- The cool kids go to school at TeWinkle Middle School, an
Orange County institution of learning that imparts some very valuable lessons
to its students. The lesson this past week was the ever-vital one that at some
point in life, most people will work with some combination of a mischievous
stoner and a disgruntled co-worker looking to exact some revenge on their
office mates by baking some of their best chron into brownies or cookies and
bringing said dessert items to work, leaving them in the break room. Three TMS
students also learned firsthand how much fun getting high can be – and they
even received a free trip to the hospital to boot. All three of the students
were taken to a local hospital in Costa Mesa, with the first two seventh
graders going to the school office around 12:40 p.m. Wednesday, complaining of
stomach problems, according to school officials. A third student, who clearly
has a higher (pun intended) tolerance for the hippie lettuce and maybe should
answer a few more questions about his or her previous experience with the wacky
weed, went to the office complaining of similar symptoms a short time later.
Newport-Mesa Unified School District spokeswoman Laura Boss said only that two
other students are being investigated in the incident and that the student
suspected of bringing the brownie to school was not among those transported to
the hospital. Well of course he or she wasn’t because that student obviously
has some solid experience with pot and knows how to handle it, not to mention
the fact that an experienced stoner is not going to get baked at school, where
teachers and principals can totally harsh their buzz. In a typical alarmist
overreaction, the district sent out a notification to parents around 1:30 p.m.,
alerting them to the situation. There may be a problem regarding pot in Costa
Mesa, as seven students at Pomona Elementary School, also in Costa Mesa, were
hospitalized last month after a student brought a brownie laced with marijuana
to school. School bake sales must be a blast in this district………
- What were America’s future CEO’s doing on Saturday night? Some of them,
believe it or not, were not trying to blow as much of their trust fund as
possible on their latest racially offensive, Ivy League fraternity theme party
or worrying that dad might repossess their Bentley because they’re headed for a
2.4 GPA this semester. These fine, upstanding citizens were busy smashing other
dudes’ faces into giant glass panes and using long sticks to beat the living
hell out of other people. That’s right, Yale
won its first NCAA hockey championship, defeating top-seeded Quinnipiac 4-0 in
a game played at Pittsburgh’s Mellon Arena. Goalie Jeff Malcolm stopped 36
shots and Clinton Bourbonais, Charles Orzetti, Andrew Miller and Jesse Root
scored for the Bulldogs (22-12-3), who bested their Connecticut rivals after
losing to the Bobcats three times during the regular season. In the process,
they stunned the nation's No. 1 team and secured their first national
championship in one of the only sports where they have any hope whatsoever of
actually winning a national championship. Bourbonais scored what proved to be
the game-winning goal with 4 seconds left in the second period and Yale added
three more tallies in the third period to win going away. Their four goals
against Quinnipiac's Eric Hartzell, a Hobey Baker finalist (think Heisman
Trophy for college hockey) were impressive, but maybe not as impressive as the
Yale students who dared to lower themselves to travel to a blue-collar, Rust
Belt city such as Pittsburgh not having to resort to their patented, “That’s
all right, that’s OK, you’re gonna work for us some day” chant………
- Are naming rights battles over outer space entities still
an issue? Really? Other than the poor fools still gullible enough to believe
that $50 sent to some bogus company with no more clout in space than the kid
who mows their lawn and assume that means they have a star named after them,
who buys into any of that nonsense? Clearly some folks do, because the International Astronomical Union (IAU)
has some drama on its hands. The IAU issued a reminder Friday that it is the
only body authorized to give exoplanets their official names, a direct response
to recent naming initiatives by companies like Uwingu. Organization leaders
said in their statement that planet-naming schemes have "no bearing on the
official naming process," and reiterated the necessity of maintaining a
unified procedure for naming such objects. While not mentioning Uwingu (whose
name means "sky" in Swahili) by name, the IAU statement referred
only to a "recent name-selling campaign." Uwingu, which is relatively
new, launched an initiative last month calling on the public to name the
nearest Alpha Centauri Bb — an exoplanet 4.3 light-years from Earth —
as part of a fundraising campaign. The Baby Planet Name Book campaign is built
around the idea of informally replacing lame-tastic planet names such as HD
85512b or Gliese 667Cc with better monikers. The underlying aim, according to
Uwingu, is to raise money for space research, exploration and education. In
order to get scammed by these fools, all a person needs to do is pay 99 cents
to vote for their preferred planet name on the list. The Uwingu contest began
in March and runs through April 15. Its purpose is to name Alpha Centauri Bb,
the newfound Earth-sized planet in the star system closest to our own.
Uwingu officials claim they will use the money raised by the project to support
research efforts like SETI's (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence)
Allen Telescope Array in California, as well as space launches and science
outreach. One factor working in Uwingu’s favor is that its CEO, Alan Stern, is
also a planetary scientist who also leads NASA's New Horizons spacecraft's
mission to Pluto. He’s having none of the IAU’s outer space naming block.
"The IAU can't prohibit what it does not control. People's Choice naming
contests and the colloquial naming of objects in space are unrelated to the
IAU's purview of specifying nomenclature for astronomers," Stern said.
"The IAU no more owns the right to control the naming of objects in space
for popular purposes than does a county that controls street naming have the
right to deny people in the county who the right to adopt a mile of highway in
someone's honor." In other words, keep sending your money,
suckers………
- Jackie Robinson’s story was tops at the box office this
weekend, championing the earnings list with a $27.2 million effort in its debut
frame. It was part of a 1-2 punch of new films to summit the list, outdueling
the parody comedy “Scary Movie 5,” a film made with the lowest of standards and
a low budget as well ($20 million. “Scary Movie 5” garnered $15.1 million in
its first frame, beating out “The Croods” for second place. “Croods” claimed
third with $13.2 million and through four weeks, has banked $142.5 million in
domestic earnings. “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” dipped two spots to fourth, bringing
in another $10.8 million in its third weekend to up its overall take to $102.4
million and counting. Last weekend’s top film, “Evil Dead,” plummeted all the
way to fifth, seeing its numbers drop 63 percent and bringing in just $9.5
million for a two-week total of $41.5 million. “Jurassic Park 3D” likewise was
way down from last weekend, adding $8.8 million to its overall domestic bank
roll of $31.9 million. “Olympus Has Fallen” took a two-spot fall to seventh
with $7.2 million and its four-week earnings now stand at $82 million. “Oz The
Great and Powerful” ranked eighth and its $4.9 million weekend lifted its
overall earnings to $219.4 million. Ninth place belonged to “Tyler Perry's
Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor” with $4.5 million for a
three-week tally of $45.4 million. “The Place Beyond the Pines” rounded out the
top 10 despite remaining in limited release, raking in $4 million in just 514
theaters across the United States for a three-week haul of $5.5 million. “The
Host” (No. 11), “The Call” (No. 12) and “Admission” (No. 14) all dropped out
from last weekend’s top 10…….
- There is good news for French President Francois Hollande. After
receiving heartbreaking news that the camel given to him by Malian authorities
that he left with a family in Timbuktu was killed and eaten by that family,
Hollande will receive a replacement camel. The original beast of burden was a
gift in thanks for helping repel Islamist rebels and because a French president
may have trouble transporting a camel home to his country, Hollande left the
camel in Timbuktu to be cared for by a family there. Either the family
misunderstood his instructions or chose to ignore them because someone got a
little hungry, because the camel became a main course within a matter of weeks
after Hollande was presented with the camel when he visited Mali in February.
Upon learning that the camel had been consumed, a local government official in
northern Mali said a replacement would be sent to France. "As soon as
we heard of this, we quickly replaced it with a bigger and better-looking
camel," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The new camel
will be sent to Paris. We are ashamed of what happened to the camel. It was a
present that did not deserve this fate.” Malian leaders are obviously
appreciate of the efforts of French troops dispatched to the country’s former
colony to help combat al Qaeda-linked fighters moving south from a base in the
north of the country. Hollande initially joked about using his new animal as a
way to get around traffic-jammed Paris, but ultimately left it with a family in
the town on the edge of the Sahara desert. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian
kept Hollande updated on the camel’s fate and had the regrettable task of informing
him of its death last week………
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