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…

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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…

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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

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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…

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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…

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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…

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August 15, 2008 by mkabyemela.

Edison had his lightbulb, Ford had his Model T, and Jan Vinzenz Krause has his spray-on condom. Inspired by the mechanics of a drive-through car wash, the German sexual-health educator designed a custom-fitting male contraceptive using liquid latex and some materials from a hardware store. “I felt a little like MacGyver,” he says of building the contraption.

U.S. condom sales have been increasing steadily over the years, according to Packaged Facts, a division of Market Research Group, and they are expected to top $444 million annually by 2010. But usage among teens appears to have leveled off, with 61.5% of sexually active high schoolers surveyed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2007 reporting that they had used a condom during their most recent intercourse, down from 62.8% in 2005 and 63% in 2003. Access to condoms is one issue; inclination to use them is another. Which helps explain why companies are constantly looking for ways to improve the standard product — vibrating, warming, climax-delaying, even glow-in-the-dark condoms are all available on drugstore shelves. Read more…

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August 14, 2008 by mkabyemela.

If the charts are to be believed, his goodwill has been repaid many times over. Of course, it helps that Tha Carter III is one of the best albums of the year. It’s a pop play–and smelling it, everyone from Jay-Z to Robin Thicke jumped on board with contributions–but it’s still weird enough to sound like underground Lil Wayne. His wordplay can be thrilling (”My picture should be in the dictionary next to the definition of definition”), and no other rapper finds as much joy in rhyming; “in the way,” “everyday,” “what we say,” “cliché,” “Andre 3K,” “sensei” is a typical string from Dr. Carter, his prescription for what ails rap. But the impact owes more to his delivery than to his wit. Wayne isn’t afraid to sound bizarre. On Phone Home, he rhymes like E.T., and throughout, he stammers, intentionally misses beats and defies most of the rules of contemporary rap. On DontGetIt, over a sample of Nina Simone’s Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, he tells a life story that veers into an indictment of drug laws and finishes some 1,200 words and 10 minutes later by dismissing Al Sharpton with a theatricality even the good Reverend would have to appreciate.

Wayne claims his rhymes are stream of consciousness, but even if they aren’t, they sound as though they’re hitting the air for the first time, unfolding with an electricity that’s–forbid the sacrilege–Dylanesque. Redd Foxx would probably dig ‘em too.  Read More…….

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August 10, 2008 by mkabyemela.

Here is some cool article I read from Time magazine….They talk about a book written by Felix Dennis. Dennis, the founder in 1995 of the bawdy “lad” magazine Maxim (which he sold last year with two smaller publications for a reported $240 million), is from the “greed is good” school of business. Worth as much as $900 million…

So, what are the secrets of building a booming business? For one thing, he says, it helps to be young, penniless and inexperienced: “You have an advantage that neither education nor upbringing, nor even money, can buy–you have almost nothing. And therefore you have almost nothing to lose.” The author rhapsodizes about the energy and tech savvy of the young. If you have the misfortune of having acquired a few more years and become a comfortable senior manager or a professional, Dennis is skeptical about your entrepreneurial odds. Read MORE

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