member. Adding one of America’s wealthiest people to the mix should generate a bit of buzz for the show, but Buffett hasn’t exactly shown a golden touch in shows he’s appeared on in the past. He did multiple guest spots on the ABC soap opera “All My Children” and needless to say, he wasn’t able to do anything to reverse the show’s (and the entire soap opera genre’s) slide into oblivion. After all, had NBC merely filmed Buffett’s guest spot and not publicized it at all, most Office viewers probably would have had no idea who he was or why he was on the show at all………..
- Agreements with all the major labels or not, Google is moving ahead with its new music service as planned. Much like Amazon before it, the Web giant has unveiled its digital music locker service without any licensing deals at all. The unveiling came Tuesday during a keynote speech at Google’s I/O conference in San Francisco. Called Music Beta by Google, the service will allow users to upload their music library to a personal online storage locker they can then use like any other cloud computing system, streaming and downloading files from any Internet connected device. Based on the details Google has provided, Music Beta is eerily similar to Amazon's Cloud Drive, with a few key differences. The biggest catch, at least in the United States, is that the service will be available on a limited, invite-only basis. Anyone wanting an invitation can request one at google.music.com, with priority given to those already in Google’s user base with the Motorola Xoom tablet, and to attendees of the I/O conference. Those with larger music libraries will also run into problems because Google is limiting the number of songs that can be uploaded to the music locker to 20,000. On the upside, the service is free while in beta, although Google refused comment on what future pricing options it may have planned. On some level, the whole announcement felt incomplete and it was clear Music Beta is not the service Google originally envisioned. Google director of content partnerships Zahavah Levine pulled no punches in assessing blame for that, either. "We've been in negotiations with the industry for a different set of features, with mixed results," she stated Monday night. "[But] a couple of major labels were less focused on innovation and more on demanding unreasonable and unsustainable business terms." Sources have pointed to Sony Music Group and Universal Music Group as primary roadblocks to Google’s initial plan to offer a scan-and-match style locker service -- where instead of uploading different copies of the same track to store in a locker for each user, the service would scan users' libraries and match the songs they own to a centralized server. Those holding rights for the songs, i.e. the labels in question, would then be paid a fee for each stream. Instead, Google is moving forward with a diluted version of its original idea and teaming it up with its new music player app, also unveiled Tuesday. Anyone with an Android device can download the app, which can play any music stored on Android devices and access music from the cloud for users who are part of the beta. Completion of the app was essential to the launch of Music Beta, according to insiders. One interesting feature of the app is Instant Mix, which creates a playlist based on a single song by analyzing the song's characteristics and pulls other similar songs from the users' music library. Music Beta has interesting features of its own, including: allowing any Web-connected device with a browser or supporting Flash to stream music from the locker, free music added in the same way some mp3 players ship with sample tracks and allowing audio quality for streaming files as high as 320kbps if the device and network support it. By announcing all of this without the major labels on board, Google is clearly signaling a “Get on board or get left behind” approach to business……….
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