At Gizmodo, Cord Jefferson discusses how technology and the Internet have changed the way killers like Dorner operate.

An essay today by Brian McGreevy on Vulture.com about Lena Dunham begins this way: "Girls creator and star Lena Dunham is debatably the most significant figure currently working in television..." Wait. Stop. Allow us to stop you right there, before this goes any further.

Joyce Linehan is the former manager of the Lemonheads, Sub Pop's Boston rep, and the manager of songwriter Joe Pernice. Courtney Love wrote "Doll Parts" staying at Linehan's place. But she's also the Massachusetts-based activist whose supportive urging helped convince Elizabeth Warren to run against Republican goof Scott Brown and his pickup-truck sidekick, a campaign for Senate the Harvard professor ultimately won, as you know. So you might say that Joyce Linehan gets shit done.

As science predicted, the universe, in its magisterial indifference, has not bothered destroying life on Earth right now. You'd better thaw something out for dinner. Might as well go ahead and tell the people you love that you love them, though.

A few days ago, a remix of Autotuned warbler Future's "Karate Chop" made its way onto the Internet. Metaphorical extraordinaire Lil Wayne guests on the track and in his own Autotuned warble, delivers the line, "Beat that pussy up like Emmett Till."

William Watts Biggers, the co-creator of "Underdog," the dimly recalled yet foundational mod cartoon you once watched at your grandmother's house, thrilling as the shy and awkward shoe-shine dog transformed himself into a brave and awkward superhero to save his love Sweet Polly Purebred from all manner of canine villains, and which first inculcated in you a hope that power and dignity was attainable to the least among us, has died. Everything does.

All the scientists are quite confident that asteroid 2012 DA14 is going to miss us when it comes by at 2:25 Eastern time. It is not all going to come burning through our atmosphere with the force of umpty many hydrogen bombs, burying whole taxa in iridium and ash, reducing human civilization to a concentrated smear of silicon and copper for far-future sentient descendants of lobsters to mull over as they drill down into old rock, seeking whatever mineral resources the industries of the lobster-people will depend on. Definitely not. It is not even big enough accomplish that, really, even if it did hit us. The appointed minute will come and 2012 DA14 will almost certainly swing harmlessly past our planet, right under our communications satellites, and back out into the interplanetary void till its next pass.

Here is a list of things we learned from Bill Nye "The Science Guy" on CNN this morning when he was asked to comment on the recent space debris that has been crossing paths with earth:

If you are a grown adult with a 401K and adult financial things of that nature, you may remember 2006 as "the year when the economy was booming, before I had to move into the box." M&A deals were everywhere! Companies were being bought and sold left and right! Bankers and consultants and assorted other finance industry hangers-on were getting rich! And so was everyone else, until it all came crashing down in a massive global disaster just a short time later.

The only unusual aspect of the Collins-Johns engagement announcement that ran in yesterday's Le Mars Daily Sentinel was that the Iowan news concerned a same-sex marriage: Le Mars' own Candace Leigh Collins was set to marry Maria Ava Johns, a young woman she'd met as an undergraduate of Texas State University, this coming May in the progressive state of Massachusetts.

Former presidential candidate Herman Cain now works for Fox News, putting him one step away from Dancing with the Stars.

Norwegian public broadcasters will be rebooting the venerable entertainment property "staring at a fire" in a 12-hour prime-time television broadcast of a burning fireplace, featuring "Norway's biggest firewood celebrity" and other experts providing advice, color commentary, and, one hopes, some play-by-play action.

After a meteorite crashed into Russia early this morning, you may have thought we'd reached our terrifying, Deep Impact-esque space shit quota for the week. Well, you'd be wrong because an asteroid is set to bypass the Earth today.

The passengers of the good ship Triumph, the Carnival cruise liner disabled by a fire and left floating, stinking of shit, for days, finally disembarked last night, only to be confronted with the essential indifference of the universe to human concern:

Are you the type of consumer who just waltzes into a store, carefree as you please, and picks up a jug of laundry detergent after a cursory glance at superficial factors like "price" and "it is laundry detergent?" I pity you. More specifically, I pity your clothes. And most importantly, I pity anyone who decides to run an ultraviolet detector over your clothes to see just how disgusting you really are.

Yesterday, Vin Diesel, among the most advanced Facebook users on the planet, posted this video of himself singing along to Rihanna's "Stay," apparently as a Valentine's Day gift to "V's Angels." Happy (belated) Valentine's Day, everyone. [h/t to Emily]

According to a new study by the U.S. Sentencing Commission, prison sentences handed out to black men in the past seven years have been almost 20% longer than sentences given to white men for the same crimes. From the WSJ:

Elizabeth Warren, the senator from Massachusetts and Great Liberal Hope, had her first hearing yesterday as a member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. How'd it go? Great for Warren; less so for the regulators of whom she was asking questions:

Former San Diego mayor Maureen O'Connor—not that Maureen O'Connor—wagered $1 billion at casinos over the last decade.

At least one meteorite crashed into Russia earlier today, causing several giant explosions and forcing schools and offices to be evacuated. The meteorite reportedly landed in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia, where witnesses said the explosions shattered the windows of nearby buildings and disrupted cell phone service. There were over 400 injuries (Update: now upgraded to 950), and damage was reported in six cities. Information is still coming in and we'll update accordingly, but for now check out the amazing videos and photos from the scene. (We'll be updating with new video and photo throughout the day, so check back for new stuff.)