Ruh roh. Carmelo Anthony welcomes Paul Milsap to the 2009 NBA season. Nice lollipop outlet pass. My recommendation, Paul, is to sit in the back row during today’s film session. It ain’t gon’ be fun for you.
Also, this should serve as fair forewarning to the Madison, Wi. YMCA. Y’all up in the 608 fin da get tea bagged cuuu!
Ecuador’s president is in London this week to promote a unique proposal: pay his country $3 billion not to drill for oil in a pristine Amazon reserve.
“This is the first time the government of a major oil-producing country has voluntarily offered to forego lucrative oil extraction in order to help combat climate change,” said Dr. Matt Finer, staff scientist for Save America’s Forests and author of a study on Correa’s initiative.
But Correa’s idea is two years old and he has yet to receive a firm cash commitment.
Under the plan, rich countries would pay Ecuador at least half the revenues that the 850 million barrels of heavy crude oil estimated to be in Ecuador’s remote Yasuni National Park would be expected to generate over the next 10 years — or about $3 billion.
Ecuador says not drilling for the oil would keep 410 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, a figure that has caught the attention of green-conscious governments in Europe.
via Yahoo!
This is intersting. I wonder what plans Ecuador has for the money?
Thao with The Get Down Stay Down - When We Swam
So, this is what hipsters do at the beach, huh. Looks fun.
I like this song.
“ I was in the bed sweating. My wife would turn over in the bed and ask “Are you OK?” Honestly, those first two weeks without The Dew was the roughest two weeks of my life. I’m talking headaches, sweats and everything. ”
Washington Wizards guard Caron Butler on quitting his 72 ounce per day Mountain Dew addiction cold turkey. Now only if he could give up those Cool Ranch Doritos.
Andre Agassi told People magazine today that he used to trip crystal meth. I wish that could explain this hairdo, but unfortunately it doesn’t since his little stint with meth was in the late 90s. Many of us probably aren’t that surprised when a famous person comes out and says they’ve used drugs in the past, except when it’s crystal meth. Crystal meth doesn’t even sound party. At least Darryl Strawberry and Michael Irvin kept it party.
More details at ESPN.
The Fiery Furnaces - Here Comes the Summer
For one reason or another, I’ve never been a huge fan of The Fiery Furnaces, but as I was cleaning out my iPod I came across this old tune. There is a certain human element in this live version that appeals, especially at the end when a little bit of laughing goes on.
“ What shocked me is that there are people like Shane Battier out there who take such a clinical perspective to basketball. From a recreational standpoint and playing, you just go out and play. To find guys who think about it in such analytically was nice. Pretty much everything he does in his preparation and during the game has a purpose. That was fun to see, there’s a reason for what they’re doing most of the time. Not everybody, obviously, but a lot of people. ”
Chris Ballard in a Q&A about his new book “The Art of a Beautiful Game.” Learning about what, why and how athletes prepare is interesting; the nuances of sports are intriguing. A guy like Shane Battier, it seems, takes it to a different level when it comes to preparation and doing the “little things.”
Ballard also briefly talks about how Dwight Howard blocks shots out of bounds and into the stands, even though it’s not fundamentally sound, because it is fun to him. Not to brag, but that reminded me of the time, as legend goes, that I traumatized some poor kid for life by blocking his shot into the wall at the Boy’s Club so hard that it dented the aluminum siding. Play on, Dwight. That shit is fun.
“ There’s a certain look girls get when they’re wasted where you know you’re either going to get punched in the face or sucked in the cock. ”
There is an interesting article about the United States’ Predator drone program in the newest edition of The New Yorker.
Within the C.I.A., control of the unmanned vehicles is split among several teams. One set of pilots and operators works abroad, near hidden airfields in Afghanistan and Pakistan, handling takeoffs and landings. Once the drones are aloft, the former counterterrorism official said, the controls are electronically “slewed over” to a set of “reachback operators,” in Langley. Using joysticks that resemble video-game controls, the reachback operators - who don’t need conventional flight training - sit next to intelligence officers and watch, on large flat-screen monitors, a live video feed from the drone’s camera. From their suburban redoubt, they can turn the plane, zoom in on the landscape below, and decide whether to lock onto a target. A stream of additional “signal” intelligence, sent to Langley by the National Security Administrataion, provides electronic means of corroborationg that a target has been correctly identified.
People who have seen an air strike live on a monitor described it as both awe-inspiring and horrifying. ”You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff,” a former C.I.A. officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack. (He watched the carnage on a small monitor in the field.) Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: “squirters.”
This type of warfare is pretty controversial and can get quite complicated, mainly because there are two drone programs, one run by the military and one run by the C.I.A. The C.I.A. program is the controversial part. It’s not exactly known how many Predator drones the government has purchased from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, but the word on the streets is that there are more than 200 in operation and that General Atomics Aeronautical Systems can’t keep up with demand. Obama has authorized forty-one C.I.A. missile strikes since January 20th, more than Bush did in his last three years in office.
Click here to read further.