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.
* The jobs outlook still twitchier than a monkey in a washing machine full of bananas. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst everyone! [ECONOMIST]
* A Philadelphia school apparently has been using the laptops they provided to the kids to also spy on them while they were home! All this came out when a kid was popped for “”improper behavior in his home” and the Vice Principal used a photo taken by the webcam as evidence.”! OK, this won the official solid gold WTF! crown for the week! The district was OK with this? The Vice Principal on down authorized this big honkin’ invasion of privacy? Of putting a camera on a child’s private moments at home? Wow! To quote Ed Rooney (Jeffrey Jones) from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off “Les jeux sont faits. Translation: the game is up. Your ass is mine.” But I don’t think the hammer is going to fall on the kids! [BOING BOING] UPDATE: Ooooh yes. Here comes the FBI! Gonna’ need some popcorn for this one! [CNN]
* Google has received federal approval to buy and sell energy. They are going to be their own electric company! Dude. Picture this next video, but with the Google logo and Sergey Brin and Larry Page jammin’ with some of their friends… [IT WORLD]
* Dolphins can switch on and off diabetes as needed! Dammit Flipper, why didn’t you tell us about this earlier? [GUARDIAN.UK]
* How would you like working straight until 70 before social security clicks in? Or seeing some big tax increases and increasing co-pays and deductibles for Medicare? These are some of the tentative plans under Obama’s new deficit commission! Why isn’t the mainstream media talking about how horrible things are going to get if things don’t change soon? And since when do most people live past 70? Since a lot of people kick the bucket before then, so all that money won’t…. ooooooh. I see. [YAHOO]
* And speaking of how bad things are getting, something called “Peak Oil” is coming soon, with severe price increases by 2015. This doesn’t mean oil running out…. it means cheap and plentiful energy will be done with a big fork in it. About 1/2 of the world’s easily accessible oil will be tapped, and the remainder will be insanely more difficult to get out. If Oil was a restaurant, it’s going from a $ rating to a $$$$$ rating. This is going to be, very possibly, the end of cheap oil in our lifetime. You can argue everything in this last century was accomplished because we all had tons of cheap energy to burn (pun intended), so something new has got to be put in place soon. Any wonder there’s a sudden rush to develop and construct more nuclear power plants? [CSMONITOR]
* Dallas police are planning on going door to door in some neighborhoods, knocking on the door, and just having a chat with the resident right there! It sounds quite British of them! While they’re passing the time on your doorstep with their door open, if they happen to see anything behind the door or in the room in plain sight that happens to look or smell illegal, or if they hear anything illegal in the background, WHAMMO!! In come the SWAT teams! Seriously! That’s their plan! Man, where to begin? Profiling. Warrantless Searches. Authoritarian Intimidation. Disregarding on the 4th and 5th amendment. I guess the old investigation to lead to probable cause to lead to a judicial search warrant is just too hard! [DALLAS MORNING NEWS]
* Operation Iraqi Freedom is now Operation New Dawn. Great. So when does Operation GTFO start? That’s the one I’ve been waiting on this whole time! [ABC NEWS]
* What does your handshake say about you? I’d like to think mine says something like “Généralement, les gens qui savant peu parlent becoup, et les gens qui savant beaucoup parlent peu.” Oui oui je sais. Just a touch! [SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN]
* Colorado Springs, Colorado is turning off their street lights, not picking up trash in the city parks, mowing only monthly, and closing public restrooms. All this in an effort to save money. So they’re collecting all these property taxes and they have nothing left over after paying…. what exactly? I betcha’ there’s a few fat cats still porking out in the budget kitchen that can be flushed out. [NPR]
* “Scientists say that a meteorite that crashed into Earth 40 years ago contains millions of different carbon-containing, or organic, molecules.” Oooo! Get Michael Bay on the line! I got an idea! Coming soon… don’t trust anyone under 40! They’ve all got sleeper DNA cells that make them not human! Dun dun duuuuunnnnn! Wait… that would be me too!! Oh no!! [BBC.UK]
* Researchers discover how antidepressants actually work! What? You mean they had no idea all this time? To stael a bit from Eddie Izzard, did they just try a little bit of everything to find out what worked? Try this piece of zinc? No? How about uranium? Ooo definitely not that one. How about a frying pan upside the head? CLANG!! No? How about this prozac, then? Ah-hah!! [PHYSORG]
And to close out, that original bit from Eddie Izzard I just completely butchered in the article above. I must warn you, the man is an executive transvestite. Watch at your own peril!
Until next week… ciao!
