DBD 2.22.12 Partied Too Hard Celebrating Presidents' Day?

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-21/paypal-alumni-poised-for-another-boost-in-riches-with-yelp-facebook-ipos.html

Jeremy Stoppelman and Max Levchin own about $200 million in Yelp Inc. shares heading into the company’s initial public offering, setting up the latest payday for PayPal Inc.’s former executives. Stoppelman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Yelp (YELP), owns 11.1 percent of the company, while Levchin, the chairman, has 13.5 percent. The user-generated review site announced plans last week to sell shares for $12 to $14 apiece in an IPO, valuing Yelp at as much as $838 million.

The Yelp executives join investors Peter Thiel and Reid Hoffman and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. founder Elon Musk on a short list of ex-PayPal employees poised to generate big-time riches from pending IPOs. PayPal, which developed an online payment system, was purchased by EBay Inc. (EBAY) for $1.5 billion in 2002, making many of its early employees rich and eager to pursue new endeavors.

I’m pretty sure I’m a day away from making jokes about how I rate their IPO one star because I overheated my microwave dinner that same day.

Show Me the Love… Or Not

Of all the ways that opposites attract, the thorniest may be when emotionally giving types pair up with types who are emotionally reserved.

Givers love to show affection: Hugs, kisses, flowers, skywriting—there’s no such thing as too much. They crave receiving displays of love, as well.

Reserved types certainly may love deeply, but they are uncomfortable showing it. Often, they rely on their partner to initiate a display of affection. Sometimes, they don’t even enjoy receiving expressions of love.

Initially, emotionally giving types are attracted to emotionally reserved types, and vice versa, because they are so different, experts say. Giving people often find reserved people intriguing; they like to elicit affection from someone who doesn’t express it easily. And deep down, reserved types often like to be drawn out.

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Pnina Peled, executive chef at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, recently faced an unusual culinary challenge: A teenage cancer patient wanted pizza, but chemotherapy treatments had dulled the girl’s taste buds and she could only taste lemon.

“This kid liked Italian food, and we couldn’t think of a lemon-flavored pizza because we kept thinking of tomato sauce,” says Ms. Peled. After some trial and error, the chef created a pizza with a lemon Alfredo sauce for the young patient. “We made it for her three or four times in a month because she kept requesting it,” Ms. Peled says.

Getting patients in a cancer hospital to eat is a challenge. “They can’t swallow or they can’t taste it or they’re nauseous,” Ms. Peled says. “The adults force themselves, because they know they need the nutrition. But the children don’t understand why food doesn’t taste like it used to, or why they can’t taste anything.”

Most hospitals have been updating their food offerings to include more vegetarian and healthier fare. But some major institutions are going further, hiring trained chefs to revamp menu selections and expanding kitchen hours to cater to a variety of medical needs. Diabetic, gastric-bypass, cardiac, cancer and other types of patients all have different cravings and nutritional requirements, these hospitals say.

Fiatlux took photos

yay go bears

ESPN on college baseball. Cal ranked 9th:



9. California (3-0)
Of note: Coach David Esquer said this team will go as far as team leaders Tony Renda and Chadd Krist take it. Sure enough, they led the offense with 12 combined hits and committed no errors at second and catcher.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-canadian-oil-20110221,0,1702847.story

Much of the focus behind Canada’s push to build a new oil pipeline to the West Coast has been to diversify its markets, to reduce its reliance on the U.S. as a customer. The Canadian government says it wants to start selling oil to China and South Korea.

But there are strong indications that California could be the ultimate destination for much of the oil shipped on the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline.

Analysts say California could see as much as half of the oil transported out of the tar sands of northern Alberta to a port on the coast of British Columbia, where it would be loaded onto tankers for destinations as yet unknown.

After the release in December of a University of Calgary study on the economics of transporting Canadian oil, energy economist Michal C. Moore, senior fellow at the university and a former California energy commissioner, predicted that half of Northern Gateway’s oil would go to "under-utilized California refineries," the Calgary Herald reported, with the other half going to northern Asia.

Enbridge Inc., which is seeking to build the $5 billion, 731-mile pipeline, has by no means ruled out deliveries to the U.S. West Coast.

Paul Stanway, spokesman for the company, told the Los Angeles Times that "very probably" California would see some of the oil shipped through Northern Gateway, if it’s built.

"Northern Gateway’s not designed for that. The genesis was for markets in the Pacific Rim, but it’s certainly possible that some might go to California," he said in an interview.

“I guess you could create just about any scenario based on blue-skying — and if the project is built the oil could go anywhere there is demand at that time,” he added in an email later. “But Northern Gateway’s application is clearly based on our assessment of commercial demand from mostly Asian markets.”

Gerald Graham, a marine environmental consultant from Victoria, B.C., said Enbridge’s own environmental reports showed only a third of the more than 200 tankers a year projected to ship oil from Northern Gateway would take a northern route away from British Columbia, toward Asia. The rest are depicted on a pair of southern routes he said would lead more logically to refineries in Washington state, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

In college basketball, California is hardly state of the art
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-0222-college-basketball-dufresne-20120222,0,6213320.column

People have speculated for years that California might someday drop off the map, and the slide may have already started with college basketball.

San Diego State, loser of three straight games and holding on by a fingernail at No. 24, is the only California team represented in this week’s Associated Press top-25 poll.

And you thought Texas was the lone star state?

St. Mary’s and San Diego State occupy two of the final three spots in the coaches’ top-25 poll despite collectively losing six of their last seven games, the Gaels prevailing over lowly Santa Clara.

St. Mary’s, wobbly and wounded, got gashed by Murray State but caught a break to remain atop the West Coast Conference standings when San Francisco upset Gonzaga.

San Diego State, at 20-6, still appears a solid NCAA entry. The Aztecs’ three straight losses were by a total of 14 points — to Nevada Las Vegas (currently No. 21), New Mexico (No. 18) and Air Force.

Long Beach State deserves love for playing its heart out in a two-point loss at Creighton, but the 49ers now face the prospect of having to win the Big West Conference tournament to make the NCAA tournament.

UCLA traveled across the country to lose at St. John’s last weekend as part of the Bruins’ “post-Pauley reconstruction” phase. But at least UCLA isn’t USC, which is 1-13 in Pac-12 Conference play.

Elsewhere in the Pac-12, California (the school in Berkeley) is not quite ranked but is tied for first in the standings, which tells you everything you need to know about the conference.

Local bright spots: Cal State Fullerton (18-7, 9-3) is tied for second in the Big West and ranks No. 2 nationally with a 42.9 three-point field-goal percentage.

California Is America’s Least Favorite State



Some highlights: Popular vacation spot Hawaii had the highest margin of favorability with 54 percent of voters saying they liked the state and only 10 percent disliking it (44). It was followed by a distant second Colorado (35), then Tennessee (34) and South Dakota (34), and then Virginia (+32). Voters only had a negative impression of five states: Utah (-3), Mississippi (-6), New Jersey (-7), Illinois (-10), and last and yes, least, California (-17).

Did we know that the scoreboards are going to look like this??

http://mikesciosciastragicillness.com/2012/02/21/news-from-the-first-day-of-dodger-spring-training/

Plenty of news coming in on this first official day of camp, and isn’t that a lovely feeling? Pitchers & catchers have reported, with position players joining them by Monday, and that means we’ll finally have real news & updates to talk about, not just hypotheticals and what-ifs. Don Mattingly held court this morning with a few of our famililar media names, and here’s what we know so far…

* Clayton Kershaw will be your Opening Day starter. (Ken Gurnick) Well, of course. This is news in the sense that "hey, Frank McCourt might not be such a great guy" is news. You know how I feel that the Opening Day assignment is wildly overrated, and so this doesn’t mean a great deal to me. Still, it’s a nice honor for Kershaw, and one that he’ll hopefully be able to carry for at least the next ten years. With three lefties likely to be in the rotation, I imagine that Kershaw will be followed by Chad Billingsley & Ted Lilly, then Aaron Harang & Chris Capuano. That will mean two lefties back-to-back as the rotation turns around, but that’s unavoidable.

* Dee Gordon will lead off and Matt Kemp will hit third. (Eric Stephen) No surprise here, either, especially with how well Kemp finished the year in the #3 spot. I think there’s a good enough argument to be made that Gordon is best served hitting lower in the order, where his inexperience and questionable on-base skills may not be exposed as much, but with his speed there was never any real chance Mattingly would have done that, and to be honest it’s not like there’s an obviously better choice anyway. (No, not even A.J. Ellis.) The official Dodger Twitter notes that Gordon reported early to camp and was in the cage taking BP today, which is a great sign. Dylan Hernandez adds that Mattingly likes the idea of Andre Ethier & Juan Rivera behind Kemp for protection, so while it’s not like we didn’t already know what the batting order was going to be, it seems pretty clear that the regular 8 will work out like so: 1) Gordon 2) Mark Ellis 3) Kemp 4) Ethier 5) Rivera 6) James Loney 7) Juan Uribe 8) A.J. Ellis, with some chance of Loney & Uribe being swapped. You know what’s going to be fun, though? When Gordon is inevitably banged-up, or even just gets a regular day off, and Jerry Hairston or Adam Kennedy gets to lead off instead.

http://deadspin.com/5886723

On Feb. 20, 1992, more American homes tuned into The Simpsons than they did The Cosby Show or the Winter Olympics from Albertville, France. A foul-mouthed cartoon on a fourth-place network bested the Huxtables and the world’s best amateur athletes. Fox over NBC and CBS—its first-ever victory in prime time. New over old.

Why the shift? Well, the Olympic programming that night featured no marquee events, and Cosby was just two months away from ending its eight-season run. Meanwhile, The Simpsons, airing just its 52nd episode out of 500 (and counting), had put forth its most ambitious effort to date, an episode called “Homer at the Bat.” Months of work went into corralling nine baseball players, a cross-section of young stars and established veterans, to guest-star as members of a rec-league softball team.

Sam Simon, the co-creator of The Simpsons, originally pitched the idea, and it was put into words by John Swartzwelder, a charter member of the show’s writing staff, who would eventually pen 59 episodes, more than anyone else. On a staff full of fantasy baseball junkies, Swartzwelder was the über-geek, a fanatic who had rented out stadiums for hours at a time so he and his close friends could play ball. (Years after Swartzwelder’s departure from the show, it’s easy to see his influence endures. During the episode’s roundtable DVD commentary, the word “Swartzweldian” is used with a deference and awe usually reserved for long-dead Nobel Laureates.)

http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/02/hoover_police_department_nude.html

HOOVER, Alabama — A driver minus his clothing struck at least seven cars at various spots along Alabama 150 this afternoon before finally stopping for Hoover police.

Capt. Jim Coker gave this account:

Shortly after noon, police were called about the naked driver on Alabama 150.

As police searched for the 57-year-old man, he drove through the parking lot of Long-Lewis Ford Lincoln, where he hit at least two cars.

General Manager Terry Poole said the man — who was driving a gray pickup truck — backed into traffic and hit a car that was driving on 150. That car spun and hit a Long Lewis car that was being taken for a test drive, Poole said.

“He just kept going,” Poole said.

The driver continued eastbound on Alabama 150 toward the U.S. 31 intersection, damaging more cars in two more crashes along the way. The driver still did not pull over.

As the driver approached the 31 intersection, a Hoover police officer saw the man and tried to pull him over.

The officer turned on the patrol car’s lights and sirens, but the driver went through the intersection and hit more cars. After that wreck, the driver stopped and the officer found that the man was not wearing any clothes.

It’s Cat Day (neko no hi or ni ni ni (2-2-2)/kinda like the sound a cat makes) in Japan.

nyan nyan.

Sharks are chum for hungry Blue Jackets
Further proof that Central Ohio is superior to the Bay Area. Slump buster my keester!

The Columbus Blue Jackets assured that the San Jose Starks would remain stuck in a rut, scoring four goals in the first period and never looking back in a 6-3 win at Nationwide Arena on Tuesday night.
Jeff Carter hit the net twice in the first period on his way to a hat trick, and Steve Mason made 38 saves as Columbus handed San Jose its fourth consecutive loss.

Kings 108, Heat 120: Well, That Wasn’t So Bad

Coming into this game, I fully expected this to be one of the uglier games of the season. The Heat are really, really good, and the Kings are really, really bad on the road. So I was pleasantly surprised by the play of the team tonight in what might have been one of the best offensive performances of the season for Sacramento.

The Kings got off to a great start against the Heat, starting out with a 17-9 lead. Miami would come roaring back, but the Kings remained competitive through three quarters, thanks to some of the best ball movement of the season. The Kings finished with 24 assists, and would have had several more if players had caught the ball cleanly on fast breaks. The best part of the ball movement was how well the Kings were cutting off the ball, particularly Marcus Thornton, who finished with 23 points on 16 shots.

Bears Hit Salt Lake in Search of Sixth Straight

The Golden Bears (22-6, 12-3 Pac-12) seek to set a season-high winning streak of six games when they head to Salt Lake City to face Utah (5-21, 2-12). Cal tied a Haas Pavilion record with their 17th win, this season, in a 77-63 victory against Oregon State, but the Bears have suffered two of their three conference losses on the road.

Cal has reached the 22-win mark for the third time in head coach Mike Montgomery’s four years at the helm; a first in program history. Utah is in the middle of a seven-game skid that started on Jan. 26, but has earned each of its Pac-12 victories at home, this season.

The Bears will need to maintain their momentum down the stretch to stay in the hunt for the first Pac-12 regular-season title as they are currently tied with Washington for first place. Each team will finish the regular season with three road games, including a meeting with their respective rivals. Cal will continue to lean on its seniors Jorge Gutierrez and Harper Kamp as the regular-season race comes to a close.

California Closes Out Season with Three Home Games


The California Golden Bears (20-7, 11-4 Pac-12) finish off the regular season with three consecutive home games. They open the homestand on Thursday, Feb. 23 facing the Utah Utes (13-12, 6-8 Pac-12) at 7 p.m. at Haas Pavilion.

The Bears head into the weekend series with a two-game lead in the race for the No. 2 seed in the Pacific Life Pac-12 Tournament with three games remaining. Stanford has already secured the top seed in the tournament. The Bears lead Arizona State by two games, USC by 2.5 and Oregon State by three. The top four teams in the tournament will receive first round byes.

The Bears are also playing to position themselves for the post season. Cal has moved up to No. 27 in the latest RPI rankings, one of the more-important items factored into the decision of the NCAA Tournament selection committee.

The Bears try to continue to build momentum by hosting Utah and Colorado this week. Utah has won three games in a row, including an overtime win at Colorado last week.

TheBuckeyeBear – you are not alone .. . in being dead to me

" Raised in the Bay Area. Go Bears! But go Bucks more! "

/He’s actually a friend of mine. Still needs to be given shit about this.