- Pennies have become something of a despised commodity in
the United States. For a Pittsburgh tattoo parlor/coffee shop owner, the small
copper circles are not only important, but they form a disturbingly large
portion of her business’ interior design. Mel Angst wanted to give Artisan, a tattoo
gallery and coffee place on Penn Avenue, a new look. Unfortunately,
overhauling the inside of a large building can be costly and Angst didn’t have
tens of thousands of dollars to spend on the project. Rather than try to find
some cost-effective laminate flooring, she went to her local bank, threw down
$2,500 and asked for a quarter of a million pennies in return. "My floor
is made out of about 250,000 pennies," Angst explained. "Amazingly
enough, it's a lot cheaper to glue money to your floor than to actually buy tile.
It's about $3 a square foot." Cheap or not, she conceded that the tellers
at the bank where she purchased the pennies thought it was "the weirdest
request they've ever gotten." Procuring the pennies were merely the first
step and from there, Angst had to find the right adhesive and recruit
volunteers to help her glue the pennies to the floor. Using her company’s
Facebook page, she recruited workers willing to trade their time and sweat
equity for free tattoos. "Some days it was just me," she said.
"I think the most we ever was 7, but on average, (we have) 3 or 4 people a
day for about 10 to 16 hours a day for about three weeks straight, gluing these
down." All together, the project took about 300 man hours to cover the
shop’s 800 square feet. The rule for a free tattoo was that anyone who put in
more than 30 hours received a free penny tattoo, along with the satisfaction of
being part of arguably the weirdest flooring project known to man………
- The Dallas Cowboys are a maddeningly erratic football
team. They have impressive individual talent, but their best players are
incredibly inconsistent and they have one of the NFL’s most outspoken,
eccentric owners. They play in a $1 billion football palace but often show up
on Sundays like a team worth about $5. After another terrible loss last Sunday
in which they spotted the New York Giants a 23-0 first-half lead before a
furious rally came up just short in a 26-24 loss, the Cowboys stand at 3-4 and
on the precipice of falling out of the playoff race in the NFC. A road game
against the undefeated Atlanta Falcons looms this Sunday and it’s a crucial
game for Dallas. Knowing as much, the principals in the organization are
fielding plenty of questions about the contest. Face lift enthusiast and owner/general manager Jerry Jones was
cautiously optimistic Friday, expressing confidence in his team but stopping
short of guaranteeing a victory against the Atlanta Falcons on Sunday night. Defensive
coordinator and sideline maniac Rob Ryan, in response to a question about the
future of cornerback Mike Jenkins, was willing to go where his owner would not.
"We got to win this week," Ryan said after Friday's practice.
"We know it and we're going to." The guarantee sounds nice, but Ryan
(and his twin brother Rex, head coach of the New York Jets) has a habit of
opening his mouth and allowing foolish proclamations to tumble out. Dallas
quarterback Tony Romo leads the NFL in interceptions with 13 and the Cowboys
cannot run the ball. They are facing a Falcons team that is 7-0 on the season
and has won the third most home games in the NFL since 2008, posting a 29-6
record. Jones was more cautious, saying only that his team would have to play
nearly mistake-free to win in Atlanta. Asked for a prediction, he chuckled and said,
"It will be positive Cowboys." Either that or the Cowboys will be
positively terrible………
- What is the key to finding intelligent life in a universe?
A joint research project by NASA and the United Kingdom’s Royal Astronomical
Society has unearthed the answer and suggests that having the right kind of
asteroid belt in a solar system could be essential to finding intelligent life
in any universe, even on Earth. Researchers studied the role of asteroid belts
in the evolution of life on Earth and in the wider universe and concluded that asteroid
belts are important in the development of life because they provide worlds with
plenty of useful materials. "Asteroids are thought to be a primary
mechanism for distributing water and heavy metals across the Earth's surface,
and possibly even the building blocks of life itself," said Rebecca
Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado. "In our own
history, if an impact hadn't killed off the dinosaurs, then mammals might not
have evolved into intelligent life." In their development process, solar
systems often acquire an asteroid belt around the "snow line" – the
point where it's cold enough for volatile materials such as water to remain
solid. Having an asteroid belt is important, but so is having large planet
around to make sure the belt isn't too thick or too thin. In Earth’s solar
system, Jupiter sits on the edge of the belt, and its gravitational force
dissipates the asteroid belt by sending much of the material there either
spinning out into space or down into the sun. Problems can arise when large
bodies of gas (Rush Limbaugh included) don't have a stable orbit and spiral in
towards their sun, scattering the asteroid belt completely. Conversely, if the
planet is too far from an asteroid belt, then it has no effect and the belt
remains packed with material that bombards other planets too frequently for
them to recover. Jupiter is considered extremely stable and has moved just 0.2
astronomical units since it was formed. Using their findings from our own solar
system, the team then examined other solar systems to find out if similar
conditions could be found elsewhere. They studied 520 giant planets and found
that just 4 percent have the kind of compact asteroid belt found in Earth’s
solar system. "Based on our scenario, we should concentrate our efforts to
look for complex life in systems that have a giant planet outside of the snow
line," said astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science
Institute. That sounds like a very smart play………
- Go big or go home when you’re attempting to build the Caribbean's largest solar energy park.
Puerto Rico understands this rule and that’s why construction is underway on a $265
million project that will put the country on the map in a big way. The facility
is being built in southern Puerto Rico and is expected to generate enough
electricity to power more than 13,000 homes in the U.S. territory. Impressive in its scope and capacity,
the park features 270,000 solar panels and is being financed by CIRO Energy
Group and One Planet Caribbean of San Juan and San Francisco-based GCL Solar
Energy Inc. CIRO Group executive Ruben Perez officially announced the effort
Friday and claimed the project will help save 236 million barrels of petroleum
a year and reduce greenhouse emissions by 217 billion pounds. Those numbers
sound good and the prospect of becoming the Caribbean leader in green energy
carries some great cachet with it as well. Puerto Rico’s government is doing
its part as well and expects to begin construction soon on what will be the
region's largest wind farm, near the island's southern coast. Seeing a nation
not known for its wealth or lavish spending doling out loads of cash to take
big steps forward in the quest for renewable energy is commendable and perhaps
even something for Puerto Rico’s wealthier Western Hemisphere neighbors to
emulate…….
- Gerard Butler’s current film in theaters is
underperforming, so maybe his next blockbuster-in-the-making will fare
better…..or not. Writing off any film before it even begins production is
risky, but it seems safe to say that a project centering on soccer and "The
Death Match" of World War II will be a tough sell to audiences. Butler is
set to star in the project, titled “Dynamo,” which will be based on Andy
Dougan's book “Dynamo: Defending The Honour Of Kiev.” The book tells the true
story of a legendary 1942 football match between a team of occupied Ukrainians
and their Nazi oppressors and relives the wonderful humiliation of the Nazis,
who set up the match to be a one-sided contest only to see the Ukrainians pull off
an unlikely 5-3 victory at Kiev's Zenit Stadium, boosting morale across the
entire city. Butler will star as Nikolai Trusevich, the winning team's leader
and goalkeeper, and attempt to make American (and worldwide) audiences give a
damn about soccer and the bigger story of human triumph behind the game.
Selling soccer to Americans. Screenwriter Eli Richbourg has adapted Dougan's
book for the screen and the film’s producers are now in talks with potential
directors, with filming set to take place in Europe next year. In the meantime,
Butler can still be seen by very few people in “Chasing Mavericks,” his largely
ignored flick based on the friendship between legendary surfer Jay Moriarty and
the grizzled veteran who trained him. So far, the movie has bombed out
with American audiences and just opened in Europe………
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