By Maggie Hendricks
Evgeni Plushenko‘s long, delusional journey continues. Just days after the silver medalist for men’s figure skating denied that Evan Lysacek is the true champion of men’s figure skating, he has apparently awarded himself a platinum medal. From his official website:
It reads, “Silver of Salt Lake, Gold of Torino, Platinum of Vancouver.” What’s impressive here is that not only has Plushenko’s website team fabricated an Olympic medal, it designed a platinum medal, too. Bravo. That’s commitment to a delusion.
Previously, Plushenko ripped gold medalist Evan Lysacek for not attempting a quad jump, and even Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin weighed in on the controversy, saying Plushenko “performed the most accomplished program on the Vancouver ice.” Lysacek responded to the criticism with class, but Plushenko clearly hasn’t come to grips with the fact that the gold medal eluded him in Vancouver.
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This is terible sportsmanship. I saw this performance and no he was not better so what he had a quad. You can not have one thing no one else has and expect to when if the rest of your progam is not up to par. I think he relied on that one jump to help over shadow what he was lacking on the over all performance.
I really did not enjoy his performance as much as the other. But for him to create a medal and to put it on the site like this is ridiculous. There goes all respect I had for him as an athlete. I mean come on be a man you did not perform better and someone else won. I think he is a little full of him self. He takes 3 years off then expects to come back and when the gold.
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Play Video LiveScience Contributor
LiveScience.com Stephanie Pappas
livescience Contributor
livescience.com – Sun Feb 21, 4:16 pm ET
NBC’s “The Biggest Loser” is all about records. In the past seasons, the weight-loss reality show has repeatedly set new benchmarks for heaviest contestant (454, 476 and 526 pounds), fastest 100-pound weight loss (seven weeks), and most weight lost in one week (34 pounds).
The show, which takes obese Americans and pits them against each other in a battle to lose the most weight and win $250,000, thrives on extreme numbers. But physicians and nutritionists worry the show’s focus on competitive weight loss is, at best, counterproductive and, at worst, dangerous.
“They’re taking people who have been inactive and are not in good shape and boom, automatically subjecting them to this stress,” Carol Wolin-Riklin, the bariatric nutrition coordinator for the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, told LiveScience. “Things are going to happen.”
And indeed, things have. Two patients were hospitalized after collapsing during a one-mile (1.6 km) foot race for the season 8 premiere. This year’s season 9 opened with another strenuous challenge in which contestants raced 26.2 miles (42 km) on stationary bikes. Show medical consultant and UCLA professor Rob Huizenga had to drag one protesting contestant off her bike when she was stricken with severe cramps. A second contestant, 526-pound Michael Ventrella, was treated for exhaustion.
Health risks of obesity
The show’s producers point out that contestants are under medical supervision and say the extreme nature of the competition is inspirational for viewers.
And of course, there are serious health risks to being as obese as the Biggest Loser contestants. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), obesity can increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and certain types of cancer. The risks become more pronounced as the obesity becomes more severe, and losing weight is a very good idea, said Wolin-Riklin ¬- if done right.
“The way I go about encouraging healthful weight loss is by working on changes one at a time,” she said. “By making these changes bit-by-bit I think you have a better shot at having long-lasting lifestyle changes.”
Real-life weight loss?
But weight loss on “The Biggest Loser” is far removed from weight loss in the real world.
For one thing, contestants start out in worse shape than most. Seventeen of the 22 contestants have a body mass index (BMI) over 40, meaning they are severely obese. In the “real world,” more than one-third of U.S. adults, or 72 million people, are considered obese with a BMI of 30 or higher, according to the CDC. But research published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the number of Americans with a BMI over 40 is just under 6 percent. In other words, the show’s claim that the contestants are the “epitome” of American obesity is a bit like saying that VH1′s “Rock of Love with Bret Michaels” epitomizes the American dating scene.
And then there’s the exercise program. Contestants work out five to six hours a day, eating strictly supervised diets. They routinely drop double-digit pounds each week. The contestant who loses the smallest percentage of body weight can be sent home.
In reality, said physician Robert Kushner, the clinical director of the Northwestern University Comprehensive Center on Obesity, a safe rate of weight loss is about one to two pounds per week.
“I think a lot of people can feel quite defeated that they’re losing weight in what we would call a recommended amount, but they would have been voted off the show immediately,” Kushner told LiveScience. “So the message, to me, is just all wrong.”
So is the science. Losing weight rapidly can be risky, according to Virginia Tech professor of human nutrition, foods and exercise Janet Walberg Rankin. Patients who lose weight quickly run the risk of gallstones, mineral deficiencies, loss of muscle tissue and reduced bone density.
Beginning strenuous exercise suddenly can cause problems with hydration, electrolyte balance and cardiac function. High impact workouts can put an extra load on already-stressed bones. At least two contestants in Biggest Loser history have struggled with stress fractures.
Regaining the weight
Risks aside, weight-loss experts say that the biggest problem with the Biggest Loser is that extreme methods of dropping pounds are less likely to work in the long run. Several former Biggest Loser contestants have regained some or all of the weight, which doesn’t surprise Kushner.
“They’re not working with a trainer every day, they’re not on national TV every day, they’re back to life,” he said. “It’s very difficult to sustain.”
While researchers aren’t sure if repeated cycles of weight lost and weight gained are more dangerous than staying overweight or obese, the psychological toll of failing to keep weight off can be grim, said Kushner. People often feel like failures and become hopeless about their health.
Those looking for a safe way to lose weight or get healthier permanently should make small changes, Kushner said, like gradually increasing exercise or substituting healthy foods for unhealthy ones. In the real world, slow, steady and committed wins the race.
“We’re not looking for extreme makeovers in someone’s lifestyle,” Kushner said. “We’re looking for changes that they can sustain long-term.”
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I completely agree. But the results from the show are great. The one bad thing about the show, (which I watch religiously) is how can we at home achieve those results that fast. These people lose a great amount of weight in a short time span making it less likely for them to get frustrated with the process. That is my problem I lose weight at a snails pace. I yo-yo up and down on a scale and get frustrated and stop so then I gain what I have lost back.
Yes I understand the health risks and yes people have gained the weight back because of it. And to be as heavy as some of these people are and how hard they work out yes they do hurt themselves. That is the one thing I have noticed this season is that people are heavier and they are needing more medical help than before. People going to the hospital for a few days due to heart issues.
But medical staff is right there when things happen making it better than doing it on your own and not having the medical attion that you need.
AP – Iraqi Army soldiers check weapons seized during recent operations in the Ameriyah neighborhood of Baghdad, …
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Play Video BAGHDAD – Eight members of one Shiite family were killed south of Baghdad on Monday in the worst incident of a bloody day across Iraq that left at least 23 dead. The spate of attacks — and the fact that some of the family were beheaded — raised fears that insurgents are trying to re-ignite sectarian warfare at a time when the country is preparing for critical March elections.
The March 7 election will determine who will oversee the country as the U.S. forces go home, and whether Iraq will be able to overcome the deep sectarian divides that almost destroyed it during the height of the fighting in past years.
A “terrorist group” using guns fixed with silencers shot and beheaded eight members of a single family in the village of Wahda, a mixed Shiite-Sunni village 20 miles (30 kilometers) south of the capital, the Baghdad security command said in a statement.
Authorities provided no further details about how many were shot, how many beheaded and provided little other information about what they described as an “ugly crime.” But beheadings have been performed before by extremist Sunni insurgents.
Associated Press television video of the attack showed a blood-soaked mattress and carpet, and stuffed animals strewn across the floor.
AP video from the nearby police station showed four people who authorities said were responsible, but no further details were given. The police statement did not indicate who might have carried out the attack.
“The crime of killing my brother, his wife and six children, five girls and one boy, is an ugly and ruthless crime,” said Mahdi Majid Maryoush al-Qabi, a brother to the killed father of six. “I call upon the Iraqi government and the prime minister to execute the accused immediately at the crime scene so that they will set an example for others. They are devoid of any human values.”
A Baghdad police officer and witnesses said the family belonged to Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority. The police officer said the family had been displaced from their home during the sectarian fighting in 2006 and had just returned in 2009.
During the fighting of 2006 and 2007, hundreds of thousands of families fled their homes across Iraq due to death threats, killings and kidnappings, as neighborhoods and towns that were once mixed with Sunnis and Shiites were almost emptied of one sect or the other.
As the situation in the country has become safer, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government has tried to encourage people to return to their previous homes, even offering cash payments to people who return. While the effort has met with some success in certain areas, such a brutal killing could serve as a stark warning to others looking to return home.
The mixed sectarian region south of Baghdad where the deaths occurred was a flashpoint for violence.
All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the incident.
U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Stephen Lanza said U.S. officials had been worried about a rise in violence ahead of the election, but said it was too soon to tell whether the death of the family of eight, as well as an early morning mortar attack against the Green Zone in Baghdad, were specifically tied to the vote.
“There’s still an investigation ongoing into the tragedy that happened in the south against that family, and I don’t know if it’s a tribal dispute or if it’s a dispute for other issues in terms of any kind of crime or something to that effect,” he said.
The incident comes as U.S. forces are slated to draw down after the election, but Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. general in Iraq said he could slow troops’ exit if Iraq’s politics are chaotic following the vote.
Odierno said there are no signs that would be necessary but said he has briefed his superiors about the plan during his meetings in Washington this week.
Six people were hurt after three mortar rounds struck the Green Zone, the neighborhood housing the main Iraqi government compound and the U.S. Embassy, early Monday morning.
In other violence, five people died after a booby-trapped car blew up in Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, 70 miles (115 kilometers) west of Baghdad, two police officials said.
In Baghdad, gunmen broke into the home of a family, killing all four, police said. However, authorities said the motive might have been robbery, noting that the gunmen took the family’s car.
Elsewhere in the capital, a sniper killed a policeman while gunmen killed a street cleaner, authorities said.
In two separate incidents in northern Iraq, gunmen killed a policeman in Kirkuk and two soldiers in the northern city of Mosul, authorities said. In the central city of Tikrit, a sticky bomb attached to a car killed the driver, said a police official.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were authorized to speak to the media.
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Associated Press Writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Chelsea J. Carter in Baghdad, Mazin Yahya in Ramadi and Yahya Barzanji in Sulaimaniyah contributed to this report.
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This is horrindous, when things like this happen you think how lucky you are to live in the U.S.. I feel quite lucky to live in a country where this does not happen. People being killed just for robbing a house and stealing the car. Yes I know this here in the states but still seems more violent there.
Thu Feb 18, 2010 10:10 am EST
By Chris Chase
You can’t talk for long about gold medalist Lindsey Vonn without bringing up her husband, coach, and media strategist, Thomas. The former Ms. Kildow married him in 2007, and he has been a constant presence on the slopes — and on television cameras — since. After Vonn won Wednesday’s downhill with a dominating performance, NBC captured the poignant moment when she saw her husband at the bottom of the hill and gave him a long embrace. “Incredible” was the word he kept using over and over.
With Thomas expected to remain in the spotlight through the rest of his wife’s four events, Fourth-Place Medal thought it would be a good time to take a look at five things you should know about Lindsey Vonn’s husband, Thomas:
1. He is a former Alpine skier and competed for the United States in the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. He finished ninth in the super giant slalom event there.
2. When the couple started dating in 2005, the relationship opened a rift between Lindsey and her father, Alan Kildow. He reportedly disapproved of the fact that Thomas was nine years older than Lindsey. The new boyfriend was also becoming something of a tutor to Lindsey, another potential problem, since Alan had long served as Lindsey’s coach. When Lindsey and Thomas were eventually married, Alan Kildow was not invited to his daughter’s wedding. They are estranged to this day.
3. Lindsey says it has taken time to learn to accept criticism from Thomas, but that they know now where to draw the line in their marital relationship. She told the New York Times:
“We learned you can hash out a lot in confined spaces. … As husband and wife we know that sometimes we have to flip the switch and be a normal couple, not a coach and athlete. We don’t talk about racing as much as you might think.”
4. Thomas usually watches the race from the bottom of the hill, but sometimes Lindsey will call him up to the gate to help calm her nerves with a pep talk. In Wednesday’s downhill, Lindsey initially put in a radio call for that very purpose, but she backed off at the last second. Later, Thomas watched Lindsey’s American teammate Julia Mancuso ski a nearly flawless run. He radioed up to his wife, “You’re going to have to be perfect to win.”
5. Friends have nicknamed Thomas “TV,” for both his initials and his penchant for showing up on television broadcasts.
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These 3 Databases Know Where You’ve Broken the Law
If you get a speeding ticket while traveling, does it stay on your record back in your home state?
We receive this question from friends and family (and readers) all the time, so we looked into how the tangled web is organized.
When it comes to how a ticket in your home state affects your driver’s license status in another state, the answer is complex and changing each year. If you want to know how much information follows you around, the quick answer is: yes it does, so watch your speed. Your unpaid speeding ticket in California, for example, will prevent you from being able to renew your Ohio driver’s license.
The more complete answer is that different information follows you different places in different ways.
Here’s how it works: There are three major databases that keep track of your driver’s license info: the National Driver Register (NDR, also referred to as the Problem Driver Pointer System (PDPS)), the Driver License Compact (DLC) and the Non-Resident Violator Compact (NRVC). None of these names sound like places at which you’d want to sit down and have dinner, do they?
The NDR: Don’t Show Up On This List
The NDR is a creation of The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), which launched ten years ago. The FMCSA’s “primary mission is to prevent commercial motor vehicle-related fatalities and injuries,” part of which it attempts to do by keeping track of infamous drivers, and although its name suggest commercial license holders — like truck drivers — it’s more than that. It keeps a look out on regular car drivers as well.
The National Driver Register keeps tabs on “drivers who have had their licenses revoked or suspended, or who have been convicted of serious traffic violations such as driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs.” Every state and the District of Columbia submits information to the NDR and they are obligated to check the NDR before granting any license privileges. Your name being on the NDR doesn’t hinder your getting a license, it is merely a way of keeping track of your violations. However, if your license has been suspended, revoked, or otherwise cancelled, or you’ve been reported as a problem driver in any state, there’s a very good chance your license application will get a red “Denied” stamped across it.
Do you have an outstanding speeding ticket from somewhere other than your home state?
Here’s an example of how the NDR works. Say your home state is Pennsylvania, and you have a driver’s license there. The PA department of transportation will check the National Driver Register three and six months before you are up for renewal, and if it finds an issue in another state, such as a DUI in Florida that has not been attended to, they’ll let you know.
You would then need to resolve the issue in Florida before you could renew your license in your home state. You are still legally allowed to drive in Pennsylvania as long as your PA license is valid – you simply can’t get a new license. So, the time would be ticking.
If you are in the NDR, your record will consist of your name, gender, date of birth, license number, and the name of the state that reported you.
Anything more detailed, like a specific violation reported or information on a suspension or conviction, is not included (the reporting state holds on to that).
Various bodies can access the information, like a company that employs drivers or one that hires pilots, but the amount of information they receive might differ. An employer of drivers is notified of anything reported to the NDR in the past three years, while an airline is notified of any record from the past five years.
You have a right to find out if you’re listed in the NDR, and you can get a copy of any NDR file sent to a potential employer. This can be handy, especially for commercial drivers, because if your home state doesn’t take the necessary steps, you could be pulled over and stripped of your CDL in another state. Your state’s license issuer will have the guidelines and forms to request that information, or you can call the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) directly at 202-366-4800 for more info.
The DLC and NRVC: How States Know Where You’ve Been
The way tickets themselves actually follow you are results of the Driver License Compact and the Non-Resident Violator Compact. They are agreements between some states, but both will soon get replaced by the Driver License Agreement.
All three of those items are products of the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, which is “a tax-exempt, nonprofit organization developing model programs in motor vehicle administration, law enforcement and highway safety.” Think of it as a treaty organization for state bodies that deal with licensing and motor vehicle laws, with the aim of making laws, and especially punishments, more uniform across state lines.
Yet, while the AAMVA can form policy on issues such as tinted windows and laws against radar and laser detectors, it is up to an individual state to ratify and join any provision. Having been around since 1933, the body’s goal now is “one driver, one license, one record.”
Unlike the NDR, which merely notifies a state to tell you to address a problem elsewhere, the DLC effectively makes a violation in another state the equivalent of a violation in your home state.
To go back to the Pennsylvania and Florida example, if you get a ticket in Florida, the Pennsylvania DOT will assess points to your PA license. If your driving privileges are suspended in Florida, then Pennsylvania will suspend your license. The NDR only requires Pennsylvania to hold back your driving rights until you address the matter in Florida, whereas the DLC makes you pay the price for your violations in Florida no matter where you are.
The NRVC works in the same manner, but in being less onerous, it resides somewhere between the DLC and NDR. If you get a ticket in another state and don’t pay it, your home state will suspend your license until you handle the issue in the other state. However, your home state will not issue points and penalties on your license, as is the case with the DLC. On the other hand, if your home state isn’t a member of the NRVC and you get pulled over somewhere else, you might be forced immediately to post bond before you can drive again.
Naturally, this being a voluntary treaty organization, there are loopholes.
Not all states are members of the DLC or NVRC: Georgia, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Massachusetts aren’t members of the DLC.
Wisconsin, California, Montana, Oregon, and Alaska are not a part of the NVRC. Michigan is not a member of either compact, but it does exchange information and will take action if it wishes.
How the states process violations and which violations they take into consideration also differ: some only use it for what they consider serious offenses, some have further requirements for taking action.
For instance, Kansas, Wyoming, Minnesota, Arizona, Iowa, and South Dakota won’t record speeding tickets from other states unless they’re ten miles per hour or more over the limit. And, most importantly, violations can only be “shared” if both states have the same violation to begin with. Get pulled over for an offense in Florida that Pennsylvania hasn’t outlawed, and there’s no action taken by Pennsylvania.
The DLA: The Future (And Why You Should Be Careful Going Forward)
Closing loopholes is where the Driver License Agreement comes in, and it’s done with a bit of an iron fist. Any state becoming a party to the DLA submits to the fact that DLA regulations supercede any state law contrary to it. The DLA requires states to take action even if the home state doesn’t have the same statute under which you were ticketed.
Say you get cited for careless driving in Colorado but your home state has no such violation; in that case, your home state will look for the closest comparable citation it could issue, such as reckless driving, and assess points and penalties based on that. And the AAMVA is working to expand the DLA internationally, not only to Canada and Mexico but to Europe, Australia, and Africa as well. In the future, when you’re caught speeding to the airport in Namibia, you’ll have a hell of a time trying to renew your license in Pennsylvania.
Finally, the DLA requires all member states to make all information available to member and non-member states, and that will include information like Social Security numbers.
The DLA is in its early stages – at the moment only three states are members (Connecticut, Arkansas and Massachusetts). But there are political machines in other states lobbying to join, and it has to be looked at as inevitable that the DLA will one day come into severe force in a greater part of the nation…if not the world.
No, it won’t mean the end of the world, and on the bright side it will mean a closer end to really bad drivers maintaining their privileges. But the long arm of the law — and increasingly its keen eye — will be watching even those who amass parking tickets, not just the moving violators.
Perhaps Wez, from Mad Max: The Road Warrior, said it best: “You can run, but you can’t hide.”
Go ahead and sleep. I make way more than your Dad.
A school superintendent in Rhode Island is trying to fix an abysmally bad school system.
Her plan calls for teachers at a local high school to work 25 minutes longer per day, each lunch with students once in a while, and help with tutoring. The teachers’ union has refused to accept these apparently onerous demands.
The teachers at the high school make $70,000-$78,000, as compared to a median income in the town of $22,000. This exemplifies a nationwide trend in which public sector workers make far more than their private-sector counterparts (with better benefits).
The school superintendent has responded to the union’s stubbornness by firing every teacher and administrator at the school.
A sign of things to come?
Mish Shedlock has the details at Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis:
Central Falls Rhode Island Fires Every High School Teacher
Here is an interesting email from “Jason” regarding high schools in Central Falls Rhode Island. Jason writes:
Hi Mish,
As I’m sure you’re aware, Rhode Island has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation.
Central Falls is one of the poorest towns in the state. It looks like the pictures everyone’s seen of Detroit or Flint. There are lots of boarded up windows, abandoned buildings, decrepit factories with broken windows, etc. It’s an absolutely depressed community. According to Wikipedia, the median income in the town is $22k.
Teacher salaries at the high school average $72-78k. Apparently 50% of the students at the school are failing all of their classes, and the graduation rate is also under 50%. In an effort to turn the school around, the superintendent requested some changes be made whereby the school day would be slightly extended, teachers would perform some extra tutoring, etc.
The union balked and refused the terms, so now she is firing the entire teaching staff of the high school and replacing them. This is yet another example of unions digging their own graves by refusing to negotiate or accept reasonable terms. Sentiment is on the side of the superintendent, at least among the folks I have discussed the issue with.
Jason
With that backdrop, please consider Central Falls to fire every high school teacher.
The teachers didn’t blink.
Under threat of losing their jobs if they didn’t go along with extra work for not a lot of extra pay, the Central Falls Teachers’ Union refused Friday morning to accept a reform plan for one of the worst-performing high schools in the state.
The superintendent didn’t blink either.
After learning of the union’s position, School Supt. Frances Gallo notified the state that she was switching to an alternative she was hoping to avoid: firing the entire staff at Central Falls High School. In total, about 100 teachers, administrators and assistants will lose their jobs.
Gallo blamed the union’s “callous disregard” for the situation, saying union leaders “knew full well what would happen” if they rejected the six conditions Gallo said were crucial to improving the school. The conditions are adding 25 minutes to the school day, providing tutoring on a rotating schedule before and after school, eating lunch with students once a week, submitting to more rigorous evaluations, attending weekly after-school planning sessions with other teachers and participating in two weeks of training in the summer.
Here are some more pieces from Supt. sets Friday deadline for Central Falls teachers
Gallo decided to give the teachers one more chance to embrace her ambitious reform plan after listening to the comments of several teachers and students at a packed School Board of Trustees meeting Tuesday night.
But, the superintendent said in a phone interview Wednesday, she is determined to fix the high school’s deep-rooted problems and she is not going to waver from doing everything that must be done to meet the needs of the 800 students there. For the first time, Gallo knows she can get it done because state Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist has mandated the overhaul, giving Gallo federal and state authority to transform the school.
“We have a graduation rate of 48 percent. I have 19-year-olds in classes with 14-year-olds. It’s the middle of the school year and 50 percent of the students at the high school are failing all of their classes,” Gallo said.
Gallo said she offered to pay teachers $30 an hour for two additional weeks of training in the summer. Gallo also said she would try to find grant money to pay teachers for 90 minutes a week of after-school planning time, also at $30 an hour.
But she says she has no extra money to pay for other changes she is pushing for, including lengthening the instructional day by 25 minutes, so teachers work 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. instead of 7:50 a.m. to 2:25 p.m. She wants teachers to formalize a rotating tutoring schedule, so a teacher is available to help students for an hour before or after school, and she wants teachers to have lunch with students one day a week.
The average teacher’s salary at the high school ranges between $72,000 and $78,000 a year, because most are at the district’s top step, Gallo said.
Union officials have been pushing for $90 per hour and want the district to pay for more of the additional responsibilities.
Matter of Principle
I commend the teachers’ union for standing up for their principles. Indeed, I hope all public unions do the same.
Those teachers now have time to reflect on whether $30 an hour for extra time on top of $90 an hour for regular time was such a bad deal.
They also get to look for another job that pays $72,000 a year plus benefits. I suggest they look in the private sector so they obtain a much needed education on matters of principle.
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OK this is ridiculous. Should there not be something in their contracts that say they must obtain certain results from the students. I mean heck less than half of the kids are graduation from school and less than half are passing classes. What in the world are the teachers teaching or should I say not teaching. For the whole school to be in this kind of disarray my goodness. The teachers are making 3 x the average range of people in that town. I completely agree with the firing. They were not asking them to do the whole thing for free just part of it for goodness sakes. Now that this has happened the school can search for some teachers willing to do the job and a little more. Being a teacher is hard work and they should know that. Now the school can get some teachers who want to be there offer a competitive wage and most likely still save some money now unless something changes and those teachers come back. I feel sorry for the students, well unless they just are not trying and if that is the case need to get to the root of the problem and find out why. They are throwing away their lives and it is not good. I wish that Superintendent some luck in finding great teachers and being able to turn that school around.
Us Magazine – February 14, 2010 10:58 PM PST
So much for flying the friendly skies.
Mallrats director Kevin Smith, 39, was kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight from Oakland, Calif. to Burbank, Calif. over the weekend because of his weight.
Smith (whose newest film, Cop Out, starring Bruce Willis, opens Feb. 26) posted more than 50 angry Twitter messages to his more than 1.6 million followers decrying the airline in the following 24 hours.
See photos of stars who are sick of fat jokes being made about them
As he explained on the microblogging site, the plane’s captain had him removed from a plane after he was deemed a “safety risk.”
“I know I’m fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?” he ranted. “Again: I’m way fat… But I’m not THERE just yet. But if I am, why wait til my bag is up, and I’m seated WITH ARM RESTS DOWN. In front of a packed plane with a bunch of folks who’d already I.d.ed me as ‘Silent Bob.’”
These stars are always criticized for their weight
The airline offered him a $100 voucher as an apology (which he refused) and put him on another flight, but he still wasn’t pleased.
“Thank God I don’t embarrass easily (bless you, JERSEY GIRL training). But I don’t sulk off either: so everyday, some new [expletive]-you Tweets for @SouthwestAir,” he wrote. “You [expletive] with the wrong sedentary processed-foods eater!”
Shortly after, he posted a photo of himself puffing out his cheeks and captioned it, “Look how fat I am on your plane! Quick! Throw me off!”
See before and after pics of celeb weight winners
The director also joked with fans, including one who encouraged him to start his own airline. “More room for everyone! If they build it, I’d certainly fly it. ‘Fly the Flabby Skies!’” he wrote.
Smith also mocked “The @SouthwestAir Diet. How it works: you’re publicly shamed into a slimmer figure. Crying the weight right off has never been easier!”
After landing in Southern California, Smith wrote, “I’ve landed in Burbank. Don’t worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised.”
Southwest Airlines apologized to the director via Twitter, and blogged a longer statement on Sunday afternoon — in which it pointed out that Smith usually purchases two seats every time he travels.
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This is terible there has to be a better way to handle this kind of situation. There has to be some kind of company guidelines that apply to this kind of situations. Especially being there are more and more overweight people put there who are flying. I think that there needs to be some etiquet training here on how to handle these kinds of situations.
But at any rate asking someone to leave because you think he is a hazard on a plane due to his size, is completely wrong. If a plane is going to have those kinds of guidelines then it should be written on the tickets. If you weigh over this amount you need to purchase 2 tickets period. Cause not every person has his thick skin. It might have crushed any other person. Think a heavy mom or dad on a plane with their kids and they get asked to get off the plane that embarrassment they would experience and think of the kids they do not need to have that either.
This kind of behavior is not called for what so ever. It is bad enough being on a plane and being heavy having to ask for a belt extension that is embarrassing enough but to add in that as well, it is hard.
I do not ask I pretend the belt is snapped and do not ask due to the reaction i have received in the past. The last time I flew and needed to ask for an extension the flight attendant huffed in disgust. People of different races think they get discriminated against try being FAT that is where you really see discrimination.
By Chris Chase
The day before he died, luger Nodar Kumaritashvili spoke to his father by phone and said he was terrified of the track at the Whistler Sliding Center.
David Kumaritashvili gave an interview Sunday outside his house in the Georgian mountain town of Bakuriani, recounting one of the last conversations he had with his 21-year-old son. The Wall Street Journal reports:
“He called me before the Olympics, three days ago, and he said, ‘Dad, I’m scared of one of the turns.’
“I said, ‘Put your legs down on the ice to slow down,’ but he said if he started the course he would finish it. … He was brave.”
Nodar Kumaritashvili also spoke with his parents minutes before his fateful slide, telling them he planned to make them proud, according to The Globe and Mail.
Since his death, many people have debated whether the track was too fast or the relatively inexperienced luger was out of his element. A number of Olympic lugers think the track was fine. They fault Kumaritashvili – a sentiment shared by luging officials who deemed the track safe (even while hypocritically lowering the starting location and adding pads to the metal beams that caused the death).
Germany‘s Natalie Geisenberger, who won a race at Whistler last year, said the women’s event has turned into a kids race, a startlingly insensitive remark given the tragedy of Friday:
I’m not happy about the new start.
It’s not a woman’s start, it’s a kinder (German for children’s) start. The rest of the track is OK, but it’s not as fast as from the proper start. It’s the same for all the athletes, but I don’t like it. I felt very good, but now because of the new start it’s not fun.
Canadian Regan Lauscher complained that the lowered start means her nation’s home-track advantage is “basically gone.” Given that some have said Canada’s resistance to allow other countries to trainat the Whistler track played a role in Kumaritashvili’s death, that comment beats out even Geisenberger’s for insensitivity. Maybe Lauscher is taking cues from her coach, Wolfgang Staudinger, who said that “exotic sliders” are the reasons luge accidents happen.
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Well I agree to both sides of the agruement. The man that died at the Olympics put a sader note on the games. So in order to make a positive effort to prevent this from happening again the Olympics changed things. You can not make everyone happy all the time. If they would have done nothing then, if by chance an accident would have happened again the backlash would have been terrible not counting losing another life.
Now being they did something preventative they get backlash for that as well. They added padding where the young man hit incase someone flies off the track again and they changed the starting point. Which if I understand correctly does not allow them to go quite as fast. Well I by reading the article many Olympians are complaining about it saying it does not make the race what it should be. Well sorry people I would rather have people be safe than have a faster race. To me what this does as well is to see how you can adjust to different conditions. You have a shorter track than expected, so this makes you off your game how can you adapt to that? This will show to me the true Olympic person. Who can adapt to changing situations, a tragic event and actual put their mind where it needs to be.
By Mike Hess Posted Feb 10th 2010 11:54AM
With word of the cancellationof ‘American Chopper,’ for some reason, we felt a bit reflective. It seems like we’ve grown along with the Teutul family — only while we grew with them, they grew apart. The show that brought them fame and fortune also seems to have sent them into familial disarray, leading to lawsuits and lots of other tension. While screaming blow-outs, door smashing and other primal feats of manhood were all too common in the Orange County Choppers headquarters, there’s one person who always seemed out of place, and in a sense, innocent from all of the ridiculousness: Mikey. And with the show ending, he’s pretty much the one we feel most sorry for.
As family patriarch Paul Sr.’s divisiveness caused major tension with head bikebuilder Paul Jr. and others in the shop, Mikey was always the show’s soul — the lovable, goofy comic relief sorely needed to get between the two territorial bears clawing each other’s faces off. Without Mikey, the show never would have lasted the seven years it’s been on.
Think about it. Here’s essentially every episode of ‘American Chopper’ in a nutshell: Design and conceptualize a new bike, yell for 40 minutes, show off shiny new bike. To break up the monotony of the same thing happening every episode, there needed to be something that had a bit of spontaneity and flair. That was Mikey.
He seemed to be the only one who could diffuse Senior’s tyrannical grip on the shop, whether it was via slapstick comedy or his inherent ineptitude around the shop. As Paul Jr. pranced around in mirrored sunglasses and a beard that looked like it was finely honed with an Exacto knife, Mikey oafed about with hair that hasn’t seen a comb since the millenium and a carelessness about life that made everyone else seem like egomaniacal fools. As the show and machismo among the rest of the crew grew, Mikey was the same guy in season six that he was in season one.
In a massive throwdown last year, Junior screamed that OCC “would go to sh-t” if he weren’t the one in charge of design. Then, in true hotheaded Teutul style, a chair was launched at a wall (really, are we 12 years old? Grown men having these types of tantrums with such frequency is quite unsettling). Looking to follow suit in an equally inefficient and barbaric manner, Papa Teutul then raged against the machine … only the machine in this case was a garbage can.
“I’m still getting stepped on, and I need to make a separation,” Senior told the New York Daily News last October. “My health was starting to deteriorate.”
It’s no wonder Mikey is the funny, lax one. He likely had to morph his personality and temperament that way as a defense mechanism. Otherwise, he’d be just as violent and aneurysm-prone as the rest of his family.
The shop tension eventually led to Paul Jr. leaving OCC to start his own design firm, and Paul Sr. eventually sued Paul Jr. for $1 million in stock options according to TMZ. And while a separation from Junior was in need, Teutul didn’t foresee the show’s demise just yet. “I think I’ve got another two or three years, maybe,” he said of the show in October 2009.
In the world of reality television, families tend to collapse under the boom mics and fame that come along with it. The Teutuls seemed doomed for an implosion from the get-go, and the show’s (and family’s) demise likely would have happened long ago if it weren’t for Mikey.
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I watched the show a couple of times and found it to be both funny and sad. Here you have two the Pauls’ very smart and head strong men trying to run a business. They both want the same result but have different ways of getting to the end. They both think they are always right. This is where working with family is not always a good thing. The Dad feels he has to be right and everything is his way because he is the Dad. And the Son feels he has to be right so that he can prove to Dad that he can take over. They both made mistakes. They are both good Motorcycle guys, in their own right.
Yes it is sad that they could not work together and the father felt the need to sue his own son. Which is not going to make things easier for the future. They are going to need to make up some time in the future and think of poor Mikey. He was always the innocent guy in this show. Yes he knows how to do the whole thing. He just does not appear to be the competitive type most likely due to both Dad and brother being that way, so he decided it would be easier to be the laid back guy and just get along. However, unfortunately in this whole thing he is going to be put in the middle. I am sure he loves them both so he will be in contact with both. Then there is the work situation is he with Dad or brother. I would hope Paul Jr. does not hold it against him if he stays with Sr.
At any rate I hope them the best they do great work and watching the show makes me want to learn how to ride a bike and get one. Well at least that is the goal for the year.
by Mike Krumboltz Feb 4, 2010
Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on much these days. But folks from both sides of the aisle were able to share a few laughs at this morning’s National Prayer Breakfast.
Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch from Utah stood up to lead the assembled leaders in a prayer. To his side sat the big guy, President Barack Obama. This was no time to mess up. Unfortunately, Sen. Hatch forgot to turn off his cell phone. Just as he stood at the podium, his phone’s alarm began to ring. D’oh!
Sen. Hatch, a good sport, laughed sheepishly and said, “Whoops, oh dear.” He then did his best to shut up the noisy gadget. As onlookers chuckled to themselves (hey, we’ve all been there), Sen. Hatch said, “I never learned how to turn that alarm off. I apologize. Let us pray.” Cue more laughter.
Some more chuckles came when President Obama worked in a jab against the birther movement. Birthers, for those who don’t know, are those who believe that Obama wasn’t born in the United States. The conspiracy theory has long sparked controversy. Critics have worked to disprove it, while believers continue to make the claim. Mr. Obama, clearly aware of the issue, remarked that civility is “not a sign of weakness” and that he’s “the first to confess” that he’s not always right.
But, the president continued, “Surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith…or, for that matter, my citizenship.” There was a bit of a pause before the sympathizers in the crowd picked up the dig. Appreciative laughter and buzz in the blogosphere ensued. You can watch the clip below.
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I just thought this was a funny post. It shows how much our President can take a joke and how they are all regular people just like us. It is nice to see people in power make these kind of silly mistakes, especially when they know they are going to be on national TV. But oh well just shows how human we all are and they too forget important things like shutting a phone off at an important engagement.
