You have to hand it to the Miami Hurricanes and their football program.  A constant source of controversy for 30 years, the most recent allegations are by far the most serious.  Before we touch on the latest mess, lets review the past 3 plus decades of scandals at The U.

• 1978 – Miami players throw a man in a lake which results in the coach, Lou Saban, getting fired.  The players threw the man into the lake because he was wearing a yarmulke.
• 1980s – Luther Campbell, a member of 2LiveCrew, had an alleged “pay-for-play” system that rewarded players for touchdowns and big plays.  It was also in this period the team showed up to the National Championship game wearing camouflage, adding to their ‘thug’ personality.



• 1995 – An athletic department councilor for the football team  raided the Pell Grant program, which provides money for students who need it to attend college.  The employee used the money to fund his cocaine habit.  This latest scandal caused Sports Illustrated to write an open letter to Miami to shut down their football program.
• 2002-Present – A known criminal, Nevin Shapiro, used funds obtained in a Ponzi scheme to pay out over $2 Million in illegal benefits to players.  The benefits ranged from “pay-to-play” to getting underage athletes into club and buying them prostitutes.

Enough is enough.  Writers, fans and others are now asking if University of Miami should get the death penalty.  The NCAA handed one of these out before to SMU, and the football program has not been the same.

What if the NCAA decided to take a different approach and allow the players to get paid and recruited at any time?  At this point what difference would it make?  College football is one of the bigger hypocrisies going.  Players get paid nothing, colleges make millions, the colleges turn a blind eye when players or coaches cheat as long as the money roles in.  At the rate these scandals and violations keep happening, there is a chance that bottom feeder football programs like Syracuse may actually be able to compete with the cheaters. 

Let’s be honest, Planet Earth has issues right now, and its citizens are not happy.  Droughts, floods, debt, corruption, its no wonder why the riots we have seen in the UK, Arab Spring across the Middle East, and other protests in Greece, Spain and even in the US in the state of Wisconsin, people are fed up and scared.  Places and people that are seen almost apathetic about their governments have been anything but in 2011.

People are generally concerned, and based on data I have seen, people are wondering when the riots, protests and peaceful activism are coming to their backyard.  Here in the United States just in the past week we have had curfews in Philadelphia and cell phones blocked in San Francisco’s transportation system both designed to protect people from protests.

All of this got me wondering if protests can happen in the UK what stops them from coming to the US?  We are only 9 months away from the 20-year reunion of the Rodney King protests in LA that resulted in numerous businesses being looted and people being hurt or killed.  The tinderbox has always been in place in this country, but hopefully we don’t get the spark to trigger what we are seeing in the rest of the world. 

For those that follow the blog know I work at Clearspring and I am in charge of AddThis which is the largest sharing platform on the Internet.  Our product enables over 9 million web sites all over the world to get their content shared to hundreds of services from Facebook to Google+ and Twitter.  Our sharing tool supports 70 different languages and is used by over 1 billion users per month.

The team that works on AddThis works hard but also plays hard.  We race cars, drink scotch, play with terabytes of data, get free lunch and snacks, and most importantly build products that users and publishers love.

We are looking to grow the team with really smart and energetic people.  We have a bunch of different openings, everything from a Senior Java Engineer to a Senior Biz Dev role.  If you are interested in a job or know someone who is, let me know by emailing me at greg-at-clearspring-dot-com.

You can check out all of the job openings here:
http://clearspring.com/about/careers

Starbucks has said for years that it offers over 87,000 drink menu combinations, but just recently a new secret menu has been revealed by loyal Starbucks customers.  There are some famous other secret menus, the best being In-n-Out’s Super Secret Menu.

I definitely need to check out some of these awesome new drinks at Starbucks.

• Biscotti Frapuccino: Buy a biscotti and ask the barista to blend it up with any flavor of frapuccino. It blends into tiny cookie chunks that add a delicious little crunch to your frozen coffee.
• Short Drink: The sizes the “mainstream menu” gives you are “Tall,” “Grande” and “Venti,” but if you say you want the “short” size to any Starbucks drink you can receive a less expensive and smaller sized drink. Although this size is in their cash register, they don’t put it on the menu as a marketing strategy to make customers buy larger and more expensive drinks.
• Short cappuccino: A “Short” cappuccino is a more Italian style cappuccino. Basically this cappuccino leaves out the gallons of milk Starbucks puts in for the more traditional amount of dairy that the drink originated with.
• Red Eye: A shot of espresso in regular drip coffee.
• Black Eye: Two shots of espresso in regular drip coffee.
• Green Eye: Three shots of espresso in regular drip coffee. Not for anyone with a heart condition or road rage issues.
• Poor Man’s Latte: Order an Iced Americano with no water and half ice, then you can add free half and half at the little milk and condiments table. This is the same drink as a Breve Latte but costs much less. Just watch out for the classy police. This is definitely not the most chic thing to be caught doing by your mother-in-law or boss.
• Poor Man’s Chai Latte: Order a Chai Tea Misto with extra foam, two tea bags, and half cinnamon-half vanilla syrup. This is basically the same drink but almost half the price.
• Cafe au Lait: If your French and looking for something nostalgic of your homeland order the Misto without foam for a classic French coffee drink.
• French pressed coffee: You can choose any coffee they sell by the bag and have it served in a French press. For coffee snobs, this is one of the best way to appreciate all of the flavors of the coffee you chose.
• Chocolate Cream Frapuccino: Chocolate syrup and chocolate flavoring. Lots and Lots of chocolate! Do not underestimate the amount of chocolate in this frozen blended coffee. Only for the true chocolate lover die hard.
• Chocolate Dalmatian: A White Chocolate Mocha with java chips and chocolate chips sprinkled in.
• Cake Batter Frappuccino: Perhaps a little deceptively named, as there are no actual piece of cake or cake batter in it, this beverage adds vanilla and almond syrup to a Vanilla Frappuccino.
• Zebra Mocha: Sometimes also called a “Penguin Mocha,” this drink combines the white chocolate mocha with the regular mocha for those who can’t pick a favorite. Or, if you really want to take it to the next level, ask to have raspberry flavoring added for something called the “Red Tux” Mocha
• Captain Crunch Frappuccino: Fans say that the combination of hazelnut syrup (though some folks contend it should be toffee nut) in a  Strawberries and Creme Frappuccino is a dead ringer for the flavor of Captain Crunch cereal.

Now I must warn you, The Washington City Paper tried ordering some of these secret items and had varying success.  In the end if you can describe what’s in the drink then the drink you shall have.  Starbucks gets an A+ for customer service.