Check this out…

Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ father is Gérard Louis-Dreyfus, who was president and CEO of the Louis Dreyfus Group until 2006.

Gérard Louis-Dreyfus’ great-grandfather, Leopold Louis-Dreyfus, founded the Louis Dreyfus Group in 1851.

Yesterday, the Louis Dreyfus Group bought Imperial Sugar.

The whole company.

For $203 million.

Cash.

According to Wikipedia, The Louis Dreyfus Group is “a diversified French private company that is involved in agriculture and energy commodities (global processing, trading and merchandising). It owns and manages ocean vessels, develops and operates telecommunications infrastructures and is involved in real estate (development, management and ownership). Louis Dreyfus companies are present in more than 53 countries, with 72 offices. Major offices are located in Geneva, Beijing, Buenos Aires, Paris, São Paulo, New York and Connecticut. Aggregate average annual gross sales in recent years have exceeded ~$120 billion. The company employs 35,000.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Star of a current HBO series and a former major sitcom by day, heir to a $120 billion family owned company since 1851 by night.

Oh, and now proxy owner of Imperial Sugar.

Epic.

I posted this before, but I thought it deserved its’ own standalone space.

FEMA announced they are going to have a nationwide simultaneous TV and Radio Emergency Broadcast test tomorrow (November the 9th) at 2 PM Eastern time.

This isn’t going to be a normal one-TV-station test where you can change the channel and something else is on another station. Every TV and radio station will have that screech alarm until the test is complete.

So don’t panic tomorrow when the TV and radio stations all have a FEMA EMERGENCY ALERT screen and that annoying screech!

Here’s the government website with info about it…

http://www.fema.gov/eastest/

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.

* “A prominent UN agency has issued a warning that the globe is hurtling toward a long recession, a 40 million worldwide job shortage and an increase in large scale social unrest.” HA! Put that in your sandbox and dig it, you positive, good for nothing optimists!! Now excuse me while I go start to dig a large hole for myself in my backyard and fill it with canned beans and… whatever other stuff I might need to survive the apocalypse! I do own a shovel, right? Major freakout story at [PRISON PLANET] and a more socially acceptable freakout at [BLOOMBERG]

* There’s some great news for future horror movie plots this week! Scientific geniuses have figured out how to rejuvenate itty bitty mice cells and make them younger!! This is fantastic news… but, of course, there’s a catch. From what I understand, human cells can only divide so many times before they start to nosedive. This nosedive either means other nearby healthy cells get all funkified, or even worse, the CANCER part of CANCER SUCKS shows up. The “rejuvenation” these scientists have found is to kill cells before they reach the “use by” date. Wasn’t that “I Am Legend” movie based on a cancer cure gone bonkers wrong? Story at the [ECONOMIST] and again at [BBC] and a more “fweeeeeeee…. over my head” explanation at [DUR.AC.UK]

* Apparently that little discovery wasn’t major enough, as some other scientists went and made photons into paranoid schizophrenics! (Because we need to support the therapy industry with thousands of chargeless particles, dammit!) Long story short, it’s now possible to make a photon think it’s actually a crowd of photons! Oh, and it’s all about Quantum Mechanics, so leave your reality at the door, please. Story at [ARS TECHNIA]

* This just in! Black holes in outer space look nothing like whirlpools in a dirty-water sink! The Hubble Telecsope grabbed a pic of a black hole a long time ago in the center of another galaxy far far away. Pew-pew lasers and whoosh-by sound effects not included. Story at [PHYSORG]

* The saying “stop and smell the roses” leaves out those damn, dirty trees for a reason! Apparently there’s a tree out there that can cause instant migraines if you sniff it! OK, who was so damn bored they went from tree to tree to tree and sniffed every one for an effect? Geez! Anyhow, I betcha every blade of un-mowed grass in my yard that the military is going to weaponize this shrubbery by the end of the year. News at [SCIENCE NEWS]

* On a semi-serious note, the geniuses at FEMA are going to sound the AHHHHHH-OOOOOOO-GAHHHHHHH red alert nationwide test of the Emergency Broadcast System on November 9th at 2 PM Eastern Time. Yeah. Nationwide. Some people are gonna’ be freaked-the-nutty-fudge out when every TV channel and every radio station in the country is going AHHHHHH-OOOOOOO-GAHHHHHHH for 30+ seconds. Sooooo for the grand prize and a copy of the home game, the big final question is… why the test? Details at [FEMA].

* The CIA is watching everything we Tweet and Facebook? Not surprising. That they have agents called “ninja librarians” to do this? “Ninja Librarians”?! That’s! Freaking! Hilarious! What, do they say SHHHH before they fling a throwing-star at you? I have a feeling these “ninja librarians” got about 200 pounds more “doughnut-muscle” than the 6′ 11″ field agents who do the daily “excuse me, but does this rag smell like chloroform to you?” kind of work at the agency. And with that little snap, I bet I’m on their list. HI GUYS!!! YOU HIRING?! CALL ME!! SHHHH!! Story at [AP]

That’s all I got this week! Now I’m off to watch me some TIVO-ed Walking Dead and grab a cigar!

** Actually posted on 11/06 because doin’ nuthin’ on Saturday felt goooooood.

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.

* This just in! Eating too much junk food is effective birth control! And before you say “ah-deerrr!!” hear me out! It’s not just the look of eating too much junk food that makes for effective birth control! Scientific science-stuff has found out that eating too much junk food also monkeys with the sperm count of men! Dun dun dunnnn!!!! Details at [TIME]

* Oui! De fhrrrrranch see-tah-zens has dun eet now! Zhey hav bunned KETCHUP! Sacre blu! Zee nherve! Apparently the idiots in the French government want the French childrens to avoid these evil-bastard “western” diets and go back to having RAW GARLIC as a condiment instead of ketchup. Raw garlic as a condiment? No wonder the French are always so steenky! The dish at [DELISH]

* Allow me to summarize my feelings about black licorice with this brief haiku…ICK! YUCK! PTOOEY! / I WOULD RATHER EAT MY SHOE / THAN THIS FOUL HOOEY. Fortunately, I now have another justification for hating this foul funk from another dimension… eating too much licorice will actually kill you! Totally not kidding! “Eating 2 ounces of black licorice a day for at least two weeks may lead to arrhythmia, or irregular heart rhythm, which could land you in the emergency room.” Nice to see this was released right before Halloween, too! Details at [TIME]

* Here’s a question most people think they know the answer to, but then when we think about it, we really don’t. Why do we cry? Leaking water from our eyes? Emotional extremes can universally cause liquid discharge in humans? Seriously? What biological process had to evolve to make that the pinnacle of communicating pain, rage, hunger, and/or emotional distress? It’s kinda bonkers if you think about it too much. Discussion ensues at [NPR]

* OK, we’re leaving the war in Iraq! Wait, no we’re not! OK, now we’re only staying on days that end in Y! The bi-polar “is we or isn’t we” war details at [ESQUIRE]

* Do you like your seafood glowing or non-glowing? Get ready, because this is going to be the new and improved difference in all those delicious little finny friends from the Pacific or Atlantic! Zee French nuclear monitor said there was a LOT of caesium 137 that leaked into the Pacific from the Fukushima disaster. A lot, a lot. Apparently it “was the greatest single nuclear contamination of the sea ever seen.” So, yeah, that would be bad. But, hey! Maybe we can get five lobster claws from one animal where before this “disaster” we could only get two! Huh! How about that science?! Red Lobster just needs to change their name to Green Lobster and we’re good! Details at [PHYSORG]

* 60 days! Two months! 1,440 hours! That’s how long movie exes want to make rental stores wait *after* a movie hits the retail shelves! Apparently some geniuses in hollywood think if a movie is only on store shelves and *not* for rent at Redbox or Lackluster (typo, but I like it), or Netflix, there are nooooo other options for us consumers to watch a movie. So, naturally, since there are nooooo other options for us consumers, we will buy the movie at the full $50-and-up retail prices since they’re only available at retail stores! Everybody keep quiet! Nobody mention this newfangled “internet” thing to the ancient ones, OK? News of the latest belly-flop from hollywood at [BLOOMBERG]

* I love me some Southpark, and now so so sooooo much moreso that SCIENTOLOGY is trying to dig up dirt on Matt and Trey! Apparently South Park did something to really piss them off some time ago, and ever since then, Scientology has been all bozo-nightmare loco about getting something on Matt and Trey. OK. Seriously. Has anybody in the Scientology character-assassination and public-humiliation department ever looked at Matt and Trey’s past? At all the stuff Matt and Trey have publicly admitted and done? For FUN? Embarrass and humiliate these two? Not. Gonna. Happen. News and details at [INDEPENDENT]

* Sound the alarms! Raise the drawbridge! Batten the hatches! Swap the poop deck! The “revised” Catholic Mass will start to take effect on November 27th! AHOOOOGAH! AHOOOOGAH! OK, seriously, the Catholic church has been listening to focus groups to determine when, exactly, to have parishioners strike their chests with their fists in confession. They’re also changing “The Lord be with you’s” response from “and also with you” to “and with your spirit”. The word “offering” is getting the heave-ho in exchange for the more archaic “oblation”. But the big enchilada is the swap of the phrase “one in being” with the seriously hardcore “consubstantial”. Con sub what? Seriously? “Consubstantial with the father” is actually going mainstream? Eesh. Expect upset Catholics to start showing up online at around 1 PM on November 27th! Breaking news at [USA TODAY]

* I remember the PBS show The Electric Company with a ton of goofball nostalgia. A megaphone blastin’ HEEEYYYYY YOOOOOOOOO GUYYSSSSSS!!! beat a mellow “get basic directions to a street I was just at last week” every time! Plus, THEY HAD SPIDER MAN!!! (“Where are you comin’ from Spiiiider Man? Nobody knows who you arrrrrrr!”) ANYHOW, some of the Electric Company crew moved on to much better things. Do you know who Easy Reader was? Big surprise at [THE ROOT]

* Speaking of nostalgia, when I first saw the headline that DARPA was having a “shredder challenge”, I thought, “Leonardo and Donatello can totally kick Shredder’s butt! Where do I sign up?” But nooooooo, it’s not Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shredder DARPA wants. DARPA actually wants a way to re-construct shredded documents, and is offering a sizeable reward for whoever can figure out a way to do this. Um… wait. Can I choose another team to go in with? Because this is actually kind of scary now that I’m thinking about it. The official DARPA darpage is at [SHREDDER CHALLENGE]

That’s all I got this week! Now I’m off to watch me some TIVO-ed Walking Dead.

** Actually posted on 10/30 because I completely blew off Saturday… again!

Urgh. It was another one of those weeks. Just enough time to twitter, but no time for some decent blog posts. But at least this one is getting out!

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! DELOREAN! IS! COMING! BACK!! OK, so technically it’s not a “factory new” DeLorean. And it’s only electric. And it can only go 70-100 miles before it runs out of power. And it’s going to cost $90,000…. hey, wait a minute. That’s a giant ball of suck!! Who has the nerve to pass this off as a “futuristic” car when an entry-level Toyota stomps all over it?! It’s more “Back to the Past” than anything else. Linkage at [NPR]

* There’s dumb, there’s really dumb, and then there’s the US Government. This week’s monument to extra large Grade-A+ stupidity is the bipartisan plan in the Senate to “import foreigners” to buy American homes. Apparently us broke-ass American’s ain’t buying mansion-sized homes no more, so the plan is to offer “foreigners a three-year, residential visa if they invest at least $500,000 into the housing market and live in a home they have bought for at least 180 days each year… [and] pay for the homes with cash.” Not written but heavily implied : “To hell with all you existing US citizens who can’t buy a $500,000 home and to hell with all you hardworking foreigners who have been waiting in line for years to be citizens. THBBBTTTTT!!! Nanna-nanna-boo-boo!!” Details at the [NEW YORK TIMES]

* There’s no question where some people are headed in the afterlife, but apparently certain people want to go that extra mile just to be absolutely sure where they’re going to wind up. Lindsey Graham, Republican from South Carolina, witnessed all the bloodshed and violence in Libya, and with a sincere heart, said “Let’s get in on the ground. There is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya. Lot of oil to be produced.” OK, was that a titanium pitchfork with carbon-fiber accents or the solid gold pitchfork with diamond tips you ordered Mr. Graham? Story and video with Graham’s comment at [THINK PROGRESS]

* Grocery store shenanigans? In this day and age? Apparently Kraft is strong-arming local grocery stores to put their packaged-food up front with the produce! This brilliant but low-key evil plan is based on the fact that comsumers see everything in the produce isle as healthy. Since fruits and veggies are universally accepted as healthy, anything in the produce isle is also seen as healthy (AKA the “halo effect”). So Kraft wants to put their cheez-wiz, processed funk, and all their other items in the produce section to “play up the fresh factor”! I figure strong-arming grocery stores has to be easier than making healthy products in the first place, right? The full story with some seriously subtle underhanded-deviousness-in-progress at the [WALL STREET JOURNAL]

* Speaking of deviousness, Verizon is going to start “collecting your Web browsing history, cell phone location and app usage” and sell your information to advertising agencies. Verizon super-duper promises with cherries on top there’s nothing personally identifiable sent! Just GPS where your cell phone is and where it goes, every website you visit, what time your phone was turned on, if you’re in range of certain businesses that are over-paying Verizon to advertise their crap… you know… Minority Report your ass! This applies to the Verizon 4G and LTE wireless cards too. Story and how to tell Verizon to take you off this list at [PC MAG]

* Who would have thought a Doctor would prescribe videogames to cure a illness? The headline says it all… “Action-packed video games help solve lazy eye”. Yes! We officially live in the future! I wonder if I can put all my Xbox 360 games down this year as medical expenses? Article at [NEW SCIENTIST]

* I secretly love SouthPark. They hide socially relevant and cutting-edge commentaries in simple animation, doo-doo jokes, and amazingly colorful vulgarities. An episode way back in 2009 titled “Goobacks” had a premise that “people from a poverty-stricken future travel back in time to find work, South Park residents accuse them of taking their jobs.” What’s really funny about this episode just happened in 2011. With most of the immigrants gone in Alabama due to recent legislation, the abundant jobs now available, formerly “taken” by immigrants, are NOT WANTED by the jobless local citizens! Delicious irony ensues at [GOOGLE NEWS]

* Want a genuine queasy feeling without having to get in the car, drive to an amusement park and hop on a roller coaster with a five story drop? Check out how the Euro crisis is connected to everything in this easy-to-barf graphic at the [NEW YORK TIMES]

* Do you use words like “because,” “since” or “so that” often? Do you use phrases and write about physical needs such as food, sex or money? You might be a candidate for attending psychopath-u! Or was it u-psychopath? Anyhow, a new computer analysis of word patterns of nutballs says psychopathic killers have distinctive word patterns and those patterns can be detected early. Story (and words for budding writers to avoid) at [SCIENCE DAILY]

* I haven’t run a multi-million dollar company yet, but I would think one of the top five things to do is NOT completely piss off the core customers when coming up with new ideas. Moleskine managed to do just that this week by announcing they are “crowdsourcing a new logo” from their pool of professional customers. Some customers asked if Moleskine was aware a professional design takes around 8 hours and this “contest” is pretty much asking for free spec work. One commentator put best : It’s like Moleskine is “go(ing) around the local bakeries for free bread and then go(ing) back to pay for the one bread they liked”. Moleskine responded to their paying customers questions with this … “If you had spent some time on the “Competitions” area of Designboom website, you certainly have seen that other Brands are running and previously decided to run similar contests, with the same regulation of our with great participation as well as amazing results. That said, being a contest, there’s a final price for the winner, but all the submissions are free, as well you are free not to taking part to it.” Needless to say, a firestorm of bad PR from Moleskine’s formerly devoted customer base has ensued. Expect Moleskine to suddenly realize their oopsie when their core demographic stops buying their overpriced drek. Moleskine’s original logo contest announcement [here] and Moleskine’s backhand response with customer comments [here].

That’s all I got this week!

** Actually posted on 10/23 because I completely blew off yesterday!

OK, this is just embarassing. I realized this morning I haven’t made any “News stories the mainstream media missed” posts since MARCH. My only defense is that, yes, it has been that kind of year for me. SO without any further delay…

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.

* This week’s winner of the gold-plated oxymoron award goes to the US Governemnt! Specifically, for sending “Armed military advisers” to help regional forces combat the “Lord’s Resistance Army” in Africa! OK, when someone holds a gun to another person’s head, they’re not exactly “advising”. It’s more of a “WHAT DOES MARSELLUS WALLACE LOOK LIKE?!” kind of thing. And the “Lord’s Resistance Army”? Seriously? Are they resisting the Lord? Or are they helping the Lord resist? Might make a difference if they spelled that out a little better. Unfortunately, in all seriousness, this sounds like the beginning of another “occupied” war for the US. The full story is at [NY TIMES]

* Faster than light speed travel IS possible! OK, so we still can’t do it, and mostly it’s fancy-pants conjecture, but at least it’s no longer laughed out of the high-and-mighty physicist’s bar and grill anymore! The gist of this article is that light speed is just a perception! (Meanwhile, the drunk philosopher in the back of the bar is yelling NOOOO KIDDING! I KOOODA TOLD YOUS BUMS THAT!!) Bonus points for some cool ancestor of mine figuring out the speed of gravitational wave propagation and how it relates to all this… smart stuff. Time travel hijinks and perceptive physicist mirth in the link. [PHYSORG]

* Get Peanut butter NOW!! Jif is going up 30% starting in November, while Peter Pan will raise prices as much as 24% in a couple weeks. Unilever wouldn’t comment on its pricing plans, but a spokesman for Wegmans Food Markets, the closely held supermarket chain in the Northeast U.S., said wholesale prices for all brands it carries, including Skippy, are 30% to 35% higher than a year ago. Kraft Foods Inc., which launched Planters peanut butter in June, is raising prices 40% on Oct. 31. Dammit, a PBJ isn’t a PBJ without enough P in it. Wait, that didn’t sound right. Story is at the [WSJ]

* When was the last time you used a film camera? You ‘member – a camera that actually uses a roll of chemically coated transparency paper-like stuff to take photos and video with? Well, the last film camera makers just called it quits. There will be no more film cameras made from here on out. It’s the end of a major era that spanned decades, and I don’t think anybody heard the door slamming on it. Details at [TECH CRUNCH]

* Governor Jerry Brown said it was OK for police to search cell phones at any time of an arrest. “Call records, text messages, photos, banking activity, cloud-storage services, and even where the phone has traveled” count for bonus points! Bear in mind that a traffic ticket, by strict definition, is also an arrest. So I guess I better keep a 44oz drink in my cup holder at all times so I can… OOPS!!! How did my cell phone wind up in there?!? Darn it! Now it’s all fried and useless! Sorry ossifer! [WIRED]

* I love how the foreign press loves to backhand Texas. A recent article in Spiegel says Fort Worth Texas as “…one of those hard-to-read provincial cities in the vastness of Middle America, a downtown-less cluster of commercial areas connected to too many expressways”. Hey, buddy, nobody makes fun of Fort Worth except Dallas. Got that? NOBODY! Except for that little pimp slap, the article covers an amazing little thing that happened recently. A man who had his face pulverized by an electrical accident received a full facial replacement – a face transplant – from a dead man. I’m torn between the “WOW” for the science part of it and a serious “OH $#!^” for what will happen to society when this procedure gets “mainstreamed” down to the plastic-surgery level of complication. [SPIEGEL]

* I’ve decided to go as 18hz for halloween… because that’s the frequency of fear!! Mu ha ha haaaa!! OK, that was a really cheesy line. Sorry. But seriously, scientists have figured out that 18hz is the sound frequency that makes people want to GTFO of a situation with no logical explanation. Examples and article at [GUARDIAN]

* Some things I just can’t make the funny with. This story for example – “We fabricated drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas, former detective testifies.” Wow. Some of the NYPD was planting drugs on innocent people for a monthly quota. That’s beyond vile. The only reason these scumbags were busted was that they missed some hidden security cameras in the home they were planting evidence in. Article at [NY DAILY NEWS]

* The headline from TIME magazine says “The Greek Meltdown: Putting the Hell in Hellas” Ah hah. I see what you did there TIME. Saying Greece is having a hella-time in their hella-predicament! How hella-cool of you hella-reporters! Too bad things are about to get rabid-zombie-infected-monkey kinds of FUBAR over there. Normal everyday people are living in the streets kind of broke, all the politicians and bankers are still as rich as a wet-cement chocolate cheesecake, and nobody in power has the brass nards necessary to make serious changes so Greece won’t go completely bankrupt. Unfortunately the Greece situation is a little too familiar sounding for comfort. What happens in Greece has a better than average chance of happening in other countries around the world. A European country at war with itself is never ever good for US (pun intended). But if it spreads worldwide? Hell won’t even begin to describe what will ensue. Sorry, got a little too serious there for a moment. Story at [TIME]

* And finally, I’ve been loving me some Twitter for awhile. The more time I spend on Twitter, the more I see the massive disconnect between Twitter and the mainstream media. News on Twitter arrives in a swarm-like manner – quick, lots of information, then it dissipates. Meanwhile, CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CBS, ABC, NBC and all the others are featuring some vapid dingbat of the month and completely ignoring reality outside their curtain-covered windows. Case in point – look up #OWS and #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupWallSt on Twitter. There are massive protests that are going on all over the world right now. Photos of Times Square with more people and riot-geared police than on New Year’s Eve. More photos of protesters and riot-geared police are coming from Seattle, Spain, Washington, Austin… all these places where everyday people are flooding the streets and gathering by the thousands, and not one damn moment of live coverage by the networks with multi-state broadcast capability. Where are the reporters in trench coats on the scene? Where are the writers who stay with the protesters in each city to write a fifteen page micro-spaced article in Rolling Stone? Where are the news helicopters to fly over the protests for a birds-eye-live view? Regardless of whether you agree with the protesters or not, knowing what is going on in the first place is absolutely critical. Not knowing what is going on is nowhere near as bad as the notion that the broadcast networks are unwilling to inform on what’s going on in the first place. No links on this one – just hit up Twitter and search for the #OWS and #OccupyWallStreet and #OccupWallSt .