Archive for the ‘Bit Coin’ Category

'Nasty' Spurs strike first against Thunder

SAN ANTONIO (AP) It's a catchphrase likely coming soon to fan T-shirts, Internet memes and the lexicon of the NBA playoffs for the foreseeable future.

''I want some nasty!''

Gregg Popovich didn't just coin it. He snarled it, and the way his San Antonio Spurs obliged has the Western Conference finals off to a thrilling start.

Manu Ginobili scored 26 points and the Spurs won their 19th in a row - tying the NBA record for longest winning streak kept alive in the playoffs - by rallying in the fourth quarter on the orders of their furious coach to beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 101-98 in Game 1 on Sunday night.

It was a tantalizing near-upset for the young Thunder, who came as close as anybody to beating the Spurs for the first time in 46 days. But a nine-point lead didn't last after the famously mercurial 63-year-old Popovich - the NBA's Coach of the Year - huddled his lagging team together in the fourth and told them to ''get nasty.''

''I said that?'' Popovich said afterward.

A nationally television audience heard it.

''The heat of the game, stuff comes up,'' Popovich said. ''So I talked to them about they've got to get a little bit uglier, get a little more nasty, play with more fiber and take it to these guys. Meaning you have to drive it, you have to shoot it.''

And when they did, the Thunder couldn't keep up.

Kevin Durant led the Thunder with 27 points. Russell Westbrook had 17, and insisted he was OK after taking a spill that was nasty in its own right - face first, bracing his fall with his hands and sitting under the basket for more than a minute while the entire Thunder bench walked across the court to check on their All-Star point guard.

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'Nasty' Spurs strike first against Thunder

What they said: Jason Dufner

MORE INTERVIEWS:Crowne Plaza Invitational at ColonialDOUG MILNE:Jason Dufner, thanks for joining us for a few minutes one last time here at the 2012 Crowne Plaza Invitational at Colonial. All in all a really great couple of weeks. The only one hiccup on the 15th hole today didn't end up the way we wanted.

You still got to be feeling pretty good about the last couple of weeks and your play here this week at Colonial.

JASON DUFNER:Yes, definitely the last month of golf, the last three months of golf has been a pretty good run. Today, obviously, a little disappointing to play that poorly and not kind of have a chance there at the end. I thought we were looking at another duel kind of coming into 18 with Zach and I because we were both back and forth, kind of struggling, both of us a little bit. But it wasn't meant to be today and that's about it.

Q. Jason, did fatigue --

JASON DUFNER:I feel pretty good actually. I felt really good yesterday. I probably felt the best I had all week today. I felt pretty good. I just played really poorly today.

Q. Can you go through what happened at 15, what did you hit off the tee?

JASON DUFNER:I hit a 3 wood off the tee. The fairways were chasing a little bit more today. I've been underneath that bunker with 3 wood, just rolled into it. I had 142 or 3 yards, a little wind in and off the right. I hit a 9 iron probably a little bit further left than I was looking, but still that's a pretty long 9 iron for me out of the bunker into the wind. Just pitched it on the back, and it barely trickled over in the water, and you are pretty much dead back there. I probably could have made a 6 pretty easily. It turned out to be a 7 and turned out to be the difference in the tournament.

Q. It looked like on the tee shot on 17, on your follow through, your shot drifted right, and you dropped your club in it, it just sort of looked like you had a moment like you couldn't believe you had run into this stretch?

JASON DUFNER:No, I could believe it. It was happening.

Q. Why, because you had been playing so well in that four or five hole stretch, it didn't seem like anything worked? Could you believe you had run into that kind of luck, or bad luck?

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What they said: Jason Dufner

Britain's poshest protestor: Hector Christie – who gave up his Glyndebourne inheritance on a toss of a coin – was this …

By Catherine Ostler

PUBLISHED: 16:51 EST, 25 May 2012 | UPDATED: 00:32 EST, 26 May 2012

Hector Christie is such a rebel, he even rebels against the rebels

There cant have been many protesters at last winters anti-capitalist encampment in the City of London who had chosen the tents on the steps of St Pauls Cathedral over their own roomy Queen Anne stately home, set among 6,000 picturesque acres of the West Country.

For that matter, there cant be many members of Take Back The Flour, the anti-GM foods protest group which is planning to invade and uproot GM crops at the Rothamsted Research centre in Hertfordshire tomorrow, who can claim aristocratic lineage, an Eton education and a trust fund.

But then Hector Christie is not your average eco-warrior.

In fact, hes such a rebel, he even rebels against the rebels: unwilling to wait for tomorrows protest, it is claimed he went ahead on his own last Sunday and broke into Rothamsted, where he allegedly lopped heads off GM plants, scattered some wheat seed of his own and made a general nuisance of himself, for which he was arrested, charged with criminal damage and released on bail.

He will appear in court in St Albans on July 13 and faces being sent to prison.

This is not the first time that Hector Christie, now 50, has been in trouble.

As the eldest son of Sir George and Lady (Mary) Christie, he is the man who could have been running Glyndebourne, the opera house that sits next to a Tudor home in the bucolic surroundings of the Sussex Downs.

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Britain's poshest protestor: Hector Christie - who gave up his Glyndebourne inheritance on a toss of a coin - was this ...

When you look carefully at panhandling, there’s another side to the coin

by: Rev. Rich Lang

A guy came up to me on the street, begging. He was a young guy and appeared to be physically healthy, although living on the streets can both break down your physical and mental health rather quickly. He wanted some spare change. So rather than just reach in my pocket for coins, I chatted with him a bit. One of my standard lines is to call attention to Real Change as a quick way to start making some money so that one can have a positive springboard to get back into life. But he didnt want to sell papers, he just wanted some money. So I asked him his age and he began to tell me bits about his hard-living, hard-knocks life.

Thats certainly a pattern. After all, kids dont grow up wanting to be homeless and beg spare change for a living. As we proceeded to chat, we talked about shelter options and employment options. Admittedly, all the options were slim pickings, but he really wasnt too invested in trying. He was defeated, discouraged, and really all he wanted was some spare change. That was his life now. We the people were ATM machines from which he hoped he could score just enough coinage to suck some beers down his throat and maybe find a place to lay his head.

And yes, I gave him some spare change. I find that if I simply look away, dont bother communicating, never take the homeless beggar seriously, then its easy to simply say no and walk away. But once I engage, actually chat a bit, its a lot harder to send another away with nothing but the words good luck or God bless.

Poverty never quits. Its bad enough to be born in a family and environment of hard living and hard knocks, and its increasingly bad to try to get work when there isnt much, to try to rent a room when there arent any, and, for a guy, to try to get a girl when youve got little but your increasingly banged-up looks to offer. Poverty of material goes hand-in-hand with poverty of spiritual means. Its increasingly difficult to maintain ones dignity as a bearer of Gods image when folks look at you like a worm. Its hard to believe that the sun will rise

tomorrow when everything in your vision is dusk or dark. Its almost impossible to believe that life is good when every moment is a struggle to survive, a struggle to escape violence and a struggle simply to eat, sleep and sit in safety. Beer helps, but its also addictive and diminishes ones capacity to hope.

Which is worse: poverty of stuff or poverty of spirit? Actually its a nonsensical question because they are two sides of the same coin. What we need are new coins that offer better options.

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When you look carefully at panhandling, there’s another side to the coin

The Internet and the secret to immortality

During my daily news consumption, I bumped into a cute story that seemed a bit familiar. The story was a suggestion to switch to an 18 cent coin. I found it by way of Hacker News, for my money ($0), the best news aggregator for the tech set. The article was a fairly typical blog post, a summary of a longer paper, which simply ran the math and determined that the average number of coins you get from a cash register will be 4.7 coins. But the addition of an 18 cent coin would drop that to 3.89.

The story itself is nice, since I like this sort of thing. Its quirky. Its math. It speaks to the stupidity of pennies (and increasingly nickels). It makes me think about government inefficiencies, and the very human affection for little hunks of metal that are actually really inconvenient and clink in my pocket. But I couldnt get past the familiarity. I backed up and re-read the article a lot slower and realized why.

First, the story was originally written in 2003. This is a little odd for Hacker News which usually is pretty current, but a story like this is sort of timeless and prone to random resurgence. But then I realized the reason for this particular resurgence: The by-line was Roland Piquepaille, and you dont forget a name like that.

Roland was incredibly active on Slashdot for many years. His submissions were often just like this 18 cent coin piece: a little off the beaten path, but often interesting. His nickname on Slashdot was rpiquepa and his account is number 5 on the all time submission list with a pretty amazing 477 accepted stories.

Why did I care? Roland died Jan 6, 2009.

He died, but his work lives on. And apparently this week somebody searched online for something or other, landed on a story nearly a decade old and written by a man who had been dead for over 3 years. And that content hit the Internet again just as effectively as if it were written yesterday. A trivial but fun little story has a bit of immortality attached to it.

Roland took a lot of garbage from Slashdot readers over the years. He was incredibly effective at what he did, and his name appeared on the site a lot. A community has a nasty habit of being a little extra hostile towards anything extreme, and Roland often submitted stories on the fluffier end of the news spectrum, and he succeeded a lot, which made him a target. That always made me a little sad.

But Id like to think he gets the posthumous last laugh. He found fun stuff that we enjoyed reading. I hope that the traces I leave behind after Im gone are still good for the occasional laugh as well. Ill never write the Great American Novel or direct the Oscar Award Winning Film. But the Internet lets all of us live forever.

The author is the founder of Slashdot.org

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The Internet and the secret to immortality