| The significance of the Grammys
Mattoon native Will Leitch is back in the Midwest after a West Coast swing promoting his new book, “God Save the Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken the Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It Back)." (For more on Leitch, see my story in this morning's edition of the Herald & Review. One important thing to keep in mind when reading is Leitch says almost everything with a self-deprecating sense of humor. He laughs a lot, and as a result, I laugh a lot, too.) While he's got a book that selling well (unless, he says, the people at Harper Collins are lying to him and he can't read them well enough to figure that out yet) and a number of writing gigs, Leitch is happy to continue doing Deadspin, the Gawker Media sports blog that made him one of the most influential sports voices on the Web.
Don't Call It Plagiarism
Perhaps not since the air traffic controllers' strike of 1981 has the big press lavished such intense and generally sympathetic coverage on a labor dispute. Both the Washington Post ("it hasn't been easy for movie writers") and the New York Times ("my greed is fair and reasonable") have run op-eds by screenwriters demanding that the entertainment industry compensate Writers Guild of America members for digital use of their work on the Web, iPods, cell phones, etc., the sticking point of this strike. In the opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times, writer-producer Marshall Herskovitz lectures about how corporate domination of Hollywood inconveniences him, and a nonscreenwriter laments the powerlessness of today's scribes ("there is nothing without the writer"). .
Circus denies its use of animals is ‘cruel’
Maz, if you asked I am sure you would be allowed to see Tom Roberts training his lovely horses, there is nothing to hide! The winterquarters is set in the countryside with big paddocks for them to use. And by the way, I bet you have never seen race horses, greyhounds, guide dogs, police dogs or horses trained either... Don't pick on circuses, when you only beleive the animal rights untrue propoganda, all produced to encourage people to donate to them! .
Gilmore's gold in first round
WORLD champion Stephanie Gilmore swooped into the new season as the pacesetter in round 1 of the Roxy Pro surfing tournament on the Gold Coast yesterday. The 20-year-old Snapper Rocks board rider posted 15.84 points, the day's top heat score, which included the best ride in good 1.2m waves at Duranbah Beach. Gilmore was the outstanding surfer of the 2008 world tour launch, beating 15-year-old Hawaiian prodigy and Roxy Trials winner Carissa Moore. She said she was relieved to finally don a contest shirt after a blur of commitments as world champion. "It's been a bit crazy with all the awards and activities and stuff, but it felt good to get back in the water," Gilmore said. "I guess I was a bit rusty at the beginning, but I started gaining more and more confidence throughout the heat and felt pretty good by the end." Local knowledge helped Gilmore pick the best waves and take command of the heat.
Mobile World Congress--Take That, Apple!
If press conferences from Sony Ericsson, Nokia and Samsung are any indication, it's that Apple's one-size fits all approach to the market with its popular iPhone is doomed to failure. Executives at the major phone makers made absolutely no mention of Apple in their speeches, but they clearly appeared to be moving to address the perceived gap in lovability between their phones and the iPhone. Nokia and Samsung had nearly identical mesages, suggesting that they alone were capable of producing a mobile phone for every lifestyle—including all you old-timers who (shudder) simply want a phone to make calls. On the high end where they currently are competing with Apple for mindshare and marketshare, the phone makers opted mainly for evolutionary updates on existing models. Nokia's new dual-band HSDPA N96, for instance, doubles internal memory to 16GB from the N95, while adding LED lights to the 5 megapixel digital camera for flash and video lighting.
PistolCam Could Come To Philly
Too often Philadelphia officers have to draw their guns, making life-or-death decisions. Afterwards, different people see different things. That's why some think it's time to start another kind of shooting, NBC 10's Lu Ann Cahn reports.
Images | Video
The demonstration for the NBC 10 Investigators didn't have a real police car stop or gun, but it really did involve a lipstick-size video camera on a model police weapon. .
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