News stories the mainstream media missed : 05/08/10

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]

Typical hikers in the Northwest Territories

Typical hikers in the Northwest Territories

* 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.