- Maryland Delegate Don Dwyer wants to be re-elected. In fact, you could
say he’s “gunning” for another term in office. You could say that because as
part of re-election campaign, Dwyer is selling raffle tickets for an AR-15 and
AK-47. That’s right, this friend of gun lovers is raffling off assault rifles,
partially in support of gun rights but fully in support of getting enough votes
to keep his position. In the sort of arrangement that should make President
Obama and Congress thrilled and extremely proud on account of their focus on
stricter background checks for prospective gun buyers, anyone with Internet
access and a credit card can buy a raffle ticket for Dwyer’s contest. That’s
right, for a mere $10, you can be a part of the Gun Rights and Liberty BBQ Gun
Raffle, an event whose proceeds will help fund a state-wide effort to defeat
legislators who supported SB 281, a controversial gun-control measure. Dwyer’s
name may sound familiar and there is a good reason for that. A man who is
raffling off guns and in support of citizens having firearms to shoot others
and the occasional target was in the news last summer for getting into a boat
accident that injured himself and 6 other people. He later admitted to having
consumed alcoholic beverages before the crash, so clearly Don Dwyer knows about
responsibility and smart decisions more than anyone. For now, the guns he is
raffling off are being held at Pasenda Pawn and Gun until the lucky winners can
claim them and plan their full-frontal assault on the wholly deserving target
of their choosing……
- Wrestling now has its opponent(s). With the
International Olympic Committee planning to remove the longtime sport beginning
with the 2020 Games, partially in an effort to modernize the Olympics, the
question was which sports would take its place. The IOC may not wait until 2020
to begin the modernization process and is now considering adding 3-on-3 basketball and BMX freestyle to
the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. IOC sports director Christophe Dubi
said on Monday that the Olympic sports federations have been "extremely
creative" with their requests for new sports in an effort to add extra
events, teams and athletes for Brazil. "All of them believe that adding
something will be fantastic for their sport," Dubi said. "We look at
it from the other angle: Will that bring, or not, an added value to the Olympic
Games?" The IOC executive board will make its decision on which events to
add at an Aug. 9 meeting in Moscow. First, the committee will study reports
from Dubi's department, then members will discuss and evaluate possible
options. With their current schedule, the Rio Games would award 306 gold medals
across 28 sports with a maximum of 10,700 athletes. According to Dubi, the goal
is creating the same impact as the IOC achieved with the new events it added
for last summer’s London Games. "Women's boxing was incredibly successful,
and in mixed doubles of tennis, the quality of the field was
extraordinary," Dubi said. Golf and seven-a-side rugby have already been
confirmed for addition in Rio, but the IOC has options to add "radically
new events" in Rio, Dubi said, with some designed for youth audiences. If
3-on-3 basketball is added, it would owe its success to a solid debut at the
2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore. The International Cycling Union is behind the
push to add street-style BMX and a mountain bike eliminator, a sprint race
involving four riders. New traditional sports have also been suggested, with
the international governing body for swimming, FINA, submitting the longest
list of new events. Dubi said he is still waiting on reports from wrestling’s
governing body, which has an emergency meeting in Moscow next month. To keep
its spot in the Olympics, the sport clearly needs to diversify and modernize………
- Until now, the supposed dangers of climate change have
been acceptable risks – things like melting polar ice sheets, displaced polar
bears and rising sea levels. That changed this week courtesy of a disturbing
report suggesting that a two-thirds fall in production in the world's premier wine regions
because of climate change is a very real possibility. These doomsday wine
prognosticators forecast sharp declines in wine production from Bordeaux and
Rhone regions in France, Tuscany in Italy and Napa Valley in California and
Chile by 2050 because of a warmer climate that will make it more difficult to
grow grapes in traditional wine country. With those regions no longer so
hospitable to grape growing, there could be a push for growing in areas once
considered unsuitable. In other words, get ready for more grape varieties from
northern Europe, including Britain, the Pacific Northwest in the United States and
the hills of central China. "The fact is that climate change will lead to
a huge shakeup in the geographic distribution of wine production," said
study author Lee Hannah, a senior scientist at Conservation International. "It
will be harder and harder to grow those varieties that are currently growing in
places in Europe. It doesn't necessarily mean that [they] can't be grown there,
but it will require irrigation and special inputs to make it work, and that
will make it more and more expensive." The climate changes are expected to
affect major changes in regions enjoying the cool winters and hot dry summers
that produce good grapes. Wine grapes are known as sensitive crops that are
extremely susceptible to the smallest shifts in temperature, rain and sunshine.
The data in this study seems to have caught both the wine industry and its
observers by surprise. "We expected to see significant shifts, but we
didn't expect to see shifts like these," Hannah said. For their research,
Hannah’s team used 17 different climate models to gauge the effects on nine
major wine-producing areas. Their projections were based on two different
climate futures for 2050, one assuming a worst-case scenario with a 8.5-degree
warming, the other a 4.5-degree increase. Both models predicted a massive shift
in the wine world, with the most drastic decline was expected in Europe, where
the numbers showed an 85 percent decrease in production in Bordeaux, Rhone and
Tuscany. But hey, wine lovers aren't pretentious or choosy and they’ll easily
adapt to something new, right………
- Could the legacy Walter White has started live on? With
AMC’s hit series “Breaking Bad” readying for its fifth and final eight-episode
run this summer, both the network and series producer Sony TV are asking
themselves how to keep “Breaking” alive while it still has some juice left. One
of the possible ideas reportedly being kicked around is a spinoff series centered on one of the show’s most recognizable
supporting characters, Bob Odenkirk’s
tough, scrappy criminal lawyer Saul Goodman. No deals have been struck just yet
and the project remains in the developmental stage, but sources say series
creator Vince Gilligan and writer-producer Peter Gould are both on board. Gould
and Gilligan created the Saul character together for a Season 2 episode written
by Gould. The episode, titled “Better Call Saul,” features Bryan Cranston’s Walter White character and Jesse
(Aaron Paul) hiring the flashy Goodman after Badger (Matt L. Jones) is arrested
by the DEA. As sometimes happens with what is supposed to be a one- or
two-episode arc for a peripheral character, Goodman resonated with audiences
and has been a regular presence on the show since. Maybe it’s Goodman’s persona
as a sleazy-yet-effective criminal lawyer with a penchant for over-the-top TV
commercials punctuated by his signature catch phrase “Better Call Saul!”
Gilligan has teased the spin-off idea in the past, but the process seems to
have moved past the point of brainstorming and into the realm of real
possibility…….
- Now THAT is the kind of tech support from India that
everyone can get with. In a world where tech support representatives from India
struggle to speak English and infuriate the masses, a trio of engineering
students in India have developed a product with the potential to do some
serious good around the globe. Manisha Mohan is the project leader for an
invention dubbed Society Harnessing Equipment. The name needs some
work, but the product is much better than its moniker, boasting what its makers
call “anti-rape” features that will help women protect themselves against
possible attacks. As what must be the first underwear featuring GPS technology to
alert the police in the event of an attack, the “SHE” underwear also features pressure-activated
electrodes “capable of sending shock waves of 3,800 kV” to give a would-be
attacker a real jolt. “A person trying to molest a girl will get the shock of
his life the moment pressure sensors get activated,” Mohan said. Along with
sending a message to the police, the underwear’s cell phone transmitter would
also send an SOS text to emergency services “as well as to parents of the
girl,” Mohan added. As part of the alert system, the underwear feature circuitry
with the GPS and sensor modules based near the chest, as the team behind the
project found that research on attempted rapes and sexual harassment showed that
is where most women are first attacked. As part of their design profile, Mohan
and her fellow designers explained that their time growing up at a convent
girls school gave way to a post-school realization that there was a dark,
twisted world around them and women are often unsafe in that world. Factor in the rape and
death of a young woman in Delhi last year and there is a definite need for a
project such as SHE……
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