::sigh::
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NYC skateboarding pioneer Andy Kessler dies at 48

 

By ULA ILNYTZKY, Associated Press Writer Ula Ilnytzky, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 22 mins ago
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pulled from yahoo

Guitar legend-inventor Les Paul dies at age 94

AP, Aug 13, 2009 11:56 am PDT

As an inventor, Paul also helped bring about the rise of rock ‘n’ roll with multitrack recording, which enables artists to record different instruments at different times, sing harmony with themselves, and then carefully balance the tracks in the finished recording.

The use of electric guitar gained popularity in the mid-to-late 1940s, and then exploded with the advent of rock in the mid-’50s.

“Suddenly, it was recognized that power was a very important part of music,” Paul once said. “To have the dynamics, to have the way of expressing yourself beyond the normal limits of an unamplified instrument, was incredible. Today a guy wouldn’t think of singing a song on a stage without a microphone and a sound system.”

A tinkerer and musician since childhood, he experimented with guitar amplification for years before coming up in 1941 with what he called “The Log,” a four-by-four piece of wood strung with steel strings.

“I went into a nightclub and played it. Of course, everybody had me labeled as a nut.” He later put the wooden wings onto the body to give it a tradition guitar shape.

In 1952, Gibson Guitars began production on the Les Paul guitar.

Pete Townsend of the Who, Steve Howe of Yes, jazz great Al DiMeola and Led Zeppelin‘s Jimmy Page all made the Gibson Les Paul their trademark six-string.

Over the years, the Les Paul series has become one of the most widely used guitars in the music industry. In 2005, Christie’s auction house sold a 1955 Gibson Les Paul for $45,600.

In the late 1960s, Paul retired from music to concentrate on his inventions. His interest in country music was rekindled in the mid-’70s and he teamed up with Chet Atkins for two albums. The duo were awarded a Grammy for best country instrumental performance of 1976 for their “Chester and Lester” album.

With Mary Ford, his wife from 1949 to 1962, he earned 36 gold records for hits including “Vaya Con Dios” and “How High the Moon,” which both hit No. 1. Many of their songs used overdubbing techniques that Paul had helped develop.

“I could take my Mary and make her three, six, nine, 12, as many voices as I wished,” he recalled. “This is quite an asset.” The overdubbing technique was highly influential on later recording artists such as the Carpenters.

Released in 2005, “Les Paul & Friends: American Made, World Played” was his first album of new material since those 1970s recordings. Among those playing with him: Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Richie Sambora.

“They’re not only my friends, but they’re great players,” Paul told The Associated Press. “I never stop being amazed by all the different ways of playing the guitar and making it deliver a message.”

Two cuts from the album won Grammys, “Caravan” for best pop instrumental performance and “69 Freedom Special” for best rock instrumental performance. (He had also been awarded a technical Grammy in 2001.)

Paul was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.

Paul was born Lester William Polfus, in Waukseha, Wis., on June 9, 1915. He began his career as a musician, billing himself as Red Hot Red or Rhubarb Red. He toured with the popular Chicago band Rube Tronson and His Texas Cowboys and led the house band on WJJD radio in Chicago.

In the mid-1930s he joined Fred Waring’s Pennsylvanians and soon moved to New York to form the Les Paul Trio, with Jim Atkins and bassist Ernie Newton.

Meanwhile, he had made his first attempt at audio amplification at age 13. Unhappy with the amount of volume produced by his acoustic guitar, Paul tried placing a telephone receiver under the strings. Although this worked to some extent, only two strings were amplified and the volume level was still too low.

By placing a phonograph needle in the guitar, all six strings were amplified, which proved to be much louder. Paul was playing a working prototype of the electric guitar in 1929.

His work on taping techniques began in the years after World War II, when Bing Crosby gave him a tape recorder. Drawing on his earlier experimentation with his homemade record-cutting machines, Paul added an additional playback head to the recorder. The result was a delayed effect that became known as tape echo.

Tape echo gave the recording a more “live” feel and enabled the user to simulate different playing environments.

Paul’s next “crazy idea” was to stack together eight mono tape machines and send their outputs to one piece of tape, stacking the recording heads on top of each other. The resulting machine served as the forerunner to today’s multitrack recorders.

In 1954, Paul commissioned Ampex to build the first eight-track tape recorder, later known as “Sel-Sync,” in which a recording head could simultaneously record a new track and play back previous ones.

He had met Ford, then known as Colleen Summers, in the 1940s while working as a studio musician in Los Angeles. For seven years in the 1950s, Paul and Ford broadcast a TV show from their home in Mahwah, N.J. Ford died in 1977, 15 years after they divorced.

In recent years, even after his illness in early 2006, Paul played Monday nights at New York night spots. Such stars as Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, Dire Straits‘ Mark Knopfler, Bruce Springsteen and Eddie Van Halen came to pay tribute and sit in with him.

“It’s where we were the happiest, in a `joint,’” he said in a 2000 interview with the AP. “It was not being on top. The fun was getting there, not staying there — that’s hard work.”

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his writing credits are crazy.

Drillbit Taylor (2008) (story) (as Edmond Dantes)

Beethoven’s 5th (2003) (V) (characters) (as Edmond Dantes)
… aka Beethoven’s 5th: Big Paw (USA)

Maid in Manhattan (2002) (story) (as Edmond Dantès)
… aka Made in New York (USA: poster title)

Home Alone 4 (2002) (TV) (characters)
… aka Home Alone: Taking Back the House (USA: DVD title)

Beethoven’s 4th (2001) (V) (characters) (as Edmond Dantès)

Just Visiting (2001) (screenplay)
… aka Les visiteurs en Amérique (France)

Beethoven’s 3rd (2000) (V) (characters) (as Edmond Dantès)

American Adventure (2000) (TV) (characters)
… aka National Lampoon’s American Adventure (USA: complete title)

Reach the Rock (1998) (written by)

Home Alone 3 (1997) (written by)

Flubber (1997) (screenplay)
… aka Disney’s Flubber: The Absent Minded Professor (promotional title)

101 Dalmatians (1996) (screenplay)

Miracle on 34th Street (1994) (screenplay)

Baby’s Day Out (1994) (written by)

Beethoven’s 2nd (1993) (characters) (as Edmond Dantès)

Dennis the Menace (1993) (written by)
… aka Dennis (UK)

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) (characters) (written by)
… aka Home Alone II (USA: short title)

Beethoven (1992) (written by) (as Edmond Dantès)
… aka Beethoven: Story of a Dog (Australia: cable TV title)

Curly Sue (1991) (written by)

Dutch (1991) (written by)
… aka Driving Me Crazy

Career Opportunities (1991) (written by)
… aka One Wild Night

Home Alone (1990) (written by)

Christmas Vacation (1989) (written by)
… aka National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (UK: complete title) (USA: complete title)
… aka National Lampoon’s Winter Holiday (UK)

Uncle Buck (1989) (written by)

The Great Outdoors (1988) (written by)

She’s Having a Baby (1988) (written by)

Planes, Trains & Automobiles (1987) (written by)

Some Kind of Wonderful (1987) (written by)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986) (written by)

Pretty in Pink (1986) (written by)

Weird Science (1985) (written by)

European Vacation (1985) (screenplay) (story)
… aka National Lampoon’s European Vacation (UK: video box title)

The Breakfast Club (1985) (written by)

Sixteen Candles (1984) (written by)

Nate and Hayes (1983) (written by)
… aka Savage Islands (UK)

Vacation (1983) (screenplay) (short story “Vacation ’58″)
… aka National Lampoon’s Vacation (UK) (USA: complete title)
… aka American Vacation (Europe: English title: video title)

Mr. Mom (1983) (written by)
… aka Mr. Mum
… aka Perfect Daddy (Philippines: English title)

Class Reunion (1982) (written by)
… aka National Lampoon’s Class Reunion

this is what i’m listening to this week…from new york, a white dude, and raw beats which is nice for a change with all the over-saturated nonsense goin on
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download ink made me a monster
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props to the smoking section

last september, i posted about the madness of the uninformed…while i blamed wikipedia for many things, i am impressed that they quickly found and corrected the error…but it’s now a social responsibility they must make on their end.
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article pulled from yahoo! news
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Irish student hoaxes world’s media with fake quote

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Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press Writer
On Monday May 11, 2009, 12:07 pm EDT
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DUBLIN (AP) — When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote on Wikipedia, he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.
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The sociology major’s obituary-friendly quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hours after the French composer’s death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India. They used the fabricated material, Fitzgerald said, even though administrators at the free online encyclopedia twice caught the quote’s lack of attribution and removed it.
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A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets they’d swallowed his baloney whole.
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“I was really shocked at the results from the experiment,” Fitzgerald, 22, said Monday in an interview a week after one newspaper at fault, The Guardian of Britain, became the first to admit its obituarist lifted material straight from Wikipedia.
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“I am 100 percent convinced that if I hadn’t come forward, that quote would have gone down in history as something Maurice Jarre said, instead of something I made up,” he said. “It would have become another example where, once anything is printed enough times in the media without challenge, it becomes fact.”
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So far, The Guardian is the only publication to make a public mea culpa, while others have eliminated or amended their online obituaries without any reference to the original version — or in a few cases, still are citing Fitzgerald’s florid prose weeks after he pointed out its true origin.
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“One could say my life itself has been one long soundtrack,” Fitzgerald’s fake Jarre quote read. “Music was my life, music brought me to life, and music is how I will be remembered long after I leave this life. When I die there will be a final waltz playing in my head that only I can hear.”
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Fitzgerald said one of his University College Dublin classes was exploring how quickly information was transmitted around the globe. His private concern was that, under pressure to produce news instantly, media outlets were increasingly relying on Internet sources — none more ubiquitous than the publicly edited Wikipedia.
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When he saw British 24-hour news channels reporting the death of the triple Oscar-winning composer, Fitzgerald sensed what he called “a golden opportunity” for an experiment on media use of Wikipedia.
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He said it took him less than 15 minutes to fabricate and place a quote calculated to appeal to obituary writers without distorting Jarre’s actual life experiences. He noted that the Wikipedia listing on Jarre did not have any other strong quotes.
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If anything, Fitzgerald said, he expected newspapers to avoid his quote because it had no link to a source — and even might trigger alarms as “too good to be true.” But many blogs and several newspapers used the quotes at the start or finish of their obituaries.
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He said the Guardian was the only publication to respond to him in detail and with remorse at its own editorial failing. Others, he said, treated him as a vandal who was solely to blame for their cut-and-paste content.
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“The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source,” said the readers’ editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.
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“It’s worrying that the misinformation only came to light because the perpetrator of the deception emailed publishers to let them know what he’d done, and it’s regrettable that he took nearly a month to do so,” she wrote.
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Fitzgerald said he had waited in part to test whether news organizations or the public would smoke out the quote’s lack of provenance. He said he was troubled that none did.
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And he warned that a truly malicious hoaxer could have evaded Wikipedia’s own informal policing by getting a newspaper to pick up a false piece of information — as happened when his quote made its first of three appearances — and then use those newspaper reports as a credible footnote for the bogus quote.
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“I didn’t want to be devious,” he said. “I just wanted to show how the 24-hour, minute-by-minute media were now taking material straight from Wikipedia because of the deadline pressure they’re under.”

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here’s my post…click for the full read
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…obey, question humanity, marry and consume, stay asleep… how different was life before the internet?…with this new type of medium has come more responsibility than i realized. when i was in college, the internet was an information source you’d take with a grain of salt, it was known to be a high risk since you’d either get an F or kicked out for plagiarism…not to mention down 50 bucks for an essay some 7th grader wrote. but now things are different. much different. the more i hear about ‘responsible information’ the more it gets me questioning the things i read and what students today are really learning from.
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it’s easy to assume the government plays gepeto for cnn, but what happens when we ourselves are dictating what potentially millions of people will read? for example…wikipedia. before powerzamcam, i taught 5th grade, learned more about the way we think in one year from 24 ten year olds than i did in 16+ years of education. about a quarter of all reports these kids handed in were direct off wikipedia…i’m not questioning the child’s sense to find information by the simplest means possible, but i am questioning the source…i read this on wikipedia’s ‘about’ page:

Visitors do not need specialized qualifications to contribute, since their primary role is to write articles that cover existing knowledge; this means that people of all ages and cultural and social backgrounds can write Wikipedia articles. Most of the articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet, simply by clicking the edit this page link.

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looks like everyone has the chance to play historian now. i read an article a couple weeks ago about a guy that lived and breathed new york, he was flipping out over the fact that the wikipedia article about nyc had numerous historical, factual, and geographical errors. he spent 2 days trying to confirm and update the article…how crazy is that…it took a new york citizen with the tenacity to challenge what he read about the city he loves to correct the information fed to millions of people. and if you don’t think it’s such a big deal…try googling new york city and see what’s in the top 3. something that’s been a factually wrong source was sitting at the top of the number one search engine on the internet! well at least it’s fixed and we don’t have to worry since it’s not world changing.
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…but i guess this is already ‘existing knowledge’ so it’s got to be right.

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don’t say i didn’t warn you…

i dunno, i usually avoid wikipedia but got bored and hit the random article button for a while…how crazy is life? people live, they try to do something, they do nothing, they do evil, they do good. and then it all ends, they die. just that simple. i wonder? most of us won’t even be blessed enough to have our own wiki. there’s gotta be more to this life, right? i didn’t know this guy, this jacob romeis. there’s 8245257327 more people just like him, some that made a larger impact whether positively or negatively. but then it ends. i dunno, maybe it’s that 27 sounds ALOT older than 26. maybe i’m happy with everything so i think about things more. maybe i’ll win the lottery, maybe something worse. maybe it’s better to have no wiki than this one jacob has. maybe maybe maybe. i don’t like maybes and i don’t like beliefs in things that’ll never come. i want to make something happen that would make any reader of my own wiki feel inspired and motivited or think about what they’re doing with their lives. i want to stop saying maybe. jacob romeis’ wiki is not doing it for me…but maybe it’s just what i need.

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pulled from wikipedia

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Jacob Romeis

Jacob Romeis (December 1, 1835 – March 8, 1904) was a U.S. Representative from Ohio.

Born in Weisenbach, Bavaria, Germany, Romeis attended the village schools. Immigrated in 1847 to the United States with his parents, who settled in Erie County, New York, and attended the public and select schools of Buffalo, New York. He engaged in the shipping business and railroading. He moved to Toledo, Ohio, in 1856.

Romeis was elected to the board of aldermen of the city of Toledo in 1874. He was reelected in 1876 and served as president of the board in 1877. He served as mayor of Toledo 1879-1885.

Romeis was elected as a Republican to the Forty-ninth and Fiftieth Congresses (March 4, 1885 – March 3, 1889). He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection in 1888 to the Fifty-first Congress. He engaged in fruit growing near Toledo.

He died in Toledo, Ohio, March 8, 1904. He was interred in Woodlawn Cemetery.

this is madness now…

Quake strikes near Acapulco, Mexico

updated 14 minutes ago

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) – A strong quake measuring 6.0 in magnitude struck southwestern Mexico near the resort city of Acapulco on Monday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

USGS measured the quake’s epicenter in the state of Guerrero about 43 miles northeast of Acapulco. The preliminary magnitude is 6.0, but that could change.

Authorities in Acapulco evacuated hotels there, although there were no reports of damage, according to CNN affiliate TV Azteca.

The temblor was felt about 145 miles (230 km) to the north in Mexico City.

CNN Producer Lonzo Cook, who is in the Mexican capital, said people there headed out into the streets after a vibration shook the building for about 30 to 40 seconds. There was no visible damage, he said.

“People in neighboring office buildings — quite a majority of them wearing masks because of the swine flu outbreak — were piling out into the streets,” Cook said. “There were a few humorous people on the stairways saying, ‘This is the apocalypse. First the swine flu, and now this.’ “

However, most people were in “high spirits,” Cook said.

Gupta: Swine flu affecting people in prime

updated 1 hour, 32 minutes ago

MEXICO CITY, Mexico (CNN) — CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta has gone to Mexico, the apparent epicenter of the swine flu outbreak where more than 100 people have died in suspected cases.

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta, reporting outside a Mexico City hospital, says people can’t get swine flu by eating pork.

With governments scrambling to prevent further outbreak, Gupta appeared Monday on CNN to address people’s concerns.

CNN: We got a question that comes to us over Twitter. This question, “I heard that you can’t contract swine flu from eating pork. Is that true? If so, why? Does cooking or curing pork destroy the virus?”

Gupta: It is true. You cannot catch it from eating the pork. And it is true that cooking it to a certain temperature, around 160 degrees, also inactivates most of the pathogens in the pork as well.

Also keep in mind, this is mainly an airborne thing or something that lives on inanimate objects, so people touch the virus, then they touch their mouth, they touch their nose, they touch their eyes. That seems to be the most common mode of transmission.

CNN: Another question that we have we haven’t gotten to, actually, which is an important question, also on Twitter. “If a person has had the flu shot this year, is he or she protected? Does this person have a better chance of getting it, or would it just be a milder case?” Thank you.

That’s from John Martin in Rome, New York. So what’s the answer, doc?

Gupta: Well, it doesn’t appear that the flu shot really offers much in the way of protection, although it may offer some, and here’s why.

This particular virus seems to be a combination of several different strains: two strains of swine flu, one strain of bird flu and one strain of human flu. It’s the human flu that that flu shot may protect slightly against. So you’re protecting against a part of the virus if that makes any sense.

But it’s a very good idea to get your flu shot, for sure. Always think about that. But in terms of protecting for swine flu, it’s not going to be enough.

CNN: We’ve got another question … via Twitter this morning. And this is a question, of course, everybody is wanting to know the answer to: “Could this strain get out of control and mutate into something similar to the 1918 pandemic?”

Gupta: Well, when you look at pandemics, they have several different qualities. They’re usually a virus or some sort of pathogen the world has never seen before. They cause a lot of death, and they’re sustainable in populations. We know that this is a new virus.

It is very hard to figure out just how deadly this is yet. We know that over 100 people have died here in Mexico, but we don’t know out of how many people who got sick. There are about 1,300 people who had serious illness, but there may be thousands more who had mild illness who never went to the hospital. So it’s hard to tell how lethal this is.

So, you know, on one hand, in 1918, you didn’t have global air travel. Nowadays, you do. So this virus can move around the world a lot faster. But right now, it doesn’t seem like it’s as lethal. You know, it’s just early in this whole process to be able to tell.

CNN: Sanjay, one question that we haven’t gotten to … most of the people who died from swine flu in Mexico were in the prime of their lives really, and this usually hits infants or the elderly. What does that say to you as a doctor?

Gupta: This is interesting. And the same thing happened in sort of a nonintuitive way when we were talking about SARS and when we were talking about avian flu.

Think about it like this: Typically, you think of someone who has a weakened immune system, who’s going to be most adversely affected by an infection. Their immune system simply can’t fight it.

But in these cases, it’s the immune system itself that reacts robustly, and it’s the immune system in that reaction to the virus that is causing death in these patients. So the virus starts that cascade, but all that fluid builds up in the lungs, and all those inflammatory cells throughout the body — that’s what’s causing the problem. We saw the same thing with SARS and with avian flu as well.

Which is why exactly as you said … [people in their] 20s and 30s and 40s, this hospital behind me, they say that’s been the bulk of their patients with regard to swine flu.

CNN: You know, Sanjay, everybody knows that you’re the sort of doctor that gets out there in the thick of things whenever something happens around the world — any kind of public health emergency or disaster. And you’re there in Mexico City, and a lot of people at home might be thinking, why the heck would Dr. Gupta want to go to a place where there’s disease outbreak. What are you doing to protect yourself?

Gupta: Well, we are trying to — you know, we’re clearly being very cautious here. We’re not taking any chances. These masks can be helpful. But, you know, this is going to sound simple, but simply washing our hands. This is a virus that lives on keyboards, lives on money. We don’t shake hands with people. That’s the way it’s probably being spread, and that’s what we’re trying to avoid.

But this is where it started. If we figure out what happened here, we may figure out what happened in the rest of the world.

Formula DRIFT Announces 2009 FD Pro Am Schedule

from FormulaD Blog by john

Formula DRIFT Announces 2009 FD Pro Am Schedule

Long Beach, Calif. – March 24, 2009 – Formula DRIFT has announced the 2009 Pro Am Schedule. Formula DRIFT will partner with the nation’s most experienced regional, grassroots, and amateur organizations to take this three year old program to new heights in search of the future stars of drifting.

The Pro Am program is multi-faceted with events taking place directly during Formula DRIFT weekends, events held within Hot Import Nights, and events that are in affiliation with Formula DRIFT such as Drift Mania Canadian Championship East and West and Just Drift. These affiliate events will be awarding their champions and top finishers will be granted automatic Formula DRIFT licenses. Additionally, affiliates also have the right to qualify their drivers for the Pro AM Nationals held later in the year.

Pro Am events held directly in alliance with Formula DRIFT will be qualifying events for the Pro AM nationals. Pro AM events held at Formula DRIFT events also come with a unique experience for amateur drifters as they will be pitted directly with the Formula DRIFT drivers and will experience a professional drifting atmosphere from beginning to end. The events held at Hot Import Nights will also be qualifying events for the Pro Am Nationals.

“Formula DRIFT has had the Pro Am system in place for the last 3 years and it has produced FD Pros like Justin Pawlak, Bill Sherman, John Russakoff, Joon Maeng and others. This new program will only push the search for the next Formula DRIFT stars forward,” said Jim Liaw, co-founder and president of Formula DRIFT. “We are proud to have partnered with the most experienced and respected organizations in the country and are excited to put together the largest Pro Am Nationals event later this year.”

Affiliate Programs Qualifying Competitions:

Hot Import Nights in association with US Drift
April 11 – Austin, TX
April 25 – Tampa, FL

May 15 – New York, NY

July 11 – Chicago, IL
Top 4 drivers from each competition will receive invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

Formula DRIFT Round 2 in association with US Drift
May 8-9 – Braselton, GA
Top 4 drivers will receive invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

Formula DRIFT Round 4 in association with Vegas Drift
July 10-11 – Las Vegas, NV
Top 4 drivers will receive invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

Formula DRIFT Round 5
August 7-8 – Monroe, WA
Top 4 drivers will receive invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

Formula DRIFT Round 7 in association with Drift Association
October 16 – Irwindale, CA
Top 4 drivers will receive invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

Affiliate Series:

Just Drift’s Top Drift Series
Round 1 – March 1 – Willow Springs Raceway
Round 2 – April 26 – Las Vegas Motor Speedway
Round 3 – Sept 5 and 6 – Willow Springs Raceway, Streets of Willow
Round 4 – Oct 24 and 25 – Willow Springs Raceway, Horse Thief Mile Canyon Course
Series Champion, #2 and #3 will automatically receives FD Pro License
Series #4-8 receives invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

DMCC East
Round 1 – June 13 and 14 – Autodrome Montmagny, Quebec
Round 2 – June 27 and 28 – Autodrome St-Eustache, Montreal
Round 3 – July 25 and 26 – St Croix, Quebec
Round 4 – August 15 and 16 – Downsview Park, Toronto
Round 5 – Sept 6 and 7 – Autodrome St-Eustache, Montreal
Series Champion automatically receives FD Pro License
#2,3,4 in Series receives invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

DMCC West
Round 1- May 31 – Castrol Raceway, Edmonton
Round 2 – TBD
Round 3 – August 22 – Western Speedway, Vancouver Island
Round 4 – September 6 – Castrol Raceway, Edmonton
Series Champion automatically receives FD Pro License
#2,3,4 in Series receives invitations to FD Pro Am Nationals

Formula DRIFT Pro Am Nationals in association with Hot Import Nights:

Hot Import Nights in association with US Drift
December 5 – Firebird International Raceway – Phoenix, AZ
Drivers from Affiliate Qualifying Competitions and Qualifying Series as well as Formula DRIFT Pro drivers needing license renewals will be converging in Phoenix for the largest Pro Am competition ever held

*Terms and Schedules Subject to Change*

I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has been short-listed for inclusion in the sixth edition of our Schmap New York Guide, to be published at the end of this month.
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nice.

news is news is news…i dunno, just thought these were interesting for one weekend.
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our first story…no surprise here

A-Rod admits using performance-enhancers

By RONALD BLUM, AP Baseball Writer Ronald Blum, Ap Baseball Writer – 6 mins ago

AP – In this May 22, 2003 file photo at left, Texas Ranges Alex Rodriguez rounds the bases after hitting a …

NEW YORK – Alex Rodriguez admitted Monday that he used performance-enhancing drugs from 2001-03, saying he did so because of the pressures of being baseball’s highest-paid player.

“When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day,” the New York Yankees star said in an interview with ESPN that was broadcast Monday shortly after it was recorded.

His admission came two days after Sports Illustrated reported he tested positive for steroids in 2003, one of 104 players who tested positive during baseball’s survey testing, which wasn’t subject to discipline and was supposed to remain anonymous.

“And I did take a banned substance and, you know, for that I’m very sorry and deeply regretful. And although it was the culture back then and Major League Baseball overall was very — I just feel that — You know, I’m just sorry. I’m sorry for that time. I’m sorry to fans. I’m sorry for my fans in Texas. It wasn’t until then that I ever thought about substance of any kind, and since then I’ve proved to myself and to everyone that I don’t need any of that.”

The 33-year-old All-Star third baseman was regarded by many in baseball as the most likely to break Bonds’ record of 762. He’s already 12th on the career list with 553 homers, 209 behind Bonds.

Rodriguez hit 52, 57 and 47 homers in his three seasons with the Rangers, winning the first of three AL MVP awards during his final season with Texas, where he received a $252 million, 10-year contract in December 2000.

“Back then it was a different culture. It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid,” Rodriguez said. “I was naive, and I wanted to prove to everyone that, you know, I was worth, you know — and being one of the greatest players of all time.”

He joined Jason Giambi and Andy Pettitte among All-Star players who have confessed to using performance-enhancing drugs. Many other players have denied any use.

Barry Bonds, a seven-time MVP, is to go on trial next month on charges he lied when he told a grand jury in 2003 that he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs.

Roger Clemens, a seven-time AL Cy Young Award winner, is under investigation by a federal grand jury which is trying to determine whether he lied when he told a congressional committee last year that he never used steroids and human growth hormone.

SI.com reported Rodriguez tested positive for Primobolan and testosterone.

“It was such a loosey-goosey era. I’m guilty for a lot of things. I’m guilty for being negligent, naive, not asking all the right questions,” Rodriguez said. “And to be quite honest, I don’t know exactly what substance I was guilty of using.”

Monday’s ESPN interview directly contradicted a December 2007 interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes,” when Rodriguez said, “No” when asked whether he’s ever used steroids, human growth hormone or any other performance-enhancing substance.

On Friday, Rodriguez is still expected to attend an event at the University of Miami, which is renaming its baseball field in his honor.

He gave $3.9 million to the school in 2003, the largest gift ever to the Hurricanes’ baseball program and money that provided much of the resources needed for renovating the existing on-campus stadium. In return, the baseball complex will be called Mark Light Field at Alex Rodriguez Park.

Despite the scandal, the facility will continue to bear Rodriguez’s name, a university official said Monday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitive nature.

Miami baseball players and coaches were not available for comment, spokesman Mark Pray said.

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Associated Press Sports Writer Tim Reynolds in Miami contributed to this report.

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in a developing story of hollywood street beatdowns…

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Chris Brown Investigated for Domestic Assault; He and Rihanna Sitting Out Grammys

• Marcus Errico Marcus Errico – Sun Feb 8, 7:47 pm ET

E! Online – Chris Brown Investigated for Domestic Assault; He and Rihanna Sitting Out Grammys(E! Online)

Los Angeles (E! Online) – Grammy day was supposed to be a glittery affair for R&B’s reigning It couple of Chris Brown and Rihanna. But things have gone horribly amiss.

Los Angeles police have confirmed to E! News that Brown is being investigated for felony domestic battery.

Per department policy, police are declining to identity the alleged victim. The incident occurred around 12:30 a.m. Sunday in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. Earlier in the evening, Brown and Rihanna were all smiles while attending Clive Davis‘ annual pre-Grammy bash together.

In a statement, police say Brown and his companion “became involved in an argument. After stopping his car, Brown and the woman got out and the argument escalated. The woman suffered visible injuries and identified Brown as her attacker.”

By the time officers arrived on scene, Brown had split. There has been no immediate comment from his publicist, and he has canceled his scheduled performance at tonight’s awards.

Rihanna’s publicist, Amanda Silverman, would only tell E! News that the “Disturbia” singer was involved in a traffic mishap but “is fine.”

In a statement, the Recording Academy announced that Rihanna would not be performing as scheduled at tonight’s show. “We’re sorry she is unable to join us this evening.”

—Additional reporting by Marc Malkin and Whitney English

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and in other news…

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Marijuana Linked to Aggressive Testicular Cancer

By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter by Alan Mozes
healthday Reporter – 1 hr 42 mins ago

AP – Chart shows percentage of people using marijuana by age, in their lifetime and in the past year; 2 c …

MONDAY, Feb. 9 (HealthDay News) — Smoking marijuana over an extended period of time appears to greatly boost a young man’s risk for developing a particularly aggressive form of testicular cancer, a new study reveals.

In fact, researchers found that men who smoked marijuana once a week or began to use the substance on a long-term basis while adolescents incurred double the risk for developing the fastest-spreading version of testicular cancer — nonseminoma, which accounts for about 40 percent of all cases.

“Since we know that the incidence of testicular cancer has been rising in our country and in Europe over the last 40 years and that marijuana use has also risen over the same time, it seemed logical that there might be an association between the two,” said study co-author Janet Daling, an epidemiologist and member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center’s public health sciences division in Seattle. “And when I analyzed the data, we found a fairly strong relationship with this aggressive type of testicular cancer.”

No link was found between the drug and a less aggressive and more prevalent form of the disease, known as seminoma, which strikes 60 percent of testicular cancer patients.

The findings were published in the Feb. 9 online issue of Cancer.

According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, testicular cancer is very rare, accounting for just 1 percent of cancers among American men. Nevertheless, the disease is the most common type of cancer for American men between the ages of 15 and 34, the study noted.

Across North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, testicular cancer rates have increased by 3 percent to 6 percent in the past half-century. That has led some researchers to suggest that the upward trend might be the product of increased exposure among young men to one or more external factors, including a simultaneous and comparable rise in the use of marijuana.

Along those lines, the researchers noted that the testes could be particularly vulnerable to the effects of marijuana, given that the organ — along with the brain, heart, uterus and spleen — carries specific receptors for tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

As well, previous human and animal research has indicated that marijuana use might lead to reduced hormonal production (particularly testosterone), poorer semen quality and impotency in men.

Daling and her team explored the notion of a marijuana-testicular cancer connection by analyzing data on 369 testicular cancer patients that had been collected by the Adult Testicular Cancer Lifestyle and Blood Specimen Study.

Participants were between the ages of 18 and 44, most were white or Hispanic, and all were residents of the Seattle-Puget Sound region. All had been diagnosed with the disease between 1999 and 2006. The men reported any history of marijuana use, as well as alcohol and smoking habits, and the same information was collected from about 1,000 healthy men.

The researchers found that current marijuana use was linked to a 70 percent increased risk for the disease.

Independent of known risk factors, nonseminoma risk was particularly high among men who used the drug at least once a week and among those who had started using it before age 18.

Though Daling emphasized that the findings are preliminary, she suggested that attention should be paid.

“We know very little about the long-term health consequences of marijuana smoking,” she cautioned. “So, although this is the first time this association has been studied and found — and the finding does need to be replicated before we are really sure what’s going on — this does give some evidence that testicular cancer may be one result from the frequent use of marijuana. And that is something that young people should keep in mind.”

But the prospect of a causal relationship between marijuana use and testicular cancer raised a lot of unanswered questions for Gary Schwartz, an associate professor in both the department of cancer biology and the department of epidemiology and prevention at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.

“The consensus is that most testicular cancer is thought to originate with lesions in utero, and that the peak age for testicular cancer to actually occur begins, really, right after adolescence,” he noted. “That’s when hormones released during puberty appear to promote [full-blown] cancer by essentially throwing fuel on the lesion fire, following a relatively long latency. The point being that you don’t suddenly wake up one morning with a tumor. So it’s a little hard to understand how exposure to marijuana beginning at that point could somehow play an immediate causal role.”

“But certainly, the idea that cannabis may cause cancer cells to proliferate is interesting,” Schwartz acknowledged. “It could, however, also be that recreational drug use is simply a marker for affluence, since we know that testicular cancer is traditionally a disease that is more common among the affluent. Or it could be a marker for some other event that comes along with it, that triggers lesions that lead to tumors. So, at this point, it’s just not clear to me how exactly the association between marijuana and testicular cancer would work.”

More information

The American Cancer Society has more on marijuana use and cancer.