- Someone did Hunter Pence a favor. The San Francisco right fielder
may not see it that way right now, but in time it will all become clear. For
the moment, Pence is upset that someone stole his motorized scooter from a
restaurant parking lot Sunday night, but that’s only because he’s too close to
the situation. After realizing that his glorified Schwinn with a lawnmower
engine was gone, Pence took to the Twittersphere to offer a reward for the
return of the scooter. He is dangling a signed bobblehead that shows him riding
the scooter for the person who brings it back. "I try not to be too
attached to things, even though I have a bobblehead with it," Pence said.
"I felt it was an extension of me." One might suggest that not
locking the scooter up means Pence is asking to have it stolen, but he has his
reasons. "It won't last very long," Pence said. "I try to trust
people. Apparently somebody needed it more than I do." In the aftermath of
the theft, he posted a tweet lamenting the loss of his personalized mode of
transportation. “Ahhhh someone stole my scooter! :(,” his tweet read. He
later posted a picture and asked his followers to keep an eye out for the scooter.
Perhaps in the interim, someone can clue him into the fact that a major leaguer
with a major leaguer’s paycheck can not be rolling around town on something
that makes a Vespa look macho. Buy whatever kind of whip you want, but your
ride says a lot about you when you’re at Pence’s level and a scooter says, “I’m
a dork who enjoys speeding around at 12 mph because I don’t have the game for
anything with more horsepower.” Who knows, maybe one of Pence’s boys knew how
bad of a look a scooter was for him and boosted it to save him further
embarrassment………
- Where some might see an impetus for change and a sign that
people across the European Union are ready for a new direction, Turkish despot/Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees something much darker and more sinister. Erdogan
scanned the scene in the aftermath of the European Parliament election results
from last week and what he sees are frightening indicators of a threat of
rising racism in Europe. In Erdogan’s convoluted world, Turkey has been beating
the drum for months about racism and increasing racist attacks in Europe and
based on the results from ballot boxes around the EU, he believes there is
concrete proof that those long-expressed concerns are "legitimate and
correct." His remarks came while addressing members of his ruling party in
parliament days after France's National Front and other far-right parties that
are against the European Union and immigration made strong gains in the
European Parliament elections. Coincidentally, many of those parties have
vocally opposed Turkey's EU membership bid. In the face of this perceived hate
and bias, Erdogan made the case that his heavily Muslim nation’s potential EU
membership would serve as an "antidote" to racism and anti-Semitism
in Europe. To end his speech, the prime minister – who has plenty of his own
problems at home and might not need to pick fights abroad – dropped the
ultimate pipe bomb when he said, "Europe needs Turkey more than Turkey
needs the EU." That statement is a steaming pile of monkey crap, of
course, but having the stones to say it is still a totally macho thing to do………
- The fight against pollution and the increasing
corruption of Earth’s ecosystem has a new player and to find it, humanity need
only look down. That’s right, the soil is up – up to no good, that is. According
to a new study led by University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor of geography Erika
Marin-Spiotta, there is far more carbon stored in Earth’s soil than previously
thought and disturbing that soil could send copious amounts of carbon hurtling
into the atmosphere. Marin-Spiotta and her team examined ancient soil that was
buried thousands of years ago and found it to be rich in organic carbon. This
dangerous dirt lies about 21 feet below ground, but it could eventually be exposed
through erosion, agriculture, mining, deforestation and other human activities.
“There is a lot of carbon at depths where nobody is measuring,” Spiotta said. “It
was assumed that there was little carbon in deeper soils. Most studies are done
in only the top 30 centimeters. Our study is showing that we are potentially
grossly underestimating carbon in soils.” That Earth’s soil sequesters carbon
and is another stop on the environmental carbon cycle is not new knowledge, but
the amount found in this particular region of the ground is. Marin-Spiotta and
her team studied a patch of soil in the Great Plains of southwestern Nebraska
known as the Brady soil, believed to have formed between 13,500 and 15,000
years ago. The soil was then buried during the last glacial retreat. However,
the soil formed at a time when the area was clear of glaciers and was later
subjected to rapid climate change and a series of wildfires, adding to the
carbon stockpile. “The world was getting warmer during the time the Brady soil
formed,” said Joseph Mason, UW-Madison geography professor and co-author of the
study, said in a statement. “Warm-season prairie grasses were increasing and
their expansion on the landscape was almost certainly related to rising
temperatures.” Based on their research, the UW team believes there could be
other similar environments worldwide, ratcheting up the threat even further……….
- It’s good to know that Quentin Tarantino isn't throwing
a hissy fit and walking away from all of his projects – just the ones where a
copy of the script leaks to gossip websites and ruins the surprise for the
world. One project that doesn’t need to leak is a possible miniseries of
Tarantino’s much-discussed and highly stylized Western film “Django Unchained.”
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival last week, the director revealed that
there is plenty of Jamie Foxx’s character still in the can and suggested that
there is enough additional footage to piece together a miniseries. "I have
about 90 minutes worth of material with Django," Tarantino said. “It
hasn't been seen. My idea, frankly, is to cut together a four-hour version of
'Django Unchained.' But I wouldn't show it like a four-hour movie. I would cut it
up into hour chapters, like a four-part miniseries and show it on cable
television, show it like an hour at a time, each chapter." Having extra
footage is nothing new for Tarantino, as “Kill Bill” was originally supposed to
be one movie but expanded to two feature-length films because it became such a
behemoth. In addition to Foxx as the title character who ho was freed from
slavery to help bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) in exchange
for the promise that his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) would be freed from
her cruel plantation owner, the “Django” movie had a strong case that held up
well despite sometimes-shaky writing. It was nominated for an Oscar and
Tarantino suggested that had he used his extra footage in the movie, it could
have bordered on four hours in length………
- As always, if three drivers are going to have their cars
wrecked and their days ruined, at least there was a good reason for it. Big ups
to 19-year-old
driver/dullest-knife-in-the-drawer Daniel Calhoon who decided to go brain-dead
behind the wheel…by doing something that could have eventually left him
brain-dead. According to the Oregon State Police Department, Calhoon caused a three-vehicle
crash on Highway 26 in Washington County when he passed out while holding
his breath through a tunnel. Why was Calhoon holding his breath while driving
his 1990 Toyota Camry toward a tunnel? The same reason all dudes of every
age do moronic things in the presence of their friends: because someone dared
him to. According to police, Calhoon and a passenger were approaching the
tunnel when the dare was thrown down. Ever the dedicated idiot, Calhoon
continued to hold his breath while driving into the tunnel and as the oxygen
stopped flowing to a brain that may have already been severely deprived of it, the
Camry crossed the center line and collided head-on with a 2013 Ford Explorer.
That crash spilled into the path of a 1990 GMC pickup and all three cars then
struck the wall of the tunnel. Calhoon – who was charged with three counts of
recklessly endangering another person and fourth-degree assault - and his
passenger were transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital, while the driver
and passenger of the explorer were also transported to the hospital. If this
incident doesn’t go down in the first chapter of the textbook on why the
collective IQ of guys of all ages nosedives when two or more of them are
gathered in the same place, then clearly it’s time to rewrite that book……..
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