Have you ever had a week of Mondays? I finally got a moment to post somethin’!
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.
* Instead of saying how bad things are going in California, I think it’s better to show of this next clip of an early classic Arnold Schwarzenegger movie called “Conan the Barbarian” as a allegory. Imagine Schwarzenegger as the modern day governor and everyone on horseback as a line item on the California budget. There’s gonna’ be cuts. Lots and lots and lots of vicious, deep, nasty DAAAAAAYUM kinds of cuts coming. Grab the popcorn! [BLOOMBERG] and [BUSINESS INSIDER]
* The oil rig owner of the massive BP gulf oil spill would like to only pay $27 million for destroying the Gulf of Mexico. No more. Because paying more would not be fair! There’s still the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean (there’s still a lot of clean areas!), the Indian Ocean, the Arctic ocean and the Southern Ocean to screw up! [WALL STREET JOURNAL]
* You know when you’re winning stupid amounts of money in Vegas because you’re always getting a 10 and an Ace on every hand of blackjack? No? Yeah, me either. Well, something similar happened to the “getting a 10 and an Ace” on every hand in the financial market recently. Four big banks scored a absolutely perfect 61 day run. If this happened in Vegas, I would expect a nice pair of concrete shoes to go with my new lead-based body ventilation. [NY TIMES]
* This week, “Bill Gates, the Microsoft billionaire, is funding research into machines to suck up ten tonnes of seawater every second and spray it upwards. This would seed vast banks of white clouds to reflect the Sun’s rays away from Earth.” OK, first off, flinging the happy little critters of the ocean into the stratosphere might be somewhat bad. And ten tons of seawater a second? In addition to needing a filter made of diamonds twelve inches thick, they’re going to need a massive no-fly zone around that contraption. Meh. He’s got the money to do it all. Go Bill! Go Bill! It’s yo’ birf-day! It’s yo’ birf-day! [TIMESONLINE.CO.UK]
* On the flipside of “I can’t comprehend this level of money” news stories, “the Treasury Department said Wednesday the April deficit soared to $82.7 billion. That was significantly higher than last year’s April deficit of $20 billion and the largest imbalance for that month on record.” [NY TIMES]
That’s all I got for this week! Have a great weekend ya’ll!
According to the video info, this shows… “Oil and gas stream from the riser of the Deepwater Horizon well May 11, 2010. This video is from the larger of two existing leaks on the riser. This leak is located approximately 460 feet from the top of the blowout preventer and rests on the sea floor at a depth of about 5,000 feet. (Courtesy video)”
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
* 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.
* 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.
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.
Last night my wife and I hit a few Hollywood Video stores that are going out of business and we picked up some Xbox games for 80% off and some good movies on DVD that were 5 for $10. Not too bad!
But what really got my attention were the movies I didn’t get. Even at $2 a piece I passed right by these gems.
First up was TRANSMORPHERS : FALL OF MAN
Transmorphers Front
Oh yeah. Not a ripoff of Transformers at all. Seriously! Nothing like it! This artwork and title won’t confuse anybody!
Transmorphers Back
The blurb in the upper left piles it on, too. “This prequel to the 2007 blockbuster, is a sci-fi action extravaganza in the tradition of INDEPENDENCE DAY and WAR OF THE WORLDS”
Even more amazing was THE TERMINATORS movie cover.
The Terminators Front
This kind of stuff is legal? Come on! By the same logic, I can get away with opening a Burger Kings if I wanted to, right? It’s not Burger King! It’s Burger Kings! With an s! I serve the flame-mesh Whapper! The flame-fresh Whopper? Never heard of it.
This next movie I’ve actually heard of, and for a brief second, I thought $2 was ok for this diamond in the very very very very rough. Then I realized I could get Moon or The Killer for the same $2 and I immediately came to my senses.
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus!! Just for the awesome… badness of it!
Finally, this movie made me laugh just for it’s title.
Ankle Biters
It’s a movie about vampire kids? And the tag is “don’t look down”? Awesomeness.
Seriously, though. These movies were green-lit, financed, produced, edited, released and made some money for somebody. So who am I to say anything? This is either an incredibly depressing fact or an awesomely inspiring fact depending on how you look at it.
Me? I’m gonna’ write a script! I’ll call it DIE HARDS! Yes!
Call me Hollywood.
As an extra special bonus, I’ve added trailers for some of the movies I found below.
A secret underground mansion with a waterslide going directly from the bedroom to the pool? A central jacuzzi with an atrium above it?
Slide A
Slide B
Slide C
Looks like a nice summer home for Tony Stark.
Even though the realtor obviously photoshopped some parts of it, and I think 4,300 sq feet is kind of smallish for a $3 million dollar mansion, I still want it.
Great news! I only have $2,999,980 to go! No problem!
There’s a pretty good Humble Indie Game Bundle going on now.
Like the video says, it’s five games for PC, Mac or Linux and a donation to two charities (the EFF and Child’s Play) for any amount you want! You can legitimately get everything for $1 if you like!
or 
for the same $2 and I immediately came to my senses.
