- This trend needs to stop. And by this trend, I mean golf fans watching tournaments from half the world away and emailing in or tweeting out about rules violations from players that result in those players being disqualified from the event. The latest victim of this trend was three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, playing in the Abu Dhabi Championship in the United Arab Emirates. Before the second round of the tournament, the Irishman was judged to have illegally moved his ball during Thursday's first round and was disqualified. How did tournament officials learn about the violation? European Tour senior referee Andy McFee said Friday that a viewer e-mailed to say Harrington replaced his ball on the green and grazed the ball with his hand as he took the ball marker away. Harrington did not replace the ball from the spot from which it moved and as such, incurred a two-stroke penalty not reflected on his scorecard. "The problem is that Padraig's card for the seventh shows a three, and the fact that Padraig was totally unaware that this ball has moved doesn't unfortunately help him," McFee said. "The disqualification is for signing for the wrong score, lower than actually taken." At the time of the disqualification, Harrington was 7-under and one shot behind leader Charl Schwartzel. He actually handled the DQ gracefully when the right move would have been obliterating the no-life-having a-hole who emailed about the violation. "You know what? A lot worse things could happen. You could be five ahead going into the last round," Harrington joked. "It's an awkward situation. Every time something like this happens, you want to try and gain something from it, learn something from it." He acknowledged that he touched the ball but felt it hadn't moved, which rules officials clearly disagreed with. “I'm well aware of the ruling on that situation, and it's happened many times over the years," he said. "You know, I'm quite comfortable, if you touch a ball and it doesn't move and you feel it hasn't moved, it hasn't moved, and you don't need to -- there is no replacing. If you called the referee at that moment in time. In all good conscience, I couldn't have put the ball anywhere else but where it was." The DQ-by-loser-viewer was the second this month alone. At a PGA Tour event in Hawaii earlier this month, Camilo Villegas was disqualified for a rules violation that a television viewer spotted during after the opening round. Villegas was disqualified for casually swatting away loose pieces of grass in front of the divot as the ball he had just hit was rolling down the slope in front of the green, back toward him. That is a violation of Rule 23-1 that says, "When a ball is in motion, a loose impediment that might influence the movement of the ball must not be removed." Villegas was DQ’d just like Harrington and while technically it was the correct decision, that fact doesn’t change the reality that uptight, über-serious golf guy needs to stop. You’re not on tour, you don’t have the game to be there and busting some pro on his minor rules mistake that no one else saw doesn’t make you cool, smart or a great golfer. It makes you an ass hat and you need to stop………
- Need some coke in your diet? If so, Bolivia just might be the place for you. With the practice of chewing cocoa leaves having been banned internationally for more than four decades, Bolivia is leading the charge to have coca removed from a United Nations list of banned drugs. Residents of the regions surrounding the Andes Mountains know that the leaves are used as a mild stimulant and herbal medicine and advocates say the leaves, which contain small amounts of cocaine, have important health and social benefits. Good enough for me, I’m on board. So why are the haters out there claiming that the leaves are dangerous? Just because coca remains the raw ingredient for the purified forms of cocaine? So what if they are illegal for non-medicinal, non-government-sanctioned purposes in virtually all countries? I’ll roll with Bolivian President Evo Morales, a former union leader for coca growers, who has gone on the record as saying that "sacred" coca in its raw state is not an addictive drug and emphasizes that it has had a legitimate medical purpose for hundreds of years. What may hurt the push to legalize coca leaves is the likelihood that the United States is likely to oppose any move to have the chewing of coca leaves removed from the 1961 U.N. Single Convention on Narcotics Drugs. Various think tanks and policy experts have predicted that opposition even as Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca is on a European tour this week, pleading with leaders there not to block its campaign. If he can succeed in that endeavor and no objections are raised by January 31, the change will take place automatically. Choquehuanca may have found a valuable ally in Spain, where Foreign Minister Trinidad Jimenez told Choquehuanca on Tuesday that Spain understands Bolivian's petition and would be willing to mediate on this issue so an agreement could be reached. A change in the law would likely lead to more coca products being sold around the world as well as energy drinks, flour and even toothpaste derived from the leaves. Considering all of the attacks on energy drink content here in the United States over the past few months, that would certainly muddy the waters. A new energy drink, called "Coca Brynco," was launched in Bolivia on Tuesday by Coca Colla - obviously a rip-off of the similarly named American soft drink. Here’s hoping that those sorts of drinks are making their way around the world sooner rather than later. Who can’t use a little more Bolivian marching powder material in their diet……….
- There is good news and there is bad news when it comes to ratings for the season premiere of Fox’s musical abortion known as American Karaoke. The bad news is that AK, the worst thing to happen to music (and that’s saying a lot considering where the industry is right now) and reality television (which also says a lot because of how many terrible reality shows exist/have existed), easily led the night's network viewing (beating 2nd-place CBS by 90 percent in total viewers). But the positives end there for you, musically ignorant AK fans. Just as a movie can dominate at the box office on a terrible weekend without putting up great numbers, the world’s largest karaoke contest drew just 22.9 million viewers and a 7.8 rating in ages 18-49 demographic. The show’s combined two-night premiere-week average was down 12 percent compared last year's ratings in viewers, and even more when you narrow the focus to adults. Fox tried to put a typical corporate spin job on the numbers by claiming they represented its highest-rated Thursday night with regular programming since February 1995 (now THAT is a crappy 15 years). The 7.8 ratings represented a 16-percent decline from 8-9 p.m. hour of the Wednesday premiere of American Karaoke last season. Plus, those of us hoping this show will just die and go away forever can always hope that the curiosity factor of those willing to see the new collection of misfit judges, complete with Steven Tyler murdering his musical legacy, were only there for a one-time viewing of the freak show and will move on to better uses of their time in the next few weeks, uses such as…….well, pretty much anything else………
- Sweeeeet! Time for another “groundbreaking” scientific study that confirms something so logical and blatantly obvious that a person who failed every science class the ever took could have predicted the result without more than five seconds of thought. According to a stunning new study published in the Nutrition Journal, starting the day with big breakfast may lead to a big weight gain. Now, I’ll wait a moment for a lot of you to pick yourselves up off the floor and recover from the shock before we continue……okay, is everyone back? For some reason, there has been a lingering belief for the past few years that the right way to start the day is with a big breakfast. Why this was supposed to help, I’m not sure. Those eating a “big breakfast” probably aren’t loading up on all-bran cereal, fruit and whole wheat toast. No, they are more likely than not dumping plenty of sausage, bacon, eggs, pancakes, waffles and sugary cereals on their plates. Few foods are less conducive to healthy living than the ones I just mentioned and again, you don’t need to be a PhD-holding scientist to know that. Yet a team of German researchers led by Dr. Volker Schusdziarra of the Else-Kroner-Fresenius Center of Nutritional Medicine in Munich roped some pathetic fool into funding a study that followed the food intake of 280 obese and 100 normal weight subjects to see how their breakfast habits impacted their weight loss or gain. Researchers had participants keep detailed food diaries and the results were analyzed and recorded over a period of 10 days (obese participants) to 14 days (normal weight participants). Stunningly, Dr. Schusdziarra’s team concluded that eating a larger breakfast in the morning led to an increased calorie intake throughout the day. Wait…….chowing down on a 1,000-calorie breakfast bolstered by sausage links, bacon strips and chocolate chip waffles leads to consuming more calories during the day? Wowsers. Think that sort of unhealthy first meal might set a bad tone for the day? In the study, subjects on average ate 400 more calories in a day when they had a big breakfast. The ultimate conclusion of the study, which is another shocker, was that eating healthy is what counts. In other words, eat more vitamins and minerals, eat less fat and cholesterol and follow the same blatantly freaking obvious rules and guidelines about healthy food and eating that apply for the rest of the f’ing day………
- CENSORSHIP! CENSORSHIP! Now, I’m not entirely sure that what I’m about to share with you falls under that heading, but since the right to yell “Fire” in a crowded theater has been ripped from us, screaming something inflammatory like “Censorship!” is the next best alternative. More than likely, this story simply falls under the heading of an overly conservative, salt-of-the-Earth small town being stuck in its behind-the-times views and not being able to stomach the idea of a dissenting, agitating viewpoint. That viewpoint comes from noted agitator Michael Moore, whose films may not be typical Hollywood fare but do a better job of creating controversy than most anything that the major studios churn out. One of Moore’s recent films, the documentary "Sicko," is causing quite a stir in Enfield, Conn. Even though the movie is several years old and its open challenge to the pathetic state of the American healthcare system has been dissected, considered and forgotten by most of the country, the Enfield Public Library planned a screening of the movie on Saturday. That event was canceled Wednesday under pressure from the town council and mayor after one idiotic resident complained about the film and several council members jumped on board with the protest. Government-run healthcare must really terrify them because Republican Mayor Scott Kaupin asked the town manager to talk to library Director Henry Dutcher, who said he was told by the town manager to cancel the screening. An angry Kaupin called the library’s decision to show the movie stupid and threatened the library's funding. "The sentiment by the majority is that it's a poor choice and that they should definitely reconsider," Kaupin told. Wow……so many things wrong with that comment. For one: The decision was “stupid” in what sense? Very intelligent comment by someone who is theoretically one of the smartest, most thoughtful people in town, the mayor. Second, since when is the majority in charge of what people can or cannot watch when it comes to movies? The film doesn’t have nudity, sex, drugs or gratuitous violence, nor does it praise or glorify the occult. If the so-called majority doesn’t like the movie, then don’t go see it. Problem solved. As for threatening the library’s funding…….seriously? They have to adhere to what you want or they can't continue operating? I take my original sentiment back: This is censorship. Why do I have a feeling that if this were a movie about reducing government involvement in the lives of Americans, Mayor Kaupin and his sycophants would not only have no objection to it, but they would rent out the nearest movie theater and bus all of the town’s residents to see it? I’m siding with Democratic Councilor Cynthia Mangini, who called the move censorship and compared it to banning books. The two of us are backed by Peter Chase, chairman of the Connecticut Library Association's Intellectual Freedom Committee, who characterized the decision as "absolutely deplorable." By the way, none of this has anything to do with the quality of the movie, which by the way won an Academy Award in 2007. Whether it’s a good movie or a terrible one is irrelevant; what matters is a bunch of head-up-their-ass, small-town yokels quashing a movie from being shown in their town simply because they disagree with the ideology it espouses. How very Stalinist of y’all……….
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