- Stoners, you all are awesome. Seriously dudes, you’re
great and your cause is a rad one. The fight is one you’re not going to win in
the United States, but onward you battle. Perhaps no one embodies this spirit
more than the
Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, a Colorado advocacy group spending
thousands of dollars to convince people that smoking pot is safer than drinking
alcohol. The argument is not new and yet, it has a certain charm to it. The
idea of bong rips instead of Budweisers is interesting on several levels. Just
as interesting is this group spending tens of thousands of dollars on
advertising to rally support for a vote in November that would legalize the
drug for recreational use. Colorado is in a pitched fight with California as the
top stoner state in the U.S. and it legalized marijuana for medical use in
2000. To push for expanded legalization, the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana
Like Alcohol has created and begun airing an advertisement on a local Denver
channel during daytime programming encouraging people to "start your
conversation about marijuana." The timing could not be better because what
group is wasting time watching TV in the middle of the day more than stoners?
The 30-second spot features a young woman typing a message to her mother on her
laptop in which she explains that she’s gone from being a lush in college to a
stoner after college because "it's less harmful ... I don't get hung-over
and honestly I feel safer around marijuana users." According to stoner spokesman/campaign
co-director Mason Tvert, the campaign’s goal is
to "break down the stereotype about who the typical marijuana user
is." The campaign has already spent a fair amount of money they could have
used on bong fodder for the ad and a billboard near Denver's Mile High stadium.
The ultimate goal is to make Colorado the first state to legalize recreational
marijuana use. "The goal is the choice -- to make sure adults have the
choice to use a less harmful substance than alcohol," Tvert said. A similar
attempt to legalize ganja failed six years ago, but Tvert claims that
legalizing and regulating marijuana could generate $50 million a year in saved
expenses and revenue. Sounds like a solid line of logic, let’s make it
happen……….
- This just in: Teammates love Timothy Richard Tebow. With
Tebow in New York and the quarterback battle afoot between he and incumbent
Mark Sanchez, at least one prominent Jet loves TRT and isn't afraid to say so.
After resident loudmouth and Jets legend/alcoholic Joe Namath came out in support
of Sanchez, All-Pro cornerback Darrelle Revis has gone on the record as saying he
sees something special in Tebow. “He’s a born leader, he really is,” Revis said
Wednesday. “Very few athletes have the gift he has. He tries to lead by example
all the time. He tries to be positive, which is awesome, and that [has
resulted] in his success on the field....some people have it, some guys don’t.
It’s the passion within, wanting to be a leader, wanting to win. You see it all
the time, eating lunch, walking down the hallway. You see it.” Passion eating lunch in the cafeteria?
That IS impressive. Revis didn’t suggest that Tebow should be named the starter
over Sanchez, but he also didn’t say whether Sanchez is one of the people who
have it, or one of those who don’t. He has played with Sanchez for three years
and never given him the sort of praise he gave Tebow after less than three
months. “He’s a playmaker, he
makes plays, he wins games,” Revis said of Tebow. “He’s one of those guys. He’s
very positive. He has passion for whatever he does. You can see it on him.”
With veterans in the locker room already lining up behind Tebow, the Jets’
decision not to appear on this coming season of HBO’s “Hard Knocks” reality
series so the world can enjoy the drama is all the more regrettable……….
- Color me stunned. An aging rock band full of massive egos
and with a history of conflict couldn’t keep a reunion tour going for more than
a few weeks? Van Halen, welcome to the club…again. The has-been rockers seeking
a revival of their glory days have
abruptly postponed all tour dates after their June 26 without any official
explanation. The decision kills more than 30 long-planned dates, including
shows in Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Salt Lake City and El Paso. While a
handful of local promoters have issued statements regarding the canceled shows,
no details have been offered yet about if or when the dates may be rescheduled
or how refunds will be handled. Live Nation, which is promoting what’s left of
the tour, refused comment and so did a spokesperson for the band. However,
sources close to the group point to a familiar and predictable culprit, saying Van
Halen's members "hate each other." Amazingly enough, these
over-the-hill rock stars haven't been able to set their egos aside and
according to those same sources, they are “fighting and arguing like mad.”
Venues all across the country are now left in limbo and the ever-changing story
of Van Halen now has another sordid chapter to add. The band toured for decades
with Sammy Hagar and, for a brief period in the late 1990s, Gary Cherone, but reunited
with David Lee Roth for a 2007 tour and hit the road again with him in
February. They released their first new album in years with Roth, "A
Different Kind of Truth," earlier that month and it sold 187,000 copies in
its debut week and hit No. 2 on the rock charts. Now Van Halen’s act reeks of a
decidedly different type of No. 2………..
- About damn time, Egypt, about damn time. Finally, the
country’s vice police have gotten around to shutting down the hazard that is a belly dancing TV station. The station,
ElTet, broadcasts videos 24 hours a day of scantily clad belly dancers giving
sultry performances to live in-studio music. Vice police kicked down the door of
an apartment in central Cairo on Thursday arrested the owner on suspicion of
operating without a license, inciting licentiousness and facilitating
prostitution. ElTet has been available on satellite TV for more than a year and
has built a dedicated following with its prostitution facilitation. Some may
argue that belly dancing is quintessentially Egyptian art form that has become
frustratingly inaccessible for many people in the country as it has been
largely relegated to expensive clubs and hotels due to Egypt’s increasingly
conservative ideology in recent years. Women across the country still learn the
style of dancing from their mothers and grandmothers, or by watching old
black-and-white movies from famous Egyptian belly dancers of the past. Thursday’s
arrest of the station's owner, Baligh Hamdy, could be a crippling blow for
ElTet. Hamdy was responsible for most of the duties in running the station,
including daily operations recording most of the videos. Officers confiscated
tapes and video equipment and arrested Hamdy, alleging he would record the
videos and send them over the Internet to his partners in Bahrain and Jordan,
who would in turn broadcast them on the station's satellite TV. That
complicated process is really the only way to make unapproved content accessible
in Egypt and shutting down the station led to a flood of complaints from
viewers, who may also have been disappointed that they couldn’t see the
onslaught of sexual enhancement products and matchmaking service advertisements
the channel carries. The ads are actually part of the case against Hamdy, who
is accused of airing content that offends public decency. ElTet’s shutdown has
revived concerns that Islamist extremist groups will choke freedom of cultural
expression out of the newly liberated country as it moves forward………..
- Depending on what day of the week it is, coffee is either
good for you or the worst substance ever for your body. It will either send you
to an early grave or keep you chugging through life well past the expiration
date of your peers. Today being Friday, that means it’s a “Coffee is good for
you” day. To back that up, researcher Neal Freedman, an epidemiologist with the
National Cancer Institute, has published findings from a study that tracked the
health and coffee consumption of more than 400,000 older adults for nearly 14
years. His research found that coffee drinkers were less likely to die during
the study than their counterparts who eschewed java. Further boosting coffee’s
case, study participants who averaged four or five cups of coffee per day had
the lowest risk of death, according to Freedman’s findings. Of course, the study
doesn’t prove causality and therefore can't say with certainty that coffee is
responsible for helping these individuals live longer, but it is the most
extensive analysis to date to suggest that the beverage's reputation for being
a health hazard may be unwarranted. "There's been concerns for a long time
that coffee might be a risky behavior," Freedman said. "The results
offer some reassurance that it's not a risk factor for future disease."
Some reassurance? Sounds great, Neal. When the Ethiopians invented coffee some
500 years ago, they would have been fired up to know that they were crafting
one of the most controversial beverages known to man. Critics and coffee lovers
have debated its merits and danger for centuries and yet, according to the National
Coffee Association, 64 percent of American adults drink coffee on a daily
basis, with the average drinker consuming 3.2 cups each day. To see what
effects that may have, the National Cancer Institute researchers examined data
on 402,260 adults who were between the ages of 50 and 71 when they joined the
NIH-AARP Diet and Health Study in 1995 and 1996. Subjects were followed through
December 2008 or until they died — whichever came first. Initially, coffee
seemed to have a detrimental effect on longevity. However, when researchers
factored in the even more disgusting habit of smoking (cancer sticks and
coffee, a breath-tastic combination), the pendulum swung in the opposite
direction. Men who drank one cup of coffee per day had a 6 percent lower risk
of death during the study, while those who drank two to three cups per day had
a 10 percent lower risk and those who had four to five cups had a 12 lower
risk. Women saw even more dramatic benefits,” with those who drank one cup per
day having 5 percent lower odds of dying during the study, those who drank two
or three cups being 13 percent less likely to die and those who gulped down
four or five cups were 16 percent less likely to die. Somewhere, Juan Valdez
and Folgers executives are high-fiving…….
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