Dirk had his way from 12 feet and out

DALLAS -- Oklahoma City coach Scott Brooks certainly wasn't pleased that Dirk Nowitzki took 24 of his team's 36 free throws, but Brooks wasn't whining about it either. After all, his team got to the line 43 times with Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook combining for 37 of the Thunder's 43 attempts.

So, Brooks won't be paying a $35,000 fine to the league office as did Portland coach Nate McMillan in the first series and Lakers coach Phil Jackson in the second round. Imagine that, two fines so far for criticism of the officiating and neither involve silent Mavs owner Mark Cuban.

Nowitzki drew 16 fouls and also caused two defensive three-second technical fouls. Serge Ibaka had five fouls on Nowitzki, Thabo Sefolosha had three, Kevin Durant had two in a span of five seconds in the third quarter, Nick Collison and Russell Westbrook also each had two and Kendrick Perkins and James Harden each had one.

Nowitzki made all 13 of his free throws in the third quarter when he was fouled seven times. Six were non-shooting fouls and the Mavs were in the bonus with more than half the quarter to play.

"We just can't foul him as many times. Twenty-four free throws, that's a lot of free throws, but he earned him," Brooks said. "We fouled him. We have to do a better job of guarding him."

Half of Nowitzki's 48 points came at the free throw line. The other half came on 12-of-15 shooting against seven different defenders with the 6-foot-10 Ibaka taking the lion's share of abuse, 22 points on 7-of-9 shooting.

Nowitzki was 5-of-6 from the floor with 16 points off free throws against the six other defenders that tried to slow down Nowitzki, who notched the sixth 40-point playoff game of his career and the first of this brilliant postseason in which he's now averaging 28.5 points.

All of Nowitzki's buckets came inside the arc. He got the ball on the wing at will, where he loves to operate, and OKC never made adjustments to either try to keep him out of his sweet spot or to take the ball out of his hands. Only seldom did they attempt to double-team.

According to ESPN Stats and Information, Nowitzki made 9-of-11 field goals from 12-plus feet, which ties for the most 2-point baskets from that range in a game this postseason and it's the second-highest shooting percentage (53.4) from that distance in this postseason behind Chris Paul (54.7).

"Really throughout the day, yeah, I had a good rhythm against whoever was on me," Nowitzki said. "I had some rip throughs, had a spin move from the baseline early to set up went to the basket, got a dunk, and I think that set up the jump shots for the next couple trips down. I thought I had a good mix driving and shooting."
Source : http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/mavericks/post/_/id/4678155/dirk-had-his-way-from-12-feet-and-out

Self-inflating earbuds make your ears hate you less

Wearing earbuds can be bad for your ears. Whenever you put them in, your ears hate it and go into defensive lockdown mode forcing you to crank up the volume. These earbuds keep that from happening while also providing better noise isolation and sound, and they do it by inflating themselves like balloons.

Your ears have a natural acoustic defense mechanism that activates whenever they encounter intense sound pressures, like those that you get when you seal off your ear canal with conventional earbuds. This defense mechanism essentially tenses up your inner ear, which has the effect of cranking down the volume of sound that you hear by up to 50 dB in an effort to protect all your delicate hearing bits. Not only does this "hearing fatigue" force most people to turn the volume of their music way up to compensate, which is bad for your ears, but it can also cause discomfort and pain.

A nifty solution to this is to use earphones with an additional membrane between the driver and your eardrum, which helps to control all that sound pressure. Instead, sound is passed directly into the walls of your ear canal where it makes it way inside your ear via bone conduction, which is essentially what happens when you listen to sounds naturally. The membrane operates like a little balloon, inflating itself using leftover air from your headphone drivers and sealing up your ear canal. This has the handy side-effects of helping to keep out external noise, and of holding your earbuds comfortably in place. Check it out:

Unofficial testing shows that the balloon earbuds sound more or less as good as conventional sets, while still doing everything extra that they promised. And since the fit is adaptive, you can open and close your mouth and even eat without changing the sound or getting all that annoying jaw noise.

The company behind this technology is currently still tweaking the design and negotiating licenses, so commercial availability is a ways off. Until then, back to your regularly scheduled ear-shattering music.

Source : http://dvice.com/archives/2011/05/self-inflating.php

London Food & Drink News: 12 May 2011

London International Wine Fair & Distil 2011 hits the ExCel London on Tuesday and goes through Thursday. More for those in the trade (entirely for trade actually), with over 20,000 wines “to explore” through tastings, seminars, debates and more, it might be worth connoisseurs making a note to follow. Visit www.2011.londonwinefair.com for details. More open to the masses and promising to be much more quirky but just as quaff-able, the Natural Wine Fair will be at Borough Market from 15-17 May. Check last week’s Food & Drink News round up for more info.

Old school Indian resto, Malabar Junction, is celebrating 15 years in Bloomsbury (nestled between TCR and the British Museum on Great Russell St) by hiring a new chef and introducing a new a la carte menu. Service was gentlemanly and with broad smiles on our recent invited visit, and we can vouch that the garlic mogo (cassava mariated in turmeric and tossed with ginger, garlic and herbs into a dry serving, £6) makes a seating in the restaurant’s lovely conservatory moreishly worthwhile.

Ever capitalising on the success of others (but in a most delicious way), the foodie thieves of the underground supper club scene, Stolen, are throwing a masquerade night on Friday May 20 from 7.30pm to midnight. The event is BYOB but not BYOM as masks will be provided on arrival. Our past experience with Stolen was memorably tasty. Check their Facebook page for details about the masked meal.

With the opening of the new Benito’s Hat on Great Castle Street near Oxford Circus, the now three-strong chain of London-based Mexican restaurants is promising not only to serve Latin inspired dishes but also to share the visual vibrancy of Mexico with its customers. To celebrate the opening of its new location, a “Hat’s Off to Mexican Street Photography” exhibition is on show now and through the summer featuring photography by a handful of young photographers from Mexico City. The exhibition is the first to be shown in the new resto’s downstairs gallery, where exhibitions of artwork are to change on a regular basis.

Hardens is accepting restaurant reviews for its 2012 restaurant guide. The deadline is midnight Monday 16 May. Keep in mind everyone who participates gets a free copy of the guide. Get started here.

source : http://londonist.com/2011/05/london-food-drink-news-12-may-2011.php?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=london-food-drink-news-12-may-2011

It's the end of the world; how do you feel?

At church Sunday, I watched a baby being baptized. I listened to a Gospel reading and a homily. I filled out a survey about youth group schedules.

I didn't hear a word about Judgment Day coming this week.

Do you know about this? Are you concerned?

For months, a California-based Christian radio network has been forecasting -- very precisely -- the end of the world. According to the Family Radio website, www.familyradio.com, "Holy God will bring Judgment Day on May 21, 2011."

The website credits 89-year-old Harold Camping, president and general manager of Family Stations, Inc., with what it purports are biblical signs and proofs that Saturday is Judgment Day.

Camping says several things will happen: The first is a terrible earthquake, which is to be followed by what many Christians call the Rapture -- the bodily ascent to heaven of all believers. Then, according to Camping, months of "horror and chaos" will end when God destroys the earth Oct. 21.

Interviewed for a CNN blog Tuesday, Camping said much information points to 6 p.m. as the time the earthquake will occur "in any city of in the world," although he didn't say for sure that a doomsday clock is set that hour.

I don't mean to cause alarm. And this probably isn't the first time you've heard this prediction. I first learned about it a few weeks ago on a radio talk show. Online I found lots of coverage of Camping's claims, including in The Washington Post and other major newspapers.

If you attended the Greg Laurie Harvest Crusade at Seattle's KeyArena last fall, you might have seen an RV nearby with Family Radio's Judgment Day announcement painted on the side. To spread its message, the network put up billboards and sent caravans to cities around the country. In downtown Seattle, Family Radio representatives handed out religious tracts last Halloween.

The Rev. Erik Samuelson, campus pastor of Trinity Lutheran College in Everett, said Tuesday that throughout Christian history people have predicted the world's end. Especially in times of war and turmoil, he said, "people get scared."

"It comes up any time there is widespread cultural panic," said Samuelson, adding that Camping has predicted the world's end before, in the 1990s.

"As the world seems more and more uncertain, people who buy into it are really looking for certainty," he said. Samuelson also said that in mainline Christian traditions, "there's a mysteriousness about how God works in the world."

"We don't get to know exactly," he said.

Samuelson is troubled to see people finding ways to profit from others' fears. "A lot of people use fear to make money and gain fame," said Samuelson, who has heard and read about people draining their savings in advance of the supposed Judgment Day.

Camping, a native of Boulder, Colo., was featured in a recent Denver Post article that included statistics about Americans' beliefs about whether we are living in end times. A 2010 Pew Research poll, quoted in the article, found 41 percent of Americans believe Jesus will return within the next 40 years.

"Every generation since the first century of the church has had those who try to calculate the end," said Jan Fekkes, a professor of biblical studies at Everett's Trinity Lutheran College. Fekkes, who earned a doctoral degree with his studies of the Book of Revelation, saw Judgment Day billboards on a recent trip to California.

"Probably the most similar example would be the predictions of William Miller in the 1840s, who twice predicted the end using complicated calculations of the books of Daniel and Revelation," Fekkes said. The "Millerite movement," he said, was a precursor to the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

Not the least of the problems with the May 21 prediction are Jesus' own words that "no one knows the day or hour," Fekkes said.

Samuelson sees trust and caring, not doom, as Christianity's central messages.

"Jesus said don't be afraid," the college pastor said.

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; muhlstein@heraldnet.com.

By Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist

source :http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20110518/NEWS01/705189841

Queen revisits ghosts of Ireland's "Bloody Sunday"

(Reuters) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth will undertake one of the most daring diplomatic engagements of her reign on Wednesday when she steps onto the pitch of Ireland's Croke Park stadium, scene of a massacre by British troops.

Before her visit to the country's national stadium the queen laid a wreath of poppies in honor of the near 50,000 Irish soldiers who died fighting for Britain in World War One, a group often overlooked in Irish history.

In her four-day state visit, the first by a British monarch since Ireland won its independence from London in 1921, the queen has shown a determination to address the bloody past and offer powerful gestures of reconciliation.

Ireland hailed her decision to lay a wreath in honor of Irish people killed fighting for independence from the British crown on Tuesday, and on the streets of Dublin people hoped Wednesday's visit to Croke Park would reinforce that effect.

Croke Park, the home of Irish sports, is an iconic place for nationalists. During Ireland's war for independence in 1920, British troops machine-gunned the crowd in retaliation for the killing of 14 British intelligence officers the night before.

Fourteen civilians, one aged 10, were killed and "Bloody Sunday," a rallying cry for the nationalist cause, was born.

"If it is handled as well as the wreath-laying that would be great," said Cormac Flood, 34. "If she goes there and acknowledges what happened that would be good. She is better off handling these issues head on."

Even a few years ago, the presence of the queen, the commander in chief of British armed forces, on such sacred nationalist turf would have been too much for many Irish people.

But a 1998 deal ending Irish nationalists' guerrilla war against British rule and British Prime Minister David Cameron's apology for Northern Ireland's "Bloody Sunday" last year has paved the way.

THE PERFECT PINT

Before her engagement in Croke Park at around 1400 GMT (10 a.m. EDT), the queen visited the Guinness Brewery in central Dublin and was presented with the "perfect pint" of stout.

Her majesty did not imbibe.

Dressed in a turquoise hat and a matching coat of Swiss wool, the queen also met Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny.

Accompanied by her husband, the Duke of Edinburgh, the queen chatted with Kenny and his wife in front of a portrait of Michael Collins, the revolutionary leader who ordered the assassination of British spies the night before "Bloody Sunday."

Later on Wednesday, Kenny will meet David Cameron, who is making his first official visit to Ireland to attend that evening's state banquet where the queen will make a speech.

The threat from militant nationalists opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process means security around the queen is tight. There are no public walkabouts and streets around venues have been cleared of onlookers.

Irish police, out in force around the capital, have had to deal with a number of security alerts and the army destroyed a makeshift bomb on a bus headed for Dublin late on Monday night.

Police arrested 21 people on Tuesday after a protest against the queen visiting Ireland's shrine to its nationalist heroes turned ugly with bricks, bottles and fireworks thrown at police.

Several hundred people took part in demonstrations on Tuesday that were condemned by the majority of Irish.

(Editing by Jodie Ginsberg and Sonya Hepinstall)

Source : http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/05/18/us-ireland-queen-idUSTRE74H2NW20110518