Cheap French wine, humans v. seals and a minor leaguer attacks a stripper

- The showdown because man and seal is turning nasty in New Hampshire and wildlife experts are concerned. A series of violent encounters between humans and seal pups last week in the town of Rye have raised the level of drama on local beaches. In one incident, an animal was injured and in the second incident, a seal pup was killed. Those skirmishes have led wildlife officials to warn beachgoers to stay away from seals on area beaches because any contact with them could endanger the animals. One incident was caught on video and the video was posted online. It shows an unidentified man nudging a seal pup toward the ocean in Rye. Experts who have viewed the video have deemed it a potential instructional video for what not to do when encountering a seal pup. Nursing pups commonly rest on the beach while their mothers fish offshore, but that isn't an open invitation for an animal lover who sees the lounging pup to swim on over for a closer look. "The most important thing is to let the seal stay on the beach and monitor it for 24 hours and make sure that there's still some maternal investment happening," said Katie Pugliares, senior biologist for the New England Aquarium. "They're dependent on their moms for about four weeks, and this is prime pupping season." As poorly as the man in the video handled his seal pup encounter, a woman who had a similar experience the following day reacted in even more inappropriate fashion. Seeing a pup separated from its mother, this fool removed it from the beach and took it to the Seacoast Science Center. That pup was later taken to a rehabilitation center at the University of New England, where it is recovering. After the two incidents, volunteers from the aquarium posted signs warning people to leave the pups alone, but officials say those signs are often ignored…….

 

- The world is littered with guys who were once THE hot prospect for a Major League Baseball franchise but for any number of reasons, never made it to the majors. Maybe injuries sidetracked their career, perhaps a younger, more talented player came along and took their chance or maybe they were just overrated to begin with. Either that or they couldn’t control themselves at some seedy strip club, got booted from the establishment and began a downward spiral that ultimately ended their baseball career. Tampa Bay Rays prospect Josh Sale is well on his way to being that guy and he took another big step toward trashing his troubled career on Wednesday when the Rays suspended him for conduct detrimental to the organization. Sale, the team’s 2010 first-round pick, was banned after boasting on Facebook about acting unruly at a strip club.” Acting a fool at a strip club is nothing new and Sale isn’t the first athlete to be evicted from the Frisky Kitty or Gentleman’s Choice after having a drink or five too many, getting belligerent and fighting a losing battle with a 325-pound bald dude in a tight black T-shirt and shades, but bragging about it on Facebook takes the stupidity to a new low. “Threw 50 cents at a stripper tonight. First time. Got kicked out and she got so (mad) thought she was gonna cry. Your a stripper. Be thankful," Sale posted. Just sit back and marvel at the class oozing from those words. Apparently Sale was out of $1 bills and rather than just enjoy the show, he elected to reach into his pocket and start chucking nickels and dimes at the women on stage. The “Your are stripper. Be thankful” blast is especially respectful and exactly the sort of statement one would expect from a player who just finished serving a 50-game suspension after testing positive for methamphetamine and an amphetamine. Rather than appreciate being able to play again for the first time since last season, Sale elected to go full-on ass hat. That might fly if he had progressed higher than Class A ball and hit better than  .238 with 14 homers and 59 RBIs in 134 games over two seasons in the Tampa Bay organization…….

- At long last, the mystery of the origin of massive invisible regions that make the moon's gravity uneven has been unraveled. NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission has solved this riddle and because of its findings, spacecraft on missions to other celestial bodies can navigate with greater precision in the future. As part of a research mission, GRAIL's twin spacecraft studied the internal structure and composition of the moon in unprecedented detail for nine months. By identifying the locations of large, dense regions called mass concentrations, or mascons, with their strong gravitational pull, the spacecraft were able to provide insights on these space phenomena. Mascons reside beneath the lunar surface and cannot be seen by normal optical cameras, but 
GRAIL scientists found them by combining gravity data from GRAIL with sophisticated computer models of large asteroid impacts and known detail about the geologic evolution of the impact craters.

"GRAIL data confirm that lunar mascons were generated when large asteroids or comets impacted the ancient moon, when its interior was much hotter than it is now," explained Jay Melosh, a GRAIL co-investigator at Purdue University. The origins of lunar mascons have remained unexplained since their discovery in 1968 by a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., although most astronomers agree that they resulted from ancient impacts billions of years ago. Mascons work based on their bull’s-eye pattern, which has a gravity surplus and s surrounded by a ring with a gravity deficit. That pattern occurs as a natural consequence of crater excavation, collapse and cooling following an impact. Melted lunar material from the heat of a long-ago asteroid impact then spurts an increase in density and gravitational pull at a mascon's bull’s-eye. Understanding this should allow scientists to better understand the geologic consequences of large impacts. NASA hopes this will lead to better understanding of ancient Earth, including how plate tectonics got started and what created the first ore deposits. It could also spur greater understanding of lanetary geology well beyond that of Earth. The two GRAIL craft, GRAIL A and GRAIL B, were originally launched in September 2011 and have since been renamed Ebb and Flow……..

- Wine can be such an elitist beverage and the sight of pompous wine lovers swirling a few ounces from a bottle made in 1924 before spitting it out into another glass and raving about its full body and sweet palate is enough to drive the average person to punch an upper-cruster in the face repeatedly. Likewise, France has a reputation as something of an uppity, rude nation. Combine the two and the term “French wine” doesn’t exactly scream, “Fun for all!” Thursday’s wine auction by France's Elysee Palace may change that perception. The palace auctioned off more than $325,000 of wine, with prices going as high as $3,000 a bottle, but the lower-end offerings selling for a mere $20. The big-ticket items were bottles of 1990 Petrus and other prime vintages, but there were also cheaper wines to allow the Yellow Tail crowd to say they own wine from the French Presidential palace. "The auction will permit anyone who loves wine to bid," said Juan Carlos, an independent French wine expert who is working with The Hotel Drouot on the sale, prior to the auction. "We will have bottles for 15 to 20 euros." All together, 1,200 bottles were auctioned off and there was plenty of buzz over the vintage bottles of Bordeaux and Burgundy. Prices for bottles of the 1990 Petrus mostly sold for $3,000 to $3,500 a bottle and the 1998 Meursault Premier Cru, 1975 Château Lafite Rothschild and Champagne from Salon were well beyond the price range of the average Frenchman. As to the question of why all of this wine was on the auction block…the answer is simple. Proceeds of the sale will go to replenish Elysee's 12,000-bottle cellar and buy new, younger wines from lesser known French producers. Selling wine to buy more wine….spectacular logic. Many of the bottles sold had only a few bottles left or an odd number so they can't be served at a state dinner or other fancy function. A few haters have called the wine auction a sign of French austerity blasted the Palace for selling some of its liquid assets. Well-known French wine collector Michel-Jack Chasseuil wrote a letter to President Francois Hollande complaining that the wines would go "to the world's billionaires and we'll be sorry when we realize we have no more.” Ah, but there is always more wine……..

- Glenn Close, despite her striking resemblance to him, is rarely confused with Samuel L. Jackson. That could change in light of Close’s latest role, which will see her play a character similar to the one Jackson portrays in “The Avengers.” Close has become the latest high-profile actor to sign up for Marvel's new superhero movie “Guardians Of The Galaxy.” The superhero epic follows a team of world-savers, including "Star-Lord", "Drax the Destroyer" and "Rocket Raccoon," who appeared in a 2008 comic book series of the same name. Marvel is clearly hoping that the massive commercial success it has enjoyed with Jackson’s Nick Fury character and the “Avengers” franchise as a whole will translate to Close and the rest of the “Guardians” gang. s. Close will reportedly appear in a "leadership role" roughly equivalent to Fury and her character will lead a rapidly growing Zoe Saldana, Chris Pratt, Michael Rooker and John C. Reilly. James Gunn will direct and he is well-versed in the superhero world, having directed “Super,” the 2010 superhero comedy starring Ellen Page and Rainn Wilson. The timetable for “Guardians” is short, as it is to begin shooting in June with a projected release date of Aug. 1, 2014. Close snagging a prime role in the project is interesting because at the age of 66, she isn't exactly the first name that comes to mind when one thinks of action heroes. She did recently receive her fifth Oscar nomination for her most recent film role as a 19th century cross-dressing butler in “Albert Nobbs,” so Close is still turning in quality performance even though she’s now old enough to qualify for Social Security……

A true NHL loss, Microsoft's latest tweak and a Russian daredevil's record

- It was bound to happen. Plenty of pathetic losers treat their dog or cat like a person, feed it better than they do their own children and ass-hattedly refer to the animal as their child. Not enough tools give the same preferential treatment to chickens. A New Hampshire farmer who is pathetic enough to treat her chickens as part of the family is stepping in to fill that void. Julie Baker has concocted a creative way to pamper her poultry and that way is launching a website called “Pampered Poultry,” which – truthfully - sells chicken diapers and saddles to protect against the “not so gentle gentleman roosters.” Sadly, this might be the least-idiotic of the chicken clothing items Baker sells. She also hawks clothing for poultry — brightly colored dresses with bows, tailcoats and even a diaper with a bow tie attached. Because not all chickens possess the self-discipline to work out and stay away from fatty foods, the diapers come in a variety of sizes. According to Baker, her products allow chicken owners to bring their pets inside the home without the mess. The diapers function like a harness and are placed on the animal by slipping the diaper over the chicken’s back and securing it. “When my daughter and I set out to design and sell chicken diapers, it was born not so much out of a need to literally pamper our poultry, but rather to share in the growing movement to bring chickens from an agriculture sphere,” Baker explained in a post on her blog, Farm Dreamer. “We wanted to be part of the “Backyard Chicken” movement.” The odds of there actually being something known as the Backyard Chicken movement seem slim, but trumped-up falsehoods are just part of the advertising game. Baker’s fowl fashions range in price from around $10 to $21 depending on size……

- The Dude does not abide – not in a sequel, anyhow. One of the ultimate cult-favorite films of the past 15 years will not be honored with a second chapter, as the Coen Brothers have all but ruled out making a sequel to “The Big Lebowski.” The film has spawned legions of fans, festivals at which lovers of all things Lebowski dress in costumes from the movie and speak the same lingo Jeff Bridges and his pals did in the 1998 release. Bridges played "The Dude" and John Goodman co-starred as his friend Walter Sobchak. As with any movie that remains popular years after its release (and even with many that don’t), suggestions for a sequel have been prevalent over the years. In fact, another of the film's stars, John Turturro, revealed in 2011 that he had an idea for a spin-off film based on his character Jesus Quintana. Nothing became of that idea, but last summer a hoax news story claiming Bridges and Goodman had signed up for a sequel circulated online and had fans hyped for the idea of another “Lebowski” movie. Ethan and Joel Coen didn’t offer much of a response then, but they are saying something now. "I don't think it's going to happen. I just don’t like sequels," Joel Coen said of a sequel during an appearance at the Cannes Film Festival. "John Turturro, who wants it, talks to us incessantly about doing a sequel about his character Jesus. He even has the story worked out, which he's pitched to us a few times, but I can't really remember it… No, I don't see it in our future,” Joel Coen added. That news is not going to go over well with the diehards at Lebowski Fest, but they’ll just get stoned and forget about it, so it’s no problem. Meanwhile, the Coen Brothers' latest film, “Inside Llewyn Davis,” a drama set on the 1960s New York folk scene, premiered in Cannes to rave reviews. Just imagine the reviews “The Big Lebowski 2” might receive……..

- Doesn’t Russian daredevil Valery Rozov know who rules his country with an iron fist? He had better find out quickly because while claiming a world base jumping record in a leap off the north face of Mount Everest in a special wingsuit sound epic, such a feat could easily be seen as a personal affront to thrill-seeking dictator Vladimir Putin. Rozov released video of the May 5 jump on Wednesday and staged his stunt to mark the 60th anniversary of the first ascent of the world's most famous mountain. In releasing the video, the 48-year-old Rozov also claimed the record for the world's highest-ever base jump, at 7,220 meters above sea level. The video shows him clad in a special wingsuit, gliding for a full a minute in the thin mountain air, reaching speeds up to 125 mph, before landing on a glacier at 5,950 meters. His feat was something of a corporate sellout, as it was sponsored by Red Bull, which posted a statement on its website in conjunction with the video’s release. "Because the cliff at the top was not very high, the initial moments of the leap in the rarified high altitude air were the most critical phase," the post read. "Rozov needed more time than usual in the thin air to transition from freefall to flying." Planning the jump took a full two years and the climb from base camp to the jump location took Rozov four days. He was assisted by a team of four Sherpas in making the ascent. Rozov’s list of stunts includes more than 10,000 jumps, including jumping into an active volcano on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Fast East in 2009 and leaping from 6,420 meters from Shivling in the Himalayas in a warmup for the Mount Everest leap. "Only when I got back home did I see how hard it was for me both physically and psychologically," Rozov said. Now try to imgine how tough it’s going to be when Putin ships him off to a gulag for performing this stunt before the despot could do it himself. Putin totally would have found time in between staging fake tiger hunts and publicity stunts flying in a glider alongside endangered birds…….

- Is everyone excited? Check that. Is anyone – anyone who doesn’t work for Microsfot – excited about the leak of several screenshots of a prerelease build of Microsoft's forthcoming Windows 8.1 update? Updating the world’s worst operating system is generally not a reason for excitement, but there is a minor amount of buzz over the screen shots because they indicate that the Start button really is coming back. The screen shot of the Windows 8.1 desktop featured a new-look Start button in the left-hand corner of the taskbar, right where Windows 7 users expected to find it. The botton is adorned with the redesigned, monochrome Windows logo, rather than the now-old-school multicolored orb. When a user moves the mouse over it, the logo changes color to indicate its functionality. Its purpose is launching the Windows 8 Start Screen…..and that’s all. It won't pop up the old-style Start Menu, just provide a new way to get to the new launcher UI, in addition to the button on the Charms bar, the Windows key on your keyboard and the dedicated Windows buttons found on many Win8 fondleslabs. Along with this slight tweak, the system will also feature the primary Start Screen with its Live Tiles and the option to set the default Start Screen to the "All Apps" view. The All Apps view will also be configurable so that users can group their icons by usage, which is a cheap substitute for a Windows 7–style Start Menu in the form of a full-screen view. The last useful tidbit surrounding the new Start button is that it will reportedly also be usable from within Windows Store apps and from the Start Screen itself, but will only be visible if the user moves the mouse cursor to the lower left-hand corner of the screen. For those users who aren't big fans of the button, Microsoft will also provide the option to get rid of it all together……..

- Fired National Hockey League coaches are a plentiful commodity. Coaches are fired a few games into the season, halfway through the season, three-fourths of the way through the season and after the season ends. They are fired on a boat, in a moat, beside goat and carrying a tote (bag). Despite those facts, it’s still jarring when a team lets a coaching superstar like John Tortorella go. Tortorella, who won a Stanley Cup with the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2004, is out as coach of the New York Rangers and with him, the best sound bytes anywhere in the NHL are now homeless. The Rangers announced Tortorella’s dismissal on Wednesday, a mere four days after the team was bounced from the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Firing a man who routinely dropped profanities during in-game television interviews, belittled and shouted down reporters in postgame press conferences and was likely to explode in a fit of rage at any given moment is awful, but firing him in New York is worse. Giving a combustible coach like Tortorella the platform he had coaching in the biggest media market in America is a gift to all sports fans, just as firing him after his team lost its playoff series in five games deprives those same fans of the joy of a witty Tortorella putdown after a tough loss. Sure, expectations were high this season after the Rangers reached the Eastern Conference finals last season, but this was a lockout-shortened season in which teams did not have enough time to prepare for a condensed, 48-game schedule. Rangers team president and general manager Glen Sather refused to go into detail about the reasons Tortorella was let go during a conference call Wednesday, but admitted that Tortorella was "shocked" to hear the news. "It wasn't one thing," Sather said evasively. "I think I made the right decision so we can move forward in another direction.” Coaches who aren't 75 years old and have a Stanley Cup win on their résumé usually find new jobs, but Tortorella’s verbal meltdowns just won't have the same impact in Columbus, Calgary or Winnipeg next season…….

German train drones, Harvard surveillance mistakes and Nike hates Lance Armstrong

- No one saw this coming. The relationship between disgraced cycling cheater and confirmed ‘roider Lance Armstrong and his former business partner/company he used to be a spokesperson for Nike has been so solid of late. What with Armstrong admitting he cheated with performance-enhancing drugs and lied about it for a decade to gain money, fame, athletic success and A-list status, defrauding all of the companies he endorsed in the process, it’s tough to see Nike or any other business having a beef with him. Yet here Nike is, disassociating from Armstrong. The world's largest shoe and apparel brand has notified the Livestrong Foundation, the charity that Armstrong helped start, that it will discontinue its line of Livestrong-branded products by the end of this year. "Nike has made the decision to stop producing new Livestrong product after its Holiday 2013 line," Nike spokesman KeJuan Wilkins said in a statement. "We will continue to support the Livestrong Foundation by funding them directly as they continue their work serving and improving outcomes for people facing cancer." The decision is an impactful one, given that Nike sold an estimated $150 million of Livestrong-branded products, its most ever. During nine fraudulent years they were in business together, the Livestrong Foundation made more than 87 million of its Livestrong yellow rubber wristbands and . Nike raised more than $100 million for the foundation through sales of the $1 wristbands. The foundation, from which Armstrong has severed all ties rather than continue to drag it down, released a statement thanking Nike for their time together. Armstrong has lost all of his endorsement deals in the past year, including those with Nike, Trek, Oakley and Michelob Ultra………

- Outspoken Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto may want to run his comments by his speech writers more thoroughly in the future. If he were in the habit of doing so, he would not have had to apologize this week for implying that he would excuse Japan's wartime military brothels. He initially sparked a sh*t storm of criticism globally earlier this month when he said that the military brothels had been "necessary" at the time and that Japan was being unfairly criticized for practices other countries also engaged in. He could not have backpedaled further from those words this week when he insisted that Japan should apologize to the women forced to work in the brothels while suggesting that historical research was needed to determine whether Japan "as a state" was directly involved in human trafficking of the "comfort women.” Oddly enough, his words have further eroded dwindling voter support for his once-rising Japan Restoration Party and suggesting that his remarks had been taken out of context and misunderstood won't help his case. "I am totally in agreement that the use of 'comfort women' by Japanese soldiers before and during the World War II was an inexcusable act that violated the dignity and human rights of the women in which large numbers of Korean and Japanese were included," Hashimoto said at the beginning of a three-hour news conference before foreign and domestic media. "I also strongly believe that Japan must reflect upon its past offenses with humility and express a heartfelt apology and regret to those women who suffered from the wartime atrocities as comfort women.” In recent weeks, polls have shown that only 3 percent of voters planning to cast their ballots for his party in a July upper house election. The “comfort women” he referred to were of several nationalities, including many from Korea. For that reason, the topic has long been a point of contention between Tokyo and Seoul. Japan insists that s the matter of compensation for the women was settled under a 1965 treaty establishing diplomatic ties with South Korea, but Seoul has balked at that suggestion as well as the notion that it should take the issue to the International Court of Justice. "I think Japan's recent ... remarks are throwing cold water onto our government's will to strengthen friendship between Korea and Japan more than ever," South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said. Sounds like someone needs more than a hug and a non-apology apology from their former ally………

- The world is clearly still enthralled with the flamboyant genius of Liberace. The ratings for "Behind the Candelabra," HBO’s Liberace biopic starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, attest to that fact. The made-for-TV film accrued  2.4 million viewers in its premiere Sunday. With director Steven Soderbergh at the helm, the movie was a big hit for the cable network and brought in HBO’s highest rating for a movie since the 2004 release "Something the Lord Made." Soderbergh has talked at length about how “Behind the Candelabra” ended up on the small screen and has revealed that it originally was intended as a feature film. Warner Bros. eventually backed out of the project because its figures showed it would have had to spend $25 million to make and market the film. That would have necessitated earnings of $60 million to turn a profit in theaters. Warner Bros. clearly didn’t believe that was possible, but the numbers for Sunday’s premiere suggest that may not be true. With movie tickets costing $10 in most theater chains around the country, the 2.4 million who watched Sunday night would translate into $24 million and while there is no guarantee that everyone who watched on TV would have gone to see the movie in the theater, those numbers represent one showing at one specific time. Factor in the second showing on HBO that brought in 1.1 million more viewers and the initial earnings could theoretically rise to $35 million. The star power of Damon and Douglas would likely bring in more fans and if the movie were to have any success at all internationally, “Behind the Candelabra” could have been a true commercial success. Sure, it may not have the sophisticated writing and storylines of “Fast and Furious 6” or the intricate, highbrow humor of “The Hangover Part 3,” but there has to be money out there for “lesser” movies………

- Evelynn Hammonds might like a mulligan on this one. Hammonds, the soon-to-be-ex dean of Harvard, will be exiting Cambridge this summer following months of controversy over her decision to authorize secret searches of faculty email. She announced on Tuesday that she will step down from her post but will remain a professor at the prestigious university. If she plans to keep that lesser job, she should probably get into the habit of not giving conflicting accounts about important situations, something she did when addressing her decision to scan the subject lines of email accounts belonging to 16 deans in search of correspondence relating to a major cheating scandal among Harvard students. Even though she apologized to the faculty last month, her hollow words didn’t seem to mend all fences. As Hammonds explained it, her covert email search was aimed at tracking correspondence between faculty and reporters for the school newspaper, the Harvard Crimson, who were investigating allegations that dozens of students cheated on a take-home final exam in a government class last spring. The scandal led to as many as 60 students being suspended earlier this year after a school investigation into the cheating. Another 60 or so students were placed on disciplinary probation but were allowed to remain at the Ivy League school. Hammonds once made history by becoming the first African-American and the first woman to be appointed dean of Harvard College and has made history once again by becoming the first African-American and the first woman to resign from that post in disgrace. Shockingly, she did not refer to the cheating scandal or the email search in announcing her impending resignation. She said in the announcement that she plans to drop off the grid, er, take a sabbatical, then return to Harvard to head up a new program looking at the role of race and gender in science and medicine……..

- Now THIS is how technology was meant to be used. Drone strikes on a country’s own citizens are so, well, draconian. Using those drones to spy on teenage miscreants with nothing better to do than grab a couple cans of cheap spray paint and tag out-of-use train cars or underpasses is the perfect way to put drones to work. German national railway company Deutsche Bahn put up with enough graffiti from young punks across the country and as anyone who has traveled through Germany can attest, there are many miles of track in out-of-the-way places and plenty of unauthorized works of art decorating them. To combat the vandalism, Deutsche Bahn plans to enlist a different sort of drones. They aren't the same drones that drop missiles or bombs, but would instead be equipped with infrared cameras designed to capture vandals in action. The drones the rail company plans to use are four-rotor, battery-powered helicopters that can fly for up to 80 minutes on a single charge. Their top speed is about 34 mph and they can travel up to 25 miles on autopilot. Doing their job undetected isn’t difficult because the drones can also hover nearly 500 feet off the ground in near-silence. Where the challenge comes in is cost. Because each drone would cost roughly 60,000 euros, buying them would represent a huge investment in fighting a problem that, while unsightly, doesn’t directly affect the functionality of any part of the railroad. On the other hand, there were some 14,000 incidents of graffiti reported in 2012 that cost 7.6 million euros to clean up. To determine whether it would be a wise investment, Deutsche Bahn will start testing the drones over the coming weeks. It hopes to use them to be able to dispatch security personnel in real-time and use photographic evidence to help build a case against culprits in court. Operating within Germany’s strict privacy and anti-surveillance laws will also be a must for the program to continue moving forward……..

Liam Gallagher vs. Daft Punk, the world's biggest flag and bizarre MLB injuries

- Prepare to have your world view rocked. That weird-shaped, brightly colored outer space thingy you thought was the Ring Nebula is no ring at all. The nebula has been misnamed and is actually something of a football-shaped jelly doughnut. That discovery was made by a team of researchers led by Robert O’Dell, a physics and astronomy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. He and his team reported their conclusion following a first-ever video reconstruction of the interstellar body based on sloughs of images from the Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based observatories. The Ring Nebula, also known as Messier 57, has been a known commodity to scientists for centuries, ever since French astronomer Antoine Darquier de Pellepoix first spotted it in 1779. German nobleman Count Friedrich von Hahn made repeated observations of it over several years leading up to 1800 and he reported seeing changes in the cloud’s middle. Among his observations was a faint star at the center. Over time, astronomers concluded that the nebula had a hollow middle and was in the shape of a ring. That give rise to its given name, but O’Dell and his crew decided to take a closer look. What they found were varying patterns of motion that may cause the middle to look unlike the rest of the nebula from an Earth-bound vantage point. That could create some of the visual illusion. The cloud surrounding the core is expanding by more than 43,000 miles an hour, but the growth is much faster at the center than it is in the outer ring. As a result, the middle is much lower-density than the rest of the nebula. O’Dell and his team used the highest-precision views of the nebula taken yet courtesy of the Hubble telescope and the pictures showed no gas presence at the center of the nebula. The nebula measures one light-year across and the now-dying star von Hahn spotted is indeed present. Based on the Hubble images and other recent analysis, the Ring Nebula is likely on its way to white-dwarf status……

- Hey Republic Party: Bob Dole has something to say to you and when Bob Dole says that Bob Dole has something to say, you’d better listen to Bob Dole. The former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, in declining health and 89 years old, took some time during a TV appearance Sunday to describe the current gridlock in Congress as unreal eviscerate his fellow Republicans for not getting more done. He also suggested a unique remedy for the embattled and emaciated GOP. “They ought to put a sign on the national committee doors that says closed for repairs until New Year’s Day next year and spend that time going over ideas and positive agendas,” Dole said. He rambled on about the current Congress’ partisan battles over topics such as reducing the deficit and expanding health care and lamented the legislature’s 16-percent approval rating among the American people, as per a recent Gallup survey. Dole represented his state in both the House and Senate, but the former Republican presidential candidate wondered if he or former President Ronald Reagan could make it in today’s Republican party. He did also blast President Barack Obama for lacking communication skills and traveling too much. “I’m not a critic of the president, but I think one mistake he’s made was not getting together more with Congress earlier on, in his first administration,” Dole said. Just to be clear, he’s not a critic, he was just non-criticizing the president by, you know, criticizing him. Bashing a decorated military veteran who is nearly 90 and is suffering from multiple health issues is bad form, so let’s just give Dole credit for describing the Senate as being “bent really badly” and just keep moving……

- The list keeps on growing. Major League Baseball players injured in the most ridiculous and moronic ways possible are a never-ending gift of hilarity and their troubled tales include apartment stairs, deer meat, mis-sized hats, tanning beds, trash bags full of watermelon rinds, dugout towels and more. Add household chores and dinnerware to the list and count Arizona right-hander Ian Kennedy as the first victim of this home hazard. Kennedy will miss his next start after cutting his right index finger while doing the dishes this week. He was supposed to start one of the Diamondbacks’ two games in Monday's doubleheader against the Texas Rangers, but his sliced finger courtesy of that pesky cereal bowl or butter knife left his team down a man. Left-hander Tyler Skaggs was recalled from Triple-A Reno to fill in and given that minor leaguers are more likely to be using paper plates and plastic cutlery, one would assume that dishwashing injuries are less likely for him. According to Arizona manager Kirk Gibson, Kennedy cut his finger a couple of days ago and threw a bullpen session on Saturday with a Band-Aid on it. The team weighed several different options to work around the injury and allow Kennedy to pitch on Monday, including glue, ultimately decided that some good antibacterial gel, another Sesame Street Band-Aid or two and more time to heal were the best route to take. There is still a possibility that Kennedy may have to go on the disabled list, although it’s doubtful his entry would read, “Out – Attacked by dinner plate.” Kennedy is currently 2-3 with a 4.70 ERA, so it’s not like the Diamondbacks will miss him tremendously while he is recovering from his boo-boo and doing his best to learn how to use the dishwasher and avoid hands-on dish duty…….

- Score one for the people of Clinceni. Their village may located in the middle of nowhere some 22 miles southeast of Bucharest, but they have put themselves on the map by aspiring to do what kooks have done for decades and decades – get their names in the Guinness Book of World Records. Alongside the freaks who grow 12-foot-long fingernails and the loser who accumulates the world’s largest ball of yarn, the villagers of Clinceni have secured a spot in the record book by unfurling the largest flag ever made. Displaying it Monday afternoon took about 200 people willing to waste several hours of their time. When fully undulated, the flag measured about 1,145 feet wide by 744 feet tall, making it about three times the size of a football field, according to Jack Brockbank, an adjudicator for Guinness World Records who measured the flag before pronouncing it the biggest flag in the world. “It gives me great pleasure to recognize a new Guinness World Record title,” he said after measuring. “Congratulations, Romania.” Yes, because no one deserves congratulations more than people who wasted the time and money necessary to make and display a red, yellow and blue flag covering 853,478 square feet. The milestone monument to stupidity and wastefulness was enough to wrest the top spot away from Lebanon which, held the previous record. The volunteers who displayed the five-ton flag struggled to keep it firmly planted on the ground because of windy conditions and had to use small sandbags. The man at the heart of the idiocy was Adrian Dragomir, manager of Flags Factory. His company spent weeks creating the flag, sewing it together using some 44 miles of thread. Ever the opportunistic politician, Prime Minister Victor Ponta and other ministers showed up to see the flag and have their pictures taken while a military brass band played………

- Liam Gallagher is progressing. He has shifted from bittering his way through life with bile directed at his brother and former Oasis bandmate Noel and is now directing his snarkiness at other musicians. The current targets in his crosshairs are French electronic duo Daft Punk. Their (overrated) new album “Random Access Memories” has yielded the No. 1 single “Get Lucky,” now in its fourth week atop the British music charts. Liam Gallagher is no fan of the song and believes it is so simple that he could write it in “an hour.” “I'd write that in a f**king hour. I don't know what the fuss is about, you know what I mean?" he asked. His anti-Daft Punk emotions don’t stop there; Gallagher also took issue with the French act's penchant for wearing robot costumes. “I am not going to have people wear disguises. Take your f**king helmet off. Let's see what you look like sans helmet, whatever you're called,” he added. Coincidentally enough, the first album from Gallagher’s first post-Oasis act, Beady Eye, wasn’t very good either. The band unveiled the video for their new single “Second Bite Of The Apple” this week to build hype for their forthcoming second release, the unimaginatively titled “BE,” due out on June 10. Perhaps this album will be better than “Different Gear, Still Speeding,” as it was recorded in London with über-producer and TV on the Radio member Dave Sitek. "Working with Sitek just opened something up in us," Liam Gallagher said of the project. "He’s without a doubt the best producer I’ve ever worked with, a real outlaw – he doesn't give a f*ck, no rules. We had a new found focus when we were writing it – we really got our heads down and got our sh*t together – clear heads, none of that crap from the '90s.” Beady Eye will play a few shows in the United Kingdom before a limited run on the festival circuit in Europe this summer……..

Notre Dame takes a hit, Vermont's sleazy governor and movie news

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- The world now has proof that a film doesn’t need minor assets like good writing, good acting or a plausible plot to make a sh*t-ton of money. All it needs are fast cars, hot women and big names in its leading roles. Those components were enough to propel “Fast & Furious 6” to the top spot at the box office for the holiday weekend, topping the two previous champs to claim the No. 1 ranking. “Fast 6” made $98.5 million in its first weekend, beating out fellow newcomer “The Hangover 3,” along with reigning king “Star Trek Into Darkness” and “Iron Man 3.” “Hangover 3” notched $42.4 million in its first weekend to finish second, while “Star Trek” added $38 million for a two-week total of $146.8 million. The animated and star-studded “Epic” ranked fourth with $34.2 million in its first weekend of release and that was enough to push past “Iron Man 3,” which tumbled to fifth with $19.4 million and has banked $367.5 million through four weeks. “The Great Gatsby” continued its rapid descent with a sixth-place result that saw it bring in just $13.7 million and has accrued $114.4 million in three weeks. Underdog story “Mud” jumped to its highest spot so far, seventh, even as it remained in limited release. Despite showing in just 712 theaters, the Matthew McConaughey-led indie flick made $1.9 million and has banked $14.5 million in five weeks. “42” claimed eighth place with $1.3 million and after seven weeks, its cumulative domestic earnings stand at $91 million. Ninth place belonged to “The Croods,” which earned $1.2 million and has now made $179.2 million in 10 weeks of work. “Oblivion” completed the top 10 with $815,000 and its disappointing six-week bank roll checks in at $87.2 million. “Pain and Gain” (No. 12) and “Tyler Perry Presents Peeples” (No. 16) both dropped out from last week’s top 10……….

- Score one for injustice in Guatemala, where the nation’s highest court has overturned a genocide conviction against former dictator Efrain Rios Montt and reset his trial back to when a dispute broke out a month ago over who should hear the case. Despised despot Rios Montt, 86, was found guilty on May 10 of overseeing the killings by the armed forces of at least 1,771 members of the Maya Ixil population during his 1982-83 rule. The court in his case hit him with a sentence of 80 years in prison, but this past week, the country's Constitutional Court ordered that all the proceedings be voided going back to April 19. That’s the date when one of the presiding judges suspended the trial because of a dispute with another judge over who should hear it. There is no date set for the trial to resume, but the mere fact that it will obliterates (for now, anyhow) what was originally hailed as a landmark for justice in the Central American nation. It’s the sort of healing a country could use when as many as 250,000 people were killed in a bloody civil war lasting from 1960 to 1996. Rios Montt presided over an offensive in which soldiers raped, tortured and killed tens of thousands of Maya villagers suspected of helping Marxist rebels. They forced thousands more into exile or made them  join paramilitary forces fighting the insurgents. He originally rose to power in a bloodless coup on March 23, 1982, and ruled for 17 months until he was finally ousted from power in August 1983. As part of his conviction, the court ordered the government to apologize for atrocities committed against indigenous people. The decision to restart the case stems from an appeal by one of Rios Montt's defense lawyers to be readmitted to the case. The higher court decided that the trial should have been suspended at that point until the matter could be resolved………

- This isn’t going to end well. Google and Microsoft are teaming up on a new YouTube application for Windows Phone and given both companies’ failures in the smartphone world, the likelihood of a positive result aren’t extremely high. Their partnership stems from a fight over Microsoft’s unauthorized YouTube app. The showdown led to Google demanding that Microsoft remove its app by May 22. Instead, Microsoft issued an update to address some of Google's concerns. “Microsoft and YouTube are working together to update the new YouTube for Windows Phone app to enable compliance with YouTube’s API terms of service, including enabling ads, in the coming weeks,” Google said in a statement. Microsoft has indicated a willingness to include ads in its YouTube Windows Phone application if Google allows it and provides access to an official API. Any agreement between the companies is expected to result in Microsoft being compelled to use publicly available YouTube APIs like the JavaScript and IFrame ones. Such moves would certainly strip the full app of some functionality, as Microsoft has previously eschewed those APIs on the grounds that they would neuter a fully featured YouTube app for Windows Phone. To push its case forward, Microsoft developed the unauthorized app it has previously released rather than put out a simple link to a mobile site. All of the drama sparked a technological pissing match that saw Google enforce and then rescind a block of its Maps service for Windows Phone users. Should the two tech giants find a way to work together, it would greatly benefit mutual customers of Microsoft and Google who simply want to use a Windows Phone with Google's web services………

- What do elected officials do best? Other than make empty promises, of course. They find ways to take advantage of situations and screw people over. According to one small-town dweller in the hamlet of East Montpelier, Vt., that’s exactly what Gov. Peter Shumlin has done. Jeremy Dodge lives in his humble childhood home in East Montpelier, but he will soon have to move away from Foster Road. He’s being dislodged because of a situation that began last year when the town put his property up for tax sale. At the time, Dodge owed almost $18,000 in back taxes. Had his property gone up for auction, he could have been homeless in 30 days. Instead, his neighbor came over and offered to buy him out. That neighbor was Shumlin. Dodge believed he had caught a break, but it turns out he may have been a sucker for a too-good-to-be-true offer. “The governor approached me... I had no offer prior to the tax sale,” Dodge said. He claims he and Shumlin negotiated the deal themselves and wrote the terms of the deal on a folder. His house and the 16-acre property it sits on were appraised in 2009 for $233,700. Shumlin allegedly offered Dodge $32,000, then upped it to $58,000. That seemed like a decent offer, but the IQ-challenged Dodge now says he did not understand that he may have gotten a better deal had the house gone to tax sale. "I'm a slow learner to start with," Dodge said. "I have a hard time comprehending a lot of things." The case is one where picking a sympathetic party is difficult, given that Dodge is an ex-con on food stamps earning less than $8,000 a year

 and Shumlin is, well, a politician. Friends claim Dodge has struggled with mental health issues since his parents died seven years ago, after which he inherited their home. They contend he is not mentally capable of negotiating a complex real estate deal and that the governor had to have known this. The FBI reportedly came knocking and was investigating the legality of the deal. The U.S. Attorney for Vermont confirmed the bureau’s involvement, but said there is no active investigation…….

- Notre Dame fans can breathe a sigh of relief because the quarterback who was so overwhelmed in the ass-kicking their team absorbed in the BCS championship game in January will not be under center for the Fighting Irish this fall. Of course, those expecting that Everett Golson would learn from the defeat and come back better and more experienced may not be quite as thrilled. Golson has fled the premises in South Bend and is no longer enrolled at Notre Dame. The school confirmed the news, but cited federal law and university policy in stating that it would not comment on the specifics of the case. However, multiple reports have alleged that Golson's departure is academic-related, perhaps due to some sort of academic violations on his part. Golson started 11 games for the Fighting Irish last season as a redshirt freshman, led them to an undefeated regular season and was under center when they were steamrolled 42-14 by Alabama in the title game. He completed 187-of-318 passes for 2,405 yards and 12 touchdowns with six interceptions and also rushed for nearly 300 yards and six scores. Coach Brian Kelly and his staff were hoping that Golson would improve and elevate their offense with him, but now he leaves a major void in his wake. The Irish could hope that former Oklahoma State quarterback Wes Lunt picks their fine institution of higher learning to transfer to (even though he would have to sit out this season), but they shouldn’t hold out hope that their former third-string quarterback, Gunner Kiel, will reconsider he decision to transfer to Cincinnati last month. Kiel reiterated Sunday that he is committed to coach Tommy Tuberville and the Bearcats. Notre Dame’s remaining options are senior Tommy Rees (18 career starts), fourth-year junior Andrew Hendrix and Malik Zaire, a spring enrollee. Golson could eventually return, but he’s not going to be helping Kelly’s team win any games this season……..

American Karaoke's next step, protecting Hawaiian creatures and rockin' Chinese dissidnets

- The Los Angeles Dodgers are an extremely expensive failure. Sporting a National League-record $217 million payroll, they are 19-26 and mired in last place in the NL West. Manager Don Mattingly knows he won't survive long with a roster loaded with high-priced talent but short on wins. The pressure was evident before Wednesday's game, when Mattingly said he wants "a team with talent that will fight, and compete like a club that doesn't have talent." He suggested that last year’s team was tougher and got more out of its abilities and indicated that his team wasn’t trying hard enough. "Part of it is the mixture of competitiveness. It's not just putting an All-Star team out there and the All-Star team wins. It's not all grit and no talent that gets there, and it's not all talent and no grit. It's a mixture of both.” Following those remarks, some observers suggested that Mattingly was calling out the front office for the roster it had assembled and that his remarks may have hastened his departure from L.A. Not so, Dodgers president Stan Kasten said Friday. "No, and I've said this for a while. I think I've stated things about as obviously as they can be," Kasten said of rumors that Mattingly is in imminent danger of losing his job. "I always avoid doing what you would all mock me for and that is issuing the dreaded vote of confidence. You know the reaction is when anyone does that. I try not to do that. I do expect this team to turn it around and, because of that, I expect Donnie to be around a long time." Kasten also rebuffed the suggestion that his decision not to pick up Mattingly's 2014 option before the season began -- or to offer him a contract extension -- was indicative of a lack of faith in the manager. In addition to calling out his team, Mattingly also benched right fielder Andre Ethier and the two have not spoken since the benching – according to Ethier. Mattingly contradicted that claim, saying he talked with Ethier for 20 minutes……..

- Rock out with your F-bombing c*ck out, Ai Weiwei. China’s most famous dissident is at it again, doing what he does best. His agitation campaign against his country’s communist government ramped up a notch this week as Ai released a profanity-laced heavy-metal single based on the 81 days he spent in detention. The song, which Ai wrote and sung with an assist from Chinese rocker Zuoxiao Zuzhou, is called “Dumbass.” It is “a wall-to-wall simulation of the prison cell that Weiwei was detained in,” a spokeswoman for Ai said. The bad news for anyone who wants to nenjoy some good ol’-fashioned government bashing in musical form is that the track is in Chinese. When translated into English, the lyrics  include "**** forgiveness, tolerance be damned, to hell with manners, the low-life’s invincible," and "The field is full of ****ers, dumbasses are everywhere." A music video for the track is on YouTube and hearing profanity in Chinese is typically entertaining, making it worth a watch. Ai still has plnety to be angry about given his detention and the hefty $2.4 million tax bill later levied against him. Those offenses sparked protests around the world and a surge in support for Ai throughout China for the award-winning artist. Even after his release, Ai was placed under house arrest. For the video, he recreated the cell he was imprisoned in while being under 24-hour supervision by two military police sergeants, even as he slept and used the bathroom. “Dumbass” is the first single off his new album “The Divine Comedy,” which is expected to be released fully in June on Ai’s website and on iTunes. The rage may not last long, as Ai’s spokeswoman said that the he was working on a second album that will shift away from the heavy-metal and towards a more romantic tone. Ah, the tried and true tale of angry political dissident gone emo……..

- Breathe easier, population-challenged species of Hawaii. A whopping 35 plants and three snails native to the state were given endangered species status Friday in a move that conservationists are hailing as a major coup for the protection of Hawaiian plants and animals. The move comes as a result of a 2011 federal settlement between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Center for Biological Diversity. That agreement to place the species on the endangered list expedited the protection decisions for hundreds of Hawaii's most threatened species. Hawaii, a very bio-diverse state, has more endangered species than any other U.S. state. "We sought protection for many of these species almost a decade ago, so we're thrilled they're finally getting the help they need," said Tierra Curry, a conservation biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity. Among the creatures and fauna given protected status are two species of Lanai tree snails and a Newcomb's tree snail. The Newcomb’s snail is only found on wet cliffs where it feeds on fungus and algae that live on host plants. Lanai tree snails are up to an inch tall and can live for 20 years while giving birth to four to six live young per year. Plants were the big winners in all of this, as a laundry list of geraniums, sunflowers, bellflowers, vines, shrubs and trees that live in a variety of Hawaiian environments now have additional protection. There are the hala pepe, popolo, kookoolau, 'awikiwiki and haha nui, among others, some with only a few remaining plants living. Certified tree huger and vice-chairwoman of the Sierra Club of Hawaii Lucienne de Naie believes some of the species will benefit from immediate protection efforts. "We are especially concerned about the plants that live in the lowland dry ecosystem, the 'awikiwiki in particular,” she said. “The [U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service] must continue to recognize the biological and cultural importance of this area and protect these irreplaceable plants from multiple threats." Awesome news, now go hug a snail, enviro-kook……..

- Never has something so appropriate happened to the reality karaoke show that spawned legions of equally pathetic imitators. “American Karaoke” has hung around for far too long and run through a growing list of “celebrity” judges in need of a jolt of publicity. Now that planning for the 2014 edition of the show is underway and there will reportedly be a full overhaul of the judging panel, multiple reports have suggested that “American Karaoke” will become a self-sustaining factory of musical crap by employing judges who also happen to be former contestants. Nothing has been decided yet, but one or more members of the panel could be involved and the names linked are pop music train wrecks such as Jennifer Hudson, Kelly Clarkson, Adam Lambert and Clay Aiken. Bringing these losers back to the 12-year-old franchise would be both fitting and the latest attempt by Fox and production companies FremantleMedia and 19 Entertainment to inject life into a show that should have died about 13 years ago. Last season, the network held off on announcing its new judging panel until mid-September, seemingly hoping to create an air of mystery and intrigue but mostly looking unsure and incompetent. One thing that is certain is that longtime “AK” judge and noted caricature of his own ridiculous public persona Randy Jackson has moved on to new endeavors that can only be described as an upgrade because they are not “American Karaoke.” Jackson said his goodbyes to everyone on their air last season and walked away, with veteran producer Nigel Lythgoe expected to follow him out the door. Finding former Karaoke-ers who are bumping around the reality show world (Aiken) or whose shtick has simply worn out without talent to sustain it (Lambert) shouldn’t be difficult and with 12 years to pick from, “AK” could use this is a way to separate itself from its younger reality karaoke show rivals…….

- The life is an Iowa prison guard can be a stressful one. Even in the Hawkeye State, inmates are no easy lot to deal with. It’s enough to make a person want to go off the reservation and escape from it all. Roy and Katie Appleget understand this reality and its way the couple, newly married, are going green by living off the land. Sure, they’re also looking to make a statement about economics and the environment while thriving in the great outdoors, but getting away from it all but living in a tent in a local park is also a solid way to eliminate some stress from one’s life. The Appleget’s live in the village of Farmington, which is the oldest village in Van Buren County. Farmington is a small place – just 650 residents – and most of them live in (relatively) normal homes. Roy and Katie Appleget do not and have taken up residents in a park where guests must register. “This is where we live,” Katie Appleget said. “This is where we sleep at night.” When asked why he and his wife have elected to eschew everyday utilities and live in nature, Roy Appleget has a simple answer. “Let’s keep our money instead of giving it to someone else,” he said. “Let’s pay cash. We’re not homeless. We’re home-free.” For the past two months, he and his wife have been tent dwellers who also write their own bare essentials blog, The Middle Class Chronicle, an Internet journal about doing more with less. “You have to kind of re-think everything as you go,” Roy added. “It’s been a learning experience for us.” In moving to a tent in the park (instead of a van DOWN BY THE RIVER), the Appleget’s have left behind monthly bills topping $1,000 for a monthly deal at the park costing $180. They have electricity to power their few appliances, but Katie washes clothes by hand and cooks over an open fire. When winter comes and the weather worsens, they will move into a camper with plans to build a sustainable home on their own land some day……..

Turkey goes wet blanket, a 7-foot-tall NFLer and Morgan Freeman falls asleep mid-interview

- Morgan Freeman can get away with a lot of sh*t and still be cool because….well…he’s Morgan F’ing Freeman. He’s one of the coolest dudes around, he has the best voice this side of James Earl Jones and he’s been a cast member of some of the best movies in the past three decades. That’s why anyone who wants to crack the 75-year-old actor for falling asleep on air during an interview with Michael Caine on Tacoma Fox affiliate Q13 should check themselves and take several giant steps backward from their current position. The interview was to promote their new film, “Now You See Me,” which features a crew of bank-robbing Las Vegas magicians. Caine was talking and like any self-important actor, he was neck-deep in a long and rambling story about his craft. He was droning on and on about magic tricks and somewhere along the way, Freeman nodded off. Ever the professional, Freeman woke up in time to do some of his best impromptu acting by feigning interest in Caine's rambling story. However, he didn’t try to pretend that he was “just resting his eyes” or that the entire incident was somehow a big joke. Instead, Freeman owned it in a way that only a 75-year-old dude who knows he has the voice of God and a résumé like few others can own sleeping in a live interview. He cracked a joke about the situation, saying through his spokesman, “I wasn’t actually sleeping. I’m a beta tester for Google Eyelids. I was merely updating my Facebook page.” There is an even money chance Freeman has neiter a single Google device nor a Facebook page that he actually uses, but the joke fits and if someone wants to make fun of Ellis “Boyd” Redding, the guy who can get you things inside Shawshank prison, then they’re the one with a problem……..

- Oh joy, the time of nutty senior pranks is here again. As high school seniors across America lazy their way through their final few days of their high school careers and put as little effort into their school work as they do into microwaving some pizza rolls for breakfast as 1 p.m., there are a few bold and inventive souls who take a few hours and invest some of their abundant creative energy into pulling off a prank they hope will make them a legend in the halls of their school for decades to come. Whether it’s pulling down a door frame and sneaking their principal’s disassembled compact car into the school to be rebuilt in the gym or letting hundreds of chickens loose in the halls overnight, every senior worth his or her salt wants to execute an epic prank to be remembered by. If a certain key figure in American history can be involved in the process, so much the better. It’s a truth an unidentified senior at Portland’s (Ore.) Lincoln High School knows all too well. The school, clearly named after the 16th President of the United States, Abaraham Lincoln, is home to a life-sized statue of the late president. That statue currently lacks a head after the senior in question decapitated it in what is being described by school officials as a prank gone wrong. Principal Peyton Chapman said the head was broken-off overnight Wednesday when a pulley system failed, causing the statue to tumble to the ground. The head broke off in the process and while it would have been much cooler if the head were lopped off on purpose, a result is a result no matter what. In a highly questionable move, the responsible students came forward and admitted what they had done. The police were called, although Chapman said she hopes to handle discipline internally because she does not believe any malice was involved. In the interim, other students created a makeshift memorial for the statue, complete with a poster, flowers and a balloon in the area where the statue once stood……

- Luring gamers in and suckering them into buying your product is all about originality and presentation. Companies must find a way to offer an experience that pale, sunlight-deprived gaming losers cannot find anywhere else. Codemasters is hoping it has the magic formula correct with its exclusive Grid 2: Mono Edition, a racing game that comes with special packaging, a PlayStation 3 console, a Grid 2-branded helmet and a street-legal BAC Mono supercar. The special edition of Grid 2 is accented by he BAC Mono, a British-built machine with a carbon fiber body and four-cylinder engine generating 280 bhp that allows it to accelerate from 0 to 60 in less than three seconds and tops out at 170 mph. But wait…there’s more. Toss in that bitchin’ helmet, a Grid 2 racing suit with boots and gloves fitted for the user and a day at the BAC factory including a tour and time spent with technicians on-car customizations and it’s safe to say that some idiot will throw down thousands upon thousands of dollars for this package. Codemasters claims this is the most expensive special edition videogame ever created, but its most-valuable aspect has little to do with what it contains and everything to do with the fact that only one is being made and it's only available in Europe. Rich people with money to burn love exclusive items and they generally enjoy traveling to Europe, so this is a win-win. Whoever buys the package can drive their special vehicle to work because it is street legal. The buyer will have a nice edge because while the standard wait time for a BAC Mono is 14 months, the purchaser of the Grid 2 Mono Edition will take delivery in just six months. For those who can't afford this special offer, Grid 2 comes out on May 28 in North America and May 31 in Europe for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC………

- Most NFL draft experts ranked the St. Louis Rams’ class from last month’s draft as one of the better ones. For a team that improved drastically last season but still has a long way to go to be a contender, that was good news. Even with a good draft, though, a team can always use some more muscle up front. The Rams found a lot of muscle – 6-foot-10 and 403 pounds of it – this week when they signed Terrell Brown, an undrafted free agent out of Ole Miss. Brown, who played sparingly during his three-year career at Ole Miss, was listed at 6-foot-10 and 388 pounds leading up to the draft. He wasn’t exactly a stalwart for the Rebels, playing in just two games at offensive tackle in 2012 and eight games at defensive tackle in 2011. His size allowed him to become a sort of freak attraction at Ole Miss' pro day, where his 38-inch arms and 92 3/8-inch wingspan stood out in a room full of freaks. He ran the 40 in 5.80 and 5.88 seconds, had a 5.65-second short shuttle and a 8.98-second three-cone drill and posted a 23½-inch vertical jump and 6-foot-9 broad jump. His strength wasn’t exactly overwhelming (22 lifts on the bench press), but the Rams saw enough to offer him a free-agent deal and give him a chance to make their team this summer. When they got him to their facility, he turned out to be larger than advertised. The Rams have elected to shift him from the defensive line to offensive line, head coach Jeff Fisher said. "Actually, we weighed him in at 403," Fisher explained. "We had him in for the tryout, and he had some issues that we had to clear up from a physical standpoint. But he got that put behind us. We worked him out on both sides of the ball, defensive line and offensive line, and we felt like his best position would be right tackle.” It will now fall to Rams offensive line coach Paul Boudreau to make a viable NFL player out of Brown………

- Turkey just became a lot less fun. The country’s uptight parliament has passed a law to ban all advertising of alcohol and tighten restrictions on sales in the mainly Muslim but secular country. This buzzkill outfit approved the bill today and this wet blanket of legislative excess bans the sale of alcoholic drinks between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. It also prohibits alcohol sales anywhere close to mosques and educational centers. Oh, and there is also the provision that bars drink companies from promoting their brands and forces the blurring of images of alcoholic drinks on television. That’s right, blurry beer mugs on TV and no whiskey for that Irish Car Bomb if you forget to buy it before your party starts. The most obvious question about the new law is why, as in why is the government trying to harsh everyone’s buzz by going all prohibitionist on their asses. Officials have argued that the law is aimed at protecting Turkey’s youth from the harm caused by alcohol. That argument falls flat because children in any culture who really want to get their drink on are going to find a way no matter what laws are in place. Secularist opponents of the new law have smartly accused the Islamic-rooted ruling party of gradually imposing an Islamic agenda and while they left out the buzzkill/wet blanket rhetoric, it was implied. Anyone who hasn’t yet stocked up on their hard liquor or booze has time to act before the measure goes into place, as the legislation needs presidential approval before going into effect. The one solid part of the law that no one should oppose is the stricter penalties on drunken driving in would impose…….

Disappearing frogs, Malaysia cracks down and warring Washington Nationals

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- HBO’s hit series “Game of Thrones” is famous for a few things, but no two more so than its blood and gore and the number of times its stars take their clothes off. One might assume that the stars of the show know what they have signed up for and embrace their duties, but it would seem that not everyone on set is a big fan of disrobing and getting naked for the camera. According to star Oona Chaplin, who plays Talisa Maegyr, one of her co-stars has refused to do any more nude scenes. That this is news at all is a testament to how much “Game of Thrones” has established itself as the go-to show for nudity and how notorious it has become for its graphic sex scenes and glimpses of naked flesh. That may stop for at least one member of the cast, according to Chaplin. “One of the girls in the show who got her kit off the most in the first couple of seasons now doesn't at all because she said, 'I want to be known for my acting not for my breasts,'" Chaplin explained. Like any good co-star who wants to leak information but doesn’t want to shame anyone, Chaplin declined to name her buttoned-up colleague. Fans have already begun lighting up message boards with their own theories and many have taken to speculating that Emilia Clarke - who has starred as Daenerys Targaryen since the pilot episode - could be the actress with the "no nudity" demands. Chaplin made sure the world knows she’s not the one who has a beef with the show's use of nudity, saying, “If it’s done in a beautiful way, in a way that honors the female form, then I’m always happy to see it." The third season of the show ends in June, but it has already been renewed for a fourth season that is slated to start next year with a to-be-determined amount of nudity……..

- New Jersey drivers found themselves wishing that someone had gotten their goat on Thursday. Instead, the owner of a goat that has been dubbed “Sky” lost track of the farm animal and the result was a bold goat escape that led to Sky roaming free on the busy Pulaski Skyway and disrupting hundreds of drivers’ morning commute after causing several collisions and evading police for nearly two hours. The latter of those two facts does not speak well to the intelligence or physical fitness of Jersey City police officers, but when they finally did capture the goat, they discovered that it had a U.S. Department of Agriculture tag and likely escaped from a truck en route to a slaughter house. In that sense, maybe Sky has earned a reprieve from execution. Jumping from a moving truck and running around like an idiot on the expressway for more than two hours is an impressive feat and if that’s not enough to keep a goat alive until natural causes claim its life, then nothing is. By the time Sky had finished wreaking havoc on the Pulaski Skyway, it had caused four traffic accidents with its amazing feats of goat athleticism, which consisted of jumping back and forth over the concrete divider. In the end, Sky was captured without injury and taken to the Liberty Humane Society in Jersey City. Shelter officials say they plan to keep the goat in custody for a few days and take it to a farm by the end of the week……..

- Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper is a rising star; one of Major League Baseball’s best young players. Nationals closer Rafael Soriano is not. Those facts are the primary reasons it was a bad idea for Soriano to publicly call Harper out for his defensive positioning on Tuesday in the ninth inning of a game against the San Francisco Giants. Soriano was on the mound an in possession of a  2-1 lead with two outs in the ninth inning Tuesday when he surrendered a game-tying RBI triple to Gregor Blanco, who hit a deep line drive over the head of a leaping Harper. According to Soriano, his young teammate should have been in a better position to make a game-saving catch. The matter is a bit more complicated because Harper is just over one week removed from a scary collision with the outfield wall. Perhaps with those thoughts lurking in his mind Harper appeared to flinch as Blanco’s hit sailed over his head and bounced off the warning track. While Soriano did not fault Harper's effort on the play, he was harsh in criticizing his positioning in the outfield. "With two outs and the tying run at first, you have to play the outfield so the ball doesn't go over your head," Soriano said. "It may not have been a catchable ball. But if we're positioned the right way, there might have been a different outcome. With two outs, I could tell my 4-year-old son, 'You know where you need to play,' and he would have positioned himself better. It's not an excuse, and I'm not speaking badly about anybody, but I think that's how you play the game." Nothing like a “My 4-year-old son could do it better” blast to share the love with a teammate. Perhaps Soriano should be looking in the mirror rather than at Harper, given that the closer has blown three saves in his first season with the Nationals. Soriano seemed to realize how bad the comments made him look because one day later, he backtracked from them. "I tried to do my job, and I didn't do it," Soriano said the next day. "[The play] wasn't an error. He was in the position and I threw the pitch I shouldn't have, and that's what happened. He stupidly added that he believed his comments were off the record, which is a lame excuse for an MLB veteran who knows better if a tape recorder or microphone is in his face. Harper did admit that he was thinking about the play last week, when he ran face-first into the wall against the Los Angeles Dodgers and needed 11 stitches in his chin, but having a teammate narc him out publicly isn't going to help matters……..

- If frogs and toads are fast disappearing across the United States and no one who isn't wearing a lab coat cares, does it still make a difference. That’s the question the U.S. Geological Survey is trying to investigate with its new study suggesting that at their current rate of extinction, most amphibians will vanish from half of their habitats in about two decades. These findings suggest that even relatively stable species of some amphibians are now vanishing. This (allegedly) holds true everywhere from Louisiana and Florida to Sierras and the Rockies. "Amphibians have been a constant presence in our planet's ponds, streams, lakes and rivers for 350 million years or so, surviving countless changes that caused many other groups of animals to go extinct. This is why the findings of this study are so noteworthy; they demonstrate that the pressures amphibians now face exceed the ability of many of these survivors to cope," said Suzette Kimball, the survey’s director. She claims amphibians are disappearing at a rate of 3.7 percent every year and that if his rate continues, most of the amphibian species will vanish from their current habitat in another 20 years. The most-threatened species are on the so-called  "Red-List" and will supposedly disappear from half of their habitats in the next six years. Michael Adams, ecologist with the USGS and lead author of the study, expressed surprise at the rate of decline in the amphibian population. "We knew there was a big problem with amphibians, but these numbers are both surprising and of significant concern," Adams said. For the study, Adams and his team observed the amphibian population in lakes and ponds for about nine years. Somehow, that didn’t allow them to identify the reasons behind this decline, only that it is happening…….

- The mercury is rising in Malaysia and The Man is feeling the heat. The Malaysian government, in a fit of oversensitivity, have charged a student activist with sedition and have detained two others, including an opposition politician, on similar charges after their involvement in a campaign to challenge what they say are fraudulent election results. On Thursday, prosecutors charged Adam Adli under the country's controversial Sedition Act for allegedly telling a political forum that Malaysians should take to the streets and "seize back power" following the vote. He later pleaded guilty and released on bail, but faces up to three years in prison, if convicted. His arrest coincided nicely with that of senior opposition politician Tian Chua and rights activist Haris Ibrahim under the Sedition Act. Chua, who was held at a police station in Kuala Lumpur said his detention is an attempt by the government to stifle dissent and discourage criticism of the May 5 election results. "[The purpose is] I think to crack down on civil liberties and to cover up questioning of the irregularities in the elections," he said. "[But] I will continue to challenge this illegitimate government." It’s a bold statement and one that will probably land him right back in jail once the government finds time to get around to call of the sedition charges it has been making of late. Earlier this month, authorities threatened to pursue sedition charges against dozens of speakers at a large, awesome and wholly unauthorized opposition protest against the election results. Prime Minister Najib Razak's ruling coalition may have extended its 56-year hold on power in the May 5 election, but it has earned plenty of haters in the process, his Chua and People's Justice Party chief among them……..