- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! The tried-and-true protest
technique of trying to use a mass of humanity linked by nothing more than
shared beliefs and intertwined limbs was on full display as Greek and Turkish
Cypriot activists formed a human chain across Cyprus' ethnic divide to protest
Turkey's planned nuclear power station. The activists claim the plan poses real
dangers to the nearby east Mediterranean island, which is why about 100 of them
linked arms across the 70-meter U.N.-controlled buffer zone between the
breakaway Turkish Cypriot north and the internationally recognized south in the
medieval heart of the capital, Nicosia, a display that would have been much
more memorable had they set something on fire, looted, rioted or tossed a Molotov
cocktail or two around, but there’s still time. Turkey plans to build the
Russian-made plant in Akkuyu, 56 miles from Cyprus' northern shoreline, but
it’s not happening tomorrow and that means there will be more chances to stage
better uprisings for men and women like Turkish Cypriot activist Murat Kanatli,
who was a part of this gathering and said there are serious concerns about
nuclear waste disposal, the nuclear plant's impact on marine life as well as
its vulnerability to regional seismic activity. Mix in Turkey's current
political upheaval and the ever-looming specter of terrorism and you can see
where this is quite the combustible mix into which to drop a nuclear power
plant……..
- The Pittsburgh Pirates: the United Nations of Major League
Baseball. First, the Pirates make reliever Dovydos Neverauskas the first
Lithuania-born and raised player to pitch in the majors when he appeared Monday
in a loss to the Chicago Cubs and now that he’s had his chance and filled in
where needed, he’s been sent back to the minors as the team called up infielder
Gift Ngoepe, making him the first player from Africa to reach the major
leagues. They recalled Ngoepe from Triple-A Indianapolis on Wednesday and sent
Neverauskas to the minors, in a sense part of the ever-revolving door that is
MLB, but also creating a unique situation in calling up a player who was the
first from his country to make it to the majors and then sending him down to
make way for a guy who’s the first from his continent to make it to the majors.
Ngoepe was born in Pietersburg, South Africa, and attended high school in the
suburbs of Johannesburg, so it’s not as if he was a guy born in a faraway land
but raised in the United States. He’s as rooted in Africa as a person can be
while playing sports half a world away and it’s been a long journey, as Ngoepe
signed with Pittsburgh in 2008 and was batting .241 in Triple-A when he was
promoted. He’s widely considered the best defensive prospect in the Pirates'
organization and for a team that hit the midway point of this week tied for the
most errors in the majors, a solid glove is all that matters, regardless where
in the world its owner comes from……..
- There’s always a lingering question of just how shittily
America can treat its prison population without technically violating any laws.
That particular issue is litigated often by aggrieved inmates who feel like the
supposedly subhuman conditions in which they’ve been forced to reside skew on
the illegal side of the ledger. It’s the one being pursued by two men once
detained at the Jackson County jail who have filed separate - yet equally
(literally) filthy lawsuits claiming sewage frequently backed up in their cells
and the stench was so intense at times that they could not sleep. Joshua
Riechmann filed one of the first suit, in federal court in Kansas City,
Missouri, and he alleges his jail cell stunk like a sewer and that human waste
backed up into his toilet when inmates in adjoining cells flushed. A separate
federal lawsuit by Nicholas Ayers alleges he had to haul water to his
second-floor cell from the floor below to get his toilet to flush and if
there’s anything crappier than a prison toilet, it’s having to supply to H2O to
get it to work. His problems allegedly arose when he suffered a serious injury
on account of falling while carrying a plastic trash can full of water at night
when the smell in his cell was so bad he couldn't sleep. Both men agree that jail
staff was indifferent to addressing inmate complaints, but a very convincing
statement by Jackson County Executive Frank White's office said that the
detention center has roughly 1,000 toilets and hundreds of showers and sinks,
making leaks and clogs routine. With a rousing two lumbers on staff and a
contract with an outside vendor to respond to emergency plumbing needs after
hours and on weekends, it’s hard to see how anything could go awry here. As for
Riechmann, he was booked into the jail last September on a warrant for a
still-pending DWI case in Carroll County and Ayers is now serving a 15-year
prison sentence for assault and armed criminal action, so they aren't the most
sympathetic figures, but they don’t need to be to win their respective cases………
- They’ve always made sense as a dynamic musical duo and
after “The Simpsons” finally had the vision to combine them some 21 years ago,
it’s a shame it’s taken more than two decades for them to find their way back
together. Yes, few musical acts blend like peanut butter and jelly in the same
jar quite as well as Cypress Hill and the London Symphony Orchestra, which
might seem mismatched as a seminal hip-hop act and a bunch of tuxedoed-up classical
musicians sitting ramrod straight in the orchestra pit at a classical music
hall, but that’s only to the musically unsophisticated ear. Those who know know
that when the two acts appeared together on the 1996 episode 'Homerpalooza,' in
which “Simpsons” patriarch Homer Simpson joined a traveling music festival, it
was a moment years in the making. The episode was part of the show’s
much-acclaimed seventh season and it featured Homer joining the fictional traveling
music festival ‘Hullabalooza’ on a bill which also includes Smashing Pumpkins,
Peter Frampton and Sonic Youth. In one of the episode’s memorable scenes, a roadie asks the festival’s bands if any of
them have hired the London Symphony Orchestra – “possibly while high? Cypress
Hill, I’m looking in your direction.” Thus, an epic collaboration was born in
which Cypress Hill asked the orchestra if they know ‘Insane In The Brain.” The
two sides recently linked up on Twitter, with the rappers extending an invite
to the orchestra to “make something happen for real” – an offer the orchestra
happily accepted, setting the stage for what should be some true musical magic……
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