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Tech NewsCarmageddon + Planking = Plankmageddon
Greetings from sunny Los Angeles, California, where the two-day closure of a 10-mile strip of freeway has produced more death, carnage and abject misery than humankind has ever seen, or will likely ever see again. Just kidding! The non-event known as Carmageddon has resulted in an almost surreally quiet weekend in the city. I don’t … Continued
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ScienceHealth
Internet Use Proven To Affect Your…Uh…Memory
I know a grand total of about five phone numbers off by heart. One is mine — not the landline, though, still have to double-check that one — and one is my parents’, who haven’t changed their number since the ’60s. (Or their phone, for that matter.) It’s a common phenomenon: The more easy-to-access information … Continued
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Tech News
Failed Prophet Harold Camping Moved to Nursing Home
Last month, 89-year-old apocalypse forecaster Harold Camping suffered a stroke, likely related to the cumulative stress of having failed to deliver on big rapture promises. http://gawker.com/5811167/rapture-rescheduler-harold-camping-suffers-stroke His family now confirms that the Bay Area evangelist was moved into an assisted care facility for rehabilitation. Meanwhile, the fate of his radio show — which has gone … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
Government Sues Apollo Astronaut For Allegedly Stealing a Lunar Camera
NASA officials learned last March that a British auction house had an item labeled “Movie Camera from the Lunar Surface” as part of their Space History Sale. The camera was described in the catalog as being one of two used aboard Apollo 14’s lunar module, Antares, and had come directly from the collection of astronaut … Continued
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Tech News
Tennessee To Be the Proud Owner of 1000 Tons of Radioactive German Waste
As a flooded Nebraska contends with a potential nuclear incident, the tornado-ravaged state of Tennessee will soon have their own radioactive material to contend with — freshly imported from Germany! http://gawker.com/5813448/what-just-happened-at-nebraskas-cooper-nuclear-station AP reports that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has approved licenses for “1,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste from Germany” to be brought to … Continued
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Tech News
All Hell Breaks Loose After Slap Fight on a United Flight
It all started when a passenger on a Ghana-bound United flight out of D.C.’s Dulles Airport decided to recline his seat. That pissed off the passenger behind him, leading to an exchange of heated words between the men, and the recliner being “smacked in the head.” That’s right: the very act you’ve fantasized about countless … Continued
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Tech News
Great Moments in Autopen History
Minutes before midnight, after a landslide House vote of 250-153, President Obama signed legislation backing a four-year extension on the controversial USA PATRIOT Act. (Did you know that’s an acronym for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism? Now you do.) Yay, habeas corpus denials, warrantless searches and … Continued
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ScienceHealth
Vuvuzelas Spread Disease
Vuvuzelas, those ceremonial trumpets favored by South Africans that, when tooted in unison, approximate the sound of the world’s largest locust orgy, are annoying. The World Cup made that crystal clear. But could they also be pandemic-hastening instruments of mass destruction? Possibly! A new study reveals the vuvuzela to be about as effective as a … Continued
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Tech News
Meet an Honest-to-Goodness Nigerian Scammer
The Nigerian scam (aliases: the 419 scam, the Spanish Prisoner scam, the Letter From Jerusalem) dates back to the 1700s, but email has made it as commonplace an inbox nuisance as penis-enlargement ads or forwarded jokes from your mother’s second-cousin. Just who are the confidence men behind the broken English? Are they even Nigerian? And … Continued
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Tech NewsHarold Camping ‘Flabbergasted’ The World Did Not End
Harold Camping speaks! The 89-year-old Nostradamus from Northern California, who spent millions of his followers’ dollars to get out the word that the world was ending on Saturday, has been noticeably silent since that day came and went rather unremarkably. But he’s at last ready to talk — and oy, what a weekend. Don’t get … Continued
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Tech News
Drug Dealer Foiled By 911 Pocket-Dial
Daniel Moore, an 18-year-old from Gainesville, was arrested after his cellphone “somehow” dialed 911, leading cops directly to his prescription drug deal. The call came in at 1:30 am, and all the dispatcher could hear was “several individuals talking about a drug transaction involving prescription narcotics,” the Gainesville Times reports. A deputy was dispatched to … Continued
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Tech NewsSocial Media
Secret Service Grills Boy Who Warned President About Suicide Bombers on Facebook
There’s an old sketch from MTV’s brilliant The State, where a kid reprimands his obnoxious classmates, saying, “You can’t even joke about it! You just can’t say ‘Gee, wouldn’t it be great if we shot the President,'” which results in a swarm of Secret Service agents flooding the classroom and carrying him away. Well, that … Continued
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Tech News
Hero Cops Escort Cellphone Loudmouth Off Train
People who carry on high-volume conversations on their cellphones in public places are the worst. THE. WORST. Which makes Lakeysha Beard the worst of the worst of the worst. For sixteen solid hours after she boarded an Amtrak train in Oakland, KATU.com reports, she yapped loudly into her goddamned phone. SIXTEEN HOURS. And she was … Continued
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Tech News
The Real Reason You Won’t See Osama Death Pix: Princess Beatrice’s Hat
All the world may want a peek at the Osama bin Laden execution photos, but sorry, sickies — you’ll just have to settle for a second-hand account from Sen. James Inhofe and his Cryptkeeper-like attention to gruesome detail. But nowhere in the reams of analysis of the president’s decision to withhold the pictures did the … Continued
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Tech News
Tourists Can Now Dangle Precariously From CN Tower
This is not going to end well. The CN Tower, which stretches 116 stories above the Toronto skyline, its “main pod” hovering there like some sort of malevolent spacecraft, will now invite tourists to stroll around its perimeter. There will be no fences, no ledges, no plexiglass walls. NOTHING, in fact, standing between you and … Continued
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ScienceSpace & Spaceflight
The Anticlimactic End to NASA’s Space Shuttle Program
That badass picture isn’t a still from the new Transformers movie. It’s an actual electrical storm behind the actual space shuttle Endeavor, set to launch on its final voyage today. This is the penultimate space shuttle mission; the curtain will fall on the 30-year-old program when Atlantis returns in June. But then what? http://gawker.com/5796896/transformers-dark-of-the-moon-trailer-total-eclipse-of-the-brain So … Continued
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Tech News
Pittsburgh Is Having A Ninja Problem
The greater Pittsburgh area has been contending with a very annoying ninja infestation lately. If you’ve ever had a ninja problem yourself, you know that they’re really hard to get rid of, and if you see one, you can be sure there’s hundreds more where he came from. The most recent outbreak occurred when a … Continued
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Tech News
FDA Finds Rat Droppings ‘Too Numerous to Count’ on Delta Flight
Do you have a fear of flying? It’s only natural. There are many frightening things about air travel that are completely out of your control. And here’s another one: Rats. Pooping rats. The Food and Drug Administration has sent a letter of warning (they’re really into those, these days) to Delta Airlines CEO Richard Anderson, … Continued
Seth Abramovitch
Seth Abramovitch's posts