- 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…………
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