| Blackie says Otago rugby can survive
Otago rugby won't fall in a heap despite the loss of its best and most experienced core of players, says departing flanker Josh Blackie. Nine years of physical batterings in the New Zealand first class game will end for Blackie in June when he begins a two-year contract with Japanese club Kobe Steel. The Otago and Highlanders captain, 27, said he began thinking about a shift late last year. "Going to Europe wasn't an option, their workload is probably the same if not more than what it is in New Zealand," Blackie told NZPA. "Japan will give my body a chance to regenerate and hopefully by the time I'm 40 I'll still be able to run down the road." World class tighthead prop Carl Hayman will leave Otago and the Highlanders for England later this year, when All Blacks hooker Anton Oliver also ends his long association with both teams.
MySpace Launches Spanish Language Site for US Hispanics; MySpace ...
MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MySpace, the world's leading lifestyle portal, announced today at the Billboard Latin American Music Conference the beta launch of MySpace en Español, a new Spanish-language version for U.S. based Hispanics. MySpace also revealed today a new pan-regional site in Spanish for Latin American residents as well as further development plans for localized communities in Mexico and Brazil. "We're moving rapidly to build communities that reflect and respect the lifestyles of our diverse members," said Travis Katz, Senior Vice President and General Manager of MySpace International. "MySpace en Español opens the community even wider, giving our Hispanic members the choice to share their experiences, connect with family members, and plan their social lives in either Spanish or English.
Army's game plan draws flak
Anti-recruitment groups are slamming a US Army deal to sponsor a computer war game channel, charging that real war is no game. In June, the Army is set to sponsor a channel at the Global Gaming League website, a popular spot for internet computer game lovers. "It is part of this campaign for the last 20 years to invade youth culture with militarism," Project on Youth and Non-military Opportunities co-founder Rick Jahnkow told AFP. "It affects the way young people think. It affects their world view. That is a very dangerous thing." A first-person shooter game based on the army training manual will be a centerpiece of the channel, which will feature other games in the same genre. The "America's Army" game was released about five years ago and ranks in the top 10 most popular computer games of its kind, according to McCann World Group vice president Anders Ekman, who is handling the project for the Army.
Rrrrrrrremix rrrrrrrrremix: Dntel anyone, though
Cult Seattle label Sub Pop are offering you, you and maybe even you the chance to remix the title track from the new Dntel album, Dumb Luck, in some kind of crazy competition. I thought long and hard about ways to make this article vaguely humorous, and then it turns out that the kids at Sub Pop already have me beaten, so over to them: “We here at World HQ are using a combination of Guinness, Jameson, espresso (together, known as The Trifecta) and the new Dntel record to get us through this month's schizophrenic weather, as we're all actually, medically sick of it being rainy and shitty. Dumb Luck is out April 24th, and as you likely know, Dntel is the moniker of our buddy Jimmy Tamborello, who you may know from The Postal Service! "If you think you're a better mixmaster than Jimmy, you are wrong.
Redman keeps sense of humor
The average career life span of a rapper, even a seemingly searing-hot rap star, is about three albums, or if he's lucky about five years, before he either has to diversify (usually by going into acting) or risk fading into the land of ``whatever happened to'' hip-hop trivia. Reggie Noble, aka Redman, came to prominence in the early '90s as part of Erick (EPMD) Sermon's Def Squad and became a favorite of thugs, backpackers and casual hip-hop fans. He could infuse the standard tough-talk and boasting with an unusual and sometimes surreal sense of humor, and with a never-ending stream of pop-culture references and similes peppering his energetic rhymes (most of which aren't suitable for a family newspaper). A few gold albums later, he teamed up with Wu-Tang Clan's Method Man, and the pair discovered a chemistry that jumped from their 2000 platinum-selling CD Blackout! into movies (How High) and a mercifully short-lived and embarrassing Fox sitcom, Method & Red.
Business calendar
Best Home Based Businesses to Start: Greece Community Education. 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. Greece Apollo Middle School, 750 Maiden Lane, Greece. $26. To register, call (585) 865-1010 or go to www.greece.k12.ny.us/commed.
Gregg Layer Xerox RIF Employees, Managing your Xerox 401(k) and RIGP while on continuance/Understanding your RIGP options/IRA rollovers: Marathon Financial. 6:30 p.m. 179 Sully's Trail, Pittsford. Free. To register, call (585) 419-2280. Job Corps Orientation: U.S. Department of Labor job training for 16-24 year olds. Call for details. Today and Thursday. Sibley Tower Building Suite 1125. To register, call (585) 454-5130, (800) 760-4577. Tuesday
Become a Notary Public: Greece Community Education. 7 to 9 p.m. Tuesday and May 1. Greece Olympia High School, 1139 Maiden Lane, Greece.
Imagine all the soldiers and sailors singing and dancing in harmony
With the expected passage of a bill setting procedures for a referendum to revise the Constitution, the Japanese people are going to have to think carefully about what sort of changes they want made to the charter. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has staked his political career on revising the Constitution, but citizens seem unsure as to whether or not they want to scrap it. Just as Abe's Liberal Democratic Party has managed to keep its majority for half a century because people think you don't fix something that ain't broke, they also figure you don't need to change a Constitution that's kept them out of war since the last one. A Kyodo News survey found that twice as many respondents want to keep the war-renouncing Article 9 as those who want to scrap it. And 54.6 percent said that they want to retain the Constitution's ban on Japan's involvement in collective defense, a matter Abe wants reconsidered.
Takashi Murakami at Gagosian Gallery
NEW YORK.- Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Takashi Murakami. This is Murakami's first exhibition with the gallery. Beneath its bright and playful appearance, Murakami's art is hard at work challenging established dichotomies. In his approach, high art and popular culture, East and West, present and past, humor and gravity, skepticism and belief are all sides of the same coin. Visually, his work merges the dystopic worlds of popular contemporary Japanese anim and manga cartoons with the ultra-refined techniques of traditional Japanese art. Operationally, he combines the work of the guild with that of the factory and production studio, resulting in a staggering body of work ranging from rare masterpieces to inexpensive, mass-produced commodities.
Departing from his well-known utopian and dystopian themes which feature masses of smiling flowers, elaborate scenes of toonish apocalypse, and the ever-morphing cult figures of DOB and Mr.
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