Traditional ‘Europeans’ are worried. It’s not only fear of strangers: it’s the  redefinition of ‘our’ space and  uncertainty about ‘our’ future. Future developments, largely unexpected, let us stress that once again, will force us to redefine choices and policies that previously had been (differently in different countries) seen as ‘ours’ by definition. But now it seems that ‘immigration policies’ will have to be designed and ‘immigrants’ dealt with in a very different context. 

Attention at present is primarily  focused on France and Italy and the policy responses and  ‘messages sent out’ by governments under the pressure of people flow, prompted by the violent confrontations with dramatic  human costs in North Africa and the Middle East. What we are facing now is a process of change that ought to bring us, traditional ‘Europeans’, to reconsider how the Mediterranean space is defined, and how we are related to and confront political contexts and peoples that we had seen as far apart, different, actually as others. 

How these events (ongoing conflict in Libya in particular) have been handled by the Italian Government is a widely discussed theme in our political sphere, public  discourse and in the media. It all began with growing numbers from the other side of the sea reaching the island of Lampedusa. Within a very few days, the anticipation of further arrivals, difficulties in facing that, graphic images in the media had come to be regarded as a highly visibile challenge. A core concern for those in power was how to handle this in terms of domestic politics (elections were close, the Lega Nord was extremely vocal in its opposition to all forms of asylum). The EU was regarded as a major source of support, and the Italian Government had recourse to the EU at the very beginning. It immediately announced that money would be made available. 

However, lack of adequate planning at the European level triggered a round of international debate.  Back in Italy, the main problem was how to tackle the immediate challenge while anticipating further developments. Various arrangements were put in place, trying to face the immediate needs of those, in extremely distressed circumstances, who continued to arrive. 

But accommodating these people raised a further issue - of increasing numbers of newcomers, not only from the Mediterranean area, but from other African regions. Immigrants from all over the world had reached Egypt in particular. A much more profound process of global mobility was thus for once made visible. This was immediately seen as having a ‘European relevance’,  and dangerous implications. 

Of course there were voices in some sectors of public opinion and in some political groupings, who made it clear that giving support to these people in their political struggle and solidarity in their present (and future) difficulties were crucial choices, reflecting fundamental values. 

But political leaders  and the media insisted that there were far too many of them and that they had to be sent back to their countries, or moved out of Italy (most of them towards France: Tunisians in particular were making it clear that this was their preferred destination). So the obvious next step involved granting  ‘temporary acceptance’ documents which would allow all to move freely within the Schengen area. Hence, out of Italy: this was the goal. 

The French Government immediately opposed this solution. 

Increasing numbers of ‘immigrants’ have tried to reach the Italian/French border nevertheless. The first reaction was to refuse all those travelling from Italy entry into France. International television channels showed how many people had to pass through days (and nights) without being given any adequate  assistance or any information. In the days that followed, controls were established at the border by French authorities. Those who did not have what was considered a sufficient amount of money were not allowed to move on into France. 

At the end of April, Sarkozy and Berlusconi met in Rome: their agreements and ‘solutions’ were announced. 

It is very clear that both feel the pressure from their ‘populist’ right-wing political rivals, Marine Le Pen in Front National  in France and the Lega Nord in Italy, together with large sectors of public opinion in both countries. But beyond that. Economic and social problems are to be expected in the  coming months (and years). Resistance to processes of change is to be expected. The sharpening of conflicting interests, and of course, forms of discrimination and growing xenophobia are one response. 

A scenario-in progress is what we have to face that had somehow not been anticipated in a ‘traditional’ European perspective, despite Europe’s intimate knowledge of how this dynamic can develop. 

So, we must work at redefining our near-term and longer-term future. 

Hopefully, also, we might finally learn how to live in diversity, while taking into account ongoing social and political pressures (and considering how unprepared Europe appears to be to face them). Two aspects in particular demand our urgent fresh attention, the rising populism in many EU countries, and the relevance for Europe of  present events  in North Africa and the Middle East. 

Just a brief comment looking at the past. In the post-war period, the project of adequate migration policies and institutions was seen as an important and feasible social and political objective in the Nordic countries, and in different ways and with different procedures in France, the UK, and Germany as well. ‘Newcomers’ were needed. Conditions of discrimination and inequality were present, but a variety of approaches and models to deal with this were developed in contexts which all had in common assumptions that a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, mutli-religious future settlement could be reached. 

Putting it briefly: those circumstances made living in diversity a possible European framework, a common goal which would, of course, require a shared project and continuous engagement. But suddenly, we find ourselves in very different circumstances. Now we face, all over Europe, growing ‘institutional xenophobia’ and a pervasive ‘politics of fear’. 

In many EU countries populist parties and a supportive public opinion have become a central political and social dimension (with somewhat different aspects and perspectives as to their future roles and positions). But common traits, which have been analyzed in a number of studies, are there for all to see: not only growing problems in the economy and in the labour market in particular; but increasing disaffection with the institutional machinery, national as well as European; and then there is the role of the media in stoking this fear. In all these different cases, the question of migration, and all the policies related to living in diversity have taken centre-ground, not lessening the fear and its attendant xenophobia, but adding to its thralldom.  

A highly visible new generation of political leaders, markedly different as to their backgrounds and their policy proposals, as well as their highly personal ways of presenting themselves (in Italy, Berlusconi and Bossi must both be seen as interesting examples) have built strong support from large sectors of the population who have felt that they have no voice.  

What is the alternative to their fear and xenophobia? Does ‘traditional’ Europe have an answer? 

I would like to wish you well next week for Europe Day and your investigation of the ‘Uses of Xenophobia’, and also congratulation on the tenth birthday of openDemocracy. This is indeed a timely discussion.

It seems that every season major league clubs are calling up their top prospects earlier and earlier and 2011 has already proven to be no exception.  On Thursday the Royals called up their top prospect in first baseman Eric Hosmer.  But Hosmer is far from the first highly touted prospect to make an appearance this season.  He joins a list that already includes Brandon Belt, Zach Britton, Jerry Sands, Trevor Plouffe, Tyler Chatwood, Michael Pineda and more.  But it isn't usually the top prospects that we've all heard about who make the biggest fantasy baseball impact.  It's those bounce back players who were forgotten about who usually step up and are the greatest of waiver wire acquisitions.  So, let's take a walk around the minor leagues and see just who is positioning themselves to be on a big league roster in the near future.

Joe Hewitt helped build Firefox, he built the wildly popular developers' tool Firebug and then he single-handedly created one of the world's most widely used iPhone apps: the Facebook app. Today he announced on his blog that he's leaving Facebook and going independent.

What's he going to do? Build tools. "[T]ools for writers, designers, programmers, whatever," he writes. "Wherever people are using computers to turn their ideas into reality, I want to help." That sounds awesome.

Sponsor

Hewitt continues:

"I've spent the last four years of my career working on a very different kind of software. At Facebook, I've gotten to build communications tools that reach hundreds of millions of people. I've had the honor of seeing people, even my own parents, using my apps while walking down the street, in restaurants, on trains, in planes and everywhere I go. Still, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Firebug.

"Technologies have a way of growing faster than the ecosystem of tools needed to support them. Over the last four years, we've seen the rise of mobile apps, the cloud, and now HTML5. Most developers building on these new platforms are using the previous generations of tools along with a mix of ad-hoc scripts and Web apps to get things done. It works, but it is far from ideal. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the Ajax climate back in 2006 when I decided to make Firebug.

"And so, I'm independent now, and I'm going to pour myself into understanding the needs of modern developers and designers, and creating software to fill those needs. There are so many opportunities that I can't even predict what I will end up building, but I am pretty sure I know where I am going to start. I can't wait."

Hewitt's plan to build tools for other developers (much less writers and designers!) points towards a future where the Web is a platform for democratized creation again. A generative force, not a new walled garden silo for passive consumption of media on a mass scale.

Facebook is many things; on the positive side it's been an incredible introduction to a writeable, personalized, feed-driven, mobile, social, place-aware Web for hundreds of millions of people. Just like AOL was too often mistaken for the entirety of the Web in the old days, though, there's a risk that many people will treat Facebook like the entirety (or at least the center) of the Web today and in the future.

There's nothing hotter right now than mobile design and applications and there are few things online more conflicted with potential and confusion at the same time as HTML5. Some tools-driven leadership could come in very handy in both departments.

Joe Hewitt creating for creators, on the open Web, sounds like very good news for the Web and its future.

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When college football’s various preseason polls come out this summer, you would have to expect that most will feature teams such as Oklahoma, Alabama, LSU and Stanford near the top of the rankings.

As we’ve seen in recent years though, preseason polls are about as useful as Derek Jeter, batting with men in scoring position.

Sure, we all know that Oklahoma is stacked this year but we’ve also learned that having to carry the weight of being the country’s top target week in and week out can take a tremendous toll on a team.

Alabama couldn’t handle it last year, Florida wasn’t equipped to do the job in 2009 and many other so-called preseason favorites have stumbled in recently.

In 2010, we watched both Auburn and Oregon, two teams that were ranked outside the top ten to begin the year, work their way up the ladder, all the way to the national game.

It has to make you wonder if there is an off-the-radar kind of team that is capable of making a similar unforeseen move this season.

One team that looks like it could fit the mold is North Carolina.

The Tar Heels have been forced to deal with plenty of stressful drama this past year with suspensions, firings and numerous allegations running though the program like a wildfire since last September.

The team appeared to be ready to challenge for the ACC crown last season but devastating suspensions to key players such as DE Robert Quinn and DT Marvin Austin weakened their resolve and they ended up finishing with a modest 8-5 overall record.

Last year’s trials and tribulations very well could have strengthened North Carolina for the future, as many role players were given the chance to develop in the wake of all the suspensions to key starters.

Considering three out of four of North Carolina’s top 2011 draft picks didn’t even play a down last season, it doesn’t seem like their loss will be all that impactful.

When looking at this Tar Heel team, it’s easy to spot some of the emerging stars such as DE Quinton Coples, a future first round draft pick, WR Dwight Jones, who made his presence felt in place of Greg Little, and LB Kevin Reddick, who led the team in tackles.  

The real story, however, is at the quarterback position where Bryn Renner, a highly talented former four star recruit, takes over for the departed T.J. Yates.

Renner may not have much game experience under his belt but he’s got the tools and the skills to develop into an elite starting signal caller this season.

The 6’3’’ 195 lb. redshirt sophomore created a lot of buzz with his performance this spring and he could be a player that will be ready break out once September rolls around.

Renner will have plenty of weapons at his disposal, as he’ll have one of the best receiving corps in the country to throw to.

Arkansas is the only other team in America that has a receiving trio that could match what North Carolina is going to put out on the field this year.

Dwight Jones, Erik Highsmith and Jheranie Boyd, who combined for over 100 catches least season, look like an unstoppable combination that will put some massive pressure on opposing secondaries this year.

After the departures of Johnny White and Shaun Draughn,  the running back situation will need to be figured out. But whoever ends up lining up in the backfield should have some nice holes to run through courtesy of All-ACC caliber linemen, Jonathan Cooper and James Hurst.

The offense should produce enough points but it’s the defense that’s really going to be the story of this team.

There’s NFL talent sprinkled all over the unit and North Carolina is set to have one of the strongest defensive front sevens in the country.

Defensive Linemen Quinton Coples, Tydreke Powell and Donte Paige-Moss are all future high round draft picks and linebackers Zach Brown and Kevin Reddick will be pros one day as well.

With so much premier talent throughout the depth chart, you have to believe that North Carolina is going to be a factor in the ACC championship race.  And you can’t count them out of the national title hunt, regardless of where they’re ranked when the season begins.

Coach Butch Davis has done a great job of bringing in top talent these past few years and if Davis can keep his team focused, the Tar Heels have a shot to really make some noise on the national scene.

With only five road games on the docket, the schedule isn’t exactly overbearing,

The key to the team’s success will be Renner, who is absolutely oozing with potential.

We know the Tar Heel defense is going to be lights out but it’s going to be up to Renner to find his talented targets on a consistent basis.

If the offense can put up the points, North Carolina is going to be one of the most dangerous teams in America this season and they have a chance to make a big run up the rankings. 

Yes, I'm doing it: A top 10 rankings list of the pound-for-pound best fighters in the world today. 

It's a daunting undertaking. After all, what good can come of this? Spirited discussion, I hope, at the very least. That and a better appreciation for the elite fighters in the sport we know and love.

A comprehensive listing of the USA Today/SB Nation consensus rankings can be found here. Comprised of some of the top MMA sites on the Internet, it's a rather informative rankings list of the top seven weight classes in MMA today.

But it doesn't venture into the dreaded "pound-for-pound" waters.

That's what I'll do here. Each month, likely the Friday night following a major event, I will attempt to make sense of how the best in the game stack up against each other.

Or course, any rankings list is highly subjective and up for debate. So don't hold back if you disagree.

In we go.

10. Lyoto "The Dragon" Machida (17-2)

I can already hear it. "What?!?!? Machida?!?!?!? Just because he blasted through Randy Couture in his retirement fight with a Karate Kid style Crane kick?" Partially, yes. Not just because of who he did it to, nor the situation in which he executed it within, but because he's such a special fighter that he has the capabilities to do such a thing to some of the best fighters on Earth. That kind of special doesn't come along often. It's unclear what's next for Machida but he has risen from the ashes of his first career slump and he could be better than ever. That's a scary thought.

9. Jon Fitch (23-3-1)

Considering this is an inaugural rankings list, I can think of no man that deserves a spot more based on past accomplishments than the Fitchster. Argue if you will that he failed so monumentally once he reached the top of the food chain, his unabashed drubbing of every other challenger, save B.J. Penn, has been nothing short of staggering. And I fully expect he'll win the rematch against "The Prodigy" and he'll do so handily.

8. Cain Velasquez (9-0)

The Heavyweight Champion of the world is currently riding the pine while he rehabs a shoulder injury that will keep him out until a likely October return against the winner of Junior dos Santos vs. Brock Lesnar. Simply put, Velasquez earns his spot because not only has he cruised to nine wins in as many outings, he's done so with shocking efficiency. His utter and complete destruction of the aforementioned Lesnar, no matter your feelings on Sir Brockness, was especially impressive considering the circumstances. His skill-set is built for a long run at the top.

7. Gray "The Bully" Maynard (10-0-1)

It pains me to place him one spot beneath his arch nemesis, seeing as he is the only man to have ever defeated Edgar and I actually scored him the win in the rematch. His record is spotless and his abilities stretch beyond that of one hit wonder. Maynard is bred to hit the big time and never look back, at least as far as his in-ring talents are concerned. The third, and likely final, bout against Edgar is set for UFC 130 on May 28 and it's in that bout that he shall make his move up the list.

6. Frankie "The Answer" Edgar (13-1-1)

The quintessential underdog, Edgar, even by me and on this list, can't get no respect. Despite his status as the champion in one of the deepest of all weight divisions, and his impressive list of victories, he's still getting counted out on a larger scale. In many ways, it's unfair, but by the same token, he can dispense of all that talk with a definitive victory over his own personal "Bully" on May 28 in Las Vegas. Can he do it? I'm not so sure.

5. Dominick "The Dominator" Cruz (17-1)

Fight fans that follow the UFC and the UFC alone, have yet to be introduced to this man but make no mistake, he is one of the greatest fighters in the world today. Much like Lyoto Machida, the 135-pound division has yet to figure out an effective way to handle his spastic style. His lone loss came at the hands of Urijah Faber in a weight class he no longer resides within. However, he'll get the chance to avenge that defeat on July 2 and if he does, the bantamweight division belongs to him for as long as he would like it to.

4. Jose "Junior" Aldo (19-1)

The man that chased Faber off to the bantamweight division, Jose Aldo, makes his appearance the highest I could possibly rank him and still sleep at night. His abilities are unquestionable, as he possesses a rare mixture of speed, power and agility, along with near impeccable timing and technique. However, I can't seem to get past the fact that he's plying his craft in one of the weakest divisions of the seven major weight classes. In fact, he's defended his title all of three times and there is already talk that he's cleaned out his division. That's just absurd. He'll get the chance to continue his reign of terror against Chad Mendes on Aug. 6 in Philadelphia at UFC 133.

3. Jon "Bones" Jones (13-1)

What this man is able to do when he steps inside the Octagon, against the martial artists he has been able to do it against, is astonishing. His size, combined with his rising skills, make for one of the most dangerous fighters in the world. Ask Mauricio "Shogun" Rua what it's like to get in the cage with this beast. Jones, 23, is on the shelf for a while to heal up an ailing hand but he'll be looking at his first light heavyweight title defense upon his return, possibly against the winner of Rashad Evans vs. Phil Davis. No matter which, it's difficult to imagine his coming up on the short end in either hypothetical contest.

2. Georges "Rush" St. Pierre (22-2)

Ah, the welterweight king, still sitting atop his throne after a gutsy performance this past Saturday night at UFC 129 against Jake Shields. Fighting through the adversity he did was admirable but there are those calling into question exactly how impressive it is that St. Pierre has been able to win so many fights without putting a stamp on them. Sure, he's beating the top welterweights in the world, but he's not doing so in the fashion one has come to expect with the otherworldly expectations placed upon him. Is that fair? I would say it is, and it is for that reason, and that reason alone, that he is number two instead of number one. His chance to redeem himself might come in the form of a superfight against Nick Diaz. Or maybe, as much of a stretch as it may be, the man that occupies the top slot on this list.

1. Anderson "The Spider" Silva (28-4)

I defy you to find a flaw in his resume bigger than a flash submission loss to Ryo Chonan. And that was damn near seven years ago. His UFC career is the most impressive in the history of the entire promotion. 13 fights, 13 wins. 11 finishes, including seven (T)KO's and three submissions. Eight title defenses at middleweight and two displays of mastery at light heavyweight. This man has basically done everything there is to do in the UFC, short of taking on a fellow champion and defeating him, as well. That might be the future, if the organization can manage to put the fight together before time runs out. Silva is, after all, 36 years-old. All the more impressive when considering what he's accomplished. Up next is title defense number nine against former foe Yushin Okami. There is no reason to think he won't run away in that fight, as well. Bow down to the king.

First off, I just want to say Thank You to those who joined us both in person and virtually last week at our Impact 2011: Building the Borderless Workplace conference. Personally, I always get energized by these events, especially when I have the opportunity to participate in real-time conversations with the amazing people who make up the leaders, practitioners, solution providers, media market, and researchers of the HR industry. What a passionate and vocal industry we work in!

I wanted to wrap up this week by sharing some insights on what I saw, heard, and personally felt at the conference last week for those who were unable to attend in person: 

What I Saw:

Although we were in the middle of beautiful St. Petersburg, with a view of the water just outside our windows and at a venue that often feels like you've stepped into a 1940’s vintage Hollywood movie set, the conference rooms were packed with passionate HR professionals taking copious notes on topics that ranged from Leadership development, HR Strategy, to What Learning will look like in 2021 (free streamed sessions). The questions and conversations following the sessions, made it into hallway discussions, and often ended up bleeding into lunch conversations. Participants were focused on learning as much as they could from everyone at the conference, especially from each other.

The networking events were lively and provided an opportunity for informal connections that hopefully everyone found positive. For example Laura Ann Preston from Kelly Services was in demand for introductions at every event based on her discussions on talent segmentation and changing the performance management dialogue in her Talent Initiatives panel. I think her exact words were “I was being chased”, but it was said with a smile. HR analytics and workforce planning was another hot topic. I’m sure I personally introduced Akil Walton, from Eaton Corporation to over 30 different people looking to learn more about Eaton’s great experience in building an HR Analytics function.  Everyone was looking to either increase their own knowledge or bring back information that their colleagues could use. 

What I Heard:

Theses discussions started during the pre-conference executive roundtables on Tuesday, which included companies that ranged from the University of Michigan to Darden Restaurants, and continued till Friday afternoon when I had the pleasure of finally sitting down to grab lunch with Starwood’s head of Talent Management and we finished our conversations over a fantastic Turkey Club.

How to implement successful HR Shared Service functions and COE’s; and differentiate this model from centralized HR functions

Restructuring and rethinking HR was a theme echoed throughout the conference. Those attending the HR sessions were interested in learning more about talent integrator roles, optimal HR structures, and the changing makeup of talent acquisition functions.

One of our international solution providers commented that this was the first conference they had heard the term Chief HR Officer used so often. He specifically asked if this role was on the increase and where was the CLO role heading? Well, that was a tough question that I’ll leave for a later blog, but I did share that in our research we are seeing an increase in the use of the titles Chief HR Officer or Chief People Officer.

Practical development of HR, particularly increasing the skills and capabilities of HR Business Partners and Center of Excellence leads

I saw and heard this theme throughout the conference. Comments centered on the fact that the current certification and higher-education programs offered important initial HR development – but they weren’t getting at the heart of what was missing in the HR community, real life experience and on the ground support.

When Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) presented their case study on Developing an Integrated People Services Organization for Strategic Talent Management; they had several audience questions about how they selected key HR roles and expectations for growth and development of their HR department. Their new HR structure has a heavy focus on the value of each area of HR, which promotes job mobility and breaks down traditional unspoken stigmas that often rise up between shared services functions, COE’s, and field HR roles. Sarah St. Clair, VP of HR for BAH even mentioned that her 80 + direct reports are expected to move and change roles on average every 2 years, emphasized by our speaker Kathy Nichols, an HR Director in her organization. 

In our Practitioner Panel: HR Challenges for the Coming Decade: Building Flexibility for the Future all four of our HR panelist's discussed the need to develop business acumen, solid planning, and advisory skills throughout HR.   Ellen Austin, a Senior Business Partner for Human Resources, Business Development Bank of Canada (BDBC) shared that her organization required all HR leadership roles to participate in 6 to 9 month job rotations in business roles throughout the organization. Once they had the experience of being on the front lines and working directly with clients or in other support roles, they became much more aware of the value of their work and its impact on their clients.  

We also found a lot of excitement in the Solution Provider discussions on this topic.  During the small group break outs in Benchmarking HR: Do You Dare to Compare? session we asked about where HR was seeing their budgets increase or decrease. The 15 or so vendors in my group had a great discussion about the increase in hiring and development needs, even for their own internal HR functions. As companies that sell sophisticated learning and HR offerings, they needed to find HR professionals who understand their business and can help them grow. Companies like Allen Communications said that their internal HR capabilities were critical to continuing their current growth rate. Additionally, almost everyone mentioned that they were spending a lot of time educating clients as part of the sales process or the support process in their particular offering areas. Those who had developed this capability felt it was increasing their sales dramatically.

We also saw announcements at the conference from MindLeaders/ThirdForce who launched their new TalentGuides, performance support modules based off of Bersin & Associates research content for HR professionals. (I’ll admit that this is a shameless plug in the middle of the blog, but I had the pleasure of working with the MindLeader’s team in supporting the development of these modules for the last year, and have a soft spot for their efforts). Conference participants who saw demos of the TalentGuides were excited about the simple idea of providing HR professionals performance support on critical talent areas when it was needed most, in front of clients and at decision making points, rather than in a separate classroom.

Our research found that 92% of High Impact HR organizations had formal internal development programs for their HR functions, and that the most effective HR development tools were coaching and mentoring programs and regular job rotations. These are all examples, of how organizations are accomplishing these best practices. 

The role of HR in managing or supporting organizational cultural changes 

Andy Mackay, from SunTrust Banks said it best, “My business is focused on changing our culture, so I need to be focused on our culture”. In Wednesday’s session on Developing a Comprehensive HR and Talent Strategy, I asked how many organizations were working on cultural change initiatives – over half the room raised their hand. As leaders we just know that Organizational Culture trumps HR initiatives – so changing the culture becomes a real focus when it is counter-productive to the company’s success. Several people came up to me after the session and asked, can HR actually change an organizations culture – and I’d have to honestly say “No, not alone”. They can support leadership efforts to change culture, they can ensure that they are nurturing and supporting a culture that has been set by their leadership, and they can coach leaders on the difference between talking about a culture and actually creating a culture. These are all important roles for an HR function – but they can’t set or change culture without leadership. Feel free to let me know if you disagree.

HR measurement and metrics

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the focus on HR measurement, metrics, and analytics throughout the conference. Almost every solution provider we spoke with shared the fact that HR analytic capabilities was a major part of their upcoming product road-map; even service providers were discussing how they were going to integrate analytics with their offerings. We saw unique, and potentially game changing tools like Zapoint's which has taken data collection methods from social sites and brought analysis of that data  to the next level, and Reward Platforms like  I Love Rewards and  Globoforce, talking about analyzing their data to not only connect it to annual engagement scores and turn-over rates, but start to connect it to the flow of recognition in a company, real time engagement notifications, and tracking organizational culture changes.  Everyone is talking about it, but few organizations and solution providers are doing it well.

We offered a small post session workshop on Building HR Analytics Capabilities which originally had 21 people signed up for the session, by the end of the conference we had an additional 12 people extend their stays to participate in the workshop, when they could have been sitting by the pool. This audience was a mix of solution providers and practitioners, and everyone was there to learn. We spent a considerable amount of time in the workshop, talking about how to prepare and develop HR professionals who could appropriately use the data coming out of these efforts. My co-presenter Akil Walton from Eaton Corporation summed it up by saying “None of the technology, or analytics skills, or even dashboard tools matter if your HR department and line managers don’t understand how to use the data to help the business make good decisions”. 

What I Felt:

Proud to be part of an industry that has so much passion and openness. Frustrated that as an industry we were still struggling with some of the basics. Exhilarated at seeing all the opportunities we, as an industry, have to help not only our companies but every person who interacts with our companies at some level.

Finally, I felt like I personally heard a battle cry – it is easy to overlook when learning about new technology implementations or yet another awe inspiring story about HR restructuring and transformation. Without development of the HR function, these initiatives simply don’t succeed. Today’s HR leaders are serious about developing their HR departments. Development that goes beyond a few business acumen courses and focuses on providing “on the job” programs that include experiences, special projects, job rotations, and extensive business knowledge and data interpretation skills.  Without these efforts, can HR actually fulfill on their goals and strategies?

In closing I’ll quote Ellen Austin, from BBDC when she was asked on her panel how she ensured her HR Strategy and Business Plan were solid, she stated  “I simply ask myself, when looking at my plan; if this was a business… would I lend them the money for this plan?”  Can you look at your own HR organization, strategy, and plan and feel confident that you would lend yourself the money?

If you attended Impact this year we’d love to hear about your own experiences, and we look forward to the next chance we can all get together and learn from each other.

Stacey Harris

Principal Analyst

If you have CPU intensive jobs that require 100s of Cores on Azure or on HPC on-premise cluster, I’ve just uploaded five easy-to-learn samples with lab instructions. (See figure 3) These samples have been added to the same location of the white paper, Windows HPC with Burst to Windows Azure: Application Models and Data Considerations.  The minimum requirement for Windows Azure Burst configuration is one on-premise (local) computer with Windows HPC Server installed.  This extremely low barrier for entry allows anyone to create a mini-super computer on Azure with powerful HPC scheduling mechanism.

Download Page for Samples and White Paper

I will be making them available on the MSDN Learning center for Windows HPC and Technical Computing in the next few days.  I have chosen these examples based HPC Server SP1’s capability and what our users are already familiar with.  These samples work on the beta release of Sp2 as well.  Please see the SP2 beta that was announced this week.

1. Parametric sweep

Parametric sweep is the simplest, fastest way to scale out your embarrassingly parallel codes.  You are simply running an executable 1000s of times load balanced across many compute nodes using the HPC job scheduler.  Please see figure 1.

· CPU spinner – The simplest example for parametric sweep.

· Image rendering of a CFD simulation:  (includes AzureblobCopy example code).  Video Link in HD   You will also need to download the HPCAzureBurstSampleData.zip on the same page.

2. SOA

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is an architectural style designed for building distributed systems. The SOA actors are services: independent software packages that expose their functionality by receiving data (requests) and returning data (responses). SOA is designed to support the distribution of an application across computers and networks, which makes it a natural candidate for scaling on a cluster. The SOA support provided by Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 is based on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), a .NET framework for building distributed applications. Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP1 improves SOA support by hosting WCF services inside Windows Azure nodes, in addition to on-premises nodes.

· Square Service – A simple sample of Square Service now running on Azure burst mode.

· Asian options Service – Visual studio Tools for office front end, Cluster SOA engine on the back end.

3. Excel offloading

The execution of compute intensive Microsoft Excel workbooks with independent calculations can be sometimes scaled using a cluster. The Windows HPC Server 2008 R2 SP1 integration with Windows Azure supports User Defined Functions (UDFs) offloading. Excel workbook calculations that are based on UDFs defined in an XLL file can be installed on the cluster’s nodes (on-premises and/or Windows Azure nodes). With the XLL installed on the cluster, the user can perform the UDF calls remotely on the cluster instead of locally on the machine where the Excel workbook is open.

· Asian Options in UDF – Same as the Excel Asian options service, but using the UDF offloading feature right from Excel.  Please see figure 4.  I bet you didn’t expect excel could do that.

Conclusion

I hope you find these samples useful to you.  I will be making some of my more complex demos mentioned in this blog into documented training in the near future. Please stay tuned and feel free to ask me questions or leave feedback.

Thank you for reading this blog.

Figure 1.  Parametric sweep job dialog.

Figure 2. Asian options demo uses Visual Studio Tools for Office as a front end.

Figure 3.  Asian options uses SOA for backend calculation.  As an embarrassingly parallel app, it can fully utilize all CPUs from both on premise (cray01-08), and Azure nodes.  (320 Azure cores + 48 on-premise cores).  For access to Azure, the minimum configuration is 1 on-premise machine acting as the HPC head node.

Figure 4.  Excel UDF, connect to your cluster from the Advanced options dialog box.  

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The Italian has seen enough big games and dealt with enough demanding owners not to be fazed by Sunday's showdown

A man as well balanced as Carlo Ancelotti has no business being a football manager. Certainly not in England's Premier League, where managers are expected to argue among themselves and snipe at referees as a matter of routine.

Not Ancelotti. Even approaching a weekend such as this, when he takes his Chelsea squad to Old Trafford on Sunday knowing that a win would put them level with Sir Alex Ferguson's team at the top of the table, nothing shakes his equilibrium or disrupts his air of knowing geniality as he wanders in from the Surrey sunshine after a training session to ponder on the problem of Wayne Rooney or to praise the match referee, Howard Webb. Not even the knowledge that his destiny is under discussion in two countries.

His team, fresh from winning the Double, started the new season with a rush. But the winter months saw a six-point lead transformed into a deficit of 15 points to Manchester United, the new leaders. And until the west London side climbed out of their mid-season slump, putting together 11 wins in their past 14 matches, the man who arrived in England two summers ago appeared to be heading for the exit.

Had Chelsea's season continued to disintegrate, the turning points would have seemed obvious. The first was the abrupt and unexplained dismissal in November of Ray Wilkins, Ancelotti's No2, an old friend of whom he said: "We wouldn't have won a thing without him." The second was the appearance in January of Fernando Torres, a £50m striker whose arrival forced Ancelotti to modify his preferred formation and who took 10 games to score his first goal.

The whims of powerful men, however, are nothing new to Ancelotti, whether they be Gianni Agnelli, Silvio Berlusconi or Roman Abramovich, and from his present vantage point he can argue that the real turning points were quite different.

"Manchester United against Arsenal last Sunday, and our win against Tottenham," he said. "If Arsenal hadn't won, it would be a different atmosphere around our game against United." Another one, he said, had come last month at the Hawthorns, just after their Champions League elimination, when West Brom scored first but Chelsea fought back to win.

On Friday he received the manager of the month award – "for April," he emphasised, implying that the fates should not be tempted. But no one knows whether a second league title, or even a near-miss, combined with a second consecutive failure to progress beyond the last eight of the Champions League, would be enough to persuade Abramovich to allow him another year at Stamford Bridge.

"It's not the moment to speak about my future," he said. "I would like to stay, but I am very quiet and calm. At the end of the season, the club will take the decision. If they decide to change the manager there is no problem. I've tried to do my best. If they consider my job good, I will stay. If they don't, they can change."

The unexpected turnaround of the past couple of months will have done his claims little harm. "Nobody thought we would be able to fight for the title," he said. "We were talking about qualifying for the Champions League. Fifteen points behind United was too much of a gap, but we closed it because we did really well for two months. Last year we built up a very good relationship with the players, and this atmosphere helped us to maintain good control of our confidence."

He has a perfect record – three wins out of three – against Ferguson in league matches and last year, after the victory at Old Trafford that took Chelsea to the brink of the title, he and Wilkins went into Ferguson's office for a glass of wine, only to find the United manager preoccupied by the racing on television. That match represented United's last defeat at home.

"I know," Ancelotti said. "Thirty matches, only one draw. Obviously they are the favourites as they have three points more. If they win, they will win the title. If we are able to win, then goal difference becomes important, and we have very difficult games against Newcastle and Everton, so nothing would be decided. But it would be important to be at the top of the table, after such a long time."

He spoke of the threat of Rooney and of Ryan Giggs, whose passes destroyed Chelsea in the two Champions League ties last month. But mostly that of Rooney. "He is a key player for them. It's difficult to stop him. His position is not so easy to control – he moves a lot, he comes back and works for the team. Obviously we have to do something. We never put one player against him, because it means changing our philosophy too much and we want to play our football. But it will be important to stay compact and keep our midfielders' and defenders' lines very close."

There has been one definite change of policy during the season. At Abramovich's behest, and with the forthcoming rules on financial fairness in mind, a group of young players – Daniel Sturridge, Gaël Kakuta, Jeffrey Bruma, Patrick van Aanholt and Josh McEachran – were among the substitutes during the first half of the season but have not been seen in the side in recent weeks.

"When we decided at the start of the season to use more players from the academy, it was a good decision," Ancelotti said. "We began really well, we were top and some of them played, although not many games. But when we had a difficult moment it was not easy to give them that responsibility. So we gave some the chance to go out on loan in January. We will decide at the end of the season if they come back or not."

Whether or not he will be around to influence those decisions, Ancelotti is intent on making the best of the last weeks of his very mixed second season. "Our bad moment was too long, I think. We could have done better. But now destiny has helped us to fight for the title again. We are excited and very happy. The season has not gone, as everyone suggested. This team is still alive."

Reporting by Sarah Phelan and Linda Man. Photographs by Sarah Phelan
Thirty-six candidates have filed papers in the 2011 mayor’s race, but only former Sup. Michela Alioto-Pier, Sup. John Avalos, Board President David Chiu, former Sup. Bevan Dufty, former Sup. Tony Hall, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, venture capitalist Joanna Rees, City Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting, and Sen. Leland Yee got to publicly race out of the starting gate May 5 during the first official mayoral forum. And while the decision to exclude the other 25 candidates was understandable from a logistical perspective, it raised the perennial question as to how the concerns of marginal communities and marginal candidates will be addressed during the campaign. (N. B. Write-in candidate and taxi driver Harold Miller used the forum to circulate his campaign literature, a strategy he also employed during this week’s cab driver protest around MTA credit card fees)<!--break-->

The May 5 mayoral forum, which the University of San Francisco’s Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service and the Common Good and buildOn, a national non-profit organization, hosted, was apparently modeled on the 2008 Presidential Candidate Forum on Service. And it was intended to enable candidates to ‘address substantive questions about the future of service and engaged citizenship in San Francisco,” according to a USF press release.

But while the forum gave the audience a chance to meet nine mayoral candidates up front and personal, and though the candidates sought to differentiate themselves as best they could, the open-ended nature of the questions that students got to pose, resulted in more talking around the issues, and less answering of the questions. By forum’s end, the one message that the mostly student audience seemed to have gotten was that the city is out of money, thanks to a $350 million dollar deficit, and that folks need to volunteer, and, come to think about it, why not volunteer for someone’s mayoral campaign.

“It was more like mayors promoting themselves. Are they supposed to be like that?! The main thing I learned was that the city is in huge debt,” one student observed, after listening to the candidates talk about their experience giving back to the community and what they hope to change if elected.

 USF student Christina Lopez, in her junior year and majoring in Politics, told the Guardian that if she had to vote at last night’s candidate forum, she would have chosen Yee. She said that out of all candidates, Yee offered more insight on how he would change things and what he would do if he was mayor. “The forum was helpful because I didn’t really know all the candidates,” Lopez said. “ I will follow the campaign and see how they actually fall through with what they said about rebuilding SF.”

Audience member Jack Frohlich said he still has no idea who to vote for. “I want to hear where we are going to get the money to do what we are going to do,” Frohlich said. “I want to hear somebody proposing a surcharge on the richest people in the state to close the budget gap.”

USF student Andriana Duckworth, a sophomore majoring in Politics, said she would vote for Avalos. “I liked how he said that we don’t need to take money from other local budgets to fix our public school system,” Duckworth said. She also noted that she liked how Alioto-Pier talked about disabilities and would like to hear it addressed more.  “When people hear diversity, they think of race and class but not disability,” Duckworth said.

So how did the candidates seek to frame and differentiate their candidacies?

Hall characterized himself as “an independent,” but then waffled his way through a long and confusing explanation of his 34 years in public service that included the claim that he was “very successful” as a supervisor.

Alioto-Pier talked about the defining moment in her life: the day she broke her back when she was only 13 years old, thanks to a ski lift accident, and how she subsequently began, “fighting for equality and the rights that I knew were mine.”

Herrera, like the bright lawyer he is, won Brownie points for noting that the location for the mayoral forum on public service was very apt, given Leo McCarthy’s service-oriented political career. Herrera then highlighted the positive changes that his office has made in recent years, including its efforts to promote marriage equality and universal healthcare. “These are real changes that started in San Francisco and had a positive impact,” he said.

Board President David Chiu cast himself as a champion of immigrants, civil and tenants’ rights, and took credit for helping usher in a new era of civility at City Hall. “For the last ten years, City Hall has not been as functional as we would have liked,” Chiu said. “I’m very proud that the tone at City Hall has changed.” He said that balancing the budget, reforming pensions, bringing in the America’s Cup and nurturing and retaining tech companies like Twitter, and creating a world-class public transit system were top priorities. ‘We’re losing families, tenants and homeowners,” Chiu warned.

Venture capitalist Joanna Rees made the biggest visual impression of the night, thanks to a bright orange jacket that made this reporter speculate that Rees was trying to raise her name recognition by making a subliminal connection with the famously bright orange wrapped Reese's Pieces. Either way, Rees cast herself as a political outsider who would breathe fresh air into an otherwise, allegedly, uninspired room. “We’ve lost the spirit of innovation at City Hall,” Rees claimed, as she committed to creating an online clearinghouse that would allow people to share their talents and meet the needs of various services, and thereby “foster more public and private partnerships.”

Sup. John Avalos stressed his roots as a social worker and a community and labor organizer. “I’m running because I want to fight for immigrants and support families and diversity,” he said. “We need to figure out how we can bring neighborhood leaders together, and how communities can come together.”

Former Sup. Bevan Dufty was the only candidate to use the linguistically persuasive technique of talking about himself as if he were already mayor. “I’m excited to be mayor, I love San Francisco, it’s a city where you can achieve your dreams,” Dufty gushed, as he pledged to fight to “uphold diversity and buck the trend that’s anti-immigrant." Dufty also did the good job of relating to the audience, largely through his ability to tell funny stories to make his points. And he wins credit from this reporter for crediting Sup. John Avalos for authoring the local hire legislation that Dufty helped pass in December by becoming the eighth vote when then Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted to veto the legislation, and that interim Mayor Ed Lee recently enacted citywide.

Sen. Leland Yee highlighted his long track record of public service, including the times he used to tutor immigrant youth in San Francisco’s Chinatown, when he was a UC Berkeley student. And he stressed his seniority as an elected official, as he ruminated on his experiences on the school board and the Board of Supervisors, and then in the state Assembly and now in the Senate.

“These are extraordinary times,” Yee said. “We don’t have enough money to do all the things we want, but through civic engagement and leadership we can provide.” He stressed that his priority is not to cut education, social services, and services that are in need. “The government is about taking care of people that are in need of help," he said.

Assessor-Recorder Phil Ting talked about his decision, five years ago, to start resetting how things worked in his office, by training his staff, investing in their future and holding them accountable for the work they do. “We were able to bring in $260 million over our budget,” Ting said, stressing that the effort proved that government works better if you have more say and more power. He also noted that his office introduced the city’s first solar incentive program.

"Now we have four times the solar roofs, we’ve doubled the city’s megawatt production, and we’ve created green collar jobs,” Ting said, lamenting that the city now wants to get out of the program. “You are missing from the dialogue,” he told the audience, as he promoted his Reset San Francisco theme.

And then, after a two-hour round of questions, it was back to the campaign trail, where raising money will be one key to getting out the message in this otherwise crowded race. The other key? Having the stamina and staying power to keep on message while pounding the pavement for the next six months.

In the meantime, you can listen to the candidates' closing statements here:

Matsya the Fish

Back in January I was asked by the Brooklyn Museum to create a set of 11 iconic Vishnu avatars for an exhibit they’re planning in June. They didn't offer a whole lot of money – an “honorarium,” they called it – but said the images could be under a Free license (they said CC-BY-SA was fine). I chose to do it because it was a cool gig, right up my alley; and I love the Brooklyn Museum and was excited to have my art be part of one of their exhibits. It turned out to be more work than I expected, but I was very pleased with the results.

Thus began a comedy of errors, the climax of which may have yet to be reached.

Kurma the Tortoise

First they wanted revisions. Creating is fun, but revisions are not. For what they were paying, revisions weren’t part of the deal. We hadn’t signed a contract; they hadn’t even mentioned a contract. It was just an oral agreement for a modest sum of money (“honorarium”) and because the work would be CopyLeft they could do whatever they wanted with it, including revise and modify.

Varaha the Boar

I hadn’t freelanced in years. Sita Sings the Blues took up nearly all my time between 2005 and 2011. I had gained a lot of self confidence during that time and was out of my old freelancer habits. Instead of doing whatever they asked and resenting them for it, I did something I’d never done before: I said no. I made sure to be polite. I consulted trusted friends, examined my motives, and was willing to accept any consequences, including being “fired.”

Narasimha the Lion-Man

The worst case scenario would be that they wouldn’t use the art and wouldn’t pay me. I was more concerned about the art than the money. I like money too, of course. The best-case scenario would be that they would use the art and pay me. But if they didn’t pay me, I planned to release the art myself, so anyone could use it, including them. They would be free to use the art even if they didn’t pay me.

The happy fact is that once I realized saying “no” was an option, any budding resentment at their requests evaporated. They were just trying to get what they wanted, which is what everyone does. It fell on me to set boundaries. It’s not wrong to try to get what you want; it’s also not wrong to say no.

Vamana thye Dwarf

After I said no, they produced a contract – one that I never would have signed, even if they’d ever shown it to me before, which they hadn’t. The contract granted them unlimited revisions.  Time passed, I politely stated and re-stated that the work was Free, and already completed; they could do whatever they wanted with it, and weren’t even legally bound to pay me.

Parashurama the Axe-Wielding Brahmin

Finally they removed the revisions clause – but added a new non-compete clause. This would make my work Free for everyone in the entire world to use, except me. I told them I couldn’t sign it, and they assured me it didn’t apply to the drawings I’d done, but anything I might do that would be “similar.”  They said the non-compete language absolutely had to stay in. I again pointed out the work was done, they had all the image files, and they could do whatever they wanted with it, without a contract and without even paying me.

Rama the King

I understand why contracts can be useful: the producer wants assurance of payment, and the payer wants assurance of production. If either party fails to live up to their obligation, the other party can punitively refuse theirs. But I had already done the work. I didn’t need a contract to incentivize it. Of course I wanted to be paid, and I thought paying me would be the decent thing to do; but the work was done, and I placed no restrictions on it.

Krishna the Cowherd Prince

I don’t like contracts. They are overused and unnecessary in most cases. Often it takes more time to negotiate a contract than it does to execute the work itself. I agree it is uncool and wrong to promise money and not deliver, but I hope to never work with anyone who can’t be trusted to live up to such a simple promise. If they don’t, a contract is unlikely to make it better. I’d have to “go legal” on them to enforce it, and unless it’s a really huge amount of money they reneged on, I’d have to spend more money and time on the legal enforcement. Art and Law should stay as far away from each other as possible. I manage to get plenty of work done without contracts, and I manage to take in money as well.

Balarama the Brother of Krishna

Throughout all of this I refrained from releasing the images myself, so the Brooklyn Museum could have first use. First use bestows such a competitive advantage that copyright is irrelevant. If the Museum rolled out merchandise first, any potential competitors would be unlikely to catch up. The work would immediately be associated with the Museum, before any competitor could associate it with anything else. Any sane contract would have obligated me to grant them first use, but that wasn’t in their contract at all, even though the Free license was. Their contract was built on the assumption of copyright, just with a CC-BY-SA license inserted into it. (Law students take note: most lawyers have no clue about the implications of Free licenses. Please try to fix this.) The non-compete clause was pointless, but a first use provision would have been essential for them.

Buddha the Preacher

Anyway, time continued to pass, and they finally let me strike out the non-compete clause so I’d just sign the damn contract and make the project digestible to their bureaucracy. So I did, and they paid me! Slightly more than the initially specified “honorarium” too. This was back in March. I’ve been looking forward to the Vishnu exhibit ever since, eager to finally have my illustrations see the light of day in the glorious setting of the Brooklyn Museum.

The exhibit is set to open in June. It should be really cool! But it won’t include my illustrations, because on May 5th they informed me their director wants to “take it in another direction.” Yep, they dropped my art, with just a few weeks to go.

I’m really glad that I specified a Free license from the very beginning. If I had granted them a restrictive copyright, then, when they axed the art, no one would be able to use it. So here’s yet another benefit to Free Culture: a client can’t kill it.

Kalki the Avatar of the Future

Addendum: As Terry Hancock wrote in the comments on my blog: “in the end, the museum subsidized an enrichment of the commons, for which I am grateful to them.” Me too!

All images CC-BY-SA. Click for 640-pixel-square PNGs with transparent backgrounds. High resolution available here.

This article crossposted from ninapaley.com

I've been playing fantasy baseball on Yahoo Sports for over a decade.  I think I've stuck with them and not switched to CBS or ESPN because they're constantly upgrading their pages and style and giving the users new stuff every year.  It's simple things too, nothing extravagant.  Not saying there's anything wrong with the other sites, I just don't use them because I don't have to.  I have no complaints with Yahoo.  

I can't recall if it was last year or this year, but they now let you look through a free agents last 7, 14, or 30 days.  I remember the 30 days because I would constantly look at a smaller sample size to see who is on a hot streak.  I know they've had the last week for a long time too.  But now you can basically split the difference and see the last 14 days.  I like that.

So today I've sorted through the highest ranked players over the last 14 days, and of course there are some interesting results.  Yahoo Ranking over the last two weeks in parentheses.  

Ben Zobrist (1) .347/.377/.755, 4 HR, 18 RBI, 13 R, 3 SB

Zobrist made headlines with his 8 RBI game and 10 total RBI day on April 28th.  He's ridden that to the #1 ranking in Yahoo over the last 14 days.  That streak started with an 0-for-5 game, so if you just look at his last 11 games he's hitting .387 with all those other pretty numbers.  He's raised his batting average by 78 points.

Adam Lind (2) .423/.439/.750, 5 HR, 16 RBI, 10 R

Lind broke out in 2009 and won a Silver Slugger award.  Then him and buddy Aaron Hill fell off a cliff last year and we were left wondering "What happened?"

Apparently Lind isn't a dead fish afterall.  (Same as Zobrist)  During one 8-game run Lind hit .531/.528/.1000 with the 5 HR and 13 of the RBI's.  You are probably wondering the same thing as I am.  "What's up with the walks Lind?"  Lind has never been patient at the plate, but his 5.3 bb% is far off from the 8.9% he put up in 2009.  At least he's doing the rest of the game well.

Jose Bautista (4) .464/.667/.1.214, 5 HR, 9 RBI, 13 R, 2 SB

Missing a few games hasn't hurt Bautista in the rankings at all.  Over just 10 games he smashed 5 HR and scored 13 times.  He even chipped in a couple stolen bases.  If you go back to "on pace for" that I wrote about yesterday, Bautista would be on an 82 HR, 65 double season pace with 211 hits and runs.  (In 2004, Ichiro had a streak of hits that lasted longer than two months which would have paced him for 325 hits over a full season.  And he did that for almost 2 and a half months.)

Bautista will be back to terrorize pitchers soon.

Jason Bourgeois (18) .481/.533/.667, 0 HR, 6 RBI, 5 R, 6 SB

Bourgeois is a 29 year old journeyman who played in 99 major league games coming into this season.  His speed is his greatest asset and he's using that to get more regular playing time in Houston.  Am I telling you to pick him up?  He's only 8% owned after all.  But he might only be good for a few stolen bases while he's hot.  He won't hit over .400 all year long.

Roy Halladay (5) 3-0, 1.46 ERA, 24.2 innings, 32 K's, 2 bb's

Just Roy being Roy, Halladay has won his last 3 starts and his 9.6 K/9 this season is the highest of his career.  So he's actually being better than Roy.  The future Hall of Famer has fine tuned his game to be the without-a-doubt best pitcher in the game.  Yes, he's pitched @SD, NYM, and WAS in his last 3 starts, but he mowed them all down just the same and his K/BB ratio is also the highest of his career.  Kickin' it with Cliff Lee may be helping him refine his own game.

James Shields (14) 1-0, .53 ERA, 17 innings, 19 K's, 3 bb's

Despite only having 2 starts in the time frame, and only winning one start (a large part of the rankings is predicated on wins for pitchers) Shields is ranked 15th in the game.  Against Toronto and LAA he gave up 10 hits and allowed 1 ER while walking just 3.  The Rays have won his last 4 starts and Shields has given up 4 ER in 33 innings during that time with 32 K's and just 6 bb's.  This is what many were expecting from Shields last season.

Ian Kennedy (27) 1-0, 1.99 ERA, 22.2 innings, 21 K's, 4 bb's

Kennedy shut out the Phillies with 10 K's and 0 bb's on April 25th and he's stayed hot.  A part of the big three-team trade with New York and Detroit, Kennedy was a disappointment in the Big Apple, but has been a solid starter in Arizona.  He got crushed by the Cardinals early in the season, but has been focused since then.  He still leads the league in wild pitches (4) which is something he also did last season (16)

Jean Claude Van Damme is the Villain in The Expendables 2 Its being reported this afternoon that Jean-Claude Van Damme has been confirmed as one of the main villains in The Expendables 2.

Sylvester Stallone has long toyed with having Jean-Claude Van Damme come aboard for this follow-up to the extremely popular action ensemble, often poking fun at the Muscles from Brussels on his personal Twitter account for not being man enough to take on what will surely be an intense shoot. The news of Jean-Claude Van Damme coming aboard didn't stem from there, though, as Sylvester Stallone has been suspiciously absent on the social networking site since January 29th.

This news actually came from Jean-Claude Van Damme's longtime collaborator, Sheldon Lettich, the writer-director behind Double Impact and Lionheart, who was advised by Van Damme himself that he would be playing a villain, presumably against Bruce Willis, who has long been set to play the main villain in the movie.

For the past few moths, Sylvester Stallone has gone back and forth on whether or not he will return to direct The Expendables 2. Last we heard, he was looking for a director to take over the project so he could focus more on the acting part of the job. Of course, that could change again anytime in the near future.

Sylvester Stallone is set to star in the Walter Hill-directed Headshot before embarking on The Expendables 2.

The Expendables 2 is in development and stars Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis. The film is directed by Sylvester Stallone.

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In a little more than two years since making his UFC debut, Stefan Struve has steadily risen through the ranks of the organization’s heaviest division. Although Struve insists that he isn’t feeling the pressure, the fact of the matter is “The Skyscraper” is on the brink of becoming a bonafide contender in the UFC's heavyweight division.

An established star on the European mixed martial arts circuit, before making his UFC debut in February of 2009, Struve has since claimed five wins in seven Octagon appearances—including victories over Paul Buentello, Christian Morecraft and, most recently, Sean McCorkle.

Right now, Struve is preparing for his next bout—a heavyweight tilt on May 28th against Travis Browne at UFC 130.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Stefan Struve about, among other topics, the joys of home-ownership, what he's been able to accomplish in the UFC so far and his upcoming bout against Browne later this month.

How are you doing today?

Good. I just finished training; I had grappling this morning with my training partners and had strength and conditioning in the evening and I just came home from my new house—I bought a new house. So, I’m doing really good.

You’ve got a new house?

Yeah, I just bought a new house a couple days ago—I just got the key yesterday.

How does that feel?

It’s awesome; it’s really nice. I bought my house with the money I’ve made in the UFC so far, so it’s been excellent.

That’s got to feel good.

Yeah, it feels really, really good. That’s another reason why I love my job.

The money?

Well, it’s not only the money that makes you happy, but the things that you can do with it; I bought a home for myself and that’s really nice. I’m really thankful for the way my career has gone so far.

Did you think, in the beginning, that you would be able to buy your own home with your talents as a mixed martial artist?

At first, I didn’t think about that. When I first signed my deal with the UFC, I didn’t think things would go this fast. That’s the truth.

Were you surprised to get that call from the UFC so early in your career?

Well, I was young—I was 20 years old—but to be honest, I was doing really, really good in Europe; I won 14 fights in a row and then I lost one and then I won five straight. For someone that’s 20 years old and fighting in the heavyweight division at 220 pounds, I think that’s pretty good, you know? We heard that Dream was following my fights and we heard that the UFC was following my fights and Affliction was following my fights, but when the offer finally came, of course we were very proud and a little surprised. The UFC is the biggest stage there is.

Was there any hesitation on your behalf to sign the contract?

To be honest, there was. At first we thought, if we signed with the UFC, then we would only be fighting three or four times a year. When I wasn’t fighting in the UFC, I was fighting seven-to-nine times a year. I really liked that rhythm, but to be honest, three or four times a year is good enough for me. With the way that I’m getting paid, it’s better because I can let my injuries heal and I can take more time to work on technical training instead of going back to strength and conditioning right after the fight, you know?

At this point, you prefer the three or four fights a year?

I think I will fight three times this year because this will be my first fight in May. I was supposed to fight in March against [Brendan] Schaub, but it got canceled because I had a small injury that I had to let heal and I needed some more time.

Do you think, looking back, it was a positive thing for your career that you got the opportunity to come to the UFC so early?

Yeah, of course I think it was. I was pretty much done fighting lower-level competition in Europe; there were no more big tests for me, to be honest. I’m getting tested in the UFC and I think Travis is another big test for me.

Did you have a “welcome to the UFC” moment, where it all kind of hit you that you were in the major league?

When it hit me? Yeah; fight-week, with all of the media attention and the attention from the crowd and the fans at the weigh-ins at the stage with all of the people in the audience. When I finally stepped into the Octagon I realized that I had to fight in the UFC for the first time and I thought, “Okay, now we’re here and now it needs to happen.” And it didn’t happen [laughs].

Was that at all overwhelming?

Yeah, everything was a little overwhelming; the media, the audience—everything. And then a guy like Junior Dos Santos is standing in front of you—who didn’t really have a big-name back then, but was coming off a big win over Fabricio Werdum—so he felt really good in there. I think I jammed; I couldn’t move, I didn’t do my thing, but losses happen and it made me stronger.

After a loss, do you ever question why you compete?

No, not really; I love my sport and I couldn’t be more thankful for the way my career has gone so far. Of course, after a loss you’re disappointed, but I never think, “Why am I doing this?” That never happens, no. 

How do you feel about what you’ve been able to accomplish so far in the UFC?

I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished so far; I’ve already got five wins—I’ve won five out of my last six—and my only two losses are against guys that are doing really well right now in the UFC. In the fight with Roy [Nelson], there were some things that were happening fight-week that—and you wish that those things didn’t happen—but they happen. For the future, it will be nice to get a rematch with both guys, but there’s no rush; I’m only 23 and, like I said, I’ve very proud of what I’ve accomplished so far and I plan on winning my sixth fight in the UFC in a couple of weeks.

How much better do you feel you are now than when you first came into the UFC two years ago?

A lot, a lot, a lot better. I’ve worked on everything; my ground-game has improved a lot and especially my stand-up—if you look at my fights, I’ve improved so much. I think I weighed in at 239 pounds, and I’m at 260, 262 right now, so I’ve improved a lot.

You’re at 262, you said?

260, 262 or something like that; around 260.

Do you usually walk around that heavy?

No; I got a little heavier. I had some more time off after the fight, so I did more strength and conditioning to get bigger, you know? That was good. I did a lot of technical training after the fight with [Sean] McCorkle; a lot of BJJ and technical kick-boxing. I’ve improved a lot since my last fight.

Do you feel a lot stronger with that added weight?

Yeah. I’m feeling it a lot—especially when I’m hitting somebody with a punch. In the gym, I’m afraid to hit people with full-force, because I know that if I hit someone it’s good-night—that’s a good feeling. On the ground, as well; I’ve got a lot more strength. It’s really good.

What do you think you will weigh come fight night?

Somewhere around 260—I don’t know. When I started my camp, after my fight with McCorkle, I went to L.A. for two weeks and when I came back I was at 280. It’s pretty big, but I didn’t train a lot and I ate a lot of pizza and shit like that in L. A. Like I said, I think around 260.

What motivated you to put on the extra weight?

Look at who’s running the heavyweight division; Brock [Lesnar], [Shane] Carwin, [Cain] Velasquez and Dos Santos—those are big guys for their frames. I need to put more muscle on my frame. On my frame, I can easily go up to 280 or 290, in my opinion, and cut down, weigh in at 265 and weigh 280, 285 in the cage.

Is that something that you would be interested in doing in the future?

Yeah—in the future. I’m getting bigger every single fight and for my next fight, I may even have to cut a little bit before the fight. That’s for the next fight; I’m under the 265-limit right now.

Did you think, when you started your career, that you would ever be that heavy?

Of course I knew that I would get bigger eventually. Especially with the people in the gym, when I was young, they would say that if I did the right things—if I ate correct and kept on training—it will all come by itself. If I continued to do the right things, they said I’d become a monster. I said that sounded cool, but I was 16 years old when they said that, but they had it right [laughs].

I remember, I think it was in one of your first bouts in the UFC, Joe Rogan said that when you grow into your body and physically mature, then you would be a real force to be reckoned with. Now that that is becoming a reality, how confident are you?

I’m really confident for my next fight. Like I said, I’ve improved a lot. My kick-boxing and my ground-game was already really technical, but because I’m getting bigger and stronger right now, I feel that my technique is really starting to work; when I give someone a push-kick or a jab or something, it has impact and I can feel it. Like I said, when I spar, I’m afraid to hit somebody with all of my power, because I know, if I hit someone on the chin then it will be good-night [laughs]. That’s a really good feeling.

What does that mean to you?

[Laughs] To me, it means that Travis Browne is going to have a bad night at UFC 130, that’s for sure.

What problems does Travis pose to you?

He’s a big test; he’s got solid power in his fists and he’s got some powerful kicks. He’s a tall guy, he’s a good striker, but I feel that my ground-game is far ahead of his. He’s got some good wrestling, but I’m not really afraid of wrestlers because my ground-game is good and my guard is good—they don’t really want to be in my guard, in my opinion. You saw that in my last fight, when McCorkle took me down because he didn’t want to stand up with me, so he decided to take me down and after a couple minutes I reversed him and he didn’t have a chance on the ground against me.

Do you feel Travis has anything to offer that you haven’t already seen?

I’m not underestimating him; he’s a good fighter. He’s four inches smaller than me—that’s a lot—but, he’s still 6’7” and he’s got a lot of power in his hands.  In my opinion, it’s going to be an awesome fight. He always comes to fight and I always come to fight; we both love to throw leather. It’s going to be an awesome fight for the fans, for sure. He puts it all on the line and I put it all on the line...I like to be in a brawl and I just like to fight. It’s been too long; I wish I could just close my eyes and be in there [laughs].

What do you think Travis’ game plan will be going into this fight?

I think he’ll want to put pressure on me and, maybe, take me down to try to ground-and-pound me, but I don’t think he will succeed with that [laughs].

Do you have a prediction for how it’s going to end?

I don’t really do predictions for fights, but I always come to finish my fight—it’s the same thing with this fight at UFC 130; I’ll be coming in to finish the fight and he’ll be coming in to finish the fight. Of course I’m confident and I feel that I’m going to win this fight. Either by submission or knock-out—I don’t care—wherever the fight goes, it’s fine with me. I’m going to be in there to finish.

What would a win at UFC 130 mean to you?

A win at UFC 130 would be my sixth win and my third straight, so that’s a good feeling. I want to put another streak together and maybe go up against the bigger boys—we’ll see. There’s no rush; I’m only 23 years old, so I’m going in there without any sort of pressure—I’m just going to fight my ass off and I’m going to do it with a good feeling, that’s for sure.

Assuming you win, where do you see yourself in the UFC’s heavyweight division?

If I win, I’ll be top 10. I think I’m around top 10 now—maybe in it, but maybe not yet. I think being in the top 10 in the UFC for someone who is only 23 years old and fighting in the heavyweight division isn’t that bad. With the future ahead—like I said, no rush and no pressure—I’m just going to keep on giving awesome fights to the fans. When I get bigger and learn more, I’m going to make a run for the belt, but there’s no rush for that. This fight is the first fight that I’ve had coaches for every single thing, you know? At first, we did almost everything in our own gym, but now I’ve got a BJJ coach, I’ve got a strength and conditioning coach, I’ve got a coach for the stand-up, I’ve got new guys to train with. It’s been an awesome camp and I can’t wait to go show how much I’ve improved.

What inspired you to make that move?

All the guys do it that way, you know? I figured that I should give it a try and see how it works. You need people who are the best in their discipline; for the stand-up, ground-game, wrestling, strength and conditioning, nutrition. You need people who know everything about all of those things and it has been really good. I’ve learned a lot about every aspect. Especially for the mental aspect of the game; I’ve learned so much and I know for myself that that’s good. Like I said, I can’t wait to show all of the technique that I’ve learned.

Do you feel that everything is really coming together at this point?

This is just the start, in my opinion. If I can keep going like this for five or six years, then I see myself being one of the best in the UFC. Also, with the strength and the weight that I added, my wrestling has been going very good, I’ve been throwing people around easier than before. Like you said, it’s coming together a little bit, but for me it’s only the start.

What are your goals in the sport at this point?

At this point? Right now, the only goal is to win my fight at UFC 130. For the future, I still have at least 12 or 13 years of competition in me—and maybe ever more. Of course I want to have the belt around my waist at some time. I’m only 23 and doing really good in the UFC, so I see myself with a belt in a couple years.

Is that what motivates you to train every day?

Every single fight motivates me to work hard. It’s my job—I need money—and I get paid for delivering exciting fights. Another motivation is the appreciation that I get from my fans. I’m not a big contender yet; it’s not like people are talking about me fighting for the belt after my next fight or anything, but I get fan mail. I read things on the Internet and people talk to me on Twitter and Facebook—it’s very motivating. People love my fights and there are a lot of people that really appreciate the way I fight—that motivates me, too.

What do the fans mean to you?

A lot. Of course, without the fans this sport wouldn’t be this big. I always want to deliver a good fight and give the fans what they came to see and what they paid for.

Have you thought about what you might like to do in 12 or 13 years when you’re doing fighting?

Well, I can’t see myself involved in anything but sports, so I think owning a gym or anything related to sports; making people better, making people stronger. Maybe something related to nutrition. I want to learn about everything that has to do with my sport. I want to start studying again so I will learn even more about my body. I want to be the best with everything, you know?

Are you excited to see what the future holds for you as a mixed martial artist?

Like I said, I can’t wait for the future, but right now I love my job, I love my life, I love Holland—things are going very well. The future can wait, and I’ll just do my thing. You never know what will happen—you might get injured—so, I enjoy every second of this and I try my best to improve every day.

Even though Brett Favre has once again crawled into retirement, the media will continue to provide every last ounce of coverage on the legendary quarterback.

The gray-haired gunslinger is not even safe in his quiet hometown of Hattiesburg, Mississippi from those seeking to keep his name relevant in NFL news. I'm sure he doesn't mind the attention, and that's why he's considering a comeback.

No, No. 4 won't step on the football field ever again unless he wants to spend the entirety of his retirement in a hospital. However, nobody ever thought a man who had such love for the game would ever completely walk away, especially after all those tears.

According to ESPN.com, Favre claimed that he may be interested in a coaching job or he might take the path of many professional sports stars and bring his football smarts to television as an analyst.

Either way, I'm sure one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time will find his way back into the national spotlight because anything he does is always big news.

In my opinion, he's more qualified to be a pee-wee football instructor than a NFL head coach, but if he wants back into the league he certainly has the credentials to be a tutor to young quarterbacks.

It would be interesting to see how Packers fans would react if he returned to Green Bay to work as an assistant.

If the coaching doesn't work out, television is always an option. If ESPN is full, I'm sure he'd find a spot a home with TNT because he definitely "knows drama."

Favre has plenty of experience performing on TV and, before too long, he'll be talking football in primetime with Troy Aikman and John Gruden.

He's a Wrangler guy. Always has been. Always will be. Brett Favre's also a football guy. Always has been. Always will be.

That's why you shouldn't be surprised that if he returns to the workforce; his occupation will have something to do with the game he's devoted his life to.

3:23 P.M. CDT

THE VICE PRESIDENT:  Hey, it’s good to be back with you all. I’ll tell you what.  I want to thank General Colt for accompanying me up here.  I get the honor of introducing the General.

I was back here on February 11th, to welcome home members of the 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team in Afghanistan -- 155 of you got off that plane in the middle of the night, and the only thing that was more exciting than seeing you getting off is watching your families watch you all get off.  So it’s an honor to be back here so soon.

I know many of you have just gotten home in the past few weeks -- so welcome home.  And I know from experience that your families want more than anything to spend time with you.  And so, every time I show up at a welcome home ceremony, I’m always worried about getting in the way.  Because I remember when my son came back home from Iraq after a year, there were all these ceremonies.  And I kept saying, hell, man, stop, I want to see my kid.  (Laughter.)

So, anyway, I get it.  So let me just say how much gratitude the President and I have, and all Americans do, for you all.  You guys have been in the fight from the beginning.  And the risk you’ve taken, the incredible sacrifices you’ve made, the comrades you’ve lost, the losses you’ve personally endured -- you’ve been in some of the most inhospitable terrain in the world.

I’ve been there a number of times, back up those damn mountains.  I’d get a helicopter to go down 9,800 feet, and all I got on is a vest -- a bulletproof vest and a helmet and I’m out of breath climbing up about 40 clicks -- 40 feet.  And you guys are up there, 60 to 80-pound packs running around.  God, you’re amazing.  You just are amazing.  I’m in awe of the job you do, in awe of the job you do.  (Applause.)

As I said back in February, I want to also thank your families.  They made sacrifices as well, those intangible sacrifices -- those missed births and those missed birthdays, those missed graduations, those missed -- an occasional funeral. Perhaps more than anything else, just being missed, just not having you home.

The famous poet -- there was a famous poet I like to quote, John Milton, who said, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Your families serve as well.  And the rest of America owes your families a debt of gratitude as well.  (Applause.)  And so, to all the families that are listening, I want to say their service is as real as yours and it’s as appreciated.

To the soldiers here, you are the most capable warriors.  Let me say this without any fear of contradiction, you’re the most capable warriors in the history of the world.  There has never, never, never, never been a fighting force as capable as you are.

It’s my job today and my honor to talk a little bit about the man that I get to work with every day.  We’ve just got to spend time with the assaulters who got bin Laden.  (Applause.)

By the way, I shouldn’t say this, but I’m going to tell you anyway -- the President is going to be mad I’m taking so long -- (laughter) -- but today was “Grandfather’s Day,” so I went by earlier this morning before I came out here to my granddaughter’s little spring play.  And after it’s all over she said, “Pop, come back to my classroom with me.”  I said, “I can’t, honey.”  She said, “Are you going someplace on Air Force Two?”  I said, “Yeah, I am, babe.”  She said, “Where are you going?”  I said, going to -- true story -- I said, “I’m going to Fort Campbell.”  I said, “We’re going to see the guys out there who got Osama bin Laden.” Absolutely true story.  She said, “Pop!” and then she grabbed a little friend of hers and she said,  “My Pop is going out to see the whales.”  (Laughter.)  Not the SEALs, the whales  (Laughter.) Because if they’re that good they got to be big, man.  They got to be big.  (Laughter.)  Well, you guys are the gorillas, I’ll tell you.

I want to tell you, look, I’ve watched -- I’ve been around a while with eight Presidents, so I’ve watched Presidents make some difficult decisions.  They’ve all had to make difficult decisions.  But sitting in every meeting getting ready and planning for this mission and assault, for the mission to get bin Laden, I saw something extraordinary.  I saw a President who was told the odds -- told the odds weren’t but much more than 50/50 that he’d be there and we could do this, but they were considerably less than 100 percent.

And I, along with the all the rest of his national security team and Secretary of Defense, stayed -- everyone else, we sat around there and he asked our advice and we gave him our advice, and we told him told him a little this and that.  And finally, he just looked at all of us and said, I got faith in the -- I got faith in these guys.

He walked off on his own without anybody giving him any guarantees at all and he decided -- because he believed in not only the SEALs, but believes in all of you.  He has absolute total faith in all of you.  And he made that determination, and it was an amazing thing to watch.  But it was because he had the absolute confidence that you were there.

And so he decided, when he got into office, because of the fight you all were in from the beginning, that the number one priority was to get Osama bin Laden.  And he knew the risks, he knew there were significant risks, and more importantly, special operations risks to the people who were risking their lives getting there.  But he didn’t hesitate, nor did your guys.

Bob Gates said something interesting.  I’ve known Bob for a long time.  He said, it was one of the gutsiest decisions I’ve ever seen made and one of the gutsiest raids.  This is going to go down in history, what happened.  This is going to go down in history.

And here to introduce your Commander-in-Chief, the guy that I’m proud to serve with, is one of the country’s leading warriors himself, Deputy Commanding General of the 101st Airborne Division, General Jeffrey Colt.  Ladies and gentlemen, General Colt.  (Applause.)

GENERAL COLT:  Thank you, sir.

I can only try to tell you today just how proud of you that this Division and this local community are.  But more importantly, today, you’re going to get to hear from the Commander-in-Chief just how appreciative he is of all of your service and your sacrifices.

Please join me in this great privilege of welcoming the President of the United States, Barack Obama.  (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT:  Hello, Fort Campbell!  (Applause.)  101st Airborne Division—Air Assault, hello!  (Applause.)

General Colt, thank you for that great introduction -- it was great because it was brief.  (Laughter.)  More importantly, thank you for the extraordinary leadership that you’ve shown here at one of the largest Army bases in America.  (Applause.)

And let me just say, I make a lot of decisions; one of the earliest and best decisions I made was choosing one of the finest Vice Presidents in our history -- Joe Biden, right here.  (Applause.)

Chaplain Miller, thank you for the beautiful invocation.

I want to thank General Colt for welcoming me here today, along with your great Command Sergeant Major, Wayne St. Louis.  (Applause.)  The Quartet and 101st Division Band.  (Applause.)  All these troopers behind me —- you look great.  (Applause.)  You noticed they kind of hesitated.  (Laughter.)  

We got a lot of folks in the house.  We’ve got military police and medical personnel.  We’ve got the Green Berets of the 5th Special Forces Group.  I think we’ve got a few Air Force here.  Ohh -- (laughter.)  Well, we thought we did.  There they go -- okay.  Come on.  (Applause.)  And, of course, the legendary Screaming Eagles.  (Applause.)  And although they’re not in the audience, I want to acknowledge the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment —- the Night Stalkers -— for their extraordinary service.  (Applause.)

Now, I’ve got to say, some of you are starting to look a little familiar -- because last December, when we were at Bagram, I was out there to thank you for your service, especially during the holidays.  And we had a great rally, a big crowd -- it seemed like everybody was there from the 101st.

And since then, I know we’ve had quite a few homecomings.  The Rakkasans.  (Applause.)  Destiny.  (Applause.)  Strike.  (Applause.)  Bastogne.  (Applause.)  And some of the Division Headquarters —- the Gladiators.  (Applause.)  On behalf of a grateful nation —- welcome home.  (Applause.)   

Of course, our thoughts and prayers are with General Campbell, Command Sergeant Major Schroeder, and all of the Screaming Eagles and troops that are still risking their lives in theater.  And I’m so pleased that Ann Campbell and Marla Schroeder, and some of the inspiring military spouses are here.  Where are they at?  Right over there.  (Applause.)  We are grateful to you.  God bless you.  There they are.  Thank you so much.  (Applause.)  This happens to be Military Spouse Appreciation Day.  (Applause.)  And we honor your service as well.

Now, I didn’t come here to make a really long speech.  I know you're hearing that.  (Laughter.)  It’s like, yeah, it’s hot!  (Laughter.)  What I really wanted to do was come down and shake some hands.  I came here for a simple reason —- to say thank you on behalf of America.  This has been an historic week in the life of our nation.  (Applause.)  Thanks to the incredible skill and courage of countless individuals -— intelligence, military —- over many years, the terrorist leader who struck our nation on 9/11 will never threaten America again.  (Applause.)

Yesterday, I traveled to New York City, and, along with some of our 9/11 families, laid a wreath at Ground Zero in memory of their loved ones.  I met with the first responders —- the firefighters, the police officers, the Port Authority officers —- who lost so many of their own when they rushed into those burning towers.  I promised that our nation will never forget those we lost that dark September day.   

And today, here at Fort Campbell, I had the privilege of meeting the extraordinary Special Ops folks who honored that promise.  It was a chance for me to say —- on behalf of all Americans and people around the world —- “Job well done.”  Job well done.  (Applause.)

They’re America’s “quiet professionals” -- because success demands secrecy.  But I will say this.  Like all of you, they could have chosen a life of ease.  But like you, they volunteered.  They chose to serve in a time of war, knowing they could be sent into harm’s way.  They trained for years.  They’re battle-hardened.  They practiced tirelessly for this mission.  And when I gave the order, they were ready.

Now, in recent days, the whole world has learned just how ready they were.  These Americans deserve credit for one of the greatest intelligence military operations in our nation’s history.  But so does every person who wears America’s uniform, the finest military the world has ever known.  (Applause.)  And that includes all of you men and women of 101st.  (Applause.)

You have been on the frontlines of this fight for nearly 10 years.  You were there in those early days, driving the Taliban from power, pushing al Qaeda out of its safe havens.  Over time, as the insurgency grew, you went back for, in some cases, a second time, a third time, a fourth time.

When the decision was made to go into Iraq, you were there, too, making the longest air assault in history, defeating a vicious insurgency, ultimately giving Iraqis the chance to secure their democracy.  And you’ve been at the forefront of our new strategy in Afghanistan.

Sending you -- more of you -- into harm’s way is the toughest decision that I’ve made as Commander-in-Chief.  I don’t make it lightly.  Every time I visit Walter Reed, every time I visit Bethesda, I’m reminded of the wages of war.  But I made that decision because I know that this mission was vital to the security of the nation that we all love.

And I know it hasn’t been easy for you and it hasn’t, certainly, been easy for your families.  Since 9/11, no base has deployed more often, and few bases have sacrificed more than you.  We see it in our heroic wounded warriors, fighting every day to recover, and who deserve the absolute best care in the world.  (Applause.)  We see it in the mental and emotional toll that’s been taken -- in some cases, some good people, good soldiers who’ve taken their own lives.  So we’re going to keep saying to anybody who is hurting out there, don’t give up.  You’re not alone.  Your country needs you.  We’re here for you to keep you strong.

And most of all, we see the price of this war in the 125 soldiers from Fort Campbell who’ve made the ultimate sacrifice during this deployment to Afghanistan.  And every memorial ceremony —- every “Eagle Remembrance” —- is a solemn reminder of the heavy burdens of war, but also the values of loyalty and duty and honor that have defined your lives.

So here’s what each of you must know.  Because of your service, because of your sacrifices, we’re making progress in Afghanistan.  In some of the toughest parts of the country, General Campbell and the 101st are taking insurgents and their leaders off the battlefield and helping Afghans reclaim their communities.

Across Afghanistan, we’ve broken the Taliban’s momentum.  In key regions, we’ve seized the momentum, pushing them out of their strongholds.  We’re building the capacity of Afghans, partnering with communities and police and security forces, which are growing stronger.

And most of all, we’re making progress in our major goal, our central goal in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and that is disrupting and dismantling -- and we are going to ultimately defeat al Qaeda.  (Applause.)  We have cut off their head and we will ultimately defeat them.  (Applause.)

Even before this week’s operation, we’ve put al Qaeda’s leadership under more pressure than at any time since 9/11, on both sides of the border.  So the bottom line is this:  Our strategy is working, and there’s no greater evidence of that than justice finally being delivered to Osama bin Laden.  (Applause.)

But I don’t want to fool you.  This continues to be a very tough fight.  You know that.  But because of this progress, we’re moving into a new phase.  In the coming months, we’ll start transferring responsibility for security to Afghan forces. Starting this summer, we’ll begin reducing American forces.  As we transition, we’ll build a long-term partnership with the Afghan people, so that al Qaeda can never again threaten America from that country.

And, as your Commander-in-Chief, I’m confident that we’re going to succeed in this mission.  The reason I’m confident is because in you I see the strength of America’s military -- (applause) -- and because in recent days we’ve all seen the resilience of the American spirit.

Now, this week I received a letter from a girl in New Jersey named Payton Wall.  She wrote to me on Monday after the news that bin Laden had been killed, and she explained how she still remembers that September morning almost 10 years ago.  She was only four years old.  Her father, Glen, was trapped inside the World Trade Center.  And so, in those final, frantic moments, knowing he might not make it, he called home.  And Payton remembers watching her mom sobbing as she spoke to her husband and then passed the phone to Payton.  And in words that were hard to hear but which she’s never forgotten, he said to her, “I love you Payton, and I will always be watching over you.”     

So yesterday, Payton, her mom, and her sister, Avery, joined me at Ground Zero.  And now Payton is 14.  These past 10 years have been tough for her.  In her letter, she said, “Ever since my father died, I lost a part of me that can never be replaced.”  And she describes her childhood as a “little girl struggling to shine through all the darkness in her life.”

But every year, more and more, Payton is shining through.  She’s playing a lot of sports, including lacrosse and track, just like her dad.  She’s doing well in school.  She’s mentoring younger students.  She’s looking ahead to high school in the fall.  And so, yesterday she was with us —- a strong, confident young woman -— honoring her father’s memory, even as she set her sights on the future.

And for her and for all of us, this week has been a reminder of what we’re about as a people.  It’s easy to forget sometimes, especially in times of hardship, times of uncertainty.  We’re coming out of the worst recession since the Great Depression; haven’t fully recovered from that.  We’ve made enormous sacrifices in two wars.  But the essence of America -- the values that have defined us for more than 200 years -- they don’t just endure; they are stronger than ever.

We’re still the America that does the hard things, that does the great things.  We’re the nation that always dared to dream.  We’re the nation that’s willing to take risks -- revolutionaries breaking free from an empire; pioneers heading West to settle new frontiers; innovators building railways and laying the highways and putting a man on the surface of the moon.

We are the nation -- and you’re the Division -- that parachuted behind enemy lines on D-Day, freeing a continent, liberating concentration camps.  We’re the nation that, all those years ago, sent your Division to a high school in Arkansas so that nine black students could get an education.  That was you.  Because we believed that all men are created equal; that everyone deserves a chance to realize their God-given potential.

We’re the nation that has faced tough times before -- tougher times than these.  But when our Union frayed, when the Depression came, when our harbor was bombed, when our country was attacked on that September day, when disaster strikes like that tornado that just ripped through this region, we do not falter.  We don’t turn back.  We pick ourselves up and we get on with the hard task of keeping our country strong and safe.

See, there’s nothing we can’t do together, 101st, when we remember who we are, at that is the United States of America.  (Applause.)  When we remember that, no problem is too hard and no challenge is too great.

And that is why I am so confident that, with your brave service, America’s greatest days are still to come.  (Applause.)

God bless you.  God bless the 101st.  And God bless the United States of America.  (Applause.)

END
3:47 P.M. CDT

An old adage, one that pops up in particular during the post-draft "grading" season, suggests one cant judge a draft until several years later. In fact, many of the draftniks who dole out grades immediately (and I mean immediately) after a draft refer to this, often somewhat apologetically, even as they spoon out their grades. Certainly, these grades are fun and create a stir, fodder for further argument, etc. And, in recent years, I have seen several scribes go back and "re-grade" a draft (or even offer a new mock draft based on who should have been selected at each pick.

A bit more useful is the project engaged in by the fine folks at Football Outsiders. For each of the drafts since 2004, they have offered up a "Report Card Report," in which they review the grades each team received from the top draft pundits. The motivating force behind this exercise is to determine which teams' drafts achieved an agreed-upon consensus and which were the most divisive. While I don't find this aspect of the project tremendously useful, I find the data they compile to be of great benefit for the questions I'm interested in asking: can we establish a correlation between these consensus grades and teams' actual drafts? Which predictors tend to the be the most or least accurate? Which teams drafts were more accurately graded, and why?

Because we can only determine the accuracy of their grades with some historical distance, I'm going to look at the 2007 draft. The players selected in '07 have given us sufficient opportunity--four seasons--to judge their careers. Recall Bill Parcells' claim that you know about a guy after three years in the league; a superb example of this is Doug Free who, midway through his third year, looked to be a marginal player. When Marc Colombo was injured against Green Bay, however, his career took off. Being a generous spirit, I've given all the 2007 draftees an extra year to prove themselves--a Parcells plus one, so to speak.  My larger aim is to take a harder look at the 2007 draft, in the hopes of answering some of the above questions.

The method of my madness and some results after the jump...

The first step is to assemble all the various grades doled out by the sportswriters in question. I've found draft report cards from Mel Kiper, USA Today, Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman and Jeff Chadiha, CSBSports' Pete Prisco. Walter Football, Football's Future, and  consensus grade compiled by Football Outsiders and The Feed (sadly, I couldn't find a link to Goose Gosselin's grades). Using so many different and varied graders introduces a statistical quandary: not all of them use the same scale. As FO writer Jake Schumacher puts it:

these are sportswriters we're dealing with, so we'll need to take a few steps if we're going to make any sense out of things. First, remember that they actually rate the average draft as above average, about a B-....Also note that Dallas Morning News' Rick Gosselin grades the toughest, about a C+ on average, and Sporting News' War Room Scouts is by far the easiest on teams, with a B/B+ average...[and Walter Football skews things by giving out A+ grades, so]...I rate agreement using a simple statistical measure of spread, standard deviation.

In the table below, you can see the adjusted grades handed out by Shumacher (the column marked "F.O.") alongside a non-adjusted average of all the other grades (column marked "Avg.") In some cases, this correlates quite closely; for example, Football Outsiders gives Atlanta a 3.4, while the average grade is roughly the same: 3.47. On the other hand, several grades are non-correlative; the most extreme example is Denver, where a 2.3 from the FO guys is contrasted by a 2.72 GPA from the assembled Internet pundits. Check out the entire chart:

Thus far, this is little more than a fun exercise--a pleasant comparison of various asseverations (some statistically enhanced) made four or more years ago. What I'd like to figure out here is how accurately these drafts were graded, and why. To do that, I must first go back and determine the success--or lack thereof--of each team's 2007 draft. To do this, I turned to my friends at Pro Football Reference. Using their matrix for "Weighted Career Approximate Value," I determined how well each team drafted. I assumed that a team needs three of its draft picks to become regular contributors for a draft to receive a passing grade. I designated as a contributor any player with a CAV of 10 or higher.

From this, I developed the following rubric:

A: five or more contributors; four contributors + star (CAV of 30+) or superstar (CAV of 45+)
B: four contributors; three contributors + star or superstar
C: three contributors; two contributors + star or superstar
D: two contributors; one contributor + star or superstar
F: one contributor

Looking at the chart, you can see the grades derived from this rubric in the far right column (marked "PFR"). In comparing them to the grades given after the draft, there is actually surprisingly little deviation in the grading accuracy of our assembled draft gurus. In a bit of an upset, the most accurate (within a third of a grade) were the guys at Football's Future, followed closely by Prisco, with 14 accurate grades. All the rest were on the mark eleven times.

What can we learn from this? Teams without first-round grades tend to receive bad grades. In 2007, neither Seattle nor Philadelphia had a first round selection; as the chart demonstrates, they received the two poorest average grades from our collective draft evaluators. As it turns out, however, both had poor drafts, although I suspect that this is not because they didn't have first round picks--Green Bay, after all, botched their first rounder and then went on to have arguably the strongest draft that year.

Perhaps most surprising is that, although individual grades aren't particularly impressive in their accuracy, the composite draft grades are actually quite accurate (even for the Seahawks and Eagles), and end up correlating much more closely that I would have expected to the actual performance of 2007's rookie class.

The ones that don't are of particular interest to me; these fall into three categories:

1. The team in question had an unpredictably deep and productive draft, particularly in the late and middle rounds. Both the Giants and Packers hit on players throughout and ended up with multiple contributors. The Giants were dinged by draft graders for failing to address needs, principally on the offensive line. Green Bay was marked down for first round choice Justin Harrell--rightly so; his CAV sits at a puny 2--but hit on several other mid-rounders.It was not by accident that these teams that met in the 2007 NFC Championship game.

2. The team had an unpredictably bad draft. Denver and New Orleans each had two low-level contributors; San Diego, New England and Chicago ended up with one each. The Patriots traded their second rounder for a first in 2008, and their fourth rounder for disgruntled Raider wideout Randy Moss. The others? Epic fails, all. One problem is that very few graders are willing to dole out low grades; there are no "F"s and only a smattering of "D"s.

I don't think there's any way to account for either of the above occurrences--I'm no statistician, but I'd bet that the number of unexpectedly good and unaccountably bad drafts falls along some kind of standard deviation, especially if we account for the fact that most draft pundits grades tend to cluster high (above an average "C"). There is an interesting third category here, however:

3. The evaluator was off the mark because he overrated quarterbacks. A look at the first 50 picks of the draft shows 11 players with CAVs below 10. Of those, five are quarterbacks. Yet most of these teams were lauded after the draft for shrewdly picking up their quarterback of the future. In particular, Cleveland became draft day darlings (they had Football Outsiders highest average grade) by trading up with Dallas to nab Notre Dame signal caller Brady Quinn, who has since taken his CAV of 3 to Denver.

I'll continue to do this every year to see whether my observations about the 2007 draft hold true for other years. And, when draft grades come out a year form now, I'll average them out to determine whether our brave 'Boys have netted a good haul--that is, unless they draft a quarterback or trade their first-round pick.

Listen to the Audio

JIM LEHRER: The jobs numbers for April were released on the same day, today, as a new report that finds executive pay is soaring once again.

Jeffrey Brown picks up that part of the story.

JEFFREY BROWN: The Associated Press, which released the study on CEO compensation, put it this way: In the boardroom, it's as if the great recession never happened.

CEO pay, including salaries, bonuses, and stock options, was up 24 percent last year, to a level higher than 2007, just before the recession hit. The 10 highest-paid executives made a combined $440 million. Six of them came from the world of media and entertainment, including the heads of Viacom and CBS.

The study came a day after the Fortune 500 list was released, showing corporate profits increased by 81 percent last year, or more than $300 billion.

And we look more at pay, profits, and jobs now with Deborah Wince- Smith, president and CEO of the Council on Competitiveness, a nonpartisan group that works with business, universities and labor to enhance American competitiveness. And Vineeta Anand, she studies corporate governance and other issues as chief research analyst in the AFL-CIO Office of Investment.

Welcome to both of you.

VINEETA ANAND, AFL-CIO Office of Investment: Thank you.

RAY SUAREZ: Deborah Wince-Smith, I will start with you.

Start with the CEO pay issue. What explains the fast rise and quick return to pre-recession levels?

DEBORAH WINCE-SMITH, Council on Competitiveness: Well, I think one of the main issues is that we're seeing tremendous success of U.S. corporations, in terms of their profits, their revenue and their share value.

So, that is a good sign that shows that we are continuing to rebound from the recession and that we are really going to see increased productivity and standard of living that ultimately comes from this wealth generation.

JEFFREY BROWN: Vineeta Anand, a good sign to see these hikes in CEO pay?

VINEETA ANAND: Well, actually, as shareholders -- and we are shareholders representing workers through the pension plans -- we are very worried, because CEOs and the rich have gotten richer in the United States, whereas everybody else has been left behind.

The disparity has grown so that, in 1980, CEOs made about 42 times the pay of an average worker. And in 2010 it was 324 times. So, that's a huge jump. And it is as if the recession never happened.

You quoted the AP numbers. And our own database we launched earlier last month, Executive Pay Watch, showed that 299 of the S&P 500 CEOs made a collective $3.4 billion. And that could support 103,000 workers making average wages.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, Deborah Wince-Smith, what -- that reflects what a lot of people wonder. And we just heard a segment where we talked about slower growth and a lot of people feeling pain for a long period of time. So, what's the other side of the -- the positive sign that you are seeing in CEO pay growth?

DEBORAH WINCE-SMITH: Well, putting aside CEO pay growth, I think what we really need to look about -- look at is the fact that what is going on in the global economy is a fundamental restructuring.

We have really left a 20th century non-high-skilled economy. The jobs of the future are requiring entirely different skill sets. So the disparity we're seeing in income is often directly linked to educational levels and skills levels.

You know, we can't in the United States compete on low wages or standardized products or services. We have to compete on this higher-value work. Now, the fact is the American worker is 10 times more productive than a worker in China. In the long run, that is fantastic.

But, of course, it means that automation, the use of all these new technological capabilities that drive this productivity does displace workers who don't have those skills and where we don't need those types of performance anymore in the workplace.

JEFFREY BROWN: And does -- and...

DEBORAH WINCE-SMITH: So, really, what we need to be focused on is, how do we transition to this new economy? How do we have the education, the skills and the training so we can really capitalize on our entrepreneurship, our innovation, our great research and development?

Because we can't really be looking back. We have to look forward.

JEFFREY BROWN: Vineeta Anand, a new economy?

VINEETA ANAND: Well, you know, Jeff, we have been talking about a new economy since the 1980s. We have been talking about how the United States left behind manufacturing and moved into service, and now into the information age in the 21st century.

But the fact of the matter remains that what you are seeing is almost 14 million people are still unemployed, as Judy said a little while ago, and, as David Leonhardt said a little earlier in the show, that if the jobs continue to grow at the rate they're growing, we're in a really troublesome spot.

So, it is not education. It's not that we lack the technical skills. It's the fact that companies are not hiring. In 2010, they had a record $1.89 trillion of cash on their balance sheets. They are not using it to create jobs.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, that goes -- Deborah Wince-Smith, that also goes to this other study we cited, the Fortune 500, and the huge growth in corporate profits.

And, yet, there's still -- we have -- we heard it again just now. We have been hearing it for months. There's a -- it's better on jobs, but there's still a reluctance to hire.

DEBORAH WINCE-SMITH: Well, first of all, I want to say that we are really a great manufacturing nation. And there is a big recognition at the Council on Competitiveness -- we're working on this -- that we have to not only maintain our manufacturing prowess; we have to lead this whole new change in how things are designed, built, logistics, supply chain. This is a tremendous opportunity for our country.

But, you know, the issue of corporate profits, companies sitting on, you know, over $1.5 trillion, where are they investing it? Are they investing it in the United States? There is a global race for the best investment, the best high-value activity.

And, so, what is the environment for that capital? You know, we had some very powerful data at the council about three years ago that the value of profits U.S. companies make outside the United States is three times the value of all our exports.

But are they bringing that money back? Well, they are facing double taxation. We're facing the highest corporate tax rate in the world, a very tough regulatory environment. So are the jobs going to be here, or are these jobs going to be around the world, where there is tremendous demand and also where there's a growing middle class?

You know, 80 percent of all middle-class consumers will be outside the United States by 2020. So, we have to make sure that we are not hobbling our companies' determination of their investment by things that put us uncompetitive against the rest of the world.

Let's not compete on the cost of capital and on wage structure. Let's compete on invasion and high skills.

And one thing I want to add, we have a tremendous shortage of middle skills. Do you know a skilled welder in this country, without a college degree, but high technical skills, makes $100,000 a year, and we're begging for them.

JEFFREY BROWN: Well, I mean, it's interesting, Vineeta, and there's a lot of things you would agree on about the kinds of things that need to be done. But you're -- you're saying you're worried, in the meantime, that this is all -- this is all exacerbating income inequality.

VINEETA ANAND: Yes.

Actually, in 2009, income inequality rose to levels that we saw before the Depression. The top 20 percent of Americans controlled 90 percent of all wealth. In the meanwhile, the median household wealth fell to about $62,000.

So, what we're seeing is, the divide is continuing to grow. And the reason for that is, very largely, that the rich are getting richer. CEOs are continuing to make more money. Last year, as AP said, 24 -- a 24 percent increase -- we said 23 percent increase -- but the fact remains is, the average worker who had a job got a 3.3 percent raise, and many people didn't even get a raise.

So, while I agree with Deborah -- I think she's right in one sense. We need to bring jobs back to the United States. But we also need to have the government help. The government has to help create jobs. We have to invest in the infrastructure. We won't get up to the levels we saw in the Clinton administration otherwise. We had a 3.5 percent unemployment rate. Does anybody remember that?

JEFFREY BROWN: All right.

I don't know the answer to that, but we will continue this discussion.

Vineeta Anand, Deborah Wince-Smith, thank you both very much.

VINEETA ANAND: Thank you.

During our annual IMPACT conference last week, I shared highlights of this year’s research results on high-impact leadership development and the 21st century leadership trends.  As we discussed in our intimate group of 100+ global senior HR/LD/OD/Talent/Business executives, our leadership talent is becoming scarcer and developing global leaders from within is becoming increasingly important.

To invest in this development effort, high-impact organizations (those at level 4 in Bersin & Associates Leadership Development Maturity Model®)  are leveraging our six best practices of leadership development—first introduced in 2009 and still viable today as validated in this year’s research:

1. Maintain strong executive engagement;
2. Define tailored leadership competencies;
3. Align with business strategy;
4. Target all levels of leadership;
5. Integrate with talent management; and,
6. Apply a targeted solution.

The most important practice of all is to obtain the engagement of top leaders and managers. This is because leadership development is much more than leadership training. Leadership development is an ongoing, systematic process that involves a great deal of coordination, integrates multiple processes and requires support at all levels throughout the organization. Understanding this, it is not surprising to find that during our 2010-2011 leadership development research study (the full study will be published in our library in June 2011), 66% of mature (level 4 in our maturity model) organizations surveyed have engaged executives in their leadership development (while 0% of the least mature organizations surveyed have engaged leaders).

What Does Executive Engagement Look Like?

Although most organizations have many key elements in place, without management support it is almost impossible to successfully develop a culture that embraces learning and adopts a true leadership development initiative. Executive engagement looks and smells differently at all organizations. However, when senior management is involved, the development programs are more robust, they target more leaders and there is a stronger culture for learning. This is true regardless of the size of the organization, the industry it is in, or the geography in which it sits.  Our research revealed that in high-impact organizations, executives are often caught doing many of these things:

• Teaching courses or presenting key business issues;
• Nominating and approving program participants;
• Promoting programs and encouraging participation;
• Reviewing and approving leadership development strategy;
• Actively coaching and mentoring future leaders;
• Identify key business issues for leadership program participants to resolve;
• Holding business leaders accountable for developing their direct reports; and
• Requiring all leaders to have a development plan in place.

Who's Doing It?

At the most mature organizations, executives do ALL of these things. Case in point is Lawson Software, a global ERP leader. The CEO at Lawson is carefully crafting the alignment of all Lawson leaders around a common set of company values and core leadership behaviors for the sole purpose of driving even increased revenue. So, the question is: How’d he do it? And, the answer is……: Through his personal engagement of each and every action in the bulleted list immediately above.  Watch our library in the next few weeks for the publications of this Lawson case study – a showcasing of executive engagement at its finest. 

Textron, a multi-industry company with a network of businesses with total revenues of $10 billion and more than 37,000 employees in nearly 33 countries, stacks right up next to Lawson. Senior executives at Textron understand that talent development leads to improved profit and retention, and overall success of the organization. They, also, have demonstrated their exemplary commitment and support to executive engagement in a number of ways:

• Executives have allocated resources to enable the creation of development programs that facilitate the identification, development and positioning of leaders;
• The CEO has requested that executive staff and business unit presidents attend premier executive development programs;
• Senior leaders present educational sessions related to their areas of expertise at executive leadership programs;
• Executives had identified project-based business-driven action-learning activities that are incorporated in leadership programs;
• Leaders present recommendations for solving key business issues to senior executives and, in return, the executives provide feedback, and often choose to act, on the recommended solutions;
• Executives identify and select participants to attend senior-level leadership development programs;
• The CEO and other executives continuously address the importance of leadership development at various meetings and through other forms of communication such as newsletters and emails; and,
• Leaders throughout the company and at all levels embrace talent development at Textron.

What Does It Get Them?

The commitment of senior leaders means that leadership development in mature organizations will be:

• highly regarded as a true competitive advantage;
• a part of the organization’s DNA;
• aligned with corporate strategy focused on the right business issues; and
• the catalyst for improved business results.

So, how are your executives engaging in leadership development at your organization? Is it making a difference in regards to your business goals?

Please write to me at barb.arth@bersin.com.  I’m eager to hear how your executives are different from the rest when it comes to engaging in leadership development to drive your business results.

Next post, we’ll chat about the second best practice of leadership development: define tailored leadership competencies.  Please stop back soon!

I first wrote about the MakoPlasty FDA approved robot back in 2008 you can use the link below to find out more. Patients are regaining quality of life without the pain with the procedure.  An implant replaces lost cartilage and stops the bone on bone grinding that causes pain.  The accuracy versus free hand surgery seems to be the real advantage here, again with a focus on higher success rates with precision targeting.  The video below is a patient talking about his procedure with the Makoplasty robot and how quick he was up and around.  You can find additional videos at the Stone Clinic website here. 

Knee Surgery Done with a Robot - MAKOPlasty Tactile Guidance System™

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Makoplasty Surgery Patient

In addition at the Stone Clinic they have some regenerative medicine going on with using stem cells to where knee tissue is grown back.  This does not replace an entire knee but rather the cartilage area of the knee.   In addition stem cells are used for Meniscus transplantation procedures for arthritis. 

Future of Joint Replacements – Regenerative Medicine - Dr. Kevin Stone Regrows the Knee Instead of an Artificial Replacement (Video)

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Articular Cartilage Stem Cell Repair

Pig tissue is being used in other areas as well and last year I had an opportunity to talk with Cook Medical and how they are using pig tissue and building scaffolds for hernia repair and other reconstructive areas with their Biodesign products.  Dr. Stone talks about what he is exploring and uses the example of what he did for his wife with a “human” meniscus transplant.  Arthritis is becoming a huge area where many of us are suffering, as we are living longer and the knees need to go the extra miles. 

Regenerative Medicine and How it Works – Interview with Cook Biotech (Medical)

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Meniscus Transplantation

Here’s the link to the Stone Clinic and you can read more about their orthopedic procedures to include both Makoplasty and stem cell use.  They also have some other interesting solutions for rotator cuffs and more.  In 2009 there were more than 20 hospitals and out patient facilities using the Makoplasty robot and there maybe be more by now.  BD 

John is a 64-year-old ski instructor, outdoor educator, and writer living in Alaska.  In July 2008, he underwent a right total knee replacement and was hitting the slopes by December that same year.  Most recently, in April 2010 he was having trouble going up stairs and visited The Stone Clinic for a robot-assisted partial knee replacement for his left knee. 

He was able to walk out of the surgery center the day of his procedure and just two weeks later is back doing what he loves fishing and studying invertebrates in the river near his home.

http://www.stoneclinic.com/patientexperiences

Technorati Tags: TED,knee surgery,stripping,biologic knee replacement,Bioware,Kevin Stone,Regenerative Medicine,Clinical Trials,Cook Medical,healthcare,technology,surgery,outpatient,stem cells,Makoplasty,robotic surgery DaVinci

BarWest Burgers & Wings will be taking the place of Aura on J Street in Midtown, and in addition to food, it is bringing a sense of cooperation with a local neighborhood association that has filed complaints for previous bars in that area, including the now-closed GV Hurley’s.

The opening day is tentatively set for mid-July. Co-owners Trevor Shults and Todd Zacaner are teaming up with local restaurateur Randy Paragary, for whom Shults worked in numerous positions – most recently in marketing.

Shults said he has always been a fan of the block that contains Centro Cocina Mexicana, Red Lotus and Harlow’s, so moving into the two-level spot at 2724 J St. was a “no-brainer.”

“It will be affordable, sit-down dining,” he said. A burger with a 3-ounce patty – similar in size to In-N-Out Burger’s patties – will start at $3.95, and a double will be $6.

Five sandwiches, five salads and a vegetable burger round out the menu, which is still being finalized.

Thirty types of wings will also be on offer, and one of the highlights of the 4,300-square-foot space is its second floor, which Shults said can be rented out for banquets, business meetings, birthday parties or any number of occasions.

He said it will accommodate 30 people in a sit-down configuration or 70 standing.

One essential aspect of opening a restaurant on the 2700 block of J Street is working with local residents.

“In Midtown, the only way you’re going to survive is if the neighborhood association supports you,” he said.

The Marshall School/New Era Park Neighborhood Association has a long history of battling with businesses on the block, with concerns of rowdiness and noise levels, according to board co-chair Mark Hefling.

“It’s been an issue adding restaurants to that block in the past,” Hefling said.

Former co-chair George Raya said loud parties as well as the noise of all the bars emptying into the street on Friday and Saturday nights has been a problem.

But both Raya and Hefling said the cooperation between the association and BarWest has been very positive.

In going through the process of obtaining a liquor license, BarWest owners were encouraged by the Alcoholic Beverage Commission to cooperate with the neighbors, Hefling said.

Several concessions were made to get the neighbors on board – including agreeing not to apply for an entertainment permit through the city and bolting down tables on the ground floor so they cannot be cleared for a dance space, as was previously done when Aura occupied the building.

An eviction notice dated March 21 was on the front door of Aura last month, and The Sacramento Press was unable to reach the former owners or property management.

After contacting more than 70 area neighbors, Hefling said the association has not heard any opposition.

Hefling said the neighborhood association is representing two disparate groups – residents who have been in the area for 25 years or more and relatively new residents who moved to Midtown after the transformation of the area over the past decade.

To that end, he said, the association is trying to find a happy medium between those who want a quiet central city atmosphere and those who like having bars and restaurants – many of whom work in those bars and restaurants.

Hefling said the owners of BarWest have been easy to work with, and he believes they are honest people who will continue to work with the association.

When the restaurant opens, Shults said it will be open until midnight on weekdays, with a 2 a.m. closing time on Saturday and Sunday morning for the late-night crowds Friday and Saturday.

There will be 15 TVs on the walls, and BarWest will be carrying all the DirecTV packages so patrons can watch sports, but he said it won’t be a sports bar.

The décor will be casual, and there will be signature cocktails, but he didn’t have details on them yet.

“We’re really in the design phase right now,” he said. “We’re really just excited to offer a great burger, great wings, a great atmosphere and 14 beers on tap.”

A website and Facebook page will be created in the future. Check back in the conversation below for information as it becomes available.

Brandon Darnell is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. Follow him on Twitter @Brandon_Darnell. 

Scotland emerges from its election completely and utterly changed.

A huge historic Nationalist victory; the worst Labour result in seats since 1931; the Tories still, despite a decent campaign, in retreat; and the worst Liberal result since the 1970s.

This is a Scotland of surprises. The SNP won 45.4% of the constituency vote to Labour’s 31.7%, a lead of 13.7%; while on the regional list the SNP won 44.0% to Labour’s 26.3%, a lead of 17.7%. This has produced a Parliament of SNP 69 (+23), Labour 37 (-7), Con 15 (-5), Lib Dem 5 (-12), Other 3 (+1).

This was an election which was meant to be a foregone conclusion and which Labour took for granted it would win [See Gerry's earlier colums from 19 April Ed]. Now even the assumption that the PR hybrid Scottish Parliament could not produce an overall majority for one party has been shattered. The SNP have won on 45% of the first vote over 70% of the seats: the sort of parliamentary misbalance for which Westminster was famous.

Scotland’s political geography has been transformed in a watershed, realigning election. The constituency political map of 2007 was one shaped by a lot of Labour red in the Central Belt and lots of Lib Dem orange rural seats in the North East and Highlands. Now that map looks very different; the Labour red has been reduced to a few isolated islands; the Lib Dem orange obliterated apart from Orkney and Shetland; mainland Scotland from north to south, west to east, is SNP yellow.

The Scottish Parliament has an addition member system with constituencies taht are contested with First Past the Post and an addition regional list system that tops up the parliament to make it more proportionally representative. Labour used to have a gridlock on constituency, FPTP seats; in 2007, what it thought a bad year, Labour won 37 to the SNP’s 21; this time the SNP won 53 to Labour’s 15. Places which have never voted Nationalist have been won; Glasgow, a city the SNP have long had trouble challenging Labour’s grip saw five Nationalist constituency gains. In Edinburgh, the party won every seat bar one, and in Lanarkshire, a host of the most unreconstructed Labour figures fell to the SNP tsunami. Traditional places which have been more SNP, such as Dundee, Aberdeen and the Highlands, have become even more so.

All of Scotland’s parties will be different. The Nationalists are now a genuine, nationwide movement, early-Blair-like in the scale of their appeal. Scottish Labour no longer has many of the long-term ‘bedblockers’ who were seen as nursing their seats for life. Both Labour and Lib Dems have suffered significant reverses. Compounding their problems their Westminster MPs, who are huge problems for both parties, will have more prominence and status because of the scale of their losses.

The Nationalist victory carries with it huge opportunities and challenges for the SNP. How does Alex Salmond keep his ‘big tent’ coalition together? How does he enact the hard choices which the age of austerity and public spending cuts implies? And how does he marry his safety first politics with the need for radical politics, challenging the gatekeepers of institutional life?

Then there are the issues of Westminster, the British state and independence. The SNP want to see radical reform of the Scotland Bill, which derives from the flawed Calman proposals of partial fiscal autonomy. They want more economic powers, more taxation powers and real fiscal autonomy. There must be a chance that the UK Government of David Cameron will make significant concessions.

Then there is the huge question of independence and the issue of the independence referendum. The conventional logic says, with patronising wither, that Alex Salmond can have his small victory today, but in the real world the separatist cause will never win a plebiscite. That’s still the best bet at the moment, but don’t be completely sure.

The SNP has an opportunity to reshape Scotland, a once in a generation moment, while the crisis of Scottish unionism, of a Labour, Lib Dem, Tory or non-party kind is a deep, long term, existential one. The independence referendum was once seen by unionists north and south of the border as a maverick, eccentric demand; then they said it was beyond the powers of the Scottish Parliament; and now we are arguing about whether the Nationalists can win such a vote. So far this debate is moving in one direction. Such a vote will have many unintended consequences, change the nature of the UK, and be an international event.

Whatever one thinks of Alex Salmond’s brand of populist, opportunist, catch-all politics, it has paid rich dividends. Scottish politics and Scotland have been remade and will never be the same again. The SNP has been utterly changed and looks like it is morphing into an inclusive nationwide movement for change. The Nationalists under Salmond have developed a convincing story of what the Scottish Parliament should be: the fulcrum of public life and aiding the evolution of self-government.

The Scottish Labour Party, the party which gave so much to the dream of home rule and devolution, has paradoxically been weakened and disorientated by the establishment of the Scottish Parliament. Rather bizarrely from the earliest days of devolution, under Donald Dewar, Henry McLeish and Jack McConnell, Labour had little idea what the purpose of devolution was about beyond seeing off the Nats.

What underlines all of this is Scotland’s future as a political community, society and nation. This election is a positive affirmation of that future, and of the desire to express it differently to the Westminster/Ukanian mindset. And that brings me to Tom Nairn, Scotland’s greatest public intellectual over the last four decades.

I am proud to call Tom a friend as well as an inspiration over my entire adult political life, and as Scotland voted SNP, and the British electorate turned its back by two to one on even the mildest degree of electoral reform, I couldn’t help but think back to the words and thoughts of citizen Tom. After the global financial crisis and the local political crisis of MPs expenses, the British state is stuck in gridlock and seems unable to embrace the most timid and incremental reform, which parts of the British establishment see as ‘unBritish’ (i.e. David Starkey and other historians). This will have many consequences for how Scotland’s future evolves.

The Scottish debate will now develop its own form, shape and structure, but I think we have come to a new fork in the road: the end of one part of Scotland’s history, and the beginning of a new one. The old one was the account of Thatcherite/Tory bogeymen and the Old/New Labour dichotomy; the new one will be shaped by a Nationalist politics offering the prospect of a different kind of nation, one told in a very different voice, and shaped by hope, optimism and a sense of generosity.

It may not have the momentous feel of any one of the Arab Spring revolutions, but Scotland, in its own way, has just undergone its very own Scottish Spring.

The president has good reason to be thankful to the assault team – the raid has silenced his critics and reshaped his image

Barack Obama flew to Fort Campbell on the Kentucky-Tennessee border on Friday to thank in person the assault team who stormed Osama bin Laden's hideout. He has good reason to do so: the raid has transformed the way Americans view their president, changing him overnight from dithering nerd-in-chief to decisive action man.

At emotional meetings, held behind closed doors to protect their anonymity, he awarded the units involved the highest honours available to him and heard their first-hand accounts of what happened inside the Abbottabad compound.

Afterwards, at an open meeting at the base with other troops, there were cheers when Obama spoke of these "quiet professionals" who had ensured that the terrorist behind the 9/11 attacks "will never threaten America again". He had told them: "Job well done."

The president spoke to a hangar full of cheering soldiers after meeting privately with the full assault team, army helicopter pilots and navy seal commandos who executed the dangerous raid on Bin Laden's compound and killed the al-Qaida leader in Pakistan early on Monday.

"Thanks to the incredible skill and courage of countless individuals … the terrorist leader that struck our nation on 9/11 will never threaten America again," Obama said, speaking at an army post whose troops have sustained heavy losses in a war in Afghanistan, losses that have grown on his watch.

A US official said that material retrieved from Bin Laden's compound shows he was in touch with senior al-Qaida figures and was able to plot future attacks on US targets from his suburban Pakistani hideout. The official said the trove of documents and computer material also includes new video of Bin Laden, both unreleased propaganda tapes and more candid shots like home videos.

Obama owes a large debt to the special forces. Since he began campaigning for the presidency in 2007, he has faced criticism that he was not up to the job. First, the Hillary Clinton campaign implied that he was too inexperienced, that he could not handle the 3am crisis call. More followed from John McCain and Sarah Palin. Then came the rightwing commentators Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the Tea Party movement. He was too detached, too academic. His patriotism was questioned as was his religion.

Stephen Hess, one of America's most respected commentators on the White House, acknowledged Obama's changed status since the death of Bin Laden. "His image, fair or unfair, is that he is an intellectual, which he is and which is unusual in a president. Obama thinks about things and takes his time in making decisions, which I think is a good thing."

But Hess, a political scientist at the Brookings Institution, saw the Abbottabad decision as "gutsy, tough, made quickly" and responsible for changing the dynamics of American politics. "It is going to be very hard for Republicans to use any more that label of weak and indecisive," he said.

Helping to reshape the image are those pictures of Obama in the situation room looking grave, grim and anxious as the raid is taking place. He was risking not only the special forces he had sent in but his own presidency, with the danger of a Jimmy Carter-style Iranian hostage rescue debacle that could have finished any hopes of a second White House term.

Richard Wolffe, the author of two books on Obama, acknowledged that the perception had changed but insisted the view of the president as weak and naive was always wrong. "If he was as cautious as people said, he could have flattened the building with a bombing raid," he said.

"He makes a few big gambles, but cautiously. He will make the gutsy move, but gets there more slowly. It is a weird combination because we are used to someone who shoots from the hip like Bush or someone more hesitant like Kerry or Clinton. But we have someone who is a combination of the two, someone who is cautious but who makes the calls." There is a hard core that will never be convinced that Obama is truly patriotic and will continue to insist he was not born in the US, that he is a secret Muslim. But their numbers have dwindled fast because of the combination of his release of his birth certificate a fortnight ago (and his ridiculing of Donald Trump at the White House correspondents' dinner) and the Abbottabad raid. Beck, Limbaugh and former members of the Bush administration joined in the praise.

David Frum, who as an assistant to Bush wrote the "axis of evil" speech, deplored the vilification of Obama as some dark-skinned alien. "So we had this situation where he was not an American, a Muslim, not a patriot. I do not think it [the Bin Laden killing] ends the paranoia but it shoves it back from the centre to the margins. He has shown he understands that the nation has enemies and that force is sometimes the only remedy," Frum said.

The White House and Pentagon almost threw away their advantage with its poor handling of the aftermath, offering exaggerated accounts of what happened and then having to recant. Obama's meeting with the 9/11 relatives on Thursday and his trip to see the troops at Fort Campbell have undone some of that damage.

Within minutes of Obama announcing last Sunday that Bin Laden was dead, US commentators were tweeting that the president had the 2012 election in the bag. That is grossly premature. Obama has not enjoyed the kind of spectacular jump in approval ratings that he might have expected. He has not soared into the 80s, instead seeing relatively modest rises that take him from the mid-40s to the mid-50s. That is mainly because of the sluggish economy.

Democratic strategists, speaking anonymously, reluctant to sound negative in a week of good news for the president, are far from convinced he is invincible and are nervous about the slowness of the economic turnaround.

Brad Coker, managing director of Mason-Dixon polling, agrees. "There is no reason for Democrats to say it is over. I think Republicans thought the same thing in 1991." George Bush Sr had seen the Berlin Wall fall on his watch and had high approval ratings for his handling of the Gulf war, but still lost.

"There is plenty of time for Obama's shine to fade. Now you have all this stuff surrounding the release of these photos. Not wanting to put them out feeds into the old Obama image, not wanting to offend Muslims. We are a tabloid country. We want to see pictures of Bin Laden," Coker said, predicting that Obama's modest boost in the polls would last only a week before being halved.

Obama came to power with some of the highest approval ratings in US political history. Millions turned out for his victory night party and inauguration. He has managed to get some of his programme through, delivering on his promise to introduce near-universal healthcare, due to begin in 2014. He has had other gains too, on gay rights, a US-Russian arms reduction deal and preventing the shutdown of government. But there is a lot left to do, including closing Guantánamo, reforming immigration laws and ending tax breaks for the wealthy. These failures have brought criticism from the left. Clarence Jones, a former lawyer and adviser to Martin Luther King, writes regular commentaries calling on the left to mobilise and press Obama to do more. While pleased that it went well in Abbottabad, he would like to see the president "apply the same careful, premeditated, calculating weighing of options about major domestic issues as he did in determining which course of action to pursue to get Bin Laden". Jones, who helped draft King's "I have a dream" speech, believes there was an undercurrent of racism behind many of the jibes about the president not being up to the job. "Yes, his academic professorial background was used by his critics to portray Obama as some ivory tower intellectual incapable of taking decisive action. Regrettably there was a racial undercurrent in the suggestions he was not up to the job." Jones does not believe that the removal of Bin Laden has exorcised that.

Politics will return to normal in Washington next week. The Republicans will resume their confrontation with the White House over the size of the national debt. Catching Bin Laden has given Obama an edge in those negotiations and an edge in the longer term. National security is usually a point of weakness for Democrats. But next year, if any Republican rival questions his credentials, the president will have an easy, one-word answer: "Osama".

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Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!

• State Farm iPhone app judges your driving skills
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• Photobucket releases Snapbucket for Android and iOS
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• Hackers claims to have credit numbers of some PSN users
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• LucasFilm reveals all about the Star Wars: The Complete Sage on Blu-ray
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• Sony is beefing up security for PSN and Qriocity
  ” At it’s press conference earlier today Sony announced how it plans to prevents future attacks on it’s network services. The plan includes expediting a physical server move, a new position in the company and further security measures in the system. Sony…” MORE »
• Sony bringing some parts of PSN and Qriocity back online this week
  ” Earlier this morning (or late last night, depending on your time zone) Sony held a press conference about the PlayStation Network and Qriosity attacks and downtime. During that press conference it was announced that parts of both services would be up…” MORE »
• 80% of OS revenue belongs to Microsoft
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• Twitter buys Tweetdeck for $40 million - $50 million
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• PlayBook tablet doing just fine at Best Buy
  ” It’s time to check on how the BlackBerry tablet is doing.  Over at Best Buy, they seem quite pleased with sales so far.  From the TV spots RIM has put out, they’ve highlighted how beautiful this tablet from RIM is doing. “Best Buy has had great success…” MORE »
• Facebook app for BlackBerry PlayBook announced
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Brett Okamoto of ESPN.com authored an article today covering the last few years of Bellator 43 welterweight tournament finalist Jay Hieron's professional life. From his scheduled fight with Paul Daley in Affliction falling apart right up to the end of his frustrating Strikeforce run, Hieron has seemingly been held back by a string of bad luck, promotional misuse, and frankly, some bad decisions. He feels like it's all coming together now in Bellator though:

"But I believe the man upstairs has a bigger path for me. He’s just making me take the long road. I’m a fighter that’s been through everything negative you can go through in a career and I’m still here."

The story of redemption in the face of adversity is nice, sure. But the narrative of Jay Hieron goes back much, much further than that. Personally and professionally, Hieron has faced an uphill battle since his childhood in Freeport, NY. Did you know his last name isn't even Hieron? It's Hieronymous. He shortened it because he didn't want ring announcers calling him "hairy mouse", which is the common mispronunciation. This is just one of the many things I learned about Jay way back in late 2007 when he helped pen a five-part story on the Xtreme Couture blog about his life. It's called The Life and Times of Jay Hieron. And it's worth a few minutes of your time.

He pulls no punches in these stories. Growing up in a dangerous neighborhood, Jay took up boxing briefly, then eventually wrestling as a means of defending himself. He almost gave up on wrestling at 16 after falling in with a "bad crowd", but his coach wrangled him back in. He struggled through senior year, and didn't have the grades to get into university right away. The plan was to go to a junior college in Iowa and focus on nothing but wrestling. Homesickness dragged him back to NY and Nassau Community College after one semester though. And back into trouble. Part two picks up there:

Even though wrestling was going well for me, I was getting into problems in the off season. I was getting into sh*t whenever wrestling didn’t occupy my time. I was hanging out in the streets all night on Pearsall Avenue back in Freeport. Getting into fights, smoking weed, just basically up to no good. I was driving back and forth to Brooklyn, 3, 4 times a day buying weed. I would buy it, sell most of it and smoke the rest.

Despite this, Hieron won a junior college national championship at 158 lbs the next season, and moved onto Hofstra University:

I did well for myself going there. Junior year of college, which was my first year at Hofstra, I went to Nationals and lost to the guy who won it by a couple points.

Senior year I was ranked #3 in the country at 158lbs going into the season. I knew this was my season. I was going to go out and win the NCAA D-I championship. I could feel it. My workouts were incredible. My determination was incredible. There would be no stopping me.

But it all fell apart soon afterward for Jay:

Hofstra started a new rule my senior year. The school said if you failed any drug tests you’re out for the season. I ended up failing a drug test for smoking weed a couple weeks before the start of the season. It blew my mind. This was my last year or wrestling. I was trying to do everything I could to see if I could get back on the team and get my suspension cut to a half season. Hofstra wasn’t having any of it.

And it didn't take long to spiral completely out of control:

Coach Ryan told me that even though I couldn’t wrestle, I could keep going to school on my scholarship. I only had a 15 credits needed to graduate, but I wasn’t really interested in that. I was really depressed. I suppressed all of my competitive drive. I took all of my wrestling gear and threw it out. I decided it was time to start making money.

I was done making sacrifices for wrestling and all I could think about was making money. That’s when I really started selling drugs. I had been messing around picking up some weed from Brooklyn but now I was serious. I put all my attention and effort into selling drugs.

The rest of part 2 describes his double life as a drug dealer and the facade he put on for his family.  After two years making big money and living the high life, Hieron started feeling the need to get out of the game and invest in a legitimate business.  The police took care of that for him though.  He was arrested and all that money went toward lawyer fees:

I had a good lawyer who had represented me after I got in a couple of street fights in high school. He told me to relax, that he’d call the cops and find out what’s going on. He called me back and said they had me on an A-2 felony. I said what’s that? He told me the worst is an A-1 felony. I had an A-2 which carried 3-years to life. Mandatory 3 years with life parole.

His mom put up her house to bail him out, and a long string of court hearings ended with Hieron getting the best news possible for him at the time:

I waited for the verdict. My future was up to the judge and God blessed me that day. The judge ended up giving me 5 years of probation and no time behind bars.

Part two ends with how Phil Baroni got him into the MMA game.  The other parts of the series discuss how he flirted with violating his probation by moving to Las Vegas to fight, losing vision in his eye in a fight and fearing permanent injury (sound familiar?), his time in the UFC and IFL, joining up with Xtreme Couture, his father's passing, and much more.  This is one of the most detailed and honest portraits of a fighter you'll ever come across, and I encourage you to read all of it.  It'll be tough not to have some level of emotional investment while watching his Bellator 43 matchup with Rick Hawn if you do.

The Life and Times of Jay Hieron, Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

If contracts mean anything it appears we're closer to Nick Diaz stepping away from MMA to try his hand at boxing. Press releases were sent out today saying the Strikeforce 170-pound champion has signed a deal to fight former 168-pound boxing champion Jeff "Left Hook" Lacy in October.

Lacy's publicist Bernie Bahrmasel said his fighter has signed the deal. ESPN.com's Josh Gross spoke with Diaz's mentor Cesar Gracie, who said the MMA fighter also put pen to paper.

Diaz didn't actually signed a contract to fight Lacy. He's signed a bout agreement with Don Chargin, the promoter, with the understanding that it's going to be Lacy.

It's a surprising matchup on both sides. Lacy, a pro boxer with 30 fights under his belt has a lot to lose. Diaz hasn't lost an MMA bout since 2007, but has only fought professionally on the boxing side one time.

"It's a challenge somebody calls him out," Bahrmasel told Yahoo! Sports. "It's a personal thing when somebody says 'you're this, you're that. I can come and kick your butt.'  And Jeff's like, 'I'm Jeff Lacy pal. I've been a successful boxer for a very long time. You want to step in with me under boxing rules and prove yourself, it's absolutely personal.'

Two weeks ago, Lacy (25-4-1) spoke about Diaz calling him out.

"Honestly, I was a little stunned. Nick has accomplished a great deal in mixed martial arts and is certainly one of the best in the sport. But getting in the ring with me for a boxing match is a path he needs to be very wary of taking. I'm willing to put it all on the line anytime, anywhere!" said Lacy.

"For the right price, I'm more than interested in heading to his turf and put my fist in his mouth and silencing him."

That kind of trash talk surprised his manager.

"For Jeff to use that kind of language, it's not typically the way he talks," Bahrmasel. "He's always been very respectful. But you throw a sword in his direction then you're going to get Jeff Lacy."

The Lacy Camp has no worries about losing to Diaz, who has one just one professional boxing bout on his resume.

"He's never lost to a guy who's 1-0 in boxing. How's that for a line? I'll leave it at that," said Bahrmasel.

Is Diaz taking a negotiating position to ensure an MMA fight against Georges St. Pierre before the end of 2011 or will he really go through with this? That's what it sounded like when Gracie spoke with MMAFighting. Seems like a risky proposition for Diaz. If he gets destroyed by Lacy, we're not so sure he can just walk back to MMA and expect anyone to promote a mega-fight against GSP in the near future.