Stoner-friendly governors, secret government telescopes and Riot Watch! in Ukraine

- The Chicago Cubs are terrible. Again. The franchise that hasn’t won a World Series since 1908 and has occupied the loveable losers category of the sports ledger for so long that they have their mail sent there is 18-36, one loss behind San Diego for the worst record in baseball. Their lone bright spot so far has been the hitting of star shortstop Starlin Castro, who has started all 54 games and is hitting .305 with four home runs and 32 RBIs. Last season, he became the youngest player in history to lead the NL in hits last season with 207. So why is manager Dale Sveum irate at his best player? Because Castro has been mentally AWOL one too many times in the field and he was officially put on notice after a mental error Monday in San Francisco. With the Cubs cherishing a rare lead (2-1) in the fifth inning, San Francisco’s Brandon Crawford hit a bouncer to second baseman Darwin Barney, who threw to Castro to start a possible double play – or at least that was Barney’s plan. Castro had other ideas because he thought the force out at second base was the third out of the inning and so he just hung onto the ball before realizing his mistake. While replays showed it would have been a difficult double play to turn, Sveum wasn’t giving his young shortstop the benefit of the doubt. "It's something that's obviously unacceptable at any time," Sveum said. "Whether we could have turned the double play or not is irrelevant to not knowing how many outs there are in the most important part of the game. These things have got to stop happening or he's going to stop playing. These kind of things are things that my son does in high school maybe." Castro apologized for the gaffe and called it embarrassing, but on the heels of him pulling up on a steal attempt Friday because he thought Joe Mather fouled off the ball, Sveum has warned that there could be a different name in the lineup at shortstop when the Cubs open a three-game series in Milwaukee Tuesday night………..

- Secret government telescopes and detecting extrasolar planets and dark energy? Heck yes, NASA. The space agency may not shoot shuttles into the great beyond any longer, but there might be a use for it still. That purpose could be built around secret National Reconnaissance Office telescopes built to collect intelligence for the U.S. government. The telescopes could be used to study the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the expansion of the universe. NASA researchers believe the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST, is a viable candidate to use their hardware and software because it is qualified for the rigors of launch and spaceflight. David Spergel, a researcher at Princeton University and co-chair of the National Research Council's Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, and other scientists helped NASA verify the suitability of the spy telescopes for this sort of mission. NASA officially took ownership of two optical telescopes in August 2011 but kept the transfer quiet until Monday, when officials briefed the astrophysics science community after the National Reconnaissance Office, which owns and operates the U.S. government fleet of surveillance satellites, declassified the telescopes. Both were constructed in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the NRO called NASA officials in January 2011 to let them know the agency would make two telescopes available after they were no longer needed for their original intelligence missions. "We just swapped a piece of paper and it became ours," said Michael Moore, acting deputy director of NASA's astrophysics division. The telescopes look very similar to the Hubble Space Telescope and sport a 94-inch primary mirror. NASA has been working on planning the $1.6 billion WFIRST mission for the past two years, but does not have the funding to establish its outer space observatory to create a census of alien planets, study dark energy and chart the evolution of galaxies in the early universe. Costs to convert the telescopes would be massive and much work lies ahead, all of it complicated by NASA’s shrinking budget. Even with sufficient funding, the earliest plausible time WFIRST could be on the launch pad is 2024, according to Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division. Even storing the telescopes isn't cheap, as it will cost the space agency up to $100,000 per year to maintain the sensitive hardware in a clean room until it is used………..

- Famous people are just like the rest of us. Don’t believe it? How many times in your life have you known, hung around with or heard about a white person who stupidly got the impression that hanging out in a group with several black people who used the N-word or other race-centric slang amongst themselves gave them, the white person in the group, license to use those same words? It never goes well for the white person who thinks their black friends using the N-word to one another means it’s cool for them to use it too and even a famous face like Gwyneth Paltrow is not exempt from that rule. Paltrow, who has a well-documented friendship with Beyonce Knowles and joined her fellow mom and BFF at Jay-Z and Kanye West's Paris stop of the Watch the Throne tour on Friday evening, was given a prime spot backstage at the show. Fellow concert-goer The Dream (producer Terius Nash) tweeted a picture of Paltrow dancing onstage and she responded with a tweet intended to be a funny play on a song from Jay-Z and Kanye’s album, a tweet that read, "Ni**as in paris for real." Although Paltrow herself put the asterisks into the word so as to not broadcast it to the world in uncensored form, the blowback was swift and strong. Most followers took offense to her using the term at all, even though  "Ni**as In Paris" is the title of a song from Watch the Throne. "Hold up. It's the title of the song," Paltrow tweeted in response. Nash came to her defense, telling his own followers that he was the one who typed Paltrow's controversial reply into her phone. "Fyi Sorry for the [confusion] I typed Ni**as in paris for real from Gwens Phone my bad...," he wrote. " ... please excuse it! We were lit!" It’s an interesting twist on the “someone stole my phone/hacked my account” excuse, along with raising the question of why Nash would tweet to Paltrow on his phone and answer his own tweet on her phone. True or not, it’s proof that white folks should steer clear of the N-word whether it’s a song title or not……….

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! It’s insane in the Ukraine right now on account of pro-government lawmakers giving tentative approval Tuesday to a bill that would allow the use of Russian in official settings alongside Ukrainian in some regions. With hundreds of angry opponents of the measure clashing with helmeted riot police outside parliament and on Kiev's main square and the Euro2012 football championship kicking off in the country Friday, Ukraine is seeing more action than it has in a long time. Allowing or banning the use of Russian has long been a hot-button topic in post-Soviet Ukraine, which is divided into the Ukrainian-speaking west that wants to shake off Russian influence and embrace Western culture and the Russian-speaking east and south that value strong ties to Moscow. How intense is the debate? When the bill came up for consideration in parliament late last month, a legislative brawl ensued that left one lawmaker hospitalized. Opponents of the bill argue that it would make Russian a de facto second state language and lead to the demise of the Ukrainian tongue and Ukraine's independence from Moscow. They also contend that President Viktor Yanukovych is shamelessly pandering to voters ahead of October parliamentary elections to reverse his party’s declining popularity. Yanukovych loyalists pushed the bill through in the first of two readings Tuesday morning on the grounds that it will give millions of Russian speakers in Ukraine the right to use the tongue of their choice. "This bill fully corresponds to Ukraine's European aspirations and European obligations," said Vadym Kolesnichenko, who co-wrote the bill. Final debate on the bill still looms, so expect more brawls in the near future if opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his supporters have their way. "The law on a second state language in Ukraine will not exist," Yatsenyuk said. "We lost the battle, but we will win the war." Sounds like it’s time to take off your chains and turn your rings around, Ukraine……….

- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo: stoner hero. While New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is ass-hattedly attempting to ban soft drinks over 16 oz., Gov. Cuomo is looking to throw on his knit beanie with sewn-in dreadlocks, break out his Cheetohs and “Planet Earth” DVDs and pulling his bong from the closet by asking state legislators to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana that are in public view. Cuomo defended his proposal as a way to avoid unnecessary misdemeanor charges against thousands of New Yorkers -- "disproportionately black and Hispanic youth," according to a statement from the governor's office. Bringing “consistency and fairness" to New York's marijuana laws may be the official reason, but stoners don’t care as long as they can get baked legally. "There is a blatant inconsistency. If you possess marijuana privately it is a violation, if you show it in public it's a crime. It's incongruous. It's inconsistent the way it has been enforced," Cuomo explained. New York's legislature addressed the issue back in 1977, reducing the penalty for possessing 25 grams or less of marijuana to a non-criminal violation carrying a fine of no more than $100 for first-time offenders, but only if the ganja was in private possession and not in public view. The problem with the law as it now exists is that if the hippie lettuce is out and viewable in public -- as it might be when someone is asked to empty his or her pockets during a so-called police "stop and frisk" -- it becomes a Class B misdemeanor. If Cuomo really wanted to secure stoner rock star status, he would ask the legislature to change the laws on selling and smoking or burning marijuana, but he’s not bold enough to do that. The governor has support from at least one legislator. "The statute as currently written unnecessarily subjects tens of thousands of people to criminal arrest and prosecution for very small quantities of marijuana," said New York State Assembly member Hakeem Jeffries. The legal change would have the biggest impact in New York City, where 94 percent of arrests for small amounts of marijuana in the state occur. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly started the ball rolling on Cuomo’s idea last year by issuing a policy order directing officers to issue violations, rather than misdemeanors, for small amounts of marijuana discovered during street searches. Bloomberg also supports the plan, so stoners may want to add New York to their list of top places to live alongside California and Colorado in the near future………..