- The Marion County
Sheriff’s Office may want to spend some of its meager budget on driving safety
classes for one of its deputies – assuming he is ever allowed behind the wheel
on the job again. Deputy Erich Gephart has now crushed not one, but two pedestrians
with official vehicles in the past year. His latest pedestrian plastering
occurred Sunday night on an interstate ramp in Indianapolis, where he struck
and killed a person along the side of the road. Gephart was driving the Marion
County Jail transport vehicle with one inmate inside when he struck Adam
McCarty, who was using a gas can to fill the tank of a pickup truck on the
southbound Interstate 65 ramp at 29th Street, according to police reports. McCarty
was pronounced dead at the scene and although his truck did not have lights or
emergency flashers on, and there were no flares, reflective triangles or other
safety devices used to alert other motorists, the spotlight is bound to be
bright on a deputy who also hit a pedestrian last fall. The fact that McCarty's
driver license had been suspended indefinitely in December 2011 is also
irrelevant because at the time of the incident, he wasn’t driving anything. Police
insisted they were not trying to divert the public’s focus away from Gephart’s
terrible driving record on the job and were only attempting to inform everyone
about the facts of the case. “We are not trying to shift the blame. We are just
putting the facts out there,” Chief Deputy Eva Talley-Sanders said. After the
accident, Gephart was taken to Wishard Memorial Hospital to submit to a blood
test and he reportedly passed. He was placed on administrative leave pending
the outcome of the investigation. Almost exactly one year ago, he was also
behind the wheel of a transport vehicle that struck a pedestrian on the near
north side of Indianapolis, near Kessler Boulevard and Spring Mill Road. In
that accident, he struck Charles Hill, who was critically injured and whose
family sued the county in April. Amazingly enough, the Hill family believes
that it would be wise to prevent Gephart from ever driving another official
vehicle again……..
- Hope dies hard, but hope is in critical conditions in New
York City as the Knicks prepare to begin their 2012-13 season. As Hurricane
Sandy slams Manhattan and threatens to postpone the Knicks’ season opener
against the Brooklyn Nets, the Knicks could use a delay of more than a few days
now that forward
Amar'e Stoudemire will miss at least the first six weeks of the season after
reinjuring his surgically repaired left knee. Stoudemire, who wisely accepted a
five-year, $100 million contract as a free agent in 2010 when the Knicks
foolishly offered it to him even though no one would insure his deal because of
his chronic knee problems, was initially expected to miss two to three weeks
after he ruptured a popliteal cyst behind the knee during the Knicks'
exhibition game against Toronto on Oct. 19. However, the pain persisted and
after Stoudemire received a second opinion over the weekend from Dr. Thomas
Carter, the Phoenix Suns team doctor, he was informed that he will need more
time to heal. Stoudemire formerly played for the Suns and Carter performed
microfracture surgery on his left knee in 2005. Sources confirmed that
Stoudemire will need approximately twice as much recovery time as initially
expected but it was unclear if he will need another procedure or will use the
extra time for rest and rehab. The high end of the estimate is eight weeks,
which would keep him out until late December. These are the very issues that scared
the NBA’s other 29 teams off from courting Stoudemire in 2010 and they are the
reason many observers winced in anticipatory pain when then-Knicks coach Mike
D’Antoni played his new start forward ridiculous minutes in his first season.
For the Knicks, Stoudermire is the latest example of their reckless and just
plain stupid free-agent spending in the past decade………
- Mosquitoes are one of the most-despised members of the
insect community. They just became that much more of a pest after a new report by the World
Health Organization revealed that in the last 100 years, the world has warmed
by approximately 0.75 degree Celsius and because of this change, the
disease-carrying pests we know as mosquitoes have become even more dangerous.
Already known for carrying vector-borne diseases like dengue and malaria, mosquitoes
are now an even bigger hazard than they were a quarter of a century ago. The
report, published Monday, explained that in the last 25 years, the rate of
global warming has accelerated, at over 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade. Researchers
pegged the cost of this change at between $2-4 billion annually for the next
two decades and blamed resulting illnesses from climate-related issues for a
big chunk of that cost. "Many of the major killers such as diarrhoeal
diseases, malnutrition, malaria and dengue are highly climate-sensitive and are
expected to worsen as the climate changes," the report stated. "Malaria
is strongly influenced by climate. Transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes, malaria
kills almost one million people every year. The Aedes mosquito vector of dengue
is also highly sensitive to climate conditions. Studies suggest that climate
change could expose an additional 2 billion people to dengue transmission by
the 2080s." Yes, malaria. Even though the surface area on which malaria
remains a risk has been reduced from half to a quarter of the earth's landmass
in the last century, demographic changes have caused to the amount of people
exposed to malaria to increase exponentially over the same time. An estimated 1
million people die annually from malaria and mosquitoes are the culprits in
many of those deaths. "Infection could range from a mild flu-like fever to
the potentially fatal severe dengue, which particularly affects individuals who
are exposed to one of the four different strains of the virus as a secondary
infection. Heavy rainfall can cause standing water, while drought can encourage
people to store more water around the home, both providing breeding sites for
Aedes mosquitoes,” the report said. Older people and those already battling
other illnesses are in even greater danger from malaria, which can contribute
directly to deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory disease. Climate change
factors in because higher temperatures also raise the levels of ozone and other
pollutants in the air that exacerbate cardiovascular and respiratory disease.
In short, the world is a jacked-up place with a deteriorating ecosystem in which
hazards are everywhere and their numbers are rising rapidly. What a wonderful
world………
- Wu Tang and Genghis Khan? Believe it because RZA, a
founding member of the iconic rap outfit, has signed on to direct two new movies, including a
biopic of Genghis Khan. Wu Tang
Clan, which includes RZA, GZA, Method Man, Raekwon, Ghostface Killah,
Inspectah Deck, U-God, Masta Killa, and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard, has been a
staple on the music scene for 20 years and RZA is using their success to branch
out into movies. He has already appeared in guest spots in “Due Date” and “Repo
Men” and also in an episode of HBO’s hit series “Californication.” His biggest
acting role to date is set to hit screens next year when he stars alongside
legit action heroes Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson in “GI Joe:
Retaliation.” Acting is one thing,
of course, but directing is another level entirely. RZA has shot and produced numerous
music videos over the years and now he’s extending his reach to the big screen.
His first directorial effort, “The Man With The Iron Fists,” hits
theaters Friday and RZA also co-wrote the film and stars in it with Russell
Crowe. After “Iron Fists,” RZA’s next film is expected to be “No Man’s Land,”
an action film about a man who steals a priceless diamond from a dangerous
criminal. Action films seem to be in RZA’s wheelhouse, but a biopic about the
legendary 13th century warrior and founder of the Mongol Empire doesn’t fit in
the same vein. Profiling Genghis Khan will be a very different challenge, but
the project already has a script by John
Milius, whose impressive resume includes “Apocalypse Now.” The Genghis
Khan project is projected to begin filming next year in China and if that weren't
enough, RZA also revealed recently that he wants to reunite Wu-Tang Clan to mark the 20th anniversary of their debut
album “Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).” Maybe after that he can host his own
radio show or morning show on network television……..
- It wouldn’t be Halloween if someone, somewhere in the
world wasn’t decrying the occasion on health/moral/societal grounds. Poland is
one of the places Halloween is a reason to rage this time around and even
though it’s not a real holiday and merely an excuse for women everyone to skank
it up as a slutty nurse/cop/librarian/French maid/pirate/ballerina and drag
their significant other to a costume party and for children everywhere to
solicit absurd amounts of candy from total strangers and hope there are no razor
blades inside, Halloween has some Catholic bishops in Poland very upset. The bishops oppose
Halloween because it is allegedly harmful on account of promoting
"diabolical" behavior. Archbishop Andrzej Dziega in Szczecin, in the
northwest, is leading the charge and penned a letter to his parishioners
explaining that under the guise of fun, Halloween can be "destroying the
spiritual life." He warned that its
"tricks" hide "diabolical attitudes" by encouraging
readiness to harm others. It all sounds bizarre, cryptic and paranoid…..and it
is. Clearly, Archbishop Dziega was never invited to the cool kids’ Halloween
party growing up and the slutty nurse he had a crush on when he was 16 and
wanted a Halloween hook-up never even looked his way. Asking the faithful not
to observe Halloween for those reasons is bogus and selfish, even with support
from Archbishop Kazimierz Nycz, who wrote in a blog post that Halloween goes
against the teaching of the Church by promoting the "occult and
magic." Great, so now king-size Snickers bars are occult and magic………
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