- Chip Kelly has big plans to ramp up the tempo for the
Philadelphia Eagles this season. The men in stripes may not be down with those
plans. NFL referees may stand in the way of the first-year NFL coach’s high-octane offense that attempts to
force the pace of games and light up the scoreboard. Since Kelly’s hiring,
analysts and fans have wondered whether Kelly's fast-paced attack would work as
well at the professional level as it did in college. The powers that be have
their own concerns. "We have to make sure teams understand that they don't
control the tempo, our officials do," NFL vice president of officiating
Dean Blandino said. "We're going through our normal ball mechanics, we
aren't going to rush [unless] it's in the two minute drill." Kelly’s
Oregon team ran 1,077 plays in just 13 games last season (82.8 per game), a
tota that would have ranked seventh (just two total plays behind the Eagles'
1,079) in the NFL's 16-game schedule last season. The fastest offense in the
NFL last season was the New England Patriots, who led the league with 1,191
plays (74.4 per game). Kelly’s stated goal is to run a play every 12 seconds, a
goal he reinforces in practice by having assistants calling in plays via
elaborate hand signals from the sidelines. His playbook is immense and players
are constantly moving. That’s fine in practice, but Blandino said he has
informed each team's coaching staff that teams will not be able to snap the
ball until a referee gives the signal. He added that the NFL's competition
committee made it a point to "re-emphasize" that NFL rules differ
from college after several NFL teams used up-tempo attacks last season. League
rules also mandate that a defense must be allowed to make substitutions if the
offense substitutes its own players, no matter how quickly the offense makes
its changes. Referees stand over the ball to make sure the offense doesn’t snap
it before the defense it set………
- Score one for gluttony. New York City restaurants can continue
massive, sugary beverages thanks to the judicial heroes on the bench at the New
York Supreme Court's Appellate Division. The court on Tuesday affirmed a lower
court ruling that found the city's restrictions on such beverages to be
"arbitrary and capricious." The judges found that the city's Board of
Health "failed to act within the bounds of its lawfully delegated
authority" when officials took steps to ban sugary drinks of more than 16
ounces in New York City restaurants, movie theaters and other food service
establishments. In official legal terms, the court declared the regulation to
be a violation of the principle of separation of powers doctrine. The doctrine
establishes boundaries between the legislature and an administrative agency,
such as a health board that tries to go nanny state and rip Big Gulps from
citizens’ hands. It is the legislature that wields legislative power, according
to the appellate decision, meaning board members cannot engage in broad-based
public policy determinations and "cannot exercise sweeping power to create
whatever rule they deem necessary." The board’s 11 members should remember
going forward that, according to the court, they are empowered to modify the
health code only with "respect to all matters to which the power and
authority of New York City Department of Mental Health and Hygiene extend.”
That includes Article 81 of the health code, which sets forth rules regulating
"food service establishments." Predictably, Mayor Michael Bloomberg
was pissed off about the decision and vowed to enforce his sovereign will on the
people of his city regardless. "Today's decision is a temporary setback,
and we plan to appeal this decision as we continue the fight against the
obesity epidemic," he said. Whatever you say, Emperor Bloomberg………
- Try to imagine the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise
without Johnny Depp. At this point, the concept is virtually impossible. Depp
IS the franchise and even if the movies continue to decrease in quality as the
series moves forward, he’s the biggest star and the only major star who has
appeared in all four of the films. That makes his revelation that he came
extremely close to being fired from the first movie in the franchise, “Pirates
of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.” Depp explained that Disney
executives were perplexed by his eccentric performance as Captain Jack Sparrow, which he based
on the persona of legendary Rolling Stones guitarist "They couldn't
understand what I was doing. You know? To the point where Disney wanted to –
wanted to fire me. They didn't understand the character. They were actually
contemplating subtitling the film," Depp said. Richards appeared in the
third movie in the series, but acting like him nearly cost Depp what has become
one of the most lucrative roles in cinema. "I was probably as close to
getting fired as anyone could be. I spoke to one of the execs at the time and
said, 'You're right, you should fire me – but you'll have to pay me for my
time,’” Depp recalled. Keeping him around turned out to be a very fiscally wise
move, as “Pirates Of The Caribbean:
The Curse Of The Black Pearl” became one of the biggest box office hits of 2003
and Depp earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as Sparrow.
Three sequels have followed and two of them have banked in excess of $1 billion
worldwide. The fourth sequel (and most unnecessary yet) is scheduled to make
its blatant cash grab/hit a theater near you in July 2015……..
- Facebook’s stock offering and bottom line since that offering haven't
been impressive. Its stock has gone down in value, all the cool kids are using
Twitter, Instagram and Vine more these days and Facebook needs to find ways to
stay relevant (and make money). To that end, the social networking site is branching
out into the mobile games business. Facebook announced a new pilot program
Tuesday that it hopes will expand its services beyond the position of games
platform to that of promoter and publisher. Dubbed Mobile Games Publishing, the
program will allow it to promote small- and medium-sized games and take a cut of
the sales in return. "We are invested in the success of these games, and
in exchange for a revenue share, we will be collaborating deeply with
developers in our program by helping them attract high-quality, long-term
players for their games," Facebook said in a blog post. After the
announcement, shares of Facebook stock rose 5.6 percent to $37.43, which still
isn’t equal to the company's IPO price of $38. Facebook remains the world's
largest social network and will use its massive 800-plus million monthly users
of its mobile apps as a captive audience to promote these games. Games were
integral in the company posting solid second-quarter results last week and its payments
revenue increased 11 percent, with games accounting for 7 percent of that
revenue. The first 10 developer participants in the gaming program are: 5th
Planet, Brainbow, Certain Affinity, Dragonplay, Gameloft, Gamevil, KiwiGames,
Outplay Entertainment, Space Ape and WeMade Entertainment………
- Being a douche bag comes naturally for Africa’s oldest
head of state. Zimbabwean dictator Bob Mugabe was re-elected five years ago
after unleashing a series of violent attacks against opposition candidate
Morgan Tsvangirai. Tsvangirai survived at least three assassination attempts,
including one in which unidentified assailants tried to throw him from a 10th
floor office window, and was also savagely beaten by police. With another
election approaching that he needs to rig, the 89-year-old Mugabe is deploying
a different tactic to extend his 33-year reign of terror: a sex scandal. This
time around, Tsvangirai’s alleged affair with a South African woman is the
subject of a series of ads on the country’s state-controlled and only
television station. An ad by Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party features footage of
Tsvangirai’s Nosipho Shilubane, Tsvangirai’s reported lover. Shilubane
denounced Tsvangirai in an interview last year, saying he told her to be
patient, only to dump her via a text message. “I received a message from an
unknown number that said the relationship was terminated,” Shilubane said. “At
an age of 60, you dump women with SMSes? Then what do the young ones do?” It’s
a good point because a dumping via text is a scumbag move at any age. A second
ad features two female actors saying they couldn’t vote for Tsvangirai “in good
conscience” because he is “busy impregnating 20-year-old girls and then
refusing to take care of those kids.” A spokesman for Tsvangirai’s Movement for
Democratic Change mocked the ads as “desperate” and said Tsvangirai has asked the
electorate to “make a choice between despair and hope.” “If you want hope, a
better life and freedom then vote for the MDC, but if you want the status quo
of suffering then vote for Zanu-PF,” Tsvangirai said at a recent rally. The
opposition leader became a widower when his wife Susan died in a 2009 car
crash and he married the much younger Elizabeth Macheka, 35, in 2011. He
won the first round of the 2008 presidential election, but Mugabe’s crusade
of violence only worsened. At least this time around, his scum-baggery has
evolved a bit………
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