news feeds oct 22

Tonight is the third and final debate leading up to the November election between  incumbent Barack and challenger Mitt Romney is what has already been dubbed "Get It On In Boca Raton," named after a popular local slogan. Obama was much better prepared for the second town hall style debate after being shown up pretty bad at the first one. The third one they will be sitting at a table with moderator Bob Schieffer (CBS News) acting as referee. The key issues will be on foreign policy (in particular current situation in Libya and Iran) with most experts saying Barack to have an edge on the issue since incumbents have access to more privileged intelligence and get more comp trips than senators. If you can peel yourself away from the Bears and Lions Monday Nighter game then take in a minute or two of the debate. Or switch over to the Giants and Cardinals game.

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If you use AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner or Verizon as your internet provider and you enjoy downloading episode of Seinfeld via Bit Torrent, you could be getting a threatening letter. That's right.. after years of trying to impose legislature against illegal downloads, they have taken their first step. First time offenders get a mild warning which also includes information to steer the guilty party away from a life of crime (what? really?). After the 'educational' phase of the warnings, if material is still downloaded illegally then they slow (throttle) your internet connection down so you can't download large files. Terminating the internet service to a customer does still appear unlikely however since copyright infringement is alright so long as you don't miss paying the bill by two days (in which case it will be promptly cancelled.)

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I had to make sure that I finished the entire series of Peep Show (seven seasons) before November 9th since, hallelujah, there is going to be a new season debuting on that very day. The show is basically a take on old Odd Couple premise with David Mitchell's Mark Corrigan playing Jack Lemmon's Felix, and Robert Webb's Jez (Jeremy) playing Walter Matthau's Oscar. Throw in the best bits of the British version of The Office (after all Mark works in a similar work place, JLB Credit), and constant interior thoughts of the two main characters and you have absolute comedy gold. From pee dripping through floorboards at a wedding, to eating a semi-charred dog or even helping a bandmate score some crack this is definitely one of the funniest shows I have ever seen. Again, season 8 starts November 9!

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Say it ain't so Lance! I have tried to years to always take him at his word. He seemed honest enough, and you always seem to have sympathy for a man with one testicle. It appears the evidence is stacked too highly against him, and in the wake of him stepping down from his own charity, being stripped of his Tour De France titles and losing his endorsements, his credibility seems to have been blown to hell. Too bad, he was a real source of inspiration for, well for people looking for that sort of thing in a cyclist. "Lance Armstrong has no place in cycling and he deserves to be forgotten in cycling," said Pat McQuaid, the president of the Union Cycliste Internationale. Remember Lance's scene in the movie Dodgeball? It was great.

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The Red Sox have gotten their man, finally. After their worst record since the 60s, Boston axed skipper Bobby Valentine after one nightmarish season. John Farrell had been Boston pitching coach prior to being named as Blue Jays manager before the 2011 season. Boston had tried to hire him before this season but the Blue Jays were reluctant to let him go to a divisional rival. But after the Jays had a season almost as bad as the Red Sox (and with just one year left on Farrell's contract) Jays GM Alex Anthopolous was more open to the lateral divisional more and picked up Mike Aviles from Boston as compensation. Farrell pitched for the Indians, Angels, and Tigers over his seven year career cut short by injury. Welcome back to Boston, John!

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The American League champion Detroit Tigers are waiting to see whether they are headed to St. Louis or San Francisco for the start of the World Series on Wednesday night. Game 7 of the NLCS between the Giants and Cardinals goes tonight in San Francisco to see who gets to represent the National League in a face-off again the powerful Tigers. Pitching for the Giants tonight is ace Matt Cain facing off against St. Louis Cardinals' right-hander Kyle Lohse who, over 18 innings has given up four runs of a tidy ERA of 1.96 while Cain's number show he's been roughed up a bit more to the tune of 9 earned runs allowed over 17 innings. First pitch is tonight at 8:07 at AT&T Park.  In a semi-related note: Remember the season Melky Cabrera was having for the Giants? He was leading the league in batting average and was the All Star Game MVP then he got a 50 game suspension by the MLB, and despite eligibility to be reinstated, he was left off the Giants playoff roster. The interesting part is that his heroics in the All Star Game guaranteed home field advantage for the National League champions, possibly the Giants. So he's even helping them while not being in the line-up. That's a dynamic player. Just saying..

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There's no hockey on. We know that. One year ago tonight, was a night the Leafs played the Canadiens in Montreal and Toronto won 5-4 on a gorgeous goal by Grabovski in overtime. Other Leaf scorers were David Steckel, Phil Kessel, Dion Phaneuf and Nik Kulemin. Anyways, here is some highlights from the game for a mild hockey fix.

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Song.

news feeds aug 24

Lance Armstrong has been long battling the US Anti-Doping agency for his alleged doping  allegations and it looks like his fight is over. Armstrong has decided to stop battling the agency saying it was a "one-sided and unfair process" after losing a court case on Monday where he was trying to put a halt to the allegations once and for all. The agency responded by saying he will get a lifetime ban as well as losing all his wins after 1998, including 7 Tour De France titles. "I have been dealing with claims that I have cheated and had an unfair advantage in winning my seven Tours since 1999. Over the past three years, I have been subjected to a two year federal criminal investigation followed by Travis Tygart's unconstitutional witch hunt. The toll this has taken on my family, and my work for our foundation and on me leads me to where I am today - finished with this nonsense," Armstrong said. The USADA has accused Lance the Pants of not only using but trafficking, giving them to others and covering up his own drug violations. It has never been proved whether he did or didn't use performance enhancing drugs, and has passed 500-600 tests in his career. One of his former coaches noted that Lance has never backed down from any fight, including his well publicized battle with testicular cancer, so for Lance to throw in the towel "underlines what an unjust process this has been."

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Best part about 3D movies? The cool glasses right? Or is it the thin storyline to make rooms for tons of 3D effects? While we may never get solid stories with 3D blockbusters, researchers in South Korea have developed a way to view 3D films without any additional hardware. So as it works now, 3D has two projectors running a film in sync with the one running with light polarized left to right and the other up to down, so when we take our glasses off everything looks blurry, since the images are basically the same, omit some light composition, but just slightly offset from one another. It is very expensive to do this, since you have to have two projectors, have the two reels of the film, and make it sync, not to mention hand out 100s of disposable glasses. The new process has a way to go… It basically puts a filter right after the projectors lens that polarizes the light, but unfortunately, the image resolution is fairly low.  "This technology is still in its infancy, but it's a new step that was hidden for a long time, " says physicist John Koshell. Remember the cardboard 3D glasses one of Biff's henchmen wore in Back To the Future? Bring those back!

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Alright, all you smart phone users/McDonald's fans (McDonalds regulars use smart phones?), it's all going down! Thirty McDonalds restaurants in France have been testing out a new smartphone payment system, similar to the ones used at many major retailers including Starbucks, 7-11 and Target. If the company is pleased with the results, expect the concept to engulf all 33,500 other locations the world over. You just walk in, order, they scan your phone (take payments from PayPal), and you get ushered over to a separate line to pick up you food. The 'little square' called "Square" was created by one of the founders of Twitter, which I did not know, is used for most phone scan payments but PayPal has been trying to stay relevant in the online payment game, which they basically invented, by working with McDonalds, not to mention they have recently hooked up with home reno behemoth Home Depot. 

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Kids allowance these days runs you $15 bucks a week, made payable from the age of 8 on. That at least the averages that have been reported in a recent survey. Kids tend to get a slightly bigger allowance when they get older (older being 15-16 not 28-29), but even at the average of $15, kids are making about $780 a year. Not mention, without any bills, from food to phone, kids still don't save, with fewer than 1% of those surveyed saying their child actually saved any money. Parents also cover costs like cell phones, music downloads, and sports costs. So after covering all these incidental costs, it is conceivable, in some homes at least, that kids have more disposable income that their parents do sometimes… and to put it in perspective a kid could buy an iPad and an iPod touch with their years "earnings." I'm going to an inflation calculator to see if my $5 allowance in the 1990s matches up. Nope, I made $8.23 per week or $427.96 annually. It did say good grades were a factor. Shucks.

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This isn't really news. Anyways, I saw Microsoft was revamping their logo, going for that retro-chic look in hopes of it making them relevant again after the launch of a redesigned Windows 8 and their Surface tablet computer (which looks great.. I posted a story when it was first announced CLICK HERE). I thought I'd put a couple other official logos up and they are pretty hilarious or terrible. Depends. The original logo was a "futuristic" looking text from the 70s, then they moved onto the glam metal fonted logo, and their "blibbet" logo with three concentric circles making up the first O in Microsoft was just ok, but apparently people had a campaign "Save the Blibbet" around the offices, not to mention the Microsoft cafeteria had a Blibbet Burger. 

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And they say the Brits are boring! I don't know anyone who wouldn't want to party with Prince Harry after his £30,000 ($47,442 USD) Vegas weekend. Harry and two of his mates rented a suite with three master bedrooms, private elevator, butler service, massage room, steam shower, 72" TV, gym and a wet bar (not to mention the infamous pool table and soundproofed walls for any royal shenanigans that took place). Harry arrived, checked in in a private lobby and went straight to the SW Steakhouse within the Encore Wynn resort, spending thousands of pounds of bottles on wine. After dinner, they slide over to Surrender night club, built around an outdoor pool, where him and his boys drank Jagerbombs and beers all night with bikini clad go-go dancers swinging on stripper poles. Mellow Friday night. Saturday, they rented out a VIP bungalow at the MGM Grand for one of its Wet Republic pool parties, before Sundays weekend cap of booze by the pool before whisking off to XS night club. The weekends tab was covered by Steve Wynn, billionaire owner of the hotel, who said that no one with the royal party is to pay for anything. This could be the first king to have a nude/semi-picture of himself on the internet, not that I know the complete history of the monarchy.

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Not to fully expose my love for the Back To the Future movies but I have to reference them again.. Back To the Future 2 actually. Remember when Marty saw Doc disappear in the DeLorean after it was struck by lightning and got send to 1885 then Joe Flaherty shows up as an employee from Western Union with a package that had been in their possession since 1885. I like that scene. Anyways, there is a 100 year old package in Norway with instructions not to be opened until 2012. It has been speculated that there is historical documents, some kind of small treasure. It is set to be open today, August 26, 2012. The package has been in small town Norway since August 1912, given to the local mayor by a politician, Johan Nygard, who said that the package would "benefit and delight future generations." Is it going to be a huge joke that will be having Nygard laughing from his grave? We will see. There is something hopelessly romantic about leaving something for people in the future, a message in a bottle sort of quality, but many capsules have often been a mixed bag, from finding nothing, to the contents improperly store and they deteriorate over time. My favourite is still Rivera's opening of the Al Capone vault found beneath the Lexington Hotel in Chicago in 1986. (You can check a previous story, with video, I did on the Capone vault HERE).

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A novelty condom company in New York City have put out some condoms with Mitt Romney and Barack Obama's face on the packaging. Mitt's rubber comes with the tagline "Great For Any Position" while Obama's read "Won't Break As Easily As His Promises" and "Ultimate Stimulus Package for Hard Times." Apparently, company founder Ben Sherman (apparently a side business to nice suits and sweaters), has been producing presidential condoms since the last election with Obama's 08 condom reading "Use Good Judgement," based on Obama's mantra that sound judgement was more important than experience, while his opponent John McCain's condom read "Old, but not expired." Obama's domes are outselling Romney's by a 7% margin.

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Friday song. Elliot's "Calm Americans"

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Say what?