- Give new NBA commissioner Adam Silver credit – just not for
honesty. The commish, like everyone else around the league, is well aware that
some teams are terrible this season and those teams do not appear to have made
much of an effort to put together a roster that would allow them to win games
any time soon. To the realist, assembling a crappy roster and watching as that
roster gets its skull caved in game after game is tanking, regardless of
whether the terrible players on the court try to win or not. NBA sycophants do
their best to argue that signing has-beens, never-weres and hacks and allowing
them to lose 80 percent of their games is merely some teams’ way of building
for the future – by sucking now. It’s all a game of semantics and Silver is
choosing to play the game by living in denial. “What is going on is rebuilding.
And we have a system right now that incentivizes teams to rebuild. There’s a
sense that you’re better off rebuilding in some cases from scratch than
remaining mediocre,” Silver said during an event in Boston on Wednesday. “I think it’s important to clarity what we
all mean by tanking. Where I grew up tanking meant the coach and the players or
some subset of that group were intentionally trying to lose a game. I don’t
think that’s going on anywhere in the NBA and I would take action immediately
if I thought it was.” Nice try, A. It doesn’t matter if the players are trying
to win because they're not the ones running the team. If an owner puts together
an F+ team and then tries to ride that team to a top lottery pick with 70
losses, that too is tanking. The Philadelphia 76ers planned to be bad and they’ve
lost 18 in a row and counting. The Orlando Magic planned to be bad and they’re
19-47 and sinking fast. No one can conscionably argue that either of them built
a team designed to win games this season and suggesting that they are
attempting to be good this year is as disingenuous as asking fans to pay top
dollar for tickets to watch the dumpster fire the 76ers and Magic have put on
the floor this season……….
- Unrealized opportunities are everywhere. Tavares (Fla). City
Council gets it and that’s why the council boldly approved the use of garbage
trucks to carry mobile messages intended to inform and educate residents. Yes,
telling people garbage trucks and garbage men can educate them is a bit
insulting, but garbage trucks have great potential as mobile billboards and it’s
high time someone realized it. The trucks are large, loud and they smell – not unlike
the cities they serve – and as such, they catch people’s attention when they
pass by. Plastering a massive ad on the side of these diesel behemoths is a
brilliant idea that Jeff Henderson, Tavares’ solid waste manager, spelled out. "Tavares
City Council always looks for creative solutions and I think this one hits the
mark, and then some," Henderson said. Right now, the messages on the sides
of trucks range from free leaf pickup and water conservation to event promotion
and emergency notices. One would hope that as time goes by and companies
approach the city about putting actual ads on the sides of trucks, city
officials will keep an open mind and wallet about the possibility. When initially
exploring the idea, officials considered using the trucks for paid
advertisements but held off for now. Still, Tavares is going all-in on this
idea and asking residents to look for the mobile messages and engage through
social media and website activities. When asking locals to tweet about what
they saw on the side of a garbage truck doesn’t work, bring on the real ads………
- Well done, El Salvador. Too few countries have the
boldness and courage to elect a former Marxist guerrilla leader as their
president, but you did just that when the final results were tallied in your
presidential election on Thursday. Salvador Sanchez Ceren of the ruling
Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), which as a militant group
fought a string of U.S.-backed governments in a 1980-1992 civil war, narrowly
won the race with 50.11 percent of the votes. The final margin was less than
7,000 votes and predictably, his right-wing rival continued to press to have
the vote annulled. Despite the people telling him he was not wanted, challenger
Norman Quijano has filed a claim to annul the election due to fraud. The
67-year-old former mayor of San Salvador and candidate of the right-wing
Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) party, had 49.89 percent support in
Sunday’s balloting, but it was not enough. Ignoring Quijano’s complaints, the
country’s five-member electoral tribunal unanimously validated the election
results, showing that Sanchez Ceren beat Quijano by 6,364 votes. "We make
an invitation to build for the future, because the FMLN's presidential ticket,
now elected to lead the country, is going to work to unite the country," Sanchez
Ceren said. Because of the ongoing dispute, the tribunal’s president Eugenio
Chicas said the court could take until Sunday or Monday to work through
Quijano's legal challenge to the election and settle any remaining doubts. What
is Quijano whining about, anyhow? He claims to have proof that 20,000 people
had voted twice, but refused to share that evidence with anyone. International
observers said there was no evidence of widespread fraud. "We don't see
any basis for the accusations," said Dieter Druessel, a Swiss election
observer. "They talk about 20,000 votes, but ultimately they aren't
presenting anything." And so it is that El Salvador has itself a legit former
Marxist guerrilla leader as its presidente……..
- Only dorks, joggers and soccer players wear headbands,
right? Maybe not. The Food and Drug Administration opened the door for migraine sufferers
to do the same by giving a thumbs-up to Belgian studies showing that special,
medical headbands could be helpful to those who suffer from these debilitating
headaches. Many migraine sufferers end up in emergency rooms because their pain
is so severe. To alleviate this problem, the FDA has approved Cefaly, a
battery-operated band that goes across the forehead with self-adhesive
electrodes. Cefaly operates on the principle of electrically stimulating the
trigeminal nerve, which senses pain in the face and parts of the head, for 20
minutes a day. Before approving the device, the FDA evaluated a clinical trial
of 67 adults who had at least two attacks a month. After going without
medication for three months, participants received either the actual device or
a placebo. Yes, for the sake of science, some poor saps not only wore a dorky
headband, but they wore one that didn’t actually treat their condition. Another
study, this one y of more than 2,000 people in Belgium and France, showed that
53 percent were happy with their Cefaly and would buy one for continued use. It
is already available in Canada, where it retails for a cool $300. Because it
was just approved in the United States, American doctors (theoretically) haven’t
had any (legal) experience with it. It’s time to look stupid in the name of
pain relief, America……..
- Are the Rolling Stones rock and roll sellouts? Of course
they are. No sane person would argue otherwise at any point in the past 20 years,
but now Mick Jagger and the fellas are hitting new lows when it comes to being
total shams of the band they once were. In the name of chasing big money in
China, the Stones have returned to the communist hellhole for the first
time since their debut there in 2006, headlining the Shanghai Mercedes-Benz
Arena Wednesday night with a set list heavily altered by government censorship.
Never mind that allowing The Man to tell you what to play, when and where is
the most anti-rock-and-roll idea ever; how about allowing a government that
continually tramples the basic rights and freedoms of its people to dictate
which songs you can play and when. This isn't the first time the Stones have
allowed the Communist Party to dictate terms to them, as they bent over and
took it in the same way back in 2006 by not playing classic tracks such as “Brown
Sugar,” “Honky Tonk Women” and “Let’s Spend the Night Together” because those
tunes were deemed inappropriate by the Chinese Ministry Of Culture. The former
two of those songs were likewise absent on Wednesday, with Jagger meekly admitting
to the crowd that “Honky Tonk Women” was "vetoed" by the authorities. Prior to the show,
Jagger confirmed to local media that the band had to submit their lyrics to
Chinese authorities for vetting, as is custom for all foreign bands playing in
China. The same does not hold true for Macau, a special administrative region
of China that does not fall under the same censorship rules, and the Stones
played a censorship-free show there earlier in their hour. “Dead Flowers” and “Street
Fighting Man” were on the set list in Shanghai, so the show was not totally
devoid of quality tracks. Jagger, showing what a good rock shill he is,
pandered to the crowd by greeting them in Mandarin. Way to sell out once more,
Stones……..
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