Characters

The Worst Of 2011




★ 2011 Worst Police Misconduct Video of the Year Reader’s Poll: Once again it’s time for our annual “Worst Police Misconduct Videos of the Year” reader’s poll. Here we post some, but not all, of the over 80 videos associated with claims of police misconduct that we were able to present on our site in 2011. While some of the incidents tied to these videos did not occur in 2011, the videos for those reports weren’t released to the public until this year so they are included.
★ Deaths From Terrorism Compared To Other Things: Here are the chances of a few things killing you in the US compared:; Terrorism ———————— 1 in 3,500,000; Tobacco ————————- 1 in 726; All Accidents ——————- 1 in 2,500; Alcohol ————————— 1 in 2827; Cancer —————————- 1 in 540
★ Surfers to be tested for drugs: In the 1960s and 1970s, it was the counter culture’s sport of choice. With the long hair and beach bum lifestyle came marijuana and LSD. But surfing is set for a radical image change as its international governing body prepares to introduce comprehensive drug testing for professionals for the first time. Amid growing evidence that the sport’s drug culture has gripped even some of its elite athletes, the Association of Surfing Professionals will in 2012 roll out a policy for screening competitors and officials for performance-enhancing and recreational drugs. The move comes after the death of the triple world champion Andy Irons in November 2010. A postmortem found he died from a heart attack and “acute mixed drug ingestion”. Traces of methadone, methamphetamine, also known as crystal meth, and a metabolite of cocaine were found in his bloodstream.
★ Donna Simpson, World’s Heaviest Mom At 600 Pounds, Closes Pay-Per-View Eating Site: Donna Simpson has taken another step towards changing her life and, perhaps, changing her image. The Plain Dealer in Cleveland reports that the Guinness World Record holder for “world’s heaviest mom” has decided to shut down her pay-per-view eating site where, for years, internet users have been shelling out $19 a month to watch Simpson eat. “I realized that I was their fantasy,” Simpson told the Plain Dealer. “Here I was getting bigger and bigger, and they had their thin wives, with 2½ kids and a picket fence.”
★ How Marijuana May Drive the Brain into Psychosis: Two ingredients in marijuana have opposite effects on certain regions of the brain, according to a new study. One chemical, called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), increases the brain processes that can lead to symptoms of psychosis, while another compound, called cannabidiol, may negate such symptoms, according to the study. Moreover, the findings are the first to use images of the brain to demonstrate that the reason symptoms of psychosis arise in marijuana users may be because THC interferes with the brain’s ability to distinguish between stimuli that are important, and those that aren’t, according to the study.
★ Shortage of ADHD drug Adderall seen persisting: The DEA authorizes a certain amount of the API in Adderall – mixed amphetamine salts – to be released to drugmakers each year based on what the agency considers to be the country’s legitimate medical need. Increasingly that estimate is coming into conflict with what companies themselves say they need to meet demand for the drug, which is reaching all-time highs. In 2010, more than 18 million prescriptions were written for Adderall, up 13.4 percent from 2009, according to IMS Health, which tracks prescription data.
★ White House Denies CIA Teleported Obama to Mars: Forget Kenya. Never mind the secret madrassas. The sinister, shocking truth about Barack Obama’s past lies not in east Africa, but in outer space. As a young man in the early 1980s, Obama was part of a secret CIA project to explore Mars. The future president teleported there, along with the future head of Darpa. That’s the assertion, at least, of a pair of self-proclaimed time-traveling, universe-exploring government agents. Andrew D. Basiago and William Stillings insist that they once served as “chrononauts” at Darpa’s behest, traversing the boundaries of time and space. They swear: A youthful Barack Obama was one of them.
★ BBC criticised for naming panda as a woman of the year: The BBC has come in for ridicule after it included a giant panda called Sweetie alongside Pippa Middleton and Adele in its list of the 12 women of the year.
Genius Cops Caught Apparently Planting Evidence By Own Dash Camera: Here’s a video of two Utica, N.Y. police officers searching a car during a traffic stop. At 1:02, one officer pulls a small baggie of something out of his pocket and ducks into the car; at 1:31, he emerges again, holding the same baggie. Oops! (Update: Police have responded, saying that the full video shows the officer had previously found the baggie on the suspect and placed it in his pocket.)
★ Five Solved ‘Unexplained Mysteries’ of 2011: Each year brings new puzzles and mysteries to challenge skeptics and put our wits to the test. Sometimes mysteries take weeks, months, or even years or decades to solve, and while most of the public’s attention naturally focuses on the still-mysterious, it’s always worth reflecting on former mysteries. This past year saw two high-profile cryptozoological (monster) mysteries finally solved, that of the Puerto Rican chupacabra and the French Beast of Gévaudan. There were also three new UFO / alien cases that made international news before eventually being solved (in Russia, Isreal, and Los Angeles). I participated in solving several of these mysteries. Here’s to a new year of fresh investigation, and hopefully 2012 will end with an even longer list of solved mysteries!
★ Vandals steal squirrel monkey ‘Banana Sam’ from S.F. Zoo: A $5,000 reward is being offered for the return of Banana-Sam, a squirrel monkey who was snatched from his cage at the San Francisco Zoo overnight. Zoo and police officials are searching for the gold-colored monkey, who appeared to have been stolen late Thursday or early Friday when vandals broke in to the zoo and cut the netting around the squirrel monkey pen. “This was a criminal act of vandalism and trespassing, and we are working with the police to identify the perpetrators,” said Tanya Peterson, the zoo’s executive director.
★ Chinese man spends $16,000 on sword for virtual martial arts game: Whilst the season of giving might be over for yet another year, it seems one computer gamer has marked the end of the festivities by treating himself to one final Christmas gift. The avid gamer spent a staggering $16,000 on a virtual sword – the only one of its kind, which he will use when he eventually begins playing a martial arts game that has not yet gone on sale in the Far East. The man who won the auction will now be able to slay characters using his sabre when the highly-anticipated martial-arts game Age of Wulin is released in Mainland China.
★ Tell Congress To Undo The NDAA, Ban Indefinite Military Detention Of Americans: President Obama just signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law despite startling provisions that will allow the military to indefinitely detain American citizens. It’s a travesty, defying basic principles of justice and due process in perhaps the most extreme respect our nation has ever seen. Thankfully, several lawmakers are keeping up the fight. Senator Dianne Feinstein has introduced legislation to undo these provisions of the NDAA, in the form of the Due Process Guarantee Act. We need to urge other Senators to support it. The Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011 amends the Non-Detention Act of 1971 by providing that a Congressional authorization for the use of military force does not authorize the indefinite detention—without charge or trial—of U.S. citizens who are apprehended domestically.
★ Drug-sniffing dogs an unconstitutional search?: Franky the drug dog’s supersensitive nose is at the heart of a question being put to the U.S. Supreme Court: Does a police dog’s sniff outside a house give officers the right to get a search warrant for illegal drugs, or is the sniff an unconstitutional search? Florida’s highest state court has said Franky’s ability to detect marijuana growing inside a Miami-area house from outside a closed front door crossed the constitutional line. The state’s attorney general wants the Supreme Court to reverse that ruling. The justices could decide this month whether to take the case, the latest dispute about whether the use of dogs to find drugs, explosives and other illegal or dangerous substances violates the Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure.
★ The evil of Aries: How astrology can be sign of future jail time: Police in Chatham-Kent, Ont., announced Wednesday that, of 1,986 people arrested so far this year, 203 were Aries, whereas just 139 were Sagittarius. It is the first time the municipality has ranked its crimes by Zodiac sign. Aries were the most arrested, with Libras in second at 189 arrests, and Virgo third at 183. The least criminal were Sagittarius (139 arrests), Aquarius (142) and Taurus (146). “You can’t really read too much into it,” says Const. Michael Pearce, a police spokesman, who used an Excell spreadsheet to classify the data. “I don’t comment too much on the Zodiac stuff because I don’t want any backlash about it. I am not drawing any conclusions about it.”
★ Detroit man sickened after eating chicken head: A Detroit man has been given his money back from a restaurant where he said he mistakenly was served a chicken head that gave his food poisoning. On Monday, Local 4 spoke with Clarence Lewis, who said he spend New Year’s Eve at the hospital after he ate a chicken tenders meal from Zorba’s Fine Food at McNichols Road and Gunston Avenue. “I noticed a crunch feel, but I didn’t know what it was, and it just went down and cut my throat. I just gagged it up,” he said. Lewis had choked on a chick’s head which was fried up with the rest of the chicken tenders meal.
★ Jamaican dancehall culture: Soul Jazz Recordings published the book which chronicles writer and photographer Beth Lesser’s travels around Jamaica in the 80s, telling the story for which the compilation provides a soundtrack. Here is a selection of Lesser’s images and the writer’s own captions from the book

Submit Links:
SeMeNSPeRmS@SeMeNSPeRmS.com

File under Culture, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS Links 'o Death

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on January 4, 2012

Tags: 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, Adderall, ADHD, Africa, alcohol, Alien, Amendment, America, American, Amphetamine, Anger, arrest, Art, Arts, Astrology, attack, attorney, auction, backlash, baggie, ban, Banana, Barack Obama, BBC, Beach, beach bum, Beast, Blood, Body, Book, brain, Bum, Cage, Camera, Can, Cancer, cannabidiol, Car, Caught, Characters, chemical, Chick, Chicken, Chinese, Choke, Christmas, chupacabra, CIA, Cocaine, Come, compilation, computer, conflict, Congress, Constitution, Constitutional, Cops, Counter Culture, court, Crime, Crimes, Criminal, Crystal Meth, Cult, Culture, Dancehall, Dangerous, DEA, dealer, death, Demon, detention, Detroit, dispute, Dog, Donna, door, Drug, Drugs, Einstein, evidence, Evil, Explosives, Fantasy, Food, force, form, Found, French, Fried, Future, Gallery, Genius, Giant, Gold, Government, Guns, Hair, Hanging, Heart, heart attack, Hell, High, Highs, hospital, Illegal, International, Internet, investigation, jail, Jamaica, jamaican, Jazz, Justice, Kids, Killing, Legal, lick, lies, lifestyle, List, Long Hair, Los Angeles, LSD, MAD, Man, Marijuana, Mars, Martial, Martial arts, Medical, methadone, Methamphetamine, Military, misconduct, mistake, money, Monkey, Monster, month, Music, Nation, Natural, News, Nose, NOT, Obama, officer, Outer Space, Panda, performance, Perp, Photograph, Photographer, Picture, Poison, Police, Police Officers, post, prescription, Prescriptions, president, project, Protection, Psychos, Psychosis, reason, Record, Recreational, respect, ridicule, Ripped, San Francisco, Science, Search, search warrant, Secret, SeMeN, SeMeNSPeRmS, Shocking, shortage, site, Some, something, Soul, soundtrack, Sport, squirrel, Story, substance, Supreme, Supreme Court, Surf, Surfer, Surfing, Sweet, Sword, Teleported, Terror, Terrorism, Tetrahydrocannabinol, THC, time, Tobacco, Torn, traffic, trespassing, Trip, TV, Tween, U.S., UFO, unconstitutional search, Unexplained, Urge, US, Vandal, Vandalism, Video, Videos, Virtual, warrant, Weird, White, White House, Woman, Women, World, Worst, Writer, Young, youth, zoo

The Star Wars Holiday Special (1978)

The Star Wars Holiday Special is a 1978 American television special set in the Star Wars galaxy. It was one of the first official Star Wars spin-offs, and was directed by Steve Binder. The show was broadcast in its entirety only once, in the United States and Canada, November 17, 1978, on the U.S. television network CBS from 8:00 pm to 10:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time (EST), and on the Canadian television network CTV from 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm, Eastern Standard Time.

In the storyline that ties the special together, Chewbacca and Han Solo visit Kashyyyk, Chewbacca’s home world, to celebrate Life Day. Along the way they are pursued by agents of the Galactic Empire, who are searching for members of the Rebel Alliance on the planet. The special introduces three members of Chewbacca’s family: his father Itchy, his wife Malla, and his son Lumpy (Later retconned to Attichitcuk, Mallatobuck, and Lumpawarrump, respectively).

During the special, scenes also take place in outer space and in spacecraft including the Millennium Falcon and an Imperial Star Destroyer. The variety-show segments and cartoon introduce a few other locales, such as a cantina on the desert planet of Tatooine and a gooey, reddish ocean planet known as Panna.

The program also features many other Star Wars characters, including Luke Skywalker, C-3PO, R2-D2, Darth Vader, Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa (who sings the film’s “theme song”, set to the music of John Williams‘ Star Wars theme, near the end). The program includes stock footage from Star Wars,and also features a cartoon produced by Toronto-based Nelvana that officially introduces the bounty hunter Boba Fett.

The special is notorious for its negative reception.Anthony Daniels, in a documentary promoting the worldwide tour of Star Wars: In Concert, notes with a laugh that the Star Wars universe includes “The horrible Holiday Special that nobody talks about”. George Lucas did not have significant involvement with the film’s production, and was unhappy with the results. David Acomba, a classmate of Lucas’ at USC film school, had been selected to direct the special, but he chose to leave the project, a decision supported by Lucas.

The Star Wars Holiday Special has never been re-telecast or officially released on home video. It has therefore become something of a cultural legend, due to the “underground” quality of its existence. It has been viewed and distributed in off-air recordings made from its original telecast by fans, which were later adapted to content-sharing websites via the Internet.

George Lucas himself has rarely commented on the special, or even acknowledged its existence. He is said to have nothing but the utmost contempt for it. For instance, Tom Burman, one of the costume designers for the holiday special, has said that Lucas once told him that he was very disappointed with the final product.

At one Australian fan convention, he reportedly said “If I had the time and a sledgehammer, I would track down every copy of that show and smash it.” In an online chat with fans, he reportedly said: “The Holiday Special does not represent my vision for Star Wars.” In an interview with Maxim in May 2002, Maxim asked the question, “Any plans for a Special Edition of the Holiday Special?” In response, Lucas said, “Right. That’s one of those things that happened, and I just have to live with it.”

Later, in a May 2005 interview with StaticMultimedia.com, Lucas was asked if the film had soured him on working in television. He replied: “The special from 1978 really didn’t have much to do with us, you know. I can’t remember what network it was on, but it was a thing that they did. We kind of let them do it. It was done by… I can’t even remember who the group was, but they were variety TV guys. We let them use the characters and stuff and that probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but you learn from those experiences.”

The official Star Wars site states that the holiday special “delivered mixed results,” and states that the highlight of the special was the Boba Fett animated segment.[6] The official site also says, when referring to the fan interest in seeing the Wookiees on screen, “the 1978 Holiday Special didn’t cut it.”[7] When asked at a fan convention, “So, you don’t like it (the holiday special) either?”, Lucasfilm head of content and fan relations, Steve Sansweet replied “No. I mean, I like the ten minute introduction of Boba Fett, but that’s about it.” The official site also refers to the Boba Fett animated segment as “a cult classic”.

On February 8, 2006, Harrison Ford made an appearance on Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and during the interview, Conan O’Brien brought up the special, and began asking various questions regarding it, such as inquiring whether he remembered making it. Ford said nothing, but looked away and shook his head nervously, then saying he had no memory of it whatsoever and it, therefore, “doesn’t exist.” The audience responded with laughter and applause. O’Brien then asked Ford what he would think if he played a clip of the special on the show, Ford jokingly grabbed him, then said that “[he'd] never seen it, maybe it’ll be nice.” Humorously acting anxious and distracted, Ford suffered through the clip (which featured a scene showing Ford as Han Solo telling Chewbacca and his wife that they are “like family” to him), and then muttered a gruff, sarcastic “thank you” to O’Brien, before continuing with the interview to promote his then newest film, Firewall.

On the 2010 television program Times Talk, New York Times columnist David Carr asked Carrie Fisher about the Holiday Special; she said that she made George Lucas give her a copy of the Special in exchange for recording DVD commentary for the Star Wars films. She added that she shows it at parties, “mainly at the end of the night when she wants people to leave.”

File under Comedy, Music, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG, SeMeN SPeRmS ViDeO CLuB, So Wrong!

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on December 20, 2011

Tags: 1970s, Acting, American, Art, Boba Fett, bounty hunter, Canadian, Carrie, Carrie Fisher, Cartoon, Celebrity, character, Characters, Chewbacca, classic television, Comedy, costume, Cult, Darth, David, Decision, Desert, Documentary, exchange, fan, Father, Film, footage, Galactic, George Lucas, Han Solo, Harrison Ford, Home, Home Video, Horrible, Imperial, Interview, John Williams, Late Night, laughter, Live, Luke Skywalker, movie, Music, Musical, Network, New York, New York Times, Night, Nobody, NOT, official, Online, Original, Outer Space, Planet, quality, Recording, scene, Sci-Fi, Science fiction, SeMeN, SeMeNSPeRmS, Shitty TV, site, something, space, spacecraft, Special, Spin-off, Star, Star Wars, Star Wars Nerds, Steve, Stock Footage, Story, Television, Ties, time, TV, U.S., Underground, United States, Universe, US, Vader

The Omega Man

☛✸Electrik Slide Show✸☚

File under Cult Movies, Culture, Horror, Influences, SeMeN SPeRmS Approved, SeMeN SPeRmS BLArRrG

Conjured by o~ SeMeN SPeRmS ~o on December 13, 2011

Tags: 1992, Abandoned, Actress, Albino, American, apartment, Army, Biological warfare, Black, Blood, Body, Burned At The Stake, Can, Car, cemetery, character, Characters, Charlton Heston, cheating, China, Comic, concert, Credit, Crucifixion, Cult, Culture, Dead, death, demise of humanity, Desert, disease, Documentary, Earth, Experimental, Explosives, Extremely, Family, Famous, Female, Fights, Film, force, Found, Free, Generation, gun, harm, Home, Human, Humanity, Imaginary, Interracial, Interview, Island, KISS, Legend, Love, Man, Medical, movie, Mutant, mutation, Network, New York, News, NOT, Old, Omega, Original, parent, Pictures, plague, Planet, Planet of the Apes, Power, Pregnant, prisoner, Resistance, Rosalind Cash, Rotten, scene, Science, Science fiction, science fiction film, scientist, Screenplay, Screw, Seventies, Some, something, Sound, Soviet, Soviet Union, Soylent Green, Spear, Spooky, Story, Student, style, Teenage, Television, The Family, The Last Man on Earth, Tim Burton, time, trial, U.S., U.S. Army, Union, warfare, website, Woman, Writer, Young, youth

Turn On Tune In Drop Dead

✪ Court Says Sending Too Many Emails To Someone Is Computer Hacking

The latest example, found via Michael Scott is that the Sixth Circuit appeals court has overturned a district court ruling, and is now saying that a labor union can be sued for violating the CFAA because it asked members to email and call an employer many times, in an effort to protest certain actions. Now some of the volume may have hurt the business, but does it reach the level of hacking? What’s really troubling is even just the focus on emails:The e-mails wreaked more havoc: they overloaded Pulte’s system, which limits the number of e-mails in an inbox; and this, in turn, stalled normal business operations because Pulte’s employees could not access business-related e-mails or send e-mails to customers and vendors
✪ Questions Arise Over Whether ‘Flash Mob’ Attacks in U.S. Cities Motivated by Race

“It looked like they were just going after white guys, white people,” Roffers told Wisconsin’s Newsradio 620.But while some witness accounts suggest the attacks are race-based, law enforcement officials say they have no evidence to prove it.

There was “no confession or anything else” to suggest the July 29 attacks in Philadelphia were “racially motivated,” Philadelphia Police Department First Deputy Commissioner Richard Ross told FoxNews.com.

“You can’t just simply look at the race of the offender and the race of the victim and say it’s ethnic intimidation. It may be, but we’re not sure. Does it give us pause? Yes it does,” Ross said.

Without a confession, a witness account or some epithet overheard by the victim, no charges will be filed related to ethnic intimidation or a hate crime, Ross said.

“If we don’t know and can’t prove it, we can’t charge it,” he said. “It’s just a very difficult charge to prove … We’re in the business of what we can prove, not what we think.”
✪ Europe Takes Its Own Path on Internet Privacy

“What you really have here is a trans-Atlantic clash,” said Franz Werro, who was born and raised in Switzerland and is now a law professor at Georgetown University. “The two cultures really aren’t going in the same direction when it comes to privacy rights. “For instance, in the United States, Mr. Werro said, courts have consistently found that the right to publish the truth about someone’s past supersedes any right to privacy. Europeans, he said, see things differently: “In Europe you don’t have the right to say anything about anybody, even if it is true.”

Mr. Werro says Europe sees the need to balance freedom of speech and the right to know against a person’s right to privacy or dignity, concepts often enshrined in European laws. The European perspective was shaped by the way information was collected and used against individuals under dictators like Franco and Hitler and under Communism. Government agencies routinely compiled dossiers on citizens as a means of control.
✪ Judge: no constitutional right to matzoh and grape juice

A federal judge has ruled that an inmate does not have a constitutionally protected right to matzoh and grape juice.Christopher Henry, who was convicted of first-degree sodomy, claimed “permanent trauma” and malnourishment and requested nearly $10 billion in damages for what he called a violation of his First Amendment right to religious freedom.

Oddly enough, Henry didn’t request matzoh for Passover, the Jewish holiday during which it is traditionally eaten. Instead, Henry claimed he had a right to have the unleavened bread served daily and grape juice every Friday.

But on August 2, U.S. Southern District Judge Shira Scheindlin held that the Rikers Island jail could deny Henry his request in the interests of maintaining order and keeping costs reasonable.
✪ Security Flaws in Feds’ Radios Make for Easy Eavesdropping

While studying the technology, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania overheard conversations that included descriptions of undercover agents and confidential informants, plans for forthcoming arrests and information on the technology used in surveillance operations.“We monitored sensitive transmissions about operations by agents in every Federal law enforcement agency in the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security,” wrote the researchers, who were led by computer science professor Matt Blaze and plan to reveal their findings Wednesday in a paper at the Usenix Security Symposium in San Francisco.

Their research also shows that the radios can be effectively jammed using a pink electronic child’s toy and that the standard used by the radios “provides a convenient means for an attacker” to continuously track the location of a radio’s user.
✪ “A Declaration of War on the Poor”: Cornel West and Tavis Smiley on the Debt Ceiling Agreement

The veteran broadcaster Tavis Smiley and the author and Princeton University Professor Cornel West are in the midst of a 15-city, cross-country trek they have dubbed “The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience.” The tour comes on the heels of last week’s deficit agreement, which has been widely criticized for excluding a tax hike on the wealthy, as well as any measures to tackle high unemployment. “Any legislation that doesn’t extend unemployment benefits, doesn’t close a single corporate loophole, doesn’t raise one cent in terms of new revenue in terms of taxes on the rich or the lucky, allows corporate America to get away scot-free again—the banks, Wall Street getting away again—and all these cuts ostensibly on the backs of everyday people,” says Smiley.
✪ U.K. Ethnic Tensions Stoked by Riots

“People are saying it’s a race issue now—blacks against Asians,” said Mykel Douglas, a black youth worker and resident of Winson Green, the working-class district northwest of Birmingham city center where the incident occurred. “It’s like the ethnic groups are at war with each other.”Outside the family home of one of the dead men, identified by local media as Haroon Jahan, a group of young Asians—mainly ethnic Pakistanis—vowed vengeance. “People are very angry,” said a bearded man in a shalwar kameez who declined to give his name. “There’s going to be retaliation. An eye for an eye.”
✪ Rochester Woman Arrested After Videotaping Police From Her Own Front Yard

In May, the Rochester Police Department arrested a woman on a charge of obstructing governmental administration after she videotaped several officers’ search of a man’s car. The charge is a criminal misdemeanor.The only problem? Videotaping a police officer in public view is perfectly legal in New York state — and the woman was in her own front yard. The arrest report of the incident also contains an apparent discrepancy from what is seen in the woman’s own video.
✪ ‘We are the Enfield Army’: Video of locals chasing rioters in London

Londoners took to the streets to protect their neighbourhoods on Tuesday night after Britain’s worst rioting in a generation. A group of anti-rioters marched through Enfield, in north London, aiming to deter looters. “We are the Enfield anti-rioting squad,” said one local resident. “You want to riot our place, we will riot you mate. This is our area not your area.” Another Enfield resident said his fellow vigilantes were the “people that are London, not the small minority that are going around smashing up stuff, that have got nothing to wake up for in the morning.”
✪ Redneck Olympics faces lawsuit over name

By all accounts, the Redneck Olympics was a huge success.About 2,600 people attended the three-day event on Harold Brooks’ land last weekend. There were no arrests, and the one ambulance visit was for a bee sting, Brooks said.

But the party ended Monday when Brooks received a call from the legal division of the U.S. Olympic Committee. Brooks said the USOC told him he had to change the name of his event or face a lawsuit.

He was told the word “Olympics” is the property of the Olympic Committee. Brooks said it’s a case of a large group bullying a small businessman.

“I said, ‘I’m not basing it on your Olympics; I’m basing it on the Olympics in Greece,’” Brooks said.

“I understand we can’t use the word ‘Pepsi,’ but we can use the word ‘soda.’ The Olympics has been around for thousands of years.” He likened it to taking out a copyright on the word “fair” and trying to force the Fryeburg Fair to change its name.
✪ New drug could cure nearly any viral infection

Most bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, discovered decades ago. However, such drugs are useless against viral infections, including influenza, the common cold, and deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola.Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.
✪ Editorial: An Argument for Surrealism in Games

The problem I find most troubling with realism in games, is that video games are inherently unrealistic. By definition, even, video games must adhere to some sense of absurdity. In Uncharted, no matter how realistic and convincing the characters and environments may be, the fact is that Nathan Drake can take a hell of a lot of damage, and is a little too good with every gun known to man. In Call of Duty, if realism is such a coveted aspect of the series, why does your character only bleed out of his eyes, and why is damage rarely permanent? The “game” part of these games keeps them from being truly realistic, and in turn makes them even less believable. Characters like Link, or even Master Chief, are believable in even the most absurd situations, as the worlds that they belong to don’t try to conform to the world that we live in.
✪ RUSSIAN NAVY CAPTURES SOMALIAN PIRATES (Expeditious disposal!)

The Euro Union navy who patrol these waters would not interfere because they feared there could be casualties (!)
All explanations are in Russian with a single exception of when a wounded pirate says something in English and the Russian soldier says “This is not a fishing boat.” All conversations between the commandos are in Russian but the pictures speak for themselves.
The soldiers freed their compatriots and the tanker. The Russian Navy Commandos moved the pirates back to the pirate vessel, searched it for weapons and explosives, then left and blew it up with all remaining pirates hand-cuffed to it.They used the anti-piracy laws of the 18th and 19th centuries where the captain of the rescuing ship has the right to decide what to do with the pirates. Usually, they were legally hanged with no lawyers or court proceedings required. Perhaps from now on, Russian ships will not be targets for Somalian pirates.Other nations might take note. “Без суда и следствия”. Смотрите, девочки.
✪ Petition Asks Bert And Ernie To Get Married On Sesame Street

The pair of puppets has long been rumored to be a veiled representation of a gay couple, though the Children’s Television Workshop has denied that this is the case.The petition echoes the message of the “It Gets Better” project, founded in 2010 following the suicides of a number of young gay men, including Tyler Clementi, Billy Lucas and others.

Reactions thus far have been mixed. An editorial in the New York Daily News, headlined “Folks who want a gay marriage for Bert and Ernie of ‘Sesame Street’ need to get over themselves,” went on to say:

“Why stop there? Why not march Yogi Bear and Boo Boo down the aisle, too?… Some stages of life – for example, the years from 2 to 4 – must be walled off from the passions of adults.”

Alyssa Rosenberg at Think Progress agrees, but for different reasons. If Bert and Ernie were gay, she would be all for a marriage, but Rosenberg has a problem with same-sex roommates being equated with gay couples.
✪ Protect IP Could Have Far-reaching Impact on Digital Freedom

Protect IP has been criticized for its ambiguity as to what constitutes an infringing website. To illustrate this, websites such as The Pirate Bay and WikiLeaks who have been accused of distributing copyrighted content in the past, could have all of their search results blocked on search engines, effectively making them invisible. This raises serious concerns about free speech when the blocked website also hosts legitimate and lawful content. Under the act, these blocks can be enforced without notifying the infringing site and therefore eradicates the presumption of innocence.
✪ Collective: Odd Future

They piled onto the shuttle late, after finally getting corralled by their minder, who was nursing a head wound with an ice bag wrapped in a towel. They piled in, niggering everything in sight, motherfucking the driver, boasting into the air unbidden about getting their dicks sucked and calling everyone in the area a faggot. Then one of them lit a joint (or a pipe, I didn’t look) and told the driver to shut the fuck up nigger and smoked it anyway. A female passenger tried to engage one of them in conversation, but he just stared at her with a dead-to-me stare while his seatmate flipped double birds in her face.The whole trip they complained about not being at a McDonalds and repeatedly shouted for the motherfucker to pull over so they could get some fucking McDonalds nigger. Interspersed with the McDonalds requests were shouted boasts about how often they masturbated and fucked bitches nigger and got paid like a motherfucker fifty grand like a motherfucker
✪ THE LANGUAGE OF THE Homosexual (1965)

America is a mixture of many types of speech reflecting the cultures and backgrounds of its teeming millions. One type that is widely used, though not given recognition, serves a very important function in the lives of many people. This is the language of the homosexual.There are 2 ways in which homosexual slang is used. The first is when it is employed by the outsider or “straight” individual to describe or refer to homosexuals ar.d their activities. In this way the slang mirrors society’s disapproval and permits a person to talk of homosexuals without incurring any guilt by association.

The other, or “inside” language, is used by the homosexual and serves several purposes other than simple communication. It helps to transform the feeling of being a despised minority to that of a special in-group.
✪ Steve Albini Hates On Odd Future While Also Sort of Defending Them

If you happen to know anything about Steve Albini, it’s almost certainly one or both of the following two things: (1) His reputation as a producer (Nirvana, Pixies, PJ Harvey) and musician (Big Black, Shellac) is unassailable, and (2) He’s a bit of a curmudgeon, and he’s not at all shy about it. Albini’s most recent outburst came at the expense of Sonic Youth, whom he more or less blamed earlier this year for corrupting independent music. Well, “most recent outburst” until this weekend, actually, when Albini went at Odd Future.
✪ Super flood blamed on lasers, a cruel Pathan

Last year’s floods, which affected around 20 million people across the country, weren’t a natural disaster – they were a mistake on the part of our government.The government, in its effort to produce water, melted glaciers in the north using lasers. The experiment went awry and things got out of control, bringing forth the worst floods in the history of Pakistan.

You might dismiss the aforementioned as absurd, but this is precisely what most people ardently believe in flood-hit areas from Muzaffargarh to Rajanpur.

Though a year has passed since the floods hit and rehabilitation work is under way, locals in stricken areas still believe in conspiracy theories.

“Not just the common people but elected representatives of our areas have time and again said that lasers were used to melt glaciers and the water went out of control,” a local in Muzaffargarh, Malik Mureed, told The Express Tribune.
✪ NYPD forms new social media unit to mine Facebook and Twitter for mayhem

The NYPD has formed a new unit to track troublemakers who announce plans or brag about their crimes on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.Newly named Assistant Commissioner Kevin O’Connor, one of the department’s online and gang gurus, has been put in charge of the new juvenile justice unit. He and his staff will mine social media, looking for info about troublesome house parties, gang showdowns and other potential mayhem, sources said.

The power of social media to empower both criminals and cops has been on full display in London this week, where riots and looting have been spreading dramatically.
✪ Leukemia Treatment Virtually Eradicates Cancer, Kills ‘Pounds’ Of Cancerous Cells (VIDEO)

A new leukemia treatment is wowing even the researchers behind its creation, providing results beyond their wildest expectations.It’s virtually eradicated cancerous leukemia cells in the first three patients it’s been tested on.

In two of the first three patients the process was tested on the treatment completely destroyed the most common type of leukemia, according to MSNBC. In the third patient, the treatment seems to have reduced the cancerous cells to 70 percent of what they once were.

“Within three weeks, the tumors had been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever expected,” said senior author Carl June, MD told Penn Medicine.
✪ Self-assembling micro-robots created, Judgment Day looms

In news that makes you wonder if anyone from the US Department of Energy has watched the Terminator films, physicists at the Argonne National Laboratory have successfully created self-assembling micro-robots that are just 0.5mm (500 micron) in diameter.Formed out of minuscule ferromagnetic particles that float freely in a sandwich of water and oil, these micro-robots (microbots? nanobots?) are controlled with magnets. With the application of an alternating magnetic field that’s perpendicular to the immiscible mixture, the micro-particles assemble into spiked circles called asters, after the aster flower. Then, with a magnetic field that is parallel to the surface, the movements of these microbots can be controlled.
✪ Working in an office is bad for your brain

A study has found that the hustle and bustle of modern offices can lead to a 32% drop in workers well being and reduce their productivity by 15%.They have found that open plan offices create unwanted activity in the brains of workers that can get in the way of them doing the task at hand.

Open plan offices were first introduced in the 1950s and quickly became a popular as a way of laying out offices.

Having a clean and sterile desk can also leave employees with smaller brains, scientists claim.
✪ Facebook’s Privacy Issues Are Even Deeper Than We Knew

These developments mean that we no longer have to worry just about what Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and other social sites do with our data; we have to worry about what they enable others to do, too. And it now seems that others will be able to do a lot.As reported in various privacy and security outlets like Kashmir Hill’s Forbes blog and Paul Roberts at ThreatPost, and demonstrated at last week’s Black Hat conference, the CMU researchers relied on just Facebook’s public profile information and off-the-shelf facial recognition software. Yet the CMU researchers were able to match Facebook users with their pictures on otherwise anonymous Match.com accounts. The researchers also had significant success taking pictures of experimental subjects and matching them to their Facebook profiles.
✪ Police Nab Alleged Zit-Popper Grossing Out Fast-Food Customers

A man accused of disgusting McDonald’s patrons by popping his pimples was under arrest after customer complaints led to a brief chase by officers.It started Monday when customers of the McDonald’s located at 2404 Santa Barbara Blvd. alerted authorities to a man standing outside the restaurant for about 10 minutes squeezing away at the acne on his back. Events that followed with police ended in a brief chase and the arrest of the man, who allegedly gave a false name when confronted about the complaints.
✪ Dolce & Gabbana in dock over ‘killer jeans’

Three of Italy’s best-known fashion houses are being accused of refusing to stop selling “killer jeans” that threaten the lives of workers in the poor countries where they are produced.The Clean Clothes Campaign began pressing in February for leading fashion manufacturers and retailers to ban sandblasting, a technique for producing denim garments with an artificially worn look. The large amounts of silica dust produced can lead to silicosis, a potentially lethal pulmonary disease.

The process was banned in Turkey in 2009 after evidence was produced to show that 46 former sandblasting operators had contracted silicosis
✪ A Nuclear Needle in a Haystack: The Cold War’s Missing Atom Bombs

In a 1968 plane crash, the US military lost an atom bomb in Greenland’s Arctic ice. But this was no isolated case. Up to 50 nuclear warheads are believed to have gone missing during the Cold War, and not all of them are in unpopulated areas.
✪ Twitter refuses to close accounts of rioters to protect their ‘freedom of expression’

Twitter has refused to close the accounts of London rioters who used the service to spread unrest and insisted that Tweets must ‘continue to flow’.The US-based company said that ‘freedom of expression’ was essential and that information would be ‘kept flowing’.

Social networks have faced criticism for allowing rioters and looters to incite violence and public disorder across the country since riots began last Saturday in Tottenham.
✪ Hong Kong exchange trading disrupted as hackers target website

The Hong Kong stock exchange was forced to suspend trading in stocks including HSBC Holdings after hackers broke into the exchange’s website on Wednesday, preventing investors from accessing company announcements made during the midday break.”Our current assessment that this is a result of a malicious attack by outside hacking,” the chief executive of Hong Kong Exchanges & Clearing (HKEx) Charles Li told reporters after the company announced interim results.
✪ Penis injury from Gretna police dog attack was unjustified, man alleges in lawsuit

A 25-year-old man sued the Gretna Police Department Tuesday, alleging his civil rights were violated by a police officer who sicced his canine on him without provocation, leading the dog to bite into his groin area and virtually sever his penis.
cody_melancon.jpgView full sizeSusan Poag,The Times-PicayuneCody Melancon alleges his civil rights were violated by a police officer who sicced his canine on him without provocation.Cody Melancon, of Gretna, said Tuesday the attack left him sexually dysfunctional. A doctor has recommended sexual enhancement pills and he faces neurosurgery in hopes of restoring the use of his penis, which was almost completely severed by the police dog’s bites.“I don’t have any sensation down there,” Melancon said. “I can’t get an erection. I’m 25 years of age.”
✪ Teenage brides suffer pain and shame of fistula

“Nobody wants a woman who passes stools all the time and smells,” whispered Farhiya Mohamed Farah, explaining why her husband divorced her when she was pregnant with their second child.Farah, developed a hole between her vagina and rectum, causing feces to leak from her body, after giving birth to her first child at age 18 while fleeing gunfire in Somalia.