- NFL fans who suffer the slap in the face of not being able to watch their home team because not enough people were willing to pony up $100 for a seat in some far-flung corner of said team’s modern, taxpayer-funded stadium to ensure a sellout, it could be worse. As the league looks to maintain its TV blackout of home games that don't sell out, a previously unreported tape recording from the National Archives shows just how much worse it could be for fans if a thoroughly corrupt and megalomaniacal former president had his way. Some 40 years ago, President Richard Nixon presented an interesting offer to the NFL and commissioner Pete Rozelle? Allow playoff games to be televised in the hometown city, and the president would block any legislation requiring regular-season home games to be televised. The astonishing policy of the league at the time, at least by modern standards, was to black out all home games, whether they were sellouts or not. Nixon was an avid Washington Redskins fan and sympathized with Washington residents who couldn't watch Redskins games on TV. Even though Redskins games routinely sold out, there was no way for fans to watch them on television. In October 1972, Nixon's Justice Department informed Congress it was time for serious modification of the blackout policy "in the public interest." Two months later, the NFL maintained it would black out that season's playoff games, including the first-round Redskins-Green Bay Packers game in Washington. That precipitated a call from Nixon to Attorney General Richard G. Kleindienst in which the president told the attorney general to relay this message to NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle: "If you make the move, for these playoff games, we will block any -- any -- legislation to stop anything else. I will fight it personally and veto any -- any -- legislation. You can tell him that I will veto it. And we'll sustain the veto. ... Go all out on it and tell him he's got the president's personal commitment. I'm for pro football all the way, and I think it's not in pro football's interest to allow this to build up because before you know it, they'll have the damn Congress go all the way. We don't want Congress to go all the way. Showing just how much clout Rozelle wielded, he rejected the offer. Kleindienst responded by saying the administration would "seek legislation that is more in keeping with the public interest." Congress became involved the next year and passed legislation preventing blackouts of professional sports games that are sold out 72 hours beforehand. Nixon signed the bill into law in time for the 1973 season and the NFL is now the single-biggest television draw any sports-broadcasting network can have…………
- So, the situation in Syria can't get much worse, right? Sure, President Bashar al-Assad's troops have bombarded Homs for eight days and counting in an attempt to wipe out the opposition, but slaughtering your own people because they dare to oppose your regime is the worst it can get…..or not. Just when it seemed al-Assad’s regime had finally plumbed the depths of its soulless existence, word comes that government forces are using detained civilians as human shields, placing them on tanks in Homs to prevent the opposition Free Syrian Army from fighting back. Substantiating those claims is difficult by Assad’s regime has heavily restricted access to foreign media, but does anyone seriously doubt that the Syrian government would commit such atrocities? Sunday was the eighth consecutive day of shelling of the city by the military, with three civilians killed in the day’s bombardment of the Baba Amr neighborhood. Arab League members, who have done little to intervene in the conflict thus far, met in Cairo on Sunday to discuss its next steps on Syria. Nabil el-Araby, the league's secretary general, proposed ducking any substantial involvement by suggesting that the United Nations deploy a joint force of U.N. and Arab League military experts on the ground as a peacekeeping force. Even Pope Benedict XVI weighed in on the situation during a message at St. Peter's Square. "I renew a pressing appeal to put an end to violence and bloodshed," the pope said He called on "everyone, and above all the political authorities in Syria, to favor the paths of dialogue, reconciliation and commitment to peace. It 's urgent to respond to the legitimate aspirations of the various components of the nation, as well as the wishes of the international community concerned about the welfare of the entire region.” In truth U.N. draft resolutions (currently in the process of being submitted to the U.N. General Assembly) and strongly worded denouncements by the pope will not resolve the conflict. The world railing against human rights abuses will change nothing and unless an outside party steps in and at least arms the Syrian opposition so it can have a chance, the battle will rage on and it will continue to be bloody. Tales of wounded people bleeding to death in the streets because they can't get medical attention and snipers picking off civilians running for cover will continue and the death toll will continue to climb past the already-staggering estimate of 7,000 by human rights groups. One can only hope Assad some day finds himself used as a human shield as well……….
- Science, consider your world rocked. The belief that flight stability is best achieved with a relatively even distribution of weight, long held as fact in the physics world, have been challenged by a study conducted by scientists at New York University. The NYU research team studied conditions needed to achieve stable hovering in mechanical flyers and created a collection of pyramid-shaped "bugs" constructed from paper that hovered when placed in an oscillating column of air, replicating the effect of flapping wings. In order to determine which types of structures best maintained their balance, the researchers crafted both low center-of-mass bugs with a weight below the pyramid and top-heavy bugs with a weight above the pyramid. Surprisingly, the top-heavy bugs hovered stably while those with a lower center of mass could not maintain their balance. The logical conclusion is that hovering in midair is easier for structures that are top-heavy. The top-heavy crafts in the study ejected swirls of air ejected from the far side of the body, which automatically adjust to keep it upright. "It works somewhat like balancing a broomstick in your hand," study co-author Jun Zhang said. "If it begins to fall to one side, you need to apply a force in this same direction to keep it upright." Based on the findings, subsequent projects could lead to stable and maneuverable flapping-wing robots, something that would clearly make the world a much better place……….
- If you have been doubting the power of protests, now would be a very good time to stop. The slow fizzling out of the Occupy movement may suggest that protestors can make a lot of noise and yet affect very little actual change, but reaching back in time a few years, an example to the contrary emerges. Thanks to the persistence of protestors involved in an anti-war demonstration in Chicago in 2003, the city will be paying out more than $6 million to settle a class-action lawsuit involving arrests in conjunction with the protest. As the city prepares for the upcoming G8 and NATO summits, the $6.2 million settlement could have implications on how the protestors certain to show up for the events are handled. A federal judge gave the city plenty of inspiration to settle the case by denouncing the "idiocy" of the city's policies on protests. The protests took place one day after the United States began bombing Iraq. One day later, thousands of people took to the streets in Chicago to protest and seized control of Michigan Avenue and Lake Shore Drive. Police told protestors on each street that they had to turn back, but there was nowhere to go. Bottled up and full of anti-war anger, protestors soon began clashing with police and nearly 700 people were arrested or detained by police that night. A lawsuit followed and despite the inevitable sloth-like speed of the American judicial system, the case finally wound its way to a federal judge who found the actions of officers arbitrary. Allowing the march by without warning beginning to arrest protestors who were forbidden from leaving made no sense to the court. "The chilling effect is, it had the potential, and in some cases it did, scare people from coming out and ever protesting again," said plaintiff's attorney Joey Mogul. Under the terms of the settlement, those arrested and charged that night would receive up to $15,000, those arrested but not charged could get as much as $8,750 and anyone who was simply detained on the street for several hours would be eligible for up to $500. Sounds like a decent day’s work for a civic-minded citizen. This is verified proof that protests really can get you paid………
- On Valentine’s Day weekend, could there be two more appropriate movies at the top of the box office earnings list? On the one hand is “The Vow,” a movie about a woman who wakes up from a coma and can't remember much about her former life, including her own fiancé, who tries to win her heart all over again. Fronted by Channing Tatum and Amy Adams, that movie made $41.7 million in its opening weekend, undoubtedly fueled by scores of dudes taking their special ladies to see a true romantic tale. On the other hand is “Safe House,” featuring Denzel Washington as a blacklisted former spy wanted by the American government and on a crusade for revenge against those who have wronged him. If that doesn’t scream romance, then nothing does. “Safe House” debuted in second place with $39.3 million for a strong start. A quartet of newcomers occupied the top four spots as “Journey 2: The Mysterious Island” finished third for the weekend with $27.5 million and “Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (in 3D)” landed in fourth place with $23 million. “Phantom Menace” technically may not be a new movie, but the 3-D version was in its first weekend of release. Those four new films combined to knock last weekend’s top film, “Chronicle,” all the way down to fifth in its second weekend following a 44-percent decline and $12.3 million in domestic earnings to raise its cumulative total to $40.2 million. “The Woman in Black” also dropped precipitously, plummeting 51 percent for a sixth-place finish with $10.3 million and $35.4 million and counting through two weeks. Liam Neeson kicked enough ass for “The Grey” to rank seventh with $5.1 million and a three-week total of $42.9 million. “Big Miracle” was anything but miraculous in its second weekend, ranking eighth with $3.9 million for a two-week total of $13.2 million. Limited release continued to be kind to George Clooney’s “The Descendents,” with an additional $3.5 million going into the film’s coffers for a 13-week haul of $70.7 million. “Underworld Awakening” completed the top 10 with $2.5 million and has earned $58.9 million domestically in four weeks of release. “Red Tails” (No.11), “One for the Money” (No. 12), “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” (No. 15) and “Man on a Ledge” (No. 16) all dropped out of the top 10 from last weekend………..
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