- Characterized by many (including former mob boss and current author and speaker Michael Franzese) as one of the most accurate organized crime-themed films ever made, "Goodfellas" could be making a jump to the small screen soon. AMC, with a growing focus on its original series lineup that includes “Mad Men” and “The Walking Dead,” is developing a series based on Martin Scorsese's classic film with writer Nicholas Pileggi, who adapted the screenplay from his book "Wiseguy.” Pileggi will co-write the TV adaptation, which should lend an air of credibility to the project from the outset. Pileggi will team co-writer Jorge Zamacona and "Goodfellas" producer Irwin Winkler to produce the developing project. The film was released in 1990 with a solid cast that included Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Ray Liotta. Its story centered on the rise and fall of mobster Henry Hill (Liotta) from 1955 to 1980. Given that the movie was nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, and that Pesci walked away with the Academy Award for best supporting actor, it’s a minor miracle that no one has tried to crank out a bad sequel or TV show before now. It is extremely doubtful any of the movie’s key actors will be involved with the show in any way, other than a cameo at some point during its run. Still, AMC has a growing reputation for producing quality original series and with Goodfellas,” it is starting off with a solid concept…………..
- A cynic might say that Los Angeles Dodgers manager Don Mattingly isn't exactly sincere when he says he hopes that Milwaukee Brewers left fielder Ryan Braun is successful in appealing his positive test for a banned substance, and also that Mattingly has ulterior motives when he suggests that would "make sense" to revote on the MVP award, or strip Braun of the award if it is found that he indeed used a banned substance. Mattingly, after all, manages star center fielder Matt Kemp, who led the NL in homers (39) and RBIs (126) and was third in batting average (.324), and finished second in the MVP voting to Braun. "In the end, I hope the appeal it's something that was a mistake. I don't want to see anything bad come out of it for him," Mattingly said. Of stripping Braun of the award, Mattingly characterized the idea as logical. "I don't know. It makes sense though, a little bit. It's not 10 years later, it's a month later," he suggested. For the record, Braun tested positive for a banned substance near the end of the season and after news of his positive result leaked in December, Braun vehemently proclaimed his innocence and is appealing the result. Braun and his attorney will argue their case in front of a three-person panel of arbiters before the end of January, then await their ruling. He hit .332 with 33 home runs and 111 RBIs to win the award and received a boost from his team winning their first division title in nearly three decades. Mattingly believes his star should have won the award. "To me Matt was the best player in the game last year," Mattingly said. "Ryan had a great year too. But you guys (the media) always ask me about unwritten rules, about catchers and stuff like that. Then we have the unwritten rules about voting, because he wasn't on a winning team. You guys gotta get your unwritten rules together." Or they could just vote for your guy and then there would be no issues, eh Donnie Baseball………..
- Quashing revolts via hired help is an increasingly popular trend so far in 2012. Bashar al-Assad’s regime was accused of hiring and equipping gangs to shoot and kill protestors by a defector and now two Nigerian trade unions have accused their country's president of using "armed thugs" to attack protesters. "In a Mubarak-style response to the peoples' protests, the Jonathan administration brought into Abuja, thugs armed with various weapons including guns," the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria said in a joint statement late Tuesday night. The groups urged demonstrators to continue their nationwide strike against high fuel prices on Wednesday and beyond in spite of the crackdown. The unions likened President Goodluck Jonathan to former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, even though the Assad comparison fits more aptly. "Labour warns the Presidency that it will be held responsible for whatever atrocities these thugs commit," the statement said. "We call on Nigerians to continue the strikes, rallies and protests ... Wednesday ... and subsequent days until the Jonathan government listens to the voice of the Nigerian People." All in all, it’s an inspiring piece of prose and hopefully Nigerians will heed the call to continue the gas revolution. The government sparked the protests with its decision to remove fuel subsidies -- a move that resulted in more than doubled fuel prices in one of Africa’s poorest countries. At least 16 people have died and 205 have injured in just three days of protests, according to a tally collected by the Nigerian Red Cross Tuesday. Most of the violence has been centered in the southern state of Edo, with five people killed and 83 injured. One of the more violent incidents thus far occurred in Yobe state, where four people died Wednesday after two gunmen on a motorcycle stopped next to a car filling up at a gas station and opened fire on the occupants in the town of Potiskum. Gunmen also opened fire at an open-air bar in Potiskum, killing eight. Jonathan has attempted to strike a conciliatory tone in speeches on the need for ending the subsidies, telling Nigerians that the government would invest the money in the country's poor infrastructure. "My fellow Nigerians, the truth is that we're faced with two basic choices with regards to the management of the petroleum sector," Jonathan said. "Survive economically or continue with a subsidy regime that will continue to undermine our economy." That message isn't exactly resonating with the Nigerian people so far, it would seem…………
- Chaos is an appropriate word to describe the end of outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s time in office. Like any outgoing president or governor, Barbour was besieged by requests for pardons from convicted criminals. The thinking goes that a politician on his way out might be inclined to grant a pardon to a person because that politician no longer has to answer to his or her constituents. Barbour clearly had many such requests in front of him and caused a lot of drama Wednesday in Mississippi by approving full pardons for 199 people, including 14 convicted murderers, as his term in office ended. The mass pardoning led to a public and judicial uproar and the day ended with a judge issuing a temporary injunction forbidding the release of any more prisoners pardoned by Barbour. Prior to the injunction, four convicted murderers and a convicted armed robber were released Sunday, but they must contact officials on a daily basis as the matter is adjudicated. "We have ordered that they report to the Department of Corrections," said Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood. "It's a slap in the face to everyone in law enforcement and Gov. Barbour should be ashamed.” The freed felons will remain unfettered for at least 11 days, as a court hearing on the matter will be held January 23. Hood claimed Barbour violated Mississippi's Constitution because the pardon requests for some inmates were not published 30 days in advance, as required by law. Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Tomie Green (desperately seeking the missing “m” from his first name) agreed and issued the injunction, saying it appeared the pardons, including those for the four murderers, did not meet the 30-day requirement. David Gatlin, Joseph Ozment, Charles Hooker and Anthony McCray are the four murderers released and they were specifically cited in Green's order. All four men were serving life sentences and worked as inmate trusties at the governor's mansion. Hmm……ironic, no? Barbour defended his pardons by chiding critics for not understanding the clemency process. He argued that contrary to popular belief, most of the individuals were not currently jailed. "Approximately 90 percent of these individuals were no longer in custody, and a majority of them had been out for years," he said in a statement. "The pardons were intended to allow them to find gainful employment or acquire professional licenses as well as hunt and vote. My decision about clemency was based upon the recommendation of the Parole Board in more than 90 percent of the cases.” Keep selling that story, former Governor………
- The search for smaller, more convenient technology never stops and a new technique could vault the process forward substantially. Current computer hard drives use more than a million atoms to store a single bit and more than half a billion to store a byte, which is an eight-bit-long unit of code sufficient to write a single letter, as an example. Researchers at IBM Research in California may have unearthed a discovery to radically streamline that process. Lead investigator Andreas Heinrich and a team of tech researchers found that 12 atoms are all that's required to store a bit of computer code – a 1 or 0. That equates to just 96 atoms per byte, allowing for hard drives that store 100 times more information in the same amount of physical space. "We can put the neighboring bits at the same atomic spacing that the atoms have inside the bit," Heinrich said. "So, we can really pack them right next to each other." To go all Scrabble double-word score on everyone, the new storage technique is based on an unconventional form of magnetism called antiferromagnetism. There is a certain amount of irony in antiferromagnetism, as normal magnets used in today's hard drives and for everyday uses, are made of ferromagnetic materials. It is ironic because strong magnets can also be used to wipe out the contents of hard drives. In existing hard drives, the spins of atoms in these magnets align with each other. This provides an overall magnetic field that we can read as a bit — a 1 or 0, explained Heinrich. "But it is bad because the magnetic field from one bit will interfere with the magnetic field from the neighboring bit and so you can't pack these bits too close together because they'll just talk to each other," he said. Conversely, antiferromagnets cancel each other out, so there's no magnetic field emanating from them. Drives using antiferromagnets can be packed close together, allowing for the increased data storage density. Heinrich and his team began their experiment after an exploratory research quest to find out how small they could make a magnetic device and use it for classical data storage. With a scanning electron microscope, they built a data storage system up one atom at a time. Once a device reached eight atoms, the team found a bit was stable for a few seconds and "at 12 atoms it turns out that the classical concepts are so good that these magnetic structures hold their magnetic state for days," Heinrich said. "We said that's good enough to call it storage." Unfortunately, this so-called “stability” is found when the atoms are kept at a chilly minus 268 degrees Celsius, or 5 Kelvin. Operating at room temperature boosts the necessary number of atoms to 250. If scientists can find a way to mass produce the technology, the result could be terabyte hard drives the size of a pinhead or thumb drives that hold every movie you've ever seen………..
No comments:
Post a Comment