Saturday, June 02, 2012

Germs in offices, strippers and rape victims united and college football's top cartel

- Guns N' Roses are easy to hate, both as a group and as individuals. Hating them just became even easier. As their tour of the United Kingdom wraps up, GNR have run out of tolerance for anyone who is willing to pay absurdly bloated ticket prices for a bastardized, diluted version of a once great rock act but who also has an affinity for said act’s iconic former guitarist. Slash would be the guitarist in question and during the band's gig at London's O2 Arena Thursday night, a member of the audience was forced to remove his t-shirt and go bare-chested under his jacket. When asked why he was shirtless, GNR fan James Revell said he was told to remove his top because no one was allowed in wearing a Slash T-shirt.
A security guard confirmed that they were told by that band’s management not to allow anyone into the O2 Arena who was wearing a Slash T-shirt. Those who had one on were asked to remove it and if they refused, they were turned away. "I felt very angry because I was looking after my little brother at the time and felt as though my freedom to wear what I want had been taken away from me, however I did not react angrily as I didn't want to spoil the show for him," Revell said the next day. "I believe they asked me to do this because Axl Rose has some problem with Slash and if he saw me wearing the shirt he might have stormed off stage."
While it’s doubtful that Rose, in his beer-and-fried-chicken-induced bender that he seems to roll through life in, would notice a fan in the cheap seats with a Slash shirt on, maybe Revell has a point. So how did GNR handle the fans it so callously treated on their way in the door? By showing up more than an hour late.  Thankfully, the charade ended with the final show of the tour at the O2 Arena Friday night and now GNR can go and be assholes to another corner of the world…………


- Have a yearning to invest in a troubled military state’s even more troubled electric power system? If so, Myanmar's government has a proposition for you. The regime has invited foreign firms to invest in the country's power for the first time as it grasps for straws to solve dire electricity shortages that led to a week of protests recently. To extend an open invitation to the world, the Electric Power Ministry took out advertisements in state-run newspapers Friday and Saturday that read, "Invitation to private sector for electricity production and distribution." The ads pleaded with local and foreign companies to help the government "distribute electricity in the whole country as quickly as possible." Power shortages have plagued Myanmar for more than a decade, ironic because the country has plentiful natural gas supplies. Its poor power distribution infrastructure has never been fully developed and now that deficient power grid is a major problem because demonstrators across Myanmar took to the streets for a week late last month when they remained without power for an extended period of time. Technically Myanmar is now under the control of a reformist government that has taken power after a half-century of military rule, but the military’s influence remains a factor. Sadly, last month’s protests were peaceful and the government’s response was equally benign. Officials made an uncharacteristic appeal for understanding and explained that rationing was required to cope with greater demand and decreased supply during the hot summer months. Some blame was also placed on ethnic Kachin rebels for blowing up several electricity pylons that reduced power supplies in several areas, but that didn’t exactly solve the problem. Joint ventures Myanmar has signed several other countries for electricity generation haven’t done much good either and now begging is apparently the plan………..


- The workplace is a filthy place. With break rooms, office kitchens, conference rooms and scores of employees trucking in the germs they have picked up from their children, spouses and friends, the office is a virtual biohazard. There are hundreds of species of bacteria on your desk and now, science has proven it. A team led by researcher Scott Kelley, an associate professor of biology at San Diego State University, sampled offices in three U.S. cities. The team identified at least 500 species of bacteria in the offices and not surprisingly, found that men's offices tended to be germier than women's. There was no East Coast-West Coast beef involved, as offices in New York City and San Francisco had similar types of bacteria. However, the granola-eating, tree-hugging hippies in the Golden State tended to have offices that were less contaminated than those in the Big Apple, the researchers said. As bad as the entire “500 types of bacteria” sounds, Kelley and his crew insist the biohazards in the average office are nothing to panic about. "You shouldn't be worried in your own office — it's you; it's just a reflection of who you are," said study referring to the bacteria you find on your typical desk or keyboard. These bacteria are "with us all the time, and they don’t make us sick," Kelley said. His point is fair, as many bacteria are harmless and actually help maintain human health. In that case, what is the point of the study? According to Kelley, the idea is to allow scientists to spot out-of-the norm bacteria that cause health problems now that the various bacteria present in buildings with generally healthy people have been identified. These dangerous bacteria might turn up when something in the building changes, such as the air vents. A side effect of the study is shining a light on how little is known about the diversity of bacteria in environments such as offices, seeing as humans spend about 90 percent of their lives indoors. To learn all about these environments, Kelley and colleagues sampled a total of 90 offices from buildings in New York City, San Francisco and Tucson, Ariz. They ventured into the filthy worlds of employees' chairs, phones, desktops, computer mice and keyboards. A thorough analysis of the bacterial DNA to identify the types and amounts of bacteria present turned up their findings, which showed high amounts of bacteria from human skin or the nasal, oral or intestinal cavities. Office chairs and phones had the most bacteria and men had about 10 to 20 percent more bacteria in their offices, on average, than women. The study wasn’t exactly an altruistic one, as it was funded in part by Clorox Corporation. What’s next for Kelley and his crew? They plan to look at the types of molds present in offices. Sounds like a lot of fungi, er, fun………


- Illinois strippers may soon be bumping and grinding on each other and filthy brass poles for a good cause in the near future. A new measure passed by the state legislature seeks to pair two extremely unlikely groups: coke-addled skanks with daddy issues who are stripping their way through law school (otherwise known as feeding a nasty drug habit) and rape and sexual assault victims. How would this work? By placing an annual surcharge on strip clubs that have live nude dancing and permit alcohol, that’s how. The measure would be applied to businesses, which could pay $3 for every person who enters or pay a graduated amount based on their sales. Either way, that cost would eventually find its way to the pathetic degenerates who actually patronize strip clubs and consume the horrible food and overpriced beverages served in such establishments. In turn, that could mean less $1 bills to stuff into the G-String of Bambi, Destiny or Ginger. But hey, the money would be going to victims of the most heinous crimes known to man that don’t actually involve someone dying, so there is a positive. The measure passed the house on a 92-23 vote Thursday and now goes to Gov. Pat Quinn for approval. The fate of stripper skanks, skeevy strip club patrons, greasy strip club owners and sexual assault victims is now in your hands, Gov. Quinn. Act accordingly and then apply plenty of hand sanitizer……………


- The Southeastern Conference has dominated college football for the past six years – longer if you ask SEC honks. Those who run the conference that has won six consecutive Bowl Championship Series titles want to keep it that way as the scumbags who run the BCS inch toward a proposed four-team playoff. The plan calls for the sport’s top four teams to square off to determine a true national champion for the first time and the SEC wants to make sure it seizes as many playoff spots as possible. To that end, the conference took an official stance on the playoff proposal as school presidents and athletic directors voted unanimously to support having the four best teams play for the national title. In other words, they have no use for a plan that includes ties to conference champions. "If we're going to go to a four-team playoff, which I anticipate we are, it needs to be, and the fans would expect us to provide, the best four teams in the country," SEC commissioner Mike Slive said. "And if people aren't happy with the current system of how we rank them, then let's go back and look at the system that creates one through four. I'm very open to looking at how we would do that.” Slive obviously isn't open to any plan that doesn’t include multiple teams from his conference being involved in a playoff system, but he obviously can't admit that. He has plenty of support from the SEC’s presidents and athletic directors. "I don't think that vote was taken because it's going to be best for this league," Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley said. "It may turn out that way, but it all goes in cycles. I think the thought is if you're going to have a playoff, you want the four best teams.” Also included in the SEC’s idea for the playoff is having the semifinal games played within the current bowl structure and have the championship game bid out separately as a stand-alone game that would be college football’s version of the NFL's Super Bowl. Slive college football’s other conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will meet June 13 and June 20 in Chicago to likely formalize details of the proposed playoff and pass their suggestions along to the Presidential Oversight Committee, which will meet June 26 in Washington, D.C., to finalize the postseason plan. That plan would then go into place after the 2014 regular season……….

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