- The Los Angeles Lakers will not be a good team next
season. Kobe Bryant may or may not be ready for the start of the season after
tearing his Achilles’ tendon late last season, Dwight Howard left in free
agency for Houston and the talent that remains on the roster is either past its
prime or completely unproven. With at least five teams in the Western
Conference markedly better than their favorite teams, Lakers fans are in for a
long year. They will be able to use all the distractions they can get, so maybe
Steve Nash can provide one. Nash, who believes
Bryant is ahead of schedule in his recovery from Achilles' surgery, will try
his hand at a different sport on Tuesday. The two-time NBA MVP will revisit his
soccer roots with an informal tryout with Italian soccer power Inter Milan
before the storied team opens play in the Guinness International Champions Cup
tournament that's coming to the U.S. next week. Inter is one of eight teams in
the tournament, which will crown a winner in Miami Gardens, Fla., on Aug. 7. "It's
a dream come true to get a chance to try out, not just to try out but to take
the field with Inter Milan, one of the great, storied franchises in
professional sports," Nash said. "I feel like a little kid."
Nash’s tryout will take place in New Jersey, two days before Inter Milan opens
its portion of the event in Indianapolis against Chelsea. Nash knows he will be
nervous, maybe even more than when he takes the court against Derrick Rose or
Russell Westbrook. "I still get nervous for basketball games from time to
time. When I get out on the court, I don't get nervous, but before. To go out
there with guys that I look up to and watch play, it's definitely going to
raise the nerves. I'll be really nervous and really excited,” Nash added. Odds
are that Inter Milan’s players won't be nervous, as most of the clubs in the
tournament are using the event as preseason training and the matches will allow
for many more substitutions than normal. Nash, who was a soccer player as a
child, had better hope that he doesn’t suffer a new injury during his tryout
after playing just 50 games last seasons because of a broken left leg and a
strained right hamstring…….
- China is not renowned as a dog-friendly place. A country
where dogs are frequent occupants of spots on dinner menus has added an
anti-dog law to the books in its capital city. Beijing residents who own large
dogs and breeds that have been labeled dangerous by the government are living
in fear because of a new law that bans 41 dog breeds from city limits for being
“big and vicious.” Police are arresting dogs and executing them if they violate
the new law, which also limits how tall a dog can be -- 14 inches is the
maximum height. Part of the law has been on the books since 1994, but only
began to be strictly enforced this year. Dog owners have logically wondered how
such a generic law can be applied fairly, but fairness has no place in a
communist hell hole of a nation. Even animal control officials haven't shown
great enthusiasm for the law, but many point to data showing that in 2012, 13
people in Beijing died from rabies, more than doubling the previous year's
figure. An estimated 1 million dogs live in the city, but many do not receive
rabies vaccines. Official data shows that only 10-20 percent of dogs have
been vaccinated for rabies, compared to 70 percent in the United States. The
government seems blissfully willing to ignore the fact that some larger breeds
are actually less likely to bite than smaller, more aggressive dogs. Dog owners
who bring unapproved dogs inside city limits are also subject to an $800 fine. The
whole concept of pets is a new one in China, where eating dogs remains common
and Yulin, a small town in China’s southern Guangxi province, holds an annual
dog meat festival………
- State control in filmmaking: It’s not just for
totalitarian regimes looking to foist their propaganda on the masses. It is
also for the state of Florida, which is getting into the movie business and
forking over $5 million to finance a sequel for the 2011 movie “Dolphin Tale.” Gov. Rick Scott
announced the decision on Friday at an event held at the Clearwater Marine
Aquarium. Scott revealed that Florida will contribute $5 million in state funds
to the sequel, which will feature the entire cast of the original film. Oscar
winner Morgan Freeman Harry Connick Jr. and Ashley Judd will all be back and Charles
Martin Smith has written the screenplay and will direct the film again. "The
odds are we'll get a great return on investment," Gov. Scott said. There
is nothing citizens enjoy more when their government allocates millions of
dollars collected from taxpayers to a project than hearing an elected official
tell them there are “great odds” that there will be a big return on that
investment. The bet does appear to be a solid one, as movie goers are apt to
have their hearts hooked again by the story of Winter the Dolphin, an animal swims
with a prosthetic tail. "We have a sequel guys. Is that cool or what?”
asked David Yates, CEO of Clearwater Marine Aquarium. With funding in place, filming
is scheduled to begin in Clearwater in October and Warner Bros. has slated the
project for a Sept. 19, 2014 release date. "The story is basically picking
up Winter's life story and weaving some more real life elements we did not tell
Dolphin Tale itself. With one of those key elements being the life story of the
dolphin named Hope," Yates added…….
- Science has done done it again, y’all. By “it,” take
that to mean implanting false memories into the minds of mice. A research team
from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology was able to make the mice wrongly associate a
benign environment with a previous unpleasant experience from different
surroundings. This may sound like a ridiculous waste of time, but these
brilliant scientific minds found a way to condition a network of neurons to
respond to light, making the mice recall the unpleasant environment. Dr. Xu Liu
and her team believe that this discovery could one day shed light into how
false memories occur in humans. The study used genetically engineered mice implanted
with optic fibers in order to deliver pulses of light to their brain. The
technique, known as optogenetics, is able to make individual neurons respond to
light. “Our memory changes every single time it's
being recorded. That's why we can incorporate new information into old memories
and this is how a false memory can form,” Liu said. “Just like in mice,
our memories are stored in collections of cells, and when events are recalled
we reconstruct parts of these cells - almost like re-assembling small pieces of
a puzzle.” Human memory has long been known as unreliable and studies have
shown the shakiness of eyewitness testimonies following crimes. Liu, who works
at the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural
Circuit Genetics, revealed that when mice recalled a false memory, it
was indistinguishable from the real memory in the way it drove a fear response
in the memory forming cells of a mouse's brain. Mice were place inside a blue
box and the brain cells encoding memory were labeled in this environment. Their
cells were made responsive to light and the mice were then place inside a red
box, where light was delivered into the brain to activate the labeled cells.
That spurred the mice to recall the blue box while they were simultaneously
given mild electrical shocks to their feet. When they were returned to the blue
box, they showed signs of fear even though no pain had occurred in that
setting……..
- Oh, the price of being a world-famous rock star. Muse frontman
Matt Bellamy has dropped a bombshell on the world by revealing the cost of
bribing local government and safety officials in order for his band to be able
to set off the pyrotechnics fans have come to expect during their extravagant
live shows. According to Bellamy, representatives for the British rock band have
had to offer backhanders to people at various gigs so they could use their
pyrotechnics and explosive effects. "Everywhere you go there are
problems," Bellamy said. "We have accountants and lawyers arguing
with all sorts of local councils and police and promoters." Bellamy
explained that the costs of bribing the necessary officials so Muse can rock
out in its expected fashion have soared to absurd heights and included phone
calls to very powerful people. "In Rome, we had to bribe people with thousands
of euros just to be allowed to blast our fire effects. We had to phone the
British Embassy in Rome and argue with some official,” he continued. “If you
want to do things like this on the move, it's quite a big deal. It's pretty
bloody expensive, though. It's mind-boggling how much, actually." Maybe
those officials who are hesitant to allow over-the-top pyrotechnic displays
have a point, though. In May, residents of Coventry, England actually thought
their local stadium had been set on fire because the special effects during a
pre-show rehearsal were so extensive. Flames rose above the top of the city's
Ricoh Arena and rumors of a blaze lit up Facebook and Twitter. Sadly, giving a
free concert last month in London for the premiere of “World War Z” did not buy
Muse enough goodwill to set off as many explosives as they want anywhere across
the continent………
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