Wednesday, August 01, 2012

Fire-walking kooks, global warming news and Stephen Colbert's floating music festival

- The Dallas Cowboys were not a good football team in 2011. They didn’t win their division or make the playoffs and once again, owner Jerry Jones’ $1 billion football palace sat empty when the postseason rolled around. Worse still, the rival New York Giants won their second Super Bowl in four years and left the ‘Boys and their egomaniacal owner seeing red. One might even imagine Jones may be humbled by a division rival winning a second Super Bowl in a short span, but that person would be very, very wrong. Instead, Jones stood up at a pep rally last week before the start of training camp and invited fans to “come to that (Cowboys) stadium and watch us beat the Giants’ ass.” Never mind that the Giants beat Dallas twice last season to knock the Cowboys from playoff contention en route to a title, Jones is full of pride and willing to shoot his mouth off about it even if he’s obviously delusional. Predictably, the Giants barely blinked when asked about Jones’ speech to the masses. "Because talk is cheap," defensive end Justin Tuck said. "Play the game." Jones was playing off Giants coach Tom Coughlin's infamous motto from years ago, but no one in Giants red and blue was about to get baited into a war of words. The closest and Giant came to retaliating was owner John Mara, who pointed to a bandage on his forehead and said, “You should see what Jerry Jones looks like.” "We'll show up," Mara said. "But that is actually the first time I've heard that comment. I have been so caught up in the (Tim) Tebow coverage that I haven't had time for anything else." Jones later explain that he wants his team focused on the Giants because the two teams open the season in New York on Sept. 5……….


- Step back and allow France to teach you a lesson about respect and how to treat the opposite sex, world. No, this isn’t a salute to France’s famed knack for romance and love, but rather a recognition of the fact that the country’s Socialist-dominated parliament has approved legislation that makes sexual harassment a crime, finally addressing problems many critics say have existed for decades. Under the new law, there will be three levels of harassment, with the most serious -- in cases where the harasser has authority over the victim, the victim is younger than 15 years old, or multiple people carry out the harassment -- punishable by up to three years in prison. The National Assembly passed the law Tuesday after the Senate voted earlier in the day on the measure, which covers offenses in universities, the housing market and job interviews. Additionally, individual acts of sexual blackmail will be considered sexual harassment, whereas previously only repeated acts were. In other words, there won't need to be a pattern of harassment over a period of time to constitute criminal activity. Maybe the United States can take France’s lead and pass stronger sexual harassment laws, as in the U.S., sexual harassment is a civil offense usually punishable by fines. And yes, the same country that foisted Dominique Strauss-Kahn on the world is the one passing forward-thinking sexual harassment laws………


- Tony Robbins is a magnet for the beaten-down, downtrodden souls of the world. The energetic motivational speaker/snake oil salesman charges pathetic people hundreds, even thousands of dollars to come to his seminars and hear corny, clichéd motivational ploys that will change their lives for all of a day at most. Oh, and he encourages attendees to his conferences to walk across burning-hot coals and sends 20 of them to the hospital, too. Robbins’ traveling scam rolled in to the San Jose Convention Center on Sunday for a fourth and final day of motivational talks as part of his “Unleash the Power Within” seminar, which included a fire walk as a signature experience. Many of those injured as they walked down the rows of coals, which stretched down 24 lanes and were each around eight feet long, reported second- or third-degree burns, Capt. Reggie Williams of the San Jose Fire Department said. Thousands of desperate people looking for a magic bean because their life sucks and they hate it participated in the walk and some even came from abroad for the seminar. Walking across hot coals is one of the biggest clichés for motivational speakers, but Robbins told his flock that the walk was a metaphor for facing your fears and accomplishing your goals. Those who buy into Robbins’ nonsense were so blinded by his B.S. that many suggested that the people who burned their feet “were out of state,” a term that participants said meant having the proper mental attitude. Robbins, who ducks cameras and interviews lest the sham he’s running be hauled out into the light, refused to comment on the incident. His San Diego-based company issued a statement saying that, “more than 6,000 attendees participated in the traditional fire walk across hot coals. We have been safely providing this experience for more than three decades, and always under the supervision of medical personnel.” Sgt. Jason Dwyer, the San Jose Police Department’s public information officer, confirmed that the department was not pursuing charges against Robbins. For the record, the coals reach a temperature of 2,000 degrees, nearly enough to match the fever idiots have to suffer from to throw down as much as $2,500 to spend a weekend in some convention center auditorium hearing Robbins spout stereotypical motivational bullsh*t……….


- The planet is trying to help us out, humans, so why won't we try to cooperate? A study led by Ashley Ballantyne of the University of Colorado, Boulder, asked that question in light of the fact that the earth is performing an enormous disposal service for the human race. Humans churn out massive amounts of carbon waste and about half of that carbon is taken up by the oceans and land. That keeps global temperatures from rising more rapidly than they already are, but scientists have long wondered how long this arrangement can last. Emissions are soaring and detailed computer analyses of the climate have long predicted that the uptake would become less efficient sometime in this century. Should the planet fall further behind in this effort, the level of carbon dioxide in the air would begin rising faster, trapping more of the sun’s heat. Ballantyne’s project responded to a previous paper showing regional carbon sinks on land (such as forests) or in the ocean and found a decline in the sink in the Western forests of North America as a result of a drought from 2000 to 2004. Ballantyne and his colleagues performed a statistical analysis of global carbon dioxide measurements that have been going on for decades and found no convincing evidence that the global carbon sink was weakening. However, he suggested that it is only a matter of time before carbon uptake slows. It’s not a question of whether or not natural sinks will slow their uptake of carbon, but when,” Ballantyne said. A second, unaffiliated study zoned in on a handful of relatively concentrated spots in the Southern Ocean that account for a high proportion, roughly 20 percent, of the entire oceanic carbon uptake. That project found that while carbon dioxide can easily dissolve out of the air into ocean water, it tends to stay in a surface layer that does not mix well with the colder, denser water below and can even escape that surface layer to re-enter the atmosphere. That is obviously bad news and it comes courtesy of Jean-Baptiste Sallée of the British Antarctic Survey. He and his team used measurements from the new Argo network of floating robots to make the most complete analysis yet of the role of currents. Should the findings of either study hold true, global warming doubters will have yet another set of solid facts to ignore as they pretend the world is copasetic……….


- Stephen Colbert is no stranger to tongue-in-cheek gatherings designed to sarcastically salute more formal events. Just one year ago, Colbert and fellow Comedy Central fake news host Jon Stewart hosted their “Rally to Restore Sanity And/Or Fear” on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The event featured a slew of musical stars and public figures and was aimed at mocking conserva-Nazi ass hat Glenn Beck’s “Rally to Restore Honor” just a few weeks prior. The next target for Colbert isn't a political radio talking head, but rather the Coachella Festival and its newly-announced nautical spinoff. The popular music festival is held each April in California and this year the event drew major attention when a hologram of Tupac Shakur “performed” on stage. Now that Coachella is going nautical, Colbert is following suit. “The Colbert Report” host announced during his Tuesday episode that he will host a music festival in New York on Aug. 10 aboard the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, docked on the Hudson River. "StePhest Colbchella `012: RocktAugustFest" is the name of the event and it will include performances from Grizzly Bear, The Flaming Lips, Santigold, Grandmaster Flash and fun. Colbert held a smaller musical event in-studio last year, the modest "Rock You Like a Thirst-Icane." He has big hopes for his new endeavor and pointed out that the event will have at least one component other festivals lack. "Does Bonnaroo have cruise missiles?" Colbert said of his battleship venue. "I think not." Fans not in the Manhattan area can watch performances and interviews with the acts on Colbert’s show during the week of Aug. 13…………

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