- Life is difficult for minor league and independent league baseball teams. Trying to attract fans and survive with attendance typically numbering in the hundreds or low thousands requires all manner of promotional stunts and gimmicks, from giving out flip-flops on Brett Favre Night to granting free entry to anyone willing to receive a buzz haircut at the door. But for a minor league franchise in London, Ontario, Canada, finding the right gimmick has been a real killer - literally. The team was looking to make a splash with a new nickname, team colors and logo and they seem to have hit the mark with their choice. Because what says family friendly, fun minor league baseball atmosphere quite like naming your team after……a serial killer. That’s right, the team will now be known as the London Rippers in a tip of the cap to the infamous late-1800s London, England serial killer Jack the Ripper. The Rippers are the newest team in the independent Frontier Baseball League and their logo and PR campaign for their identity are based on the famed serial killer who targeted women and specifically prostitutes around London in 1888. He was known and named for his violent, knife-wielding murders and having a team tie itself to him seems odd. A video on the team’s Facebook page invites fans - in a menacing voice - to come on down to the park and watch the Rippers terrorize opponents. Team president and general manager David Martin has either decided to outright lie from the start or realized what a bad idea the name was and is now scrambling to cover, because he insists that the franchise is in fact not named after Jack the Ripper. "That (Jack The Ripper) is not our story," Martin explained. "Ripping a ball is used in baseball all the time." He added that the character on the team’s logo—a man wearing a black top hat and black trench coat—is “Diamond Jack,” a frustrated hockey player who discovered he can “rip” the cover off baseballs. "It's Phantom of the Opera meets baseball. He's a mysterious character who is somewhat edgy," Martin continued. Right, because the Phantom is synonymous with baseball, a logical connection that anyone could make. Local women’s rights groups are not so enthusiastic about the choice of team name. "It doesn't matter what they think, it's what the people think," said Megan Walker, executive director of the London Abused Women's Center. "You don't have to be the brightest bulb on the block to realize Jack and Ripper go together. People are outraged. I think it's appalling. It's insulting and stupid and they better rethink their entire marketing strategy." They probably should have rethought it immediately after it was offered up in some team brainstorming session, but alas they did not. Now, they are a team named after a serial killer and their team slogan is, “Get ripped.” Sounds like fun……………
- Don’t think no one has noticed your brazen displays of sexual boldness, Saudi Arabian women. Your lack of modesty has been noticed and your shameless showing off of your lovely eyes will not go unchecked. Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) is considering a new law forcing Saudi women with attractive to cover them up, the latest in a series moves repressing women by the Islamic state. A spokesperson for the head of the committee, Sheikh Motlab al Nabet, said the committee had the right to stop women revealing "tempting" eyes in public. No one is clear what qualifies an eye as tempting, but women in Saudi Arabia already have to cover their hair, and, in some regions, their faces while in public. Failure to do so can result in punishments including fines and public floggings. The CPVPV has regularly been accused of human rights violations over the past few decades. It was founded in 1940 with the explicit purpose of ensuring Islamic laws are not broken in public in Saudi Arabia. One of its more recent, extremely popular decision came in 2002, when the committee refused to allow female students out of a burning school in Mecca because they were not wearing correct head cover. That’s right, they let them die rather than let them outside without their heads properly covered. That decision contributed to the high death toll of 15 people who were killed in the fire. It’s hard to see why these folks aren’t more popular………
- Albert Einstein was such a hack. He is clearly overrated as a scientists and his theories are worthless to anyone with half a brain. Don’t believe me? Just as scientists at the world's biggest physics lab who said Friday they have ruled out one possible error that could have distorted their startling measurements that appeared to show particles traveling faster than light, possibly proving that Einstein was wrong about a fundamental law of the universe. Back in September, many physicists reacted with skepticism when measurements by French and Italian researchers seemed to show subatomic neutrino particles breaking what the famed Nobel Prize-winning physicist considered the ultimate speed barrier. The European Organization for Nuclear Research insisted on more precise testing and that testing has occurring, in the process confirming the accuracy of at least one part of the experiment. "One key test was to repeat the measurement with very short beam pulses," the Geneva-based organization, known by its French acronym CERN, said in a statement. In the test, researchers checked to see if the starting time for the neutrinos was being measured correctly before they were fired 454 miles underground from Geneva to a lab in Italy. Unfortunately for Einstein, t he results matched those from the previous test, "ruling out one potential source of systematic error," said CERN. Scientists did toss Al a bone by stressing that only independent measurements by labs elsewhere would allow them to declare that the results of their experiment were a genuine finding. "A measurement so delicate and carrying a profound implication on physics requires an extraordinary level of scrutiny," said Fernando Ferroni, president of Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics. "The positive outcome of the test makes us more confident in the result, although a final word can only be said by analogous measurements performed elsewhere in the world." Under the guidelines of Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity, nothing is meant to be able to go faster than the speed of light — 186,282 miles per second. His theory took a massive hit in September when CERN researchers said that their neutrinos traveled 60 nanoseconds faster, when the margin of error in their experiment allowed for just 10 nanoseconds. A nanosecond is one-billionth of a second. Clearly, Einstein was a total hack………..
- You’ve gotta fight……for your right…..to have a lake. Hundreds of Lancaster County (Pa.) residents know that lesson well and they gathered on Wednesday night meeting with the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission and state lawmakers to help save Speedwell Forge Lake. Last month, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission drained the 100-acre lake as a precaution. The decision came after heavy rain from Tropical Storm Lee and Hurricane Isabel caused a number of cracks to form in the lake’s dam and spill way threatening nearly 80 homes downstream. Despite that reality, the decision to drain the lake has been an emotional one for many Elizabeth Township residents because there are only two lakes in the entire county. With the decision to drain, local merchants say business around the lake has already taken a hit. Locals like Kevin Oettel have founded Save Speedwell, a grass-roots organization whose membership has risen to over 1000 concerned residents. Somehow, this group has slid under the radar with the Occupy movement taking center stage. Perhaps if the concerned locals staged a swim-in wherein they occupied the lake and its frigid waters to force a confrontation with police, they could make more of an impact. Any effort to restore the lake and rebuild the dam is estimated to cost $6.5 million, according to the PFBC. Facing the same sort of budgetary restraints as nearly every other government organization in the United States, the PFBC has made it clear that its own budgetary constraints have limited what projects the agency can fulfill. That hasn’t stopped a few sate lawmakers, including Rep. Tom Creighton of Lancaster County, from joining the campaign to see if they can get funding to see the lake restored. “It’s questionable whether this is just a patch – or we redo the dam and make it a low hazard dam,” said Creighton. While the legislators look for possible funding avenues, Save Speedwell is attempting to gain non-profit status in the next few months to help secure either state or federal grant money for the project. “We are not going to do it with bake sales,” said Oettel. “It will be a long road,” he added. A long road for a loved lake………
- In a time when television shows are canceled at an alarming rate before even being on the air for half a season, any show getting renewed its big news - especially if it is renewed for not one, but two whole seasons. Fans of Showtime’s Dexter got that good news Friday as the network announced that the series would be renewed for two more seasons. The announcement should relieve tensions following a scary period wherein it seemed unclear whether star Michael C. Hall would return to the show. With the announcement, Seasons 7 and 8 are now locked down, with production on Season 7 beginning in 2012 in Los Angeles. Both will be short seasons, consisting of 12 episodes each, but as fans of NBC’s cult favorite spy comedy Chuck can attest after their show returned this fall for a 13-episode fifth and final season, any extension is a good one. “On behalf of the entire ‘Dexter’ family, we relish the invitation to delve ever deeper into Dexter's world,” said Hall. The show’s sixth season has been going well, recently delivering its fifth consecutive week of growth. It is averaging 5.12 million weekly viewers across all platforms, making it the highest rated season yet, according to Showtime. The show centers on Dexter Morgan (Hall), a bloodstain pattern analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who moonlights as a serial killer. The show is set in Miami and its first season was largely based on the novel Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, the first of his Dexter series novels. The following seasons have evolved independently of Lindsay's works, with several based on short stories by Lindsay's friend, Stephen R. Pastore. Screenwriter James Manos, Jr., who wrote the first episode, adapted it for television and wrote the series’ first episode. With the previous uncertainty over its future, fans had been speculating that Dexter Morgan would be captured and put on the chopping block this season. That route appears unlikely and the show will get additional life to properly close Dexter’s story……….
No comments:
Post a Comment