- Don’t make the New York Jets angry. You won't like them
when they’re angry. A 48-28 annihilation of the hapless Buffalo Bills in their
opener was apparently fueled as much by the supposed disrespect of fans and
media as it was a desire to defeat a division rival and start the year strong.
After being labeled a circus and being mocked in a front-page cartoon last week
in the New York Post that depicted head coach Rex Ryan, Mark Sanchez and Tim
Tebow as circus clowns, Ryan and his team decided they’d had enough. "It seems like that's how people look at
us," Ryan said of the circus perception. "I was like, 'You can think
that all you want, but we see something totally different.' I do -- and I know
this football team does. Our opponents
will take us seriously, I promise you that." Powered by that hunger to
shove it in the world’s collective face, the Jets responded by crushing the
Bills and for at least one week, silencing the doubters. Of course, that heat
will come right back on them if they revert to being the team that dropped their
final three games last season and didn’t score an offensive touchdown in their
first three preseason games. Ryan still talks too much, Sanchez is still a
SoCal pretty boy who hasn’t won anything yet, Tim Tebow is still the most polarizing
player in the NFL and guys like Bart Scott and Santonio Holmes still rock Jets
green and white. "It made it a bigger deal for us to go out there
and prove to each other that we had each other's back," linebacker Aaron
Maybin said when asked about Ryan's speech to the team. The über-quotable Scott
snapped at reporters after the game because "you treat us like a f------
joke" and promised a “media mutiny,” by which he probably meant a boycott.
Sanchez did his part to both quiet the circus talk and calm the push for more
snaps for Tebow by passing for 266 yards and three touchdowns. Simply put, the
Jets were dominant on both sides of the ball. Unfortunately, they’re still a
circus. They have missed the point of what a circus is all about and the fact
that being a good circus or a successful circus doesn’t mean they aren’t still
a circus. The gap between them and the bland, buttoned-up New England Patriots
in terms of style and approach is as wide as it has ever been…….
- There are many monuments to America’s status as the
FAT-test nation in the world and with many Americans obese enough to actually
qualify as monuments themselves, it might seem like opening up a museum
dedicated to one of the primary foods greasing the skids in the slide toward
flabbiness is a mistake. Don’t tell that to Pizza Brain owner James Dwyer. The
Philadelphia-based businessman owns a pizza chain but in the interest of
promoting his brand while also shining a spotlight on the food that has raised
him to local semi-prominence in the greater Philadelphia area, he has launched
something called the Pizza Brain Museum. The museum opened Sept. 7 and
according to Dwyer, it is the world’s first museum dedicated to America’s
bastardized version of the pies Italy made famous. Dwyer came up with the idea after
curating a pizza-centric art show. “I said to myself the next day, what if
there was a pizza shop that was self aware enough to really celebrate the
culture of pizza? And thus began the seed being planted in my head. Four months
later, Pizza Brain was the thing,” Dwyer explained. Coming up with a concept is
one thing, but building it into an entity substantial enough to fill a museum
building and entice people to come in not to eat pizza, but merely look at
pizza-associated items, is something else entirely. Dwyer plans to keep the
museum fresh and current by rotating items from what the Guinness Book of World
Records has deemed the largest collection of pizza memorabilia in the world
(more proof that this book exists solely to encourage friendless losers to
attempt asinine feats just for “fame”) and tie the museum to the pizza
offerings available at his restaurant. The museum will undoubtedly become a
must-see attraction on the same level as the Liberty Bell and all of the
Constitution-associated sites around the City of Brotherly Love………….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! The scene was a bizarre one on a
beach about 1 mile from the Kudankulam power station India, where Indian
riot police fired tear gas to break up thousands of protesters there to
demonstrate against the country's largest nuclear power project. Months of
opposition have failed to slow the project down and it is due to fire up within
weeks despite months. Seeing the mass of people on the beach, police advanced
toward the gathering and rather than stand their ground and fight, demonstrators
waded into the crashing waves or escaped in fishing boats as hundreds of police
moved toward their location. A few fighting souls hurled rocks at the police and
several injuries were reported on both sides, but their should have been much
more violence with some 4,000 activists having camped on the beach to complain
about the threat of radiation from the plant near the southern tip of India.
Even though most of the protestors were women and children from fishing
villages, they could have done more. The project they showed up to denounce was
first conceived in 1988 and the Russian-built plant was supposed to have gone
into operation last year. Instead, protesters surrounded the compound after an
earthquake and tsunami destroyed Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and
sent radiation spewing into the atmosphere as mass evacuations took place. Looking
to the recent past, the Indian protestors recalled the 2004 Indian Ocean
tsunami and worried that a similar accident could hit their region. Their anger
grew last month when the government's Atomic Energy Regulatory Board gave
clearance for fuel to be loaded into one of the plant's two reactors, one of
the last steps before producing power. Once functional, Kudankulam will provide
2 gigawatts of electricity. India has suffered through massive blackouts for
months and that added jolt of power would help millions of Indian homes get out
of the dark while also relieving a power crisis in the state of Tamil Nadu.
Additional reactors are planned to address Indian’s peak-hour power deficit of
about 12 percent and its negative impact on the economy. But grid failure on
two consecutive days this summer causing the world's largest-ever blackouts or
not, those 4,000 protestors have not been swayed on the issue of nuclear power
and the dangers it brings with it. So riot on, all Indian sea-bound dissidents,
riot on………..
- Geek alert! Geek alert! The astronomy world is abuzz today
sightings
of a flash on Jupiter, leading to speculation that the massive planet was
struck by an asteroid or comet drawn in by its immense gravitational pull. The
impact, spotted by an amateur astronomer from Dallas, suggests that Jupiter has
once again fallen on a grenade for the solar system. Similar impacts were
reported in 2009 and 2010 and as in both of those instances, astronomers are
calling on most everyone with a decent telescope to look for any visible scars
on Jupiter's cloud tops, as those would be a sure sign that was the planet's
gravitational pull that averted a possible cosmic collision threat for Earth. "It's
kind of a scary proposition to see how often Jupiter gets hit," said
George Hall, the astronomer who captured the flash on video. He didn’t see the
hit live, but early Tuesday morning he brought out his 12-inch Meade
Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope with the Point Grey Flea3 video camera attached,
intending to capture imagery for a composite picture of
Jupiter. "Jupiter happens to be ideally positioned at about 6 o'clock
in the morning," he explained. "It's right overhead." Around the
same time, another amateur astronomer from Oregon, Dan Petersen, observed the
flash and he didn’t get an image of the flare. He did pass word along to his
sky-gazing friends, including one in the Philippines. That friend relayed
Peterson's report to the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers' Jupiter
forum and the resulting excitement caught Hall’s attention. He then went back
to review the video file on his computer and admitted that if not for the
online uproar, he “never would have looked.” Once he did, he was able to match
his video up with Petersen's observations and at 7:35 a.m. ET on the video, he
found what he was looking for and posted it online to share with the astronomy
community around the globe. Experts predict that the impact area should come
back into view starting at about 1 a.m. ET Wednesday and observatorites will be
able to break out their high-powered telescopes and have a closer look………
- Musical thievery is not cool. When the artist accused of
the theft is an internationally famous rock band that wrote a (crappy) theme
song for the most recent Summer Olympics, that’s even more offensive. It is
also what British rockers Muse and their record label Warner Music are
being accused of by someone named Charles Bolfrass. Bolfrass has sued the band
and their label for $3.5 million, claiming they "ripped off" their
2009 track “Exogenesis” from his sci-fi rock opera of the same name. Bolfrass
filed the suit in federal court in Manhattan last week and in it, he accuses the
band of stealing his "cinematic science-fiction rock opera" called
“Exogenesis.” How did a famous rock band become aware of, much less steal, the
music of some unknown songwriter who has never had a single record deal or
sold-out concert? According to Bolfrass, he contacted the Devon trio and two
other bands in 2005 with the idea to write a sci-fi rock opera about space
travel after the demise of the planet Earth. The idea seems moronic and like a
rejected album concept from David Bowie’s spaceman era and sure enough,
Bolfrass says that Muse rejected his idea the following year. In his world
view, Muse rejected his offer but turned around and stole his idea as the basis
for three tracks on their 2009 album “The Resistance.” The tracks are titled
“Exogenesis I,” “Exogenesis II” and “Exogenesis III.” To finish off the concept
hijacking, Bolfrass also claims the cover of the album has an image that the
band stole from the storyboards of his rock opera. Based on those claims, he is
suing Warner Music for copyright infringement, unfair trade practices and
unfair competition. The timing of the suit is ironic, with Muse set to release
their new album “The Second Law” on Oct. 1 and touring the United Kingdoms
later in the month. If Bolfrass is successful in his legal quest, the profits
from the first few shows of the new tour could be destined for his bank
account……..
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