Foursquare upgrades, RoboCop remakes and help for surgically enhanced Venzuelan ladies

- As women in Egypt deal with increasing violence as part of protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the superficial, surgically enhanced women of beauty-conscious Venezuela have been handed a major victory by their Supreme Court. Venezuela's Supreme Court has ruled in favor of women who have defective French-made breast implants, issuing a preliminary injunction stating that the cost of removing and replacing the implants should be paid by surgeons, hospitals and a company that imported them. A lawsuit brought by the country's public ombudswoman will now be heard by the court and in the interim, the preliminary injunction will stand. That means during the legal process, Galaxia Medica as well as surgeons and private hospitals are under court order to remove and replace leaking implants for free. This may not seem like a large-scale issue, but implants are disturbingly common in the beauty-obsessed culture of the South American nation. Thousands of women in Venezuela have the breast implants, which contain industrial-grade silicone by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese, or PIP. Gilberto Andrea, a lawyer representing more than 2,000 women who received the implants, hailed the ruling by the court and vowed to press on with a pending lawsuit seeking additional damages. Andrea estimated that 33,000 women have the implants in Venezuela and called the court's initial decision " a measure for all of those affected." The jaw-dropping cost of replace each PIP implant with one made by other brands ranges from about $5,000 to about $9,000. Sandy Contreras, who heads an association of women who have received the implants, said both she and her 24-year-old daughter have the implants but have yet to experience complications from them. Suggesting that women simply be happy with what they have and attempt to improve other aspects of their appearance they can control without surgery obviously isn’t an option for those like Contreras and her daughter………..

- Adding more stars does not make up for a bad movie sequel idea. The makers of the recycled “RoboCop” film can throw as many big names into the mix as they want; it doesn’t change reality. Remaking movies that are less than three decades old is still ridiculous, even if Samuel L. Jackson signs on to be a part of Jose Padilha's remake of the 1980s action classic as Pat Novak, a "charismatic media mogul and powerful force in the RoboCop world.” Jackson becomes the latest big name to join the project, as Gary Oldman recently joined the cast as RoboCop's scientist creator and Joel Kinnaman will play the film’s star role as Alex Murphy, the police officer who gets cybernetically converted after being wounded on duty. Worse still, Padilha has admitted that his plan is to diverge significantly from the concept of the original movie. "RoboCop the first movie was fantastic. But even if there was no movie, the concept of RoboCop is brilliant, first because it lends itself to a lot of social criticism, but also because it poses a question, 'When do you lose your humanity?’” he once mused. "I have my take on it. And I can tell you this: In the first RoboCop when Alex Murphy is shot, gunned down, then you see some hospitals and stuff and then you cut to him as RoboCop. My movie is between those two cuts. How do you make RoboCop? How do you slowly bring a guy to be a robot? How do you actually take humanity out of someone and how do you program a brain, so to speak, and how does that affect an individual?" Here’s a better question: Why can’t you leave a classic movie alone and come up with your own damn concept that doesn’t piggyback of something that has already been made? This disaster is set for release in the summer of 2013………..

- Guns, and lots of them. Either that or the testicle-biting dogs and sonic canons inducing involuntary urination being used to control hooligans at the ongoing Euro 2012 soccer championship. Both are credible solutions for city officials in Stockton, Calif. as they try to answer the question of how they get delinquent parking violators to pay up the collective $7 million they owe. No one likes receiving a parking ticket because they arrived back at their car 50 seconds after the meter expires and the sad reality for towns and municipalities is that unhappy drivers typically don’t pay their citations unless and until they accrue enough fines to have their car towed or get one of those big metal boots placed on the rear driver’s side wheel. Because so many people refuse to pay their parking citations, the city of Stockton has $7 million worth of unpaid tickets they have never been able to collect. That financial gem was dropped at Tuesday night’s city council meeting and the $7 million figure has sent ripples throughout the community. Even Vice Mayor Kathy Miller seemed shocked by the total and more than a little disturbed, given that Stockton is facing a $26 million deficit. Mix in another $13 million in other assets the city never collected and the source of Stockton’s woes – laziness or simply lack of tenacity – isn't difficult to pinpoint. “We could certainly use that $7 million dollars,” Miller whined. Then man up, start towing cars or applying boots to wheels and don’t allow people to have their ride back until they pay what they owe. Merely issuing fines and not following up when a person doesn’t pay isn't going to get the job done. “The more important issue for this council is figuring out where was the breakdown in the process,” said Miller. “Why was a fine levied by parking or the police department and then there was no follow-up on it?” Why? Because you’re a small city staffed by inefficient government workers that doesn’t have any muscle behind its threats, that’s why. But assessing blame for past mistakes won't fix anything, so let’s shift the focus forward to how Stockton can collect the money it’s owed. “My guess is that a collection agency will be involved,” said Miller. “But a collection agency will take a percentage of whatever they collect.” In other words, your city is on the verge of bankruptcy, but don’t expect those overdue parking fines to make as much of a dent in the debt as expected……….

- The National Football League is a business. Fans may not want to hear that, but with billions of dollars made in television revenues, ticket and merchandise sales and other income each year and hundreds of millions paid out to players, it’s reality. Teams have salary cap constraints and even when they win a championship, keeping their title-winning roster together is all but impossible. Seeing a favorite player leave via free agency or because the team waived him is especially difficult for young fans, who have no clue what a salary cap or guaranteed contract is. San Francisco 49ers running back Brandon Jacobs was a member of the New York Giants team that won the Super Bowl in February but the Giants released him March 9 after both sides failed to work out a restructured contract. Jacobs spent seven seasons with New York, winning two Super Bowls and helping the Giants beat the his new team 20-17 in overtime of the NFC championship game at Candlestick Park on Jan. 22. His role diminished as Ahmad Bradshaw emerged and Jacobs managed just r 571 yards and seven touchdowns last season. When he left, at least one young Giants fan had great difficulty digesting the news. Jacobs received a letter from 6-year-old Joe Armento, who sent $3.36 to Jacobs when his mother explained to him that the Giants couldn't keep Jacobs because of money. "He asked me about it and said, 'How come?' They had just won the Super Bowl so he couldn't understand it," said Julie Armento, Joe's mother. "He said, 'I want to write him a letter and ask him to come back.'" Not only did Jacobs respond to the letter, he was so moved that he tweeted a picture of it and the money and said he would take Joe and his own son to Chuck E. Cheese when he returns to New Jersey. "I almost cried; I am still trying to hold it in," Jacobs tweeted. "I may have to pay him a surprise visit. I want to do good and go out there and do the best I can for little Joe. After thinking about it since it happened, I'm going to remember this for the rest of my life. " Julie Armento explained in the letter than her son is just learning to read and write, so she added a sort of translation of why he was saying: "'Dear Brandon Jacobs, So you could go to the Giants, here is my money. "Love, Joe.'” It’s a touching moment in a sport/business all too often devoid of them……….

- Any social networking app or site that isn't growing, expanding and refining its operation is dying. Foursquare knows this well and in response to the growing popularity of certain features on other social networking sites, it launched a major redesign of its app for the iPhone and Android devices on Thursday. The changes incorporate features from social discovery and local search applications, as well as the "like" feature made famous by Facebook. Foursquare has clearly seen better days, namely the days following its launch in 2009 when was at least competitive with other similar applications. The service still has 20 million users and is predicated on the idea of allowing users "check in" to shops and other locations to share their whereabouts with social contacts. In an attempt to regain momentum, Foursquare officials described the redesign as "a whole new app." The new "explore" function will now allow users to browse locations by category or conduct a specific search like “free wi-fi” or “Chinese food,” according to a company blog post announcing the launch. According to Foursquare, the function is an upgrade for conducting local searches when compared to Google or Yelp. The reason Foursquare “explore” is better, the post explains, is that users will receive “a very personalized set of search results," based on prior check-ins, friends' check-ins and a given location's popularity across Foursquare, instead of the identical results users of those other services get. Holger Luedorf, Foursquare's vice president of business development, introduced the revised app at a conference in San Francisco and zoned in on the individuality component. "It's not the one-size-fits-all approach to local discovery you're used to,” he explained. Another new feature introduced at the conference was the Top Picks feature, a set of recommendations that appear without requiring a query. Users looking for the existing feature that allows them to find friends who may be nearby will find it on the "explore" tab, not far from the "friends" tab featuring tips, lists, and places friends have saved. The app will soon be available for BlackBerry and Foursquare is working with Microsoft to create an app for the Windows Phone, according to Luedorf. He will probably check in with an update on that later………

No more free rides for Egyptian women, hooker inspiration and the Mad Dog returns

- The free ride is over, ladies. And by free ride, we mean being treated like second class citizens, being beaten regularly  and denied some of your basic rights. After coasting along for too long, women are feeling the harsh hand of karma (or abusive men beating them down) and that was on display late Tuesday as the most recent in a string of violent attacks in Tahrir Square in Cairo took place. A women was attacked by a group of men and beaten violently before she was pulled to safety by men who ferried her out of the melee in an open Jeep. For some reason, attacks on women have risen sharply following a mixed verdict against ousted leader Hosni Mubarak e and his sons in a trial last week. The attacks have become so severe and disturbing that activists met Wednesday to organize a campaign to prevent sexual harassment in the square. No official statistics are available for attacks on women in the square because police do not go near the area. Some protestors suspect the misogynist efforts are organized by opponents of the protests to break the spirit of the protesters and drive people away. Protestors have told many stories about women being isolated and assaulted around the square and Mona Seif, a well-known activist who has been trying to promote awareness about the problem, confirmed Wednesday that she was told about three different incidents in the past five days, including two that were violent. Those doing the beating either have a short memory or simply don’t give a damn that many women participated in the 18-day uprising that ended with Mubarak's Feb. 11, 2011 ouster. Military and security troops have targeted them as well, keeping alive a practice commonly used by Mubarak security that grew even more aggressive in the days following his ouster. Should anyone be surprised by this news? Of course not. A 2008 report by the Egyptian Center for Women's Rights claimed two-thirds of women in Egypt experienced sexual harassment on a daily basis. Only eight female legislators have a seat in the country’s 508-member parliament and even with new leadership in place, the fight is obviously a long way from over for the ladies………..

- Different people find inspiration in diverse places. For some, it’s a friend or family member who enlisted in the military or fought a life-threatening illness.  For others, it’s their favorite athlete or musician who battled their way to prominence. None of those sources work for Miss Ohio Audrey Bolte. Bolte, taking part in one epic blowhard Donald Trump’s many beauty pageants, was asked a question about how women are portrayed in movies. It was an odd question because movies are completely unrealistic and basing much of anything in the real world on what shows up on the big screen is rather absurd. Bolte didn’t exactly channel her inner Miss Teen South Carolina Caitlin Upton, Bolte did cause a minor stir when she used Julia Roberts' character in “Pretty Woman” as an example of a positive role model. Roberts played a prostitute who was plucked from her skanky lifestyle by a wealthy benefactor with whom she found love and Bolte said she viewed Roberts’ character in the movie as a role model. When asked several days after the fact if she wanted to change her response, she wasn’t backing down. "I'm going to stick with my answer," she said. "I feel very confident in the way I answered it. I felt I had 30 seconds on live TV and I felt I answered it the best I could at that moment." She did however want to make it clear that she isn’t going to allow the media to take her words out of context and suggest that she holds up hookers as exampled for young women. "For the record, I do not feel that prostitutes are role models," she said. "That was not the question. Those words were not ever out of my mouth. I feel the movie I gave an example of shows inaccurate and accurate roles of women in movies, because at the end of the movie she turned out to be a wonderful, well-rounded woman.” Yes, a beautiful, well-rounded woman who made a living making money for having sex with strangers……….

- WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? The freaking Stanford men’s basketball program, that’s who. Madsen, who famously unleashed a real gem of dancing and butchered Spanish at the Los Angeles Lakers’ 2001 championship parade, is returning to the place where it all started. The man known as “Mad Dog” for his over-the-top sideline and championship parade celebrations has joined his alma mater as an assistant basketball coach. Coach Johnny Dawkins announced Tuesday that Madsen will replace the retired Dick Davey on his staff and work primarily with post players. The safe assumption is that Madsen will also work with the entire team on their celebrations should the Cardinal ever win a Pac-12 or national championship during his time on staff. During his playing days, the Mad Dog n helped lead the Cardinal to four NCAA tournament appearances and the 1998 Final Four He averaged 10.9 points and 7.9 rebounds per game in his career a and despite never amassing even a small fraction of those averages during his NBA career, he did win two championships in Los Angeles and was a fan favorite both in L.A. and during his stint in Minnesota. He has actually been back on campus at Stanford for the past two years, completing his MBA and working in a volunteer capacity when he accompanied the team on a trip to Spain last September. His addition to the staff may or may not lead to more wins, but free Spanish lessons will be plentiful and dance wisdom will be dispensed regularly………

- E-nough. To the technology company behind Tupac Shakur's hologram that “shocked” the world at this year's Coachella Music Festival, enough is enough and in this case, it’s too much. Bringing back an iconic rapper gunned down in his prime in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting for a one-time event is all right, but going around scheming which deceased rocker or hip-hopper you can bring back to life next is not cool. Some needs to stop Digital Domain Media and its new corporate partner Core Media Group, which owns the licensing rights to Elvis Presley, from bringing the possibly dead rock and roll icon back to life, digitally speaking. Worse still, the plans aren't just for a one-time appearance for the King. No, he is expected to appear on film, television and even at concerts because clearly, a small army of Elvis impersonators around the world in almost every conceivable language is not enough. “Elvis is the most iconic, most recognized performer on the planet, and we are thrilled to have been chosen to bring new performances and original shows where fans can have their own, new experiences of Elvis,” said Digital Domain Media Group chairman John Textor. Bzzzzzz! Wrong-O, John Boy. There are not going to be any new or original performances from Elvis because he is (allegedly) dead, which means no new audio and therefore, no new concerts or songs. Then again, Elvis is still a better option than a Justin Bieber hologram, which Digital Domain Media Group was reportedly looking at earlier this year……….

- Way to be a buzzkill AGAIN, United Nations. Specifically, the United Nations Environment Program needs to stop being such a freaking wet blanket. According to the UNEP, the earth's environmental systems "are being pushed towards their biophysical limits.” In a disturbing report, program officials said, "Several critical global, regional and local thresholds are close or have been exceeded. Abrupt and possibly irreversible changes to the life-support functions of the planet are likely to occur." All 525 (yikes!) pages of this riveting report are full of dour news and to soften its impact, the UNEP released it overnight. Contained within the report are dire prognostications of rising oceans, increased frequency and severity of floods and droughts and the collapse of fisheries. The findings are based on three years of work by 300 scientists and they paint a truly bleak picture. They claim about 20 percent of vertebrate species are under threat of extinction, that coral reefs have declined by 38 percent since 1980, greenhouse gas emissions could double over the next 50 years and 90 percent of water and fish samples are contaminated by pesticides. But wait, isn’t the world becoming conscious of its wayward enviro-habits and mending its broken ways? Nope. Near the end of the report, its authors say little or no progress has been made over the past five years on nearly a third of the main environmental goals, including global warming. In fact, significant progress has been made on just four of the 90 most important goals, the report claims. "This is an indictment," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said. "We live in an age of irresponsibility that is also testified and documented in this report. In 1992 [when the first of the agency's five reports was released] we talked about the future that was likely to occur. This report 20 years later speaks to the fact that a number of the things that we talked about in the future tense in 1992 have arrived.” However, Steiner’s press conference was not all gloom and doom. "Change is possible. Given what we know, we can move in another direction," he suggested……….

Guns for goodwill, Octo-Skank has standards and goggles to help the FAT

- In a stunning twist, the Octo-Skank actually believes she has standards. Nadya Suleman, the woman who rode her ability to procreate without having any concern for how she might support her eight children who are cursed with a train wreck of a human being for a mother, may be fulfilling her destiny of ending up in porn, but that doesn’t mean she has no self-respect. She doesn’t actually have self-respect, but her lying down and taking some from strangers on camera for money doesn’t mean she’ll do anything if you pay her enough, according to Suleman. To supplement her porn income, Suleman was scheduled to join the coke-addled, daddy issues-having pole workers at T's Lounge in Palm Beach, Fla. next month. According to sources familiar with the situation, Suleman was to go topless at the club. However her agent (yes, she has one) Gina Rodriguez confirmed Tuesday that her client has pulled out of the deal because she believed club employees were talking junk about her. According to Rodriguez, the breaking point was a local news interview with a club bartender who said the Octo-Skank has "a lot of mouths to feed so it was only a matter of time" before she started stripping. It was just about the most accurate observation the poor bartender could have made, but Suleman didn’t like it, nor did she appreciate the bartender speculating on her sanity. "She must be a little crazy, normal people don't have that many children," he added. Again, nothing this guy said was false. Sometimes the truth stings and for Suleman, it clearly felt like the backhanded slap across the face someone should have administered to her right around the time she cracked the three-child barrier. She could obviously stop trying to pretend that she’s not a mentally deficient skank who has made the world a worse place and doomed her kids to a life of suffering, but what fun would that be? Instead of embracing a manager at the club implying she might go fully nude and do lap dances for the right price, Suleman continues to fight against her inevitable fate………….

- Flying into or out of Tripoli's international airport remains arguably the riskiest proposition in air travel.  That will happen when armed Libyan brigades are surrounding it and forcing flights to be diverted to the capital's military airport before withdrawing. The militia, called al-Awfea Brigade from the town of Tarhouna, 50 miles southeast of Tripoli, staged its temporary takeover to demand the release of one of its leaders, who they claimed disappeared last night. The sight of angry militia members with heavy weapons alarmed travelers for some reason and caused significant panic at the airport. "It is total confusion. Everyone is fleeing. Several armored vehicles and tanks are positioned on the tarmac, blocking traffic," an official said. "Cars mounted with antiaircraft guns and armed men are surrounding the aircraft and preventing them from moving," another official confirmed. Militia members forced passengers to leave the planes, but did not show any interest in taking hostages or harming anyone. Local tribal leaders and officials rushed to the airport to resolve the standoff and whatever was said, the militia ultimately withdrew. The man they want returned to them is Awfea head Col. Abu Oegeila al-Hebeishi, who was kidnapped by unknown armed rebels while traveling between Tarhouna and Tripoli late Tuesday night, according to ruling National Transitional Council spokesman Mohammed al-Harizy. The militia doesn’t seem to accept that explanation and seeing them hijack an entire airport again in the near future wouldn’t be that surprising………..

- There are still individuals with good hearts in the world, seeking to make a positive difference for others. Those good souls do charitable things like donate a variety of items to local thrift stores and charities. They give away appliances, clothes, tools……and firearms. Sadly, one entry on that list wasn’t welcomed by the good folks at the Miracle Hill Thrift Store in Spartanburg, S.C. As employees sorted through a new round of donations on Tuesday, one item in particular stood out from the rest. Manager Andrew Wolff was in his office when an employee notified him that he had a gun under a pile of clothes while sorting through boxes. "Lifted some clothes out of the way and found the revolver," Wolff said. The employee showed him the unloaded .38 caliber gun and rather than simply be grateful that some unselfish person had willingly (and perhaps accidentally) given away their firearm so a person who couldn’t walk into a gun or sporting goods store and buy a new one could buy it at a discounted price, Wolff overreacted and called the police. Asked why his chain of thrift stores doesn’t deal in guns, area operations manager Mark Steenback insisted the focus is on standard, boring thrift store items. "Clothing is a big one and then just any gently used household items," Steenback explained. "We're able to sell those to people that are in need and also take those revenues and help the people who are in need in our community.” Right, and what’s more helpful than a nice, gently used .38 caliber gun. Sheriff’s deputies said they had no reports of a gun matching the description of the one found at the thrift store being stolen. Wolff insisted the gun was far from the most bizarre item he’s seen donated at the store. "The craziest thing is sitting on my desk right now," he said. "Here are three carcasses of American mink. Head, eyes, nose feet and all." Yes, but those minks are nowhere near as cool as a working gun………..

- Still dream of owning your very own professional sports franchise or having one in your hometown? If losing money is your idea of fun, then keep that dream alive. Lots of money, that is. The (for now) Phoenix Coyotes have been in ownership limbo for months now and the NHL believes it is close to resolving the fate of the franchise. Former San Jose Sharks CEO Greg Jamison seems to be the top choice for buying the team and keeping it in the Glendale area, but even a deep run in the playoffs and a rich new owner lurking may not be enough to make the Coyotes profitable. Even if the Coyotes are able to replicate their success for an insanely long period of time, THAT might not be enough to make them profitable. According to local news reports, a projection of the Coyotes’ financial situation showed that even if the Coyotes went to the Stanley Cup Finals for the next 20 seasons and the Jobing.com Arena in Glendale booked 30 sold-out concerts each year for the next 20 years, Glendale could still expect to lose about $9 million annually. Factor in the city’s annual arena debt payments, which will average about $12.6 million a year over the next 20 years, and the picture becomes that much uglier. Glendale Mayor Elaine Scruggs doesn’t sound like she’s on board with that dire future. She has argued that next year’s budgeted $17 million arena management fee is too steep and said she cannot support the new ownership deal. Scruggs pointed out that the city “won’t see the construction of new city facilities or park upgrades for at least the next five years.” Opponents argue that the city is going to lose money one way or the other and that the new deal will mitigate those losses. The forecast remains murky with so much money and so many egos involved, but the end result is going to be extremely painful for someone…………

- Tokyo University professor Michitaka Hirose and his team are looking to ride to the aid of the FAT. They just might have found a way to help overeaters cut down on their consumption, assuming that consumption includes only round objects. Their creation is a camera-equipped special goggle that makes objects appear larger and tricks the mind into thinking a person has consumed more food than they actually have. Hirose conducted an experiment, asking participants to eat as many cookies as they wanted, first with and then without the glasses. The goggles, which make biscuits or round cookies like Oreos, appear larger, led to subjects eating 9.3 percent less on average with the goggle showing cookies 1.5 times bigger than they actually are and 15 percent more with cookies looking two-thirds of their real size. By sending images to a computer that magnifies the apparent size of the cookie in the image it displays to the wearer while keeping his hand the same size, the goggles are able to make the snack appear larger than it actually is. How much consumption declined in the experiment depended upon how much the biscuits or cookies were magnified. In the experiment, volunteers consumed nearly 10 percent less when the biscuits they were eating appeared 50 percent bigger. "How to fool various senses or how to build on them using computers is very important in the study of virtual reality," Hirose said. "Reality is in your mind.” He views the goggles as a significant improvement over standard virtual reality equipment, which is often bulky and heavy. There is also a variation on the goggles which Hirose's team called a "meta cookie.” The headgear uses scent bottles and visual trickery to fool the wearer into thinking the plain biscuit they are consuming it something much more appealing, like chocolate or strawberry-flavored cookie. Using this trickery, the research team has been able to fool 80 percent of subjects are fooled. They naively insist they have no plans to commercialize their invention (yet) and want to focus on whether obese people wanting to lose weight can use the device……….

Stoner-friendly governors, secret government telescopes and Riot Watch! in Ukraine

- The Chicago Cubs are terrible. Again. The franchise that hasn’t won a World Series since 1908 and has occupied the loveable losers category of the sports ledger for so long that they have their mail sent there is 18-36, one loss behind San Diego for the worst record in baseball. Their lone bright spot so far has been the hitting of star shortstop Starlin Castro, who has started all 54 games and is hitting .305 with four home runs and 32 RBIs. Last season, he became the youngest player in history to lead the NL in hits last season with 207. So why is manager Dale Sveum irate at his best player? Because Castro has been mentally AWOL one too many times in the field and he was officially put on notice after a mental error Monday in San Francisco. With the Cubs cherishing a rare lead (2-1) in the fifth inning, San Francisco’s Brandon Crawford hit a bouncer to second baseman Darwin Barney, who threw to Castro to start a possible double play – or at least that was Barney’s plan. Castro had other ideas because he thought the force out at second base was the third out of the inning and so he just hung onto the ball before realizing his mistake. While replays showed it would have been a difficult double play to turn, Sveum wasn’t giving his young shortstop the benefit of the doubt. "It's something that's obviously unacceptable at any time," Sveum said. "Whether we could have turned the double play or not is irrelevant to not knowing how many outs there are in the most important part of the game. These things have got to stop happening or he's going to stop playing. These kind of things are things that my son does in high school maybe." Castro apologized for the gaffe and called it embarrassing, but on the heels of him pulling up on a steal attempt Friday because he thought Joe Mather fouled off the ball, Sveum has warned that there could be a different name in the lineup at shortstop when the Cubs open a three-game series in Milwaukee Tuesday night………..

- Secret government telescopes and detecting extrasolar planets and dark energy? Heck yes, NASA. The space agency may not shoot shuttles into the great beyond any longer, but there might be a use for it still. That purpose could be built around secret National Reconnaissance Office telescopes built to collect intelligence for the U.S. government. The telescopes could be used to study the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force driving the expansion of the universe. NASA researchers believe the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, or WFIRST, is a viable candidate to use their hardware and software because it is qualified for the rigors of launch and spaceflight. David Spergel, a researcher at Princeton University and co-chair of the National Research Council's Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics, and other scientists helped NASA verify the suitability of the spy telescopes for this sort of mission. NASA officially took ownership of two optical telescopes in August 2011 but kept the transfer quiet until Monday, when officials briefed the astrophysics science community after the National Reconnaissance Office, which owns and operates the U.S. government fleet of surveillance satellites, declassified the telescopes. Both were constructed in the late 1990s and early 2000s and the NRO called NASA officials in January 2011 to let them know the agency would make two telescopes available after they were no longer needed for their original intelligence missions. "We just swapped a piece of paper and it became ours," said Michael Moore, acting deputy director of NASA's astrophysics division. The telescopes look very similar to the Hubble Space Telescope and sport a 94-inch primary mirror. NASA has been working on planning the $1.6 billion WFIRST mission for the past two years, but does not have the funding to establish its outer space observatory to create a census of alien planets, study dark energy and chart the evolution of galaxies in the early universe. Costs to convert the telescopes would be massive and much work lies ahead, all of it complicated by NASA’s shrinking budget. Even with sufficient funding, the earliest plausible time WFIRST could be on the launch pad is 2024, according to Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division. Even storing the telescopes isn't cheap, as it will cost the space agency up to $100,000 per year to maintain the sensitive hardware in a clean room until it is used………..

- Famous people are just like the rest of us. Don’t believe it? How many times in your life have you known, hung around with or heard about a white person who stupidly got the impression that hanging out in a group with several black people who used the N-word or other race-centric slang amongst themselves gave them, the white person in the group, license to use those same words? It never goes well for the white person who thinks their black friends using the N-word to one another means it’s cool for them to use it too and even a famous face like Gwyneth Paltrow is not exempt from that rule. Paltrow, who has a well-documented friendship with Beyonce Knowles and joined her fellow mom and BFF at Jay-Z and Kanye West's Paris stop of the Watch the Throne tour on Friday evening, was given a prime spot backstage at the show. Fellow concert-goer The Dream (producer Terius Nash) tweeted a picture of Paltrow dancing onstage and she responded with a tweet intended to be a funny play on a song from Jay-Z and Kanye’s album, a tweet that read, "Ni**as in paris for real." Although Paltrow herself put the asterisks into the word so as to not broadcast it to the world in uncensored form, the blowback was swift and strong. Most followers took offense to her using the term at all, even though  "Ni**as In Paris" is the title of a song from Watch the Throne. "Hold up. It's the title of the song," Paltrow tweeted in response. Nash came to her defense, telling his own followers that he was the one who typed Paltrow's controversial reply into her phone. "Fyi Sorry for the [confusion] I typed Ni**as in paris for real from Gwens Phone my bad...," he wrote. " ... please excuse it! We were lit!" It’s an interesting twist on the “someone stole my phone/hacked my account” excuse, along with raising the question of why Nash would tweet to Paltrow on his phone and answer his own tweet on her phone. True or not, it’s proof that white folks should steer clear of the N-word whether it’s a song title or not……….

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! It’s insane in the Ukraine right now on account of pro-government lawmakers giving tentative approval Tuesday to a bill that would allow the use of Russian in official settings alongside Ukrainian in some regions. With hundreds of angry opponents of the measure clashing with helmeted riot police outside parliament and on Kiev's main square and the Euro2012 football championship kicking off in the country Friday, Ukraine is seeing more action than it has in a long time. Allowing or banning the use of Russian has long been a hot-button topic in post-Soviet Ukraine, which is divided into the Ukrainian-speaking west that wants to shake off Russian influence and embrace Western culture and the Russian-speaking east and south that value strong ties to Moscow. How intense is the debate? When the bill came up for consideration in parliament late last month, a legislative brawl ensued that left one lawmaker hospitalized. Opponents of the bill argue that it would make Russian a de facto second state language and lead to the demise of the Ukrainian tongue and Ukraine's independence from Moscow. They also contend that President Viktor Yanukovych is shamelessly pandering to voters ahead of October parliamentary elections to reverse his party’s declining popularity. Yanukovych loyalists pushed the bill through in the first of two readings Tuesday morning on the grounds that it will give millions of Russian speakers in Ukraine the right to use the tongue of their choice. "This bill fully corresponds to Ukraine's European aspirations and European obligations," said Vadym Kolesnichenko, who co-wrote the bill. Final debate on the bill still looms, so expect more brawls in the near future if opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his supporters have their way. "The law on a second state language in Ukraine will not exist," Yatsenyuk said. "We lost the battle, but we will win the war." Sounds like it’s time to take off your chains and turn your rings around, Ukraine……….

- New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo: stoner hero. While New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is ass-hattedly attempting to ban soft drinks over 16 oz., Gov. Cuomo is looking to throw on his knit beanie with sewn-in dreadlocks, break out his Cheetohs and “Planet Earth” DVDs and pulling his bong from the closet by asking state legislators to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana that are in public view. Cuomo defended his proposal as a way to avoid unnecessary misdemeanor charges against thousands of New Yorkers -- "disproportionately black and Hispanic youth," according to a statement from the governor's office. Bringing “consistency and fairness" to New York's marijuana laws may be the official reason, but stoners don’t care as long as they can get baked legally. "There is a blatant inconsistency. If you possess marijuana privately it is a violation, if you show it in public it's a crime. It's incongruous. It's inconsistent the way it has been enforced," Cuomo explained. New York's legislature addressed the issue back in 1977, reducing the penalty for possessing 25 grams or less of marijuana to a non-criminal violation carrying a fine of no more than $100 for first-time offenders, but only if the ganja was in private possession and not in public view. The problem with the law as it now exists is that if the hippie lettuce is out and viewable in public -- as it might be when someone is asked to empty his or her pockets during a so-called police "stop and frisk" -- it becomes a Class B misdemeanor. If Cuomo really wanted to secure stoner rock star status, he would ask the legislature to change the laws on selling and smoking or burning marijuana, but he’s not bold enough to do that. The governor has support from at least one legislator. "The statute as currently written unnecessarily subjects tens of thousands of people to criminal arrest and prosecution for very small quantities of marijuana," said New York State Assembly member Hakeem Jeffries. The legal change would have the biggest impact in New York City, where 94 percent of arrests for small amounts of marijuana in the state occur. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly started the ball rolling on Cuomo’s idea last year by issuing a policy order directing officers to issue violations, rather than misdemeanors, for small amounts of marijuana discovered during street searches. Bloomberg also supports the plan, so stoners may want to add New York to their list of top places to live alongside California and Colorado in the near future………..

Lazy science attacks exercise, Putin propaganda in Russia and "Spartacus" to end

- Prepare yourselves for one of the rarest of all political commodities, world: humor. Not only humor, but great humor, courtesy of an extremely unlikely source. Russian despot Vladimir Putin is selling the world and especially his own people on the idea that he actually wants fair rules and standards applied to political protests in Russia. So far, the only standards Putin and his regime have applied to protests is crushing the wills and basic rights of anyone who opposes them by any means they like. But according to Putin, he wants to European legal norms applied in response to major protests like the massive opposition rallies that have seized Russia in recent weeks. Perhaps doing some political brown-nosing while speaking at a joint news conference with EU leaders, Putin gave true lip service by stating that holding protests was "normal.” However, he maintained that Russia should "transfer into our legislation those norms of European law that are applied in many European countries to regulate such events." However, he failed to explain how such a move would address the concerns of human rights activists and scores of Western politicians who have accused him of looking to choke out democracy. Putin also failed to address the bill making its through the Russian parliament that would set much higher maximum fines for people holding unauthorized demonstrations: 300,000 roubles ($8,740) for individuals and 600,000 roubles for legal organizations. While Putin spoke, opposition leaders in St. Petersburg distributed leaflets listing people they described as political prisoners. One of them, former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was once Russia's richest man but has been in jail since his conviction for fraud and tax evasion in 2005. He accused Putin’s regime of corruption prior to his arrest, so there are more than a few shady details lurking around his case. But it’s all good because dictator Putin wants to apply European legal norms to dissidence from here on out………..

- Hit the eject button before you start your decline. Starz network is looking to bail out on its highly successful "Spartacus" saga before the still-young series straps on its skis, grabs the rope, circles the lake and jumps that ridiculous shark. “Spartacus” has been hugely successful for the cable network and given the difficulty most networks have in developing and sustaining successful series, pulling the plug on a show while it remains a viable commodity is extremely unusual. Yet there was Starz, announcing Monday that it will conclude the action-adventure series after its next season. The show, which stars Liam McIntyre as the Thracian-slave-turned-revolutionary who's out to topple the Roman Empire, has had something of a difficult run despite its success, as Andy Whitfield stared in the title role in the first season, stepped down due to illness and passed away from cancer in September 2011. McIntyre has made the role his own and carried the show well, helping “Spartacus” draw six million viewers this past season, a ginormous number for a paid subscription channel. As part of an announcement that the series’ fourth season (or fifth, counting a "prequel" season), creator-executive producer Steven S. DeKnight promised a "stunningly epic" final season. The 10-episode cycle will start in January and filming is already underway in New Zealand…………

- American flags: a symbol of pride for some, fuel for the fire for others and a safety hazard to The Phillipsburg (N.J.) Housing Authority. It is the last of those three that is making life difficult for Phillipsburg resident Dawn Paulus. Paulus inexplicably thought it would be a good idea to hang three small American flags from her balcony at her home in a Phillipsburg housing project. She has lived through world wars, cold wars and recessions and thought the flags would be a great way to honor veterans who gave their life fighting for freedom. “I think the veterans, they fought for us and this is why we have our freedom. My ex-husband was in service, brothers, nephews, cousins — to me this is a big thing,” Paulus said. “I feel I have a constitutional right to fly a flag.” The Philadelphia Housing Authority disagrees. Paulus’ flags were identified as a safety hazard and she was sent a cease and desist order demanding that she take the flags down. The order explained that she violated the lease on the apartment she pays $400 a month for and that she would be evicted if she didn’t remove the flags immediately. On the surface, the housing agency’s stance on the issue may seem intolerant, but it’s executive director insists it is not. “I don’t want to be that guy. I don’t want my legacy to be I kicked anyone out over a flag,” Paul Rummerfield said. He has received death threats over the issue but maintains that his agency is no unpatriotic, just safety conscious. “We’re not anti-American. It’s just a lease provision that says nothing can be on the balconies,” he explained. Adding a dose of irony to the issue, Paulus lives less than a mile from the town’s Civil War Memorial. But with her living situation on the line, would she really face eviction for three small flags hung on the balcony of a sixth-floor apartment? Yes. “I’ll put my things in storage and hang my hat wherever,” she proclaimed. When maintenance workers came to take the flags down, she stopped them. Once her eviction notice is served, she will have 30 days to take the flags down or else her fate will be in the hands of a judge………..

- Dear science: Stop giving lazy, FAT people excuses not to exercise. Is that too much to ask? Clearly, it is. Dr. James O’Keefe, a cardiologist at the Mid America Heart Institute of St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, led a study suggesting that what he and his team deemed excessive exercise is bad for humans. “As great as exercise is, it’s like a powerful drug,” he said. “More is better up to a certain dose, but after that there is a point of diminishing returns, and it may actually detract from [heart] health and even your longevity.” In a study that reeks of laziness in its own right, O’Keefe’s team examined previous r studies of people who trained and participated in endurance events such as marathons, triathlons, ultramarathons and long bike races. They found that individuals who exercised on a regular basis benefited significantly and increased their lifespan by an average of seven years over those who didn’t exercise, but that people who engaged in “extreme” physical activity actually experienced more side effects than benefits. Why? According to the results of this study, extreme physical activity leads to increased levels of the enzyme troponin. The heart releases troponin when its muscle is in distress and during extreme exercise it can climb as heart muscle fibers start to tear under the pressure of constantly pumping at a high level. Over time, scar tissue forms in the heart and endurance athletes end up having thicker right atria and larger right ventricles. That leads to a thickened and scarred heart that is more susceptible to abnormal heart rhythms, O’Keefe explained. Joining in on the lazy parade was co-author Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at the John Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute in New Orleans, who postulated that the best amount of running for increased longevity is about 10 to 15 miles per week. “Not only did the runners not get more benefit, but the more they did, the faster they ran, the more frequently they ran, the more miles they ran, they actually seemed to lose any benefit to the heart,” Lavie said. Their excuse-making study can be found in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings………..

- So close, NFL Players Association, so close. And by so close, of course, take that to mean you had no chance in hell and this outcome was inevitable. The NFLPA challenged commissioner Roger Goodell’s authority to discipline New Orleans Saints players for their role in a bounty system and it lost definitively. An arbitrator ruled Monday that Goodell has the power to do exactly what he did, namely impose penalties for what the league says was a three-year bounty program that targeted specific players. Arbitrator Stephen Burbank, a University of Pennsylvania law professor, took a mere five days to determine that Goodell has the power to punish the players under the collective bargaining agreement reached last August to end the lockout. As a refresher, Goodell suspended Saints linebacker Jonathan Vilma for the entire 2012 season, dinged defensive end Anthony Hargrove, now with Green Bay, was suspended for eight games, hit Saints defensive end Will Smith for four games and docked linebacker Scott Fujita, now with Cleveland, three games. All four players have appealed their suspensions and the union predictably said Monday it expects to appeal Burbank's decision because it believes salary cap violations are involved in the payment. In the NFLPA’s reasoning, that would give Burbank the authority to rule on penalizing any players involved. Maybe the union will have better luck with a separate grievance filed with a different arbitrator, Shyam Das, claiming the new CBA prohibits Goodell from punishing players for any conduct before the CBA was signed. Das has yet to rule on that grievance, making it one of many unresolved legal battles ongoing between the league and the NFLPA. Vilma’s lawsuit against Goodell for defamation in a U.S. District Court in New Orleans is still alive and the players also have sued the league in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, claiming the owners colluded in the uncapped 2010 season to have a secret salary cap. The spirit of cooperation is alive and well in America’s biggest sport this offseason……….

Seattle destroys the Dew, movie news and swapping vending machines

- R.A. Dickey has lived something of a storybook life since debuting in Major League Baseball in 2001. Despite doctors discovering after he was drafted by the Texas Rangers that he was missing an ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow, re-inventing himself mid-career by becoming a knuckleballer and rarely throwing faster than 85 mph, he has carved out a long career even though he has a career record of 49-51. His tale took another twist prior to this season, when he wrote a book in which he revealed that he was the victim of sexual abuse, first by a female babysitter when he was just eight, then by a teenage boy when he was in fourth grade. In the book, he also detailed his family's relative poverty, his father's absence, his mother's decline into alcoholism and his own infidelity to his wife and failings as a father. Maybe the soul cleansing was good for him because he has been one of the best pitchers in baseball this season. His magical ride continued Saturday, one day after Johan Santana made New York Mets history. Dickey took the mound and followed up Santana's no-hitter by shutting out St. Louis as the Mets beat the Cardinals 5-0. The win lifted him to 8-1 with a 2.69 ERA and kept the surprising Mets rolling. "It's no easy chore to follow Johan," Dickey said, "I went to bed reminding myself to bring what I bring and be myself." He was definitely himself, riding a fluttering knuckler that he could throw at speeds from 59 to 80 mph, to his eighth win of the season to help his team win for the sixth time in eight games and tie Miami for second place in the NL East, a game behind Washington. "I think what's awesome about it is we don't have to explain it. It's organic," Dickey said. At age 37 and coming back from being on the verge of being out of baseball entirely, Dickey is enjoying the sort of year he probably couldn’t have dreamed of. He has 30 strikeouts and just one walk in his last three starts and hasn't allowed a run in 17 1/3 innings overall. No matter where the trail leads from here, Dickey’s year has been about as remarkable as it could possibly be…………

- Traditional vending machines are boring. The ‘Swap-O-Matic’ vending machine at Ample Hills Creamery in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, is no traditional vending machine. Depending on the day of the week, the machine could be offering anything from toys to shoes to original artwork. However, there is no need to put money into the machine or even take out your credit card to pay. Instead, the machine allows you to swap and trade items, rather than buy them. “The Swap-O-Matic recognizes that there is a thrill in getting things. The vending machine satisfies our desires for instant gratification, but it co-ops it and re-appropriates it to something that is a more sustainable method of acquisition,” said Lina Fenequito, the creator of the Swap-O-Matic. Fenequito says she wanted to call attention to issues of overconsumption and needless waste and set out to find a creative way to encourage trading and reusing. The project began as her senior thesis at Parsons School of Design. Fenequito built a basic, low-cost version of the machine and improved on it last August with the help of visual designer Ray Mancini and electrical engineer Rick Cassidy. The Swap-O-Matic now has a machine with touchscreen capability and digital locks. Using the machine is simple: Enter your email address on the screen and choose whether you want to donate, receive, or swap an item. There are no values assigned to the items and all transactions work on a credit system. New users receive three credits and from there on, they receive a credit each time they donate an item and spend a credit every time they receive something. A straight-up swap of one item for another does not require any credits. There are no restrictions on items, as anything that fits into the machine can be swapped and traded. “There have been a few personal items like some original artwork and handwritten poems [swapped in the machine.] And there’s been some kind of oddball items, like there was a jar of Miracle Whip in there, and so that was kind of funny,” Fenequito explained. She credited her parents with imparting the philosophy of recycling and reusing as an inspiration for the machine and has received feedback from as far away Brazil, Thailand, the United Kingdom and Italy on her idea that just might start a Bohemian revolution………

- Charlize Theron is a busy woman and a very successful one at the moment. She’s one of the stars of the über-hyped “Prometheus” project from director Ridley Scott that drops in a matter of days, but for now she’s the central figure in the new film “Snow White and the Huntsman,” which opened in first place this weekend. With a total of $56.2 million, “Snow White” nearly doubled up its closest competitor, “MIB 3.” The latest bad sequel in the sci-fi franchise fell one spot to second place, making $29.3 million in its second weekend for a two-week domestic total of $112.3 million. The presumptive biggest movie of the year, “The Avengers,” remained solid in third place with $20.3 million and has earned a whopping $552.7 million domestically in five weeks of release. The disastrous voyage of “Battleship” continued as the big-budget action flick sank to fourth, made a measly $4.8 million and inched its three-week total to just $55.1 million against its massive $209 million budget. Sacha Baron Cohen’s “The Dictator” was fifth, adding $4.7 million to its coffers for a three-week total of $50.8 million. Sixth place went to “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel,” which remained in limited release but crept up two spots on the earnings list by virtue of a $4.6 million weekend. It has made $25.4 million so far and has earned a high amount of critical praise along the way. A film that has definitely not been a critical or financial success is “What to Expect When You're Expecting,” which slipped to seventh place in its third weekend with $4.4 million in earnings and an overall total of $30.7 million. Johnny Depp’s “Dark Shadows” hasn’t overwhelmed either and a weekend of $3.9 million to up its overall haul to $70.8 million in four weeks won't change that reality. “Chernobyl Diaries” has been nearly as big of a disaster as the nuclear plant meltdown upon which it is based, turning in back-to-back subpar weeks since its debut. A ninth-place finish with an even $3 million and a two-week total of $14.4 million suggest that this meltdown is headed out of the top 10 next weekend. “For Greater Glory” secured the No. 10 spot with $1.8 million in very limited release (757 theaters), while “The Hunger Games” (No. 11 and out of the top 10 for the first time) and “Think Like a Man” (No. 16) both dropped out of the top 10 from last weekend………

- Memo to all: Dismantling Serb roadblocks in Kosovo can be hazardous to one’s health. That much was readily apparent after at least three Kosovo Serbs and a NATO soldier were wounded in a gunfight on Friday as peacekeepers tried to dismantle Serb roadblocks blocking traffic. NATO troops kicked things up a notch by firing tear gas and small arms, leading protestors to bust out their handguns and return fire because, you know, everyone is packing in Kosovo. NATO troops in the Kosovo Force (KFOR) in armored personnel carriers found themselves confronted by hundreds of Serbs who pelted them with stones near barricades in the villages of Rudare and Dudin Krs outside the town of Zvecan in a Serb-dominated northern area of Kosovo. Most of the roadblocks in the area have already been dismantled by KFOR. They were initially erected as part of a long-running Serb campaign to prevent the government of Albanian-majority independent Kosovo from imposing its rule, but are no longer necessary in the eyes of NATO leaders. That philosophy is not shared to Kosovo Serbs, clearly. "One KFOR soldier has been wounded, has been evacuated and he is stable," said NATO spokesperson in Kosovo Uwe Nowitzki. "KFOR will not allow the situation to escalate and will use a proportional level of force necessary to maintain a safe and secure environment.” The campaign to remove the roadblocks will continue and so will the fact that Kosovo is 90 percent ethnic Albanian. In spite of that majority, Serbs opposed to independence dominate in a small swathe of the north bordering Serbia. Their region continues to function as part of the Serbian state and they are attempting to fend off efforts by the Kosovo government to extend its authority. KFOR troops from Germany and the United States led the forces in Sunday’s clash and received reinforcements over the weekend. Exactly what happened around the roadblock depends on who is telling the story. Dragisa Milovic, the mayor of Zvecan, said KFOR had refused to allow Serb medical personnel to help wounded Serbs. "A (KFOR) commander told me they have the authority to use deadly force on anyone who throws a stone or uses a weapon," he said. It sounds like a fair arrangement, really. Kosovo Serbs set up the barricades at boundary crossings with neighboring Serbia last year in response to authorities in Pristina and the European Union's police and judiciary mission EULEX attempting to extend their influence into the area. Trying to remove them is bad idea unless a Sunday morning shootout with the locals is your idea of a good time……….

- Michael Bloomberg’s plan is already working. Even if it’s not in the city where he’s the mayor, Bloomberg’s war on soda is clearly making an impact. Sure, you might argue that a Sound Transit train in Seattle colliding with a semi-truck filled with cases of Mountain Dew has nothing to with the ass-hatted mayor of New York City trying to ban restaurants and street carts has nothing to do with an “accident” in which a train and truck collide and gallons of the Dew are spilled near the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and South Holly Street about 9 a.m. on Saturday. That would be the cynical point of view and let’s face it, life is miserable when lived in a funk of cynicism. Whether part of a sinister bi-coastal anti-soda plot or not, the train t-boned the cargo section of the truck, shearing it in half and sending hundreds of cases of soda spilling onto the road. Many of the individual cans burst open due to the force applied to them, leaving the intersection soaked in sugary sweet liquid goodness. A few opportunistic passersby scooped up stray cans and police didn’t hassle them as long as they didn’t attempt to horde a high number of cans. The accident took most of the day to clean up and an investigation into the cause of the accident is pending. Regardless of who is to blame, a whole lot of Mountain Dew was wasted and that is giving soda-phobes like Mayor Bloomberg exactly what they want…………

Germs in offices, strippers and rape victims united and college football's top cartel

- Guns N' Roses are easy to hate, both as a group and as individuals. Hating them just became even easier. As their tour of the United Kingdom wraps up, GNR have run out of tolerance for anyone who is willing to pay absurdly bloated ticket prices for a bastardized, diluted version of a once great rock act but who also has an affinity for said act’s iconic former guitarist. Slash would be the guitarist in question and during the band's gig at London's O2 Arena Thursday night, a member of the audience was forced to remove his t-shirt and go bare-chested under his jacket. When asked why he was shirtless, GNR fan James Revell said he was told to remove his top because no one was allowed in wearing a Slash T-shirt.
A security guard confirmed that they were told by that band’s management not to allow anyone into the O2 Arena who was wearing a Slash T-shirt. Those who had one on were asked to remove it and if they refused, they were turned away. "I felt very angry because I was looking after my little brother at the time and felt as though my freedom to wear what I want had been taken away from me, however I did not react angrily as I didn't want to spoil the show for him," Revell said the next day. "I believe they asked me to do this because Axl Rose has some problem with Slash and if he saw me wearing the shirt he might have stormed off stage."
While it’s doubtful that Rose, in his beer-and-fried-chicken-induced bender that he seems to roll through life in, would notice a fan in the cheap seats with a Slash shirt on, maybe Revell has a point. So how did GNR handle the fans it so callously treated on their way in the door? By showing up more than an hour late.  Thankfully, the charade ended with the final show of the tour at the O2 Arena Friday night and now GNR can go and be assholes to another corner of the world…………

- Have a yearning to invest in a troubled military state’s even more troubled electric power system? If so, Myanmar's government has a proposition for you. The regime has invited foreign firms to invest in the country's power for the first time as it grasps for straws to solve dire electricity shortages that led to a week of protests recently. To extend an open invitation to the world, the Electric Power Ministry took out advertisements in state-run newspapers Friday and Saturday that read, "Invitation to private sector for electricity production and distribution." The ads pleaded with local and foreign companies to help the government "distribute electricity in the whole country as quickly as possible." Power shortages have plagued Myanmar for more than a decade, ironic because the country has plentiful natural gas supplies. Its poor power distribution infrastructure has never been fully developed and now that deficient power grid is a major problem because demonstrators across Myanmar took to the streets for a week late last month when they remained without power for an extended period of time. Technically Myanmar is now under the control of a reformist government that has taken power after a half-century of military rule, but the military’s influence remains a factor. Sadly, last month’s protests were peaceful and the government’s response was equally benign. Officials made an uncharacteristic appeal for understanding and explained that rationing was required to cope with greater demand and decreased supply during the hot summer months. Some blame was also placed on ethnic Kachin rebels for blowing up several electricity pylons that reduced power supplies in several areas, but that didn’t exactly solve the problem. Joint ventures Myanmar has signed several other countries for electricity generation haven’t done much good either and now begging is apparently the plan………..

- The workplace is a filthy place. With break rooms, office kitchens, conference rooms and scores of employees trucking in the germs they have picked up from their children, spouses and friends, the office is a virtual biohazard. There are hundreds of species of bacteria on your desk and now, science has proven it. A team led by researcher Scott Kelley, an associate professor of biology at San Diego State University, sampled offices in three U.S. cities. The team identified at least 500 species of bacteria in the offices and not surprisingly, found that men's offices tended to be germier than women's. There was no East Coast-West Coast beef involved, as offices in New York City and San Francisco had similar types of bacteria. However, the granola-eating, tree-hugging hippies in the Golden State tended to have offices that were less contaminated than those in the Big Apple, the researchers said. As bad as the entire “500 types of bacteria” sounds, Kelley and his crew insist the biohazards in the average office are nothing to panic about. "You shouldn't be worried in your own office — it's you; it's just a reflection of who you are," said study referring to the bacteria you find on your typical desk or keyboard. These bacteria are "with us all the time, and they don’t make us sick," Kelley said. His point is fair, as many bacteria are harmless and actually help maintain human health. In that case, what is the point of the study? According to Kelley, the idea is to allow scientists to spot out-of-the norm bacteria that cause health problems now that the various bacteria present in buildings with generally healthy people have been identified. These dangerous bacteria might turn up when something in the building changes, such as the air vents. A side effect of the study is shining a light on how little is known about the diversity of bacteria in environments such as offices, seeing as humans spend about 90 percent of their lives indoors. To learn all about these environments, Kelley and colleagues sampled a total of 90 offices from buildings in New York City, San Francisco and Tucson, Ariz. They ventured into the filthy worlds of employees' chairs, phones, desktops, computer mice and keyboards. A thorough analysis of the bacterial DNA to identify the types and amounts of bacteria present turned up their findings, which showed high amounts of bacteria from human skin or the nasal, oral or intestinal cavities. Office chairs and phones had the most bacteria and men had about 10 to 20 percent more bacteria in their offices, on average, than women. The study wasn’t exactly an altruistic one, as it was funded in part by Clorox Corporation. What’s next for Kelley and his crew? They plan to look at the types of molds present in offices. Sounds like a lot of fungi, er, fun………

- Illinois strippers may soon be bumping and grinding on each other and filthy brass poles for a good cause in the near future. A new measure passed by the state legislature seeks to pair two extremely unlikely groups: coke-addled skanks with daddy issues who are stripping their way through law school (otherwise known as feeding a nasty drug habit) and rape and sexual assault victims. How would this work? By placing an annual surcharge on strip clubs that have live nude dancing and permit alcohol, that’s how. The measure would be applied to businesses, which could pay $3 for every person who enters or pay a graduated amount based on their sales. Either way, that cost would eventually find its way to the pathetic degenerates who actually patronize strip clubs and consume the horrible food and overpriced beverages served in such establishments. In turn, that could mean less $1 bills to stuff into the G-String of Bambi, Destiny or Ginger. But hey, the money would be going to victims of the most heinous crimes known to man that don’t actually involve someone dying, so there is a positive. The measure passed the house on a 92-23 vote Thursday and now goes to Gov. Pat Quinn for approval. The fate of stripper skanks, skeevy strip club patrons, greasy strip club owners and sexual assault victims is now in your hands, Gov. Quinn. Act accordingly and then apply plenty of hand sanitizer……………

- The Southeastern Conference has dominated college football for the past six years – longer if you ask SEC honks. Those who run the conference that has won six consecutive Bowl Championship Series titles want to keep it that way as the scumbags who run the BCS inch toward a proposed four-team playoff. The plan calls for the sport’s top four teams to square off to determine a true national champion for the first time and the SEC wants to make sure it seizes as many playoff spots as possible. To that end, the conference took an official stance on the playoff proposal as school presidents and athletic directors voted unanimously to support having the four best teams play for the national title. In other words, they have no use for a plan that includes ties to conference champions. "If we're going to go to a four-team playoff, which I anticipate we are, it needs to be, and the fans would expect us to provide, the best four teams in the country," SEC commissioner Mike Slive said. "And if people aren't happy with the current system of how we rank them, then let's go back and look at the system that creates one through four. I'm very open to looking at how we would do that.” Slive obviously isn't open to any plan that doesn’t include multiple teams from his conference being involved in a playoff system, but he obviously can't admit that. He has plenty of support from the SEC’s presidents and athletic directors. "I don't think that vote was taken because it's going to be best for this league," Florida athletic director Jeremy Foley said. "It may turn out that way, but it all goes in cycles. I think the thought is if you're going to have a playoff, you want the four best teams.” Also included in the SEC’s idea for the playoff is having the semifinal games played within the current bowl structure and have the championship game bid out separately as a stand-alone game that would be college football’s version of the NFL's Super Bowl. Slive college football’s other conference commissioners and Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick will meet June 13 and June 20 in Chicago to likely formalize details of the proposed playoff and pass their suggestions along to the Presidential Oversight Committee, which will meet June 26 in Washington, D.C., to finalize the postseason plan. That plan would then go into place after the 2014 regular season……….

Verizon viewdini, NYC vs. soft drinks and bombastic umpires

- When umpires or officials become the story in any sport at any level, that’s bad news for everyone involved. The men and women in stripes, chest protectors or black hats with whistles in their mouths or pitch counters in their hands are there to enforce the rules and keep the game on track, nothing more. If and when an official interjects himself or herself into the game in a bigger way, that’s no good. Someone needs to pass that message along to umpire Laz Diaz, who got into a confrontation with New York Yankees catcher Russell Martin during New York’s 6-5 win over the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday night. Martin and Diaz, working behind home plate for the game, argued over balls and strikes early in the game. The disagreement did not escalate and Martin was not ejected. As it turned out, he may have had a more pleasant evening had Diz tossed him from the contest. Instead, Martin claimed Diaz began messing with him during the game and went so far as to refuse to allow him to throw new baseballs back to his own pitchers on the mound after balls were fouled out of play or thrown out because they had become scuffed up. Martin alleged that Diaz told him that throwing the balls was “a privilege I had to earn.” He explained the mini-drama with a curious metaphor. “Even at the end of the game after I get hit in the neck. I’m like, can I throw the ball back now? He’s still like no. I’m like you’re such a (expletive). Like for real. Unbelievable. I even told him like when there’s guys on base, I like to keep my arm loose. No. I’m not letting you throw a ball back. That’s pretty strange to me … I was kind of mystified. I really didn’t get that. He was punishing me,” Martin said. Diaz, like any umpire in his situation, did not comment on the issue and probably never will. Then again, he doesn’t have to because he’s in charge and unfortunately, that’s that……….

- Few politicians know how to grandstand quite like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Bloomberg has gained major publicity from smoking and trans far bans and now, he’s getting plenty of run for his proposal to ban sugar-filled, calorie-laden drinks of more than 16 ounces from thousands of restaurants, delis, movie theaters, food carts, sports venues and other businesses that serve food and drink. His announcement ironically came on one day before the New York prepared to celebrate National Doughnut Day with a mass giveaway of Krispy Kremes. “The idea here is you tend to eat all the food in the container in front of you,” Bloomberg said in one of his many public remarks on his proposal. “If it’s a bigger container, you eat more. If somebody put a smaller glass or plate or bowl in front of you, you would eat less.” The logical argument that an avalanche of unhealthy foods in mass quantities are available on every street in Manhattan doesn’t seem to bother Bloomberg, nor does the idea that a restaurant that offers free refills isn't likely to see patrons drink less just because their fat selves have to waddle up to the soda machine one extra time. Critics took little time to respond with vitriol and outrage. "New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's micromanaging Nanny State strikes again,” Americans For Limited Government President Bill Wilson said. Wilson’s group likened Bloomberg’s proposal to President Obama’s healthcare plan, labeling it  “another example of the government overstepping its authority.” Big Soda also denounced the plan, with the Coca-Cola Co. dismissing the proposal as unnecessary because calories already are listed on its products. "New Yorkers expect and deserve better than this,” it said in a statement. “They can make their own choices about the beverages they purchase. We hope New Yorkers loudly voice their disapproval about this arbitrary mandate.” That Bloomberg had no objection to Krispy Kreme President and CEO Jim Morgan ringing the closing bell Friday as traders were treated to thousands of free doughnuts is amusing. Maybe the next step is issuing doughnut or soda quotas to make sure no one is consuming too many………..

- Verizon’s 4G network hasn’t exactly taken off the way the company had hoped. In an attempt to change that, Verizon on Friday officially launched viewdini, its mobile video portal that provides access to movies, TV shows and other content from Comcast, Netflix and other providers on users LTE-enabled tablets and smartphones. The company announced viewdini last week at the 2012 Cable Show and now, the mobile site powered by CBS Interactive's TV.com is officially up and running. It provides access to Comcast Xfinity, Hulu Plus, mSpot, Netflix and Verizon Video and the wireless giant hopes to add a few more content providers in the coming weeks, including Verizon FiOS TV. To enjoy the benefits of viewdini, customers must have a Verizon Wireless data plan. On a 4G network, those data plans range from $30 per month for 2 GB of monthly data usage to $80 per month for 10 GB. To put those numbers in persepctive, Verizon estimates that streaming 30 minutes of high-quality video daily would use 30 GB of data per month. In other words, not a lot of viewing time for quite a bit of money. The viewdini app has some versatility in that it may also be used over Wi-Fi, depending on the content provider's rights, in which case usage would not be counted toward the 4G LTE caps. Presently, users must start playing a video when connected to Wi-Fi to determine whether it's available over a Wi-Fi network. "We continue to expand and enhance our content with our audience in mind, working with reputable content providers in order to bring a rich mobile entertainment experience to our customers," Verizon Wireless executive director of marketing Kristi Crum said in a statement. Those who throw down big money for a large data plan and to use viewdini can search content by title, topic or an actor's name, returning results showing which services have mobile video for streaming and whether it is available at no additional charge, by subscription, to rent or for purchase. So far, it is only available to Verizon Wireless customers with 4G LTE-enabled Android devices, with support for Apple's iOS in development. The app itself is free for Android and can be downloaded from Verizon Apps and Google Play. It is just about the only free offer in this expensive proposition………

- When you think freedom and especially freedom of expression, you probably don’t think Turkey. The Islami-heavy state is not known for its tolerance of dissenting viewpoints and a Turkish court’s decision to formally charge an internationally known Turkish pianist and composer with insulting Islamic religious values in comments he made on Twitter probably won't change that perception. No credit to the court in Istanbul for voting Friday to approve an indictment against Fazil Say, who has played piano with the New York Philharmonic, Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, National Orchestra of France and Tokyo Symphony. While it could be argued that Say has boosted national pride and called positive attention to Turkey by using his musical skills around the world, that clearly does not give him the right to say what he thinks, not in the eyes of the court. Say now faces charges of inciting hatred and public enmity, and insulting "religious values." Those sorts of charges aren’t normally levied against a person who has served as a culture ambassador for the European Union. However, Say allegedly mocked Islamic beliefs about paradise. He has denied the charges and his trial will open Oct. 18, according to Say’s attorney, Meltem Akyol. Akyol confirmed that Say could face a maximum 1 1/2 years in prison if he is convicted………..

- The idea for a Bourne-less “Bourne” movie seemed bad on the surface and as the release of “The Bourne Legacy” nears, the concept still seems fundamentally flawed. Not having Matt Damon, who owned the role of Jason Bourne in the first three movies in the series to the point that continuing without him seemed absurd and a blatant cash grab, beating bad guys down with rolled-up magazines and blankets seemed destined to fail. With the “Legacy” release slated for Aug. 3, the promotion for the film is ramping up and the first full-length trailer for The Bourne Legacy has finally been released online. It smartly makes passing references to Jason Bourne and other key parts of the franchise and asks the question, "You think that Jason Bourne was the whole story? There's a lot more going on here." In short, the concept is the termination of genetically modified killers like Bourne and the central figure is Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner), an agent of Operation Outcome, a black ops program that creates killing machines the way Treadstone did, but without the messy side effects and “inconsistency.” Those side effects included headaches, memory loss and other emotional issues for Treadstone agents. Jason Bourne is nowhere in sight, so Cross must do his best to stay alive and along the way across the globe, he rescues the beautiful scientist Stephanie Snyder (Rachel Weisz) and attempts to stay ahead of the ruthless Byer (Edward Norton) and his hit squads. The film’s success or failure will speak volumes about the abilities of writer and director Troy Gilroy, who took over the reins from Paul Greengrass, who directed the first three films in the series and whose absence from “Legacy” led Damon to walk away as well. Fans of the franchise will recognize David Strathairn as Noah Vosen, Albert Finney as Dr. Albert Hirsch, Joan Allen as FBI Agent Pamela Landy, and Scott Glenn as Ezra Kramer to provide a few familiar faces for the movie…………