We well-meaning men have been trying to tell you this for years, ladies: your fancy hairdo is dumb. And it sucks up time that could be better spent on other things like, I don't know, just to pick an example out of thin air... doing some exercise to get yourself in shape, for once.
At London's Notting Hill Carnival on Monday, 20 year-old Rio Andre was stabbed by a teenager after trying to break up a fight. What was that intense moment like? Well, just look at this god damn picture: There's Andre in the middle of the scene with his wound, arms out, looking stricken; there's the stabber, fleeing the scene with knife in hand; there's the heroic bystander trying to trip the perp as he runs by; there are the police, frozen, like "huh?"; there's the crowd in the background, shocked.
The Mangyongbong, a ferry that was previously used to shuttle passengers between North Korea and Japan, is now North Korea's hot new tourist vessel. Yesterday was the Mangyongbong's maiden voyage as a pleasure craft, embarking on a tour of the country's eastern coastline, and North Korea's official KCNA has the details:
Stockholm's Karolinska Institute has concluded a new study about pregnant mothers and tobacco use and the results may shock you (no irony!). In snus-addled Sweden, using snuff/snus/dip is widely seen as less harmful than smoking, so it's a great habit for pregnant women who smoke to pick up, right? Perhaps not! Reuters Health reports on the findings:
The Economist Intelligence Unit annually releases a "Liveability Ranking Report" that "assesses which locations around the world provide the best or the worst living conditions." HR Departments routinely use it as a benchmark for whether or not a company's employees should get hardship pay. If you were, say, an oil man sent to grab Libya's natural resources at the behest of a major company (or after the "Lockerbie Bomber" was swapped for lucrative oil contracts), well, you'd be in the money! But it also wouldn't be much fun.
Australians are renowned for having contributed a great many things to the world, such as [TK/research intern], but cultural sensitivity is, alas, not one of them. For example, last June we noted one newscaster's lighthearted description of a Chinese lotto winner as having "slanty eyes and yellow skin." Reaching back further, in 2009, a variety show called Hey Hey, It's Saturday caused a bit of an international stir when a Jackson 5 tribute group came out in blackface, horrifying guest judge Harry Connick Jr. Well, it seems not much has changed, as Qantas has named the winner of its Twitter contest to send two lucky fans to an international rugby match, and it's...yet two more guys in blackface and afro wigs. Wait! Let them explain! They were actually paying lighthearted and respectful homage to...uh...Oh, never mind. If you have to explain it, it's already lost half the joke. Their teeth! So white! BLOL! [tracker.org.au]
Police in Yorktown, Virginia responded to a domestic dispute call around 10:00 a.m. on Thursday that resulted in a man decapitating himself. Yes, that's right. He decapitated himself.
Feeling perhaps a little down in the dumps over poor book sales and a rescinded invitation to be Sarah Palin's warm-up comic, Christine O'Donnell retreated to the comfort of her Twitter feed today. There she delivered an electrifying message to her core constituency of spellcasters, shamans, and Vodou high priestesses, which, as best as we can make out using what we remember from 6th grade Wiccanese, foretells Palin and the president waking up this morning having swapped bodies. [Wonkette]
Here's a local news report that features photos, obtained from a surveillance camera, of a uniformed New Mexico State Police officer using the hood of a car to give one woman a full cavity search, if you catch my drift. The officer in question hasn't been fired as of yet, but he's now the subject of an internal affairs investigation related to his own, uh, internal affair. [KOB]
Stuck at home on a drunk-driving conviction waiting for a "private security firm" to attach a court-mandated ankle monitor? Try this foolproof trick: Don't have a leg!
You'd think a professional chef who is also a cannibal would be into some ambitious human meat food, right? Nope! A 21-year-old Russian cook and (now-jailed) cannibal settled for some boring old meatballs and sausages.
There's something charming about Andrew Mason's goofiness. "I feel like clout is something that builds up on your teeth," the Groupon CEO once told Today in response to a question about his influence. But with two top lieutenants out the door in as many weeks, you have to wonder if the antics are starting to grate.
There's a lot to like about this very well-done promo video for a soon-to-open East London shopping, hrm, "centre" besides the fashion, much of which still looks very snappy, if not entirely accurate. Such as, for example, the music (by Tristin Norwell), and the choreography, and imagining how annoying, but also fun, it would have been to change your clothes 100 times and do the same dance every time. [via The Hairpin]
Twitter is partnered with Apple, so maybe the microblogging service can get some advice from Steve Jobs on effective advertising. Or maybe it has; Twitter's new earthquake ad looks like nothing so much as a cry for help.
Is there any kind of crime better than the crime you can imagine being committed by a good-looking and diverse team of criminals cracking stilted jokes on, say, USA or TNT? No, there is not! And so it is with the "Sleeping Gas Bandits":
Why did Rick Perry completely change his mind about entering the presidential race, thereby stripping Mitt Romney of his inevitable frontrunner status? Perhaps he's too flippant about the whole deal. Or he just wants to exact revenge on Romney for dishonoring his beloved Boy Scouts, nine years ago.
