- From its high-grossing beginning, there was really nowhere to go but down for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 in its second week in theaters. And so in its second weekend, the film centered on hunky vampires declined 70 percent and still whipped the competition’s ass. Breaking Dawn earned $42 million this time around, boosting its overall domestic gross to $221.3 million and counting. Newcomer The Muppets landed in second with $29.5 million for the weekend and with some income from limited earlier release factored in, the movie has garnered $42 million and counting. In its second weekend, Happy Feet Two scored a third-place finish with an unimpressive $13.4 million and through two weeks it has limped to a cumulative total of $43.7 million. Another newbie snared fourth place as Arthur opened modestly with $12.7 million despite having a relatively wide opening nationwide. The third new film of the top five was Hugo, which landed in fifth with $11.4 million in its debut. The bottom half of the top 10 included: Jack and Jill (No. 6 and about 100 spots higher than Adam Sandler’s latest dud should be with $10.3 million and $57.4 million in cumulative domestic earnings), Immortals (No 7 and falling four spots with a haul of $8.8 million and a three-week tally of $68.6 million), family-friendly Puss in Boots (No. 8 with $7.5 million and an impressive $135.4 million through its first month in theaters), the lame-tastic Tower Heist (No. 9 with $7.3 million and just $65.3 million after its own first month in theaters) and The Descendants (No. 10 despite still being in extremely limited release (433 theaters) by making $7.2 million for a higher per-theater average than any other film on the weekend). Films dropping out of the top 10 from last weekend were: the snooze-inducing J. Edgar (No. 11), A Very Harold & Kumar 3D (No. 13) and In Time (No. 14)……………
- The dangers of climate change are all around us, yet so many of us are oblivious to some of the greatest threats posed by rising temperatures on Earth. Thankfully, men like Dr. Sanliang Gu are thinking for the oblivious masses and contemplating a world too hot to grow fine grapes suitable for the making of fine wine. Gu lives in Fresno, Calif. and for years, he has been obsessed with finding ways to manipulate the growing cycle of grapes around Fresno, California's hottest and earliest-ripening wine region. If successful, his work could be vital to growing grapes should Earth’s surface temperatures skyrocket due to global warming. As of this week, Gu has achieved that success. A 2011 vintage that normally would have been picked in July or August came off the vines two days before Thanksgiving and a full three weeks after Napa's weather-delayed harvest ended. Extra time on the vine is extremely valuable in the wine business, where that extra time adds complexities to flavors and thus makes wine more valuable. Gu’s results were met with eager enthusiasm by the wine industry and those associated with his work. "If this can help incrementally improve the quality, it means big money for growers, especially in a global market," said Joe Bezerra, executive director of the California State University Agricultural Research Institute, which is helping to fund the project at Fresno State University. The project actually has two main goals: first, to add complexities to the 150,000 acres of wine grapes grown in California's San Joaquin Valley, along with opening up marginal areas for growing to substantially higher production. "I hope it doesn't get any hotter in Fresno," Gu said, "but it doesn't matter because we know now that we can manipulate the growing season." The San Joaquin Valley is home to 44 percent of the state's crop, so improving its production and heartiness would be a major step forward. The valley stretches for 220 miles from Stockton to Bakersfield and is the most prolific grape-growing region not only in the state, but in the entire country. Massive tracts of wine grapes are mechanically harvested for popular labels such as Gallo's economy brands and Bronco's popular Charles Shaw, aka Two Buck Chuck, and included in higher-end wines. However, grapes in the region ripen quickly and growers must harvest them before the acids and tannins that contribute to a flavorful wine can fully develop. Being the esteemed professor of viticulture he is, Gu managed to solve that problem by pruning off the first crop of clusters in June, which forces the vines to generate a new crop just as the weather really heats up in July. His idea worked and on Tuesday, he watched as his students donned winter jackets and harvested the grapes before carrying macro bins of cabernet sauvignon to the school winery. "This is exciting," Gu said. "We're picking wine grapes in Fresno at Thanksgiving. That has never happened before." Gu tried many other means to force a later harvest in previous years, but nothing worked until this year’s crop. "Nothing made a difference because the overriding factor is temperature," he said. The world’s pretentious and contemptible wine lovers will be happy to know all of this…………
- Still at it, Drew Rosenhaus? The NFL season is two-thirds of the way over, teams across the league have suffered injuries at the wide receiver position and yet Rosenhaus’ most attention-starved client still hasn’t found a job. Seven months removed from major knee surgery, 37-year-old Terrell Owens has held public workouts, posted videos of himself doing agility drills and made his desire to return to football well-known. So far, he has yet to receive an official contract offer from any of the league’s 32 teams……but wait. According to the equally bombastic Rosenhaus, one NFL team is currently "very interested" in his client. However, Rosenhaus quickly added that this supposedly interested team is sensitive about being publicly mentioned and so he is keeping its identity a secret. Honestly, it sounds like exactly the sort of bogus PR ploy Rosenhaus used to Jedi mind-trick the Buffalo Bills into drafting running back Willis McGahee in the first round of the 2003 draft even though he had just blown out multiple knee ligaments three months prior in his final college game at Miami. By faking a phone conversation with a team supposedly interested in picking the injured McGahee, he managed to pressure the Bills into pulling the trigger and picking his client when there was no other team in the mix. So him lying or exaggerating the truth in some last-ditch attempt to keep alive the notion that Owens could find work before the season is through sounds perfectly reasonable. Teams just aren't all that eager to sign a receiver coming off knee surgery in April and who turns 38 years old on Dec. 7, even if he did play 14 games for the Cincinnati Bengals last season, making 72 receptions and scoring nine touchdowns. Still, Rosenhaus and his nonstop shenanigans are always amusing if nothing else………
- Ah, the Iron Curtain rises again. Bad Vlad Putin hasn’t even officially been “elected” back to the position of power he never actually left in Russia and already he’s extending a giant communist middle finger to the rest of the world. With a parliamentary vote this weekend that his party is expected to win on tap, Putin took a moment to tell the West to eff off and get out of his country's internal affairs. Putin also chided western powers to stop funding human rights groups that he disdainfully likened to Judas. "We know that representatives of some countries meet with people they fund, so-called grant receivers, and give them instructions and guidance for what work they need to do to influence the election campaign in our country," he fumed. He then executed a thoroughly sarcastic jab at the United States and the European Union, saying such countries would do better "to use the money to pay back their domestic debt” instead of supporting human rights groups. The comments played very well to a group of 11,000 sycophants gathered in a Moscow soccer stadium. The lovefest was regularly interrupted with rabid applause and chants of "Putin," "Russia" or "The people trust Putin!" The event was truly a throwback to the old Soviet days even if it was theoretically for Putin’s United Russia party to endorse him as their official candidate for March's presidential election. The vote was predictably unanimous even though the party’s popularity has declined in recent months. Still, an iron group on state media and other levers of power should ensure a comfortable win for both Putin and in the parliamentary vote. The supposed current despot in power in Russia, Dmitry Medvedev, is expected to swap jobs with and become the prime minister. That’s the post Putin has pretended to occupy while Medvedev has pretended to be president for the past few years. Putin was in fine form at the commie rally, issuing the sort of fiery rhetoric that one would have heard at the height of the old U.S.S.R. "We know better than anyone else what needs to be done in our next stage of development," Putin proclaimed, accusing liberal opposition politicians of ruining Russia during the 1990s. He finished by standing tall for Russia's national interests on the international stage. "All our foreign partners need to understand this: Russia is a democratic country and a reliable and predictable partner with which they can and should reach agreement but on which they cannot impose anything from the outside." Hopes for democracy’s growth in Russia thoroughly trampled, Putin wrapped his speech up and went off to mock people waiting in two-day-long bread lines………….
- Lurking in the shadows of a dimly lit parking lot and bashing someone over the head with a blunt object isn't the only way to steal from them as they do their holiday shopping. In fact, doing your thieving online is probably a lot easier, with a near-zero chance of bloodshed and a much higher likelihood of getting away with your crime. So as the pepper spray from Black Friday evaporates, the sounds of police sirens wailing fades into the distance and trampled shoppers are released from the hospital to return home, the keyboard tapping and mouse clicking of Cyber Monday loom. Shoppers will head online looking for the same sorts of great deals offered in stores Friday and when they arrive, scammers and hackers will be waiting to rip them off with too-good-to-be-true offers. There will be great deals from legitimate merchants to be sure, but security experts are already warning shoppers that scam artists will be amping up their efforts for the biggest online shopping day of the season. Last year, Cyber Monday blew right by Black Friday as the highest-volume day for holiday shopping, with close to $1 billion in online sales. Of course, this year’s Cyber Monday has to be bigger and better and shoppers are expected to do more than a third of their holiday shopping online, in the neighborhood of $1.2 billion, according to the National Retail Federation. More dollars means more scammers looking to poach those dollars, obviously. "Even more holiday shopping will happen online this year than last, and that means more scammers will be looking to do some shopping of their own—possibly at your expense," said Stephen Cobb, a security analyst for ESET. In the month of November alone, searches for "Cyber Monday Deals" have increased 400 percent, according to search statistics available from Google. So far, cyber thieves seem to be targeting keywords such as "tech," "jewelry" and "toys" that factor prominently into searches for deals and setting up fake websites to lure in naïve shoppers. When these clueless customers visit the fake site, they are redirected to other malicious sites that download malware onto their computers or trick them into divulging personal information. Businesses could also be in danger on Cyber Monday because of the high number of slacker employees expected to peruse the Internet for great deals on gadgets and designer clothing instead of actually doing the work they are paid to do. In 2009, nearly 60 percent of the nearly $900 million in online purchases two years ago on Cyber Monday were made from the workplace, according to security software maker McAfee. By shopping from their desk or cubicle, employees will be putting their organizations at risk for malware, spam, phishing scams and other threats. To top off their Cyber Monday efforts, scammers are also sending out malicious emails in bulk, offering special Cyber Monday deals alongside the usual collection of spam consisting of Nigerian inheritance scams, scams involving people stuck in London with their wallet and travel documents stolen and scams involving crank-enhancing little blue pills. In short, try to be smarter than most people typically are when doing anything online. Assume everyone is out to get you and operate accordingly…………
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