- International soccer beefs are the best. Especially those
that do not end with police cars on fire, cities engulfed in tear gas or
bloodied fans lying on the sidewalk. Give the U.S. and Mexico credit for
beefing in hilarious fashion ahead of the two nations’ international friendly on Wednesday in
Phoenix. The game doesn’t matter and is merely an occasion for both sides to
polish their skills ahead of this summer’s World Cup, but that isn't stopping
both sides from acting like a couple of overly intense, middle-aged dudes
arguing over who fouled whom on a drive to the hoop on the game point of their
pickup basketball game. The U.S. team will play the game with a 20-man roster
after Mexican League team Puebla refused to release DaMarcus Beasley and
Michael Orozco for the match. Yes, a team paying these two good money to play
soccer won't let them leave for a couple days to go play an exhibition game. U.S.
team men's coach Jurgen Klinsmann said he was unhappy with Puebla's decision
not to release the two payers and laid out his team’s case for the media. "We
got notice from Puebla that they don’t release DaMarcus Beasley and Michael
Orozco, which we’d planned on and we are very angry, very angry about this
because the Mexican clubs release all their players for this very prestigious
friendly," Klinsmann said. "For us, World Cup kind of coming up,
(it's) very important. When the match was scheduled, it was with the spirit
that both teams would have access to their domestic-based players for what is a
very important game for those competing for spots in the World Cup.” Puebla is
allowed to withhold the players because the game does not fall on an
international calendar date. Both MLS and most clubs in Liga MX honored the
game by releasing their players, but this should only add another layer of intensity
to an already solid rivalry……..
- What the hell is going on in the island paradise of Trinidad & Tobago? It’s a place that offers a slew of
beautiful beaches, an escape from the world as most of us know it and a few
decent Olympic sprinters every few years. If the past few weeks are any
indication, the country is about to become known for something entirely
different and not at all desirable. One week ago, Trinidad’s minister of people
and social development was fired for behaving aggressively toward a flight
attendant. Menacing an air waitress is just uncool for many reasons, but that
incident has alreay been flung to the back pages because of Tourism Minister Chandresh
Sharma. Sharma resigned in disgrace early this week amidst a police
investigation into assault allegations made against him by a former girlfriend.
Sharma is accused of physically assaulting the woman in a shopping mall parking
lot March 12 and like all good domestic abuse incidents, this one has plenty of
solid reasoning and an injury to top it off. Accuser Sacha Singh says Sharma
shoved her during an argument. And claims s she suffered a mild concussion
after hitting her head on a parked car. There is nothing like a dude two-handed
shoving his lady into a parked car and it would seem that Sharma isn't exactly
maintaining his innocence. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said Monday
that she had accepted Sharma's resignation and instructed the country's
governor general to revoke his appointment as tourism minister. Why? Because
according to Persad-Bissessar, the prime minister is committed to "maintaining
the high ideals upon which we were elected." Those ideals probably need to
find their way to a domestic violence seminar sooner rather than later………
- Brewers put outlandish ingredients into their beer in
the hopes of making it stand out from the ever-expanding arsenal of craft beers
and home brews flooding the market each year. West Philadelphia’s Dock Street Brewing
Company has done its best to corner the market on odd brews in the city of
brotherly love and its latest offering is another step in the right – or wrong
– direction. Simply put, Dock Street Brewing Company is rolling out a beer made
with goat brains. This is somehow safe and sanitary enough to pass health
standards and “Dock Street Walker” is the idea of company president Rosemarie
Certo. Not surprisingly, Dock Street Walker is inspired by the zombies and
other undead beings of AMC’s hit drams “The Walking Dead.” “The flavor is a
light stout and it tastes really roasty and chocolatey. A little bit of smoke
from the goat brains that were cooked in our wood burning oven,” Certo said. Where
does one find quality goat brains in Philadelphia to use in their kooky,
bizarro beer? That would be a local Italian market, where the goats (and their
brains are purchased). All of this sounds like an open invitation for animal
rights kooks to come a-callin’ with their torches and pitchforks, seeking to
burn the brewery to the ground and stop the senseless slaughter of these poor
goats in the name of inebriation, but so far all is quiet on that front. Dock
Street Walker made its debut Sunday night as “The Walking Dead” aired a new
episode and depending on how it fares, this undead libation could hang around
for a while……..
- A match made in reality karaoke heaven has finally
happened. Pharrell
Williams cranks out some of the most abysmal, unoriginal and hackneyed pop
music garbage on the airwaves these days and he makes perfect sense as a judge
for a generation of aspiring hack karaoke-ers looking to churn out the same
kind of unlistenable tunes. In that spirit, Williams has agreed to take Cee Lo
Green’s place as a judge on “The Voice Karaoke.” Williams confirmed the news on
Twitter after NBC confirmed that Green will depart prior to the start of the show's
seventh season later this year. The 40-year-old producer and singer retweeted a
message from the show and added a few words of his own to ensure the masses
that he is sufficiently excited about the chance to sit in a fancy chair on a
tacky, gaudy stage and tell a bunch of world-be karaoke icons why they suck. "This
is going to be so fun '@NBCTheVoice: Okay, we can OFFICIALLY say it! WE ARE SO
#HAPPY to announce PHARRELL WILLIAMS = #NewVoiceCoach,’” Williams wrote.
Williams previously appeared on the show’s fourth season alongside his longtime
friend and occasional musical collaborator Usher, who is working on the current
season and has been time-sharing a full-time judging spot with Green. When
Williams takes his high-backed, red pleather chair, he will join glorified
man-bander Adam Levine of Maroon 5 and country warbler Blake Shelton, plus
whichever member of the Shakira/Christina Aguilera duo shows up on a given
night. Green is leaving “Voice Karaoke” to develop his own TV show. "I'm
not coming back guys. I'm going to continue my relationship with NBC. I have a
television show development deal with them as well and hopefully some other
talk show opportunities for later in the year,” Green said last month………
- Seashells: The next great addition to the world’s greatest
military or free gift you pick up for people who you’re too cheap to buy them a
tacky Myrtle Beach t-shirt? Yes and yes. As it turns out, seashells could be
the key ingredient in protecting American troops on battlefields around the
world. "We
have long studied natural exoskeletons as inspiration for the development of
advanced engineered protective systems," said researcher Christine Ortiz,
a materials scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yes, the
search for durable, tough, lightweight materials for applications such as body
armor has taken scientists to the world of mollusks and crustaceans. It is part
of the strategy known as biomimetics, in which researchers seek to create
materials that mimic structures found in nature Ortiz and her colleague Ling Li
investigated the windowpane oyster, Placuna placenta, which has a shell that
permits 80 percent of visible light to shine through it. Craftsmen in the
Philippines, India and other Asian countries sometimes use the shells in places
of glass in windowpanes. "About five years ago we started searching for
natural armor systems, which were also optically clear," Ortiz said. She
noted that transparent armor could serve in "soldier eye or face
protection, windows and windshields, blast shields and combat vehicles.” The windowpane
oyster’s shell is made almost entirely of calcite, which is also the main
component of relatively fragile rocks such as limestone and chalk. Despite that
usage, it is capable of dissipating energy from penetrations about 10 times
better than ordinary calcite. The combination of its strength and unique optical
properties made it a prime research material and after examining d its structure
on the scale of nanometers and subjecting it to d to microscopic denting from a
diamond-tipped probe, the scientists found the shell deformed via "twinning."
That is a process in which crystals of calcite that were mirror images of each
other formed around the penetration zone. The process helped dissipate energy
and localize damage, by deflecting cracks from spreading farther, for instance.
Next up, the seashell army storms the fortress walls down by the sea shore………
No comments:
Post a Comment