- People having the sh*t scared out of them was a big draw
the movies this weekend as newcomer “The Conjuring” claimed the top spot at the
box office with a $41.5 million debut. That total was sufficient to displace
last week’s earnings champion, “Despicable Me 2.” The animated flick featuring
the vocal talents of Steve Carrell slipped to second with $25 million and
through three productive weeks, has banked $276.1 million in domestic earnings.
The second new movie in the top 10 was “Turbo,” which powered its way to $21.5
million and has a long way to go to earn back its $135 million budget. Fourth
place belonged to “Grown Ups 2,” which brought in $20 million and has somehow
managed to rake in $79.5 million in two weeks despite sucking exponentially. A
newcomer-dominated top five included geezer spy flick “Red” with its $18.5
million effort that doesn’t exactly scream long-term success. “Pacific Rim”
continues to be the antithesis of a dominant force at the movies, earning $15.9
million in its second weekend for a domestic total of $68.2 million against a
robust $190 million budget. The fourth and final new movie to crack the top 10
was the Jeff Bridges-led “R.I.P.D.” It hauled in $12.7 million and might be the
biggest surprise of the weekend when it comes to films with a massive budget
because Universal somehow spent $130 million making it. “The Heat” slipped four
spots to eighth in its fourth weekend, its biggest decline to date, with $9.4
million for the frame. After one month in theaters, the female buddy comedy has
amassed $129.2 million. “World War Z” was slotted ninth with $5.2 million to
boost its five-week haul to $186.9 million. “Monsters University” completed the
top 10 with $5 million to place its domestic total at $248.9 million. “The Lone
Ranger” (No. 11), “White House Down” (No. 12) and “Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain” (No.
14) all lost their spots in the top 10 from last weekend……..
- The Transportation Security Administration is joking, right? Flying is
already an über-costly experience in terms of money, sanity and personal
dignity, so leave it to a government agency to find a way to pry even more
money out of the pockets of intrepid travelers. This way dangles the carrot of expediting
the ever-annoying TSA screening process and profit from it. The plan is to
dramatically expand the program to get travelers through airport checkpoints
faster by inviting them to pay a nominal fee for voluntary background checks.
Yes, invite the government further into your life and pay for the privilege. As
presently constituted, the TSA’s pre-check program offers travelers separate
lines at checkpoints, where they leave on shoes and light coats and keep
laptops in their bags. It currently operates at 40 airports and now covers
members of frequent-flier programs for Alaska, American, Delta, Hawaiian,
United, US Airways and Virgin America airlines. Travelers typically can apply with
little more than the information provided when buying a ticket. TSA
Administrator John Pistole announced expanded eligibility for the program for
anyone with enough spare cash and few enough brain cells to pay a one-time fee
of $85 for five years, to cover an application with identifying information
such as address and birthplace, a background check and fingerprinting. The
first two enrollment centers are scheduled to open in the fall at Washington's
Dulles and Indianapolis airports. "This initiative will increase the
number of U.S. citizens eligible to receive expedited screening, through TSA
Pre-check," Pistole said. Pistole has made a point of shifting security
scrutiny from a blanket suspicion of everyone to focusing the most scrutiny on
the riskiest travelers. "That's our way of dealing with risk-based
security and saying let's get away from the one-size-fits-all, and let's focus
on the those that we can pre-screen ... so we can expedite your physical
screening at the checkpoint because we have a high confidence that you are not
a terrorist," Pistole added. The agency’s goal is to expand the program to
cover 25 percent of travelers by the end of the year and 50 percent by the end
of 2014. Imagine the money that will bring in for the government to ultimately
waste……….
- Surfers make tasty snacks for sharks. Surfers generally
blanche at the idea of being eaten by a shark. Australians like to surf a lot.
Put all of these facts together and it makes perfect sense that Australian
researchers say they've come up with the first shark-proof wetsuits. That’s the
good news. The bad news is that there is no Kevlar involved and no magic fiber
that somehow prevent sharks from taking a ginormous bite out of a guy waiting
to catch a righteous wave. The suit works by using visual trickery to throw a
shark’s attention elsewhere, thereby keeping surfers safe. One model of the
shark-proof suit features black and white stripes, based on the idea that t a
shark would see that as a warning to stay away from possibly poisonous prey. A
second suit is predominantly blue and colored in a way that is supposed to help
a person blend in with the water around them and become – in a sense – invisible
to the color-blind sharks. Such suits could be a huge asset following a recent
surge in shark attacks in Australia. Scientists from the University of Western
Australia used the spike in attacks as an impetus to team up with designers
from the commercial Shark Attack Mitigation Systems to create the $500 suits.
Their efforts produced a usable product in a relatively short amount of time
and the suits went on sale last week. Aside from testing carried out by the
people now attempting to profit off the suits, the effectiveness of this new
(possible) miracle product has not been proven. Maybe the suits can offer a
benefit to sharks as well because eating poisonous prey is much more damaging
to the ol’ reputation than being tricked by an optical illusion-based
wetsuit…….
- What is the price of playing a key role in the murder of
22 people? That would be $500, or 50,000 rupees in Pakistan, where a cook has been
accused of poisoning to death 22 people and sending 50 more to the hospital as
part of a political feud between two branches of the same family. The
government has confirmed the incident in the town of Mailsi in Punjab province,
an incident that came on the heels of provincial elections in which Arsal Khan
Khichi lost to his cousin Jehanzaeb Khan Khichi. Police chief Sadiq Dogar
confirmed that Arsal Khan Khichi is accused of paying a cook, Mohammad Rafiq,
50,000 rupees ($500) to poison food at his rival's home on June 9. Rafiq has
confessed to poisoning the food, Dogar said, but police waited to arrest him
until they received medical reports that confirmed the dead had been poisoned.
The no-good chef is in police custody, but Arsal Khan Khichi is still on the
run. A murder case has also been lodged against him for the deaths of the 22
people who consumed the toxic food at the dinner. Such an incident was probably
inevitable in Pakistan, where family members often run against one another in
elections and politics are an extremely violent and vicious arena. The
animosity typically stops short of paying a cook to drop some arsenic or
another toxic chemical into the soup or use it to flavor the bread before
distributing it to those eating the meal, but losses in races for elected offices
can be difficult to accept…….
- No argument in life ever can or should be won with the
argument that, “Hey, that dog barked at me first.” Florida Gators linebacker Antonio Morrison finds himself in the
unenviable position of making this very argument after he was arrested for the
second time in five weeks, this time for allegedly barking at a police dog and
resisting arrest. According to the police report, he attempted to justify his
alleged crime by claiming that the dog barked at him first. An Alachua County
Sheriff Office's report claims that police responded to a suspicious incident
and disturbance call at 3:43 a.m. Sunday at a Gainesville hotel adjacent to a
nightclub. Officer William A. Arnold investigated the vehicle that was the
subject of the call and as he did his work, a group of several men were walking
along SW 13th Street. The men, who were not related to the incident, became
part of it when one of them reportedly approached the patrol car and began
barking at his police dog through the open window. The report added that the
barking t caused the dog, named Bear, to bark back at the man, which Arnold
says in his report diverted his attention from investigating the vehicle.
Arnold then reportedly instructed the man
-- later identified by his driver's license as Morrison -- to wait in
front of his patrol car. Morrison then compounded his woes by allegedly
resisting arrest when Arnold tried to handcuff him. Two other officers arrived on
the scene and helped subdue Morrison, according to the report. Alachua County
Sheriff's spokesman Art Forgey noted how unusual it is for an ass hat to harass
a police dog. "We don't see that very often at all," he said.
"Gainesville Police Department has horses and they see it sometimes.
Usually everybody steers clear of the dogs." Not the man who is expected
to be the Gators' starting middle linebacker this season, a man who was already
in Florida coach Will Muschamp’s disciplinary crosshairs after June 16 arrest
for battery after he punched a nightclub bouncer because he was not given a
discounted rate for admission………
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