News Briefs 05-11-2009

Friends, Grailers, countrymen: lend me your eyeballs!

• While we Mexicans celebrated Día de Muertos —where's my calaverita, Greg??— the Fortean world suffered two —more— deaths: on the Cryptozoological front, Robert Rines (most famous for the subaquatic pics taken on Loch Ness in 1975); and on the Ufological side, Lonnie Zamora (witness of the legendary Socorro case of 1964).
• V for Viperine: Which one's better, the original or the remake? Who cares! as long as they have girls with forked tongues in it *shudders*
• "My great great great great great great granddad was Guy Fawkes", says a woman living in Halstead —Best. Ancestor. Ever!!
• Cromwell's soldiers damaged tomb of Black Prince 350 years ago. A hooligan, by any other name...
• As part of the Jon Ronson Takeover series of articles, Jim Channon (the founder of the First Earth Batallion) writes: 'My First Earth Battalion comes to life in The Men Who Stare at Goats'; 'Strategic shamanism and the new world order'; and 'The paranormal soldier demystified'.
• Could a human beat a T. Rex in arm wrestling, ask the (stoned) journalists of Popular Science? And here's the bone-crushing response —Still, I'd definitely pay to see that event!
• The mystery of Darwin's wolf, finally solved. Now there's just one more wolf mystery left to crack.
• Feeling grumpy is good for you —so embrace your inner Scrooge and repeat after me: "Bah, Humbug!"
• The ultimate iPhone app: one that lets you drive your car. Suck it, Mr. Bond!
• Faraway So Close: Success & frustration in Space Elevator games.
• Rocketeers win $1 million in Lunar Lander contest —and it was NOT the favorite team in the competition.
• Alien worlds spotted outside our galaxy from the first time.
• Kepler telescope glitch may slow search for alien worlds. Unless that's another darn sabotage from the future, like with the LHC —in which case, Colbert help us!
• Mind control with sound & light. So now we know why aliens like to pimp their interstellar rides.
• Argentinian man in La Pampa stood underneath a 'flying saucer'. Maybe that boludo mistook the UFO for Maradona :-P
• The Airshake: The Belgians Demolition Man-esque way to avoid "Mexican flu", showing that not only they are bigots, but also immensely paranoid.
• ...But then again: Cat catches swine flu in Iowa.
• Can we manipulate the weather? "Sure we can!" say the Chinese; but the real question is: can we IMPROVE it?
• Al Gore set to become the first 'carbon billionaire'. I'm sure a lot of folks —Hi, tihz_ho!— would like to give him the carbon treatment, all right.
• Big Brother (aka the NSA to his buddies) ran out of room at Maryland, so they will have new facilities at Salt Lake City & San Antonio, which will house supercomputers capable of storing yottabytes —not yadda, yotta; as in 10^24— of data.
• Baddabing Badda—Huh?? Italian judge convicts 23 Americans (in absentia) for the kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in 2003.
• The omissions of American journalism when reviewing Juanita Castro's new book (Juanita is the sister of the Fidel we all know and loathe).
• Russia 'simulates' nuclear attack on Poland —great way to celebrate the fall of the Berlin wall, tovarisch...

Thanks to Rick, Kat & Loren.

Quote of the Day:

"War does not determine who is right —only who is left."

Bertrand Russell

[the quote is part of the comic programming of my personal robot, in the Fallout 3 videogame —Amazon US & UK]