If you own an iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, a free iPhone 5 is just a car ride away for the next week.
On June 1, Best Buy offered a one-day deal: bring in your old iPhone 4 or 4s and trade it for a brand new iPhone 5. The offer was so successful, that the retailer has decided to give it another, longer run.
For the next nine days, you will be able to bring in those iPhone models and trade them in for the newest Apple phone. The offer ends Saturday, June 29.
A teacher in New York stooped to disgusting lows to have sex with his 10-year-old student. According to reports, 5th grade teacher, Anthony Criscuolo deceived the parents of the 10-year-old girl, who was a student in his class.
Criscuolo told the girl’s parents that she won an academic award and was taking her to the ceremony. However, there award ceremony did not exist. On June 17, Criscuolo left his wife and took the the girl to an empty parking lot at a school in Queens, New York. He parked his truck and raped her.
The girl’s mother found sexually explicit emails sent to the student and discovered that the teacher bought the child an iPad Touch and a diamond ring. Students who were interviewed revealed that the teacher passed notes to the girl and slow danced with her during a Valentine’s Day dance.
Criscuolo, who earned $73,000 per year was arrested on June 19. He will be terminated by the school system.
h/t – rollingout
Saw the movie “Last Earth” this past Father’s Day and it was a blast! The flick had everything I like in a matinée sci-fi blockbuster: mind-blowing SFX, a mind expanding storyline, fast-paced action, great acting and a hunky leading man, in this case Will Smith.
On the surface the story appears to be about a young man desperately trying to live up to what he feels are the expectation of a heroic father and falling miserably short in his own eyes.
The big picture centers on the complexities of human nature and family bonding. A father tries to instill in his son everything’s he’s learned about surviving and thriving in an often times dangerous, hostile environment. It was no mistake that the message was particularly aimed towards black boys. The tagline of the movie ” Danger is real, fear is a choice” couldn’t be more poignant. “Last Earth” exemplifies the time when a boy ingests everything taught to him by his father and the breakaway moment when he decides to come out from under his protective wing, to fly on his own. To be his own man.
It is the timeless coming of age story that never gets old, and the real life father/son duo of Will and Jaden Smith only added to the narrative of a rite of passage that all boys of any nationality or race should go through, but often times miss out on.
Imagine my confusion then, when finally reading reviews on ” Last Earth” that called it a flop almost before the movie hit the theatres. Critics have the power to make or break a film because people will totally bypass seeing one based on negative reviews;
NY Daily News: “Summer 2013 has its first bomb, and sadly, it’s landed right on Will Smith.”
The Mirror: “The speaking clock has more emotional range than Will’s son Jaden Smith, with the trite scenes of him bonding with his father simply throw-your-hands-in-the-air bad.”
The Village Voice: “I fear Jaden might face online wrath for his performance here, especially thanks to the numb-tongued Kiwi accent he’s forced to adopt. He’s not bad, especially, but he is a kid asked to do the extraordinary: compel us as he pretends to do ridiculous bullsh–.”
DailyMirror on Twitter: “As Will Smith coldly instructs him to feel, to root in this moment now, to master his own creation, I felt the purest horror I ever have at a Shyamalan film: What if this is what Jaden Smith’s life is actually like?”
These comments left me wondering “What movie did they see?!” There were even cries of nepotism and that senior Smith used his tremendous star power in creating the role of his son in the movie Kitai Raige, for Jaden. Ummm…duh! There’s a long list of movie star parents who starred opposite their children in movies to help push their carreer’s along. That’s what parent’s do when trying to create a legacy. It’s obvious that Will Smith wanted the role to be a gift to his son and that it was meant to help propel the boy into the stardom that he now enjoys. And why the heck shouldn’t he? There’s room at the top of the multi-billion dollar movie industry for more than one black male and female superstar, isn’t there?
I would say to those critics that Jaden Smith was the best part of the movie and that his performance held my attention until the very end. And I was clapping at the end (which I rarely do lol!) along with others in my Manhattan theatre audience!
So, I want everyone within the site of this blog to go check out “Last Earth” and if you loved it like I did, spread the word and make this movie the summer blockbuster that its supposed to be!
Shocking, yea, I know. But it’s only shocking to you because you are thinking as a logical person. If you watched Fox News however, you might believe that Trayvon Martin caused his own murder.
That is the kind of information Fox is broadcasting. One of their guest, a former New York Police Detective Harry Houck, actually opened his mouth and made that statement, saying “… listen, Trayvon Martin would be alive today if he didn’t have a street attitude. That’s the bottom line.”
I supposed the “street attitude” Detective Harry Houck is talking about has to do with the Skittles Trayvon had when he was shot by Zimmerman. Or maybe it was the can of Iced Tea he bought at Seven Eleven. Those two things mixed with Trayvon’s skin color automatically equals “street attitude” in this Detective’s mind.
That is a scary statement, but it’s even more scarier coming from someone who was a New York Police detective. With an attitude like this, I wonder how many innocent people are imprisoned because of this stereotypical racist attitude from a detective.
All his cases should be reopened and examined thoroughly! It’s disgraceful that a detective would even entertain this way of thinking.
Paula Deen, the self-proclaimed queen of Southern cooking and a sugary mainstay of the Food Network, was dropped by the network on Friday, following a bewildering day in which she failed to show up for an interview on the “Today” show and then in two online videos begged her family and audience for forgiveness for using racist language.
A network spokeswoman said it would not renew Paula Deen’s contract when it expires at the end of June. Ms. Deen has faced a volley of criticism this week over her remarks in a deposition for a discrimination lawsuit by a former employee. In the document, she admitted she had used racial epithets, tolerated racist jokes and condoned pornography in the workplace.
The Food Network statement did not elaborate on its reasons for dropping her, but a person close to the network said its shows featuring her sons, Jamie and Bobby, would not be affected. Ms. Deen currently has three regular shows on the network, including “Paula’s Best Dishes.”
In her first video on Friday, posted on YouTube and later removed, Ms. Deen, near tears, said: “I want to apologize to everybody for the wrong that I’ve done. I want to learn and grow from this. Inappropriate and hurtful language is totally, totally unacceptable.”
In a longer video posted later in the afternoon, Ms. Deen appeared more composed. “Your color of your skin, your religion, your sexual preference does not matter,” she said, adding, “ I was wrong, yes, I’ve worked hard, and I have made mistakes but that is no excuse and I offer my sincere apology to those that I have hurt, and I hope that you forgive me because this comes from the deepest part of my heart.”
A judge has sentenced an Alabama man to federal prison for threatening President Barack Obama on Twitter, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
U.S. District Judge C. Lynwood Smith Jr. sentenced 26-year-old Jarvis Britton of Birmingham to one year in prison for threatening the life of Obama. He must serve three years on probation after finishing the prison term.
Britton pleaded guilty in March to threatening to kill, kidnap or inflict bodily harm on the president by tweeting the message, “Let’s kill the president. F.E.A.R.,” in September
Are you sure you want them “eggs?” This was submitted to reddit by a McDonalds employee.
From a Knicks fan, I’ll be the first to stand up and say congratulations to the Miami Heat for winning the NBA championship for the second year in a row. I’m not necessarily fond of LaBron, but I must give props where props is due. And tonight, props is due.
If things had turned out differently in the last minutes of game six, we would have sung a different tune. But it takes the heart of a champ for the Heat to turn what looked like a game 6 loss and turn it into a game 7 win.
Final score was The Heat 95, San Antonio 88. LaBron had a great game, scoring 37 points on 12/23 shooting. James also camped out at the three point line, hitting 5 of 10 threes.
Knicks will take the trophy in 2014
1… Contrary to what 42 percent of Americans think, Obamacare really is happening. In fact, people can start signing up for state-run health insurance on October 1st. That’s when states and the federal government will open marketplaces, called exchanges, to offer subsidized benefits to the nation’s 50 million uninsured.
2… Another survey found that a majority of Americans think the law cuts Medicare benefits and covers undocumented immigrants. It doesn’t.
Actually, the government expects the average Medicare recipient to save approximately $35,000 over the next ten years.
3… Tax credits. Next year, health insurance for eligible individuals or families will be subsidized.
For example, someone making just under $23,000 a year wouldn’t have to spend more than 6.3 percent of their annual income on health insurance. Based on a $3,030 plan, their contribution would be $1,450. Under Obamacare, they’d receive a tax credit of $1,580 to put towards their coverage.
4… The 80/20 rule. Insurers are now required to spend at least 80 percent of premium dollars on providing healthcare. The other 20 percent can be used on overhead expenses like excessive administrative costs and profits. In 2012, this provision saved Americans over two billion dollars.
If insurers don’t comply, they’re required to provide customers with a rebate. In 2011, over 13 million consumers received $1.1 billion in rebates – that’s around $150 per customer.
5… taxes. No matter what you’ve heard, your health benefits under Obamacare will not be taxed. The law does require that employers report the value of your annual coverage on your W-2, but the government says that’s just for workers’ information.
h/t Yahoo
As if educators, including me, several times, haven’t been clear enough that rushing into an untested teacher evaluation system is a terrible idea, along comes our esteemed Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan to finally get the message: schools need more time to implement, experiment and, yes, evaluate the new system before it becomes operative and to see if it does what it’s supposed to do. It won’t, because it has fatal flaws in it, but at least giving teachers, administrators and school boards another year might just uncover the folly of using prescriptive tests for evaluative ends.
In any case, Duncan is allowing states to apply for waivers to their waivers, which would require that the Christie administration to do something positive for teachers and students, so I’m not holding my breath. After all, I’ve sat in a room with NJ Education Commissioner Christopher Cerf and heard him, and other DOE officials, wax rhapsodic about how wonderful this new system is. Meanwhile, the data crunchers don’t have all of the numbers, and the numbers they have are not representative of all types of districts.
Then there is this open letter to the New Jersey legislature from noted Millburn Superintendent James A, Crisfield, who makes a powerful case for letting the 2013-14 school year be a test case for every district in the state. That way we can observe how the system works and look to solve the obvious technical problems that the state seems to be ignoring. These include the funding restraints that will restrict districts from purchasing the computers necessary for all students to be able to take the end-of-year evaluations and the rather obtuse attitude the department has about ensuring that the youngest students have the necessary keyboarding skills to actually show what they’ve learned.
But just in case you think that it’s only bitter teachers who are questioning the efficacy of the system, Crisfield reminds us that concerns reach across the education spectrum:
And speaking of fairness, there really needs to be another discussion about the efficacy of using student test scores to judge the effectiveness of a teacher. We’re moving so fast now that we don’t even have the opportunity to fully vet that very troubling (and in most educators’ opinion, highly flawed) aspect of the new system.
In fact, I can’t even explain to my teachers how, exactly, student test scores will affect their ratings, tenure, and pay (and I certainly don’t have the time to discuss with them the research behind, and/or the wisdom of, such ideas).
I like this guy.
This evaluation system has always been a political issue, not an education issue. If the governor was serious about true reform, he would have included far more public school teachers in the process, and he wouldn’t have exempted private and charter schools. If you are in a position to do so, please contact your legislator. I can tell you from personal experience talking to them, that members of the Assembly and Senate want to know how affected constituents are thinking on the issues. The only thing we have to lose is control over our profession.
Scary.
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The Texas senator credits his father with shaping his views on immigration, and talks about following the rules: ”In my opinion, if we allow those who are here illegally to be put on a path to citizenship, that is incredibly unfair to those who follow the rules.” But Raphael Cruz acknowledged on NPR that he bribed a Batista official to get out of Cuba.
“I came to this country legally,” Cruz’s father says. “I came here with a legal visa, and … every step of the way, I have been here legally.”
In an interview near his home outside Dallas, the elder Cruz says that as a teenager, he fought alongside Fidel Castro’s forces to overthrow Cuba’s U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista. He was caught by Batista’s forces, he says, and jailed and beaten before being released. It was 1957, and Cruz decided to get out of Cuba by applying to the University of Texas. Upon being admitted, he adds, he got a four-year student visa at the U.S. Consulate in Havana.
“Then the only other thing that I needed was an exit permit from the Batista government,” Cruz recalls. “A friend of the family, a lawyer friend of my father, basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit.”
