- “Man up.” That phrase seems to have little meaning to the South African government, which currently lacks the testicular fortitude to do its job and make a decision on whether the Dalai Lama should get a South African visa. No one seems to have any interest in actual addressing the issue and the game of duty ducking began Thursday night when a Department of Home Affairs spokesperson said on television that the Dalai Lama's visa application was an international relations issue. Masizole Mnqasela, deputy minister of home affairs, contradicted that statement Friday when he said the exact opposite. "This is clearly a home affairs issue, and the department should treat his application like any other," Mnqasela stated. Asked about the comments of the department spokesperson just one day earlier, Mnqasela came off as a bit confused.
"This is not an official state visit by the Tibetan spiritual leader, and so requires no input from the minister of international relations," he mused. In all of this drama, there is the pertinent question of why the Dalai Lama needs a visa at all. He is to be a guest at Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday party in Cape Town on Oct. 8 and would theoretically be visiting South Africa is an ordinary tourist. Tutu has blasted the government over its slowness in approving the Dalai Lama’s visa, saying it would "shoot itself in the foot" by again refusing his fellow Nobel Peace laureate entry into South Africa. Of course, the country doesn’t exactly have a warm, fuzzy relationship with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. The South African government has denied the Dalai Lama a visa before, when he wanted to attend a peace conference there in 2009. South African leaders refused because they were afraid granting the visa would jeopardize ties with China, a key trade partner. This time around, Mnqasela says, he should be granted a visa as long as he has a valid passport or travel document, sufficient funds, a return or onward ticket, at least two blank pages in his passport, and his yellow fever certificate.
"It's time for government to stop dithering over the Dalai Lama's visa application and treat him with the same respect afforded to all foreign nationals who visit our shores," Mnqasela declared. In the event the visa isn't granted, a night vigil is to be held at Parliament on Monday to lobby for it. Here’s hoping a visa is granted for a man who has been living in exile since fleeing Tibet during a failed uprising in 1959…………..
- As if a trip to the movies weren’t already expensive enough, seeing many 3-D films will become that much more costly beginning next summer. Sony is sick and tired of giving moviegoers a free ride for paying for their 3-D glasses to see its mostly crappy, overrated movies and doling out a few extra dollars just to see said 3-D films. So from next summer on, if you want to watch The Amazing Spider-Man or Men in Black III in three dimensions, you’ll have to buy them yourself. The prices isn't exorbitant - 50 cents - but for a major film that is seen by millions of people, the cost can be $10 million or more for the studio. According to Sony, it’s decision to stiff movie fans is actually an incentive for exhibitors to renovate their theaters for 3-D. Other studios have made similar decisions in the past and theaters haven't exactly responded warmly to the gesture. Back in 2009, Fox said it wouldn’t supply theaters with glasses for its summer release Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. Regal Cinemas took all of two seconds to announce that it would only screen the film in 2-D. Fox backed down and paid for the glasses, but Sony has tired of doing so and is now advocating an ownership model that would force audiences to purchase the glasses as they do in Europe and Australia. The cost in the United Kingdom is especially high, with moviegoers paying the equivalent of $1.50 for disposable 3-D glasses. If forced to pay for them, maybe movie fans will simply keep the pair they purchase and shove them into a drawer somewhere in the hopes of remembering them the next time they go to see a 3-D film. There is also the option of theaters paying the bill for 3-D glasses, but no one is counting on that happening. Many are already bitter about having to purchase new digital projectors in order to screen 3-D features and won't give back any additional revenue by paying for the glasses. In short, the only option left that everyone who has power in the process likes is passing the cost on to the economically challenged movie fan on the street………
- If NBA players and owners can't reach a new labor agreement in time to save the coming season, is it too much to ask that they at least continue acting like petulant 8-year-olds as they futilely negotiate? Very little progress was made Friday as 21 players and 10 owners crammed into a meeting room in New York and rumors continue to abound that commissioner David Stern will begin canceling regular season games if no “substantial” progress is made by the end of the weekend. However, no progress doesn’t necessarily mean no fireworks and a reported altercation between Stern and Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade definitely created its fair share of drama. While speaking to the assembled owners, Stern made the mistake of pointing his finger at Wade, who took great offense to the commissioner’s gesticulation and snapped back at the man who runs the league that has made him tens of millions of dollars. "You're not pointing your finger at me," Wade said, according to unidentified sources. "I'm not your child." From there, the meeting became so intense that Wade and the other star players present nearly stormed out. It was only the presence of union executive director Billy Hunter and his pleas for the players to stay that Wade and his compatriots remained in the room. Keep in mind that all of this is happening with the scheduled start of the regular season exactly one month away. Getting mega-stars like Wade, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Kevin Durant in the room with the players' association executive committee and owners did nothing to push talks forward Friday even if union president Derek Fisher called the session an "engaging" meeting with the owners' labor relations committee. Neither side could identify any specific progress in the talks, but there were seven additional hours of talks Saturday and for the first time in the entire labor stoppage, both sides actually seem to have a sense of urgency to get something done. "All I'll say is there was a sense of urgency in the room today," deputy commissioner Adam Silver said. "I think the sense today from both sides is we really need to push this weekend. Time is of the essence, and I don't think there was any disagreement about that by both parties." No disagreement? You mean a disagreement like Stern and Wade screaming each other down and the league’s top players nearly storming out of the meeting? The major point of division, as it has been throughout the three-plus month lockout, is the owners’ desire for a hard salary cap. The players have steadfastly rejected any proposal with a hard cap and owners this week relaxed their insistence on it, instead proposing a system where there would be four levels of the luxury tax, and the more a team spent, the higher that tax. Fisher, though, said that system still wouldn't work for the players. In other words, hello square one, good to see you again…………
- Who would ever dare to believe that a project or business owned and operated by Donald Trump would in any way be vapid, shallow or superficial? Donald Trump is, if nothing else, focused on people’s hearts and souls, their inner beauty. It’s why the Donald has consistently sought out the plainest, most inconspicuous and unattractive women to date and marry. So it comes as quite a shock that the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City is holding a $25,000 sweepstakes for plastic surgery. Patrons can enter the contest and the winner can choose either $25,000 or the same amount in plastic surgery procedures. “We determined if you had a few procedures and $25,000 seemed to take care of a lot,” Kathleen McSweeney, senior vice president of marketing for Trump Entertainment Resorts, said. Yes, $25,000 would “take care of a lot” in a country filled with morbidly obese people for whom exercise is a four-letter word and cutting Taco Bell and McDonald’s from the daily diet is just too much to ask. Not that a person going to any casino expects to win both a hand or two of blackjack and some free botox, liposuction or breast implants, but why not shift the paradigm and give them something unexpected? Sure, some casino patrons have denounced the contest as stupid and a perfect representation of what’s wrong with the superficial land that is the United States of America, but maybe if those patrons could set aside their righteous indignation and imagine how they would look with their love handles gone, that bump on their nose smoothed out and their figure filled out with an artificial rack, they would change their mind. For those who do want to enter, the contest ends on Oct. 29. The timing couldn’t be better for the Trump Taj Mahal, which needs some good publicity after a man from North Jersey was shot and killed after he and his girlfriend were carjacked inside the Trump Taj Mahal parking lot two weeks ago…………
- Aladdin: cheesy Disney kids’ movie or brilliant forecaster of the future in science and technology? Before you say yes to the former and scoff at the latter, give the smart Ivy Leaguers at Princeton University a chance to silence your doubts. Graduate student Noah Jafferis and his team have created what is being called a miniature magic carpet. The carpet, made of plastic, is a 10-cm. sheet of smart transparency is driven by "ripple power"; waves of electrical current driving thin pockets of air from front to rear underneath. It took flight at an on-campus laboratory and although it is in the prototype stage and moves only at speeds of one centimeter ped second, improvements to the design could raise that to as much as a meter per second. Jafferis was inspired to create the magic carpet by a mathematical paper he read shortly after starting his PhD studies at Princeton. Instead of continuing with a project printing electronic circuits with nano-inks (definitely won't pull any of the hotties in the Princeton physics department), he ditched that lame-o idea for the magic carpet idea. Even the faculty leader for Jafferis’ research group admits that the concept seemed far-fetched and a possibly ginormous waste of time. "What was difficult was controlling the precise behavior of the sheet as it deformed at high frequencies," professor James Sturm stated. "Without the ability to predict the exact way it would flex, we couldn't feed in the right electrical currents to get the propulsion to work properly." In spite of those doubts, Jafferis was able to soldier through a two-year digression attaching sensors to every part of the material so as to fine-tune its performance through a series of complex feedbacks. Two years of hard work led to an undulating “carpet” with slight wafting motion that helped it take flight. Yet Jafferis and his team aren’t willing to fully embrace the idea that their creation flies because in their minds, it has more in common with a hovercraft than an airplane. "It has to keep close to the ground," Jafferis explained, "because the air is then trapped between the sheet and the ground. As the waves move along the sheet it basically pumps the air out the back." He is also working on a solar-powered version of the device that could fly longer distances. As for the possibility of an actual magic carpet ride for a human being, Jafferis is not so optimistic. Using existing materials, he estimates that a flying carpet powerful enough to carry a person would need a wingspan of 50 meters. Still, let’s not give up hope on the dream just yet…………
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