Chuck Liddell's face caved in, attacks on rallies in Kenya and a failure to urge originality in Hollywood

- That didn’t end well. Former UFC light-heavyweight champion Chuck Liddell desperately wanted to fight again to prove that he still had it and that he remains a viable MMA fighter, but his best efforts only got his face caved in by Rich Franklin at UFC 115 in Vancouver. Liddell said all the right things leading up to the fight, put himself through rigorous training and came into the fight in great shape. He attacked from the opening bell and for the first four minutes and 55 seconds of the first round, he was on the rampage. He manage to break Franklin’s arm and was giving more good shots than he was taking - right up to the moment Franklin dropped him like a sack of cement mix with a solid shot to the head. That shot ended Liddell’s night and most likely his career, as UFC President Dana White said after the fight that Liddell will not fight again for UFC. "I'll be the first one to say he does not have the same chin he used to," White said. "You get to a point in your career and the chin just goes. I've been around fighters my whole life and you could have hit Chuck in the face with a pole at one time and it wouldn't have knocked him out. He had an incredible chin. We all get old. Michael Jordan was the greatest basketball player in the world. It happens to everybody. He wanted this and he gave it his best shot. He went out like Chuck Liddell would. He was blasting and throwing bombs and he gave the fans a last, good fight with the Iceman.” For White, that’s high praise and from a guy who is brutally honest about his product and his fighters after bouts, to not have anything critical to say about Liddell shows you a) how much respect White has for Liddell and b) how certain White is that Liddell’s career is over. Quitting is never easy for a great athlete or competitor and for a guy who was long revered as the most feared fighter in MMA, walking away has proven impossible thus far. Perhaps having to go to hospital after the fight and suffering his third consecutive knockout loss will convince him otherwise. It was a great 12-year run for Liddell and in his prime, there was no tougher MMA fighter than him. Still, the image of Franklin caving his face in and sending a noticeably more fragile Liddell to the ER has to be the straw that finally breaks this MMA legend’s back…………..

- Thanks for nothing, America. Never mind the idea of pushing Hollywood to come up with original concepts that we haven’t seen a time or three on the big screen. Let’s just hand our money over to see remakes of old movies that can be easily recycled and run at your local multiplex while not necessitating any real effort on the part of the studios. That’s exactly what you’ve done by making The Karate Kid the top film at the box office this weekend, forking over your money to see Jaden Smith rip off Ralph Macchio and help his film earn $56 million for the frame. Despite being two hours and 20 minutes long, Karate Kid received overwhelmingly positive ratings from moviegoers and easily outdistanced The A-Team, which earned $26 million for its opening weekend. That’s well below the take Twentieth Century Fox was expecting from the big-budget adaptation of the popular ‘80s sitcom. For a movie that received a ton of promotional support, those earnings are subpar at best. Third place went to Dreamworks Animation’s Shrek Forever After, holding strong with another $15.8 million, a 38-percent decline from last weekend. That raises the film’s cumulative total to $210 million, a number that makes it the lowest-grossing of the Shrek releases by a wide margin. In fourth place for the weekend was returner Get Him to the Greek, which made another $10.1 million for a running total of $36.5 million. The last of the top five was Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl flick Killers, which held fairly strong and made $8 million. The rest of the top 10 consisted of: Prince of Persia (No. 6 with $6.5 million for a three-week gross of $72.3 million), Marmaduke (No. 7 after falling 48 percent for a tally of $6 million its second weekend in theaters, the über-disappointing Sex and the City 2 (No. 8 with $5.5 million cumulative total of $84.7 million, Iron Man 2 (No. 9 as it nears the $300-million mark, earning $4.5 million) and Splice (No. 10 with $2.8 million, making for running tally of $13 million in two weeks of release despite outstanding reviews). All told, some solid movies in the top 10, making it a rare weekend at the movies…………

- Firing squads in 2010 fascinate me. They are a relic of a bygone era; a bizarre entity that most states in the United States have forgotten about with the invention of newfangled technology like electric chairs and lethal injection. Heck, the guillotine is probably the only means of execution that seems more outdated than the firing squad right about now. As such, you can bet that when I hear a Utah death row inmate is one step closer to his scheduled execution by firing squad early Friday, I’m going to have a thought on it. Ronnie Lee Gardner is scheduled to be gunned down by an armed posse on Friday after the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole on Monday refused to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The decision came after the board held a two-day commutation hearing for at the Utah State Prison on Thursday and Friday. Both Gardner and defense attorney Andrew Parnes argued during the hearing that he is a changed man who regrets killing two men in two separate escape attempts in 1984 and 1985. Let me stop right there for a moment. This guy attempted to escape from prison twice after being convicted of a felony to end up in prison in the first place and in those two attempts, he killed two men? First of all, those are terrible escape plans. I watched every episode of Prison Break on Fox (although I wish I had missed the series finale - it sucked) and I don’t remember Michael Scofield’s escape plan calling for him killing anyone during the escape itself. Second, who cares if you’re a changed man? Seriously, who gives a crap? There are just some things you cannot apologize for and killing two men in your futile attempts to escape the punishment you ere originally given for a crime you committed is one of them. If you were truly a changed man, you would not have attempted a second escape after the first one ended with a dead body and you back behind bars. Fact is, even if Gardner is telling the truth about being a changed man with a dream to help keep teens from making the mistakes he did, his argument doesn’t carry much weight. For starters, how does he propose that he be punished for two murders when he was already in prison for another crime? What, is he willing to surrender dessert for all weekday meals for the rest of his life to make his sentence harsher? Second, what kids is he going to help avoid the mistakes he made? How many kids are there who have been sentenced to prison and killed a man trying to escape, thus allowing them to benefit from his wisdom of not attempting a second escape that leads to the loss of another life? Whether I agree with Assistant Attorney General Thomas Brunker’s citation of Gardner's "long history of relentless violence" or not, the bottom line is that the least Gardner can do is stand in front of that firing squad to pay for the death of attorney Michael Burdell during an escape attempt at a courthouse in Salt Lake City. He has lived two-plus decades longer than he should have and should consider himself fortunate for that. Now, line up those men with rifles, blindfold Gardner and let’s make it happen…………

-If there is one thing I cannot and will not stand for, it’s governments attacking rallies by its citizens as they look to exercise their right to speak out and criticize those governing them. That means you and I have problems right now, Kenyan government. After you (allegedly) instigated a grenade attack on a rally against a draft constitution that would recognize Islamic courts, the National Council of Churches accused you of being complicit in the attack, which killed six people. Groups throughout Kenya are lining up on both sides of the issue, which the country votes on Aug. 4. Observers worry that if groups both supporting and opposing the draft constitution continue their violent tactics, even more violence could erupt in between now and Aug. 4. That will surely be a major day for all Kenyans, as the referendum will be the first nationwide vote since Kenya's 2007 presidential election. In case you have forgotten, that vote was followed by the deaths of more than 1,000 people in days of rampaging violence after the vote. Kenyan political leaders were quick to attempt to put distance between the blasts, which police said were caused by grenades, from the political issues around the referendum. A predictable comment from Prime Minister Raila Odinga labeled the attack an "isolated case." That idea was rejected by the National Council of Churches, which blamed the attack on the government and supporters of the draft constitution. "Having been informed over and over that the passage of the new constitution during the referendum is a government project, we are left in no doubt that the government, either directly or indirectly, had a hand in this attack. Who else in this country holds explosive devices?" said a statement by the council and other aligned groups. Even the United States has a role in this situation, as noted F-bomb dropper, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, urged Kenyans to embrace constitutional reform during a speech in Nairobi last week. Those views are not shared by many prominent politicians and Kenya's church leaders because the draft defeated because of allowances for abortion and Islamic courts that deal with family matters. The explosions themselves tore through a downtown Nairobi park at dusk Sunday as a rally against the constitutional draft was winding down. Only a few attendees were injured by the blast, but many more were wounded as the crowd of thousands stampeded out of the park after the second explosion. For Americans, the explosion could definitely stir up memories of the last major bombing in Nairobi, in 1998, when the U.S. embassies in the Kenyan capital and in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, were hit simultaneously, killing 225 people in an attack blamed on al-Qaida. This time around, it’s a strictly Kenyan issue that led to the attack, but the question now is who is responsible………..

- Your iPad may not be as secure as you would hope and Apple’s tablet computer continues to have unresolved security issues even after AT&T ‘fessed up to its iPad 3G customers about a security breach. A day after that revelation, the very hackers that exploited the vulnerability in AT&T's website claimed that there are still lurking security problems related to the iPad. Hacker group Goatse Security said Monday that a "skilled attacker" could still exploit a significant weakness in the iPad's Safari Internet browser. As with so many problems users can encounter, this one would be brought on by naïveté and cluelessness of the person doing the browsing. In order to open up the vulnerable spot, a user would have to click a malicious link, which could then allow someone to gain unwanted access to that user's iPad. In a post on its Web site, Goatse released an explanation of how the bug works: To protect against hacks, Internet browsers typically restrict websites' access to computers through communications channels known as "ports." But Apple's Safari browser failed to block off some illegitimate ports with unusually high numbers. A hacker could use those unguarded channels, in combination with Safari features that automatically execute software requests, to wreak havoc. In short, there is a hole in the iPad’s version of Safari that allows someone to have full control over the iPad of the idiotic person who clicked on the malicious link in the first place. Apple has already fixed the bug on the desktop and laptop version of Safari, doing in March when the security glitch was first discovered. At present, no such patch is available for the mobile version, which makes iPad users (those with real-life and computer IQs below 44) exposed to the attacks of hackers looking to do them harm………