- 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…………
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