Okay, help me out here.
Last night I was watching the Men’s Moguls competition from Vancouver. Absolutely fantastic fun, lots of drama, the thrill of victory, apeshit Canadians, etc. But this particular event, probably moreso than anything this side of parkour, drives me bonkers. (No, figure skating and synchronized swimming aren’t sports. Anytime you can trigger controversy because your tutu is trimmed in fur, whatever you’re doing isn’t a sport. Period. Let’s move along.)
Here’s the problem.
What part of hurtling a zillion miles an hour down a double-black mogul field isn’t good enough for you? I mean, powder, skis, a steep mountain and a stopwatch – that sounds like a pretty good sport to me. Full story »
There’s a train rolling to a stop just outside of town. It’s a long train, and each flatbed carries 20 dumpsters. Each dumpster is filled to overflowing with nuclear waste and flaming grease. As the copter shot pulls away the final credits roll over the first few bars of Tears for Fears’ “Everybody Wants to Rule the World.” We can all breathe a sigh of relief – all is well now, but just a few moments ago this train was hurtling at top speed toward the city center, its murdered conductor’s body holding the throttle in full-steam position.
This isn’t some wholesome, Focus on the Family-friendly Thomas the Train, folks. No, sir. This is the toxic, Viagra-addled nuclear dumpster grease fire Johnny the Train from Hell, and it came that close to plowing headlong into the unshielded nards of American democracy. Full story »
On February 3, an official Pennsylvania State University (PSU) administration inquiry into four allegations of research misconduct against Dr. Michael Mann found that three of the four allegations were without merit. The fourth allegation was referred to a investigation committee because the administrators concluded that PSU faculty were more qualified to rule on the fourth allegation than were the administrators.
Shortly thereafter, PSU started being accused of risking its reputation by “whitewashing” the inquiry with a cover up designed to protect Dr. Mann. The accusations came in form of press releases from think tanks, blog posts from media pundits, as well as some traditional media outlets. A typical example was the Fox News report that Republican Represntative Darrell Issa had called for freezing all federal grants to PSU and Mann until PSU “settled all the charges” against Mann, suggesting that perhaps money was the reason that PSU was allegedly covering up Mann’s supposed research misconduct.
S&R decided to investigate the “whitewash” claims to determine if they had any substance. Here’s what we discovered. Full story »
