We Are The World 25 - 2010 We Are The World list of artists

If you've not seen it yet, We Are The World 25 is here. The 2010 version of We Are The World, recorded February 1st 2010 and in the same studio as the original recording, (now called Henson Recording Studios, formerly A&M Recording Studios), is just as beautiful as it's 25 year old father.

We Are The World 25 is a combination of private recording sessions and one large gathering of musicians and includes the late Michael Jackson. It's produced by Quincy Jones and Lionel Richie with Wyclef Jean, Randy Phillips and Peter Tortorici, Humberto Gattica and RedOne, and co-producers Rickey Minor, Mervyn Warren and Patti Austin. All to help the people of Haiti.

Here's the video followed by the full list of artists on We Are The World 25:



To donate to help Haiti, text "WORLD" to 50555 and visit World25.org

Here's the full list of artists who gave their voice to We Are The World 25 from the website World25.org:

QUINCY JONES – Executive Producer
LIONEL RICHIE – Executive Producer
WYCLEF JEAN – Executive Producer
RICKEY MINOR – Producer
RedOne – Producer
CARLOS SANTANA
JENNIFER HUDSON
JAMIE FOXX
SUGAR
LANDADAM LEVINE
JASON MRAZ
EARTH WIND & FIRE
NATALIE COLE
THE JONAS BROTHERS
T PAIN
BRIAN WILSON
JUSTIN BIEBER
NICOLE SCHERZINGER
INDIA.ARIE
JULIANNE HOUGH
MARY MARY
MELANIE FIONA
BEBE WINANSMYA
TYRESE GIBSON
ANTHONY HAMILTON
RAPHAEL SAADIQ
GLADYS KNIGHT
KERI HILSON
JOEL & BENJI MADDEN
HEART
BRANDY
P!NK
MUSIQ SOULCHILD
MILEY CYRUS
AKON
JORDIN SPARKS
CELINE DION
ROB THOMAS
KATHARINE McPHEE
JEFF BRIDGES
RANDY JACKSON
PATTI AUSTIN
KID CUDI
USHER
WILL.I.AM
KANYE WEST
LL COOL J
ISSAC SLADE (aka The Fray)
SNOOP DOGG
NICOLE RICHIE
TREY SONGZ
ETHAN BORTNICK
TARYLL JACKSON
TAJ JACKSON
TJ JACKSON
VINCE VAUGHN
DRAKE
FREDA PAYNE
FAITH EVANS
ROBIN THICKE
RASHIDA JONES
BARBRA STREISAND
JIMMY JEAN LOUIS
ENRIQUE IGLESIAS
ZAC BROWN
LIL WAYNE
TONY BENNETT
JOSH GROBAN
SEAN GARRETT
HARRY CONNICK, JR.
AL JARDINE
BONE THUGS AND HARMONY (BIZZY BONES)
AR RAHMEN
FERGIE
MARY J. BLIGE
ORIANTHI
MANN
NIPSEY HUSSLE
IYAZ
KEITH HARRIS
NIKKA COSTA
TONI BRAXTON
FARNSWORTH BENTLEY
PLAIN PATIL TRIO

Academy Luncheon Monday, Oscar Contest Finalists - Oscar Buzz Roundup

AMPAS, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sends so many press releases - at times as many as six within a given week when the Academy Awards are not in full swing - that it spawned this experiment in Oscar-related blogging and Internet reach.

This is the Oscar Buzz Roundup.

Oscar Nominees to Be Honored at Academy Luncheon Monday

Monday features a luncheon that's certainly one this blogger should be at. At 12 noon, 14 of the 20 nominees in the acting categories will join 120 Academy Awards nominees for the annual Nominees Luncheon at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

All five Best Director nominees will be there: Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, Lee Daniels, Jason Reitman and Quentin Tarantino.

Expected to attend from the Best Actor and Best Actress categories are: Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Renner, Sandra Bullock, Carey Mulligan, Gabourey Sidibe and Meryl Streep. For the Best Supporting Actor and Actress Categories, Vera Farmiga, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Anna Kendrick, Woody Harrelson and Christoph Waltz have been invited to the luncheon.

Three Finalists Named in Academy/mtvU Oscar Correspondent Contest

AMPAS smartly partnered with MTV-U to produce a contest such that teams of college journalists would be flown to Los Angeles to compete for a spot on The Red Carpet. The winning teams and (their videos) are:

Chapman University, Orange, CA – Rachel Berry (anchor) and Christian Hartnett (videographer)
..and a corny but entertaining video that scored a 52 percent thumbs up rating:



Emerson College, Boston, MA – Terry Stackhouse (anchor) and Zach Cusson (videographer) - and an informative video that earned a 51 percent rating:



Florida A&M University, Tallahassee – Brandon McCaskill (anchor) and Kiarra Hart (videographer) and this special-effects-laden video:



You can still vote for these teams through March 2nd, here: Oscars.MTVU.com

The Grand Prize winning team will be announced Saturday, March 6th at a special Academy Awards press conference. The winning team will receive their spot on The Red Carpet and backstage press room passes. The runner-ups will be placed in the bleacher seats above The Red Carpet on Oscar day.

To see all of the videos that were submitted, click here: Oscars / MTV-U. Congratulations to the winning teams!

Actress Elizabeth Banks will host the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Scientific and Technical Awards on Saturday, February 20

The Oscar Scientific and Technical Awards, presented in this space, will be the focus of this Saturday's "Oscar special night" at the Beverly Wilshire in Beverly Hills, hosted by the lovely Elizabeth Banks (pictured).

Ms. Banks will present 15 awards to 45 individual recipients during the night's event. And you can catch Elizabeth Banks in Paul Haggis' film The Next Three Days.

Stay tuned for more Oscar news.

Happy Valentine's Day! Dating Doc shares his secrets

UPDATE: The makeer of the video below reports:

1) There are no Actors in the film
2) All events that took place are part of a Documentary Film in San
Francisco by Independent Filmmakers part of the organization at
(www.scarycow.com)
3) The services provided are real and are catered for San Francisco Bay
Area Singles (www.newdatinglife.com)

Today is Valentine's Day, one of the best days of the year. It is so because the very idea of Valentine's Day is associated with giving.

But today, with so many men and women trying to seek perfection in relationships (or the perfect person) when such a thing does not exist, many spend time worrying about who they didn't get a Valentine's Day greeting from, rather than enjoying who gave them one.   The result is a lot of depressed sprits for all the wrong reasons.

And some men, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, have forgotten how to approach and talk to a woman, if they ever knew how to. So they wallow in despair, silently cursing couples or expressing anger with men who aren't afraid of, and really like, women.

 That's where San Francisco-based "Dating Doc's Secrets to Attraction" comes in.

In the video below, Dating Doc helps this poor San Franciscan male out who just can't figure out what to say to a woman he's interested in:



OK. Now, I'll let you in on the joke. There's no Dating Doc (as far as I know). The video was sent to me by the YouTube channel NewDatingLife which houses the video work of Charles Gellman. All of the people in the video were actors. Even the website NewDatingLife.com is a fake service.

(Not sure what that says about our culture, but I'll think about it.)

But even with that, the video does capture a problem in the Bay Area: the lost art of verbal communication between people, regardless of the reason.

In a culture where people dump each other via text message, openly talking about anything is out of practice. The implications of this are the collapse of how a community of people relate, which keeps that group together.

The result is that no one really knows the other person at a level where trust can be established. It may also lead to the idea that people don't have to help each other, which means that a crime could be committed against one person, and the people in what should be that community do nothing about it.

You say we've already got that kind of situation?

To end it, we have to return to the art of talking. So on Valentine's Day practice striking up a conversation with just any one, for any reason.  Test yourself.  You're giving the gift of real community on a day when community and communication take center stage.

Or, they should.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Dr. Amy Bishop of Alabama-Huntsville killed to protect intellectual property

This news in the case of Dr. Amy Bishop-Anderson of Alabama-Huntsville, who murdered three of her colleagues in that school's biology department.



It was revealed to this blogger by a source who claims that Amy Bishop was his faculty advisor, that Dr. Amy Bishop Anderson killed to protect what she considered to be her intellectual property after Bishop lost tenure and was not going to be retained by the University.

"You called it when you said you thought this happened over her invention," and referring to this bloggers first post on this matter,"When her tenure was denied, that invention became the intellectual property of the university."

The invetion Dr. Amy Bishop believed was hers and that she had rights to something Bishop created, and what was reported in this space, is a portable cell-incubator called "InQ" which won the couple an award in a state competition and won $25,000 of seed money in a business competition, money they could use to start a company around the invention.

Dr. Bishop was also working on something she called The Neuristor, also reported in this space as using neurons as we use integrated circuits in a living computer. Bishop wrote:

Neuroengineering

My laboratory's goal will be to continue in our effort to develop a neural computer, the Neuristorâ„¢, using living neurons. This computer will exploit all of the advantages of neurons. Specifically, neurons rich with the nitric oxide NO dependent learning receptor, N Methyl D Aspartate receptor NMDAR, will be utilized. These have previously been studied in the context of induced adaptive resistance to NO IAR. For the Neuristorâ„¢ we will take advantage of the IAR phenomena since it has been demonstrated that IAR neurons express more learning and memory receptors NMDAR as well as increased neurite outgrowth. The neurons that we are currently using are mammalian motor neurons. We are exploring the possibility of using neurons derived from adult stem cells, and from bony fishes provided by Bruce Stallsmith Ph.D. This laboratory has created a portable cell culture incubator, the Cell Driveâ„¢ that is an ideal support structure for the Neuristor".

Still, there are many unanswered questions in this case. Dr. Bishop could have sued the University for damages or filed a criminal theft complain. But why murder in cold blood. That question remains unanswered.

Nodar Kumaritashvili's Olympics luge death fault of track design

Georgian Luger Nodar Kumaritashvili's Olympics luge death during a training run was the fault of the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre, not the athlete.

That is the opinion of this blogger as of this writing, not anyone else. It runs counter to the official view of Olympic officials, who fault the athlete and not the track. This bloggers' view comes from a back understanding of how a vessel moves along a surface at a certain speed.

The basic problem is the track, which has been adjusted since the accident, was such that it had the luger coming from a curved, banked part of the track to a right-angled, straight-away portion. If one takes the curve high, it literally tosses the luger into the wall that is the straight-away part of the course coming out of the turn.

While many have criticized NBC for showing the video of the crash, the public should see it, given the design issues the track presented. What's curious is how, in the 21st Century, the course designers could have overlooked such an obvious flaw?

And update as this blog post is being written: Deadspin reports that the Whistler Sliding Centre track's design was questioned by many athletes and observers. Three riders were hospitalized in 2008 duing the World Cup. Deadspin quotes American lugar Tony Benshoof as telling NBC that someone "was going to kill themselves" on the track.

Having higher track walls isn't the answer at all. The whole track needs to be torn down and rebuilt. It's simply too dangerous to be used.

We Are The World 2010 - Miley Cyrus kills it

25 years ago Michael Jackson, Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones joined forces to make a song benefit for Africa called "We Are The World" which got together top music artists from Bob Dylan to The King of Pop for what's turned out to be a classic song.



In 2010 Lionel Richie, and Quincy Jones, and members of The Jackson Family joined with a more contemporary set of artists, from LL Cool J to Lil Wayne, Justin Bieber, and Barbara Streisand. But of all of the singers, the one who's got everyone talking is Miley Cyrus.

The teen pop sensation from the TV Show Hanna Montana sang her heart out and in a way some did not expect. Not this blogger.

Miley Cyrus can sing. Some, particularly on Twitter, express the idea in a way that they're surprised that this 17-year old white girl has a soulful voice. All of it has degenerated into a #WeLoveMileyCyrus v. #WeHateMileyCyrus tweet battle. But even with all of the sex-based marketing, if Miley Cyrus couldn't sing she would not have top selling albums or singles.

Moreover, Miley Cyrus is showing an interest in helping those less fortunate than she and teaming up with artists like Timbalind who are just outside her normal song genre.

Give Miley Cyrus a break and a real chance.

Oakland Raiders Stadium study: competitive bid and minority involvement missing?

The Oakland Tribune article on the possibility of a shared football stadium between the Oakland Raiders and the San Francisco 49ers is certainly exciting news, but lost in the hope that the Raiders get a new stadium - 49ers or not - is any attention to the process behind getting to that point.

In this case, on Friday February 19th the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority is considering a proposal from CSL International, an event planning and stadium development consulting firm to write a feasibility study of a stadium for the Oakland Raiders.

Great, but where's the competitive bid for the consultant? And what about minority involvement in the study's development? Now that the Oakland Raiders have finally succeeded in getting the City of Oakland to see that it needs a new stadium, it's important to make sure the Oakland Coliseum Authority doesn't screw it up.

Where public monies are used, sole-source consultant contracts are frowned on and have been for decades. The reasons are simple: such contracts are looked at as political gifts or favors to a friend unless there's solid evidence that that company, and only that firm, can do the job required.

In the case of a feasibility study for a stadium for the Oakland Raiders that may include the San Francisco 49ers, there's no evidence or source that can confirm that the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority conducted a competitive bid process, out of which CSL International emerged.

The contract is reportedly for $125,000, not below $5,000, which is the California legal level at which a contract must be below if it is "sole-sourced" or without a competitive bid process. And as Oakland is a charter city, this process goes against the City of Oakland's own process and it's "hire Oakland first" mandate for the use of Oakland's public funds for contracts.

As one who's done feasibility study work, this blogger can assert that what the Oakland Coliseum is looking for does not take a rocket scientist to do. (And this blogger has no interest in being considered for any City of Oakland contract.)

These questions must be answered by the Coliseum Authority:

1) which firms out there in Oakland and in the San Francisco Bay Area can do this work?

2) Where they contacted in writing by the Coliseum Authority's Executive Director?

3) What was their written response?

4) Why was CSL International selected out of the competitive bid process?

5) Does CSL International have people of color on its staff?

If all of these questions can be answered, then CSL International was selected fairly. But if not and it appears that CSL International was chosen out of an informal and process controlled by the current Coliseum executive director, their proposal should be rejected. The Coliseum executive director should be made to start the process over, the right way.

The Oakland Raiders deserve a new stadium. But there's no hurry; the process toward a new facility should be done in an inclusive, not secretive, way.