Archive for October 19th, 2009

New Orleans makes its case for Mayweather-Pacquiao megafight

Oct 19

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As Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather inch closer towards a proposed mega-fight — Mayweather has already agreed to terms and the AP reported on Friday that Pacquiao, who hosted Top Rank promoter Bob Arum in the Philippines this week, has also accepted the deal — several key points are coming into focus.

The agreed-upon date is March 13. The weight, according to an industry source, will be the 147-pound welterweight limit. And the venue? Eh, that’s not so clear.

Major cities across the country are clamoring for the opportunity to host Pacquiao-Mayweather, arguably the biggest fight in more than a decade and one that represents 10 of millions in revenue for the winning city.

The usual — along with a few unusual — suspects have already lined up. Las Vegas, home to the majority of major fights, has the MGM Grand and Mandalay Bay properties ready to go, and has proposed erecting a 30,000-seat outdoor stadium on Las Vegas Boulevard to accommodate the expected demand for tickets.

Executives from the Staples Center in Los Angeles have expressed interest.

New York officials have lobbied to hold the fight in the new Yankee Stadium.

In Dallas, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has spoken with Arum about putting the fight in his new $1.3 billion, 111,000-seat Cowboy Stadium.

But there is one venue that has intrigued representatives from both Pacquiao’s and Mayweather’s camps: New Orleans.

Though not generally thought of as a boxing hotbed — the last fight of any significance in the Big Easy was Roy Jones Jr.’s light heavyweight title fight against Eric Harding in 2000 — the city does have a rich history. It hosted the first world heavyweight title fight in recorded history when Jem Mace defeated Tom Allen in nearby Kennerville. In 1978, the Superdome was the host when Muhammad Ali reclaimed the heavyweight title from Leon Spinks to become the first three-time heavyweight champ in history. Two years later, it was the site of the infamous “No Mas” fight between Roberto Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard, which ended when Duran suddenly and inexplicably waved the fight off in the eighth round.

The city also has a heavyweight advocate James Carville, a former White House advisor-turned-political analyst, who has been burning up the phone lines promoting his hometown.

“I’ve let the parties involved know that we would like to make a presentation,” Carville said in a telephone interview. “Down here, we have a lot to offer.”

Carville’s pitch emphasizes New Orleans’ ability to not only host a fight, but also a major event. Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest, Voodoo Fest and the Essence Festival are hosted annually by the city, and the NBA’s 2008 All-Star game in New Orleans was so successful that the league is contemplating going back in the near future.

“If [the promoters] are looking at it just as a fight, we make as much sense as anyplace else,” said Carville. If they are looking at it as an event, we make more sense than anywhere else. We can do a lot of creative things and we can do a better job of making it an entire event.”

Still, money talks in boxing and though New Orleans could pack a sizeable crowd into the Superdome (a spokesman for the stadium said 70,000 seats could be available for the fight), Louisiana’s 6-percent income tax looms as a major obstacle. Neither Nevada nor Texas has a state income tax, and Arum told SI.com recently that any city hosting this fight would have to be a tax-free zone.

“It doesn’t make sense otherwise,” said Arum.

To that end, Carville has worked with representatives from Governor Bobby Jindal’s office to come up with enough tax credits to make the city palatable or to waive the tax entirely.

“I’ve talked with enough people to feel pretty comfortable saying we can get [the tax issue] done.”

Carville says that when negotiations for the fight location begin in earnest, it should be a public process.

“I think that the best thing for the sport would be to open up the process,” Carville said. “Everyone should make their pitches public. That kind of openness would create a whole different mood around this event. Let Dallas talk about what they have to offer. Let Las Vegas. Let us. These two athletes deserve a hell of exhibition. Let’s give it to them.”

Information Storage

Oct 19

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When we store information in some kind of circuit or device, we not only need some way to store and retrieve it, but also to locate precisely where in the device that it is. Most, if not all, memory devices can be thought of as a series of mail boxes, folders in a file cabinet, or some other metaphor where information can be located in a variety of places. When we refer to the actual information being stored in the memory device, we usually refer to it as the data. The location of this data within the storage device is typically called the address, in a manner reminiscent of the postal service. With some types of memory devices, the address in which certain data is stored can be called up by means of parallel data lines in a digital circuit (we’ll discuss this in more detail later in this lesson). With other types of devices, data is addressed in terms of an actual physical location on the surface of some type of media (the tracks and sectors of circular computer disks, for instance). However, some memory devices such as magnetic tapes have a one-dimensional type of data addressing: if you want to play your favorite song in the middle of a cassette tape album, you have to fast-forward to that spot in the tape, arriving at the proper spot by means of trial-and-error, judging the approximate area by means of a counter that keeps track of tape position, and/or by the amount of time it takes to get there from the beginning of the tape. The access of data from a storage device falls roughly into two categories: random access and sequential access. Random access means that you can quickly and precisely address a specific data location within the device, and non-random simply means that you cannot. A vinyl record platter is an example of a random-access device: to skip to any song, you just position the stylus arm at whatever location on the record that you want (compact audio disks so the same thing, only they do it automatically for you). Cassette tape, on the other hand, is sequential. You have to wait to go past the other songs in sequence before you can access or address the song that you want to skip to.

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Bhopal still continues to suffer after industrial disorder

Oct 19

Posted by admin in Health | No Comments

The world’s worst industrial disaster took place 25 years ago, in central India.  A chemical leak at the plant of the Indian subsidiary of an American corporation, Union Carbide, poisoned an estimated half million residents of the city of Bhopal. The death toll remains disputed, but certainly thousands died in the ensuing days and thousands more are believed to have succumbed to gas-related diseases since then.

For a quarter of a century, the scenic and historic city of Bhopal has been synonymous with disaster – the tragic leak of methyl isocyanate (MIC), a pesticide ingredient, along with other toxins.

On the evening of December 2nd, 1984, workers were cleaning choked pipes and water somehow entered the MIC tank.   Was it an accident, negligence, incompetence or sabotage?   The debate on that continues.  What is certain is that it triggered a runaway reaction that spewed a toxic gas cocktail that enveloped Bhopal.

Rashida Bee, who earned a few rupees a day hand-rolling cigarettes, lost seven family members that fateful night.

She recalls her eyes burning, as if someone was poking them with needles,” said Rashida Bee. “She says her lungs felt as if they would explode.  She pleaded for God to give her death. She opened her eyes to see a panicking crowd trampling over her body.

Bee joined other female survivors to form a union demanding employment, medical treatment and compensation. They have been holding demonstrations and hunger strikes ever since, sometimes going to jail for their activism.

During a tour of Shiv Nagar, a mixed low-income Hindu-Muslim neighborhood, children with birth defects and mental retardation are brought outside.

Government-sanctioned medical research and monitoring of the health effects of the gas leak stopped in 1994. But Nafeeza Bee Khan is certain that chemicals still in the area’s soil or that seeped into the drinking water continue to cause health problems.

Khan says a generation which inhaled the gas had children who were born sick.  And, that  they are giving birth to another generation of handicapped babies.  Khan says no one seems to understand that the contaminated land still needs to be cleaned.

Three evaporation ponds for the defunct plant remain and are used by some people as a communal bath and toilet.  Right next to these toxic bodies of water, slum-dwellers displaced by highway construction are building homes.

Officials from the city to the federal level privately tell victims and reporters it is time for Bhopal to get on with life and put the tragedy behind it.

In light of scant public support, 100,000 survivors turn to the Sambhavna Trust Clinic for their medical care.  It offers modern and traditional therapies for free and relies on individual donations.

It is run by Sathyu Sarangi, a metallurgist who rushed to Bhopal to volunteer immediately after the gas leak and never left.


“From the kinds of communications that we have had with the officials of the government, including the prime minister, what it appears to us is that investment by foreign corporations is way higher priority for the government than looking after the needs of its own people,” said Sathyu Sarangi.

Gas survivor Rashida Bee has won international acclaim for her activism.  She shares that assessment.

She says she is ashamed to say that the Indian government and American officials heed the wishes of the big corporations, dancing to their tune, because they need the money.

But Sathyu Sarangi, of the Sambhavana Clinic, is optimistic that big money means the victims will one day prevail.  He points out that Dow Chemical – which bought Union Carbide – has not been able to resume manufacturing in India because of the unresolved Bhopal legacy.

“For the last eight years, it has not been able to make any serious investment in India,” he said. “And, the one thing that is stopping them is the struggle of the people of Bhopal, of the have-nots in Bhopal and the support they have got from all over the country.”

Dow declined repeated requests for comment, referring media to statements on its corporate web site. Union Carbide paid nearly half a billion dollars to India, a decade before Dow bought the company in 2001.  Thus Dow says, it “has no responsibility for Bhopal” and has tried to do all it can “to assure that similar incidents never happen again.”

Some scientists say the decaying plant, still containing hundreds of tons of waste, remains so toxic no one should step inside.

However, the government of the state of Madhya Pradesh wants to open it up to the public for the 25th anniversary, with the country’s environment minister contending the chemical residue is no longer harmful.

In the gas-affected slums, such government assurances have little credence.  Many Bhopalis believe they have been repeatedly lied to since that fateful night, 25 years ago, exemplified by un-kept promises of adequate compensation and health care.