Note: This post—a response to Reddit's free speech argument in the wake of Gawker's Violentacrez story—was originally published on writer John Scalzi's personal blog, and is republished here with permission. You can find the original here.

Public Enemy hype man and wearable clock aficionado Flavor Flav (born William Drayton, Jr.) was allegedly involved in a heated altercation early this morning that resulted in his arrest on charges of assault with a deadly weapon and misdemeanor domestic violence.

"The Backbone Zone" is "an innovative approach to bystander intervention" that encourages students to stand up against sexist and homophobic slurs.

I'd like to thank presidential candidate Mitt Romney for taking a moment last night to raise binder awareness. But while most of the Internet is occupied today with the women Mitt is putting in those binders and how those women got into his binders to begin with, I think we need to step back for a moment and talk about a larger issue surrounding binders. And that is that they are fucking terrible.

A pair of patrons at Paddy Murphy's Irish Pub & Restaurant in Orlando took their public display of affection a little too far when they started having sex in full view of other customers.

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard has accomplished something previously reserved for Homer Simpson and horny preteens: she has revised the dictionary. Well, the Australian dictionary, which is sort of a real dictionary, except it is written by the descendants of criminals.

Buying an afro wig for a Studio 54 theme party thrown by your work is a totally reasonable thing to do. Less reasonable is buying an afro wig, wearing it to your theme party, and then continuing to wear it around New York City on a journey of self-discovery, during which you frequently take pictures with black people. Alas, that's exactly what Michelle Lapidos has done. Welcome to "Before and Afro."

On the first episode of TLC's latest good-natured freak show, Extreme Cheapskates, we were introduced to Kate Hashimoto, a woman so cheap that she thinks nothing of serving friends food that she picked out of the trash. The premiere's 30 minutes was devoted to Kate's incredibly odd ways, and its format was basically a litany of her lifestyle. Said Kate:

After word spread last week that a Canadian teen named Amanda Todd had taken her own life after being cyberbullied for a period of at least two years, certain anonymous Internet justice outfits set out to find the person responsible.

Can we declare a moratorium on the "Barack Obama's email subject lines sure are weird" stories? Thanks.

America's newest sweetheart and undeniable debate-winner Jeremy Epstein joined Chuck Todd on MSNBC this morning to share his experience at last night's town hall debate. Epstein described the question selection process, explaining that each audience member submit four questions, and was given one back, but no one knew for certain they would be called upon.

The Screen Junkies Show is riding high on the success of last week's episode, which featured Seven Psychopaths stars Christopher Walken, Colin Farrell, and Sam Rockwell reciting lines from TLC's Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, so they decided to "flip the script" and give Here Comes Honey Boo Boo stars Honey Boo Boo Child and Mama June a chance to respond in kind by reenacting scenes from Christopher Walken's appropriately wacky repertoire.

Halloween party season will soon be upon us, which means, more importantly, celebrity Halloween party season will soon be upon us. Now that you've negged your way to the top of the celebrity dog pile, you've probably got more invitations than can fit inside a regulation sized plastic jack-o-lantern candy carrier (so bring a pillowcase, Jesus, plan ahead). Use this guide to plan your party route.

Says here that 93% of the income gains over the first year of our ongoing economic "recovery" went to the top 1% of earners. Everyone okay with that? *Swivels head briefly* Great. Let's all keep moving in this direction—together.

Barbs are flying in the high stakes world of online coupon blogging after professional baby-haver Kate Gosselin was fired yesterday from her job ghostwriting blog posts about saving money sometimes.

The most exciting recent musical development in R&B has less to do with its beat than what's floating above it. The synth-led humidity the genre has absorbed via the likes of Frank Ocean, Drake (and his producer, Noah "40" Shebib), the Weeknd, and Miguel is shaping the commercial genre before our ears in a way that hasn't happened since Timbaland revolutionized it by making it skitter during the last half of the ‘90s. Mood music actually sounds moody again.

Jumping into a pool of frozen water wearing nothing but a Speedo-Hot Pants hybrid would demand of any reasonable primate at least a fleeting expectation of pain.

As can be gleamed from the various pop-up parody twitter accounts and tumblrs, the second presidential debate was predictably a perfect target for internet meme makers, which in this day and age is what one might call "a success." When the candidates weren't too busy talking over each other, Mitt Romney was making weird, unsupported claims about women and binders and both President Obama and Candy Crowley were providing live fact checking services for the entire evening. It goes to show that the purpose of any given presidential debate is really just to remove the context from stupid things the candidates say and preserve them on the internet forever.

One person was killed and five others were injured following a gas explosion in a Russian apartment complex allegedly caused by a resident's suicide attempt.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics is reporting the violent crime rate in America rose last year, for the first time in almost two decades. The rise is due largely to a rise in assaults, now at 22.5 per 1,000 people.