- It might be time to determine the winner for your Larry Brown Coaching Nomad NBA pool, degenerate gamblers. Brown is the biggest transient in a coaching business full of them, having done stints at Davidson, Kansas and UCLA in the college ranks and with the Nuggets, Spurs, 76ers, Pistons, Pacers, Knicks and Bobcats in the ABA/NBA. He never stays in one place for long, occasionally wins a championship and is always coaching with one eye cast toward the horizon for his next gig. He supposedly left coaching for good after his stint in Charlotte ended badly, but less than two years later he’s once again waxing philosophic about how much he wants to coach again. “I want to get back badly. I just don’t know. The direction the NBA’s going, it seems like they just want to get young ex-players and if you look around the league, there’s not a lot of older coaches anymore. ‘Pop’ [Gregg Popovich] and maybe [Rick] Adelman, but most of these guys are younger, so I don’t know if I fit that mold, but I still believe that I have something to offer and I was disappointed the way Charlotte ended,” Brown opined. “We go to the playoffs and then, 14 games later, I’m fired. They get rid of Raymond [Felton] and get rid of Tyson [Chandler], and I have Kwame Brown, Gerald Henderson and [Dominic] McGuire, all of those guys hurt, missing training camp. So, I’m disappointed the way that ended, but I’d love to get back if somebody gave me a chance. But I won’t politic for it.” No, of course not. You’ll just lobby for it in the media and hope someone will take one more chance on you because you’re a junkie and being on an NBA bench is your drug. Maybe someone actually will give Brown his next fix…………
- Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom! Freeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom! William Wallace isn't around any longer, but the thirst for freedom remains a major topic in Scotland and current First Minister Alex Salmond is the one sounding the trumpet of liberty. Salmond took a direct shot at the British government Wednesday by insisting that the people of Scotland should set the terms of a referendum on independence, not British politicians. Rather than back down and be a polite member of the United Kingdom, Salmond took a defiant stance against British Prime Minister David Cameron's government by saying he favors allowing the Scots a vote on whether their country should become independent. Salmond believes Scotland should choose between total separation and the status quo and wants the Scottish parliament to determine the best way to present the question to voters. He allowed for the inclusion of a third option based on more independence from Britain that stops short of total separation, but that just seems like a cop-out. His position falls in line with the Scottish National Party’s long-standing position that Scotland should leave the UK and become fully independent. Scotland currently relies on its legislature to govern its own internal affairs and social policies, but cedes control of foreign policy and defense issues to London. Perhaps the reason Scotland hasn’t gone the independent route is the failure of Salmond or another SNP leader to paint their face blue and white, mount a trusty steed and ride back and forth in front of their supporters proclaiming that no one can ever take their freedom and maybe Salmond will do just that if he follows through on his promise to hold a vote on Scottish independence in the fall of 2014. Cameron opposes any breakup of the United Kingdom, which also includes Wales and Northern Ireland, but nonetheless has suggested that Scotland make its intentions clear "sooner rather than later." Scottish minister Michael Moore weakly claimed that Scotland's parliament did not have the legal power to hold a referendum and that any plans must be approved by Britain's parliament, but Salmond was not so meek. "Our conditions are quite clear: This must be a referendum built and run in Scotland, accountable to the Scottish Parliament," he said. He then slammed the British government for having "the idea that London knows best and it is operating in our best interests but wanting to set the ground rules for our referendum despite the fact it has got no mandate whatsoever for doing so.” Let freeeeeeedom ring………….
- Bong rips aren't so bad for you, according to science. Dr. Stefan Kertesz of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, newfound friend of stoners everywhere, and his team hunkered down and researched the riveting topic of whether the smoke wafting from bongs and fatties is as detrimental to a person’s health in the same way as cigar or cigarette smoke. What they found was that multiple measures of lung function actually improved slightly as young people reported using more marijuana all the way up to 1,000 joints smoked. In other words, bong rips don’t seem to have any detrimental effects on lung health. "There's no doubt, if you've watched a Harold & Kumar movie, marijuana triggers a cough," Kertesz said. He admitted that his study contradicts the results of previous research, but isn’t exploring new ground what science is all about? "Previous studies have had mixed results," Kertesz explained. "Some have hinted at an increase in lung air flow rates and lung volume (with marijuana smoking), and others have not found that. Others have found hints of harm." One obvious question about the apparent lack of harm from smoking the chron is why the effects would be different even though marijuana smoke has many of the same toxins as cigarette smoke. Kertesz theorized that could be due to the fact that stoners tend to smoke fewer joints each day than tobacco users smoke cigarettes. Combine that with the method of inhaling for potheads potentially offering some relative lung protection and boom, a working theory furthering the cause of stoners everywhere. For the study, Kertesz and his team used data from a long-term study of more than 5,000 young adults in Oakland, Chicago, Minneapolis and Birmingham. During a period of 21 years from 1985 until 2006, researchers periodically questioned participants about their past and current use of cigarettes and marijuana and tested how much air their lungs could hold and the maximum rate of air flow out of their lungs. Those who were smokers or had smoked cigarettes in the past performed worse on the tests, but the findings did not hold true for stoners when Kertesz and his team dug in and studied them. In fact, both lung volume and air flow rates increased with each "joint-year" -- the equivalent of 365 joints or pipe bowls -- participants said they'd ever smoked, up until about seven joint-years, or some 2,555 joints. Haters will argue that ganja is still a gateway drug, that it makes people lazy and unproductive, blah, blah, blah. Those people can suck it, stop hammering stoners and read more about Kertesz's team and their awesome work in the Journal of the American Medical Association………….
- If one is a marginal actress on an irrelevant CW teen soap opera and wants to get people talking about her, what’s the best way to go about it? “Accidentally” tweeting a topless picture of yourself is a good start, as "90210" cast member AnnaLynne McCord found out earlier this week. While taking some time off searching for the missing space between her two first names, McCord spent some time chilling and hanging with her iPhone and like any remotely tech-savvy person with a Twitter feed, she snapped a picture of herself and posted it. Unfortunately for her, she (allegedly) didn’t realize that the pic showed a little too much of her hot body. The image too much of her left breast and one of her female fans pointed out the mistake, leading McCord to delete the image and shoot that fan a message of gratitude. "Omg I deleted it, is it still there?" she asked in the message. . "This is for you @meganraee," she later tweeted to the fan, along with a link to the edited photo. "You rock! Xxx." Granted, there were probably quite a few of her other followers who noticed the nip slip as well, but most of them were probably dudes who chose to enjoy the visual rather than alert McCord to what it showed. A cynic might argue that McCord is a D-lister at best who knew exactly what she was doing with her NC-17-rated tweet, but she insisted it was a mistake and swung back at those who criticized her for it. "My only response to all these lovely people is, 'He who be without sin cast the first stone.' If you have never messed up or done anything wrong in your life, then please, feel free to judge me," McCord tweeted. Assuming that was a “mistake” on her part, of course……….
- Kooks who think they’ve seen the Almighty or Virgin Mary in grass clippings, tree bark, food or oil slicks in a parking lot, you’ve been ignored for a little while now, but the time has come to welcome you back into the spotlight. First up is Philadelphia resident Patty Maiellano, who hosted a New Year’s Ever party at her south Philadelphia home for friends and family and also welcomed none other than Jesus Christ to the party as well. With noise inside the house and a festive scene outside, how could she possibly encounter Jehovah? “Fireworks, kids — you know how south Philly is on New Year’s Eve,” she recalled. “As I was coming downstairs, I saw a figure on my vertical blinds, which were completely shut. That was Jesus that appeared on my verticals.” Umm….OK. Not being able to sleep late at night and ambling downstairs to see the crazy scene on the street, coupled with some possible consumption of a glass or five of alcohol, could make one a bit fuzzy on logic and perception. Maiellano doesn’t believe she was delusional and maintains that she saw a figure silhouetted in the window blinds of her front room. She says the figure appeared to have his hands clasped, perhaps in prayer. She then called her sister, who was undoubtedly thrilled that she had been disturbed in the middle of the night on a holiday to come over and see some dirt spot or other blemish on a set of vertical blinds. “When she saw Jesus on my verticals, she dropped to her knees,” Patty recalled. The sisters scanned the area around the window searching for anything that could have caused the image, but saw nothing. “This is a complete miracle,” Maiellano said. Sure thing, kook. Maiellano soon found company in her growing club of fools when employees at a restaurant in the Ybor City neighborhood of Tampa, Fla. thought they saw an image of the Virgin Mary on one of the restaurant’s walls. The restaurant is Hamburger Mary's and its supposed miracle came over the weekend after some customers noticed the image on a stainless steel plate on the wall near the kitchen. "From certain angles it does look like the Virgin Mary," manager Melanie Todd said. "I never have noticed it myself, before [this weekend]." And what more logical place for the Virgin Mary to appear than at some greasy spoon known for its gay karaoke and drag queen bingo nights? It’s reassuring to know that there are still nuts out there seeing “supernatural” images in inane places…………
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