- No apology needed, Cincinnati police chief Chief Tom Streicher. These things will happen when your underachieving NFL team employs no fewer than a half-dozen ex-cons to double as players when they’re not residing in an 8x10 cell. But Streicher felt the need to issue a public apology to the most notorious and accomplished of the Bengals’ felons, cornerback Adam "Pacman" Jones, who was questioned by officers on Sunday after allegedly driving his vehicle over a downtown curb to avoid another vehicle or pedestrian in his way. Officers spotted Jones and questioned him before ultimately releasing him without a citation or charges. But living in the age and media climate we live in, of course anyone in the vicinity with a camera phone whipped it out, took pictures and posted them on Twitter and Facebook with claims that Jones had been arrested. The claims were completely false but when a rumor like that gets rolling and it involves something imminently plausible (Jones has been arrested or question by police about a dozen times during his college and pro careers), it takes on a life of its own and many people accept it as fact without much proof to back it up. Bengals coach Marvin Lewis said Monday that Jones was disappointed with the way the matter had been portrayed, but Jones has to know deep down that people are going to assume the worst when it comes to him and alleged criminal behavior because of his long, long rap sheet and history of boorish behavior. That’s what happens when you spit on women, start night club melees that leave people shot and paralyzed, brawl with your own security guards at hotels and go to strip clubs after said shooting incident and do so on the eve of an important meeting with the commissioner who suspended you for that incident. But with guys like Tank Johnson, Matt Jones, Cedric Benson, Andrew Whitworth, Rey Maualuga and Pacman Jones on your roster, all of whom have arrests to their credit during their NFL career, the local police are bound to be watching you closely and sooner or later, someone is going to run afoul of the law. But hey, at least your team is winning games to justify keeping these headaches around. Oh wait, no it’s not………
- What to do when you want to be a viable candidate in an election and no one is taking you seriously? Getting arrested for trying to get into a debate you were not allowed to participate in should help, right? If not, someone should have clued California Green Party gubernatorial candidate Laura Wells, because this kook actually tried to crash Tuesday’s debate between actual candidates Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown at Dominican University of California in the northern city of San Rafael. Whiteman, the Republican candidate, was set to debate her Democratic challenger in an event that Wells was banned from because of her lack of support in the polls. So she decided to put on her bright green dress, gather a group of her disillusioned supporters and storm the event holding protest signs. She used a bogus ticket to get into the event and then proceeded to get in the face of school security officers who attempted to stop her from going up on stage. "When the independent parties are not at the table, California is not at the table," Wells barked before she was led away by security officers and charged with trespassing. Good to see that your state is not continuing its habit of having a gubernatorial race that’s an absolute circus, California. And to think that we all assumed that having the Gover-nator run and win would be the most ridiculous and absurd thing to happen when it came to California and its top elected official. Honestly though, political debates tend to be about as interesting as a reading of the tax codes, so big ups to my girl L. Wells for spicing things up and giving people something to talk about other than which of the two unqualified, sure-to-fail candidates for the job did the best job at talking over their opponent and promising things they cannot possibly deliver………
- Figuring out how to stop their children’s sexting is a big concern for parents of kids anywhere between the ages of, oh, about 10 and 17, but to do that most parents would first need to figure out how to use the various features of a cell phone in the first place. Preventing your child from sending sexual texts or picture messages first necessitates an understanding of technology and most parents are far too ignorant to do that. Apple (who else) may be riding to the rescue with a newly patented technology that could be used by parents to prevent kids from sending sexually explicit text messages. The technology still hasn’t been finished and released publicly, but it would allow a phone's administrator block an iPhone from sending or receiving texts with certain words. When a message containing blocked material came to or went out from the phone, it would either be blocked or would have the objectionable content redacted. Apple’s technology is also graduated into that it would allow the phone’s administrator to filter content based on a child's age level and filter abbreviated words that maybe missed by other programs. Apple was awarded the patent on Tuesday and oddly enough, it could also turn the filters into educational tools. The patent documents explains how parents of kids who are studying Spanish, for example, could be required to send a certain number of messages per month in that language. If a child fails to meet the foreign language quota, their texting privileges could be automatically revoked until they send more Spanish-language text messages. Why is Apple’s idea so unique when it comes to sexting? Well, Steve Jobs and Co. would have you believe that current methods of monitoring and controlling text communications on phones have failed. These methods allow kids to communicate only with a pre-set list of phone numbers or e-mail addresses, but that’s extremely limiting and does nothing to address the content of the communications, which Apple says is more important. The company also pooh-poohs the idea of only blocking certain expletives, saying it is not as effective as trying to recognize the overall offensiveness of a message and comparing that to a kid's age and learning level. So hapless parents of sexting teens, help is on the way………
- I’m having a difficult time figuring out if this is what you would call a lateral career move. When you rise to quasi-fame as a member of a reality TV show cast, pretty much anything you do other than getting into porn should be considered an upgrade……but this case has me perplexed. Jenni “J-Woww” Farley has actually carved out a niche for herself as the “sane” cast member on MTV’s Jersey Shore, which is akin to being the tallest midget, and like anyone appearing on any reality show in the history of the world, her end game is to become famous without possessing any actual talents or skill set that would justify her being famous. To that end, Farley will appear on Thursday’s TNA iMPACT! (TNA stands for Total Nonstop Action, a wrestling promotion that is as second-tier as they come) as……wait for it…..herself. She will apparently encounter a female TNA wrestler who looks a lot like her old Jersey Shore pal Snooki. There’s no telling what will unfold at the show, but a second-echelon wrestling company like TNA has to pull out all of the stops and gimmicks to draw in viewers for its programming and fans to its shows, so odds are that there will be a catfight and Farley will be slapped, scratched, clawed and probably clocked with an closed fist at some point. But again, I’m wondering if showing up on a professional wrestling show is a lateral move or an upgrade for someone who has spent the past couple of summers rolling with the Situation, Ronnie, Snooki and the other self-absorbed GTL-ers on the Shore. Ultimately, even the fake, steroid-fueled culture of pro wrestling wins out here and it at least contributes something of worth to the world, at least when stacked up against MTV’s intellectual wasteland of reality programming………
- Umm, this doesn’t seem good. A rogue, bitter and hostile state like North Korea being capable of producing up to 12,000 metric tons of chemical weapons has to be bad, right? Maniacal dictator Kim Jong Il possessing enough weapons to affect massive civilian casualties in South Korea sounds like a recipe for the world’s biggest disaster…..and then some. Those staggering calculations come from the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, a think tank that recently undertook a study to assess the North's nuclear capabilities. What the KID found was that North Korea’s chemical weapons stockpile is South Korea's most urgent security issue according to the report. "The international community must show its strong will in seeking disarmament of North Korea's chemical weapons along with its denuclearization," KID official Kwon Yang-Joo said. Furthermore, South Korea’s defense ministry estimates that North Korea has 2,500 to 5,000 metric tons of nerve gas, blood agents, mustard gas and other chemical agents. Based on those estimates, the KID predicts that the North produce up to 12,000 metric tons of chemical weapons deliverable by artillery, missile or aircraft. Armed with 5,000 metric tons of chemical agents, North Korea could contaminate some 950 square miles of land, four times the area of South Korea’s capital city, Seoul. Should the North choose to blow its entire nuclear wad at once, the KID estimates that it could produce between 625,000 and 1,250,000 chemical bombs. All of that in the hands of a freaking lunatic like K.J. Il, a man who desperately wants to be the one to kick off World War III in style……that’s not going to end well……..
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