- Welcome to the club, Cinmeon Bowers. That would be the club
of athletes who have responded with, um, less than top-notch intelligence when
it comes to reacting when the police come knocking and they are in possession
of marijuana. Because so many athletes enjoy toking up, a few are bound to have
encounters with John Q. Law while they have a blunt, dime bag or half-smoked
fattie in their possession. What’s a baller to do when he or she is holding an illegal
substance and doesn’t want to go to jail? For Bowers and two of his friends,
the answer was simple. When the junior college baller and Florida State recruit
and two teammates were pulled over for a speeding violation, officers smelled
marijuana coming from the car. To prevent the law from stealing their stash,
Bowers and Chipola College teammates Torian Graham, 20, and Jamaar
McKay-Taylor, 19, ate the marijuana in an attempt to conceal it from the
officers, according to a police statement. Yes, because munching on your ganja
before baking it into a brownie or other dessert item is always a good idea. That
in no way will make a person sick and/or lead to them being charged with
tampering with evidence and taken to the Jackson County Correctional Facility.
Amazingly enough, all three players have been suspended indefinitely by Chipola
College until the legal process plays out. The conversation inside the car in
between the time the flashing lights went on in the rearview and the time the
officer reached the driver’s side window must have been some real Mensa-level
dialogue. As expected, Florida State coach Leonard Hamilton said the school
will wait until the legal process plays out before making any decision. No such
wait is necessary to know that while stoners are geniuses at crafting a bong
out of literally any household item, they’re absolute fools when it comes to
reacting in pressure situations when their stash of the sticky icky is about to
be discovered…………
- The only African-American Republican in the Senate is
attempting to stay above the fray after being accused of being a new-age Uncle
Tom by the NAACP. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) said he had no plans to "reflect seriously" on
comments made by a civil rights activist who accused him of being a puppet for
the tea party. Scott, speaking on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, instead tried to
keep the focus on the man being honored by the holiday. "Instead, I will
honor the memory of Dr. King by being proactive in holding the door for others
and serving my fellow man," Scott said in a statement. "And Rev.
(William) Barber will remind me and others of what not to do." Barber is the
president of the North Carolina NAACP, but made his inflammatory statements in
a speech at a church in the senator's home state of South Carolina. "A
ventriloquist can always find a good dummy," Barber said, adding that the
extreme right in the state basically hand-picked Scott to be its stool pigeon
on the Senate and spout its über-conservative agenda in Washington. Those words
came as part of a diatribe in which Barber ripped African-Americans who he said
aren't following in the spirit of King, including black youths who kill each
other and those "who wear their pants down to their knees.” Grouping
killers, senators and wearers of saggy pants is a pretty broad generalization,
especially for someone who belongs to a race that has been the target of a slew
of ugly and hateful generalizations over the year. Best of all, Scott said in
his statement that he has never met Barber. Tearing into someone you’ve never
met is always a foolproof strategy…for saying something asinine and
regrettable. Scott added that to “reflect seriously on the comments a person, a
pastor that is filled with baseless and meaningless rhetoric would be to do a
disservice to the very people who have sacrificed so much and paved a way.” For
once, a senator (sort of) takes the high road. So amazingly rare……..
- Is one of the biggest rock bands of this generation simply
too busy with its own solo projects to come together for a new album? According
to Radiohead
guitarist Colin Greenwood, he and his
bandmates may simply be going in too many different directions to find a
mutually available time for a new project. Greenwood cited the respective side
projects of Radiohead’s members as the primary reason they have yet to get
working on the follow-up to their 2011 album “King of Limbs.” He insisted the quintet
are eager to make new music together but are currently enjoying some
down time following the tour to promote “Limbs.” "It's all up in the air
at the minute. Thom's just come back from touring Atoms For Peace and he's
having some quiet time,” Greenwood said. “I'm sorry to be vague but we're all
just taking it easy at the moment. Just enjoying being at home and hanging out
really. But at the same time, the vibe is very much Oxford and all good. It's
like that." Like any successful rock star, Greenwood knows that fans would
love to hear that Radiohead are hard at working writing, brainstorming and
putting in late nights at the studio in search of their next great release.
Hearing that your favorite band is getting older and enjoys being at home
chilling with their families and relaxing doesn’t exactly inspire enthusiasm in
the masses. On top of that, listen to how cheery and positive Greenwood sounds
– not exactly fitting for a member one of the most mopey, melodramatic rock
bands around. “We definitely want to do it all again but we've just got to give
it some time for the dust to settle. What I'm trying to say is everyone's very
happy and positive and looking forward to the next adventure,” Greenwood
added………
- Surprise, surprise. In a stunning twist of irony, a prominent Chinese
anti-corruption activist and legal scholar is on trial accused of organizing
demonstrations demanding the authorities obey their own transparency laws. The
Communist Party does not take well to anyone suggesting it should actually
abide by the laws it establishes, so Xu Zhiyong, the leader of a moderate
reformist group, was arrested in July for organizing small protests. The goal
of the protest was to demand that government officials declare their income and
assets. Xu’s supporters argue that his efforts have exposed shortcomings in
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-corruption policy. The government
claims that the law has led to the takedown of 20,000 crooked officials. Xu is
an unofficial representative of a group of activists and social media
campaigners facing a secretive government crackdown because of their outspoken
ways. Xu’s trial is the first major dissident case since Xi took power and
is drawing more international attention than any Chinese judicial proceedings
since Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo was locked up for subversion in December
2008. The drama around Xu ratcheted up in August when he managed to record a
message on an iPhone smuggled into the prison in which he appealed for
democracy. In the 60-second recording, he said he would "sacrifice
anything" for "freedom, public good and faith." His group, the
New Citizens Movement, seeks to work within the current system to affect change.
In 2010, he was even elected to a local Beijing district legislature as an
independent. He campaigned on the closure of illegal detention centers and
equal education rights for China’s migrant population. He established the New
Citizens Movement in 2010 and initially expressed hope that Xi’s rise to power
would be positive news for anti-corruption advocates. Instead, 16 activists
have been detained in the anti-anti-establishment crackdown. As one would
expect, most Chinese trials end in a conviction and that means Xu is likely
headed for five long years in a Chinese labor camp……..
- Men, the time has come to get up off your fat ass. So says
the American Heart Association. The AHA wants men to know that the risk
of heart failure in men – even those who exercise regularly – increases with
sitting for long periods of time. Researchers discovered that preventing
heart failure requires a two-part approach combining two obvious techniques to
combat idleness: increased physical activity and decreased levels of sedentary
time. Amazingly, in an age when there are hordes of researchers probing
every angle of every topic – important or not – this is actually the first
study to investigate the link between heart failure and sedentary time,
according to lead researcher Deborah Rohm Young, Ph.D. Young, who is also a senior
scientist at Kaiser Permanente in Pasadena, Calif., and her colleagues came to
a simple conclusion after doing their work: “Be more active and sit less.
That’s the message here,” Young said. For the project, t he researchers
tracked a racially varied group of 84,170 men ages 45 to 69 without heart
failure. They calculated exercise levels via a metabolic equivalent of task
(METS), a measure of the body’s energy use. They factored in participants’
sedentary levels in terms of hours and some eight years of follow-up work
later, they found that men with low levels of physical activity were 52 percent
more likely to develop heart failure than those men with high physical activity
levels. Men who spent five or more hours sitting down each day outside of work
were 34 percent more likely to develop heart failure than men who spent no more
than two hours a day sitting, regardless of the time they spent exercise. Worse
still, the risk of heart failure increased twofold in men who sat for at least
five hours a day and did less exercise than men who were very physically active
and sat for two hours or fewer each day. From the results of the study, Young
and her team issued statement in support of the AHA’s recommendation that men
and women get at least 150 minutes per week of moderate-intensity aerobic
activity to decrease their risk for heart failure and other cardiovascular
diseases……….
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