Category: Business

Fight Club …on 60 Minutes

Fight Club …on 60 Minutes; Exclusive Video Only on Yahoo! News
It’s been likened to a street corner brawl: two men fighting, very few rules, and the last one standing is the winner. It may be brutal but “Mixed Martial Arts” is also one of the fastest growing sports in America. Scott Pelley talks with the man behind the “Ultimate Fighting Championship” and goes toe-to-toe with some of the top fighters in the sport today.

Now its pay-per-view buys are approaching one million and Spike TV’s Ultimate Fighting Championship, the nation’s most popular pro league, outdraws baseball and basketball among the 18 to 34 crowd, which is the most highly desireable advertiser’s demographic.  In fact, many have speculated that cage fighting, with its hyper-quick action and colorful characters, will replace boxing as the nation’s choice bloodsport.

The UFC was to be based upon a version of Brazilian vale tudo fighting. Often violent and brutal with minimal rules, the UFC’s brand of vale tudo, initially known as no holds barred fighting, allowed fighters of various disciplines to prove which martial arts style prevailed above others in realistic, unregulated situations. Early UFC fights, while accomplishing the goal of determining which style was best, were less sport than spectacle, which led to accusations of brutality and “human cockfighting” by opponents. Here is some video from that period, which was eventually banned on Pay-for-View, until it was re-vamped with 31 rules.

Mashups.com : The Link and Mashups of the Day

Mashups.com : The Link and Mashups of the Day – A new Mashup site with MP3s every day!

With the Christmas gift-giving release of a mashup of Beatles Love Songs mixed by George Martin, what started out as Club DJs cross-mixing different songs and then spreading them as bootleg mp3s over the internet, has climbed out of the Underground into legitimacy. Even JC Penney has a X-mas mashup ad. The hottest trend now is to mary these audio mashups with corresponding videos, such as this Beatles Medley or the Monkees “I’m a believer” & the Beatles “Paperback Writer” mashup.

Aroesmith’s “Walk this Way” used by Run DMC was a crossover in the evolution of the Mashup with the music sampling of Urban Rap overlaying Hard Rock. The highly popular video was the first rap video ever played in heavy rotation on MTV. In addition to being one of the songs that helped break Aerosmith into the mainstream in the 1970s, it also helped resurrect their career and revolutionized rock and roll and rap music when it was re-made in 1986 with rappers Run-D.M.C. on their album Raising Hell. It became an international hit and won both groups a Soul Train Music Award for Best Rap – Single in 1987. Click the image to view it. click on the other highlighted videos to play them. The Green Day video embedded below, just needs you to click on the play icon.

The Mashup ran into heavy copyright resistance. American Edit is an album of mashups paying tribute to the Green Day Album ‘American Idiot’. Although Green Day liked the album their record label banned it in late 2005. Watch ‘Boulevard of Broken Songs’ featuring Broken Dreams by Green Day, Wonderwall by Oasis, Writing to Reach You by Travis, and Sing for the Moment by Eminem. This is the original by Party Ben / Dean Gray (Pioneers of the Mashup Movement) but with video edited by Pilko, only this version is entitled ‘Wonderwall of Broken Dreams’. The audio mashup still became a huge music download favorite.

Office and computer pranks

Office and computer pranks | TechRepublic Photo Gallery
What better way to welcome back coworkers from an extended vacation than an amusing practical joke? Whether you enjoy the simple elegance of filling someone’s cubical with balloons, appreciate the effort required to cover an office with tin foil, or the comedic brilliance of growing grass on a keyboard, this gallery photo gallery will tickle your funny bone and keep you looking over your shoulder? You’ll be glad these office pranksters didn’t target you. Click on the image to enlarge and the Photo Gallery link for the slide show.

Looking For Love? Consumer Reports Tests 5 Online Dating Sites

Looking For Love? <i>Consumer Reports</i> Tests 5 Online Dating Sites – News by InformationWeek
Here’s what Consumer Reports discovered about 5 of the sites:

True: “If Internet dating makes you hesitate, try the True site because they screen their members and they have a customer-friendly privacy policy,” said Ware, who noted that True runs a background check on members against a criminal database. True reports that it will notify authorities if they find a member who has a criminal background.

eHarmony: Ware said eHarmony is good for people who want a “hand-picked” match. The site only lets you see profiles and exchange emails with people they’ve selected to be a good match for you. If you don’t want to scan through hundreds of profiles on your own, this is a good site. They’ll do that part of it for you. Continue reading “Looking For Love? Consumer Reports Tests 5 Online Dating Sites”

Stones lips slurp up £250,000

Stones lips slurp up £250,000 | | Guardian Unlimited Arts
The original artwork for the Rolling Stones’ iconic tongue and lips logo sold yesterday for £250,000 at auction in London.

The work was one of 160 lots to go under the hammer at the It’s More Than Rock ‘n’ Roll auction yesterday.

A spokeswoman for promoter Magnum Communications said the band’s guitarist Ronnie Wood and former bass player Bill Wyman both watched the sale at the Sound venue in London’s Leicester Square.

A Fender Stratocaster guitar owned by Jimi Hendrix also went for £60,000 and a black bustier worn by Madonna on her Who’s That Girl tour sold for £5,000

Russia agrees to shut down Allofmp3.com

Russia agrees to shut down Allofmp3.com | CNET News.com
Russia has agreed to shut down Allofmp3.com and other music sites based in that country that the U.S. government says are offering downloads illegally. We warned about this in an earler post

The nation has struck the agreement with the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative as it seeks entry to the World Trade Organization. The U.S. has suggested that it would hold up Russia’s acceptance in the WTO unless leaders there took action against digital piracy

Russia tips the balance

Asia Times Online :: Central Asian News – Russia tips the balance

The struggle for dominance of the world’s energy centers on control of the production of oil and gas fields, and therefore where and to whom that production will be offered. Russia, with help from China and India, is beginning to win this battle. Next, with new oil exchanges that don’t deal in US dollars, begins the assault on the greenback.
the fact that the West’s oil majors have lost control of all but 9% or 10% of reserves means that state-controlled oil companies can reroute any amount of product they wish from the New York-London exchanges to any of the new exchanges. This will provide a more than sufficient supply to guarantee the success of the new exchanges, and the US can do nothing to stop it. Continue reading “Russia tips the balance”

The Party of Sam’s Club

The Party of Sam’s Club
This is the Republican party of today–an increasingly working-class party, dependent for its power on supermajorities of the white working class vote, and a party whose constituents are surprisingly comfortable with bad-but-popular liberal ideas like raising the minimum wage, expanding clumsy environmental regulations, or hiking taxes on the wealthy to fund a health care entitlement. To borrow a phrase from Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Republicans are now “the party of Sam’s Club, not just the country club.”

Therein lies a great political danger for Republicans, because on domestic policy, the party isn’t just out of touch with the country as a whole, it’s out of touch with its own base. And its majority is hardly unassailable: Despite facing a lackluster Democratic presidential candidate who embodied virtually all the qualities Americans loathe–elitism, aloofness, Europhilia, vacillating weakness–George W. Bush, war president and skilled campaigner, was very nearly defeated in his bid for reelection. GOP operatives boast that their electoral efforts were targeted down to the minutest detail, and that their marketing prowess delivered victory for the incumbent. The trouble is that even such extraordinary efforts delivered only a narrow victory