Interview: Kiss’ Gene Simmons Defends Tim Tebow: He’s Cool to Me

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty

Photo Credit: AFP/Getty

Has polarizing football player Tim Tebow gotten a raw deal in the press because of his religious beliefs? And would he be treated more respectfully if he were not Christian, and specifically, Muslim? Gene Simmons thinks so.

“He’s got a religious passion, as well he should, we’re in America,” the KISS frontman told Radio.com earlier this week. ”He’s proud to be a Christian, what’s wrong with that? And yet, with sports media and pop culture media, they make fun of his religion. Really? In America? If he was wearing a burqa, they wouldn’t dare say anything [editor’s note: only Muslim women wear burqas]. But if you’re a Christian, you get to be picked on? What the hell? The guy’s got family values. I never saw the media picking on Michael Vick for torturing dogs. Or this other football player, who’s alleged to have killed, committed murder. That’s ‘cool.’ But a guy who’s religious and has got family values isn’t ‘cool?’ He’s cool to me.”

As has been widely reported, Simmons and his KISS bandmate Paul Stanley are now co-owners of a new Arena Football League team, to be called LA KISS. And Simmons wasted no time drawing attention to the expansion team (which will begin playing in 2014), extending a very public offer to quarterback Tim Tebow, who after a brief up-and-down career in the NFL, was released by the New England Patriots a few weeks ago.

In an interview focusing on the new oral history of KISS, Nothing To Lose (more on that to come), Simmons addressed the situation with the man who he hopes will be the KISS QB.

“We haven’t heard back from Tim,” Simmons said. “He’s considering this seriously; he’s in Los Angeles. Right after this, I’m gonna fly back with our guys and try to sit down with him and tell him that we’re serious about this. He’ll get the respect here that he didn’t get at the NFL.”

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‘Artificial Egg’ Made from Plants Backed by Bill Gates Set to Revolutionize Cooking Goes on Sale at Whole Foods

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Photo Credit: Cody Pickens

Photo Credit: Cody Pickens

A radical ‘artificial egg’ backed by Paypal billionaire Peter Thiel and Bill Gates goes on sale in US supermarkets for the first time today.

Made from plants, it can replace eggs in everything from cakes to mayonnaise – without a chicken ever coming close to the production process.

The team today started selling their ‘plant egg’, called Beyond Eggs, in Whole Foods in California – and say it could soon be available in supermarkets worldwide.

‘We want to take animals out of the equation,’ said Josh Tetrick, the firm’s founder. ‘The food industry is begging for innovation, especially where animals are involved – it is a broken industry.’

Tetrick’s idea was to find a mix of easy-to-grow plants that, when mixed together in the right way, replicate the taste, nutritional values and cooking properties of an egg.

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Can Public Shaming Be Good Criminal Punishment?

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Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

Photo Credit: BBC Screen Grab

For a few hours every day last week, a 58-year-old man in Cleveland with a gray goatee, a ratty AC/DC T-shirt, and a backwards hat wore a sign around his neck that clearly labeled him as an idiot. “I apologize to officer Simone & all police officers for being an idiot calling 911 threatening to kill you,” it read. “I’m sorry and it will never happen again.”

The man, Richard Dameron, didn’t wear the sign by choice: It was part of his punishment—along with 180 days in jail—ordered by municipal Judge Pinkey Carr.

The practice is called public shaming, and it’s the kind of creative punishment that is being ordered by judges around the country, from court-mandated dinners at Red Lobster to wearing a chicken suit on the side of a road. And it could actually work to not only cut down on low-level crime, but to help slash ballooning state and local budgets as well.

Jessica Eaglin, the counsel for the justice program at New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice, sees public shaming as forward-looking compared with more retributive punishments. Forward-looking public shaming is more deterrence-based, says Eaglin, and can have an impact on an entire community instead of just one person. For low-level crimes in small towns, “that’s where the public shaming comes in,” Eaglin says. “It’s reflecting on your life, people are watching you, and that’s going to affect your behavior more than just paying a fine.”

Not everyone agrees. “This kind of public shaming has no record of efficacy in turning someone away from crime,” Peggy McGarry, director of the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice, said in an e-mail. McGarry thinks this is especially true for small-town, low-level offenders…

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Japanese Professor Pushes for Hide-and-Seek at the Olympics

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Photo Credit: Alamy

Photo Credit: Alamy

The International Olympic Committee is to announce the host city for the XXXII Olympiad at its meeting in Buenos Aires on Saturday, with Tokyo competing with Istanbul and Madrid for the right to host the largest sporting event in the world.

And Hazaki, a graduate of Nippon Sport Science University, believes Tokyo 2020 would be the perfect occasion for the Olympic community to embrace his chosen sport.

“I would like hide-and-seek to be one of the exhibition sports in 2020 and then it could become an official event at subsequent Olympics,” Hazaki, a professor of media studies at Josai International University, told The Daily Telegraph.

Prof. Hazaki set up the Japan Hide-and-Seek Promotion Committee in 2010 and the organisation has around 1,000 members across the country. Many are university students, but the sport can be enjoyed by anyone, he emphasises.

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Utah Shepherd Survives After Being Gored by Elk

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A wild bull elk gored a shepherd in the mountains in eastern Utah, puncturing one of the man’s lungs, knocking him unconscious and forcing him to walk several miles for help.

Sheepherder Hugo Macha, 31, was in good condition in a Grand Junction, Colo., hospital Friday, three days after the rare attack in the La Sal Mountains.

“He was already worrying about his sheep,” said Polly Hill, co-owner of the 1,000 sheep Macha tends, in an interview with The Salt Lake Tribune. “The doctor said he was lucky because the way the lung was punctured it kept it from collapsing. He might be able to come home Sunday. We will take care of him until he is back on his feet.”

Macha, who is from Peru, told rescuers that he’d been sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree Tuesday evening when the elk appeared and started heading toward him. He tried to get away, according to Utah Division of Wildlife Resources officer Dennis Shumway, but the animal ran him down, knocked him to the ground and gored him with its antlers.

When he came to, the elk was nowhere to be found.

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Man Charged With Smuggling Meth In Frames Of Religious Art

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Photo Credit: KDKA

Photo Credit: KDKA

It’s a drug-smuggling scandal straight out of a movie.

Federal agents say they’ve uncovered a scheme in which meth was hidden in the frames of religious artwork and shipped to Pittsburgh from Mexico, according to an affidavit filed in court.

Carmelo Rojas-Perez is charged with smuggling.

He lived in an apartment in Oakland, but according to court papers, he’s a Mexican citizen who came here illegally in 1993. The man who owns the store below Rojas-Perez’s apartment says he came into the store regularly, but the owner says he had no idea what was allegedly going on.

Custom agents at the FedEx hub in Memphis caught on to the hidden drugs.

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Drone Hunters Line Up for Colorado Town’s ‘license’ Ahead of Vote – $100 Bounty for Fed’s Drones

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picture - Drone Hunding CO townThe tiny Colorado plains town of Deer Trail has yet to vote on a proposal that would create drone-hunting licenses and bounties, but that hasn’t stopped the man behind the initiative from selling 100 of his own licenses online.

The Denver Post reports that Phillip Steel, a traveling structural inspector who spearheaded the drone-hunting initiative, is selling the $25 novelty licenses to anyone who applies on his website, droneshooters.com.

Deer Trail, population 500, on Oct. 8 will vote on whether to issue permits to hunt drones. The proposal calls for a $100 bounty reward for shooters who bring in debris from an unmanned aircraft “known to be owned or operated by the United States federal government.”

Steel, who insists the initiative is a symbolic stand against government surveillance, said he’s given part of the income he’s received from selling the fake licenses to the town.

“These are not big drones you see on TV that look like airplanes. These are little 55-pound things that can come right down into your land,” Steel told The Associated Press.

Steel got the idea after seeing news reports about the National Security Agency’s domestic spying efforts. “Do we really want to become a surveillance society? That’s what I find really repugnant,” Steel said.

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I Came, I Saw, I Skedaddled

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Photo Credit: GARY LOCKE

Photo Credit: GARY LOCKE

Chief Executive of Sparta,
Barack Leonidas Obama,
at the Battle of Thermopylae

Stand down, men. The chairman of the Greek City States Alliance Joint Chiefs of Staff has indicated to me that our capacity to execute this mission against Xerxes is not time-sensitive.

Julius Barack Caesar Obama
Crosses the Rubicon

I am crossing the Rubicon. Brrr, the water’s chilly. Deep, too. I’m going for a walk along the riverbank to look for a bridge. And I will cross the Rubicon as soon as the weather warms up. The die has been cast. That is, the deck has been shuffled. Or the Wheel of Fortune has been spun. And I’ll buy a vowel.

Pontius Barack Pilate Obama,
Matthew 27:24

When he saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, “I am innocent of the blood of these just persons, but I’ll ask the Senate back in Rome for authority to do something-or-other, although it may have to wait until after Good Friday.”

Christopher Barack Columbus Obama

Many prominent experts, including Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, maintain that the earth is flat. This is a debate I would like to have. Meanwhile, I have discovered a new route to France.

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New Mexico Outhouse Labeled ‘Obama’s Presidential Library’ Causing Controversy

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Photo Credit: opposing views

Photo Credit: opposing views

A sign on top of an outhouse in New Mexico is causing controversy and discussion around town. The outhouse, which is located in the town of Tucumcari, is actually “Obama’s Presidential Library,” according to its label. Residents of Tucumcari, which is located right off of historic Route 66, are split about whether the sign is a deft political statement or simply an example of bad taste.

The man who built the outhouse and put up the sign won’t reveal his identity and he also won’t be taking down the Obama-bashing bathroom anytime soon, KOAT reported.

“It’s like watching TV. If you don’t like what the hell you’re watching, turn the channel,” said the man who put up the sign. “I’m not even certain he even deserves that level of respect, but that’s my opinion.”

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Jon Stewart Returns to Blast Obama Administration, Congress on Syria

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Photo Credit: Comedy Central screen shot

Photo Credit: Comedy Central screen shot

Jon Stewart returned to Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” Tuesday night after spending the summer directing a film in Jordan, and the host wasted no time in going after the Obama administration and Congress members on Syria.

Correspondent John Oliver filled in for Mr. Stewart for eight of the 12-week break, and he gave the returning host an on-air rundown of the summer’s news.

“Wow! America taking military action against a Middle East regime? It’s like I never left,” the host said, before leading into a segment called “Uncle Jonny Stew’s Good Time Syria Jamboree,” featuring presidents who delivered various threats against Middle Eastern countries.

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