- Punk-popsters Blink 182 resurfaced last year after a
seven-year hiatus spent chasing solo projects and apparently, the reunited trio
developed different musical sensibilities during their time apart. According to
drummer
Travis Barker, the band’s next project will have a decidedly different slant
than anything they have produced before. After returning in 2011 with
“Neighborhoods,” an album that was laid down remotely, Barker claimed the band have
written a "very folky" new song. Set to be featured on the EP the
band are putting out over Christmas, the song will apparently be less punk rock
and more Mumford & Sons. “I don't even know. It's way out,” Barker said. “We
all had some ideas. I went in the studio and I was just playing around. I had
my electronic kit and I just played a straight drum pattern over it, and it
sounded crazy. It changed the entire shape of the song.” Ironically, the track
was recorded in a place where simpler and less produced are rarely seen: Los
Angeles. Barker believes the EP will be a major upgrade over “Neighborhoods,”
which is typically not a good thing for a band to say about an album it
released just one year ago. "To me already, this EP is a hundred times
better than 'Neighborhoods', because we're all in a room together,” he added. “There's
some songs on there that I love, but for the most part it was disconnected. It
was like, 'You do this part in your studio, and then you're gonna play on it
and send it back to me.' When we're not in the studio together, you don't have
the opportunity to gel off each other.” How the “folky” song is received will
go a long way toward determining whether or not Barker was full of sh*t when he
promised earlier this year that "the
best is yet to come" from the band. They have moved on from Interscope
Records and clearly, more changes are afoot……….
- There are few developments sadder than a person passing
away and having no one to whom they can leave their estate. When a person dies
and doesn’t have a relative or even friend close enough to them that they want
to leave this person their wealth and worldly possessions, it suggests a sad
and lonely ending to their life. Of course, that doesn’t mean someone can’t
benefit from this scenario and in the case of Belleair, Fla., it is the town
itself that will reap the rewards of one of its wealthiest citizens dying. John
Osborne recently passed away and when he did, he left his home and fortune to
the city. That left city officials with the decision of how to spend an extra $4 million dollars
bequeathed to them by Osborne’s will. Those who lived near Osborne had no idea
he was so wealthy and said that like many über-rich people, Osborne kept to
himself. “He was very much to himself,” neighbor John Sikorra said. "He
was very private. Nobody really knew him very well. He went to the
hospital and passed away about a week later." City officials had been
notified that the town might receive Osborne's home, but they had no idea that
millions of dollars would also be a part of the deal. “He calls me and he says,
'Are you sitting down?' I said, 'yeah.' He said, 'Mr. Osborne’s
estate is $4 million,” said Mayor Gary Katica of a call he received from his
town manager shortly after Osborne's passing. Osborne left literally everything
he owned to the town of Belleair and like any good politician, Katica is
already thinking of ways to waste, er, use the money. “The golf course is one
of the items that has come up," he said. Yes, purchasing a golf course to ensure
that it is never sold to developers is exactly what Osborne probably had in
mind. He likely just never got around to actually writing that stipulation into
his will. Other possibilities for the financial windfall include pay raises for
city employees and improving the town's infrastructure, with the latter seeming
to be the most practical option………
- Hopefully, everyone planning to fly to and backpack around
Europe in 2012 has gotten their travel adventures in by now, because trying to
ride the rails and low-budget one’s way around the continent could be extremely
difficult for the last seven weeks or so of the year. Travel to and in Europe
is a dicey proposition at the moment, with thousands of workers striking and
taking to
the streets to protest austerity measures aimed at reducing massive government
deficits and boosting shaky economies. Flights were disrupted and trains were
canceled across the continent Wednesday after unions called for strikes to
protest the trimming of government-funded salaries and pension benefits in an
attempt to solve debt problems in many countries. Italy and Spain were hit
hardest by the strikes, while union workers in Britain, Germany and Denmark
held rallies instead of walking off the job. Many major transport hubs were at
standstill across southern Europe and also in the north in places such as
Brussels, where airports and train stations shut down. The Thalys and Eurostar
high-speed rail services that connect Brussels with London and Paris were significantly
disrupted. Violent clashes between protesters and police were reported in Spain
and Italy, but most demonstrations remained disappointingly peaceful. Why are
the masses so angry? They view spending cuts, tax hikes and changes to labor
laws to allow businesses to better adjust to shaky economies as threats to
their way of life and a tactic that could have the side effect of worsening economies
by driving down individual incomes. "They've only just started cuts but
they are pretty draconian already," lamented Andrew Burgin, European
officer for the Coalition of Resistance in London, which organized a rally
outside the European Commission offices there. "I think this is the
beginning of a new movement. It will be a day remembers in history as the
beginning of a pan-European movement, possibly an international movement,
against capitalism." Those are heavy words, suggesting a potential
international movement against capitalism, but European leaders, such as Angela
Merkel of Germany, continue to point to the massive debts of nations including
Greece, Spain and Portugal as proof that more austerity measures are necessary.
Citizens in those countries are riled up because they are experiencing
curtailment of government health care, reductions in their pensions and salaries
and higher taxes. The wave of protest goodness did not have much effect in wealthier
states like the Netherlands and the Nordic nations in the north, which saw few
protests. Maybe protest tourism is the way to go for anyone still eager to
visit Europe this year………
- See, there really is a link between soccer and brain
damage. It may not be the link most Americans would suspect, namely that one
needs to have suffered major head trauma to watch and enjoy soccer or that
watching soccer permanently impairs brain function, but it’s still a link. Researchers
have discovered that repeated hits to the head that are below the threshold for
causing a concussion may still cause changes in the brain. This small study of
soccer players found that elite male soccer players – who often play the ball
with their heads – experienced. Dr. Inga Koerte of Harvard Medical Schools
Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory in Boston and her colleagues examined a
small number of athletes from both groups and found these differences even though
none of the participants in either group had a history of concussions. In their
cautious report, Koerte and her fellow researchers suggested that although it
is possible that frequent heading of the ball could explain the impairments in
the soccer players, "differences in head injury rates, sudden
accelerations, or even lifestyle could contribute.” Previous studies have
proven that repetitive traumatic brain injury can have negative long-term
consequence, but few studies have examined the issue of the effects of frequent
subconcussive head impacts. To measure these effects, Koerte and colleagues
used high-resolution diffusion tensor imaging, which can detect changes in
white matter structure. They studied 12 right-handed male soccer players from an
elite-level soccer club in Germany, all of whom had played soccer their entire
lives with the goal of playing professionally. Their mean age was 19.7 and
their average time playing soccer was more than 13 years. On the other side of
the study was a control group consisting of 11 competitive swimmers who were
matched by age, handedness, and sex. Both groups underwent diffusion tensor
imaging to measure markers of mild traumatic brain injury and axonal and myelin
pathology and even after adjustment for age and years of training, the soccer
players showed increased radial diffusivity in multiple brain areas. This
condition has also has been seen in patients with mild traumatic brain injury
and suggests possible demyelination, according to the researchers. Unfortunately,
the researchers could not prove a definitive link between heading the soccer
ball and changes in white matter architecture, so as always, science’s biggest
success remains in producing results that demand further study and more money
being spent……..
- NBA All-Star
Game voting will look much different this year and balloting for the 2013
incarnation of the league’s defense-free, meaningless exhibition game that is
more of an excuse for a weekend of parties than it is about basketball will
have a very tech-friendly slant. Voting is underway and for the first time,
fans will be able to cast their votes using social media. Both Twitter and
Facebook will be avenues to vote for players on the 120-player ballot,
featuring 60 players from each conference. The ballots were unveiled Tuesday in
Houston, site of the All-Star Game on Feb. 17, 2013. Fans will be able to vote
for one player a day simply by tweeting that player’s first and last name along
with the hashtag NBABALLOT. The league has developed a custom application on
Facebook that allows fans to fill out one full ballot per day, so fans with an
addiction to their smartphone or tablet and that device’s social media apps can
vote using both methods on a given day. There will still be the tradition means
of voting, true old-school techniques like visiting NBA.com or by texting the
player's last name to 6-9-6-2-2 (MYNBA). When voting, fans will also see a
different ballot composition than ever before after the NBA announced last
month than the center position would no longer appear on the ballot and
instead, players would be selected as either guards of front-court players
(with forwards and centers in one group), Balloting runs through Jan. 14 and the
starters will be announced on Jan. 17.……….
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