Susan Boyle appeared on Britain’s Got Talent this week, and to say she wowed the judge and audience would be an understatement.

Seeing as I live in the United States, I don’t watch Britain’s Got Talent, but, then again, I don’t watch America’s Got Talent either.  I’ve never been big on the “talent” style shows like American Idol, but then tonight a video was making the rounds on Twitter, and considering it seemed to leave everyone speechless, I went ahead and checked it out.

Same as its American counterpart, Britain’s Got Talent consists of common British folk coming on the show to display their talents, whatever they may be. Unlike American Idol they can dance, sing, play instruments, even spin plates if they want, it really is open to all talents. In the early rounds the judges, Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan, can say if someone is passing on to the later rounds, or they can stop them there, and even stop the performance by hitting their big X lights.

In this week’s episode, Susan Boyle, who is 47-years-old and hails from West Lothian in Scotland, came on the show. She informed the television audience that she lives alone with her cat Pebbles, and has never even been kissed, let alone had a boyfriend. When she took the stage the audience and judges were snickering alike… and then she sang.

If there ever was a case of “don’t judge a book by its cover”, it is obviously Susan Boyle.  I hate to admit it, but I was snickering along with the audience when she took the stage in her awkward little way.  Shame on me.

I also have to admit it is very rare for me to actually watch a shared video on Twitter, it is even odder for me to watch the whole thing, but I have watched this one a couple times thus far.  Her voice is simply amazing.  If I had the ability to vote in this show, I would be, and I don’t even know if there is someone with more talent performing, but I find that difficult to imagine.

Good luck, Ms. Boyle, but somehow I doubt you’re going to need it if you keep wowing the audience and judges like this.

UPDATE: You can see the Susan Boyle CBS The Early Show interview here.

Update 2: Hear Susan Boyle sing “Cry Me A River”.

Make sure to check out SusanBoyleFandom.com for all of the latest Susan Boyle relate news!

I have to admit that I am a bit of a coffee snob, but I think I may have found the cure for it with Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

Since the age of 13 or 14 I’ve been drinking coffee on a daily basis.  Even though I have cut back on my consumption, I still drink at least a pot a day.  Since I was 16 or so, I’ve been grinding my own whole beans at home for my pots, and it’s just the way I prefer it.  I’ve never been big on pre-ground coffees, but would drink them in a pinch.

Then I met Dunkin’ Donuts Original Blend.

Friends had been raving to me about the wonders of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee for a while now, but I had kept thinking, “Oh, it can’t be that good, but maybe I’ll try it some time on those rare occasions I am near one of their stores.”  Well, they ended up releasing it to grocery stores, and feeling a bit adventerous one day, I picked up a bag of it at Walmart, and I am totally hooked.  It’s smooth, strong without being over powering and tastes like coffee.  You know what I mean, no nuts, no syrups, this is just plain old, coffee tasting coffee, and I love it.

All that being said, they do offer other flavors, but I’m sticking to original blend.

If you want to give it a try, just click the image up there and go to their site have them send you a free sample of it.  No, I get nothing from this, I just like spreading the addiction the coffee love.

Scattercast is 38… and still coughing here and there.

- Finally feeling better, but you’ll still hear me coughing here and there.

- The final Coon Hunt ’09 Update

- News on where you can now me doing my professional blogging. SitePoint.com and Mobile.BLORGE.com will be the main places.

- I blogged a lot more than usual this week… and I liked it!

- The FCC is going to “study” the broadband situation in the USA… joy… I rant on this for the majority of the episode.

That’s it for this week… there may be a surprise during the week next week!

Here’s

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for those who wish to download it, subscribe to Scattercast via iTunes.

A 39-year-old teacher and coach at Orangefield Junior High School in Orangefield, TX has been indicted by a grand jury for an improper relationship with a female student.

Jennifer Lea Burton has been indicted on three counts of sexual assault and three counts of improper relationship between an educator and a student for a supposed relationship she had with a 15-year-old student between September and November of 2008.  Both of the cases are considered 2nd degree felonies, and she is facing multiple counts of each.  Her punishments could range from two years probation to 20 years in prison with fines of $10,000 for each count.

Ms. Burton has been teaching in the school district since 2003, but was put on leave on March 30th when the district officials learbed of the charges and investigation.  She was coaching volleyball, basketball and track, and has a daughter of her own who is in the 8th grade in the school district.

Currently she is not in custody, and authorities are recommending that she turn herself in before they have to arrest her.  Bonds will be set at $15,000 each for the three counts of sexual assualt, and $10,000 each for the counts of Improper Relationship Between Educator and Student.

This women now joins the roll call of teacher sex scandals for 2009!

• Christine McCallum, Boston, MA
• Lisa Lavoie, Holyoke, MA
• Christy Lynn Martin, St. Petersburg, FL
• Linda Nef and Valynne Bowers, Bountiful, UT
• Sarah L. Tolzien, Richton Park, IL
• Autumn Faulkner, Randolph County, WV
• Lindsay Massaro, Hackettstown, NJ
• Lauren Breslin, Vineland, NJ
• Kristina Anna Baeta, Union City, CA
• Raeanna Jewell, Apache Junction, AZ
• Tamara Hofmann, Chandler, AZ
• Jennifer Marie Collier, Jacksonville, FL
• Gina Marie Watring, Durham, NC
• Alison M. Peck, Greenfield, MO
• Maria Guman Hernandez, Hialeah, FL
• Helen Goddard, London, England
• Amy Elsworth & Brian Drake, Waterford, MI
• Alini Brito & Cindy Mauro, Brooklyn, NY (no students involved)
• Amanda Watkins, Muscle Shoals, AL

Rumors of problems with Dollhouse have been all over the Internet today, but what is and isn’t true?

Hold on to your hats every one, there has been a ton of confusion about what is going on with Dollhouse, and if it has already been canceled or not.  It all stems from the unaired pilot, and how it effects how many episodes will be aired.  As this was a mid-season replacement, that usually means 13 episodes, but it seems Fox will only be airing 12 episodes, and this is leading to people thinking that the show is dead.

Okay, try to follow along:

- Fox Television Network ordered, produced and paid for 13 episodes.  This includes the pilot and 12 normal episodes.  The pilot was trashed, and parts of it reused.

- Fox Television Studio (different than the network) needs 13 episodes for the DVD release, so they commissioned a stand-alone episode entitled “Epitaph One”.  This brings the total number of episodes produced to 14.

- Fox Television Network has no interest in “Epitaph One” as it is stand alone and they did not commission it.  They are under no obligation to air the episode, although people would like to see them do so.

- Fox Television Studio will put “Epitaph One” on the DVD release for season one regardless if it airs on television or not.

This now “lost” episode is where people got all uptight that this meant the series was axed, but Fox is assuring viewers they have not yet made a decision on the fate of the second season.  To confirm this, Tim Minear posted on Whedonesque to clarify what is going on.

Okay. So maybe I can help clarify this somewhat. Because we scrapped the original pilot — and in fact cannibalized some of its parts for other eps — we really ended up with 12 episodes. But the studio makes DVD and other deals based on the original 13 number. So we created a standalone kind of coda episode. Which is the mythical new episode 13. The network had already paid for 13 episodes, and this included the one they agreed to let us scrap for parts. It does not include the one we made to bring the number back up to 13 for the studio side and its obligations. We always knew it would be for the DVD for sure, but we also think Fox should air it because it’s awesome.

So, in short, yes, there is a “missing/lost” episode floating around there, it does not affect the outcome of the season, and if it doesn’t air we will see it on the DVD. And, no, this does not mean the series is canceled.

The release of the second Transformers movie, Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, is quickly approaching, and at last we have some nice CGI images of at least some of the robots we can expect to see this time around.

The images don’t cover the enormous number of robots in this outing for the series, but it gives you a good sampling of what you can expect this time around from the returning characters as well as some of the newest additions to the franchise.

Below the cut are all of the new pictures, and you can click on any of them for a larger view (and larger views don’t have the character names on them).

Continue Reading ->

The police evidence photos of Vince Shlomi’s altercation with a hooker have leaked, and they are less than pretty.

Vince Shlomi, better known as “The Shamwow Guy”, was in a fight with a hooker named Sasha Harris back in February.  The story goes that Mr. Shlomi met Ms. Harris in a Miami bar and agreed to pay her “around $1000″ for “straight sex” and then took her back to his $750-a-night hotel room at the Setai hotel.  Once there, they began kissing, and Mr. Shlomi claims that Ms. Harris bit his tongue and would not let go.  To free himself he punched her repeatedly until he was freed, and then fled to the hotel lobby to get security.  The police were called, and both of them were taken into custody on felony battery charges.  The prosecutor eventually did not follow through on the charges, but the reason for that is unknown.

The original news of the Shamwow Guy’s arrest was reported back on March 27th, and now this has been followed up by police evidence photos of the incident that have made their way on to the Internet thanks to The Smoking Gun.

The full gallery includes more images of Vince and, the seemingly unconscious, Sasha handcuffed to their hospital beds.  The hotel room where the incident happened is  quite a site, including a blood covered phone, blood on the door to the room, blood out in the hallway… basically there is blood everywhere.

I am curious as to why all charges were dropped as the photos are pretty damning that there was indeed quite the fight.  What I am even more puzzled by is why this guy’s commercials are still running on TV, especially the one for the Slap Chop.  That thing is just in bad taste at this point.  Maybe they don’t think that many people know about this incident, or perhaps they just don’t care that their spokesman hires hookers?  Still, an interesting story, and the gallery of evidence photos is really odd, but fascinating.

A freshman girls basketball and softball coach from Apache Junction High School in Apache Junction, AZ has been arrested for sexual misconduct with one of her players.

Reanna Jewell, 25-years-old, is being held on $750,000 bond in the Pinal County Jail for inappropriate sexual conduct with one of her 16-year-old basketball players.  Ms. Jewell was arrested on March 29th after the girl’s mother had reported to the police three days prior that she had discovered suspicious text messages on her daughter’s cell phone.  The police launched an investigation and discovered there had indeed been sexual contact between the coach and her player, as well as texting, or “sexting” as it is known, of inappropriate images to the young player.

The relationship appears to have begin in December of 2008 and during that time there was enough evidence for a grand jury to indict Ms. Jewell on two counts each of sexual conduct with a minor and luring a minor for sexual exploitation. According to the East Valley Tribune, Ms. Jewell was employed with the school part-time from September 19th, 2008 through March 20th, 2009 when she resigned her position.

The timing of her resignation seems a bit odd as the mother apparently didn’t discover the text message until the 26th, so her resignation may have been unrelated.  A statement from the school says that during the hiring process that Ms. Jewell was fingerprinted and a background check was conducted, but nothing suspicious was discovered. Normally this is where I mention something about how the woman should have known better, or should have seen all the other stories out there in the press about teachers being caught doing this, but this time it is truly jaw dropping how she could have carried on with this.  ”Why?” you ask?  Well, you see, another female basketball coach at the very same school was arrested in January for the very same charges.

-waits for that to soak in-

Yes, another coach… at the same school… same charges. Jason Beck, a 24-year-old male, was a part-time coach to the girls basketball team.  He resigned from his job on January 13th, and was arrested on February 3rd on suspicion of one count each of sexual conduct with a minor and luring a minor for sexual exploitation.  In other words, the exact same charges that are being leveled at Ms. Jewell.  He was also hired around the same time as Ms. Jewell.  His crimes are said to stem from sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old player from his team and offering and/or soliciting oral sex to her via text messaging.

What makes me think this school has a problem with their hiring process?

This women now joins the roll call of teacher sex scandals for 2009!

• Christine McCallum, Boston, MA
• Lisa Lavoie, Holyoke, MA
• Christy Lynn Martin, St. Petersburg, FL
• Linda Nef and Valynne Bowers, Bountiful, UT
• Sarah L. Tolzien, Richton Park, IL
• Autumn Faulkner, Randolph County, WV
• Lindsay Massaro, Hackettstown, NJ
• Lauren Breslin, Vineland, NJ
• Kristina Anna Baeta, Union City, CA
• Jennifer Lea Burton, Orangefield, TX
• Tamara Hofmann, Chandler, AZ
• Jennifer Marie Collier, Jacksonville, FL
• Gina Marie Watring, Durham, NC
• Alison M. Peck, Greenfield, MO
• Maria Guman Hernandez, Hialeah, FL
• Helen Goddard, London, England
• Amy Elsworth & Brian Drake, Waterford, MI
• Alini Brito & Cindy Mauro, Brooklyn, NY (no students involved)
• Amanda Watkins, Muscle Shoals, AL

It would seem that the Associated Press (AP) is insanely short sighted.

At a meeting of the AP, which encompasses approximately 1500 member publications, AP Chairman Dean Singleton talked to the audience about the increasing evils of the Internet, and how their content was being abused by blogs and news aggregation sites.

We can no longer stand by and watch others walk off with our work under misguided legal theories. We are mad as hell, and we are not going to take it any more. AP and its member newspapers must be paid fully and fairly.

While they certainly have every right to protect their intellectual properties, but they are talking about even going after sites like Google News that aggregate multiple news sources into one centralized location.    They are saying that even these types of sites are profiteering off of their copyrighted works, and if they are to continue, they must pay for the use of AP content just as any other news source that reprints their content with permission.

The problem with this whole theory is that sites like Google News simply provide the headline, maybe an image, and usually around one sentence of the story to give you and idea of what it is about.  If you choose to read more of the story, you then click on the link are taking to the original page that presents the story.  Due to the limited amount of the story that ir reprinted, this falls well within the terms of “fair use“, or, as the AP calls it, “misguided legal theories.”

Essentially fair use is the concept that you can reprint things in an article so long as you limit how much of it you copy, and you site the source of the information.  Copying an entire piece, even with a link to the original source would fall outside of the fair use guidelines.  As anyone familiar with Google News knows, they show you a headline, maybe an image and one to two introductory lines from the article. Then, if you are interested in it, you click on it and go to the original piece. Well, it seems the AP no longer wants this to happen unless sites like Google pay them a fee for running those brief intros.

Here’s the back-asswards part of this whole thing. Someone like me has no time to read news unless they go through an aggregator. I don’t have time to go to multiple sources, and by using a service by Google News I do visit a lot of local television sites, smaller town newspapers and so on. In other words, these sites are getting traffic they never would have if it wasn’t for Google doing what they do.  In the AP’s amazing lack of wisdom, they see this as a horrible thing that Google is slapping some ads on those results pages, and that is where their problem is.  It’s a chick and the egg type scenario… I wouldn’t be seeing those ads on Google if I wasn’t coming to their site to look for the news stories that I can then go and read, and, in turn, see the ads of those original sites.

Old media, which the AP is a glowing example of, is in desperate need of money, and they are trying to get it from anywhere they can, even if it means cutting off their nose to spite their face.  Charge Google… Google may drop you… you just lost thousands, if not millions, of potential readers.  Is there not a time where you have to skip making money from a venue to make other money because of that same venue?  Yes, there is, and this is one of those times.

The even sadder part is that it isn’t just Google they want to go after, but also bloggers for quoting their articles.  Well, quoting articles is an age old tradition in journalism, which blogging is an off shoot of.  Sure some bloggers take it too far, but the vast majority don’t.  So why not leave us alone and les us spread your work for even more people to see?  I have no desire to quote entire articles, that would be pointless for someone like me.  I actually already stopped using AP stories due to their plan a few months ago to start charging something like a $1.50 per word for every word you quoted.  I didn’t feel like seeing what their limit would be, so I always look for on-AP stories to quote, and apparently I am going to have to keep that policy in place.

It is time for the AP to grow up and accept the 21st century or this truly will be the end of newspapers as we know it.  So go ahead, AP, keep annoying the people who might be your only salvation and see how far you get.

A special education teacher at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Union City, CA has been arrested for lewd acts with a male student.

Kristina Anna Baeta, a 38-year-old special education teacher, has been arrested for lewd acts with a 13-year-old students at her school.  While neither the New Haven Unified School District or police department aren’t going into the details of what constitutes “lewd acts”, but they are saying that the family discovered communications between the boy and the teacher, and that led to them contacting officials.  The Alameda County District Attorney’s Office is the one going through with the lewd acts charges.

Ms. Baeta has been placed on administrative leave by the school district.  While this certainly does not lessen the disgusting factor of what Ms. Baeta is accused of, I can thankfully report that the 13-year-old boy was not one of her special education students.  As I just said, it doesn’t lessen the fact that she may have had sexual relations with a boy 25 years her junior, but if it had been one of her students, that would have been a whole new level of “ick factor” that I can’t comprehend.

While it is not believed that any other students are involved, the police are asking that anyone with information to please call Detective Michael Ward at (510) 471-1365 or call the tip line at (510) 675-5207.

This women now joins the roll call of teacher sex scandals for 2009!

• Christine McCallum of Boston, MA
• Lisa Lavoie of Holyoke, MA
• Christy Lynn Martin, St. Petersburg, FL
• Linda Nef and Valynne Bowers, Bountiful, UT
• Sarah L. Tolzien, Richton Park, IL
• Autumn Faulkner, Randolph County, WV
• Lindsay Massaro, Hackettstown, NJ
• Lauren Breslin, Vineland, NJ
• Reanna Jewell, Apache Junction, AZ
• Jennifer Lea Burton, Orangefield, TX
• Tamara Hofmann, Chandler, AZ
• Jennifer Marie Collier, Jacksonville, FL
• Gina Marie Watring, Durham, NC
• Alison M. Peck, Greenfield, MO
• Maria Guman Hernandez, Hialeah, FL
• Helen Goddard, London, England
• Amy Elsworth & Brian Drake, Waterford, MI
• Alini Brito & Cindy Mauro, Brooklyn, NY (no students involved)
• Amanda Watkins, Muscle Shoals, AL

A teacher’s aide at Veterans Memorial Middle School in Vineland, NJ has been arrested for sexual contact with a student.

Lauren Breslin, 23-years-old of Vineland, NJ, was taken into custody on Friday for allegedly having kissed a 14-year-old student on the lips multiple times during school hours, and texting, or “sexting”, him multiple photos of herself in lingerie as well as one full-nude photo.  The relationship came to light after the boy’s mother had looked at his cell phone and found the photos.  She recognized Ms. Breslin and immediately alerted the police on Thursday, and by Friday morning she was taken into custody.

She was arraigned in Superior Court on Friday morning, where Superior Court Judge John Waters reduced her bail from $100,000 to $25,000 cash or bond. This was done after her strong ties to the community were expressed which included her being a champion swimmer at Vineland High School from 2001 to 2004, and still being involved with the swimming program. Her parents are also still located within the community and were present in the court room during the sentencing. Under the terms of her release she is not allowed any contact with anyone under the age of 18, to have no contact with the alleged victim and to stay away from the school where she has been suspended without pay.

This is truly getting to the point of ridiculous.  The other day it was a student teacher, Lindsay Massaro , and now we’re down to teacher’s aides.  What’s next?  According to Assistant Prosecutor Dara Paley, whose job it is to make her sound as horrible as possible, the student supposedly came to her for some kind of help and she then “took advantage” of him.  Whatever the case is, if its proven to be true, you just have to wonder, yet again, what this world is coming to.  It made some sort of really awkward sense when you would hear of female teachers in their 40′s and 50″s doing it, which isn’t to say it was right, because it isn’t, but it did make some sort of weird sense.  Now they are getting younger and younger, and you would think they would have some sort of sense of how wrong this all is, but apparently everyone has lost their minds at this point.

This women now joins the roll call of teacher sex scandals for 2009!

• Christine McCallum of Boston, MA
• Lisa Lavoie of Holyoke, MA
• Christy Lynn Martin, St. Petersburg, FL
• Linda Nef and Valynne Bowers, Bountiful, UT
• Sarah L. Tolzien, Richton Park, IL
• Autumn Faulkner, Randolph County, WV
• Lindsay Massaro, Hackettstown, NJ
• Kristina Anna Baeta, Union City, CA
• Reanna Jewell, Apache Junction, AZ
• Jennifer Lea Burton, Orangefield, TX
• Tamara Hofmann, Chandler, AZ
• Jennifer Marie Collier, Jacksonville, FL
• Gina Marie Watring, Durham, NC
• Alison M. Peck, Greenfield, MO
• Maria Guman Hernandez, Hialeah, FL
• Helen Goddard, London, England
• Amy Elsworth & Brian Drake, Waterford, MI
• Alini Brito & Cindy Mauro, Brooklyn, NY (no students involved)
• Amanda Watkins, Muscle Shoals, AL

It seems that not everyone in the NBC corporate family is 100% on board with the new Jay Leno show concept.

As I reported back in December, Jay Leno is moving to 10 PM EST, which places him in a prime time slot and before the nightly news for affiliates.  This move was made as a way to keep Leno from jumping ship to another network when Conan O’Brien takes over hosting duties on The Tonight Show in June, but it is also an attempt by NBC to try something new in the hopes it will pull them out of being the fourth in ratings of the big four networks.  (Yes, former joke network Fox has moved to second place even)

Well, it seems it is just more than people such as myself that are questioning the wisdom of this move as WHDH, the Boston, MA NBC affiliate, has opted not to air the show.  Instead of airing the oddly formatted show for the time slot, WHDH management has chosen that they will air an hour of news during that hour instead.  Their fear is that the Leno show will not work out in the time slot and could lead to lower ratings for their news broadcast that airs at the traditional 11 PM EST slot.

Coming as no big surprise, NBC is furious over this decision.  Not only is Boston Jay Leno’s hometown, but it is one of the 10 biggest television markets in the country.  The network is saying the station is violation of their contract, although the station’s lawyer’s say they aren’t.  The peacock network is also saying that this could lead to them yanking the station’s license and either starting their own company owned station (which they actually already have a license for) or possibly going to another station in the market and looking to convert them to NBC.

So with this hanging over their head, why would WHDH take on their corporate overlords?  Well, Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood sums it up succicently, as she always seems to do:

Because few of the NBC affiliates get a substantial boost from NBC’s primetime offerings because of the low ratings. Even NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker has admitted that the network-affiliate relationship is overdue for an overhaul. But don’t for a minute think the affiliates’ first-choice scenario isn’t for the network to finally deliver some primetime hits. Instead, NBC is giving up on even trying to program for high ratings.

The result is that when the new 2009-2010 schedule debuts in September, Leno’s show from Day One will be rated lower than anything on NBC’s primetime even now. But that doesn’t matter according to NBC Universal’s controversial philosophy of “managing for margins, not ratings”. Estimates are that Leno 2.0 may only cost $2M a week and result in 46 weeks of original shows, compared to the average $3 million per episode pricetag of scripted primetime dramas that air on average 22 original weekly episodes. But the 58-year-old attracts only 4.8 million viewers now on The Tonight Show – measly by primetime standards, especially in the advertiser-coveted 18-to-49 demographic. The affiliates know that expanded local news or local ballgames might hit a higher number than Leno or NBC’s weaker nights — which is no doubt why WHDH made the decision it did.

In short, this Leno move is good for the NBC corporate heads, and no one else. The idea that he will magically attract more than his current 4.8 million viewers is laughable, and the fact that NBC is foisting this off on their stations as a positive move is insulting.  I say kudos to WHBH for calling them on it, and I would certainly hope some others might do the same, but if NBC is to be believed, no other stations or even raising questions at this time.

What I find incredibly sad, and going by what Ms. Finke wrote, it seems NBC has just shrugged their shoulders and gone “Well, we suck now, might as well aim low.”  Networks have always traded off the lead spot in the ratings, and while yes it may be embaressing that you are in fourth, that doesn’t mean you just throw in the towel and try to go for the most cost effective ratings possible.  Just as WHDH has a contract with you, you have an agreement with them to deliver quality programming, and simply moving Jay Leno to the slot before the news instead of after it does not qualify as “quality programming”.

I for one stand by WHDH for what its worth.  NBC has made what I feel is going to go down is one of the biggest programming blunders in history and will only be labeled a “success” due to the low cost versus the return. The affiliates are going to lose an hour of the sort of advertising rates they got from shows like ER, even in its handicapped final seasons, and that will be a massive hurt to stations already hurting in a down economy.

Good on you, WHDH, keep up the good fight.