Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

* According to CBS Evening News, nearly every copier built since 2002 has a secret hard drive that keeps a copy of everything that has ever been copied or printed on it. DAAAAAAMN!! Three words : office Christmas parties. I’ll say no more.

* The Greek crisis is really is turning into a “sun-exploding pushing earth into a black-hole filled with angry flying vampire bat-baboons and drunk wonk-eyed former leprechauns off their meds” kind of bad. Spiegel has the writeup. Oh, by the way, don’t binge on pizza and tamales and green and red chili with Tabasco after 2 am no matter how great they all smell together…. the dreams and nightmares that follow would make Tim Burton freak. [SPIEGEL]

* Speakin’ of the Greek crisis, Brian Williams explains this week’s stock market “free fall” in 2 minutes and 47 seconds on the David Letterman show. Fair warning: some ugly brutal truth ensues in this 2 minutes and 47 seconds. Props to Letterman for the funny outtro.

* A sniper took out TWO living moving targets from 1.5 miles away in two consecutive shots?!? Can someone hand the solid gold “pimp hand of death” award to this man? [DAILYMAIL.CO.UK]

* The latest risk to your health? SITTING! “Short of sitting on a spike, you can’t do much worse than a standard office chair,” says Galen Cranz, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley. At the very end of the article, it says “(James A. Levine, an obesity specialist at the Mayo Clinic) talked to Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Salo accounting about letting him design their offices and keep people walking and working as much as possible….and he partnered with Steelcase to manufacture a $4,500 version of the machine.” Sounds like he made a little cash on this new study. Hmmmm…. how about instead of selling a product, I’ll give away the TL;DR version for free – get yo’ butt out of the chair and exercise once in awhile! [BUSINESS WEEK]

* Speaking of exercise, scientists have just found out that exercising outside helps you stay healthy! Next up, eating healthy foods and not stuffing your face with pie keeps you from being a Chunky McChubbster! Film at 11. [YAHOO]

* File this under “AAAAAAAAA!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIIIIIIIVES!!!!” Grizzly Bears and Polar Bears are now interbreeding. I think SRAWs will soon be mandatory equipment for walking around in the Northwest Territories. So what should these things be called? Grolar Bears? Pizzly Bears? How about just sticking with AAAAAAAAA!!! That pretty much covers them I think. [THESTAR.COM]

* Wanna feel better about some recent questionable choices you’ve made? Just wash your hands! Somehow, washing your hands removes guilt and doubts about recent decisions you’ve made. I’m gonna go test that out! I’ll buy a new motorcycle this weekend, and then come home and wash my hands! I’ll probably need to wash my wife’s hands too come to think of it. [SCIENCE DAILY]

* A dog named “Kanellos” has showed up at every single Greek protest for the last two years. Coincidence? Hmmm. Maybe that’s not an ordinary dog. Lemme go unpack my PKE meter and proton pack. Anybody seen Venkman? [GUARDIAN.CO.UK]

* Nintendo wants to kick Apple’s butt? Calling them out as the “enemy of the future”? You would think these two would be best friends! Somebody schedule a sit-down with these two! [TIMESONLINE.CO.UK]

* Aside from being a bunch of stupid thugs with delusions of adequacy, the TSA employees who work the body scanners are apparently slightly sensitive about their undersized wee-wees. Seriously! A “guinea pig during an employee training session on full-body scanning equipment” got his junk revealed for everyone to see when he went through the full body scanner. Well duh! What part of “full body scanner” did he not understand? Anyhow, Dr. Evil wasn’t too happy about everyone making fun of mini-me over the course of *a year*, so he eventually went postal in the parking lot, beating a co-worker with a large baton, and then “demanded the witness kneel down and say, “I’m sorry.”” Seriously! Freud would have a ball with this mess! Pun intended. [MIAMI TIMES]

* The headline says it all. “The once mighty Jordan River, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised, is now little more than a polluted stream that could die next year”. Right. Seriously. When we can’t even keep a river with blisteringly obvious historical value intact, there’s some big problems that need to be dealt with. [ABC.NET.AU]

* “Even dyed-in-the-wool preservationists from the WWF agree… Birds, those that have been covered in oil and can still be caught, can no longer be helped. … Therefore, the World Wildlife Fund is very reluctant to recommend cleaning.” In other words – terminate all the animals caught in the oil slick as humanely as possible. This sucks. The animals were in their own environment doing their own thing when BP got them all killed. Nice job, guys! [SPIEGEL.DE]

* Babies have a built in morality code! They even go so far to put the baby-smackdown on “bad” puppets! Veeeeery interesting study. [NY TIMES]

* It’s raining on the North Pole? For the first time ever? “Dashing through the slush… in a one horse power sleigh…” just doesn’t sound right. [CBC.CA]

* Google is actually coming out with a future predictor? A real working future predictor? Um… “amazing!” and “burn it!” are tied for first place in my head on this. [BOSTON.COM] has the story and the promo vids are below.

and

This is Minority Report and Pi with a sprinkle of The Matrix. Damn. Here’s their official website, too.

* Are we our bodies or are we just our microbes? Dude. That’s like asking if the galaxy is made of stars or do the stars make up the galaxy? Trippy. [TECHNOLOGY REVIEW]

* Beautiful women can be bad for your health. Allow me to quote Jack Nicholson/The Joker on this so called “problem”….. “If you gotta go, go with a smile.” [TELEGRAPH.CO.UK]

* Stephen Hawking is now talking about how to build a time machine! Between this new topic and his jibber jabber last week about visiting aliens, I think the Men In Black are overdue to flashy thing him. Or at least put him on the next shuttle back to Antares. The dude is leaking secrets. [DAILYMAIL.CO.UK]

* Speaking of aliens… “Russian regional president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov claims he was abducted by aliens. Now, a Russian MP has asked President Dmitry Medvedev to investigate his claims to make sure he didn’t give any state secrets to the space visitors.” Ok then! How about we try less vodka and more sunlight for you guys? Yes? Повторяйте за мной. “Нет больше водки. Спасибо!” [GIZMODO]

* Scientists have gone too far! Not content with the perfectly logical idea that metal doesn’t smell because it doesn’t have noses, it turns out metal has no smell at all. In fact…. the smell is actually your sweat and the metal interacting! Dude. Ew. [BIO ED ONLINE]

* You know something is bad when the industry that was using tons of a product suddenly drops them like a bad habit and runs far far away. High Fructose Corn syrup? Extraordinarily bad for you. Specifically the “High” and the “Fructose” and the “Corn Syrup” part. [BNET]

* And finally, can a katana blade really cut a bullet that has been fired from a pistol in half? The answer is….. YES.

And how about from a giant .50 caliber belt fed Browning M2 machine gun on full auto? It takes 7 of these monsters hitting the same spot on the blade to finally break it.

Stunning. Wicked cool. Stupidly dangerous kinds of awesome. But now, the zen question… The katana blade *can* cut a bullet in half. But can the wielder of the katana blade do the same? I shall meditate on this while playing Xbox this weekend.

There’s an awesome graphic on the New York Times’ website that shows how much the EU countries all owe each other. It all comes down to Britain, France and Germany loaning Ireland, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain some serious money.

Taking a moment to look at how much Germany is owed, you can see that…

• Ireland owes them $184 billion
• Greece owes them $45 billion
• Italy owes them $190 billion
• Portugal owes them $47 billion
• Spain owes them $238 billion

…you get $704 billion!

Even more stunning is how much France is owed.

• Ireland owes them $60 billion
• Greece owes them $75 billion
• Italy owes them $511 billion (daaaaaaaaaamn!)
• Portugal owes them $45 billion
• Spain owes them $220 billion

…that’s a staggering $911 billion these countries owe to France!

This is nuts. No wonder everyone is freaking out that Germany wants to stop loaning these other countries more money. And no wonder Germany wants to stop loaning money as well!

Click the graphic to enlarge on the New York Times website.

Here are some news stories from this week that I think the mainstream media completely missed out on. All links are from legitimate news sources and not the fringe / wacko sites.

—– JUMBO SIZED EDITION —–

* 10,000 people are about to undergo forced sterilization in China. This isn’t mentioned anywhere in the US mainstream media, but it’s all over Europe. This sounds like an evil rat bastard thing they’re doing until you realize…. wait, no, it is an evil rat bastard thing they’re doing. Nevermind.  [SKY.COM]

* A commanding officer in the military in Iraq tells his subordinates… “If someone in your line gets hit with an IED, 360 rotational fire. You kill every mother****** on the street.” The solider under his command says… “and you couldn’t just disobey orders to shoot, because they could just make your life hell in Iraq. So like with myself, I would shoot up into the roof of a building instead of down on the ground toward civilians. But I’ve seen it many times, where people are just walking down the street and an IED goes off and the troops open fire and kill them.”  BTW, this soldier interviewed is the Army Ranger who saved the children in the van from that infamous Apache shootout a few weeks ago. He has a lot to say. Definitely read this to see how things in Iraq *really* are. Oh, and Obama… why the HELL are we still in Iraq? [WSWS]

* How trusting would you be if you heard that a judge and a prosecutor were having a secret ongoing affair with each other? Would you trust or believe any judgment in the cases they made together? The US Supreme Court did! They said it was OK to the point of letting a man stay on death row! Has no one on the Supreme Court ever heard the “If you do this for me…” compromise-thing in a relationship? [WASHINGTON POST]

* Speaking of trusting, it’s really a sad commentary on our society when someone who has a condition where they automatically and completely trust everyone is the “problem”. It’s called Williams Syndrome, and this story about a child affected with it will really will make you think about the world. Hollywood? Are you paying attention? This has “academy award” written all over it. [NPR]

* Speaking of Hollywood, they now want “real” women for their movies and are looking at casting outside of California. Apparently the local “actresses” are too plastic for them. Good idea Hollywood! Run with it and try casting “real” men next! [NY TIMES]

* The latest hot supplement is Omega-3 fatty acids. “Research shows they promote heart health and reduce pain in people with rheumatoid arthritis. They also may help treat autism, bipolar disorder, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, ADHD and prostate cancer.” But it doesn’t do windows or laundry? Next! [LA TIMES]

* You’ll never ever see this in the mainstream media…. new research shows fizzy drinks and processed foods are linked to premature aging! D’oh! [TELEGRAPH.CO.UK]

* Trick question… if the medical care is so good in this country, why is it far cheaper to fly to London to have the same procedures done? [CNN]

* There were two super secret military rocket launches in the US this week. Well, OK, obviously not so secret because those launches are on the internet with a lot of photos. Anyhow, the first launch was the military version of the space shuttle, which “can stay in orbit for up to 270 days, whereas the Shuttle can last only 16 days” and is designed for “launch(ing) a surge of small satellites during periods of high international tension.” The second was a “prototype of a new weapon that can hit any target around the world in less than an hour.” Soooo maybe this is the first step toward a space military that can say “nuke ’em from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.” And by the way, why was this launch completely glossed over in the US and only covered by the Times Online overseas? [TIMES ONLINE]

* In the “I see this going wrong in all sorts of ways” category, the “gene that allows growing a new head” has been identified! And we need to have two heads because? Wait. Seriously. Don’t answer that. [THE REGISTER]

* In another of the “I see this going wrong in all sorts of ways” category, “Scientists in California plan to use the world’s biggest laser to set off a nuclear reaction so intense it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth. If they succeed they say they could solve the planet’s energy crisis.” Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! A star ON the Earth? I think those scientists missed a teeny little detail in their plan! [CNN]

* NASA screws up a balloon launch. I mean, come on! Just let go of the string! It works every single time for me! [YAHOO]

* Those dirty rotten bastiches who send spam emails have pulled an idea from computer technical support companies…. they’re getting people in developing countries to work for them. [NY TIMES]

* Speaking of dirty rotten tricks, when GM said they paid back their loan “in full, with interest, years ahead of schedule.” It turns out… no. It’s all a bunch of lies. [REASON]

* In case I haven’t mentioned it before, I think anybody who says they are doing something “for the children” has ulterior motives. Exhibit A: An anti-piracy group said at their latest convention that ”Child pornography is great! By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites.” [CHRISTIAN ENGSTROM]

* A corrupt attorney at Homeland Security? Taking bribes? Noooooooo! [JUDICIAL WATCH]

* Infertility might begin in the womb? Wait… how does that work? [INDEPENDENT.CO.UK]

* The most blindingly obvious idea yet – use the Sahara to generate solar power. Good luck getting everyone in the area to play nice long enough to get the generators installed, though. [GUARDIAN]

* On the not-so-blindingly obvious side of things, Texas says the state’s water can handle “10 times more bacteria in some of the state’s creeks, rivers and lakes” so more dumping is OK! WTF!! I have an idea. Make the state senators drink a glass of water every day from Texas lakes and streams while they are in session. If the water can handle “10 times more bacteria” and not taste barfiliciously funky, they shouldn’t have a problem! [AUSTIN POST]

—>WARNING : POLITICAL RANT STARTS HERE<—

* Obama said to Wall Street this week “I Do Think at Some Point You’ve Made Enough Money.” Right. Where to start with this comment… how about by **whose** definition have you made enough money? The ones who have money already? And who is to say what the limit is? If I had 100 million dollars, I can guarantee it’s not enough for all of my dreams to come true. I would love to help Bill Gates create safe nuclear energy systems across the nation. I would love to create a national food bank with a computerized warehousing system to rival WalMart to help in feeding the truly destitute who have nothing to eat. I would love to re-establish a sustainable space program and have tiered space stations (plural!) that gradually expand out into our solar system. I would love to push stem cell research *hard* in the hopes of stopping all the thousands of variations of the damned “big C”. The problem isn’t who has “enough” money and who is making “enough” money. It’s the bozos who do stupid, petty and trivial things with the money they have and with the government who tries to mandate controls on individuals’ lifestyles. The video of his comment is below…

—>END OF POLITICAL RANT<—

* “A sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream, which new research has linked to the mass extinction of dinosaurs, may happen again, many scientists fear. The shift could be abrupt, and climate experts advise that we must continue to monitor the present warning signs, such as influxes of fresh water into the North Atlantic, and slowdowns of the Atlantic Gulf Stream.” Daaaaaaamn. Just in time for the oil spill! [DISCOVERY]

* Finally, the SciFi channel (now known as the uber macho name SyFy) is abandoning most science fiction programming and is now airing WWE Smackdown. You gotta give them partial credit here. Is the WWE Science? No. Is it Fiction? Ah-hah! [MSNBC]