- For the record, auto racing is still not a sport and it never will be. Dudes (and chicks) sitting in a car, driving around in circles, cutting others off, making left turns without signaling and driving really fast is not a sport, period. That being said, I can still enjoy angry drivers ramming and sideswiping one another in practice because they’re a bunch of overgrown, immature babies who can’t react with grown-up emotions to things they don’t like and instead try to turn their cars into weapons. I’m talking directly to you, Kevin Harvick, and you, Denny Hamlin. Apparently bent over Hamlin's comment on Friday that Clint Bowyer's RCR team intentionally violated NASCAR's tolerances by 60/1000ths of an inch with its winning car at New Hampshire, Harvick rammed the No. 11 Joe Gibbs Racing car twice in the right rear quarterpanel, then sideswiped him during the first lap of Saturday's practice at Dover International Speedway. Hamlin must have known it was coming because he clearly was not surprised by what transpired. "He got into me on pit road before we went on the track," Hamlin said Saturday. "I had a hint," Hamlin said. "Their crew guys they stare and made little comments through the day, 'Good luck today.' So I knew we were going to have to deal with some issues." Not to get too much into auto racing issues because I neither know nor care what NASCAR, IndyCar or any other racing circuit mandates of its cars and drivers, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that some hothead driver not weaponize his car and turn another driver into a flaming wreck on the side of the track. NASCAR officials sat down for a nice chat with both drivers while their cars were being fixed for the second practice and amazingly, no one rammed, sideswiped or rear-ended anyone in that second practice session. And no, NASCAR fans, this is not an example of what makes your little driving competition so exciting and intense. This is a prime example of why auto racing is not a sport and why it’s basically a lowbrow, simpleton’s excuse for a way to spend a weekend………
- Who knew the Department of Defense had such a voracious appetite for reading? I mean, how else do you explain the DOD purchasing thousands of copies of an Army Reserve officer's memoir? I can only assume the department has a book club that meets every other Friday and was looking to snatch up 9,500 copies of Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer's new memoir "Operation Dark Heart” because their book club has merely grown to a ridiculous size that necessitates 9,500 books. Wait a second……you mean to tell me that there is no DOD book club and that the department purchased those books for the purpose of destroying them in an effort to safeguard state secrets? That’s no rumor, as it was confirmed by a DOD spokeswoman Saturday. "DoD decided to purchase copies of the first printing because they contained information which could cause damage to national security," Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. April Cunningham said. So not only did the DOD channel its inner Nazi and have a good old-fashioned book burning, defense officials observed the September 20 destruction of the books. Shaffer sounded none too pleased about selling out the entire first printing of his book. “The whole premise smacks of retaliation," Shaffer fumed. "Someone buying 10,000 books to suppress a story in this digital age is ludicrous." Shaffer was also sold out by his published, St. Martin's Press, which caved in released a second printing of the book that it said had incorporated some changes the government had sought "while redacting other text he (Shaffer) was told was classified." There are literally entire paragraphs of blacked-out text in the book's 299 pages. Apparently the Defense Intelligence Agency has been chasing this case for a long time and attempted for nearly two months to get a copy of the manuscript. A statement from the DIA stated that its investigation "identified significant classified information, the release of which could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to national security." Included in that information were details about secret activities of the U.S. Special Operations Command, CIA and National Security Agency. Shaffer, through his attorney, claimed that the book was reviewed by Shaffer's military superiors prior to publication. The Pentagon first contacted St. Martin's Press in early August to express concerns about the book, but by then the first printings were just about to be shipped from its warehouse. That led to the harried mass book purchase by the DOD and the subsequent second printing that had the author incredulous. "When you look at what they took out (in the second edition), it's lunacy," Shaffer said. Of course, any time mass quantities of something are destroyed and a few are left, those with a copy in their hands want to make a few bucks off of it. In this case, one eBay user has already posted an alleged first-edition printing of the book for an asking price of nearly $2,000…………
- Umm, I don’t think this is going to help settle the ever-explosive tensions in the Middle East. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas throwing down the gauntlet by saying Saturday there will be no peace deal with Israel unless the Jewish state stops settlement construction in areas the Palestinians claim for their future state is not going to put out that fire of hatred. "Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of settlements," Abbas said during his address to the U.N. General Assembly's annual ministerial meeting. The U.N. has been the site of plenty of theatrics over the past few days, mostly due to Iranian despot Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but Saturday it was Abbas who broke out the heavy verbal artillery. His words came undoubtedly out of frustration after direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians stalled out a mere three weeks after starting in Washington in early September. A key issue in the negotiations has been the impending end of a 10-month freeze on new Israeli settlement construction on land claimed by the Palestinians. Abbas insisted that the Palestinians are committed to achieving a peace agreement but laid the blame for the stalled negotiations on the Israelis. "We have decided to enter into final status negotiations. We will continue to exert every effort to reach an agreement for Palestinian-Israeli peace within one year in accordance with resolutions of international legitimacy ... and the vision of the two-state solution," Abbas stated. Sunday’s deadline for Israel to resume the contested building could exacerbate tensions even more and the Palestinians are clearly looking to the U.S. to help break the stalemate. President Barack Obama has continued to emphasize the situation as part of his foreign policy efforts and U.S. special Mideast peace envoy George Mitchell did meet with Abbas on Saturday. However, it’s dubious that Mitchell can do anything to abate Abbas’ anger over what he perceives as Israel's repeated flouting of U.N. resolutions. Abbas has been adamant that he will be forced to walk away from the direct negotiations if construction resumes. His position, of course, is firmly rooted in the belief of Palestinians that all of the West Bank belongs to them as part of a future state. Thus, with 300,000 Jewish settlers currently calling the land home and the threat of expanding settlements on the horizons, the Palestinians believe Israel will make it all but impossible for them to establish a viable country. The situation became that much more combustible when pro-settler activists hauled construction equipment into the Revava settlement in the northern West Bank on Saturday. All in all, I’d say we’re headed for an explosive (no pun intended) future in a region that is certainly no stranger to such drama………
- Color me flat-out stunned. You’re telling me that Tweets from Ashton Kutcher don’t change people’s lives? According to a stunning study conducted at Northwestern University and unleashed on the world this past week, those Tweets from your favorite celebrity just don’t have that much of an impact on your day-to-day life. Researchers used a mathematical algorithm to measure the effects of the countless tweets that appear on celebrities’ pages on a given day and while they found that experts in certain fields were much more likely to cause topics of discussion to become trends, Tweets from people who are famous for acting in bad movies and hosting reality prank shows on MTV are mostly ignored, resulting in little if any influence. If nothing else, the findings go hand in hand with recent findings by social media analytics company Sysomos that celebrities’ Twitter followers don’t have any influence either. These Northwestern findings do call into question Twitter’s prior claims that 3 percent of the network’s servers are dedicated to tweets from Bieber and the retweets from his followers. The researchers at Northwestern compiled their own list of Twitter trending topics and instead had topics related to the upcoming Brazilian music awards at the top of the rankings. Northwestern professor Alok Choudhary and graduate student Ramanathan Narayanan concocted this curious system and found that the only way a celebrity’s Tweets could have a consistently high impact is for a celeb to Tweet about his or her area of expertise. But if, for example, LeBron James Tweets on the upcoming Senate races for his new home state of Florida, his thoughts wouldn’t generate as much of a buzz as someone who is actually in politics. Also, it’s worth wondering……if a celebrity’s Tweets on a topic they have no direct expertise on are ignored, how unnecessary and unnoticed are the Tweets or random, anonymous strangers…………
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