Wednesday, 20 January 2010
austinheap Are you kidding me? A porn star that defends water boarding just won Mass? Thank god I left that hell hole. (Sorry, not trying to offend.)
UK teacher sets new world record for a throw in (inna different stylee)
Teacher Danny Brooks has set a new world record for the longest throw-in, launching a ball more than half the length of a football pitch.
Photos: BULLET7 / GUINNESS RECORDS
The PE teacher, from Halifax, West Yorkshire, has perfected a forward flip that enables him to throw a football legally with both feet on the ground, generating maximum arm speed in the build-up.
Mr Brooks, a former gymnast, used his athletic skills to send the ball 49.78 metres (163ft 3.8in) – the length of five double-decker buses – and set a new Guinnessworld record.
He said he got the idea from watching Stoke City fullback Rory Delap, who has achieved cult status for his enormous throw-ins, and honed his technique before beating the record of 48.17m, recorded by Michael Lochner of the USA in 1998.
Mr Brooks, 28, said: "I realised I could do a flip while holding the ball. I thought if I could get the angles and timing right I could beat the record."
He sent off a film and photographic evidence of his throw, and a Guinness World Records spokesman confirmed the new record on Monday night.
Mr Brooks said: "When it was confirmed it suddenly hit home. I can't believe I'm the best in the world at something."
SashaGrey
*sigh*
Any musicians want to put their music in an SG movie?looking for a guitar sound similar to the beginning of this http://tinyurl.com/yal47h2 about 1 hour ago from web
Scottish doctors criticise ‘reckless’ drug abuse guidance
A group of doctors and drug experts has attacked the “reckless” advice given by a government agency that heroin addicts should quit the drug after the recent spate of anthrax deaths among users.
The group demanded in a letter to Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon that the Government take emergency action to stop the outbreak from claiming more lives.
It claimed Health Protection Scotland was wrong to suggest abusers give up the drug and that further deaths were inevitable unless they could get access to substitutes such as methadone.
The letter said waiting times for these opiate replacement drugs were as high as 12 months in Scotland, the longest in Britain.
In addition to the seven fatalities, another seven people are in hospital after contracting anthrax from infected heroin.
The letter said: “It is unacceptable for those responsible for public health to issue advice to those using heroin to simply stop, or access treatment which in practice is not available.
“It is clear that this kind of approach can only lead to the death of more vulnerable people.” It continued: “An immediate public health plan must be initiated – part of this plan must provide for rapid access and low threshold prescribing of appropriate alternatives to street heroin.”
The letter was organised by drugs campaign group Release and signed by academics, international drugs experts and doctors.
Gary Sutton, head of drug services at Release, said the group’s UK-wide helpline fielded 16% of calls from Scotland, a “disproportionate” number of calls.
A Scottish Government spokesperson said: “Ministers have confidence in the public health advice being given to drugs users.”
Australian liquor industry paints itself as defender of the people by Jeremy Bass
On Australia Day, I'll be sitting down with family and friends for our traditional barbecue lunch. My mates and I will have a beer as I turn the meat; the ladies will have a sparkling white as they prep the garlic bread and salads indoors.
That's what the liquor industry has us doing anyway. According to it, it's our right to rejoice in the pleasures of Aussie family life and mateship over a drink or two, and we should resent having that right trampled by do-gooder politicians and nanny-state troopers on account of a few mischief makers.
Such is the response to police suggestions to restrict full-strength liquor sales on the public holiday. ''We seem to be targeting everybody for the actions of a few and I just don't really understand why that's the case,'' Darren Pearson, who runs four bottle shops on the North Coast, bleated to the ABC.
The acting Queensland Premier, Paul Lucas, said he hadn't seen any such problems with Australia Day: ''I wouldn't want to be saying to mums and dads that you can't have a beer."
Buried under the romantic imagery of such responses to the threat of clampdowns is an alcoholic's argument: the notion of the right to imbibe alcohol uber alles. Notwithstanding the well-documented short- and long-term socio-economic costs, such polemics expose an element of our drinking culture that's less visible but pregnant with portent.
There's a couple of fundamental flaws to the argument in favour of a silently-sipping majority's right to a drink or two. The first lies in an inherent Catch-22: the more vehemently one argues one's right to consume alcohol, the stronger the evidence of an unhealthy love of the stuff, and the more likely it is that one shouldn't be touching it.
The liquor industry shares the tunnel vision attitude of its more dangerously loyal customers, that nothing is more important than unfettered access to full-strength alcohol. The whole stance is predicated on the idea bad apples can be easily identified and corralled away, leaving the rest of us to sip politely and chatter away in peace and harmony about the kids and the house renovations.
But this fails to take into account the random way in which personal responsibility dissolves in alcohol. On any given night, we don't know who's going to be a bad apple and who's not. There aren't many people who can seriously guarantee their good behaviour after one or two drinks. And that's not just the manifestly alcoholic ones. Many teens have visited casualty for a charcoal stomach-pump before maturing into a polite, moderate adult drinker.
Here's what the liquor industry, and the governments guzzling the excise, expediently fail to notice: the world is not neatly divisible into upright, responsible citizens and yobbos who can't hold their piss. Human nature is fluid at the best of times. Under the influence of alcohol, it is extremely so.
After a vicious glassing attack last October at the Chalk Hotel, near the Gabba in Brisbane, hotelier Jason Titman announced he was looking into civil actions against those involved (including the victim) for damage to his business's reputation and costs connected with investigation and legal compliance.
In the online trade publication The Shout, Titman has argued the tough-on-grog case fails to acknowledge that fewer than a quarter of serious assaults occur on licensed premises. This, he concluded, makes it safer to be inside licensed premises than not. "When was the last time we saw the media or politicians quoting these kind of numbers?" he asked.
Presumably what happens at 2.30am on the footpath outside a pub, and on the way to the other licensed premises nearby, doesn't count.
Such nonsense bears all the sincerity of those microscopic reminders on bottle labels to ''enjoy in moderation''. And those bourbon billboards admonishing consumers to ''please, drink responsibly''.
The blatant conflict of interest in all such reminders is evident in the wording. If they meant it, they would say ''please, drink less''. But there is not a liquor distiller or retailer in the capitalist world who would not prefer that you bought two bottles of its product rather than one.
No doubt, to answer such accusations, they would retreat into that old tobacco defence, the one about taking market share from competitors rather than increasing it overall. Rubbish. While one bourbon distiller is no doubt keen to wrest market share from another, both want to maximise the wider bourbon market and their share with it.
After that, the bourbon distillers might argue that they are working to wrest a bigger share of the wider spirits market, by persuading scotch and vodka drinkers as to the virtues of bourbon, and then they might say they are trying to turn existing wine and beer drinkers to bourbon.
But at the bottom of all such arguments is the laughable idea of a concrete ceiling on the number of drinkers and how much they will drink, and that no amount of persuading will get them to buy more and no amount of suggestive advertising will increase that ceiling. But any advertising worth its cost will expand not just the advertiser's share of the market, but the market itself.
It is common practice among barristers to emphasise a point by way of extreme analogy. Heroin users have been known to burgle, bash and rob others for money to feed their habit and avoid the pain of withdrawal. Such is the intense discomfort, they lose the ability to balance their interests against those of others.
The liquor industry displays the same kind of self-centredness - and on Australia Day as on every other, the fairest game for all these desperadoes is the drunk community.
A week after Haiti quake, aid for all is elusive
Even as U.S. troops landed in Seahawk helicopters Tuesday on the manicured lawn of the National Palace, the colossal efforts to help Haiti are proving inadequate because of the scale of the disaster and the limitations of the world's governments. Expectations exceeded what money, will and military might have been able to achieve so far in the face of unimaginable calamity.
"God has abandoned us! The foreigners have abandoned us!" yelled Micheline Ursulin, tearing at her hair as she rushed past a large pile of decaying bodies.
Three of her children died in the quake and her surviving daughter is in the hospital with broken limbs and a serious infection.
Rescue groups continue to work, even though time is running out for those buried by the quake. A Mexican team created after that nation's 1985 earthquake rescued Ena Zizi, 69. She had survived a week buried in the ruins of the residence of Haiti's Roman Catholic archbishop, who died. Other teams pulled two women from a collapsed university building.
But most efforts are focused on getting aid to survivors.
"We need so much. Food, clothes, we need everything. I don't know whose responsibility it is, but they need to give us something soon," said Sophia Eltime, a 29-year-old mother of two who has been living under a bedsheet with seven members of her extended family. She said she had not eaten since Jan. 12.
It is not just Haitians questioning why aid has been so slow for victims of one of the worst earthquakes in history — an estimated 200,000 dead, 250,000 injured and 1.5 million homeless. Officials in France and Brazil and aid groups such as Doctors Without Borders have complained of bottlenecks, skewed priorities and a crippling lack of leadership and coordination...
Continue reading
Oh-No's at it again!
Billboard reports that U2 and Jay-Z, two of the biggest musical entities on the planet, are teaming up to record a charity song for Haitian earthquake relief. Speaking to the Irish radio station 2FM, U2's the Edge confirmed reports that Swizz Beatz was producing the collaboration: "Last night, we wrote a song... Bono got a call from a producer, Swizz. He and Jay-Z wanted to do something for Haiti. So Bono came up with the phrase on the phone, and last night we were here. We wrote a song-- finished, recorded, and sent it back to them. So that might be the next thing you hear from us!" Billboard reports that the collaboration will probably be sold on iTunes.@'Pitchfork'
Please Bono stick to your mediocre rock'n'roll (that you do SO well) and don't be such a disaster whore. You want to help? Well you know all that money that you have saved by basing your (tax)self in The Netherlands...
The people of Haiti have suffered enough!
Please Bono stick to your mediocre rock'n'roll (that you do SO well) and don't be such a disaster whore. You want to help? Well you know all that money that you have saved by basing your (tax)self in The Netherlands...
The people of Haiti have suffered enough!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
