Kickass Senior Citizen of the Day

Granite Stater Rachel Gilbert, a diehard NASCAR fan who hasn’t driven a motor vehicle in over 15 years, got to live out a dream by taking a racecar for a spin around the New Hampshire Motor Speedway.

Oh, did I mention Gilbert just turned 100? “I can’t make up my mind that I’m here, really, at 100 years old,” the speedy centenarian told WMUR.

In addition to the laps, the track and representatives from Online Casino India (https://online-casino-india.in/) presented her with VIP tickets to the July Sprint Cup, and even scored her an autographed shirt signed by her favorite driver, Carl Edwards.

Sexism of the Day: Nobel Prize Winning Scientist Tim Hunt Says Women Don’t Belong in Labs

English biochemist Sir Tim Hunt won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine back in 2001, but now he is more widely known as Sir Sexist Pig.

Hunt was speaking at the World Conference of Science Journalists in Seoul, South Korea this week when he explained to the audience why he is in favor of single-sex labs.

“Let me tell you about my trouble with girls,” he said.

Uh oh…

“Three things happen when they are in the lab. You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry.”

You see, all the ladies love Hunt, because he is just so irresistible and such a smooth talker.

Here he is talking about cell division, which might get you all hot and bothered.

Unfortunately, he is probably going to find it difficult for anyone to fall in love with him again after that comment.

He later apologized for the timing of the remarks, but stood by his beliefs, telling BBC Radio that it was “a very stupid thing to do in the presence of all those journalists.”

He added: “I have fallen in love with people in the lab and people in the lab have fallen in love with me, and it’s very disruptive to the science because it’s terribly important that in a lab people are on a level playing field.”

The Royal Society, of which Hunt is a fellow, also issued a statement distancing themselves from Hunt and his comments.

The Royal Society believes that in order to achieve everything that it can, science needs to make the best use of the research capabilities of the entire population. Too many talented individuals do not fulfil their scientific potential because of issues such as gender and the Society is committed to helping to put this right. Sir Tim Hunt was speaking as an individual and his reported comments in no way reflect the views of the Royal Society.

And here are some of the reactions from people Twitter.

 

 

Squee of the Day: Mom Weasel Goes Back For Smallest Baby Left Behind

OK, so we aren’t sure if these are weasels, ferrets or stoats—but we do know this is one dedicated momma!

The video starts out with these adorable creatures scrambling up a stone wall led by their fearless mom. When mom gets a look at the camera, she signals to the babies to follow her away from any danger.

But, oh no! One of the babies has fallen off the wall and can’t seem to get up.

The runt of the group finally makes it back up to the top of the wall where it calls out for mom.

With one swift tug, the mom weasel/ferret/stoat pulls the baby to safety and rejoins the group.

Supercut of the Day: Watch All Your Favorite Dance Scenes from Movies in One Video

Shut up and dance with everyone who has ever danced in a major motion picture.

YouTuber MsTabularasa has taken memorable dance scenes from about 88 different movies and mashed them together in one big celebrity dance-off for your viewing pleasure.

The supercut is set to Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance with Me” and it’s really well timed with the music.

It includes classics like “Dirty Dancing” and “Footloose” as well as some more recent films like “Silver Linings Playbook” and “Magic Mike.”

In case you can’t guess them all, she’s listed all of the film titles in the comments below the video along with the corresponding time codes.

Food of the Day: Krispy Kreme Announces Donut Dog with Raspberry Jelly and Bacon

Is the world (or our heart) even ready for this?

It’s only been a few weeks since Little Caesars unleashed their bacon-wrapped pizza, and now Krispy Kreme has come along with an exclusive new creation to put that thing to shame.

Meet the “Krispy Kreme Donut Dog,” a hot dog in a glazed donut bun, slathered in raspberry jelly and covered in bacon.

The Wilmington Blue Rocks, a minor league baseball team from Delaware, has partnered with the donut company to sell this beast during their games at Frawley Stadium.

“The Blue Rocks are always looking for new ways to please our fans, and we think this is certainly going to accomplish that,” said Blue Rocks Director of Advertising Sales Brian Radle. “Krispy Kreme doughnuts and ballpark hotdogs are two of America’s favorite treats, so why not combine them?”

The team has also set up a contest to help officially name the monstrosity, and they are accepting submissions until March 17.

Apology of the Day: Comcast Sorry for Changing Subscriber’s Name to A-Hole

Here’s yet another reason to join the cord-cutting revolution.

A man in Spokane, Washington was surprised to find out that Comcast had changed his name from Ricardo Brown to “Asshole” Brown on his most recent bill.

He and his wife Lisa had been trying to cancel their cable subscription with the company, which should have been a very simple process.

But it was not.

They first reported the issue to consumer advocate Christopher Elliott, who wrote:

Instead of complying immediately, a representative escalated her call to a retention specialist, who tried to persuade her to keep the cable service and sign a new two-year contract.

His wife said she was not being rude, but the Comcast customer service agent decided to get back at them for not taking the offer in the most passive aggressive and childish way possible.

Elliot spoke with a Comcast rep who eventually apologized.

“We have spoken with our customer and apologized for this completely unacceptable and inappropriate name change,” he said. “We have zero tolerance for this type of disrespectful behavior and are conducting a thorough investigation to determine what happened. We are working with our customer to make this right and will take appropriate steps to prevent this from happening again.”

The company also promised to fire the employee responsible and has offered to both waive the $60 cable cancellation fee (how generous) and provide a refund of their two years of cable service.

And just as a reminder of it’s like to deal with Comcast customer service:

Toy of the Day: You Can Now Buy an Action Figure of Vladimir Putin Riding a Bear

Meanwhile in Russia… you can now own an action figure of your favorite Russian president Vladimir Putin, shirtless and riding a bear.

Finally!

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty correspondent Robert Coalson tweeted the strange image this weekend.

“For sale at the Ismailovo market in Moscow,” he wrote.

You can also purchase the polyresin figure at this website, and it appears to be on sale for just 2500 Rubles (about $38).

Here’s the description of the item from the site, via Google Translate:

Luxurious Figurine as the head of state who tamed forest brown bear standing on a segment of a great country, symbolizes the victory, the heroic strength and power. Bear has long been considered a symbol of immense Russia, represents courage, strength, courage and rage directed against enemies – this beast could not be better reflects the position of the nation and its principles.

There have been other Putin action figures available in the past, like this one of him giving a speech at a podium (boring).

Joke or not, Coalson is noticing a lot of interest from people about the item on his Twitter account.

There are a number of photoshopped images of the Russian president riding various wild beasts, including a shark, but this figure seems to be based off this one.

In Russia, you is on joke.

WTF of the Day: Swedish Kids’ Song About Sex Organs is Super Catchy

A cartoon penis and vagina are taking Sweden by storm.

This music video for kids is supposed to teach them about the human body, particularly male and female genetalia.

In it, the animated characters dance around with hats, canes and microphones.The song also actually really catchy too – even if you can’t understand the lyrics – which roughly translate to phrases like “here comes the penis at full pace,” and “the vagina is cool, you better believe it.”

The video was created by Swedish Public Television for a children’s show called Bacillakuten, and it was posted to their Facebook page last week where it has over 1 million views and some complaints from angry parents.

“The song is deplorable and unacceptable for children,” said one commenter.

“Yes why not talk about these body parts in a good and funny way!!” wrote another in support of he video.

The show isn’t phased by the critics, however, and thinks the message behind it is all that matters.

“Although we received some criticism, we are very, very happy today, because the impact of the video is awesome!” said a rep for the show.

Via: The Local

On Kony 2012

On Kony 2012: I honestly wanted to stay as far away as possible from KONY 2012, the latest fauxtivist fad sweeping the web (remember change your Facebook profile pic to stop child abuse?), but you clearly won’t stop sending me that damn video until I say something about it, so here goes:

Stop sending me that video.

The organization behind Kony 2012 Invisible Children Inc. is an extremely shady nonprofit that has been called misleading, naive, and dangerous by a Yale political science professor, and has been accused by Foreign Affairs of manipulat[ing] facts for strategic purposes. They have also been criticized by the Better Business Bureau for refusing to provide information necessary to determine if IC meets the Bureaus standards.

Additionally, IC has a low two-star rating in accountability from Charity Navigator because they wont let their financials be independently audited. Thats not a good thing. In fact, its a very bad thing, and should make you immediately pause and reflect on where the money youre sending them is going.

By ICs own admission, only 31% of all the funds they receive go toward actually helping anyone. The rest go to line the pockets of the three people in charge of the organization, to pay for their travel expenses (over $1 million in the last year alone) and to fund their filmmaking business (also over a million) which is quite an effective way to make more money, as clearly illustrated by the fact that so many cant seem to stop forwarding their well-engineered emotional blackmail to everyone they’ve ever known. Don’t send them anything, you’d be better off gambling away your money in a casino online than sending them a dime. And just to clarify I’m not suggesting anyone should now go and start betting at an online casino any time soon!

And as far as what they do with that money:

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Lets not get our lines crossed: The Lords Resistance Army is bad news. And Joseph Kony is a very bad man, and needs to be stopped. But propping up Uganda’s decades-old dictatorship and its military arm, which has been accused by the UN of committing unspeakable atrocities and itself facilitated the recruitment of child soldiers, is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already plenty involved in helping rout Kony and his band of psycho sycophants. Kony is on the run, having been pushed out of Uganda, and its likely he will soon be caught, if he isnt already dead. But killing Kony wont fix anything, just as killing Osama bin Laden didnt end terrorism. The LRA might collapse, but, as Foreign Affairs points out, it is a relatively small player in all of this as much a symptom as a cause of the endemic violence.

Myopically placing the blame for all of central Africas woes on Kony even as a starting point will only imperil many more people than are already in danger.

Sending money and plastic sheets to a nonprofit that wants to muck things up by dousing the flames with fuel is not helping. Want to help? Really want to help? Send your money to nonprofits that are putting more than 31% toward rebuilding the regions medical and educational infrastructure, so that former child soldiers have something worth coming home to.

Here are just a few of those charities. They all have a sparkling four-star rating from Charity Navigator, and, more importantly, no interest in airdropping American troops armed to the teeth into the middle of a multi-nation tribal war to help one madman catch another. They also had a generous donation from a casino company in Luxembourg that wanted to help out the cause, check them out here.

The bottom line is, research your causes thoroughly. Dont just forward a random video to a stranger because a mass murderer makes a five-year-old sad. Learn a little bit about the complexities of the regions ongoing strife before advocating for direct military intervention.

There is no black and white in the world. And going about solving important problems like there is just serves to make all those equally troubling shades of gray invisible.

Return of the Jedi Set Footage of the Day

Back in 1982, a group of young Star Wars fans trekked into the California desert to crash the outdoor set of Return of the Jedi, and this seven-minute video of scenes from the Sail Barge, featuring Luke Skywalker, R2-D2, Slave Leia and Boba Fett, was the result.

Posthumous MJ Release of the Day

Better late and unfinished than never — available today for the first time (and exclusively at Wal-Mart), the demo of Michael Jackson’s “Don’t Be Messin’ ‘Round” accompanies a re-release of Bad’s original lead single, “I Can’t Just Stop Loving You.”

A full album of previously unreleased material from the Bad sessions is due September 18.

[ae]

Everybody Needs A Hobby of the Day

One man, 1,000,000 edits: Justin Knapp, a 30-year-old Wikipedia editor from Indiana, has spent the bulk of his free time since 2003 giving the open-source encyclopedia the ol’ spit-and-polish, and he’s finally hit seven digits. And that’s easier said than done, considering the site is the sixth most-visited in the world.

Among his crowning achievements on the site is the bibliography on the George Orwell entry, the most comprehensive of its kind in the world; it took Knapp more than 100 hours to complete. He also has tasked himself with keeping the site’s information on music albums up-to-date. And all for what?

“I’ve never accepted any restitution for my work on Wikipedia — it’s purely voluntary. … Far be it for me to say that it’s an act of love to edit Wikipedia. But I really do feel like it helps other human beings. That makes me feel good — knowing that somehow I can be a small part of helping someone who I’ll never know.”

[gizmodo]

Love Story of the Day

When G-Male — the imagined Google version of the perfect boyfriend — meets Siri — the imagined Apple version of the perfect girlfriend — data flies.

This Is All Kinds of Wrong of the Day

A horrifying video of a student being restrained and shocked for hours at the Judge Rotenberg Center was shown in court Tuesday at the start of Andre McCollins’ trial against the center, and it may be enough to get the facility shut down once and for all.

The video shows a 2002 incident in which 18-year-old McCollins was restrained, face-down, on the floor, and then given 31 shocks as he screamed and fought, all because he had refused to take off his coat. While the center had fought for years to keep the video sealed, it was used not only in court, but by a Boston Fox affiliate that got permission to air it over objections from Rotenberg’s lawyers.

Despite a revealing 2007 exposé (McCollins wasn’t the only student subjected to the inhumane treatment) that led to local and state investigations and ongoing lawsuits, the school, in Canton, MA, has managed to stay open. It bills itself as a special needs school, and “is the only facility in the country that disciplines students by shocking them, a form of punishment not inflicted on serial killers or child molesters or any of the 2.2 million inmates now incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons.”

“I never signed up for him to be tortured, terrorized, and abused,” McCollins’ mother Cheryl testified in court Tuesday. “I had no idea — no idea — that they tortured the children in the school.”

Early Bird Special

9Lives Adventures, “an adrenaline-fueled tour operator catering to the physically disabled,” helps make a paraplegic girl’s bungee jumping dreams come true.

Celebrity Cellphone Pic Leak of the Day [UPDATED]

A new celebrity cellphone pic scandal may be brewing after highly personal photos of Christina Hendricks and Olivia Munn made their way online last night.

A user of the anonymous file hosting site Motherless.com started a thread two days ago asking other users which celeb they most wanted to see nude. Several hours later, seeing the thread produce nothing of value, a second user began uploading private cellphone photos of Mad Men star Christina Hendricks, including a headless shot that contained exposed breasts.

It remained unclear if the photo was in fact of Hendricks.

Later on, risque photos of television personality Olivia Munn, complete with salacious captions believed to be intended for her then-boyfriend Chris Pine, were also posted, likely by the same user.

Personal photos of actresses January Jones, Sarah Silverman, Hayden Panettiere, and Michelle Trachtenberg were also posted in the thread, but did not appear to be as private or scandalous as the ones of Hendricks and Munn.

The origin of the cellphone pics was not revealed.

“Hollywood Hacker” Christopher Chaney, the notorious celebrity cellphone hacker responsible for leaking the now-infamous ScarJo self-pics, was arrested last October and indicted on charges of identity theft and wiretapping among others. If convicted, Chaney could face up to 121 years behind bars.

[ontd / nudography.]

UPDATE: Christina Hendricks confirmed through a rep that her phone was hacked, but claims the nude photo is not her. Olivia Munn also denied the solitary nude pic in the set is her, but the others are apparently real.

Best Casino Ad of the Day

Hilarious stuff from Parks and Recreation in the form of this Wamapoke Casino ad. Wamapoke Casino live by the moto: “Slowly taking our money back from White people one quarter at a time.”

The internet casino version may get them even closer to their goal.

Lights Out

An adorable montage of adorable grandparents discovering Photo Booth, adorably.