- That time is here again, music fans. The most meaningless “honor” in the music industry has arrived for its annual visit and no, that’s not a reference to the Grammys or MTV’s Video Music Awards. Those are empty awards to be sure, but nothing rings quite as hollow as a nomination for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The reason such a nod is without meaning is because right around the time the likes of the Bee Gees, Madonna or Cher are inducted, the term “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame” loses all of its value. There is nothing rock and roll about those three or scores of other inductees from genres that embody the antithesis of what true rock is all about. The Bee Gees represented disco as much as anyone and disco was the single darkest era in music history, narrowly edging out the man-band era of Backstreet Sync Degrees Town Men and the entire 1980s music scene. The instant they received a plaque in the hall of fame, it ceased to be relevant or worthwhile. This year’s nominees actually have a substantial amount of rock cred and some of them even deserve to be in a place called the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but the concept has already been ruined. The new, first-time nominees are the Cure, Eric B. & Rakim, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Guns N' Roses, Heart, Rufus with Chaka Khan, the Small Faces/the Faces, the Spinners and Freddie King. The Cure, Joan Jett, GNR and the Small Faces stand out as important and influential acts in their respective eras and aren't up for debate when it comes to their HOF merits. Other worthy nominees are up for induction after failing on previous attempts, with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and War standing out, but so do kooks like Donovan and disco divas like Donna Summer. If the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame changes its name to the Music Hall of Fame (and lowers its standards), then those nominations make sense. Otherwise……not so much. Whomever voters ultimately select, the induction ceremony will take place at the Hall of Fame on April 14 in Cleveland………….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Protestors in Syria are picking up steam instead of losing it and despite months or riots and clashes with police and security forces, they aren't losing their focus. It can be easy to get caught up in the general spirit of mayhem and riot simply for the sake of rioting, but give credit to Syrian dissidents for staying on point. Friday was an especially combative day as thousands of protestors renewed calls for President Bashar al-Assad's departure and received an extra jolt of support from a band of army deserters fighting for their cause and battling with Syrian forces. All across Syria, rallies were held following midday prayers on Friday. The uprisings came after Syrian officials said seven soldiers and police personnel were killed in an operation targeting what they called "terrorists" in Homs province Friday morning. A two-day offensive in the central town of Rastan also left everal soldiers wounded in the fighting.
Rastan has become a focal point for Syrian troops looking to decimate army deserters who have formed rebel units around the town. Those deserters deserve immense respect for realizing they were on the wrong side of the conflict, not blindly following their off-point leadership and asking questions about where they stood on the issue. Standing alongside anti-government forces is a balls play and a huge risk, but if the cause is just then the risk is worth it. Elsewhere in the country, an angry pro-government mob attempted to assault U.S. Ambassador Robert Ford and other American diplomats as they arrived for a meeting with a leading opposition figure in the capital, Damascus.
The mob trapped Ford and his group inside a government building and in the process showed just how out of control the entire situation has become. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even weighed in after Ford’s scare, calling on Syrian authorities to protect foreign diplomats. It is awfully difficult to protect foreign diplomats when you’re trying futilely to protect your own backside and stay in power, so maybe Hank should cut them some slack. But don’t lose sight of the fact that the true stars of this show are and will continue to be those trying to overthrow the government…………
- Some cynics might look at Twitter’s trending topics and characterize them as nothing more than a reflection of what happens to be on TV or happening in the sports world at a given moment. For the wicked-smaht researchers at Cornell, those topics represent something more substantial. These brainiacs view Twitter as a fascinating look inside the human mind and the resulting behaviors and opinions springing from it. A team of researchers from the Ivy League school analyzed English-language tweets from 2.4 million people in 84 countries, a total of more than 500 million 140-characters-or-less messages sent over two years. Using a computer program that searched for words indicating positive mood — happy, enthusiastic, brilliant — or negative mood — sad, anxious, fear, they were able to identify some very specific patterns and trends. For example, for anyone who doesn’t stay up until 3 a.m. tweeting and posting pictures on Facebook, positive attitudes tend to peak early in the morning and again near midnight, then dip midmorning before rising again in the evening to cap the day. Not so coincidentally, the typical morning hassles of getting out of bed and off to work or school fit seem to fit nicely into this pattern. The trend of more positive tweeting on weekends further underscores that paradigm, although the morning peak of happy tweets occurred two hours later, probably because more people were napping it out on a Saturday or Sunday morning. However, going to work doesn’t entirely explain why the Twitter mood sours in the middle of the day. A similar decline also occurs on the weekend, said lead researcher Scott Golder, a Cornell graduate student. Golder pointed to the effects of sleep and humans’ 24-hour biological clock, the so-called circadian rhythms that signal when it's time to sleep and to wake, as a better explanation for the Twitter mood changes. When they applied this model to tweets in the United Arab Emirates, where Friday and Saturday are considered the weekend, the same pattern appeared. Cornell sociologist Michael Macy, also a part of the project, hailed the study as proof of an important message about the scientific potential of social media, Macy said. "It illustrates a new opportunity for doing social and behavioral science in ways that were really unimaginable even five years ago," Macy said. Either that or it’s a great way to figure out which 15-year-old, clichéd action movie is currently playing on TNT or TBS………….
- How do you respond when you achieve your dream? Athletes, musicians, actors or just average citizens all face the same quandary in this respect because they all (hopefully) have goals and dreams, some of them larger than life. When that dream comes true, does a person revise their list and find something else to chase or do they stop, kick back and get FAT off their success? Athletes are one of the most interesting case studies of this phenomenon because they tend to be extremely driven and defiant when told they can't or shouldn’t do something. Win one championship and the goal then becomes winning two or three. That clearly doesn’t hold true for PGA golfer Darren Clarke, who admitted recently that he's struggling to stay motivated after achieving his lifetime goal of winning the British Open. Clarke, a Northern Irishman who scored an improbable victory at Royal St. George's in July, had played the Open 19 times previously and never had a great look at winning it. Now that he has, Clarke conceded he has lost much of his competitive fire. "I've done what I always wanted to do, got to the top of the mountain -- what else can compare to it?" Clarke said. "What else is there to do?" Since winning the Open, Clarke has missed the cut twice, finished tied for 68th at the Bridgestone Invitational and tied for 35th at the European Masters. Musing about his sudden lack of drive to continue competing, Clarke pointed to another well-known athlete from the United Kingdom, legendary British rower Steve Redgrave, who won five Olympic golds -- the last coming in 2000 at 38. "I've no idea how Steve Redgrave did it," Clarke said. "It's not as if I'm 21 or 22. I'm 43. Whether I get another chance to win a major, it may not happen." If not winning another major, then is there another goal Clarke might want to chase? There is, but it’s not as a competitor, at least not an active part of the process. Instead, Clarke suggested that being appointed Ryder Cup captain is the biggest challenge left in his career. Until then, he is soliciting motivational advice from those closest to him and trying to keep his fire going…………
- Churches are doing funny things these days to reach out to the world or make money to continue operations. A pastor in western Washington caught flack from his town for growing marijuana plants just a few hundred feet from a local school. Compared to a group of old dudes from Framingham, Mass., pastor Peter Jackson and his flock might be tame. The geezers from the First Parish Church in Framingham have developed a distasteful habit of doffing their clothes and posing for creepy, disgusting pictures of themselves in the nude to fill out a calendar that is somehow supposed to encourage people to support God’s work. For a second straight year, this geriatric group went full-on nude (with some strategically placed musical instruments and other props) for a calendar photo shoot and is now selling the calendar to raise money for the church. Worse still, these old guys are proud of their efforts and believe their wrinkled old selves are an attractive sight for the ladies. “In the picture -- totally awesome for an old guy,” said 64-year-old Leo Giorgio, Mr. September. The church’s former pastor is not only behind the effort, he’s a part of it. Said 86-year-old Holly Hollerorth, Mr. June, of his picture in the calendar, “The older body has its own elegance.” Yes, an elegance best kept covered up for all but you and your special lady friend, H. Again, it feels relevant to ask how taking off your clothes is pointing people to the Almighty. Sticking a banjo in front of your NSFW parts and allowing the world to see the rest doesn’t exactly scream, “Come to Jesus.” Sympathy has to go out to photographer Lynne Damianos, who snapped all of the images for the calendar and could not have been paid nearly enough for seeing those retina-scarring images. “They felt special and they really wanted to do their thing for the church. I think they had a lot of fun and they really let go of their inhibitions to make this happen,” she said. Part of the blame for this farce has to go on the female members of the church, who did their own calendar in 2006 that sold out and raised $2,600. Look what you’ve inspired now, ladies. Hope you’re proud of yourselves………..
Friday, September 30, 2011
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Digital Dead Sea Scrolls, a lack of MLB offense and thieving cemetery workers
- The Internet: It’s not just for porn any longer…….sort of. Now, one of the great archaeological finds of the 20th century is also available for your perusal on the information superhighway that Al Gore invented. The Dead Sea Scrolls have gone digital as part of a $3.5-million project that uses space-age technology to produce the clearest renderings yet of five of the ancient texts: the Great Isaiah scroll, the Community Rule scroll, the commentary on Habbakuk, the Temple scroll and the War scroll. Thanks to these remastered versions, the public will be able to see details on the scrolls previously invisible to the naked eye. The scrolls, which are the oldest known biblical manuscripts in existence, are considered by many to be the most significant archaeological find of the 20th century. The scrolls are now available as part of a joint project between the Israel Museum and Google, which is clearly continuing its quest for world domination in an entirely now arena. Not only can the public read the scrolls online, but the scrolls can also be easily searched and their text can be magnified to reveal those details that were previously beyond the capability of the human eye. By visiting http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/, users can view all of the text, as well as a translation tool and other background information on the documents. "We are privileged to house in the Israel Museum's Shrine of the Book the best preserved and most complete Dead Sea Scrolls ever discovered," Israel Museum director James Snyder said in a statement. He described the scrolls as of "paramount importance" for the world's monotheistic religions. "Now, through our partnership with Google, we are able to bring these
treasures to the broadest possible public," Snyder explained. There are a total of 900 manuscripts in the collection of scrolls, many Biblical, comprising some 30,000 fragments. They were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea and were photographed in their entirety with infra-red
technology in the 1950s. Made of parchment and papyrus, the scrolls sport Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic
writing that includes several of the earliest-known texts from the Bible, including the oldest surviving copy of the Ten Commandments (because Moses just couldn’t find a safe place for the originals). The oldest document among the scrolls dates to the third century BC and the most recent to about 70 AD, when Roman troops destroyed the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. As for the original scrolls, they are stored at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the larger pieces are shown at the dimly lit Shrine of the Book on a rotational basis in order to prevent damage from exposure. But now, one need not book a plane ticket for the Holy Land to read the scrolls. A high-speed connection and no social life are the only requirements…………
- It truly is amazing what can happen when you take the steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs out of baseball. As it turns out, de-‘roiding Major League Baseball has taken the offensive wind out of the game’s sails. The 2011 is the most definitive proof yet that batters can’t mash quite as powerfully when they’re not peaking on bull ‘roids or whatever else they had previously jammed into their bodies to gain a competitive edge. In a season with three 20-game winners and the game’s first 24-game winner since Arizona's Randy Johnson in 2002, offense was down across MLB. Teams averaged 4.28 runs per game this season, the lowest production the lowest since 1992's 4.12. At the peak of the ‘Roids Era in 2000, teams averaged a robust 5.14 runs per game. Also telling was the decline of the average number of home runs per game, down to 0.94. That represents the lowest total in 19 years and a massive dip from 1.17 per game in 2000. Are steroids (or the lack thereof) the only reason for the loss of offense? No, but there is no question stricter testing plays a significant part. A rising crop of talented young pitchers and more than a few pitcher-friendly ballparks around baseball also play in and at least one of MLB’s former slugging stars - and a known steroid user - realizes that the era of abundant offense is gone and may not return any time soon. "There's a good generation of young pitchers who have come up and established themselves," said Colorado's Jason Giambi. "The days of offensive guys putting up crazy numbers, I think it's going to be different the next few years." Baseball’s mashers aren't the only ones affected by the absence of offense; the cumulative batting average across MLB was .255, the lowest since 1989. Pitchers are clearly gaining the upper hand, as evidenced by a league-wide ERA of 3.94 that hadn't been matched since 1992. "Pitching is getting better. Teams are drafting pitching more. They started doing that a while ago and now you're seeing what all those guys can do," Cincinnati Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "For a long time, parents didn't want their kids to be pitchers. They were afraid they'd get hurt. Now they see some of the top draft pick money they're getting and thinking it might be OK to pitch." No pitcher epitomized the swing in power more than Detroit stud Justin Verlander, who posted an awesome 24-5 record and was dominant enough for many to do the unthinkable by putting a pitcher in the discussion for MVP. On top of Verlander’s special season, Tampa Bay's James Shields became the first pitcher this century to post double-digit complete games and Philadelphia's Cliff Lee became the first pitcher with six shutouts since 1989. Strikeouts were up markedly and walks were down substantially, leading some to christen 2011 as the year of the pitcher in MLB. "The pendulum is switching," New York Mets manager Terry Collins said. "Pitchers are throwing harder. Guys are throwing 94 to 98 (mph). Bullpen. Rotation. Years ago, 92 was a hard fastball. Now it's an average fastball. Guys might even say it's a tick below." Pin the credit or blame on whomever you choose, but there is no denying that juiced-down batters just aren't getting the job done on their own merits……….
- Not many music fans know who the heck Jessie J is, but anyone who does recognize her is going to think of her first and foremost as a vapid, self-absorbed and clueless twit who doesn’t bother to think before she speaks if she continues on her current life trajectory. Miss J first made waves last month when she commented on indie music icon PJ Harvey winning the Mercury Prize for her album Let England Shake. The British music prize was awarded to Harvey and for whatever reason, a music journalist felt it would be a good idea to ask fellow Jessie J, a fellow Brit musician who began her music career in embarrassing fashion as a songwriter for pop hacks Chris Brown and Miley Cyrus, about the honor. Queried about whether she saw the ceremony, Jessie J admitted she had no idea who Harvey was or even what the Mercury Prize was. "I didn't see the ceremony, no, I was jet-lagged after a flight back from America so I had an early night. I live in a bubble. Could I be up for a Mercury next year? Possibly. I should probably find out what it is before then, ha ha," she laughed. But compared to her most recent comments about people with missing or amputated limbs, her remarks about Harvey and music awards seem intelligent by comparison. After breaking her foot earlier this year and spending more than two months with a cast on her leg, a grateful Jessie J chose to express her appreciation for having full use of both legs back in foot-in-mouth fashion. "I'm back in the swing, getting my cast off after nine weeks of this awful Smurf shoe. But it's put everything in perspective,” she explained. “I have a different respect now for people who don't have legs." Aaaaaand….end of scene. Wow….just wow. You having to wear a cast and use crutches for nine weeks makes you respect people born without legs or who lost legs in combat or other accidents? Because apparently Jessie J didn’t have all that much respect for these people prior to breaking her foot. This ungrateful dimwit also took a moment to lash out at fans who weren't quite as tough as she was in soldiering through the same injury that millions of people around the world deal with each year with no fanfre. “You give so much as an artist, you give, you give, you give. I'll break my foot and I've got fans going, 'I've got a tummy ache, can I get a re-tweet.' People think you go to a special hospital, get special casts and treatment,” Jessie J fumed. Way to keep perspective, ass hat…………
- You cannot be serious, Bahrain. Not that any better treatment of those bold enough to rise up and oppose The Man was expected of you, but way to also persecute medical professionals just for doing their jobs and treating those your security forces to maliciously wounded. The disappointing verdict came down Thursday as Bahrain's special security court sentenced a protester to death for (allegedly) killing a policeman and gave doctors and nurses who had treated injured protesters during the country's uprising earlier this year lengthy prison sentences. The tribunal, set up during Bahrain's emergency rule, convicted and sentenced 13 medical professionals each to 15 years in prison. Two other doctors were sentenced to 10 years each while five other medics convicted on Thursday got shorter prison terms of five years each for simply doing their jobs. Apparently anyone who is injured while protesting an unjust government is supposed to be denied medical treatment and allowed to die a slow and painful death. Human rights groups had opposed the prosecution of the doctors and nurses, but Thursday’s severe sentences would seem to indicate that Sunni authorities in the Gulf kingdom will not show any fairness or intelligence in punishing those they accuse of supporting the Shiite-led opposition and participating in dissidence that has rocked the island nation. Al-Alawi, the attorney for the 20 medical professionals, said all of his clients in the case will have the chance to appeal their verdicts (and have them denied without actual consideration). Human rights groups identified the protester sentenced to death as Ali Yousef Abdulwahab and claimed that another suspect, Ali Attia Mahdi, was convicted on Thursday as Abdulwahab's accomplice and sentenced to life imprisonment. They are merely two of the hundreds of brave dissidents arrested and imprisoned since March, when Bahrain’s oppressive rulers imposed martial law to deal with protests by the country's Shiite majority to demand greater rights and freedoms. The unofficial death toll for the uprising stands somewhere around 30 and despite their severity, Thursday’s sentences aren't likely to quell the unrest. Even as state officials have begun releasing some detainees and reinstating state workers jailed for suspected support of the seven-month-old protest movement, opposition groups have not expressed any inclination to back down. With Shiites representing about 70 percent of Bahrain's population about 525,000 people, there is little reason to stop demanding fairer treatment. The Sunni dynasty, which has ruled the island for more than 200 years, still has the support of many western powers and Gulf Arab neighbors, but that is only more fuel for the fire of those trying to enact change. Keep up the right, Bahraini dissidents, keep up the fight…………
- What is it with lowlife, soul-less scumbags working at cemeteries of late? Not long ago, a gravedigger in Colorado was fired and investigated for possible criminal charges for playing his shovel “guitar” atop a grave to win tickets to a local music festival. But compared to a kook named Steven Conrad, a resident of Brown County, Wisc., shovel-rocking loser Christopher Redd seems classy. Conrad, as of now still employed as a grounds worker at the Allouez Catholic Cemetery, was arrested on Saturday and charged with felony theft from person or corpse. What exactly did he steal from a person who had just departed this world? Some gold jewelry or a diamond ring, perhaps an antique pocket watch? Nope. Conrad pilfered a vintage Fender Telecaster from the coffin of Randall Jourdan, an elderly man who had made it his dying wish to be buried with the "pride and joy" guitar he'd played for over 40 years. After spotting the guitar and deciding he wanted it badly, Conrad made the fatal mistake of confessing to co-worker James Lang that he would like to take the instrument. Ripping the beloved ax of a deceased person did not seem to be a problem for Conrad’s weak conscience, so he continued drooling over it and told his co-worker, "That's a Telly, a really expensive guitar. I have to have that guitar. It's too expensive to be in a crypt." When he asked Lang "if he would say anything if he took the guitar,” Lang was adamant that he would. Undeterred, Conrad went ahead with his plan and stole the guitar. Lang, knowing what his buddy was up to, checked the coffin twice before it was lowered into the ground. When he checked the coffin for a second time, the guitar was missing and Lang called police. Finding a suspect didn’t take long and within hours, officers were knocking on Conrad’s door. He confessed to the theft but had a great reason for his dirty deed. "This isn't something I normally do. I just have a respect for fine musical instruments," Conrad told officers. So you have respect for “fine musical instruments,” just not for the last wishes of the dearly departed? You care more about the rights of a piece of musical equipment than you do about a person whose life has ended? Here’s hoping Conrad’s stay at the Brown County Jail and whatever correctional institution he moves to next are both thoroughly unpleasant……………
treasures to the broadest possible public," Snyder explained. There are a total of 900 manuscripts in the collection of scrolls, many Biblical, comprising some 30,000 fragments. They were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in the Qumran caves above the Dead Sea and were photographed in their entirety with infra-red
technology in the 1950s. Made of parchment and papyrus, the scrolls sport Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic
writing that includes several of the earliest-known texts from the Bible, including the oldest surviving copy of the Ten Commandments (because Moses just couldn’t find a safe place for the originals). The oldest document among the scrolls dates to the third century BC and the most recent to about 70 AD, when Roman troops destroyed the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. As for the original scrolls, they are stored at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, where the larger pieces are shown at the dimly lit Shrine of the Book on a rotational basis in order to prevent damage from exposure. But now, one need not book a plane ticket for the Holy Land to read the scrolls. A high-speed connection and no social life are the only requirements…………
- It truly is amazing what can happen when you take the steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs out of baseball. As it turns out, de-‘roiding Major League Baseball has taken the offensive wind out of the game’s sails. The 2011 is the most definitive proof yet that batters can’t mash quite as powerfully when they’re not peaking on bull ‘roids or whatever else they had previously jammed into their bodies to gain a competitive edge. In a season with three 20-game winners and the game’s first 24-game winner since Arizona's Randy Johnson in 2002, offense was down across MLB. Teams averaged 4.28 runs per game this season, the lowest production the lowest since 1992's 4.12. At the peak of the ‘Roids Era in 2000, teams averaged a robust 5.14 runs per game. Also telling was the decline of the average number of home runs per game, down to 0.94. That represents the lowest total in 19 years and a massive dip from 1.17 per game in 2000. Are steroids (or the lack thereof) the only reason for the loss of offense? No, but there is no question stricter testing plays a significant part. A rising crop of talented young pitchers and more than a few pitcher-friendly ballparks around baseball also play in and at least one of MLB’s former slugging stars - and a known steroid user - realizes that the era of abundant offense is gone and may not return any time soon. "There's a good generation of young pitchers who have come up and established themselves," said Colorado's Jason Giambi. "The days of offensive guys putting up crazy numbers, I think it's going to be different the next few years." Baseball’s mashers aren't the only ones affected by the absence of offense; the cumulative batting average across MLB was .255, the lowest since 1989. Pitchers are clearly gaining the upper hand, as evidenced by a league-wide ERA of 3.94 that hadn't been matched since 1992. "Pitching is getting better. Teams are drafting pitching more. They started doing that a while ago and now you're seeing what all those guys can do," Cincinnati Reds manager Dusty Baker said. "For a long time, parents didn't want their kids to be pitchers. They were afraid they'd get hurt. Now they see some of the top draft pick money they're getting and thinking it might be OK to pitch." No pitcher epitomized the swing in power more than Detroit stud Justin Verlander, who posted an awesome 24-5 record and was dominant enough for many to do the unthinkable by putting a pitcher in the discussion for MVP. On top of Verlander’s special season, Tampa Bay's James Shields became the first pitcher this century to post double-digit complete games and Philadelphia's Cliff Lee became the first pitcher with six shutouts since 1989. Strikeouts were up markedly and walks were down substantially, leading some to christen 2011 as the year of the pitcher in MLB. "The pendulum is switching," New York Mets manager Terry Collins said. "Pitchers are throwing harder. Guys are throwing 94 to 98 (mph). Bullpen. Rotation. Years ago, 92 was a hard fastball. Now it's an average fastball. Guys might even say it's a tick below." Pin the credit or blame on whomever you choose, but there is no denying that juiced-down batters just aren't getting the job done on their own merits……….
- Not many music fans know who the heck Jessie J is, but anyone who does recognize her is going to think of her first and foremost as a vapid, self-absorbed and clueless twit who doesn’t bother to think before she speaks if she continues on her current life trajectory. Miss J first made waves last month when she commented on indie music icon PJ Harvey winning the Mercury Prize for her album Let England Shake. The British music prize was awarded to Harvey and for whatever reason, a music journalist felt it would be a good idea to ask fellow Jessie J, a fellow Brit musician who began her music career in embarrassing fashion as a songwriter for pop hacks Chris Brown and Miley Cyrus, about the honor. Queried about whether she saw the ceremony, Jessie J admitted she had no idea who Harvey was or even what the Mercury Prize was. "I didn't see the ceremony, no, I was jet-lagged after a flight back from America so I had an early night. I live in a bubble. Could I be up for a Mercury next year? Possibly. I should probably find out what it is before then, ha ha," she laughed. But compared to her most recent comments about people with missing or amputated limbs, her remarks about Harvey and music awards seem intelligent by comparison. After breaking her foot earlier this year and spending more than two months with a cast on her leg, a grateful Jessie J chose to express her appreciation for having full use of both legs back in foot-in-mouth fashion. "I'm back in the swing, getting my cast off after nine weeks of this awful Smurf shoe. But it's put everything in perspective,” she explained. “I have a different respect now for people who don't have legs." Aaaaaand….end of scene. Wow….just wow. You having to wear a cast and use crutches for nine weeks makes you respect people born without legs or who lost legs in combat or other accidents? Because apparently Jessie J didn’t have all that much respect for these people prior to breaking her foot. This ungrateful dimwit also took a moment to lash out at fans who weren't quite as tough as she was in soldiering through the same injury that millions of people around the world deal with each year with no fanfre. “You give so much as an artist, you give, you give, you give. I'll break my foot and I've got fans going, 'I've got a tummy ache, can I get a re-tweet.' People think you go to a special hospital, get special casts and treatment,” Jessie J fumed. Way to keep perspective, ass hat…………
- You cannot be serious, Bahrain. Not that any better treatment of those bold enough to rise up and oppose The Man was expected of you, but way to also persecute medical professionals just for doing their jobs and treating those your security forces to maliciously wounded. The disappointing verdict came down Thursday as Bahrain's special security court sentenced a protester to death for (allegedly) killing a policeman and gave doctors and nurses who had treated injured protesters during the country's uprising earlier this year lengthy prison sentences. The tribunal, set up during Bahrain's emergency rule, convicted and sentenced 13 medical professionals each to 15 years in prison. Two other doctors were sentenced to 10 years each while five other medics convicted on Thursday got shorter prison terms of five years each for simply doing their jobs. Apparently anyone who is injured while protesting an unjust government is supposed to be denied medical treatment and allowed to die a slow and painful death. Human rights groups had opposed the prosecution of the doctors and nurses, but Thursday’s severe sentences would seem to indicate that Sunni authorities in the Gulf kingdom will not show any fairness or intelligence in punishing those they accuse of supporting the Shiite-led opposition and participating in dissidence that has rocked the island nation. Al-Alawi, the attorney for the 20 medical professionals, said all of his clients in the case will have the chance to appeal their verdicts (and have them denied without actual consideration). Human rights groups identified the protester sentenced to death as Ali Yousef Abdulwahab and claimed that another suspect, Ali Attia Mahdi, was convicted on Thursday as Abdulwahab's accomplice and sentenced to life imprisonment. They are merely two of the hundreds of brave dissidents arrested and imprisoned since March, when Bahrain’s oppressive rulers imposed martial law to deal with protests by the country's Shiite majority to demand greater rights and freedoms. The unofficial death toll for the uprising stands somewhere around 30 and despite their severity, Thursday’s sentences aren't likely to quell the unrest. Even as state officials have begun releasing some detainees and reinstating state workers jailed for suspected support of the seven-month-old protest movement, opposition groups have not expressed any inclination to back down. With Shiites representing about 70 percent of Bahrain's population about 525,000 people, there is little reason to stop demanding fairer treatment. The Sunni dynasty, which has ruled the island for more than 200 years, still has the support of many western powers and Gulf Arab neighbors, but that is only more fuel for the fire of those trying to enact change. Keep up the right, Bahraini dissidents, keep up the fight…………
- What is it with lowlife, soul-less scumbags working at cemeteries of late? Not long ago, a gravedigger in Colorado was fired and investigated for possible criminal charges for playing his shovel “guitar” atop a grave to win tickets to a local music festival. But compared to a kook named Steven Conrad, a resident of Brown County, Wisc., shovel-rocking loser Christopher Redd seems classy. Conrad, as of now still employed as a grounds worker at the Allouez Catholic Cemetery, was arrested on Saturday and charged with felony theft from person or corpse. What exactly did he steal from a person who had just departed this world? Some gold jewelry or a diamond ring, perhaps an antique pocket watch? Nope. Conrad pilfered a vintage Fender Telecaster from the coffin of Randall Jourdan, an elderly man who had made it his dying wish to be buried with the "pride and joy" guitar he'd played for over 40 years. After spotting the guitar and deciding he wanted it badly, Conrad made the fatal mistake of confessing to co-worker James Lang that he would like to take the instrument. Ripping the beloved ax of a deceased person did not seem to be a problem for Conrad’s weak conscience, so he continued drooling over it and told his co-worker, "That's a Telly, a really expensive guitar. I have to have that guitar. It's too expensive to be in a crypt." When he asked Lang "if he would say anything if he took the guitar,” Lang was adamant that he would. Undeterred, Conrad went ahead with his plan and stole the guitar. Lang, knowing what his buddy was up to, checked the coffin twice before it was lowered into the ground. When he checked the coffin for a second time, the guitar was missing and Lang called police. Finding a suspect didn’t take long and within hours, officers were knocking on Conrad’s door. He confessed to the theft but had a great reason for his dirty deed. "This isn't something I normally do. I just have a respect for fine musical instruments," Conrad told officers. So you have respect for “fine musical instruments,” just not for the last wishes of the dearly departed? You care more about the rights of a piece of musical equipment than you do about a person whose life has ended? Here’s hoping Conrad’s stay at the Brown County Jail and whatever correctional institution he moves to next are both thoroughly unpleasant……………
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
SEC arrogance, animal shrinkage and mysteries solved
- Given the way the Southeastern Conference has dominated college football over the past few seasons, the real shocker would be if SEC commissioner Mike Slive and Co. didn’t believe the BCS should alter its rules to allow more than two teams from a conference to play in the five most lucrative bowl games in a year. The SEC has won the last five national championships and with the conference adding Texas A&M as its 13th member next season, the conference seems to believe it should be entitled to as many of the 10 BCS slots as it wants. "I do know this: That Bill Hancock has put together a list of issues that he believes the commissioners and the BCS bowl oversight committee ought to be looking at as the BCS develops a position on upcoming negotiations. I think that's one of them," Slive said of the current two-team rule. "I think there are going to be several issues that are important enough to have serious discussion about, and that would be one of them." Of course, the BCS is a fraudulent system that is already broken and needs fixed, but why not break it further by trying to cram a third SEC into the mix instead of a non-BCS conference team that warrants it? Hancock would be BCS commissioner Bill Hancock who is still delusional enough to believe the BCS is actually a good system. The system works for what it is designed to do, namely get the six BCS conferences and their members paid. It does not always work in matching the sport’s two best teams for the national championship, even if Hancock thinks it’s the bees’ knees. "The commissioners are committed to making the BCS the best it can be," Hancock wrote in an email. "It's very good now. Just what 'making it the best' might entail will be evaluated in a thoughtful and deliberate process over the next six or eight months." Why is the SEC pounding on the BCS’ door for a third team, specifically? Is it to recognize how dominant the conference is on the football field? Umm, nope. A BCS bid will be worth about $22 million to an automatic qualifying conference this season and if the SEC could add a third team, that would net it another $6.1 million. The two-team limit has been in place since the BCS was implemented in 1999 and remained even after the BCS “Championship” Game was added for the 2006 season. The entire system has been a sham since its first day, so maybe changing the rules again to make it worse is a solid idea……….
- A legendary criminal who has been a part of American folklore has finally been captured. No, D.B. Cooper is not in custody and his story still remains a fascinating and unsolved mystery. The man in question is George Wright, who had been on the run for four decades after escaping from prison when Richard Nixon was in the White House, joining the Black Liberation Army in Detroit, hijacking a plane in Detroit and being part of one of the most bizarre ransom drops ever when FBI agents were made to deliver the ransom money in bathing suits. More than three decades after his escape, the FBI finally tracked Wright down Monday all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Wright was living quietly in the resort of Sintra near Lisbon in Portugal, where he was apprehended. The United States is seeking his extradition from Portugal so Wright can serve the remainder of a 15- to 30-year sentence for murder - or whatever portion of that time he actually lives. Wright is predictably fighting extradition and will not make another court appearance for nearly two weeks. His story is an amazing one, dating back to 1962 when, at the age of 19, he and three associates committed t a series of armed robberies in New Jersey. During one of the robberies, Wright and another man shot and killed a World War II veteran in Farmingdale and he was arrested soon afterward. He was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison but escaped eight years later from Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, N.J. and went criminal legend by reportedly stealing the warden's car to make his getaway. From there, he linked up with the Black Liberation Army and supposedly earned extra money as a part-time male model before he and four other members of the Black Liberation Army went to Detroit airport on July 31, 1972 and hijacked Delta Flight 841, bound for Miami. Wright carried a handgun in a hollowed-out Bible that was part of his disguise as a priest. Wright and his cohorts seized the plane as it approached Miami and once on the ground, they demanded that FBI agents dressed only in bathing suits deliver $1 million ransom to the plane in order to be sure the agents were not carrying guns. The hijackers then refueled the plane and flew on to Algiers, where they were welcomed by a country ruled by a hard-line socialist government that had poor relations with the U.S. The Algerian government did confiscate the $1 million in ransom money to the U.S., but Wright and his associates vanished. Some of the hijackers were arrested in Paris in 1976, but Wright was not among them. In fact, no one knew where he was until the FBI managed to locate him a few days ago…………
- Here’s a solid lesson for all humans, regardless of their race, nationality, sex or profession: Do not, under any circumstances, slam on a Nazi or Nazi-themed outfit or costume for any reason. Period. It’s going to go poorly for you and if Prince Harry’s appearance in Nazi garb at a party a couple years ago wasn’t evidence enough, take the current predicament of the Sacred Heart School in Chiang Mai, Thailand as another prime exhibit. Somehow, school officials though it would be a good idea to hold a parade in which participating students wearing Nazi uniforms performed "Sieg Heil" salutes. This debacle featured participants carrying a Swastika flag, performing Nazi salutes and wearing SS uniforms, while others dressed as Adolf Hitler sported toothbrush moustaches. Somehow, no one involved with the parade realized it was a terrible idea to mock and trivialize one of the biggest tragedies in the history of mankind and the parade went on. Photographs of the parade have leaked and Jewish human rights organizations have called for Thailand's Christian leaders to condemn the parade and punish those responsible. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, decried the event as "glorifying Nazis." The center’s officials say that the images show the school’s officials had to know about the parade and yet did nothing about it. Worse still, a similar parade took place in 2007 at a school in Bangkok and it’s starting to look like Thailand just doesn’t take the Holocaust all that seriously. In a more recent incident, members of Thai rock band Slur donned Nazi uniforms in a music video. So far, all Sacred Heart officials have done is post a weak “apology” on the school’s website which read, "We, the entire Sacred Heart School [personnel] are deeply saddened by this incident." Go ahead and remove the personnel from that sentence and tack on a “We’re sorry for this idiotic display, apologize for its hateful ignorance and will punish all who had a role in it. It will never happen again.” And no, explaining that the day was a “sports day” on the campus involving groups being differentiated by colors doesn’t help. It doesn’t matter if the "Red" group was the one that used Nazi symbols because they still should have been stopped…………
- There seems to be some confusion of just what sort of crappy reality TV show Dancing With the D-List Stars is. Most of those who appear on the show seem to think it’s some sort of ballroom dancing-themed Biggest Loser spin-off, judging by the way they talk about how throwing on hideous sequined outfits, doing ridiculous-looking dances and trusting America to properly evaluate their performance to vote. None of these fourth-rate, quasi-celebrities and hacks is willing to admit that they’re on the show to jump-start their faltering career or put themselves on the map after they squeezed as much attention as they possibly could out of their time on some MTV reality series. Count CNN Headline News legal analyst Nancy Grace among these delusional kooks. Grace, who caused a minor uproar (among those with nothing better to do than care about some vapid TV talking head and whether she popped out of her dress) with a possible wardrobe malfunction this week, says she has began shedding some of the many excess pounds she is carrying around simply by virtue of her DWTDLS schedule. "I've inadvertently lost 10 lbs. on the I'm-too-tired-to-eat diet," Grace stated. "By the time I get the children ready for school, then practice and then come home, I'm like exhausted." Perhaps if you didn’t show up for rehearsal and live shows 50 pounds overweight, you wouldn’t be so fatigued, N. Also, you couldn’t lose those 10 pounds if you weren't carrying them around to begin with. Grace is paired with DWTDLS pro Tristan MacManus and admits she actually enjoys the grueling practice schedule. "If you would have told me five to seven hours of dance practice was fun, I would have never believed you," she said, "but it is." It certainly beats having a real job, without a doubt………….
- There is shrinkage in the animal kingdom too. Not that kind of shrinkage, but it still exists for our furry, feathered, scaly or slimy friends. According to new research conducted by Dr. Andrew Hirst and colleagues from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, animals grow smaller in hot versus cold climates and there is a viable explanation. This so-called temperature-size rule affects most cold-blooded organisms, causing them to stop growing at a smaller adult size when they live in a warmer climate. The phenomenon itself is not new, but the reasons for it were not known until Hirst and his team conducted their research. They studied data collected over 40 years on marine planktonic copepods, the main animal plankton existing in the world's oceans and a key food source for many animal species. What they discovered was that growth rates, measured by how fast mass is accumulated and development rates and how fast an individual passes through its life stages, vary substantially amongst species. Their findings indicate that how fast an animal underwent development was more sensitive to temperature than the growth rate was. "We've shown that growth and development increase at different rates as temperatures warm. The consequences are that at warmer temperatures a species grows faster but matures even faster still, resulting in them achieving a smaller adult size," Hirst explained. Hirst also made a clear distinction between how fast an animal develops versus how fast an animal grows and said that difference "could have important consequences for individual species and ecosystems." With global warming (possibly) taking the world by storm, this study suggests that fundamental rates such as mortality, reproduction and feeding may not change at the same rate. To read more about this sure-to-rivet research, pick up the copy of the latest edition of the journal The American Naturalist from your magazine rack and check it out…………
- A legendary criminal who has been a part of American folklore has finally been captured. No, D.B. Cooper is not in custody and his story still remains a fascinating and unsolved mystery. The man in question is George Wright, who had been on the run for four decades after escaping from prison when Richard Nixon was in the White House, joining the Black Liberation Army in Detroit, hijacking a plane in Detroit and being part of one of the most bizarre ransom drops ever when FBI agents were made to deliver the ransom money in bathing suits. More than three decades after his escape, the FBI finally tracked Wright down Monday all the way across the Atlantic Ocean. Wright was living quietly in the resort of Sintra near Lisbon in Portugal, where he was apprehended. The United States is seeking his extradition from Portugal so Wright can serve the remainder of a 15- to 30-year sentence for murder - or whatever portion of that time he actually lives. Wright is predictably fighting extradition and will not make another court appearance for nearly two weeks. His story is an amazing one, dating back to 1962 when, at the age of 19, he and three associates committed t a series of armed robberies in New Jersey. During one of the robberies, Wright and another man shot and killed a World War II veteran in Farmingdale and he was arrested soon afterward. He was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison but escaped eight years later from Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, N.J. and went criminal legend by reportedly stealing the warden's car to make his getaway. From there, he linked up with the Black Liberation Army and supposedly earned extra money as a part-time male model before he and four other members of the Black Liberation Army went to Detroit airport on July 31, 1972 and hijacked Delta Flight 841, bound for Miami. Wright carried a handgun in a hollowed-out Bible that was part of his disguise as a priest. Wright and his cohorts seized the plane as it approached Miami and once on the ground, they demanded that FBI agents dressed only in bathing suits deliver $1 million ransom to the plane in order to be sure the agents were not carrying guns. The hijackers then refueled the plane and flew on to Algiers, where they were welcomed by a country ruled by a hard-line socialist government that had poor relations with the U.S. The Algerian government did confiscate the $1 million in ransom money to the U.S., but Wright and his associates vanished. Some of the hijackers were arrested in Paris in 1976, but Wright was not among them. In fact, no one knew where he was until the FBI managed to locate him a few days ago…………
- Here’s a solid lesson for all humans, regardless of their race, nationality, sex or profession: Do not, under any circumstances, slam on a Nazi or Nazi-themed outfit or costume for any reason. Period. It’s going to go poorly for you and if Prince Harry’s appearance in Nazi garb at a party a couple years ago wasn’t evidence enough, take the current predicament of the Sacred Heart School in Chiang Mai, Thailand as another prime exhibit. Somehow, school officials though it would be a good idea to hold a parade in which participating students wearing Nazi uniforms performed "Sieg Heil" salutes. This debacle featured participants carrying a Swastika flag, performing Nazi salutes and wearing SS uniforms, while others dressed as Adolf Hitler sported toothbrush moustaches. Somehow, no one involved with the parade realized it was a terrible idea to mock and trivialize one of the biggest tragedies in the history of mankind and the parade went on. Photographs of the parade have leaked and Jewish human rights organizations have called for Thailand's Christian leaders to condemn the parade and punish those responsible. The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization based in Los Angeles, decried the event as "glorifying Nazis." The center’s officials say that the images show the school’s officials had to know about the parade and yet did nothing about it. Worse still, a similar parade took place in 2007 at a school in Bangkok and it’s starting to look like Thailand just doesn’t take the Holocaust all that seriously. In a more recent incident, members of Thai rock band Slur donned Nazi uniforms in a music video. So far, all Sacred Heart officials have done is post a weak “apology” on the school’s website which read, "We, the entire Sacred Heart School [personnel] are deeply saddened by this incident." Go ahead and remove the personnel from that sentence and tack on a “We’re sorry for this idiotic display, apologize for its hateful ignorance and will punish all who had a role in it. It will never happen again.” And no, explaining that the day was a “sports day” on the campus involving groups being differentiated by colors doesn’t help. It doesn’t matter if the "Red" group was the one that used Nazi symbols because they still should have been stopped…………
- There seems to be some confusion of just what sort of crappy reality TV show Dancing With the D-List Stars is. Most of those who appear on the show seem to think it’s some sort of ballroom dancing-themed Biggest Loser spin-off, judging by the way they talk about how throwing on hideous sequined outfits, doing ridiculous-looking dances and trusting America to properly evaluate their performance to vote. None of these fourth-rate, quasi-celebrities and hacks is willing to admit that they’re on the show to jump-start their faltering career or put themselves on the map after they squeezed as much attention as they possibly could out of their time on some MTV reality series. Count CNN Headline News legal analyst Nancy Grace among these delusional kooks. Grace, who caused a minor uproar (among those with nothing better to do than care about some vapid TV talking head and whether she popped out of her dress) with a possible wardrobe malfunction this week, says she has began shedding some of the many excess pounds she is carrying around simply by virtue of her DWTDLS schedule. "I've inadvertently lost 10 lbs. on the I'm-too-tired-to-eat diet," Grace stated. "By the time I get the children ready for school, then practice and then come home, I'm like exhausted." Perhaps if you didn’t show up for rehearsal and live shows 50 pounds overweight, you wouldn’t be so fatigued, N. Also, you couldn’t lose those 10 pounds if you weren't carrying them around to begin with. Grace is paired with DWTDLS pro Tristan MacManus and admits she actually enjoys the grueling practice schedule. "If you would have told me five to seven hours of dance practice was fun, I would have never believed you," she said, "but it is." It certainly beats having a real job, without a doubt………….
- There is shrinkage in the animal kingdom too. Not that kind of shrinkage, but it still exists for our furry, feathered, scaly or slimy friends. According to new research conducted by Dr. Andrew Hirst and colleagues from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, animals grow smaller in hot versus cold climates and there is a viable explanation. This so-called temperature-size rule affects most cold-blooded organisms, causing them to stop growing at a smaller adult size when they live in a warmer climate. The phenomenon itself is not new, but the reasons for it were not known until Hirst and his team conducted their research. They studied data collected over 40 years on marine planktonic copepods, the main animal plankton existing in the world's oceans and a key food source for many animal species. What they discovered was that growth rates, measured by how fast mass is accumulated and development rates and how fast an individual passes through its life stages, vary substantially amongst species. Their findings indicate that how fast an animal underwent development was more sensitive to temperature than the growth rate was. "We've shown that growth and development increase at different rates as temperatures warm. The consequences are that at warmer temperatures a species grows faster but matures even faster still, resulting in them achieving a smaller adult size," Hirst explained. Hirst also made a clear distinction between how fast an animal develops versus how fast an animal grows and said that difference "could have important consequences for individual species and ecosystems." With global warming (possibly) taking the world by storm, this study suggests that fundamental rates such as mortality, reproduction and feeding may not change at the same rate. To read more about this sure-to-rivet research, pick up the copy of the latest edition of the journal The American Naturalist from your magazine rack and check it out…………
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Bitter NFL legends, missign grenades and women in combat
- Dammit, has anyone seen my grenade lately? I had it right here beside me just a few hours ago and then I just got busy and lost track of it……..oh wait, someone found it? Awesome! That’s a huge weight off my mind…..what’s that? The grenade caused a major - albeit brief - panic after it was found near Interstate 435 in Kansas City. Authorities closed Front Street from I-435 to Corrington Avenue, as well as the northbound exit from I-435, Monday afternoon after the grenade was spotted. A concerned (and panicky) citizen tipped police off to the grenade’s presence and they shut down the area until officers could arrive on the scene and assess the threat. In the end, the threat was all hype as Kansas City Police Department spokeswoman Stacey Graves said the device was a training grenade. Investigators simply collected the wayward grenade and were on their way without further incident. The closed streets reopened a few hours later and life went back to normal. Police are still not sure how the grenade ended up in that particular location or who was responsible for putting it there, but at least the incident injected a little life into an otherwise mundane Monday in Kansas City. In fact, maybe mischief-loving citizens around the United States could add a welcome dose of excitement to their otherwise humdrum daily existence by taking unused firearms, ordinance and incendiary devices and leaving them in random public places. Sounds like a recipe for success to me, or the plot for a 24 spin-off movie…………
- God bless you, Irish farmer Alan Graham, God bless you. You have done something many others before you should have had the courage to do, even if your reasons for your actions were rooted firmly in the 19th century and in desperate need of a leap forward in social and moral consciousness. Graham was the unfortunate soul approached by pop hack Rihanna and her record label to use his field as the site for her new single "We Found Love." Graham, who knew nothing about Rihanna or her music (lucky bastard) and yet he gave her permission to use the field for the video. He was okay with the project right up to the point when he was out in the field doing some work on his tractor when he spotted something he didn’t approve of going on over on the set of the video. Channeling her inner Survivor contestant, Rihanna was dancing in a red handkerchief bikini when Graham noticed her and drove over on his tractor to put a halt to the proceedings. Rather than simply enjoy the sight (she may not make good music but no one said she wasn’t hot) as many dudes would, Graham objected to the display of immodesty and chastised Rihanna for her "inappropriate" wardrobe. "I have an ethos and I felt it was inappropriate," Graham explained. "I requested them to stop and they did." The shoot was stopped, the record label ate the cost of moving the entire project to a new location and the two sides parted ways good terms, according to Graham, shaking hands as he went on his way. "I wish no ill will against Rihanna and her friends," he said later. "Perhaps they could acquaint themselves with a greater God." Ouch. A nice “greater God” blast on the way out the door. As a quick aside, you’d think someone involved with the video would have sat down with Graham at some point to explain what the nature of the video was or that Graham himself would have asked a few questions. Then again, the chance to put a stop to Rihanna’s gawd-awful attempts at music is something most people will never be fortunate enough to experience…………
- Overturning one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe has to be considered a successful day for any scientist and the international team of researchers working on an experiment dubbed OPERA run jointly by the CERN particle research centre near Geneva and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy must be pleased with themselves right now. This brilliant group of minds said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light. Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, cited measurements taken over three years that allegedly showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done. "We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," Ereditato said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently." That find, if validated, would undercut Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster. On a quick tangent, Einstein’s theory that a moustache is a good look for anyone but firemen, police officers and porn stars was debunked long ago. His theory on the speed of light has been repeatedly tested over the past century and remains one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works. The OPERA team fired a total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos -- tiny particles that pervade the cosmos -- over a period of 3 years from CERN towards Gran Sasso 500 miles away, where they were picked up by giant detectors. The neutrinos (which sound like some sort of healthy new breakfast cereal) bested the speed of light by covering that distance in 60 billionths of a second less than the 2.4 thousandths of a second light beams would have taken. "It is a tiny difference," said Ereditato, "but conceptually it is incredibly important. The finding is so startling that, for the moment, everybody should be very prudent." Implications of the discovery are still largely unknown, but the pie-in-the-sky dreamers out there who hold out hope that Back to the Future could in fact come true will undoubtedly trumpet this news as a sign that time travel might theoretically become possible. On a side note, big ups to the crew at CERN -- also home to the Large Hadron Collider probing the origins of the universe - for another riveting discovery because in between the collider breaking down every other week, they’ve come up with some really interesting stuff………….
- Women’s rights, specifically the right to die on the front lines of a war, are about to get a boost in Australia. The Australian government announced Tuesday that female soldiers will soon be able to serve in all front-line combat roles, a move that makes Australia one of a small number of countries that allow women to serve alongside male counterparts in some of the most dangerous roles in modern warfare. Women will now be allowed to serve on über-dangerous military teams like Special Forces units in Afghanistan. While it remains highly unlike the Aussies will be going to war directly any time soon (unless someone tries to steal their beer), the announcement by Defense Minister Stephen Smith still represents the biggest shakeup of the country’s armed forces in more than a decade. Allowing women to serve in the Special Forces, infantry and some army artillery roles was first proposed in April in light of a series of military scandals at home and abroad. The most prominent example was a male cadet at the elite Australian Defense Force Academy caught streaming video of himself having sex with a female cadet to his friends via Skype without her knowledge. How that equates to women in combat roles isn't exactly perfect logic, but Prime Minster Julia Gillard supports the new policy. “We have an Australian Army that’s been going for 110 years, an Australian Navy that’s been going formally for 100 years, and an Australian Air Force that’s been going for 90 years, and last night, we resolved to remove the final restrictions on the capacity of women to serve in front-line combat roles,” Smith said. “In the future, your role in the defense force will be determined on your ability, not on the basis of your sex.” Women have already played a significant role in Australia’s effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Aussies currently comprise the largest contingent of any non-NATO member. Nearly 340 women were serving on overseas operations as of August, accounting for more than 10 percent of Australia’s fighting forces deployed overseas. Of course, 93 percent of positions are open to women under the current policy, meaning the new rules will open up the remaining 7 percent. The changes will be implemented over a five-year period and Australia will join Canada, Israel and New Zealand as the only developed countries with no restrictions on women serving in front-line capacities. The United States continues to lag behind by not allowing the women who make up 14 percent of its armed forces to serve in front-line combat roles…………
- No one likes a bitter old dude who won't give any credit to the next generation and insists on ragging on them every chance he gets. It’s why so many people despise the living members of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins team - the only undefeated champion in the Super Bowl era of the NFL - because they pop champagne and have a party every year when the final undefeated team loses its first game. Even when that old dude is an absolute icon in a particular city the way Super Bowl III hero Joe Namath is in New York, the bitterman routine wears thin very quickly. Namath seems oblivious to this fact as he has laid out his former team not once, but twice this season. Namath, who famously guaranteed victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III and delivered, first cracked the Jets’ signing of free-agent receiver and recent New York Department of Corrections inmate Plaxico Burress, saying Burress would be “damn lucky” to make it through the entire season. After Sunday’s humbling 10-point loss in Oakland, Namath - not associated with the team in any official capacity - Namath directed his criticism toward Jets coach Rex Ryan for not having his team properly prepared for the contest. "It wasn't disheartening so to speak," Namath said. "It's rather alarming is the way I'm looking at it. It starts at the top. Coach Rex Ryan I think has been doing a great job getting the team to two (AFC) Championship Games. But if there's one thing about the athlete, if you keep telling him how good he is, he's going to start believing it, to the point that he may not be preparing not quite the way he should. He may be losing some respect for the other team." Yikes. Accusing a coach of not preparing his team well enough for a game is about as serious a charge as anyone can levy and as expected, Ryan wasn’t exactly backing away from the confrontation when asked about it Monday. "I'm not gonna change who I am because Joe Namath said something," Ryan said in response. "Joe Namath can come in here, and if he can still throw, we'll have him as a backup quarterback. He doesn't know our team. He's on the outside. Even though he's a Jet, and once you're a Jet you're always a Jet ... but he's on the outside, he's not in these meetings. I think if he was he'd be shocked at the preparation.” Good call, Rex, suggesting than a 68-year-old recovering alcoholic who hasn’t taken a snap in more than three decades should try to make the roster as a backup to a third-year quarterback in Mark Sanchez who hasn’t even played in a Super Bowl. The situation could have become even more heated had Ryan said what he probably wanted to say to Namath but had too much respect for his position in Jets history. Regardless of how Rex handled the matter though, Broadway Joe would do well to drop the crotchety old geezer act…………
- God bless you, Irish farmer Alan Graham, God bless you. You have done something many others before you should have had the courage to do, even if your reasons for your actions were rooted firmly in the 19th century and in desperate need of a leap forward in social and moral consciousness. Graham was the unfortunate soul approached by pop hack Rihanna and her record label to use his field as the site for her new single "We Found Love." Graham, who knew nothing about Rihanna or her music (lucky bastard) and yet he gave her permission to use the field for the video. He was okay with the project right up to the point when he was out in the field doing some work on his tractor when he spotted something he didn’t approve of going on over on the set of the video. Channeling her inner Survivor contestant, Rihanna was dancing in a red handkerchief bikini when Graham noticed her and drove over on his tractor to put a halt to the proceedings. Rather than simply enjoy the sight (she may not make good music but no one said she wasn’t hot) as many dudes would, Graham objected to the display of immodesty and chastised Rihanna for her "inappropriate" wardrobe. "I have an ethos and I felt it was inappropriate," Graham explained. "I requested them to stop and they did." The shoot was stopped, the record label ate the cost of moving the entire project to a new location and the two sides parted ways good terms, according to Graham, shaking hands as he went on his way. "I wish no ill will against Rihanna and her friends," he said later. "Perhaps they could acquaint themselves with a greater God." Ouch. A nice “greater God” blast on the way out the door. As a quick aside, you’d think someone involved with the video would have sat down with Graham at some point to explain what the nature of the video was or that Graham himself would have asked a few questions. Then again, the chance to put a stop to Rihanna’s gawd-awful attempts at music is something most people will never be fortunate enough to experience…………
- Overturning one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe has to be considered a successful day for any scientist and the international team of researchers working on an experiment dubbed OPERA run jointly by the CERN particle research centre near Geneva and the Gran Sasso Laboratory in central Italy must be pleased with themselves right now. This brilliant group of minds said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light. Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, cited measurements taken over three years that allegedly showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done. "We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," Ereditato said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently." That find, if validated, would undercut Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster. On a quick tangent, Einstein’s theory that a moustache is a good look for anyone but firemen, police officers and porn stars was debunked long ago. His theory on the speed of light has been repeatedly tested over the past century and remains one of the key elements of the so-called Standard Model of physics, which attempts to describe the way the universe and everything in it works. The OPERA team fired a total of 15,000 beams of neutrinos -- tiny particles that pervade the cosmos -- over a period of 3 years from CERN towards Gran Sasso 500 miles away, where they were picked up by giant detectors. The neutrinos (which sound like some sort of healthy new breakfast cereal) bested the speed of light by covering that distance in 60 billionths of a second less than the 2.4 thousandths of a second light beams would have taken. "It is a tiny difference," said Ereditato, "but conceptually it is incredibly important. The finding is so startling that, for the moment, everybody should be very prudent." Implications of the discovery are still largely unknown, but the pie-in-the-sky dreamers out there who hold out hope that Back to the Future could in fact come true will undoubtedly trumpet this news as a sign that time travel might theoretically become possible. On a side note, big ups to the crew at CERN -- also home to the Large Hadron Collider probing the origins of the universe - for another riveting discovery because in between the collider breaking down every other week, they’ve come up with some really interesting stuff………….
- Women’s rights, specifically the right to die on the front lines of a war, are about to get a boost in Australia. The Australian government announced Tuesday that female soldiers will soon be able to serve in all front-line combat roles, a move that makes Australia one of a small number of countries that allow women to serve alongside male counterparts in some of the most dangerous roles in modern warfare. Women will now be allowed to serve on über-dangerous military teams like Special Forces units in Afghanistan. While it remains highly unlike the Aussies will be going to war directly any time soon (unless someone tries to steal their beer), the announcement by Defense Minister Stephen Smith still represents the biggest shakeup of the country’s armed forces in more than a decade. Allowing women to serve in the Special Forces, infantry and some army artillery roles was first proposed in April in light of a series of military scandals at home and abroad. The most prominent example was a male cadet at the elite Australian Defense Force Academy caught streaming video of himself having sex with a female cadet to his friends via Skype without her knowledge. How that equates to women in combat roles isn't exactly perfect logic, but Prime Minster Julia Gillard supports the new policy. “We have an Australian Army that’s been going for 110 years, an Australian Navy that’s been going formally for 100 years, and an Australian Air Force that’s been going for 90 years, and last night, we resolved to remove the final restrictions on the capacity of women to serve in front-line combat roles,” Smith said. “In the future, your role in the defense force will be determined on your ability, not on the basis of your sex.” Women have already played a significant role in Australia’s effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where the Aussies currently comprise the largest contingent of any non-NATO member. Nearly 340 women were serving on overseas operations as of August, accounting for more than 10 percent of Australia’s fighting forces deployed overseas. Of course, 93 percent of positions are open to women under the current policy, meaning the new rules will open up the remaining 7 percent. The changes will be implemented over a five-year period and Australia will join Canada, Israel and New Zealand as the only developed countries with no restrictions on women serving in front-line capacities. The United States continues to lag behind by not allowing the women who make up 14 percent of its armed forces to serve in front-line combat roles…………
- No one likes a bitter old dude who won't give any credit to the next generation and insists on ragging on them every chance he gets. It’s why so many people despise the living members of the undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins team - the only undefeated champion in the Super Bowl era of the NFL - because they pop champagne and have a party every year when the final undefeated team loses its first game. Even when that old dude is an absolute icon in a particular city the way Super Bowl III hero Joe Namath is in New York, the bitterman routine wears thin very quickly. Namath seems oblivious to this fact as he has laid out his former team not once, but twice this season. Namath, who famously guaranteed victory over the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III and delivered, first cracked the Jets’ signing of free-agent receiver and recent New York Department of Corrections inmate Plaxico Burress, saying Burress would be “damn lucky” to make it through the entire season. After Sunday’s humbling 10-point loss in Oakland, Namath - not associated with the team in any official capacity - Namath directed his criticism toward Jets coach Rex Ryan for not having his team properly prepared for the contest. "It wasn't disheartening so to speak," Namath said. "It's rather alarming is the way I'm looking at it. It starts at the top. Coach Rex Ryan I think has been doing a great job getting the team to two (AFC) Championship Games. But if there's one thing about the athlete, if you keep telling him how good he is, he's going to start believing it, to the point that he may not be preparing not quite the way he should. He may be losing some respect for the other team." Yikes. Accusing a coach of not preparing his team well enough for a game is about as serious a charge as anyone can levy and as expected, Ryan wasn’t exactly backing away from the confrontation when asked about it Monday. "I'm not gonna change who I am because Joe Namath said something," Ryan said in response. "Joe Namath can come in here, and if he can still throw, we'll have him as a backup quarterback. He doesn't know our team. He's on the outside. Even though he's a Jet, and once you're a Jet you're always a Jet ... but he's on the outside, he's not in these meetings. I think if he was he'd be shocked at the preparation.” Good call, Rex, suggesting than a 68-year-old recovering alcoholic who hasn’t taken a snap in more than three decades should try to make the roster as a backup to a third-year quarterback in Mark Sanchez who hasn’t even played in a Super Bowl. The situation could have become even more heated had Ryan said what he probably wanted to say to Namath but had too much respect for his position in Jets history. Regardless of how Rex handled the matter though, Broadway Joe would do well to drop the crotchety old geezer act…………
Monday, September 26, 2011
North Korean needle assassins, climate change chaos and reality show racism
- The stories just continue to get better and better in North Korea. When a certified kook like Kim Jong Il is your leader, the bizarro tales are certain to abound, but this latest rumor might be the most peculiar one yet. According to anti-government activists, well-trained government agents from the regime of Kim Jong Il have been stealthily slithering around the country, targeting dissidents for assassination using poisoned needles. These conspiracy theorists have pointed to the unusual death of a 46-year-old South Korean pastor living in Dandong, a Chinese city near the North Korean border, after he was found unconscious in the street with his face and fingers badly discolored before dying. The pastor was reportedly active in an underground railroad that helps North Koreans escape to China. However, a spokesman for the South Korean Foreign Ministry, Kim Jeong Ok, said that an initial autopsy showed no signs of poisoning and that the family declined a second autopsy. The next day, a South Korean involved with missionary work in the Chinese city of Yanji was minding his own business on a sidewalk waiting for a traffic light to change when he felt a pinprick in his lower back. He collapsed to the sidewalk and reportedly hard a man muttering behind him in Chinese, "Sorry, sorry." The man survived the attack, but his story lends more credence to the growing list of allegations about such needle-wielding operatives terrorizing those inside and outside of North Korea. South Korean intelligence officials lent further credence to the stories earlier this month when they announced their own operatives had foiled an attack in Seoul in which the intended weapon was a poisoned needle. The target of the attack was Park Sung-hak, an activist who had launched balloons into North Korea carrying anti-government leaflets. Taken together, the three attacks are being hailed as signs of an increasing belligerent North Korean intelligence and security effort willing to go to any lengths to silence critics. Some observers have suggested that the attacks might be the handiwork of Kim Jong Un, son and heir apparent to Kim Jong Il. What makes North Korea so great (or a terrorist organization posing as a state) is that there are so many possibilities for the person behind these (alleged) attacks…………
- Did Tiger Woods pirate another golfer’s caddie or did that caddie approach Woods and his agent, Mark Steinberg, about the job of his own volition? If you believe the story as told by Woods on his website - the only “source” he ever provides information for - caddie Joe LaCava wanted to leave Dustin Johnson, one of the most talented young Americans in the game, to work for a former legend who hasn’t won in two years and is clearly on the downslope of his career. "This was an important decision, and I wanted to think about it carefully," Woods said in the story. "Also, out of deference for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, I decided to wait until they were concluding to have substantive talks. We then spoke to Joe and came to an agreement. Joe is an outstanding caddie, and I have known him for many years. I've personally seen the great job he did for Freddie (Couples). I'm anxious for us to be working together." Johnson didn’t exactly sound like he expected the move, nor did he or his agent point to any tension or troubles that may have forecasted the split. "Needless to say, Dustin and I were completely surprised, as they have enjoyed a great relationship and have been very successful together," agent David Winkle said. "Nonetheless, we think highly of Joe, both as a caddie and a person, which is why he was hired in the first place. We wish him nothing but the best with his new employer." To be fair to Woods, LaCava had not caddied for Johnson for long. He was the longtime caddie for Couples but their relationship at ended in the summer because Johnson was looking for a caddie and Couples' playing schedule was being reduced because of his health. One party who clearly didn’t see the change from Johnson to Woods coming was Woods’ former swing coach Butch Harmon, who has not been shy about criticizing Woods since their own relationship soured. "The thing that bothered me the most was T.W. not calling Dustin and asking if he could talk to Joe," Harmon explained. "That's the way it's done. I'm a little disappointed with the way Tiger handled it. But I'm not surprised." Woods’ post on his site didn’t deny that version of events, stating Woods talked to Johnson after LaCava informed his employer he was leaving. Of course, Woods has been searching for a permanent caddie since breaking off Steve Williams this summer after 13 years together. Their acrimonious split provided plenty of headlines for a short span and now LaCava will step into Williams’ oversized, cantankerous shoes. Now the question is whether his new boss will make enough money to keep his new gig as profitable as the one he just left………….
- Let this be a lesson to all losers on reality television shows on any network, but especially those on basic cable: Know your role and stay in your lane. Allow lead actress Patti Stanger of Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker to serve as an example for all of you with her imbecilic comments while appearing on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live. Stanger, whose job seems to consist of sifting through vapid, Botox-ed SoCal bimbos and matching them up with overly tanned, plastic, WASP-y millionaires, felt for some reason that the show was a great venue in which to unleash her inner anti-Semite and gay stereotyper. Bravo made the regrettable decision to allow Stanger to go beyond her skill set and take phone calls from viewers and then did a terrible job of screening the calls, which led to a caller asking Stanger how she felt about open long distance relationships and monogamy. Stanger replied, "In the Gay world, it will always be open." She asked the caller, a man named Dustin, if he was gay. He answered in the affirmative and Stanger replied, "There is no curbing the gay man." At that point, anyone with any self-awareness at all or an IQ above 42 would realize they were venturing into dangerous territory and pull the rip cord, but not Stanger. She turned to host Andy Cohen, who is openly gay, and said, "I have tried to curb 'you people.'" Wow……“you people.” Generalize much, P. And who exactly are you to “curb” anyone? Not content with her pre-existing bigotry contribution to the show, Stanger then told another caller, "First of all, you're very handsome, I thought you were straight." How she knew a caller was handsome is curious, but linking handsome and straight seemed to befuddle Cohen. He chimed in, "I don't know why being straight is a compliment." Once she was done bashing homosexuals, Stanger then went full-on anti-Semite by declaring, "Jewish men lie." Memo to you, P.: All men lie. All women lie. Everyone lies. No one tells the truth all the time, you tool. Her last bit of dating wisdom didn’t target a specific sexual orientation or race, but rather an entire city full of women. Stanger announced that New York women are "angry" and should be avoided by certain men. The Twitter world - clearly populated by people with nothing better to do than tweet in response to some pompous, self-aggrandizing reality show kook - lit up with anti-Stanger comments and some went so far as to ask for a boycott of Cohen’s show, Watch What Happens Live, which premiered after the show carrying Stanger’s moronic remarks. If only someone could have seen all of this coming from someone as brilliant and worthwhile in the world as Stanger…………
- Maybe the United States really is scaling back in waging unjustified, decade-long wars across the globe. The promises have been handed out like coupons for a free kids-sized ice cream cone on Halloween for as long as U.S. forces have been in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now, there are actual plans and dates on how those efforts will be dialed back. Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, the U.S. Army’s service's personnel chief, said in a recent interview that the Army will soon embark on a plan to cut 50,000 troops, or 8.6 percent of its soldiers, over five years. The cuts, scheduled to begin in March, will bring the Army's total force to 520,400 active-duty soldiers by October 2016, according to an Army Times report. Why now? “We feel that with the demand going down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and given the time to conduct a reasonable drawdown, we can manage (the force reduction) just as we have managed drawdowns in the past,” Bostick explained. The plan as laid out by Bostick is to conduct the reductions in two phases, with the first covering the 22,000 troops added three years ago to support the troop surge in Afghanistan. Another 27,000 troops that were added in the Grow the Army program, begun in 2007, will be cut in the second phase. Where will these displaced soldiers and officers go? The Army plans to achieve its target number through a number of options, including retirements, buyouts and voluntary and involuntary separations, Bostick said. Add war and unnecessarily propagating it to the expanding list of things America is no longer lapping the rest of the world in………….
- There is a fight in the world of science and it is pitting scientists against the publishers of Britain’s influential Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World. A news release magnanimously touted the release of the tome’s latest edition as “the Greatest Book on Earth.” Climate scientists do not seem to agree and one angry science dork fired off an e-mail to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. calling the book a “fiasco.” The atlas (whose name derives from The Times of London) is under attack for its depictions about the speed at which Greenland’s glaciers are melting. This scientist worried that a map in the atlas, along with news accounts repeating an error in the news release, could lead to another tidal wave of climate-change controversy. The release claimed that Greenland had lost 15 percent of its permanent ice cover from 1999 to 2011. That percentage represents 125,000 cubic miles, enough melted ice to raise sea levels three to five feet. Along with the figures in the release, the map in the atlas itself indicated that significant portions of Greenland’s coastline had become ice-free. Geologists were already on edge because of the drama over an exaggerated claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 United Nations report. That report became the weapon of choice for global warming skeptics and made the battle to win over undecided individuals that much tougher. In light of the atlas’ release, angry climate change scientists have gone on a media tour speaking to any show, columnist or host who will talk to them and sounded the same message: Greenland has not lost 15 percent of its ice cover in recent years. The angry scientists pegged the number at one-tenth of 1 percent and made it abundantly clear that nobody at the atlas had consulted them. “It was a case where, really, the community came together really fast with both barrels blazing,” said Mark Serreze, director of the snow and ice center in Colorado. “Everyone had some real bad memories of this whole fiasco that had to do with Himalayan glaciers. No one wanted to see that again.” Oh no, not the glaciers error in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Climate Change again. HarperCollins subsidiary Collins Geo, publisher of the Times atlas’s 13th edition, hasn’t exactly stood its ground against the criticism. The company apologized for the news release and says it is “urgently reviewing” the map of Greenland. Their backtracking comes after initially firing back at the scientists in a statement released on Sept. 15. “We are the best there is,” an unidentified Harper Collins spokeswoman said. “We are confident of the data we have used and of the cartography.” That stance changed after Theodore Scambos, a glaciologist at the center, reverse-engineered the error and theorized that a mapmaker at the atlas had mistaken a center’s map of the ice’s thickness for one showing its extent. Collins Geo has yet to explain exactly what did happen, but there is truly nothing like a quality climate change controversy to get science back into the spotlight……….
- Did Tiger Woods pirate another golfer’s caddie or did that caddie approach Woods and his agent, Mark Steinberg, about the job of his own volition? If you believe the story as told by Woods on his website - the only “source” he ever provides information for - caddie Joe LaCava wanted to leave Dustin Johnson, one of the most talented young Americans in the game, to work for a former legend who hasn’t won in two years and is clearly on the downslope of his career. "This was an important decision, and I wanted to think about it carefully," Woods said in the story. "Also, out of deference for the FedEx Cup Playoffs, I decided to wait until they were concluding to have substantive talks. We then spoke to Joe and came to an agreement. Joe is an outstanding caddie, and I have known him for many years. I've personally seen the great job he did for Freddie (Couples). I'm anxious for us to be working together." Johnson didn’t exactly sound like he expected the move, nor did he or his agent point to any tension or troubles that may have forecasted the split. "Needless to say, Dustin and I were completely surprised, as they have enjoyed a great relationship and have been very successful together," agent David Winkle said. "Nonetheless, we think highly of Joe, both as a caddie and a person, which is why he was hired in the first place. We wish him nothing but the best with his new employer." To be fair to Woods, LaCava had not caddied for Johnson for long. He was the longtime caddie for Couples but their relationship at ended in the summer because Johnson was looking for a caddie and Couples' playing schedule was being reduced because of his health. One party who clearly didn’t see the change from Johnson to Woods coming was Woods’ former swing coach Butch Harmon, who has not been shy about criticizing Woods since their own relationship soured. "The thing that bothered me the most was T.W. not calling Dustin and asking if he could talk to Joe," Harmon explained. "That's the way it's done. I'm a little disappointed with the way Tiger handled it. But I'm not surprised." Woods’ post on his site didn’t deny that version of events, stating Woods talked to Johnson after LaCava informed his employer he was leaving. Of course, Woods has been searching for a permanent caddie since breaking off Steve Williams this summer after 13 years together. Their acrimonious split provided plenty of headlines for a short span and now LaCava will step into Williams’ oversized, cantankerous shoes. Now the question is whether his new boss will make enough money to keep his new gig as profitable as the one he just left………….
- Let this be a lesson to all losers on reality television shows on any network, but especially those on basic cable: Know your role and stay in your lane. Allow lead actress Patti Stanger of Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker to serve as an example for all of you with her imbecilic comments while appearing on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live. Stanger, whose job seems to consist of sifting through vapid, Botox-ed SoCal bimbos and matching them up with overly tanned, plastic, WASP-y millionaires, felt for some reason that the show was a great venue in which to unleash her inner anti-Semite and gay stereotyper. Bravo made the regrettable decision to allow Stanger to go beyond her skill set and take phone calls from viewers and then did a terrible job of screening the calls, which led to a caller asking Stanger how she felt about open long distance relationships and monogamy. Stanger replied, "In the Gay world, it will always be open." She asked the caller, a man named Dustin, if he was gay. He answered in the affirmative and Stanger replied, "There is no curbing the gay man." At that point, anyone with any self-awareness at all or an IQ above 42 would realize they were venturing into dangerous territory and pull the rip cord, but not Stanger. She turned to host Andy Cohen, who is openly gay, and said, "I have tried to curb 'you people.'" Wow……“you people.” Generalize much, P. And who exactly are you to “curb” anyone? Not content with her pre-existing bigotry contribution to the show, Stanger then told another caller, "First of all, you're very handsome, I thought you were straight." How she knew a caller was handsome is curious, but linking handsome and straight seemed to befuddle Cohen. He chimed in, "I don't know why being straight is a compliment." Once she was done bashing homosexuals, Stanger then went full-on anti-Semite by declaring, "Jewish men lie." Memo to you, P.: All men lie. All women lie. Everyone lies. No one tells the truth all the time, you tool. Her last bit of dating wisdom didn’t target a specific sexual orientation or race, but rather an entire city full of women. Stanger announced that New York women are "angry" and should be avoided by certain men. The Twitter world - clearly populated by people with nothing better to do than tweet in response to some pompous, self-aggrandizing reality show kook - lit up with anti-Stanger comments and some went so far as to ask for a boycott of Cohen’s show, Watch What Happens Live, which premiered after the show carrying Stanger’s moronic remarks. If only someone could have seen all of this coming from someone as brilliant and worthwhile in the world as Stanger…………
- Maybe the United States really is scaling back in waging unjustified, decade-long wars across the globe. The promises have been handed out like coupons for a free kids-sized ice cream cone on Halloween for as long as U.S. forces have been in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. Now, there are actual plans and dates on how those efforts will be dialed back. Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, the U.S. Army’s service's personnel chief, said in a recent interview that the Army will soon embark on a plan to cut 50,000 troops, or 8.6 percent of its soldiers, over five years. The cuts, scheduled to begin in March, will bring the Army's total force to 520,400 active-duty soldiers by October 2016, according to an Army Times report. Why now? “We feel that with the demand going down in Iraq and Afghanistan, and given the time to conduct a reasonable drawdown, we can manage (the force reduction) just as we have managed drawdowns in the past,” Bostick explained. The plan as laid out by Bostick is to conduct the reductions in two phases, with the first covering the 22,000 troops added three years ago to support the troop surge in Afghanistan. Another 27,000 troops that were added in the Grow the Army program, begun in 2007, will be cut in the second phase. Where will these displaced soldiers and officers go? The Army plans to achieve its target number through a number of options, including retirements, buyouts and voluntary and involuntary separations, Bostick said. Add war and unnecessarily propagating it to the expanding list of things America is no longer lapping the rest of the world in………….
- There is a fight in the world of science and it is pitting scientists against the publishers of Britain’s influential Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World. A news release magnanimously touted the release of the tome’s latest edition as “the Greatest Book on Earth.” Climate scientists do not seem to agree and one angry science dork fired off an e-mail to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. calling the book a “fiasco.” The atlas (whose name derives from The Times of London) is under attack for its depictions about the speed at which Greenland’s glaciers are melting. This scientist worried that a map in the atlas, along with news accounts repeating an error in the news release, could lead to another tidal wave of climate-change controversy. The release claimed that Greenland had lost 15 percent of its permanent ice cover from 1999 to 2011. That percentage represents 125,000 cubic miles, enough melted ice to raise sea levels three to five feet. Along with the figures in the release, the map in the atlas itself indicated that significant portions of Greenland’s coastline had become ice-free. Geologists were already on edge because of the drama over an exaggerated claim about the melting of Himalayan glaciers in a 2007 United Nations report. That report became the weapon of choice for global warming skeptics and made the battle to win over undecided individuals that much tougher. In light of the atlas’ release, angry climate change scientists have gone on a media tour speaking to any show, columnist or host who will talk to them and sounded the same message: Greenland has not lost 15 percent of its ice cover in recent years. The angry scientists pegged the number at one-tenth of 1 percent and made it abundantly clear that nobody at the atlas had consulted them. “It was a case where, really, the community came together really fast with both barrels blazing,” said Mark Serreze, director of the snow and ice center in Colorado. “Everyone had some real bad memories of this whole fiasco that had to do with Himalayan glaciers. No one wanted to see that again.” Oh no, not the glaciers error in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on Climate Change again. HarperCollins subsidiary Collins Geo, publisher of the Times atlas’s 13th edition, hasn’t exactly stood its ground against the criticism. The company apologized for the news release and says it is “urgently reviewing” the map of Greenland. Their backtracking comes after initially firing back at the scientists in a statement released on Sept. 15. “We are the best there is,” an unidentified Harper Collins spokeswoman said. “We are confident of the data we have used and of the cartography.” That stance changed after Theodore Scambos, a glaciologist at the center, reverse-engineered the error and theorized that a mapmaker at the atlas had mistaken a center’s map of the ice’s thickness for one showing its extent. Collins Geo has yet to explain exactly what did happen, but there is truly nothing like a quality climate change controversy to get science back into the spotlight……….
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Terminating the Dodgers, movie news and stoner haters
- Why, oh why are you so preoccupied with persecuting stoners, America? Most other civilized, forward-thinking nations around the world aren’t so close-minded about those whose existence is highlighted by bong rips, fatties, games of hackey-sack and lots of time spent with their best pal Chester Cheetah. Aside from only a select number of states allowing marijuana for even medical purposes, there is also the long list of ugly stereotypes levied against potheads. Go ahead and add some idiot in northern California thinking he or she is going to be really funny and post a sign further mocking stoners just for daring to take a toke off of their favorite product grown from Mother Earth. Whoever this clown is, they have posted a sign warning motorists to be aware of a very specific type of pedestrian near the American River access close to the Salmon Falls Bridge. From afar, the sign looks like a normal black-and-yellow crosswalk sign. A closer review shows a sign warning “Beware of stoner.” There are also alterations to several other crosswalk signs long Salmon Falls Road heading to Pilot Hill that show a bong silhouette added to the pedestrian’s hand. These imbecilic displays have been popping up over the past few months and the anti-stoner graffiti is well-done enough to escape notice for most motorist. Videos of the signs have been posted on YouTube and sadly, local officials say they have not received any complaints about the displays. No complaints? First, this is northern California and if no one is going to stick up for stoners there, who will? Secondly, do you need complaints to fix signs that have clearly been doctored to defame a certain group of people? And make no mistake about it, this is not some do-gooder looking out for the general well-being of stoners because we all know that no stoners are out going for long, arduous walks through the hill country. They’re either on their couch, in their bed or in a friend’s basement hitting the peace pipe and watching Beavis and Butthead episodes while they wait for their buddy to eject more Pop Tarts from the toaster and bring them down. Stop clowning stoners, whoever defaced these signs, because you’re the one who is worthy of derision……….
- Where the average person might see a two-way communication device designed to help stranded or otherwise troubled motorists, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) sees a sinister plot to invade the privacy of those same people. Schumer is in a rampage against the OnStar automobile communication service used by 6 million Americans because he believes the device’s setting to maintain its two-way connection with a customer even after the service is discontinued and reserving OnStar’s right to sell data from that connection is highly illegal. "OnStar is attempting one of the most brazen invasions of privacy in recent memory," Schumer fumed. "I urge OnStar to abandon it.” Schumer is also calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. In response to Sen. Schumer’s criticisms, OnStar stated that former customers can stop the two-way transmission, and that no driving data of customers has been shared or sold. The company also insisted that customers are thoroughly informed of the new practice. Thoroughly informed is a relative term, of course, and it probably is not a huge risk to assume that many OnStar customers are not aware that they have a chance to not have data collected after service is ended. Oh, and why would OnStar go to the effort to reserve the right to share or sell data on customers' speed, location, use of seat belts and other practices (and it does) if it had no plans to sell the data? Why bother collecting something with supposedly no value to you and which you do not plan to use? "We apologize for creating any confusion about our terms and conditions," said Joanne Finnor, vice president of subscriber services. "We want to make sure we are as clear with our customers as possible, but it's apparent that we have failed to do this. ... We will continue to be open to their suggestions and concerns." Suggestions? How about simply stopping the practice all together because it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose for the customer? Finnor attempted to make the case that keeping the two-communication active for former customers could someday allow for emergency messages to be sent even to ex-customers about severe weather or evacuations, but counting on a company to expend effort on things that don’t impact its bottom line in a positive way seems to be a massive stretch……….
- The Lion King (in 3D) was king of the box office once more as it ruled with a take of $22.1 million in its second weekend of three-dimensional release. In those two frames, the film has scored $61.7 million and rewarded Disney handsomely for its shameless cash grab. Four new films occupied the next four spots on the list, led by the baseball-centric Moneyball as Brad Pitt led the movie to $20.6 million and showed Sony that it made the right call in adapting the book of the same name to the big screen. The cheesy, corny and sappy Dolphin Tale opened in third place with $20.2 million and showed that people will see just about anything if it gives them a chance to hear Morgan Freeman use his golden pipes. Taylor Lautner proved not to be as much of a draw when not playing a hunky teen vampire and his new film Abduction stumbled to a fourth-place finish with $11.2 million in its first weekend. Sadly, a solid movie going by the name Killer Elite was fifth in its own debut thanks to $9.5 million in domestic earnings. That total portends disappointment for a movie with a $70 million budget, even if it does star Jason Statham and Robert DeNiro. There were no new films in the bottom half of the top 10, but there were the following entries: Contagion (No. 6 in its third week of release by virtue of an $8.6 million take and $57.1 million overall in domestic earnings), Drive (No. 7 thanks to $5.8 million for a two-week total of $21.4 million), former top earner The Help (No. 8 with $4.4 million and $154.4 million in cumulative earnings domestically), Straw Dogs (No. 9 after earning $2.1 million in its second weekend of release and with $8.9 million overall in those two weekends) and I Don't Know How She Does It (No. 10 and leaking oil severely in plummeting four spots in its second weekend with a mere $2 million and just $8 million overall). The bottom four films from last week’s top 10 all fell out this time around, with The Debt (No. 11), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (No. 13), Warrior (No. 14) and Colombiana (No. 15) unable to crack the list…………
- Sunday marked the end of a controversial era in one corner of Spain. The Catalonia region of northeast Spain already considers itself separate from the rest of the country and that division took on a new dimension last year when government officials decided to ban bullfighting, a popular sport across Spain for much of its tumultuous history. Many cities across the country have bullfighting rings and arenas, but those in Catalonia can now be converted for other uses. The ban goes into effect on Jan. 1 and was approved by lawmakers in Catalonia in July of last year. The ban was enacted due in large part to the efforts of animal rights group Iniciativa Legal Popular, which collected 180,000 signatures from people against the sport. Critics argue bullfighting is cruel to the animals and barbaric and those critics were able to generate enough public pressure to get the ban passed. The final bullfight in Catalonia took place Sunday and thousands of fans packed Barcelona's bullring to witness the spectacle before the ban on the centuries-old sport comes into force next year. A sold-out La Monumental, Barcelona's bullring, played host to the event and more than 20,000 spectators gathered inside to see the final fights by top matadors Juan Mora, Jose Tomas and Serafin Marin. Seeing his livelihood threatened, Marin has become an outspoken advocate for bullfighting and vowed to fight to keep the sport alive other parts of Spain and France. "I feel bad about it, sad. They take away all your past and part of your future," he said. "They stop you from exercising your profession and you have to emigrate elsewhere. You feel bad." It is truly a shame any time the world gives in to animal rights kooks, but bullfighting might be one habit the world can do without, or at least Catalonia………
- Even if the threat is total horse crap, the idea that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig would actually terminate one of his sport’s most iconic franchises if current deadbeat owner Frank McCourt doesn’t sell the team is hilarious. For more than a year, McCourt and ex-wife Jamie have been haggling over the terms of their divorce settlement and the Dodgers have been caught in the middle like a child in a bitter custody battle because Frank has attempted to make the case that he is sole owner of the franchise and Jamie has maintained that she has a right to part of the baseball pie. Offers for the team have come in and McCourt has rejected them while scurrying around furiously borrowing and bartering with team sponsors for money because he has been on the verge of missing payroll multiple times. He has also tried several end-around financing deals to see the Dodgers’ TV rights and those too have been truncated by MLB. At this point, a high-dollar and stable new television contract is the only thing that can save Frank McCourt and pull his troubled franchise from the grips of bankruptcy court. Selig badly wants an ownership change but has supposedly become so frustrated with the situation as is that he is allegedly threatening to terminate the Dodgers from the league if McCourt does not sell the team. The threat is great even if it is so absurd as to border on comical. Pulling the plug on a franchise with a cherished 128-year history and in the nation’s second-largest media market would be asinine and it could also frighten off potential investors who might have helped McCourt, including television networks. If the threat has the effect of cutting off McCourt’s last-ditch option for saving his ownership of the Dodgers, it could serve Selig’s intended purpose, but at what cost……….
- Where the average person might see a two-way communication device designed to help stranded or otherwise troubled motorists, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) sees a sinister plot to invade the privacy of those same people. Schumer is in a rampage against the OnStar automobile communication service used by 6 million Americans because he believes the device’s setting to maintain its two-way connection with a customer even after the service is discontinued and reserving OnStar’s right to sell data from that connection is highly illegal. "OnStar is attempting one of the most brazen invasions of privacy in recent memory," Schumer fumed. "I urge OnStar to abandon it.” Schumer is also calling on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate. In response to Sen. Schumer’s criticisms, OnStar stated that former customers can stop the two-way transmission, and that no driving data of customers has been shared or sold. The company also insisted that customers are thoroughly informed of the new practice. Thoroughly informed is a relative term, of course, and it probably is not a huge risk to assume that many OnStar customers are not aware that they have a chance to not have data collected after service is ended. Oh, and why would OnStar go to the effort to reserve the right to share or sell data on customers' speed, location, use of seat belts and other practices (and it does) if it had no plans to sell the data? Why bother collecting something with supposedly no value to you and which you do not plan to use? "We apologize for creating any confusion about our terms and conditions," said Joanne Finnor, vice president of subscriber services. "We want to make sure we are as clear with our customers as possible, but it's apparent that we have failed to do this. ... We will continue to be open to their suggestions and concerns." Suggestions? How about simply stopping the practice all together because it doesn’t seem to serve any purpose for the customer? Finnor attempted to make the case that keeping the two-communication active for former customers could someday allow for emergency messages to be sent even to ex-customers about severe weather or evacuations, but counting on a company to expend effort on things that don’t impact its bottom line in a positive way seems to be a massive stretch……….
- The Lion King (in 3D) was king of the box office once more as it ruled with a take of $22.1 million in its second weekend of three-dimensional release. In those two frames, the film has scored $61.7 million and rewarded Disney handsomely for its shameless cash grab. Four new films occupied the next four spots on the list, led by the baseball-centric Moneyball as Brad Pitt led the movie to $20.6 million and showed Sony that it made the right call in adapting the book of the same name to the big screen. The cheesy, corny and sappy Dolphin Tale opened in third place with $20.2 million and showed that people will see just about anything if it gives them a chance to hear Morgan Freeman use his golden pipes. Taylor Lautner proved not to be as much of a draw when not playing a hunky teen vampire and his new film Abduction stumbled to a fourth-place finish with $11.2 million in its first weekend. Sadly, a solid movie going by the name Killer Elite was fifth in its own debut thanks to $9.5 million in domestic earnings. That total portends disappointment for a movie with a $70 million budget, even if it does star Jason Statham and Robert DeNiro. There were no new films in the bottom half of the top 10, but there were the following entries: Contagion (No. 6 in its third week of release by virtue of an $8.6 million take and $57.1 million overall in domestic earnings), Drive (No. 7 thanks to $5.8 million for a two-week total of $21.4 million), former top earner The Help (No. 8 with $4.4 million and $154.4 million in cumulative earnings domestically), Straw Dogs (No. 9 after earning $2.1 million in its second weekend of release and with $8.9 million overall in those two weekends) and I Don't Know How She Does It (No. 10 and leaking oil severely in plummeting four spots in its second weekend with a mere $2 million and just $8 million overall). The bottom four films from last week’s top 10 all fell out this time around, with The Debt (No. 11), Rise of the Planet of the Apes (No. 13), Warrior (No. 14) and Colombiana (No. 15) unable to crack the list…………
- Sunday marked the end of a controversial era in one corner of Spain. The Catalonia region of northeast Spain already considers itself separate from the rest of the country and that division took on a new dimension last year when government officials decided to ban bullfighting, a popular sport across Spain for much of its tumultuous history. Many cities across the country have bullfighting rings and arenas, but those in Catalonia can now be converted for other uses. The ban goes into effect on Jan. 1 and was approved by lawmakers in Catalonia in July of last year. The ban was enacted due in large part to the efforts of animal rights group Iniciativa Legal Popular, which collected 180,000 signatures from people against the sport. Critics argue bullfighting is cruel to the animals and barbaric and those critics were able to generate enough public pressure to get the ban passed. The final bullfight in Catalonia took place Sunday and thousands of fans packed Barcelona's bullring to witness the spectacle before the ban on the centuries-old sport comes into force next year. A sold-out La Monumental, Barcelona's bullring, played host to the event and more than 20,000 spectators gathered inside to see the final fights by top matadors Juan Mora, Jose Tomas and Serafin Marin. Seeing his livelihood threatened, Marin has become an outspoken advocate for bullfighting and vowed to fight to keep the sport alive other parts of Spain and France. "I feel bad about it, sad. They take away all your past and part of your future," he said. "They stop you from exercising your profession and you have to emigrate elsewhere. You feel bad." It is truly a shame any time the world gives in to animal rights kooks, but bullfighting might be one habit the world can do without, or at least Catalonia………
- Even if the threat is total horse crap, the idea that Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig would actually terminate one of his sport’s most iconic franchises if current deadbeat owner Frank McCourt doesn’t sell the team is hilarious. For more than a year, McCourt and ex-wife Jamie have been haggling over the terms of their divorce settlement and the Dodgers have been caught in the middle like a child in a bitter custody battle because Frank has attempted to make the case that he is sole owner of the franchise and Jamie has maintained that she has a right to part of the baseball pie. Offers for the team have come in and McCourt has rejected them while scurrying around furiously borrowing and bartering with team sponsors for money because he has been on the verge of missing payroll multiple times. He has also tried several end-around financing deals to see the Dodgers’ TV rights and those too have been truncated by MLB. At this point, a high-dollar and stable new television contract is the only thing that can save Frank McCourt and pull his troubled franchise from the grips of bankruptcy court. Selig badly wants an ownership change but has supposedly become so frustrated with the situation as is that he is allegedly threatening to terminate the Dodgers from the league if McCourt does not sell the team. The threat is great even if it is so absurd as to border on comical. Pulling the plug on a franchise with a cherished 128-year history and in the nation’s second-largest media market would be asinine and it could also frighten off potential investors who might have helped McCourt, including television networks. If the threat has the effect of cutting off McCourt’s last-ditch option for saving his ownership of the Dodgers, it could serve Selig’s intended purpose, but at what cost……….
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Lost tortoises, annoying celebrities and delusional $18 million-a-year baseball players
- Which celebrities annoy the heck out of the average American - at least the average American with the time and inclination to respond to a Parade Magazine poll on which celebrity annoys them the most? Before answering the question, it’s important to establish what constitutes a celebrity. The person need not have actual talent, nor must they have contributed anything of worth to the world. They do not need to be intelligent and the world need not miss them if they moved to an empty desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean for the rest of their natural life. Having established those parameters, the possible answers for the question are both numerous and easy to surmise. At the top of the list is someone who has contributed nothing to the world, doesn’t seem to be very intelligent and has yet to showcase any worthwhile talents other than being über-hot: reality TV airhead Kim Kardashian. The newly minted Mrs. Kris Humphries received 29 percent of the votes in Parade’s poll, barely edging out suddenly reformed nutcase Charlie Sheen, who finished second with 27 percent of the poll. They were followed up by easily the least-talented, most world-draining entry on the list, Jersey Shore resident Oompa-Loompa Nicole “Snooki” Pollizi. Pollizi garnered 21 percent of the votes and that was enough to fend off someone who could be the second most-talented choice on the list behind Sheen, troubled actress/coke addict/alcoholic/frequent rehab resident Lindsay Lohan, with 16 percent. After those four, there was a sizeable drop-off in the amount of votes received, all the way down to 5 percent by blowhard/megalomaniac/Rosie O’Donnell verbal excoriate-er Donald Trump. Voters clearly haven’t watched the clip of Trump verbally pummeling O’Donnell (here) enough times because if they had, he would not have received a single vote. Last on the list, with a scant 1 percent, was former Bachelor tool Brad Womack. Womack may have received more votes if only he were known by more than a 1/100th of America’s population. Taken in its totality, the list seems to indicate one fact above all others: Reality TV peeves a lot of Americans. And yet they continue to tune in…………
- While we all realize that NASA’s budget has been slashed by the federal government and the agency is no longer in the business of shooting people into outer space, is it too much to ask that NASA’s nerds keep track of the space junk they have created? Sure, a recent NASA-sponsored report from the National Research Council found that the space agency needs a better plan for dealing with this space junk, but the problem appears more urgent than originally communicated. See, NASA scientists are still not sure exactly where pieces of a huge, defunct satellite landed after re-entering Earth's atmosphere this morning and these same brilliant minds acknowledged that "we may never know" the whereabouts of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). While early evidence suggests that the debris landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, recovering the satellite’s remains could be virtually impossible. NASA chief orbital debris scientist Nicholas Johnson spoke about the issue during a conference call with media members Saturday afternoon and explained that data from the Department of Defense's Joint Space Operations Center (JSOC) indicate that UARS fell to the Earth sometime between 11:23pm Eastern Friday night and 1:09am Saturday morning. In that window, the satellite passed over Canada, the African continent, and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. The most likely point for its fall, according to the JSOC’s calculations, is off the West Coast of the U.S. "There were several folks along the western coast of North America, the U.S. Northwest, and Canadian Southwest who were looking to observe UARS as it came over," Johnson said. "Every one of those attempts came up negative, [so] that would suggest that re-entry did happen before it reached the North American coast [and] that most of this debris fell into the Pacific Ocean." Suggest? Shouldn't you be more sure than "suggest" would indicate? Even if the data is consistent with predictions made by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) - and it is - that doesn't mean Americans should feel good about NASA's capability (or lack thereof) to track its own space junk. "We're now waiting to see if we can verify that," Johnson said. "If it came down over one of the oceans, of course, that's going to be problematic." Sounds great, Nicky. The only way NASA even knew UARS was no longer in space was by sending out sensors to locate it and receiving no response. Once it enters Earth's atmosphere……all bets are off. "Most of the time, we do rely heavily on people on the ground," Johnson said. "UARS, whether it came in during local day or night, would've been clearly visible, so if we continue to have a lack of reports, particularly in Canada or Africa … that would typically give further credence to the fact that it's probably over the water." That the UARS came crashing back to Earth was probably overdue, as the satellite was launched in 1991 by the Space Shuttle Discovery. It fulfilled its mission to measure ozone and chemical compounds found in the ozone layer, as well as winds and temperatures in the stratosphere and the energy input from the sun. It was officially decommissioned on December 14, 2005 and has since been drifting aimlessly through space ever since. Now, it’s final resting place may never be known…………
- In most ways, it has always been as if Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin never left as the country’s president/dictator in disguise. Putin, who supposedly transformed post-Soviet Russia but really found clever ways to keep the old communist ways alive and well, continually created new and repressive ways to impose even more state control on the daily lives of Russians. Even when he “left” office and became prime minister, few doubted his heavy influence on all that supposed President Dmitri A. Medvedev did or said. Thus, it came as no surprise that Medvedev announced at a party convention in Moscow that he would step aside for Putin to return to power. Worse yet for Russians, Putin could remain as president until 2024. His first stint from 2000-08 was not a great time for Russia and its forced end by term limits in the country’s constitution didn’t exactly cause most Russians so shed tears of sorrow. When Putin wins March’s presidential election (and he will), Medvedev is to take his place as prime minister. For evidence of this reality, look no further than the massive tsunami of applause that swept over the hall where 11,000 members of Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, gathered to hear Medvedev’s speech. Putin was sitting in the audience during the speech and looked on with a certain smug self-assurance, as in, “I freaking ruled this place with an iron fist for eight years and grabbed control of every single Russian’s daily life, never really gave it up and now I’m BACK, baby!” Pundits have been asking for years if Putin would ever relinquish his grip on power and the answer is clearly no, as in never. Medvedev’s presidency will have the legacy of being an orchestrated falsity designed solely to fill the mandatory gap between Putin’s official turns in power. Putin himself has admitted that the two men crafted their plan long ago “I want to say directly: An agreement over what to do in the future was reached between us several years ago,” Putin said. “What we are recommending to the convention, it is a deeply thought-out decision,” Medvedev added. “Moreover, we really discussed this possible turn of events at the time when we formed our comradely union.” That “comradely union” (see, communism IS alive and well in Russia) could well drive a massive wedge between Russia and the United States, as Medvedev had developed something of a positive rapport with President Barack Obama. There is some dissatisfaction with Putin and his leadership within Russia, but there is also little evidence that this unhappiness will show up in March’s vote. Sadly, the political and judicial reforms Medvedev has called for now look like nothing more than an elaborate ruse designed to tease Russians into expecting real change. The rest of the world can only grimace and brace for impact of the Putin-ator’s return……….
- Typically, anyone making $18 million a year on a terrible team while posting subpar statistics would keep their mouth shut, try to ignore the fact that they need to rock a ski mask and gun when they pick up their paycheck every two weeks and not make trouble. Chicago Cubs leftfielder Alfonso Soriano is not willing to go so quietly into this good night and even though his team is 70-88, 27 1/2 games out of first place and in fifth place in the National League Central, Soriano is doing his damndest to make it all about him. That would appear to be a bad idea for a player hitting .244 with just 85 RBI, but don’t tell Soriano that. He is angry about the way the club treated him this year by batting him mostly in the seventh spot in the lineup. "I'm not a guy that fights with people," Soriano whined. "The way they treat me this year, I don't like it. The way they have me hit in the No. 7, 5 and 6 spots, I have trouble concentrating on the job hitting in those different spots. But [Mike] Quade is the manager and does his best to try to make the team better." Way to throw in that your manager is in fact the manager and “tries to make the team better.” Prior to Saturday’s game against St. Louis (another loss for the Cubs), Soriano had 203 at-bats in the seventh spot -- the most for any spot in the order. Oddly enough, he is batting .258 with 13 home runs and 40 RBIs in the position, better than his numbers in the sixth spot (.233, 9 HR, 26 RBI) or the fifth spot (.224, 3 HR, 17 RBI). When asked why he didn’t speak with Quade earlier in the season about his dissatisfaction with his spot in the lineup, Soriano said: "I don't think I should go to his office because I'm not like that. That's not me. He puts me in the seventh spot, and he thinks we can win like that then I'm OK with that.” Oh, okay……so you’re “not like that” in terms of talking directly with someone with whose decisions you have a problem, but you are the sort of person who blasts that same someone in the media. Makes good sense, no doubt. Unfortunately for both the Cubs and Soriano is that he signed an eight-year, $136 million contract with the team in 2006. No one is trading for a player with his salary and lackluster statistics and unless they want to cut him and still pay the remainder of the money owed to NOT play for the team, there is no good solution…………
- Can the animal lovers at the In Harmony With Nature animal haven in Orlando really be expected to fend for the health, well-being and survival of our feathered, furry, scaly and slimy friends if they can't even keep track of the ones in their custody? It seems like a pertinent question to ask now that the preserve’s employees are now scouring the greater Orlando area for a 50-pound Sulcata Tortoise that escaped from the facility last week. The massive tortoise is a 13-year-old female named Terp that needs special care from the staff at In Harmony With Nature, the organization said. Tips from the public have placed Terp at several locations around Orlando, but like any eyewitness testimony these accounts have proven good for next to nothing. The Sulcata Tortoise is native to northern parts of Africa and isn't likely to fare well on its own in a town teeming with tourists whose primary focus is paying $200 (approximate) for admission to Disney World to have their picture taken with a person in a giant mouse costume and ride the Tower of Terror. Most of the Terp spottings have been centered in the Forest Trails neighborhood off Clarcona-Ocoee Road. In Harmony With Nature sent out a search team after the report came in, but staffers arrived too late to catch Terp. Another sighting was reported Saturday afternoon by two people who claimed they saw a man struggling to get a large tortoise into the back of a white cargo van. There have been no other sightings, so perhaps these helpful citizens were telling the truth. In case they are mistaken, In Harmony With Nature is updating the public on the search and fliers have been posted around the city just in case people spot a 50-pound Sulcata Tortoise and don’t think to call animal control. In Harmony With Nature is offering a reward for Terp’s safe return and asking anyone with information on the tortoise’s whereabouts to call immediately…………
- While we all realize that NASA’s budget has been slashed by the federal government and the agency is no longer in the business of shooting people into outer space, is it too much to ask that NASA’s nerds keep track of the space junk they have created? Sure, a recent NASA-sponsored report from the National Research Council found that the space agency needs a better plan for dealing with this space junk, but the problem appears more urgent than originally communicated. See, NASA scientists are still not sure exactly where pieces of a huge, defunct satellite landed after re-entering Earth's atmosphere this morning and these same brilliant minds acknowledged that "we may never know" the whereabouts of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). While early evidence suggests that the debris landed somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, recovering the satellite’s remains could be virtually impossible. NASA chief orbital debris scientist Nicholas Johnson spoke about the issue during a conference call with media members Saturday afternoon and explained that data from the Department of Defense's Joint Space Operations Center (JSOC) indicate that UARS fell to the Earth sometime between 11:23pm Eastern Friday night and 1:09am Saturday morning. In that window, the satellite passed over Canada, the African continent, and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans. The most likely point for its fall, according to the JSOC’s calculations, is off the West Coast of the U.S. "There were several folks along the western coast of North America, the U.S. Northwest, and Canadian Southwest who were looking to observe UARS as it came over," Johnson said. "Every one of those attempts came up negative, [so] that would suggest that re-entry did happen before it reached the North American coast [and] that most of this debris fell into the Pacific Ocean." Suggest? Shouldn't you be more sure than "suggest" would indicate? Even if the data is consistent with predictions made by the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee (IADC) - and it is - that doesn't mean Americans should feel good about NASA's capability (or lack thereof) to track its own space junk. "We're now waiting to see if we can verify that," Johnson said. "If it came down over one of the oceans, of course, that's going to be problematic." Sounds great, Nicky. The only way NASA even knew UARS was no longer in space was by sending out sensors to locate it and receiving no response. Once it enters Earth's atmosphere……all bets are off. "Most of the time, we do rely heavily on people on the ground," Johnson said. "UARS, whether it came in during local day or night, would've been clearly visible, so if we continue to have a lack of reports, particularly in Canada or Africa … that would typically give further credence to the fact that it's probably over the water." That the UARS came crashing back to Earth was probably overdue, as the satellite was launched in 1991 by the Space Shuttle Discovery. It fulfilled its mission to measure ozone and chemical compounds found in the ozone layer, as well as winds and temperatures in the stratosphere and the energy input from the sun. It was officially decommissioned on December 14, 2005 and has since been drifting aimlessly through space ever since. Now, it’s final resting place may never be known…………
- In most ways, it has always been as if Russian Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin never left as the country’s president/dictator in disguise. Putin, who supposedly transformed post-Soviet Russia but really found clever ways to keep the old communist ways alive and well, continually created new and repressive ways to impose even more state control on the daily lives of Russians. Even when he “left” office and became prime minister, few doubted his heavy influence on all that supposed President Dmitri A. Medvedev did or said. Thus, it came as no surprise that Medvedev announced at a party convention in Moscow that he would step aside for Putin to return to power. Worse yet for Russians, Putin could remain as president until 2024. His first stint from 2000-08 was not a great time for Russia and its forced end by term limits in the country’s constitution didn’t exactly cause most Russians so shed tears of sorrow. When Putin wins March’s presidential election (and he will), Medvedev is to take his place as prime minister. For evidence of this reality, look no further than the massive tsunami of applause that swept over the hall where 11,000 members of Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia, gathered to hear Medvedev’s speech. Putin was sitting in the audience during the speech and looked on with a certain smug self-assurance, as in, “I freaking ruled this place with an iron fist for eight years and grabbed control of every single Russian’s daily life, never really gave it up and now I’m BACK, baby!” Pundits have been asking for years if Putin would ever relinquish his grip on power and the answer is clearly no, as in never. Medvedev’s presidency will have the legacy of being an orchestrated falsity designed solely to fill the mandatory gap between Putin’s official turns in power. Putin himself has admitted that the two men crafted their plan long ago “I want to say directly: An agreement over what to do in the future was reached between us several years ago,” Putin said. “What we are recommending to the convention, it is a deeply thought-out decision,” Medvedev added. “Moreover, we really discussed this possible turn of events at the time when we formed our comradely union.” That “comradely union” (see, communism IS alive and well in Russia) could well drive a massive wedge between Russia and the United States, as Medvedev had developed something of a positive rapport with President Barack Obama. There is some dissatisfaction with Putin and his leadership within Russia, but there is also little evidence that this unhappiness will show up in March’s vote. Sadly, the political and judicial reforms Medvedev has called for now look like nothing more than an elaborate ruse designed to tease Russians into expecting real change. The rest of the world can only grimace and brace for impact of the Putin-ator’s return……….
- Typically, anyone making $18 million a year on a terrible team while posting subpar statistics would keep their mouth shut, try to ignore the fact that they need to rock a ski mask and gun when they pick up their paycheck every two weeks and not make trouble. Chicago Cubs leftfielder Alfonso Soriano is not willing to go so quietly into this good night and even though his team is 70-88, 27 1/2 games out of first place and in fifth place in the National League Central, Soriano is doing his damndest to make it all about him. That would appear to be a bad idea for a player hitting .244 with just 85 RBI, but don’t tell Soriano that. He is angry about the way the club treated him this year by batting him mostly in the seventh spot in the lineup. "I'm not a guy that fights with people," Soriano whined. "The way they treat me this year, I don't like it. The way they have me hit in the No. 7, 5 and 6 spots, I have trouble concentrating on the job hitting in those different spots. But [Mike] Quade is the manager and does his best to try to make the team better." Way to throw in that your manager is in fact the manager and “tries to make the team better.” Prior to Saturday’s game against St. Louis (another loss for the Cubs), Soriano had 203 at-bats in the seventh spot -- the most for any spot in the order. Oddly enough, he is batting .258 with 13 home runs and 40 RBIs in the position, better than his numbers in the sixth spot (.233, 9 HR, 26 RBI) or the fifth spot (.224, 3 HR, 17 RBI). When asked why he didn’t speak with Quade earlier in the season about his dissatisfaction with his spot in the lineup, Soriano said: "I don't think I should go to his office because I'm not like that. That's not me. He puts me in the seventh spot, and he thinks we can win like that then I'm OK with that.” Oh, okay……so you’re “not like that” in terms of talking directly with someone with whose decisions you have a problem, but you are the sort of person who blasts that same someone in the media. Makes good sense, no doubt. Unfortunately for both the Cubs and Soriano is that he signed an eight-year, $136 million contract with the team in 2006. No one is trading for a player with his salary and lackluster statistics and unless they want to cut him and still pay the remainder of the money owed to NOT play for the team, there is no good solution…………
- Can the animal lovers at the In Harmony With Nature animal haven in Orlando really be expected to fend for the health, well-being and survival of our feathered, furry, scaly and slimy friends if they can't even keep track of the ones in their custody? It seems like a pertinent question to ask now that the preserve’s employees are now scouring the greater Orlando area for a 50-pound Sulcata Tortoise that escaped from the facility last week. The massive tortoise is a 13-year-old female named Terp that needs special care from the staff at In Harmony With Nature, the organization said. Tips from the public have placed Terp at several locations around Orlando, but like any eyewitness testimony these accounts have proven good for next to nothing. The Sulcata Tortoise is native to northern parts of Africa and isn't likely to fare well on its own in a town teeming with tourists whose primary focus is paying $200 (approximate) for admission to Disney World to have their picture taken with a person in a giant mouse costume and ride the Tower of Terror. Most of the Terp spottings have been centered in the Forest Trails neighborhood off Clarcona-Ocoee Road. In Harmony With Nature sent out a search team after the report came in, but staffers arrived too late to catch Terp. Another sighting was reported Saturday afternoon by two people who claimed they saw a man struggling to get a large tortoise into the back of a white cargo van. There have been no other sightings, so perhaps these helpful citizens were telling the truth. In case they are mistaken, In Harmony With Nature is updating the public on the search and fliers have been posted around the city just in case people spot a 50-pound Sulcata Tortoise and don’t think to call animal control. In Harmony With Nature is offering a reward for Terp’s safe return and asking anyone with information on the tortoise’s whereabouts to call immediately…………
Friday, September 23, 2011
Mind-reading computers, thong-wearing wannabe karaoke-ers and free beer with your new home
- Brigham Young University is a different place. That principle was clearly illustrated last year when the school suspended star basketball player Brandon Davies for the NCAA tournament after discovering he violated its honor code by having premarital sex, rather than let him slide in order to have a better shot at a Final Four run. It is being further illustrated this semester with the unique approach campus police are taking in enforcing school rules. Some of the rules center on students getting around campus on their bikes and the possible hazards that a 250-pound sophomore frat dude barreling down a sidewalk on his Huffy might create. All of the rules are posted on the BYU Police Department’s website and among them is a rule stipulating that students must never ride on a sidewalk during class breaks on BYU campus, ride double or more than two abreast and attach bikes to trees, handrails or other fixtures. There will undoubtedly be violators and typical law enforcement practices - even for fake, university police - focus on disciplining those scofflaws. But this semester, campus police are trying the polar opposite approach. Instead of hammering rule breakers, they are rewarding those who follow the law. “We’ve tried a couple approaches, ” said BYU Police Lt. Arnold Lemmon. “We try to warn them the first time in some cases. Once they’ve been warned, if we catch them again, we’ll give them a university citation. Now, when we see someone walking their bike during class change, we’d like to reward that if we can. We said, ‘Here, thanks. Thanks for obeying the rule.’” Governing with kindness……hmm. A common reward might be a coupon for a free ice cream scoop at the campus creamery (this is BYU, Mormon-based education and all, so no free booze or anything wild). Does this actually work? At a place like BYU, maybe. Anywhere else on a more typical college campus? Umm……….
- Faster, higher, stronger…..and more corrupt. The last of those four may not be part of the official Olympic motto, but it should be. The International Olympic Committee has long been one of the most corrupt sports governing bodies around and no one will ever confuse either the Summer or Winter Olympics with a morally upstanding entity. As such, it should stun no one that reports of secret payments of millions of dollars from Azerbaijan to the international boxing organization World Series Boxing in exchange for a guarantee that Azerbaijani fighters would win two boxing gold medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. An Olympic official even admitted that an Azeri national paid $9 million to the International Amateur Boxing Association AIBA, but denied any deal to fix matches. AIBA President Dr Ching-Kuo Wu says the claims are "totally untrue and ludicrous,” adding that "WSB is conducted in a totally transparent way." Furthermore, Wu stated the AIBA had a zero tolerance policy on corruption and that he would conduct an immediate investigation into the allegations. Unfortunately, the IOC would probably tell the same story about having a zero-tolerance policy on corruption and the committee has a legendary reputation for accepting bribes ranging from food and hookers to fitness equipment. For the record, the AIBA is the international governing body for the sport of boxing recognized by the IOC and WSB is one of its initiatives. The corruption allegations center on WSB chief opearting officer Ivan Khodabakhsh. The organization had reportedly run low on funding and needed cash and sources claimed hodabakhsh told them that a secret deal had been done to secure funding from Azerbaijan in return for manipulation of the Olympic boxing tournament to guarantee gold medals for Azerbaijani fighters. "Ivan boasted to a few of us that there was no need to worry about World Series Boxing having the coin to pay its bills. As long as the Azeris got their medals, WSB would have the cash," one source alleged. Another said Khodabakhsh told staffers, "We are safe now - Azerbaijan came in - we have to give them medals for that." Millions of dollars changing hands, Olympic medals being sold……sounds like business as usual. Yes, Khodabakhsh denied the allegations and called them " an absolute lie,” but would anyone really be stunned if he was the one lying? There are records involving anonymous donors and bank activity to be sorted through, but an investigation is definitely in order. Then again, if every possible instance of Olympics-related corruption were investigated, there would be no time or money to put on the actual Olympics……….
- Agreeing with the kooks of the Parents Television Council is always a terrible option. No matter the situation, siding with these squares and their quest to return America to the same conservative values and entertainment options it sported back in 1940 is not desirable. However, where does one stand when the PTC is attacking one of the biggest debacles on television and something the world would be better off without? Such is the plight thanks to a tool named Geo Godley, who recently appeared on Simon Cowell’s latest aborton of a reality TV show, “The X-Factor.” Godley, whose personal dignity and self-respect were clearly gone long before he decided to audition for this travesty of television, showed up for his audition and in seeking to set himself apart from the other would-be karaoke-ers, he decided to pull down his pants and reveal a far-too-smell G-string that permanently scarred the retinas of anyone pathetic enough to be watching “The X-Factor.” The display was immediately decried by the PTC, which wrongly claimed Godley was nude. In his defense, Godley claimed his outfit was nothing worse than what you see at the beach and that his performance was inspired by his Greek cultural heritage. "We always dance in g-strings," this idiot said. "G-Strings are legal. The PTC have no complaint to make." Oh no, they have a complaint and so do the rest of us. You in a G-string is not the same as a hot girl at the beach rocking one and there is (and always will be) an infinitely small percentage of ladies hot enough to pull off the look. Keep your pants on, try to out-karaoke all of the other hacks who are auditioning. Fittingly, Godley took a spill after dropping trou and admitted afterward that his display was over the top. "I apologize to anyone that was exposed to my behind ... I had no intention of showing it and it was an accident when I fell. I was caught up in the moment," he explained. Whatever you say, kook. You’ve put me in the awkward position of having to agree with the Parents Television Council on an issue and for that, you deserve plenty of condemnation………
- Canadians love to drink. Some would argue that residents of the place derisively called “America’s Hat” by angry Americans have little else to do between ice fishing and curling sessions but drink lots of beer and eat round bacon. So trying to ply would-be homebuyers with alcohol may not be the worst idea, but is it enough of a draw to win over home buyers who haven’t quite made up their mind on their big purchase? Realtor Robyn Moser of MaxWell South Star Realty is hoping so because she is attempting to sell two homes in the Calgary neighborhoods of Hidden Valley and Coventry Hills and will throw in a special incentive for the individuals or families who buy one of the homes: beer, and lots of it. “The homeowners are offering any purchaser who is willing to purchase a home $1,000 in beer on possession day as part of the offering price of a home,” Moser said. “It’s most likely going to have to be (left) either in the garage or depending on the temperature in the house.” Or in the frigid back yard because the temperature in Calgary never gets above freezing, right? Just kidding, Canada. Moser came up with the free beer concept after reading a story about a realtor in Chicago who was trying the same gimmick and increases his property showings by 300 percent. “And with those two listings in particular I knew that the clients were very receptive to trying out new ideas,” she said. “And I felt I would pass along the information of what they tried down in Chicago and how successful it was down there. Plus at the same time, like we all discussed, there’s nothing more Canadian than beer.” True is true, R. For those interested in spending nearly half a million dollars on a home and getting about 0.2 percent of that amount back in free beer, the two-story, 1,800-square-foot home in Hidden Valley is listed at $424,900. “Buy this home and on possession day the seller will leave you $1,000 in beer,” the property listing reads. Those seeking a cheaper option can purchase the two-story, 1,335-square-foot home in Coventry Hills for a mere $349,900. Moser was quick to stress that the free beer is a homeowner incentive because realtors aren't allowed to make such offers. Obviously, the beer’s role in the process is more luring in potential buyers and setting up the realtor’s pitch than actually selling the home itself because even in Canada, no one loves beer enough just to overpay for a home to get $1,000 worth for free…………
- Is reading human minds the next big step for computers? Because not everyone has the special set of ESP skills Mel Gibson possesses to let him know what women want, science has to step in and the smart hippies at the University of California-Berkeley may have achieved a colossal breakthrough. A team led by Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist, and Shinji Nishimoto, a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant's lab, have used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models to watch clips of movies inside the minds of people who just viewed them and "read the mind" by deciphering and rebuilding the human visual experience. Previous studies had laid the groundwork by recording activity in the visual cortex (which processes visual information in the brain) while participants viewed black-and-white photos and using a computer model to predict what the participant was looking at. Working off those findings, Gallant and his team were able to decode brain signals created by viewing moving pictures. Nishimoto and two other team members were placed inside an MRI scanner while they viewed two sets of movie trailers. During the first set, the fMRI measured blood flow through the visual cortex and this information was directed to a computer that portrayed the brain as tiny three-dimensional cubes called "voxels," or volumetric pixels. Each voxel was linked to a model showing in detail how motion and shapes in the movie are translated into brain activity. A computer program learned ho to relate the resulting visual patterns in the trailers with corresponding brain activity. The second set of clips presented the computer's algorithm with 18 million seconds of YouTube clips and testing its ability to predict the brain activity that each clip would induce. Researchers reconstructed the original trailer by merging brain scans that were most similar to the YouTube clips. Although the end result was not perfectly clear, it is still a major step toward understanding and rebuilding how humans see and process images. Gallant and his team hope this will lead to technology that can decipher what is happening in the minds of those who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims or coma patients or allow for the creation of an interface that allows people with certain disabilities to use their minds to control machines…………
- Faster, higher, stronger…..and more corrupt. The last of those four may not be part of the official Olympic motto, but it should be. The International Olympic Committee has long been one of the most corrupt sports governing bodies around and no one will ever confuse either the Summer or Winter Olympics with a morally upstanding entity. As such, it should stun no one that reports of secret payments of millions of dollars from Azerbaijan to the international boxing organization World Series Boxing in exchange for a guarantee that Azerbaijani fighters would win two boxing gold medals at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. An Olympic official even admitted that an Azeri national paid $9 million to the International Amateur Boxing Association AIBA, but denied any deal to fix matches. AIBA President Dr Ching-Kuo Wu says the claims are "totally untrue and ludicrous,” adding that "WSB is conducted in a totally transparent way." Furthermore, Wu stated the AIBA had a zero tolerance policy on corruption and that he would conduct an immediate investigation into the allegations. Unfortunately, the IOC would probably tell the same story about having a zero-tolerance policy on corruption and the committee has a legendary reputation for accepting bribes ranging from food and hookers to fitness equipment. For the record, the AIBA is the international governing body for the sport of boxing recognized by the IOC and WSB is one of its initiatives. The corruption allegations center on WSB chief opearting officer Ivan Khodabakhsh. The organization had reportedly run low on funding and needed cash and sources claimed hodabakhsh told them that a secret deal had been done to secure funding from Azerbaijan in return for manipulation of the Olympic boxing tournament to guarantee gold medals for Azerbaijani fighters. "Ivan boasted to a few of us that there was no need to worry about World Series Boxing having the coin to pay its bills. As long as the Azeris got their medals, WSB would have the cash," one source alleged. Another said Khodabakhsh told staffers, "We are safe now - Azerbaijan came in - we have to give them medals for that." Millions of dollars changing hands, Olympic medals being sold……sounds like business as usual. Yes, Khodabakhsh denied the allegations and called them " an absolute lie,” but would anyone really be stunned if he was the one lying? There are records involving anonymous donors and bank activity to be sorted through, but an investigation is definitely in order. Then again, if every possible instance of Olympics-related corruption were investigated, there would be no time or money to put on the actual Olympics……….
- Agreeing with the kooks of the Parents Television Council is always a terrible option. No matter the situation, siding with these squares and their quest to return America to the same conservative values and entertainment options it sported back in 1940 is not desirable. However, where does one stand when the PTC is attacking one of the biggest debacles on television and something the world would be better off without? Such is the plight thanks to a tool named Geo Godley, who recently appeared on Simon Cowell’s latest aborton of a reality TV show, “The X-Factor.” Godley, whose personal dignity and self-respect were clearly gone long before he decided to audition for this travesty of television, showed up for his audition and in seeking to set himself apart from the other would-be karaoke-ers, he decided to pull down his pants and reveal a far-too-smell G-string that permanently scarred the retinas of anyone pathetic enough to be watching “The X-Factor.” The display was immediately decried by the PTC, which wrongly claimed Godley was nude. In his defense, Godley claimed his outfit was nothing worse than what you see at the beach and that his performance was inspired by his Greek cultural heritage. "We always dance in g-strings," this idiot said. "G-Strings are legal. The PTC have no complaint to make." Oh no, they have a complaint and so do the rest of us. You in a G-string is not the same as a hot girl at the beach rocking one and there is (and always will be) an infinitely small percentage of ladies hot enough to pull off the look. Keep your pants on, try to out-karaoke all of the other hacks who are auditioning. Fittingly, Godley took a spill after dropping trou and admitted afterward that his display was over the top. "I apologize to anyone that was exposed to my behind ... I had no intention of showing it and it was an accident when I fell. I was caught up in the moment," he explained. Whatever you say, kook. You’ve put me in the awkward position of having to agree with the Parents Television Council on an issue and for that, you deserve plenty of condemnation………
- Canadians love to drink. Some would argue that residents of the place derisively called “America’s Hat” by angry Americans have little else to do between ice fishing and curling sessions but drink lots of beer and eat round bacon. So trying to ply would-be homebuyers with alcohol may not be the worst idea, but is it enough of a draw to win over home buyers who haven’t quite made up their mind on their big purchase? Realtor Robyn Moser of MaxWell South Star Realty is hoping so because she is attempting to sell two homes in the Calgary neighborhoods of Hidden Valley and Coventry Hills and will throw in a special incentive for the individuals or families who buy one of the homes: beer, and lots of it. “The homeowners are offering any purchaser who is willing to purchase a home $1,000 in beer on possession day as part of the offering price of a home,” Moser said. “It’s most likely going to have to be (left) either in the garage or depending on the temperature in the house.” Or in the frigid back yard because the temperature in Calgary never gets above freezing, right? Just kidding, Canada. Moser came up with the free beer concept after reading a story about a realtor in Chicago who was trying the same gimmick and increases his property showings by 300 percent. “And with those two listings in particular I knew that the clients were very receptive to trying out new ideas,” she said. “And I felt I would pass along the information of what they tried down in Chicago and how successful it was down there. Plus at the same time, like we all discussed, there’s nothing more Canadian than beer.” True is true, R. For those interested in spending nearly half a million dollars on a home and getting about 0.2 percent of that amount back in free beer, the two-story, 1,800-square-foot home in Hidden Valley is listed at $424,900. “Buy this home and on possession day the seller will leave you $1,000 in beer,” the property listing reads. Those seeking a cheaper option can purchase the two-story, 1,335-square-foot home in Coventry Hills for a mere $349,900. Moser was quick to stress that the free beer is a homeowner incentive because realtors aren't allowed to make such offers. Obviously, the beer’s role in the process is more luring in potential buyers and setting up the realtor’s pitch than actually selling the home itself because even in Canada, no one loves beer enough just to overpay for a home to get $1,000 worth for free…………
- Is reading human minds the next big step for computers? Because not everyone has the special set of ESP skills Mel Gibson possesses to let him know what women want, science has to step in and the smart hippies at the University of California-Berkeley may have achieved a colossal breakthrough. A team led by Jack Gallant, a UC Berkeley neuroscientist, and Shinji Nishimoto, a post-doctoral researcher in Gallant's lab, have used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and computational models to watch clips of movies inside the minds of people who just viewed them and "read the mind" by deciphering and rebuilding the human visual experience. Previous studies had laid the groundwork by recording activity in the visual cortex (which processes visual information in the brain) while participants viewed black-and-white photos and using a computer model to predict what the participant was looking at. Working off those findings, Gallant and his team were able to decode brain signals created by viewing moving pictures. Nishimoto and two other team members were placed inside an MRI scanner while they viewed two sets of movie trailers. During the first set, the fMRI measured blood flow through the visual cortex and this information was directed to a computer that portrayed the brain as tiny three-dimensional cubes called "voxels," or volumetric pixels. Each voxel was linked to a model showing in detail how motion and shapes in the movie are translated into brain activity. A computer program learned ho to relate the resulting visual patterns in the trailers with corresponding brain activity. The second set of clips presented the computer's algorithm with 18 million seconds of YouTube clips and testing its ability to predict the brain activity that each clip would induce. Researchers reconstructed the original trailer by merging brain scans that were most similar to the YouTube clips. Although the end result was not perfectly clear, it is still a major step toward understanding and rebuilding how humans see and process images. Gallant and his team hope this will lead to technology that can decipher what is happening in the minds of those who cannot communicate verbally, such as stroke victims or coma patients or allow for the creation of an interface that allows people with certain disabilities to use their minds to control machines…………
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Hunky vampires try music, hating on fake racks in Venezuela and Nuggets in China
- Have you been looking for an album by a hunky vampire/teeny bopper icon to add to your iTunes collection? That hole could soon be filled by Twilight star Robert Pattinson, who has long been rumored to be working on material for his music career and spent time jamming with his Twilight co-stars in hotel rooms between filming sessions on the movie that so far stands as the only reason anyone knows who he is. A source close to Pattinson has claimed that the actor will begin working on the album within the next few weeks, once he is about to find space in his schedule. The course, speaking anonymously because the possibility of a Robert Pattinson album is the very thing that will revolutionize the music industry as we know it, said, “The album Rob will make will be guitar-based and drums, very organic-sounding, nothing pop. Like stripped-down Ray LaMontagne meets Van Morrison.” Umm…..let’s not compare some teen vampire/actor dreamboat with a great singer and songwriter like Ray LaMontagne, k? While this isn't Pattinson’s first foray into music, he certainly hasn’t accomplished anything worth a damn in the industry and there is no reason to believe he ever will. He did record two songs - 'Never Think' and 'Let Me Sign' - for the original Twilight soundtrack in 2008, but it seems safe to say that neither of the tracks were high on the list of reasons anyone (anyone being teenage girls) bought the soundtrack. Pattinson hinted at his return to music earlier this year, saying he wanted to re-start his singing career and play some live shows. He also suggested a possible deal with XL records, but the label wanted nothing to do with him and no similar rumors have surfaced since. As for the last installments in the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn: Part 1 is due for release in November and the second part will debut one year later. Might be wise for Pattinson to stick to that side of his career and leave the music to the professionals………….
- While it might be tough to explain the connection, there is no denying that NBA free agents who ended last season with the Denver Nuggets have shown a strong predilection for balling in China during the league’s three-month (and counting) lockout. J.R. Smith and Wilson Chandler have already inked deals to play in the Chinese Basketball Association this coming season and on Wednesday, forward Kenyon Martin joined them, Martin's agent, Andy Miller, confirmed the forward has agreed to a deal with the Xinjiang Flying Tigers. By signing the deal, Martin joins other NBA free agents who have signed with CBA teams in being committed to say with those teams through the end of their season without the possibility of leaving to return to the NBA if the lockout ends. The odds of that happening are somewhere south of zero percent, so Martin, Chandler and Smith should be fine and so should Martin’s Xinjiang teammate Quincy Douby, a former first-round draft pick by the Sacramento Kings. As for the Nuggets, they had better hope the season is canceled because if it isn't and they have to field a team, their options are going to be extremely limited. Martin, Smith and Chandler are all off the table, while current Nuggets Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari are playing in Europe and will be able to return as soon as the lockout ends. The CBA gamble is a big one for Martin, as he is 33 years old and on the tail end of his career. Potentially giving away an entire year of his career at this point would be a lot to surrender. Chandler seems to be adjusting to his new surroundings well and recently tweeted about his experience in China thus far, "just walked/climbed about 4 or 5 miles on the great wall of china..." NBA training camps are scheduled to open Oct. 3 with the regular season beginning in early November, but those are merely dates on a calendar now and no one involved with the process of observing it from the outside holds much hope that a season of any length will happen………….
- Say what you will about Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, just don’t call him a fan of fake racks. In a country that holds six Miss Universe titles and five Miss World titles - more than the United States’ 10 total crowns - and has its share of lovely ladies, breast implants are virtually ubiquitous. Women have little shame about showing off the silicone enhancements they have purchased for their physique and that was never a problem……until Chavez made a random address on state-run television earlier this year, excoriating doctors who accrue small fortunes from performing breast augmentations. Chavez said such doctors "convince some women that if they don't have some big bosoms they should feel bad." Chavez, who has glossed himself as a feminist, also ripped poor women who pay for these costly breast implant procedures that they couldn't afford, decrying it as "a monstrous thing." His words seemed directed toward physicians like Dr. Pete Romer, a plastic surgeon who has personally worked on thousands of Caracas women, including two of Venezuela's pageant queens. “We just polish the beauty," Romer said. "All those girls are gorgeous and have good material. The proportions of face and body are almost perfect. My work is just change a little things." Romer also said Chavez should not be telling Venezuelan women how to spend their money and aspiring beauty queens around the country has also taken umbrage with the address. Many of them point out that there are simply so many beautiful women with perfect proportions that anyone who doesn’t fit the mold must go under the knife just to keep pace. Being a beauty queen actually means something in Venezuela whether it should or not. The best comment on the issue came from a woman named Ester Gonzalez, who daughter Corina is a would-be beauty queen and went under the knife for bigger boobs before she even turned 23. "It's an investment because no matter what you do she is getting prepared for life for any kind of job," Ester said. "All the courses she does and the beauty stuff is directed to her own growth. It's an investment no matter where she will use it." An investment? For what, her future appearance in Venezuela’s version of Playboy? Oh, and that investment paid off with Corina Gonzalez now rocking a DD cup size. Some Venezuelans have supported their dictator’s opinion on the issue and a few of them may even have done so out of something other than fear for what would happen to them if they didn’t back Chavez. These Hugo supports have suggested that the immense cost of the procedure - implants can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 - is beyond the means of many Venezuelans and that taking out loans just to look like a real-life Barbie doll is a bad idea. Still, nearly 40,000 women in Venezuela undergo breast augmentation each year and that figure isn't likely to trend downward no matter what Chavez says………..
- Of life’s great constants, bitching and whining about Facebook changes - minor or major - are easily the most reliable. No matter what the changes, a certain segment of the Facebook population is bound to bash them and in the ultimate irony, use the very thing they are bashing to do their bashing. When the world's largest online social network rolled out significant changes to users’ Facebook home pages and news feeds earlier this week, it took less than a day for the Facebook world to explode with complaints. Users logged on Monday morning to find what Facebook calls "top stories" on the top of their pages, followed by "recent stories" listed in chronological order. On the right side of the page, there is now something called a "ticker," a live feed of all the ongoing activity that also appears in users' news feeds. The ticker seemed to draw the most vitriolic reaction, with most viewing it as a Facebook inside your Facebook. Many users began circulating a doctored image of rapper/TV personality Xzibit with the words, “Yo dawg, I heard you like Facebook. So we put a Facebook in the upper right of you Facebook so you can Facebook while you Facebook.” In short, the ticker is retardedly redundant. The changes became a trending topic on Twitter within hours and the jokes were flying fast and furious. Facebook, accustomed to defending unpopular changes to its site, has long maintained the position that it makes changes to keep users engaged, and that those alterations are often based on user requests. Of course, the changes typically seem like they have been made just for the sake of making them and to infuriate users. Facebook seems to do a terrible job of predicting what users will like and with even more changes expected in the wake of today’s f8 conference in San Francisco for developers who create games and other applications for its site, the rage is not likely to dissipate any time soon. The conspiracy theory when it comes to the changes comes from privacy advocates who argue that Facebook changes its site in order to get people to share as much as possible about their habits, hobbies and likes in order to provide that information to advertisers. Facebook vice president of engineering defended the changes by saying they are "tailored at making sure this news feed is what you want to see.” Not if you ask users, they’re not…………
- Maybe this is what the United States needs as so many Americans turn away from organized religion and make faith a smaller portion of their daily lives. If more churches were willing to do what pastor Peter Jackson and his small congregation in Anacortes, Wash. are doing, then more people would probably want to show up for worship services on Sunday or Wednesday. Jackson, like many across the state of Washington, is taking advantage of the state’s laws legalizing medical marijuana and he is subsequently growing a small stash out behind the church. He was proud enough of his crop to show it off to a local TV station, which showed up because the church just happens to be a few hundred feet from a local elementary school and last week, two students wandered over to the fence between the two properties, climbed over and discovered the pot plants. How two elementary school students recognized marijuana plants so readily is another issue entirely, but the two children found the plants and in a decidedly uncool move, ratted Jackson and his church out to their teachers. Seriously, someone needs to teach these kids common stoner courtesy, wherein one of the points is not ratting out those who grow or possess a stash of the hippie lettuce. But the kids went narc and their teachers alerted local law enforcement. Word quickly spread to parents, who pressured police to force Jackson to remove the garden. Unfortunately, a loophole in the town’s legal code means police have no right to do that and Jackson is well within his rights to grow the plants. His garden has 30 plants and when asked about his legal rights to grow them, he said, "We don't believe we need paperwork for how many plants we grow or how much weed we're allowed to smoke." All right, then. Not every church invites its members to bring their own bong or roll up a fattie for Jesus, but America is all about being different and unique, right? Now quiet down, go get the bag of Cheetos and pass the bong……….
- While it might be tough to explain the connection, there is no denying that NBA free agents who ended last season with the Denver Nuggets have shown a strong predilection for balling in China during the league’s three-month (and counting) lockout. J.R. Smith and Wilson Chandler have already inked deals to play in the Chinese Basketball Association this coming season and on Wednesday, forward Kenyon Martin joined them, Martin's agent, Andy Miller, confirmed the forward has agreed to a deal with the Xinjiang Flying Tigers. By signing the deal, Martin joins other NBA free agents who have signed with CBA teams in being committed to say with those teams through the end of their season without the possibility of leaving to return to the NBA if the lockout ends. The odds of that happening are somewhere south of zero percent, so Martin, Chandler and Smith should be fine and so should Martin’s Xinjiang teammate Quincy Douby, a former first-round draft pick by the Sacramento Kings. As for the Nuggets, they had better hope the season is canceled because if it isn't and they have to field a team, their options are going to be extremely limited. Martin, Smith and Chandler are all off the table, while current Nuggets Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari are playing in Europe and will be able to return as soon as the lockout ends. The CBA gamble is a big one for Martin, as he is 33 years old and on the tail end of his career. Potentially giving away an entire year of his career at this point would be a lot to surrender. Chandler seems to be adjusting to his new surroundings well and recently tweeted about his experience in China thus far, "just walked/climbed about 4 or 5 miles on the great wall of china..." NBA training camps are scheduled to open Oct. 3 with the regular season beginning in early November, but those are merely dates on a calendar now and no one involved with the process of observing it from the outside holds much hope that a season of any length will happen………….
- Say what you will about Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, just don’t call him a fan of fake racks. In a country that holds six Miss Universe titles and five Miss World titles - more than the United States’ 10 total crowns - and has its share of lovely ladies, breast implants are virtually ubiquitous. Women have little shame about showing off the silicone enhancements they have purchased for their physique and that was never a problem……until Chavez made a random address on state-run television earlier this year, excoriating doctors who accrue small fortunes from performing breast augmentations. Chavez said such doctors "convince some women that if they don't have some big bosoms they should feel bad." Chavez, who has glossed himself as a feminist, also ripped poor women who pay for these costly breast implant procedures that they couldn't afford, decrying it as "a monstrous thing." His words seemed directed toward physicians like Dr. Pete Romer, a plastic surgeon who has personally worked on thousands of Caracas women, including two of Venezuela's pageant queens. “We just polish the beauty," Romer said. "All those girls are gorgeous and have good material. The proportions of face and body are almost perfect. My work is just change a little things." Romer also said Chavez should not be telling Venezuelan women how to spend their money and aspiring beauty queens around the country has also taken umbrage with the address. Many of them point out that there are simply so many beautiful women with perfect proportions that anyone who doesn’t fit the mold must go under the knife just to keep pace. Being a beauty queen actually means something in Venezuela whether it should or not. The best comment on the issue came from a woman named Ester Gonzalez, who daughter Corina is a would-be beauty queen and went under the knife for bigger boobs before she even turned 23. "It's an investment because no matter what you do she is getting prepared for life for any kind of job," Ester said. "All the courses she does and the beauty stuff is directed to her own growth. It's an investment no matter where she will use it." An investment? For what, her future appearance in Venezuela’s version of Playboy? Oh, and that investment paid off with Corina Gonzalez now rocking a DD cup size. Some Venezuelans have supported their dictator’s opinion on the issue and a few of them may even have done so out of something other than fear for what would happen to them if they didn’t back Chavez. These Hugo supports have suggested that the immense cost of the procedure - implants can cost anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 - is beyond the means of many Venezuelans and that taking out loans just to look like a real-life Barbie doll is a bad idea. Still, nearly 40,000 women in Venezuela undergo breast augmentation each year and that figure isn't likely to trend downward no matter what Chavez says………..
- Of life’s great constants, bitching and whining about Facebook changes - minor or major - are easily the most reliable. No matter what the changes, a certain segment of the Facebook population is bound to bash them and in the ultimate irony, use the very thing they are bashing to do their bashing. When the world's largest online social network rolled out significant changes to users’ Facebook home pages and news feeds earlier this week, it took less than a day for the Facebook world to explode with complaints. Users logged on Monday morning to find what Facebook calls "top stories" on the top of their pages, followed by "recent stories" listed in chronological order. On the right side of the page, there is now something called a "ticker," a live feed of all the ongoing activity that also appears in users' news feeds. The ticker seemed to draw the most vitriolic reaction, with most viewing it as a Facebook inside your Facebook. Many users began circulating a doctored image of rapper/TV personality Xzibit with the words, “Yo dawg, I heard you like Facebook. So we put a Facebook in the upper right of you Facebook so you can Facebook while you Facebook.” In short, the ticker is retardedly redundant. The changes became a trending topic on Twitter within hours and the jokes were flying fast and furious. Facebook, accustomed to defending unpopular changes to its site, has long maintained the position that it makes changes to keep users engaged, and that those alterations are often based on user requests. Of course, the changes typically seem like they have been made just for the sake of making them and to infuriate users. Facebook seems to do a terrible job of predicting what users will like and with even more changes expected in the wake of today’s f8 conference in San Francisco for developers who create games and other applications for its site, the rage is not likely to dissipate any time soon. The conspiracy theory when it comes to the changes comes from privacy advocates who argue that Facebook changes its site in order to get people to share as much as possible about their habits, hobbies and likes in order to provide that information to advertisers. Facebook vice president of engineering defended the changes by saying they are "tailored at making sure this news feed is what you want to see.” Not if you ask users, they’re not…………
- Maybe this is what the United States needs as so many Americans turn away from organized religion and make faith a smaller portion of their daily lives. If more churches were willing to do what pastor Peter Jackson and his small congregation in Anacortes, Wash. are doing, then more people would probably want to show up for worship services on Sunday or Wednesday. Jackson, like many across the state of Washington, is taking advantage of the state’s laws legalizing medical marijuana and he is subsequently growing a small stash out behind the church. He was proud enough of his crop to show it off to a local TV station, which showed up because the church just happens to be a few hundred feet from a local elementary school and last week, two students wandered over to the fence between the two properties, climbed over and discovered the pot plants. How two elementary school students recognized marijuana plants so readily is another issue entirely, but the two children found the plants and in a decidedly uncool move, ratted Jackson and his church out to their teachers. Seriously, someone needs to teach these kids common stoner courtesy, wherein one of the points is not ratting out those who grow or possess a stash of the hippie lettuce. But the kids went narc and their teachers alerted local law enforcement. Word quickly spread to parents, who pressured police to force Jackson to remove the garden. Unfortunately, a loophole in the town’s legal code means police have no right to do that and Jackson is well within his rights to grow the plants. His garden has 30 plants and when asked about his legal rights to grow them, he said, "We don't believe we need paperwork for how many plants we grow or how much weed we're allowed to smoke." All right, then. Not every church invites its members to bring their own bong or roll up a fattie for Jesus, but America is all about being different and unique, right? Now quiet down, go get the bag of Cheetos and pass the bong……….
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