- Student-led
uprisings are a thing in the world of American colleges and universities these
days. But not every uprising is one built around major social issues such as
racism and hate. Sometimes, these small revolts are about the firing of a
longtime coach who’s lost his gig in a dispute with his school over a dispute over a facility rental fee for a basketball camp he runs.
Such is life at William Paterson, a Division III school in New Jersey, where
the men's basketball team forfeited a game to protest of the recent firing of
its longtime coach. Players weren't down with the dismissal of coach Jose
Rebimbas by walking off the floor shortly before tipoff of their home matchup
against Ramapo. A video from the game was posted on Instagram, showing the players
leaving their warm-up shirts in a pile on the court and exiting stage right. The
school's athletic department later confirmed that the team forfeited the game,
which was supposed to be played with assistant coach Brian Chapman serving as
the acting head coach. Rembimbas addressed the situation in a Facebook post. "It
is with great sadness and extreme frustration that after today I will not be
coaching the basketball team at William Paterson University," Rebimbas
wrote. "WP has been my home and family for more than 20 years and yet the
University has taken action to remove me from the service I love. People I have
trusted and served with have defied logic and are pursing my termination
because of a misunderstanding over a facility rental fee for a camp that I
run.” It’s an ugly exit for a man who is 384-168 at the school, guiding it to
six conference titles and nine NCAA tournament berths. There is clearly more to
this situation and odds are it’s going to get much nastier before it’s
resolved……….
- There
are certain subjects social media was never designed to be used to share. For
example, let’s say you murder your wife and are trying to decide what to do in
the aftermath of a terrible crime. There are many options, most of which center
on trying to not get caught and sent to prison for the rest of your life, but one
of them should not be busting out your iPhone so you can post a Facebook pic of
your deceased lady’s body. Yet that’s exactly what
Derek Medina did when he offed his wife, Jennifer Alfonso, two years ago. It’s
also a big part of why the South Florida man was convicted of second-degree
murder this week as jurors came to a verdict in the third week of the trial. Medina
claimed he shot his wife in self-defense during a fight and quickly went online
to post the photo with a caption explaining that he expected to go to prison
but had to kill her because of years of physical abuse. Medina admitted to
police in a videotaped statement that he shot his wife during a fight in which
she threatened him with a knife. He’s now staring down life in prison and odds
are it won't help his case that he also admitted in the statement taking a
cellphone photo of his dead wife's body and uploading it on Facebook.
Prosecutors argued that Medina had vowed to kill Alfonso if she tried to leave
him, which she told friends she planned to do. "He planned to execute Jen,
and he executed his plan," prosecutor Leah Klein told jurors in his closing
argument. "He was angry and he wanted her dead." Testimony during the
trial detailed a fight that began in their upstairs bedroom because Medina had
failed to wake up his wife early that morning to watch a movie as he had
promised to do, followed by Alfonso hurling mascara containers and towels at Medina. She
later fired off a text to a friend in which she said she "felt like
ripping his face off" and was "about to explode,” but in the end it
was Medina who exploded and made a decision that pretty much ruined the rest of
his life……….
- Free
music is always good. When that music comes from a former member of one of the
best rock bands of the past few decades, even better. Big ups to former Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante for
dishing out an early Christmas gift for fans by releasing a boatload of free
music after setting up Bandcamp and Soundcloud pages. The new tunes came as a
surprise for fans, especially the collaboration with Omar Rodríguez-López of The
Mars Volta. Frusciante released 18 tracks, among them eight electronic tracks
recorded between 2009 and 2011, along with a letter explaining why he decided
to pass out a few freebies to the masses. "Giving people music for free
online being so common these days is a good reminder that artistic expression
is always a matter of giving, not taking, or selling," Frusciante wrote.
"Selling is the making money part, and artistic expression, creation, is
the giving part. They are distinct from one another, and it is my conviction
that music should always be made because one loves music, regardless of whether
one plans on selling it or not." The reason this project came as such a
surprise is that Frusciante claimed earlier this year that he had stopped
making music for other people and was simply tinkering in the studio for the
sake of making music despite having "no intention of releasing" the finished
product. The idea of toiling away for hours and hours with no one ever hearing
his would-be musical masterpieces must have gotten to Frusciante, because he
reversed field in the end and came up with a solution that says both, “I’m a
musician and my works are meant to be heard,” and, “I’m so f*cking rich and
successful that I can spend tons of money recording a new project without
needing to make a single cent from it.” It’s a rock star move by a man who
clearly isn't done making tunes just yet……….
- Drones
are an embattled species. Their existence and use is a subject of extreme
contention in countries around the world, but not everyone is down on these
unmanned flying vehicles. Australia is keeping an open mind to what drones can
do and using them to battle one of its biggest environmental hazards: sharks.
The Australian government plans to utilize drones to fight off shark attacks
following a trial of the unmanned aerial vehicles
in New South Wales. A surge of attacks on humans by the marine predators this
year has already yielded one fatality and authorities are determined to keep
that number from rising. The drones will funnel live images back to an
operator, including GPS coordinates, allowing wildlife officials to warn the
public of where the toothy killers are lurking. It’s the same technology
already being used by lifeguards in California to monitor Great Whites in an
attempt to keep beaches safe. New South Wales is setting up two "listening
stations" located on the far north coast of the state to provide real-time
tracking data of tagged sharks caught and released by "smart" drum
lines which send out an alert to authorities who are then able to tag and release the animals. The state
government insists the drum lines are more humane than those used to capture
sharks in Western Australia in 2014. That controversial catch-and-kill policy
was later abandoned after objections from the state's environmental agency, but
Niall Blair, a minister in the NSW government, is adamant that this time will
be different. "They will then tag and release the sharks that are caught
on those. So they're very different to the traditional drum lines which could
have sharks sitting on them for days before they're checked,” Blair said. With
drones, helicopter surveillance and those drum lines, odds are that swimmers
and surfers will still be terrified of DBS (death by shark), but it’s nice of
the government to make an effort………..
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