- Korn frontman Jonathan Davis seems angry - much angrier than the lead singer for a band that has sold millions of albums and fronted several successful U.S. and national tours should be. Davis spoke recently about his band's new 'dubstep' album 'The Path Of Totality' and seemed to take a sort of twisted joy from the fact that he believes the album will infuriate many Korn fans. Because the album is comprised entirely of songs made with dubstep producers, with DJ Skrillex featuring on three tracks including lead-off single 'Get Up', Noisia appearing on three tracks, Downlink appearing on four and Excision appearing on two, the effort is going to sound drastically different than anything the nu metal rockers have ever put out. Why go in a different direction? Could it be to show the band’s range or avoid being pigeonholed? Nope. Apparently the idea came almost entirely from Korn’s members growing tired of being known as "the godfathers of nu metal," as Davis put it. "People are going to be pissed about this record. That's made me even more excited about it. I don't give a flying f**k what people think. We can't win with Korn fans. Some are so stuck in 1994."
Way to blast those who have supported you by buying album after album of your subpar sonic efforts and paying bloated ticket prices to see you live, J. Davis. "Everybody calls us the godfathers of nu-metal and I'm f**king tired of that. We don't want to join the nostalgia circuit. Us, Limp Bizkit, Staind or some s**t like that. F**k that," Davis ranted before giving his band credit for inventing a new genre of music on the album, which he calls "Future metal." Before concluding his tirade, Davis decided to take a run at non-Korn fans because he simply has too much ire to hold it in. He revealed that the band's recent single 'Get Up' was inspired by his hatred of everybody complaining about the recession. “'Get Up' is about the recession. I wish everyone would shut the f**k up and have some fun. Every day I've got to hear about unemployment and people starving.” Yes, it is horrible that a rich, successful recording artist has to be troubled with stories of people going hungry, not able to find a job and on the brink of losing their home……………
- The coolest game of the 2011-12 college basketball season will be played Friday night, before many teams have played even one game of the new season. That is features No. 1-ranked North Carolina has little to do with the game’s cool factor. What does set the Tar Heels’ matchup with Michigan State apart is where the game will be played. It will be the first college game ever played outdoors on a freaking aircraft carrier. The game will take place the flight deck of the USS Carl Vinson on Friday afternoon, the same aircraft carrier that buried Osama bin Laden at sea. Coaches Tom Izzo of Michigan State and Roy Williams of No. 1 North Carolina will lead their teams in the inaugural Carrier Classic in front of a Veterans Day crowd of 7,000 in the crowd, including the nation's basketball-fan-in-chief, President Barack Obama, plus a national TV audience. The nuclear-powered carrier, which stretches 1,092 feet, weighs 95,000 tons and has four steam catapults that can accelerate a jet fighter from 0 to 165 mph in just more than two seconds, will have a court surrounded by stadium seating that organizers hope will block any winds. "My first impression when I walked in far superseded whatever I thought it could be, and we've been talking about this for seven or eight years," Izzo said Thursday aboard the carrier, which is docked at North Island Naval Air Station. "If you could have seen our players' eyes as we walked in, you just had such an appreciation for what we're doing. It's bigger than a game. It's bigger than North Carolina against Michigan State. It's kind of a dream come true for us." A fantastic view of the San Diego skyline across the bay from the island will add to the atmosphere for a game that is a rematch of the 2009 national championship game won by North Carolina. Although the game’s location in San Diego would suggest ideal weather for the 4 p.m. local tip-off, forecasts earlier in the week suggested that a storm might hit around the start of the contest. With good weather, the game will be played on the flight deck, said Mike Whalen of Morale Entertainment Foundation, which is organizing the game. If the forecast had remained bad, the game would have been moved below to the hangar deck. The obvious question is how the teams will fare playing outdoors, with possible wind gusts. Neither coach seemed concerned. ''I would be willing to bet 90 percent of our players will be thrilled to death to do something that nobody else has ever done," Izzo said. Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis is credited with coming up with the idea for the game and says the concept came in his effort to find a "dramatic way to reach out" to the military. Will anyone be able to use the experience as a way to get the inside scoop on what exactly happened with the sea burial of the world’s most famous terrorist? Capt. Bruce H. Lindsey, the commanding officer of the flat top, made it clear that neither he nor any of his sailors can talk about that mission. There should still be plenty to talk about on this day………….
- Hugo Chavez is not a popular man. The vast majority of his support comes when he tells people to support him or he will shoot them and/or rip more of their basic human rights. Just kidding, Hugo - sort of. Chavez has no shortage of enemies, but the Venezuelan despot doesn’t have anyone looking for retribution on a grander scale than a wealthy Venezuelan businessman seeing $1 billion in damages because he claims the socialist Chavez government illegally took over a bank he owned in the country in June 2010. Nelson J. Mezerhane filed a lawsuit against the Chavez government in federal court in Miami in which he alleges that the seizure occurred because he refused to surrender his 20 percent stake in Globovision, the only TV network aligned with Chavez's opposition. Chavez has repeatedly moved to silence opposition voices in Venezuela and shutting down opposition media outlets has been a favorite tactic. Even though Mezerhane refused to sell his shares, the government eventually seized them anyhow, along with , the bank and 33 other Mezerhane assets and properties. In the lawsuit, Mezerhane's attorneys say the government takeovers violate both U.S. and international law. The suit was filed in Miami because Mezerhane is living in South Florida and seeking political asylum in the U.S. But why wouldn’t he want to live in such a warm, fuzzy and loving place like Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela? As would be expected, Venezuelan officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment and probably won't say anything of worth on the issue any time soon…………
- Finally, technology is moving the direction it needs to go: backwards. For too long, tech companies have been looking to make computers faster, smaller and more powerful. A group of British researchers are going to opposite way and have announced plans to finally build Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a gear-based proto-computer conceived of but never constructed by the 19th century inventor. A team from the Science Museum of London, led by former museum curator Doron Swade and programmer John Graham-Cumming, believe will take a decade and cost millions of dollars. With tablets, quadcore processors and touch screens making everyday life better, why undertake the task? Because they can, of course. Swade oversaw the effort to build two working replicas of Babbage's Difference Engine No. 2 over the past two decades. The first, completed in 1991, is housed at the Science Museum and the other, commissioned a few years ago by former CTO of Microsoft Nathan Myhrvold, is a popular attraction at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. Babbage's Analytical Engine is likely to be a much bigger challenge because of the relative dearth of information on the device. The inventor kept copious and detailed notes for his Difference Engine designs and provided a clear final blueprint for the Science Museum team to follow in building Difference Engine No. 2. Conversely, his ideas for the Analytical Engine, a much more complex machine, were never finalized. Several incomplete blueprints do exist, but no single set of plans have ever been found. "There is no single set of plans that design a single machine." Tim Robinson, a docent at the Computer History Museum. “It was constantly in a state of flux." The Analytical Engine designs are also different because they are regarded by many as the first in history to describe a programmable computer. Babbage drafted them nearly a century before Alan Turing and John von Neumann codified the essential qualities of a computational device that could process and perform essentially any sort of computational task through the use of algorithms. Technology experts have hailed Babbage's Analytical Engine as a landmark in the transition from calculation to computation. The steam-powered computing behemoth with dimensions of 90 feet long by 30 feet wide has a punch-card programming setup and "memory" that can store 1,000 numbers of 50 digits each. Babbage was the forerunner of Neumann's scheme that has dominated computer architectures in the electronic era, separating the memory, which he called "the store," from the Analytical Engine's "mill," or processor. Will the time consumed and money spent benefit much of anyone in a practical sense? No, but at least technology is heading in the direction any sane person would want to see it go…………
- If there is a worse story to have break on Veterans Day, it escapes the mind. With millions of active duty and retired military personnel being recognized for their unbelievable service and sacrifice, the holiday rang in awash in news that a five-person military panel convened at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state convicted Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs Thursday of all charges against him, including the murders of three Afghan civilians. Gibbs was accused of terrorizing Afghan villages as the leader of what prosecutors call a rogue group of soldiers that targeted civilians. He was the highest-ranking soldier of a group of five soldiers accused of murdering Afghan villagers, planting weapons on them and cutting body parts off to keep as war trophies. Other members of Gibbs’ unit were charged with lesser crimes such as intimidating a fellow soldier not to speak out against the platoon's alleged killings and rampant illegal drug use. That’s right, rampant illegal drug use. These fine servicemen were apparently sampling some of the fine opium products Afghanistan is known for. Gibbs’ fate was decided quickly by the panel of three officers and two enlisted soldiers, which began deliberating shortly before 10 a.m. (1 p.m. ET) and returned its verdict around 3 p.m. (6 p.m. ET). The verdict was delivered in a military courtroom near Tacoma, half a world away from the site of his crimes. Gibbs now faces a maximum sentence of life in military prison, which is probably a more lenient a punishment than he deserves in light of his actions. "Sergeant Gibbs had a charisma, he had a 'follow me' personality," Maj. Robert Stelle, a prosecutor in the case, told the court in closing arguments Wednesday. "But it was all a bunch of crap, he had his own mission: murder and depravity. No one died before Sergeant Gibbs showed up.” Gibbs took over the 3rd Platoon of the Army's 5th Stryker Brigade in November 2009 in Kandahar Province, Afghanistan after the platoon's previous sergeant was seriously wounded in a roadside bomb attack. Despite his clean-cut experience, Gibbs’ true character was better illustrated by the six skull tattoos he sported on his left shin signifying his "kills." He was known to refer to Afghan civilians as "savages," prosecutors said. Several soldiers testified at the court-martial and detailed how Gibbs discussed staging firefights that he called "scenarios" so that the soldiers could kill civilians and make it look as if they were Taliban fighters. Prosecutors claimed that those scenarios unfolded over a span of five months, during which time Gibbs’ unit regularly planted or fabricated evidence and stories to explain their actions. Phillip Stackhouse, Gibbs' defense attorney, alleged a massive conspiracy against his client by the older soldiers in the unit. "What if there is no hard evidence other than what you have heard from that witness stand?" Stackhouse asked Wednesday. Other than dead Afghan civilians and those skull tats on your client’s leg? Oh, and big ups to the witnesses who admitted to smoking hashish they obtained from Afghan translators. Stackhouse tried to blame their testimony on the influence of hash, which seems like a desperate play to say the least. For his part, Gibbs denied murdering civilians. In the end, it made no difference…………
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