New methods of offing people, resourceful recruiting at Tennessee and Google's continued quest for world domination

- You know me, I’m always in favor of finding new, intriguing methods of offing people and forcing them off this mortal coil we call life. That’s doubly true when the person to be offed is a psycho killer convicted of killing and dismembering a woman. Suffice it to say that the world is a better place without people like Kenneth Biros, an Ohio inmate responsible for the grisly 1991 murder of Tami Engstrom. Biros met her at a bar near the town of Warren and offered to drive her home, and later admitted robbing and attempting to rape her. Prosecutors accused him of dismembering Engstrom and spreading her body parts around northeast Ohio and neighboring Pennsylvania. The crime was "particularly heinous, with 91 pre-mortem wounds," according to the clemency report. Doesn’t sound like a good guy, eh? Well, Biros was executed Tuesday using a new, untested one-drug method of lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 11:47 a.m. at a prison in Lucasville, Ohio. His last words, according to Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokeswoman Julie Walburn, were: "Sorry from the bottom of my heart. I want to thank all of my family and friends for my prayers and who supported and believed in me. My father, now I'm being paroled to heaven." The execution was also noteworthy because it was the first in Ohio since September, when the governor and federal courts halted capital punishment in the state after a badly failed attempt to execute another prisoner, Romell Broom. After the prison staff could not find a suitable vein for the injections, Ohio was clearly looking for something new and they may have found it. The one-drug method had never been tried on a U.S. death row inmate, so this was a pioneering effort of sorts. The method relies on a single dose of sodium thiopental injected into a vein, with a separate two-drug muscle injection available as a backup. Up to now, the one-drug method has only been used to euthanize animals. in the traditional the three-drug method previously used in Ohio, sodium thiopental is the first ingredient, albeit at a much lower dosage. Bleeding heart liberals looking to argue against capital punishment would argue that sodium thiopental, which renders the prisoner unconscious, can wear off too quickly, and that some prisoners would actually be awake and able to feel pain as the procedure continues. Biros was originally scheduled to leave this world at 10 a.m., but things were delayed while the state of Ohio awaited a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on Biros' request for a stay. The court made the right call in turning away the petition and by noon, it was all over. It was fitting for Biros to be the guinea pig for the new execution method, as he was previously involved in litigation challenging the three-drug method and received a stay of execution in 2007 because of his involvement in the suit. He subsequently made all of the desperate moves that a man condemned to death typically makes, filed all of the appeals and in the end, he lost his life because he so senselessly ended someone else’s…………

- Look out world, Google is attempting to take over. First, the company announced a new operating system and browser, Google Chrome, designed to help it corner the technology market beyond search engines. That was followed by the announcement that Google will be entering the netbook arena, producing netbooks equipped with its new OS. Continuing a big run of announcements in the past few weeks, Google announced Monday the ability to perform an Internet search by submitting a photograph. The new feature, called Google Goggles, operates from a database of billions of images that informs its analysis of what's been uploaded, then is capable of recognizing books, album covers, artwork, landmarks, places, logos, and more. "It is our goal to be able to identify any image," said Vic Gundotra, Google's vice president of engineering. "It represents our earliest efforts in the field of computer vision. You can take a picture of an item, use that picture of whatever you take as the query." At this point, the feature is not available to the public and is still in Google Labs to work out problems and bugs. That didn’t stop Google from using Monday’s event at the Computer History Museum in New York to promote Google Goggles as the supposed future of online searches. "It could be we are really at the cusp of an entirely new computing era," Gundotra said, with "devices that can understand our own speech, help us understand others, and augment our own sight by helping us see further." Google Goggles could be helpful on a variety of fronts and in many settings, especially in ones where they don’t speak the local language and could use the cell phone cameras to snap pictures of signs, maps, etc., upload them and search online for clues and meanings that would help them out almost immediately. So keep an eye out for Google Goggles in the months ahead as Google continues its attempted takeover of the tech world………

- I would say that the demise of As the World Turns in September 2010 is a huge travesty, but I’m not big on lying today. Fact is, people mock and belittle soap operas for good reason, namely that they feature terrible acting, ridiculous plot lines and are just about the most worthless thing a person can watch on television. On top of that, due to their crap-tacular nature and low production value, one soap opera is the same as the next one and so a show going off the air is no big deal because it can easily be replaced by a near replica at the drop of a hat. So while CBS announcing Tuesday that ATWT will be exiting stage right come September after more than 50 years on the air may cause some to be downcast, that’s only because those people are idiots. Sure, the show has a reputation as a pioneer of the format, it has won numerous Emmys and many of its former cast members went on to bigger, better things. All of that is true, but clearly CBS is not in a patient mood these days when it comes to its daytime dramas. Just three months ago, the network brought the ax down on Guiding Light — after 72 years on the air (57 on television). It’s a shrinking map for soap operas, which are more and more viewed as outdated relics with little relevance or following among today’s viewers. The demise of As the World Turns leaves just six soaps on the air, with CBS home to two of them, The Young and the Restless and The Bold and the Beautiful. One interesting historical note in regards to As the World Turns: It was on the air when President Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963 and became the last regular network program broadcast for the next few days as continual TV news coverage took over. The show debuted April 2, 1956 and was the most-watched drama for 20 years. Notable alumni include Marisa Tomei, Meg Ryan, Julianne Moore, Martin Sheen and Parker Posey……….

- Some of you out there are inexplicably cracking the University of Tennessee football program for allegedly using recruiting "hostesses" to help bring prized recruits to its football program. Included in that group would be the NCAA, which is once again probing Tennessee's football recruiting practices, specifically the use of “hostesses” who have helped the program convince prep prospects to choose Tennessee by, um, using their skills and assets and even by attending prospects’ high school games. The problem in regards to the NCAA is that that hostesses are a part of the university's Orange Pride student ambassador group, which is considered an extension of the university. As such, the “hostesses” going off-campus to help in the recruiting process would be a no-no by NCAA rules. "We are concerned about the alleged activities of some members of the Orange Pride," the university said. "Both university and NCAA guidelines are a part of the Orange Pride's orientation and training. If those guidelines were violated, we will take appropriate action. Because of federal student privacy regulations, we can't comment further." The NCAA declined to comment, but none is needed from them at this point. Orange Pride is one of three student admissions groups at UT and the organization's responsibilities include staffing admissions programs, providing campus tours and hosting prospective athletes and their families. Oh, and don’t forget that its primary focus is using hot chicks to win over potential recruits, although you won't find that on any official Web site or brochure. Sure, Orange Prid has both male and female members on its 75-member roster, but don’t think for one second that this group is anything other than glorified pimping out of the girls for the purpose of winning over recruits. Don’t believe me? Just ask one of the recruits caught up in this latest round of controversy, Marcus Lattimore, a running back at James F. Byrnes High School in Duncan, S.C. who is one of three highly prized recruits at the school. According the multiple published reports, several hostesses attended one of James F. Byrnes’ games and hostesses brought signs, including one that read, "Come to Tennessee." Now call me cynical, but I’m guessing that none of the “hostesses” were anything other than smoking-hot girls who were more than a little flirty any time they encountered potential recruits. Lattimore had made an unofficial visit to UT, but the other two standouts on his team were apparently the ones that the hostesses were there to see. Perhaps that’s why Lattimore was willing to speak out, because he was bent at not being offered a scholarship by the Vols. I don’t know about that, but what I do know is that Lattimore’s evaluation of the hostesses falls perfectly in line with what I just said. Lattimore said the hostesses were "real pretty, real nice and just real cool" and thinks they had "a lot" of influence in his teammates making oral commitments. "I haven't seen no other schools do that," Lattimore said. "It's crazy." Suffice it to say that of Lattimore's high school teammates, Brandon Willis and Corey Miller, have orally committed to Tennessee. But I’m sure it’s only for the great facilities, the outstanding tradition and the amazing coaching staff. Uh-huh, sure it is. What high school guy isn't going to be swayed by a hot college chick flirting with him, showing him attention and promising much more of that treatment if he commits to the school she’s from? NCAA officials are currently in the process of visiting recruits who may have received visits from the Orange Pride hostesses and if UT is tagged for a recruiting violation at the end of the investigation, it will certainly be nothing new since Lane Kiffin took over as coach. During that time – just over a year – the Tennessee has committed at least six secondary NCAA recruiting violations, which are classified as unintended violations of rules not deemed to have given the school an unfair competitive or recruiting advantage, Whatever Kiffin is doing, it’s clearly working. Despite a season in which they struggled to stay above .500 and were nowhere near the top of the SEC East, the Vols boast the fifth-ranked recruiting class in the nation, according to Rivals.com. I guess I just don’t understand why some hot girls pimping themselves out to support their favorite football team and breaking a rule or ten along the way is such a big deal………..

- What exactly does the (bogus) government currently ruling in Honduras want with President Jose Manuel Zelaya, the man they ousted from office in a military coup? The deposed presidente has been hunkering down at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa for the past three months, trying to fight his way back into power but being turned away time and again. With his term coming to an end in a few weeks anyhow, Zelaya is now facing the reality of moving on. He thought he had a deal in place to guarantee safe passage out of the country, but the government that did not want to allow him back into Honduras in September now refuses to accept his plan to leave. A Mexican petition that would have granted Zelaya safe passage out of the country was rejected by Honduran authorities because it did not meet legal standards. Honduran Government Minister Oscar Raul Matute made the hypocritical announcement and from what I’m told, he did so with a straight face and without a hint of irony. In a letter to the de facto Honduran government, Mexico asks for a guarantee of Zelaya's safety from the embassy to the airport, where a Mexican Gulfstream III jet would fly his family to Mexico. The Mexican embassy in Honduras "has the honor of informing that the government of the United Mexican States has decided to receive on its territory" Zelaya, his wife, two children and one of his advisers, the letter states. "The embassy petitions the ministry (of foreign relations) to provide safe conduct so that the above Honduran nationals may leave Honduran territory safely, with respect of their persons and without being detained or otherwise harassed.” Seeking any reason to be the biggest dicks possible, the Honduran government of fake President Roberto Micheletti rejected the request because it supposedly did not meet the necessary standards because it made no mention of under what legal status Mexico would accept Zelaya and his family. Their standards for what constitutes a legitimate plan for exodus appear to be a bit different than everyone else’s, by which I mean they’re totally making theirs up and are full of sh*t. Zelaya has rejected the possibility of asking or accepting political asylum because he still considers himself the legitimate president of Honduras, and as such, if he leaves Honduras for another country, it would have to be as a "guest." While I’m with him in terms of being the legitimate president of Honduras, the fact is that me and my man M. Zelaya are not going to win that battle. Even with the backing of the United States and the Organization of American States, the nimrods now running the country won't allow him back into power. They insist that Zelaya's removal was a constitutional transfer of power, not a coup. Let’s see here, the definition of coup is “a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government,” so let’s stack up what happened in Honduras against that definition. Power was indeed seized from a properly elected leader. It was seized suddenly and violently by force, so to me that sounds exactly like a coup. But coup or no coup, the issue now is allowing Zelaya and his family to leave Honduras peacefully, something the current government seems unwilling and unable to do. Get over yourselves, swallow your immense ego and let this guy go before things get even uglier………