- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Workers across India are on strike
to protest economic reforms, including a rise in the minimum wage for unskilled
laborers, and this one looks to have some quality heat on both sides. On the
one side of the battle, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government says the
reforms are needed to boost growth, but they’re finding strong opposition from
- who else - labor unions who say the minimum wage hike should be double what
the government is offering. Yes, unions are fighting for more money for
unskilled workers because that is the kind of thing unions are all about.
What’s interesting about this debate is that some states, including Kerala as
well as the territory of Delhi, already have minimum wage levels that are
higher than the new monthly targets announced this week from 9,100 rupees to
13,598 rupees, or $136 to $204. The rage was felt to end the week as the unions
claimed that 180 million workers participated in the strike, but that number
couldn’t be verified and claiming that 180 million people took part in anything
across the breath of a large nation is a dubious thing - even in one of the
world’s most-populous countries. Still, there was no denying the fact that in
some states, all transportation and business halted, streets were deserted and
offices shuttered. The effects were less noticeable in other regions, but it’s
clear that this fight is a long way from being over on both sides……..
- No one really cares about NFL preseason football. Fans are
mostly indifferent and if anything watch because they’re so desperate to have
football back in their lives, players are mostly trying not to get hurt and
those who cover the league know the results couldn’t matter less. Just don’t
take that irrelevance to mean that the preseason can't cost a player dearly,
because Detroit Lions defensive lineman Kerry Hyder is proof that it can. Hyder
was fined $18,231 for his hit on Cincinnati Bengals quarterback AJ McCarron on
Aug. 18, a number that staggered Hyder because it was more than any paycheck
he'd ever earned in his life. His agent called and confirmed the amount of the
fine, which is more than three times the $6,000 he made the entire preseason.
"You know, I was a little hurt," Hyder said. "It's definitely a
bigger number than I've ever made myself, so I hope we can figure something out
with that, because as you know I haven't made an active roster or anything. So
it's tough for me." The good news for Hyder, who had three fumble
recoveries in the preseason finale against Buffalo last year but was still cut,
is that he can appeal the fine and the collective bargaining agreement between
the league and the players' association allows for fines to be reduced or
appealed based on potential earnings this season. For a guy considered a long
shot to make Detroit's roster at a deep position and one who was on the New
York Jets' practice squad in 2014 and the Lions' practice squad in 2015 before
being called up for the final game of last season with the Lions, it’s a
painful twist in a story that’s had lots of wrong turns………
- Most folks give the middle finger to crosswalk signs,
ignoring some digital governor telling them when they’re allowed to cross the
street. In Houston, someone decided that maybe it was time for the crosswalk
signs to return the gesture. That someone took action by defacing several
signs, altering them so that they appear to be giving pedestrians the middle
finger rather than the hand telling them not to walk. One just happens to be near a daycare center and schools and for that
reason, some locals have demanded that the problem be fixed immediately. A
local television station has been receiving plenty of feedback about the signs
on its Facebook page, but not everyone is upset about sign obscenity being
unleashed in a public place. Some have joked that the signs fit the city
perfectly, but clearly the city can’t allow this to go unchecked and work crews
have already been sent out to fix one signal. However, the city noted that the
amount of time needed to repair each sign will vary depending on the extent of
the damage done by the vandals, who have still not been identified and remain
at large to possibly terrorize other parts of the city’s large and diverse
digital sign population. The police department will have to investigate and
determine who is responsible, but until the public works department can find
time in its busy schedule of 15-minute work sessions sandwiched in between
mandatory coffee breaks, Houstonians will have to live with crosswalk signs
that deliver a very loud, colorful and profane message about when they should
cross the street………
- When Frank Ocean released his visual album 'Endless' last
week, it was a curious move because after years of delays for the successor to
his highly acclaimed debut, 'channel ORANGE,” the world wasn’t quite sure that
this was the project it had really been awaiting. Sure enough, Ocean quickly
chased that with a more conventional album titled “Blonde,” one he apparently
made a very wise business decision on. See, Ocean has likely already made more
than $1 million from the album because he released it on his own indie label,
Boys Don't Cry, after fulfilling his contractual obligations to majors Def Jam
and Universal by putting out “Endless” days before. Had Ocean only released “Blonde,”
he would have had to do so on a major label and projections put his take from
that more conventional release at around $550,000. It’s still a nice chunk of
change considering that artists still make the bulk of their money from touring
and not from releasing actual music. Projections on Ocean’s earnings from each
copy of “Blonde” sold on iTunes for $9.99 range anywhere between $5 and $7.50
and while that might seem like a lot of money to surrender right off the top,
an artist releasing their project on a major label would typically expect to
receive somewhere between $1.50 and $2.00 per copy. The real winners here are
fans who waited four years for any new music from Ocean and in the span of a
few short days, they got two new releases that should keep them occupied for a
while as Ocean sinks into his next period out of the public eye and out of the
studio, building up the hype for his fourth album and infuriating fans and
critics with promises that it will be released very soon, only to postpone and
postpone over and over until everyone wonders if there will ever be another
Frank Ocean album. Either way, “Blonde” has topped the charts in both the
United States and United Kingdom, proving that what Ocean is doing is working
in at least one respect………
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