- Major League Baseball wants credit for doing
something it should have done a long time ago. After years of dragging its feet
and refusing to accept that technology could improve their game, baseball’s
powers that be have finally welcomed in the replay age. Its arrival came when
owners unanimously approved what
commissioner Bud Selig called a "historic" expansion of replay to
correct missed calls. The new system will go into effect this season and
provide managers most of the power to trigger reviews, by providing them with
one challenge per game, along with a second potential challenge if their first
is upheld. If managers have used up their replays or a disputed play occurs
after the start of the seventh inning, umpires would be authorized to initiate
a review on their own. The reviewable plays will include: ground-rule
doubles, fan interference, stadium boundary calls, force plays (except tags of
second base on double plays), tag plays,
fair/foul in the outfield only, trap play in the outfield only, a batter
hit by a pitch, timing plays, touching a base (requires appeal), passing runners
and record keeping. MLB
executive Tony La Russa, one of the architects of the new system, estimated
that some 90 percent of all potential calls are now reviewable. Disputed home
runs were already reviewable and will not need to be formally challenged. To
enact the new rules, MLB struck deals with the Major League Baseball Players
Association and with the Major League Umpires Association and new MLBPA
executive director Tony Clark expressed excitement for the expansion of replay.
"The Players look forward to the expanded use of replay this season, and
they will monitor closely its effects on the game before negotiating over its
use in future seasons," Clark said in a statement. To operate the system,
MLB will hire two additional umpiring crews and staff its New York replay
center with a rotation of current umpire crews……..
- As the world knows, Colorado now allows stoners to stand
in line for hours and legally buy wildly overpriced ganja in limited
quantities. What the world may not have expected was the tangential effect that
legalizing the hippie lettuce would have on edible pot products. For the
greater Denver area’s largest supplier of marijuana edibles, business is booming
and has been since Jan. 1. A one-month supply of products was gone in just
three days at Dixie Elixirs and Edibles. Its chief marketing officer explained
that the high (pun intended) demand for his company’s products has picked the
pace up at a place that thrives on catering to the mellow and lazy. "We
are working hard," Joe Hodas said. "We like to call ourselves the future
of cannabis. Actually demand's been huge and our employees have been just
killing it working around the clock." Demand is so high that Dixie Elixirs
and Edibles is enforcing a strict limit of two products per day at recreational
pot shops. What sorts of pot-infused products is the company shopping? Chocolates,
mints, topical lotions and elixirs are all on the menu and Hodas noted that the
elixir is “a soda that comes in a variety of flavors.” Knowing stoners, a
Fanta-like orange soda has to be on that menu, but at this point the flavor
doesn’t seem to matter. Dixie Elixirs and Edibles is doing so well that it is
constructing a new, 30,000-square-foot facility to help meet demand. Stories
like this are the reason many economic analysts are forecasting as much as $2.3 billion in legal U.S. sales of
marijuana this year……..
- Metallica fans clamoring for a new album have a powerful
ally on their side. Guitarist Kirk Hammett conceded that the band have
"run out of excuses" to delay starting work on a new album and plan
to hit the studio within a few weeks. The new project will be the first
Metallica studio album since 2008’s “Death Magnetic,” although the iconic metal
band did collaborate with the late Lou Reed on 2011’s “Lulu.” Since their last
release, Metallica have toured and played festivals extensively, which isn't a
huge issue for a band with a deep catalog and plenty of old material to pull
from. "When we start, that's going to be our main priority, and we're
pretty excited about it because we've been saying we need to start working on
this album, but we've been procrastinating greatly with it,” Hammett said. "We've
pretty much come up with every sort of excuse we can not to start work on the
album, but we've run out of excuses, so we pretty much have to start work on it
now.” Hammett noted that unlike some bands that don’t record a new album
because they simply don’t have the creative juice to come up with enough new
material, Metallica has plenty of ideas and perhaps they even have too many. “Metallica's
problem is the total opposite. We have too many ideas. James (Hetfield) has,
like, 800 ideas. I have 400. Those number alone are just crazy. That’s
formidable,” Hammett added. The studio sessions will have to wait for a bit, at
least until the band performs at the Grammy Awards next Sunday with Chiense classical
pianist Lang Lang. Maybe Lang can land a spot on the new album because as
everyone knows, nothing punches up a solid metal album quite like a bitchin’
piano riff that really shreds………
- The Massachusetts Institute of Technology isn't all about robots and
technological innovation. The wicked smaht dorks who populate MIT have
expertise in other areas as well and some of the school’s researchers have
discovered a drug that may help treat people suffering from post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD). A team of MIT neuroscientists examined the effects of a
drug known as an HDAC2 inhibitor, which helped lab rats. Sure, the rats may not
have carried automatic weapons into battle, see their comrades killed in
violent fashion or had to kill anyone, but trauma is still trauma. “By
inhibiting HDAC2 activity, we can drive dramatic structural changes in the
brain,” said Li-Huei Tsai, the director of MIT's Picower Institute for Learning
and Memory, and the study’s lead author. “What happens is the brain becomes
more plastic, more capable of forming very strong new memories that will
override the old fearful memories.” Tsai and her colleagues believe this drug
could someday help treat people with PTSD – particularly those for whom
psychotherapy is not effective. However, the drug’s effects seem to lessen the
older the memory in question. “If you do something within this window of time,
then you have the possibility of modifying the memory or forming a new trace of
memory that actually instructs the animal that this is not such a dangerous
place," Tsai said. "However, the older the memory is, the harder it
is to really change that memory.” More testing is needed, but if the drug could
help soldiers who have suffered through some of the most horrible things known
to man, then all the power to it………
- Never doubt the power of poor people reaching for the
dollars they lack by growing illicit crops, no matter the circumstances.
Impoverished farmers in Afghanistan could look at the decade-long residency of
American troops as a reason to curtail their growing of opium, but instead of
backing down these brave souls are standing up for their right to crank out the
source for narcotics enjoyed by drug addicts around the world. According to John Sopko, the
U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, farmers in
Afghanistan are producing more opium than ever. Sopko informed the Senate Drug
Caucus that the rise in opium production is expected to continue and believes
it poses a serious threat to the stability of the Afghan government. “The
expanding cultivation and trafficking of drugs is one of the most significant
factors putting the entire U.S. and international donor investment in the
reconstruction of Afghanistan at risk,” Sopko said. He pointed to a report from
the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime that showed the cultivation of
poppy plants — used to make opium and its derivative drugs such as heroin — is
greater today than in 2001. That long-ago date is when the United States
invaded Afghanistan. According to Sopko, opium product is at its highest in modern
history. In 2012 alone, Afghanistan produced 3,700 tons of opium and that
number rose to 5,500 tons in 2013 – a 50-percent uptick. Additionally, the
amount of land used to cultivate opium poppies reached a record high of 516,000
acres. Sopko suggested that the increase in opium production and poppy
cultivation are signs that the Afghan National Security Forces may be
encouraging production, offsetting the $7 billion the U.S. has spent to combat
production. Oh, and the additional $3 billion the U.S. has spent to curtail
opium growth by encouraging farmers to grow other crops doesn’t seem to be
helping much either. Just imagine what these numbers will look like when U.S.
forces finally make their long-awaited exit from Afghanistan later this year……….
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