- I must say, I don’t find it surprising that two women, including his former wife and a recent girlfriend, say that Oakland Raiders coach Tom Cable has a history of violent behavior. Even though Napa County district attorney Gary Lieberstein said he would not pursue charges against Cable for allegedly breaking the face of Oakland assistant coach Randy Hanson during an altercation in a coaches meeting, don’t mistake that decision for a confirmation that Cable didn’t assault Hanson and that he isn't a violent guy. The fact that ESPN was able to do some digging and find two women who say that Cable hit them during relationships dating back more than 20 years is not surprising in the least. Sandy Cable and Marie Lutz say that Cable physically abused them at various times during their relationships. Cable claims that he once struck Sandy Cable after learning she had cheated on him, a claim she denies. In 1989, she sought a temporary order of protection, which said, in part, "On two occasions, one back in '86 and the other in '88, he hit me. The second time in the face, however on attempts to call law enforcement, my husband would rip the phone out of the wall." Sounds like a great guy to me, for sure. A third woman, Cable's second wife Glenda, also made claims of abuse, although her allegations came in documents related to the couple's 2008 divorce. In those documents, Glenda Cable alleged that "in the past he has been physically and verbally abusive to me." She was not willing to go on camera in regards to the alleged abuse, which could be because she’s currently receiving support payments from Cable and perhaps she just wants to lay low and continue getting paid. Lutz, who dated Cable as recently as January 2009, said she remembers Cable hitting her "three, four times." She tells tales of assaults in cars and at Cable’s home when she showed up, found another woman there and an argument ensued. After the latter incident, she went to the emergency room and was treated for back pain and a contusion. That other woman Lutz encountered would be Tom Cable’s third wife, Carol. Yes, this guy allegedly pummels every woman he’s been seriously involved with, he allegedly busts his assistant’s faces and yet he can find a third woman willing to marry him? Wow. In response to all of these allegations, Tom Cable released a statement through his agent and attorney Donald Yee, saying "on only one occasion in my life have I ever touched a woman inappropriately." That would seem to be very much in doubt, T. Something tells me that the NFL will be looking into these allegations further and could impose some sort of discipline under the league's personal conduct policy, which specifically identifies workplace violence and the very sort of behavior outside the workplace that Cable stands accused of. Oh, and he also works for an owner with a history of firing coaches who don’t perform even when they’re not alleged domestic abusers. I have no doubts that crazy, might-still-be-alive Al Davis would can a coach who is causing this many problems AND is 2-6…………
- The season finale of Greek pulled out inter-fraternity pranks, choreographed dance numbers, showdowns in science labs and a whole lot of fun. With Casey and Cappie back together, their first order of business is how and when to tell everyone. For a week, they keep things quiet. Finally, Casey spills the news to BFF Ashleigh, who inadvertently repeats it back into a microphone while working with the rest of the ZBZ sisters on their dance number for Song Fest, the Pan-Hellenic council’s sorority competition for singing/dancing. Everyone is happy for Casey, but Cappie’s task of telling Evan Chambers about getting back together with Casey is a little more nerve-wracking. At the secret lair for their secret society, the Amphoras, Cappie finds the right time and place to break the news and Evan takes it surprisingly well. He promises he doesn’t have feelings for Casey any longer and that it’s all good. However, things don’t seem so great the next day when someone pranks the Kappa Tau house by dropping a bunch of crickets down the chimney along with a rock inscribed with a taunting message. Cappie calls Evan back to the Amphora lair to challenge him on the prank, but Evan claims to have not been responsible, although he does cite the prank Cappie and his KT brothers played during their Thanksgiving turkey hunt, vandalizing a picture in the Omega Chi house. The KT’s retaliate by building a cinder block wall in front of the Omega Chi front door, kicking things up a notch. That escalates the tension between Cappie and Evan, but Casey tries to play peacemaker when the three of them run into one another on campus. She suggests that the two of them try to bond over their common hatred of Officer Huck, the campus security officer who is always hassling both of them. Teaming up for a prank against Huck seems like a good idea, so both guys agree to pitch the idea to their house. The KT brothers are hesitant but accept the idea largely because they are bunch of laid-back slackers who just like the idea of pulling a prank. The Omega Chi’s are dead set against the idea and criticize it as another example of Evan being a weak, ineffective leader ever since he gave up his trust fund and became poor. And so the Omega Chi’s put a plan into motion to prank both the KT’s and Huck. They tell the KT’s that they are in for the prank, but Chip and Grant, two of the Omega Chi brothers, have other ideas. They sell Evan on their idea and it’s on. The prank turns out to be stealing Huck’s beloved golf cart, putting a dummy dressed like Huck inside and dangling it from the roof of a campus parking garage with rope. Everything goes according to plan, but once the card is hanging from the side of the structure and a few brothers from each frat are holding the rope, the Omega Chi’s bail, allegedly to go get more rope. Evan tells Cappie to follow them, leaving three KT brothers - Wade, Ferret and Jeremy – as the only ones holding the rope. Back on ground level, the Omega Chi brothers reveal their plan by jumping into waiting cars as police sirens begin wailing from nearby. Evan clues Cappie in to the fact that the KT’s are being screwed over and urges him to flee. Realizing that the Omega Chi’s have called the cops and set them up, Cappie manages to escape trouble but Wade, Ferret and Jeremy are caught and their punishment is swift and severe: expulsion. Evan stops by the KT house to offer a lame explanation, but Cappie won't allow him inside and instead ushers him into the back yard. Evan whines about how he’s losing control of his house and that screwing over the KT’s was the only way to change that. His house is all he has left, he laments, while Cappie has his house and the perfect girl. Cappie basically declares their friendship over and that’s that. On top of losing Wade (noooo!), Jeremy and Ferret, KT is also bidding adieu to Heath, who is bucking KT tradition and actually graduating. His farewell party is expanded to include the three expelled brothers. As for Song Fest, it turns more complicated for Casey when Gamma Psi member and Pan-Hellenic president Katherine offers her a spot as the vice president of judicial affairs on the P-H board. If Casey accepts, she can’t participate in any inter-sorority activities, i.e. Song Fest, because she must be fair and impartial. While weighing the offer, Casey is pressured by Ashleigh to stay true to ZBZ. At the first round of Song Fest performances, the Gamma Psi’s perform and do well, but the real news comes after their performance. Katherine tells Casey that Beth, the ditzy ZBZ member who choreographed the ZBZ routine, isn't allowed to participate because she isn't an active ZBZ member at present, having defected last semester to join Frannie’s new IKI sorority temporarily before coming back to Zeta Beta. Not only can’t she participate, they can’t use her dance either. Left to come up with a new dance in less than a day, the ZBZ’s are saved when annoying, outspoken pledge Abby pipes up to say that she has plenty of experience choreographing dances. Her dance comes up big the next day, with ZBZ dancers popping up from throughout the audience and coming together for a number that the crowd loves. However, the judges still hand the win to Gamma Psi, which infuriates the ZBZ’s. They sneak into an empty GP house that night to look at Katherine’s score sheets from Song Fest and find that one judge, named Ryan, gave them a terrible score while giving Gamma Psi a score way higher than any of the other judges. Confident that they have their proof, the ZBZ’s leave. The problem arises when Rebecca Logan lights an aromatic candle and forgets to put it out before leaving. Later in the night, the Gamma Psi house catches fire and basically burns down as the entire campus gathers to watch. Casey and Ashleigh gather their sisters and swear them to secrecy about the events of that night, at least until they know for sure what caused the fire. Katherine stops by shortly thereafter, intending to talk about the judging inconsistencies from Song Fest, but when she hears about her house on fire, she flees the scene. Casey’s night at least end well when she hooks up with Cappie again and spends the night with him, as she’s done for the past week. The last storyline was the ongoing rivalry between Rusty and Dale as they compete for a prestigious engineering grant. The day for judging arrives, which turns out to be partly funny because the professors sponsoring their projects, Drs. Hastings and Larson, spark Rusty and Dale to some pre-judging smack talk. When the judges finally do come in and do their thing, they reveal five finalists for the grant, including Rusty and Dale. The bad news is that the winner won't be announced until next semester, meaning the tension between Rusty and Dale will linger a while longer. To settle things in the meantime, Dale suggests the ultimate dork showdown: battle bots. The fight is on and engineering dorks of all shapes and sizes gather in a dark, poorly lit basement that’s basically a nerd fight club for the robot battle. Before the fight, Calvin suggests to Rusty that while he has his fraternity, his school work and the girlfriends he’s had so far, Dale only has his science. If Rusty wins the robot battle and/or the grant, it could crush Dale. During the battle, Rusty is ahead when he realizes that Calvin is right. He allows Dale to win the fight, which makes Dale feel better and seems to calm things between them. So Rusty ends this leg of the season without a girlfriend, but at least he has his friends and his frat. The show returns at the end of January, so look forward to that and be sure to tune in……….
- It’s been a few days, so what say we have another case of environmental disaster encroaching upon us all and threatening to irrevocably damage our planet? Voyage with me to majestic Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania, where the ice and snow that cap the mountain are quickly vanishing. Unless current conditions change, climate change experts say Kilimanjaro's world-renowned glaciers will be gone within the next two decades. "In a very real sense, these glaciers are being decapitated from the surface down," said Lonnie Thompson, professor of earth sciences at Ohio State University. In other words, glaciers that have been around for centuries could be gone within decades. Thompson is co-author of a study on Kilimanjaro published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and he doesn’t sound all that optimistic about the chances of saving the glaciers. Whereas previous studies of Kilimanjaro's glaciers have relied on aerial photographs to measure the rate of the retreating ice, researchers for this study climbed the mountain and drilled deep into the glaciers to measure the volume of the ice fields. At the top of atop the 19,331-foot peak, they found that the ice sheet that capped Kilimanjaro in 2007 was 85 percent smaller than the one that covered its plateau in 1912. Ice depth that decreased by about 1 percent a year from 1912 to 1953 shrank by to 2.5 percent a year from 1989 to 2007. Heck, this decade alone, the plateau's three remaining ice fields have shrunk by 26 percent. Making use of the strong backs of some locals, Thompson’s team toted carried 6 tons of equipment to the mountain's plateau, braved temperatures as low as 35 degrees below zero and lived atop Kilimanjaro for nearly two months, drilling and collecting core ice samples buried thousands of feet below the glaciers' surface. They found that whether it was the Northern or Southern ice fields atop Kilimanjaro, the verdict is the same. Both have thinned dramatically in recent years, while the smaller Furtwangler Glacier shrank as much as 50 percent between 2000 and 2009. More and more of the crater beneath the glaciers is becoming visible as the ice breaks up and this causes temperatures to rise on the mountain and accelerates the melting of the ice."The Kilimanjaro glaciers are indicators for a larger-scale process," Thompson said. "It's not just Kilimanjaro, it's every tropical glacier in Africa, in the tropical Andes of South America, it's the glaciers in New Guinea. We are losing all those glaciers in today's world.” This is bad news for Tanzania not only on environmental grounds, but also in terms of tourism revenues. An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 people visit Kilimanjaro every year, spending almost $50 million annually in the country. Will people flock to Tanzania to see a snowless Kilimanjaro? I would, but I can't say that holds true for everyone. So step your game up, world, and stop killing the glaciers………
- Bad beef! Bad beef! Attention northeastern sector of the United States: Put down that beef and find out if it’s potentially deadly before you eat it. On Monday, Fairbank Farms of Ashville, New York issued a voluntary recall for more than half a million pounds of ground beef because it may be contaminated with bacteria linked to at least two deaths. The recall pertains to approximately 545,699 pounds of ground beef produced between September 14 and September 16 after the meat was "possibly linked" to E. coli O157:H7. "Any customers from northeastern or mid-Atlantic states who have identified recalled ground beef products should remove the product from their freezers and return it to their stores for full reimbursement," the company said. Government spokespeople in New York and New Hampshire have each confirmed a death in their state from the E. coli and apparently the situation came to light during a U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service an investigation of a cluster of E. coli 0157:H7 illnesses in Connecticut, Maine and Massachusetts. This mess isn't limited to those two states; the recall was for distribution centers in eight states. It could potentially balloon beyond that because some retailers may have sent the affected beef to other states. You definitely don’t want this strain of E. coli, as it could inflict ailments like bloody diarrhea, dehydration and kidney failure upon you. Retail outlets from which the lethal beef could have been purchased include: ACME, BJ's, Ford Brothers, Giant Food Stores, Price Chopper, Shaw's, and Trader Joe's. To find a list of the tainted meats, visit the USDA Web site. At present, the products are already at least 23 days past their expiration date, meaning they are no longer being sold as fresh. "We're assisting our customers in conducting this recall, and continue to urge consumers to check their freezers for ground beef products that are listed in the recall," said CEO Ron Allen in a news release. "Consumers who identify these products should return them to the point of purchase for a full refund." Hmm, I don’t know. I give up my shot at bloody diarrhea, dehydration and kidney failure and all I get is my money back? I’ll have to think about that one for a while…………
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