- Police thyself, Waterbury, Vt. The self-policing could be
in full effect come November depending on how votters in the village feel about
the fate and future of the Waterbury
Police Department. Township trustees decided to place the issue on the ballot, figuring
that with difficult financial times at hand, cutting the police department for
a town with just 1,700 residents might not be a bad idea. Skip Flanders,
president of the board of trustees, said that even with massive budget cuts, the
Waterbury Police Department still receives more than 80 percent of the
yearly budget. Clearly, the thinking is that shutting the doors on the WPD
would save mone ythat could instead be used for economic development.
"If the police department were to be shutdown, like surrounding Duxbury
and Waterbury Town, the village would be patrolled by Vermont State Police.
That could increase response time 15 - 20 minutes or even more than that,"
said Joby Feccia, Waterbury Police Chief.
"If there are 2 or 3 troopers on
and they're at an accident in Williamstown, Vt. how long will it take to get
here?" In Feccia’s irrationally reasonable world, a slower response time
would be a problem in the unlikely event a crime actually occurs in his tiny
hamlet. While some residents have expressed trepidation about eliminating the
WPD, Flanders said the community as a whole has mixed feelings about the
department.
"The trustees are neutral on the position, we really want
voters to express for having a police department and continuing or is it time
that other priorities are going to take issue,” he said. If the measure passes,
it would follow the trend set when the village previously merged its fire and
public works departments with the city (not to be confused with the village) of
Waterbury……….
- One of the weirdest collections of people ever brought
together in a movie theater could eventually happen if Canadian pop music hack
Justin Bieber’s claims that he has been approached to take on the lead role in the film adaptation
of Fifty Shades Of Grey” are true.
The Biebs said in an interview that he had been asked to play the kinky
title character in the big-screen version of EL James' novel despite looking
and sounding like he is 8 years old. "They actually want me to be in the
movie,” he said after being told that his fans were pushing for him to be cast
as businessman Christian Grey, who has a red-hot relationship with college
graduate Anastacia Steele in the book. Universal Pictures and Focus Features
secured the rights to the book in March, but so far it has no screenwriter,
director or confirmed stars. What it does have, with the possible casting of
Bieber, is the chance to bring together the shrieking hordes of under-16 Bieber
fans and the lonely, lecherous housewives who have devouted James’ book,
assuming the younger set can find a way to sneak into a movie that will
probably earn an R rating. Rather than cast some slab of meat like Channing
Tatum, Ian Somerhalder or Alexander Skarsgård, or even porn star James Deen
(all rumored to be in the running), all of whom would be interchangeable and
infinitely forgettable, casting the Biebs and seeing him thrown into a script
rife with explicit sexual content would be both horrific and hilarious.
Regardless of who is ultimately cast, look for a long and all-female line
outside the local multiplex when the movie hits theaters. The book has sold more
than 5.5 million copies to British readers alone, making it the UK's
biggest-selling book of all time………
- The people have spoken and Google claims it has listened. The
online search king announced this week that it will be adding a “do not track” option to
its Chrome Web browser by the end of the year. Most other browser makers have
already done so and maybe because it is lagging significantly behind the pace, Google
didn't make much of a deal about it. "We undertook to honor an agreement
on DNT that the industry reached with the White House early this
year," the company said in an official statement. “To that end we’re
making this setting visible in our Chromium developer channel, so that it will
be available in upcoming versions of Chrome by year’s end." Were Google
actually out ahead on the issue, you can be damn sure they would be trumpeting
their feat much louder. Instead, Google’s announcement was so vague and
uninspired that it did not provide an exact date that it will make the DNT
option available. Whenevr the DNT function is rolld out, users will be able to
go into Chrome's settings and select "Do Not Track." Once those
settings are saved, Chrome will send a message to every website that a user
visits that she does not want the website to track where the user goes
next. Every other major browser already includes a DNT option, with Microsoft's
Internet Explorer making DNT the default setting. Google has been working on
the idea with the White House and the FTC and in explaining why the company
dragged its feet for so long, Susan Wojcicki, the company's senior vice
president of advertising, wrote in a company blog post several months ago: “There
has been a lot of debate over the last few years about personalization on the
web.We believe that tailoring your web experience -- for example by showing you
more relevant, interest-based ads, or making it easy to recommend stuff you
like to friends -- is a good thing." Seems that philosophy has changed,
S…………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Asian neighbors are at the heart
of this edition of everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence the whole
world ‘round. The scene was contentious across
more than a dozen cities in China on Saturday as protests against Japan for its
control of disputed islands swelled and turned violent. Proving that attacking
American embassies is SO earlier this week, angry demonstrators hurled rocks at
the Japanese Embassy in Beijing and clashed with Chinese paramilitary police
before order was restored. A crowd of thousands gathered in front of the
embassy and a group of several hundred broke off from the pack and attempted to
storm a metal police barricade. While they were pushed back by riot police
armed with shields, helmets and batons, a few broke through and scuffled with plainclothes
police before being hauled away to underground Communist prisons where they
will never be heard from again. Meanwhile, the rest of the unruly mob continued
to throw rocks and burn Japanese flags. Sadly, protests were more orderly in
most other cities, although a few inspired souls in the southern city of
Changsha did smash a police car made by Mitsubishi in a symbolic gesture. Anti-Japanese
sentiment has always been high in China, but the rage has amped up this past
week after the Japanese government purchased the contested East China Sea
islands from their private owners. Sure, Japan has controlled the uninhabited
islands for decades, but actually buying them was obviously a slap in the face
to the Chinese. You don’t just acquire islands known as Diaoyu in Chinese and
Senkaku in Japanese and expect there to not be hell to pay. Beijing has battled
back by sending marine surveillance ships into what Japan says are its
territorial waters around the islands and amping up state media coverage, but
to little avail. That Japan believed its purchase would calm the situation
could not have been more absurd, absurd enough to launch a massive uprising
large enough for police in Beijing to close off a main thoroughfare to traffic.
Mix in Tuesday’s anniversary of the 1931 Mukden incident, which marked a step
in Japan's conquest of Manchuria and onward to much of China in the 1930s and
World War II, and clearly this sh*t ain't over yet………
- The primetime NFL game Sunday may or may not live up to
the hype of two teams who made the playoffs last year and are expected to do so
again this season, but the game itself may not even be the most anticipated
activity Sunday night in San Francisco. The Detroit Lions and San Francisco
49ers will meet in the featured game on NBC, but there is also an intense focus
on the postgame interaction between the two teams’ coaches, regardless of the
outcome. The drama stems from a Week
6 matchup last year at Ford Field when Lions coach Jim Schwartz and 49ers coach
Jim Harbaugh nearly dropped gloves and fought after Harbaugh gave an
overenthusiastic handshake and pat on the back to Schwartz. Something about the
combination of a 25-19 loss that ended his team’s unbeaten start to the season
and the nature of the slap on the back set Schwartz off and he chased Harbaugh
down as the Niners coach left the field. The two men shouted at each other and
looked ready to fight before they were separated. As they return to the same
field as one another for the first time, Harbaugh labeled the incident as a
"mini controversy" and "completely irrelevant," and
Schwartz said this week that the incident is "long in the past." If
that were really the case, would the Bovada a online sports book, based in Las
Vegas, would not have put a line on whether Schwartz will shake Harbaugh’s hand
after the game. Bovada, as part of its NFL Player Props, is banking on the two
men either shaking hands or hugging after the game and as of 11 p.m. ET Friday
night, the line was minus-500 that they do and plus-300 that they don't. In
order for the bet to be official, the handshake or hug must be clearly seen on
TV and given all the drama around it, expect film and pictures from about 20
different angles if the handshake or hug actually goes down……..
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