- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Turkey is still a simmering
cesspool of governmental incompetence and societal rage and the action was
high-quality Tuesday as police and protesters clashed in two of the country’s biggest cities.
Tens of thousands of rampaging Turks took to the streets across the country
following the death of a 15-year-old boy hit by a police tear-gas capsule
during anti-government protests last summer. Berkin Elvan passed away early
Tuesday morning after remaining in a coma for nearly nine months. His tale of
leaving his home to buy bread for his family and being struck in the head with
a tear gas capsule shot by the police during clashes with demonstrators quickly
became one of the most tragic tales of Turkey’s ongoing unrest. His death
sparked demonstrators to rush out to the nearest public gathering place in more
than a dozen Turkish cities and recreate the same violent scene that led to
Elvan’s death. In the capital Ankara, police turned water cannons and tear gas
on protestors. Over in Istanbul, more peaceful protestors hung loaves of bread
on their doors to symbolize Elvan’s final journey. “People all around Turkey
have hit the streets. I feel it deeply in my soul that I have millions of
Berkins,” said Sami Elvan, Berkin’s father, after his son’s autopsy was
completed. Leaders from both the government and the opposition movement
appealed in vain for protestors to remain calm and not escalate the violence. Mix
in the burgeoning corruption scandal that has implicated Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan and dozens of his allies and allegations of a conspiracy to oust
Erdogan and his government from power and it’s fair to say that stable and
Turkey do not belong in the same sentence right now. The opposition Republican
People’s Party ripped Turkish President Abdullah Gul for failing to apologize
on behalf of the Turkish state. “Those responsible for this country aren’t
being properly held responsible nor do they know how to apologize,” said CHP
lawmaker Suleyman Celebi. Fight the power, S……..
- Jay Z will collaborate with damn near anyone. He’s teamed
with half of the hip-hop world, two-thirds of the pop world and many artists
who fall somewhere in between. Clearly, the limits of his self-assurance and
confidence know no bounds, as a man who was insecure in his career would not
lend a helping hand to so many hacks. His latest collaborators – at least in
terms of when their collaboration hit the music world – may not technically be
hacks, but they are a walking gimmick best equated to a mash-up of Olympic
bobsledders, Storm Troopers and club DJ’s. Yes, a new joint between Jay Z and
oddball French electro-popsters Daft Punk is upon the world. Titled “Computerized,” the track recently surfaced on a fan site
for Daft Punk. In it, H.O.V.A. ruminates on the fact that – according to him,
anyhow – everyone and everything in the world will be computerized in the
future. The four-minute, heavily auto-tuned track finds the rap icon
name-dropping every relevant (and irrelevant) technological innovation of the
past decade, from on-the-decline phone maker BlackBerry to Apple’s iChat video
chatting program to YouTube. He also poses the question, "Whatever
happened to our phone sex? / Right now, can't think of anything that we don't
text." The origins of this collaboration are unclear and no one knows when
or where it was recorded. The song’s intro is borrowed directly from Daft Punk’s
efforts on their “Tron: Legacy”
soundtrack in 2010 and the “new” version could merely be a demo version for the
soundtrack or it could be the a blatant copy of their work for no apparent
reason. Either way, there is no word on any official release plans of
“Computerized.” Given the world’s misplaced fascination with the wildly
overrated Daft Punk, it would certainly sell plenty of copies…….
- No, this isn't a bad rip-off of the already terrible
Norwegian pop song “What Does the Fox Say?” The question of what the elephant
hears is a real one and according to a research team led by Graeme
Shannon, a behavioral ecologist at Britain's University of Sussex, what
elephants hear could be subtle differences in human speech dialect in as little
as a few sentences. Shannon and his team s found that elephants are able to
distinguish men and women and between adult and children just by listening to
human sentences. "They're using vocal information from another species -
us - and they're using that to discern threat," Shannon said. "That
takes really advanced cognitive abilities.... These are subtle differences
these elephants are attending to." This ability could allow the massive
mammals to differentiate between different ethnic groups after hearing them
speak just a few sentences. Previous studies have shown that elephants can
distinguish between the roar of a single lion and the roaring of a trio of
lions. Older elephants have proven able to distinguish between the roar of a
male lion and that of a female lion. For this study, the researchers examined
1,500 or so elephants roaming Kenya's Amboseli National Park. It is the first
to definitively to establish that elephants can distinguish between men and
women and react accordingly to different level of risks. As such, it shows that
elephants can learn about threats in their environment and adapt their
behaviors to minimize or avoid risks. This inherent flexibility is important
for a species that is the target of poachers in many countries around the world
and could use every possible advantage in order to stay alive……..
- So many people want to bill themselves as the
pound-for-pound biggest or best in a given weight class or sport. D'Iberville, Miss. resident Richard
Hawthorne promotes himself as such and has assigned himself the title of the
pound-for-pound strongest man in the world. At 5-foot-3 and 130 pounds,
Hawthorne is a world-class power lifter. That he doesn’t look the part is part
of his intriguing appeal. "People will see me and, you know, I don't look
like a power lifter," Hawthorne said. "They would never know."
Those who were in the house last summer when he traveled to Australia as a
member of the team representing the United States at an international event no
longer doubt his credentials. "I broke the all-time squat record for my
weight class and I broke the all-time record for the squat," Hawthorne
said. His 562 pounds established the 132-pound weight class all-time squat
record and his dead lift of 601 pounds set the all-time world record. Factor in
the 308 pounds he bench-pressed and it all adds up to an all-time 132-pound weight
class total record of 1,471 pounds. "That all-time record for my weight
class, it made eleven times bodyweight. So that put me pound-for-pound the
strongest man in the world," Hawthorne said. His claims haven't exactly
been verified by any official standard, although doing so would likely be
difficult anyhow. Hawthorne began lifting when he was 15 and had a friend who
was a world champion in the sport. When he’s not traveling the world lifting
immensely heavy inanimate objects, Hawthorne and a friend own and operate the Southern
Elite training facility in D'Iberville. His next big adventure is in June, when
he will travel to Russia as one of two Americans chosen to participate in an
event called the Battle of Champions………
- Manny Machado
is not happy. The future of the Baltimore Orioles franchise being cranky is a
bad omen for the year ahead, but it’s not his surgically repaired left knee
that has him in a bad mood as the 2014 season nears. Machado, who underwent
surgery in October to repair a torn knee ligament and has not appeared in a
game this spring, is bent over the terms of his new deal with his team. That
contract is worth $519,000, but the third baseman who won't be a free agent
until after the 2018 season wants more. . "It is disappointing, but at the
end of the day, you just have to go out and play," Machado said of the
deal. On one hand, he may actually have a point. He is 21 years old and won the
2013 Platinum Glove Award, which honors the American League's best defender. He
also played in 156 games last season, his first full one in the majors, and hit
.283 with 14 home runs, 71 RBIs and a league-leading 51 doubles. Those numbers
would earn many players a raise, but someone as young as Machado and with so
far to go before free agency isn't going to get an exorbitantly rich contract
from any team. Hell, Angels star Mike Trout might be the best player in
baseball at the age of 22 and even though he has more of a résumé than Machado,
his record-breaking contract bump for this season took him all the way to…..$1
million. Machado made $495,000 last season with a bonus of $25,000 for making
the All-Star team and will earn a $100,000 bonus for this season for the Platinum
Glove Award. He claims that he wants to “be an Oriole forever,” but at the same
time he wants to be treated fairly. Here’s hoping his knee exam next week
clears the way for him to get back on the field so he can let his bat and glove
to the negotiating he tried to do with his mouth…….
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