- Are you paying attention, United States Congress? While you all are haggling over long-term budget fixes, pork projects and ethics violations, the country is going to hell and you’re doing nothing about it. Perhaps it’s time to take a cue from your compatriots in Kyrgyzstan, where members of the country’s divided parliament slaughtered seven rams before their morning session on Thursday, in hopes of banishing "evil spirits" disrupting their work. Ever since Kyrgyzstan elected a new legislature in October in a bid to build the first parliamentary democracy in former Soviet Central Asia, the entire group has been a giant morass of uncooperativeness and inefficacy. In a region typically run by authoritarian presidents, creating a democracy is no easy task. However, the level of recriminations and disputes in parliament has been ridiculous thus far, leading a senior government member to resign temporarily. The fragile governing coalition has found itself under attack on a daily basis and no real solutions have come forth on dealing with the problem of Kyrgyzstan lying on a drug trafficking route out of Afghanistan. For a country that saw its president toppled by a violent revolt last April, unrest is not the word you want being thrown around. Yet after more than 400 people were killed in ethnic riots in June, unrest has been the order of the day for nearly every day since. So how does a legislature at odds with one another mend its differences, get on the same page and make some actual progress? "We decided to resort to popular customs, in order for this building not to see bloodshed anymore," member of parliament Myktybek Abdyldayev said after the rams were sacrificed on a green lawn in front of the government headquarters. Ironically, the parliament building is the same building two presidents fled this building to escape violent popular uprisings in 2005 and 2010. "We acted like those who light candles or fumigate their homes in order to banish an evil spirit from their conscience," Abdyldayev said. Sacrificing rams is a common custom in Kyrgyzstan, an impoverished, predominantly Muslim nation of 5.4 million, typically during funeral repasts and at solemn ceremonies of reconciliation. "This is a popular ancient tradition, carried out in order to avoid a repeat of last year's tragic events and for peace and harmony to triumph," said parliamentarian Kurmanbek Osmonov. However, not everyone was down with the idea. Ondorush Toktonasyrov, one of those who led last year's protests that toppled President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, mocked at the ritual as "a sign of backward mentality." He went on to say that “deputies have no idea about parliamentary culture." Hey Kurmanbek, I think you might fit a little better with your unproductive American counterparts………….
- After all the rumors, all the speculation, all the time and all of the energy expended on the “probable” move of the Sacramento Kings to Anaheim for next season, apparently the NBA will not have a third southern California franchise - at least not right now. Speculation had the move as a sure thing as recently as the beginning of the week, but sources say the league now thinks the team will remain in Sacramento next season. While no one is certain of the team’s fate beyond next year, the fact that the Kings won't become the Anaheim Royals by the end of the calendar year is still something of a stunner. Kings co-owner Joe Maloof said Friday that his family is still deciding whether to move the franchise to Anaheim or stay in California's capital city and said he's "as anxious as anybody" to find out if Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson can deliver on his promise for more sponsorship support and finally finance a plan for a new arena. Johnson, a former NBA All-Star, said Thursday that he was proud of how the city had rallied from supposedly being on the brink of losing their team. If you go back a week ago from today, we thought it was virtually over," Johnson said. "And not only did we prevent the team from leaving, we got a chance to show them who we are. And when we said $7 million, and the commissioner said, 'Well, prove it,' he sent a team out and we over-delivered. I mean, this is Sacramento. This is what makes us great." His comments came after two days of meetings with NBA relocation committee chairman and Oklahoma City Thunder owner Clay Bennett and other league officials in Sacramento. That Bennett is allowed to chair any relocation committee in any league anywhere is a miscarriage of justice, given how he bought the then-Seattle Sonics and with tacit approval from the league, ripped Seattle’s team from the city and moved them to Oklahoma City without ever giving Seattle a fair shot. For their part, the Kings issued an official statement saying, "We have not made a decision with regards to relocation filing, and will not make that decision until we have more information from the NBA." The league’s Board of Governors did give the Kings an extension until May 2 to file paperwork requesting a relocation to Anaheim and at the meetings, also heard from Johnson as he presented $9.2 million in commitments for new advertising, ticket purchases and other financial support from regional businesses and other backers to prevent the team from moving to Anaheim. Yet even this success could be temporary if Johnson and other city leaders cannot find a way to replace outdated Power Balance Pavilion, formerly called Arco Arena, with a modern arena. But for now, they may have given themselves more time and that at least keeps them in the fight………….
- Soap opera fans, I know you’ve been out of touch with reality for some time, mostly because anyone watching a soap opera has no life, no friends and no regular interaction with civilization throughout the average day. If a person had any of those things, they wouldn’t be sitting inside mid-afternoon on weekdays, watching the saddest excuse for a scripted drama known to man, complete with terrible acting, absurd plots and more than a whiff of pathetic-ness. Being as out of touch as soap fans are, they may not have seen this week’s TV bombshell coming even though the rest of us have seen it rolling down the tracks for some time. ABC finally busted a burning slug into the back of the head of two of the last soap operas on television, canceling “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.” The decision sent soap fans reeling, looking for answers and grasping desperately for someone - anyone - to save their beloved (and anachronistic) shows. For whatever reason, that search led them to the queen of daytime talk shows and of the media in general, Oprah Winfrey. It was a convenient match, as Winfrey recently launched the Oprah Winfrey Network, also known as OWN. With her own network, the theory went, Winfrey could pick up the free-agent soap operas and give them new life. That idea lasted all of 24 hours or so, right up to the point Winfrey put together a hastily filmed video on YouTube debunking the idea that her network would take on the shows. Winfrey said fans had “bombarded” her with requests to help and admitted she understood “what it feels like to have a show that you love go off the air.” She praised those who fought to keep the shows alive, but then hit them with a dose of reality. “I appreciate that you all think that I could save the soaps,” Winfrey said before adding it was the “bone marrow truth” that the audience for soaps had dried up over the years. In the two-minute video, she cited how soaps went from “double-digit ratings” when she first began her TV career to lately “not even getting a full, single digit number.” Ultimately, she concluded there simply weren't enough women at home in the daytime anymore to keep the genre alive. “Believe me, if there was a dime to be made from them on broadcast television it would still be happening,” Winfrey said. “All good things come to an end.” In other words, find something else to do with your days, soap fans. Make friends, take up a hobby, get out and experience the world around you………….
- What would one of the biggest religious weekends of the year be without some kook thinking he or she has seen a sign from the Almighty in a pile of grass clippings, the bark of a tree after a lightning strike or a puddle of motor oil spilled on their garage floor? And it wouldn’t be a true American occurrence if the kook in question didn’t attempt to profit from it, right? This year’s Easter kook is Olathe, Kan. resident A.J. Straub, who was eating a morning snack at work on Friday when he found what he deemed to be a miracle from God on one of his sour cream and onion Ruffles. Two intersecting burn marks looking roughly like a cross were in the middle of the chip, which Straub was about to eat before his boss stopped him. Pointing out the incredible “miracle” of finding a “crucifix chip” on Good Friday, how did Straub’s boss respond? By telling him to take to the nearest church or suggest that he show it to friends and family as a miraculous? Nope, by putting it on eBay and trying to make a few bucks off it. Straub isn’t hoping for a financial windfall, only to make a few dollars and perhaps cover the cost of his snack. "I figure if I can at least get the 99 cents for the price of the chips," Straub said. Bizarrely enough, he went on to say how special the chip was - even though those musings sounded an awful lot like a man trying to drive up the price of a useless piece of soon-to-go-bad-and-decompose food on an Internet auction site. "The more we thought about it, the more special I guess it became," Straub said. "It's Good Friday, you know, it's a holy symbol on a holy day to religious people. So it's kind of a weird coincidence." For those who might doubt the chip’s authenticity or suggest that Straub used some sort of tool to put the burn marks on the chip himself, he said two of his co-workers witnessed him pulling the chip out of the bag and can verify that it was not tampered with. So now, Easter weekend is complete with the requisite delusional knob who thinks they have seen a sign from above on the most random and improbable of places…………
- Kids of the world, this may not come as welcome news to you, but your parents harping on you to practice the piano, hone your trombone skills or work on your clarinet playing could in fact benefit you later on in life even if you never become a professional musician. A new study led by researchers at the Emory University School of Medicine suggests that older adults with musical experience perform better on some cognitive tests than those who had never studied music. The small-scale study involved just 70 patients, but its results sync up with other studies of challenging tasks, including findings that learning a second language protects against dementia. "Musical activity throughout life may serve as a challenging cognitive exercise, making your brain fitter and more capable of accommodating the challenges of aging," study researcher Brenda Hanna-Pladdy, a neurologist at the Emory University School of Medicine, said in a statement. "Since studying an instrument requires years of practice and learning, it may create alternate connections in the brain that could compensate for cognitive declines as we get older." Study participants ranged in age from 60 to 83 and were split into three groups: one with no musical training, one with one to nine years of musical study and a third group with 10 or more years of training. None of the participants had Alzheimer's disease and all possessed similar levels of education and fitness. Even amongst the musicians, none had played professionally and the vast majority had started playing an instrument around age 10, with more than half playing the piano and about a quarter playing woodwind instruments such as the flute. All participants were given a neuropsychological assessment, including tests of verbal functioning, memory and attention. Researchers found those who had studied music the longest performed best, followed by the next group of musicians. Non-musicians scored lowest on all tests and the gap between high-level musicians and non-musicians was significant, much greater than the score differences between higher- and lower-level musicians. High-level musicians exhibited much better skills when it come to visuospatial memory, naming objects and adapting to new information. Surprisingly, whether a person continued to play music into old age didn't matter, researchers found. "Based on previous research and our study results, we believe that both the years of musical participation and the age of acquisition are crucial," Hanna-Pladdy stated. She admitted that more research is needed into the subject, but suggested that one possible explanation could be that more intelligent people tend to study music longer. Either way, feel free to pick up a copy of the latest edition of the journal Neuropsychology to read more about this fascinating study…………
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