✦ Teen who butchered 9-year-old neighbor wrote that killing was amazing, enjoyable in her journal before she went to church

“I just f—— killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the “ohmygawd I can’t do this” feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now…lol.” Thanks Jasmine

✦ GREAT (?) MOMENTS IN COMICS HISTORY: “MAD’S PUNK ROCK GROUP OF THE YEAR” (1978)

But when it had one of its surges of brilliance, MAD was indeed a force to be reckoned with and if you were of the right age at the right time it was both eye opening and fucking hilarious, a good case in point being the hit-or-miss observations and social commentary found in the long-running “(FILL IN THE BLANK) OF THE YEAR” series. Two of those stand out in my memory as being absolutely vital in the forging of my sense of humor were “Mad’s Karate Movie Producer of the Year” (MAD #167, June 1974), a piss-your-pants moment of brilliance illustrated by Jack Davis during the height of the 1970′s martial arts movie boom, and issue #199′s (June 1978) poke at the British punk rock movement when it reared its Mohawked head over here in the States.

✦ Know your Rights!- right!?

Recently as I was doing some research I came across a designers site that had a rug for sale that had the exact style of my friend Keen One, I thought to myself how unlikely that he would do such a commercial project so I passed the link for confirmation. As it turned out it wasn’t an agreed upon collaboration but an artistic infringement by the designer. Since the work was painted on a wall in public they must have assumed the artist had no rights to said work since it may or may not have been legal and decided to use for their own commercial and financial gain.

✦ Play the Rings of a Tree Trunk Like a Record

What would the trunk of a tree sound like if a cross section of it were played like an LP? With his creation Years, Bartholomäus Traubeck attempts to answer that question by using a turntable, PlayStation Eye Camera, a stepper motor to control the arm, and computer running Ableton Live. As you’ll hear in the video above, the rings of the tree trunk, as interpreted by this piece, create an eerie and ominous piano track that sounds like it was taken from psychological horror film. Who knew trees were so emo?

✦ THE FAB 5 FREDDY DEBATE CONTINUES

Revok recently pulled Fab 5 Freddy’s card calling him a biter and a fraud (check Revok’s blog post HERE). This accusation has drew a line in the sand with people opposing and supporting Fred’s work. Today I received this harshly retarded email from Holland’s Shoe aka Niels Shoe Meulman…

✦ Fungi Discovered In The Amazon Will Eat Your Plastic

The Amazon is home to more species than almost anywhere else on earth. One of them, carried home recently by a group from Yale University, appears to be quite happy eating plastic in airless landfills. The group of students, part of Yale’s annual Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory with molecular biochemistry professor Scott Strobel, ventured to the jungles of Ecuador. The mission was to allow “students to experience the scientific inquiry process in a comprehensive and creative way.” The group searched for plants, and then cultured the microorganisms within the plant tissue. As it turns out, they brought back a fungus new to science with a voracious appetite for a global waste problem: polyurethane.

✦ Stealing in virtual world is theft in real life, top Dutch court rules

The amulet and mask were a 13-year-old boy’s virtual possessions in an online fantasy game. In the real world, he was beaten and threaten with a knife to give them up. The Dutch Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the theft conviction of a youth who stole another boy’s possessions in the popular online fantasy game RuneScape. Judges ordered the offender to perform 144 hours of community service. Only a handful of such cases have been heard in the world, and they have reached varying conclusions about the legal status of “virtual goods” — and whether stealing them is real-world theft. The suspect’s lawyer had argued the amulet and mask “were neither tangible nor material and, unlike for example electricity, had no economic value.”

✦ New Theory of Life Claims to Unite Fields of Science

The Earth is alive, asserts a new scientific theory of life emerging from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine. The trans-disciplinary theory demonstrates that purportedly inanimate, non-living objects — for example, planets, water, proteins, and DNA — are animate, that is, alive.

✦ First ‘Heartless’ Man: You Don’t Really Need A Heart, Or A Pulse

Two doctors Billy Cohn and Bud Frazier from the Texas Heart Institute successfully replaced a dying man’s heart with a device—proving that it is possible for your body to be kept alive without a heart, or a pulse.

✦ Twitter news: US bars friends over Twitter joke

TWO pals were barred from entering the US after innocent tweets joking about “destroying America” were picked up by the country’s anti-terror cops. US special agents monitoring Twitter spotted Leigh Van Bryan’s messages weeks before he left for a holiday in Los Angeles with pal Emily Bunting. Leigh, who also quipped about “digging up Marilyn Monroe” on Twitter, said they were treated like terrorists on arrival at a Los Angeles International Airport. The pair were held by armed guards and quizzed for five hours before being handcuffed, put in a van with illegal immigrants and locked up overnight.

✦ Key Internet operator VeriSign hit by hackers

VeriSign Inc, the company in charge of delivering people safely to more than half the world’s websites, has been hacked repeatedly by outsiders who stole undisclosed information from the leading Internet infrastructure company. The previously unreported breaches occurred in 2010 at the Reston, Virginia-based company, which is ultimately responsible for the integrity of Web addresses ending in .com, .net and .gov.

✦ A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors [Video]

Experiments performed with a team of nano quadrotors at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania. Vehicles developed by KMel Robotics. Special thanks to Professor Daniel Lee for his support.

✦ 2,100 pounds of marijuana seized from fake AT&T; work truck

Two men are behind bars after authorities found more than a ton of marijuana inside a fake AT&T; work truck. It all happened off FM 490 just west of the Hidalgo County community of McCook. A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) state trooper pulled over what appeared to be an AT&T; truck over for speeding 72 mph in a 60 mph zone. Driver Aaron Arrellano-Salgado fled on foot but was caught. Authorities found 189 bundles with 2,168 pounds of marijuana inside the cloned work truck. State troopers pulled over a second car driven by Wilfredo Garza-Salgado for running a stop sign nearby.

✦ Oriental riff

The Oriental riff, also known as the Asian riff or the Chinese riff, is a musical riff or phrase that has often been used as a trope or stereotype of orientalism in Western culture to represent the idea of the Orient, China, Japan or a generic East Asian theme by Western culture. The riff is sometimes accompanied by the sound of a gong.

✦ Police Raid 5-Story Bronx Marijuana Farm, 593 Plants Seized

Police raided a five-story Bronx building that they believe was being used as a marijuana farm with hundreds of plants in an elaborate growing system. A search warrant was executed at about 1 p.m. Tuesday at 610 Morris Park Ave., according to police. Investigators seized 593 plants, some as tall as seven feet, as well as 75 pounds of marijuana that had been cut, dried and packaged in plastic. Sources told NBC New York that each floor of the building was used for a different stage of growth for the plants. It had been outfitted with an intricate ventilation and hydration system. The seized plants and packages totaled about 1,550 pounds, police said. Investigators said about 50 to 60 pounds of marijuana were being produced each month for a value of about $250,000.

✦ Joan Rivers, 78, gets stoned in a carpark and is unable to drive home… and its all filmed for her reality show

Joan Rivers is not known as a shrinking violet. But the 78-year-old has taken things a step further by smoking a marijuana pipe in a carpark with her friend – and had it all filmed for her reality show. The comedian, known for her red carpet interviews at award shows, became so stoned, she was unable to drive home and later ended up fully clothed in a hot tub and drinking the water out of her shoe.

✦ Your cell phone is a government issued tracking device

Mobile phones have become a major part of our modern civilization. These hand-held computers have reached a level of sophistication that allows us to instantly communicate through text, voice and video. This same technology is also being used to amass a situational awareness and sensory system that will track you and the world around you. You and your cell phone are nodes in a grid of sensors that paints a virtual picture of the world.

✦ US ‘no-fly’ list of suspected terrorists doubles in 12 months

The size of the US government’s secret list of suspected terrorists who are banned from flying to or within the country has more than doubled in the past year. The no-fly list jumped from about 10,000 known or suspected terrorists one year ago to about 21,000, according to government figures. About 500 are US nationals. The flood of new names began after the failed Christmas 2009 bombing of a Detroit-bound jetliner when the US government lowered the standard for putting people on the list and scoured its files for anyone who qualified. “We learned a lot about the watchlisting process and made strong improvements, which continue to this day,” said Timothy Healy, director of the Terrorist Screening Centre, which produces the no-fly list.

✦Stacey Irvine, 17, collapses after eating only McDonald’s chicken nuggets since age 2

Ever since she was a toddler, Stacey Irvine has eaten little else but chicken nuggets and the occasional portion of chips. Now, at the age of 17, she has been warned by doctors to change her appalling diet or die. The factory worker – who says she has never tasted fresh fruit or vegetables – had to be taken to hospital earlier this week when she collapsed after struggling to breathe.

✦ Addicts’ cravings have different roots in men and women

When it comes to addiction, sex matters. A new brain imaging study by Yale School of Medicine researchers suggests stress robustly activates areas of the brain associated with craving in cocaine-dependent women, while drug cues activate similar brain regions in cocaine-dependent men. The study, expected to be published online Jan. 31 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, suggests men and women with cocaine dependence might benefit more from different treatment options.

✦ Missing Iraq $100 Million: Pentagon Unable to Account for Missing Iraqi Millions

The Pentagon doesn’t know what happened to more than $100 million in cash held at Saddam Hussein’s palace in Baghdad during the Iraq war, according to a new report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. What’s more, the Pentagon can’t find documents to explain what it spent as much as $1.7 billion on from funds held on behalf of the Iraqi government by the New York Federal Reserve, the report says. The missing records raise new questions about how the US government handled billions of dollars in Iraqi funds during the war. The new report, the latest in a multi-year investigation by the inspector general into missing money in Iraq, paints a picture of Pentagon officials digging through boxes of hard copy records looking for missing paper copies of Excel spreadsheets, monthly reports and other paper documents that should have been kept detailing what the money was spent on and why those expenditures were necessary. Apparently, there are no electronic records

✦ Cocaine accidentally sent to UN headquarters

Bags containing 16 kilogram of cocaine that Mexican drug traffickers recently lost has turned up in an unlikely place – the United Nations in New York. Two fake UN bags containing the drugs – which experts said had a street value of about $US2 million ($1.9 million) – set off a security alert when they were delivered, apparently by accident, to the global body’s headquarters. The bags, which had the UN symbol printed on them, were shipped from Mexico through the DHL delivery company’s centre in Cincinnati, Ohio, deputy commissioner Paul Browne of the New York Police Department said. But the bags had no address on them, nor any return to sender details. “It is my understanding that because there was no addressee, the DHL just thought, well, that’s the UN symbol so we should ship it on to UN headquarters and let them figure out who it was supposed to go to,” deputy commissioner Browne said.

✦ The Mercenary Techie Who Troubleshoots for Drug Dealers and Jealous Lovers

With Martin’s system, each crewmember gets a cell phone that operates using a prepaid SIM card; they also get a two-week plastic pill organizer filled with 14 SIM cards where the pills should be. Each SIM card, loaded with $50 worth of airtime, is attached to a different phone number and stores all contacts, text messages and call histories associated with that number, like a removable hard drive. This makes a new SIM card effectively a new phone. Every morning, each crewmember swaps out his phone’s card for the card in next day’s compartment in the pill organizers. After all 14 cards are used, they start over at the first one.

✦ Student receives free cocaine with Amazon textbook order

A US university student discovered a package of cocaine in a pre-owned textbook she bought from online retailer Amazon.com. Sophia Stockton, a junior at Mid-America Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas, ordered a textbook called Terrorism: Challenges, Perspectives and Issues through Amazon.com for a spring course on terrorism. After flipping through the pages of the just received textbook a bag of ‘white powder’ fell to the ground. Stockton initially thought that it was Anthrax and took the book and bag to the Gardner police station after classes and was surprised she had been shipped $400 worth of cocaine. She told WPTV: I told them white powder was in my terrorism textbook and so I put it on the table and they’re like, ‘oh, okay,’ And so he went back and tested it, He comes back and says, ‘you didn’t happen to order some cocaine with your textbook, did you?’ And I was like, no!

✦ New designer drug ‘Roflcoptr’ hits UK dance floors

The new ‘rave drug’ is called Roflcoptr, which is a street-speak acronym for “Roll On the Floor Laughing Crapping Our Pants Totally Ruined”. An alternative name is “mket” (which is a truncation of the full chemical name, as described below). Like other drugs linked to electronica and other forms of club / dance music, the physiological affect is to produce a state of euphoria and sometimes have hallucinogenic properties. The basis of the new substance is the chemical methoxetamine (and which has a very long chemical name: 2-(3-methoxyphenyl)-2-(ethylamino)cyclohexanone). The chemical takes the form of a white powder. The user snorts the powder.

✦ Drug war hypocrisy: drug trafficking’s big money benefits Big Brother and corrupt banksters

The hypocrisy of the war on drugs is outrageous when compared to the amount of drug trafficking that benefits the CIA and international banking system. The son of a convicted notorious mobster, John Gotti Jr, when asked in court if the family still dealt drugs cracked, “No, we can’t compete with the government.” Today in Afghanistan, American troops have been seen guarding poppy fields used to make heroin. Those fields were all but wiped out by 2001 when the Taliban destroyed them and forbade that agricultural pursuit. Now they’re flourishing again after the American occupation. This doesn’t make sense despite all the mainstream reports that American troops are protecting the poppy farmers from the bad guys. Internet sites such as Prison Planet, Info Wars, The Political Coffeehouse and others report otherwise. They connect the CIA and US military to restarting the poppy fields in Afghanistan in 2002, increasing poppy growth by over 650 percent. Who’s telling it like it is?

✦ Discipline recommended in Air Force whistle-blower case

The U.S. Office of Special Counsel said Tuesday it has recommended disciplinary action against three Air Force officials after concluding they retaliated against four civilian mortuary workers at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware for disclosing that remains of fallen troops had been mishandled.

✦ Peacemaker: Lauderdale police put trouble spots under surveillance with Big Brother truck

Tania Ouaknine is convinced the police are watching her. She’s not paranoid — it says as much on the red sign painted along the side on the hulking armored truck that’s been parked in front of her eight-room Parisian Motel for several days. “Warning: You are under video surveillance,” reads the bold message on the side of the truck. From the front bumper of the menacing vehicle, another sign taunts: “Whatcha gonna do when we come for you?” The truck is a new weapon for the Fort Lauderdale Police Department in the fight against drugs and neighborhood nuisances, and it looks like a Winnebago on steroids. They call it “The Peacemaker,” and it may be a first in South Florida.

✦ Facebook IPO: What happens if Mark Zuckerberg were to die?

“In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor. As a board member and officer, Mr. Zuckerberg owes a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our stockholders.”

✦ Teacher abused students during class, detective says

Investigators recovered photos from the film processing store and Mark Berndt’s home that allegedly showed the students bound and blindfolded and some with large Madagascar cockroaches crawling on them inside the school setting, Scott said. Scott said girls were allegedly photographed with a blue spoon holding a white substance near their mouths. Investigators said they believe that substance was Berndt’s semen and that he had the girls consume it. Thanks Jasmine

✦ 9-Eyes

Collection of strange Google Street View screenshots

✦ Early 70′s LA Gang Graffiti

Howard Gribble: When these photographs of Chicano “placas” (wall writing) were made in the early 1970s gangs and their graffiti were a mysterious presence that few understood — if they were aware of them at all. In the thirty plus years since the popular media and entertainment industry have repeatedly spotlighted the subject to the point that the gangsta culture has become a pervasive part of our society. The original gangster graffiti of this period was of a purer form than that seen today, with much emphasis on artistic flourishes. These pieces could last for years in the days before municipilaties instituted aggresive graffiti removal programs that quickly remove them from view — often overnight. This is, of course, still vandalism but from an earlier and more innocent time.

✦ ALIEN or HUMAN born with PIGS BODY….you decide. [Video]

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Joan Jett, Sandy West, and Lita Ford, Post-Cherie Currie Runways, mop up the musical athletic competition in yellow Adidas track suits at the Freddy Fender Rock ‘n Roll Sports Classic, late 1970′s. Also featuring: Lionel Richie, Ann Murry, Latoya Jackson, and Rod Stewart.

✪ Ron Jeremy exclusive: Will the condom law be a wrap for porn industry in L.A.?

An HIV-positive adult film actor is hailing the Los Angeles City Council’s final approval of a city law requiring condoms on porn sets – but veteran star Ron Jeremy thinks its dirty politics. Jeremy, originally from New York, told the Daily News he believes this week’s vote is part of a larger effort to stamp out porn production in the industry’s sunny San Fernando Valley home. “Performers don’t mind wearing rubbers, but viewers don’t want to see it. It ruins the fantasy,” Jeremy said Wednesday. “This will force production to leave Los Angeles, and that’s really what the supporters want,” he claimed. The legendary lothario said local porn purveyors are already feeling the squeeze from a flood of overseas imports and low-budget, amateur productions – and new condom requirements will make competitive success even harder. He said mandatory, monthly STD testing – now the industry standard – is more than adequate to keep performers safe.

✪ Feds Say 7 Behind Celeb-endorsed Megaupload.com Ran Massive, Worldwide Piracy Ring

Federal prosecutors have shut down one of the world’s largest file-sharing sites, Megaupload.com, on charges of violating piracy laws — a day after a 24-hour blackout of popular websites such as Wikipedia drew national attention to the issue. “This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States,” the Justice department said in a statement about the indictment. The indictment accuses seven individuals and two corporations — Megaupload Limited and Vestor Limited — of costing copyright holders more than $500 million in lost revenue from pirated films and other content. It was unsealed on Thursday, and claims that at one point Megaupload was the 13th most popular website in the world.

✪ Google Is Already Using SOPA-Like Censorship

However, Google’s main issue with SOPA is seemingly not related to their concerns about Chinese-style web censorship becoming commonplace, but rather which entity gets to wield those powers – large transnational corporations or governments. While Google criticizes SOPA publicly, it is already privately using SOPA-like powers to unfairly marginalize legitimate web content. Google News is a content aggregator that allows users to search thousands of news sources for relevant stories. Although the aggregator includes a plethora of obscure, occasionally offensive, and barely-read websites, in November 2010 Google took the decision to de-list PrisonPlanet.com and Infowars.com from its indexed news sources. Infowars.com alone is an internationally recognized news website that gets more traffic than MSNBC.com and innumerable other big mainstream news websites.

✪ Protest against discrimination of Ethiopian Jews

Thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets of Jerusalem, in protest against what they say is discrimination against Jews of Ethiopian origin. The protest came after a recent report in the Israeli media that landlords in southern Israel had agreed not to rent or sell their real estate to Jews of Ethiopian origin.

✪ Goodbye, Fish: Rising CO2 Direct Threat to Sea Life “Driving Fish Crazy”

New research shows the disastrous consequences the world’s rising carbon dioxide levels are having on ocean life. Photo courtesy of Dr Simon Foale, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies A team of researchers from the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University published their findings in the journal Nature Climate Change. They document how elevated CO2 is “driving fish crazy.”

✪ WiFi signal with racist, anti-Semitic slur in Teaneck, NJ sparks police probe; signal came from rec center router

A bigot named their WiFi signal “F— All Jews and N—-” — and now cops are investigating. The hateful signal I.D. popped up on the iPhone of a 28-year-old mom inside a Teaneck, N.J. recreation center, where her 3-year-old daughter was attending dance class. The offending signal was coming from a router connected in the Richard Rodda Community Center in the the township, located 10 miles outside New York City. “When I first saw it, I said, ‘Did that say what I thought it said?,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be used. “I was shocked, hurt. I felt harassed.” The signal showed on her phone as it searched for an Internet connection in the center Tuesday. “I felt like I’m bringing my daughter to this place, and it should be a safe place,” she said.

✪ Scientists Create World’s Tiniest Ear

Have you ever wondered what a virus sounds like? Or what noise a bacterium makes when it moves between hosts? If the answer is yes, you may soon get your chance to find out, thanks to the development of the world’s tiniest ear. The “nano-ear,” a microscopic particle of gold trapped by a laser beam, can detect sound a million times fainter than the threshold for human hearing. Researchers suggest the work could open up a whole new field of “acoustic microscopy,” in which organisms are studied using the sound they emit.

✪ The Rise of the New Groupthink

SOLITUDE is out of fashion. Our companies, our schools and our culture are in thrall to an idea I call the New Groupthink, which holds that creativity and achievement come from an oddly gregarious place. Most of us now work in teams, in offices without walls, for managers who prize people skills above all. Lone geniuses are out. Collaboration is in. But there’s a problem with this view. Research strongly suggests that people are more creative when they enjoy privacy and freedom from interruption. And the most spectacularly creative people in many fields are often introverted, according to studies by the psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Gregory Feist. They’re extroverted enough to exchange and advance ideas, but see themselves as independent and individualistic. They’re not joiners by nature.

✪ NYPD developing portable body scanner for detecting concealed weapons

You have to feel sorry for the police officers who are required to frisk people for guns or knives – after all, if someone who doesn’t want to be arrested is carrying a lethal weapon, the last thing that most of us would want to do is get close enough to that person to touch them. That’s why the New York Police Department teamed up with the United States Department of Defense three years ago, and began developing a portable scanner that can remotely detect the presence of a gun on a person’s body. The NYPD announced the project yesterday.

✪ Scientists Uncover The Mathematics Of Serial Killers

Andrei Chikatilo, “The Butcher of Rostov,” was one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. Between 1978 and 1990 in the Ukraine, he committed at least 52 murders before he was caught, tried and executed. The pattern of his murders, though, was irregular. There were long periods of no activity, interrupted by several murders within a short period of time. Hoping to gain insight into serial killings to prevent similar murders, his pattern of behavior was examined by Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury at UCLA. They’ve published a paper on ArXiv with their preliminary results.

✪ Fake iPad 2s made of clay sold at Canadian stores

As many as 10 fake iPad 2s, all made of slabs of modeling clay, were recently sold at electronic stores in Vancouver, British Columbia. Best Buy and Future Shop have launched investigations into how the scam was pulled off. The tablet computers, like most Apple products, are known for their sleek and simple designs. But there’s no mistaking the iPad for one of the world’s oldest “tablet devices.” Still, most electronic products cannot be returned to stores. For the the stores and customers to be fooled by the clay replacements, the thieves must have successfully weighed out the clay portions and resealed the original Apple packaging.

✪ For rent: Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair

Anybody willing to pay the asking rent of £90,000 a year can take over the 13-hectare site in a secluded forest in eastern Poland, which during the war lay in German East Prussia. From 1941 to the end of 1944 the Wolf’s Lair was the nerve centre of the Nazi war machine owing to its proximity to the Eastern Front. The Polish Forestry Service, the owners of the camp, started looking for a tenant after the old 20-year lease expired. Hitler and his henchman built huge bombproof bunkers at the site that also housed 2,000 staff and security personnel. Although retreating German forces dynamited most of the bunkers in November 1944, their shattered shells remain a prime tourist attraction with some 180,000 visitors a year.

✪ The Great Martin Luther King Copyright Conundrum

Believe it or not, to legally watch that famous Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech — arguably one of the most hallowed moments in American history — costs $10 thanks to the twisted state of United States copyright law.

✪ World’s Largest Garment Made From Golden Spider Silk Goes on Display

Before anyone asks, no, it’s not bulletproof. But that doesn’t mean that the glistening yellow cape—the world’s largest garment made entirely from spider silk—isn’t a massive feat of engineering to marvel at (hint: it is and you should). Now on public display for the first time at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, the textile gets its unearthly gleam from the undyed filaments of the golden orb spider, a species of arachnid commonly found in Madagascar. Girl power can be taken literally in this instance: Only the females produce the coveted silk.

✪ NSFW: An Alabama Fan Teabagged A Passed-Out LSU Fan At The Bourbon Street Krystal

Those of us un/fortunate enough to have visited the Krystal restaurant at the mouth of Bourbon Street in New Orleans know it’s a place where the occasionally odd, bizarre, or criminal events take place. We don’t know which of these this incident is, if not all three. That’s especially given that some people are claiming the victim in this is now dead, making the “This guy’s life is over” line uttered in the video creepy.

✪ Funk Legend Jimmy Castor Dead At 64

Funk/disco great Jimmy “The Everything Man” Castor passed away on Monday from unknown causes in Las Vegas, according to reports. Castor, a respected saxophonist, was the leader of the seminal funk/disco band the Jimmy Castor Bunch. The group was behind funk classics like the 1972 smash, “Troglodyte (Cave Man).” Though the group’s popularity faded at the end of the disco era, Castor’s music lived on through hip hop as his song “It’s Just Begun” became a staple break of the ’70s and ’80s b-boy break dancing scene. The song served as the back up music for the iconic b-boy collective the Rock Steady Crew in the 1983 film Flashdance. Eric B. and Rakim, the Ultramagnetic MCs, N.W.A., and Kanye West were among the hip hop names to sample Castor’s tunes over the years.

✪ Radioactive tissue holders found at Bed, Bath & Beyond reveal hypocrisy of failed national security

The Dual Ridge Metal Boutique tissue boxes sold at Bed, Bath & Beyond stores have been discovered to be radioactive. Made with the extremely dangerous material used to blast cancer tumors with radiation — cobalt-60 — they emit gamma rays that are known to cause both cancer and infertility. They were manufactured in India, shipped on a commercial container to New Jersey, and then distributed to Bed, Bath & Beyond stores in 20 states. How much radiation do these tissue holders emit, exactly? Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman David McIntyre said, on the record, that standing near one of these tissue holders for 30 minutes a day would expose you to the equivalent of “a couple of chest X-Rays” each year. The Illinois Emergency Management Agency went even further, issuing a release stating that every 10 hours spent near the product would expose you to the equivalent of one chest X-Ray

✪ Big Brother Brazil: Daniel Echaniz ‘raped Monique Amin on live TV’ after alcohol-fueled party

A housemate on Brazil’s version of Big Brother has been raped live on TV, it has been alleged. Police today confirmed they had begun an investigation and carried out a search of the studios in Rio de Janeiro, where the popular reality show is being filmed. Viewers were shocked in the early hours of Sunday to watch contestant Daniel Echaniz 31, apparently force himself on 23-year-old student Monique Amin, who had passed out drunk after a boozy party.

✪ Exchange students report shocking placements

I’ve seen many things I don’t like, including students that had been sexually abused, photographed, and forced to drink alcohol, says Danielle Grijalva, She is the head of CSFES, an organization that helps exchange students who run into problems abroad. Only this past year, 10-12 Norwegian exchange students abroad contacted her for help.

✪ EPIC Request Reveals DHS Monitoring Social Media

A Freedom of Information Act has revealed the Department of Homeland Security awarded a contract in 2010 to General Dynamics’ Advanced Information Systems in order to provide constant surveillance of social media, according to The Washington Post. The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed the request, and according to a training manual that was among the documents they received, DHS engaged in monitoring comments on Facebook, Twitter and blogs to obtain public sentiment on a proposed transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to a town in Michigan. The $11 million contract awarded to General Dynamics is expected to produce “reports on DHS, Components, and other Federal Agencies: positive and negative reports on FEMA, CIA, CBP, ICE, etc. as well as organizations outside the DHS,”

✪ MLK strip club flyer: Graphic designer under fire for ‘I Have a Dream Bash’

When Martin Luther King Jr. said he had a dream, this likely wasn’t what he meant. A flyer promoting a Miami strip club’s “I Have a Dream Bash” featuring MLK holding wads of cash next to scantily-clad women has its creator taking plenty of flack. Miami Beach graphic designer Jeffrey Darnell Paul says he didn’t realize the flyer, made for The Office strip club at 250 Northeast 183rd Street, would generate the controversy it has. “I wasn’t trying to disrespect anybody… it wasn’t on my mind that it would escalate to something like this,” Paul told NBC Miami Monday. “It was just supposed to be a promotional thing, it wasn’t about disgracing Martin Luther King, it wasn’t about that.”

✪ Mom forces son to wear ‘I sell drugs’ sign

An Indiana mother forced her son to wear a sign around his neck listing his law-breaking behavior and stand on a Ft. Wayne street corner for two hours earlier this week. The sign read: “I lie, I steal, I sell drugs, I don’t follow the law.” CBS New York reports that Dynesha Lax thought the punishment police had given her son when he broke the law recently wasn’t strong enough to get him to stop his behavior, so she took matters into her own hands.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58XPsyWDEkw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEQROtK3X0E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kDj92AE_6M

A Wild Experience, An Eye-And-Ear Blowing Trip Into Weirdsville USA

This documentary on rock ‘n’ roll groupies, including the infamous Plaster Casters, features performances (musical) by such bands as Ten Years After, Terry Reid, Spooky Tooth, and Cat Mother.

Sorry, part 4 is missin’ from YouTube.

▲ Ferret Legging – A Truly Unusual Sport

Also known as ferret-down-trousers and put ‘em down, the rules of the sport are pretty tight. Competitors have two ferrets placed inside their trousers, which are tied firmly at the ankles and belted up at the waist, thereby eliminating any point of escape for the furry creatures. The competitor then stands before judges, enduring the misery of the razor-sharp claws and teeth of the ferrets. Other rules state that competitors cannot be drunk and the ferrets must not be sedated. Also, the ferrets must have a full set of teeth that have not been blunted or filed. The man who stands the longest, wins. Sounds gruesome, doesn’t it? Well, get this – they aren’t even allowed to put on underwear, so as to allow free access to the ferrets from one leg to the other.

▲ Shoplifting Around the World [Infographic]

▲ Mountain Dew Will Dissolve Rats On Contact

According to McGill, if a mouse is submerged in Mountain Dew between four and seven days, the rodent “will have no calcium in its bones and bony structures.” During those days of soft drink immersion, “the mouse’s abdominal structure will rupture.” Additionally, “its cranial cavity (head) is also likely to rupture within that time period,” McGill noted. After 30 days exposure to Mountain Dew, “all of the mouse’s structures” would have disintegrated to the point that it would not be recognizable. In fact, “the mouse will have been transformed into a ‘jelly-like’ substance.” The only part of the rodent that could possibly survive, added McGill, was “a portion of the tail.”

▲ Lab-grown glands, eyes and brain parts

Growing a complete, functioning brain is unfeasible, but there is real potential in growing functional neural tissue containing specific types of cells, for transplantation into the human brain. This is one avenue of research that the team are investigating. Last year, they showed that ES cells can be coaxed to differentiate into functional cerebellar Purkinje cells, which integrate themselves into the brain when transplanted into mouse foetuses. “We are now attempting to generate Purkinje cells from human ES and induced pluripotent stem cells,” says Sasai. This would be useful in establishing animal models for the spino-cerebellar ataxias, to investigate their pathogenesis and to explore the possibility of gene therapy for these diseases.” The 3D culture technique could also be used to grow midbrain tissue containing neurons that synthesize the neurotransmitter dopamine, which could eventually prove to be very useful in the development of therapies for Parkinson’s Disease.

▲ No Fear: Memory Adjustment Pills Get Pentagon Push

The Pentagon hasn’t come close to solving the PTSD crisis plaguing the current generation of troops. But a cutting-edge realm of treatment might change that — by wiping away the fear that military personnel associate with traumatic memories. The Pentagon this week announced an $11 million grant for three research institutions, all of them long-time hubs for the military’s ongoing PTSD investigations. Experts at Emory University, the University of Southern California and New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center will study the effectiveness of D-Cycloserine (DCS). DCS is a pharmaceutical thought to help extinguish fearful memories. It’s usually taken right before exposure therapy, a process that involves recalling traumatic experiences in an effort to nullify the menacing associations that accompany them.

▲ Saudi son sale: $20 million price tag for a child

A failed Saudi businessman has put up his own son up for sale on Facebook. He claims that with all doors closed to him, he couldn’t see any other way to provide for his wife and daughter. ­Saud bin Nasser Al Shahry wants more than 73 million UAE Dirhams for the boy, a sum equivalent to almost $20 million, reports Qatar’s Al Sharq newspaper. A deal on the boy would offer “a decent life to his mother and sister rather than living in poverty.” The resourceful businessman said his debt-collecting firm had been ruled illegal by a local court and had to be shut down. When Al Shahry approached the Labor Office for financial assistance, the authorities allegedly refused him aid as the ministry does not provide help to individuals over 35 years old.

▲ 7 year old Poppy Burge gets liposuction voucher from ‘Human Barbie’ mum Sarah for Christmas

A seven-year-old who received a voucher for a boob job on her last birthday has received yet another inappropriate gift from her surgery-obsessed mother: A £7,000 voucher for liposuction. Little Poppy Burge received the gift in her Christmas stocking after her mother, a 51-year-old plastic surgery addict known as The Human Barbie, decided it would ‘come in handy’. ‘I put the voucher in her stocking – there’s nothing wrong with that,’ she said. ‘She asks for surgery all the time. She wants to look good and lipo is one of those procedures that will always come in handy.

▲ Police Shoot and Kill Armed 8th Grader in Texas

Police shot and killed an eighth grader brandishing a handgun in a Texas middle school hallway Wednesday. Police received a call around 8 a.m. saying there was someone with a weapon at Cummings High School in Brownsville, Texas, the Associated Press reported. Officers found the student with a handgun in a hallway and shot him after he “engaged” police, a district spokeswoman said in a statement. He was taken to a nearby medical center where he later died, the Brownsville Herald reported. His name has not been released. Local ABC affiliate KXXV-TV reported that police told the student to put his weapon down and fired three times after he refused to comply.

▲ Stephen Hawking admits he finds women ‘a complete mystery’

His career has shed light on the secrets of the universe, from the nature of space-time to the workings of black holes, but there is one conundrum that still baffles the world’s most famous scientist. In an interview to mark his 70th birthday this weekend, Stephen Hawking, the former Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, admitted he spent most of the day thinking about women. “They are,” he said “a complete mystery.”

▲ Avoiding Facial Recognition of the Future

The main focus of the camouflage is to use makeup and hair to create a look that is a mix between organic and machine. This makes it very hard to program software that can detect facial features if the traditional lines of a person’s visage are broken up in non-organic fashion. For those wanting to take a stab at protecting their identity, there are a few basic tips offered: 1. Avoid enhancers: They amplify key facial features. 2. Partially obscure the nose-bridge: The region where the nose, eyes, and forehead intersect is a key facial feature. 3. Partially obscure the ocular region: The position and darkness of eyes is a key facial feature. 4. Remain inconspicuous: For camouflage to function, it must not be perceived as a mask or disguise.

▲ PayPal Tells Buyer To Destroy Purchased Violin Instead Of Return For Refund

a seller claims that she’s out $2,500 and an antique violin after the company told the buyer to destroy the instrument. According to the seller, who shared her tale with the aforementioned Regretsy, she had sold the old violin to a buyer in Canada, who subsequently disputed the instrument’s bona fides. It is certainly not uncommon for people in the antique musical instrument field to argue over whether or not a particular item is the real deal, and it makes sense to notify PayPal that you are disputing the purchase. But the decision as to whether or not the violin is the real deal or an impersonator is not usually left up to the company that promises the payment. Alas, someone at PayPal apparently is an expert in old violins, because the company determined the instrument was “counterfeit” and told the buyer he needed to destroy it in order to get his refund. The buyer not only smashed the violin to bits; he also snapped some pics that he sent to the seller.

▲ La Redoute Naked Man Kids PHOTO

Stylist UK reports that the image has stirred up its fair share of controversy in France — and with good reason. The photo, found on La Redoute’s e-commerce site, features four annoyingly happy looking children frolicking on the beach wearing fun (if grammatically incorrect) T-shirts. But way off in the distance behind them is a man wearing absolutely nothing. This is creepy on a number of levels — in the photo, this naked man’s presence invalidates all that childlike joy the children are experiencing. But then you have to step back a level. How did this man get here in the first place? Did La Redoute really do a children’s photoshooot on a beach where people are allowed to roam around naked? Odds are, if there was one naked guy on that beach, there were probably more.

▲ Chinese Girls Before and After Makeup

Before and after makeup comparisons, even more shocking than plastic surgery

▲ Deadly parasite turns Bay Area honeybees into zombie slaves

Infected bees go mad, abandoning their hive in a suicidal rush toward bright lights, according to a new study by San Francisco State researchers. “It’s the flight of the living dead,” said lead investigator and biology professor John Hafernik, also president of the California Academy of Sciences. The parasite, a tiny fly, has been found in bees from three-quarters of the 31 surveyed hives in the Bay Area — essentially, everywhere except Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. In a plotline similar to a George Romero horror film, the fly deposits its eggs into the bee’s abdomen, then takes over. The hapless bees walk around in circles, with no apparent sense of direction. Some are unable to even stand on their legs. “They kept stretching them out and then falling over,” Hafernik said. “It really painted a picture of something like a zombie.”

▲ India girl killed in ritual sacrifice to ensure better harvest

Police arrested two men, both poor farmers, last week and they told police they killed the girl to appease their gods and get a better harvest, Das said. Tati was walking home after watching television at a neighbor’s house when she was kidnapped, Das said. The two men confessed to cutting her open and removing her liver as an offering. Das said the police had gathered enough evidence, apart from the confessions, to charge the two with murder. They would face life in prison or even the death sentence if convicted. The men were described as “tribals,” a term referring to the region’s indigenous people, most of whom remain mired in poverty and illiteracy.

▲ ‘Lost World’ Of Sea Creatures Discovered Near Antarctica

A “lost world” of sea creatures was discovered near Antarctica, British scientists announced Wednesday. Scientists doing their first exploring of deep-sea vents in the Antarctic said it was unlike anything found around other hydrothermal vents — a world populated by new species of anemones, predatory sea stars, and piles of hairy-chested yeti crabs. It was “almost like a sight from another planet,” said expedition leader Alex Rogers, a professor of zoology at Oxford University. Even in the eye-popping world of deep-sea vents, the Antarctic discoveries stand out, with the unfamiliar species of crabs found crowded in piles around the warm waters emanating from the seafloor. Many of the animals found at the vents have never been found at hydrothermal vents in other oceans, Rogers said. “To see these animals in such huge densities was just amazing,” Rogers told LiveScience.

▲ Naked man interrupts ‘Chipmunks’ at North Riverside Mall theater

Kids and parents who paid admission to see a movie about three shipwrecked chipmunks on Dec. 29 at the North Riverside Park Mall’s Classic Cinemas theater, 7501 Cermak Rd., got a bonus show that afternoon – one that landed a 34-year-old Chicago man in Cook County Jail. About a half hour into the 4 p.m. showing of the kiddie feature Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, police say an entirely naked Edward L. Brown stood up from his seat in the front row, faced the crowd of 86 theater-goers, stretched out his hands and displayed his genitalia for all to see before sitting back down to enjoy the movie. …According to the police report, Brown told officers that he had been let inside the movie theater for free by an unknown female who allegedly told him to have a seat in the front row of the theater, take off his clothes and wait for her, so they could have sex, smoke crack and do heroin.

▲ Charlton Library Sends Police To Collect Overdue Books From 5-Year-Old

A Charlton mom says her local library crossed the line when they sent police to collect her daughter’s overdue library books. Her mom says the 5-year-old girl was so afraid that she burst into tears. Charlton Police Sergeant Dan Dowd stopped by the home of Shannon Benoit to let her know that her daughter had two books several months overdue which needed to be returned or paid for.

▲ Bonobo ape lights campfire, cooks hamburgers

Kanzi, a 31-year-old Bonobos, also known as the pygmy chimpanzee, reportedly became obsessed with the film “Quest for Fire” at an early age. “Kanzi makes fire because he wants to,” Dr. Sue Savage-Rumbaugh, his main handler at the Great Ape Trust, told the Telegraph. “The movie was released about a year after Kanzi was born and was about early man struggling to control fire. Kanzi watched this spellbound over and over hundreds of times.”

▲ Children becoming ‘addicted’ to computers

Children’s access to smartphones and computers should be limited to stop them becoming “addicted” to electronic gadgets, according to a schools’ leader.

▲ Password case reframes Fifth Amendment rights in context of digital world

Beyond the log-in screen of Ramona Fricosu’s laptop computer lies what federal prosecutors say could be the key evidence in the bank-fraud case against her. There’s only one problem: Prosecutors don’t know her password. Thus, in an extraordinarily rare move, prosecutors in Denver are seeking a court order forcing Fricosu to unlock the computer so that they can obtain files they would use to try to convict her and her ex-husband. Civil-liberties groups nationwide have taken notice, saying the case tests the strength of rights against self-incrimination in a digital world. Prosecutors, meanwhile, say that allowing criminal defendants to beat search warrants simply by encrypting their computers would make it impossible to obtain evidence in an age when clues are more likely held within a hard drive than a file cabinet.

▲ White powder sent to Fla. gov’t office sickens 4

According to the Palm Beach Post, initial testing of the white powder was “inconclusive.” WPEC mentioned that there can be psychological and physical effects or psychosomatic symptoms even if the substance is not hazardous due to the panic caused by the situation, but Emergency Manager for the City of West Palm Beach Allan Ortman told the Palm Beach Post that when tested the powder didn’t change colors, which is raising some concern. The powder has been sent to a FBI lab for further testing, and results are expected within 24 hours.

▲ Police State 2012: No Need to Wait, It’s Already Here

One of the greatest problems in talking about the police state is that all such discussion of the subject is hampered by the lack of a clear-cut definition. Given the public’s own ignorance of the true nature and function of a police state, story after story after story of intolerable levels of official oppression, secret illegal surveillance, and increasingly sophisticated technology for tracking, apprehending, incapacitating and even killing dissenters can be dismissed because these stories are reported one at a time, in a contextless and therefore meaningless way that invites the interpretation that these stories are only warnings of what is to come instead of sign posts of a reality that is already here.

▲ John Lydon’s top of the pops roots Reggae picks

Don Letts: The Rastas loved John! To them he was “THE punk rock Don from London” they were aware of all the trouble he had stirred up in London, and yeah, they were into what he stood for and his stance, and they dug it… We smoked a chalice together with U Roy for breakfast, and then went out to one of his dances, miles out in the countryside, quite a long journey by car. I remember the dreads stringing up this sound, and kicking off with some earthquake dubs. Now let me tell you this sound system was LOUD, and me and John both of us, literally passed out! I remember hours later some dreads shaking us awake, it was like, “Wake up man, dance done, dance finish now man!” Yeah, it was pretty wild for me and John out in Jamaica. We loved it. John just had a vibe you know, people were drawn to him. It was the same in London; it was the same in Kingston. John is Irish, and there is a definite affinity between Jamaicans and Irish!

▲ Pot Culture: White Punks on Dope

In fact, despite protestations to the contrary, the punks always smoked pot when no one was looking. In John Lydon’s autobiography, Don Letts explains how he became DJ at the seminal punk hang out, The Roxy: “I took the job at first for the money. I thought the punks were just a bunch of crazy white people. I didn’t really tune into it. When I became the deejay and started meeting them, I picked up on what they were doing. I got the job first, and then got all my black mates to work there. Everybody who worked there, besides Andy (Czezowski), was black. We used to make joints before we went to work to sell to the punks over the counter. The people would come up and say, ‘Give me two beers and a spliff. No, make that two spliffs and a beer.’ They couldn’t roll Jamaican cones.”

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✖ ‘Absolutely no progress being made’ at Fukushima nuke plant, undercover reporter says

Conditions at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant are far worse than its operator or the government has admitted, according to freelance journalist Tomohiko Suzuki, who spent more than a month working undercover at the power station. “Absolutely no progress is being made” towards the final resolution of the crisis, Suzuki told reporters at a Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan news conference on Dec. 15. Suzuki, 55, worked for a Toshiba Corp. subsidiary as a general laborer there from July 13 to Aug. 22, documenting sloppy repair work, companies including plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) playing fast and loose with their workers’ radiation doses, and a marked concern for appearances over the safety of employees or the public.

✖ 9 Underground Economies – And Greece

The fortunes of the world’s legitimate economies may rise and fall, but the global black market is currently booming. From Somalia’s “pirate stock exchange” to the flourishing illegal organ trade in Egypt, there are some making money hand-over-fist, under the table. We took a look at nine “alternative economies” — and Greece — to find out how people make do on the margins.

✖ TEPCO says it ‘no longer owns’ Fukushima fallout

TEPCO’s lawyers used the arcane legal principle of res nullius to argue the emissions that escaped after the tsunami and earthquake triggered a meltdown were no longer its responsibility. “Radioactive materials (such as cesium) that scattered and fell from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant belong to individual landowners, not TEPCO,” the utility told Tokyo District Court. The chief operating officer of the prestigious golf course, Tsutomo Yamane, told The Australian that he and his staff were stunned: “I couldn’t believe my ears. I told my employees, ‘TEPCO is saying the radiation doesn’t belong to them’, and they said ‘I beg your pardon’.”

✖ The Leading Cause of Breast Cancer?

Profiteers in the medical CT scan business took a big hit last week from a major new government report on the causes of breast cancer. Published by the Institute of Medicine (IOM), the health arm of the National Academy of Sciences, the exhaustive analysis found that medical radiation, particularly the large radiation dose delivered by CT scans, is the foremost identifiable cause of breast cancer

✖ Street Cams Can Now Tag, Track and Follow Individuals (video)

The dystopian nightmare described in George Orwell’s novel 1984 took place in London, UK. This very city is today one of the most heavily monitored places in the world, using a record number of cameras and the most advanced surveillance technology to keep track of its citizens. Reuters now reports that the CCTV system of London has now the ability to tag specific people, track them across the entire system and even run a “search” on them for previous footage. The report basically praises the software and quickly dismisses the privacy concerns it raises, stating that most citizens approve of being monitored (I’d like to see a scientific survey proving this). Of course, this summer’s London Riots were mentioned as an excuse to implement this technology, as anticipated in my article entitled The London Riots and How They Will be Used to the Elite’s Advantage.

✖ Man Jailed In Near-Shooting Over Facebook

A North Strabane Township man has been jailed on attempted homicide and other charges after police said he tried to shoot his wife because he believes she spends too much time on Facebook.

✖ The Pentagon and its Sock Puppets

The inspector general’s investigation grappled with the question of whether the outreach constituted an earnest effort to inform the public or an improper campaign of news media manipulation. The inquiry confirmed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s staff frequently provided military analysts with talking points before their network appearances. In some cases, the report said, military analysts “requested talking points on specific topics or issues.” One military analyst described the talking points as “bullet points given for a political purpose.” Another military analyst, the report said, told investigators that the outreach program’s intent “was to move everyone’s mouth on TV as a sock puppet.”

✖ Child sex: Woman arrested on sex charges involving 7-year-old girl

A woman who told deputies she had sex with a 7-year-old girl to prove her love for her married boyfriend is in the Orange County Jail, where she is being held on sexual-battery and other charges. Margaret Ann O’Neill, 26, of Kissimmee, admitted to sheriff’s investigators that she had sex with the child three times last year at a home in west Orange County, they said. O’Neill, known as Meg, told detectives that her lover, Christopher P. Smith, 32, manipulated her to perform the acts. He promised to leave his wife for her and said “she was led to believe that by giving herself to Smith’s sexual appetites proves her love for him,” a sheriff’s report states. Smith was arrested Dec. 5 and is being held without bail at the same jail. Another woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair turned him in Dec. 4 after he asked her to have sex with the child, now, 8, according to the report.

✖ Rock Hill woman struck in head with bowling ball

Deputies were called Sunday to Strikers Family Sports Center, 124 N. Anderson Road, Rock Hill, and found a 28-year-old woman on the floor next to the snack bar, bleeding from the forehead, according to a York County Sheriff’s Office report. Deputies could see her skull through the cut, and EMS treated her before taking her to Piedmont Medical Center. The woman told police she and a man had been arguing because she wouldn’t let him buy her drinks, the report states. When it was his turn to bowl, the man picked up a 12-pound ball and flung it at her head while she was sitting down. Witnesses told deputies they saw Stevenson pick up the ball and throw it at the woman before he left the bowling alley.

✖ Venezuela’s Chavez: Did U.S. give Latin American leaders cancer?

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speculated on Wednesday that the United States might have developed a way to give Latin American leaders cancer, after Argentina’s Cristina Fernandez joined the list of presidents diagnosed with the disease. It was a typically controversial statement by Venezuela’s socialist leader, who underwent surgery in June to remove a tumor from his pelvis. But he stressed that he was not making any accusations, just thinking aloud. “It would not be strange if they had developed the technology to induce cancer and nobody knew about it until now … I don’t know. I’m just reflecting,” he said in a televised speech to troops at a military base. “But this is very, very, very strange … it’s a bit difficult to explain this, to reason it, including using the law of probabilities.”

✖ Tessa Gay, 35, ‘had sex with her daughter’s underage friends on dozens of occasions’

A mother is facing up to 80 years in jail after being accused of having sex with two of her daughter’s male teenage friends. Tessa Gay, 35, is also alleged to have played sexually charged game of ping pong with another teen where the winner allowed to intimately touch the loser. Gray, a mother of one, is said to have admitted to the underage sex charges when interviewed by police.

✖ Ohio dad charged with drugging kids

An Ohio father has been charged with giving his children a potentially addictive pain medicine so he could submit their urine for his drug tests. Police said Lawrence E. Kirk Jr., 30, Conneaut, Ohio, had to submit to a urine test before his prescription for Oxycodone could be renewed in order to assure he was not using illegal drugs. They said he diluted the Oxycodone in water and then had his 6, 7, 9 and 10 year old children drink the solution. He would then collect their urine and present it to a doctor as his own.

✖ Police Search For “Backpage Killer” After Four Women Found Dead

Police have found the dead bodies of four women this month, and police say three of them had advertised escort services on Backpage.com, a Craigslist-type site that includes ads for escort, massage and stripper services. On December 19, the bodies of 23-year-old Renisha Landers (pictured), and her cousin, 24-year-old Demesha Hunt, were found in the trunk of Lander’s new Chrysler 300 parked in the driveway of a vacant home. Their bodies showed no outward sings of trauma and investigators are awaiting autopsy results to determine the cause of death. Then, on Christmas Day, two black females between the ages of  28 and 29 were found in the trunk of a car that had been set on fire. They were both burned beyond recognition. Police would later identify them and reveal both had advertised escort services on Backpage.com, as did either Landers or Hunt.

✖ Photographer arrested after falling asleep in Mcdonalds with child porn on laptop screen

According to a probable-cause affidavit, Harrison County Police Department Officer Nicholas Smith was walking through a McDonald’s restaurant Nov. 14 in Corydon when he observed Brockman asleep in an upright position behind a table. There was a laptop computer in front of him. When the officer walked behind Brockman, he observed multiple pictures of nude children who appeared to be between the ages of 5 and 10 on the computer screen. Brockman consented to a warantless search of his computer, which was taken into evidence. An investigation by the Indiana State Police revealed “hundreds of images of child erotica,” according to court records. There was at least one image that depicted sexual conduct by a child.

✖ Caught In Act, TSA Bomb Screener Declares Child Porn “Not Right In A Legal And Moral Sense”

After waiving his Miranda rights, Wilson–who has been suspended by the TSA–told investigators that he used his laptop to download illicit images of children, and that he “sometimes masturbates to the images of child pornography.” Wilson added that he “usually deletes the child pornography” after viewing movies and images “because he knows that it is not right in a legal and moral sense. Wilson stated that he knows that he has a problem.” A “forensic preview” of Wilson’s two computers (as well as various storage devices found in a locked safe) revealed a variety of videos and photos “depicting prepubescent females engaged in sexually explicit conduct with adults.

✖ Man Who Sexually Assaulted Teen Allegedly Posed As Police Officer

A Brooklyn neighborhood remains on edge as police continue their search for a man who allegedly pretended to be a police officer and sexually assaulted a teenage boy he met in a subway station last week. Investigators say the man, seen above in a police sketch, approached a 15-year-old boy at the 53rd Street and Fourth Avenue station in Sunset Park around 9:30 a.m. Friday, after the teen threw an empty bag of potato chips on the ground.

✖ Richard Prince Lawsuit Focuses on Limits of Appropriation

One recent afternoon in the offices of the Midtown law firm run by David Boies and his powerful litigation partners, a large black clamshell box sat on a conference table. Inside were raucous, sometimes wildly funny collages of photographs and magazine pages handmade by the artist Richard Prince, works of art that have become the ur-texts of one of the most closely watched copyright cases ever to rattle the world of fine art. In March a federal district court judge in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Prince — whose career was built on appropriating imagery created by others — broke the law by taking photographs from a book about Rastafarians and using them without permission to create the collages and a series of paintings based on them, which quickly sold for serious money even by today’s gilded art-world standards: almost $2.5 million for one of the works. (“Wow — yeah,” Mr. Prince said when a lawyer asked him under oath in the district court case if that figure was correct.)

✖ Embolism After Long Flight Killed Rapper Heavy D

A pulmonary embolism brought on by a long flight killed rapper Heavy D, according to a report from the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office released Tuesday. Heavy D (real name: Dwight Arrington Myers) collapsed and died suddenly outside his Beverly Hills home on Nov. 8 at age 44. His cause of death was a blood clot in his lung, but he also suffered from deep vein thrombosis and heart disease. Craig Harvey, chief of the L.A. County Coroner’s Office, said the blood clot was “most likely formed during an extended airplane ride,” according to the L.A. Times. The rapper had recently returned to L.A. from a trip to London. Risk factors for deep vein thrombosis, or DVT, include long distance travel with little mobility, obesity, and immobility from an acute illness or surgery.

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★ Americans Shoplifted $1.8 Billion Worth of Stuff This Christmas

Hope you have a Merry Christmas, America, because you’ve been extremely naughty at the mall this year. After surveying retailers in the U.S., the Global Retail Theft Barometer says that shoppers pinched $1.8 billion worth of merchandise during the four weeks leading up to Christmas, reports the AP. $1.8 billion! For context, $1.8 billion is a 6 percent increase from 2010 — a total of approximately 62 million Tickle Me Elmos at retail. And this is a year when there aren’t even any good toys to buy. When stores are offering big markdowns because people aren’t spending as much. But that’s exactly the point: while there will always be some built-in kleptomania to society, the sour economy drives some people to buy less and steal more. Or at least gives them a good excuse for doing so.

★ Cardinal Faces Pushback For Comparing Gay Rights Movement To The KKK

Change.org has released a petition calling for the resignation of Catholic Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, following comments the Cardinal made to FOX Chicago Sunday comparing the gay rights movement to the Klu Klux Klan’s anti-Catholicism. Equally Blessed, an umbrella group of pro-LGBT rights Catholic organizations, has reinforced the pushback by releasing a statement declaring in part that George, “has demeaned and demonized LGBT people in a manner unworthy of his office. In suggesting that the Catholic hierarchy has reason to fear LGBT people in the same way that blacks, Jews, Catholics and other minorities had reason to fear the murderous nightriders of the Ku Klux Klan, he has insulted the memory of the victims of the Klan’s violence and brutality.” The petition has already garnered well over half the 2,500 signatures the organization was aiming for.

★ Aquaponics: Baltimore city, suburban residents try hand at fish farming

The aquarium in the living room of Meir and Leah Lazar’s Baltimore County home isn’t just for decoration. The tilapia and bluegills packed into the 50-gallon glass tank are waiting their turn to wind up on dinner plates. Out back, Meir Lazar is putting the finishing touches on a bigger new home for the fish inside a plastic-covered greenhouse. There, he hopes, the waste from the fish he’s tending will help him raise enough lettuce, tomatoes and other produce to feed his family of five year-round. Sustainability is more than a buzzword for Meir Lazar, 32, a computer systems administrator and teacher who’s pursuing aquaponics in his small suburban backyard off Greenspring Avenue. He said he’s inspired at least in part by news reports about food tainted by pesticides, bacteria and even radiation from the Japanese nuclear reactor meltdown earlier this year.

★ Man Dressed as Santa Believed to Shoot Six

Police were looking for a motive in a shooting in which they believe a man dressed as Santa Claus killed six family members in a Fort Worth, Texas, suburb on Christmas day before shooting himself. No one survived the carnage in the living room of a two-story apartment in Grapevine, Texas. Police said it was the single largest mass-shooting death in the city’s history and among the worst in Texas in recent years.

★ Unrelenting Global Economic Crisis: A Doomsday View of 2012

The economic, political and social outlook for 2012 is profoundly negative. The almost universal consensus, even among mainstream orthodox economists is pessimistic regarding the world economy. Although, even here, their predictions understate the scope and depth of the crises, there are powerful reasons to believe that beginning in 2012, we are heading toward a steeper decline than what was experienced during the Great Recession of 2008 – 2009. With fewer resources, greater debt and increasing popular resistance to shouldering the burden of saving the capitalist system, the governments cannot bail out the system. Many of the major institutions and economic relations which were cause and consequence of world and regional capitalist expansion over the past three decades are in the process of disintegration and disarray. The previous economic engines of global expansion, the US and the European Union, have exhausted their potentialities and are in open decline.

★ 8-Bit Yulelog

★ Mexico’s cartels build own national radio system

The alert goes out from a taxi driver or a street vendor, equipped with a high-end handheld radio and paid to work as a lookout known as a “halcon,” or hawk. The radio signal travels deep into the arid countryside, hours by foot from the nearest road. There, the 8-foot-tall (2-meter-tall) dark-green branches of the rockrose bush conceal a radio tower painted to match. A cable buried in the dirt draws power from a solar panel. A signal-boosting repeater relays the message along a network of powerful antennas and other repeaters that stretch hundreds of miles (kilometers) across Mexico, a shadow communications system allowing the cartel to coordinate drug deliveries, kidnapping, extortion and other crimes with the immediacy and precision of a modern military or law-enforcement agency.

★ Killin’ for Candy and Concords: The Price of Black Life

In recent news, an up and coming rapper was killed in a crowded Atlanta mall. According to authorities, Joe Blackmon, aka “Killa Black,” was standing in line for a pair of Air Jordan Concords when he, accidentally, knocked a Jolly Rancher out of the hand of the man in front of him. The man, described only as “an African American in a black hoodie with saggin’ pants” pumped five rounds in him before fleeing the scene. Witnesses say that the crowd just stepped over the dying Blackmon like nothing happened ,some even refusing to let paramedics through for fear of losing their places in line… Recently, people were shocked that Brick Squad affiliate, Slim Dunkin, was murdered in an Atlanta studio, allegedly, stemming from a fight over a piece of candy. This tragic event was coupled by media images of mobs of people beating each other senseless over the new Air Jordan XI Concords

★ Touched: The Jerry Sandusky Story

Submitter: Hello, I’m a librarian in [NY] and a huge college football fan. Shortly after the sex abuse scandal at Penn State I decided to look on amazon and in our library catalog to see if we had anything by or about Jerry Sandusky. There are 14 copies of his unfortunately titled autobiography, Touched, floating about according to WorldCat

★ Israel Spyware Sold To Iran

The clandestine arrangement worked smoothly for years. The Israeli company shipped its Internet- monitoring equipment to a distributor in Denmark. Once there, workers stripped away the packaging and removed the labels. Then they sent it to a man named “Hossein” in Iran, an amiable technology distributor known to them only by his first name and impeccable English, say his partners in Israel and Denmark. Israeli trade, customs and defense officials say their departments didn’t know that the systems for peering into Internet traffic, sold under the brand name NetEnforcer, had gone to a country whose leaders have called for the destruction of the Jewish state. Israel’s ban on trade with its enemy failed, even though a paper trail on the deals was available in Denmark.

★ Report Assails Japan Response to Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident

From inspectors’ abandoning of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant as it succumbed to disaster to a delay in disclosing radiation leaks, Japan’s response to the nuclear accident caused by the March tsunami fell tragically short, a government-appointed investigative panel said on Monday. The failures, which the panel said worsened the extent of the disaster, were outlined in a 500-page interim report detailing Japan’s response to the calamitous events that unfolded at the Fukushima plant after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out all of the site’s power. Three of the plant’s six reactors overheated and their fuel melted down, and hydrogen explosions blew the tops off three reactor buildings, leading to a major leak of radiation at levels not seen since Chernobyl in 1986.

★ An Independent America: Voters leaving Republican, Democratic parties in droves

A recent analysis conducted by USA Today showed that American voters are fed up with both mainstream political parties and are leaving them in droves. The newspaper claims that “More than 2.5 million voters have left the Democratic and Republican parties since the 2008 elections.” Over the last decade this trend has only seemed to accelerate says USA Today. While many people feel there is little difference in the parties, their options remain slim. Yet, voters switching to Independent have climbed dramatically. According to the statistics gathered from eight swing states, “Democrats’ registration is down by 800,000 and Republicans’ by 350,000. Independents have gained 325,000.”

★ ATF and D.C. Police Impersonate Rap Label; Arrest 70 in Year Long Guns and Drug Sting

Over $7.2 million in drugs and 161 weapons were confiscated after a year long investigation by the Washington D.C. Police and the Bureau the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, which operated as fictional rap label. According to Washington D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier, D.C. police and ATF agents acted as undercover officers and “music industry insiders” during the year-long sting. The police created the “Manic Enterprisess” studio in Northeast Washington, for fictional rap artist Richie Valdez in November of 2010. Agents then told the underground world and black market that they were seeking to purchase weapons and drugs. Over the course of the year, agents confiscated 161 firearms (including a rocket launcher), 29 assault weapons, 80 pounds of methamphetamine, 21 pounds of cocaine, 1.25 gallons of PCP, 24 pounds of marijuana, heroin and Ecstasy. “If these drugs and guns had made it to our streets, the impact would have been devastating to community,”

★ LAPD botched use of downtown crime cameras

Most of the surveillance cameras installed in downtown Los Angeles as part of an effort to help police crack down on crime have not been working for two years, according to interviews and records reviewed by The Times. The cameras were installed over the last few years in a highly publicized partnership between local business groups, which purchased them, and the Los Angeles Police Department, which was to monitor and maintain them. But officials said the majority of the cameras don’t work. Some broke down and were never fixed. In the case of six cameras purchased to watch over Little Tokyo, LAPD officials admit that they were never plugged in to the police station’s monitoring bank.

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✧ 1972 Kenner Toy Comic Book Catalog

1972 Kenner Toy Comic Book Catalog (Newspaper Insert)

✧ THE COOLEST TOYS EVER: The barely legal pleasure palace

If there’s one thing that kids have in common, it’s a love of toys.  Whether your parents got you ever latest new flashy thing, or you just found an armless GI JOE to pass the time with, toys have played an important role in all of our lives.  Here’s a loving look at the coolest toys of all time, resulting from an intensive 8 year multi-million dollar study performed by our website.

✧ Sandusky’s Lawyer: If You Believe Witness, “I Suggest You Dial 1-800-REALITY.” That’s A Gay Phone Sex Line.

Joe Amendola, the attorney for Jerry Sandusky who thus far has been lawyerin’ like a man who got his J.D. from the bottom of a cereal box, did some more lawyerin’ in front of the cameras this morning. The choicest moment: At one point, Amendola discussed the possibility that Mike McQueary witnessed a rape, told Joe Paterno and two university administrators, and no one did anything except tell Sandusky to stay out of the locker room with kids. To anyone who believes that version of events, Amendola said, “I suggest you dial 1-800-REALITY.” We did. Here’s what we got: Hey guys, welcome to the hottest place for triple-X action. Get ready for bulging, bursting pleasure with horny gay, bi, and bi-curious studs. Just 99 cents per minute.

✧ “Mad Honey” Sex Is A Bad Idea

“Mad honey” is honey made by bees from the nectar of toxic Rhododendron flowers. In places where wild Rhododendrons grow, including Turkey, it’s a health hazard. The dangers of mad honey were known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, and it’s reported that leaving tainted honeycombs in the path of invading armies was a popular military tactic. 2000 years later, some people still haven’t quite got the message. According to a case report from cardiologists Yarlioglues et al, a married couple deliberately ate some mad honey “for reasons of sexual performance”.

✧ The Internet Blacklist vs. The Constitution

Last week, two leading Constitutional scholars offered detailed analyses of the Internet blacklist bills now pending in Congress, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect-IP, or PIPA. Both scholars concluded that the proposed law could not pass muster under the U.S. Constitution. So you’d think that the new version of SOPA circulated this week would have resolved those concerns.   You’d think wrong. While the revised SOPA briefly mentions the First Amendment, the substantive text makes clear that’s just lip service.  Here’s a selection of fundamental flaws that remain in both SOPA and PIPA:

✧ Rosemount High parent-on-student kissing prank has principal apologizing

A prank on some blindfolded Rosemount High School athletes — they were unknowingly and at times amorously kissed by their parents during a recent pep fest — is collecting YouTube views by the tens of thousands and has the principal apologizing for what happened… …The captains of the school’s winter sports teams — boys and girls — were lined up and blindfolded. They were told they would be kissed and then asked to guess who was on the other side of their lips. Some of the parents during the 59-second YouTube video are seen holding the kisses for several seconds, cupping their child’s faces or embracing and swaying. One mother moved her son’s hand down to her behind during the encounter. Another mom has her son down on the gym floor to the delight of two male students nearby. The hoots, screams and laughter rolled on as the students pulled off their blindfolds to realize it was Mom or Dad they were smooching.

✧ Brain scans should not be used in court… for now

Should an offender’s sentence be decided on the basis of a brain scan? A group of neuroscientists have put together a report for the Royal Society to assess this issue and other ways that progress in brain science might impact the law. Neuroscience is already making waves in court: an Italian woman convicted of murder recently had her sentence reduced on the grounds that her behaviour could be explained by abnormalities in her brain and genes.  The authors on the Royal Society panel, led by Nicholas Mackintosh of the University of Cambridge, also flag up research that suggests the brains of psychopaths are fundamentally different. This raises the question: should individuals with the brain anatomy of a psychopath have their sentence reduced on the ground of diminished responsibility, or should brain scan evidence be used to keep dangerous individuals locked away?

✧ Gingrich ‘proposed the death penalty for marijuana’

Over the weekend, struggling Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson reminded MSNBC viewers that GOP frontrunner Newt Gingrich had once to called to punish some drug offenders with death. “Newt Gingrich, in 1997, proposed the death penalty for marijuana — for possession of marijuana above a certain quantity of marijuana,” Johnson explained. “And yet, he is among 100 million Americans who’ve smoked marijuana.”

✧ Machine reads your age, gives sample

Big Brother isn’t just watching, he’s also about to size you up via a new product sampling machine that can determine whether you’re the right age — or even the right sex — to receive a sample. Kraft’s new sampling machine, developed by Intel, scans your face and can detect it you’re an adult or a child and blocks dispensing if you are a child. Today, Kraft Foods, the nation’s biggest foodmaker, will roll out in Chicago a device that dispenses its mousse-like Temptations dessert by Jell-O, but only to the product’s target market: grown-ups. The machine, developed by Intel, can detect facial age with a special camera that scans your face and determines if you’re an adult or a kid. If the machine detects a child, it shuts down and asks the child to step away. If it detects an adult — bingo — the sample can be dispensed.

✧ China Keeps Slapping America In The Face And America Just Keeps Taking It

Today, China is absolutely crushing the United States on the global economic stage, but they are hardly playing fair.  They shower their own firms with huge government subsidies, they brazenly steal technology, they publicly violate intellectual property rights, they manipulate currency rates so that foreign firms cannot compete with Chinese prices and they slap ridiculously high tariffs on many classes of foreign goods.  In short, they basically do everything that they can get away with to give themselves a trade advantage.  This predatory behavior has caused an enormous transfer of wealth from the United States to China.  It isn’t as if it is just some sort of an “accident” that we now owe China about a trillion dollars.  The truth is that China just keeps slapping America in the face and America just keeps taking it.  We are like an abused spouse that just keeps coming back for more.  It is disgraceful and it needs to stop.

✧ As Facebook Aims at Millions of Users, Some Are Content to Sit Out

As Facebook prepares for a much-anticipated public offering, the company is eager to show off its momentum by building on its huge membership: more than 800 million active users around the world, Facebook says, and roughly 200 million in the United States, or two-thirds of the population. But the company is running into a roadblock in this country. Some people, even on the younger end of the age spectrum, just refuse to participate, including people who have given it a try. One of Facebook’s main selling points is that it builds closer ties among friends and colleagues. But some who steer clear of the site say it can have the opposite effect of making them feel more, not less, alienated. “I wasn’t calling my friends anymore,” said Ashleigh Elser, 24, who is in graduate school in Charlottesville, Va. “I was just seeing their pictures and updates and felt like that was really connecting to them.”

✧ 10 Ridiculous Things That Make You a Terror Suspect

You thought you weren’t doing anything wrong, so why should you care about who they call a terrorist? Well, you may not believe it, but you’re likely a terror suspect in America’s new paradigm of the Land of the Fear. The government is casting a wide net over its citizens in its search for potential threats. Now, you don’t need to actually commit a crime to be hauled away to a detention center and held without charges while you are tortured; you just need to appear suspicious by sympathizing with anti-government views to be labeled a domestic terrorist.

✧ DNA: The next big hacking frontier

Imagine computer-designed viruses that cure disease, new bacteria capable of synthesizing an unlimited fuel supply, new organisms that wipe out entire populations and bio-toxins that target world leaders. They sound like devices restricted to feature-film script writers, but it is possible to create all of these today, using the latest advances in synthetic biology. Just as the personal computer revolution brought information technology from corporate data centers to the masses, the biology revolution is personalizing science.

✧ DNA Hackers: Synthetic biology weaponized virus, zero-day exploit to infect your brain?

From the let’s get futuristically freaky department, future hacking crimes could take a decidedly sinister twist; not hacking to breach systems but brains, bodies and behaviors. This DNA hacking goes way beyond potentially using police bees to bust biohackers, or even storing unhackable data in box of bio-encrypted bacteria. It’s not science fiction to hack insulin pumps or to use jamming signals to stop hackers from lethal pacemaker attacks, but now bioengineers and security futurists are warning that the day is coming when criminals and bioterrorists hunt for vulnerabilities that will give a new meaning to zero-day exploits. In the future, a weaponized virus will aim to infect you, your brain and body biology, and not just your computer or mobile device.

✧ Woman sues sex toy company after injuring herself using vibrator

A California woman claims a little foreplay nearly put her six feet under. April Bonjour says her pleasure turned quickly to pain while using a “vibrator/dildo” with her boyfriend last November when the sex toy caused a sharp vaginal pain and massive bleeding. “I started to get faint from the loss of blood,” she wrote in a personal injury complaint filed Aug. 30 in California Superior Court. “My boyfriend called 911. By the time they got there, I was in and out of consciousness.” Bonjour, in her suit against Pipedream Products Inc., said both she and her son “thought I was dying … Once we got to the hospital, I had lost so much blood I was given several pints.” Thanks Jasmine

✧ Mother tasered and buried alive in cardboard box by ‘bored’ lover, court told

“Terrified” Michelina Lewandowska, 27, was bound by her hands and feet and left to die in a shallow grave, Leeds Crown Court was told. In a bid to stop her getting free Marcin Kasprzak, her partner and father of their two-year-old son, had a friend help him bury her in a box less than 2ft high and then covered it in soil and leaves and then put a large branch over the top, a jury heard. But she eventually managed to free herself and raise the alarm. A jury was told how Kasprzak, 25, had decided that he no longer wanted to live with his partner and wanted his mother to bring up their young son. In a bid to get her out of the way he used a 300,000 volt electric stun gun on her at their home in Waterloo, Huddersfield, West Yorks, before using parcel tape to gag her and tie her hands and feet.

✧ Woman caught smuggling 1.5kg of cocaine in her dreadlocks on flight to Bangkok

A woman was caught trying to smuggle 1.5 kilograms of cocaine in her dreadlocks on a flight to Bangkok, it was reported today. South African Nobanda Nolubabalo, 23, was arrested and held in Thailand’s capital yesterday after customs officers allegedly noticed a suspicious white substance in her hair. Officials later carried out a search and discovered she had allegedly matted the Class A drug into her dreadlocks before boarding a flight from Brazil.

✧ Man dressed as Santa drugs teen at Berlin Christmas market, 9th victim in a week

A man dressed as Santa drugged a 15-year-old girl at a Berlin Christmas market over the weekend — the latest such attack that has seen holiday revelers left either sickened or unconscious, police said Monday. At about 10 p.m. Saturday the suspect approached the girl and her friend at Berlin’s downtown Alexanderplatz Christmas market, offering both of them what he said was a shot of alcohol in a paper cup, police said. One girl refused, but the other girl drank both of the shots. She soon started vomiting and had to be taken to the hospital, where she underwent a blood test, before being released. Police said it appeared she had been slipped some type of a date rape drug, but released no further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

✧ Man dressed as Santa drugs teen at Berlin Christmas market, 9th victim in a week

A man dressed as Santa drugged a 15-year-old girl at a Berlin Christmas market over the weekend — the latest such attack that has seen holiday revelers left either sickened or unconscious, police said Monday. At about 10 p.m. Saturday the suspect approached the girl and her friend at Berlin’s downtown Alexanderplatz Christmas market, offering both of them what he said was a shot of alcohol in a paper cup, police said. One girl refused, but the other girl drank both of the shots. She soon started vomiting and had to be taken to the hospital, where she underwent a blood test, before being released. Police said it appeared she had been slipped some type of a date rape drug, but released no further details, citing the ongoing investigation.

✧ Indonesia: Punkers’ Mohawks Shaved, Piercings Stripped By Hard-Line Police

Police in Indonesia’s most conservative province raided a punk-rock concert and detained 65 fans, buzzing off their spiky mohawks and stripping away body piercings because of the perceived threat to Islamic values. Dog-collar necklaces and chains also were taken from the youths before they were thrown in pools of water for “spiritual” cleansing, local police chief Iskandar Hasan said Wednesday. After replacing their “disgusting” clothes, he handed each a toothbrush and barked “use it.”

✧ If you want to drink less, then turn down the music: Alcohol tastes sweeter as noise impairs judgement of intake

Alcohol tastes sweeter when loud music is playing and the noise could make it difficult for drinkers to judge how much they are consuming, new research has claimed. Dr Lorenzo Stafford, a psychologist from the University of Portsmouth, conducted the first experimental study to find out how music can alter the taste of alcohol. Dr Stafford said: ‘Since humans have an innate preference for sweetness, these findings offer a plausible explanation as to why people consume more alcohol in noisy environments.’

✧ Man grows new fingertip on stomach

Doctors in China saved a man’s partially-severed finger – by attaching it to his stomach. Furniture worker Wang Yongjun, 20, cut off the end of his middle finger with an electric saw in an accident at work. Wang, of Liaoyang, Liaoning Province, was rushed to hospital where doctors had to think fast. Dr Huang Xuesong said the muscle and skin had been cut away from the end of his finger leaving only the bone showing. “We had to make a quick decision or he could have lost his finger. We decided to cultivate a new fingertip on his stomach,” he said. Doctors operated and attached Wang’s finger to his stomach in the hope that new skin and muscle would grow around it.

✧ Baby, baby, baby, no: Pay up or be forced to listen to Justin Bieber

For someone who isn’t a fan of teen idol Justin Bieber, being forced to listen to one of his songs over and over again could be considered cruel and unusual punishment. At Evanston Township High School this week, they called it a fund-raiser. To motivate their fellow students to donate money for a struggling cafe/arts center popular with ETHS kids, seniors Charlotte Runzel and Jesse Chatz persuaded administrators to let them blast Bieber’s hit “Baby” over the school’s loudspeaker system at the end of each class period — and not stop playing the song until Runzel and Chatz had met their goal.

✧ Bye Bye Booie! California’s smoking chimpanzee who learned sign language dies at 44

A chimpanzee that kicked a smoking habit and used sign language to beg for candy has died at a California animal refuge. Martine Colette, founder of the Wildlife WayStation, said Booie was being treated for a heart condition when he died on Saturday, at the age of 44. The chimp had been living at the animal sanctuary near Los Angeles since 1995, after he retired from a research lab. Ms Colette said she successfully turned Booie away from his smoking habit but could not make a dent in his love of sweets. She said he would use his signing skills to panhandle for candy by signing: ‘Booie see sweet in pocket.’

✧ Girl, 13, brought booze-laced milk to school

A Glen Ellyn junior high student brought chocolate milk mixed with Bailey’s Irish Cream to school as a “joke,” Glen Ellyn police said. Glen Ellyn Deputy Police Chief Bill Holmer said this week the 13-year-old girl allegedly brought the liquor mixed with chocolate milk to Hadley Junior High School on Dec. 9. Holmer said it’s unclear if any students actually drank the concoction, but it was “given to some other students who claimed to not know what they were given.” The “kid brought this stuff to school claiming it was meant to be a joke,” Holmer said. A student at the school informed staff about the drink, who interviewed other students about the incident then called police, Holmer said. Police worked with the juvenile and her parents “regarding enforcement action,” according to a police report.

✧ Pig Born Without Back Legs: A Balancing Act Like No Other

Wang taught her to walk on her front hooves and she learned in just a few days. After about a month, she began walking on her own, balancing her weight on her front legs as she moves about. Today, despite a body weight of 50 kg (110 pounds), the piglet walks upside down quite effortlessly.

✧ 14 bomb-sniffing dogs on way to Afghanistan died in truck

The death of 14 bomb-sniffing dogs allegedly housed in an unventilated sealed truck while awaiting air shipment from Houston to military forces in Afghanistan has spawned a lawsuit in which requested damages may top $1 million… In an unsuccessful bid to settle the matter without going to court, a Houston lawyer for the Florida company asked the defendants to pay $1.3 million in damages and $30,000 in legal fees. According to the lawsuit, the animals — Tiny, Rex, Rocky, Crock, Dork, Harrie, Stress, Sigo, Rex, Jaco, Kimbo, Kilo, Albert and Bak — were taken the Houston shipping facility on Dec. 20.

✧ Giant Smiley Feel-o-Meter Reflects the Mood of the City

Fuehlometer (Feel-o-meter) by Richard Wilhelmer, Julius von Bismarck, and Benjamin Maus is a light installation consisting of a giant smiley face that reflects the average mood of the people living in the city. An earlier version of this work originally used a more standard light screen installation instead of kinetically moving the different parts of the smiley face. The average emotional value is calculated through the computational analysis of the faces of people passing a camera located in a specific part of the city,

✧ The teenage politics of the British Churches are summed up by their pathetic Christmas poster

The Baby Jesus will not be visited by Three Wise Men bearing gifts of Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh this Christmas. Three different sorts of guys will turn up at the manger, bringing the young Son of God a Fabergé egg, a Swarovski crystal perfume bottle and a Damien Hirst skull. All this is on the seasonal advertising poster issued by the British Churches. There are no shepherds either. These are replaced by a cycle courier and a plasterer. As King Herod himself might have said: “Gee, it’s so relevant and accessible it fair sets your teeth on edge.” Jesus famously commanded us: “Take no thought for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat and the body than raiment? Why take ye thought for raiment?”

✧ As Banks Start Nosing Around Facebook and Twitter, the Wrong Friends Might Just Sink Your Credit

A new wave of startups is working on algorithms gathering data for banks from the web of associations on the internet known as “the social graph,” in which people are “nodes” connected to each other by “edges.” Banks are already using social media to befriend their customers, and increasingly, their customers’ friends. The specifics are still shaking out, but the gist is that eventually, social media will account for at least the tippy-top of the mountain of data banks keep on their customers. “There is this concept of ‘birds of a feather flock together,’” said Ken Lin, CEO of the San Francisco-based credit scoring startup Credit Karma. “If you are a profitable customer for a bank, it suggests that a lot of your friends are going to be the same credit profile. So they’ll look through the social network and see if they can identify your friends online and then maybe they send more marketing to them. That definitely exists today.”

✧ How common is Nazi fancy dress?

It is really very easy to avoid a controversial costume, but that does not seem to stop some people. And one of the most offensive outfits is a Nazi uniform, as Conservative MP Aidan Burley has discovered. The MP for Cannock Chase in Staffordshire has been pictured in a national newspaper sitting next to another man dressed as an SS guard. Burley, who was on a stag do in a French ski resort at the time, has apologised for the “clearly inappropriate behaviour” of some of his friends. In some countries, wearing a swastika armband in public would be illegal But he is not the first person, and will surely not be the last, to hit the headlines over a Nazi costume. Prince Harry is perhaps the most famous Nazi fancy dress costume-wearer in the world. In 2005, he was pictured wearing a German desert uniform and a swastika armband at a friend’s birthday party. The fancy dress theme was “colonial and native”.

✧ The school of Jay-Z studies

Judging by the amount of fuss he caused, one would think Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson had floated the idea of abolishing child labor laws. In reality, all he had done was announce that this semester he would be teaching a course entitled “Sociology of Hip-Hop – Urban Theodicy of Jay-Z.” And it was Glastonbury all over again. The outrage flew from all directions. A SPIN headline referred to “Georgetown’s Semi-Ridiculous Jay-Z Class”, while the main article nonchalantly mentions that tuition at the university is $40,920, attaching the price to a particularly inarticulate quote from a college sophomore. Gawker was still more ruthless in its takedown, declaring: “One notable thing about Michael Eric Dyson is that although he is very good at being an academic celebrity, he doesn’t know shit about hip-hop.”

✧ Census data: Half of U.S. poor or low income

Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income. The latest census data depict a middle class that’s shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government’s safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.

✧ China’s deserted fake Disneyland

Situated on an area of around 100 acres, and 45 minutes drive from the center of Beijing, are the ruins of ‘Wonderland’. Construction stopped more than a decade ago, with developers promoting it as ‘the largest amusement park in Asia’. Funds were withdrawn due to disagreements over property prices with the local government and farmers. So what is left are the skeletal remains of a palace, a castle, and the steel beams of what could have been an indoor playground in the middle of a corn field.

✧ Memphis Cop Sexts & Rapes 14 Year Old Relative

A Memphis police officer is behind bars after investigators say he sent a 14-year-old girl nude pictures and had a sexual relationship with the teen. Officer Ericck Cain, 25, has been charged with aggravated statutory rape and exploitation of a minor by electronic means. Investigators say Cain emailed a naked picture of himself to a 14-year-old relative in January. About six months later, police say, the two had sex in a house in the 5600 block of Cottonwood. “He gave us a statement of admission,” said Dave Martello, of the Memphis Police Department. Police say the initial report was made at the Mt. Moriah precinct. One of the teenager’s friends came went to the station Monday night and told police everything she knew about the relationship. Police say they do not suspect there are any other alleged victims, but that one is enough. “It’s such a disappointment,” said Martello.”This person is a criminal just like the people that we deal with on the streets every day.”

✧ Somalia’s Rebels Embrace Twitter

Think of it as the Battle of the Tweets. Somalia’s powerful Islamist insurgents, the Shabab, best known for chopping off hands and starving their own people, just opened a Twitter account, and in the past week they have been writing up a storm, bragging about recent attacks and taunting their enemies. “Your inexperienced boys flee from confrontation & flinch in the face of death,” the Shabab wrote in a post to the Kenyan Army. It is an odd, almost downright hypocritical move from brutal militants in one of world’s most broken-down countries, where millions of people do not have enough food to eat, let alone a laptop. The Shabab have vehemently rejected Western practices – banning Western music, movies, haircuts and bras, and even blocking Western aid for famine victims, all in the name of their brand of puritanical Islam – only to embrace Twitter, one of the icons of a modern, networked society.

✧ ‘White Only’ Pool Sign Owner Explains

A female landlord, Jamie Hein, had a sign that read, “Public Swimming Pool, White Only” hanging on a gate at her house and her private pool. (Photo credit: Ohio Civil Rights Commission) An Ohio landlord accused of discriminating against an African-American girl with a “white only” sign at her swimming pool told ABCNews.com that the sign was an antique and a decoration. “I’m not a bad person,” said Jamie Hein of Cincinnati. “I don’t have any problem with race at all. It’s a historical sign.” The sign in question reads, “Public Swimming Pool, White Only.” It is dated 1931 and from Alabama. Hein, 31, was unapologetic about the racist origins of the sign that she displayed at the entrance to her pool. She said she collects antiques and was given the sign as a gift. She also said that even though the sign seems to indicate that the pool is public, the pool is on her private property and “everybody has to ask before getting in my pool.”

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