News stories the mainstream media missed : 05/22/10

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.

* Four words: refrigerator-sized nuclear reactors. Hell yes! And at $50 million for a 25-megawatt reactor (as opposed to the usual $2.3 billion for a back-to-the-future sized 1.2 gigawatt reactor), it’s a steal! Oh, and “A 25-megawatt plant would put electricity into 20,000 homes” according to James Kohlhaas, vice president at Lockheed Martin Corp. Or, shall we say, 15,500 homes and one super secret high tech personal laboratory! All I need now is a winning lottery ticket! [BUSINESSWEEK]

* Driving gives you skin cancer? Specifically the part of your skin that hangs out the window? Damn you sun! I say we go full Republican on it’s ass and just blow the damn thing up! [WEBMD]

* Wait…the gulf oil spill is actually worse than the worsest worst worst predictions before? ONE new pulme is “10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick.” ONE? This is re-friggin-diculous. BP mega-nukes the Gulf of Mexico and nobody is calling for their heads? [MSNBC] Oh, and if you want some really scary analysis, click this out… “It’s not a leak, it’s a volcano spewing oil.” [EXAMINER] and [NYTIMES] Crap. Crappity crap crap crap.

* Read this next bit in that voice of that guy that does all the movie-previews… “Dispatched to Houston on a top secret mission by the President, five “extraordinarily intelligent” scientists from around the country will have to stop the biggest oceanic disaster in history…Members of the team designed the hydrogen bomb, invented techniques for mining on Mars, and found a way to precisely position biomedical needles.” Pan the camera back to reveal the actors walking toward the camera in slo-mo. Dramatic music flares! Yeah, baby! I got your movie right here! [BLOOMBERG]

* Our brains re-shoot every scene in a memory when we recall something? Dude! Our brains are George Lucas – reshooting the classics all the time?! AAAAAAA!! [SMITHSONIAN MAG]

* So if you loan someone money to keep them from starving, and they come back and SUE YOU for loaning them money, what would you think of them? Check it out – Greece would be the one with no money and the US would be the loaner. [YAHOO]

* Want a real-time tally of the promises Obama kept and the promises Obama broke? Look no further! Prepare for some surprises, too. [POLITIFACT]

* A giant friggin’ botnet is just sleeping out there in the internet. It’s huge, and has the potential to cause some serious game-changing damage whenever it wakes up. Kind of like Godzilla taking a nap. And when she wakes up? (Yes, Godzilla was a she!) Run!! Because some mega-level destruction is soon to follow! The Atlantic article has a great explanation of what a botnet is and how they work, too. [THE ATLANTIC]

* A girl re-grew kidneys after her old ones failed? Awesome!! Science needs to figure out how she did this immediately! [DAILYMAIL]

* How are things going in Afghanistan? Let’s just say if things were catastrophically FUBAR with a touch of rabies, it would be a improvement. [SLATE]

That’s it for this week. Back Monday!