Star Tribune
Minnesota prison inmates frustrated over wait for new tablets
There is also a sentimental loss caused by not having the tablets, inmates and their families say. Gordon, who is serving a life sentence for murder, said he lost the only photo of his late father when his tablet died, as well as a photo of his daughter.
Rierson, who spent eight years in the Faribault Correctional Facility, would often go to sleep with meditative music playing through the headphones attached to his tablet. He said he would spend hours looking at photos of family members, and that the devices provided a mental health benefit to many.
“It’s sort of comforting to know that there are people out there that care about you,” he said. “It’s that connection that gives me a reason to do better in prison.”
Rierson noted that he is “very skeptical” the DOC would follow through with providing the tablets this year. In the meantime, while inmates continue to wait for the new tablets, Klosterbuer said she hopes for an alternative. “If you’re not going to get them tablets, at least accommodate them with something else, like giving them more time at the kiosks,” Klosterbuer said.
“The trickiest thing is to manage the nerves, especially last season, performing for the Western Conference Finals. Every single seat was packed, and the energy was through the roof,” Riley said.
Among the challenges the 1st Avenue Breakers face when performing at the Minnesota Timberwolves games at Target Center are the flashing lights when spinning on their heads. (Minnesota Timberwolves)
The dancers also performed amid flashing lights, which made things more challenging. “You have to know where you’re at as you’re spinning on your head. It’s a lot to manage,” he said.
To help prepare the dancers, Riley said his group typically rehearses on the court before the show, flashing lights included.
“Part of my job is not just to choreograph, but to coach the new members in particular, to be ready for those timing cues,” he said. “Because if you miss a cue and you fall out of a move and we’re transitioning, it can have a bad snowball effect.”
Riley also owns House of Dance, an official dance studio partner of the Timberwolves and Lynx. The 1st Avenue Breakers rehearse in the space, and it’s the site for auditions, as well. “It’s been a good relationship because we’re so connected to the hip-hop dance community in general,” he said. “Our studio serves as a pipeline of talent for the Timberwolves.”
In a way, basketball is a kind of dance, with set moves and improvisational movement performed by the players. A soundtrack of recorded music and sound effects underlays the rhythm of the basketball hitting the floor, the shoes squeaking against the wood, and the ref’s whistle. Formal dance groups, mostly grounded in different forms of hip-hop vocabulary, supplement that basketball game with their own ebullient moves.
Star Tribune
Ancient footprints found in Kenya suggest human relatives ‘might have walked by one another’
In an undated image provided by Kevin G. Hatala, a footprint hypothesized to have been created by a Homo erectus individual. (KEVIN G. HATALA/The New York Times)
In 2021, Hatala was part of a team that reported footprints found in Tanzania were made by two distinct hominid species 3.6 million years ago. Now, he’s found a similar occurrence in Kenya.
The researchers uncovered three single footprints that seemed to come from the same type of hominid, and one long, continuous trail of prints that came from another.
It wasn’t immediately clear that the footprints were from distinct species. Because the fossil record is sparse, “you can’t do the Cinderella thing of fitting the foot skeleton into the footprint,” Hatala said.
Instead, the scientists relied on results from earlier experiments that used X-ray technology to understand how foot motion affects imprints left in the mud. Compared with the continuous trail of prints, the three isolated footprints all had higher arches, indicating that they arose from a gait more similar to that of humans today.
The scientists also found that the feet responsible for the trail of prints had a big toe with a position that changed from step to step. The toe was not as mobile as those on apes, but more varied than what is seen in modern humans.
“That, to me, is fascinating,” said William Harcourt-Smith, a paleoanthropologist at Lehman College and the American Museum of National History in New York, who wrote a perspective article that accompanied the study in Science. “Here we’ve got diversity in the way these creatures are moving around on the landscape, in each other’s backyards.”
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — An Alabama A&M football player who suffered a head injury during a game in October has died.
Medrick Burnett Jr., 20, was playing his first season as a linebacker with Alabama A&M University when he sustained a head injury during the annual Magic City Classic against in-state rivals Alabama State University on Oct. 26, the Jefferson County coroner said in a statement Friday. The coroner listed his official time of death as Wednesday evening.
The Alabama A&M athletic department announced Burnett’s death on Wednesday morning and then sent out a retraction later that day. The second statement said that the initial news of Burnett’s death came ”from an immediate family member on Tuesday evening.”
The redshirt freshman from Lakewood, California, joined Alabama A&M’s team over the summer after starting his college career at Grambling State, according to the athletics department.
A spokesperson for the department could not be reached by phone on Friday morning.
