- Too much paperwork is a headache for anyone…and that’s
without factoring rush hour into the mix. Drivers making their morning commute
Friday in Springfield, Mass. were reminded of that fact on a grand scale when
their drive turned into a parking lot thanks to a massive paper spill that
struck Interstate 291 around 7 a.m. According to State Trooper
Rafael Cazares, law enforcement began receiving calls about debris on the
eastbound side of the highway near Exit 2 shortly after 7 a.m. and when
troopers showed up on the scene, they found nearly one-eighth of a mile of the
highway littered with large sheets of paper. They worked to clean up the mess,
but in a world where even a single raindrop or flake of snow on the ground
causes many motorists to react as if the apocalypse has arrived, maintaining
order and sanity in such a situation can be an incredibly difficult
proposition. While the source of the mess has not yet been determined,
officials are working under the theory that the paper may have fallen off some
sort of truck that was transporting it. The paper was uncut and the sheets
coating the highway in a sheet of white that would have Dwight Schrute filled
with rage were approximately two feet wide and three feet long. Cazares said
that the incident slowed traffic temporarily, but troopers were able to keep
everyone moving along by diverting traffic and cleaning up as much of the
littered paper as possible to return I-291 eastbound to its normal traffic-choked
Friday morning mess……..
- Apple has explored the possibilities of a smaller tablet,
but the House That Steve Jobs Built is boldly going the other direction. After
years of rumors about a tablet with a smaller screen than most on the market
and Jobs saying before his death that a 7-inch tablet would be “dead on
arrival,” details are slowly leaking out about a much larger tablet, larger to
the point of rivaling the screen size of an actual Apple laptop. As with all
Apple rumors, this one has not been confirmed, but the purported release date
is some time next year, possibly as early as April. Among the supposed details
about the new tablet is a 13-inch version with a display with twice the
resolution of the iPad Air’s Retina display and speculation that Apple is
secretly working on a slate that will combine the capabilities of the MacBook
Air and the MacBook Pro. That particular part of the rumor has given rise to
the term “iPad Pro,” which actually does sound exactly like a name Apple might
use. To support those theories, tech dorks have been swapping rumors of secret
tests of iPad models featuring a 12.9-inch display. Such a tablet is reported
to include a display with at least 4,000 horizontal pixels, which is comparable
to the current iPad Air, which features a display with a resolution of 2048
horizontal pixels and 1536 pixels. Expect more details, both accurate and fictitious,
to pop up over the next few months and an actual product to fit some of those
details to emerge with an Ultra HD display some time in 2014……..
- In between the end of college football’s regular season
and the bowl season, the Southeastern
Conference is doling out some justice for schools that stepped across the line
and violated its rules. The conference dinged four schools a combined $60,000
for violating league policies during the football season, reserving the
strictest blows for Mississippi State and Mississippi. Both schools received $25,000
fines, albeit for different offenses. Mississippi State was fined for violating the league's artificial
noisemaker policy a second time, the latest in a series of rows over its fans
continuing their tradition of bringing cowbells to games. The SEC approved the
use of cowbells, but only at approved times during games. Clearly, conference
officials have been breaking tape and reviewing all instances of cowbell usage,
which allowed them to find heinous violations of the rules that cannot go
unchecked. The other three fined schools were docked for violating the league's
field access policy. Ole Miss was fined for the second time because its fans
rushed the field following the school's 27-24 victory over LSU on Oct. 19. The
school also violated the policy in 2012. Auburn and Missouri, the two teams
that reached the SEC title game earlier this month, received paltry $5,000
fines for their own field-rushing violations. Missouri’s fans stormed the field
after their team won the East by beating Texas A&M 28-21, while Auburn fans
did the same at the end of the already-iconic Iron Bowl win over Alabama on
Nov. 30. Considering that Auburn went on to win the SEC championship and will
play in the BCS title game on Jan. 6, one would surmise that the school isn’t
too worried about scraping together the pocket change to pay this particular
fine…….
- Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse……it does. NBC’s
hack-tastic reality karaoke show “The Sing-Off” is ending its current season –
and not a moment too soon – with a two-hour finale on Monday night. That
should be cause for celebration, but it’s awfully difficult to celebrate when
the show is reviving the man band era for the occasion. For its finale, that
other reality karaoke show will reunite "Sing-Off" host
Nick Lachey with former 99 Town Men Sync Degrees man-bandmates Drew Lachey,
Justin Jeffre and Jeff Timmons to perform “I’ll Be Home
for Christmas” from their 1999 holiday album, “This Christmas.” Along with
a man band reunion that no one was asking for, the finale will also feature Pat
Benatar and Neil Giraldo singing their 1984 hit duet “We
Belong," as well as former contestants and already forgotten hacks Pentatonix,
who will return to the stage they conquered in 2011. It should all make
for riveting television, what with Lachey’s fellow karaoke judge Jewel singing
with contestants/country music twangers Home Free, third judge Shawn Stockman
taking to the stage with gospel-inspired contestants Ten and fourth judge Ben
Foldswill joining performing arts high school group Vocal Rush onstage. To
round out the two hours of karaoke hack-dom, all seven of the season’s
previously eliminated groups – The Filharmonic, VoicePlay, acoUstiKats,
Element, Calle Sol, Street Corner Renaissance and The Princeton Footnotes –
will make a return as well. The night will include several holiday songs, so it
should be an utterly missable evening that has everyone who doesn’t watch
saying, “Damn, I’m glad I missed that dumpster fire,” then returning to
organizing their sock drawer……..
- Cuba…..come on down! Financing is guaranteed and we will
offer TOP DOLLAR for your late-model, antiquated relic of a vehicle. Yes, the communist
island nation has finally opened its automobile market and its roads to a
wider range of vehicles by eliminating a special permit that sharply restricted the number of
people allowed to buy vehicles from the state, the government announced this week.
Previously, the communist government maintained monopoly on the sale of
imported vehicles by requiring any potential buyer to obtain a special card
from the Transport Ministry authorizing the purchase of a car. Any potential
buyer has been required to prove they obtained the cash for a car through
approved means like working overseas as a state-employed doctor, musician or
artist. If a relative from abroad sent money that did not qualify a person to purchase
a card. The struggle was far from over even when a person was approved; cards
took months or years to obtain, creating a black market in which people with
ready cash would buy permits for more than the price of vehicles themselves.
The issuance of cards had virtually ground to a halt in recent months as the
government readied its new regulations. Many Cubans have struggled to take
advantage of a change instituted two years ago, when the government lifted
restrictions on the sales of used cars between individuals, because the shortage
of imported cars raised the prices of all vehicles on the island. Decades old jalopies
sold for tens of thousands of dollars and the average Cuban remained priced out
of the market. Dictator Raul Castro has been slowly allowing private enterprise
into Cuba's state-controlled economy and the most recent change was documented
by state-run media, which wrote in part, "It's become clear that while
private sales of cars between individuals has developed smoothly, the sale of
cars using 'authorization cards' has been inadequate and obsolete.” Welcome to
2013, Cuba. Glad you could get here before it ended…….
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