- God may forgive those who make mistakes, but the Vatican
isn't so willing to let slip-ups slide. Specifically, it is pulling back thousands
of medals commemorating Pope Francis' ascension to the papacy because the name
of Jesus is misspelled. Misspelling the messiah’s name seems like a colossal
error (as does selling medals to commemorate the rise of a pope who has proven
himself to be all about modesty and humility) and doing so on medals which have
often been minted for a new pope and are bought by collectors worldwide should
probably cost someone their job. That person would be the one who gave the
final OK to the proof of the medal that named the Christian savior as
"Lesus" in an inscription on the edge. Somehow, the medals were
struck in gold, silver and bronze by the Italian state mint before the mistake
was noticed and they went on sale to the general public on Tuesday. In the
prototypical case of rare, flawed items being sold and emerging as rarities
with obscenely high value, our of the medals were bought before that happened
and could become valuable because of the error. The buyers of the Lesus medals
should probably make sure they secure their new trinkets properly, lest thieves
target them. The remainining 5,996 medals have been withdrawn and the mold will
be fixed before their replacements are struck. Both the effed-up and
non-effed-up medals depict Pope Francis and a phrase in Latin that inspired him
to become a priest: "Jesus therefore sees the tax collector, and since he
sees by having mercy and by choosing, he says to him, 'Follow me.’” Twitter
users quickly jumped on the mistake and mocked the error, with one user blaming
the “Lesuits” for the situation…….
- Texas A&M
isn't done cashing in on Johnny Manziel just yet. The defending Heisman Trophy
winner is winding his way through his final season in College Station and will
almost certainly declare for the NFL draft next spring, giving A&M precious
little time to sell more of his jerseys and other merchandise. While they’re at
it, school officials have figured they might as well sell the hallowed ground
upon which their star quarterback treads six or seven times each fall. Technically,
the university was already planning to get rid of the natural grass surface at
Kyle Field after the season, but selling chunks of the field to football-crazed
fans the year Manziel is playing his final games for the Aggies is a
super-profitable coincidence. Beginning Monday, fans can shell out $400 at
AggieAthletics.com to buy a pallet ripped from the playing surface after the
final home game on Nov. 9. Each section of sod will come complete with a
certificate of authenticity and for their money, fans will get approximately
450 square feet of sod that has been trod upon by the Aggies this season. Those
on a memorabilia budget can vie for one of a limited number of single grass
squares to be offered for $20 each. The certificates of authenticity will be
signed by longtime fields manager Leo Goertz and to ensure that their section
of sod remains in top form, buyers will receive a care guide complete with tips
for maintaining their tifway-bermuda purchase – overseeded with rye grass, of
course -- from Goertz. The school isn't switching to a synthetic grass surface,
but merely installing a new natural grass surface currently being grown
off-site. Yet another reminder of how the school raised more than $740 million
in donations – a school record -- between Sept. 1, 2010 and Aug. 31, 2013……….
- Maybe the Beatles were wrong about some chick named Lucy
being in the sky with some diamonds, but they may have been half-right about
what they saw while tripping on LSD and peyote. According to new research by a
California-based engineering consulting firm, solid diamonds are scattered deep inside
both Jupiter and Saturn. While space experts have long believed that Uranus and
Neptune boast diamonds in their depths, Jupiter and Saturn were never included
in the conversation. "We don't want to give people the impression that we
have a Titanic-sized diamondberg floating around," said planetary
scientist Mona Delitsky of California Specialty Engineering. "We're
thinking they're more like something you can hold in your hand."
Extracting the diamonds wouldn’t be the most cost-effective proposition
(although rich people would pay out the ASS for the right to be among the first
to own space diamonds), although the researchers believe that only the outer
parts of the planets would contain solid diamonds. Core temperatures on both
plants would melt the gems into droplets of liquid diamond, a mysterious
substance that may have some of the internal structure of the familiar jewel.
That could yield what should become a new club favorite for wealthy rappers and
rock stars, a phenomenon known as “diamond rain.” Neptune and Uranus are
different because their lower temperatures mean that diamonds stay solid. The
diamonds on Jupiter and Saturn are believed to have originated from methane
gas, which emanates from landfills and sewers on Earth and is found in the
atmosphere on the solar system's two biggest planets. Lightning that strikes
the planets during storms blasts apart some of the methane, creating fluffy,
dark soot much like the material that floats out of a fireplace. The research
team traced the path of the sinking soot using new calculations by other
scientists of conditions deep inside the planets. By following the soot, the
researchers found that it first turns into graphite, a form of carbon used in
pencils. From their, the particles’ journey to the center of the planet takes
them through growing pressure and rising temperatures that heat them into
specks of solid diamond floating in a sea of helium and hydrogen. All of this takes
place at roughly 5,000 degrees on Saturn and nearly 7,000 degrees on Jupiter –
many times hotter than the temperature at which diamonds are forged inside the
Earth. The next step is finding someone to go dig for the diamonds in the great
beyond………
- Someone alert TLC and Discovery Channel because Brooklyn’s
ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods have a reality show idea that needs to
happen yesterday. Mendel Epstein is a man made to star in a seedy, manufactured
show in which he plies his trade as the rabbi to see for women struggling to
divorce their husbands. His services are needed because among the Orthodox, a
divorce requires the husband’s permission, known as a “get,” and most husbands
refuse to consent. Rabbis often take action against defiant husbands, such as
barring them from synagogue life, but Rabbi Epstein kicked things up a notch,
according to law enforcement officials. This radical rabbi allegedly orchestrated
the kidnapping and torture of reluctant husbands, extracting fees as high at
$10,000 from their wives for a rabbinical decree permitting violence and
$50,000 to hire goons to carry out the deed. Epstein, allegedly worked with
another rabbi, Martin Wolmark, who is the head of a yeshiva, and a team of
Jewish jerk-offs called the “kidnap team.” These fine citizens appeared in
Federal District Court in Trenton after a sting operations in which an
undercover federal agent posed as an Orthodox Jewish woman soliciting Rabbi
Epstein’s services took them down. Paul Fishman, the United States attorney for
New Jersey, claimed that investigators have “uncovered evidence” of about a
couple dozen victims. Most of the men are Brooklyn residents who were taken to
New Jersey as part of the kidnappings. Lead prosecutor R. Joseph Gribko spun
tales of Tasers, rope, stun guns and other torture until the kidnappers got the
result they wanted. He added that the defendants had been motivated by money,
not faith. Epstein has a checkered past of his own, having been sued in the
late 1990s by another Brooklyn rabbi, Abraham Rubin, who claimed that a group
of men shoved him into a van as he left synagogue, hooded him, and applied
electric shocks to his genitals in an effort to force him to provide a get to
his wife. Yes, threatening to electrocute a man’s package is on the
table for these guys as well. Still think there’s not a reality show here?
Think about it……….
- Promoting a new movie is all about creating buzz, heaping
on the hype and getting people interested in the project even if it isn't a
blockbuster action movie or much-anticipated sequel to a successful film.
Anything a studio can do to create the drama ahead of a new project’s release
is important, even if that includes floating the provocative question of
whether or not the film’s A-list stars actually had sex on screen. That is the
question being staged, er, raised in regard to did director Lars Von Trier and his new film
“Nymphomaniac.” Posters for the movie show A-listers such as Shia LaBeouf and
Uma Thurman naked and in the heat of the moment, but rumors from the set have
posited the question of how far the actors went on screen. LaBeouf implied in
an interview that during the film’s production, the actors we’re definitely
going to have sex on screen. “There's a disclaimer at the top of the script
that basically says we're doing it for real,” he said. “Everything that is
illegal, we'll shoot in blurred images. Other than that, everything is
happening.” Alas, LeBouf’s provocative words appear to have been little more
than false advertising for the movie. There was real sex happening on screen,
but body doubles were reportedly used for the actual sex scenes. Producer
Louise Vesth explained that the actors were filmed pretending to have sex
before the body doubles, who really did have sex, stepped in to finish the job.
The finished product will be a hybrid of the two, with the stars being shown
from the waist up and the body doubles below the waist, like some sort of
sexual centaur. In keeping with the mysterious air about the movie, it
currently has no official release date…….
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