- Stoners, now is the time to apply for Uruguayan
citizenship. Where the United States and other so-called world powers are
failing, Uruguay is embracing a novel approach to Latin America's growing fatigue with the
war on drugs. The idea is simple: a plan announced by Under Defense Minister
Eleuterio Fernández Huidobro Wednesday under which the country would normalize
marijuana use and hand over its distribution and marketing to the government.
Simply put, Uruguay is going to legalize the sale and use of the hippie lettuce
for citizens 18 and older. Huidobro said the government would try to attain
"regulated and controlled legalization" on the grounds that the prohibition
of drugs and the violence that entails is causing "more problems than the
drugs themselves." Forming a nice, neat (and mellow) circle, the
government would then se the revenue from its role as marijuana vendor to fund drug-rehabilitation
programs. If enacted, the program would make Uruguay the first country in the
world where the state took charge of selling marijuana to its citizens. "We
are doing this for the young people, because the traditional approach hasn't worked,"
Uruguayan President José Mujica said during the Rio+20 environmental
conference. "We have to find
another way, and some may find this way too bold. Uruguay is a small country,
where these sort of things are easier to do.” Exactly, do it for the young
people. Legalizing the sale of ganja by the government wouldn’t be a huge leap
forward in a country where the use of the chron isn't illegal. Other Latin
countries, including Argentina Brazil and Mexico, have liberalized policies on
the use of small quantities of narcotics and Uruguay is seeking to follow suit.
The only loud voices of dissent on the plan so far are stick-up-the-butt
opposition leaders who have complained that rather than address a pressing need
to combat insecurity, the government is instead proposing the legalization of
drugs. In a country where there are 150,000 consumers of pot out of a
population of 3.3 million and where marijuana is a $750 million a year business,
maybe that’s not the worst idea………..
- She’s baaaack. Singer
and actress Barbra Streisand has been out of the directing business for 16
years, but the "Funny Girl" actress is itching for a return to the director’s chair. Streisand's
spokesman on Thursday confirmed that Streisand wants to direct "Skinny and
Cat," a love story about late writer Erskine Caldwell and his late wife, American photojournalist
Margaret Bourke-White. The project would be her first as a director since
"The Mirror Has Two
Faces"
in 1996. Why now and why this particular project? It could have something to do
with the fact that Oscar-winning stars Colin Firth and Cate Blanchett are reportedly attached to play the
leads. On the negative side, the project doesn’t have an official green light
yet because of financing issues. Having Streisand, Firth and Blanchett all on
board could go a long way toward resolving those issues. It was reported last
week that screenwriter Linda Yellen’s project needs an additional $20 to
finance operations and fundraising was proving to be a difficult task.
Meanwhile, Streisand is also working on a movie adaptation of the stage musical
"Gypsy" in which she would star, with "Downton Abbey" creator Julian Fellowes adapting the Stephen
Sondheim and Arthur Laurents musical for the screen. That Streisand has this
much energy and drive at age 70, when she has nothing left to prove, is
impressive and if she can pull off “Skinny and Cat” and make a mostly droll project
interesting on the big screen, she’ll earn even more cred………..
- Party on the moon, y’all! According to NASA, there is a
massive crater on the surface of the moon that could hold water in the form of
ice. Ice means party because no one wants a warm drink at a good party and if
the moon has ice, it’s time to bring in the turn tables, inflatables and DJ and
get the party on. Or, as NASA officials have suggested, a (yawn) lunar base.
NASA scientists investigated Shackleton Crater, a crater located almost
directly on the moon’s south pole and named after the Antarctic
explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. The massive crater is more than 12 miles wide
and 2 miles deep, making it nearly as deep as Earth’s oceans. Making it the
perfect place for the aforementioned party, the crater exists in permanent
shadow so obviously, glowsticks are in. Right now, scientists aren’t sure how
many mysteries lay at the bottom of the crater. The research team, led by Maria
Zuber of MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, intends
to find out. They used an instrument called a laser altimeter aboard NASA’s
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to create a highly detailed topographical
map of the crater. “Water ice in
amounts of up to 20 percent is a viable possibility,” said lead author Maria
Zuber, a geophysicist at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Don’t get your hopes up,
though. The amount of ice in Shackleton Crater “can also be much less,
conceivably as little as zero.”
Oh no you don’t, Zuber. Don’t be a buzzkill on this one. Simply mapping the
crater’s elevations and brightness in extreme detail doesn’t mean you can rain
on this parade. The mapping process was perfectly facilitated because the LRO’s
path takes it nearly directly over the crater as it orbits the moon from pole
to pole as the moon rotates underneath. “We decided we would study the living
daylights out of this crater,” Zuber said ironically. “From the incredible density
of observations we were able to make an extremely detailed topographic map.” Researchers
also used the laser altimeter to measure the crater’s brightness and it absorbed
some light based on its own natural albedo, reflecting the rest back to the
spacecraft. By calculating the difference, researchers mapped the relative brightness
throughout the crater’s floor and walls. The findings support long-held
suspicions that the crater is capable of holding moisture, but this project did
not determine whether the crater actually holds a large chunk of ice. Zuber believes the
water might be buried at extreme depths and NASA’s GRAIL mission will
investigate that possibility. If there is a substantial amount of moisture,
then Newt Gingrich’s dream of a moon colony has new life as well………
- Bitter ex-jocks are the best. They have a healthy
reservoir of resentment because the world has moved on without them and because
they are no longer the best in the world at something. Maybe they’re even
irritated with the next generation for taking their place. Hall
of Famer Rich "Goose" Gossage is one of those bitter ex-jocks and he
has targeted his resentment toward the newly exonerated Roger Clemens. Clemens,
the seven-time Cy Young Award winner who was acquitted Monday on all charges that he obstructed and lied to
Congress in denying he used performance-enhancing drugs because the federal
government horribly botched his case, could be back on track for Hall of Fame
induction……but not if Gossage has any say. "Are we going to reward these
guys for cheating?" Gossage asked during a radio interview. "Even
though he was found innocent, it was because of the bad testimony. No one
believed (Brian) McNamee and (Andy) Pettitte kind of changed his thing, 'Did I
really hear what he told me.'” With Clemens appearing on the Hall of Fame
ballot for the first time this fall, voters must decide whether or not a not
guilty verdict in a court of law carries any weight for baseball’s highest
honor. Gossage went so far as to compare the Clemens trial's outcome to the
controversial 1995 verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial. "O.J.
Simpson, did you believe he didn't kill those two people?" Gossage said
Thursday. To further prove just who is clean in baseball and who isn’t, Gossage
wants Congress to release the list of 104 names from the anonymous 2003 player
survey on performance-enhancing drugs. "Release the whole list and let's
get it out there on the table and see who tested positive for these
things," Gossage said. In an ironic twist, Gossage candidly admitted
he "probably would have" taken performance-enhancing drugs if the circumstances
and timing of his career and the steroid era had been different. "I
probably would have," Gossage said.
But you don’t want a guy in because ‘roids were more prevalent in his era and
he took them? Sounds like excellent logic………..
- Snake lovers are a freaky lot. No one who is mildly normal
wants a large, scaly, muscular reptile that eats live mice writhing around in a
cage in their bedroom or living room. But as odd as the average snake lover is,
they do not tend to have the habit of leaving their five-foot jungle carpet python
lounging inside a motel room. That terrifying scene (especially to Indiana
Jones) greeted a motel maintenance worker in Myrtle Beach, S.C., who was
surprised to find the large snake s hanging out on the windowsill of a room the
worker was supposed to clean. Motel management said the snake belonged to the
room's last guest, who left it behind. There is the obvious question of why a
person would go to all the trouble of transporting and traveling with a snake,
keeping it in a motel room and then leaving it behind. Why not release it into
the wild? Upon discovering the snake, the motel manager contacted local animal
control authorities, who apprehended the snake. They called a local snake
enthusiast, who adopted the snake and plans to either keep it or find it a good
home. As for the snake kook who decided to suddenly become an absent
reptile owner and abandon his or her former pet….next time, find a local animal
sanctuary and take care of the problem yourself………..
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