- People love Robert
Griffin III and not just kooks painting their faces yellow and maroon and
putting plastic pig snouts over their noses and paying $100 to see Griffin do
everything in his power to revive football in Washington, D.C. Griffin, who sat
out the Washington Redskins’ win Sunday in Cleveland while recovering from a
knee sprain, has led his team to an 8-6 record and a tie for first place in the
NFC East on the field. He has turned in a spectacular season running and
passing the ball and is the second-highest rated quarterback in the NFL. His
teammates respect him enough to vote him a team captain and his poise and
maturity have allowed him to blend in well in his first NFL season. Football
fans beyond the District are taking notice as well, as indicated by the fact
that the rookie quarterback's No. 10 jersey has sold more than any other
player's in a single season since the NFL started keeping track six years ago,
according to the league. The rankings are based on sales of jerseys on the
league's official Internet store, NFLshop.com, and while the league won't
provide figures, it has confirmed that Griffin has wrested the top spot on the
list for single-season jersey sales from the Ol’ Gunslinger, Brett Favre, who
previously held the record for most jerseys sold in a year twice -- with the
New York Jets in 2008 and the Minnesota Vikings in 2009. Griffin is holding off
another future Hall of Famer, new Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning,
whose Broncos jersey has become the fourth-highest seller. Further heightening
the impressive nature of Griffin’s popularity is the fact that the NFL's fiscal
year runs from April 1 to March 31, meaning that he has the league's
highest-selling jersey with 3½ months to spare and with the draft taking place
at the end of April, he didn’t even have a Redskins jersey number for the first
month of the fiscal year. All things RGIII are selling well, in fact, including
the line of socks that adidas started producing for the quarterback after
signing him to an endorsement deal………
- Carmageddon may have been a massive letdown for Southern
California residents the past two years, but the northern part of the state was
not so fortunate when a massive crater developed on Highway 4 near Pittsburg, in the Bay
Area. This über-pothole damaged more than two dozen cars in one day during a
recent storm and left cars with flat tires, broken headlines and in some
instances, stranded and waiting on a tow truck. A total of 25 cars were damaged
and those who found themselves with a mangled car are already lining up to join
a list of roughly 1,500 local drivers who file damage claims with the state
each year. In typical bureaucratic, B.S. red-tape fashion, Caltrans, the agency
responsible for highway maintenance, can take months to get around to repairing
a pothole after it has been reported. The agency estimates that it should take
10 days on average for maintenance crews to fill a pothole identified by
drivers through a service request, but government agencies actually meeting
established deadlines or guidelines for efficiency or timeliness is one of the
bigger jokes in all of public administration. Caltrans’ own records show that
the agency has paid more than a million dollars to Bay Area drivers filing
claims since 2009 and a pragmatic person might wonder if those dollars would
not be better spent doing maintenance work to prevent damages from occurring in
the first place. “Those are dollars that could be used for new roads and making
sure the right kind of infrastructure is in place for safety,” said Contra
Costa County Supervisor Federal Glover. “When you are paying out those types of
claims, it is a waste.” Still, Caltrans continues to stand behind the party
line that safety is its top priority, but if that were the case, would public records
show that there had been several requests for service along Highway 4 in
Pittsburg earlier this year? Probably not and then the Pothole from Hell
that already existed before the storm severely worsened it would not have
threatened to swallow entire cars whole……….
- Waaaaaiiiiiiiit a minute. Aerobic exercise is a viable
option for burning fat and losing weight? It falls on science to consistently
affirm the blatantly obvious and once again, the smart people in lab coats and
rocking pocket protectors have scored a direct hit by revealing that to burn fat
and lose weight, aerobic exercise beats resistance training (i.e. weight
lifting). "We not trying to discourage people from resistance
training," said study author Leslie Willis, clinical research coordinator
at Duke University Medical Center and an exercise physiologist. "If fat
mass is something a person wants to target, I would say your most
time-efficient method would be to focus on the cardiovascular exercise. Resistance
training did increase lean mass, but it doesn't change fat mass, so the pounds
didn't change.” While previous
studies have shown that resistance training has many benefits, including
improving blood sugar control, weight lifting’s impact on fat reduction has not
been studied as much up to this point. In this effort, Willis and her team compared
resistance training to aerobic exercise to determine which is best for weight
and fat loss. Their efforts zeroed in on those with a short amount of time for
physical activity and assigned 234 middle-aged men and women, all overweight or
obese, to one of three groups for the eight-month study. The
resistance-training group worked out three times a week using eight different
weight machines for approximately three hours total. Their counterparts in the aerobic
group put in about 12 miles a week on elliptical machines or treadmills and
exercised for about 133 minutes a week. A third group engaged in both aerobic
activity and resistance training for roughly the same amount of time. Of the
119 people who started the study, 119 completed it, which says something in and
of itself about Americans’ commitment to health and exercise. Those in the
aerobic group and combination group saw more body mass reduction and fat loss
than hose in the resistance group, with the aerobic group losing 3.8 pounds on
average and the combination group losing 3.6 pounds. Time to hit the
treadmill, America……..
- Let’s give it up for corruption. The world is swimming in
it and in fact, corruption is the single biggest import, export and domestic
product in virtually every developed nation around the globe. In a sad instance
of the trickle-down capability of financial fraud, corruption then filters to
the developing world and according to a new report by a corruption watchdog
group, crime,
corruption and tax evasion have cost the developing world nearly $6 trillion
over the past decade. With China leading the way, more than $858 billion in
dirty money flowed into tax havens and Western banks in 2010, according to Global
Financial Integrity, a Washington-based group that campaigns for financial
accountability. China accounted for almost half of that total and its
contribution was more than eight times the amounts for runners-up Malaysia and
Mexico. Across the board, total illicit outflows increased by 11 percent from
the prior year, making 2010 a banner year for fraud and corruption. "Astronomical
sums of dirty money continue to flow out of the developing world and into
offshore tax havens and developed country banks," said Raymond Baker,
director of GFI. "Developing countries are hemorrhaging more and more money
at a time when rich and poor nations alike are struggling to spur economic
growth. This report should be a wake-up call to world leaders that more must be
done to address these harmful outflows." The top 10 on the list saw some
new blood this time around as India, Nigeria, the Philippines and Nigeria joined
the ranks and while different in many ways, these nations all face significant (and
common) problems with corruption. Most nations on the list are plagued by
massive gaps between rich and poor citizens as well as internal security
problems. Where is the corrupt cash coming from? According to the report, the
10 countries with the highest measured illicit money outflows between 2001
and 2010 were, in order: China, Mexico, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Russia,
Philippines, Nigeria, India, Indonesia, United Arab Emirates. With these corrupt
countries leading the way and failing to crack down on money laundering, bank
secrecy and tax loopholes to prevent funds being stolen from public coffers,
the world average is $10 leaving foreign nations for every dollar in foreign
direct aid……..
- This story is confusing and not because a DJ was kicked
off the decks in Miami this weekend for playing a set that was “too confusing”
for the crowd. Giving DJ Shadow, a.k.a. Josh David, the boot at Miami’s Mansion
nightclub after the promoter approached him and informed him that he was
perplexing the crowd with his mix is confusing because who the hell can make
any sense of club music? Isn’t the entire point going out, getting a few drinks
in your system, ingesting Ecstasy or the current club drug of choice, peaking
on said drug and dancing like a careless lunatic to whatever repetitive,
electronic garbage is pumping through the speakers? No dance/techno music makes
any sense, so it seems bizarre that the promoted pulled Shadow aside as he was
playing Krampfhaft’s “Spit Thunder” and informed him that he didn’t need to go
home, but he couldn’t stay here. David then addressed the crowd, saying: “I’ve
waited a long time to play here, but they said this shit is too confusing for
all y’all.” The promoted made a call the to DJ bullpen and called in DJ No Máz,
fueling an angry post-gig tweet from David in which he wrote, “I don’t care if
I get kicked out of every rich kid club on the planet. I will never sacrifice
my integrity as a DJ…ever.” Yes, dude is arguing that DJs have integrity and
standards. Maybe he should have been more aware of the place he was spinning,
as the club in question has a history of booting DJs off the desks, including
an incident in which New York house DJ Dennis Ferrer had his set cut short for
not being “commercial” enough. Stay classy, Mansion nightclub……..
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