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Microheat Inc., the company responsible for inventing and supplying General Motors with their HotSpot windshield cleaning system, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The technology utilized heated liquid to clean the front glass of debris, ice, and snow. Unfortunately, a short circuit on a printed circuit board could overheat and lead to a fire (removing contaminants from much more than just the front windshield). As a result, GM recalled 944,000 vehicles and dropped Microheat, and their HotSpot product, from the lineup. Even with the system no longer offered on vehicles, things are cooking in court as GM is now seeking $20-25 million in damages to cover the cost of the recall. Without the assets to cover the charges, bankruptcy protection could only be expected. While GM’s HotSpot recall solves the overheating problem with a simple inline fuse, the new filing by Microheat only seems to be fueling the fire.

ATLANTA — Adrian Gonzalez sees no reason to praise any of the pitchers who are shutting down the Padres these days.

“It comes down to, it doesn’t matter who the pitcher is out there,” said Gonzalez, the best hitter on the team. “Could be a young guy or an inexperienced guy or a veteran guy. Doesn’t matter. We’re just not producing.

“As a team, we’re not doing it.”

Gonzalez was speaking after the team’s 16th defeat in the past 20 games, a 5-2 setback at Turner Field Wednesday night.

For the 16th time this season — or 47 percent of the contests — the Padres scored two runs or fewer.

It’s one thing for a Padres offense to go thirsty in April, when cooler weather tends to make Petco Park play as if it were the Deadball Era.

As for the pitching the Padres faced in April, manager Bud Black said he’s never seen better pitching for one month since he entered the majors in 1981.

But the Padres — poor at slugging, dismal at getting on base, prone to striking out and able to combine slow footspeed with bad baserunning — are still doing almost nothing of substance on offense.

Almost every night, they continue to put their starting pitcher on a tightrope. Wednesday night it was Randy Wolf who worked without a safety net, opposite a stout, athletic Braves offense that is averaging more than six runs per home game and has Mark Kotsay as its No. 8 hitter.

When Wolf put a 2-2 game into the home team’s hands by loading the bases with none out in the seventh, Black enlisted Joe Thatcher, he of the 6.75 ERA. Thatcher gave up a single, a sacrifice fly and two more singles.

Ballgame.

“It’s really hard,” Wolf (2-2) said of the team’s struggles. “It’s very difficult. I play the game because I want to win and obviously we’re not doing that. It’s very frustrating.”

If you want to dig really deep, you could chalk up Wednesday night’s striking talent disparity to Braves scouts who are so adept at finding amateurs and the Padres’ two-decades-long underachievement in that area.

From 1988 through 2006, the Padres were the only National League team that never got one 20-home run season from a homegrown player; in that same span, the Braves got 45 seasons of at least 20 homers from nine players.

This Braves lineup, loaded with homegrown producers such as Chipper Jones, Brian McCann and Jeff Francoeur, is so deep that Kotsay was in the No. 8 hole with a .308 batting average. “That’s a good eight-hole baseball player,” Wolf said.

Kotsay, hitting a slider that Wolf said was a good pitch, singled with two outs to put the Braves ahead 2-1 in the second. The Padres’ Tadahito Iguchi tied it in the sixth, scoring on Kevin Kouzmanoff’s double play after leading off with a single, stealing second and reaching third on Gonzalez’s single. The Padres were done scoring, though.

So it was left to Padres pitchers to be perfect from there, and they fell short. Picking on Wolf’s first two pitches of the seventh, the Braves smacked a double and single, and Kotsay came back from 0-2 to earn a walk off Wolf’s 86th pitch.

Enter Thatcher, a left-handed sidewinder. Black would let him face four right-handers. The first, pinch-hitter Greg Norton, hit a go-ahead single off a 1-2 pitch. The Braves pulled away, and right-handers against Thatcher improved their average from .320 to .351.

Black had better luck demoting struggling Jim Edmonds one spot to the sixth hole, but even after Edmonds went 1-for-2 with a walk, Black lifted him for pinch-hitter Callix Crabbe.

Before the game, General Manager Kevin Towers declined comment when asked if the club is planning to release Edmonds. The Braves, meantime, are pleased with Kotsay, whom they acquired cheaply from Oakland last offseason, at a time when the Padres decided to get Edmonds instead.
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Sure, you’ve heard the horror stories of faulty Xbox power cables sparking up fires in homes, but it seems the latest case involves the aforesaid console’s successor: the Xbox 360. According to Little Rock, Arkansas fire department captain Jason Weaver, a 360’s power cord was to blame for a blaze that injured no one (thankfully) but caused some $100,000 in property damage. Mr. Weaver asserted that the power supply was likely crammed in a tight spot with no “space to dissipate heat,” and while we’ve certainly seen no shortage of overheating Xbox 360s, this marks the first time that we’ve seen high temperatures wreak havoc on more than just the machine’s internals. Here’s to hoping this isn’t the start of a dreadful trend.

[Via Joystiq]

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In some regions of Scotland and Ireland, Halloween celebrations start by kindling fire on top of hills and on plains by young people, which is known as ‘Halloween Bleeze’, as a part of the holiday ritual. In the past, a circular trench to symbolize sun surrounded these sacred bonfires. Then, youths kindle faggot’ made up of heath, broom and dressings of flax tied to the end of a pole from this bonfire and carry on the shoulders to the village to rekindle old hearths with new ceremonial fire. If the faggot gets burnt out in the way, a second one is ties to the pole, before the fire dies. Thus, several blazing faggots being carried through the villages look quite beautiful.

The natives of Hebrides used to pour ale into sea for a marine God called Shony on Celtic Samhain or Halloween, so that he sends seaweed to the shore, which is a good fertilizer. The sacred bonfires of Samhain are similar to Solar fire festivals of Solstices and Equinoxes, except that it was timed with the lunar calendar and were called ‘Samhanagan’. Each household used to compete each other to have the ‘Biggest one. Later these traditions moved on to Nwe Year Celebrations but still a traditional Scottish Halloween song called ‘Hogmanay’ mentions these rituals. Fire rituals of Halloween also include the Nutcracker ritual, predominant in the north of England.

One of the Halloween rituals related to these fire rituals indicate that when the fire dies down, its ashes are used to form a circle and one stone for each member of the household is kept inside this circle near the circumference. If any stone is displaced or seems broken by next morning, then the person to whom that stone belongs is believed to die within a year. A similar rite in north Wales includes a great bonfire called ‘Coel Coeth’ being built for each family on Halloween. Later, the members of the household throw a white stone in the ashes marked in their name. Next morning, all the stones are searched for and if any stone is missing, then the person who threw that stone, is believed to die before next Halloween.

LOS ANGELES - A Superior Court commissioner gave Britney Spears’ father the power to fire the singer’s business manager, according to documents released Friday.

Commissioner Reva Goetz also ordered Howard Grossman to turn over “all documents, records and assets relating to Britney Spears” to James Spears, who is the court-appointed conservator of his daughter and her estate.

The order came the day after Goetz held an emergency closed-door hearing on a motion brought by the singer’s father and her lawyer Andrew Wallet, who is part of the conservatorship.

Spears’ parents said they feared their daughter’s life was at risk after she was released from a hospital psychiatric ward on Wednesday.

Spears’ affairs were placed under a temporary conservatorship after she was taken to UCLA Medical Center on Jan. 31 under heavy police escort. Conservatorship are granted for people deemed unable to care for themselves or their affairs.

The conservatorship lasts until Feb. 14.

Spears was discharged from the hospital over the recommendation of her psychiatrist and against the wishes of her parents. Her parents said they were extremely disappointed she was released and they said they were deeply concerned about her “safety and vulnerability and we believe her life is presently at risk.”

Spears slipped out of the hospital unnoticed by the pack of paparazzi that follow her every move in public, but they gave chase later in the day when she left her home behind the wheel of her Mercedes-Benz and eventually showed up at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
source:news.yahoo