A young superstar winning Stanley Cup after Stanley Cup
Marrying Janet Jones - it was like a royal wedding in Canada
His final years in the Big Apple
Gretzky's team gets eliminated at the 2006 Turin Olympics
Losing in Phoenix on the ice and off
The facility, buried in a mountain outside the city of Qom, is still under construction (satellite photo above). It is designed to enrich uranium and could be used to produce the essential material for a nuclear weapon.
On Friday the International Atomic Energy Agency, said that Tehran wrote to the agency on September 21, disclosing that it is building a new uranium enrichment facility.
The revelation has heightened fears that Iran is determined to develop the capacity to build an atomic weapon, although Tehran insists that it wants a nuclear programme to generate energy for a rapidly growing population.
The programme presents the West with a thorny challenge. World leaders meeting this week in the United States have been considering a response. Their options include diplomatic pressure, tougher sanctions, and in the last resort military action. One scenario is that Israel, which feels threatened by Iran, could bomb the plants.
Israel said on Saturday that this week's disclosure proved the country was seeking nuclear weapons, and demanded an "unequivocal" Western response.
The five were charged Wednesday with prostitution. Charging money for that kind of touching falls under the city's definition of prostitution.
The Everett Herald reports the women were charging up to $80 to strip down while fixing lattes and mochas.
First thing, the Grab-n-G0 isn't charging much more for lattes than Starbucks so some guys will consider the extra services well worth it. The other comment I have is that the prostitution business must be hurting under the recession if whores have to supplement their income as baristas.
The double murder trial of Chris Little, 37, began yesterday. It’s been over 2 years since Julie Crocker, 33 at the time, and Paula Menendez, 34, were found dead in Little’s home. This is what we know so far:
- Paula Menendez had split with her husband of 3 years, sportscaster Rick Ralph. The separation was supposedly amicable.
- Little and Crocker has also split up after 10 years of marriage, however, it has been reported that there was turmoil over the break up.
- Crocker and Ralph had begun dating. That was the only known connection between the two women.
- Little reported an apparent murder suicide to police on February 12, 2007. In his 911 call, Little reported finding a strange woman hanging from a rope in the garage. He then allegedly found his estranged wife with her throat slit open in the bedroom.
- Police claim that the killings were staged. They allege that he abducted Menendez from her home, took her to his home, and then murdered both women in a ruse designed to persuade authorities that Menendez killed Crocker in a fit of jealousy over Mr. Ralph, and then took her own life.
- Police checked Little’s computer and discovered that days before the murder, Little had used Mapquest to locate Menendez’s home – the person in his garage that he claimed not to know.
- Menendez’s boss drove to the her house when she failed to show up for work or answer the phone and found her car in the driveway, the front door unlocked and her purse, car keys and cell phone in the house.
- Police also believe that Little had been stalking Crocker including using a GPS tracking device to locate his former wife and a commercial chemical, Check Mate, to test her clothing for semen.
The trial is expected to last 3 months and to attract a tremendous amount of attention. The story that has come out so far doesn’t look good for Little. His lawyer, John Rosen, has considerable experience with these types of cases including Paul Bernardo. Little is scheduled in testify which is quite unusual in a case like this.
In a bid to save herself from becoming a stripper in order to pay for her training, triathlete, Jenna Shoemaker is auctioning herself on eBay.
More precisely, the California-born Shoemaker's offering a dinner "at a restaurant mutually agreed upon" lasting 2.5 hours and an autographed race kit worn during her 2009 season.
By way of explanation, Shoemaker said she was "advised to get a job this fall so that come January I will be able to train full time without worrying about money." "I don't think there's anything wrong with [stripping]," she said, but it's not my style. Some things need to be left to the imagination."
There were 5 bids and the winner will be paying $275. With a little more imagination she could have earned a lot more. By the way she has some great abs.
It appears that
So is nuclear proliferation such a bad thing? There is a growing body of research that suggests that nuclear weapons have not made the world is not more dangerous. Here is some of the evidence to support this theory:
· Since 1945 no one has used nuclear weapons against another state.
· There hasn’t been a war fought between two nuclear-armed states. Even hostile neighbours like
· There haven’t been major conflicts similar to the World Wars since nuclear weapons appeared on the scene.
It may be true that nuclear weapons have in fact made us more secure. There is a good explanation for this theory. Everyone knows that you can’t win a nuclear war. It is quite clear that if you attack a nuclear state with nuclear weapons they will retaliate with nuclear weapons. Both sides lose. You initiate a war with the intention of winning the war. But the cost of nuclear war is just too high. Even the most crazed despot understands that.
Eliminate nuclear weapons and you reduce the risk of being annihilated if you attack another state. Less risk means more wars. And if you could convince countries to eliminate their nuclear arsenal, what if they cheated? The world would be at greater risk if there countries hid the fact that they had nukes. Afterall, they would cease to be deterrents.
Lately, the
Cito Gaston and Paul Beaston were brought back in the past year because of their connection with the “Golden Era” for this franchise. But their presence alone will not bring back fans. Cito has been quoted to say, “If you win, they’ll come back. And if you don’t they don’t.” He understands that you can’t suck fans into Ricciardi’s mantra – wait until next year. We are in year 8 of Ricciardi’s 5-year plan with no contender in sight.
So what has gone wrong with this franchise? Here my observations:
· We have largely an absentee owner. How else can you explain an owner that has rarely held General Managers accountable for the product on the field? In the sports entertainment business, GMs are regularly canned for poor performance.
·
· Decisions regarding which players to retain and which players to move out have baffled and frustrated fans. The team decided it couldn’t afford both Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado so it traded Green. Later the team decided it couldn’t afford Delgado either. For reasons unknown, the team will through a huge contract at a single players (Delgado, Vernon Wells) then try to squeeze savings elsewhere. Players who want to play here are pushed aside to save small amounts of money (eg., Shannon Stewart vs. Reed Johnson). Fans are teased by the occasional big free agent signing (Roger Clemons, B.J. Ryan, A.J. Burnett) but they aren’t surrounded by good players so these valuable assets are wasted. The attempt to trade fan favourite, Roy Halladay has likely been the last draw for
· The team has always been in a rebuilding mode which has been the excuse to trade veterans but often their roster spot isn’t filled by a young prospect but instead by a broken down veteran (John Thomson, Victor Zambrano, Tomo Okha, Kevin Mench, Kevin Millar). The alternative approach is to bring in career minor leaguers in the hopes that they can fill in a gap (Joe Inglett, Scott Richmond, Randy Ruiz).
· There is a sense that the Blue jays have not been honest with fans. They make promises that are rarely met. The feeling is that management knows they can’t meet those promises when they were being made. As the saying goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
· The Blue Jays play in the brutal American League East. They are 20-43 against teams in the East but 39-29 against Central and West Division teams. Without a committed owner, a competent management team and a sizable payroll you can’t compete in the AL East. It’s been 16 years since the Jays have made the playoffs and that streak doesn’t appear to be ending soon.
So can the Blue Jays pull out of this death spiral? Only if the team is sold to committed owners. But what is the likelihood that a new owner will want to stay in
At Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, the Canadian ice maker buried a loonie (a Canadian dollar coin) at centre ice to provide the Canadian hockey teams with good luck. Now Canada wants more than just luck in their hunt for medals.
The New York Times reports that Canada is restricting access to Olympic venues in order to provide Canadian athletes with an advantage at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. This has probably gone on for decades but it appears the Canada is being far more restrictive.
Events like downhill skiing, luge, bobsledding, and speedskating take place on unique venues and courses and familiarity will improve your time. So while Canadian athletes will be provided with hundreds of practice runs, other athletes will get to practice only a handful of times.
Canadians have done poorly on world stages with the exception of a small number of sports. They are desperate to do well at these Olympics since Canada is the host nation. In the previous games held in Canada (1976 Montreal Summer Games and 1988 Calgary Winter Games) Canada won no golds – the only hot country to be shutout.
The target is 35 medals, 11 more than Canada won in 2006 in Turin, Italy. Canada’s Own the Podium program is pumping $110 million into the medal push, focusing on athletes most likely to finish in the top three. Alpine skiers, for example, are being counted on to win two medals. Besides gold medals in hockey and curling, Canada expects big hauls from speedskating and the sliding sports.
