- Down but not officially out for good. Former
No. 1 overall pick Greg Oden may be AWOL from the NBA right now, but he is
reportedly set on resuming his career. While he is not planning to return to
the NBA before the 2013-14 season, sources have reported that multiple teams
already have expressed interest in signing Oden before the end of this season.
He is currently taking classes at Ohio State, where he played one season before
turning pro, and rehabbing in an effort to get back on the court after three microfracture
surgeries. He has not played since Dec. 5, 2009 and in two NBA seasons, he appeared
in just 82 games with the Portland Trail Blazers while suffering from a myriad
of knee injuries. In spite of that, several teams are reportedly interested in inking
him to a multiyear deal that would allow him to continue his rehab until he can
get back on the court in training camp in the fall. Better still for Oden, one
of his chief suitors also happens to be the defending NBA champion, the Miami
Heat. The Heat have reportedly kept tabs on Oden as he rehabs and he could fit
into one of two roster spots available this season. With his latest
microfracture surgery one year behind him, Oden is the very sort of long shot
that Heat team president Pat Riley is known to gamble on. However, the
franchise is already committed to more than $80 million in salaries for next
season and could take a large hit when the new, more harsh luxury tax kicks in.
Even on a minimum-level contract, Oden could be a high-risk signing. He and his
camp are planning a conservative approach to getting back on the court,
including sitting out the rest of this season and summer league to make sure he
allows himself the best chance of finally getting healthy. Very few NBA players
have successfully returned from microfracture surgery, so the odds against Oden
remain steep at best………
- Czech politics just became that much more awesome. The
tattooed sweetness that is opera composer and painter Vladimir Franz has injected life and
intrigue into this week's Czech presidential elections. Franz, tattooed from
head to toe, sports blue, green and red ink on every visible surface of his
body and as such, he seems like an unlikely candidate for a prestigious post
previously held by beloved playwright-dissident Vaclav Havel and acclaimed
professor Vaclav Klaus, who is credited with guiding the nation through he
economic transition from communism to a free market. Some voters have dubbed
him “Avatar” for his resemblance to the blue Navi people in James Cameron’s
blockbuster film and during one televised debate a caller compared him to
"an exotic creature from Papua New Guinea." Despite the doubters,
Franz has found support from voters who are tired of the same old suit-wearing,
corrupt politicians who fail to deliver on years of promises. The Czech
Republic is more than two decades past the fall of communism, yet corruption is
still prevalent. Franz is viewed by some as a breath of fresh air because he has
no political experience and confesses to little knowledge of economics. He even
admitted he only entered the race after a group of admirers established the
Franz for President initiative and begged him to get involved. After he
consented, a leading economist offered his services for free and his campaign
workers are all volunteers. He has no party affiliation and has spent $25,000
from donations on his campaign, not putting up any campaign posters or
advertisements. One commodity he does have is a healthy distaste for the
political system, spiced up by his willingness to speak his mind bluntly. "The
(political) system is so enchanted with itself that it's lost the ability to
self-reflect," he said. “Czechs are fed up with this crap." He has
proven popular, unsurprisingly, with young voters and is projected to win
around 11 percent in the first round of the election, which wouldn’t be enough to
make the runoffs but could put him in a position to swing the election
depending on who his supporters reassemble behind once he is eliminated. Regardless
of the result, the election is noteworthy because it is the first time the
Czech president will be elected in a popular vote………
- The demand is there and now, the supply is on hand as
well. Dudes have long needed to protect their philandering way from their
ladies, but the question of how to best hide text messages and calls from one’s
numerous mistresses has always been difficult to answer. The ironic answer
could be eschewing the latest 4G smartphone and sticking with the
aging flip-phone. Fujitsu Ltd.'s older "F-Series" phones are giving
unfaithful Japanese men the protection they need from prying eyes. The phones feature
some attractive stealth privacy features, including a privacy mode, a layer of
nearly invisible security that hides missed calls, emails and text messages
from contacts designated as private. If one of those side pieces contacts their
secret lover, the only way the phone shows the contact is a subtle change in
the color or shape of how the battery sign or antenna bars are displayed.
Perhaps the cheating guy ignores the call because he’s with one of his other
ladies and in that case, the missed call doesn't appear in the phone log.
Unless his wife or other girlfriend is a trained spy looking for these very
clues, there is no way the phone will give up the secret. Only when the privacy
mode is turned off through a secret combination of keys do the concealed calls
and messages appear and voicemail becomes accessible. For now, these useful
features work only on older phones and not on the iPhone or smartphones running
Google's Android operating system. Fujitsu started offering the privacy mode as
part of more stringent security requirements for all phones offered by NTT
DoCoMo Inc., Japan's largest carrier, with senior DoCoMo executive Takeshi
Natsuno explaining that he insisted on tougher security after hearing too many
stories of couples splitting or workers landing in hot water because they left
their phones out and unguarded. "If Tiger Woods had this Japanese feature
in his phone, he wouldn't have gotten in trouble," Natsuno said. Sadly,
the push toward smartphones for all is steering Fujitsu away from the old,
privacy-enabled phones. The company has added some of the privacy features to
its smartphone lineup, but the technology is still lagging slightly behind the
pace at the moment……
- Andy Samberg has moved on from “Saturday Night
Live” and he needs his next gig. He may have found it if his new endeavor with Fox pans out.
After departing his gig at “SNL” last May, Samberg has bumped around in a few
small projects over the past few months but is now set to star in a pilot for a
comedy series on Fox, one penned by the writing duo of Mike Shur and Dan Goor
of NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.” Samberg’s
as-of-yet untitled series is Fox’s first pilot order for fall 2013 and is billed
as a single-camera comedy about "diverse group of detectives in a precinct
at the very edge of New York City.” Yes, it’s another cop-centric show,
although given Samberg’s presence one could wisely guess that it won't be
another “Law & Order” or “CSI.” Shur and Goor reportedly wrote the role of
the lead detective specifically for Samberg and although the cop show concept
has been done to death, the idea of putting a comedic slant on it at least
gives the series a chance to be slightly different than the rest of the pack. Fox
has been losing ground to competitors such as ABC and NBC of late, so hitting
on as many of its new series for the fall as possible is vital for the network
at this point. Hopefully Samberg’s recent efforts directing fake toe-puppet
movies for Windows Phone commercials have kept him sharp and he’ll be on point
once his new series begins shooting later this year……..
- A potentially sour situation is unfolding this weekend
in Waukesha, Wisc. No,
perfectly good beer or fried cheese curds are not going to waste. Instead, tens of thousands of gallons of milk are stuck
inside the closed-down Golden Guernsey Dairy plant. The plant was closed
suddenly, so suddenly that the last of its products were never shipped out.
Unlike some less-perishable products, milk has a short window for use and that
means time is already running out. Donating it to schools or soup kitchens in
need seems like an obvious fit and some of the plant’s former employees are
partnering with community members to find a way to get the unused milk into the
hands of those in need. There are also stockpiles of cottage cheese, butter and
eggs, all of which have been refrigerated since the dairy suddenly closed and
filed for bankruptcy late last week. "The waste is terrible, all that
product sitting in that cooler, There's probably 150,000, 200,000 gallons of
product in there. They're going to waste. It could've been sold to make more
money to pay us," Golden Guernsey worker Robert Storm said. The bad news
is that the forgotten dairy products are now under control of a bankruptcy
court appointed trustee in New Jersey and that ass-hatted trustee doesn’t sound
amenable to doing anything with the items. "With regard to milk and foods
and liquids, anything ingested by anyone, children or adults, it's not worth,
as far as I'm concerned, what I might collect to take that chance that someone
might get sick," court-appointed trustee Charles Stanziale Jr. said. Maybe
the voice of reason - Milwaukee's Hunger Task Force director Sherrie Tussler
will be able to convince stodgy Stanziale Jr. to reconsider. "Having a
full gallon of milk for every mom in need in the city of Milwaukee would just
be a godsend," Tussler said. She plans to approach Stanziale and convince him that refusing to
give the dairy products away over liability concerns is imbecilic because of a
state law protecting donors of food products if they're given in good
faith.
[
"It's disturbing to know that a dairy is closed in Wisconsin, and
it's full of milk, and we're sitting here in Milwaukee in need of milk, a
truckload of milk, and we can't get access to the milk," Tussler said.
Well said………
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