I just heard the name of the new Louisville, Kentucky arena where the University of Louisville plays – “KFC Yum! Center“.
Really?!
Yum! Brands, the owner and franchiser KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, was spun off from PepsiCo in the late 1990s and is apparently based in Louisville.
You might think the name is stupid, but originally it was “Tricon Global Restaurants, Inc.”
This is the kind of shit that drove me batty about Dubai; check out this article from the Gulf News: “Pollution, diet blamed for male infertility in UAE.”
So you’d think there’d be, you know, facts and figures about pollution and diet trends to support the premise of the article.
Nope.
In fact, I wonder if there is any infertility at all. This quote specifically makes me wonder:
According to a recent World Health Organisation study, there has been a decline in births in the UAE from 5.7 children per woman down to less than two children, over the past two decades.
Perhaps this “male infertility” is just the UAE joining most other developed countries where fertility rates decrease to levels below replacement rates?
How about that?
Miami’s weird. Sure, I’ve never been there, but I’m familiar with their Vice, their Bad Boys and their Crime Scene Investigators (seriously, do the police all drive Hummers down there?)
But Crockett and Tubbs, Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett and, um, David Caruso’s sunglasses aside, their sports teams just flat out confuse me, most recently with their renaming Joe Robbie Stadium for the Super Bowl (see “Super” Bowl).
The new baseball stadium that the Marlins are building is also bizarre – the retractible roof looks, to some people, like a giant bagel-slicer on its side.
But that’s not the extent of the weirdness; last week it was announced two salt-water aquariums will serve as the home plate backstop.
For more, and a few more jokes, see this Miami Herald article: “Will Wild Pitches Scare the Fish?“
Did you see that Fess Parker passed away today?
Reminds me of a story about Daniel Boone.
And no, this has nothing to do with Parker being a Disney Legend for playing Boone on TV.
It’s about a statue of Boone. Up until 1958 – my parents’ lifetime – there was a statue on the steps of the US Capitol Building of Boone stopping a tomahawk-wielding Indian from killing his frontier family.
Yes, on the steps of the US Capitol Building.
Tomahawk-wielding Indian.
My parents’ lifetime.
Photo in the public domain as a work of the Federal Government
When I first read about this years ago in a history book I thought it was a mistake. How insanely racist!
On the steps of the US Capitol Building!
For more, check out the wikipedia page for The Rescue.
Oh, and rest in peace, Fess.
Punk-rock journalist Spencer Ackerman had a post yesterday that linked to the text of bill McCain and Lieberman introduced regarding the closure of Guantanamo Bay, specifically regarding detention. Here’s a chunk (emphasis mine):
An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 15 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.
Um, don’t we have a Bill of Rights that includes, oh, I don’t know, the polar opposite of this? Something about not being deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law?
Criminy!
Josh finally lives in Maine again
after four years at Boston University, a stint in Southern California with
Walt Disney Feature Animation,
and two years in Dubai, UAE,
where he created and wrote
Newlywed in Dubai.
