- Did anyone know that ‘80s Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue was
still around? She clearly is and judging by her new gig, she isn't exactly
killing it when it comes to writing, recording and releasing her own music. If
she were, then Minogue would not have inked a deal to be one of the karaoke
coaches for the next season of “The Voice Karaoke” in the United Kingdom. Minogue
will fill one of the voids created by the departure of fellow pop hacks Jessie
J and Danny O'Donoghue of The Script from the coaching panel. As always, plenty
of terrible pop singers remain on every street corner and so “The Voice
Karaoke” will have no trouble filling out its coaching roster as Hack Eyed Peas
member Will.i.am and Tom Jones will return alongside Minogue for the show's third
season. "I'm very excited to become a coach on The Voice UK. I love
the concept of the show and have been an avid viewer of both series,” Minogue
said in a statement. “The search for new talent is such an important aspect of
the music industry and ‘The Voice UK’ gives us all a part to play in that. Will
I be competitive? Probably more than even I imagine. Watch this space."
Both Jessie J and O'Donoghue announced this summer that they would not be back
and after sharing news of his departure on Twitter, O'Donoghue wrote: "I
had two wonderful seasons on The Voice and as everybody knows I gave it
my heart and soul and couldn't be more proud of the show and what we have
achieved. My focus will be on The Script moving forward as we are about to
embark on the most important part of our career as a band." Wait…someone
didn’t want to be a part of a reality karaoke show and wanted to do something
with their own musical career? No way………
- Anyone who has spent a few minutes with the Danes knows
that the beer-loving Scandinavians know how to enjoy life. Despite über-high
tax rates and less-than-balmy temperatures, Denmark is a place where happiness
abounds, a fact proven by this year’s edition of the World Happiness Report. The
report, which aims to rank how happy people are with their lives, dropped
Monday and as usual the good times are most abundant in northern Europe. As per
Columbia University's Earth Institute, Denmark is the happiest country on the
planet, followed by Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Sweden. It may or
may not be a coincidence that four of those five countries – the Netherland
excluded – happen to be four European countries that still use their own
currency and remain blissfully clear of the ongoing eurozone crisis. The
report’s findings were compiled using data collected between 2010-12 and its
authors noted that while "the world has become a slightly happier and more
generous place over the past five years," economic and political upheavals
have resulted in greatly reduced levels of well-being for some nations. Those
nations with decreased well-being and happiness ranked at the other end of the
spectrum and not surprisingly, the least happy nations among the 156 surveyed
were impoverished and conflict-ravaged places such as Rwanda, Burundi, the
Central African Republic, Benin and Togo. Americans hoping for a high spot on
the list will have to settle for No. 17 on the list, leaving them behind their
North American neighbors in Canada (No. 6, eh?) the party-and-fight-loving
Australians (No. 10), their allies in Israel (No. 10) and their other North
American neighbors in Mexico (No.16). Maybe there is some solace in ranking
ahead of fellow world powers Germany (No. 26) and Japan (No. 43) and communist
hell holes such as Russia (No. 68) and China (No. 93). Financially troubled
eurozone nations Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain all saw their rankings drop
significantly. "We expect, and find, that these losses are far greater
than would follow simply from lower incomes," the report added. On the
sunnier side, Angola, Zimbabwe and Albania experienced the largest increases in
happiness and if they can keep it up, they just might see a massive surge in
unwanted immigrants crashing their borders………
- Either America’s white trash has moved on to another drug
of choice or law enforcement is losing its game, because news that methamphetamine lab
seizures and arrests declined nationwide in 2012 can't be that simple. Even
experts in drug enforcement admit they aren't sure why Drug Enforcement
Administration statistics show just 12,694 meth lab incidents in 2012, down 5.5
percent from 13,390 in 2011. Some states have reported increases in their own
meth seizure figures this year, but the 2012 data represents the second
straight year of decline. That isn't enough to constitute a trend, but the meth
industry is clearly off its game after an impressive 15,196 meth lab incidents
in 2010. An optimist might suggest that the toothless, crater-faced,
wife-beater-wearing, trailer-dwelling losers who deal the white trash drug of
choice have simply gotten better at flying under the radar, but there is no way
to know. Missouri remains the race leader in the great meth marathon of life,
topping the list with 1,960 incidents in 2012. Jefferson County deserves much
of the credit for that number, with 346 incidents to pace the state. Along with
Missouri, fellow Middle America states Tennessee (1,701), Indiana (1,697) and
Kentucky (1,000) accounted for nearly half of all meth lab incidents. DEA
spokesman Rusty Payne cautioned that the decreased numbers could simply be the
result of late-reporting states slacking on updating their 2012 figures.
Whatever factors are behind last year’s dip, several states have already
reported a rise in incidents in 2013. Tom Farmer, director of the Tennessee
Methamphetamine Task Force, said his state is on pace for around 2,000 meth lab
incidents in 2013 and officials in Indiana say they are on a trajectory for
nearly 1,900. What experts do agree on its that most homemade meth in the U.S.
is now cooked by mixing pseudoephedrine and other ingredients in a soda bottle,
the so called "one-pot" or "shake-and-bake" method. This
method creates smaller amounts of meth, theoretically making it simpler to
gather supplies for and thus less likely to ding the radar of law enforcement. There
are national laws on the books to fight the meth menace, including the Combat
Meth Act of 2005, which requires cold and allergy pills containing
pseudoephedrine to be sold from behind the counter………
- My, how the New York Yankees have changed. There was a day
when the Yankees didn’t bother to ask any questions when one of their top
players hit free agency, electing to throw the biggest load of cash possible at
the star in question and re-sign him regardless. The winningest franchise in
Major League Baseball history has altered its spend-happy approach in the past
few seasons and that philosophy is being applied to the impending free agency
of stud second baseman Robinson Cano. Cano, who fired agent Scott Boras several
months ago to sign with a group headed up by Jay-Z, leads the Yankees in
batting average, home runs, RBI, hits, talks and total bases and he is clearly
the team’s best player, but Yankees
president Randy Levine said his team won't retain Cano at all costs. Levine
suggested that the organization would be willing to lose Cano in free agency if
the All-Star second baseman received an offer beyond the Yankees’ now-limited
price range. "Robinson Cano is a great player. We will sit down and talk
to him," Levine said. "Hopefully he's a Yankee. Nobody is a re-sign
at all costs, but we want him back and we feel good about negotiating something
with him. But nobody is a re-sign at any cost." The fact that Cano is at
the core of a playoff push that is happening even though the Yankees are nearly
devoid of star-level talent doesn’t seem to impress Levine much. Cano insisted
he isn't worried about how the team will approach his free agency and his
agent, Brodie Van Wagenen, and the Yankees have held informal talks throughout the
season in an effort to strike a deal before Cano comes free and clear. Five-time
All-Stars aren't a common commodity and Cano will likely receive a lucrative
multi-year contract wherever he ends up, but seeing a top player in his prime
walk away from the franchise that George Steinbrenner built would be a jarring
sight nonetheless………
- Giants gas bags are everywhere in the world, but mostly on
basic cable news stations. But these giant collections of gaseous materials
also exist in other parts of our galaxy and as they swirl around, they give
rise to new
stars. A team of astronomers has set out to map the location of these massive
and mysterious objects and in the process, learn more about how they function. The
researchers used the 70-foot-long Mopra millimeter wave telescope in Australia
to identify galactic clouds of molecular gas, which can be up to 100
light-years across, from the carbon monoxide that they contained. "On
Earth, carbon monoxide is poisonous--a silent killer," lead researcher Michael
Burton said. "But in space, it is the second most abundant molecule and
the easiest to see. One of the largest unresolved mysteries in galactic
astronomy is how these giant, diffuse clouds form in the interstellar medium.
This process plays a key role in the cosmic cycle of birth and death of
stars." Along with the gas clouds, the researchers sought "dark"
galactic gas clouds, which are unseen clouds that contain very little carbon
monoxide. They are comprised mostly of molecular hydrogen, which is too cold to
detect. Finding these elusive clouds could allow scientists to pinpoint the "missing"
source of gamma rays, which are produced when high-energy cosmic rays interact
with the nuclei of gas atoms or molecules they encounter when traveling through
space. "The
source of more than 30 percent of gamma rays remains unidentified-another big
mystery our research could throw light on," Burton added. As part of their
research, Burton’s crew hopes to learn more about the regular functions of the
point of origin for stars and gain a greater understanding of the role gas
clouds play in the universe. The project remains a work in progress, so more
riveting discoveries could be forthcoming……..
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