- The might of “Oz The Great and Powerful” was on
display for a second time in as many weekend, adding $42.2 million to its
coffers to hold onto first place at the box office and bump its overall
domestic total to $145.1 million. Two newcomers claimed the next two spots on
the list as Halle Berry’s latest, “The Call,” opened with $17.1 million to best
the heavily publicized and slightly underperforming “The Incredible Burt
Wonderstone,” which ended up third with a modest $10.3 million in its first
weekend. Fourth place went to “Jack the Giant Slayer,” which dipped two places
and made just $6.2 million to up its three-week domestic haul to $54 million. “Identity
Thief” ended up fifth with $4.6 million and after six weeks, it has banked
$123.7 million and counting in domestic earnings. The sixth-place film for the
frame was “Snitch,” down one spot with a $3.5 million effort that upped its
four-week bank roll to $37.2 million. A one-spot drop left “21 and Over” in
seventh place and its $2.6 million take was enough to boost its tally to $21.8
million after three weeks in theaters. “Silver Linings Playbook” held firm in
eighth place and in its 18th – 18TH! – week of release, managed $2.5 million.
With $124.6 million so far, it is well past the $100 million barrier in profits
on its U.S. earnings alone. In ninth place was “Safe Haven,” adding $2.4
million to its take to increase its five-week total to $67 million and
counting. “Escape From Planet Earth” rounded out the top 10 with $2.3 million
and “Dead Man Down” (No. 11) and “The Last Exorcism Part II” (No. 12) both
dropped out from last week’s top 10………….
- He’s responsible for a fair amount of success for players
enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame, so it’s only fitting that Dr. Frank Jobe also receive special
recognition from the hall. Jobe, who developed the elbow procedure known as
"Tommy John surgery" and subsequently saved the careers of dozens of
pitchers and even position players who blew out their elbow but were able to
return after having the surgery, will be honored during Hall of Fame induction
weekend on July 27. Jobe operated on New York Yankees pitcher Tommy John, who will
attend the ceremony to help honor Jobe for his impact on the sport, after John
was diagnosed with a ruptured MCL in his left elbow in 1974. The good doctor
then performed a previously unheard of procedure in which he removed a tendon
from John's forearm and repaired his elbow. The surgery was successful, John
was able to return to the mound and in the nearly four decades since, many more
players have undergone Tommy John surgery, including current Washington
Nationals ace Stephen Strasburg. Hall of Fame president Jeff Idelson announced
the special honor for Jobe and cited his work as a testament to the positive
role of medicine in baseball's growth. Even in his late 80s, Jobe still
maintains a connection to the sport he helped to revolutionize by serving as
special adviser to the chairman of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Maybe at Hall of
Fame weekend, he can bring a glove and have a catch with John and some of the
other greats of baseball whose careers he had a direct hand in salvaging………
- Institutions
of higher learning need to spend more time building ape-like robots and less time on
lame pursuits such as mathematical theory and polymer science. Carnegie Mellon
University is a place that understands this imperative and it has just
announced plans to build its very own ape-like robot. A 10-person research team
with CM's National Robotics Engineering Center is hard at work on what it calls
it a CMU Highly Intelligent Mobile Platform, or CHIMP for short. The CHIMP is part
of a project dubbed "Tartan Rescue” and it is safe to say that the world
will be a better place because of this effort. The robot bears a modest
resemblance to an ape, although its normal motions are more similar to those of
a tank, with the tracks of all four limbs on the ground. Such an arrangement
would give the robot an advantage when moving over debris and rough terrain.
The versatile CHIMP can also move on the treads of just two limbs when needed,
freeing up its other limbs to operate tools or open a container. It also sports
a second pair of hands jutting from its robotic heels, both with an opposable
thumb. When completed, CHIMP will be able to grasp objects like a human and the
team building it plans to extend its usefulness to "mobile manipulation
and manufacturing." The tank-like treads help CHIMP avoid “many dynamic
stability problems of humanoid robots,” according to its makers. "When we
walk or stand, our brains are actively controlling our balance all of the
time," Tartan Rescue team leader Tony Stentz explained. "This dynamic
balance makes people nimble and enables them to run. But it also greatly
increases the complexity, computational requirements and energy consumption of
a machine. So CHIMP is designed with static stability; it won't fall down even
if it experiences a computer glitch or power failure." Whether or not
CHIMP will truly have "near-human strength and dexterity” or not remains
to be seen, but employing sensors to render its surroundings in texture-mapped
3D and allowing its human operator to use the 3D imagery relayed by CHIMP to
choose whether to manually maneuver the robot or allow CHIMP to work
autonomously should at least make it a fun toy for researchers to play with………
- Getting greedy there, eh eurozone and International
Monetary Fund? Not only did these two groups give the island nation of Cyprus a
boost in the form of a decision on Saturday to bail out its faltering economy to the tune of €10 billion ($13 billion), the IMF and
eurozone are looking to assess a levy on bank deposits held in Cypriot
accounts. All 17 European Union countries that use the euro offer deposit
insurance to protect customers if their bank fails, but the Cyprus measure is
different because it is a tax — not losses incurred because of a bank failure.
Banks acted quickly to seal off the amount of the levy — a 6.75 percent tax on
deposits under €100,000 and 9.9 percent on those above — in order to prevent
depositors from accessing it. Customers can draw on the rest of their funds via
ATMs and many anxious citizens did exactly that, raiding the nearest ATM to
drain their account. Most banks opened only briefly on Saturday and with Monday
being a national holiday, no international transfers will be able to go through
until Tuesday. While Cyprus' parliament is expected to pass the required legislation
quickly, the deal also needs the approval of several eurozone parliaments.
What’s happening in Cyprus is jarring for consumers because thus far in the
euro crisis, they have been protected. Italy did levy a tax on every bank
account in the 1990s to stave off the collapse of its lire currency, but that
tax was a meager 0.06 percent. EU officials insist Cyprus is unique and in the
sense that its banks are overwhelmingly funded by deposits, they’re correct. Current
deposits in Cypriot banks total about €68 billion, of which foreigners hold
about 40 percent. The government has elected to go after all depositors,
regardless of their nationality. With the policy shift, it seems likely that
the country will lose its carefully built reputation as a financial center and
preferred place for investments by foreigners. It banks were renowned for their
service and provided substantial privacy to clients in a country with very low
tax rates. Those banks took a large hit when Greece’s economy tumbled because
they held a lot of Greek debt and suffered significant losses when they took a
write-down of those bonds as part of the Greek bailout. Cyprus’ deficit and
debt have both mushroomed in recent months and now, those problems are too
pressing to ignore………
- What happened to wanting street cred and chicks digging
the bad boy? Oakland (Calif.) resident Chau Van either does not believe in
these ideas or has forgotten them because he and his lawyer have filed a federal lawsuit
against the city of Oakland because Van claims he was wrongly put on the
Oakland Police Department’s “Most Wanted” list for six months in 2012. Instead,
attorney DeWitt Lacy called the incident “an egregious and scandalous error”
and said the lawsuit is to clear his client’s name and reputation, which were
“irreparably harmed” by the incident. The suit, filed on March 5, calls
Van “a law-abiding citizen with no
history of violence.” According to Lacy, Van is a real estate consultant and
freelance web designer, which essentially means he’s self-employed and should
choose to view this as a chance for free publicity instead of complaining about
it. Lacy is taking the case to extremes, insisting that restoring Van’s
reputation would require a public acknowledgement of the alleged error as well
as efforts to make sure Van’s name is removed from related federal and state
most wanted lists. Of course, those developments wouldn’t be enough for Lawyer
McGreedypants, who also wants to obtain financial compensation for Van for lost
employment and emotional trauma. “It put a great amount of fear on him and his
family. He was wounded and he needs to be made whole,” Lacy said. Wounded? How
about significantly more badass than he’s ever been? Being bitter that Police
Chief Howard Jordan placed Van’s photo and name on a list of the city’s four
most wanted suspects by during a news conference about gang violence on Feb. 7,
2012 isn't going to get anyone anywhere. So what if a concerned friend called
van that night and told him that a television station was reporting that he was
one of Oakland’s most wanted criminals? If he were smart, he would be putting
that on his business cards, having t-shirts made and rolling with it. Then
again, Van hasn’t handled the case well from the start. He actually went to the
police department on Feb. 13, 2012 in an attempt to clear up the error and
instead was arrested and searched and kept in custody for 72 hours before he
was released. If all he gets out of this is cash and an apology, it’s going to
be a complete waste………
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