- The champ has been dethroned. “Iron Man 3” has been
toppled at the box office and it took an other-worldly effort to get it done.
The outer-space nerdiness of J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek Into Darkness” seized
the top spot on the earnings list from Robert Downey Jr.’s action thriller,
banking $70.5 million domestically in its opening weekend. Work remains to be
done to earn back all of the film’s $190 million budget, but it’s a nice start.
“Iron Man 3” slid to second with a solid $35.1 million weekend for a three-week
total of $337 million and counting. “The Great Gatsby” was more mediocre than
great in its second weekend, adding $23.4 million to its overall earnings.
After two weeks, its haul stands at $90.1 million. “Pain and Gain” also dipped
one spot to fourth, but was light years behind the top three with $3.1 million
and has managed just $46.6 million through four weeks. “The Croods” defied
cinematic gravity and rose two spots in its ninth week of release by earning
$2.8 million, elevating its total earnings to $176.7 million. Sixth place
belonged to “42,” still treading water in its sixth weekend with $2.7 million
to up its total tally to $88.7 million and counting. “Oblivion” clinched
seventh place with $2.2 million to pad its bank roll all the way up to a
still-disappointing $85.5 million. For those keeping track, that’s still well
short of its budget of $120 million. “Mud” slogged along in limited release for
a fourth straight weekend, notching $2.1 million for the frame to give it $11.6
million overall. “Tyler Perry Presents Peeples” landed in ninth place (several
dozen spots higher than it should have) with $2 million and has earned a meager
$7.8 million through two weeks. “The Big Wedding” closed out the top 10 with
$1.1 million for a four-week tally of $20.1 million. “Oz The Great and Powerful”
(No. 11) was the lone film to drop out from last week’s top 10……..
- What the hell, China? Since when does a communist nation
that thrives on trampling the basic rights and freedoms of its people double as
a peacemaker trying to resolve the long-running feud between Israel and
Palestine? Yet there China is, with President Xi Jinping meeting individually last
week with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas. The officials visits have prompted speculation that China is
seeking to seize its place as a world power by trying to negotiate an end to
one of world's bloodiest conflicts. T he two Middle Eastern leaders arrived in
the country within hours of each other and China wasted no time touting that
fact to the world. "China's hosting of the two emphasized its active
involvement in Mideast affairs and highlighted its role as a responsible
power," an editorial by China's state news agency, Xinhua, declared. It’s
ironic that a nation with a long-held policy of non-intervention is now
suddenly Debbie Do-Gooder, but China needs to convince the world that it’s more
than a totalitarian regime that runs citizens over with tanks and throws them
in secret prisons to silence them. Even with regular business partners like
Sudan, Libya and Iran, China has made a point of staying out of the political
and regional strife of others to focus on natural resource extraction and
trade. Analysts have pointed out that its previous avoidance of direct
involvement will give China a fresh perspective on the dispute. Israel may feel
differently given China’s carefully crafted position of supporting the
Palestinian cause, dating all the way back to 1965, when the Palestinian
Liberation Organization setup an office in Beijing. However, the communist
power has also worked hard to position itself as a close friend of Israel, as
its third-largest trading partner behind the U.S. and the European Union.
Negotiating a peace accord could put its tradition of neutrality in jeopardy
and many have questioned how much China is willing to risk in that respect……..
- Based solely on its name, the Holler House bar sounds like a place
where tattooed, bearded and leather-clad folks gather to throw back beers,
shoot pool and trade punches on occasion. That the bar is located in Milwaukee
only fortifies this impression and a state that loves its beer and fried foods
has to know how to have a good time at a place called the Holler House, right?
Yes….but the fun has taken a hit thanks to The Man having a) no sense of humor
and b) a wet-blanket dedication to enforcing the letter of the law no matter
who it hurts. For years, the Holler House has had a tradition calling for
visitors to leave a personal item of clothing behind. Oddly enough, a place
that turns a profit on sending people away intoxicated has accumulated a lot of
undergarments that it keeps on display. They added a certain trashy charm to
the joint, with the past tense being appropriate because the local fire department
and the Department of Neighborhood Services decided a few weeks ago that the
lines of bras and boxer shorts had to come down. “I got an order that I gotta
take the bras down, they’re a fire hazard,” said the bar’s owner, Marcy
Skowronski. The 87-year-old Skowronski recalled how the tradition started back
in the free-and-easy 1960s. “About 45 years ago all the girls got together and
we were drinking so we decided to take our bras off and hang them up,”
Skowronski added. In April, she was informed that the dangling undergarments
were violating fire codes and was ordered to take them down. “You know, I got a
retired chief of police that comes in here and he was on an arson squad and he
says ‘I never heard of a fire starting with a bra,’” Skowronski marveled. Even
Milwaukee Alderman Bob Donovan believes the city is overreacting, but the
fight to reverse the decision was bound to be dificult. In the end, the battle
was won after several calls by the alderman and persistence by Skowronski. The
Department of Neighborhood Services relented and decided that it was wrong to
think that the hanging bras would make it easier for flames to spread from wall
coverings and other wall decorations……
- It may not be time to turn the page for USA Basketball after all. Head coach Mike
Krzyzewski, who led Team USA to gold medals in Beijing in 2008 and London in
2012, has been adamant that last summer’s London Games were his last coaching
the Americans on the international stage. USA Basketball chairman Jerry
Colangelo was believed to be moving forward with the search to replace Krzyzewski
and the Boston Celtics' Doc Rivers and San Antonio Spurs' Gregg Popovich from
the NBA and Michigan State's Tom Izzo from the college ranks were believed to
be the leading candidates. However, Krzyzewski has reportedly had a change of
heart and is now in discussions to return as the United States Olympic men's
basketball coach through the Rio 2016 Olympics. Because Team USA won the gold
medal in London, it doesn’t have to qualify for the 2016 Games, making the task
of coaching the team that much easier. Krzyzewski admitted recently that he and
Colangelo have been talking about his return "quite a bit” and Colangelo
suggested that the matter is “very close to being revolved.” Should Krzyzewski
return, it would be a major about-face from comments he made back in February,
when he said that he expected the Americans to pick a new coach this summer.
Under that plan, Colangelo was set to name a new coach sometime around the new
year. That decision can wait, as the Americans don't have to play again until
2014. Putting off the decision for a while allow Krzyzewski to focus on Duke's
season and that extra time may have given Krzyzewski just the breather he
needed to sign on for another run in a position he has held since Colangelo
hired him in 2005 after taking over a U.S. program that was coming off debacles
at the 2004 Olympics and 2002 world basketball championship………
- How long until a beverage company finds a way to
capitalize on the fined of pockets of water trapped inside rocks from a rural
Canadian mine? Aquafina or Dasani have to be working on this already because it
isn’t every day that scientists discover water trapped in rocks believed to be 1
billion years old from a Canadian mine. A team of researchers led by Barbara Sherwood Lollar, an Earth scientist
at Canada's University of Toronto, collected the (allegedly) ancient water from
boreholes at Timmins Mine beneath Ontario, Canada, at a depth of about 1.5
miles. "When these rocks formed, this part of Canada was the ocean
floor," Lollar said. "When
we go down [into the mine] with students, we like to say imagine you're walking
on the seafloor 2.6 billion years ago." Her team worked with U.K.
colleagues Chris Ballentine and Greg Holland to analyze the water, which they
found to be rich in dissolved gases such as hydrogen and methane, which could
provide energy for microbes like those found around hydrothermal vents in the
deep ocean. The water also contained different rare gases that include the
elements helium, neon, argon, and xenon, all of which were created through
interactions with the surrounding radioactive rock. The researchers measured the
concentrations of isotopes of these "noble gases" to estimate how
long the water had been trapped underground and whether it had been isolated.
Their estimates ranged from 1.1 billion years old to 2.6 billion years old—or
as old as the rocks in the mine itself. "It shows us that there's been
very little mixing between this water and the surface water," Lollar added.
"What we want to do with further work is see if we can narrow that [age
range] down.” In addition to determining the age of the water, Lollar and her
team are testing the mine water to see if they can find evidence of living
microbes. The presence of microbes in such difficult conditions could indicate
that these organisms could also survive elsewhere in the universe, such as beneath
the über-cold surface of Mars……
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