- Being a social worker or a foster parent is a commendable
endeavor. Those willing to help an abandoned child find a home or provide that
home for a young boy or girl in need is as worthwhile an undertaking as there
is in life…but not everyone should be allowed to undertake it. For example, North Carolina
social worker Wanda Sue Larson and her pal Dorian Lee Harper probably should
have found better ways to contribute to the world given that one of Larson’s
charges, an 11-year-old boy, was found cuffed by the ankle to her front porch
with a dead chicken hanging from around his neck. Whether the chicken was there
for punishment or as some sort of weird sorcery ritual is unclear, but what is
clear is that Larson and Harper are charged with numerous offenses after a
sheriff's deputy found the shivering 11-year-old boy locked up on the front
porch with dead poultry hanging from his neck. Larson and Harper adopted four
children and were serving as foster parents to the fifth child, but one would
imagine a grand total of zero of those children would remain in their care now
that they are charged with intentional child abuse inflicting serious injury,
false imprisonment and cruelty to animals. All five of the children, ages 8 to
14, have been removed from the home and regardless of where they are now
staying, it’s safe to say that they are in infinitely better surroundings than
they had been living in. Union County Sheriff Eddie Cathey called the incident
shocking and once the dynamic duo of Larson and Harper appear in court and have
their case heard, odds are that the shock and disgust value of their story will
only increase…….
- No one could rip the top spot at the weekend box office
from Thor’s heroic hands as the superhero blockbuster strong-armed its way to
$38.5 million and a two-week domestic total of $147 million and counting. Second
place went to a movie that can only be described as straight-up awful, yet a
film that made $30.6 million in its debut – “The Best Man Holiday.” After that,
it was a steep drop-off to third place, where “The Geezer Hangover,” a.k.a.
“Last Vegas,” creaked and crawled its way to $8.9 million and has earned $47
million in three weeks. The animated “Free Birds” scored fourth place with $8.3
million to raise its overall domestic total to a disappointing $42.2 million
through three weeks. “Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa” continued to chug along
above expectations with $7.7 million and has amassed $90.2 million in one month
in theaters, a number that looks even better against the backdrop of a $15
million budget. “Gravity” defied the laws of its namesake and remained in sixth
place in its seventh weekend of release after making $6.3 million to boost its
total earnings to $240.5 million. “Ender’s Game” fell to seventh place with its
$6.2 million effort and with a scant $53.7 million so far, it isn’t even
halfway to earning back its bloated $110 million budget. The limited-release
success of “12 Years a Slave” continued as the Oscar favorite banked $4.7
million while showing in just 1,411 theaters and has garnered $24.9 million so
far. “Captain Phillips” claimed ninth place with $4.5 million to elevate its
overall bank roll to $97.6 million. “About Time” capped the top 10 with $3.5
million, while “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2” (No. 11) fell off the list
for the first time in its eight weeks of release……….
- Welcome back, Scott Boras. Whatever rocks baseball’s
most bombastic agent has been hiding under since Jay-Z started lighting him up
on tracks and stealing his clients, Boras crawled out from under long enough to
rip some of Major League Baseball’s big-market teams for taking a bite out of
his commission by not paying his clients enough. Specifically, Boras used MLB’s
general managers' meetings in
Orlando to take a run at the New York Mets, Chicago Cubs and Houston Astros for
not spending more money. Boras’ thinly veiled attempts to provoke teams into
spending more on free agents included taking a convoluted run at the Mets by
likening them to a certain downsized American space agency. "The Mets are
like NASA," Boras said. "They have big rockets, a lot of platforms
and very few astronauts. Astronauts are hard to find. They've got one guy with
the 'Wright' stuff, that's for sure. And they've got a lot of Arm-strongs, too.
But they're certainly a club that I'm sure that's in pursuit of a higher level
of talent." The analogy made no sense at all, not even to Mets general
manager Sandy Alderson. "I don't think his intergalactic metaphor is
exactly right," Alderson said. "I'm not sure because I've first got
to understand it." The Mets were an easy target because in the wake of
Bernard Madoff's Ponzi scheme, they s have cut payroll by about one-third over
the past two seasons and were 17th at about $95 million in the latest 2013
figures. "I think the ability to spend and actually spending are two
different things. And that's only for the Mets to diagnose," Boras said.
"Certainly their franchise value has gone through the roof -- they're well
over $2 billion.” Up next, Boras lit up the Rickets family, which bought the
Chicago Cubs four years ago, for focusing too much on the redevelopment of
Wrigley Field and not enough on major league payroll. "You're developing
the infrastructure, but fans don't come to see seats, grass, cement. They come
to see players," he said. In another part of his rant, Boras compared the
Tampa Bay Rays' stadium situation to Charles Dickens' "Tale of Two
Cities," saying there was "the one they're in and the one they should
be in." It was a massive reach of a metaphor to suggest that playing at
Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg is a mistake and that the Rays should
spend/extort the public for tax dollars to build a new facility in Tampa
proper……….
- Get the partying in early, residents of the Pakisanti town
of Rawalpindi, because having a great night won't be an
option any time soon now that authorities have imposed a curfew in the city.
Government officials imposed the curfew in Rawalpindi, near the capital
Islamabad, after eight people died in sectarian clashes on Friday. Making the
violence sadder is the fact that the deaths came as a religious festival was
going on. Clashes erupted as Shia Muslims staged a procession marking the religious
festival of Ashura and rather than celebrate the event peacefully, a few
maniacs turned the day into a deadly on for eight festival attendees. Dozens
more were injured and many shops set on fire in clashes between Sunni and Shia
Muslims in the city. The curfew was briefly relaxed for three hours on Saturday,
but the violence inspired a quick change in thinking and now officials aren't
even saying when it will be completely lifted. Security forces are patrolling
the streets and entry points into Rawalpindi have been closed in order to
"avert further violence," according to local police. These are the
sorts of overreactions that tend to happen by The Man when 35 people are
injured, many with gunshot wounds, in clashes that just so happen to coincide with
a sermon at a nearby Sunni mosque. Set a few (dozen) shops and a seminary on
fire and next thing you know, everyone has to be off the streets by sundown.
All of this unfolded during one of the most religious occasions for Shia
Muslims, commemorating the anniversary of the death of Imam Hussein, the
grandson of the prophet Mohammed. It’s sad that security must be upped ahead of
the mourning ceremonies, but if jamming mobile phone networks is what it takes
to keep the peace, then someone is going to do it……..
- Technology is often frustrating, but it can also amuse and
entertain. This is one of those times when gadgets are good for a laugh and
even better, police are at the center of the yuks. In their never-ending and
largely pointless battle against marijuana, police officers often find
themselves overmatched in a world full of stoners. Not every cop can have a drug-sniffing
dog and humans’ noses simply aren't sophisticated enough to sniff out ganja
everywhere it lurks. That’s why there is a new gadget called the Nasal Ranger
and while it sounds like a device to trim nose hairs or a surgical device to be
used when removing a quarter stuck up the nose of a rambunctious 8-year-old
brat, the Ranger is actually a megaphone-like device placed on top of a person’s
nose. In technical terms, the Nasal Ranger is an olfactometer, a device that
enhances the detection of odors. It works by introducing an odorous baseline
gas against to which the offending odor can be compared in order to measure its
intensity. The Ranger is also equipped with a calibration tool because not
every person has the same smell skill. Sadly, the Nasal Ranger is still in the
development stages and while some law enforcement agencies are using it, it
remains far from an ironclad means of stamping out the menace of hippie lettuce
usage. Officials in Denver are using it to determine if individuals are making
the public air smell too much like pot while they legally get baked. For the
germaphobes among us, the Nasal Ranger comes with a mask for the user’s nose to
keep the smells in, a disposable seal and cleaning wipes for the nose-mask and odor-filter
cartridges. Oh, and it also comes with guaranteed laughter for anyone who gets
to witness one being used……..
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