A new study finds that "young adults who regularly attend religious activities may be more prone to obesity by middle age than their nonreligious peers," according to the LA Times. The study of 2,433 people found that men and women aged 20-32 who were very religiously involved were 50% more likely to be fat at middle age, even controlling for other variables like race, age and income.
A 31-year-old Pennsylvania man high on America's latest drug scourge, snortable bath salts, went on a crazy rampage last month. It started when he ditched his car on the side of the highway and started running because, according to police, "he thought it was melting and electricity was following him."
Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich acquired plenty of attention this week when he floated the idea that President Obama committed an "impeachable offense" by starting a war in Libya without congressional authorization last week, before flying to Brazil for a few days. Where in the Constitution, Kucinich asked, does it allow the president to jaunt off to Rio without even inviting Dennis Kucinich? And what about the "starting a war without telling anyone" thing, too?
People lose jobs all the time by writing dumb stuff on Twitter. But Newton's Third Law of Internet Dynamics means people also get jobs by writing dumb stuff on Twitter. Well, in this case it's internships: the New York Times recounts how the ad agency Campbell Mithun hired six summer interns via a Twitter competition, "The Lucky 13," wherein they had to come up with 13 tweets making their case.
Last night's American Idol will go down in Idol history as one of its weirdest hours, an episode in which both Ryan Seacrest was thrown into the crowd and a man nearly died, or maybe actually did die. Behold, amazement!
Lindsay Lohan drops her last name while the other Lohans change theirs. Chris Brown's publicist leaves him. In Touch documents Jennifer Aniston's "worst date ever." It's time for TGIFriday gossip.
According to his celebrity ex, this leading man's member is especially tiny. This celeb wants out of his (or her) religion, and this actress is looking to cash in on an upcoming adoption. We know someone who could use the money for a penile enhancement.
Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi can be forgiven for his physical appearance these days. After all, his country is being bombed, rebels are fighting an increasingly bloody war with his army, and his "voluptuous blond" Ukrainian nurse left him. But things weren't always this way. Back in the heady days of 1995 Qaddafi, now 68 years old, gave a Brazilian plastic surgeon an envelope "full of U.S. dollars and Swiss francs" to halt the appearance of aging. The AP spoke to the doctor:
A deputy prosector in Johnson County, Indiana, has resigned his job after it was revealed that in February, during the large protests in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker's anti-public employee union bill, he e-mailed Walker's office and recommended that they conduct a "false flag operation" — to fake an assault or assassination attempt on Walker in order to discredit the unions and protesters.
We are shocked—shocked—to hear that the University of Kentucky is under attack from a racist sign-maker, who has been leaving "juvenile" notices around campus that refer to President Obama using a racial epithet. The first was found hanging from a door in the law school building on March 15; on Thursday, a law student found a sign stuck to a bus stop reading "How Do You Spell Nigger? OBAMA," which is both hateful and factually incorrect. Ingeniously, the sign was composed of letters "cut out from a menu, glued to another piece of paper and photocopied," meaning we may never know the identity of Racist Sign Guy or Gal, and therefore never have the chance to say "what is your deal, man" to his or her face. [Lexington Herald-Leader]
This is a still from a porn film. See the brunette on the left? She's a clerical worker at a Quebec-area high school who was suspended after a student discovered her side job. And then asked for an autograph. Teenagers!
Anarchy! Within reason. All four backing members of punk rock outfit Screeching Weasel have left the band, after a disastrous show at South by Southwest in which longtime frontman Ben "Weasel" Foster taunted the crowd, then struck two women, before spending the rest of the show bitching about The SXSW Man, man. (Shaky footage of the Gig From Hell embedded above.)
All Madonna wanted was her own private school for impoverished African girls, just like Oprah has (minus the molesty stuff). What she got is a PR nightmare. Her mismanaged charitable foundation, Raising Malawi, is on the verge of collapse, and $3.8 million designated for the school have all but vanished into thin air.
NATO agreed on Thursday night to take complete command of military operations in Libya. Psych! NATO is only leading the part that involves flying jets around, while the U.S., France and the UK are stuck doing the "actual war stuff" (technical term).
Bad news for Rep. Peter King's eternal fight against the second-largest religion on the planet! Turns out most Americans are actually dyed-in-the-wool radical Islamists: Sixty nine percent would be "okay" with having a mosque in their communities, and 46 percent have a favorable view of American Muslims, according to a CNN poll. As you might imagine, there is one last bastion of true American Muslin-hating—the rural south, where one half of people say they'd "disapprove" of a neighborhood mosque, unless it had a big confederate flag painted on it. [CNN; image via AP]
You've got to hand it to that old ball-buster, Liz Taylor—she knew how to make an entrance. Taylor left specific instructions that she wanted to "be late for her own funeral," according to a family rep. So 15 minutes after the scheduled service time, pallbearers at Forest Lawn Memorial Park finally carried out the Cleopatra star in a casket "draped with gardenias, violets, and lily of the valley," where she was laid to rest in The Great Mausoleum—just a stone's throw from her longtime partner-in-crime, Michael Jackson.
Ark Music Factory, the vanity production company Rebecca Black's mom paid $2,000 to make that "Friday video," just released this teaser video for something they're calling "The Truth About Ark." Not really sure what to make of this, but apparently it will counter all the mean things people have been saying about Ark, i.e. that they exploit their roster of tween girls' misguided dreams of fame for profit.
