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CISPA passes

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Despite a growing storm of resistance to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, CISPA has cleared its first legislative hurdle. But the battle over the widely-criticized information-sharing bill is just heating up.



In an earlier-than-expected vote Thursday evening, the House of Representatives voted 248 to 168 in favor of the bill , which was originally designed to allow more sharing of cybersecurity threat information with government agencies.

The legislation has drawn the ire of legislators, civil liberties groups, security practitioners and professors, and hundreds of thousands of petitioners, who say the bill tramples over users’ privacy rights as it allows Web firms like Google and Facebook to give private users’ information to government agencies irrespective of other laws that protect users’ privacy. “It’s basically a privacy nightmare,” says Trevor Timm, a lawyer and activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “CISPA would allow companies to hand over private data to the government without a warrant, without anonymity, with no judicial review.”

But even before it passed, the House voted to amend the bill to actually allow even more types of private sector information to be shared with government agencies, not merely in matters of cybersecurity or national security, but in the investigation of vaguely defined cybersecurity “crimes,” “protection of individuals the danger of death or serious bodily harm,” and cases where that involve the protection of minors from exploitation.

That statute, which in effect widened the most controversial portion of the bill just hours before it came to a vote, is sure to draw even more controversy as the bill works its way through the legislative branch and reaches President Obama’s desk. President Obama currently backs a bill in the Senate put forward by Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, designed to increase the cybersecurity regulatory powers of the Department of Homeland security, which has been opposed by the GOP and stalled in the Senate.

The White House came out Wednesday with a strongly-worded statement slamming CISPA and pushing its regulatory approach in a threat to veto CISPA, writing that “cybersecurity and privacy are not mutually exclusive” and calling CISPA an intelligence bill rather than a security bill that treats civilians as subjects of surveillance. (White House watchers have observed, however, that the president’s advisors similarly recommended that he veto the National Defense Authorization Act, which he instead signed into law.)

Regardless, reconciling the House bill in its new, even more controversial form with a Senate version, even as the White House opposes the central thrust of the legislation, will only rekindle the controversy that has grown around CISPA in the last week.

The EFF’s Timm says he sees the House’s early vote on CISPA as an attempt by its author, representative Mike Rogers, to squeeze the bill through before its opposition grew any stronger. “We’ve seen an explosion of a variety of groups and congressmen come out against the bill,” he says. “As the Senate debates this, it’s good that privacy and civil liberties will be front and center.”


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Nicki Minaj's Starships Video Is A Fucking Disaster.

Scandal - 1.05 - Crash and Burn - Promo + post 1.04 interview with Shonda

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The Hollywood Reporter: How will the team learn of Amanda's death?
Shonda Rhimes
: Whether or not she is even dead is a question for much of the next episode. We see Amanda get taken at the end of this episode and we're not sure what that really means for her. We fear the worst and that that is going to have a really strong impact on Olivia and all of our people.

How will the case evolve now that it's a kidnapping and potentially a murder?
We thought that we were going to be dealing with this scandal that was just about whether Amanda Tanner was pregnant with the president's baby or not and whether or not she had an affair with him. It all takes a hideous turn from that moment and becomes something very different; it changes the nature of the entire case and there becomes a desire to see things rewrited.

Considering Olivia Pope & Associates' job isn't to solve cases -- like we saw in the pilot -- is solving this case a priority? Who are they now working for?
Who they're working for changes, but it doesn't change. Amanda is their client and they owe something to her, and finding her and making sure that whatever has happened to her is dealt with is important to them.

How does Amanda's kidnapping impact Olivia and the team?
It's going to affect everybody really profoundly. Amanda's disappearance turns the story in an entirely new way and really plays with Olivia's emotions and her feelings about the president and whether or not she perceives there to be any involvement from that side in terms of what's happened to Amanda or not.

The mysterious call Amanda gets -- in which she reveals she can't lie anymore and wants to come clean -- sets up her drugging and kidnapping. What can you tease about who she's working for, what her motivation is and how she got involved in this?
What is interesting about Amanda's phone call is that is the moment that you have proof that something very different than maybe you thought was going on is going on. That [phone call] might be the reason that she disappears at the end or it might not. As we progress in the final three episodes we start to see an unraveling and begin to understand what is behind all of that for Amanda and who she was talking to.

Fitz has definitively said that Amanda's baby isn't his and the phone call seems to support that the president is telling the truth. How will that change how people perceive him?
People's perceptions of what happened will change as things go on. I still maintain that he hasn't denied having an affair with Amanda, he simply said that's not his baby. I had some very interesting conversations with Tony Goldwynabout that. He was like, "How do I know it's not my baby?" I had to explain the other ways people have sex, it was very funny. Fitz hasn't necessarily said he didn't do it with Amanda, so there are some things there that you will begin to understand as we head into these final episodes. But what you thought he was doing or saying isn't necessarily done for the reasons that you thought he was doing them for. Things come back, and what they are changes. I still find him to be a guy worth rooting for.

Cyrus' monologue gets Fitz to man up, but will that change now that Amanda has gone missing?
The news that Amanda is even missing is going to really spark something in him, and make him start to wonder about the people around him, who is he in general and what he's done all of this for. It's like a little crisis of conscience, which I think is important. I love the Jeff Perry monologue; he only did like two takes and it's a real window inside that character.

How will Cyrus and Olivia's battle change in light of Amanda's disappearance? Could we potentially see them working together again?
What's interesting about Amanda's disappearance is you come to understand something about Olivia that you didn't necessarily before: she really does know who these people are that she's working with and she really does know who the people are in the White House. She has a very clear view of who she thinks Cyrus is in light of Amanda's disappearance, and it's pretty revelatory because if you know this about a person and if you have these thoughts about a person, and yet you can still work with them and call them a friend, it says something about who you are, and you're sort of moral landscape.

He obviously has a bit of a questionable moral landscape.
Absolutely she does; all of them do. Everybody's moral landscape is questionable. There is no one pure good guy in this entire thing.

We learned a lot about everyone's back story -- everyone but Quinn, who apparently didn't exist until 2008. How much does Olivia know about her?
This is something we crafted very carefully. Quinn in the pilot was saying, "Why did she hire me, why did she want me?" That's a big question for her and we are laying track for things that are going to happen, hopefully in Season 2, if there is a Season 2. She is there for a reason. Huck (Guillermo Diaz) says it best, when he says, "Everybody in this office needs fixing, you need fixing and you're a stray dog." Olivia takes in the stray dogs; there's clearly a reason that she's taken in Amanda, and if you look at everyone's back story and realize that every last one of them has been fixed in some way by Olivia. We hit a place in the final episode where you begin to understand what Olivia knows and doesn't know about Quinn.

Quinn goes against Harrison's advice to be honest with Gideon and throws that out the window when she takes things to the next level with him and blatantly lies about the Amanda case. Could that be something that winds up hurting him?
It absolutely can be but more importantly, it reveals a lot about her character. She is not this sweet little neophyte that needs to be told what to do all the time. There's more to her than that. But yes, I definitely think that that is going to come back and bite everybody in the ass.

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Kristen Stewart & Garrett Hedlund Cover Jalouse Magazine May 2012

Grey's Anatomy 8x22 Let The Bad Times Roll Promo

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Youtube

So done with kepner after tonight. Luv Meredith & Christina though <3

Who's Dying On "Community"?

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Community offed one of its own:



Image and video hosting by TinyPic
Starburns

While not a major character, Mr. ‘burns (aka Alex Osbourne) still felt like a member of the Greendale gang. He was a middle-aged community college student who rocked geometrically-shaped facial hair far better than most and often donned a mean top hat.

He was also Greendale’s premiere drug dealer, and, sadly, it ended up being the death of him. The victim of a meth lab explosion in the trunk of his car, Starburns and his weird ways will be missed.

All that said, his portrayer Dino Stamatopoulos remains a consulting producer on Community (he co-wrote the classic stop-motion animated episode “Abed’s Uncontrollable Chirstmas”), so Starburns’ presence will continue to be felt on the quirky comedy… particularly next Thursday when Greendale hosts a lavish funeral in the cafeteria for its fallen Human Being.

In other news, I loved tonight's episode sfm.

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Blog Sparks Controversy with "Eight Pleasantly Plump Female Musicians We'd Like to Get Down With"

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Editor Eric quickly took down the above post with a half-assed apology:

Sarcasm doesn't always come across in writing, and it certainly didn't in this post. I get why commenters below called this "the most insulting thing on the Internet," and that's why it has been removed. New Times regrets the offense we've caused and hopes you'll stick with us in our next attempt at sarcasm. -- Eric Barton



Arielle posted a critique on her co-writer's column:

Yesterday was equally appalling and exciting on this blog and across Twitter and other various social media platforms. As a freelancer, I was busy in the morning covering the Billboard Latin Music Conference in Miami, and during a break, I checked my various feeds to see a post on this blog with a cringe-inducing title: "Eight Pleasantly Plump Female Musicians I'd Like to Get Down With." 


I quickly tweeted the authorRic Delgado, that not only was the article sexist but also inaccurate on a few factual fronts. Then I ran out of time and forgot about the post for a little while, figuring it would largely be scrolled past and then lost in the annals of daily blog ephemera.

Maybe an hour later, I saw a tweet from Christopher R. Weingarten, now an editor at Spin and hugely influential online via his Twitter feed, @1000TimesYes"A piece of music writing so bad, you don't even have to read more than the URL," he wrote, before including the link.  

Shit hit the fan. Delgado was rightfully mocked by much of the country's top tier of music writers. Eric Harvey (@marathonpacks) created an entire Tumblr, titled Ohnotheywrittnt, to call out the article and, hopefully, similarly clueless ones in the future.

This was all simultaneously embarrassing and enraging. For everyone else who contributes freelance to New Times, Delgado was making us look bad -- and apparently casually thinking much less of those of us with just XX chromosomes. 

I know Ric Delgado, having first met him when I served as music editor of this newspaper and sister paper, Miami New Times. Back then, he was running an online music zine, RevMiami, which later folded. (As a disclaimer, I have had several pleasant chats with Delgado in real life, as recently as this past weekend at Sweat Records' Sweatstock event. We are [probably] still Facebook friends.) 

So unlike others who would call for his head, I know that, at least from my experience, he is friendly in real life. Still, I cannot stand by the fact that he wasted finger strength typing out this sexist, unfunny drivel, nor can I stand for the fact that it made it to light at a publication for which I and many other women write. 

Where to even begin? Well, first, there are some of the most basic planks holding up the flimsy foundation of the article, which has been removed from this site but has been almost entirely preserved in screen shots on the GirlGroup Tumblr. They are wrong or picked seemingly at random or with the laziest thoughts.

Jennifer Hudson, for instance, ranked on Delgado's list -- but as anyone who has turned on a TV in the past two years would know, Hudson is no longer in most universes considered overweight. Carnie Wilson, which another commenter rightfully described as a "low-hanging fruit," can, in 2012, hardly even be classed as an active musician. Jessica Simpson may currently be a little larger than usual because she's, well, you know, pregnant. And Sinead O'Connor? What? Why did she even come up? If Delgado couldn't bother with much more than cursory Google search to  (inaccurately) pick his would-be targets, why would anyone bother with the rest of the "story"?

Whether the woman are currently one size or another, of course, is entirely beside the point. Most disturbing is the way in which it was written, or rather the way in which Delgado thinks it was written. By all accounts, it seems Delgado thought this piece to be (1) appreciative of women larger than the usual pop-culture standard, and, worse, (2) funny

It was neither. Delgado's link-baiting listicle is guilty of a lot -- but the worst is the premise that women above, say, a size ten are desperate and that sleeping with Ric Delgado (or any other faceless blogger, as long as he is male and willing) would automatically be a prize

This is clear form the language in the second graf of the post, which has been removed from this site: "even big girls need some love, and we're down to give it to them." The use of "even," here, of course implies that "big girls" are some other category that one would usually not deign to include in the sexually attractive or the needing of physical affection. But no matter, since Ric Delgado is willing to take up that tough job, right?

The rest of the original post is full of the kind of language that continues a misogynistic bent. Jessica Simpson, for instance, may be getting heavier, Delgado says, but she stays "dumb and sexy as ever." "Dumb" as a compliment or positive quality? Well, perhaps if you're feeling insecure about your own possible intellectual shortcomings.

Adele is derided for her "kankles" [sic] while Delgado implies that a movie date with her would be too expensive for the cost of popcorn. There's also the bit where he promises he would greet the Gossip's Beth Ditto, postconcert, with a "vanilla ice cream in hand." 

All of this, of course, continues to underscore the erroneous and gross notion that all larger women are slovenly creatures who gorge constantly on unhealthy food and that they will settle for any man who continues to enable this. What Delgado doesn't get, though, is that what entertainers of any gender eat or don't eat, weigh or don't weigh, is none of Delgado's business. It simply, in the context of the original post, has nothing to do with the "music" "criticism" in which most of his blogging usually purports to engage.

This is to say nothing of the fried-chicken joke he made in reference to Aretha Franklin -- one which, he told me via Twitter, he had no problem making. That sexism would pass through his brain as acceptable, and even possibly funny to others, is sad but not surprising. That such bald-faced racism would be acceptable to someone is indeed surprising. 

Not only is that joke racist, but it's also incredibly clichéd. That is a hallmark of bad writing and worse comedy. "If comedians concerned themselves with people that got offended, there'd be no Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, or Louie CK," Delgado wrote to me on Twitter. (I have corrected the punctuation.) 

The thing is, Lenny Bruce, Louis CK, and the like used/use offensive language to provoke and subvert, to make people laugh, and then possibly feel a twinge of discomfort about their own laughter. These comedians were and are effective because they achieved this in a creative way. Delgado's completely failed here too, instead reaching for the lowest common denominator in language and tone. 

Undeterred, Delgado's responses to other Twitter commentators were mostly flippant, refusing to acknowledge that he had offended, hurt, or just plain failed to be funny."Honestly, I'm comfortable with it," he wrote to me when I questioned him about his mentions of fried chicken and Aretha Franklin in the same paragraph. In another response, he told a woman she "must be single" for calling him out. Perhaps this is the most troubling part of the debacle -- Delgado has so far rejected an opportunity for dialogue or enlightenment.

"The world doesn't want high-minded intellectualism. They want fart and dick jokes," he wrote to someone. (Again, I have corrected the punctuation here.)

The internet world, viewed through the cold lens of click-bait and trolls in large numbers, perhaps gravitates toward a certain content. But to become those trolls ourselves, we continue to lower expectations and standards and beget even more trolls. That's not a progression anyone needs to hasten.


A Selection From His Twitter Acknowledging the Article 


@RicDelgadoRocks
Good piece by @ariellec: Another View: Why Ric Delgado's "Pleasantly Plump" Listicle Yesterday Was Not Okay

@tess_rae
@RicDelgadoRocks @ariellec not really clear on how you can say this is a good piece while continuing to defend all you wrote.

@RicDelgadoRocks
@tess_rae @ariellec is a great writer who made clear and well written points.



Original article taken down with comments still in tact
Cached images courtesy of Oh No They Writ'nt (qt name)
Arielle's lengthy response to the debacle
His Twitter if you want to see a true comic in his native habitat

Great Movie Siblings: From Emily Blunt & Alison Brie To Jake Gyllenhaal & Tobey Maguire

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Movie siblings can make or break the believability of a feature film. Cast two actors who can convincingly play family members, and you're in the clear; cast two actors who look nothing alike, and you're in trouble.

Thankfully, "The Five-Year Engagement" falls in the former category. In the film, actresses Emily Blunt and Alison Brie play sisters, and not only do they look alike, but they sound alike too. (This is quite a feat since Blunt is British and Brie is not.)

"I had a great vocal coach here in LA for a few weeks, but when I got out there, Emily became my unofficial vocal coach," Brie said last year to The Insider. "It was more important that we sound alike than me studying a super proper British accent." Mission accomplished, Alison!

In honor of the success of "Five-Year Engagement," HuffPost Entertainment has compiled ten other great sibling pairings from the big screen.






Will Ferrell & John C. Reilly in 'Step Brothers'



Scarlett Johansson & Natalie Portman In 'The Other Boleyn Girl'



Mark Wahlberg & Christian Bale In 'The Fighter'



Emily Blunt & Amy Adams In 'Sunshine Cleaning'



Anne Hathaway & Rosemarie DeWitt In 'Rachel Getting Married



Josh Hutcherson & Mia Wasikowska In 'The Kids Are All Right'



Cameron Diaz & Toni Collette In 'In Her Shoes'



Emma Stone & Abigail Breslin In 'Zombieland'



Tobey Maguire & Jake Gyllenhaal In 'Brothers'



Arnold Schwarzenegger & Danny DeVito In 'Twins'

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Demi Lovato & Ashley Tisdale PUNK'd Promo

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next Thursday Nick Cannon punks Ashley Tisdale and Demi Lovato

source: MTV.com

first look at snooki + jwoww's new show

Demi Lovato gets mobbed on stage in Paraguay

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source/youtube link
Demi was performing on stage and invited some fans to sing with her. That's when things got out of control.
Starts at the 0:48 mark.

Game of Thrones' Gethin Anthony Discusses Renly's Rise, Relationships and Shaving Scene

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by Hanh Nguyen

In the War of Five Kings, Renly Baratheon appears to be the most powerful, at least on the popular front.

On HBO's Game of Thrones (Sundays, 9/8c),Gethin Anthony plays young Renly, who's become quite the charismatic young leader in the drama's second season. "He started off as a young man at court, very much a courtier, and had to go through a huge evolution into becoming a king, and not a king with an easy route to power," Anthony tells TVGuide.com. "He's had to take on a lot of responsibility. He's had to become more politically strategic with warfare and understanding armies."

Game of Thrones' Natalie Dormer: Margaery supports Renly and Loras' love

Two other self-styled kings -- Renly's older brother Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) and Robb Stark (Richard Madden) -- have taken notice of Renly's impressive number of followers and have tried to convince him to join forces to overthrow King Joffrey (Jack Gleeson).

Going into Sunday's new episode, "The Ghost of Harrenhal," Anthony discusses Renly's political strengths, his relationships and that infamous shaving scene from Season 1:

How would you assess Renly as a player in the game?
Gethin Anthony:
 The reason why I like playing him is I think he's a fantastic man who believes in Westeros being a cultured and enlightened place. His major advantage -- and why he gets on well in the world -- is that he gets on well with people. There's lots in the books [on which Game of Thrones is based] about him being able to talk to queens and serving ladies alike. He can talk to anyone in the court and anyone from the populace. He would be a very popular presidential candidate.

Unfortunately, that's not how it works in Westeros. There are other problems that he faces along the way. But Mace Tyrell is behind him and is the head of a very wealthy family and no doubt wants one of his children to be royal somehow. That's how Margaery Tyrell (Natalie Dormer) becomes involved. I have no doubt that Mace told him, "Yes, I think you should be king. And here's my army and my money." Renly's war strategy is sort of bang on. He's got a lot of money behind him, he's got a lot of strategic power, he's got 100,000 soldiers and 22 families behind him.


What are his feelings towards Stannis? Why not let him claim the Iron Throne? Why does Renly want it for himself?
Anthony:
 He thinks Stannis would do a bad job. He worries that Stannis' manner and way of governing is less likely to yield peaceful results. A direct quote from Stannis from the book A Clash of Kings is "Kings don't have friends. They have subjects and enemies." Having another king like that means it's going to be a long, tormenting time.

Standing objectively back from it a little, I also think Renly has been in court a long time. He's grown up in court. He's been educated to think of himself as a royal family member despite the fact that his brother [Robert] took the throne in the rebellion. So he hasn't seen war on the front line, but he's been on the Small Council and he's the Master of Laws, so he thinks he'd be great in governance actually. I think he has real hope for the kingdom that it can become a kingdom of peace under his rule.

Your character means a lot to the gay community. Although there were hints fromGeorge R.R. Martin's books that Renly and Loras (Finn Jones) had a relationship, it's made explicit in the series. What are your thoughts on this?
Anthony:
 What's amazing about the project as a whole is that it has to create a world from scratch. Everything has to be handmade, props, everything because it's all from George's imagination, which is this bottomless well of an imagination. And in that world, as a sort of paradigm of our own world, there are complex human relationships and complex sexual relationships as we see in most episodes. I think it was absolutely right that they would have a homosexual relationship of some kind. I think it's kind of that idea of why not? If you see the full gamut of human experience, that relationship is very much part of our human experience and it's fantastic it's being reflected on the show.

That said, it's not all bliss between Renly and Loras. As a strong knight, Loras seems a little miffed that Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) was given a place in the King's Guard. That was a new scene written specifically for the show.
Anthony:
 The obvious answer to that is always this: the show is not told solely from the point of view of the characters. You get to see behind the scenes, and Renly and Loras have an affectionate, loving relationship. But, like any relationship, it has obstacles and barriers to it running smoothly. I think that added scene fit in very nicely because it adds to the drama in the relationship.

From Game of Thrones to Spartacus: TV's unsexiest sex scenes

Why does Renly promote Brienne to an honor post in the King's guard? How does he see her?
Anthony:
 I think he thinks she's a fantastic warrior. He thinks she's incredibly loyal. And why not? Of all the people in power, Renly doesn't really see labels. He sees people. Without getting too maudlin and contemporary about where he sits politically, he sees this fantastic warrior. I think he's possibly naive about how much love she bears him. He sees it as utter loyalty and thinks she's fantastic. Her father's been saying how wonderful she's been for years, this wonderful warrior. And she is this amazing warrior. It's almost a glorious thing to behold. You would think, "Well yeah, you can be a talisman in my King's Guard."

He's entered into a political marriage with Margaery Tyrell. What's your take on this? We see that she's pretty open-minded and open to inviting her brother Loras into their marriage bed if that will help Renly get excited enough to provide an heir.
Anthony:
 What was really exciting for me was that they cast Natalie Dormer in that role, who's a fantastic actress. I knew that if they were doing that, they were adding a whole other element to the character. In the books you don't get as much of her. Bringing Margaery Tyrell to the fore politically and how dramatic she is is a fantastic element and it adds to the power play in the relationship between Loras, Margaery and himself. It makes it even more interesting. It brings the drama right into the bedroom at home. I'm really glad they did it.

I have to ask about Season 1's infamous shaving scene in which Loras is shaving off Renly's body hair but also convincing him to become king. It was so nervewracking to watch the shaving process! Were you nervous shooting it?
Anthony:
 You know what's funny about that is I have a thing about my nipples. I'm quite sensitive about them. So to have a naked blade near any sensitive part of the body is quite nervewracking! And even after I had filmed the scene, while I was watching it, I was equally nervous that something was going to go wrong. Afterward, I only had one armpit shaved because they didn't shave the other one. I did feel lopsided a little bit. It was a weird feeling.

But I have to say that instead of Finn they used a hand double, it was fantastic barber from Belfast, a young man who came in. I don't think he knew what hit him when he walked on set and they told him, "You're going to be shaving his chest." But he's a very talented barber and so obviously he was a professional and knew what he was doing. I think it was the longest take I had ever done, I had to do a straight take, so it was 15-20 minutes of sitting absolutely still and not flinching. Me and Finn were very excited about what that scene added to that relationship, that element of Loras being involved in the machinations of power.



TV Guide

Jezebel reports on Stalker Sarah, proves ONTD's superior detective skills

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There is a 16-year-old girl living in the L.A. area who is famous amongst famous people. She's met everyone — everyone — from Miley to Oprah to Skrillex, and is on a first-name basis with teen heartthrobs like Justin Bieber, the Jonas Brothers, Chord Overstreet, the guys from the Wanted, and the guys from One Direction. [is arguably the head in the 'What Makes You Beautiful' video] She's not an actress, she's not in the industry, nor is she the daughter of a celebrity. She's just a regular girl named Sarah, who has somehow managed to amass an enormous collection of photos — over 4,600 — in which she's posing cheek-to-cheek with Hollywood stars. Her improbable adroitness for daily celebrity sightings has earned her the nickname Stalker Sarah on the internet. But jealous haters[lol] aside, one thing is clear: If you haven't appeared on Sarah's Flickr stream, you're a nobody.



At this point, Sarah is a machine. She knows exactly where to go every single night in L.A. for the most primo celebrity encounters. There's an art to her portraits; she uniformly frames each one and stands to the right of the celebrity, and her expression is always the same: a calm smile. But it wasn't always like that. When Sarah first started her hobby (obsession?) four years ago, at a taping of The Wizards of Waverly Place, she stood much farther away from her subjects, her images were blurrier and, at probably only 12 years old, she hadn't yet cultivated her rocker chick look of heavy eyeliner, concert shirt, and black leather jacket.

Starting on the oldest page of her Flickr stream and working toward the most recent photos, it's evident that Sarah used to just be a fan girl that attended television show tapings and stood outside movie premieres hoping to get a glimpse of star or two. Over time, she began to operate like a paparazzo, waiting around at airport terminals or outside of nightclubs. But unlike those professional stalkers earning a living from their photos, Sarah has developed a chummy rapport with many stars, who've grown used to seeing her over the years. (She's known Ashley Tisdale since her old nose. She's basically photo-documented Justin Bieber's puberty. She's met Demi Lovato and Miley Cyrus so many times that they stop to talk to her if they run into her at convenience stores.) She's something of a celebrity advocate. Instead of annoying her targets, she sticks up for them. She served as an eyewitness to one of Lindsay Lohan's recent scandals, clearing Lindsay's name.

As she became a fixture of the L.A. nightlife scene, she went from one side of the red velvet rope to the other. In the past month alone, she attended such celebrity-heavy events as a Nylon party, Perez Hilton's birthday, and a Family Guy event. She's gone bowling with Nick Jonas [lol], pals around behind the scenes of Two and a Half Men with Angus Jones, and hangs with Jedward. Naturally the kids online are jealous, and she has amassed her own network of haters, fans, and a sizable Twitter following. [r we the haters?]

But despite her increasing ubiquity at Hollywood events, not much is known about Sarah. What's her last name? Why is she allowed to stay out so late every school night? What do her parents do? There are rumors that her father is a paparazzo, but Sarah denies this. In a caption under a 2008 photograph of herself and Ricky Schroeder, she says that her father worked on his pool. Still, she must have help recognizing her subjects. What 16-year-old girl knows who Tommy Chong, Nicholas Sparks, or James Caan is? She gave one rare interview—in the video to the left—on YouTube a year ago, but she didn't reveal much. She ignored our multiple requests for an interview, so for now we're just going to have to watch from the glow of our computer screens as she rubs elbows with greatness, not-so-greatness, and a few more levels below that.

Haters gon hate

Previous Stalker Sarah post for reference/evidence

Our detectives seem to have answered many of these questions/ have evidence to the contrary of some of this reportage.


1D and Sarah tyfyt

Tweets put focus on racism, hockey and Boston

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Hate travels fast in the age of Twitter. No sooner had Joel Ward's shot found the back of the net late Wednesday than racist rants began spewing on the Internet.

Web sites such as Chirpstory and BlackSportsOnline collected dozens of the vile tweets. Most used the n-word modified by the f-word. A few issued death threats. And some combined both: "That (n-word) deserves to hang." "Shocking to see," Ward told USA TODAY Sports, "but it didn't ruin my day."Web sites such as Chirpstory and BlackSportsOnline collected dozens of the vile tweets. Most used the n-word modified by the f-word. A few issued death threats. And some combined both: "That (n-word) deserves to hang."

"Shocking to see," Ward told USA TODAY Sports, "but it didn't ruin my day."


Ward, who was born in Toronto of parents from Barbados, heard about the tweets while on the Washington Capitals' flight back from Boston after his Game 7 overtime goal knocked out the defending champion Bruins. Teammate Jeff Halpern showed Ward some of the tweets and apologized that he had to see that.

"Halpern just took offense that people weren't talking about the goal, (but rather) getting into racist remarks," Ward said. "I think he was telling me he had my back."

So did Caps owner Ted Leonsis, who attacked the haters on his blog, Ted's Take: "What these people have said and done is unforgivable. I hope they are now publicly identified and pay a huge price for their beliefs."

The NHL issued a statement that called the comments "ignorant and unacceptable" and said the people who made them "have no place associating themselves with our game."

Some Twitter users attacked the racist tweets. By Thursday evening, 31 of the 40 tweets highlighted on Chirpstory.com had been deleted and 17 of those accounts deleted. One tweeted an apology, saying he was 16 and had made a stupid mistake.

"I think it is just kids," Ward said. "It has no effect on me whatsoever." Some of the tweeters indicated they were Bruins fans, though it is hard to know how many are from Boston, a city with a fraught history of racial tension.


"Social media gives a voice and prominence to a bunch of idiots," said author Richard Johnson, curator of The Sports Museum, which is adjacent to TD Garden, where Ward scored his game-winning goal. "This is probably going to dredge up a lot of bad stuff about Boston."

Four decades ago, Boston produced indelible images of racism — the stoning in white South Boston of school buses carrying students from black neighborhoods. Boston Celtics' Hall of Fame center Bill Russell once called the city a "flea-market of racism."

Dan Lebowitz, director of Northeastern University's Center for the Study of Sport in Society, said that as soon as he saw the goal, "I knew the backlash was coming." But he said he didn't think such reaction is unique to fans of hockey, a largely white sport (the NHL has 38 minority players, 18 of them black), or of Boston.

"If this had happened to a team in New York or Philly or any other city, or in another sport, we'd have seen a lot of the same reaction," he said. "The problem isn't limited to sport, or to the Internet. It's a comment on our society."

A complicated history

For much of the last century, said Thomas Whalen, a Boston University political historian and the author of several books on Boston sports, "Boston was as segregated as Birmingham, Ala. It's still very segregated, like a lot of cities."

Sport and race always has been a combustible pairing in Boston. In the 1970s, when Russell was coaching the NBA's Seattle Supersonics, he said that as an African-American he'd rather be a lamp post in Seattle than the mayor of Boston.

Perhaps reflecting the racial attitudes of owner Tom Yawkey, the Red Sox were the last major league team to sign a black player (Pumpsie Green, in 1959). Years earlier, the team held a tryout at Fenway Park for Jackie Robinson and other black players, a charade designed to placate a liberal member of the city council.

But the historical record is complicated and, in some respects, exonerates Beantown. In 1958, Bruins' winger Willie O'Ree became the first black player in the NHL. The Celtics were the first NBA team to sign a black man (Chuck Cooper in 1950), the first to start five black players and the first to name a black head coach — Russell.

Northeastern University athletics director Peter Roby said it is unfair to blame Boston for Internet racists who can be found in any city.

"There's been too much progress made here," he said. "That doesn't mean there are not still pockets where people are being discriminated against or made to feel less than welcome, but there is no way I'm going to let a couple of people who don't see the world the way they should spoil the way people look at the city of Boston.


"There is no excuse for this because it suggests we can only see people in regard to their ethnicity or their origin instead of giving them credit for being a professional, skilled and talented athlete. That's what I take offense with the most." Ward did his best not to take offense. "I'm definitely getting a lot of support," he said. "There have been a lot of Boston fans who have supported me, which is very cool to see."

An instant forum for expression

"How would you like to be Danny Ainge today?" asked Whalen, author of books on the Red Sox and Celtics. He was referring to the Celtics' president of basketball operations, who faces a summer of trying to sign free agents, most of whom will be African Americans and who may already harbor some reservations about living in Boston.

"This puts the word out there — Boston is still inhospitable for athletes of color," Whalen said.

Joseph Reagle, a Northeastern communications professor who studies Twitter and other online platforms, said such incidents are to be expected in forums such as Twitter. They start out small and intimate with relatively like-minded users. But that changes as they get more popular and attract more users, to the point where — after incidents like last night's — people will call for filters.

His take: the explosion Wednesday night was less a deliberate expression of racism by Bostonians, or hockey fans, than an accidental, unmediated expression of biases that might otherwise go unprofessed. He distinguished between what he called "purposeful racism" and some of Wednesday's tweets, which he said were probably inadvertent revelations of racism — people writing in a virtual stream of consciousness to what they think is a small community of readers. Twitter offers an easy, instant forum for expression, he said, "and (tweeters) forget that the whole world gets to look at it."

Still, as former Red Sox pitcher Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd said: "People that are talking like that, feel like that. That's the scary thing. A lot of things haven't changed. It's just bad, bad, bad."

The most diverse sport

African-American NHL player agent Eustace King represents several players of color. "I look at the NHL as being the most diverse of all of the big sports," King said. "We have Russians, all other Europeans, Canadians, Americans, and people have gotten along well."

He finds it disheartening that Washington players who should be celebrating an important win are dealing with this issue instead.

"This is not what they signed up for," King said. "I think the league has to pursue these individuals just to send a message that says we are here to protect our athletes. Maybe it wouldn't amount to anything from a legal standpoint because people can say what they want, but the league takes a stance that fans should stick to a certain etiquette or face repercussions."

A fan threw a banana on the ice in London, Ont., during an NHL exhibition game last September when Philadelphia Flyers winger Wayne Simmonds, who is black, was attempting a shot during a shootout. The 26-year-old fan got a $200 fine on Jan. 9 for provincial trespassing after police decided there wasn't enough evidence to file charges for a hate crime.


Simmonds heard about the Ward case Thursday. "Obviously, things get said. It's the Internet. They can say whatever they want and they don't have to show their face. It's disgusting. I've had things like that happen to me before."

Simmonds and Ward are from Scarborough in suburban Toronto. Ward is 31 and Simmonds 23, but they've become close friends since meeting four or five years ago, workout buddies back home over the last two summers.

"It's sad in this day and age that it continues to happen," Simmonds said. "People can be as gutless as they want and they don't have to show up. They just throw a comment out there on the Internet."

The one black guy in the room

Ward said he has always felt comfortable in an NHL dressing room and on the ice.

"There is no lying about it. … I'm definitely the one black guy in a room with 20 white guys," he said. "There are definitely some cultural differences, such as taste in music, but I've never heard anything derogatory."

Teammate Matt Hendricks put it this way: "He's the only black guy on the team, but do we look at him like that? Not all. We look at him like he's part of the family."

Leonsis, the Caps' owner, said in his blog: "There should be zero tolerance for this kind of hate mongering. Their messages should now stay glued into the algorithms to place a forever warning and a mark upon these people and their actions. They shouldn't be able to escape their keystrokes."

Peter Cooney is Ward's Boston-based agent. He watched Wednesday's game with his fiancée and they cheered for Ward all game. One Bruins' fan tapped them on the shoulder mid-game to ask if they were Ward's parents."

"We're white," Cooney said. "We laughed and explained that I'm his agent. And when Joel scored the winning goal that fan congratulated us and wished the Capitals luck. The Bruins do not have bad fans. There's a small percentage in any city."

Cooney said he talked to Ward on Thursday to ask if he needed him to come to Washington for support.

"And Joel said, 'What, you're going to be my bodyguard?' And he laughed. He said, 'Peter, I dismiss all that. My focus is to play hockey for the Washington Capitals.' "

A difficult town

Arizona Diamondbacks hitting coach Don Baylor played 16 seasons in the majors, including one with the Red Sox in 1986-1987.

"It was a difficult town," Baylor said. "I think everybody looks at it by team, more than anything else. If the team is doing well, they don't care who is out there performing at the time. But individually, out on the street, you know what it is. It's Boston. Going there my entire American League career, you could always sense that. You experienced the same thing in South Florida a lot of times. You could always feel your color in Boston and Florida. …


"You always had players, maybe not as much today as back then, say certain things that were happening. I know Oil Can was always saying about things that happened to him. He was a bomb ready to go off every day. Here's a kid going from Mississippi to Boston, and it was a tough experience."

Boyd said he didn't experience much racism in Boston himself. "I was very open about showing my blackness and how proud I was," he said. "Fans loved me and the city loved me." But he knows all about the city's past.

These comments about Ward make it "look like Boston itself hasn't changed — like South Boston has risen up again. That ain't the city, fool. That's not the city. You ain't gonna tell me that.


"Boston is a very diverse place, a melting pot. "

Darnell McDonald, an African-American outfielder in his third year with the Red Sox, said: "I've had the n-word written on my car, in Boston. It's individuals, man. Racism is everywhere; I'm not just going to say Boston. It's just unfortunate that people are that ignorant."

Tommy Harper, 71, is a former Red Sox outfielder and coach. "We're never going to eradicate that kind of thing, so why worry about it?" he said of the offending posts. "Like any African-American, if I were to respond to every idiot in the world, you could never have a day."




Source. I don't claim to know anything about hockey, not my kind of sport, but it is still a good read. It is sad though. 

Colbert has more money that presidential candidate Ron Paul

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Ouch.

Ron Paul's campaign is so downtrodden that the super PAC supporting his candidacy has less cash than former fake presidential candidate Stephen Colbert.

The latest Federal Election Commission filings revealed that Colbert’s super PAC Americans for A Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow had $794,462. Endorse Liberty, the pro-Ron Paul group, had only $53,984.

To be fair, since the Comedy Central comedian isn't actually running for president, he hasn't spent nearly as much as Paul campaigning. Still, the Texas congressman only raised $13,104 in March -- a significant drop from earlier this year, when billionaire Peter Thiel donated $1.7 million. Colbert, on the other hand, raised $43,896 last month.

As Mitt Romney comes closer GOP 2012 nomination with major endorsements and primary wins, Ron Paul struggles to remind voters he's still running.

Paul recently told CBS's Face The Nation that "the votes haven't been counted ... there's no way I'm gonna give up on the effort to get the Republicans back to their roots."

source

Thanks to the helpful mod who helped me submit

Robert Sheehan on the cover of Hunger

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The magazine hits newsstands on 10 May 2012.

source


Work that eyeliner, girlfriend.

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