A Georgia teacher has been charged with numerous counts in regards to a sexual relationship she had with one of her teenage students.

Amy Bass Jackson, 35, was arrested last week after an investigation by the police into allegations made by the parents of one of her 14-year-old male students.  She was accused of having sex with the boy, and after a week long investigation she was charged with aggravated child molestation, three counts of child molestation, statutory rape, enticing a child for indecent purposes, sexual assault by a person with supervisory or disciplinary authority, two counts computer or electronic child exploitation, sexual exploitation of children and six counts of furnishing harmful material to minors according to CoastalCourier.  She was arrested last Wednesday, but Ms. Jackson resigned her position as a language arts teacher at William James Middle School as soon as the investigation began.

As per the usual trend these days with teacher sex scandals, Ms. Jackson apparently used social networks and cell phones to communicate with the unnamed victim.  The Bulloch County Board of Education has already stated that they will be reviewing the incident and possibly enacting new rules governing what contact teachers may have with students through various electronic means.

While there has been no mention yet of what evidence there is against Ms. Bass exactly, the number of different charges, and the mentioning of social networks and cell phones suggests there must be some evidence, but that is pure speculation on my part.  As with all of these cases, though, one has to wonder how things get to this point.  Is there nothing in these teacher’s minds that could potentially tell them what they are doing is wrong?  One has to wonder.

Thanks, Jo for the tip.

A total of 40 this week.

FunJug.com

• Rockstar Parking
• The Flaming C Movie Trailer
• Dog Tries To Drag His Pool Indoors
• Cat Attacks Reflection in Mirror
• Harry Potter Reimagined as a Teen Comedy
• My Drunk Kitchen Ep. 6: Brunch?
• Saturday Shorts: Cindy Goes to a Party

RememberingChristmas.com

• U.K. Department Stores Open Their Christmas Boutiques

SeanPAune.com

• Walking Dead Season 2 Trailer
• Captain America Raises the Flag at the Top of the Box Office
• Avengers Assemble in First Production Art
• New Judge Dredd Pictures Crush My Hopes
• Battleship Trailer Sucks as Much as You’d Expect
• Scattercast Episode #155: You Sunk My Battleship!
• Japanese Calling for End of Nuclear Power

TechnoBuffalo.com

• LG Thrill Hitting AT&T in Coming Weeks for $99
• AT&T Bringing Android Gingerbread to All Post-Paid 2011 Handsets
• Netflix Subscribers & Revenues Hit Another Quarterly High
• Verizon Adds Two New 4G LTE Devices to its Arsenal
• iPhone 5 Revealed in a Target Ad?
• iPod Touch with 3G Leaked on Apple’s Site?
• Windows Phone Mango Update Sent to Manufacturers
• Sprint Ends the Life of Several Popular Handsets
• Ask The Buffalo: 3D Tablets, BlackBerries and the MyTouch Slide 4G
• What Can’t You do in an Apple Store?
• The History of Android (infographic)
• Motorola Xoom Finally Receiving 4G LTE Upgrade in September
• Potential iPhone 5 Cases Surface Offering Clues to New Device
• Fox Wants to Make Sure You’re Paying for Cable to See its Shows
• Ask the Buffalo: July 27th Edition
• iPhone 5 Slated for Mid-Sept. Release?
• Samsung Galaxy S II Coming to Europe in White
• Budget iPhone 4 Prototype Caught on Camera?
• What’s The Apps: VLC Streamer
• Meet TechnoBuffalo at VidCon 2011
• Amazon Signs Deal with NBC Universal for Streaming Video Content
• Droid Bionic Confirmed by Motorola for Sept. Release
• Apple Has More Money than the U.S. Government – What Should it Do With It?
• AT&T Confirms Unlimited Data Throttling to Begin Oct. 1
• Rumor Roundup : Jane Says Spotify!

In a completely unsurprising announcement, the people of Japan are overwhelmingly calling for an end to the use of nuclear power in their country.

A recent poll conducted by the Kyodo news agency indicated that 70.3 percent of the population wants to see the use of nuclear power in Japan come to an end in the wake of the damage at the Fukushima plant.  Reuters is reporting that Prime Minister Naoto Kan is now echoing this sentiment, however, seeing as his approval rating has fallen to 17.1 percent in the wake of his handling of the Japan Earthquake-Tsunami aftermath, it isn’t the least bit surprising he would latch on to a popular opinion.

Fukushima is still leaking radiation four months after the disaster with no end in sight.  Of the 54 nuclear plants that were operational prior to March 11th, only 17 are currently online as the rest were shut down for safety checks.  The government has now delayed their return to service over safety concerns, especially after it was discovered that a pressure vessel at Kyushu Electric Power’s Genkai plant may be faulty.

As I predicted in a episode of Scattercast, I knew this would be the route the Japanese people would end up taking.  If they find something is dangerous, they usually just eliminate it from their society.  The problem is that almost a third of their power comes from nuclear facilities, so alternatives will need to be found, and quickly.  They can go wind, solar or even wave technology, but those are expensive and time consuming to roll out.  My theory is that they will do something to keep themselves going, but more than likely they will be doing heavy research into alternative fuel systems, and by the time they’re done, the whole world may end up benefiting from the time and research that will now into these projects.

For the time being, Japan is still not out of the woods.

Please remember you can help by checking out the Japan Earthquake-Tsunami Relief. It has been over a month since the tragic events of March 11th, but they still need our help.

It’s episode #155 and Scattercast is getting old.

A minor update on Dolly Madison.

Why does Battleship look so blasted bad?

The Smurfs are being ravaged by the critics?  Are we shocked?

A lot of talk about movies in general.

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Circulating since 2009 as a project, the film version of the famous board game Battleship is becoming a real deal, and the first trailer has now been released. Yes, it looks as pointless as you’d imagine.

It would appear that director Peter Berg has gone to the Michael Bay School of Directing for his latest cinematic outing.  While we can imagine it was difficult for anyone to come up with a concept for a game that is based solely around saying things like “B6″ and “Miss,” we’re not quite sure going for slow motion, lingering shots of water droplets falling from an alien ship passing over an inflatable boat was the way to go. Oh yeah, did I mention that it involves aliens? Because that was the most logical way to set up this story.

From watching the painful trailer, it would appear the aliens erect a dome over the battlefield, and the U.S. Naval ships lose their radar, which is what I’m betting will lead to them coming up with a grid system to call where they should be aiming their shots … you know … like “A4.”  Let me just begin pounding my head into a keyboard now despite the fact the film doesn’t release until next summer.

My biggest question is how Liam Nesson got sucked into this project.  Was he this hard up for a paycheck?

Watch the Battleship trailer at your own risk … you may feel cranial bleeding.

More images from the Judge Dredd movie have popped up courtesy of Empire magazine and … why can’t anyone get this property right?

There is no doubt that the comic book version of Judge Dredd is a bit odd looking, but couldn’t they have at least tried to make the costume look at least a bit like that?  Would it be so bad to run the chain to the badge?  I can understand not doing the eagle should badge as it’s odd looking, although I would have thought there could have at least been a little one.  Moving the gun from the boot to the leg is fine, although the whole idea was it was easy to access when riding his motorcycle.

But, and I hate slamming on poor Karl Urban, but he looks nowhere near massive enough to be Dredd.  Look at the characters chin in the drawing, look at his build … and then look at the pictures below.  Urban is a good actor, but he looks nothing like the character, and considering how in the comic we have never seen his face, the lower half of an actor’s face in this role is essential, and he simply doesn’t have the chin for it.  Yes, this matters in this particular case.

How will the rest of the movie look?  Who knows, they aren’t showing us much, but I am ot excited to say the least at this point.  Now lets just hope at least the script captures the tone of the books.

More images after the jump of Dredd and a few other judges.

Continue Reading ->

With 10 months to go, Marvel is wasting no time getting us all worked up for the upcoming film of The Avengers.  Considering the amount of time and money the company has put into prepping for this film, it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Released over the course of the San Diego Comic-Con was a series of seven character posters that would finally form one large image that showed you some of the history of each character as well as hints of what we’ll see in the new film.  (Is that a Helicarrier I see behind Hawkeye and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents?)

• Scarlett Johansson as Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow
• Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man
• Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk
• Chris Evans as Steve Rogers/Captain America
• Chris Hemsworth as Thor
• Jeremy Renner as Clint Barton/Hawkeye
• Mark Ruffalo as Bruce Banner/Hulk
• Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury
• Clark Gregg as Agent Phil Coulson (S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent)
• Cobie Smulders as Maria Hill (S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent)

While I normally don’t care for films with too many characters in them, especially in the comic book genre, but the only new introductions out of all those characters I listed that are new to the series are Cobie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother as S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Maria Hill and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye.  (Yes, Hawkeye appeared in Thor for a sum total of an eye blink, I don’t count it.)  If Marvel was going to try to introduce each character in this film I would go out of mind, but seeing as the characters have had their own films to prepare for this particular project, this concept works fine for me.

May 2012 can’t get here fast enough for me.

Knocking the boy wizard from the top box office spot, Captain America: The First Avenger planted his flag at the top of the mountain.

Captain America took the top box office spot this weekend with $65.8 million, beating the last Marvel movie, Thor, by a mere $100,000 for a weekend total.  The latter went on to a domestic gross total of $180 million, so it looks like this film will go on to a similar total.  This is the last of the films from the company leading up to its team film, The Avengers debuting next May.

The big news this week, however, was the 72 percent decline that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2, the largest fall ever for a film that set an opening weekend record. It still brought in $48 million, and it is doubtful that Warner Brothers is to up set as it’s nine day worldwide total sits at $834.5 million.  How will they ever make payroll next week with so little income coming in?

Friends With Benefits came in third with a rather anemic $18.5 million, below the similarly themed No Strings Attached that came out this past winter and opened with $19.7 million. There are probably some nerves around this film now as it opened so low and had a $35 million dollar budget. Using the usual math the film needs to hit $70 million domestic to break even, and that seems a pretty tall order now.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon slipped to fourth place with an estimated $12 million. It’s domestic total now sits at $325 million and a worldwide total of $882.3 million.

Coming in fifth was Horrible Bosses with $11.7 million, bringing its domestic total to $82.4 million off of a $35 million budget.

And since I love a train wreck, where was Green Lantern? 18th place with $390,000 for a new domestic total of $113.9 million. Worldwide it’s now at $147.2 million off of a production budget of $200 million. And yet they say there will be a sequel? Well, okay then.

Next week sees Cowboys & Aliens, Crazy, Stupid, Love and The Smurfs.

The second season of The Walking Dead kicks off on Oct. 16th, and it only makes sense that a big promotional push would happen at San Diego Comic-Con. What I’m not sure anyone was counting on was over four minutes of footage to be shown.

Judging by what is shown in the below footage, the television adaptation will continue to mix original storylines in with what happened in the comic.  The fact that the character of Shane is still with the survivors (I’m not saying if he died in the book or just left the group) tells us that things definitely are still diverging from the original story, but then we see “the farm,” and we’re suddenly pulled back into the book.  (please tell me the prison and the Governor are coming up … please, please, please)

All that being said, I would say easily 95 percent of this trailer shows us things that never happened in the book, and while I’m okay with some divergence, if you’te doing to call this The Walking Dead, couldn’t we be at least a little bit closer?  At this point they should have just gone with a different name and said, “Inspired by the comic book series, The Walking Dead.”

Despite my grievances with the series at the end of season 1, I’ll still be watching.

A total of 47 this week.

FunJug.com

• Speak Like Kristen Stewart
• Russian Meal Time – Epic Meal Time
• Bollywood Dancing in a Pizza Hut
• X-Men Born This Way
• My Drunk Kitchen Ep. 5: Smashed Brothers
• Saturday Shorts: Writing Better Social Letters

RememberingChristmas.com

• Christmas in July

SeanPAune.com

• Animal Dumping
• Harry Potter Sets Opening Weekend Record
• The Dark Knight Rises Teaser Trailer
• Introducing Dolly Madison
• On Turning 40
• Amazing Spider-Man Trailer; Here We Go Again
• Scattercast Episode #154: Not the Snack Cakes
• The Tragedy of Oslo

TechnoBuffalo.com

• Samsung Galaxy Q to Have 5.3-inch Screen?
• Batman: Arkham City Collector’s Editions Gets Detailed Early
• Two New iPhones on the Way This Summer?
• HTC Puccini Tablet Passes Through the FCC with LTE in Tow
• Amazon Kindle App Finally Arrives for the TouchPad
• Borders Says “Good-Bye” as No One Bids to Save It
• HTC Sensation for AT&T: Hands-On
• Ask The Buffalo: Chromebook Thoughts and The Most Exciting Tech Products of 2011
• Spotify Contest! Win One of 20 Invite Codes!
• Mac OS X Lion Confirmed for July 20th Launch (DEVELOPING)
• Apple has Largest Quarter Ever with Revenue of $28.5 Billion
• Roku 2 Gets Shown Off in an Ad Before it’s Announced
• The Mobile Platform Race (infographic)
• Mac Mini Receives an Update for Mac OS X Lion
• MacBook Goes the Way of the Dodo Bird (UPDATED)
• Which Apple Announcement Excited You the Most Today? (poll)
• Samsung Galaxy S II Finally Heading to the U.S. (UPDATED)
• Roku 2 Makes its Official Debut
• MacBook Air 2011 Comparison Chart
• HTC Wildfire S Coming to T-Mobile Aug. 3rd for $80
• What’s The Apps: Movie Looks HD
• Ask the Buffalo: July 21st Edition
• Philadelphia Officially Frowns on Texting While Walking
• Amazon Bolsters Streaming Video with CBS Deal
• Apple Said to be in Talks to Buy Hulu
• Droid Bionic Inching Closer to Release? (UPDATED)
• Verizon Labels Materials “iPhone 4G”; Mistake or Hint?
• Droid Bionic Cases Appear at Retail; Phone Still Missing
• Mortal Kombat Adds Freddy Kreuger as DLC
• Star Wars: The Old Republic Character Classes Shown Off in Trailer
• T-Mobile Starts Selling iPhone Compatible SIM Cards
• Apple Tests OTA Updates with New iOS 5 Beta Build
• Rumor Round Up: iPhone 5 for $350.00, Google Nexus Prime Leaks and More!

There are sometimes events in this world that are just so impossible to comprehend that you never feel that words will adequately describe them or your feelings about them.  What Anders Behring Breivik did in Oslo, Norway yesterday is one of those events.

As if the bombing of a government building wasn’t bad enough with killing seven people, but then traveling to a youth camp, dressed as a policeman, and killing 85 or more children and teenagers is enough to make you wish for this person to rot in Hell.  And it doesn’t matter that this camp was sponsored by the ruling Labor Party, or that Breivik had a difference of political opinion with them, how can anyone view killing children as anything more than monstrous?

It is the right of anyone to disagree with their government.  It is their right to speak up, but to take the lives of children?  Did he somehow think this would make people stand up and listen to his Progressive Party that he was an active member of?  It does nothing but make them look like psychopaths.

Children.

What could these children have possibly done to warrant this?  Absolutely nothing.  I don’t care what potential sick reasoning this man may have come up with in his head, there is never an excuse for killing children.  I am in no way defending the bombing, that sickens me as well, but what he did on the island of Utøya just sickens me to my core.

They were children.  They were innocents.

Evil has a new face, and its name is Anders Behring Breivik.

It’s episode #154 and Scattercast is getting old.

More on turning 40.

More on Dolly Madison.

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