PETA to Janet Jackson: You're Nasty!

PETA doesn't care that Super Bowl viewers saw a glimpse of Janet Jackson's boob a few years ago.

This irritating organization is far more concerned over the fact that the singer is wearing a fur coat in a new promotional ad for her Blackgama clothing line, as seen here:

Naming Jackson its Grinch of the Year, PETA issued a statement this week that reads:

"When Janet Jackson had her infamous 'wardrobe malfunction' during the Super Bowl, at least the flesh that popped into view was her own. Unlike the stolen animal skins that she drapes herself with, which are as dead as her taste in fashion (not to mention her career). Ms. Jackson, you're just plain nasty."

And PETA knows a thing or two about nastiness. In order to drum up attention for itself animals, the company is starting a porn site.

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/12/peta-to-janet-jackson-youre-nasty/

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HEINEKEN USA Appoints Jeffrey Colbert as Region Vice President Sales, Central Region

Dec 26 2011 --- HEINEKEN USA announces the appointment of Jeffrey Colbert as Region Vice President Sales, Central Region, effective immediately. In his new role, Colbert will report to Scott Blazek, Senior Vice President of Sales, and will be responsible for driving HUSA performance and delivering results through the effective management of regional resources.

?Jeff brings a strong history of leadership and success in the beverage industry to the HEINEKEN USA Sales Management Team,? said Blazek. ?We are thrilled to welcome him to the helm of our Central Region, where he will lead a team of more than 80 sales and marketing professionals to drive business results and establish a success-oriented culture in the region.?

At HEINEKEN USA, Colbert will be responsible for establishing Central Region objectives, strategies and tactics, and guiding account planning. He will oversee relationships with HEINEKEN distributor partners and key regional accounts, as well as assess and improve the effectiveness of retail executions that support brand development to ensure delivery of company objectives.

Colbert brings more than 26 years of sales and marketing management experience to HEINEKEN USA. Most recently, Colbert served as Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Tenth & Blake Beer Company in Chicago, IL, where he oversaw the company?s overall commercial strategy and business development which included sales, brand marketing, innovation, channel marketing and customer solutions as well as the organizations internally focused learning and development goals.

Prior to Tenth & Blake, Colbert held several positions of increased responsibility in the beer industry including Region VP, Southwest for MillerCoors; Area VP, South Central Region for Coors Brewing Company; Region VP, Southern Region for MolsonCoors; and General Manager Southwest Region for the Miller Brewing Company. Prior to working in the beer industry, Colbert held sales and general management positions with Coca-Cola Enterprises in Massachusetts.

Colbert holds a Bachelor degree from The University of New Hampshire, Whittemore School of Business and Economics. He will be based in HEINEKEN USA?s Chicago, IL office.

Source: http://www.foodingredientsfirst.com/news/HEINEKEN-USA-Appoints-Jeffrey-Colbert-as-Region-Vice-President-Sales-Central-Region.html

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Another Tainted Milk Scare In China

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Shares of China Mengniu Dairy tumbled 23% on holiday-thinned trading in Hong Kong on Wednesday, after the company said it had destroyed a batch of milk that was found to have high levels of a carcinogen.

None of the contaminated products are believed to have made it onto store shelves, according to a statement from Mengniu. The country?s largest milk producer blamed moldy feed given to cows for producing milk with excessive levels of flavacin M1, a toxin linked to liver cancer.

?The milk, produced on October 18, contained flavacin levels of 1.2 micrograms per kilogram?140 times higher than the country?s permitted level,? said a report from China?s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

The tainted milk was discovered on Dec. 24 in boxed milk products from the company?s plant at Meishan, in China?s southwestern Sichuan province.

Mengniu?s reassurances seems to have done little to ease the concerns of jittery investors and consumers harboring strong memories of melamine-tainted formula milk that killed at least six babies and sickened an estimated 300,000 infants in 2008.

Since then, Mengniu (which literally means ?Mongolian cow?) spent more than $500 million to upgrade its supply chain, buying shares in 14 megaranches around the country, contracting with other large farms and establishing uniform inspections and quality standards.

Headquartered in the remote Inner Mongolian capital of Hohhot, Mengniu?s business not only recovered from the scandal but thrived over the past two years. Mengniu debuted on our Fab 50 list of the best publicly listed companies in Asia in 2010 on the back of its double-digit-percentage growth in annual sales. This year, the company?s earnings jumped another 28% to 780 million yuan ($123 million) in the first half.

Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertolsen/2011/12/28/another-tainted-milk-scare-in-china/

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Source: http://www.fcsafekids.org/2011/12/22/possible-opportunity-to-contain-cheap-car-insurance-rather-quickly-in-the-present-day/

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Alistair Overeem is in for UFC 141, but still fighting battle against rumor mill

The last thing Alistair Overeem needed was any sort of performance enhancing drug testing snafu heading into the biggest fight of his career in the U.S. But that's exactly what happened to the behemoth from Holland.

Overeem, his camp and the Nevada State Athletic Commission had some communications issues. When the NSAC asked for a random drug test sample in mid-November, there was a five-day lapse, the incorrect sample was sent in and it was done by Overeem's personal physician administered the original test. It's all been worked out, Overeem satisfied the state's requirement and his fight against Brock Lesnar at UFC 141 is on, but it just adds another odd chapter for folks who are suspicious over the fighter's enormous growth since 2007.

"You can't get bothered too much by all the stuff that's written," Overeem told the Boston Herald. "To be honest, I don't really have time to read it all because training takes a lot of energy. All the activities that come with being a fighter and fighting at this level take a lot of my energy, so I don't have enough time to read it all."

At 6-foot-5, Overeem always had the frame to add more weight, but his gain from a 205-pounder to around 256 has been amazing in just four years.

"Some of it's not nice and people accuse you of stuff and hate a little bit. But if you're going to be in this position, there will always be people who love you and there will always be people who hate you," Overeem said.

"The Reem" is 10-1 since his move to heavyweight. There's a case to be made that he's become a better fighter now that he's not stripping himself down to make 205. In any case, the extra weight allows him to square off against those perceived by casual fans as the biggest and baddest in the sport.

"I think the fight between Brock and me is a dream fight," Overeem said. "I never thought about the possibility of me fighting him in the UFC. I was fighting outside of the UFC and I didn't see the fight coming, maybe ever. The way things went, I'm very happy I got the opportunity."

Of course, the argument could also be made that a 225-pound Overeem might stand a better shot against the gargantuan Lesnar. Speed, movement and technique, not pure power has been the path to beating the former WWE star during his short MMA career.

Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/blog/cagewriter/post/Alistair-Overeem-is-in-for-UFC-141-but-still-fi?urn=mma-wp10964

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[OOC] Now or Never

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Please post all "Players Wanted" threads in the Roleplayers Wanted forum!

This topic is an Out Of Character part of the roleplay, ?Now or Never?. Anything posted here will also show up there.

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Forum for completely Out of Character (OOC) discussion, based around whatever is happening In Character (IC). Discuss plans, storylines, and events; Recruit for your roleplaying game, or find a GM for your playergroup.
This is the auto-generated OOC topic for the roleplay "Now or Never"

You may edit this first post as you see fit.

xxdarkglass

Member for 0 years

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The seting is now in a place once known as North America. This area, called Foravia, is heavily forested and monuments like the White House are overrun by nature and the rest of the world is decorated with lavish Korie architecture. Korie are a new version of werewolves. They've mastered the art of shape-shifting and turning into the night howlers at will while the full moon has no effect on them whatsoever, partly because most of the sky is blocked out by Garan, the Lanais country, causing Korie to have high sensitivity to sunlight.
Up above, in Goran a floating haven for Lamais, life is very enjoyable, much like that of the Lamais. Lamais are new age vampires. Since their world is so close to the sky, their weakness to the sun rays has vanished completely. Thirteens, what humans are called, are becoming scarce and rebellious towards both the Lamais and Korie. This scarcity has been going on long enough for Lamais to no longer need blood from Thirteens because their own blood, thick as it may be, carries the same things that the Thirteen's blood does with one more thing. Immortality. The very thing the Thirteens yearn for...
There hasn't been a war in many millennium, and they cause so much worry and stress on both sides that no one really wants one besides the Thirteens who are having wars amongst themselves over land, food and shelter. The Lamais and Korie have an agreement between them which gives them a sense of peace, tranquility and understanding. Since neither race really needs the Thirteens anymore, they're unsure if they should kill them all or turn them into their own kind. Neither would be a problem since there's only 20 Thirteens, but some of the Lamais and Korie have fallen in love with few of them...
The leaders of the two elite races have decided to kill all of the thirteens in the near future, how will those smitten Lamais and Korie react? A rumor has been going around about a war starting up with rebels in each of the races. What will become of all this?

xxdarkglass

Member for 0 years

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Southwest, plains face blizzard watch (Reuters)

AUSTIN. Texas. (Reuters) ? A blizzard watch is in effect until Tuesday for parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas as a severe winter storm is expected to bring high winds and up to a foot of snow there on Sunday night and Monday, according to the National Weather Service.

The storm was expected to edge into the mountains of Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado before heading east on Sunday night or Monday morning, the agency said in a statement. The areas were under winter weather advisories or watches on Sunday.

A blizzard watch means forecasters believe life-threatening winter weather conditions are likely, including winds of at least 35 mph and visibility less than a quarter mile.

As the United States readies for a week of holiday travel, weather officials warned of dangerous road conditions on Sunday and Monday in the plains. The storm is expected to bring heavy rains and high-elevation snow to the mountains of Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona on Sunday afternoon before moving east.

"It is likely that slippery areas will develop Sunday and progress to the east over the high ground along I-40 in Arizona and New Mexico," meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said on Accuweather.com.

"As snow spills out over the southern High Plains Sunday night and Monday, snow is likely to fall and accumulate in part of I-40 stretching across the northern Texas Panhandle and Route 54 reaching northeastward into southern Kansas."

The mix of rain and snow will move through eastern Kansas on Monday night and into the Chicago and Detroit areas on Tuesday, forecasters said.

(Writing by Karen Brooks, editing by Ian Simpson)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/weather/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111218/us_nm/us_weather_storm

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Alyson Hannigan: Pregnant With Baby #2!

How I Met Your Mother star Alyson Hannigan is going to be a mother - again!

The actress was photographed yesterday chatting on her cell phone wearing jeans, a vest and thin red crocheted sweater, revealing an undeniable baby bump.

"Alyson is thrilled to be pregnant!" a source close to the star says, while the star's rep confirmed the news. "She's been wearing baggy clothes to cover it."

Alyson Hannigan, her husband and daughter in April of this year.

Thankfully, Hannigan won't have to crouch behind a sofa or wear oversize dresses to hide her belly for long. Her TV character Lily is also currently expecting!

She and husband Alexis Denisof are already parents to daughter Satyana, 2. Married since 2003, Hannigan, 37, and Denisof, 45, met as stars of Buffy and Angel.

Congratulations to the happy, expanding family!

[Photo: WENN.com]

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2011/12/alyson-hannigan-pregnant-with-baby-2/

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IBM Acquires Emptoris in Smarter Commerce Move (NewsFactor)

IBM on Thursday announced an agreement to acquire a leader in the cloud and on-premise analytics software field. IBM will take over Emptoris for an undisclosed amount.

Emptoris makes software that works to add intelligence to procurement and supply-chain operations with spend, supplier and contract management. The acquisition is the latest addition to IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative the company launched earlier this year. The initiative aims to help companies respond to shifting customer buying patterns.

"Procurement officers need to manage the full engagement, integrating suppliers with key internal systems, and have the capability and visibility to manage compliance and mitigate supply risk," said Patrick Quirk, CEO of Emptoris. "That is the value we bring to the procurement organization."

Emptoris in Action

With the Emptoris acquisition, IBM builds on its capabilities in what it calls the "buy" aspect of Smarter Commerce, while also extending it to a new line of C-suite executives -- chief procurement officers. This growing list of decision makers includes chief information officers, chief financial officers, chief supply chain officers and chief marketing officers.

As IBM sees it, procurement and sourcing professionals increasingly need better supplier management, spend analysis and contract management solutions to lower sourcing costs and risks. Emptoris helps execs drive these benefits by automating vendor selection, negotiation, management and compliance.

Here's an example of Emptoris in action: A large global oil and gas company established a centralized sourcing network across its entire enterprise operating in more than 80 countries. The network allowed the firm to focus on the most strategic, highest-cost, frequently-purchased items. This brought speed, transparency and simplification to the sourcing process.

As a result, the company runs thousands of sourcing events per year, managing more than 15,000 suppliers in 10 languages, achieving more than 9 percent reduction on managed categories of goods.

IT's New Bar

"IBM is demonstrating that by moving forward in a very orderly and measured way, it is not only creating a large number of solutions that its customers can use to drive profits, but that it understands its customers' businesses in a very tangible, if not intimate way," said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. "That's the base of the Smarter Commerce strategy but it also creates a new bar for computing IT vendors to be able to meet."

King argued that it's no longer enough for IT vendors to sell hardware or databases or productivity software anymore. Rather, business organizations need IT vendors that understand the mechanics of their business and how technology can help them work better, smarter and faster.

"The world has become an increasingly competitive place, and the laggards get left behind and plowed over. Vendors like IBM in particular understand that. How many of the company's competitors understand that is open to speculation," King said.

"When we see this kind of strategy that IBM is pursuing in commerce, you can see how the company could take the basic template of what they are doing in commerce and extend it into almost any other industry. And that's precisely what I expect IBM to do in the coming months and years."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/software/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111215/tc_nf/81399

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Egypt Protests: Second Day Of Violence Rocks Cairo, 8 Killed

CAIRO, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Eight people have been killed as clashes between troops and protesters in central Cairo spilled over into a second day, Egyptian state television said on Saturday.

It also said that 303 people had been wounded in the unrest in the capital, whose centre has turned into a smoke-filled battleground in some of the most violent clashes since a popular uprising ousted President Hosni Mubarak last February.

Egypt's Dar al-Iftah, the body that issues Islamic fatwas (edicts), said one of its senior officials, Emad Effat, was among the dead, state news agency MENA said.

Clashes around government offices and parliament raged on after nightfall on Friday, with protesters throwing petrol bombs
and stones at soldiers who used batons and what witnesses said appeared to be electric cattle prods.

The violence has sharpened tensions between the ruling army and its opponents, and clouded a parliamentary vote set to bring Islamists, long repressed by Mubarak, to the verge of power.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/17/egypt-protests-second-day_n_1155121.html

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I Heard You Like Feedback Loops

In some labs, biology and computer science are converging. On the one hand, computer scientists are working towards creating computer chips inspired by the circuitry of the brain, and on the other, some synthetic biologists are aiming to create biological computers inside living cells. Scientists and engineers have seen biology inside computers and computers inside biology for a long time, and the weird and wonderful blending and mixing and overlapping of the two is only becoming more pronounced.

A really cool recent paper announced the construction of cyborg yeast: cells that contain engineered genetic pathways that can be controlled by external signals that come from a computer. The researchers took advantage of two proteins from plants that control how the plant behaves in response to different wavelengths of light?in red light the two proteins bind to each other and turn on a gene, in near-infrared light the proteins unbind and the gene turns off. The yeast can be engineered with these proteins so that the expression of a yellow fluorescent protein can be controlled by light.

Feedback
The way that both engineered systems and living cells are controlled depends on feedback loops. Positive feedback amplifies a signal, like when a microphone picks up the sound coming out of its speaker, which then goes back to the speaker and on and on in a screechy vicious cycle.

While positive feedback amplifies signals, negative feedback stabilizes them by outputting the opposite of the input signal. A thermostat is a negative feedback device; when the temperature gets higher than the set point, the thermostat turns down the heat, and when the temperature gets too low the thermostat turns the heat up. Negative feedback devices have been used in engineering since antiquity, but weren?t theoretically formalized until the James Clerk Maxwell?s paper ?On Governors? in 1868. Governors were part of steam engines and made sure that the speed of the engine was kept constant. When the engine speeds up, the spindle of the governor moves faster and the centrifugal force pushes the metal balls up, pulling a lever that turns down the engine throttle. When the engine slows down the balls go back down and the throttle opens.

In the 1940s, researchers working in electrical engineering, control theory, communication theory, and neuroscience began to see feedback loops everywhere in both engineering and biology. A new field was born that brought together biology and engineering, with biology interpreted through engineering paradigms and engineering design influenced by how biological systems are controlled. In Cybernetics: or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, Norbert Wiener discusses naming this new field:

[A]s happens so often to scientists, we have been forced to coin at least one artificial neo-Greek expression to fill the gap. We have decided to call the entire field of control and commuication theory, whether in the machine or in the animal, by the name Cybernetics, which we form from the Greek ?????????? or steersman. In choosing this term, we wish to recognize?Clerk Maxwell?and that governor is derived from the Latin corruption of ??????????.

Feedback is everywhere in biology, from neural circuits to hormonal pathways to gene expression loops, maintaining homeostasis or amplifying signals like those that control embryo development. Norbert Wiener began to see the connections between control theory and biology when trying to build systems for shooting down airplanes during World War II. Feedback was necessary to constantly figure out how far off the system was from the plane and adjust accordingly. As happens so often in science, the crucial realization came from understanding how feedback loops fail; when there is a delay between the signal input and the negative feedback loop output, the output can overshoot the desired target and set the system into an uncontrolled oscillation as the feedback loop constantly tries to stabilize the system and overshoots the target from above and below. Wiener wondered whether the feedback loops guiding the anti-aircraft missiles had any similarity to the feedback loops that guide how the brain senses the position of the body and makes adjustments. Talking to a neurologist he learned that a similar condition occurs after some kinds of injuries to the cerebellum, where a patient will overshoot when trying to reach something and go into an oscillation known as a purpose tremor. The feedback loop that tells the brain how far away the hand is from the object isn?t getting the signal fast enough to stabilize the hand?s motion, setting off the oscillation. Much more recently, these kinds of oscillations have shown up in negative feedback genetic circuits, where a gene turns itself off. When there is a delay between when the gene is activated and when the protein is produced, the activity of the gene will oscillate with a period that depends on the length of the delay.

One fascinating part of Wiener?s Cybernetics discusses how ?black boxes,? systems where we know the input and the output but none of the internal processing, can be synthesized through the connection of multiple ?white boxes,? simple systems whose internal workings are pre-defined. While I don?t understand all of the electrical engineering equations involved with Wiener?s boxes, I think that this is a really interesting metaphor for synthetic biology. Synthetic biologists try to design and build biological functions, the ?black boxes? of the cell, by combining the ?white boxes? of genetic parts with well-characterized functions. Negative feedback loops can make switches, and oscillators, while positive feedback loops can amplify signals to help cells remember.

Cyborg Yeast
Designing a biological negative feedback loop that can keep the production of a protein constant is possible but very challenging, because even the best studied biological ?white boxes? can interact with the rest of the cell in mysterious ways. A collaborative project between the labs of Mustafa Khammash and John Lygeros at ETH Zurich and Hana El-Samad at UCSF attempted to outsource this feedback loop to a computer, to keep the levels of yellow fluorescent protein constant in their engineered yeast cells. These ?cyborg yeast? cells were kept in the dark with a computer monitoring the level of yellow fluorescence. When the computer sensed that the level of fluorescence was decreasing, it flashed a red light. When it sensed that the fluorescence was too high, it flashed near-infrared light that turned the gene off. With the help of the computer the same cells could maintain the protein level constant at any arbitrarily chosen level, a task that would be nearly impossible with ?traditional? synthetic biology.

These cyborg yeast are a fascinating mixture of cybernetic loops, computer feedback loops controlling biological homeostasis, with applications not only in experimental biology, with the ability to hold a gene constant and study how downstream pathways are affected, but also in biotechnology, where the production of molecules has to be strictly controlled by the conditions of the culture, and maybe someday in medical devices that can control the release of medicines at precise moments. The metaphors and mixtures of computers and biology have always been complex, and the feedback between synthetic biology and computer science will only continue to amplify itself and spin off new and weird cyborgs.

Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=4153bf602bcb29019e89b51f376d20e5

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Former professor, wife donate $150 million to university

By msnbc.com staff

STONY BROOK, N.Y. -- A billionaire former professor and his wife are donating $150 million to Stonybrook University, the largest gift ever to any school in the State University of New York system.

The gift announced Wednesday comes from James Simons, a hedge fund manager who taught math at Stony Brook, and Marilyn Simons, an alumna?of the school.

?This gift represents a milestone moment ? a transformational moment ? in the history of our young institution,? Stony Brook University President Samuel L. Stanley Jr. said. ?Everyone has a reason to celebrate and an opportunity to excel. It provides Stony Brook with infinite possibilities?the financial capacity to fulfill our potential and reach unparalleled heights in the areas of research, education and discovery.?

The money is targeted at three priorities: research excellence in the School of Medicine, faculty hires through new endowed professorships and recruitment of top-level graduate and undergraduate students.

"Stony Brook gave me a wonderful chance in 1968 when I was hired as chair to build up the Department of Mathematics,? said Jim Simons in a statement. ?That worked out remarkably well, and ever since, the university has had a special place in my heart."

Added his wife: "My Stony Brook education and the friendships I developed there as an undergrad and as a graduate student opened so many possibilities to me. We're deeply grateful for all Stony Brook has given to us and very glad to be able to give back to such a great institution."

Jim Simons is founder of Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund management company, and chair of the Simons Foundation. Marilyn Simons is president of the Simons Foundation.

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Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/14/9449230-former-professor-wife-donate-record-150-million-to-stony-brook-university

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PFT: Players win big in new TV deal

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Hall of Fame coach and legendary broadcaster John Madden made his weekly appearance today on SiriusXM NFL Radio with Rich Gannon and Adam Schein, and Coach Madden made a stirring and persuasive case for a culture change at all levels of football regarding the issue of concussions.

Madden?s remarks were so compelling and blunt and convincing that the league should have him reprise the message for a DVD that is sent to every football coach in America.

In fact, Madden may have been too candid, given the various pieces of litigation the league currently is facing, with allegations that the NFL failed to warn players about the risks of concussions.? Madden says that the issue had been ?swept under the rug? for years, requiring significant changes now in order to properly address the situation in the future.

And while Madden didn?t specifically blame the Browns for the team?s decision to allow quarterback Colt McCoy to re-enter last Thursday?s game against the Steelers, Madden said that the injury was handled ?wrong in every way,? or words to that effect.? (We?ll get the full transcript from our friends at SiriusXM NFL Radio.)

So Browns president Mike Holmgren can claim all he wants that it?s ?unfair? to criticize the team for failing to hold McCoy out of the game, but the fact remains that the team allowed McCoy to re-enter the game with a concussion.? And Holmgren can make all the excuses he wants about how the doctors and trainers were busy and didn?t see James Harrison put a helmet into McCoy?s chin, but the fact remains that the team allowed McCoy to re-enter the game with a concussion.? And Holmgren can point to all the times the Browns kept players out of games after suffering concussions, but the fact remains that the team allowed McCoy to re-enter the game with a concussion.

Madden explained that coaches and teammates tend to assume that, when doctor and/or trainer is evaluating a player, the doctor and/or trainer know where and how hard the player had been hit.? Madden said that the next step in the process of spotting concussions is to ensure that teammates and coaches don?t make that assumption.

If one of the most influential, old-school coaches believes strongly about this issue, everyone associated with the game ? at every level ? should take notice.? Here?s hoping that Coach Madden keeps spreading the word, and that everyone who hears his words heeds them.

Source: http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/12/14/players-win-big-under-new-tv-deals/related/

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