- Chael Sonnen
loves to talk smack and lots of it. He also revels in being the villain and
getting fans and opponents to hate him. It’s how he’s talked his way into more
big fights than a man with a 28-14-1 career record and precisely zero wins in
said big fights has achieved well beyond what his in-octagon abilities would
dictate. With news that Sonnen and Wanderlei Silva will headline a televised
UFC event on May 31 in Brazil, Sonnen has his best opportunity to date to be
the man everyone in the arena wants to punch in the face. The bout was
originally announced as the co-main event for a UFC 173 pay-per-view card on
May 24 in Las Vegas, but UFC officials revealed Thursday that the location and
date had been changed. Logistically, the new setting makes sense because Sonnen
and Silva will soon wrap up filming in Brazil for "The Ultimate Fighter:
Brazil" reality series. The two are the coaches for this season of the
series and pitting them against one another is a good way to generate more buzz
for the show. It’s also a way to have a hometown hero in Silva defend his turf
against a bombastic, loudmouthed competitor who has a better than even money
chance of offending the entire nation of Brazil in between now and May 31. It
doesn’t even matter that Sonnen is coming off a first-round TKO loss to Rashad
Evans at UFC 167 in November because he will run his mouth even at times when
he should be humbled. Sonnen reportedly offered to step in on short notice
against Daniel Cormier next week at UFC 170, but the UFC spurned the offer in
favor of setting up a matchup with Silva, who has alternated wins and losses in
his past six fights………..
- White, powder stuff is falling from the sky across much of
the United States, but the same is true on Java island in Indonesia. The
powder is of a different variety on the island, but it is causing problems
nonetheless. So far, more than 100,000 people have been evacuated from areas
where volcanic dust and rocks lay up to eight inches thick after Mount Kelud exploded.
The ash hung above Indonesia’s most populous island and the blast that released
it was heard 125 miles away. The resulting haze lingered over the island’s
major towns: Surabaya, Indonesia’s second-largest city after Jakarta, with a
population of about 3 million, and Yogyakarta. Two casualties were reported as
a 60-year-old woman and an 80-year-old man were killed in the village of
Pandansari, about 4 miles from the mountain, when the roofs of their homes
collapsed. A 70-year-old man was reportedly killed when a wall collapsed on top
of him as he waited to be evacuated from the same village. The nearest major
airport, located in Surabaya, and airports in the cities of Malang, Yogyakarta,
Solo, Bandung, Semarang and Cilacap were closed due to reduced visibility and
the dangers posed to aircraft engines by ash. Transport Ministry spokesman
Bambang Ervan announced the closures and noted that Virgin Australia cancelled
its Friday flights from Australia to several locations due to the eruption.
Locals reported hearing what sounded like bombs exploding and women and
children crying as the volcano rumbled and spewed ash high into the air
throughout the night. In the aftermath of the eruption, a sea of crumpled
roofs, farms and broken furniture littered the landscape. Kelud is merely one
of about 130 active volcanoes in Indonesia, which sits astride the Pacific
Ocean’s “Ring of Fire.” Ironically, it’s the fertile volcanic soil that draws
many to Java and yet, its shortage of space means hundreds of thousands of
people live close to active volcanoes. Kelud’s last major eruption was in 1990,
but that clock of days without a deadly eruption can now be reset to zero…….
- Termite robots? Way to be, science. A team of
wicked-smaht researchers from Harvard University revealed small robots that can
handle tasks like real-life termites, without following orders from a boss, at
the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting.
Somehow, these maniacs found time to pull themselves away from their keg stands
and beer bongs at their rager of a conference long enough to present the
findings from their four-year study. Their creations, known as TERMES, are
capable of building staircases and pyramids. "You can give the robots, in
effect, a picture of what you want them to build," said Justin Werfel, a
scientist at Harvard University's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
Engineering. . "It doesn't matter how many of them there are or whether
that number changes or which robot does what and when.” The robots operate on the
concept known as stigmergy, which is a form of "implicit communication” in
which machines sense changes in each other's environment and act based on those
changes. TERMES are equipped with three motors and each motor has limited
sensing ability that gives information about the machine's surroundings. At
least one robot in a team works in parallel with the rest despite not knowing
the overall details of who is building what and where, according to the study.
In spite of their lack of artificial knowledge, the TERMES are very productive
and the project has been described by the team of Harvard researchers as
"an important proof of concept for scalable, distributed artificial
intelligence." They hope the robots will eventually be able to build
things people need to accomplish important tasks such as building levees ahead
of floods or constructing habitats on Mars. "We co-designed robots and
bricks in an effort to make the system as minimalist and reliable as
possible," said co-author Kirstin Petersen, a graduate student at Harvard.
Left unsaid was the hurt real termites must feel, having their work usurped by
robots……..
- The Man is at it again. Being a fun-killing wet blanket
that snuffs out everyone’s good time is what the establishment is best at and
right now, no one knows this better than bars in the historic district of
Roseville, Calif. Local bar owners are up in arms – but not up to their
eyeballs in tips and patrons – over a new city ordinance mandating that they charge
a $5 cover after 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. The Roseville Police
Department says the new law is in response to a high number of calls from the
area on weekends and claims the regular disturbances in the historic district
are a drain on their resources. “We were having some issues down there,”
Roseville Police Department spokesperson Dee Dee Gunther said. “There were a
lot of fights where it required resources from the police department.” The
ordinance went into effect in late December and the fallout is already evident
among bars in the area. Two bars have closed and The Rose Room and Mint may not
be the final casualties in this battle. The Owl Club will shut its doors after
80 years at the end of February and other establishments aren't painting a rosy
picture of their financial future if the law is not terminated. “The cover
charge, we don’t get,” Onyx Club owner Dave Sullivan said. “To charge a patron
to come into your business, we don’t understand how that provides public
safety.” Another bar was reportedly ticketed $100 for “not wanding patrons or
charging cover.” Sullivan’s bar is still open, but he is worried that Onyx Club
could suffer the same fate as its peers if nothing changes. The connection
between cover charges and public safety may not seem logical from a bar owner’s
point of view, but it’s clear the thinking by the local government and law
enforcement is that they will cut down on the number of people hanging out in
bars and therefore reduce the number of fights. Ruining the businesses in
question is merely an unfortunate side effect, it seems………
- Bands are often accused of selling out when they change
their sound to appeal to the mainstream or alter their image to sell more
merchandise. Rarely do any of those bands actually admit to said selling out,
even if it is so blatantly obvious the denying it is an exercise in absurdity.
British indie rockers Wild Beasts are one exception to this trend after boldly
admitting to
"sucking corporate c*ck" when licensing one of their songs for a TV
ad in 2010. A Santander commercial featured part of the band’s song “Underbelly”
as part of an ad campaign and four years later, drummer Chris Talbot and his
band still feel awful about the decision to pimp their song for cash. Talbot
said the decision was made for purely financial reasons and left a sour taste
in the band’s collective mouth. "We sucked corporate c*cks at one
point," Talbot said. "I think it is quite a hard world out there and
sadly sometimes it is quite easy to make ends meet by just being completely
single-minded and not being 100 per cent pure on your output for what it’s used
for. I think that when that opportunity came along, it’s not like it bought us
all four big houses but I did mean that we could carry on doing what we were
doing.” According to Talbot, selling out was such a stomach-churning experience
that the band no longer feel connected to the song, which appears on 2009 album
“Two Dancers.” He pointed out that there have been both positives and negatives
from the transaction, including being able to continue rocking out while
simultaneously despising a song of which he and his bandmates were once proud. From
these remarks, it seems safe to assume that Wild Beasts will not be licensing
any songs from their new album “Present Tense” – due out Feb. 24 – for any ad
campaigns……..
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