- A show no one was sad to see end is coming back
because…..well…..NBC is desperate and hoping that people forgot how much of a
dumpster fire “Heroes” became in its final season. Yes, the sci-fi drama that
featured average people learning they possessed superpowers and watching their
lives change irrevocably because of them, is making a limited return to the
airwaves. NBC announced via a brief and ambiguous trailer aired during the
final week of the Winter Olympics that “Heroes” would be revived for a 13-episode
miniseries airing sometime in 2015. The show debuted in 2006 and for its first
season, it was a runaway hit. Ratings were sky-high, the series launched the stardom
of actors such as Milo Ventimiglia and Hayden Panettiere and it
was a smash for NBC. That success continued into its second season, but at some
point during that second season, the writing and storylines for the show began
to taper off in quality. By the time Season 3 arrived, “Heroes” was
hemorrhaging viewers and inspiring regular questions about how much longer it
could continue. A truncated fourth season was its last one and as 2010 came to
a close, making the argument that there was any life left in the series would
have taken some powerful hallucinogens and perhaps several of the superpowers
possessed by the show’s characters. Perhaps buoyed by the logic that people are
mindless sheep with short memories who will happily watching anything billed as
new and shiny, NBC will bring the show back in miniseries form under the
direction of show creator Tim Kring. Named “Heroes Reborn,” the show is being
kept off the grid for now and no word has been given on whether Ventimiglia, Panettiere or
their fellow stars will return The Peacock plans to introduce the characters
and storylines for the show with a Web series to air shortly before the show
begins…….
- Lemurs: They’re more than tiny, rodent-like creatures with
big, sad eyes. They’re also vehicles to help science better understand the
world around us and that is precisely what researchers Alexandra Rosati of Yale
University and Kerri Rodriguez and Brian Hare from Duke University have been up
to. As part of an effort to understand the origins of primate intelligence,
this trio of smart people studied five species of lemurs residing in captivity at
the Duke Lemur Center. They forced the lemurs to learn the position of food
placed in one of two arms of a T-shaped maze during their first experiment. One
week later, they asked the lemurs to do the same task and found that only the
animals that loved fruit were able to remember the location of the food. Those
lemurs showed higher memory power than their counterparts that depend on a more
varied diet. According to the research team, this supports the idea that
depending on seasonal food items help in improving certain cognitive skills,
including memory. ”Our results suggest that different cognitive skills might
evolve for different reasons,” Rosati said in a statement. The five different species
of lemurs used for the study included fruit-loving red-ruffed and
black-and-white ruffed lemurs, leaf-consuming Coquerel’s sifakas, and
ring-tailed and mongoose lemurs that consume a combination of fruit, leaves,
seeds, flowers, nectar and insects. Lemurs typically live in social groups that
consist of two to 16 animals and those numbers were the basis for their groups
in this study. For the second experiment, the researchers attempted to
determine whether the lemurs were remembering the exact location of the food or
just recalling them. The same experiment was repeated, but 10 minutes after
learning the location of the food, the animals were placed in a new starting
location. Once again, the ruffled, fruit-loving lemurs were most likely to find
the right spot again, even though they had to follow a new path to locate the
food. In a third experiment involving boxes that were either empty or contained
food, the fruit-friendly lemurs carried the day once more…….
- About damn time. New York City’s Upper West Side is not a
poor-friendly place. That’s left for Harlem and the Bronx, maybe Queens for the
mildly poor. You live on the Upper West Side, you expect to not rub elbows with
the dregs of society. That’s why it makes perfect sense that the landlords at Stonehenge
Village on West 97th Street have implemented a new policy governing who can and
cannot use the brand-new gym they just built. The policy, simply put, is thus:
No poors. Under the policy, the building’s rent-stabilized tenants are not
allowed to use the gym. Sure, that may be offensive to the majority of the
residents in the former Mitchell-Lama housing building because they are
rent-stabilized, but they had to see this one coming. Rich people don’t want to
rub elbows – or anything else – with the poor, nor do they want some
blue-collar dirtbag sullying their dumbbell rack or incline bench press with
their lower-class filth. “The small gym we built and opened this week is
different in that it is aimed specifically at new and prospective tenants who
expect certain amenities and incentives that are commonly available to
market-rate renters,” a spokesperson for the management company for the
building explained. The building uses key cards for its locks and the cards for
rent-stabilized tenants do not work on the gym door. To make sure no one sneaks
in, a sign near the gym advises people not to hold the door for others. For
some odd reason, the poors who live in the building are angry about this
policy. “I can’t let you make me a second-class citizen within my own
building,” said Jean Dorsey, president of the building’s tenants association.
Dorsey and her fellow impoverished residents say they were not told in advance
about the policy, but plan to fight for their right…..to dead-lift………
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Dammit, the world is on riot
fire riot now and there are not enough water cannons in The Man’s arsenal to
put it out. The names of cities and nations engulfed in full-fledged uprisings
is immense and growing by the day: Bangkok, Kiev, France, Cairo…..and now,
Caracas. A massive uprising against President Nicolas Maduro's 10-month-old
government is underway and the anger reached impressive new heights Monday as anti-government
demonstrators erected barricades and set fire to trash despite calls from
within the opposition to rein in protests that have led to 13 deaths in
Venezuela's worst unrest for a decade. The demonstrations slowed traffic to a
virtual standstill thanks to piles of smoldering trash lining many of the
city’s main thoroughfares. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles feebly called on
demonstrators to keep their gatherings peaceful, but the people responsible for
them knew Capriles didn’t mean what he said and simply ignored his words. So far,
there is no indication that the uprising will force Maduro from power or affect
the OPEC member's oil shipments, but that hasn’t stopped the government from
charing 529 people (and rising) in the unrest. Most have been given warnings,
but 45 have been kept locked up. Capriles rejected an invitation to meet Maduro
in the afternoon as part of a gathering of mayors and governors aimed at
opening up communications between both sides. "This is a dying government
... I'm not going to be like the orchestra on the Titanic," Capriles said.
"Miraflores (presidential palace) is not the place to talk about peace,
it's the center of operations for abuses of human rights." That is Grade-A
anti-government smack right there. Capriles and other opposition leaders
continue to demand that the government release imprisoned protest leader
Leopoldo Lopez and about a dozen jailed student demonstrators. They have also
demanded that Maduro disarm pro-government gangs and address national issues
ranging from crime to shortages of basic goods. They don’t seem to be on the
same page as hardline student protestors, who want Maduro to resign
immediately. Maduro continues to live in a delusional wonderland where the
protests have, well, proved how much people love and support him unconditionally.
"If there's one thing these violent protests have done, it's unite
'Chavismo'," Maduro told state television, using the term for government
supporters coined during the 14-year rule of his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Sure
thing, Nic……..
- The record is safe for another year. No, not some
illustrious and longstanding sports record held by a hall of famer who is unquestionably
one of the greatest of all-time in his or her sport. None of those records are
currently under assault, at least no in a serious way. The record in this case
is that for fastest 40-yard dash time in the history of the NFL scouting combine. The mark to aim for is 4.24 seconds, set by
Tennessee Titans running back Chris Johnson in 2008. Johnson is famously proud
of his record and has said numerous times that he does not believe it will be
broken, but even Johnson had to be holding his breath Sunday as relatively unknown
former Kent State running back Dri Archer broke free from the
starting blocks and tore down the artificial surface at Lucas Oil Stadium in
Indianapolis. The 5-foot-8 Archer may not be a first-round pick on anyone’s
draft board, but he made himself a lot of money on Sunday when he posted a time
of 4.26 seconds, the fastest at this year’s combine and a mere 0.02 seconds
behind Johnson’s record-setting sprint. For now, it is the second-fastest time
in the 40-yard dash since the NFL began officially recording times in 1999. Of
course, fast times are often reported and then downgraded once the tape is
reviewed, but Archer’s mark seems safe. Johnson admitted on Twitter that he was
“nervous” while waiting for Archer’s official time to be posted. Fast 40 times
can boost a prospect’s performance as much as anything else and for a player
who toiled in relative obscurity at Kent State, gaining 854 yards from
scrimmage and scoring 11 touchdowns despite missing significant time due to
injuries, it couldn’t have come at a better time……..
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