- Every year needs its own great mystery to perplex and confound people. Less than a week in, this year may already have that checked off the “to do” list. When as many as 5,000 red-winged blackbirds and starlings fell from the sky in a square-mile area in less than an hour on New Year's Eve in rural Arkansas (actually, isn’t everything rural there?), that should qualify. While a preliminary report conducted Monday by the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission found that the 500 dead birds in Beebe, Ark., likely died from massive trauma, the question of exactly what happened to the birds remains unanswered. Beebe is something of a ground zero for the bizarre happening because 500 red-winged blackbirds, starlings and grackles were found dead there. Experts at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisc., are looking at samples sent from Beebe in the hope of determining the specific cause of death. So far, the only evidence in the case is a collection of reports of loud sounds in Beebe before the reports of birds falling began to come in. The sound could have been high-altitude thunder and lightning that struck the birds, or perhaps the sounds made the birds disoriented, and they went into sudden, chaotic flights, crashing into each other and into objects. "This one is unusual because of the time period over which so many birds died," said LeAnn White, a field investigator with the center. "You're disturbed, you're disoriented, you're trying to figure out where you are. We have seen some stuff like this before when there's heavy dense fog, and they'll run into towers and power lines." The center will also examine samples from Louisiana, where dead birds also fell from the sky in mass quantities. Other experts have labeled the bizarre story as a freak event, especially because at this time of year, blackbirds are in huge roosts, particularly throughout the southeastern United States and generally don't fly at night. Some have speculated that idiots shooting off New Year’s Eve fireworks could have caused the mass bird death, which doesn’t seem that far-fetched. Doug Inkley, senior scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, said his "first suspicion is that they were frightened and went into a mass panic." "I would call this event unusual," he said, "but not unprecedented." Officials for the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission examined samples and discovered evidence of trauma in the breast tissue, with blood clots in the body cavity and a lot of internal bleeding, but all major organs were normal. Until there is a definitive answer on what caused the incident, many residents in affected areas are refusing to allow their children to play outside in places where dead birds fell. To the core, this is just an odd story that sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi movie. Quick, get John Cusack and Jake Gyllenhaal on the phone……….
- Ready or not Boston, Bill Buckner is coming back here…..sort of. Not only is the biggest goat in the history of Boston sports returning to Massachusetts, he’s coming back in uniform, too. No, Buckner is not returning to the fold for the Red Sox, the organization whose fans’ hearts he broke so emphatically by allowing a ground ball to slowly roll through his legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, leading to a should-not-have-happened win for the New York Mets, who went on to win Game 7 and the series. For that gaffe, Buckner became the symbol of a goat and the object of derision and even hatred for many Red Sox fans who clearly have a poor grip on reality and baseball’s perspective in that reality. Because of that persecution, Bucker has been forced into virtual seclusion and currently lives in Idaho. He hasn’t worked in baseball since serving as hitting coach for the Chicago White Sox in 1996 and 1997. It wasn’t until 2008, when he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Red Sox home opener as part of the celebration of the team's 2007 World Series title, that any sort of moving forward seemed realistic for he and his haters. After throwing that pitch, an emotional Buckner spoke about coming to terms with the notoriety that has hounded him because of the error he made his name becoming a cultural touchstone. "I really had to forgive, not the fans of Boston, per se, but I would have to say in my heart I had to forgive the media," Buckner said at the time. "For what they put me and my family through. So, you know, I've done that and I'm over that." Words are always trumped by actions, so there is no better way to show that he is indeed “over that” than returning to the state he once played to manage the Brockton (Mass.) Rox, a team in the independent Can-Am League. Buckner has been hired in that capacity, Rox co-owner Van Schley confirmed Tuesday. "We're thrilled," Schley said. "They're just crossing the t's and dotting the i's on the contract." Oddly enough, Buckner e-mailed his acceptance of the offer to team owner Chris Carminucci over the weekend. The Rox plan to formally introduce Buckner at the team's Hot Stove Dinner Jan. 21 and officially hand Buckner his first-ever managerial job. In a nice twist, the manager Buckner is replacing is Carminucci, who was Brockton's field manager the last two seasons while also running the club. He enters something of an unstable situation, as Carminucci is owner of a business that helps out financially distressed ballclubs and one former president has been accused of embezzling money from the club, or as Schley called it, "using it as his personal ATM." For those who wonder about the decision to hire someone still disliked (wrongly) by so many in the state of Massachusetts, Carminucci has a simple reply. "People are going to think, 'Oh, you're bringing back a controversial guy,' " he stated. "No, I'm bringing back one of the best baseball people that has ever played in Boston. We think Bill will be great for the community, great for our players." In other words, it’s independent league baseball and anything we can do to draw attention to ourselves is worth it………
- When you’re a member of the faculty of staff at Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., you don’t have many options for getting people to pay attention to your tiny blip on the radar of a school. Aside from……well, whatever it is that LSSU has built its fine traditions upon, there are just no eye-catching, must-see features of this forgotten institution of higher learning. As such, the powers that be at the school need to concoct some phony, contrived attention-grabber and for the past few decades, that attention-grabber has come in the form of LSSU’s annual list of "banished words" -- terms so overused, misused and supposedly ridiculous that they deserve to be removed from the spoken language of one and all nations. The words tend to be ubiquitous across age groups and demographics, but for the most part they are not worthy of banishment any more than the fools who come up with this list should be banished back to the obscurity from whence they came……but I digress. This year’s list includes scores of public-nominated words, including “viral,” as in the rapid spreading of videos or other content over the Internet. "This linguistic disease of a term must be quarantined," Kuahmel Allah of Los Angeles said in making a nomination. Viral topped the list, beating out "epic" and "fail," often paired to describe mistakes of large proportions. Other inclusions on the list were "wow factor," "a-ha moment," "back story" and "BFF". Tech haters also had their say, nominating the use of "Facebook" and "Google" as verbs. Sarah Palin haters (pretty much everyone not in her immediate family) suggested the banning of "Mama Grizzlies," used to describe right-wing female politicians of Palin’s ilk. LSSU began the list in 1976, when it named "at this point in time" as the word most in need of banishment. With something of a cult following, the college now receives well over 1,000 nominations each year through its website, lssu.edu/banished. Viral joins previous illustrious winners like"shovel ready" for 2010, "battleground states" for 2005, "24/7" for 2000 and "family values" for 1995……….
- America, I warned you. I was out in front of this approaching storm, letting each and every one of you know that unless we all acted swiftly and in unison, the very real threat of a joint man-band tour would not only sweep across this great nation like the Black Plague and infect entire towns and cities, but it could expand and ruin the musical minds of a brand new generation of music lovers. I warned, you ignored my call to buy up every last ticket to everyone one of the shows on the joint New Kids on the Block-Backstreet Men tour and burn them, or burn down the venues, or have them condemned by the health department…..basically, whatever it took to stop these shows from happening. Had you heeded the call and acted, this catastrophe could have been averted. As is, not only is this tour still happening, but fresh off a Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve performance (which, not so coincidentally, has never rocked so little), the two man bands have just announced 16 new shows in 2011 for a total of 41 confirmed tour dates for what's being called the "boybandbananza." Live Nation has moronically linked itself to this disaster, which begins June 2 with confirmed shows through July 30th. Tickets for the newly announced dates go on sale beginning Saturday, Jan. 15 at Ticketmaster.com and LiveNation.com, so perhaps the American public can step up and buy-and-burn them as you all should have done with the first round of ducats. It’s not too late to stop this entire charade from going down, so act now before something truly awful happens…..like this tour going off as planned…………
- This is not the warm welcome home I would expect from you to one of your own, Iran. When an Iranian nuclear scientist who claims to have been abducted by the CIA and returns home, you expect him to receiver a hero's welcome in Tehran and be allowed a solid year or so of token freedom before being imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of giving away state secrets. Instead, scientist Shahram Amiri was seized, imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of giving away state secrets within weeks of returning to Iran. According to an opposition website, Iranbriefing.net - run by a US-based group which normally reports on political prisoners and the activities of Iran's revolutionary guard - Amiri was brutally interrogated for three months in Tehran and then spent two months in solitary confinement, where his treatment had left him hospitalized for a week. Iran predictably refused to confirm or deny the report, even though no one has seen Amiri in public in the six months since his much-hyped homecoming from America. Perhaps Iranian officials are merely trying to cleanse the Western filth from his person by beating, punching, stomping, whipping and waterboarding it out of him. For the record, Amiri claimed to have been held against his will and while he remained in the U.S., state media in Iran portrayed as a daring patriot who eventually escaped from his alleged CIA captors with critical information about U.S. covert operations against Iran. U.S. officials insisted all along that Amiri came to the country willingly and they reacted with surprise when he elected to return to Iran. Some in the intelligence community had speculated that his original "defection" in Saudi Arabia in 2009 could have been a trap to embarrass the CIA and trick its officials into revealing how much the U.S. knows about the Iranian nuclear program. During his time in the U.S., Amiri made three videos: one saying he had decided to continue his studies in the U.S., another saying he was being held captive and a third claiming to be on the run from the CIA. With three conflicting messages, no one is quite sure what to believe. After making the videos, he presented himself to the Iranian interest section at the Pakistani embassy in Washington and asked to go home. Upon returning home, what happened to Amiri and those close to him remains something of a mystery. Independent, unverified reports from inside Iran alleged that Amiri's family had been stripped of their passports and placed under intense scrutiny. The scientist originally went missing on his pilgrimage to Mecca and cynics from outside Iran pointed to his sudden return that he had been forced to return by threats to his relatives. The entire saga adds another interesting layer to the long-running dispute between Iran and Western powers over the erratic, confrontation Middle East nation’s burgeoning nuclear program. Talks in December between Iran and six major powers in Geneva led to an agreement to meet again in Turkey later this month, so until then all the world can do is watch and wait………
No comments:
Post a Comment