- It definitely couldn’t hurt the Sacramento Kings to have some extra help on draft day. The Kings
finished with the seventh-worst record in the NBA last season and despite
picking in the lottery every year for the past decade, they haven’t exactly
accrued a long list of all-stars and future hall of famers with their high
picks. Perhaps with this in mind, the team has launched what is believed to be
the NBA's first crowdsourcing program to help make a draft pick. While the
front office will also utilize traditional scouting methods and probably will
ignore what the fans want anyhow, its brain trust seek analysis on players from
the public and eventually select two people to be in their draft room on June
26. This subtle ploy of seeking free analytical advice from wannabe GMs and
personnel executives in exchange for possible inside access was announced by
Kings general manager Pete D'Alessandro. The Kings have dubbed the program
Draft 3.0 and revealed it during a Reddit Ask Me Anything chat Friday. There is
already a website where would-be analysts will be asked to rank draft prospects
as well as offer their methodologies. "This may not get us all the
answers, but it may help us think of the right questions to ask,"
D'Alessandro said. "We're still going to be using traditional draft
methods, traditional scouting and our own analytics. We're looking to combine
all the creative things as we look for a way to bring the answer in." The
winners are likely to get nothing more than a seat in the war room and a couple
of Kings t-shirts, but perhaps not. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban did
famously hire Roland Beech in 2009 after reading Beech’s research on his
website, 82games.com. Regardless of its outcome, Kings owner Vivek Ranadive are
proving they place a high value on the increasingly competitive field of
basketball analytics and will use that knowledge in next month’s draft………
- Do NOT push Libyan Interior Minister Saleh Maziq,
you European Union jackasses. Maziq sees what you’re doing and he’s not going
to put up with the sh*t you’re trying to pull. This government giant of the
people has threatened to help illegal migrants reach Europe if the European
Union does not do more to help his country deal with a flood of migrants using
Libya as a transit point. Sure, it’s a thinly veiled plan to blackmail a bloc
of 27 nations that could crush your unstable country in so many ways if they so
chose, but Maziq isn't backing down. He argues that EU assistance would enable
his North African nation stop illegal migrants arriving in Libya from
sub-Saharan African nations en route to Europe. Whether the American concept of
building a big goddamn fence along its southern border has simply not struck
Libya is unclear, but the arguments against migrants are the same in Libya: a
rise in crime, the spread of illegal drugs and diseases. Those were the salient
points Maziq made during a news conference in which he also appealed to Libya's
southern neighbors to help it stop the flood of migrants. In truth, Libya needs
all the help it can get and then some given its perpetual state of chaos that
has reigned since the 2011 overthrow of dictator Moammar Gadhafi. In the three
years since, it has become a premier launching points for tens of thousands of
migrants trying to float their way to Europe in crowded, rickety boats. Neither
the police nor the military have been able to get a handle on human smuggling
and with Libyan militias actively involved in and profiting from the shady
business, its frequency is only increasing. Toss in Libya's 1,600-kilometer
largely unpatrolled Mediterranean coastline and this is a mess in need of a
major cleanup……….
- Do you want to hit a moose or a house with your speeding
car (hand down, Billy Joel)? That unpalatable option may not be a problem for
most Americans, but it became a true and meaningful decisive moment late last
week for one Woodland, Maine resident. There was 20-year-old Makaila Bourgoine, puttering along northbound
on Route 161 just before 10 p.m. when she spotted a moose in the road. One
might think Maine residents would be accustomed to seeing moose on the road at
all hours of the day, but Bourgoine was badly rattled and with too little time
to react, she swerved to avoid hitting the animal but lost control of her 2003
Dodge Intrepid, according Chief Deputy Darrell O. Crandall of the Aroostook
County Sheriff's Department. That is when Bourgoine’s Joel-esque tendencies
kicked in. Just as the portly pop singer once plowed into a house with his car
– albeit while drunk and not trying to avoid a large quadruped in the road –
Bourgoine swerved her car into the southbound lane, where it left the road and
hit the northeast corner of a house owned by Sheldon Ketch. As rural Maine
residents tend to be on a weeknight at 10 p.m., Ketch was home and called 911
to say a vehicle had crashed into his house and that the driver was trapped
inside the car. The good news is that Bourgoine was wearing a seatbelt and was
not injured in the crash. However, both her car and the house sustained heavy
damage, according to Crandall, while the damn moose at the center of it all
merely waltzed away – and yes, moose can waltz – without any repercussions,
free to terrorize another motorist any time it wants……..
- It’s about damn time, plants. For too long, your kind has
only performed remotely useful functions such as taking in carbon dioxide-rich
air and churning out oxygen-rich air for mammals of all kinds to breathe. Other
than that, all you do is take up space and give enviro-loving hippie kook
something to hug and/or chain themselves to. That all changes right here, right
now because scientists
from the University of the Philippines, Los Banos have discovered a plant with
the truly remarkable ability to literally eat metal. The plant, known as Rinorea
niccolifera, can accumulate more than 18,000 parts per million of nickel in
its system without being poisoned.
That’s right this shrub can eat lead – or something in the same general
substance group as lead. This rare ability to hyper-accumulate heavy metals has
been observed in only about 450 vascular plants out of an estimated 300,000
known worldwide and even in regions where the soil is rich in nickel, less than
1 percent of native plant species display the quality. The species in this
study was discovered on the western part of Luzon Island in the Philippines, an
area known for soils rich in heavy metals. “Hyperaccumulator plants have great
potentials for the development of green technologies, for example, ‘phytoremediation’
and ‘phytomining,’” said study co-author Dr. Augustine Doronila of the School
of Chemistry, University of Melbourne. As everyone knows, phytoremediation is
the process of using hyperaccumulator plants to remove heavy metals from soils
contaminated after industrial and commercial accidents. In contrast, phytomining
is the process of recovering metals by growing hyperaccumulators for harvest in
precious metal-laden soil. Because a plant with the ability to absorb metal is
so rare, turning this talent into any sort of profitable endeavor is all but
impossible. However, where there is a dollar to be made, there is always a way………
- An overbearing promotional blitz and the sheer
ridiculousness of a goofy summer comedy provided the winning formula for
“Neighbors” as the Seth Rogen-led flick claimed first place in its debut
weekend at the box office with $51.1 million. That was more than enough to best
the unnecessary sequel-ness of “The Amazing Spider-Man 2,” which tumbled to
second and added $37.2 million to its coffers for a two-week domestic haul of
$147.9 million. Third place went to “The Other Woman,” which likewise fell one
spot with its $9.2 million effort and has now banked $61.7 million in three
weeks of release. “Heaven is for Real” continued its remarkable run with another
$7 million and a fourth-place finish to boost its cumulative earnings to $75.2
million against a paltry $12 million budget. “Captain America: The Winter
Soldier” slotted fifth for the weekend and garnered $5.7 million, giving the
superhero epic a solid $245 million through its first six weeks in theaters. Sixth
place was the property of “Rio 2” thanks to $5.1 million in domestic earnings
and a grand total of $113.2 million in earnings since it hit theaters across
the United States five weeks ago. One of the softest debuts for the weekend
came from the uninspired “Moms’ Night Out,” which managed but a seventh-place
finish and $4.2 million in its first appearance in theaters. “Legends of Oz:
Dorothy's Return” was likewise a letdown in its debut, placing eighth with $3.7
million. Next on the list was “Divergent,” owner of a ninth-place finish and
$1.7 million in weekend earnings for an eight-week bank roll of $145.1 million.
The final spot in the top 10 belonged to “Brick Mansions” with $1.5 million for
the weekend and a scant $18.4 million overall. Dropping out from last weekend’s
top 10 were “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (No. 11), “God's Not Dead” (No. 12) and “The
Quiet Ones” (No. 13)………
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