- Don’t confuse getting your ass kicked because you are verbally challenged with not having any use in showing up for future Republican presidential debates, Gov. Rick Perry. Not wanting to be embarrassed because you lack the charisma and capacity for quick, independent thought in stressful settings does not mean that you should just give up on debating. Yet according to Perry’s camp, that’s exactly what the gun-toting W. clone may do. "We're about 60 days away from votes being cast," communications director Ray Sullivan said Wednesday in an interview with CNN. “The candidates need to spend time in Iowa doing those town halls and spending a lot more time with the voters, who oftentimes have the best questions and press the candidates the hardest. There's no way that the candidates can do all those debates.” In other words, the excuse is that there are too many debates and they eat up too much of Perry’s time. He wants to spend that time glad-handing voters and posing for photo ops, as cameras are less likely to challenge him with difficult questions on foreign policy, education and taxes. Maybe it is simply one big coincidence that Perry is considering skipping the remaining debates even as his poll numbers have slid after a series of uneven debate performances. He and his staff have done everything within their power to tear down the debates and place blame for his failings on the format and not on the lack of competence on the candidate’s part. "These debates are set up for nothing more than to tear down the candidates," Perry said on Fox News. "It's pretty hard to be able to sit and lay out your ideas and your concepts with a one-minute response." Yes, and it seems to be much harder for Perry than it is for every other candidate on the platform. In spite of his deficiencies, Perry has agreed to take part in at least one more debate, on Nov. 9, hosted by CNBC with the Michigan Republican Party and Oakland University in Rochester, Mich. From that point on, his debate schedule is wide open. Sullivan insisted the Perry campaign needs to be in several key battleground states, including Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and Nevada, where hopefully voters aren't concerned with candidates who talk well and think quickly on the fly……………
- Who’s ready for a major professional sports league in the United States that doesn’t have labor issues? The NFL already slogged through a four-month lockout and reached an agreement in time to save its season, while the NBA continues to resort to all-out trench labor warfare in its ongoing lockout as it nears the four-month mark. The NHL could also have a serious labor fight when its current collective bargaining agreement expires on Sept. 15, 2012. That leaves Major League Baseball, whose labor agreement expires on Dec. 11. How are Bud Selig and Co. progressing on their negotiations? Shockingly well, it turns out. The relatively minor issue of signing bonuses for amateur draft picks is the last major issue left in talks for baseball's new labor contract. While their NBA counterparts muddled through a 15-hour negotiation session elsewhere in Manhattan, representatives for MLB players and owners met Tuesday in New York, according to multiple sources. Selig is pressing for Bud Selig wants a system of fixed signing bonuses that tie the amount to when a prospect is drafted, known as slotting. Players are against pre-determined bonuses and believe they should be able to extort as much money as possible from teams, er, negotiate a fair amount. This practice often leads to prolonged negotiations and top picks electing to return to or attend college rather than take a smaller bonus than they want. Bonuses are also tied to other parts of the agreement, such as the luxury tax, the reserve system and the minimum salary. One hurdle that mirrors the NFL’s labor battle is testing for human growth hormone, which still has not been implemented in football. According to sources close to the MLB negotiations, players and owners have come to an general understanding on how to handle testing for HGH, but not necessarily a definitive agreement. That baseball is the one sport in the least trouble or crisis on the labor front is incredibly ironic given the sport’s eight work stoppages from 1972. Since losing the 1994 World Series to the eighth of those strikes, MLB has maintained relative labor peace. If the few remaining obstacles can be overcome, that trend will continue…………
- Adapt or die. That is the message being sent from Australia to the grouping of former British colonies - the Commonwealth - spread around the globe. As Commonwealth leaders are gathering in the Western Australian city, Perth, for a summit that is held every two year, Australian officials have bluntly cautioned attendees at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting that they are falling behind the rest of their world and at risk of losing their place in that world. The Commonwealth’s government has been labeled cumbersome and unwilling to make tough decisions, leading to tensions with the international community. It is bound by a shared history as former British colonies and has more than 50 members across six continents, including Ghana, India, Tonga and Malaysia. Australian Special Minister of State Gary Gray maintained that the Commonwealth is still relevant, but in need of drastic changes. “I think CHOGM has an enduring purpose. Anything that brings together 50 or more of the world's prime ministers and presidents to engage in global issues - CHOGM represents every continent," Gray said. "CHOGM represents a multitude of global organizations from the G20, the G8, the African Union. It is an organization which is as cosmopolitan as our globe itself.” The grouping’s most senior officials ordered a sweeping review of its entire organization two years ago to assess its direction and purpose.
At the meeting, Commonwealth officials are expected to recommend the establishment of a charter of Commonwealth values and the appointment of commissioners for democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Its critics have long argued that the Commonwealth lacks real authority because of its reclusive, secretive means and methods of solving issues behind closed doors. Media reports have characterized the Commonwealth as plagued by organizational “decay” that has allowed members to breach human rights and democratic conventions.
Calls for accountability on these topics have gone largely ignored. Other issues on the agenda for the meeting in Perth will be food security, the status of women and alleged human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. The gathering officials fires up Friday when
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth officially opens the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. From there, let the political hijinks begin…………
- To the cynic, it might seem that director Roland Emmerich is getting exactly what he wants. Emmerich, a director known for apocalyptic blockbusters, has ventured into the unfamiliar world of period pieces with his latest project “Anonymous,” a supposedly historical portrayal of the true story of good ol’ Bill Shakespeare. As with any director launching a film, Emmerich would undoubtedly love to stir up hype for the film any way he can. Picking a fight, even passive-aggressively, with the academic and literary communities has proven to be a brilliant strategy thus far. The movie hasn’t even opened and already scholars are excoriating it for its contention that Shakespeare was a simpleton, a fraud and perhaps a murderer who never wrote a word of his great plays. "A new low for Hollywood," ranted Columbia University professor James Shapiro. The source of the outrage from Shapiro and others like him is the recycling of the old notion that the true author of Shakespeare’s plays was the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere. Others believe it was playwright Christopher Marlowe, or even Queen Elizabeth I herself. Emmerich’s film goes a step further by injecting Shakespeare into a political drama involving a fight for succession using the plays as propaganda. Many critics have also decried the portrayal of Queen Elizabeth, known as the Virgin Queen? In Emmerich’s version of the story, she’s more of the Slut Queen, having secretly had several children, one born of incest. So far, the defense from Emmerich has been the tried and true “creative license” refrain, which hasn’t silenced the haters. Then again, silencing anyone is the last thing Emmerich wants. The more people talk about his film, the better. While it doesn’t help that Sony, the film’s studio, has worked with an educational company to prepare study guides for educators on the authorship question because any ties to academia should be the last thing “Anonymous” has, all of this just feeds the hype machine. The questions have also reached the film’s actors, who don’t quite understand the drama. "It's a political thriller," said Rhys Ifans, who plays de Vere. "It's a historical piece, a visual banquet. And it shows the potency of the theater as a vital form of change." Ifans went on to explain that Emmerich is merely updating the plays and stories. "That's what Roland is doing," Ifans declared. "He's cleansing the plays, elevating them. It's really refreshing." Ultimately, those who are enraged over the movie are in the wrong on this one because no one said this is a historically accurate documentary; it’s a fictional take on a tale that may have some elements of fact or theory mixed in. Deal with it and suspend your disbelief just like you do when you watch Robert Downey Jr. put on a massive iron suit and vanquish bad guys or Hugh Jackman protrude Adamantium claws from his hands and slice up his cinematic foes…………
- Do you have Dropbox? If you don’t know what that means, consider yourself behind the technological times. Dropbox is an online file-sharing service that allows users to upload files into a sort of cloud where others can access and download them. The service is competing with big companies like Google, Apple and Amazon.com, which all offers y sophisticated ways to store, share and sync files. Dropbox users can upload and can access files, like documents, photos and music, on any device wherever they are, without having to compress them or attach them to multiple emails. The basic version of the service is free but users can pay for additional storage beyond 2 GB. But Dropbox is not content with targeting individuals users and is gradually expanding its focus to include businesses as well. The company is now offering a service for businesses, Dropbox for Teams, introduced Thursday. Dropbox was founded in 2007 and has accured more than 45 million users who save more than 2 billion files each week. It also received a reported $4 billion valuation from venture capitalists earlier this year, but has drawn concerns and criticisms about security from users, especially on the corporate side. In fact, a complaint filed with the Federal Trade Commission says Dropbox misled users about privacy. The company insists it uses the same security measures as banks, with all files encrypted and access by Dropbox employees restricted. “These are all things we take very, very seriously because our reputation and the confidence and trust people have in Dropbox is what we’ll succeed by,” said ChenLi Wang, team leader for business and sales. Standing in stark contrast to its free service, Dropbox for Teams starts at $795 annually for five users. However, it does offer 1,000 gigabytes of storage, phone customer support and gives I.T. departments control to add or remove users. Still, security experts in general have expressed doubt about Dropbox security and believe added features like security controls to automatically stop people from sharing confidential documents or to put files on home computers on legal hold are needed. Those concerns aside, Dropbox is still a valuable addition to the tool belt for most tech lovers…………
No comments:
Post a Comment