- Hey, remind me again why you don’t stand atop a
15-foot-high border fence that was never designed to hold the weight of a few
hundred human beings….go for it, African migrants trying to force their way
into Spain's North African enclave of Melilla. According to Spain’s Interior
Ministry, nine of these desperate souls were treated for injuries as some 200
tried to scale border fences separating Melilla from Morocco. According to the
ministry, the nine – who should have sustained some serious breaks, ruptures
and bruises if karma were real – only e sustained minor injuries in falls
during the border rush. Hundreds of migrants attempted to scale the barricade
and when it became clear they weren’t exactly going to vault over it
gracefully, around 70 of them remained perched high atop the fence for several
hours. In even worse news that will surely embolden the next wave of kooks who
try the same asinine stunt, about 20 of the fence jumpers eventually managed to
cross the border and enter the city. That brings the total to 2,000 migrants who
have made it across the border fences in roughly 60 attempts this year and for
the math-challenged, that comes out to about 33 migrants per attempt. As anyone
in the advanced metrics community knows, that’s far too high a BJCBAF (Border
Jumpers Clearing Big-Ass Fences) ratio for a developed nation, so the city's
temporary migrant accommodation center has been overwhelmed for much of the
year. Those who reach the center are eventually repatriated or let go, their
dreams of reaching Europe and begging tourists for money, er, making a better
life dashed in the process……….
- Chance The Rapper is feeling mighty munificent. He has let the world
know that he plans to release his next joint for free and that it will drop
before the end of the year. The album, titled “Surf,” is an album he recorded
with his band The Social Experiment and as U2’s much-maligned new album proved
despite the rampant bitching over its release strategy, folks like free music.
They should like Chance’s offering even more after he revealed that he has been
in the studio with Pharrell Williams, Frank Ocean and Rick Rubin among others.
As he tells it, “Surf” is "the first Social Experiment project" and
not the successor to his 2013 mixtape “Acid Rap.” Why it makes a difference is
something of a subjective issue, but Chance believes it’s an important
distinction. "'Surf' is the first project, which is coming out before the
end of 2014. It's the first Social Experiment project. It's a big step for all
of us all putting our heads together and letting Nico [Segal, a.k.a Social
Experiment member Donnie Trumpet] hold the reigns and carry it,” he said. “There's
a lot of great instrumentation. A lot of input from cool writers." Chance
went on to lay out those he worked with on the album and in addition to
Williams, Ocean and Rubin, he included Migos, J. Cole and Emily King. To hear
Chance tell it, there was a revolving door to the studio and there was always
someone new wanting to join the party. “There's been a lot of just people in
the studio watching us work almost like a house band. People come in just to
watch us jam out,” he concluded………
- No way. Small town residents who are ardent Bible thumpers
don’t have the utmost tolerance for the hippie lettuce? Beaumont, Tex. is a
place firmly entrenched in the Bible Belt way of thinking and that’s not
helping Faith Bodle, whose name implies she has a relationship with the
almighty but whose church membership status is currently lacking. Bodle is a
former member of Beaumont
Seventh Day Adventist Church, with the emphasis on former. As Bodle tells it,
she was cast out of her church because of her appearance on a local television
broadcast as an advocate for medical marijuana. She appeared on the station and
said she uses cannabis extract, an oil derived from marijuana, to treat
illnesses like degenerative spine disease, congestive heart failure and
arthritis. She claims that fellow church members at grew concerned after seeing
her support the use of ganja and detailed a campaign of upright, uptight peer
pressure aimed at getting her to ditch her support of the dank. Her pastor
allegedly sent her a letter calling on her to stop using and promoting
marijuana and six weeks later the congregation decided to revoke her
membership. One of Bodle’s misdeeds was appearing at the arraignment of Jeremy
Bourque, who is facing trial on marijuana charges. Her son, Jason Falconbridge,
claims that smoking the sticky icky is the one relief from pain his mother can
find and is heartbroken that the church cannot understand her situation and
show an ounce or two of compassion. Even a letter from Bodle’s doctor
confirming that she “takes the extract for medicinal and not recreational
purposes” did nothing to sway the church. As one would predict from such
caring, loving and upstanding beacons of Gods light, no one from the church has
stepped forward to comment on the situation. Way to live out the love of the
Lord, haters……..
- Sucking isn’t quite as abhorrent to NBA owners as we all
thought. Despite widespread expectations that an effort to reform the Association’s draft lottery process would
easily accrue the necessary 23 votes to become law, the measure failed
miserably and as a result, the concept of tanking is alive and well.
Essentially pushed to the forefront by the Philadelphia 76ers long-term,
unannounced-yet-very-real plan to suck every year for the next decade in order
to rebuild through high draft picks, the plan would have discouraged such efforts
by giving the league's four worst teams identical odds (around 11 percent) of
winning the top pick. Currently, teams have a certain number of assigned
combinations of ping pong balls that are drawn to assign picks and the worse
their record, the more combinations they receive. That leads to teams trading
good players and giving more court time to bad ones in order to secure a higher
spot in the lottery and having teams trying to be less competitive is generally
viewed as bad business for a league as it often offends the paying customers
and sponsors. Yet a plan to reduce the odds of the league’s worst team getting
the top draft pick fell well short of the 23 votes needed for passage. Owners
voted 17-13 in favor of the reform, clearly stating that they want to be able
to bottom out when necessary without having to sacrifice their chances for the
first pick. The irony is that since the league's weighted lottery system was
adopted for the 1985 draft, only four teams with the worst or tied-for-worst
record have earned the top overall pick. It hasn’t happened since 2004, when
the Orlando Magic finished finish with the NBA's worst record and landed the
No. 1 overall pick, which they used to select Dwight Howard. For now, the team
with the worst record will continue a 25 percent chance at the No. 1 pick and
the 76ers will once again be a leading candidate to break the league’s record
for highest-ever losing percentage………
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