- Everything Lady Gaga does is to seek attention and get
more people to pay attention to her, so why not mix a little laziness and some
terrible eating habits in while also creating a little drama as her normal kooky
antics start to get a little old? That may not be the story she’s selling, but
Gaga has chunked up and taken plenty of heat for her, um, fuller figure. She
doesn’t like the blowback and is taking a stand against critics of her recent weight
gain, posting photos of herself in just her underwear on her official website. She
is billing her weight gain and purported pride about it as “Body Revolution 2013,” conveniently
ignoring the fact that it’s still 2012 and challenging her female fans to send in
their own photos of themselves. Gaga said she’s struggled for years to accept
her body image, which might be true but also might be another one of her ploys
to build her brand, give her public image some depth and get people to pay more
attention to her. The heat she has taken online for FAT-ting up probably does
sting, but having scores of people kissing your ass every day, bowing to your
every whim and telling you how great you are because they’re paid sycophants
probably helps salve those wounds. The pop hack credits her boyfriend,
actor Taylor Kinney, and her fans for giving her the support she needs to feel
happy with her shape. “My weight/loss/gain since I was (a) child has tormented
me. No amount of help has ever healed my pain about it. But you (fans) have. My
boyfriend prefers me curvier, when I eat and am healthy and not so worried
about my looks, I’m happy. Happier then I’ve ever been,” she wrote on her
official website. “I am not going to go on a psycho-spree because of scrutiny.
This is who I am. And I am proud at any size.” Just as long as she’s proud of
how she looks and not of that unlistenable garbage she calls music……….
- How bad could it be to allow self-driving cars on the road
in a state full of people completely self-absorbed in their iPhone
conversations, urgent texts on their Droid, applying their makeup, checking to
make sure their new boob job is properly displayed by their halter top or using
their BlackBerry to schedule an appointment with their plastic surgeon for a
nose job? California will soon find out after Gov. Jerry Brown signed the
autonomous-vehicles bill into law Tuesday afternoon alongside Google co-founder
Sergey Brin and State Sen. Alex Padilla, who authored the bill, at Google's headquarters
in Mountain View, Calif. The law makes California is the latest state to allow
testing of Google's self-driving cars on the roads, but such vehicles will
still need to have a human passenger along as a safety measure. The bill, SB
1298, will also set up procedures and requirements for determining when the
cars are road-ready. Brin is setting high expectations for the effort and hopes
that self-driving cars will be able to drive on public streets in five years or
less. Brown also sounded confident when asked about how the public will react
to self-piloted cars on the highway. "Anybody who first gets in the car
and finds the car is driving will be a little skittish. But they'll get over
it,” Brown said, adding that the California Highway Patrol is on board with the
plan. The cars operate using a combination of technologies, including radar
sensors on the front, video cameras aimed at the surrounding area, exterior
sensors and artificial-intelligence software that helps steer. Artificial
intelligence would probably help cars with IQ-deficient drivers, so maybe that
should be Google’s next project. Other organizations, including Caltech, are
also working on self-driving cars. Google has already tested the cars on the
road in Nevada and the vehicles have accumulated more than 300,000 driving
miles. More than 50,000 of those miles were without any intervention from the
human drivers, according to Google. There have been no reported accidents while
the cars were controlled by the computer and Brin believes the cars could
address a number of key transportation issues. He suggested that the
self-driving vehicles could be a great, independent transportation option for people
who are usually unable to drive, such as blind people. "Some people have
other disabilities, some people are too young, some people are too old,
sometimes we're too intoxicated," Brin said. Ah, the self-driving car for
that special lush in your life who doesn’t have enough self-control to call a
cab or hand their keys over rather than drive home while rocking a .15
blood-alcohol level. So far, Google’s self-driving fleet includes Toyota Prius
Hybrids and the Lexus RX450h. Many legal and technical problems must be
resolved before the vehicles are ready for public use, but it’s all part of
Google’s continued quest for world domination…………
- Beringia: It’s a real place and not a region in the most
remote corner of Narnia. That very real place is an ancient land consisting of 2,800 miles
stretching from Siberia, across the Bering and Chukchi seas, through Alaska and
into Canada's British Columbia. It’s also a place that appears to have magical
powers in that it is actually bringing the Communist hellhole that is Russia
together with the United States. The two world powers have united to provide
additional protection for Beringia. For thousands of years, the region sported a
1,000-mile-long land bridge that emerged when sea level dropped. It has a real
heritage of people divided by borders but united culturally and a wealth of
wildlife diversity including whales, polar bears, walruses and seals. Animal
rights and wildlife protection groups are hopeful about the future of those
creatures following a meeting and announcement by U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton and her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, earlier this
month. Both nations pledged to work toward "a transboundary area of shared
Beringian heritage" by 2013 and groups such as the New York-based Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS) are fired up by the news. "From the
diversity of its Arctic wildlife, both on land and within its waters, to the
bounty it provides that sustains cultures on both sides of the U.S.-Russian
border, Beringia is home to a kingdom of wildlife and cultural riches,
deserving of protection in perpetuity," Cristian Samper, the group’s
president. "This announcement brings us one step closer to that
reality." If the region does receive an official designation, it would
more closely link two U.S. national parks -- the Bering Land Bridge Natural
Preserve and the Cape Krusenstern National Monument -- with Russia's
soon-to-be-designated Beringia National Park. Clinton explained that park
managers and researchers from both countries will share the responsibility for
conserving Beringia’s “unique ecosystem.” The U.S. has long maintained a
program to promote and maintain Beringia, a term that was first used in 1937.
Current protection efforts are focused on issues such as how shipping in
formerly ice-covered seas will affect marine life and indigenous people,
the threat
walruses face from shrinking sea ice and the impacts of human development on
birds from around the world that nest and breed in the Arctic tundra………..
- The two primary reasons the NFL is king on the American sports
landscape are gambling and fanstasy football. While fans love the action on the
field and on their flat screens, they love the action they have with their
sports book of choice even more. As much as they care about their favorite team
winning, they’re just as passionate about their fantasy team emerging
victorious in a given week. Monday
night's mangled, botched touchdown call by a team of replacement officials that
gave the Seattle Seahawks a 14-12 victory over the Green Bay Packers had a
major impact on both fronts. Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson’s Hail Mary
pass was intercepted by Packers safety M.D. Jennings, but the inept scab
officials working the game inexplicably blew the call on the field by ruling
that Seahawks receiver Golden Tate caught the ball despite barely touching it
with his fingertips as it was tucked in Jennings’ arms. The officials then blew
their chance to correct the call on replay and in the process, they jammed
hundreds of fantasy owners and may have swung as much as $200 million in bets
on the game worldwide. Had the correct call been made on the field, Green Bay
-- 3½ point favorites -- would have won by five, covering the spread. Instead,
the Seahawks were victorious and director of the race and sportsbook at one of
Las Vegas’ best-known gambling operations believes the impact of the blown call
was in the nine-figure range. "Most of the customers in the sportsbook
were not happy with the final call," said John Avello of the Wynn in Las
Vegas. "The shift was 100 percent. After the (Seahawks) score, all bets
were reversed." He put the number north of $150 million and others
sportsbook operators estimated that the outcome shifted as much as $15 million
in Nevada alone. Mix in the worldwide number, including offshore sportsbooks
and in Europe, and the number could inch past $200 million. Most betting sites
and sportsbooks took more bets on the Packers, so those people lost a lot of
money based on a few terrible replacement officials. It would also be
interesting to know the total damage caused by angry fans and fantasy owners
who damaged or destroyed laptops, tablets, televisions and remote controls
after witnessing one of the worst calls in NFL history. Another casualty of the
mishap was the Packers' odds of winning the Super Bowl, which dropped from 7-1
Monday to 9-1 Tuesday………
- Sometimes forgotten as newer, shinier space technology is
launched into outer space, the Hubble
Space Telescope is still hard at work in the cosmos and making an impact. The
telescope has captured the farthest-ever view into the universe, snapping a
photograph revealing thousands of galaxies billions of light-years away. The
image already has a name, eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, and is actually a
composite of 10 years of Hubble telescope views of one patch of sky. Only
by accumulating images of light gathered over so many observation sessions can
one see such distant objects, some of which are one ten-billionth the
brightness that the human eye can see. This mosaic of the stars is a sequel to
the original "Hubble Ultra Deep Field," a picture the Hubble Space
Telescope produced in 2003 and 2004 using light collected over many hours to
reveal thousands of distant galaxies in what was the deepest view of the
universe to that point. The XDF takes it a step further, looking back many
years into the universe's past. "The XDF is the deepest image of the sky
ever obtained and reveals the faintest and most distant galaxies ever
seen," said Garth Illingworth of the University of California at Santa
Cruz, principal investigator of the Hubble Ultra Deep Field 2009 program. "XDF
allows us to explore further back in time than ever before." The image
truly is remarkable, detailing a wide range of galaxies, from spirals that are
Milky Way-lookalikes, to hazy red blobs that are the result of collisions
between galaxies. Illingworth suggested that the small, barely visible galaxies
could be the seeds from which the biggest galaxies around today grew. Hubble
has revealed 5,500 galaxies so far and is expected to continue functioning through
at least 2018……..
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