- When going
daredevil, embracing your inner adrenaline junkie and attempting something that
walks the fine line between illegality and boldness, the one thing you never
want to do is end up hanging helplessly from a tree, waiting to be rescued and
then arrested. That message was hammered home once more by a Canadian base
jumper who crossed the border into the United States, kept moving south and
ended up at the Foresthill
Bridge in Placer County, Calif., where he then plunged from the bridge and
plummeted toward the ground below. In a true miracle of physics, it took him a
full five hours to get from the top of thre 730-foot bridge to the ground
below. Now, that had quite a bit to do with the fact that he was left dangling
more than 100 feet above the ground for five hours when his parachute became tangled
in the branches of a 150-foot-tall pine tree. A passerby spotted the man
hanging from the tree and a rescue crew from the local fire department was
called to the bridge at 8:55 p.m. Monday. Getting him down from the tree was no
simple endeavor and rescuers had to concoct a detailed plan to get the man down
from the tree. First, they used a bulldozer to dig a road to the base of the
tree and once the path was created, a 90-foot boom was then called in to raise
rescuers up to the spot where the failed daredevil was hanging. They cut the
man out of his harness just after 2 a.m., but left the parachute hanging in the
tree, according to incident commander Jeff Brand. After the jumper was treated for
minor injuries, he was handed over to the Placer County Sheriff's Office to be
charged with illegally jumping from the bridge. A cohort was also taken into
custody following the stunt, which attempted to mimic a similar attempt just a
few months earlier. Foresthill Bridge is the tallest bridge in California at
730 feet above the canyon floor and as such, more attempts are probably
forthcoming………
- Oh yeah, it’s
once again time to surf the wave of unrest sweeping the globe. That’s right,
Riot Watch! is back. Georgia is the scene, in this case meaning the former
Soviet republic, not the state sandwiched between Mississippi and South
Carolina. Georgians are enraged over videos showing the abuse of prisoners and
the images have sparked street protests and an exchange of harsh accusations
between the government and the opposition ahead of parliamentary elections.
After the videos went viral, hundreds of protesters blocked traffic in the
center of the capital, Tbilisi, in the overnight hours. Two television stations, Maestro and
Channel 9, aired the graphic videos showing guards abusing prisoners, including
the footage in which prisoners are raped with police truncheons and broom
handles. It is the sort of vile activity that should never be perpetrated on
anyone, whether they are a convicted criminal or not. President Mikhail
Saakashvili could not have faced the controversy at a worse time, as his party
is facing a tough opposition challenge in the Oct. 1 parliamentary elections. Saakashvili
vowed to swiftly punish all the culprits and completely reshuffle prison
personnel. The scandal has already led a cabinet minister in charge of the
country's penitentiary system to resign and in response to the videos, Saakashvili
issued his own video statement. "Everyone who has masterminded it,
everyone who has perpetrated it, everyone who has done it and allowed it to
happen deserves the strictest — I repeat, the strictest — punishment,"
Saakashvili said. After discussions with top government officials, the
president said that hundreds of prison guards in all Georgian prisons would be
temporarily suspended pending an official probe and immediately replaced by
police officers. He called the incidents an indication that the nation's
penitentiaries have suffered a "systemic failure." Of course, no
scandal has just one side and in response to the vidoes leaking, the Georgian Interior
Ministry on Wednesday blamed Saakashvili's political foes for staging the
videos and faking many of the images by paying prison officials for
orchestrating and filming the abuse by an inmate. Despite economic reforms,
anti-corruption efforts and moves to build closer ties with the West since he
took power in 2004, Saakashvili has remained relatively popular. The opposition
Georgian Dream party hopes to change that come October and these videos are an
excellent tactic to that end………
- Tiger Woods’
mystique and dominance over the golf world are long gone. The man who owned the
No. 1 spot in the world for the second longest number of weeks in history,
second only to Woods in his prime, proved it once more when he took a run at
Woods by suggesting the guy who used to intimidate everyone who teed it up
against is now inimidated by a younger rival. Greg Norman, known as much for
his meltdowns as his successes during his playing career, Rory McIlroy's recent
run of three victories – including his second career major victory – have made
him the best player in the world. Furthermore, Norman believes Woods knows it
even if he won’t admit it "What I'm seeing is that Tiger's really
intimidated by Rory," Norman said. "When have you ever seen him
intimidated by another player? Never. But I think he knows his time's up and
that's normal; these things tend to go in 15-year cycles." The reference
to the 15-year cycle was part of a larger story of how Jack Nicklaus took over
the mantle as the best in golf from Arnold Palmer, Norman supplanted Nicklaus,
Woods took over for Norman and now, McIlroy is wresting the title from Woods.
Ever the prideful, once-great athlete, Woods dismissed Norman’s theory with a
touch of condescending humor. "No one is the size of (linebacker) Ray
Lewis who is going to hit me coming over the middle, so this is a different
kind of sport," Woods said Wednesday. “We go out there and play our own
game and see where it falls at the end of the day." In other words, there
is no physical pain and therefore no real intimidation. It might ring truer if
Woods hadn't relied so heavily on intimidation as part of his own success when
he was great. He’s now four years removed from winning his last major at the
2008 U.S. Open at Torrey Pines and Norman doesn’t see him winning another one
any time soon. "The more you want something, the more you reach for it,
the more it gets pushed away," Norman explained. If only Woods stillstill had
the game to prove Norman wrong………
- Going to see “The Dark Knight Rises” may have been more
than entertainment for men in the theater when Christian Bale made his final
appearance as the Caped Crusader. For many dudes who paid to see arguably the
weakest of director Christopher Nolan’s three Batman films, seeing Batman’s
chiseled physique could also be a way of bolstering their own body image. A new
study that tackled the long-overlooked topic of the bond men have with comic
book heroes like Batman or Spider-Man and its impact on their well-being found that
those who said they felt a bond with those superheroes also reported feeling
more satisfied with their own bodies. After being shown a picture of a muscular
superhero, those who reported a bond with that hero had a stronger body image
of themselves, while men who felt indifferent toward the superhero felt worse
about themselves. This project contradicts previous research suggesting that
seeing muscular male figures makes men feel bad about their own bodies. The
effort is an interesting shift of focus away from the deluge of research
dwelling on all the body issues women deal with because of Barbie, Photoshopped
magazine cover photos of hotties and the like. In explaining this unusual
response from men, study researcher Ariana Young theorized that men who felt a
personal connection with a svelte superhero are free from the typically
damaging effects of seeing an unobtainably chiseled physique. In other words,
these men know they’ll never look like Superman and the ridiculously unrealistic
set of pecs and abs the Man of Steel rocks are not something to chase. "For
some men, exposure to extremely muscular superheroes may actually have a
positive effect. It may make them feel better about their bodies," said
Young, a graduate student in psychology at the University at Buffalo in New
York. She and her colleagues asked nearly 100 male college students how much
they liked Batman and Spider-Man to determine how bonded the men felt with
those characters. As part of the study, they also manipulated images of the two
superheroes to look either muscular or skinny before showing each picture to
the participants. Men who felt no bond with a superhero felt worse about
their bodies after seeing the muscular image, but not after seeing the thinner
version. The results were similar to those of a study involving women shown
pictures of attractive celebrities, with w omen who felt a connection with a
thin celebrity feeling no worse about their own bodies after looking at pictures
of that celebrity. There is always the idea that comic book characters are
ridiculous no matter what and that celebrities have no real bearing on the
average person’s life, but who wants to live in that world……..
- The Rolling Stones have hung on longer than just about any
of their contemporaries in the rock and roll world and along the way they have
become one of the most commercialized bands ever. That makes it all the more
surprising that 47 years after it was filmed, the 1965 Rolling Stones documentary “Charlie
Is My Darling” is just now being
released. The 50-minute film was shot in September 1965, with the band
riding high and touring Ireland shortly after “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”
was released. Bootleg copies have leaked, but the film was never officially
released. The timing of the release coincides with the band's 50th anniversary
celebrations and the official version will be newly restored, unlike the
bootlegged copies. The restored version will premiere at the New York Film
Festival on Sept. 29 and it features the earliest known professionally recorded
concert footage of the band, including “Satisfaction,” “Time Is On My Side” and
“The Last Time.” It also contains documentary footage of the band backstage,
writing new tracks and doing impressions of The Beatles and Elvis Presley. Many
of the scenes from the film emphatically reinforce just how big the Stones were
at that time, with a performance of “I’m Alright” ending prematurely when the
crowd swarmed the stage and the band had to be rushed offstage by police.
"We
did some pretty serious science on this," director Mick Gochanour said of
the restoration of the film. "It took eight months to synch up the
[soundtrack] with the live performances…We realized during the middle that we
had six complete performances.” Although the film premieres Sept. 29, “Charlie
Is My Darling - Ireland 1965” won’t
be released commercially until Nov. 6………
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