Unbelieably Boring Finals

This has to be the most boring NBA Finals ever. Even their ad campaign shows how desperate they are by enlisting David Blaine to "spice" things up. Maybe his new stunt is to endure the slow, ponderous, low scoring games like he had to endure all that time in the glass box and underwater.

This last game was an absolute joke and had a college basketball score as well. Too bad the NBA can't inject a little March Madness into what has become the June Slog. I just want the Spurs to finish the Cavs off as fast and possible so we can fast forward to football season arleady.

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/13/07

+$1,661.71 +3.59%

Sheriff to the Stars Lee Baca on the hotseat

They should recall this guy and get someone in there who doesn't coddle celebrities at the expense of regular lawbreakers.

At a morning hearing, County Supervisors Mike Antonovich and Yvonne B.
Burke said that Baca must outline why Hilton was allowed to go home as opposed to the other inmates at Century Regional Detention Facility compatriots
complaining of emotional and physical problems, especially since Los Angeles
Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer expressly forbade home detention and
electronic monitoring in his sentencing ruling.

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/12/07

-$761.00 -1.62%

Paris Wall-To-Wall Sad Commentary of News Media

Even Variety is dumping on the wall-to-wall coverage of Paris going to jail, being put on house arrest and then heading back to jail again.

Story proved its irresistibility long after Hilton was again behind
bars. On Saturday, ABC's "Good Morning America" led with a story about
President Bush's visit to the Pope, but then quickly turned to Hilton.

"This is the decline of Western civilization as we know it, and
we're watching it live," TMZ.com's Harvey Levin told "GMA."

I followed the story how you would normally follow a celebrity story in the pages of the online gossip press like Defamer, A Socialites Life, and the Superficial. I wasn't even aware of the circus until we saw an OJ White Bronco style coverage of the Paris motorcade. Then we went from a gossip pages story to a media event with the real "old-school" 4th estate weighing in.

This shows how this celebrity culture that has grown to monstrous proportions in the last few years. All of this stuff belongs in the gossip pages and in the celebrity press and should never get out of the entertainment portion of Good Morning America.

This is essentially a story about a rich talentless girl who screwed up and now has to serve the time. No one died, or was murdered, or even got hurt. So the media can't use the "if it bleeds it leads" defence. I guess you can paint it as the justice system treating the rich and poor differently. It would actually have been newsworthy to compare Paris's sentence to national averages or interview other probation violators to see what their prison experiences were like.
Even getting man-on-the street interviews on what people though tabout Paris would be better then what they put on.

Instead they follow the Paris motorcade like it was an actual breaking news story and go into every twist and turn like it was something other then entertainment news. At least the Anna Nicole crappola had a dead person, a mystery, and the custody of a child to give it some legs.

I think it is up to news editors to police themselves and make sure a story about an heiress going to jail for a few weeks doesn't become more important then real news stories. They need to show integrity by keeping the entertainment news about entertainment and the "real news" as the "real news."

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/11/07

+$192.00 +0.41%

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/8/07

+$786.02 +1.70%

Acropolis, Chichen Itza lead 7 Wonders Race

It is shaping up to be a real big deal worldwide.

Some 50 million people have voted so far in the competition designed to
produce a 21st century list of the world's greatest man-made heritage sites, but
Tia Viering, a spokeswoman for the organization, said the result is wide
open.

I wonder why there is no American sites on the top list though. It might be anti-American rhetoric that bumped Mt. Rushmore, the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty off of the list? However the other sites on the list are pretty impressive though:

The most popular 10 sites so far include both the Taj Mahal and Christ
Redeemer, along with the Colosseum in Rome, the Eiffel Tower, the Great Wall of
China, Peru's Machu Picchu, Petra in Jordan, and the statues of Easter
Island.

J. Michels Uranium Index

-$1,052.02 -2.23%

Rise of the Religious Left?

I thought it was just lip service that Hillary has been giving to religious folks but there may be a real religious left brewing.

The candidates' easy willingness to appear at the forum also represents
a watershed for the modern Democratic Party: Intimate discussion of faith, and
how it informs policy views and personal behavior, is no longer an arms-length
proposition at the party's highest levels.

I guess the atheist, anti-God wing of the Democratic Party is starting to lose favor. It would seem that "progressive" values and religious values would have coincided years ago. I mean the Catholic Church has usually been anti-war, pro-peace, and anti-poverty for years. However, the reason why the religious left will never be as strong as the religious right is as follows:

But to some activists, especially those who are fighting to maintain
strict separation between church and state, the growth of a religious left
raises the risk that the public loses sight of the proper place of religion
and faith in government.

London Olympics Logo Causes Epileptic Fits

It is getting worse and worse for the "Ugliest Logo Ever Made"

Charity Epilepsy Action noted they had recieved calls from people
saying that they had seizures while watching the animated footage.

One person told BBC Radio London how both he and his girlfriend had
seizures when watching the film, leaving his girlfriend needing hospital
treatment.

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/6/07

-$1,353.00 -2.79%

Merger Mania in Uranium Space

Well one of the Uranium Index companies is going to be bought out.

Canadian uranium explorer and developer sxr Uranium One Inc. agreed to
buy Energy Metals Corp. in an all-stock deal valued at about $1.7 billion, fully
diluted, the companies said on Monday.

The price paid is $17.84 a share which was only a little higher then where the stock was trading when the deal was announced on Monday. This could mean that Uranium producers are fairly valued in the marketplace. It would have been nice if they had a 30% premium or something but oh well.

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/5/07

-424.00 -0.87%

London Olympics Logo Ugly as Sin

Now this is one crappy looking Olympic Logo.

I love the funny British responses in this article.

Bob Neill, 2012 Olympics spokesman for the main opposition Conservative
Party, was disparaging about Coe's optimism, despite him being a fellow Tory
lawmaker.

"Lord Coe has described this logo as 'ambitious, interactive and
youth-friendly'. I would describe it as hideous," he said.

"Questions need be answered as to how we have ended up in this
situation. Was there an open competition to supply the designs? If so, what on
earth do the rejected ones look like!

"We need to know how much money this exercise has cost, because
whatever it was, it's been a complete waste of money."

A poll by the BBC News website asked readers to give it a gold, silver
or bronze medal, or a wooden spoon if they really didn't like it. Eighty three
percent gave it a wooden spoon.

Weird Purple Frog Found

Now this is a pretty funky looking frog that was recently found in Surinam. It looks poisonous so I bet it would be a lousy pet

IPhone Launch Day June 29

I wonder is we will have insane Macnuts camped outside of Apple stores or AT&T cell phone places waiting to be first adopters of this thing.

Sunday night's ads showed off several of the gadget's features and
ended with the pronouncement that the phone will be available "Only on the new
AT&T" and "Coming June 29." One aired on the CW network before a 7 p.m.
broadcast of "7th Heaven."

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/4/07

+$279.01 +0.57%

Real World Denver Cast the Sickest Yet

I was watching the Real World Denver: The Shit they Should have Shown show last night and this cast is perhaps the grossest ever. Each one of these freaks did some sickening stuff. One roommate crapped in a mailing envelope instead of stopping the car like a regular person. While another got drunk and left his poop in his underwear and then threw the underwear poop and all into the washing machine. And a third peed in the corner of the house instead on in the toilet and didn't remember a thing afterward. Finally, one person had a jellyfish sting (or so she though) and 2 cast members peed on her.

They were also drunk and disorderly throughout the show. You couldn't count the times when someone said they were passed out or couldn't remember what they did. One cast member even got so drunk that she kept puking until they had to take her to the doctor. Also one cast member named Jenn was a full-blown alcoholic and was drunk maybe 90% of the times they showed her. She seemed to get drunk every single night no matter what and would black out and not remember what she did. She would cook food, hook up, and generally stagger around in a Tara Reid stupor almost all the time.

Whatever the case this Real World showed a terrible trend when it came to 20 somethings. They kept saying over and over that they were in their 20s and that justified being serial hook-up artists, alcoholics, and not showing general hygiene or common sense. They repeatedly engaged in the most destructive behavior and the shows producers glorified it. The Real World message is you can get fall down drunk every night, hook-up with whomever, crap wherever you want and there are no consequences.

I could just hear Jenn in a drunken stupor yell "You don't know me!" Well, we may not know the real you Jenn; but the one portrayed on the Real world is a statistic waiting to happen. Go to AA and maybe your late 20s won't be a spiral out of control ending in firefighters pulling your mangled corpse out of a car at 3AM. It sure would have been nice if the producers of the Real World showed that this behavior came with a price but they were too busy getting everyone drunk to "spice up the show." I guess you can't expect much from MTV nowadays.

J. Michels Uranium Index 6/1/07

+$636.00 +1.32%