The Real Housewives of Atlanta Reunion Recap: Growth is Hard to Find

Growth is a beautiful thing. Of course it can also be hard to find.

The Real Housewives of Atlanta Reunion, Part 1, offered up a lot of talk about growth but what we saw was merely a an hour's worth of screeching, eye rolling, and one upmanship Atlanta style so we'll break it down in THG's +/- review ...

Andy starts off asking why the ladies love to talk about there designer labels.

It's true, these women are always going on and on about who they're wearing and what they're buying. They may think it makes them appear wealthy, but they only look like a bunch of insecure wannabes. Minus 12.

Somehow all roads led back to NeNe tonight. If she wasn't defending herself or yelling at someone she was rolling her eyes while the others were talking.

And she was wearing the most ridiculous looking heels of the group. Minus 5. How the heck does she walk in those things.

First we'll start off with Kandi whose sex toy line, Bedroom Kandi is making her a mint of money. Plus 8. You go girl! Phaedra says she's helping make sure the products work well but NeNe simply looks uncomfortable. Kandi calls her out on it. Didn't NeNe used to be a stripper. Maybe so but sex toys are not her thing. 

NeNe says she's grown and she ain't got time for these ladies. Well, she isn't threatening to kill anyone this season so I suppose we can count that as growth. Plus 9.

So once we break away from Kandi's cleavage (seriously, she must be glued into that dress), we move over to Kim… and more cleavage.

Kim is so blissfully happy it is almost sickening. Andy asks about her spending habits but she swears that although she likes to spend, they aren't stupid about it. Let's hope so for the kids' sake. She also says that she and Sweetie are still friends and that she came to Brielle's birthday party. Plus 5 because I was so worried about that.

Then Kim breaks the big news. She's pregnant again. Damn, she and Kroy sure work fast but Plus 10 for the happy news.

Well, not everyone seems so happy. NeNe looks downright ticked off and Cynthia's not much better. Minus 8. 

Is it a boy or girl?  Rose her friendly psychic advisor says it's a girl but Kim's not telling. We'll all have to wait and see.

Andy then tries to steer the conversation to Big Poppa but Kim says she won't talk about him in respect of her new husband. Plus 7. Good call.

Finally we wander over to Sheree who cries about Bob still not paying child support. Yup, the guy's a jerk. Nothing has changed there except that Sheree's still blaming Phaedra for the way she handled the case. Minus 10. It's been months. Phaedra returned her retainer and recommended another attorney. What more does she want?

Chateau Sheree is still a hole in the ground but she says she's got a new contractor and things are back on track. Then NeNe calls her project Neverland, as in it's never going to happen and suddenly things turn ugly.

Sheree tells NeNe she has donkey teeth and NeNe says hers could use a whitening. Classy, ladies. Minus 5. 

The two are actually screeching so much it's hard to make out what they're saying but it's all about how much money they claim to have and when NeNe says she doesn't shop at Walmart, Sheree is quick to shoot back that her son still steals from there.

Minus 15 because bringing the kids into this isn't cool and NeNe calls her on it. Then Kim jumps back in reminding NeNe that she didn't have a problem tweeting about her kids having different baby daddies. NeNe claims it's not the same thing. You can decide who's right on that one.

The screeching doesn't end until the show does but don't worry, it isn't over yet. We'll have part two next week and you just know there'll be rehashing the Africa nonsense. It's the storyline that just won't end.

EPISODE TOTAL: -6! SEASON TOTAL: -389!

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Is corn syrup killing the honeybees? (+video)

A trio of recent studies faults a common family of corn pesticides for disorienting honeybees, potentially leading to colony collapse disorder. The German chemical company Bayer, which manufactures the pesticides, disagrees. ?

Since 2006, something awfully strange has been happening to North America's commercial beehives. Beekeepers are finding that many of the boxed hives ranged throughout their apiaries have been inexplicably abandoned by worker bees. These ghost-hives typically have ample stores of honey and pollen, and hold gestating colony broods, sometimes even a lone queen.

Skip to next paragraph Dr Reese Halter speaks to the Daily Planet from Camerillo, Calif on the missing 50 billion honeybees.

This phenomenon is called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and two papers published recently in the journal Science say that it is correlated with the presence of a ubiquitous class of insecticide called neonicotinoids. A newer study published in the Bulletin of Insectology suggests that this insecticide is introduced into bee colonies through, strangely enough, high-fructose corn syrup.

The insecticide was developed by Bayer AG, the German chemical and pharmaceutical giant most recognized for its original brand of aspirin. Today, the $53 billion company has released a rebuttal to the suggested link between neonicotinoids and Colony Collapse Disorder.

The population of feral honeybees in the US has been steadily decreasing for the past half-century, and is now almost nonexistent. In the same timescale, commercial honeybees experienced a shallower decline in population. However, since 2006, they have started rapidly disappearing in North America and Europe. Many scientists agree that the confluence of factors that drove population decline before 2006 is still in effect, but that something probably changed in light of the new rash of colony collapses.

Identifying the causes of CCD is a complex proposition, but the disorder's symptoms and effects are quite simple. It usually occurs when worker bees first depart their hives to forage, in winter or early spring. Then they don't return. Their hives typically have an active queen, ample food, and a developing brood ? not exactly the home a bee would abandon under normal circumstances. Many scientists have since suggested that pesticides may disorient bees or affect their memory, making them unable to navigate home.

Chensheng Lu, an environmental scientist at Harvard and the lead author on the Bulletin of Insectology paper, was curious as to how the insecticide may be introduced into the colony, and decided to investigate high-fructose corn syrup, which for the past decade has been used by beekeepers to supplement hives that have been decanted of honey. Much of the US corn crop is treated with neonicotinoids, and so trace amounts of the insecticides can often be found in the sugary syrup.

Lu and colleagues designed an experiment that would expose hives to concentrations ranging from 20 to 400 parts per billion. Within 4 months, 15 of the 16 experimental hives had been emptied by what appeared to be CCD, according to the researchers.

As more studies are published on this subject, the link between neonicontinoids and CCD may become more apparent. In this case, Bayer AG could only be held indirectly accountable, as it is the beekeepers who are substituting the inexpensive syrup for bee honey, thereby introducing the pesticide.

Earlier today Bayer released a statement that criticized the Harvard study, asserting that the sample size was too small to be statistically significant and that the "authors ignored the scientific consensus that bee health is impaired by multiple factors, including inadequate diet, pests and parasites such as the varroa mite, microbial diseases, mismanaged colonies, and loss of genetic diversity."

These are not unreasonable criticisms. Though the study authors certainly didn't "ignore" a "scientific consensus" on the multiple factors that could cause CCD. They simply investigated one of them. Nonetheless, scientists are still puzzled by the many possible causes of the disorder. They're also concerned, and for good reason.

The common honeybee is widely recognized as the most important insect pollinator. They're extremely versatile, able to collect both nectar and pollen and to transport it. They are easily managed by beekeepers, and live year-round, which means they will service a wide variety of plants. They're also fecund; one simple colony can consist of one queen, a few hundred drones and roughly 80,000 workers. There is no realistic scenario in which we could operate our mass-scale farms without them.

Bayer's concerns about the studies are not all that surprising considering the company's financial interests. But if more research confirms that its neonicotinoids are afflicting the commercial honeybee population, then they are threatening an enterprise on which Bayer crucially depends: agriculture itself.

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Canonical's AWSOME API bridges OpenStack and Amazon clouds, Ubuntu has its head in both

New features and services that improve Canonical's latest version of Ubuntu seem to keep rolling in. The latest addition being the announcement of its AWSOME proxy service. No, that's not us getting over excited about it, that stands for Any Web Service Over Me, and it includes APIs that smooth the transition to OpenStack for those currently using Amazon's cloud services. Although not open source, Amazon's Web Service has such a large market share, that Canonical clearly wants to make integrating with it as smooth as possible. The AWSOME proxy will only provide basic functionality for the AWS side of things, with users still encouraged to adopt the OpenStack infrastructure for deeper capabilities. Still, if you're currently working with Bezos' platform, and this was the last barrier to hopping aboard the Precise Pangolin ship, you're in luck.

Canonical's AWSOME API bridges OpenStack and Amazon clouds, Ubuntu has its head in both originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 15 Apr 2012 03:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fake Orgasms and the Tea Party: Just Another Political Science Convention (Atlantic Politics Channel)

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Sunday Evening Dog Blogging: Reader Dogs (Theagitator)

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George Zimmerman charged in Trayvon Martin case: Why now, and what next?

George Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. Florida?s Stand Your Ground law could loom large moving forward.?

Forty-five days after police in Sanford, Fla., released neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman without charges after he shot an unarmed black teenager, a special Florida prosecutor has charged him with second-degree murder.

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News that Mr. Zimmerman was in custody in Florida capped an emotional and tense three weeks that raised questions about racial injustice and sparked a fiery national debate about Florida's landmark Stand Your Ground self-defense law, which prosecutors acknowledge they may still have to contend with in the case.

Amid massive public pressure and attention from the White House and the Justice Department, special state prosecutor Angela Corey announced Wednesday that the state was charging Zimmerman, a 28-year-old former altar boy going to school to become a police officer, for his role in Trayvon Martin's death.

Saying her decision had nothing to do with public pressure, Ms. Corey said she believes prosecutors have evidence to prove that Zimmerman did not act in self-defense under the state's Stand Your Ground law. A charge of second-degree murder involves the claim that death was caused by dangerous conduct and an obvious lack of concern for human life. Florida law requires a minimum punishment of 25 years and a maximum of life in prison without parole if convicted.

?We have to have reasonable certainty of conviction any time we file charges,? said Corey. ?If Stand Your Ground is an issue, we'll fight it.?

Sanford police released Zimmerman on the night of the shooting, believing they didn't have probable cause given his self-defense claim and physical evidence ? including blood on nose and back of his head ? that he had defended himself.?

But Corey said the case ?changed course? amid a public outcry over the Sanford Police Department's assertion that there would be no arrest, and as Gov. Rick Scott appointed her three weeks ago to lead the investigation.

?The Supreme Court has defined our role as not only ministers of justice, but seekers of truth, and we stay true to that mission,? said Corey, who said she had prayed with the Martin family at their first meeting three weeks ago, though she had not promised them that any charges would be filed.

Given the tension over the case in Sanford, officials in Seminole County ? where the special prosecutor is based ?remained on high alert ahead of Wednesday's announcement. On Monday, an empty police cruiser was riddled with bullets near where Trayvon was shot. Corey said Zimmerman was being held in an undisclosed location for his safety and the safety of others.

?I trust in the goodness of all Florida citizens to allow justice system to reach appropriately conclusion in this case,? Governor Scott said.

According to Martin's family, the arrest is the first step toward closure. They have urged police to arrest Zimmerman, alleging that the outcome would have been different had a black man shot a white man. Thousands of people have marched, many of them wearing a similar hoodie to what Trayvon was wearing the night he died. More than a million people signed a petition for police to arrest Zimmerman on the Change.org website.

?We simply wanted arrest, nothing more, nothing less, and we got it, and I say thank you, thank you Lord, thank you, Jesus,? Trayvon's mother, Sybrina Fulton, said. ?Secondly, I just want to speak from my heart to your heart, because a heart has no color. It's not black, it's not white, it's red. Thank you from my heart to your heart. ?

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Madonna's Truth Or Dare Fragrance '15 Or 16 Years' In The Making

Queen of Pop tells MTV News that scent is for those 'daring enough to tell the truth.'
By John Mitchell, with reporting by Rob Imbriani

Madonna
Photo: MTV News

Have you ever wanted to smell like royalty? Well, now's your chance.

We may not have kings and queens here in democratic America, but we've made our celebrities — pop stars in particular — our own sort of royalty, and none is more regal than Queen of Pop Madonna.

On the heels of her acclaimed album MDNA and with a massive, largely sold-out world tour looming, Her Madgesty launched her first-ever fragrance, Truth or Dare, Thursday night in New York, and she tells MTV News that the fresh, gardenia-based scent has been a long time coming.

"This is finally the time that I developed a fragrance that I liked the smell of," Madonna said when asked why she was entering the celebrity scent game now. "I've been trying to develop a fragrance for the last 15 or 16 years."

"Madonna's Manager Confirms That 'Turn Up The Radio' Will Be Next MDNA Single"

So who is the scent perfect for? Madonna has a few thoughts.

"Someone who is daring, daring enough to tell the truth," she said before adding, "and someone who likes gardenias."

Some Madonna watchers have found it curious that the always forward-thinking pop diva would draw on something so well known from her past — her historic Blond Ambition Tour documentary "Madonna: Truth or Dare," which recently dropped on BluRay — for the name of her new fragrance. M explained that there's a very simple reason for the name choice.

"My manager [Guy Oseary], he just held a gun to my head and said, 'Call it this or you're not going to have a manager anymore,' and I said OK," Madonna deadpanned.

After clarifying that she was joking (we figured as much: No one tells Madonna what to do!), the singer elaborated that "truth or dare" is "a phrase that is related to me and my work and what I stand for. I think I've had a fairly daring career and I'm pretty honest about my work, so I think that goes with my perfume."

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