some newsness pulled from cnn…i think i’m going to make an effort to stop using the word retarded. i use it a little too much. .
sample this track from MF DOOM, intro’d by Charles Bukowski poem, “Dinosauria, We”…i love it.
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Obama’s late-night slip teaches how words hurt
By Jessica Ravitz CNN
(CNN) — In a quick and clearly unscripted moment, President Obama exhibited the power of words during his history-making visit Thursday with Jay Leno.
Special Olympics is running a campaign to stop the use of the “R-word.”
While joking on The Tonight Show about his bowling prowess (during last year’s campaign trail he shamefully scored 37 in a game), Obama said he’d been practicing at the White House lanes and boasted to Leno, “I bowled a 129. It’s like — it was like Special Olympics or something.” The comment during the taping of the show prompted Obama to pick up the phone on Air Force One and call Special Olympics Chairman Timothy Shriver to preemptively apologize for the remark before it hit television screens. He also reportedly invited Special Olympic athletes to Pennsylvania Avenue to hit the lanes and give him tips or shoot some hoops. The president “expressed his heartfelt and sincere commitment to work with our athletes and make this country a more accepting place for people with special needs,” Special Olympics President and CEO J. Brady Lum said.
This sudden and unexpected spotlight on the Special Olympics, an organization that for more than 40 years has served and honored those with intellectual disabilities, comes less than two weeks before the nonprofit launches a new campaign, Spread the Word to End the Word. March 31 is being billed a “national day of awareness,” a call to Americans to consider their use of the word “retard,” or as the organization would prefer, the “R-word.” “Most people don’t think of this word as hate speech, but that’s exactly what it feels like to millions of people with intellectual disabilities, their families and friends,” a statement about the campaign reads. “This word is just as cruel and offensive as any other slur.”
The push for increased respect is being spearheaded by young people who are collecting pledges or vows to not use the word at http://www.r-word.org/, and are leading online discussions on how people can get involved in this cause. So far, across the country, 300 schools have already committed to hosting rallies on March 31, Lum said.
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FBI planting spies in U.S. mosques, Muslim groups say
By Eliott C. McLaughlin CNN (CNN) — Ten U.S. Muslim organizations threatened this week to cease working with the FBI, citing “McCarthy-era tactics” by the agency, including efforts to covertly infiltrate California mosques.
Stephen Tidwell, then of the FBI’s Los Angeles office, speaks at the Islamic Center of Irvine in 2006.
The groups claim the FBI has sent undercover agents posing as worshippers into mosques, pressured Muslims to become informants, labeled civil rights advocates as criminals and spread misinformation.
The FBI declined to comment on specific allegations but called the proposed move unproductive. “Limiting honest dialogue, especially when complex issues are on the table, is generally not an effective advocacy strategy,” spokesman John Miller said in a statement. “The FBI has continued our outreach efforts, across the board, with a number of concerned groups and where we agree — or disagree — most have concluded the best results are achieved through continued conversation. We believe that, too.” The group’s statement, dated Tuesday, said several incidents of the FBI “targeting Muslim Americans lead us to consider suspending ongoing outreach efforts.” The statement was issued by the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, whose director, Agha Saeed, couldn’t immediately comment because of a family emergency. The FBI has sent “agents provocateur” into California mosques, according to the statement, which says an FBI agent threatened to make one mosque member’s life a “living hell” if he did not become an informant.
Though the statement does not name the mosque member, the Council on American-Islamic Relations said last month it would seek an investigation into the February 21 arrest of Ahmadullah Niazi, an Afghanistan native.
“Mr. Niazi previously reported to [CAIR's Los Angeles office] and other community members that, during a raid of a friend’s house, an FBI agent urged Mr. Niazi to work with the agency, saying that if he refused to cooperate his life would be made a ‘living hell,’ ” a news release said. Niazi, a member of the Islamic Center of Irvine, told CAIR his arrest was retaliation for his refusal, the release said. The FBI directed questions about Niazi’s arrest to the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, California, which declined comment. Niazi, 34, was indicted last month on charges of perjury, procuring naturalization unlawfully, using a passport procured by fraud and making false statements. A search warrant for Niazi’s Tustin, California, home said Niazi became a naturalized citizen in 2004 and made false statements about his past aliases and international travel.
He also made false statements about contact with his brother-in-law Amin ul-Haq, the indictment said. Ul-Haq is said to be Osama bin Laden’s security coordinator and has been labeled a “specially designated global terrorist” by the U.S. government, the indictment said.
news is news is news…i dunno, just thought these were interesting for one weekend. .
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.”
So I figured it was time to make a post on the other powerzamcam drift car. So here’s George’s car.
So lets start at the beginning. Here it is after they picked it up at the original Powerzamcam shop (Sal’s garage)
Stock KA is out, but I have no idea what he was doing. Lol.
Sorry I don’t have any pics of them putting the SR in L
So after the SR was in, and it was lowered he decided to make a roll bar. Sorry for the bad pics, you can’t really see it.
Shortly after he decided he did not like it, so he cut it out and did an entire cage.
On another note this is what happened to George’s exhaust after visiting the “mountain” one night… I believe he’s been through like 4 or 5 different exhausts most from his car being so low that it would hit the ground constantly eventually putting a hole in it.
Anyways back on topic, a few quick pics of the completed cage in action, and to give you an idea of how low it was and why he went through so many exhausts. And yes we would drive 8+ hours each way to events in that car as is, scraping the exhaust everywhere.
Getting ready to go to an event.
More on driving to events. I believe we were coming back from VIR or summit point, I can’t remember, but it started snowing. So we had to drive back in this all the way from Virginia. By the time we got back into New Jersey it was bad. I remember George telling me about one point where he pulled over and then got back on behind a salt truck hoping to stay behind it to get some type of traction, but he couldn’t even keep up with the salt truck due to the lack of traction. Lol. I still don’t know how he made it home that day. I would have pulled over and waited for a few days, until the snow was gone. Lol.
Anyways, look at the determination…
Next was some fresh paint…
So, after George had the car painted he decided he wanted to make a hard top for his car and completely remove the soft top. His initial design was pretty bad. And yes I told him it was. Lol. So I stopped by the shop one weekend and we spent most of the day doing the top. Unfortunately we were so wrapped up into it that I forgot to pictures of the build. All I have are these few. I forget what we used to make the mold some type of Styrofoam. I think it was some kind of stuff used when building a house. Lol.
Here we began fiber glassing
After countless hours of fiber glassing and sanding the end result. Not bad for never having done fiber glassing before.
So here’s what was next…
Getting it all tuned
So stay tuned for next season to see what’s next, Cuz I sure as hell don’t know. Lol.
since i’ve been out of the game for some time now, what better way to come back than with a new cage, some gold, and what some will call a superior motor! i’ll always love sr20s =)
3 months. it’s been 3 months since i last posted on here. something i told myself to do monthly turned into me not being in front of my computer for weeks at time. and when i am, it’s simply to check late fees or approve some whack ass photo kristian or david or ankur decide to send to our myspace. BUT, i am happy to say 2007 is exceeding our expectations. the powerzamcam name is building the image george and i set out to establish stronger and stronger each day. as i’m sure you’ve seen, chris orso is officially the face (and car) of 2007 for powerzamcam drifting. thanks to DUNLOP TIRES, SMAX PERFORMANCE, ENDURA-TECH, DRIVEN-ADDICTIONS.COM, XTC AUTOSTYLES, DRINKNOS.COM (much love to ernie manansala), chris was able to have his car ready (at 9am) for the d1 driver’s search. check out chris at myspace.com/chrisorso and become his friend =)
also at d1, driven by myself, was the STREET VERSION of BUDDY CLUB USA’S s13 which will be completed at powerzamcam this month and raced/shown along with it’s TWIN RACE VERSION at events all over the area. both cars are owned by mark manansala and will be representing another significant part of the powerzamcam drift team including co-owner, george zamouzakis in the powerzamcam vert and chris orso, powerzamcam driver. mark will be driving BUDDY CLUB USA’S race version, also fully built by powerzamcam. a HUGE thanks goes out to the two cars’ sponsors:
also premiered recently was the official BOSAL SUBARU STI, sponsored by HIDE YOUR RIDE, PERRIN PERFORMANCE, ENDURA-TECH, VOLK WHEELS, SUBARU PERFORMANCE TUNING, G-SPEC, and ZERO SPORTS. this is an important build for us because of the high quality companies that made this car possible in support of Bosal Performance, the STI will open the door to a whole new market for powerzamcam. look for it at major shows, including hot import nights 2007. thanks Bosal!
sooo, as you could see…powerzamcam is officially a name in the list of many that are forwarding drifting on the east coast. we are now noticing the people, companies, and teams of local and national notoriety that we’ve seen for years recognizing us for what we are. our family here is something that i know for a fact is unlike any other group i’ve ever seen. we grew up living and breathing the entire racing world. some of us were in shows, others strictly raced, some are new to imports, others experienced beyond comparison…but the passion and commitment we share along with our ability to try and do as much as possible for the benefit of the shop is where our heart is. that is what sets us apart from others, we are brothers all looking for one thing. to drive.
