- Boy, some companies just do not appreciate quality, free
advertising in a major motion picture. In an age where many brands pay a lot of
money for product placement in films and television shows, turning one’s nose
up at a chance to have one’s product on display in a blockbuster movie starring
one of the most famous actors alive seems like bad business. Someone should
tell that to Budweiser, which is demanding that its logo be obscured from
scenes in Denzel Washington’s new movie “Flight.” In the movie, Washington
plays a skilled pilot whose heroic acts in a crisis save a flight from
crashing, but who is later accused of drinking during the flight. In several
scenes, Washington’s character can be seen crushing a can of Budweiser and
rather than smile and say thank you for the free advertising, Budweiser is
getting uppity and asking that its logo to be "obscured" any
time their product appears on screen. At a time when the company could be
promoting the fact that drinking Budweiser helps fuel people to acts of heroism
and saves lives, or suggesting that its magic potion doesn’t make people
drunken fools like other beers but instead spurs then on to greatness,
Budweiser executives are missing the point. Company vice president Robert
McCarthy fired off a letter to the film’s producers, Paramount Pictures and
production company Image Movers, spelling out his company’s concerns. "We
would never condone the misuse of our products, and have a long history of
promoting responsible drinking and preventing drunk driving. It is
disappointing that Image Movers, the production company, and Paramount chose to
use one of our brands in this manner.” Disappointing? Hell no. What IS
disappointing is Budweiser’s ridiculous response. Drunk driving his nothing to
do with this movie anyhow. You don’t drive a plan, you fly it……….
- How much does exercise benefit the healthy and not so
healthy among us? Putting down the burger with extra bacon and cheese and
breaking a sweat for 30 minutes a day helps, but to what extent? According to
researchers at the National Cancer Institute, exercising for half an hour daily adds
an average of 3.5 years to a person’s life and as much as 4.2 years for those
willing to up the intensity or spend closer to an hour working out. Better
still, these benefits hold for the morbidly obese, who should be exercising
more anyhow. Individuals with a body mass index above 35 can even achieve average
life expectancy a notch above that of a normal-weight person who is sedentary by
exercising for about 2.5 hours a week at moderate intensity or for 75 minutes
at vigorous levels. While the findings don’t exactly turn the world of exercise
science on its ear, they should serve as an alarm for non-FAT people who spend
too much time on the couch by stay relatively thin thanks to a good metabolism.
Even with a BMI between 20 and 25, study participants who were physically
inactive were far more likely to die in the next decade or so than were
overweight or obese exercisers. More than 600,000 participants took part in the
study, all of them over the age of 40, and the sedentary were almost twice as
likely to die during the course of the study than were participants who were
highly active. "This finding may convince currently inactive persons that a
modest level of physical activity is 'worth it' for health benefits, even if it
may not result in weight control," study leader Steven Moore and his team
wrote. Part of the project examined the ability of exercise to offset tobacco
use or a patient’s family history of cancer or heart disease and researchers
found that even a modest amount of physical activity restored between 2.5 years
(for current smokers) and 5.3 years (for cancer patients) of lost life
expectancy. The push to exercise could start small, the study showed, with
something as minute as a 10-minute daily walk. Those walks could be down the
street to buy another chili cheese burrito, or better still, to the organic
foods store to buy some pesticide-free carrots and legumes. Simply put, the
real hazard is the lazy and sedentary lifestyle that leads to FAT-ness, as
opposed to simply the disgusting rolls of flab themselves………
- Jerry Jones built it and now, one of the most-anticipated fights
in the history of UFC may be coming to Jones’ $1 billion football palace. Jones’
Dallas Cowboys are terrible once again and have no hope of playing meaningful
games in their luxurious home venue any time soon, but Cowboys Stadium could
host a
superfight between UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva and Georges St.
Pierre some time in the next few months. If St. Pierre, the UFC welterweight
champion, defeats interim titleholder Carlos Condit on Nov. 17, the megafight
with Silva could happen at Cowboys Stadium, UFC president Dana White said
Wednesday. "If Georges St. Pierre against Anderson Silva were to happen,
that's the fight you could do at Cowboys Stadium," White said while
promoting UFC 154 in Montreal. "We've been talking to (Cowboys Stadium
officials) for a while. They're pumped and ready whenever we can bring an event
there. They're ready for it." Venues in Toronto and Brazil are also under
consideration if Cowboys Stadium doesn’t work out, but holding the event in
Dallas would offer a golden chance to shatter UFC’s attendance record of 55,724
people at Rogers Centre on April 30, 2011, when St. Pierre defeated Jake Shields
by unanimous decision at UFC 129. Before the Silva-St. Pierre fight can happen,
GSP will need to prove he is back to his usual self following a yearlong layoff.
"People keep asking me, 'Is the Anderson Silva fight happening next (for
St. Pierre)?' He's got to beat Carlos Condit first," White said.
"People are overlooking Carlos Condit, and that's a bad idea.” Staging an
event at Cowboys Stadium is a great idea, one that would continue to grow the
brand White has so successfully built to the point that it has blown right by
boxing as America’s most-popular combat sport……….
- Tolerance has gone AWOL in Morocco, where the government
has given the boot to 19 foreigners
who were in the annexed territory of the Western Sahara. The Moroccan
government claimed the 19 individuals were journalists who had entered without
permission and were therefore expelled from the country. Maybe these alleged
journalists should have known better, given Morocco’s raging oversensitivity
over any criticism of its policies in the mineral rich region, but predicting
this sort of overreaction is always difficult. Around the same time these
supposed media members were being shown the exit, domestic activists were busy
ramping up their calls for the independence of the Western Sahara and marking
the two-year anniversary of deadly clashes outside the regional capital,
Laayoune. Morocco's Interior Ministry issued a statement via its official state
news agency in which it quoted local authorities as saying the 15 Spanish and
four Norwegian journalists planned to meet with "separatist" elements
in Laayoune to engage in demonstrations on the anniversary of the clashes.
Either that or they were looking to cover the news that was happening, but
probably one or the other. "These journalists entered the national
territory without revealing their true identities, pretending to be on holiday
in the kingdom," said the statement. Spanish media characterized the
incident differently, reporting that most of those expelled Tuesday and
Wednesday were activists, not journalists. All of this drama stems from a day
of violence on Nov. 8, 2010, when police clashed with thousands of locals at
the tent city of Gdeim Izek who were protesting government discrimination. According
to Human Rights Watch, 11 police and two civilians were killed and Morocco
expelled three Spanish journalists following their coverage of the incident.
Morocco and Spain have lived in a state of perpetual tension since the former occupied
and annexed the mineral-rich Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in
November 1975 after the Spanish withdrew. The next step was the Polisario Front
declaring independence on behalf of the inhabitants, the nomadic Saharawi
people, and battling the Moroccan army until a 1991 truce brokered by the U.N.
However, the dispute is alive and well and remains one of the world's longest
unresolved conflicts. The U.N.’s official position is that a referendum should
be held for the locals to decide if they want independence, but the government
does not agree and in May officials criticized the special U.N. envoy, former
U.S. diplomat Christopher Ross, for being biased and called for his
replacement. One of the world’s longest-running disputes doesn’t look
poised to end any time soon………
- Maybe in the world’s FAT-test nation, laying off people
who want to grow their own vegetables on their own property is wise. City
ordinances and laws aside, is someone dropping a planter with tomatoes and
beans in their front yard or back yard really a major issue? It is right now in
Orlando, where a resident in the College Park neighborhood is facing the heat
from city hall because of a vegetable garden in his front yard. Jason Helvingston grows radishes,
wax beans and kale and while his plants do block the route to his front door,
it is his property and his front door. A 25-foot square micro-irrigated
vegetable garden is against city code, zoning officials have informed him, and
on Wednesday Helvingston was asked to dig it up. His response was simple: Hell
effing no. "I said, 'You'll take my house before you take my vegetable
garden,'" he said. "There's nothing wrong here, there's nothing
poisonous here. This is a sustainable plot of land." The applicable
city code in Helvingston’s case is a law mandating that ground covers to be
planted in a way that gives off a finished appearance so neighborhood lawns are
clean and inviting. It’s a draconian rule aimed at keeping property values up
and Helvingston is correct to fight for his right……to garden. So far, he has
gathered more than 200 signatures on a petition to change the code to allow for
vegetable gardens in front yards. His own neighbor has signed the petition and
if she’s not upset about the garden potentially lowering her property values,
then why should anyone else be?
"(I'm) definitely not bothered by
it. As a matter of fact, we love it," Shelly Snow said. Fighting
city hall with wax beans and kale just might be the new protest march……….
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