- Yemen has gone dark – really dark. That will happen when a
bunch of machete-wielding maniacs attack power lines leading into your capital
city, slicing them in an effort to make a political statement. According to the
Yemeni Electricity
Ministry, assailants attacked power lines located along the road linking the
capital, Sanaa, with Marib, immediately causing the power outage in the early
morning hours. The attackers deserve credit for a solid plan that they carried
out with total effectiveness, as the ministry confirmed that the entire nation of
23 million people was without power after the attack. It’s not as if Yemen
needed anyone to attack its power lines in order to have problems with
electricity, as the country has battled repeated and extended power outages in
recent years. The outages have grown so frequent and their reach so extensive
that many citizens have come to rely on diesel generators for reliable power.
The attack was part of a large-scale assault on energy sources in the Middle
East nation, as residents of Sanaa have reported massive lines at gas stations
throughout the city after fuel trucks also came under attack over the past
days. If anyone in the Arab world's most impoverished nation can actually
afford solar panels at this point, now might be a good time to take them down
and store them in a safe place before some militants decide to make another
statement by shattering them into a million pieces. It’s worth nothing that
Yemen continues to grapple with a decade-long al-Qaida insurgency, as well as
tribal and sectarian conflicts, so in other words…..now is a great time to get
a cheap price on a plane ticket to Sanaa……….
- Someone sounds a little bitter, British folk rocker Billy
Bragg. Bragg has delivered a few well-received albums over the years, but he
has never really crossed over and achieved any sort of mainstream success. Maybe
that’s why he seems so resentful of the attention being paid to fellow British
artist Kasabian as the Leicester quartet released its new album “48:13” this
week. The buildup to the album’s release featured a series of odd promotional
stunts, including a random mural painted on a wall, but it seems Mr. Bragg is a
fan of neither the project nor its unusual title and song names. Bragg compared
Kasabian to the stars of 1984 rock mockumentary “Spinal Tap,” saying that he thinks the band named their new
album after its total run time because "they hadn't bothered to think up any f*cking titles."
Odds are that Kasabian picked the album name and called its songs by their
individual lengths (i.e. “4:01”) is because they were being über-hipsters who
thought it was totally avant garde and made them stand out amongst their many
indie rock peers, but Bragg doesn’t care and cracked them and modern artists
for not being willing to make a political statement with their music. However,
Kasabian did tackle the NSA's observational tactics in their new single “Eez-Eh.”
"If we're really honest with ourselves, we have to admit that urban music
is where the politics are nowadays," Bragg said. "There are still
political singer-songwriters, but no one you could compare to The Clash, or
even the Manics. When it's all down to Kasabian, it's like....” It’s like what,
Bill? Sure, Kasabian has a penchant for theatrics and some of the stunts Serge
Pizzorno and Nigel Tufnel have pulled off have been bizarre, but calling them
some ridiculous caricature of a rock band just seems steeped in jealousy………
- Google is at it again. Specifically, the Internet search
giant and aspiring conqueror of the world is looking to extend the reach of its
digital tentacles and control even more of the currency that makes the world go
‘round: information. Its newest acquisition is super-smart satellite imaging and
analytics company Skybox Imaging, from which Google stands to gather massive
amounts of geographic data for information as wildly diverse as the health of
farm fields and congestion of parking lots. The new partners announced Tuesday
a deal in which Google will pay $500 million to acquire Skybox, which claims to
have made the world’s smallest high-resolution imaging satellite, capable of
collecting a range of images and video of the world’s daily happenings.
According to Google, the acquisition will provide up-to-date imagery for its
much-criticized Google Maps and Google Earth services, both of which often use
data that is up to three years old. Skybox’s impact could extend much further,
though. “Over time, we also hope that Skybox’s team and technology will be able
to help improve Internet access and disaster relief—areas Google has long been
interested in,” Google said in a statement. None of that rhetoric is new and
much of it comes from the same script the company used after its recent
purchase of Titan Aerospace, which makes drones that fly at 65,000 feet to beam
Internet access to underserved parts of the world. Both Skybox and Titan could
prove to be useful in Google’s Project Loon, an experiment involving
high-altitude balloons for Internet access in remote locations. Google is also
locked in a duel with Facebook for Internet control of the skies. Facebook
already as its own drones for Internet and other projects, making Skybox a
potent weapon in the fight. The 5-year-old start-up analyzes the images and
video it collects to amass stalker-ish amounts of data on all sorts of
industries and activities on Earth. That’s right, these world-class creepers
scan the number of cars in a mall’s parking lot, the stockpiles of natural
resources in ports and other data folks would likely prefer that the corporate
world not know about them. “The time is right to join a company who can
challenge us to think even bigger and bolder, and who can support us in
accelerating our ambitious vision,” Skybox said in a statement announcing its
deal with Google, presumably released in between counting all of the new commas
and zeros in its corporate account balance……….
- There is never a bad time for a good party. Even if that
party happens at a brand new home where the owners have not yet moved in and
you are not one of the owners, a quality rager is never to be apologized for.
Credit goes to a crew of rage-a-holics in Affton, Mo. for understanding this
reality and christening the Kaiser family’s new abode before the Kaiser family
could officially move in. The expansive home, with four bedrooms, a pool, deck and a
gazebo, was just sitting there looking all trash-able when a group of
unidentified partiers decided to have some fun. The family closed on their new
home, changed the locks and began to get excited about moving in when a
top-notch kegger beat them to the punch. The resulting party caused tens of
thousands of dollars in damage and left the family shocked and horrified. “They
urinated in cabinets. There’s cigarette burns all over all the floors,
the carpets, the laminates, I mean there was alcohol spilled everywhere, there
was vomit all over the place, and they broke the handrails up the stairs,”
father Curtis Kaiser said. According to Kaiser, the party people also broke
several windows and dumped retaining wall blocks into the roof before heading
up to the roof and doing damage there. “I guess a whole bunch of people got out
there, and it caved in, and so we had to replace the flat part of the roof, too,”
Kaiser added. The party produced three dumpsters filled with trash and the
family had to replace all of the custom-built kitchen cabinets they had
installed. After replacing every window, every inch of flooring and repainting
all of the house’s walls, ceilings and doors, the bill hit $30,000. According
to St. Louis County police, they have several persons of interest in the case
and believe Facebook photos show a former resident who may have been involved.
Oh, and there was the one drunk chick who showed up at the house the day after,
asking if she could get her beer pong table back. Well done, drunk chick……….
- Richard Sherman
has a talent for pissing people off. Most of the time, he seems to do so
effortlessly and with little true malice in his heart, but his ability to
offend has now extended into the virtual world. Sherman was recently voted as
the cover athlete for the popular "Madden NFL 15" video game, beating
Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton in the finals of the online balloting.
In so doing, he earned his status as just the third defensive player to make
the "Madden" cover, joining Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis for
the 2005 edition and Pittsburgh Steelers safety Troy Polamalu, who shared the
2010 cover with Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald. Sherman wants
to share the cover too, but not with a receiver whom he is preventing from
making a catch or detonating with a vicious (but still legal) hit following a
reception. No, Sherman wants to share his space on the “Madden” cover with his
three Seahawks teammates with whom he forms Seattle's "Legion of
Boom" secondary. "I've been trying to get the Legion of Boom on the
cover, and EA has been fighting me," Sherman said. "So if everybody
wants to start a petition to get the Legion of Boom on the cover, here it is,
here's an open invitation." If EA is smart, it will ride this wave of free
publicity for as long as possible and then “cave” to Sherman’s demands. The
move is a smart one for the Stanford graduate, who said he "would never be
in the position" to be on the cover without the rest of Seattle's
outstanding secondary, which features Pro Bowl safeties Earl Thomas and Kam
Chancellor and emerging Byron Maxwell. Insisting that teammates share the
spotlight is a time-tested ploy for an athlete, currying favor both inside and
outside the locker room. A cynic could argue that it is little more than a public
relations stunt and defeats the purpose of having a cover vote, but EA should
be smart enough to roll with Sherman’s antics and hope that the supposed “Madden”
cover curse doesn’t re-emerge and sniper the best secondary in the NFL as they
chase another Super Bowl title………
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