- Anyone who has spent more than two minutes in a college
classroom or lecture hall knows full well that merely being admitted to college
doesn’t mean someone isn’t a moron. Listen to any lecture, watch as the
professor asks if there are any questions and marvel at the idiocy as clueless
students ask the same question eight times. It can be frustrating for fellow
students who aren’t morons, but just imagine how difficult it must be for a
professor who goes through that experience several times a day and over the
course of weeks, semesters and years. Put all of those ingredients together and
it’s no so surprising that a Michigan State University math professor suffered an all-time meltdown
during a class on Monday. The professor, whose identity was not released,
snapped during his afternoon class after one of his students made a mistake he
simply could not overlook. “God … how can no one do anything right?” the
professor reportedly screamed before stripping off all his clothes, save for a
pair of white calf-high socks. The Ingham County 911 Central Dispatch Center
received a call at 1:07 p.m. Monday about a naked man in the Engineering
Building shouting in the hallway and several students in the class responded
quickly to the incident….by tweeting about it. Some posted photos of the naked
professor sitting on the hallway floor in handcuffs. A few claimed the
professor was swearing and ranting as police responded and apprehended him.
“MSU police responded and took the man, a university professor, into protective
custody and transported him to a local hospital,” a police spokeswoman said.
Because no one was injured (perhaps mentally scarred, but not injured), the
professor is not being charged with a crime, police said. However, MSU’s
Counseling Center has reached out to students who may have witnessed the
incident to offer any support they need. Let this stand as proof that dealing
with a group of students at a state school can be hazardous to one’s mental
health……..
- Dinosaurs received something of a bad rap in the original
“Jurassic Park” movie and in its multiple, gawd-awful sequels. Not all
dinosaurs were angry, sharp-toothed killers or massive, lumbering beasts with
brains the size of the Hack Eyed Peas’ miniscule musical talent. Paul C. Sereno,
a paleontologist at the University of Chicago, has discovered an extremely
small member of the species, at the opposite end of the size scale from a
mighty predator like Tyrannosaurus rex. Sereno believes these tiny animals,
small enough to be compared to a frog or toad, were among the first to spread
across the planet more than 200 million years ago. Fossils from these tiny,
fanged plant-eaters known as heterodontosaurs, or “different toothed reptiles,”
have been discovered in places such as England and China. Sereno’s team added
another find to the list, identifying a bizarre species of these dwarf
herbivores in a slab of red rock that was collected in the early 1960s by
scientists working in South Africa. In his findings, published Wednesday in the
online journal ZooKeys, Sereno described the strange anatomy of the new member
of the heterodontosaur family. He also releases its official name, Pegomastax
africanus, or “thick jaw from Africa.” “My eyes popped, as it was clear this was
a distinct species,” he recalled of first viewing the species, with its short
parrot-like beak, one-inch jaws, sharp teeth and skull no less than three
inches long, in a Harvard lab. That was 1983, meaning it has taken nearly three
decades to finally sharing the news with the world. “I’m embarrassed to say how
many years ago that was — 1983,” he said. “But I was an enterprising graduate
student then at the American Museum of Natural History. All the while since
then, I wondered if anyone else might spot the creature hiding among the lab
drawers.” The fossils have long since been returned to the South African Museum
in Cape Town, but news of what they are has finally reached the world…………
- NHL enforcers have feelings too and New
Jersey Devils tough guy Krys Barch wants to make sure his voice is heard as the
league’s lockout drags on. Owners and players remain relatively entrenched in
their negotiating positions and recent talks have made little progress toward a
new labor agreement. The regular season is in jeopardy, most American sports
fans could not care less and yet, Barch is adamant that people hear his side of
the story. He spent a chunk of his weekend writing a series of tweets in which
he excoriated NHL owners for their tactics during the lockout. For over an
hour, he let loose with his Twitter bile. “I sit here from Gand Bend, Ontario
putting a pen to my heart and writing on paper what bleeds out. My name is Krys
Barch. I have played approx. 5 รณ years in the NHL and have worked for every second
of it. I Haven’t been a 1st round pick, bonus baby or a son
of a hall of famer. I have made it through sweating, bleeding, cut Achilles,
broken hands, concussions, broken orbital bones, 8 teeth knocked out, etc, etc,
etc.,” he tweeted. “My thoughts racing on what I can conquer tomorrow to get
our family ahead. Some times wonder if I should have existed when a word and a
gun solidified and solved all problems. I feel the Wild West would more
simplified than the world we live in now whet an employer who makes billions of
dollars and a league with record revenues can tell me that I can’t do the
things that my heart tells my me to do!” He went on to write about listening to
Neil Young, sitting beside a fire and wondering if NHL owners are sitting in
comfort, smoking expensive cigars and never having experienced the pain and
injuries their players suffer through each season. His primary beef was that
the owners “want to take 20% of our paychecks,” a reference to the owners
asking players to accept a 10-percent rollback in the percentage of
hocked-related revenue they currently receive. Near the end of his rant, Barch
offers a salution for the league’s financial struggles: more cooperation
amongst teams so “franchises in the South” can be more profitable or allow
teams to move north (closer to or in Canada), where they will make money. “The
lockout is a procedure to take from the players to pay for the NHL mistakes.
Let not allow the NHL to make any mor mistakes. Let the league and the players
to come together to fix the mistakes that have been made and make sure non are
made in the future,” Barch concluded…………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! When someone says a problem isn't
about the money, it’s about one thing – the money. Scores of angry rioters in
Tehran on Wednesday made no pretense about the reason for their demonstration
because money was their one and only driving force. The riots broke out in the
Iranian capital over the collapse of the Iranian currency, which has lost 40 percent
of its value against the dollar in a week. The rial has hit record lows against
the U.S. dollar almost daily and with Western sanctions over Iran's disputed
nuclear program squeezing the country like an anaconda, recovery is not
imminent. Regular revenues from oil have depleted Iran’s reserves and
undermined the central bank's ability to support the currency. The resulting
push by panicked Iranians to buy hard currencies have driven down the value of
the rial. As a result, Iran’s official inflation rate sits at 25 percent. That
has created a very angry mass of people affected directly by the dilemma and
those folks clashed with riot police in the capital, shouting slogans against
despotic ruler Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, saying his economic policies had fueled the
economic crisis. Nothing inflames the masses like job losses and lowered living
standards, but the government insists the problems are not its fault. In fact,
Ahmadinejad and his sycophants actually blame speculators for the rial's
collapse and ordered its security services to take action against them. Currency
dealers versus a corrupt and oppressive government doesn’t seem like a battle
with a favorable side, but everyone can get with an entertaining riot, right?
Reports from Tehran have concerned citizens taking their life savings to
currency dealers to buy more stable U.S. dollars, further weakening the rial. Tehran's
main bazaar stands as a stark example of the country’s economic trials, closed
on Wednesday because the instability of the rial was preventing merchants from
quoting accurate prices……….
- Prepare for lots and lots of drugs of various shapes,
sizes, colors and consistencies, world. The reissue of the Beatles’ 1967 film
“Magical Mystery Tour,” fueled by hallucinogens and narcotics from beginning to
end, is imminent. But before the film re-emerges, previously unseen footage of the
band making the film is being shown online. For those under the age of 50 who
don’t remember the original film, it was released in the wake of the release of
the iconic “Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band” album. The project was the
Beatles’ third film and documents a trippy (drug-addled) coach trip to the
seaside. Thoroughly surreal and bizarre, the film first aired on Boxing Day in
1967 by the BBC. Most critics hated it and most viewers, by virtue of not being
on an acid trip or peaking on LSD when they watched it, didn’t get it. The
project hasn’t been broadcast anywhere since 1979. The general reaction after
its first showing was a perplexed look and a shake of the head, but maybe BBC2
airing a new documentary on “Magical Mystery Tour” before broadcasting a
re-mastered version of the film will put the entire project in a better
context. Before the night of musical nostalgia, fans can catch a first glimpse
of the previously unseen footage on thespace.org. In the clip, the band is on
board their coach, headed for a fish and chip shop as they progress toward Newquay
– the final destination of the Magical Mystery Tour. Seeing the Beatles share a
simple meal with the other passengers on the coach as the amazed residents of
Taunton gather outside is a rather surreal scene, one that stands in stark
contrast with the band’s image at the time. The restored version of the full
film will be released Oct. 9 with a remixed soundtrack and special features, including
other scenes that were cut from the original, as well as interviews with the
band and cast………
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