- Jacksonville
Jaguars receiver Justin Blackmon has his 2013 season off to a flying start. The
combustible second-year receiver is still recovering from groin surgery and is
suspended for the first four games of the regular season for violating the
league's substance-abuse policy because of two alcohol-related arrests in the
past three years. Neither of those issues kept him from getting himself
directly involved in the Jaguars’ first preseason game Friday night against the
Miami Dolphins. In fact, Blackmon became so involved that he had to be escorted
from the field following a heated argument with Dolphins cornerback Nolan
Carroll in the second quarter. Sitting out a game and watching in street
clothes from the sideline would normally preclude a player from getting into
any sort of altercation, but the track suit-clad Blackmon decided to start
jawing with Carroll anyhow. It was unclear who or what prompted the verbal
pissing match, but the battle of words intensified to the point where Jaguars
coach Gus Bradley got involved. The first-year head coach received some
help from running back Maurice
Jones-Drew, who stepped in, calmed Blackmon down and escorted him to the locker
room. Jones-Drew is the team’s best player and one of its locker room leaders,
but that doesn’t usually include walking his teammates to the locker room
because they can't control themselves during games. Whether Blackmon did some
yoga, took a nap or played video games during his time away from the field, he returned
to the sideline to start the second half and hugged Bradley before remaining on
the sideline and managing to behave himself for the rest of the game. For a
player trying to show he's matured, it wasn’t the sort of evening that
convinces the world a person is growing up……..
- Thank God French wineries aren't caught up in an
industry-wide uprising. That could lead to an angry display by vineyard owners
destroying their own product and flushing millions of dollars down the drain in
the process. Instead, it’s French farmers who are living and threatening to upgrade a protest
over low egg prices by smashing thousands of eggs on the streets and squares of
France's main poultry producing region of Brittany. The movement began earlier
this week when around 15 masked farmers dumped pallets holding tens of
thousands of eggs in front of a grocery store in Ploumagoar. Whoever these masked
men (and women) are, they have repeated their egg-dumping demonstration nightly
in the region since Tuesday. At the root of the farmers’ rage are multiple
causes, including over-production and expensive renovations to meet new
European norms on hen houses, that have resulted in farmers making only $0.94
per kilogram of eggs, down from $1.47 per kilogram last year. Seeing their
products lose nearly one-third of their value has these humble workers of the
earth up in arms and Yves-Marie Beaudet, the head of Brittany's egg producers'
lobby, said he "understands the movement" that began earlier this
week and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. Agriculture has become a
heavily debated topic of late in France, as the decline of the baguette has
sparked bakers to launch a campaign promoting the popular bread product as a
key staple of the average Frenchman’s daily diet……..
- We have our eyes on you, camels. The hump-equipped beasts
of burden just may be the carrier of the mysterious virus that has infected at least 94 people
in the Middle East and killed half of them. The virus was first detected last
year in Saudi Arabia and causes Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS,
which begins with flulike symptoms and can progress to severe pneumonia. It
also belongs to a family called coronaviruses that is often found in bats and
researchers suspect that may be its point of origin. The chain of infection is
believed to run through other animals before reaching humans and now the
middleman may have bee identified. A team of researchers from a dozen
universities have discovered that dromedary camels (the kind with one hump)
from Oman and the Canary Islands show signs of past infection with the MERS
virus or one very much like it. The team tested blood samples from 50 female
retired racing camels in Oman and 105 used in the tourist industry in the
Canary Islands. While the blood tests did not find the virus, they did identify
antibodies to it in all the camels from Oman, and 14 percent of the ones from
the Canary Islands. Sheep, goats, camels, llamas and alpacas were also tested, but
none had MERS antibodies. The results need further exploration, but they could
point people who have had MERS in the right direction if they have been exposed
to camels or their milk or meat. However, this particular study does not prove
that camels have infected humans. Just don’t think it means you’re off the
hook, you one-humped disease mongers………
- The Banshee will ride again. In 1995, Sandusky, Ohio-based
amusement park Cedar Point announced
plans for a stand up coaster named The Banshee but soon changed the name to The
Mantis when Cedar Point realized the possible negative connotations of the
word banshee. Nineteen years later, fellow Ohio amusement park Kings Island is
taking up the banshee torch. Kings Island has announced plans to construct the
longest inverted steel roller coaster in the world and will be called simply Banshee.
Park officials unveiled plans for the world-record breaking ride on Thursday
evening and said it will debut in April. When it opens, Banshee will take
riders zipping along 4,124 feet of track and seven inversions at speeds up to
68 miles per hour. Despite that length, the ride will last just two minutes and
40 seconds after taking riders up to the maximum height of 167 feet at its
beginning, plunging 150 feet and taking riders through a dive loop, followed by
a vertical loop, zero gravity roller, two batwing inversions, a second vertical
loop and a 170-foot long finale. Banshee is also noteworthy because it is the first
female-inspired thrill ride at a Cedar Fair Entertainment amusement park, which
owns and operates Kings Island. "Two of the most unique features about
Banshee are the massive size of every loop, and unlike other roller coasters,
the top speed isn't reached until halfway through the ride's course,” Kings
Island said in an official statement. Passengers will ride in rows of four and
three trains will comprise each run of the ride. That will allow as many as
1,650 park visitors to ride Banshee every hour…….
- The producers of the current season of CBS’ reality
voyeurism show “Big Brother” really picked a group of winners this time. Multiple
contestants have been fired from their real-life jobs for racist and generally
offensive remarks made on the show, but contestant Spencer Clawson took the
idiocy to new lows last week with remarks that may not have cost him his job,
but did manage to pique the interest of police in his hometown. Clawson is
under investigation by his hometown police department after a creepy, pervy and
wholly inappropriate tangent about child pornography. While Clawson clearly
intended the comments as a joke while impersonating housemate McCrae, the Conway
Police Department in Clawson's home state of Arkansas decided to investigate anyhow. "I like to
[masturbate] to child porn," Clawson said. "I love it when they're
around 3 or 4 years old. My favorite ones are when you can tell they're in a
basement." Aside from inspiring everyone watching the show to turn off
their television and go take a two-hour hot shower to scrub off the sleaze, the
scene also led the Conway Police Department to issue a statement. “Due to the
nature of the comments, our department moved quickly to look into the
matter," the department told in a statement. "At this time we haven't
found that any criminal act was committed." Clawson was also the subject
of a statement from his employer, Union Pacific. "Due to the volume of
feedback Union Pacific has received from the public about Spencer Clawson's
August 5 comments on the CBS reality show Big Brother 15, the company wants to
reiterate that it has taken all the action it can under the Collective
Bargaining Agreement until Mr. Clawson is released from the show," the
company said in a statement. "Mr. Clawson took an unpaid leave of absence
to participate on Big Brother 15. Union Pacific has notified law enforcement of
Mr. Clawson's August 5 comments." Of course, all of this attention
is exactly what CBS has in mind every time it picks another group of
attention whores for one of its many reality series………
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