- The Los Angeles Clippers will likely never match the 16
championship banners and 10 retired uniforms their Staples Center co-tenants
boast. The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the most decorated franchises in all
of professional sports and even though their NBA little brother, the Clippers,
are the better team right now, historically the team in purple and gold is
vastly superior. So what are the Clippers to do as they begin a new regime
under their first-year coach Doc Rivers and seek to step out of big brother’s
shadow? How about cover up the Lakers' championship banners and retired
uniforms during Clippers home games? That sounds like a win, right? The
part-time arena makeover debuted during a preseason game Friday, with giant
posters of players Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan, Jamal Crawford,
Matt Barnes, Jared Dudley and J.J. Redick over the Lakers' memorabilia. The two
teams have shared the Staples Center since it opened for the 1999-2000 season,
making them the only teams in the league to have such an arrangement. When
asked about the new decorations, the Lakers didn’t sound too pleased,
especially not L.A. native, and former Clipper, Nick Young. "He can do
that?" Young said of Rivers. "For real? That's disrespectful. We got
to talk to Doc. He can't have that. We got to do something about that." It
was suggested to Young that Rivers' championship resume from his time with the
Boston Celtics gave him that necessary gravitas to make the changes, but Young
countered, "But he didn't win no title in L.A. That's where it's at. Look
at all these banners in here, you can't shadow those up." Lakers point
guard Steve Nash was more diplomatic and given that Kobe Bryant won't be back
any time soon and the Lakers are a shell of their former selves, that’s probably
smart. "I guess if you were in the Clippers' organization you probably
want to do that, too," Nash said. "It's their arena on their night,
so I would try to make it feel like home." Well played, Steve-O………
- Gold dig time in India, booyah! On the surface (pun
intended), it might seem ridiculous to launch a massive dig based simply on a
tip from a
holy man who said he dreamed 1,000 tons of gold was buried at a random site,
that’s precisely what the Indian government did over the weekend. The dream from
Swami Shoban Sarkar indicated that the treasure was buried near an ancient
temple. As the swami tells it, he was approached in a dream by a 19th century
ruler called Rao Ram Bux Singh and the Singh-meister informed him about the $40
billion bonanza buried near an ancient temple. Showing his
unselfishness/insanity, Sarkar did not keep the mystical vision to himself even
though he has no money, land or bank account. He took his found wisdom to the Archaeological
Survey of India (ASI) in the hope the gold could solve India’s economic crisis.
The agency could have blown off the suggestion as the delusional raving of a
nut job, but political pressure compelled the ASI has decided to see if
Sarkar’s dream checks out. This expedition based on insanity is taking place in
the village of Daundia Khera, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, began
Friday. "I cried the day I realized that India is going to collapse
economically," Sarkar said. "It is a hidden treasure for the
country." A crew of a dozen labors sent by the ASI arrived at the site on
Thursday and cordoned it off with a bamboo fence. Gawkers with nothing better
to do have begun showing up at the site to see if there is any progress and the
work crew is following Sarkar’s directions to dig in an area based on a shadow
cast by the nearby temple. They will waste their time, effort and energy to
uncover two 100-square meter areas beside the building. In an attempt to cover
its own ass, the ASI said the project is not based entirely on the holy man’s
foresight. Director General BR Mani used a fictional geological survey
following the claims to back up the idea that there could be precious material
at the site. “We’ve responded to a report by the ministry of culture,” he said.
“[The report] has observations by the Geological Survey of India that there
could be some metal bounty under the earth. So the team is in the field.” Way
to behave like a financially secure world power, India……..
- The Amazon rainforest may not be as diverse as is widely
assumed. Sure, the massive natural wonder is home to about
16,000 tree species, but a new study suggests that a mere 227
"hyperdominant" species account for half of Amazonia's total trees. After
painstaking research, an international team of researchers found that the
region is home to an estimated 390 billion trees. However, t the rarest 11,000
species made up only 0.12 percent of tree cover. Their findings are based on a
survey of 1,170 plots and half-a-million trees across the six-million-square-kilometer
area often described as the lungs of the world. Unfortuantely, the authors were
unable to determine the hyper dominance of the 227 species, which accounted for
1.4 percent of the estimated number of species in the region. "We knew
that, normally, a few species dominate ecosystems, but if you have a system
that has 16,000 tree species but just 227 make up half of the trees, that was
pretty surprising even for us," said lead author Dr. Hans ter Steege from
the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands. "We don't really
know why these species are so incredibly dominant because they do not have any
particular ecological feature that stands out." Ter Steege and the team of
more than 100 scientists concluded that two key functional traits for trees -
seed mass and wood density - played a part in determining what species
dominated the landscape. The most dominant species was indentified as Euterpe
precatoria, a palm tree native to central and southern America, boasting a
population of more than 5 million trees within Amazonia. On the opposite end of
the spectrum, the rarest 5,800 species had communities with fewer than 1,000
individuals. Those species identified as hyperdominant were found to be "disproportionately resistant to
pathogens, specialist herbivores and other sources of frequency-dependent
mortality,” according to the researchers……..
- New York City has hundreds of great live music venues both
large and small, but its best and brightest are disappearing at a disturbing
rate. In 2006, iconic punk rock venue C.B.G.B.’s on the Lower East Side in the
Bowery closed due to a rent dispute between owner Hilly Kristal and the local
residents’ commission. Earlier this year, the New York City Council gave the
world’s most famous arena, Madison Square Garden, 10 years to find a new
location so it could expand Penn Station, which rests below the arena. Now, the
historic Roseland
Ballroom will close in April, ending its 56-year run on 52nd Street. The
3,500-seat venue, which is owned by developer Larry Ginsberg and is booked by
Live Nation, was originally located on 51st Street, where it opened in 1919.
The second version opened in 1958 and has morphed from a ballroom dancefloor in
the 1920s to a venue for rock n' roll, disco, grunge. Of late, it has become a
popular stop for the rising crop of electronic and dance music artists. Its
closing might have come much sooner had the venue not spent more than $1
million on new production and rigging in the early '90s to upgrade its
facilities and make it a viable stop for a litany of high-profile acts,
including rock icons Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Along the way,
well-known acts including The Rolling Stones, Madonna and Radiohead have also
played there. The best of the best may not have Roseland Ballroom as the first
stop on their world tours, but even with a cycle of artists including Jessie
Ware, The Wanted and Panic! At the Disco rolling through, it wouldn’t seem like
the ballroom was on its last legs. So far, venue officials haven't officially
confirmed the shutdown, but once they do, tickets for the remaining shows will
likely become much bigger gets and a few A-list acts might decide to make one
final trip to midtown Manhattan………
- What’s a trip to a C-level seafood restaurant without a
nice dose of blatant racism? For Franklin, Tenn. Resident Devin Barnes, it’s
pertinent question because it is Barnes who stands accused of
scribbling the N-word on a receipt that waitress Toni Christina Jenkins said a
customer left for her last month at the Red Lobster restaurant where she works.
Barnes says he has been falsely accused and vows to sue the franchise in the
coming week. Jenkins turned the situation from an ugly, unknown incident into
national news when she posted a picture of the receipt on Facebook Sept. 10
with the words “none” on the “tip” line and the N-word on the “total” line at
the Franklin, Tenn., restaurant. “I was just stunned that it happened,” Jenkins
said. “It’s not something that you think in our generation would actually take
place, so I was just blown away by it.” Tracing the receipt back to Barnes
wasn’t difficult and he admitted writing “none” on the tip line but says he
left the “total” line blank and signed his name. Either he sucks at math and couldn’t
add the zero dollars he left as a tip to the total of his meal or he wrote the
N-word and now knows what an ass hat he looks like….or the always-elusive random
stranger who hijacked his receipt and scrawled a heinously racist term on it. His
father called him, asking, ‘What happened? Someone wrote the N-word on your
receipt,’” Barnes said. “I thought he was lying. But I pulled it up on her
[Jenkins] Facebook page and just thought, ‘I didn’t write this, I don’t know
who wrote it.” Regardless of the author, the incident inspired complete
strangers around the United States to donate more than $10,000 to Jenkins and
excoriate Barnes online. Because the receipt contained confidential information
about Barnes, he had to change his banking information and order a new debit
card – and deal with a few harmless death threats. His continues to insist that
he didn’t leave a tip because he and his wife were in a hurry and needed to
leave. His attorney/pastor (true story) Richard Dugger advised him to sue Red
Lobster over the story and he has already submitted handwriting samples to a
forensic document examiner in an attempt to prove his innocence.……
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