- Sacramento, hopefully you’re happy with your new purchase. It’s a perennially disappointing, rooted-in-inferiority professional basketball franchise that hasn’t been especially relevant on the NBA landscape in a decade-plus. That’s right, the Kings are staying Sacramento because the city has agreed to build them a shiny new arena and now the Kings and their financially troubled owners don’t have to move to Anaheim as they threatened to do after last season. Just one year from being on the brink of losing their team, Sacramento residents gathered to celebrate Tuesday night when the City Council approved a plan to help finance an estimated $391 million arena. The assembled crowd broke out in cheers when news of the vote was announced and celebrations extended out into the streets outside the council meeting. "Long live Sacramento, and long live the Kings!" shouted former NBA All-Star and Mayor Kevin Johnson. The celebrations were the polar opposite of the reaction from fans in Seattle, who have been longing for a team to play in their city since they had the SuperSonics ripped from them in 2008. Johnson was in a joke-cracking mood after his big victory, responding to a question of what the biggest challenge left for the city was by saying: "That everybody behind me is not hung over going into tomorrow." Fans may be fired up now, but once they digest the reality that they will be contributing $255.5 million to the project and arena operator AEG will contribute $58.75 million while the Kings pay just $73.25 million, their mood may change. Oh, and those fans will help cover the remaining cost for the arena beyond what those three parts will provide through a ticket surcharge and souvenir bricks and plaques to be paid for and placed around the complex. Construction is expected to begin in the late spring or early summer next year and the arena would open for the 2015-16 season in the downtown rail yards. "I want to thank you on behalf of my family and our organization for taking the next step forward," Kings co-owner Gavin Maloof told the council. “We appreciate your efforts. This is a great day for Sacramento." It’s always a great day when you get a new arena that will make you a ton of cash and have to pay for less than 20 percent of it………….
- Gyms and workout facilities run on sweat (and those exorbitant membership fees from people who cannot find a way to escape their interminable membership agreement), right? That may be partially true, but for the Energia gym in Hadley the fuel that keeps its fire burning comes from an additional source. The gym runs largely on the power its members provide when they ride specially designed stationary bikes purchased from a company called Green Revolution. By riding the retrofitted bikes for an hour, members create about 100-130 watts, enough to power two laptops for that span of time. "While people are riding the bikes the demand for electricity from the utilities goes down, as soon as the bikes are idle, the demand for electricity from utilities goes right back to it's normal levels, it's all dynamic, the health club owners don't have to throw any switches," said Mike Curnyn, co-founder of Green Revolution. With the bikes, Energia is the first fitness center in the state of Massachusetts to channel the energy generated in its spin classes into something other than sweat equity and more-toned legs for riders. Gym officials say members have quickly rallied behind the idea. "They're realizing: wow, this is tough to generate energy and why are we wasting it, why not think twice and really make an effort to conserve and it's pretty cool that I get to create energy as well," said owner Jennifer Siddall. The system works through the use of a "grid tide command center" to which all of the bikes are linked and which converts the energy from direct current to alternating current which can be used as electricity. Members have applauded the chance to reduce their carbon footprint while getting healthy and with the program up and running, the gym should produce enough power to light 72 homes for a month while reducing 5,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from its output in the first year…………
- America, you’re FAT and unhealthy. That’s difficult to hear, but it has to be said. You know it, those around you know it and candy maker Mars knows it. But because those who know you can't force you to live healthier or exercise and you clearly do not possess the willpower to get healthier, a candy maker must step in and help you where you will not help yourself. How will Mars accomplish this? By downsizing its products, of course. Sure, companies have been reducing the amount of food they put into packages for a while now and simultaneously ramping up prices to maximize profits, but this time Mars is doing so for the benefit of its customers. By the end of next year, at or under the 250-calorie mark. That means the 2-oz. Snickers currently sold in the average vending machine and its 280 calories will be remade and lose 11 percent of its size to meet the new guidelines. Worse still, Snickers king-size bars currently sport 540 calories, which means the new 250-calorie limit is also the death knell for the king-size bar. Why? The concept is to "enable sharing or saving a portion for later," according to a Mars spokesperson. Not to argue for people’s right to be FAT and unhealthy, but how does making a candy bar smaller allow them to share more or save some for later? The good news is that Snickers and other candy bars are so packed with preservatives that anyone hooked on king-size bars can buy them in bulk in the months ahead and simply place them in cold storage for once the new limit goes into effect. Snickers argues that it wants to be an industry leader, helping its customers enjoy "responsible snacking." Sure, in the same way beer companies promote responsible drinking while seeking to maximize profits. What’s truly sad is that if Mars doesn’t step up and make a change, none of its obese, unhealthy customers will………..
- Ah, an infusion of good ol’ fashioned jingoism into France’s ongoing presidential campaign. As American, Israeli, Iranian and Russian politicians issue all manner of fiery campaign rhetoric to win votes while also grabbing the world’s attention, French president Nicolas Sarkozy is fighting a losing battle to keep his job. He continues to lag behind the Socialist frontrunner, François Hollande, and needs something – anything – to send a jolt through his faltering campaign. Sarkozy needs to find a way to capture the public’s attention and as everyone knows, there is no better way to get people looking at you than hitting your entire country with a healthy dose of jingoistic thought. Sarkozy played that card prominently Monday night during a three-hour appearance on a TV politics debate show. He hijacked the rhetoric of the extreme right in a vain attempt to regain ground in his re-election battle. "Our system of integration is working increasingly badly, because we have too many foreigners on our territory and we can no longer manage to find them accommodation, a job, a school," he said. Wow. Saying your country is on a downward slope because there are too many foreigners living in it is as blatantly jingoistic as possible and vowing to cut immigration by half and limit state benefits for legal migrants is a shameless attempt to pander to a new demographic for Sarkozy. The comments are an obvious attempt to court voters from Marine Le Pen's extreme-right Front National and it has as much chance of succeeding as the French do of winning the gold medal in men’s basketball at this summer’s Olympic Games in London. Early reaction to Sarkozy’s new approach has been mostly negative, as religious leaders and members of his own party have ripped him for ranting on minor issues like halal meat (as a means of antagonizing Muslims). He is far from the only European politician to rail against the encroaching menace of Islam, but attacking Muslim meal customs seems like a blatant reach. Le Pen brilliantly baited Sarkozy into the battle knowing full well that her an anti-immigration platform had no hope of vaulting her past either Hollande or Sarkozy. The president took the bait and wrongly announced that 100% of all meat in the Paris region was in fact halal, and encroaching on the French way of life. Realizing he needs Le Pen’s supporters to join his side to have any hope of overtaking Hollande, Sarkozy has doggedly stuck to his new position and now finds himself staking out increasingly extremist positions to court new supporters. Hollande has quietly cashed in on Sarkozy’s in-progress implosion, warning against using the issue of halal or kosher meat for electioneering. "Our Muslim and Jewish fellow citizens feel hurt, whatever their political allegiances might be," he said. Allow your rival to blow up his own campaign, very smart move………..
- Netflix is still scrambling to recover from its failed plan to split its DVD-only business into a service called Qwikster while unifying its other services behind its existing brand name, but CEO Reed Hastings is working hard to build his brand back up to what it was before the über-failed experiment. His next idea is convincing U.S. cable companies to add the movie-streaming service to their cable packages. Hastings met with senior executives at some of the largest U.S. cable companies in the past few weeks to pitch them on the idea of adding Netflix as an on-demand option for cable subscribers. If any of the companies accept the proposal, they could begin offering Netflix to customers within a year. By positioning itself in this manner, Netflix would essentially enter into direct competition with HBO, whose content is universally offered by cable companies as an on-demand option in addition to the live channels. Hastings promoted his plan last week at an investor event in San Francisco. "It's not in the short term, but it's the natural direction in the long term," Hastings said. "Many (cable service providers) would like to have a competitor to HBO, and they would bid us off of HBO." Convincing cable companies to add Netflix could be tougher than it would seem because many of them have long viewed it as a competitor whose offerings might convince customers to do away with their cable subscription. Some providers have started their own video services, like Comcast’s online video service called Streampix that provides subscribers with a Netflix-like alternative. Verizon and Redbox are planning a partnership to battle Netflix as well even as Netflix attempts to recover from losing about 800,000 customers in last year’s third financial quarter in the wake of the Qwikster debacle……….
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