- The University of Wisconsin’s football program is doing
its best to pick up the pieces and move on after former coach Bret Bielema left
them in the dust to accept the head coaching job at Arkansas on Tuesday. The
Badgers are getting ready to play in their third straight Rose Bowl next month
and with their head coach packing his bags for Fayettville, the question was
who should coach the team on New Year’s Day against Stanford. Should Bielema
continue to lead the team? After all, he did get them to the Rose Bowl, so
maybe he should be allowed to finish what he started. On the other hand, he
dumped them like a C+ girlfriend when an A- option became available, so why
reward disloyalty? Thankfully for the Badgers, they have a viable alternative
handy in the form of athletic director Barry Alvarez. Alvarez is a College
Football Hall of Famer who led the Badgers to three Rose Bowl wins before
retiring in 2005 and turning the program over to his handpicked successor,
Bielema. Alvarez was the logical choice to replace Bielema for the Rose Bowl
and the choice became reality when team captains asked Alvarez to coach the
squad for the game. Wisconsin is one of just many programs whose coaches leapt
at the chance for a better job after a successful season and won't coach their
team in its bowl game, but the Badgers are arguably the most surprising entry
on a list that includes Arkansas State, Kent State and Northern Illinois.
Unlike those other programs, however, the 8-5 Badgers have a viable replacement
option and someone who has already won three times in the bowl game they’re
about to compete in……….
- For as long as fraternities and sororities have existed,
drunken stupidity has been part of the equation for these groups. No, not all
fraternities and sororities are full of booze-guzzling, six-year-plan-following
skanks and meatheads, but on every campus across America, at least one frat or
sorority exists to keep the traditions of “Animal House” alive. Penn State,
which has had its share of scandal and drama for more than a year, definitely
has one such fraternity and it is none other than the ladies of Chi
Omega. The Chi Ho’s obviously like a good party just like any other college
student and judging from a photo these fine ladies posted recently to their
Tumblr page, they like their fun with a heaping helping of racism. If only the
rest of the world could appreciate their bigoted, fun-loving ways, there would
not be a problem with them posting a picture of themselves dressed in ponchos
and sombreros and wearing fake mustaches and holding racist signs with messages
such as "Will mow lawn for weed + beer" and "I don't cut grass.
I smoke it." Inexplicably, the university and its Panhellenic Council
didn’t get the joke. "The Penn State Panhellenic Council recognizes the
offensive nature of the photo and is therefore taking the matter very
seriously," the council’s executive board said in a statement. We are
addressing the situation immediately with the members of the chapter in
conjunction with their national headquarters." Rather than stand their
ground and defend their right to hateful speech perpetuating ugly racial
stereotypes simply for the purpose of amusing themselves and getting some
social media run, the Chi Ho’s are instead backing down and apologizing. “Our
chapter of Chi Omega sincerely apologizes for portraying inappropriate and
untrue stereotypes," said Jessica Riccardi, president of the Chi Omega
chapter at Penn State. "The picture in question does not support any of
Chi Omega’s values or reflect what the organization aspires to be." Why
not? A Mexican-themed Halloween party sounds like a damn fun time and just
because these skanks weren’t smart enough to not tag themselves in the photo on
Facebook is no reason to hate on them. Now do us a favor and pass the cerveza, sororacists………..
- Oops. Tearing down an historic 18th-century chateau in a sleepy French
village in Bordeaux seems to be one of those actions taken only after careful
planning and consideration, just to be certain that, you know, no one wants a
building like that around. For officials in the village of Yvrac, prior
planning wasn’t as big of a factor as it should have been when it came to
bulldozing the aforementioned chateau. Residents awoke Wednesday to find the
chateau gone and in its place they had only an apology from the mayor’s office,
saying the building was completely bulldozed "by mistake." The
mayor's office in Yvrac said a construction crew was hired to renovate the
grand 140,000-square-foot manor and raze a small building on the same estate in
southwest France. Somewhere in the process, the message was jumbled and no one
bothered to stop and ask why a small building off to the side of the property
would be left standing while a ginormous, historical chateau would be razed. "The
Chateau de Bellevue was Yvrac's pride and joy," said former owner Juliette
Marmie. "The whole village is in shock. How can this construction firm
make such a mistake?" The onus looks to be squarely on the construction
company, which reportedly misunderstood the renovation plans of the current
owner, Russian businessman Dmitry Stroskin, to clean up the manor and restore
it to its former baroque glory. The best part of the entire story is that Stroskin
was away when the calamity occurred and returned home to discover his chateau
was a giant pile of rubble. "I'm in shock... I understand the turmoil of
the community," Stroskin said. Shocked? Just because a local treasure
boasting a grand hall that could host 200 people and boasted a grand stone
staircase is a heap of crushed stone is no reason to be upset. You can always
build another one and wait 300 years for it to become just as historical………
- Eminem’s daughter has clearly been studying her father’s
style and looking to emulate the ridiculous amounts of smack he talks, but she still
needs to develop the thick skin he’s built up over the years. Oh, and
16-year-old Hailie Mathers could also use a quick lesson on Twitter and the
media, because she doesn’t seem to understand either. The sh*t began hitting
the fan when young Ms. Mathers fired off a tweet accusing country/pop darling
Taylor Swift of “whoring around” to make an album. A Twitter account supposedly
run by Mathers, @hailiejade_x, uncorked a stream of virulent anti-Swift rants late
Tuesday. “Dear @taylorswift13, please stop whoring around with every guy you
see,” @hailiejade_x wrote. “We all know you’re only doing it so you can make
another album.” Then (allegedly) Mathers got to her real point, namely that she
was jealous that Swift was currently dating man-bander Harry Styles of One
Direction. “If @taylorswift13 is really dating the love of my life Harry_Styles
i will not be happy,” Mathers wrote. “I am never, ever, everrrrr, listening to
your music againnnn, @taylorswift13. LIKE EVER.” Predictably, based on the fact
that sarcasm never translates well into messages on a computer or smartphone
screen, Swift’s fans fought back and after receiving enough angry tweets from
pissed-off teeange girls, Mathers apologized and tried to blame the drama on
the media. “Wow. I didn’t mean for people to react to my tweet in the way that
they have it was just a bit of fun!” she wrote. “Sorry @taylorswift13 for my
immaturity. OK so I’m deactivating my account now ...The media is BS.” True to
her word, the account has since been deleted and maybe next time Mathers will
realize what she’s getting into before she opens her mouth…or her iPhone…….
- How much of a role does a person’s memory of the meal
they just ate affect how full they feel after consuming that meal? A research
team at the University of Bristol has suggested that while remembering a
massive meal you wolfed down can make you feel fuller, an inaccurate memory of
the meal can lead to a feeling of still being hungry. Lead researcher Jeffrey
Brunstrom and his team showed 100 volunteers either a small or large portion of tomato soup
before lunch and then used a hidden pump to refill or empty the bowl without
the subject noticing. "For the first time, this manipulation exposed the
independent and important contribution of memory processes to satiety," Brunstrom
explained. "Opportunities exist to capitalize on this finding to reduce
energy intake in humans." After their meal, volunteers’ self-reporting of
their hunger level was influenced by the amount of soup consumed, the
researchers said. However, two to three hours after the meal ended, the pattern
flipped and a person’s hunger level was dictated by the perceived amount in the
bowl at the beginning of the meal rather than the actual amount. Participants
who were shown 500 ml of soup experienced greater satiety than those shown 300
ml even though they did not actually consume 500 ml of soup. Both sides
received 400 ml of soup, so their intake was identical even though their
fullness was not. One day later, the researchers examined expected satiation
for the two groups. Participants also answered an open-ended question about the
purpose of the study and Brunstrom's team believes its findings s suggest that
the role of memory is substantial and can be triggered without explicitly
cueing a memory of a recent meal. The study did not draw the same cause-and-effect
relationship between hunger and memory that previous studies have shown, but
one brave team of money wasters, er, researchers, cannot possibily accomplish everything
in just one study………
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