Random

It makes us feel better when famous people make mistakes.

It's not that we're cruel. It's that we want to believe that they are as incompetent and wayward as we are.

Yet sometimes, the mistakes of the famous can be visited on the anonymous. A couple of days ago, for example, Justin Bieber tweeted a Dallas phone number, so that someone could call him "right now." He omitted the last digit, which some might find peculiar.

Perhaps this was a tease. (Well, he is 18 now.) Probably--at least according to CBS Dallas/Fort Worth… Read more

When Facebook tells you it has "notifications," it can be troubling. What must Facebook notify you of? It sounds so official.

However, when Facebook recommends a new friend, surely the machines know that this is someone with whom you will have a riotous old time.

And yet a woman in Pierce County, Wa., received a Facebook friending suggestion that recommended someone she felt certain was a stranger. Yet she allegedly discovered it was her husband's wife. Yes, his other wife.

The way the News Tribune splices it, Alan L. O'Neill, 41, is a corrections officer who … Read more

There are few more painful jobs than being a restaurant server.

Why, only yesterday, a number of them were awarded more than $5 million, after they claimed that Mario Batali's company had unfairly re-allocated some of their tips.

So if Peyton Manning walked into your restaurant and, at the end of a meal, offered an a additional tip of $200, you might feel a little giddy. Especially as 18 percent had already been added to the $739.58 check.

You would want to tell as many people as possible--or at least your friends.

These days, though, many think the … Read more

In human relationships, nothing should surprise. Indeed, the only extreme reaction ought to be disappointment.

This is what I feel after I learned from the excellent Beaver County Times that a man is being accused of placing a transmitter beneath his wife's bed.

His purpose was allegedly to discover if she was having sex.

The more alert among you might have noticed the phrase "his wife's bed." This would suggest either that the gentleman in question and his wife had an agreeable but separate sleeping arrangement. Or that there was trouble beneath their roof.

It seems … Read more

The Transport Security Administration's body scanners have enjoyed a level of controversy similar to that of Rush Limbaugh.

Though they've never called women names, the machines have led females to strip to their bra and panties in protest.

Now, Jonathan Corbett--who was the first to sue the TSA over its invasive machines--claims that the body scanners can be easily duped.

His explanation seems quite simple: if you strap your evil-doing object to your side, rather than to your front or back, the scanners provide no visual contrast with the background and therefore won't spot the object.

On his blog, … Read more

All the children I know seem to enjoy a good horror movie.

Not all, though, may enjoy that horror being transmitted to their math classes. For a teacher who allegedly downloaded some colorfully horrific math problems with which to fascinate her third-graders, has been fired.

WUSA9 TV offered a very spooky tale of a teacher at Trinidad Center City School in Washington, D.C. who allegedly presented this problem to his kiddies: "I took a nap in a bog one day and woke up screaming. 3,796 leeches, 2,910 fleas and 1,044 vampire bats were stuck to … Read more

With Greece teetering on the brink of post-history and Italy constantly attempting to out-buffoon itself, the concept of "nation" is under a little pressure.

Then along comes Apple, hurtling toward style domination, and suddenly it seems to have a market valuation greater than some world economies.

One headline this week, though, crowed slightly beyond reason. "Apple is now worth more than Poland," it read.

It was the use of the word "worth" that caused my cabbage pierogi to resist their final resting place.

Is Apple really "worth" more than Poland? I know … Read more

As political parties, bank managers, and drug dealers have often found to their cost, infiltrators can be very hard to detect.

This is something that, perhaps, the members of Anonymous recently discovered for themselves, at least according to Symantec, the online security people.

For the company believes that members of the hacking collective were deceived into downloading a Zeus Trojan that gave up their banking details and other personal information.

On its blog, Symantec described how, on January 20--the day of the rather charming Kim Dotcom's sequestration by the FBI--members of Anonymous used their own personal computers to participate … Read more

Loud screams of excitement have been heard ever since the revelation that two Japanese researchers had developed a gun that could stop people talking. Without killing them.

I wrote about this fascinating firearm only the other day.

Now the Japanese researchers who developed it are so excited by the excitement that they have released a YouTube video of the device.

And what a frisky little Colt .45 silencer it is.

Wired reports that the two creators, Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tskuba and Koji Tsukada at Ochanomizu University, are bemused at the … Read more