- Hey world…if it’s all right with you, noted steroid
cheater, liar and all-around Major League Baseball scumbag Ryan Braun would
like to pretend it’s all good and just move on. Sure, Braun fueled an MVP
season by jamming illegal performance enhancers into his body and lied about it
repeatedly while ruining the reputation of the man who carried out his drug
test and collected his sample. Yes, he made a fool out of everyone who supposed
him, fought his initial suspension for PED use and won on a technicality –
doing a virtual victory lap even though he knew he had indeed cheated – but
that doesn’t mean you should continue bringing all of this up and asking him
about it. Braun showed up Maryvale
Baseball Park in Arizona for Milwaukee Brewers spring training and immediately
started looking for ways to shake the stigma of a 65-game PED suspension that
ended his 2013 season and severely tarnished his reputation. "I made a
mistake,'' Braun said. "I deserved to be suspended. I took full
responsibility for my actions. And as I've said many, many times, all I can do
is look forward and continue to move forward. I wish I had the ability to go
back to change things and do things differently. But unfortunately I don't have
that opportunity.'' The 2011 National League MVP is officially back in for the
first time since Major League Baseball suspended him on July 22 as part of an
investigation into the Biogenesis anti-aging clinic in Miami and while he’s not
the biggest PED villain around – thanks for that, Alex Fraud-riguez – Braun is
the most visible one at the moment because Fraud-riguez is suspended for the
2014 season. What Braun forgets – or wants us to ignore – is that while he may
be tired of talk about his cheating, when he took the cream and lozenge he used
to rehabilitate from an injury he incurred during the 2011 season, he signed up
for two things: enhanced recovery/strength and a lifetime of scrutiny and
criticism if he were ever found out. He ended up getting both of those things
and although he may want out of the deal, popping those PEDs inked his name on
a contract that he can never get out of………
- Hugo Chavez no longer walks among the living, but his
spirit is alive and bueno in Venezuelan politics. His hand-picked successor,
current dictator/Presidente Nicolas Maduro, has the same low level of tolerance as his mentor and
that’s why he had his top challenger jailed Tuesday on charges of inciting
violence following a wave of anti-government protests. With the support of his
regime and a court clearly under his thumb, Maduro is leading a charge that has
opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez in
custody pending further hearings. Lopez’s attorney, Bernardo Pulido,
tweeted that the court had "confirmed the detention order.” Lopez is the
leader of the opposition Popular Will party and while his wife and attorney
were tweeting messages of hope and support, Lopez went through a charade of a
hearing that was moved from the Palace of Justice in Caracas to the Ramo Verde
prison, where Lopez has been held since he handed himself over to the
authorities on Tuesday. Maduro has accused Lopez of fomenting a coup against
his government and pinned a whole lot of sh*t on his rival in a nationally
televised address. "Someone is responsible for every violent act that
happens in this country. One of them is in jail," Maduro said in his
speech. "The others will get there one by one, in the same way, to the
same cell. I have no doubt of that.” Authorities initially ordered an arrest
warrant for Lopez last week on charges of inciting violence after three people
were shot in anti-government protests on Feb. 12. Lopez initially dropped out
public view before posting a video message calling on his supporters to join
him in a mass rally on Tuesday. He delivered an impassioned speech standing in
front of a statue of Cuban independence hero Jose Marti and while clutching a
white flower, he walked up to a line of National Guardsmen and turned himself
in. It was a bold, moving scene and one that he will undoubtedly regret as
Maduro’s regime goes about ruining his life…………
- America deserves major credit for having its priorities in
order. For example, in a nation with a tanking economy, numerous social and
cultural problems, omnipresent security concerns and a government incapable of
actually doing its job at any level, it might seem like the people would focus
their free time on one of these matters and not worry so much about frivolous
issues. Think again. For some very desperate (and possibly alcoholic) people in
northern California, something very important happened this week and they
dropped everything to be on hand for it. That something was the annual release
of a rare beer from Russian River Brewing Co. The name of the rare beer is Pliny
the Younger, a play on the name of Pliny the Elder, the fabled ancient Roman
nobleman, scientist and historian and author of “Naturalis Historia: Pliny's Natural Histor,” and his nephew,
Roman orator Pliny the Younger. Pliny the Younger is a hoppier
version of the brewery’s beloved but more common double IPA Pliny the Elder.
The 10.25-percent alcohol triple India pale ale is released each February and
this year marks the 10th anniversary of the acclaimed beer. How much do the
drunken masses love this awesome ale? Enough to be extorted for $8 for each
8-ounce glass of it. To further drive up demand, Pliny the Younger is only
available at select breweries and bars throughout California, most in and
around the brewery’s hometown of Santa Rosa. “It is extremely difficult, time-
and space-consuming, and very expensive to make,” the company said in a post on
its website. “And that is why we don’t make it more often!” Some beer drinkers
are so amped up about this particular brew that they make the pilgrimage to
Russian River’s Santa Rosa headquarters to get their glass at the source every
year. Even a rainy day wasn’t enough to drive away the lushes this year and because
none of the annual brew is bottled and kegs are only released to a select few
clients – usually rich folk in southern California – there won't be much of
Pliny the Younger left by the end of the month. For anyone unable to throw away
an entire day of their free time to drive to Sonoma County and wait in line,
the only other option is to buy a ticket and wait in line at one of the limited
locations that are able to obtain kegs………
- Someone has gotten a little too big for his own good, eh
Black Keys frontman Dan Auerbach? Auerbach and Black Keys bandmate Patrick
Carney have become one of the biggest rock bands in the world and they’ve fired
verbal scuds at all sorts of musical rivals with their Grammys in hand and rock
credibility in tow, but cracking on Nickelback is one thing and having such
hubris that you believe you can work hand in hand with one of the biggest pop
hacks around and escape unscathed is something else entirely. That’s where
Auerbach now lives as the apparent producer of the new album from pop fraud
Lana Del Rey. The album, “Ultraviolence” (so named because that’s what people
forced to listen to it will want to do to their poor ears), is set to drop on
May 1 and according to a photo Del Rey posted on Twitter Thursday, Auerbach either
a) produced the album, b) is sleeping with her or c) both. Odds are that only
the first option is true, but a photo of a hot female singer sitting on the lap
of a rock star leaves plenty open to interpretation. The photo came with a
grammatically stunted caption: "Me and Dan Auerbach are excited to present
you Ultraviolence." Auerbach has produced a host of artists including Dr.
John, The Growlers and Hanni El Khatib, but none so much of a bubble gum pop
fabrication like Del Rey. On the positive side, at least Del Rey is excited
about the results. "It's so good that it made me forget about the last
record. I'm in love with it. I have that romantic feeling about it,” she said.
Del Rey previously announced the title of the album at a launch party for her
short film “Tropico” last year and she recently released “Once Upon a Dream,”
the theme song from the soundtrack to the new Disney film “Maleficient.” Who knows where
this dumpster fire of a career will go next……..
- Dogs not only hear sounds that man’s ears do not register,
but according to new research from Hungary, they may also understand human
emotions better than actual humans. A team led by Attila Andics of MTA-ELTE Comparative
Ethology Research Group in Hungary compared the brain function of dogs and
humans and showed that dogs have "voice areas" in their brains
located in the same region as humans. This part of the brain in both dogs and
humans is skilled at understanding the subtleties between human voice tones
that express our different emotions. "Dogs and humans share a similar
social environment," Andics said. "Our findings suggest that they
also use similar brain mechanisms to process social information. This may
support the successfulness of vocal communication between the two
species." She and her team scanned the brains of 11 dogs with an fMRI
scanner -- a device that measures brain activity – as the canines listened to
nearly 200 dog and human sounds, including happy barking, crying and laughing. The so-called voice area of both dog and
human brings lit up when they heard the sounds and both groups also processed
emotion-heavy sounds the same way. In one test, the primary auditory cortex was
activated more when a happy sample was played more than a sad sound in both
species. "This method offers a totally new way of investigating neural
processing in dogs," Andics added. "At last we begin to understand
how our best friend is looking at us and navigating in our social
environment." There were a few differences in the study, namely that 39 percent of the dogs’ vocal regions
were activated most by sounds made by dogs, and 48 percent lit up due to
non-verbal noises. Just 13 percent responded the most to human vocalizations.
Human skewed similarly to their own sounds, as 10 percent of human participants’
vocal regions were most activated due to environmental sounds, and just 3
percent responded the most to non-vocal noises. Still, people overly obsessed
with their dogs because they have no lives or human friends can happily seize
on this as evidence that dogs are really their actual children……….
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