Actor Judd Hirsch (Taxi, Jeff Goldblum's Dad in Independence Day) would like to rid himself of that dang electric grid. To do so, he would like to build a 177-foot-tall electric wind turbine that will stand alone on his property. To Judd's neighbors in small Denning, New York, that's 15 stories of sheer terror.

While the United States mostly lets banks get away with brazen fraud, Vietnam has just sentenced a crooked banker to death. Perhaps there's some middle-ground we can all stick to?

You can change your profile photo to whatever you want, but all that Facebook sees are sweet, sweet dollar signs — and they want you to know that.

It was exactly two weeks ago today that I first heard of Renisha McBride. I read half the story—the 19-year-old African American girl, shot in the face by a 54-year-old white man, after she'd been in a car accident, walked down the road, and knocked on his door seeking help—and dutifully posted it to the hate crimes blog I manage.

In 1993, Ronald Phillips raped and killed his girlfriend's 3-year-old daughter. On Thursday, he was scheduled to be executed, until Ohio governor John Kasich delayed his execution so he could come to a decision whether Philips' request for his organs to be donated should be fulfilled.

'Tis the season for bacon-flavored candy canes.

An upstate New York man with an affinity for lawsuits was arrested this week after he fired an unloaded Civil War cannon replica at his neighbors for eight days straight.

TSA Officer Gerardo Hernandez waited 33 minutes before receiving medical attention after being shot earlier this month at LAX, a delay that might have cost Hernandez his life.

Alec Baldwin's MSNBC talk show, which debuted in October, is already being suspended for two weeks following an incident yesterday in which Baldwin was heard to call a paparazzo a "cocksucking fag." Baldwin denies using the word "fag," but he apologized nonetheless for his outburst in a statement posted to the MSNBC website:

Dozens were killed and hundreds more wounded in a gun battle between Libyan militia members and armed residents in Tripoli today. "Prime Minister Ali Zeidan is struggling to control rival militias, Islamist militants and other former fighters" who are still fighting two years after overthrowing Gaddafi, reports Reuters.

[A rainbow forms over the airport in Tacloban, Philippines, where survivors of Typhoon Haiyan wait to be evacuated early Friday. Photo by Wong Maye-E via AP]

A Michigan man has reportedly gone to Internet-ready lengths in order to troll his ex-wife with a daily reminder of his feelings towards her.

Math is hard.

Earlier this week, authorities discovered the remains of Joseph and Summer McStay buried in a shallow grave in the Mojave desert. The couple, along with their two young sons, Gianni and Joseph Jr., have been missing since 2010, when they disappeared from their suburban California home. Police are treating their deaths as homicides.

A 20-year-old female undergrad is the third proudest person in the world today (following her two proud parents) after being named winner of a month-long contest to find the "horniest student."

Moody's has cut the credit ratings of several big Wall Street banks, because it's less confident that the government will bail them out if they fuck up. Baby steps.

What’s Ken Starr up to these days? According to Virginia court documents, the famously pious former Clinton prosecutor recently pleaded with a Fairfax County judge to let a confessed child molester go free. Because he’s a family friend. Here’s the letter.

I have never seen anyone cry so openly and in such volume as I did when I attended a press screening of The Best Man Holiday earlier this week with my coworker Caity Weaver. (Given our shared love of all things Christmasy, cheesy, and Christmasy cheesy, she was the natural choice to be my +1.) Malcolm D. Lee's follow-up to 1999's The Best Man simply destroyed her. Her outpouring of emotion was a beautiful sight to behold.

If you are the type of person who throws around the word "zen" just to make yourself feel important, consider this: *the complete lack of sound.* Now who is "zen," you faux-spiritual fop?