According to The Atlantic Wire, San Diego’s entire 18 minute show got compressed (via time dilation, rogue Hobbits, or a misfire — we may never know!) into a mere 15 seconds.
I put it to you dear readers: worst, or best?
Current Events
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Lonesome George has died
The last Galapagos tortoise, Lonesome George, has died at roughly a hundred years old. Scientists aren’t sure why he died and plan an autopsy, but Galapagos tortoises were thought to have a lifespan of about two hundred years.
George was a member of the same species of tortoise that prompted Charles Darwin, on visiting the Galapagos Islands, to first formulate the theory of evolution.
The footage of George in this clip starts at 2:03, but you may want to watch the start anyway, which tells of fishermen holding George and other iconic animals hostage to fend off conservationists who have been making the fishermen’s lives difficult.
Kid tries to prove his masculinity by shooting himself in the head on live video
See, it’s bullshit like this that motivates me to destroy gender roles, not just for feminism’s sake, but for men as well. This child did not, obviously, think things through before he tried to prove how “manly” he was to his friends on video chat. He put a gun to his head and pulled the trigger, not realizing that the gun was loaded.
About 1:15 a.m., the teen was video-chatting — police believe it was either over Skype or another video-chat service called ooVoo — with an as-yet-unidentified person while his brothers were asleep in the room in their Kensington house.
Sometime during the video chat, things went horribly wrong.
“His manhood or his ego was challenged and he said something along the lines of, ‘I’ll show you,'” Gallagher said. “He thought he was clowning around, trying to shock the other party on the Internet site.”
That’s when the teen picked up his older brother’s gun and, believing it was unloaded, put it to his head and pulled the trigger, police said.
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Labatt almost sues Montreal Gazette over dismemberer’s photo
They wisely backed off after a Twitter campaign to remind them of the Streissand Effect, but the makers of the least complicated beer in Canada very nearly sued the Montreal Gazette over publishing this photo from Luka Magnotta’s Facebook feed.
What’s the big deal though? It’s a picture of the killer in a club or something, holding a Labatt Blue. Surely even serial killers and snuff film makers who send dismembered body parts to political parties need to wind down too, after a long hard day with the bonesaw!
I’d covered this sicko when news broke, and I’m happy to report that Magnotta was caught after fleeing to Berlin and will not fight extradition back to Canada. Normally I’d be careful to say “alleged” killer, but the evidence is pretty iron-clad, and he’s admitted he “can’t stop killing”, so… yeah.
The victim whose body parts got sent to the Liberals and Conservatives was Jun Lin, a Chinese engineering student. The kid apparently had a promising career ahead of him before Magnotta made him famous. Bloody shame.
But seriously, who drinks Labatt anyway? It’s trying to be a less-offensive Coors Light or something, and failing miserably.
Geek Pride, Towel Day and Glorious 25th of May!
Pulling yet another overnight for work tonight, but I have every intention of taking my towel with me. Today marks three distinct geek holidays all wrapped into one!
Kylie has a post with an infographic up to explain Towel Day, a day to celebrate the life and works of Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. What about the other two, though? Well, Terry Pratchett’s Discworld marks the day as the Glorious Revolution, when people rose up to overthrow Lord Winder and succeeded, very temporarily, until history was rewritten shortly thereafter. You celebrate by hard-boiling an egg.
And Geek Pride Day celebrates geekery in general, but was timed to represent the release of the first Star Wars film. Star Wars is, of course, not the first major sci-fi event to develop a cult following as well as make it big in the mainstream, but it’s certainly one of the largest franchises in geek history.
How are you going to celebrate the geek trifecta today?
Invisible Children #Kony2012 filmmaker detained for masturbating in public
No idea whether he was on something or had a nervous breakdown or what, but apparently this is, um, a bit out of character for Jason Russell. The San Diego police department has taken him to a medical facility after he apparently went something close to crazy in public. Specifically, via NBC:
Jason Russell, 33, was allegedly found masturbating in public, vandalizing cars and possibly under the influence of something, according to Lt. Andra Brown. He was detained at the intersection of Ingraham Street and Riviera Road.
Brown said Russell was acting very strange.
“Due to the nature of the detention, he was not arrested,” she said at a press conference. “During the evaluation we learned we probably needed to take him to a medical facility because of statements he was saying.”
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Pastor Manning: Breitbart was murdered by Obama
Via Joe My God, enjoy some crazy babbling about conspiracy theories and legally-actionable slander about Barack Obama.
Something something Muslim, something something blah blah liberals are dumb, yadda yadda CIA, blah blah evidence that bin Laden isn’t dead blah Wikileaks blah, therefore Breitbart was murdered.
LOLWUT
Fukushima: it gets even worse
As though it wasn’t bad enough already. The NY Times reports that the meltdown may have already escaped containment and begun boring through the concrete floor, according to a computer simulation of the original accident.
Soon after an earthquake and a tsunami on March 11 knocked out cooling systems at the power plant, nuclear fuel rods in three of its six reactors overheated and slumped, the operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, has said.
Oozing Pumpkin Puke
Happy Hallowe’en! Stephanie had a great idea in posting a science demo of an exploding pumpkin, so I figure I should take a cue and post something appropriately Halloweenie.
Bleaurgh!!!
Security theatre exposed.
You know all that screening, profiling and backscatter nudie x-rays you have to go through to get from point A to point B via plane, all “for your safety”? It’s a sham. It’s security theatre. It’s not to make you safer, it’s to make you think you’re safer. Know how I know?
A loaded and undeclared .38-caliber handgun tumbled from a checked bag at Los Angeles International Airport Sunday, prompting police to detain the gun owner temporarily.