- “The Tonight Show” may get its East Coast swing soon. With
current host Jay Leno snarking at NBC in his monologues and rumors swirling
that the über-annoying Jimmy Fallon is the not-so-distant heir to Leno’s
throne, it turns out there may be truth to rumors about the network looking to
turn the page in the history of its signature late-night show. Fallon,
currently seen during every commercial break annoying the hell out of America
with his inspid Capital One commercials, is the odds-on favorite to succeed
Leno and when he does, “The Tonight Show” is expected to return to New York, a
place it hasn’t been since it debuted with Steve Allen in 1954. Once Johnny
Carson took over, he moved the show to Burbank, Calif., in 1972 and it has
remained there ever since, even when Leno moved to primetime with “The Jay Leno
Show” in 2009 and Conan O’Brien took over as his ill-fated replacement. The
change went over like a lead balloon and Leno returned to his old spot seven
months later. However, at age 62, his time is limited and NBC seems to be of
the opinion that Fallon is the best contender to compete with Jimmy Kimmel in
the prized 18-to-49 demographic. Kimmel recently moved into the time slot on
ABC and NBC has been eyeing a succession plan for Leno for some time. Leno doesn’t
appear thrilled with the Peacock’s move in that direction and earlier this
week, took a shot at the network during his opening monologue. "Well, you
know, the whole legend of St. Patrick, right?" Leno said. "St.
Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland, and then they came to the United
States and became NBC executives." Reports over the latter stages of the
week suggested that the tension between the two sides was being resolved, but
the clock is clearly ticking on Leno and the show’s run in sunny Southern
California………
- Does a not-so-little apology for your nation’s military
killing nine activists from another country at sea go a long way? Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is about to find out after making a Barack Obama-inspired
phone call on Friday to Turkish premier Tayyip Erdogan to apologize for a raid
by Israeli marines that killed nine Turkish activists. Relations between the
two countries have been trained since the deaths of the activists, who were on
a boat attempting to go through Israel’s naval blockade of the Gaza Strip
in 2010 when it was boarded by the marines. While apologizing only under international
pressure and nearly three years after the fact may seem a bit hollow, one never
knows unless they try. Netanyahu's office issued a statement confirming he had
apologized and Obama also reportedly spoke for a moment during a conversation
that was primarily between Netanyahu and Erdogan. The call reportedly lasted
for half an hour and was made from a trailer on the tarmac at Tel Aviv's Ben
Gurion Airport before Obama left Israel for Jordan. Nothing says “I’m
truly sorry” quite like that last-minute call prompted by the leader of another
country before that leader bolts for another country. According to sources with
knowledge of the conversation, Netanyahu admitted "operational
mistakes" during the raid and apologized to Erdogan, who reportedly accepted
the apology. The Israeli premier "expressed an apology to the Turkish
people for any error that may have led to the loss of life, and agreed to
complete the agreement for compensation,” moves U.S. officials hope will help
normalize relations between the Middle East neighbors………
- Officials in
Butler County, Ohio clearly have time to waste and a lame sense of humor to
indulge. Unlike most Americans, who either blew right past Groundhog Day and
kept on going because after all, what does an ignorant, ground-dwelling,
non-speaking mammal know about predicting weather, the powers that be in Butler
County appear to be so bored that they have actually indicated Punxsutawney
Phil the groundhog for willfully misrepresenting when the end of winter weather
would come. Butler County Prosecuting Attorney Michael Gmoser filed the
indictment, which alleges that on or about February 2, 2013, at Gobbler's Knob,
Punxsutawney Phil “did purposely, and with prior calculation and design, cause
the people to believe that Spring would come early.” Made with all of the panache
that publicity-grabbing public official can muster, the proclamation is either
a contrived joke with no punch line or an effort to remind the world that there
is a place called Butler County. "I woke up this morning and the wind was
blowing, the snow was flying, the temperatures were falling, and I said
'Punxsutawney, you let us down,'" Gmoser said. The suit goes on to say
that, "contrary to the Groundhog Day report, a snowstorm and record low
temperatures have been and are predicted to continue in the near future, which
constitutes the offense of MISREPRESENTATION OF EARLY SPRING, a Unclassified
Felony, and against the peace and dignity of the State Of Ohio." Oh, and
what would a publicity stunt be without a bold proclamation of heroic
intentions? Cue Prosecutor Blowhard for that one. "There's only one person
that can do something about this for the citizens of Butler County, and that's
me," Gmoser added. Gmoser has even roped Sheriff Richard K. Jones into
playing a role in his manufactured melodrama. "Hopefully, like I said,
Pennsylvania cooperates with our prosecutor. My job is just to carry out the
court orders and the indictments. My job is not to question," Jones said. Gmoser
believes the crime should carry the death penalty and that’s not sitting well with
one of Punxsutawney Phil's co-handlers. "If you remember two weeks ago on
a Sunday, it was probably 60, 65 degrees. So, I mean, that basically counts as
an early spring," John Griffiths countered. Yes, this has already been a
solid waste of everyone’s time and it’s not even over yet……..
- For the most part, the only aspect of the NFL on which the
Cleveland Browns have a significant impact is the win totals of teams fortunate
enough to have them on their schedule. If second-year running back Trent
Richardson is correct, the Browns may have found a new way to make a lasting
mark on the league. After NFL owners passed an extremely controversial and
questionable new rule penalizing ball carriers 15 yards for a personal foul
penalty if they initiate contact with a defender using the crown of their
helmet while outside the tackle box, Richardson said he mind went back to the
vicious hit he laid on Eagles safety Kurt Coleman last season. Richardson
trucked Coleman at the end of a 9-yard gain, knocking the safety’s helmet off
his head and high into the air. Now that the owners have passed the new rule
and a video of Richardson’s hit was used as an example of plays the league
wanted to penalize during the NFL owners meetings in Phoenix, he feels like he
is the one to blame for a rule that players almost uniformly hate. “I feel like
I made it bad for all the backs," Richardson said. "I feel like it's
my fault." He also revealed that people have been telling him it should be
called the “T-Rich Rule,” a designation he doesn’t sound thrilled with. Owners
have been busy patting themselves on the back over passing the rule by a 31-1
count, figuring it shows how committed to player safety they are. Never mind
the fact that the league made billions of dollars over the past four decades
based on its controlled violence and hits that it now hypocritically penalizes,
because dammit, former players are suing the league for not doing enough to
protect them from concussions and their side effects, er, because it’s
important to keep players safe. That fact is not lost on Richardson. "I
know why they did it, but I won't say that I fully agree with it," Richardson
told. "I'm not saying it's a dumb rule, but the backs are all talking
about it and it's kind of hard on us." NFL owners couldn’t care less as
long as all of this makes life a little softer on their wallets………
- File this under “Who gives a damn? Dead is dead.” Still,
science is not about the relevant or the important, but about asking questions
that matter to perhaps only one or two people with too much time on their hands
and that’s why it matters that Terrence
Blackburn, a geologist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, and his
research team have discovered that ginormous volcanic eruptions may have led to
the extermination of half of Earth's species some 200 million years ago – give or
take a year or 1,000. In this working theory, the release of gases from giant
eruptions caused climate change that led to the End-Triassic Extinction, the
widespread loss of land and sea species that made way for the rise of the
dinosaurs. Blackburn’s team blamed the damage on a set of major eruptions
spanning from what is now New Jersey to Morocco. This backs up the belief that volcanic
activity and the resultant climate change were responsible for this major
extinction and at least four others. Pinning down the exact dates (Tuesday,
March 8, W.B.C. – Way Before Christ – perhaps) has been difficult, but this
study dates the End-Triassic Extinction to 201.56 million years ago, the same
time the volcanoes were erupting. The eruptions are collectively known as the
Central Atlantic Magmatic Province and are believed to have taken place when
the land on Earth was part of one giant supercontinent called Pangaea. For more
than 600,000 years (allegedly), the explosions continued and created a rift
that became the Atlantic Ocean. To prove their hypothesis, researchers examined
lava from these flows in modern-day Nova Scotia, Morocco and New Jersey. Using
the results, the research team was able to narrow the margin for error on
estimates of their age from a range of 1 million to 3 million years to a number
that is a fraction of those measurements. The oldest of the massive eruptions
were in Morocco, followed by the ones in Nova Scotia 3,000 years later and then
those in New Jersey another 10,000 years after that. Fossils found in sediment
layers underneath the lava flows contain animal and plant fossils not found in
layers above them, suggesting the eruptions wiped out those species. Using
mineral content, Blackburn and colleagues determined the age of the lavas and by
measuring the ratio of uranium to lead in lava rock, they were able to figure
out precisely when the eruptions occurred…….
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