Tracey Emin's raw unpretentiousness – and the use she's made of her life in her work – has captured the nation's attention for 20 years. But its brilliance lies in its use of words

A cunt is a rose is a cunt. This is the title of a Tracey Emin monoprint from 2000. It's a reclining female nude, legs and torso neatly nicked off above the chest and at ankle and shin level, a body sloping backwards from the raised legs downwards, so that, held vibrant and prominent right at the centre of the drawing, there's not just the vibrating smudge and scribble of female genitalia but also a sense of something solid emerging from it, a shape cut in air, made by the crook of the upper knee and the line of the lower thigh.

"A cunt is a rose is a cunt" is Emin's reworking of the famous/notorious line from Gertrude Stein's 1913 poem "Sacred Emily": "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose". This was probably inspired in turn by Juliet's comment on Romeo's name, 300 years before Stein: "What's in a name? – That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet" (and Shakespeare was a writer not averse to the odd pun on the word "cunt" himself). What would Stein, the great literary experimenter, have made of Emin's emendation? Here's what she said in 1935 when some students in Chicago questioned her about it:

Now listen. Can't you see that when the language was new – as it was with Chaucer and Homer – the poet could use the name of a thing and the thing was really there. He could say "O moon", "O sea", "O love", and the moon and the sea and love were really there? And can't you see that after hundreds of years had gone by and thousands of poems had been written, he could call on those words and find that they were just worn out literary words? The excitingness of pure being had withdrawn from them; they were just rather stale literary words. Now the poet has to work in the excitingness of pure being; he has to get back that intensity into the language. We all know that it's hard to write poetry in a late age; and we know that you have to put some strangeness, as something unexpected, into the structure of the sentence in order to bring back vitality . . . Now you all have seen hundreds of poems about roses and you know in your bones that the rose is not there. All those songs that sopranos sing as encores about "I have a garden! oh, what a garden!" . . . Now listen! I'm no fool. I know that in daily life we don't go around saying ". . . is a . . . is a . . . is a . . ." Yes, I'm no fool; but I think that in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years.

The "can't-you-see?" of this. The insistence on "listen". The repeating immediacy – now, now, now. The emphasis on the importance and excitement of aliveness; the intensity. The focus on strangeness; the understanding that something strange introduced into the structure of things renews things: Stein's isn't a bad lens through which to see Emin's own practice. For Emin a word like "cunt" is excitingly multiple. In her work it ranges across the whole spectrum of resonance, from affirmation, celebration, punchy frankness to unpleasantness, insult and mundanity, via the still-thrilling buzz of the just-not-said, and all simultaneously, all in the swivel of a repetition, the shape a word cuts in time. There's also, here, the cheek, the wit of her retake on Stein's rose, since for sure Stein knows that a rose means more than just a rose. "And then later," Stein says of her ring of words, "what did I do? I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun." Emin, too, is a caresser and addresser when it comes to verbal and conceptual certainties and ambiguities. Inherent ambiguity is something she's well aware of if you look at the photograph, from the same year as A cunt is a rose is a cunt, called I've got it all, in which she sits with her legs splayed open, clutching notes and coins to her cunt as if either the cash is exploding out of her in fairground fecundity, spilling out as though she's a giant fruit machine, or she's in the act of cramming it into herself.

The thing about Emin is that she's really good with words. Maybe no one, until now, has so energised, understood, made visible, the possibilities of this particular, powerful word: cunt. Partly such energising is art's responsibility, one that works, by means of what WG Sebald calls "keeping faith with unsocial, banned language", to question, understand and, with any luck, transcend the proscriptions and the inarticulacies of whatever time we happen to live in. There's a parallel in Emin's punk insertion of the word "fucking" into the construct "red, white and blue" in her neon of 2002, Red, White, and Fucking Blue, where the word "red" is red neon, the word "white" and the "&" are white neon, and the words "Fucking" and "Blue" are blue neon, and suggest everything that could make you feel blue (in all senses of the word) in the cliché of the concept of being British. Plus, there's her general democratising, the total unpretentiousness – for instance, in one of her Princess Diana monoprints of 1999, on which she writes "Regardless of class or status no woman deserves what thoes cunts put you through – LOVE WAS ON YOUR SIDE." With Emin, art is about articulation: its questions, impossibilities and, above all, the fluidity and changeability of register. At the same time it's really very British, reminiscent of something a bit Lawrentian. Mellors, the close-to-nature gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) – a novel that's all about chatter, and the upper, the lower, the chattering classes – can switch rhetorical registers with ease, talking to his penis one minute ("Ay, th' cheek on thee! Cunt, that's what tha're after. Tell lady Jane tha wants cunt"), the next minute laughingly aphoristic to Constance Chatterley ("Blest be the tie that binds our hearts in kindred love"). Something in this resembles the versatile split-second shift from cloy to edge, from acrid to sentiment and back again, in Emin's work; the neon Be Faithful to your dreams (1998) next to Good Smile Great Come (2000) next to MY CUNT IS WET WITH FEAR (1998) next to Love is What You Want (2011). (Elsewhere in her work Emin has played this last one as Love Is What You Wont.)

Something in it is prefigured, too, in work by groundbreaking writers like Angela Carter, a genius of verbal and narrative reclamation and emendation, and the American post-beat writer Kathy Acker, whose seminal, anarchic 1978 novel Blood and Guts in High School is also a work of words and pictures with its graphic genital line drawings, including one of the labia labelled underneath in typewriter typeface "My cunt red ugh". (Acker was influenced, in turn, by the 1960s and 70s feminist performance artists, for instance Carolee Schneemann, one of whose practices was to pull a rolled scroll out of her vagina then read out what was written on it.) Somehow Emin goes beyond; with her, it's as if Warhol and Valerie Solanas were rolled into the same person, but minus his posture of obliquity and spaciness, minus the violent fixity of her political focus. Something else, something unexpected and difficult to articulate happens. As Jennifer Doyle says, about looking at Emin's repeated graphic versions of what Courbet calls "the origin of the world", "I couldn't help but think: 'Isn't this how Judy Chicago and Georgia O'Keeffe are supposed to make me feel (but don't)?'".

Emin's ear for the right word in the right place, and for the resonances of "rightness" and "wrongness" in word and place, are at the basis of her art. Take her play on meaning in the pair of neons, Is Anal Sex Legal and Is Legal Sex Anal (both 1998), so simple and so complex at once, so centrally about how (and where) words mean, and so witty about proscription, with shades too of Lewis Carroll's Alice lazily falling down the rabbit hole in a swoon pondering do cats eat bats, do bats eat cats? "And what is the use of a book", thought Alice, "without pictures or conversation?" Emin – while she brings straight to the surface all the things, including survival, Freudian strangeness, child/adult sexualities and innocences, which go unsaid or remain subconscious in the work of a writer like Carroll – is drawn to the place where meaning and consumption come together, fascinated by the conversation that happens when words and pictures meet, a dialogue most of us come across as soon as we first look at books. "I love writing," she says. "I think every artist has a backbone to what they do. For some it could be photography, painting, the ability to make a formal sculpture stand, but for me it's writing." For her, art is language and, as she put it in the press release for her very first show, "art has always been, a lot of the time, a mysterious coded language. And I'm just not a coded person . . . What you see is what I am."

This unpretentiousness has made Emin a national symbol. Her uncodedness, her frankness, her direct use of her own life in her work, have made her a repository, in the media and to some extent in the general public's eye, for all that's contentious in contemporary art. It's easy to dismiss, simplistically, her complex and redolent use of self-portraiture as ego-posturing. But the thing is, there's no pinning her down. There's no reducing Emin. No matter how – or how much – the media strings her up (one minute lunatic, the next the new William Blake), her work engages the nation, and has engaged it now for more than 20 years, in a dialogue about art and life and the crossovers between both. It does this at what might be called a language-sensitive place. She is multitalented, multifaceted; aesthetically endlessly versatile; there's no form she won't try. Somehow nothing circumscribes her.

From Blake's illuminated books to Stevie Smith's strange, pithy little illustrated verses, from Fra Angelico to Magritte's not-pipe; from the terrible increasing tension in Charlotte Salomon's Leben? oder Theater? to Gilbert & George's Dirty Words Pictures: artists and writers have worked for centuries with what happens when text and visual art come together. For Emin, it's another of her many modes of dialogue. In one of her monoprints, a girl wearing high-heeled shoes, with a smudge for a face, stands next to the words "dog" and "brains". Is she saying it about herself? Is she hearing it said about herself? The instability makes something momentary into something piercing and shaming.

In her book those who suffer love (2009), 11 monoprints by Emin of a woman masturbating accompany the text like a restless flickerbook; but the repeated shifts of the body up against the text make the text come alive, while the text itself, sometimes banal, sometimes funny, sometimes anguished, rubs up against the body to make the whole thing both pathetic and satisfying. Its title, a statement in its own right and an adjectival phrase, is a typical Emin reflexive. Considered carefully, it becomes more than itself, in the same way that the title of her celebrated tent-work, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (1995) played on the phrase's colloquial sexual meaning and was mischievously, seriously, quite literally, a list of everybody she had ever gone to sleep next to.

I wonder if, along with My Bed and the now lost Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (which was destroyed in the Momart fire of 2004, and which Emin refuses to remake), one of Emin's most enduring images will prove to be the photograph Monument Valley (Grand Scale) (1995–97). In it, the artist is off centre, sitting in the desert on an old bright-green chair whose sides are lined with orange piping, so much in the foreground that the great slabs of Monument rock are miniaturised behind her, with the wide blue sky above her only slightly scuffed with clouds, the word "THANKS" appearing from behind her right leg and a book called Exploration of the Soul in her hands, open as if she's about to give a reading. She's looking straight at us. Her gaze is direct but distanced – shrewd, serious. There's both silence and the promise of voice in it. There's a waiting, a discrete openness.

The book is one she wrote in 10 days, an autobiographical work written with the considered rawness for which Emin has now become known. In the early 90s she toured America, giving readings to anyone who came to hear, sitting on her travelling storyteller chair, which was a gift to her from her grandmother (it originally belonged to her great-grandmother), which she patched with the names of the places she visited, like a suitcase. The chair is now an exhibit in its own right (There's a lot of money in chairs, 1994). It's a dialogue itself in the form of a chair, one that holds its own narrative shape between Emin and her grandmothers, between past and present histories. The work is about a girl who comes of age via the legends of her English mother and her Turkish-Cypriot father, their material ups and downs, then the girl's own horrific early sexualisation, first by abuse, then by rape, at the age of 13, at the hands of a local man, someone well known for having "broken in girls". "When I got in, my mum said, 'Tracey, what's wrong with you?' I showed her my coat, the dirt and the stains, and told her 'I'm not a virgin any more.' She didn't call the police or make any fuss. She just washed my coat and everything carried on as normal, as though nothing had happened." Exploration of the Soul ends with the story of Emin at the age of seven going to a children's party, from which she is sent home because "you don't have an invitation". The next morning the child Emin asks her mother, "What's an invitation?" It is a model fable of exclusion, of how language itself is used to exclude.

Emin is a great recycler. Much of Exploration of the Soul appears again in her book of "memoirs and confessions" Strangeland (2005), a work of echo and resonance and rewrite, in which – as in her video-poem Why I never became a dancer (1995) – she works with a repeating structure, one that shifts from abjection to empowerment and transformation. In it she declares "You don't have to be born with balls to have balls."

By her own authority, Emin writes with a gift of fused subjectivity and objectivity reminiscent of a writer like Nell Dunn (the titles of whose 1960s novels Up the Junction and Poor Cow read now almost like the titles of Emin works). Dunn, an upper-class girl who decamped to south London and wrote with what proved to be a transformative lack of judgmentalism about the working classes, has a talent for fusing roughness and beauty into something at once fragmentary and whole, seen from both outside and inside simultaneously.

"Instead of feeling on the outside, I realised that there was an outside and it was called 'being an artist'." Strangeland's first image, of her birth, is an infant vision between death and life, somehow wrong, voiceless: "When I was born they thought I was dead. Paul arrived first, ten minutes before me . . . I just rolled out, small and yellow . . . I somehow felt a mistake had been made. I couldn't scream or cry or argue my case . . . They put me into a little glass box and slowly I came round." Its final image, of the adult Emin in Egypt longing to smash through the glass case in a tomb and take into her arms a "tiny mummified foetus" is one of sheer empathy. "Dead for thousands of years, not completely formed, but he had soul. He still had soul," writes the artist who knows what spirit is, who can go from the word "drunk" to the word "soul", from inebriation to metaphysic, in the space of a single strip of material, and hold them both in equal measure (Drunk to the bottom of my soul, 2002).

It's all about connection. It's one word after another, with Emin. Give her a blanket and she'll make it speak. Give her the fabric of things and she'll find voice in it. Give her a cliché and she'll take it apart to give it back its full original whack of power again. Give her words, she'll write them backwards and forwards; she'll send them off in all directions; she'll work them into everything; she'll put them where you least expect. She'll make you wonder what they mean; she'll show you they're right and they're wrong. She'll take them to pieces then sew them back together again. She'll light them up.

Tracey Emin: Love Is What You Want is at the Hayward Galley, Southbank Centre, London SE1 (0844 875 0073), from 18 May to 29 August 2011. www.southbankcentre.co.uk

Salami is quite the versatile little meat: it's delicious on an appetizer platter alongside bread and cheese, tossed in a chopped salad, layered atop pizza, or crisped up into salami chips. But a recent shipment from Columbus salame got us wondering: what's the deal with the various types of salami out there? We've established the difference between salumi and charcuterie, but what about within the salami family itself?

All salami is made from a combination of uncooked ground meat, spices, wine, and garlic, which is then dried and cured. It develops a fine, white mold on the outside during the curing process, much like the coating on brie cheese, which is usually edible. But beyond that, there's tons of variation in this tasty, salty delicacy. Here are some of the most common varieties, and what sets them apart.

• Genoa salami: Traditionally made with pork and veal, and seasoned with garlic, red wine, and pepper.
• Soppressata: Usually made with pork, soppressata has a higher fat content and a more rustic appearance than most salami. Soppressata is typically pressed with a heavy weight while curing and cured until it loses 30 percent of its weight, intensifying its flavor.
• Pepperoni: Not a traditional Italian salami, pepperoni is an Italian-American invention. It's finely ground, lightly smoked, and spicy.
• Herbed or peppered salami: Traditional salami that has - surprise! - been rolled in cracked peppercorns or dried herbs.
• Nduja: A deliciously spreadable salami made of pork meat, pork fat, and spicy red peppers.
• Cotto salami: Salami that has been partially cooked or smoked before or after curing.

What's your favorite type of salami?

Something about an angry Australian in a car always reminds us of Mad Max.

The thing I've learned over these last few weeks is that it's not strange to watch yourself on TV. It's strange to know that hundreds of thousands of people are also watching you on TV, and that they're sitting at home judging you the way you judge everyone you watch on TV, and there isn't really a lot that you can do about it. The producers just put whatever they want into the show, whether that makes you look good or bad. (Example: Watch out for my ridiculous high-five later in this episode.) What's my larger point here? I don't know that I have one. Maybe I'm just tetchy because I don't think I've liked the way the makeup department combed my hair.

We start, as always, in the kitchen, Curtis Stone ready to spring some sort of silliness upon the (unwitting?) chefs.

George notices price tags on the ingredients that are out. This week's Quickfire: Make a dish that costs less than a dollar to make. Floyd's all, I got this, and then recalls how he came to America with less than a hundred dollars in his pocket. More interesting is the mustache he's rocking in the old photos they show. A friend of mine is fond of saying that no man is really complete without a mustache, and Grub Street's official stance on that subject is that no truer words have ever been uttered.

In other words, bring back the 'stache, Floyd!

Here's the weird thing about this challenge: It's never explained how the food prices were determined. Are they the prices that were at the grocery store where the ingredients were purchased? Or are they — more likely — just prices that have been randomly assigned by the producers? After all, how can an onion be the most expensive ingredient out there?

Judging the Quickfire will be "Dinner Party Download" hosts Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam, both of whom Hugh calls "funny, young, interesting."

"This does make you re-judge the value of everything you've ever eaten at a fancy restaurant," says Rico during the tasting. Curtis chimes in: "We might be doing something bad to our industry right here." It's a line that probably carries more weight than Curtis intended.

At one point, Rico wonders why fast food sucks so bad if chefs can put this kind of food together so cheaply, in twenty minutes. Prescient!

So! What's the verdict? George is called out for the blandness of his calamari ("I wanted to see it get kicked up a notch," says Emeril Rico), and Naomi's bread-and-asparagus salad with lemon vinaigrette is named the winner. As always, that means money for her charity and immunity from elimination.

Elimination-challenge time, and this week the chefs are going on a road trip! But the producers aren't telling them where just yet. Instead, the only things the chefs get to know is that they'll have to make a main and a side; there are going to be at least a hundred diners; and nobody eating will have any utensils. During shopping time, Floyd is so bewildered by the vagaries of the challenge that he appears to just wander around the Whole Foods, unable to choose his ingredients.

George, meanwhile, is all decisions. He's getting pork loin and clams, constraints of the challenge be damned.

Eventually the chefs pull into their mystery location: a Farmer Boys. "What the heck?" wonders one of the chefs, echoing the thoughts of, I'd guess, 99 percent of the viewers. Seriously, has anyone ever seen a Farmer Boys? I'd never heard of it before we taped this episode, and I try to keep up with the regional fast-food-restaurant beat. From what I could tell, the concept is like a mix between McDonald's and Cracker Barrel, but with a California vibe — by which I mean they put avocado on everything.

I'll be interested to see what everyone thinks of this challenge, since it seems like a big complaint about this season has been the producers' knack for giving the chefs challenges that somehow demean or diminish their roles as Masters. My big question is: Why did the producers feel the need to keep the chefs in the dark before the challenge started? Why not just tell them they're going to be working a fast-food drive-through ahead of time and see what they come up with? Undoubtedly the service itself would have been just as hectic, and the end results on the food side of things would probably have ended up being more impressive.

During prep, more than a few of the chefs mentioned how hard it would be to get caught up if they fell behind and ended up in the weeds during service. Service starts and it takes approximately one second for almost all of the chefs to fall behind and get in the weeds.

Behind the Scenes Fact: As the show has it, the chefs jump right into service, but that's not really how it happened. There was a plumbing problem or something — it was described in very vague terms to us critics when we arrived at the Farmer Boys, so I'm guessing it was something gross that had to do with the bathroom — and there was a long delay before we could actually start taping the service portion of the challenge. Which, as it turns out, was great, because while we were waiting, James spotted a doughnut place called D K's Donuts and said something to the effect of, "I've got a feeling about that place." So he and I went over and ordered two plain, glazed doughnuts. James's feeling was way right: The doughnuts were the superlative — Ur-doughnuts, if I may. Still warm, light fluffy interior, this really light glaze that tasted almost like honey. If I remember correctly, James even treated, which was a nice gesture.

Back on the show, it's complete pandemonium in the kitchen, and before the chefs know what's hit them, James and I show up in the dining room, while Curtis and Danyelle hit up the drive-through. We wait a bit for our food, and I reminisce yet again about being James's intern at Saveur. Curtis and Danyelle get weirdly flirty in the car. "It's like a healthy hush puppy," Danyelle says while she eats one of Mary Sue's quinoa fritters. "You're a healthy hush puppy," Curtis coos back.

(I'm noticing that the sum total of my critical analysis this week amounts to saying "yep," and "yeah," and nodding whenever James makes any sort of point. Insightful as ever. )

Anyway, the service flips and the chefs who had been cooking take over handling the orders, and vice versa. And the critics switch spots, too. So James and I head out to the Lexus, while Danyelle and Curtis will continue their flirtation in the dining room.

Even with the new roles, nothing much has changed for the chefs. They're all in panic mode, and Danyelle and Curtis order one of everything. James and I, perhaps not wanting to share single servings of food Lady and the Tramp–style, order two of everything. Ante = upped.

They've edited the show to make it look like we were waiting a really long time for the food, and it's more or less completely accurate. I'd say James and I were sitting at the drive-through window for about twenty minutes.

Finally all the food comes out, we try it, and it's time to get down to the business of being critical.

Since this is my last week as a critic on the show, it's as good a time as any to talk about how the judging actually works. Before we call the chefs out, the critics sit down one at a time with the producers and go over their favorite and least favorite dishes. I would have thought that this system would create a lot of conflicts, since the critics ostensibly have to come to some sort of consensus. But we usually pick at least most of the same dishes. It's a little trickier to agree on the top three and the bottom three, but coming up with whose dish was best and whose was worst is pretty clear. Then we sit down at the critics' table, the chefs are brought out, and the producers prompt us (via our earpieces) to tell specific chefs our feelings on their dishes, either positive or negative, depending on whether it was the winning group or the losing group. I really wish there were something juicier I could say about this.

Mary Sue is declared the winner, mostly on the strength of her super-delicious quinoa fritters. (She says that she was going to put them on the menu for the Border Grill Truck, but a quick glance at the truck's website seems to indicate that she hasn't — what's the deal, Mary Sue? America needs to eat those fritters!)

George is sent home, which is sort of a shame because most of the stuff he made on the episodes that I judged was outstandingly interesting and well-executed. (The shrimp-and-beet dish he made a couple of episodes ago remains the best-looking plate of food I saw the whole time I was on.) But the grilled pork skewer with clam-filled cucumbers really wasn't good. I'll still never know why he didn't fry the clams and do some sort of Iberian Po' Boy thing with the chorizo and the pork loin. Now that I'm thinking about it, I wish he'd made that, because it sounds like it could be really amazing.

Next week: Gail Simmons and Maroon 5 will show up, the chefs have to cook on a bus, and someone is wondering where the caviar is. Wait — the first show I'm not on, and they get caviar?

Read more posts by Alan Sytsma

Filed Under: overnights, recaps, top chef, top chef masters, tv

The Minnesota Vikings had three tight ends on their roster heading into the 2011 NFL Draft, but that didnt stop them from selecting Notre Dames Kyle Rudolph with the No. 43 overall pick in Round 2.New offensive coordinator Bill Musgrave likes to mix in two- and three-tight end sets. So what will this mean for current starter Visanthe Shiancoe, and how will running back Adrian Peterson benefit? I called on former Vikings tight end Stu Voigt to answer these questions. Voigt played at the University of Wisconsin before being drafted by the Vikings in 1970. He ended up catching 177 passes for 1,919 yards and 17 touchdowns and winning eight NFC Central Division titles with the Vikings before retiring in 1980. Voigt was the lead analyst on the Vikings Radio Network from 1981-89.5 QUESTIONS WITH STU VOIGT1.KG: What do you think of the Vikings second-round selection of Notre Dames Kyle Rudolph? VOIGT: At first, I was a bit surprised knowing the Vikings needed help on defense and also might be looking to upgrade their offensive line. However, this kid is quite an athlete and without question one of the top tight ends in this year's draft. After watching Rudolph at Notre Dame, I think its obvious he has great hands and is tough enough to hold his own in blocking situations. So he brings big-time versatility. Sometimes I think you are better off in the top couple rounds taking the best players available rather than looking to just fill a need.2.KG: The Vikings already have three tight ends on the roster, including Visanthe Shiancoe. How will this affect Rudolph's playing time? VOIGT: I think he will be a perfect fit. Shiancoe is really more of a hybrid receiver who can stretch the field. Rudolph is more of a blocker and play action-type guy that will stay home. This should give Minnesota some diversity in the area of play-calling and open up deep balls for guys like Sidney Rice and Percy Harvin. Remember, all three current tight ends are 30-plus years old, and all three are in their final year of their contract.3.KG: How will the selection of Rudolph impact Vikings running back Adrian Peterson? VOIGT: This is the area where the pick makes the most sense. The Vikings needed to get better at run blocking, and Rudolph should instantly help the cause. Rudolph is a terrific in-line blocker, which means he can handle linebackers and or defensive ends. Adrian Peterson should be able to find some running lanes with these multiple-tight end sets. Teams will have to respect Rudolph and Shiancoe in the area of play-action therefore wont be able to key in on stopping Peterson.4.KG: How will the NFL lockout hinder rookies like Kyle Rudolph? VOIGT: Its a very big jump from college to the pros, and missing some of these offseason camps will be difficult--no doubt about it. Something as simple as being able to go over the playbook and interact with coaches and players will now be out the door. One thing that helps Rudolph is he played at Notre Dame, where you play a pro-style offense and compete against very good teams. I think if this lockout situation goes well into the summer it will put these kids behind the 8-ball coming into next season.5.KG: The Vikings have a new head coach in Leslie Frazier and now have added a new quarterback in Christian Ponder. What type of expectations should Vikings fans have for next season? VOIGT: The tough part right now is the division has never been better. The Packers are world champions, the Bears went to the NFC Championship game and nobody has drafted better than the Detroit Lions in the last two years. That being said, I think Leslie Frazier will do an outstanding job for this organization. Frazier reminds me a lot of Tony Dungy. He is quite smart and patient and the players really seem to like him. As far as the new quarterback goes, it looks like Christian Ponder has serious potential, but like most young QBs he will need some time to develop. I think 8-8 for next year is a very realistic expectation, but one thing is for sure: They should be a fun team to watch.TWEET AND RETWEETVisanthe Shiancoe, TE, Vikings (@VShiancoe): "Just left the St Patricks Episcopal School in Washington DC for Childrens Hunger Awareness"Danny Valencia, IF, Twins (@dannyvalencia): "Boston, here we come ... What's up in Boston besides my Heat? I will be attending the game Saturday night!"Dave St. Peter, President, Twins (@TwinsPrez): "Hey Bert, u sure Gayle and u don't want to spend a couple more days there? 2-0 since you made the trip. "

Our winners are in! Click ahead to see who gets a Gameboy iPhone 4 case from iPWN, and some of the iOS gaming questions we might discuss on our podcast.

The following tweets win an iPhone 4 case:

@yazvision: My Podcast question is: Do you think a MMORPG like Order&Chaos; is feasible in the long term on IOS?

@Alex21_LP: My podcast question is: What's the best game to play for a long storyline?

@YamanKaytaz: My podcast question is: What's the best way to keep up with/finish all my favourite iOS games? :-)

@tenyilun: My podcast question is: How many women hardcore iOS gamers are out there? And what game are they playing?

@Rellite: My podcast question is: What's the next step for Motion Gaming? Do Gyroscopic controls have a place in Gaming's future?

@Gunnbjorn: my podcast question is: what developer will bring the next benchmark for the capabilities of iOS gaming?

@AbdullaAljowder: what is the first game ever created for ios devices ? , created by who ? & is it stil in the app store ?

@EricBojorquez: What video game/toy/cartoon from when u were a kid do u think could be awesome if brought back in iOS form?

@Trocergian: What's your recommendations for turn-based strategy games for the iOS?

@Pogemon: My podcast question is: Does it bug you when a game cuts off your iPod music?

@Schmidty164: With Unreal running in games like Rage HD how do u think the iOS will stack up compared to the 3DS + NGP?

@stricklyall: What do you think are the pros and cons of having a game becoming free for a day.

@brentwomble: On a future iPhone, will Apple use the same no-glasses screen that's on the 3DS? How will games change?

@PHASE123: My podcast question is: Whether MMOs will ever really take off on touch screen devices?

@Zully2113: My podcast question is: How do game of the week games get chosen?

Congratulations to our winners, and we'll have more great giveaway prizes next week!

By Francis Moran

No sane person setting out on a long journey of indefinite length would wait until they had arrived before filling up the gas tank.

And yet technology companies tell me all the time that they're going to do exactly that.

"We'll start marketing as soon as we have some customers," is a variation of a line I've heard often but that still pains me deeply every time I hear it.

I heard it again just the other day from an amazing company I've been watching for a while. Like most promising technology companies, this one has developed a new way of doing something that creates massive value for users. Their product costs less money to use than the alternative, saves huge amounts of incredibly expensive time at a critical juncture for its potential customers, and avoids the considerable environmental damage wrought by existing approaches.

Like many compelling technological advances, however, the adoption of this company's product requires significant changes in behaviour in a risk-averse industry.

In short, this company needs marketing, and lots of it.

However, like most companies that give me the fill-the-tank-when-we-get-there line, this company quite obviously views marketing as an expense item that can't be contemplated until revenues start rolling in. Lost on them is the reality that marketing is an investment item that ensures the revenues will roll in.

By contrast, let me talk a little about another company with which I am meeting in a couple of weeks to start work on the first ever proper marketing strategy this company has ever done.

We've known this company for several years. It is an important partner of one of our long-standing clients and we've had the pleasure of helping it out with some modest media relations requirements. Their new reality is exactly the reason why I've chosen to add this strategic marketing practice to what has long been a sharply focused PR practice -- many of our B2B PR clients need help with more than just PR.

In this instance, this company has the opportunity to enter a promising new market, and has turned to us for counsel beyond the straightforward media relations stuff we've been doing. Their first request was for something tactical and, when we told them what it would cost, they had sticker shock. I validated their concern about how much marketing costs -- it is expensive. But I also started to turn the conversation around. "If you view marketing as an expense item, you'll never do it," I told them. "You need to look at it from the other end of the telescope."

The exercise we will bring this company through starts with its objectives for its new market and then goes on to ask and answer many questions. How big is the opportunity? How many customers are there? How many of those customers could you acquire -- or do you need to acquire to meet your business plan objectives -- in your first year? How are you going to acquire them? What should it cost to acquire them? What is the life-time revenue of every new customer you acquire? What's your profit on that revenue? How much of that profit should you invest in acquiring that customer?

I'm simplifying things here but what we will have at the end of this exercise is a business case supporting an investment in marketing rather than an expenditure on marketing. The difference is subtle but illuminating. The latter creates a mindset of limited opportunity where costs, rather than results, are the key focus and the impetus is always on constraining those costs as much as possible. The former creates a mindset of expectation where a dollar spent is expected to return a multiple of revenue, where the focus is on results, and where investment decisions are made on the basis of their effectiveness.

With this business case in hand, our client will be able to put exactly enough gas in its tank to get it to where it needs to go.

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See Also:

• It's Not Easy Being A Marketer
• How Influential Is Influence?
• What Is Your Market Validation Plan?

I'm thinking about moving to LA soon, but I've never actually been there. Where would someone like me live? What's it like to live in LA? General advice? Or should I move to SF?

I'm about to get out of graduate school with a degree in the sciences that I don't plan on using anytime soon. I want to devote some time to exploring vague creative ideas I have concerning writing, acting, and art. I've got minimal experience in any of this, but I figured I might as well give it a shot while I'm still young. So I'm soon going to move to a city and get a job waiting tables or something that will pay the bills while giving me time and flexibility to write or act or pursue enlightenment or whatever.

I've been thinking I'd move to SF because I'm familiar with it and its beautiful and interesting. But lately I've been wondering whether it would limit me because it might suck up my savings too quickly and I'm not sure if I could easily find a job that would pay the bills in SF while still allowing lots of free time. Also, I've been wondering if SF has too particular a "vibe" where less a variety of things are happening than in bigger cities.

So I started considering LA, because it seems like it'd be at least slightly cheaper than SF and would provide more freedom to invent myself. It seems friendlier to my situation. I've heard that you can do whatever you want in LA and no one really gives a shit. This is starting to sound appealing. Obviously, I need to visit there. I'm trying to imagine what it would be like to live there.

So:
Where does one live in LA? Where would you live if you wanted a cheap place but with lots of culture around? Where do the hipsters live?

How easy would it be to get a job to pay the bills?

What should I know about LA before I visit / move there?

How true are the unpleasant cliches about LA? Is it really disgustingly superficial? It it really over-polluted and ugly? Is the sprawl soul-crushing? Do you really spend most of your life in your car?

What are the advantages of living in LA?

What do you know. Republican North Carolina Rep. Walter Jones sounds like a liberal here. Now that Osama bin Laden has been killed, there are a growing number of calls for the United States to get out of Afghanistan. This is long past due.

CNN:

BLITZER: After the death of bin Laden, CNN is now taking an in- depth look at the war in Afghanistan, a war that some U.S. lawmakers are now saying should end quickly.

Our congressional correspondent Kate Bolduan is joining us now with some of the details.

Kate, what's going on here?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, the death of Osama bin Laden has renewed the debate here on Capitol Hill, as well as elsewhere, about the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. It's also renewed the push by some liberal Democrats and some fiscal conservatives calling for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan altogether, and do that sooner rather than later.

North Carolina Republican Congressman Walter Jones and Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Jim McGovern, they both have been long opposed to the war in Afghanistan. They are rolling out a bill come Thursday that would require the White House provide a concrete timeline and specific dates for the U.S. to pull all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan. The administration now, their timeline is to begin the withdrawal in July and finish up in 2014.

I spoke with Congressman Jones earlier today about what he thinks the death of Osama bin Laden should mean for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. Listen here.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERGEN: So, when you talk about the news of Osama bin Laden being killed, how does that change in your view as you are looking for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan? How do you think that changes the debate up here on Capitol Hill?

REP. WALTER JONES (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Well, it should change the debate because we were saying that al Qaeda, bin Laden are responsible for 9/11, which is true. Where we have driven the al Qaeda out of Afghanistan, and now bin Laden, who leaves al Qaeda, he is gone. So, therefore, what are we trying to achieve there? The Taliban have -- the Taliban we supported when they were fighting the Russians.

BOLDUAN: But some of your colleagues, including Speaker Boehner, even, saying just yesterday, they think an accelerated drawdown, an accelerated pullout would be a mistake, would be dangerous at this point. Speaker Boehner even said that this reinforces, this makes our mission in Afghanistan more important, not less.

JONES: I would say to the Speaker, what do you want to accomplish? You want Karzai to be your friend when he tells you half the time that he supports the enemy that's killing our kids?

I mean, my -- in fact, I have been very disappointed in my party, quite frankly, because why are we -- we are up here cutting Medicare, but we are spending $8 billion a month in Afghanistan, borrowing money. But, yet, we're saying to children and senior citizens in America, we can't help you. Well, it's ironic to me that you want to help Karzai remain in power in Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Now, the bill that Jones and McGovern will be unveiling Thursday would require that President Obama provide a concrete timeline with specific dates that they will withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and also provide regular updates and reports to Congress about how much the continued fight there is costing and how much they could be saving if they had accelerated the withdrawal.

Now, this is likely to be a tough sell up here, as well as with the White House. When the White House spokesperson was asked just today if the -- if bin Laden's death will impact the withdrawal and plans there, he said flatly no, that the withdrawal of troops will be based on conditions on the ground -- Wolf.

BLITZER: I suspect though this legislation will get some momentum, especially as the congressman points out the enormous cost to U.S. taxpayers of maintaining those troops in Afghanistan.

BOLDUAN: That's what he is hoping.

BLITZER: About $2 billion a week, as he says.

All right. Thanks very much.

Today I got the chance to hobnob with Henry Abbott of TrueHoop.  We talked about the Blazers, basketball philosophy, and blogging.  Take a gander.

Dave:  2010-11 Portland Trail Blazers.  What are your lasting impressions of the season?  What did we learn about the team this year?

Henry:  We learned a lot. Off the top of my head:

• The really big sobering piece of news was that Greg Oden was both more fragile than we ever knew and entirely essential to the whole "just let them age together and they'll win a title" view of the team. (We also learned that phrase probably is pretty true in places like Oklahoma City and Memphis.)
• We learned the same, to a smaller degree, about Brandon Roy, and that he's not going to go quietly into a supporting role, which is not surprising or hard to understand, but could indeed be problematic.
• LaMarcus Aldridge and Andre Miller can do some great things together on the run and at the rim -- things that don't happen as much with Roy on the floor.
• Nate McMillan can depart from his preferred approach of covering the floor with shooters, driving, kicking and offensive rebounding.
• The Blazers tend to underperform in the playoffs.
• It might be good to have some more shooters.
• Paul Allen seems to confirm, in the angst of his book, that he's the common thread in a lot of bitterness at the top of the organization through the years.
• We learned that Rudy Fernandez can be happy living in Portland.
• We didn't learn how to value Nicolas Batum. "Potential" and "great moments" are not definitions. If he's going to really reach his ceiling, great. If not, better to trade when he's still young enough to dream on.
• We didn't learn how to value Brandon Roy, post-surgery. At times he's the best player on the floor, at times he's the worst.

Dave:  The Roy issue is fascinating.  I haven't addressed it directly on the site yet, but Brandon is making me waver a little.  In this modern Blazers era when potential has been king and depth has been sufficient to cause Portland fans to clamor for different starters on a weekly basis I've lived by a simple mantra:  the guy who earns the starting spot gets the starting spot.  Don't talk to me about Sergio Rodriguez or Jerryd Bayless or Travis Outlaw starting until they've earned it and we'll know they've earned it when we see them in there excelling with consistency.  Start promoting people on potential or hunches and you're sending a message that playing well and winning are secondary priorities.

Then again, we're not talking about Sergio Rodriguez here.  This is Brandon...Roy.  Obviously there's a physical component to his declined play.  Who knows what those knees will do?  But there seems to be a mental component as well.  When a guy explodes for 20 points in a quarter and then follows it up with 20 points in a week, something is going on there.  He's in a binary state, either gifted by the gods or unable to hit a single free throw.  Some of that has got to be in the old noggin. 

Brandon's role has always been go-to guy, scorer, savior, and starter.  The Blazers may not need a full-force return to his glory days but they can't afford next-to-zero from him 6 games out of 7 in all those departments.  If the title of starter is what it takes to get him back on track mentally, give it to him.  You can still limit his minutes if desired.  He can become one of those nominal starters, beginning the game, the third, and playing as necessary in the fourth.  I have no problem with Wesley Matthews getting big minutes off the bench.  I have no problem with Wesley Matthews playing in crunch time instead of Roy if the occasion warrants.  Matthews can still give everything he gives now from the pines whereas Roy apparently can't.  All of Matthews and something of Roy beats all of Matthews and none of Roy...at least for now.  Two years down the road maybe this story is different.  But for now you have to give Brandon a chance to be Brandon.

Am I catering to star whims?  Yeah, I probably am.  But I need a little Roy and if this is what it takes, I do it.

Am I crazy?  What's your take on the Roy enigma?

Click through for Henry's thoughts on Brandon Roy plus even more discussion!

Henry:  In a way I'm glad it's the offseason and he's signed up to a huge contract for ages. Unless his one great playoff quarter dazzled some owner out there, we can assume he'll be in Portland for the long haul and we know he's desperate to be good, smart and works hard. We know he has time to retool.

So, presumably, he comes back not like the Brandon of the past, but as some kind of Brandon of the future.

He better! 

Because if you wash those highlights out of your eyes, by just about every measure he has been an average NBA player. He's often the team's worst defender, and the offense that made him famous works best (or only?) when he can finish at the rim, or draw a double and kick it to an open shooter. The team doesn't have those shooters anymore -- they were shipped out to help assemble a team that can win without him -- and evidently he can only finish in the paint with power a few times a month. 

What used to be a third option -- to shoot the step-back with a defender in his face -- is now the first option. 

Thus performance plummets.

Injured Brandon trying to play like healthy Brandon ... I'd assume that long-term team success would hinge on playing that guy as little as possible. But a guy who has always coped with limited athleticism, and who can create space without speed and explosiveness ... maybe he can come up with something.

Dave:  Yup.  Now stuck with him, the Blazers need him to be SOMETHING.  Whatever you have to do to make that happen, you at least try it.  If he wants to be SOMETHING, that is...which seems to be the burning question.  What is going on in Brandon Roy's head?  It's cruel to have to ponder that question along with all the others that afflict this team.

Either way, Brandon's over-reliance on the jumper at least will keep him out of the way of Aldridge, provided LaMarcus embraces the role of lead scorer and getting in the paint every once in a while.  That Miller-Aldridge space should be wide open even with Brandon on the floor.  Then again, is even the new LaMarcus good enough?  Will Gerald Wallace get uncorked?  Can Nicolas Batum become a star?  Does Marcus Camby have anything major left?  Will Miller even be with the team?  And don't even ASK about Greg Oden.  The Blazers have talent, but there's not a guy among them that isn't facing questions...questions about location and role if not inherent ability.  This team is supposed to be getting more settled, not less.  

What's going on?  Why can't they seem to get out of their own way?  Or are we in Portland too close to the situation to judge fairly?

Henry:  Well, look around the league, at the teams still alive ... they're all facing profound questions too. Is Miami's "little nine" anything like good enough? Is Boston too old? Can Gasol and Bynum co-exist? Is it OK to rely on Zach Randolph? Is Westbrook a ballhog? The Hawks recently handed out one of the worst contracts in sports. All those big salaries for so-so players in Dallas ...

And on and on and on.

Stresses and tensions are part of success. The key is not to add to that with a big helping of "why me?" 'Cause it's not you, or us ... it's everybody. That's just life -- or at least, that's life without Tim Duncan in his prime.

The best teams, someone once said to me, see the good in their players. The other teams see the flaws.

So, to me, yes Portland has had big bad luck. But also great luck, in that there are players all up and down the roster who can contribute. 

We're talking about how best to deploy a former rookie of the year, what to do with the returning-from-injury top overall pick, the obsessiveness of an incredible and affluent fanbase and the moodiness of one of the richest owners in sports history. In a lot of cities, they'd LOVE to have problems like that.

Dave: Every team indeed faces questions, even the once-unquestionable Spurs now.  But in Portland those issues seem to be embedded in the DNA.  The questions aren't just in the spaces between teams and players, such as LeBron fitting into Miami or being able to come out of the East, but internal to the players:  Who am I?  How good am I?  How much am I supposed to take on here?

Your "helping of 'why me?'" statement is apt.  It's not just a Portland fan mantra.  It still feels like this team sinks too much into questioning when the pressure is on and things don't go right.  "Why did the refs make that call?  Why did Dirk's crazy shot just go in?  Why is Jason Kidd all of a sudden shooting 60% from the arc against us?  Why can't I hit a shot?  When's our turn to win?"  It never gets to be your turn unless you make it so.  It's less about figuring out why and more about bowling over whatever it is that's getting in your way.  The Blazers will push and overcome sometimes, usually just when you think they're finished, but that pushing always seems to lead to a rousing bout of navel gazing instead of triumph.  It's like when success is in front of them, begging to be taken, they get Woody Allen neurotic and shrink back.

Part of that may be the main guys having grown up without real veteran leadership, trying to figure out the league on their own.  Look how long it took Zach Randolph to make his game success-friendly.  Even the veterans they brought in--Miller, Camby, Wallace--haven't overdosed on playoff success in their careers.  But you'd hope some experienced players and a good session of getting punched in the face by Dallas...and Phoenix...and Houston would snap you out of it.

On the other hand, maybe this really is as good as the Oden-less, Roy-mostly-less Blazers get right now.  I don't know if it's the habit everywhere, but Blazer fans are notorious for 50 wins being less of an accomplishment than a sign you should have won 55.

Henry:  This, to me, is pretty much the definition of mental toughness. You see what Gerald Wallace does out there? Just fights his ass off play after play, regardless of outcome. You do that every time, and you'll have more than enough success in this life.

Anything that keeps you from that ... and for a lot of people, a victim complex is one such thing ... hurts.

Any notion this franchise is snakebit I find laughable, childish and harmful. Get over it!

Also, from my point of view, in the NBA there is no magic elixir, no formula, no ninja training, no real rites of passage even. We like the idea that after getting beat up in the playoffs you then are informed about the playoffs for next time.

But in reality, it was only ever basketball, which does have roles for experience and wisdom and all that, but is also heavily haphazard, random and based on things like the bounce of a ball or the spring in a step. You could look at this year's playoff elimination and question the souls of all involved, or you could just say "that's a pretty darned good team that Kevin Pelton calls the most injured in the NBA, and they missed a bunch of free throws in big games, and didn't have homecourt advantage anyway. And by the way, the Mavericks are beating the Lakers right now."

In other words, there is not one shred of insight into anybody's soul. It's just that the Blazers are a good basketball team, at a time of year when good basketball teams are often left by the wayside.

Dave:  In a sense I agree.  For years there's been a mystique surrounding the Blazers, espoused by pundits and commentators...I have preached it as well.  "This team is 'X' now but just you wait a year or two and they will be 'Y'.  And have no doubt, 'Y' is much greater than 'X'."  That may have been true at one point, but I think it's safe to say that the cavalry isn't coming in the way anticipated.  The mystique is gone.  "X" this year will be "X" next year unless something changes.  But the team itself has been in mystique mode since its main players were rookies.  One wonders if they know another way.  I wonder if the Gerald Wallace everything-at-all-costs mentality--the only thing that matters--is within the reach of some of these guys, including some of the major figures.  They should be fighting their asses off.  Instead they're waiting for next year.

This, to me, was the essence of the Dallas playoff series.  Dallas fought, the Blazers waited.  On paper, even without a healthy Roy and Oden, the Blazers had advantages alongside Dallas'.  Dallas exploited their advantages better, played harder, and turned a two-way paper matchup into a one-way road to success.  The Blazers got beat between the ears as much as on the court.  This is where we diverge maybe because I didn't see it as a matchup of two good teams, one naturally better.  I saw it as a matchup of two good teams, one of which knew what it was doing and refusing to lose because it had been battered before and hated that feeling and the other of which was still waiting for something...waiting for the series to turn their way while the opponent was busy making off with it.  That's often the dividing line between good teams and great.  Put another way, to me there are no great teams.  There are good teams and then there are good teams that refuse to lose and have both the knowledge and drive to back that up.

So...there is no 60-win team waiting in the wings here anymore.  There's a 48-win team that wants to be a 60-win team and is going to have to change somehow--through internal development or roster changes or both--in order to become that great team they want to be.  How do the Blazers get there?  What are the keys?  Is it even possible?

Henry:  I think we see it exactly the same way, but I'd add one wrinkle: Being convinced, in your bones, that you got screwed, and are really better than this, is doom.

In other words, focusing on what's wrong is not just ill-advised, but causative of the mentality you abhor.

Oh yeah, I'm about to quote Shakespeare. Believe it. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

In other words, a big part of developing the mentality you crave is to scoff at the notion this team is cursed.

"We are here right now and 100 percent ready to rip this game right out of your hands," ... that works.
"Some of us are here right now and you wouldn't believe what we could do at full strength," ... that doesn't work.

Being a 48-win team that can overachieve (on the court, in the huddle, in the front office) and make it deep into the playoffs ... that's to be ahead of the NBA curve. That's every team except the very luckiest and most skillfully managed. The only difference with this team is that there was reason, for a minute there, to think all that success was going to be easy -- thinking like that, though, is almost always harmful. It was going to be hard then, and it's going to be hard now. So it goes in an enterprise where 29 of 30 teams "fail."

Dave:  Gotcha.  It's not so much what questions get asked, but how you answer them.  That, my friend, is why you are the best in this business.

Speaking of, I would be remiss in the extreme if I let you go without asking about your specialty.  When we met I was just starting out but you were already a giant in this business...the ONLY giant in this business at the time, the guy who broke the mold.  The world has changed in the last few years.  The world of online journalism has exploded.  I remember when we used to say "online journalism" 90% of the gravity came from the word "online".  Now it might as well not be there in most cases as quality and quantity have eclipsed anything that could have been imagined a decade ago from traditional or nouveau sources.

What has struck you as you've watched this industry develop?  How does it compare today to when you began?  Do you still love doing TrueHoop as much as you did on Day 1?

Henry:  Holy mega hard-to-answer succinctly question.

[Unprompted Editorial Note:  Hey, you get a chance to sit down with Jesus you're not going to ask him something he can answer with yes or no.  You get a chance to eat dinner with Pamela Anderson and you're going to take at least one decent look at her rack.  So I'm taking my shot.  Now back to the show...] 

Henry (cont.):  A lot has changed, but a lot is exactly the same.

Journalism, the job of developing sources and calling people and sticking microphones in people's faces ... That's the same job it ever was, which I say as a guy who did it the old way on murder scenes and at public meetings and the like as a reporter. It's easier now, because people call you back when you're from ESPN. But when I talk to the ESPN news editors, they are literally people who used to do the same job at newspapers, and they have the same questions and standards. So this whole "fall of journalism" thing ... it's a fall of a business model, but not of a process.

At the same time, there has been a publicizing, through the internet, of conversations that were once private. I talked to my UPS guy today. Great guy, just love him. He told me a bunch of stuff about the NBA. A lot of it was really just completely detached from reality, but who cares? He's making small talk! Nowadays, that happens online, too. And some of it gets traffic and makes money. This really riles some people, but I can't see what the big deal is.

The real issue is in getting to know who's talking. So long as I, as a reader, can tell if I'm reading somebody who is really responsible with information or not, then I'm safe. 

We all know how to do this, really. We do it every day. If your toddler tells you he saw a goat jump over a tree, you know -- based on the source and the tale -- to discount that a little. (Although, in fairness, goats do have mad springs.)

I long for a day when every reporter's name comes with an accuracy score, but until then, I think readers with what my journalism professor calls "crap detectors" can do the job well enough. In the end, people who are rash with information will demonstrate themselves foolish again and again.

That's why I tell everyone in the TrueHoop Network all the time that the most important thing is to build credibility. I think that drives value in online journalism.

As for fun ... I mean, I have long treated this like a job, and no job is always fun. (Reference earlier point about when you think it's going to be easy, you're wrong.) However, let's step back for a second and realize: I get paid to watch basketball. I go to work every day and write more or less whatever I want. I get to talk to people like you. Most days nobody even cares if I shave or not, and only once in a while do I have to eat balut.

Not too shabby.

Dave:  Ding! Ding! Ding!  And Henry has spoken the Word of the Day, "Balut"!  For that he'll win a spa pedicure at Lavender Springs Resort and everyone in the audience will receive a copy of the new Blazersedge cookbook, "Oops!  Was I Supposed to Do That?" Seventy-Two Theoretically Easy Meals with Ben Golliver.  I don't think balut is in there though.  Ben's more of a Kraft Mac and Cheese tartar guy.

Thanks so much Henry.  Best of luck during the lockout.  Keep your head high and the content coming!

Henry:  Ha! That is awesome. This was fun. Thanks for having me!

Be sure to check out Henry's work at TrueHoop!  

--Dave (blazersub@yahoo.com)

Leave it to us to cause a kerfuffle just before the elementary school spring concert this Friday! My daughter, who's seven and in first grade, is in tears because we, her parents, asked her to modify a movement in her performance and the teacher's response was for her to just do as she's instructed (as reported by our daughter and taken with a grain of salt) because "I'm the one that's teaching here."

No doubt that countless other people the world will be subjected to school childrens' earnest performances of Waving Flag (the Official World Cup Theme Song) for years to come. This year it's our daughter's class' turn to perform it on Friday night, wearing heritage costumes and of course, waving flags. We're in Canada, but she's chosen to feature the Scottish part of her heritage and will be kilted up and waving Saint Andrew's Cross. We live in Toronto, and her school is gentrifying, while still very multi-cultural in its makeup, but for the sake of representing this visually with a wide variety of flags, more obscure choices have been encouraged, hence her choice though I'm aware that the Union Jack is more common today.

They've been working on this for weeks. It's supposed to be a secret, somewhat, so that parents will be surprised and hopefully pleased and not sick to death of the song before the show - but she was practicing it the other night, and I noticed her doing a movement with her little 6" X 9" stick flag, where she swept the flag in a large circle, and at the lower part, the flag was dragged along the floor.

I corrected her, explaining to her about flag etiquette and protocol and in keeping it simple told her that if at all possible, flags should never touch the floor. I suggested that she could do the movement as best possible without that part.

So, she tried that today - and was corrected. Now she is a sensitive soul - but knowing her lovely but firm teacher, I can imagine that after a chilly, rainy day with twenty kids and a few who are live ones on a good day, the teacher may have sounded a little sharp. But what came home, in between the tears and blubbering was that the teacher required her to do it even after my daughter tried to assert that she knew it was wrong because her mommy checked, and was yelled at, with, as I'd said: "I'm the one that's teaching here."

So, while I'm sure that there has been some disrespect to the various stick flags already - though we carried ours carefully in, I've seen them being walked down the hall all bundled in a tote bag - I'm not sure how far to push this. But I'm pretty sure sweeping flags along the floor is on the other side of the boundary I have in regard to this matter.

I was raised with flag etiquette as part of school and Camp Fire girls and as part of my family upbringing, and this really rankles me; my Canadian husband agrees that it's not right and wants her to do the right thing too. We do get that there will be some errors made, because kids are kids and stuff isn't perfect and it's enough to hope that nobody loses an eye with the little wooden sticks. But I am pretty sure, unless convinced otherwise, that not dragging flags on the ground for the sake of a Spring Concert dance movement is a hill I'll willingly mount with my husband beside me in making sure our daughter does what's right. That is, if this is as big a deal as I'm making it out to be. So my question: Is it as big a deal as I'm making it out to be?

This brings me to: I happen to be hosting a committee meeting tonight for a few parents at the school, and they're reasonable people that I like and trust. I'll be running this past them. Do I rally the troops?

And then, considering the consensus: Do I confront the teacher first, knowing that my child tried to advocate for herself and was shut down, or do I go directly to the Principal? Do I print out pages from the most authoritative sources and march in there? And in that case what would be those sources? I could, perhaps, go to the extreme of pulling my kid and thus devastating her temporarily - or I could require and assert that my kid do what we believe is right, despite what the teacher said and risk animosity...

Or, do I say "Eh, well, it's just the Spring Concert and nobody else seems to care but me" and let it go?

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Megan McCarthy currently runs Mediagazer, a news aggregator focusing on stories examining the changes in the media industry and the implementation of technology into mass communications (read: my bible).  Megan helped to launch Mediagazer, a spinoff of technology news aggregator Techmeme, in March, 2010, after being hired as the first human editor of Techmeme in 2008. Prior to joining Techmeme, Megan covered Silicon Valley and startups for Wired.com and Valleywag, a technology blog owned by Gawker Media. She's ridiculously connected and knowledgeable and by her own admission "spends far too much time thinking about the future of media."  I grabbed her for 15 to talk aggregation. [Image]

You recently turned one! What have you learned over the last year about the media industry?

My top takeaway is that there's a lot of change, but also a lot of opportunity. In the past year we've had acquisitions, shutdowns, rebirths, personnel shifts, and major upheaval in the way publications are trying to monetize. While some aspects seem to be shrinking, there's room for more growth in other places. I'm excited to learn about the next big thing.

What makes Mediagazer so successful? (Talk a little about the algorithm / curation process) What does success look like for an aggregator?

Success is a page that shows all of the top media stories of the moment, efficiently and comprehensively. The algorithmic approach gives us breadth, so you see all relevant takes on a story, and the human element helps us curate things a little more quickly and elegantly. My aim is for Mediagazer to be the one site that anyone who wants to make money in media needs to visit every day.

Any plans to change anything? Any other spin offs planned?

Nothing concrete! We're keeping an eye out for other improvements and topics that might make for good sites. Please let me know if you have any ideas or requests!

You recently added Twitter as a way to cite sources / get tips etc - why did you do this? Has it been successful?

Twitter has become a valuable resource for lots of people in the media industry. It's just another way to publish information, and there were times when a story would break on Twitter, yet we couldn't put it on Mediagazer until someone else wrote it up in a proper blog post. That didn't feel right. News under 140 characters is still news. Incorporating Twitter into the collection of stories we have makes things feel more complete.

What's next for Mediagazer?

Just aiming to perfect the mix at the moment. We have a few ideas we're kicking around, but, again, nothing concrete, and feedback is welcome!

How has running Mediagazer changed your view of the media industry?

It hasn't changed my viewpoint of the industry, but it has sharpened my view. I know a lot more about the patterns of this topic - how things are released, which writers are strongest in which categories - than I did before I started.

What's the next disruption for the media industry?

The disruption I'm waiting for is the one involving Advertising. Right now, things are segmented - the people who buy TV spots are different from the people who buy magazine pages are different from the people who place mobile ads. Yet, I think that cross-platform content is inevitable - consumers care more about the content than the medium and want to be able to access whatever information is out there from wherever they are. The advertising world cannot keep pretending that different screens are siloed from each other. This will result in more money moving towards digital, but it will have to come from the more traditional media side - and there are years of built-up businesses who are doing quite well with the status quo, so there will be resistance.

How do we make people read more news?

Easiest way is to get them involved in creating it.

What's the future of news? Aggregation? Curation? Something entirely new?

There will be more interaction, and, because of that, smart publications will realize they need to focus on the display and design of their products and how - physically and intuitively - their users consume their content. Aggregation and curation are aspects of this - they're both just ways of delivering news.

What advice would you give journalists out there? And grads?

Focus on the execution, not the idea. You could have the greatest idea in the world, but it's useless if it just lives inside your head. Also, if you can't find a gig you like, learn how to set up your own website, teach yourself how to blog or podcast, and just start doing it. You don't need anyone's permission.

What do you wish you knew ten years ago?

I wish I knew Python and the number to a recruiter at Google.

In all seriousness, though, I didn't get involved in media until about five years ago, even though I was an avid consumer and an unintentional student of it for most of my life. I didn't know what skills were necessary to enter this field, so I never knew where to start. I wish I realized how silly that was. Turns out, sometimes you just need some perseverance and boldness and to realize that the door is already open and just waiting for you to walk through.

How do you stem the flow of information coming at you? What tools do you use?

I use a lot of alerts and alarms. Our algorithm is a great help. I have Tweetdeck organized with certain columns for people/publications that I follow on Twitter. And sometimes it's best to stem the flow by being aggressive and trying to anticipate what the next step will be and seeing if it's out there.

Related articles:

• Happy Birthday Mediagazer: Congrats to Megan McCarthy, the New Doyenne of the Media Scene (beet.tv)
• Techmeme Opens the Door to Twitter Commentary by Select People (readwriteweb.com)
• Mark Armstrong: What I Read - Technology - The Atlantic Wire (theatlanticwire.com)
• Master Curators (theflack.blogspot.com)
• The Social Media Strategists Power Tools [Consumption] (newcommbiz.com)

Today, I thought I'd try something new. Here's the whole "Sunday Pops" column from today's Tribune-Review:

So, would those arguing that the federal judge who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage has a "conflict" because he has a gay partner argue that a federal judge with a wife who upheld the ban is similarly conflicted? ... How can the Keystone Research Center's "independent" Budget and Policy Center claim to be "independent" when its parent is an arm of organized labor? ... After years of speculation over whether he was a natural-born U.S. citizen, President Barack Obama finally released his birth certificate indicating he was born in Hawaii. But given Mr. Obama could have nipped the matter in the bud years ago, why did he wait so long to do so? ... Donald Trump is taking credit for forcing the president to release his birth certificate. But he might have a "birther" problem of his own. We're told some tabloid is about to report that Mr. Trump was born on Mars ... or Venus ... or was it Mercury? ... Lest we forget, the whole "birther" controversy was started by supporters of Hillary Clinton after she lost the Democrats' 2008 presidential nomination. So much for the shibboleth that this was a "right-wing operation." [Bold in original.]

A mixture of spin and just plain silly (and one they get right). Let's go point by point.

Point 1 -

So, would those arguing that the federal judge who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage has a "conflict" because he has a gay partner argue that a federal judge with a wife who upheld the ban is similarly conflicted?

Ok, so I have no problem with this one. They even got the irony quotes right. Only one thing: it's obvious that they're assuming that the hypothetical federal judge in that last phrase is male. (A teensy bit of sexism that should be pointed out.) If she were female then the meaning of the sentence is completely changed, doncha think?

So Let's move on.

Point 2 -

How can the Keystone Research Center's "independent" Budget and Policy Center claim to be "independent" when its parent is an arm of organized labor?

Seeing this on the Scaife-funded Trib, I chuckled. Especially when I found this from Commonwealth Foundation:

Everyone loves to hate "special interests." They spend millions of dollars in electing and lobbying public officials in order to gain political or legislative favor.

So it was no surprise when groups like PennFuture and the Keystone Research Center's Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center joined with Common Cause PA and the Pennsylvania League of Women Voters to attack individuals affiliated with the natural gas industry for giving $2 million in state campaign contributions over the past 10 years. Nor was it surprising that they called for a severance tax to punish this "special interest."

But someone forgot to tell these organizations living in glass houses that they ought not to throw stones.

Indeed, the $2 million in contributions given over 10 years by natural gas interests is dwarfed by the contributions of the labor unions that run the Keystone Research Center's Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center (KRC/PBPC). Union political action committees gave $27 million in state races in 2007-08 alone and $60 million over the last three election cycles. Of course these special interests expect special favors in return for their "investments." [Emphasis added for dramatic effect]

How much money has Scaife funneled to the Commonwealth Foundation, the foundation that attacks the KRC for being in the pocket of it's "special interest" donors? About $2 million.

Of course the editorial board writers of the Scaife owned paper would never mention this.

Point 3 -

After years of speculation over whether he was a natural-born U.S. citizen, President Barack Obama finally released his birth certificate indicating he was born in Hawaii. But given Mr. Obama could have nipped the matter in the bud years ago, why did he wait so long to do so?

I want you to note the grammatical lack of clarity of that first sentence before we look at its rhetorical misdirection. Was it Obama who was speculating that he wasn't born in Hawaii? Surely looks that way. But the rhetorical misdirection is the greater sin here. In order for this phrase "Obama finally released his birth certificate indicating he was born in Hawaii" to be true, the official birth certificate released 3 years ago has to be something other than an official birth certificate. All they did was to move the goal posts from "he's not one of us." to "what's he hiding by waiting for so long?"

Except he didn't wait. See what the Trib did there?

Point 4 -

Donald Trump is taking credit for forcing the president to release his birth certificate. But he might have a "birther" problem of his own. We're told some tabloid is about to report that Mr. Trump was born on Mars ... or Venus ... or was it Mercury?

The "on what planet was The Donald born?" is actually a Karl Rove talking point. I heard him use it the other night. Other than that, this is just silly.

Point 5 -

Lest we forget, the whole "birther" controversy was started by supporters of Hillary Clinton after she lost the Democrats' 2008 presidential nomination. So much for the shibboleth that this was a "right-wing operation."

THAT'S RIGHT! It's a lib'rul plot! Spread by the lib'rul media best represented by:

• World Net Daily
• Rush Limbaugh
• Sean Hannity
• Michael Savage
• Jerome Corsi
• Michelle Geller
• Orly Taitz
• Alan Keyes
• G. Gordon Liddy
• Jim Quinn
• Rose Tennant
• Chuck Norris
• And about half (depending on how you slice it) of the GOP.

So of course it's NO RIGHT WING OPERATION! Of course not.

That's just silly.

What's on your agenda this weekend?

Is anyone watching the White House Correspondent's dinner? Who's there? Donald Trump, Bristol Palin and Bill O'Reilly. Also, President Obama, who is lauughing at SNL's Seth Meyers. And Sean Penn. Here's a photo gallery of "red carpet" arrivals.

Update: Meyers is killing Trump. Trump is so not amused. And Obama is laughing out loud. He then moves to Obama, who's a good sport and laughs at all the jabs, from how he's aged to how the only person who can beat Obama in 2012 is the Obama who ran in 2008.

This is an open thread, all topics welcome. Updates and video from the dinner below:.

Update: On Congress, Meyers says, "I think Congress votes on bills the same way the rest of us read the updated conditions on iTunes."

President Obama also spoke. Here's some of what he said about "The Donald." Trump at least smiled at this:

“He can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter. Like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”

I'll look for a video of the Trump portion, that was the funniest.

Here's Obama's speech tonight. His digs at Trump are really funny, and since it was before Meyers, Trump at least pretended to crack a tight smile:

They left Ireland for England as young men… and never returned. As a film documents their homecoming 40 years later, Jon McGregor meets the exiles

I went to a film premiere last year. It was in the garden of a large house, on the eastern outskirts of Nottingham, that provides supported accommodation for older homeless men. There was quite a crowd when I got there; a mixture of local artists and film-makers, professionals from the worlds of care and housing support, and men living in the house. Someone had made a pot of stew and we stood around eating it and making small talk while we waited for dusk to fall so the screening could begin. It took a while to get everyone seated, and a while longer for everyone to be quiet, and then the film opened with a shot of one of the men I'd just seen talking in the garden.

"My name is Sean Lynch," he said, to the camera. "I'm from County Cavan, Ireland. I'll be coming home soon." In the garden, there was some soft cheering and a scatter of applause. On the screen, we could see Sean and others in the cold half-light of dawn, carrying their bags out to a hired minibus. At least two of them were walking with sticks. They played for time, lighting cigarettes and finishing cans of beer before helping each other to their seats. They were heading for Holyhead, and the boat to Dublin. Most of them hadn't been back to Ireland for 40 or 50 years.

They seemed wary, ambivalent. The film cut back to one of them, Tom Sweeney, in an interview filmed some weeks earlier, saying he wasn't sure he wanted to go. "I like this bed here. I like my painkillers. I like my bath and a shower. The nurse after me. I'm not fit to go back in any van. Never mind, never mind. Shall we try, love?"

Sean Lynch was 10 when he left Ireland; Tom Coffey was 18; Tom Sweeney was 18 or 19; Pat Kelly was 24. They're old men now. They were among the many thousands who came to Britain to work on the roads and building sites of a booming postwar economy and who, for various reasons, have never been able to go back. The work was casual, and often dangerous; but there was plenty of it, if you knew where to look. Hitching, walking or being driven in cramped vans, the men would follow the work around the country, setting off on a rumour or studying Construction News – known as "Paddy's prayer book", according to Sean – for the latest big jobs.

When I meet Sean, Pat and Tom Coffey a year on, they tell me about their working lives; about cooking breakfast on a shovel on the building sites (the trick, apparently, being to wedge a couple of mushrooms either side of the sausages to keep them from rolling off), about men being conned into selling their national insurance numbers, about being paid in the pub and finding work in the pub, and borrowing money in the pub that kept them tied to the gangermen until the following week's payday. "If you didn't drink, you weren't wanted," Sean says. "You were an outcast."

I want to ask the men what it had been like going back to Ireland after such a long time, what they'd found and what they'd hoped to find, how it had felt to be involved with putting the film together and watching other people watch their lives on screen as I'd done that evening in their garden a year before. But mostly they want to talk about work. Even Tom Coffey, who is otherwise very quiet and subdued, is voluble in his descriptions of work: "It was 14ft wide and 16ft deep. Yes. What a trench it was. Outside Southampton. It was the length of this room anyway. It was a trench for the fixed gas mains underneath it. They had that bridge down the road in about an hour, reopened the road in an hour. That was 35 years ago." I ask Tom what stories he'd heard about England before he'd come here. "Not good ones anyway," he says. So why did he come? "There was nothing for me there," he says softly.

I ask Pat why he'd come to England at 24, when he'd already had work with a farmer in Donegal. He starts to say something about the wages being better, but Mick Spriggs, another man who's listening in to our conversation, suddenly interrupts.

"Why does a man go anywhere?" he calls out. "He's got to go somewhere. What's the difference? He's got to live somewhere!"

"There was gold here," Sean announces, drily, leaning forward in his chair: "Gold in England!" He pauses. "We'd come to build; to build this country for you." From across the room, Mick repeats his question.

"Why does a man go anywhere?"

One of the guiding principles of Arise, You Gallant Sweeneys! is that it's not a film about these men making their return visit to Ireland; it's a film by them. All the production decisions were made by the group, the editing was done collaboratively, and the rights in the final product are owned collectively by everyone in the group, which calls itself the Long Distance Gang after the name traditionally adopted by itinerant labourers. The members of the group were initially contacted by Ian Nesbitt, a freelance artist, and Julie Cassidy Gosling, a community activist, and the planning of the trip was a group collaboration, which took over a year of talking and remembering and singing.

"We'd sing all sorts of things while we were planning," Julie remembers. "It actually helped, it made us feel very companionable. The Cliffs Of Dooneen, all sorts of things."

"Sometimes we'd have meetings where we wouldn't plan anything," Ian says. "We'd just have a bit of a sing and a bit of stew."

"Then somebody said it would be a good idea to all get in a minibus first to see if we could manage it, all getting along, do you remember?"

"Oh, yeah," Sean says, smiling.

"And Tom Sweeney saw a hole in the wall for the first time, and he said, 'Holy Mother of God, there's money coming out of that!' Can you remember? 'Holy Mother of God, would you look at the tenner coming out of the wall!'" Judging by the laughter, everyone does remember.

Tom Coffey was also involved in planning the trip, but at the last moment, with his bags packed and his money and passport ready, decided not to go. I ask him why.

"He wasn't able," Sean calls from across the room. Tom just points at himself.

"Stomach," he said. There is a silence, and then Ian asks Tom if, as well as his stomach being bad, he'd been worried that when he got to Ireland he wouldn't want to come back.

"Yes," Tom agrees.

"You had things you wanted to sort out at home," Julie reminds him, gently. "Didn't you?"

Tom nods in agreement again. I wait for him to say more, but it is clear that whatever Tom had wanted to sort out at home is none of my business.

I ask Sean whether he'd had second thoughts about the trip when he woke up that morning.

"Oh, I was going," Sean says, looking scornful. "I was ready to go. What was there to worry about?"

"Because you hadn't been back for so long?" Julie suggests.

"Oh, aye," Sean concedes. "Aye, I was a bit nervous. There's people I haven't seen for years." What had he been hoping to find? "That it hadn't changed much anyway," he says. "I'd rather that." Another man, listening in, calls out that everything changes down the years and Pat, in his low, soft voice, murmurs something about all the old people being dead.

Arise, You Gallant Sweeneys! is a film very much in the observational tradition. There are no voiceovers or captions (although there are, after much debate, subtitles); no explanations of the background to the journey or the route they're taking; just the group, and the road, and the conversations they have with each other and with the camera. The end result is a slow-paced, rambling and occasionally chaotic road trip through the half-remembered towns and villages they left behind so long ago. It's also a moving, engaging and often deeply funny exploration of exile, and memory, and loss.

There are long driving sequences – the white lines on the roads, telegraph wires, traffic jams – interspersed with scenes of the group arriving at some village, or lake, or roadside church, and clambering out of the van. Mostly the men stand around these places looking bemused. "I know England backwards," Chris Cassidy, the group's driver, says, looking across a bay at a row of heathered hills. "I been all over it working. But I don't know this country. I was too young when I left. Thousands of Irish people don't know Ireland at all, y'know?"

Along the way, we hear stories of their working lives, of why they went to England to find work, and why they never went back. There are tales of dangerous working practices, and exploitation – one man, talking about his wages not being paid, still trembles with fury 30 years later – but there are also conversations about horses, and pubs, and a man called Peter McManaman who once caught a dose of the clap. This isn't a film that's big on politics, or history, or any kind of agenda; it's a film that wants you to take these men as you find them. And often the way we find them is with a drink in hand, singing old Irish songs of exile and yearning, laughing helplessly at some joke or passing remark.

And it is, perhaps surprisingly, an often funny film. The men's wheezing laughter can be infectious, and their easy mocking of each other draws the viewer in. On the ferry, Sean and Chris have a baffling conversation about the exchange rate: "There's not 100 cents in a euro, is there? It goes up and down, doesn't it?"

One by one, the men roll into the towns where they grew up, wandering around or setting out to find someone who remembers them. And the film is haunted by a strong sense that for the most part they've left this homecoming too late. In one scene, we see Sean being shocked by the news that an old friend called Deborah has died. Moments later, speaking to another acquaintance, he says, "And Deborah? How's Deborah?" Oh, she died, comes the reply. "Dead?" Sean says, shocked all over again; "Deborah's dead? Oh, God bless her."

Tom Sweeney didn't leave it too late, though: in the film's emotional centrepiece, he meets his brother, Martin, for the first time in 50 years. As the two of them sit together on a settee, holding hands, a friend says that Martin had been told Tom was dead. "And then today there was this note on the table; well, he was dumbfounded. He didn't know whether he was dreaming or what!"

There is much left out of the film. There were times during the trip when people didn't want any filming going on, or when whoever had the camera chose not to film; and there were scenes the group as a whole decided to leave out during the editing process. And when Sean went back to Arvagh a few months later, travelling with just Ian and Julie, the cameras were left behind.

On that occasion, the three of them went to a pub where they'd been told an old friend of Sean's might be working. Not only was he there, serving drinks, but another old friend was sitting at the end of the bar with his son.

"They almost fell off their seats, didn't they?" Ian remembers. Sean nods. "And then your other mate, he had a photo of you, in his pocket. We'd walked into the village pub after 50 years, and he had a photo of you at school, in his pocket."

"And remember the next night we went back in, and nearly the whole of the town had turned out to see you?" Julie says. "Remember that? The word got round very quickly. There were cousins and second cousins and in-laws, and everyone turned out to see you, didn't they?"

"Yeah," Sean says.

"How did that feel, when you saw all those people?"

"Oh, good, yeah."

"It was good, wasn't it? You stood them all a drink, didn't you, remember?"

"Yeah."

"And Danny brought you something, remember?"

"Potcheen."

"He brought you a bottle of Potcheen, didn't he?"

"Two. Of course they had to be watered down."

"You've never forgiven me for watering them down."

"You won't water the next one down."

Sean, Julie and Ian went back to Arvagh again, just before Christmas. Sean was very ill with cancer, and it was to be his last visit there. He died in February.

At that first garden premiere of the film, the men who feature in it had mostly stood up and gone back into the house by the time it had finished. It was a cold evening, after all. But it was clear then, and has become clearer since talking to them, that they take great pride in the film, and in the stories it has enabled them to tell. (I don't really have a quote for this; when I asked what they felt about it, Sean simply said it was "all right". You'll just have to trust me that, coming from Sean, "all right" is a ringing endorsement.)

As well as their pride in the film itself, Julie tells me about the effect the project has had on the group's sense of confidence and wellbeing. When the group first met, the men were living separately, in different care homes and hostels across the city; the project has led directly to their needs for companionship and self-expression being recognised, and more of them are now living together. "It brings into question what is meant by 'wellbeing'," Julie says. "Is their definition of wellbeing any less valid just because it dares to be different?"

The final scene in the film shows Sean on the deck of the ferry, leaving Dublin again. He talks about his working life, and then he interrupts himself to make conversation with a young blond-haired woman who's caught his eye. She's friendly enough and asks about his life in Nottingham and how long he's been away. He leans forward to whisper something in her ear, something that appears, from the look on his face and the look on hers, to be a proposition.

"I don't think so!" she says, laughing, and moves away. Sean turns to the camera and smiles.

"That's me all over," he says. "I'll never change. I don't want to change. Ever!"

• Tom Coffey died in December 2010. He was taken back to Ireland for burial in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon.

To arrange festival or one-off screenings of Arise You Gallant Sweeneys, or to discuss distribution rights or DVD sales, please contact outsidefilm@mail.com. Even The Dogs, Jon McGregor's third novel, is published by Bloomsbury.

Lucky number...




Lucky gate...
A couple weeks ago the Mouse will let out the first, minimalist details about the coming Magic Kingdom-styled theme park that it plans to open in Shanghai in 2015/16...

But what I want to know is what will come after it?


I mean, we know that Shanghai Disneyland is going to be modeled after a Magic Kingdom styled park. Of course there will be variation, with no Main Street involved, but it's still going to follow the basic principles of the hub/4-5 lands concept that Walt Disney pioneered back in the Fifties. But what will the park after that one be? We know that Shanghai will be Iger's first chance to put the stamp of his taste on a Disney park. But it's going to be something that already has guidelines to adhere to. So it won't tell us how far, or how daring the Walt Disney Company via Iger wil go. The park after SDL will be a much bigger and far more interesting test.

First off, examine the parks that the Mouse already has:




* In California it has two (2) with the original Disneyland and Disney California Adventure.




* In Florida it has four (4) with the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Disney's Hollywood Studios, Disney's Animal Kingdom, not to mention a host of other properties including a couple of water parks.




* In Japan it has two (2), although they're not technically owned by them, but franchises that royalties are derived from.




* In France it hast two (2) with Disneyland Paris and Walt Disney Studios Paris.



* In China it has one (1) for now (Hong Kong Disneyland), and one (1) that is supposed to be done after the middle of the decade (Shanghai Disneyland).

Twelve parks, 12 gates. So, what's next?

California -

Well, let's narrow down the possibilities for each of these first. Starting with the original, what are the chances we'll have a third gate for Anaheim in the next few years? Sadly, not likely at all. There are blue sky projects all over WDI, but nothing so big is being planned for a third theme park right now. The majority of the resources are going toward making the Second work and then the focus will likely shift to the Disneyland park in 2011/12 for some tlc for a few years. This along with a small possible/probable second expansion will likely fill out most of this decade for the Disneyland Resort.

If a third gate comes, it'll be later in the decade, no sooner than 2017/18 at the earliest. And likely, that would probably be the announcement of, not the building of any third park. For now, we have to be content with improving the parks and resort. This isn't bad news as with each addition the parks/hotels/shops become closer to being a true resort as was promised almost a decade ago. It will arrive late, but starting in 2012 we'll get what was deserved all the way back into 2001. A third gate will be a blessed surprise and a welcome addition, but not an expected one.

Florida -

Then perhaps a fifth gate for Florida? Again, not much planning going ahead for a massive new gate like the other four. As of now you shouldn't expect a park along the size and scope of the last three gates. Right now, that "Boutique" park planned for night time guests is still in the works, but with the economy the way it is the announcement of that is in doubt. So, until the international outlook becomes better, I don't think number five will be alive. Which, really is fine with me.

WDW has four parks right now that need attention directed by WDI (as the current Fantasyland expansion shows) and hopefully the park managers and Suits will be able to work on improving the experience for guest. I don't expect to see any announcement during this decade. If the economy booms and attendance surges, anything is possible, but the build out of the parks is pretty full. About the best we can hope is a furthered improvement of the current parks and the current experience.

Europe -

Now, then you have Paris with its two gates. There perhaps? No. Let me restate that: NO. Not a snowballs chance in Hades. If there is any resort that has absolutely no chance of getting another gate, it's Paris. I know that EuroDisney recently came out with plans that included announcements of a possible park, but these are projections over decades, not years. With the financial situation in Europe the way it is, any dream of announcing a third park will be just that: a dream. But with the 20th anniversary coming up you can look forward to some updates/rethemes and additional E-Tickets at both parks.

I'd suggest going over to Alain's excellent Disney and More blog if you wish to have some more knowledge as to what could be coming down the line for the parks. It's great to see that they're still expanding the two parks, even if there is no plan/news for a third gate. Now, if they'd just build a better front entrance to Walt Disney Studios Paris, like what is happening to California Adventure. Well, I guess you can't have everything.

Asia -

J a p a n
Surely Tokyo would have something coming up? After that earthquake/tsunami it's going to take some time for the Oriental Land Company to get back up to speed and that could take a few years. Any talks of a third gate are really off the table. But it doesn't mean there haven't been projects that the Walt Disney Company and their Japanese partners haven't tried. Remember how they were going to have that Urban Entertainment Center, a couple of years ago? This was a product of those wonderful Jay Rasulo daze, uhm, I mean days, that are now behind us. But the Japanese owners of the Disney's only franchise couldn't make the numbers work for the OLC and it was scrapped. Even if it were to have been built, it wouldn't have been on the Tokyo Disney Resort or even in Tokyo for that matter. Several other cities were being looked at for this expansion of Disney's only franchise partner.

As for the resort, any expansion would more than likely require more landfill and that is a very pricey expenditure, even for the Oriental Land Company. So unless plans for parking structures go through so as to free up some of those parking lots, any plan for a third gate in the land of the rising sun won't rise. Then again, with the liquefaction of the parking lot from the natural disaster, perhaps this could be feasible? There is a model in the Imagineers secretive model room of a project for the TDR, but it waits, unwanted. That doesn't mean that all construction is dormant of course. You could see a great deal of expansion of the current parks. Tokyo DisneySEA in particular has continually added attractions over the past few years that will culminate this year in the tenth anniversary of that amazing park. Events and planning for the fifteenth anniversary are already starting to be talked about and you can imagine a few surprises to be announcEd as that date comes closer.

C h i n a
So, that leaves only Hong Kong. What could be happening there? Well, we know what's going on there up until 2013 with the current Extreme Expansion. Notice that date? It's a year sooner than originally announced and that is by design. They want to get as far out in front of Shanghai as possible. In fact, if the plans go well for the Extreme Expansion and attendance goes up to expectations then plans are for another, slightly smaller expansion to be completed by the opening of China's second Disneyland. Now, as for the Hong Kong Disney Resort; is a second park in the cards for the future?

No. Not anytime soon. There is still a couple of years before the actual expiration date on the original deal. The most likely thing to happen is that the Walt Disney Company will get a waver or extension for at least into the next decade. By the beginning of the next decade we can probably expect Hong Kong to get another park, but like DCA, HKDL is in need of tender love and care.

As for Shanhai Disney Resort, there are plans to build out to at least two, but possibly three theme parks when completed. But that plan is over a decades expected roll out. And we won't see a second park for this park until well into the next decade.

So will all this in mind it brings into perspective what this decade is. From 2011-2020 is a recovery decade, a hangover decade. A span of time that will mostly be used to buttress or fix up existing parks and resorts. This decade will be a chance for the Mouse to refresh and strengthen the places and experiences to be found in a Disney kingdom.

The next decade will be the one where the unexpected will come...

What open source/free software projects exist that have a humanitarian or social justice mission?

I'm looking to improve my coding skills by working on an open source/free software project in my free time. I'd love it if said project's mission was to improve people's lives in a concrete sort of way. I'm flexible on what exactly that means: whether it's software custom-made for a liberal organization, a web app designed for an endangered/oppressed group, or just something that helps people (a la Sahana).

What's out there?

(I'm also interested in programs like Code for America that might appeal to bleeding-heart programmers such as myself.)

PlayBook gets off to a slow start

RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook?tablet has gone on sale in the US after months of teasing. However, a lack of buzz and poor reviews has stalled RIM’s plans to dominate the fierce market and tough competition.

The 7-inch tablet has gone on sale across the US at $499 for the 16GB version, $599 for the 32GB model and $699 for the 64GB offering.

But while opening sales figures aren’t yet known, reviewers in the US haven’t rated the device well; seemingly upset that it doesn’t have native email, a calendar or support for many of the apps people use on other devices like the Motorola Xoom or Apple’s iPad.

In fact, app support for many favourites is unlikely to be present on launch at all. Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Kindle and Google Maps are all missing, along with a majority of high profile iOS and Android apps.

RIM has said that it plans to address all these software issues with updates rolling out as quick as it can, and no doubt we will get more news on when, what, where, why and how at the company’s BlackBerry World event in May (Pocket-lint will be there). But the lack of overall excitement has forced many to rethink whether the wait was worth it.

That lack of support has meant that, for the time being, many are adopting the “wait and see” approach, rather than queuing to get their hands on the latest BlackBerry device. There's certainly been no Apple-esque queues or fans camping outside stores.

In addition, analysts polled by Reuters estimate RIM will sell about three million PlayBooks in 2011 compared to Apple’s projected 60 million sales.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Historically, RIM has never been one to benefit from launch hype - an experience that it’s learnt all too well in recent years.

And a customary teardown by the chaps at iFixit proves that the PlayBook has the hardware spec to take future upgrades, with it sporting a fast processor, two cameras (3-megapixel on the front and 5-megapixel on the back), and a digital 3-axis accelerometer for gaming.

The BlackBerry Torch?smartphone, like the BlackBerry PlayBook, was also slammed in the US in early reviews, but that didn’t stop consumers flocking to buy the touchscreen slider after it transpired that early reviews were based on pre-launch software that was quickly fixed. The Torch is now one of RIMs most successful phones.

Certainly, it’s something that looks to be the case when the PlayBook comes to the UK in the coming weeks - our sources suggest the UK version will have been tweaked for the new market before launch.

Speaking of which, although RIM has yet to officially announce a UK launch date, it hasn’t stopped Phones 4 U starting to take pre-orders. It’s normally a good sign that things are starting to happen and should, in theory, mean that Brits don’t have long to wait.

RIM’s PlayBook isn’t dead on arrival as some have suggested, but it does have a lot of work to do to prove that it’s got what it takes to take on the market leader.

Tags: Tablets RIM BlackBerry PlayBook BlackBerry Torch

Latest BlackBerry launch struggles to excite - but what's new there? originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:02:03 +0100

Splattered Mermaids has issued the following announcement about upcoming tour dates and working on a new album:

"What's up grinders out there?

"The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

As a theorist, one of the challenges I face is bringing the experimental and observational sides of what we study to all of you. I understand its importance, its significance, and how it is the ultimate arbiter of our understanding. And yet, it is not my strongest suit. Nonetheless, tomorrow night (the 19^th) is an important milestone: the date I take my astronomy students up to the observatory to view the night sky!

(Image credit: Melissa Pereira, Lewis & Clark alum.)

What's sort of amazing is how much you can see through just a simple telescope -- even in less-than-ideal conditions -- even if you know almost nothing about astronomy.

Let me take you through it, assuming you live in the Northern Hemisphere and only know how to find one thing:

(Image credit: Jerry Lodriguss.)

The Big Dipper! The most easily identifiable object in the Northern Skies, if all you can do is find this guy, here's how you -- given good, dark skies -- can find a whole slew of beautiful objects! Now, before we get going, you need to know that the more light pollution you have -- i.e., the lower your elevation, the closer you are to cities, and the fuller the Moon is -- the less able you'll be to see faint and diffuse objects. Let's get on with it!

You'll need to get your bearings, and that means finding true North. In the Northern Hemisphere, we are guided by the North Star, which is easy to find if you know your Big Dipper! Simply take the last two stars in the "cup" portion of the dipper and follow them up and out of the cup; they'll run into Polaris, the bright pole star and the edge of the handle in the Little Dipper!

Here in April, the Big Dipper stars out high in the sky after Sunset, making it the ideal guidepost for your night-sky hunting. The dipper itself is made up of seven stars... or is it?

Just barely visible to the naked eye is the fact that the second star in the handle of the Big Dipper is actually a double star. But if you point your telescope at it, know what you'll find?

(Image credit: Lodriguss again!)

It's actually four stars! Mizar is a binary star system, where both stars appear very bright, and there is a faint star behind and between Alcor and Mizar, visible only through (good) binoculars or a telescope.

But the Big Dipper can not only lead you to Polaris, it can lead you to a couple of the brightest and most spectacular stars in the Northern Hemisphere. Let's start with #1!

(Image credit: Astrobob, using Stellarium.)

If you follow the curve of the handle through space for a little while, you'll come to Arcturus (make an "arc to Arcturus"), the orange giant that is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere! Unfortunately for you telescope enthusiasts, there's nothing remarkable about it through a telescope.

But instead of following the handle, try following the two stars that make up the top of the Dipper's cup.

(Image credit: Synaptic Sky.)

They take you, going away from the Dipper's handle, to Capella, the third brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere (and sixth overall)! Capella is notable for being the brightest star that's also close to the North Pole (and hence is the most seen bright star in the Northern Skies year-round), but through a telescope, Capella is something special.

(Image credit: Jim Napolitano.)

Capella is actually a double yellow giant! Two yellow giant stars, in close orbit around one another, that never eclipse one another! (In other words, any time you look at them, you'll always be able to see two distinct, non-overlapping stars.)

But if you get a really good telescope, you won't just see the two yellow giants...

You'll see that Capella is a pair of binaries! The two yellow giants and two red dwarf stars.

Not bad for stars, simply by being able to find the Big Dipper. What if you wanted to go beyond stars, and find a beautiful planetary nebula?

Guess what? There's one in the Big Dipper! In the 18^th Century, Charles Messier made the first catalogue of "non-cometary" objects in our night skies. Only four of them were planetary nebulae, or stellar corpses of red giants that have blown off their outer layers. One of them -- the Owl Nebula, or M97 -- is right there, just below the bottom of the "cup" of the Dipper!

(Image credit: Keith Quattrocchi.)

The two dark "eyes" give it its name, although perhaps today it would be called the Amy Winehouse nebula? While it's one of the fainter nebulae in the sky, its compactness means it's going to be visible even with substantial light pollution through a reasonably-sized telescope. Originally around the mass of our Sun, the Owl Nebula is only about 6,000 years old, with about 15% of the Sun's mass making up the glowing, "nebular" region.

But what if you're dissatisfied with stars or nebulae? What if you want to find some galaxies? Luckily for you, the Big Dipper can help you find three of the most spectacular ones. Let's start with the easiest.

Go directly "below" the last star in the handle, perpendicular to the line it makes with the Alcor/Mizar double star next to it. That's the location of the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, one of the most spectacular (and one of the brighter) face-on spirals in our sky!

If you had a really good telescope, you might see something like this...

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA.)

Of course, you likely don't have Hubble, but with good skies, you can see the companion galaxy, NGC 5195, even with large binoculars or a small telescope! Those pink regions in M51 are real, not false color, and are emission lines from star-forming regions.

Want a challenge? Try to find one of the faintest face-on spiral galaxies near the Big Dipper:

(Image credit: Naoyuki Kurita.)

M101! Start at Mizar/Alcor, and follow the line that Mizar makes with Alcor. That should take you to a fairly bright star, labeled "81" above. Bend "down" (back towards the Dipper's handle) and follow the rough "line" of brighter stars until you've hit four in a row, and then head back "up" (away from the Dipper's handle) one last time; that fuzzy blob is M101, the Pinwheel galaxy!

Only visible in places with low light pollution, M101 is a challenge for amateur observers. But for Hubble...

(Image credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA, and Robert Gendler.)

I certainly don't expect to see this, polluted by bright city skies (and a nearly full Moon tomorrow night), but it is certainly worth a try!

But there is one more candidate that I would like to try for, the great galaxy pair, M81 and M82. How to get there?

(Image credit: NASA, ESA, Z. Levay (STScI) and A. Fujii.)

Take the last star in the "cup" of the Big Dipper (the last of the pointer stars that points towards the North Star) and the one diagonally down from it. (Dubhe and Phecda, respectively.) Connect Phecda to Dubhe, and continue on in an imaginary line for the same distance, and that should plunk you down very close to a pair of bright, interacting galaxies, M81 and M82!

(Image credit: Rainer Zmaritsch & Alexander Gross.)

With dark skies and a good telescope, these are spectacular. With city skies and a moderately-sized scope, they may be visible at all... we'll see.

And those are some amazing sights available to you, even if all you have is a simple telescope, and even if all you know is the Big Dipper! And for those of you who are way ahead of me, tomorrow night, what objects do you recommend viewing with a 16" scope under heavy light pollution? I know that Saturn is up...

Read the comments on this post...

By Amy Campbell

Grocery shopping can be a daunting task for anyone, even dietitians. Keeping up with label reading and trying to decipher the ingredients list practically requires a PhD. (OK, perhaps that's an exaggeration, but it can often be confusing.) What's frustrating for me is the sneaky, stealthy way that some (not all) food manufacturers package and advertise their foods to make them seem "healthy" and "good for you." I sometimes have to pause when I'm shopping to figure out if the product is really too good to be true.

I can imagine how confusing it can be for people who are honestly trying to make better food choices without spending hours in the supermarket. So this week, I'm highlighting a few of those "health foods" that maybe are thinly disguised. I should point out that the definition of "healthy" is somewhat subjective. For example, you may decide that a healthy food is one that is low in calories or low in carbohydrate. Others may define healthy as being free of artificial sweeteners or food colorings.

Fruited Yogurt
I'm a big fan of yogurt. It's a great source of calcium, protein, and good-for-you bacteria called probiotics. The downside of some yogurts is that they can be filled with sugar. Many people don't care for the tangy taste of plain yogurt, so food companies doctor up their yogurt by adding fruit…along with high fructose corn syrup. And to get kids to eat their yogurt, the companies have added even more sugar in the form of those little crunchy-things (such as cookies) to stir in, essentially making a highly nutritious food not much better than a sugary dessert.

Let's take Dannon Fruit on the Bottom Raspberry yogurt: A 6-ounce cup contains 150 calories, 1.5 grams of fat, and 1 gram of saturated fat. Not too bad in terms of heart health (low-saturated-fat foods have no more than 1 gram per serving). But keep reading the Nutrition Facts label and you'll see that the yogurt has 28 grams of carbohydrate (2 carbohydrate choices worth) and 26 grams of sugar!

Now, I should point out that some of that sugar is naturally occurring, coming from lactose, a milk sugar. Yet the second ingredient on the list is fructose syrup, and the fourth ingredient is sugar (as if you needed more). Dannon's Light & Fit Raspberry yogurt contains 80 calories, 0 grams of fat, 0 grams of saturated fat, 16 grams of carbohydrate, and 11 grams of sugar per 6-ounce container. It seems like a better choice. Keep in mind that this yogurt contains three nonnutritive sweeteners: aspartame, acesulfame-K, and sucralose, along with fructose. Depending on how you feel about nonnutritive sweeteners, this may not be your first choice either.

Bottom line. Don't give up on yogurt, but choose wisely. Go for nonfat varieties that contain about 12 grams of sugar (that's what naturally occurs in 6 ounces of yogurt) and roughly 90 to 120 calories per serving. Choose less "fruity" flavors such as vanilla or lemon if you can't take plain. Or, try plain yogurt and add your own fresh or dried fruit and/or some nuts, ground flaxseed, or lower-fat granola. Try the newer Greek-style yogurts, too. They're generally lower in carbohydrate (which means easier on your blood glucose) and higher in protein than regular yogurts — but again, choose the nonfat varieties.

Salad
Summer is right around the corner. This means bathing suit season, cookouts, hot weather…basically a time to lighten up your food and maybe drop a few pounds. What do people turn to? Salad! Salads are awesome if they're made the right way. And if you make your own salads, you're in control, which means you decide what goes in the salad bowl.

But what happens when you're out and you need a quick, healthy lunch? Is a salad really the best option? Some salads are obviously not too healthy. Beware the chicken, tuna, shrimp, or egg salads that are dripping in mayonnaise (even if they ARE served on a bed of lettuce)! Are Caesar salads any better? Not if you go to Wendy's and order the Spicy Chicken Caesar with Lemon Garlic Caesar Dressing. An entire salad will set you back 750 calories, 49 grams of fat, 15 grams of saturated fat, 41 grams of carbohydrate, and 1820 milligrams of sodium. Yikes.

If you're a fan of Panera Bread, you might be thinking that their Greek salad is a healthy option. Let's see: One Greek salad with dressing is 380 calories, 34 grams of fat, 8 grams of saturated fat, 14 grams of carbohydrate, and 1670 milligrams of sodium. Not as big of a nutritional disaster as the Wendy's salad, and it's reasonable in carbohydrate, but the fat and sodium are still pretty high.

Are there any decent salads out there? Surprisingly, McDonald's Southwest Salad With Grilled Chicken isn't half bad. It weighs in at 320 calories, 9 grams of fat, 3 grams of saturated fat, 30 grams of carbohydrate, 30 grams of protein, and 960 milligrams of sodium. It's not perfect, but it's a better choice than the others.

Bottom line. Healthier salads are available, but you'll need to do your homework. Fortunately, most fast food and chain restaurants post the nutritional content of their items on their Web sites and may also have this information in their restaurants.
However, it's really best to make your own salad. Yes, it seems like work, but it's really the best way.

Start off with a pile of washed leafy greens of your choosing. Next, add an assortment of raw veggies, such as shredded carrots, radishes, red and green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms…the list could go on. Then, if the salad is the entree, add some protein in the form of grilled chicken or turkey, hardboiled eggs, salmon, tuna, tofu, chickpeas, black beans, or low-fat cottage cheese (protein also helps keep you feeling full). Next, add a small amount of a heart-healthy fat food, such as a few slices of avocado, some black or green olives, a sprinkling of your favorite nut, or some ground up flaxseed. Top it off with an oil and vinegar dressing, or even just plain balsamic vinegar (you know to forgo the creamy Ranch dressing, right?). Yes, you can use bottled dressings but they can be loaded with fat, sodium, and/or sugar, so choose wisely.

More "not-so-healthful" foods next week!

------------------------

Copyright (C) 2011 R.A. Rapaport Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. See http://www.DiabetesSelfManagement.com/Terms/ for terms and conditions of reuse.

The following comes from http://www.womansday.com/Articles/Life/11-Funny-Fine-Print-Warnings.html .  Enjoy! 11 Funny Fine-Print Warnings Check out the hilarious safety precautions on these product labels By Amanda Greene Posted January 05, 2011 from WomansDay.com Remember on The Office when Michael Scott drove into a lake because his GPS system told him to turn right? Well, that's the sort of thing the creators of the products below are trying to prevent with their (unintentionally) hilarious warning labels. Printed on everything from hairdryers to cheese, these common-sense precautions may help some folks avoid trouble, but for the rest of us, they're just good entertainment. Terrestrial Digital Outdoor Antenna [image] If she's drunk and pregnant, is falling off a roof really her biggest worry? Vidal Sassoon hairdryer [image] But then how are we supposed to get the hair of our dreams? iPod shuffle [image] Even if we did want to take a bite out of our iPod, it's probably not worth it. Apple will just come out with one that tastes better in three months. Rowenta Iron [image] The real question is, can we iron clothes while animals are wearing them? Black Cat Fireworks [image] What's wrong with putting fireworks in your mouth?! We've seen Wile E. Coyote do it a million times! Razor Go Kart [image] So it's not just a really cool-looking lounge chair? Child-Size Superman Costume [image] While thousands of children were disappointed when they read the warning label, they were relieved to know the costume still got them free candy. Nabisco Easy Cheese [image] Hey! We thought it was supposed to be easy! Dremel Electric Rotary Tool [image] Who knew there were so many at-home dentists out there? Auto-Shade Windshield Visor [image] But can we keep our blindfolds on? Duraflame Fire Logs [image] Their service hotline must be flooded with satisfied customers.  

If you've followed the RnR Race Day Open Threads, you've seen the hype we've placed on NASCAR The Game 2011. After nearly three years without a proper NASCAR title, fans finally have a new game, with a new production team, as Activision and Eutechnyx take over for EA and Tiburon.

Some of us wanted to believe this would be the second coming of NASCAR Racing 2003, or for others, NASCAR Thunder 2004. The team behind N2011 certainly had the pedigree to to live up to that standards, but did they succeed?

The answer lies after the jump!

Let's start with what's good about the game.

For one, at least when the cars aren't damaged, they were rendered pretty well. Sure, there's no way they could live up to those in Gran Turismo 5's, and there are quite a few decal nitpicks I have. But as an overall critique, the team did a good job with the base models. I'm looking forward to seeing how the 2011 models look when that patch is released at the end of the month.

As far as the other graphics go, the tracks look decent and are up to date as possible with the 2010 season. The user interface is nice, although it suffers from the same problem that other games have in recent memory. It assumes that everyone playing is playing on an HDTV (and I'm not), and not including an SD mode, thus making the text for tube televisions tiny and almost unreadable. It's not like I need to see how far I am behind the leader or how much fuel I have remaining, right?

For the most part, the sound is what you'd expect.

The menu music, especially opening with ZZ Top's "La Grange", isn't bad at all. The soundtrack has with only one subpar song.

The cars sound as they should, although when pulling out of the pits for qualifying there's a weird skipping in the engine.The biggest issue here is the spotter. In the Days of Thunder review, I ragged on the voice work as being bad, but at least Rowdy Burns was INFORMATIVE.

Ty Norris? Not so much.

He's about 4 seconds too late when it comes to cars being on your door, constantly says "clear" when you have a lead of any amount, and the absolute worst part lies in his CONSTANTLY lamenting about his food issues, talking about choking on cocktails, dropping hot dogs, and buying pizza. These lines are repeated about three times each, IN A 15 LAP RACE. Just horrendous work here.

As far as core gameplay goes, the game is solid. Not hardly Gran Turismo good, but I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

It's not nearly as terrible as Days of Thunder which was all about finding new and exciting ways to screw you over. Bristol and Daytona, as well as the road courses, have their moments. With Bristol, there is absolutely no way to avoid the turn 4 wall, and sometimes, sliding against it bounces you into the air, stops all forward momentum, and sends you across the track in one of the game's more laughable moments.

The main issue here is the rubber band AI. For one, there's just no middle ground when it comes to difficulty.

If you play on Easy or Medium, prepare to win nearly every race, save Daytona, with at LEAST a two-second lead. Even Talladega. Hard mode? You'll never even touch the end of the pack. Maybe I'm just too spoiled by NR2003's difficulty sliders, but not having that middle ground is simply ridiculous.

Add in that the AI drivers just don't have any aggression to them except Daytona, where they will actively screw you over any chance they get, and you get one of the biggest disappointments about this game.

If we stopped there, I could happily rate the game a B- and end the review. But no, you see, there's far greater disappointment to be had. For one, the paint shop is one of the worst I've ever seen in a racing sim. Designs are needlessly hard to place, much less line up correctly on the other side of the car. Only having 5 font options for numbers is laughable. The lack of headlight/taillight decals is just wrong.

Oh, and speaking of this lack of decals? Only having a small amount of sponsors, and not even having the freakin' Sprint Cup contingency logo, is frankly stupid. The image you see above is the best I could churn out with this thing.

Pathetic.

And then, there's the damage model. Remember how I slightly praised the base car models? Well, all that goes out the window when you get damage. This is one of the most underwhelming, and inconsistent, damage models I have ever seen. For starters, if you damage any part of the side, it damages the entire side of the car. I've had moments where I drifted the car a bit, smacked the wall with just the rear of the car, and then changed views to find that even the front part of the side was damaged. And not just "slid against the wall" damaged, I mean, "pieces hanging off" damage.

That's another thing. Even sliding against the wall for a brief second will completely total your car. And then, there's this...

When I said inconsistent, I meant it. One of those images is the aftermath of a full speed, head-on collision with the wall, that even made my car go off the ground for a couple seconds. The other is the aftermath of simple bump drafting. Can you tell which is which? Well, in the tradition of old shampoo commercials, if you can't tell, why should I? Add in that computer controlled cars get ZERO damage no matter how hard they hit (I saw David Ragan once flip 12 times, and then drive away, with no damage), and you just get a horrible horrible excuse for a model.

And the game is just so full of glitches. There's the Bristol wall glitch, a glitch that causes drivers who aren't Carl Edwards to do backflips (Yes, Mark Martin and Bill Elliott do backflips), ones that cause MASSIVE pileups on pit road, make cars and tracks disappear during victory celebrations, leaving your driver floating in a weird blue mess of a world, and COUNTLESS freeze-ups that force you to hard-reset your PS3.

It's as they didn't even care to bug test the game.

Eutechnyx has been working on fixing the aforementioned problems, and plan to release a patch on May 9th, along with the 2011 DLC, but therein lies a major problem with game companies these days. The "release it now, patch it later" mentality that's come with the ability for gamers to download content to their consoles. This game and so many others that had such high hopes for, is a victim of sheer laziness.

They should have delayed the game until they fixed all the bugs. But that even invites a more problematic issue: The game WAS delayed an extra month for the fixes. And if these bugs still got through, I shudder to think how bad initial release may have turned out.

I really did want to love this game, but as it stands now, it's a massive disappointment.

Sure, you could say "it's their first attempt at NASCAR, so cut them some slack", but that really doesn't hold any water. A large portion of the Eutechnyx team worked on the old Papyrus NASCAR games, and while they had their problems, they were still very good.

So no, it's not their first attempt, and I'm not cutting them any slack. I'll certainly give the patch but as the game stands now... Don't get it.

Final Grade: C-

Op. Ed. --

Brett and I share pretty similar views of NASCAR The Game 2011.

It treats itself as a racing simulator but plays too much like an arcade. Gameplay treats the draft like a mystical power-up when it really shouldn't make a difference at tracks like Martinsville and Bristol.

And the spotter -- Is he working or throwing a party up there? They needed to take a cue from Codemaster's Formula1 2010 on how to treat in-race dialogue. (You really must play this game if you haven't - it's the ultimate simulator.)

On post-race cutscenes, Mark Martin and Todd Bodine should never do backflips.

In regards to gameplay, somehow, bump-drafting at Daytona and Talladega equates to the total-damage witnessed in the images above. It makes no sense that I'd have to turn off damage in order to draft. How else am I supposed to compete?!

The game also allows you to corner-cut on road courses with no penalty. I once went 43rd to first on the last hairpin at Infineon thanks to a corner-cut. That's a hoot.

As previously mentioned, paint-modification was a total let down. I should, at least, be allowed to edit the game's base-templates as we could in Papyrus' NASCAR Racing series.\

If looking at the game from an arcade-style perspective, it gets a B- with room to improve following the downloadable patches. The base is here for a great follow-up. Let's just hope the developers don't rest on their laurels.

-Matt Weaver

@Racing_Observer

As we mentioned earlier on the @FringeTV twitter feed, Fringe executive producer Joel "J.H." Wyman answered fan questions today through his Twitter account @JWFRINGE.



Here is a list of the Q&A:

@PLOTthickenr did the S4 pickup impact the S3 wrapup at all? Also what's the best way 2 show Fox how much we love the show..DVDpurchases maybe?
@JWFRINGE Hi Andrew. No, we did not change any course because of the pick up. Buying dvds is good, but watching live is the best thing.

@FringeDivision9 I know 3.20-3.22 will be an arc but I was wondering if the season finale finale will be a cliffhanger unlike season 1 and 2?
@JWFRINGE Rule number 1. Always have a cliffhanger. ; )

@pencalledwalter Do you know if there a chance for Seth Gable to be a regular next year ? I would love to!
@JWFRINGE Never say never.

@manissag Hi, I hope everything's goin' well! I have a random question: do you watch any other show besides Fringe (haha, obviously)? :)
@JWFRINGE I love Modern Family. Getting into Justified. (Thanks Jeff). I try and check out as much as I can. You?

@wdahl51 How do you like shooting in Vancouver? Will you keep Fringe here?
@JWFRINGE LOVE shooting in Vancouver. Yes, Fringe is staying put.

@mathewsoutback In Bell's notes Walter found a way to regrow the missing parts of his brain and tried it? Have we seen the last of this?
@JWFRINGE Probably not.

@b3rt4 what happens at 6:02 AM EST? ;)
@JWFRINGE watch, watch, watch. ; )

@maria4hitz PLEASE tell me none of the main characters die at the finale, I couldn't watch the show without Olivia Peter or Walter =(
@JWFRINGE There is always a plan. We want you to keep watching. ; )

@CJcubs Has Fringe moved into the mystical realm w/ Bellivia or is there a scientific explanation?
@JWFRINGE Science. ; )

@TripOpt55 Who comes up with all the little differences between here and Over There? Is that something all the writers get involved with?

@JWFRINGE All of us (the writers) kick in. Best idea wins.

@Fringeship Do the writers and EPs take a break (during summer) or they keep coming up with stuff to our hearts pounding & minds wondering?
@JWFRINGE Always thinking, but there is a break. Small break.

@DoraTheVillain Oh, one more question, how much of Season 4 do you already have planned out? ;)
@JWFRINGE We have a lot of ideas.

@Fringeship Maybe too early to ask.Confirmation that Fringe will be at #SDCC?I would love to have opportunity to meet all you fabulous people.
@JWFRINGE Good question. Don't know yet.

@Maria_PORTUGAL2 What subjects are thinking approach in the 4th season?
@JWFRINGE Next season will be different, but still Fringe. We have some exciting ideas.

@SaixMC Hi! you can give us some surprise the episode 3x19??? ;)
@JWFRINGE In no way can you expect what's coming. That's all I can say. ; )

@Maria_PORTUGAL2 Over here you are an excellent writer of a fantastic series and over there your alternative Joel? XD
@JWFRINGE Thank you!!! Over there? Hmn... I wish that over there, or In some universe, I play guitar in the Cure. ; )

@JWFRINGE Gotta go to work! Thanks everyone. I'll get back on soon.

From House Speaker John Boehner, staking out an early position on the upcoming fight to raise the nation's debt ceiling:

The president says I want you to send me a clean bill. Well guess what, Mr. President, not a chance you’re going to get a clean bill. There will not be an increase in the debt limit without something really, really big attached to it.

This is hardly a surprise. We've been talking for months about how there's going to be a big battle over the debt ceiling, and obviously big battles have to be fought over something. Boehner is just being a little more bellicose about this than usual.

So what's the "really, really big" thing that Boehner has in mind? Maybe I'm being obtuse, but I'm at a bit of a loss over this. I don't think Boehner can get away with demanding concessions on side issues like Planned Parenthood or EPA regs. He lost on that already, and his position won't be any better in a couple of months. As for straight budget issues, what's the point? The House is working on a budget right now and it will land on the president's desk soon enough. That's the place for a fight over FY2012 outlays.

So what else is there? Some kind of deal on slashing Medicare? Maybe, but I'd be pretty surprised if Boehner really wanted to tie the Republican Party to big Medicare cuts in an extremely public battle like this. Permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts? Something else?

I know that I'm demonstrating a lack of imagination here, but I'm hard pressed to see what kind of big things Boehner can really attach to a debt ceiling bill. Help me out.

Post by Linda Sharps

I have two nitpicks about AMC's The Killing so far, and one has to do with the weather. Oh, that pervasive gloom and eternal downpour—it's like an additional character in the show, so effectively does it communicate the dread and grief running through each episode. The Killing's rainfall almost seems to have its own dialogue, weaving soggy droplets between the restrained Detective Linden's many silent glances.

It's just, what's up with all the thunder, AMC? As a Seattle resident who knows exactly how rarely we get thunderstorms, I object. Plus, our rain is often more like a grey drizzle than the sort of flood-triggering deluge depicted on the show. (Also, Grey's Anatomy? We say "ferry." NOT "FERRY BOAT.")

(Pedantic TV viewing, it's what's for dinner!)

Anyway! In this third episode, we learn a bit more about the nastiness that goes down in the school basement "cage," which includes a school janitor with a history of watching the action through a peephole. But why was Rosie there? What happened to her? Was that her blood smeared all over the walls?

A myriad of suspects swirl tantalizingly within reach. There's Kris Eckles, a jerky dropout on a skateboard who the janitor pointed out as "El Diablo," on account of the freaky devil mask he was wearing. There's Jasper, Rosie's stupendously skeezy ex-boyfriend with the asshole father who I have my suspicions about.

And eventually a cell phone video emerges that shows both Eckles AND Jasper with Rosie that night in the cage, and they're appearing to … well, what exactly IS going on in that video? Is it rape? Is it consensual? All I know is that it's spooky and druggy and awful, a parent's worst nightmare.

Meanwhile, there's a heart-crushing amount of suffering going on at The Larsens' house, including a scene of Rosie's mother submerging herself in the bathtub in order to try and experience what it felt like for Rosie as she drowned. Linden had lied to the parents, saying Rosie was unconscious when she died, but it seems Rosie's mother guessed otherwise. (She was, after all, the one who noticed how torn up Rosie's fingernails were.)

Over in the Darren Richmond storyline side of things, campaign aide Jamie is accused of being the leak, which he denies. I've disliked this weaselly character from the beginning, but for some reason I believe him. I suspect he's been set up. But why? And by who? Was it Gwen, Richmond's campaign advisor who Richmond is also making sweet political love to? Was it someone in the current mayor's office? Questions, questions.

Questions are all we really have for The Killing, three episodes in. Which leads me to my second nitpick: are we really supposed to believe that Detective Holder, AKA The White Snoop Dogg, is supposed to be such a ladykiller? All the little teen girls are drawn to him like moths to a flame, and I just don't get it. Is it the mosslike facial hair? The narc-friendly wacky tobaccy? Maybe it's the moody, rumbling THUNDER that accompanies him wherever he goes.

What did you think of this week's episode of The Killing? Do you have any theories about the murderer yet?

Image via AMC

Just before 1 a.m., Valenzuela, 21, and another man were at the northwest corner of the Corbett Elementary School yard when Valenzuela fired shots from a handgun, [Tucson Police spokesman Sgt. Matt] Ronstadt said.

Shortly after Valenzuela fired the first few shots, an adult in a nearby apartment verbally confronted him, Ronstadt said.

During the verbal confrontation Valenzuela walked towards the adult and was standing on the road in front of the complex, pointed the gun at the adult in the doorway and fired at least one shot, Ronstadt said.

That is when Johnathan Federico ran into the doorway and was hit by a bullet, Ronstadt said.

What's wrong with the folks out there? Haven't they had enough of this wild-west bullshit? Are they trying to take back the crown from Florida?

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

News that the Ex-Centris is set to re-open as an art-house triplex is creating quite a buzz in the film scene here and should result in the arrival of more foreign films in town. Since Ex-Centris founder Daniel Langlois closed two of three cinemas at the St. Laurent Blvd. complex - leaving only the Cinema Parallele open - two years ago, film distributors have struggled to find screens for their art films and particularly their films from countries other than the U.S.

On Friday, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay, Quebec Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre, Langlois and Cinema Parallèle director Caroline Masse announced that Cinema Parallèle is buying a stake in Ex-Centris for $7.5 million, essentially becoming part owner of the building on St,. Laurent along with Langlois. Provincial funding agency SODEC is lending the indie cinema $4 million, the City of Montreal is pumping in another $2.75 million, and the Daniel Langlois Foundation will give $1 million to the project. In addition, the Culture Ministry will dole out $1.25 million over the next five years to help defray the costs of running the cinema complex.

It is expected that three cinemas will be back in action by this fall and this is undoubtedly a good thing for art-film fans in town who have been hungry for more foreign fare ever since the Ex-Centris dropped down to one screen two years back. But keep in mind that there is quite a bit of public dough going into this adventure and the economist in me wonders why the Quebec government has to give $250,000 for each of the next five years to keep this thiing afloat? Maybe that means there just isn't enough of an audience for this type of cinema? I also wonder what the folks over at the Cinema du Parc think of this government hand-out?

The whole thing also has me wondering about the real-estate implications here and how it ties in to everything else going on in the Quartier des Spectacles. Christian Yaccarini is involved in this project as chair of the board of directors of the Cinema Parallele and he is also one of the main movers-and-shakers behind the Quartier des Spectacles real-estate development thanks to his day job as CEO of the Société développment Angus, which has a number of big projects in the area. While we're on the subject, what's up with the Just For Laughs Museum? Anything going on there?

Short version - good news for films fans, raises questions for those not sure provincial government should be running a multiplex.

 

The co-main event of the Showtime broadcast of Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley is a lightweight title bout between champion Gilbert Melendez and challenger Tatsuya Kawajiri. This is a rematch from there 2006 PRIDE bout where Melendez barely edged out Kawajiri in a thrilling fight. Both fighters have wins over Josh Thomson, although Shinya Aoki crushed Kawajiri while Melendez routed Aoki.

The questions going into this one are: is Melendez ready for UFC competition? Can he even fight there? If he aces this bout against Kawajiri, what's left for him in Strikeforce?

BloodyElbow.com breaks down the stakes:

I want to see a competitive fight here, but I think Melendez is really going to roll. Think about this: Melendez, one of the best lightweights in the world, hasn't fought in 51 weeks. Fifty-one weeks! That makes me incredibly sad because he is, like Mousasi, a special talent. He's coming off dominant performances against Josh Thomson and Aoki and is really hitting his stride. Kawajiri is no pushover, don't get me wrong, but I think Melendez, with the camp he's been in (with Jake Shields, Nick Diaz and Nate Diaz all getting ready to go at the same time), is going to have a distinct advantage here. Kawajiri, to his credit, is coming off a very good win over Thomson, but I see Melendez neutralizing him for the most part, winning a decision.

Here are the grounds on which this might play out:

At Pride Shockwave in 2006, Cesar Gracie product Gilbert Melendez (18-2) vaulted into the spotlight by upsetting overseas standout Tatsuya Kawajiri (27-6-2) in an all-out dogfight.  The decision for Melendez was unanimous to the judges, but not to all fans, as some found controversy in the outcome of veteran versus newcomer.

Everyone can at least agree that it was a light-speed, back-and-forth, barn burning brawl, and there's no reason why the rematch -- scheduled as the appetizer to the "Strikeforce: Diaz vs. Daley" main course -- shouldn't be just as entertaining.  Both have worked diligently to distinguish themselves with the rare honor of being top-ranked lightweights outside of the UFC, and the only prediction I feel confident in is that sparks will fly in this one.

Variables

The Rules:  The gist of Kawajiri's career took place in Shooto, Pride, and DREAM, where he freely bombarded knees to sprawling opponents in any position.  Not only is this a crucial weapon in his arsenal that's become ingrained into his instincts through years of fighting, but transitioning to divergent guidelines can be mentally taxing, especially in the heat of battle.

Ring vs. Cage:  I don't even want to touch the pros and cons of this debate, but I believe the ninety-degree angle corners and smaller square footage of the ring facilitated Kawajiri's clinch and grappling, and the open space in the cage will favor Melendez's newly enhanced elusive style much more.

The Balance:  These two competitors are so similar and well-rounded in all aspects that even where one has a slight advantage, the other seems to hold an equalizing property.

Sparing the Blah, Blah:  Rather than place unnecessary worth in the following speculation, my best suggestion is to go back and watch their first encounter, understand that these two are extremely evenly matched, soak in the broad range of martial arts technique they integrate so fluently, and hope we're treated to the same display.

I see this fight going similarly to the first, but with Melendez winning with more ease this time. Whereas his striking was loose and unrefined before, now it's become purpose-driven and significantly cleaner.

Kawajiri has a top-level wrestling game, but it's a basic game, too. Those basics are incredibly tight and hugely effective, but it's Melendez's adaptability along with his preparedness that will be the difference.

Should be one hell of a scrap either way.

My prediction: Melendez by TKO.

I'm increasingly seeing signs that tell me that Microsoft and SharePoint are going to secure a dominant market position as the shift toward cloud-based computing accelerates. 

Microsoft may be two years behind in the tablet game and grasping at relevancy with Windows Phone 7, but you heard it here first -- Microsoft is going to be THE BIG WINNER when it comes to enterprise computing in the cloud.  How big is big?  I believe their share of the enterprise cloud is going to be equivalent to the virtual monopolies they have around Windows, Office and Exchange.  Office 365 is going to dominate, and what we know as SharePoint today will be the "operating system" of the future.  

Implied in this prediction is perhaps the even more ambitious assertion that the Cloud Era has finally arrived.  I believe that over the next 12-18 months the early mainstream adoption of cloud based solutions will be in full swing.  This sector is going to get white hot, DotCom and Web 2.0 hot.  To me this feels like more of an observation than a prediction, but I still hear from lots of folks who believe the transition is five years away.  There are good arguments to be made that getting off our legacy on-premise infrastructure will be harder and more time-consuming than we hope, but I for one don't share this view.  I think companies will simply abandon their legacy systems to avoid cost and save time.  Concerns about data security and service availability will fade quickly as users rapidly adopt the superior functionality offered by cloud-based systems.

What's the Evidence?

Sitting here at Bamboo, in the heart of the Microsoft ecosystem, we get a pretty good view of what companies are planning in terms of enterprise technologies.  I contend that among Bamboo's 6,000+ global customers, we have a disproportionate share of the most innovative and forward thinking companies in the world.  Without naming names, I can tell you that the largest and most progressive companies in the world have either already adopted BPOS, are currently running pilot programs or are already insisting that the on-premise technologies they purchase today will available to them in a Microsoft hosted environment soon.

I don't know that I've heard a formal statement from Microsoft, but I think we all already know that BPOS and Office 365 are going to be a single offering.  Personally, I don't love Office 365 as a brand, but I think it will probably stick, and the strength of the offering will be more than sufficient to carry an uninspiring brand identity.

I occasionally hear nice things about Google Docs.  Friends who are bootstrapping their one man offices rave about the capabilities.  I know there are a few big companies who have rolled the dice on Google, but seriously -- what is their current market share?  I don't think Google loses a lot of sleep over Bing -- but like Microsoft they have major battles on all fronts.  Google will be way too busy defending the search business, growing the Android platform, chasing the tablet market to give enterprise computing the attention it needs.

Who else is out there?  A lot of us admire Amazon's early cloud offerings, they've done a great job.  But Amazon has a platform, not the applications.  They're not going to be a factor.  That's also the key weakness of all of the pure hosting companies as well.  Connectivity and disk space have been totally commoditized.   They can't compete with companies like Microsoft that have the applications and the functionality to offer.  Microsoft and other application providers will be the king makers in the hosting sector, with the ability to vertically integrate anyone who gets too big.

What about Salesforce, other established SaaS providers and the zillions of SaaS wannabes who will be coming to market over the next two years?  Well, Salesforce has done all the right things.  They started by specializing in one of the biggest and most crucial horizontal applications.  They've begun to broaden the scope of functionality offered and have cultivated a robust ecosystem of ISVs who can help extend their offerings.  Strength in CRM is particularly advantageous because it happens to be a soft spot for Microsoft.  But ultimately, I think there is a limit to how far they can go.  I don't believe they can go head-to-head with Microsoft on email, office productivity apps, and many other key line-of-business systems.  They have to hope that they can become so embedded that companies are willing to invest in integrating separate SaaS systems.  A lot of companies are going to try to facilitate that "interoperability", but I think it's going to be really hard.   Salesforce could enhance it's position by rolling up folks like Zoho and Basecamp, but it really seems unlikely to me that buyers are going to accept Zoho docs over Microsoft Word just because they really like Salesforce CRM.  Ultimately, Microsoft's portfolio of big clunky client-based applications -- the thing that looked like it might weigh them down and keep them from ever reaching the cloud -- is going to be the leverage that helps the win the cloud.

SharePoint is the Replacement for Windows

I've been hearing people say this for the last three years, and it seems clear to me now that this must happen.  Once the firmware becomes irrelevant, all an operating system really does is knit together the applications that sit on top of it.  SharePoint is well on it's way to serving that function already.  It's surely where Microsoft is headed with Office 2013.  Integration between Exchange, Office and other critical apps needs to improve quickly, but my guess is that it's already done in the lab.  I think SharePoint can be more valuable than Windows.  The fact that it does more than just connect applications (like providing social/collaborative capabilities, document management and an app/dev platform) makes it a really appealing ingredient of the future Microsoft stack.

Relevance to the Bamboo Buyer

If you've made a big bet on leveraging Bamboo to enhance and extend your SharePoint deployment, what does this all mean to you?  Rest easy.  Bamboo is ahead of the curve making certain our products will work in the Cloud.  We have a really exciting and unique technology behind our recently introduced Cloud Parts.  We are already providing enhanced functionality for customers on BPOS-D.  We expect to work closely with Microsoft to make sure all Bamboo technologies are compatible with Office 365 and all flavors of BPOS.  We've made substantial investments here, and we'll be ready when you are. 

Argue with Me, Please

Personally I don't think there is much in my premise and assumptions that you can argue with.  I'm mostly reporting things I'm witnessing right now.  But I'd love to hear from others with a different opinion.  Help me hone my vision of the future by:

• Providing evidence or testimonial that Google Docs will actually be competitive with Office 365
• Tell me about the legacy infrastructure that simply cannot and will not be moved to the cloud before 2030
• Spin a story about how Salesforce can grow significantly beyond CRM
• Tell me how IBM, Oracle, Google, Amazon, SAP or anyone else is going to assemble anything as competitive as Azure + Office + SharePoint

The one wrinkle here that I really can't account for is the hardware.  What kind of device will the average information worker be using by the time this stuff goes mainstream.  At the moment, given my the 12-18 month time horizon of my prediction, I think there's a strong argument that many of us will be using tablets.  Now Microsoft did go out of it's way to make SharePoint 2010 compatible with Safari, but I don't think Ballmer envisions this incredible enterprise offering being consumed by people with iPads.  The Microsoft tablet is reportedly not far away, but seems as tragically late to market as Windows Phone was behind the iPhone.  Google will certainly bring an Android tablet to market, and it will probably do well.  Still, as much as I'd like to own an iPad just because, I haven't bought one yet.  Honestly tablets seem only slightly less clunky than my laptop.  I'm not sure on the timeline, but I'm thinking something like Motorola's Atrix, a dockable phone/pc is probably the hardware configuration of the future. 

I'm already looking forward to your feedback on these subjects, what do you think I got wrong?

Here's are some related links for your consideration:

Microsoft's Huge Cloud Problem

Microsoft can fend off mobile, cloud competition

Microsoft CRMs Competitive Advantage vs. Salesforce.com

Ahhhh, here he is everyone. Melvale.

From Time Masters Book Two, The Prophecy, chapter seven.

"Shona, Shona wake up."

The voice was familiar, but Shona couldn't quite place it. She opened her eyes to a familiar face as well, but found she still could not attach it to a name.

"Are ye all right, lassie? Can I gets ye a cup o' something … er … ah … well, does ye needs anything?"

Shona wondered at the obvious hesitancy of the question as she sat up and looked around. Angus MacNab and Lany Mosgofian were hovering over her like a couple of mother hens. They were in a medium sized room all of white. Just four walls and the odd white cot she found herself on. It was the only piece of furniture to be found. No wonder Angus was hesitant in his offer. Where would he get a cup of anything?

"What happened to me?" She asked.

Lany let go a heavy sigh. "You were brought here after passing through the … ah … gates … I guess we could call them, and Jaireth brought you here to wait for Dallan with us."

"Dallan!" She immediately tried to rise.

Angus gently pushed her down. "Nay, lass. Best ye waits until ye get some o' yer strength back." He reached into a small knap sack he had draped over one shoulder. It was adorned in the same odd markings that had covered the blankets which covered the Muiraran's mounts. What ever they were. At this point Shona had no idea.

"Here," he began as he pulled out an apple and gave it to her. "Eats up. I have a feeling ye'll be needing yer strength." He pulled his lower lip between his teeth a few times. Shona recognized the action. The man was nervous.

Lany caught the concern in her eyes. "Don't worry. Dallan will be along shortly. Eat what you can."

Shona stared at the shiny red apple in her hand, a flash of Snow White and the poisoned apple handed to her by a dangerous foe engulfed her briefly. A subtle reminder they were still quite possibly in danger. "Thank you." Was all she said before she took a much needed bite.

"When Jaireth brought you through the, ah …" Lany waved a hand in the air, trying for the right word. "Oh living stars, we'll just stick with calling them gates, you passed out."

Shona chewed a little faster, and swallowed. "What gates?"

Angus shifted his feet about a bit. "Tis the entrances into the city here. I've been through several times, but never through the ones used today."

Shona stopped chewing, swallowed, and stared at Angus. "What is wrong with the gates?"

"D'ye remember anything, lass? D'ye remember passing through the wall o' rock?"

Shona almost choked. "Wall of rock?"

"Aye." Angus confirmed as he and Lany now peered at her intently as they waited for her answer.

She thought hard a moment as she tried to remember what had happened. She and Jaireth and been speeding along across a flat plain, she did remember seeing some sort of high wall of rock ahead. Like the wall of a plateau one might see in the desert. But the wall was not the red rock of Arizona like she'd seen in books at the library. No, this was grey and sharp looking, with streaks of black in it. Rather bleak and foreboding against the bright sunshine and dusty flatness of the plains over which they rode. But then the thing flying above them had screamed that horrible scream, and she in her terror had screamed right along with it.

"Oh dear." She said.

Lany peered at her more intently.

She merely looked at him, and then to Angus whose eyes were as round as saucers. "I remember heading straight for a wall of rock. Jaireth, he … covered me with his body, just before we …" she looked at the two men, puzzled. "Just before we hit it?"

"Aye." Angus again confirmed as he pulled a cloth handkerchief from his coat pocket and swiped it across his brow.

Shona shook her head as if to clear it. "We rode through a wall of rock?"

Lany shrugged. "As far as we can figure. We're not any more sure of it than you are. We were hoping you could tell us something else other than what we already know."

Shona again thought back. "I remember it becoming suddenly very cold, then nothing. I woke up here." She looked around again. "Where are we?"

"Some sort of waiting room or holding area." Lany answered.

Angus snorted. "Try a holding cell, laddie. I've been left in one o' these before. Have ye not noticed there are no doors?"

"Angus, how can I not notice?" Lany chastised.

The apple forgotten, Shona stood and looked around the room. It was perfectly square and a bright white color. What was interesting was the fact there were no visible lights in the room, yet what light there was was of an unusual soft brilliance. And the men were right. There were no doors, windows, or even a seam in the walls, ceiling, or floor. Sterile was the word she would use to describe their surroundings. Sterile and with no escape. So how did they get there? She threw the silent question at Lany who saw it coming in her raised brows.

"We don't know how we got here either. The two of us woke up not long before you did."

"I see." She walked to the nearest wall and touched it. It seemed to quiver slightly in response.

Angus backed up a step. "Best not touch anything, lass. We dinna ken what might happen!"

A slight humming noise permeated the room, as if it soaked through the walls and into the space around them. All three suddenly realized the room had changed with the noise. Shona gasped. The room had gotten bigger.

Lany looked around nervously. "That was certainly interesting." He swallowed hard. "Shona, do us a favor and don't touch the wall again."

She shrugged in helplessness, her heart suddenly aching with hunger. Her knees weak, she slumped to the floor.

"Lassie!" Angus rushed to her as did Lany.

"Your quick attendance to my daughter is most appreciated, gentlemen."

Shona, Lany and Angus all stared at the sudden appearance of Jaireth Shamaelon and the several guards who followed him into the room. An open corridor of white was behind them. But where had it come from?

Shona struggled to her feet with the help of Lany and Angus. "Where is Dallan?" She demanded.

Jaireth offered her a face full of compassion. "Did you honestly think I would let any harm come to him, daughter?"

Shona was taken aback at the question. What had she thought he would do? Especially after the stunt he'd pulled on the journey here. Where ever here was. "I do not know at this point. Where is he?"

Jaireth simply looked at her, and then moved to the side.

Dallan's still form was held up by a Muiraran guard on either side of him. They had obviously dragged the Scot down the corridor and into the room.

"Ewwww, it's not going to be pretty when he wakes up." Lany mumbled under his breath.

Shona pushed past her father to get to Dallan. Jaireth's lips formed into a tight line at the action, but he said nothing.

She knelt next to her husband as the guards gently lowered him face first onto the floor. One of them smiled at her before he turned the big Scot onto his back. "He'll be all right, your highness. Do not worry."

Shona looked at him, ignoring how he'd addressed her, and nodded her thanks.

The two guards stood and joined Jaireth along with the others whom had entered. Belatedly Shona sensed another person and turned to stare at the tall, cloaked Muiraran Melvale, who stood behind her in the corridor's entrance. She didn't quite know how she knew it was him. She just did. He must have taken in her expression as he bowed slightly before her. He then casually stepped over Dallan's unconscious form and entered the room.

"Melvale," Jaireth began. "You know what to do for my daughter and our guests. See to their needs will you?"

Melvale merely bowed slightly to the Muiraran Ruler then turned to his charges. Lany and Angus both stared blankly back.

Jaireth smirked slightly before he and the guards left them. Shona started as the room again quivered and hummed as before. The corridor suddenly disappeared and only the wall remained. She quickly looked to Lany and Angus, who looked just as shocked as she did. All three of them slowly turned their attention back to Melvale, who merely stood and said nothing.

Dallan groaned.

Shona repositioned herself and cradled his head in her arms. "Dallan?"

His eyes slowly opened. He blinked a few times before consciousness and recognition dawned. He reached up to Shona and cupped her face with a large hand. "Weel, Flower, this is different, is it no?"

She held the hand closer to her face and smiled. To touch him was bliss. To hear his voice, heaven. She now knew he was all right. "I do not think you fainted as I did. But then, we are not sure of a lot of things right now." She tried to smile at him. "Such as how we got here."

"Och, aye." Dallan said as he pushed him self up to a sitting position, gave Lany and Angus a curt nod, then leapt to his feet pulling Shona up with him. He staggered somewhat and grabbed Shona for balance until he could right himself. He was shaken. Very much so. It had been one wild ride to get here. And in more ways than one. Ways he wasn't ready to share with anyone just yet, lest they think he'd become addled in the brain. But where was here?

She supported him as best she could. "I felt the same way when I woke up too."

He straightened. "Saints," he began as he took in their surroundings. "What's happened and where are we?" Dallan shifted his gaze to the hooded Muiraran who stood nearby. "Well?" Dallan cocked his head slightly before a quirky smile formed on his lips. "Melvale?" What other Muiraran could it be? The arrogant stance was a dead give away.

The ever cloaked Melvale shifted his position and began to move along the wall behind him. The rest of them shifted naturally with him. Soon the four were lined up in front of him, all of them realizing what they'd just done. Angus, Lany, Shona, and Dallan all stood and waited as their tall host now stood as if he were looking down his nose at them. Bloody hard to tell though, Dallan thought, what with the hood he wore to cover his face.

He briefly wondered if dear Melvale didn't have some hideous deformity he was forced to hide and moved a little closer to Shona. Just in case. He didn't want her frightened.

Melvale took note of the slight action. "Hmmmm." came out in a rather sing-songy way. Beginning on a higher note and dropping in pitch slightly. Dallan narrowed his gaze and waited. He tensed as Melvale suddenly put his hands on either side of the hood he wore. All four sets of eyes widened, knowing what was coming.

Angus groaned and nodded knowingly to himself. "Here we go." He mumbled flatly.

Lany glanced slightly in his direction but didn't move at the odd statement as Melvale just as suddenly threw back the hooded cowl he wore.

Shona actually gasped. "Oh!"

Dallan and Lany on the other hand stood in silence, their mouths dropped completely open. Angus just groaned aloud again and rolled his eyes in annoyance.

Melvale stood in all his splendid glory. And splendid it was too. Even Dallan had to admit that. The creature standing before them was magnificent. He'd even go so far as to describe Melvale as beautiful. His face seemed as if it had been chiseled to perfection, his mouth as equally well formed as it pulled up slightly into a satisfied smile. The Muiraran man's eyes were of a steel grey, hard and intelligent. Very intelligent, Dallan noticed, and framed by inquisitive dark brows that were in sharp contrast to his hair. Beautiful hair of thick white silver tresses which cascaded down his back and over his shoulders. Dallan had to admit it. The man was breath taking. He quickly moved closer to Shona and put an arm around her small frame, pulled her close, then glared accordingly at the god-like looking specimen standing before them.

Melvale turned his body ever so slightly, raised one hand to shoulder level, his thumb and middle finger tips touching, pinkie finger out. Dallan wondered if it were some sort of Muiraran greeting. But then when Melvale didn't move further, he realized it was just a natural posture for the man. A slight tremor of familiarity and revulsion raced up Dallan's spine. He'd been around Melvale's kind before in France in his own time. But that couldn't be. Could it? Melvale couldn't possibly be a ….

"Welllllll" escaped Melvale in the same sing-songy manner as before though much louder this time.

Melvale, thought Dallan, most certainly could be.

"You all look as if you were expecting something else, hmmmm?"

Saints! He was! A dandy, a fop! Dallan had run into enough of them in France to know one when he saw one. He had to control himself to keep his mouth from curving up into a smile.

Melvale sauntered over to Angus. "Wellllllll Angus! How long has it been?" His words came out overly punctuated and still all over the octave scale as he poked at the aged Scotsman.

Angus could only groan in response.

Melvale tapped Angus on the forehead. "I know someone who's just dying to see you! AH HA!" His last two words burst from him rather than emerge a light laugh. His whole body moved with the sounds.

Dallan's tell tale twitch began its dance, but not in annoyance or irritation. Rather, it was with the effort it took to hold him self together and not fall into complete hysterics at the man's mannerism.

Melvale moved to Lany next. "And you Lord Councilor." He exclaimed as he poked Lany playfully in the chest. "First time to be allowed into the main city? Hmmmm? HA! Ohhhhhhhhhhh but what fun you'll have and the sights you'll see! I bet the missus will be sooooo jealous when she finds out." Melvale suddenly straightened as he turned from him, his face and voice flat as he made to move down the line. "If you're ever allowed to leave that is."

Lany stiffened at the statement.

Melvale froze. He took one step backwards. Two, and put himself directly in front of Lany again. He stared hard at the new Lord Councilor, his eyes narrowed to two, dark grey slits. "Hmmmmm …."

Dallan watched as Lany began to sweat. One droplet slowly trickled its way down his temple as Melvale continued to examine him.

Lany cleared his throat. "You have no right to keep us here as prisoners."

Melvale's eyes popped wide open at the statement. "HA!" he exclaimed then shoved at Lany in a playful gesture. "Oh stab me! Prisoners? Prisoners you say?" his voice bounced around from one octave to another, causing Lany to grimace almost as if in pain. Dallan thought he might be in the same uncomfortable position he was. That of trying not to laugh at the foppish mannerisms of the pretty dote.

But suddenly Lany wasn't laughing, if he'd had been that is, silently or otherwise, as Melvale's entire expression changed to one of near malice. He leaned into Lany's face and got nose to nose with him. "Hmmmm." Melvale's head tilted slowly from one side to the other as if he was reading the Lord Councilor, examining his very core. And perhaps, Dallan thought. He was.

Melvale leaned to Lany's ear, and though the words he spoke were whispered, Dallan heard them all the same. "Secrets, eh?" Melvale then moved away from Lany, a smug look on his overly handsome face, and approached Shona.

Shona leaned into Dallan and he tightened his hold on her to bring her even closer to his side. Melvale totally ignored the action and instead looked Shona right in the eye, his manner now that of servant as he bowed before her. "Your highness." He stood erect again and looked at her with what Dallan thought was compassion. "I am at your disposal. Anything you want, anything you need, anything, OH!"

Shona jumped.

Melvale's mouth formed a perfect "O" as he slapped both his hands to the sides of his face. He then pointed an accusing finger at her. "What is that awful thing you're wearing, your highness? Why it's utterly loathsome!" he made a great show of his disdain for the drawing of 'Tweety' which adorned her tee shirt as he threw his head to one side and brought the back of his hand to his brow in an obvious show of dramatics. At least Dallan hoped it was just dramatics. The man couldn't possibly be that far over the edge of … well, foppishness?

Shona looked blankly at him a moment, both brows raised, then began to blink a few times. She tried to push back a laugh as her body tensed against Dallan. But after a brief second, she looked from first Dallan, then to Lany in silent question. Finally, as if she could stand it no longer, she simply blurted out. "Gay?"

There was dead silence for the briefest of moments before Lany lost it. Dallan hadn't heard such high pitched cackles since the day of the "Kitty incident" which had nearly destroyed Angus's weapons shop. Angus himself was shaking in silent laughter, as if not quite able to let his own suppressed cackles fly.

Melvale stood completely erect, once again his voice flat. "I say your highness, are you referring to the twentieth century term which would dictate my choice of a mate to be one of my own gender?"

Shona, knowing her foot was in her mouth, could only shrug and nod before speaking. "I am so sorry. I just did not realize that there might be such things here. I…"

"Think nothing of it, your highness." He quickly interjected. "No offense taken." He moved down the line and stood in front of Dallan. He then made a show of looking the new Time Master up and down like he was a piece of candy to be rolled about on the tongue and savored. Slowly.

Dallan's free hand balled into a fist.

Lany and Angus immediately put some distance between the Scot and themselves. If he was going to take a swing at Melvale, they didn't want to deter him in any way.

"Ohhhhh come now, you big brute. Stop looking at me like that. Do you really think that if I was in such a state I'd even consider you?" He turned to Shona. "Not when there is such beauty to be had. Ohhhhhh just look at you, your highness. You've grown into a true treasure!" He clapped both hands in front of him. "And I can't WAIT to dress you!"

Dallan scowled. "That's it!" He let his balled fist fly.

Melvale ducked gracefully and dodged the blow. "There's no need for violence, Time Master!"

Dallan seethed. "Stay away from my wife ye bloody … ye …" Saints! What does one call a thing like him?

"Oh STAB me! You mean to say you can't come up with a proper insult on the fly?" Melvale broke into complete hysterics, his laughter bounced around a musical scale like a symphony trying to sound bad.

Dallan lunged.

Melvale quickly stepped aside to spin out of Dallan's grasp. Lany and Angus grabbed Shona and jumped onto the cot with her to get her out of the way.

"Oh stop you big smelly brute! DO calm yourself!" Melvale screamed as he ran around the perimeter of the room, Dallan in hot pursuit.

Lany, Angus, and Shona stood atop the cot in amazement as the mighty Time Master of Muirara chased the screaming Melvale in circles around the room. "Stop! Desist!" the Muiraran screamed after the fourth lap before he finally stopped and turned. Dallan plowed right into him and almost toppled them both over, but Melvale stood firm. "Really, if you insist upon taking your pent up anger issues out on someone, why not take them out on Kwaku? After all, you've got plenty to settle with him but no real argument of any substance here with me. All I merely intended was to gown and bejewel your wife properly as is befit her station. Not to do to her what you were obviously thinking, you BIG OAF!" Melvale poured out.

Dallan stood still as he took in the words of Melvale's quick yet calmly voiced entreaties, and could only stare back. Saints, was this fop of a braggart for real?

Melvale stood his ground and looked down his nose at Dallan. "Apologize."

Dallan shook himself. "What?!" Ye want me to give you a bloody apology?"

"Of course I do, you big smelly brute!" Melvale huffed.

"For what, I might ask?"

"Insulting me," Melvale began as he held up one finger. "Attacking me!" he held up a second finger. "Insinuating I would do dire, not to mention nasty things, to her highness!" Three fingers. "And …"

"Shut up!" Dallan hissed. "And, and … get us out o' here!" he added as an almost after thought.

Melvale turned to Shona. "I dare say, your highness, but is he always in such a bad mood?" He asked as he shoved his way past Dallan to stand before the cot where Lany, Angus, and Shona were still perched.

Shona stood speechless on the cot, her growing hunger drowning out the hilarity of the situation. She wondered if there were other Muirarans like Melvale to be found. She shook her head and sent a pleading look to Dallan.

"Out o' the way!" Dallan pushed Melvale aside and took Shona into his arms.

"Welllllll! You don't have to be so brutish about everything, Time Master!" Was Melvale's retort.

Dallan shot Melvale a warning glare before turning his attention to Shona. "She needs to feed." He stated more to himself than anyone else.

Lany now looked to Melvale. "You'd best see to our needs then as Jaireth told you."

. Melvale huffed as he turned to the wall opposite the one he, Jaireth and the others had entered. "You humans are so impatient. Always rushing here, running there." He shot them all an annoyed look. "Well don't just stand there you ninny twits! Bring her highness along and follow me!"

And with that, Melvale walked through the wall in front of him, and disappeared.

Want all the fun times of a shady sex club but none of the hassle of talking to people to determine what's out there? Look no further than Yelp NYC's adult entertainment section. [Jezebel] More »

Want all the fun times of a shady sex club but none of the hassle of talking to people to determine what's out there? Look no further than Yelp NYC's adult entertainment section. More »

Finding a new series can be hard but there are some good 'magic' options out there

I find the Twilight series a little bit boring, but I would like a series of long books with the same sort of ideas as Twilight, Harry Potter etc. What should I try?
Thank you!
Skywalker

Finding a new series to get stuck into is hard but it sounds as if you like something with a bit of supernatural or magic in it. Diana Wynne Jones wrote a wonderful series about a boy wizard called Christopher Chant and you could try the Chrestomanci series in which he appears, starting with Charmed Life. There's a lot of supernatural mystery and romance as well as great danger in Lian Hearn's Across the Nightingale Floor, the first in the Japanese-set Tales of the Otori series. Although not so romantic, Ursula le Guin's The Wizard of Earthsea sequence might also fit the bill as there is much that is supernatural in Earthsea.

Help me get excited about moving to Boston/Somerville/Cambridge area. What are some cool things that go around in these places that you only really know about once you live there?

Well, the good news is that I got a job offer. The other news is that it's in Boston, and I'm not terribly excited about moving there.

Anyways, what are some really cool things that go on around Boston/Cambridge/Somerville that I should know about and that should excite me? For example, I'm only now finding out that in the city I live in (after four years of living in it) there's a huge vegetarian/vegan scene, that have on-going public vegan waffle breakfasts, a local co-op artsy house that throws awesome dinner parties for the public that has weird indie bands show up and play in their giant basement. There's an amazing restaurant here with like 40 obscure beers on tap that rotate every month, and a menu that consists of only local, organic food items. There's a guy who makes his own condiments and has a shop dedicated just to that.

So basically, what are some cool events, places, shops, restaurants, and things to do that should get me really excited? I'm most likely going to live around the Somerville area. I'm into tech-geeky-stuff, biking, being outdoors. I like local weird indie bands. I've recently picked up running and would love to hear about cool running events and biking events (for example, NYC has the 5 boro bike tour).

As a note, I've been to Boston/Cambridge plenty of times so I know about all the touristy stuff. I'm not interested in that, but rather more interested in things that the locals do.

What better way to preserve the memory of a scrumptious meal you're about to devour than to snap a photo of it and send it to your Posterous? If only all meals looked half as appetizing as Dweh's Plates from Chef Dweh of Beverly Hills. His innovative take on global recipes definitely deserves its own website where the rest of the world could only wish their meals tasted as good as his dishes looked!

How long have you been cooking and what inspired you to start?
I have been cooking for 10 years total, 4 months professionally at Eveleigh on Sunset Blvd. and L'Ermitage in Beverly Hills. My inspiration for cooking came from being in the kitchen with my mother when I was younger, learning how to prepare regional dishes from Liberia, West Africa . Just by standing there observing how she would take raw ingredients and turn that into something deliciously comforting made me want to become a Chef.

How did you get the idea to work with global recipes?
I have to admit that watching the Food Network, was one of the ways in which I realized that cooking was more than a skill, it was a global art. By watching chefs from all parts of the world, my approach to cooking would reflect a fusion of world cuisines so that I could take creativity in the kitchen to the next level. When I came across Posterous, I felt inspired to create a sort of culinary passport via a photoblog. It’s a good way to capture the evolution of original ideas in the kitchen.

What's your most popular dish? Your personal favorite?
My most popular dish and my personal favorite I would have to say is the "Love On A Plate Part 1", which I dedicated to my one and only true love Robinne. She brings so much joy to my life and inspired me to start this blog so I created this dish one  morning to represent the love that I have for her. Several of the recipes on Dweh’s Plates have sentimental meaning.

Any horror stories from unsatisfied customers?
I think every chef has at least ONE horror story – there’s always someone who isn’t happy with what another may consider a “perfect dish”. On one particular incident, I spent half a day preparing Shepherd’s Pie, which is something I had made a million times to great reviews. Once it was served, I noticed that all of the orders were coming back to me uneaten, one customer actually spit it back onto the plate. I had to toss out the entire day’s preparation and take my own spoonful of humble pie. It was really hard to receive the negative feedback and a horrible day.   

Any advice for aspiring cooks out there?
Yes, makes sure that you look deep inside yourself to see if you really love to cook before you start the path of becoming a chef. It is a long and challenging road mentally and physically. It’s not about the fame, although celebrity chefs paint a pretty picture of the glory. It’s about staying true to yourself and your love for cooking. 

What are some of your Posterous sites to visit?
I like a kate offering for its simplicity on lifestyle. Mark Bittman’s blog has a lot to say on food matters and good recipes for anyone new to gourmet cooking.

Other sites to check out:

Social Media Graphics - Collecting all sorts of graphs, infographics, and charts relating to social media to help identify your addictions.

Who What Wear Blog - A behind the scenes look of an online fashion magazine.

Rich Demuro Blog - Follow this LA based journalist as he continues to cover the most interesting stories in the digital world!

Want the spotlight on your site or want to suggest one for next week's feature? Let us know.

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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our 14th Edition of VooDoo Sabermetrics. We know, it's been way too long. Obscenely long. We promise we won't wait another year before you get to voodoo. At any rate, this week's subject is bearded San Francisco Giants closer Brian Wilson. It is no one's fault but his own that this post will be riddled with Youtube videos. Enjoy.

Sooze, Babes Love Baseball and Star Tribune...

Jolliness - Brian Wilson's jolliness knows no bounds. Even on a 3-2 count with the bases juiced he has a smirk on his face. Well, what's left of his face under that monstrous merkin he refers to as his epic beard. Apparently there's a maypole and sexy elves inside of it. And ninjas. No, you're not allowed to touch it. There's too much magic inside.

Wilson gets a giant tripping unicorn wielding two machine guns on the Jollity Scale.


Theme Song - It took me a while to think of a theme song for Mr. Wilson. The possibilities are endless. Generally speaking, his warm-up music is Jump Around -- that's House of Pain, kids -- but it just doesn't fit. However, I believe this one encompasses his personality and good looks quite well... Frank Zappa - Smell My Beard. Disc 2, Track #9 from the 1991 album You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 4. (You should probably get high first.)



Extra P., Bus Leagues Baseball...

Name Quality (nicknames included) - (Reporting live from the Final Four in Houston) Brian Wilson: One of my favorite words is 'disambiguation', mostly because that's how Wikipedia directs you to the right entry when there are several options by the same title. That's how it goes with Brian Wilson. You get Brian Wilson (musician), Brian Wilson (song) and Brian Wilson (systems scientist). Sports-wise, there are soccer players, poker dudes, and even an Australian Rules footballer. There is a Fox News reporter and a disturbing number of politicians sharing a name with our hero of the hour.

For sheer balls-out crazy behavior, the bar for this name was set pretty high by the former Beach Boy, who inspired the Barenaked Ladies song that also required some altered ambiguation over at the Wiki ranch. For a younger generation, we can safely say that ol' shoe-polish-in-the-beard is establishing a whole new rainbow of colors to attach to the name, and for that, we should all be thankful. As a name, Brian Wilson is nearly as boring as it gets. Now, thanks to a rock n' roll legend and a World Series winner, it has uber-flair. Somewhat to my chagrin, Brian Patrick Wilson has no nicknames that I am aware of. Let's fix this, America.

Hold up: premature disambiguation. Search turns up "Horse" and "B-Weez". All I can say on that is that Horse had better not be an allusion to how athletes beat the steroid piss-test by substituting animal urine. For the second, who uses Weez? Isn't Pauley Shore dead?


Tuffy, SB Nation Arizona...

Hardness Scale (Like the Mohs Hardness Scale but with more Tuffy) - Brian Wilson is a dying star, still dense but growing more unstable with each beard dye application. Stars are very hard, of course, except when orbited by Barbara Walters. Despite having started his inevitable implosion, Brian Wilson currently ranks a still-impressive 6.7 on Tuffy's Hardness Scale while his beard rates a 7.1. (He never cleans the old dye out before adding a new one.)

Just as an aside, why is there no art punk band named Brian Wilson's Beard? Why is there no Tears for Fears song called "Brian Wilson's Beard Said"? No one else? Just me? Alright then.

Horoscope - (Date of Birth: March 16, 1982) - Horoscopes only work for people born on Earth. Show us the birth certificate, Brian.



Monday Morning Punter, With Leather...

One-Liner - "Brian Wilson might have started the season lying in bed, but wouldn't it be nice to see him back Wednesday and throwing all summer long; as he buries hitters with his pitches and leaves his fans in stitches, there hasn't been a beard this fearful in baseball since A-Rod dated Madonna."


Jon Pyle, Pyle of List...

Hotness and SMI - You remember those guys you met in college that seemed bound and determined to fundamentally reinvent themselves now that they’d shed the shackles and chains of their lackluster high school existence? At some point they must have thumbed through the signatures imploring them to “never change” in their yearbook and realized they weren’t particularly cool, or even memorable for that matter. While building a playlist of nostalgic songs from the coolest buzzbands mentioned in Pitchfork, they ask “will anyone even know who I am at the 10 year reunion?” It’s likely that at that point, the person in question swore a blood oath to Maxim declaring that by the time they arrived on campus they would be someone else. They would be hip, they would be with it, they would be cool… for the first time in their life.

They shortened their government name, started going by their middle name or developed an unoriginal self-appointed moniker, broke the bank on Ironic Pop Culture Reference T-Shirts and whatever else the kids wear these days, got a new haircut and arrived on campus in the fall expecting to pull generic college hi-jinks movie-level babes. However, our protagonist forgot one core tenant of self-improvement: an interesting personality. But at that point it’s too late. They’re already on campus desperately clinging to the experience promised them by The School of Hard Knockers.

The solution? Add obvious and attention-grabbing affectations until someone notices. Perhaps they try to install a hot tub in their dorm room, wear a smoking jacket to class, or grow a beard and dye it mid-life crisis black. But in the end, they are a walking Dashboard Confessional song. They are obsessed with being popular/cool in a sad, sad way and their plan ends up backfiring because they’re just the weird guy who took Quarters WAAAAAYYYYY to seriously that one night and passed out in the elevator. This level of futility is the opposite of hot. If there’s one thing women can smell, besides another woman’s perfume, it’s desperation. And that is never sexy.

So Brian Wilson, let me say something to you mano a mano: stop trying so damn hard. Leave Charlie Sheen’s house and let us try to love you for who you really are.

With that said, Brian Wilson scores a douchebag from Die Hard shot in the face by Hans Gruber (DBFDHSITFBHG) on the Sexy Man Index (SMI).




Josh, Josh Q. Public...

Clutchiness - Down…The paint is peelin’…Now…When the chips are down…Down…You gotta lose all feelin’…Now…When the chips are down. – Terror Squad

According to the good folks over at the esteemed Baseball Prospectus, "There is virtually no evidence that any player or group of players possesses an ability to outperform his established level of ability in clutch situations, however defined." Well I’m here to tell you, like Flo from Alice would tell you, the good folks over at the esteemed Baseball Prospectus can kiss my grits. They can kiss my grits because clearly, the good folks over at the esteemed Baseball Prospectus, have never seen Brian Wilson pitch.

I don’t care that he’s having too much awesome on feet and wearing Juicemobiles like he did in his Major League debut. I don’t care that he’s hanging out with his bring out the gimplike friend, "the Machine." I don’t care that he ranks right up there on the wacky-o-meter with the likes of Bill "the Spaceman" Lee and "Super Joe" Charbeneau. I don't care what they say about us anyway. I don't care 'bout that. I don’t care about any of it because last season, whenever the Giants needed the door closed, Brian Wilson, like Leatherface, was there to slam it shut.

He slammed it shut during the regular season for a Giants' single season save record and Major League leading, 48 times. He slammed it shut in the final game of the season to win the division by striking out Will Venable on three straight pitches. Yes, I know what happened in Game 2 of the National League Division Series against the Atlanta Braves but you should know, for the entire post-season, Wilson allowed nary an earned run and a measley five hits in 112/3 innings of work. Yowza!

You should also know, in November, in the biggest moment of the biggest game of his career, on the world’s biggest stage, facing the biggest part of the Rangers’ order, the Great Bearded One, blessed be He, slammed the door shut on Texas en route to a World Championship. Josh Hamilton? I hear you knockin’ but you can’t come in. Vladdy? I hear you knockin’ but you can’t come in. Nelson Cruz? I hear you knockin’ but you can’t come in. Knock knock. Who’s there? Brian Wilson bitch!


Before we leave you with your newly-disturbed thoughts, here's a little something from our creative buddies over at PM Sports. Always a treat...



Check back real soon for our next edition of Voodoo Sabermetrics!

Rafael Nadal Miami Final Interview - April 3rd 2011

N. DJOKOVIC/R. Nadal 4‑6, 6‑3, 7‑6

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. Tough day for you. What do you think the turning point was in the match today?
RAFAEL NADAL: Well, he's playing with confidence, that's for sure, no? Probably his best moment of his career. I think I didn't play as well as I did during a lot of moments of this tournament today.
I was a little bit more tired than usual during the match, that's true. But in general, that's everything what I said is part of the game. So the sport is this. Sometimes you win; sometimes you lose.
Last two times myself, I had to lose. I had chances in both places. I think here was really close with the 6‑5, 15‑30. But, you know, when you play against one player like Nole, first thing, he's very good; second thing, he's playing with big confidence.
When you're winning, it's easier to keep winning ‑‑ or less difficult, no? So all these facts.
I probably didn't serve as well as I did during all the tournament. Well, I didn't serve as bad as I served in Indian Wells, but the thing is, my serve didn't help me today to start the points with a little bit of advantage.
I was there fighting until the last point. You know, nothing left in my body right now, so that's the sport. I love these kind of matches. For sure I love to win, not lose. (Smiling.)
But from everything you learn, I had a fantastic American hardcourt season, two finals, and ready for clay.

Q. A that what a impressing you most about Novak, a his mental strength? He might not have had it a few years ago but it's there now.
RAFAEL NADAL: He always was there. He's focused and confident and playing well. I wasn't that far, so that's true, no?
Well, what he's doing a unbelievable, winning four tournaments in a row, difficult ones, one Grand Slam, two Masters 1000, Dubai. So it's great. He's a great champion, and all the best for the rest of the season for him.
We'll see what's going on right now.

Q. Looked near the end that he might be getting tired and he was looking at his box. Looked like he was ready to maybe go down a little bit, but he seemed to play very strong at the end. Were you surprised with that?
RAFAEL NADAL: No. He has a perfect performance physically, because when you play and you win one Grand Slam, one Masters 1000 last week, so he's in the perfect performance right now, no?
I think he's healthy. He can run to every ball. Seems like he's less tired than. Before when he runs a lot, he can play long points and still running. So he's good.
In general, the easiest thing to say a he's very good tennis player.

Q. You seemed to have a lot of double faults today.
RAFAEL NADAL: How many?

Q. Six or seven. Six.
RAFAEL NADAL: Too much, yeah. If it's one, it's too much.

Q. What do you think a the reason that you weren't serving as well?
RAFAEL NADAL: I always say the same: If I know the reason, I never going to do it. That's part of the game. Maybe because I was a little bit more nervous than other days, second final, maybe because I never won here and this is the third chance.
I played against a player who's playing well, and I lost last week. All of these facts maybe can affect a little bit to be a little bit more nervous, and the serve is a little bit part of that.
In general, I think I didn't play as well as I did two days ago. I didn't play bad, that's true. I was close on probably his favorite surface and against the best Novak Djokovic.

Q. Which was the harder match, last week or this?
RAFAEL NADAL: Physically this, for sure. I was very tired at the end. I think I played a little bit better the beginning of last week's final. But wasn't real for me because I didn't play well during all the tournament, so I wasn't ready to play all the match that level.
This week I was ready to play at my highest level because I played a very, very good tournament, playing better every day.

Q. How far are you...
RAFAEL NADAL: No, I think was more difficult the match of today because I was closer to win. But was a little bit more difficult to accept maybe, because I was ready to win last week. I was there. Wasn't very far, but probably mentally or physically I wasn't enough ready well to beat Novak.
This time I was ready to win. I didn't play perfect, so I lost.

Q. How far are you from where you want to be? I know you had a month that you couldn't practice or anything.
RAFAEL NADAL: I am not that far. I am very close, no? I had a very good season, American season, probably the best one of my life here, in Indian Wells and Miami, having two finals. It's true I won a few times in Indian Wells, but after I lost in quarterfinals in Miami.
So both times I lost in quarterfinals, I think. One time against Novak and one time against Del Potro. This time I was very solid. Indian Wells I was very far from where I want to be. And where I want to be, you never know where is the top.
I am happy. Important thing is be happy how you are playing, be comfortable when you go on court. That's what I feel right now. Every day when I go on court, I think I played solid, aggressive with the forehand. Today remain few aspects to win this kind of match against Novak. That's work to improve that for Monte‑Carlo.

Q. Do you feel like he's breathing down your neck to be No. 1?
RAFAEL NADAL: No.

Q. Did you feel like in the clay court season you can separate like you have in the past?
RAFAEL NADAL: No, I think he's going to be No. 1. I don't feel he's breathing on my neck. I don't know what's the expression in English. The thing is, that's part of sport. We will see at the end of the season who's No. 1, who's No. 2, and who's No. 20.
That's tennis. For me, be No. 1 is a goal, but not. That's always difficult to say, because you are No. 1 or you are not No. 1. It's difficult for me to say my goal is be No. 1. My goal is be competitive in every tournament. If I do that, I going to have my chance to be No. 1.
He won two tournaments in a row right now, very big tournaments and one Grand Slam. Normal thing is he will be No. 1 in the next month, month and a half, two months. I don't know. Depends on my results on clay.
For sure he will be there, no? I going to fight for me. If I am solid, if I play a very good clay court season, we will see what's going on after.

Q. At the end of the first set, at 5‑2 when you came up to serve for the set, you went for the ice scarf. You used it, and at the end you were bending over. Were you feeling as if were going to pass out? Have you had any type of treatment since the end of the match?
RAFAEL NADAL: Well, was very hot outside. Can you see? You was there? (Laughter.)

Q. I was in the shade.
RAFAEL NADAL: You were in the shade, yeah, so you wasn't there. So that's what happened. Was very, very hot outside there today. I sweat crazy, like ten T‑shirts today. So I was very tired at the end. Seriously, very tired.
One of those kind of matches, it's better to finish as soon as possible, because I was very, very tired at the end. But I was there fighting until the last point, because I felt if I am tired, the other one must be tired, too. The hot and the sun is for both of us.

Q. This time last year when you were sitting there having not won this tournament, you then won Monte‑Carlo, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Wimbledon. So you must take some comfort in that. Your favorite surface is about to happen.
RAFAEL NADAL: Yeah, that's one time in life win every tournament on clay. Nobody does in the history, only myself last year. So it's difficult to imagine two years in a row can repeat that.
For me, seriously happy about how I'm playing, happy about my level of this tournament. Normally when I play well on clay I have a little bit more advantage, so let's see what's going on week in Monte‑Carlo.
I'm going to prepare. I'm going to start to practice on clay. You know, always the adaptation after almost ten months without play on clay is hard the first days, so we will see.
Hopefully I going to be playing well this tournament. This is important confidence for me. That's all, no? Let's try my best in Monte‑Carlo. First tournament of clay is always important.
But it's not going to be perfect. Remain a lot. I don't going to win ten times in a row Monte‑Carlo. That's sure. No, I won six in a row. I going to try my best for the seventh, but know how difficult is every tournament.

Q. That was part of my question, too. You've been to the finals here a few times. How tough it was to lose this match today?
RAFAEL NADAL: Well, wasn't very lucky weekend for me, no? I think I was very close in 2005; I was very close today. I'll try next year. That's what I can say. I didn't feel sad. No, I feel okay.
I think I try my best and it's not big disappointment, no? Some tournaments I arrive one time and you win. This tournament, three times, three loses.
So if we see my record on finals, normally I have a very positive record winning finals. This tournament breaks a lot this positive record for me, no? So let's try next years. I don't know. I love this tournament. I love to play. So when you play three finals, you can win. We'll see.

FastScripts by ASAP Sports

Novak Djokovic Miami Final Interview - April 3rd 2011

N. DJOKOVIC/R. Nadal 4-6, 6-3, 7-6

THE MODERATOR: This puts Novak at 24 0 this year and the fourth player since 1990 to win the Australian Open, Indian Wells, and Miami in the same year.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Thanks for the info.

Q. Is that your strategy now, to lose the first set to Rafa and then beat him? Just tell us how you turned it around. You seemed to really clean up your game.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: As I said on the court, it was one of the closest and best finals that I have played ever. To be able to win against a great champion like Nadal is, of course he's No. 1 player of the world, and at this stage he's always playing his best.
I think it was very high level of tennis today. I think everybody enjoyed, even us playing. It was very close, and up to the last stroke we really didn't know which way it's going to go.
He did start better the match. I made too many unforced errors, and, you know, after half an hour, I was two breaks down and it was hard to get back. I started playing better towards the end of the first set, and that was important coming into the second.
I had lots of winners and I decreased the number of unforced errors coming into the second set, which was important to me. I wanted, you know, to make him play an extra shot, not give him a lot of free points, and try to get some free points out of serve, which wasn't happening that much.
I had to work both of us had to work for each point in this match, especially in the third set. It was amazing final.

Q. Where did you find all the Serbians?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Which ones?

Q. Where did you find all the Serbians who cheered for you madly?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I didn't find. They found me, I guess.

Q. Were you surprised by that?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Yeah, of course. Any support is welcome in this stage, especially in these very close matches. I think the atmosphere was amazing...

Q. Looked like near the end you may have been getting a little tired.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I didn't finish my answer, but okay.

Q. Sorry.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Okay, you can ask me now.

Q. You looked at the end to be getting tired. You were going to your box.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Look, it's intense. You know, I'm an emotional player and I show my emotions. It's part of me, so I do communicate with the box in some ways.
Look, there is not much they can help me out. It's just my outer frustrations, or, I don't know, when I win the point or, you know, just screams, whatever. But it helps me to focus better after.
You know, as I said on each point, I think each game we played in the third set especially was very close. I had a lot opportunities on his serve in the third set; he had on my serve in the second and third set.
So really fortunate to get through this match. For these matches, you really play this sport. You know, to play the final address, three and a half hours against the best player in the world, you know, it's incredible achievement for me. So I'm very proud of today's performance.

Q. How important do you think was the fact that you did what you did in Indian Wells, coming back from a set down in the finals? Is that some kind of galvanizing situation as well when you were in the same situation today?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I don't think it affected today's match too much, the one we played in Indian Wells. Maybe from the mental side slightly you have some advantage knowing that you won against your opponent that you're playing against, you won against him two weeks ago. Not that much.
Because on this level really couple of points here and there decide a winner. So as I was saying before the match, I needed to play at top of my game in order to have the chance of winning against Rafa.
I think I've played on top of my level in the second and third set especially.

Q. How tough was the heat today, and how well did you hold up physically would you say?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I think it was obvious that both of us were slowing down towards the end of the match. It was a physical struggle, but I knew I needed to hold on, try to hold my serve, try to get to the tiebreak, or eventually have some chance of breaking his serve, which I had a couple times, 15 30, 30 All. But then he serves well, played well.
So we were both really mentally tough. When we needed play well and come up with big shots, we did. In the tiebreak, it was really anybody's game. It was point by point, and until the last shot, you know, I didn't know if I was going to win or not.
So it was incredible match.

Q. Did you realize you were two points from defeat in there, or were you concentrating so hard?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I wasn't thinking about it. Trying to take one point at a time and try to focus and think about the strategy each point, what I need to do to win that certain point.
I wasn't going that far with thinking.

Q. You are perfect this year in your matches, 3 0 against Federer and 3 0 against Rafael Nadal. Regardless of the standings, do you feel like you the best player in the world right now?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I know I had the best start of the season, no question about it. It's the best four months in my life.
But it's only the start of the season. I think it's a bit early to talk about getting that top spot in the rankings. It's still quite a big difference. Rafa is, you know, definitely the best player in the world now.
If I want to have that shot, the No. 1 ranking, I need to play consistently well throughout the whole year. We all know that clay court is his favorite surface, and obviously somewhere where he plays his best.
But this is going to give a lot of confidence boost for the upcoming clay court season, the wins that I had on the starting tournaments of the year.
Still, this streak is incredible that I have, and I want to keep on working hard and try to get more success. So right now, the rest is something that I need most, because, you know, it's been very successful but very exhausting and long four months of the year.
You know, then the clay courts come where I haven't had a lot of success last years. So maybe that's my chance it really try get some success.

Q. Are you surprising even yourself? Are you surprised you've been able to win this many matches in a row against good players?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: If you told me I would have 20 something wins in a row at the start of the year, I would take it, definitely. I didn't expect that.
But it's been couple of months with hard work and really dedication from every member of my team. We know that in the long run we want to make me as better player on the court, physically, mentally, emotionally, and this is what I feel now. It's paying off, all the work we put into.
So it's great to see that, and I just want to keep on going.

Q. You talk about the mental aspect. There has been a little bit of lack of toughness in the past for you. How proud are you that you overcame that, and did it today against probably the toughest mental player out there?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: That makes my success even bigger, No. 1 of the world now, as you said, one of the fittest ones around. He and Roger are extremely mentally tough players. They don't give you a lot of free points, and seems like they always lift their level of performance towards the end of each event, especially in the big ones.
Results show that the last five years. They've been so dominant on big events. To be able to win such a close match against somebody that's strong mentally and physically as Nadal is a great achievement.

Q. What have you learned about yourself through these wins? Must be some surprises there in terms of how well it's gone. Anything about yourself that you surprised yourself with?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Um, you know, nothing special, to be honest. It's true that I didn't expect to be unbeaten this year so far in the season. But as I was saying, it's something that I do for my life. I dedicate 100% of my time to the sport.
I knew when I was in a little crisis last year for six months that if I put in the hard work, I know that I have strokes, I know I have quality, I just need to be patient and my time will come. This is what's going on now.

Q. It's been amazing seeing you today, and I have to tell you everybody is always talking about you being an emotional player, and you just said it yourself. But what's great to see today is you're an emotional player with a brain. So you had some amazing shots. Like you said, a game plan. You could see that your brain was working on the court 100%, so I was so proud to see that.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: On this heat it's really hard, yeah.

Q. It's coming more and more in every match. What do you think about that? How did you comment?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Thank you for your monologue and very nice words. It's very hard to answer on that, except that, you know, if you're thinking about your brain in such heat. (Laughter.)

Q. Everyone knows you're a power hitter, but the dropshot lob worked out pretty well today. Is this part of your future strategy against Rafa?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I cannot rely on that strategy, to be honest. He's such a fast player. In some moments when he's far back from the baseline it's a good shot to play. I guess couple times it was successful; couples times it wasn't.

Q. If you were to play the same match two or three years ago against Rafa, do you think you would have wilted in the heat? Do you think you would have been complaining? How do you think the game would have gone compared to today? How are you different?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Look, with time, it's logical that you have more experience, that you have a physical ability to go through these matches, you have the endurance to get far, and you have you have to believe on the court, you know.
In the end, it's all mental. We're both physically fit. Of course, it was obvious that we were kind of dropping down with energy towards the end of the match. But, you know, in these moments against players like Rafa who is a big champion, you've got to believe you can win. That's all. It's all about self belief and stepping in and trying to take your chances if there is any.

Q. When did you start believing that you could?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: I always believed. It's just that it's a process of learning. You know, you can't always expect to play your best. You can't always expect to win.
I accept every day of my life spending on the court as something new to learn and trying to take the best out of it and move on as a better player, better person. It's normal. I'm still only 23, 24, so it's still early stages of my career.

Q. You started out the match looking very relaxed, and Rafa on the other hand looked a little bit nervous.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Uh huh.

Q. How much has your intuitive nature on the court gotten better? Do you feel much more intuitive?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Well, he had the better start, so I don't know if I was more relaxed than he was, because he was 5 1 after half an hour. So he definitely was playing better in the first set.
But, you know, I believed that I could come back, and I knew that I am in this moment playing the best tennis of my life, so I needed to rely on my qualities and try to step in.
Obviously when you have a high level of confidence, which I do at this moment with so many wins, then it's easier to go for some shots.

Q. What are you doing now that will help you in the clay court season, do you think?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Well, as I said, now it's rest for couple days; Monte Carlo is just a week away. There is not much time really to rest, because you have to prepare as well.
But I really have a great team. I have really the best team of people around me. We'll come up with a strategy to recover and to get ready for clay.

Q. Are you a better player from last year, do you think?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Yeah, of course. Of course.

Q. What's your play schedule?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: It's Monte Carlo, it's my home tournament, Belgrade, Madrid, Rome, and French Open.

Q. Mary Carillo suggested the other day we could be see a trivalry of you and Rafa and Roger. Do you see it that way, or do you think maybe you and Rafa have kind of separated yourself a little bit from Roger?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: No, I don't think Roger is separated. He's still up there. You know, it's obvious that he still wants to come back to the No. 1 of the world and he's hungry for more success. Of course he's not going to just pull back from that.
He didn't have the best start of the season, but he was still in most of the tournaments semifinals, finals. So he's definitely going to be one of the contenders for the top spot in the rankings in the end of the year.
If you want to call it trivalry or rivalry, whatever you want to call it, I don't know. I just try to focus on what I do. Of course Roger and Rafa are the two biggest rivals that I have, and of course there are many more players out there are able to play great tennis. We cannot forget about them. Murray, Soderling, Roddick, the Spaniards.
The clay court season is coming, so it's going to be interesting to see who's going to play some good tennis there.

Q. 2009 you played really well on clay actually. The match today was very similar to a couple you had in Rome. What do you have to do on this surface to beat Rafa, if you meet him in a final again?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Well, I have never done that, so...
If I do have an opportunity to play him on clay, obviously I have to be aggressive. Clay is the slowest surface that we have, and it's surface that suits him best. Over the years, he's been the king of that surface and a guy to beat. He hasn't lost last years on clay. He comes up always with his best game on the clay court tournaments.
So if you want to win against him, I guess you got to step in, believe, and you got to play your game. I think I have the game to challenge him on that surface, and I showed that in 2009. I think we had some great matches in Monte Carlo, final; in Madrid, semifinal, so it is possible.
It's just as I said, as this match is, it's couple points here and there that decide a winner.

Q. Along your great ability Linda Robertson of the Herald wrote last week about that the Serbian players are these wonderful extroverted players and impressions and jokes. Is there a chance that you'll always let that humor funny side of you be shared? If so, I was wondering if you're going to ever be doing again some of your impressions of some of the great tennis players?
NOVAK DJOKOVIC: Well, everybody has a different personality. My personality is like that. You know, I like to have fun on and off the court. I am fortunate to have the people that I care about and that I feel good with spending time, traveling on the tour.
It's important for me to have the people that I can relax with, that I can share my issues from the private life or whatever, things that are bothering me, not bothering, success, achievement. I have the family there, brothers, girlfriend.
I have many people who really want the best for me, and I care about them. So it's that human relationship that is really important, you know, to have off court, especially a relationship that's going to bring you a lot energy, positive energy on the court.
This is how I have been living and working for last couple of years of my professional tennis life. Somebody else likes to be more professional and serious. You know, I like to joke around sometimes. It just depends from a person. So I will definitely continue on doing what I was doing until now.

FastScripts by ASAP Sports

I'm a fan of participating in an occasional group bike ride (not critical mass) - though I tend to favor those that cater to casual riders, rather than the ones that race through town at break-neck speeds. Group rides are fun. Riding a bike alone can get lonely sometimes, especially if you're going to be out for a while. Riding with other people means you can hang out, have a conversation, and enjoy being outside.

With last night's loss to the Pacers, the Milwaukee Bucks saw the last glimmer of hope for a playoff berth fade away.  A surprising 2009-10 season, culminating in the exciting first round playoff series loss to Atlanta, propelled the Bucks from anonymity to the periphery of the national discussion.  A team built without superstar free agents or athletic specimens, the Bucks used smart offense and stingy defense to dictate the terms of the game, usually with a favorable outcome.  

That was then, and this is now.  What was supposed to be an underdog team crashing the party turned out to be an unspectacular collapse.  What happened here?

The Starting Point: What Went Right

The year before (2008-2009), the Bucks were dismal for a number of reasons, but more than anything else was a lack of talent.  Two major injuries (Andrew Bogut's back and Michael Redd's first left knee disintegration) forced the team to rely on Richard Jefferson, Ramon Sessions, and Charlie Villenueva as the team's top trio, an approach that simply didn't work.  The following offseason, all three moved on (two via free agency, one via trade), and the team was redesigned.

Scott Skiles is notorious for getting more out of less, as far as roster talent is concerned.  In 2009-2010, though, the meshing of Skiles' coaching strengths and the available roster pushed the team beyond what anyone thought possible.  The team was third in defensive efficiency, had a +1.7 point differential, and was able to earn the 6th seed in the perennially-weak Eastern Conference.  Brandon Jennings' debut season, Andrew Bogut finally putting it all together, and a slew of capable role players (Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Carlos Delfino, Ersan Ilyasova, Kurt Thomas, and Luke Ridnour) all buying into Skiles' program proved to be a successful formula.

An Underrated Offseason Loss

And at season's end, we all thought that the formula would be repeated.  Bogut showed that he could handle being the focal point on both ends of the court.  Jennings, no matter how erratic his offense was, could capably run the offense and surprised everyone with his defense.  Mbah a Moute, Delfino, and Ilyasova were there to do all the little things (setting screens, rebounding, shooting the open shot, etc.).  There was just one key cog missing.

Luke Ridnour's career shooting year in 2009-10 (.478/.381/.907 for FG/3PT/FT) was the glue that kept everything together.  If Jennings' jumper was struggling (as it often did), it was Ridnour who could come in and keep the offense on track.  He was a special role player that isn't often found on an NBA roster: talented enough to start but not talented enough to take games over, willing to take as many minutes as were necessary, shooting smart shots, making smart passes, and playing smart defense.  Even though he was getting just a shade over 20 minutes per game, he was easily the third most important player on the team.

John Hammond and Co, though, thought differently.  They declined to resign him outright, instead letting Minnesota pay him $16 million over 4 years to join their plethora of point guards.  The rationale was, at the time, solid.  "Jennings is ready to run the team permanently, we need the cap space to get more help on the wings, and Ridnour's numbers are bound to regress to his career averages."  As it turns out, points one and two were true, but not the third.  Currently, Ridnour is shooting .468/.446/.888 (TS% of .571).  In about 8 more minutes per game, his points, assists, and rebounds are all up, while his fouls and turnovers are about the same, and his PER is an average 15.32.  Below average for a starter, but great for a backup, and would have been perfect off the bench in Milwaukee.

Trying To Buy The Solution On Offense

Ridnour's departure allowed the team more flexibility under the salary cap, and the vision for the team was clear: continue the defensive performance, but get some players to help get buckets and earn free throws.  The 23rd-best offensive efficiency in the league wasn't good enough to get past the first round of the playoffs, even with John Salmons coming off the hottest streak of his career.  We all remember how it went down:

Step one: trade Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric for Corey Maggette (career: 16.3 ppg).  Two overpaid non-factors for an athletic wing who can flat-out score, both from the floor and from the line.

Step two: sign Drew Gooden (career: 11.8 ppg).  A big man who can rebound like crazy, and maybe shoot a bit.  

Step three: re-sign John Salmons (career: 10.1 ppg).  The savior from the year prior, able to shoot from distance and work his way to the basket for layups and fouls.

Step four: sign Keyon Dooling (career: 7.2 ppg).  With Ridnour gone, a backup PG was a must, and Dooling was a decent replacement.  Not as good a shooter, but a better athlete who was better suited to slide over to the 2 when he and Jennings were on the court together.

Between those four players, the Bucks added 45.4 points per game for the price of $25.44 million (2010-11 salary numbers).  That breaks down to about $560,035/point.  

But It Looks So Good On Paper

The rotation truly did look formidable on paper.  Running out a starting five of Jennings, Salmons, Delfino, Gooden, and Bogut was far more potent than the lineup from the year prior, and the second unit of Maggette, Dooling, Ilyasova, Mbah a Moute, and Sanders/Brockman seemed able to put points up as well.

But, as the saying goes, the games aren't played on paper.  Skiles' efforts to find a way to focus the theoretical offensive firepower were not enough, and the offense never found a groove.  Maggette, an all-world ball-stopper, struggled to get the free throws we all thought he could get, and eventually got himself moved to the end of the bench.  Gooden, the eternal space cadet, struggled with plantar fasciitis all year.  Salmons pulled the old Tim Thomas routine (perform well, get paid, regress, repeat) that, combined with his 31 years of age, morphed his offense from smooth to impotent.  

And if it wasn't bad enough for those three to struggle, the guys who had success last year couldn't stay on the court.  Delfino lost months to a concussion, Ilyasova is losing time as we speak.  Jennings lost weeks to a broken foot.  Bogut never fully came back from his catastrophic elbow injury, and is continually plagued by migraines.  At least Michael Redd wasn't ever lonely in the trainer's room.

What Could Have Been

Of course, it's easy to rehash the last year's worth of moves and try to fix what's already irreparably broken.  But here's what I would have done if I had control:

• Re-sign Luke Ridnour, allowing us to stay away from Dooling.  Here's what I wrote in a recap of a road win against Philadelphia last season:
  
  "Luke Ridnour needs to be re-signed after the season...Words cannot express how well Ridnour and Jennings work together.  The fact that they played a large portion of the fourth quarter together underlines not only how much they depend on each other when they're both on the court, but having the ability to replace your point guard but not lose that much in terms of making the offense click.  John Hammond, re-sign this guy ASAP so we don't have to worry about the PG spot."
  
  Not that Dooling is bad, but Ridnour found his groove and seemed to work extremely well with Jennings, both as his backup and his backcourt mate.  I don't see that with Dooling.
• Still make the Maggette trade.  Even though he doesn't work with Skiles' preferred system, and he's way overpaid, and he can kill an offense as easily as he can drive to his right, the trade was the right thing to do.  Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric were bad contracts and worse players, and bringing in Maggette shows a commitment to improving the team.  Was there a better trade out there?  Maybe, but anything else would have been with a similar goal.
• Let Salmons walk.  This is self-explanatory; we should have given him the Charlie V treatment and let someone else overpay for him.
• Pass on Gooden, re-sign Hakim Warrick.  Warrick will never statistically match up to Gooden, but his uber-athletic style would have allowed the team to run-and-gun more.  Gooden would have made an excellent backup center for the right price, but at $5.7 million, I'd pass.
• Give Eddie House a call and a serious sales pitch.  Yes, he's as inconsistent (if not moreso) as Jennings.  Yes, he's a bit of a headcase.  Yes, he takes some shots he shouldn't.  But a guy with championship experience who can space the floor and hit big shots is a guy that the team could have used this year.  As a 10th man, he'd be fine.
• Sign a backup center for less than $5.7 million.  If Kurt Thomas couldn't come back (or if he wasn't wanted), find someone else to take his place.  The following players would have been less expensive than Gooden (who I would have signed for less than the MLE, but not what he got): Shelden Williams, Brad Miller, Mikki Moore, Brian Skinner (who the team actually did sign), Etan Thomas, Lou Amundson, and Fabricio Oberto.  Yes, Gooden is a better player than all of the above, but the way the team could have been built, all they needed was a passable backup center who could give Bogut a breather.

Poll

Where do we go from here?

• Stay the course; with all the injuries, next season will be more positive by default.
• Make some moves, but with the core that's available right now.
• Make as many moves as possible without moving Jennings or Bogut.
• Three words: blow it up.

  7 votes | Results

Are you confused by all the "Cloud" stuff out there? Wish you had an easy way to learn what cloud storage can do for you? Here's a couple of ways you can do that:

• http://www.healthvault.com/personal/index.aspx
• http://skydrive.live.com/

Skydrive is part of Windows Live Essentials. Yes, you have to sign up using your Live ID -- your Hotmail account if you have been out of the loop for a few years :) -- but you have 25GB of storage you can access "in the cloud". You can even share a folder or a document with someone else.

HealthVault is a more purpose-built cloud, one for your medical records. I was really pleased to see that I could stop getting paper copies of the Explanation of Benefits from my insurance company. You probably know the documents I mean, the statements which say your doctor charged $195 for service code RHDFSKJFSY111-0-123A54 (a 10-minute office visit), but the negotiated rate was $45 and your copay was $25. I was even more pleased to see I could have those automatically shared to a HealthVault account.

Why is this cool? Because it lets me store my health-related information in one place -- online --- and not in a tornado of papers on my desk at home. There are even devices -- scales, glucose meters and more -- which can upload data directly to your HealthVault. If I change health insurance providers, my data is still there and I don't need to go to my previous provider and beg for my records. If I want to share the information with a new provider, I can do that, too.

If you try these out, I think you will see how useful it is to have information stored "out there", but protected so only you or the people you designate can see it. And that's what's also happening with enterprises which move from SharePoint or Exchange hosted in their data centers, to email and SharePoint hosted in the cloud: http://office365.microsoft.com/en-US/online-services.aspx 

 

Arron Afflalo has long prided himself on his defense. As a player who entered the league with plenty to prove, aggressive D was his preferred method of convincing coaches to notice. Defense is the key to playing time, he says, "unless you're a high draft pick, or somebody who's known for coming in and scoring a lot of points."

In other words, unless you're something of a legend.

Which, in a funny way, is precisely how Afflalo arrived in the NBA.

In the course of growing up as a shooting guard in Los Angeles, and starring at UCLA from 2004-2007, Afflalo developed no small amount of admiration for Kobe Bryant.

In predraft interviews, executives say Afflalo talked like a superstar. Executives were blown away by Afflalo's excessive confidence, complete with talk of making the Hall of Fame, patterning his game on Bryant and the like. That kind of talk is great -- from stars. But all indications were that Afflalo was on a course to be a role player. Delusions of grandeur among role players is a leading cause of NBA failure.

Some teams were turned off. The Pistons drafted the All-American (who just missed two NCAA championships courtesy of the Florida Gators) 27th, at the tail end of the first round.

Two years later, the former first-round pick was traded to Denver -- with Walter Sharpe and cash -- for a measly second-round pick.

But there's more to the Bryant legacy than tough talk. There's also an off-the-charts work ethic. And Afflalo got that, too. Finishing up his fourth NBA season, he's a full-time starter who has been improving for four straight years.

Nursing a hamstring injury since early March, he has nonetheless posted career best numbers in key categories that reflect an offseason spent away from fun, and in the gym.

Afflalo's true shooting percentage -- which accounts for his shooting from 2, 3 and the free throw line -- has improved four straight years and is now third in the NBA, trailing only big men. His assist rate and PER are the highest of his career. He's shooting a career-best 85 percent from the free throw line, and making 43 percent of his 3s. Turnovers and fouls are at career-low rates.

The key to Afflalo's offensive efficiency is built on quick decisiveness: Take the open shots without hesitation, otherwise move the ball crisply. Since the Carmelo Anthony trade, that approach has defined the entire Nuggets team, and they've been playing elite basketball. Afflalo, who says he "should be good to go" against the Kings tonight after sitting out with a hamstring injury, tells TrueHoop the game is more fun this way:

How'd you first learn about the Carmelo trade?

I saw it on the breaking news during All-Star Weekend I believe. I was just listening along with everybody else.

And when you saw who you were getting, did you think you'd be this good?

Of course that's though. Hadn't really played with the guys -- it's so hard to judge that. But at the same time, we did know we were getting somewhat legitimate talent. You know if things went well as far as our chemistry -- really just share the ball and play together -- that we would be fine.

Now that you do know them, are you thinking a little bigger? Or is this just a young team going on a nice little run, and that's that?

Honestly, I just think the organization and the guys that were here alongside Melo and Chauncey and all those guys that left, they expected to win. The guys that came over with us, they expected to win too. So I don't think, because of the trade, either team, at the time, didn't have aspirations of winning it all.

Post trade deadline, on the Nuggets, who has the ball in their hands at crunch time. Is it Ty Lawson?

Yeah, either Ty or Raymond [Felton]. I'm not sure who gets the shot, or who gets the play drawn up. But you have to feel comfortable with the ball in the point guard's hands at least initially. As the shot clock winds down, and it's time for the shot to go up, that probably will vary. And there are certain guys who are dreading those moments, so I'm sure coach will have a good feel for who should have the ball at that time.

Do you subscribe to the theory that teams need "that guy" to take those big shots? Or can it be done by committee?

Umm, I don't think you have to have one designated guy. You've seen it in sports. Some guys are just better at it. But that doesn't mean the next guy can't get it done.

We have a lot of those guys. I'm fully confident in myself. There's different players on our team now who, when put in that position, feel like they would succeed. It's just that Melo had established a tradition, with him being here so long, and you know Chauncey established that over a long career, those are just the two initial guys people looked to before the trade went down. But that doesn't mean we can't get it done when a big play needs to happen.

How many game-winners have you hit?

In the NBA, or just period?

Well, I know you had some big ones in college.

I guess in the NBA as far as at the buzzer, literally with the horn going off, just one. But I've hit a lot with ten seconds or under that were really really important.

That's just got to be the best feeling, huh?

It really is.

Is Coach Karl doing anything different now?

He's the same. He's the same. I just think we have a younger team, so he can do a little more teaching. When you've got more of a veteran team, it's more just about making sure guys are doing the right thing. But when you've got a 13-year point guard, an all-star, a ten-year veteran and myself out there to start the game, there's not a whole that needs to be said. Guys of that caliber should know what to do out there on the court. It's kind of his job to kind of make sure the ship just keeps going straight.

Now he's doing more teaching, just because we have young guys who are eager to learn.

We like the story of teams coming together and sharing the ball. Chicago is like that. The Florida team you played in college. Being that kind of team, that socializes together, and like each other as friends ... is that better? Does that help you win more games?

Yeah. I just think that's the way the game should be played. People talk about playing the game the right way or the wrong way. That's just a matter of opinion.

But there is a certain style of basketball, and a certain mentality, a winning mentality, a team mentality, or a defensive mentality, that has proven to be most successful at this level.

You just look at the past champions, with the Celtics, and the Lakers and the Spurs, there's just a certain style of basketball that gets played on winning basketball teams.

Is it more fun?

It is. It is. Because you just feel like you have your opportunity to be your personal best, and at the same time have a winning attitude about it. It's a lot less individualism. It's hard to find at this level.

Have you established a goal for this season, as a team?

Just to win.

Not this round of the playoffs or anything?

I don't think any playoff team has aspirations to just make it. Well, maybe some teams do. But we don't. The plan isn't just to make it. The plan is to compete and win. That has a lot to do with the pride and the personnel actually on this team. I can't say it's an overall success story, like if we don't win a championship everybody would be mad. For the guys that are in that locker room, we expect to win.

Have you power rankings where, lately, you guys have been ranked near the very top of the whole NBA?

No. I don't think so.

That sounds a little too high?

It's hard to judge. Obviously, we have played well. But a lot of that stuff depends on matchups, the longevity of the season and injuries and things like that. So, you know, that's why the playoffs are so special and different. It's just a matter of timing. If you have healthy guys and you're playing well at the right time, I mean, usually the best team will win, and that's how it should be. That's the importance of a series. But you just never know.

You were one of the players who helped Adam Morrison off the court when he was crying after you eliminated him from the NCAA tournament, right? I was a little surprised that that was seen as controversial, or so exceptional. Did it feel like a normal thing to you?

I mean, at the time ... you don't like to see anybody go out like that. He had such a great college career.

I obviously don't think about that during the basketball game. I'm out to kill. But you know, once it's done, it's done. It is a sport. And it's an emotional game. You want to be there for your teammates, but at the same time you want to have high character in how you celebrate and what you do in tough moments for your opponent. Just have a little class about how you approach the game, even when it's done.

There's kind of a macho code, though, isn't there? I know there are plenty of coaches who would say: Don't go console the other guy.

Yeah, I mean, that's just me as a person. I think. Trust me it doesn't carry over at all during game time. But it's OK to be there for somebody once that clock has expired. You would expect it from someone else too.

So, this past summer, you didn't go to L.A. for the summer, right?

No, I didn't. I went home for a very short visit. But you know, I knew that my opportunity may be slightly better this year than even last year. I had a lot different things at stake, for me personally, and for our team.

Is this a contract year for you?

It is.

And you've got the lockout to worry about too, I guess.

We'll be fine.

I think last year, in my third year, and having somewhat of a significant role on the team as a starter, was really the first year in the league I was really really disappointed about how the postseason ended. I'm a competitive player, but my rookie season I didn't play a whole lot. We got somewhat of a lot of dysfunction my second year. So last year was really a tough year to just lose in the playoffs, how we did, to Utah. This year I was just really really motivated.

Were you working with [Nuggets strength and conditioning coach] Steve Hess?

Yeah, I worked with him, and I worked with the coaching staff. But I did a lot of stuff on my own. Those guys like their offseason as well. There were some coaches and things, around here who do stay in Denver in the offseason, and they were all available.

Why is it easier to work in Denver?

Isolation. Me being from L.A., and obviously the city itself ... it wasn't tough for me to be disciplined and to stay away from distractions. Friends, family, entertainment. I didn't have a choice but to deal with work. It's easier to stay focused.

Are you single?

Yeah.

So you were really, like, alone for the summer.

Yeah.

That's intense.

It was. [Laughs]

What's motivating you?

I just take pride in being a complete player, trying to win games, and becoming a leader. ... I enjoy winning. It's fun.

The Real Madrid defender on his love for Liverpool, standing naked in front of the queen and whether Leo Messi could cut it on a cold night in Stoke

So, Álvaro, Real Madrid-Spurs … Yes. Normally, you all watch the draw together but we trained in the afternoon that day so I was at home alone. You sit there and wait and wait … and when they've opened the ball and they're there with the piece of paper in their hand and smiling, you're thinking: "Turn it round, will you?" I really wanted an English team, so I was delighted. I have great memories of my time there – the atmosphere is unbeatable. I sent messages to Xabi [Alonso], to [Raúl] Albiol, to Sergio [Ramos], excited. Spurs knocked out Milan and will be dangerous but everyone's happy. If we play well, we're probably favourites. Playing the return leg there is hard, though.

Does Spurs' success surprise you? Not entirely. While I was in England they started to make some good signings and spend good money on players. People thought it would be Spurs' year and maybe it didn't quite happen; they never took that step up. Now they have. They're very quick with Bale and Lennon and I like Rafa van der Vaart and Modric. And Crouch of course.

Harry Redknapp once said he had to find a place for Modric because he was a t'riffic player but that as a central midfielder he might get bullied out of the game. Is England really that much harder? Physically, yes, it can be. You want to play but if your opponents want to play at something else it's very difficult. It's not just a case of playing the way you want to play but the way you can play. You go to grounds like Stoke and you can't impose your football. It's very physical, very direct. It's long ball … long ball … and it never comes down. You can't control or play.

So, it's true? Leo Messi couldn't do it on a cold, wet night at the Britannia? Hahaha, well, Messi probably could! Maybe he's the only one that can. But it is true that it's hard. There have been so many players who have come from other leagues, very technical players, who have struggled to settle in England.

Speaking of Messi, you're one of the few players that has stopped him. Should other teams copy what you did? Well, he's totally different now. He is not playing as wide, he has greater freedom of movement: he goes left and right, through the middle. I did pretty much a man-marking job on him: I just stuck by him all the time. It worked well. I was so happy with the two games I played against him.

When you follow a player everywhere, do you end up striking up conversation? Ha, Messi didn't. He is very quiet, he doesn't say a word. In two games he didn't say a thing. I'm not the kind of player – like some – that tries to wind them up by saying things. Quite honestly, I have to be so concentrated that I can't let my attention be diverted by talking.

You could face Messi in the next round. After Spurs, you've got Barcelona. Why do they draw all the way through? I like knowing the road to the final. It's good to know what's waiting for you: you're ready. With Barcelona this isn't the case because we know them so well but if it was another team, a foreign one, knowing in advance who you'll get next means you can start watching them early. Anyway, I don't want to have to sit through another draw! The 5-0 [loss to Barcelona] earlier in the season really hurt but I think we're ready now and there could be four clásicos in three weeks with the league, the Cup final and potentially two Champions League ties …

Please don't say that … Haha, I know! But I hope there is. That means we've got through.

But first you have to get past White Hart Lane, of course ... Fans don't actually play but in England it's as if they do. It can be hard to face that. In England the atmosphere is greater than in Spain; the fans support you and carry the team from the first minute. We have to make sure we don't suffer there. It's special, magic, for Spurs fans. England is different.

England seems to have made a real impact on you … Yes, a hell of an impact. When you get to April and May and you don't see the sun, ¡madre mía! But I loved it and the football is everything. England helped me grow and made me a better player. I love the way fans live their football there, with such intensity. I know it's a cliché but it's true: everyone who goes to play there loves it. It was a wonderful experience and I would recommend it to everyone.

Then why did you leave? We didn't reach an agreement to renew my contract at Liverpool, and then Madrid showed an interest. At the same time, Liverpool paid £17m for Johnson. White and in a bottle, as we say. It was obvious. They'd signed a full back, we hadn't reached a deal, Madrid were interested. There was no other outcome. If Liverpool hadn't signed Johnson I'm sure I would have stayed there.

You're extremely popular amongst Liverpool fans still … Much more than I deserve, much more than I earned. I look at Xabi Alonso: he was there for five years, he was a reference for the team, the focal point. In that last year, he was Liverpool's best player. When he was out the team missed him more than they missed Gerrard or Torres; he was the centre of gravity. It's normal for him to be so loved by the fans. But for them to have so much affection for me … [shrugs, blows out his cheeks]. I was only here for two and a half years. I appreciate it so much.

You and Xabi Alonso left and are still admired. Fernando Torres's situation could hardly be more different … It's hard to make fans understand certain things – especially in the case of the Liverpool fans, who are so passionate. Maybe if instead of going to Chelsea he had gone to, say, Inter, the fans might not have reacted in the same way. I don't know, but maybe not. Sometimes, you have to take into account the way the club sells [the story] of a player's departure. It depends on lots of factors. I've spoken to Fer and he is hurt by the way it happened: in truth, it wasn't done the best way.

You sound saddened by it. I am. El niño was perfect from the start, he connected so well with the fans, they loved him so much, he loved them so much … it's such a pity. It happened with Atlético too: when he reached the point that he felt there was no other option he said: "I've just got to go." At Liverpool, great players were leaving, the replacements were not what people hoped for, the project didn't look so attractive … That's what made him leave his heart to one side and take the decision …

If Liverpool had the money would you all still be there? Liverpool is a spectacular club to play for: it has everything. But maybe it lacks that economic muscle to fight with the biggest clubs. It has such a great history – they deserve to be back up there …

How is your Scouse? Uf! That was hard. Carra and Stevie, wow. In the end, though, you pick it up: that's one of the other great things about going abroad. And now when we talk to Lass at Madrid, me and Xabi talk in Scouse … la! I loved Liverpool. London too: whenever I got a few days off, I'd go down there. Mind you, I said to Fernando you must be loving it in London and he just said: mucho tráfico, muuucho tráfico. He had to get out the city, haha!

Now for something completely different: what's it like standing naked before the Queen? Hahaha! In Spain we have reached a point of such familiarity with the royals that it no longer matters; the protocol has broken down. We have affection for them and they have affection for us. That image in the dressing room after the World Cup final with Carles Puyol in just a towel saying hello to the Queen … haha! Maybe the distance that should separate us from the royal family isn't there any more and some people can't believe it when they see it.

Do you realise what you have done? England won the World Cup 44 years ago and we're still talking about it … Yeah, true. I think The most important thing about this team was not just winning the World Cup but laying a path to follow in the future. This is the way we have to proceed. What we needed was the style, an identity: How are we going to play? What kind of players do we need? And of course the Barcelona influence is important: Xavi, [Andrés] Iniesta, [Sergio] Busquets … half the team is Barcelona. Their approach has proven contagious. Our identity is very clear and we're following that. So, hopefully this won't be the only World Cup they're talking about in 44 years' time.

Right, that's enough of that. Paella or fish and chips? Paella. Paella. No doubt. Fish and chips? I'm sorry but I just don't see it … And those breakfasts you have! The food is probably the thing you notice most: I took loads of food from Spain: I didn't have a big jamón leg in the kitchen but I did bring it over in vacuum packs.

Kylie or Britney? Britney … I think.

Who'd win a fight between a lion and a tiger? The lion. He's the king of the jungle.

Everyone says that. Now, what was the last book you read? I'm reading a saga which they're going to make into a series on HBO, I think. A Song of Ice and Fire. It's a series of books and I'm on the third one.

You're a bit of a series fan ... I think we all are; we're all hooked. You'd think we were stupid but you can't help it My favourite was probably The Sopranos. As well as being a great series the ending is brilliant. I'm not going to say anything in case you haven't seen it, but it was brilliant – and that contrasts with others. I didn't like the way Lost went, the same goes for Prison Break … Heroes, I didn't like. I haven't seen The Wire but people have told me to watch that.

Did you watch any English TV? Not much but there was this football programme on Saturday mornings, where they would do tricks with the ball, try to hit the bar from the half-way line, it was funny …

Soccer AM? That's the one.

What was the last film you saw? Torrente 4 … but no one will have heard of that in England.

You only watched that because Cesc was in it … Hey, I was in it too! With Sergio Ramos and [Gonzalo] Higuaín. We just played football; they didn't give us any lines. I'm a big cinema fan: it was a shame that in England I couldn't watch it because of the language. My English wasn't quite good enough without subtitles.

Did you ever watch Room 101? Eh?

Small Talk embarks on yet another inadequate explanation of the concept. So, what would you put in there? Fifa and Uefa have so much power and you so rarely hear the players' voice in that. They don't listen and they can't accept criticism. If you say anything, you get a fine or a ban. Sometimes you feel like they have too much power but refuse to listen, so in they go … You look at the interests there – in choosing who hosts the World Cup for example – and, well, maybe it's better I don't say anything but it's true. It's not good to be in a situation where you can't even criticise things for fear of reprisals.

And what about the Spanish league? Three days before this weekend's games we didn't know whether you were playing and, if so, when … That's another one. I said it the other day and people attacked me for it. But how can that be in a country like Spain? That's another thing I miss about England: it was so well organised.

What was the last CD you bought? I don't, I download them. Danza Kuduro, I think. it's Spanish-Portuguese. I'm not a huge music fan really.

Who is? Small Talk hears that Sergio Ramos is the flamenco-loving master of the pre-game stereo ... Not any more. When he is with us, he's not allowed to put flamenco on – we've banned him. The other pain in the arse is Marcelo. I think even Sergio is better than him. I'm stuck between the devil and deep blue sea. You've got to choose between two terrible options. And if you try to put your iPod on they kill you, hahaha! But flamenco? Uh-uh. Banned.

Are you ready to see what's next from HTC? That's just what the company promises to deliver at an upcoming press event, notifications for which are just going out now. The fun is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, April 12 in London. What could HTC be planning to reveal? Just last week we spotted the EVO 3D in what looked like a GSM configuration ... Read More

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1 Comments

Does the three day rule no longer exist in dating? I kinda liked it. What's the protocol in the time of facebook and texting?

So snowflake precipitous story: Met a guy at a bar on a Thursday. We hit it off, he walked me home and we exchanged numbers. He sent me a text when he got home saying how nice it was to meet me. That was cute, I told him the same. I was perfectly ready to wait til Saturday (or so) to hear from him or I would call him (I'm not a damsel waiting to be chased). He added me to facebook the very next day. And he sent me (multiple) texts everyday til Sunday. Not making plans texts; I tried calling him because it seemed like he was trying to get to know me through an inadequate medium, but he seemed really uncomfortable talking and we ended the convo kinda awkward. Then the texting resumed. I'm not unwilling to talk to someone so soon, but he was all over the place. (My responses to the texts were friendly, but tried to convey the message that I was busy and looked forward to talking to him later, I was after all at work and so was he).
This creeped me out. This is weird, right? I need a day of space to a) acknowledge I've met someone I like and b) go over our interaction while sober to make sure it wasn't drunk-infatuation. He didn't give me any space at all and by Sunday the texts were over-familiar (to me) in the vein of 'hey baby'. I DON'T KNOW YOU I AM NOT YOUR BABY. I told him something along those lines and he told me to fuck off. He made it real easy to be comfortable with my decision there.
I've had a few similar encounters where the guy makes electronic contact almost immediately and I have no time to get my bearings (or feel excited anticipation!) and it makes me feel like a prudey old lady (I'm 26) to be turned off by this.
My friend tells me I'm completely overreacting and this is how dating in the time of facebook and texting works (although she admitted the 'baby' talk was pushing it). Am I being unrealistic to expect a little space from someone whose last name I haven't learned yet?

FWIW, I usually date people I've met through work or school, more often than not we're at least acquaintances before one of us asks the other out. But I have done this new person dating before, with a nice 2-3 day period of twitterpated anticipation before calling the new person and things have progressed well from there. Haven't gone this route in a while and I'm wondering if things have changed completely in the few years I've been dating known parties.
Does anyone know what they're doing out there?

"They'll Stone You" Edition
*

Bob Dylan - Rainy Day Women - 1998 Newcastle
Dan Riehl at Riehl World View:

"I don't know if this demonstrates how truly stupid are our Beltway bois who like to dress up as conservatives, or how deranged they are when it comes to Sarah Palin. And, yes, that goes for Jimbo at NRO, nice guy, or not. What's utterly ridiculous is Geraghty's and other's takes on this... What policy is it, exactly, that conservative Sarah Palin embraced as Governor of Alaska, hmm? Oh, look at this, she reduced taxes to encourage commerce. Nah, nothing conservative in that, now is there? Obviously, she had been planning a reality show all this time, how forward looking, our Sarah. Let's just forget that many states have entire departments devoted to facilitating this same type of thing... Tim Pawlenty has been Governor of Minnesota since 2003. Why on earth did it take that conservative until 2010 to take a serious look at the budget for his state's film board? How many millions did it dole out during his terms, I wonder? Get right on that, won't you, Jimbo?"

Dan Riehl at Riehl World View:

"Rut Roh. I guess this kills Mitt's chances of getting an NRO endorsement. Barbour's toast, too, I guess. Mitch Daniels?? How could you??? I thought you were conservative. I've already dealt with Pawlenty. I guess Bachmann's a shoe in for the 2012 NRO endorsement at this point, right? Idiots."

Dan Riehl at Riehl World View:

"I imagine Jimbo might hyperventilate over every new Chris Christie You Tube video. While Christie cut $2 million from NJ's tourism budget, it still spends several million dollars of taxpayer dollars a year to attract tourists. Through some tax credits, Alaska now has Ice Road Truckers, Deadliest Catch, Alaska State Troopers, Palin's reality show and other productions, which often tout Alaska as a beautiful tourist destination, while building a cottage film industry that provides jobs and income to Alaskans. They're even building a sound stage up there, so I hear. Certainly in Jim's mind, if Palin's tax credits are an issue, Christie's 5% hotel tax to fund all that government spending in NJ is an even bigger problem for him, right? So, how would Christie defend all this spending as a conservative were he to run in 2012? I bet Jimbo will get right on providing us the answer to that troubling question."

Greg Pollowitz via Twitter:

"So if @sarahpalinusa is elected prez, she might give tax breaks to intl cos to open factories in America and create jobs. Socialist!"

Lady Liberty at From the Desk of Lady Liberty:

"The Daily Caller is ticked off they got called out by Palin for what she described, very accurately I might add, as ‘sloppy’ journalism. It was sloppy, but it was also intentional in my opinion. This was a conservative media hit piece designed to slap her down just prior to a possible announcement she might run for President. It’s right in line with the Rove-’O'Reilly backstabbing of Palin (and a handful of other rising conservative stars) narrative of late."

Mark Levin via Twitter:

"This is getting absurd, and the fact that inside the beltway conservatives play this..."

John Hayward at Human Events:

"What could Palin have done to soothe Jim Geraghty’s concerns? Insist the producers of her show refuse to take advantage of the substantial tax credit they were entitled to? Refuse to do the show? He’s probably right that she’ll take heat for it, but she takes heat for existing... I don’t see why Sarah Palin’s appearance on a television program that took advantage of a state tax credit should automatically make her a supporter of direct federal subsidies, or a hypocrite for opposing them. If the people of Alaska want to terminate that program, it would be relatively easy for their legislature to do so… certainly much easier than cutting off the direct cash pipeline from our wallets into NPR and PBS, or getting the company run by Obama’s soulmate Jeffrey Immelt to pay a nickel of federal taxes."

Nice Deb:

"‘Dissent is the highest form of patriotism’ officially ended with the New age of Obama upon us... 4/19/2009: Joe Klein: Yes, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck ‘seditious’... I wonder if there’s been any progress by the linguists in the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to find a word stronger than ‘Hypocrisy’?"

Foxfier at Head Noises:

"Gosh, That Sarah Palin-- Using the word 'squirmish' to mean 'a small fight'... Whups, that's the Boston Globe, last November. Anyway... wait a sec, how many of these dang things are there?... Oh... *throws in towel* I give up! How can I show that Sarah is a stupid-head making up words when there's examples from when she was in college? Curse you, Mrs. Palin! How did you go back in time twenty-five years and put a word into newspapers! Seriously, though, folks-- I found this all on the first page of a Google news search. I didn't even have to go half way down the page before I got more than I felt like putting together in paint. Maybe y'all -- (oh noez! Did I just "invent" a word?!? It's not in my dictionary! Wait, "noez" isn't there, either...) -- should try a simple internet search before you copy the lefty talking heads and start hollering about someone 'making up' a word?"

Matthew Sheffield at The Washington Examiner:

"Scuttlebutt has it that no one has thrown his/her hat into the ring as everyone is waiting to see what former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is going to do."

Clifton B at Another Black Conservative:

"The Republican primary debate scheduled for May 2 at the Reagan Library has been moved to September 14. This is the debate that will be cosponsored by Politico and NBC... Even with a new date set, Republicans should really consider skipping this debate all together. Since 2008, both Politico and NBC have shown themselves to be less than impartial. Since scores of Democrats flatly refuse to go on Fox News cause they find it biased, why can't Republicans flatly refuse to deal with the likes of Politico or NBC? I think skipping this debate could be a way for the right to finally call out some of the biggest hacks in the media. I am not going to hold my breath for it though. As Sarah Palin has said, some Republicans have the fighting instinct of sheep."

Tom Maguire at JustOneMinute:

"Obama Looks For His Inner Sarah Palin..."

streiff at RedState.com:

"Politico’s Ben Smith Sees Red People... The left, immune to any sense of ridiculousness, is relegated to trying to convince each other they are smarter than anyone on the right. Naturally, this often leads to hilarious results. When Sarah Palin told a Tea Party crowd to 'party like it was 1773' the leftosphere went positively orgasmic until someone pointed out that the Boston Tea Party occurred in 1773, not in whatever year the left thought it did."

Benyamin Korn at JewsForSarah.com:

"William Kristol walks back his criticism of Sarah Palin..."

Gripping Hand:

"I’ve been puzzled about the vitriolic hate directed at Sarah Palin ever since she was introduced to a national audience. The seething and ranting has reached epic proportions and has gone way beyond any disagreement over policy positions. Was it simply that Palin was an attractive, relatively conservative woman? Was is that she wasn’t a product of the so-called elite educational institutions? Her political credentials were no worse than many other national candidates, so that couldn’t have been it. So what was it? The answer came to me yesterday... While driving in Kentucky, I saw a... bumper sticker... which stated, 'Palin does not speak for THIS woman!' While surprisingly free from ad hominem attacks or or scatological references, it illustrated the problem with Palin – she’s a woman. In the eyes of the left, that is simply inexcusable. Why should anyone think that Sarah Palin speaks for anyone other than herself? When she speaks, she says what she thinks, not what all women think. People can chose to accept what she says or not, or debate certain points with her, or engage in any other sort of rational debate with her, but the conversation is still with *her* and not with any collection of people other than ones that specifically say she represents them. And there is the problem – the left cannot accept that individual people have individual opinions."

- JP

Filed under: Sports, Celeb News & Interviews

Jason Babin, a defensive end for The Tennessee Titans, has three passions he loves talking about: sports, family and hunting.

Married to Sara Babin, his college sweetheart, and dad to two boys -- Maddux, 5, and Talan, 3 -- the 2004 first-round draft pick is known as #93 on football field, but he's also dedicated to the sport of hunting.

Babin owns and operates the Babin Ranch, 500 heavily wooded acres in Center, Texas, and home to a variety of animals, including zebras, rams, antelope, wildebeests, deer, elk and buffalo.

In a recent interview with ParentDish, Babin says he has been teaching his young sons how to hunt, and that it teaches them sons valuable lessons. An edited portion of the conversation follows.

ParentDish: Sorry about the season so far.
Jason Babin: Yeah, well, the season is not going according to plan and it does not look like we are going to make the playoffs this year. A couple teams will have to lose, which means we have to win, so, overall, I would say the playoffs are a slim chance right now.

PD: You have had quite a career with the NFL. Texas, Kansas and now Tennessee.
JB: It hasn't gone as planned, but we are on track right now.

PD: Is it hard to plant roots in one place knowing you can get traded at any time?
JB: It is uneasy, which is why I am excited to finally sign a four to five year deal. Now we can be somewhere for a while and finally start a life.

PD: How does your family handle each move to a new city?
JB: My wife has been amazing about it since she is stuck with all of the unpacking since I tend to be in training camp. As for the boys, they look at it as a long vacation.

PD: What's your take on Tennessee?
JB: We love it here because we love country music and the country scenery. We are ready to make it home.

PD: In addition to your role with the Tennessee Titans, you are also a dad.
JB: When I had my first child, Maddux, I was nervous. I was never a dad before and I knew what I did with Maddux was going to be a direct reflection of me in terms of how my wife and I parent him. Now that I have a second child, I am in the groove.

PD: Do you give your boys a special pep talk before you hit the road to play a game?
JB: (Laughs.) Yes, I do. Always. I sit them both down and say, "OK, Daddy has to go to the hotel now which means you are the men of the house and have to protect Mommy while I am gone." They take it to heart and they take it serious when I am gone.

PD: How do you stay in touch with them when you are away?
JB: We use the iPhone face chat so we can see each other, or the Web cam on the computer. I tend to read them stories when they are getting ready to go to bed.

PD: Speaking of children, when you were 7 years old, you started hunting.
JB: Yeah. I started hunting early. Actually, my mom's father was a professional fur trapper for a while and he used to hunt and fish, too. Because of that, they never went to the store for meat. They always hunted for their meals.

PD: So, when you were 7, you learned how to shoot a gun?
JB: They started teaching me with a bow and arrow because that requires more patience and you need to learn patience if you are a hunter.

PD: Don't you think that is too young to teach a kid how to fire a weapon?
JB: Absolutely not. My 5-year-old shot his first deer on a bye-week at my ranch in Texas, and then we made it into hamburger and sausage for the family. We are a pretty hands-on family.

PD: What did you hunt as a kid?
JB: Where I grew up in Michigan, it was deer, rabbit and turkeys.

PD: I find your take on kids handling weapons surprising since you graduated from Western Michigan University with a degree in criminal justice.
JB: Yes, that is true. I grew up in a small town and since it was rural there wasn't a whole lot to do and hunting was common.

PD: You don't think this sends the message to children that it's OK to kill an innocent animal for sport?
JB: We are a meat-hunting family and everything we kill we eat. Look, we have a rule in our house: You do not point a toy gun at anyone. We instill the basics to our kids and, in terms of hunting, we do it because it is how we get our food. We really educate our kids about this and if you teach them the right way, they will learn those lessons early on.

PD: When did you introduce Maddux to hunting?
JB: When he was 3.

PD: Three? My daughter only played on the playground and the beach at 3.
JB: He learned how to shoot a bow and a .22, as well as (my son) Talan.

PD: And you don't think that's way too young for a kid to handle a weapon, let alone learn how to use one?
JB: Maybe it was because my mom wouldn't let me have some of that cool stuff at that age. My mom was very over-protective of me. Look, before my boys did anything, they needed to learn the proper care, such as how to clean a gun and put it away. We always promote safety first.

PD: And your wife allows this?
JB: Yeah, she is on board with it. She knows what I am doing and how I teach them the basics before we do anything else.

PD: I'm stunned other parents haven't given you a hard time about this.
JB: They do, but I don't care.

PD: What are the benefits to teaching your kids how to hunt?
JB: There are three great benefits. One, I feel it teaches them patience. It taught my 5-year-old how to sit still and not move for two hours. It also teaches them life lessons, such as finding food for survival. And, three, we get to spend lot of quality time together, which I wouldn't trade for the world.

PD: You and your dad also run the Babin Ranch Center in Texas where you serve as the owner and your dad is the manager.
JB: He fills in for me while I am gone because we have a lot of corporate outings during the fall season while I am gone due to football.

PD: Do you let kids hunt there?
JB: Yes, we can set it up to be a family atmosphere.

PD: So, at what age can kids go there with their parents?
JB: At least 12, and their parents have to be avid hunters and they always have a guide with them at all times. We always put safety first.

PD: I'm shocked PETA hasn't come after you.
JB: Oh, yeah, and I love to antagonize them. I have even saved some of the letters they sent me -- how I have made the world a darker and gloomier place and my soul will be forever blackened.

PD: Your response?
JB: I invite them to come out, but they never have.

PD: I notice you give a lot of tickets away to needy children to attend a football game.
JB: Yes. I was lucky to have good role models when it came to my parents and, unfortunately, not every child has that. The more I can do to help out children is an amazing feeling.

PD: Do you work with a particular charity?
JB: No, but I am hoping to be in one place long enough to team up with someone. Since I get tickets at face value I purchase them for the children so they can go to a game.

PD: Is it true a lot of athletes follow the same practice?
JB: Yes, a lot of guys do. I think the guys get involved because, if you read some of the bios about these players, you see a lot of them came from nothing and, in the end, made it to the NFL. I think it is a great way to give back and teach other children you can do anything you set your mind to.

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