- Cue Ron Burgundy because that certainly escalated quickly. And it really - and I do mean REALLY - got out of hand. One minute, the Tennessee Titans are playing great football and seemingly headed for a win that would, ultimately, tie them for first place in the AFC South. They have the best running back in football, a promising young quarterback who has overcome plenty of personal demons to reclaim his starting job…..and then not. In the span of three hours Sunday afternoon, the Titans lost a football game and perhaps the man they believed was their franchise quarterback. That man is fifth-year quarterback Vince Young, who apparently will not be around to help the Titans as they attempt to take advantage of what should be a fairly easy schedule down the stretch. The game began well enough, with Young completing 12 of 16 passes for 165 yards, no touchdowns and no interceptions, but an overall solid effort. He did enough to keep his team in the game even if the fans booed he and the offense lustily throughout the game. Still, Young tore a flexor tendon in his right thumb when he hit his hand on a helmet on a 37-yard completion to Nate Washington late in the third quarter and after staying in to hand the ball off on the next play, he left the game and went to get his hand taped. A tape job tends not to be enough to fix a torn tendon, so Young as unable to return to the game and Tennessee head coach Jeff Fisher turned to rookie backup Rusty Smith, in that spot because veteran backup Kerry Collins is out indefinitely with a calf injury. "Vince tore a flexor tendon in his thumb and I was not satisfied with his ability to control the ball, so I stayed with Rusty," Fisher said. "He never said to me he was OK and wanted to go back in, and I was told he was a little upset after, and I was also told he threw half his uniform in the stands." That’s right, dude lobbed his shoulder pads into his stands because he was angry about being injured and unable to return to the game, always a mature play. After that, Young reportedly stormed out of LP Field and on his way out, he apparently dropped his job as the team’s starting quarterback. Fisher said following Sunday's game that Young has lost his job as starter and explained that there was "no excuse" for Young's behavior. That may not seem like a big deal for a player who could well be headed for season-ending surgery, but Fisher’s tone made it sound like Young’s tenure with the franchise could well be over. All that in a span of three hours……..
- Is anyone surprised? Nerds ruled at the box office this weekend, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows drawing out all manner of pale, dorky, socially awkward magic lovers to see their favorite fake wizard do his thing on the big screen and propel the latest adaptation of one of literary one-trick pony J.K. Rowling’s books to the top of the earnings charts. The film made $125.1 million for its opening weekend to easily rout the rest of the field. Seriously, no other movie was within $100 million of Harry Potter. The closest pursuer was the previous two weekends’ box office champ, Megamind, which made $16.2 million to finally inch over the $100 million mark at $109.5 million - the very same $100 million mark Harry Potter eclipsed in a span of four days. Third place went to Unstoppable, which dropped off by 42 percent in its second weekend but still made $13.1 million to raise its cumulative total to $41.9 million and counting. Coming in fourth was Due Date, which held fairly steady (only declining 41 percent) and made an additional $9.2 million to elevate its overall tally to $72.7 million. Last among the top five ways The Next Three Days, which was a ginormous flop in its first weekend despite the name value of noted chain-smoker Russell Crowe. The thriller proved to be not all that thrilling, making a paltry $6.8 million despite opening in 2,564 theaters. Rounding out the rest of the top 10 were: Morning Glory (No. 6 with $5.2 million after a 43-percent drop-off and a cumulative take of $19.9 million), Skyline (plummeting further and faster than any other movie on the weekend - 71 percent! - and making just $3.5 million to ease its total up to $17.6 million for two weekends), geezer spy comedy Red (No. 8 with $2.5 million in its sixth weekend of release, giving it an impressive cumulative total of $83.6 million), Lionsgate’s For Colored Girls (No. 9 with an unimpressive $2.4 million after a 63-percent drop and an equally unimpressive running total of $34.5 million) and Fair Game (No. 10 with $1.5 million, meaning it has made a whopping $3.7 million in three weekends of limited released). Dropping from the top 10 from last weekend was the extremely profitable Paranormal Activity 2, which descended to 12th this weekend…………
- Interested in a Droid phone for one cent? If so, Amazon.com has a deal for you, my friend. The web retailer is offering all Droid phones for a penny……assuming that you’re willing to sign up for a new Verizon Wireless contract. On the one hand, you can get any of Verizon's U.S. Droid phones, including the Droid X and new Droid Pro, essentially for free, through November 22. If you sign up for a new account, you’ll also receive a $35 credit to cover the full cost of activating the phone. On the other hand, you’re limiting yourself to Verizon as a service provider, so there is a tradeoff. Still, this seems to be a sign that the intensifying smartphone competition across all carriers is sparking a race to the bottom in pricing. Up to now, the $199 price point has remained the low end of the spectrum, but Amazon bucked that trend back in August when it reduced the price of the Samsung Vibrant to one cent. Jeff Bezos’ crew followed that up by selling two Windows 7 phones -- the HTC Surround and LG Quantum -- for one cent with a two-year contract from AT&T. They even threw in some BlackBerry, Android and Palm models. Honestly, the only people with a huge beef when it comes to these one-cent deals are new customers, whose best option is upgrading their phones and extending their current contract in exchange for a discounted phone -- for the Droid X, it's currently $49.99. Of course, if you’re someone like me who has held out on the cell phone revolution and remains one of the five people in the world without one, none of this matters anyhow……..
- Simply put, if your election doesn’t have some form of fraud, then it ain’t true democracy. An election is not legit until someone tries to rig voting machines, buy votes, destroy or discard votes they don’t like or intimidate voters not on their side into not voting at all. So while some might recoil in horror at an audio recording featuring two men are heard speaking in Dari, with the distinct accent of the western city of Herat, Afghanistan, as they negotiate terms for rigging more than a dozen races in Afghan’s parliamentary elections, I find myself strangely pumped up. Trying to rig an election, in a perverse way, is showing respect to the process. If the election were worthless and its results irrelevant, then no one would bother trying to rig it. According to the country’s Independent Election Commission, one of the men is Abdul Rashid Irshad, a low-level staffer in the commission’s Kabul headquarters. On the tape, Irshad doesn’t exactly sound like a voice of authority, but his conversation partner, known warlord and current member of President Hamid Karzai’s cabinet Ismail Khan, sounds like he’s the scumbag running this show. Irshad claims to have control over what Khan wants, namely the ability to turn a half-dozen winning parliamentary candidates into losers, and losers who were favorites of Mr. Khan into winners. “When you talk you seem worried,” Mr. Khan says. “I am afraid you will ruin things.” Striking the perfect tone of weasel-ness and timidity, Irshad meekly replies, “To be honest, your excellency, we have to be worried because we are under pressure here.” The tape throws more uncertainty into an election so fraught with fraud that 1.3 million votes — about a quarter of the total — have already been thrown out. While this case of fraud is relatively minor, it puts a real face on a serious issue. While corruption is believed to have affected only a small portion of Afghanistan’s political races and the Independent Election Commission and the Election Complaints Commission has spoken confidently about the validity of the voting results, Khan and Irshad are exactly the sort of slimy election-fixers the commission is attempting to weed out. On Sunday, the complaints commission gave its final ruling on more than 2,000 charges, ultimately disqualifying 21 more candidates on the grounds of election fraud to bring the total of disqualified candidates to 25 overall. Official certification of the voting results is expected later this week. Ironically (or perhaps not so ironically), 13 of the final 21 disqualified candidates are supporters of President Karzai. The results are expected to leaver Karzai with a Parliament that has an even smaller minority of members loyal to him than he had expected. Fittingly, the eradication of fraud this time around could undo some of the damage done when that very same type of fraud helped Karzai steal, er, um, win his presidential election last year. Sucks when the shoes is on the other foot, eh Karzai……..
- There are precious few things in this world more amusing than watching pathetic losers who spend hours or even days camping out in line for free or heavily discounted electronic goods. The sight of adults scrapping with one another over who cut in front of who in line, going to the bathroom on themselves (which actually has happened) and looking like disheveled hobos with wrinkled clothes and unshaven faces all in the name of a cheap laptop that they may be too far back in line to get their hands on is hilarious. But every now and then, these losers strike it rich and get the cheap or free crap they wait in line for. Count über-losers Lorie Davenport and Tina Thain of St. Petersburg, Fla. in that category. These two were actually rewarded for their loser-dom by their local Best Buy, which gave the women iPads for being the store's first customers in line for Black Friday nationwide, calling them the 'First Family of Black Friday.' Davenport and her family have no life to the point that they have literally set up a tent in the Best Buy parking lot. "We have a group of 10 this year," said Davenport. "So we're rotating shifts according to work schedules and family time and when they need to shower and eat." ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME? Hey losers, how pathetic and materialistic must your life be if you have nothing better to do than camp out in the parking lot of an electronics chain store for a freaking week? What, are you tools going to set up a portable kitchen there and cook your Thanksgiving dinner on the engine block of your car? Go home, celebrate the holiday and if you must, get up at an ungodly hour Friday to go jam into the line with all of the other freaks. "We make our Christmas list," Davenport stated. "We find out all the deals at other stores. We get our game plans together. Some of our family really thinks we're crazy.” Some? The ones who don’t are just as big of losers as you freaks are. And what are you doing encouraging these ass hats, Best Buy? Don’t give them free iPads, don’t leave lights on in the parking lot and certainly don’t have police on hand to beef up patrols for security. Leave these clowns to their own devices, let some of St. Petersburg’s finest hoodlums and miscreants take care of them and I guarantee they won't ever camp out for Black Friday again. Problem solved and you’re welcome……….
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Walking on eggshells at USC, Vlad Putin saves tigers and threatening bad reality dancing shows
- What do you get when you mix a massive NCAA rules scandal encompassing the men’s basketball and football programs and a new football coach with a proclivity for breaking those same NCAA rules and a new athletic director hell-bent on cleaning up the athletic department? If you said an atmosphere of complete and total paranoia, you would be 100 percent correct. Southern California is still reeling after being put under significant NCAA sanctions during the summer after a four-year investigation into the athletic department. The NCAA punished the Trojans for extra benefits allegedly provided to Heisman Trophy-winning tailback Reggie Bush by two aspiring sports marketers and for illegal perks and benefits provided to former men’s basketball player O.J. Mayo. Athletic director Mike Garrett was fired for haphazardly presiding over the whole mess and new AD Pat Hayden came in with a mandate to clean things up. He inherited coach Lane Kiffin, hired by Garrett before his own firing. Kiffin knows that he’s walking along the edge of a cliff every day and one small slip would mean disaster, so clearly he’s being incredibly oversensitive to every minor misstep or possible misstep by one of his players. Hence, freshman tailback Dillon Baxter being ruled ineligible to compete for the Trojans because he solicited a ride in a golf cart on USC's campus from an NFLPA-certified agent Thursday in violation of NCAA rules concerning extra benefits. School officials confirmed the decision after self-reporting the infraction and filing an official request with the NCAA for Baxter's reinstatement. In filing the request, USC put a nominal value on the golf cart ride that Baxter would have to repay, likely to a charity. "We're hoping that that this is going to be the end of it and the NCAA will understand that we acted proactively and quickly," USC vice president for athletic compliance David Roberts said. "Obviously we'll take further action in this coming week to make sure that there are no other contacts between these people and our players." So why is an agent tooling around the USC campus in a golf cart? Well, because the agent is Teague Egan (his real - and stupid - name), the CEO of First Round Enterprises, a company that represents multiple recording artists and lists itself as a provider of sports representation, and Teague Egan is also currently a student at USC, according to official school records. Egan is clearly not subtle or polished when it comes to his operation, as his biography on the agency's website includes a claim that he has "befriended many athletes on the USC football team." Gee, think you might want to be a little less blunt about that, chief? Yes, one of Egan’s partners is former Trojans linebacker Jordan Campbell, the first USC player to defect post-sanctions when he transferred to Louisville in June, and longtime NFL agent and current USC adjunct professor of law Fred Fenster is also listed as the legal senior adviser for the company. Bearing all of this in mind, is it coincidence that Baxter did not practice Thursday after being hospitalized earlier in the day with an unspecified illness and dehydration? Could be, but you have to love the thought of the arrogant, brash Kiffin panicking every time a player says or does something even remotely close to being an NCAA rules violation……..
- Y’all, I hate to be over-reactive and panicky, but I believe that I’m acting in everyone’s best interests when I say that it’s time to seriously consider canceling ABC’s hack-tastic reality dancing show, Dancing With the (D-List) Stars. First, Bristol Palin’s presence on the show inspires a Connecticut man to open fire on his teleivision with a shotgun (as you read here on Wednesday) and now, the show has infuriated one unstable citizen enough for him or her to mail a threatening letter with white powder inside to the DWTDLS production office. Now I know what you’re thinking and no, I did not send that letter. To be honest, I’m not wasting postage or any white powdery substance - cocaine, baking soda, salt, sugar, heroin, talcum powder, etc. - in order to send a letter to the kooks who run that show. But someone was definitely fired up enough to mail that letter and staff in the office immediately notified security and city authorities after the letter arrived Friday evening. Hilariously, investigators later advised ABC that the substance inside was talcum powder. "Measures were taken to secure the area and ensure the safety of personnel," ABC spokeswoman Amy Astley said. The letter will be tested further at a regional laboratory as authorities' investigation continues, but I have a better and simpler solution. Just shut down the show right away, destroy any and all evidence that it existed and promise the world that never again will you foist anything remotely like this train wreck of D-listers on them again. Then, people will no longer have to shoot their televisions or mail personal hygiene products and threatening letters to you ever again…..
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Egypt, it has been far too long since everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the world made a stop in your little corner of the world. It’s great to be back and of course, the reason for returning is the awesome, explosive clashes that erupted between security forces and opposition supporters Friday as elections near. Even though tensions is most major Egyptian cities appeared to have simmered down by Saturday, Friday’s clashes were some of the most violent in recent memory. Opposition groups brawled with police, who predictably overreacted by busting out the tear gas and rubber bullets. They arrested dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters ahead of November 28 parliamentary election and the riots weren’t only in Cairo. Clashes between The Man and the little guy also broke out in Alexandria, where 33 people were injured as demonstrators threw rocks at security forces trying to disperse a crowd from one neighborhood. The banned Muslim Brotherhood group is just one of many opposition groups speaking out against The Man, although the MB is more furious than anyone because its candidates are forced to run as independents. Nearly all of the opposition groups have accused the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of using its power to suppress voices critical of President Mubarak's almost-20-plus-year rule. The groups are demanding international election monitors, a demand that ruling party general secretary Safwat al-Shareef dismissed as unnecessary. Egypt's Supreme Election Committee and "civil community groups will guarantee free and transparent elections, Al-Shareef said. Uh-huh, sure they won't. I don’t care if 76 Egyptian civil organizations will be allowed to monitor the polls, the reality is that the government could very easily have those groups under its thumb. With 800 candidates from the ruling party, 250 from the liberal al-Wafd Party and 130 from the Muslim Brotherhood running for the parliament's 508 seats, this election is going to be contentious throughout and having some impartial observers on hand would help. Smaller parties and opposition movements have already declared they are boycotting the elections over transparency concerns, so perhaps adding impartial third-party monitors would convince them to rejoin the proceedings………
- Residents of Washington, Pa., you have a mighty fine police department protecting you - or at least protecting fake murder victims at fake murder scenes at ghetto-fabulous hotels. An impressive display of their serving and protecting came this week when firefighters were called to a fire at the old George Washington Hotel and found a room splattered with blood and empty liquor bottles. Police were called in and even Washington Police Chief J.R. Blyth thought the messy room was the most grisly murder scene in his 35 years in law enforcement. Blyth assigned several investigators to the crime scene and they went to work figuring out what had happened before realizing that the entire scene was nothing more than a set for a horror movie. "I was mad at first because we declared it a crime scene. I had to call my detectives out -- that's eight hours of overtime," Blythe said. Hey chief, it’s no one else’s fault that you aren’t smart enough to know fake blood from real blood and a movie set from an actual crime scene. Has you been a little sharper, you may not have used up more than eight hours of overtime for the investigation. "I had no idea what was going on -- blood on the floor, the mattress, the pillows, piece of a scalp with hair still attached in the center of the bed," Blythe explained. For the record, the room is on the fourth floor of the 10-story hotel on South Main Street, where four people have died since current owner Kyrk Pyros bought the hotel seven years ago. The room was used for what can truly be described as a horror movie, with Corey Haim as its biggest-name cast member. Two long years ago, the room was used for a scene in a straight-to-DVD flick called "New Terminal Hotel" with Haim. After filming wrapped, the room was left uncleaned because Pyros wasn't sure if the movie crew would have to come back and do re-shoots. "We had a laugh and I said we had 'Terminal Hotel' filmed there and they put blood on the walls and they did a nice job making it look good," Pyros remembered. The hotel itself has a national reputation for being haunted and more than a dozen people have died in the hotel since it was built in 1923. Presidents and famous actors have stayed there and now it’s the scene of one of the dumbest police investigations in our nation’s history………
- In case you didn’t know, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. That’s ironic because only about 3,600 of the majestic predators remain in the wild, putting tigers on the verge of extinction because of habitat-loss and poaching. With that precarious situation in mind, Russian Prime Minister (and communism lover) Vladimir Putin and the World Bank will co-host the International Forum on Tiger Conservation, beginning Sunday and bringing together 13 nations to discuss what could be the best and last chance to save the wild tiger. The 13 nations gathering represent every major tiger country in the world. The summit marks a first in the history of tiger conservation and oddly enough, it will be hosted by a noted Communist and former totalitarian ruler of a country better known for vodka and Siberia. Putin is a tiger activist and has been ever since 2008, when he received a female tiger cub as a birthday gift. The cub, named Mashenka, spent at least three days sleeping in a wicker basket at Putin's home before being given to a zoo. Putin was in front of every camera he could find during those three days and images of him with Mashenka flooded the media. Later that year, Putin traveled to Siberia's conservation area and got between an angry tigress and some volunteers. After tranquilizing the animal, he helped put a tracking collar on her and she became a prominent image on his personal website. Barney Long, the head of the WWF U.S. Tiger Program, credits the scale and importance of the summit "almost solely to Putin. It is he who is reaching out, turning this from technical meetings into a real political event." And so it is that leaders of tiger-having countries around the world will journey to St. Petersburg, Russia this week. Leaders from Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam will all attend and take part in breakout sessions, brainstorming meetings and other fun seminar activities to figure out ways to save wild tigers. Russia’s tiger population consists of roughly 400 Siberian tigers in its far-eastern region, accounting for 9 percent of wild tigers in the world. Conservation experts have applauded Russia's conservation formula -- strict legislation targeting poaching and illegal trade in tiger parts - and say it is important for other nations to know that the formula can find success elsewhere. So what nation is the biggest problem in the case of the rapidly disappearing wild tiger? Prepare to be shocked because its……freaking China. China still fuels the market for tiger parts despite government efforts to curb the trade and it’s not just because tigers, like humans, must breathe the toxic air hovering over most of the country and thus die early from respiratory illnesses. As a lover of all living things, here’s hoping that Bad Vlad Putin and friends can find a way to get China in line and protect the remaining wild tigers of the world………
- Y’all, I hate to be over-reactive and panicky, but I believe that I’m acting in everyone’s best interests when I say that it’s time to seriously consider canceling ABC’s hack-tastic reality dancing show, Dancing With the (D-List) Stars. First, Bristol Palin’s presence on the show inspires a Connecticut man to open fire on his teleivision with a shotgun (as you read here on Wednesday) and now, the show has infuriated one unstable citizen enough for him or her to mail a threatening letter with white powder inside to the DWTDLS production office. Now I know what you’re thinking and no, I did not send that letter. To be honest, I’m not wasting postage or any white powdery substance - cocaine, baking soda, salt, sugar, heroin, talcum powder, etc. - in order to send a letter to the kooks who run that show. But someone was definitely fired up enough to mail that letter and staff in the office immediately notified security and city authorities after the letter arrived Friday evening. Hilariously, investigators later advised ABC that the substance inside was talcum powder. "Measures were taken to secure the area and ensure the safety of personnel," ABC spokeswoman Amy Astley said. The letter will be tested further at a regional laboratory as authorities' investigation continues, but I have a better and simpler solution. Just shut down the show right away, destroy any and all evidence that it existed and promise the world that never again will you foist anything remotely like this train wreck of D-listers on them again. Then, people will no longer have to shoot their televisions or mail personal hygiene products and threatening letters to you ever again…..
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Egypt, it has been far too long since everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the world made a stop in your little corner of the world. It’s great to be back and of course, the reason for returning is the awesome, explosive clashes that erupted between security forces and opposition supporters Friday as elections near. Even though tensions is most major Egyptian cities appeared to have simmered down by Saturday, Friday’s clashes were some of the most violent in recent memory. Opposition groups brawled with police, who predictably overreacted by busting out the tear gas and rubber bullets. They arrested dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters ahead of November 28 parliamentary election and the riots weren’t only in Cairo. Clashes between The Man and the little guy also broke out in Alexandria, where 33 people were injured as demonstrators threw rocks at security forces trying to disperse a crowd from one neighborhood. The banned Muslim Brotherhood group is just one of many opposition groups speaking out against The Man, although the MB is more furious than anyone because its candidates are forced to run as independents. Nearly all of the opposition groups have accused the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) of using its power to suppress voices critical of President Mubarak's almost-20-plus-year rule. The groups are demanding international election monitors, a demand that ruling party general secretary Safwat al-Shareef dismissed as unnecessary. Egypt's Supreme Election Committee and "civil community groups will guarantee free and transparent elections, Al-Shareef said. Uh-huh, sure they won't. I don’t care if 76 Egyptian civil organizations will be allowed to monitor the polls, the reality is that the government could very easily have those groups under its thumb. With 800 candidates from the ruling party, 250 from the liberal al-Wafd Party and 130 from the Muslim Brotherhood running for the parliament's 508 seats, this election is going to be contentious throughout and having some impartial observers on hand would help. Smaller parties and opposition movements have already declared they are boycotting the elections over transparency concerns, so perhaps adding impartial third-party monitors would convince them to rejoin the proceedings………
- Residents of Washington, Pa., you have a mighty fine police department protecting you - or at least protecting fake murder victims at fake murder scenes at ghetto-fabulous hotels. An impressive display of their serving and protecting came this week when firefighters were called to a fire at the old George Washington Hotel and found a room splattered with blood and empty liquor bottles. Police were called in and even Washington Police Chief J.R. Blyth thought the messy room was the most grisly murder scene in his 35 years in law enforcement. Blyth assigned several investigators to the crime scene and they went to work figuring out what had happened before realizing that the entire scene was nothing more than a set for a horror movie. "I was mad at first because we declared it a crime scene. I had to call my detectives out -- that's eight hours of overtime," Blythe said. Hey chief, it’s no one else’s fault that you aren’t smart enough to know fake blood from real blood and a movie set from an actual crime scene. Has you been a little sharper, you may not have used up more than eight hours of overtime for the investigation. "I had no idea what was going on -- blood on the floor, the mattress, the pillows, piece of a scalp with hair still attached in the center of the bed," Blythe explained. For the record, the room is on the fourth floor of the 10-story hotel on South Main Street, where four people have died since current owner Kyrk Pyros bought the hotel seven years ago. The room was used for what can truly be described as a horror movie, with Corey Haim as its biggest-name cast member. Two long years ago, the room was used for a scene in a straight-to-DVD flick called "New Terminal Hotel" with Haim. After filming wrapped, the room was left uncleaned because Pyros wasn't sure if the movie crew would have to come back and do re-shoots. "We had a laugh and I said we had 'Terminal Hotel' filmed there and they put blood on the walls and they did a nice job making it look good," Pyros remembered. The hotel itself has a national reputation for being haunted and more than a dozen people have died in the hotel since it was built in 1923. Presidents and famous actors have stayed there and now it’s the scene of one of the dumbest police investigations in our nation’s history………
- In case you didn’t know, 2010 is the Year of the Tiger. That’s ironic because only about 3,600 of the majestic predators remain in the wild, putting tigers on the verge of extinction because of habitat-loss and poaching. With that precarious situation in mind, Russian Prime Minister (and communism lover) Vladimir Putin and the World Bank will co-host the International Forum on Tiger Conservation, beginning Sunday and bringing together 13 nations to discuss what could be the best and last chance to save the wild tiger. The 13 nations gathering represent every major tiger country in the world. The summit marks a first in the history of tiger conservation and oddly enough, it will be hosted by a noted Communist and former totalitarian ruler of a country better known for vodka and Siberia. Putin is a tiger activist and has been ever since 2008, when he received a female tiger cub as a birthday gift. The cub, named Mashenka, spent at least three days sleeping in a wicker basket at Putin's home before being given to a zoo. Putin was in front of every camera he could find during those three days and images of him with Mashenka flooded the media. Later that year, Putin traveled to Siberia's conservation area and got between an angry tigress and some volunteers. After tranquilizing the animal, he helped put a tracking collar on her and she became a prominent image on his personal website. Barney Long, the head of the WWF U.S. Tiger Program, credits the scale and importance of the summit "almost solely to Putin. It is he who is reaching out, turning this from technical meetings into a real political event." And so it is that leaders of tiger-having countries around the world will journey to St. Petersburg, Russia this week. Leaders from Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Thailand, and Vietnam will all attend and take part in breakout sessions, brainstorming meetings and other fun seminar activities to figure out ways to save wild tigers. Russia’s tiger population consists of roughly 400 Siberian tigers in its far-eastern region, accounting for 9 percent of wild tigers in the world. Conservation experts have applauded Russia's conservation formula -- strict legislation targeting poaching and illegal trade in tiger parts - and say it is important for other nations to know that the formula can find success elsewhere. So what nation is the biggest problem in the case of the rapidly disappearing wild tiger? Prepare to be shocked because its……freaking China. China still fuels the market for tiger parts despite government efforts to curb the trade and it’s not just because tigers, like humans, must breathe the toxic air hovering over most of the country and thus die early from respiratory illnesses. As a lover of all living things, here’s hoping that Bad Vlad Putin and friends can find a way to get China in line and protect the remaining wild tigers of the world………
Friday, November 19, 2010
Neil Young's fire-starting hybrid, crabby Mark Cuban and international legal skirmish fun
- Way to go Neil Young, you freaking hippie. Thanks to you and your battery-powered car, an entire warehouse in San Francisco has gone up in flames. That’s right, the anti-W. (which I love) rocker’s fuel-efficient car has been linked to a warehouse fire in San Francisco. Young’s converted 1959 Lincoln Continental, which was actually the inspiration for Young's 2009 album, “Fork in the Road,” burst into flames because of a malfunction in its charging system. Several vintage guitars and pieces of memorabilia owned by the rocker also went up in smoke, so at least Neil suffered a bit for this as well. The 10,000-square-foot warehouse contained paintings, instruments and vintage cars owned by Young, including the LincVolt and Young was quick to blame the blaze on "human error." That’s not the same story being told by authorities, who fingered the battery-powered whip for the fire. "The car was plugged in to charge and left unattended," Young wrote. "The wall charging system was not completely tested and had never been left unattended. A mistake was made. It was not the fault of the car." Thankfully, firefighters arrived on the scene quickly and managed to save around 70 percent of the warehouse's contents. Unfortunately, the building, located in San Francisco's San Carlos neighborhood sustained damage estimated at around $850,000. Ironically, Young was planning to rebuild the LincVolt using pieces of a similar Lincoln Continental, given to him by his wife for his 65th birthday. He has chronicled the vehicle’s conversion in a series of online videos, detailing its changeover to relying on electric batteries and a generator powered by bio-diesel. Perhaps it’s time to work on ways to fireproof storage facilities as part of your enviro-friendly endeavors, Neil………
- Someone sounds a bit crabby, Mark Cuban. Just because you lost out in attempts to buy the Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers within the past few years is no reason to get all snotty and say that you have no plans to bid on the Houston Astros now that current owner Drayton McClane is putting the team up for sale. "No interest in buying the Astros," Cuban wrote in an email. One can't help but think that Cuban is acting like a bit of a petulant five-year-old in this case, given that he’s based in Texas and has a chance to bid on another team from the state. But perhaps it’s not a matter of being cranky over losing out on bidding for the Rangers…..Cuban did say last year that he would be interested in buying the Los Angeles Dodgers if the right deal presented itself. There’s still a chance the Dodgers will be going up for sale once the divorce proceedings of the team’s current owners, Frank and Jamie McCourt, are wrapped up. As for Cuban’s failed bid to buy the Rangers, his group, which included Houston businessman Jim Crane, made a $598 million bid for the Rangers during an August auction in federal bankruptcy court. Instead, a group led by Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg won the auction with a $593 million bid because of how the bids were structured. Cuban refused to say why he didn't have any interest in owning the Astros, although one would have to imagine that it has a little (or a lot) to do with the reasons just mentioned……..
- Allow this to be a reminder for one and all: When heading to Manhattan and looking to ditch your vehicle in the Lincoln Tunnel and bum rush the studios of a cable network for a dance performance, don’t do so when wearing guerrilla-style camouflage outfits. This valuable life lesson comes courtesy of a Florida-based dance troupe called Club Envy, which drove for 24 hours from Jacksonville, Fla., for the chance to appear on BET's live "106th & Park" show. As anyone who has spent even a few hours in or around Manhattan knows, traffic is typically the biggest obstacle to face and Club Envy found that out the hard way. As their leaders drove them to the studio and became ensnared in tunnel traffic, the eight dancers decided there was only one thing they could do to make it on time - get out of the cars and run the remaining two miles through the Lincoln Tunnel. For some odd reason, other motorists were alarmed by the sight of camouflage-clad people leaving vehicles and running through the tunnel and someone alerted the authorities. Before Club Envy could make it out of the tunnel, they were stopped at gunpoint by a contingent of officers from the Port Authority police and the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force who had been notified of a possible terrorist threat. The showdown actually resulted in the tunnel being closed for 45 minutes on Wednesday as authorities tried to sort out the situation. In the end, police decided to escort the dancers to the show, but BET producers were forced to turn them away, as the group missed their time slot on the live show. Chalk this one up to learning an important lesson and having the story of a lifetime to share………
- International legal skirmish time, booyah! Any time two rival nations want to engage in an international hate-fest and take that hate-fest to court (or any other field of confrontation), I’m on board. Thus, I’m incredibly excited about Costa Rica taking its bitter border dispute with Nicaragua to international court. The two nations have been at odds over Costa Rican claims that its territory has been invaded. But when someone infringes upon your land, you have but a few options. If you’re a total wuss of a nation, you can do nothing and let your neighboring country take what it wants. For those who tend toward violent and apocalyptic means of settling disputes, you can simply bust out the nuclear codes, press that big red button and nuke them off the map. Or you can file lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which is the option Costa Rica's foreign ministry chose on Thursday. The suit claims that Nicaragua’s actions “threaten imminent and irreparable harm" to Costa Rica and asks the court to stop "the construction of a canal on Costa Rican soil," according a statement released by the foreign ministry. The entire combustible situation is over Calero Island, a parcel of land on the Atlantic coast. Costa Rica claims the land as its own and alleges that Nicaraguan troops are in Costa Rican territory. Furthermore, it claims that in addition to the Nicaraguan troops, a dredging project in the river is dumping sediment on its side of the border, and that a Costa Rican flag in the area was replaced with a Nicaraguan flag. Nicaragua also had the kahones to complain that Costa Rica has broken diplomatic relations between the countries. Gee, ya think? You (allegedly) invaded their country and having been tearing up their land, so I can see where they might be a little perturbed. Regardless of how this one ends, it should provide some great international fireworks and if nothing else, make things more than a little awkward at Latin America’s Thanksgiving get-together next week……….
- How do you know that your life has bottomed out, blasted right through the bottom of life’s barrel and kept on going? When you’re deemed unfit and not reliable enough to play a porn star in a movie, that’s when. Yup, I’m looking right at you, Lindsay Lohan. Locked in to play the one role she was clearly meant to play - that of legendary porn actress Linda Lovelace - Lohan simply could not stay in her shoes long enough. The director for Inferno, the upcoming Lovelace biopic, announced this week that he will be recasting Lohan’s role as the Deep Throat actress. Director Matthew Wilder had been supportive of Lohan despite her myriad legal troubles, insisting that he would wait until she fully completed rehab to start filming the movie. His patience apparently ran out after Lohan checked into the Betty Ford Center after violating her probation earlier this fall. “We have stuck by Lindsay very patiently for a long time with a lot of love and support. Ultimately, the impossibility of insuring her — and some other issues — have made it impossible for us to go forward,” Wilder stated. Of course, he’s far from the only producer or director to pass over Lohan for a movie role because the film’s insurer wouldn’t sign off on her as a member of the cast. Besides, Lohan has slightly more important issues to worry about at this point, what with being an unabashed lush who is probably headed back to jail and simply cannot shake her affinity for the Colombian nose candy and the drinky-drinky………
- Someone sounds a bit crabby, Mark Cuban. Just because you lost out in attempts to buy the Chicago Cubs and Texas Rangers within the past few years is no reason to get all snotty and say that you have no plans to bid on the Houston Astros now that current owner Drayton McClane is putting the team up for sale. "No interest in buying the Astros," Cuban wrote in an email. One can't help but think that Cuban is acting like a bit of a petulant five-year-old in this case, given that he’s based in Texas and has a chance to bid on another team from the state. But perhaps it’s not a matter of being cranky over losing out on bidding for the Rangers…..Cuban did say last year that he would be interested in buying the Los Angeles Dodgers if the right deal presented itself. There’s still a chance the Dodgers will be going up for sale once the divorce proceedings of the team’s current owners, Frank and Jamie McCourt, are wrapped up. As for Cuban’s failed bid to buy the Rangers, his group, which included Houston businessman Jim Crane, made a $598 million bid for the Rangers during an August auction in federal bankruptcy court. Instead, a group led by Nolan Ryan and Chuck Greenberg won the auction with a $593 million bid because of how the bids were structured. Cuban refused to say why he didn't have any interest in owning the Astros, although one would have to imagine that it has a little (or a lot) to do with the reasons just mentioned……..
- Allow this to be a reminder for one and all: When heading to Manhattan and looking to ditch your vehicle in the Lincoln Tunnel and bum rush the studios of a cable network for a dance performance, don’t do so when wearing guerrilla-style camouflage outfits. This valuable life lesson comes courtesy of a Florida-based dance troupe called Club Envy, which drove for 24 hours from Jacksonville, Fla., for the chance to appear on BET's live "106th & Park" show. As anyone who has spent even a few hours in or around Manhattan knows, traffic is typically the biggest obstacle to face and Club Envy found that out the hard way. As their leaders drove them to the studio and became ensnared in tunnel traffic, the eight dancers decided there was only one thing they could do to make it on time - get out of the cars and run the remaining two miles through the Lincoln Tunnel. For some odd reason, other motorists were alarmed by the sight of camouflage-clad people leaving vehicles and running through the tunnel and someone alerted the authorities. Before Club Envy could make it out of the tunnel, they were stopped at gunpoint by a contingent of officers from the Port Authority police and the FBI-NYPD Joint Terrorism Task Force who had been notified of a possible terrorist threat. The showdown actually resulted in the tunnel being closed for 45 minutes on Wednesday as authorities tried to sort out the situation. In the end, police decided to escort the dancers to the show, but BET producers were forced to turn them away, as the group missed their time slot on the live show. Chalk this one up to learning an important lesson and having the story of a lifetime to share………
- International legal skirmish time, booyah! Any time two rival nations want to engage in an international hate-fest and take that hate-fest to court (or any other field of confrontation), I’m on board. Thus, I’m incredibly excited about Costa Rica taking its bitter border dispute with Nicaragua to international court. The two nations have been at odds over Costa Rican claims that its territory has been invaded. But when someone infringes upon your land, you have but a few options. If you’re a total wuss of a nation, you can do nothing and let your neighboring country take what it wants. For those who tend toward violent and apocalyptic means of settling disputes, you can simply bust out the nuclear codes, press that big red button and nuke them off the map. Or you can file lawsuit at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which is the option Costa Rica's foreign ministry chose on Thursday. The suit claims that Nicaragua’s actions “threaten imminent and irreparable harm" to Costa Rica and asks the court to stop "the construction of a canal on Costa Rican soil," according a statement released by the foreign ministry. The entire combustible situation is over Calero Island, a parcel of land on the Atlantic coast. Costa Rica claims the land as its own and alleges that Nicaraguan troops are in Costa Rican territory. Furthermore, it claims that in addition to the Nicaraguan troops, a dredging project in the river is dumping sediment on its side of the border, and that a Costa Rican flag in the area was replaced with a Nicaraguan flag. Nicaragua also had the kahones to complain that Costa Rica has broken diplomatic relations between the countries. Gee, ya think? You (allegedly) invaded their country and having been tearing up their land, so I can see where they might be a little perturbed. Regardless of how this one ends, it should provide some great international fireworks and if nothing else, make things more than a little awkward at Latin America’s Thanksgiving get-together next week……….
- How do you know that your life has bottomed out, blasted right through the bottom of life’s barrel and kept on going? When you’re deemed unfit and not reliable enough to play a porn star in a movie, that’s when. Yup, I’m looking right at you, Lindsay Lohan. Locked in to play the one role she was clearly meant to play - that of legendary porn actress Linda Lovelace - Lohan simply could not stay in her shoes long enough. The director for Inferno, the upcoming Lovelace biopic, announced this week that he will be recasting Lohan’s role as the Deep Throat actress. Director Matthew Wilder had been supportive of Lohan despite her myriad legal troubles, insisting that he would wait until she fully completed rehab to start filming the movie. His patience apparently ran out after Lohan checked into the Betty Ford Center after violating her probation earlier this fall. “We have stuck by Lindsay very patiently for a long time with a lot of love and support. Ultimately, the impossibility of insuring her — and some other issues — have made it impossible for us to go forward,” Wilder stated. Of course, he’s far from the only producer or director to pass over Lohan for a movie role because the film’s insurer wouldn’t sign off on her as a member of the cast. Besides, Lohan has slightly more important issues to worry about at this point, what with being an unabashed lush who is probably headed back to jail and simply cannot shake her affinity for the Colombian nose candy and the drinky-drinky………
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Riot Watch! Haiti, expanding the MLB playoffs and cows humiliating cops
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the world is always dealing with important issues like inept governments, voting inequities and financial malfeasance, but today’s edition is especially important because it involves Haiti. The battered island nation, still attempting to recover from a deadly earthquake not many months ago, is now coping with hurricane induced floods that have led to a lethal cholera outbreak. The cholera outbreak is a major issue because the poor, largely uneducated people dealing with it don’t fully understand how cholera spreads and stopping its spread has proved all but impossible. With that weighing on their minds, thousands of angry Haitians took to the streets in the capital city of Port-Au-Prince to stage large-scale protests against the United Nations. The protests, which have been forming around the country, finally reached the capital and saw masses of angry people demanding the global body get out of their country. The demonstrations mirrored those earlier this week in the northern coastal city of Cap-Haitien and are based on unfounded assertions that U.N. peacekeepers from Nepal were responsible for starting the cholera outbreak that has claimed more than 1,100 lives and spread to eight of the nation's 10 departments. The United Nations is steadfast that its representatives are not responsible for the outbreak. The main protest in Port-au-Prince on Thursday began peacefully in the center of the city but quickly turned violent as it moved toward the presidential palace. Next thing you know, tear gas is in the air and it is ON. At the city’s central square, Champs de Mars Plaza, several hundred men in an angry pack blocked traffic and added some sizzle do the demonstrations by setting fire to tires in the street and turning over dumpsters. Others kicked it up a notch by lobbing rocks at a campaign poster for presidential candidate Jude Celestin, whose candidacy has been endorsed by outgoing president Rene Preval. A few forward-thinkers threw Molotov cocktails at the poster. To be sure, the floods have heaped even more suffering on an already beaten-down people who are seeking someone to blame. The U.N. is a convenient target and whether or not there is actual evidence to blame them, Haitians are simply looking for a scapegoat. The smallest provocation is enough to spark them to attack a government tractor being used to clear barricades blocking the streets, for example. None of this is meant to minimalize the cholera outbreak, which has led to 1,110 reported deaths and another 18,382 people hospitalized with the disease. It certainly comes as no surprise that the first riots occurred in Cap-Haitien, which has been hit hardest by the outbreak. Residents of the city came out en masse to demand the departure of U.N. peacekeepers because they believe those peacekeepers to be responsible for the cholera epidemic that has produced the highest fatality rate from cholera, 7.5 percent, of any Haitian province. If that means you need to riot and demand answers, then so be it………
- With the NFL and even NBA blowing right by it in terms of popularity in this country, Major League Baseball is in desperate need of something to give it a jolt and hold onto what remains of its dwindling fan base. Commissioner Bud Selig, who hit a home run when he added the wild card to baseball and thus put additional teams in the postseason, hopes that same concept will prove golden once again. Speaking at a series of meetings this week in Orlando with owners and general managers, Selig’s plan to expand baseball's playoffs to 10 teams gained enough momentum that the executives in attendance left all but resigned to the fact that the plan will soon become reality. Selig said his special 14-man committee will discuss adding two wild-card teams when it meets Dec. 7 during the winter meetings in nearby Lake Buena Vista. "We will move ahead, and move ahead pretty quickly," Selig said Thursday at the end of three days chocked full of meetings. Owners would need to approve that change and their next meeting will be Jan. 12-13 in Paradise Valley, Ariz. The players' association would also need to give its approval, although it has already said it is amenable to the extra round. Even if the additional teams are added, MLB would then need to sell those games to baseball's national television partners and fitted into a crowded postseason schedule that has already pushed the World Series into November in the past two years. However, the league would have an extra year to figure out all of the details because the added playoff teams could not happen until the 2012 season, after baseball’s current labor contract expires in December 2011. "I'm not going to rule out anything," Selig said. "We'll just proceed and whatever we decide, then we'll just see how fast we can get it done. Once we pass something, I'm always anxious to get it done." By the way, Selig's committee includes current managers Tony La Russa, Jim Leyland and Mike Scioscia and former manager Joe Torre. They will consider the idea of raising the number of wild-card teams in each league from one to two. Owners seem generally supportive of the idea thus far. "I think it's definitely worth looking at. I have no problem with that," New York Yankees co-owner Hank Steinbrenner said. One question to be answered would be the format of the new opening round of the playoffs, with some favoring a best-of-three series and others supporting one-game winner-take-all game. If implemented, the change would be the first to the postseason since 1995, when MLB expanded its playoff field from four to eight by adding the wild card to each league and changing each league from two to three divisions, creating one additional division winner. Selig remembers that change well, along with the heavy criticism he initially took for the idea. "I got ripped and torn apart, and it was pretty bad," Selig said. "If I had defiled motherhood I don't think I could have gotten ripped any more than I did. But now it's fascinating to me. Now they not only like it so much, they want more of it." Assuming that the playoffs don’t extend past Thanksgiving with this new idea (and don’t bet against that), it sounds like a solid concept…….
- At this point, is there anyone who cares whether or not Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix’s documentary/mockumentary, I’m Still Here, is a complete hoax or not? Both men have waffled on the issue so many times and offered so many varying explanations that no one is quite sure where the truth lies, but the film is nowhere near good enough to waste time and energy caring at this point. For those unfamiliar with the project, the movie chronicles Phoenix’s highly public, supposed psychological meltdown, complete with a drug addiction, attempted rap career and overall life crisis. Phoenix supposedly went temporarily loco, left the acting business and began growing a hobo beard and doing stupid sh*t like showing up on stage at some random club and busting a horrible rap song so awful that is sparked a brawl between he and a patron. Affleck has hinted that the documentary was real and he’s more recently tended toward admitting that it’s all a big ruse between he and his brother-in-law. Phoenix seemed to bring clarity to the situation in September when he admitted on David Letterman’s show that the project was a sham, ‘fessing up to his mumbling, grumbling appearance on the show in February of 2009. But with the project scheduled for release on DVD next week, Affleck and Phoenix need to do something - anything - to inject life and interest into a project that has thus far failed miserably. Hence, their “stunning” revelation on the movie’s DVD audio commentary that they weren’t the only ones in on the hoax. Many of the other stars who appear in the film — including Ben Stiller and Diddy — knew exactly what was going on. Diddy appears in the film when he appears to legitimately consider Phoenix’s plea to produce his album. He kept up the sham by later insisting to reporters that the actor’s rap career was authentic. Affleck and Phoenix cop to Diddy’s part in their hoax during the DVD commentary. “Puff was great. He invited us over to his house, and we actually went over and we explained what the movie was to him and you know, sat with him for about a half an hour and sort of talked him through it. And all he said was that he was in,” Affleck said. “Puff… took direction very well.” Stiller, who appears in one of the film’s more dramatic scenes as he pitches a potential movie role to Phoenix. “We actually filmed this scene after Joaquin’s appearance on Letterman, after the Oscars, when Ben makes fun of him,” Affleck revealed. “And then we went back and we shot this scene so we could put it earlier in the movie and give Ben a reason. We had to sort of justify why [Ben] would be making fun of him that way. Give him a kind of personal motivation. And he was totally game.” As for the infamous rap effort at a Las Vegas club, Phoenix admitted that the stunt was inspired by Chevy Chase. “Most of my life I’ve been consumed and plagued with the fear of falling or tripping in public for some reason. And any time I walk the red carpet or go on to a talk show or something, I’m certain that I’m going to fall and make a fool of myself. And I just thought that this was kind of a perfect opportunity to see the character fall,” Phoenix stated. “I was always a fan of slapstick comedy, and Chevy Chase always used to do this thing where he’d fall over and jump up immediately, like he was fine. And I just basically tried to steal it from him.” Also in on the joke were Natalie Portman and Edward James Olmos, although Affleck refused to comment on whether Letterman was in on the joke. At this point, who really gives a rat’s ass……….
- The Philadelphia Eagles go green every Sunday anyhow, but now the team that put on one of the most explosive offensive shows in the NFL this season wants to go green full-time, in the environmental sense. Their home turf, Lincoln Financial Field, was built before the true advent of green construction. That isn’t stopping owner Jeffrey Luria from turning the stadium into the greenest stadium in the world. By the time next season begins, the team plans to have the entire upper rim of the stadium adorned with 100 spiral-shape wind turbines and to place some 2,500 solar panels over portions of the roof and facade, tilting south. Furthermore, in non-parking areas of the stadium’s main parking lot, the Eagles will build a cogeneration power plant that can run on biodiesel or natural gas. Adding these three enviro-friendly power sources together, the team believes they will have enough energy to power everything needed to stage a game, even a night game where lights are used. In essence, the Eagles have removed themselves from the energy grid. They won't be consuming power from traditional energy sources, although their system will actually be connected to the grid so it can send any unneeded power back to that grid. Everyone made certain to salute the Eagles for their achievement, from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to a sustainability expert at Carnegie Mellon University who called the plan "impressive" and said it would bring important publicity to alternative energy. Not only that, the new system will reportedly save the team some $60 million in energy costs over the next two decades. "We never really accepted the notion that to do great by the environment would not be a wise business practice, or too costly," Lurie said. As for the claim that the Linc will be the greenest stadium in the world……that’s going to be difficult to verify. Other contenders for the title include Taiwan's 100 percent solar-powered Dragon Stadium and the Stade de Suisse arena in Bern, Switzerland, also powered entirely by solar energy. In the United States, 18 other professional sports venues have some form of solar power and nine more have been granted LEED certification, a green rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. Outgoing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to join the trend last month by signing a bill paving the way for construction of an $800 million green stadium in Los Angeles to lure an NFL team back to the city. Whether or not that plan succeeds, it’s certainly good to see teams doing something to benefit the environment………
- Not being a huge fan of The Man (a designation including pretty much anyone in authority, including law enforcement), I find this next story incredibly amusing. Any time police officers are forced to do something truly humiliating, something that has nothing to do with stopping actual lawbreakers and misfits looking to get over on society, it’s worth a solid laugh or ten. When multiple officers are called in to apprehend a bovine escapee terrorizing their town, that definitely qualifies as hilarious. The scene for this small-town shenanigan is Decatur, Ala., where local police were called in to catch a stray cow wandering the streets after leaving a parking lot at a local shopping center. At first, only a few officers joined the pursuit, but the longer it went on, the more cops put their doughnuts down and got in on the action. When that wasn’t enough, another bevy of helpers were brought in from the local stockyard. But try as they may, this motley crew was unable to capture one cantankerous cow and were only able to secure their prey when the animal tired after an hour on the run. At that point, officers used a lasso to secure the cow and after plenty of wrangling, they were able to move her into a cattle trailer to take her to the stockyard. My only regret in all of this is not being there to watch this delightful real-life comedy. You know it’s far better than any crappy, half-baked CBS sitcom that airs in a given week and it’s almost enough to make you wish you lived the small-town life in a place like Decatur……almost……..
- With the NFL and even NBA blowing right by it in terms of popularity in this country, Major League Baseball is in desperate need of something to give it a jolt and hold onto what remains of its dwindling fan base. Commissioner Bud Selig, who hit a home run when he added the wild card to baseball and thus put additional teams in the postseason, hopes that same concept will prove golden once again. Speaking at a series of meetings this week in Orlando with owners and general managers, Selig’s plan to expand baseball's playoffs to 10 teams gained enough momentum that the executives in attendance left all but resigned to the fact that the plan will soon become reality. Selig said his special 14-man committee will discuss adding two wild-card teams when it meets Dec. 7 during the winter meetings in nearby Lake Buena Vista. "We will move ahead, and move ahead pretty quickly," Selig said Thursday at the end of three days chocked full of meetings. Owners would need to approve that change and their next meeting will be Jan. 12-13 in Paradise Valley, Ariz. The players' association would also need to give its approval, although it has already said it is amenable to the extra round. Even if the additional teams are added, MLB would then need to sell those games to baseball's national television partners and fitted into a crowded postseason schedule that has already pushed the World Series into November in the past two years. However, the league would have an extra year to figure out all of the details because the added playoff teams could not happen until the 2012 season, after baseball’s current labor contract expires in December 2011. "I'm not going to rule out anything," Selig said. "We'll just proceed and whatever we decide, then we'll just see how fast we can get it done. Once we pass something, I'm always anxious to get it done." By the way, Selig's committee includes current managers Tony La Russa, Jim Leyland and Mike Scioscia and former manager Joe Torre. They will consider the idea of raising the number of wild-card teams in each league from one to two. Owners seem generally supportive of the idea thus far. "I think it's definitely worth looking at. I have no problem with that," New York Yankees co-owner Hank Steinbrenner said. One question to be answered would be the format of the new opening round of the playoffs, with some favoring a best-of-three series and others supporting one-game winner-take-all game. If implemented, the change would be the first to the postseason since 1995, when MLB expanded its playoff field from four to eight by adding the wild card to each league and changing each league from two to three divisions, creating one additional division winner. Selig remembers that change well, along with the heavy criticism he initially took for the idea. "I got ripped and torn apart, and it was pretty bad," Selig said. "If I had defiled motherhood I don't think I could have gotten ripped any more than I did. But now it's fascinating to me. Now they not only like it so much, they want more of it." Assuming that the playoffs don’t extend past Thanksgiving with this new idea (and don’t bet against that), it sounds like a solid concept…….
- At this point, is there anyone who cares whether or not Casey Affleck and Joaquin Phoenix’s documentary/mockumentary, I’m Still Here, is a complete hoax or not? Both men have waffled on the issue so many times and offered so many varying explanations that no one is quite sure where the truth lies, but the film is nowhere near good enough to waste time and energy caring at this point. For those unfamiliar with the project, the movie chronicles Phoenix’s highly public, supposed psychological meltdown, complete with a drug addiction, attempted rap career and overall life crisis. Phoenix supposedly went temporarily loco, left the acting business and began growing a hobo beard and doing stupid sh*t like showing up on stage at some random club and busting a horrible rap song so awful that is sparked a brawl between he and a patron. Affleck has hinted that the documentary was real and he’s more recently tended toward admitting that it’s all a big ruse between he and his brother-in-law. Phoenix seemed to bring clarity to the situation in September when he admitted on David Letterman’s show that the project was a sham, ‘fessing up to his mumbling, grumbling appearance on the show in February of 2009. But with the project scheduled for release on DVD next week, Affleck and Phoenix need to do something - anything - to inject life and interest into a project that has thus far failed miserably. Hence, their “stunning” revelation on the movie’s DVD audio commentary that they weren’t the only ones in on the hoax. Many of the other stars who appear in the film — including Ben Stiller and Diddy — knew exactly what was going on. Diddy appears in the film when he appears to legitimately consider Phoenix’s plea to produce his album. He kept up the sham by later insisting to reporters that the actor’s rap career was authentic. Affleck and Phoenix cop to Diddy’s part in their hoax during the DVD commentary. “Puff was great. He invited us over to his house, and we actually went over and we explained what the movie was to him and you know, sat with him for about a half an hour and sort of talked him through it. And all he said was that he was in,” Affleck said. “Puff… took direction very well.” Stiller, who appears in one of the film’s more dramatic scenes as he pitches a potential movie role to Phoenix. “We actually filmed this scene after Joaquin’s appearance on Letterman, after the Oscars, when Ben makes fun of him,” Affleck revealed. “And then we went back and we shot this scene so we could put it earlier in the movie and give Ben a reason. We had to sort of justify why [Ben] would be making fun of him that way. Give him a kind of personal motivation. And he was totally game.” As for the infamous rap effort at a Las Vegas club, Phoenix admitted that the stunt was inspired by Chevy Chase. “Most of my life I’ve been consumed and plagued with the fear of falling or tripping in public for some reason. And any time I walk the red carpet or go on to a talk show or something, I’m certain that I’m going to fall and make a fool of myself. And I just thought that this was kind of a perfect opportunity to see the character fall,” Phoenix stated. “I was always a fan of slapstick comedy, and Chevy Chase always used to do this thing where he’d fall over and jump up immediately, like he was fine. And I just basically tried to steal it from him.” Also in on the joke were Natalie Portman and Edward James Olmos, although Affleck refused to comment on whether Letterman was in on the joke. At this point, who really gives a rat’s ass……….
- The Philadelphia Eagles go green every Sunday anyhow, but now the team that put on one of the most explosive offensive shows in the NFL this season wants to go green full-time, in the environmental sense. Their home turf, Lincoln Financial Field, was built before the true advent of green construction. That isn’t stopping owner Jeffrey Luria from turning the stadium into the greenest stadium in the world. By the time next season begins, the team plans to have the entire upper rim of the stadium adorned with 100 spiral-shape wind turbines and to place some 2,500 solar panels over portions of the roof and facade, tilting south. Furthermore, in non-parking areas of the stadium’s main parking lot, the Eagles will build a cogeneration power plant that can run on biodiesel or natural gas. Adding these three enviro-friendly power sources together, the team believes they will have enough energy to power everything needed to stage a game, even a night game where lights are used. In essence, the Eagles have removed themselves from the energy grid. They won't be consuming power from traditional energy sources, although their system will actually be connected to the grid so it can send any unneeded power back to that grid. Everyone made certain to salute the Eagles for their achievement, from NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to a sustainability expert at Carnegie Mellon University who called the plan "impressive" and said it would bring important publicity to alternative energy. Not only that, the new system will reportedly save the team some $60 million in energy costs over the next two decades. "We never really accepted the notion that to do great by the environment would not be a wise business practice, or too costly," Lurie said. As for the claim that the Linc will be the greenest stadium in the world……that’s going to be difficult to verify. Other contenders for the title include Taiwan's 100 percent solar-powered Dragon Stadium and the Stade de Suisse arena in Bern, Switzerland, also powered entirely by solar energy. In the United States, 18 other professional sports venues have some form of solar power and nine more have been granted LEED certification, a green rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. Outgoing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger tried to join the trend last month by signing a bill paving the way for construction of an $800 million green stadium in Los Angeles to lure an NFL team back to the city. Whether or not that plan succeeds, it’s certainly good to see teams doing something to benefit the environment………
- Not being a huge fan of The Man (a designation including pretty much anyone in authority, including law enforcement), I find this next story incredibly amusing. Any time police officers are forced to do something truly humiliating, something that has nothing to do with stopping actual lawbreakers and misfits looking to get over on society, it’s worth a solid laugh or ten. When multiple officers are called in to apprehend a bovine escapee terrorizing their town, that definitely qualifies as hilarious. The scene for this small-town shenanigan is Decatur, Ala., where local police were called in to catch a stray cow wandering the streets after leaving a parking lot at a local shopping center. At first, only a few officers joined the pursuit, but the longer it went on, the more cops put their doughnuts down and got in on the action. When that wasn’t enough, another bevy of helpers were brought in from the local stockyard. But try as they may, this motley crew was unable to capture one cantankerous cow and were only able to secure their prey when the animal tired after an hour on the run. At that point, officers used a lasso to secure the cow and after plenty of wrangling, they were able to move her into a cattle trailer to take her to the stockyard. My only regret in all of this is not being there to watch this delightful real-life comedy. You know it’s far better than any crappy, half-baked CBS sitcom that airs in a given week and it’s almost enough to make you wish you lived the small-town life in a place like Decatur……almost……..
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Dog crap in Aspen, oppression in Iran and Oden's woes
- And the other shoe finally drops. As rumors of a big U.S. Food and Drug Administration announcement (and aren’t they all big?) swirled over the past week, word on the street had the announcement centering on caffeinated alcoholic beverages. Those rumors proved true Wednesday as the FDA informed the manufacturers of seven caffeinated alcoholic beverages Wednesday that their drinks are a "public health concern" and can't stay on the market in their current form. The FDA has spent the past year analyzing the situation, but that doesn’t mean they are giving the affected companies a similar amount of time to address the problem. In fact, the agency has given the companies 15 days to either reformulate their products or face possible seizure under federal law. Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, the agency's principal deputy commissioner, made the announcement and based it on the fact that experts have said the caffeine used in the beverages can mask the effects of alcohol, leaving drinkers unaware of how intoxicated they are. "FDA does not find support for the claim that the addition of caffeine to these alcoholic beverages is 'generally recognized as safe,' which is the legal standard," Sharfstein explained. "To the contrary, there is evidence that the combinations of caffeine and alcohol in these products pose a public health concern." The announcement had swift and serious consequences, as one of the companies that received warning letters, Phusion Projects of Chicago, Ill., which makes Four Loko -- a drink nicknamed "blackout in a can" by some users, announced that it was dropping caffeine and two other ingredients, guarana and taurine, from Four Loko. The company cited "a difficult and politically-charged regulatory environment," which is a snotty, corporate-speak way of saying that we’ll change, but we won't like it. Also affected by the new policy are San Diego, California-based United Brands, which manufactures the Joose and Max brands; Portland, Oregon's Charge Beverages Corp., which sells Core High Gravity HG, Core High Gravity HG Orange, and Lemon Lime Core Spiked; and New Century Brewing of Boston, Massachusetts, which makes Moonshot. Not all of these companies have taken kindly to the crackdown and New Century Brewing insists that its Moonshot drinks are “not beer, they're juice, with 200 grams of sodium and artificial everything.” It is important to note that the FDA has no authority to ban the products outright, but it can regulate the products that are on the market. That makes good sense, given the fact that a 23.5-ounce can of Four Loko contains either 6 or 12 percent alcohol by volume, depending on state regulations. So simmer down, caffe-beer makers……….
- It is important to be careful when talking about a person afflicted with bipolar disorder because those dealing with it have incredibly difficult lives and so do their loved ones. Unless and until you have dealt with a bipolar person, you can't even begin to fathom how hard their life can be. Having said that……it’s at least somewhat humorous that of all television shows that could drive a bipolar disorder-sufferer to fire a shotgun at his television, of course it was Dancing With the (D-List) Stars. That show is more than enough to infuriate anyone with even the most mediocre of standards when it comes to their entertainment choices and to be honest, I’d probably want to unleash some major violence on my television if I was ever forced to watch the show. So I can very easily understand how Steven N. Cowan, bipolar-afflicted man from Vermont, Wis., became angry enough to fire a shotgun at the television in his house Monday evening while watching the performance night of Dancing With the Stars. Cowan’s wife fled their home and phoned police, saying her husband was intoxicated, armed, and threatening to commit suicide. Police arrived at the residence and after 15 tense hours of negotiations, they were able to coax Cowan out of the house. He’s been charged with second-degree reckless endangerment, but one would have to imagine that if he is indeed diagnosed with bipolar disorder, those charges will be dropped. Apparently the tipping point for Cowan’s anger was his belief that Bristol Palin is a member of the show’s cast because her mother - the vapid, nutty and frighteningly idiotic Sarah Palin - is a well-known political figure and not because of her own dancing ability. Thankfully, the only casualty in the situation is the television or wall in the Cowan home that the bullet struck, which is as happy an ending as can be hoped for in a situation like this………
- Maybe all of the jokes weren’t really jokes after all. When Greg Oden left Ohio State early to enter the NBA Draft, his bearded visage and overall personality led people to crack wise about how old he really was. Jokes about him being a grandfather and on the verge of collecting Social Security were all the rage and became so commonplace that they ceased being funny after about a day. However, Oden’s NBA career has done nothing if not back up the fact that he has, if nothing else, the body of an 85-year-old. He underwent microfracture surgery on his right knee before playing a single NBA game and missed the entire 2007-08 season as a result. He returned to play 62 games the following season and at times flashed the promise that led Portland to draft him first overall in the 2007 draft. However, the injury bug bit again in December and he fractured his left patella in a game, leading to him missing the rest of the 2009-10 season after playing in just 21 games. He hasn’t taken to the court in game action since then, but the Trail Blazers had hoped he would return some time this season to give their front court a boost. Those hopes were doused Wednesday when the team announced that will undergo microfracture surgery on his left knee Friday and will miss the remainder of the 2010-11 season. A news conference was scheduled for midnight ET in Portland to deliver the grim news. Ironically, the microfracture surgery is unrelated to the fractured patella and is necessary because an MRI showed damaged cartilage on the surface of his femur. When he’s been able to actually get on the court, Oden has posted solid career NBA averages of 9.4 points, 7.3 rebounds, 0.6 assists and 1.43 blocked shots in 82 games over parts of two seasons…..ironic because 82 games is the number of games in a full season for guys who can actually stay healthy. More and more, it’s looking like Oden will never be one of those guys and at least in terms of his basketball career, could go down as one of the biggest draft busts of all-time………..
- Dammit, Iran! You can't just go around accusing every foreigner who visits your sand trap of a country of being a spy. Literally, accusations of Americans, Europeans, Asians, Australians, South Americans, being spies looking to bring down Iran’s totalitarian regime are becoming really tired, really quickly. The latest such allegations are levied at two German journalists who interviewed the son and lawyer of a woman condemned to die by stoning with espionage. "Their reports and propaganda in Tabriz proved that they are in the country for spying," Malek Ajdar Shafiee, the head of the Justice Department of East Azarbaijan. All we know about the two alleged spies at this point is that they are a reporter and photojournalist, arrested last month in the northwest city of Tabriz after they interviewed the son and lawyer of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was convicted of adultery in 2006 and sentenced to death by stoning. The positions of each side in the case are well-known, with the Iranian government insisting that Ashtiani was involved in her husband's murder in addition to her adultery and Ashtiani and her family disputing those claims. But anyone who dares oppose the mighty regime of dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an enemy of the state these days and the two Germans probably should have known as much when they did the interview. An interview run Tuesday on Iranian state-run television quoted one of the men saying that they were "tricked" by an activist with the German-based International Committee Against Stoning, into entering the country illegally. The unidentified source told the television station that the committee's spokeswoman, Mina Ahadi, used the journalists for her own gain. "Mina Ahadi sent me to Iran because she knew she would benefit from my arrest, and I'll sue her when I get back to Germany," the man said. The only real fair treatment the two supposed spies have received thus far has come in the forms of two meetings with a German diplomat based in the embassy in Tehran. Iranian courts have said Ashtiani's case is still under review, but leave it to Ahmadinejad and his crew to take the situation and capitalize on it to extend their web of oppression, paranoia and ruling by terror………
- People of Aspen, allow me to put this simply: Pick up your dog crap. It’s not difficult and if you’re going to walk your dog in any of the beautiful, scenic parks in and around one of the country’s most picturesque cities, the least you can do is carry a plastic bag and scoop up your pooch’s waste when they drop a deuce on a sidewalk, trail or grassy knoll. I say this on behalf of Aspen and Pitkin County's open space department, which has been forced to hire a third park ranger in preparation for next summer as part of its ongoing effort to make sure people clean up after their dogs. "Dog poop is a huge issue," said Open Space Land Steward Gary Tennenbaum. "More people are picking it [dog poop] up, but leaving the bags. Now we've got to get them to remember to pick up the bag.” The department’s two current rangers have been doing their best, but they just can't handle the problem on their own. "They've been working with the community for six years with some success," said Tennenbaum. However, the department has been snatching up more and more property and building additional trails, which is good in a sense but also creates more for the two rangers to police. Thus, they will be hiring that third ranger to work May to October - peak pooping season on the trails. Rangers don’t actually clean up the messes, but they do enforce the rules and sometimes, a nice, swift kick in the butt is what dog owners truly need……….
- It is important to be careful when talking about a person afflicted with bipolar disorder because those dealing with it have incredibly difficult lives and so do their loved ones. Unless and until you have dealt with a bipolar person, you can't even begin to fathom how hard their life can be. Having said that……it’s at least somewhat humorous that of all television shows that could drive a bipolar disorder-sufferer to fire a shotgun at his television, of course it was Dancing With the (D-List) Stars. That show is more than enough to infuriate anyone with even the most mediocre of standards when it comes to their entertainment choices and to be honest, I’d probably want to unleash some major violence on my television if I was ever forced to watch the show. So I can very easily understand how Steven N. Cowan, bipolar-afflicted man from Vermont, Wis., became angry enough to fire a shotgun at the television in his house Monday evening while watching the performance night of Dancing With the Stars. Cowan’s wife fled their home and phoned police, saying her husband was intoxicated, armed, and threatening to commit suicide. Police arrived at the residence and after 15 tense hours of negotiations, they were able to coax Cowan out of the house. He’s been charged with second-degree reckless endangerment, but one would have to imagine that if he is indeed diagnosed with bipolar disorder, those charges will be dropped. Apparently the tipping point for Cowan’s anger was his belief that Bristol Palin is a member of the show’s cast because her mother - the vapid, nutty and frighteningly idiotic Sarah Palin - is a well-known political figure and not because of her own dancing ability. Thankfully, the only casualty in the situation is the television or wall in the Cowan home that the bullet struck, which is as happy an ending as can be hoped for in a situation like this………
- Maybe all of the jokes weren’t really jokes after all. When Greg Oden left Ohio State early to enter the NBA Draft, his bearded visage and overall personality led people to crack wise about how old he really was. Jokes about him being a grandfather and on the verge of collecting Social Security were all the rage and became so commonplace that they ceased being funny after about a day. However, Oden’s NBA career has done nothing if not back up the fact that he has, if nothing else, the body of an 85-year-old. He underwent microfracture surgery on his right knee before playing a single NBA game and missed the entire 2007-08 season as a result. He returned to play 62 games the following season and at times flashed the promise that led Portland to draft him first overall in the 2007 draft. However, the injury bug bit again in December and he fractured his left patella in a game, leading to him missing the rest of the 2009-10 season after playing in just 21 games. He hasn’t taken to the court in game action since then, but the Trail Blazers had hoped he would return some time this season to give their front court a boost. Those hopes were doused Wednesday when the team announced that will undergo microfracture surgery on his left knee Friday and will miss the remainder of the 2010-11 season. A news conference was scheduled for midnight ET in Portland to deliver the grim news. Ironically, the microfracture surgery is unrelated to the fractured patella and is necessary because an MRI showed damaged cartilage on the surface of his femur. When he’s been able to actually get on the court, Oden has posted solid career NBA averages of 9.4 points, 7.3 rebounds, 0.6 assists and 1.43 blocked shots in 82 games over parts of two seasons…..ironic because 82 games is the number of games in a full season for guys who can actually stay healthy. More and more, it’s looking like Oden will never be one of those guys and at least in terms of his basketball career, could go down as one of the biggest draft busts of all-time………..
- Dammit, Iran! You can't just go around accusing every foreigner who visits your sand trap of a country of being a spy. Literally, accusations of Americans, Europeans, Asians, Australians, South Americans, being spies looking to bring down Iran’s totalitarian regime are becoming really tired, really quickly. The latest such allegations are levied at two German journalists who interviewed the son and lawyer of a woman condemned to die by stoning with espionage. "Their reports and propaganda in Tabriz proved that they are in the country for spying," Malek Ajdar Shafiee, the head of the Justice Department of East Azarbaijan. All we know about the two alleged spies at this point is that they are a reporter and photojournalist, arrested last month in the northwest city of Tabriz after they interviewed the son and lawyer of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, who was convicted of adultery in 2006 and sentenced to death by stoning. The positions of each side in the case are well-known, with the Iranian government insisting that Ashtiani was involved in her husband's murder in addition to her adultery and Ashtiani and her family disputing those claims. But anyone who dares oppose the mighty regime of dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is an enemy of the state these days and the two Germans probably should have known as much when they did the interview. An interview run Tuesday on Iranian state-run television quoted one of the men saying that they were "tricked" by an activist with the German-based International Committee Against Stoning, into entering the country illegally. The unidentified source told the television station that the committee's spokeswoman, Mina Ahadi, used the journalists for her own gain. "Mina Ahadi sent me to Iran because she knew she would benefit from my arrest, and I'll sue her when I get back to Germany," the man said. The only real fair treatment the two supposed spies have received thus far has come in the forms of two meetings with a German diplomat based in the embassy in Tehran. Iranian courts have said Ashtiani's case is still under review, but leave it to Ahmadinejad and his crew to take the situation and capitalize on it to extend their web of oppression, paranoia and ruling by terror………
- People of Aspen, allow me to put this simply: Pick up your dog crap. It’s not difficult and if you’re going to walk your dog in any of the beautiful, scenic parks in and around one of the country’s most picturesque cities, the least you can do is carry a plastic bag and scoop up your pooch’s waste when they drop a deuce on a sidewalk, trail or grassy knoll. I say this on behalf of Aspen and Pitkin County's open space department, which has been forced to hire a third park ranger in preparation for next summer as part of its ongoing effort to make sure people clean up after their dogs. "Dog poop is a huge issue," said Open Space Land Steward Gary Tennenbaum. "More people are picking it [dog poop] up, but leaving the bags. Now we've got to get them to remember to pick up the bag.” The department’s two current rangers have been doing their best, but they just can't handle the problem on their own. "They've been working with the community for six years with some success," said Tennenbaum. However, the department has been snatching up more and more property and building additional trails, which is good in a sense but also creates more for the two rangers to police. Thus, they will be hiring that third ranger to work May to October - peak pooping season on the trails. Rangers don’t actually clean up the messes, but they do enforce the rules and sometimes, a nice, swift kick in the butt is what dog owners truly need……….
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Iran's arms oopsie, the NFLPA counter to an 18-game season and "research" that explore no new ground
- Oops, did we do that? Yes Iran, you did. You just “accidentally” handed over a shipment of arms to Nigeria because of what you claim was a giant mix-up. A shipment of arms intercepted Monday in Nigeria was shipped from a private company and destined for another West African country, according to Iran's foreign minister. "A private company which had sold conventional and defensive weapons to a West African country had transferred the shipment through Nigeria," Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said. That, however, is not the story being told by security forces in Nigeria, who said last week they believed the shipment was bound for Nigeria. Nigeria’s security service said it seized 13 shipping containers in the port of Lagos filled with illegal weapons, including rockets, grenades and bullets. Sounds like a recipe for a helluva Fourth of July party…..followed by a small war launched against a neighboring town. Inside each shipping container was 20 wooden crates full of war-starting goodness and the shipping company that transported those crates quickly explain that the weaponry came from Iran. That led to a representative of the shipping company meeting with Nigerian authorities to explain what had….what ha---….well, what happened. "Our enemies had insinuated that the shipment was intended for Nigeria," Mottaki fumed. He and his Nigerian counterpart, Odein Ajumogobia, also met Thursday. The best part of the situation is that no one involved in this mess actually wants to take responsibility. The company that shipped the arms, CMA CGM, claimed it was a victim of a false cargo declaration. Someone definitely did falsify those shipping documents because paperwork filed by CCA CGM listed the materials inside the containers as "packages of glass wool and pallets of stone." Now, unless that’s super-secret shipping code for sh*t that you could use to launch a violent coup to overthrow a government, then someone lied. The containers have been traced to Bandar Abbas, a port in southern Iran, where they were loaded before being discharged in Lagos in July. Next time, let’s try to figure out who is shipping what to where and keep track of it, k………
- Gosh, I love scientific “research” that confirms blatantly obvious truths about the world that no one is bothering to dispute, don’t you? So let’s give a big round of applause to Amelia Arria, PhD, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, in College Park, who is the lead author on a truly revolutionary study that unearthed the shocking news that combining caffeine and alcohol can pose a risk to young people even when the substances aren't mixed in the same can or cup. That’s right, even if you’re not downing caffeinated alcoholic beverages such as Four Loko and are merely chasing a can of Red Bull with a beer or shot of vodka, you could be in danger. According to this study, college students who consume nonalcoholic energy drinks such as Red Bull at least once a week are more than twice as likely as their peers to show signs of alcohol dependence, including withdrawal symptoms and an inability to cut back on drinking. "The odds were fairly strong, especially when you look at the dose of energy drink used," Arria said. Her study, which appears in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (which is the magazine you want to quote at parties to impress chicks, no doubt), was based on interviews with about 1,100 college seniors - the ones who were sober enough to answer questions, I suppose. The problem with the study is that no pattern of cause and effect is shown, so there is no way to definitively link energy-drink consumption to alcohol problems. In other words, being on a lot of benders and to a lot of frat parties and keggers could simply lead to students too worn out to do any school work without the aid of a Five Hour Energy or Red Bull. Or, researchers theorize, caffeine-laden energy drinks can prolong drinking sessions and mask the feeling of drunkenness, potentially raising the risk for dangerous binges and behavior. "Caffeine keeps you awake but just as impaired," Arria says. "You may feel as if you can get into a car or play a risky game. That's why this feeling of wide awake drunkenness is more dangerous." As you might expect, the American Beverage Association, a trade group that represents the makers and distributors of nonalcoholic beverages including Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar, and Amp, was quick to dispute the findings on the grounds that they do not prove a direct link between energy-drink consumption and alcohol problems and “do not show that energy drinks encourage misuse of alcohol in any way and state that further research is warranted," the association said. We’ll see how the Food and Drug Administration feels about that assertion because the agency is expected to make an announcement about caffeinated alcoholic beverages on Wednesday and Sen. Charles Schumer (D--N.Y.) said Tuesday that the FDA "will rule that caffeine is an unsafe food additive to alcohol beverages," effectively banning the sale of the beverages in the U.S. Looks like battle lines are being drawn………
- Planning to fly Delta any time soon? Better make sure you don’t have any visible tattoos that could possibly offend or worry your fellow passengers because you could end up in the same situation as traveler Adam Pearson of Los Angeles after he attempted to take a Memphis-bound Delta flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Memphis. Pearson, who sports several colorful ink jobs on different parts of his body, admits that some people find his body art a tad frightening, especially the tats on his fingers that read "Atom Bomb." However, tattoos scaring someone because they think the person sporting them is a legitimate threat to kick their ass in a bar fight is one thing; having that person temporarily removed from a flight because of them is something else entirely. The latter is what happened to Pearson, who was temporarily removed from the flight before eventually being allowed back on board the plane after he explained the tattoos stand for a childhood nickname and that he works as a food stylist and not a terrorist. "Someone was uncomfortable with my appearance and that caused an interrogation of me," Pearson said . "And I don't understand that whole process. It just struck me as a weird experience.” Ironically, Pearson is a Gold Medallion member with Delta Airlines who has flown more than 140,000 miles this year alone. You know, the people you curse under your breath at the gate because they get to board first and don’t have to wait through the same über-long line you have to suffer through at the top of the jetway. Still, the story has made him something of a trending topic worldwide. "My assistant's sister is in Indonesia and it made the news there," he said. "It's gone worldwide.” So Delta has to compensate him somehow for the inconvenience and harassment, right? Umm, not exactly. Seems that all Pearson wants is an apology from Delta, but he has yet to hear anything from the airline…………
- Isn't PBS supposed to be the television station of the common man, a free, user-supported entity dedicated to educating, inspiring and edifying the everyman? If so, why is PBS jerking what might be the only mildly funny joke Tina Fey has ever told in public from its airwaves? That’s what happened over the weekend, as Fey’s joke about Sarah Palin and conservative female politicians was edited by PBS during Sunday’s broadcast of the Mark Twain Prize ceremony. Somehow, Fey snagged the mildly prestigious comedy award and during her acceptance speech, she said, “And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women — except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape kit ‘n’ stuff. But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know what? Actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.” Obviously, Fey isn’t a big fan of the conservative or religious points of view on the big issues of the day, but the fact that PBS is censoring someone who was honored on one of its very own broadcasts……seems a bit incongruous with what the network is all about (or is supposed to be about). For what it’s worth, the entire unedited video can still be viewed on PBS’s official web site. A PBS executive quizzed about the decision to edit Fey’s joke out had nothing to do with politics and was rather a matter of keeping the broadcast on schedule. “We had zero problems with anything she said,” said executive producer Peter Kaminsky, who claimed the ceremony had run 19 minutes too long. “We snipped from everyone.” Oh, I see. So the primary comment you chose to cut just happened to be critical of a conservative kook whose interests just so happen to align more with your own than with the liberal left with what Fey seems more closely in tune? And what network doesn’t have an awards show run long? They all run long and they’re all insanely boring and self-serving, but that’s what the speech-ending music is for, to get long-winded people off stage. Next time, just go “Gong Show” and cut Fey off mid-speech, before she says anything truly offensive………
- Fans are down on the idea of an 18-game regular-season format in the NFL, current and former players hate the idea and yet, the owners keep pushing it for the simple reason that it will make them more money. Realizing that they are backed into a corner and don’t have the clout to stop the 18-game season from becoming a reality if the owners decide to exert their will, the NFL Players Association has made what it says is a "good-faith" counterproposal that addresses the player safety risks incumbent with an expanded season. That counterproposal would largely target the number and length of offseason activities, thus balancing out the added time and physical burden on players by two added regular-season games. The proposal lays out multiple ideas, including: reducing offseason workouts would be reduced from the current 14 weeks to five weeks or 20 days, significantly reduced contact between players during training camp with four practices a week consisting of helmetless and padless periods, two in-season bye weeks (up from one),
the expansion of rosters from the current 53 to 56 or 57, in addition to practice squads, increased pro-rated salaries for players under contract and reduction of the amount of games players need to become vested to qualify for post-career health care and pension benefits. One could argue that the players are making these demands because they know the owners will reject them and they will then be able to point to the fact that they made a proposal and tried to work with the league, only to be shot down. The league is refusing comment on the counterproposal, which was delivered to the league's labor negotiation team near the end of October. At present, negotiations between the two sides have all but ground to a halt and no one in or around the league seems to hold out much hope for a new collective bargaining agreement to avert a potential work stoppage in 2011. "We have responded to every one of the league's proposals and concerns in an effort to keep negotiations progressing in good faith," said George Atallah, the NFLPA's assistant executive director of external affairs. "There are obvious concerns about an 18-game season in the absence of real information that we await." Pressed about what data the NFLPA needs in order to move forward, Atallah said, "injury data, financial information and a logical explanation as to why they are canceling their obligation to post-career and current health care [next March when the current CBA expires]." Although the league hasn’t made public its plan for an 18-game schedule and what concessions it would make on the issues raised by the union, we do know that the NFL calendar would undergo significant changes under an 18-game format with two byes, including the possibility that the Super Bowl will be played on President's Day weekend -- three weeks into February. As complicated as all of this sounds (and is), the unfortunate reality is that the 18-game schedule is but one of many issues that must be resolved in order for a new CBA to happen……….
- Gosh, I love scientific “research” that confirms blatantly obvious truths about the world that no one is bothering to dispute, don’t you? So let’s give a big round of applause to Amelia Arria, PhD, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, in College Park, who is the lead author on a truly revolutionary study that unearthed the shocking news that combining caffeine and alcohol can pose a risk to young people even when the substances aren't mixed in the same can or cup. That’s right, even if you’re not downing caffeinated alcoholic beverages such as Four Loko and are merely chasing a can of Red Bull with a beer or shot of vodka, you could be in danger. According to this study, college students who consume nonalcoholic energy drinks such as Red Bull at least once a week are more than twice as likely as their peers to show signs of alcohol dependence, including withdrawal symptoms and an inability to cut back on drinking. "The odds were fairly strong, especially when you look at the dose of energy drink used," Arria said. Her study, which appears in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (which is the magazine you want to quote at parties to impress chicks, no doubt), was based on interviews with about 1,100 college seniors - the ones who were sober enough to answer questions, I suppose. The problem with the study is that no pattern of cause and effect is shown, so there is no way to definitively link energy-drink consumption to alcohol problems. In other words, being on a lot of benders and to a lot of frat parties and keggers could simply lead to students too worn out to do any school work without the aid of a Five Hour Energy or Red Bull. Or, researchers theorize, caffeine-laden energy drinks can prolong drinking sessions and mask the feeling of drunkenness, potentially raising the risk for dangerous binges and behavior. "Caffeine keeps you awake but just as impaired," Arria says. "You may feel as if you can get into a car or play a risky game. That's why this feeling of wide awake drunkenness is more dangerous." As you might expect, the American Beverage Association, a trade group that represents the makers and distributors of nonalcoholic beverages including Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar, and Amp, was quick to dispute the findings on the grounds that they do not prove a direct link between energy-drink consumption and alcohol problems and “do not show that energy drinks encourage misuse of alcohol in any way and state that further research is warranted," the association said. We’ll see how the Food and Drug Administration feels about that assertion because the agency is expected to make an announcement about caffeinated alcoholic beverages on Wednesday and Sen. Charles Schumer (D--N.Y.) said Tuesday that the FDA "will rule that caffeine is an unsafe food additive to alcohol beverages," effectively banning the sale of the beverages in the U.S. Looks like battle lines are being drawn………
- Planning to fly Delta any time soon? Better make sure you don’t have any visible tattoos that could possibly offend or worry your fellow passengers because you could end up in the same situation as traveler Adam Pearson of Los Angeles after he attempted to take a Memphis-bound Delta flight from Los Angeles International Airport to Memphis. Pearson, who sports several colorful ink jobs on different parts of his body, admits that some people find his body art a tad frightening, especially the tats on his fingers that read "Atom Bomb." However, tattoos scaring someone because they think the person sporting them is a legitimate threat to kick their ass in a bar fight is one thing; having that person temporarily removed from a flight because of them is something else entirely. The latter is what happened to Pearson, who was temporarily removed from the flight before eventually being allowed back on board the plane after he explained the tattoos stand for a childhood nickname and that he works as a food stylist and not a terrorist. "Someone was uncomfortable with my appearance and that caused an interrogation of me," Pearson said . "And I don't understand that whole process. It just struck me as a weird experience.” Ironically, Pearson is a Gold Medallion member with Delta Airlines who has flown more than 140,000 miles this year alone. You know, the people you curse under your breath at the gate because they get to board first and don’t have to wait through the same über-long line you have to suffer through at the top of the jetway. Still, the story has made him something of a trending topic worldwide. "My assistant's sister is in Indonesia and it made the news there," he said. "It's gone worldwide.” So Delta has to compensate him somehow for the inconvenience and harassment, right? Umm, not exactly. Seems that all Pearson wants is an apology from Delta, but he has yet to hear anything from the airline…………
- Isn't PBS supposed to be the television station of the common man, a free, user-supported entity dedicated to educating, inspiring and edifying the everyman? If so, why is PBS jerking what might be the only mildly funny joke Tina Fey has ever told in public from its airwaves? That’s what happened over the weekend, as Fey’s joke about Sarah Palin and conservative female politicians was edited by PBS during Sunday’s broadcast of the Mark Twain Prize ceremony. Somehow, Fey snagged the mildly prestigious comedy award and during her acceptance speech, she said, “And, you know, politics aside, the success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women — except, of course, those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape kit ‘n’ stuff. But for everybody else, it’s a win-win. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know what? Actually, I take it back. The whole thing’s a disaster.” Obviously, Fey isn’t a big fan of the conservative or religious points of view on the big issues of the day, but the fact that PBS is censoring someone who was honored on one of its very own broadcasts……seems a bit incongruous with what the network is all about (or is supposed to be about). For what it’s worth, the entire unedited video can still be viewed on PBS’s official web site. A PBS executive quizzed about the decision to edit Fey’s joke out had nothing to do with politics and was rather a matter of keeping the broadcast on schedule. “We had zero problems with anything she said,” said executive producer Peter Kaminsky, who claimed the ceremony had run 19 minutes too long. “We snipped from everyone.” Oh, I see. So the primary comment you chose to cut just happened to be critical of a conservative kook whose interests just so happen to align more with your own than with the liberal left with what Fey seems more closely in tune? And what network doesn’t have an awards show run long? They all run long and they’re all insanely boring and self-serving, but that’s what the speech-ending music is for, to get long-winded people off stage. Next time, just go “Gong Show” and cut Fey off mid-speech, before she says anything truly offensive………
- Fans are down on the idea of an 18-game regular-season format in the NFL, current and former players hate the idea and yet, the owners keep pushing it for the simple reason that it will make them more money. Realizing that they are backed into a corner and don’t have the clout to stop the 18-game season from becoming a reality if the owners decide to exert their will, the NFL Players Association has made what it says is a "good-faith" counterproposal that addresses the player safety risks incumbent with an expanded season. That counterproposal would largely target the number and length of offseason activities, thus balancing out the added time and physical burden on players by two added regular-season games. The proposal lays out multiple ideas, including: reducing offseason workouts would be reduced from the current 14 weeks to five weeks or 20 days, significantly reduced contact between players during training camp with four practices a week consisting of helmetless and padless periods, two in-season bye weeks (up from one),
the expansion of rosters from the current 53 to 56 or 57, in addition to practice squads, increased pro-rated salaries for players under contract and reduction of the amount of games players need to become vested to qualify for post-career health care and pension benefits. One could argue that the players are making these demands because they know the owners will reject them and they will then be able to point to the fact that they made a proposal and tried to work with the league, only to be shot down. The league is refusing comment on the counterproposal, which was delivered to the league's labor negotiation team near the end of October. At present, negotiations between the two sides have all but ground to a halt and no one in or around the league seems to hold out much hope for a new collective bargaining agreement to avert a potential work stoppage in 2011. "We have responded to every one of the league's proposals and concerns in an effort to keep negotiations progressing in good faith," said George Atallah, the NFLPA's assistant executive director of external affairs. "There are obvious concerns about an 18-game season in the absence of real information that we await." Pressed about what data the NFLPA needs in order to move forward, Atallah said, "injury data, financial information and a logical explanation as to why they are canceling their obligation to post-career and current health care [next March when the current CBA expires]." Although the league hasn’t made public its plan for an 18-game schedule and what concessions it would make on the issues raised by the union, we do know that the NFL calendar would undergo significant changes under an 18-game format with two byes, including the possibility that the Super Bowl will be played on President's Day weekend -- three weeks into February. As complicated as all of this sounds (and is), the unfortunate reality is that the 18-game schedule is but one of many issues that must be resolved in order for a new CBA to happen……….
Monday, November 15, 2010
Charlie Rangel provides drama, secession in Sudan and Facebook's new messaging system
- Say what you will about embattled Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-New York, but my man Chuck is great theater if nothing else. How many octogenarian congressmen do you know who are still every bit as irascible, cantankerous and confrontational as they begin their ninth decade on this planet as they were at any point in their life? In case you haven’t been following Rangel’s case, he is currently facing 13 allegations, include failing to pay taxes on a home in the Dominican Republic, misuse of a rent-controlled apartment for political purposes and improper use of government mail service and letterhead. Those allegations are the premise for his ongoing House ethics subcommittee trial, which Rangel stormed out of on Monday while fuming that he has not had sufficient time to hire a new legal team to respond to corruption allegations. Never mind that his original defense team quit all the way back in September; Chuck Rangel does not assemble a legal team in a mere two months, dammit! He sounded downright distraught as he pleaded with the subcommittee for more time to assemble a new legal team, a request the subcommittee rejected. "Fifty years of public service is on the line. And I truly believe that I am not being treated fairly," he pleaded. "I deserve a lawyer." True, and you’ve had two months to find one, Chuckster. Rangel’s counter would be that he has already spent $2 million defending himself from the charges and would need another $1 million to sufficiently defend himself during the trial. Why he can’t just withdraw some of his illegally obtained funds or the money he saved not paying taxes, I don’t know. But Rangel complained that he was not being given enough time to raise funds to hire new lawyers because the committee simply wanted to complete the trial before the current session of Congress ends. "What theory of fairness would dictate that I be denied due process ... because it is going to be the end of this session?" he asked. The funniest part of the story is that the committee simply went on with the hearing after Rangel left, leading to him releasing a statement calling the committee's decision to proceed without delay a violation of "the most basic rights ... guaranteed to every person under the Constitution. The (ethics committee) has deprived me of the fundamental right to counsel and has chosen to proceed as if it is fair and impartial and operating according to rules, when in reality they are depriving me of my rights. Those arguments did little to sway ethics committee chair Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, who insisted it was Rangel's responsibility to assemble his legal team and that the committee had advised him numerous times on how to raise funds for his defense. "Retention of counsel is up to the respondent," she said. Lest you think that the committee is out to tar and feather Rangel no matter what, just know that several committee members have ripped Zuckerman Spaeder, the law firm originally representing Rangel for what they deem the "fundamentally unfair" step of abandoning a client on the eve of a trial. Many of Rangel’s fellow representatives have called on him to resign in light of the allegations against him, called Rangel has ignored. He said in August that nothing "will stop me from clearing my name from these vile and vicious charges." For the same of continuing his suddenly comedic 40-year run in Congress, here’s hoping not………
- And Al Davis wins again. He may or may not be alive at this point, but the man who has turned the Oakland Raiders into the biggest freak show in the NFL in recent years freaking owns Lane Kiffin, the man he inexplicably hired as coach in 2007 and fired on Sept. 30, 2008, after the Raiders' fourth game of the season "for cause." At the time of the firing, Davis held a bizarr-o press conference in which he used an overhead projector from the 1970s, read from a letter he wrote to Kiffin and ripped the coach over his dislike of former No. 1 overall pick and then-Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell, who was ultimately released by the team earlier this season after failing to meet Davis’ lofty expectations. Kiffin disputed Davis’ claim of a “for cause” firing and filed a grievance with the league seeking about $2.6 million in salary owed to him. That amount was reduced to a demand for $333,000 after accounting for a salary offset from his next job as coach for the Tennessee Volunteers. Davis also had something to say about UT hiring Kiffin, claiming that he would wreck the school’s athletic department, football program and overall reputation. All along the way, Davis fought Kiffin’s grievance and a source said Monday that the wrinkly, jumpsuit-wearing, bespectacled crypt keeper of an owner has won the case. The source said that Kiffin’s grievance seeking unpaid salary he felt he was owed after being fired by the Raiders has been denied by an NFL arbitrator. The arbitrator also denied the Raiders' countergrievance for lawyer and arbitration fees. Of course, neither party actually needs the money they were seeking. Davis is still filthy rich and far too old to ever spend the money he already has and Kiffin is now making a decent amount of change as the head coach at USC Trojans. He received the opportunity despite his 5-15 record as an NFL head coach and 7-6 record in his one season at Tennessee. Unfortunately for him, Davis’ critical comments about him have proven true for the most part and now the old-as-dirt owner has gotten over on him once again………
- So……let me get this straight: Mel Gibson isn’t welcome to appear in The Hangover 2, but Bill Clinton has the red carpet rolled out for him? Gibson was set to fill Mike Tyson’s role at the requisite crazy guest cast member on the sequel to the wildly popular comedy, but a cast revolt reportedly led by actor Zach Galifianakis led to producers pulling Gibson from the movie, the very movie the troubled actor hoped would help launch a career resurgence. Instead, that guest spot was handed to Liam Neeson. Not content to stop there, director Todd Phillips then invited Clinton to appear in the film and the former president shot his brief appearance on Saturday in Bangkok, where part of the production takes place. Filming for the movie has been going on in Thailand for a few weeks and with Clinton in the country to bang a few interns, er, um, give a speech on clean energy, the timing made sense. No word on who he will share screen time with in the movie, but Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha are all back for another run as they try to replicate the success of the first film, which enjoyed substantial commercial success and has also become something of a cult favorite. Knowing the offbeat sense of humor that Phillips can bring to a film and the spirit of the first movie, something tells me that Clinton will have lines and scenes that pay tribute to the fun-loving, troublemaking nature………
- Nothing brings the voters in any country out quite like the possibility of casting a vote for secession. No, we’re not talking the United States in the 1860s; the setting here is southern Sudan, where years of war, financial struggles and a beaten-down populace have pushed residents of the country’s southernmost region to the precipice of independence. That process took a large step forward Monday as thousands of Sudanese registered to vote in a referendum that early next year could split Africa's largest country in two. Registering that many voters is no small task in Sudan, where violence and political hijinks have beset the process at every turn. Still, the voter registration drive began at about 2,700 centers around Sudan and as expected, the majority of the turnout was in the semiautonomous south. The region, which is heavily populated by animists and Christians, is expected to secede from the mostly Muslim government in the north on Jan. 9. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir’s government is viewed as unresponsive to the needs of the region by both Christians and animists, meaning they want to pull a Confederacy and start their own country. “A referendum happens only once," independence leader Salva Kiir proclaimed to a crowd at a registration station in the southern capital of Juba. "People must come out en masse; otherwise, it would mean people fought and died for nothing." Bonus points for using the term “en masse” correctly, by the way. The possible secession is on the minds of not only the Sudanese government, but also the entire African continent and the Obama administration, which opposes the referendum on the grounds that it could spark renewed bloodshed along the oil-rich border between north and south. Just five years ago, a 21-year-old civil war that killed two millions people came to an end with a peace treaty that promised the south a vote for independence. Bashir has promised that he will allow the referendum to happen even though analysts doubt the he will relinquish his grip on a south that generates nearly 500,000 barrels of oil a day. Losing 80 percent of the country’s oil output could cripple what would remain of Sudan, but officials from both sides have done their part to push toward secession by accusing each other of attempting to provoke hostilities along the border before the vote. The Obama administration has attempted to bribe Bashir with a number of incentives, including accelerating Sudan's removal from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, if he does not spoil the referendum. If the vote does go forward, it will be monitored by international monitoring organizations including the Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter. In a nation with a population of 41 million, 9.7 million of which reside in the south, such a vote will be a massive undertaking. Here’s hoping this vote does happen because the world just doesn’t have enough quality secessions these nowadays…………
- Facebook is growing, diversifying and looking to put a chokehold on the social networking world and Monday’s unveiling of a new messaging system that will envelope e-mail, instant messages, Facebook messages and SMS should be a boost to those efforts. Even though Facebook insists that its new messaging system is not an attempt to take the place of email, many of the system’s features seem designed to do just that. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took time away from telling people how wrong a portrayal of his life and business that The Social Network is to launch what he calls a "modern messaging system" to handle messages across several different media and gather them under one social umbrella. The system, 15 months in the making, will save all messages in order to provide users with a comprehensive history of their communications. Under the new system, users will also be able to have a facebook.com e-mail address. Still, Facebook software engineer Andrew Bosworth was quick to point out that that the new system will work with other e-mail systems, such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. "People should share however they want to share," said Bosworth. "If you want to send me an e-mail and I want to get it in a text message, that should work." The only obvious omission from the system at this point is voice chat, but Zuckerberg promised that feature will be added I the future. For now, the messaging system -- code-named Titan -- will hopefully fix many of the oft-uttered complaints about Facebook’s chat and messaging services, namely that entire chunks of conversations are lost and that users are sometimes knocked offline with no explanation. At present, about 350 million people use Facebook each day to message their friends and family members. Zuckerberg explained that the idea for Titan came to him after talking with a group of students who told him that they rarely use email because it’s too slow. "I was kind of boggled by this," Zuckerberg said. "I remember having a similar conversation with my parents about why e-mail was good and regular mail was slow.... At Facebook, we're all so used to using e-mail. It's interesting to see that all kinds of folks don't see it that way." Thus, the emphasis of combining all sorts of electronic communications - email, Facebook messages, IM and SMS - into a single system. As with all changes to anything related to Facebook, the new system is sure to spark plenty of complaints and angry Facebook groups demanding things return to normal. Now, those complainers will have a new messaging system to facilitate their efforts…….
- And Al Davis wins again. He may or may not be alive at this point, but the man who has turned the Oakland Raiders into the biggest freak show in the NFL in recent years freaking owns Lane Kiffin, the man he inexplicably hired as coach in 2007 and fired on Sept. 30, 2008, after the Raiders' fourth game of the season "for cause." At the time of the firing, Davis held a bizarr-o press conference in which he used an overhead projector from the 1970s, read from a letter he wrote to Kiffin and ripped the coach over his dislike of former No. 1 overall pick and then-Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell, who was ultimately released by the team earlier this season after failing to meet Davis’ lofty expectations. Kiffin disputed Davis’ claim of a “for cause” firing and filed a grievance with the league seeking about $2.6 million in salary owed to him. That amount was reduced to a demand for $333,000 after accounting for a salary offset from his next job as coach for the Tennessee Volunteers. Davis also had something to say about UT hiring Kiffin, claiming that he would wreck the school’s athletic department, football program and overall reputation. All along the way, Davis fought Kiffin’s grievance and a source said Monday that the wrinkly, jumpsuit-wearing, bespectacled crypt keeper of an owner has won the case. The source said that Kiffin’s grievance seeking unpaid salary he felt he was owed after being fired by the Raiders has been denied by an NFL arbitrator. The arbitrator also denied the Raiders' countergrievance for lawyer and arbitration fees. Of course, neither party actually needs the money they were seeking. Davis is still filthy rich and far too old to ever spend the money he already has and Kiffin is now making a decent amount of change as the head coach at USC Trojans. He received the opportunity despite his 5-15 record as an NFL head coach and 7-6 record in his one season at Tennessee. Unfortunately for him, Davis’ critical comments about him have proven true for the most part and now the old-as-dirt owner has gotten over on him once again………
- So……let me get this straight: Mel Gibson isn’t welcome to appear in The Hangover 2, but Bill Clinton has the red carpet rolled out for him? Gibson was set to fill Mike Tyson’s role at the requisite crazy guest cast member on the sequel to the wildly popular comedy, but a cast revolt reportedly led by actor Zach Galifianakis led to producers pulling Gibson from the movie, the very movie the troubled actor hoped would help launch a career resurgence. Instead, that guest spot was handed to Liam Neeson. Not content to stop there, director Todd Phillips then invited Clinton to appear in the film and the former president shot his brief appearance on Saturday in Bangkok, where part of the production takes place. Filming for the movie has been going on in Thailand for a few weeks and with Clinton in the country to bang a few interns, er, um, give a speech on clean energy, the timing made sense. No word on who he will share screen time with in the movie, but Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis and Justin Bartha are all back for another run as they try to replicate the success of the first film, which enjoyed substantial commercial success and has also become something of a cult favorite. Knowing the offbeat sense of humor that Phillips can bring to a film and the spirit of the first movie, something tells me that Clinton will have lines and scenes that pay tribute to the fun-loving, troublemaking nature………
- Nothing brings the voters in any country out quite like the possibility of casting a vote for secession. No, we’re not talking the United States in the 1860s; the setting here is southern Sudan, where years of war, financial struggles and a beaten-down populace have pushed residents of the country’s southernmost region to the precipice of independence. That process took a large step forward Monday as thousands of Sudanese registered to vote in a referendum that early next year could split Africa's largest country in two. Registering that many voters is no small task in Sudan, where violence and political hijinks have beset the process at every turn. Still, the voter registration drive began at about 2,700 centers around Sudan and as expected, the majority of the turnout was in the semiautonomous south. The region, which is heavily populated by animists and Christians, is expected to secede from the mostly Muslim government in the north on Jan. 9. President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir’s government is viewed as unresponsive to the needs of the region by both Christians and animists, meaning they want to pull a Confederacy and start their own country. “A referendum happens only once," independence leader Salva Kiir proclaimed to a crowd at a registration station in the southern capital of Juba. "People must come out en masse; otherwise, it would mean people fought and died for nothing." Bonus points for using the term “en masse” correctly, by the way. The possible secession is on the minds of not only the Sudanese government, but also the entire African continent and the Obama administration, which opposes the referendum on the grounds that it could spark renewed bloodshed along the oil-rich border between north and south. Just five years ago, a 21-year-old civil war that killed two millions people came to an end with a peace treaty that promised the south a vote for independence. Bashir has promised that he will allow the referendum to happen even though analysts doubt the he will relinquish his grip on a south that generates nearly 500,000 barrels of oil a day. Losing 80 percent of the country’s oil output could cripple what would remain of Sudan, but officials from both sides have done their part to push toward secession by accusing each other of attempting to provoke hostilities along the border before the vote. The Obama administration has attempted to bribe Bashir with a number of incentives, including accelerating Sudan's removal from a U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, if he does not spoil the referendum. If the vote does go forward, it will be monitored by international monitoring organizations including the Carter Center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter. In a nation with a population of 41 million, 9.7 million of which reside in the south, such a vote will be a massive undertaking. Here’s hoping this vote does happen because the world just doesn’t have enough quality secessions these nowadays…………
- Facebook is growing, diversifying and looking to put a chokehold on the social networking world and Monday’s unveiling of a new messaging system that will envelope e-mail, instant messages, Facebook messages and SMS should be a boost to those efforts. Even though Facebook insists that its new messaging system is not an attempt to take the place of email, many of the system’s features seem designed to do just that. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took time away from telling people how wrong a portrayal of his life and business that The Social Network is to launch what he calls a "modern messaging system" to handle messages across several different media and gather them under one social umbrella. The system, 15 months in the making, will save all messages in order to provide users with a comprehensive history of their communications. Under the new system, users will also be able to have a facebook.com e-mail address. Still, Facebook software engineer Andrew Bosworth was quick to point out that that the new system will work with other e-mail systems, such as Gmail and Yahoo mail. "People should share however they want to share," said Bosworth. "If you want to send me an e-mail and I want to get it in a text message, that should work." The only obvious omission from the system at this point is voice chat, but Zuckerberg promised that feature will be added I the future. For now, the messaging system -- code-named Titan -- will hopefully fix many of the oft-uttered complaints about Facebook’s chat and messaging services, namely that entire chunks of conversations are lost and that users are sometimes knocked offline with no explanation. At present, about 350 million people use Facebook each day to message their friends and family members. Zuckerberg explained that the idea for Titan came to him after talking with a group of students who told him that they rarely use email because it’s too slow. "I was kind of boggled by this," Zuckerberg said. "I remember having a similar conversation with my parents about why e-mail was good and regular mail was slow.... At Facebook, we're all so used to using e-mail. It's interesting to see that all kinds of folks don't see it that way." Thus, the emphasis of combining all sorts of electronic communications - email, Facebook messages, IM and SMS - into a single system. As with all changes to anything related to Facebook, the new system is sure to spark plenty of complaints and angry Facebook groups demanding things return to normal. Now, those complainers will have a new messaging system to facilitate their efforts…….
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Stoners win in Arizona, distraction can mean depression and movie news
- Californians may have voted down the much-needed stoner initiative, er, Proposition 19, but they weren’t the only state where voters were faced with a pot-centric ballot measure on Election Day. Although Arizona voters weren’t being asked to approve the overall legalization of the hippie lettuce, they did vote on a measure that would legalize medical marijuana. But the vote was so close that it took until today for state election officials to decide the result and at long last, deliver the long-awaited good news to all of Arizona stoners that medical marijuana is now legal in their state. By a narrow margin of about 4,300 votes, Arizona voters approved Proposition 203. The final results have 50.1 percent of the vote to 49.8 percent of "no" votes, according to unofficial results posted on the Arizona Secretary of State's website. More than 1.6 million votes were cast on the measure, which was the only issue on the ballot for which a definitive result had not yet been announced after the November 2 election. Within hours of the results going up online, the stoner activists at the Marijuana Policy Project saluted the result in a statement, saying it will allow patients who suffer from cancer, AIDS and other illnesses to use medical marijuana with a recommendation from their doctor. "Voters in Arizona have sided with science and compassion while dealing yet another blow to our nation's cruel and irrational prohibition on marijuana," said Rob Kampia, Marijuana Policy Project executive director, in the statement. "Arizona's law now reflects the mainstream public opinion that seriously ill people should not be treated like criminals if marijuana can provide them relief, and that doctors should be able to recommend marijuana to patients if they believe it can help alleviate their suffering." Those comments may be true as they relate to those suffering from terminal illness, but don’t think for a second that potheads all around Arizona aren’t working on their scam/plan to con a doctor into giving them some hippie lettuce for their chronic pain that looks a lot like stoner-itis. Having spent a few days in Amsterdam, I encountered a guy from Montana, where medical marijuana is legal, who manages to score a regular supply of ganja from a friend who is in the medical professional. In other words, Arizona potheads, the Marijuana Policy Project have provided funding and support to the Arizona Medical Marijuana Policy Project, the group that ran the Proposition 203 campaign, with the intent of helping ease the pain of those suffering from serious illnesses, but everyone knows that this is just opening one more door for you in your quest to get baked on a daily basis. Arizona joins 14 other states and the District of Columbia that have passed medical marijuana laws since 1996 and in every single one of these places, stoners have been huge beneficiaries of the new laws………
- The Dallas Cowboys may be terrible and the single-biggest train wreck in the NFL right now, but according to owner/general manager Jerry Jones, their head coaching job is just as sought-after as ever. After firing the inept, bumbling Wade Phillips this week, Jones said Super Bowl-winning coaches have contacted him about becoming his next head coach. Jones, who named offensive coordinator Jason Garrett as the team’s interim coach for the remainder of the season and said that he hopes Garrett will earn the job on a permanent basis. "I will say that before I made the decision with Wade Phillips, I had Super Bowl-winning coaches solicit this job," Jones said during a radio interview. When the interviewer pressed him as to which Super Bowl-winning coaches had called, Jones refused to elaborate, nor would he say whether he intended to pursue any of the available coaches with Super Bowl rings -- a group that includes Bill Cowher, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick and Tony Dungy. Dungy said in a separate radio appearance that he had no interest in the job. "[Jones] needs a Bill Cowher or Jon Gruden or Mike Holmgren. Those are the kind of guys he needs. All three of those guys would be pretty good right now." If Jones it to be believed, Garrett will have a legitimate chance to earn the job over the final eight games of the season and won't necessarily be judged by how many wins the Cowboys have the remainder of the season. "It's a huge challenge for our team and, of course, a huge challenge for Jason," Jones said. "If he can meet this challenge square on and he can pull his nose up, if he can do things that you see that direction, then that's going to be impressive. Very few people have ever come into a coaching situation with any more challenges. We all know his qualities. He's from a great football background. He's got a great background with the Cowboys. I know what he's capable of, his demeanor, how he carries himself, how he approaches. I know all of those things. There's no stranger here for me in Jason Garrett. How the team responds, what we can do on a player-by-player basis, all of those things will weigh into it. I do not have a won-loss percentage in mind or a number of wins that impact what I do in the future." It’s the first head coaching job for the Princeton-educated Garrett, who caused plenty of waves when Jones hired him prior to hiring Phillips and gave him the highest salary of any NFL assistant. Considering the team he’s going to be working with, he’s going to have to earn that money over the next two months…….
- Fending off much-hyped newcomers at the box office is a tough challenge, even for the strongest of films, so Will Ferrell’s Megamind maintaining the top spot in the earnings race in its second weekend is noteworthy. The Pixar animated flick made $30.1 million, dropping off 35 percent from its opening frame but still managing to raise its overall gross to $89.8 million. That was enough to hold off newcomer Unstoppable, which proved unable to live up to its name or ride the star power of Denzel Washington to the top of the earnings list. Unstoppable made $23.5 million in its opening weekend, giving it the second spot by a wide margin over last weekend’s No. 2 film, Due Date. The laugher starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis saw a massive drop-off from its opening stanza and made a meager $15.5 million to place third for the frame. Fourth place went to the horror thriller Skyline, which certainly received plenty of fanfare but fell flat in its opening weekend despite opening wide in 2,880 theaters. Its $11.7 million tally looks better only when you consider the $10 million budget it was made upon. The last spot in the top five was held down by another newcomer, Morning Glory, which looks to be on track to be one of the biggest busts of the year after just one week. But that’ll happen when you spend $40 million to make a movie, have it open in 3,822 theaters and make just $9.6 million for the weekend. The rest of the top 10 was filled out by: last weekend’s No. 3 film, For Colored Girls (No. 6 this weekend with $6.8 million and a cumulative total of $30.9 million), geezer spy movie Red (No. 7 with $5.1 to elevate its total tally to $79.8 million and counting), Paranormal Activity (No. 8 with $3.1 million and despite a hefty 57-percent decline, an overall tally of $82 million on a budget of just $3 million), fellow horror film Saw 3-D (No. 9 with $2.8 million, - a whopping 64.4-percent decline - and a cumulative total of $43.5 million) and Jackass 3-D (No. 10 with $2.3 million to raise its impressive running tally to $114.7 million-plus). Dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend were Secretariat and The Social Network………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the globe is traveling to Bangladesh today, where two straight days of clashes between police and opposition supporters in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, are forcing the world to take notice. Two straight days of riots, brawls and melees have produced scores of memorable images, including The Man going to his old standbys of tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to disperse supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting dissidents are tried and true measures for oppressive regimes looking to quell uprisings, but when dissidents are outraged over real or perceived injustices, rubber bullets and tear gas aren’t going to stop them for long. The BNP is doing its best to incite the uprising, calling for a day-long general strike in protest against the eviction on Saturday of its leader, Khaleda Zia, from her home of more than 25 years. The government claimed that the lease on the house was not legal, which seems extremely convenient under the circumstances. But who am I to condemn their actions when those actions led to massive brawls between BNP supporters and police after the supporters gathered near the party's headquarters and shouted slogans in support of Zia. Schools, businesses and most offices were shut by the strike and public transportation was severely disrupted across the country. The protests were timed well, as thousands of people were hoping to go to home for the forthcoming Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha but were unable to leave Dhaka because of the protests. On Saturday, vehicles around the city were set ablaze by rioters and those images warmed the hearts of riot lovers around the world. Seeing Zia evicted from her home struck such a chord with BNP supports because the residence was leased to Zia after the assassination of her husband, the former president, Gen Zia-ur-Rahman, in a military coup in 1981. Her supporters firmly believe that the eviction was politically motivated, which doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch under the circumstances. So use that anger and riot to your heart’s content, BNP dissidents, riot on……..
- For a generation where nearly everyone claims to be ADD or ADHD and unable to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time, it can't be good news when a study finds that having a wandering mind leads to emotional unhappiness in humans. According to some of Harvard’s many wicked smaht people, researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, 47 percent of people's waking hours are spent thinking about things that have nothing to do with their current activity and according to their findings, that’s a decidedly bad thing. "It is likely the same capacity that allows humans to learn from the past, plan for the future, and imagine things that might never occur, which are clearly afford very important benefits," Killingsworth said. "But like people's desire for food, it may be a tendency that at some level is beneficial but can cause problems (e.g. obesity with respect to desire for food, and unnecessary worry or distraction with respect to mind-wandering)." The study was unique in that participants took part through an iPhone app available to anyone at trackyourhappiness.org. More than 2,200 people, ranging in age from 18 to 88, took part in the study, which was published in the journal Science. Researchers contacted them at random interviews and asked questions about their present happiness, their current activity, and what they were thinking about. Over the course of the study, participants reported engaging in 22 different activities, including watching TV and shopping, making love had the least mind-wandering associated with it - stunning, I know. Mind wandering occurred in nearly one-third of all other activities, according to the study. Relating their results of mind-wandering to overall happiness, researches found that having sex, exercising, engaging in conversation bring the most happiness, while the least happiness comes while resting, working, using a home computer. Yet a surprisingly small percentage of happiness - 4.6 percent - has to do with the actual activity you're doing, while mind-wandering claims 10.8 percent. Killingsworth encourages anyone with an iPhone to do their own research using trackyourhappiness.org. "Users can view their results and see the predictors of their happiness. More generally we hope our insights from the project can help improve people's well-being," he said. We can, assuming we’re not too ADHD to focus long enough for that……..
- The Dallas Cowboys may be terrible and the single-biggest train wreck in the NFL right now, but according to owner/general manager Jerry Jones, their head coaching job is just as sought-after as ever. After firing the inept, bumbling Wade Phillips this week, Jones said Super Bowl-winning coaches have contacted him about becoming his next head coach. Jones, who named offensive coordinator Jason Garrett as the team’s interim coach for the remainder of the season and said that he hopes Garrett will earn the job on a permanent basis. "I will say that before I made the decision with Wade Phillips, I had Super Bowl-winning coaches solicit this job," Jones said during a radio interview. When the interviewer pressed him as to which Super Bowl-winning coaches had called, Jones refused to elaborate, nor would he say whether he intended to pursue any of the available coaches with Super Bowl rings -- a group that includes Bill Cowher, Jon Gruden, Brian Billick and Tony Dungy. Dungy said in a separate radio appearance that he had no interest in the job. "[Jones] needs a Bill Cowher or Jon Gruden or Mike Holmgren. Those are the kind of guys he needs. All three of those guys would be pretty good right now." If Jones it to be believed, Garrett will have a legitimate chance to earn the job over the final eight games of the season and won't necessarily be judged by how many wins the Cowboys have the remainder of the season. "It's a huge challenge for our team and, of course, a huge challenge for Jason," Jones said. "If he can meet this challenge square on and he can pull his nose up, if he can do things that you see that direction, then that's going to be impressive. Very few people have ever come into a coaching situation with any more challenges. We all know his qualities. He's from a great football background. He's got a great background with the Cowboys. I know what he's capable of, his demeanor, how he carries himself, how he approaches. I know all of those things. There's no stranger here for me in Jason Garrett. How the team responds, what we can do on a player-by-player basis, all of those things will weigh into it. I do not have a won-loss percentage in mind or a number of wins that impact what I do in the future." It’s the first head coaching job for the Princeton-educated Garrett, who caused plenty of waves when Jones hired him prior to hiring Phillips and gave him the highest salary of any NFL assistant. Considering the team he’s going to be working with, he’s going to have to earn that money over the next two months…….
- Fending off much-hyped newcomers at the box office is a tough challenge, even for the strongest of films, so Will Ferrell’s Megamind maintaining the top spot in the earnings race in its second weekend is noteworthy. The Pixar animated flick made $30.1 million, dropping off 35 percent from its opening frame but still managing to raise its overall gross to $89.8 million. That was enough to hold off newcomer Unstoppable, which proved unable to live up to its name or ride the star power of Denzel Washington to the top of the earnings list. Unstoppable made $23.5 million in its opening weekend, giving it the second spot by a wide margin over last weekend’s No. 2 film, Due Date. The laugher starring Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis saw a massive drop-off from its opening stanza and made a meager $15.5 million to place third for the frame. Fourth place went to the horror thriller Skyline, which certainly received plenty of fanfare but fell flat in its opening weekend despite opening wide in 2,880 theaters. Its $11.7 million tally looks better only when you consider the $10 million budget it was made upon. The last spot in the top five was held down by another newcomer, Morning Glory, which looks to be on track to be one of the biggest busts of the year after just one week. But that’ll happen when you spend $40 million to make a movie, have it open in 3,822 theaters and make just $9.6 million for the weekend. The rest of the top 10 was filled out by: last weekend’s No. 3 film, For Colored Girls (No. 6 this weekend with $6.8 million and a cumulative total of $30.9 million), geezer spy movie Red (No. 7 with $5.1 to elevate its total tally to $79.8 million and counting), Paranormal Activity (No. 8 with $3.1 million and despite a hefty 57-percent decline, an overall tally of $82 million on a budget of just $3 million), fellow horror film Saw 3-D (No. 9 with $2.8 million, - a whopping 64.4-percent decline - and a cumulative total of $43.5 million) and Jackass 3-D (No. 10 with $2.3 million to raise its impressive running tally to $114.7 million-plus). Dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend were Secretariat and The Social Network………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence ‘round the globe is traveling to Bangladesh today, where two straight days of clashes between police and opposition supporters in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, are forcing the world to take notice. Two straight days of riots, brawls and melees have produced scores of memorable images, including The Man going to his old standbys of tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to disperse supporters of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Tear-gassing and rubber-bulleting dissidents are tried and true measures for oppressive regimes looking to quell uprisings, but when dissidents are outraged over real or perceived injustices, rubber bullets and tear gas aren’t going to stop them for long. The BNP is doing its best to incite the uprising, calling for a day-long general strike in protest against the eviction on Saturday of its leader, Khaleda Zia, from her home of more than 25 years. The government claimed that the lease on the house was not legal, which seems extremely convenient under the circumstances. But who am I to condemn their actions when those actions led to massive brawls between BNP supporters and police after the supporters gathered near the party's headquarters and shouted slogans in support of Zia. Schools, businesses and most offices were shut by the strike and public transportation was severely disrupted across the country. The protests were timed well, as thousands of people were hoping to go to home for the forthcoming Muslim festival of Eid-ul-Adha but were unable to leave Dhaka because of the protests. On Saturday, vehicles around the city were set ablaze by rioters and those images warmed the hearts of riot lovers around the world. Seeing Zia evicted from her home struck such a chord with BNP supports because the residence was leased to Zia after the assassination of her husband, the former president, Gen Zia-ur-Rahman, in a military coup in 1981. Her supporters firmly believe that the eviction was politically motivated, which doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch under the circumstances. So use that anger and riot to your heart’s content, BNP dissidents, riot on……..
- For a generation where nearly everyone claims to be ADD or ADHD and unable to focus on tasks for prolonged periods of time, it can't be good news when a study finds that having a wandering mind leads to emotional unhappiness in humans. According to some of Harvard’s many wicked smaht people, researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert, 47 percent of people's waking hours are spent thinking about things that have nothing to do with their current activity and according to their findings, that’s a decidedly bad thing. "It is likely the same capacity that allows humans to learn from the past, plan for the future, and imagine things that might never occur, which are clearly afford very important benefits," Killingsworth said. "But like people's desire for food, it may be a tendency that at some level is beneficial but can cause problems (e.g. obesity with respect to desire for food, and unnecessary worry or distraction with respect to mind-wandering)." The study was unique in that participants took part through an iPhone app available to anyone at trackyourhappiness.org. More than 2,200 people, ranging in age from 18 to 88, took part in the study, which was published in the journal Science. Researchers contacted them at random interviews and asked questions about their present happiness, their current activity, and what they were thinking about. Over the course of the study, participants reported engaging in 22 different activities, including watching TV and shopping, making love had the least mind-wandering associated with it - stunning, I know. Mind wandering occurred in nearly one-third of all other activities, according to the study. Relating their results of mind-wandering to overall happiness, researches found that having sex, exercising, engaging in conversation bring the most happiness, while the least happiness comes while resting, working, using a home computer. Yet a surprisingly small percentage of happiness - 4.6 percent - has to do with the actual activity you're doing, while mind-wandering claims 10.8 percent. Killingsworth encourages anyone with an iPhone to do their own research using trackyourhappiness.org. "Users can view their results and see the predictors of their happiness. More generally we hope our insights from the project can help improve people's well-being," he said. We can, assuming we’re not too ADHD to focus long enough for that……..
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Tanning beds in Russian prisons, Ferris Bueller keepsakes and R.J. Reynolds targeting hipsters
- Giving incarcerated felons much better treatment and more amenities than they deserve: It’s not just an American thing. The communists in Russia are apparently no different when it comes to lavishing ridiculous perks and bennies on inmates, as evidenced by the fact that one of Russia's most notorious prisons will soon install sunbeds to improve the health of its inmates. For a prison created in the likeness of a brick fortress, the 19th century Butyrka prison in central Moscow isn’t really known as a cosmopolitan, trendy place to be jailed. But perhaps the prison that has held famous news ranging from persecuted Soviet-era writers Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Isaak Babel to Adolf Hitler's nephew Heinrich is trying to change its image and tanning beds are where that change begins. "We are developing additional medical services ... and even sunbeds will be put in place," Butyrka's head Sergei Telyatnikov said - presumably with a straight face. Telyatnikov insisted that the tanning beds/cancer boxes would be used for medical purposes, which would certainly be a first. In the rest of the world, cancer boxes are used to blast the skin of naïve, paying customers/narcissists with artificial UV rays, giving them an orange-ish color year round while drastically upping their chances for skin cancer. Perhaps that data has yet to reach Russia or maybe the Russians just don’t care and are looking to off prisoners by any means possible, even if it means appealing to their vanity. After all, the nation’s prison system is overcrowded and poorly run, as the world learned during a period of intense scrutiny that followed the November 2009 death of jailed lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, who spent much of the last months of his life in Butyrka. Magnitsky (whose name is fun to say) died under questionable circumstances and his attorneys later argued that he was kept in custody illegally and not given proper medical treatment in prison despite repeated requests. In a shocking turn of events, the Federal Prison Service actually admitted it was partly responsible for Magnitsky's death. That was followed by the admission that almost half of Russia's inmates are ill, many infected with HIV or with tuberculosis. Officials blamed outdated medical equipment for the problem, by which they apparently meant a lack of tanning beds. In addition to adding cancer boxes to Butyrka, inmates will also have access to ultrasound systems to "check up on their health," and could even have spa facilities such as mud baths in the future. Furthermore, they will also be allowed to use Skype to make voice and video calls over the Internet to relatives. Suddenly, life in a Russian prison doesn’t sound quite so harsh and unwelcoming………
- Have you been holding on to the ‘80s with fanatical devotion, reveling in the ridiculous implausibility and predictability of John Hughes movies, longing for the days of hilariously oversized hair and parachute pants and rocking your “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt like nobody’s business? If that description fits you and if you have a few (hundred thousand) dollars lying around, this piece of real estate news might interest you. A certain house at 370 Beach Street in sunny southern California is currently on the market, a property better known to children of the '80s and other John Hughes aficionados as Cameron's house from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off.” The unique midcentury modern home was the setting of the famous scene in which Cameron, Ferries and Sloane stole Mr. Freye's 1961 Ferrari, tooled around downtown Chicago in it for a day and then attempted an ill-fated return of the car that ended in disaster. The home, of course, is perched over the ravine
where the classic car later met its demise. "The Ferrari that went through the window was of course a mock-up of the real car," says the property's realtor, Meladee Hughes. "They could not have an explosion in the ravine so smoke bombs were put in the shattered car for effect. The window was Hollywood glass and the original window was replaced after the shoot." Architecture buffs may also have an interest in the home because it was designed by acclaimed architect James Speyer, who was Mies Van Der Rohe's first graduate student and protégé. The 4- bedroom, 4-bathroom home was built in 1953 and since it was built, the home has been owned by famous textile designer Ben Rose and his wife. "Later in their lives [they] were European race car drivers and traveled the world collecting objects of art. His work and the architectural works of James Speyer are at the Art Institute in Chicago,” Meladee pointed out. The home is still on the market, although Meladee is currently negotiating with a “serious” buyer. If you want to swoop in and steal this piece of cinematic history, better act now………
- Anyone who didn’t have a rooting interest in tonight’s marquee boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito prior to this week should definitely have one now. Margarito has his share of detractors, as would anyone who had been found guilty of doctoring his hand wraps before one of the biggest matches of his career and cheating for a win. Still, hating on a guy for cheating in a boxing match is one thing, while hating the guy for mocking someone suffering with the terrible illness that is Parkinson’s disease is something else entirely. That’s what Margarito and his crew are guilty of after a video interview posted by Elie Seckbach of FanHouse went viral, a video in which Margarito and training partner Brandon Rios appear to mock the Parkinson's disease of Roach, the hall-of-fame trainer for Pacquiao and former fighter. In the video, Margarito contorts his face and raises a shaking hand for the camera before it pans to Rios, who also makes faces and stutters while saying Pacquiao's name. Since it went up initially, the video has been edited and Rios has been cut, making it seem that Margarito is doing a scared impression of Roach, who has been a vocal critic of Margarito's integrity following the hand-wrapping scandal two years ago. Trainer Robert Garcia also jumps in on the video hilarity, holding up a thick chunk of metal and taunting Roach that he'd better watch as Margarito's hands are wrapped so that it doesn't end up under the tape. Typically, when a video like this surfaces, the people in it are quick to claim that it was taken out of context and try to spin it in their favor somehow. But there’s no mistaking the point of this video, so much so that Garcia apologized for the video before even talking about the junior middleweight title bout during a news conference Wednesday at Cowboys Stadium. Granted, his explanation was a total lie, but he did try to explain. "This was nothing to do with the disease that Freddie Roach has. We know it's something that we don't wish [on] nobody," Garcia lied. "It's something personal, something between Team Pacquiao and Team Margarito. I just wanted to make that clear." Oh, okay. So you can't say exactly what it is, but it’s not what we can all obviously see that it is. Roach clearly didn’t buy Garcia’s explanation. "It affects a lot more people than me," Roach said. "A lot of people have Parkinson's. They're so disrespectful to me and the hand pad issues. ... It's like a slap in the face, like 'we got caught with something, but we're still here fighting. ' I think it shows his true character. I don't think they are a good group of people. I'm not going to bother Manny Pacquiao with that. Manny doesn't hate anybody and so forth, but I do hate those guys." Roach said he has both Parkinson's and Parkinson's Syndrome, which can be caused by repeated blows to the head and can almost certainly be traced to his time as a journeyman lightweight in the 1980s. But regardless of what caused him to be stricken with Parkinson’s, the fact that anyone would be classless and soul-less enough to mock it in any way, shape or form is detestable, horrific and stomach-turning………
- Just die, cancer stick makers, just die. The world would be a much better, healthier place if you merchants of death via lung cancer and/or emphysema would cease and desist - permanently. Instead, tobacco titans like R.J. Reynolds keep trying to pull a Madonna and reinvent themselves in order to turn a profit. R.J. Reynolds’ latest effort centers on the so-called hipster capital of New York state, Williamsburg. The city is the target market to the newest line of Williamsburg Camel cigarettes. Packaging for these cancer sticks will feature the company’s well-known camel mascot on what appears to be Kent Avenue, with a background of the old Domino Sugar factory and the Williamsburg Bridge. On the Camel Web site, a message about the new line mentions the neighborhood as "the most famous hipster neighborhood," and describes the Williamsburg experience as being "about the last call, a sloppy kiss goodbye and a solo saunter to a rock show in an abandoned building." Pardon me while a vomit in my mouth……okay, we’re go-…….no, more vomit…..okay, I think we’re do-…..nope….more vomit…..all right, let’s continue. Look, I don’t want to be the killjoy out there stamping out the entrepreneurial flames of those who want to make a fortune and live a better life in these here United States……unless their business of choice is tobacco. I can and will look to rain on every one of those losers’ parades, especially when they’re launching a 10-week "Camel Break Free" promotion that is redesigning the Camel Blues pack, formerly known as Camel Lights. Part of me believes that even the hipsters in Williamsburg are smart enough to see through this campaign and that belief was bolstered when one local resident said, "Smoking is so 90's though, it's kind of silly." That attitude and the belief that they are already much cooler than everyone else could help Williamsburg hipsters see through Camel’s promise that switching to the brand will earn "serious street cred." Clothing manufacturer American Apparel and real estate companies such as Douglaston Development have previously aimed campaigns at the neighborhood, with varying degrees of success, but I think we can all agree that this campaign is one that can, should and probably will fail miserably………
- Boy, Twitter users pick some bizarre causes to rally behind. Supporting breast cancer or victims of domestic violence is one thing, but coming to the defense of a Twitter user convicted of tweeting a message threatening to blow up an airport is a first. Paul Chambers has become an Internet celebrity since sending the following tweet in January: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s--- together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high." His tweet came out of frustration, as he had been planning to go to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to meet a woman he had met through Twitter. Now, was this meeting more than a little creepy, pathetic and weird? Sure. Is Chambers a loser who has to meet women from other countries via Twitter rather than in person? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean he should be charged with and convicted of a crime……right? Not if you ask the South Yorkshire Police Department. Chambers was arrested, charged and summarily convicted of sending a "menacing" electronic communication. Following his conviction, he was ordered to pay a $621 fine and something called a victim surcharge in the amount of $24. He appealed the conviction and on Thursday, the appeal was rejected by a north England court. The court ordered Chambers to pay the fines along with prosecution costs totaling $4,193. His appeal centered on the claim that Twitter was not a "public electronic communications network" within the meaning of the relevant law. The judge disagreed and dismissed Chambers' appeal on every count, ruling that because the Tweet was discovered when an airport manager, who was not a Twitter member, searched for "Robin Hood Airport" on Twitter, Chambers’ defense was invalid. The decision hasn’t lessend Chambers’ online support; if anything, that group is growing faster than before. Hundreds of Twitter users have launched a campaign based on the idea of retweeting his message and tweaking it to include other locations they might blow up or otherwise destroy. Some of the United Kingdom’s most famous faces, including comedian Stephen Fry, have joined the effort and perhaps some of them will be inspired enough to help Chambers pay his legal bills………
- Have you been holding on to the ‘80s with fanatical devotion, reveling in the ridiculous implausibility and predictability of John Hughes movies, longing for the days of hilariously oversized hair and parachute pants and rocking your “Frankie Says Relax” t-shirt like nobody’s business? If that description fits you and if you have a few (hundred thousand) dollars lying around, this piece of real estate news might interest you. A certain house at 370 Beach Street in sunny southern California is currently on the market, a property better known to children of the '80s and other John Hughes aficionados as Cameron's house from "Ferris Bueller's Day Off.” The unique midcentury modern home was the setting of the famous scene in which Cameron, Ferries and Sloane stole Mr. Freye's 1961 Ferrari, tooled around downtown Chicago in it for a day and then attempted an ill-fated return of the car that ended in disaster. The home, of course, is perched over the ravine
where the classic car later met its demise. "The Ferrari that went through the window was of course a mock-up of the real car," says the property's realtor, Meladee Hughes. "They could not have an explosion in the ravine so smoke bombs were put in the shattered car for effect. The window was Hollywood glass and the original window was replaced after the shoot." Architecture buffs may also have an interest in the home because it was designed by acclaimed architect James Speyer, who was Mies Van Der Rohe's first graduate student and protégé. The 4- bedroom, 4-bathroom home was built in 1953 and since it was built, the home has been owned by famous textile designer Ben Rose and his wife. "Later in their lives [they] were European race car drivers and traveled the world collecting objects of art. His work and the architectural works of James Speyer are at the Art Institute in Chicago,” Meladee pointed out. The home is still on the market, although Meladee is currently negotiating with a “serious” buyer. If you want to swoop in and steal this piece of cinematic history, better act now………
- Anyone who didn’t have a rooting interest in tonight’s marquee boxing match between Manny Pacquiao and Antonio Margarito prior to this week should definitely have one now. Margarito has his share of detractors, as would anyone who had been found guilty of doctoring his hand wraps before one of the biggest matches of his career and cheating for a win. Still, hating on a guy for cheating in a boxing match is one thing, while hating the guy for mocking someone suffering with the terrible illness that is Parkinson’s disease is something else entirely. That’s what Margarito and his crew are guilty of after a video interview posted by Elie Seckbach of FanHouse went viral, a video in which Margarito and training partner Brandon Rios appear to mock the Parkinson's disease of Roach, the hall-of-fame trainer for Pacquiao and former fighter. In the video, Margarito contorts his face and raises a shaking hand for the camera before it pans to Rios, who also makes faces and stutters while saying Pacquiao's name. Since it went up initially, the video has been edited and Rios has been cut, making it seem that Margarito is doing a scared impression of Roach, who has been a vocal critic of Margarito's integrity following the hand-wrapping scandal two years ago. Trainer Robert Garcia also jumps in on the video hilarity, holding up a thick chunk of metal and taunting Roach that he'd better watch as Margarito's hands are wrapped so that it doesn't end up under the tape. Typically, when a video like this surfaces, the people in it are quick to claim that it was taken out of context and try to spin it in their favor somehow. But there’s no mistaking the point of this video, so much so that Garcia apologized for the video before even talking about the junior middleweight title bout during a news conference Wednesday at Cowboys Stadium. Granted, his explanation was a total lie, but he did try to explain. "This was nothing to do with the disease that Freddie Roach has. We know it's something that we don't wish [on] nobody," Garcia lied. "It's something personal, something between Team Pacquiao and Team Margarito. I just wanted to make that clear." Oh, okay. So you can't say exactly what it is, but it’s not what we can all obviously see that it is. Roach clearly didn’t buy Garcia’s explanation. "It affects a lot more people than me," Roach said. "A lot of people have Parkinson's. They're so disrespectful to me and the hand pad issues. ... It's like a slap in the face, like 'we got caught with something, but we're still here fighting. ' I think it shows his true character. I don't think they are a good group of people. I'm not going to bother Manny Pacquiao with that. Manny doesn't hate anybody and so forth, but I do hate those guys." Roach said he has both Parkinson's and Parkinson's Syndrome, which can be caused by repeated blows to the head and can almost certainly be traced to his time as a journeyman lightweight in the 1980s. But regardless of what caused him to be stricken with Parkinson’s, the fact that anyone would be classless and soul-less enough to mock it in any way, shape or form is detestable, horrific and stomach-turning………
- Just die, cancer stick makers, just die. The world would be a much better, healthier place if you merchants of death via lung cancer and/or emphysema would cease and desist - permanently. Instead, tobacco titans like R.J. Reynolds keep trying to pull a Madonna and reinvent themselves in order to turn a profit. R.J. Reynolds’ latest effort centers on the so-called hipster capital of New York state, Williamsburg. The city is the target market to the newest line of Williamsburg Camel cigarettes. Packaging for these cancer sticks will feature the company’s well-known camel mascot on what appears to be Kent Avenue, with a background of the old Domino Sugar factory and the Williamsburg Bridge. On the Camel Web site, a message about the new line mentions the neighborhood as "the most famous hipster neighborhood," and describes the Williamsburg experience as being "about the last call, a sloppy kiss goodbye and a solo saunter to a rock show in an abandoned building." Pardon me while a vomit in my mouth……okay, we’re go-…….no, more vomit…..okay, I think we’re do-…..nope….more vomit…..all right, let’s continue. Look, I don’t want to be the killjoy out there stamping out the entrepreneurial flames of those who want to make a fortune and live a better life in these here United States……unless their business of choice is tobacco. I can and will look to rain on every one of those losers’ parades, especially when they’re launching a 10-week "Camel Break Free" promotion that is redesigning the Camel Blues pack, formerly known as Camel Lights. Part of me believes that even the hipsters in Williamsburg are smart enough to see through this campaign and that belief was bolstered when one local resident said, "Smoking is so 90's though, it's kind of silly." That attitude and the belief that they are already much cooler than everyone else could help Williamsburg hipsters see through Camel’s promise that switching to the brand will earn "serious street cred." Clothing manufacturer American Apparel and real estate companies such as Douglaston Development have previously aimed campaigns at the neighborhood, with varying degrees of success, but I think we can all agree that this campaign is one that can, should and probably will fail miserably………
- Boy, Twitter users pick some bizarre causes to rally behind. Supporting breast cancer or victims of domestic violence is one thing, but coming to the defense of a Twitter user convicted of tweeting a message threatening to blow up an airport is a first. Paul Chambers has become an Internet celebrity since sending the following tweet in January: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s--- together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high." His tweet came out of frustration, as he had been planning to go to Belfast, Northern Ireland, to meet a woman he had met through Twitter. Now, was this meeting more than a little creepy, pathetic and weird? Sure. Is Chambers a loser who has to meet women from other countries via Twitter rather than in person? Absolutely. But that doesn’t mean he should be charged with and convicted of a crime……right? Not if you ask the South Yorkshire Police Department. Chambers was arrested, charged and summarily convicted of sending a "menacing" electronic communication. Following his conviction, he was ordered to pay a $621 fine and something called a victim surcharge in the amount of $24. He appealed the conviction and on Thursday, the appeal was rejected by a north England court. The court ordered Chambers to pay the fines along with prosecution costs totaling $4,193. His appeal centered on the claim that Twitter was not a "public electronic communications network" within the meaning of the relevant law. The judge disagreed and dismissed Chambers' appeal on every count, ruling that because the Tweet was discovered when an airport manager, who was not a Twitter member, searched for "Robin Hood Airport" on Twitter, Chambers’ defense was invalid. The decision hasn’t lessend Chambers’ online support; if anything, that group is growing faster than before. Hundreds of Twitter users have launched a campaign based on the idea of retweeting his message and tweaking it to include other locations they might blow up or otherwise destroy. Some of the United Kingdom’s most famous faces, including comedian Stephen Fry, have joined the effort and perhaps some of them will be inspired enough to help Chambers pay his legal bills………
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