- Potholes piss people off. They wreck cars, annihilate
alignment systems and break bikes. Winter weather leaves scores of these road
pock marks along boulevards and avenues around the world and as any driver or
cyclist can attest to, cities and villages don’t always rush out to repair the
many potholes in their municipality once the weather warms up. So what’s a
person to do if he or she wants to avoid bent rims or a trip to the auto repair
shop to spend hundreds of dollars to fix a broken axle? For Levittown, N.Y.
resident Bobby Fitzgerald, the answer is simple. You grab your shovel, pick up
a bucket of sand and fix the problem yourself. Fitzgerald was inspired to take
action after he
damaged one of his cars by hitting a pothole. He attempted to get the town to
pay for the repairs on his car, but that didn’t end well. "The claims
department for the Town of Hempstead refused to pay for the damage on my
vehicle," Fitzgerald said. Left to pay for the repairs out of his own
pocket, he set out to make sure that neither he nor his fellow motorists had to
deal with that issue ever again. When he finds a pothole, Fitzgerald takes a
shovel to dig up cracked concrete, a bucket of sand to fill in the hole and a
broom to smooth his ghetto-rigged pothole fill mix over. "If I see them,
I'll pull over and I'll try to patch up the best way I possibly can,"
Fitzgerald added. His neighbors have expressed appreciation for his effort, but
Hempstead town officials aren't as supportive. "We think it's dangerous,
not effective and totally unnecessary," said town spokesman Mike Deery.
The first two characterizations may or may not be accurate, but the part about
Fitzgerald’s efforts being totally unnecessary are garbage. Town workers
clearly aren't out fixing potholes, leaving drivers to dodge them as best they
can. The town claims Fitzgerald’s actions are illegal, but officials have no
plan to issue him a summons. He says he has no plans to stop, so this standoff
will drag on until someone decides to end it……….
- Marty McFly has himself a musical. Three decades after DeLoreans
became cool and time travel via car hit the big screen “Back to the Future” is
traveling to a place it has never been: the theater. To mark the film's 30th anniversary, the
time-travelling classic will debut in London's West End courtesy of director
Robert Zemeckis and co-writer Bob Gale. The duo have announced they will write
the book for the stage adaption of the 1985 blockbuster that starred Michael J.
Fox and Christopher Lloyd. The actors who played McFly and Doc Brown made the
first installment of the franchise memorable and it spawned two lesser-loved
sequels. In the first film, the pair travelled back to 1955 in a
nuclear-powered DeLorean and McFly accidentally altered how his parents met and
fell in love while students at the fictional Hill Valley High. While he was
stuck in the past, McFly also altered the history of rock and roll by belting
out Chuck Berry's 1958 classic “Johnny B. Goode.” Gale said the aim for the
stage version is to "true to the spirit of the film without being a
slavish remake.” "We intend to use music from the movie along with brand
new songs to make a version of Back to the Future that is fresh, entertaining
and takes advantage of all the amazing things that can now be done on stage,”
Gale said. “We can't think of a better way to celebrate the 30th anniversary of
the film." Since becoming a household name in the movie, Fox has won four
Golden Globes and five Emmy Awards, but neither Gale nor Zemeckis commented on
whether Fox would be involved with the new project. The film's original
composer, Alan Silvestri, will score the musical and lyrics will be written by
songwriter Glen Ballard………
- Here Cleveland goes again. The most tortured sports city
in America – maybe the world for that matter – is used to its best athletes
laying down tread on their way out of town the instant they become free agents.
LeBron James was the most painful and visible example, but he wasn’t the first
and won't be the last. His successor in bolting the Mistake by the Lake could
actually be the man who is also his successor as the face of the franchise for
the Cleveland Cavaliers. Cavaliers
All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving is part of a terrible team that got its ass
kicked by 31 points Thursday night by the New York Knicks, but Irving insisted
that despite the losing and the reported tensions within the locker room, he
does not want out of Cleveland. In fact, Irving insisted he plans to be with
the team for "a long time” and is not telling people privately he wants
out. "I'm in Cleveland. I enjoy myself. I enjoy going out and competing at
the highest level for the Cleveland Cavaliers," Irving said. "It's
not about me and it's not about this controversy -- 'Do I privately want out
when my contract is up?' I'm still in my rookie contract and I'm happy to be
here. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to be here for a long time.” His desire to
leave may or may not be real, but there is no question that earlier this
season, Irving got into a verbal altercation with teammates during a team
meeting following a lopsided loss. He has clashed with backcourt teammate Dion
Waiters and there was reportedly a physical altercation involving the two early
in the season. On the court, Irving is a starter to this month's All-Star Game
and he’s averaging 21.5 points and 6.2 assists for the 16-30 Cavs. His rookie
contract runs through next season and the team can offer him an extension on
July 1. Should he turn down that extension, July will once again be the month
when Cleveland fans begin looking for a ledge to leap from as they wonder once
more why their city is so sports snakebitten………
- Thanks for nothing, Neanderthals. Science tells us that
many current gene types that influence disease in modern man were
picked up through interbreeding with Neanderthals. It’s easy to argue that
someone should have kept it in their pants, but Neanderthals weren't known for
wearing pants, so that logic doesn’t fly. According to research led by researcher Sriram
Sankararaman, these gene variants include those involved in type-2 diabetes,
Crohn's disease and smoking addiction. Yes, Neanderthals are part of the reason
you see leathery-faced, green-skinned, raspy-voiced smokers huddled outside the
doors of office buildings around the United States all winter long, huddled
over their cancer sticks for one more puff. Genome studies show that humans mated
with Neanderthals after leaving Africa, but until now no one knew what impact
that interspecies mating had on humans. Between 2-4 percent of the genetic
blueprint of present-day non-Africans allegedly came from Neanderthals,
according to the study. The researchers screened the genomes of 1,004 modern
humans and identified regions bearing the Neanderthal versions of different
genes. One a gene variant associated with a difficulty in stopping smoking was found
to have a Neanderthal origin, but the research team cautioned that there is no
evidence Neanderthals were lighting up the predecessors to Marlboro Reds. The
study also showed that Neanderthal DNA is not distributed uniformly across the
human genome and is actually concentrated mainly in regions that affect skin
and hair. These variations could have benefitted humans as they adapted to the
cooler environments they encountered as they moved into Eurasia. Other
Neanderthal influences were found in genomes linked to the regulation of skin
pigmentation and the toughness to skin, hair and nails. "It's tempting to
think that Neanderthals were already adapted to the non-African environment and
provided this genetic benefit to (modern) humans," said study co-author
David Reich of the Harvard University Medical School. Neanderthals
eventually died off, perhaps proving that man has long been in the business of
co-opting what others had going on and then ripping that way of life as their
own………..
- Living in northern Italy must be swell, right? Beautiful
landscapes are all around, the rolling hills are plentiful and authentic
Italian cuisine is a daily staple. Those facts are all legit, but then a
boulder comes rolling down the hill and takes out one-fourth of your house and
then, life isn't so rosy. That’s how the week went for the Trebo family, which
lives in rural Ronchi di Termeno. The family was minding their own business, going
about their lives and enjoying being Italian when a massive landslide struck in
the nearby mountains. Several massive boulders, estimated at several tons,
broke free from the ridges and rolled downhill toward the Trebo home. One
boulder stopped just short of the house, but a second boulder had more than
enough force and momentum to continue its downward trajectory right through the
family’s barn. The boulder wiped out virtually the entire structure, leaving
but a few beaten-up beams standing. It found a home in a nearby vineyard, right
next to a rock that had been dislodged many years ago. The good news for the
Trebo clan is that no one was injured in the incident and the boulder missed
striking their house. Such a strike could have been disastrous, given the
massive amount of damage it was able to inflict on the barn in a matter of
seconds. But such are the perils of owning a beautiful villa next to an Italian
mountain and having your own farm and vineyard where you can produce great wine
and live in a gorgeous setting that many people who give anything to enjoy………
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