We present you funny dog posts from May 05 to May 11 that will paws-itively make you through the rest of the week!

A no-kill shelter in Indiana is bringing attention to one of their dogs as the dog's "spunky personality is dimming" after being in the shelter for too long.

New Criticism of Elon: He Spends Too Much Time With His Son

Energy storage company BaroMar is preparing to test a new kind of grid-level energy storage that relies on water to function. If it works, it will be a cheaper way to stabilize renewable energy over longer periods of time. The world is gradually moving towards zero-carbon energy options, but the road ahead is not a straightforward one. To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, around 80 percent of the world’s electricity will have to come from options like solar and wind power. For some, the prospect of moving towards zero-carbon grids may seem impossible – but some countries, like Portugal, Denmark, and Namibia are already doing so. However, to be applicable to everyone, new ways of storing and releasing energy produced from these new technologies will need to be improved to keep up with demand. These demands will vary depending on location – some may need almost constant supply, even on overcast days, while others may experience peaks and troughs throughout the day. At the same time, energy will need to be stored for (forgive the pun) the rainy days of winter or other seasonal low points where wind power may not make up for the loss of solar power. This is where BaroMar’s new compressed air energy storage (CAES) alternative may come in handy. The technology for CAES has been around for about 40 years and is known to be quite a good cost-effective way to store energy and to ensure that the grid remains stable. Traditionally, the process involves compressing and storing ambient air under pressure in underground reservoirs, like caves or old salt mines. When energy is needed, it can be released using turbines that drive a generator to recover it.   BaroMar believes their alternative approach can outperform this older method and store energy for long-durations using low-tech equipment.       The answer is water. The company plans to set up plants near coastlines with access to deep water, the pressure from which will replace the high-pressure tanks used in traditional CAES. This approach is much cheaper. So rather than imagining slick sophisticated tanks of pressurized air, imagine large concrete and steel tanks weighed down by cages filled with rocks. These would be submerged at around 200-700 meters (650-2,300 feet). Each tank has water-permeable valves that fill them with seawater, at least to start with. Then, when energy needs to be stored, the nearby compressor and generator (which is on land) feed air down into the tanks through a hose at around 20-70 bar (290-1,015 psi), depending on the depth. As the air enters the tanks, it forces water out. Then, when energy needs to be extracted, the air is allowed to return up the hose where it powers a thermal recovery system and then a turbo expander, driving a generator. Back at the sea floor, the tanks fill back up with water and await further use. This system, especially the tanks, is said to be significantly cheaper to produce because the pressure from the seawater acts as a stabilizer. “The tanks are designed to resist loads imposed by the marine environment as well as the compressed air and hydrostatic water pressure, during both installation and operational conditions,” a spokesperson for Jacobs, who has teamed up with BaroMar, explained to CleanTechnica.Jacobs is preparing a pilot project for the new system to be installed in Cyprus with the target of reaching a round-trip efficiency - the combined loss of energy added to and withdrawn from an energy store – of around 70 percent. If achieved, this would be around the same efficiency as the world’s largest traditional CAES station in China. However, this water-based pilot project will not be able to achieve the level of energy stored at the Chinese plants. It will initially store around 4 MWh (compared to the 100-MW, 400 MW/h capacity in Zhangjiakou, China). Despite its promises, there will be challenges ahead. These relate to anything designed to exist underwater for decades, which require extensive feasibility studies, geophysical research, and geotechnological and bathymetric surveying to make sure the tanks can be built and can operate at great depths. Still, if BaroMar’s claims are correct, this new system would be extremely appealing to many cities across the world and could represent a far cheaper and easily scalable solution. Let’s see how they get on. 

Back in 2021, China instituted the world’s first series of national regulations to try and curb sedentary behavior in children. Almost three years on, a team led by scientists at the University of Bristol has taken a close look at the results of the measures. The conclusion? They seem to be working.For a great many of us, our days now revolve around sitting down. Whether it be a desk job, a long drive, or flopping onto the sofa after a tiring day, we don’t do as much standing as we used to 50 or 100 years ago. This trend is just as apparent in our children, with research showing that kids from hunter-gatherer societies get way more exercise than those growing up in the UK or the US. The trouble is that all this sitting can mean we lose some of the health benefits of regular exercise. Although it may be possible to “catch up” on physical activity you miss out on during the week, most health experts still agree that getting our kids into more active habits from a younger age can help stave off potential problems down the line. The problem is, how can that be achieved in a society that has them sitting at school, then sitting to do homework, and then probably sitting to relax in their downtime too?The Chinese government was the first in the world to bring in regulations to try and tackle this issue. In July 2021, a series of measures was brought in that took a multi-pronged approach to sedentary behavior in different settings. The regulations restrict the access that online gaming businesses can have to the youth market; they limit the amount of homework teachers should assign to children according to age group; and they put constraints on when private tutoring companies can offer lessons. Dr Bai Li, from the Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences at the University of Bristol’s School for Policy Studies, explained in a statement that “this type of regulatory intervention across multiple settings has never been tried before.”“Traditionally, children and their parents or carers have been guided with education and encouraged to make behavioural changes themselves, which hasn’t really worked. With these regulatory measures, the onus has shifted to online gaming companies, schools and, private tutoring companies to comply.”Li recently led a study to find out how the intervention is faring, and the results may provide food for thought for other world governments.The team looked at routine surveillance data for over 7,000 school students aged 9 and above living in 31 regions across 14 cities in the Chinese province of Guangxi. The data covered a period between 2020 and 2021, just before and just after the regulations came into effect.Overall, the average daily sedentary time for these students dropped by 46 minutes. The difference was more pronounced in kids from urban areas as opposed to more rural areas. Average daily screen time went down by about 10 minutes (6.4 percent), and students were deemed 20 percent more likely to meet a recommendation of a maximum of two hours of screen time daily after the new regulations had been introduced. The students were also more likely to meet the Chinese government’s recommendations for time spent on homework, although this varied with age – younger pupils were 3.6 times more likely to meet the recommendations, whereas for middle- and high-school-age pupils it was 2.1 times.Commenting on why these measures appear to have worked better at this stage than previous efforts targeting parents and kids themselves, Li said, “This very different approach appears to be more effective, because it is aimed at improving the environment in which children and adolescents live, supporting a healthier lifestyle.” For now, it’s only possible to draw conclusions on this one region of China, so more research is needed to assess how the guidance is having an impact on the rest of the country. It’s also not clear how such an approach might translate to other countries and cultural contexts; nonetheless, it’s an interesting insight into what might be possible.“This is a fascinating study because most interventions to reduce sedentary behaviours have relied on educational approaches rather than the regulatory measures used here,” said Professor Boyd Swinburn, co-director of the World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Obesity Prevention, who was not directly involved in the study.“While achieving similar regulations in countries outside China may be a challenge, the impact of the regulations does show how sensitive sedentary behaviours are to the prevailing environmental conditions and rules.”The study is published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity.  

What’s the longest you can hold your breath for? A minute, maybe even a few? That definitely feels like a long time when you’re doing it – but a few minutes has got absolutely nothing on the animal that can hold its breath the longest.Under the seaIf you were guessing in the region of marine mammals when it comes to the breath-holding champion, you’d be correct. But once you’re in that region, things can become a little more contentious.Basing it on the longest dive recorded, the title would go to Cuvier’s beaked whales. During a 5-year study of 23 members of the species, scientists recorded one individual diving – and thus holding its breath – for a whopping 3 hours and 42 minutes. In comparison, the world record for a human is 24 minutes and 37 seconds.That being said, the median dive duration for the beaked whales in the study was 59 minutes. On top of that, only 5 percent of those observed had dives exceeding 1 hour and 17.7 minutes. If we look beyond the individual with the impressively long dives, there are other marine creatures that can hold their breath for longer than those figures on average.Sperm whales, for example, are known to spend around an hour and a half underwater before coming back up for breath. And outside of the cetaceans, elephant seals are the clear winners, holding their breath whilst diving for up to two hours. How can they hold their breath for so long?Part of the reason that deep-diving marine mammals are able to stay under the water for so long is because their muscles are packed with a protein called myoglobin, which stores oxygen and provides a handy supply of it to muscle cells.Humans have myoglobin too, but at far lower concentrations – in us, too many proteins close together could clump up and cause disease. So why don’t whales, seals, and the like have the same problem? According to a 2013 study, mammalian divers’ myoglobin is positively charged."Like the similar poles of a magnet; the proteins repel one another,” study author Dr Michael Berenbrink told BBC News. "In this way we think the animals are able to pack really high concentrations of these proteins into their muscles and avoid them sticking together and clogging up the muscles."Myoglobin may only be one part of the story, however. Researchers also suspect that Cuvier’s beaked whales in particular might have a low metabolic rate, meaning they won’t be using up oxygen as quickly. When they eventually do have to switch to metabolizing without oxygen – anaerobic respiration, a little throwback to high school biology – the whales are thought to have a better tolerance for the lactate that builds up in the muscles. If scientists could now figure out how we can nick these features so we don’t run out of breath during a gym session, that’d be great.All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current.  

Phosphorus is one of the few elements that may be essential for life, but its origins are something of a mystery. Core-collapse supernovae are known to form some phosphorus, but this source alone can’t explain its abundance and distribution within the galaxy. If novae, rather than supernovae, are the main source of phosphorus then what we see makes more sense, with important implications for the prospects of finding life elsewhere.Among the components of life, phosphorus is something of an oddity. Other ingredients used by all living things on Earth, such as carbon and hydrogen, are very common, galactically speaking. We expect that whatever limitations there may be on life getting started elsewhere, the lack of these elements would not be among them. Humans need some much rarer elements, such as selenium, but many other life forms don’t, and if Earth had been deficient in these ingredients, evolution might have found another path.Phosphorus is more abundant in Earth’s crust than carbon, but the same may not be true of the galaxy in general – variation in its concentration between stars is considered something of a puzzle. With a higher atomic number than the other essential elements, it is not formed as readily, sparking a search to identify its origins.A new study points to oxygen-neon novae. Like all novae, these involve white dwarves in close orbits with another star, usually a red giant. The white dwarf is so dense, and the companion so diffuse, that the smaller star can pull matter off the other to make an accretion disk. As the material in the disk spirals onto the white dwarf, it sometimes accumulates to the point where it becomes hot enough to ignite nuclear fusion, leading to a sudden brightening. The world is eagerly awaiting the sight of the brightest recurrent novae, T Coronae Borealis, which is expected to have such an outburst quite soon. Novae are sometimes classified by the elements most visible in their spectrum. Oxygen-neon, or oxygen-neon-magnesium novae, also known as ONe novae, have been suspected since the late 1990s of forming phosphorus in abundance by a complex fusion path, where other novae make little or none. With some novae bursting frequently (by galactic standards) over long periods of time, the cumulative phosphorus production can be very large.ONe novae involve white dwarfs with masses at least 25 percent greater than the Sun. Professor Kenji Bekki of the University of Western Australia told IFLScience that to get a white dwarf like that, the progenitor star needs to start off with 7 to 9 solar masses, something which is relatively rare.When Bekki and Dr Takuji Tsujimoto of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan modeled the expected concentrations of phosphorus in stars if much of it was formed in ONe novae, they got a close match with what is observed. A plot of the ratio of phosphorus to iron in stars compared to the ratio of iron to hydrogen produces a strange pattern. Low iron stars also have little phosphorus, but as iron becomes more abundant, phosphorus rises – not just compared to hydrogen, but compared to iron as well. Then at a certain point, the trend reverses, so that the phosphorus becomes scarcer relative to iron.[Novae have a] wind velocity of 3,000 kilometers a second, much larger than average for the Milky Way.Professor Kenji BekkiIron abundance is an important measure here, because it is used to track how evolved stars are. The first stars were pure hydrogen and helium, but the next generation, formed from their ashes, had more metals, with iron used as the primary measure. Bekki and Tsujimoto propose the ONe novae were most common in our galaxy around 8 billion years ago, providing a phosphorus boost to stars formed thereafter. As their frequency dropped, phosphorus concentrations stalled. “ONe novae become less common as the metallicity [of the progenitor stars] increases,” Bekki explained. Consequently, they had only a brief heyday relatively early in the galaxy’s evolution, but have left a vital legacy.Supernova explosions are so powerful the elements they make are dispersed far and wide. Novae are more restrained, but Bekki told IFLScience they have a “wind velocity of 3,000 kilometers a second [6.7 million miles per hour], much larger than average for the Milky Way.” This can push a fair bit of phosphorus into nearby gas clouds that later become stars.Nevertheless, the question remains how widely the phosphorus is dispersed. It’s possible galactic phosphorus distribution is quite uneven, and many planetary systems may lack the concentration needed for the richness of life we see on Earth. “To answer this question we need more computation,” said Bekki. “We might be quite lucky to have as much phosphorus as we do.”If Bekki and Tsujimoto are right, ONe novae should produce chlorine along with phosphorus. They suggest looking into chlorine distributions to test their theory.The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Democrats love abortion. A lot. In fact, given how frequently progressives claim black women are “victims” of abortion restrictions, it’s clear they love it more than their black voters. Joe Biden is making abortion a major campaign issue in this year’s election, and the party’s official X page tweets about it constantly. The vice president is equally bullish on using the issue to connect with female voters. Her husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, was recently in Atlanta to tell men — including students from Morehouse College — why they should also care about the issue. You’re more likely to see Bigfoot get struck by lightning twice than find a progressive in national office who publicly opposes abortion. I get why Democrats support killing the unborn. It is consistent with their worldview. Progressives reject biological sex, attempt to redefine marriage, and think they can control the weather. No political ideology with such a serious god complex should be expected to care about the biblical command to “be fruitful and multiply.”What I don’t understand is why black voters — especially those who identify as Christian — fight for a party that promotes death for babies whose mothers have too much melanin and not enough money. Why do people who claim to believe black lives matter fight harder for abortion than for their own children?All the most influential black civil rights organizations are pro-abortion. When the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision struck down Roe v. Wade in 2022, the NAACP, National Urban League, and National Action Network joined with Planned Parenthood to demand a meeting with the White House to discuss the “disproportionate impact” the decision would have on black women. The nation’s largest abortion provider has its hooks in far more than legacy civil rights outfits. The Congressional Black Caucus, BET, and some of the most popular black entertainers all promote Planned Parenthood’s death agenda. The organization, without the slightest hint of irony, even voiced its support of “Black Lives Matter” in 2020. This doesn’t mean pro-life Democrats don’t exist. There are a few, such as Katrina Jackson in Louisiana and Treneé McGee in Connecticut, who are active in state politics, but you’re more likely to see Bigfoot get struck by lightning twice on the same day as a solar eclipse than find a progressive in national office who publicly opposes abortion. One of the main reasons black voters are under a Svengali-like spell from progressives on this question is that black leaders are Pavlovian in their opposition to anything that can be framed as aiding and abetting “white supremacy.” People who see themselves as “slaves” will destroy their own offspring if their “liberators” say they’re giving them the freedom to do so. One social media user who tweets often about race claims that Republicans are committing “genocide” in the South, in part because of pro-life laws advanced by conservatives. I asked how not killing black babies can constitute genocide, particularly when the Centers for Disease Control reported that in 2021, 80% of the babies aborted in Mississippi were black, along with 69% in Georgia and 64% in Alabama. Someone should ask Ibram X. Kendi and his antiracist crusaders whether they think those percentages are too high, too low, or just about right.Anyone familiar with the antiracist activist and his acolytes knows they blame racism for all social and economic disparities between blacks and whites. Progressives are equally vocal about threats to the “black body,” such as viral police shootings or incarceration rates. Somehow these concerns fade away when it comes to abortion. In fact, they claim that pro-life laws are racist tools of oppression.Another important disparity highlighted in the CDC’s report was the connection between abortion and marital status. Close to 90% of women seeking abortions are unmarried. This should come as no surprise in a culture where abortion on demand is the norm and children are characterized as the unwanted “consequence” of sex, rather than the expected “fruit” of it.This is one reason I focus so intently on marriage. Raising children can be difficult, but a married couple’s primary response to a positive pregnancy test is gratitude for a new blessing, not grumbling about another burden. Black leaders could create a pro-family and pro-life culture if they spent more time promoting the benefits of marriage in their communities than they do trying to get white people to affirm that black lives matter. To be clear, abortion is a grave evil because it takes the life of the innocent. This is true, regardless of the color of the mother, the father, their baby, political views, social economic status, or zip code. It’s time to shine some light on the fact that 90% of black voters in America support a party that thinks it’s good that fewer of us are born.

One of the major “accomplishments” of the Biden administration has been a rapid increase in conflict between the federal government and the states. While massively expanding regulations and government interference to advance leftist causes (such as the elimination of fossil fuels and the encouragement of “gender-affirming” surgery for minors), the Biden administration has engaged in spectacular neglect of constitutional duties in matters where the solution would undermine Democrats’ political power (such as border enforcement and election security). The federal government today is at the peak of its domination and on the verge of a tactical reversal — or it is headed for a massive disaster. Ironically, this conflict is turning out to be a good thing. The left has clarified that its positions involve the full centralization of power in the federal government, and state governments and the public are finally realizing that the feds are devoted to that effort regardless of which political party has formal control. It is also increasingly clear that the nation’s institutions of economic and cultural power are with the national government in that campaign. The states are pushing back. On immigration, for example, in addition to helping Texas guard its southern border, states are now passing laws authorizing law enforcement officers to find and apprehend people residing illegally within their borders. Border backlash In Oklahoma last week, Governor Kevin Stitt signed HB 4156, which gives “state law enforcement officers the authority to arrest people without legal authority to be in the United States,” designating the offense an “impermissible occupation” punishable by a year in jail or a $500 fine for a first offense, USA Today reported. Those penalties are doubled for subsequent arrests, and in either case, “offenders will be required to leave the state within 72 hours of their conviction or release from custody, whichever comes later,” the paper reports. Texas, Florida, Iowa, and Tennessee have likewise enacted laws criminalizing illegal occupation, and other states are considering similar measures. Cities and counties are following suit. According to the Epoch Times, counties in upstate New York counties have been “using local zoning laws to stop [New York City Mayor Eric Adams] from busing illegal immigrants to live in their hotels.” Taunton, Massachusetts, used its zoning laws to prevent the state from housing homeless people and immigrant lawbreakers at a local hotel. This is all in response to the Biden administration’s flagrant refusal to guard the nation’s southern border. Sex and gender in the dock A similar case of intense Biden administration aggression against the states is playing out before the U.S. Supreme Court in Idaho v. United States and Moyle v. United States. In oral arguments in late April, several justices questioned the Biden administration’s attempt to negate “Idaho’s general abortion ban by imposing conditions on the recipients of federal funds,” meaning hospitals, especially when “the state did not enter into the contract with the federal government (and therefore did not agree to the conditions imposed by the government),” SCOTUSblog reported. Justice Samuel Alito said the Biden administration is “asking the justices to interpret ‘a statute signed by Ronald Reagan’ as imposing a duty to perform an abortion even when doing so would be contrary to state law,” the blog added. Meanwhile, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed an executive order last week directing state agencies not to enforce the Biden administration’s new Title IX interpretation that requires schools to let students access facilities based on “gender identity.” Sanders called the Biden Title IX regulations an “attack on common sense” and said she was “appalled” by the rule. A couple of days earlier, six states sued the U.S. Department of Education to block implementation of the rules. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told the press, “The U.S. Department of Education has no authority to let boys into girls’ locker rooms.” Nullification rising? In a direct blow against such federal regulatory misconduct, Utah enacted a law in March establishing a process for negating federal government decisions with which it disagrees. Under the new law, “the Legislature may, by concurrent resolution, prohibit a government officer from enforcing or assisting in the enforcement of a federal directive within the state if the Legislature determines the federal directive violates the principles of state sovereignty,” Reason reported. Opinion polls show the new law accords with current public opinion across the country. Pew Research found only “16% of Americans say they trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time,” and Gallup pollsters found “Americans have the most faith in local government (67%) and the least faith in the legislative branch of the federal government, or Congress (32%),” while “state governments fall between the two,” Reason reported. In direct opposition to public opinion and the Constitution, the Biden administration is doing everything it can to establish full authoritarian rule on the national level, with the states reduced to nothing more than its vassals. The federal government today is at the peak of its domination and on the verge of a tactical reversal — or it is headed for a massive disaster. Biden’s threat to use F-15s and nuclear weapons against those who want “to take on the government” may have seemed clever when directed at handgun owners, but it rings increasingly hollow as state after state does exactly that. It appears that the federal government under Joe Biden has gone about as far as it can in antagonizing the states. Unfortunately, Biden’s recklessness seems to have no limit.

When the Indiana Pacers finished off their first-round upset of the Milwaukee Bucks last week, all of the analysis of what had been a pretty entertaining basketball series was lost in the furor over the late-game antics of mercurial Bucks guard Patrick Beverley, who was caught on camera throwing a ball at a fan. Twice. "Furor," I suppose, is perhaps not the right word. Beverley's actions were so egregious that the default assumption from around the league was that Beverley was inevitably facing an extremely lengthy suspension for having crossed the sacrosanct line between athlete and fan. Not only did Beverley chuck a ball at a fan's head, but he apparently missed the fan he was aiming for the first time (striking an innocent bystander in the process), so he got the ball back from a different fan, then chucked the ball at the fan again. Apparently, the only people who do not agree that Beverley screwed up big-time are all working in the NBA league office.Watching replay of the incident in the TNT postgame show, Charles Barkley spoke for most of America when he watched the tape: "Oh. He gone. He's gonna get suspended. He hit that lady in the head. ... You can't hit a lady, ever. ... Listen, I've done stupid stuff, and I got criticized. That's just wrong. He's gonna get suspended for that, and that's gonna be a good one, too. 'Cause he didn't do it once; he did it twice." Chuck Reacts to Patrick Beverley Throwing Ball at Pacers Fan | Inside the NBA www.youtube.com In at least one particular, Sir Charles was woefully wrong, because the suspension for Beverley, announced by the league yesterday, was a measly four games. For those keeping track at home, that is less than 5% of Beverley's next regular season. It is also less than one-sixth of the length of the suspension handed down to Memphis superstar Ja Morant for the offense of having a boneheaded friend who posted a video to social media of Morant carrying a gun that he legally owned. Beverley's actions were so egregious that, unlike Morant, he faces a criminal investigation for the incident that got him suspended. Beverley himself, who has long been one of the most self-assured and defiant interviews in all of sports, acknowledged that his actions were "inexcusable." Apparently, the only people who do not agree that Beverley screwed up big-time are all working in the NBA league office. Gone are the days when the league came down like a ton of bricks on the principal participants in the infamous 2004 "Malice at the Palace" incident in Detroit. Even Jermaine O'Neal, who was arguably defending a teammate against a fan who inexcusably ran onto the court, ended up serving 15 games, and Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson got far worse. It wasn't that long ago that even in the NBA, it was considered inexcusable behavior to physically assault your paying customers. But over the last 20 years, the power center of the NBA has shifted away from owners and general managers to the players, with the end result being that the paying customers of the NBA (the fans) fall down another rung on the priority ladder.The shift has led to a number of trends that have steadily degraded the viewing experience for fans of the league. Most notably, the league has been woefully slow to respond to the trend started by Gregg Popovich's Spurs teams of regularly resting star players for as much as a quarter of the regular season for "maintenance" reasons. As for the fans who might have spent good money to buy tickets to a specific game in order to see star players, they do not count as much as the players' desires to have more days off, apparently. Nor do teams apparently have any ability to respond to players who sign a four-year contract with a team only to "demand" a trade halfway through, thus destroying all of the roster continuity that breeds long-term relationships between teams and fans. Nor, apparently, are teams or the league capable of or interested in even appearing to take seriously the problem of players who are increasingly physically confrontational with fans. Over the last couple years, Clippers guard Russell Westbrook has had at least two heated incidents with fans that very easily could have turned into physical altercations due to Westbrook's clear provocations, and the league did nothing. Having now done essentially nothing to Beverley, who actually physically assaulted two fans (at least one of whom appears to have been nothing more than a bystander), the league can probably expect more similar behavior in the future. I don't want to sit in judgment of what it's like to be an NBA player because I've never lived that life, but I've attended plenty of sporting events (including NBA games) in my life, and I'm well aware that many athletes take abuse from fans that sometimes crosses the line. That also is an issue that the league and its teams should address. I don't know what the right way is to address that, but I do know for sure that allowing the players to settle it by chucking basketballs at fans until they hit the one they were aiming for is the wrong way. I have no idea what happened in this particular case between Beverley and the fan. Beverley alleges that the fan called him an offensive name. I have no idea whether that's true or not, and it does not matter. It particularly does not matter to the woman who got beaned in the head with a basketball for the offense of sitting next to someone who may or may not have said something offensive to Beverley. The league needed to send a clear message to Beverley and the rest of its players that the proper way to deal with hecklers who cross the line is not to start a physical fight with them. And a paltry four-game suspension is certainly not going to get that message across.It will, however, get another message across, loud and clear: If you are a paying customer of the NBA, you are the last person the league cares about.