- What the f**k? This is f**cking bullsh*t! Middleboro,
Mass. is now profanity-unfriendly after the town voted overwhelmingly to impose a $20 fine for swearing in
public. At its Monday night meeting, the town council debated a proposal to
pass an ordinance to fine profane language with a $20 ticket. Who was the
puritanical, 1950s-minded idiot who proposed this piece of sh*t idea? Mimi
Duphily, a store owner and former town selectwoman who hangs flower baskets as
part of the beautification of Middleboro, the Middleboro Business Association
and police chief asked nearly 300 people at the meeting to approve their
proposal. Some citizens rightly pointed out that the proposed law is Big
Brother/Big Parent in excess and voted against the proposal, but most residents
liked the idea. Maybe it was hearing Duphily’s whining that won them over. "They'll
sit on the bench and yell back and forth to each other with the foulest
language. It's just so inappropriate," she lamented. The “they” she
referred to were the clichéd “young people,” who are clearly responsible for
the world going to hell – sorry, heck – in a handbasket, at least in the eyes
of backwards-thinking old people stuck in the Great Depression. The law is now
in effect and police said public profanity will be treated like public drinking
or littering, meaning offenders will receive a citation they have the right to
appeal. “It's not going to be just someone walking down street dropping the
f-bomb, it's going to be when you're actually making it uncomfortable for
everyone else,” Duphily said. No, YOU’RE the one making in uncomfortable for
everyone, Mimi……….
- Everyone’s favorite song-and-dance teen drama is in a
state of upheaval, but at least one aspect of the “Glee” existence isn't going
to change. While the graduation of most of the Fox hit series’ main characters,
questions linger about which cast members will be back and for how many
episodes this coming season. Fan favorites have graduated from fictional McKinley High School and series creator
Ryan Murphy has been vague about who will be back and how often the returnees
will appear. In spite of that uncertainty, the show will continue its unusual
tradition of sending a contingent of actors, including stars Lea Michele and
Cory Monteith, to Comic-Con. Comic-Con is the annual Gathering of the
Nerds in which pale, pasty, basement-dwelling losers whose lives are consumed
by Dungeons and Dragons and their graphic novels and who haven't actually made
physical contact with a member of the opposite sex to whom they are not
related. A show based on glee club renditions of pop music hits doesn’t seem
like the best match, but “Glee” will send a contingent to the convention in San
Diego for the fourth consecutive year. Darren Criss, Kevin McHale, Jenna
Ushkowitz and Naya Rivera, along with Glee co-creator/executive
producer Brad Falchuk, will join Michele and Monteith for a panel discussion on
July 14. “This was the first year our cast has not gone out on tour, so
Ryan and I thought we’d let them have some well-deserved time off,”
Falchuk said in a statement. “But everyone wanted to be there, and we couldn’t
be happier that Glee is returning to the convention where we feel it all
started.” Fox previously left the show off its list for the convention, but
Falchuk and the actors will be there and almost certainly have to field plenty
of questions about what the cast will look like for the new season…………
- Wooly mammoths were awesome. Even though none of us were
around when they were on account of their species dying off more than 10,000 years ago, with a
lingering dwarf population lasting on the Wrangel Islands until 4,000 years ago,
no one can dispute the awesomeness of bigger, shaggy elephants with huge tusks.
So it’s about time science did research to find out exactly what happened to
these furry giants so many years ago. A team led by Glen MacDonald of the
University of California Los Angeles delved into the gradual disappearance of
these remarkable pachyderms and conducted a large-scale analysis of 1,323 wooly
mammoth samples and numerous woodland sample records. Their samples dated to
45,000 years ago in the region called "Beringia," which during the
last Ice Age included a land bridge stretching from Siberia to Alaska. "Mammoths
were open vegetation-adapted with diets dominated by graminoids and soft-shoots
of selected woody plants such as willow. Conifer trees, although found in the
stomachs of some woolly mammoths, are not nutritious browse. Birch (Betula) can
be toxic to cecal digesters, such as mammoths, which lack a rumen for
detoxification. While grasses and willows were plentiful, birch was less
abundant,” study authors wrote. “In the north (from 60,000 to 25,000 years
ago), with relatively abundant grass and willow cover, may represent an
environment closest to the idealized mammoth steppe.” When an ice age and the
subsequent warm-up led to poisonous birch and peatlands, difficult terrain
and lousy food, mammoths’ territory became much more hazardous. Instead of roaming
across Siberia and North America, they began dying off. “Small continental
populations of woolly mammoth certainly were present after (12,900 years ago),
but trajectory of these populations towards extinction was being driven by
changing habitat and perhaps also through human hunting that had spread to
North America,” the study explained. Simply put, hunting and environmental
stresses were too much for the wooly mammoth to overcome. MacDonald and his
team theorized that extinction was gradual and inevitable based on climate
changes, vegetation changes and the presence of hunters in Beringia.
This study, which appears in the current edition of the journal Nature
Communications, does not address
the controversial theory that an asteroid strike that allegedly killed off the
dinosaurs also wiped out the wooly mammoths………
- Call me any time, just don’t call me looking for a job. Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has a
strong connection to troubled former NFL receiver Terrell Owens, but his like
of Owens does not mean he wants to help the combustible pass catcher return to
the league. Owens, who was fired and stripped of his ownership share by the
Indoor Football League's Allen Wranglers last month, still hopes to return to
the NFL. He ranted earlier this week that teams should look at his heart, not
at the mistakes of his past. But if he really can contribute to an NFL team and
Jones likes him so much and once had him on the roster in Dallas, why wouldn’t
the Cowboys bring him in given their search for a No. 3 receiver behind Miles
Austin and Dez Bryant? "First of all, he really can reach out to me at any
time, because I consider him a friend," Jones said Tuesday at the Cowboys'
minicamp. "We would feel good if he reached out. I think that he really,
without having first-hand knowledge of what kind of physical condition he is
in, I know he has the right stuff and could help someone." The key part of
that statement is the end, when Jones says, “help someone.” Left unsaid is, “Just
not us.” Jones thinks Owens might have something left in the tank, but he knows
how difficult T.O. is to handle and wants no part of it. Yes, Dallas released
Owens after the 2008 season, but if he really had changed and was a valuable
contributor, they would find a spot for him. "I have actually looked at
some of the things he did last year," Jones said. "He has the ability
to be quite a threat as a receiver. I would advise him if that he still has got
the heart -- and he does -- to continue to try to get on with an NFL
team." The underlying message? Best of success in your future endeavors….somewhere
else, playing football for someone else………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Tunisia has been a hotbed of rebellion
this week, but the festivities took a temporary break Wednesday as relative calm returned to
the country as radical Islamists across the country regrouped after days of
riots by left 62 members of the security forces injured and led to 162 arrests.
The ultraconservative Islamists, known as Salafists, went high-class Sunday by
attacking an art gallery for an exhibition they said insulted Islam. Security
forces responded with tear gas, angry Salafists around the country began
attacking police stations and it was on. Wednesday’s hiatus from violence comes
ahead of what is expected to be renewed unrest on the Muslim holy day of Friday
when a number of conservative religious groups have called for demonstrations
against insults to the faith. The rage from Islamists underscores just how
angry they are after spending half a century under the rule of a secular
dictatorship that fiercely repressed any Islamist sentiment. Since the
overthrow of the regime last year, religious groups have been flexing their
muscles. One moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, won elections and allied itself
with two secular parties, while more hardline groups have stuck to rioting as
their primary means of difference-making. These extremists argue the government
is not doing enough to implement Islamic law. To encourage progress in that
direction, they have clashed repeatedly with security forces and secular groups.
Al-Qaida didn’t help matters Monday when it issued a statement calling on
Tunisians to rise up against Ennahda. The offending art gallery that sparked
the most recent round of violence has since been closed by the government,
ending access to a gallery in the suburb of La Marsa that included paintings
that caricatured Mecca, portrayed a nude woman, and showed the word "Allah"
spelled with strings of ants. Expect the rioting goodness to find a new igniter
and return with a vengeance in a couple of days………
No comments:
Post a Comment