A black bear invasion, Team USA is golden and weekend movie news

- Perhaps Comedy Central talking head Stephen Colbert is right and bears are the single greatest threat facing society today. How else do you explain the massive surge of angry black (not to be racist) bears being reported in west Texas and parts of northeast Texas? Instead of illegal immigrants streaming across the border from Mexico to drop their anchor babies and receive free health care, these Texas towns are in peril because of rising numbers of black bears. Locals are readying themselves for a continued rise in the number of black bears, knowing what their presence could mean. “Normally, when we'd be walking through the woods and its getting dark, we'd think that rustle in the bushes was an armadillo, now it makes you think twice," said Don Benton, a Red River County rancher. So where are these bears coming from? "We're seeing bears slowly return naturally return from the surrounding states of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana to East Texas," said Nathan Garner, with the Texas Parks and Wildlife. The frontrunners for the black bear resurgence are juvenile males, which are typically the first to venture out and explore any new habitat. Of course, there are some tree-huggers out there who want to allow nature to run amok and they are predictably celebrating the rising tide of black bears as a positive. "I think it says two good things. One, that bears are healthy in those states, and that we do have habitat that support animals like the black bear," chirped Christopher Comer, a professor of Forest Wildlife Management at Stephen F. Austin University. If only Professor Comer had to deal with the bears firsthand, his tune would change. Ranchers and other citizens in the affected communities are busy plotting ways to cope with the growing bear population. Black bear sightings are already becoming commonplace and ranchers worry that the bears may prey on young, weak calves and horses. One obvious solution to the black bear problem would be hunting, and I say that as someone who has never understood (and never will) the thrill of killing an animal with a gun or crossbow. Now, some naysayers would point out that under Texas law, black bears are protected and it's illegal to hunt or shoot one. Right, because Texans are big on following laws they don’t like, especially ones telling them when and how they can use their beloved firearms. It’s open season on black bears, gun-toting Texans. You know what needs to be done………

- College football had its second weekend of the season and the NFL opened its 2010 campaign this weekend as well, so very few sports fans were likely to pay attention to the quest for Team USA to win gold at the World Basketball Championships in Turkey, which wrapped up this afternoon. That’s unfortunate because Americans tend to love dominance and being able to say that they’re the best at damn near anything. On the strength of an undefeated, 8-0 record in the tournament, Team USA accomplished exactly that and aside from a narrow, one-basket win over Brazil in the group stage of the event, the Americans were never seriously challenged. Kevin Durant, easily the MVP of the tournament, set multiple scoring records for USA Basketball, including highest point total and scoring average at a world championship. He and his comrades stampeded through the medal round, clubbing Angola by 55 points, topping Russia by 10 and b*tch-slapping Turkey by 17 to win Sunday’s championship game by an 81-64 count. Durant poured in 28 points, including seven 3-pointers, to lead his squad to their eighth and most-important win of the tournament. The gold medal is noteworthy for any number of reasons, but first and foremost because it is the first with for the U.S. at the world championships since 1994, a span of three embarrassing performances sandwiched in between those gold medal wins. Secondly, this squad was universally considered USA Basketball’s “B” team because none of the players who won gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics returned this time around, leaving a young, internationally inexperienced team to try and claim the gold and earn an automatic berth to the 2012 Olympics in London. And lastly, the win made head coach Mike Kryzewski the first-ever coach to win both an Olympic gold medal and world championship gold for the U.S. Mix in that Team USA won the championship game in Istanbul against the host nation and in front of a rabid pro-Turkey crowd and it’s easy to see why this game and event are so meaningful, even if the bulk of American sports fans couldn’t pull themselves away from their NFL Direct Ticket package long enough to see Durant and Co. dominate the Turks………

- With the aforementioned NFL and college football obsession now in full swing across America, it’s not a huge surprise that the weekend at the box office was largely lackluster. The only movie to drastically exceed expectations was Resident Evil: Afterlife, which cashed in on its based-on-a-video game status to draw in dorks, er, games and ride their support to the No. 1 spot for the weekend with a $27.7 million debut. The take is a record for the Resident Evil franchise, which has now spawned four forgettable movies. To fully grasp how tough the weekend was for movies big and small, know that the second through seventh films on the earnings list didn’t match Resident Evil’s take - combined. Second place went to Takers with $6.1 million, a 44 percent drop from its three-day take last weekend and good enough for a $48.1 million total. It’s also worth noting that crappy acting by Paul Walker and T.I. haven’t managed to torpedo this film yet, so there’s that to consider as well. Finishing in third place was last weekend’s winner, The American, which fell 55 percent from last weekend and made $5.9 million for a cumulative total of $28.3. Another film hoping to stay hot after opening well last weekend was Machete, which was unable to realize those hopes and plummeted 63 percent to fourth place, bringing in just $4.2 million for the weekend and $20.8 million total. Rounding out the top five was the crap-tacular romantic “comedy” (can it be a comedy if not a single frame of the film is actually funny?) Going the Distance, which somehow managed to hold its drop-off from last weekend to a semi-respectable 44 percent to finish with $3.8 million for fifth place. Just don’t look at the film’s miniscule cumulative total of $14 million total over ten days or you’ll remember just how disappointing it’s been thus far. For the rest of the top 10, a mix of longstanding holdovers and more recent films made up the mix. Surprisingly, The Other Guys found a way to move up the list instead of down and jumped to sixth, conjuring up $3.6 million for $112.7 million total. It narrowly edged out The Last Exorcism, which fell to seventh with $3.5 million and $38.2 million total. One of the bigger overachievers of the past few months, The Expendables, brought in $3.3 million for a $98.5 million (and counting) cumulative total. Still hanging on in the top 10 was Inception, which dug in its fingernails one more time and held on to ninth place with a $3.0 million gross, boosting its overall tally to $282.4 million. Occupying the basement of the top 10 was Julia Roberts’ Eat Pray Love, which has mostly fallen short of expectations and managed a scant $2.9 million this weekend, a 40 percent drop leaving the film at $74.6 million for its first month of release, which is not an impressive total for a frequent box office queen like Roberts. But then again, it’s not like any other movies were lighting it up this weekend………..

- Umm, this can’t be good, right? Any time inmates escape from a Mexican prison, a chill shoots down the spine of most anyone within shouting distance of the U.S.-Mexico border because it’s a given that suddenly free inmates from our neighbor to the south will attempt to border crash at some point. When the prison break in question involves 85 inmates who escaped from a prison in the border city of Reynosa, the tension kicks up another notch or two. You’ll have to excuse those in and around border towns for not having the utmost confidence in Mexican authorities to find some or all of the 85 escapees in the massive manhunt now under way across northern Mexico. Antonio Garza Garcia, head of the Tamaulipas' detention facilities, was left to attempt to explain the prison break and suffice to say, he wasn’t exactly overflowing with reassuring info. Garcia explained that the break happened shortly after 4 p.m. Friday when the men used a ladder to clear a wall and soon dropped off the grid by using the streets around the prison. Of the 85 escaped inmates, 66 were serving time on federal charges, while the rest were serving time for lesser violations. In the aftermath of the escape, two prison guards are missing and 44 others have been detained under suspicion of corruption. Gee, what on Earth would lead you to suspect corrupt guards? Since when is it difficult for seven dozen inmates to gain access to a big enough ladder to scale the wall and seamlessly blend into the crowd the instant they get over the wall? Part of the problem may also be that the detention facility in Reynosa was more than 300 percent over its intended capacity. The facility was designed to hold 400 inmates but is currently housing about 1,700 prisoners (give or take 85). This news obviously isn’t sitting well with residents of McAllen, Texas, which sits directly across the Rio Grande from Reynosa. Now would be a very good time to double-check your locks and ensure that your firearms are loaded, McAllen residents………

- Not sure what that pill you’re about to cram down your gullet actually is? Before you take a potentially lethal or otherwise harmful medicine, it’s best to make at least a moderate effort to find out what said medicine is. With poison control centers across the United States receiving some 1 million calls a year about medicines that need to be identified, getting answers isn’t always fast or easy. Bearing that in mind, the National Institutes of Health is developing a way to quickly identify medications based on appearance. An application dubbed Pillbox, in its beta testing phase, will hopefully assist idiots who have managed to separate their pills from the correct bottle by identifying the tiny spheres based on their shape, color, size, imprint, and "scoring" (how many pieces it could be broken into based on the lines etched into the surface of an individual pill). Pillbox will also boast an advanced search feature allowing users to work in the opposite direction and search for a drug and see what it's supposed to look like. The problem in fully developing the app is that while Pillbox has 10,562 records, only 912 currently have images to go with them. To fill in the many gaps, the National Library of Medicine and the Food and Drug Administration are working on photographing more pills. But Pillbox is not a one-trick pony, said David Hale, developer of the tool. Hale added that the app is also being used to teach pharmaceutical students, list inactive ingredients in pills that people might have sensitivity or allergies to and help law enforcement. The latest word on Pillbox came courtesy of Hale’s speech this week at the Gov 2.0 summit. He told the crowd that new data were now available on Pillbox and that it was also giving access to tech developers to explore new ways to use the accrued data. He extended an invitation to pharmaceutical companies to send samples of their drugs so more images could be placed into the system. At this point, the app is not ready for clinical use, the NIH warned. In other words, the burden for figuring out what the heck you’re about to ingest from that pill bottle is still up to you and will remain that way for the foreseeable future………