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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Banned players settle with gay softball group (AP)
SEATTLE ? A gay softball organization has agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to three players who were disqualified from its 2008 Gay Softball World Series because of their perceived heterosexuality.
And as part of the settlement announced Monday, their team will be awarded the second-place trophy it was denied at the time.
The men ? Stephen Apilado, Laron Charles and John Russ ? filed the federal lawsuit against the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance last year, claiming they had been discriminated against because they were bisexual, not gay.
They had played for years on a San Francisco-based team called D2. Rumors had persisted that the team was stacked with straight ringers, and when they made it all the way to the finals of the 2008 tournament in the Seattle area, others filed a protest, accusing D2 of exceeding the limit of two heterosexual players per team.
Tournament officials convened a protest committee and brought in five D2 members for questioning. In a conference room filled with about 25 people, many of them strangers, the players were asked questions about their sexuality and private lives. The protest committee then voted on whether the men were gay.
Two were determined to be gay, but the committee found Apilado, Charles and Russ to be straight. The organization said the men were evasive or refused to answer questions about their sexuality. Minutes of the hearing say that Charles claimed to be gay but acknowledged being married to a woman, and Apilado initially said he was both gay and straight but then acknowledged being more attracted to women.
The men said they weren't given the option of stating outright that they were bisexual, even though the organization considered bisexual players to be gay for roster purposes. They and their team were disqualified. One official involved in the decision commented, "This is not a bisexual world series. This is a gay world series."
Last summer, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour ruled that the organization had a constitutional right to limit the number of straight players, much the way the Boy Scouts have a right to exclude gays. But he said the case could proceed to trial because questions remained about the way the softball association applied its rule, including whether the questions asked at the hearing were unnecessarily intrusive. The trial was set for next month.
Since the lawsuit was filed, NAGAAA has added language to its rules clarifying that bisexual and transgender players are fully welcomed participants in its events. As part of the settlement, the organization said disqualifying D2 was not consistent with its goal of welcoming bisexual players.
"NAGAAA regrets the impacts the 2008 protest hearing had on plaintiffs and their team," the settlement reads.
The National Center for Lesbian Rights, which represented the men, welcomed the changes but said they should go even further. The group wants NAGAAA to delete its roster limits on straight players altogether, on the grounds that it encompasses gay players who are in the closet or who choose not to put a label on their sexuality.
Charles said he's looking forward to playing more softball.
"It means a lot to me that NAGAAA is going to recognize our second place finish in 2008," Charles said in a statement. "I look forward to continuing to play ball with my friends, teammates and community in NAGAAA's tournaments."
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Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Nintendo brags about record Wii, 3DS Black Friday sales (Digital Trends)
Nintendo can thank Mario and Link for two good reasons to brag about Black Friday. The publisher has revealed that both Super Mario 3D Land and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword have set sales records, each selling more than 500,000 copies since their respective launches on Nov. 11 and 20. Mario also helped ignite sales of Nintendo?s 3DS handheld, which skyrocketed 325 percent from sales during the week of Nov. 6, reports USA Today.
?What this has been able to do is drive our Nintendo 3DS business in only eight months to surpass the full first year volume of the original DS and we still have the bulk of the holiday to go,? said Reginald Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America President, ?and we still have the launch of?Mario Kart 7?(out Dec. 4) to continue driving our full-year sales on Nintendo 3DS.?
Nintendo debuted several new 3DS bundles in time for Black Friday as well, which undoubtedly helped spur sales. A Pink Nintendogs 3DS bundle, a black Ocarina of Time 3DS bundle, and a red Super Mario 3D Land bundle were all on store shelves. Strangely, even without a fancy new bundle, the Wii delivered solid sales as well, with more than 500,000 units sold during the Black Friday week?one of its strongest years yet, if not the best.?
Despite it?s relatively poor performance throughout the year, Nintendo is, like last holiday, making up lost ground during November and December. It?s also worth noting that, while 500,000 is certainly not anywhere near as many units as a game like Modern Warfare 3 will sell, Mario and Zelda games tend to have a long shelf life, picking up sales as they go along instead of shedding them like a typical blockbuster release. It?s kind of like how Avatar had a moderate opening, but kept building steam for months. It will be interesting to see how well the two games sell over time.
This article was originally posted on Digital Trends
More from Digital Trends
Nintendo: mobile games are bad for the industry, except Angry Birds
Kirby online trailer, Tower of Pandora, and Rhythm Paradise unveiled for Wii
Nintendo to exhibit at CES, DSi Black Friday bundles
Super Mario 3D Land Review
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Euro in danger, Europe races for debt solution (AP)
PARIS ? European leaders rushed Monday to stop a rampaging debt crisis that threatened to shatter their 12-year-old experiment in a common currency and devastate the world economy as a result.
One proposal gaining prominence would have countries cede some control over their budgets to a central European authority. In a measure of how rapidly the peril has grown, that idea would have been unthinkable even three months ago.
World stock markets, glimpsing hope that Europe might finally be shocked into stronger action, staged a big rally. The Dow Jones industrial average in New York rose almost 300 points. In France, stocks rose 5 percent, the most in a month.
More relevant to the crisis, borrowing costs for European nations stabilized. They had risen alarmingly in recent weeks ? in Greece, then in Italy and Spain, then across the continent, including in Germany, the strongest economy in Europe.
The yields on benchmark bonds issued by Italy and Germany rose, but only by hundredths of a percentage point. The yield fell 0.1 percentage point on bonds of France, 0.14 points for those of Spain and 0.22 points for Belgium.
Allowing a central European authority to have some control over the budgets of sovereign nations would create a fiscal union in Europe in addition to the monetary union of the 17 countries that share the euro currency.
Some analysts have said that would be a leap toward creating a United States of Europe. More delicately, it would force the nations of Europe to swallow their national pride, cede some sovereignty and agree to strengthen ties with their neighbors rather than fleeing the euro union during the crisis.
"The common currency has the problem that the monetary policy is joint, but the fiscal policy is not," Germany's finance minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, said in a meeting with foreign reporters in Berlin.
The monetary union has existed since the euro was created in 1999, but the European Union, which includes the 17 euro nations and 10 others that use their own currencies, has no central authority over taxing and spending.
Countries like Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy overspent wildly for years and racked up annual budget deficits that have left them with monstrous debt. Italy holds euro1.9 trillion in debt, or 120 percent of the size of its economy.
A fiscal union could prevent excessive spending in the future. More important, it would be a step toward addressing today's debt crisis: It could provide cover for the European Central Bank to stage a massive intervention in the European bond market to drive down borrowing costs and keep the debt crisis under control.
So far, the ECB has resisted, in part because of concerns that bailing out free-spending countries would only encourage them to do it again, a concept known as moral hazard. Enforced budget discipline would ease those concerns.
A fiscal union would also pose a practical problem ? how to make such a body democratically accountable.
Another option is for the 17 nations in the euro group to sell bonds together, known as eurobonds, to help the countries in the deepest trouble because of debt. Germany has resisted such a plan, because it would raise borrowing costs for it and other nations that have good credit ratings.
While Europe buzzed over the possible solutions, finance ministers of the euro nations prepared for a summit beginning Tuesday evening in Brussels, to be joined the following day by ministers from the rest of the European Union.
Italy readied an auction of bonds designed to raise euro8 billion, or about $10.6 billion, and steeled itself for the high interest rates it will have to pay.
In Washington, President Barack Obama huddled with European Union officials, but the White House insisted Europe alone was responsible for fixing its debt problems.
Obama said failing to resolve the debt crisis could damage the U.S. economy, which has grown slowly since the end of the recession in June 2009 and still has 9 percent unemployment.
"If Europe is contracting, or if Europe is having difficulties, then it's much more difficult for us to create good here jobs at home," Obama said at an annual meeting between U.S. and EU officials.
Despite signs of possible progress on the debt crisis Monday, the euro has appeared to be in increasing danger the past few weeks. Experts said the currency could fall apart within days without drastic action, with consequences rivaling those of the 2008 financial crisis.
"Everyone knows that if the eurozone crashes the consequences would be very dramatic and in the race after that there would no winners, just losers," said Finland's finance minister, Jutta Urpilainen.
For countries that decided to leave the euro group and return to their own sovereign currency, the conversion would be wrenching.
If Germany broke away, for example, its national currency could rise in value quickly because the German economy is stronger than the European economy as a whole. But a stronger German mark would damage the German economy because Germany depends heavily on exports, and it would cost more for everyone else to buy German goods.
As for weaker countries that decided to leave, depositors would probably yank money out of their banks, fearing a plummeting currency. Savers in Greece would not want their euros replaced with, say, feeble drachmas.
If countries tried to repay their old euro debts with their own currencies, they'd be considered in default and would struggle to sell bonds in global financial markets. Corporations would face the same squeeze.
Overall, economists at UBS estimate, a weak country that left the eurozone would see its economy shrink by 50 percent.
Currency chaos and defaults by governments and companies would weaken European banks and also cause them to stop lending to each other. Because banks are connected globally, a credit freeze in Europe would spread. As it did in 2008, a credit freeze would cause stock markets to sell off worldwide, and another deep recession would probably follow.
Wolfgang Munchau, a columnist for the influential Financial Times newspaper, wrote Monday that the common currency "has 10 days at most" to avoid collapse. He called for decisions on a fiscal union and the creation of a powerful common treasury.
Unlike the United States, which has centralized institutions in Washington for raising taxes and spending money, the euro nations have 17 independent treasuries with little oversight from Brussels, the headquarters of the EU.
That would change under the fiscal union proposal being aired ahead of another summit of EU leaders that begins Dec. 9. Ten nations in the EU do not use the euro currency, most notably Britain.
While not explicitly backing a fiscal union, Germany and France have promised to propose measures that will make the 17 euro countries operate under strict and enforceable rules, so that no single country can wreak continent-wide damage.
Already, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an international group devoted to economic progress, warned that the global economy would be rocky in coming months.
In its six-month report Monday, it said the continued failure by EU leaders to stem the debt crisis "could massively escalate economic disruption" and end in "highly devastating outcomes."
The latest turmoil came last week, after Germany tried to auction $8 billion worth of its national bonds and could persuade investors to buy only $5.2 billion. It was a sign that even mighty Germany was not immune from the debt crisis.
Investors around the world will watch the Italian bond auction Tuesday. If it receives a similarly poor reception, more European countries will be in danger of being locked out of the international bond market.
Exactly how a fiscal union would take shape in Europe is an open question.
Schaeuble, the German financial minister, said the proposal would require passage only by the 17 countries that use the euro currency. The other 10 countries in the EU, such as Britain, Poland and Sweden, could adopt it if they wanted to.
But analysts said such a move would take a long time to come to fruition.
"We do seem to be moving slowly towards more of a fiscal union but at a pace that may result in all the components being put in place after a complete meltdown of the financial system," said Gary Jenkins, an economist with Evolution Securities.
Many think the ECB is the only institution capable of calming frayed market nerves. But Merkel, the German chancellor, has continually dismissed the prospect of a bigger role for the ECB.
____
Pylas reported from London and Wiseman from Washington. Melissa Eddy, Juergen Baetz, Kirsten Grieshaber and David Rising in Berlin, and Matti Huuhtanen in Helsinki contributed to this story.
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Monday, November 28, 2011
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Yet Again, Government is the Internet and Communications ...
Seton Motley, President, Less Government: We just recently tried to congressionally undo the Barack Obama Administration?s egregious and illegal Internet-Network Neutrality power grab to keep the government out of what has become ? in the Leviathan?s absence ? a free speech, free market Xanadu.
And now we have yet another example of government being the wireless authoritarian problem. Behold Pakistan.
Despite all of this government wireless authoritarianism all around the world, our Media Marxist Left is suing to?increase our government?s control over cell phones and the wireless Web because they deem it a failing that our government now only has said totalitarian sway over the wired Web.
Tags: Big Government, Federal Government, control of the Internet, communication authoritarian, problems, PJMedia, Seton Motley, Less Government To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
(Hope for continuing Internet freedom now lies in the hands of the D.C. Circuit Court.)
During our year-plus long push to try to stave off the Obama administration?s huge overreach, we pointed out that if one looks around the planet, one sees time and time and time again ? in China, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia,? ? it is the government that is the threat to Internet and communications freedom, and not the eeeee-vil corporations that the Media Marxist Left shake as their Shibboleth to allegedly justify our government taking over the Web.
Of course, governments lord over not just the Internet, but all forms of communications (and, of course, everywhere and everything else).
Prior to the fall, Egypt President Hosni Mubarak?s regime commandeered control of some of their nation?s cellular phone networks ? so as to force feed the people propaganda.
?Youth of Egypt, beware rumors and listen to the sound of reason ? Egypt is above all so preserve it,? read one text, according to a photograph and translation posted on this Flickr account. Another, received Sunday by an Associated Press reporter in the country, called on ?honest and loyal men to confront the traitors and criminals and protect our people and honor.?
And now we have yet another example of government being the wireless authoritarian problem. Behold Pakistan.
The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority told mobile carriers to begin blocking text messages Nov. 21 containing words from a list of more than 1,600 ?obscene? terms?.
The list met widespread Internet criticism, in part for including believed benign words such as ?Jesus Christ,? ?athlete?s foot,? ?poop,? ?fairy? and ?harder.? An unconfirmed version of the list has been circulating online. Some 1,100 of the words are in English, while less than 600 are in Urdu, Pakistan?s national language?.
Pakistan is no stranger to digital bans from the government. In May 2010, the country blocked Facebook
for two weeks after a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed sparked controversy. YouTube was blocked temporarily in 2008 following news that images from a competition to draw the Prophet Mohammed had leaked onto the site.
Despite all of this government wireless authoritarianism all around the world, our Media Marxist Left is suing to?increase our government?s control over cell phones and the wireless Web because they deem it a failing that our government now only has said totalitarian sway over the wired Web.
All of this despite the fact that when cornered, these Media Marxists begrudgingly admit they can?t cite a single example of a single private corporation ? their psychosomatic bete noir ? currently doing anything even remotely similar to what governments all around the world are doing all the time.
As always, Leftists never allow facts to get in the way of a good beating.
These Media Marxists at Free Press aren?t ?public interest groups? ? they are government interest groups. They are interested only in dramatically increasing the Leviathan?s size, scope and sphere of influence on all things Internet and communications (and anywhere else they can get).
The First Amendment was written to stop the government ? and only the government ? from censoring us.
Congress shall make no law?abridging the freedom of speech?.
The word ?corporation? (or ?company,? or any variation on that theme) does not appear anywhere within said Amendment.And as we?ve seen over and over ? the world over ? it is government that is far and away the largest problem, and the entity against which we need the Amendment?s protections.
It is thus a perverse, fundamentally warped and disingenuous effort by the Media Marxists ? and anyone else ? to cite protection of the First Amendment as a pseudo-justification for jamming the government into what has always been a government-free zone.
The Internet in all its forms ? wired, wireless and on your cell phone ? was here in America just such a government-free zone until the Media Marxists led the illegal government charge to impose Net Neutrality. Again, in the erroneous name of ?protecting? the First Amendment.
As always, we need protection from the ?Protectors? ? Leftists and Big Government ? far more than we do from anyone or anything else.
--------------
Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he contributes to numerous sites and blogs.
Tags: Big Government, Federal Government, control of the Internet, communication authoritarian, problems, PJMedia, Seton Motley, Less Government To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Source: http://arkansasgopwing.blogspot.com/2011/11/yet-again-government-is-internet-and.html
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