SOURCE: Los Angeles Times

The Giants landed on the shores of San Francisco 53 years ago, their colors worn by greats identified solely by their last name.

Mays and Cepeda graced Seals Stadium. McCovey and Marichal christened Candlestick Park. Bonds lorded over AT&T Park.

The statues and the records are theirs. The first World Series championship parade in San Francisco history will be led by a cast lovingly described by its manager as castoffs and misfits.

Russ Hodges, rest in peace. Your old team has a new favorite call: The Giants win the World Series! The Giants win the World Series!

They won in five games, dispatching the favored Texas Rangers on Monday with a 3-1 victory. San Francisco’s baseball team finally has a title to call its own.

“This is for everybody who has ever worn the Giants uniform,” club President Larry Baer said, “for every fan who ever froze at Candlestick, for every person who ever voted for a new ballpark, for every person who listened to our games on the radio.

“It’s on behalf of 53 years of waiting.”

Edgar Renteria, the World Series most valuable player, won the Series by hitting a three-run home run, 13 years after he delivered the Series-winning hit for the Florida Marlins.

“Unbelievable,” Renteria said.

Tim Lincecum, who was 13 when Renteria clinched Florida’s first title, silenced the Rangers on three hits over eight innings, striking out 10.

Brian Wilson, the closer whose jet-black beard became a folk icon in San Francisco, secured the final three outs, setting off delirium in the streets of San Francisco.

“It means everything,” Wilson said. “San Francisco is going nuts. We’re going nuts.”

After the final out — a strikeout of Nelson Cruz — catcher Buster Posey tossed aside his mask, threw his arms in the air and leaped skyward, then raced toward Wilson, the mob rapidly forming around him.

“Mass chaos,” Wilson said. “Hysteria.”

Posey is 23, a rookie yet to make an opening-day roster, but the enormity of the moment was not lost on a son of Georgia, raised on Maddux, Smoltz and Glavine.

“I grew up a huge baseball fan,” Posey said. “I watched the Braves win 14 division titles and only one World Series. It’s humbling.”

The Giants stormed through the postseason without playing an elimination game. They became the first West Coast team to win the World Series since 2002, when the Angels beat the Giants.

As the Giants pranced around the clubhouse, soaking their commemorative T-shirts and caps in champagne and beer, the players paid homage to their predecessors, Mays and McCovey and all the rest.

“I love the history of this team,” Wilson said. “We’re happy to bring it back to the guys that fought long and hard but never won one. This is for those guys.”

The Fall Classic concluded with a classic pitching duel between Lincecum and Cliff Lee, the kind anticipated in Game 1.

The tension mounted, scoreless innings piled upon one another. Neither team got a runner past first base through the first six innings.

Cody Ross, who languished on the Giants’ bench for most of September before donning his Superman cape in October, started the seventh inning with a single. Juan Uribe singled too, and Aubrey Huff followed with the first sacrifice bunt of his career — after 5,560 at-bats without one.

Pat Burrell struck out; he finished the World Series with 11 strikeouts in 13 at-bats.

Renteria batted next. One more out, and Lee would be out of the jam.

On a 2-0 pitch, Renteria homered — the second home run of the World Series for a player who had three in the regular season.

“He tried to throw the cutter,” Renteria said. “The cutter stay in the middle, and that’s why it go out.”

At that point, the Rangers had not scored in 18 consecutive innings. Cruz homered in the eighth — too little, too late.

The Giants last won the World Series in 1954, in New York. The Rangers, born in Washington in 1961, never have won the Series.

They went for broke this year. They traded four prospects for Lee, fully aware he might not be theirs beyond the season, betting on his history of postseason invincibility.

The Giants beat him twice. Their tenure as champions was less than one hour old when the players’ union announced Lee had filed for free agency.

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MY TAKE: I’m happy the Giants won after all those years.  It’s about time Calififornia had a series player and winner. By the way, did you know that training online for a field in law has never been easier. Did you know you can study and train to be Denver wrongful death lawyers, a spousal support attorney, Denver CO construction lawyers, even LA California court reporting service owner operator? It’s not like it used to be when you had to spend $15,000 a year on living at a fancy school just to become a lawyer. Today, you can train to become a fully barreddivorce attorney, a Los Angeles court reporting service provider, or someo ther kind o lawyer right on line. Of course,data disaster recovery jobs are hotten than ever, so legal jobs in this area are also in high demand.

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Tips for Vacation Home Rentals

Finding the perfect vacation home rentals for your family need not be a difficult process but if you’ve never engaged in a search for a place to stay there are some tips you can employ to make your search easy and productive. The first tip is to begin your search with plenty of time before your travel dates. The earlier you search the better chance you have of finding deals and early specials. Secondly, ensure that you consider more than one location. Even if you feel a spot might be the perfect option, it’s best to compare amenities of several different rentals.

Rail Pads and Security

As security at major sporting events has become a priority over the last decade, beyond items such as rail pads and fence pads, the owner of a sports facility might take additional precautions to keep fans and players safe. As is often the case in larger sports facilities, things like laser pens, video cameras, and laptop computers will often be banned from entering a sports complex. In addition, items such as firearms or knives are almost universally prohibited and since it’s easy to forget a small pocket-knife in a purse or pocket, leaving these items in the car when attending a sports even is the best option.

Mortgage questions?

Lexington KY mortgage refinancing laws, like many around the country are changing so fast it’s hard to keep abreast. If you are looking for a good source for and Indianapolis IN refinancing package on your mortgage, check with the Federal government’s home page at hud.gov and see what they tell you.

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times

Kathy Griffin was sitting in her tiny dressing room when one of her “people” presented her with a golden chalice.

But the ornate container wasn’t filled with Cristal Champagne or chocolate truffles. Griffin’s life on the D-list apparently means that her cup runneth over with pint-sized packages of peanut butter. And the chalice? It’s made of plastic.

“Well, aren’t I the big star?” she teased, shoving a spoonful of the peanut butter into her mouth in hopes of a protein boost.

The flame-haired 49-year-old comedian known for her acerbic humor — and her Bravo series “My Life on the D-List” — holds a nebulous place in the celebrity pecking order. She’s the star of a reality series in which she mocks stardom, while her own Hollywood life lends itself to plenty of material. Especially on this September day: Griffin was between two comedy sets at Pechanga Resort & Casino in Temecula, which has been edited down into the one-hour Bravo comedy special “Kathy Griffin: Whores on Crutches” that will air Tuesday.

“I’m not doing Caesars. Palace — that’d be too easy,” she said backstage. “We’re doing it Temecula style and, frankly, I deserve an Emmy for the drive alone. You can’t come here unless you witness several accidents and get caught in several brush fires.”

As cameras flicker backstage, Griffin engages with fans, signing photos and even a catheter (she likes to call her Twitter followers “Katheters”). Despite the one-on-one attention she shells out, she remains absorbed in thought.

“I’m replaying the act in my head,” she said. “Trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t so I know whether I should start with the bit about Maggie [her mother] … or if I should mention Ryan Seacrest in the next show because I didn’t mention her [sic] in the last one?”

Griffith acquired her adaptability over a career dotted with periodic triumphs and frequent rejections. After high school, the Chicago native moved to Los Angeles and worked odd jobs while also working the audition scene. She landed bit parts on television, including appearances on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” and “The X-Files,” before eventually finding a more lasting gig as Brooke Shields’ feisty sidekick in the NBC sitcom “Suddenly Susan.”

But poking fun at the Hollywood elite is her favorite game. She’s filmed numerous stand-up specials — this one marks her eighth for Bravo. Two of them, “Kathy Griffin: Straight to Hell” (2008) and “Kathy Griffin: She’ll Cut a Bitch” (2009) were nominated for Emmys.

The specials are only one facet of her enduring relationship with Bravo, along with “My Life on the D-List,” which wrapped its sixth season earlier this summer.

“She peels off the layer of celebrity,” said Andy Cohen, senior vice president of original programming and development for the network, who isn’t exactly immune to Griffin’s comedic wrath. (She pokes fun at his “crossed-eyes” in the special.) “She’s very Bravo. Her observations about pop culture are just really spot on and we love being the home of her very uncensored, unfiltered act.”

The same rapid fire wit has been a frequent source of controversy. While co-hosting a red-carpet event for cable network E! in 2005, Griffin joked that Dakota Fanning, then 10, was in rehab; the network issued an apology shortly after. Her sarcastic comments about Jesus during an Emmy acceptance speech in 2007 had religious leaders fuming. Most recently, Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.) slammed the comedian for calling his two daughters prostitutes on her show.

Her wicked humor and lampoons of celebrities have also resulted in her being temporarily banned from talk shows including “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “The View.”

“I can’t say I don’t enjoy getting under some people’s skin,” Griffin said. “I’m the poor man’s version of Joan Rivers. She’s a legend. I can only hope to insult people for as long as she has.”

In Tuesday’s special, Griffin warns, “I’m going to discuss things that should not be discussed in a tepee,” with Bristol Palin, Paris Hilton, Tiger Woods and “The View’s” Elisabeth Hasselbeck coming under fire.

“Howard Stern said this great thing to me one time,” she shared. “When you’re in this business, you can’t keep track of the crap you’ve said…. I’m nervous constantly and yet I can’t stop myself. I know I shouldn’t have told that Hasselbeck story because now I know I’ll never be on ‘The View’ again, but it’s toooo good.”

All it takes is a cheap notebook and some bullet points listing topical headlines to transform trite encounters into salacious stage fodder.

“Writing jokes is not my style,” Griffin said. “I’ll literally just write down ‘Bristol Palin’ and then I’ll riff for 15 minutes. It helps that I’m constantly tuned to news events, reality TV…. I can talk about it for hours.”

As Griffin analyzed her live set in retrospect, her brain was clearly moving at warp speed, pegging the opening — in which she appears with a Native American headdress — as “really strong cause it was visually funny and silly — it could be the commercial.” But she admits she didn’t hit her stride until much later in the act, when she blathered on about the VH-1 series, “The OCD Project.”

“It will be interesting if Bravo lets me keep all that stuff [in the televised special] because I talk about shows on other networks,” Griffin said. “But I felt the audience and I really kicked into high gear when I was talking about that show.”

The bit, which pokes fun at the over-the-top “treatment” offered on the series, made the final cut.

But, moments later, Griffin had shifted gears to a more important matter: She couldn’t fasten her belt buckle.

“Someone get Tiffany [Rinehart] now!” she said, referring to her assistant. The shout was not so much the demand of a diva as the plea of a panicky performer about to appear in front of a roomful of “disgruntled poker players who were probably given free tickets.”

Belt finally in place, Griffin prepared for her second grand appearance on stage.

She didn’t put on a fancy special occasion dress. But she did have special headware.

“If you’ll excuse me, I have to put on my headdress,” she said. “I bet Joan Rivers has never had to say that.”

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MY TAKE: Kathy G. is so funny she could make the dull life of a NY slip and fall lawyer or FCRA lawyers seem hilarious. I love the fact that she takes on everyone from the cheap Bronx construction lawyer that fixed her house up, the harassment lawyers form battleing networks, and the fact that she shuns fancy sequined evening dresses.

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Enjoying Halloween with an Infant

One of the best things about a new baby is all the first holidays that will be celebrated during the child’s first year of life. From the December holidays to Halloween celebrations, it can be fun to buy the first baby Halloween costumes for a new child. But the costumes for an especially young child don’t need to be complex or costly. Simply buying a hat that looks like a pumpkin and a t-shirt and pants that are covered in a Halloween themed design should be sufficient to create fun for any infant during the October holiday.

Repurposing Old Jewelry

The old jewelry sitting in a box at the top of the closet need not stay hidden forever. Old styles and designs always come back into fashion and it is possible there’s a piece sitting in that box that’s an extremely popular modern style. For example, a pair of stylish 14K gold bracelets that were worn decades ago might simply be in need of a professional cleaning and could be worn as a fashion statement showing how elegant jewelry designs of the past have been. A piece of jewelry worn by a parent or grandparent might have special meaning as well and be a great piece of retro ornamentation.

Remodeling Your Basement

Parker basements are a goldmine for anyone willing to reconsider building up. As populations increase, more and more builders are having trouble getting permits for adding on, so Denver Colorado basement refinishing is on the rise. Think about redoing your basement as an alternative to a second additon.

SOURCE: Los Angeles Times

Technology takes on a new meaning in the classroom.

Seated in a tan leather couch, Petty Officer Sarax suddenly straightens his back and begins flailing his right arm.”She doesn’t know what I’ve been through,” Sarax, who just returned from Iraq, says when asked about his marriage. “There are things that I just don’t want to talk about with her. And she keeps pushing.”

He talks and behaves like a soldier overcome by combat trauma, but Sarax isn’t real. He is a software program, a life-size projection on a movie screen that is reacting and responding to questions from a psychologist being trained to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Sarax is a virtual patient, one of many computer-simulated humans created by psychologists, engineers and scientists at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies. By the end of the year, the virtual patient is expected to be in use in university classrooms, and eventually in clinical hospitals and military bases.

Interactive computer patients are just one of many cutting-edge virtual technologies being developed at the institute. Many of them are used as training tools for U.S. military personnel, from fighting insurgents to calming nerves of combat-weary soldiers.

The institute’s wide-ranging virtual technologies, now found on 65 military sites across the country, have popped in and out of the public spotlight, but last week they were on full display when the institute opened the doors to its new 72,000-square-foot facility in Playa Vista.

“The move is a mark of a new era for us,” said Randall W. Hill Jr., executive director of the institute, which outgrew its facility in Marina del Rey. “But really, it’s a new era for the Army as well.”

The institute’s funding has increased from $5 million in 1999 to about $30 million today — as the Pentagon has stepped up spending on training military personnel through simulations. It has also attracted a diverse staff of more than 180 professionals, from graphic designers to former Disney artists and designers.

“Five years ago, the characters were talking heads with computer-generated voices with no emotion,” said Patrick G. Kenny, who leads the virtual patient program. “Today, it’s getting harder to distinguish what is real from what is not with virtual human characters.”

Walking through the institute’s new Playa Vista offices is like walking through a fraternity house for high-tech geeks. Cubicles have white boards on which workers can quickly jot down ideas whenever they have an “aha” moment. And a corner office is more likely to be occupied by a twentysomething in a T-shirt huddled over computer monitor than a supervisor in a suit.

On a recent visit, the institute engineers were testing one of their latest first-person, multi-player games that allows players to take part in a simulated attack that includes dealing with an improvised explosive device.

The game is designed to prepare soldiers for an insurgent ambush. It is already found on three military bases, including Camp Pendleton, in northern San Diego County.

In the training simulation, soldiers sit in mock Humvees and slowly roll through towns in either Iraq and Afghanistan, which are aesthetically true to life because the institute used satellite photographs to design the town’s landscape.

“We try to make it as real as possible,” said Todd Richmond, the game’s project director.

Richmond said he knew the institute got the game right after a Marine, who had been deployed overseas, was playing the game and pointed to a shop by the side of the road and said, “Hey, I went in that place and bought a Coke.”

In addition to mapping and satellite reconnaissance, the institute uses Hollywood movie writers to come in and make the story lines more compelling. The institute is one of the country’s only organizations that draws on the entertainment industry to do such work.

Maintaining this kind of realism is key to the institute’s success, said Peter W. Singer, author of “Wired for War,” a book that examines robotic warfare. “The stuff that ICT does is really in a class of its own.”

Singer estimates the U.S. military is spending about $6 billion each year on virtual training and expects that number to rise.

“This is a medium the iPhone generation knows,” Singer said. “You can’t simply teach them on a chalkboard anymore.”

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MY TAKE: The “industry” is so much more advanced than it used to be and careers are branches out to include everything from DVD duplication, legal transcription and computer repair in New York. Training to make a Los Angeles DVD copy of a film is just the tip of the iceberg. Companies are embracing the backside of Hollywood’s creative talent pool to put computer graphics to use in arenas beyond the movies.

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Occasions for Business Greetings

There is often an emphasis on today’s business dealings that all interactions be handled in as professional a manner as possible and with as little prejudice and politically incorrect behavior as possible. Even in business and client relationships that last for years a certain level of professionalism must he practiced. One of the best ways to muddle a potentially successful business relationship is to send a Christmas card to a practicing Jew or a birthday card to a Jehovah’s Witness. Being sensitive to the religious tendencies and practices of other businesses and clients when sending business greeting cards is the best policy.

Frame Display and Industry

While it is vital for any optical business to provide a visually distinct and eye catching frame display, there are additional industries that can benefit from professional lighting design. For example, galleries that feature hanging art or any variety of sculpted pieces require sufficient lighting that does not overwhelm the space but which offers adequate illumination. Large retail spaces can also benefit from lighting displays that employ such techniques as recessed lighting, cabinet lighting, or more mainstream functional lights. From contemporary design to classic display, the proper lights can bring any designer’s vision to life.

SEO in a Snap

The best SEO service provider out there is going to be the one who understands your company from the inside out. It’s not enough to just proivde SEO services. A good provider needs to also offer press materials, company snapshots in a portfolio format, and all of this must be optimized for maximum visibility on the major Web sites.

SOURCE: CNN

LinkedIn has launched a new feature that allows users of the social networking Web site to review products and services.

The new feature, called Company Pages, is designed to give companies exposure to LinkedIn’s over 80 million members, while also giving users access to insight from other professionals in the network, the company said in a press release.

Among the 32 companies participating in the initial launch are several big technology names, such as Hewlett Packard , Microsoft and Dell. Other businesses that LinkedIn users will be able to review are JetBlue and Volkswagen.

The companies listed or advertising could include manufacturers of display cases, hair restoration doctor referral agencies, even call answering services providers.

Jeff Weiner, chief executive of LinkedIn, said in a statement that users will benefit from “the considered perspectives of those whom they trust and relate to the most - the people they know.”

At the same time, he said businesses can use the feature to display “their strongest recommendations to prospective customers and employees on LinkedIn,” which he says can “accelerate growth and trust in their brands.”

In addition to reviews, businesses can display videos, product information and targeted ads on their Company Pages, according to the press release.

LinkedIn, a privately held company that caters to professionals, said it will officially unveil the feature Tuesday at its annual marketing and advertising event in New York.

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MY TAKE: Sounds like another way for Linkedin to make a boat load of money, via advertising revenues of course. Everyone who has a Linkedin page will be tracked each time they use the site and you can bet that every family defense lawyer, the manufacturer of blackboards, Phoenix hair transplant or answering services providers in the country will have access to their online information. Think again before you linkin in to that divorce lawyer or the CEO of the company you’re trying to work for.

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OTHER RESOURCES

SOURCE: CNN

Alcohol ranks “most harmful” drug beating out crack and heroin, according to study results released by a British medical journal.

A panel of experts from the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs weighed the physical, psychological, and social problems caused by the drugs and determined that alcohol was the most harmful overall, according to an article on the study released by The Lancet on Sunday.

Using a new scale to evaluate harms to individual users and others, alcohol received a score of 72 on a scale of 1 to 100, the study says. It was compared to 19 other drugs using 16 criteria: nine related to the adverse effects the drug has on an individual and seven on its harm against others.

That makes it almost three times as harmful as cocaine or tobacco, according to the article, which is slated to be published on The Lancet’s website Monday and in an upcoming print edition of the journal.

Heroin, crack cocaine and methamphetamine were the most harmful drugs to individuals, the study says, while alcohol, heroin and crack cocaine were the most harmful to others.

In the article, the panelists said their findings show that Britain’s three-tiered drug classification system, which places drugs into different categories that determine criminal penalties for possession and dealing, has “little relation to the evidence of harm.”

Panelists also noted that the rankings confirm other studies that say that “aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy.”

The Lancet article was co-authored by David Nutt, a professor and Britain’s former chief drug adviser, who caused controversy last year after he published an article saying ecstasy was not as dangerous as riding a horse.

“So why are harmful sporting activities allowed, whereas relatively less harmful drugs are not?” Nutt wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. “I believe this reflects a societal approach which does not adequately balance the relative risks of drugs against their harms.”

Nutt later apologized to to anyone offended by the article and to those who have lost loved ones to ecstasy. He said he had no intention of trivializing the dangers of the drug and that he only wanted to compare the risks.

In the article released by The Lancet on Sunday, ecstasy’s harmfulness ranking — 9 — indicates it is only one-eighth as harmful as alcohol.

The study was funded by the London-based Centre for Crime and Justice studies.

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MY TAKE: Alcohol certainly does take its toll on the body over time, and the effects of being drunk and driving can be devastating and expensive. If you think you have issues now with debt settlement services think agai. Try to eliminated credit card debt once you’ve lost your license and your job and your freedom because you’ve killed someone in a car accident. By the way, it’s usually the drunk driver who survives an accident, possibly with no more than a few scratches or perhaps nothingmore than a California plastic surgeon would have to handle.

One of the best ways to lose belly fat for men is to put down the heavy beer guzzling. Women can also count on being able to also lose belly fat if they stop drinking excessively, especially wine, which is pure sugar!

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OTHER RESOURCES

Arabica Beans Becoming Scarce

A number of companies that roast coffee for a living are finding that there has been a reduction in the availability of Arabica beans for standard coffee and wholesale coffee which has meant that various manufacturers have had to change their options as far as obtaining the right sort of beans is concerned. There was a significant amount of rain that fell in Columbia last year that meant that the crop was far smaller that came out of the country and the harvest for the crop in Brazil is not yet expected for several months so prices have gone up.

Natomas Private Seucrity

For the best Natomas private security services your company should ensure the safety your business and your assets, proved outstanding customer service and cater to your needs. That goes for any Rancho Cordova private security firm.

SOURCE:

Too much TV is not a good thing.

Forget about how to find daycare centers. Turns out childcare is one of the last things you should worry about when it comes to kids.

Parents should limit their young children’s screen time to no more than two hours per day, according to pediatricians. This recommendation has been in place for many years, but parents and child caregivers don’t seem to be catching on. A new study finds that the average preschool-age child is exposed to double the recommended amount.

Screen time consists of television, DVDs, computers and video games. The researchers examined data from nearly 9,000 preschool-aged children who were part of a longitudinal study that began in 2001 and included interviews with parents and child care providers to collect data on each child’s daily screen time.

On average, children were exposed to four hours of screen time per day — with 3.6 hours of that time coming from exposures while at home.

That’s a lot of time exposed to commercials and ads for everything from green issues and pharmaceutical companies to senior style forum debates and other issues they don’t really understand, let alone need to hear about.

Children in home-based day care averaged 5.6 hours of screen time at day care. Children in center-based day care watched about 3.2 hours a day while at home and at day care. Even children who did not attend any day care or preschool exceeded recommendations — 4.4. hours a day of screen-time on average. Children enrolled in Head Start, a day care program for economically disadvantaged children, watched an average of 4.2 hours a day, but most of their screen time was at home, not at the Head Start center.

Excessive television, video and computer time is linked to delayed speech and language, aggressive behavior and obesity in children, which is why the American Academy of Pediatrics issued the recommendation to limit exposure to one to two hours per day of quality programming. Most states, however, do not issue regulations regarding screen time as part of licensing of child care centers, the authors noted.

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MY TAKE: One of the best ways to find out how parents feel about TV watching is to use online survey tools. If you take an online survey software program and set up a survey that way, they are more likely to answer it. But for kids and TV issues it’s always as crap shoot about whether the results are real. Parents don’t really want to admit how much time they rely upon the TV for a babysitter, nor do daycare centers.

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OTHER RESOURCES:

SOURCE: Associated Press

In a story that sounds as though it could have been lifted straight out of an episode of MTV’s “Punk’d,” celebrity couple Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore may have violated NCAA rules on behalf of the Iowa men’s basketball program.

The Des Moines Register reported Sunday that Iowa athletic officials have told the NCAA they allowed two recruits to meet Kutcher, Moore and ex-Hawkeye basketball stars Dean Oliver and Reggie Evans prior to a home football game last month.

Kutcher, an Iowa native and Hawkeyes fan and donor, is considered a representative of the university’s athletic interests, as are Oliver and Evans. The NCAA prohibits potential recruits from having any contact with such individuals as a result of the undue influence they could have on the recruiting process.

A juicy story like this one is sure to garner plenty of headlines over the next few days because of Kutcher and Moore’s involvement, but the truth is that these potential violations are not that big of a deal

Whether it’s North Carolina recruits playing pick-up games with Michael Jordan or former Ohio State receiver Cris Carter encouraging Seantrel Henderson to become a Buckeye, encounters between recruits and celebrity alums happen all the time. The vast majority of these infractions either go unreported or become secondary violations, which provide only minimal recruiting or competitive advantage and typically carry only minor consequences. 

Documents obtained by the Register block out the names of the two recruits involved in the potential violations at Iowa, but a quick Internet search reveals the two were likely guards Josh Oglesby and Marcus Paige. Oglesby, who committed to new Iowa coach Fran McCaffery in late September, previously told IlliniHQ.com that he was excited to meet Kutcher during the Iowa-Iowa State football game he attended on his official visit.

“He was cool,” Oglesby said. “You know, some of those actors or actresses might just say, ‘Hey, how you doing?’ But he just sat there and talked your ears off.”

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MY TAKE: I don’t know if this is the first negative story I’ve ever heard about this couple, but between them they can seem to do no wrong. She seems to be ageless. Not that I guess I get the implications however, and it’s proabably no more appropriate for Kutcher to be waving US Marine corps flags at football games for Navy. Or waving Texas flags at an Iowa State conference. But actually, it all seems about as superfulous as wondering whether their property management is taking care of their homes. Or, if their Costa Del Sol properties are rented out to Iowa state co-eds in off season.

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Need Coverage?

Monmouth County Fraud lawyer advice is not cheap. Be sure you know your rights before hiring a Manasquan NJ traffic tickets lawyer, or any lawyer for that matter, including divorce lawyers in Austin Texas. No one gets anything for free, so when you retain a Georgetown TX family law attorney, for example, you can bet that he or she will be billing you for every second they work for you, whether it’s in an e-mail or a fax or a phone call.

SOURCE: Associated Press

A 22-year-old Florida mother has been arrested on charges of shaking her baby to death after he interrupted her Farmville game on Facebook and she has plead guilty to second-degree murder.

Alexandra V. Tobias charged in the January death of 3-month-old Dylan Lee Edmondson.

She entered her plea on Wednesady.

Tobias told investigators she became angry after the baby cried while she was playing the computer game and she shook him, the Florida Times-Union is reporting.

She also said she smoked a cigarette to compose herself and then shook the baby again, at which time he may have hit his head, the paper reported.

Tobias faces up to life in prison if convicted.

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MY TAKE: Unfortunately, this is the darker side of social networking. I love FB, don’t get me wrong. I find great leads on everything from concert tickets to San Diego Wedding packages. I network online all the time and not just with friends but also businesses. I found a great Alpine CA wedding decorations company that helped me put together an event in San Diego. I’ve bought sports tickets on line and even found a few jobs. But Facebook is also addictive: You can get on there at 7 in the morning and before you know it it’s lunch time and all you’ve done is check in on “friends” to see what they’ve been doing all day or night.

This girl was obviously not ready for motherhood and I suspect that it wouldn’t take police dog training experts to figure out she was probably also involved in the abuse of not just online networking but other substances as well. Farmville, the game she was allegedly playing, is not that interesting.

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OTHER RESOURCES

Custody Laws in Phillie

Need to hire a Philadelphia custody attorney? Before you pay a Montgomery County PA family attorneys firm, be sure to ask for a detailed fee schedule. Many family lawyers charge you on the quarter or half hour every time you send an e-mail or call them and ask for a response back. In fact, this goes for all lawyers, really, including your fancy West Palm Beach divorce lawyer. No Lake Worth FL divorce lawyer is going to offer you free advice, so be sure you have all your questions together before calling or e-mailing your attorney.

SOURCE: Associated Press

Four driverless electric vans successfully ended a 8,000-mile test drive from Italy to China — a modern-day version of Marco Polo’s journey around the world — with their arrival at the Shanghai Expo on Thursday.

The vehicles, equipped with four solar-powered laser scanners and seven video cameras that work together to detect and avoid obstacles, are part of an experiment aimed at improving road safety and advancing automotive technology.

The sensors on the vehicles enabled them to navigate through wide extremes in road, traffic and weather conditions, while collecting data to be analyzed for further research, in a study sponsored by the European Research Council.

“We didn’t know the route, I mean what the roads would have been and if we would have found nice roads, traffic, lots of traffic, medium traffic, crazy drivers or regular drivers, so we encountered the lot,” said Isabella Fredriga, a research engineer for the project.

Though the vans were driverless and mapless, they did carry researchers as passengers just in case of emergencies. The experimenters did have to intervene a few times — when the vehicles got snarled in a Moscow traffic jam and to handle toll stations.

The project used no maps, often traveling through remote regions of Siberia and China. At one point, a van stopped to give a hitchhiker a lift.

Think of the technology as a sort of cloud hositing for cars. Not the kind you consider when searching for a good web hosting site, but similar to the remote technology involved.

A computerized artificial vision system dubbed GOLD, for Generic Obstacle and Lane Detector, analyzed the information from the sensors and automatically adjusted the vehicles’ speed and direction.

“This steering wheel is controlled by the PC. So the PC sends a command and the steering wheel moves and turns and we can follow the road, follow the curves and avoid obstacles with this,” said Alberto Broggi of Vislab at the University of Parma in Italy, the lead researcher for the project.

“The idea here was to travel on a long route, on two different continents, in different states, different weather, different traffic conditions, different infrastructure. Then we can have some huge number of situations to test the system on,” he said.

The technology will be used to study ways to complement drivers’ abilities. It also could have applications in farming, mining and construction, the researchers said.

The vehicles ran at maximum speeds of 38 mph and had to be recharged for eight hours after every two to three hours of driving. At times, it was monotonous and occasionally nerve-racking, inevitably due to human error, Fredriga said.

“There were a few scary moments. Like when the following vehicle bumped into the leading one and that was just because we forgot, we stopped and we forgot to turn the system off,” Fredriga said.

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MY TAKE: I can see how these driverless cars might have applications in farming. But I wouldn’t recommend that you start to compare auto insurance rates on these guys just jet. In order to compare insurance car wise, you do have to have a driver, in most cases, so not sure how that would work. Also, what if you are a Redwood City DUI lawyer? How do you work as a San Mateo County DUI lawyer defending a DUI defendant if they weren’t actually behind the wheel but operating a driverless vehicle remotely, while drunk? Puts a whole new spin on things, right?

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OTHER RESOURCES

SOURCE: Toronto Sun

Hiccups brought her national media attention, now she’s in the spotlight under chargers of murder.

A teen who gained notoriety for her extended bout of hiccups is facing a first-degree murder charge in Florida.

Jennifer Mee, 19, was arrested in St. Petersburg, Fla., Saturday night in connection with the shooting death of Shannon Griffin, 22.

Mee allegedly lured Griffin to a home where he was robbed at gunpoint by Laron Riford and Lamont Newton, St. Petersburg police Sgt. T.A. Skinner said in a release.

During the robbery a struggle occurred and Griffin received several gunshot wounds to his upper body, Skinner said. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Mee and the two men involved in the robbery and shooting have admitted their involvement, Skinner said. All three are charged with first-degree felony murder.

Mee became known as the “hiccup girl” in 2007 when she suffered from unstoppable hiccups.

She did a media circuit talking about her hiccups, which were occurring up to 55 times a minute. She tried several home remedies, talked to medical specialists and worked with a hypnotist until the hiccups subsided after about five weeks.

Mee could face the death penalty in the southern state.

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MY TAKE: Nothing like 30 minutes of fame on both sides of the law. This girl makes ads for slim jims and cheap Las Vegas strip tour sites look tame. For some reason, she doesn’t look at all like the girl that was hiccupping her way to notoriety on the news a while ago. She looks like she’s got more knowledge of lock picks and how to hotwire Henderson NV hummer limousines than she does with home remedies.

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OTHER RESOURCES

Resume Patrol

Those of you out there looking for the latest links to VP jobs online should be on Linked In and one of the other professional social networking sites. Studies show networking on social sites is a great way for job seekers to make connections that could lead to otherwise hard to get interviews, not to mention they create interaction with like-minded job seekers and industry professionals which can keep self esteem levels high in times of uncertainty.