- Warning, all visitors to Saudi Arabia: Don’t be too
good-looking or you could find yourself on the next plane home. Allow the
disturbing and eye-opening tale of Omar
Borkan Al Gala to serve as a teachable moment for all of the really, really
hunky dudes out there because Al Gala was reportedly one of three men deported
from Saudi Arabia last week after religious police in the deeply conservative
Muslim country bum-rushed a stand manned by delegates from the United Arab
Emirates at the Jenadrivah Heritage & Culture Festival. According to local
media reports, the three men were thrown out of the festival and immediately deported
to the UAE because they were so handsome that police “feared female visitors
could fall for them.” It’s a legitimate problem and one that the Saudis are
wise to look out for; the last thing anyone would suspect for a small,
non-threatening nation is a hostile takeover that starts with them sending
three men posing as cultural ambassadors to steal the hearts and minds of the
ladies in a foreign country. Al Gala, a Dubai native, posted about the incident
on his Facebook page but stopped short of admitting to being one of the three
accused studs involved in the incident. Knowing a chance for good PR when he
sees it, Al Gala has ducked media inquiries and done his part to fuel the
intrigue around the case. He did post some nauseatingly cheesy romantic quotes
and glamour pictures on his Facebook page, writing, “The beauty of a woman must
be seen from in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart, the place
where love resides.” Oh, and he’s also a poet, so he has pretty much all of the
necessary ingredients to help lead the UAE’s covert quest to subvert the Saudis
using handsomeness…………
- Earth’s core is H-O-T. Specifically, it is far hotter than prior experiments suggested, with new estimates pegging
its temperature as 6,000 degrees Celsius. That would make the temperature as
hot as the Sun's surface for the solid iron core that is actually crystalline,
surrounded by liquid. Much of the debate over the exact number had centered
around the temperature at which that crystal can form. Agnes Dewaele of the
French research agency CEA, a co-author of the study, and a team of researchers
used X-rays to probe tiny samples of iron at extraordinary pressures to examine
how the iron crystals form and melt. Although seismic waves captured after
earthquakes around the globe can offer information as to the thickness and
density of layers in the Earth, they don’t help estimate temperature. That work
is left to computer models that simulate the Earth's insides. In the early
1990s, scientists studied iron's "melting curves" - from which the
core's temperature can be deduced – and pegged the core temperature at around
5,000 degrees Celsius. "It was just the beginning of these kinds of
measurements so they made a first estimate... to constrain the temperature
inside the Earth," Dewaele said. "Other people made other
measurements and calculations with computers and nothing was in agreement. It
was not good for our field that we didn't agree with each other.” If the core
temperature truly is higher, it would affect all of disciplines that study
regions of our planet's interior and alter mankind’s understanding of
everything from earthquakes to the Earth's magnetic field. "We have to
give answers to geophysicists, seismologists, geodynamicists - they need some
data to feed their computer models," Dewaele said. To calibrate their
measurements, Dewaele and his tean used European Synchrotron Radiation Facility
- one of the world's most intense sources of X-rays. They used a device called
a diamond anvil cell to subject their iron samples to high pressures and high
temperatures using a laser, then applied X-ray beams to carry out diffraction
and next thing you know, they had reinvented the way science views the fiery
core of the planet we all inhabit……
- Hockey is just fine, thank you. At least according to the
worst commissioner of a major American professional sports league, the NHL has
not suffered any severe short-term consequences for a four-month lockout that
wiped out nearly half of its current season and left the league with a shortened 48-game schedule. NHL
commissioner Gary Bettman insists that fans have come back and are watching and
attending games at the same rates they were before the lockout. Bettman said
Friday that teams are filling up their buildings to 97.4 percent of capacity
and that television ratings on a national level in the United States and Canada
have actually increased. “We may not have as large a fan base as a couple of
the other major league sports, but there are no more avid, passionate fans in
all of sports than ours," Bettman said. "We believe in the strength
of our game." He went so far as to claim that some teams have reported
ratings gains of double and triple digits this year, which is obviously true
because leagues and those who run them never lie or fabricate information about
ticket sales, TV ratings and revenues. "We don't take our fans for
granted," Bettman said. "Our fans are passionate about the game, they
get angry when they have reasons to be angry, they are excited when they have
reasons to be excited, they are emotional, but most of all they are
well-informed. Overwhelmingly, fans understand what we need to do and what we
have done. They come back because they love the game. We are grateful on a
daily basis for our fans." One point on which Bettman is standing on solid
ground is his assertion that the best thing to come out of this lockout is that
the new agreement with the players' association should stabilize the league for
the better part of a decade. After two lockouts in nine years and four in his
two decades running the NHL, labor peace is a welcome concept. "It doesn't mean there isn't a lot
of work to be done, it doesn't mean that we're not continuing to focus as a
priority on issues such as player safety, but the business has been strong this
season," Bettman added. "We continue to believe that we are in for
continued growth." Continued growth, of course, is a relative term. The
NHL is at best fourth in the pro sports power rankings in the United States and
remains light years behind the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball……..
- If MTV brings back one of the most tired, played-out movie
franchises of the past two decades as a new TV series, does that actually
represent improved decision making on the part of the network? Sadly, the
answer may be yes and the reason for the question is “Scream.” Amidst its slew
of increasingly terrible reality shows featuring IQ-deficient losers pandering
to ridiculous stereotypes and to the cameras filming their every (scripted)
move, the network that used to be about music has announced plans to bring
tired horror franchise “Scream” to the small screen. MTV has enlisted Dimension Films,
the studio responsible for the franchise’s feature films, for the reboot and
has also reached out to director Wes Craven to direct the pilot show, which it
wants to debut over the summer of 2014. Craven piloted the films and although
there doesn’t seem to be much of a story left to tell for “Scream,” it has been
nearly 20 years since the original movie was released in 1996, starring Courtney
Cox, David Arquette and Neve Campbell. All three returned to reprised their
roles in “Scream 2” and “Scream 3,” released in 1997 and 2000, respectively,
and still hadn't found anything better to do when they all came back in 2011
for “Scream 4.” No word has been given on whether any of them will be sought
out to be a part of the potential series, but given the fact that all of them
are nearly 20 years older than they were when this whole trip started, it seems
unlikely. For now, MTV has ordered only a one-hour pilot based on the films
starring the Ghostface serial killer
who has since been lampooned by the “Scary Movie” films…….
- Just as the homeless people of New York City didn’t want
the muffin stumps Elaine Benes attempted to donate in the famed “The Muffin
Tops” episode of “Seinfeld,” the city of Osawatomie, Kan. does not want the $150,000 one of
its residents attempted to donate toward much-needed repairs on the city's
public pool. Osawatomie resident Webster Hawkins was looking to do
something good for his town when he offered to donate $150,000 pay for repairs
to reopen the city’s lone public swimming pool. Osawatomie is not the sort of
place where there is a ton to do during the summer (or any other time of year),
so fixing the pool seemed like a smart decision, even for a 87-year-old former newspaper publisher
who isn’t a big fan of the water. "I can't even swim," Hawkins said.
Yet he offered up the money and it seemed to come at a perfect time, as t he
50-year-old pool did not see a swimmer all last season after the city
discovered a huge leaking problem. City officials concede that they don’t have
the funds to fix the pool….yet they rejected Hawkins’ donation. "I just
thought we need it," Hawkins added. "I just thought it would be great
for the community, for the adults as well as the kids, for everybody."
Hawkins’ hope was that his donation would have the pool open in time for
Memorial Day, but those hopes were derailed when the city council passed on his
offer. "Sometimes free money is not inexpensive," city manager Don
Cawby said. Hmm……it sounds as if there may have been conditions imposed on the
donation, perhaps an oversized statue of Hawkins being erected outside the
facility? Nope. Instead, council members fretted that Hawkins' donation would
not be enough to completely fix the pool and that they would then be expected
to pay tens of thousands of additional dollars to make all the necessary
remaining repairs. "We want to make sure that if we're going to put money
into that pool, that it's something that'll last several years," Cawby
said. "Especially when someone's gifting something to the city, we'd feel
a responsibility to make sure that money's used wisely." Cawby suggested
that city officials are looking for ways to make Hawkins money go further, but
from the sounds of it, this good Samaritan may be reconsidering the offer all
together and could find a more willing recipient to take the cash off his hands………
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