Kansas City gives royal welcome to Royals, World Series Champions!

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[CPT Twit - for those not capable of reading a 140 character Tweet, the CPT Twit tells the story through pictures.]

A royal welcome awaited the Kansas City Royals as they returned with their first World Series championship in 30 years and only the second in franchise history.

Over half a million people came out to greet the team and celebrate the stunning victory and in the tradition of American baseball, the kids were part of the celebration.  Babe Ruth first brought kids into baseball and the Kansas City Royals are helping to continue that great American tradition.

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CPT Twit - Paul Ryan New Speaker of the House - America's Future - Youth, Hope, Honest, Fair

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CPT Twit - for those not capable of reading a 140 character Tweet, the CPT Twit tells the story through pictures.

 

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NASA is baffled by these 8,000-year-old mystery structures in Kazakhstan

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Yet another of history's ancient mysteries yet to be solved.

• Andrew Griffin, The Independent

Nasa has released pictures of huge patterns drawn on the ground in Kazakhstan in an attempt to solve the mystery behind how they got there.

The huge formations are known as the Steppe Geoglyphs. Scientists have little idea how they were formed — but think that solving the mystery could lead to a huge change in how we understand early humans.

There are around 260 of the designs, which are carved into the ground and made out of piles of earth assembled into shapes that include squares, rings and swastika shapes. The oldest of them are thought to be about 8,000 years old.

The patterns were first spotted by a Kazakh enthusiast in 2007, who saw them on Google Earth. Dmitriy Dey, who works as an economist, was watching a programme about pyramids on the Discovery Channel and looked to see whether any such buildings were in Kazakhstan. When he looked, he found the strange structures.

But despite being known for almost 10 years, Kazakhstan hasn’t made much of the finds or worked to investigate them.

But Nasa is now joining the hunt to find out how exactly they got there. Nasa has released a range of satellite images, showing them photographed for the first time in an attempt to catalogue and detail them.

The land around the symbols was once a key destination for Stone Age tribes looking for places to hunt. But scientists would previously not have expected that such a population would have the time or the organisation to build and dig the huge symbols.

“The idea that foragers could amass the numbers of people necessary to undertake large-scale projects — like creating the Kazakhstan geoglyphs — has caused archaeologists to deeply rethink the nature and timing of sophisticated large-scale human organization as one that predates settled and civilized societies,” Persis B. Clarkson, an archaeologist at the University of Winnipeg, told the New York Times.

It isn’t clear whether the creations were created as an early form of art, or for a practical function. They could have been solar observatories, some speculate, in a way similar to the theories that surround other ancient constructions like Stonehenge.

Some of the strange theories have also proposed that the structures have something to do with aliens, or have been linked with Nazis because of the appearance of the swastika. While some of those can easily be rejected — the swastika was used in a wide range of contexts before Hitler — others are harder to dismiss because so little is known about how the finds came about.

Read the original article on The Independent. Copyright 2015. Follow The Independent on Twitter.

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Kentucky again to challenge for NCAA Basketball National Championship

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Bad News for UK Haters

What we learned from Kentucky's first exhibition against Ottawa

By Justin_Hodges  @justin_hodges22 on Nov 2, 2015, 9:36p

Kentucky looked about as impressive as a team could in an exhibition opener.

Basketball season is back, folks!

Your Kentucky Wildcats took the floor against Ottawa University for their first game of the season tonight and put on an excellent performance, winning the game 117-58. Deeper than the score, let's dive into some of the aspects we learned about this brand new Kentucky team.

These boys are hungry

If we saw one thing out of these kids tonight, it is that these Wildcats play with energy, unselfishness and effort. They've shown a will to learn and a hunger to become better. Most kids come into Kentucky with a set of skills that they use effectively. These kids seem to be different; they allow Cal to work on them and learn to play ways that Cal knows will help them win basketball games.

Jamal Murray is well deserving of #23

You can remember at the UK-UNC alumni game, Anthony Davis went over to John Calipari and said, "you let him have 23?!?!" about Jamal Murray. Cal responded with, "your number ain't retired yet! I hope he's better than you so we can retire his instead of yours." Now, is anybody ever going to be as good as Anthony Davis was at Kentucky? Likely not, but Jamal Murray looked excellent tonight. Tallying up 17 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists at halftime, Murray finished with 22 points, 12 rebounds, and 9 assists for a near triple double.

Cal is looking rather spry

Over the years, it's been noticeable how much the stress of leading Kentucky can have on a person. Lately, we've seen Cal growing gray hair, showing those aging aspects. Today, he looked a little different. A full head of black Italian hair, a lot of energy, turning the clock back a little bit, probably because this is the most fun he's ever had with a basketball team. Cal has guys that play to the same style he loves for really the first time in his career. Cal always preaches for his kids to have fun; it's nice to see the ol' coach having a little fun himself.

The guards will get to the rim

Coach Calipari loves for his players to get to the rim, especially his backcourt players. Over the years, Cal has had mostly guards that do work outside of the paint. Not this group of kids; Tyler Ulis, Isaiah Briscoe and Jamal Murray love attacking the rim and are so good when they get there. With 66 points in the paint, 26 fast break points and 32 assists tonight, this has the looking of a team that is absolutely perfect for Calipari's scheme. That is scary to think about.

Alex still isn't all the way back

As we thought would be the case, senior forward Alex Poythress clearly isn't all the way back from his ACL rehab. Anytime you're dealing with a ligament tear, it's going to be a long road to recovery, and while Poythress showed flashes of his beastly self, it was clear he's not all the way back yet.

That's also why junior Marcus Lee got the start at the 4 spot over Poythress. It may end being where Poythress coming off the bench as the sixth man is best for this team, and as long as Poythress gets back to 100%, this will be a true championship contender.

Different team, same fundamentals

A lot of new faces are coming into Kentucky this year, but tonight's game made it appear evident that it's going to be a lot of the same fundamentals as it always is in Lexington moving forward. Kentucky's going to play stout defense, garnering 9 blocks, 10 steals and holding the opponent to 26%FG shooting.  They're going to throw lobs and slam them as Marcus Lee and Skal Labissiere did numerous times tonight. They're also going to stretch it behind the three point line, going 12-22 from range today with Tyler and Murray making 4 each. The bench is going to deep as well, just like last year; the bench unit provided 39 points today.

Overall, a great first performance by your Kentucky Wildcats. This team looks like it's going to be very good in hopes for our ninth national title.

Kentucky Wildcats Basketball No. 1 in Preseason Top 25 Poll

By Jason Marcum  @marcum89 on Sep 7, 2015, 

The Kentucky Wildcats will likely once again have one of the best teams in college basketball when the upcoming season begins.

While the 2015-16 season doesn't open for another two months, UK is already having high expectations placed upon them with top-five rankings in just about every preseason poll you'll find. That's the case with Athlon Sports, who have the Cats No. 1 in their preseason top 25:

The Wildcats might not challenge 40-0 again, but Tyler Ulis, Skal Labissiere and Jamal Murray should contend for the Final Four.

Here is the entire Athlon Sports 2015-16 College Basketball Preseason Top 25:

1 Kentucky

2 Duke

3 North Carolina

4 Maryland

5 Virginia

6 Kansas

7 Iowa State

8 Arizona

9 Oklahoma.

10 Villanova

11 Gonzaga

12 Michigan State

13 Cal

14 Wichita State

15 Vanderbilt

16 Purdue

17 Indiana

18 UConn

19 Wisconsin

20 Butler

21 Oregon

22 Michigan

23 Louisville

24 SMU

25 Texas A&M

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