August 16, 2008 by mkabyemela.

So I was listening to XM today and I hear Common on the radio. It is a completely new song and a new sound. The new song called “Announcement” also features Pharrell who raps and produces the track! I had to know more… and I found out Common is releasing a new album this year titled Invincible Summer said to be released in late September. I also found another Common track called “Universal Mind Control” also featuring Pharrell. Personally, I am excited about this new album. I wasn’t impressed with Finding Forever, so let’s see how it turns out. It sounds like a whole new territory for Common, hopefully the whole album will sound like this if Pharrell has anything to do with it!

Announcement

Follow the following link

Universal Mind Control

Follow the following link

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August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

The latest photo to emerge shows Spanish women tennis players pulling the pose, apparently in anticipation of their Federation Cup match against China in April.

Pictures of the Spanish men’s and women’s basketball teams making the gesture, a crude impersonation of Chinese people, were published in adverts in Spanish newspapers earlier this week.

The photos, which were reprinted around the world, added to Spanish sport’s poor reputation for racial sensitivity.

The latest image appears to show players in Spain’s Federation Cup team doing the “slit-eyed” gesture along with members of their support staff. There is no suggestion that they intended to cause offence.

It was apparently taken after the team defeated Italy in the quarter-finals of the competition - the leading team contest for women tennis players - in Febraury. Wine glasses are visible on the table in front of the party….man, the Spanish teams have been dropping the ball…read more…

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August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

PITTSBURGH—Pittsburgh police say one homeless man was stabbed by another after they argued over who was the better panhandler.

Police are not identifying the victim, who was taken to Allegheny General Hospital with minor wounds. Forty-six-year-old Larry Milburn remains in custody awaiting arraignment on aggravated assault and other charges.

The men began arguing in an area where homeless people are known to encamp about 4:15 p.m. Thursday. that’s when police say Milburn cut the other man in the neck using kitchen shears.

Police say the men were arguing about which of them was the best panhandler on the city’s North Side, a neighborhood that contains the city’s pro sports stadiums.  [I guess the police missed the whole situation…I got to talk to them  and they said they were actually fighting for panhandling territory]

Posted in Eye-opener, Random | No Comments »

August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

Spain’s Olympic basketball team posed for an advertisement prior to the Games which appears to show all its players slanting their eyes, a move that could offend its Olympic hosts in Beijing. The ads, for a Spanish courier company, appeared in the Spanish-language newspaper La Marca.

As the uproar over the picture has grown today, more information about the advertising shot has come to light. The ad was sponsored by a Spanish courier company, Seur. Spain’s team, ironically, also is sponsored by Li-Ning Footwear, a Chinese company founded by Li Ning, the final torchbearer who was hoisted along the top of Beijing National Stadium during the Olympic Opening Ceremony finale.  Yea…and recently the team’s representative has said that this picture was in no way intentionally aimed at offending the chinese team. Read more…

Posted in Sports, TIMES and more | No Comments »

August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

They twirled and tumbled and soared, their lean, lithe bodies slicing the air like tiny blades. In the end, China’s women’s gymnastics team prevailed in the team final, capturing the gold, with the Americans taking silver and the Romanians rounding it out with a bronze. But even as the Chinese team’s doll-like faces broke out into giant smiles, a question mark hung over the mats at the National Indoor Stadium. Last month, when China finally named its Olympic squad, legendary gymnastics coach Bela Karolyi complained that some of China’s gymnasts were “obviously kids… and you’re telling the world they are 16? What arrogance!” Were three of the six Chinese women on the stand actually too young to be competing?

Under Olympic regulations, female gymnasts must turn 16 years old during the year of competition. According to their passports, which determine Olympic eligibility, He Kexin, Jiang Yuyuan and Yang Yilin are all 16. But Chinese online records and local newspaper articles have presented different information, raising questions about these three gynmasts’ true ages.   I know you have seen some olympic stuff, these gymnasts don’t look 16 at all. One of them reminds me of my room mate’s little cousin! Read more… 

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August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

(New York) — BET starts a weekly news program on Friday described as a cross between Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher with a black perspective.

Called “The Truth with Jeff Johnson” and airing at 11 p.m. on Fridays, the program stars a BET personality who has also been an activist for the NAACP and People for the American Way. Its debut is timed for the Democratic National Convention.

BET, the most-watched network aimed at blacks, will also air Barack Obama's speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination on Aug. 28 live, just like its competitor TV One. Neither network, however, is airing John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican convention the next week.   Interesting, so it will be like CNN aimed for black people? Read more…

Posted in TIMES and more, Eye-opener | No Comments »

August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

No the picture above is not an electric bike. That is just a prototype of what is to come in the future! I can’t wait..but…

The surging cost of gasoline and a desire for a greener commute are turning more people to electric bikes as an unconventional form of transportation. They function like a typical two-wheeler but with a battery-powered assist, and bike dealers, riders and experts say they are flying off the racks.

Official sales figures are hard to pin down, but the Gluskin-Townley Group, which does market research for the National Bicycle Dealers Association, estimates 10,000 electric bikes were sold in the U.S. in 2007, up from 6,000 in 2006.

Bert Cebular, who owns the electric bike and scooter dealership NYCeWheels in New York, said his sales are up about 50 percent so far this year over last. Amazon.com Inc. says sales of electric bikes surged more than 6,000 percent in July from a year earlier, in part because of its expanded offerings.

“The electric bikes are the next big thing,” said Frank Jamerson, a former General Motors Corp. executive turned electric vehicle guru….say that to countries like Japan that have had them for AGES!!! Read more

Posted in Money-Saver, TIMES and more | No Comments »

August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

(BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.) —Donald Trump will soon be Ed McMahon’s landlord.

Trump announced Thursday he would save the television personality’s Beverly Hills mansion from foreclosure by buying it for an undisclosed amount and leasing it to McMahon.

The developer told the Los Angeles Times he doesn’t know McMahon personally, but acted out of compassion because helping out “would be an honor.”

McMahon, 85, who was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on the Tonight show for three decades, has not worked for about 18 months because of a neck injury. He defaulted on $4.8 million in mortgage loans with Countrywide Financial Corp.  Read more…

Posted in TIMES and more, Random | No Comments »

August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

(WASHINGTON) — White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That’s eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004.

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics.

It is also growing older.

“The white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future.” read more…

Posted in TIMES and more, Random | No Comments »

August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

For an über-best-selling author of good old-fashioned books, Stephen King has always seen the promise inherent in the Internet. It’s a medium designed to get as much content to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time. And there are few people who have as much content as King. In 2000, he debuted his novella Riding the Bullet exclusively on the Web; more than 400,000 downloads were recorded in the first 24 hours. At the time it was a staggering number. This month, King is dipping his toe into the Internet yet again. To promote Just After Sunset — his first volume of short stories in six years — King’s publisher, Scribner, has teamed up with Marvel Comics and CBS Mobile to produce and distribute an online comic adaptation of a previously unreleased story from the collection.

Running at two minutes per “episode” until Aug. 29 (for a total running time of about 50 minutes), N. is accessible through its website (nishere.com), available for purchase at iTunes and Amazon, and even downloadable to cell phones — ironic, given that in King’s recent novel Cell, the mobile-phone network became a conduit for a global pandemic. The experiment is an example of the kind of outside-the-box thinking that publishers have had to engage in to try to reverse a steep decline in readers.  Read more…

Posted in Movies, TIMES and more | No Comments »