✰ 6 uncannily fake baby videos

Not all special effects are digital – fake babies are still constructed for film and television work, and for collectors who want highly realistic replicas.

✰ Baby eats cocaine found in motel room

It was in room 223, Jahmai’s mother says he found a spoon under the bed, and put it in his mouth. His grandmother was the first to notice. “She looked at it and she’s like, look at this,” said April Portis, Jahmai’s mother. “I took it from her and on the back of the spoon it was all burnt up and on the top of the spoon was the residue from the cocaine on it.” Portis called police. She says an officer performed a test on the spot, and confirmed cocaine was on the spoon.

✰ A subversive spotlight

Sacred cows make the best hamburgers, says the activist who defaced an Australian icon. It’s been eight years since David Burgess scaled up to the top of Sydney’s gleaming white Opera House and lashed it with bright red paint. It took three coats before the act was complete. NO WAR screamed the sign. The highly-visible protest against the looming Iraq war split the Australian community between those who were shocked at the wanton vandalism of the national icon, and those who applauded the message. Ultimately, it landed Mr Burgess and his activist peer Will Saunders in jail for nine months’ weekend detention for malicious damage. “I won’t say there were days I didn’t wake up feeling utterly miserable, but you couldn’t really regret what we’d done,” Burgess says. “A lot of people said it gave them a little bit of happiness or hope on what was otherwise a very awful day.

✰ Face Slimmer – Weird Anti-Aging Mouthpiece from Japan

The so-called face Slimmer was launched in Japan, late last year, by a well-known cosmetic company called Glim. It’s a weird-looking rubbery thing that looks a lot like the mouth of a blow-up doll, and it supposedly solves your sagging face problem while giving you that coveted duck-face look. You know, the one every “cool” teenager poses with in their Facebook photos. Now, unlike most other Japanese inventions, the Face Slimmer isn’t high-tech. In fact it’s as low tech as they come, all you have to do is put it in your mouth and start exercising your face muscles. Think of it as a squeeze punch for your mouth…

✰ No Explanation for Pennsylvania’s Purple Squirrel

A Pennsylvania couple trapped, of all things, a purple squirrel on Sunday. Percy and Connie Emert, of Jersey Shore, Pa. caught the unusual animal when trying to keep birds safe from the rodents. “We have bird feeders out in our yard, and the squirrels are constantly into them,” said Jersey Shore resident Connie Emert. “My husband traps them and then sets them free elsewhere so they don’t get into your bird feeders.” Emert said she had spotted a purple squirrel on her property but no one believed her. “I kept telling my husband I saw a purple one out in the yard. ‘Oh sure you did’ he kept telling me,” said Emert. “Well, he checked the trap around noon on Sunday and sure enough, there it was.”

✰ Man dismembered and cooked after sex games

The BZ daily reported on Wednesday that the deceased, Carsten Srock, was found with his limbs expertly carved off with either an axe or large knife. The body pieces were then wrapped fastidiously in plastic bags and cling-wrap, and left to sit in the two-room flat for around three weeks. His head was found, partially cooked, by the police. Prosecutors on the case told the BZ they believe the victim was “murdered for sexual pleasure.”

✰ Mexico Meth Bust: Army Finds 15 Tons Of Pure Methamphetamine

The historic seizure of 15 tons of pure methamphetamine in western Mexico, equal to half of all meth seizures worldwide in 2009, feeds growing speculation that the country could become a world platform for meth production, not just a supplier to the United States. The sheer size of the bust announced late Wednesday in Jalisco state suggests involvement of the powerful Sinaloa cartel, a major international trafficker of cocaine and marijuana that has moved into meth production and manufacturing on an industrial scale. Army officials didn’t say what drug gangs could have been behind the dozens of blue barrels filled with powdered meth. Army Gen. Gilberto Hernandez Andreu said the meth was ready for packaging. There was no information on where the drugs were headed. Jalisco has long been considered the hub of the Sinaloa cartel’s meth production and trafficking. Meanwhile, meth use is growing in the United States, already the world’s biggest market for illicit drugs.

✰ Interview with a hoaxster: How I fooled the Daily Mail with fake pic

Looks pretty authentic, yes? Well the image of a snow-covered road and cars never aired on the BBC, wasn’t taken in Lutterworth, and it certainly wasn’t submitted by anyone with the name Shanda Lear. (Chandelier, anyone?) Kirton, a truck driver and photographer, created the image in Photoshop and then made it look like it had been on TV. After the Mail somehow discovered the image, it published a story headlined, “Not a name to make light of! BBC News shows picture taken by viewer called Shanda Lear.”

✰ No Satisfaction: Lip-Shaped Urinals in Stones Museum Called Sexist

Women in the northern German town of Lüchow have expressed their dissatisfaction with the design of two urinals in the men’s toilet of a museum dedicated to the Rolling Stones. They are shaped like red lips, similar to the legendary logo of the band, but they look more feminine, and they lack tongues. Local activist Roda Armbruster wants the urinals removed. “That’s discrimination against women,” she told regional broadcaster NDR. “Why does it have to be a woman’s mouth? If it had been based on the emblem of the Stones with the tongue, it would have been OK. But the tongue’s been left out and they really looks like women’s mouths.”

✰ Janet Howell, Virginia State Senator, Attaches Rectal Exam Amendment To Anti-Abortion Bill

To protest a bill that would require women to undergo an ultrasound before having an abortion, Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) on Monday attached an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. “We need some gender equity here,” she told HuffPost. “The Virginia senate is about to pass a bill that will require a woman to have totally unnecessary medical procedure at their cost and inconvenience. If we’re going to do that to women, why not do that to men?”

✰ Scouting An Abandoned Cold War Missile Base Hidden In The Adirondacks

Quick note: Though you may have read about this property before, most articles have simply reprinted the same stock real estate photos over and over. As always, all pictures are my own work, and I don’t think you’ll find a tour like this anywhere else.

✰ Congress Trying to Fast-Track Domestic Drone Use, Sideline Privacy

One result of that pressure is this legislation (H.R. 658 — see conference report for more details), which authorizes appropriations for the FAA through fiscal 2014. Unfortunately, nothing in the bill would address the very serious privacy issues raised by drone aircraft. This bill would push the nation willy-nilly toward an era of aerial surveillance without any steps to protect the traditional privacy that Americans have always enjoyed and expected. Congress — and to the extent possible, the FAA — need to impose some rules (such as those we proposed in our report) to protect Americans’ privacy from the inevitable invasions that this technology will otherwise lead to. We don’t want to wonder, every time we step out our front door, whether some eye in the sky is watching our every move.

✰ Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists

Deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists are being carried out by an Iranian dissident group that is financed, trained and armed by Israel’s secret service, U.S. officials tell NBC News, confirming charges leveled by Iran’s leaders. The group, the People’s Mujahedin of Iran, has long been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, accused of killing American servicemen and contractors in the 1970s and supporting the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran before breaking with the Iranian mullahs in 1980. The attacks, which have killed five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 and may have destroyed a missile research and development site, have been carried out in dramatic fashion, with motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars.

✰ Experimenting With Nootropics to Increase Mental Capacity, Clarity

Nootropic (new-tro-pik) is the term for supplements, also known as smart drugs, that improve brain function. They can be food substances like phenethylamine and L-Theanine, found in chocolate and green tea, respectively. Nootropics also include extracted and purified components of medicinal plants, as well as substances synthesized from chemical precursors, such as piracetam, the world’s first official nootropic (piracetam was created in 1964 in Belgium by a team of scientists whose leader, Dr. Corneliu E. Giurgea, coined the term). Since then piracetam has been widely used as a cognitive enhancer and to treat neurological diseases like Alzheimer’s.

✰ Reason for Zimbabwe reservoir delays… mermaids have been hounding workers away!

Essential work on planned reservoirs in Zimbabwe has stopped because mermaids have been hounding workers away, according to the country’s Water Resources Minister. Samuel Sipepa Nkomo told a Zimbabwean parliamentary committee that terrified workers are refusing to return to the sites, near the towns of Gokwe and Mutare. Minister Nkomo said the only way to solve the problem was to brew traditional beer and carry out any rites to appease the spirits.

✰ Scientists use brain activity analysis to reconstruct words heard by test subjects

Last September, scientists from the University of California, Berkeley announced that they had developed a method of visually reconstructing images from peoples’ minds, by analyzing their brain activity. Much to the dismay of tinfoil hat-wearers everywhere, researchers from that same institution have now developed a somewhat similar system, that is able to reconstruct words that people have heard spoken to them. Instead of being used to violate our civil rights, however, the technology could instead allow the vocally-disabled to “speak.”

✰ Nazi Concentration Camp Surgical Tools Up For Auction

Nazi surgical tools formerly owned by an SS Major and possibly used in a concentration camp during the Holocaust are being put up for auction. A wooden box of instruments belonging to Anton Burger, commandant of the Theresienstadt camp in what was then Czechoslovakia, is being sold off by the widow of a Jewish man whose parents were Holocaust survivors.

✰ F.B.I. Admits Hacker Group’s Eavesdropping

The international hackers group known as Anonymous turned the tables on the F.B.I. by listening in on a conference call last month between the bureau, Scotland Yard and other foreign police agencies about their joint investigation of the group and its allies. Anonymous posted a 16-minute recording of the call on the Web on Friday and crowed about the episode in via Twitter: “The FBI might be curious how we’re able to continuously read their internal comms for some time now.”

✰ This Looks Like A Fortified Sniper’s Nest At The Super Bowl

Some photos with no backstory are making the rounds, showing what appears to be an Indianapolis police sniper checking out his post in the rafters of Lucas Oil Stadium in the hours or days before the Super Bowl, a post that would be manned when the game began. Yes, we know there’s nothing surprising about trained marksmen working the biggest sporting event of the year. We also know it’s pretty damn cool to see what the Super Bowl snipers are working with. It’s standard operating procedure to have an invisible law enforcement presence at any high-profile event, let alone one with the attendance and attention the Super Bowl receives. And remember, there are all kinds of politicians and other assorted rich people around. You never know what could happen, though the imagination conjures up increasingly insane and horrifying scenarios, and also the criminally underrated Black Sunday. It’s just never a bad idea to have a sniper rifle around.

✰ Independent Report Shows that Syrian Government Violence Has Been Exaggerated

While the Western media act like the Syrian government is wantonly and indiscriminately killing its own people without provocation, an independent investigation has found a different reality on the ground. Specifically, over 160 monitors from the Arab League – comprised of both allies and mortal enemies of Syria – toured Syria and published a report on January 27th showing that the situation has been mischaracterized.

✰ FaceTime for Apes: Orangutans Use iPads to Video Chat With Friends In Other Zoos

Orangutans living in captivity will soon start using iPads for primate play-dates, using Skype or FaceTime to interact with their brethren in other zoos, according to zookeepers. The great apes have been playing with iPads for about six months at the Milwaukee County Zoo, and they’ve been such a hit that other zoos plan to introduce them, too. The “Apps for Apes” program started after a zookeeper commented online about getting some iPads for her gorilla charges. Someone donated a used iPad, and it turned out the gorillas didn’t care for it. But the orangutans loved it, as the LA Times says.

✰ Single-Serve Coffee Brewers Make Convenience Costly

SOMETIMES it’s hard to tell how much coffee costs, even if you know what you spent. At least that’s the case with many of the single-serve brewing machines that are soaring in popularity. For example, the Nespresso Arpeggio costs $5.70 for 10 espresso capsules, while the Folgers Black Silk blend for a K-Cup brewed-coffee machine is $10.69 for 12 pods. But that Nespresso capsule contains 5 grams of coffee, so it costs about $51 a pound. And the Folgers, with 8 grams per capsule, works out to more than $50 a pound. That’s even more expensive than all but the priciest coffees sold by artisanal roasters, the stuff of coffee snobs.

✰ Killed by her hair extensions: Woman dies after allergic reaction ‘to glue in hairdo’ as expert says he has seen four similar deaths in three months

A woman died from a massive allergic reaction that could have been caused by the glue in her hair extensions, a pathologist said yesterday. Atasha Graham, 34, who had used hair extensions for 14 years, collapsed after clubbing until the early hours. Home Office pathologist Michael Heath told the inquest into her death that the latex glue used to apply her extensions – or the solvent for removing old ones – may have been to blame.

✰ Pigs on police cars? Prank by Vermont inmates adorns decals

How did an image of a pig — the infamous ’60s-era epithet by protesters for police officers — wind up on a decal used on as many as 30 Vermont State Police cruisers? State officials Thursday pointed to the failure of the quality assurance office within the Vermont Correctional Industries Print Shop in St. Albans to detect a prisoner-artist’s addition made four years ago to the traditional state police logo. A spot on the shoulder of the cow in the state emblem was modified into a pig.

✰ BBC defends decision to censor the word “Palestine”‎

What rapper Mic Righteous was actually trying to say was ‘Free Palestine’. But Palestine, it seems, is now a dirty word on the BBC.

✰ Neuroscience could mean soldiers controlling weapons with minds

Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops. These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published on Tuesday, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.

✰ Controversial Chicago City Parking Sticker Design Dumped For Alleged Gang Signs

Chicago City Clerk Susana Mendoza has decided to go with the runner-up in the city’s parking sticker design contest, after a blogger questioned whether gang signs were in the artwork submitted by the winner. The sticker was picked as the winner in a city-wide contest and was designed by Herbie Pulgar, a15-year-old boy who attends a school for troubled youth. “I was trying to convey the love for Chicago, the love for our first responders,” he said. The theme of the contest was to honor city firefighters and police officers. The freshman said his design honored first responders, as he was saved from a fire when he was 4 years old. On Tuesday, the city clerk’s office began getting calls after a blogger said the hands in the artwork may be showing the symbol of a notorious gang. Some said both the heart and the shape of the hands in the image are evocative of gang symbols.

✰ Whales not slaves because they are not people, judge in SeaWorld case rules

A US federal judge has thrown out an animal rights group’s lawsuit accusing SeaWorld of enslaving captive killer whales, ruling that orcas have no standing to seek the same constitutional rights as people. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) had accused the chain of aquatic theme parks of violating the rights of whales under the 13th amendment of the US constitution, which abolished slavery. The lawsuit, filed in the US district court of San Diego, listed as plaintiffs five performing orcas at SeaWorld’s parks in California and Florida: Tilikum, Katina, Corky, Kasatka and Ulises. “The only reasonable interpretation of the 13th amendment’s plain language is that it applies to persons and not to non-persons such as orcas,” US district judge Jeffrey Miller wrote in his ruling.

✰ According To A New DHS Report, If You Love “Individual Liberty” Of If You “Believe In Conspiracy Theories” You Are A Potential Terrorist

Hot Spots of Terrorism and Other Crimes in the United States, 1970 to 2008“, and it was produced by the “National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism” for the Department of Homeland Security. As you will see detailed later on in this article, the most shocking part of this report is when it discusses the “ideological motivations” of potential terrorists. The report shamelessly attempts to portray red-blooded Americans that love liberty and that love their country as the enemy. Once upon a time, deeply patriotic Americans were considered to be the backbone of America, but today they are considered to be potential terrorists.

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✦ 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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In this episode of Here Comes the Neighborhood, Kunle Martins aka EARSNOT, founder of the IRAK CREW, along with Jesse Geller aka NEMEL break down the importance of good penmanship, the difference between murals and graffiti, and the concept behind their “tagging mosaic” in Wynwood. Stealing, masturbation and other compulsive behaviors are also addressed.

For more information on Kunle Martins follow him at twitter.com/KunleIRAK

Jesse Geller, his dog and his girlfriend can be found at coastttocoast.tumblr.com/

• ✪ Mexican Town Goes Mad for Pointy Boots‬‏ [Video]
  Mutant pointy cowboy boots _ part Aladdin, part Las Vegas _ created a fashion craze that spread from one northeastern Mexican town.
• ✪ World’s Greatest Drunk Driving Mug Shot

  Does this man look drunk to you?I mean, could someone who spends a lot of time sober ever possibly consider a facial tattoo like that?

  This is 29-year-old Cory P. Smits, who was recently given his fifth operating while intoxicated conviction.

  He’s racking these things up like body art.

  Smits was arrested in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, back in February when police pulled him over for swerving and found a man with glassy and bloodshot eyes.

  I’m surprised they even noticed the eyes.

• ✪ Boater finds brick of likely cocaine, snorts some, dies

  A Merritt Island videographer died in a Miami hospital Thursday after he snorted an unknown substance — possibly cocaine — from a brick he found floating off the Middle Keys, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office says.Thomas Swindal, 53, and his brother Kenneth were trolling in about 200 feet of water on Wednesday when, Detective Mark Maison said, they found what they believed to be a kilo of cocaine and brought it aboard the boat, tossing it into the bait well.

  They kept on fishing and, Kenneth Swindal told detectives, he looked back a short time later and saw his brother open the package and ingest some of its contents.

  He said about an hour and a half later, Thomas Swindal began to run around the boat, throw things in the water and even gaffed the engine, which fell off the boat and sank.

  He continued acting strangely, running around with knives and pliers, so Kenneth Swindal threw all the sharp objects, as well as the package, off the boat.

• ✪ Police: Man Admits To Sex With Cat

  The 29-year-old man, identified as Gerardo Martinez, answered the door shirtless with his pants down, the police report said. Officers asked him to pull his pants up and asked him about the cat.Martinez, who admitted to using meth, first denied having a cat, police said. Later, he changed his story and told police his boyfriend threw the cat from the window three hours prior, police said.

  When police told Martinez that witnesses said the cat was thrown more recently, he said he attempted to have sex with the cat and then threw it out the window, along with a pornographic DVD, police said.

• ✪ Warren Jeffs trial: Heavy breathing ‘sex tape’ made with 3 wives including ‘bride’ of 12

  The recording was allegedly made at the Yearning for Zion ranch in Texas, owned by the FLDS. It begins with Jeffs asking the girl how she feels.According to the transcript made and given to the court, the girl replies: ‘Feels good.’

  Soon after Jeffs can be heard saying: ‘Everyone else let go of me, back away a little. Please get on the other side of the bed.

  ‘You shall learn the powers of the spirit of God as a heavenly wife should,’ Jeffs tells the 12-year-old.

  ‘Let the heavenly comfort hear us.

  ‘We bless you, by the Lord, at this young age. To come to know God and his power, and feel his presence.’

  According to CNN, many jurors lowered their heads and closed their eyes during the recording.

  The voice is also heard saying: ‘You have to know how to be sexually excited and to help each other … and you have to be ready for the time I need your comfort.

  ‘This is your mission. This is how you abide the law.’

  At one point, he says: ‘Take your clothes off. Do it right now.’

• ✪ 13 Reasons Why The U.S. Is Now OFFICIALLY BANKRUPT
  ATTENTION IDIOTS IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA – Stop The Budget Lies – There Are NO Cuts – House Passes Bill To INCREASE Spending By $7 Trillion Over The Next 10 Years
• ✪ Mysterious Orange Goo Baffles Remote Alaska Village

  Leona Baldwin’s husband saw it first, and she got on the marine radio to alert others in the remote Alaska village of Kivalina that a strange orange goo was sitting on top of the town’s harbor.The news attracted all the townspeople, anxious to get a gander of the phenomenon that covered much of the harbor and then began washing ashore Wednesday.

  The next day it rained, and residents found the orange matter floating on top of the rain buckets they use to collect drinking water. It was also found on one roof, leading them to believe whatever it was, it was airborne, too.

  By Friday, the orange substance in the lagoon had dissipated or washed out to sea, and what was left on ground had dried to a powdery substance.

  Samples of the orange matter were collected in canning jars and sent to a lab in Anchorage for analysis.

  Until results are known, Kivalina’s 374 residents will likely continue to wonder just what exactly happened in their village.

• ✪ How Did Those Vermont Fish Get Radioactive?

  “Hey, don’t look at us” has been Entergy Corporation’s response to the discovery of Strontium-90 in fish from the Connecticut River.But the contamination, revealed this week by the Vermont Department of Health, promises to complicate the utility’s effort to extend the license of its aging Vermont Yankee Nuclear Plant.

• ✪ Police: Teens Leave Church Picnic To Riot In East Liberty, Pittsburgh

  “They came in Target, they were throwing chairs, everybody went running,” said witness Shauny Bowe.“Everybody was just running everywhere,” said Bowe. “They went to McDonald’s, and they told people to get out, cussing and swearing. They were about to taze people. I was scared for my life.”

  As members of the church cleaned up the park, they said they are saddened that a day of fun and worship is now associated with disruption and vandalism.

• ✪ Tottenham riots: Double decker bus set ablaze as mob violence hits London
  Twenty-six police officers hurt in clashes, with eight being treated in hospital
  Scotland Yard still dealing with ‘isolated pockets of crime’ this morning
  Mob of 500 people protest about death of father-of-four Mark Duggan who was shot by officers
  100 riot police on the streets as Tottenham burns
  Fears that violence was fanned by Twitter as picture of burning police car was re-tweeted more than 100 times
  Shop looted and youths storm McDonald’s and start cooking their own food
  Mail on Sunday photographers beaten and mugged by masked thugs
• ✪ Shoplifters Drown While Fleeing the Scene
  Amid heavy downpours, a mother and daughter suspected of shoplifting at a Charlotte coat store ran into a swollen, fast-moving stream Friday night. Police found the mother’s body at the bottom of the creek Friday, and now it is being reported that search crews have found the body of her 16-year-old daughter Saturday.
• ✪ PHILIP K. DICK’S BIBLE with HIS HANDWRITTEN NOTATIONS – eBay
  $6500 Buy It Now
• ✪ Shops and Cars Burn in Antipolice Riot in London

  Clusters of young men hurled bricks and aimed fireworks at riot police officers before a backdrop of burning cars and buildings early Sunday in north London as a protest turned into an all-out riot.Demonstrators on Saturday evening marched to a police station in the Tottenham area of London to protest the death of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old father of four who was killed Thursday by officers from the Trident unit of the Metropolitan Police, which investigates gun crime, according to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, an external government body which regulates the police.

  By 10:20 p.m. local time, the protest had turned violent. Two empty police cars were burned and officers were “subject to bottles and other missiles being thrown at them by the crowd,” according to a statement released by the police.

• ✪ 8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back: How the US Crushed Youth Resistance

  Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.Young Americans—even more so than older Americans—appear to have acquiesced to the idea that the corporatocracy can completely screw them and that they are helpless to do anything about it. A 2010 Gallup poll asked Americans “Do you think the Social Security system will be able to pay you a benefit when you retire?” Among 18- to 34-years-olds, 76 percent of them said no. Yet despite their lack of confidence in the availability of Social Security for them, few have demanded it be shored up by more fairly payroll-taxing the wealthy; most appear resigned to having more money deducted from their paychecks for Social Security, even though they don’t believe it will be around to benefit them.

  How exactly has American society subdued young Americans?

• ✪ John’s Phone: Subversive Mobile Technology – media underground

  “Whatever happened to coming to the pub to engage in social interaction!?” I exclaimed.There was no response.

  I looked out of the window at the multitude of passers-by, all of whom seemed to be preoccupied with whatever was on their cell phones.

  “Another beer?” asked the barmaid as she punched in a few characters on her smartphone.

  “What exactly are you all fucking doing?” I asked somewhat irritably.

  “I’m on Twitter,” she said without even looking up.

  “And I’m on Facebook,” remarked the fat lawyer – his beady little jaundiced eyes looked up again briefly, as if attempting to burn holes in the back of my inner skull.

  “Yeah,” I remarked sarcastically, “cos, so much interesting shit is going down in here right now that all your friends need an update.”

  “Do you want a beer or not?” asked the barmaid impatiently – her podgy little pink thumbs sliding over the touch sensitive device.

  “No thanks,” I said getting to my feet, “I’ve got walls at home I can stare blankly at.”

• ✪ Computer scientist calls for Web search shake-up
  The main obstacle to progress “seems to be a curious lack of ambition and imagination,” Etzioni writes in the piece, which he acknowledges “is meant to be provocative.”
• Earth Had 2 Moons That Crashed to Form 1, Study Suggests
  A tiny second moon may once have orbited Earth before catastrophically slamming into the other one, a titanic clash that could explain why the two sides of the surviving lunar satellite are so different from each other, a new study suggests.
• ✪ Germany’s War on Facebook
  The latest development has to with Facebook’s facial recognition feature that helps users tag photos. After joining in the chorus of European nations that objected to the feature launch in June, German authorities are now the first to declare the feature illegal. Hamburg’s data protection official Johannes Caspar claims that the software violates both German and European Union data protection laws and that Facebook users don’t know how to delete the data that Facebook is gathering. “If the data were to get into the wrong hands, then someone with a picture taken on a mobile phone could use biometrics to compare the pictures and make an identification,” Caspar told the Hamburger Abendblatt. “The right to anonymity is in danger.”
• ✪ Lego Minifigs Soon Headed for Deep Space

  The figures, milled from aluminum, will accompany Juno on its five-year trip to Jupiter. When Juno arrives in 2016, the Lego likeness of the Roman god, Jupiter, his sister, Juno, and the Italian astronomer, Galileo, will be there to take in all the sights and bask in the immensity of the largest planet.This (until now) secret installation was initiated by NASA scientists, who love Lego as much as anyone and wanted to do something memorable for this mission. They approached Lego and the company loved the idea. It saw the project as a way to promote children’s education and STEM programs.

  The brick company even underwrote the project, at a cost of $5,000 for each of the minifigs, which will soon become the farthest flying toys ever. The manufacture of the figures was a deliberate process to ensure the figures would not interfere with NASA’s sensitive measurements.

• ✪ Domain Seizures Do Not Violate Free Speech, U.S. Court Rules
  A U.S. federal court has ruled that the domain seizure of sports streaming site Rojadirecta does not violate the First Amendment, and has refused to hand the domain back to its Spanish owner. The order stands in conflict with previous Supreme Court rulings and doesn’t deliver much hope to other website owners who operate under U.S. controlled domain names.
• ✪ Why Facebook and Google’s Concept of ‘Real Names’ Is Revolutionary

  pseudonyms allow statements to be public and persistent, but not attached to one’s real identity.I can understand why Google and Facebook don’t want this to happen. It’s bad for their marketing teams. It generates social problems when people don’t act responsibly under the cloak of their assumed identity. It messes up the clarity and coherence of their data. And maybe those costs do outweigh the benefits pseudonymity brings to social networks.

  But then let’s have that conversation. Let’s not pretend that what Google and Facebook are doing has long-established precedents and therefore these companies are only doing what they’re doing to mimic real life. They are creating tighter links between people’s behavior and their identities than has previously existed in the modern world.

• ✪ Face recognition: Anonymous no more

  IF YOUR face and name are anywhere on the web, you may be recognised whenever you walk the streets—not just by cops but by any geek with a computer. That seems to be the conclusion from some new research on the limits of privacy.For suspected miscreants, and people chasing them, face-recognition technology is old hat. Brazil, preparing for the soccer World Cup in 2014, is already trying out pairs of glasses with mini-cameras attached; policemen wearing them could snap images of faces, easy to compare with databases of criminals. More authoritarian states love such methods: photos are taken at checkpoints, and images checked against recent participants in protests.

• ✪ Mossad’s murder machine claims another scientist’s life in Israeli bid to stop Iran building a nuclear bomb

  The two assassins arrived from nowhere as their victim was driving home with his wife. Trapped inside his car, he was hopelessly vulnerable as their motorcycles pulled alongside.He would just have had time to notice their blacked-out visors before they opened fire, emptying round after round into his chest.

  Nuclear scientist Darioush Rezaei died immediately. His wife was critically wounded and still in hospital days after the attack in north eastern Iran.

  The hitmen? They vanished into the traffic fumes of the night.

• ✪ One in seven Americans lives on food stamps

  Believe it or not, one in seven Americans – 15 percent of the country – now need government-provided food stamps simply to survive, according to latest government figures.Nearly 46 million Americans receive food stamps out of a population of some 311 million people, the US Department of Agriculture, which administers what’s officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme reported Thursday.

• ✪ Rupert Murdoch pie attacker Jonathan May-Bowles jailed for 6 weeks

  A comedian who threw a foam pie into the face of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch was jailed for six weeks yesterday.Jonathan May-Bowles, 26, attacked the 80-year-old chief executive and chairman of News Corporation as he gave evidence to MPs about the hacking scandal that has engulfed his company, calling him a ‘naughty billionaire’.

  May-Bowles – also known as Jonnie Marbles – from Windsor, Berkshire, was ordered to pay £250 costs at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, and a £15 victim surcharge.

• ✪ Even Wall Street Hates the Debt Deal

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average has plummeted by 760 points since the terms of the debt ceiling deal were announced Monday. If austerity was supposed to encourage economic growth, someone forgot to tell Wall Street.On Thursday alone, the index dropped more than 500 points, the worst one-day drop since the lowest lows of the meltdown.

  Some budget-cutting enthusiasts promoted the “important economic advantages of linking the debt limit to spending reductions,” and we’re seeing the immediate aftermath.

  Before the deal was voted on, Paul Krugman warned, “The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is slash government spending since that will depress the economy even further.”

  Investors seem to agree and, for the moment anyway, have decided to get out of Dodge.

• ✪ Google’s self-driving wreck: Really human error?

  When a self-driving car crashes, one just has to wonder about those robots. Are they really all they’re cracked up to be? Or might they be just as cracked as the rest of us?Should you have, this morning, been unreasonably detained by aggressive machines, may I tell you that Google’s famed, futuristic, liberating, and ultimately superhuman machine, the self-driving Prius, was involved in a fender bender.

  What seems evident from shots of the scene is that Google’s robot machine ran into the back of another Prius. You might think that it was on robotic autopilot and this was some sort of mating ritual.

  You might also think that a Google representative rushing to the defense of our future controllers by issuing a statement to Business Insider that a human had been driving might smack of the convenience of being chauffeur-driven.

• ✪ Pentagon’s Lightning Gun Sold for Scraps on eBay

  There was a time, not all that long ago, when the Pentagon sank tens of millions of dollars into remote-controlled lightning guns that it hoped would fry insurgent bombs before they killed any more troops. Now, disassembled parts from the one-time wonder-weapons are being sold on eBay. At least one buyer snatched up the gear, hoping to use it in his latest art project for Burning Man.All of which would make for a funny little story, if that buyer didn’t discover that the multimillion dollar “Joint Improvised Explosive Device Neutralizers,” or JINs, were kluged together from third-rate commercial electronics, and controlled by open Wi-Fi signals. In other words, the Pentagon didn’t just overpay for a flawed weapon. On the off-chance the JIN ever worked, the insurgents could control it, too.

  “This is the hack of all hacks,” says Cody Oliver, a freelance technologist in San Francisco. “And this is what they were selling to the government? Holy shit.”

• ✪ Porn Doesn’t Sell Like It Used To

  It is hard to get a fix on how much porn contributes to cable and satellite companies’ bottom lines because the companies aren’t transparent about it. But adult content has been a consistent source of profit, because cable operators have leverage to command margins that can exceed 90% on rentals of generally interchangeable porn movies, analysts say. “It’s a relevant business simply because of its profitability,” said Craig Moffett, a cable and satellite analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein.Adult movies are often more expensive, too. Many adult movies cost $9.98 to rent on Time Warner Cable in New York, while Hollywood films often cost $4.99 to rent.

  The porn-cable connection tumbled into public view when NBC’s “30 Rock” mocked the dependence of Kabletown—a fictionalized version of NBC’s then soon-to-be owner Comcast—on pay-per-view pornography, calling it “the goose that lays the golden eggs.

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• ✦ Obama’s Terrifying Unchanging Smile
  Eric Spiegelman put together this amazing stream of 130 photos of Obama posing with dignitaries during this week’s U.N. meetings (long video after the jump). And Obama’s smile never changes. Of course you may suspect some Photoshopping, but Spiegelman defends himself by directing us to the State Department’s flickr site.
• ✦ Over 80 slaughtered at Labor Party youth gathering in Norway

  New information from Norwegian police has made clear the real scale of a shooting at a youth gathering on Utoya Island in Norway: more than 80 dead and dozens wounded.

  ­A gunman disguised as a police officer started shooting on Utoya Island just outside Oslo, where youth were attending a Labor Party conference. Many ran for their lives, some jumping into the water in an attempt to reach the mainland. Law enforcement officials say the consequences of the attack are catastrophic: at least 80 lives lost, and dozens more wounded. The police did not rule out that there might be more victims.

  Locals who tried to rescue some of the injured claimed they saw dozens of bodies in the water.

  Undetonated explosives were also found on the island, where some 700 teenagers had gathered for a political rally.

• ✦ Modern Mythology: Elves of the Apocalypse: “Machine Elves” and the Self-Sabotage of Psychedelic Research
  “ASC [Altered States of Consciousness] are only possible because of a normal waking state of consciousness. I propose that it is the role which [endogenous tryptamines including DMT] play in our waking awareness which allows them to play a role in the ASC as well.” (“Endogenous hallucinogens as ligands of the trace amine receptors: A possible role in sensory perception,” J.V. Wallach, Medical Hypotheses 72 (2009) 91–94. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2008.07.052. 94). In this case, if endogenous DMT is in part responsible for how we experience waking life (visually), it follows that altered and normal states of consciousness might not be so radically divergent as we might be led to believe. It also stands to reason that if conscious experience has no intrinsic meaning, altered states of consciousness are no more intrinsically meaningful than waking life.
• ✦ Can a Playground Be Too Safe?
  “Children need to encounter risks and overcome fears on the playground,” said Ellen Sandseter, a professor of psychology at Queen Maud University in Norway. “I think monkey bars and tall slides are great. As playgrounds become more and more boring, these are some of the few features that still can give children thrilling experiences with heights and high speed.”
• ✦ Attorney: Ship prank wasn’t federal crime

  What Rick Ehlert did aboard a cruise ship in November was stupid, his attorney says.

  Ehlert admits he got drunk aboard the MS Ryndam, broke into a control room and deployed the ship’s anchor early in the morning, Daniel L. Castillo said. “I guess he thought it was a big joke.”

  Castillo added, “He’s got a lot of money. It was a silly thing to do. It’s silly. He’s not denying he did it.”

• ✦ Google Deletes Last 7 Years Of User’s Digital Life, Shrugs
  Something happened to Dylan’s Google account, and it’s been disabled. He doesn’t know what happened to the account, and no one at Google with the power to help him is interested in acknowledging the problem or letting him back in to the cloud-based services where all of his correspondence and much of the digital trail from the last few years of his life is stored. Google doesn’t own Twitter, though (yet), and he has taken to Twitter to try to draw attention to his problem and urge anyone who will listen not to trust Google with their digital lives.
• ‪✦ Raw Video: Shoplifter Uses Skirt to Hide Booze
  Forget a five finger discount — a group of women caught on surveillance video robbing a Florida liquor store used their thighs to carry away the booze they lifted.
• ✦ New court filing reveals how the 2004 Ohio presidential election was hacked

  A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio’s 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush.

  The filing also includes the revealing deposition of the late Michael Connell. Connell served as the IT guru for the Bush family and Karl Rove. Connell ran the private IT firm GovTech that created the controversial system that transferred Ohio’s vote count late on election night 2004 to a partisan Republican server site in Chattanooga, Tennessee owned by SmarTech. That is when the vote shift happened, not predicted by the exit polls, that led to Bush’s unexpected victory. Connell died a month and a half after giving this deposition in a suspicious small plane crash.

• ✦ Benny Hill behind bars?

  To the madcap music of “Yakety Sax,” the video shows correction officers chasing a jumpsuit-clad inmate through Albany County jail corridors and stairways. The action is speeded up, lending the attempted escape the feel of a Keystone Kops comedy.

  Sheriff’s officials were not amused.

• ✦ Embryos involving the genes of animals mixed with humans have been produced secretively for the past three years

  Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.

  The hybrids have been produced secretively over the past three years by researchers looking into possible cures for a wide range of diseases.

  The revelation comes just a day after a committee of scientists warned of a nightmare ‘Planet of the Apes’ scenario in which work on human-animal creations goes too far.

• ✦ Paleoecologists suggest mass extinction due to huge methane release
  Prior to this research, most scientists have believed that the sudden extinction of nearly half of all life forms on the planet was due solely to the emissions from volcanic eruptions that were occurring in what was to become the Atlantic Ocean. Ruhl et al contend that instead, what happened, was that the small amount of atmospheric heating that occurred due to the exhaust from the volcanoes, caused the oceans to warm as well, leading to the melting of ice crystals at the bottom of the sea that were holding on to methane created by the millions of years of decomposing sea life. When the ice crystals melted, methane was released, which in turn caused the planet to warm even more, which led to more methane release in a chain reaction, that Ruhl says, was the real reason for the mass extinction that led to the next phase in world history, the rise of dinosaurs.
• ✦ Ronald Tackman, New York ‘Celebrity’ Escape Artist, Racks Up 28 More Years In Court

  Ronald Tackman, a convicted New York robber and notorious prison-breaker famously told police he held up stores like Dunkin’ Donuts just blocks from home because he was “lazy,” The New York Post reported. But the Upper East Side stick-up artist was no slouch when it came to his elaborate escapes.

  Tackman last gave law enforcement the slip in 2009, when he was transported to court from Riker’s Island wearing a three-piece suit but no metal bracelets. The uncuffed criminal strolled out after noticing the door to the 12th floor holding cell was open. He found his way to the lobby and was shown the door by an officer who mistook him for a lawyer, The Post notes.
  Thanks Nico Dios

• ✦ DUCK AND COVER – The Citizen Kane of Civil Defense
  Just how did the term “Duck and Cover” become universal shorthand for the paranoid excesses of the Cold War and for every geo-political panic attack since? How did the image of a pith-helmet-wearing cartoon turtle named Bert become as lasting a symbol of this dark era as the yellow and black fallout shelter signs that still adorn many buildings around the United States?
• ✦ 8 arrested in crackdown on L.A. County tagging crew

  Members of a tagging crew allegedly responsible for more than 1,600 pieces of graffiti vandalism were arrested Wednesday by authorities serving search warrants at houses in cities across southwest Los Angeles County.

  Eight people, including one juvenile, were charged with causing more than $100,000 in vandalism to schools and Metro bus and rail systems, according to a report from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. All are alleged members of the ASC — Art Sex Crime — tagging crew.
  Thanks Brendan Donnelly

• ✦ Science and religion: God didn’t make man; man made gods

  Scientists have so far identified about 20 hard-wired, evolved “adaptations” as the building blocks of religion. Like attachment, they are mechanisms that underlie human interactions: Brain-imaging studies at the National Institutes of Health showed that when test subjects were read statements about religion and asked to agree or disagree, the same brain networks that process human social behavior — our ability to negotiate relationships with others — were engaged.

  Among the psychological adaptations related to religion are our need for reciprocity, our tendency to attribute unknown events to human agency, our capacity for romantic love, our fierce “out-group” hatreds and just as fierce loyalties to the in groups of kin and allies. Religion hijacks these traits. The rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, for example, or the doctrinal battles between Protestant and Catholic reflect our “groupish” tendencies.

• ✦ Cops: Mom gave her children beer and cocaine

  Police said they spotted Dunn and Jefferson sitting at the playground, the young children on the ground next to them. As officers approached them, police said they spotted an empty 40-ounce bottle of Steel Reserve beer on the ground beside the boy. They said a baby bottle next to the baby contained a dark liquid that smelled strongly of an alcohol beverage. Dunn was identified as the children’s mother.

  Police said witnesses told them that Jefferson had handed the bottle of beer to the boy and ordered him to chug it. When he had finished it police said Jefferson called the boy an alcoholic.

  Both children were taken to Bridgeport Hospital where police said both the boy and girl tested positive for alcohol and the 10-month-old also had cocaine in her system. While being examined, police said the 4-year-old told a social worker he likes, “Natural Ice beer, Budweiser beer, but didn’t like the taste of Dog-Bite beer.”

• ✦ Norway Oil Fund divests from Israeli companies

  Norway’s Ministry of Finance announced that the Norway Oil Fund divested from Africa-Israel Investments and Danya Cebus Ltd. on Monday.

  The reason given is the companies’ construction in the West Bank.

  The Norwegian Finance Ministry said, “The ethics council stresses that construction of settlements in the occupied territories violates the decision of the Geneva convention regarding defense of civilians during war time. Several decisions of the UN Security Council and the International Court of Justice have reached the conclusion that construction of Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories is prohibited.”

• ✦ Pedo-Style
  What if you were chatting with someone on OKCupid and they’re all like “I love kids too!” and then they showed up on your first face-to-face date wearing one of these shirts? Would you smooch them anyway? I’d at least think about it… Hey, it’s hard out there for a single lady!
  Thanks Carlen Altman.
• ✦ Lawyer: Cop scanner ‘crosses line’

  Civil libertarians are raising the alarm over the state’s plans to create a Big Brother database that could map drivers’ whereabouts with police cruiser-mounted scanners that capture thousands of license plates per hour — storing that information indefinitely where local cops, staties, feds and prosecutors could access it as they choose.

  “What kind of a society are we creating here?” asked civil rights lawyer Harvey Silverglate, who along with the ACLU fears police abuse. “There comes a point where the surveillance is so pervasive and total that it’s a misnomer to call a society free any longer.”

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• ✩ Rise and Fall of Underground Comix
  Listen to an excerpt from “The Rise and Fall of Underground Comix in San Francisco and Beyond” read by author Jay Kinney
• ✩ In Twitter Town Hall, Obama Tweets His Way into 2012

  Yes, the event was “cool.” When was the last time you could tweet a president, with the (slim) potential for him to answer your questions?

  But there was a problem with the Twitter aspect of the town hall — it went in one direction, which goes against the point of Twitter. Not only did the President not type in his answers, they were much longer than the 140 characters Twitterers use to communicate.

• ✩ Doctors Struggle to Evaluate Whether a Patient’s Pain Is Real
  Dr. Saper estimates that 15% to 20% of them are faking—or at least, aren’t as incapacitated as they say. Some are dependent on painkillers or seeking to resell them, he says. Some want a doctor to certify that they’ll never be able to work again and deserve disability payments. Some, he thinks, don’t really want to get well because they subconsciously find power in their pain.
• ✩ US police smash camera for recording killing

  Police noticed the man filming the shooting and an officer jumped into his truck, and put a pistol to his head, Benoit said. The video shows officers crowding around Herisse’s vehicle before opening fire, followed by indistinguishable yelling at onlookers, including Benoit, to stop filming.

  The cop yelled: “Wanna be a [expletive] paparazzi?” Benoit recounted in a TV interview.

  “My phone was smashed, he stepped on it, handcuffed me,” the 35-year-old car stereo technician told CNN.
  Despite his phone being destroyed, Benoit was able to save the footage by taking the memory card out of the device and putting it in his mouth before handing it over to police, he said, adding that officers smashed several other cameras in the chaos which followed the shooting.

• ✩ Thief steals Picasso drawing from S.F. gallery

  The well-dressed man in dark glasses didn’t attract a second glance when he walked into a gallery near Union Square on Tuesday.

  And soon he was gone, after grabbing a drawing by Pablo Picasso that was being offered for more than $200,000, and vanishing in a waiting taxicab, San Francisco police said.

• ✩ Woman Showers On NYC Subway Train [VIDEO]

  In this week’s crazy NYC subway video series, a woman, nude from the waist down, sets up a wash station on the blue bench of a subway car and proceeds to take a camping-style shower.

  With water and suds pooling on the subway car floor, the woman deliberately cleans herself in a 3-part YouTube video uploaded by a straphanger. It’s anyone’s guess what happens in the second and third videos, as they have been removed from YouTube for violating the policy on nudity or sexual content. See Video Below (Warning NSFW):

• ✩ Cylinder, Disc and Tape Care in a Nutshell – Librarians & Archivists – (Preservation, Library of Congress)
• ✩ Geocaching treasure hunt leads to UK bomb scare

  An Internet-based treasure hunt, known as geocaching, caused a bomb scare in West Yorkshire after a local cafe owner reported a suspicious package.

  The hidden box was blown up in a controlled explosion after being placed near the cafe, which was forced to be shut down for two hours.

  Geocaching participants use GPS and other mobile devices to hide and locate caches around the world. The caches typically contain a logbook to sign or small item to trade.

• ✩ Self-Experimenters: Psychedelic Chemist Explores the Surreality of Inner Space, One Drug at a Time

  Alexander Shulgin is the world’s foremost “psychonaut.” The 82-year-old chemist has not only created more of the 300 known consciousness-altering (or psychoactive) compounds than anyone living or dead, he has, by his own account, sampled somewhere between 200 and 250 of them himself—most of them cooked up in the musty lab behind his home in the hills east of Berkeley, Calif., where he has shared many a chemical voyage with his wife of 26 years, Ann.

  “I take them myself because I am interested in their activity in the human mind. How would you test that in a rat or mouse?” says Shulgin, known to friends as Sasha.

  He has paid the price for his avocation. Some of his creations have induced uncontrollable vomiting, paralysis and the feeling that his bones were melting, among other terrors.

• ✩ An Oral History of May 3, 1987: The Day The Butthole Surfers Came to Trenton, New Jersey
  Story of a crazy show I was at that became a riot. Best show EVER!
• ✩ Gastric band “made my stomach explode”, says Coventry woman

  COVENTRY woman Samantha Haworth is lucky to be alive after a gastric band made her stomach “explode”.

  Samantha had the band fitted when her weight soared to 28 stone, putting her health at risk.

  Two years later, an incredibly rare complication meant the band ‘slipped’ inside her, leaving the 25- year-old from Walsgrave in agony.

  But she mistook her deadly symptoms for heartburn.

  Without Samantha knowing, her gastric band had moved and turned septic. When her stomach could not cope any more it burst.

• ✩ 15 Food Companies That Serve You ‘Wood’

  The recent class-action lawsuit brought against Taco Bell raised questions about the quality of food many Americans eat each day.

  Chief among those concerns is the use of cellulose (read: wood pulp), an extender whose use in a roster of food products, from crackers and ice creams to puddings and baked goods, is now being exposed. What you’re actually paying for — and consuming — may be surprising.

• ✩ Roadside Radiation Detectors To Blanket U.S. Soon

  DHS is gearing up with just about every terror gadget and detection system possible to protect us from a pretty much nonexistent threat in the United States.

  Now they are testing roadside radiation trackers and sporting event radiation trackers in the next phase to screen the populace.

• ✩ Anonymous & Lulzsec Personal Information leaked by TeaMp0isoN
  TeaMp0isoN claim to expose the personal details of Anonymous & Lulzsec via a tweet. They posted a pastie link which contains the details of various Lulzsec members and Anonymous.
• ✩ Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab: nuclear playset for kids from the 50′s
  Gilbert had high expectations of America’s youngsters, and with such he tried to help the future engineers, doctors and leaders by providing toys worthy of their imaginations. As the inventor of the Erector Set, and seeing its commercial appeal, the he and his company set a higher goal. They became the leading manufacturer of scientific toys (chemistry sets) and construction sets (Erector), all of which gained wide acclaim at the retail level. Interested in the joy of science more than remuneration, however, Gilbert created the Atomic Energy Lab U-238 – with the help of MIT’s able faculty. The toy was made to de-mystify the perils of nuclear energy and to encourage the understanding of chemistry, physics and nuclear science – ultimately helping kids (and adults) become more open to the possibilities these disciplines offer. This educational composite, which was marketed during 1950-51, sold for $49.50 – a very high price for a toy set, even by today’s standard.
• ✩ Motel reports $3,500 worth of damage in feces-covered room

  The mysterious odor coming from Room 131 of the Lincoln Motel 6 last week turned out to be more than rotten food or a clogged toilet.

  The entire room was covered with feces, Lincoln Police Capt. David Beggs said.

  Police are looking for the person responsible for the vandalism, which caused about $3,500 damage to the hotel room. Employees reported the incident Saturday.

  After guests complained of an odor, employees discovered the room, including the curtains, table and counter, was covered with feces. Surrounding rooms had to be vacated, Beggs said.

  The last occupant, who stayed in the room June 22-29, checked in with three cats. But those who saw the room said some of the feces appeared to be too big to be from a cat, Beggs said.

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• ★ Facebook and Google Join Forces to Oppose Privacy Bill

  “You shouldn’t have to sign in and give up your personal information before you get to the part where you say, ‘Please don’t share my personal information.” The bill would also grant parents the right to request photos or text be removed from any of their children’s social networking pages within 48 hours.

  Calling the bill “unnecessary” the letter from Facebook, Google and the other tech giants details how the bill would damage business for the California technology sector and violate the Constitutions of both the United States and California based on First Amendment rights. With a $10,000 fine for each violation, the bill could certainly have some repercussions on the companies’ bottom lines. What a turnaround for the infamously censor-happy Facebook to start defending free speech.

• ★ US woman touting moon rock for $1.7M stung by NASA

  A woman who tried to sell what she said was a rare piece of moon rock for $1.7 million was detained when her would-be buyer turned out to be an undercover NASA agent, officials said Friday.

  The gray rocks, which are considered national treasures and are illegal to sell, were given to each U.S. state and 136 countries by then-President Richard Nixon after U.S. moon missions and can sell for millions of dollars on the black market.

• ★ National Pigeon Association’s “Grand National” Pigeon Show
  National Pigeon Association is an all-breeds pigeon club with an international membership founded in 1920 by humans. Encompassing all varieties of domesticated pigeons, the NPA promotes, educates, and acknowledges the efforts of fanciers and pigeon breeders in the continued development and care of our feathered friends.
• ★ Brazil’s Amazon in grip of deadly drug Authorities are alarmed as more and more people are getting high on Oxi.

  A new and deadly drug, called Oxi, has hit Brazil’s Amazon region.

  Highly addictive, its use is now spreading to other parts of the country, causing alarm among officials.

• ★ Joplin wiped out: Shock aerial view of city smashed by killer tornado
• ★ Nazis tried to train dogs to talk, read and spell to win WW2

  The Germans viewed canines as being almost as intelligent as humans and attempted to build an army of fearsome ‘speaking’ dogs, extraordinary new research shows.

  Hitler hoped the clever creatures would learn to communicate with their SS masters – and he even had a special dog school set up to teach them to talk.

  The incredible findings show Nazi officials recruited so-called educated dogs from all over Germany and trained them to speak and tap out signals using their paws.

  One mutt was said to have uttered the words ‘Mein Fuhrer’ when asked who Adolf Hitler was.

  Another ‘spoke’ by tapping letters of the alphabet with his paws and was said to have speculated about religion and learnt poetry.

• ★ Severed head of genital disease saint for sale in Ireland

  A decapitated head, said to be that of St Vitalis of Assisi, the patron saint of genital diseases, will be sold at an auction in Co Meath next Sunday.

  The macabre object, which is housed in a Queen Anne case, is being sold by an Anglo-Irish family based in Co Louth and has a guide price of between €800 and €1,200.

  Saint Vitalis of Assisi (there are a number of saints with the name Vitalis) was an Italian hermit and monk who died in 1370.

  He became a saint despite an early life marked by licentiousness and immorality.

• ★ Blind man confused over ‘mystery enema’

  The 53-year-old Californian man answered the door to a woman who claimed she was there to give him an enema.

  As the man had recently undergone intestinal surgery, he assumed the visit was part of his rehabilitation and allowed the woman into his home to perform the procedure.

  The woman took him into the bedroom, had him drop his trousers and lie face down on his bed, before performing the enema in less than two minutes.

  A day later, the man began wondering about his experience and contacted the Sonoma Police Department to report the incident.

• ★ ‘Bog Butter’ find believed to be 2,500-years-old
  The butter which was found in timber keg, made from the trunk of a tree, weighed almost 28 pounds. The keg was built using Iron Age implements. It was buried three to four-foot away.
• ★ Get This Woman Some Laughing Gas!
  Other countries use nitrous oxide in the delivery room. Why don’t we?
• ★ Comic Color Chart of Yore
  I decided to put together a photoshop version based on these values so that you don’t have to. The image below is just a RGB jpeg example and shouldn’t be used when doing your own color work. Under the swatch image below is a link to a Zip archive that contains the CMYK PSD file with all of the correct color mixtures. I also included a pretty transparent layer of 100% yellow that you can turn on and play with the opacity to make sure that all the colors work better together in a pleasing way, similar to the underpainted effect those old comics have now with their yellowish-orange, aged newsprint.
• ★ Bitcoin miners busted? Police confuse bitcoin power usage for pot farm
  One of the issues, other than if governments will try to outlaw bitcoin, is the high amount of electricity needed to create a single bitcoin. It might cost more to generate a bitcoin than the actual value a bitcoin is currently traded at. High electricity bills can lead to marijuana busts. And it is this unusual power consumption needed that caught my attention since it appears as a bitcoin miner has been mistaken as a person running a marijuana growing operation.
• ★ Outdoor Smoking Ban Takes Effect – But Residents Will Have To Police Themselves

  The city’s outdoor smoking ban is now in effect, with smoking is outlawed in city parks, pedestrian plazas, beaches, boardwalks, marinas, public golf courses and sports stadia.

  City officials say the new law is expected to be enforced mostly by New Yorkers themselves, who are urged to call 311 if they spot smokers breaking the law.

  Violators will face a $50 fine, but only the city’s 200 Parks Enforcement Patrol officers can hand out those summonses. Those officers are also putting the emphasis on educating the general public.

• ★ Ray Lewis Makes Controversial Comments About NFL Lockout

  “Do this research. If we don’t have a season, watch how much evil, which we call it crime, watch how much crime picks up when you take away our game,” he said.

  “I would hope that it would not increase crime without football. Baltimore is a place where we do have other things for people to enjoy,” said Baltimore City Councilwoman Helen Holton.

• ★ US Navy recruits gamers to help in piracy strategy

  The US Navy is turning to the wisdom of the crowd to forge military strategy, inviting the public to join an online game in which Somali pirates have hijacked commercial ships.

  The Office of Naval Research plans this month to launch the US military’s first online war game to draw on the ideas of thousands of people instead of the traditional strategy session held inside the Pentagon’s offices.

• ★ Hungry eagle inadvertently swoops toy poodle away to better life

  She’s a vagabond toy poodle, named May by SPCA staff because earlier this month she fell out of the sky and landed in the grounds of Sechelt’s Shorncliffe Nursing Home.

  How she came to be flying over the nursing home is explained by the deep talon marks in her back and sides, showing she was probably the unwilling passenger of a hungry eagle that had picked her up but eventually found her 18 pounds too much to hold on to.

• ★ Teens Target Manhattan Businesses

  It’s like a flash mob gone bad. Security footage from a Manhattan Dunkin’ Donuts shows a group of youths climbing on counters, throwing chairs and throwing tables in a violent attack on workers.

  It happened at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. A $2,000 hot chocolate machine was reportedly destroyed in the attack.

• ★ NJ town puzzles over mystery hole in ground

  Officials and experts in one New Jersey town are scratching their heads over a mysterious hole that appeared in a yard last week.

  For now, it appears the small crater that splayed debris across a 100-foot area wasn’t caused by a meteorite. Beyond that, it’s a mystery.

  “It’s just really, really weird,” said Jerry Vinski, director of nearby Raritan Valley Community College’s planetarium, who conducted tests on the site. “We dug around and couldn’t find anything. We used metal detectors because all meteors have metal in them, and we couldn’t find anything, large or small.”

• ★ Louis Theroux Miami Mega Jail

  In the first episode of this two-part series, Louis spends time in one of the most notorious sections of Miami County Jail: the fifth and sixth floor of ‘Main Jail’, where many of the most volatile inmates are incarcerated.

  Held in large cage-like dwellings for up to 24 men, the inmates have developed a strange and violent jail culture. The men – who remain in the cells almost all the time and may only leave for yard time twice a week – live under the sway of a gladiatorial code. They fight each other for food, for status, and often just to pass the endless hours of confinement. Trips to the infirmary are a frequent occurrence as inmates are viciously attacked and beaten, but the guards say they are powerless to end the abuse.

• ★ Dominique Strauss-Kahn conspiracy theories mount
  Dominique Strauss-Kahn gave an unpublished interview only two weeks before his arrest in which he suggested he could imagine a scenario in which he might be set up for rape, it emerged on Monday.
• ★ Kidult Fire Extinguisher Bombs Supreme NYC
  Kidult made his American debut early yesterday morning by using a fire extinguisher on the storefront of Supreme in New York. No stranger to destroying storefronts, Kidult has done the same in Paris to Colette, Yves Saint Laurent, JC/DC, and Agnes B. A film crew has always documented his vandalism and there will most likely be a live Supreme video soon.
• Long lines form after $1.10-a-gallon LA gas goof
  Word spread quickly about a Los Angeles gas station selling premium unleaded for $1.10-a-gallon, but it wasn’t a promotion. The owner says the too-good-to-be-true price was a computer glitch that cost him $21,000.
• ★ Meet the woman allergic to electricity

  She said: “Different things give me different feelings but it’s mostly headaches and nausea. iPhones make feel really sick within about 20 minutes of being near one so even though I might not realise someone has one straightaway, I soon find out.

  “Wifi makes me feel like I have a clamp at the back of my head which is squeezing the life out of me. It’s completely draining and a home hub can totally immobilise me – I’m left unable to move my arms and legs.”

• ★ Vuvuzelas ‘may spread diseases’

  Vuvuzelas – the horns used by football fans celebrating last year’s World Cup – not only cause noise pollution but may also spread diseases, say experts.

  A short burst on the instrument creates a spittle shower similar to a sneeze, travelling at a four million droplets a second, a PLoS One journal study shows.

  In crowded venues one person blowing a vuvuzela could infect many others with airborne illness like the flu or TB.

• ★ Cop Tasers 10 yr old girl for not going to bed [Video]
• ★ Feds to Mandate Black Box on all New Cars

  Computer chip manufacturer Intel showed off its event recorder last year following the Toyota recall. “With new vehicles, there will very likely be video cameras inside and outside,” said Intel’s chief technology office, Justin Rattner, in a July, 2010, interview. “It’s not particularly new or stunning, but when you combine the cameras with GPS, you’re geo-tagging the video.”

  In other words, your car – like your smart phone – may soon become a surveillance device and high-tech snooping will be mandated by the federal government.

• ★ Kyle Pearce, United Airlines Passenger, Single-Handedly Joins Mile High Club, Is Arrested

  Kyle Pearce of Florida was flying from Spokane to Denver on May 19, when he shocked fellow passengers by masturbating in his coach-class United Airlines seat, according to an FBI affidavit filed in Denver on May 20, The Smoking Gun reports.

  He was, not surprisingly, arrested when United flight 340 touched down in Denver. Pearce was charged with “obscene and indecent exposure of his person by

• ★ WE ANALYZED KEITH MORRIS’S DREADLOCK It Contained Uranium and Arsenic
  The first thing we noticed about Keith’s results was that there’s a ton of uranium in his hair. The report said that this isn’t the type of uranium that turns people into superheroes or kills them, but we’re still a little worried for him because it’s fucking uranium. He also had a bunch of arsenic in his mane, but curiously the report focused more on his apparent excess of copper, which can have an “antagonistic effect on zinc.” High concentrations of copper, the report warns, have also been associated with hair loss. Maybe Keith knows this, and that’s why he’s let his coiffure mat and clump for maximum coverage. The 25-page analysis also includes a chart marked “Tendencies” that lists ailments Keith should expect to experience unless he shifts his day-to-day habits toward metabolic optimization. In Keith’s case, he could suffer from depression and unnamed allergy symptoms, which doesn’t sound that bad considering he’s walking around with the Fukushima reactor on his head.

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• ✮ And Vinyly – Press your ashes in a vinyl record
• ✮ Captain Midnight: ‘No regrets’ about jamming HBO back in ’86

  John MacDougall, then 25, was the lonely pamphleteer of lore, only instead of paper and ink he was armed with a 30-foot transmission dish, an electronic keyboard, and a burning objection to HBO’s decision in 1986 to begin scrambling its satellite signal and charging viewers $12.95 a month.

  That move and price had offended MacDougall’s sense of fair play – and all but halted the sales being generated by his fledgling satellite dish business in Ocala, Fla. So at 12:32 a.m. on Sunday, April 27, he transformed himself into Captain Midnight by commandeering HBO’s satellite transmission signal – interrupting a showing of The Falcon and the Snowman – and putting in its place the above protest message that aired for four-and-a-half minutes.

• ✮ No limits to the law in NoLa

  On 17 March this year, the federal department of justice (DoJ) decided that enough was enough and it has made moves to have the New Orleans police department (NOPD) placed under the supervision of a federal judge. The New Orleans jail system will likely follow.

  The department released a report covering only the past two years and ignoring several current federal investigations of police officers for murder. It says, more or less, that the NOPD is incapable on any level; that it is racist; that it systemically violates civil rights, routinely using “unnecessary and unreasonable force”; that it is “largely indifferent to widespread violations of law and policy by its police officers” and appears to have gone to great lengths to cover up its shootings of civilians. “NOPD’s mishandling of officer-involved shooting investigations,” the report says, “was so blatant and egregious that it appeared intentional in some respects.”

• ✮ Fuelled ‘by Viagra’, Gaddafi’s troops use rape as a weapon of war with children as young as EIGHT among the victims

  In an interview with the Sunday Times, Dr Khalifa al-Sharkassi described how two sisters, aged 16 and 20, had been assaulted by African mercenaries after their brothers had joined the rebels.

  The girls’ mother was locked in another room while they were raped.

  ‘Four or five Africans took turns raping both girls,’ he said. ‘(Now) one of them just sits and cries and looks lost.’

  He said another victim had tried to clean herself with bleach after being attacked.

  One of his patients had given herself an injection of chlorine in the belief that this would stop herself becoming pregnant.

• ✮ Tricks of Short Change Artists
  ARE the con men, the shills and the short-change artists of the old time circus and carnival deserting the field for the more generous one of big business? The present-day short-change artist is entirely modernized with up-to-date methods. Methods have to be up-to-date to make it possible to short-change an experienced bank teller, and that is exactly what they are doing. As a side line to thus robbing banks, odd fives and tens are daily picked up in drug stores, filling stations, etc. Usually the storekeeper first finds it out when counting up at night; the short-change artist is clever!
• ✮ Video: Man Caught Peeing on Cough Drops in Drug Store
  Investigators say the man went to the aisle where the cough drops are kept, looked around, unzipped his pants, and urinated on about 110 packages of cough drops.
• ✮ The Graffiti of War
  From war, art. This is the basic premise of The Graffiti of War , a project from two combat veterans that features the unconventional military art that soldiers, seamen, marines, and airmen (and women) create during deployments. From tanks spray painted with “I love u baby” to memorials for the dead to enemy jets covered in graffiti, every art work tells a story. It’s the alternative, unauthorized history of war from those who fought it.
• ✮ ATLAS HOODS: BOTSWANA’S COWBOY METALHEADS
  Love it or hate it, when most people think of metal, they think of white dudes. Even if metal was born from the blues and there are growing scenes in places like Indonesia and Peru, metal’s founding fathers–Priest, Sabbath, Maiden–and most of those who’ve come after have been unmistakably Caucasian. Which is why I was pleasantly surprised to find out about a small but passionate collection of guys who dressed like doomsday cowboys and listened to Motorhead in the predominantly black, central African country of Botswana.
• ✮ Brigitte Bardot – Harley Davidson
  One of the 3 Harleys built by Maurice Combalbert for the clip “Harley Davidson”. The last one still existing. Brigitte Bardot. 1968.
• ✮ Plan to bring exhibition glorifying graffiti vandalism to the Brooklyn Museum should be tagged NoWay

  Now showing at Los Angeles’ Geffen Contemporary museum: “the first major U.S. museum survey of graffiti and street art,” an exhibition that reverently displays “installations by 50 of the most dynamic artists from the graffiti and street art community.”

  Translation: They’re having wine and cheese parties surrounded by framed images of urban blight. They’re giving the destruction of other people’s property a hallowed place in high-art halls.

  Thanks Smart Crew

• ✮ The Growing Up In Arcades: 1979-1989 Pool
  Awesome collection of vintage video game arcade pictures.
• ✮ Nibiru And the Anunnaki

  In recent years, there have been many speculative writings about Planet X, which is also known as Planet Nibiru. Most of these writings are based somewhat on Zecharia Sitchin’s book, The Twelfth Planet. Sitchin, like Velikovsky and Darwin, used his respective theories to support his claims. A question arises: Is Nibiru real? The answer to that is a resounding “Yes”.

  There are those who believe that the Anunnaki of Nibiru are coming back to Earth soon. They believe that Planet X is going to pass by Earth, in May or June of 2003, on its 3,600 year orbit around our sun. Such believers are terrified of the consequences that a close pass by Nibiru might bring. They fear this will cause earthquakes, tidal waves, severe flooding, food shortages due to climatic conditions, diseases, meteor fire storms, volcanic eruptions and the like. They are afraid that it will result in a great catastrophic infliction of loss of life on Earth.

• ✮ Will Release Of Obama’s Purported Birth Certificate Give Rise To New “Certer” Movement?
  So here’s a few nutty points about the birth certificate sure to be seized upon by the nonbelievers
• ✮ Dark Power: Pigment seems to put radiation to good use

  Microbiologist Arturo Casadevall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City recalls learning several years ago that single-cell fungi had been found thriving inside the collapsed nuclear reactor at Chernobyl, Ukraine. He and his colleagues later saw reports that the cooling water in some working nuclear reactors turns black from colonies of melanin-rich fungi.

  Nuclear reactors are intense sources of gamma rays, which can zap through living organisms and leave behind trails of destruction. Many microorganisms can survive in extreme environments, but Casadevall thought that something more might be going on. Perhaps the fungi were growing thanks to the radiation, not in spite of it. “The thought was that biology never wastes any energy source,” he says.

• ✮ Jury Acquits Man of Stealing 99-Cent Hot Dog
  It took jurors about five minutes to reach their verdict in the February trial. Juror Patrick Reeves tells The Spokesman-Review someone would “have to be an idiot” not to realize Richardson simply forgot to pay.
• ✮ Demon core
  The Demon Core was the nickname given to a 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium that accidentally went critical in two separate accidents at the Los Alamos laboratory in 1945 and 1946. Both incidents resulted in the acute radiation poisoning and subsequent death of a scientist. After these incidents, the sphere of plutonium was referred to as the Demon Core.

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• ✸ Very Large Areolae
  …Or is it mold?!
• ✸ Surprise, Surprise: Iraq War Was About Oil

  On April 19, Democracy Now ran a brief clip in which British author Muttitt called to mind Blair’s assurances to a TV audience on Feb. 6, 2003, six weeks before the war: “The idea that we’re interested in Iraq’s oil is absurd, it’s one of the most absurd conspiracy theories you can imagine.”

  Muttitt pointed out that, as Blair was saying this, a secret (until now) Foreign Office document setting out British strategy toward Iraqi oil asserted, “Britain has an absolutely vital interest in Iraq’s oil.”

  The London Mail Online summed up the contradictions on April 20 with classic English understatement. It noted that the flurry of meetings between oil executives and the Labour government in late 2002 “appear to be at odds with their insistence Iraq’s vast oil reserves were not a consideration ahead of the March 2003 invasion.”

• ✸ Interactive Graphic: Tour of Guantanamo Bay
  Washington Post reporters obtained exclusive government documents and traveled to the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay to provide an unprecedented look at a base and prison complex that served as a central component in the Bush administration’s war on terror. It remains a key repository of detainees picked up in anti-terrorist operations. Founded in 1903, Guantanamo Bay is the oldest American military installation overseas, traditionally serving as a refueling port and a base of operations for drug interdiction and refugee missions. It covers 45 square miles of land and water along the southeastern tip of Cuba.
• ✸ A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms [Video]
  In Hong Kong, because of the space, apartments are small and expensive. Gary Chang, an architect, decided to design a 344 sq. ft. apartment to be able to change into 24 different designs, all by just sliding panels and walls. He calls this the “Domestic Transformer.”
• ✸ Blunt Face Tattoo
  Is that a chick?
• ✸ L.A. tagger Revok arrested at LAX

  Revok, one of Los Angeles’ best known graffiti writers, was arrested as he prepared to board a plane to Ireland at Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department reported.

  Jason Williams, a.k.a. Revok, was taken into custody Thursday for an outstanding arrest warrant for failing to pay restitution, according to sheriff’s Capt. Mike Parker.

  Authorities claim Revok is a member of the graffiti crew Mad Society Kings, or MSK. Officials from the sheriff’s department were notified that there was an outstanding warrant against Revok for failure to repay victims of previous vandalism incidents.

  That led to his arrest, officials said.

  Revok is being held in the Los Angeles County Jail in lieu of $320,000 bail.

• ✸ jakety ghoust [Video]
  Thanks Baller
• ✸ Franklin Graham: Second Coming of Christ will be on YouTube, Twitter

  “So what will the Second Coming look like?” Amanpour wondered.

  “Well, the bible says that every eye is going to see it. And, you know, I thought how is that going to happen? There’s so many phones today. And just look at what’s happening in Libya or Egypt and everybody has got their phone up, and everybody is taking recordings and posting it on YouTube and whatever and sending it to you or — and they get shown around the world. I don’t know but he said they’ll be coming on the clouds and the world is going to moan. They’re going to groan,” Graham explained.

  “I don’t mean to be disrespectful but could there be a second coming by social media? Is that what you mean?” the ABC host asked.

• ✸ Propaganda posters of Soviet space program 1958-1963
• ✸ Jesse Hodgson Pleads Guilty: Accused Of Forcing 11-Year-Old To Participate In Diaper Fetish (VIDEO)

  A former Longmont-area firefighter has pleaded guilty to forcing his 11-year-old stepdaughter to watch him urinate in an adult diaper before changing him. His stepdaughter was also allegedly forced to wear an adult diaper as punishment on two occasions.

  Thanks Ramon.

• ✸ Earth Day’s Dirty Secret
  Eco-Activist Killed, Composted His Girlfriend
• ✸ New Graphene Material is Paper-Thin and Ten Times Stronger Than Steel

  Researchers at the University of Technology Sydney have created a new material that is lighter, less dense, harder, and stronger than steel. But this material isn’t one of those breakthroughs that only sounds good on paper. It is paper, and it could be a game-changer for materials science if it can live up to researchers’ hopes.

  This graphene paper is constructed of graphite reformed by chemical processes into monolayer hexagonal carbon lattices stacked as thin as a sheet of paper, and it is remarkably strong.

• ✸ Childrens Japanese Nuclear Cartoon -頼れる仲間プルト君——プルトニウム物語
  The brainchild of a now defunct government research organization, the apple-cheeked animated Little Mr. Pluto debuted in the mid-1990s wearing a green helmet with a pair of antennae and the chemical symbol for plutonium, Pu. Promising to “never be scary or dangerous,” Little Pluto extolled the benefits of plutonium, which Japanese nuclear authorities have viewed as a fuel of the future for fast breeder reactor technology.
• ✸ Was the Early Universe One-Dimensional? | What Would Life Be Like In 1-D? | Vanishing Dimensions Theory | High Energy Physics & Cosmology

  A refreshingly simple new idea has emerged in the complicated world of high energy physics. It proposes that the early universe was a one-dimensional line. Not an exploding sphere, not a chaotic ball of fire. Just a simple line of pure energy.

  Over time, as that line grew, it crisscrossed and intersected itself more and more, gradually forming a tightly interwoven fabric, which, at large distances, appeared as a 2-D plane. More time passed and the 2-D universe expanded and twisted about, eventually creating a web — the 3-D universe we see today.

  This concept, called “vanishing dimensions” to describe what happens the farther one looks back in time, has been gaining traction within the high energy physics community in recent months.

• ✸ 9/11 predicted by the film “The Long Kiss Goodnight”, 5 years ago before it actually happened
  Don’t forget about ‘The Lone Gunmen’ pilot episode… aired MARCH 2001
• ✸ Illegitimate dad of ‘Kong’
  One of the Depression’s highest-grossing films was an outrageous fabrication, a scandalous and suggestive gorilla epic that set box office records across the country.
• ✸ Hiroshima Aftermath 1946 USAF Color Film
  Source: US National Archives, Archive Research Catalog

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