- Bleeding hearts foolish enough to treat animals as if they
were human beings – it’s no longer just an American thing. The phenomenon is
alive and well in Argentina too, as evidenced by the fact that an Argentine
court has ruled that an orangutan that has lived 20 years at the Buenos Aires
zoo is entitled to some legal rights enjoyed by humans. Yes, an ape gets the
same rights as a human being even though it is not in fact a human being. How
did this come to be? Did the orangutan file a lawsuit? Did her hirsute self read
a few legal books, decide her rights were not being properly protected and seek
legal counsel to rectify those years and years of wrong perpetrated as the zoo
made mountains of money charging people to visit and see her without chipping her
off a singe cent – just bunch after bunch of those damn bananas? Sort of. See,
the kook of a local animal rights group filed a habeas corpus writ in favor of
"Sandra,” fighting for rights that don’t actually exist for apes. They
found attorneys willing to shred their remaining supply of personal dignity,
er, fight the good fight, and those lawyers said following the ruling that the
29-year-old orangutan is expected to be transferred to a sanctuary soon to
enjoy more freedom. The court’s decision came to light when it was published by
the official judicial news agency and it reads in part that “a Great Ape has
rights, including freedom and avoiding suffering from being in captivity."
The court also decreed that the beast should enjoy a more adequate habitat, a
decision that left attorney Andres Gil Dominguez fist-pumping and calling the
ruling unprecedented. That’s probably because it’s asinine and wrong……….
- There will be no rephrasing, repackaging or blatant
thievery of a classic Jack Bauer quote here. Why? Because we are not running
out of time, there is no need to jam a gun in anyone’s face and there will be
no torture using waterboarding or souped-up car batteries and electrical nodes
to achieve the necessary aims here. Sure, “24” star and executive producer
Kiefer Sutherland is on the record as saying that he is not interested in
bringing Bauer back to life for another run, but read between the lines and
there is more to the message. Of course, the eight-season run of the iconic
espionage/terrorism drama left fans hanging and Fox obliged by bringing it back
for a 12-episode run earlier this year. “24: Live Another Day” brought Bauer to
London to stop a terrorist who had an override device she planned to use to
hijack American drones and use them to carry about attacks on civilian targets,
with Bauer emerging from the rock under which he’d been living to foil the plot
despite being disavowed by his own government and sold out by the president’s
chief of staff. The 12-episode arc came to an end with Bauer surrendering
himself into Russian custody to bring peace to a tense situation, leaving a
cliffhanger than begs to be answered. Still, Sutherland is claiming he doesn’t
want to go back. “Me, I don't see going back to it," Sutherland said.
"We had set out to do 12 episodes [of Live Another Day] to end the show
and deal with some of the past history of the show. It was also an irresistible
opportunity to go shoot in England. So for all of those reasons it made sense
to do that last season." That sounds an awful lot like an A-lister angling
for more money, one who will come back for the right price. Make it happen,
Fox……….
- Stephanie Powers is a hero. The Seminole County woman wants what all good
citizens of the world should want, nothing more. She sees a real and pressing
danger to the world around her and she wants a solution that will put she, her
family and friends at ease. In other words, she wants Florida wildlife
officials to permit seasonal bear hunting, claiming the animals are wreaking
havoc on her property, killing her fish and chicken and even going after her
exotic birds. She woke up one recent morning and discovered that she had six
fewer koi fish than she’d had the night before, a development punctuated by the
afact that one of her neighbors snapped a picture of a black bear in the area
the same night. As Powers tells it, the bear is both eating her fish and
destroying several section of her fence. "I found several dead chickens
during the day," Powers said. "I'm going to have an encounter, and
I'm going to be too scared to shoot the gun (and) then I'll turn around, and
then that'll be the end of me." This woman’s courageous stand is made all
the more inspiring by the fact that a) she is scared of bears and b) there have
been at least two women mauled by bears in her area since April. Because of
this, she totes a gun and has repeatedly contacted the Florida Fish and
Wildlife Conservation Commission to launch her campaign to declare open season
on bears. Instead, she has gotten a worthless supply of advice and pamphlets. No
bears have been trapped or relocated, Powers said, but she’s not giving up. She’s
advocating the same approach as wildlife officials use with alligators: a
lottery for hunting permits. "I mean, they should have open season like
the alligators," Powers said. "That's how we're keeping the
alligators in control now. So, they only give out so many licenses, like a
lottery." Brilliant idea, S. Done and done………..
- Buyer’s remorse is nothing new in professional sports,
where eight-figure contracts are doled out daily and teams quickly realize that
the player they’ve committed $50 million to is going to give them the same
production they could get for a journeyman veteran making the league minimum.
Even in this world, it’s über-rare that a franchise does a complete 180 as
quickly as the Detroit Pistons did in the past few days as they decided to
sever ties with veteran forward Josh Smith, who still had two years and at
least $26 million remaining on his contract after this season. Smith, who
averaged 13.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 4.7 assists per game for Detroit this
season, inked a four-year, $54 million deal before last season. He’s been an
ill-fitting piece in a dysfunctional puzzle, a puzzle currently sporting a 5-23
record. After shooting just 42 percent from the field in 2013-14, Smith has
continued to jack long jump shots he can't make and routinely inspire opposing
teams to say after games that they literally wanted him to keep shooting so he
could shoot the Pistons right out of the game. "Our team has not performed
the way we had expected throughout the first third of the season and
adjustments need to be made in terms of our focus and direction," coach
and team president Stan Van Gundy said in a statement. "We are shifting
priorities to aggressively develop our younger players while also expanding the
roles of other players in the current rotation to improve performance and build
for our future.” In other words, we suck, we’re going to suck and we might as
well give playing time to young guys who will facilitate our sucking for a
better draft pick rather than devoting extended minutes to a 6-foot-9 jumping
jack of a forward who thinks he’s a silky shooting guard with a deft outside
touch. “We have full respect for Josh as a player and a person,” Van Gundy
added. Uh huh, sure. Smith now goes on waivers and assuming no one jumps on
him, he will have the right to go elsewhere as a free agent. The line forms
here, title contenders………..
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