- What’s more exciting than your favorite Major League team throwing down $214 million and committing for nine years to a 300-pound slugger who doubles as the world’s largest vegetarian? The prospect of that same team having to reassign a nearly-as-obese slugger with no range whatsoever and subpar conditioning to a new spot on the field because the slugger you just signed plays his current position, that’s what. The Detroit Tigers landed one of the biggest free-agent prizes of the offseason when they inked first baseman Prince Fielder to the fourth-largest contract in MLB history. That’s the good news - assuming they get enough production out of him in the first five to six years of the deal to justify paying an overweight first baseman in the twilight of his career $24 million a season for the final three years of the contract. The bad news is that the Tigers must now move Miguel Cabrera from first base even though the reason he was playing first base is because he was too FAT and slow to continue playing third base or the outfield, the two positions he played prior to signing with the team in 2008. Cabrera began his career with the Florida (now Miami) Marlins as a left fielder, but moved to third base because he was terrible defensively in the outfield. His conditioning played a role and as his weight ballooned, his ability to track down balls in left field decreased. His lack of nutritional and exercise discipline continued and eventually he was moved to first base, where he had to move even less and mostly had to catch balls thrown his way by his fellow infielders. He committed five errors in the space of just 14 games playing third base for the Tigers and managed Jim Leyland shifted him across the diamond. Now that Fielder has landed in the D, the team must hope that Cabrera will either rediscover how to be a competent third baseman or accept manning the designated hitter role for most games. Cabrera insists he’s fine with the move to third. “I will come back to the third base, which is my natural position. The arrival of Fielder will benefit us,” he said. Lots of success with that, Miggy…………
- Who knew Connecticut was such a racist place? In all fairness to the Nutmeg State, not everyone who lives there is a flaming bigot. Just East Haven Mayor Joe Maturo and a few select idiots, that’s all. That Maturo is the top executive in a city where Latinos have said for years that they live in fear of local authorities doesn’t help matters, of course. Those fears were validated Tuesday after news broke of the arrests of four rogue police officers who are accused of systematically targeting Latinos with unlawful search and seizures, traffic stops and even physical abuse. Federal authorities accused East Haven Police Sgt. John Miller and officers David Cari, Jason Zullo, and Dennis Spaulding of not only intimidating fellow officers but also the community as a whole. "The indictment further alleges that Spaulding and Zullo intimidated, harassed and humiliated members of the Latino community," said David Fein, United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut. With a quartet of New Haven’s finest accused of such horrific abuses of power and authority, one would hope Mayor Maturo would exercise respect, professionalism and integrity in dealing with the situation. What did the mayor have to say about the matter and how he would work with the Latino community to repair the relationship between them and the city? Nothing intelligent. Maturo responded by saying he "might have tacos" as his first step to repair relations with the New Haven Latino community. That’s right, a taco blast. Nothing like suggesting that all Latinos are Mexicans who like tacos, eh Mr. Mayor? For some reason, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy called Matruo's comment racially insensitive. They represent either a horrible lack of judgment or worse, an underlying insensitivity to our Latino community that is unacceptable. Being tired is no excuse. He owes an apology to the community, and more importantly, he needs to show what he's going to do to repair the damage he's done. And he needs to do it today,” the governor said. In his defense, Maturo pointed out that his city’s Latino population is relatively small. "We have a very small segment of Latinos in town," he said. "We have a very small segment of a lot of nationalities in our community." What that has to do with anything related to the case is unclear, as racist treatment of even one or two members of a race or ethnic group is a major problem. Maturo also tried to soften the stupidity of his remark by saying that he's visited Puerto Rico, and since he's Italian he may have spaghetti, then claiming his words were taken "out of context." Nice try, numb nuts…………
- Learning is fun. For example, isn’t it riveting to know that the raven-size creature long thought of as the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx, may have sported black feathers? That riveting find comes from a team led by researcher Ryan Carney, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University. Researchers theorized that the structures that held the black pigment may have strengthened wing feathers, perhaps helping Archaeopteryx fly. Archaeopteryx lived in what is now Bavaria in Germany (which means it loved beer, obviously) and was first discovered 150 years ago. It was a known carnivore sporting a blend of avian and reptilian features. Scientists have long identified the creature as something of an evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds, but once recent study questioned whether Archaeopteryx was a true bird or just one of many birdlike dinosaurs. In cases where a creature bears characteristics of both dinosaurs and birds, scientists often turn to the animals' feathers. "Being able to reconstruct the colors of feathers can help us gain more knowledge about the organisms and more responsibly reconstruct what they looked like," Carney said. He and an international team of scientists conducted research on Archaeopteryx’s feathers and determined that they were black. They also studied the color-generating structures within the creature's feather, known as melanosomes, and found that they "would have given the feathers additional structural support," Carney said. "This would have been advantageous during this early evolutionary stage of dinosaur flight." The Archaeopteryx feather was discovered in a limestone deposit in Germany in 1861, but scientists were initially unable to locate any melanosomes within the feather. It wasn’t until a more powerful type of scanning electron microscope was developed that the needed melanosome was found. "The third time was the charm, and we finally found the keys to unlocking the feather's original color, hidden in the rock for the past 150 million years," Carney said. In fact, the international team located patches of hundreds of melanosomes encased within the fossil. Each melanosome is about 1 millionth of a meter long and 250 billionths of a meter wide. That is less than a wavelength of visible light in width. In order to determine color, researchers compared the fossilized structures with those found in 87 species of living birds that represented four classes of feathers — black, gray, brown and ones found in penguins, which have unusually large melanosomes compared with other birds. "What we found was that the feather was predicted to be black with 95 percent certainty," Carney declared. One point the team did not address was what purpose the coloring of the wing may have served, although one theory is that black feathers may have helped the creature absorb sunlight for heat, acted as camouflage, served in courtship displays or assisted with flight. No matter the reason because as always, knowledge of any sort is power………
- Is the future bright in Libya now that Moammer Gadhafi is dead? Not according to Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of Libya's ruling National Transitional Council, it’s not. Abdul-Jalil warned on Sunday the country could be heading towards a "bottomless pit" after protesters stormed a government office in Benghazi while he was inside. His comments could be purely out of fear and panic after facing an angry mob demanding the resignation of the Libyan government. But where he sees a possible plummet into a bottomless pit, others might see a bold group of dissidents smashing windows and forcing their way into the NTC's local headquarters late on Saturday. The display made it clear that anger at the establishment has not abated merely because Gadhafi is no longer in power. The rioters did not seem impressed by the continued support of Western powers for the NTC, which makes sense because the unelected body has been slow to restore basic public services and most its members have direct links to Gadhafi. Shortly after the riot, Abdul-Jalil suspended the six representatives to the NTC from Benghazi, the main city in eastern Libya and appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gadhafi regime. The suspensions angered the group’s deputy head, Abdel-Hafiz Ghoga, who resigned in protest. Other delegates on the council blasted the decision and criticized the appointment of religious leaders to the council’s operations. The country's election law has also delayed for one week and will be made public on Jan. 28, said a government spokesman. Once it is put in place, the law will guide Libya as it puts together its first working parliament in more than four decades. But how can it go wrong with confident leaders like Abdul-Jalil? "We are going through a political movement that can take the country to a bottomless pit," he said. "There is something behind these protests that is not for the good of the country." Wrong, wrong, wrong. There is nothing bad about a quality riot…………
- Charlie Sheen has let go of plenty of things in the past 18 months or so - his main acting gig, his grasp on sanity, any remaining shreds of humility in his character and plenty more - but hasn’t found a way to release his anger toward the show that fired him and those who run it. He has gradually inched back toward sanity in recent months, but he ire toward “Two and a Half Men” and show creator Chuck Lorre still burns white hot. With the show moving on and Ashton Kutcher taking his place, Sheen is not impressed by what he has seen and believes the show should die a quick death. "I don't think they should go past this year," he remarked. "I don't think that (Kutcher's) working with the best writing because Chuck is doing too many shows." So it all comes back to Lorre, it would appear. Sheen made his comments while promoting his new series, “Anger Management,” but sounded less concerned with the new project than with laying out Lorre. "They deserve what I had for the first five years," he said of Kutcher and co-stars Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones. He believes the trio are working with subpar scripts and given the show’s lackluster ratings this season, maybe Sheen is correct. He still sounds bitter and unable let go and move on, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong. Perhaps he’s also hoping that the demise of his old show will give viewers all the more reason to watch his new series, which will probably be just as bad or worse because that’s simply how sitcoms work. They’re formulaic due to their half-hour time frame and are rarely original or interesting. One could also say the same about Sheen now that his crazy act has worn thin……….
No comments:
Post a Comment