- It’s always nice when a government can crank out a
symbolic, practically worthless gesture that generates a lot of publicity while
accomplishing nothing of substance. Governments seem to thrive on those sorts
of actions and Cyprus' parliament is no different. These fine
professional legislators have legislated to criminalize the denial of the
massacre of an estimated 1.5 million Armenians by Ottoman Turks a century ago
and if you think that doesn’t matter….you’re right, at least to anyone outside
this fine legislative body. Parliamentary speaker Yiannakis Omirou said that
through a unanimous vote, lawmakers can make denial of any historically proven
massacre a crime. He announced after a meeting with his Armenian counterpart
Thursday that Cyprus was the first country to raise the issue of recognizing
the Armenian genocide at the U.N. General Assembly in 1965 and therefore,
believes this empty action carries with it a tremendous significance for the
whole country. Who is this aimed at? That would be Turkey, which denies that
the deaths constituted genocide and claims that the toll has been inflated, and
that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest. Having a nearby country
that flatly denies something so offensive and important in your history can drive
a nation to do crazy things, or to simply have a bunch of well-dressed and
self-important men tasked with making laws that govern your nation band
together to vote through a meaningless bill that won't actually have any substantive
effect in the real world. Armenians mark the centenary of the killings on April
24 and it will clearly be a poignant day all around……..
- There isn't a person in the world who has access to a
smartphone that doesn’t spend way too much time and border on addiction to
their iPhone or Droid. We all stash them on a bedside table and use them when
we should be sleeping, we dive into our apps when we should be focusing on
driving and we have a near-panic attack if we’re separated from our device for
more than a moment…..but not everyone takes their phone obsession to the
extreme quite like middleweight boxer
Marvin Jones. Jones was supposed to be focused on his big bout with Ramon Luis
Nicolas
at the Turner Agri-Civic Center in Arcadia, Florida, but Jones seems to have
had other things on his mind in the moments leading up to the bout and when he
stepped into the ring. A few
seconds into the first round, referee Frank Santore, Jr. stopped the fight
because Jones’ phone came tumbling out of his trunks and to the canvas. Boxing
trunks tend not to have pockets, so one has to wonder where exactly in his
shorts Jones put the phone and how he expected it to stay there for the entire
fight. Maybe he was worried that if he left his phone in his locker room, his
lady would sneak in and check it to see if he was getting any text from a girl
he has on the side, but then again, why not ask your corner man to keep the
phone in his pocket so it was safe? Or maybe Jones was on hold with Apple
customer service and didn’t want to lose his place in line by hanging up…..but
either way, Nicolas retreated to his corner while Jones bowed to the amused
crowd and proceeded to get knocked out before the end of the first round. It
was his fourth straight loss, but managed to take losing to a new low in the
process……….
- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Hawaii's Big Island
is rarely a place of rage on account of being an island paradise with
tropical magic and beaches galore. But there are always reasons to rise up if
you look hard enough and so it is that enraged protesters on the
island have been blocking the road to a mountain peak where one of the world's
largest telescopes is being built. While not Molotov cocktails have been thrown
and no police cars have been overturned and burned just yet, Hawaii County
police spokeswoman Chris Loos says some people have been arrested for blocking
the road to the Mauna Kea summit. The mountain is held sacred by native
Hawaiians, but that didn’t stop the government from green-lighting the construction
of the $1.4 billion Thirty Meter Telescope. When The Man gets a project rolling
downhill, it’s tough to stop and even though opponents of the project grasped
at straws by questioning whether land appraisals were done correctly and
whether native Hawaiian groups had been consulted, it was all to no avail as
the process simply kept going. Growing more desperate by the day, protestors disrupted
a groundbreaking and Hawaiian blessing ceremony last year and their fight has
rolled right on into a new year while on the other side of the debate, astronomers
say Mauna Kea is the ideal location for observing the most distant parts of the
universe. It isn't quite the same as building a Jack In the Box burger joint or
a Target on the peak, but the worthiness of this scientific endeavor seems to
have little value to the protestors who are raging against the dying of the
light on this one……..
- He hardly looks old enough to be an ass-kicking mutant,
but former
“EastEnders” actor Ben Hardy
has reportedly been cast as Angel in next year's “X-Men Apocalypse.” Hardy last showed up on the popular BBC drama
back in February but had actually played Peter Beale since 2013. His next turn
will be decidedly more exciting after months of being linked to director Bryan
Singer's next X-Men film.
Depending on whose rumors you believe, Hardy was at one point in the running to
play Cyclops. Instead, Singer has tagged him as the winged mutant Angel, who
previously appeared on screen in 2006's “X-Men:
The Last Stand,” played by Ben Foster and with some decided daddy issues
to figure out along with his newfound abilities. Singer has been a busy man of
late and earlier this month he shared production art featuring the character on
Instagram. The cast is still in the works, but the project is set to begin
shooting later this month in Toronto with a scheduled release date of May 27,
2016. Since the turn of the new year, Singer has unveiled several new cast
additions, including Kodi Smit-McPhee as young Nightcrawler and “Game of Thrones” actress Sophie
Turner as Jean Grey, with Tye Sheridan portraying Cyclops and Alexandra Shipp
as Storm. Most of the players here aren't A-listers or even names that the
average movie fan will know, but rest assured that fan boys will delve deep
into their IMDB pages and past credits in an attempt to figure out whether they
are the right fit for yet another installment in a series that has spawned more
spin-offs and sequels than anyone could have ever dared to imagine………
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