- And so the trend continues for John Calipari. One of the
best coaches in college basketball and long one of its best recruiters, the
über-slick Calipari has also developed a reputation as someone who will bend or
break the rules in order to secure a five-star recruit or make sure that
recruit is eligible. NCAA sanctions have followed him at his first two head
coaching stops, Massachusetts and Memphis, after he left, due to player
eligbilty issues and transcript problems. Althugh the NCAA has never hammered
Calipari himself for any of these matters, the residue from them has stuck to
him and apparently has not evaporated even after he won his first national
championship last season. After that win, nearly half of the roster for
Kentucky left for the NBA draft, leaving Calipari to fill the holes his exiting
underclassmen created with their exodus. One of the blue-chip recruits he found
to plug in and fill that gap is New
Hampshire prep school phenom Nerlens Noel. The 6-foot-10 Noel is the No.1
recruit on the ESPN 100 prep recruit rankings, but the NCAA seems less
concerned with his talent than it is with how he made his college choice. The
NCAA is reportedly investigating people involved in Noel's recruitment and
Noel's payment for unofficial visits and two NCAA enforcement officials visited
the incoming Kentucky freshman prep school this month to ask about Noel's
recruitment process, according to a Tilton School administrator. This comes on
the heels of two investigators visiting Noel's high school in Massachusetts in
May. Most experts have Noel pegged as the next stud recruit to sign for a
school Calipari coaches, play the required one season of college basketball and
leave to be the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. The visits to Noel’s former
schools suggest the process has moved beyond a normal NCAA investigation and
although it isn’t clear what the issues are surrounding his recruitment, Tilton
coach Marcus O'Neil has admitted that Noel has a close relationship with Chris
Driscoll, a former Providence assistant coach, and that Driscoll once told him
that he needed to "score big" with Noel. Noel was in class as the new
semester began Wednesday at Kentucky, but the question is whether he will be on
the court for the Wildcats when the season begins in November………
- Is a private island on the holiday wish list for that
certain someone special in your life? For those looking to get out ahead of the
rush, get their shopping done early and snag the hard-to-find item that
everyone is going to be after when Thanksgiving rolls around and colder weather
blankets the nation, this is a golden chance. While a private island in the
Caribbean or South Pacific would be nice, you need not go that far to find what
you seek. You need go no farther than Scotia, N.Y., where a private island has
hit the market and realtor Denise
Polsineelli is looking to flip the property.
"I have not heard of anyone
selling an island especially in the Capital District," Polsineelli said.
The veteran realtor has worked in the Scotia area for years, but said this is
the first private island she has had on the market. The price tag is extremely
affordable for Glenotia Park, named as a combination of Glenville and Scotia.
The island is located on the Mohawk River, behind the Glen Sanders Mansion and
it is priced at $92,000. "I was a little scared about the island because I
wasn't sure what the market would be," Polsineelli added. Right now, the
island is mostly overgrown vegetation, but for the right owner, it could offer
a wealth of possibilities with an interesting history and the cache that comes
with owning one’s own private island. It originally started as the location a
swimming school and evolved into recreation for adults, recreation for
children, and even added dancing on Saturday nights. The property is a spacious
19 acres and its previous owner is selling after failing to make good on a
dream to restore the island to those uses. Those who might buy the island
shouldn’t do so with the notion of living there, as conservation issues and
environmental laws ban any permanent structures on the island. Oh, and there is
no bridge to the island because it was knocked out by weather decades
ago. So experienced kayakers who want to live in a beefed-up campsite on
their own private island, now is the time to act………
- Congratulations too Canadian bubble gum pop/quasi-punk
princess Avril Lavigne. No, not for getting engaged to Nickelhack frontman Chad
Kroeger, but for showing that the seemingly impossible is possible, both by
actually downgrading from the bottom-of-the-barrel-scarping marriage she had
with Sum 41 frontman Deryck Whibley and proving it is actually possible for
someone to love something – anything – that has to do with Nickelhack. Lavigne
is now engaged to ‘Bick frontman and kidney-stone-passing-esque vocalist Chad
Kroeger, 10 years her senior. The two talent-deprived Canadian crooners have
kept their relationship so quiet that few even knew they were dating, but after
six months in which they clearly were smart enough not to listen to any of one
another’s music, they are engaged and sources say Kroeger has made Lavigne
extremely happy and that her family is also thrilled with the match, which
became official when Kroeger proposed on Aug. 8, again, clearly making sure
none of his crappy music played any role in the proposal. He gave Lavigne a 14-carat
diamond ring and now, he is all set to make his first trip down the aisle. How
a catch like Kroeger, who looks like a greasy man perm crossed with the
prototypical poseur rocker and sounds like he is either having a bowel movement
or attempting to pass a kidney stone every time he “sings,” has made it nearly
four decades into life and never found true love is difficult to fathom, but
both families are reportedly on board with the union. The musically inept
romance began when the two got together in February to co-write a song for
Lavigne's upcoming fifth studio album. Their love, and a track that could
clearly be the worst in the history of recorded music, blossomed from there and
the world is a more off-key place because of it. Then again, for a girl who has
also dated a reality TV ass hat like Brody Jenner, nothing is too far-fetched………..
- T-Mobile is an also-ran in the cell service race, so why
not throw a hail Mary and attempt to woo users back? That is precisely what the nation’s
fourth-largest cell phone company is doing by bringing back unlimited wireless
data. Unlimited data plans have become scarce of late, but smaller wireless
companies trying to compete with AT&T Inc. and Verizon Wireless need every
bullet in their gun they can muster. T-Mobile USA Inc. announced Wednesday it
will start selling an unlimited-data plan again on Sept. 5, after stopping
sales of such plans early last year. The move comes one day after barely-known No.
5 carrier MetroPCS cut the price of its unlimited data plan as a promotion for
a very limited time. Verizon, AT&T and Sprint are all preparing for the
launch of the iPhone 5 in the next month or so, but neither T-Mobile nor MetroPCS
carry Apple’s popular smartphone. Sprint does offer an unlimited data plan, but
AT&T stopped selling unlimited data plans two years ago and Verizon
followed suit last year. Both companies have compensated by lifting all limits
on calls and texting, which isn’t much compensation because more and more users
rely on their phones to access Web content and calls and texts use very little
network capacity. Heavy data use slows down the network for everyone, so the
idea of limited data plans makes sense…..or does it? Figuring out how many
gigabytes of information a person will use by visiting X number of websites and
viewing Y number or videos in a month is extremely complicated for a nation
that annually ranks among the world’s worst at math. Kevin McLaughlin, vice
president of marketing for T-Mobile, said the company is bringing back
unlimited data due to high customer demand and insisted the company is
confident it can keep its network “fast and dependable” even with unlimited
data users hogging bandwidth………
- Kenya, what is wrong with you? Villagers from neighboring
towns or cities storming each other’s borders and killing one another for no
good reason is so 3rd century A.D. There is no good reason why the country that
consistently churns out kick-ass distance runners by the truckload should be
dealing with the aftermath of attacks involving two rival communities that left
as many as 52 people in a coastal area of Kenya, most of them women and
children, dead. The violence erupted when an armed militia from the Pokomo
ethnic group raided homes belonging to the Orma community, slashing every
resident they encountered to death before setting their victims’ homes on fire
to really rub salt in their wounds. According to Danson Mungatana, the local
member of Parliament, 48 people were confirmed killed in the fighting and the
powers that be probably should have seen the violence coming. “This conflict
has been simmering since last week,” he said. Mungatana pointed to an uptick in
acts of lawlessness in the area and characterized the killings as revenge
attacks after a string of cattle raids. That’s right, someone raided someone
else’s cattle and therefore, women and children who had nothing to do with any
of it needed to due. Residents of the Orma community said the fighting stemmed
from a confrontation over land and resources. The two cultures should be able
to co-exist because they do not practice the same sort of agriculture; the
Pokomo practice subsistence farming while the Orma are cattle herders. The
Kenya Red Cross responded to the scene and its death total, 52, was different
than the one offered by a Kenyan police spokesman. Clashes over cattle are
nothing new in this area of Africa, but the conflicts are rarely this deadly.
Maybe everyone just needs to go out for a nice, relaxing 10-kilometer run and
calm down………..
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