- There are plenty of happy people at Paramount Picture right now and the celebrations are due to the fact that Paranormal Activity 2 won the weekend with $41.5 million from 3,216 locations and set the record for the largest three-day opening for a horror film. It scared up more case than Friday the 13th‘s $40.6 million tally from last year, proving once again that a horror movie need not be good in order to make a lot of money. Second place went to last weekend’s winner, Paramount’s Jackass 3D. Johnny Knoxville’s latest knucklehead fest declined a whopping 57 percent but still conjured up $21.6 million, bringing its cumulative total to an impressive $87.1 million. Geezer action flick Red was third for the weekend after a modest 31-percent drop and a gross of $15 million for the three-day frame. Clint Eastwood’s supernatural drama Hereafter scored fourth place as it expanded to wider release. As the movie made the jump from six theaters into 2,181 locations, it upped its earnings to a respectable $12 million. The last of the top five was Sony’s The Social Network, which held strong for a $7.3 million weekend and has now grossed $72.9 million. The rest of the top 10 consisted of: Disney’s family flick Secretariat (No. 6 with $6.9 million after a 25-percent drop to elevate its cumulative tally to $37.4 million), the disappointing Life As We Know It (No. 7 with $6.2 million and a $37.6 million cumulative total after three lackluster weeks), Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole (No. after making $3.2 million, dropping off 25 percent in its fifth weekend in theaters), Ben Affleck’s bank heist thriller The Town (No. 9 with $2.7 million and a running total of $84.7 million) and Easy A (No. 10 with $1.75 million, on its last legs in the top 10 and yet having turned a profit in excess of $46 million with a cumulative take of $54.8 million). Next weekend, look for Saw 3D to do ginormous business with it being Halloween and all………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Behold the power of the people, all. Italian residents in the Naples area have proven what the little guy is capable of by compelling the Italian government to stop the construction of a controversial landfill near Naples amidst vocal opposition from residents. You might think that would be enough to placate these proud people, but I credit them for not being easily quieted. Even after the government agreed to stop work on the new landfill, the locals still clashed with police Saturday night, injuring six police officers in the process. Why the riot even after they got what they wanted? Because merely stopping the building of the new landfill was not the entirety of these dissidents’ goal. They also took it to the streets to speak out against the conditions of an existing landfill, which they said pose an environmental and health hazard. The situation has become explosive enough that the government named Guido Bertolaso, the chief of Italy's civil protection agency, to deal with the issue. Bertolaso made the official announcement that the government was halting all work on the second landfill and undertaking an in-depth analysis of the current landfill to determine if it poses any dangers to people or natural resources. But like any good dissidents, these angry Italians were doubtful of The Man’s promises and went on lashing out anyhow. Some 500 protestors boldly blocked the road that leads to the landfill and only 20 or 30 of the bravest protestors then clashed with police. The rowdy rioters chucked rocks, hurled firecrackers and even lobbed a few Molotov cocktails at police - always a big plus in any riot. On Sunday, Bertolaso met with the mayors of the towns in the landfill area in Naples to reiterate the government’s position on the issue, but he has been unable to convince them to agree to his proposed compromise. The group will meet again Tuesday and attempt to reach some sort of resolution, but I wouldn’t count on it. "We are going to continue these battles and I believe that we'll obtain what we want," said Domenico Auricchio, mayor of Terzigno. "I only ask my citizens to have faith in the local institutions. We'll continue to battle to the end, but now I ask that these acts of vandalism stop because they don't bring any thing good to any one." Nice try, D. Your citizens (you said they were yours, bro) have already lost faith in their government and you aren’t going to get it back by asking nicely. Of course, Bertolaso and the national government are planning to movie forward unilaterally with their proposals regardless of how the local governments in the region respond. The most humorous note in the entire process was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi promising last week that "within 10 days, the situation should be brought to normality." I think those 10 days have some and gone…….
- How many of us even slow down when we pass a wreck or any sort of traffic problem on the expressway? Most of the time, we’re so busy and in so much of a rush to reach our next destination that we barely notice what’s going on around us. Thankfully for a few troubled travelers in Pittsburgh on Saturday night, University of Pittsburgh basketball coach Jamie Dixon didn’t take the typical approach to a wreck on the side of the road. When Dixon saw an accident on a busy stretch of interstate on Saturday night, he pulled over to help trapped passengers in a car that had turned over against a guard rail. The vehicle somehow managed to flip over while going on I-279 North near the McKnight Road exit in Pittsburgh. The car was on its side when Dixon, traveling in the same direction, stopped to help. "[Dixon] assisted in removing at least one of the two occupants," Pennsylvania state trooper Erik Fisher said. "He sustained some injuries to his hands in assisting in getting them out through the windshield of the vehicle on the passenger side." Sure, but what are a few cuts and scratches on your hands when you possibly save someone’s life or health in the process? Thankfully, the vehicle was not on fire when Dixon pulled over to help its occupants, or the rescue would have become a lot more stressful than it already was. Dixon was treated in an ambulance and then released before continuing on his way and was right back in practice with his team on Sunday morning. “He was a good Samaritan," Fisher said. "That's the way people are supposed to be. By all accounts he did exactly what a decent person should do. It's an Interstate freeway and I'm sure countless other cars drove right past. He was one of the very few who pulled over." He pulled over and I would imagine made a few lifelong Panthers fans in the process………
- Making ends meet is an Herculean task for millions of Americans, let alone the always-impoverished college students of this great nation. So while others may want to condemn two Georgetown University students arrested in connection with a suspected drug lab found inside a dormitory Saturday morning, I’m going to cut these stoners/aspiring entrepreneurs a break. The two men and a third person were charged with possession of drug paraphernalia, said Officer Hugh Carew, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department. Amazingly enough, these future Mensas thought they could run a meth lab in a dorm room and not have anyone smell it. Oh, and given the propensity for meth labs blowing up at one point or another, the odds of success were not high for this endeavor. Yet these brave souls soldiered onward and were doing just fine until police showed up at their door shortly before 6 a.m. after receiving a call about a foul odor at Georgetown's Harbin Hall. Police theorized that the lab was for producing meth but later said it was used to make Dimethyltryptamine, a hallucinogenic drug commonly known as DMT. The problem with DMT when it comes to being charged with its production is that it’s classified as a Schedule 1 drug, meaning it has no accepted medical use for treatment of any kind in the United States. That means you’re facing stiff sentencing guidelines if found guilty and in this case, that means a maximum prison sentence of 20 years on a conviction of federal trafficking of Schedule 1 drugs. As for the addicts at Georgetown who have been (allegedly) counting on these two kooks for their favorite synthetic hallucinogenic, your life just became that much tougher. DMT is popular because it can be sniffed, smoked or injected - a triple-threat drug. It is known for giving the user a short high sometimes referred to as a "business man's trip" because it lasts about an hour. In addition to the charges of drug paraphernalia possession, the three men arrested Saturday morning could see their legal burden become heavier if The Man adds federal drug trafficking charges, which could happen if anything more serious is uncovered by the DEA's investigation. Harbin Hall was evacuated for much of the day Saturday until the DEA determined that the chemicals used in the suspected lab posed no health risk to students in the dorm. "The DEA has informed us that there was never a health risk to students in Harbin, including those on the same floor, beyond those who lived in the room," Todd Olson, vice president of student affairs, said in a statement to Georgetown students and faculty. "Hazardous materials experts have now removed all potential contaminants. The use, production and distribution of illegal drugs are issues we take very seriously and are violations of the student code of conduct. MPD [Metropolitan Police Department] has arrested three individuals, two of whom are Georgetown undergraduates. They remain in police custody." Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every college official and administrator at every school in the nation would say the same thing…..and a lot of them spent their very own college career smoking, snorting and ingesting illegal substances. Don’t allow this to deter you from chasing your dreams, aspiring meth, pot, coke and X dealers of the world. You can thrive, you can succeed and you can soar………
- Whoopsie. Was that wrong, Google asks? Yes Google, it was wrong for you to collect and store users’ e-mails, URLs and passwords - even if it was, as you claim, accidental. The tech titan admitted the error in a blog post Friday, conceding that external regulators have discovered the “mistakenly” collected information that was recorded while the vehicles for Google's Street View service were out documenting roadway locations. That process was controversial in and of itself, even before people knew their personal Internet data was being pirated. The erroneously gained data was mistakenly collected in more than 30 countries, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, some of Europe, and parts of Asia, according to Google. Alan Eustace, senior vice president of engineering and research, wrote the blog post and explained that "we failed badly here" while adding that Google has spent months analyzing how to strengthen their internal privacy and security practices. "We want to delete this data as soon as possible, and I would like to apologize again for the fact that we collected it in the first place," Eustace wrote. So how did Google manage to “accidentally” collect this data in the first place? Apparently the unencrypted WiFi data was recorded through its Street View service, but the severity of the situation was unknown. According to a Google spokesperson, the company first became aware of the problem when the Data Protection Authority in Germany asked Google to review all of the data collected through its Street View cars, which record street locations, but can also collect WiFi data about hot spots in order to improve the location database for things such as Google Maps for mobile. It (allegedly) wasn’t until Google went back and analyzed the data that the company realized what it had done. Yes, any data snagged by the Street View cars came from people not smart or forward-thinking enough to encrypt their wireless network, but that doesn’t excuse Google from taking 99.9999999 percent of the blame here. It snagged passwords and entire emails, many of which were likely of a personal nature. The improperly recorded data has since been segregated and secured, and WiFi data is no longer being collected from Street View cars. The data collected from Ireland, Austria, Denmark and Hong Kong has been deleted, but several countries have opened their own investigations into the matter. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal weighed in on the matter in a written statement that read: "This alarming admission that Google collected entire e-mails and passwords validates and heightens our significant concerns. Our multistate investigation, led by Connecticut, into Google's alleged invasion of privacy through wireless networks is continuing." Great, because we didn’t already have plenty of reasons to be concerned about who was out there trying to steal our personal information, thanks for that, Google………
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