NASCAR on FOX
Jeff – i will not watch another nascar race if they support the removing of the flag in sc
Customer Service – We are glad to inform you that you’ve never actually watched a NASCAR race, because NASCAR isn’t racing. NASCAR is an excuse for rednecks to get drunk and watch other rednecks make left turns. Hope that helps!
Whataburger is the greatest burger around, I have been a fan since a child, HOWEVER I will not spend another penny at your stores due to your anti gun attitude. I suspect you would not ban openly gay people from your stores even though many people find that activity offensive and are uncomfortable witnessing it. …. Same justification you used for banning open carried handguns. Just Saying.
PaulahmartinI really think that will fix everything.
PaulahmartinI am sure there are a lot of people who think like this.
Paulahmartinthis is sometimes how I feel about closures in Lebanon
PaulahmartinI just think this is awesome.
Tesla's chief technical officer, JB Straubel, has revealed the next few steps of Tesla's world-domination plans. Most notably, the Tesla Model 3—due to go on sale in 2017—will come in two different flavours: sedan (saloon) and crossover. The pricing for both is still expected to be around $35,000 (~£25,000), and they will both get around 200 miles (320km) of range on a battery charge. Tesla currently plans to show off the Model 3 in March 2016, presumably at the Geneva Motor Show.
The Model 3 is Tesla's attempt to capture the mainstream market. $35,000 is still very much on the high end of "mainstream," but it's certainly a lot more affordable than the Model S, which starts at $75,000 (or £55,000 in the UK). Not a whole lot is known about the Model 3, other than it will be smaller than the Model S—and now, we know that it'll come in two versions: a sedan and a crossover. Straubel didn't mention timing, but it is highly likely that the sedan will come first, with the crossover utility vehicle (CUV) following some time after.
More immediately, however, Tesla is scheduled to start delivering the Model X CUV in the next few months (September 2015 is the current target). The Model X is based on the full-size sedan Model S platform, with the same 70kWh and 85kWh battery options; and indeed, the Model X also looks a taller, roomier Model S. Oh, except that it has frickin' gullwing doors. Pricing hasn't been announced for the Model X, but we expect it'll be at least as much as the Model S.
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Last month, we shared a story about Art Institute students requesting student loan forgiveness after many of the for-profit Art Institute locations announced they were shutting down. If your school shuts down, and if your for-profit school’s parent company, the Education Management Corporation, is regularly under investigation for fraud, you shouldn’t have to pay back your student loans, right?
Well, I don’t have an update on the Art Institute story, but I do have an update on another for-profit educational system: Corinthian Colleges. To quote the New York Times:
In a move against what he called “the ethics of payday lending” in higher education, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan announced Monday that the Education Department would forgive the federal loans of tens of thousands of students who attended Corinthian Colleges, a for-profit college company that closed and filed for bankruptcy last month, amid widespread charges of fraud.
In case you’re curious about what that means: Corinthian Colleges worked to attract and enroll predominantly low-income students into its for-profit college system. Admissions representatives used high-pressure sales tactics to persuade students to enroll and take out loans. The college did provide students with coursework and, if the student was able to complete the program, a diploma; however, students often found that both their education and their diploma were of little value in the job market.
Here’s a sample student story from the Huffington Post:
“I said I can’t afford it, I can’t do loans,” [Tasha Courtright] remembered, noting that she was working a minimum-wage job at a gas station when Corinthian first recruited her. “They said, ‘Let us do the numbers.’ They said I qualified for Cal Grants and Pell Grants, and I wouldn’t have to pay anything.”
The recruiter called Courtright repeatedly for two days, pressuring her to make a decision. “They said classes were starting and ‘If you don’t do it now, you never will.’ So I went down again and signed up.” Courtright spent four years at Everest, earning a bachelor’s degree in applied business management. She said recruiters promised she wouldn’t pay a dime; she ended up with $41,000 in student debt.
The HuffPo also notes that another Corinthian student “had an employer at a bank laugh in his face when he said he went to Everest, telling him he would never hire anyone from that school.” (Everest is one of Corinthian Colleges’ many colleges.)
When your school uses high-pressure tactics to recruit you, gives you a sub-standard education, goes bankrupt, closes, and is under charges of fraud, the federal government will forgive your student loans. That’s what it takes. On the plus side, Art Institute students may soon be offered the same forgiveness. Back to the NYT:
Mr. Duncan also said the department planned to develop a process to allow any student—whether from Corinthian or elsewhere—to be forgiven their loans if they had been defrauded by their colleges.
A special master would be appointed within three weeks, department officials said, to create procedures to apply for relief that are “durable, not just for Corinthian but beyond.”
If you’re curious about how private loans factor into this, the Huffington Post has an update. Corinthian pressured many of its students into high-interest private Genesis loans, but the market, as they say, always reaches equilibrium:
The Education Department and CFPB negotiated $480 million in debt relief on private Genesis loans, but most of those loans are in default and have been deemed uncollectible.
I hope someday we see one of those default stories as an op-ed in the New York Times.
PaulahmartinNot sure how involved Bryson is on this
Remember how the funniest parts of Grumpy Old Men were when Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau didn’t act grumpy at all? No? Neither do we, and yet that seems to be the general premise behind A Walk In The Woods, the new comedy whose studio pitch was almost certainly “Grumpy Old Men meets City Slickers.” Robert Redford and Nick Nolte star as two old friends who decide to make the most of their twilight years by hiking the Appalachian trail. And while Nolte appears to be doing a variant on his “gruff ‘n’ crazy” shtick, neither character comes across as particularly funny, so much as they just resemble some guys on a camping trip. The film was directed by Ken Kwapis, who worked on some good TV shows (The Office, Freaks And Geeks), but whose film credits read more like a warning than a promise (License To Wed, He ...
Paulahmartinyikes
In the Southern Tablelands region of Australia, a “ballooning” event has seen millions of spiders riding the wind and creating their own arachnid storm. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the spiders in question crawl to the highest point they can find, release strands of silk, then launch themselves into the air.
PaulahmartinFor some reason this makes me want to clean out my closet. It would probably be squirrels though.
It's a familiar scene to most Americans. The poignant moment when a soldier is honored for his or her service before a cheering crowd during halftime of an NFL game. It turns out, however, that at least some of these patriotic displays are not what they seem.
More at Scout and NJ.com, with a discussion at Reddit.
A New Jersey-based website, NJ.com, has a detailed report that reveals the Department of Defense is paying millions of dollars to many NFL teams in what are essentially paid promotions to honor America's heroes...
This does not mean, of course, that all halftime events featuring troops or veterans are paid promotions. However, the fact that many are could undermine such efforts and "leaves a bad taste in your mouth" one lawmaker said.
"Those of us go to sporting events and see them honoring the heroes," said Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake in an interview with NJ.com. "You get a good feeling in your heart. Then to find out they're doing it because they're compensated for it, it leaves you underwhelmed. It seems a little unseemly."
It's hardly a secret that the NFL is one of the leading recruitment vehicles for the U.S. military. The problem, Flake implies, is that these events are portrayed as genuine moments of gratitude expressed to America's servicemen, not advertisements.
Welcome to the newest entrant in the extreme sports category: “cloud chasing.” Competitors play it... with electronic cigarettes. They are called cloud chasers, and their devoted fans are cloud gazers. Competitions like this have been heating up world-wide...More information at the Wall Street Journal.
Competitions are straightforward. Cloud chasers inhale on the devices, which convert e-cigarette “juice” into vapor. They then toast the competition by blowing the biggest, densest vapor cloud possible. In less than two years, the sport has adopted all the trappings of professional athletics. It not only has fans but teams, sponsors and cash prizes...
The origins of this sport are somewhat foggy. E-cigarettes first arrived in the U.S. about eight years ago, but it wasn’t until two years ago, when vape shops took off, that shopkeepers started hosting contests to attract customers. Now, there are an estimated 8,500 vape shops in the U.S., doing $1.2 billion in sales, and the number of contests has exploded...
A newly discovered species of fungus with an uncanny resemblance to little humans has been found on the roadside in Norfolk.
With fleshy heads, arms and legs, the mushrooms, discovered by Jonathan Revett in Cockley Cley, Norfolk have just been classified as a new species... The mushrooms have been named as geastrum britannicum to reflect them being unique to the UK.
PaulahmartinHey look they are already trying to ramp up the terrorism fear ahead of the next election.
PaulahmartinI can't believe how stupid we are
On Tuesday, April 28, a federal judge in Pennsylvania struck down the state's "Revictimization Relief Act," agreeing with plaintiffs that it violated the First and Fifth Amendments of the US Constitution.
The law at issue was passed in October 2014, and permitted crime victims to sue convicted offenders to stop "conduct" - including speech - that cause "mental anguish" to the victims. The law was not limited to prisoners - even those completely out of the justice system could be subject to its restrictions. Much of the press surrounding Tuesday's decision focused on controversial prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, whose commencement address at Goddard College last year took place three days before the bill was introduced and was referenced by then-Governor Tom Corbett when he signed the bill into law.
The case is Prison Legal News v. Kane. (Edited to add: the ruling covered another case as well, Mumia Abu Jamal v. Kane.)
In his decision, U.S. District Court Chief Judge Christopher Conner wrote, “A past criminal offense does not extinguish the offender’s constitutional right to free expression.” Judge Conner dismissed the state’s argument that the law was a mere regulation of conduct with an incidental impact on speech, and noted that even if that had been the case, the law would still be flawed:
Assuming arguendo that the Act or its history revealed a principal intention to regulate behavior and only an incidental regulation of speech, the court‟s holding would remain unaltered. The Supreme Court has held that when a law “generally functions as a regulation of conduct” it is nonetheless subject to strict scrutiny when “as applied to plaintiffs[,] the conduct triggering coverage under the statute consists of communicating a message.” Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 27-28 (2012).
As reported in the March edition of FTRF News, the Freedom to Read Foundation filed an amicus brief in the case in February, arguing that allowing judges to issue injunctions in accordance with the law constitutes prior restraint "on a limitless range of speech, including matters of public interest, such as deterring crime, rehabilitation of prisoners, prison conditions, and fundamental issues of justice."
You can find the judge's decision here. For more on the ruling, visit Volokh Conspiracy and Philadelphia City Paper (one of the plaintiffs).
The bill's sponsor has indicated he will ask about an appeal and, if the Attorney General declines, will introduce new legislation.
In case you blinked and missed it, the St. Louis Blues were eliminated from the 2015 Stanley Cup Playoffs in the first round by the Minnesota Wild.
Which means they will not win the 2015 Stanley Cup. Which means our friend Mike has made a very, very terrible life choice.
Mike was the winner of a contest on The Rizzuto Show on 105.7 FM The Point that asked Blues fans what they’d do to win a free St. Louis tattoo. His answer – “I would let the team bang my wife” – won both the radio contest and the 2015 Classiest Man Alive Award.
(Plus, doesn’t it really all depend on when this activity takes place? For example, if it’s scheduled for May or June, the Blues won’t even show up…)
So Mike went to Big Dave’s The Ink Spot in Troy, Missouri, and received his prize: a 2015 St. Louis Blues Stanley Cup Champions tattoo. Which emphatically refutes the theory that those words would reject each other like a bad organ transplant if ever in close proximity.
On the plus side: It’s a gorgeous tattoo. And we’re not just saying that because Big Dave looks like the kind of guy who wields a mean chainsaw and has a taste for human offal.
On the minus side: HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA OMG HA HA HA HA HA HA HA WOW.
Now Mike waits patiently for 2045 and a somewhat painless edit…
PaulahmartinAm sharing mostly because of the picture they used in the actual article. Best Hitch picture ever.
Like spoiled milk, moldy cheese and that Russian dressing that’s been on the fridge door since the Bush administration, Ken Hitchcock has an expiration date.
His first head-coaching job in the NHL remains his longest tenured one: Seven years with the Dallas Stars, 503 games, with a Stanley Cup and two Western Conference titles.
Then came four years and 254 games with the Philadelphia Flyers before being fired in 2006. Then came four years and 284 games with the Columbus Blue Jackets before parting ways in 2010.
He’s coached the St. Louis Blues for four seasons and 281 games.
Time’s up.
Look, there’s no denying the effect Hitchcock had on this franchise. His systematic structure produced four straight playoff years – Year 1 had him taking over for Davis Payne after 13 games – with the Blues twice finishing first and twice finishing second.
But their six-game bow to the Minnesota Wild is the third straight season that they’re out on their asses in the first round. This year’s loss came at the expense of the best roster, on paper, that GM Doug Armstrong has given his coach. And it wasn’t against the Kings or the Blackhawks. It was against a team they should have beaten.
This core hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt that it can succeed, but it’s time to find out if it can with another voice. There’s a reason Hitch hasn’t lasted more than four years in his previous two stops, and it’s because like other coaches from the same mold – that late Pat Burns and the hated Mike Keenan come to mind – there’s a finite amount of time these guys have the players’ attention and motivation.
Did you watch the Blues vs. Wild series? Was there anything you saw that would indicate they’re jumping in front of a bullet for their coach?
The idea of “message fatigue” is a very valid thing in the NHL. How many times have you seen a gruff coach replaced by a players’ guy, or vice versa?
That’s the direction I imagine the Blues go in if they opt not to bring back Hitchcock – please keep in mind any parting of ways would be mutual, as Hitch doesn’t have a contract for next season – but the question is whether they actually go in that direction.
There are two paths here for the Blues, and they eerily mimic the decisions that the other stumbling disappointment of dashed expectations in the Western Conference faced last summer – the San Jose Sharks.
The Blues have a good coach. He gets results in the regular season. His postseason results? Not so good, especially based on expectations.
The Blues have two players at the heart of their lineup who have been there for years – David Backes and T.J. Oshie. They’re beloved by fans. They’re leaders on the team. They’re vital members of the community. They’re really, really good guys.
But their playoff numbers, and lack success, could be as scrutinized as those of their coach.
(It’s not a perfect parallel, as Patrick Marleau and Joe Thornton’s postseason performances far outshine those of Backes and Oshie, but just stick with me here.)
Backes had one goal and one assist against the Wild, giving him two goals and four assists in his last 16 playoff games. Oshie … well, let us know when he shows up for the first round. One goal and one assist in six games, and we might have noticed Steve Ott more than him this series. He does have five goals in his last 17 postseason games, but he’s also a minus-10.
So the question then becomes whether you save face by changing the face of your team.
Backes goes unrestricted next summer and is 31; he’s been with the Blues since 2006. Oshie’s only 28 and has been with the Blues since 2008. If you believe the core is the problem, then you take a melon baller and scoop out these two this summer. They both have enormous value. Maybe it’s just not going to happen in St. Louis.
Or maybe it will, with a new voice behind the bench.
As I said, the next move would be for a players’ guy. Todd McLellan has been mentioned, as he will be for every job, and once you get past the utter hilarity of the coach of the Western Conference’s OTHER annual heartbreaker taking over the Blues, he’s a good fit.
Dan Bylsma probably intrigues me the most. Replacing Hitchcock would be akin to replacing Michel Therrien with the Pittsburgh Penguins. Factor in his history with players like Backes, Oshie, Paul Stastny and Kevin Shattenkirk, and it’s a compelling fit.
Former Devils coach Peter DeBoer would fit that bill too. He’s an outstanding coach, with a bit of swagger, and that’s never a bad thing.
Look, it’s not an easy decision to move off Hitchcock. Ask the Penguins what it’s like to jettison a successful coach for the sin of playoff underachievement. There are going to be those who point to the Blues’ goaltending as being the culprit this time, as Jake Allen gave up three softies in the series and was pulled in Game 6. As Jeff Gordon wrote:
This was the last time this collection of players and coaches will work together. Disaster brings consequences. Change is inevitable, perhaps significant change.
“It’s terrible right now,” Allen said. “To get a chance to win a Stanley Cup, it doesn’t happen too often in your career. Especially with a team like this.”
So Allen earned his spot on the Pantheon of Blues Goaltending Failures, joining the likes of Ryan Miller, Chris Osgood, Roman Turek, Jon Casey, Curtis Joseph (Keenan Era only) and, of course, Jaroslav Halak’s balky groin muscles — famously fragile body parts that have their own special place in franchise lore.
That’s quite a collection.
But here’s the thing: Jake Allen could learn from this. Hitchcock said that himself. He’s 24, this was his first rodeo, and maybe he comes back older and wiser and better.
Hitchcock has no room to grow. This is the ceiling for himself and the Blues. Jake Allen could have been Jacques Plante in this series and it doesn’t change the fact that, yet again, this group under Hitchcock scored four goals in their four losses. Take out the six-goal explosion in Game 4, and the Blues scored eight goals in five games.
So once again, it’s goaltending and a lack of goal scoring. Same crap, different year, and something’s gotta change.
We imagine it’ll be behind the bench before it’s anything substantial from the roster Armstrong’s built.
Hitchcock will be fine. The Maple Leafs, Sharks and Flyers are three teams that might throw money at him if he's available. And why not: The next expiration date is in 2019...
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