San Francisco

Photo credit: Kirby Lee / USA TODAY Sports Coming off a season of career bests, San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree came into OTAs with high hopes of becoming the league’s leading receiver in 2013. Instead, two days into workouts, Crabtree has possibly seen the end of his season. He suffered a torn Achilles tendon during Tuesday’s practice and is rumored to be sidelined for six months. Team officials were reluctant to divulge the injury yesterday, based on uncertainty of its severity. Crabtree is undergoing tests, including an MRI, which will determine whether the tendon is partially or completely torn. The extent of the injury will determine his treatment and prognosis, as well as offer 49ers fans (and fantasy owners) plenty of room to speculate on when the blossoming, young receiver might return. Crabtree had 85 catches for 1,105 yards and nine touchdowns last season. He was a key to opening up the 49ers offensive game plan, especially after Colin Kaepernick was inserted as the the 49ers starting quarterback. Let’s consider a few possibilities based on the extent of Crabtree’s injury. If his tendon is completely torn, his season is over. If it’s a partial tear, surgery will be required to repair the damage, but there’s a chance Crabtree could return late in the season. The 49ers are a probable lock for the playoffs, and the team would greatly benefit from Crabtree’s presence for another Super Bowl run. Related Posts Randy Moss Inks Deal With 49ers Chauncey Billups Tears Achilles Tendon, Out For The Season 2013 NFL Schedule Released, Promises to Be One Helluva Season

The Geto Boys are gearing up for a massive U.S. tour with Houston’s Free Press Summer Fest heading the list June 1st. It’s been 22 years since Willie D, Scarface and Bushwick Bill toured together as a group. Classic hip-hopper Willie D says of the venture, “We’re doing this in response to the demands of our fans: There is a whole generation of GB fans who haven’t seen us live in concert and we want to rectify that.” The southern rap pioneers recently headlined the Red Bull Soundstage (to a capacity crowd) at SXSW this past March – a precursor of more to come this summer from Geto Boys. Confirmed venues and dates are: JUNE 1 HOUSTON, TX – FREE PRESS SUMMER FESTIVAL JUNE 6 PENSACOLA, FL – VINYLE MUSIC HALL JUNE 7 NEW ORLEANS, LA – HOWLING WOLF JUNE 11 TUCSON, AR – RIALTO THEATER JUNE 13 LAS VEGAS, NV – LVCS JUNE 14 DEVER, CO – SUMMIT MUSIC HALL JUNE 15 GRAND JUNCTION CO – MESA THEATER JUNE 16 SANTA ANA, CA – THE OBSERVATORY JUNE 18 SEATTLE, WA – EL CARAZON JUNE 19 SAN FRANCISCO, CA – YOSHI”S JUNE 21 INDIANAPOLIS, IN – SUITE 38 JUNE 22 COLUMBUS, OH – LC PAVILLION JUNE 23 MINNEAPOLIS, MN – FIRST AVENUE JUNE 26 WASHINGTON, DC – HOWARD THEATER JUNE 29 BOSTON, MA – MIDDLE EAT CLUB JUNE 30 NEW YORK CITY, NY – BB KING’S Additional cities with tour date details to be announced. Submit all press inquiries & interview requests to info@hanaassociates.com Source: http://hnaprnews.wordpress.com/2013/04/22/geto-boys-reunion-tour-2013/

Google X, Google’s lab where the company hatches big ideas like driverless cars and Google Glasses, is acquiring the high altitude wind startup Makani Power, according to an article in Bloomberg Business Week. This is the first time we’ve heard that Google’s secretive moonshot lab has bought an outside company and is bringing it in house — usually the lab works on crazy ideas in house, and if these ideas become less risky, then Google turns those into actual Google products or pushes the products into other Google divisions. Makani Power has been building and testing a new type of wind turbine that is attached to a long tether (that could be 600 meters long) and which rotates high off the ground, capturing wind that is stronger and more consistent than typically found on the ground. The idea behind the innovation is that capturing high altitude wind could be cheaper, more efficient, and more suitable for certain environments like offshore than traditional wind turbines. Makani Power has said its kite-style system could deliver twice as much capacity factor (a measure of energy generation productivity) with 20 percent less mass than conventional wind turbines. A computerized system launches the turbines and monitors and tracks the data on how much energy is generated. Makani Power’s kite turbine on display at ARPA-E 2012. Makani Power was founded in 2006 by Saul Griffith and former World Cup windsurfer Don Montague and a lot of the early employees were kite surfers. Griffith has since gone on to run Other Labs, his incubator workshop in San Francisco that is building things like a new natural gas engine and tiny solar thermal devices. Makani Power previously raised $15 million from Google.org, back when Google.org and Google were more actively funding next-gen energy devices. According to the Business Week article Google X’s captain of moonshots, Astro Teller, proposed the idea of buying Makani Power to Larry Page and Page’s response was that Teller had to make sure to crash at least five of the high-altitude wind devices in the near future (basically put it to a rigorous enough test). While Makani Power has been working on this innovation for seven years, it’s been slow going commercializing a product. The company has survived on the funding from Google.org, and grants from the Department of Energy’s early stage ARPA-E program. Late last year Makani’s charismatic, kitesurfing CEO, Corwin Hardham, tragically passed away unexpectedly. Earlier this year former energy policy maker and energy exec Cathy Zoi joined Makani’s board of directors. Google is interested in clean energy generation partly because its data centers suck up a ton of energy and cost it a lot of money. Google has invested over a billion dollars into various clean energy projects, but in recent years moved away from making equity investments into clean energy startups. Perhaps Google X is a better place for this high-risk clean energy ideas. Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.The fourth quarter of 2012 in cleantechCleantech and investment in 2013The economics of clean-data-center innovation

- It only took about an hour after Brian Urlacher to announce his retirement for “get this guy in Canton” pieces to start hitting the presses. Urlacher may say he leaves the game “with no regrets” but once you go Minnie, you’re pretty much finnie. - San Francisco 49ers receiver Michael Crabtree tore his ACL in OTAs today and is facing possible season-ending surgery. Look for the NFLPA to bring up this injury in the next round of negotiations when they propose all OTAs to be held in a foam factory where players do nothing but review movies all day. - Football operations types are already (anonymously) grousing about the change in the 2014 draft schedule and according to SI, not buying the Easter Bunny excuse. The conspiracy theories about the date change are starting to reach DONNIE DARKO levels of Rabbidness. - Of course Lord Rog is already looking to add a third London game to the schedule since the two games a season have been selling out so quickly. So that’s three games in London, up to two games a in Toronto (one preseason, one regular season), and none in Los Angeles. Not one stinking game in the Rose Bowl or the Coliseum just for old time’s sake, Rog? - Hard to believe it’s already been ten years since the Eagles opened the Linc, but yep, it’s time for the old gal to get gentle makeover. The NFL agreed on Tuesday to provide support for the club to upgrade the stadium’s televisions, screens, maybe add additional club level facilities. Few shots of Botox and Juvederm and the building will look like it did when Philadelphia first fell in love with her. - Sometimes a lift isn’t enough to renew the spark, as in the case the 21 year old Georgia Dome, and the league also agreed to give the Atlanta new stadium fund a $200 million loan to help build a new venue that would house the Falcons. No word on which Star Wars vehicle the new stadium will be modeled after. *Crosses fingers, hopes for Super Star Destroyer.*  - Robert Kraft believes if a Super Bowl is successful in New York City it can be successful in Boston, according to the Boston Globe. This is a great plan, just to see what happens when approximately 12,000 sportswriters and 50,000 tourists encounter a traffic rotary for the first time. Might be the one time traffic cams pulling higher ratings than the Super Bowl. - Browns owner Jimmy “Flying J” Haslam addressed the other NFL owners for five minutes yesterday just before lunch so he could apologize in person for any embarrassment and damage he might have done to the NFL brand with the ongoing IRS and FBI investigations into his Pilot Flying J truck stop company. USA Today reports the apology, explanation and Haslam’s denial of any involvement in the fraud case came off as sincere. Our guess is he broke the ice with his fellow old rich people meeting by doing his best Nixon impersonation. - And finally, Microsoft signed a 5-year $400 million deal with the NFL to start providing XBox and tablet technology to the sidelines, starting as soon as 2014. While unrealistic, one can hope a geriatric Madden will call plays for the Raiders using nothing but his thumbs and a controller from an rocker on the sidelines. The post KSK Kontent Klearinghouse: Canton, Conspiracies and Crooks appeared first on Kissing Suzy Kolber.

San Francisco Giants' outfielder Gregor Blanco's game-tying triple in the bottom of the ninth last night came on a two-out, 1-2 slider up in the zone from Washington Nationals' closer Rafael Soriano. Blanco's triple to right-center got over a leaping Bryce Harper and scored Buster Posey's pinch runner, Andres Torres, from first two outs after the Giants' catcher reached on an infield single that bounced off Soriano's glove and died in the grass to the side of the pitcher's mound. Harper later admitted to having worries about running into the wall after last week's collision in Dodger Stadium, and blamed himself for not making the play. Soriano wondered about the way the oufielder's were positioned on the play. "When you got two outs when you play away," Soriano told reporters after the game, "you're supposed to, you know, a guy hits a ball, it's got to be in front of you, not like what happened tonight." "With two outs and the tying run at first, you have to play the outfield so the ball doesn't go over your head,'' Soriano said in Spanish." - Rafael Soriano in USA Today Sports' article USA Today's Jorge L. Ortiz quoted Soriano explaining further in Spanish what he thought of that particular play: "'With two outs and the tying run at first, you have to play the outfield so the ball doesn't go over your head,'' Soriano said in Spanish. "It may not have been a catch-able ball, but if we're positioned the right way, there might have been a different outcome. With two outs, I could tell my four-year-old son, 'You know where you need to play,' and he would go to the right spot to make the play. It's not an excuse, and I'm not speaking badly about anybody, but I think that's how you play the game.'' • Blanco's Game-Tying Triple: Your browser does not support iframes. "[Soriano] is an extremely competitive guy, and usually he's an extremely upfront guy, so I would think that he would have, if he had those things to say to [Harper], he would have pulled [Harper] aside..." - Nats' GM Mike Rizzo on 106.7 the FAN In D.C. Nats' GM Mike Rizzo was asked about his closer's comments this morning in an appearance on 106.7 the FAN In D.C.'s The Mike Rizzo Show with Holden Kushner and Danny Rouhier. "This is the first I've heard of it," Rizzo told the show's hosts. "I haven't talked to any of those guys, but [Soriano] is an extremely competitive guy, and usually he's an extremely upfront guy, so I would think that he would have, if he had those things to say to [Harper], he would have pulled [Harper] aside or Tony Tarasco aside, who implements the outfield defense, and made his case to them instead of to the newspapers, and I will have to look into that. I haven't gotten to the ballpark yet here in California, so if there's something that is amiss and there is some issues with it, they should get together and discuss it face-to-face, that's how I like to attack any of the issues that I have." Asked about his comments by reporters this morning, Soriano qualified his statements, telling the Washington Post's Adam Kilgore they were made off the record and not intended as a shot at his 20-year-old teammate: "Soriano told the Post in a telephone interview from San Francisco on Wednesday morning that he thought he was talking casually with the USA Today reporter off the record after they had talked on the record about the game, a normal occurrence when players speak with reporters. He said he saw and heard on Wednesday morning what was published. "'I tried to do my job and I didn’t do it,' Soriano said in Spanish. '(The play) wasn’t an error. He was in the position and I threw the pitch I shouldn’t have. And that’s what happened. And after we finished talking, I made the mistake of saying that to [the reporter]. And he put it in there with what I said.'" Apparently, the two players met this morning at AT&T Park and discussed the issue as Rizzo suggested, here's what the reports on

Gu Wenda's united nations--babel of the millennium by Catherine Sparacino. [ more › ]

Bee sport staff San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree has suffered a torn Achilles' tendon while participating in organized team activities Tuesday and will likely be lost for the

Bravo to the Bravo TV network. And Bravo to Michael Yaki, a former City of San Francisco supervisor who is now a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. When Yaki wrote to the network to complain about the use of the term “JAP” to describe a “Jewish American Princess” on a new reality [...]Related Posts:We need to train young journalists (and people in general)…Author urges women to date diverse men (good), then…Jeff Yang in WSJ deconstructs “model minority”…Do we still call ourselves “Asian American?”Yuki Kokubo’s “Kasama-Yaki” documentary…

San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Michael Crabtree has suffered a torn Achilles tendon during organized team activities (OTAs), per Mike Garafolo of USA Today. Crabtree, the team's first-round pick in 2009, had a breakout season last year as he finished with career highs across the board: 85 receptions, 1,105 yards and nine touchdowns. Once Colin Kaepernick replaced Alex Smith, who suffered a concussion in Week 9, Crabtree really thrived. In the second half of the season with Kaepernick under center, Crabtree had 46 receptions for 665 yards and six touchdowns in the final eight regular-season games. Only six players had more receiving yards during that span. In three playoff games, he had another 20 receptions for 285 yards and three touchdowns. The loss of Crabtree (most likely) for the season is obviously a huge blow for the 49ers. While the 49ers are the preseason favorites to win the Super Bowl, the Seahawks are the team with the second-lowest odds within the NFC. From a fantasy impact, Kaepernick's fantasy value takes a bit of a hit. On the other hand, Vernon Davis (and Anquan Boldin, to a lesser extent) should see a larger share of targets. Perhaps the injury opens the door for A.J. Jenkins, but I'm a bit skeptical after his irrelevance last year. In fact, I would prefer Quinton Patton, their fourth-round pick this year, over Jenkins as a potential sleeper.

Orchestral avant-pop band Makeunder released their new video today for "To The Ladder," a wonderful, structurally free and intense number which the group performed live in SF earlier this year.Take a peek:If you wanna hear more, check out Makeunder at Viracocha on July 28th. Categorized: MusicTagged: MakeunderNo Comments