- Baltimore
Orioles third baseman Manny Machado needs to work on becoming a better liar. Athletes
lie all the time about their intentions and feelings related to what happens on
the field because they know they might be fined, suspended or mocked if they
say what’s really on their mind. It’s an accepted part of sports, but with one
caveat: Athletes must at least offer a semi-plausible lie and be quasi-convincing
in selling said lie. Machado did neither when he claimed there was no
ill-intent Sunday after being at the center of another heated dugout-clearing
confrontation with the Oakland Athletics. The sh*t got real when Oakland
left-hander Fernando Abad threw inside to Machado in the eighth inning of
Baltimore's 11-1 loss to the A's. Perhaps smarting from being on the wrong end
of a double-digit ass-kicking, Machado “accidentally” let go of the bat and
sent it helicoptering down the third base line toward A’s third baseman Josh
Donaldson. Machado and Abad exchanged some non-friendly words and in typically
lame baseball fashion, both benches and bullpens emptied, sending dozens of
large, well-muscled professional athletes jogging toward one another with no
intention of actually fighting anyone. Crew chief Larry Vanover said Machado
was ejected for throwing the bat and Abad was tossed for throwing at him a
second time, but by that point the damage had been done – except the damage
Machado did to his credibility by lying about his not-so-subtle bat toss. .
"The bat slipped out of my hands,'' Machado said. "Trying to make
contact and the umpire thought it was intentional and he tossed me at that
point. The umpire thought it was intentional, so I guess at that point you've
got to toss the pitcher and the hitter at the same time.'' The why of throwing
at Machado could stem from an incident during Friday’s game between the two
teams when he didn't like the force of the tag by Donaldson and the two had to
be separated……….
- If a strip club doesn’t have its integrity, what does it
have? Other than the quality, affordable food for which such establishments
are known and the coke-addled strippers grinding on brass poles – and the laps
of skeevy strangers for $1 bills – and the overall stench of pathetic
desperation? That’s a question Temptations,
a Kansas City strip club on Grand Boulevard just a block south of the Sprint
Center, must ask itself after it willingly covered up its very classy, “Come
see skanks get naked for your amusement” sign in order to help The Man lure a
bunch of right wing conserva-Nazis to town. Yes, Temptations covered up its
signage in order to pretend it doesn’t exist because top Republicans were in
town considering Kansas City as host for the party’s 2016 political convention.
The 2016 Republican National Convention's 13-member site selection committee
arrived in town for a three-day visit and before the plane carrying these
suited, pocket-square-rocking squares touched down, Temptations dropped a tarp
over a sign advertising its "totally nude" skanks. Ironically, the club
considered moving a few years ago but elected to stay because zoning
restrictions made a potential move difficult. City officials refused to say
whether the sign being covered was related to the RNC visit, but a large-scale
downtown cleanup effort in the weeks leading up to the visit suggests there is
a link. A few residents noted that all four cities vying for the convention
have strip clubs and committee members know it, so covering up the sign is
pointless. Clearly, these people are idiots. No RNC member has a smartphone,
laptop or tablet that could allow them to determine whether or not a city has
strip clubs and since the Republican Party is clearly stuck in 1930, these guys
may not know the Internet exists. Either that, or they know their convention
attendees will find the strip clubs when they arrive and thus, committee
members just pick the place with the best naked ladies, advertised or
otherwise……….
- Oh good, another entertainment franchise for Darren
Aronofsky to ruin. Aronofsky was most recently seen hijacking the Biblical tale
of Noah and using it as the very general basis for a sprawling, bastardized and
bloated action flick in which God flooded the world with lame CGI effects and
left only Noah and his family alive at the end of the movie. Now, HBO has given
the director a green light to develop a TV version of “MaddAddam,” which is based on Margaret
Atwood’s book trilogy Oryx
and Crake (2003), Year Of
The Flood (2009), and MaddAddam
(2013). Some might argue that Aronofsky was nominated for an Oscar for “Black
Swan” a few years back and those people would clearly be ignoring the steady
slew of stupendously bad stink bombs and bloated blockbusters he has churned
out since than. “Maddam” would be the first project to come out of the
three-year first-look deal the filmmaker and his Protozoa Pictures inked with HBO in January and
it would also be HBO’s first chance to officially ask itelf what the hell it was thinking when it signed that
deal in the first place. The story in the MaddAddam
books is in the vein of Atwood’s self-described genre of “speculative fiction”
and it takes place in a mid-21st century in a world where corporations have
taken over for governments and the genetic modification of organisms is
perversely ubiquitous. The corporation part sounds a lot like the present day
on Earth, but in this case the setting is in the aftermath of a Waterless Flood
that wipes out almost all of the world’s population. The book follows an
extensive cast of characters, including those responsible for the apocalypse
and those struggling to survive it, and when it is ruined by Aronofsky, fans of
the franchise can thank producer Brandi-Ann Milbradt, who is engaged to the
director and brought the project to Protozoa. The future Mrs. (and ex-Mrs.) Aronofsky
will serve as executive producer on the project, assuming Aronofsky’s meeting
with writers for the film………..
- Give Rolls-Royce credit. As one of the most iconic makers of
ridiculously expensive luxury cars, it could easily look at one of the world’s
poorest countries and figure that a people who often cannot afford to feed
their family even one nutritious meal a day would never be able to afford a car
that retails for well into six figures – let alone have anywhere to drive said
Rolls-Royce Phantom. Thankfully, the executives who run the automaker are
forward-thinking enough to conceive of joining with a Cambodian business
partner to open a showroom in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, thereby
throwing an insanely overpriced fleet of cars directly in the face of
impoverished people with very little reason not to grab their torches and
pitchforks and storm this automotive castle rather than let the elite rub it in
their face that there are cars on the market that cost more than their entire
village will earn in 10 years. Rolls-Royce Asia-Pacific regional manager Paul
Harris announced the company’s deal with HGB Group Co., Ltd. and boldly said
the auto maker signed the accord because it believes that demand for its rides
will grow along with Cambodia's economy. When, how and why the economy will
grow is a mystery Rolls-Royce did not unravel and given that Cambodia's average
per capita annual income is about $2,600, a bit less than 1 percent of the cost
of the cheapest Rolls-Royce, the two ends of the continuum don’t appear poised
to meet soon. Sure, there is a small, wealthy group of elite folks living in
the capital of the mostly rural nation, but whether they want to pony up for a
new ride remains to be seen…………
- Rats regret things. It’s true. University of Minnesota
researchers have discovered that human beings are not the only ones capable of
getting really drunk, doing something asinine that involves them either peeing
on or riding in a police car and feeling really bad about it the next day.
According to the UM research team, regretting a lost opportunity extends to the
rodent world in a profound way. "Regret is the recognition that you made a
mistake, that if you had done something else, you would be better off,"
said David Redish, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience in the University of
Minnesota Department of Neuroscience. "The difficult part of this
study was separating regret from disappointment, which is when things aren't as
good as you would have hoped. The key to distinguishing between the two was
letting the rats choose what to do." By proving that rats are able to feel a complex emotion such
as regret, the research team believes it can better understand decision-making
skills in humans. Taking a page from Manhattan’s most-famous dining destination,
the researchers put four rats under a test called "Restaurant Row."
In this case, there were no exotic eateries featuring cuisine from around the
globe, but rather a series of food options at a tiny rat restaurant and a few
measly seconds for the rats to choose what to eat. Often, rats chose a bad food
over a good one. They were fitted with electrodes that helped researchers
monitor the brain activity and those electrodes measured to response of a region
called the orbitofrontal cortex. The cortex is responsible for people feeling different
pleasant and unpleasant emotions and in humans, it regulates regret. In the
study, rats that recognized that they had made a poor food choice showed heavy
activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, suggesting rat regret……….
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