- Usually, it’s a reckless company or law-flouting citizen dumping garbage into a river or other body of water. Manufacturing plants or IQ-deprived ass hats who fail to realize or recognzie the degree to which their actions affect the environment is one thing, but now you’re getting in on the action, city officials in Memphis? Sure enough, city officials are in the process of explaining to the public exactly why they were “forced” to send sewage into the Mississippi River. The official explanation is that a broken piece of equipment forced them to make the sewage dump. Just how much crap are they pumping into the mighty Mississippi? About 694 gallons per second, that’s how much. Yes, 3 million gallons of water flow past Memphis every second and 694 gallons seems like a small drop, but it’s a small drop of sewage. "It's very unusual and it's very unfortunate, but at this point there is little we can do," said Dan Gilliom, the city's public works director. "There's no pumps operating." It’s not as if this sewage is somehow treated and therefore harmless because health officials have already posted signs in the immediate area warning people to avoid contact with the water because it is contaminated and may pose a health risk. The problem originated Saturday during routine, scheduled maintenance at the Maynard C. Stiles wastewater treatment facility. A careless worker broke a shut-off valve broke and flooded all three pump motors, short-circuiting the system and shutting down the plant. Faced with a non-functioning plant, city officials claimed they had no other choice but to activate the bypass system and send untreated wastewater into the river. "In order to reduce the damage to Memphis residents and businesses by wastewater backing up into structures and premises," Gilliom said. Crews are working around the clock to fix the issue and officials expect it to be resolved soon. Thankfully, the city’s drinking water does not come from the river and is safe from this bout with contamination…………
- Brace yourself for some shocking entertainment news, world Lindsay Lohan is done partying. Really. She promises. Her promises may not mean much, but Lohan sat down with Matt Lauer that will air on the “Today” show Thursday and tried desperately to convince Lauer and all who would watch the piece that she really has changed. "That's not my thing anymore," she said about partying and clubbing. "I went out, actually, a few months ago with a friend. And I was so uncomfortable. Not because I felt tempted, just because it was just the same thing that it always was before. And it just wasn't fun for me. I've become more of a homebody, and I like that." Her point is a fair one because a person doesn’t need to go to a club and be a part of the scene in order to score some quality blow and do a few rails off the bathroom mirror. Ecstasy, pot and the Colombian nose candy aren’t exclusively found in clubs, so many Lohan can give up the party scene. Her words about settling down are tougher to take after her Playboy spread was a smash hit to the point that Hugh Hefner is speculating about a second appearance in the skin mag. To her credit, Lohan is at least saying the right things about having to prove that she’s cleaned up her life. "I still need to go through the process of proving myself," she said. "You know, with SNL, being on time, being, you know, keeping my – can't say the word – but stuff together." The SNL reference was an allusion to her gig hosting “Saturday Night Live” this weekend. Regardless of the reviews of her performance there, nothing will carry as much weight as her positive evaluation from L.A. Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner, who told Lohan last week, "You seem to be getting your life back on track." So there’s further proof of how easy it is to fool the American judicial system……….
- New leader, new regime and new approach in North Korea? Probably not, but there are positive signs coming from Pyongyang pertaining to the North’s much-criticized nuclear program. North Korea agreed on Wednesday to stop nuclear tests, uranium enrichment and long-range missile launches and even allow checks by nuclear inspectors. The stance is a direct about-face in policy and will open a path for resuming long-stalled disarmament talks. Amazingly, the breakthrough was even announced simultaneously by the U.S. State Department and North Korea's official news agency. Maybe the North is simply Jedi mind-tricking the rest of the world into backing off sanctions against it, but the concession is still enough to resume six-nation nuclear negotiations about Pyongyang’s nuclear program. Critics were quick to point out that North Korea has backtracked repeatedly on past deals, but those were under the heavy-handed leadership of dictator Kim Jong-Il. His son, Kim Jong-Un, is now in power and the political optimist might contend that the new guy will be more amenable and less hostile than his old man. If the announcement is merely a ploy to curry international favor, it’s working. In conjunction with Wednesday’s announcement, the U.S. State Department said it would move ahead with a proposed 240,000 metric-ton food aid package requested by North Korea and that more aid could be agreed to based on continued need. Saying it was changing its stance was merely the first step in the process and some doubt still exists as to whether nuclear inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency will be welcomed and allowed to do their job when they visit the Yongbyon nuclear complex to verify the moratorium on uranium enrichment has been enforced. "The DPRK, upon request by the U.S. and with a view to maintaining positive atmosphere for the DPRK-U.S. high-level talks, agreed to a moratorium on nuclear tests, long-range missile launches, and uranium enrichment activity at Yongbyon and allow the IAEA to monitor the moratorium on uranium enrichment while productive dialogues continue," North Korea's official KCNA news agency said in its announcement. "Today's announcement represents a modest first step in the right direction," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained to a Congressional panel. IAEA inspectors were pulled out of North Korea in 2009, but the agency insisted it was ready to return. Food aid to the North was also halted in 2009 amid a dispute over transparency and monitoring, compounding food shortages in the country. Talks or no talks, the odds of North Korea dropping its nuclear program entirely are miniscule. Miracles do happen, but abandoning one’s nuclear programs for good in exchange for economic and diplomatic incentives just seems to be an über-long shot. This is the same North that held two nuclear test blasts -- in 2006 and 2009 -- and later disclosed a uranium enrichment program. If this new North Korea is for real, it vaults Iran well ahead of the pack in the ongoing race to spark World War III………….
- Barack Obama is cutting funding to NASA, fading Republican presidential candidate New Gingrich dreams openly of establishing a 13,000-person moon colony and now Playboy wants in on the outer space race. If Gingrich ever succeeds in creating his moon colony, Hugh Hefner wants to be ready to capitalize by taking his special brand of skank-ery to outer space. In the magazine’s March issue, Hefer urges his pervy readers, er, subscribers to imagine a Playboy Club in space. With entrepreneurs like Sir Richard Branson blazing the trail for private flights to space, Playboy feels like those lonely space travelers will need some eye candy to enjoy while traveling beyond Earth’s orbit. To formulate its plan, Playboy has teamed up with artist Thomas Tenery, Branson’s Virgin Galactic and several scientists to craft a vision of a Playboy Club in outer space. The space skank club would include a zero-gravity, trampoline-lined dance club, fine dining, bungee jumping, space “farms” for food, and a casino with “human roulette.” “The Playboy Club in space will be on a station in orbit, like a cruise ship,” Playboy writers A.J. Baime and Jason Harper wrote in the piece. “Orbiting Earth is one idea, but it could also travel around other celestial bodies.” Yes, I’m sure everyone reading the piece (because that’s why they subsrcibe, after all) will be thinking about celestial bodies. Complete with drawings by artist Thomas Tenery, the issue is now on news stands………….
- Tiger Woods remains a shell of his former self on the golf course. Off the course? He may or may not be plowing through a nonstop parade of skanks, club promoters, porn stars and Perkins hostesses the way he once did now that he’s single. However, there is no disputing that his golf game is still fatally flawed and he hasn’t won a sanctioned PGA Tour event since that fateful Thanksgiving night in 2009 when he bounced his SUV off a tree and fire hydrant while fleeing his (allegedly) 9-iron-wielding then-wife Elin. Injuries and multiple surgeries have also set him back and those closest to him have found themselves pushed out of his inner circle. Some of those people have looked to cash in on their time with Woods and perhaps no one more so than his former swing coach, Hank Haney. Haney has written a book, The Big Miss," about his time coaching Woods. The book will be released March 27, a week before the Masters. In it, Haney argued that Woods' quest to break Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 major championships weighed heavily on the former best player the world to the point that it took away from Woods’ career and happiness. He also wrote extensively about Woods' extreme workouts and his fascination with the military. "Tiger did two tandem parachute jumps, engaged in hand-to-hand combat exercises, went on four-mile runs wearing combat boots, and did drills in a wind tunnel," Haney wrote of a four-day stint doing special ops training at Fort Bragg, N.C. Haney shared another story of being in Woods’ home when the golfer returned from a four-mile run wearing Army combat boots. The most surprising claim from the book, at least from the excerpts released so far, is that Woods seriously considered leaving golf to become a Navy SEAL at the height of his career. "I didn't know how he'd go about it, but when he talked about it, it was clear he had a plan," wrote Haney. "I thought, wow, here is Tiger Woods, greatest athlete on the planet, maybe the greatest athlete ever, right in the middle of his prime, basically ready to leave it all behind for a military life." Woods’ father, Earl, was a Green Beret. When media members ignored an attempted ban on questions about the book during Woods’ press conference for this weekend’s Honda Classic, he became extremely confrontation and refused to answer the queries. Instead, he attempted to bully reporters and dismissed their questions. He definitely does not look or sound like a guy on the verge of regaining his former glory………
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