Well, just a few days after Hillary Clinton was in Toronto for a book signing tour, the Republican National Committee has deployed a giant squirrel to follow Hillary Clinton around the country on the book tour for hew new memoir, Hard Choices, mocking her potential 2016 presidential run with the message that, quote, “another Clinton in the White House would be nuts.“
(One thing for sure, those people down there in the good ol’ U.S. of A. sure know how to have a good time!)
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Well, here’s one for the books!
You’re looking at the first-ever electric Harley-Davidson motorcycle, coming to a showroom near you sometime in 2016.
First, we should emphasize that “Project LiveWire,” as you see it here, is not a production motorcycle. It’s a rolling test bed not for technology, but to gauge customer reaction and slowly introduce people to the idea of an electric Harley.
Having said that, production of a bike like this is inevitable. Electric motivation has so many performance advantages over Internal Combustion engines, that even Harley can’t ignore the technology for long. Motorcycle.com — an authoritative source for motorcycle industry insight and reviews — says we should expect a production LiveWire in 2016.
http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/what-harley-davidsons-first-electric-motorcycle-means-1592983608/+jcondliffe?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29
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Folks, this is serious enough that I am going to give you the entire article:
The blowup over the Washington Redskins NFL logo and mascot could boost a campaign in Canada to spike the CFL’s Edmonton Eskimos brand, which some have suggested could also be considered offensive.The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office decided in a landmark ruling on Wednesday to cancel six Redskins registered trademarks, reasoning that the name was “disparaging to Native Americans.”
It was a development that Edmonton-based outreach worker and native studies researcher Daniel Johnson called a “victory.”
“I hope teams with racist names and logos are starting to be a little afraid,” the former University of Alberta native studies instructor told CBC News.“I think the conversation has been ongoing in both the U.S. and Canada, and that the Washington controversy will surely continue to inspire social media campaigns and, hopefully, grassroots activists to pressure these team owners to change their names.”
The U.S. patent ruling over use of “the R-word” quickly bred speculation about which other major sports franchises — the Cleveland Indians, Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks — might be targeted next.
At least one Canadian sports team, the Ottawa-area Nepean Eagles, has already taken a stand on this issue. In January, the youth football club adopted its Eagles identity and dropped its Nepean Redskins name after 35 years and a human rights complaint.
Johnson expects the change-the-name movement to turn to turn its attention to the Eskimos.
But there’s no debate as far as the CFL club is concerned, said Allan Watt, vice-president of communications and marketing for Eskimos.
“We have no backlash from our fans or politicians or any other sort,” Watt said. “The only people we ever hear from with regard to the name ‘Edmonton Eskimos Football Club’ is with people like you — reporters.”Johnson begged to differ.
“Changing the name of the Eskimos … is simply the right thing to do,” he said, adding that he recalled “quite a number of people on social media” demanding an Edmonton CFL team name change “over the past couple of years.”
Reached at his home in the Alberta capital, former Eskimos player Dave Ward, who now goes by the single-word Inuktitut name Kiviaq, said he wouldn’t want to see the club name changed, nor does he see any reason people should take offence from it.Kiviaq played just three weeks with the Eskimos in 1955, when he debuted as the club’s first Inuk athlete, before injuring his neck at a Calgary exhibition game. Even so, he remembers those days fondly, and said he takes great pride in being an “Eskimo.”
He is now in his late 70s.
“I don’t know what the problem is with having us called the Edmonton Eskimos. It wasn’t meant to be derogatory at all. We’re proud of it and we should be proud of it,” he said.
Johnson acknowledged many Inuit people will support the name, but that the bottom line is “people should not be used as a caricature in professional sports.”
The conversation online appears to have already shifted that way.
The youth group Canadian Roots Exchange, which focuses on educating the public about indigenous communities, linked to the Redskins article and commented in a tweet: “Would the Canadian patent office do the same with the Edmonton Eskimos?”Another Twitter user in Halifax, Frank Streicher, wondered why the CFL team had not yet been subjected to “the Washington Redskins treatment.”
CBC Television host George Stroumboulopoulous also mused about the future of the Eskimos name in light of the Redskins decision.
“With the pressure mounting on the Washington football club,” he asked, “will Canadians apply equal pressure to the Edmonton football club?”
Some argued that while they saw the term “redskin” as a slur, they had no problem with the word “Eskimo.”
That term has fallen into disfavour in some communities, but it continues to find common usage in others. For example, the name “Eskimo” is often used in Alaska to refer to Inuit people.
Lawrence Kaplan, a linguistics professor with the Alaska Native Language Center, writes in a blog post on the University of Alaska Fairbanks website that linguists believe that the word “is derived from an Ojibwa word meaning ‘to net snowshoes.’ However, the people of Canada and Greenland prefer other names. ‘Inuit,’ meaning ‘people,’ is used in most of Canada.”
Watt, with the Edmonton Eskimos organization, said the CFL franchise remains sensitive to people who might take offence to any portrayal of indigenous people.
Compared to teams such as the Cleveland Indians, which has been accused of promoting stereotypes or racist iconography by using a drawing of a grinning chieftain named Wahoo, the Edmonton organization’s logo is benign — just two letter E’s in green and gold. The club’s mascots, Nanook and Punter, are a polar bear and an angry football.Still, Johnson argues, the word “Eskimo” shares at least one thing with the Redskins.
“That is that it’s outdated, inaccurate and mostly unaccepted in current discourse, and entirely inappropriate for a sports team,” he said.The Washington Redskins organization said it plans to appeal the trademark office’s ruling.
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/washington-redskins-fight-could-put-pressure-edmonton-eskimos-090000001–finance.html
By the way folks, I have decided that calling my ancestors Dutch is OFFENSIVE! (Will somebody please tell me where I can lodge a complaint!)
Actually, in the light of day, and if ya want to get right down to it, I would say that these people we employ in the “Naked News Department” are the one’s who are offensive!
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Folks, I really like Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” but the words always left something to be desired………………., then I heard this version, with new lyrics, and suddenly it all made perfect sense. (Now as you probably know, I’m not religious, but this version is enough to bring you to tears!)
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And now a few words of the more excitable and single minded amongst us:
Islamist politicians swept elections across the region in the aftermath of the Arab Spring, stepping close to power in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Morocco and undermining the thesis of Qaeda-style militants that violence offered the only hope for change.
Today, those politicians are in frantic retreat from Riyadh to Rabat, stymied by their political opponents, stalked by generals and plotted against by oil-rich monarchs. Instead, it is the jihadists who are on the march, roving unchecked across broad sections of North Africa and the Middle East. Now they have seized control of territory straddling the borders of Iraq and Syria where they hope to establish an Islamic caliphate.
“Rights cannot be restored except by force,” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, the surging Qaeda breakaway group, declared last year after the Egyptian military removed President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood from office.
Islamists must choose “the ammunition boxes over the ballot boxes” and negotiate “in the trenches rather than in hotels,” the group proclaimed, calling the more election-minded Muslim Brotherhood “a secular party in Islamic clothes” and “more evil and cunning than the secularists.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/19/world/middleeast/as-moderate-islamists-retreat-extremists-surge-unchecked.html?_r=0
This is the “Extremists” cage in the Egyptian Zoo! (It’s right next to the monkey cage!)
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During the World Cup, some employers probably can’t help but wonder if the soccer fans on their payroll are actually doing any work. According to one estimate, the last World Cup cost US$7.36 billion in lost productivity — and those games, held in South Africa, did not overlap with the North American business day as much as the matches currently underway in Brazil.
The answer for Adbloc Media, a Toronto-area advertising company, was simple. It has relocated to a bar for the duration of the Cup.
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Extra, Extra, Facebook went down for 30 minutes yesterday and everyone panicked, and fled to twitter!
Wow, if THIS site goes down for 30 minutes, no one even notices!
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Procrastination, after years of debate and …………….., procrastination, has just been classified as an inherited characteristic!
That means that if your parents were procrastinators, you will be too! (But of course, if they procrastinated too much, chances are that you wouldn’t even be here!)
Those same researchers came to the conclusion that having kids was hereditary………………………, which is about the same as saying that if your parents didn’t have kids, chances are that you won’t either!
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