‘I would still have to be someone who could wisecrack,’ Clark Gregg tells MTV News about his future at Marvel. By Josh Wigler, with reporting by Kara Warner Clark Gregg Photo: MTV News Alas, poor Coulson — we knew him well. “Avengers” director Joss Whedon is known for killing off fan-favorite characters to heighten the stakes of his stories — we’re still pouring one out for Serenity flyboy Wash all these years later. In the Marvel superhero flick, it wasn’t one of Earth’s mightiest heroes who bit the bullet, but the much beloved S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson who lost his life at the hands of Asgardian bad boy Loki. Of course, this is a comic book property we’re talking about, and in comics, no one stays dead for long. That idea has kept Coulson fans feeling optimistic about the possible return of actor Clark Gregg to the Marvel movie universe at some point down the line, with his resurrection as popular character Vision the current leading theory. Speaking with MTV News in the lead-up to the 2012 MTV Movie Awards on Sunday (June 3), Gregg opened up about returning to the Marvel universe as the Avengers’ resident android . “Vision is cool,” he said. “But I would hate to be any AI life form. If I got to come back, I would need to still be somebody who could wisecrack, because my favorite part of the job was that if anybody was going to tease anybody about their diva superhero outfit or whatever, it would be me.” Indeed, while Gregg has “seen a lot of theories” about Coulson’s return — “I love what people are doing with that,” he said — he’s just as happy to let his character rest in peace. “I really love what Joss did with Agent Coulson in ‘The Avengers,’ ” he said. “It seems like an idea that was in the cards, not only from Joss but from Marvel, in that you needed to ground the movie in some real emotion and stakes. I loved playing that guy, and I’ll miss playing him, but I was glad to have that job.” Coulson’s fate will remain a hotly debated topic for many weeks to come, we’re sure. But even if the hard-nosed S.H.I.E.L.D. agent is gone for good, that doesn’t mean Gregg can’t visit the set of “Avengers 2,” right? “That might be hard. I might be sad,” he said. Then again … “I guess I would [visit the set] if I was dressed up as a sentient android,” he teased. Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to vote for your favorite flicks now! The 21st annual MTV Movie Awards air live Sunday, June 3, at 9 p.m. ET. Related Videos Behind The Scenes At The 2012 MTV Movie Awards Related Photos ‘Avengers’
‘Saddened to learn one of my precious fans; found tragically murdered in Japan,’ Minaj tweets Thursday of Nicola Furlong’s death. By Nadeska Alexis Nicki Minaj Photo: UMG Nicki Minaj ‘s Pink Friday Tour touched down in Tokyo, Japan, last week, and following one of the rapper’s colorful stage shows, things took a devastating turn: One of Minaj’s fans was murdered after attending the May 25 concert. On Thursday (May 31), Minaj took to Twitter to send condolences and deny allegations that her dancer was involved in the incident. “Saddened to learn one of my precious fans; found tragically murdered in Japan. My love & prayers are with the family of Nicola Furlong,” Nicki wrote . Saddened to learn one of my precious fans; found tragically murdered in Japan. My love & prayers are with the family of Nicola Furlong. — Nicki Minaj (@NICKIMINAJ) May 31, 2012 The 21-year-old fan, a foreign exchange student from Dublin City University in Ireland, was found dead in a Tokyo hotel room after attending Minaj’s show at Zepp Tokyo a few hours earlier. An early report on PerezHilton.com stated that Furlong and her friend Sarah Maher linked up with Minaj’s backup dancer James Blackston and another musician, Larry Perry, after the show, heading to the men’s hotel rooms. Furlong was later found strangled to death in the room, while Maher reported that she was sexually assaulted by both men in a taxi. After sending her condolences to the slain fan’s family, Minaj addressed rumors that her dancer was involved, tweeting directly at the celebrity gossip blogger. “My dancers had nothing to do w/this tragedy. No one in my entourage was questioned or arrested. They all flew home from Japan,” she wrote. “That person on your [site] is NOT my dancer. We do NOT know the men in custody. Too much misleading information.” According to IrishCentral , Tokyo police have released a statement confirming that they arrested two American men in connection with the crime. James Blackston, 26, and an unidentified 19-year-old have been taken into custody. “These two men allegedly took advantage of a female unable to resist due to the fact she was in a comatose state from a highly alcoholic beverage,” the report states, adding, “As that is an indecent act, they have been charged with quasi forcible indecency.” The police also confirm Maher’s story of being harassed in the taxi, noting, “On a taxi ride between Shibuya and Shinjuku, they took advantage of a woman by touching her body.” Furlong’s body is expected to arrive in her hometown of Curracloe, Ireland, on Thursday, where she will be laid to rest. The 21-year-old was studying at the Takasaki City University of Economics in Takasaki, Japan. Related Artists Nicki Minaj
A top Obama EPA official discussed the Obama Administration’s plan to destroy the coal industry at a recent Yale University gathering of environmentalists. EPA Region 1 Administrator Curt Spalding told the Yale University gathering, “Lisa Jackson has put forth a … Continue reading → Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Gateway Pundit Discovery Date : 04/06/2012 21:42 Number of articles : 2
This is a powerful story, and if this kid can achieve what he has, there isn’t anything that you can’t achieve. Homeless High School Student David Boone Accepted To Harvard David Boone had a system. There wasn’t much the then-15-year-old could do about the hookers or drug deals around him when he slept in Artha Woods Park. And the spectator’s bench at the park’s baseball diamond wasn’t much of a bed. But the aspiring engineer, now 18 and headed to Harvard University in the fall, had no regular home. Though friends, relatives and school employees often put him up, there were nights when David had no place to go, other than the park off Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. So he says he made the best of those nights on the wooden bench. His book bag became his pillow, stuffed with textbooks first — for height, he says — and papers on top for padding. In the morning, David would duck into his friend Eric’s house after Eric’s parents left early for work so he could shower and dress before heading to class at Cleveland’s specialized MC2STEM High School. David expects to graduate from there next month as salutatorian of the new school’s first graduating class. “I’d do my homework in a rapid station, usually Tower City since they have heat, and I’d stay wherever I could find,” he said. David says that giving up would have left him stuck in a dead-end life, so it was never an option. “I didn’t know what the results of not giving up were going to be, but it was better than nothing and having no advantages,” he said. “I wanted to be in a position to have options to do what I want to do.” David was born to a young mother, who divorced his father when David was a little boy. When David was a student at Sunbeam Elementary, medical problems put him in the hospital regularly, said Mary Solomon-Gatson, the school’s former nurse. Even then, she said, he impressed her as a bright child. He was one of the school’s few students to pass the state’s achievement tests, she said, despite missing classes constantly. Even at that school, which covers kindergarten through eighth grade, David said he was pushed to join gangs. He refused, fueling tension with gang members. Once, he says, they tried to jump him. Because his older sister dated a member of a rival gang, he said, the situation was that much worse. “There was a lot of pressure for me to join. That was the life they lived, so it was the only life to live and they thought if I wasn’t with them, I was against them,” David said. In the summer after eighth grade, he said, gang members shot at his family’s Eddy Road home. He attributes that mostly to the issue of his sister’s boyfriend, but his whole family was affected. No one was injured, but the family split up. His mother went to stay with a boyfriend, he said. His three sisters went to stay with friends and he went to his friend Eric’s house — for a while. Though Eric’s family took him in for a short time, he said, he couldn’t stay there permanently. “We’ve been through a lot as a family,” said his mom, Moneeke Davis. “There’s been a lot of challenges and adversity.” But she said David was determined to build a better life. “He’s so focused, so driven and so humble,” Davis said, adding that she is grateful for the people “the Lord put in [David’s] path” to help him. Sometimes he stayed with Solomon-Gatson, sometimes with Eric, sometimes with other friends and relatives, and sometimes in the park. “It’s a lot to take someone in, particularly a teenage boy,” David said. “I was kind of upset that no one would, but I was never upset at any one person.” Though the park baseball diamond was mostly isolated from crime in other parts of the park, he soon decided it wasn’t safe to sleep there. He says he developed a new plan: When he wasn’t in school, he would sleep in parks during the day and roam and study at night, so he’d be awake and alert to trouble. “If you sleep in the daytime in the park, people don’t bother you,” he said. “You’re just taking a nap. It’s acceptable.” In between studying at Tower City, he’d work at a now-closed boutique, he said, to buy food. Before leaving Sunbeam, David had applied to several district specialty high schools, including the John Hay School of Science and Medicine. But he was intrigued after attending a meeting at the Cleveland Public Library about the newly created MC2STEM High School, which teaches science, technology, engineering and math with a hands-on, projects-based program. David likes tinkering and learns best by pulling things apart to see how they work. When he was 6, he says, he took apart the family television set and put it back together in working order. His favorite part of school, pre-high school, was an eighth-grade project about solar electricity. That let him dive in and make plans for a combined solar and wind farm that he was excited about. MC2STEM caught his eye because it would allow him to work on projects at the Great Lakes Science Center, with General Electric at the Nela Park campus and with companies across the region. With a nudge from Solomon-Gatson, he applied and was accepted. Instantly, he was hooked by an early project on alternative energy. That covered material he had worked on for his solar and wind farm project and had him working on it with GE engineers. MC2STEM also pushed him — hard. “They don’t accept mediocrity,” he said. The school requires students to master a subject before moving on to the next. In the first two years, students receive an A in a class or an incomplete and keep taking the class until they earn an A. MC2STEM also has longer school days and a year-round schedule with classes most of the summer. Through the school, David has worked at Lockheed Martin and Rockwell Automation and landed a spot last year at the Minority Introduction to Engineering and Science program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Like many students at MC2STEM, he took classes at Cleveland State University this spring, in subjects such as differential equations, calculus-based physics and an introduction to computer science. MC2STEM Principal Jeff McClellan praised David’s appetite for learning and his ability to connect with people who can help him learn what he needs. “If you tell him that ‘a person can help you with your calculus, make the call,’ he’ll do it,” McClellan said. “He was getting up at 5 a.m. and coming in early to get caught up on his work.” Over time, McClellan learned one of the other reasons that David was coming in early was because he was bouncing from place to place to place. So McClellan and his wife took in David. He lived with them for more than a year — parts of 10th and 11th grade. “My wife and I talked it over and said that we can’t do everything for everybody,” McClellan said. “But we could help him. It was just the right thing to do. He needed somewhere to go.” David is now living with his friend Eric again but said he was thankful to McClellan for the home when he needed one and for continuing to offer help after he left. “There’s nothing I can’t call him for,” David said. Now the school and the district can brag about David’s success. He turned down places like Yale and Princeton to go to Harvard, where he will study engineering and computer science. He also landed a Gates Millennium Scholarship, which will cover all of his college costs not covered by other aid. “It wasn’t all easy,” David said. “It wasn’t all fun and games. It was a lot of hard work and I just made it happen.” What an amazing story. It is kind of hard to understand why his mother or one of his sisters wasn’t able to care for him — but times have been hard and when they are that hard people really struggle to take care of themselves, so much so that they can’t take care of others. Source
Francis Boyle is a Professor of Law at the University of llinois School of Law, where he currently teaches courses on Public International Law and International Human Rights. He was a part of the prosecution team that tried former US President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisors in absentia in Malaysia. Barack Obama, the current US President, is an accessory after… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Antemedius – Liberally Critical Thinking Discovery Date : 28/05/2012 14:34 Number of articles : 2
Francis Boyle is a Professor of Law at the University of llinois School of Law, where he currently teaches courses on Public International Law and International Human Rights. He was a part of the prosecution team that tried former US President George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisors in absentia in Malaysia. Barack Obama, the current US President, is an accessory after… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Antemedius – Liberally Critical Thinking Discovery Date : 28/05/2012 14:34 Number of articles : 2
No isht Sherlock Study Shows That White Juries Convict Blacks More Than Whites Juries formed from all-white jury pools in Florida convicted black defendants 16 percent more often than white defendants, a gap that was nearly eliminated when at least one member of the jury pool was black, according to a Duke University-led study. The researchers examined more than 700 non-capital felony criminal cases in Sarasota and Lake counties from 2000-2010 and looked at the effects of the age, race and gender of jury pools on conviction rates. The jury pool typically consisted of 27 members selected from eligible residents in the two counties. From this group, attorneys chose six seated jurors plus alternates. “I think this is the first strong and convincing evidence that the racial composition of the jury pool actually has a major effect on trial outcomes,” said senior author Patrick Bayer, chairman of Duke’s Economics Department. “Our Sixth Amendment right to a trial by a fair and impartial jury of our peers is a bedrock of the criminal justice system in the U.S., and yet, despite the importance of that right, there’s been very little systematic analysis of how the composition of juries actually affects trial outcomes, how the rules that we have in place for selecting juries impact those outcomes,” Bayer said. Some of the more interesting findings in this story are as follows: – In cases with no blacks in the jury pool, blacks were convicted 81 percent of the time, and whites were convicted 66 percent of the time. The estimated difference in conviction rates rises to 16 percent when the authors controlled for the age and gender of the jury and the year and county in which the trial took place. – When the jury pool included at least one black person, the conviction rates were nearly identical: 71 percent for black defendants, 73 percent for whites. – About 40 percent of the jury pools they examined had no black members and most of the others had one or two black members. – When blacks were in the jury pool, they were slightly more likely to be seated on a jury than whites. The eligible jury population in these counties was less than 5 percent black. Does any of this information surprise you at all? We’re more surprised that Duke University, a predominantly white school, did this study. But maybe that lends the research more credibility… Source
While Mark Zuckerberg was taking Facebook public, his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan was quietly putting the final touches on her wedding gown. In a surprise relationship status update, Zuckerberg and Chan married Saturday in a small, unannounced ceremony at their home in Palo Alto, Calif. The bride looked stunning in Claire Pettibone’s “Sky Between the Branches” gown, an ivory laser-cut floral dress with matte sequins lined in silk. The gown featured subtle cutouts in the overlay, plus an illusion jewel neckline, sheer back and chapel-length train. Chan’s dress retails for $4,700. Pettibone, a Los Angeles-based designer, has also created wedding dresses for stars like Mad Men ‘s Elisabeth Moss and American Idol ‘s Tamyra Gray. Guests thought they were merely coming over for a surprise party to celebrate Chan’s graduation from medical school at the University of California. However, the couple, who met at Harvard more than nine years ago, had been planning the low-key wedding for more than four months. Given that Facebook stock is already down $4 today, at least Mark has something to smile about … well that and being worth tens of billions. Congratulations to the newlyweds again!
Well we’ll be damned… Missing Actor Nick Stahl Contacts Friends Via Email According to TMZ reports : Missing “Terminator 3″ star Nick Stahl has reached out to friends via email, TMZ has learned, telling them he’s ok and pledging to go to rehab. According to our sources, Stahl emailed friends yesterday and apologized for scaring them. We’re told Stahl told friends he was getting treatment and would be out of contact for the next 30 days. Our sources say Stahl’s friends and family hope he’s telling the truth … but they are skeptical. We’re told that Stahl’s wife, the one who reported him missing, was not on the email. This guy must have been in REALLY bad shape to take off to rehab without telling ANYONE! His wife probably feels like isht for getting the news from the internet…
Our prayers are with this young lady. The woman in Georgia who has been battling a flesh eating bacteria deserves kudos for her bravery after learning she’ll have to have her hands and remaining foot amputated. According to RadarOnline reports : The Georgia girl whose body is being ravaged by a flesh-eating bacteria bravely gave the OK when her parents broke the news to her that she would have to lose her hands and right foot. Aimee Copeland, 24, of Snellville, Georgia, is now awake and alert but remains in critical condition battling the hideous infection, after falling from a home-made zip line into infected water near the Little Tallapoosa River on May 1. She suffered a deep gash in her calf and despite it being cleaned and closed with 22 staples, a bacteria burrowed deep into the wound and caused necrotizing fasciitis, forcing surgeons to amputate her left leg. Copeland’s parents told her Thursday that the doctors want to remove her hands and remaining foot, reported the Atlanta Journal Constitution and the brave student replied that she was a “little confused but would figure it out.” “She smiled and raised her hands up, carefully examining them,” father Andy Copeland wrote on his Facebook page on Friday. “She then looked at us. We all understood her next three words… ‘Let’s do this.’” Aimee’s dad explained how they had come to expect the inevitable after watching the startling transformation in her hands over the past few days. “They went from a splotchy purple color to a red tone and then to a pinkish flesh tone… back to an angry red,” he wrote. “The doctor explained that her body was trying hard to heal her hands, but the blood flow was too poor.” Andy said he was blown away by the strength of his daughter when he explained to her, “Aimee, these hands are not healthy, they are hampering your progress. “I have never seen such a strong display of courage,” he revealed. “Aimee shed no tears, she never batted an eyelash. I was crying because I am a proud father of an incredibly courageous young lady.” The bacteria that triggered the infection destroying the University of West Georgia Psychology student’s body, Aeromonas hydrophila, thrives in warm climates and fresh water. While common, the germ rarely causes flesh-eating disease. But when it does, the infection carries a fatality rate upward of 60 percent, according to a 2010 report published in the Journal Clinical Microbiology Reviews.
