Not apologizing to FAT people for airline troubles, the dumbest pro athlete fight yet and a "Greek" recap

- I’d love to tell actor/director Kevin Smith that I sympathize with him and support him in his outrage over being kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland to Burbank, Calif., Saturday because he was deemed too fat for the seats…….but I don’t. The Clerks and Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back director claimed that he was ousted from the plane by the captain and crew because he was considered a "safety risk." The reason I don’t support Smith is because celebrity FAT people don’t deserve to be treated any differently than average FAT people and you all know how I feel about FAT people in general: Slim down or face the consequences. Fact is, being FAT is a sign of laziness, poor eating habits and a lack of discipline. It makes you an ugly sight for the rest of us to look at, it leads to poor health and the resulting health-care costs that burden our health care system and it lessens your quality of life. I’m not saying we all need to be thin and trim (although that would be awesome), but not being classified as medically overweight or obese is a reasonable goal. If Smith (or anyone else) falls into one of those categories and in so doing causes a safety hazard on a plane, give ‘em the boot. And if you are booted, don’t react with a barrage of angry Twitter posts, as Smith did. He wrote, "I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated? I broke no regulation, offered no 'safety risk' (what, was I gonna roll on a fellow passenger?).” Instead of taking offense, feel free to view such an occurrence as a sign that it’s time for you to push away from the buffet table, put down the doughnuts and Yoo-Hoo and hit the gym. I understand that Smith complied with the airline’s requirement that, as a FAT man, he purchase two tickets because he’s too large to fit completely into one seat. However, the reality is that when he attempted to take an earlier flight and was only able to get on standby, just one seat was available. Just because the airline attempted to placate him by offering him a $100 voucher, don’t take that to mean that Southwest was in the wrong here. Stand your ground, Southwest. I definitely don’t want to be crammed into an uncomfortable seating arrangement caused because one of my fellow passengers is so obese that he or she oozes over the boundaries of his or her seat and into my seat, so you stick to your principles. Whether the offended FAT party is a famous actor/director or a construction worker from Omaha, that person needs to know that being FAT is not okay and that there are ramipercussions……………

- If there’s an argument dumber than two professional athletes - grown men - who both make eight figures in a given year arguing about who owns the theoretical rights to a nickname, then I’ve yet to hear it. Orlando Magic center Dwight Howard and Cleveland Cavaliers center Shaquille O’Neal have both laid claim to the Superman nickname during their career, but since O’Neal has played in the NBA more than a decade longer than Howard, he apparently feels he has the rights to the moniker. Last week, after the Cavs defeated the Magic in both teams’ final game before Sunday’s All-Star Game, Shaq said he was "offended" to be compared to Howard. "You tell me who the real Superman is," he said. Not to correct you, big fella, but there is no “real” Superman because Superman is a fictional character owned by DC Comics. Neither you nor Howard is the real Superman unless and until you can: a) fly, b) have X-ray vision, c) have super-hearing, d) shoot fire from your eyes and e) be invincible to everything but actual Kryptonite. In response to O’Neal’s comments, Howard threw his own hissy fit. "It didn't sit well with me personally," Howard said. "I'm a young player trying to get to where he's at. I felt it would be better if he tried to help me instead of trying to put me down." He followed those comments up with a post-game interview after Sunday’s All-Star Game in which he attempted to take the high road and position himself as merely looking for a mentor, which he would like O’Neal to be. "The whole Superman thing, there's no battle of nicknames. I mean, if he wants to be Superman, he can be Superman. But I never tried to steal that title from him or take away anything that he's done for the game of basketball. I would like, instead of people fighting over a nickname, for us to be able to talk about what it's like to win a championship. Just little things that him being who he is can help me," Howard said. “I would just ask that somebody like Shaquille O'Neal to help me become a better basketball player and a better person.” All of this over a nickname? Guys, you’re both multi-millionaires, so how about using so of your massive net worth to buy a freaking clue? The only thing that irritates fans more than billionaire owners and millionaire players bickering over how they can get more money is stupid crap like this…………

- The real world infringed on last night’s Greek and the results weren’t pretty for those involved. For Casey and Cappie, the reality of their relationship hit home when Casey came to the realization that her summer internship in a congresswoman’s office last year had whet her appetite for politics and that the political world could be her future after graduation. She goes to the Kappa Tau house to share the news with Cappie, who is out in the back yard with his brothers in the midst of the Kappa Tau 500, a race in which they paint up the shells of turtles and race those turtles around a track set up in the back yard. Casey realizes that Cappie’s perpetual student act and her aspirations for a successful future in politics might not mesh. For help with her political aspirations, she enlists the help of ZBZ sister/nemesis Rebecca Logan, whose father is a disgraced U.S. senator. She points Casey in the direction of the local campaign manager for another senator who is operating in Cyprus Rhodes, but only after discouraging Casey from getting involved with politics at all because everyone in it is so corrupt. They stop by campaign headquarters and Casey is assigned the task of helping register voters on the CRU campus. She isn’t faring too well until Rebecca suggests she use some scare tactics (claiming that the military draft will be reinstated or that porn will be outlawed unless students register and vote against them). That turns the voter registration drive around and the campaign manager is duly impressed. He is further impressed when Casey pitches an idea for a huge voter registration event at Dobler’s, offering free cover for those who register to vote. That event is a big success as well, but things take a turn for the ugly when the campaign manager makes a comment to Casey about stopping by his apartment later for a debrief and she takes it as him hitting on her. Acting on advice from Rebecca and BFF Ashleigh, she tells the campaign manager off only to find that he really did invite her and other campaign staffers to a real debrief at his apartment. The next day, she decides to stop by campaign headquarters to apologize and also to lobby for a legislative aide position with the candidate if she is elected. What she finds out is that she is too inexperienced and doesn’t have enough education to actually be considered for a legislative aide position. The campaign manager suggests that she either get more experience or go to grad school, possibly even law school. That inspires Casey to reconsider law school, which she had thought about before but decided against. Cappie also finds himself in a tough spot, faced with the reality that Casey might be moving on without him. Everyone, from her sorority sisters to Evan Chambers, tries to tell Casey that Cappie is a CRU lifer who will never leave. Uanble to utter the “G-word” for so long (graduation), he finds himself forced to consider it if he wants to keep the girl he loves. After being ripped by Evan at the Dobler’s event and responding only with “turtles” when Casey visits the KT house a second time to broach the subject of their future, Cappie decides to man up and head to the ZBZ house to talk to Casey. Not only does he support Casey’s political aspirations, he manages to say the “G-word” and admit that as scary as graduation might be, he doesn’t want to be anywhere that she’s not. By episode’s end, the two of them are sitting on the back porch of the KT house, her doing prep for the LSAT and him having actually picked up a form from the registrar’s office for declaring a major. Sure, the form is still blank, but it’s all about “baby steps,” as Casey puts it. As for Rusty, the real world for him comes in the form of a feature story that Engineering Weekly wants to do about him and his new breakthrough with a self-healing wire that uses polymer technology. Rusty is being celebrated by the entire CRU engineering department, including Dr. Lundquist, the dean of the department. Rusty is celebrated at a party, introduced to all of the big-wigs in the department and prepared for his interview with the encouragement that his project will benefit the entire university. However, things hit a bump when his project sponsor and advisor, Dr. Hastings, assigns Rusty a promising student from one of his other classes to serve as his assistant on the project. It turns out to be Dana, the girl who had a crush on Rusty since freshman orientation and whom he blew off earlier this season, forgetting her name and offending her in the process. When he tried to recover and ask her out, she shot him down in inglorious fashion. Now, she’s his assistant and has the gall to suggest that his formula for the wire is faulty and that he’s headed for a dead end, with his wire capable of regenerating and conducting for no more than half an hour. At first, Rusty blows her off – again. But closer examination reveals that she’s right and rather than go on with his big EW interview, he tells the interviewer that his project is being blown out of proportion and that at this point, all it has is potential. Hastings is furious, as is the dean, but Rusty buckles down and gets back to work. Dana agrees to continue being his assistant (although clearly they’ll end up dating at some point) and the project is still alive for now. Rusty’s roommate Dale is going to extreme measures to fund his project after Rusty beat him out for the Gary Wyatt grant. Dale applies for the vacant hasher job at the ZBZ house and after hooking up (and breaking up) with Fisher, the last ZBZ hasher, Ashleigh wants a replacement who won't tempt her to get involved with him. Dale – the dorky, Bible-thumping science nerd – seems like the perfect candidate. Initially, the sisters reject him as the hasher because they want a hot guy, but when that hot guy turns out to be a perv, they ask for Dale back and he accepts, but only after Ashleigh agrees not to hit on him because he thinks she only hired him to be her man-candy like Fisher was. Overall, it was a good episode and one of the better ones this season even while dealing with a little more drama and a few less laughs………….

- Political corruption and abuse of power: They aren’t just American things. Not when the chief of staff for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is denying allegations that he used the power of his office to extract sex from a female job seeker, they’re not. My man Rafiq Husseini is the second in command in President Abbas' office, but he may just as well be second in command to former President Bill “Slick Willie” Clinton. Husseini held a hastily arranged news conference Sunday after it was reported that Abbas had suspended him from his job for three weeks due to the allegations. Additionally, a committee had been formed to look into the charges of sexual misconduct against him. All of this stems from the airing of grainy surveillance footage of Husseini undressing in a bedroom and calling for a woman to join him in bed. An Israeli television station aired the footage, which was shot in 2008. It was released by Fahmi Shabaneh, a former agent in the Palestinian Authority's General Intelligence Department. Shabaneh said that he released the tape to the media to expose ethical and financial corruption within the Palestinian Authority. Furthermore, he claimed that he presented evidence of the sexual and financial wrongdoing to Abbas before going public, but he was ignored. In response, he made the recording of Husseini after a Palestinian woman had approached him complaining that Husseini was trying to "sexually blackmail her." Bascially, this was a sting operation made with this woman’s cooperation and Husseini fell right into it. Now, Husseini would have you believe that he was been framed by a gang "working for the interest of Israeli intelligence" and that the tape was "dubbed." I haven’t seen this tape, but unless it is impossible to identify those on the tape and there are obvious jump cuts and inconsistencies in it, then those claims don’t hold much merit. It’s great that Husseini has pledged to fully cooperate with those investigating the matter, but until we see that cooperation in action, I have my doubts. Abbas is in a tough spot here because a) they can't really back an accused sexual harasser and b) they need to defend their organization in case of the likelihood that these allegations are true. To that end, an Abbas spokesman called the allegations "recycling baseless lies and asinine stories told by a former junior officer in the Palestinian intelligence service who was sacked more than two years (ago) from his position." As of now, neither Abbas nor Husseini has provided evidence to prove that he was not attempting to use his position of authority to force a job applicant into getting after it with him in some hotel room and the footage against him is the only tangible evidence in either direction at this point. How very American of you, Abbas…………

- It’s the rest of the computer world v. Apple and the battle is about to be waged. Some of the world's largest telecommunications companies have decided that they can’t possibly take on Steve Jobs and Co. on their own and have partnered up to create an apps store that they hope will compete with Apple's and those of other smartphone makers. Included in the supergroup are AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG Electronics and 24 other companies that have formed the Wholesale Applications Community. In an announcement made at the Mobile World Congress, they laid out details for the new store, which will be designed to encourage developers to create mobile and online applications for all smartphones and operating systems. An open platform is the central tenet for the new store, the group said in a prepared statement. "For customers this means a broader choice of innovative applications and services available on a wider choice of devices than ever before," the group said on its Web site. Without specifying how, the group said its site will provide app developers with a simple route to publishing and marketing and will bring those apps to customers faster and with more variety than anyone else (a veiled shot at Apple). "This is tremendously exciting news for our industry and will serve to catalyze the development of a range of innovative, cross-device, cross-operator applications," said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association. What is noteworthy about the new store is that Apple has thus far maintained complete control over the apps that officially run on its iPhones and they have been available exclusively through the company's official online store. Tech-savvy users have been able to "jailbreak" their phones to run other apps, but few are capable of that maneuver and so most users are bound to what they can find in the Apple store. The Wholesale Applications Community would allow developers to write programs for multiple smartphones instead of just one. Again, not only are Apple’s apps available only from their store, but they can also be used only on iPhones. Apps from the Wholesale Applications Community would not be bound by such rules and might be able to alleviate complaints by developers that Apple is often slow to approve their new apps. Of course, any excitement over the WAC should be tempered by the reality that it will be some time – months – before any apps will be available through the WAC. Until then, it’s still Apple’s world when it comes to smartphone apps………….