- Does anyone else get the impression that Ohio State University president E. Gordon Geek, er, Gee might want to stop talking for a while, maybe sit the next few plays out? Being the president of one of the world’s largest universities typically puts one in a position to give quite a few speeches to groups of varying sizes and interviews as well, but Gee doesn’t seem to handle either very well and he continues cramming his foot so far down his throat that he needs one of the fine proctologists from OSU’s vaunted medical school to help remove it. His most recent offensive remarks prior to this past week came in November 2010, when he boasted that Ohio State's football schedule didn't include teams on a par with the "Little Sisters of the Poor." He was looking to criticize schools like Boise State, which have a better football team than OSU but don’t play in the mighty Big Ten. Gee’s comments were both idiotic and inaccurate because he clearly knew nothing about the schedules of non-BCS teams like Boise State and TCU. He also offended the real Little Sisters of the Poor and sent a personal check to the group’s northwest Ohio chapter and followed up with a visit to the nuns months later. Gee continued to speak without thinking on Wednesday while talking to an audience in Columbus about the challenges of coordinating the university's 18 divisions such as independent schools and colleges. "When we had these 18 colleges all kind of floating around, they were kind of like PT Boats, they were shooting each other," Gee said. "It was kind of like the Polish army or something. I have no idea what it was." Umm….uh……oops. Sure enough, the Chicago-based Polish American Congress quickly condemned Gee’s remarks. "The Polish American Congress is shocked by the slanderous analogy used by Ohio State University President Gordon Gee and his slur on the military of a nation that has been fighting valiantly and effectively alongside the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan," the group said in its statement released Thursday. "We are dismayed by the bigotry and ignorance expressed by the President of such a large and prominent American university." What did Gee have to offer in his defense? Not much. He issued an email statement that didn’t exactly make anyone forget that in the aftermath of his initial remarks, he said, "Oh, never mind, who did I embarrass now? I'll have to raise money for Poland now.” It’s OK not to talk, president Gee(k)……….
- Has anyone heard this before: a major medical breakthrough with potentially wide-ranging implications and already a pharmaceutical company has licensed the technology? The discovery of a hormone that is secreted by muscles during exercise and boosts the amount of energy the body burns, a finding that could lay the basis for new drugs for obesity, diabetes, and other diseases is just such a breakthrough and Boston-based Ember Therapeutics has managed to lock it up. The company is already working to develop a form of the hormone that could be used as a drug that would mimic some of the benefits of exercise. Yes, mimic the benefits for exercise for those too lazy and undisciplined to actually exercise. Bruce Spiegelman, a cell biologist at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, led the research that discovered the horome. Spiegelman has done multiple studies on the formation and nature of “brown fat,” a type of fat that burns energy rather than storing it. He and his colleagues discovered that the hormone, which they named irisin, alters ordinary “white” fat and makes it resemble brown fat while increasing energy expenditure. By dosing obese, pre-diabetic mice with greater levels of the hormone over a short period, researchers saw slight weight loss, increased energy expenditure and improvements in insulin resistance, a risk factor for diabetes. “It’s a hormone made by muscle, put into the blood, and with exercise it increases,” Spiegelman said. “It seems to embody some of what exercise is known to do, which is have an antidiabetes, antiobesity effect.” Left unanswered by the study is how the hormone creates its positive effects. Ember Therapeutics is working to optimize the hormone to create an experimental drug that might help fight various diseases by activating brown fat, which would obviously make it a lot of money. Scientists responding to Spiegelman’s find have also questioned why exercise, which already increases energy expenditure, also cause an increase in the kind of fat that burns energy. He hopes to answer those and other key questions with additional research. For now, read about his findings in the latest edition of the journal Nature……….
- The dream of a parliament that isn't just a ginormous puppet for The Man is one step closer in Kazakhstan. Voters in the oil-rich Central Asian nation showed the sort of voter dedication Americans wouldn’t dare expend the energy to even think about by casing ballots Sunday (yes, Sunday) in elections that are expected to minimally expand democratic representation in parliament's rubber-stamp lower house. President Nursultan Nazarbayev has an iron grip on the lower house, with all seats currently occupied by his Nur Otan party. Despite a 2009 election law gives at least two seats to the party with the second-highest number of votes even if it does not receive the 7 percent share that is the threshold for proportional allotment of seats, Nazarbayev’s government has either disqualified or effective neutered all opposition parties that were most likely to pose a challenge to it. The leading contender for Sunday’s election to grab those two seats in parliament was the pro-business Ak Zhol party, which avoids confrontation with the government. Any push for change in Kazakhstan are typically mitigated by economic prosperity and stability on the basis of its vast reserves of oil, gas and minerals. However, it’s the perception of the outside world Kazakhstan that its leaders are looking to improve and transitioning to a multiparty parliament will serve to improve its democratic credentials would be valuable in boosting its international image. "This is a great test for us, we have more than 1,000 observers here from around the world. I am sure that the people of Kazakhstan will make the right choice for their future, for our development, and a peaceful life in our common home," Nazarbayev said. There has been an outburst of discontent and violence in the weeks leading up to the election, including a long-term protest in the town of Zhanaozen by oil workers striking for better pay. Many potential voters expressed optimism that the election would bring about change and with more than 9 million people are eligible to vote, turnout was expected to be high. In that sense Kazakhstan is already well ahead of at least one of the countries whose respect it wants to earn, no names named (cough…..United States….cough)…………
- The Dallas Mavericks thought they were getting the best sixth man in the NBA, a versatile 6’10 point forward who could handle the ball, play inside or outside and bolster the reigning league champions as they sought to repeat. Instead, they acquired a wishy-washy, half-interested bench player averaging just 6.6 points and 4.8 boards in a career-low 19.8 minutes per game and someone who wasn’t even sold on playing at all this season until his wife talked him into it. As he and his new teammates prepare to play the team that traded him away, the L.A. Lakers, Lamar Odom revealed that was "real close" to taking a basketball sabbatical for one season as possibly longer. After being included in a failed three-team trade that would have sent him to New Orleans and brought Chris Paul to the Lakers, Odom demanded the Lakers move him somewhere else. Mix in the July murder of his 24-year-old cousin and a fatal car accident days later that killed a pedestrian after the car he was riding in as a passenger collided with a motorcycle, and Odom was on the verge of quitting basketball all together. "My wife talked me out of it,” he said. "Cause I was asking myself: 'Was I mentally prepared to play? If I didn't play well, was I mentally prepared to help the team?' I had thought, 'Maybe I need a year.' Because of the lockout, I thought, 'Maybe somebody's sending me a sign that I needed this time off.'” Considering his play so far this season and his admitted struggles to adapt to his new team, maybe a year off wouldn’t have been such a bad thing. "I thought it was good time for me to take a step back," Odom said of his sabbatical idea. Asked if he imagined it as just a one-season break, Odom added: "I don't know. 'Cause who knows where time away is gonna take you? You never know." Interesting philosophy on basketball and life, to be sure………..
- Marky Mark reigns at the box office once more. His days of bench-pressing cinder blocks and dancing in puddles in abandoned warehouses as a rising rapper may be gone, but Mark Wahlberg’s days of fronting successful films are alive and well. His latest, “Contraband,” debuted this weekend and was the top earner at the box office with $24.1 million. Those domestic earnings were enough to beat the revived, 3-D edition of “Beauty and the Beast,” which came back to life and brought in $18.4 million domestically. Both newcomers edged out “Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol,” which landed in third place with $11.5 million and has scored $186.7 million in domestic earnings through five weeks. The unimpressive duo of Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah led newbie “Joyful Noise” to a fourth-place finish, just behind “Ghost Protocol” with $11.3 million in its first weekend of release. Robert Downey Jr.’s “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows” rounded out the top five with a total of $8.4 million to boost its cumulative tally to $170 million and counting. Last weekend’s top film fell precipitously, with “The Devil Inside” dropping to sixth in the space of just one week. A 76-percent decline will do that, but “Devil Inside” did make $7.9 million and raised its two-week total to $46.2 million. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” finished seventh with $6.8 million, boosting its one-month earnings total to $87.9 million domestically. Eighth place belonged to “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked” with a $5.8 million weekend. The animated film has garnered $118.8 million in five weeks of release. “War Horse” galloped to a ninth-place finish on the strength of $5.6 million in earnings and has scored $65.7 million in one month. “The Iron Lady” made the biggest jump of the weekend, rising 16 spots to finish tenth and make $5.4 million in the process. Falling out of the top 10 from last weekend were “We Bought a Zoo (No. 11), “The Adventures of Tintin” (No. 12), “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier” (No. 13) and “The Darkest Hour” (No. 17)…………
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