- Turtles have long been stereotyped as being slow,
blundering impediments in the way of faster creatures in the way of two- and
four-legged beings looking to get where they’re going. That’s largely because
turtles tend to be slow, blundering animals who get in others’ way, but the
good people in an area of Cape Coral, Fla. are not willing to accept the fact
that turtles are doomed to an early demise because of their overall lack of
speed. Residents of an area along
Burnt Store Road between Tropicana and Diplomat parkways have noticed a
disturbing number of dead turtles showing up along the road, often torn to
pieces by passing cars who simply did not see them lumbering across the road or
could not react in time to avoid the animals. Rather than allow this problem to
continue unchecked, these do-gooders are pushing city officials to post "Turtle Crossing" signs put in
to warn drivers the animals are there. To accomplish this goal, they are
sharing stories of turtles torn in half and the top half still moving while the
severed lower half rests in pieces several feet away. The turtles are known to congregate
in the waters closest to busy the Burnt Store Road and when they attempt to
cross the road, many of there are sent off to that great pond in the sky. Unfortunately
for the concerned locals attempting to save the turtles, city officials are not
receptive to their concerns. While spending a few hundred dollars erecting a simple
sign warning drivers that turtles are known to cross that section of road might
seem like a trivial expense, officials argue that such a sign would likely be a
waste of time because turtles are known to change their movement patterns and
as such, a sign could quickly become irrelevant. If that happened, they could
always pull it out of the ground and drop it along any of the five dozen other
roads in their area where turtles are known to dwell………..
- Gwen Stefani’s entire musical career feels like one big
cosmic joke on the world, so it’s rather hilarious to hear the part-time
singer/part-time clothing designer suggest that her solo career while on break
from her joke of a band, No Doubt, wasn’t successful because she felt like she
was playing a character. That’s the story Stefani went with recently when asked
to compare and contrast her solo self with the role she plays while singing the
crap-tacular garbage No Doubt presents as music. “I did the solo thing, but I
felt like I was trying to play a character in a way, this Alice in Wonderland
pretend version of myself. But this, being in No Doubt, is really who I am,”
she said. "Time kind of stops when you're in a band. It's this suspended
childhood, and it's really awesome, that part of it. But then when you have a
family of your own, it forces you to go into the adult world a little bit more."
If only she would step fully into that adult world, spend more time with
husband Gavin Rossdale of Bush and her children and work exclusively on running
her clothing line, the world would be a more wonderful place because of it. Any
doubts about how irrelevant No Doubt is on today’s music scene can be clarified
by a quick look at the Billboard album sales chart, where the band’s second
single from its comeback album, “Push and Shove,” could reach only No. 397 on the
charts, almost 1,500 sales short of hitting the Top 200. Neither the album
itself nor the first single, “Settle Down,” could crack the top 15. Even the
fact that U2 was once dumb enough to allow No Doubt to tour with it as an
opening act cannot salvage anything from the ongoing train wreck that is the No
Doubt era……….
- In violent times, science is not exactly helping mankind’s
cause to cut out the aggression. In fact, a team of researchers from the University of Utah
may be making matters worse by suggesting that man’s hands may be biologically
engineered for fighting. These pro-punch people used instruments to measure the
forces and acceleration when martial artists hit a punch bag and found that the
fist provides support that increases the ability of the knuckles to transmit
"punching" force. “We asked the question: 'can you strike harder with
a fist than with an open palm?'," co-author David Carrier said. "We were
surprised because the fist strikes were not more forceful than the strikes with
the palm. In terms of the work on the bag there is really no difference."
Because the surface that strikes the target with a fist is smaller, there is
more stress from a fist strike. Carrier explained that “the force per area is
higher in a fist strike and that is what causes localized tissue damage.” However,
the purpose of the study was to determine whether the proportions of the human
hand allow for support when a punch is thrown. In its efforts, the team found
that clenching one’s fist does provide important support for the delicate bones
of the hand and wrist, specifically because of the increased stiffness of the
second meta-carpo-phalangeal, or MCP, joint. Making a fist increased the
support by a factor of four and also doubled the ability of the proximal
phalanges to transmit a punching force. Carrier and fellow researcher Michael
Morgan added that the human hand has also been shaped by the need for manual
dexterity, but that’s a fairly obvious conclusion and one whose “discovery”
makes you angry enough to ball your hand up and punch something with it………
- Swiss banking industry, say it ain’t so. Other than the
Cayman Islands, no other place in the world has the sterling reputation as a
place to hide cash from the powers that be that Switzerland has developed over
the years. Yet here we are, digesting the news that Swiss bank UBS was hit with a $1.5 billion
fine on Wednesday, admitting to fraud, paying bribes to brokers and
"pervasive" manipulation of global benchmark interest rates by dozens
of staff in a deal with international authorities. That massive fine is more
than three times the $450 million fine
levied on Britain's Barclays in June for the identical offense of rigging
the Libor benchmark rate used to price financial contracts around the globe,
but it is still less than the one assessed to Britain's HSBC after regulators
fined it $1.92 billion last week to settle a probe in the United States into
laundering money for drug cartels. If UBS had just dabbled in the drug business
a little bit, its fine could easily have vaulted up to first place. UBS has
already stumbled through the past 18 months as it suffered a $2.3 billion loss
in a rogue trading scandal, management upheaval and thousands of job cuts. "We
deeply regret this inappropriate and unethical behavior. No amount of profit is
more important than the reputation of this firm, and we are committed to doing
business with integrity," UBS Chief Executive Sergio Ermotti said in an
official statement. The bank will chip off $1.2 billion to the U.S. Department
of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, 160 million pounds to
the UK's Financial Services Authority and 59 million Swiss francs from its
estimated profit to Swiss regulator Finma. According to bank officials, the
fine would widen its fourth quarter net loss but would not be a crippling blow
to its operations. In its own statement about the scandal, the UK's Financial
Services Authority claimed that at least 45 people were involved in the rigging
across three continents, which took place across a range of Libor currencies.
At the heart of the fraud were senior managers at UBS directing traders to keep
Libor submissions low in order to give the impression that the bank was able to
borrow more cheaply than it would actually have been able to do so. This was
done in order to “protect our franchise in these sensitive markets,” according
to a retelling of those UBS instructions by British financial officials. The
FSA said "the manipulation was conducted openly and was considered to be a
normal and acceptable business practice by a large pool of individuals,” which
doesn’t begin to make this activity sound shady enough.…………
- Watching the Sacramento Kings attempt to play basketball
is a consistently painful experience. The Kings, a team that nearly moved each
of the past two offseasons and had a deal for a new arena in their current city
fall through, are 8-17 and have no hope for so much as a playoff berth this
year. In the fact of such awful basketball, one things fans have no tolerance for
is a roster full of players in denial of how terrible they truly are. Thankfully,
the Kings are fully aware of their suck-itude. According to sources close to
the team, “They
know that they’re playing terrible basketball right now. But they’ve thrown
their hands up trying to figure out Keith Smart.” Keith Smart would be the
Kings’ coach, who is in his fourth year as a head coach in the NBA. He landed
in Sacramento after underachieving in one season as the interim head coach with
Golden State following Don Nelson’s retirement prior to the 2010-11 season.
Smart drew criticism for his handling of rookie star Stephan Curry and
ironically enough, he’s running into trouble in his current job for not giving
enough playing time to a promising young back court player. This time, that
player is point guard Isaiah Thomas, who is coming off the bench after
finishing seventh in last season’s Rookie of the Year voting Thomas posted
shooting percentages of 47.7/40.6/84.1 as a rookie and averaged 14.8 points,
3.1 rebounds and 5.4 assists in 31.6 minutes per game in 37 starts. Perhaps
Smart is scared off by Thomas’ lack of height (5-foot-9), but his strength and
leaping ability still make the diminutive point guard an above-average
defender. General manager Geoff Petrie provided Smart with an easy out when he
signed free-agent guard Aaron Brooks over the summer and Smart took it even
though Thomas stepped up and played a prominent leadership role in the
offseason, organizing team workouts and working to build camaraderie. He has
been relegated to a supporting role now that the season is underway and
according to sources close to the team, players “don’t know what they’re
running” on offense with Brooks running the show. Oh, and the Kings rank dead
last in the NBA in assists per game, so the experiment seems to be working
splendidly……….
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