- Faced with a quandary that had only two realistic solutions, the good people of Williamsville, N.Y. went with the easier option: installing C-shaped steel brackets, designed to prevent deer from impaling themselves on the iron spikes of the town cemetery. Obviously, educating the deer on the dangers of trying to leap over a tall metal fence with spikes on top was also an option, but deer are notoriously difficult to educate and not reliable for showing up to classes where they can be taught about life-threatening dangers. Because renovating the fence was the easier option, cemetery officials and members of an animal advocacy group teamed up with a Williamsville-based company specializing in historic preservation to make the necessary adjustments to the fence in order to prevent IQ-deprived deer from impaling themselves on it. "If a deer comes against it, they'll be bounced back in. They will not be able to come down on the spike. This will not rotate," Joseph Jakubik of International Chimney Corporation said about the new brackets that will be attached to the top of the fence. One Williamsville resident who lives next to the cemetery has seen the deer problem manifest itself numerous times but seemed to side mostly with the fence in the matter. "I don't expect them to take the fence down. Fence is what, a 100, a 150 years old. If they hide the points that'll be a good idea," Mark Beatty Sr. said. Local wildlife administrator Joel Thomas was consult on the problem and fully endorses the proposed solution. "It should stop or seriously reduce any kind of injury to deer and other wildlife, and it's a good conservation, good stewardship decision," Thomas stated. The leader of the charge for a new fence has been Morgan Dunbar, founder of Animal Allies of Western New York, a local animal-rights group. Dunbar estimated that about 4,400 of the steel safety brackets will be needed and her organization will be collecting donations from the public to fund the project. "We're asking for a $10 donation, and $10 will buy you a deer shield. So, that you can know that I had a role in fixing this problem," Dunbar explained. The goal of the project, aside from having no more dead deer lying around the cemetery, is to maintain the historic aspects of the fence. "We did not want to change the original design of the fence and still make people be able to see it," Jakubik said. To make the changes official, the Williamsville Cemetery will file a certificate of appropriateness with the village's Historic Preservation Commission. Once that request is approved, it’s only a matter of time before the dumb deer of Williamsville have one less death trap to contend with…………
- Memo to both of you, Thailand and Cambodia: I don’t care. It doesn’t matter which of you fired the first salvo Friday and sparked an intense exchange of gunfire with unconfirmed casualties on both sides of the border. The responsible party isn't important because any time you have two neighboring nations so on edge that the smallest provocation can spark a major firefight that could escalate into a full-fledged military conflict, the only thing that matters is that someone - anyone - fires that first shot. We may never know who fired the first shot, but we do know that Thailand and Cambodia exchanged gunfire along their border on Friday, with Thailand saying three of its soldiers were killed, while Cambodia cited unspecified casualties on its side. Tensions between the two sides have been high for decades, based largely on competing claims to a piece of territory near the Preah Vihear temple. Even though the International Court of Justice awarded the Hindu temple to Cambodia in 1962, Thailand has never fully accepted the decision. The latest round of tensions flared up after the temple was declared a world heritage site a few years ago. Oddly enough, the one portion of Friday’s drama both sides agreed on was that the hostilities occurred near a different temple site. Cambodian officials informed the United Nations Security Council that Thai troops directed artillery fire towards two temples located deep inside the Cambodian territory. That was not the story being told by Thai officials, who alleged an intrusion by some Cambodian soldiers into Thai territory, where they started building a bunker. In this version of the story, the Cambodian troops opened fire once their actions were discovered. Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Hor Namhong shot down this story in a letter to Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa as well, complaining about Thailand's “large-scale attack.” So how to resolve this skirmish? Thailand suggested bilateral talks with Cambodia to resolve the tensions, but Cambodia balked at the suggestion and instead asked for a mediated settlement, arguing that Bangkok's proposal was “a pretext for the use of [Thailand's] larger and materially more sophisticated armed forces against Cambodia.” Neither side seemed interested in a previous plan to station Indonesian military observers along the Thai-Cambodian border. In the meantime, keep up the hostilities, you two, because it certainly is entertaining for the rest of us…………
- A new head coach in any sport typically assumes his or her new role with certain ideas of how to run the team and any changes they may want to make. That phenomenon is nothing new, but new San Diego State football coach Rocky Long’s big idea for change has nothing to do with the Aztecs themselves. Not long after being promoted from defensive coordinator, Long turned his focus on another newcomer in the Mountain West conference: the Boise State Broncos. The Broncos, perennial powers in the Western Athletic Conference, are known for two things: being the plucky mid-major team that intrudes into the world of the BCS on a regular basis and their gimmicky blue turf. The turf is reportedly to discourage birds from landing on the field and possibly to make Boise State football unique, but Long is none too impressed without it and took a pointed shot at the blue turf in a recent interview with an Idaho newspaper. “I think they ought to get rid of that blue turf. I think it’s unfair,” said Long. “It takes the visiting team a quarter or two to get used to that different field.” On the surface, Long’s words sound like a whiny coach looking for excuses as to why his team won't be able to compete with a tough opponent. But he insists there is a legitimate reason the blue turf is a problem. Long said players “track the ball differently” on the blue turf and when combined with Boise State’s traditionally all-blue uniforms against the backdrop of the turf, the advantage for the home team is unfair. Obviously, Long is not the first coach, player or analyst to suggest that the blue turf needs to go. Yet the exact opposite seems to be happening, as Eastern Washington took Boise State’s example and installed blood-red turf at its own stadium prior to last season. Whether Long and other blue-turf haters like it or not, the curiously colored carpet is not going anywhere in the near or distant future…………
- If North Carolina can do it, maybe anyone can do it. A state that has long been at the unfortunately beating heart of the tobacco industry has finally enacted a statewide smoking ban nearly a full decade ahead of the 2020 target date set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for all restaurants, bars and workplaces to be smoke free. The North Carolina ban applies to restaurants and bars and puts the state in stark contrast to its southern neighbors. In a recent report, the CDC noted that the number of states, including Washington, D.C., that enacted some sort of a ban on public smoking increased from zero in 2000 to 26 in 2010. However, most southern states have lagged behind in this area and with the exception of North Carolina, Louisiana and Florida, no southern state has any kind of smoking restrictions. While this may give southerners a decided advantage when it comes to contracting lung cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related illnesses early in life, it does play to unfortunate, misguided and inaccurate stereotypes of this region of the country being full of backwards, socially and culturally stunted hicks. That no southern state has a smoke-free law for all three venues measured by the CDC - restaurants, bars and workplaces - also does not help in this respect. Obviously, the CDC’s worthy goal of a smoke-free nation full of public places can be reached only if the South comes on board. This seems like a great time to remind those states still dragging their feet on enacting smoking bans that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that second-hand smoke exposure results in an estimated 46,000 heart disease deaths and 3,400 lung cancer deaths among non-smoking American adults each year. Southern states, follow the outstanding example of Delaware, which was the first state to implement a comprehensive smoke-free law, passing the legislation in 2002. Other leaders in this area include New York (2003) and Massachusetts (2004). There are multiple ways to achieve a ban, with most states choosing the legislative route. Others, such as Arizona, Ohio, South Dakota and Washington, enacted theirs through ballot measures. Even with its partial ban, North Carolina is still something of a marvel because of the significant clout tobacco carries in the state. A possible smoking ban has been under consideration since 2009, but there was sufficient political and public support for the ban at that time. The state is still a large tobacco producer and home to cigarette companies Reynolds American in Winston-Salem and Lorillard in Greensboro. But if North Carolina can muster up the courage to ban smoking in bars and restaurants, then other southern states can do the same and we will all be one step closer to living the dream…………
- Attention all directors and screenwriters: If you have a movie idea that is original, unique and/or not based on a comic book character, don’t even bother. The current credo in Hollywood is to do only movies that are either remakes or sequels of recent films. Whether the movie was made 10 years ago, 20 years ago or 50 years ago, the call has gone out for it to be remade. Equally high on the list are movies with comic book heroes in them or films that lend themselves to franchises. Fortunately for the upcoming films Captain America and Thor, they have two of those factors working in their favor. They both center on comic book heroes (more than one hero in Captain America’s case) and lend themselves to multiple sequels even if the franchise becomes tired, runs out of interesting ideas and is begging to be killed off. With that in mind, Marvel has already confirmed sequels to both movies despite neither having been released yet. The comic publisher’s studio will release both blockbusters in the coming year, with Chris Evans starring as in the title role in Captain America: The First Avenger, while Chris Hemsworth plays the eponymous God Of Thunder in Thor. Both films will also get a boost when their stars appear in the upcoming all-star movie The Avengers, alongside Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man, Mark Ruffalo's Hulk and Jeremy Renner's Hawkeye. Marvel president Kevin Feige sought to build the hype even further by confirming reports of sequels for Captain America and Thor, saying: "Thor will go off into a new adventure, and Captain America will continue to explore the modern world in another film of his own." Hmm, vague, generalized and yet not reassuring at all in terms of preventing an unnecessary and unwanted sequel if both movies fall well short of expectations. In other words, typically Hollywood of Marvel…………
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