- Let’s do a quick survey: How many have heard of
Elizabeth Township, Pa.? Raise your hands, go ahead. No one? Point made.
Keeping that in mind, take a closer look at the suddenly interesting saga of Gene
Francesconi, the embattled president of Elizabeth Township's board of commissioners.
Local politics generally aren't riveting, but Francesconi’s case is different
because unlike the presidents of most township boards of commissioners, he is
accused of sending sexual and racist text messages. One or the other would be
bad, but the double-double of racist and sexual texts for a government official
is impressive. So far, the board is trying to keep a lid on the story and keep
the content of the messages quiet, but at its Tuesday meeting, Commissioner
Donald Similo introduced two motions, one being to turn over the messages to
the state ethics commission to be investigated and the second to discuss the
messages publicly at the meeting. The second motion failed, sadly depriving the
world of hearing what a middle-aged, sexting racist sends out from his iPhone
or Droid. A township solicitor said the issue was a personnel matter and that
the alleged texts were private communications on private cellphones, although
one could easily argue that racism for an elected official is a reason for
concern no matter whose phone the hateful messages are sent from. In his
defense, Francesconi denies sending the messages just as one would expect from
a closeted racist who like to sext his love interest and side pieces from time
to time. Without his story, no one would know that Elizabeth Township
even exists. With it, the township suddenly becomes much more interesting……….
- When making a directorial debut and actually looking to
succeed and spin off a successful second career while still acting, hitching
one’s wagon to former “Jackass” star Johnny Knoxville probably isn't the wisest move.
That being said, lots of luck to Renee
Zellweger as she prepares to make her debut as a director with a new
movie starring Knoxville. To hedge her bets and attempt to control the damage. Zellweger
will star alongside Knoxville in “4 1/2 Minutes,” a film based on the
life of stand-up comedian Dov Davidoff. In what may not be a huge stretch, Knoxville
will play a struggling comedian forced to take a job looking after Zellweger's
genius son. The plot sounds totally plausible and not at all absurd, so it
should be a real winner. The movie is set on the New York City stand-up scene
and it is scheduled to begin shooting next February. Screenwriter Anthony
Tamakis, who is set to direct Zellweger in a new Broadway production of “The
Hustler” and is also developing a TV series called “Cinn-amon Girl” with
her, has to be fired up about
having a master thespian like Knoxville set to bring his script to life. Zellweger
is returning to the big screen for the first time since 2010’s “My Own Love
Song,” which had one and only one redeeming quality: its soundtrack
featured songs by Bob Dylan. As for Knoxville, his next project to hit
the big screen will see him pairing with an actor who may acutally have less
talent than he does – former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two
will front “The Last Stand,” which is due out in January………
- How difficult is it to find a quality international
logging scandal? Too damn difficult, without a doubt. Credit to Liberia for
being at the center of a report released this week alleging that illicit deals gave
a quarter of all of Liberia to foreign logging companies. The scandal has been
some time in the making, as Liberia’s president had already suspended her
forestry chief and promised to investigate. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
knew the fallout would be immense and tried to get ahead of the report, with
minimal success. The report alleges that the country's "private use
permits" have been hijacked over the last two years to allow commercial
logging. “The private use permits have
been considered in the past to assist communities in terms of job creation, in terms of support and benefit,
but the truth is, we are finding out also, that it has been abused and it is unacceptable," Liberian
Information Minister Lewis Brown said. Chief among the allegedly corrupt
figures is the head of Liberia's Forestry Authority, Moses Wogbeh, who is under
investigation into an allegation that he violated a moratorium on land permits
for commercial logging. Presidential spokesman Jerolinmek Piah explained that Wogbeh
was suspended from his post over the weekend and insisted Liberia said it would
bar illegally-logged timber from being exported. While the report is damning,
it is important to note its source: advocacy groups Global Witness, Save My
Future Foundation and Sustainable Development Institute. "A quarter of Liberia's total landmass has been
granted to logging companies in just two years, following an explosion in the
use of secretive and often illegal logging permits," the groups said in a
statement. And the problem is? Economic times are tough and if someone can make
a quick profit off their country’s natural resources, er, help boost development,
so be it. Corruption continues to be a major issue in Liberia, which remains
one of the world's least developed
countries nearly a decade after the end of a 14-year civil war. Its government
regularly struggles with land ownership issues and shady deals for logging have
become the latest symptom of the disease. Land deeds in Liberia require a
presidential signature, but it doesn’t appear those were too important in Wogbeh’s
dealings. If anyone can deal with this dilemma, it should be Johnson
Sirleaf, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year for her work for
women's rights and now has to prove the award was deserved. Her leading the
fight against corruption is pretty rich considering that she has been
criticized for nominating three sons to high level posts in her administration.
All in all, just another great day in Liberia………
- Explaining the mysteries of health and illness, of why
certain people get certain diseases, has always been a focal point for modern
science. The answers just might lie in the human genome, which is filled with at
least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were
dismissed as “junk.” The junk label may go out the window following the
discovery made during a study involving 440 scientists from 32 laboratories
around the world. The immense federal project pertaining to gene switches,
understanding
how alterations in the non-gene parts of DNA contribute to human diseases and
applying that knowledge to medicine, led the international contingent of
scientists to delve into the “junk” — parts of the DNA that are not actual
genes containing instructions for proteins. In doing so, they discovered a
complex system that controls genes. Far from junk, at least 80 percent of this
DNA is active and necessary. The project yielded an annotated road map of much
of this DNA, explaining what its functions are and how those functions are
carried out. Also on the map is the system of switches that control which genes
are used in a cell and when they are used, and determine, for instance, whether
a cell becomes a liver cell or a neuron.
The new project is a vast improvement over its predecessor, the Human Genome
Project, with more specifics and details to work from. Human DNA is “a lot more
active than we expected, and there are a lot more things happening than we
expected,” said Ewan Birney of the European Molecular Biology
Laboratory-European Bioinformatics Institute, a lead researcher on the project.
With their findings, researchers were able to link the gene switches to a range
of human diseases — multiple sclerosis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s
disease, celiac disease – and to basic physical characteristics like height. Previously,
what happened in the “junk” stayed in the junk and scientists didn’t know much
about those happenings. That has now changed. “Most of the changes that affect
disease don’t lie in the genes themselves; they lie in the switches,” said
Michael Snyder, a Stanford University researcher for the project, called
Encode, for Encyclopedia of DNA Elements. To grasp how significant these
findings are, six papers on the project were published on Wednesday in six
papers in the journal Nature and in 24 papers in Genome Research and Genome
Biology. It truly is a big day for science nerds around the world……….
- One of the worst sights any fan can see watching a
baseball game at any level is a pitcher letting fly with a fastball and less than
a second later, having that fastball turned around and smashed off his skull in
the form of a 100 mph line drive. With very little time to react and not much
with which to defend themselves, pitchers are in a perilous position every time
they throw the ball. Oakland Athletics pitcher Brandon McCarthy was the latest victim of
such a vicious hit after he was hit in the head Wednesday by a liner off the
bat of Erick Aybar of the Los Angeles Angels. McCarthy went to the ground after
he was hit but was soon able to sit up as trainers attended to him and everyone
in the stadium wondered how he wasn’t dead after the ball blasted him in the
side of the head. As good as it was to see him be able to sit up and speak
immediately afterward, McCarthy still suffered a skull fracture and brain
contusion and underwent surgery at a Bay Area hospital. He underwent two CT
scans and after the second exam, he had a two-hour operation to relieve
pressure in his head. The Athletics said Thursday that McCarthy was awake,
alert and resting comfortably in the critical care unit of the hospital. The
team did not offer any timetable for how long McCarthy will be out, but it is a
difficult dilemma for a team currently in position to make the playoffs. Having
one of its better starting pitchers in the hospital recovering from a skull
fracture and brain contusion should mean the A’s will let McCarthy take as long
as he needs to recover, but he will undoubtedly put a lot of pressure on
himself to get back on the field as soon as possible……….
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