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Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Yankee Owner George Steinbrenner Dead at 80
"The Boss" suffered a massive heart attack and died Tuesday morning
By RONALD BLUM
George Steinbrenner, the controversial but beloved "Boss" who turned around the Yankees franchise in 37 years of ownership, died this morning in Tampa, Fla., after suffering a massive heart attack.
Steinbrenner's family mourned the loss of a man they called "a visionary and a giant in the world of sports," who just celebrated his 80th birthday on July 4.
"He took a great but struggling franchise and turned it into a champion again," the family said in a statement released by spokesman Howard Rubenstein. "He was an incredible and charitable man. First and foremost he was devoted to his entire familygrandchildren."
Steinbrenner's micromanaging on the field and penchant for pursuing high-priced free agents -- and later taking a key role in escalating their salaries -- earned him a reputation as one of the most controversial figures in sports and made him beloved yet polarizing New York City legend.
Dramatic Photos: Yanks Celebrate World Series Return
In Memoriam: Yankees Owner George Steinbrenner
A Look Back: George Steinbrenner Dies at 80
For more than 30 years, Steinbrenner lived up to his billing as "the Boss," a nickname he earned and clearly enjoyed as he ruled with an iron fist. During Steinbrenner's 37-year ownership of the club, the longest tenure in Bronx Bombers' history, the Yankees won 7 World Series titles and 11 penants.
He was known for feuds, clashing with Yankees great Yogi Berra, and firing manager Billy Martin twice. But as his health declined, Steinbrenner let sons Hal and Hank run more of the family business.
Steinbrenner was in fragile health for years, resulting in fewer public appearances and pronouncements. Yet dressed in his trademark navy blue blazer and white turtleneck, he was the model of success: The Yankees won seven World Series titles after his reign began in 1973.
Steinbrenner’s tenure of more than 37 years exceeded that of any other New York Yankees owner by 13 years (Colonel Jacob Ruppert purchased the Yankees with Tillinghast L’Hommedieu Huston in January 1915, bought out Huston in 1922, and maintained sole ownership in the club until his death in January 1939—a total of 24 years). Since Steinbrenner became principal owner, the other 29 Major League clubs had more than 100 owners or ownership groups while the Yankees had just one.
He appeared at the new Yankee Stadium just four times: for the opener in April 2009, for the first two games of last year's World Series and for this year's homer opener, when captain Derek Jeter and manager Joe Girardi went to his suite and personally delivered his seventh World Series ring.
"He was very emotional," said Hal Steinbrenner, his father's successor as managing general partner.
Until the end, he demanded championships. He criticized Joe Torre during the 2007 playoffs, then let the popular manager leave after another loss in the opening round. The team responded last year by winning another title.
In addition to the team’s on-field success, the Yankees have consistently shattered franchise and league attendance records at home and on the road. In 2009, they drew 3,719,358 fans in their first season of play in Yankee Stadium, topping the American League in attendance for the seventh straight season (2003-09). Currently, the Yankees remain the only franchise in baseball history to draw more than 4 million fans at home in four consecutive seasons (2005-08).
Steinbrenner's death was the second in three days to rock the Yankees. Bob Sheppard, the team's revered public address announcer from 1951-07, died on Sunday at 99.
The Ohio-born executive leaves behind his wife of 54 years, Elizabeth Joan Zieg, and their four children -- Hank, Hal, Jessica and Jennifer.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC New York
A Holocaust Survivor Dances at Auschwitz
From: http://www.theatlantic.com/
This video depicts a Holocaust survivor—flanked by a handful of younger family members—dancing at several concentration camps, with a cover of "I Will Survive" in the background. Buzzfeed calls it "the most heart-warming Holocaust memorial ever displayed."
UPDATE: Alyssa Rosenberg points out that this isn't history's first example of dancing at a Holocaust site: Groucho Marx performed a two-minute Charleston on Hitler's grave in 1958.
Buying the New Chevy Corvette – Get to Build Your Own Engine
Chevrolet may just have unleashed a masterstroke in product-marketing by allowing customers who order their Corvette (Z06 and ZR1) to have the option of a one-day experience where they will help a master technician build their engine from the block up. Customers can shell out an additional $5,800 to hand-assemble at GM’s Performance Build Center in Wixom, Michigan. In case you’re left wondering – the customer cannot add additional parts to up the horsepower, and the engine will still be covered by warranty.
Every customer who orders a ZR1 will also receive complimentary two-day course at either of two official Corvette ZR1 Driving Schools: Ron Fellows Performance Driving School at Spring Mountain Motorsports Ranch in Pahrump, Nev., or the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Chandler, Ariz. The course will teach new owners how to fully enjoy the performance of the ZR1 (read: Heel/toe shifting, threshold braking, and cornering) in a safe, closed-course environment.
Also available is a Museum Delivery program that will allow customers to take delivery of their Corvette at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky. They will receive a private tour of the GM Bowling Green Assembly Plant, home of the Corvette, and the National Corvette Museum, along with a personalized demonstration of the Corvette’s features. The Museum Delivery option is $490.
The Corvette Buyers Tour is another unique feature that allows for customers to watch their Corvette follow the build process from the start of body assembly to the end of the line at GM’s Bowling Green Assembly Plant. This tour includes the chance to witness areas of the plant not included on the general Plant tour. The customers will also have the opportunity to buy a photo album that entails the entire build process of their car. The leather-bound album includes more than 20 pages of text and photos devoted to capturing the entire Corvette build process, along with a letter of authenticity from the National Corvette Museum.
via GM
Hugh Hefner offers to take Playboy private
CHICAGO — Hugh Hefner, Playboy Enterprises Inc.'s iconic founder, is offering to buy the shares of the media empire that he doesn't already own and take the company private in a deal that values the organization at $185 million.
Playboy announced the bid Monday, drawing a competing offer just a few hours later from the corporate parent of rival Penthouse magazine, FriendFinder Networks. FriendFinder CEO Marc Bell said Monday that his company will make a formal bid soon.
Based on the number of shares outstanding on April 30, Hefner's proposal offers $122.5 million, or $5.50 for each share the magnate doesn't already own. That's a nearly 40 percent premium above Friday's closing stock price of $3.94. Playboy's shares climbed $1.63, or 41 percent, to $5.57 in midday trading Monday.
Hefner, 84, the company's chief creative officer who's known for his silky pajamas and young, curvaceous girlfriends, plans to team up with private equity firm Rizvi Traverse Management LLC for the deal.
Hefner founded Playboy in 1953 and turned the publication and its scantily clad models into a cultural mainstay. But in recent years, Playboy has faltered as advertising revenue dwindled and competition grew.
In late 2008, Hefner's daughter Christie resigned as chairman and CEO. Scott Flanders replaced her last summer.
Since then, speculation has mounted that Playboy would seek a suitor, for a merger or acquisition.
But that's something Hefner appears to oppose.
In his letter to Playboy's board of directors, Hefner said he has no plans to sell his shares — or the company. He rebuffed any suggestion that there should be a merger between Playboy and other potential bidders.
Playboy, which is headquartered in Chicago, described Hefner's offer letter as a proposal and said there was no guarantee it would get any formal bid from Hefner. But if it does, the board of directors will form a special committee to consider the bid.
At the end of April Playboy had 33.6 million shares of stock, of which Hefner owns more than 4 million shares in two stock classes.
Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
43 of the World's Most Stunning Lighthouses [HDR PICS]
weburbanist.com — Here are 43 of the world’s most stunning HDR lighthouse images to enjoy from the comfort of your computer chair.
Click here for the full gallery: 43 of the World's Most Stunning Lighthouses
Monday, July 12, 2010
6 y/o Boy with NO Legs & 1 Arm Swims Better Than Most
blog.al.com — There's really no other way to put this but "GABE IS THE MAN!"
click here for the amazing story: 6 y/o Boy with NO Legs & 1 Arm Swims Better Than Most
Amazon river dolphins being slaughtered for bait
Photo By AP
The bright pink color gives them a striking appearance in the muddy jungle waters. That Amazon river dolphins are also gentle and curious makes them easy targets for nets and harpoons as they swim fearlessly up to fishing boats.
Now, their carcasses are showing up in record numbers on riverbanks, their flesh torn away for fishing bait, causing researchers to warn of a growing threat to a species that has already disappeared in other parts of the world.
"The population of the river dolphins will collapse if these fishermen are not stopped from killing them," said Vera da Silva, the top aquatic mammals expert at the government's Institute of Amazonian Research. "We've been studying an area of 11,000 hectares (27,000 acres) for 17 years, and of late the population is dropping 7 percent each year."
That translates to about 1,500 dolphins killed annually in the part of the Mamiraua Reserve of the western Amazon where da Silva studies the mammals.
Da Silva said researchers first began finding dolphin carcasses along riverbanks around the year 2000. They were obviously killed by human hands: sliced open and quartered, with their flesh cut away.
The killings are becoming more common, researchers and environmental agents say. Even the government acknowledges that there is a problem. It's already illegal to kill the dolphins without government permission -- as with all wild animals in the Amazon. But little is being done to stop it.
Less than five agents are tasked with protecting wildlife in a jungle region covering the western two-thirds of Amazonas state, which is more than twice the size of Texas, according to the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (Ibama), the enforcement arm of the Environment Ministry.
"It's a matter of priority, and right now the government is focusing on deforestation," said Ibama's Andrey Silva. "The killings of these dolphins exists -- it's a fact."
The dolphins are attractive to anglers for their fatty flesh that is a highly effective bait for catching a type of catfish called piracatinga.
Consumption in neighboring Colombia is driving the slaughter. Some 884 tons of the fish came from Brazil in 2007, according to the Colombian Institute for Rural Development. That jumped to 1,430 tons in 2008 and spiked to 2,153 tons in 2009.
Simple economics exacerbates the problem: Killing dolphins is free, and their meat is valuable. Using the flesh from one carcass, fishermen can catch up to 1,100 pounds (500 kilograms) of piracatinga. According to da Silva and other researchers, they can sell the catfish for 50 cents per kilogram, translating into $550 for just a few nights' work -- about double Brazil's monthly minimum wage.
"It's attracting a lot of poor people to this region to kill the dolphins and make easy money," said Antonio Miguel Migueis, a dolphin researcher with the Federal University of Western Para since 2005.
So far it's impossible to quantify the exact impact fisherman are having on the river dolphins -- little research has been done to study the killings or even the overall population of the dolphins in the Amazon.
But activists warn that waiting for exhaustive studies could mean the dolphin population would be irreversibly devastated by the time the work is complete.
"This is most definitely a threat to the future of this river dolphin species," said Alison Wood, with the England-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. "This is a relatively new threat, but clearly an extremely serious one."
Migueis said he warned Ibama and other authorities numerous times about the dolphin slaughter, but his reports fell on deaf ears.
Growing up to 8 feet (2.5 meters) long and weighing as much as 400 pounds (180 kilograms), Amazon river dolphins are the largest of four species known to exist in South America and Asia.
Their genetic siblings have already died off elsewhere: The Yangzte river dolphin in China was declared functionally extinct in 2006, the victim of pollution, overfishing and increased boat traffic.
Meanwhile, the International Union of Conservation of Nature lists the Ganges river dolphin in India as endangered, and the Irrawaddy river dolphin in Bangladesh as vulnerable.
Scientists believe river dolphins likely arrived in the Amazon during the Middle Miocene era 16 million years ago, when ocean levels were high around the world, and the sea inundated what is now lush rain forest.
For centuries they have been revered by locals and protected by myth. According to one tale, the dolphins transform into handsome men and leave the water at night, seducing and impregnating local women before returning to the river. Many simply consider it bad luck to kill them, given their supposed magical attributes.
But today, the quick payoff is trumping legend and superstition.
"Killing the dolphins is a fast and easy way for the fisherman to make money. It costs nothing but time," Vera da Silva said. "It's ugly because these dolphins have a folkloric value in the Amazon, and all that is disappearing for the sake of using them as bait."
------
Associated Press Writers Jessica Lleras in Bogota, Colombia, and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo contributed to this report.
Pink Floyd's Gilmour and Waters Stun Crowd With Surprise Reunion
Photo courtesy of DavidGilmourBlog.com
For the first time in five years, the two driving forces behind Pink Floyd, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, reunited onstage at a benefit in England over the weekend. The unannounced team-up went down before the 200 attendees of the Hoping Foundation benefit in Oxfordshire, which raised money for young Palestinian refugees. The duo's four-song set included Phil Spector's "To Know Him Is To Love Him" (a Floyd sound-check staple according to the blog on Gilmour's website) and the band's classics "Wish You Were Here," "Comfortably Numb" and "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2."
The Saturday night set marks the first time Waters and Gilmour have shared the stage since Pink Floyd's reunion performance at 2005's Live 8 in London. The duo's Hoping Foundation performance helped raise £350,000. At the benefit, Gilmour and Waters — who swapped his bass for an acoustic guitar — were joined by keyboardists Harry Waters and Jonjo Grisdale, drummer Andy Newmark, guitarist Chester Kamen and bassist Guy Pratt, who ironically replaced Waters in the Gilmour-led, Division Bell-era Pink Floyd.
As Rolling Stone previously reported, Waters asked Gilmour to join his 30th anniversary tour of The Wall this year, but his onetime bandmate declined. "David is completely uninterested," Waters said in May. "I could have probably gone for doing some more stuff, but he's not interested." Hopes for an official Pink Floyd reunion tour were mostly extinguished when keyboardist Richard Wright passed away in 2008 and Gilmour lamented, "No one can replace Richard Wright."
Even without Gilmour, Waters' The Wall tour is one of the few treks that has seemingly staved off the summer's concert industry struggles: While artists including Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers and tours like Lilith Fair and American Idols Live continue to cancel dates, the demand for The Wall 30th anniversary tour has led Waters to double, triple and, in some cases, quadruple the number of dates he's performing in certain markets.
Highest Paid Players in American Sports (Infographic)
mint.com — In this infographic, mint.com compare the salaries of the top-paid baseball, basketball, football, soccer and hockey players, take a look at salary caps and give you the average compensation for a professional in each of these sports.
This Bendable Bike Can Tie Itself to Any Post
We Inhabitat writers have had our fair share of bicycles and bicycle parts stolen on the mean streets of New York City. It seems these days you’ve got to lock everything down (even the brakes!) in order to keep your cycle intact. That often means buying more than one lock and disassembling your bike every time you leave it unguarded. Kevin Scott hopes to change all of that. He just unveiled his revolutionary bendable bike. That’s right, with the push of a lever the cycle becomes bike-Houdini and can wrap around any post making it easy to secure all its parts with just one lock. No more clunky chains? Sign us up!
Scott is a 21 year old graduate of The De Montfort University in the UK and was runner-up in the Business Design Centre New Designer of the Year Award. The bicycle he created uses a ratchet mechanism to allow it to be both rigid and bendable — but not all at once. Once you hop off the bike, you simply push a lever on the frame and the bike becomes flexible, so you can wrap it around your nearest pole or bike rack.
Scott decided to create the bike specifically so that all of its pieces could be secured easily with one lock. Scott’s bike is a prototype at this point but he’s looking to parlay this technology into a business venture. “I am now going to take this forward to produce a fully resolved solution and hopefully this will be a stepping stone into a career in the bike designing industry,” he says. Anyone looking for a new bike-genius might want to give this chap a call.
Via Gizmodo
New super awesome 'Machete' trailer arrives!
YEAH! A brand-new trailer for Robert Rodriguez and Ethan Maniquis' upcoming action adventure "Machete" is now online, and I highly recommend you check it out right after the jump. It totally rocks!
Danny Trejo plays the title character, a man who is orderd to kill a senator but ends up being double-crossed. Pissed about what went down, he gets back up to seek revenge against those who screwed him.
Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriquez, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson and Lindsay Lohan co-star. The film opens Sept. 3, 2010, and based on this trailer, it will kick ass and deliver superb action.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Fish Found Walking in Gulf Spill
Two new species of pancake batfish, which walk using their arm-like fins, have been found at the site of the Gulf oil spill, according to a study published in the Journal of Fish Biology.
Both fish live in waters either partially or fully encompassed by the Deepwater Horizon spill.
“One of the fishes that we describe is completely restricted to the oil spill area,” says John Sparks, curator of Ichthyology at the AMNH. “If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity -- especially microdiversity -- is out there that we do not know about.”
According to a press release issued by the museum, pancake batfishes are members of the anglerfish family Ogcocephalidae, a group of about 70 species of flat bottom-dwellers that often live in deep, perpetually dark waters. Pancake batfishes have enormous heads and mouths that can thrust forward. This, combined with their ability to cryptically blend in with their surroundings, gives them an advantage for capturing prey.
They use their stout, arm-like fins to walk awkwardly along the substrate; their movements have been described as "grotesque," resembling a walking bat. As most anglerfishes, batfishes have a dorsal fin that is modified into a spine or lure, although their lure excretes a fluid to reel in prey instead of bio-illuminating.
Sparks says the new "discoveries underscore the potential loss of undocumented biodiversity that a disaster of this scale may portend."
(Other species of fish walk too. The below video, for example, shows Australia's spotted handfish.)
Make a DIY iPad stand from pencils and rubber bands
These days, you’ll be hard pressed to find anyone actually using a pencil for writing, but it seems there’s still a healthy market for pencils being used as 
A handful of pencils, a collection of rubber bands, and the willingness to get crafty with your geeky self is all you need to create your own DIY iPad stand. You can use sharpened pencils to give your homemade stand some flair, but we recommend going the un-sharpened route if you want to avoid marking up your desktop. Thanks to the creative folks over at Geeky Gadgets, we’ve got a pictorial on how to save yourself some cash and slap together a functional tablet stand out of everyday items that you probably haven’t touched in years – we barely even know what a pencil feels like in the hand anymore.
To summarize, you basically create a triangle out of three pencils. This will serve as your base. Secure the points of this triangle with rubber bands. Then, insert the remaining three pencils into the top of your newly-created rubber band joints so that they point upwards. Finally, bring the tops of your upward-pointing pencils together to form a pyramid and secure them together with your remaining rubber band. You’ll want to use the eraser tips as the point of contact between the stand and your iPad – we’d also suggest you aim a couple eraser tips downward to provide grip on your desk.
We used the metal band that connects the eraser to the pencil as the resting point for our iPad. We wrapped the metal band with a bit of electrical tape to prevent the ridges from scratching our pristine tablet – you would do well to do the same.
Best of all, if you need an emergency pencil for some reason, you’ll always know where to find one.
So, if you’ve got some pencils lying around, give this DIY a go and let us know how it turns out!
We love DIYs.
[Via: GeekyGadgets]
'Beavis and Butt-Head' creator Mike Judge working on 30 new episodes
REVIEWING THE NEWS: REVIEWniverse has exclusive info about the possible return of Beavis and Butt-Head
By Kenny Herzog
Woah, Butt-Head is weirdly buff.
REVIEWniverse has exclusively learned from an anonymous source that Mike Judge is currently outlining 30 new episodes of his iconic animated comedy Beavis and Butt-Head for its native network.
The source conceded that plans for actual broadcast are not yet cemented, or even a given, but confirmed that the King of the Hill/Office Space/Idiocracy maestro is definitely in the midst of writing new B and B material with the hopes of a full-throttle return.
Even better news for fans is that, should this come to pass, Judge plans on retaining the show's original ghetto-tech aesthetic, right down to the faded color palatte. The source also reveals that the Extract director intends on keeping B and B's format identical to its original sketch-videos-sketch incarnation, but with more contemporary music clips for the cartoon slacker-duo to skewer.
And of course, this being the viral age, Judge could always just unveil the finished installments on his own website or through a high-profile online partner should MTV be crazy enough to hesitate making room in its primetime schedule.
In case you forgot how actually, truly funny Beavis and Butt-Head was amidst all that ancient, controversial history:
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