Thursday 25 March 2010

Lady Gaga: A new Madonna making pop history




She had amazing success ...

And though times may have changed, Joan Jett and Steven Van Zandt have some tips for the pop star after her recent near collapse onstage in New Zealand.

"I'll tell you, the Runaways, when we started, we didn't have this sort of craziness around us. Really the only time when there was insanity, as far as the press goes, was Japan ... it wasn't a 24-hour media world at that point," Jett told PEOPLE at the Tommy Hilfiger-sponsored New York premiere of "The Runaways," which portrays the ascent of Jett and Cherie Currie to rock icons.

"I think it's very difficult if you had to be dealing with this all the time. It's tough to incubate and do the work you need to do with people in your face."

Currie's concern for Lady Gaga, who she believes is "very good," is less about media and more about managing expectations and staying sober.

"You know you have got to try to keep your wits about you," Currie, who served as a drug counselor after leaving the Runaways, said. "There is so much expected from you. But try to limit yourself to just two ... as long as it is in drinking form, just two [drinks]."

Also on hand was and talking about drinking was Van Zandt, of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band.

"My first advice would be to hydrate," he said. "Drink more water. You do need to drink a lot of water onstage. We also have a substance that we drink during a show that has electrolytes. But I think, she really seems to have a good grip on celebrity, not talking it particularly seriously."

Her little monsters would agree.


Image: www.rocketball.eu

Monday 22 March 2010

Tiger Woods gave two interviews




Tiger Woods gave five minute interviews with the Golf Channel and ESPN today and talked about getting “out of control” and being “disgusted” with his behavior. Interviewed at the Isleworth Country Club in Windermere, Fla., Woods also talked about how he thinks his late father would react if he were alive today. ”He’d be very disappointed in me,” Woods told Golf Channel’s Kelly Tilghman. “We’d have numerous long talks. That’s one of the things I miss, I miss his guidance, wish I could have had his guidance through all this to have him straighten me up.”

Woods, whose eyes appeared red while talking to Tilghman, talked about his experience in rehabilitation even though he didn’t specify why he was undergoing treatment. “Being there for 45 days you learn a lot,” he said. “You strip away the denial, the rationalization and you come to the truth and the truth is very painful at times and to stare at yourself and look at the person you’ve become…you become disgusted.”

When asked how he got out of control, Woods explained it was because he was “going against core values, quit meditating, I quit being a Buddhist. I felt I was entitled. I hurt so many people by my reckless attitude and behavior.” As for the children who consider him a role model, Woods hopes time will heal all wounds. ”I’m trying to become a better person each and every day. The proof in pudding is over time.”


Woods told Tilghman that he plans to continue seeking therapy and is now wearing a Buddhist bracelet that represents “protection and strength.” As for the state of his marriage, Woods would only say “we are working on it” and left it at that.

He recognizes that he’s become a punch line for many people. “It was hurtful. I did it. I’m the one who did those things,” he told the Golf Channel. “Looking back on it now, I get it. I can understand why people would say those things. It was disgusting behavior, it was hard to believe it was me.”

Over on ESPN, Woods talked to Tom Rinaldi about why he felt the need to issue a public apology. “I owe a lot of people an apology. I hurt a lot of people. Not just my wife. My friends, my colleagues, the public, kids who looked up to me. There were a lot of people that thought I was a different person.”

As for returning to play golf April 8 at the Masters, Woods told ESPN, “I still have a lot of treatment to do. Just because I’m playing doesn’t mean I’m gonna stop going to treatment.”


Image: www.rocketball.eu

Monday 8 March 2010

Tim Berners-Lee: The Father of the World wide web



Unlike so many of the inventions that have moved the world, this one was truly the work of one man. Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, but he was not alone - dozens of people in his lab were working on it. William Shockley invented the transistor, but two of his research assistants actually built it. And if there ever was a thing that was made by a committee, it is the Internet. But the World Wide Web is Berners-Lee's creation alone. He threads of the Internet into a worldwide web. With this, he created a mass medium for the 21st century. He gave it to the world. And he has fought to keep it open and free. Everybody knows that with a mouse, a modern and access to the Internet these days you can point and click anywhere on the planet - time and space or long distances are not an obstacle.

It started in the Swiss Alps. The year was 1980. Berners-Lee was a software engineer at the Europeen Laboratory for Practical Physics in Geneva. He was struggling to find a way to organize his notes. He was interested in programs that organized the information in a "brain-like" way: the brain is good at remembering associations. So he deviced a piece of software that connected all the associations in real life. In other words. Berners-Lee designed a kind of hypertext notebook. Words in a file were linked to other files on his computer; he could follow a link and automatically find the related document. It worked splendidly.

The next step was to add information that was on somebody else's computer. He developed an easy-to-learn coding system - HTML, Hypertext Mark-Up Language. He opened up his documents and his computer to everyone and allowed them to link their information to his. The coding system has become the language of communicationa of the Web.

Then Berners-Lee designed an addressing system which gave each Web page a unique location site. And he devised a set of rules that linked these documents together on computers across the Internet.

And on the seventh day, Berners-Lee created WWW's first browser. It allowed users anywhere to view his creation on their computer screens. This brought order and clarity to the chaos that was cyberspace. From that moment on, the Web and the Internet grew as one.

Image: www.rocketball.eu