- Never offend a first-ballot future Hockey Hall of Famer.
The New Jersey Devils should have
known as much, but clearly they did not. As a result, they now have a
pissed-off legend in their locker room in the form of goaltender Martin
Brodeur. Brudeur, who owns three Stanley Cup titles and two Olympic gold medals,
is still not over the departure of star forward Zach Parise. Yes, almost two
years have passed since Parise signed with the Minnesota Wild, but Brudeur is
still bitter about his departure and blames the front office for not doing more
to keep his friend in town. "For sure," Brodeur said before
Thursday's game against the Wild. "When you know you have an athlete that
is going to be a game-breaker, that is going to be one of the top players;
rules are that free agency comes a lot younger than it used to. You have to
make commitments. You look around the league, some of the young guys, like
[Tampa Bay Lightning forward Steven] Stamkos, they don't wait, they get them
done." Brodeur doesn’t seem swayed by the fact that Parise bolted for his
hometown team and a 13-year, $98 million deal as an unrestricted free agent in
July 2012 and views the loss of their star as a long-term problem that is still
plaguing the Devils. "It affected our organization in a big way, losing
him, and that's what the fans care about," Brodeur added. "Us, we
know it's part of the business. We had plenty of chances. We had two years to
talk to him and try to figure out something. We waited and waited and it was
too late." The departure came just months after Parise led the Devils to the
Stanley Cup finals and they haven’t been back since. There is no guarantee that
the Devils would have won anything the past two seasons with him, but they
would have had a much happier all-time great between the pipes……….
- Turkey and Twitter are at war. Because of its ongoing
rebellion, the Turkish government is extremely sensitive about what its people
are saying on various social media platforms. Rather than, um, change its
corrupt was and govern both fairly and responsibly, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s
government elected for the oppressive route by blocking access to Twitter. That
may not seem like the most overbearing maneuver, but it inspired a vitriolic
reaction from the won't-be-silenced masses, who used the very weapon that the
government tried to take from them to get their message out. Hours after the
attempted social media c*ck-block, Turkish citizens struck back by circulating
an image of Erdogan sinking his teeth into the blue bird that serves as the service’s
mascot. Twitter helped by sending out mobile numbers that allowed Turkish
consumers to keep using its service and the number of tweets sent in the hours
after the ban rose 140 percent over normal levels. Additionally, Turkish
downloads of Hotspot Shield, the world’s most popular virtual private network
service, rose to 270,000 on Friday – from a daily average of 7,000. The surge
of defiance portends bad things for Erdogan’s reputation, but when facing
charges of corruption and election fraud, Twitter trolls are just one of many
possible problems. The next round of elections is set for March 30 and in the
buildup to voting, Erdogan has removed some 7,000 policemen from their posts
and boosted Ankara’s powers over judges and prosecutors. The crackdown has
corresponded to the online outrage that prompted the Twitter crackdown. The
online world has been a myriad of headaches for Erdogan, as YouTube was
recently used to circulate apparently incriminating voice recordings of he and
his inner circle talking about possible corruption and oppression issues. Here’s
hoping snarky Yelp reviews of the Turkish government are next on the agenda………
- The Piano Man has taken up residence at New York City and
he’s doing his best to keep it interesting as he plays the world’s most famous
arena. Billy Joel, looking like he has packed on a few extra pounds but still
with plenty of charisma on stage, played his third show in his temporary new
home Friday night and brought along plenty of friends. He added a four-piece string
section that allowed him to play “Surprises” from 1982’s “The Nylon Curtain”
album and claimed it was the first time he had ever played the song live. After
doing a sing-along with the crowd on arguably his best-known song, “Always a
Woman,” he then took the evening for a sharp left turn by bringing out AC/DC
frontman Brian Johnson for what was likely the most unorthodox and unusual
version ever performed of the legendary rock band’s “You Shook Me All Night
Long.” Johnson may not have scored many rock and roll credibility points with
the masses with that performance, but Joel was clearly fired up by the effort.
“That’s how it’s done,” he proclaimed to the sellout crowd as the show kept on
rolling. The rest of the evening was equally eclectic, as Joel did his own take
on “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” replicating his performance from “The Tonight
Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Thursday night. The mini-Manhattan residency
seems to be working well for the 64-year-old singer, giving him a chance to
operate in full storytelling mode and cover all genres and areas of music, from
AC/DC to Elton John and other pop culture favorites. Who knows where the
journey will take him – and his audiences – next……….
- Mudslides: They aren't just for sunny southern California.
They strike other places on the west coast, as the unfortunate residents of one
home just north of Seattle found out on Saturday. Authorities are still
attempting to determine what happened to cause a massive mudslide that carried
a house from its perch on a hill onto a highway , injuring at least five people and
leaving an unknown number unaccounted for. Snohomish County sheriff’s Lt.
Rodney Rochon said the injuries were not life-threatening. He added that
authorities believe the mudslide may be linked an overflowing Stillaguamish
River in Oso, Wash., an hour-drive north of Seattle. Evidence for the results
of that theory can be found where all solid, official evidence for crimes and
natural disasters is found these days: on Twitter or Facebook. Photos taken by
an individual at the scene and posted online show the home blocking both lanes
of State Route 530 with its ugly, unsightly and splintered remains. Emergency
responders from fire departments and law enforcement agencies across the region
responded to the scene to search for victims and clear debris from the highway.
The mudslide was an estimated one mile long, according to a very informative
tweet from Washington State Police spokesman Mark Francis. Traffic was being
stopped at Whitman Road, on the west side of the slide, along with the obvious
stoppage on State Route 530 on account of a FREAKING HOUSE BLOCKING BOTH LANES.
Perhaps if the National Weather Service had warned of more than possible minor
flooding of the Stillaguamish, folks would have taken the possibility of
flooding more seriously……….
- What does the nose know? For decades, scientists have
known that the human nose can differentiate between 10,000 different scents. But could the
dorks in lab coats have been underestimating the power of the schnozz all
along? Perhaps, assuming that new research led by an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute is accurate. ''Objectively,
everybody should have known that the 10,000 number had to be wrong,” said
Leslie Vosshall, and a professor at Rockefeller University who studies
olfaction. Vosshall and her team estimated that the nose is capable of
discerning between as many as 1 trillion different odors. Vosshall explained
that since the human eye uses three light receptor to identify up to 10 million
colors and an average person's nose has 400 olfactory receptors, she began her
work with the hypothesis that the estimate of 10,000 different odors was low by
a wide margin. She and three colleagues at Rockefeller University studied those hundreds of olfactory receptors and
discovered that the sense of smell far outperforms the other senses' in
terms of different stimuli it can detect. “The message here is that we have
more sensitivity in our sense of smell than for which we give ourselves credit,”
researcher Andreas Keller said.” We just don’t pay attention to it and don’t
use it in everyday life.” Concocting 1 trillion different odors to test would
have been virtually impossible, so the researchers mixed and matched 128
different odorant molecules they used to evoke smells such as orange, anise,
spearmint and strong chemicals. The combinations made the smells difficult to
tell apart, adding a desirable degree of difficulty to the test for participants.
Once again, the nose powered its way through a test such as this in impressive
fashion………
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